Fic: City of Birds [CSI:NY, Stella/Hawkes]
Title: City of Birds
Author: stellaluna_
Fandom: CSI:NY
Rating: R for semi-explicit sex
Summary: This is what happens at the end. Set sometime after "The Thing About Heroes." Stella/Hawkes
Disclaimer: None of these are mine. Characters are the property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer Television, CBS, and Alliance Atlantis.
Notes: Implicit spoilers for S4 and for "Raising Shane."
Stella wakes up alone in bed, the sheets tangled around her. She gets up and walks through the apartment slowly, rubbing her arms against the early-morning chill. The floorboards are cool and rough beneath her bare feet, and she can no longer remember what she was dreaming about just before she woke up. The dream clings to her anyway, vague fragments of whispered promises and a cold green light in the interrogation room, where she'd sat and watched as Mac had talked to someone unseen, and all the things he was talking about were cast up like a shadow play on slick sea-glass walls. When she'd tried to leave, she hadn't been able to find Hawkes, or anyone else.
She shivers, and the last bits of the dream fall away from her as she steps into the living room. It's cooler in here than it was in the bedroom, and after a moment she sees why: the window is open, and Hawkes is standing outside on the fire escape.
Before she can let herself wonder if he'll want to be disturbed or not, she crosses the room and knocks gently on the windowpane, and Hawkes turns to her with a smile. "Good morning," he says.
"Good morning." She leans against the window. "You're up early."
"I couldn't sleep, and I didn't want to bother you. You were out pretty cold."
"Was I?" She waits for him to ask her if she's been having bad dreams again, or to tell her she was talking in her sleep, but he doesn't.
"Yeah." He looks at her. "Want to keep me company, now that you're awake?"
"Sure," she says, and climbs out onto the fire escape next to him. It's chilly, but manageable, and Hawkes rubs his hand over the small of her back as she comes over to stand next to him. "Do you always do this when you can't sleep?"
"I like this hour of the morning," he says. "There's a moment right in between night and dawn when the sky is perfectly balanced between both, and for just a little while it turns this deep shade of blue that I've never seen at any other time of day. It's pretty amazing. Have you ever seen it?"
Stella shakes her head. "No." When she's awake this early, it's usually because she's been called to a scene. She hasn't been looking at the sky.
"Wait a little while and you will today."
Stella leans against the railing, looking out at the sky and at the street beneath them. Everything is silent, not even a far-off drone of traffic, and there are no lights except for the ones on the street. She can hear the squeak of her palm against the metal rail, and the rustle of Hawkes' clothes every time he moves slightly. Silence hums in her ears.
"It's eerie," she says, glad for the sound of her own voice. "I'm not used to all this quiet."
"I know," Hawkes says. "Sometimes I think this is the way the city will be after the bomb falls. Or at least after all the people are gone. Look." A bird flies past them. It's gone too fast for Stella to be sure, but she thinks it might have been a robin, a bird she wouldn't expect to see here on a city block.
"Or maybe," he continues, "it won't be the bomb after all. Maybe the birds will just take the city back."
"Like in the Hitchcock movie?" Stella asks.
"Something like that. Everything in nature is cyclical, so I don't see why it shouldn't happen sooner or later. I've tried to imagine it." Hawkes puts his arms around her waist and leans into her, tucking his chin against her shoulder, then goes on talking.
"Everything will be quiet like this all the time," he says, "except for birdsong and rain falling in the afternoon. Robins and cardinals will fly up and down and build their nests in the eaves of all the buildings. They'll feather them with flags and the scraps of awnings. There are already birds of prey living in some of the hotels uptown, you know. After the people leave, they'll expand their range. Some of them will move to the Dakota and they'll dive-bomb sparrows on Central Park West."
"What else?" Stella asks. She's caught in the story now, in the quiet rhythms of his voice.
"Gulls will nest in Battery Park City and on the piers, and all along FDR Drive," he says. His breath tickles her face. "They'll hatch their eggs in the sun, and the rivers will be theirs. Fifth Avenue will belong to the owls."
"Owls?"
"They'll come out at twilight and fly up and down all night. Can't you see it?"
A graceful explosion of silky gray feathers against the cool white marble of upper Fifth; wide yellow eyes and the sounds of soft hooting on a street where there are no other sounds, soaring past the spires of St. Patrick's: she can.
"The doors of Tiffany's and Cartier will all stand open," Hawkes says. "The magpies and ravens will take the jewels for their nests, and it will all glitter, everywhere."
