Chapter 7
Christmas was usually Kara’s department, and that was generally just fine with Alex. She had her fire place, and that was as holiday as she got. Too many holidays drinking too much wine to cope with not feeling enough for your mother, with missing your father with all your heart, with how happy your sister is and with not understanding why you feel so empty in the midst of everyone else’s joy… That’ll kill the holidays for a person.
It had long since killed them for Alex.
But this year? This year, since coming out? This year, since Maggie?
“Your place is huge, babe, at least you could have a little Christmas tree. Something to remind you that it’s not all about alien invasions and death rays from space.”
“Death rays from space.”
Maggie leaned up and kissed her earlobe, and Alex froze. “Missing the point, Danvers,” she practically growled into her ear, and Alex barely suppressed a groan.
“Just a little Christmas tree, huh?”
Maggie had lit up so brightly at Alex’s concession that it solved the matter then and there: within twenty minutes, Alex had let herself be dragged out to National City’s Garden Depot, which had all but established an artificial forest of evergreens, waiting to be attached to the top of car roofs and brought home to be draped with candy canes, sparkling lights, and photo frames of first anniversaries and lost loves.
Maggie had interlaced their fingers and Alex found herself staring down at the spot where her entire body’s senses had lit up. She gulped and Maggie’s hand stiffened.
“I’m sorry, did you not want – ”
“No,” Alex said firmly, taking Maggie’s hand tighter. “I want to hold your hand. I’m just still… getting used to it, is all.”
Maggie nodded softly, but then her eyes caught a tree behind Alex and her eyes lit up.
“Oh, babe, this one is gorgeous.” Maggie let go of her hand and suddenly Alex found herself jealous of the pine needles on the tree – a little taller than Maggie, modest in girth but full, just this side of understated beauty – because Maggie’s hand was running over the needles and she was speaking, softly. Alex stepped closer with a tilted head – a habit she was picking up from Maggie – and furrowed brow.
“What?”
“Oh,” Maggie shifted her feet. “I always… I always feel bad, you know. They’re killed just to make our living rooms look nice… I like to… you know, thank them, I guess? It’s stupid, I know, but I – ”
But Alex had grabbed her face and pulled her up into a searing kiss, and Maggie – a little shocked, but pleased – melted into the kiss, letting her tongue brush Alex’s bottom lip.
Alex moaned slightly, forgetting entirely where they were, and nearly whined when Maggie pulled back a moment later, tugging her phone out of her back pocket apologetically.
“Sorry, Danvers,” she flirted as she glanced down at the text. Her face – flushed and heated with desire and affection a moment before – drained of any happiness a moment later, and her eyes flew wide.
“Alex, shit, I’m sorry, I have to go – ”
“No, it’s fine, work – ”
“It’s not work. I’m sorry, I’ll explain later, I – get this tree, I – I’m sorry babe, I have to go.”
She pulled her down for a quick kiss to her lips and sprinted back to her Triumph, leaving Alex to stare after her, bewildered and worried and falling in love.
Christmas Eve, Five Years Ago
Maggie sighed as she replayed the last text message exchange with her mother in her mind, having memorized it so her eyes were free to do her job, not keep staring at her phone every two minutes.
I already explained Ma. Rookie cops don’t get to take holidays off. I’m sorry. I miss you guys.
It’s not enough that you didn’t come home for the holidays during college, now that you’re right out of college you avoid us, too? Your father and I didn’t raise you like this, Margaret.
I’m not avoiding you, Ma, I’m doing my job. And it was one year in college that I didn’t come home, ONE.
To stay with that girl instead of your family!
Ma, I am sorry. I have to go, I’m going on patrol. I love you. Merry Christmas, Ma.
She’d gotten no response.
She sighed as she adjusted the still stiff, unfamiliar collar of her uniform as she shifted down the street, eyeing the rush of last minute Christmas shoppers and families with something akin to envy.
As the sun set, laughter and shouts of Christmas wishes flooded the streets, and they were almost enough – almost – to bring Maggie out of her thoughts and bring a smile to her lips.
Amidst the din of revelry, she almost didn’t hear the wet coughs coming from the alleyway between the National City Science Museum and its adjacent bookstore.
