disclaimer: they belong to bruckheimer and co.

rating: pg

summary: Mac swears it is the most New York name he has ever heard. Stella Bonasera.

pairing: mac/stella friendship and more

author's note: first CSI:NY fic, so feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Eight Ball
author: Jo C.

She has all the charm in the world behind her eyes, and he has her apple martini all over the front of his shirt.

"Oh, god, I'm sorry." She grabs paper napkins from the bar counter. "I am so sorry."

"It was my fault. I wasn't paying much attention to where – " He looks up from the stain and meets her gaze. "Let me buy you another drink."

"You don't have to, really."

"Please. I want to."

She introduces herself then, and Mac swears it is the most New York name he has ever heard. Stella Bonasera. (Detective, first grade, with a degree in Criminal Justice, he later learns.)

"Name your poison."

She shakes her head. "Nah, I'll have what you're having."

"Irish coffee."

"People still drink those?" she teases. It is the first time he hears her laughter, and he makes a bet with himself that he can sell it for hundreds of thousands of dollars. She briefly touches his arm, then answers gamely, "Sounds good to me."

He has her neatly tucked against his body, and her curly hair is tickling his cheek. They lean into the rail, and he has his left hand over hers on the green tabletop.

"It's never really about your ability to aim," he tells her, "It's all just high school physics. Angle of Incidence equals Angle of Reflection. Moment of Inertia. Torque. Elasticity and Impulse. Momentum, velocity, mass. Force, mass, acceleration – Newton's Second Law."

He pulls the pool cue back slightly, and it slides through both their hands. He nods at an orange ball, "Side pocket."

With a trick of the wrist, balls scatter across the table, and number five sinks into its designated hole. They straighten together, and Stella turns in his arms, and he's not really sure why his arms are still around her waist, but she has never looked more beautiful than right there under the dimmed lights of a Brooklyn pool hall at two in the morning.

It's the first time Mac is sure he loves her.

She goes back to school, and gets her Masters Degree in Chemistry. He offers her a job. CSI, he says, and there's an indisputable sound of pride in his voice. He offers her a job because this is how it is now, because he is getting married in a few months, because this is just how it is, damn it, and there's nothing he can do but offer her a job.

So he offers her a job. She refuses four times, then accepts because he won't stop offering.

(He can't stand not being around her.)

She is invited to the wedding, and he is relieved when all that arrive are a card that congratulates the happy couple and a set of silverware.

She apologizes a thousand times over just like the night they met, and makes up some kind of flimsy excuse about a family emergency – the kind high school kids use to play hooky – and he lets himself believe it because maybe it is too painful not to.

A month later, at a bar two blocks from headquarters, she remarks flippantly that she never got her dance with him, so like the gentleman he is, Mac slips his hand around hers, and they dance.

They dance to a song he can't for the life of him remember the title to, a song he never really liked but is now unavoidably associated with the color of her hair and the smell of her perfume. They move in small, slow circles across the floor, but somehow they are impossibly out of sync with each other, and they end up standing there, barely moving and just laughing and laughing and laughing.

Stella leans her forehead against his shoulder, shakes her head. He lets go of her hand and grips her arm to steady himself; she feels the cool metal of his wedding band slicing through her, and she steps back without allowing time for awkwardness.

Her classic smirk appears on her face. "Mac, you are one hell of a detective, and thank God you don't have to dance for a living."

New Year's Day, 2000, and she is alone on the roof of a Manhattan building, overlooking Times Square. She checks her watch, then looks up at the sky; it's an unusually cold and gray morning.

She hears footsteps behind her and turns to face him, and she discovers she's unable to keep from smiling. She gives him a quick kiss on the cheek. "You're late," she says, crossing her arms.

"Well, aren't we bright and cheery today," he teases. "You cold?"

"Nope."

"For a New Yorker, you're a horrible liar." He removes his coat and drapes it over her shoulders.

They're silent for a moment, and the rush of the city fills their ears with distant sirens and the impatient honking of horns. Eight years, and their ritual hasn't changed one bit. She elbows him gently in the ribs.

"Happy New Year, Mac."

"Happy New Year, Stella."

They watch the streamers from last night's hubbub being swept away, the dust, the ashes, and all the past being erased from the sidewalk. It's going to be a good year.

He shows up at her doorstep two hours after their shift ended, and she only needs a brief glance at the anger and confusion behind his eyes to surmise that he is the loneliest-looking man this side of the Prime Meridian.

She waits for him to speak first because asking if he were okay would be inappropriate considering the fact that she is a trained investigator, a detective of the NYPD, the most feared cops in all the free world, and the question is therefore unnecessary. So she waits, and he waits, and they stand there in the hallway of her Brooklyn apartment building and wait some more.

"I went home," he finally says, not to her but to his shoes, "and she was, uh, Claire was there with, uh, with a man. I think they work together."

(He falls long before the fall, long before that shattering September daylight blinds his eyes, long before all the dust and all the ash manages to settle over his soul. He falls long before the sky bleeds fire. Still, the man is steadfast in his loyalty and in his tragic faithfulness – even to the end of all things.)

It is a week after his wife's funeral, and Mac is standing in front of her, eyes bloodshot and liquor on his breath. She finally realizes what is off:

"You haven't cried yet, have you?"

He isn't very talkative as she walks him to her couch and sits him down. He is asleep within minutes, and she removes his shoes and jacket, then pulls a blanket over him.

When she wakes up in the morning, it's snowing, and he is gone.

There's a note on the kitchen counter. "Thank you," it says. (The handwriting is strangely hesitant as if he meant to write something else.)

He brings coffee and croissants. He is standing at her doorway at the most obscene, ungodly hour of the morning with coffee and croissants – and that lopsided smirk of his. She doesn't invite him in, but he is stepping around her anyway, knowing he has already been forgiven (because he brought coffee and because he brought croissants).

He makes himself at home on her living room couch before she can protest, and he is sipping, munching, and grinning all at once as he switches on the television.

"What the hell, Mac," she mumbles, "come right in, sure, you can watch TV, whatever you want 'cause I don't need to sleep or anything."

He hasn't stopped smiling since he's walked in. "Sit down and watch the movie with me. On the Waterfront is starting."

She folds her arms across her chest, shifts her weight around on the creaky hardwood floors, glances out the window for a moment. The light from the streetlamp outside is slanting in through the blinds, and she chews her bottom lip. "You don't like that movie."

He takes a bite out of his second croissant and doesn't look away from the television screen. "No, but you do."

She does, so she sits down and takes the cup of coffee he's offering her.

She is tugging at his tie and telling him he has to loosen up. He catches a few words here and there about some place called Sullivan's and something about tagging along, but when she is standing so close to him, he really isn't paying attention to what she is saying.

She baits him with Irish Coffee, and before he is fully conscious of the fact, she is already ordering it for him at the bar. Danny and Flack ask her to join their pool game, and she hops off her stool and tells them quite frankly that they should be prepared to get their asses kicked because she's learned from the master.

"The master?" Danny raises an eyebrow in skepticism. "And who would that be?"

Stella just smiles and grabs a cue.

From the bar counter, he watches her sink all the solid colors one by one. He has spent his whole life playing by the rules, obeying the principles (both natural and unnatural, from physics to commandments). And as she winds up for the Eight Ball and steals a quick glance in his direction, Mac wonders if it is time to challenge the laws of chance because maybe, just maybe, they were going to be on his side this time around.

the end.
December 2004