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“So, not that I’m complaining or anything,” Alex says, afterward, “but what brought on the change of heart?”
Most of her wants nothing more than to drift off with Maggie’s fingers tracing slow circles over her back and Maggie’s scent on her pillowcase, but the part of her that makes her such a good investigator won’t fall asleep until she asks.
The circles pause. Alex almost wishes she hadn’t said anything, because her skin is already prickling at the loss of Maggie’s touch. “Hm?” says Maggie.
She pulls her hand away to prop herself up on one elbow, and Alex promptly loses her train of thought. She can see the muscles in Maggie’s collarbone traced in stark shadow, her shoulders tensing under her skin, and the curve of her breasts.
Alex’s breath hitches. Maggie hears it and smirks, and Alex feels the blood rushing to her face. She looks down to distract herself. It doesn’t work, because now she’s looking at the outline of Maggie’s hip under nothing but a thin sheet, and following the suggestion of Maggie’s legs where they’ve kicked the blanket to the bottom of the bed, and remembering the sensation of sliding her hands up those legs, and — this isn’t helping at all.
She swallows, and looks up again. Maggie is looking at her now with mild concern. Fortunately Alex’s train of thought trundles by again, and she catches hold of it with the desperation of a Depression-era hobo riding the rails. “You said I was — I was fresh off the boat. What changed?”
Maggie frowns. “I told you, I almost died. That kind of experience tends to put things in perspective.”
“Well, yeah, but….” Alex takes a breath and forges on. “You were shot in the shoulder. You told me yourself the bullet missed all the major blood vessels. Maggie, you needed three stitches, and you let me patch you up.” Actually, Alex spent the entire time in the DEO’s sickbay alternating between suppressing her fury that Maggie let herself get shot at all and trying not to think about the fact that under the sterile hospital covering Maggie was entirely shirtless. But that doesn’t change her point. “You had to know it wasn’t deadly.”
“Alex, I’m a woman cop. Who’s gay.”
It’s Alex’s turn to frown. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Are you — did you never watch TV as a kid?”
“Wh— of course! Sometimes.” It comes out sounding more defensive than she intends. “I don’t know, I was studying a lot, and then there was Kara. Making sure your adopted alien sister doesn’t get discovered by a random passenger jet doesn’t leave a ton of time for pop culture!”
“And you didn’t realize you were gay until a few weeks ago.” Maggie is staring at Alex with something like wonderment. “Oh my god, you don’t know.”
“Don’t know what?” Alex is uncomfortably aware that here is another lesbian memo she managed to miss. There ought to be a Global Sapphic Council or something to aggregate all of this information for late-to-the-party people like her.
Maggie smiles wickedly, and Alex’s heart starts racing. She can’t tell what’s causing it: the sense of foreboding that smile gives her, or the thrill of knowing that Maggie’s smiling just for her.
“Oh, Danvers, we have got to get you educated in queer.”
* * *
Maggie makes her sit through all seven seasons.
Six would be enough to get the point across, and Maggie even tells her that Season 7 gets weird and will probably be a bit of a disappointment, but they watch all of them for completeness’ sake.
Anyway, by that point Alex is invested.
* * *
At first, though, she thinks it’s kind of inane.
It’s a late ’90s teen show called “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” for god’s sake.
“I get the horror movie trope subversion, fine,” she says, halfway into the second episode, “but seriously? One teenage girl to deal with all the vampires on earth, and the only support she gets is an older man who is literally called a ‘Watcher’? You don’t find that creepy?”
“That gets explored more later. And hush, the show was feminist for its time.” Maggie is stretched out on the couch, head pillowed on Alex’s lap. Soon, Alex will work up the courage to wind her fingers through Maggie’s hair. It’s just that every time she starts to do it, she thinks about how embarrassing it will be if she accidentally gets her fingers stuck and yanks out some hair instead, and doesn’t do it. But she will.
Soon.
Very soon.
“The special effects were also innovative for their time,” she points out instead, stalling. Really, she should stop obsessing over Maggie’s hair. Maggie’s hair is long, and dark, and luxuriant. “That doesn’t make them good.”
