Work Text:
Alex texts as soon as she gets in her car: I’m coming .
The reply comes in seconds: Tonight? The Delta flight?
Yes. Because she texted Kara during a recess and asked her to book it.
I’ll arrange an airport pickup.
And that’s it.
She wishes she had her bike instead of her car. Under the helmet, she’s anonymous. Especially now, in the dark, strangers could squint and stare as hard as they wanted, and they’d see nothing but themselves reflected in her visor.
But in the car, she dreads every red light. She rests her elbow on the door and rests her temple on her fingertips, and hopes that’s enough to hide her face. She hopes it’s enough to keep neighbouring drivers from glancing over and recognizing her: H ey, wait, didn’t I just see you on TV?
As if the whole thing weren’t terrifying enough in itself, even without being televised.
She picks up her boarding pass at the airport. Her seat is shitty—in the middle, all the way at the back—but she supposes she should be grateful she could get anything same-day on a flight to Colorado at the start of ski season. She wishes diplomatic travel were like the movies, all private planes and first-class lounges, but she makes public servant money and this is last-minute personal travel, and that means the shittiest possible seat in coach.
By her gate, she stands near the window, facing out toward the tarmac and watching the blinking lights of departing planes dissolving into the dark.
Someone taps her on the shoulder.
She turns. It’s the gate agent. He’s young, professional, with manicured eyebrows and impeccably-styled hair: definitely gay, and doesn’t mind that people can tell.
He doesn’t know that she is, of course, but it gives her a sense of kinship with him just the same. It makes her want to trust him, even though she’s not feeling particularly trusting at the moment.
“Sorry,” he says, “I just kind of thought that paging you over to the desk might draw some unwanted attention.”
It’s a small gesture of humanity, and she has no idea how to process it. “I, um—do you need something?”
He smiles and offers her a boarding pass.
She looks at it.
Row 4, seat C.
The back corner of first class, as far as possible from prying eyes.
“Give me your carry-on,” he says. “I’ll send it on with the crew, and then you can board last.”
Board last, so that everyone in coach doesn’t have to parade past her when she’s seated.
She wants to cry.
“Thank you,” she says.
“Thank you ,” he replies.
She has a row to herself on the plane and she wonders if he managed to arrange that for her, too.
When the plane crosses above the clouds, she stares out at the stars. Their closeness helps her feel small. Insignificant.
What’s one day’s testimony in a Presidential impeachment inquiry relative to the endless expanse of the universe, after all?
Still, her hand shakes when she lifts her scotch to her lips. It’s Macallan, which is the only scotch on the airline menu, but it makes her long for the smoke and heat of the peatier stuff she shares with Maggie on cold mountain nights lit only by the fire in the hearth.
Maggie. She’s going to see Maggie soon.
The decision to go to Colorado had been an instinctual one. Maggie’s resort is where she goes to hide, and right now, she needs to hide. Maggie will make sure a good room is ready for her, thick towels by the tub and a pour of good scotch on a tray by the propane fireplace, which will be on. And if Alex is lucky, Maggie herself will come to her and give her the best possible reason to forget everything for an hour or two.
When she lifts the scotch again, her hand shakes a little less.
—
She doesn’t want to turn her phone on when she lands. She’s scared of what she’ll see. But her mother will worry, and Kara, and J’onn, so she takes a deep breath and powers up.
Her notifications immediately go wild, of course. Twitter notifications, Google alerts, and more emails than her app can handle. There are texts from pretty much everyone in her phone—college friends she hasn’t seen in a decade, co-workers from two or three postings ago. She texts Kara, J’onn, and her mom, telling them where she is and that she’ll be back in DC in two days.
There’s a text from Maggie, too: Go to pickup zone C. Black Toyota Camry, license plate 269GTP. Driver is trustworthy. He has your room number and key so you can go right there and skip the lobby. Get settled and I’ll come check on you later.
Alex had expected the resort’s shuttle van; she’d sit in the back and hope nobody would be looking for her here, in Colorado, when everyone knows she was in DC this afternoon. But Maggie has sent her a private car, and it makes her want to cry again.
—
She has a corner room with a huge bay window overlooking the backcountry. The time zones have worked in her favour so it's only a little after nine when she gets there. As she'd expected, the usual thick terry-cloth robe is on the bed, the fire is lit in the fireplace, there are towels stacked by the wood-trimmed tub. The only difference is that it's a bottle of red wine, not a glass of scotch, breathing on the tray by the fire.
