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Maggie turns Alex down, because she knows how it would go.
She wraps her hands while she remembers Alex's face as she turned and walked away from her, telling her she'd see her in a voice that wrecked Maggie from the inside out.
But she can't, because she knows how it would go.
She would watch Alex bloom and grow and go from stuttering and tripping over the words to owning her identity with pride. Hell, Maggie would probably take a blushing, nervous Alex to her first Pride parade.
She’d help her, because God knows (and Maggie can say all she wants she’s an agnostic but deep down she believes in a God, she was raised to, catholic through and through, it’s just from recent events she can’t guess at how merciful such a God could truly be) God knows she wishes she’d had someone to help her.
She’d hold Alex’s hand and help her come out to her mother if Alex asked (Maggie’s done it before, been the living proof sitting awkwardly in a family’s living room that their daughter was not straight. She’s been there, twice.)
She’d kiss her and see her slowly get comfortable with PDA, with public dates, with holding her hand while they walk down their street.
Maggie would talk her through sex and she’d get a secret satisfaction from being the first woman to show Alex how good it can be. She’d treat her how she deserves to be treated.
She’d kiss every inch of skin she could reach before ever taking her clothes off-
Maggie wipes sweat from her brow, the punching bag swinging in front of her. She has got to stop thinking like that.
Point is, she’d give her everything.
She’d be Alex’s crutch.
Her training wheels girlfriend.
She feels horrible thinking about it in those terms, and her knuckles sting as one of her punches lands a little too hard on her bag, but she has to think about it in those terms, because otherwise she’ll convince herself there’s a chance.
But there isn’t, not right now. Because she knows how it would go.
She’d be thinking of settling down, buying a house in this damned economy, choosing silverware together. She’d want it all, a few years down the line. Has already started thinking about it. A kid or two, maybe. Even with her line of work. Her captain has a wife and two kids in high school and she thinks she’d want that. A family, a warm meal at the table.
She’s wandered enough that she knows it’s in the cards, that she doesn’t reject the idea out of hand like she did when she was younger and fighting against all expectations set on her for being a woman.
She’d want someone to come to home to, someone to call her “wife”.
She’s there.
Alex…Alex is light years away from her.
Alex is just figuring things out and testing her footsteps and Maggie, she doesn’t have anything against that, she thinks it’s fucking beautiful -but she can’t do it.
She can’t be with someone like Danvers, with Danvers, someone so easy to fall for, so easy to love -
And then have it end.
She was with Emma for 4 months. In the grand scheme of things it sounds like nothing, but Maggie really thought she’d be the one.
And before that there was a string of dates, flings, really. Darla, that was exciting. Katherine, Lily. K’hym. And before that, Rose, those 2 years. They’d lived together for a few months near the end, and Maggie had to go back to Blue Springs for a couple of weeks while she got her shit in order and found a new apartment.
Amy, was it 6 months? While Maggie finished her time at the academy. And going back. College. Boy, did she have fun in college. Finally out of Blue Springs and seeing the world for the first time, thinking herself invincible because she’d fallen for her best friend and gotten cut out of her life for it and survived. Didn’t keep her from falling and falling hard for the first time, getting her hopes up only to see Milla graduate and leave her behind.
She’s loved. (And in her cousin’s words, been a serial dater, and was there such thing as too much sex?)
But the thing is, she’s been in love before.
And every time it ended she’s gotten a few more callouses in her hands from hitting a punching bag and another brick around her heart.
She’s tougher now. Not so tough that she doesn’t still want soft crap like a picture in her wallet and the warmth of a shared home but she’s been through the ringer and she’s come out stronger. Her heart is thick all around.
Danvers…her heart is as soft as a baby’s skin.
She’s a newborn deer, feeling out her footsteps for the first time.
Maggie knows the woman is strong. Alex is strong, and smart as hell, and beautiful to wrap it up. She’s funny, kind. Terrifying when she wants to be. And she gets it -Alex gets the job and what it entails.
Maggie doesn’t want to overlook those qualities, Alex deserves the credit. She's not saying Alex is an actual child, all baby-gay thoughts she has aside.
But Alex has never felt what Maggie has.
She’s never gone through the pain of missing someone in her bed so keenly that she’s had to drink a quarter bottle of rum just to numb the pain and another quarter to get to sleep. She’s never been in love, of her own confession. She’s just discovered she’s been looking for that in all the wrong places and she has yet to take a step when Maggie has run a marathon.
She’s excited and the whole world is bright to her right now, and so she thinks Maggie is, too, but it isn’t real. She’s the first woman Alex has had feelings for, but she won’t be the last. And Maggie can’t handle that right now.
Maybe a few years ago she could have, definitely yes in college, just gone into a relationship knowing that it wouldn’t be for the long haul, just a few months, maybe a year. Now? Now she craves permanence, she craves the intimacy that comes from years at someone’s side.
She’s just flirting with thirty but Maggie is done with the flings. And she’s not saying Alex wants her to be a fling, that the woman knowingly wants nothing serious with her. No. But she knows that’s what it’d end up being. Alex would stop being a fresh-faced, wide-eyed baby. Maggie would get her to grow up, hold her through the scary part, and then she’d leave her, she’d get out there and see the world and realize that there are so many more lesbians and lady-inclined folk other than Maggie Sawyer.
And even if she didn’t -because for how little time she’s known Alex, Maggie realizes the woman is loyal to fault- Maggie would be holding her back. It wouldn’t be fair for the newly out woman. There are real shiny girls out there, girls on Alex’s level, Nobel price nominees, women searching for the cure for cancer, not local cops born in a small town in Nebraska.
Maggie isn’t all that.
Plus, she just got out of a relationship, and everything with Emma still stings, everything she said still circles her head and she's always needed a few weeks to lick her wounds in peace before trying again. Alex doesn't deserve her baggage.
And Maggie likes her. Beneath all the reasons why she shouldn't and why she can't Maggie is drawn to the other woman, cares about her already in a way that she hasn't cared about anyone in years. (Right off the bat, a minute or two after meeting her.) Maggie doesn't like a lot of people and she -so, so quickly- likes Alex.
She wants her in her life, had so enjoyed their afternoons at the bar and the pool games that put a hole in her pocket. It's been so long since Maggie has had a real friend she wasn't sleeping with and wasn't related to her, and she's missed it. She doesn't want to lose it. (Trying to stay friends with a girl after a romantic relationship didn't work? Maggie has been there, three times. Didn't work not once.)
So she’s doing Alex a favor, even if it hurts right now. Even if Alex looks at her like Maggie is something she truly wants.
She’s doing Alex a favor, and she’s protecting herself, and protecting them, and who can fault her for that?
(Turns out, she can.)