When Mac had been called out to a murder scene, leaving him with the few remaining photos of his mother that he had, Reed hadn't been sure that he would actually call him again. For all that he had said about being connected by Claire, Reed still felt distant from him. The man smiling in the photographs of his mother from years ago didn't look all that different to who Mac is today, but he felt different. There was a heaviness in the way he held himself, a weariness in his eyes. This man had loved his mother, Reed could tell that much.

From the pictures and from the way he talked about her still. He sat at the table, staring at the face of a woman he'd always hoped to meet one day. In one picture, she's waving to the camera.

Alone in a diner, a decade after the picture was taken, Reed waves back at her.

If Mac calls again, he'll answer. Not because Mac loved his mother, but because his mother had clearly loved him. Reed doesn't need another dad - he's already got one - but he'd been right when he said that Claire would want them to know each other.

Or, at least, Reed hopes that he's right. Hopes that any man his mother loved is a man worth knowing. He still has so many questions about her - who she was and what she was like, which parts of her were passed down to him even though they never had the chance to truly meet.

He'd been looking for his mother, but he found Mac instead.

And a mystery too.

Stella Bonasera. He'd thought, for a moment, that it could be her. Perhaps the curls in his hair were a softer version of hers, this woman who walks in and out of Mac's apartment like she lives there, too. Who gets dinner with him, and brings him birthday presents.

Reed had stumbled over asking about her, words tripping awkwardly over his tongue. Not sure he was ready, despite having asked, to hear that Mac had already moved on from the mother that Reed had only just learned was gone.

"My best friend," Mac had explained, with a shake of his head, as though he'd understood the feeling crawling up Reed's throat, the need to know his mother hadn't been so easily replaced.

A best friend makes sense.

Except that Reed had thought she was his wife.

Mac calls.

Reed doesn't answer.

Brian is dead. They'd been working on a story together for the school paper, and now he's dead. Reed picks up the phone to call Mac, then pockets it.

He gets a taxi to the lab instead.

Poking his head out of the elevator, he looks around. Glass walls and warm light, people in lab coats bent over machines Reed is pretty sure he could never guess the name of, let alone what they do. He doesn't see Mac, so maybe he's out at a crime scene.

He probably should have called first.

"Can I help you?" Friendliness laced with a hint of suspicion coats the question, and Reed turns around, finding himself face to face with the guy who'd chased him while he was following Stella.

Unsure if he recognizes him in turn, Reed opts to pretend like he's never seen this guy before. "Uh, no, actually. I'm here to see Mac, I'm-

"Reed!" Stella's warm voice interrupts, but functions as his introduction just as well. "How are you?"

Reed shuffles his feet, nervously adjusts the straps of his bag. "Good," he replies tightly. "Yeah, I'm good."

She doesn't look convinced, but before he can say anything else, she gives a quick squeeze to his shoulder, looks away from him. "I can take it from here, Danny, thanks." There's warmth in her voice, but it's clearly a dismissal nonetheless. Whether Danny recognizes him, or thinks it's weird that someone who said they were here for Mac is also someone Stella knows, he doesn't say.

"Sure thing. I'll be in Trace with Montana if you need me."

Stella watches him go for a second before turning back around to face Reed, looking at him like she can see the nervousness rolling off him in waves. Maybe she can, because she smiles kindly at him. "You can wait for Mac in my office," she offers, nodding her head down the hall.

"Do you think he recognized me?" Reed blurts out. "From when I was…"

"Following me?" Stella fills in, arching an eyebrow in a way that could look stern if it weren't belied by the amusement in her smile and voice. "No. I didn't get a good look at you then, and I doubt he did either."

"I am, you know, sorry about that." He clears his throat, eyes on the floor as Stella holds open the door to her office, waves him inside as easily as she waves away the apology.

"Already forgiven." She motions for him to take a seat on the couch, so he does.

"Mac was telling me about what you guys do," Reed's apology continuing to pour out of him anyway. "And I'm sure it must have been, you know, weird to have some guy following you around. I didn't mean to be creepy, I just wasn't thinking about-"

"You were looking for your mother, Reed. And you wanted to be sure." One shoulder lifts in a casual shrug. "You were forgiven as soon as you said Claire's name."

"Did you know her?" Reed leans forward in his chair. Someone else knew his mother. Someone else remembers her, can tell him more about her.

