disclaimer: if you see them on your television screen, they belong to bruckheimer and co

disclaimer: if you see them on your television screen, they belong to bruckheimer and co. title bit belongs to led zeppelin ("going to california"). other lyrics, in the order that they appear in the story, are: mamas and papas ("california dreamin'"), john lennon ("stand by me"), meredith brooks ("bitch"), steppenwolf ("born to be wild"), the hollies ("bus stop"), john lennon ("woman"). any other brief allusions to popular culture also do not belong to me, of course.

rating: hard pg13/ mild r (language, inexplicit sex, mature themes), or t/ m or something

summary: "So how did you two meet? Bet there's a good story behind that."

pairing: mac/stella

spoilers: nah, just minor, obscure references to american dreamers, officer blue, recycling, tanglewood. if you blink, you will miss them, swear to god.

author's note: my attempt at balancing their humor and their angst, plus i figured i ought to work on my dialogue. i did not intend for it to be this long. feedback? yes, please.

Red Seas, Gray Skies, and the Miles in Between

author: Jo C.

The sea was red, and the sky was gray,

Wondered how tomorrow could ever follow today...

The summer they met, hundreds of bottlenose dolphins were washing up along the length of the Atlantic coastline. For months, pale corpses lay strewn across the eastern shores, and daily, trucks would arrive to pick up the bodies while the few that had floated onto the beach half-dead gasped in the shallow water, eyeing the activity and sensing the doom.

"Stella, come here. I want you to meet somebody." 1987 – Pete wrapped his arm around her waist, and for that summer, she let him think she belonged to him. "Stella, this is Mac Taylor, my buddy from the Marines. Beirut '83."

She shook hands with him then, and he was awkward and charming, and it looked like he hadn't slept in years.

The summer they met, millions of dead fish were washing up on the beaches of Long Island Sound, and this journey – this endless, cyclic journey of trying to outrun what they can't escape, what they can't accept – began.

Mac has been sitting in the same position for close to three hours, and it's uncomfortable as hell; he doesn't move though, won't let himself because Stella, with her head against his lap, is sleeping across three seats at the back of the Greyhound that's taking them west.

He looks out the tinted panoramic windows, watching the view blur at seventy miles per hour. He isn't sure where they're going, doesn't know what they'll do when they get there, and he hears his mind telling him over and over This is a bad idea, this is a bad idea, but there is her voice, too – her voice that had woken him up two mornings ago, soft and pleading and broken, whispering, Take me to California, Mac.

He had taken it like an order from a commanding officer as he packed what meager hope he had with his boxers and socks, and somehow, both their lives had been diminished to a single black duffel bag, which she had made him carry all the way down to fucking Port Authority while she was humming to that song, "Allll the leaves are broownnn, and the skyyy is graaayyy...."

He touches her hair and wonders when he let Stella's say trump his rationale so easily because he certainly doesn't remember when his chief function of life came to this: making her laugh, singing to her lyrics of songs she has forgotten, and buying her pretty things.

(It had been, as it always was in their city of eight million and the loneliest place he knew, a gray morning.)

"The rotten fish guts."

"Over pigeon guts?" Stella sent him a quizzical look.

Monday afternoons were meant for idleness, and this was in itself the utter equivalence of indolence. It was a day like this – days that were saturated with boredom and cheap foreign beer and obnoxious daytime dramas – that reminded her how very much she was alive, and here she was sitting on an ugly couch next to a guy she only met last night, sharing in their uniform "inertia," as he called it.

"Sure," Mac answered. "Now, your turn. Live cockroaches or dead rats?"

She grinned cheekily and licked her lips. "Live cockroaches."

He met her gaze. "You're a strange girl, Stella Bonasera; most people would rather eat dead rats than live roaches."

"In case you haven't noticed already, Mac, I'm not most people." She slid the batteries back into the remote control and smacked it a few times against the couch and her hand, directed it at the television, pressed the volume button. "Why won't this goddamn piece of shit work?"

"Well, from what I've heard, technology and violence aren't exactly the best of friends."

Stella ignored him and threw her bottle cap at the television. On the screen, a busty brunette slapped a redhead across the face, and a mouth formed the word "slut".

"See, you gotta love soap operas. You can stop watching it for a year, and when you start again, the show is still recounting the same day, yet the characters have managed to change clothes at least twenty times. And what's so incredible is that the chief surgeon has not only saved humanity from some highly contagious disease and rekindled his relationship with his estranged wife who slept with his father, but he also has assisted the local police in apprehending his son's kidnapper who, by the way, turns out to be his long lost twin brother out for revenge."

Mac stared at her. "Okay."

She chewed her lip. "Was I talking just now?"

"Don't worry. I can assure you I wasn't paying much attention." He finished his second beer and rose from the sofa.

"The words every girl wants to hear."

"What can I say?" he called from the kitchen, "I can be quite the charmer at times."

"Hey, Mac?"

"Yeah?"

She examined the remote again and listened to him rummaging through the refrigerator and the cabinets.

"Earthworms or maggots, Mac?"

"Earthworms."

She laughed triumphantly at his answer. "Coward," she teased.

She switched off the television and turned on the radio instead. ("Daaahhhling, daaahhling, staaand byyy me, ohhh, staaand byyy me...") The music followed her into the kitchen where he was making scrambled eggs.

"I hate this song," she muttered as she pulled out utensils from a drawer.

"How come? You don't like John Lennon?"

"The only solo Lennon song I ever liked was 'Woman.' But my favorite Beatle has always been George. Shy, quiet, underrated."

He shut off the stove, and after sliding the frying pan on top of old newspapers on the Formica counter, he reached for the pepper shaker and sprinkled the condiment over his claimed side.

"You want salt?"

He shook his head. "No, just pepper."

Stella raised an eyebrow but said nothing as she handed him a fork.

They ate, leaning over the counter and out of the pan, reading last week's bold-type headlines about dolphin corpses floating to shore, mangled and bloated and diseased and – she had to stop reading.

"So, you can cook eggs. Good eggs. What else can you cook, Mac?"

"Well, I have a handle on boiling water," he said, not looking up.

"Congratulations."

"Yeah. Physics degree from the University of Chicago. A couple of years in the Marines. Hot water and scrambled eggs. That's the extent of my résumé."

"You're an accomplished man." She shoveled the last bite into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully, studied his awkward demeanor. ("Nooo, I woonn't sheddd a teeear, just as looong as you stand, staaand byyy me...") "So I heard you're applying for a job at the Chicago Police Department."

"Yeah, I'm not sure though. I mean, I'm not sure if that's what I want to pursue."

She pointed her fork at him to add emphasis. "You know what? I think you'd be good at it."

Mac glanced up from the empty frying pan. "Really?"

"Sure, why not? And you know what else? You know who would make a great partner?"

He smiled slightly. "Tell me."

She stood up straight with her head held high and nose pointed up in an arrogance that can only compare to a cat. "Me, of course."

"Why?"

"Because sure, they need big geeks like you with the Physics degree, but they also need people who think like criminals. Street smarts to balance out the book smarts."

"And you think you fit that description? You think like a criminal?"

"I lived the hard-knocked life, Mac; believe you me." Her eyes sparkled with peculiar humor.