She stopped walking so abruptly a small child careened into the backs of her legs. She turned and he cowered, already knowing to fear cops at the age of, she guessed, six or seven.
“I’m sorry, Officer,” the boy spluttered, and his mom rushed up behind him, putting her arms over his chest.
“I’m sorry about my son, Officer, he’s just excited – Santa coming tonight, you know.”
Maggie stared into the mother’s deep brown eyes, trying to calm her fears with her own. She crouched down in front of the boy, keeping an ear out for that coughing in the alleyway.
“Your mama’s right, kiddo. Santa tonight: that’s a lot to be excited about. He bringing you anything special?”
She glanced up at the mother, who beamed in a combination of headiness and relief.
“A new science book!”
“Hey!” Maggie held up her hand for the boy to slap, and he did enthusiastically. “That’s exactly what I’m hoping Santa brings me! Maybe we’ll get the same one, and then we can compare notes, okay?”
She tickled the kid’s ribs and he squirmed and shrieked with laughter.
Maggie stood and stepped out of their path, sweeping them on with her hands. “Merry Christmas, kiddo. Ma’am.”
She watched the kid’s bouncing step and the mother’s ass – she chided herself for that one – as they walked away, but she didn’t follow.
There was still the coughing in that alley.
Right hand tense above her gun, she slipped into the dark passage between buildings.
She stole behind a green dumpster that was taller than she was, and what she saw next sent her sprawling to her knees.
A boy – no older than thirteen – was curled fetally between the dumpster and the building’s back wall, a rapidly swelling bruise on his cheek and blood pouring from a gash on his mouth.
“Kid, what happened?” Her hands were immediately on him, checking for other injuries, as her eyes swiveled around for his possible attacker. She grabbed at the walkie on her shoulder and was about to call for an ambulance for him.
“No!” he yelped, grabbing with a shaking hand at her wrist.
“Kid, you need an ambulance, you – ”
“I don’t, I don’t, please. Please, just let me – ” He looked absolutely terrified – more terrified at the idea of am ambulance than he was at laying alone in an alleyway bleeding – and he coughed some more. Maggie was relieved to see there was no blood coming from his insides. She relaxed a bit and waited.
“Okay, it’s okay. You’re safe now. I’m listening.”
She peered into his good eye and put a tentative hand on his knee. He didn’t tense away, so she swiped her thumb across his tight jeans.
“I… I can’t tell you.”
There was something about the way he spoke; about the tightness of his jeans, the bandage on his earlobe marking a fresh new piercing; something about the particular kind of terror in his eyes. Something that Maggie recognized. Something that Maggie remembered.
Something that she’d been reliving, with her mom’s texts earlier.
“Okay.” She nodded and sat down next to him, untucking her uniform to get at the undershirt underneath it. She ripped until she had a decent strip of cloth, and she pressed it to the side of his bleeding mouth. “Okay, you can’t tell me. But can I tell you a story?”
“You’re a cop. Aren’t you gonna arrest me?”
“For what, for being lousy in a fight?”
“It… wasn’t a fight.” Maggie’s heart leapt, hoping he’d elaborate. But he shut off again, so she just nodded again.
“Okay. My story now?” He just stared at her, his dark eyes waiting. “When I was your age, I kissed a girl for the first time.”
His spine stiffened, as she’d guessed it would, and his eyes flew wide open. “Her big brother beat me to a pulp. But you know what? I had a home to go back to. Not an alleyway to hide in. So lemme ask you: why aren’t you home?”
“That wasn’t a very long or happy story.”
They both stiffened as a group of older teenagers walked past the alleyway, yelping about Christmas plans.
“Did I say it would be long or happy?”
The kid giggled despite himself, and Maggie smiled softly, biting down her rage.
“There’s a shelter where some of us stay. The ones whose parents kick us out when we come out. I didn’t know how to get there looking like this. I thought…” He regarded her with wide eyes and shook his head slightly. “I thought a cop might see me and arrest me or something. Will you… will you take me back there?”
Maggie arched an eyebrow. “A shelter for homeless queer kids on Christmas Eve. I could think of more unpleasant things to do on patrol tonight.”
She braced his body as he stood shakily and brushed himself off.
“What’s your name, anyway?”
“Jordan.”
Maggie smiled and held out the hand that wasn’t stemming the blood flow on his face.