“Don’t knock the make-up artists, Danvers, they did a decent job with what they had.”
“I’ll have you know I’ve seen a creature that lived off human blood, and it didn’t look like that.” Alex shudders. That had been one of the DEO’s less fun missions, mostly because of the desiccated corpses they kept finding before they figured out how to track the alien that was draining them.
“Did you really?” says Maggie with interest, sitting up. The room is warm, so there is no reason for the sudden absence of Maggie’s head on her lap to leave Alex’s thighs feeling this cold. Absolutely no reason.
“Yes,” Alex tells her. “And actually it could disguise itself to look pretty much human, no weird forehead wrinkles, except it had a proboscis hidden under its tongue. Like a mosquito’s. Only much, much bigger.” She shudders again. Mosquito mouth parts do not belong on any creature remotely close to human size.
“Mm. Good thing you were there to subdue it.”
“Actually, J’onn did. He insisted on going in alone.” Which in hindsight makes a lot more sense than it did at the time, since J’onn does not in fact have human blood; Green Martian blood must have been off the mosquito alien’s diet. On the screen, a darkly brooding David Boreanaz has appeared behind Buffy, who almost attacks him before he can articulate his offer to help. “Vampire,” Alex says.
“Oh?” says Maggie. “No spoilers.” But the crinkle at the corner of her eyes tells Alex that she got it in one. The only question is how many episodes she’ll have to wait for her I told you so.
“Obviously a vampire. I mean, come on. Mysterious stalker dude with a name like Angel and a bunch of suspicious inside info? No way is he human.”
“That’s some top-notch detecting, Agent Danvers, but you’ll just have to wait and see,” Maggie says, laying her head back down on Alex’s lap. This time, Alex takes a deep breath and, as Buffy plunges a stake into a vampire’s heart, plunges her fingers into Maggie’s thick hair.
Maggie makes a noise of contentment that sends sudden warmth shooting through Alex’s stomach and pelvis, and she digs her fingers harder into Maggie’s scalp.
They don’t get stuck.
She and Maggie end up having to re-watch the next episode, because it plays automatically and both of them are too preoccupied to pause it.
* * *
“‘One moment of true happiness’?” Alex says, incredulously. “That’s, uh, subtle.”
Maggie snickers. “Stop it, Danvers, you’re ruining what’s supposed to be a really emotional moment. Actually, I think it’s a great metaphor for male entitlement. How many guys are total sweethearts, but only because they think it’s gonna get them laid? And then as soon as that happens, they turn into jerks. Makes me glad to be gay. But yeah, kinda puts a damper on sex, if you lose your soul every time you come.” Alex blushes, and is furious at herself for blushing, knowing it shows up like neon on her pale skin. She is going on thirty; there is no reason for her to blush at any mention of orgasms. Maggie sees it, and smiles, but it’s more affection than mockery. Alex thinks.
They watch in silence for a while. “Do you believe in souls?” The question slips out before Alex stops to wonder why she’s asking it. They’ve fought together, and slept together, and watched more than twenty episodes of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” together, but there’s still so much more she wants to know about Maggie. Alex isn’t really one for metaphysics, normally, and she’s vaguely surprised to realize that she’s not embarrassed to have asked the question.
“I don’t know,” Maggie says eventually. “I don’t know if it matters. I believe in whatever makes you, you. I guess that could be called a soul.” She glances at Alex. “What about you? Do you believe in souls?”
“Yes,” Alex says without hesitation. Her answer might have been different before Kara, but Kara has a soul, Alex is sure of that, and it’s good right through. She turns her attention back to the screen, where Angelus is discussing some new evil plot with Spike and Drusilla, and smiles wryly. “I don’t think sex can make you lose yours, though.”
Maggie grins. “Wanna test that?”
