Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It could have been the twelfth interview, but still, Lena knew the question she was going to get no matter how hard she laid on the charm and steered the conversation toward her own accomplishments and hopes in moving to National City. An entire day of press, she’d told herself, and then hopefully no more. What was the worst that could happen?

It wasn’t her natural aversion to the spotlight, or that she never planned on being in this position of power. It wasn’t that her family name became synonymous with hatred, death, war, violence, despair, wealth, insanity, obsession, failure… the list got longer every time she went through it. It wasn’t even what she was good at it, but she was there now, and so she embraced the challenge. That was the only thing she could do.

As the fourteenth reporter of the day politely shook her hand and made his escape, Lena waited until he was gone before promptly flopping down into her chair, much too low for professional. Her legs sprawled out as her chin disappeared into her chest, her shoulders up to her ears. Grumpily she burrowed into herself.

“Ms. Luthor, your last reporter of the day is here,” Jess offered as she slowly opened the door. “Would you like a moment before I send her in?”

“Do you believe in karma, Jess?” the CEO sighed, head drooping impossibly farther forward as she rolled and stretched her neck.

“Sometimes.”

“I mean the big notion of it,” Lena clarified. She put her hands on the desk and pushed herself up as best she could. There was a fresh bottle of wine at her apartment, just waiting for her. That was what kept it going. “Like paying for the sins of past lives?”

“No, I don’t think so,” she shook her head, considering it quite seriously before handing over a protein bar and pouring her boss a fresh glass of water.

“That’s because you’re far from the bad stages. I think my past few lives must have been absolutely dreadful to amass the kind of karmic debt that would explain the black tragicomedy that is my current life.”

“Just one more reporter,” her secretary promised with a small grin despite knowing full well that she was probably serious about her logic.

With a shake of her head, Lena returned the smile and took a deep breath. She nodded and turned her head slightly toward the giant windows behind her, toward the view that she wished she got to enjoy more. She debated moving her desk so that it faced the other direction, but deep down she knew she would never get work done.

“Give me a few minutes. I just want… quiet, please.”

“I can do that,” Jess promised. “Should I call the car to be ready as soon as you finish?”

“You are my silver lining on this plane of existence.”

“I’ll add that to my resumé.”

As soon as the door closed, Lena chuckled. The afternoon was pink outside. The sky glowed and the buildings were already illuminated in half specks of left on lights. If she survived the marathon of PR and interviews, she could start… something. That was the goal. Something. So nondescript and vague she could imagine actually accomplishing it once she got over the feeling of merely treading water.

For a moment, she paused her movements that attempted to ready herself for the final interview, and she took in the pink wisps that were the clouds, and she took in the skyline, all of the lives happening around her. That helped sometimes, to decompress, to disappear in the vastness of the world.

Before the door opened, she toyed with the gentle little word written on her wrist, hidden beneath an oversized watch band. She tugged at the watch and slid her finger under the leather there, pretended she could read the letters like braille, though she imagined it was solely because it was burned into her head that she felt them.

Amidst the chaos of the past few years of her life, between trials and subpoenas and degrees and family and moving and so much paperwork and fighting with her mother, Lena had nearly forgotten that was part of her life. Months passed where she didn’t think or even see the neat little letters on her skin. For the instant between meetings though, it captured her and ade her smile.

The idea of someone who would love her despite… despite it all, it was comforting in the darkest hours, it was terrifying in the daylight. In that moment though, it was merely reassuring that there must be some brightside to the melodrama of her story.

“Ms. Luthor, the reporter from CatCo is here to see you,” Jess explained as she held open the door.

“It’s a pleasure,” Lena smiled, the fake seeping into her bones, prepared to pretend for just another half hour. There was a bottle of wine waiting for her at home, and some days, that was all the motivation she had to not fling herself from the balcony. “Thank you, Jess.”

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Mundane as it was, Kara enjoyed the feeling of the sky at night. She couldn’t articulate it properly, for she was certain there weren’t proper words for the slight change in atmosphere that might have been completely in her own head, that came when the sun disappeared. The skyline glowed, the streetlights pushed away darkness, making it dense, in her opinion.

Gone were the men in suits downtown. Gone was the busyness that dictated so much of the day, the hustle and bustle a loud, droning hum that often annoyed the hero. In its place existed the kind of life that was not focused at one decibel, but rather existed as a living thing unto itself.

It would be a quiet night, an early day for her. That was what she thought as she tilted her head and listened to the many lives happening. There was something so lovely about hearing people who weren’t angry or in pain or upset, something soothing about safety.

Approximately six minutes until home where she would gladly deposit the suit on the floor and elect instead for something in the sweatpants family in which to gorge on all of those glorious leftovers from her sister, Kara paused, her flight freezing halfway over Wrenwick, nearly home and away from it all.

“Alex, do you have any idea what’s happening downtown?” she asked into her comm as she turned around.

“Not yet. Why?”

“I hear some kind of yelling, there was an–”

The unmistakable sound of glass breaking and controlled explosions emerging. With a boost, Kara found herself heading toward the tall building by the harborfront, the penthouse that sat high above all else.

“What do you see, Supergirl?”

“Fire. There’s a helicopter fleeing southwest. Can someone chase it down? I have to make sure everyone’s out.”

“J’onn will head that way,” her sister promised. “Be careful. If this wasn’t an accident, than someone just attacked the wealthiest residential building in the city. No one does that for fun.”

With an unseen nod, the hero pushed herself closer, quickly scanning the building once she got there, looking for problems. There was a hole in the side of the penthouse, plain as day and clearly made by some kind of projectile. Flames now reared their necks through it, feeding on the air despite the best efforts of the sprinklers.

Carefully, Kara circled, picking up on a quick heartbeat somewhere in it all. Below the top floor, the noise of the alarms and the crowds exiting, screaming, worrying, crying could all be heard clearly, though everyone was proceeding well enough.

As a few beams from the ceiling began to fall, Kara took a deep breath and blew out the fire, or at least tried. Unlike her birthday candles, it took a few inhalations to fully extinguish the inferno that charred most of the penthouse.

Despite the short burn time, the damage was extensive.

Despite herself, Kara followed the heartbeat that tried to calm itself despite much warbling and fretting on its own part. She lifted up a chunk of wall and tossed it aside, slowly approaching the balcony that remained intact.

Unperturbed or unaware of the completely charred penthouse, a figure lifted a glass of wine to her lips as she leaned against the railing, and crossed her legs, bare foot languidly dragging along her calf. Still clad in a skirt and starched shirt, a messy black bun remained high over hunched shoulders.

Even though her mouth went slightly dry at the sight, Kara hovered, electing not to scare her too much, and carefully flew so that she lowered herself, announcing her presence, in front of the either brave or stupid woman.

The problem was, despite the sprinklers in the background, despite the smouldering rubble, despite the impending need to get her to safety and out of the most likely condemned home, when Kara saw her, met her eyes, she couldn’t think of practical safety procedures at all.

Instead, she just saw green. Green like… green like… like the highest leaves that get pale because of too much sun. Green like the park was green sometime in mid April, when the showers were constant and the world was yawning back to life. Green like… Green like the lake they used to go to when she was just a kid. The problem was that this green was attached to porcelain skin and a jaw that was strong and square, attached to lips that were plump and deep red in lipstick that Kara wanted to find on her pillowcase in the morning.

“Golly,” she breathed, her eyes growing wide at the woman who sipped wine and was unbothered by the apparent violent attack on her home that led to a fire that could have taken the whole place down before fire crews properly set up.

As soon as she muttered the word, green eyes grew wide and stared at her as if she had three heads, as if she was an alien. Her neck tensed, her hand clutched the wine glass tighter.

Kara furrowed and wanted to say something else, to shake out of the stupor the beautiful woman had put her in, and yet she couldn’t so much. Her reactions felt slower, her brain felt fuzzy. The world was different after seeing a woman like that.

“Duck!” the woman yelped, pointing at the air behind the floating hero.

The world came back into focus. With no time to react, Kara saw the missile coming at her, felt it, and so she sped forward and quickly covered the woman with her body, shielding her from the inevitable.

While it rocked the building once again, the chopper moved to circle and line up another shot.

“Are you okay?” Kara worried, sitting back slightly from the girl she pressed into her chest and into the wall, hoping to keep her from exploding as well. She ran her hand along soft chin and jaw and neck, appraising, looking for damage and damage only.

“Ye-yeah,” she swallowed. “I’m really pissed about my night though. I just wanted to drink my wine.”

“I think we might have to get you another glass.”

Both looked down at the puddle of wine that stained the cement of the balcony.

“I just moved in last week,” she murmured, shaking her head, upset about her wine and her home and clearly having one of the worst days in the universe. “It’s…” she looked back at the hero and stared at her a little harder. “It’s the funniest joke I’ve ever heard.”

The smile started and followed the curve of her lips. Without any help from the hero, she pushed herself up and pretended that she was alright despite having a pulse that had been competing in the olympics and lungs that couldn’t steady if they wanted.

“The meetings and the family and then… you!” she chuckled and pushed hair back up atop her head that’d come loose in the tackling. “And now… you. Of course it’s you.”

“Everything is going to be okay,” Kara promised, taking a step toward her. “But we really should get out of here. I need to put this out again and probably go get whoever is doing this to you.”

“Well, even when you capture these guys, you might have to talk to Lex Luthor.”

“Lex Luthor?” the hero furrowed.

“The only person I know who would try to kill his sister,” she shrugged, crossing her arms.

Eyebrows shooting up, Kara felt her jaw go slack as well. There was no possible way that this… this girl… her… her… no. She wasn’t. She couldn’t. There wasn’t. No. She was a Luthor. No way. Never. Not happening.

The sirens came. Her comm buzzed loudly in her ear, but Kara didn’t hear much else except the crashing of her entire universe upon itself at the realization that she was standing on a balcony with Lena Luthor, and her brother had tried to have her killed. Her voice when she shouted at the hero to duck played repeatedly.

“I should… uh. I have to get you to safety.”

“I suppose the elevator is out of the question.”

Sheepishly, Kara shrugged. Lena nudged her head slightly as she stood closer to the hero before winding her arms around her neck. Pressed close together, the smell of wine and fire bonded them. At the contact, Lena shivered, Kara tensed.

Kara wanted to see her wrist. She wanted to look at her own, though she knew that wasn’t going to happen because she knew the answer already.

“Just hold on tight.”

“Now might be a bad time,” Lena swallowed as they started to move. She chanced a look over the edge as they hovered 125 stories above the ground. “To mention I hate flying.”

The feeling of the hero laughing vibrated against her own chest as Lena held on tighter. She didn’t want to, but she smelled sunlight, the warmth of it, like beneath the super suit there was a sunbeam locked in her skin.

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Ms. Luthor,” Kara promised as they descended toward the lights and sirens and chaos of an entire building evacuating.

By the time they made it to the ground, Lena was growing accustomed to those arms around her. She thought that was not a good sign. All she wanted was a glass of wine after one of the most arduous days in human history. Instead, she lost her home and found her soulmate, both of which she was not too excited about happening.

