11. Chapter 11

OMG I love you for sending me this I think about how Alex must be constantly bruised all over her torso and back more often than is healthy.

The first few times they kiss, Maggie is tentative with her hands, keeping mostly to Alex’s elbows, her shoulders, her face, her hair, her neck. It’s hard enough, not just stripping all her clothes off: she’s not trying to make it harder for herself by touching her anywhere else.

But it doesn’t take long for Alex, baby gay though she is, to get, well… handsy.

And the sounds she makes when she lifts Maggie’s shirt to touch the bare skin above her waistline, the way Alex’s entire body trembles when she first slides her hands down to Maggie’s ass, pulling her closer into her body, the look on her face when Alex tugs her shirt off for the first time…

Maggie needs all of this like she needs oxygen, but more, and so, it seems, does Alex.

So when Maggie slides tentative, desperate but gentle hands down to the hem of Alex’s henley, her heart is nearly slamming out of her chest. She waits for Alex to stop her, needing, always, to get her permission before doing anything; and she’s not surprised that Alex does stop her, does reach her hands down to still Maggie’s. But she is surprised by the insecure terror on Alex’s face.

“It’s okay, babe, we don’t have to – “

“No, it’s not… I want to, Maggie, I want you.” She looks down at Maggie’s shirtless body, at the way one of the straps of her black bra had slid off her shoulder, and she nearly pounces on her again. “I just…”

Alex swallows.

She stares at the woman standing, open lipped and silent, wanting and patient, understanding and vulnerable, in front of her, and she slowly, her hands shaking, lifts up her shirt.

“I like my body,” she tells her in a voice that she hopes to god isn’t shaking. “I like my body, and I like – not in a self-destructive way, just – I’m proud of what my body lets me do. Of the marks that remind me what I can survive.”

Maggie lets her eyes follow the progression of Alex’s shirt, higher and higher up her washboard abs, and she inhales deeply, slowly, at the mural of bruises and scars painted on Alex’s torso, on her sides, all in various shades, colors, all in various states of healing.

“But I – no one knows, no one’s… seen. I stopped changing in front of Kara when I started working at the DEO, I… I don’t want you to think that I’m… I don’t want you to stop looking at me like you…”

“Like I what?” Maggie rasps, her eyes memorizing a map of Alex’s current wounds while Alex tugs her shirt over her head.

Stitches, eight, on the fresh side, maybe about three months, diagonal, just above her navel. Probably from the slash of a knife, or claws.

A bruise, bigger than a human fist, deep purple in the center and fanning out in various shades of green and yellow for at least twice that span, on the left side of her rib cage. Probably from being kicked repeatedly while she was on the ground.

A smaller bruise, older, yellower, just below her navel. Probably from a solid punch to the gut.

A jagged scar, just above her bra line, old, but not so old that it wasn’t clearly visible; she must have covered it with make-up when she wore that low cut shirt the other night. Maggie doesn’t want to even begin at guessing what it could be from.

“Like you want me,” Alex answers in a small, small voice. “I don’t want you to stop looking at me like you want me.”

“Alex,” Maggie breathes, sinking slowly down to her knees, not breaking eye contact with her. She braces her hands gently on Alex’s hips and Alex breathes in deeply, slowly.

And just as deeply, just as slowly, Maggie brings her lips to meet every scar, every bruise, every bump and every scrape, that she can find. Alex hisses and Alex sighs and Alex tangles her hands in Maggie’s hair and Alex swears she will never let go of this woman even if keeping her kills her.

“I want you, Alex Danvers,” Maggie tells her as she rises from her knees. “I want you, I want you, I want you.”

And she spends the entire rest of the night proving just how much.