* * *
Maggie tells her Vampire Willow is the hottest character on the show, at least in what they’ve seen so far, and Alex has to agree. She is delighted when Vampire Willow returns for another episode, especially because Regular Willow is hilariously awkward, impersonating her evil self in leather pants and a corset. Alex sympathizes. She cleans up all right, and her combat and movement training let her carry off slinky formalwear better than she otherwise would, but she’ll never find it comfortable.
And then it gets better.
“‘I think I’m kinda gay,’” says Willow, of her vampire double.
Alex lets out a sound that is definitely not a squeak. Maggie lets out a bark of laughter, which she quickly stifles so as not to drown out the dialogue.
“‘Just remember a vampire’s personality has nothing to do with the person it was,’” Buffy reassures her friend.
“‘Well, actually,’” Angel begins, and then thinks better of it. Alex steals a glance at Maggie, whose eyes are dancing.
“Is she —”
Maggie cuts her off. “Spoilers, Danvers.” Her smile has gone crooked with the effort of holding in laughter. Maggie has the most gorgeous smile, Alex thinks.
“But I thought — with Oz…”
“Well,” Maggie says, quirking an eyebrow, and then her lopsided smile turns into a real grin. “Let’s just say you’re not the only one to take your time reaching the end of the rainbow.”
She means it as a joke about the show, Alex knows, but it releases a weight Alex hadn’t even consciously realized she was carrying. Being gay, well, that was hard enough at first, but Alex thinks now that the realizing of it was maybe even harder. Realizing it, and knowing that she had realized so late. Alex has always been pretty damn smart, and she’s always taken pride in how well she knows herself. The fact that she missed such an important part of who she is, and for so long — that’s shaken her more than she’s been willing to admit. She thinks of Maggie’s words from before — You’re fresh off the boat — and thinks about what might have been if she’d known sooner.
Alex is still new to this, still inexperienced.
Maggie could still change her mind.
Something of this must show on her face, because Maggie grows serious. “I’m glad you got there in the end, though. And — I wouldn’t have you any other way.”
You do, Alex almost says. Have me.
* * *
“We should spar,” Maggie says a few days later, watching Giles test Buffy’s reflexes with throwing knives.
“I’m not going to fling knives at you.”
“No, not with weapons. Hand-to-hand.” Alex stares at her. “Come on, I can show you the scrappy back-alley moves I picked up on the mean streets of National City, and I bet you know lots of secret DEO tricks for disarming someone with twice the usual number of limbs. Or something.”
Actually, Alex’s record for number of appendages on a hand-to-hand combat opponent is thirteen, but she’s not going to say that. She remembers how training with Kara was at first; her sister was cocky when they started, overconfident that her superpowers would protect her, until Alex showed her all the ways a weaker person could use an opponent’s strength against them.
She doesn’t think Maggie will make Kara’s mistakes.
“Okay,” she says.
They switch out the next Buffy night for a session in one of the DEO’s practice rooms.
Maggie has music on as they warm up, and Alex catches herself timing her stretches to the beat. Clever, she thinks. She’ll have to be careful not to fall into a predictable rhythm when they start sparring.
They circle each other, testing for weaknesses, and Alex takes a moment to appreciate how her girlfriend moves — wait, is Maggie her girlfriend now? It occurs to her that they haven’t actually talked about the parameters of what they have. Officially, that is. Alex thinks they’re dating, and certainly she’s not looking for anyone else, but —
Maggie’s punch almost knocks her off her feet.
Dammit.
Focus, Danvers.
She was right; Maggie doesn’t make Kara’s mistakes. Alex is able to gain an advantage from time to time with her “secret DEO tricks,” but Maggie picks up on them quickly, and Alex never manages to successfully use the same tactic twice. Other than that, they’re pretty evenly matched. Alex is startled by how good this feels, to fight an opponent who’s strong enough and skilled enough to teach her things, but who’s able to learn from Alex as well.
Maggie pushes her hard, but Alex is stubborn, so she keeps up without a word. She’s damned if she’s going to be the first one to ask for a break. Only problem is, Maggie is equally stubborn, so they end up sparring until they’re both exhausted, and it doesn’t even matter that Maggie is barely blocking Alex’s blows because Alex is barely landing them anyway.
