February 12:
He pulls up outside her apartment building at 6:00. His parallel parking skills have not improved with time, and the falling darkness doesn't help. He finally manages to get situated, with the car's rear only sticking out into the street a little. He turns off the engine and waits, fidgeting with the opened-out paper clip he keeps in the cup holder.
They'd planned to go out sooner than this, but first there was a case in California and then that snowstorm that practically shut down DC for a few days. He's just glad they've been able to do this before Valentine's Day, that would've been too loaded a day for a First Official Date, but it's not really doing anything to make him less nervous. He looks down at himself in the fading light. The blue sweater, warm and comfortable but maybe he should've tried to not dress like an absent-minded professor - then again, she's already seen him in feety pajamas first thing in the morning, so -
The heat in the car is dissipating. He's wondering if he's supposed to go up and get her, and then there's a knock on the passenger side window and she's standing there. He leans over and opens the door.
She climbs in, in a quick puff of cold air. He's already revving the engine up again, trying to get the balky heater going, before she even puts her belt on.
"Hi."
"Hi."
He looks over at her. She's still a bit too thin and too pale, not surprising after over a year of hiding. There are small dark weary smudges beneath her eyes, and he's pretty sure fashion-critic types would say something about her striped brown coat and paisley skirt clashing, and she's wearing little pink snow boots...and she looks cute as hell.
"You're staring," she says.
"You're pretty."
She starts giggling, the nervous-but-pleased kind, and then he's grinning.
He just manages not to clip the back end of the car in front of them pulling out.
On the way, he listens, she talks: about how her old job was long since filled, but that's okay because she'd been thinking about going into teaching even before...everything...happened, she's busy gathering up everything she needs to start applying for that instead and it's a pain. There's a rapid-fire quality to her speech that he's never heard before. As they pull up to the first red light, she locks the passenger side door, with that subtle maneuver of pushing the knob down with her elbow.
The mall parking lot has a lot more cars in it than he expected on a Tuesday night. A lot more slush, too. He parks as close to the bookstore entrance as they can get, but it's still slow going walking up to the doors. His knee is twinging a bit, like it always does in this kind of weather, and she keeps looking around and then behind them.
It's blessedly warm inside, relatively quiet too (aside from the Muzak and the periodic whine of machinery in the cafe). A couple of hours in here with books and coffee, then dinner at the pizza place a few blocks away, a calm and low-key plan that he's suddenly hoping isn't seeming dorky or cheap. Then he sees how Maeve is smiling.
"I haven't been in here in forever," she whispers. "Or any store for very long."
"Then enjoy," he whispers back.
They wander up and down the aisles in comfortable silence, stopping to inspect interesting things. She picks out a large, unwieldy book on astronomy, and he takes two atlases, one of the U.S., the other of the world. She holds everything while he puts earplugs in. The sound of the cafe's grinder is too high-pitched for him to be able to go too near it otherwise.
She pays for two cups of coffee before he can say anything. Maybe he shouldn't let her do that, he thinks. He has no idea what state her finances are in after over a year out of work. He decides not to bring it up at this point either.
Except for a couple of very tired-looking college-student-types absorbed in their laptops, the cafe is empty. They take the back corner table.
He hasn't told Maeve that this is actually his First Date Ever. He'd figured she was probably nervous enough without knowing that. He's pretty sure, though, that 99.9% of dates wouldn't consist of what they're doing: concentrating on their respective books, but periodically stopping to point out something interesting in them to each other. She shows him pictures of Martian dust devils and the methane lakes on Titan; he explains how the remarkably obvious grid patterns of the Plains states' major roads are artifacts of the first railway lines from the 1880s.
Parallel play, he thinks, people engaging in play activities in each other's presence, but not together. Except there's some reciprocity here.
Maybe he should stop analyzing it. It seems to be working.
