Work Text:
2007
Alex turns eighteen in December, and even though she’s been away from home for almost six months, she still hasn’t been to a college party yet. Well, she hasn’t been to any party, technically. There was one – but she didn’t really think it counted. Back in Midvale.
In high school, she was just Vicky Donahue’s ex-best friend who always had her weirdo adopted sister hanging around, so she didn’t get out all that much. She spent time on her homework and took extra classes and didn’t get distracted, and it all turned out to be worth it, because she got out of Midvale High a whole year earlier than she was expecting to with a full ride to Stanford.
She hadn’t hated school before her big fight with Vicky. Actually, she’d rather enjoyed it. She always knew all the answers in class, so the teachers liked her, her parents didn’t nag her because she had straight A’s, and she had Vicky by her side. Vicky, who would make fun of people behind their backs, and if Alex hadn’t been so enamored with the idea of being popular – yes, popularity; that’s what she craved – she would have noticed that anyone who talks shit about their other friends to you is likely talking shit about you to their other friends. Vicky, who would invite Alex to sleepovers where they would braid each other’s hair and read trashy tabloids, even though Alex didn’t really care about the celebrities they read about. Vicky, who would copy her homework and touch up Alex’s lip gloss in the big stall in the bathroom where they really didn’t have to stand so close together that Alex could see all the freckles lining Vicky’s nose, but did anyway.
She’d liked it, then. But then she went to a party – their first party, as up-and-coming juniors – and it had all gone to shit.
2005
They spend almost three hours at Vicky’s house before the party starts, trying on different clothes and makeup and heels. Alex knows that Vicky looks beautiful in each and every one of them – because of course she does, she’s objectively attractive – but Vicky won’t let that stop her from trying on every dress in her closet.
“Do you think this one’s too slutty?” Vicky asks, holding up a black cocktail dress that would end a few inches past where her underwear stopped.
Alex furrows her brow, as if she’s debating. “I don’t know. I don’t know if Ian Spencer likes black. You know, green really brings out your eyes. Maybe you should go with this one,” Alex says, gesturing to the long green dress sprawled out next to her on the bed.
“Yawn, Alex. That one doesn’t show off anything I’d want anyone to look at. We’ll just have to keep trying.” She keeps rifling through her closet as she says it, and as much as Alex wants to argue, she doesn’t.
“Okay.”
When they arrive at the party – an hour late, which Vicky says will help them not look so eager – Alex is just excited to be there with her best friend.
“Look,” says Alex, pointing at a senior boy lighting up a joint. “What kind of people are they, going somewhere where you’re surrounded by people you don’t know just to lose control?” She scoffs. “That will never be me.”
“Yeah,” replies Vicky, but she doesn’t seem at all interested in what Alex is saying. Instead, her eyes are focused on Ian, the guy she’s liked for the entirety of their high school career. He’s only a grade older, but he has his own car and he lives in a guest house in his backyard, which Vicky tells Alex means he must have a lot of sex.
Alex doesn’t think he’s all that attractive. He has a chiseled jaw and nice arms because he’s on the basketball team, but that doesn’t mean much. Alex has both of those things, too, and Vicky doesn’t want to date her.
“Here,” says Vicky, rushing up to the drinks table and grabbing a beer. “Drink this.”
Alex frowns. “I hear beer tastes like piss.”
“Good practice for when you’re an adult and you’ll have to like drinking it. I’m going to the bathroom, okay? Don’t wait up.”
Alex examines the beer bottle carefully, assessing if it was a twist-off or if she’ll need a bottle opener. “Vicky,” she starts, but she’s already gone.
She can’t stand around the drinks table forever, so she wanders over to where the kitchen is, pulling her shirt over the beer while she tries desperately to untwist it.
She hears, “Hey,” and then there’s a person standing next to her. A person who is decidedly not Vicky, but instead Ian Spencer.
“Hi,” she tries back.
“Not having any luck with that beer, I see.”
Alex tries to laugh, but it comes out sounding forced. “Yeah, it’s really not working.”
“Here,” Ian says, taking the beer from Alex’s hands and pulling out a bottle opener from his back pocket. In a mere two seconds, the beer is open and back in Alex’s hands, and Ian’s bottle opener is nowhere to be found.
“Thanks,” she says, taking a sip. She almost gags when she tastes it. “Oh my god, that’s awful.”
Ian laughs and leans up against the wall. “Oh yeah? Maybe you’re just not used to it. Let me have a sip.”
Alex feels a little sick to her stomach with the way this guy is looking at her, but shrugs anyway, handing him the beer. “Go ahead.” He takes a sip and grimaces like she had, only somehow, he makes it look cooler.
“Wow, you’re right. That’s the worst beer I’ve ever tasted.”
“Yeah, and I’m sure you’ve tasted tons.”
He nods, smiling. “Of course. I’m a junior, you know. Soon to be senior, actually.”
“Yeah. I know.” Alex clears her throat. “You know, my friend Vicky is around here somewhere, and I know she wanted to congratulate you on the winning basket at –” But before she can finish, his lips are on hers, and she has no idea what to do.
It isn’t bad, she thinks. It certainly isn’t what everyone had lead her to believe – no fireworks or weak knees or anything of that sort, but it isn’t awful. She can tell he’s shaved recently, because she knows he’s capable of growing a mustache, but she doesn’t feel any stubble on her top lip, which she’s grateful for. His lips are soft enough. They don’t feel as nice as Vicky’s look, but they’re okay, and he doesn’t stick his tongue down her throat like she’d heard Vicky complain about a thousand times before. If she were to rate the kiss on a scale from one to ten, it might be a four. It’s quick enough for her not to be able to react properly before he pulls away. When he does, he looks like he’s just seen the stars.
“Wow,” he says.
Alex just stares.
“I don’t know if you knew this, but I’ve liked you for a while.”
“Oh,” is all she says in return.
“Can I do that again?” he asks, leaning in for a second kiss.
She’s about to push him away when she sees Vicky storming up behind him, face contorted in anger.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Alex shakes her head. “Nothing. Wait, Vicky, this isn’t what you think it is. He –”
“He did nothing, Alex! You made a pass at him, didn’t you? I knew it. Always so innocent. ‘I don’t have a crush, you can like whoever you want!’”
“Vicky – ”
“Don’t ‘Vicky’ me.” She presses her face close to Alex’s, so close that Alex can smell the whiskey on her breath. “I know everything about you. Don’t think I couldn’t ruin you in a second.”
And Alex is about to protest, but an anger starts to burn in her before she can, and then she’s saying things she really shouldn’t be.
“Fine,” says Alex. “Do whatever you want. Have whatever you want. But the one thing you can’t have is Ian, because he’s mine.” She pulls Ian down into a kiss, spreading her lips so his tongue can have access to hers. She feels Vicky stomp away more than hears it, because the bass is still pumping in her ears, but it feels good. When she’s sure Vicky is gone, she pushes him away and wipes her mouth, and then she leaves. She doesn’t look back.
2007
She remembers that night, now, here, at her second ever party. She remembers Ian asking to be her boyfriend, asking her to go steady or to homecoming or whatever. She remembers it being stupid, but saying yes anyway, and she remembers the way he looked at her after she said it.
That’s when she tries not to remember, because it doesn’t make her feel good. It kind of makes her skin crawl, actually remembering it. (It wasn’t right, she tells herself. It makes her feel bad because it wasn’t right, it wasn’t with her soulmate. When she finds her soulmate, she’ll love the way he looks at her.) She takes another shot of tequila, squeezes lime into her mouth, and tries to forget.
Tries.
At midnight, her friends all gather around her in the bathroom so they can see the tattoo form on her right arm. It begins starting with one letter: M.
“Ooh,” her friend Tracy squeals. “Manny Esposito.”
Alex rolls her eyes. “Manny has to man up and learn to take a shot before he can be my soulmate.”
“Mike Samson from bio!” exclaims Hannah, and Alex kind of wants to throw up. She can tell they’re trying to be supportive – naming guys that they find attractive, but their taste in boys is abysmal. A strong jawline or set of abs is enough to sway them, so she shushes them as the rest falls into place.
“9863 Olive Street,” reads Alex, “National City, CA, 22434, USA.”
Emery sighs. “Oh, no, does this mean you’re gonna transfer to some school in National City so you can be there quicker?”
Alex almost laughs. “My soulmate will be there when I get there, and I plan to get my medical degree before I move anywhere else. Don’t worry, guys, I’m not going anywhere.”
She brings them into a hug that’s slightly too warm because they’re all a little wasted, and Tracy starts crying a little, which Alex pretends not to hear. She doesn’t tell them that moving to National City so she can meet her soulmate is the last thing she wants to do. With her luck, her soulmate will be some gross douchebag that likes to wear more than one polo shirt at a time and will only want to get in her pants. She doesn’t want that, so the less time she spends thinking about her soulmate, the better.
~~~
She goes to five more parties before the year ends a month later, and she watches everyone around her lean in for a kiss when the ball drops at midnight. To be honest, they all look a little idiotic. She hopes that will never be her.
2008
She parties a lot more in the next year. She gets drunk almost every other weekend, and then it turns into every weekend, and then to Thursdays and Sundays and Mondays, sometimes, until the only time she’s sure she won’t have anything in her system is Tuesday nights, because that’s when her sister calls her, and she can’t disappoint her.
Kara is still in her junior year at Midvale High, and it’s been rough for her without Alex by her side. Alex kind of wants to be there for her and comfort her, but she also kind of wants to scream. Ever since Kara’s biological parents had died, it had been nothing but work for Alex. Work to be seen, to be cared for, to help Kara fit in. It was work to keep her life together, work to keep her friendships together, and work to pretend like it didn’t matter when she couldn’t.
She knows it makes her an awful person to think that. Kara had lost her family, and Alex had really only gained something when Kara came along. It wasn’t Kara’s fault that Jeremiah died. He was just protecting her. Sometimes kids step out into the road without looking, and sometimes cars are heading towards them, and sometimes their adoptive fathers push them out of the way and take the blow, instead.
(It’s not Kara’s fault, it’s not Kara’s fault – but Alex can’t help but think if it isn’t Kara’s, who else is left to blame?)
2009
School gets harder. Alex has always been able to stand out in academic settings, always been able to shine, but it isn’t so easy anymore. She supposes she could stop drinking – stop partying, stop smoking, stop getting so goddamn distracted – but she doesn’t. She tells herself if she works harder, she can do it. If she studies more, if she sleeps less, she can do it.
Her dad would say she could do it. He’s never been wrong.
Well, almost never.
2010
Alex gets put on academic probation in her last year of undergrad, just a week after her birthday. Her grades have been slipping and her attendance is abysmal and even though she started at Stanford as a perfect student, she knows she won’t end as one.
She thinks about quitting school, moving away to a city that no one will recognize her in. (Certainly not National City. Her sister lives there. Her soulmate lives there. One might think she’d want to live there too, but she can’t. She doesn’t know why, but thinking about it fills her with dread.)
She thinks about quitting life, too, if she’s being honest. It’s a Sunday morning, barely. It’s 3 a.m. and she’s just come from a party and it’s quiet. It’s the kind of quiet she used to have with her dad when they went stargazing. It’s the kind of quiet she used to have when she rode her bike around with Vicky, back when they were kids and before Vicky learned how to be a bitch. It’s the kind of quiet she misses, and the only way to get it is at the top of the parking structure in E lot at 3 a.m. on a Sunday morning.
She sits there, at the top, for a long time. She stares at the stars that she can hardly see because of the light pollution, but she knows they’re there. She stares at her clothes and her shoes and her hands and – when did she get so thin? Like, raggedly thin. When was the last time she drank something that wasn’t alcoholic? When was the last time she ate more than a granola bar at 8 p.m. because she didn’t want to get too drunk before the good part of the night? She doesn’t really know what ‘good part’ she’s talking about, because all of the parts of a party are equally as good and bad. She gets drunk and happy and light. People look at her like she’s the life of the party. Guys look at her like they want her in their lives. But then again, she gets drunk and unstable and light. People look at her like she’s the life of the party – but not much else. Guys look at her like they want in her pants, and she doesn’t know why that last part freaks her out so much.
Alex has always said that she’d become a doctor, but at the rate she’s going, it doesn’t look like she’s going to make it. She looks down at the ground – so far below her. She thinks if she were to fall, that everything would go away. Maybe it wouldn’t even hurt that badly. Maybe they would think it’s an accident.
Maybe it would fix everything.
She thinks about it for a long time. Too long of a time, because she’s still there when the sun rises and when students come to get their cars and when Kara calls her because some guy at NCU asked her on a date.
She thinks about what she was thinking about, about what she could have done.
She thinks about it until she can’t, until she decides she doesn’t ever want to think that way again. She thinks.
She walks away.
2011
She meets a man named J’onn J’onzz when she graduates from Stanford, just barely. He comes to her graduation, the one event that year that she’s been sober for.
He tells her that he knows her. He tells her about her incredible grades up until last year. He tells her about how she could have made it as a doctor, if she wanted to, and she thinks he’s lying (she knows he’s lying) but it’s flattering all the same. He tells her about herself, and when he offers her a job at the FBI in National City, the place she least wants to go, she accepts.
She questions it, a lot, how he came to her. Why, really. Why did this man come to Alex of all people? Alex Danvers who is broken and sad and wrong, and she asks him one day, because it seems too coincidental to be random. He says he was a friend of her father’s, and Alex doesn’t know what he means by that, but she trusts him.
~~~
She trusts him. He compliments her papers, but not without reason like other people have in the past. He knows what he’s talking about.
Each day at the FBI is made up of two separate pieces – research and training. From eight to noon, she looks at slides on microscopes and analyzes data, and she feels at home. From one to five, though, she learns to fight, and, somehow, she feels even more at home doing that.
J’onn says she’s skilled, much more so than he had been when he first started his training, and she’s proud of herself for that. He teaches her to throw a punch without breaking her thumb, and how to disarm someone with a gun, and how to beat a much larger and stronger opponent by using their strength against them. She learns and learns and learns, and when she thinks she can’t learn any more, she does.
One year exactly from that day on top of the parking structure – which he can’t possibly know about, she tells herself – he says she’s done with her training, and he lets her go out in the field.
Nothing has ever tasted this sweet.
2012
She meets Max in June. She’s been working for the FBI for a little over a year now, studying and researching and going out in to the field here and there, but nothing major. She hasn’t gotten drunk in almost six months. She’s had drinks, here and there. When Kara comes over and they drink wine and watch movies, or when her mom stops by and she drinks something a lot stronger than wine, but she hasn’t had too much in almost six months, and she’s proud of the fact. (She thinks about getting drunk a lot – turning up to a bar and drinking until she forgets. Forgets what, she doesn’t know, but she thinks she’ll know once she can’t remember it. She stops going to bars, because the thought is always too tempting.)
There’s a dead body, because there’s always a dead body when it comes to Alex’s life, and it’s at the address written on her arm. She’s scared, terrified, really, to go with J’onn to examine the body, but it’s her job. It’s her job, so she does it, and a man runs into her on the way to the apartment, and it just so happens to be someone with a soulmark that matches hers.
She doesn’t feel anything special when she sees him. He’s not handsomer or smarter or anything-er than any other man she’s ever seen, but he seems to be enamored with her. He’s a jerk to everyone else, her boss, the other lady on the elevator, but not her when he asks for her number. He asks her out for dinner the next day at seven, and she says yes, and she goes on with her job.
She tries to ignore how it feels like there’s a rock in her stomach.
~~~
The date is awkward, at first. They go through their histories, basically reciting what their obituaries will sound like in sixty years: when and where they were born, siblings, schooling, jobs. He’s The Max Lord, the one that runs Lord Technologies, and she’s only a little impressed by it, if she’s being honest. She thinks maybe they’ll be the 0.1% of soulmates that don’t work out, because she doesn’t feel much of anything looking at him. Then again, she’s not disgusted or anything, so maybe this is just what it’s supposed to feel like. Maybe everyone else is just exaggerating.
But then it gets better. They talk about their jobs and he makes some decent jokes and he laughs at hers. He isn’t so bad. Cocky, sure, full of himself, yeah, but a bad person? No. Maybe she could learn to live with this.
At the end of the date, after they’ve ridden back to her apartment, he walks her to her door. He tells her he had a good time, and she repeats that she did too, even if she’s not sure if she’s telling the truth. Her words hang heavy in the air around them. This is the part where he kisses her goodnight, and Alex doesn’t know if she’s ready for that. She should be, of course. This is her soulmate, after all.
If there’s one word she can use to describe the kiss, it’s anticlimactic. It’s not necessarily bad, she thinks. It’s just not all that much better than her first kiss with Ian Spencer. Max tastes like wine instead of cheap beer, which is a nicer detail, she thinks, and she can feel a little bit of stubble above his top lip, which is a less-nice detail, and his lips are doing different things than Ian’s were, but she wouldn’t rate it much higher than a four and a half on a scale of one to ten. (Ian’s was a four, so she guesses that guys are improving, but they could stand to go up a lot higher.)
When it’s over, he opens his eyes and says, “You’re really good at that.”
Alex wants to return the compliment, say something like ‘you’re not so bad yourself,’ but even though she’s trained in deception, she’s scared he’ll find her out, so she just says, “Thanks.”
He asks her when he can see her again, and she says she’ll have to check her calendar, and he says okay and leaves. She isn’t sure why, but she feels a little like she might cry.
After an hour has passed of Alex sitting on her couch sipping whiskey, she realizes she hasn’t told anybody about any of this. Kara always calls her after her first dates, so Alex figures she should do the same. It might be nice to talk it out with someone. So she calls her sister.
Kara is beyond excited when she tells her, asking all sorts of questions, like ‘what’s his name’ and ‘what was he like’ and ‘did you have fun?’ Alex tells her that it was all fine, that she was expecting more, but it’s okay. Kara says that maybe Alex just isn’t used to it yet. After all, she hasn’t been with anyone since Ian Spencer. Alex says that she’s probably right and steers the conversation away from how she feels.
She tells Kara his name and how tall he is and what color his eyes are. Eventually, she tells her that he’s Max Lord, not just some random guy named Max, and that he runs Lord Technologies. Kara yells at her for burying the lead, the fact that she’ll most likely be married to one of the richest people in the world one day, let alone last year’s number two spot on Time’s Thirty Under Thirty list.
Kara tells her that she can’t wait to meet him, and Alex thinks she definitely can. She just hopes that by the time they progress to meeting the family, she’ll have fallen for him. (She thinks, of course she will have. He’s her soulmate. He’s handsome and smart and what is there not to fall for?)
~~~
She decides to have sex with him after their six-month anniversary. She can’t expect him to wait much longer, can she?
The date is nice. Max takes her out to the same restaurant that they went to on their first date, and they banter back and forth like they did that night. Alex feels calmer than she did that first night, though, because she has three shots before he picks her up. This will take the edge off, she thinks, but not an hour later, she’s feeling just as nervous as she was before.
She drinks four extra glasses of wine that night, after, and she hopes that it’s enough to dull whatever awareness she’ll have of the night. This isn’t normal, she thinks. This isn’t what she should be feeling. She must be broken, she thinks. She must be broken, and he can never know.
When it’s over, she feels… wrong. Everyone has always told her that she would feel complete when she finally had sex with her soulmate, like something had been missing all this time before, but she still feels empty.
It isn’t supposed to be like this.
He asks how she feels, if she liked it, and she lies. He doesn’t seem to notice, because he just kisses her cheek and falls asleep within minutes. Alex hopes he won’t wake up when tears fall from her eyes onto the pillow.
He doesn’t.
~~~
They go to a party on New Year’s Eve, one at Max’s company, and he introduces her to all his friends as his soulmate. His friends congratulate them, asking to see their soulmarks and looking both delighted and surprised to find that they match.
They kiss at midnight when the ball drops, and Alex vaguely remembers thinking that would never be her. It is, now. She’s with her soulmate and he wants to show her off and she’s not unhappy. This is what love must be.
2013
Alex throws herself into her work. She takes down criminal after criminal, and she can tell that J’onn is proud of her. She likes approval, craves it, really, but just knowing that she’s making the world a safer place is enough for her, most days. She would do the work without any praise at all, but J’onn’s tight-lipped smile and quiet, ‘Good job, Agent,’ makes her feel even better about everything.
~~~
Max says ‘I love you’ to her for the first time on their nine month anniversary. He describes it like flying, like when he’s with her nothing can go too wrong, and Alex thought she might’ve loved him before that, but knows that she doesn’t feel any of what he’s saying.
She says it back, anyway, though.
~~~
A few months after their first anniversary together, six months after she moves in to his apartment, Max proposes. It’s not that Alex hadn’t been expecting it, because most soulmates get engaged within two years of dating, but she wasn’t expecting it tonight.
It’s not a special night. Max is the type of person to make a big deal of a proposal, but he doesn’t. He asks her when they’re sitting on the couch watching some romantic comedy that Alex isn’t really paying attention to. He rubs his hand along her thigh the whole way through, and at the end, when Alex gets up to take the DVD out of the player, he asks her.
He asks her to marry him, and though she’s surprised, she says yes. He stands up to kiss her – a kiss that has progressed to a five, if she’s being generous – and Alex feels him smile into it. He’s happy.
Why isn’t she?
2014
They move out to a new apartment, and they get married, and it’s all fine. The wedding is small. Her mother and Kara come, and so do her coworkers, Lucy and J’onn and Vasquez, and it’s over within an hour. It doesn’t really hit her for a few more months that she’s really married, but the second it does, she realizes she feels trapped.
She can’t explain to anyone, not even herself, why that is.
2015
Work is still good. It feels a little more like coming home than stepping into her apartment does, if she’s being honest. She tests chemicals and runs experiments and beats the shit out of the occasional bad guy, and she doesn’t think she’ll ever get tired of doing exactly what she is now.
She doesn’t have to wait to get proven wrong, because J’onn promotes her to a higher security clearance a few weeks into the new year after she turns twenty-five, and she’s now officially the youngest person in FBI history with the title she holds.
Lucy throws a party for her during their lunch break, and in any other job the party might seem small, but the three balloons that J’onn allows Lucy to bring in along with the paper plates to hold their supermarket sheet cake that say, ‘It’s a girl/PROMOTION!’ are good enough for Alex.
Alex’s immediate thought upon getting home from work is to call Kara and tell her what happened, but she gets her voicemail. Alex tells her to call her back whenever she has time, but Kara just responds that she’s really busy.
(Alex [6:13 pm]: Hey are you free? I have something to tell you
Kara [6:57 pm]: I’m soooo sorry!!! I’m working overtime trying to sign all of Cat’s fanmail…. Is it important?
Alex [7:00 pm]: Not really. It’s stupid. Have fun at work
Kara [7:06 pm]: <3 )
Alex decides it doesn’t really matter all that much. She tells herself that when Kara calls her back tomorrow she can tell her, but Kara doesn’t call her back. Kara texts her pictures of dogs she sees the next day, but they don’t have a real conversation for two more, and when they do, it’s about what happened at Kara’s job. She seems to have forgotten all about the fact that Alex had something important to tell her.
Alex doesn’t really know how to bring it up, so she just doesn’t.
2016
Kara becomes a reporter in May, and Alex is invited to the party that Kara’s best friend, Winn, throws for her. She’s met him before, back when he was hopelessly in love with Kara. He has a J marked on his arm, nothing close to looking like a K, but the address was the same one where he met Kara, the Catco Worldwide Media building. Winn apparently thought that the universe had made some sort of mistake with his soulmark, given him the right address but the wrong initial.
