Disclaimer: No infringement of copyright is intended. All characters originated with CSI:NY. Poetry not referenced is original

A/N: Lots of requests for Hawkes to have his own story line, so here he is. There's a little Mac/Reed stuff here too. Let me know what you think!

Spoiler Alert: Spoilers for Seasons 2 & 3, up to and including "Silent Night".

Hollow Man

I stand empty, waiting to be filled.

I used to know what was inside me,

Who I seemed to be was who I was

And now I stand uncertain, unclear

What reflection of self do I see in your eyes?

The person I am?

Or the person you want me to be?

SMT, April 2007

Chapter 7: Making a Start

Hawkes rolled over in bed, stretching and yawning as he glanced at the clock beside him. For the first time in two weeks, he had a real day off, and, with Danny and Lindsay finally safe, if not completely sound, he had no other mysteries or cases hanging over his head either.

His last case had been wrapped up pretty quickly, thanks to Adam; he hadn't even needed the verification of the DNA tests. He had talked to the wife of his dead stockbroker with the paraffin wax on his suit jacket: the old stories were still the best. The fifty-three year old suit had told her the night before that he was in love for the first time, with his twenty-five year old personal trainer.

The next morning, the wife had added kiwi juice to the batch of strawberry jam she made him every year, then kissed him forgivingly, transferring traces of paraffin to the lapels of his suit jacket, and told him she wouldn't stand in the way of his happiness.

Evidently she was referring to his eternal happiness. He was deathly allergic to kiwi, as his subsequent death on the subway only a few blocks from his home had proven. She had confessed in a shivering heap, looking at Hawkes with huge eyes and asking, "What am I going to do now? What am I going to do without him?"

Hawkes thought with a cynicism he did not often show at work that she had a lot of time to work that out: fifteen to twenty-five years if she had a good lawyer.

The day stretched out in front of him like a gift, and he decided a quick jog in the park and a coffee from his local shop would start things off well. He had stopped running at night after the Casey case; there were still a few officers who looked away when he walked into the station. None of the ones who worked with him regularly, but a few. Captain Gerrard, who would love to nail one of Taylor's people, always made sure that Hawkes was watched closely by whatever uniformed officers were assigned to the scene. Flack always kicked their asses for it if he caught them at it.

He didn't always catch them.

Hawkes shrugged it off, as he had shrugged off more than thirty years of similar petty insults and posturings. People could be hateful, he knew, and whether they saw a black man to hate, or an intelligent man to despise, or a punk from Harlem who somehow made it to the status of doctor to envy, it didn't matter once the target was painted on his back.

"Feeling bitter, Hawkes?" he jeered at himself as he threw his clothes in the hamper and pulled his running clothes out the drawer. "Give it up, man. None of it changes who you are. And who is that?"

He laughed at himself for the self-indulgent pep talk. He had had a bad time after a couple of hits: the conflict at the hospital with his former Chief of Staff in the case involving the teenager killed by her own mother; then his arrest. He'd had serious doubts about his third choice of profession at that point.

A comment from Danny Messer and a question from a paramedic had forced him to confirm something for himself if not for everyone else around him: first and foremost, he was a doctor. And after he had gone for his jog, and had a shower, he was finally going to find a way to prove it to himself.

-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-

Mac opened his eyes and blinked up at the ceiling. He could swear he smelled coffee. And eggs. And maybe, possibly, although it seemed highly unlikely, bacon.

He thought back to the night before. He'd been blown off by Peyton – yeah, he remembered that. Had the living shit scared out of him by Reed, whom he had almost pulled a gun on – check. Then Reed had told him …

"Damn!" Mac's feet hit the ground running; he was downstairs in his track pants and t-shirt and through the kitchen door before his brain caught up with him.

He stopped before he frightened Reed again. After all, it was hardly likely that anything was wrong when Reed was standing in front of the stove, frying up bacon and cheerfully humming along to the music currently blasting into his ears from his iPod. He was wearing a faded old NYPD t-shirt of Mac's and a pair of sweats that hung off his lean hips, and would have trailed on the ground if he hadn't rolled them up nearly to his knees. Mac leaned up against the wall and watched the kid for a moment, trying to see something of Claire in him.

He had told Reed at that first, uncomfortable meeting in the coffee shop that Claire looked a lot like him, and it was true: the big blue eyes, the curly brown hair, the slight build. But every time he saw Reed, and it had been a few times now, he waited to see something else, a look, a way of moving, a flashing smile, that would bring Claire back from the dead for just a moment.

Resurrection seemed like quite a burden for a boy not yet twenty.

Perhaps if Claire had had the chance to meet Reed earlier, if she had chosen to bring the boy up herself, he would be more like her, would have picked her tones of voice, her hand movements as she talked. He might have picked up the way she would tilt her head when she asked a serious question Mac did not want to answer. He might have spoken with her rippling fluency, her passion.

Or perhaps he was just like her, and Mac had simply forgotten the way her eyes lit up when she smiled, or the tone in her voice when she teased him. He shut his eyes in pain at the thought.

"Hey, you're up!" Reed's voice was too loud, a perennial problem for people who talked with earbuds in. "I made some breakfast; you hungry?"

"I could eat," Mac said with a cautious smile. "I'll start with some of that coffee." He walked over to the cupboard to grab a mug, and saw the teacup he had unearthed for Peyton a few nights ago, carefully washed and placed where she could reach it herself the next time she came to stay. He clenched his fist briefly, and turned to the coffee maker to fill his cup.

"Over easy or sunny-side up?" Reed asked, still a little too loud.

