607. Chapter 607
It’s not about a DJ. It’s not about a band.
Hell, it’s not even about the wedding.
Not really.
It’s about you didn’t tell me why you didn’t want to do the tasting did you not trust me enough do I not show you how much I love you enough do I not take care of you well enough and it’s about I feel weak and selfish because your entire family has disowned you and I’m whining that my father can’t come and it’s about how did we get engaged without talking about any of this and it’s about are we ready and it’s about if I ask you to compromise about this maybe you won’t want to marry me anymore and it’s about I love you too much to mess this up but of course I’ll mess this up because that’s what I do to everything I touch.
But they’re both terrified.
So neither of them say the things they need to say.
They say, instead, the things that hurt.
They say, instead, the things that make them shout in the middle of the damn DEO, because fighting is easier than I’m scared but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to marry you and I was happy for like five minutes and the universe is just smacking me down from being happy, because it’s whatever is easier than I miss my family every minute of every day and my father used to be my best friend but I don’t want to tell you because you have enough problems with your own parents.
Winn flinches away from the shouting, and Vasquez shoots a text to Lucy so she can shoot a text to Alex to tell her to kiss and make up with her girl, already.
J’onn tries science and he tries levity, but the grief coming from both women is not about music or dancing, and he knows it.
Everyone in the room knows it.
Except, maybe, the two women shouting in the center of it.
It takes Alex all morning to seethe. To think. To realize.
It takes Maggie shorter than that, because her tendency to beat herself up is, sometimes, even stronger than Alex’s.
But Maggie doesn’t reach out.
Because Maggie figures it’s better to explode than fizzle, anyway.
Like everything else in her life.
Like everyone else she’s ever loved.
“She loves you,” Kara tells Alex as Alex works in her lab and Kara leans in the doorway with her arms folded across her chest. “She loves you so much, Alex. Don’t throw that away.”
“I’m not throwing it away,” Alex tosses her hands up and almost crashes her hand into the monitor displaying all the brain wave data they’ve collected.
“Alex,” Kara half-sighs, half-scoffs, and it’s Alex’s turn to cross her arms.
“You have more important things to worry about right now,” Alex tries to dismiss, but even at her worst, Kara knows Alex better than that.
“Is this really about a DJ versus live music? Because I can sing for you both even if there’s a DJ, Alex, I’m sure it’ll be – “
“No, it’s about her not listening to me, to what I want!”
Kara furrows her brow and Alex tosses up her hands again.
“She always listens to me and to what I want,” she admits dully, tonelessly, and Kara nods.
“Right. So what is it really about?”
Images of Maggie crying about her father; of Alex breaking over her own; of Maggie coming completely unraveled, naked underneath her; of Maggie’s arms, Maggie’s lips on her face, when her lungs were learning how to breathe again, when her body was still soaked with the water that had been about to kill her.
Life is too short.
Alex sighs and nods and doesn’t speak, but Kara smiles, because she doesn’t have to.
And, sure enough, at first opportunity, Alex steals away to the precinct.
“Sawyer,” she leans on her desk, trying to look cool, to sound casual.
Maggie barely looks up from the case files she’s trying to find patterns in.
“Don’t you have a citywide crisis on your hands, Danvers?” she asks with no emotion in her voice.
No emotion, that is, other than raw pain, of the distant variety. Of the bracing-for-disaster variety.
“Maggie,” Alex tries again, her voice less affected this time, her voice softer this time.
Because one of them has to be vulnerable first, and it might as well be her.
Maggie looks up, and her eyes are guarded. But they’re also hopeful.
“Can we talk?” Alex asks, and Maggie sighs.
“Interrogation room,” she leads the way, and Alex bites back a sex joke. Not the time.
“So the first thing is that I love you, and I want to be your wife,” Alex starts the moment Maggie closes the door behind them, and Maggie folds her arms across her chest protectively.
“If the shoe fits?” she repeats Alex’s earlier words, and Alex flinches.
“I’m sorry,” she tells her, and she takes a step forward.
Maggie takes a step back.
“Maggie, please.”
“What, Alex? Please have a band? Sure, it’s whatever, Alex – “
“Stop saying that – “
“But that’s not what this is about, is it? It’s about you didn’t think before you asked me to marry you, Alex. You… you’re just like your sister, Danvers, and… hey, no, wait, hear me out – and I love that about you. I love that you are so damn smart but listen to your heart first. I love it, Alex. I love everything about you, I just… I’m…” She unfolds her arms and she lets Alex step forward, and she leans into her embrace.
“What if we’re doing this too fast? My family, they said… they said I could never be happy like… like this.”
“Like… lesbian?”
Maggie laughs weakly and Alex kisses her nose tentatively. Maggie smiles, so Alex does it again.
“Yes, nerd, like lesbian. And since we got engaged – “ They both pause, and they smile more, because neither of them have been able to reference their engagement without smiling from ear to ear, and neither of them particularly want to – “we just… we’re fighting all the time, because we didn’t… we didn’t think. We’d just barely survived a war, Alex, and we – “
“Maggie, exactly. We survived a war. Together. I think we can get through wedding planning, don’t you?”
Maggie chuckles and sighs at the same time, leaning up to kiss Alex’s cheeks, her chin, her lips.
They linger in their kiss, soft and not moving, lips just gently pressed together until they both smile into each other’s mouth.
“We’re gonna need to figure out a better way to have arguments. And a better place. I’m sorry, Alex. That’s your job, your whole life, I never should have – “
“I never should have, either, Maggie.”
A silence. A kiss to Maggie’s forehead. A kiss to Alex’s neck.
A hug, long and close and full-bodied.
Another kiss, parted lips, wet eyes.
“Can we just stop for a minute and… and do this whole thing the right way? We’re engaged, Danvers. And I never want to be engaged again. Only once. To you. And I want it to be good. I want it to be great. I want us to be great. So can we just…”
“Yes,” Alex agrees, because god, god, god, this woman.
“I love you, okay?”
Alex grins broadly, and Maggie rolls her eyes affectionately before the words even come out of Alex’s mouth, because it’s all she’s been saying, lately.
“You too,” she beams. “Forever.”