Title: Night Shift
Author: stellaluna_
Rating: R for implied sex
Pairing: Mac/Danny
Summary: Moments of grace arrive unexpectedly. Set post-S2 and prior to S3; implicit spoilers for the former.
Disclaimer: None of these are mine. Characters are the property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer Television, CBS, and Alliance Atlantis.

***

Stella parks and turns off the ignition, then just sits there, keys in hand, listening to the soft ticks the car makes as it cools down. The garage is deserted, and so there's no one to walk past and stare, to wonder why she's not moving, why she's staring unblinking at nothing instead of getting out and going upstairs.

She's not sure herself. It's been an ordinary shift, even a quiet one. One murder on Astor Place at the start, another on Ludlow just now, and in both cases uniforms had snagged the perp before she even got to the scene. CODs seem equally straightforward, so unless Sid turns up something unexpected during autopsy, her job is done except for the follow-up paperwork. She should be fine; all she has to do is go upstairs long enough to sign out, then she can go home and collapse.

Maybe that's the problem.

She never used to like the night shift, not because it's too busy, like a lot of people seem to imagine, but because it's -- she can't resist the pun -- too dead. Not that the murderers only keep banker's hours, but odds are good that a middle-of-the-night body won't be found until dawn or later, once the daytime crowds have had a chance to discover it, or after the vic has had time to be missed.

So, no, it was never that the night shift was too much work, or even that it wreaked havoc on her sleep patterns. It was the boredom, which she once hated and now hopes for. She still hates it sometimes, when it gives her too much time to think, but she's gotten very good at not thinking, at turning her mind into a white-noise machine. When her head gets too noisy, she can usually find solace in reciting all the song lyrics she can remember, or all the poetry, or state capitols. She can go for a long time with a head full of Please don't bother trying to find her Jackson Springfield Albany I do it exceptionally well, and she's proud of herself for this. It's better than the alternative, just like the night shift is better than going home. On the night shift, all the bloodstains belong to strangers, and she can hide the scars on her hands under latex gloves.

And yet. And yet it's not enough, and she reaches out and clutches the steering wheel so she won't be able to see her hands, won't be tempted to look. The mnemonics and the work keep her busy most of the time, but not always, and more and more she's becoming aware that even if they worked all the time, it wouldn't be enough. It wouldn't be a good thing. That's not the life she wants, and she needs something more; this twilight existence, half-existence, isn't her. She needs more; she craves more.

Crave. That's the word. Stella presses one hand across her eyes. She craves, needs, and she has no words for what that need might be. She's tired of living her life, her real life, in secret. That's part of it, but that's not all of it. She's tired of being careful, tired of this ache, this waste, that knots her throat at all hours of the day.

But right now, she has to stop obsessing over this. She'll go upstairs and clock out, then go home. Maybe even try to sleep, bundled up in blankets and two layers of sweats. She sits up and takes a deep breath, then climbs out of the car, muscles twanging with stiffness.

She stares at the flashing numbers the whole way up in the elevator, counting along silently until she arrives at the 35th floor. Halfway up, she steps out of her shoes, wiggling her toes in relief; after eight hours, her feet are killing her, and it's not like there's going to be anyone around to comment on her walking around barefoot. That's another good thing about working late: overnight, the lab drops down to a skeleton staff at best, and she's less likely to run into someone she doesn't want to talk to. She does wish, fleetingly, that Hawkes were scheduled for tonight. He's soothing to talk to, calm and low-key and always prepared with some distracting topic of conversation, never inclined to try to force her into any discussions she's not willing to have.

But Hawkes isn't there; neither is anyone else. The hall, when the elevator doors open, is silent, and the whole place is semi-dark, shrouded in shadows. She walks out slowly, shoes held in one hand. Her other hand drops to her hip, to the butt of her gun. Just for a moment. Just to make sure it's still there.

Her bare feet make no sound on the marble floor. She walks to her office, past empty labs and closed doors, and she doesn't see another living soul. She almost might not be there herself.

The message light on her phone is dark. There are a few new e-mails and a couple of reports stacked on her desk, but all of it can wait until later. She sorts through it three times, shifting restlessly from foot to foot, but there's nothing to keep her here. It's time to go home.

Not a dozen steps from her office, she freezes. She stands there, not moving, barely daring to breathe. She heard something, or thinks she did, but she can't be sure. She knows far too well how strung-out and unreliable her nerves are these days, and so she holds her breath and doesn't move. Doesn't react. Not yet.

There. She did hear it that time. From behind her -- not directly behind, but further away, past the bend in the hall. Quiet little noise, soft little noise, that's barely there at all, like the floor creaking under someone's feet. Like someone trying to be quiet has shifted position ever so slightly.

Stella moves softly, more softly than ever, glad now that she took off her shoes. Her hand has dropped to her gun again. She doesn't draw it yet, because chances are excellent even now that she either imagined the noise or that she's about to startle the hell out of someone working late, or someone on the cleaning staff. Having her gun drawn, in any of those possibilities, would be very, very bad; it would start people talking again. And she knows she can't afford to overreact. Still, she keeps her thumb on the safety; she can't afford to underreact, either.

She goes toward the bend in the hall holding her breath, relieved when she's past it. Then she sees the light shining. Just one light, turned down low, way down at the end of the hall. Mac's office. Of course; he must be working late. She eases her hand away from her gun, wondering why it didn't occur to her earlier that he might still be around. He had been scheduled to go off shift at eight, she remembers, but that doesn't mean anything. She can see him, his back to her, standing near his desk in the dim light.