Alex thought that was ridiculous. Never in recorded history had soulmarks ever been incorrect. Platonic? Sure. Unrequited? Very rarely. But wrong? Never.
Winn eventually got over Kara, shortly after he confessed his feelings for her and she had to show him her soulmark, dictating that her soulmate’s name started with an L, not a W. Kara had whined to Alex for a few days about how awkward it was between them, but they got through it, and Kara seemed to think they were stronger for it.
Either way, Alex knows that he and her sister are close, and that Winn is kind to her, which means Alex respects him. She shows up at the restaurant twenty minutes after the party is supposed to start, so as to avoid the awkward moments where there are barely any people present and nobody really knows what to do to pass the time until more people arrive.
Kara greets her enthusiastically at the door and hands her a donut before reaching into her back pocket and pulling out her phone. It has their mother’s name on the screen, and Kara doesn’t even look at Alex before picking up.
Alex has always known that Kara is closer to their mother than she ever has been, has always known that Kara is the favorite, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting when her mother congratulates Kara on her promotion.
She knows it shouldn’t, that the only reason Eliza didn’t say anything about hers was because Alex had never bothered to tell her, but she didn’t know how to bring it up. They almost never talk, so what was she supposed to do, call her mother up out of the blue and blatantly ask for her praise? No, that would mean admitting that her mother’s approval means something to her, and it doesn’t. It shouldn’t, because it’s not like she’s gotten any of it in the last ten or so years. (Besides, Alex thinks, Kara didn’t have to call Eliza up to tell her about the promotion. She probably didn’t have to introduce the topic, because their mother calls Kara almost weekly, and they both know that Eliza is the first one to ask if anything new or exciting has happened in Kara’s life.)
Eliza makes a comment about how she never hears anything about Alex’s job, and Alex fights back the urge to tell her that part of it might be because she was so adamant about how she didn’t want Alex to take the job in the first place.
(“Your father worked as a scientific researcher for the FBI, too, and it never brought him any good. Long hours, insufficient pay, terrible management. You don’t want to go into that, do you? Not when you’re going to have a family to think about one day.”)
Eliza doesn’t mean for her words to bite – or maybe she does, Alex will never know – but they do. They do, so Alex tells herself that she’ll stay for twenty more minutes after Kara hangs up and then give an excuse to leave.
She only lasts ten, because Winn comes up to her and asks if she’s feeling alright, tells her that she looks a little pale, and Alex tells him that she’s actually feeling sick and if he could tell Kara that she went home because she had a stomach ache, that would be great.
(It’s not a lie, exactly. Her stomach feels twisted up in knots, and the fact of it aches a whole damn lot.)
2017
Alex hasn’t been back to Olive Street, let alone Max’s old apartment – their old apartment – in two years. Max always points out that it’d be fun to visit the address on their arms one day, but Alex says she’s saving that for another day, one where they’re older. (She doesn’t say when they’re old – when they’re grey and have been married for fifty years – because she doesn’t like to think about that.) He always just sighs and says, “Okay.”
She goes back on June 29th, though. It’s a slow day, which they almost never have, so she’s just listening in on the police scanner when she hears the address.
“9863 Olive Road. Caucasian female, somewhere between fifty-five and sixty, found dead in her apartment.”
She turns off the scanner and stands up from her chair, grabbing her gun and badge and trying to make it out of the building without J’onn seeing her.
She fails, because J’onn sees her almost immediately and yells, “Hold it right there, Agent Danvers.”
She closes her eyes for a moment, then turns around with a smile on her face. “Good morning!” she says cheerily. “I was just going out to get some coffee. Would you like any?”
J’onn eyes the coffee cart not ten feet away. “Coffee?”
“Okay, fine,” Alex admits, dropping the smile. “I heard there was a murder near here and there’s been nothing good all day and I really just want to check it out.”
J’onn’s frown doesn’t budge.
“But I guess I’ll stay here and wait for something interesting to happen.” She begins to skulk back to her desk when she hears J’onn sigh.
“Just tell me if it’s anything we need to look into.”
“Really?”
“Don’t make me regret this.”
~~~
She’s at the old apartment building within ten minutes, a serious expression on her face. She can’t look too excited at the site of what could be a crime.
“What do you got?” she says to an eager-looking cop outside the apartment. (It’s on the same floor she met Max – she tries to quiet the nerves in her stomach, because, really, why are they there?)
“Caucasian female, somewhere between fifty five and –“
“I know, I saw the scanner. I mean what have you figured out while you’ve been here?”
“Oh,” he says, clearing his throat and standing up straighter. “We’re thinking it’s natural causes, but there were signs of a struggle, so we’re not entirely sure.”
“Door busted in?”
“No.”
“Hmm.” She catches the eye of a woman inside the apartment looking like she couldn’t care less about the crime that may have just occurred. Well, not in comparison to Alex, anyway. Alex doesn’t know what it is, but something about the woman makes Alex feel… different. Calmer, maybe? Like the sight of this woman has just soothed all her nerves. (It hasn’t, of course. That would be ridiculous. Still.)
“Good work,” Alex finishes, walking over to the woman.
Alex’s gaze stays on her, because she’s beautiful in the way not many people are. She’s not tall or blonde or fair – quite the opposite of those things, actually – but she has an intensity that Alex wonders if she matches, and there’s a smile present in her eyes before her lips give it away. The detective, Alex assumes, since Alex is the only one in the room not with the NCPD, approaches her, too, and she somehow seems like the most confident person she’s ever seen and a nervous wreck at the same time.
It isn’t until she’s right in front of the detective that she realizes that even in the heat – which is pretty characteristic for this time of year – she’s wearing a long, oversized police jacket and tight black jeans that make her look like she had to pour herself into them. (Alex isn’t staring at her legs, but she doesn’t think anyone would blame her if she were, because this woman is obviously very attractive.) It makes her a little self-conscious of what she’s wearing, seeing this woman look so good. She’s in dress pants and a white short-sleeved blouse that usually pairs with a blazer, but seeing how hot it was, she opted to leave the FBI building without it. (She knows her soulmark is uncovered, knows that anyone who isn’t blind can see that they’re at the address on her arm, but she doesn’t think anyone will comment on it. The woman, however, keeps glancing at it, like it’s given her what she’s always wanted, or something like that.)
“Hi,” says the detective. “Detective Maggie Sawyer, NCPD. And you are?”
“Agent Alex Danvers, FBI.”
Something inside the woman – Maggie – clicks, because she’s suddenly smiling so hard that Alex thinks she might hurt herself.
“Wow. I’ve been waiting a while for you.”
Alex is about to ask what she means when she hears someone in the background say, “Sir, you’re not allowed to be here,” and before she can turn around, arms are snaking around her waist. (She fights back the urge to bring her elbow back and hit whoever had their hands on her in the ribs, but she doesn’t, because she looks down and knows that it’s Max.)
“Max?” she asks, turning around. He kisses her as soon as their faces are close enough together, and in the second before she closes her eyes, she can see Maggie’s smile dim in the corner of her vision.
Max’s kiss is filled with heat, like they all are. He wants her, and Alex knows it, but she doesn’t have time and they’re certainly not in an appropriate place, so she pulls away and looks down, clearing her throat. Max unhooks his arms from around her, instead stepping next to her and wrapping only one around her waist.
“Max,” she repeats, “why are you here?”
“I heard from J’onn that you were heading back here, and I wanted to come see you.” He turns to look at Maggie, flashing her a self-satisfied grin and holding out his hand for her to shake. “Max Lord.”
She doesn’t take it. Instead, she says, “Pleasure,” her acidic tone a stark contrast to the light one she was using earlier.
He looks a little taken back, but he doesn’t say anything. Maggie looks at Alex expectantly, though, so Alex does.
“Sorry, Detective, this is my husband, Max.”
He scoffs. “‘Husband.’ She likes to downplay it. I’m her soulmate.” (Something changes in Maggie’s eyes, but Alex can’t place what it is.) He pauses to look Maggie up and down, and Alex doesn’t know why, but Maggie fidgets with her right sleeve, pulling it down as if her arm hadn’t already been covered. “You are?”
“Detective Maggie Sawyer,” she says coldly.
“Right,” says Max, any hint of politeness leaving his eyes as he realizes that Maggie isn’t going to be nice to him. “I was just stopping by. I should get going.” He places a kiss on Alex’s cheek before turning to the detective. “Goodbye,” he says, almost gloatingly.
Alex clears her throat once he’s left. “Sorry about him. He doesn’t understand professionalism.”
“It’s fine. I better get back to work.”
“Right,” she says, but she can’t say she isn’t surprised. She thought they were going to have some sort of conversation, by the way Maggie had been looking at her. “Bye, Maggie.”
“Bye, Al–“” She pauses mid-word and forces out a cough. “Goodbye, Danvers.”
She walks away, and she doesn’t look back, and Alex doesn’t think she’ll ever see her again.
She’s wrong.
~~~
She’s wrong, because not a day after she sees the NCPD has classified the Olive Street case as natural causes, Maggie Sawyer is at the FBI building speaking angrily with J’onn.
“We missed something,” she says, and Alex rolls her chair back so she can see Maggie’s face. She’s beautiful – not that she wasn’t when they first met – with loose, dark curls running down her shoulders. Her eyes are full of passion, like Alex knew they were meant to look, and they’re the perfect shade of brown. (Alex has never been one for brown eyes. She just didn’t think they were anything special, but Maggie’s prove her wrong.)
“And you’re coming to me because?” replies J’onn, arms crossed.
“Because my captain doesn’t believe me, but I think you will.”
“Oh?” he says, eyebrows raising.
“Yeah. Something’s off, Director J’onzz, and if you just look through the report you’ll see it, too.”
He doesn’t speak for a moment, but when he does, he says, very calmly, “Agent Danvers, would you like to join us?”
Alex nearly falls out of her chair, but coughs to cover the sound of her stumbling, and smooths out her outfit. (She can’t help but chastise herself for wearing what’s basically the same outfit she was wearing the first time she saw Maggie, because Maggie clearly isn’t. Light-wash jeans that curve around her body perfectly, a grey long-sleeved shirt with buttons only half-way down the length of it, just a few undone so she can see the beginning of – what is she doing?)
“Yes, Director?” she asks, trying to look like she wasn’t just spying on them.
Maggie sees right through her.
“Detective Sawyer here would like to present a case to us. I’m too busy, but since you had time to listen in on our conversation, I’m assuming you aren’t.”
Alex tries not to blush, but she’s not sure how she does. She’d think that Maggie would give her an indication of what her face looks like, but she doesn’t react. “Of course. I have time.”
“Director,” says Maggie, turning her attention to J’onn, “I was really hoping to have someone else look this over for me.”
“Is there a problem you have with Agent Danvers?”
“No, but –”
“Perfect. Alex,” he says, turning to her, “go out with Detective Sawyer for the day. Look over the case.” He looks down at his watch, and Alex knows it’s nearly half past three. “Actually, don’t come back. Once you’re done with her, you should go home and get some rest. I know these past few days have been tiring.”
She kind of wants to strangle J’onn for that, because he knows she’s been bored out of her mind this week, but she doesn’t, because coming to work is the highlight of her day, no matter how boring it is, and murdering the director might get her fired.
“Right,” she says as J’onn leaves. She turns to Maggie to say something, anything to make the situation less awkward, but Maggie has already turned and begun walking out the door.
Alex follows, setting her pace faster so she can walk side by side with the detective who seems to hate her guts.
“Something wrong?” she asks, voice hard.
“Nope,” Maggie says, and there’s no room for discussion in her tone.
They arrive out front, and Alex immediately sees a motorcycle. It’s nice, no doubt about it. Black and leather, a Triumph Bonneville, if Alex isn’t mistaken, and Maggie just looks at her.
“This yours?” she asks Maggie.
“Yup.”
Alex doesn’t say anything, which leads to Maggie rolling her eyes.
“What, not a fan of bikes, Danvers? Wouldn’t have pegged you that way.”
“Me? No, no I like bikes. I have one of my own, actually. It’s just that I got a ride to work today.”
“Oh?”
“Which means I have no way to get wherever we’re going.”
Maggie’s eyes flit to her bike, then back to Alex. “I have an extra helmet, you know.”
~~~
Alex has never been one of those girls who sits behind a guy on a motorcycle and holds on to his waist just a little tighter than really necessary to stay on. She still isn’t, because Maggie isn’t some guy she’s interested in, and if she’s gripping Maggie’s (incredibly toned) abs more tightly than necessary, it’s only because she’s never ridden on the back of a motorcycle before, and it’s a little different than riding her own. When she’s riding her own bike, she knows how to turn corners and speed up and come to a stop without falling off. Being a passenger, though? It’s terrifying.
Logically, she doesn’t know why it is. She’s never been anything close to nervous to ride before, so she doesn’t know where it’s coming from. All she knows is that she must be scared, because her heart is beating out of her chest, thumping against Maggie’s back. (She wonders if Maggie can feel it – if Maggie thinks Alex is a wimp or that she was lying about having her own bike, because she wouldn’t be acting like this if she were telling the truth, would she?)
Maggie doesn’t comment, though. Alex rests her chin in the crook between Maggie’s shoulder and neck and breathes in a smell that she knows must be the most tantalizing perfume out there. Maggie smells warm and oaky, and whatever fragrance she’s wearing, Alex has got to get some of her own, because she doesn’t ever want to stop breathing it in.
She tries to concentrate on just Maggie’s smell, and nothing else. She doesn’t focus on the fact that her chest is pressed up to Maggie so closely that she must be able to feel the outline of her breasts. She doesn’t think about the fact that her arms are looped around Maggie’s waist in the same way that Max is always doing with her. And she definitely doesn’t think about the fact that she’s pushed up against Maggie’s ass, because that’s not something that she should be concerned about. Why would she be? She doesn’t think about any of that.
It’s somehow too soon and not soon enough when they finally pull up to where they’re going, and Alex immediately removes herself from Maggie. She stands up from the bike, her legs feeling shaky for some reason, and takes a deep breath.
“You okay, Danvers?”
“Me? Yeah. Yes. Fine.” She looks up at the sign on the building, and whatever she was expecting, it certainly wasn’t this. “Denny’s?”
“You don’t like pancakes?”
Alex shrugs. “I like pancakes.”
They head inside and a lanky boy with acne covering his cheeks and clunky glasses sitting on the bridge of his nose leads them to a booth in the back.
“I’m Dan and I’ll be your server for today. If you need anything, let me know. I’m happy to help,” he says, though he doesn’t sound all that happy to be there. He hands them their menus and heads back to the front desk.
Alex looks over at Maggie, and she was about to crack a joke, but after looking at her she doesn’t really feel like it. Maggie doesn’t open her menu, just pulls the case file out of her bag and plops it on the table in front of Alex.
“Everyone at the station thinks she died of natural causes, but I’ve got a feeling it’s something more than that,” she says.
Alex picks the case folder up and flips through. Cassandra Robinson, née Stevens, fifty-seven years old at the time of death, newly divorced from one Evan Robinson.
“Her ex-husband?” Alex asks.
“They got married after she got pregnant at nineteen. They weren’t soulmates, but they moved out to the city where they were both supposed to meet theirs, anyway.”
“That seems like a bad move,” Alex mutters.
Maggie seems like she’s about to reply when their waiter comes back.
“Can I get you two started on drinks?” he asks.
“I’ll have a lemonade,” says Maggie. “Oh, can I also get the blueberry pancake breakfast?”
Dan nods and pulls out a pad of paper in his apron, writing it down. “And for you, ma’am?” he asks, looking at Alex.
“Water. And the same.”
“Right.” He stuffs the pad of paper back in his apron and stacks the menus in his arms. “I’ll be back with your drinks shortly.”
He leaves, and Alex finds herself smirking at Maggie.
“What?” Maggie asks.
“Blueberry pancake breakfast? It’s nearly four in the afternoon.”
Maggie shrugs. “You’ve never heard of breakfast for dinner? Plus, if I’m not mistaken, you ordered the same.”
“Only because I didn’t want you to feel awkward,” Alex defends.
“Gee, I didn’t think you cared, Danvers.”
“Yeah, well.”
Dan comes over with their drinks, then, and Maggie takes a sip of her unnaturally yellow lemonade.
“What exactly makes this look like a murder to you?”
“There were signs of a struggle in her apartment.”
“Okay, but don’t people reach out and grab things when they’re having a heart attack or choking? That’s not that unusual.”
“Maybe, but her neighbor reported seeing her ex-husband leaving the building at the estimated time of death.”
“Did you bring him in for questioning?”
“Of course,” says Maggie, taking the straw from her glass of lemonade into her mouth. Alex isn't sure why, but the simple action is fascinating enough for her to stare at Maggie’s lips around the straw for a few moments. (They look soft. Definitely more so than Max’s, Alex thinks.)
“Danvers?” Maggie asks when she’s done taking a long sip. Alex looks up from her lips to her eyes to see they’re full of questions. “You good?”
“Yeah.” She clears her throat and rolls her shoulders back. “Did anything come of your little chat with the guy?”
Maggie shakes her head. “Nope. I mean, he was suspicious as hell, but he swears he never set foot in her apartment, and we didn’t find any of his fingerprints.”
“Hm,” mutters Alex, flipping through the pages of the case, trying to find something – anything – incriminating enough to bring him in for questioning. She knew his type, and it was the type to flee the country whenever the law came down on them. Judging from his rather empty bank account, though, it would take him a few days to secure enough money to book a flight overseas, so they had at least a little bit of time.
“You don’t think it was a murder, do you?” asks Maggie. Her eyes are so much colder than they were the first time they met. Alex feels like she might just freeze.
“Maggie –“
“Well, I do. And I know my department head doesn’t believe me, but I’ll find a way to prove it before this jackass walks free. The autopsy won’t be for a few days because the captain isn’t pegging it as a homicide, but I’ll find a way.”
Maggie is passionate, is what Alex gains from that sentence. Maggie is passionate and headstrong and won’t back down when she believes in something, which makes Alex hope they can be friends. She could imagine being friends with Maggie for a long time.
“I never said that,” is what Alex says eventually. “You didn’t let me finish.”
“Then what were you going to say?”
“I was going to say that I think you’re right. I think something fishy is going on here.”
Maggie’s eyes soften, but only just for a moment. In the second that Alex has realized something has changed, they’re back to looking distant and cold like they were before. (Alex knows this should discourage her. Maggie doesn’t seem to like her – at all – but she feels something in her gut that tells her they’ll be in each other’s lives for a while.)
The food comes while they’re still looking over the case, and while Alex isn’t all that hungry, Maggie says she is, and that she could eat an entire elephant. Alex barely touches the food she ordered, knowing she can eat when she gets home if she’s hungry.
She offers Maggie some of her food when she sees that the woman across from her has gobbled up most of her eggs within thirty seconds from the time her plate touched the table.
Maggie catches Alex watching her and chuckles a little awkwardly. “I swear I don’t usually eat this much, I just forgot to pack lunch today.”
“No, no, it’s fine. Believe me, my sister is way worse than you will ever be. I’m actually not that hungry, do you want any of mine?”
Maggie shakes her head. “I couldn’t.”
“Sure you could,” replies Alex, scooting her plate closer to Maggie. “Just take what you want.”
Maggie still looks hesitant.
“Seriously,” Alex reiterates. “I had a big lunch, and my husband loves to cook dinner for us. He might be upset if I’m too full to have any of the meal he’s gonna make.” Of course, Max doesn’t actually cook dinner for the two of them since he’s rarely ever home before nine, but Maggie doesn’t need to know that.
Maggie deflates a little at the last part of the sentence, and Alex wonders if she has a husband at home, too. She considers asking if Maggie has met her soulmate yet – not that she’s all that curious, she tells herself – but Maggie is quick to change the topic.
“Thanks, Danvers,” Maggie returns, giving a wide smile. “Tell me if I’m stealing too much of your food, though, okay?”
Alex doesn’t know why she feels out of breath when she answers, “Okay.”
By the end of dinner, Maggie has softened considerably, even giving Alex her phone number in case she makes a break in the case.
Alex doesn’t know why, but her stomach flips when their hands touch as Maggie hands her back her phone.
After they finish eating, Maggie drives Alex back to her apartment on her motorcycle, and Alex is just as nervous to be on the back of the bike as she was before. Maggie smells sweeter than she did on the ride there, though, like she’d bathed in sugar.
Alex has always had a sweet tooth.
~~~
Alex pores over the case for hours after she gets home. She pours herself some cereal at eight, reading, and Max gets home a little after that.
“Hey,” he says, pulling off his tie.
Alex doesn’t look up. “Hey.”
“What’s that?” he asks, leaning over her shoulder
“Some case that Maggie wants me to look at.”
“Maggie?”
“That detective you met the other day.”
It takes him a second, but then he’s saying, “Maggie, the one who really doesn’t like me?”
Alex shrugs. “I guess you could say that.”
“I definitely could,” he says, kissing her cheek.
“I’m working,” she replies, pulling away.
“We could work on something else…”
Alex pretends to think about it, for his sake. It’s an easy thing to say no to – spending her time doing something she wants to do versus something she doesn’t – but she doesn’t want to hurt his feelings, so she pauses for a few moments like she’s mulling it over. “As fun as that sounds, I really should work on this.”
Max sighs and pulls away. “Tell me if you change your mind. I’m gonna go to bed.”
“Goodnight,” says Alex absentmindedly, and she’s back to focusing on the case.
~~~
It’s two in the morning before she decides to go to sleep. She says she’ll flip through one more time to see if she can catch anything unusual and then go to bed so she can look it over tomorrow with fresh eyes, but that’s when she finds it.
She calls Maggie up immediately, not bothering to wonder if she’ll still be awake until the phone is ringing and it’s too late to hang up.
“Hello?” She answers the phone with her raspy I-was-just-asleep voice that makes something in Alex’s gut swoop. She briefly wonders what it is and why it’s there, but she doesn’t have time to dwell on it.
“Maggie, it’s Alex.”
“Danvers?”
“We have to go to the morgue where Cassandra Robinson is.”
Maggie clears her throat and doesn’t answer for a second. “It’s 2:12 in the morning. Is this important?”
“You won’t regret coming down, believe me. Just meet me there in twenty minutes, okay?”
She sighs, but says “okay” all the same.
~~~
Alex meets Maggie at the morgue in eighteen minutes, Maggie in an untucked white button up and tight black jeans that give Alex a perfect view of –
Nothing.
Maggie definitely looks like she just woke up, but she’s still somehow gorgeous. Her hair is pulled up in a messy bun, like she hadn’t had time to brush it, but it’s still beautiful. Alex doesn’t think she’s wearing any makeup, but her skin is still flawless, somehow. Maggie brings a cup of coffee to her lips and closes her eyes before saying, “You called?”
“I did.” Alex replies. “Can you lead us to where she is?”
Maggie nods and pushes open the door, flashing her badge to the security guard who nods at them.
Alex has seen dead bodies before – way too many, actually – but this one looks different. She doesn’t look peaceful, like most do. Alex has always taken comfort in the fact that at least in death she wouldn’t be stuck in her worries, but looking at this woman, she’s not so sure.
“So?” asks Maggie, breaking Alex out of her thoughts. “What did you need to show me?”
“Her neck,” says Alex, pulling a makeup wipe out of her back pocket. “Does it look weird to you?”
Maggie takes a closer look, furrowing her brow. “I guess a little…”
Alex swipes the wipe across Cassandra’s neck, and sure enough, a thick layer of concealer is removed. Underneath it, Alex can see dark purple marks.
“Shit,” says Maggie.
“Cause of death: asphyxiation.” She turns to face Maggie. “She was strangled.”
