Alex feels only a little guilty about dozing off during the trip considering the next time she opens her eyes it was to the sounds of keys jingling, a plastic bag rattling against itself as it was hastily juggled into a more comfortable position on an arm and a far steadier voice whispering a guilty. "Sorry about that, it's just when we went out to pick up dinner Gracie slipped her collar when the storm let loose, and I had to go after her."
The honest guilt easily chased the haze of sleep from Alex's more puppy-like mind as she was carefully carried into the darkened apartment. That also explained the new weight around her neck that hadn't been there when she'd last closed her eyes. Maggie had slipped that other puppy's collar around Alex's neck.
"Speaking of." Maggie chuckles noticing the pup's more awakened state after depositing the takeout bag on the small kitchen table. "Hey, sleepy fur." Alex's ex greets with a teasing smile as wide puppy eyes blink over at her with another sleepy yawn. "Hang on a sec, Eliza, mind if we switch this call to facetime?" Maggie asks towing off her boots by the door, "Then I can introduce you two properly." She muses still holding a shocked Alex against her shoulder as if the small puppy were an infant.
"Yeah, okay thanks." Maggie smiles the gesture making the heart of the puppy embodied woman in her arms flip in her chest. Even after all this time apart that included one of them taking up with a new love interest, Alex was hopeless to resist those adorable dimples.
Maggie had just finished retrieving a small towel when the chime of the laptop on the counter started up a few moments later.
"Can you stay here for me?" Maggie coos finally setting Alex down a few paces away from the still chiming laptop. Just out of sight of the things webcam. "just for a second." Maggie promises reaching over to scratch at the soft patch behind Alex's ear. The Alex puppy gives a small whimper in answer, mentally wanting to slap her head against her hand in the process but she couldn't feel too bad considering the move also brought out another dazzling dimpled smile from her ex. "That's my good girl." Maggie praises in a voice that had she been human Alex would be blushing at the praise as it was the comment only earning the rapped thumping of her tail against the tabletop as Maggie chuckled and hit the keys to pick up the still ringing call with a whispered: "stay." In Alex's direction.
"Oh, baby have you gone full puppy again?" Kelly asks noticing the growing puddle that wasn't only dripped off rainwater around the terrified puppy still cowering beside the door of the more human Alex's apartment when the more human of the two came out of the bathroom with a dry warmed towel.
The trembling pup only whimpering terrified as wide eyes dart around the place as if she'd never set foot, or rather paw in the place in all her life.
"Oh, Alex." Kelly breathed meeting the wide pleading eyes of her currently puppy-formed girlfriend. "You're aright, honey." She promises cautiously approaching the terrified pup. As she'd expected the puppy takes off in more oversized paws than puppy claws run toward the bedroom. Kelly was only a little upset with herself when she found herself giggling at the adorableness of Alex's over-ended sliding across the hardwood in her attempt to escape as she filed this moment away to retell once she was sure her girlfriend was more human than puppy.
Normally the split lasted a few short minutes between puppy Alex and human Alex.
Soon the sounds of pained whimpers draw the humming human from her self-given task of cleaning up the water, pee spot by the door.
"Alex?!" Kelly called
The puppy that was her girlfriend was still growling angrily at the closet door when Kelly skidded into the doorway to her and Alex's bedroom.
"What are you doing, honey?" the chuckling woman wonders when instead of at least acknowledging her Alex continued alternating between scratching and growling at the closet door and pressing her cute little puppy nose at the small crack between the door and the floor as if she was tracking some kind of delicious smell.
Rather than waste her breath with another question Kelly simply opens the offending door for her pleading girlfriend much to the hunting puppy's delight as the still wet ball of newfound energy darts into the mess that was Alex Danvers's closet.
It only takes a small amount of shifting on Kelly's part to find the exploring young puppy that was her girlfriend especially when the pleased puppy had managed to scramble onto a box with a loud bark of triumph.
"So, is this where you hide your more private toys?" Kelly teases as she tugs both the box and the puppy out of the closet. The question only earning the most adorable of puzzled head tilted looks from the puppy by way of an answer. "Just please don't get mad for the privacy invasion when your you know, you again." She pleads when the puppy once again paws pleadingly at the side of the box.
"Okay, so I guess your still in total puppy mode." Kelly shrugged now sitting cross-legged on the bedroom floor as her curiosity gets the better of her and she shifts the now insistent puppy from tumbling into the box herself when she started pawing at the folded-down flaps keeping the thing closed.
The first thing she comes to is an overturned picture frame that seemed to be meant to weigh down the small collection the box contained.