At last, Alex manages to break Maggie’s stance with a capoeira-style sweep, but when Maggie stumbles and falls, Alex flops over onto her back as well.
“Jeez, Danvers, you don’t let up, do you,” Maggie says between breaths.
“Pot. Kettle. Black.” Verbs and articles require too much effort. Maggie’s music is still playing in the background, Alex realizes vaguely as her heart rate stops pounding in her ears. It’s something with an energetic beat and an intense guitar line, and the lead singer’s voice is like nothing Alex has ever heard. “Who is this?” she asks.
“Sleater-Kinney,” Maggie says, and then grins. “Don’t think you get a break from your queer education just because we’re working out instead of watching television. Pay attention to the lyrics, Danvers. You may have grown up completely oblivious to pop culture, but I’m not letting you ignore your radical feminist music history anymore.” She squirms over to Alex on her elbows. Her hair is plastered to her forehead with sweat, and there’s a bruise starting on her shoulder where Alex landed a kick. Alex thinks she has never looked more beautiful.
Suddenly, she isn’t tired anymore.
Sleater-Kinney, it turns out, is good for more than just workouts.
* * *
Season 4 makes it clear why Maggie insisted that “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” was an essential part of Alex’s education.
“Actually, branding non-heteronormative female sexuality as witchcraft has a long and sordid history,” Maggie tells her, as they watch Willow and Tara clasp hands and trace a circle for a spell. “This was the first mainstream show to subvert that.” The scene is full of fluttering eyelids and heavy breathing, and — now that Alex is primed to watch for it — could hardly be more obvious without venturing into the pornographic.
“Would you really call ‘Buffy’ mainstream?” Alex asks doubtfully. “Seems like it’s more of a … dedicated-cult-following kind of show.”
“Yeah, but it was a big dedicated cult following.”
They’ve fallen into a kind of routine, alternating Buffy nights with sparring sessions, and Alex can’t remember ever being this happy. She and Kara haven’t talked explicitly about it, but Alex is pretty sure Kara knows what’s going on between her and Maggie, since Kara conveniently times her patrols and training sessions so that she’s always out when Alex and Maggie have Buffy night.
“I kind of wish I’d known about this show when I was a teenager,” Alex says slowly. “It might’ve tipped me off about the whole being gay thing.”
Maggie smiles reminiscently. “I swear, Willow and Tara’s on-screen kiss got me through high school. I made my parents get me the season DVD set so I could study it. It was the only tutorial on how to kiss girls that I had. It took me a year and a half to build up the nerve to kiss the girl I had a crush on, and when I finally did — she recognized the kiss!”
“What?” says Alex, incredulous.
“I’m not kidding. I have my hand at the back of her neck like Tara does in the show, and suddenly she pulls back and says, ‘Is this supposed to be like in "Buffy”? Because I don’t think I’m tall enough.’ Can you believe that?” Maggie asks. “She was right, though, she totally wasn’t tall enough for us to pull off that kiss without severe neck strain.”
“Are you … are you still in touch with her?”
Maggie shrugs. “Eh, Christmas, birthdays, and major life updates, that kind of thing. Last I heard she was living in Metropolis, and she and her wife just adopted their second kid.”
“Oh.” And then, before Alex can stop herself, “I’m tall.” She’s immediately furious with herself. Of all the irrelevant things to say.
“Alex,” Maggie says, breaking into her train of thought, and Alex knows she’s being serious because Maggie always calls her Danvers when she isn’t, “it’s the right life for her, but it’s not the life I want. I have the life I want.” She curls a hand around the back of Alex’s neck. “And the person I want.”
“Oh,” Alex starts to say, again, but she loses the end of it into a kiss.
* * *
Maggie is impressed at how easily Alex takes the Season 5 premiere in stride.
“What,” says Alex, “you’ve never woken up one day with a new sister that you suddenly have to take care of?” Warmth spreads all the way through her when Maggie breaks into a sudden laugh.
