Title: When It Happens

Author: Banana Tooth

Rating: K

Spoilers: None

Disclaimer: I am in no way connected with CBS, the CSI Franchise, or its writers, producers, or directors.

Sure, I've had fantasies—I've had them for years. There's one where it's been another long, hard day at work, and we say goodnight and go our separate ways like we always do…but then I open my door to find him standing there, and without a word he strides in and backs me up against the wall and pins me there and kisses me until I can't breathe…

That one makes me grin. Because Mac would never do that.

By the time I finally finish up for the night, it's late and I'm famished. I mentally review what I have on hand at home, and it doesn't look promising.

I can't think of a plan that sounds any more appealing at this hour, so I head across the street to the coffee shop. I'm on my way to the back corner booth when I stop short for a moment, caught unaware by the sight of the familiar dark head bent over a newspaper. I grin, and slide into the booth across from him. "Hi," I say as he looks up in surprise.

He actually grins back, and folds up his paper to give me room at the table. "Great minds think alike?" he suggests, raising his eyebrow.

I laugh. "Seems like great minds could come up with something better than this."

"I don't know." He smiles at me, shyly, and looks back down at his paper, and murmurs, "This seems pretty good to me."

I feel like I'm grinning from ear to ear. "Me too," I tell him. He doesn't often say things like that, and it leaves me feeling warm all over.

Our eyes meet just for a second, before a waitress arrives with his food and takes my order. When she's gone, he asks, "Are you just finishing up?"

"Yeah, we wanted to get through all the garbage while we were at it."

A smile plays at the corners of his mouth. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay. It was mostly just coffee cups. Eighty-eight coffee cups."

"I'm sorry," he says again, teasing gently.

I laugh, and motion toward his untouched plate. "Eat. Your food's getting cold."

"I didn't want to just sit here and eat in front of you."

"I think I can handle it," I assure him, and steal one of his fries.

I've missed this. It's not often anymore that I can catch him in a lighthearted mood…it reminds me of old times. I take another fry. "How's your case?"

He silently slides his plate to the middle of the table, straight-faced, but his eyes are sparkling. "Okay. Prints came back, so we have some leads."

I'm starving. Once I've started on the fries, I can't stop. "Anything from ballistics?"

"No…get your own food."

"I'm trying."

We're both laughing. The waitress finally brings my order, and as she walks away, he mutters, "Thank goodness."

I give him half my fruit salad as a peace offering. I look up from spooning it onto his plate to catch his gaze on me, but he looks back down quickly. "What?" I ask.

"Nothing," he says quietly, and I don't push him. Instead, I tell him about making Flack help me collect trash, and get him to laugh some more.

We walk out together. Outside, I turn to him and ask, "Did you have plans tonight?" I hope I'm not keeping him from something, but it's late enough that I doubt he had anything in mind.

"No, I was just going home." He speaks flatly, none too excited, looking at the ground. I wonder—as I've wondered before—if he feels the way I do sometimes, heading home alone to a dark, empty apartment. Sometimes I stay late at work, even when I'm worn out, just to hold off going home. Is it like that for him, too?

"Well…" Let's see a movie. Take a walk. Shoot pool. Get a drink. "I'll see you in the morning."

He raises his eyes to meet mine. "I'm glad you came in tonight, Stella."

He's not just saying that to be polite—Mac doesn't do that, anyway. His voice is warm and sincere and he means it.

"Yeah, me too."

"Maybe…we could do this again?"

I smile. "I'd like that." I try to carefully phrase what I'm thinking, hoping I don't come off as throwing myself at him or something, but I want to make sure he knows. "Mac...if you ever—need company or anything, I'm here. You know that, right?"

"I know." His eyes are quiet and beautiful in the glow of the streetlight, and he reaches out his hand to my waist and pulls me to him, just for moment, as he murmurs, "You always have been."

I feel a pleasant sort of hum in the cab ride home, a sense of anticipation that I recognize, but haven't felt in a long time. I go in and look at myself in the mirror, and think, Maybe.