Maggie is staring at her with a mix of appreciation and awe in her gaze. “Wow, Danvers. You really came through.”
Alex doesn’t know why, but she’s blushing. “Seems that way.”
~~~
They’re at Evan Robinson’s house within twenty minutes, and Maggie is knocking on his door with her badge in her other hand.
“Police, open up!”
He opens the door with a yawn, clad in a worn-out blue robe.
“Yes?”
“We’d like to ask you some questions, Mr. Robinson,” says Maggie coolly.
“It’s almost four in the morning, can’t this wait?”
“No. We have reason to believe you’re guilty of the murder of your ex-wife, Cassandra Robinson.”
He clears his throat. “I thought she died of natural causes.”
“So did we. Recently some new evidence has come up, though.”
“Right.”
His eyes dart around the room, and Alex thinks for a second that he’s about to run, but he just sighs and says, “I’m innocent.”
“Okay,” is all Maggie says back. “We just need to confirm that.”
“Right,” he repeats, but he comes with them anyway.
~~~
Evan is in the interrogation room for two hours before he confesses. It’s not by any fault of Maggie – definitely not, because Alex has seen a lot of interrogators before and Maggie is by far the most competent she’s ever seen – just that he seems to be very stubborn. It takes a good cop/bad cop bit for him to finally confess. Alex is the bad cop, because even though Maggie insists that she can be intimidating too, Alex doesn’t think anyone will get scared by her dimples and soft eyes. (She doesn’t tell her that, though.)
It turns out that he did it because Cassandra found her soulmate and divorced him. Alex figured that was the reason, but she couldn’t be sure until he told them. Maggie leaves him in the interrogation room and tells her captain she’ll have the report done by tomorrow, but right now she’s going to go home to sleep.
“Nice work, Danvers,” she says.
Alex shrugs. “It was no big deal.”
“Yeah it was. I owe you big time.”
“I guess I’ll take you up on that, then.”
Maggie just smiles and ducks her head before walking out.
Alex can’t help but stare at her retreating figure.
~~~
They text after that night at the morgue. It’s nothing big or long or exciting, but every time Alex’s phone dings, she feels her heart skip a beat. (She knows that’s not possible. She may not have actually gone to medical school, but she was about to. She sat through enough biology courses to know that when you feel your heart ‘skip a beat,’ it’s actually your heart adding an extra one, but that doesn’t sound like what she feels. She feels… alive. That’s really the only way she can describe it.)
They don’t talk about anything in particular. Sometimes it’s about work, sometimes it’s about The O.R., the grossly inaccurate medical drama that Alex hates to love and loves to hate, and once it was even about whether aliens exist or not. (Alex and Maggie are both firmly of the belief that it’s stupid to think Earth is the only planet in the universe that holds life.) They just talk.
They plan to go to Denny’s again the next week. Really, they planned to do it the day after they arrested Evan Robinson – or, technically, later that day, since it had occurred at 4 a.m., but it didn’t happen because the second Alex got home from work, she passed out. The next day Maggie had plans with her friend M’gann, and the day after that was date night for Alex and Max and – it really just wasn’t working out.
They meet at Denny’s on a Tuesday almost a week after they last were together, and Alex’s heart is practically singing. She spends more time than she thinks she ever has looking in the mirror, parting her hair different ways, straightening and curling it, applying different shades of eyeliner and lipstick. Alex has always said that she didn’t care much about what other people think about her, given how little time she spent fussing over her appearance before dates with Max, but she’s just now thinking that she’s wrong about this, because she’s beyond nervous to look good for Maggie. (This must be a friend thing, Alex thinks. She hasn’t had many friends since her junior year of college. Emery and Tracy and Hannah, her friends from freshman biology, had faded into the background after she got too big on parties. She thinks for a second that she should reach out, see what they’re up to, but shoots the thought down. They were never that close, anyway, just using each other for study group members and designated drivers. Maggie, however, is someone she wants to use for more than convenience. Maggie is someone she wants around her for a long time.)
Maggie orders the blueberry pancake meal, again, only she doesn’t gobble the eggs down as quickly as she did last time. Alex decides on a burger, because it’s “not anywhere near time for breakfast, Maggie.”
(“It’s 9 am somewhere, Danvers.”
“Is that how the saying goes?”
“Obviously. Why, have you heard it some other way?”
“I can’t say I have.”)
Alex tells Maggie a lot about herself in the two hours they spend in the booth. She talks about getting recruited to the FBI, about the awful movies her sister makes her watch, about how she wanted to be a doctor before life got in the way.
Alex also doesn’t tell Maggie about a lot, though. She doesn’t talk about her dead dad and the mother who doesn’t think she can do anything right, or about the downward spiral she was riding for years before J’onn got to her. She definitely doesn’t tell her about the fact that it wasn’t really life that got in the way of her becoming a doctor, but her own shortcomings.
(She likes Maggie, but some things she doesn’t even share with her soulmate, let alone someone she barely knows, no matter how much she wants to change that.)
Maggie tells Alex a lot about herself, too. She talks about growing up in Bumfuck, Nebraska, about working her way up at the academy, about being a lesbian. (Alex tries not to react at that information, not to give her surprise away, because she knows it’s 2017 and gay people are everywhere and look just like everyone else, but Maggie really doesn’t look like a lesbian. If she looks anything but straight, she looks just plain old gay. Not like a lesbian. Lesbian seems like a word that can’t apply to someone as beautiful and funny and wonderful as Maggie is.)
Maggie also doesn’t tell Alex about a lot. She doesn’t talk about her family, about all the ex-girlfriends she’s disappointed by being too focused on work, about the woman she met the other day who may very well be her soulmate.
Well, she talks about that last one a little.
“So you’ve got a soulmate at twenty-seven?” Maggie asks, taking a bite of her pancake.
“Well, I will be twenty-eight in December.”
“I’m guessing you didn’t meet him this year, though, if you’re already married.”
“No. I met him a few years ago,” Alex says, a little curious as to where this is going.
“And you were….”
“Twenty-two.”
“Shit, Danvers, can’t believe you were so young when you met the person you’re going to be with forever.” (Alex feels her throat tighten, but she can’t explain why. She never can.) “I wish I’d met mine then, too.”
“I’m sure you’ll meet him – “ She clears her throat. “Her, soon.”
“Yeah, well. Maybe I already have.” Maggie looks like she regrets saying the words as soon as they leave her mouth.
“Wait, what?”
“Yeah,” she says nonchalantly. “I think I might have met her the other day, but I’m not sure. Either way, she didn’t seem interested.”
Alex scoffs. That’s impossible. Alex is straight, obviously, but even she can see how gorgeous Maggie is. She’s charming and beautiful and smart, and anyone would be lucky to be with her. “Not interested? That’s crazy, who wouldn’t be interested in you?”
Maggie shrugs. “She didn’t seem to be.”
“Well, maybe she’s not your soulmate.”
“Yeah. Maybe. I’m sure lots of people have M’s on their arms with the same address as mine,” she says, and from anyone else’s mouth it might sound sarcastic, but Maggie seems to truly be trying to convince herself of the fact.
“You’re right. I bet there’s been some study on it, collecting the data on how many people there are out there with the same soulmarks,” Alex offers.
Maggie chuckles lightly. “When you find it, send it over. I’d love to read it.”
There’s a moment of silence, and Alex suddenly feels the most awkward she’s ever felt in Maggie’s presence. “So, can I see yours?” she asks. Some people are really private about them, like they think it’s bad luck to show other people, but considering that Maggie just talked about her soulmate, Alex doesn’t think she’s one of them.
Maggie shakes her head, though. “No way!” she jokes. “You’ll take me to the address on my arm every chance we get and constantly ask people their names hoping to find her. I’m not up for that, Danvers.” There’s a smile on her lips, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.
“Damn, Sawyer,” replies Alex, copying Maggie’s use of her last name. “You know me so well.”
~~~
Alex and Kara get together most Wednesday nights for what they call Sister Night, which is basically just an excuse for them to eat ice cream out of the container and watch bad TV. Either way, Alex enjoys it. Kara is the only person besides Max, Lucy, and now Maggie, she guesses, that she could consider a friend. It’s a little sad, she thinks, that her only friends are her little sister, her husband, her co-worker, and some cop she’d met a little over a week prior.
She knocks on the door to Kara’s apartment with two pints of ice cream in tow. Kara opens the door almost immediately and pulls her into a bone-crushing hug.
“Come in,” Kara says, shutting the door once Alex steps in. “I’m starving.”
“Well, when was the last time you ate?”
Kara pauses, thinking. “I had a burrito like an hour ago.”
“Only one burrito?” Alex asks, pretending to be shocked. “You must be famished.”
“Shut up,” says Kara, shoving her lightly. “Pizza should be here in ten minutes and I have this week’s episode of O.R. recorded and ready to play.”
When Kara pulls her hand away, Alex looks down at the sunkissed skin of her arm, marked with the only details she knows about her soulmate. A sharp ‘L,’ followed by an address maybe twenty minutes from her apartment is written on her forearm, and Alex remembers the day she got it.
Kara called her immediately after midnight on her eighteenth birthday, which is not what happened to Alex. Alex couldn’t call her sister on her birthday because she was getting drunk, wasn’t she? She was getting drunk and pushing away a tipsy Evan Miller after he tried to feel her up. She was getting drunk and trying not to think about the day she would meet her soulmate. (Why did it scare her so much?) Kara called her, though, and squealed into the phone. Alex made fun of her, reciting names with the same initial – Lance, Larry, Lewis – and telling her that her soulmate would come soon, just like Kara had done for her.
Kara loved to point out names that could be the name of her soulmate. It didn’t bother her as much as it did when her friends from college did it, but it still didn’t feel great. To counter the feeling, Alex would change the subject to Kara’s soulmate, instead.
Alex was almost relieved when she finally met Max, if only because that would mean Kara wouldn’t come up with any more possibilities.
They’re ten minutes into watching The O.R. and eating pizza when Kara points to a character who has just been introduced and says, “Wow, she’s pretty.”
Alex doesn’t realize that she’s saying, “She reminds me of Maggie,” until it’s out of her mouth.
Kara pauses the show and furrows her brows. “Who’s Maggie?”
“What?”
“Maggie. You just said that Dr. Parisi reminded you of her. Who is she?”
“Oh, she’s just a friend I made at work.”
“You made a friend?” Kara asks, mock surprise in her voice.
Alex shoves her. “Shut up, I can make friends.”
“Yeah, I know. So, she’s new at the FBI?”
“No, she’s a cop, actually.”
“Oh? How’d you meet her?”
“There was a murder at Max’s old apartment and I got bored and went to check it out.”
“The apartment where you met him?”
“That’s the one.”
Kara laughs. “So you met Maggie – with an M – at the same address that’s written on your arm?”
“Yeah?”
“Maybe she’s your soulmate,” she jokes.
Alex just laughs. “Yeah, maybe.”
She wants to return her attention to the show, but she can’t help but notice the sinking feeling in her stomach.
~~~
Alex has noticed that Maggie never calls her by her first name. She calls her Danvers instead, no matter what.
They’ve grown closer in the past few weeks since that day at Denny’s. They’ve talked and laughed and shared, but never too much. Never enough for Maggie to wonder if Alex Danvers is not who she appears to be.
They’re drinking at a bar down the street from Maggie’s station, and Alex has had a bit too much to drink. She feels light and happy, and she knows Max would be concerned that she’d get lost in the bottom of a bottle, but she feels safe and secure with Maggie. She feels like she’ll know to stop after this beer, that she won’t get too tempted to have another shot to numb something inside of her.
Alex realizes she’s grinning like an idiot when Maggie sets her drink down mid-swig and laughs at her.
“Wow, Danvers, you smiley goof. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drunk.”
“Me? I’m not drunk.” Alex hiccups. “Okay, maybe I’m a little drunk.”
“A rare sight. I’m glad you trust me so much to show me,” Maggie jokes. “It’s a real honor.”
Alex laughs. “It wasn’t always.”
“Shit, right,” says Maggie, smile dropping from her face. “I forgot.”
“It’s fine, don’t worry. I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m okay. It’s been a long time since I got drunk every night. I’ve learned to appreciate the finer things in life, like not being doubled over a toilet every morning.”
“Yeah, I hear that’s rough,” Maggie jokes, but her laugh doesn’t sound as full as it usually does.
They sit for a few moments in silence, sipping their drinks, before Alex says, “So, what’s up with your life?”
Maggie shrugs. “Not much.” She pauses, reconsidering. “Well, I got dumped last night.”
“What? You got dumped?”
“Yeah, try not to act so surprised.”
“Who would – who would even do that?”
Maggie shrugs again. “She did. Convincingly.”
Alex pauses before saying, “Do you know why?”
“She’s ready to settle down. You know, with her soulmate. And I’m… not that.”
“You don’t seem all that broken up about it.”
“Yeah, well she wasn’t mine either.” Maggie looks up at her for a moment, something that Alex can’t place twinkling in her eye. It’s gone before Alex can really wonder what it was, because then Maggie is saying, “It was nice. She was an amazing kisser – and when I say amazing, I do mean truly spectacular - but it wasn’t anything serious.” She takes a sip of her drink. “But you! You’re married to yours. What’s that like?”
Alex thinks for a minute. “It’s good. Max is… there.”
“Just there? Come on, Danvers, you have to give me the dirty details here.”
“I don’t know. Max is kind of an asshole to everyone, but not to me. Well, not since we first met, anyway. He’s just, sort of, solid. There. Like he’ll be around forever.”
“Of course he will. He’s your soulmate.”
“Yeah.” Alex looks down at her beer, suddenly not feeling so happy anymore.
“Are you okay?” Maggie asks, concern evident in her voice.
“Yeah, yeah, of course.” She thinks she’s done, but then her mouth opens up and she’s saying things that she would have the good judgment not to if she were sober. “I don’t know, Maggie, it’s just not what I pictured.”
“And what did you picture?”
“Well, nothing, really. I didn’t like to think of my soulmate before I met him. I was so scared I was going to end up with some gross guy, but Max isn’t like that, not really. He’s smart and handsome and he cares about me. He wants to be with me forever.” Alex sounds like she’s going to continue, but she doesn’t.
“But?” Maggie prompts.
“But… it’s not how everyone describes it. Being with your soulmate. Being with anyone, really. He’s always there for me. Like my sister. He’s the person I talk to most, besides you, maybe,” Alex says. She wonders if she’s said too much, but she’s a little too drunk to really care. She continues. “But everyone says that being with your soulmate is the best thing that could ever happen to you. That every kiss is electric and exciting, and every touch leaves you wanting more and that’s just…”
“Not what you feel.”
Alex just nods.
“Alex,” says Maggie with something in her voice she doesn’t know how to analyze. She reaches out to touch her, and it dawns on Alex that it’s the first time she’s heard that from her, that she’s Alex and not Danvers, which makes her think that she’s definitely said too much.
“I have to go,” she says, yanking her hand away like Maggie’s approaching touch was going to burn her. She gets up from her seat and pulls out her wallet.
“Alex, don’t go,” says Maggie.
“No, it’s late. I should get back home to Max. My husband. My soulmate.” She plops down a fifty dollar bill next to Maggie’s drink. “Tell them to keep the change.”
She walks out feeling somehow lighter and heavier than she ever has before, but she knows it’s not because of the alcohol, because she suddenly feels incredibly sober.
She just hopes Maggie doesn’t bring this up the next time they talk, because she can’t imagine anything more embarrassing than having to relive this night.
~~~
She gets a text from Maggie twenty minutes after she leaves the bar. She’s home, now, sitting on the couch with a bottle of tequila in her hand and wondering if she should drink it.
Maggie [12:32 am]: Did you get home safely?
Alex briefly thinks about not responding, letting her think she’s fallen asleep and then responding in the morning pretending like she doesn’t remember anything that happened last night, but she knows Maggie will worry if she doesn’t reply and maybe even call Max to see if she’s safe.
Danvers [12:35 am]: Just got home. Tired. Going to bed.
A ding comes from her phone just as she’s set it down, and she looks at the screen that reads, “Sleep well Danvers” with the crescent moon emoji beside it.
She doesn’t unlock her phone or change her clothes or brush her teeth. Instead, she sets the tequila back in its place in the liquor cabinet and plugs in her phone before crawling into bed beside a snoring Max. Sleepily, he throws his arm around her waist and pulls her closer, and Alex can’t help the tears that come.
Max doesn’t wake up.
She falls asleep.
~~~
They don’t hang out for a week after the night at the bar, but when they do Alex is beyond grateful that Maggie doesn’t mention anything she said.
Alex sees Maggie’s name pop up on her caller ID and wants to answer immediately, but she decides to wait a few seconds.
“Hello?” she says eventually.
“Danvers,” replies Maggie, a smile evident in her voice. “I was wondering if you were busy right now?”
“No, why?”
“I need some help getting a kid to confess.”
“Having trouble, Sawyer?”
Maggie scoffs. “No, of course not. I just thought you might be bored, seeing how I haven’t heard anything interesting on the news.”
“I guess I could be persuaded into coming over to help you,” Alex teases.
“And what would you need me to do for you?” Her voice is a little short of seductive, and Alex feels weird about it, but not in the same way she feels when Max speaks that way.
She changes the tone. “I’ll be there in twenty, is that cool?”
Maggie seems to get the message and drops it. “Yeah, see you then.”
“See you then.”
Alex arrives at the station half an hour later with a dozen donuts, which everyone at Maggie’s precinct seems to really appreciate.
“Damn, Sawyer,” says a tall detective with kind brown eyes. “Who’s your friend? We might have to invite her over more often.”
“This is Danvers,” says Maggie, “and she’s FBI, so I’m not sure how much you’ll want her here, Richardson.”
Richardson pretends wince. “You’re friends with a mysterious one-named FBI agent? That’s, like, against everything we stand for!”
“I do actually have two names,” Alex cuts in. “Everyone but Maggie likes to call me Alex.”
Richardson’s smile deflates for a second as his eyes glance to where Maggie’s soulmark would be if she weren’t wearing long sleeves. He looks to her questioningly, but Maggie just clears her throat and shakes her head so slightly that Alex isn’t even sure she sees it.
“Well, Alex Danvers,” he says, turning back to Alex, “thank you so much for the donuts. We’ll hold off on our plans to egg the FBI building.”
“We’d appreciate it,” Alex says, smiling.
Maggie rolls her eyes. “Can we get back to what we were here for?”
“Right,” says Richardson. “I’ll let you get to it.” He turns to walk away but rotates back and grabs another powdered donut. “One for the road.”
Once he’s out of earshot, Alex laughs. “You cops really do like your donuts. I was just trying to make a joke.”
“Yeah, well, not every stereotype is false, Danvers. You FBI types really do like to dress in all black,” Maggie says, eyeing her up and down.
Alex is wearing a different outfit than the one she first met Maggie in – no blazer or white shirt – but is still wearing an awful lot of black: a black button-down with white vertical stripes and black pants that hug her hips just the right way. (She didn’t plan this outfit, didn’t plan to wear these pants that make her ass look so good for the first time she’s seen Maggie in a week, but damn is she glad it worked out that way.)
“Touché,” Alex says eventually. “So, what’s the deal?”
“Earlier today we caught a kid with cocaine, but he doesn’t seem like he knows all that much about the world of dealing, so I’m guessing he’s new. We just need him to give up the guy who gave it to him, but he won’t even tell us his own name.”
“So what are you thinking?”
“Good cop bad cop?” Maggie asks, smiling.
“I thought you would never ask.”
Maggie takes her hand and leads her to the interrogation room, and Alex had never thought about it before, but there is something to be said about how soft Maggie’s hands are. She’s only really held Kara’s and Max’s before, and with Kara it was always brief. Max’s hands were rough and dwarfed hers, which made her feel a little uncomfortable, even if she didn’t know why, but Maggie’s seem to fit perfectly in her own. They’re a little bit bigger than hers, her fingers long and slim and tan, and Alex feels perfectly content to hold them. (She ignores the way her stomach flutters as their hands touch, just like she ignores the way she feels disappointment rush through her veins when Maggie pulls her hand away as they reach the room.)
“One second,” says Maggie, turning away from Alex and heading towards the end of the hall where the water coolers are. Alex feels the loss of Maggie’s closeness in her bones, but she doesn’t think about it. Within thirty seconds, Maggie is back, anyway, with a Styrofoam cup full of cold water. She nods and opens the door.
“Hey, kid,” she says. “I brought you some water. I thought you might be thirsty.” She sets the cup on the table and Alex has to look away so her expression can remain stoic and glaring.
The kid looks longingly at the water, and Alex can tell he’s thirsty, but he doesn’t take it.
“Go on,” says Maggie. “You can drink it, I won’t bite.”
“I might,” says Alex from the corner she’s standing in.
Maggie turns around as if to scold her, but Alex can see her bite her lip to hide a grin. “Agent,” she says warningly.
“Sorry.”
Maggie turns back to look at the kid encouragingly, and he eventually grabs the cup and gulps down all the water.
“Thank you,” he says, eyes shifting around the room.
“You’re welcome,” replies Maggie. “Now, about that cocaine. I was really hoping you might tell me who gave it to you,” she finishes, sitting down at the table.
The kid just purses his lips.
“Right,” says Maggie. She stands up and looks over at Alex, signifying that it’s her turn.
Alex ambles over to the chair but doesn’t sit down. Instead, she rests her hands on the table, leaning down so she’s at eye level with the kid. “Do you know who I am?” she asks.
The kid shakes his head.
“In any other world, that might be for the best. I don’t know who you are, so you shouldn’t know who I am, right?” She doesn’t wait for the kid to answer before she says, “Wrong. You need to know who I am in order for you to know how much trouble you’re going to be in if you don’t give Detective Sawyer over there all the information she needs.”
The kid gulps.
“My name is Agent Alex Danvers, and I work for a very special branch of the FBI dealing with people like you who break the law and don’t want to face the consequences. Do you know what I do to people like you?”
He shakes his head.
“Good, you don’t want to. But you know there’s an easy way to get out of this.”
He raises his eyebrows, as if to ask, ‘how?’ but he doesn’t say anything.
“All you have to do is tell me your name and who gave you the drugs. It’s that easy.”
“And if I don’t?” he asks, voice shaking.
“If you don’t, I’ll have to find out the hard way.”
“Kid,” interrupts Maggie, “it’ll be in your best interest to just tell us your name. Please?”
He shakes his head, and Alex takes this opportunity to slam her hands down on the table hard enough for him to flinch before saying, “Guess I’m going to find out the hard way.”
Maggie says, “Agent,” before she rests her fingertips on Alex’s forearm, right where her soulmark is, and Alex can feel a shock of electricity before she yanks her arm away. She sees the pain of her rejection flash across Maggie’s face for a tenth of a second before it’s gone and her unreadable exterior returns. Alex stares for a second too long into Maggie’s eyes and the kid must think they’re somehow communicating with each other and talking about him, because he immediately gives himself up.
After everything has been explained, Alex leaves the interrogation room with a bounce in her step and a stupid grin on her face.
“Enjoy that, did you, Danvers?” Maggie asks, a smile evident on her lips as well.
“You could say that.”
“What about we enjoy the day a bit more? We could go to Denny’s after my shift is over? Get some blueberry pancakes?”
Alex tries to groan but her laughter gives her away. “Jesus, Maggie, don’t you ever get anything else?”
“Can’t say that I do.” She pauses. “So?”
“Well, I still disapprove of your meal choice, but I’ll go with you anyway.” She’s about to ask what time Maggie gets off work when she feels her phone buzz in her back pocket. “One second,” she says, pulling it out.