* * *
Alex doesn’t cry when they watch “The Body.”
Really.
She doesn’t.
It’s just that, she’s spent five seasons watching Joyce Summers grow from oblivious and overprotective to understanding and fierce, and it’s only so very recently that she’s felt the beginnings of a thaw with her own mother, and she still gets a physical ache in her chest when she thinks how scared she was to tell Eliza about being gay, and…
Part of her is still the teenager hoping for a single word of approval from the mother who always made it about Kara, obstinate and resentful and too proud to ask.
“Want to talk about it?” Maggie asks.
Alex shakes her head and refills her wineglass. She tips the bottle at Maggie, offering, but Maggie shakes her own head, eyeing Alex’s full glass. She doesn’t say anything, though, just lifts her arm invitingly, so Alex can tuck her legs up underneath her and lean against Maggie’s shoulder.
Whatever she did to deserve this woman, it cannot possibly have been enough.
Maggie will realize that eventually. She’s too smart not to.
Part of Alex lives in constant terror of that moment. But right now Maggie hasn’t figured it out, because she’s got her arm around Alex, and Alex isn’t going to say anything to break the spell.
* * *
Buffy’s gravestone reads, “She Saved the World a Lot.”
It would be a good epitaph for Kara, but Alex refuses to think about Kara dying.
* * *
“I liked witchcraft better as an allegory for lesbian sex than for drugs,” Alex complains. “Sex is much better than drugs.”
“Maybe lay off a bit on the intoxicating substances, then,” Maggie says, neatly snatching Alex’s whiskey and placing it out of reach.
“Hey,” Alex says. She doesn’t pout. Definitely not. The expression on her face is a dignified frown at the unjust seizure of a perfectly harmless bourbon.
The buzz is strong now, smoothing out all of Alex’s rough edges. Maggie is backlit by the room’s lamp. It makes her look like she has a halo.
“Bourbon isn’t a substitute for actually dealing with your feelings, Alex,” says Maggie, but her voice is gentle, which takes the sting out of it.
“I have,” Alex protests. “I do. Feel. With my dealings. Wait.” That’s not quite right. “I told you how I feel, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, I’m getting the sense that this” — she indicates Alex’s stolen glass — “isn’t about me. Pretty sure you started well before I got here.”
Alex is surprised. It’s not that Maggie’s wrong; Alex was well into the bottle of bourbon by the time Maggie showed up with pizza, but Alex had thought she’d done a good job of playing sober.
It occurs to her belatedly that maybe the half-empty, open bottle on the counter was a bit of a giveaway.
She’d gotten it out because Eliza had called earlier that evening to scold her about yet another risk Kara had taken, going up against a rampaging alien ten times her size. Kara won, but it was a close thing. And some intrepid reporter had caught the fight on camera, which was how Eliza found out about it, so there was the added crime that Alex hadn’t told her first. Alex wanted to remind her mother that Kara could handle herself because she had a good brain and loyal friends, not to mention superpowers and also a deep-pocketed government agency with state-of-the-art tech — which Eliza already knew about and which Alex was employed by.
She’d downed a swallow of bourbon instead.
She becomes aware that Maggie is looking at her expectantly, and sighs. “My mother called.”
“Sounds like maybe you’ve got some things to work out there,” Maggie suggests gently.
“What?” says Alex mutinously. “I told you, I already came out to her. And it was fine.”
“I’m willing to bet there’s more going on than you being gay.” Serves Alex right for falling for a top-notch detective. She should’ve picked someone less intelligent.
“But we talked about the … other stuff. Last Thanksgiving.”
It’s Maggie’s turn to sigh. “Yeah, Alex, I know you love each other, but you can’t have one serious conversation with her per year and expect that to solve all your problems.”
Alex isn’t oblivious. She can spot what Maggie’s doing. Maggie is using logic against her, which isn’t fair because Maggie’s only had one bourbon. Alex was counting.
