Chapter 1: Alex

It's been awhile now since we became official; since we first got together. It's only been six short months from the time I pulled you outside into the cold brisk city night and confessed how I felt to you. I kissed you that night, outside the restaurant without hesitation and without regret. It was our first kiss. You made me feel whole for the first time in years.

You took me home with you. We sat together on your couch, sipping wine, making out like teenagers, not going any further than, well, using the crude vernacular, second base. You held me gently against you, almost as if you thought I would break. I slept with you in the same bed. You held me close to you and told me you dreamed about this.

We didn't make love that night, like my body wanted, like my mind was crying for. You made me feel like a girl with an out of control teenage crush. My sustenance became your kisses and your gaze healed my soul in ways I didn't realize it had been broken. You were so tender and seemed only to embrace me more for my faults.

With a shy smile, you handed me some NYPD sweats, and even left me alone to put them on, all the while reassuring me that things could go slowly. You wanted me to know you didn't expect anything. You didn't want anything more than I was ready to give. You didn't want us to start with regrets. You told me you had hoped too much for it to become a reality to let us begin that way. Instead, you laid me in your bed and kissed the back of my neck lightly as you drifted into sleep.

I'm used to sleeping alone and before I met you I couldn't sleep with another person's body twisted with mine. I was hyper aware of every move, every breath. Every place skin touched skin felt oppressive and the heat made me feel a compulsive need to pull away. I usually waited for my bedmate to fall asleep and then pushed myself as far away from them as possible. With you though, it's different. You're soft in the right places, the way you let my head rest against your breast; the way the curve of my arm fits over the curve of your stomach. Your soft breath whispers across my cheek and I feel entirely at peace. I find myself drifting off to sleep, still wrapped around you.

You're the best thing that's happened to me. It's a trite cliché, I know, but I can't do better. I want to tattoo it on my chest for the whole world to see. I don't care who knows that I love you, but that's the very problem, of course.

I care very much who knows it.

If we lived in Utopia, where everything was love and happiness, roses and sunshine, we would never have to question how our relationship would affect our lives. But we don't live in Utopia, and fairy tales don't exist, and my Prince has become my Princess.

We live in a biased and incredibly political world full of hatred and misunderstanding. Together, alone, in your small apartment we can sit for quiet ages alone, kissing, and feeling, and making love to each other without prying eyes and dark judgments. We don't need explanations only for the two of us, alone in the dark. While neither of us speak the words, I feel you grabbing for my hand only after you've glanced to make sure that no one's looking and I feel the emptiness as you let it go when you see another couple walking down the street.

Neither of us has dared touch the topic of how to tell anyone else. It's strange to be so in love and keep it a secret. I'm used to dating men. Not out of lust, or love, but out of expectation. It's strange to feel the way I do about you, because for the first time in a lifetime, I care.

I've sat across from too many dinner tables listening to boring men tell boring stories about their boring lives. I've kissed them, and bedded them without feeling even a tiny sliver of the passion I feel when you smile at me. When I see you, I feel my stomach tighten and my heart beat faster. It's strange that I've shown more affection in public for men I can barely stand, than for you, the woman I hope to spend the rest of my life with.

I find it distinctly foreign to have to sneak around, wondering what people think. We drive separate cars to the same places. I spend lunches with you, and I'm nervous that the knock on my closed office door will be someone who will wonder why we're together. I'm sick of eating with our case files out, not because of our attention to them, but just in case we need a sudden excuse. I wonder who's watching us. I wonder if we look too close. I wonder if it's me or if you really do withdraw from me when I walk into the squad room. Your face, which usually lights with love when we see each other, scans the room looking anywhere but in my eyes. It's strange to wake up in your bed, and then merely four hours later, pretend I don't know you in a crowded hallway.

But even though we hide, I can still see the love burning in you eyes when I can catch them long enough, and I'm sure you see it deep in mine, even when we're pretending to merely be office acquaintances. I feel you walking a little closer to me in the hallways, gently letting yourself rub against me just enough to let me know you're there. You shoot me tiny smiles when no one is looking. Smiles that melt my heart and send heat rocking through my body knowing they are meant only for me. You lean over my shoulder while we're reading a case file together letting your breath hit my neck because you know it drives me…

Ahem.

I'm unsure of how to deal with the complexity of the feelings that run below the surface of my mind. We don't talk about it, but we know that our solitude can't be forever, and I don't want it to be. I want to be able to live in a society where I can kiss you and hold you and have our friends be happy for us and with us without fear.

It scares me what would happen to us if it we were to become office gossip. Would I lose my job? There's no direct rule regarding officers and ADA's dating, but I'm pretty sure that none of the other ADA's that I know have been dating a cop of the same gender on the same squad they are directly involved with. Running up to Branch's office and playing "what if," doesn't seem like the greatest idea, and neither of us wants to be unemployed.

Not to mention what could happen to you. You shrug and say they think you're gay anyway, but if we were out, it would be confirmation. Cops are not notoriously open-minded when it comes to the alternative lifestyle section of the handbook. I don't think I could handle it if something happened to you because you loved me.

You can't face a reality you're not used to living in. I'm newer to this than you are, and from what I've gathered you're not all that experienced in this either. We've both been content to be alone: until now. All this sneaking around: all this hiding from things that I don't even know if it's reasonable to fear. It was exciting, but now I want to stand in the park and scream that I love you, and I'm afraid of what would happen if I did. We talk about telling people, and how we would, and what we would say. I'm not unsure of my feelings for you, but I am unsure of how it will be to love you in a world filled with hate.