A/N: I don't know if a one shot can really have an epilogue, but here's a tiny follow up piece :)
Maggie twists into the warmth beside her, shifting under the weight of an arm to tuck herself closer. Her nose nestles the gray fabric of a worn t-shirt, her hair hiding the face she presses into Alex. The pale yellow of sunrise filters through the window but Maggie's tries to uphold immunity, burrowing against Alex as the agent tightens her embrace, murmuring sleepy nonsense and tilting her forehead to fit Maggie against her.
Maggie pinches her eyes closed, residue of nightmare sharpens into memories of the previous day, an assault on the morning and her haven of a fuzzy blanket and Alex and oblivion. Her eyes snap open and the ache behind them returns and, with it, white hot electricity that gnaws at her stomach, a rolling nausea and biting stab. The sensation that she could not stay still any longer, but one wrong movement—too fast or too slow—would tear her feet from beneath her and set her vision ablaze with sparking light.
She scrambles upright and backward, hitting her skull against the headboard and sending a heavy exhale from her lungs. A groan punctuates the moment her head falls forward, received by her palms, elbows propped up on shaky knees.
"Mags?" Alex whispers, raising her head from the pillow and feeling around the sheets for Maggie, eyes barely able to part under the rising sun.
"I'm okay," Maggie says and removes a hand from her head to settle it over Alex's, stopping its search through the blankets. "Just…" she shrugs and takes a deep breath through her nose. "Just jittery. I think I'm just gonna go on a run or something, I need to burn off this energy."
"Wait… wait…" Alex catches Maggie's wrist and drags herself upward from the sheets, keeping her touch light around Maggie the whole time. Alex runs a loose fist over her eyes with her other hand. "Hey, lemme go with you." Her body still slumps with the weight of sleep, her eyelids still fighting a battle against fatigue and her desire to help. "If you want."
Maggie shakes her head. " 's okay." She squeezes Alex's hand and lowers it back to the sheets. "I'll be quick." She presses a kiss to Alex's temple, where a pattern from the sheets' crinkles is pressed into her skin and mussed hair frames her face. The contact sends some of the dread receding away from Maggie. "You sleep. Your body needs rest to heal up."
"You sure?" Alex says through a yawn and closing eyes. "I really don' mind. 'm not even that t'red anymore."
Despite it all, a soft smile creeps across Maggie's cheeks, sticky with yesterday's tears. She shakes her head again. "Rest."
"You call if you change your mind, 'kay?" Alex murmurs, slipping back down into the mattress as Maggie replaces the sheets back up around her fiancée's shoulders. "I'll run there as fast as I can, so fast… won' even know ' was gone."
Maggie rubs her shoulder for a moment, before hauling herself out of bed and through the motions of getting dressed on wobbling legs.
The sounds plays as a backdrop to Alex's stream of consciousness, unable to fully relinquish her grip on wakefulness now that she's aware of Maggie's movement and the empty space beside her. Alex listens, war waging inside her between the desire to sweep Maggie into a hug and keep her there forever, and the knowledge that somethings require time alone. Her heart pangs with each beat, her eyes sneaking glimpses of Maggie as she moves through the apartment.
The need to act stirs inside her, but Alex waits for the closing of the front door to pull herself from bed. She's stumbling over the pillows scattered across the floor from a restless night and grabbing her phone from the nightstand when a thud outside yanks her attention to the door.
A jangling of the handle sends her staggering over the mess of pillows and a discarded blanket.
Just as she finds her footing she hears the door open and close again.
She exits the bedroom and her vision tunnels toward Maggie, shoulders sinking and cheeks wet and legs knocking.
Alex's brows raise and her lips turn to form a question but before she can Maggie is shaking her head.
"I couldn't do it." Her sentences are a smear of watery words. "I tried to go but I couldn't. I took one step and it all just drained out of me and I couldn't stand, I couldn't—" A breathless gasping confessional.
"That's okay." It feels as though Alex crosses the room in a single step, she moves so quickly, and Maggie is enveloped in her arms, her skin warm and muscles taut beneath Alex's fingers splayed across her shoulder blade. Alex holds her tight, holds her up, holds her close. Alex kisses her head. "It's okay."
Maggie sniffles and wipes at her cheeks. "And Kara and Lena… she… they…" She gestures toward the island in the kitchen and Alex gives it her attention for the first time that morning, sees a spread of bagels and hot coffee and eggs, a small stack of pancakes, a bundle of flowers.
"I don't even know what those flowers are…" Maggie hiccups and small laugh wiggles its way through her drying tears. "Lena must have picked them though so I'm sure they're symbolic and perfect and unjustifiably expensive."
Alex laughs and squeezes Maggie in a one-armed hug against her side.
"And Kara was obviously responsible for the food."
"Obviously." Alex says with a grin and an eye roll. "It's mildly creepy though that Kara must've flown into our apartment this morning and arranged everything, because I didn't hear the front door open."
"Me neither." Maggie shakes her head, she shrugs and blushes and turns toward Alex's touch. "It's kind of sweet though."
"The sweetest." Alex confirms. "From both of them. They love you, Mags."
She nods and her fingers find Alex's, lacing them together and holding tight. "I don't want to be alone."
"You never will be," Alex promises, kissing Maggie's knuckles. "Not here. Not with all of us."