Max [11:46 am]: Can’t wait to see you tonight. I’ll pick you up from work.
She doesn’t understand what he’s talking about for a split second, but then the date showing at the top of her screen gives it away. It’s their third wedding anniversary.
“Shit,” she mutters.
“Everything alright, Danvers?” Maggie asks, and when Alex looks up she can see genuine concern in her eyes.
“Me? Yeah, yeah, I’m… fine. I just forgot that I have plans.” She doesn’t know why she doesn’t specify what the plans are, but it feels right not to.
“You sure you’re not just trying to get out of spending time with me?” Maggie jokes, but there’s insecurity deep in her eyes.
“No, no, I promise that’s not it. I just sort of forgot it was our anniversary. Mine and Max’s. You know, from when we got married.”
Maggie clears her throat. “Right, well, I better let you get to that.”
“Maggie –”
“I’ll see you around, Danvers.”
~~~
Maggie doesn’t text back for the rest of the day, even when Alex sends her little anecdotes. Lucy accidentally spills her coffee and then Vasquez slips on it, which is by far the funniest thing that has happened in the six years she’s worked there, but Maggie doesn’t open the message. Alex feels like she should just get the hint, stop bothering her, but something in the back of her mind tells her that if she stops texting Maggie today, she might never get a reply again. That scares her a little more than she’d care to admit.
Max comes to pick her up at the office and walks in, like he always does, to say hello to everyone. If it were someone else, Alex might think that it was just because he cares about her and wants to be polite, but with Max, she really just thinks he enjoys the awe that people look at him with. Not J’onn or Lucy or Vasquez, but the other people at work. They look at him like he can walk on water.
He leans over to kiss her on the cheek – his stubble on his face that other women go crazy for itching her skin. She wonders briefly what Maggie’s lips would feel like on her cheek, and then what Maggie’s skin would feel like on Alex’s lips. Would she be soft? Of course she would, Alex thinks. That’s a stupid question. Maggie’s skin looks softer and more radiant than anything she’s ever seen. She’s just curious as to how exactly it would feel. How Maggie’s skin, Maggie’s mouth, Maggie’s –
She stops and flushes bright red. She doesn’t know why she would even think anything like that. Maggie is not her soulmate because Alex already found hers, and his name is Max Lord. Maggie is not her soulmate because even if Maggie is gay – a lesbian – that doesn’t mean Alex is. Maggie is not her soulmate because she can’t be.
“Ready to go?” Max asks, and Alex just nods. As they walk out, she sees him glance back at the room, probably winking or something else equally as self-centered, so she doesn’t feel bad about taking a picture of the sunset to send to Maggie. She types out a quick caption, deletes it, types out another, and deletes again. Eventually she has to just get it over with, so she taps the send button before she can think about it, before she can stress herself out any more than she already has. She stares at the – now five – texts she’s sent Maggie today (with no response) for a few moments, and she’s about to turn off her phone and focus on something else when she sees ‘Read 6:13 pm’ pop up underneath her text. She feels her breath hitch and her heartbeat speed up, but nothing happens for a few seconds. She stares at it for almost a minute before she moves to press the home button and three dots pop up signaling Maggie’s response.
They stay there for a few moments, then disappear. They come back a few seconds after that, and then leave again, and Alex thinks Maggie must be revising what she wants to say, but then the dots don’t return for a full minute and Alex feels something sink in her stomach.
She turns off her phone.
~~~
Dinner is nice. Max orders a steak that’s much too expensive for its size, and Alex settles for spaghetti with meatballs. They laugh and joke, and Alex is reminded that he’s not so bad, when he’s like this, at least. When his hand isn’t touching her in places she doesn’t want to be touched, when he isn’t looking at her like he’s seen her naked, it’s okay. It’s… fine.
Near the end of the dinner, Alex gets a text. She almost doesn’t check it, telling herself that she shouldn’t get her hopes up, that it’s probably not Maggie, but she caves in eventually. (Eventually being roughly forty-five seconds after she feels it buzz.)
It’s from Maggie, and she tries not to notice how her heart leaps out at her when she reads the name.
Maggie [7:02 pm]: Cute pic danvers
It’s not the response she’d want, not the response that Maggie would usually give, but it’s something. It’s something, and that means that they’ll be okay. They’ll be okay – even if Alex isn’t quite sure why they weren’t in the first place.
When she and Max go to bed that night, like they always do after date night, it isn’t any different than normal. Max touches her with lust like he always does, and Alex tries to enjoy it, but mostly she just waits for it to be over.
This time, though, she doesn’t think about what she did at work today or about what she might do tomorrow like she usually does. She thinks about Maggie. When Max’s lips are on her own, she thinks about Maggie’s smile. When Max – well, Alex doesn’t want to think about what he’s doing. She thinks about Maggie’s hair and eyes and lips and what she’ll say to her the next time they meet. She thinks about how adorable Maggie looks in her police jacket when Alex picks her up from the station after work, about how warm Maggie’s hand felt in her own earlier today, about how soft her lips look.
When it’s over, he tells her he loves her. She doesn’t know what else to say except that she loves him, too, so that’s how she replies.
She tries not to think about how those words felt false on her tongue as she falls asleep. She says to herself, I won’t do this again. Any of it. Not until I know I’m telling the truth.
~~~
The next day, Maggie is back to normal. They text and talk just like they used to, and Alex can almost forget the hurt look on Maggie’s face the last time she saw her. She isn’t exactly sure why she can’t stop thinking about it, if she’s just confused or if she feels guilty for some reason, so she spends most of the day sparring with different agents.
She starts out with Vasquez, who’s good, but not as good as Alex is. Lucy is less of a fighter and more of an order-everyone-around-er, so she doesn’t even step foot in the training room, if only because she doesn’t enjoy it. (That’s not to say she isn’t good at it, because Alex has seen her bring a fair share of agents who made fun of her height to their knees.) She easily defeats the new recruit, Matthews, who seems to think he’s god’s gift to this earth. It’s too easy. After Vasquez, no one is near her match, so she bribes J’onn into taking some time off the case he’s been working on for three weeks with no luck.
J’onn and Alex are almost equal in skill. So close to being equal, in fact, that it takes a good thirty minutes before J’onn has Alex on her back. She feels the air woosh out of her lungs as she hits the mat, and she’s suddenly very glad the training room doesn’t have any windows leading to the inside of the building, so none of the other agents can see her. It’s not that she doesn’t want them to see her defeated, because if she had to be bested by anyone, she’s glad it’s J’onn. Well, it kind of is that, but that’s not it entirely. Mostly, she’s glad because she doesn’t get up after a few seconds like she normally would. She lets her breathing even out and stares up at the ceiling.
J’onn offers her an outstretched hand, and she takes it and sits up, but not before looking hard and long at the metal ceiling that she’s spent so much time underneath. It’s the same one that she spent her days under almost six years ago.
So much has changed since then, she thinks. She isn’t that same sad kid she was, just barely out of college. She knows who she is, now. She’s an FBI agent, a sister, a friend. A wife. A wife to her husband, who doesn’t make her feel anything close to what Maggie makes her feel.
Maggie, who isn’t her soulmate. Maggie, who has a soulmate that isn’t Alex. Maggie, who, most importantly, is a woman. But Alex isn’t… She’s not. She’s not that.
She doesn’t know when it is that J’onn decides to sit down next to her on the floor, but he does. His presence is comforting, which Alex knows is a thing that not many people can say about their boss, but it’s no secret to anyone that he’s much more than that to her.
Eventually he asks, “Do you want to talk about it?”
The words ‘yes’ seem to get stuck in Alex’s throat, so she just shrugs instead. “I don’t know what it is I want to talk about,” she says softly.
He just nods. “Okay.”
They sit there, together, staring out the window at the sky, and Alex finds herself thinking about Maggie. She knows it’s stupid, that she shouldn’t let her mind wander like this when she knows Maggie’s mind isn’t on her.
Either way, she finds herself wondering if Maggie is looking out her window at the precinct, too. If the sky that she’s seeing right now is anywhere close to what Maggie sees.
If Maggie just might be thinking about her, too.
They stay there like that for a long time.
~~~
They go to Denny’s again a couple days later, after Maggie works a 12-hour shift and is just looking for something to eat that isn’t a cold sandwich, and something to drink that isn’t coffee from an espresso machine that was probably made before she was born.
Alex drives Maggie to the restaurant on her motorcycle, instead of the other way around, this time. Maggie holds her a little tighter than necessary, she thinks, and she can feel every inch of Maggie pressed into her back, which doesn’t help her concentrate. Luckily, she’s been riding a motorcycle since her early twenties, which means she can basically do it in her sleep, and she doesn’t have to put too much focus into it.
Instead, she focuses on Maggie’s breath on her neck, hot and even, like Maggie isn’t the least bit nervous. (Maggie must trust her, which is something she delights in a little too much to explain to herself.) Alex feels herself shiver when Maggie shifts on the bike and presses a little closer into her, and she can only hope that Maggie doesn’t notice.
If she does, she doesn’t mention it when they get to the restaurant. She just takes off her helmet and hands it to Alex with a sigh.
Maggie orders the blueberry pancake breakfast, like Alex knew she would, and a water, this time. Alex gets the same because she thinks Maggie might want some more food than she ordered.
She doesn’t. She doesn’t actually eat all that much, and Alex thinks she might actually be… nervous? No. There’s nothing to be nervous about.
She’s about to ask her why she’s not eating when Maggie glances across the restaurant to a man and a woman getting seated at a table and says, “Shit.” She ducks down and lets loose another swear, closing her eyes.
“What?” Alex asks, looking back at them. The woman has puzzled look on her face, but something else crosses it. Alex thinks this woman looks amused, but she can’t figure out for the life of her why she would.
“See that girl over there?”
Alex nods, now that Maggie’s eyes are open, but she still hasn’t sat up straight.
“That’s my ex.”
“Oh,” says Alex, automatically. Then, she processes it, and something sinks in her stomach. “Oh.” She looks back again and realizes that this woman is pretty. Really pretty. No, gorgeous. Of course she is, Alex thinks. It’s the only logical explanation. This tall, platinum blonde woman with the bluest eyes she’s ever seen has to be Maggie’s ex. It makes sense, that two beautiful people would go together. It makes sense that she’s Maggie’s type. It makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is why Alex feels like she’s been stabbed in the gut. This woman is beautiful. Maggie could get any beautiful woman she wanted. Why does Alex feel almost… jealous?
Scratch that. She knows why.
“Is she heading this way?” Maggie asks, still not looking over.
“No, of course not,” Alex starts, but when she glances back to the table, she realizes that this woman actually is heading towards them. “I take that back. Here she comes.”
Alex finishes her sentence as the woman steps up to their table, a want for something – Maggie, a want for Maggie, Alex realizes quickly – in her eyes.
“Maggie,” she says, and Alex realizes quickly that this woman has an accent. Spanish, maybe? A hot girl with an accent. There’s no coming back from that.
“Natalia,” Maggie replies, smiling. (Alex takes no pleasure in the fact that the smile doesn’t reach her eyes, the fact that Maggie obviously doesn’t want to see her. Well, she takes a little.)
“It’s been a while,” Natalia says, running her fingers along the table slowly. “How are you?”
“Good,” says Maggie. “I’m… Good. You?”
“I’m okay. I’m visiting National City with Ricardo,” she says, gesturing back at the man at her table. He’s also blond, though his hair is a shade darker, and Alex finds herself hoping that he’s her boyfriend. She almost shoots down the idea after she remembers that this woman dated Maggie, another woman, before remembering that bisexual people exist. It’s right there in the acronym. Maybe this woman swings both ways and the man over at the table is her husband, which means she’s taken and there is no chance that she’ll go home with Maggie tonight.
“Ricardo, your brother, right?”
Fuck. There goes that idea.
Natalia nods, biting her lip in a way she clearly thinks is attractive on herself. (Alex can’t blame her, though, because it is.) This woman is looking at Maggie like she’s seen her naked, looking at Maggie like she wants to see her naked again, and Alex feels something red hot shoot down her body.
Maggie, however, is not looking at Natalia the same way. Maggie isn’t looking at her with sex eyes, and while Alex is glad, she wonders what she would look like if she were. She wonders what Maggie looks like when she’s seducing a woman, what she says and how she acts. She wonders what Maggie does in bed with a woman, what Maggie’s skin would feel like under her fingers, what Maggie sounds like when –
She stops herself. Those are thoughts she should not be having about a friend. (Thoughts she’s never had about a friend before.) She shoves a bite of pancake in her mouth and tries not to notice how hot her cheeks feel.
Natalia leaves soon after with an Adíos, and Maggie lets out a sigh.
“Sorry about her,” she apologizes.
Alex waves her away. “That’s fine.” It’s quiet for a moment until Alex says, “Are all your exes hung up on you like that?” She laughs like she’s not serious, but she doesn’t think it sounds very convincing.
“No, definitely not. Natalia and I ended after she decided she wanted to meet her soulmate, but judging from the way she’s acting, I’m guessing she still hasn’t met them yet.”
“Right. So, she wants you back.”
Maggie shrugs. “I guess. I think she more misses the sex than anything else. We weren’t really serious.”
The sex, Alex thinks. The sex, because Maggie has had sex with women before, has been good enough in bed for women to act like that.
“But I’m sure you have an ex or two like that,” Maggie jokes. “I bet you broke all the boys’ hearts when you got married.”
Alex just shakes her head. “I didn’t really date before Max.”
Maggie looks surprised at that, which isn’t all that odd. Most people date before they meet their soulmate. It’s not frowned upon any more like it was hundreds of years ago.
“Oh?” Maggie asks. “Why not?”
Alex doesn’t quite know what to say. She knows she shouldn’t tell her the truth, that she never felt enough for anyone to want to date. She shouldn’t say that because Maggie might look at her the way she did that night in the bar, and she really doesn’t want Maggie thinking about that. “I was really busy. Stanford and all. I guess I just wanted to wait for my soulmate.”
“Right. That’s cute, Danvers.” Maggie places a bite of scrambled egg in her mouth and chews it thoughtfully before swallowing and saying, “Wait, does that mean that you never… Before Max, you never…” She lets out a laugh, trying to figure out how to say what she means.
“Well I kissed, of course. I had a high school boyfriend for a little while to see what the craze was. We weren’t serious, though. So I never did anything… else… until Max.”
Maggie just nods, a little awkwardly, Alex thinks. Alex goes to take a sip of her water, and she thinks can almost see Maggie bite her lip before she looks away.
~~~
Alex says she’s sick of blueberry pancakes a couple days later when Maggie suggests Denny’s for dinner again.
Maggie just laughs. “You know you don’t have to get blueberry pancakes. There are other food options.”
Alex shrugs. “Maybe, but what’s the fun in that? Either way, I’m sure your stomach needs a break from all those pancakes you eat. You ever heard of a vegetable, Maggie?”
“I’ll have you know that I usually eat vegan. So, yes, I have heard of vegetables.”
Alex scoffs. “You eat vegan? I’ve seen you gobble down bacon by the handful.”
“It’s healthier for you even if you only eat it sometimes! I’m trying not to die of heart disease at the age of 35 here, Danvers.”
“And the way to do that is to go to Denny’s every week with me?”
Maggie just nods. “Right. Another time?” she asks, but she sounds disappointed.
“Another – no, no I didn’t mean we wouldn’t hang out, I just meant we should do something else besides bug the good people at Denny’s.”
Maggie smiles at that. “And what did you have in mind?”
“I’ve got a great DVD player at my apartment. Got a movie in particular you’d like to see?”
They end up at Alex’s apartment at 8 with mushy spaghetti (courtesy of Alex’s inability to cook anything correctly) in their bowls and some spy movie that Kara had suggested playing on the TV. Maggie likes to call out inaccuracies every so often, which Alex would’ve thought would be annoying, but it isn’t anything but endearing when Maggie does it.
“That’s so stupid,” Maggie says.
Alex just laughs. “What? What’s wrong with the movie now?”
“These spies are totally underestimating the police force! We can do lots of things besides ‘sit on our asses and wait for them to turn themselves in’ like this jackass thinks we do.”
“I mean, to be fair, you must do a lot of that with how many people the FBI arrests each year,” Alex jokes, elbowing Maggie lightly as she does.
“Ouch, Danvers, that really hurt.”
“Oh, sorry you’re too weak to handle a little elbow to the ribs.”
“You think I meant that? I’m made of steel.” Maggie flexes her right bicep, laughing, although Alex has to admit it’s actually pretty impressive. “I meant you so openly bashing us cops. That hurt me deep in here,” she continues, raising a fist to her heart. “I can only take so much abuse.”
“I’m so sorry, detective. I’ll never say anything like that again.” Alex rolls her eyes playfully.
“Good. Otherwise I might have to arrest you.”
“Nerd.”
Her next complaint doesn’t come until nearly the end of the movie in which the two competing spies have their uniforms stolen by the enemy right before they defeat him and their soulmarks are revealed, showing that they’re each other’s soulmates.
“Now that’s bullshit,” says Maggie, setting her empty bowl down on the coffee table.
“What do you mean?” Alex asks.
“You’re saying these two highly intelligent spies, who, by the way, are trained on how to detect what body language means, wouldn’t know they’re soulmates until they see their soulmarks? I’m calling bullshit.”
Alex shrugs. “I didn’t know it was Max until I saw his arm.”
Maggie takes a sip of water but doesn’t say anything.
“Granted,” Alex continues, “That’s pretty much the first thing I saw when I met him. But I wouldn’t have noticed anything about him, otherwise. People always say that when they met their soulmate, they just knew, but I don’t think that’s true. It’s not always like that.”
Maggie just nods, but it doesn’t seem like she thinks the same way.
“You don’t agree?” Alex asks. “That girl you said that might be your soulmate, did you feel something with her?”
Maggie shrugs. “I just felt calmer when I first saw her. Like, instantly. Like I didn’t have to be nervous. I mean, I was, but something about her made me feel better.”
Alex ignores the fact that she didn’t feel that way with Max. (She ignores the fact that she felt a little like that when she first met Maggie even harder.) “Hm. And is she really?”
“Is she really what?”
“Your soulmate. Is she actually your soulmate?”
Maggie sighs and looks down at her hands, playing with a string in her shirt. “I don’t know. I’m thinking she is more and more every day.”
“You should tell her. She’s probably been looking for you for a long time.”
Maggie shakes her head. “She hasn’t been, believe me. Either way, I don’t think she’s ready to hear it.” She looks up at Alex with something gleaming in her eyes. Hope, maybe. “Do you, Alex? Do you think she’s ready to hear it?”
Alex pays special attention to how Maggie didn’t call her Danvers this time, used her first name, a name she never thought was anything inherently intimate until now. She stares into Maggie’s eyes for what seems like ages, not answering. Her mouth is too dry to form words right now.
She’s relieved when she hears Max’s key in the lock, letting her out of having to answer. She loves spending time with Maggie, and she knows Maggie won’t want to hang around Max and will leave after this, but she has no idea what she would have said.
“Hi, Alex,” Max says as he walks in the door. He walks over, clearly about to kiss her before he looks over at Maggie and furrows his brow. “Hello?” He looks to Alex for explanation.
“This is Maggie,” Alex says, standing up. “You remember her, right? From the crime scene at your old apartment?”
“Right,” says Max, his voice rough and cold. It feels a little like he’s about to suggest a pissing contest, and the look on Maggie’s face doesn’t do much to assure Alex that she won’t agree to it. “It’s nice to meet you again,” he says insincerely. “I don’t know if you remember, but I’m Max.” He sticks his hand out for her to shake and leans over the couch where Maggie is now standing so she can reach.
She shakes his hand for a brief second and smiles back a little coldly, but her eyes are empty. Actually, Alex thinks, they’re not quite empty. If Alex didn’t know any better, she’d think that Maggie was sad about something, but she can’t figure out what it could be. “Nice to meet you again.” She glances at her watch and makes a face. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize it was so late.” She starts to go but turns to Alex before she does. “I’ll see you later?”
“Definitely.”
“Okay.” She pauses for a moment in front of Alex, and Alex almost thinks she’s going to get a goodbye hug, but Maggie must decide against it because she just says, “See you later,” and leaves.
Alex stares at the door for a moment after she does, wondering why it stings that Maggie didn’t look back at her before shutting the door. Max scoffs when she leaves. “What was with her?”
Alex shrugs. “I don’t know.”
~~~
Alex and Maggie hang out a couple more times in the next three weeks, and it’s easy. Being with Maggie is as easy as breathing. Alex has never had all that many friends, never been close to all that many people. Mostly it’s because she’s busy or not interested or annoyed with the person who wants to spend time with her, but it’s also just a lot of work that Alex doesn’t want to do. Being with Max takes effort. She doesn’t mind spending time with him, not really, but being around him doesn’t come easy. He’s not hard to deal with or rude to her, but spending time with anyone takes a lot of energy out of Alex.
Even with Kara, whom she’s known since she was fourteen years old and can’t imagine life without, it’s work. It’s tiring to be with her, to listen to her rattle on about whatever boy she met today, even if she likes it. Even if they’re doing everything Alex wants to do, watching Alex’s favorite show and eating Alex’s favorite food and talking about whatever happened during Alex’s day, if she spends too long with her sister, she feels like she has to take a nap afterwards.
Maggie isn’t like that. She’s never spent more than a couple hours with Maggie, but she knows she could spend the entire day, her entire life, with Maggie and never have it be too much. Maggie is smart and funny and interesting and everything she says makes Alex want to hear more. Not only that, but Maggie seems to feel the same way about her. She knows that she’s rambled to Maggie for at least fifteen minutes about boring things no one else would care about, but she never seems to mind. Maggie doesn’t just care about what she’s talking about, though. A lot of the time, she understands enough to give input into a conversation about ‘nerdy science things,’ as Kara would put it.
Alex can talk about anything with Maggie, and she does.
Well, anything but soulmates.
~~~
The topic of soulmates gets brought up a month after their first movie night.
For two weeks, Alex has been saying that she’ll treat Maggie to some Ben and Jerry’s (“I can’t believe you’ve never tried it, Sawyer!”) and for two weeks, Maggie has been insisting that it’s not important. (“I don’t need any ice cream, let alone from a big chain that probably isn’t as good as everyone says it is.”)
Maggie steps out of the precinct at 7 p.m. and looks around for Alex’s motorcycle, adjusting her leather jacket. Alex sees her reach for her phone, probably to text her and ask where she is, but she honks the horn of the car she’s in and rolls down the window before Maggie has a chance to do anything.
“Maggie! Over here!” she yells, head stuck out the window.
Maggie just laughs and jogs over, stepping into the car and shutting the door firmly. “You have a car, Danvers?”
“Well, it’s not technically my car.”
Maggie just raises her eyebrows.
“Kara let me borrow hers. Well, actually she made me borrow it because she wanted to take my motorcycle.”
“Your sister, Kara? That Kara?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Glasses, blonde hair, wears a lot of pink dresses?”
“That’s the one,” says Alex. Kara hasn’t officially met Maggie, but she’s heard a lot about her and has seen her pick Alex up from her apartment more than once.
“Didn’t peg her as a motorcycle type.”
“Oh, she’s not. She has a date with the new reporter at Catco and wanted to seem ‘cool and badass’ – her words, not mine – by having a motorcycle in her parking spot instead of a Toyota.”
“She hasn’t considered the option that this guy might ask her, you know, any question at all about her motorcycle, and she won’t know what to say?”
“Nope. She just really likes him. He wears leather jackets and, as we all know, Kara dresses like a Girl Scout, so she wanted to offset that. Prove to him that she’s more than someone to buy cookies from.”