“Hey,” says Maggie, putting both hands on Alex’s shoulders and looking straight at her. Heh, straight, Alex thinks to herself. Maggie doesn’t look straight; she looks gay. Gloriously gay. It would be terrible if she were straight. “Hey,” Maggie says again, cutting off Alex’s mental digression. “You are a brave, powerful, intelligent, badass woman. If your mom doesn’t see that, she’s not half as smart as I’ve been giving her credit for.”
Alex tells herself that it’s the alcohol making Maggie go blurry in her vision, but the sudden tightness in her throat suggests otherwise.
Maggie is a brave, powerful, intelligent, badass woman as well.
Alex kisses her.
Maggie returns the kiss, deeply, and then draws back. “Jeez, Danvers, if you’re gonna kiss me with bourbon breath, at least get some nicer bourbon.”
Alex laughs, and manages not to turn it into a sniffle.
She has a pounding headache the next morning, but the sight of Maggie in bed next to her gives her courage.
After the coffee and ibuprofen kick in, she calls Eliza.
* * *
Willow and Tara break up, Spike assaults Buffy, Xander ditches Anya at the altar, and, “Wow, Season 6 is rough,” Alex says.
“Imagine watching it as a teenager,” Maggie says. “If ‘high school is hell’ is the driving metaphor for the first half of the show, then Season 6 is where you find out that adulthood is worse.”
Alex acknowledges that with a tilt of her head. “Not to mention that ‘Going Through the Motions’ has been stuck in my head for days.”
“Hey, that’s a great episode. And a great song!” Maggie protests.
Alex did quite enjoy the musical episode, but nevertheless: “Only for the first forty-eight hours.”
Maggie punches her in the shoulder.
* * *
That night, Maggie gets her revenge. Alex is almost asleep when Maggie leans over and whisper-sings in her ear, “You make me come…”
Sleepiness gone, Alex breaks into uncontrollable giggles — giggles! She can’t remember the last time she actually giggled.
It’s only when she subsides that Maggie finishes, “—plete.”
She manages to hit the exact pitch where she left off, which sets Alex off again, and this time it’s even longer before she can stop.
“I’m going to do that every night until you acknowledge the masterpiece of television storytelling that is ‘Once More With Feeling,’” Maggie promises, and Alex smiles into her kiss.
* * *
“Your shirt,” Tara says, and that’s all the warning she gets.
Alex eventually realizes her mouth is hanging open, and snaps it closed. “What,” she says, dangerously. “No, that’s not —”
“Now do you get it?” Maggie says.
“They can’t do that! You can’t just give these characters a whole intense romantic arc that almost gets destroyed, and then bring them back together, and then kill one of them!”
“And yet.” Maggie is infuriatingly calm, and Alex gapes at her. Maggie shrugs. “I got out my big emotional rant over Willow and Tara in my freshman year of college,” she says. “‘Buffy’ isn’t the only show that does this, by the way. So I’ve had time to process. But do you see now? Why I’m here?”
Your shirt, Tara said. Alex had to cut Maggie’s off, after they got Maggie back to the DEO. She remembers the blood on the fabric, and cutting along the seams to get a clear view of the bullet wound. She’s not sure what they did with the bloody shirt, probably got rid of it through the DEO’s biohazard processing system, and suddenly it seems important to find out.
She’s putting the pieces together.
“We’re women,” she says, and Maggie nods. “Who are lesbian. And out. And — together?” Alex is pretty sure about that one, given all the sex and cuddles, but they still haven’t talked about it explicitly. Maggie gives her hand a reassuring squeeze. It sets off fireworks in Alex’s chest, and it’s a moment before she can remember where she left off. “And we both work in high-risk jobs, with lots of exposure to violence.”
“No kidding.”
“And you got shot. And survived.” Alex can’t believe how naïve she was. "Maggie, you could have died."
Maggie shrugs, and cracks a grin. “Eh, you wouldn’t have let me.”
“Damn right I wouldn’t,” Alex says fiercely.
“Kinda makes you want to make the most of the life you have, though, doesn’t it?”
Alex slides her arms around Maggie’s waist.
“Damn right it does.”