160. Chapter 160

It hasn’t happened in a long time.

It hasn’t happened because she’s avoided situations where it can happen.

She hasn’t gone to social spaces that aren’t the bar – where it’s never super crowded, where it’s always people she’s comfortable with, where people are more than happy to leave her alone to do her own thing – and she hasn’t let her parents talk her into coming back for the huge family gatherings.

She’s been proud of herself for avoiding her triggers.

But she can’t avoid them forever, and certainly not now, because her captain tells her, with the order very clearly underlying his words, that her presence would be sorely missed if she neglected to go to yet another one of the precinct family outings.

Alex beams when she asks her to go with her, and Maggie can’t bring herself to tell her how terrified she is about the whole thing.

Hard-headed. Insensitive. Obsessed with work. Borderline sociopathic.

Yes, quite the opposite, yes, and no, just dealing with extreme social anxiety.

And she knows Alex, she trusts Alex, but Alex likes her because she’s tough, because she’s calm, and she doesn’t know how to tell her that on the inside, she feels none of these things. That on the inside, especially when there are so many people around, so many people who want to small talk her and touch her without asking and ask questions about her family that they would never ask a straight person and tell her so many racist things that they would never say to someone darker than her, she feels quite the opposite of tough and quite the opposite of calm.

So she just smiles and she thanks her and it’s settled, then.

But the morning of the precinct’s annual family picnic, she can’t get out of bed.

Alex is surprised that she refuses to go on their morning run, but she figures it’s the frantic, late-night sex and the early morning chill that’s keeping Maggie in bed.

It’s not until she gets back from her run and Maggie is still in the same position, still in bed, but with her eyes wide open, that Alex realizes something is wrong.

“Babe?” she asks, and she kneels by the bedside inside of sitting, because she’s sweaty and doesn’t want to mess up the blankets.

“Hey, how was your run?” Maggie smiles, but her voice is too high, her smile is too pinched, and Alex strips off her running jacket and watches her girlfriend carefully.

“Mags, what is it?”

Maggie bites her lip and finds that she can’t answer.

Alex runs through last night, through Maggie’s last week’s worth of cases, and she can’t find anything particularly disturbing, can’t find anything out of the ordinary.

The only new thing on the radar is the picnic today.

“Babe, are you nervous about today?”

Maggie sits up like a shot and she swings her feet off the bed mechanically. “Why would I be? Come on, it’s just a stupid picnic.”

“Maggie.”

She chances a look at Alex, and she doesn’t find judgment and she doesn’t find irritation. She finds love and she finds concern and she finds respect.

“Just… don’t leave my side while we’re there, okay?” She doesn’t explain further because she can’t. And, she hopes, she doesn’t have to.

Alex stares at her for a moment, a moment that lasts a lifetime to Maggie, but Alex’s eyes stay soft, stay kind, stay open, stay loving.

“I won’t leave your side for a single moment,” she promises, and Maggie’s chest opens up slightly, she can breathe a little more than a moment ago, because Alex isn’t asking her to explain, she’s just helping her to her feet, helping her to the shower, helping her into her clothes, helping her eat at least a little something, helping her out the door.

Alex helps. Alex helps a lot.

Maggie keeps her hand in a vice-like grip the entire time she introduces her around, the entire time Alex makes old white men laugh and young hot women blush.

Alex routinely runs her thumb over Maggie’s hand, and Alex routinely leans down to kiss her temple, picks her hand up to kiss her knuckles. Alex somehow figures out how to get them food without letting go of her hand a single time.

Alex helps. Alex helps a lot.

But Maggie’s panic spills over anyway.

Her chest constricts and her breathing quickens. Her eyes sting and her abs tighten. Her knees shake and her lip nearly bleeds with how hard she bites it.

“Alex,” she whispers, just once, because it’s all she can choke out, and Alex leads her away immediately, brings her to the single-stall family bathroom, ignores scandalized glances from people milling nearby, and locks the door behind them.

“Do you need space or do you need to be held?” is all Alex asks, calmly, soothingly, lovingly, no trace of irritation in her voice, and Maggie reels, because she’s looking at Alex, and she’s looking for signs of irritation, and she can’t find any, and she doesn’t understand why not, but she lets her body collapse forward into Alex’s, and Alex’s strong arms envelop her, and she lets herself go.

She shakes and she sobs and she forgets how to breathe and she rocks and she grabs at Alex’s jacket desperately, desperately, needily.

“I’ve got you, Maggie. I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” is all Alex says as she holds her, as she rocks her, as she kisses her hair, as she kisses her forehead, as she rubs small circles into her back.

Right when Maggie can’t see, right when Maggie is scared she’ll pass out from lack of oxygen, Alex pulls back, and Alex puts a hand on her chest.

“Breathe into my hand, Mags. You can do it, babe, just breathe into my hand.”

And Maggie does, does, does, focuses on pushing her chest out slow, slow, careful, calm, into Alex’s hands, and oxygen floods into her body again, and she steadies again, and she calms, calms, calms.

“Good girl, Maggie, you’re so brave.” Alex presses her forehead to Maggie’s and breathes with her, slow and steady.

“You’re so brave, my love.”

“Your love?” Maggie asks raggedly.

“Oh, I’m sorry, are you not mine?”

Maggie smiles shakily and looks up disbelievingly into Alex’s eyes. “Of course I’m yours, but I… love?”

“Of course I love you, Mags. Of course I love you. Is that not okay?”

“Yeah, of… of course it’s okay, just… I just had a complete breakdown over a fucking picnic, Al, I…”

“Yeah. Yeah, you did. And I love you. Problem?”

Alex is stroking her cheeks with her thumbs and Maggie has never felt so loved, so cared for, so wanted.

And suddenly, she laughs. “We’re in a bathroom.”

Alex grins. “We are.”

“A single-stall bathroom.”

“Mmmhmm.”

“And I’m sure I look like a mess.”

“You look beautiful.”

“Okay. But, a mess. All the cop wives are going to be scandalized.”

Alex’s grin deepens. “Nah, they’ll just be jealous that I get to get alone time in single-stall bathrooms with the most perfect girlfriend ever to…. girlfriend.”

“The most perfect girlfriend ever to girlfriend, Danvers?”

“Listen, you didn’t start dating me for my way with words.”

“No, you’re right. I started dating you because I was falling in love with you.”

“Was?”

“Yeah. Now I know I’m in love with you.”

“Excellent. Because I’m in love with you, too, Mags.”