DISCLAIMER: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and all characters are
property of NBC and Dick Wolf.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
Crazy
By Katherine Quinn
You know how it is when you first find yourself falling in love with someone. It always starts slow at first. Perhaps you catch yourself looking for a second longer than you should. Perhaps it's a sudden flash that her quirks are making you blush that deep crimson-the blood pooling near your skin at first an unfamiliar feeling, but soon, you know why the way she says your name makes you blush.
For me, it's innocent at first. I smell her scent, it lingers in my nostrils, and I remember how she sat on my desk while she laughed at my jokes and complimented me on the bust we just pulled. I get nervous when I hear her heels clacking down the hall, smiling, asking her how she wears those things. I only can manage three hours tops. She says something about being used to them, and her eyes are deep blue and they're smiling at me. I'm melting.
Then it's more lascivious. I'm a teenager again. Horny as hell and everything about her body drives me crazy. The way she taps her pen on her teeth when she thinks; those god damn glasses. I can't take the way the short skirts slowly rise up her leg as she sits at her desk. I can sense her body heat near me, it radiates out and I can feel my skin pulsing to touch her. To take those pouting pink lips and suck on them, feeling her body writhe under me until she screams my name.
I catch myself leaning over her chair staring at the way her chest rises when she breathes instead of the file that lays splayed in front of us. She talks, oblivious to the fact that my attention is a million miles away and that all I can see is the curve of her breast and the slight hint of lace that is holding the creamy skin in place. I've seen her with men, dressed up, the way I would want her to dress up for me. For some ungodly reason, she's here now. This little mom and pop place across from the court house; I sit here late at night, thinking about her and what she thinks of me. She's in my booth, with some pompous looking lawyer type. Jealousy burns within me, as I swallow my pain, and approach her to say hi.
She must think that I don't notice. Thinks that practiced detective stare actually works on me anymore. She must not have heard that her eyes pour right into her soul. She must tell herself I can't see through the open window.
Does she really think it's an accident that the top buttons of my blouse mysteriously fall open when she's around? That I scold myself daily for primping in the mirror right down the hall from the squad room just in case she's there. Playing with my hair, checking my teeth for remnants of lunch, pinching my cheeks to bring them color. Of course, she doesn't know I hold my breath when I see her and I know she's watching me, and I can feel those eyes on my body, lusting for me. I feel myself respond to the lust in her eyes. They leave me speechless. I forget my words, I'm awkward. Maybe not to most people, but I know myself.
Hell, I've been with men. I've been with women too. Those prestigious pretty ivy league colleges are more than bastions of political liberalism. College is for experimenting with who you will be when you `grow up'. Just ask all the men who begged to watch. But you can't stay a kid forever, and the red dye washed out of my hair years ago, and I had to grow up. You make choices.
I chose to be the ice princess. It was safe, politically prudent, and so entirely predictable that I nearly made myself ill as I slowly became more and more aware of why I was choosing what I was choosing. But I don't regret it. I have a solitary existence with the injustices of the world left to me to right. I never thought I would feel the intense longing to be with someone who was so improbable. Someone who could be so irritating and frustrating and wonderful. But there's society to remember, and I'm a poor political pawn, waiting for my opportunities to do what I tell myself I want; get justice. All that and dating a detective, even a male detective would be a scandal. The ice princess and her female police officer lover? I can see the headlines.
So I wind up here in a hole in the wall with a perfectly politically appropriate candidate for my affections. I have tried to get out of this for weeks. Not returning phone calls, avoiding him in court, screening my calls. The man bores me. He bores me to death, and I'm staring at him and thinking about her eyes and how even being with her in silence is better than anything this tedious man can offer. I vaguely remember the sounds of the bells that reminded the wait staff that people were entering and leaving the busy restaurant. I feel her eyes. I know she's there. I hang my head, I don't want her to see him, to see me, a political prisoner held in place by society's expectations of what I should be. What she should be. What we can't be.
She saw me, damn. And she's walking this way. I adjust my body, sit up straight, push the hair out of my eyes, and get ready to act like I didn't want her to replace this man, and take me home with her, and hold me close and never let me leave her arms.
I approach her. I have to know why she's here and what she thinks and whether she wants him or me. I have to see into those blazing blue eyes. She smiles at me, a real smile for the first time since I've spotted her and I knew she saw me. It wasn't one of the smiles she was lazily giving that guy either. Her eyes lit up. I could feel it.
She does that to me, makes me smile for real. I feel like I'm exposing myself to her, and she doesn't back down. She doesn't turn around or look away. She takes me for what I am. I have to tell her; I have to explain.
I stick my hand out to introduce myself to her date, but she's speaking before I can say my name, and suddenly, her hand's in mine and we're walking away and there's a poor befuddled man sitting behind us wondering how my approach led to him being alone. I can't take it anymore. And her hand, it's in my hand, and she's pulling my arm, and she's pulling me, and not talking, and people are looking at us and I don't care, because she's touching me.
I wasn't thinking. I am not thinking. My mouth is rushing out words, telling her I want her, that I think I might love her, that I think she feels the same because of her eyes and that those eyes are in my thoughts and in my dreams and I want to hold her and have her hold me.
What I want more than anything else is to stop that look of shame in her eyes as her inner most feelings come flooding out of her mouth and they're about me. She thinks she loves me, it can't be real. Is it possible for the impossible to happen? And she's still talking, and it's so unnecessary because I loved her from the moment I saw her and she is trying to explain things that I already know because they live in my heart too. I can slap her or kiss her. I vote for kiss her.
And I'm telling her about how I dream about her at night and she doesn't look afraid. I didn't even see her, see her getting closer, making her understand that she was driving me crazy and that I wasn't sure I would be able to keep breathing if she wasn't with me. I would have talked forever until I thought she could understand that the ice princess loved her and didn't want to stay frozen from her feelings anymore. I felt the fire as her lips hit my lips and the world was spinning and places in my body I had forgotten I had flushed with heat and the kiss wasn't ending. Her hands were in my hair, her tongue was in my mouth, and this suddenly had all the potential of a bad porn because I needed her and I didn't care who saw it or what they thought about it.
And she's kissing me back, and I can't believe it, and I love her.
And she's kissing me back, and I can't believe it, and I love her.
The End