"And what happens after that?" Stella asks. "What happens to all the buildings, to everything we leave behind?"
"Once the birds have settled in?"
"Yeah."
"The forests will come back," he says. "The trees will creep out from the parks and push up their roots through the sidewalks. Oaks will sprout in Macy's and the Frick. Ivy will grow all over the Guggenheim and across the doors of Barneys. Foxes will nurse their babies at the Cloisters."
Stella pictures it: birds in the skies over Manhattan, hundreds of them, all day long and all night too, the streets cracking and splitting as if there's been an earthquake while giant trees push their way up through the concrete and heavy vines of ivy overtake the buildings. It'll be like the transformation scene in The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center, only for real; Lincoln Center itself will crumble until there's nothing left but the fountain, and then the fountain will turn into a natural lake.
"What about the people?" she asks. "Where will we all go?", and she wants Hawkes to admit, now, that this is just a fantasy, something he's made up during long nights bent over reports or, longer ago, during long days in the half-light of the morgue, light that could make anyone's imagination take a strange turn. At the very least, she wants him to tell her not to worry, that they'll both be long dead before any of this happens.
"It depends," he says instead. "To other cities, I suppose, if those are still safe. Maybe other countries. I think some people may become birds themselves. They -- " But he doesn't finish whatever it is he means to say, because just then the sky turns a brilliant shade of blue that Stella has never seen before, and Hawkes falls silent as she stares at it, openmouthed with wonder.
When it's over, there's nothing left but dawn, and recognizable shapes are beginning to emerge from the dark. Bus brakes hiss on the next block and a car alarm starts to wail, and Stella tilts her head back so her cheek is pressed to Hawkes'. "Take me inside," she says.
Inside, in bed, he moves over her, kisses her and runs his hands over her body until her skin is alive and humming, until she can feel herself opening, rising up, reaching out to touch him back. He kisses her mouth and her cheeks and her eyes, and she runs her hands through his hair and down his back and along his ribs, where the muscles jump at her touch; she hooks one leg across his hip and pulls him closer until there's nothing between them but skin.
Even then, he makes her wait; he moves lower, kisses her breasts, tongues her nipples until they're tight and aching, then runs his tongue down her belly while he parts her legs with his hands, eases his fingers high against her until his feather-light touch has her gasping. Stella lets herself moan as he licks the cup of her navel. She tugs at his hair until he gives in and moves his tongue over her in slow, steady strokes and she feels safe enough to let it take her, to let everything break and push her into a high, dizzy spiral.
He waits until she's stopped trembling, then moves over her again and into her. She wraps her legs around him and reaches for his hands, twining his fingers with hers, and she holds on until he comes into her, until he drops his face to hers and breathes in deep gulps of air in quick shuddering breaths against her cheek.
They're quiet afterward; Stella rests her head on his chest and looks at the ceiling. She can't stop thinking about his story of how the birds will take over, and she's also thinking about other things: the night Hawkes had been cleared of the bar murder and she'd gone to meet him, and how warm he'd been when they embraced; the days Drew Bedford had sent her the parachute and the gift certificate for sky-diving lessons and all the rest of it; the abandoned subway station under City Hall where they'd found Mac, and how he hadn't wanted to talk to her after they'd climbed back up to the sidewalk, about Drew or anything else. The memory of Hawkes is a good one, so she's not sure how it connects to the other two.
That abandoned station will be an ossuary one day, she thinks; she'll have to add that to Hawkes' story.
She curls closer to him, and he kisses her mouth. "Good thing neither of us has an early shift today," he says.
"I know." She walks her fingers up his arm, watching how the fine hairs rise at her touch, and something else occurs to her. "What were you starting to say just before we came back inside?" she asks. "About how some people would become birds."
"Oh, right," he says. "The people who won't have to leave. The ones who'll know how to become birds. I think they're people who already know how to fly away. Anyone who hurts enough to not let themselves get too attached to anything earthbound. Or who never gave a damn in the first place." He pauses. "Unfortunately, I'm not one of them."
"No." Stella touches his cheek. "No, that's a good thing." A few weeks ago, after she'd been to a scene with Mac, she'd found a small brown feather on the floor of her truck. She hadn't thought anything of it at the time.
"There are a lot of little islands all up and down the East Coast," he says. "Off Maine and North Carolina and other places. I think that's where I'd go when it happens. I bet that moment in the sky is even more spectacular."
"I bet it is," Stella says, and smiles, and when Hawkes puts his arms around her, she hangs on tight, soothed as much as she can be by the steady beat of his heart.
