sweet charity fic :: tipping point
title: Tipping Point
with: Mac & Stella || Mac/Flack
rated: teen
herein: episode tag for 410 “The Thing About Heroes” || It’s been a long week.
disclaim: I only own the dvds; everything belongs to Zuiker, CBS, et al
note: Sweet Charity - for lazigyrl
He told Andy the truth-he dreams it over and over again
Mac closes his eyes against the background hum of the bar, opens them almost immediately. It’s Friday, low-key but busy, and the early pinch of a headache has found Mac’s temples. He can’t remember whose idea it was that they all go out after work, and he closes his eyes, opens them. Across the table, Danny and Hawkes talk about baseball with all the careful intensity of the drunk. (Danny skipped the beer and went straight to vodka. Hawkes felt obligated to keep him company, and Mac tried not to notice any of this.) Flack brings over the next pitcher, and Stella comes back from the restroom. She looks tired. Her hair is haphazardly pulled back from her face, and Mac owes her an explanation.
“I’m sorry,” Mac starts to say. Stella turns to him, worry still lining her eyes after three days, and Mac corrects himself. “I’m not good company tonight.”
“It’s been a long week,” Stella says. Her voice is dry, but it’s not directed at Mac.
“I’ll drink to that,” Flack says and pours the beer, but there’s not enough bluster to it. Flack’s more sober than he looks, and Stella is blurred at the edges more by fatigue than by alcohol. It’s been three days.
“Absolutely drink to that.” Danny’s smile is knife thin. He raises his glass in a toast-to Mac-and Mac laughs unexpectedly, a small and absurd laugh. Danny’s drunk, and Mac understands the appeal.
“That’s definitely the silver lining,” Mac says. He has dreamt of carrying Danny’s broken body through the night. It didn’t matter. Mac came after Tanglewood, but it didn’t cancel out the paralyzing fear from his youth. (The wind went out of Mac back when he learned that Louie woke up.)
A lull hits them all, just this side of awkward. Danny drains his glass, and Hawkes fidgets. Hawkes should never fidget. They must have the story-either pieced it together or told by Jimmy. Jimmy has the right to tell it.
Flack looks around the table and clears his throat. “Okay, Messer,” he says. “Time to defend your title-assuming you’re not too drunk.” This is all it takes. Flack invokes their recurring pool tournament, and a rush of normalcy hits Mac in the chest. Don doesn’t meet Mac’s eye, but he doesn’t need to.
“You want some more, Flack? I beat your ass six days ago, but if you want some more.” Danny actually plays better when he’s drunk, and Mac finds that more entertaining than he should. Tonight it’s comforting.
“I better go supervise,” Hawkes says. He lists for a half-second when he stands up, and Stella stifles a laugh. “I want a fair game if I’m playing the winner.”
“I’ll wipe the floor with the both of you,” Danny says. It’s probably true.
“I know you can trash talk better that that.” Flack claps Danny on the shoulder, and there, for a split second, looks at Mac. Mac smiles. Some of Stella’s hair has come loose. She tucks it back behind her ear, and she’s watching Danny and Hawkes weave their way across the room. Don trails a few steps behind them, and Mac wouldn’t be surprised if Stella caught that fragment of a glance. Mac isn’t sure if she did. He wouldn’t mind, but he would also be changing the subject. For a moment the room feels very close, the ambient noise too loud.
“We didn’t know,” Mac says without preamble. Stella turns to him again, and she’s unsettled, the smile already gone from her face.
“About Drew?” she asks, and it sounds like what the hell?.
“That too. We were kids, and we didn’t know anything,” Mac says. It’s the truth, and he still doesn’t know if the truth can ever be an excuse. (A matter of perception, Andy said.) Mac looks at Stella straight. “I’m sorry. We never talked about it, and I never-I tried not to let myself think about it.” He dreams it, but that’s another matter entirely. Stella looks away for a moment, and her smile is sad.
“Mac, you had no way of knowing it was Drew.” Her smile is sad, bitter and kind all at once, and Mac has a hard time looking at it. “He was careful not to give you any real information, not until the end,” she says.
“How much did Jimmy tell you?” Mac asks.