There's another one—well, just a variation on the first one, really—where I'm pressed forward into the wall, with my cheek against it and him close behind me. My hair is up so he can kiss my neck, and he moves down, nips at the spot where my neck meets my shoulder, and I…

Okay. That's even less likely.

That was a Tuesday. A week later there's a little tingle in my stomach and it grows stronger as evening approaches, while I tell myself firmly that there's nothing special about Tuesday. We didn't make any definite plans that night, unfortunately, and we probably won't do anything together again for months…

It's time to go and nothing has happened. I sigh, and stop by his office on my way out. Tapping on the door, I stick my head in. "Night, Mac."

He puts down his pen and leans back in his chair. "Hungry?" he asks.

One little word, and a lovely little pang spreads through all through me. I grin and answer, "Yes."

He gets up and takes his jacket from the rack, but then he stops short. "Did you want to…"

I laugh. "Yes."

His eyes crinkle at the corners. "Just making sure."

The next week he comes to find me. I look up from the layout table to see him leaning against the doorframe. He grins at me, and we both laugh.

I think, again, about how his whole face changes when he smiles, how it lights up and looks years younger. I spend dinner trying to get him to smile more, studying him, wishing I could touch the little laugh line in his cheek.

I do, later, when we say goodnight. He doesn't seem to mind.

Then there's the one where he's at my place, or I'm at his, after one of the times I've almost lost him. I just give up trying to hold it together, and he pulls me into his arms and I tell him what it would mean if I did lose him, and he tells me it would be the same for him, and I kiss him and he kisses me back…

That one seems more probable, but we've certainly had plenty of chances and they've never gone like that.

And to tell the truth, I've been sort of afraid that sometime it would happen like that, and afterward we both might have a nagging little doubt—that maybe if we weren't upset and vulnerable, we would have felt differently. It wouldn't be true—at least for me—but we wouldn't be able to shake it.

I seem to become more and more pathetic. My whole week begins to revolve around one little hour spent in the back booth of a coffee shop, and if we have to miss for some reason, the week seems to stretch interminably on, dismally, forever.

One night after the waitress takes our menus, he says, "You know, we have all of New York City at our disposal."

"What?"

"We don't have to eat here."

I laugh. I've thought about suggesting that before, but I was worried it would scare him off. Eating here is safe. Going across the street for a bite to eat—we all do that, all the time, with whomever we happen to be working with. If anyone were to see us, they wouldn't give it a second thought. In fact, one time Danny had come in, said, "There you are," flopped into the booth beside me, and brought us up to date on his case.

But going somewhere else, at night, just the two of us…that's something else entirely. And if he wants to do that, well, I'm not going to object.

He's hungry tonight, and digs in. I never mind it when we fall silent, because it gives me a chance to watch him, to trail my eyes along the line of his jaw, down along his neck…but tonight it makes my throat ache. I try my best to keep from looking down at his hands, because his hands are what always do me in. He's caught me staring at them before…

"Hey," he says suddenly, tilting his chin at the TV behind me. I twist around to see that the news story about our case is coming on. I also see that it's not going to work to watch it like this, so I go over to Mac's side, pulling my plate and glass across too.

Danny had said that a reporter interviewed him, but they just show a snippet of it. To his credit, he says absolutely nothing, which I know relieves Mac. He gets a little nervous when they catch Danny.

The story ends, but we keep watching the newscast as we finish eating, and then just sit there. Our arms brush together.

TV is hypnotic. As long as we're sitting there with our eyes glued to the screen, it's as if we're in our own world, just the two of us, instead of in a busy little coffee shop where people we know are always in and out. It seems to make us bolder, somehow. I lean against him a little, and after a moment he shifts to set his arm around me.

I breathe carefully, staring at the screen without seeing a thing because his hand is on my bare arm. If I just turned my head a little, leaned in, I could rest my forehead against his cheek…and I do it, before I lose my nerve.

He pulls me into the curve of his shoulder, holds me there, fingertips moving absently on my arm. The ache has moved to my chest now. Neither one of us is watching TV anymore.