He stared at her very seriously all of a sudden, and it was silent ("Staaand byyy me, ohh, staaand byyy me...), then: "I don't doubt it."

The front door of the apartment swung open at that moment, and Pete walked in whistling, with a plastic bag of groceries slung over his left shoulder.

"Something smells good," he comments.

"Eggs. You want some?" Mac nodded towards the refrigerator.

"Sure."

Stella grinned. "Hey, Pete, what would you rather eat – earthworms or maggots?"

Pete made a face. "The earthworms."

"Coward."

At the stove, Mac flipped the eggs and chuckled.

Grandma Betty's eyes crinkle at the corners when she smiles, and Mac can see all the past written in the lines of her dry parchment face. She is sitting a row ahead of them, and for a while now, he has been listening to stories about her grandchildren, about Uncle Ralph and Aunt Meredith, about the grocery boy at the corner store, and about her secret recipe for the manicotti she doesn't have the time to make anymore.

(She calls him Mike, but he smiles politely and says nothing because she's old, sweet, and hard of hearing with the roar of the bus muffling his voice.)

Grandma Betty asks him if he is from New York, why he is leaving one coast for another – "You don't like New York?" – and it is a surprise to him because it has never been asked with such precision and candor.

He breathes in the question, remembers: the distinctive, ineffable smell of Chinatown; the old man who plays the saxophone in Central Park West every Sunday morning; the odd, comforting nights of empty black skies of starlessness; a flicker of bright gold in Stella's hair in the daylight.

Mac blinks, finds himself staring out the window. "I don't know."

"She tried to make me take this cherry-flavored cough medicine."

"What's so terrible about that?"

Stella faced him completely, and because of the Italian blood mixed inside of her, she talked with her hands. "You know how they try to make it taste good?" She gestured vaguely. "Well, I hate that – hate that – you know, how they purposely add artificial flavors to make it seem more appealing to dumb kids."

"You weren't one of those dumb kids I take it."

"The way I see it," she continued, "it's like school. Kids don't want to be stuck in a classroom learning all day, and teachers know that, so they try to make up 'activities' so it seems more fun than it actually is. Most kids see through that, and by second grade, you can't fool them into thinking school is fun anymore no matter how 'fun' they try to make it."

"You saw through cherry cough syrup, and by second grade, Sister Margaret couldn't fool you into thinking it tasted good –"

"Mac, can't you stop being cute for just one minute, and let me tell the damn story?"

He successfully hid his smile. "I apologize. Continue."

"All right, then. So she was trying to make me take this cherry-flavored shit that –"

"Sister Margaret?"

"Yes. She was trying to make me take –"

"Some cherry-flavored shit that really wasn't as appealing as it was supposed to be."

"Would you like to tell the story?" Stella stopped walking and folded her arms across her chest; it made her look more adolescent than she was, and Mac started laughing uncontrollably in the middle of Central Park.

"I'm sorry," he said unconvincingly with a grin still plastered on his face. "It's your story, it's your story."

"Yes, it is; so let me tell it before you get your ass kicked by a New Yorker from here back to Chicago."

"All right, I'm done. Go ahead."

"A group of us with the cold was lined up in front of her, and a few kids that were ahead of me were practically gagging from the medicine, so when my turn came up, I told her outright, 'You make me take it, and you're going to regret it.' Then, she –"

"Let me get this straight. You threatened a nun?"

"If you categorize that statement as a threat, yes."

"Well, I'm just thinking how the Assistant District Attorney would categorize it."

Stella narrowed her eyes at him. "You think you're so clever."

"Finish your story."

"Sister Margaret shoves the spoonful of –"

"Sugar?"

"Listen, Mary Poppins, if you –"

"Oh, so you got my allusion."

"If you –"

Mac raised an eyebrow. "Did you just call me Mary Poppins?"

"It's the least you deserve, asshole." Stella zipped up her sweatshirt and stuck her hands in the pockets, started walking ahead in mock annoyance.

"Aren't you going to finish your story?"

"No, because apparently you don't appreciate me as a brilliant raconteur."

"Sure, I do." He sidled up along side her. "Come on, Stel, tell me how it ends."

"No."

"Tell me, please."

"No, and you're buying me a hot dog right now."

"It's ten in the morning. And we're supposed to meet Pete for a brunch-lunch thing in an hour after his class gets finished."

"Yeah, so?"

"I was promised French Toast." There was a slight pout in his voice, and Stella had to blink to be certain of the fact that she had identified that bit of childishness correctly. "Pete said that place down the street had the best French Toast that money can buy –"

She rolled her eyes blatantly. "How old are you – twelve? You'll get your French Toast, but right now I want a hot dog. You're buyin'."

"You want a hot dog now? At ten in the morning?"

"It's the best time to get 'em, Mac."

"Why?"

"Fresh batch, Genius. Welcome to New York City."

Mac followed her up to a hot dog stand and pulled out his wallet. "Is this payment for me being such a – what's the word?"

"Asshole."

"Yeah, that. Right. Is this payment for that?"

Stella smirked. "You wish, Mac Taylor. You're going to be paying far more than a hot dog."

"Yeah, I got that feeling."

"Of dread?"

"And doom."

The Greyhound groans and before it comes to a complete stop, half the passengers are already screaming bloody murder and the second half are already on their cell phones. Mac manages to slip his balled-up coat under Stella's head without waking her before stepping off the bus along with the others.

"What the hell?" A middle-aged, balding man in a suit decides to speak his mind. "I want my money back. I didn't pay for this."

Driver Rick, who looks like he's in his early sixties, blushes furiously and lets the thick steam from the bus's engine veil this face, and Grandma Betty comes to his defense quietly, "Nobody paid for this, but here we are all the same whether we like it or not."

"Where are we anyways?" A ditzy blonde this time, and her fiancé in John Lennon sunglasses shrugs uselessly; Mac holds back a smile at the stereotypical young couple.

"Nebraska?" Someone else ventures.

"I think we're still in Iowa."

"No, sweetheart, I think we're in Nebraska."

"Hey, who you callin' 'Sweetheart'?"

"Shut up."

"Nobody was tawkin' to you."

"Why don't you shut up?"

"And who the hell is talking to you?"

"Hey." Stella appears at the folding doors of the bus, and every head turns to her. "So, I noticed we're not moving."

"The engine's over heated, Ma'am," informs Driver Rick.

"Okay." Stella shrugs good-naturedly. She looks around, and there is nothing but miles and miles of Nebraskan farmland. She jumps down from the last step, her heels hitting red sand. "So," (Mac watches her eyes sparkle in the late afternoon sun and prepares himself for her morbid sense of humor.) "When do we start eating each other? I'm famished."

"The landlord wants to repaint my apartment."

It was two years later, and he was in a different time zone, but over the phone, they were watching the Berlin Wall being torn down on NBC. The cameraman got jostled in the uproar, and a chunk of concrete scratched the lens. Her laughter echoed across five states to reach his ears.

"God," she said, "that's live TV for you."

"November 1989, Stella. Years from now, kids will be learning about this in history class."

"Thank you, Mr. Rocket Science."

"Yeah. So, what color?"