“The basics,” Stella says. “That both of you-all three of you apparently-were present when their brother was beaten to death.” She lets the sentence rest there.
“That I wasn’t able to shoot a man, even to save Will’s life,” Mac says.
Stella pauses, seemingly caught between frustration and sympathy. “Yes,” she says.
Mac nods. He drinks the beer, even though he doesn’t really want it.
“That’s not quite how he put it, but yes.” Stella doesn’t spare him her anger. (This is why he loves her.) “That’s not how you would put it either.”
“I don’t-” Don’t know how to put it. Don’t regret it. Don’t want forgiveness. Mac can’t finish the sentence, too many truths conflicting in his head. “I told Flack about it in Chicago.”
“I know,” Stella says. She glances at her hands, palms spread out on the table-top. “He hasn’t said anything, though. Did you have any idea what you’d find in when you went back?”
“No, not consciously.” Mac presses a thumb against his temple, wishing his headache would fade. He shouldn’t be drinking. “I wasn’t surprised, either. I don’t know why not,” he says. He sorts through his memory, trying to turn these pieces into a straight line again.
“Maybe we’re never really surprised by the past,” Stella says.
“I still dream about it occasionally.” Mac leans back. The chair is hard against his shoulder blades, and he hadn’t meant to say that. “Not often at all, and not in the past several months. Ironically enough.”
Stella grins, presses her hand to her mouth. It’s not hysterical, but it’s still a little desperately funny-Mac is well aware of that, of all the interrupted sleep he’s had in his life. Stella’s eyes are bright, and Mac shakes his head.
“I’ve always slept poorly, even before I might have had reasons,” he says. Stella knows this, though.
“You never told anyone,” she says, and it shouldn’t be so difficult to listen to the kindness in her voice.
“We didn’t know any better.” Mac’s said it, thought it enough this week-maybe they should have known better. “We only knew we shouldn’t have been in that hotel room, which is why we went in the first place.” His throat feels thick, but it passes. Stella deserves evidence in context, and he tells her, tells her everything. He tells her what happened after, too, and those slow hours, days, weeks were almost worse.
Mac’s father picked him up before dawn. Will was already dead. When Mac got home, he noticed some of Will’s blood was smudged and crusted on his shirt. So did his mother, who threw the shirt away while she and his father were still demanding answers, demanding promises. Mac sat at the kitchen table and watched a blade of early morning light slip through the window because he couldn’t meet his parents’ eyes. He’d quit crying hours ago, but his face itched. Years later, he recognizes the staccato in their voices as fear. He didn’t when he was fourteen.
“Jimmy and I stopped-we stopped being friends, I guess,” Mac says. (He can hear the city, hear Chicago in his voice.) He can’t remember what he did that year other than go to school and come home. “We had agreed never to talk about it, even with each other, but after Will died there was nothing else to talk about. It felt easier to go our separate ways.”
Stella is quiet for a moment. “That must have been lonely for both of you.”
“It was harder on Jimmy,” Mac says. He can’t feel guilty for not pulling the trigger, but he might feel guilty for this. “We were both different of course, after, but I remember watching him skip class, get into fights.” Only watching. Jimmy dropped out of school in eleventh grade, and Mac still doesn’t know what he could’ve said to Jimmy, just that he should have tried, at least once. “What you’d expect,” he tells Stella, grimacing at the words.
(Not that Mac managed to be a model student.)
Mac didn’t get to this part of the story with Don because everything after Will’s death was secondary. It didn’t matter how Mac lived with that night-it mattered how Andy couldn’t live. So it was easier in Chicago, a line of facts brought into focus by the shock of recognition.
Don didn’t push for more answers back in Chicago, and he won’t now. On the way to the airport, they stopped to pick up Mac’s overnight bag. Mac sat down on the motel bed for a minute, knowing he shouldn’t. Knowing it would be hard to stand back up again, even with the flicker of urgency in his chest. Distantly, he knew his blood sugar was crashing, that he’d been on his feet for twelve hours straight.
Don sat down beside him and didn’t say anything. Another minute passed, and Mac bent his head, wishing he could stretch the knots out of his body. Don put his hand on Mac’s shoulder, slid his hand up to Mac’s neck, and when Mac raised his head, Don leaned in to kiss him, simply. Like saying of course.
