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Alex is off her cast, then smaller cast, then brace, for less than two days (a fact Sam is aware of because Kara sent an emoji laden announcement to their group chat) when Ruby strides into the kitchen and announces they’re going to the beach that weekend.
Sam has a mouth full of toast and orange marmalade and isn’t exactly sure how to respond to this announcement. She likes the beach okay, and she knows Ruby does too, but they’ve never been one of those families who go to the beach.
“Alex is going to teach me how to surf,” her daughter says, beaming.
Despite how suddenly dry her mouth is, Sam manages to swallow all the toast and marmalade. “Alex…Danvers?”
Ruby nods. “She told me once that she’d teach me how to surf as soon as she got her cast off and you told me she got it off two days ago, so I called her and she said yes. We have to bring food though.”
“Ruby that is—you can’t just—you should have told me so I could arrange it.”
Ruby dips into the fridge—which Sam knows is absolutely her daughter hiding her face. “You’ve been busy. And it will be fun.”
She comes out of the fridge with the milk, which she pours into a glass and passes to Sam so she can wash down the remains of her toast.
“Ruby…”
“Mom, you spend every weekend holed up in your office here downtown withe Lena, and I spend every weekend thinking about how cool I would look if I learned to surf. This will be better for both of us.”
Lena had decided that there was something involving genetics and nanotech involved with her missing time and had been trying a wide range of, thus far ineffectual, tests to pinpoint the problem so she could fix it.
When she wasn’t trying to figure out what had happened with Lena she was chronicling the missing time in a calendar and trying to look for patterns.
Something she was sure Lena or Alex, or even Kara, could have helped with. Something, despite their protestations, she really didn’t want help with. She wanted to process what she’d done with her missing time before having anyone else talk about it.
Ruby pours her own glass of milk and takes a sip. “We’re going right?” She’s got that expectant look. Not a childish selfish one. But the look she gets when she’s worried Sam isn’t taking care of herself and needs some fun.
“Let me think about it.”
“Because I’m about to be a full grown teenager, Mom. You have, maybe, six months left before I don’t want to talk to you again until after college. We have to make every moment count.”
She chuckles, yanking her daughter into a one armed hug and placing a kiss on the top of her head. “I said let me think. I have to double check with Alex that we, and by we I mean you, are not imposing on her.”
***
“You’re really not imposing,” Alex says. There’s the clank of metal behind Alex and she sounds out of breath.
Sam raises an eyebrow. “Did I call at a bad time?”
“What? No.” Over the phone she hears someone shout “look out” and then there’s another, louder, crash. “Everything is fine. I’m at the gym.”
“It sounds violent.”
“Very.” Alex grunts. “Sorry. But yeah, I’d love to teach you and Ruby how to surf this weekend.”
“Oh no. That—I thought it was just Ruby.”
There’s more scuffling and a clank, and Sam is positive that someone at that gym Alex is at is groaning as they slip into unconsciousness. “I was under the impression it was both of you. I’ve got enough boards.”
“Oh I don’t think I’d be very good at it—“
Alex let’s out another loud grunt and then the clamor over the phone goes still. Things suddenly feel more intimate. “You’d be great at it Sam—probably. And you won’t know unless you and Ruby meet me at my place bright and early Saturday morning.”
Sam bites her lip, because if she doesn’t try to figure out what kind of gym Alex is at, and just focuses on her voice then she can see Alex as sure as if she were in the room with her, and she can see the way her eyebrows quirk up as she waits for what she knows will be a yes. As the sides of her mouth tilt and prepare to go into a full smile.
And who is Sam to deny Alex the chance to smile like that? “Okay,” she says, her cheeks hurting from her own grin. “Saturday morning—ten?”
Alex made a noise. “Try six.”
“Are you insane?”
“Gotta catch those good waves Sam.”
“I don’t even know how to surf yet.”
Alex’s voice seems to have dropped an octave, or six, and Sam tries to push aside any thoughts of how that lower timbre in her voice makes her feel. “By the time I’m through with you you will.”
Never mind. It makes her feel good. Really, really good.
***
They get to Alex’s apartment building a few minutes after six. Ruby is in the passenger seat with a spread of croissants, cheese and fruit on her lap and is practically vibrating with excitement. The night before she made Sam watch Blue Crush to prepare and Sam had come very close to cancelling the day just to get out of finishing the very bad movie.