"What color what?"

"What color does the landlord want?"

"Ghost white."

"It's white now, isn't it?"

"Egg-shell white. He wants ghost white."

"That makes sense."

She laughed again. "No, it really doesn't."

"Okay."

She fiddled with the phone cord.

"Hey, Stel?"

"Yeah?"

"You'll come? You'll come meet her?"

Stella chewed her lower lip, watched a group of twenty-something-year-olds waving posters and signs on the television. She closed her eyes and shrugged. "Sure. If you want me to," she answered. She heard her voice tremble slightly. "So, when's the big day?"

She attended the wedding a few months later, and then, nothing, nothing, nothing.

"Mac?" She looks up at him like a little girl with her head in the clouds, begging for a bedtime story. "What are we going to do when we get there?"

Mac hasn't thought that far ahead though because half of him still believes, still hopes for the rational Stella he knows to wake up and demand to return home. This is crazy, this is fucking crazy – there's nothing at the end of the road but another empty ocean.

He lowers himself to the ground next to her, sits against the base of the telephone pole near the bus and tries to sort this mess, this thing that is – quite obviously – not going to work out.

What are we going to do when we get there? The question echoes in his ears, and she is waiting for his reply with eyes shining with an optimism he doesn't trust but bows to because she has been schooled in the fine arts of persuasion and seduction: she wields both words and tongue.

What are we going to do when we get there?

"We're going to live happily ever after," he says, not believing, "like the hippies we are."

Stella wrinkles her nose. "You better have a better answer than that by the time we get there."

She stands, claps red dirt from her hands and pants, the faded denim stained orange from this strange land; she throws him a curious smirk as she heads back to the bus.

"Hey, Mac," she calls, her smile still lingering.

He takes the bait, of course. "Yeah?"

"Know what the fastest running dog is, Mac?"

"I'm guessing the greyhound."

She laughs, loudly and obnoxiously and doesn't give a shit. "Yeah," she says, shaking her head of brown curls. "Go figure."

Stella was working Narcotics in Brooklyn North by the time the name Mac Taylor came up again.

"Mac Taylor?" The words sounded odd on her lips, on her tongue. "Yeah," she added dismissively, "I used to know Mac Taylor. From Chicago. What about him?"

"He's transferring to a Manhattan precinct."

"Oh, yeah?" She was very convincing in her disinterest as she walked down the station's hallway.

Her partner shrugged. "He mentioned your name apparently."

"I really haven't talked to him in years though."

(She suddenly had an inexplicable craving for hot dogs, but said nothing.)

Her partner shrugged again, changed the subject. "Did you hear Giuliani's inauguration speech last night? 'Dream with me of a city that can be better than the way it is now.'"

"Yeah," she nodded, "I'm gonna remember that line for a long time."

It's late by the time they reach civilization again – civilization in its loosest form, that is: a cheap motel and a roach-infested bar called Larry's – and the unscheduled overnight stop is accompanied by complaints and curses, but nevertheless, Mac finds himself mildly thankful for the ill comforts of their cramped motel room. (Stella points out, helpfully, that he isn't making much sense.)

They walk across the deserted parking lot to the bar and sit in the back corner, and Mac doesn't realize how many drinks she has had or how quickly she has downed them until a number of empty shot glasses and tumblers are on the table in front of him and he notices he is still on his first round when she is getting up for her nth refill. When she returns with a third of her drink already gone, he says nothing, pretends like this is something she does. It isn't, and he knows it; he sits back in his rickety chair and watches.

"Mac, I hate this song."

Mac's brow creases, and he strains to hear the music humming in the backdrop, humming from not very strategically placed speakers. "What song?"

"It's our song, Mac. Our song."

"We have a song?"

"Sure. That Lennon song that I hate. That's our song, Mac. Don't you remember? You picked earthworms over maggots, you coward."

He vaguely recalls what she is talking about. ("Daaahhhling, daaahhling, staaand byyy me, ohhh, staaand byyy me...")

"It's our song, Mac," she says again. She finishes her cherry rum in one gulp, then continues, "I hate this fucking song."

Mac laughs; he wants to kiss her for that.

"So."

"So."

"So."

"So? So what?"

"So, I want to offer you a job," he muttered over the phone.

"Mac, no." She was indignant. "Whatever the hell it is, I don't want it."

"That's fantastic. I'll pick you up for our first business meeting tomorrow afternoon."

He hung up, and Stella sat at her desk scoffing, fuming, and wondering how he got her roped into this ridiculous situation in less than three minutes when it took her three years just to forget him.

Their table of two turns into a table of seven by the time Mac is near the bottom of his second drink, and he isn't quite giving his full attention to the conversation until he hears the ditzy blonde's squeaky voice asking: "So how did you two meet? Bet there's a good story behind that."

All eyes turn to Stella, including Mac's.

(The sea was red all summer, and he sees his buddy Pete, whose hands were in her hair, whose tongue tasted her skin in the master bedroom adjacent to the guest bedroom, and she was throwing bottle caps at the soap opera on TV, and there are rules, rules about touching a best friend's girlfriend, and then, that look on her face when he held her hand for that moment, that moment when she grinned impishly and said, "Nice to meet you, Mac Taylor.")

Stella takes a short sip from her glass, then meets the blonde's gaze while avoiding Mac's, and the whole table is waiting for a good story.

Stella shrugs casually instead. "You know what? I honestly can't say I remember."

He was outside, arms crossed, leaning against a No Parking sign, and Stella had to give him credit for having the backbone to actually show up for their "business meeting."

"Take the job."

She shot him a hooded look. "What the hell, Mac?" She approached him steadily. "No 'Hello, how the hell have you been because I haven't seen you in three years?' No mundane chit-chat? I can't even ask how Claire is before you start hinting at the job?"

His classic lopsided smirk appeared, and he straightened, shuffled on his feet. "You got a haircut, Stella."

She rolled her eyes at him. "I got like seven haircuts."

"Yeah, well, it looks nice. I don't remember it being quite so curly, but it looks nice."

"Mac, stop. Don't even." She slipped into her jacket and started waving him off though she knew he would follow.

"Don't even what?"

"Don't try to compliment me and then try to slip me a job offer."

"I thought I already blew that cover."

She holds up two fingers. "Strike two."

"Sports metaphors, Stella? Since when did you start using baseball –"

"Oh, shut up."

"Okay, so, I was thinking –"

"What were you thinking, Mac Taylor?"

"Street smarts to balance out the book smarts, remember?"

She pretended not to know what he was referring to. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Nothing. Never mind. Listen, let's get some dinner and grab a couple beers, and we can talk about the job then, all right?"

"How 'bout we skip the dinner, go directly to the drinks and the part where I tell you that we don't have ourselves a deal?"

"Stella, come on –"

She turned suddenly, stared at him like she would a culpable suspect in her interrogation room: a lethal combination of rage and frustration and even betrayal.

"Mac, stop. Christ, you just don't get it, do you? You can't just fucking waltz back into my life after we haven't been in contact for three fucking years, so stop pretending like those three years were three days, and stop trying to compensate for that with dinner and a job offer and whatever other shit you've come up with because I'm not interested." She waved her arms wildly. "Things are different, things have changed, whether you feel that way or not, or whether you even noticed or not, and I know this just sounds like one big movie cliché to you, but you can't expect me to welcome you back into my already fucked-up universe like nothing ever happened. I'm not the same person anymore, and I doubt that you're the same person, so stop pretending like I'm your best friend or something."