“Nice to meet you, Jordan.”
Present Day
“What the hell happened, Jord?”
Jordan squinted up from his hospital bed, IV in his hand and eyes slightly unfocused. “We have to stop meeting like this, Detective Sawyer.”
“Not funny, Jordan,” the boy sitting next to him, holding his IV-less hand, chided gently, tears in his eyes and in his voice.
“What happened, Mateo?” Maggie asked Jordan’s boyfriend as she strode across the room to stroke Jordan’s matted hair.
“Someone decided to try to go home to see his family for the holiday. But seeing as they made it clear he wasn’t to step foot there again – ”
“I’m their son, it’s the holiday, I thought – ”
“Detective Sawyer, don’t,” Mateo interrupted her as she reached for her phone. “You arrest his parents, they’ll send his sister into foster care. She’s seventeen, she’s just got one more year. Come on, you know you can’t screw it up for her when she’s so close to just going off to college and leaving them.”
Maggie ran a hand over her face and stared down at Jordan.
“What do you need, kid?”
“More morphine?” He poked at his bandaged ribs gingerly.
“Ha ha.”
Jordan squinted up at the hospital TV dazedly, and a soft, sad smile started filling his face. Maggie and Mateo followed his gaze, and a rolling image of Supergirl stopping a car crash on the interstate blinked through the room.
“You know it was thinking of her that got me through tonight. How strong she is, how… how she came out as an alien, as a superhero, you know, even when it put a huge target on her chest.” He paused, wheezing slightly, and Maggie took a deep, steadying breath. “I wish I could meet her. You don’t ever run into her with your fancy new Science Division promotion, do you?”
Maggie kept her eyes on the television, no longer able to look at the sadness in Jordan’s eyes, the pain in Mateo’s. “Yeah. Yeah, I – you wanna meet Supergirl, Jordan? Then dammit, you’re gonna meet Supergirl.”
She sent a quick text off to Alex as she left his room twenty minutes later, asking her to meet at the bar.
On her way out of the hospital, she gave her information to the front desk, instructing that Jordan’s medical bills be put in her name.
Christmas Eve, Three Years Ago
“Yeah yeah, ho ho ho and all that stuff. I have your gifts from the precinct’s drive, so gather round unless you wanna get coal for Christmas this year, yeah?”
The supervisor at the shelter shook her head and rolled her eyes at Maggie’s sardonic ebullience, at the way the kids gathered around her and the cart of wrapped and bagged gifts she brought. “Why don’t you tell them that you’re the one who organized the drive in the first place, Officer?” she muttered in Maggie’s ears.
“Does Santa Clause go around begging for credit, Sam?” Maggie muttered back.
“Well actually, if you count all those mall visits and parades and shit – ”
“Oh shush, Sam. Jordan! Wanna come help me give these things out, or you too busy with your new man?”
Jordan flushed and disentangled from the new boy he was dating, Mateo.
“Officer, what if all I want for Christmas is permission from my parents to start hormones, huh? What’s your present bag gonna do for me then?”
“Are you insulting the depth of my present bag, Kay? Do you not believe in the power of Office Maggie Sawyer to meet all your Christmas needs?”
The other kids ooed and whistled, and Kay grinned down at Maggie. “Seriously though. I don’t know what to do anymore, I just – ”
Maggie put a hand on Kay’s arm and rummaged around for a folder on the side of the otherwise lumpy bag. “Got a court order that I think might help you out, Kay. Name recognition, emancipation. You can start as soon as you can get an appointment at the clinic.”
Jordan tossed an arm over Kay’s shoulders and lifted her, spinning her around and laughing. “And you thought it was gonna take months to get all that through!”
“What favors did you have to call in to get that stuff expedited?” Sam leaned in to ask her. Maggie just grinned and watched as Kay showed off her papers to her friends.
“Merry Christmas, Office Sawyer.”
“Merry Christmas, Sam.”
Present Day
Maggie had said nothing as she walked into the bar and shoved her body down onto a stool. M’gann raised an eyebrow but said nothing, bringing her three shots and lining them up in front of her. She hadn’t seen Maggie like this since she started dating Alex, and thought she should call J’onn to make sure the two were doing alright.
