Chapter Text
Maggie stares at Lena as the same reads the cover of the magazine Maggie handed her a couple of minutes ago. Lena hasn’t moved since she sat down on Alex’s couch and maybe, just maybe, she is starting to get worried.
It was not the worst way of getting their relationship outed; it was a real flattering picture after all, where they were caught just leaving L-Corp to their usual lunch date, and Kara was leaning just enough against Lena, while the woman whispered something in Kara’s ear and her hand had found its way to Kara’s lower back. They looked cute, to say at least, with a slight push of their lips in small smiles.
And it wasn’t like they had published the word dating. They used gal pals and question mark. Which, coming to think of it, was bad. And Maggie just wanted greasy comfort food and that was shoved on her face from every angle.
But she knows, it doesn’t matter how perfect the photos were (and the photo gallery is really good, but Lena hasn’t gotten on the article yet to see them), this is not the way Lena wanted to go public about them.
Not now. Lena just wanted some time to them, to forget about the rest of the world. Well, it worked for a while. It worked until they couldn’t stop from acting all couple-y around each other. Which, sickening.
“The photos on page four are amazing.” Alex says as she comes back into the living room, arms wrapping around Maggie’s front and chin resting against her shoulder. “I bet Kara will want to keep them.” Maggie elbows her but she earns a scoff in return. “Too soon?”
“Yeah.”
Lena looks up then, her bottom lip caught between her teeth and corner or her lips turned up, and tilts her head to the side.
“I mean, we look good, but gal pals? Really?”
“Well, you never actually came out, publicly. You remember the Kristen Stewart’s mess.” Lena nods, Alex hums in her ear. She’s happy she’s educating her girlfriend. “Are you upset?”
Lena opens her mouth, closes it, her fingers twitch around the corners of the magazine, and for sure, Maggie has never seen this side of her.
“Yes. No. I don’t know, maybe?” She sighs and gets up, hand running through her hair. “I guess I just wanted to chose when and how to tell.”
“I know you wanted to keep this to yourselves, but you and my sister have been dating for what? Three weeks now?”
“Seventeen days.”
“But who’s counting?” Lena looks at Maggie and raises an eyebrow, she shuts up. “Sorry.”
She hands Maggie the magazine and she wastes no time in opening it to the pictures. Lena and Kara during their dinner last week; Lena and Kara leaving CatCo together; a blurry picture of Lena leaving Kara’s apartment way too late; Kara entering L-Corp with a paper bag and flowers.
Could they be any more obvious? It was actually just a matter of time. But it’s just another one of the things Maggie doesn’t say.
“What should I do?”
“Talk to Kara.” Alex answers, but she points at the photo of Kara with her head down and a smirk playing at Lena’s lips as they walked out of Noonan’s. That’s gay. “She probably hasn’t seen it and most likely won’t mind. And, please, learn to control yourselves around each other. You look like two hormonal teenagers, especially you. I don’t need physical proof of how you look at my sister.”
Lena blushes, she really blushes and turns her head to the side to try and hide it. Maggie nods, I chose well.
“You could do a speech. You know: As a lesbian…”
“Supporter?” Alex provides.
“As a fucking lesbian.”
“This is how you think it will happen?” Her tone is hard but she can’t stop the laugh escaping her throat.
“We can rehearse. You’ll prepare a public speech; Alex will scream supporter and I will run to the podium with a pride flag. All good.”
Alex laughs, followed by Lena, but Maggie shrugs and releases herself from Alex’s hold, causing the woman to whine.
“I’m sure there are other options.”
“None will be as good was mine, but”
The sound of the door opening makes Maggie stop. Kara rushes in, beige coat already off and light blue button up tucked inside her pants. She kisses both her sister and Maggie’s cheek before pecking Lena’s lips and wrapping an arm around her waist.
Maggie takes them in. Kara in her innocent, not gay at all outfit and Lena, whom had just came from her penthouse to movie night in Alex’s apartment and was wearing one of Kara’s shirts, flannels rolled up to her elbows and shorts.
Lena Luthor in casual clothes is gay. So fucking gay.
“Sorry I’m late; it was kinda hard avoiding the photographers outside my place. Did you pick something yet?”
Alex sits down, pulling Maggie with her, her sides pressed together as they watch (honestly? Maggie watches) the two of them.
“They went to your apartment?”
“I don’t understand why, though. It’s not like you’re always with me.”
“So you know.” Kara nods. “And you’re okay with that?”
