Sixteen Minutes
(Disclaimer: I do not own L&O or any of it's characters, even if they are not out rightly implicated in this fictions piece.)
His fingers itched and ached with desire as he looked at the time.
11:24.
She'd be asleep by now, wouldn't she?
She wouldn't. She didn't sleep very often.
Everything about her was becoming unbearable. Totally and completely unbearable. She was intoxicating. She was exhausting him without even being present.
11:25.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. After all, he knew what kind of woman she was. Oh yes, he knew all about her type. She walked into a room and commanded it's attention with merely her presence, she saw what she wanted and with one long, hard stare, the current object of her desire was made just as blatantly aware, and just as full of the desire to reciprocate her desire.
And she definitely had not given him that look. Ever. Not when they had first met, and not now. No. Never.
11:27.
He held his cell phone in his hand as the buttons beneath his fingers lit up, yet again, as he pressed them. The screen blared the time in a bold, white font. She wouldn't be asleep yet. She wouldn't be asleep until early the next morning.
11:28.
His tongue slid over his lips as he tried to slow his heart, unsuccessfully.
Keep breathing, he thought. In and out, in and out. Don't call her. Don't bother her. She isn't thinking about you.
11:29
The phone vibrates, startling him, and he almost drops it. The screen screams again, but this time with news of a message, oh God, a message from her.
You awake?
His eyes closed tightly as he fought the urge to respond, the need to talk to her, to call her, to hear her voice, to see her, touch her, just be with her…
Yes. Are you ok?
11:30.
So much can happen in six minutes. Too much can happen in six minutes.
She doesn't respond as quickly as he does, he realizes, and he kicks himself for allowing his eagerness to shine through the time stamp on a text message.
A time stamp, of all things.
11:31.
I'm fine. Just checking on you.
Just checking on you. Just checking on you? Just thinking about you as I lay in bed, waiting for sleep to overtake me even though I know it won't? Is that what she means, or is it more of a, 'You've been acting strangely, and I don't want it to change anything'. No changes. No chance. No chance, so stop acting strangely.
11:32.
I'm fine, thanks. See you tomorrow.
Her reply was quicker this time.
I can't sleep.
A frustrated sigh escaped him and rested the phone on his knee so that he could use both hands to rub the worry from his face. No such luck. No luck, instead there was panic, panic and fear that this could lead up to something awful, and more fear that it could lead up to absolutely nothing at all.
11:33.
Did you need to talk?
He snapped the phone shut and put it down on the table in front of him, eyeing it warily as though it was her, as though it was tempting him, teasing him, and dear GOD why would she text him at 11:29 at night if she hadn't been doing the exact same thing he was doing?
11:34.
…I'm not sure. I'll just see you tomorrow. Night.
And it was over. As quickly as she had started it she ended it. Five minutes. A lot happened in five minutes. He thought she was doing this on purpose. She was screwing with him deliberately, trying to reach him at all hours, filling his mind with thoughts of her and her eyes and how drop-dead gorgeous she was as she walked toward him and how she was a vision from behind. Right. That's what this was. A ploy. She wanted him to think about her, to imagine the scent of her hair and how beautiful she must look as her skin glowed in the darkness of her bedroom at night.
He didn't stop to think about the before, how he had thought and imagined and dreamed all of those things hours, days, years before she had picked up her phone at 11:29 and decided to infiltrate his thoughts with new concerns, concerns that maybe, just possibly, she was as addicted to him as he was to her.
11:37.
"Baby?" A soft voice and a tender touch on his shoulder pulled him back into reality. "Are you coming to bed?"
He nodded solemnly, holding down the power button on the phone before tossing it onto the coffee table and looking up at his wife with a tired smile.
"Yeah, I'll be there in a second."
11:39.
The sheet, thin as it was, felt suffocating as he burrowed under it, feeling hot and suppressed as he lay on his back and stared at the ceiling. Tomorrow this would be over, he would see her and he would know there were to be no changes, no chances, no second glances of longing and when he came home he wouldn't imagine climbing into her bed instead of his bed with his wife and the suffocating sheet and the noisy old fan that filled the room with a slightly cooler but still hot air as it oscillated because he'd finally see how ridiculous the whole thing was.
11:40.
She wondered if he was asleep yet.
A/N: Because I do this, therefore other people must do it too, right? Haha, I hope you enjoyed my little one-shot. I pictured it as Elliot and Olivia, but because no names are used one can pretty much define his or her own couple. As long as the man is married, apparently.