TITLE: Cooling
AUTHOR: Rain Garcia
RATING: T
SUMMARY: Once, someone asked Stella if she ever walked bare feet in the rain.
ARCHIVE: My website. Otherwise, tell me first.
FEEDBACK: Please do. I'm begging here. Lol.
DISCLAIMER: Not mine. I'm only making Jerry Bruckheimer richer by the second.
AUTHOR'S NOTES:An accompanying piece to 'Drive", though they are both stand- alones. All mistakes are mine, no one proofread this story.
Once, someone asked her if she ever tried walking bare feet in the rain. Back then, she was still too young, too smart, too unfamiliar with the CSI territory. She was grappling with the evidence the best way she could without fucking anything up, and it wasn't enough that her trainers were giving her a hard time, no --- even her co- workers were criticizing her. They said that she was too uptight- always keeping her emotions bottled up-, that she probably thought that 'fun' was a drug prescription for schizophrenia.
This went on and on, back and forth, and she ignored them. Ignoring was a well- visited territory for her.
Until one of those wise guys, a George- whatsoever, pressed a finger on her right rib and asked her if she, "Ever tried dancing … or walking bare feet in the rain? We bet you haven't, Bonasera, because you'd probably want to disinfect the whole atmosphere first."
She could remember giving the asshole a look that defied cold, and then she stormed out of the room.
If they thought that she had never walked in the rain before, she wanted to tell them, then have they tried walking bare feet AND naked in the rain? After being a stupid teenager, needing so much acceptance because you're locked 24/7 inside an orphanage that you hate with a vengeance, and then this preppy guy would ask you if you wanted to 'hang' out with him? Have you ever tried sneaking out of your room (which wasn't really your room because you shared it with six other girls) and then sprinting so fast across the muddy lawn to not be caught? Have you ever consented sex without even knowing its consequences, without even knowing the borderline between rape and pleasure? Have you ever escaped a fuckhead, who after using you, slept with a cigarette on his lips and it was so disgusting that those lips actually touched yours? And have you ever felt the urgent NEED to escape, that despite the fact that you're naked, its raining like crazy outside, the cold was unbearable, you just think that you HAVE to go …
Stella woke up with her gasp echoing in her ears.
It took her a long minute to realize that she wasn't dreaming anymore, that she was lying on her own bed, and that she was safe. She shivered a little - thinking that she should lower the air conditioning -, but something wet trickling down the side of her face stopped her. With an eloquent "shit", she sat up and opened the bedside lamp.
Damn. Her wound reopened.
"Stella?"
She wiped the thin line of blood with her palm. "I'm fine, go to sleep." Not that it mattered to say those words, because to him, the words 'I'm fine' was an ultimatum for 'I'm dying here'.
Her side of the bed dipped as Mac Taylor inched closer toward her. He placed a hand on her shoulder, then used the other to turn her head to him - so that he could see what was wrong. When he saw the blood, he quickly stood up and grabbed a cloth from her cabinet.
Kneeling down in front of her, he gently pressed on her bullet graze, controlling the blood flow.
"What happened? Does it hurt?"
Stella stared at him for sometime, watching his eyes crinkle with worry, then answered, "No, it doesn't. I don't know what happened. I must've hit it in my sleep." She smiled slyly. "Maybe YOU hit it, Mac."
"Don't joke like this," he reprimanded, but not without squeezing her hand. "Let me get some antibiotic, okay? Then we'll seal it with some gauze."
She rolled her eyes, knowing that the only antibiotic available in her apartment was particularly harsh on open wounds. "Get me some benzodiazepine first."
Mac shook his head sternly, even if the amusement was present in his voice as he spoke: "C'mon, don't get all cute on me."
He left her to go to the bathroom and to rummage her medicine cabinet. While she patiently waited for him to return, she wrapped their blanket around her body. Everything was too darn cold.
"You were dreaming, weren't you?" he asked from the bathroom, his voice muffled by the half closed door. "I thought I heard you uhh, talking in your sleep."
