20. Chapter 20

Alex sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose, shrugging out of her combat gear and thanking the newbie agent who jumps to put the rest of the field equipment away for her.

Her muscles are stiff and she’s going to feel that laceration in her side in the morning, but she’d gotten it checked out in the field and she’s really too exhausted to take better care of it right now.

She sighs again as she checks into the control room one last time before leaving for the night, making sure all the agents on late night shift have checked in, that all the new compounds they’d transported earlier that day are in proper storage, that all the cells are locked tight, that all the combat gear has been returned and accounted for.

She almost misses the post-it note, hastily scrawled and crookedly stuck to the computer console.

Danvers, it reads, go home tonight, not Kara’s. She said it’s fine. - Sawyer

Brow furrowed, Alex bites the inside of her cheek, reads the note again, and grins slightly at the flutter of anticipation in her stomach.

She’s not quite as tired when she swings her leg over her Ducati and pulls away into the night.

Danvers, the next note, stuck this time to her front door, Bathroom. Take your time. -- Sawyer.

Alex walks into the bathroom, slowly, mystified.

“What the...” she whispers on discovering a near boiling, perfectly sudsy, perfectly scented -- lavender, her favorite -- bath, candles and rose petals littering the sides of the tub, contemporary jazz humming from the iPod plugged into a small speaker above the sink.

She looks back down at the note in her hand -- Take your time, it says -- and she smiles, and she does.

She finds the next note folded into the heated towel waiting for her on the rack.

Alex, it reads. Bedroom. Don’t bother getting dressed. -- Sawyer

Her heart skips and she forgets how to breathe, and she notices for the first time that there’s a path of rose petals leading from the bathroom into her bedroom.

She smiles and she swallows the stinging in her eyes and she takes a deep breath, wrapping the towel around her body, holding it just above her chest as she steps, slowly, tentatively, wide-eyed, into her bedroom.

There’s a tray of homemade pizza, still steaming, and salad, loaded with all of Alex’s favorites, and bottles of beer and a pitcher of water sitting next to her bed, and there’s that contemporary jazz again, and there’s Maggie Sawyer, hair down and eyes soft and lips slightly open, sitting cross-legged on the bed in one of Alex’s Stanford sweatshirts.

“Hungry?” she asks, after a long, long silence, a long, long silence of staring into each other’s eyes and forgetting how to breathe.

“Yes,” Alex smiles, and crosses the room to sit in front of Maggie.

Needing no words, Maggie passes Alex beer and she holds out pizza for her to bite into, and she moans when she does because god is it good. She feeds her the salad and she feeds her the pizza and she caresses her naked body when Alex lets the towel drop.

Still wordless, she slips the final note -- for tonight -- into Alex’s hands.

Alex, it reads, I love you. Always. -- Your Maggie