Mac found himself clutching Don’s shoulder, then he kissed Don back. There was no heat, only need. Mac was too tired for anything more than the need, pressing his mouth hard against Don’s. They’ve done this before, a handful of times. (If Don had any virtue he’d sacrifice it in a heartbeat because you don’t leave someone to their ghosts, but it was more than that, too.) Mac should have felt relief now that he’d told someone. Finally. He held on tight, white-knuckled, and he was no longer afraid of what happened thirty years ago, but he remembered the fear. Don cupped the back of Mac’s head, and Mac made a small, senseless, frustrated noise. The story had been told as far as it could be, but it wasn’t Mac’s to tell after all-it wasn’t his to end. Maybe relief would come later, after he found Andy. Maybe it wouldn’t.
Don broke it off, framing Mac’s face with one hand. Mac kept his eyes closed and listened to the hectic beat of his own pulse. He was lightheaded.
“We’ve got to get a cab soon,” Don said. He kissed Mac’s cheek and eyebrow, and Mac almost smiled.
Mac got up and moved around the room, making sure he wouldn’t leave anything behind. It only took a moment; he’d brought almost nothing and he’d barely unpacked. Don sat and watched him.
“I could really eat something,” Don said. “How about you?”
Mac did smile at that.
Maybe he owes Don the rest of the story-maybe owe is the wrong word. Mac has lapsed into silence, and he knows that Stella is watching him. He doesn’t mind. He takes a deep breath and pushes the half empty glass away from himself.
“I’m sorry he tried to get to me through you,” Mac says.
“That wasn’t your fault,” Stella says.
“I know.” He does know, objectively.
“Good.” Stella sounds pissed off again, but she also puts her hand over his.
“Still.” Mac turns his hand to squeeze her fingers, then he lets go.
Later, Mac’s headache fades, and it’s gone by the time he says goodbye to Stella. They’re standing outside the bar when he notices it. He’s tired, on some level he’s exhausted, but it’s a clean exhaustion.
“What are you thinking?” Stella asks.
“It’s been a long week,” he says.
Stella laughs and kisses him on the cheek, and they’re good, they always were. She tells him goodnight.
Mac walks from the bar with his head up so he can remember where he is. The small part of him which never left that hotel room expected Stella to be angry, betrayed. The small part of him which will never leave that hotel room.
Flack is waiting two blocks away, standing on the corner with his hands in his coat pockets.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Don says, and he looks tipsy now, just on the edge of tipsy, and Mac grins in spite of himself. Don grins back and falls into step beside him.
“I thought you left twenty minutes ago,” Mac says.
“Yeah, I needed to stretch my legs.” Don shrugs. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m holding up,” Mac says. He casts about for something more to say, but there isn’t anything more. From any angle, the truth is that he’s holding up. He’s glad the danger has passed, but there’s no relief, not for something so far in the past.
“You’re holding up for thirty years and counting,” Don says.
“Something like that.” Mac knew it’s been that long, but he’s still surprised by the math.
“That’s a couple lifetime’s worth,” Don says quietly. They haven’t caught a moment alone since Chicago. The night air is crisp, and autumn can make everything more sharp and real. Maybe that’s only because when Mac dreams, he moves through a hot-house landscape and he wakes to the taste of sweat and adrenaline.
And he told Andy the truth-he dreams it over and over again.
“It doesn’t always feel like a couple lifetimes,” Mac says.
Sometimes it gets mixed up, and in his sleep he helps to carry Will though the drifting dust (ashes) of a broken building in the desert. And sometimes there are fliers for the missing, a hole in the skyline. Too much death. There is always too much death.
“Yeah, time will fuck with your head.” Flack’s eyes are private for a moment, and Mac is hit with the memory of another ruined building and Don bleeding out.
“Shouldn’t you be heading for the seven train?” Mac asks. His chest goes tight, but his pace doesn’t falter.
Don shrugs again, frowns.
Mac slept well last night. He doesn’t know why.
“Or do you plan on stretching your legs all the way down to Brooklyn?” Mac doesn’t give himself time to think about what he’s asking.
“Unless you don’t want me to,” Don says.