“She’s pretty much a Girl Scout, though.”
Alex just laughs and starts the car up. “Anyway, I’m finally taking you to Ben and Jerry’s today.”
“No,” Maggie says, laughing. “You’d be corrupting my innocence by taking me there!”
“Yeah, because Maggie Sawyer is the picture of innocence. I’m hardly corrupting you. And with ice cream, no less.”
Maggie shrugs. “If you’d like to corrupt me, I’m sure there are other ways.” She winks, grinning, and turns away to look out the window. Alex is more than a little glad she does, because if she hadn’t, she might be able to see that Alex would love to know what those other ways are.
They drive for a few minutes, Maggie fiddling with the radio and dancing badly to the music while Alex laughs. They get to the shop more quickly than either of them would like, seeing as how their time in the car is over, but they get out anyway.
Maggie orders vanilla (“You can’t go wrong with a classic, Danvers,”) and Alex gets rocky road, and she pays while Maggie reaches up to grab their ice cream. Her shirt is loose, a black and white flannel, and when her arm shoots up to grab the cups, her sleeve rides up until just the tip of her soulmark can be seen. (Not enough for Alex to read anything, but enough for her to wonder. And she does.) Maggie quickly retracts her hand and pulls down her sleeve before reaching up with her other hand to get the ice cream.
Alex almost doesn’t comment on it, knowing it’s probably none of her business, but her curiosity wins out.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were scared of someone seeing your soulmark,” Alex jokes. “It can’t be that bad, can it?”
Maggie chuckles half-heartedly. “No, it’s not that bad.”
They eat their ice cream in quiet, their joking demeanor abandoned, and Alex wants to kick herself for ruining the mood. Maggie obviously doesn’t want to talk about it, and she shouldn’t push.
“How is it?” Alex asks, trying to break the ice.
“Really good,” replies Maggie.
“As good as I told you?”
Maggie shakes her head and grins. “You had me thinking this shit was going to be life changing.”
“You’re saying it isn’t?” Alex asks, mock offended.
Maggie doesn’t say anything for a moment, but when she does, it doesn’t have anything to do with ice cream.
“I’m not scared of people seeing my soulmark. I’m just… I’m not sure that you want to.”
Something in Alex’s chest goes tight when she hears Maggie say that. In the back of her mind, she remembers their movie night a month ago. Maggie’s soulmate isn’t ready to hear it. Maggie’s soulmate isn’t ready. Maggie’s soulmate… might be Alex.
Alex tries to laugh. “Yeah,” she says. “I don’t want your air of mystery to be ruined.”
They change the subject.
~~~
Movie nights quickly become a weekly thing. They meet up every Thursday night at Alex’s apartment because Max is always out and Alex can’t stand the thought of eating any more pancakes.
Maggie knocks on the door at seven o’clock sharp, because there isn’t a time when she’s more than a minute late. (Alex teased her about it the first time, saying that Maggie must love Alex a lot to be on time for every meeting they have. Maggie didn’t deny it at all, just said, “Yeah,” and smiled at her in a way that made Alex’s knees go a little weak.)
Alex opens the door to Maggie looking stunning – though, when does she not? – with a DVD in one hand and two bags of microwave popcorn in the other. “Danvers!” she says, smiling, before walking in. “Are you ready to watch whatever shitty movie M’gann suggested we watch this time?”
Alex just laughs and shuts the door. “The last one wasn’t that shitty. The writing was just bad. Another couple splitting up over an issue like kids as if they’d never talked about it before? That’s not an overused trope at all,” she jokes.
“Yeah. Well, M’gann swears this one is better. It’s about some secret agent taking down a diamond thief, which she thought would be fitting seeing as how you’re a Fed.”
Alex nods. “Sounds good. Popcorn?”
Maggie hands her the two bags and Alex sticks one in the microwave before leaning back on the counter. “You can get it all set up, I’m just gonna pop the popcorn and get it all into a bowl and I’ll be there in a second.”
“You just want an excuse to eat half of my popcorn as well as all of yours,” Maggie says, rolling her eyes.
“I can’t believe you would slander me like that! I would never.”
“Yeah, right.”
(Alex doesn’t tell her that that’s not the reason at all, that she craves Maggie’s touch for some reason, even if it’s just their hands brushing as they both grab food from the same bowl. She can’t explain it to herself, so how could she explain it to Maggie?)
She sits down next to Maggie on the couch after the popcorn is done, the movie ready to go.
“All set?”
Alex just nods.
The movie starts out okay. The agent, Miranda something, has been working on catching this notorious diamond thief, Katherine Bentley, for almost the entirety of her career, and she thinks she’s close to catching her. It’s unrealistic, yes, but nothing too awful.
She meets Katherine within twenty minutes from the opening credits, and there’s… something between them. They stare at each other for a little too long, smile a little too openly to be enemies. Alex just thinks it’s weird acting choices, but she feels Maggie stiffen up next to her.
“You okay? You haven’t bashed this movie at all, yet.”
Maggie just nods. “I’m fine.”
When Katherine gets away five minutes later, Miranda just looks down at her arm where her soulmark would be if she weren’t wearing long sleeves. Alex hears Maggie’s breath hitch. She doesn’t really understand the choices the director made in this movie, but Maggie seems to know where it’s going, so she doesn’t say anything.
She doesn’t get it until they meet again and spend a little too long staring into each other’s eyes and then –
Oh. They’re kissing. They’re gay. She feels her stomach flip, like if she were falling, but she’s not. She doesn’t really understand that. She feels her face heat up and looks over at Maggie, who’s blushing as well. She has a sheepish smile on her face and is scratching absentmindedly at the back of her neck.
Maggie chuckles awkwardly. “Wow, sorry, Danvers. I didn’t know this was a gay movie. We can stop it, if you want. I just didn’t think to check the reviews.”
Alex shakes her head. “It’s fine, Maggie. You’ve sat through a lot of straight movies with me, I can watch one about…” She wants to say the word lesbian, wants to show Maggie she doesn’t have a problem with it, but she doesn’t. “Gay women,” she finishes. “It’s totally fine.”
Maggie just nods. “Right.”
They turn their attention back to the movie, where Miranda and Katherine are heating up the kiss. Alex doesn’t look over at Maggie while she watches, just stares at the screen while they grab hungrily at each other. When Katherine’s shirt comes off, she clears her throat and looks down. She can’t watch this, not next to Maggie. (Not when she knows that Maggie has done the same thing.)
She glances over at Maggie, who is looking at her popcorn like it’s the most interesting thing in the room, and says probably the stupidest thing she’s ever said.
“What’s it like to be with a woman?”
Maggie lets out a short laugh. “I… what?”
Alex is an idiot. It’s stupid to ask Maggie what it’s like to be with a woman, not only because she probably gets that question all the time, but because she knows she’s not going to get the answer she wants. She doesn’t want to know what it’s like to be with a woman. Not really. She wants to know what it’s like to be with Maggie. (She wants to tell herself that’s not true, that she doesn’t really think that, but she can’t. She can’t. She just can't.)
“I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have asked that. You probably get that all the time, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean –“
“No,” says Maggie, “It’s fine.” She sucks in a breath, like she’s thinking about it. “I don’t know? It’s nice. Women are soft and warm, and if it’s with the right woman it’s kind of dizzying. If you’re kissing a girl you really like, it kind of feels like you might fall down if you let go of her.”
Alex doesn’t respond for a moment, doesn’t dare look up into Maggie’s eyes. “Sounds nice.”
“Yeah.”
Alex almost thinks they’re going to go back to watching the movie, forget about this conversation forever, when Maggie says, “What’s it like to be with a man?”
Alex lets out an awkward-sounding laugh. “What do you mean?” She looks over at Maggie, who hasn’t changed her expression from the unreadable mess it is right now. “Have you… you’ve never?”
Maggie shrugs. “I figured out I was a lesbian right around the time that most girls would start getting their first boyfriends, so…”
There she goes again with that word. Lesbian. (A gay woman. A woman who is romantically and sexually attracted to other women. She knows what it means, and it’s nothing inherently bad. Why does that word make her stomach shrivel up?)
“Right,” she says, anyway. “Well, it’s…” She doesn’t know what to say. What Maggie just described… Alex has never felt any of that. She can’t tell Maggie that, though. “It’s the same, I guess.”
“Yeah.”
There’s another moment of silence, and Alex apologizes again. “I’m sorry. It was a stupid question, I shouldn’t have asked.”
“It’s fine, Danvers,” says Maggie. She doesn’t seem upset, doesn’t seem offended by Alex’s question. She seems like she’d be fine to forget Alex even asked, but Alex feels sick to her stomach.
“I’m – I’m not feeling great.”
“You okay?” Maggie asks, and Alex can see the concern in her eyes. Maggie cares about her, and somehow that makes it worse.
“Yeah, I just… I think I should go to bed. I might be getting sick.”
“Can I help?”
No, you can’t, Alex thinks. You can’t help because all I want is… No, you can’t help. “No, it’s fine,” she says, instead. “I’m just tired.” She stands up. “I’ll see you later? Maybe tomorrow?”
“Right. Tomorrow.” Maggie stands up, too, and walks towards Alex. She’s so close that Alex can see the slight blush in her cheeks. She stays there, in Alex’s personal space, for a moment too long before angling her face upwards and pressing her lips lightly to Alex’s cheek and immediately moving away.
“I’ll see you later, Danvers,” she says as she walks out the door, and Alex doesn’t think she even hears her reply because she shuts the door so quickly.
Alex feels the spot where Maggie’s lips grazed her face burn for hours, well after she’s fallen asleep.
~~~
Two nights later, Maggie comes over again to finish the movie. It’s much less awkward than it was before, now that Alex has tried to get her shit together and get over whatever it is that made her feel like that. Katherine and Miranda kiss a few more times and Alex ignores the butterflies in her stomach.
Maggie criticizes the movie, but not nearly as much as any of the others they’d watched together.
“Wait, who is that?” Maggie asks after a scene is shown of Miranda at the FBI.
“Who’s who?”
“That woman in the background talking to her boss, she looks familiar.”
Alex furrows her brows. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“I’ll point her out when she shows up again. I’m positive I’ve seen her before.”
“Okay,” says Alex, fighting a grin.
Maggie keeps her word, because half an hour later the woman shows up again and she gestures frantically toward the screen. “Her! Look at her!” she almost yells, and Alex would be paying a lot more attention to the movie if her sleeve hadn’t ridden up when she began pointing. She sees a flash of something familiar before Maggie’s other hand shoots to her arm and pulls the shirt down frantically. Maggie doesn’t make eye contact.
Alex tries to turn her attention back to the movie, tries to put herself back into Miranda’s shoes and tell herself to care about the plot, but she can’t. The energy in the room is different, now. Like the air is charged with an electricity that wasn’t there before. Alex clears her throat, trying to get rid of the feeling in her stomach that’s telling her she should confront Maggie about it.
She’s not ready, she’s not, but she’s saying Maggie’s name all the same.
“Maggie,” she starts, but she’s not sure what she wants to say after that.
Maggie takes a shaky breath, her eyes still on the screen, but slowly moves so she’s looking over at Alex. There’s something in her eyes – fear? hope? Alex can’t tell.
“Maggie,” she begins again, and Maggie turns so that her entire body is facing Alex. Alex doesn’t know when she did that, too, but every cell in her being is focused on the woman beside her. Slowly, she turns her gaze down to Maggie’s arm, right where her soulmark would be. She wishes she could see through the fabric, wishes she knew what she was going to find underneath it – but then again, she’s pretty sure she already does.
Gradually, she inches closer to Maggie, until she’s so close that she’s scared Maggie will hear her heartbeat. She knows that’s all she can hear, her own pulse thumping in her ears. She reaches out her hands until they’re touching Maggie’s sleeve, and she looks up into Maggie’s eyes, searching for permission.
“Can I see?” she asks.
Maggie takes a beat before asking, “Are you ready?”
“I – I think so.”
Maggie swallows thickly and, eventually, nods.
Alex has always had steady hands. She needed to, if she were going to continue onto a career in medicine. Even when she abandoned that, she prided herself in the fact that her hands didn’t shake. Not during a crisis, not ever, but now… Oh, now her hands are shaking, alright.
Ever so slowly, her fingers lift up the sleeve until she can see Maggie’s soulmark.
A. 9863 Olive Street. National City, CA, 22434, USA. The exact soulmark that Max has. The exact soulmark that fits with hers.
She doesn’t know what to do except stare for a few moments. She runs her hand over Maggie’s skin – it’s so soft; softer than Alex knew was possible – just trying to gauge if it’s real.
It is. It’s real. Maggie is real.
Alex doesn’t think before asking, “Is that me?”
“Do you want it to be?”
For the first time since revealing Maggie’s arm, she looks away from it and up into Maggie’s eyes. They’re darker than the night sky, dark enough to be framed with stars. (Alex has always loved looking up at night, loved imagining outer space, but Maggie’s eyes are better and more beautiful than the sky could ever be.) For the first time, she realizes that Maggie’s eyes aren’t just beautiful, they’re scared, too.
She doesn’t know how long she stares into Maggie’s eyes before she lets her eyes flit down to her lips. They look just as soft as ever, and Alex wonders, not for the first time, what they would feel like on hers.
She’s about to find out when she hears Max open the door.
It all happens so quickly. She’s looking at Maggie, almost kissing Maggie, and then Max is there and she’s shooting up from off the couch and turning away. Maggie is pulling down her sleeve and telling Alex that she should probably go, and then she’s gone, and she’s alone with Max in the apartment. The apartment they live in, together, because they’re married. They’re soulmates.
Well, maybe not.
~~~
She thinks a lot about what could have happened – what almost happened – that night. She lies awake in bed for hours with Max pressed up behind her, thinking not about the husband she should love, but the woman she just might. She thinks about what it means. What it means is that Maggie is beautiful and kind and smart and tough. What it means is that Maggie, with an M, has the same soulmark that Max has, one that fits perfectly with Alex’s.
She thinks about it, how she’s not gay. How Maggie is a woman. How she’s never enjoyed being intimate. And how maybe that’s the reason why. Maybe she never enjoyed being intimate because Maggie is a woman and Max is a man and maybe Alex actually is gay.
Alex is gay.
She can’t think about it any more, so she takes a sleeping pill and closes her eyes. She’ll confront it all in the morning.
~~~
Alex and Maggie don’t talk for a week after that, and it’s probably the longest week that Alex has ever lived through. That’s saying something, because Alex has lived through a lot of long weeks.
She remembers the week after her parents told her they were adopting a girl from France, the week her dad was in a coma before he died, and the week her scholarship to Stanford was almost revoked because she was on academic probation. She remembers all of them, and it’s clear to her that this one is by far the longest.
Alex cracks and texts Maggie first, but she doesn’t respond. She doesn’t even read the message. So, Alex does what she has to do, which is to head back into the FBI at nine at night and look up Maggie’s address in the NCPD database.
She knocks on Maggie’s door a half hour after she leaves the FBI, and Alex doesn’t think she’s ever been this nervous.
Maggie answers the door looking just as beautiful as ever. Her hair is tied up in a messy bun and she’s wearing a tank top and shorts that are much too short to leave Alex with any sort of control. Her soulmark is uncovered, and Alex can’t help but stare at it, because that just proves once again that they were meant to be. That night last week wasn’t a dream.
Maggie is her soulmate.
Alex came there to talk, she really did. She came there to work out what they were going to do and ask questions and answer some of her own, but that’s not what she does. That’s not what she does because Maggie looks more beautiful than anyone she’s ever seen, and before she knows it, she’s pulling Maggie into a deep kiss.
And kissing Maggie? It’s… indescribable. Her lips are so soft and warm, and there’s nothing about her that makes Alex feel anything but complete.
No kiss with Max has ever been more than a five. No kiss has ever left Alex dizzy or shaky or wanting more. Nothing she’s experienced in her entire life has ever compared to kissing Maggie. Not riding a rollercoaster or having sex or, hell, even getting married. Kissing Maggie is the perfect ten that she’s been dreaming about her whole life.
She pulls away after a minute, breathless and dizzy and feeling more alive than she ever has before.
“Danvers,” Maggie starts, but Alex doesn’t let her finish.
“No. No, I’m not ‘Danvers,’ Maggie. I’m Alex. I’m Alex, with an A, the same A that’s on your arm, and you’re Maggie with the same M that’s on mine, and I know this sounds crazy because life is insane and I thought I was straight for a long time, but I can see now that we’re supposed to be together.”
It’s Maggie’s turn to pull Alex into a kiss, this time, and if Alex thought it couldn’t get any better than their first, she was wrong. She was so fucking wrong, because kissing Maggie for the second time feels like coming home.
Alex doesn’t think she’s ever been happier than she is to be kissing Maggie right now, but when she tastes salt on her lips that she realizes are from Maggie’s tears, she pulls away immediately. Maggie is crying, softly.
“Maggie, are you okay?”
“Ignore it, I’m fine,” Maggie says, and pulls Alex in for another kiss.
“Maggie,” Alex says, pushing her away gently.
“They’re happy tears,” Maggie explains, and she goes to continue the kiss, but Alex doesn’t move. “Alex,” Maggie breathes, and the way she whispers Alex’s name sounds like a prayer.
(Alex has never been religious, but hearing Maggie say her name like that might just be enough to restore her faith in a god up there.)
She pulls Maggie back in. Their lips connect again, and Alex doesn’t think she’ll ever get used to the surge of happiness that rushes through her every time it happens.
Maggie stumbles backwards onto her couch after a few minutes, letting Alex fall on top of her so she’s basically straddling Maggie, but they don’t move their faces more than an inch apart from each other. Soon after they’re settled, their mouths collide again.
Maggie doesn’t ask for anything, doesn’t run her tongue along Alex’s lip and request permission to enter, doesn’t do anything she thinks Alex won’t be comfortable with. Alex, however, wants exactly what Maggie is too polite to ask for, so she opens her mouth and licks Maggie’s bottom lip. Maggie shivers at that, and something in Alex’s lower stomach grows hot and tingly.
Alex has never enjoyed kissing with tongue, never thought it anything but something other people wanted from her, but with her tongue dancing in Maggie’s mouth, she knows she just wasn’t doing it with the right person. Kissing Maggie with tongue is better than anything she could have imagined.
They kiss for what is probably hours, Maggie’s hands roaming down Alex’s back before settling firmly on her hips, holding her steady. Alex feels like she’s on fire, like she might burn to death with the heat that Maggie has ignited in her body if she doesn’t break the contact. Still, she never wants to let go.
Maggie pulls away first, when she hears Alex’s phone ring from somewhere in her leather jacket. She bites her bottom lip, saying, “You should probably get that.”
Alex doesn’t want to stop, but knows that it could be a work emergency, so she fishes it out of her pocket and swipes to the right to accept the call without looking at it.
“Danvers,” she answers.
She isn’t prepared for the voice on the other side.
“Alex,” says Max, a hint of worry in his tone. “Are you alright? I tried texting but you didn’t reply. Where are you?”
“Oh, I – I…” She pushes herself off of Maggie, not daring to look at her face, before turning around so that Maggie can’t see hers. “I’m fine. I’m just… I’m fine.”
“Oh,” he says. “Do you know when you’re getting home?”
“No,” Alex stutters, “I don’t know. I’ll be home later.”
“Okay.” He sounds a little less concerned now. “I love you. See you later?”
“Yeah, I… I’ll see you later.”
She hangs up and holds the phone to her chest for a few seconds before turning around, and she almost wishes she didn’t when she sees Maggie’s face.
“I’m sorry,” is all Alex says.
“That was Max,” Maggie deadpans. “Right?”
“It was.”
Maggie launches herself off the couch and walks towards her kitchen table, turned away from Alex. “You should go.”
“Maggie –“”
“I can’t do this, Alex. I can’t be the reason you cheated on your husband.”
“Maggie,” Alex tries again.
“Please,” she says, her voice breaking. “Please go.”
Alex can’t do anything but comply.
~~~
They don’t talk.
Life without Maggie is probably the worst thing that Alex has been through.
Kara even notices that something is up at the next Sister Night she goes to, because she cancels on her the first week after it all happens. Kara is a great sister, the person Alex loves the most, but she can be oblivious to what’s going on in Alex’s life a lot of the time.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Kara asks thirty minutes into The O.R.
“What?” Alex asks. “What do you mean?”
“Something has to be wrong. Dr. Hunt just got fired and you haven’t said a single word about it.”
“So?”
“So?” Kara asks, mockingly. “So you hate him! You’ve been praying for him to get written off the show for years.”
“I have not,” Alex scoffs.
“Have so. You talk over all his scenes! You keep saying he’s not worthy of any of the women he’s been with. You even call him Doctor Cun–”
“Okay, fine, I hate him. Your point?”
“Are you okay? Did something happen?”
Alex sighs. “Yeah. I mean, no. Not… not really.”
“What do you mean by ‘not really?’” Kara asks, putting air quotes around the last two words.
“Maggie and I had a fight.”
“Oh. That’s a relief.”
Alex furrows her brow. “What? What do you mean? Do you not like Maggie?”
“No! No, nothing like that,” Kara assures her. “I was just worried it was something really bad. Like something happened at work, maybe. You and Maggie are, like, best friends. You’ll be fine. I’m sure of it.”
“Yeah,” says Alex. “I don’t know.”
~~~
She tries not to think about Maggie. She throws herself into work, coming early and staying late to avoid thinking about her, but also to avoid having to see Max.
Lucy notices there’s something wrong after her soulmate, James, comes in to bring her lunch and Alex doesn’t make even one sarcastic comment about it.
“Earth to Agent Danvers,” she says, sitting down at her desk.
“Huh?” says Alex, looking up from the paragraph she’s been trying to focus on for the past fifteen minutes.
“Is something wrong?”
“Wrong? No, why?”
“James just kissed me and brought me a lunchbox with hearts on it, and you haven’t said a single word to make fun of me. I don’t think you even looked up from that paperwork.” She peers over so she can see enough to read what Alex is doing. “Which is just a case file. That’s not interesting at all.”
“Oh, yeah. I’m just trying to be a better agent, you know?”
Lucy scoffs. “You’re one of the best agents I know.”
“Yeah, well.” Alex shrugs. “You can always be better, I guess.”
“Soulmate trouble?”
“Lucy –”
“Fine, okay, you’re not ready to talk about it.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Okay,” says Lucy, sitting back down at her desk. “But when you’re ready to spill, I’m here.”
~~~
Alex breaks down and calls Maggie two weeks after they saw each other last. She dials the number on her house phone and hangs up at least fifteen times before letting it ring for long enough for Maggie to pick up.
Maggie answers the phone with, “Sawyer,” and just hearing Maggie say her own name takes Alex’s breath away.
She doesn’t know what she was going to say. She doesn’t know what she should say, either, so she doesn’t say anything at all. She just sits there, focusing on breathing in and out.
Maggie must know it’s her, because even though she doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t hang up. They stay there for a long time, just listening to each other’s breathing, until Alex starts to cry. She thinks – hopes – that maybe she’s quiet enough that Maggie won’t hear, won’t know what’s happening, but it’s Maggie. Maggie always knows.
“Alex,” she whispers into the phone. She says it like it’s the sweetest word in the universe, and Alex suddenly can’t breathe.
She hangs up immediately, and as soon as the line disconnects, she lets loose a loud sob.
She doesn’t call again.
~~~
Alex heads to a bar a week after that, because they don’t keep nearly enough alcohol in the apartment to put her in the state of mind she wants to be in. She isn’t expecting anything when she sits down on a bar stool and orders a whiskey, let alone to see Maggie.