She diverted her gaze then and tried to blink away the tears that were coming dangerously close to falling, and they stood there, silent and aching, in the middle of the sidewalk with the afternoon fading into evening.

"Stella, I'm sorry. I didn't know that – I mean, I didn't think that –"

She shook her head, still not looking at him. "Everybody's got a fucking excuse for everything."

Mac said nothing, and she felt relieved and tired all at once. She made her way over to the stone steps leading up to an old apartment building and sat down, watching the sky like the little girl who still lived inside her, hoping, dreaming for a better day. She nodded toward the clouds hovering above them, above the city.

"You know," she said pointedly, "it was supposed to be sunny today. Weatherman said sixty-two and not a cloud in sight, and I'm no meteorologist, but it looks like it's going to rain."

He smiled slightly and kept his attention on her as he joined her on the stoop. "It's bound to clear up. It'll be better tomorrow."

"You've turned into quite the optimist there, Mac."

"Yeah, something about letting your smile be your umbrella."

"A load of bullshit."

"Probably."

She pulled her jacket closer and stood her collar up, avoiding the chill that arrived whenever dusk settled. She was still watching the sky when she asked, "How's Claire?"

Mac leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. "Claire is –" He paused, and Stella thought she heard him give a short sigh. "She's fine."

"Did she get a haircut?"

"As a matter of fact, she did. She got a couple of them." He laughed. "She actually dyed it also."

"Yeah? What color?"

"Blonde."

"Mac, she was blonde when I met her."

"A darker blonde."

"You're real keen on description, aren't you?"

"The best." He scratched the back of his hand – a nervous gesture of his that she later came to recognized – and she caught the glimmer of his wedding band in her vision. "Hey, how's Pete doing anyway? You seen him lately?"

She shrugged. "Last I heard, he got engaged."

"Is he still at NYU?"

"Yeah, worked his way up to associate professor."

"Good for him."

"Yeah."

Stella felt herself sinking, sinking, sinking, and she wanted to be stubborn and selfish and right about this. She wanted to win, and though she didn't want to admit it, didn't even want to think it, she wanted him to bow and beg. He was there though, and goddamn it: she sighed in the wake of her defeat.

"So, tell me about this job you had in mind."

Mac picks out one of his shirts for her because she had forgotten to pack sleepwear, and Stella slips into it, pulls on a pair of his boxers, too, then sits on the edge of the springy mattress while he tangles his fingers in her hair and tells her quite frankly that she's going to get the worst hangover in the morning.

"I know how to hold my liquor," she protests sleepily as she lies down against lumpy pillows.

He kisses her softly on the lips, and her mouth tastes of an odd combination of tequila and toothpaste; he whispers, "Sure, you do."

He covers her up to her chin with the motel's powdery, starchy bedsheets, but she sits up slightly.

"Aren't you coming to bed, too?" she asks.

"Yeah, in a minute. I forgot to ask when we're supposed to be back on the bus tomorrow morning."

Stella yawns. "Nine, I think."

"I think so, too," he says as he walks to the door, "but I'm going to double check. I'll be right back."

Mac steps out into the warm evening, closes the door behind him.

He stands there for a moment, and a desire to weep suddenly overtakes him, and there under the Midwestern night and bright stars he has never seen before, he cries, silently, and he doesn't know why.

"God, Mac, go home already."

He didn't look up from his desk, but nodded slightly, absently, in response. Stella stepped forward into his office, a private smile gracing her face.

"Mac, the Pink Panther mugged me last week in the middle of Grand Central."

He continued scribbling down notes for his report, and she heard a noise of assent drifting in her direction, an "mmm-hmm" of sorts.

She walked up to his side and touched his shoulder, and he jolted back, banging his knee against the underside of the table.

"Sorry, Stella, I didn't notice you come in. Did you need something?"

"No, just stopping by." Her eyes scanned over the artlessly scattered papers covering his desktop. "Working on the homicide up on Lennox?"

"Finishing up the paperwork."

"It's almost one o'clock in the morning. Go home. Call it a day for god's sake. Finish it tomorrow; it'll still be here in seven hours."

Mac shook his head and returned his attention to his work. "That's the problem. They'll haunt me in my sleep."

"Okay," she answered, and there was a warning, motherly tone in her voice, "Suit yourself."

She headed toward the door.

"Good night, Stella."

"Good morning," she called back.

He is still standing outside in the middle of the empty parking lot in front of their motel room door when Stella steps out to look for him, and while he has fallen apart in front of her before, he isn't sure why he wants to hide from her now, why he wants to hide the tears that continue to overwhelm.

She touches his hand though, brushes it briefly with her own, but he doesn't turn, doesn't react, just stares straight ahead at the deserted highway and land that stretches beyond and melds with the black sky. They stand together, side by side, quiet and searching, and he tries to not be embarrassed about this, but he senses the humiliation clawing inside him.

He shuts his eyes, and he feels her body move close to him, her chin on his left shoulder, her hand in his hair, then her mouth against his neck, her breath over his skin. She brands careful kisses along stiff bones and stressed veins, she tugs at his earlobe with insistent teeth, and Mac doesn't know how much longer he can tolerate this.

He doesn't know how much longer he can take her, Stella, standing there next to him, openly offering him every ounce of goodness within her. More tears slide down his cheeks: he has nothing to give back to her, nothing but sorrow and loneliness.

Mac turns to her for the first time, eyes still closed, and he kisses her, hard against the mouth.

Her kiss tastes like their history.

Mac thought he was just casual enough about it, but she had become very good at seeing through him. "How did your date go on Wednesday night?" he asked (casually).

The spatula in her hand stilled for a moment, hovering above a slice of French Toast in a sizzling pan. A mixture of expressions shot across her face, and she wasn't entirely sure what to make of the question, but luckily she was turned away from him at the stove.

She flipped the piece of toast a few more times, then transferred it to the waiting plate in front of him, and when she handed him the bottle of syrup, she was eyeing him carefully.

"I'm sorry," he said quickly, "I shouldn't –"

"It's Friday night, and I'm making you French Toast, so you tell me how the date went."

He looked down at the tabletop and his dinner drowning in maple syrup. "Right."

"The guy was incredibly dull and incredibly arrogant about things he really shouldn't have been arrogant about because let's face it – do I really care if has a dozen fish from Lake Malawi – red top zebras or a stupid name like that. Do I really care?"

"He was telling you he's rich."

Stella gave him a pointed look. "No shit, Sherlock." She sat down at the table with her own plate. "He was dull, so dull, that – hand me that syrup, would you? He was so dull that I actually prayed, honest to God, prayed for, you know, the restaurant to explode, or the roof to collapse on top of my head, or –"

"Aren't you exaggerating –"

"Mac, you weren't there. I swear I was sitting there, wondering just how much the universe hated my guts to stick me with this moron." She waved her fork like a teacher would a yardstick. "Death would have been a welcomed form of entertainment."