(We’ve already lost enough, too much.)
with: Mac & Stella || Mac/Flack
rated: teen
herein: episode tag for 410 “The Thing About Heroes” || It’s been a long week.
disclaim: I only own the dvds; everything belongs to Zuiker, CBS, et al
note: Sweet Charity - for lazigyrl
He told Andy the truth-he dreams it over and over again
Mac closes his eyes against the background hum of the bar, opens them almost immediately. It’s Friday, low-key but busy, and the early pinch of a headache has found Mac’s temples. He can’t remember whose idea it was that they all go out after work, and he closes his eyes, opens them. Across the table, Danny and Hawkes talk about baseball with all the careful intensity of the drunk. (Danny skipped the beer and went straight to vodka. Hawkes felt obligated to keep him company, and Mac tried not to notice any of this.) Flack brings over the next pitcher, and Stella comes back from the restroom. She looks tired. Her hair is haphazardly pulled back from her face, and Mac owes her an explanation.
“I’m sorry,” Mac starts to say. Stella turns to him, worry still lining her eyes after three days, and Mac corrects himself. “I’m not good company tonight.”
“It’s been a long week,” Stella says. Her voice is dry, but it’s not directed at Mac.
“I’ll drink to that,” Flack says and pours the beer, but there’s not enough bluster to it. Flack’s more sober than he looks, and Stella is blurred at the edges more by fatigue than by alcohol. It’s been three days.
“Absolutely drink to that.” Danny’s smile is knife thin. He raises his glass in a toast-to Mac-and Mac laughs unexpectedly, a small and absurd laugh. Danny’s drunk, and Mac understands the appeal.
“That’s definitely the silver lining,” Mac says. He has dreamt of carrying Danny’s broken body through the night. It didn’t matter. Mac came after Tanglewood, but it didn’t cancel out the paralyzing fear from his youth. (The wind went out of Mac back when he learned that Louie woke up.)
A lull hits them all, just this side of awkward. Danny drains his glass, and Hawkes fidgets. Hawkes should never fidget. They must have the story-either pieced it together or told by Jimmy. Jimmy has the right to tell it.
Flack looks around the table and clears his throat. “Okay, Messer,” he says. “Time to defend your title-assuming you’re not too drunk.” This is all it takes. Flack invokes their recurring pool tournament, and a rush of normalcy hits Mac in the chest. Don doesn’t meet Mac’s eye, but he doesn’t need to.
“You want some more, Flack? I beat your ass six days ago, but if you want some more.” Danny actually plays better when he’s drunk, and Mac finds that more entertaining than he should. Tonight it’s comforting.
“I better go supervise,” Hawkes says. He lists for a half-second when he stands up, and Stella stifles a laugh. “I want a fair game if I’m playing the winner.”
“I’ll wipe the floor with the both of you,” Danny says. It’s probably true.
“I know you can trash talk better that that.” Flack claps Danny on the shoulder, and there, for a split second, looks at Mac. Mac smiles. Some of Stella’s hair has come loose. She tucks it back behind her ear, and she’s watching Danny and Hawkes weave their way across the room. Don trails a few steps behind them, and Mac wouldn’t be surprised if Stella caught that fragment of a glance. Mac isn’t sure if she did. He wouldn’t mind, but he would also be changing the subject. For a moment the room feels very close, the ambient noise too loud.
“We didn’t know,” Mac says without preamble. Stella turns to him again, and she’s unsettled, the smile already gone from her face.
“About Drew?” she asks, and it sounds like what the hell?.
“That too. We were kids, and we didn’t know anything,” Mac says. It’s the truth, and he still doesn’t know if the truth can ever be an excuse. (A matter of perception, Andy said.) Mac looks at Stella straight. “I’m sorry. We never talked about it, and I never-I tried not to let myself think about it.” He dreams it, but that’s another matter entirely. Stella looks away for a moment, and her smile is sad.
“Mac, you had no way of knowing it was Drew.” Her smile is sad, bitter and kind all at once, and Mac has a hard time looking at it. “He was careful not to give you any real information, not until the end,” she says.
“How much did Jimmy tell you?” Mac asks.
“The basics,” Stella says. “That both of you-all three of you apparently-were present when their brother was beaten to death.” She lets the sentence rest there.
