760. Chapter 760

It’s just a small fracture. It’s basically just bruised, really.

Sure, it hurts when she breaths, and when she’s sitting, she doesn’t want to think about standing, and when she’s standing, she doesn’t want to think about sitting – forget laying down – but Alex has got enough on her plate, really.

She’s been pulling extra late nights, lately, what with the Cadmus resurgence. And, perhaps more pertinently, her girlfriend has two things that are a mile wide: her guilt complex and her praise kink.

And while the latter is positive, Maggie is worried about the former.

Because she sustained this injury – a minor one, really, truly – in the field. While Alex was out on another mission.

And even though Maggie wouldn’t dream in a billion centuries of blaming Alex for the pain she’s in, Alex will blame herself.

And it’ll be better soon, anyway.

So she resolves not to tell her.

She has enough on her plate, and on the scale of lies, this is a pretty shiny white one, right? Because no one’s hurt – well, it’s just her, and this barely qualifies as hurt anyway – and Alex doesn’t need more to worry about.

It strikes her that there’s a contradiction there: if there wasn’t anything to worry over, she would just tell Alex, because if it was really no big deal…

Whatever. The pain killers they gave her are making her pretty hazy, anyway.

So when Alex comes home that night, Maggie tries to act like nothing’s amiss.

She does what she always does when she’s home earlier than her girlfriend: she gets up from where she’s reading (she hides her flinch, she thinks, pretty well), and goes to help Alex shrug off her jacket, to kiss her hello as she kicks off her boots, to stroke her hair and ask her how her day was.

But the moment her lips touch Alex’s, her girlfriend stiffens.

“What is it?” Alex wants to know, and suddenly Maggie’s clever plan to not make her worry is out the window. Because she’s forgotten something crucial about herself: she was raised to be a good liar. She had to be, to protect herself, keep herself safe. But lying to Alex isn’t in her skillset, not now, not with how far they’ve come.

“It’s nothing, Danvers,” she tries, but her heart isn’t in it: because no matter what she’d planned, how cool she’d planned to play it, there was this woman looking down into her eyes, wanting to know what was wrong and how she could help. The feeling was so rare, so beautiful, that she couldn’t help but let herself give into it. Give into Alex’s almost overwhelming care.

“A Cadmus jackass got in a few good kicks to my ribs before James got there – ”

Alex is on her knees before Maggie can finish speaking. “May I?” she asks, and her eyes – usually full of something very different when she’s in this position – are brimming with worry and endless love.

“Why didn’t you call me?” she murmurs after Maggie nods, and Alex begins gently, tenderly, lifting her shirt. Maggie hisses as the fabric brushes the worst of it, and Alex bites her lip. “Babe,” she whispers, almost more to herself than to Maggie.

“I didn’t want you to worry,” Maggie explains, though it sounds so hollow now.

As though sensing Maggie’s regret at her decision, Alex relents. Nurture first, long intense talk later. “Okay,” she stands resolutely after another long moment of studying Maggie’s bruised skin.

“Okay…?”

“I’m going to carry you to the bed – no arguments – and I’m going to make you hot chocolate, and you’re going to drink it with the bendy straw I put in it until I’m done drawing you a bath with bubbles and epsom salts. I’m going to undress you, and I’m going to carry you into the bath. You’re going to let me wash you, and then dry you, and then we’re going to snuggle and watch whatever you want to until you pass out. And we’re going all of that again tomorrow. Alright?”

There’s a long pause as Maggie fights her demons, combats all her wounded angels shouting that she doesn’t deserve Alex’s care, her steadiness, her sureness that she wants to devote so much energy to Maggie, even after she’d tried to keep something from her. As if sensing her battle, Alex kisses her nose while she waits for an answer.

“Okay.”

It’s soft and it’s nearly broken, but it’s affirmation. It’s soft and it’s layered with decades of not understanding how precious she is. And it’s all Alex needs to continue.

“You know you don’t have to do all this for me, Danvers,” Maggie murmurs quiet and low as Alex washes her hair, an hour later, even as she groans in soft release.

Alex just chuckles. “Consider it payback for not telling me right away,” she teases, but it’s gentle, like her hands, and it makes Maggie feel more loved than chastized.

“Thank you,” she whispers, and Rao, does she mean it.

“Always,” Alex kisses the suds on the back of her neck, and Rao, does she mean it, too.