"Well, look at it this way: at least you got a free dinner at a four-star restaurant, right?"

"I ordered a salad and a bowl of soup."

Mac burst out into laughter in spite of himself, and she bat his arm.

"Boy, Stel," he replied, shaking his head, "you sure got the wrong end of that date."

"No kidding. I should've ordered two steaks and a lobster."

"Yes, you should have." A forkful of food disappeared into his mouth. "And now, you're stuck here with me on a Friday night."

"Doesn't that just suck for me?" She smiled.

"Sure."

"Hey, when is Claire back from her trip?" she asked, and she paid particular attention to his reaction.

Stella had been picking up a strange vibe from him lately, like something was out of place, but she didn't mention this, of course, because he would just wave her off and tell her everything was fine, fine, fine. She wasn't one to pry, but he was beginning to max out his overtime, and she thought, it was never like this before.

"Well," he started, not looking up from his plate, "she was supposed be back tomorrow afternoon, but something came up, so she rescheduled her flight to Sunday night." He shrugged. "You know how it is."

She stared down at her own plate and said nothing.

The lights are off, but the television is blaring Spanish infomercials about hair-removal products. Mac is too occupied to notice (and that's saying a lot).

He removes her clothes: rips two buttons of the shirt in the process, tears the collar. He hooks two fingers into the waistband of her – rightfully, his – boxers, pulls them down, and she struggles beneath him, caught between tangled sheets and his desperate kisses and bruising hands.

Stella reaches for the duffel bag on the floor next to the bed, finds the condom box she had thrown in amidst the broken-ness and the fear and the false hope they had packed up. She fumbles a moment with the wrapper when his mouth begins to wander, the stubble along his jaw leaving scarlet scratch-marks on her skin.

(He sees the thin scar slanting down her abdomen, a constant reminder of her humanness and vulnerability, and feels sick with thoughts.)

It's not death: his life flashes behind his vision – not like death, but a strange redemption – and there, walking through Central Park and buying hot dogs, and the sound of the evening rush humming in his ears as he herded another criminal toward the squad car, and then there, again, Stella's hair with that golden blondish glow, and the small flock of pigeons that were evading his approaching footsteps that early Tuesday morning, and there was that oppressive heat and those ugly flames against his back in Beirut.

She comes quickly, and when she does, tears spill from her eyes. He brushes them away and feels guilt in his gut.

"You're crying," he whispers.

Stella shakes her head, inches closer to him, and hides her face against the curve of his neck. It's silent (except for the TV) for minutes, and his touch up along her side is soft and apologetic.

"Mac." She looks up at him.

He waits.

"Mac, do you remember the dolphins?"

The haunting image of slick, gray corpses along the beaches emerges, and Mac blinks it away before it imprints itself in his mind again, blinks away anymore tears that may be lingering, uncried.

"No," he lies, "I don't."

"Okay."

After another moment, she slips out of bed.

He leans back into the pillows, throws a forearm over his eyes. He hears the bathroom light being flicked on and then, the thin hissing of the shower.

He tries to sleep, tries to forget, but the memories remain in his head because he hadn't fallen in love just with her. He had fallen in love with the structure of the Queensboro Bridge and the architecture of the Flatiron building; he had fallen in love with the bustle of tourists in Times Square and the screech of the subway train as it brakes against the rails.

He drifts off in the middle of the infomercials and the drone of the water.

He sleeps, forces himself to not remember for once because he had fallen in love with, first and foremost, the height of the Twin Towers and the shifting shores of Long Island Sound.

He dreams, and in the midst, he learns that life is made up of n dimensions.

(Then, that Tuesday came, and the wail of sirens would never sound the same to her again.)

It had taken five grown men – Flack, Danny Messer, two patrols, and a civilian – to stop Mac from entering the perimeter and push him into a squad car.

Stella couldn't remember what else happened that day, didn't want to remember, but the smell of antiseptic and blood was strong, and the whirl of confusion at Bellevue made her stomach flip.

It was Mac who threw up though, into the East River, that night, and she stood behind him rubbing his back as he half-wheezed, half-sobbed, leaning against the cold metal railing.

"Stella."

Mac turns over in the creaky bed and feels for her amongst the layers of sheets. The spot next to him is empty and cool to the touch. He sits up, suddenly panicked, and squints at the bright light slanting through the partially opened bathroom door as he makes his way across.

"Stella?"

She isn't in the bathroom. The towel she had used earlier is hanging on the rack, abandoned and still damp. Her wet toothbrush is next to his in a clear plastic cup, and his razor is in a zip-lock bag. He glances briefly at the scratchy, blurry mirror and runs the back of his hand along his jawline; he hasn't shaved in two days.

He backs out of the bathroom and searches for his clothing in the semi-dark; he puts on a pair of old khakis and then a white t-shirt. He reaches for his leather jacket that he left folded over the dresser next to the television and finds it isn't there. He frowns: she disappeared and took his jacket with her.

He finishes dressing, puts on shoes, and steps out. The twilight air chills the film of sweat on his forehead and on the back of his neck, sending an uncomfortable and familiar tingle down his spine. He sees a light down at the end of the row of doorways, and he walks over briskly (and almost grasps for the gun he doesn't have).

Stella is sitting, knees brought up to her chest, huddled in his jacket, in the laundry room, watching the snowy, fuzzy television screen.

"Stella."

She turns in her plastic chair, smiles faintly. "Hi."

Mac lowers himself into the chair beside her. "Hi."

"Hi."

"I was worried about you," he says carefully, not looking at her.

"How come?"

"It's four in the morning, and you weren't in the room."

"Mac," she answers impatiently, "I can take care of myself. I know how to protect myself for Christ's sake."

"I know that. I need you to take care of me, protect me." He wants that comment to be funny, light, casual, but his voice is sad and desperate.

She smiles again and says proudly as she kisses him, "Yeah. You need me."

"What are you watching?" He nods toward the screen.

"MASH."

He narrows his eyes, tries to figure out whose face is talking, though even the speech is filtered with extra noise. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, that was B.J. talking just now."

He leans forward in his chair. "Are you sure?"

"No."

Mac laughs and shakes his head. "You're going to kill your eyes watching this."

She raises an eyebrow. "Who are you – Sister Angela?"

"Which one is she again? She's not the Sister who forced cherry cough syrup down your throat, was she?"

Stella looks at him quickly, surprised. "No, that was Sister Margaret." She paused. "You remember that?"

"Of course. I mean, you never finished your story about what actually happened, but I remember."

"Suffice it to say, I ended up mopping the floors for a week."

"I'm sure you did it with your head held high."

It's silent between them for a while, and Mac is still trying to figure out if it really is MASH that they're watching. He finds himself not caring.

He studies the dingy yellow floor, attempts to not be obvious. "Nightmares?" he asks. "Did you have nightmares?"

Stella tries not to be fazed and fails. "Yeah. But I don't want to talk about it."

"Okay." He moves closer to her, presses a kiss into her cheek. "You know I'm here for you, you know, if you want to talk about it."

She stares at him suspiciously. "What are you doing?"

"I'm being supportive and considerate."

"Why?"

"Because this is me being caring and devoted and other good things that women like in a man."

