Slivers

Maggie was pacing

Around and around her apartment, which wasn´t big enough for this kind of activity. Her body craved space, her mind craved an ocean, an open field—anything but four enclosing walls that just kept pressing down on her.

She was an idiot.

Really, Maggie knew that. She knew she was an idiot. It was why she´d told Alex no in the first place. Years of knowing herself, making the same mistakes and leaving herself and others with tender hearts and bruised insides had taught her so. And Alex deserved more than that. Alex deserved everything and anything. All the good and all the right in the world. She made Maggie border on poetic and that was a terrible sign.

So why had Maggie kissed her?

She rounded her sofa for the fifty-second time—she was counting—and started a new lap.

Alex had kissed her back, with a fervency that had left Maggie aching and her chest tight. Even now, at the thought, her stomach swooped low and, in frustration, a low moan left her lips. Why couldn´t Alex have just pushed her away, looking aghast? Why did she have to scrape her nails down Maggie´s neck and slip a thigh between hers, her lips hungry and tongue just brushing against Maggie´s own before she´d pulled away with a quivering mouth and shocked eyes?

Why did Maggie feel like she could fall into Alex Danvers and never crawl her way out?

You´d think she´d have learnt. Stay away from the good ones. Because Maggie had just made a huge mess.

There had been tears in Alex´s eyes.

A knock at the door made her freeze. Glance at her watch. Almost eleven. She´d left the bar an hour ago. For most of it, she´d walked the city, the cold sending her back inside to pace her living room.

The knock sounded again. Insistent.

Maggie pulled the door open to reveal a blinking, wild-eyed Alex. Her cheeks were flushed, a bloom of red that streaked across her skin. Even there, heart quickening at the sight of a clearly angry woman, Maggie wanted to trace her tongue over that patch of red, feel the warmth and know what it meant when Alex gasped wetly against her neck.

“Alex.”

Alex stormed past, her shoulder brushing Maggie´s, and Maggie closed the door behind her, turning just as Alex paused in her living room, spinning on her heel, her hands thrown up. “What the hell, Maggie?”

Maggie pressed her lips together. What the hell indeed? She really hadn´t planned that.

“I have a girlfriend!”

“I know.” That, Maggie did know. It was like a stab in her gut. One she deserved, because she´d all but pushed Alex to get one. She knew  all of that, damn it.

She just hadn´t anticipated the jealousy the would writhe in her gut.

“You told me—“ Alex was staring her down, and in that moment, Maggie really felt their height difference “—You—you told me you wanted to be friends.”

“I did.”

“You told me get out there.” Alex was gesticulating wildly, her voice raising to mimic Maggie, “’ Danvers, go! Experience it all, the shiny unknown lesbian wonderverse’.”

“That´s not exactly how I—“

The look Alex shot her made her shut her mouth.

“So I worked hard, Maggie.” And the gesticulating stopped, her arms crossed over her chest, shoulders hunching inwards, just a little. “I worked hard, to get over you. It wasn´t easy. I don´t think you understand how I felt.” She raised a hand when Maggie went to interject, words at the ready on her tongue about first crushes, and how much Maggie really did know. “I fell hard, for you. And fast. I—I know that. But you told me, basically, to get over it. So that´s what I did. I tried to be your friend, even though it-it hurt, a  lot, for a long time.” Maggie swallowed and couldn´t look away from those wide, dark eyes that felt like they could swallow her whole. She´d heard the term ‘doe-eyed’ and hadn´t realised just what it meant until Alex had looked at her. Eyes that could tell a person everything, if you knew how to read her. And Maggie thought she could. “But then I got out there. And I met Sam.”

“I know, Alex.”

“I don´t think you do.” Alex took a stride forward and Maggie wanted to take one of her own and meet her in the middle. “Sam is my girlfriend. I-I really like her. A lot. She´s good, and funny, and she gets me. And she doesn´t, she doesn´t mess with me head.” Alex´s voice had dropped, the words scraping raw passed her throat to spill in the space between them. “I have a girlfriend.”

“I know.” Maggie hated that her own was as raw as Alex´s.

And then Alex was striding forward again, colliding with her until Maggie thumped against the door, the sound reverberating and a groan falling from her lips that Alex captured. Maggie wondered, briefly, as fingers traced over her ribs, under her shirt, trailing lines of fire against her skin, if Alex knew Maggie could fall apart against her fingertips. Alex´s hair was in her hands, her neck under her palm, a pulse bounding hard and rapid against it. Maggie wanted to close her fingers, to take that feeling with her in case this all Alex was going give her.

There was a voice in the back of her head, whispering that they should stop. The feeble protests drowned out shamefully easily as Alex´s tongue, hot and wet, flicked against the back of her teeth. Maggie clung to her, her fingers most likely leaving little prints, and she liked that idea. A pattern of herself on Alex´s skin.

Then teeth were scraping down her jaw, lips on her neck and Maggie´s head fell back against the door so hard she almost saw stars. Her hand grasped at Alex´s neck, the other falling to splay against the door, fingertips digging into wood to try and keep herself steady. Alex´s fingers were at her belt, fumbling with it, and then a button and a tongue was soothing a bite mark on Maggie´s collarbone and Maggie´s knees were starting to shake. The thigh between her legs wouldn´t stop and she was going to come undone, right here against the door while Alex Danvers was all rage and fire and fury.

And Maggie couldn´t bring herself to stop her. She´d spent months dancing around Alex, and trying to hide how she felt. She´d put Alex through hell and herself through hell, and now all she wanted to do was let Alex pick her apart and leave her however she wanted.

“Bedroom.” Maggie´s voice was hoarse, broken, tearing past her lips as fingers pressed against her underwear. “Bedroom.”

And she pushed them backwards, their lips barely parting, to stumble in the direction she knew her room was. Jackets hit the floor, shoes were kicked to thump against furniture and walls. When they fell into the bed, skin flush and warm, Alex´s mouth traced over her chest and down Maggie´s stomach.

It took a mere minute for her to fall apart, her arms still trembling as she tugged Alex back up, hand already sliding down.

* * *

Maggie woke up to sore limbs, a clock telling her it was just passed three am, and an empty bed. Only Maggie´s clothes littered the living room and Alex Danver´s taste was on her lips even as she was nowhere to be seen.