A Look He'll Never See

Rating: PG-13

Episodes: 8x05, Committed

Pairing: Tess/Ollie

Summary: Tess' silent musings as she watches Oliver sleep.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

The late night moon shined through the sheer curtains that hid the beautiful French doors from sight. The rays bounced around the room and created an ethereal glow about everything inside as the curtains rustled in the wind.

As she lay there quietly and watched his chest fall and rise with each soft almost silent breath that he took she could not help but think that he was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen and that thought almost ripped a hole in her heart.

Almost.

Tess let out a small sigh and pulled the sheet up over her body to ward off the chill that came with the late night in the mansion. It assaulted her skin and caused goose bumps to erupt all over her body.

Had this been only a few years ago she would not have hesitated to curl into his side and warm herself in his body heat and caring embrace. She would have put her head down on his chest and listened intently to the thumping beat of his heart.

And she would be slowly comforted back to sleep when he attuned himself to her silent communications, somehow even in his sleep knowing what she needed, and he pulled her tighter into him and held on as if he would never ever let her go.

She wonders what life would be like now if that feeling she had had in his arms had been real.

What would have happened to them had Oliver never let her go? Would they be married now? Traveling in marital bliss to exotic locations to enjoy being alone and secluded and oh so together, is that what they would have made of their life?

Would it be even more domestic than that? Would they have had a kid? Settled down in one location to play out the cliché dream of the father going to work at the multi-billion dollar corporation while the mother stayed home to take care of the little ones, maybe they would have fallen easily into that instead?

Her heart tightened in her chest.

Tess closed her eyes and mentally berated herself for the ridiculous questions that floated through her mind because she would never get the answers to them and she would never need them either.

He did let her go. They weren't on permanent vacation and they weren't parents to some brat.

They were enemies now. They were business rivals.

Yet, they were in bed together and she was looking at him with that soft smile tugging at her lips as she lightly ghosted a finger over the curve of his jaw before running it into his soft, messy hair loving the feel of everything as her finger traveled along its path careful not to disturb him.

The last thing Tess wanted was for Oliver to wake up and see her. See and feel what she was doing and be given a chance to determine what it could mean for a future or her feelings or if there was a chance that the girl he had cared for was still somewhere in her.

Maybe she was. Maybe she was not. Tess could not really say one way or the other.

But she would convince him in the morning that this was just a onetime thing between them.

A stroll down memory lane.

An itch that had to be scratched.

Simply lust.

Simply physical attraction.

Tess told herself that it would be easy to convince him of that in the morning. He would never get the chance to doubt or question anything that had happened that night between them was anything other than sex. As she sat in the moonlight looking at his familiar and devastatingly handsome face she was also knew that she had missed this... had missed him despite telling herself otherwise over the years.

She missed that she had been happy with him and those nagging thoughts were what had kept her from sleep.

Something in her had wanted needed this moment to see him beside her, to pretend that they were the same two people they had been so long ago. It was a moment where Tess could let her confusion and indecision and messiness of her life and who she was and who she used to be and who she was turning into out in the open for no one to see but herself. And because she was the only person to witness this moment of weakness and vulnerability she would be able to pretend that it had never happened.

No one would know especially him. He could never know.

Oliver would never know in the morning that she had watched him carefully in the night and wondered about all of the things that could have happened. All of the moments they could have shared. All of the moments that would never be.

It was right there. Between them still. Maybe it would always be that way. Taunting them, mocking them. The unknown hanging between them, around them whenever they were in the same room and she would always do her best to ignore it but hating that it still hung around her heart and her mind and her soul and she would always wonder if that was how it was for him too.

Tess would never get those questions answered and a big part of her did not want them answered. It did not matter because for that brief moment in the middle of the night the past and the future dissolved into the present. And in the present, at that very moment in time, they were together. Tess and Ollie. And no one and nothing could touch that. She wouldn't let anything ruin that moment of being with him at least not until the sun came up.

End.

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