126. Chapter 126

Maggie told her she’d bring dinner, and Alex had assumed that meant takeout.

So she’s surprised when she opens the door and Maggie’s got a soft grin and grocery bags.

“What’s all this?”

“Told you I’d bring dinner, Danvers. Takeout’s great, but you deserve something a little more… personal.”

“Personal?” Alex flirts with a low voice as she closes the door behind Maggie, taking the bags from her and lifting them onto the counter.

“Mmhmm,” Maggie smiles, leaning up on her tip toes to meet Alex’s soft kiss, and she can’t help the low groan that builds in the back of her throat as Alex’s tongue flits tentatively into her parted lips.

“Alex,” she barely breathes, and Alex’s hands on on her waist and Alex’s fingers are slipping up her shirt and Maggie is seeing stars and they can’t, they can’t, they can’t, not this soon, not this soon.

“Yeah?” Alex rasps, pulling back slightly, stilling her fingers, lips slightly swollen, pupils dilating, chest heaving.

“I was gonna make you dinner.”

Alex grins and Alex backs up and Maggie sighs at the loss of contact and Alex leans across the counter to get another kiss with the safety of a granite countertop between them. Maggie obliges and her stomach is nothing but butterflies, and – judging by the dorky and irrepressible grin on Alex’s face – the winged creatures have also made a home in her belly.

“So,” Alex wants to know as Maggie starts pulling groceries out of her bags. “How was your day?”

Maggie smiles at the domesticity of the question, at the casual way Alex steals a grape and pops it into her mouth with doe-eyed innocence.

“Long,” Maggie tells her. “There’s this string of missing persons that I just… I can’t connect it, not yet. Pieces aren’t coming together, it… long. Day was long.”

“You’ll crack it, babe. You’ll bring them home.”

Maggie smiles softly and sets to washing peppers, lettuce, tomatoes, bringing rice to boil. “They’re not my cases, just going around the precinct. I’m still… massacre stuff, you know? Finding families, notifying them. That kinda thing.”

“Maggie,” Alex sighs sympathetically, slipping behind her and putting her chin on Maggie’s shoulder, her arms around her stomach. Maggie leans back into her embrace, lets her body relax, because she’s still not ready to talk about the massacre, still not ready to process it beyond what she has to do at work, but damn do Alex’s arms make it feel just a little better.

Eventually, they disentangle, and eventually, Maggie learns that things have been slow on the alien invasion front so Alex has been spending a lot of time in the lab, a lot of time developing defenses against another biological attack by Cadmus; Alex learns that Maggie’s cop partner’s son is turning nine over the weekend, and she’s planning to get him tickets to a ball game, because she’s the one who taught him to play baseball; Maggie learns that Alex can steal red pepper pieces faster than Maggie can chop them; Alex learns that Maggie swoons and whines breathlessly when she’s kissed on the nape of her neck; Maggie learns that Alex fractured her wrist as a teenager while surfing; Alex learns that Maggie is a phenomenal, phenomenal cook.

They talk while they eat and they stare and they giggle, because god nothing’s ever felt like this before.

And suddenly it’s late, and Maggie’s standing to go, and Alex is taking her hand and looking down into her eyes and licking her lips and Maggie is kissing her, kissing her, kissing her, and Alex is trying to carry on a conversation between kisses.

“Stay?”

“Alex, I should – “

“Please, Maggie, please stay, I want – “

“I don’t wanna go too fast, Alex, we – “

“So we won’t, but I, Maggie, god, how do you do that?”

“What, this?”

“Yes.”

“Like this.”

Alex tosses her head back to allow Maggie better access to her throat, and Maggie’s tongue is perfect, and Alex is dragging them back to her bed and she’s tossing a pillow to the ground because Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, and she’s pulling her down on top of her and Maggie gasps and Alex can’t breathe and Maggie stops and puts their foreheads together and they struggle to breathe, breathe, breathe.

“Alex, please tell me if it gets too much, okay? Whenever it gets too much.”

Alex nods and Alex pulls her back in for a kiss, and Maggie rolls off of her so they’re laying next to each other, so their hands can roam where they’d like, and when Alex tugs her shirt up, Maggie’s throat goes dry but Maggie sits up and pulls it over her head and Alex nearly cries because you’re so beautiful, Mags, and tears are stinging Maggie’s eyes this time, and Alex’s fingers tremble and her eyes ask and Maggie nods because god those eyes, and it only takes Alex two tries to unhook Maggie’s bra and Maggie makes a note to congratulate her later, but now Alex is staring like she’s never seen anything beautiful in her entire life before and Maggie is swallowing tears and Alex asks and Maggie nods while chewing on her lower lip and Alex’s touches are tentative, are soft, are somehow both desperate and tender, and her lips, god, her lips, her tongue, and Maggie’s fighting not to cry because she can’t remember the last time someone paid this much attention to her body and she’s flipping Alex over and she’s asking and Alex is nodding desperately, whining softly, desperately, and Maggie is returning the attention, kissing every newly exposed inch of skin, of scar, of bruise and of fresh scrape as she slowly, slowly, slowly traces Alex’s shirt up her torso.

She lingers on Alex’s navel and she discovers – hell, Alex discovers – which unexpected spots make her squirm, make her yelp, make her grind her hips up into Maggie, and Maggie crawls farther up her body so she can come home to Alex’s lips, and again she slips off of her so they’re laying next to each other, hands tangled in each other’s hair, hands roaming everywhere, feverish and slow, slow, slow.

“How you doing, Danvers?” Maggie wants to know, and Alex beams and it makes Maggie’s entire world spin.

“Amazing. This is… you’re… this is amazing, you’re amazing.”

“So are you, Alex. So are you.”

They smile and they snuggle and they murmur about home and safety and happiness and not quite love because they’re both actively swallowing that four letter word down, and they fall asleep entangled, fall asleep enraptured, fall asleep falling in love.