We stay for a long time, longer than we usually do. I don't really know what to do next and he probably feels the same way. I'm already dreading when we have to move, but we can't sit like this all night. Well, I guess we could…

Finally he draws a deep breath, and turns his head and kisses my forehead. "You ready?" he asks.

"I…yeah." I can't even think straight. Mac has never kissed me before, at all, and it leaves me feeling breathless. I kiss him all the time—just on the cheek, of course—because somebody needs to, but in all the years I've known him, he's never reciprocated.

Outside, he suggests, "So next time, let's go someplace real."

"Okay." I feel inordinately shy, like I'm sixteen years old and at the end of a date. It's ridiculous, because it's just Mac. The man I love, sure, but still just Mac. Just us.

He's looking up the street for a cab—he always sees me safely into a cab when we leave. I set my fingers along his cheek and turn his face to mine. "Good night, Mac," I say, and kiss his chin.

After Frankie, I had a lot of bad nights. I would make myself think of Mac instead of Frankie as a sort of therapy…because Mac is about as far from Frankie as you can get.

I wanted so much to just show up at his door, and I almost did, a couple of times. I had it all planned out, what I would say, what he would do, and I would think how gentle his hands and his voice are, how I trust him implicitly, how he's safe, so safe.

I wanted so much to run to him, but for some reason I always stopped myself. I think I wanted to prove that I could handle it myself, and now, looking back, I think maybe that was good. Now we can start over, with both of us ready, and do it right.

Next time, let's go someplace real, he'd said. But there's not a next time, at least not the next week, because right after that we get slammed. As Sheldon observes, apparently half of New York decides it's time to kill the other half.

Even on Tuesday morning I know that there's no way we're going to get away. Flack shows up with pizza that night while everyone's working late, and we take a ten-minute break to congregate in the break room and wolf it down.

Mac comes in, gets a slice, and lowers himself wearily into a chair against the wall. His eyes meet mine across the room, and I get up from my seat and go over to sit next to him.

No one is talking much, so I can't say anything to him without it ringing out loud and clear, but I rest my arm on the arm of the chair and he does the same. His sleeves are rolled up so his bare arm is warm against mine. I sit perfectly still, looking down at my plate. Nobody's paying any attention to us, but I feel sure my face must be giving me away.

When everyone gets up to leave, we linger just enough that we're following the others out the door, and he brushes his fingertips deliberately down my arm as we head our separate ways.

I'm humming as I go back to my prints, and my arm tingles all night.

We stay swamped for days and days. Then Sheldon gets wiped out by the flu and I cover some of his night shifts for him, and then Mac has a case that keeps him at work for three days straight…and so on, and so on.

I miss him so much I can't sleep. I lie awake thinking about him, seeing his face when I close my eyes. I see him every day, sometimes all day, and yet I miss him as much as if he were...dead, or something.

Then one day Lindsay and I go into his office to tell him about our DNA results. When we get ready to leave he says, "Thanks, Lindsay. Stella, could I speak to you for a minute?"

"Sure," I say, wondering. Lindsay leaves and I turn to him—and he catches me in his arms, hugging me tight, and lets me go before I can even respond. I meet his eyes, happy and surprised. "Hi," he says quietly.

I laugh. I want to hug him back, but we are at work, after all. Instead, with my back squarely toward the hallway, I take his hand between both of mine.

"I know tomorrow's your day off, but…would you like to have dinner?" he asks.

"Yes," I say quickly, sounding over-eager, but I don't care.

He looks down at our joined hands. "I miss you," he says, even more softly, and there's a quick little pang in my stomach.

I stroke my thumbs across his fingers. "I miss you too. Surely this can't last much longer."

"Yeah," he says slowly. "I guess…after I got a taste of what it would be like…it made it that much harder to go back."

What it would be like? Does he mean… I squeeze his hand, and tell him, "Mac…we don't have to go back." He looks back up at me, and I add, "Ever."

His eyes widen, startled, and of course that's when Danny knocks and comes in, going on about something. I edge out and try to sound normal as I say, "I'll see you later, Mac."