But now she is parking on the street and grabbing the cooler and her bag of towels and sunblock.
They walk around the side of Alex’s building to the resident’s parking lot and finer her standing on the bumper of a very old and very ugly Jeep. She’s wearing big board shorts that are slung low on her hips, and a soft-looking gray t-shirt under her leather jacket. It is a new, very casual look.
Sam is not unopposed.
Alex has not notice them. She’s somehow located four different surfboards somewhere and is tying them all to the top of the SUV.
Ruby is impressed, and stands on the runner board of the car to get a better look at the surfboards. “Which one am I riding on?”
Alex looks up over the top of her sunglasses. “I hadn’t decided yet. Where’s your mom?”
“Here,” Sam calls from down on the ground. “Sherpaing the many, many snacks for the day.”
Alex leaps nimbly off the Jeep and jogs over the few steps between them. Besides that soft shirt she’s wearing that big smile of hers that always seems to make Sam smile back. “This is a lot of food” she says, hands warm over Sam’s as she tried to take the cooler away.
“Drinks too. Gotta keep hydrated.”
Alex dips from the weight of the cooler. “How many drinks? This feels like Kara packed it.” She waddles back over to the Jeep and Sam chases after her, popping open the hatchback so Alex can muscle the cooler in.
“I might have overpacked,” Sam says. “But in fairness to me, single mom.”
Alex is still smiling when she leans an elbow on the cooler and looks at Sam. “Hey now. I was raised by a single mom through most of high school. This,” she taps the cooler with her nail, “is something more.”
Sam tries to laugh again, but she is starting to feel a little embarrassed about the overpacking. Enough that she hadsto look away.
“I don’t hate it,” Alex says suddenly, one hand wrapping around Sam’s. “Twelve hours from now we’re gonna be really grateful you packed half of a 7-11 into that cooler.”
“I forget that teasing is your thing.”
“I mean usually it isn’t.”
“Oh, it’s not?”
“Sure. I mean I tease Kara. Winn. You now. But you think I’m gonna tease Lena Luthor?” Alex slams the hatch closed and goes around to the driver’s side.
“You could try,” Sam says, trying to stand on tip toe to see Alex over the top of the car and all the boards.
“Knowing that women she’d pay to have someone write a ten minute roast of me.”
They settle into their seats, Ruby’s already packed into the rear seat with half a croissant in her mouth.
“She absolutely would—“ She snatches the bag of pastries out of her daughter’s hands, and offers one to Alex. “I could do the same you know.”
Alex takes a chocolate one and bites into it with the kind of zest Sam has started to associate with Danvers’ and their food. “Yeah but you’re a CFO, not a CEO,” she says. “That’s the boring part of multibillion dollar businesses. Who are you gonna get?”
There are flakes of pastry everywhere. Enough that Sam had to laugh before reach over to brush the worst of it off Alex’s shirt. “I’ll get Ruby to do it.”
Ruby leans forward into the space between their seats. “What am I doing?”
“Writing a roast of Alex. You can start with how she needs a baby bib to eat croissants.”
Alex pauses in backing out her Jeep to narrow her eyes and glare at Sam as she slowly bites into the croissant again. Then chewes. With her mouth open.
“That’s disgusting.”
Alex, still loudly smacking, just shrugs and goes back to pulling the car back out of the space. Kelly Clarkson, of all people, is playing on the radio. Sam waits for Alex to change the station.
Instead she hums along.
***
The beach is clearly one of those places that qualifies in guide books as a “secret spot known to locals.” They have to park on what amounts to the shoulder of a busy two lane highway and then walk though the woods and over two dunes to get to the actual beach. It isn’t a pretty beach. It’s more shells and gravel than silky sand, and Sam’s already been stabbed in the foot by grass twice. But the water is why they’re there, and it seems like they’re not the only ones.
She can see figures out on the waves, even this early, and the beach is already dotted with a few more towels and bags.
Ruby watches the people out on the water with wide eyes as Alex and Sam bring all the stuff from the car. Then Alex sets a board down, in front of Ruby, the tail or end or whatever digging into the “sand”.
“Ready to learn?”
Her daughter nods eagerly.
“Good. Go lay this board over there over there where’s nice and flat. You and your mom are gonna practice standing on the boards.”
