DISCLAIMER: Law & Order: CI and its characters are the property of Dick Wolf and NBC. No infringement intended.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
Her Moment
By ralst
Megan Wheeler stretched out her long legs and relaxed back into the uncomfortable metal chair, relieved to be back where she belonged. Her partner's welcoming smirk was tinged with amusement as he watched her scan the surrounding area, and casually brush a hand through her, too-short for his tastes, hairdo. Secretly pleased that she'd kept her word and returned to the precinct.
"What are you doing, Wheeler?" Logan finally asked, half an hour later, having watched her smile ineffectually at every woman who past their desks since the moment she'd arrived. "Is this something you picked up in Europe?"
"No." She sat up a little straighter and beamed at an approaching Alex Eames, only to have the other woman pass on by after a quick nod of acknowledgement. "I'm waiting to be hit on by all these women."
"So am I, kiddo," Logan's chuckle dissolved into nothingness as he realised Megan hadn't been joking. "Wheeler, what are you talking about?"
Checking to make sure there was no one of interest nearby, Megan leant forward in her chair, beckoning her partner to draw near. "I did some reading on the plane," she explained, "and according to everything that's been written, I'm meant to be having torrid affairs with everyone from the Police Commissioner's wife, to the temp who comes in to do the typing."
He looked at her like she'd been peeking into his dreams.
"I'm a New York City detective," she insisted. "With short hair and a tendency to wear boyish clothes." She waited for him to put the clues together but he was being uncharacteristically slow. "Benson, over in SVU, cut her hair and she's been hip deep in ADAs ever since."
"She has?" Logan made a mental note to visit Cragan and catch up on old times. "I still don't see -"
"Rodgers never looks at me, Alex barely remembers my name, and our lovely ADA is too busy with her husband to realise I'm alive." She pouted. "My only chance is a crossover, and that seems as likely as you winning a 'Mr. Sunny Disposition' competition."
His smile was back; he wouldn't admit it, to anyone, but Wheeler had kind of grown on him. "And that explains why you're sitting there ogling ever woman in sight?"
"I wasn't ogling. I was just waiting for my moment."
"Your moment?"
She nodded. "Precisely. Every story starts off with a moment." Turning around in her seat, she pointed towards Alex, who was standing at the back of the room talking with Goran. "Alex and I will be chasing down a suspect and then suddenly, amidst all the action, we'll have a moment when we connect and start to see each other in a different light. Or I'll be in the courthouse and bump into one of the roving ADAs and before you know it we'll be staring at each other from under lowered lashes and expelling breaths we didn't realise we were holding. It's 'the moment'."
Logan's eyes shifted from Megan, to Alex, to the door into the squad room, before once again resting on his desperate partner. "I think I know just what you need," he declared, as he started punching numbers into his phone. "Hello, Serena, this is Mike Logan, do you have a moment?"
The End