She breathed a sigh of relief when Alex jogged in through the back door, eyes scanning eagerly for Maggie.
“Babe, what happened?”
Maggie didn’t look up as Alex sat next to her, close, close, close. She just swallowed her first shot and then, immediately, her second.
“Maggie?”
Maggie fingered the rim of the third shot glass.
“A kid I know. Jordan. Seventeen. Been on the streets since I was a rookie cop here, five years ago. Twelve. Twelve, you wanna believe it? Because he likes boys.”
Alex swallowed and shuddered.
“He tried to go back to visit for the holidays. They put him in the fucking hospital. Again. Some holiday spirit.”
Alex stiffened. “Did you arrest his parents, where – ”
Maggie stilled her with a hand to her arm. “Sometimes justice is more… complicated. I’ll explain later, I just…” She downed her third shot. “Kid just really wants to meet Supergirl. Hell, all the kids in the shelter probably wanna meet her. Especially that one. The one I… the one he crashes at, the one most of the queer kids crash at. I know it’s a lot to ask, Alex, but do you think you could – ”
“She’ll do it. Absolutely.”
“Yeah?”
Alex took Maggie’s face into her hands and kissed her forehead, her temples. Her cheekbones, her dimples, her chin, her eyes, her nose. Her lips.
“Of course she will. Just say when and where.”
“So how do you know this kid?” Alex asked softly as Maggie drove them in the cop car, a few days before Christmas. After Jordan was discharged. Just in time for the shelter’s holiday bash.
“I uh… I met him when I was a rookie.” She squirmed slightly: she didn’t much like telling people how much volunteer time she put into that shelter, into those kids. If she bragged about it, it sort of made her guilty of using the kids for good person points with other people. And she never wanted to use those kids.
But this was Alex, and Alex was looking at her with those eyes. Those eyes that wanted to know her, those eyes that wanted to break through the walls that her ex had called “obsessed with work” and “borderline sociopathic.” Those eyes that understood the walls that her ex had called “obsessed with work” and “borderline sociopathic.”
Maggie gulped as she decelerated, as they reached the building where she spent most of the off hours she wasn’t at the bar.
“I volunteer. Here. It’s a homeless youth shelter, it – it wasn’t much when I was a rookie, but they – we – it’s developed over the years. I – ” Maggie pulled over to park, and glanced at her girlfriend. Alex’s eyes were full to the brim with tears, but they were still wide, still absorbing everything, still those eyes, and Maggie found that once she’d started, it was hard to stop. “Some of these kids, some of them I’ve known since I was fresh out of the academy.”
A pause. “Like Jordan.”
Maggie nodded and put the car in park. Alex was still staring at her, and it made her squirm.
“Supergirl knows where to be?” Alex nodded.
“Maggie, I – ”
“Detective Sawyer!” Maggie’s face lit up, and she raised her eyebrows at Alex excitedly before slipping out of the car and into the arms of a tall woman with buzzed hair and a collared shirt. Jealousy pitted in Alex’s stomach, and she concentrated on maintaining a neutral expression as she got out of the car and walked slowly around to Maggie’s side.
“Alex! Alex, this is Sam, she runs the joint.”
Sam disentangled herself from Maggie’s arms and strode to Alex, taking her hand into both of hers warmly. “So this is the Agent Alex Danvers that our Detective Sawyer won’t stop gushing about.” The jealous pit in Alex’s stomach vanished, and she felt the blush creeping up her chest and blossoming all over her face. She stammered something about it being nice to meet her, and Maggie beamed behind them.
“Come on in, the kids are eager to meet you. Overeager, maybe… Don’t mind them if they uh… other than my wife and me, and some of our friends, they don’t always get to interact with too many queer adults in relationships. Forgive them if they ask… inappropriate questions.”
Alex’s eyes flew wide, but Maggie just laughed as she slipped her arm around Alex’s waist and followed Sam inside.
A Christmas explosion that reminded Alex of a more homemade version of Kara’s apartment assaulted their eyes when they walked in. Covering almost every inch of every wall were pieces of writing, pieces of art, banners proclaiming the holiday season and banners proclaiming that queers were here to stay.