She hands a second board to Sam.
“Seriously?”
“Yup. You got to learn how to get up on the board and I have to wax this one.” The third board is the longest. It looks like it’s nearly twelve feet tall, and why Sam knows nothing about waxing boards she knows that one will take some times.
So they spend what feels like hours (it isn’t) going from laying out on the boards to leaping up onto their feet.
“No knees,” Alex periodically says, as she works waxed into her giant board. Usually she doesn’t even look up when she says it. She’s taken off her leather jacket and Sam can see the way her arms work as she palms the wax and moved is across the board.
View aside it is…not Sam’s idea of a very good time, but she doesn’t want Ruby getting upset, so she cheerfully continues on with the leaping up and then dropping down and leaping up again.
Later, when Ruby is out of ear shot, Sam plans to explain to Alex that her version of teaching could use a lot of work.
When Alex is done waxing her board she stands up and abruptly yanks off her shirt, revealing a lot more toned stomach than Sam had expected to see today.
She quickly looks away, struck more by her own bashfulness that the sleek figure her friend cuts in long shorts and a bikini top.
“Okay,” Alex says, clapping her hands together. “Now we can get into the water and actually surf.”
“You don’t think we need a break after the hundred push ups you just had us doing?”
“I do, which is why I’m gonna take Ruby out onto a few waves with this board while you sun and eat strawberries.”
Sam is suspicious, but not turned off by the idea. “That actually sounds…fun,” she said warily.
Alex picks up the board, which was easily twice her height, and leans against it. “I thought you might.”
Was…okay Sam was actually really really bad at the whole romance thing. A hook up in high school had led to a daughter she adores but had left zero time for romance. The few times she’s attempted it she’s ended it quickly, and those have all—the guys pursued her. Hard.
So casual fun flirting was not something she had ever learned to read. But it feels like…Alex is flirting with her a little.
She glances back down at abs.
Boy.
Waving back over at their towels and cooler Sam sputters something about going to read and eat some fruit. It must sound really stupid coming out of her mouth because Alex and Ruby both tilt their heads to nearly the exact same angle in confusion.
Just. Oh boy.
From the towel on the lumpy beach it is easier. Sam eats strawberries and pretends to read her book. She can watch Alex and Ruby from a distance. Ruby is straddling the huge surfboard Alex had been waxing and Alex is hanging onto the side of it—treading water as she seem to walk Ruby through things.
Then there is a “you got it” question nod and a response from Ruby. Alex leaps up nimbly onto the board and spins it around in the water, before driving it towards the horizon.
Sam—she should have expected Alex to be so sure on a surfboard. To have such a practiced ease with it.
She’s caught glimpses of Alex the FBI agent (and the doctor) before and she knew Alex is capable of a terrifying and exhilarating kind of confidence.
But over the last few months Sam has grown used to Alex the goofy friend who teases her sister and humors Ruby and smiles bittersweetly when anyone mentions Maggie.
Watching Alex powerfully move what has to be nearly twelve feet of surfboard through the water is a lot for Sam to handle. But being on the beach makes it easier.
Because then she can think about other things. Like the fact she keeps missing time. Googling had suggest it could be stress instead of genetic engineering or whatever Lena hopes it is.
So coming out to the beach to learn how to surf should definitely be applauded.
But there is that unease at the back of her mind, like brittle nails worrying at a hard scab. As much as she wants to forget about forgetting whole chunks of each day since Ruby was nearly killed at the waterside months ago, she can’t. Something. She knows. Is coming. And thinking about the way Alex surfs or smiles or presses her hand to Sam’s back to guide her through a room or comfort her when she is upset isn’t going to fix the problem at the root of Sam.
And she can’t think about Alex more until the problem is gone.
She chews on her nail watching Alex and Ruby. They’ve wipe out a few times, then Alex gets back on and helps Ruby up and lays a hand on her shoulder as she explains what’s gone wrong.
Then, back out into the water they go.
Alex is a persistent and patient teacher.
Sam’s phone buzzes with a text. It’s the group chat between her, Lena, Alex, and Kara.
The latest text is from Kara, who despite being a professional writer has the worst text grammar. “did she stop making u do burpees yet?”
Lena responds immediately. “What on earth are burpees?”