(Then again, why is it that she chose this specific bar to go to, a bar that’s only two blocks from Maggie’s station?)
She’s pretty sure her heart stops for a moment when she sees Maggie’s wavy black hair on a woman a couple seats down from her, but she tells herself that it can’t be Maggie. The woman next to the Maggie lookalike elbows her and glances over at Alex, and then the lookalike is turning around to face her, and god, it’s her.
Alex doesn’t know how to react, but it turns out she doesn’t have to, because Maggie’s friend (or who she hopes is just a friend) is getting up from her seat to talk to her.
“Hi. Alex, right?” the woman asks, her hand held out for Alex to shake.
Alex takes it gingerly before saying, “That’s me.”
“I’m M’gann,” she says, and Alex feels herself breathing easy again. (Maggie can date whoever she wants, she knows that, but it does make her feel better that she knows M’gann is straight.)
“Oh, hi.”
“You look a little lonely all by yourself over here,” M’gann says.
“Me? No, I’m… fine.”
“Are you sure? We have plenty of room over by us.” She glances back at Maggie, who looks a little panicked, if Alex is telling the truth. She smiles all the same, though, dimples just barely there.
“Are you sure?”
M’gann looks back over at Maggie and mouths something, but Alex can’t see what it is. When she looks back over at Alex, she nods, and all Alex knows is that this is an opportunity to be close to Maggie again, one she can’t pass up.
It’s a little awkward, at first. Alex makes a joke that Maggie has good taste because she’s drinking the same whiskey Alex is, but she doesn’t say much back. M’gann does most of the talking, actually, because Alex is too caught up in how right it feels to be sitting next to Maggie, how it feels like Maggie is the strongest magnet in the world, pulling each and every atom in Alex’s body closer to her.
It takes two more glasses of whiskey for Maggie to loosen up enough to say more than a couple words at a time, and then, somehow, they’re laughing. M’gann leaves at some point, but Alex doesn’t really notice. The world could probably end, and Alex would be too busy staring into Maggie’s beautifully brown eyes to even realize it.
Maggie finishes a story about how Richardson spilled coffee all over his computer the first time he saw his soulmate walk into the precinct, and Alex wonders if she’s talking about the concept of soulmates on purpose. If Maggie wants her to say something in return, if she wants her to do something, or if she just doesn’t care enough to avoid the topic. (Or worse, if their kiss meant so little to her that she forgot about it entirely.)
Alex doesn’t say anything in return, just smiles and sips at her drink. Eventually, she says, “Wanna play some pool?”
Maggie groans. “You’re here to take all my money from me again?”
“The FBI doesn’t pay all that well. I’ve got to make a living somehow.”
Maggie shoves her but slides off the bar stool anyway and heads over to the pool table. She grabs two pool cues, handing one to Alex, and rubbing chalk onto the tip of her own. (Alex wonders how she can make something so mundane look so sexy.)
Alex doesn’t really know how it happens. One moment she’s shooting a ball into the pocket at the edge of the table and laughing at how Maggie throws her hands up in defeat. One moment she’s leaning into Maggie, grinning and joking that she should just give up now. One moment she’s just a little closer to Maggie than she should be – and the next they’re kissing.
She should care that they’re kissing. She should care that she’s married and that they’re in public and that Maggie turned her down, but she really doesn’t. Maggie’s hands are holding her in place, her fingers firm on the back of her neck and the underside of her jaw, and she doesn’t think she’ll ever care about anything ever again.
She drops her pool cue after a few seconds, once she processes the fact that Maggie’s lips are on hers, and she barely even hears it clatter on the ground, drawing everyone’s attention to what they’re doing.
Maggie isn’t shy, this time, and Alex thinks it probably has something to do with the fact that they’re both a little past tipsy. Alex can taste the whiskey on Maggie’s tongue, burning and bitter, and it’s so much more delicious in Maggie’s mouth than it was in the glass she was drinking from earlier. Maggie swipes her tongue across Alex’s bottom lip, and Alex feels like she might pass out. There’s nothing more dizzying or satisfying than Maggie Sawyer’s mouth on hers, she’s sure of it.
Maggie shifts her hands down from where they were before, running along Alex’s arms and eventually resting at her waist. She isn’t sure why Maggie moved her hands, but she definitely isn’t complaining. She almost whines when Maggie pulls away from her mouth, but she isn’t disappointed for long, because seconds after her lips leave Alex’s, they’re tracing their way down her jaw, and god, nothing has ever felt better. She can feel every pulsation of her heart, and she wonders if Maggie can too, because her lips are pressed up against her pulse point and she’s sure her heartbeat is much louder than the trashy music coming from the speakers above them.
Maggie pulls away first, and Alex has to give herself a moment for her eyes to flutter open before she can look at her. Maggie is always gorgeous, but somehow, now, with her kiss-reddened lips and mussed hair, she looks even better. Alex doesn’t ever want to look away from the beautiful woman in front of her, but for some reason, she does. She does, and she wishes she hadn’t, because she doesn’t like what she sees.
Max.
Alex has known Max for a long time, and in that time, she’s seen a lot of his expressions, but never has she seen him look like this. He looks a little angry, a little shocked, but mostly just hurt. He stares at her with narrowed wet eyes for a few moments, and she’s frozen until he turns to walk away and suddenly she’s calling his name and stepping forward to chase after him.
She hears her name being called by someone by the time she’s halfway out of the bar, and when she turns around she realizes it’s Maggie. (Maggie, who is wearing a variation of the look that Max was just a second ago. Somehow, hers seems to hurt worse.)
Alex doesn’t move, just stops where she is, and it feels like her feet are glued to the ground. Maggie’s eyes are soft and pleading, begging her to stay.
“Alex,” Maggie says again, only this time it’s so quiet that Alex can’t hear it. She only knows that’s what Maggie’s saying by looking at her lips. (Lips that were on hers less than a minute ago. Lips that felt righter than anything she’s ever known.)
Alex wants to stop. She wants to stay with Maggie, choose her, pick her instead, but she can’t.
“I’m sorry,” is all she says before she turns on her heel and races out the door.
Max is barely a block away from the bar by the time she exits it, so it doesn’t take long to catch up to him.
“Max,” she calls, and he halts, but he doesn’t turn towards her. “Max,” she repeats, “please talk to me.”
He’s still facing away from her when he says, a little angrily, “What the fuck?”
“What?”
He doesn’t seem to hear her, because he continues as if she hadn’t spoken at all. “You weren’t at home and I know you’ve been feeling badly lately, so I wanted to check the bars. I wanted to be a good husband. And this is what I get in return? What the fuck?”
Alex waits for him to continue, but he doesn’t. “I’m sorry.”
His body stiffens for a moment before he turns around, but when he does Alex can see he doesn’t look so angry, anymore. He looks like he’s given up. “You never look like that with me.”
“What?”
“The way you look at… her. You never look at me like that.”
Alex doesn’t know what to say.
Max is silent for a moment before asking, “Do you love me?”
“Of course. What kind of question is that?”
He shakes his head and repeats himself, louder this time. “No. Like that. Do you love me the way you love her?”
“Max…”
“Alex,” he says, fed up. “Do you love me the way you love her?”
Alex takes a deep breath. “No.”
She doesn’t know exactly what she expected his reaction to be, but it isn’t what he gives her. He exhales shakily and closes his eyes for a moment before asking, “Did you ever?”
She doesn’t have to think about it. “No.”
They don’t say anything for a few moments, just standing there on the sidewalk while cars rush past, filling the silence.
Max speaks first. “She’s your soulmate. Right?”
Alex doesn’t know if it will hurt him more or less if she answers truthfully, so she just says, “I’m sorry.”
Apparently, that’s all the confirmation he needs, because he clenches his jaw and nods. “It’s not your fault.” Alex can tell that he wants to walk away, but he doesn’t. Instead, he says, “I really hope you can be happy with her,” and, however unexpected, it doesn’t sound anything but genuine.
~~~
Maggie isn’t at the bar when she returns ten minutes later. Alex asks the bartender if he’s seen her, but he just says he’s too busy to remember every customer that comes in or out.
Alex searches every place in the bar that Maggie could possibly be, but after twenty minutes of finding nothing whatsoever, she figures Maggie probably went home.
That’s how she finds herself at Maggie’s apartment, knocking on the door with her heart in her throat.
Maggie opens the door, and even though she would never admit it, Alex can tell she’s been crying.
“I can’t do this,” Maggie says.
“Maggie –“
“No, I can’t. I’ve been on both sides of the cheating equation, and it’s awful. I can’t let you cheat on Max with me, even if we are…” She trails off and averts her eyes, clearly not able to let the word ‘soulmates’ pass her lips. “I can’t.”
Alex blurts out, “I just broke up with Max.”
Maggie looks up immediately. “Wh-what?”
“Max and I aren’t together anymore.”
It doesn’t process for a second in Maggie’s eyes, but then she’s grinning with those adorable dimples. “You broke up with Max,” she repeats.
“I did.”
The smile doesn’t break for a few seconds, but then something crosses her mind and it dims slowly until she’s frowning again. “You just broke up with Max.” She turns on her heels, walking to the kitchen counter, and brings a hand up to her face, sighing.
“Maggie?”
She doesn’t move for a moment, but then she turns to face Alex again, and her eyes are sad. “You just broke up with Max.”
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“Because you just broke up with Max. You’ve been with him for how many years? Five?”
“I know I’m slow to figuring everything out, and I’m sorry, but –”
“No –” She sighs. “Alex. That’s not it. It’s not your fault.”
“Then what is it?”
“You were with him for all that time. And you’re married, and you thought he was your soulmate for so long, and you just broke up. Everything is going to change for you. The world is going to be shiny and bright and new.”
Alex doesn’t know if she wants to know where this is going. “What are you saying?”
Maggie takes a deep breath and bites her lip. “I’m saying we shouldn’t be together.”
Alex wants to say that she can’t believe what she’s hearing, but she can. She can believe it oh so easily. It only makes sense that the only time Alex has felt something this strong, it isn’t reciprocated.
Maggie says something else, but Alex isn’t really listening. All she can process is Maggie saying something about Alex settling in to her new life, and waiting for something, and that they should just be friends for now.
Friends.
“Yeah,” says Alex, and she doesn’t say anything about how it literally feels like her heart is being cracked open. She always thought that was just an expression, heartbreak and all. Guess not.
“I’ll talk to you later.”
“Alex –”
“It’s fine, Maggie.”
She walks out the door, and she doesn’t let herself cry until she’s in the elevator.
~~~
Max is asleep on the couch when she gets home, or at least he’s pretending to be. She doesn’t have the energy to talk to him, doesn’t even know if she wants to, so she locks herself in the bathroom and turns on the showerhead.
She stares at her face in the mirror, trying to figure out if everyone can see just how broken she feels inside. She isn’t wearing mascara, so there aren’t black streaks running down her cheeks, thank god. Her eyes look a little red, and it’s too late in the year to blame them on allergies, but nothing about her screams ‘damaged.’ She stares at her reflection until the steam from the shower fogs up the mirror and she can no longer see anything but a blurry shape.
She stays in the shower for a long time, rubbing at her skin until she’s red and raw, as if soap could wash away her feelings. She spends a good five minutes staring at how the water hits her soulmark, wondering if, were it to say something different, would she still be in this situation?
Yes, she thinks. She could have any letter tattooed into her skin, any address in the universe, and she would have met Maggie, anyway. She would have met Maggie and she would have felt the same way about her that she does now, would have wanted her just as badly as she always has. She would do anything for Maggie, no matter the circumstances.
That should scare her, but it doesn’t. It just makes her sad.
~~~
It’s awkward with Max. She tries not to act any differently than she did before, tries to fake normalcy, but it doesn’t work. Max is angry, but he’s clearly trying to be the bigger person about it. Still, it feels like she’s walking on eggshells. It doesn’t help that she can tell he’s hurting, can tell all he really wants to do is yell, and that she can’t do a damn thing about it.
She moves out four days after everything goes down. She doesn’t know who to call to help her with moving her boxes into her new apartment, not that she has all that many, because she’s never really had all that many friends. She can’t ask Max, because they haven’t had a real conversation in days. She can’t ask Kara, because then she would have to explain why she was moving away from whom Kara thinks is her soulmate, and she would have to tell her about Maggie, even though they’re not together. (Alex knows that soulmarks have never messed up before, knows that the only explanation as to why Maggie wouldn’t like her back is because Alex has an unrequited soulmate, but she’s seen Maggie’s arm. She’s seen it and touched it and it fits with her, so she doesn’t understand why this would happen. Do platonic and romantic soulmarks mix sometimes? Maybe Alex is Maggie’s platonic soulmate, and maybe Maggie is someone that Alex will never stop… feeling this way about.)
She definitely can’t ask Maggie to help her move, because even though she said they should be friends, Alex isn’t ready to face her. Not yet, at least. She’ll call her up again after she’s in her new apartment, once she’s prepared.
The only person left she can call is Lucy, so she does.
It’s a little weird. They haven’t really hung out outside of work before, and Lucy brings James along to help because she assumes there will be a lot more than the eight boxes Alex actually has, three of which are filled entirely with books. James is kind, but doesn’t say much to her, just like the other few times Alex had talked to him before. Lucy fills the silence with meaningless chatter, which Alex didn’t know she needed, but is beyond grateful for.
Lucy doesn’t ask why Alex needs help moving, doesn’t say anything at all until James is downstairs waiting in the car and they’re alone in the empty apartment Alex will have to call home.
“So,” starts Lucy. “Are you ready to talk?”
Alex wants to say no, wants to let Lucy go on thinking whatever it is she’s thinking, but she also kind of needs to talk to someone about it. She shrugs, hoping somewhat that Lucy will walk away, and hoping a little bit more that she’ll stay and pry it out of her.
Lucy stays. She hops up on the counter where a few bar stools would rest if Alex had any furniture besides a bed, and says, “So I was right. Right?”
“About?”
“Soulmate troubles?”
“Kind of,” Alex admits, staring down at her hands. She isn’t completely sure how to tell Lucy that the ‘soulmate troubles’ that she’s probably thinking of aren’t anywhere near the truth.
“’Kind of’ like maybe the person you thought was your soulmate… isn’t?”
Alex’s head shoots up. “I – what? No, I… What?”
Lucy doesn’t roll her eyes, although usually when Alex stumbles over her words like that, she does. She just looks on kindly, waiting for Alex to be able to tell her what’s on her mind. “Max,” she supplies. “He’s not your soulmate, is he?”
“I…” Alex takes a deep breath. “How did you know?”
“You just don’t look at him the way I look at James. For a while I thought that was just the way you are, but…” Lucy doesn’t continue for a moment, like she’s waiting for Alex to say what she’s about to.
“But,” Lucy continues, “then I saw the way you looked at that cop when she came to pick you up after work about a month ago.”
Alex clears her throat. “Yeah.”
“And that’s trouble enough, right? Not loving the person you thought was your soulmate for the last five years is a difficult thing, but I knew you wouldn’t need me. That’s why I didn’t ask.”
“So why are you asking now?”
“Because I think there’s a reason that cop isn’t here helping you move out of your old apartment right now.”
“I have other friends, Lucy,” Alex says, feeling like she has to defend herself, even though nothing Lucy has said has sounded judgmental or uncaring.
“I know. But none of them are here, either.”
“If you didn’t want to come, you could have said so,” Alex says angrily, standing up from the box she was sitting on. “That would have been fine. I know we’re not that close.” She starts to walk towards the door, but as she goes to pass Lucy she feels her hand grab onto her arm.
“Alex,” she says, and it’s the softest Alex has ever heard her speak. Not necessarily volume-wise, because she’s still speaking at the same decibel level as she was before, but in the fact that it sounds like all harshness has been eliminated. Lucy, for once, isn’t out to make fun of her. “I wanted to come. And I think maybe you wanted me to come, too. Because we’re not all that close, and maybe that’s why it’ll be easier for you to tell me what you need to.”
The second Lucy lets go of her arm, she’s gushing out everything she’s been thinking for the last couple of months. She tells her about all those years feeling broken, about feeling complete and alive and real with Maggie, about how she felt seeing Maggie’s soulmark for the first time. Lucy sits there, smiling at some parts, sympathy in her eyes during others, just listening.
“So why aren’t you asking her to help you with these boxes?” Lucy asks. “I mean, not that I’m not totally happy to be here. Looking at James in his tank top carrying boxes up for you? You’re doing wonders for our sex life, Danvers.”
Alex rolls her eyes, but there’s a sadness in it. “She doesn’t like me… like that.”
Lucy lets out an exasperated groan before hopping off the counter. “Alex, you’re being stupid. She said you should be friends for now. Not forever, dumbass.”
“But she doesn’t –”
“You’re an idiot. Soulmates don’t work the way you’re describing them. Platonic soulmates are a thing, and so are unrequited soulmates, however rare they are. But no one has ever had both at the same time.”
Alex huffs. “Well maybe I’m the first.”
“Please. You’re not that special, kiddo.”
“Kiddo? We’re the same age…”
Lucy waves her off. “Whatever. Just talk to her, okay? It doesn’t have to be now, or even soon, but eventually you’re going to have to talk to her about all this, and I promise it will work out.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
“Lucy, I’m serious.”
Lucy shrugs. “I’m serious, too. The way you look at her? It’s not platonic. And the way she looks at you…” She inhales sharply. “Definitely not unrequited.”
~~~
She and Maggie go out to a bar, though not that specific bar, a few days after Alex settles in to her new apartment. She bought a couch and a TV stand the first day, and some bar stools the next, but she still doesn’t have a dresser, table, or chairs.
“Damn,” laughs Maggie, taking a sip of her beer. “Not even a dresser? Where do you put your clothes?”
“In the box I packed them in originally!” Alex says incredulously, a grin playing on her face. “That’s a pretty obvious answer.”
“You’re in a league of your own, Danvers,” Maggie says, laughing.
Alex doesn’t think she’s heard anything more beautiful than Maggie’s laugh, which is a stupid thought, because Maggie’s voice in general clearly outranks it. That’s how she knows she’s a little too far past tipsy to be here. Hanging out with Maggie sober is dangerous because it hurts, but hanging out with Maggie drunk is even more dangerous, because she knows she might say something she shouldn’t.
“I just remembered, I have to do some paperwork tonight,” Alex lies, slipping out of her seat.
“What?” She laughs. “You’re clearly not sober, you shouldn’t be doing anything.”
“Yeah, I’m just… tired.”
Maggie’s smile dims when she realizes what Alex is doing. It hurts Alex to know that Maggie thinks she doesn’t want to be there, but nothing is going to hurt enough for her to stay when she knows exactly what she wants to – and can’t – do.
“Oh,” is all Maggie says.
“Yeah, I’m tired. So I’m gonna sleep this off and then wake up early to do the paperwork. But I’ll see you later, right?”
“Right,” says Maggie. “We could go buy you some furniture at IKEA or something. That’s so much fun,” she jokes, trying to lighten the mood.
“Ha, right.”
“Or we could drive around during rush hour,” Maggie says, teasing harder now.
“Definitely,” says Alex, trying to lessen the sting of rejection that Maggie must feel.
“And then we could get our teeth pulled and our appendixes taken out.”
“That’s where I’ve gotta stop you. Teeth pulling sounds fun, but I’ve already had my appendix taken out.”
“Without me?” Maggie clutches at her heart. “I’m hurt.”
“I didn’t know you!”
“Well you should’ve,” she says, taking a sip of her drink.
Alex pauses. “Yeah. I should have.”
Immediately, the atmosphere has changed. Maggie isn’t laughing anymore, and neither is Alex. She wants to look up into Maggie’s eyes, see what she’s thinking, but she doesn’t have the courage. She tries to change the subject, get back to joking like they were before. “I’ll see you around, though. Next time, we can get colonoscopies.” She smiles, but she’s sure it doesn’t reach her eyes.
Maggie laughs, but it sounds forced. “Yeah. I’ll take you sometime.”
“Bye, Maggie.”
“Bye.”
She walks out of the bar and doesn’t look back, even though she wants to.
Later that night, once she’s sobered up a little, she goes to Walmart’s website and orders herself a dresser, nightstand, table, and some chairs. None of them match, because she’s never been great at home decoration, even when she isn’t still a little tipsy and high off Maggie’s presence. She presses the ‘buy’ button at the bottom of her page after entering her credit card number incorrectly three times before finally getting it right.
Usually she would wait until she was at least sober enough to type, but she knows if she doesn’t do this now, then she’ll give in to Maggie’s offer to help her pick out furniture. That would be a bad idea all around. Furniture shopping would be too incredibly domestic for her, and if Alex wants to entertain the idea that she’ll ever get over Maggie, she can’t do anything like that.
She can’t get ice cream with Maggie or go to Denny’s with Maggie or do fucking anything that isn’t being at a bar with Maggie, because all of those things feel like dates. Yeah, it stung doing those things back when she thought Max was her soulmate. When she thought a life with Max was all there was, being with Maggie like that pinched. But now that she knows what it’s like to kiss Maggie, to have a romantic experience that she more than just tolerates, that she actually craves? No.
No, she can’t go on ‘friend-dates’ knowing exactly what it is that she could have with Maggie if only she felt the same way. Before, it hurt. But now? It might just kill her.
~~~
Maggie and Alex meet up three times in the next week, all at the bar. It isn’t that Alex needs alcohol to function, or that she needs to be in a bar where she knows their meet-up can’t be anything more than two friends getting together, except, yeah, she does need those things.
Every time she looks at Maggie, she wants to reach out and touch her. She’s never felt like that before. Not with anybody. Before they kissed, before she knew what it was like to feel Maggie under her fingertips and on her lips, she didn’t think about it as much. She says, ‘as much,’ because she still thought about it a lot, but it’s nowhere near the amount she thinks about it now.
It’s not just looking at Maggie, though, because she feels like she could probably deal with that. She could turn away and not make eye contact, if she had to. No, even being in the same room as Maggie makes her feel like there’s TV static all around her. Like electricity is buzzing in the air and she’s waiting for the shock of Maggie’s touch. A shock she’ll never get.
Never, ever again.
Maggie doesn’t seem at all distracted by Alex’s presence. She seems just as normal as she ever has. Anything that Alex might read as flirting if it were exhibited by anyone else, she can’t, because it’s things that Maggie has been doing all throughout the time she’s known her. Maggie has always smiled at her the way she does now, the way that makes Alex’s heart flutter. Maggie has always bitten her lip every so often around Alex, has always given her that signature smile of hers when she walks into a room. All of those things could sound like flirting, sure, but Maggie’s been doing them the whole damn time they’ve been friends, and there’s no way that Maggie has been flirting with her since they met. That must just be how Maggie is.
The only solace Alex finds in the whole thing is that Maggie hasn’t dated anyone since that girl she broke up with months ago, only a month after they became friends. From all her past stories, it seemed like Maggie was a bit of a player. Maybe she’s trying to be considerate, Alex thinks. Maybe she’s seeing someone – or multiple someones – and just hasn’t told Alex because she knows it would only hurt her. Maggie is kind, kinder than Alex would be if she had lived through all that Maggie has, and she must know that Alex still feels that way about her. Maggie cares about her as a friend enough to spare her feelings.
Alex just wants Maggie, but Maggie doesn’t seem to want her at all.
~~~
She doesn’t talk to Max after she moves out. They lived together for years, and Alex cared about him, at the least, but she has no idea what to say to him. “Hey, sorry I left you for a woman I’m not even with?” She doesn’t think that will go over well.