“Thank you, Supergirl,” she nodded as her feet hit the ground.

“Try not go get blown up, Ms. Luthor,” the hero smiled, ready to take off again to put out the fire. “I’m sure I’ll see you around.”

Kara made it about a dozen stories before she let herself look back down for just a second, at the girl who was made of steel, enough to not be bothered by an attempt on her life, who said that ridiculous magic word that was spelled out in italics on her own wrist. With no time to spare, she pushed faster away, ready to put out the fire and chase down a helicopter.

“Kara, everything alright?” Alex worried.

“I think that was an assassination attempt on Lena Luthor by her brother.”

“Luthor like… Lex?”

“Alex, she told me to duck.”

The line was quiet as Kara blew and fought against the flames, quickly putting them out once more. Only a few walls remained. The roof barely stayed up. Carefully, Kara jammed what she could to keep it from falling.

“Wait. Hold on. What?” Alex finally managed.

“I have to go take down a helicopter,” Kara sighed, trying not to freak out as well.

“Does she know?”

“I don’t know.”

“She has to.”

“A Luthor and a Super.”

“Are you sure?”

“I have work to do, Alex,” the hero finally groaned, leaping and tossing herself toward the horizon.

“We’re not done talking about this!”

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Supergirl.

Supergirl?

Supergirl.

Super. Girl.

Supergirl?

SUPERGIRL.

“Golly,” Lena sighed and let her forehead rest on the window of her office. Her arms wrapped tighter around her chest as she took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

Outside, in the office, down in the halls below, people talked about the CEO. Hushed tones and whispers and “I heard”’s all mingling together over cubicle walls and coffee mugs. It was the front page of the paper, naturally. The tallest residential building in the city suddenly attacked, the roof literally blown off, and no one would mention it, but Lena was pretty certain her renter’s insurance didn’t cover attempted sororicide, and that was an annoyance.

It would be months before she’d be back in her apartment. Months before she’d get that view back. Months before she’d get the calm that came in a glass of wine, quiet music, and her book that she was certain she lost the place in. That made her most mad at her brother, though she was refusing to call him that as much as possible. He was fellow human Lex Luthor. No blood. No honor between them. He blew up her brand new Louboutins. He blew up her brand new and meticulously constructed server unit. There were unforgivable things, and he crossed that line.

If she closed her eyes and held her breath, Lena was certain she could hear everyone talking. Her own brother trying to kill her. Her own life mimicking the absolute tinderbox her apartment had proven to be. If she closed her eyes long enough, she could find the metaphor. If she closed her eyes and breathed out, she could recall the exact shade of blue of Supergirl’s eyes.

She ran her thumb beneath her watchband, toyed with the word on the tender skin there, rolled it between her thumb and forefinger. The word had been there forever. Never once did she hear anyone say it outside of the movies, and from that, she was certain it was impossible to be true. There was no way her soulmate was going to be someone who said something akin to gee willikers.

It wasn’t a dream though. An attack helicopter was lining up a shot and a beautiful alien was hovering in front of her after putting out her burning apartment, and Lena heard that word and all time ceased. The building could have collapsed, swallowing her whole, and it would have been less surprising.

For better or worse, for however long she had left until her brother inevitably succeeded, Lena felt the entire world shift. There was no longer just herself. She was a we. Things could never be the same.

“Ms. Luthor, the agents that are investigating the incident are here,” Jess’ voice murmured softly through the computer.

With a deep breath, Lena stood straight and absently pushed a stretch of hair from her forehead. Just like that, she was the CEO again.

“Send them in, Jess,” she murmured, bracing herself on her palms over her desk as she quickly scanned the pages on her computer.

“Thank you for taking the time to see us, Ms. Luthor,” the taller one nodded politely. “I’m Agent Henshaw, this is Agent Danvers, and we’re with the FBI.”

Lena leaned over and shook their hands politely, motioning for them to sit before taking her own.

“I don’t really have much to add to what I’ve already told three insurance adjusters, two cops, four detectives, and one very persistent Cat Grant.”

“Nothing to add about the attack on your penthouse?” The younger woman cocked her head, relaxed and waiting. “You told the cops on scene that you had no idea who was attacking you, but you told Supergirl to look into your brother.”

“Supergirl’s a Fed?” Lena furrowed, looking between the two of them. “I had some wine and I said something stupid. It was nothing.”

She lied. Because dammit, he was her brother, and if this was a battle to the death, they would handle it internally, like all families did. For a moment she envisioned killing him with her beautiful black pumps with the gold heels that were so new, so beautiful. Gone too soon. But she would be the one to do it, heels or not, because she was the one that felt the guilt of allowing him to live.

“We think it was something,” Henshaw disagreed, pulling pictures from his chest pocket and sliding them across the large desk. “We have pictures of the men who attacked you.”

For a moment, Lena hesitated picking up the images. If she did, then she was in it. But morbid curiosity was surely going to kill her. Or at least it would finish the job her brother started.

The lead agent smiled and turned to his partner who did her best to read the CEO’s movements. Lena bought time while her computer worked, and she picked up the pictures and moved through them.

“I don’t know who they are,” she shrugged. “Did you catch them?”

“We did. They are being detained for questioning,” Agent Danvers nodded.

“The last few images are what looks like a code that was discovered in your brother’s cell after he escaped last night,” Henshaw continued, peering at the girl, looking for any kind of clue as to her feelings, though her poker face was alarmingly good.

“Where did you find it?” she asked flippantly, leaning back in her chair.

“It was scrawled in the margins of a few books.”

“Which books?”

“Moby Dick. The Waste Land. Little Women.”

Lena chuckled despite herself and turned one of the pictures slightly as she looked at the words and seeming ramblings of a madman who was now on the loose.

“What’s so funny, Ms. Luthor?” Agent Danvers asked.

There was no mistaking the malice in her voice. Lena grew up listening for the slightest indications of constricted vocal chords and voices that were filled with disdain and jealousy and anything but genuine thoughts and feelings. She’d call herself an expert, but the other agent was proving harder to read.

“He’s toying with you. Look here,” she smiled despite herself. “What shall I do now? What shall I do?” “I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street “With my hair down, so.”

“Seriously,” the agent sighed.

“And Moby Dick, well,” Lena shrugged. “He’s always had a flare for showmanship.”

“What about Little Women?”

“He just really likes that book.” Both agents looked at the CEO as she handed back the pictures, refusing to give the code anymore thought. She didn’t care. He would come. They were the Irresistible force paradox. She was immovable. He was unstoppable. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”

“Ms. Luthor, your brother escaped from a very highly guarded black site prison the night you were attacked,” Agent Henshaw explained, taking the pictures back and putting them in his pocket. “We would like to put you in protective custody and conduc–”

“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary.”

“We must insist–” Agent Danvers tried.

“My answer is final,” Lena shook her head and stood, carefully hitting the button to signal her assistant to politely enter. “I will not have people dying to protect me from him. That is all that would happen if I went under your protection. He will not stop until one of us is dead.”

As soon as the younger agent tried to argue, the door opened, though it wasn’t that which stopped her, but rather a gentle hand from her mentor, who patted her shoulder as he stood, smiling politely.

“We understand, Miss Luthor. Thank you for your time.”

“I still have quest–”

“Here’s my card. If you reconsider or need anything, please don’t hesitate.”

“Thank you, Agent Henshaw,” Lena nodded politely. “Agent Danvers.”

There was more. There was always more. But Lena stood there, the only nervous tick to her being her thumb toying with the word under her watch band. She watched the younger agent want to argue with her boss before relenting.

To her credit, Agent Danvers makes it to the steps leading up to a landing by the door. Just two or three more steps and she’d be gone, and Lena could go back to work. Work was safe and quiet and not nefarious.

“Why does your brother want to kill you? You’re all each other has left,” Agent Danvers finally asked as her feet slowed and she paused at the door.

Once more, the CEO did that infuriating smile, as if every answer she was giving was so common place, she couldn’t believe an agent didn’t already know the answer. Agent Danvers found it even more irksome to see.

“Because there can always only be one, Agent Danvers,” Lena nodded sadly. “One CEO, one rightful Luthor heir. My brother loved me once, but I’m afraid that man has been destroyed.”

“What did it?”

“Alex,” Henshaw warned quietly.

“Ask Dora Luthor. Ask Lex Luthor, Jr. They’re buried at St. Anne’s just outside of Metropolis. A beautiful little plot. Big Hawthorn tree on the top of a hill, overlooking the lakes.”

“Buried?” she swallowed and furrowed.

“My brother tried to be better than our parents, than his father and mother. But genetics are… all a predisposition takes is a nudge. Lex thinks Superman gave him that push.” Lena tapped her knuckle gently against the desk. “LJ was funny, for a toddler. Dora loved to paint. I think I would go mad too, to find that kind of happiness after our childhood, just to lose it.”

“So it’s justified?” she balked, furrowing hard.

“Never, Agent Danvers,” the CEO disagreed. “I’m simply telling you that he’s gone, and there is no saving him. If you ever find that thing in your life that changes everything, you might be different to lose it as well.”

“I-”

“Thank you, Ms. Luthor,” Agent Henshaw nodded politely. “We’ll be in touch.”

“I’m sure,” she smiled curtly.

Lena waited until the door closed to flop back down in her chair. She stared at the business card left on her desk before swiveling to look out at the world, her empire, her domain.

“Come and get me, Lex.”

Chapter Text

“What do you mean she said no?” Kara yelled, storming after her boss and her sister through the hall of the DEO. “All you had to do was tell her that a homicidal maniac wanted to keep trying to kill her and escaped from prison. She’s like a genius. Surely she could do that basic math.”

The pair stopped and stared at the monitors that covered the wall from the crow’s nest of the headquarters. The caped hero nearly ran into them as her distraction and anger reared up beyond all else.

“She said no. We can’t make her have protection,” J’onn explained, surveying the screens, arms crossed and authoritative.

“But that’s insane! Kal is searching day and night trying to find Lex, and his sister is a sitting target!” Kara yelled again, her voice raising despite not knowing why.

She knew why though.

She ran her thumb along the word on her wrist and she rubbed it harder than necessary to still herself. She heard the stories, she knew the concept of it all, the word and the love and the destiny of it. When Alex found Maggie, she watched them fall in love, so easily, it was as if they were just meant to be together, and their lives just folded together so nicely, where they became one, while still remaining individual. Kara loved that. She wanted that.

Her soulmate, on the other hand, had a death wish.

“Kara, we are going to be watching her and looking for Lex. Don’t worry,” Alex promised. “But she had her mind made up. J’onn knew not to press.”

“But still, you could have tried,” she argued, almost hopeless and showing it. “At least something. She can’t be this dumb.”

“I think she might be brave,” Alex disagreed, surprising herself. “If she asked for protection, we’d have guards stationed at every door. Those would just be bodies in the way, but she knew Lex would reach his target, no matter what we did. She didn’t want any blood on her hands.”

Even though she didn’t want to, Kara understood and clenched her jaw. She crossed her arms and tapped her foot. They were a we now, whether Lena knew it or not, and there was no more unilateral decisions. Or something.