“alex’s idea of torture”
Kara quickly follows it up with a Youtube link of actual burpees. They’re an exercise that involves a lot of leaping from the ground.
It’s actually kind of like what she had to do all morning.
“OMG Sam, I thought she was teaching you two how to surf? This looks awful.”
“how do u think alex get’s into the gun show?”
“Kara…” Sam quickly types. She is biting her lip with amusement though.
“ur alive!”
“I am alive. yes. Alex and ruby are out on the biggest board I’ve ever seen.”
She snaps a shot of the two of them and Kara immediately responds with six heart eye emojis.
Lena is more polite in text form—furiously deleting any autocorrect snafu and always capitalizing names properly. “That looks fun!”
“make her take u!!!!!”
“That’s the plan…”
“seriously sam. u need to have a little fun, and riding alex’s board is FUN.”
Sam clicks the phone’s screen off before she can think of any innuendo Kara might have been laying into that text. Not that…Kara is really the innuendo kind of person.
She groans, suddenly flustered and annoyed with herself, and flops back onto her towel.
***
Sam wakes up because she is pretty sure a dog with very cold spit is drooling on her.
Her eyes take a minute to adjust to the fact that she is wearing sunglasses. The sun is creeping up over head, and there is someone looming over her.
Using her hand to block some of the glare she squints at the figure. It’s Alex. Completely soaked and dripping water onto her.
“Sleep well,” Alex asks.
Sam is grateful for the sunglasses because she can stare at glistening abs with abandon. “What?”
A hand is thrown out to her. “Come on Sam, I promised you both I’d teach you how to surf.”
She doesn’t take it, but she does sit up. “Where’s Ruby?”
“Wiping out on her very own board.” Alex points to a figure who plummets off her board just when she is trying to stand.
“Oh my God. Is she—“
“She’s fine. Wiping out is part of the process.”
Sam eyes Alex. “That doesn’t sound like a very fun process.”
She chuckles and squats beside the cooler, rooting out two waters and then flopping out the towel next to Sam. She’s cool from being out in the water, and her chest is rising and falling like she’s just gotten over being restless.
“It’s the least fun part, but important for surfing.” She offers the other water to Sam. “You got to learn to get slammed around a lot.”
“Okay, but as adults can we agree that that,” she motioned to her daughter who had wiped out again. “Is not fun.”
Alex splashed half the bottle on her face, drops of water trickling down her neck, then chugs. “No,” she says, pulling the bottle away from her lips with a pop. “That is the opposite of fun which is why we are going to tandem surf.”
“I don’t know what that is, but I’m getting images of the stuff with bikes and pretty sure my daughter would never let me live it down.”
Alex bats her with her empty water bottle. “Too bad that’s what Ruby’s been doing all morning. If she makes fun of you she has to make fun of herself first.”
“Alex…”
Alex leaps up again and holds out a hand. “Nope. I promised surfing lessons, and part of surfing with Alex Danvers is tandem surfing.”
How the hell does the woman have so much energy?
She let herself be pulled up. Alex’s grip is sure.
“Is this how Kara learned to surf?”
“Who do you think demanded tandem surfing as part of the curriculum. I tried to teach her the way my dad taught me and it did not go well.”
Alex pauses to drop her empty water bottle into the bag then glances at Sam, eyes flickering quickly over her body. “You’ll probably want to—“
“Oh, right.” She quickly shucked off her hoody and shorts, dropping her sunglasses on top of the pile.
If she felt, for even a moment, self-conscious about her one piece the feeling disappears when she realizes Alex is ogling her with all the tact of a fifteen-year-old boy.
Alex seems to realize what she is doing a half second later, face going red as the side of the cooler.
She goes back over to the enormous board, heaving it out of the sand which causes the muscles across the back of her shoulders to flex in ways Sam can honestly say she’s never thought about before.
Then she drops the huge board down into the surf with a noisy splash. “Hop on,” she says, like she’s got a motorcycle and wants to take Sam for a ride.
Alex is totally the kind of person who has a motorcycle.
“Do I lay down like you had us doing earlier or—“
“Just your knees is fine right now.”
She carefully kneels towards the front of the board. It wobbles and shifts, and she starts to understand the abs, and she braces her core to stay balanced.
The Sam is emitting an uncharacteristic squeal as the board is pushed out into deeper waters and towards the waves.