She pauses in the curve of the bend. She doesn't mind going to say hello to him, because, although Mac has never been precisely comforting, he's good, like Hawkes, at leading her away from uncomfortable topics. He doesn't pry. She just needs a moment to collect herself before she goes over to him, a moment to let her heart rate return to normal, and so she stands there, breathing in and out, one hand pressed to her chest.

Then Mac turns, and moves closer to the glass wall that lines his office, and Stella sees that he's not alone.

Her eyes go wide, and she doesn't move a muscle, can't. She's frozen where she is, and in his office, Mac is kissing Danny. Danny is kissing Mac. She squeezes her eyes shut for a single heartbeat. They're kissing each other. They haven't seen her, and she doesn't make a sound. She should leave, she knows she should; if nothing else, she should give them their privacy. But she doesn't move.

She can't really see their faces; the light and the angle are wrong. What she can see is how they're kissing each other, how tightly wrapped up in each other they are. Danny's hand is splayed across Mac's lower back, and Mac has his fingers knotted in Danny's hair. There's not an inch of space between their bodies, and their open-mouthed kiss goes on and on, neither of them pausing for breath.

Stella stands there, holding her breath again, and the hand that was pressed to her chest comes up and covers her mouth.

The kiss is deep, but it looks soft, too; it looks like they don't want to miss anything, like they don't want to forget anything. It looks like the kind of kiss that started off hard, or maybe teasing, and has gradually dissolved into this, into something much more breathless. The more swollen their mouths have grown, the less they've been concerned with finesse or technique or holding back; and now it's just this, just sensation, blurred heat and movement and wet warmth, everything else falling away. That's the kind of kiss it looks like.

They shift the angle and Stella watches the brief flicker of their tongues. Then Mac pulls back a little, just enough so that there are a few millimeters of space between them. Both of them stand there, chests rising and falling sharply, and then Mac takes his fingers out of Danny's hair and brings his hand around to his mouth, and strokes his thumb slowly across Danny's lower lip.

A gasp rises to Stella's lips, escaping past the hand that's still pressed to her mouth, and she has just enough presence of mind to duck back around the bend in one quick movement. There's a pause, and then Mac says, "Did you hear something?"

"Not sure," Danny says. "I think -- "

She can't make out the rest of his sentence, but it doesn't matter. She moves, as fast and as silently as possible, and slips through the first open doorway she sees. She eases back into the shadows, biting her lip, and seconds later, she hears their footsteps moving up the hall.

"No one," Danny says. "Must've been the vents or something."

"Must have been," Mac says. "Maybe that's a sign we should get out of here, though."

Stella's heart is like a drum in her chest, in her ears. They're right outside, and for a moment she's convinced they'll be able to hear it too. But they just go on talking like nothing's wrong.

"Sure. My place or yours?"

"Mine. I've got court in the morning."

"Sure. Want to go play a few rounds of pool first?"

"I'd rather -- " The rest of what Mac says is lost; they've started to walk again.

" -- afraid you'll lose," Danny says, and they both laugh.

Stella waits five minutes, and then five minutes more, just to be sure they're gone. Her legs are weak and shaking with adrenaline as she walks to the elevator.

All the way home, what she saw in Mac's office plays over and over again in her mind. The way they kissed, and the way they'd been holding each other tight, so caught up in what was happening between them that they'd never even suspected, until the very end, that anyone was there. She feels a little bit guilty for staying as long as she did, but only a little; if it had gone any farther than just that kiss, she thinks, she would have left.

She's not very surprised by the fact of seeing them together, or at least not very surprised that they would want to kiss each other, either of them. What does surprise her is that they've allowed it to happen, that they weren't fighting whatever it is that exists between them. Somehow, when she wasn't looking, something changed between them, some act of shapeshifting or alchemy, and things are different now. She should have known, she thinks, and remembers a night in Mac's office when his clothes had smelled like smoke.

Stella thinks again, as she undresses in her bedroom, about words like crave and need, and she remembers Mac's thumb tracing the shape of Danny's lower lip. She remembers a night when he'd done that to her, a long time ago now, when he'd brushed his warm, slightly callused thumb over her open mouth and then kissed her, and everything had been all right, there in the dark; it had been familiar, just the way the gesture looked when he did it with Danny, and she was wrong to tell herself that Mac has never been comforting.

Danny's mouth would be hot under her fingers, and his lips are probably chapped. The stubble on his upper lip and chin would be rough. She wonders if that's how it felt to Mac, and if he remembered that other night when he was touching Danny, if he thought of her as they kissed, or if he had thought of Danny when his mouth was on hers.

She shivers at the questions, and a little tremor rocks her cool skin. Either way, it's good. Mac will eventually see what time she clocked out, she thinks, and that's all right. Let him wonder. Maybe he'll feel compelled to ask her about it; she'll tell him the truth if he does, and then the shape of things will change again.

She turns off the light and rolls over onto her back. She's naked in her bed for the first time in months, and it feels good. She tries to picture what Mac and Danny might be doing now, and as she does, she moves one hand down to cup a breast, stroking the peak of her nipple until she has to bite her lip.

Something is bursting and breaking inside of her, something welling up in her chest that's been dormant for far too long. She eases her other hand down her belly, down her bare skin, going slowly and using her nails so that nerve endings spark and flare to life beneath her touch.

Stella closes her eyes and tilts her head back, and she thinks she can almost feel, in the darkness, a hand touching the curve of her parted lips, like a ghost promise of what's to come.

***