Mac tapped his own ear, and with a grin Reed pulled the buds out, dropping them around his neck so he moved in a cloud of music that swarmed around his head like midges. Mac was a little surprised to hear jazz playing; he had expected maybe house or rap.

"Over easy. Who you listening to?" he gestured to the iPod.

"Jamie Cullum at the moment. It could be anyone: pretty eclectic taste in music, actually." Reed slid an egg and a couple slices of bacon onto a plate for Mac, then piled his own plate and sat down to start eating.

Mac quirked an eyebrow at the unequal distribution of food on the two plates, but refrained from saying anything, choosing instead to just enjoy some company and the taste of home-cooked food he hadn't had to prepare.

"You sleep okay?" he asked casually.

"Yeah, it was good, thanks. I'd kind of expected a blanket on a couch; a whole bedroom was more than I bargained for." Reed didn't look at Mac, concentrating on eating.

"You're welcome anytime. You want to tell me why you showed up last night, or are you still working it out?" Mac concentrated on finishing his coffee slowly. Interrogation techniques were not what Reed needed from him, he reminded himself. He wasn't sure what Reed wanted from him, or why he had shown up the night before, soaking with sweat, stinking with fear, but clearly neither intoxicated nor high. He had been jumpy, unable to sit down, pacing the floor, and had finally declined to talk, claiming he just needed a safe place to crash for the night.

Reed looked up at him with a look Mac recognized from a thousand young suspects in a thousand interview rooms. More, though, he looked up at him with Claire's eyes, and with the same look she had had the night she had told him her biggest secret.

The night she had told him about Reed.

-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-

The day was crisp and clear, and Hawkes had been out for about a half hour when he decided it was time to head for coffee. The park was filling up and the jogging trails were starting to get crowded. Hawkes missed the quiet of running at night on roads that were as peaceful as New York streets ever were. Still, compromise was nothing new to him.

He stopped in front of his usual coffee shop, and waved to the young girl behind the counter. By the time he had stretched out a little so that his muscles didn't tighten up too much, Karisa had poured his preferred drink and put it on his tab already. Once a month or so, Hawkes would put some money on the account so that he didn't have to carry cash.

She brought the drink out to him, and stopped to chat and flirt for a moment. Hawkes was used to it; for some reason, the younger the girl, the more attractive she seemed to find him. As he wasn't into pedophilia, it didn't do much for him. Women his own age seemed mostly interested in his friendship, especially when they were having trouble with the men in their romantic relationships.

He thought with a sigh about the phone call from Peyton the night before. It wasn't that he was interested in Peyton that way; had he been he would have made a serious move long before she had started seeing his boss. That was the thing, though. Mac was his boss, and he did not want to be involved in any way between his friend and his boss. He could only see ways to lose in that position.

But what was he supposed to say when she had phoned him, asking for a friendly shoulder to cry on? Not that she did much crying: seemed to him she had things going pretty much her own way. She wanted to be in Mac's life, and he was slowly opening up to the idea more and more. If she just kept doing what she was doing, Hawkes thought there was a good chance she'd get everything she wanted, including the white dress and veil fantasy she hadn't even mentioned yet, but he could feel hovering over her every word.

He had said as little as possible, actually. He had learned, through years of being women's 'best guy friend', that there was nothing he could say that wouldn't bite him on the ass sooner rather than later.

He walked to a bench in the park near the chess players, and sipped his coffee reflectively. He watched people; it was what he did. He was even better at it than Mac was. He'd won the bet about Don Flack and Stella, which hadn't been hard. Flack had been staring at Stella for so long, Hawkes bet there was a permanent impression of her on his eyeballs. Stella had been so sunk in guilt and pain over Frankie Mala that Flack had been afraid to move, but Hawkes wasn't surprised that once he did, Stella had fallen in one swift tumble.

Hawkes watched a couple of old men playing, intent and focused. Was this his future? Finding companionship on a cold bench in a silent game with people whose faces he would come to know intimately, but whose names he may never hear?

He finished off his coffee in one swift gulp, balled up the paper cup and shot it into a nearby garbage can. It was time – more than time – to change things up. He loved his job, and enjoyed the people he worked with. But it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough to keep working double and triple shifts because he had nowhere else in particular to be.

It was time to find that thing that lit him up, the thing his mother claimed God had intended him for.

He stretched again and took off down a street he rarely went on. It was a continuation of the brownstones and residential area around the park, but he knew that one end was all commercial, mostly small, family-owned businesses passed down at least one generation. Fifty years ago, they would have been mostly European: Polish, Italian, Russian. Nowadays, they were more likely to be Asian and Middle Eastern: Korean, Vietnamese, Iranian. The streets were a riot of colours, smells, and voices speaking a hundred different languages and dialects, overlaid with the ordinary traffic sounds of a New York morning. He slowed down to a walk; the streets were too crowded to run effectively, and he was a little more cautious about running through crowds these days.

He stopped when he noticed a small group of people standing in front of a plain white building with a clear glass door. Mostly men, they were grumbling in a rich mixture of languages, not yet dangerously angry, but working themselves up to it. Hawkes stepped a little closer, feeling a little strange as he looked around. Aside from the language differences, he saw more faces which looked like his own in this crowd than he did in a normal day at work, than he had since he had left his home in Harlem.

A police car cruised by, slowing down obviously, and the men broke up into small groups, walking off in different directions. Hawkes continued down the street, the hairs on the back of his necks bristling as he ran by the radio car. He still overreacted to any threat, real or not, and he hated that feeling. It was definitely time to find a new place to set his feet, a new sense of himself.