She makes a face. "Yeah, well, stop it. You're creeping me out. What, are you gonna hold my hand and call me 'Pumpkin,' too?"

He smiles, self-mocking, embarrassed, and the humor disappears from her eyes suddenly. "Mac," she whispers.

"Yeah?"

Her voice is desperate in his ears. "Don't do that."

"Don't do what?"

"Change. Don't change, Mac, okay?"

It's not pressure but duty and obligation that well up within him. He meets her gaze. "Okay, I won't –"

Stella shushes him, gestures to the television. "I'm watching TV here."

"Fine. I'll shut up."

"Yes, please do. The best part's coming up."

An uncharacteristic grin finds its way across his face, and when he looks at her now in the pale glow of twilight, he doesn't see the blonde hair anymore.

The department gave him a week off to get over his dead wife.

Stella silently spent that week picking up the empty whiskey bottles and cleaning the vomit in the bathroom after she force-fed him and put him to bed every evening.

Then, on the sixth night, as she was about to leave, she heard Mac's voice behind her.

"Get back into bed," she commanded sullenly.

He stared at her with blood-shot eyes and scratched the back of his hand, then his neck. "Yeah," he answered, not moving toward the bedroom.

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"Are you going to?"

"Going to what?"

She sighed internally. "Get back into bed."

"Yeah."

He didn't move.

"Come on." She took him gently by the arm, started walking him back.

Mac stopped halfway, and she turned, watched him carefully.

"Stella."

"What's wrong?"

"Are you leaving?"

"Yeah, I was just about to."

She saw tears forming in his eyes, and it made her want to break down and weep, too.

He shifted his weight and scratched his arm. "I just – I was – I, um –" He shook his head, looked away.

This wasn't going to be easy for him.

"Mac, do you want me to stay?"

"No. No, it's not – I don't –" He brushed away the tears before they fell and tried to hide the embarrassment and shame, but Stella didn't really understand the need: he had lost his wife after all. His response came out as a whisper, "Please?"

She stared at him for a moment, quietly, and she saw the warfare in his eyes. "Let's get you back in bed."

After watching an hour of TV, he gets another hour of sleep before she wakes him up: "Time for breakfast."

"Point of order, Stella: it's six in the morning." He pulls the bedsheets over his head, rolls away from her to his side.

"Is that the extent of your weak-ass objection?"

He groans. "Know why it's, as you so poignantly put it, a 'weak-ass objection?'"

She crawls back under the sheets, rests her chin on his shoulder. "Because point of order, it's six in the morning?"

"Mmm."

"Point of order: Too bad. I'm hungry. Get up. And since when did you use phrases like 'point of order?' You make me feel like I'm in the fucking Parliament or something, geez. And you know what? That's not even the proper usage of the phrase."

She clambers out of bed, and despite Mac's protest, they end up walking across the parking lot at sunrise to the bar, where she claims there is a kitchen in the back, claims it is a diner by day, and to his dismay, she is right.

It is closed though, of course, and the lights are off. Stella stands next to the door silently for a moment, and he thinks she might be sensible enough to return to the room for another two hours, but he grins proudly – sensibility is overrated anyway: she begins knocking loudly on the glass door.

Ten minutes later, Larry the barkeep from last night appears and opens the door; Stella turns, smiles triumphantly.

"Hey, Lady," Larry grumbles, "Do you have any idea what time it is? It's six in the morning for Holy God's sake."

Mac stifles his laughter, mutters, "Point of order," under his breath, and she ignores him skillfully.

"Yes, it is. It is six in the morning," she counters, still smiling, "yet here we are, ready to eat."

When Larry grudgingly sets down the plates of food in front of them at the same back table, Stella immediately peppers her scrambled eggs, then leans over and peppers Mac's, too, before picking up her fork.

"Men: can't live with 'em," Stella sighed regretfully, thoughtfully as she took another sip of her third drink of whatever it was called, "Can't chop 'em up into pieces without getting blood spatter on your clothes."

"And shoes," Aiden Burn added helpfully from across the table.

"Gee, don't I feel loved." Danny Messer shook his head as he took a seat with his own beer.

"Must be your skewed imagination."

"You're not going to go into a feminist, man-hating number of 'I'm a bitch, I'm a lover,' are you?" He grinned cheekily over the rim of his raised glass.

Aiden threw the orange peel from her drink at him. "It's cute how narrow your scope of vision of the world is, Messer. Doesn't that make your inferior species, otherwise known as men, – I don't know – more susceptible to aerial assaults or something?"

"What the hell?" Danny raised an eyebrow.

Stella burst into laughter, and in her fuzzy, dazed, alcoholic buzz, she spotted Mac shrugging out of his jacket near the door. Despite the fact that Sullivan's had been their regular after-work retreat for more than a few times now, he still looked glaringly out of place, and she couldn't help but laugh even harder as she waved him over.

A wayward western wind brings rain's odd salvation, and Mac stands in its gray morning shroud, leaning against the outside wall of the diner/bar with the duffel bag between his parted feet, and he's watching, always watching, watching, watching, observing.

Stella, dressed in his too-big navy blue USMC sweater, is nearby with her back to him, arms crossed.

"Stella," he calls gently.

She turns, steps toward him. "Yeah?"

He grabs her too-long sleeve, and as he pulls her another step closer, he smiles slightly. "Stella, you need to relax."

"The bus is late, Mac, late. Aren't you annoyed?"

"It's only been ten minutes, so not really, no."

"Well, you should be. We should've been well on our way by now." She crosses her arms again.

"You are the definitive New Yorker."

"Why thank you."

"Sure, now relax. You should relax. Like me. See, I'm relaxed. Be more like me."

"I am relaxed. This is me being relaxed. Anymore relaxed, and I'll be in a fucking comatose, Mac. Do you want to see me in a coma, Mac, huh, do you?"

She tries to suppress the smile that's growing on her face, but fails, and he tastes it almost as quickly as he sees it. It's a light kiss, and Mac feels himself slipping and remembering.

"Hey," she challenges, "guess what song I'm thinking of right now."

He thinks about it, then: "Get your motor ruuunnin', head out on the hiiighway..."

"Well, that actually fits pretty well, but what I have in mind is better."

"Tell me."

"Bus stop, wet day, she's there, I say, please share my umbrellllaaa..."

"Good one."

"Yeah."

Mac brushes a stray brown springy curl away from her face, hooks it behind her ear, and he notices (for one too many times) that she has been holding the same sad smile for too many rest stops and too many state borders. When she turns, looks away, he tucks a hand under her chin, and she stares at him curiously: this is completely uncharacteristic of him, and he knows this, she knows this, and he hears her voice in his head, begging and pleading, Don't change, Mac, okay?

"Did you get enough rest last night?" he asks her.

Stella nods, and she isn't very convincing, especially to him, Mac, a person who's known her for a disturbingly long time.

"I don't believe you," he says, and with his hands holding her by the waist, his thumb traces small circles around the spot where he knows the long scar is under the sweatshirt. "Stella, were they just as bad as before?"

"What?"

"The nightmares, Stella."

She shakes her head. "They're getting better."

He leans into her, whispers in her ear, "Are you lying?"

