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I leaned back and place my feet up on the hardwood of my desk. A desk that had begun life as a decorative side table for my bed room when I'd first moved in, but soon become my home office as work invaded my personal life, and time spent on the job became a 24/7 thing. Not that I minded – I more so let it in myself than anything else.
I had piles of paperwork in front of me – cases and cases I had to file away, send to the DA, evidence analyses to put together, and I was grappling to have them done so that the past two weeks of downtime wouldn't make a dent on my work timetable. It proved harder than expected, I was beginning to drown in my self-made obligations and each case was looking more and more like the last.
Tired and mentally drained, I ventured to stand up and take a break but swiped a stack of files off my desk instead in one careless motion. Bending over experimentally to pick them up, I was reminded that that was still one activity the gunshot wound in my side kept me from doing. I swore cursorily and sat back against my chair – and was more than a little frustrated at myself.
Mac walked over then, and carrying his mug of piping hot coffee, he casually lifted the fallen files back onto my desk, taking the almost unnoticed care to stack them parallel to the edge. I smiled at him to convey my thanks and my apologetic helplessness that I wasn't able to aid myself. He laid a hand on my files, and then sitting down on the worn fading armchair by my desk, gave me that same pervasive, penetrating smirk he'd been giving me for the last two weeks.
"You need to take it easy Stella," he said, and continuing once he saw me try to butt in to protest, "There's no reason that all this can't wait for you to get back on your feet," gesturing condescendingly at my work pile. "We're doing alright without you." He grinned, and looked me in the eye, to convey he was serious, yet knowing he still had a way to go to get past my stubborn insistence to do anything but sit back and take a break. Ever, in any situation.
He stood up again to go back to the kitchen, wherein I thought to glare at him accusatorily for the excessive kindness he'd been showing me the past two weeks. But then he came over and put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it, drilling his firmness into my eyes again with a knowing stare. I couldn't help but smile weakly and admit the slightest defeat.
..Mac had been coming here almost every day after work, since my mishap on the job two weeks ago. That day he'd stayed with me all the way to the hospital, as I waxed lyrical in an almost delirious way about how I was fine, as I held on far too tightly to his hand, and as I eventually passed out. And when I woke, he showed up not a half hour later, with tired eyes, his jacket hung over his arm, and his head poking in past the door.
He'd come over around 9 after a full day at the lab ever since, make himself a coffee, and see to it that I was doing alright. He'd make sure that I'd sit still and do no work in his presence, and he'd make himself comfortable in my place, and eventually over the course of two weeks we found that we'd discovered the time to talk to each other again. It'd been a hectic couple of years already that had crept up on us so quickly and we'd never noticed that precious time together had so elusively escaped us.
He'd stay for two hours, the coffee would turn cold and eventually turn into a glass of wine, and we'd talk about the lab and about cases or Danny, or Lindsay and what we suspected they might be doing outside the confines of work, and soon talk about everything and nothing in particular. It became a way for Mac to forget the long work day, and a way for me to take my mind off my absence from it. In an easy and casual way we'd find the means to relax using the company of one another, and I could almost say a part of me did not look forward to the time when we'd go back to work together and resume being unable to see anything but the cases in front of us. This job was wonderful, but it did become our lives.
.."Have you had your dinner yet, Stel?" Mac asked from the kitchen. His eyes were intense, his gaze always steely.
"No… not yet," I replied and stood up to walk towards him. "Mac, you have got to stop pampering me like this. I'm only eating time out of your day."
"Now, you know that's not true," he said, opening up my refrigerator, looking prepared to see if what I had he could whip up into something. I went up and batted his hand away from the fridge door, telling him I would order in something later. I sighed resignedly at him, like a parent who after his child has made the same mistake ten times can't help but smile bemusedly.
"Come on, I'll make you something. Grab some cutlery," he said, and I smiled and walked over to him and put one arm around him as I pecked him on the cheek. "Thanks", I said gratefully, looking into his eyes and conveying with unsaid words the gratitude I had for not just the food, but for the company that prevented me from likely consuming myself in my own work and stubbornness.
I walked over to the counter and picked up a knife from the drawer and then forgetting, used my wounded side to push it back in. I winced more than a little as the air caught in my throat from the sudden shock of the feeling. The pain was brief but it was jarring, and I had to double over and wait for the temporary pain to subside. After an instant I picked myself up, feeling completely dumb and appalled at my uselessness, laughing in nervous embarrassment that I'd been forgetful enough to do that, trying to laugh off my brief stupidity in front of Mac.
But when I looked up, his face was unexpectedly stern, unamused, and he had started towards me but was now straightening himself up again. In that moment my smile fell and I let my hand drop from where I'd been holding my side, suddenly guilty for the way I'd hurt myself.
Noticing his expression I reached over to him. "I'm… I'm okay," I ventured to Mac, not in surprise at my own well-being but in assurance that I saw that Mac needed to have. When his expression remained stoically the same for the briefest second, I repeated, "I'm fine," grabbing a hold of his hand.
Then he turned to me and put his other hand on mine, his stance loosening again, and he stroked my fingers. "Okay," he said and he nodded. As I moved back to the cupboards to grab a plate, Mac eased and turned to rest his hands on the back of the chair, and let out a sigh inaudibly.
Dinner lasted till 11, and then he left.