222. Chapter 222

She’s swaying her hips absently and interspersing her own stream of curses with an impressively flawless mouthing of Bare Naked Ladies’s One Week.

She forms every word perfectly, stumbling over exactly none of the wild, rapid streams, as the song blasts through the apartment so loudly that she doesn’t notice Maggie leaning against the doorway, head tilted to the side, disbelieving smile on her lips, arms crossed over her chest, staring at the take-no-prisoners DEO agent dancing around her kitchen, singing about she has a tendency to wear her mind on her sleeve and a history of losing her shirt, which is currently dusted with a strange combination of sugar and brandy.

“Oh come on, I can synthesize antidotes to alien poisons, but I can’t make fucking custard?” she’s muttering during a musical interlude, shaking her head with a frustrated grin and taking a swig of the brandy she’s trying to work into the tiramisu she’s attempting to make.

“Alright there, Danvers?” Maggie asks, and Alex jumps slightly, spinning with her eyes wide, with her eyes innocent, with her eyes guilty.

“I’m making you tiramisu,” she splutters anticlimactically, holding up a whisk dripping with egg yolks and frowning down at the bowl of ice she has on standby.

“Looks like you’re several attempts in there, babe,” Maggie grins teasingly as she turns down the music, just slightly.

Alex wilts slightly, a sheepish grin on her face, before unleashing another string of curses as the saucepan starts hissing with too much heat.

“I wanted to make you what you love,” Alex explains with a reddened face as she surveys the sugary kitchen with eggshells scattered across the counter from her previous, failed attempts.

“Oh, babe,” Maggie steps forward, shrugging out of her jacket. “You don’t have to worry, your mama already did that.”

Alex’s heart leaps and she forgets that she’s spent the past several hours failing, failing, failing, at something that shouldn’t be hard, because the way Maggie is looking at her, the way that Maggie is grabbing a dish towel and wiping Alex’s hands without taking her eyes off Alex’s face, the way Maggie is threading their fingers together, the way she’s leaning up on her tip toes to kiss her lips…

This could never be failure.

This could only be perfection.