Chapter 4
“James. James Olsen. Such a nice name. You know it wouldn’t occur to me right away why you’d want to adopt another name when James Olsen is such a nice one, but hey, I respect you and your life choices.”
A shiver ran down James’s spine: he wasn’t actually afraid of Alex. They’d bonded a lot over the last year, especially since the day Kara was attacked by the Black Mercy and Alex had trusted him to let her die trying to save Kara. Because she knew that he knew how much Kara meant to her. To them both. That kind of love for the same person? It can bring people together. And it had.
But damned if Alex wasn’t going to milk knowing James’s Guardian secret for all it was worth until he told Kara.
“What do you want, Alex?” A smile tugged on the corner of his lips because he could see, even when she was trying to be low-key threatening, how happy she was now. Since coming out. Since Maggie.
Alex mock glared at him and sighed when he didn’t rise to the bait. She battled his eyes with hers for a moment before tossing her hands back, palms out. “I need to get Maggie a Christmas gift and I’ve never gotten a Christmas gift for a girlfriend before, so I figured, you know, you could help.”
To his deep, deep credit, James didn’t laugh. He didn’t mock her and he didn’t flinch. He did, however, sit back on Cat Grant’s old desk and furrow his brow at her. “You’re asking me, not Winn?”
“Lucy had a lot of good things to say about your thoughtfulness. And Winn would never let me live down asking for his… help.”
He smiled slightly, fondly, thoughts on Lucy, and nodded. He glanced at his watch and sighed.
“You free right now? I can take an early lunch.”
Alex groaned, relieved. “Ugh, you are the best.”
Kara’s brow was furrowed, squinting under her glasses at desk she was standing at, bent over a messy pile of police reports and hastily scrawled notes: Snapper still hadn’t allowed her a chair, but he was giving her multiple assignments at once now. Superhuman endurance or not, she was considering asking for a chair instead of a holiday bonus.
“Hey, Little Danvers!”
Kara looked up and grinned. “Hi Maggie.”
Her sister’s girlfriend took a cursory glance at the papers scattered on Kara’s desk and pushed her leather jacket aside to reveal her badge. “You know if you need an inside source on the missing Bravak case, I hear tell there’s a brilliant NCPD science division detective floating around in your inner circle.”
Kara laughed and adjusted her glasses. “That’d be great! I didn’t want to ask, you know, take advantage of your undying love for my sister and all.”
Maggie put her left hand to her chin, just under her lips, and shuffled her feet a bit. “Yeah, there’s the thing, Little Danvers. I… I don’t want to take advantage of your undying love for your sister, but I was wondering if you’d maybe want to help me. Pick her out the perfect Christmas gift.”
Kara’s eyebrows raised, and Maggie took it as disapproval, rambling on, pacing slightly around Kara’s desk now. “It’s not that I’m trying to get out of being thoughtful about it myself. It’s just, you know her better, obviously, and I want to find the perfect thing because I feel like she’s not too into the Christmas thing, you know, and I want to make sure she – ”
She stopped when Kara’s hands braced her shoulders, and she looked up into piercing blue eyes. “Of course I’ll go Christmas shopping for Alex with you. It’ll be fun! And you can give me all your super secret, on-the-record intel for my article on the way.”
Maggie chuckled in equal parts amusement and relief and followed an overeager Kara Danvers out the door.
James took her to the National City Holiday Market; a hodgepodge of food stands, antique stands, novelty items, and a whole host of unique things you couldn’t find anywhere else.
They’d found the perfect hand-crafted thermal gloves for J’onn – who despite the whole Martian thing, tended to run very cold, and they’d noticed him rubbing his hands together a lot as the weather got chillier – and they’d stumbled on the perfect set of gag gifts for Kara and Winn.
Alex even stole away from James for a few minutes – her DEO training in action – to buy him an old Nikon film camera, still in working order, that caught her eye.
But they could find nothing for Maggie.
James had jokingly gestured his hand through a rack of old leather jackets, and Alex had, in a rare moment of sexual boldness when Maggie wasn’t around, waggled her eyebrows suggestively at James, pointing at an old-style series of nude women photographs.
“I mean, she might want them if they were of you,” James teased, and had to resist photographing her with how red and pleased she got.
And then he wondered. Why resist?
He slipped his Canon out of his jacket pocket – it wasn’t the most high quality, with no real zoom lens, but it was good enough to snap photos for CatCo – and, making sure Alex’s back was turned, started snapping.
He photographed her lopsided, faraway smile when she reached out to touch an old NCPD badge on one of the tables, surely thinking of Maggie.
He photographed her when she sipped on the hot apple cider she’d insisted on buying for them both, her eyes fluttered closed in relief at its warmth.
He photographed her when she bent over, hands resting on her thighs, to debate whether Santa was the Head Elf or just a really old human with a small child who’d run headlong into her in his excitement at seeing the North Pole display set up behind her.
He photographed her as she held a painting of the National City Bridge in her hands, head tilted – just like Maggie’s – and tongue sticking out slightly, undoubtedly imagining Maggie’s response to it.
He photographed her when she was in a crouch, combing through old trinkets and newspapers in a box on the floor, her hands – so lethal in other contexts – gentle as she caressed all that history.
He photographed her when he called her name and she turned to him, head over her shoulder, looking back expectantly, happily, eyes glowing in the Christmas lights strung around the stand behind him.
