15. Chapter 15

After a few months, they’re practically living together.

After a few months, they have a shorthand that’s even tighter than the one they had almost automatically; this one extends into emotional life outside of work. When there can be emotional life outside of work.

So when Alex gets the deflated long day today. quiet night tonight? text from Maggie, she knows.

Knows that her heart hurts and that her body probably hurts, too.

Knows that someone did something racist, something xenophobic, something homophobic. That someone she was pursuing got away, that someone died, that Maggie got beaten down, that she was questioning herself, her purpose, her abilities.

Something. It was always something.

Alex knew, because Alex always had something, too.

Come over, I’ll order in, Alex texted back casually.

In the beginning, she’d always been overly concerned.

In the beginning, she’d overcompensated for making their initial friendship mostly about her needs, her coming out, her growth, and tried to get Maggie to talk about everything with her.

And sometimes, Maggie did. Sometimes Maggie talked and sometimes Maggie cried and sometimes Maggie shook with rage for hours on end.

But more often? More often Maggie sat, and sighed, and took shots of whiskey, and let Alex play with her hair, and sank into her arms, onto her lap, and fell asleep with Alex’s fingers tracing every contour of her face.

So Alex knew, now, not to make a big fuss over Maggie’s long day. She knew not to ask: if Maggie wanted to talk, she would.

She knew, now, just to act.

So she sped home from the DEO and she rummaged way in the back of the cabinet underneath her sink, digging out first aid kits and toothpaste and tampons, until she found the bottle she was looking for: a lavender-scented bubble bath that Eliza had gotten her last year, with a pointed reminder about the scientifically proven benefits of aromatherapy.

She plugged the drain, she ran the water, she dumped a quarter of the spicy-sweet smelling bottle into the mix. She tested the water with her hands, warm, warmer, warmest, bordering on too hot. She watched with satisfaction as the bubbles formed, and she jumped up with another idea, looking haphazardly at her watch as she darted from the bathroom: Maggie would be home any minute.

She shot through the apartment, gathering the candles that Maggie always seemed to like best, and arranged them on the sides of the tub. She lit them. She tested the water again. She took a deep breath in and let her eyes flutter closed.

She grinned and she turned off the water and she ordered them two pies of pizza, because it was bound to be one of those nights.

When Maggie’s key scraped the lock – her heart always leaped at that – she bit down her smile, she bit down the urge to run to the door, to overwhelm Maggie with physical attention, with love, with kisses. Instead, she casually leaned her head over the side of the open fridge door to meet Maggie’s eyes, clinking two bottles of beer together as she did.

“Hey,” she offered.

“Hey babe.” Maggie’s smile was as small as her eyes, which was as small as her defeated body language, and deep empathy combined with a strong desire to destroy whoever or whatever did this to the woman she loved swept through Alex. She bit it down, popping the top off one of the beers and handing it to her girlfriend.

“Thank you,” Maggie sighed, leaning up and kissing her, lingering just long enough to make Alex smile.

“I ran you a bath,” she said as casually as she could muster after Maggie pulled away.

“You did what?”

Alex bit down the series of insecure questions and disclaimers that screeched into her mind, and she nodded her head toward the bathroom with a small smile. She heard Maggie gasp faintly as she took in the scent, the sight, the dim lights and the candles.

“Babe,” she half breathed and half groaned, a small lighting up her every feature, stress already easing off of her body.

“How did you get to be so perfect?”

Alex beamed and Maggie strode over to her, unbuttoning Alex’s shirt without preamble.

“What uh… what are you doing?”

“A bath,” Maggie explained as she untucked Alex’s now unbuttoned flannel, taking her fingers lower to unzip her jeans, “requires a good, long soak. Especially one with all those candles, all those suds. You can’t let a good bath like that go to waste.”

She shrugged Alex out of her shirt, unclasped her bra with one try, and started tugging down her jeans, grinning at how utterly compliant badass DEO Agent Alex Danvers was for her.

“And the thing is, babe, especially after the day I’ve had? That long in the bath, alone? I’d miss you too much. So, either I take a shorter bath, or – “ She tugged down Alex’s boy shorts triumphantly. “–you just join me.”

“So you won’t be lonely,” Alex confirmed as she stripped Maggie of her own clothes.

“Exactly.”

Alex nodded and kissed each newly exposed inch of Maggie’s skin as she worked her way down her body.

“Happy to be of service, my love.”