“J’onn… is she…” Kara swallowed and took a deep breath. Her body relaxed, uncoiled. Her henches calmed as she let out the air in her lungs and tried to ask the question she feared the most. “Is she… like… her brother?”

“I can see why you two are bonded,” he simply answered. It wasn’t nearly enough, but Kara took it.

“Wait, what does that mean?” she asked as he moved through the room.

“Get some rest, Supergirl,” the director called as he made his way toward his office.

“What did he mean, Alex?” Supergirl turned to her sister.

Alex just rolled her eyes and shook her head.

The Bankhead was abuzz with the inhabitant in the penthouse. The housekeeping staff made extra care to put extra towels and whispered about how the rooms were barely touched. A wine glass left on the kitchen table. The coffee cup with bright red lipstick left neatly on the room service tray. A book left, cracked open in downward facing dog on one side of the giant bed with the covers pulled up as if no one had slept there at all.

Lena dropped her bag on the couch and moved to the balcony. The view wasn’t as grand or as wonderful as her penthouse that was currently still smoldering across town, but she loved the age of the building, the history, the look and feel of it as much as someone who missed her pure privacy could find things to be okay with when inevitably failing.

It was a familiar schedule she developed after moving in for an extended period of time. There were other properties that fell under her name after inheriting the burden of being a Luthor. Most didn’t have a view that made her heart race. Most weren’t within walking distance of her building.

Though her favorite bottle of wine was waiting, though someone would soon bring in the dinner she forgot she placed with Jess not an hour ago, though there were things to be signed and read, emails to be answered, though all of that was there, Lena slipped off her heels and inhaled for what felt like the first time in the entire day.

For just a moment, she took off the heaviness of the day. There was no one else and so she got to be normal, or, at least more her. When she heard the knock at the door, she smiled, genuinely, and moved back through the huge suite to thank the bellman who was growing on her.

From just beyond notice, from out of sight, Supergirl hovered and crossed her arms, once again taking the long way around patrol just to see the girl who said the word on her wrist. It’d been her habit for nearly two weeks now, and each time, she fully recognized how uncomfortable it made her.

But then she would see Lena pull up her hair and take off her jewelry as she walked through the rooms, absently and slowly, as if she were just figuring herself out, as if she were listlessly disassembling herself. And Kara liked that.

She would watch as Lena picked at her salad with her fingers absently while she opened the ratty book that got its wear despite never leaving the suite, strictly from being dragged around to the bath, to the balcony, to the kitchen, to the living room where it was a coaster, to the bed where it was a bedmate. Six others had already survived the cycle, though their spines were sore from the voracious reading of the youngest Luthor. And Kara liked that.

Eventually, the dresses or skirts were traded for shorts or sweatpants. Make up was wiped away with little consequence and without a second glance in the mirror. The cell phone was plugged in and ignored by the door. The hotel room was eventually cleaned so that the occupant was nothing more than a ghost, nothing like a hassle. And Kara liked that.

But Lena didn’t pick at her dinner once it was set and she tipped the bellman. She didn’t pick up the book that was ready to be finished that very night, nor did she hurry to take off the staunch work clothes. Instead, she moved back to the balcony and leaned against the railing. Even from a distance, Kara heard the sigh. Even from far away, she saw the CEO play with the ink on her skin. Even from across the sky, she felt her own heart yearn and tug her.

It was too late to turn around when she realized how close she was, when she felt those eyes on her. Suddenly, Kara was there, and she couldn’t remember how or when or why.

“Golly. That was the best you could come up with?” Lena smiled softly, though she didn’t move at all.

“I’ve had the name of an animal that quacks on my body for my entire life,” Supergirl countered as she hovered on the opposite side of the railing, respecting space. She earned a wider smile and felt her mouth go dry at the sight.

“I’m sorry it wasn’t a little more descriptive.”

“It is you then?” she asked. “I mean. I’m. I think that you’re my. You know. My. The words you said. I didn’t know I said ‘golly,’ and I just. You’re.”

“Yeah. You’re mine, too,” Lena nodded and pushed herself up a little bit. She ran her fingertips along the railing as the night settled between the buildings. “Well, what do we do now, Supergirl?”

There wasn’t any worry, there wasn’t any real fear, or at least none that Kara could find. Instead, it was an actual question, an actual moment for them together.

“I don’t know.”

“Fair enough. I’m a tough pill to swallow,” the CEO nodded with a fake smile. It was for hiding behind, and Kara knew it already. So was the puff to her chest. So was the squaring of shoulders. “I’m sure you were expecting or hoping for someone else.”

“No, no, it’s not. No. I just,” Kara swallowed and hovered closer before retracting slightly so as not to spook her. “I honestly hadn’t planned what was supposed to happen whenever I ran into whoever my… person… was going to be. This is… we’ll figure something. I just. It’s… I mean. What do we do now?”

“I think I already asked you that,” Lena reminded her.

“I know,” she sighed. “I was hoping you had a better idea than me.”

“I guess I’d never considered it either,” she shrugged. “I mean I knew it would happen. I just–”

“You didn’t know it would happen,” the hero supplied. “Yeah. We’re lying. Neither of us planned on the inevitable.”

There was a small smile that came despite the fake, defensive one, and Kara was hooked. She felt her heart pick up, and she was okay with it. From the balcony, Lena just cocked her head and watched the floating hero with morbid curiosity, trying to get a read on her though coming up short, which was a rarity and peculiarity for her honed set of ascertaining skills.

“I’m not like my brother, or my family. I never thought–” she bristled and reverted into herself. “I hate what they became. That’s not me.”

“I know,” Supergirl nodded quickly, inching forward even quicker. “I didn’t presume–”

“For a moment, you had a spark of fear. Don’t lie.”

“Not once,” Kara swore.

The words were so honest and heavy that Lena wanted to believe them. She even let herself believe them, because the words came from a girl with those eyes and that smile and it was easy to believe someone like that. She wondered what that must be like.

“I appreciate that,” she blushed and recovered.

Downtown, the buses were grumbling, the boats on the water were wheezing, the bars were full, and the streetlights were singing in perfect harmony. Twenty stories below them, the city happened, oblivious to the clash of the two forces in slow motion above them.

“What is this I’ve heard about you declining protection?” Kara asked, backing away again, unsure of how she kept getting closer to the railing.

“Why would I need protecting? I don’t want anyone else to get hurt because of my brother.”

“So you just let him walk right up to you and hurt you?” the hero balked.

“No,” Lena refused vehemently. “Of course not. I have precautions. I just don’t want anyone to die for me. You don’t know Lex.”

“I know that when you were offered protection you should have taken it. How could you be so obstinate as to refuse–” Kara’s voice grew louder as she remembered her outrage. “It’s for your own good! A mad man is on the loose–”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Oh really? Did you see your home?” she argued. Both had hands on hips. Both were dug in deep. “There were helicopters. With highly trained paramilitary assassins. Well-paid, well-equipped goons with projectile explosives!”

“And they failed!”

“Pure luck!”

“Well, I take what I can get!” Lena shouted. “I’m not going to endanger anyone just for me. That’s ridiculous and a waste of resources–”

“A waste! A waste! Are you kidding me?” Kara tossed her hands up and spun slightly, unable to sit still and contain herself. “You are important and alive and I’d like to keep it that way, but you have a death wish because of your crazy bro–”

“Are you–” she smiled a little wider as she watched the caped hero rant and vent, her hands moving to highlight her points. “Are you worried about me?”

“I’m concerned for a citizen of National City, just as I would be concerned for any citizen, of course,” she flubbed.

“Oh.”

Kara paused and saw it all right there, the entirety of the conversation, the entirety of what was to come, and she couldn’t help it.

“Yes,” she mumbled. “Of course I’m worried about you, in particular, more.”

The truth perked up the CEO slightly, amusing her to no ends because she had no idea how to handle any kind of feeling like that. No one worried about her. Especially not strangers. Especially not ones with huge ‘S’s’ on their chest.

Sirens roared from a few blocks over, and despite her admission, Kara met Lena’s eyes and didn’t know what to do. Three weeks she avoided her and now… now she didn’t know how to leave, she didn’t know where they stood, she didn’t know anything at all except that when she was in Lena’s company she felt different, and it was good and new and addicting.

“Duty calls,” Lena offered the out first.

“You’ll think about calling the DE– FBI for at least some protection?”

“I’ll think about hiring someone.”

Kara wanted to argue but she picked up the noise of gunshots and she saw Lena’s stern glare and she wasn’t sure which was more volatile. The bullets were definitely less effective on her.

“Be safe,” Kara nodded.

“Go get’em, tiger,” Lena smiled sadly.

With a little boost, Kara took off toward the noise and wondered what in the world had just happened, and if it could happen again. Lena just watched the blue streak in the sky bleed into the night. From her balcony, she listened to sirens grow even more faint. The chill in the air made her shiver. That was what she told herself as she waited on the balcony, just to see.

It was quiet. The wires, the rumblings of the whispers that came with the inevitable sightings of a certain criminal mastermind, all were silent. He was a ghost, vanished into nothing and smart enough to keep hidden while he bought back power. But still, Kara searched. She kept in touch with her cousin, and she did what she could because even though she had trouble speaking complete sentences to the CEO with a penchant for balconies, she felt this growing anxiety over her safety and well-being.

Lena wouldn’t guess it, mostly due to her lack of familiarity with the concept, but it was Kara’s anxiety that left her to finding presents on her balcony both at work and the hotel. There was a sandwich, first, after a terribly long day of meetings. It wasn’t from somewhere she recognized, but Lena chuckled to herself as she found the note that told her who it was from. Halfway through the messy monstrosity, the best she could remember eating, the hero appeared and joined her with a gentle smile.

A few days later, after a marathon she sprinted in New York which consisted of two days of wall-to-wall meetings, a conference, three talks, and seventeen interviews, Lena wanted nothing more than to collapse on her hotel bed, face down, and smother herself to sleep. Sitting on her balcony was a candle that smelled like lavender, a tea with turkish writing on it, and a tin of homemade cookies, which were still moist and perfect. She brewed two cups of tea and was not disappointed when a certain hero touched down in the clear night.

That was the night they touched. The night they sat beside each other and she was so tired she forgot to think, and she rested her head on the hero’s shoulder. Kara smiled and held her breath the entire time, doing her best not to tense up at the contact, unsure of how to act. So she just sat there and hoped it wouldn’t end.

The next morning, two beautiful white flowers were sitting atop a new book on the balcony to the CEO’s office. Lena held one to her nose, cupping it gentle and grinning into it. She spent the entire morning googling white flowers to find it. And she read the words attached to its description, she felt her heart skip. Gardenia– secret love. The book was not one she recognized, but she traced its spine fondly.

Sometime that evening, a pair of warm, flannel pajama pants were waiting with a movie, and the orders to relax, and do nothing else but watch. Somewhere about twenty minutes into it, the smell of popcorn wafted in from the open balcony door, and Lena wasn’t even surprised when a hero sat on the couch beside her.

It was easy. They talked. They had a hesitant, easy kind of friendliness to their conversations with this underlying set of nerves that hinted that they both knew what was happening, they both knew what was inevitable but didn’t know how to get there. And so they were fourteen year olds who cast glances and touched shoulders.