Kelly feels her heart physically hurt as her fingers brushed a bit of the collective dust off the glass from Alex's side of the three-person picture when she'd gathered enough courage to flip the thing over.
Not that she was nervous the image would be one of Alex and the woman she'd once been intending to marry.
Kelly wouldn't blame Alex for wanting to keep and or hide any pictures of her and Maggie considering how much of an impact her predecessor in Alex's love life had on her girlfriend.
The nervous woman gives a small sigh of relief when she finds it wasn't one of Alex and Maggie in a captured moment of their earlier shared love but one of Alex her sister and their departed father.
The tears in her eyes turning from nervous jealousy to honest pain as she traces her fingertips across the younger teenager leaning in across a table toward Kara and the father, she would be forced to lose not that long after she is forced to plaster on a fake happy smile for the camera.
She wonders if her own pain at seeing this frozen moment in time could even measure up to the hurt the young Alex must have felt that day when Jeremiah chose to sit beside the young girl, she had been forced to call her sister instead of his own flesh and blood daughter during this day of bonding over their respective choices in ice cream waiting to be devoured in front of them.
A simple root beer float for Jeremiah, what looked to be a Rocky Road milkshake with extra cherries for Alex while Kara sat grinning proudly behind what Kelly could only guess to be a monster of a sundae consisting of a scoop from every flavor the shop had available that day complete with a mountain of whipped cream and swirls of both caramel and chocolate also sporting a few extra cherries on top.
She'd heard the stories of course. How in the beginning the Danvers sister could barely stand to be in the same room let alone actually want to publicly declare themselves as relatives. Or at the very least how Alex had felt that way for a time. How it had taken her father's 'death' as well as the added weight of their school friend's passing to get the pair to admit they were more than a little tolerant of one another.
Seeing this picture of them now Kelly could almost be tricked into thinking that maybe just maybe the now unbreakable bond between the Danvers sisters started before Jeremiah Danvers's disappearance from his daughter's lives.
It wasn't until she heard a contented sounding huff that Kelly remembered the furry version of the teenager was still in the room or more specifically currently snuggled in complete contentment nestled up in a folded windbreaker that had also been stashed away in Alex's box of more tangible memories of her past before the pair had gotten together.
"Ouch, Baby that hurt." Kelly snaps jerking her hand back when she made to pick up both Alex and the jacket, she'd now burritoed herself in only to earn the hard bite of puppy teeth against her hand for her efforts.
It was only after the puppy that was Alex had curled up once again with a contented sigh as she nuzzled into the neatly folded jacket that Kelly noticed the name peeking out from under the large and now out-of-date NCPD logo printed across the breast pocket.
M. Sawyer.
Kelly punched down the stab of jealous pain as she stuck her stinging finger into her mouth. Not that Alex's puppy teeth had broken skin this time, but it was enough of a nip to cause a small pin prim of pain as she rises back to her feet leaving Alex to her nap as she heads out of the bedroom to finish cleaning up the unintended accident by the door and fix something for them both in way of dinner.
"Thanks again for those notes, Liza." Maggie smiles gratefully. "They really saved my vegan bacon with the chief."
"Of course, Maggie." The Danvers mother waves off "I'm always happy to help. Whatever you need." She promised, "just promise you'll call more; I've missed our little talks."
Maggie only nodes in answer blinking back tears at the honest plea behind the ask. Also, she was biting her lower lip to keep from giggling a the 'little talks' part considering the pair had been talking for a solid hour and a half "I'll also try again to stop by the house so you can meet Gracie in person next week." She promised by way of getting the conversation away from herself.
"You better. She's even cuter than you described." Eliza gushed.
"If I didn't know better," Maggie started still cradling puppy Alex in her lap as Eliza waved her goodbyes before closing down her side of the internet call. "I'd say you were a completely different puppy to the one I brought home a few days ago." She muses pressing another kiss to the top of Alex's head.
'If you only knew, Mags' Alex wants to say but instead, she just nuzzled her head under the Latina's chin with a happy sigh as she drinks in the warmth her ex offered.
"Hungry, cutie?" Maggie wonders when Alex's stomach gives a very noticeable gurgling reminding the dazed woman Alex had to remind herself, she truly was that she and Kelly hadn't exactly had dinner yet before nature had forced them out into the start of a storm instead of Kelly allowing Alex to try peeing like a puppy balanced unsteadily on the bathroom toilet as the former DEO director had attempted once she'd registered the fullness of her new bodies bladder.
"Come on." Maggie chuckles catching Alex's more bashful expression as the puppy in her arms peaks up at her. "Dinner time." Alex's ex says in a much more sing-song tone as she carries Alex back toward the near-forgotten bag she'd left out on the kitchen island when they'd first came in.