“Hold onto the board and just duck down okay,” Alex shouts over the surf.
Sam does as she is told, yelping again when a splash of cold water hit her in the face.
They finally make it past the waves to where it seems quieter. A few surfers are straddling their boards, chatting and watching the formation of waves. Ruby comes out and then goes back on the next wave, wiping out before she’s really even stood.
“She’s getting good,” Alex says. “And she’s persistent, which you basically have to be for this.”
“Do you really think she’ll be any good at it?”
“With some practice? She’ll be riding a shortboard in months. You,” she scoots closer, hands wrapping around the sides of Sam’s waist. “Are another story. You clearly do not care. And that will make it harder.”
“Am I that obvious?”
“Very much so.” She hasn’t moved from where she was pressed to Sam. “But I’m an amazing teacher, so you’re still going to ride some waves today.”
She glances over her shoulder, eyebrow raised in challenge. “I am?”
Alex nods. “What I’m going to do is move you back so you don’t flip us,” she tugs until Sam is moving back over the tacky surface of the board and hoping the bottom of her suit didn’t stick. “Then I’m going to wait for a really amazing wave so I can show off.” She pushes away from Sam, the clammy pressure of her body immediately missed. “And afterwards you’re gonna beg me to do it again.”
“We’ll see Alex—“
Alex tilts them towards the beginning of a wave, arms pushing through the water and sending the huge board hurtling forward.
And after it’s done, and Sam’s heart is racing in the pleasant kind of way she couldn’t ever remember it racing she does turn around to that sun bright smile and say, breathlessly, “Can we do that again?”
***
By the time the sun is high in the sky—noon about to set in—they’re clearly done.
Ruby is on the shore eating lunch and being comfortably lazy.
Sam and Alex are out again past the waves. But instead of looking for a good one to ride back to land they are lying on the board, head to head, staring up at a too blue sky.
“I’m starting to understand the appeal of surfing,” Sam says.
Alex is still panting from the last push out from shore. “Now,” she asks, sounding winded. “It took you long enough.”
“I mean I still don’t like all the jumping up and down. That’s terrible.”
“Sound like Kara,” Alex mutters.
“And I’m not crazy about what this wax is gonna do to my bathing suit, but the wave stuff is nice.”
“It is isn’t it?”
“Company’s better.”
She feels Alex turn her head, and if she does the same they would be nose to nose. Which, with the way her life currently is, she knows can’t be an option. So she resolutely stares at the sun and wills a sunburn onto herself.
“The company is pretty nice,” Alex says softly. “I actually,” she turns back to look at the sky too. “I haven’t had this much fun in months.”
“Seriously? You’re single, with no kids. You can have fun any time you want.”
“Single not entirely by choice. Single with no kids is cool when you’re twenty. Now it’s not really that fun to me. This is fun to me.” She’s waving around them, hands gesturing in Ruby’s direction.
“You said the same thing when you babysat Ruby. I’m starting to think all that FBI work has given you some brain damage.”
Alex laughs. “I like Ruby. I like…I mean it is nothing like what you do every day, but I like the whole adult figure in a kid’s life thing.”
“You were gonna say parent.”
“I was not.”
“Uh huh. You were gonna compare burpees at sun up on a single Saturday to the whole of her terrible threes.”
“Not even where I was going.”
Sam can see the fierce blush out of the corner of her eye, and it is so adorable—Alex is so adorable—that she has to do it. It is as if her body is telling her it is impossible not to.
She darts out and quickly presses her lips to Alex’s temple. She tells herself the quick kiss is friendly. The same kind of kiss she’d try to give Kara or Lena in the same situation. But when Alex twists her neck to look at Sam with dark eyes she knows for a fact it is not that kind of kiss.
And maybe another, very wanted, and very not the right time, kind of kiss might have followed. But suddenly Alex’s eyes go comically wide before she is whipped off the board and into the water.
Sam’s cry has barely been pulled from her mouth before a soaking Kara Danvers throws her arms across the board laughing. “Oh my God did you see her face,” she cries.
Alex sputtered up and then wrapped her arms around Kara’s neck, yanking her sister back and dunking her into the sea. “You are such a twerp some times!”
But Kara was still too amused with herself. She does a quick impression of Alex at the exact moment she’d been pulled in, before laughing again. Alex gets herself back up onto the board and shouts back to her sister, “We’re leaving.”