Alex pours herself a glass while the tub is filling. The water is a little too hot for comfort but she wants it that way: she hopes the scald will keep her in her body, driving away her whirling thoughts. She barely slept last night, barely the night before. Exhaustion makes her bones feel hollow, her head feel like lead, but she’s too wired to even begin to imagine sleeping. Her brain is revisiting every moment of her testimony today, considering all the ways it could have been more diplomatic, or more persuasive, or more fully contextual.
She’s remembering other things, too: the conversations she overheard that were clearly about bribes even if they never included the word “bribe.” The defense briefs she drafted for the Ambassador only to have them discarded in favour of other deals that couldn’t, by any means, be justified as having US interests at heart.
The wine is smooth and just bitter enough on her tongue. She soaks for long enough to finish her glass, and then shampoos her hair with the cedar-scented hotel shampoo that smells, to her, like relaxation.
She’s wrapped in a robe, combing her hair while the tub slowly bubbles down behind her, when she finally hears the knock on the door. Her heart races a moment, a flash of irrational panic overtaking her: she’s been doxxed, someone found her. She knows it’s Maggie, knows it is, but still—
But of course, there, on the other side of the peep-hole, is Maggie, smiling at the door like she knows Alex is looking back at her.
Alex sags against the doorframe for a moment, willing her hands to stop shaking before she reaches for the knob.
Maggie has not come empty-handed: she has a room service delivery cart that she wheels in ahead of her. She’s wearing the jeans and the flannel with the sleeves rolled up that are her uniform for the job.
(“Honestly?” she’d said to Alex, once, “I’m more of a graphic tees and leather jackets girl, but boots and plaid are what customers want to see in a lodge in the Rockies, so that’s what I wear.”)
She walks in, and Alex closes the door behind her, and Alex has never been so happy to see anyone in her entire life, she’s sure of it.
“I brought soup,” Maggie says. “Italian wedding, with some rolls still hot from the oven.”
And Alex hadn’t even noticed she was hungry. She couldn’t bring herself to do more than nibble on the plane, but now, as Maggie lifts the covers off the steaming bowls, her stomach lurches in desire.
“You’re perfect,” Alex says.
“No, you are,” Maggie says. “Every word you said today was perfect.”
And Alex can’t help herself: she takes one step, two steps, and grabs Maggie with one hand at her collar and the other at her jawline and kisses her as though what they have were more than what it is.
Maggie smiles into the kiss, and then lays a gentle hand on the lapel of Alex’s robe. “Easy there, Tiger. Have something to eat.”
They sit together on the room’s leather sofa, an afghan spread across their laps. Alex’s toe touches Maggie’s knee under the blanket and her mind gravitates, over and over, to that spot of contact. It feels solid while everything else feels light, as though it might all float away.
After, with the empty bowls put back on the tray and nothing but crumbs left of the rolls, Maggie finally speaks.
“You were incredible today.”
Because, of course, Maggie watched. Everyone watched.
The entire country was watching.
Alex doesn’t know what to say to that. What does it mean to be “incredible” when all you did was to speak the truth — and when that truth has the potential to destabilize the entire government, and to take you down with it?
“I feel like I should sell action figures at the desk or something. ‘Alexandra Danvers is a regular here.’” Maggie smirks a little. “It’d be amazing for business.”
And Alex can’t help but laugh a little. “I don’t know. Would it?”
“Sure. For the kind of business I want, anyway. Nazis and traitors can keep their money.”
Traitors .
Alex had known, from the beginning, that that’s what they’d been. President Baker had been slicing and selling off American diplomatic stability--and, by extension, international diplomatic stability--to Russian interests and stashing the money in offshore accounts in Russian protectorates. And Ambassador Haley had been facilitating some of it, and turning a blind eye to the rest, because her slavish devotion to the chain of command was stronger than her desire to defend the principles that were supposed to undergird it.
Her hands begin to shake again. She shoves them under the blanket.
But before she can sink deeper into her spiral, the sofa shifts. Maggie slips closer. Maggie’s hand settles over Alex’s, the blanket a soft barrier between them.
“Hey,” Maggie says quietly. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Alex lets the question sit for a moment. Feels it in her breath.
Does she want to talk about it?
“No,” she finally says. “I don’t--I don’t think I do.”
“Okay.”