"Okay," he says. His eyes are still wide.

I'm unreasonably excited. There are butterflies in my stomach all day, and my heart is already beating too fast when my doorbell rings. I open the door and wrap my arms around him, and then pull back, laughing. "You're all wet."

"Sorry." He shrugs out of his overcoat. "It's snowing."

"It is?" I go to the window. I love to see it snow from up here.

"It started about an hour ago." He comes up behind me, and adds, "It's sticking, too."

"Sure is." I watch the flakes silently drifting down, watch the traffic passing below. "Have a good day?"

"Yeah. We got Griffith."

"You did?" I know that's a load off his mind.

"Yeah."

He's warm, close behind me, and I think, Don't just stand there. "Do you think we'll get a conviction?"

"We've got a good case," he says, still not moving. I reach back and find his hands with mine and pull his arms around me. He willingly pulls me to him and I lean my head back on his shoulder, closing my eyes, because he's so strong and comfortable behind me...

"No reason it shouldn't stand up," he's saying. I have to think—Oh, he's still talking about the case, because his words are warm on my neck and I want him to kiss me there. I tilt my head, giving him easy access, but he doesn't move. Swallowing a grin, I take matters into my own hands, turning in his arms to brush my lips against his neck.

He tenses, his arms tightening around me. I smile against him and keep kissing my way up until I reach his ear, where I whisper, "Anytime you want to join in…"

He pulls back so he can see me. I search his face anxiously and I'm relieved when he says, "You sure?"

I set my face against his cheek, like I always want to do. There's so much I could say to that, but no words will come, so I just murmur,"I'm sure."

My breath catches at the first touch of his lips, at the spot just below my ear. He moves slowly along my jaw line, down to my chin, and kisses just below my lower lip, and then the corners of my mouth. Then, once I'm practically begging for it, he finally kisses my lips, and…well.

No one has ever kissed me like that before. No one has ever made me actually weak in the knees like this, so that I have to cling to him just to stand up, or made me so desperate for more as if I could never get enough of him. I clench my hands in his hair, trying to pull him closer even when it's not possible, while he kisses me over and over, leaving me breathless, his hands gentle even as his arms crush me against him.

"Stella," he breathes, and captures my mouth again. I'm lightheaded, and trembling all over, and I can't stop thinking about all the times I've watched him and just wanted, so much, to kiss him, and I wrap my arms tight around his neck, giving myself to him completely. I want to; I want him to have whatever he wants, from now on.

He's moving us gently toward the couch and then he's lowering himself down, pulling me with him, sinking back against the cushions with me mostly on top of him. After a while we grow quieter, but we're still breathing hard.

He strokes my hair as my head rests on his chest. "You have beautiful hair," he says at last, his voice raspy.

I grin, my face half-hidden against his shirt. "Thank you."

He doesn't speak again for a long time, and I lie still, feeling his heartbeat and the gentle rise and fall of his breathing. Finally I lift my head and prop myself up on one elbow so I can see him. He smiles up at me as I bring my hand up to trace his face with my fingertips. "Hungry?" he asks.

I laugh. "Yes. You?"

"I think I worked up an appetite." His eyes are happy, full of light, and his hair is all rumpled against the cushion. He pulls my head down and kisses me and asks, "Where did you want to eat?"

I can't answer for a moment because it washes over me again just how much I love him, and I stretch out all along him, like a full-length hug, snuggling, kissing his jaw, and suggest, "Why don't we order in?"

So, when it finally happens, it isn't very much like the fantasies after all—it's much, much better, because it's slow and sweet and us.

I still have daydreams, but now they're not so much fantasizing as re-living things that have already happened. I haven't thought up any new ones in a while. I really don't need to; all I have to do is wait and see what will happen next.

Because—when we pass each other in the hall, each talking to someone else, but he glances at me with just the faintest grin and my stomach does a little flip…or when we go to my place after work and he kicks the door shut behind him and catches my face between his hands and kisses me as if he couldn't wait another second…or when he shyly suggests that we get married—I feel like I'm living out a fantasy, and it's better than anything I could dream up.