Kara’s hands slide to Lena’s side, settling on her hips, and Lena’s rest around her neck. Maggie puts a hand on her sulking girlfriend’s arm and soothes her with her thumb.
“I’m going to have to be more careful with the whole Supergirl thing, but if it means being able to hold your hand outdoors, of course.”
And, by her side, Alex coos. Her girlfriend coos and both turn their heads towards them just in time to catch Maggie slapping her arm.
“Sorry, continue. Maggie, share the magazine.”
When Lena pulls Kara by her cheeks to kiss her, she thinks relooking at the same photos is a very welcomed distraction.
But thirty seconds later, they’re still kissing, if the sounds are any indication. And she hears Lena moan, that’s not something she needed to hear. She groans, coughs.
“There are other people in the living room.”
She looks up in time to see Lena pushing Kara back, thumbs wiping the corners of Kara’s mouth. She turns her head to the side, where her girlfriend is staring at the same page she opened, red cheeked.
Maggie leans in, lips brushing against the curve of her ear and whispers.
“That’s lesbian activity.” Alex groans and drops her head back, while Maggie looks at Alex’s hands. “Oh, look! Bad picture of Lena! I’m framing this and putting on my hallway.”
**
Alex should take Kara’s keys back.
She really, really should. Because Kara has the worst timing ever (yes, she’s referring to last week incident in which Kara barged in when Maggie’s head was already under the sheets).
And, right now, Maggie was really enjoying the make out session with Alex. The Alex she’s been straddling for the past ten minutes, the same one who has her hands under her shirt and going higher. And they’re pantless, since what’s the point on wearing pants at home?
But they should, they really should. To avoid situations like this, where Alex freaks out and pushes her out of her lap and to the floor, before getting up and running to the bedroom.
“Hey, Little Danvers.” She says as she gets up from the floor to stand in front of a red faced Kara, who is looking at anywhere but her. She stretches, not bothering with her dressing state. “What brings you here?”
“I wanted to talk to you and you weren’t in your apartment, so I just assumed.”
“And what’s the matter that couldn’t wait until past seven thirty am?”
Alex walks back in, looks at Kara, blushes one more time and ducks her head down.
Kara bites her lip, avoids both of them and readjusts her glasses. Why am I the only one comfortable around here? Maggie sighs, wraps her hand on Kara’s arm and brings her to sit on the end of the couch. The end of the couch they weren’t making out (not today, at least, or yet.).
But she doesn’t say anything. She looks at Alex, sitting on her other side, and then at Maggie. She understands.
“You don’t want Alex to hear?” She nods, Alex opens her mouth to say something, but Maggie stops her. “Does it involve Lena?” Another nod. She looks at her girlfriend with a pointed look. “I don’t think you want to hear about your sister’s sex life.”
“Maggie.” The squeal comes from both of them, faces growing back to that cute red. Her girlfriend really is a vision.
“Tell me it’s not about that.” Kara can’t. She looks at Alex again and she gets up.
“Okay, I’ll buy breakfast, then. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”
Kara looks at her with wide eyes, fingers twitching around the frame of her glasses.
“Make it thirty.” The expression is still on her face, Maggie’s eyebrows shoot up. “Forty? More? For how long do you think I’ll talk?”
“I have lots of questions!”
“Just, call me when it’s over. Maggie, don’t give her stupid advice.”
As if.
They wait until the door is closed and, then, they wait some more. When Kara think Alex is far enough, she brings her hands down to smother her unwrinkled skirt. Maggie waits until she gathers enough courage to look at her.
“What’s bothering you?”
“How did you and Alex, actually no, I don’t wanna know that. How do you know you want to take your relationship to the next level?”
“Look who wants to do the do with Lena Luthor.”
“Maggie.” Kara whines, her face already giving up on returning to the natural color.
“Okay, okay, sorry. So you want to thrust her?” Maggie giggles but Kara only frowns, the crinkle becoming visible on her forehead. “Well, your sister told me not to give bad advice, which excludes ninety percent of what I could say. Give me a second to think.”
You’re bad. You’ve been a bad, bad girl. No, brain, don’t go there. This isn’t porn. Which means, not the vegan ice cream. Also, stop using that one. And eating that.
“Have you, um, talked to her about it? I mean, I’m sure Lena won’t mind and communication is important.”