They sit quietly for another stretch. Maggie’s hand stays on Alex’s clenched fists, her thumb following the line of Alex’s wrist through the blanket.
“Do you want me to lea—”
“No!” Alex answers, before Maggie can finish asking. Because the idea of being alone, even here, in this luxurious room so far from anything, is unbearable.
“Okay,” Maggie says. She stays like that: quiet, only her thumb moving. Her other arm is stretched along the back of the sofa, behind Alex’s shoulders.
And something about this strange moment — here, in this lodge, with a woman she sees once every few months but thinks about once every few minutes, makes Alex’s spine feel like it’s vibrating. She imagines the snitch in the Harry Potter movies, the way it buzzes and jumps around erratically; it feels like there’s a snitch in her chest, throwing itself with ever greater violence against the insides of her ribcage.
“It’s just--it’s just--I liked Haley at the beginning of all this,” Alex says. The words feel like they’re exploding from her. Like they’d be impossible to contain. “She was principled at first, you know? She really understood that it didn’t serve her, or the country, to advocate for US political interests at the expense of global human interests. That’s why Marsdin appointed her.”
“Yeah,” Maggie agrees. “That’s been the hardest thing to wrap my head around—that she was a Marsdin pick, not a Baker pick.”
The snitch thuds behind her sternum, and Alex surges to her feet, the blanket dropping in a pool on the rug.
“You know, I feel that way too, but like—who’s Marsdin anymore, really? I loved her. I loved knowing I was working for her, even though I only shook her hand, like, twice in my life. But then she resigns for such a stupid reason, and leaves Baker to take over, and everyone always knew he was a Democrat in name only. That he was a campaign pick to make her more electable to rural whites.”
She’s pacing now, wringing her hands, and Maggie is watching and listening from the couch, her arm still stretched along its back.
“And I’ve worked so hard for this, Maggie! I don’t want to be a defence policy strategist my entire life—I’ve always wanted to become an ambassador.”
“I still think you will be,” Maggie says.
“Maybe, but it’s all out of my hands now. It’s all up to Haley, and her testimony next week, and whether she decides to back me up or to double-down on all the lackeying she’s been doing for Baker.” Alex’s pacing has sped up, become more frantic. She’s still wringing her hands, but they grip harder now, and she watches her nails leave white lines as they scrape across her skin. “If she goes with me, it’s anybody’s game. But if she doubles down on Baker, that’s it. I’m toast. I’ll lose everything—my job, my dreams, everything I’ve—”
She walks into something. Looks up.
It’s Maggie.
“Hey,” Maggie says. She puts one hand over Alex’s tangled fists, and the other on Alex’s shoulder.
The snitch throws itself against the inside of her chest, over and over again.
“You were honest,” Maggie says, and her eyes are the most grounding thing Alex has seen all day. “You were clear, you were articulate. You handled that asshat from Tennessee perfectly . You made me so proud, Alex.”
Alex half-laughs. “You have to say that.”
But Maggie shakes her head. “This isn’t about…” she trails off, but the rest is easy to infer. This isn’t about this, us, whatever we are; it isn’t about the fact that we’ve seen each other naked or fucked each other senseless or the fact that out of everywhere you could have gone after today’s testimony, you chose to come here. Maggie swallows. “You made me proud to be American, Alex, and it takes a lot to make me feel that way these days. Every answer you gave to those questions was the embodiment of what we as a country can be when we’re at our best.”
The snitch thuds harder, and then it’s buzzing around again, because that’s all Alex has ever wanted to do—to represent the best of her country to the world. To use American influence to make things better for everyone, if she could. But she’s learned that sometimes short-term harm is required for long-term gain, and maybe this is a case of that—maybe she should have just played the game today, she should have protected herself and her future for—
“Hey.”
Alex’s eyes refocus. She hadn’t even noticed when her gaze had turned inward again.
“Hey,” Maggie says again. “Stop thinking so much.”
But every part of her is buzzing, is wired. Second guessing aside, she knows she was right. She knows—
Warm hands on either side of her neck.
“Stop thinking,” Maggie says. Her thumbs slide over Alex’s cheeks.
Alex leans into the touch. She tries to focus on it—the warmth, the light scent of hand lotion—but all she can think of is manipulation. All she can think of is sleight-of-hand.
Maggie’s hands slide away from her face, down the front of the robe to the knot in the belt.
They pause there for a minute, waiting: a chance for Alex to push her away.
Alex leans down, just a little.