"No."

"Was that a lie just now?"

She doesn't answer, and by the time Mac thinks she's going to, she only kisses him again, very briefly, then steps back: "The bus is here."

It was years later, and there was an ambulance and blood on her shirt and hands, and Danny Messer was yelling into his cell phone, yelling at the cops who were supposed to have secured the crime scene, and there was a hot, numbing sensation in her stomach.

She woke up and discovered bouquets of flowers on the table at the foot of the bed.

"Who sent me flowers?" her voice rasped out to no one in particular.

"Hawkes sent the tulips, and Aiden, Danny, and Flack sent the other ones – I don't remember what they're called."

It wasn't the first time she saw him sitting there next to her in that uncomfortable brown chair, but it was the first time it occurred to her that he could open his mouth and start to talk. He had a stiff and tired expression on his face, and despite her fuzzy vision and drugged bliss, she still noticed the deep creases in his unchanged shirt and suit and the stubble on his chin.

She smiled sleepily at him. "Daisies, Mac. They're daisies."

His own voice was rough from too many cups of stale hospital coffee. "You should be a gardener."

"Father Sebastian used to be a gardener."

"Oh, yeah?"

She tried to nod, and her world spun. She blinked hard to chase the stars away from her vision. "Then, he died; you know, he was seventy-seven."

Mac leaned forward in his chair, his elbows resting on his knees, and she could see he was trying to hold back tears. It seemed like he was about to take her hand, but he touched the metal railing of her bed instead.

"How old were you?" he asked.

"Thirteen, maybe fourteen." She stopped for a moment, then, "You wouldn't have liked me very much back then."

"How come?"

"I was a delinquent." She laughed, and when he raised an eyebrow at her, she continued. "Didn't I tell you I think like a criminal? Once – I was eleven – I set part of the frontyard lawn on fire."

"That sounds just like you, Stella," he accused gently as he wiped his eyes.

"What, a juvenile delinquent?"

He half-smiled. "A pyromaniac."

"It's not like there's anything else to do on this goddamn bus, so come on, answer the question," she prods with a steady voice and a sharp elbow.

"No."

"Why not?"

He sighs loudly, but keeps his eyes on the newspaper he is reading. "Because we're sensible adults, Stella."

"Yes, yes, sensible adults who make sensible decisions through, you know, sensible decision-making processes that sensible adults would use. Sensibly."

Mac looks at her. "I don't know what the hell you just said, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't sensible."

"I'm saying answer the question."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Are we going through this again?"

"Not if you answer the question."

"The question is ridiculously flawed."

"No, it's not," she protests.

"It has faulty logic, the Either/Or Fallacy."

"Oh, for god's sake, we're not trying publish a dissertation, Mac. Just answer the question."

"Go away."

Stella sinks back into her seat with a huff and stares out the window, watches the world whizzing by. "You're no fun."

"I happened to have grown up."

"My ass."

Mac tries hard to ignore her for the next few minutes, tries to finish reading his crumpled newspaper, but finds he can't concentrate on any of the words. He leans over then and whispers, "I'd probably eat the roadkill."

She glances up at him. "Instead of owl pellets?"

He makes a face. "Don't even say that again. It's disturbing."

She turns back to the window, and she looks triumphant in the early afternoon sunlight.

"Coward," she murmurs, satisfied and smiling.

Mac grins back. "Well, you know me."

It happened then: one afternoon, a week after she returned to work, Aiden Burn found her hunched over the sink in the ladies' room, emptying her stomach. Aiden rubbed her back and said over and over, It's okay, it's okay, but Stella couldn't get that image of pooling blood out of her eyes and that sound of shattering glass out of her ears. Her throat stung.

"Fuck," she muttered. "Motherfuck."

"It's okay," Aiden cooed, "it's okay. Should I get –"

Stella shook her head. "No, I'm fine. I just – I just need a minute to, you know –"

"Yeah." Aiden handed her some paper towels. "You only have an hour left of your shift. You should go home. I'm sure I can get Danny to take over for –"

"I was supposed to see Hawkes about –"

"Stella, we'll take care of it."

She felt like she was giving up, giving in, giving out; her body was aching and her mind was sick of seeing red and feeling pain. "I'm tired," she admitted quietly before sighing.

Aiden took her by the hand, led her out of the bathroom like a child. "It's okay. Go home. I'll see if Flack can spare a few minutes to give you a –"

"No, I can take the subway," she protested weakly.

"There's no way in hell you're taking the subway by yourself."

Stella folded her arms across her chest. "Yes, I am. It's final."

Flack drove her home.

Another two hours later, Mac was standing outside her door.

"I don't need a babysitter," she said preemptively.

Mac stared at her, and he looked guilt-ridden, angry, and scared all at once.

"I wasn't aware I looked like a sixteen-year-old girl. Is it my hair?" he answered without humor as he stepped past her into the living room. "Aiden told me what happened," he continued carefully. "Aiden told me what happened this afternoon, and I'm saying to you now: maybe you should take a few more weeks off because you aren't doing yourself any good by insisting to work."

Stella narrowed her eyes at him. "Mac, don't. Don't talk to me like that, and don't undermine my ability. You've never done that before –"

(She heard glass breaking in her head and half-flinched.)

"Stella, I'm not doubting your – I'm not saying you're not capable for the job because I know you are. I'm saying maybe you're not capable for the job right now."

Somewhere in between the snippets of phrases she caught, Stella couldn't hear what he was saying anymore, and she stood there in front of him in the middle of his attempt to be comforting – he was never very good at comforting – and she was drowning, slowly drowning in his doubt, fear, words – words that had no substance because all she could hear was the chaos behind them.

She leaned forward then, eyes closed, and kissed him, her mouth against his, hard and soft, desperate and edgy, awkward and absolute like their relationship had always been, and it tasted like the weakness she was not yet ready to face.

It took a moment and a half before he backed away, stunned, and he stared at her as if she were a stranger.

"I – I should let you rest," he said. "It's been a long day." He walked to the door, not looking back, but continued like a brief afterthought, "Call me if there's anything."

He closed the door behind him.

"Once," Stella says quietly, "Father McCaffrey took a bunch of maybe six kids upstate and let us look through the telescope he owned. It was actually a pretty dinky telescope, but he let us all have a turn with it, and he pointed out to us the constellations. 'There's Scorpio,' he said, 'Can you see the tail? Can you imagine its claws?' and it's not like you need a telescope to see it – I mean, you can see most of them with the naked eye, but he let us fiddle with all the knobs anyway. Theresa Tapper – she was the youngest one there – threw a fit because someone cut in front of her or something. Her face turned red as a friggin' tomato, and I could see it even in the dark: chubby cheeks and big fat teardrops."

She laughs at the ridiculous memory, and Mac waits patiently for her to continue.

"Anyway, Father McCaffrey showed us a bunch of constellations – I can't remember what half of them are anymore – then, right before we left, he pointed to the Big Dipper and said something like, 'You can always depend on Ol' Big Dipper to help you find your way home.' Then, Theresa yawned really loudly – you know, a signal that we should be returning to the city – and he packed up the telescope very slowly, very carefully, and he let me carry it back to the van while he gave Theresa a piggy-back ride." She pauses as she thinks, stares out the window again. "He had a really bad back."