Two mornings later, Kara left a granola bar and a pack of Lena’s favorite pens after she mentioned she’d run out and was complaining about the wait time from having to order them special. That afternoon she heard the news about the attempted mugging, about Lena’s self-defense with a taser, about the broken arm, about the henchmen, about the stolen money and the account Lex was syphoning. She balled up her fists and felt her breaths grow shallow.

There was more work to do, and Supergirl was unable to break away, though she wanted nothing more than to make sure Lena was alright. Nothing would let her admit that though. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

But her anger subsided, at a point, and work did as well. And she made her way across town, much quicker than she would have anticipated.

Arm in a cast already, Lena lounged with her new book on the balcony, fresh from the bath and smelling of lavender and vanilla. Kara felt herself stutter with it clouding her mind.

“I figured you’d hear,” Lena sighed, closing her book as boots landed on her balcony. “I’m fine. You should see the other guy.”

“May I?” Supergirl asked, nodding toward the cast. Lena handed it over gingerly. She gazed at the plaster and swallowed as she saw the broken bones. The wrist was tweaked, the forearm fractured, her humerus snapped. It was a world of pain, and the heavy cast that almost met her shoulder looked uncomfortable. “How bad is the pain?”

“Manageable,” she shrugged with one shoulder, watching the hero’s face grow impassive. “I have pain killers. I have taken them liberally. I’m fine. Eight weeks and I’ll be good as new. Did I mention that you should see the other guy?”

“This isn’t funny.”

“Thank you for the granola bar this morning. If I had skipped breakfast I wouldn’t have been as sharp.”

“Lena,” Kara warned, setting her jaw.

“I’m perfectly fine. And before you start,” she shook her head, “remember that I hired people like you asked.”

“You need professionals.”

“These guys were professionals.”

“Three men overpowered your security detail and almost took you!”

“Almost. Did you see the other guy?”

“You tased him and he broke his nose hitting the steering wheel, but that was luck,” Kara vented. “They yanked you so hard you broke your wrist!”

“Yes, but it was the car accident that broke my arm.”

“Why aren’t you taking this serious!”

Without meaning to, Kara stood and began to pace, so absolutely frustrated that this wasn’t something serious to the CEO, that she was just so cavalier about her own life, that she was so nonplussed about almost dying.

“I am, but I can’t get upset about every shenanigan my brother attempts.”

“You’re going to call Detective Henshaw.”

“I’m fine,” Lena rolled her eyes and sat up a bit more as she watched the hero pace, oddly confused by the display. She’d been attacked. She’d expected nurturing and doting even from the softie who left her flowers and cookies and made sure she had breakfast.

“You’re not fine! What are you not understanding! It’s not just you anymore. I don’t know what’s happening, but we’re. We’re. There’s. Just. You can’t keep doing this.”

“Just because we said certain words to each other doesn’t mean you get a say in my life. I’m an independent person, I’m not helpless. I don’t know if that’s what you were expecting in a soulmate, but I don’t need saving, and I’m perfectly capable of–”

“I just found you and I don’t even know you and you can’t die! That’s not fair to me. I just found you and we haven’t even… We haven’t… tried!” Kara fumed. “Stop being so, so, so…. Stubborn!”

Shoulders echoing the words in the cavern of her lungs, Kara tensed completely and glared, eyes wide and unhearing.

“Okay,” Lena nodded as she stilled the pen she was twirling in her fingers and set it down with her book.

“I mean, of all the decisions, what made you think that– wait, what?” she furrowed.

It was different this time, this chance of death. Lena felt the feeling that Kara was unclearly referencing, that moment of just finding and being afraid to lose something, though they didn’t know what the something was. They were a we. That was it.

“I was being selfish and I will be more careful.”

“Seriously?”

“If it makes you stop storming into my buildings and ranting about civic responsibility, then yes,” she shrugged, offhand and indifferent.

“Oh, okay then,” Kara furrowed and nodded.

“That’s not what you wanted?”

“No, it is. I just. Expected more of a fight,” she realized. “I’d been working on counterpoints for a while about why you should accept the help and more security. It’s just kind of wasted now.”

“By all means, please continue if you want,” Lena grinned and leaned back in the chaise.

“No, no, it’s fine,” the hero shrugged. “You already agreed. I just. I really was ready.”

“I believe you, but your first argument was most effective.”

“What was that?”

“We don’t know each other, and earlier I realized that I really do want to get to know you.”

“Me? Oh. I. Yes. Okay,” Kara blushed and nodded. The hands on her hips didn’t help and so she crossed them in front of her chest, unsure of what to do with her body let alone her hands with news like that.

Just like that, her anger dissipated and she was unsure what that meant and what her mood was, but there she was, in front of a Luthor, worried and scared and they agreed. The day of worry was eased so easily, she wondered if that was what this was, between them, if this was the balance, if this was what everyone talked about when they talked about love.

“You have to know though, my brother and I have unfinished business. As fated as you and I are, so is the inevitable moment of a family reunion,” Lena informed the alleged love of her life. “Unfortunately, I don’t know what will happen, but it will.”

“You never counted on me though,” Supergirl smiled.

“No I didn’t.”

As lingering as the glances had been, as gentle as the smiles and as coy as the grins, the look the pair shared was fondness, pure and plain and simply enamoured despite not knowing how to handle it. Kara couldn’t remember ever feeling anything akin to it. Lena was well out of her depth with even realizing she was uncomfortable with how nice this girl’s voice was in her ears, regardless of subject matter and confidence, let alone the content of the words.

“I, uh,” Kara shook her head as she snapped out of the trance. “I should go. I didn’t mean to interrupt your…. Recovery. I just had to see. To make sure you were… alright.”

“You’re never an interruption.”

“That’s. That’s good to know,” she nodded. “Get some rest.”

“Go get’em, tiger,” Lena smiled calmly.

She didn’t miss the blush that was there, nor did she forget how that made her feel as she laid in bed that night and drifted to sleep with the thoughts of pretty blonde hair against her own skin.

Chapter Text

Even with a full arm cast, the CEO worked hard, choosing to devote herself to the distraction of her job. High in the belfry of LCorp’s tower, she toiled and tried not to count on a hero showing up on her balcony, though every single night she promised herself to ignore it, and yet she spent the day waiting eagerly. The days were spent waiting to avoid thinking about what her future might hold, which turned into a more exhausting job than her already exhausting one.

Work was a different kind of obstacle with a full arm cast, but Lena persevered anyway. It didn’t hurt that she got doted on behind the scenes. She grumbled about it, but the hero didn’t take it to heart at all. Little things had a way of appearing when she needed them. There was extra aspirin and her favorite juice one morning. There were flowers when she woke and little notes that had inside jokes. She was someone who had inside jokes. There were lunches left while Lena was in meetings, and there were homemade baked goods to get rid of the afternoon lethargy.

She got in the habit as well. One of her finished books made its way into the hero’s possession as she left it with a note on the balcony at the hotel. She made a sandwich and left it waiting, wrapped up nicely when she fell asleep early one night. When she went to a dinner meeting, extra dessert made its way back to the hero waiting. Lena was someone who thought of things like that, now.

More important than all of it, there were evenings, the deep, dark nights spent up much too late talking and shivering on the balcony. It was a delicate dance, to talk and not push. It felt more intimate than Lena could remember having a relationship in a long time, if that was what she could even call it. It was how she learned that Supergirl had to eat constantly due to her high metabolism. It was how she found herself telling a superhero about what it was like to be pushed against a wall and strangled, what it felt like to feel like nothing because of her mother’s words. She hadn’t meant to tell anyone those things, she hadn’t meant to think those things. But they came out at night, when the world was quiet and the stars were dancing brightest against the city lights.

The computer monitor on her desk had another spreadsheet on it that was important enough, that needed her attention, but the CEO couldn’t find it in herself to care at all. Instead, she just kept thinking about the way Supergirl looked when she talked about her own parents, this joy and this sorry that was so intertwined, so precise, it was contagious in equal measures. Lena thought about the way her face looked when she confessed her own childhood.

For even more reasons, in that moment, the CEO found herself hating the former Luthor owner. Her big brother would have known. No one would believe her if she told them about Lex near his wife, or how he mooned over her the first day he met her practically laying himself out on Lena’s bed while he talked about the girl with soft, red hair who smiled at him and said ‘You need a hat.’ Those words were on his ribs and when she knit him one three weeks later, he wore it proudly in the snow.

When Lena was fifteen years old, she held her nephew while her brother beamed from the other side of the hospital room. Dressed in his slacks and shirt rolled up at the elbows, he crossed his arms over his broad chest and the angles of his naturally stern face turned almost soft.

If she had been smarter, if she had been paying attention Lena always assumed that she would have seen the insanity right there. But it lingered below the surface, already coming out in different ways, but non obvious enough to warrant worry. Who would worry about the brilliant billionaire with a new family?

In her dreams, Lena stared at her brother’s face and she looked for the signs and beat herself up so bad she woke up gasping from time to time, when the guilt got to be too much.

Lena watched it happen, watched him fall in love and watched him lose his mind, and as she crawled into bed after a hug from the hero, she felt the coldest shiver of fear and dread creep up her spine. She couldn’t help but wonder if she was capable of the same kind of evil, if she was capable of losing something she hadn’t considered.

“Ms. Luthor?” Jess asked, repeating herself for the twelfth time, and only finally getting a response from the distracted boss.

“Yes, sorry, what is it, Jess?” she sat up a little more in her chair and tapped her pen a few times against her desk.

“Can I get you anything for lunch?”

“No, thank you,” Lena smiled and leaned forward, suddenly self-conscious. “I brought something.”

It was almost a lie. She had sushi delivered to her that morning, fresh from Tokyo, and it made her heart giddy. For just a second, of course. And then the dred. That creeping fear of what it all meant overwhelmed her entirely and she found herself lost in those thoughts and memories of her brother and his descent.

“Will you get the boys something though? They’re growing lads and need a bite,” she remembered her guards who sat in the lobby, waiting for her to leave or move down the hall.

“Of course.”

New files were put on the corner of her desk, but Lena didn’t particularly care. She had too many thoughts for her office.

“When is my meeting with the Beta team?” she finally asked as she stood.

“Not until two.”

Jess moved around the desk, knowingly pick up what she knew needed refiled, organizing what remained while Lena grabbed her purse and moved toward the fridge beneath her bar.

“I’m going out for lunch.”

“It’s hot out there,” the assistant warned.

“I need some sun. I need to be out of this room.”

“I’ll phone down to security.”

“Just one. I don’t want an entire battalion just to go sit alone at the park.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Could you also call the hotel and have them deliver two large pizzas around ten tonight?”

“Pizza?”

“Yes, you know, that round thing with cheese?” Lena smiled as she moved toward the door. She couldn’t help but recognize a bit of amusement in her friend’s voice. “Sometimes I like pizza.”

“Enough to eat two large ones?”

“Thank you, Jess,” Lena smiled and shook her head. “I appreciate it.”