“What the hell, Olsen?” she asked, finally snapping out of her singular focus on finding Maggie a gift to notice his camera.
He held the device out of her reaching grasp and held up a finger.
“Whoa whoa whoa. Just – just look at them, Alex. I’ll delete any of them, all of them, if you don’t like them. But I uh… I have an idea for what you can give Maggie.”
Maggie suggested the National City Holiday Market, because she wanted to find Alex something as unique, as special, as she was. Kara had squealed at her explanation, and Maggie swelled with pride that her idea had the approval of the girl who knew Alex best.
So she let herself be tugged along by a very frenetic Kara Danvers, all but skipping from one stand to the next. Maggie shelled out almost all her cash buying snacks for her girlfriend’s little sister, and was rewarded by the contented sighs Kara made when she bit into one new holiday treat after the next.
When Kara’s appetite was somewhat sated, she slipped into business mode.
“Okay, so. Gift for Alex. What kind of thing were you thinking? Unique, special, like you said. But anything more specific?”
Maggie let her hands run over the side of a stand selling hand-crafted jewelry and sighed. “Alex is so particular, so ordered, you know? I don’t want to get her just anything, so I don’t… I don’t know, Little Danvers. I know she… I know she wears that ankle bracelet sometimes, but does she – does she like jewelry? She likes art galleries, I know, but would she want another painting in her apartment?”
Kara cut Maggie off before she listed everything she could think of.
“Alex likes you, Maggie. She’ll like whatever comes from your heart.” She threaded her arm through Maggie’s. “Let’s just look around slowly and see what jumps out at you.”
What jumped out at Maggie was a blue knit cap and scarf for James; a vintage denim jacket for her little cousin; a Christmas elf tie for Winn; and – bought stealthily between getting Kara extra donuts – a simple silver pen engraved with the phrase, “I write so I can free the world” for Kara.
Just as she was beginning to despair that she wouldn’t find anything special enough for Alex, it caught her eye.
An old microscope – had to be from the late 60s, judging from the model and make – that, after cursory inspection and intent conversation with the vendor, she discovered still worked. She tested each lens and asked if it came with slides and covers. She asked if the bulbs were still good and she asked if he thought a massive science nerd would love it.
“Undoubtedly,” the vendor assured her as Kara beamed in the background.
“Alex’ll love that,” she squealed as Maggie carefully arranged it in its travel box.
Maggie shook her head. “I’m not just getting her the microscope. What I’m gonna do is, I’ll go to the NCPD lab and prepare a bunch of different slides for her. Pictures of us, pictures of places I want to take her, pictures of her favorite astronomical phenomena, like a slideshow of everything we are so far and everything I want to be with her, but all microscopic, so you can only see through the microscope. Do you – do you think that’s stupi – ”
The wind was completely knocked out of her before she could even finish the word; Kara had wrapped her in a hug so tight she’d risked completely crushing the telescope, not to mention the other bags Maggie was hauling by now.
But none of that mattered. None of that mattered because Alex Danvers’s kid sister was whispering in her ear that she was so grateful Alex found her, that she was so grateful she’d come into all their lives. And that it is a brilliant, perfect idea and that Alex would love it almost as much as she loves Maggie.
Maggie’s heart wobbled and expanded; her eyes stung and her ribcage burned, but she didn’t have the heart to tell Kara to loosen her grip.
“Kara? Maggie?”
They disentangled messily, and Kara all but dove in front of Maggie, in front of the bags she was carrying, the box with Alex’s microscope in her hand.
“James! Alex!” Maggie almost groaned. She might not have known her as well as the rest of the Superfriends, but already she knew that voice. The voice of trying to play it cool, nothing to see here, move right along, what, of course I’m not an alien, I’m from earth just like you why would you ask me something like that.
“Hi guys! Maggie and I were just – we were – she’s catching me up on a case! Yes!” Victory reigned in Kara’s voice as she found a lie that wasn’t completely untrue. “For my article. For Snapper! NCPD inside source!”
“Kara,” James’s voice was deeply amused. “It’s okay if you and Maggie are out here Christmas shopping together. That’s cool.”
“Pfft, no, we’re not, and I’m definitely not helping Maggie shop for Alex, that is definitely not what’s happening.”
Maggie hung her head and looked up at Alex through squinty eyes.
But Alex was looking at her like she’d never seen something so beautiful as her girlfriend hanging out with her sister, and Maggie’s insecurities melted.
“Well that’s perfect, because I’m certainly not helping Alex pick something out for Maggie! Ow!”
Alex stepped toward Maggie after delivering a sound smack to James on the arm. “Hey,” she said, and Kara melted away toward James.
He put his finger to his lips and took out his camera as Alex, shopping bags – now including the vintage photo frames she’d bought to hold James’s pictures – dangling from her elbows, reached out to stroke the hair framing Maggie’s face.
“You didn’t have to get me anything, babe. You’re my gift.”
Maggie kissed her deeply, and James, with Kara squeeing encouragement in his ear, snapped still more photos.
“And you’re mine, babygirl.” Alex melted, and Maggie’s fingertips on her waist were her only point of connection to the earth.
“But also, presents!” Alex laughed, and they intertwined in each other’s arms, and James’s camera didn’t stop clicking.