Stella nods slowly, a far away look in her eye, like she's more present in a memory than she is in the room with him. "Yeah," she eventually breathes, "yeah, I did." There's a curl of a smile on her lips, even as a shadow of sadness crosses her face. "She was a good friend."

She looks back at him again. "You look like her."

Reed nods, throat tight. "Mac showed me some photos."

Surprise flashes across Stella's face. "He did?"

"Yeah, he didn't have many." This time, Reed notes, there's no surprise. So she wasn't surprised that Mac would show him photos; she was surprised that there were photos to show. "He said he'd gotten rid of most of them."

No surprise, but more of that sadness. "I know." Her voice comes out whisper quiet. "After…" Stella swallows, lips pursed, like she's deciding how much to say, "he got rid of almost everything. Photos, clothes, even CDs they used to play. Everything that reminded him of her."

"Why?" It seems unfathomable to Reed, who had searched for his mother, who wants to know all that he can about her, that anyone could willingly throw memories of her away.

Stella looks at him as though she understands. It chafes, because how could she know what this is like? "He couldn't bear to remember being happy."

The words rattle around in Reed's mind as he waits for Mac in his office. He couldn't bear to remember being happy. It paints a desolate picture: a man consumed in his grief, sadness pulled around him like a shroud that would let no light in. No happiness, not even the memory of it.

It's a far cry from the man he talked to in the diner a couple of weeks ago, who had smiled when talking about Claire. A man who still felt grief, but was no longer consumed by it. How much of Mac's grief had Stella seen? The way she had carefully chosen her words - and Reed's training as a reporter meant he very much noticed how deliberately she spoke - tells him that she likely saw the worst of it.

He's here about Brian.

He's here about the case.

When Mac arrives, Reed pushes everything else aside. His friend is dead, and that's what's important here.

There's no investigative article to be written about Stella, about Mac.

He's focused on the Kings and Shadows, the students cheating on their exams. He's focused on Brian, and breaking the story he was working on for him.

Every inch of his body is sore, it feels like.

When he had dreamed of being a journalist when he was younger, he'd always thought there was something alluring about the danger of exposing the truth. Of putting himself on the line for a story. It had seemed… glamorous, maybe.

But now he's sitting in the recliner in Mac's apartment, and his black eye makes it hurt to blink himself awake after dozing off. Getting beaten is significantly worse than he'd thought it would be.

Low voices coming from the kitchen catch his attention, but he can't make out what they're saying. Who else is here?

"...sleeping. Hawkes has something. Doctor says he'll be fine, but-"

"I'll watch over him. Any chance you actually have food in this place for when he wakes up?" The fridge door opens and shuts, and Stella sighs. "How is it possible that a grown man keeps forgetting to buy food for himself?"

It sounds like a well-worn discussion - a familiarity to the words, a conversation had again and again. There's no anger, no surprise. Stella is teasing him, not asking a genuine question.

"I have you to do it for me." Reed wishes that opening his eyes weren't so painful, and his vision weren't so blurry. There's a lightness in Mac's voice that he hasn't heard before, a contrast to the grieving widower and studious detective he's seen him be so far.

Mac has a sense of humor.

Stella's laughing even as she says, "Get out."

"This is my place." There's indignation in Mac's voice that even Reed can tell is fake. Keys jingle, and a drawer shuts.

"Yeah, and I'm kicking you out of it. Reed and I are having Dinner Night without you." Dinner Night. Is that why he'd seen Stella coming and going from Mac's place when he'd been watching? She'd brought groceries sometimes, too; it's part of the reason he'd thought that she lived here.

Kitchen cabinets open and shut, and there's a clank of pots and pans. "I shouldn't be long, but if things at the lab-"

"I'll stay. Are my-?"

"Should be. If not, you can always-"

"Yeah, thanks. Still in the-?"

"Yep."

"Great."

If not for the fact that the rest of their conversation had seemed normal, Reed would have thought the painkillers were messing with his ability to understand what was happening. Those weren't full sentences.

Still, they seemed to know what they were talking about.

Mac's footsteps head closer to Reed. "Still sleeping."

No, I'm not, Reed wants to insist, but he can feel fatigue creeping up on him again. He has questions about the case, about why Mac is going into the lab. Questions about why Stella was the one he called, about their Dinner Nights.

He'll ask later, he decides. When he doesn't feel so tired.

