166. Chapter 166

Alex groans in the bathroom and Maggie pokes her head out of the bedroom door.

“You okay, babe?”

“Ugh, no, fuck me.”

Maggie brightens. “Okay, I’m game.” She hears Alex chuckle and sigh and groan again.

“No, I… I’m on my stupid period.”

Maggie laughs sympathetically and continues getting dressed. “I’m sorry, babygirl. You cramping up?”

“I’m gonna. Ugh, and we have a sting op today.”

“Oh, babe, no!”

“Oh, babe, yes.” Maggie smiles and shakes her head at Alex’s humorless voice, and she turns when Alex trudges out of the bathroom a few minutes later while dry-swallowing a motrin.

She collapses face-forward on Maggie’s bed before turning and curling into a fetal ball.

Maggie tilts her head and her eyes soften before she pads out of the room quickly.

“Why are you abandoning me?” Alex groans after her, self-deprecation layered somewhere under the despair in her voice.

“I would never do that, Ally,” Maggie calls from the kitchen, and she comes back into the room a few minutes later with a warmed up heating pad and a soft smile.

“Come here, Danvers,” she says as she kneels on the bed in front of her, rolling Alex over onto her back and straddling her. Her fingers hesitate at the hem of Alex’s shirt, and Alex shakes her head.

“I’m all bloated and gross.”

“You’re never gross, babe,” Maggie counters, but she moves her fingers, but Alex is suddenly keening at the loss. Maggie arches an eyebrow and Alex slowly lifts up her own shirt to grant Maggie the access she’d been requesting.

Maggie smiles softly and her eyes light up, as they always do when she’s looking at Alex’s body, and Alex doesn’t understand because she’s bloated and she’s bloody and she’s not at all worthy of being looked at like that. Not today, anyway.

But Maggie strokes her stomach with near reverence, and Maggie bends down to press her lips gently, gently, gently, all across Alex’s lower stomach, tracing the line of her underwear with her lips, wanting to go lower but not wanting to ask Alex, not yet, if even lifting up her shirt was a struggle right now.

“Why are you doing that?” Alex asks, and Maggie looks up from her ministrations and tilts her head.

“Because your body hates you right now, but I love you and I love your body, so I’m trying to remind it whose will is stronger.”

Alex laughs because Maggie Sawyer, Maggie Sawyer, Maggie Sawyer, and Maggie kisses her swollen belly one more time before grabbing at the heating pad she’d brought in, lowering Alex’s shirt again, and pressing the warmth a few inches below Alex’s navel, and Alex moans in part pain, part relief.

“You know you can call in today, babe. Your body’s ragingly upset, same like it is when you have the flu or a stomach virus or something,” Maggie tells her as she pulls her into her arms, kissing her hair and rubbing soothing circles onto her arms.

“Can you call in, too?” Alex wants to know, and Maggie smiles.

“Netflix and chill it is, Danvers.”

“Netflix and cramp, more like it, Sawyer.”

Maggie kisses her and Maggie shrugs and Maggie loves her, loves her, loves her. “Netflix and me convincing your body that I love you more than it hates you and it should release you from this vile spell, most like it, Danvers.”

“Pfft, and you call me a nerd.”

“Takes one to know one, Danvers. Takes one to know one.”