“Oh come on! It was funny Alex!”
The rude gesture she shoots Kara suggests she does not find it funny, and the wave they ride after is so perfunctory as to be almost boring.
Kara follows them, and then cuts by on a shorter and narrower board. With her short sleeved wet suit she looks intimidating. Like an actual surfer.
The “show off” muttered under Alex’s breath does nothing to break that illusion.
Back on land Ruby has been joined by Lena and James Olsen and that Winn guy from Kara’s holiday party.
“Where did you all come from?”
Lena is in a very stylish and not at all practical bathing suit and expensive coverup. The only thing bigger than her sunglasses are her hat. “After Kara explained the surfing lessons I told her I’d never learned so she said we should join you, and then James and Winn insisted on coming—“
“I wanted to see the famous Alex Danvers at work,” Winn says. “Our girl Alex here apparently has trophies.”
She is blushing again. “I don’t—they’re from high school.”
“Yeah. Kara said you were gonna go pro at one point. Said you both could have if you’d really wanted to.” He bumped Sam with his elbow. “They used to do tricks together.”
“But not, like, competitively!” Alex looks helplessly around before settling on her sister.
“Oh yeah,” Kara says, pushed her seawater flecked glasses up her nose. “It was totally just to show off to all the other kids. Alex said I needed to look cool.”
“So you did tandem surfing,” James asks. He looks like he is trying, hard, not to laugh.
“Like Gidget.” Lena sounds so guileless with the question, and it sends everyone else (besides Alex) into a round of giggles.
“Sounds Like Alex was just being a good big sister.” Alex’s relief over Sam’s defense is worth the small lie. Because trick tandem surfing would never be the way to make a bunch of high schoolers thing you were cool.
***
Sam the rest of the afternoon dozing. She always seems to stir just before the dreams—the terrifying ones she would never remember—appear.
It’s been over a week since her last black out, and she’s surprised. Like maybe her work with Lena might be working. Maybe she really can do things like go ice skating or learn how to surf.
Alex is there for most of the afternoon too. She lays on her back, head pillowed on Sam’s bag as she reads something on her kindle.
The others play frisbee and try surfing—to varying degrees of success. Ruby gets better and better, and by the time the sun starts to set she is standing on the huge board she’d started with on with Alex. This time with Kara.
“She’s improving,” Alex observes.
Sam hadn’t realized Alex had stopped reading. She pulls herself up and balances her elbows on her knees. “Good teacher.”
Alex murmurs agreement before stretching long and lean. And Sam can see faded bruises along her ribs she hadn’t noticed before, and the white of old scars.
Alex follows Sam’s gaze, her fingers skimming the almost gone bruise. “Perks of being an FBI agent.”
“Didn’t you also just get over a broken leg?”
“I heal fast at least.” She rotates the ankle of her recently broken leg. “You should see the other guy.”
She’s trying to sound cheerful and she’s got a crooked grin Sam has the irrational desire to kiss.
But instead they stare at each other. The screaming and playing and the surf all background noise.
Alex is the one who breaks eye contact. She looks out to the waves and jumps up, tugging her shorts to keep them in place. “I’m gonna go catch a few more waves before we head back. You want to go too?”
“I think I am surfed out,” Sam says softly.
Alex walks backwards, not looking away from Sam, “You sure?”
She is, and she says so while shooing Alex away.
It’s more fun to watch anyways. Alex grabs the shorter board her sister had been on and slides out into the water, briefly chatting with Kara and Ruby before cutting over towards the bigger waves starting to form down the cove.
One by one the others return, surrounding Sam with pleasant chatter. Ruby, sandy and damp, leans into her and eats leftover fruit from the morning, while Kara and Lena do that thing where they stand too close to each other and act like they’re flirting.
Sam steals some her daughter’s snack and considers it. Maybe Lena and Kara are flirting.
James doesn’t seem to notice. He’s flicking Winn’s ear while Winn bats him away and does something on his phone.
Out in the water Alex moves like Winn had alluded to. It’s a quick glimpse at the “champion” she’d once been.
It’s…breathtaking. And Sam feels her heart beat too fast at the realization.
She’s sick. Terrified. And falling for a friend who just got out of a relationship—and not just a relationship. When she first met Alex she was engaged.
