"I don't like these crayons, Mama." Ryan sighed looking from the half-colored picture to the obviously distracted woman sitting at the table beside him. "They color funny." The artistically inclined boy sulked at the same time he pushed the crayon pack away.
"Huh? What's wrong sweetie?" Alex questioned her focus trained more on the unopened door to the restaurant than on whatever it was that had her son so upset as her knee gave another nervously irritated ticking bounce under the table.
Sawyer was late. A lot late. Like a she'd stood them up kind of lateness that had Alex's jaw ticking in barely restrained anger.
It was one thing to stand her up, but No one walks out on a promise to her son.
"Color with me Mama." Ryan decides as he pressed that much closer against his mother's side at the obvious hurt expression now settling in Alex's far away gaze when the door opened not on the dark-haired woman both mother and son had been waiting for, but a lighter haired hurried woman who was already picking her way between the tables towards her equally long waiting party.
"Please, Mama color with me." He tries again with a puppy-eyed pout as he slides an uncolored picture page in front of his mother and nudges over the standard four-color crayon pack every eatery with a child-friendly menu offered its younger clientele. The hardly used red, yellow, blue, and green colors lightly bumped into one another as they rolled within the confines of the opened plastic packaging.
"It's getting close to your bedtime kiddo," Alex counters now eyeing the kitchens for their waitress to come back with a drinks refill. The server made obvious eyes at Alex while Ryan had grumpily scanned over the kid's menu for what he wanted considering that instead of leaving as she'd wanted after their wait had hit the twenty-minute marker Alex instead ordered her son a meal over Ryan's protests they should all eat together, so her child at least had some semblance of dinner for the evening.
At the very least Alex guessed she'd been undressed in the other woman's mind just by the slow way the server's eyes slid up and down her seated figure when she'd thought Alex hadn't noticed.
Alex quietly vows to literally kick both of her younger sister's backside for teaching her son such lethal levels of the 'Danvers Pout' next time they spared mostly to think of anything but the way her heart does a nervous little flip in her chest as she looks up more intently towards the finally opening front door.
The annoyed mother picking up the blue crayon when she spies her son's deepening pout as he nuzzled against her side picking up on her rapidly changing mood.
"Miss Maggie will come, Mama. She promised." The boy reasons just as he had been for the last half an hour as the two waited. Ryan makes it his mission to stick up for the absentee detective by covering arguments including: "She's a police officer, Mama. Even when we have Supergirl to help they still have lots of work to do. She's just helping with it too.", "She just moved here Mama; she doesn't know her way around.", "It's not nice to eat without everyone here Mama. I'll eat when Miss Maggie is here, so we all eat together."
Alex had to negotiate of course when Ryan attempting to go 'halfsies' with the spaghetti and breadstick meal he'd picked so his mother would get dinner for the night too once the more child-sized portioned meal had been delivered to their table.
Alex quickly covering the low hungry rumbling of her stomach with a reminding "Well Sawyer isn't the only one who's late, RyRy" at the also late tag on her son had also thought to invite to this not-so-fun dinner out, "besides if we leave your auntie Kara alone with Maya much longer, she might steal our new puppy." with only a mild tease in her tone, but she smiles too considering that by then Ryan had finally given in to at least start a tentative nibbling on one end of a breadstick when Alex offered a suggested 'We'll stay a little longer but only if you eat all your dinner and maybe when Maggie gets here, she can have dessert with us before we go home."
"Mind if I use the red one for a second, RyRy?" Alex questions having given in to her son's suggestion of coloring now she knew he'd be fed at a relatively decent hour after a few beats of quiet between mother and son. A rarity when not even her mother's best home cooking could make her son this quiet at the dinner table.
"RyRy?" Alex asks a little louder still absently shading in a darker tone of blue on the campsite picture she'd been given.
Alex's heart dropped somewhere near the earth's core when after a quick glance towards the place her little boy had been shows only an empty seat and an abandoned plate of hardly touched food behind. "Ryan." The mother attempted to yell yet the name comes in more of a breathless squeak considering her throat was closed in a vice of pure panic as she looked around for her now absent son.
"Mama, Mama look." Ryan cheered from a direction far closer to the front door for Alex's liking "She came, Mama." Ryan calls over "She's came, she came she came." The boy chants excitedly still hugging as tightly as a four-year-old was able onto the guilty yet bashfully smiling Maggie Sawyer kneeling more towards the child's eye level as they'd hugged just inside the restaurant entrance.
"Ryan J Danvers you get back here right now young man." Alex ordered her tone sliding into the one she never thought she'd use with her son only for intimidating her fellow DEO agents as she stands up from the table the same time Ryan guides Maggie back towards her. Not even the sight of her son willingly holding the hand of someone who was practically a stranger to him as he did so couldn't cool Alex's flaring temper.
"Wow Supergirl pose much?" Maggie questions in an obvious attempt to ease the now palpable tension as she and a now hesitant Ryan near the table. Not that the sight of an angered Alex Danvers now standing ramrod straight with her fists perched on her hips as she stared the approaching duo down was making her swoon or anything.