Maggie’s hand didn’t leave Alex’s waist, even as she dolled out fruit punch from big plastic bowls to a bunch of kids in various states of homespun holiday garb, even and especially as the kids bombarded Alex with questions about how she and Maggie met, about what working for the FBI was like, about who asked who to be their girlfriend, about their first kiss, about who topped and who bottomed (Alex had choked and Maggie had chided, “Keep your discourse in your own heads, please!”, to the deep bemusement of everyone involved).
But Alex slipped out of her girlfriend’s proud grasp long enough to roam amongst the kids and hear the stories Maggie was too humble to tell her.
“She got me out of juvie when they arrested me for carrying condoms, I don’t think I ever saw her so mad, you know?”
“She came to every hearing I had when I needed to get a judge to make my parents pay for my health care.”
“She thinks we don’t know, you know, not cause she thinks we’re stupid, she just thinks she’s pulling the wool over us, being modest or some shit, but she’s the one who got her precinct to do those toy drives and clothes drives and toothbrushes and stuff for us, I mean, they didn’t do that before she worked there, did they?”
“Did she tell you about the self-defense classes she teaches us? Look, lemme show you how to get out of an attack from behind, I mean I’m sure you know, but here, lemme show you – ”
“I don’t know her so well, I uh… I’m new here, you know, but she’s the only cop any of the others really trust, and hey, I mean she’s hot, so there’s that.”
“Every holiday, she cooks us something different. She made you cookies yet? Or lasagna? God, you have to get her to make you lasagna.”
Alex kept stealing glances at Maggie, across the room, with each conversation feeling the more and more urgent need to touch her skin, to kiss her lips, to take her clothes off and positively worship her, to hold her and cradle her and cry and sob and rage that she could do all this and not tell anyone, not have anyone, to tell her, short amount of time they’d known each other be damned, that she loves her and she will always love her and –
Jordan saved her from the overwhelming need to kneel in front of Maggie and bare her soul to her.
“Hey, so when does Supergirl get here?” he called, an excited gleam in his eyes. Alex caught Maggie’s nod across the room, and Alex hit send on a prewritten text to Kara on her phone.
On cue, Supergirl soared through the window that Maggie had asked Sam to keep open despite the chill.
“I heard this was where the bravest bunch of kids in National City were having their Christmas party,” Kara announced into the awed silence, her voice both ebullient and grave in her Supergirl mode.
Maggie strode across the room to Alex and buried her face in her shoulder as Kara descended and embraced Jordan gently, minding his ribs, talking to each of the kids one by one by one by one.
“They’re never gonna forget this,” Maggie rasped, and Alex nodded, throat too tight to speak, body and mind on too much fire to trust her voice.
She swallowed a few times. Breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth a few times.
“They love you so much,” she whispered to Maggie: even as they all fawned over Supergirl, Alex thought she’d gotten a pretty good idea of who their other superhero was.
Maggie just smiled, watching the kids and Kara carry on. “I love them.”
A long silence, watching. Watching. Feeling each other’s warmth, feeling the warmth from the occasional spells of laughter from whatever Supergirl was telling the kids.
“Was it like this for you, Mags? This lonely, but at the same time this…” She looked around the room, at the way the kids touched each other casually, like family does; the way they seemed to really know each other, like family does; the way they watched out for each other, like family does.
“Full?” Maggie supplied.
“Yeah.”
Someone started playing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” on a tinny speaker, and Maggie paused to let the tune sink into her bones, to let the image of Supergirl telling these kids that they were the real superheroes sink into her skin.
“Sure is full now,” she said, and she reached up to turn Alex’s face to hers, kissing her slowly, kissing her soundly, kissing her like it was the very first time.
“Wooooooohhhh, get it, Detective Sawyer!”
Jordan’s voice broke them apart in a fit of gasping giggles, and Supergirl laughed and covered her eyes.
“You don’t see me interrupting your intimate time with your bae, do you?”
“Intimate time!” Jordan shrieked with laughter, and the other kids followed.
Alex laughed along, her face bright red, watching Maggie be someone she’d never seen before but desperately wanted to know better: someone who was a decade older and younger at the same time, a glimpse both of the girl she was and the person she would be, all wrapped up in the woman she was now.
So when one of the kids ran up and dangled a sprig of mistletoe over their heads, Alex couldn’t help but draw her back into the most public, and most happy, kiss they’d ever shared.