Feedback is always appreciated.
Author: stellaluna_
Fandom: CSI:NY
Rating: R for semi-explicit sex
Summary: This is what happens at the end. Set sometime after "The Thing About Heroes." Stella/Hawkes
Disclaimer: None of these are mine. Characters are the property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer Television, CBS, and Alliance Atlantis.
Notes: Implicit spoilers for S4 and for "Raising Shane."
Stella wakes up alone in bed, the sheets tangled around her. She gets up and walks through the apartment slowly, rubbing her arms against the early-morning chill. The floorboards are cool and rough beneath her bare feet, and she can no longer remember what she was dreaming about just before she woke up. The dream clings to her anyway, vague fragments of whispered promises and a cold green light in the interrogation room, where she'd sat and watched as Mac had talked to someone unseen, and all the things he was talking about were cast up like a shadow play on slick sea-glass walls. When she'd tried to leave, she hadn't been able to find Hawkes, or anyone else.
She shivers, and the last bits of the dream fall away from her as she steps into the living room. It's cooler in here than it was in the bedroom, and after a moment she sees why: the window is open, and Hawkes is standing outside on the fire escape.
Before she can let herself wonder if he'll want to be disturbed or not, she crosses the room and knocks gently on the windowpane, and Hawkes turns to her with a smile. "Good morning," he says.
"Good morning." She leans against the window. "You're up early."
"I couldn't sleep, and I didn't want to bother you. You were out pretty cold."
"Was I?" She waits for him to ask her if she's been having bad dreams again, or to tell her she was talking in her sleep, but he doesn't.
"Yeah." He looks at her. "Want to keep me company, now that you're awake?"
"Sure," she says, and climbs out onto the fire escape next to him. It's chilly, but manageable, and Hawkes rubs his hand over the small of her back as she comes over to stand next to him. "Do you always do this when you can't sleep?"
"I like this hour of the morning," he says. "There's a moment right in between night and dawn when the sky is perfectly balanced between both, and for just a little while it turns this deep shade of blue that I've never seen at any other time of day. It's pretty amazing. Have you ever seen it?"
Stella shakes her head. "No." When she's awake this early, it's usually because she's been called to a scene. She hasn't been looking at the sky.
"Wait a little while and you will today."
Stella leans against the railing, looking out at the sky and at the street beneath them. Everything is silent, not even a far-off drone of traffic, and there are no lights except for the ones on the street. She can hear the squeak of her palm against the metal rail, and the rustle of Hawkes' clothes every time he moves slightly. Silence hums in her ears.
"It's eerie," she says, glad for the sound of her own voice. "I'm not used to all this quiet."
"I know," Hawkes says. "Sometimes I think this is the way the city will be after the bomb falls. Or at least after all the people are gone. Look." A bird flies past them. It's gone too fast for Stella to be sure, but she thinks it might have been a robin, a bird she wouldn't expect to see here on a city block.
"Or maybe," he continues, "it won't be the bomb after all. Maybe the birds will just take the city back."
"Like in the Hitchcock movie?" Stella asks.
"Something like that. Everything in nature is cyclical, so I don't see why it shouldn't happen sooner or later. I've tried to imagine it." Hawkes puts his arms around her waist and leans into her, tucking his chin against her shoulder, then goes on talking.
"Everything will be quiet like this all the time," he says, "except for birdsong and rain falling in the afternoon. Robins and cardinals will fly up and down and build their nests in the eaves of all the buildings. They'll feather them with flags and the scraps of awnings. There are already birds of prey living in some of the hotels uptown, you know. After the people leave, they'll expand their range. Some of them will move to the Dakota and they'll dive-bomb sparrows on Central Park West."
"What else?" Stella asks. She's caught in the story now, in the quiet rhythms of his voice.
"Gulls will nest in Battery Park City and on the piers, and all along FDR Drive," he says. His breath tickles her face. "They'll hatch their eggs in the sun, and the rivers will be theirs. Fifth Avenue will belong to the owls."
"Owls?"
"They'll come out at twilight and fly up and down all night. Can't you see it?"
A graceful explosion of silky gray feathers against the cool white marble of upper Fifth; wide yellow eyes and the sounds of soft hooting on a street where there are no other sounds, soaring past the spires of St. Patrick's: she can.
"The doors of Tiffany's and Cartier will all stand open," Hawkes says. "The magpies and ravens will take the jewels for their nests, and it will all glitter, everywhere."
"And what happens after that?" Stella asks. "What happens to all the buildings, to everything we leave behind?"
