261. Chapter 261

“Oh come on, Alex, what’s the harm?”

“The harm? James, she wants me to give her a flash grenade. A flash grenade, James! Don’t be fooled by that perfect smile and those shining, gorgeous eyes and that – “

“Okay, okay, Alex, I get it. I won’t be seduced by your girlfriend.”

“That’s not what I – “

“Alex, it’s just a gym date. And I’m – “ James glances around shiftily before leaning in and whispering in Alex’s ear. “I’m Guardian, Alex, I think I can handle your incredibly strong but also incredibly tiny girlfriend in the gy – “

“James, hey! Ready to go? Hi babe! James and I are gonna work out together, did he tell you? Wanna come with?”

Alex’s eyes go wide and her mouth opens hesitantly and her eyes swivel to J’onn, who smirks but looks away, offering absolutely no help. Her eyes land next on Winn, who’s leaning back in his desk chair and already gesturing at her with a pen.

“You know, I think I’ve had enough of a workout for the day – “

“You call scampering in here late for your shift a workout, Mr. Schott?”

“Not helping J’onn,” Winn says through clenched teeth, and Maggie goes over to him and slaps a welcoming hand on his shoulder.

“Next time, Winn, I know how to take a hint.”

“Thank you,” he whispers with relief, and Alex snickers.

“You, on the other hand,” Maggie says, running a finger from Alex’s throat down the slight neckline of her uniform’s zipper. “You’re just lucky I don’t want to crash James and my plans.”

She leans up on tiptoes to kiss her and James laughs as he tosses an arm around Maggie’s shoulders.

“See you all later,” he waves, looking back at Alex over Maggie’s head. “Nothing to worry about,” he mouths at her.

“There are cameras in the gym they’re going to, aren’t there?” Alex mutters to Winn, and he grins and points at his screens.

“Already on it.”

“Mr. Schott, Agent Danvers, I hope that you’re not planning to use DEO resources to surveil your closest friends – and for you, Alex, your girlfriend – while they’re working out together.”

“J’onn,” Alex holds up her hands, and the innocence on her face reminds him of when he’d keep an eye on her when she was a little girl, laughing with Kara in the back yard. “You have no idea how competitive Maggie is. James doesn’t know what he’s walking into. It’s gonna be hilarious.”

J’onn has never felt more like her father as he realizes where Kara learned to pout from, as he takes a deep breath, sighs, and walks off in the other direction, muttering as he goes, “At least Vasquez can be counted on to do her job.”

Winn snorts, because he knows Susan is bound to be on her way to join them any minute now, that even Pam might come up from HR to catch the latest.

Alex grins fondly after her space dad, her heart swollen with love, with pride, with feeling, unusually, like a child while also feeling perfectly loved, perfectly happy, perfectly confident.

She hopes James has his confidence in tact, too, because Rao, is he going to need it.

Because when Maggie and him hop on a treadmill to warm up, it takes him a minute to notice that she’s eyeing his speed and consistently keeping hers a few notches above his.

It takes him a minute to notice that when he runs through some dynamic stretching, she makes sure to flex slightly farther than he does.

He grins good naturedly and winks at her. She grins right back, because god it feels good to be working out with a man who’s going to love her and admire her and keep up with her, not want to overcompensate for his masculinity with her.

“Squats, Olsen?” she asks, and he wonders vaguely how sharing a rack is going to work with their… well… height difference, but if Maggie’s workout rotation is on leg day, he’s not going to get in the way of her having the most effective workout she can.

She doesn’t surprise him when she cranks out a beautifully formed workout set with just the 45-pound bar, but she does surprise him when she gestures him into the rack for his own warm-up set and she gets right down to bang out a set of perfect tricep pushups.

“So you superset, Sawyer?”

“Always.”

And she surprises him again when – after he lowers the bar to her shoulder level after his own warm-up – she leaves the 25 pound plates that he used to warm up on the bar and cranks out another perfect set with no problem.

“Maggie, doesn’t that weigh almost what you do?”

She shoves into his chest with her shoulder as they switch places. “Please, Olsen, I’m not that tiny, don’t believe the slander my woman spreads.”

He realizes quickly that Maggie is integrating endurance training with strength training – a lot more reps than he would normally do with heavier loads, even putting weighted plates on her back while she does her pushups – and her dedication makes him smile. The way she’s attentive to him when they’re both panting, when she’s spotting him, but the way her eyes seal themselves off in pure focus when she unracks the bar on her shoulders and sets her feet, the way her form is perfect every time, the way it’s like nothing else exists in the world while she’s lifting.

“Alex is a lucky woman,” he pants after his own set of weighted pushups, after Maggie’s latest set of squats.

“Why’s that?”

“You share her passion for focus. It’s something photographers have to have, too. No uh… no pun intended.”

Maggie looks around and grins before putting both hands on his shoulder and pulling herself up toward his ear. “And karate-style superheroes too, huh?”

James laughs as she lowers herself down.

“Apparently.”

And she helps with his own focus, too, counting out his reps for him, her voice pushing him to do more, more, more.

He’s so lost in his own focus during his next round of pushups that he almost doesn’t notice when the location of her voice rises from where she’s leaning back on her haunches next to him.

He doesn’t notice, that is, until she’s straddling him, full-out sitting on his lower back.

“Seriously?” he chokes, trying desperately to hold in his laughter, to keep his arms from shaking.

“Oh come on, Olsen, you can get in at least another ten, I thought you all are always saying I’m supposed to be microscopic or something.”

He laughs so hard at that that they both collapse in a heap on the padded gym floor, and as they’re gasping for breath, as they’re waving away the concern of other gym-goers, Maggie nudges him and points to one of the security cameras in the corner of the room.

“Say hey to the DEO, James,” she grins, and he groans with a broad smile.

“They hacked in, didn’t they?”

“Of course they hacked in. And you know what they saw?”

“Oh, god. Winn and Alex – and Vasquez, too, probably – oh thank god Kara’s at CatCo all day – seeing me collapsing with you on my back.”

“Wanna redeem yourself, Olsen?”

“You’re on, Sawyer. You’re on.”