“Yes, we have, she said, we talked about it. She did the talking. It’s just that, when things get heated” and she actually cringes at the word, sign that makes Maggie smile “I’m the one who pulls away, because I don’t know what to do.” She ducks her head down, hands fidgeting in her lap.
“Kara.” Maggie puts a hand on her shoulder. “You don’t have to do anything you are not ready for or you don’t wanna do.”
It takes her a moment, when her hand still in her lap and her mouth hangs open, and she thinks maybe that’s the furthest they will go this time. But Kara breaths out a shaky breath.
“But what if I want to?” It’s nothing but a whisper, and if she weren’t sitting just beside Kara, their knees close enough to be touching, she would have missed it.
“Then this is not a talk about whether you’re ready or not. It’s about how to do it.” She feels Kara relaxing by her side, as if the worst part have passed. Oh, boy, it hasn’t. “You can never go wrong with a ‘Can I sleep with you?’ and if it goes wrong you can always play it off? I really don’t know Kara. It’s different for everyone.”
“Not that forward, please. I don’t think I can do it.”
“So you want to imply you want to, but you don’t want to make it obvious?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, I’m not nearly as drunk as I should be to have this conversation. But, tell her that you want her to come, and you want her to come.” She arches her eyebrows to make the point, but she’s met with nothing but confusion.
“Why would I say the same phrase twice for Lena?”
“Oh God, this is going to be bad. Next time she wants to order in, just say that you prefer eating out.”
“But I love takeout. Maggie, I need good advice here!”
This is going really bad. Really, really bad. Craving a back massage but lower. Taste her cherry chapstick. No brain, that’s exactly the kinda things Alex would kill you for saying to her baby sister.
“Cut your nails in front of her.”
“Why would I do that?”
“It’s basically foreplay, Kara.” She sighs, she can feel her own cheeks burning and she doesn’t know how much more of this she can take. “Look, Kara, Lena will understand. Trust me. Remember how you got your first date?”
Kara grumbles a yes and then her neck and the tip of her ears match the color of her face. Maggie closes her eyes, but it couldn’t get any worse than this. Right?
“Spit it out.” Kara stutters, a bunch of incoherent words come out of her mouth in one go and Maggie honestly couldn’t understand past the “how”. “Slow down, say it again.”
“How do you, you know, how am I supposed to, uh. How is it done?”
Oh God, oh God, no. Not having this conversation.
“Kara.” She starts in a serious tone, sits up straighter and looks for her eyes. Kara deflates. “Please, tell me you’re not asking me how to have” But she is. Maggie knows she is. There is the line. “Right. There are videos about that, I’m gonna take the notebook and bring it to you, I’ll show a good user and you can do your research alone.”
She’s already halfway out of the couch when a frantic hand grabs her forearm and tugs her back in place.
“Maggie, I’m not gonna watch” she looks around, leans in and whispers “porn in my sister’s apartment.”
“I was talking about YouTube tutorials, but, nice to know you mind went there.”
**
“Lena Luthor, just the woman I wanted to see.” Maggie closes the door of Lena’s office behind her and the woman barely glancing up in her direction.
“It makes sense since you came into my office.” She looks at her watch. “You’re early for our lunch break.”
Maggie hums, takes a couple of steps towards Lena’s desk, and fumbles with the zipper of her leather jacket until she shoves her hands inside her pockets. She’s been like this since, well, since she got into the elevator on the lobby. Even Jess knew something was wrong after she handed her the coffee.
But Lena doesn’t notice, not at first at least, when she’s still too busy between paperwork and typing something on her notebook.
It doesn’t take long, though, and Maggie is definitely not prepared for when she’s met by Lena’s glare.
“You tapping your foot is distracting. What’s wrong, Maggie?”
“So, I talked to Kara.”
“It was you. It makes so much more sense, now.” Lena drops her pen, motions for Maggie to take a sit in front of her. “She got home yesterday”
“Wait, home?” She raises her eyebrows, Lena fights a smile. “Did you U-Haul already? That’s lesbian activity.”
“No jokes.” She points a finger at her. “But she got home yesterday and said she wanted to pet my kitten.” Alex is going to kill me. “And then during dinner she kept sucking at her fingers.” Alex is so going to kill me.
“That was me, I’m sorry. We had the talk.”
“The talk.”
“Yeah, the talk. It was weird.”
“I can see that.”
“Her being awkward is my fault this time. Sorry. But, are you finished yet? I’m hungry.”
Lena looks at the paper work, and then at her notebook, she closes it, gathers the papers.