Stella cringed. Coming from a certified detective, it sounded so feverishly wrong to be 'talking' in her sleep.
"I don't really think I was," she denied --- knowing much better but yet again, ignoring what she knew.
Mac came back with a bunch of medical supplies that she forgot she even had. Resuming his former position in front of her, he waved the dreaded antibiotic in her face while dropping the rest of what he carried beside her. He grinned. "You should buy some supplies for your cabinet. I know a good antibiotic that doesn't sting at all."
"You KNOW, so you BUY."
"You ARE getting all cute on me," he remarked, grabbing a cotton ball. "What were you dreaming about?"
He said it so nonchalantly, so easily, that it almost rendered her in an epileptic fit. She hated it that someone – other than herself – could read her well, that someone was actually taking care of her, that someone cared enough to ask her about her dream. Whereas she had been living alone for so long that she forgot how it was to have someone. She forgot how it was to have Mac.
It was colder, now. Stella shook her head, turning her face away.
Noticing that she was bothered, he tilted her chin so that she would look at him. "Stella, are you okay?" His eyes were matted with layers and layers of unconditional concern, and if she looked hard enough, she knew that she could probably see his soul.
It was too much. It felt as if she was on a top and she was spinning out of control. For him; because of him.
Stella abruptly stood up, almost knocking Mac down on his back, and tossed the blanket out of her way. She began to tip- toe toward the bathroom.
"Stella?" Mac tried, confused. She continued to walk.
"I need to take a bath, Mac."
She heard him sigh loudly, not unfamiliar with this territory of hers. "Please, don't run out on me-"
"I just need to take a bath. Everything's good, Mac." She turned around when she reached the bathroom door, forced a smile on her lips, and watched him not buy any of it. "Water is a great natural disinfectant, right? I'll be careful, promise."
There was a sense of exhilaration when she shut the door, when she stared at her lone reflection on the medicine cabinet's mirror, when she stripped down naked. Then as her bare feet touched the cold floor of the bath tub, it felt like she grabbed that top by its neck. When the lukewarm water streaked through her body, the top stopped spinning.
During their first meeting, after he insecurely kidded that damn joke about her hair, she wished that she lost her virginity to him. His hesitant smile personified extreme compassion – he never would allow them to do anything they weren't ready for. His clean cut haircut was a huge point for neatness (a trait she adored), ultimately telling her that he probably smoked a little before, but never got the hang of it. And those eyes were like open books. She was sure she could trust him.
She trusted him enough to let him in her life. To let him take the wheel and drive.
She loved riding in that old car (she forgot what its brand was). She loved feeling like a teenager again – a normal one, this time- and she loved it that he allowed her to feel that way. She loved it that he was so patient with her, that he listened, that he never left her alone. When the night was over, he made sure she got home safely. They exchanged numbers on receipts from 7 Eleven and he called the very next day.
No one made sure that she got home safe ever before in her life. That evening, on their first meeting, she found the only person she could call family in New York - in her whole existence: Mr. Mac Taylor.
The water flowed through her hair, dampening the vibrant curls and matting them on her shoulders. She closed her eyes as the warmth overtook her.
As Claire walked down the aisle on her wedding day, Stella sat on the front pew, close to where Mac was standing in the altar. She gave him an encouraging thumbs up and mouthed 'your handsome' to him, earning her a smirk.
It was when she realized how in love she was with him.
It was also when she realized how alone she was. Again.
She buried herself in her own culture, trying to find bits and pieces of what her past should've been. She researched the difference between the words parakalo' and efharisto', how the Greeks loved to dance (when all the while she never cared much for it), and how Greek families ALWAYS stuck together. She just never knew what happened to hers.
She was about to start all about Italian when she became a CSI. Alongside Mac.
At least she could try and convince herself that she wasn't alone. At least.
The guys came after that. Plenty of them. So different from one another yet all the same - like the girls in her orphanage. None of them mattered to her, honestly. Because whenever she entered the office the very next day, Mac would offer her coffee and that was the end of it. They were all blurs in the back of her head.