“I want you to get out of your head,” Maggie says, and Alex’s eyes watch her lips, the way they shape the words, the way they glisten just a little from the chapstick Maggie must have used before she came to Alex’s room.
A tug, and the knot comes undone. Alex’s robe falls open, and Maggie uses the loose ends of the belt to tug Alex closer. Alex feels the button of Maggie’s jeans pressing cool into the low curve of her belly.
Maggie wraps her hands in the loose ends of Alex’s belt and tugs it up, up, until it’s hooked over the back of Alex’s neck.
“I want you to be here with me,” Maggie murmurs. She tugs a little, pulls Alex’s head down until Alex can feel the ghost of Maggie’ breath over her lips. “Just be present, with me. Do you want that?”
And Alex realizes, suddenly, that everything in her has stilled, has quieted. The snitch has settled to rest.
“Yeah,” she breathes.
A gentle tug on the belt, and Alex drops her head, and then they’re kissing.
It’s slow, tender, and far more intimate than they’re used to sharing. Alex steps closer, feels the buttons of Maggie’s shirt pressing a line from her pubic bone to the hollow between her breasts. Maggie is still holding the belt; the backs of her hands press the terry-cloth of the robe into Alex’s nipples, and for a moment Alex struggles to breathe again, but this time it’s for an entirely different reason.
She tugs at the hem of Maggie’s camisole. “Please,” she gasps, between kisses. “Please.”
Maggie just tugs her in deeper.
Things move from there, slow and steady. Maggie pulls back just enough to breathe, “Take the robe off,” and Alex does. Maggie wraps the belt tighter around her hands, pulling their bodies tighter together even as she pushes Alex back, back, over the pooled robe, past the fire, over the carpet, onto the bed.
And then Alex's wrists are crossed over her head and that belt is doubled and tied around them, its loose end knotted to one corner of the four-poster, and Maggie’s body is on top of hers, kissing her, pressing her deep into the mattress, making her feel solid and still for the first time in what feels like days.
Maggie pulls away, and Alex opens her eyes just in time to see the lights dim all the way to dark, until the only light in the room comes from the fireplace and the full moon over the mountain forest.
She has never been more grateful that a hotel room has had a bedside lightswitch.
But even in the dim she can seem Maggie’s lips, swollen and damp from kissing; she can see Maggie’s shoulders as they shrug out of the flannel, she can see Maggie’s ribs and breasts as she pulls off her camisole.
And, God, maybe in her heart she’s just a hormonal teenage boy because when Alex can see Maggie’s breasts she’ll be damned if she can think of anything else.
(Not even the future, or the President, or Russia, or the articles of impeachment).
Maggie lays a hand on Alex’s solar plexus, her fingertips resting in the hollow between her breasts, and presses down, firm but gentle. “Is this okay?”
Alex tugs on her wrists, and the terry-cloth tugs back. It’s reassuring, like the weight of a car seatbelt or the pressure of a careful massage.
She smiles, her eyes dropping to Maggie’s waistband. “Take the rest off, and it’ll be perfect.”
Maggie smiles, and does.
This isn’t the first time they’ve played with power like this. Alex fucked Maggie standing up, once, with Maggie’s wrists tied above her head and hung from the top of the four-poster. Alex has spent morning showers nursing rug-burns on her knees after desperate nights spent on all fours on the floor by the fire.
But this isn’t like that.
This is a different, slower kind of control. This is Alex pulling against her tied wrists for leverage against the weight of Maggie’s knee pinning her thigh down. This is Maggie’s hand in Alex’s hair, her hand between Alex’s legs, one moving with an aching slowness while the other keeps Alex still. Alex’s hips want to chase Maggie’s touch but Maggie won’t let her; Maggie is slow and gentle and relentless until Alex can do nothing but inhale to the bottom of her lungs and let herself be pulled under. Maggie is murmuring things in her ear and Alex can’t understand them; all she can process is the sound of Maggie’s voice, like thick steam, fogging her brain.
Alex feels herself at the bottom of an ocean, lights dancing on the surface above her. But it’s like the ocean is where she’s meant to be: like the water is what she was meant to breathe.
“Good,” Maggie murmurs, “that’s good,” and she finally reaches inside.
Maggie is so gentle, and Alex feels small and held and perfect. She’s doing everything right—
she knows she is, because Maggie is telling her so, and Maggie is the only thing that matters in the whole world: Maggie’s hands, her warmth, her voice, the feeling of her lips.