“That I wasn’t able to shoot a man, even to save Will’s life,” Mac says.
Stella pauses, seemingly caught between frustration and sympathy. “Yes,” she says.
Mac nods. He drinks the beer, even though he doesn’t really want it.
“That’s not quite how he put it, but yes.” Stella doesn’t spare him her anger. (This is why he loves her.) “That’s not how you would put it either.”
“I don’t-” Don’t know how to put it. Don’t regret it. Don’t want forgiveness. Mac can’t finish the sentence, too many truths conflicting in his head. “I told Flack about it in Chicago.”
“I know,” Stella says. She glances at her hands, palms spread out on the table-top. “He hasn’t said anything, though. Did you have any idea what you’d find in when you went back?”
“No, not consciously.” Mac presses a thumb against his temple, wishing his headache would fade. He shouldn’t be drinking. “I wasn’t surprised, either. I don’t know why not,” he says. He sorts through his memory, trying to turn these pieces into a straight line again.
“Maybe we’re never really surprised by the past,” Stella says.
“I still dream about it occasionally.” Mac leans back. The chair is hard against his shoulder blades, and he hadn’t meant to say that. “Not often at all, and not in the past several months. Ironically enough.”
Stella grins, presses her hand to her mouth. It’s not hysterical, but it’s still a little desperately funny-Mac is well aware of that, of all the interrupted sleep he’s had in his life. Stella’s eyes are bright, and Mac shakes his head.
“I’ve always slept poorly, even before I might have had reasons,” he says. Stella knows this, though.
“You never told anyone,” she says, and it shouldn’t be so difficult to listen to the kindness in her voice.
“We didn’t know any better.” Mac’s said it, thought it enough this week-maybe they should have known better. “We only knew we shouldn’t have been in that hotel room, which is why we went in the first place.” His throat feels thick, but it passes. Stella deserves evidence in context, and he tells her, tells her everything. He tells her what happened after, too, and those slow hours, days, weeks were almost worse.
Mac’s father picked him up before dawn. Will was already dead. When Mac got home, he noticed some of Will’s blood was smudged and crusted on his shirt. So did his mother, who threw the shirt away while she and his father were still demanding answers, demanding promises. Mac sat at the kitchen table and watched a blade of early morning light slip through the window because he couldn’t meet his parents’ eyes. He’d quit crying hours ago, but his face itched. Years later, he recognizes the staccato in their voices as fear. He didn’t when he was fourteen.
“Jimmy and I stopped-we stopped being friends, I guess,” Mac says. (He can hear the city, hear Chicago in his voice.) He can’t remember what he did that year other than go to school and come home. “We had agreed never to talk about it, even with each other, but after Will died there was nothing else to talk about. It felt easier to go our separate ways.”
Stella is quiet for a moment. “That must have been lonely for both of you.”
“It was harder on Jimmy,” Mac says. He can’t feel guilty for not pulling the trigger, but he might feel guilty for this. “We were both different of course, after, but I remember watching him skip class, get into fights.” Only watching. Jimmy dropped out of school in eleventh grade, and Mac still doesn’t know what he could’ve said to Jimmy, just that he should have tried, at least once. “What you’d expect,” he tells Stella, grimacing at the words.
(Not that Mac managed to be a model student.)
Mac didn’t get to this part of the story with Don because everything after Will’s death was secondary. It didn’t matter how Mac lived with that night-it mattered how Andy couldn’t live. So it was easier in Chicago, a line of facts brought into focus by the shock of recognition.
Don didn’t push for more answers back in Chicago, and he won’t now. On the way to the airport, they stopped to pick up Mac’s overnight bag. Mac sat down on the motel bed for a minute, knowing he shouldn’t. Knowing it would be hard to stand back up again, even with the flicker of urgency in his chest. Distantly, he knew his blood sugar was crashing, that he’d been on his feet for twelve hours straight.
Don sat down beside him and didn’t say anything. Another minute passed, and Mac bent his head, wishing he could stretch the knots out of his body. Don put his hand on Mac’s shoulder, slid his hand up to Mac’s neck, and when Mac raised his head, Don leaned in to kiss him, simply. Like saying of course.
