Author's Note: Get ready for Grouchy!Mac…but of course Stella gets him straightened out in the end. ;-)

Spoilers: Season Four, "The Thing About Heroes"

Disclaimer: I am in no way connected with CBS, the CSI Franchise, or its writers, producers, or directors.

He's still breathing hard. He feels dazed as he gives his statement to Flack and numbly watches the others document the scene, watches the paramedics take Jimmy and Andy. He even lets them check him out—because Stella makes him, but he won't admit that—but refuses to go to the hospital. He's fine, he tells himself. His pulse rate is just too fast.

He watches Stella photograph the gun pointing at the door and take it down—the gun that would have shot her. Killed her. Sure, she was wearing a vest, but she was shorter than Jimmy. It might not have even hit the vest.

He watches her move, calm and steady, bagging and marking everything. The others talk to him and he vaguely hears himself answering. He hopes he makes sense.

His fault. He keeps thinking that. She would have been bleeding on the floor, life draining from her, and it would have been his fault. He can't breathe.

He finds himself out on the sidewalk, where everyone is loading up. "Come on. Ride with me," he hears her saying, and then it's just the two of them left, standing by the SUV.

He just looks at her. She's turning to go around to the driver's side, but then she catches him staring and stops. "Hey," she says. "You all right?"

He avoids her eyes. "Yeah."

"Mac." She sets her hand on his arm. "What is it?"

He flinches when she touches him. She's always doing that, always touching him. He's all right, until she does that.

He doesn't mean to flinch. Usually he can hide it. But this time she feels it and her eyes are concerned, but she doesn't move away. "We got him. It's over," she says softly, and now she's rubbing her hand up and down his arm.

Does she think that's it? Of course they got him. They were bound to, sooner or later. I almost got you killed, he thinks. Doesn't she see that? It's all because of him…Andy would have had no connection to her in the world, if it weren't for him.

He wants to grab her, crush her, pour out his relief and his guilt and tell her he's sorry, over and over again. He wants to push her up against the side of the vehicle, hold her, feel her, until he's convinced himself that she's real and she's all right and it's over.

And if she doesn't leave him alone, he's going to do it.

He moves away, shrugging her hand off as gently as he can. He doesn't want to hurt her feelings. She's just trying to help. "Let's go," he says, but she's blocking the way so he can't open the door. And she doesn't move.

"Mac. Look at me." Her voice is still soft, but she speaks firmly. He makes himself meet her eyes. Hers are dark and anxious. He doesn't say anything, and she looks at him for a long time and then to his dismay she sets her hand along his face.

Her palm is cool and gentle and he wants to bury his face in the crook of her neck. He drops his eyes again; he can't help it. She steps closer, rests her forehead against his other cheek. "Thank God you're okay," she murmurs, and he can feel her breath warm against his skin.

His fists clench at his sides. He's almost shaking with the effort not to move, and what he keeps thinking now is—she knows. She knows what he'll do. And she still won't leave him alone.

She knows, because he's done it before. It was the fourth day…or maybe the fifth, and she'd just shown up and come in without being invited. He had let her sit at the other end of the couch, because he didn't know what else to do. Hadn't talked. When she said something, he'd answer in one word.

"Mac," she'd finally said, just above a whisper, and he'd jerked himself angrily off the couch and gone to the window and stood there shaking, his back to her. He could hear her getting up, coming over to him…and then she was touching his shoulder and saying something and he'd spun her around and backed her up against the wall, hard.

He remembers leaning against her, feeling her body all along the length of his own. He could feel her hipbones—he always remembers that, for some reason: her hipbones jutting into him because he was pressing against her so hard. He had leaned his forehead against the wall beside her head, breathing hard, and she'd been warm and soft and there and he'd thought, he could cheat. Right there.

And then it had hit him, all over again, that it wasn't cheating if your wife was dead. Even if she'd only been dead four days.

He'd shoved even harder up against her, pushed her head sideways against the wall, his face in her hair, and he'd known then that he didn't want her; he wanted her to be Claire.

Let her go, you have to let her go, he'd thought, and he couldn't, and he'd known he was shuddering but he couldn't stop.

He's never been very sure what happened after that, because the next thing he remembers is waking up on his couch and seeing her sitting on the floor in front of it, her head resting on his arm. He'd thought she was asleep too, but when he stirred she had lifted her head and smiled at him.

He'd stared at her for a moment, still confused by sleep and by her still being there. "I'm sorry," he'd said, his voice raspy.

She'd shaken her head. "Nothing to be sorry for," she'd murmured.

Of course that wasn't true, but he'd realized that he'd just slept, for the first time, and he remembers feeling, looking up at her, just the faintest glimmer of hope. Hope that maybe, someday, he was going to be all right.

He is all right, now. As long as she doesn't touch him. Because, now, he doesn't want her to be Claire. He wants her. And he's not sure if that's better or worse.

Finally she squeezes his arm and moves away. "Come on," she says again. "Let's go home."

"I have to get back—" he begins, but she cuts him off.

"You are not going back to work."

"I need to…"

"Sheldon will take care of it. And Danny. They know what to do." She's going around, getting in the driver's seat, so he gets in too. He's too tired to argue.

They don't talk during the drive. She finds a space and he turns to thank her for the ride, but she's getting out, so he sighs and gets out too. She even reaches the door of his building first and stands there waiting for him to unlock it, so he does, and follows her up.

There's no way to get rid of her. He eyes her warily as she removes her jacket and kicks off her shoes, because what is this, is she moving in?

"Are you hungry?" she asks.

"No." He is, but that's not her problem.

"Why don't you get a shower? I bet you'll feel better."

He feels fine, but she's probably right. He leaves her there and takes a long time in the shower, and dresses in his workout clothes, and comes out hoping she's gone. She's not.

"Come and sit down," she says. He sits on the couch and she sits beside him, looking at him in concern. "Are you sure you feel all right?"

"I'm fine."

"That must have been a nasty knock to the head."

He doesn't want to talk about that. He doesn't want to talk about anything. He looks down at his hands until she touches his chin, turning his face toward her. "Mac," she says. "Tell me what's wrong."

He thinks how he still isn't breathing right, after coming so close to losing her. He thinks about Andy, the scumbag, stalking her and sending her gifts and how hearing him talk to her on the phone made his skin crawl.

He thinks how beautiful her mouth is and how he could reach out, right now, and pull her to him and kiss her and lean her back until she's lying on the couch, underneath him, and then he could tilt her chin up and kiss her all along her throat, down to her collarbone.

And that's what's wrong.

He drops his gaze again. He can't look in her eyes and not tell the truth. "Nothing. I'm okay."

The corners of her mouth tighten, but she nods. "Okay. Well—why don't you lie down? See if you can sleep for a little while?"

He thinks that over for a long moment. He doesn't think he'll sleep, but it will give him an excuse to get away from her. Maybe she'll even leave. "Okay," he says, and starts to get up.

"No, stay here." She gets up instead and motions toward the couch. "I have to watch you. You could have a concussion."

"I don't have a concussion, Stella."

To his surprise, a broad grin spreads across her face. "What?" he asks in confusion.

"You're right," she says, biting back laughter. "You're too hard-headed."

He cracks a little smile at that, but he doesn't think that's very funny, and besides, who is she to call him hard-headed? He stretches out along the couch, on his side, with his back to her. He hears her sit in the armchair, but after a minute she gets back up and he feels her fingers trail along his sleeve before she gently takes his cell phone from his hip and sits back down.

He's too tired to even care. He finds himself thinking, as he drifts off, that she'll take care of things anyway.