569. Chapter 569

She doesn’t lie. Not exactly.

She just tells her she has a lot of paperwork to do and can’t come over tonight.

Which is technically true. She’d had one of the rookies bring her a bunch of paperwork from her office.

If she’d going to be miserable and sick with bronchitis, she figures she might as well get some work done.

Because she’s used to that. Used to making her own soup. Picking up her own medicine. Getting her own orange juice and holding back her own hair and whatever.

Because she’s been doing the whole taking-care-of-myself thing since she was fourteen.

It’s not like she still misses her father’s soup or her mother’s soft hands, taking her temperature every hour and never allowing her to get up for anything except to pee, because everything else she needed would be brought to her.

It’s not like she misses any of that.

Because it turns out she doesn’t need it. It turns out she’s just fine on her own.

Or so she tells herself.

No point in getting Alex sick, anyway.

She loves her too much for that. She’s doing her a favor. She’s gross and boring right now, anyway. Far from the sexy, exciting detective Alex fell in love with.

She can’t even talk or stand up properly.

But, bonus; if Alex isn’t here, she doesn’t have to talk at all. Doesn’t have to do anything except grab her own tissue when she hacks up mucus from her lungs, has to squeeze her own thighs with disgust and pain when she coughs long, hard, from deep in her chest, when she has to put Vix on her own nose and chest.

She groans to herself. And tries to see straight enough to focus on her paperwork.

At first, she thinks she’s imagining the tapping at her window. At first, she thinks it must be her growing headache playing tricks on her.

At first, she forgets that her fiancee’s little sister can fly.

But the tapping gets more insistent, and when she looks up and tries to stand, the tapping stops. The blonde responsible for that infernal noise squints and frowns gestures for Maggie not to get up. She does something to the window latch with her eyes and lets herself in.

Maggie is secretly relieved. Her head had been spinning at the mere idea of standing up.

“Little Danvers!” she tries to sound casual, but her voice gives away the pain of the chest cough she’s been nursing. As does the messy array of tissues, cough drop wrappers, glasses stained with orange juice, and half drunk mugs of tea.

“Why didn’t you tell us you were so sick?” Kara demands without preamble, and Maggie blinks like she’s trying to keep up. Which she is.

Kara just shakes her head and sighs, not waiting for an answer.

“You two are the same person sometimes, I swear,” she mutters, more to herself than to Maggie. Which is just as well, because Maggie’s foggy brain is still processing Kara’s presence.

“You stay there. Don’t move. If you move while I’m gone, I’ll know. And I’ll be mad. And I’m Supergirl. So you don’t want to make me mad. So stay put. I’ll be right back.”

“I’m not a puppy,” Maggie protests, but by the time the words pass through her lips, Kara is gone.

By the time she starts to wonder what the hell just happened and if Little Danvers was always that protective of her, Kara is back, and she’s not empty handed.

“Oh, babe,” Alex sighs the moment Kara sets her down, rushing to the couch and kneeling in front of Maggie, looking like she doesn’t know whether to kiss Maggie’s forehead or hug her or wrap her more effectively in her blankets or throw out all those used tissues and wrappers first.

“No,” Maggie tries to squirm away from Alex’s embrace. “You shouldn’t have brought her, Kara, I’ll get her sick.”

“But you don’t care if I get sick?”

“You’re Kryptonian, kid, you don’t get sick on this planet.”

Alex just smiles and shakes her head at their banter, completely ignoring Maggie’s protests as she sets about cleaning her sick space off and refilling fresh cups and mugs with orange juice and soon-to-be-brewing tea.

“Danvers, I’m serious, though, I don’t wanna get you sick. And I’m fine, I’m a big girl, I can take care of my – “

“Oh, I know you can take care of yourself, Maggie Sawyer,” Alex interrupts with a double entendre in her voice and in her eyes that makes Kara blush and train her eyes on the ceiling. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to take care of you. If you’ll let me?”

Alex pouts, and Kara chuckles to herself.

Maggie moans, and when the moan turns into a hacking cough, Alex has her arms around her in an instant, one hand rubbing her back as her body convulses, the other hand in Maggie’s, letting her squeeze as hard as she wants through the pain of the cough.

When she’s done, her eyes are flooded with tears.

And it’s not from coughing.

“I’d forgotten,” she whispers as Kara smiles and lets herself out through the window quietly.

“Forgotten what, babe?” Alex tilts her head.

“What it’s like to be taken care of like this,” Maggie manages hoarsely, and it’s Alex’s eyes that flood this time.

“It’s called being loved, get used to it, Sawyer.”

And she does.