Because it wasn't. Alright, it totally was but Maggie wasn't about to admit it.
"Stay out of this Sawyer." Alex snapped the darkened bit of her tone only adding to Maggie's already breathless demeanor considering Ryan had one hell of a tacking greeting hug when the kid was excited.
"He's a kid Danvers, kids run off when they get excited over something, it wasn't as if he left the place, cut him some slack," Maggie argues gingerly tugging a much quieter Ryan back against her side as if the act alone could shield him from his mother's nearly tangible mixed emotions of anger and fear.
"I'm sorry Mama, I didn't mean to scare you." Ryan agrees talking more towards his shoes than at his mother as he spoke from his seemingly welded place against Maggie's side. "I just wanted to say hi to my friend."
Alex wanted to hold onto her annoyance she really did but she couldn't whenever she heard her son speaking in his strengthening Kryptonian syntax. With a slow breath, Alex rounds the table to kneel more to her hiding son's eye level. "I just want you to be safe, my little warrior but I can't keep you safe if you run off like that." She says guilt layering her words when instead of moving into her open arms for an offered hug of her own Ryan instead stays pressed as close as he was able to Maggie's pant leg. The side of his head rests so trusting against the detective's hip as he appraises his mother. Maggie's fingers yet to move from their tangled place in his hair.
"Everything alright over here?"
Sara the waitress was back under the guise of stopping by to top off their drinks. Or mostly to refresh Alex's soda considering Ryan hadn't touched his milk glass since the last time she'd stopped by the table.
"We're okay, Miss Sara." Ryan calms giving the curious onlooker a wary smile as he shepherds Maggie over towards the booth of a table the mother and son had taken over since they'd been seated. Alex gets up far slower at the sting of yet another of her son's apparent rebuffs the same time Ryan continues his easy seeming chat with the watchful diner employee. Asking for menus she guessed considering Alex had sent hers back unused once Ryan had ordered his meal.
"uuhh I'll…. what is she having?" Maggie was asking when Alex finally returned to her seat. Sara must be asking her for a drink order. "I'll have the same." The cop decides at the waitress's answer.
"We're still waiting on one…."
"No, we're not Mama." Ryan counters before Alex could point out they were still a member short of the entire party she'd warned of when reserving the table when Sara turns away to go retrieve the asked-for menus and put in Maggie's drink order.
It was then Alex realizes yet another reason why her son had broken her 'stay where I can see you' rule when her eyes fell on the shirt now half hidden behind the open folds of Maggie's leather jacket.
"You trying to start something, Sawyer?" Alex questions nodding in quiet thanks when Sara quickly dropped off the menus and a drink for Maggie without much comment other than a curt "I'll be back in a sec to take your orders." before walking off once more to check on her other tables.
Maggie gives a nervous kind of smile, but she does sit up a little straighter in her seat before she answers. "You can take a cop out of Gotham but no taking the Gotham from the cop so why not show support for our that is to say Gotham's resident hero?" the detective reasons smoothing her hand down the front of her tee shirt declaring by use of the two hero's easily recognizable symbols with the 'S' standing in for Supergirl and the red bat for Batwoman that the bat was better than the cape.
"Can Miss Maggie come home with us Mama?" Ryan steps in after a healthy drink from his glass so now the boy was sporting the dribbled start of a milk mustache on his lips.
"I don't know…." Alex and Maggie start to answer at the same time
"I wanna show her something in my room." Ryan pouts "It's important." He adds attempting to wink in Maggie's direction that was just the boy closing both eyes tightly for a few seconds making both his mother and her ex pen pal giggle behind their respective glasses.
"Order whatever you want. I'm not hungry." Alex says hastily as she gets up from the table altogether with a covering "Stay with Maggie a second RyRy I gotta go to the bathroom."
"All that soda you've been putting away it's not surprising." Their waitress scoffs glaring in challenge to a once again guilty-looking Maggie Sawyer as she clears away another round of empty glasses from Alex's seat at the table.
"Leave her be it's not her fault." Alex defends giving Maggie a weak but friendly smile before she flees towards the covering safety of the restaurant bathroom.
The three she'd left at the table all stare after her before Sara breaks the stunned quiet with a probing "Well you gonna go after her or what?" in Maggie's direction as she gives a covering "Hey Tony I'm going on break." Towards the kitchens before taking up Alex's vacant seat at the booth-like table with a questioning "So what are we coloring this time kiddo?" as Ryan gives a giggled laugh at Maggie's shocked "Uh thanks" before she hurries off in the same direction as Alex had.
Not that the rushing cop makes it past the little alcove separating the rest of the bathrooms from the rest of the half-filled eatery before she was being dragged hard towards a shadowed corner of said alcove and the warm press of velvety soft and limen lime flavored lips were pressing down roughly against her own.
She feels more than sees Alex's lips curl upwards into a smug grin as the instigator of their urgent kiss swallows Maggie's surprised gasp at the sudden flurry of moments. It only takes a following breath of a pause before Maggie was kissing her back swallowing a few surprised groans of her own as she presses the taller woman back against the alcove wall holding her hostage by the two fistfuls of Alex's jacket to keep her in place.