He's invited, once he's healed, to their Thursday night dinners. Stella had insisted, saying something about him needing to have at least one meal a week that isn't campus food. Reed thinks it probably has more to do with keeping an eye on him after the beating than the nutritional value - or lack thereof - of what he can buy in the cafeteria. But Mac had smiled when he agreed, and shown up to Brian's funeral for him.

He'd been looking for his biological parents, but he'd found Mac. His step-dad, of sorts.

So he shows up.

He'd worried, at first, that he would feel like he's intruding, but Stella greets him with a hug and Mac claps him on the shoulder and it feels how Reed had hoped finding his family would.

Rain pours down in bullets, and Mac hastens him inside. "Stella's out at a scene," he explains, when he notices the way his eyes scan the room, knowing who he's expecting to see.

"I thought you guys took the night off. Not that I'm disappointed," he reassures Mac, a cringe on his face as he realizes how that might have sounded.

"We try." Mac shrugs, clearly taking no offense. "But since we're the two supervisors, it's not always a guarantee. Sometimes we have to go in. She'll be here when she can."

Reed nods absently.

"Here," Mac opens a filing cabinet he keeps tucked in the corner of the living room. Reed assumed it was case files, or old notes. And maybe most of it is, but the folder he gets handed is filled with takeout menus. "Pick what you like."

He flips through a couple of menus, searching for something that he's in the mood for. Some menus have scribbles of past orders on them, some have items with hand drawn stars next to them, indicating a favorite. Reed settles on a Chinese place that has more writing than the rest, and as Mac places the call, he starts wandering around, a reporter's instinct to take in his surroundings.

There's a bookshelf filled with board games, and Reed isn't too interested with only the two of them, so he grabs a puzzle instead. With the rain, they may be waiting some time for their food. Not too many people are going to want to go out in that.

"Do you mind?" He asks, showing Mac the box.

"Not at all." They clear a large enough space on the coffee table by the couch, and Reed dumps the pieces out. There's no way they're finishing this tonight, he thinks.

Mac works methodically, finding edge pieces, and sorting by color. The two of them work in a comfortable silence for a while, both content to focus on the puzzle in front of them.

"When did this start?" Reed eventually asks, breaking the quiet, but still looking down at the puzzle, trying to figure out if the piece he's holding is the right shade of blue to be the sky, or if it's water instead.

"Hm?"

"These dinners," Reed elaborates. "When did you and Stella start them?"

At this, Mac presses another piece into place, but then looks up at him instead of taking another one. "Claire started them."

Oh.

Mac picks up another piece absentmindedly, twirling it in his fingers.

"She didn't think you and Stella saw enough of each other?" Reed says it jokingly, but he is curious.

The two of them see each other at work for hours every single day of the week, and then they choose to hang out some more. He can't imagine how they aren't sick of each other, but they never seem to be. Mac chuckles at that, eyebrows raising to acknowledge that he'd made a good point. Some of the humor fades after a moment, as he thinks about his answer.

A similar expression is on his face as when Stella had been talking to Reed about the way Mac had grieved: he's deciding how much he's going to say.

If it weren't frustrating, if it weren't keeping him from understanding exactly what's going on here, Reed thinks he might find it touching, the thought that they put into keeping each other's secrets.

Whatever Stella knows of Mac's grief - whatever she had seen him go through - Reed is aware she had shared only a sliver of it with him. The rest she had kept to herself. Mac had shown those things to her, and in exchange for his vulnerability, he gets her unwavering loyalty. She keeps his cards close to the vest.

Whatever Mac knows now - and it's about Stella, Reed can tell - it seems he's giving it the same consideration. What he knows about her is for him alone.

"Claire thought it was important for Stella to have someone to hang out with outside of the lab. It was her idea to make it a standing thing. She didn't want Stella to be lonely. Your mother was always good at taking care of people like that." The smile on his face is a touch rueful. "Stella kept them going after Claire died. Making sure I wasn't lonely."

Reed nods, though it doesn't necessarily make perfect sense to him. Stella doesn't strike him as a lonely person. Why would Claire and Mac be the only people she saw outside of work?

He thinks about the look on her face when he'd first asked her if she were Claire, the easy understanding of why looking for his mother lead him to following a stranger, the sympathy in her eyes when he couldn't understand how Mac had gotten rid of reminders of his mother. He remembers thinking she couldn't understand.