It’s such a bad time and place to be thinking about anything but getting better and keeping Ruby safe.
“What?” She blinks and looks at her daughter, who has clearly been trying to talk to her for who knows how long.
Did she black out?
The others seem lazy and uninterested—even Lena. And Alex is still out on the water.
“I said can we go to dinner with everybody?”
“Wha—oh Ruby we can’t impose.”
“Uh, pretty sure I was the one who said ‘let’s all go get dinner’,” Kara says.
“And I’m pretty sure I was the one who started taking bets on how many shrimp Kara would eat before she gets sick,” Winn adds.
“I think it’s a good end to the day,” Lena says, watching Sam a little too knowingly for her taste. “Don’t you?”
The idea of spending the next hour or two with a group of friends feigning fun and trying not to wallow in her feelings—both old and perilously new—is not Sam’s idea of fun.
“I actually—I kind of wanted to go home. I’m not twelve so surfing since six in the morning has worn me out.”
Ruby groans, knowing that it means the end of the night for them both.
“If you can wait a little Alex was flaking out us on too. She can take you home and we’ll drop Ruby off after dinner.” Kara is trying to be nice.
It is somehow worse. “Oh no. I don’t—“
“Sam, please, go get some rest,” Lena says. She gives Ruby a light squeeze. “We’ll have her home by nine.”
***
The others are packed up and gone before Sam really has the chance to protest. She is left with all the boards, including the ones Kara brought, her bag, and the towel she’s been sitting on half the day. Without the others the setting sun and emptying beach begin to feel lonely.
Instead of looking at her phone, and the emails that still needed to be read, she returns her focus to Alex, who just keeps going. The waves seemed to be faster, and higher and Alex tackles them with the focus she must use in her day job.
When she finishes her last run, and emerges from the surf as a vision that calls to mind romantic words Sam has not business uttering, she seemed completely turned inward. As if she has no idea Sam stayed behind.
To the point that she actually startles when she sees Sam rise. “Kara said you were skipping dinner too,” she announces, feeling sheepish all of a sudden. “I thought I’d hitch a ride back.”
“No. Yeah. No that’s great. I can…I can drive you back.” Alex dries off and dresses and Sam finished packing up in silence.
She feels like she’s imposing, but there’s nothing she can do about it. They head back to Alex’s Jeep, which looks a little dustier than how they left it that morning. Sam ferries boards from the beach as Alex ties them down.
That work is done in silence too, with Alex’s face screwed up in thought and Sam too worried about conclusions she herself has come to to try get Alex chatting.
But then it happens doesn’t it?
The last board has been tied down and Alex tries hopping off the bumper just as an 18-wheeler drives by—close and fast enough to make the car tremble.
Sam yanks Alex towards her and away from the road. It isn’t any ulterior motive. Just the instinct to protect a friend. Her hand is wrapped up in the chest of Alex’s t-shirt, which is still damp.
Sam knows she should let go, should stop staring at Alex with wide and concerned eyes—letting all the feelings she is still struggling to put into words just shine out from her face.
“I’m—“ she starts to say.
‘Sorry?’ ‘Glad you’re okay?’ What is she supposed to say?
But Alex just shakes her head, presses both hands to Sam’s cheeks and pulls her forward into a kiss that sears the senses.
She kisses with…intensity and a sureness that reminded Sam it has been way too long since she last kissed anyone besides Ruby.
But as Alex’s tongue darts into her mouth she starts remember ing a few things, and kisses Alex back—tongue swiping into her mouth and drawing a wet little mewl from the back of Alex’s throat.
They parted at the sound and each looks to the other to try to get some kind of permission—that is gladly given as Sam backs Alex up into the Jeep so hard it shifts with the bump. Her hand is still wrapped up in Alex’s shirt, but the other is on Alex’s hip, fingers dipping into the swell, and every time she squeezes it seemed to earn her another moan, which she happily swallows.
Of course they should stopped. There are only a few places kissing with this fervor they are committed to could take them. Especially when Alex tangles her fingers in Sam’s hair and pulls her away, groaning before pulling her back into another kiss, just as intense.
Eventually clothes will be removed. Decisions will be made. Regrets will be had.
And Sam really doesn’t’t want regrets.
Yes. Kissing Alex is wonderful—wonderful—but neither one of them are actually in the position to…to produce something healthy from all the very good kissing.