“Anything else? Maybe some bread sticks? Ice cream? Cheeseburgers?” she taunted.

“Just pizza for now. You’re the one who keeps telling me to expand my horizons.”

“That’s true,” she sighed as she stood behind the large desk and set up the rest of the day. “Have a good lunch.”

Lena wasn’t dumb. She knew that Jess wasn’t either, but she certainly didn’t know where to start when it came to her new friend, and so she took the half-hearted needling and she was thankful Jess was easy enough to not push too far.

It wasn’t even particularly normal for her to want to escape the tower, and yet, Lena found herself doing all kinds of things she never expected recently. That was how her brain now worked.

Years passed before Lena realized she hadn’t had time to think. Life just happened, was thrust upon her. And then her heart fluttered back and her head fluttered twice as hard. Sitting on the bench in the park a few blocks away from her building, she nibbled on delicious sushi and dug out the newest book added to her collection by the hero.

By the time her watch reminded her that there was actual business to conduct, she’d reached an almost state of zen. Children played and ran around the trees. People milled about, the world happened in this tiny slice of life and Lena was actually a part of it, she was actually existing and the sky wasn’t falling.

She dreaded checking her phone, though as she made her way back toward the entrance of the park, Lena found herself compelled to check the damage of her extended absence. Behind her, a behemoth of a man in a suit followed, eyes darting around behind dark sunglasses. It did nothing to make her feel safe. Nothing would. Fate just had a way of smacking her right in the fac–

“Golly, I am so sorry,” a voice hurried as Lena felt herself come in contact with an immovable force. She bounced back a step before strong hands grabbed her tightly.

It was those eyes, she realized, the moment she saw them. All warning signals went off like a submarine about to be torpedoed. It might have even been comical if she had the wherewithal to imagine the controllers in her head scurrying around while red lights swirled and warnings blared over the speakers. Instead, she just stared at those eyes.

“Duck!” she tugged a little as she felt her bodyguard approach and try to swing at the person who was currently holding her tight.

Much too quickly, they were tipped down with ease, avoiding the fist of the protector.

“Oh fuck,” Lena sighed, furrowing deeply as she wound her arms around a familiar neck and inhaled that familiar smell. “Not again.”

“I’m so sorry. I should have watched where I was going, and then–”

Both were speechless, both were terrified, both couldn’t figure out how to move again. That moment, the earth-shattering, life-changing moment they experienced amidst burning rubble and an attack copter, was supposed to be a one time feeling. But they felt it change, for better or worse, right there in the park in the middle of a warm afternoon.

Lena forgot how to breathe, and she didn’t know what to do. She knew, logically, that Supergirl had to exist in the world, and yet, seeing her now, was just completely new and unexpected. It was easier to keep a distance, to not think of this.

“Easy, Peter,” Lena held up her hand as she was righted and the guard fret over her. “I’m fine. Just an accident. Give me some space.”

She waited for him to back up before surveying the girl in front of her. Gone was the suit, the costume. In its place was glasses, soft blonde hair tied up in a pony tail, soft colors and starched shirts. She was anything but super, but standing right there, Lena was positive, and she now intimately understood why she was always afraid to ask about the hero’s real identity. Now it was real. Now it was possible. Now it was there.

Those eyes were wide and worried. All kind of blue and happy and different. Lena couldn’t find the rest of the world to save her life. All that existed was the moment between them when she came face to face with the girl of her dreams.

“I’m sorry again,” the not-so-strange, stranger muttered and adjusted her own glasses nervously.

“Come on, don’t pretend,” Lena shook her head. “Fate made us have the same interaction twice. Surely, that’s a little bit funny.”

“Maybe we’re both so dense it knew we needed a second go at it,” she smiled. Lena would know that smile anywhere. She spent the past few weeks mapping it in the dark. “Is your arm alright?”

The worry was new and still very foreign to her. But as the hero reached out and held the cast, scanning it tenderly, with a kind of familiarity that was normal for them.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” she promised, looking down to make sure it was still attached. When she met Supergirl’s gaze, she swallowed and cleared her throat. “We don’t have to… do this or whatever. You haven’t said anything before, and I respect–”

“My name is Kara,” she interrupted, hand sticking out, waiting for the niceties to be met. “It’s nice to meet you, officially.”

“Lena,” the CEO breathed, taking the hand offered to her.

They stood there shaking hands as if they’d never learned how before. It was almost the most contact they had mustered.

“I never introduced myself because I wasn’t sure you were ready.”

“I probably wasn’t,” Lena confessed. “I’m probably not.”

“I wasn’t either.”

There was a weirdness to knowing someone and not knowing them, one that lingered between them so that Lena felt a tangible need to say or do or be something, though she couldn’t. They knew each other as much as anyone who spent nearly every evening together could know, and yet they knew absolutely nothing. The dichotomy of knowing that the hero’s favorite smell was lemongrass versus not knowing what she did as a day job was baffling and confounding.

“I hope we don’t make a habit out of this.”

“At least nothing’s on fire,” Kara grinned. It was purely to the side and all manner of mischievous. “Are you just out for a walk? Could I walk with you? Maybe? I was just… I had to go— I mean. I don’t have to right now. But we could, if you want.”

“I actually snuck out of the office for lunch. Sushi and a good book.”

“Ah, sushi sounds good. Did you know they make the best sushi at this tiny restaurant on the fifth floor of a building in Tokyo? Right on the corner near the fish market,” she smiled wider, proud of herself. “I was just there not too long ago.”

If anyone else had been watching, they might not have recognized Lena Luthor. She couldn’t help it though, and with those words, she laughed, genuinely, honestly, right from the gut, laughed.

“I’ll have to keep that in mind next time I make it over there.”

The phone still clutched in her hand buzzed with warnings and the inevitable reminders from her assistant, but Lena didn’t want to go back. She wanted to run away with this stranger who was anything but, who was funny and geeky and unassuming, right in front of her. Despite how afraid she was.

“I shouldn’t keep you,” Kara murmured, her own smile growing as she watched Lena recover from laughing. “I’m sure you have business to get to. I was just on my way to do something. Um. Run a few errands.”

“Right, of course, yeah,” she nodded. “If this, uh. We should… talk?”

“Yeah. Definitely.”

“What do you like on your pizza?”

“Um, well, anything, actually,” Kara answered, confused as to the train of thought.

“Try using the front door this time, tiger,” Lena grinned as her phone vibrated, annoyed and ignored and not taking it any longer. “Maybe tonight we finally figure things out.”

“Is this just because we ran into each other?”

“No,” the CEO sighed. “I mean. I planned on…. I planned on having dinner with you tonight.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she smiled, still unsure of herself. But Kara’s giant smile helped put her at ease. If she was going to do one thing in this world, she was going to earn more of those. And maybe that was what this entire thing was all about. The thoughts troubled her for a split second.

Lena Luthor liked to be good at things, and this was unchartered waters.

“Could I walk you back to your office?” Kara ventured, despite knowing it would make her late for work, despite knowing the lashing that would come from her editor.

“Sure.”

“Okay.”

“Good.”

“Yeah.”

“Awesome.”

Both smiled and nodded and were nervous wrecks, but persisted anyway, diving deep and very aware that they had no idea what the landing was supposed to look like.

The night that Lex Luthor was found in a non-extradition country, Kara spent hours holding back her cousin. And when the League found out, they consulted the government and held him back even tighter. In the back of her head though, her first thought was of a CEO who was undoubtedly glued to the television.

The night that Lex Luthor was found, Lena tried to ignore it and failed. When Jess poked her head in and offered to get dinner, Lena smiled politely and told her to head home. And when she went home, she oddly hoped that no one else would join her.

But she knew her soulmate.

The day she met her, officially, in the park, Lena was a ball of emotions. That was the thing she would never want anyone to figure out and worked hard to conceal, that she was a perpetual roaring river of emotions hidden behind the thinnest dam ever constructed, ready and eager to break at the slightest provocation. That was the thing that Kara knew, despite Lena’s best attempts to prove otherwise, and she hated it, and was in no mood for the weakness of her structurally unsound levee in the torrential flooding of her brother’s reappearance.

After two months, knocking had grown obsolete. But the night Lex Luthor was spotted, Kara hesitated.

Inside the hotel room, she heard Lena pace. She heard her set down a glass that, even from the distance of being behind a door, smelled like vodka. Behind the door to the hotel room, Kara watched Lena finally. Watched her cross her arms and finally go into the bedroom before taking off a work shirt in favor of something more comfortable. Kara blushed and cleared her throat before making her way inside with the key Lena told her to use.

“Hey, Lena, I brought dinner,” Kara called. “I figured you might be busy or maybe forgot and I was in the neighborhood, which is actually a lie. I wasn’t. I was actually in Metropolis, but I remembered you said that this place had your favorite–” she paused as she put bags on the counter of the full kitchen. “Golly.”

Her legs weren’t long, but when they were on display, they were all that mattered. Kara stared, and even though she didn’t mean to, she felt her gaze take a long while as it made the trip up from the ground to the edge of a long shirt that hung just below hips. The faintest edge of shorts could been seen there, but Kara had no time for that fact. Instead, she just stared and felt her eyes go wide.

She stared until she heard the sound of a bag hitting the ground and forgot that her hands held things. Her eyes and seeing took up much more brainpower than previously expected, but when Lena rounded the corner, nothing much made sense.

“Duck,” Lena returned with a smile she couldn’t have imagined all day. But then Kara was right there, and Lena couldn’t help it.

“Sorry, I’m. I didn’t. I didn’t mean to barge in, or interrupt, I was just–”

“In the neighborhood?”

“Yes. No. Wait,” she shook her head and scrambled to pick up the take out. “I was. I thought you might like company.”

“I didn’t think you’d stop by,” Lena shrugged as she put her hair up.

The past few months had been a delicate balance of friendship that neither explicitly knew how to navigate. Kara felt a growing attachment, a natural inclination to care about her soulmate. And she also wanted to kiss her which was growing to complicate things immensely because she was certain Lena was barely handling her being Supergirl.

“I was hoping you’d be… I’ll just. Do you want to put more clothes… I…” the hero turned around and blushed, focusing decidedly upon the bags of food. “I didn’t mean to. Golly.”

“You said that already.”

Without a thought, Lena approached and rested her chin on Kara’s shoulder. She kept her arms crossed, she leaned as best she could and inhaled the new familiar, that Kara smell, of sunlight and something fruity, something like a peach, soft and sweet that fogged up her thoughts.

“Today was shit,” Lena acknowledged. “But this smells good. Is this from Ezio’s?”

“The best clam sauce in the world,” Kara nodded. “I had to test out your rave review. Plus, pasta is the best kind of comfort food.”

For a moment, they looked like a couple. Lena knew it. She saw herself, she felt the pause. Kara swallowed hard and smiled at the feeling of warmth against her back. It was the most intimate they had been, and still, Kara didn’t know how to handle it. Thankfully, her stomach grumbled and she earned a chuckle.

“Let’s feed you then. I’m sure your day wasn’t much better.”

The departure of the chin on her shoulder was oddly hollow. Kara turned quickly and furrowed.

