Chapter Text
Maya Bishop anxiously waited outside the arrivals gate and baggage claim of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, eagerly pacing the sidewalk in restless anticipation as she craned her neck around much fewer than usual travelers as they came and went from different destinations around the world.
Maya was concerned with finding only one traveler that day, however, an admittedly gorgeous brunette she soon would have the pleasure of calling her wife.
Has a she landed? Have you seen her?
Her hotel room is all set up whenever you’re ready.
Reaching behind her body when she felt her iPhone vibrate in the back pocket of her dark washed, skinny jeans, Maya quickly read the messages and softly sighed as her thumbs flew across the touchscreen.
Plane just landed. I'm still waiting.
Thank you. Shouldn’t be long.
With an N95 mask properly secured to her face, Maya’s eyes gently fell shut, her thumbs hovering over her phone’s keyboard screen. She desperately wanted to throw caution to the wind - to tell Vic and Andy to march right down to the concierge of the Archfield Hotel to cancel Carina’s reservation for a two week quarantine stay.
Maya hadn’t touched Carina in just over a month - thirty days, five hours, twenty-seven minutes, and fifteen seconds. During their time apart, she had seen her via FaceTime and heard her voice over the phone, but that did little to quell the growing need Maya felt to be in the taller woman’s presence - to sit with her, to hold her, to bask in her love and light, to just be.
Maya desperately wanted Carina to just come home with her once she was back in Seattle after her month-long stay in a pandemic hell. The blonde had insisted time and time again that they could - and should - weather Carina’s mandatory two week quarantine together in their apartment, but in the end, Carina’s more logical and heartfelt reasoning had prevailed. She currently was not displaying any signs or symptoms of COVID-19, but she wanted to be safe. She wanted them to just get through the next two weeks - healthy and alive - so that they could then start their life together as wife and wife.
Maya had argued - she had fussed and she had begged - but the sincerity of Carina’s concern had finally prevailed. The Italian woman would never be able to forgive herself if she was the reason Maya contracted this deadly and life threatening disease.
Considering herself lucky that Carina had finally succumbed to her request to at least allow her to pick her up from the airport, Maya huffed one final resignation. Shoving her phone back into the pocket of her pants, bright blue eyes once again searched the jet-setters exiting the airport’s doors. And, as she once again began to pace, her body suddenly went still, a large grin reaching her eyes from beneath her mask when she finally spotted precisely whom she had been waiting for.
“Carina,” she softly whispered when the magical brown eyes of her fiancée finally found her own from across the way.
With her breath catching in her throat and her heart hammering the beat of a tympani within her chest at the sight of this woman who made her life complete, Maya found herself profoundly amazed by the fact that in less than just one month, this woman would be hers.
Her wife.
Her soulmate.
Her everything.
Her forever.
Fighting everything within herself not to run to the other woman and pull her into the safety of her loving embrace, Maya could do nothing but stare.
Though Carina looked thoroughly exhausted to be sure, she was still as gorgeous and elegant as ever - long, brunette locks hanging perfectly past slim shoulders that were covered by a designer trench coat with jacquard print.
Unable to help herself, Maya momentarily found herself wholeheartedly mesmerized by the vision of her soon to be wife, but finally recovering, she briskly began to close the distance between them in several quick strides, stopping suddenly when the taller woman held up her hand, halting her at just beyond a distance of six feet.
“Bambina, please,” Carina softly spoke, her accent much more emphatic after just one month in her native land. And, with emotional tears escaping the corners of russet eyes and landing against the rim of the mask that covered her smile, Carina gently cleared her throat. “Just a few more days, bella. We can make it…just a few more days.”
Narrowing her eyes as they too began to tear, Maya tipped her head to the side as she studied the other woman’s face.
This was pure, unadulterated torture - finally having Carina so close, yet still so very, very far away.
“Fourteen more days feels like a lifetime,” Maya earnestly admitted, tugging at one strap of her mask to free the offending covering from her face.
With a rueful shake of her head, Carina demurely did the same. “I missed you,” she honestly stated from across the caverness distance currently separating her from the woman she loved. And, with sparkling, brown eyes searching Maya’s face and finding fatigue etched around usually emotive blues, Carina quickly wiped at her face, catching a tear that had errantly escaped. “I love you, Maya. So much.”
With a tearful smile of response, Maya softly spoke, her words barely above a whisper.
“I love you, too.”