“We should,” another kiss—this time with a nip to the lips, “we should stop.” It is Alex who actually says it. Hand wrapped around Sam’s neck and keeping her in place. Lips close and wet, and nose cool and pressed to her cheek. “Fuck. We should stop. I shouldn’t have—“
“I did too—“ Sam can’t remember the last time she’s struggled to breathe like this.
“I like you way to much to—“
Sam just nods. ”Right.”
Less than halfway home, in a drive that is thoughtful and quiet, Alex pulls into a drive-in. “I need food,” she declares.
They order burgers and fancy lemonades. And after Alex had finished hers she twists in her seat so her back is to her door and plays with her straw. The squeak obnoxious in the close confines.
“I like you too much,” she said suddenly.
Sam’s mouth is full of meat and lettuce so all she can do is raise an eyebrow.
“Like. You and Ruby. I get excited when I get to see you. Spend time with you. And at first I was sure it was just Ruby and the ticking time bomb that is my uterus. But after everything with your illness, and spending more time with you I realized it wasn’t just her. I mean I like you so much I kissed you on the shoulder of the highway.” She leans in, the corner of her mouth quirking up as she speaks. “And I do not do that. But I’m still kind of a hot mess right now. And you definitely do not need that in your life.”
“Yeah. No. I mean—not like—I’m the mess. As hot messes go I guarantee you I will officially win.” There’s a mustard on her lip and she wipes it away with the back of her hand.
Cool.
“Sam…”
“No.” Forget about the mustard Sam. “Seriously. I keep losing time, and it’s affecting Ruby. And getting into a relationship, which I am pretty sure would be amazing and very serious, right now? It’s not fair to any of the parties involved. Not until I figure out whats happening to me and why.”
“So,” another squeak of her straw. “We’re both hot messes?”
“Huge, hot, sloppy messes.”
“Stop.” Alex fans herself. “So flattering.”
“God.”
“What?”
“I really want to kiss you again.”
Alex looks down at her straw before back up at Sam through her eyelashes. “You looking at me like that isn’t making it any easier for me either.”
“So what do we do? Avoid each other until we clean up our acts?”
“We could always have lots of messy sex and keep it secret from everyone.”
Sam thumps her head against her window. “That sounds really nice.”
“But probably not feasible. Because either Ruby will walk in—”
“My daughter would be scarred for life.”
“Or we’d have to do it only when she was at a friends or at school or something.”
“Which would lead to resentment.”
“So I guess we just be friends, who occasionally, when neither have anything going on, make out.”
“I could,” Sam glances at her watch. “I could probably do that. For twenty minutes.”
Alex has already put her drink on the floorboard and is crawling over the center console. “You should set an alarm.”
Warm legs straddle Sam and her seat is gently lowered as she raises her arm to eye level to actually set her alarm.
“Maybe twenty five,” she squeaks as Alex’s lips finds her chin and a palm finds her breast.
“Make it thirty,” Alex says.
Sam makes it thirty five.
The drive in asks them never to return.
***
“I want to ask you up.”
Alex is walking Sam back to her car, their fingers laced together even though they are purely friends.
“Ruby—“
“Is why I’m not asking you up. And your issues and mine are why we should probably have a chaperone the next time we see each other.”
“Your friend Winn seems like a good choice.”
“Are you crazy? No. Kara’s the perfect choice. Even when I was dating boys and annoyed about how much I hated it she still managed to cock block me.”
“Cruel.”
“Be very grateful you don’t have a sister.”
“I still have a friend, right?”
Alex drops Sam’s hand and then quickly grabs her wrist with both hands. “You’ve got a friend Sam. Through all of this.”
“Good, because I really want to make out with you, but I also…I just really want to see you. And be friends with you.”
Alex pulls her into a hug then. There is nothing nervous or vaguely sexy about it. Just unadulterated comfort. A boundless wealth of it Sam wants to sink into.
“Whatever happens I’ve got you Sam.”
And it was true.
Because four months later when Reign is laying waste to the city and Lena Luthor’s attempts to save Sam have failed and Supergirl is standing there telling her she is sending her far away “to where you can never hurt anyone ever again” it is Alex Danvers who has her.
Who leaps into the void pressed against her and says, desperately, “I’ve got you.”
Supergirl’s scream chases them into the nothingness.