After a while, she gets up and heads back into the aisles. He finds a particularly nice set of seafloor maps in the world atlas. The Atlantic: shallow, sunken places like Dogger Bank, the Scilly Isles area, Rockall. He marks the Rockall page with the cardboard sleeve from his coffee cup. When Maeve comes back, he'll show her, ask if she's ever heard the Hy Brasil stories and how this place might explain them.
Eventually he checks his watch. It's slightly after 8. The pizza place is open late, but the bookstore's closing soon. He goes to put the atlases back. As he heads down the central aisle, he spots Maeve, crouched in front of the Mystery section. Good, for one horrible moment he'd wondered if she'd gotten spectacularly bored and just left...no, that was ridiculous, even if he was that big a loser of a date she wouldn't be that rude.
He just remembers to pull the sleeve-marker out of the world atlas before reshelving.
When he gets back to the Mystery aisle, she's still there. Actually - hold on - she hasn't moved at all, and something about her hunched posture isn't right -
She cries out when he touches her shoulder, and stares wildly up at him with huge, round eyes. Right away he sits down beside her, hoping he's not so close that it crowds her. Her knees are pulled up and her hands are pressed against her mouth, fingers braided, knuckles white. She's shaking, and breathing in little pained gasps.
"Maeve?"
"I can't - breathe," she manages. "Chest hurts. Too - big in here - "
"Can you get up?" He keeps his voice as low and calm as possible.
"Not sure. Dizzy."
"Come on." He offers her a hand. She grabs on so tightly it hurts, and he helps her up.
She sways obviously as they make their way out of the store. The woman behind the main counter stares at them, then opens her mouth like she's going to say something. He gives her the nastiest don't even think about it glare he can.
Wet snow is spitting down, tinted orange in the streetlamps' glow. They get into the car, and Maeve leans forward, against the passenger-side dashboard. He turns the engine on, just for the heat, and she startles a little at the sudden sound.
"Put your head between your knees," he tells her. She does.
He's still got the cardboard sleeve in his hand, and he starts fiddling with it, twisting it, because touching her is probably not a great idea right now. "Try breathing in for a count of two, okay? Then out for the same."
She tries, whispering the numbers, and he whispers them along with her. He watches the snow falling, slowly piling on the hood and windshield. Her breathing slows with the counting.
She sits up after a few minutes, still wide-eyed and very pale.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize."
She leans back in the seat, eyes closed. "Everything just seemed really huge and loud all of a sudden, and then I couldn't breathe..."
"I think you had a panic attack."
She takes a deep breath and puts a hand over her face. "Damnit." She laughs, a little, tight, bitter sound. "This whole getting-back-my-life business is just not going well, huh? To say nothing of our record on dates so far."
"Hey. It's understandable. You've been...locked out of the world...for more than a year, you're not going to get used to everything again right away." He realizes she sounds so muffled because he's still got the earplugs in, so he pops them out quick, leaving them in the cup holder with the sleeve. "As for the date part...I'm just...glad you're here, okay?"
She nods.
"I'm assuming you're not up to going to Fiorini's."
"No. Not tonight."
"We could go back to my place and order in pizza instead. Watch some movies. I have all the Star Trek ones, we could make fun of the special effects in the first one - or if you'd rather just go home, that's fine too."
"Your place," she says firmly. "God knows I've spent enough time in my apartment."
"My place it is." He's turning forward, about to grab the steering wheel, and then she's putting her hands on his arm and tugging just slightly, so he faces her again.
"Let me ask you something. Answer honestly." Her voice is very soft.
"What?"
"Can I kiss you?"
He can't speak, so he just nods. Her hand is on his face, tilting his chin a little, and he closes his eyes and her mouth is on his, soft sweet touch that's almost a flutter, then she draws back. His whole body tenses briefly, like it always does when he's had a serious pleasant shock, and if anything qualifies as one this does and - wow.
"Thanks," she says.
"No problem." His voice has gone a little swoopy-toned.
By the time they're turning out of the parking lot, he feels like he can speak levelly again, and tries. "Actually, maybe making fun of the first Star Trek movie isn't so appropriate, those were top-of-the-line special effects when it was made...now, the writing is another matter - "