Maybe she does, if Mac and Claire were all she had.

He blinks out of his reverie, feeling Mac's eyes on him. "You still do them now." It isn't phrased as a question, but he can tell Mac hears it anyway.

"We do." Mac shifts his attention back to the puzzle, as though that's the end of the conversation.

"The two of you are close." It's the same question-not-a-question tone he'd used before, a trick he'd learned doing reporting for the paper. Give someone a statement, let them confirm or deny.

The line of Mac's shoulders is taut, and he looks over at Reed as though he's trying to see through him, trying to see where this is going. "We are." Another two word answer, though this time, Mac's tone is guarded. He stays looking right at him.

"You love her, don't you?" Reed isn't sure where the question came from, but as soon as the words leave his mouth, he's sure that he's right. He hadn't thought they were married simply because he'd seen Stella coming and going from this apartment a few times. His first instinct hadn't been wrong.

Mac stares at him, his mouth in a thin line, looking for all the world as though he wants to deny it but can't find the words.

Before he can answer, though, the front door swings open. "Sorry I'm so late," Stella rushes in, drenched from the rain. Her curls stick to the side of her face, and Reed feels cold just looking at her.

Mac must see something in the way she's holding herself that indicates more than just a chill, because he asks, "Tough case?" He pushes himself up from the couch, making his way over to her.

A whole conversation seems to be happening between them silently, but then Stella gives a single nod in response, flashing a momentary grimace, and shifts her eyes over to Reed. Whatever it was they were saying to each other before, he doesn't need to be in on their secret language to understand this one. She'll tell Mac about it later, when he isn't around to hear the details.

Part of him wants to insist, to point out that he noticed what she didn't say, and that he isn't a kid. He's grown up fast since his friend was murdered. He can handle it. Another part of him knows that there's no way he won't sound like he's pouting, petulant. Like the kid he wants to insist he's not.

He keeps quiet.

"Go warm up." It's an order, but a soft one.

"Thanks." Stella's smile is tired but real as she walks down the hall.

Mac watches her go for a minute, an inscrutable expression on his face.

"You do love her." This time, it isn't a question.

"She's my best friend." It's neither a confirmation nor a denial, but it's all the answer Reed needs.

Stella comes back out with her hair pulled up in a hasty bun, wearing dry clothes. An NYPD t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants that no amount of rolling can make her size. She sits down on the couch beside Mac, her legs curled under her.

She's quiet, and it's clear that her mind is somewhere else.

Reed politely excuses himself, inventing a test he needs to study for. Mac sees him out.

"Don't worry, Mac." There's a smile on his face as he whispers. "I won't tell her."

Reed is the biggest liar in New York City.

He hovers just outside the doorway of Stella's office, watching her methodically flipping through paperwork. Her desk seems to be covered in chaos, but it's clear that she knows where everything is, even if absolutely no one else could figure out her system. Despite her focus, he's fairly certain she knows he's there.

The walls are glass, after all.

A few more files move from one seemingly indistinguishable pile to another, and Stella finally looks up at him. "You're not interrupting," she says, in lieu of a greeting. "And you know you can walk right in, yeah? You don't need to wait for my permission." There's a smile on her face, and she looks more relaxed than she did a moment ago, when her thoughts were on work.

Reed shuffles in, hand rubbing the back of his neck in a nervous gesture. When he visits Mac at the lab, he just walks in. With Stella, he still hesitates. Especially now, as he belatedly realizes he doesn't exactly have a plan.

"Give me one second," she says, grabbing the paperwork she'd just been sorting. "I need to make sure these get to Mac."

Well, it's an opening. "He loves you, you know."

He watches her closely, gauging her reaction. All she does is blink once, and then a small smile spreads on her face. "Yeah, Reed." She lifts one shoulder in an elegant shrug. "I know he does. He's my best friend."

With that, she turns slightly away from him, reaching for one last file.

She doesn't get it.

Reed presses forward, despite his nerves. "No. He's… he's in love with you."

When he'd pictured how this would go on his way over here, this isn't what he imagined.

Stella is entirely unsurprised. With a sigh, she leans back against the desk, looking straight at him, her stare examining and introspective at the same time. "Yeah, Reed." It's an echo of her previous answer. "I know he is. Leave it alone."