Maggie follows the movement, her fingers curling slightly against the papers, and there it is, proudly around her thumb. A silver ring. She chuckles and tries to cover it with a cough. Lena doesn’t buy it, but says nothing as she gets up. And it’s only then that Maggie actually pays attention to what she’s wearing.
It feels familiar, how Maggie stops and just stares at the woman in front of her. But what else can she do when Lena Luthor is in her usual white button up and black tailored pants, but fucking suspenders. Honest to God suspenders.
Her mouth hangs open, Lena catches it and smirks.
“You are just so gay.”
She shrugs, arches an eyebrow.
“I know.”
“Are you trying to outgay me?”
“Well, it’s not trying if I don’t have to break a sweat to do it, right?”
“Oh, you are so on, Luthor.”
Maggie gets up, bumping her shoulder against Lena’s earning a laugh from the CEO.
“Don’t stand too close or people might think I’m a player.”
“Your wish. But you and I together would be like a four alarm fire in an oil refinery.” She gets a smirk in return.
It’s when they already crossed the reception, after Maggie has waved Jess goodbye, when the doors of the elevators are already closed and Lena is once again concentrated on her phone, scrolling absently through it, that Maggie nudges her side.
Lena doesn’t look at her, but she nods, and leans in just enough.
“Did Kara?”
“What?”
“Pet that kitten.”
The blush on her face is enough of an answer.
Lena doesn’t talk to her until the end of the day.
**
Kara is standing with her sister on Lena’s kitchen. To say things are weird would be an understatement. Because Alex is by her side with her second glass of wine already finished while they stared at their girlfriends standing in the middle of the living room.
And they weren’t doing anything to be honest, and that’s what’s scaring Kara the most. They are just standing there, staring at each other with squinted eyes. They just seem so… not themselves?
Because Maggie is in a black low cut tank top, flannel wrapped around her waist, a snapback backwards and leather pants, matching the leather wristband. And Lena, oh Rao, Lena, is in her usual short shorts, a soccer jersey with the sleeves rolled up, a leather jacket tucked tightly around her fingers and a beanie.
That is just a sight Kara never thought she would see.
“What are they doing?” She whispers to Alex who just shrugs.
“Maggie mentioned something about ‘showing Lena her place’ before we left.”
“Alex, um, quick question. Does Maggie react to numbers?”
“What?”
“Last night Lena brought work home and she just kept muttering ‘so hot’ under her breath and the only thing consistent was the number 13 or the word ‘and’. I’m pretty sure it’s not the latter.”
“Thirteen?”
“It’s the higher amount of potstickers I’ve eaten in one sitting?” Alex shakes her head.
“That’s not it, Kara.”
“She also cried when she opened her notebook once and one file was named 6,741.”
“Really? Maggie cried when she saw my 1987 playlist and her password for literally anything is a variation of letters with 1698 at the end. What the fuck is wrong with them?”
“How are they still staring at each other?” Alex filled her glass again; Kara just looked at her and fiddles with her glasses.
“Has anything ever happened with the number” Alex leans in, drops her voice in a barely audible whisper “307?”
“Yes. Lena didn’t talk to me for like, two hours.”
“Maggie screams ‘triggered’, then acts like nothing ever happened.”
“She doesn’t.”
The glint in her sister’s eye is dangerous. She is going to prove a point.
“307.” She says loud enough for everyone to hear.
Sure enough, Maggie screams and Lena lets out a loud gasp. But neither says anything, choosing to go back to their stare contest.
“That’s it; I’m breaking up with her.” Alex says after she takes a sip of her wine. Kara raises a skeptical eyebrow. “Okay, I won’t, but they are weird.”
“They’re cute.”
“So, Lena Luthor, you’re a lesbian, not a unicorn, right?”
Kara looks at Maggie. Alex looks at Maggie, who has a growing smirk on her face. Then she looks at Lena, with her eyebrows knitted together and head titled to the side.
The huge grin that appears on Maggie’s face makes both Alex and Kara smile.
“You didn’t get it? You don’t actually know where this is from?” Lena shakes her head. Maggie’s arms shoot up as she turns to look at her girlfriend. “I won! And you can suck it, Luthor!”
Kara gets out of the kitchen, circling the counter and stops with her hands on Lena’s arms. She smiles at her girlfriend, who is pouting, and she is just so adorable. She kisses her, and can feel the smile against her lips.
“Get a room.”