"Once the birds have settled in?"
"Yeah."
"The forests will come back," he says. "The trees will creep out from the parks and push up their roots through the sidewalks. Oaks will sprout in Macy's and the Frick. Ivy will grow all over the Guggenheim and across the doors of Barneys. Foxes will nurse their babies at the Cloisters."
Stella pictures it: birds in the skies over Manhattan, hundreds of them, all day long and all night too, the streets cracking and splitting as if there's been an earthquake while giant trees push their way up through the concrete and heavy vines of ivy overtake the buildings. It'll be like the transformation scene in The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center, only for real; Lincoln Center itself will crumble until there's nothing left but the fountain, and then the fountain will turn into a natural lake.
"What about the people?" she asks. "Where will we all go?", and she wants Hawkes to admit, now, that this is just a fantasy, something he's made up during long nights bent over reports or, longer ago, during long days in the half-light of the morgue, light that could make anyone's imagination take a strange turn. At the very least, she wants him to tell her not to worry, that they'll both be long dead before any of this happens.
"It depends," he says instead. "To other cities, I suppose, if those are still safe. Maybe other countries. I think some people may become birds themselves. They -- " But he doesn't finish whatever it is he means to say, because just then the sky turns a brilliant shade of blue that Stella has never seen before, and Hawkes falls silent as she stares at it, openmouthed with wonder.
When it's over, there's nothing left but dawn, and recognizable shapes are beginning to emerge from the dark. Bus brakes hiss on the next block and a car alarm starts to wail, and Stella tilts her head back so her cheek is pressed to Hawkes'. "Take me inside," she says.
Inside, in bed, he moves over her, kisses her and runs his hands over her body until her skin is alive and humming, until she can feel herself opening, rising up, reaching out to touch him back. He kisses her mouth and her cheeks and her eyes, and she runs her hands through his hair and down his back and along his ribs, where the muscles jump at her touch; she hooks one leg across his hip and pulls him closer until there's nothing between them but skin.
Even then, he makes her wait; he moves lower, kisses her breasts, tongues her nipples until they're tight and aching, then runs his tongue down her belly while he parts her legs with his hands, eases his fingers high against her until his feather-light touch has her gasping. Stella lets herself moan as he licks the cup of her navel. She tugs at his hair until he gives in and moves his tongue over her in slow, steady strokes and she feels safe enough to let it take her, to let everything break and push her into a high, dizzy spiral.
He waits until she's stopped trembling, then moves over her again and into her. She wraps her legs around him and reaches for his hands, twining his fingers with hers, and she holds on until he comes into her, until he drops his face to hers and breathes in deep gulps of air in quick shuddering breaths against her cheek.
They're quiet afterward; Stella rests her head on his chest and looks at the ceiling. She can't stop thinking about his story of how the birds will take over, and she's also thinking about other things: the night Hawkes had been cleared of the bar murder and she'd gone to meet him, and how warm he'd been when they embraced; the days Drew Bedford had sent her the parachute and the gift certificate for sky-diving lessons and all the rest of it; the abandoned subway station under City Hall where they'd found Mac, and how he hadn't wanted to talk to her after they'd climbed back up to the sidewalk, about Drew or anything else. The memory of Hawkes is a good one, so she's not sure how it connects to the other two.
That abandoned station will be an ossuary one day, she thinks; she'll have to add that to Hawkes' story.
She curls closer to him, and he kisses her mouth. "Good thing neither of us has an early shift today," he says.
"I know." She walks her fingers up his arm, watching how the fine hairs rise at her touch, and something else occurs to her. "What were you starting to say just before we came back inside?" she asks. "About how some people would become birds."
"Oh, right," he says. "The people who won't have to leave. The ones who'll know how to become birds. I think they're people who already know how to fly away. Anyone who hurts enough to not let themselves get too attached to anything earthbound. Or who never gave a damn in the first place." He pauses. "Unfortunately, I'm not one of them."
"No." Stella touches his cheek. "No, that's a good thing." A few weeks ago, after she'd been to a scene with Mac, she'd found a small brown feather on the floor of her truck. She hadn't thought anything of it at the time.
"There are a lot of little islands all up and down the East Coast," he says. "Off Maine and North Carolina and other places. I think that's where I'd go when it happens. I bet that moment in the sky is even more spectacular."
"I bet it is," Stella says, and smiles, and when Hawkes puts his arms around her, she hangs on tight, soothed as much as she can be by the steady beat of his heart.
Feedback is always appreciated.