It isn't what he imagined at all. "But-"

"No." She cuts him off quickly before he can really give voice to his objection, and for the first time, he gets a glimpse of the cool steel that sits beneath the warmth that Stella exudes. It's gone as quickly as it came, patience taking over. "You should have let him tell me that."

Shit.

In all his time poking around in other people's business as a reporter - even when he'd been beaten - he hadn't felt like this.

Like he's crossed the line, like he's meddling in something he couldn't possibly understand. He feels, suddenly and inexplicably, like a little kid who's been caught snooping through his parents' things.

Perhaps it's the way Stella is looking at him, almost like the mother he'd first thought she was - her expression irritated and patient, exasperated and fond all at once.

"But he's so happy when he's with you." Reed wishes he sounded more convincing, especially since that is the reason he's here. Mac is happy with the way things are, true, but he could be so much happier. This effort, however clumsy, is for him. "I just thought, since he hadn't told you-"

This is where he'd gone wrong. He'd thought that Stella couldn't see it. He'd thought he'd known something about Mac that she didn't. It is, Reed thinks, a silly mistake to make.

Silence holds, before Stella finally takes pity on him and talks.

"It's more complicated than that." For all the times Reed has heard someone say those words, it's the first time he believes it.

He wonders, now, if Mac knows. Does he know that she knows?

He hadn't told Reed not to say anything; he'd offered that himself. If he'd gone to Mac, and told him that Stella loves him, would he have been equally unsurprised?

Have they talked about it? Whispers over coffee, an acknowledgment of what's going on between them? Or is it something in the silent conversations they share?

He has so many questions now, when this seemed so simple standing outside her office door a few minutes ago. From the look on her face, Reed can tell Stella isn't going to answer them.

This - whatever this is - is something that's between them.

Reed shows up early - though early doesn't mean much when their work schedules meant that 'dinner' wasn't starting until past 10 - at Mac's apartment the next week. As soon as he sees him, he blurts out, "I told her."

Mac nods slowly, opening the door wider. "She told me."

"I'm sorry." Mac doesn't seem that upset, but Reed apologizes anyway.

He nods, looking somewhere a little over Reed's shoulder. He forces a casual shrug that doesn't entirely hit its mark of conveying nonchalance. "She already knows." Mac turns around, heading toward the living room.

The puzzle is still there, almost finished now.

"What'd she say?" It's a test, he can tell. If Stella told him about their conversation, there's no way that Mac doesn't already know the answer.

Reed blinks, clearing his throat. "Pretty much told me to stay out of it." He feels like a kid explaining to his dad why he got detention.

"She's right." He passed the test, but he still feels admonished.

Head down, he admits, "I know."

"It's okay." There's acceptance in Mac's voice, a resignation. Maybe he always knew Reed would tell her.

"It's not, but-"

The door opens again, Stella letting herself in as easily as always. Her eyebrows raise slightly at the two of them here together already, and a knowing look passes between her and Mac.

And Reed gets it, suddenly. Without the shared memories, without the details they each keep close. He gets what's between them.

They're each other's lifeline.

It's complicated because they rely on this, they rely on each other. For connection, for support.

It's complicated because they're so close, because they've been so close for years.

It's complicated because they are inextricably linked; each and every aspect of their lives woven around the two of them, wrapped up in the ribbons of all that they are to each other.

It's complicated because the stakes are so high.

As though through an unspoken agreement, no one brings it up.

Reed suggests putting on a movie, and Stella makes her way over to the couch, sitting down beside Mac. She does that, he's noticed. Here and at the lab. It's understood that her seat is the one beside his.

The television plays in the background; Reed keeps one eye on the screen and one on Mac and Stella, who have started up on the puzzle again. Every so often they'll whisper to each other, low enough that he can't hear them, even just across the room.

Mac sorts his pieces like before, with separate piles for similar colors and pieces that all make the same object. Stella works from the edges inward, passing off pieces she finds that he needs, pointing out where sections he's put together now fit into the picture.

The puzzle is near complete by the time the movie is done. Reed blinks the tiredness out of his eyes as he notices the time on the clock reads just past 3:30. Saying his goodbyes, he puts his jacket on, bundling up against the New York City winter.

Stella has her head on Mac's shoulder, her hands wrapped around a mug of coffee. Reluctantly, she rises too.

Mac places the last piece of the puzzle into place, and reaches out for her hand.

"Stay."