Those lips are dusting across Alex’s cheeks, now. “Are you okay?” Maggie asks, because Alex’s cheeks are wet. But Alex just nods, and heaves in another breath, and begs for the permission her body has been waiting for.
And Maggie presses deeper. “Yes,” she breathes. “Yes. You’re perfect, you’re so good. Yes.”
Alex gives up the rest of her surrender.
—
There are things Alex will remember, later.
She will remember Maggie untying her wrists, Maggie combing fingers through her sweat-slick hair. She’ll remember Maggie’s lips on her neck, her face, and finally her lips.
Alex will remember wrapping her freed arms around Maggie’s neck and pulling her in for a kiss that’s deep and slow and filthy, her hands wandering down over the sides of Maggie’s breasts, the curve of her ass.
But she’ll remember how, with a smile and a final peck, Maggie slips out of Alex’s arms and coaxes her onto her side.
“Sleep,” Maggie murmurs: a final command in Alex’s ear.
With Maggie warm against her back, Alex does.
—
In the morning, Alex awakens to a sunlit room, fresh snow dusting the evergreen tops outside.
She rolls over. The other side of the bed holds nothing but rumpled sheets.
This isn’t a surprise. Maggie doesn’t stay. That’s not the relationship they have, and anyway, Maggie’s workday starts by 7:00 and — Alex squints at the clock — it’s almost 8:30.
Then, the toilet flushes.
Alex reaches over to the opposite pillow, to the hollow in its center, and feels that it’s still warm.
The faucet runs for a few seconds, and then the bathroom door opens and Maggie walks out, all naked copper skin and hair that’s far too perfect for someone who, apparently, just got out of bed.
“Good morning, Sleepy,” Maggie says as she slides back under the covers.
“Hey,” Alex says. She rolls over, extending an arm, and Maggie slides into it, fitting her head into the crook of Alex’s shoulder. Alex runs her fingers through those long, perfect strands. “You stayed.”
Maggie stiffens. “Yeah—um, is that okay? I thought—I thought with everything that’s going on, plus last night was kind of intense, so—”
“Shh.” Alex tightens her arm around Maggie, pulling her closer and pressing a kiss to her forehead. “It’s amazing. But don’t you have to work?”
Maggie shrugs. “Winn’s got things covered for now.”
Alex hums. “Tell him I said thank you.”
“Mmm. Will do.”
They sleep again.
—
When they wake up again a half-hour later, Alex pushes Maggie onto her back and goes down on her until Maggie pushes her away, panting that her body can’t take another orgasm.
--
In the shower, they wash each other gently. Maggie arranges room service for breakfast, and sits with Alex when she finally opens her email. There are 974 messages from the previous 12 hours, so she filters for the key ones: J’onn telling her he’s proud of her. Brainy, her buddy in the FBI cyber-crimes division, telling her he’s got bots trolling for any evidence of doxxing — nothing yet. Kara and her mom, telling her they’re glad she’s taking the day off, and to be in touch when she goes home.
Haley, thanking her for her testimony and her service but giving no suggestion as to how her own testimony might align with it.
There’s also hate mail, journalist queries, random outreach from high school classmates or colleagues in the state department she has no real relationship with. She ignores all of those for now.
“Everything good?” Maggie asks.
Alex nods. “It’s okay,” she says.
Eventually, Maggie goes to work. Alex spends the day working through her inbox. She braves the news in the afternoon, though she chooses a few websites and TV channels that she knows will be sympathetic to her.
She’ll face the critics later.
That evening, Maggie comes to her again. They spend a long time kissing, reclining on the sofa by the fire, before anything goes further. They are slow together; careful with each other.
Maggie stays the night again.
In the morning, Maggie sits with Alex while she packs, and then walks her down to the lobby. Alex pulls out her credit card, but Maggie shakes her head.
“On the house,” she says.
“Maggie, no, I—”
“In thanks for your service to the country,” Maggie insists.
Alex wants to kiss her right there in the lobby, where everyone can see. But “everyone” is all of Maggie’s employees and customers, so she settles for letting her eyes linger a little too long on Maggie’s lips — long enough for Maggie to smile in understanding.
“Until next time,” Maggie says, as the same private car pulls up to take Alex to the airport.
Alex smiles. “Until next time,” she says.
In the car, she checks her calendar to try to figure out when that will be.