“Hey, you’re… how are you?”

“They can’t go get them, can they?” Her arms wrapped around herself tighter. “It’d be illegally obtained. The courts would side with him.”

Kara watched Lena cock her head and squint, and no one else would ever know what a scared person rested in the confident exterior of the CEO. She just shook her head in response.

“I spent all day holding back Clark. And any free moments, we were trying to find a legal way to go about it, but we didn’t… we tried… I mean–”

“You didn’t find anything.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. It’ll… it’ll all work out,” Lena tried. “At least he isn’t trying to kill me at the moment.”

Kara snorted indignantly before her arms moved on their own. She was already hugging Lena tightly, wrapping around the girl tightly because it was the only way to provide comfort. It felt right, and despite Lena’s tensing, she relaxed a moment later, languidly lounging in the reassurance of strong arms.

“He’s not going to hurt you,” Kara promised. Her lips moved against Lena’s hair, against her temple, against the shell of her ear.

“I know,” Lena nodded.

As she pulled away, Kara’s hands fell to her hips, wrapped around her waist. She felt her hips press against the girl who brought her a dinner she’d mentioned weeks ago, just because she thought it would help. Her palms rested on Kara’s chest, her fingertips toying with buttons and collarbones.

“I was weirdly worried about you, all day,” the reporter finally admitted, when staring at lips was too distracting, and those eyes were nothing but an even worse target to keep her mind from taking terribly arousing rabbit holes of thoughts.

“It’s not weird. What do all of the stories say? We’re linked, now, right?” Lena shrugged. The news was welcomed though.

“I always thought that was just part of the story,” she admitted sheepishly. “I didn’t expect it to be so literal. I see my sister and her girlfriend, and they just move so naturally, I hadn’t expected it to be second-nature, or to realize I’m doing it…. Like thinking about you and stuff.”

“I was worried about you, too,” Lena confessed, clearing her throat and trying to stand up a bit straighter, though there were hands still rooted near her spine. “For the record.”

“So long as it’s on the record, you won’t mind me quoting you in my new article, Ms. Luthor.”

“Wait, what?”

“My article, to be titled Beautiful Billionaire Slums with Nerdy Reporter: Does Fate Make Mistakes?” Kara explained, her hands accenting each word as a headline between them.

“Tad lengthy.”

“You’re right,” she nodded. “How about Hot Genius Reluctantly Accepts Awkward Alien Lover.”

“Oh, is that what we are?”

“Oh, um, well,” Kara blanched and stood up a bit straighter. She adjusted her glasses.

No longer was Lena held there, no longer were arms around her waist, but still, she remained rooted, now the force holding Kara against the counter with just the help of gravity and her own hips. It was mighty power to hold.

“How about Wonderful, Patient Hero Saves Heiress’ Heart From Lonely Future.”

“Lengthy.”

“Bespeckled, Kind-hearted Angel Thaws Frosty Bookworm’s Future.”

“A bit hyperbolic.”

“Not entirely,” Lena shrugged. Her hands wound around Kara’s neck, her forearms resting on her shoulder. “Fine. Pretty Girl With 1940s Vocab Wooes Pessimistic Orphan?”

“We’re getting closer,” Kara nodded with a smile.

“Quote me for whatever you want then.”

Hovering close, Lena watched Kara’s chest rise and fall quicker, she felt her tense and swallow, she felt her eyes grow wider and yet focus in on her own face quite quickly. It was a lot, it was close, it was a position they had been careful to not find themselves in, and just as Kara had explained, it happened so naturally, without either noticing until it was too late.

“We should eat then,” Lena finally decided, clearing her throat and letting her hands fall away from the hero’s neck. It was safer this way, she decided.

“We should. We should… yeah. We should,” Kara nodded eagerly, still dazed. “Yeah. Eat. Yes.”

Lena felt at ease for the first time in hours, and just because someone brought her dinner.

Much the way a fearsome jungle cat becomes a kitten when it is time for a nap, so did Lena Luthor remind Kara when she grew weary. The graveyard of their take out dinner remained on the coffee table amidst stacks of books and files from work, while a few of Kara’s notebooks and laptop made it to the mountain range of easily dismissed work activities neither felt the urge to traverse once they had full bellies and a comfy couch to share.

Normally, a prowling, sleek, menacing man-eater of a panther, Kara watched Lena fight against her exhaustion and her worry, watched her argue against herself until she settled like an innocent kitten against her side. The warmth radiated between them, and before Kara could really take the time to appreciate it, Lena was breathing soft and even, her cheek on Kara’s thigh, her arms wrapped tightly around her calf.

With the smallest of movements, Kara pulled the blanket from the back of the couch and draped it over they exhausted CEO who would rather swallow her own thoughts than let them see the light of day, who could never admit how purely exhausted she was, but succumbed to the mere suggestion of comfort and warmth and safety.

There’d been a moment, once, when J’onn spoke of his wife, when he referenced this idea that he was always exactly where he needed to be when she existed. It wasn’t a thought that made sense or seemed relatable, in fact, it often perplexed her, and yet right there, on the couch while some documentary played, Kara felt, for the first time in a long, long while, that she was exactly where she was meant to be.

With only the smallest of stretches, she leaned to turn off the light and settled into the couch, knowing full well that nothing was going to make her move and wake the sleeping executive from what must have been her first solid chunk of rest in –

And then her phone rang.

“Hm? Is that? Where’s my…?” Lena sat up and squinted, frantic and adorable as her hand patted along the coffee table.

Quickly, Kara dug into her pockets, trying to find the offensive device that betrayed what would have been a wonderful moment.

“I’m sorry, that’s me,” she rattled as Lena tried to still her heart.

“I must have fallen…. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean. What time is it?”

“I just have to take this…” Kara pointed at her phone and stood, leaving a confused and disoriented girl in her wake who still squinted and watched her move with only one eye open. “Alex? What’s wrong?”

From the couch, Lena looked down at the blanket and only half heard Kara muttering as she moved out of the living room. It took all of her mental processes to figure out how she’d ended up covered up, and why she was so near delirious from waking from such a deep sleep.

By the time Kara made it back in, she had already adjusted her messy hair and felt somewhat presentable.

“Everything okay?”

“Hm? Yeah, sorry. Alex just stopped by my apartment, and I wasn’t there,” Kara explained. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

“I’m sorry I used you as a pillow.”

“Never apologize for that.”

Though they were quiet, both had words bubbling up in their throats so that they burst out at the same time once they caught the merest look at the other.

“I should–”

“You should–”

Both snapped their mouths shut and stared at the other, willing them to say the next thing they paused.

Lena yawned and pushed messy hair around her head while debating it all. Kara stared back at her and shifted her weight from foot to foot.

“I should head home,” Kara finally managed, rubbing her hand anxiously along her elbow, holding herself together as best she could.

Lena felt her lungs pop at the news, wheezing out like an old party balloon. Still half asleep and very disoriented, the facts of the day swept back into her thoughts.

“Would you… I mean. You could stay, if you wanted.”

“Stay here?” the hero asked quickly. “With you?”

“I could leave if that’d make you more comfortable, but that’d defeat the purpose.”

Still in almost nothing, still very pretty, still doing ungodly things to her heart, Lena had no knowledge of the thoughts in Kara’s head, and for that the reporter was the most grateful. She didn’t mean to, or that was her defense, but she caught a glimpse of legs, and then she caught those eyes, and she felt warm all over.

“It is late,” Kara wagered.

Somewhere, in a foreign country, stalked by round the clock surveillance from any number of world governments, Lex Luthor, the more infamous of the Luthor siblings, paced through the halls of his borrowed mansion, plotting and calculating and being utterly miserable and all but dead physically, because surely a man like him did not just appear into the world for no reason at all. There was always a plan, always a motive.

Somewhere else, far away, a more and more dwindling thought, the oldest Luthor heir concocted and hatched and schemed.

RIght there though, in the hotel room on the top floor of the hotel on Twelfth street, Lena Luthor, the youngest of the Luthor brood, the chosen, the adopted, the last one standing, she slid into her bed and kept strict to one fourth of it before facing the middle as, for the first time in a long, long, long while, the other side dipped with another body. Suddenly very much alive inside, she huddled under the blankets and calculated all manner of math that did not make much sense because surely she must be dreaming. A girl like her did not just a hero in her bed for no reason at all. She didn’t have anyone in her bed.

Right there, she swallowed and took a deep breath. The one true heir was too tired to extrapolate.

“I didn’t want to be alone tonight,” Lena whispered in the dark.

Clear on the other side of the bed, what felt like miles apart, the other body rolled to her side as well, and faced the honest voice.

“He’s not going to hurt you,” Kara promised.

“It’s not that,” she bit her cheek and leaned forward slightly. “I just. I’m very good at being alone. But then you… you’re just. I know what it’s like to have someone around now. I didn’t want to be alone.”

God, did it fucking hurt to say things like that.

“You don’t have to be alone anymore, if you don’t want,” a tiny promise came after a few seconds. “There’s no where in the entire galaxy I’d rather be right now than here, in this exact spot.”

With a small smile that she was grateful Kara couldn’t see in the dark, Lena closed her eyes and ran her foot along her calf, adjusting sleepily and sorely into the big bed. For the life of her, she was not sure how to process an emotion like that. She couldn’t figure out where to even start.

“That’s a like,” Kara whispered, shifting slightly.

Just as quickly as her mind tried to forget the equation put before her with Kara’s promise, it short circuited. The body beside her shifted closer, until she felt Kara’s knee on her own knee, until she felt soft breath on her knuckles, until she felt a forehead against her own forehead.

“A foot to the left was the real answer,” she explained as she stopped adjusting. “But now, my answer stands. True, too, considering I’ve been to many places in the Galaxy, and the next four.”

“I’m not as well traveled, but I have to say, that on this world, in this moment, I agree completely.”

“Good.”

“Thank you, Kara.”

The only response came in the form of a warm hand gliding along her back, soothing her toward the inevitable sleep.

Chapter Text

It didn’t happen often. It couldn’t.

But Lena felt herself getting accustomed to occasionally waking up in the same bed as the hero who had a knack for sleeping like a starfish, big and wide and very wholly. Twice, she woke up with arms wrapped around her. That was a pleasant surprise, one that she allowed herself to burrow into and close her eyes for an extra five minutes.

The moment before she ever found consciousness, she could just feel that there was someone else in her bed. And then she started to wake fully, stretching, long and content in the warmth of her comforter and the knowledge that a certain blonde used her key and decided she wanted to flop down in her bed in the middle of the night as opposed to going home. It was a foreign knowledge, but a welcomed kind of fact.

Outside, the sun was just an inkling, barely dismissing some of the night, disposing of the moon once again. Lena rolled over, careful not to disturb the other occupant of the large bed. Taking up roughly two-thirds of the bed, Kara hadn’t even changed out of her suit, though the cape was in a pile on the floor by the bedroom door and the boots, she assumed, were somewhere in the hotel room.

There was a safety, this secure feeling, at having, not just someone else, but this someone else sharing her bed, there sharing was a bit of a misnomer. Passed out above the sheets, Kara still was there, and that was something.

