91. Chapter 91

Alex shakes him off the first time, nods him away with a quirk of her eyebrow and a cool I’m all set, thanks, before taking another swig of her beer, eyes returning to the bar disinterestedly instead of on the half-amused, half-affronted looking man who’d just offered her a drink and a time that’ll put a smile on that pretty face.

He scoffs and he stalks away, shaking his head and running his hand over his chin, and the girl with the dimples and leather jacket alone at the corner of the bar stiffens, watches him with careful eyes, sips her bourbon slowly. Makes a note to herself to keep an eye on the gorgeous short-haired woman nursing a beer like she’s wishing for ten more, because if Maggie knows one thing, she knows men in bars, and this guy will be back.

He proves her right a few minutes later, after a raucous conversation at a booth with his buddies, after another shot or two. He saunters up to the woman with the distant eyes again, and she tenses, but it’s subtle, it’s simple, it’s collected. It’s brave. But it’s also tired.

She can’t hear what he tells her, but she catches the woman’s response – no, nothing hurt, and before you can say it, no, I didn’t fall from heaven, but if I did, I’m fairly certain I’d be in a morgue instead of this bar, and also an alien – and Maggie snorts and smirks into her drink before rising halfway up, because the guy is pissed, but the woman just levels an even stare at him and if he expected any resistance from her, it wasn’t this kind of devil-may-care resistance. He splutters and he mutters about not knowing how to take a damn compliment and he ambles back to his friends.

The woman rolls her eyes and shakes her head and orders another beer.

By the third time the same guy comes up to her, she’s irritated and she’s flustered because god didn’t anyone ever teach him the meaning of no, but mostly she’s just tired, because the day she had, all she’d wanted was a drink in a place that wasn’t her apartment, because her apartment was empty of everything except her thoughts, except her memories, except the broken screams she’d heard that day, the ones she’d failed to stop; the ones she’d failed to save.

Alex almost groans aloud when her peripheral vision picks up the man with a lustful blaze in his eyes and fucking her on his mind, but she swallows it because she doesn’t want a confrontation, she can’t do another confrontation, not today.

But before whatever stupid, misogynist pickup line he’s cooked up this time can cross his lips, a warm, gentle arm, touching her but only barely, only just, is slipping around her shoulders, and she starts to jump, starts to go for the gun in her waistband, but the voice that goes with gentle arm stills her fear somehow.

“Aw babe, is this a friend of yours?”

Maggie doesn’t wait for a very baffled Alex to respond before putting her free hand out to the man who’d been bothering her all night.

“Hi, I’m Maggie, this beauty’s girlfriend. And you are?”

Her voice is honey and her smile is dimpled but her eyes are fire and her grip must be out of this world, because Alex swears she sees the man flinch.

He mutters something indistinguishable and he glares and he wrenches his hand out of this Maggie woman’s grasp and they both watch him stalk away, watch his shake his head and watch him sullenly collapse in the booth with his friends as they slap him on the back, as they laugh heartily and entirely at his expense.

As soon as eyes leave them, Maggie takes her arm away from Alex’s shoulders apologetically.

“Sorry about that,” she says gingerly, biting her bottom lip slightly, her eyes examining Alex’s nervously.

“No, you uh… you saved me. My hero.”

Maggie can’t quite read the woman’s face – a mix of grateful and resentful and tired with just a pinch, just a hope, of, maybe, something else, something more – but she definitely feels her own face getting hot.

“Well, the city’s already got one of those.” She points to the bar screens absently and the woman glances up at the news coverage of Supergirl saving a bus full of children from a crash with pursed lips, a raised eyebrow, and something that looks, strangely, almost like pride in her eyes. And that exhaustion again.

“Yeah. Yeah, it does.” The woman drinks deeply and Maggie tilts her head, watching her closely.

“Danvers. Alex Danvers, FBI,” she says suddenly, and Maggie grins slightly.

“Maggie Sawyer, NCPD. Pleasure to meet you, Danvers, Alex Danvers, FBI.”

Alex rolls her eyes but her lips are smiling and Maggie decides she’s never seen anything more beautiful.

“Why’d you do that for me? With that guy back there?”

“What can I say, I can’t resist offering my services when a beautiful woman’s in need.”

Alex looks down and Alex pffts and her ears turn crimson and she shakes her head but then she looks up, then her eyes flicker down to Maggie’s lips, and then Maggie gulps and then Alex grins a little lopsidedly, a little cockily but a little sheepishly.

“That how it is, Sawyer?”

“Only if that’s how you want it to be, Danvers.”

Alex bites the inside of her cheek as some of the tension melts away from her shoulders, as Maggie’s gentle, warm, safe gaze washes over her and sends heat pooling straight into her core, sends renewed energy straight through her entire body, sends hope through her again after an utterly hopeless day.

“You wanna get outta here?”

“I know a place with a great pool table.”

“You’re on.”