A/N: Reuploaded because I clearly don't understand how FFN's posting works. Hopefully this is readable now!
"C'mon," Nestor barks, dragging the suspect with him into the parking garage. He shoves Wilkerson into the back of the van and climbs in behind him. Zidan is crouched between the two seats in front, Maggie standing in the open passenger door.
"We've got less than two minutes on the timer," Maggie warns, holding a flashlight so her partner can see the wiring of the bomb. Carla's on the other line, but all Nestor focuses on is shoving Wilkerson closer to the fuse box.
"Two minutes and you die with us," he growls. "Where is the switch?"
"I'd rather die than tell you!" Wilkerson shouts, squaring his shoulders.
Nestor looks up to see Maggie completely focused on Zidan as he searches the car for the switch. "45 seconds," she says. Though her face is calm, he can tell by her voice that she is nervous. Worried. And yes, it's only been six months, but if Maggie was nervous, he knew her well enough to know that was bad.
"Where is it?" Zidan demands over his shoulder. "We are all going to die if you don't tell me right now!"
Wilkerson grits his teeth and stays silent.
"OA. 15 seconds."
Zidan and Maggie lock eyes and Nestor feels oddly like a third wheel in this investigation. OA looks back at the bomb, the timer, and stares at the wires. Nestor stares at Maggie. His heartbeat slows to match the beat of the timer, seconds ticking away quicker than he wanted.
"Mags," he whispers, and light flashes.
—
Nestor blinks at the sunlight crossing his eyelids. He starts, sitting up quickly, barely relaxing when he sees himself in the master bedroom of the new apartment he put a deposit on that morning. "What the hell," he mutters, ripping the sheets off and leaping to his feet.
The apartment looks like exactly what he had dreamed. Open, airy, modern. Iron furnishings, luxurious fabrics, and modern art. It still wasn't right. Not only should he have been dead by a bomb, but something else was missing from this home.
Then, he realizes. Maggie.
They were supposed to be here together. This apartment was supposed to be theirs. Theirs to turn into a home. He had picked it, planned it, asked her to move in with him. They were supposed to make new memories, to laugh, to have fun, to come up with new and exciting things and make plans for their future. To have something new that was theirs.
But this place is bland. Empty. There was no life here. Nestor carefully leaves the room and explores the rest of the place. No personal photos, no elements of it being "lived in". Just clean, pristine lines that look like a photo shoot for Better Homes & Gardens.
Maggie had warned him, hadn't she? That she wasn't ready? That she needed more time?
"When we were undercover…it was intense, Nestor," she said over dinner. "And I like this, I like you, but I just need to take it slow." Nestor replied with all the right words at the time, but now, looking back, he remembers sadness in her eyes and something else so intense that he couldn't name it.
And if Nestor hadn't dragged Wilkerson to the bomb, if they had gotten out of this somehow, he would've told her to move in with him that very night.
But Maggie would have said no.
—
OA looks up to lock eyes with Maggie as the bomb steadily ticks away under his hands. I'm sorry, he says with his eyes. I couldn't imagine a better partner. You are my best friend and I'm so glad we worked together.
Maggie doesn't break their eye contact. I know, she seems to say, and though OA feels a crippling failure overtake his body, knowing he didn't defuse the bomb and save his partner's life, he thinks that maybe, just maybe, this wasn't such a bad way to end things.
Light flashes, and OA wakes up back in his apartment, disoriented and sweating. The dark room is so utterly opposite the bomb exploding that it takes him a minute to figure out where he is. Was that a dream? Blindly, he reaches for his phone only to see tomorrow's date at the top of the screen.
Then he hears the shower running.
His senses are immediately on alert. He finds his gun, tucked away in the nightstand like always, and quietly maneuvers around the bed towards the bathroom door. OA glances at the other nightstand and freezes. If anyone were to be over at his place showering, it would have been Mona, and her glasses would have been resting on that table.
Instead, there's another badge. And that makes OA hesitate. He walks over to the table, softening his steps, and picks up the badge.
Maggie Bell, he reads. His heart breaks a little. Maggie was an untouchable topic hidden deep in his heart. She was - is? - his best friend, his partner, and they had shared more conversations and established an intimate trust deeper than anything he had with his actual girlfriends. Most agents had a joke at one point or another of their partner being their work spouse. As a rule, you had to trust your partner deeply to get the job done. And he and Maggie had that.
OA was glad that they had caught Jason's killer, that he had a hand in closing that chapter of Maggie's life. He knew Maggie was not ready for a relationship, so when he had met Mona, he was ready to try. And still, the idea of Maggie lingered in the back of his mind. What would a girl from Indiana want with a Queens-raised Muslim like him?
Despite all his fears, OA couldn't deny the chemistry between them. Her smiles were light in the middle of their darkest cases, and the two of them had an easy friendship strengthened by their job. In literal matters of life or death, Maggie had his back. Time and time again, she had proven herself as an FBI agent and as a partner willing to risk it all to save their skins.
Was Maggie actually in his shower? Did the bomb not go off? Is this a vision of the future that could have been? Maybe it is a gift, a glimpse at the happiness that might have been had they actually had that uncomfortable conversation.
Whatever it is, OA won't let this moment go. He returns his sidearm to its drawer and slips his shirt off.
"Can I join you?"
—
In the moments before the bomb goes off, as the timer counts down to zero, Maggie can't bring herself to look at Nestor. Instead, she locks eyes with OA, with her partner, with the man that had taken bullets to the vest for her and sent bullets toward others for her. Though she can see Nestor watching her in her peripheral vision, she doesn't take her eyes away from OA. They are speaking, whole paragraphs and endless streams of I'm sorry, you are my best friend, I wish things were different. Any useless platitude that could share how she feels pours out of her gaze and straight to OA.
And Maggie knows that he understands exactly what she's trying to say.
A flash of light, and Maggie sees two very different futures.
In one, Nestor brings up that blasted apartment again, letting her know that it's theirs and he's ready and it's the perfect place for them to have some fun. In the other, OA invites her for a drink at their favorite bar and they bask in the togetherness, in knowing that they've solved a case and their partnership survived another trying day.
Maggie has fought with both men. She would call them both pretty important in her life. And yet, time and time again, she knows exactly which person she would choose to spend her last moments with.
Maggie reaches for the beer in front of her.