It must have been a busy night, and she was certain, as soon as she put on the news there would be plenty of stories of Supergirl saving everyone she could. No one would know that she was here now, softly snoring in a Luthor’s bed, strictly defined by fate.

Without even thinking, Lena watched her hand push aside blonde from the sleeping girl’s face, retracting quickly at the realization that it was her hand touching Kara. After the initial scare, she didn’t stop, smiling to herself as she watched the word on her wrist move with her soothing.

“What time is it?” Kara squinted her eyes tighter and retracted her arms under her chest with a yawn.

“Almost five. What time did you get in?”

“Three something,” she yawned again, inching closer before stopping and furrowing despite not opening her eyes yet. “Wait. I’m in your bed. Unless you’re in my bed.”

“You’re at the hotel,” Lena smiled at the thought of the exhausted hero sputtering in and flopping on a bed, purely on instinct. Though, it did lend itself to the question of how many beds did she find herself waking up in that weren’t her own.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t… I don’t know how I got here.”

“I’m not opposed.”

“Good,” Kara smiled, inching forward again. She pushed her forehead against Lena’s chin.

They weren’t affectionate all of the time. They were comforting and orbiting and oddly attempting to find boundaries in this precarious situation both found themselves, when in reality, all Lena desperately wanted to do was kiss her. But they were in agreement, an unspoken agreement, that they were taking their time.

There were lunches, now. When Lena would tell Jess to clear an hour and they would explore little restaurants and steal from each other’s plate while talking about everything. There were a few dinners, often punctuated with work to keep it more platonic. There were walks and coffees and adventures when Kara thought it in Lena’s best interest to be kidnapped or when Lena assumed Kara was absolutely overwhelmed. But perhaps the best part of the acquainting, or at least Lena’s favorite, was the little surprises that never stopped coming.

It would have been simple for Kara to stop leaving things on the balcony or desk once her identity was revealed, once they started to talk in this weird kind of courting ritual they were tangled up in, and yet they didn’t. Still, Lena would wake sometimes to a pastry from France. Or tea from somewhere. Or the newspaper and a coffee, often with little notes, some asking her for lunch, some just a little heart. And it didn’t stop her from reciprocating, though she didn’t care about balconies as much. Instead, she filled Kara’s office with flowers. And on sister nights, she sent over extra potstickers. There was even a day when she had donuts sent to CatCo with the card reading XO- a duck.

“Long night?”

“Very.”

“You’re still in your suit.”

“But not my boots,” Kara hummed, wiggling her toes.

“Why don’t you change? I have some spare clothes.”

“I don’t want to move.”

“You’ll sleep better.”

“I’m sleeping just fine.”

“Change and then sleep. I have to go to work soon.”

“It’s five in the morning.”

“Gym, then shower, then work,” Lena decided.

“Gross.”

“Not all of us are godly super humans with a metabolism that allows for the consumption of thousands of calories per day.”

With her words, Lena tried to get up, hoping to slip out and find some of her old shorts and a shirt for the caped heroine in her bed. She didn’t move far, arms slipping around her waist and a smile pressing into her collarbone.

“You’re beautiful,” Kara hummed. “Stay.”

Lena couldn’t remember the last time someone asked her to stay in bed. Years. Possibly lifetimes. She hadn’t thought of much else suddenly, other than the missing from her life that Kara seemed to represent. Every time something different happened, she remembered that she couldn’t remember having something good.

“Will you at least change?”

“Will you stay?” Kara challenged, yawning again. They went from splitting the bed three to one, to suddenly both occupying less than a fourth of it on Lena’s side. “I sleep better near you.”

Lena blushed at the answer. She couldn’t help it. As Kara burrowed slightly into her chin and pillow, she felt her own hands move closer.

“I’ll go to the gym after work,” Lena decided. “Let me get you clothes.”

“Fine,” Kara complained, turning over and flopping her arms out wide once again dramatically.

With the small victory, Lena hurried before the super strength could change its mind. She dug through the half dark before tossing them on the end of the bed. In the bathroom, she dug for an extra toothbrush.

“Come on, go change,” she squeezed exposed ankle before hopping back in her warm bed. “I put a toothbrush out for you, too.”

Kara was already asleep again before Lena could nudge her awake.

Despite herself, she woke up and rolled toward the edge before beginning to tug at the suit, fighting it off right there in the almost dark of the bedroom. Lena swallowed and told herself to look away, but she couldn’t.

And so she stared at strong back, and she gulped before closing her eyes and digging into the pillow as Kara slid on the shirt she was instructed to wear. It wasn’t until the water was running in the dark bathroom that Lena thought about breathing again. Six hours of post-work gym, she decided before Kara slid back, this time joining her under the covers.

“Am I allowed to have a sleepover now?” Kara complained again, clearly upset about the inconvenience of changing into comfortable clothes that smelled like her soulmate.

“Do you feel better?”

“I do.”

“Can I… ask you something?”

“Can it be after I sleep more than forty-five minutes?” she yawned, wide and big like a lion roaring, tugging the blankets up to her chin.

“Sure.”

Even tired, Kara knew that Lena would bottle it up and never bring it up again. Even with lethargy attacking her joints and muscles, Kara sighed and shifted closer and finally opened her eyes near the CEO, finally made out her shape in the pre-dawn.

“Sorry, please ask away.”

In a familiar move, she tilted Lena’s chin up, pressed her palm to her jaw and neck and ran her thumb along her cheek. It was easy to sleep with Lena, as she slept pretty normally, all on one side and barely moving in the night. It left Kara lots of room to flop about, though she always found herself shifting closer. It was impossible not to do it.

“Sleep,” Lena closed her eyes this time.

“Please, ask.”

Kara could feel her debate. It was quiet and intimate and they were just them, something each almost craved.

“I like being your friend,” Lena started. “But I think. I mean. If you think. We could. We should go on a date.”

“We haven’t yet?”

“Dates end with a kiss or in bed..”

“What are we doing right now.”

“No, like. In bed, bed,” she insisted. “You know. Naked.”

“We can get naked.”

“Kara.”

“I thought we were dating.”

“Oh, yeah, okay well. Sure then.”

“Take me on a date, officially, whenever you want, Luthor,” she yawned, hiding in her own shoulder. “But I don’t just hop in bed with anyone.”

Lena snorted and rolled her eyes. It didn’t stop Kara from shifting closer, from holding her still. She felt her nose against her own, she felt her breath on her lips. There was a distinct pause before she did it, a moment that could have been a long, long time, though it felt much quicker than it could have been.

The first instant that Lena felt Kara’s lips, her eyes went wide before her body tensed. It was soft and simple and set her on fire in the worst kind of way. Her hand pressed against ribs that were in her old shirt. Kara hesitated, orbiting her for a moment before kissing her again, this time Lena relaxed into it, kissed her back, pushed her hip slightly and pressed her body against her because it was all she wanted to do for weeks now.

“Golly,” Kara finally whispered.

“We can do that more often.”

“You check me out naked once, and then you just want to make out with me all the time,” Kara smiled, victoriously.

“I didn’t… I haven’t… I mean. I check you out often.”

“Good to know.”

“Kara, what are we doing?”

There was worry there, where Lena didn’t know how to be strong and confident in her personal life. No one got to see it. Not one person did because she was always sure because she didn’t take risks. Not real risks. Not anything that was terrifying. Not anything like Kara.

“Dating. I thought you were supposed to be a genius.”

“Our order is all messed up.”

“I don’t care at all. I’ve wanted to kiss you for so long.”

“Sleep.”

“Do you want to kiss more?” she grinned.

Lena chuckled and kissed Kara’s nose before rolling over, tugging the arm around her as a blanket. Lips pressed against her shoulder and neck before a nose found a spot and she felt Kara relax and melt into her back.

“What time do you have to be at work?” Len asked.

“Nine.”

“So wake you up about eight thirty?”

“Best alarm clock yet.”

“Thanks for coming, Kara.”

“Thanks for telling me to duck.”

It was the worst day. It was the worst, worst day. It was the day that wouldn’t end and made Kara want to punch things, which was a rarity. Normally, she got enough punching that happened naturally to assuage any urges. But this day. The worst day, nothing could satisfy her need to punch things and not be frustrated.

Through she prided herself on an even keel for the most part, at least in general, something about the day just riled her to no end. And it wasn’t even mostly her fault.

There was the sour milk in her cereal, which she took some blame in, having spent too many nights at the hotel and not enough to remember groceries. Fine, okay, not the worst. There was the iron ruining her favorite shirt. Again, not the worst, but an irritation. There was not having many clean clothes, again, a byproduct of her own choice to enjoy room service in a penthouse with a pretty girl who did this thing with her tongue when she kissed her neck… again. Not the worst.

But they kept adding up.

The shower with no hot water. The shoelace that broke. The train derailment she had to fix. The robbery that made her late to work and got her covered in honey for some reason, which meant another cold shower and another try at finding clean clothes.

And then she lost her phone. And then her coffee order was wrong. And cold.

And then she got yelled at by Snapper.

And then again by J’onn.

All before lunch, which got interrupted by a stupid high speed chase which meant her favorite lunch was cold by the time she got back, and for the life of her, Kara wasn’t even hungry.

And that was how the day went. It was a series of just crap the piled up atop here, where she couldn’t do anything right.

It was probably a curse, she assumed as she walked down the sidewalk, her feet leading her away from work, her bag clutched over a shoulder, the strap broken and tied to the holder after the poor clasp got stuck on a door handle.

It was definitely a curse, she sighed as the rain came in a tumult, drenching the city in an instant. As drops bounced from her glasses, she stared up and asked Rao what she’d possibly done to deserve a day such as this day. Her only answer was a grumble of thunder.

But there was a feeling she got when her shoes sloshed down the familiar hall to a newly familiar penthouse, freshly rebuilt and finally deemed livable by the city after the fire. Just back for a few days, Kara had shown up with a stuffed duck in a cape and a cactus as a housewarming present. She earned a kiss and then dinner, cooked fresh for her by a girl who couldn’t stop talking about how she’d tracked her brother’s funds and was figuring him out and how to shut it down. There was lots of computer talk in there, but Kara listened eagerly.

The memory warmed her as she raised her hand to knock and finally just opened it as Lena had told her to do.

“Hey, Lena, I have had the absolute worst,” she threw her bag down, “day, of all,” she nearly tripped as she tugged off her shoes, leaving the sopping pile by the door, “time. Seriously. No one in the world has had a worst day.”

Hair matted from the rain, bottle of wine dripping, clothes heavy and sticky, Kara made her way inside and waited to hear a response, but got nothing.

“Did I mention it’s been terrible? And I’m all wet and you can see my muscles? You like that.”

Kara hugged and grumbled. There was no way Lena was still at the office. She had a rule, to leave by a certain time, or else she wouldn’t leave, and that wasn’t what she wanted. Kara liked that rule.

“I should have expected this,” she finally grumbled, put the wine down on the counter and making her way down the hall toward one of the guest bathrooms to find a towel.

The worst day continued.

Until she found herself following a familiar sound of soft music and a keyboard typing.