Mac smiles, nods slightly. "What suddenly made you think of all this?"

Stella doesn't answer for a while, and when he wonders to himself whether or not he should leave it alone, she turns toward him and says with the tone of the little girl she was in her story, "I can't see – I can't even remember what the stars look like anymore."

He doesn't know how to answer, so he doesn't.

She curls up in her seat and falls asleep without another word.

She turned the television on in her bedroom, and after taking her painkillers and calming her nerves, she buried herself under the bedsheets and prayed for dream-less sleep. Sleep didn't come though; Stella lay there in the dark instead, watching the blue glow of the television flicker across the ceiling and seeing that shocked expression on Mac's face before he left, and before she consciously knew it, tears were falling beyond her normal emotional control.

"Fucking lunatic," she scolded herself as she switched off the television and turned over to her side.

Then, she heard it, a key sliding into the lock on the front door. She quickly ran over the list of people who had her apartment key through her mind: the landlord, her downstairs neighbor Mr. Carducci, and – son of a bitch –

She recognized his timid gait before he said anything. "Stella?"

She didn't answer even as she heard his approach. Mac called her name again before stopping at her opened bedroom door. He knocked softly, then, "Stella, can I come in?"

She didn't trust her voice still, didn't trust that she could face him without allowing the rage and hurt to show. He must have taken her lack of response as permission because he slowly made his way over. She felt the bed dip slightly as he sat down on the edge of the mattress next to her, and the gentleness of his touch on her back made her want to weep with relief.

Stella moved over to give him more room, and to her surprise, he was receptive to her invitation. He got under the sheets, and after an uncomfortable moment of adjusting to each others' presence, Mac closed the gap between them, his chest against her back, his face in her curly, tangled hair, an arm secured around her waist.

He played with the hem of her T-shirt first, then slipped a hand under it. His palm was warm against her abdomen, deliberate and searching, and it didn't occur to her immediately, but she realized he was feeling for her scar. It didn't take him long to locate it, and she lay there, very still though inside she was shaking, as he traced its jagged length back and forth; it felt longer under his fingertips.

"Stella," he said after a while, and she heard his voice choked with his own pain and tears, "Stella, I'm so scared."

She didn't reply to this confession but placed a reassuring hand over his instead, and with gradual, increasing confidence, his caress moved upward. She let her eyes close, let his kisses and his touch wash over her like the mysterious cosmic cure for which she had been seeking. She abandoned herself to the will of his hands and mouth.

Mac wrote his life and love on her skin that night. He kissed physics equations down her spine, breathed chemical formulas across her stomach.

He licked old song lyrics into her thigh: Please remember my life is in your hands.

It's late in the night when they reach their desired destination and the farthest west they can go on Interstate 80: San Francisco.

"You know, Ma'am, I hope the unscheduled stop doesn't conflict with what you had planned, and I hope you'll ride with Greyhound again, Ma'am." Driver Rick smiles nervously as Stella steps down from the bus.

She sets a hand on the old man's arm, and he blushes. "Don't worry. You have our business," she says kindly.

Mac follows closely with the thick strap of that impossibly heavy duffel bag slung over his right shoulder. He shakes hands with the bus driver. "Thank you."

"Have a nice evening," Rick says.

They check into the cheapest motel on the outskirts of the city, next to the 101, and despite the lateness of the hour, they take a cab out to the Pacific shore.

They walk along the sidewalk instead of on the beach. Stella had given up on beaches for many years now, since the dolphins though she doesn't consciously know, and Mac had never liked beaches because the intense heat on his shoulders always makes him think of Beirut, so they pick out an ancient rotting bench that must have been there since the discovery of the sea, and sit down to watch the shifting shoreline.

She doesn't say anything for hours, and they just sit there until Mac swears the waves are numb to his ears and are instead pulsing in his veins. He wonders if she has fallen asleep, and when he turns to look at her after he is able to pull himself away from the hypnotic effects of the tide, he sees that Stella is still very much awake, her eyes bright in the darkness and full of the Pacific Ocean.

Mac studies her for a moment in the pale moonlight. She's still dressed in his too-big sweatshirt, and she has on a pair of old, tattered jeans and tennis shoes; he can't help but compare her to that younger version of herself, when she was throwing bottle caps at soap operas and laughing about earthworms and maggots. He doesn't want that Stella over the one he has now, but he does wonder what happened to the little girl who had eyes filled with the stars. He wonders when that little girl faded into the background.

"What?" she finally says.

He blinks. "What?"

"You've been staring at me. Do you want to go back –"

"No." Mac shakes his head, stares westward again. "No, this is – this is –" He searches for a word and can't find one. He gives up: "This is nice."

She laughs softly. "Are you trying to write poetry now?"

He smiles back. "That's as poetic as I get, I'm afraid."

"And the universe takes one huge collective sigh of relief."

"You just don't know how to appreciate my sensitivity."

"Ha, ha, ha," she replies mirthlessly. "What time is it anyway?"

Mac looks at his watch. "Let's see, subtract three hours. That would make it, yeah, three o'clock."

"Honestly, Mac," she says seriously, "Are you tired? Do you want to go? We've been sitting out here for quite a while now. We can go if you want to."

"Honestly, Stella?" He moves closer to her. "No to both. Unless you want to go."

"Not yet."

"Okay," he answers with finality.

"Because I want to see the sunrise."

"But the sun is going to rise behind us."

"You're always picking up on the obscure details, aren't you?" Stella teases.

"Sure, 'cause why else would you keep me around?"

It's silent between them, and Mac gazes upward, searching the sky. He nudges her arm, and she stares up, too. He points out a constellation in the abstract distance and connects the stars together with a forefinger. He leans into her slightly, and without looking away, he quotes quietly:

"'You can always depend on Ol' Big Dipper to help you find your way home.'"

She decided to take the department's advice.

Still a week later, she woke up early one gray morning from her nightmares – blood-red nightmares filled with the pain and breakdown of everything she had once trusted in their city – and Mac had to hold her until she stopped shaking.

"Take me to California, Mac."

They wait for the sunrise, and when the first hint of daylight stretches from behind them, brightening the sky with a pink and orange glow, Stella stands from the bench and takes a few steps forward.

The waves seems softer now, even the wind is softer, and the cyclical hush of the water sliding up the sand isn't as threatening, but almost unreachable in its clichéd beauty.

"Hey, Mac," she calls.

He joins her on the edge, where the concrete sidewalk joins the beach.

"You see that, Mac?" She waves an arm vaguely.

"The sea. The sky."

"Yeah," she answers.

He looks at her curiously, expecting her to say more.

"Mac, look how – how blue it is." She furrows her brow in childish disbelief. "I've never seen such a clear blue."

He absorbs her words, then, "Yeah, it's going to be a – you know, nice day."

Stella doesn't seem to hear him for a moment, and Mac stares back at the ocean. They stand there in the early hours of the day, the sun soothing against their backs.

She turns around suddenly, facing east, and she closes her eyes briefly.

"Come on, Mac," she says, slipping her hand inside of his and smiling, "Let's go home."

April 2005