Stella sighed as she chose a body soap to use. She realized that she had been using Mac's for the past week, so she used her own. She slathered it all over her hands, body, and reveled in the smooth softness, breathing in the raspberry scent that wafted everywhere.
As the towers crumbled down, Mac crumbled down. During Claire's death, she was constantly there for him, but it was as if he was so far away. It felt as if his soul joined his wife's.
The loneliness was too much for her, she remembered. She cried in the showers, she cried during Claire's funeral, she cried in her bed at nights. The thing she dreaded the most finally happened: She was losing Mac, her only family. She was losing him to the city, just like she lost everything else before him.
She was kidding herself when she walked down that rain years ago, naked, when she told herself that she would never give her heart away to anyone who could hurt her. She promised herself that she could, would never walk under the rain again.
It was only during Claire's death when she understood that all her life, she had been walking under the rain. She never took shelter --- she was still there, naked, bare feet, and vulnerable.
Washing away the soap, Stella stood still under the defiant spray of the shower. She felt the water's initial burst of heat as it landed all over her body, dejectedly growing lukewarm as they reached the soles of her feet, until they disappear - losing themselves in the coolness of the bath tub's floor.
Even if they had been working alongside each other - as partners - for years now, Stella never felt the same comfort she had with Mac before the tragedy. He was surprisingly edgier, a lot more serious, and insensitive. She suddenly became the one who drank the prescription pills called 'fun', while Mac was the one who forgot what it could cure.
She hated it. Even if she made a lot of friends because of her sunnier attitude, she lost the only one that mattered.
It was a surprise to her, in all aspects, when he made sure she got home safely after her brush with death, during their latest crime scene.
Imagine what her mind was whispering when Mac kissed her.
As his hands rounded her waist, all her thoughts silenced. All she could think of was how warm his body was, compared to her cold exterior. That was when she broke their kiss apart to moan.
It was right; even if they didn't talk about it. It was so right to cradle his face, to feel his five o'clock shadow, to allow him to kiss her breasts, to let him see her like no man had ever seen her before. To be with him when they both reached their orgasms, when he was whispering her name over and over again, when he kept kissing her passionately despite his fatigue. He spooned up behind her, holding her so close and with such overflowing desperation that it broke her heart.
Before she drifted to sleep, one sentence reigned in her head:
She suddenly wasn't cold anymore.
Stella opened her eyes through the spray. She slid the shower curtains ajar and ducked her head out of the tub's perimeter.
"MAC?" she called out.
She heard footsteps jogging to the bathroom. The door opened and he came in slowly, a light red covering his cheeks when he saw her body's silhouette through the curtains.
"Uhh, is there anything you need, Stella?"
She grinned. They had only been together for a week. They both had a LOT to work on.
"Yeah, you. Come here and join me, 'kay?"
Mac raised an eyebrow, an incoming grin tainting the corners of his lips. "Its four AM. I take a bath at around seven."
"Do me a favor and cut that crap. Come on," she urged.
Mac shrugged and began to take off his clothes. He made sure that his T- shirt went into the hamper, but when he was about to strip his boxers, he hesitated.
Stella laughed. "Take the boxers off, Mac. Don't get all nazi on me!" Returning to the shower, she added, "Its nothing that I haven't seen!"
"You're cute and I'm a nazi, huh? And you tell me that you spoil me too much." She guessed that he probably rolled his eyes after that.
Mac entered the tub, taking the spot she previously was on. He was underneath the water's spray, stiff and uncomfortable.
To ease him, Stella took his hand in hers. The awkwardness in his system melted at once, and in his eyes, she saw that he understood how important this was to her.
He leaned in and surveyed her wound for a moment, then kissed the clean side of her forehead, brushing away her curls. Afterward, he looked at her straight in the eye.
"You know you're not alone anymore, Stella."
She wrung her arms around his neck, pressing their bodies together. She murmured her reply against his lips.
"Yeah, I know."
THE END