She waits for him to contact her with the details of their divorce, waits until he’s ready to talk to her. It doesn’t matter to her if she’s tied up in a divorce. Max is calculated in everything he does, and he’ll be the same way with this. She may not agree with everything he does, but he’s at least fair, and she’ll be fine with whatever settlement they agree on. It doesn’t even matter if it takes him months to talk to her, or if it takes him years. What does it matter to her if she’s legally married to someone she doesn’t talk to? It’s not like it’s holding her back from anything.
It was, at one point. That was the reason she couldn’t be with Maggie, at first. Now, though, it doesn’t matter what Max does. He could drop any surprise in her life, and no matter how much it might fuck up her personal agenda, it won’t change a damn thing with the woman she wants to be with.
It doesn’t matter. Anything she wanted with Maggie is off the table. Anything but friendship.
Nothing really matters.
Max texts her after two weeks of living on her own about the divorce. He apologizes and he asks if they can wait a little bit. He says that it won’t be long, just until a little after his new app is released, and then they can sign whatever papers they need to. He can’t deal with the bad press of… what’s happening.
Alex didn’t even think about that. Her relationship with Max was never something huge, never on the front page of any magazines, but people knew about them. Articles would be written about them, sometimes, and she was almost always mentioned in articles about Max and his life. Once they get divorced, the whole world will know she’s –
Gay.
She doesn’t think about it. She just tells Max that they can wait however long he wants to, and Max tells her it won’t be more than a month after the app gets released.
He doesn’t ask how Maggie is, and she knows it was more for his sake than for hers, because he must think they’re together by now, but she’s grateful anyway.
~~~
It gets better between her and Maggie. It still feels like Alex might die if she doesn’t touch her, but it’s less awkward. Maggie tells jokes about what happened at the station that day, and Alex makes fun of her food choices, and it’s almost back to normal.
Almost, because even though soulmates weren’t a huge topic that they discussed before everything happened, it did come up every once in a while. Now, though, neither of them has said anything about it. Alex has taken to wearing long sleeves, and now that she knows why, she’s noticed that Maggie has been doing that too, since the moment they met.
Alex tries not to think of her fingertips on Maggie’s skin or Maggie’s lips on her neck, but she fails most of the time.
She doesn’t mention it, though. If she never says anything, she can almost pretend nothing is wrong.
~~~
Alex still hasn’t told Kara about anything. As far as she knows, Alex is still living at Max’s apartment, so Sister Night has been exclusively at Kara’s for the past month.
Alex knows she should be thankful that Kara hasn’t noticed anything is off, but it also makes her a little angry. She always knows when something is wrong with Kara, and she always asks. She tells herself that maybe Kara knows and is just giving her space, but Kara has never been observant like that, and even if she were, that’s not her style.
Kara is oblivious to anything going on in Alex’s life, and for the first time ever, Alex wonders if she has the right to be upset about it.
~~~
In the past two weeks, Alex and Maggie have texted all throughout the day like they used to before. (Alex knows that their friendship could be exactly what they had before if only she could get over her feelings. If Maggie wants them to be friends, if Maggie is only looking for a platonic soulmate, she should comply. She just needs to push down these feelings, right? It’s not like she has any shortage of practice at that.)
They text, now, but Maggie hasn’t replied to either of the two messages that Alex has sent since her last one at nine in the morning. Alex isn’t worried, except that’s a lie, because Maggie’s job is insanely dangerous, and she is actually very worried.
She tells herself that Maggie still wants to be around her, that even if she doesn’t like her like that, she still likes her as a person. She tells herself that, but if all of that is true and Maggie isn’t replying, that means something bad must have happened to her, and that’s even more terrifying.
She’s pouring her first glass of scotch for the evening when she hears a knock on the door and feels her heart jump up. The only people who know where she lives are Lucy, James, and Maggie, because she picked Alex up one time a couple of weeks ago.
Through the peephole, she sees Maggie shoot a stupid grin at her and hold up a box of pizza and a case of beer. She opens the door and lets her in, apologizing for her pajamas.
“They’re cute,” says Maggie setting the food on the counter, and Alex doesn’t want Maggie to see her blush, so she busies herself with grabbing a beer opener.
“It’s late,” says Alex, “you got a case or something? I could really use an old-fashioned murder right now.”
Maggie shakes her head. “I didn’t come here for work. I just really needed to… see you. And talk to you.”
That doesn’t sound good.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” Maggie affirms. “Well, no,” she corrects. “I got stabbed today.”
Alex drops the beer opener and rushes to Maggie’s side. “What? I – “
“It was a light stabbing, don’t worry –“
“Light stabbing!?” Alex says, outraged. She brings her hands to Maggie’s torso before remembering that she can’t touch Maggie without feeling her heart race, so she pulls away. “What the hell is that? Maggie, are you okay? I’m –“
“It missed all my major organs, I’m fine,” Maggie reassures her, but Alex doesn’t feel any better. “Honestly, I just… really need to talk to you.” She turns around, and Alex can see her wringing her hands.
“Okay,” Alex says slowly, and she can feel the dread in her stomach form a knot. Something must be seriously wrong.
Maggie takes a deep breath. “When those two guys came up to me and pulled out a knife… I was scared.”
“Maggie,” Alex starts, but Maggie doesn’t let her speak.
“Please,” she says, turning back on her heel so she’s facing her. “I need to get this out.”
Alex just nods.
“I was scared,” she says, and Alex thinks about how hard this must be for Maggie to say. In all the time Alex has known her, Maggie has never admitted to feeling fear. Maggie wants everyone to think she’s fearless. She does a pretty good job of it, too. “I thought I could handle it, I thought I could fight them off, but I couldn’t. And then I was being stabbed,” Maggie says in a rush, “and that sucked, yeah, but I also… realized something.” She takes a breath. “People always say that in a near death experience, your life flashes before your eyes. And I almost died, kind of.”
Alex interjects. “I would not have let that happen. If you had told me you were hurt, I would have come over right away, I – “
“I know,” says Maggie, and it doesn’t sound like she’s trying to placate her at all. It sounds like she truly knows Alex would be there to take care of her. “I know I would have been fine, but my life flashed before my eyes, anyway. And I realized something.” She swallows roughly and looks away. “All the big moments that I was remembering, all the important parts of my life that my brain wanted me to see before I kicked the bucket… They were all of you.”
Alex doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know what that means, but Maggie is stepping forward close to her and opening her mouth again to speak.
“I realized that I don’t want to imagine my life without you in it. And I know that we said that we were going to wait until you were settled, I know that, but it’s been a month and a half, Alex. And I just want to ask you, are you? Settled?”
Alex doesn’t trust herself to speak, doesn’t trust herself not to blow what’s happening, so she just nods.
“Good,” Maggie says, and she’s smiling now. “Because life is too short. And we should be who we are. And we should kiss the girls we wanna kiss.” She pauses, waiting for Alex to say something. She doesn’t, though, so she continues. “And I really… I just wanna kiss you.”
Alex can barely believe what’s coming out of Maggie’s mouth. This seems too good to be true. She feels frozen in her spot, because she wants to move, and she wants to lean forward to kiss Maggie, but she isn’t doing it.
Maggie doesn’t freeze, though, because she’s stepping into Alex’s space and reaching up to cup her face, and then her lips are on Alex’s, and it’s even better than she remembers.
Alex doesn’t think there’s a single thought in her mind that isn’t of Maggie. Maggie’s fingers are gripping the back of her neck and her lips are soft and warm on her own, and Alex can feel the heat radiating off of Maggie’s skin.
Maggie pulls away first, and Alex can’t open her eyes for a second. When they finally flutter open, Maggie is smiling at her with the most loving look in her eyes.
“So you’re saying… you like me,” Alex jokes. “Because that’s what I got.”
Maggie laughs. “Yeah. I like you.”
Alex stares into her eyes for a moment, brushing her hair out of her face and then cupping it and bringing her back into a kiss. Maggie seems surprised, but her lips move along with Alex’s after the shock has worn off, and Alex doesn’t ever want to stop.
~~~
Maggie stays over for hours. They kiss, yes, but they also just talk. Eventually, they end up sitting on the couch, and somehow Alex’s head ends up on Maggie’s lap. Maggie doesn’t seem to mind, with the way her fingers are running through Alex’s hair. Alex just stares up at Maggie, eyes closed and a smile evident on her face.
“Maggie?” she asks.
She just hums.
Alex doesn’t know why she’s saying this, why she’s possibly about to ruin what she could have, but she says it anyway. “I want you to know that you don’t have to be with me.”
Maggie’s eyes snap open, eyebrows furrowed. “What? I – what?”
Maggie’s hands stop moving through her hair, so Alex sits up. “I don’t want you to feel obligated to be with me just because of some letters on your arm.” Alex absentmindedly picks at a thread on her sofa. “I know you didn’t want to be with me at first, and I just want to make sure that – ”
“Hold up,” Maggie interrupts, and Alex finds herself relieved that Maggie is saying things, so she doesn’t have to. For someone who spent at least a month’s worth of sleepless nights thinking about how to phrase this, she doesn’t have all that much planned out. “You think I didn’t want to be with you?”
“I mean… yeah?”
Maggie lets out a little laugh before her eyes turn sad and she reaches out to brush a lock of hair behind Alex’s ear. “Alex, I’ve wanted to be with you since that first day I met you.”
Alex shakes her head. “No, you were definitely not interested then. What are you talking about?”
“You thinking that I wasn’t into you is either a testament to my acting skills or to your obliviousness, and I know I’m not that great of an actress.”
“You didn’t like me at all until I solved the Robinson case.”
“Woah, solved? I’d like to think I was a pretty big help on that case,” Maggie jokes.
Alex laughs, but she’s pretty sure it doesn’t look all that genuine.
“I liked you before that, Alex. I promise.”
“Then why did it seem like you didn’t want anything to do with me?”
Maggie shrugs and ducks her head. “I guess I was a little scared of just how much I liked you. I had an A on my arm, and your name was Alex, and you had an M on yours, but you were married. I figured I was just unlucky and had an unrequited soulmate. That it would hurt too much to be around you.”
“I’m sorry,” is all Alex can think to say.
“It’s fine. Not all of us can know who we are at fourteen, right?”
“I know, but I’m still sorry that I hurt you.”
“Alex,” Maggie says, placing her fingers under Alex’s chin and tipping her head up so that she’s looking into Maggie’s eyes, “it was all worth it to get here.”
Alex leans in for a kiss, and all she can imagine is doing this over and over again for the rest of her life. For the first time, that doesn’t scare her at all.
Maggie stays there with her until probably four in the morning, and they just talk. Alex relishes in the feeling of Maggie’s hand in hers, and they sit there, telling each other stories and jokes and how they feel. Eventually, they fall asleep, and even though Alex doesn’t want to, even though she knows Maggie might leave during the night, she feels safe enough to do so, so she does.
Maggie doesn’t leave without saying goodbye, which is something Alex didn’t expect. She wakes her up with a gentle kiss to the forehead and whispers in her ear, “Go back to sleep. I’ll text you when you wake up.”
Alex has never really been a morning person, so she isn’t entirely sure it wasn’t all a dream until she gets a morning text from Maggie telling her that she had a lot of fun last night.
For the first time in her entire life, Alex is excited at the prospect of seeing someone again after a night spent together. A night, she reminds herself, in which they did nothing but kiss and talk. Doing more? That’s an exhilarating thought. One that she can’t be focused on half an hour before she has to go see her incredibly perceptive boss. It is a thought that she’ll definitely think about later, though.
~~~
Maggie comes over for two nights of the next week, and Alex goes to Maggie’s place for three of them. They don’t do anything but kiss, but Alex feels like this is exactly who she’s been meant to be kissing all these years.
Maggie shows up at Alex’s doorstep the next Monday with a basket, and Alex is incredibly suspicious.
“What’s all this?” she asks.
“I feel bad.”
“About?”
“I’ve kissed you.”
Alex blushes and ducks her head. “You have.”
“A lot. And I want to do more than kiss you. When you’re ready,” she’s quick to add, “but we haven’t even gone on a date yet. And that means I’m not being a gentleman.”
“Well I’m happy for that,” Alex jokes.
Maggie just rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean, dork. I want to make all this perfect for you.”
“It is perfect,” Alex replies, putting her hand on Maggie’s shoulder. “I promise.”
“Okay, well I want to make it more perfect. I’m taking you on a date.”
Alex stutters for a second. That can’t happen. “I – ”
“I know, you can’t be seen on a date with a woman while you’re married to Max Lord, or be seen on a date with a woman at all since you’re not out. Don’t worry. We’re having the date here.”
“Here?” Alex looks around at her apartment, noticing that it’s less than ideal. The space is minimal, the table is from Walmart, and she isn’t sure there’s anything in the fridge besides some eggs and expired milk.
Maggie seems to know what she’s thinking. “Don’t worry! I brought everything I need to make us dinner.” She sets the basket on the counter and starts pulling out ingredients – uncooked spaghetti, a pot, some sauce in a jar that looks like it was sold at a farmer’s market, and some grated cheese.
“You like spaghetti, right?”
“Oh, no, Maggie, I hate spaghetti. As a child, my mother had to only buy the finest pasta brands from Italy. I refused to eat anything that looked even vaguely like a long worm.”
“Firstly,” says Maggie, with a laugh, “spaghetti is way too thin to be a worm. Secondly, I think you mean ‘pasta types.’ Pasta brands are Barilla versus Ronzoni.”
“Ronzoni?”
“It’s a brand.”
“It is?”
“It is. I know a lot about pasta, so trust me, okay?”
Alex just smiles. “Okay.”
Having spaghetti with Maggie is by far the best date that Alex has ever been on. Maggie’s hand rests on her knee the whole time they eat, and every time she laughs, Alex feels like there couldn’t possibly be anything better than the moment she’s having. It’s not true, because the next time Maggie laughs, Alex thinks it’s even better than the last time.
They try to watch a movie at the end of the night. ‘Try’ being the operative word, because by the time the credits are over, Alex’s legs are resting atop Maggie’s thighs, and their lips are touching, and nothing has ever felt more right.
Each and every time they kiss, Alex swears it gets more magical. She’s not one to believe in magic, obviously, but it’s almost like there’s fairy dust in her stomach because it feels like she might fly away if she were to stop holding on to Maggie’s waist.
Maggie is less shy, now. Less scared of accidentally doing something that Alex won’t like. Alex thinks Maggie must trust her enough to know that if something is going on that she doesn’t like, she’ll say so. That means that every couple of minutes, Maggie’s hand inches higher up from her hip, so after about twenty minutes of kissing, her palm is right underneath Alex’s bra.
Maggie pulls away first, eyes even darker than they were before, if that’s even possible, and bites her lip.
“Is this okay?”
Alex must not respond quickly enough, because she clarifies.
“Can I touch you?”
That triggers an immediate, “Yes, please,” that causes Maggie to let out a huff of laughter.
Alex captures Maggie’s lips with her own, and the second that she feels Maggie’s fingers brush against her breast, she lets out a moan.
She actually startles herself, because she pulls away, eyes still closed.
“I didn’t mean to – I’m sorry it just came out, I –”
“Alex,” Maggie interrupts. “You don’t need to apologize for feeling good.”
“Yeah, I know. I just… didn’t mean to be so loud about it.”
Maggie grins and kisses her chastely before pulling away again. “You don’t ever have to worry about being too loud.”
That’s all it takes for Alex to need her again. She pulls Maggie in for a kiss, hungrier than before, and Maggie smiles into it, seemingly amused by how much Alex wants this.
And she does. She does want this, more than anything she’s ever wanted before, actually. Alex doesn’t even want to stop when Maggie’s phone alarm lets them know that it’s almost midnight and they’ve been here – kissing, making out, feeling each other up – for almost three hours. Alex didn’t even know that anyone could want to do anything for three hours at a time.
She tells Maggie this, and she just bites her lip and runs her eyes up and down Alex’s body.
“Believe me,” says Maggie. “I want to do so much more with you, and for so much longer than three hours.”
Alex doesn’t feel anything but good when she hears those words. Certainly not anything close to what she felt when Max said similar things. No, this isn’t that. This is her life when it finally starts to make sense. Like, if this were a movie, the audience would be sure, now, that everything would be okay. Alex thinks that, right now, in this moment, is where everything finally comes together. And she can’t be happier for it.
~~~
Maggie doesn’t pressure her to come out. She says that it’s her choice, that she should be allowed to tell people whenever she’s ready. And Alex is grateful for that, she really is, but it’s getting really hard to talk to Kara about anything that isn’t Maggie. Kara – sweet, oblivious Kara – still hasn’t figured anything out, but Alex wants her to. She wants to be able to tell Kara why she’s been so giggly the past few weeks, why her heart feels like it’s going to burst every time she gets a text from Maggie. Why she hasn’t ever been happier.
So she decides she has to tell her. Alex decides to ask if she wants to hang out, and then she’ll tell Kara everything. She’ll tell her about Maggie, about learning about her soulmark, about the fact that she’s… you know.
“So what’s going on?” Kara asks, plopping down on the couch before grabbing a glazed donut and shoving a bite into her mouth. “Is something wrong? You never randomly decide to hang out on a Monday and bring a dozen donuts with you.”
Alex takes a shaky breath and starts to pace around the coffee table. “No, no. I, um…” She clears her throat, hoping maybe it might make it easier to get the words out. “I just – I wanted to talk to you about something. Something about me.”
“Alex,” Kara says, staring up at her with worried eyes, “whatever it is, you can tell me.”
“I know. So, it’s about… well, it’s about…” She wants to just say it, but she doesn’t. “Maggie. It’s about Maggie.”
Kara just smiles. “Your cop friend. Right?”
Alex just nods. “You know she and I started working on that case a couple months ago.”
“Yeah. Is there something wrong with it?”
“No, no. We just… started hanging out after work and stuff. And I started, you know…” She takes a deep breath before saying, quietly. “Thinking. About her.”
She avoids Kara’s eyes, doesn’t dare look into them for the few seconds of silence before Kara says, “I don’t know what that means.” When Alex finally makes eye contact, she finds that there isn’t anything but confusion in her eyes. Kara doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
She’s going to have to explain.
“I mean,” she says, clearing her throat again. “I started to develop… feelings. For her.”
Kara doesn’t say anything again, but this time Alex is too nervous to look back.
“Feelings. Like…”
“Yeah. Those-those feelings.”
“I don’t understand. Max is –”
“He’s not.”
“He’s not?”
“I moved out. Max isn’t my soulmate, Maggie is. I’m a… I’m gay.”
She doesn’t say the word lesbian. She doesn’t say it, even though that’s what she is, a woman who exclusively likes other women. The fact of that makes her feel free, but that word makes her feel ashamed. Lesbian is a word for pornography or mean women who hate men, neither of which, when applied to Alex, make her feel good about herself.
Still, she says the word gay, even though it feels like her throat might close up in fear. She says it, and she waits.
Kara doesn’t say anything for a moment, just sits on her couch with the donut in her hand untouched for the last minute, staring at a spot on the coffee table. Eventually, she repeats the words she just heard. “You’re gay.” She still doesn’t look up.
Alex nods, staring intently at Kara, before remembering that she isn’t looking at her. “Yeah, yeah. I’m – I’m gay.”
Kara sets her donut back in the box, and Alex thinks she might make eye contact with her, but she doesn’t. She waits a few more moments, and when looks up after what feels like an eternity, Alex can’t place any of the emotions that are shining through in her eyes. “Have you felt…” She pauses, trying to find the words. “Like this before?”
“No,” Alex answers immediately. “Not like this.”
“Have you ever been with a girl?”
Alex doesn’t know if Kara means kissing or if she means sex, but either way the answer is no, never before Maggie. “Not before now.”
“Okay,” she says slowly. “Then what’s different? Maybe Max wasn’t your soulmate, but –”
“This isn’t because I haven’t found the right guy, Kara,” Alex snaps.
“I never said it was! I’m just… I’m trying to understand.” She takes a deep breath. “How can Maggie be your soulmate if you’ve never felt like this about a woman before?”
Alex knew that question was coming, knew it because that’s all she asked herself for the months she thought about Maggie before she did anything. “I…”
Kara just looks up at her with curious eyes, and Alex remembers that this is exact expression on that was on her face so often after she first came to live with them. Alex takes a seat on the couch and inhales deeply.
“I said that I’ve never felt like this before.”
Kara nods.
“That was the truth. I’ve never felt anything this strong. But, if I’m being honest? You know, I realize that… that I’ve had these thoughts before.”
She waits for Kara to say something, give her something to go off of, but she doesn’t, so she continues.
“Do you remember my best friend from high school, Vicky Donahue?”
Kara nods. “Yeah, I remember Vicky. You had that big falling out, right?”
Alex doesn’t acknowledge the words, because she’s scared if she does, she might start crying. She can’t cry over something that happened more than ten years ago. Instead, she continues as if Kara hadn’t said a word.
“I used to love sleeping over at her house. I-in her room.” She swallows thickly. “In her bed. I think that… I think I felt something, then. And it scared me, you know? Because the next thing I know I’m fighting with her, over something so stupid, and I lost my best friend.
“I shoved that memory down so deep inside that… it’s like it never happened.”
Kara lifts her hand up from her lap, and it looks like she’s about to rest her hand on Alex’s thigh, but she decides against it before setting it back on her own leg.
“I’m remembering stuff like that, now,” Alex finishes.
When she finally looks over at Kara, she doesn’t look upset like Alex thought she might. “So, you and Maggie? Are you like… together?”
Alex bites the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling too hard. “Yeah, yeah. We – we are.”
Kara doesn’t seem to bite hers, though, because her grin is bigger than any Alex has ever seen. “Alex, I’m so happy for you.” She seems to be less nervous now, because she knocks her shoulder against Alex’s before asking, “So what about her? What’s she like?”
“I don’t know,” says Alex, ducking her head down so Kara won’t see her blush. “I just like her so much, you know? She’s smart, and she’s tough, and she’s… beautiful. She’s just so beautiful.”
“So are you.”
Alex shakes her head. “I’m not jealous, Kara. I’m not saying that she’s beautiful and I’m not, I’m just saying that…” She pauses, trying to figure out the proper way to word it. “I finally get what people mean when they talk about their soulmates. How they’re beautiful, no matter what they’re doing or saying or wearing. She’s beautiful, Kara. She’s got these dimples and beautifully soft lips –“
Kara laughs. “You really like her, then.”
Alex just nods. “I do. Every time I kiss her I feel like I never want to stop, you know?”
Kara hums her agreement.
“Like I could just stay there forever, touching her. Not even in the way you’re thinking, just touching her arm or her face or her waist. I could spend forever touching Maggie.” She bites her bottom lip and tries to hide a grin before realizing exactly how cheesy all of what she just said sounded. “Oh, god, never repeat any of that to anyone.”
“Who would I tell? Winn?”
Alex covers her face with her hands, laughing. “He’d never let me live it down.”
She feels Kara shrug. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mention it if you threatened him with your index finger again.”
“Yeah,” Alex says, laughing. “That always works.”
They sit in the quiet for a moment, and for the first time since Alex told Kara her secret, it’s not uncomfortable at all.
“I just… never felt like that with Max. I thought something was wrong…”
“Wrong?” Kara asks. “With him?”
Alex doesn’t need to reply. Kara already knows that’s not what Alex meant.
“I think,” Kara begins, “I owe you an apology.”
“What? For what?”
“For not…” Kara sighs and thinks about how to word her sentence before answering. “Not creating an environment where you felt like you could talk about this with me.”
Alex doesn’t say anything.