Mac found himself clutching Don’s shoulder, then he kissed Don back. There was no heat, only need. Mac was too tired for anything more than the need, pressing his mouth hard against Don’s. They’ve done this before, a handful of times. (If Don had any virtue he’d sacrifice it in a heartbeat because you don’t leave someone to their ghosts, but it was more than that, too.) Mac should have felt relief now that he’d told someone. Finally. He held on tight, white-knuckled, and he was no longer afraid of what happened thirty years ago, but he remembered the fear. Don cupped the back of Mac’s head, and Mac made a small, senseless, frustrated noise. The story had been told as far as it could be, but it wasn’t Mac’s to tell after all-it wasn’t his to end. Maybe relief would come later, after he found Andy. Maybe it wouldn’t.
Don broke it off, framing Mac’s face with one hand. Mac kept his eyes closed and listened to the hectic beat of his own pulse. He was lightheaded.
“We’ve got to get a cab soon,” Don said. He kissed Mac’s cheek and eyebrow, and Mac almost smiled.
Mac got up and moved around the room, making sure he wouldn’t leave anything behind. It only took a moment; he’d brought almost nothing and he’d barely unpacked. Don sat and watched him.
“I could really eat something,” Don said. “How about you?”
Mac did smile at that.
Maybe he owes Don the rest of the story-maybe owe is the wrong word. Mac has lapsed into silence, and he knows that Stella is watching him. He doesn’t mind. He takes a deep breath and pushes the half empty glass away from himself.
“I’m sorry he tried to get to me through you,” Mac says.
“That wasn’t your fault,” Stella says.
“I know.” He does know, objectively.
“Good.” Stella sounds pissed off again, but she also puts her hand over his.
“Still.” Mac turns his hand to squeeze her fingers, then he lets go.
Later, Mac’s headache fades, and it’s gone by the time he says goodbye to Stella. They’re standing outside the bar when he notices it. He’s tired, on some level he’s exhausted, but it’s a clean exhaustion.
“What are you thinking?” Stella asks.
“It’s been a long week,” he says.
Stella laughs and kisses him on the cheek, and they’re good, they always were. She tells him goodnight.
Mac walks from the bar with his head up so he can remember where he is. The small part of him which never left that hotel room expected Stella to be angry, betrayed. The small part of him which will never leave that hotel room.
Flack is waiting two blocks away, standing on the corner with his hands in his coat pockets.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Don says, and he looks tipsy now, just on the edge of tipsy, and Mac grins in spite of himself. Don grins back and falls into step beside him.
“I thought you left twenty minutes ago,” Mac says.
“Yeah, I needed to stretch my legs.” Don shrugs. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m holding up,” Mac says. He casts about for something more to say, but there isn’t anything more. From any angle, the truth is that he’s holding up. He’s glad the danger has passed, but there’s no relief, not for something so far in the past.
“You’re holding up for thirty years and counting,” Don says.
“Something like that.” Mac knew it’s been that long, but he’s still surprised by the math.
“That’s a couple lifetime’s worth,” Don says quietly. They haven’t caught a moment alone since Chicago. The night air is crisp, and autumn can make everything more sharp and real. Maybe that’s only because when Mac dreams, he moves through a hot-house landscape and he wakes to the taste of sweat and adrenaline.
And he told Andy the truth-he dreams it over and over again.
“It doesn’t always feel like a couple lifetimes,” Mac says.
Sometimes it gets mixed up, and in his sleep he helps to carry Will though the drifting dust (ashes) of a broken building in the desert. And sometimes there are fliers for the missing, a hole in the skyline. Too much death. There is always too much death.
“Yeah, time will fuck with your head.” Flack’s eyes are private for a moment, and Mac is hit with the memory of another ruined building and Don bleeding out.
“Shouldn’t you be heading for the seven train?” Mac asks. His chest goes tight, but his pace doesn’t falter.
Don shrugs again, frowns.
Mac slept well last night. He doesn’t know why.
“Or do you plan on stretching your legs all the way down to Brooklyn?” Mac doesn’t give himself time to think about what he’s asking.
“Unless you don’t want me to,” Don says.
(We’ve already lost enough, too much.)