578. Chapter 578

Kara Danvers isn’t the only one in the family with a massive appetite.

Because Maggie might be gross and boring in her breakfast choices – who can eat right when they wake up, Danvers, come on, and dry double toasted bagels are not gross – but when it comes to other forms of decadence, she is all in.

Hence tiramisu.

Hence the elaborate meals she cooks Alex.

Hence the explorations with ice cream they have in the bedroom.

And sometimes, because Alex is so conditioned to have Kara eating the most out of everyone at any given gathering, Alex even forgets.

That Maggie sometimes isn’t satisfied by just her own veggie burger and fries.

Sometimes, she wants Alex’s fries, too.

Or Winn’s. Or James’s. Whoever’s with them, really.

And often – more often these days, since Rick Malverne and the fight and the saving the woman they both love more than life itself and the subsequent handshake-become-hug – the only other person eating with them is Kara.

It’s a sign that she loves a person, more than anything.

That she trusts them.

That she’s intimate with them, if not romantically, then some other deep, deep way.

That she trusts they’re not going to be angry with her for taking up too much space, for taking what’s not hers, for being an awful, selfish, waste of a human being.

So the first time she finds herself popping one of Kara’s french fries into her mouth, she’s surprised.

She’s surprised and when she realizes – the Danvers girls didn’t notice, too distracted by Winn’s animated discussion with Brian over at the bar – she almost starts bawling.

She excuses herself to the bathroom and tries to pull herself together, because the level of her intimacy with Alex was surprising enough.

But to feel comfortable enough with her sister – with whom she’d been, well, shaky-on-the-border-of-hostile with for so long – to steal her fries is…

Well, is overwhelming.

So she doesn’t talk much more that night, but she hugs Kara extra long when she drops the girls off for their alone sister time.

Kara is startled and a little baffled, but grateful. Because she’s felt something shift in their relationship, too.

Alex, of course, couldn’t be happier, and even though she’s the human of the sisters, she’s the one who practically floats for the rest of the evening.

The next time it happens, Maggie is more aware of it.

And she lets Kara see.

She just leans over, grabs a fry from Kara’s plate, swipes it through Winn’s mixture of ketchup and mustard, and pops it into her mouth with a satisfied grin.

James’s fork stops halfway on the journey to his mouth.

Lucy drops her burger onto her plate.

Winn jumps at the sound and stares at Kara, silently pleading with her to be merciful.

Lena bites her lip and tries not to laugh.

Alex gulps.

“Babe,” she starts slowly, softly, but Kara ignores her.

“Did you just… take a fry from my plate, Maggie?”

“Mine are all gone,” Maggie teases innocently, confident that Kara’s outrage is playacting. “Why, you don’t want it back, do you?”

“Ew, Maggie, save the flirting for your girlfriend, not for her sister!”

“Since when is regurgitation flirting, Schott?”

“Hey, don’t yuck my yum!”

“Winn!”

“Ow!”

“Hey, see, you wasted a perfectly good fry throwing it at Winn’s perfectly good face – but it’s outrageous to think of sharing it with the woman who treats your sister so damn well?”

Lena and Lucy whoop and James nearly chokes.

Winn thumps Alex on the back with a wide grin on his face.

Kara adjusts her glasses and splutters.

“I… it… excuse me? I’m sorry, can we please get another order of fries? Thank you so much.” She turns back to Maggie.

“A share plate.”

“A what now?”

“A share plate. If you wanna take my food, we’ll have a share plate. My meal, your meal. And then the share plate.”

“So like… food dessert. For you and me.”

“But survival of the fittest style,” Winn inserts, and Lena shakes her head at this new family she’s somehow acquired.

“You’re on, Little Danvers,” Maggie grins.

And that’s how their share plates begin.

Kara loves the arrangement – extra food for her, along with extra laughs when they start frantically swiping each other’s food and Alex tries to keep the peace by keeping the share plate full – and Maggie loves the arrangement for much the same reasons, with the addition that she’s never felt quite so… loved. Casually intimate. Connected.

But Alex is the one who loves it most of all.

Because she’s the one who gets to hold the share plate during what she and Kara have started to call Maggie Nights: nights where the three of them cuddle on the couch, as close as can be, under layers of blankets and mounds of food.

Alex gets to have her sister pressed against one of her sides and the romantic love of her life pressed against the other, both of their hands periodically brushing into the share plate Alex keeps on her lap.

Except, of course, when one or both of them want to lay on her lap.

Then she sort of becomes a share plate herself.

And in those moments, she really couldn’t be happier that Maggie started stealing Kara’s food.