“All those years we spent together growing up, even after we grew up… the endless nights, talking and sharing? Now I realize that they were all about me and my issues. There’s never been room for you, Alex. And that’s – that’s my fault. And I’m so, so sorry.”
Kara’s voice breaks when the word ‘sorry’ passes her lips, and Alex’s only thought is to make her feel better. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Kara shakes her head. “I did. I was a bad sister, and you were so great to me.”
“Not at first.”
“No, but every moment after that. You were the best big sister anyone could ask for, and I haven’t been half as good a sister to you as you’ve been to me.”
“Kara – ”
“But I’m going to be,” Kara continues. “I’m going to try to be better. I want to be there for you like you’ve always been there for me. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Alex can’t focus on anything besides the fact that it finally feels like it will be okay.
~~~
It takes a few weeks after Maggie and Alex’s first real date for them to do anything more. They make out and they touch each other, which feels amazing, but they haven’t done anything… else… yet. Alex didn’t think it was possible to want something as much as she wants to touch Maggie without anything in between them. She thinks Maggie wants to touch her too, but she knows she’ll have to be the one to say it because her girlfriend – girlfriend! – is entirely too selfless to even think about asking for something she thinks Alex won’t be ready for.
Alex can’t focus on anything besides Maggie’s body on top of hers and Maggie’s lips on her neck, but she knows she wants more.
“Maggie,” Alex moans, and she pulls back, lust in her eyes. “I – I want to have sex with you.”
“You do?” Maggie asks.
“I mean, only if you want to have sex with me, too.”
Maggie laughs. “I do. But are you sure?” and Alex nods, and that’s all the confirmation that she needs. She returns to kissing Alex, and Alex can feel herself sigh into the kiss. Alex’s hands wander around Maggie’s t-shirt and her fingers graze the bottom of her stomach. Maggie groans at the touch and separates from Alex’s lips long enough to pull the shirt off of herself.
This is officially more of Maggie than Alex ever thought she would see. She can’t really say or think anything except that Maggie is the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. She kind of wishes she weren’t so turned on right now, because she’d really like to spend the time needed to truly appreciate the beauty that is Maggie Sawyer. Her skin is smooth and tan, unmarred by scars except for the red one near her hip bone that must be from when she was stabbed. Alex doesn’t realize she’s extending her arm to touch it until she makes contact and Maggie sighs.
Alex looks up at her, suddenly scared that she’s hurt her, but Maggie just shakes her head and caresses her cheek softly with her thumb.
“Alex, I’m fine.”
She doesn’t know how Maggie knows exactly what she was thinking, but she’s glad she does, because she wouldn’t know how to ask.
“Are you sure?”
Maggie nods and presses Alex’s palm into the scar, holding pressure lightly. “I’m not going to break. I’m okay.”
Alex waits there for a second before nodding and trailing her hand along the rest of Maggie’s stomach. Skin is stretched over taut muscles, and Alex knew Maggie was fit, but never did she imagine anything as beautiful and attractive as what she’s seeing now. She sits up slightly to recapture Maggie’s lips with her own, not taking her hand away from Maggie’s torso, but instead moving it to rest on the small of Maggie’s back.
Maggie runs her hand along Alex’s stomach, and Alex feels the muscles tighten and release as fingertips graze lightly under her shirt.
“Can I?” Maggie asks, her lips only inches away from her girlfriend’s, and Alex nods.
Maggie pulls the shirt up off of her, and Alex was sure she’d be self-conscious, but there is nothing but care in Maggie’s eyes.
“Alex,” she says, eyes trailing down every inch of uncovered skin she can see, “you’re so beautiful.”
Alex blushes. “I’m not.”
Maggie just shakes her head and leans forward to recapture her lips. Her hands are somehow both delicate and strong, one hand on Alex’s waist holding her in place, and the other sliding up the side of her torso, just grazing at the side of her breast.
“Can I?” Maggie asks, the hand previously on the side of her ribcage now underneath her at the clasp of her bra, and Alex just nods. She sits up slightly so Maggie can undo it, which she does easily, and Alex wonders for a second how many other women she’s done this with. In the next second, though, it doesn’t matter, because Maggie’s fingers are circling her nipple and, god, that feels amazing.
“You’re so beautiful,” Maggie repeats, and then she presses her lips onto Alex’s jawline. Her fingers don’t move from her breast, but her lips travel lower and lower until they’re just below her collarbone, and Maggie looks up for permission.
“Yes,” says Alex, and her voice is gravelly and needy.
Maggie kisses around her nipple with a feather light touch, and Alex feels like she might pass out. It isn’t until she hears Maggie laughing that she realizes that she said it out loud.
“Fuck, I didn’t mean to say that,” she explains, and Maggie shuts her up with a kiss.
“You’re adorable.”
“I guess I’ll have to trust you on that.”
Maggie smiles and returns her attention to Alex’s breast, eventually pressing an open-mouthed kiss to her nipple which causes Alex to gasp. Maggie’s mouth is hot and wet, and her tongue swirls around the peak of it.
When Alex isn’t sure she can take much more, Maggie pulls away. Alex whines at the lack of contact, but then Maggie is undoing the clasp of her own bra, and that’s much more exciting than anything Alex has ever seen before.
She must be staring, because Maggie clears her throat, and when Alex looks up, she’s smirking.
“Like what you see, Danvers?”
“I – yes.” She gulps. “Definitely.” She reaches her hand up before hesitating and asking, “Can I touch you?”
Maggie smiles and guides Alex’s hand to her chest, shutting her eyes when Alex’s fingers brush her nipple.
Alex has felt her own breasts before and never felt any sort of attraction. She’s even felt Maggie’s before, over the shirt, and while they were nice, they’re nothing compared to a topless Maggie breathing roughly, just like she is right now.
Alex never thought anything could be this arousing. Maggie is so soft and warm and electric. It feels a little like they’re the same person now, not like she can’t feel where she ends and Maggie begins, but like the boundaries between the two of them don’t matter anymore. She runs her thumb over the peak of Maggie’s breast, and she hears Maggie stifle a groan. Alex presses a chaste kiss to the area, circling in until her lips are right above Maggie’s nipple. She takes it into her mouth slowly, and Maggie lets out a strangled grunt.
She stops, suddenly. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, yes,” says Maggie, a little breathless. “The sounds I’m making are good, I promise.”
Alex nods and takes Maggie’s breast into her mouth again. She swirls her tongue around, pausing in places that make Maggie’s breath stop short, listening intently for what makes Maggie feel good. She wants nothing if not to make Maggie feel good.
After a few minutes, Alex trails kisses back up to Maggie’s mouth, connecting their lips again. She expects to just kiss for a little bit, but then Maggie is smiling and flipping her over so that her back is flat against the mattress and Maggie is on top of her in the most wonderful way. Maggie kisses down her neck, then her sternum, then down the smooth skin of her stomach, until Alex can feel hot breath right above where her pants buckle.
“Are you okay?” asks Maggie.
“Yeah, yes,” Alex replies. “I’ve just never done this.”
“There’s not much to do, Danvers.” Maggie unbuckles Alex’s belt, but lets it sit in the loops before going any further. “All you have to do is lie back and let me take care of you. Do you want that?”
“Yes,” Alex says, nodding. She tries to relax, but the pulsing between her legs and the beating of her heart are quite the opposite of soothing. She doesn’t think she’s ever felt anything this intense before in her entire life.
Maggie slowly undoes the button on Alex’s jeans and pulls them down her legs until Alex is left with nothing but underwear on. If she were still wearing her bra, Maggie would see that she purposely matched them, but she guesses it doesn’t matter now.
Maggie hums, taking a deep breath, and kissing up and down Alex’s inner thighs. She sucks lightly at her inner thighs until Alex is actually panting and begging her to go on, and then she takes the opportunity to kiss her way back up to Alex’s mouth, landing softly on open lips.
“You’re really good at this,” says Alex, breathless.
“Oh yeah?” Maggie takes the opportunity to mold her lips with Alex’s, kissing softly. When she pulls away, she asks, “Can I touch you?”
“Yes,” says Alex immediately, and Maggie doesn’t ask twice. She brings her right hand down a shivering path on Alex’s body, all the way to her hips, and she presses a kiss to Alex’s pulse point as she slips her hand into Alex’s underwear.
There’s so much going on, so much for Alex to focus on, that she decides to keep her attention to the hand in between her legs. When Maggie pushes a finger between wet folds, Alex feels Maggie smile into the kisses she’s placing on her neck.
“You seem excited for this,” says Maggie.
“Y-yeah.”
“Does that feel good?”
Alex swallows roughly. “Yes.”
“Good,” says Maggie. She swirls her pointer finger around Alex’s clit, and Alex feels a little like she’s going to short circuit. She’s never felt anything this good before. And that’s when Maggie stops.
Her hand pulls away, and Alex groans at the loss of contact.
“Why’d you stop?”
“Because I want to do more. Do you trust me?” she asks.
“Always,” says Alex.
Maggie nods, pressing a kiss to Alex’s cheek before trailing down to where she was before, warm breath on Alex’s center.
“Can I?” she asks, hands tugging lightly at the underwear.
“Yes,” is all Alex can say, so Maggie follows her request, sliding down her panties.
This is it, Alex thinks. This is the most exposed she’s ever felt, and somehow, it’s also the safest. She’s nervous, of course, but she knows she has no reason to be. Maggie would never make her feel badly about herself, and she’s done this before, which means that nothing Alex has will be unfamiliar to her. So, she takes a deep breath and looks down to admire her girlfriend’s head between her thighs.
Maggie seems to be doing the exact same thing, because Alex can’t find anything but love in her eyes when they meet. She can feel hot breath on her outer lips, and then fingers prying them apart, and then the softest kiss anyone could ever give right on her clit.
Without meaning to, Alex lets loose a groan, and that’s all Maggie needs to go forward.
She isn’t really sure what happens. She knows when Maggie’s tongue meets her clit, because she feels a surge of pleasure that she’s never felt anything like before, and then she loses track of time. Maggie could be down there for a minute or an hour or a whole day and Alex wouldn’t know, because she’s too lost in the pleasure.
She finds that she doesn’t know what to do with her hands. Gripping the sheets isn’t satisfying, and twisting her fingers in Maggie’s hair seems rude or maybe painful, so she just makes a fist. She hopes she doesn’t look too weird or awkward, and that Maggie doesn’t notice, but Maggie is Maggie, and of course she notices.
She doesn’t stop, she doesn’t even look up, she just reaches her hand up to grip Alex’s, and then they’re holding hands while Maggie eats her out, and Alex feels like she might laugh at how embarrassingly soft the whole situation is if she weren’t so incredibly turned on right now.
Something inside her builds like it has so many times in the past few weeks, and then she’s coming with a strangled cry, and as soon as the aftershocks fade, Maggie is back up near her head, placing gentle kisses on her jawline.
“Oh my god,” pants Alex.
“That good?” Maggie asks, grinning. She doesn’t need to, though, because Alex is sure that Maggie knows exactly how good it was for her.
“That was amazing,” Alex says, laughing, and she’s sure she sounds at least a little crazy right now.
“You okay?”
“Yes. Yeah, I am. I’m so okay.” She rolls over to face her girlfriend and kisses her chastely before pulling back and laughing again. “I never knew I could feel that good. I mean I’ve felt good before, oh god, so good, with you. You’ve made me feel things that I never thought I could, you know? I just feel so good with you, Maggie.”
Maggie doesn’t say anything, just nods and smiles that signature smile of hers, the one that Alex finds herself falling in love with more and more each day.
“Maggie,” Alex continues. “I want to make you feel as good as you make me feel.”
“You already do, Alex,” Maggie says, running her thumb along Alex’s cheekbone.
“No, like… you know. The way you just did with me.”
Maggie laughs. “You want to go down on me, Danvers?”
Alex just nods, smiling a little awkwardly. “I do! I just don’t know what to do.”
“That’s okay. No one knows what to do.”
It goes slowly. Alex is on top of Maggie, kissing her, playing with her breasts, just like she was doing before. Only this time, she has access to all of Maggie, even the parts that she doesn’t know what to do with. Maggie undoes the button on her jeans, giving Alex easier access, so Alex takes that to mean that she can slip off her pants. Maggie may be short, but it feels like Alex has to pull pants down miles of tan skin before she reaches the end of her legs. She kisses up Maggie’s thigh, placing a kiss where her clit would be beneath the cloth of her underwear, then trailing back up to her mouth, just as Maggie had done earlier. The plan at first is to copy the movements that Maggie had done to her, but as soon as she reaches wet folds, she feels Maggie gasp and all rational thought goes out the window. Soon, she’s following what Maggie’s body is telling her to do, swirling circles at her entrance until Maggie is panting.
At this point, Alex is just as turned on as she was when Maggie was going down on her, so she can only imagine how good it’s going to feel when she’s doing this with her tongue, tasting Maggie. She pulls down the panties and spreads Maggie’s legs with her knee before kissing down, down, down, until she reaches Maggie’s center.
She didn’t know what she was expecting, to be honest. All she does know is that she didn’t think it would be this hot. Something about seeing Maggie like this, all but undone, is beyond attractive. She doesn’t really know what to do, but she trusts that Maggie will tell her if she does anything she doesn’t like, so she dives in.
She presses a kiss to Maggie’s outer lips, and savors the little gasp that she hears from above. Spreading them gently, she licks a soft line up from Maggie’s entrance to her clit, and Maggie lets out a half groan, half moan. She takes that to mean that she likes that, so she copies the movement a few times before circling her tongue around the swollen bud. Alex wasn’t sure what to expect, but this is certainly more enjoyable than anything she’d done with Max. Alex wants to savor this, licking up wetness wherever she can. She follows the sounds that Maggie is making, focusing on wherever makes Maggie the loudest until Maggie’s hands tangle in her hair, holding her loosely at the right side of her clit, and Alex licks and sucks at that point until Maggie is shaking, and then very, very still.
She figures it’s over, then, and she wipes her mouth on the back of her hand and returns to the spot next to Maggie, her head resting on her chest so that she can hear the soft beating of Maggie’s heart, returning to its normal pace.
Maggie doesn’t say anything, just kisses the top of Alex’s head, and sighs into her.
“This is going to sound cliché, but is it always like that?” asks Alex.
Maggie is quick to reply. “No. I’m going to sound cliché, too, but no, Alex. It’s never like that.”
“So that means… that means it was as good for you as it was for me?”
Maggie chuckles a little before realizing that Alex is serious. “Do you really have to ask that?”
“Would you answer, if I did?”
Maggie sits up, then, waiting until Alex looks back up at her so she can stare into soft eyes. “Alex, it was definitely as good for me as it was for you. I don’t think I’ve ever felt like this before.”
Alex smiles softly. “Me neither. I mean, you knew that, but, still. I’ve never felt that good in my life.”
“Well, I’m glad I got to change that. I hope to do it a lot more,” says Maggie, smiling softly.
“Me too.”
~~~
Alex wakes up early, surprisingly, to the sun shining in her eyes. Maggie’s arms are wrapped around her waist, and they’re still not wearing any clothes, so Maggie’s skin is warm on hers. She feels like this might be the happiest moment of her life, waking up knowing that she and Maggie had slept together, and that she will probably do it so many more times. She kind of feels like she needs to scream, or run a mile, or explode.
She needs to tell someone. Anyone. But who is there to tell?
She basically only has four friends, and that’s if she includes both her sister and her boss. J’onn is out of the question, if only because he was her Dad’s friend, and it feels a little dirty to tell him about how she just got laid. Lucy would just gloat about being right about everything, which Alex doesn’t need right now. The only other person left who isn’t Maggie is Kara, her baby sister who she’s never said a word about sex to.
Then again, Kara is an adult. Alex has certainly heard about the adult things that Kara has done. Plus, she used to wake her up at the crack of dawn all the time when they were younger, both when they shared a room and after Alex had moved out. It’s only fair that Alex return the favor.
She scrolls through her contacts and selects her sister’s name, practically vibrating by the time Kara picks up.
“Alex? Are you okay?”
“I know you probably don’t want to talk about this, but I really need to talk to someone.”
“Of course,” Kara replies, instantly. “What do you need? What’s wrong? I know I’ve been selfish all these years, never listening to what you needed, but I’m here now, I promise.”
“God, I… I don’t even know where to start.”
“Okay,” says Kara, clearly a little worried. “What’s the general idea of the thing you need to tell me?”
“Maggie and I… We… She and I had… no, we… We made love last night!”
“Oh my god,” says Kara, clearly horrified.
“No, I’m not being gross, it’s just that that’s all we can call it! What we did was way too sweet to be called sex, Kara! Sex is too harsh a word! She was so kind and gentle and perfect, like I honestly and for real understand what love songs are talking about now. Did you know it felt that good?”
“Oh my god,” she repeats.
“I never knew it could feel this good! I mean, I’ve done other things with her, for sure, and I’ve had sex before, too, but –”
“Dear lord –”
“Kara, this was so beautiful. I can’t believe I waited this long! I wasted months of my life doing stupid shit like working or sleeping or eating pizza when I could have been making love to Maggie? And not just making love! God, we could’ve been having sex, too!”
~~~
Alex isn’t anything but relieved when the day comes that she can finally sign the divorce papers. When Max has told her that he wanted to wait until after the app was released to tell everyone, she was fine with that. She wasn’t ready to tell the whole world who she was and who she loved. That was really okay with her.
But now it’s getting old.
Alex wants to take Maggie out on a date. She wants to bring her to a restaurant and hold her hand and kiss her without being worried that someone could snap a picture and ruin her image. It’s not as if Max is the president, but he’s notable enough to have people who care about his life. By the transient property, there are people who care about Alex’s life, too.
Well, were.
As of today, though, Alex will be a free woman. That’s what she tells herself, anyway, as she walks into her lawyer’s office. She debates bringing Maggie in with her, but eventually decides that it would just be cruel. Maybe Max was happy to be rid of Alex. Maybe he was happy that this wasn’t actually his life, that she wasn’t actually his soulmate. But maybe he was heartbroken, and Alex can’t kick him while he’s down. He may have been a douche, but he loved her. At least, she thinks he did.
He’s sitting across the room from where she enters the office. He doesn’t look sad, but he doesn’t look happy either. He looks a little like he doesn’t care, actually, which makes this easier for Alex. She doesn’t know if it’s true, if this façade he’s put on is really what he’s feeling. It’s hard to believe that he isn’t feeling anything about the end of a five-year marriage, but if that’s what he needs people to believe, Alex will give him that.
It’s quicker than she would have imagined. As soon as she walks in, a man in a suit points her over to the stack of paper that she recognizes as holding the same words that were on the document she was reading on her computer last night. She picks up a pen, signs where it tells her to, and when she places the pen back down on the table, she feels a sense of finality. This is an ending.
She can only hope that it’s also the beginning of something better.
~~~
Alex knows that once the divorce papers are processed, it’ll be all over the news. Divorces aren’t all too common in a society where everyone has a soulmate that they’re pretty much guaranteed to meet. While divorce is legal now, it’s only been that way for maybe 100 years, and it pretty much only happens in cases of the marriage of two non-soulmates. So, yeah, the media will eat up the fact that Max Lord’s wife is not actually his soulmate, that his wife is some other woman’s soulmate.
There’s no escaping that her mother will find out. So, she takes that to mean that she has to hear it from her, first.
She hasn’t really spoken to her mother since before she left for college, so it’s not all that unusual that she doesn’t know about Max, or more importantly, Maggie. Her mother calls her before major holidays to wish her a good day or invite her and Kara over, and they talk for maybe five minutes about nothing of importance before she fakes an emergency at work. (Her mother always sighs and tells her to call her back later, that she wants to talk, but Alex never does, and Eliza never calls her on it.)
She’d texted her mother the day before asking her to call whenever she was free, saying she had something important to say. Her mom said she wouldn’t be free until tomorrow morning, and Alex said that would be fine.
The phone rings at ten, an hour after the papers have been signed, and Alex is prepared, sitting in the driver’s seat of the car she borrowed from Kara.
She picks up after the sixth ring, heart in her throat.
“Hello?” she answers.
“Alexandra,” says her mom, “it’s been a while. You told me to call? Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, everything’s good,” says Alex, letting out a shaky breath.
Eliza seems skeptical. “Okay… What did you want to tell me?”
“It… it has to do with Max.”
Eliza’s tone shifts instantly to worry. “Is he alright? Alex, are you alright?”
“Yeah, yeah. He’s fine, I’m fine. We’re both… fine.”
Eliza doesn’t speak for a moment, waiting for Alex to continue, but she doesn’t. “You’re worrying me, sweetie. What’s wrong? Are you with him right now?”
A pause. “No. That’s kind of what I’ve been meaning to tell you.”
Alex waits for her mother to say something, but she doesn’t, so she resumes talking.
“Max and I aren’t together anymore.”
Eliza scoffs. She doesn’t say anything for a moment, clearly not believing it, before she gasps and says, “What?”
“We got divorced.”
“What? Why would you do that? When did this happen?”
“Today.”
“What?” she repeats. “Alexandra,” she scolds. “You didn’t tell me.”
“I’m sorry. I guess I couldn’t really explain why it happened.”
“Did you have a fight? Soulmates have fights sometimes, it’s no big deal. I’m sure you’ll work it out.”
“No, we didn’t have a fight. He… He wasn’t….”
Her mother pauses, trying to let Alex get out whatever it is she’s trying to say, but when she doesn’t, she has to chime in. “Honey, tell me. Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.”
“Hewasn’tmysoulmate,” Alex says in a blur.
“Sorry, what?”
“He wasn’t my soulmate.”
“What are you talking about? Of course he was.”
“He wasn’t, though. I don’t… I don’t love him.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I don’t love him. I love someone else. My real soulmate.”
“He’s not your soulmate?”
“Yes. He’s – but that’s not why I didn’t love him.”
“Why didn’t you love him?”
Alex avoids the question. “I have a soulmate, and it’s not him.”
“Well, who is it? What’s his name?”
Alex opens her mouth and she’s about to tell her mom the truth, but nothing comes out.
“Alex? What’s his name?”
“Maggie,” she says eventually.
There’s a moment of silence that can’t be more than ten seconds long, but it feels like an eternity. (Alex remembers the longest week of her life – somehow this is worse.)
“Maggie,” her mother repeats.
“Yeah.”
“You’re… gay?”
“Yeah.” She takes a breath. “I’m gay.”
Her mother doesn’t answer for a few seconds, but she sounds like she’s smiling when she does. “I’m proud of you, Alexandra.”
“For what?”
“For being who you are. For telling me who you are.”
“Well, now you know. I’m gay,” she says, laughing awkwardly. “I’m a lesbian.” The word still feels weird on her lips, like she’s thirteen years old and saying ‘fuck’ for the first time, but she knows she’ll get used to it.
“I’m a lesbian,” she repeats. That’s what she is, and she’s happy about it. She’s a lesbian and she’s Maggie’s soulmate and she’s happy. She’s actually happy.
Finally.
~~~
This year, when Kara invites Alex to a New Year’s Eve party, she brings Maggie. She lets people stare and wonder and gawk, because it doesn’t matter anymore. She spent so many years hoping that she wouldn’t have to kiss anyone on New Year’s, that she wouldn’t have to do anything or be anything that she didn’t want to. But it’s different now. Now she has Maggie by her side, who loves her and only wants her to be happy. And she is. She really is.
So when the clock starts ticking closer to midnight, and when Kara’s friends count down from ten, she isn’t anxious or uncomfortable anymore. When the ball drops and the new year washes over them, when she leans down to kiss her soulmate – her real soulmate – she is nothing but content. This is the feeling she was waiting for all these years.
It was worth it.