Disclaimer: I make no claim to these characters.
AN: I've had this scenario in my head since watching the movie and this morning decided this was the best way to go about writing it. Calling this an experiment would imply I might do this again, which I won't. For this though, it seemed like the right way to go.
Forty-Seven Minutes Ago
Forty-seven minutes ago the jewelry shop on the Calle de Aguina was broken into. The lock on the back door was picked. We would like to say the alarm code was overridden somehow but the thief had procured it only earlier today when she entered the shop as a legitimate customer.
Forty-four minutes ago the thief used the spare set of keys kept in the vault to open the display case on the far left side of the show floor. She ran gloved fingers over diamond bracelets. They glittered in the dim light when she tried a few on her wrist.
Thirty-eight minutes ago a dark figure left the roof of the bakery across the Calle to enter the jewelry shop through the skylight. The figure dropped to the floor with a grace marred by a slight quavering in his left knee.
Thirty-seven minutes ago thief and figure locked gazes over the display cases.
Thirty-six minutes ago the lock on the front door rattled as the shop owner returned, having forgotten his home keys on his desk.
Thirty-five minutes and forty seconds ago the display cases were locked up, their spare keys back in the vault, the alarm system was set once more, and the back door and skylight were firmly locked.
Thirty-five minutes ago the shop owner disabled the only recently set alarm, oblivious to the woman running over his shop's roof or the man in the back alley.
Twenty-nine minutes ago two people sat down on a park bench not three blocks away from the site of the crime.
Twenty-eight minutes ago they both spoke at once.
Twenty-seven minutes ago they forced through their awkwardness and the woman spoke. "We're very bad at this, aren't we?" The man laughed with only a little humor.
Twenty-five minutes ago the man took the woman's hand.
Twenty-four minutes ago they watched a similar couple walk by, too caught up in each other's embrace to notice their audience or care about the late hour.
Twenty-three minutes ago our couple wondered at the others. How, they asked one another, did normal people manage to be normal? Shouldn't it be easier? Maybe, just maybe, they said with some shame, they were the ones making it hard.
Twenty minutes ago the man attempted to stand. His knee would not allow it. The woman helped him rise and wrapped her arm around him so that when they walked he did not limp.
Eleven minutes ago man and woman, still wrapped around each other, arrived at their home.
Ten minutes ago the last of the seven locks on the front door was turned. The two separated, each making their way from room to room to check windows and doors and watch for intruders.
Two minutes ago they met in the bedroom. Gazes locked over the bed as they had over the sparkling display cases.
One minute ago they silently agreed that they knew one thing they could do at least as well as all the normal people in this city.
Tomorrow they will get up. They will shower and dress and eat breakfast and go out into the street as if they belong among all those normal people. They will go to jobs they do not love and talk to friends who do not know them. They will do all of this, whether they admit it or not, so that at the end of the day they may each come home to the person who does know them, the person they do love.
In three months they will each, in entirely separate conversations with those friends who know them perhaps a little better than they think, realize that this is exactly what normal people actually do.