Kara stopped in the doorway and smiled, leaning there as she toweled her hair. There it was– the breath, the ease, the peace. Still clad in leggings and an old tank top from the gym, her hair was a messy bun and flyaways, but she was darn mesmerizing.

Lena didn’t hear. She was locked in, chewing on a pencil as she squinted and furrowed and typed. It gave the grumpy hero a moment to remember good parts.

Despite the bad day, despite everything else, Kara let her be because even though she would hide it, Lena would be grumpy she was interrupted. Instead, Kara snuck into the master bedroom and dug for clothes.

There was the bright side. Because there was still honey residue and rain seeping into her, she got to take a shower in Lena’s monstrosity of a shower with about twelve thousand nozzles and settings and it felt like a human car wash, which was somehow better than it sounded.

Then, there was the clothes she got to steal. She elected to grab the old MIT sweatshirt and shorts. It was nice and cozy and worn in and her’s now.

There was the day being washed away and her starting over again as she went into the kitchen and ordered food after discovering that there was no food.

It wasn’t the worst day, Kara decided as she opened her laptop and re-started her work that Snapper labeled hideous trash. It was close, but slowly upturning. And by the time to food arrived, she’d found a good movie on television and rewrote a few paragraphs.

“Kara?” Lena furrowed as she finally made her way down the hall at the noise of the delivery man knocking.

“Hey,” she smiled. “I didn’t want to interrupt…”

“I’m so happy!” she yelped, tossing her arms around Kara’s neck, becoming a koala somehow, though she never knew herself capable of such a feat.

“Usually I’m the only one who gets this excited about the delivery guy.”

She tried to hold the thing wrapping itself around her, but her hands were full of bags. Still, Kara tried to hug her back.

“When did you get here?”

“Um, maybe an hour and a half ago?”

“You should have said something.”

It was hard to take her serious as Lena wrapped her legs around her waist, but Kara chuckled at the notion, moving them toward the kitchen where she placed the bags and properly held her soulmate up. It didn’t hurt that it was by her butt.

Upturning, indeed.

“You were hard at work. I know our hard at work face,” Kara explained. “You look like a beaver, gnawing on a pencil, and I did say something, but you didn’t hear.”

“Still.”

“Still,” she mimicked, earning a smile and finally a kiss. “You taste like pencil.”

“I’m not a beaver.”

“Okay. Sure.”

“I don’t care. I figured it out,” Lena sighed, all bliss and relief until she looked at what her fingers were touching. “Is this my sweatshirt?”

“It’s mine now,” Kara shrugged.

“Ah, okay.”

“Anyway, you solved it?”

“I solved it.”

“You’re kind of sweaty for solving something.”

“I was at the gym, and I don’t know, I get in a trance somehow. Just calming and working out and then it hits me,” she explained excitedly, her words spilling out quickly.

“It hits you.”

“It hits me,” she nods seriously, much to Kara’s amusement.

She could have said anything and the hero wouldn’t have minded. She had her hands on Lena’s butt and she had a girl wrapped around herself, and she had just lots of distracted thoughts about the tanktop and Lena’s lips. Nothing else really mattered.

“He isn’t using funds at all. It’s untraceable because he is creating fake funds somehow and passing them off as real accounts.”

“Right, of course,” Kara nodded, not sure what was happening.

“It’s like a virus. He is creating the illusion. Like a pop up ad. It’s phantom bank accounts that when connected to another bank account, infect it and create a new layer that hides the regular account. Camouflage for real information behind what he wants people to see, which is him giving them money for services. When in reality, they aren’t.”

So matter of a factly Lena explained it, that Kara almost kind of understood or tried to keep up, though she still had trouble liking anything more than Lena in leggings.

“So how do you stop someone with unlimited funds and a perfect network?” Lena asked rhetorically.

“I have no idea.”

“You build a patch. It’s like when your phone updates its operating system for bugs that appear. So I just had to build a patch, hack the secure servers of a few places you wouldn’t have approved me hacking,” Lena smiled sheepishly, “And then pulling back the curtain and pulling open the curtain to reveal the trick.”

“Rao, you are so doggone smart, and it’s so sexy.”

“Oh yeah?”

It actually surprised Lena to hear that reaction. It wasn’t often she got encouraged with her academic endeavors. Everything was always not good enough. But to be called sexy for her brainpower was nice. Unexpected and nice.

“I thought just seeing you hard at work and in gym clothes was enough, but golly.”

“Kara, this is the best day,” she grinned. “I got him.”

“Who?”

“What?”

“Who did you get?”

“Lex! Who do you think? I cut off his money scheme. He’s broke, and now everyone he’s dealt with will know it.”

“You did what?” Kara balked, dropping Lena slightly until her feet touched the ground again.

“What’s wrong?”

“Lena, he’s a criminal who literally tried to blow you up. Like not in a little bomb kind of way, but as in a hired mercenaries who shot multiple rocket launchers at you,” she explained, shaking her head. “You can’t just cut off his scheme and think he’ll be okay with it.”

“Why not?” she huffed, hands on her hips.

“The rocket launchers, Lena!”

“Don’t raise your voice at me, Kara.”

She said it so calmly, and so measured, that Kara knew it was a trap, knew that she’d lost before she started, but she couldn’t stop the train on the tracks this time around.

“This is great. This is the worst daggum day of the year,” she crossed her arms. “You are poking a bear. A rocket wielding bear, and your skin doesn’t like fire and explosions. In fact your body is very averse to them.”

“I saw an opportunity and I took it. Anything I can do to hurt him is a win.”

“Except you cut off his money. You made him desperate, and no doubt you made him a few enemies from the people he was ripping off.”

“Good,” she smirked.

“No! It’s not!” Kara groaned again, tossing her hands up. She turned around and paced a little, her hands moving though no words wanted to escape her throat. “Lena, he’s dangerous. And you just gave him another reason to want you not alive.”

“Yeah?”

“He went underground again! We haven’t had a trace of him in like three weeks! And you decide this is the best? Make him a laughing stock in front of his criminal buddies so he can just lash out at the only punching bag he’s ever known to take it?”

“So what?”

“So what? Are you kidding me? You can’t barrel through things, head first, darn the consequences to heck!”

“Wow, the mouth on this girl,” she taunted, sarcasm a much better defense.

All the CEO could do was wonder how they went from exciting butt touching and making out and successfully putting a dent in her brother’s plan, to suddenly fighting. Kara walked a few steps before turning around and tensing. Everything about her was tense and angry and so greatly chained within her own body. Lena could see her tearing at the seams.

“Lena. I am astoundingly, ridiculously, infuriatingly in love with you, and you can’t just antagonize a mass murdering psychopath who wants to kill you. I already have two full time jobs. And you’re quickly becoming a third.”

Seething, Kara finally stopped moving, though her shoulders echoed her words and wavered with the rant. Lena stared at her, torn between fight and flight. At the moment, she was torn between a lot of things.

“He’s going to come after you again,” Kara finally sighed. “He’s going to know it was you and what if he gets close? That’s not… we talked about–”

The words don’t make it. As much as Kara was trying to be reasonable after the outburst, she didn’t seem capable of talking when Lena kissed her like that, all rough and there and overwhelming.

“This is serious,” Kara pulled away once she figured herself out.

Her head swirled around with a kiss like that and her anger all swirling around in her mouth at the same time.

“I know.”

“Will you stop fighting him?” Kara tried.

“No. It’s my job to finish it.”

Both set their jaws and waited, though it was a losing kind of battle on both sides. Lena relaxed her grip on the sleeves on her sweatshirt a little bit.

“Why did you kiss me?”

“You said you loved me,” Lena squinted slightly, cocking her head.

“I did?”

“Somewhere between yelling at me and pacing around, yeah.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“The yelling or the….”

“The love part,” Kara furrowed. “I can’t believe it. It’s only been like… no. I shouldn’t have. Okay. It doesn’t. I didn’t mean to just– What I mean is–”

“Stop.”

Gratefully, Kara snapped her mouth shut.

“I’m keeping this sweatshirt.”

There were hands knitted in the sweatshirt. Kara’s hands were still crossed in front of her own chest as she tried to understand how it all happened, how her day ended up like this.

“That’s fine,” Lena promised.

Kara simply nodded for a moment, refusing to look at green eyes, she focused instead on the hands on her arms, the body near her. That was safer.

“You are strong. And you are smart,” she started, calm and precise. “You are one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met, and I’m not just saying that because you said a word to me that happened to be on my skin. But we’re a team, you know? I can’t do my part, the whole shielding damsels from infernos and bullets, part, without some warning and some planning. This isn’t just you going up against him, as much as you want to think it is. And you don’t have to do that anymore. And that’s okay.”

“I know. I just… I got very excited. My brain just clicked, and it all flew out of my fingers,” Lena shook her head softly. “I don’t know how I got home, honestly. And then I had to make sure it worked, and so I had to try it.”

“I got us dinner.”

“Thank you.”

“Maybe you could stay at mine, when I’m not around,” Kara ventured. “Just to make me feel a bit better.”

“Are you inviting over?”

“I’m very sorry I yelled.” The puppy eyes were in full effect as Kara placed her hands on Lena’s hips. “I didn’t… I don’t like to yell like that. It wasn’t at you. It was about you. But about me. I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“I consider anything short of laser beams a fairly even fight.”

“I don’t want you to not tell me things because you think I’ll yell.”

“You might yell.”

“Like you never yell,” she pfft’d.

“PIss me off and find out, Danvers,” Lena smiled, taunting her as best she could.

“No thank you.”

“Good choice.”

The food sat on the counter, waiting to be eaten while the two in the living room waited and debated and thought. Lena leaned her whole body forward until her nose dug into Kara’s shoulder, until she felt arms around her shoulders, keeping her tight and close. Lips met the crown of her head and she smiled in that little win.

“I had the worst day today,” Kara confessed. “It still has been better since I got here.”

“I kind of thought we were about to… you know.”

“Wait, what?” she gulped.

“You’re the one that wanted to fight because I have Luthor tendencies to just shoot first and ask questions later,” Lena shrugged.

“No, let’s go back,” Kara begged, lifting Lena up and earning a loud laugh at the quick adjustment. “You look very cute in your workout clothes.”

“Are you going to make a sweaty innuendo?”

“No…” she tried. “Yes.”

Lena couldn’t help herself. She kissed the girl that lifted her like it was nothing, that her legs currently wrapped themselves around for the second time in under an hour.

“Let’s eat. I want to hear about your bad day.”

“Ugh, no. Let’s do more kissing.”

“Will that help?”

Eagerly, Kara nodded.

“After dinner then.”

“Fine,” she sighed.

“Good girl.”

That was new. Kara gulped.

Chapter Text

The day was rushing toward its end, with the city eager to quit. The sun slunk low, weaving between tall buildings while the headlights and streetlights clicked on in choreographed tempo. High above it all, the CEO pondered too much and focused on her work too little.

She was simultaneously dating Supergirl and spunky, goody-two-shoes reporter Kara Danvers. Both were a lot of work. Both didn’t feel like it at all. And while her life was better and perhaps more enjoyable than it’d ever been, and though she felt more normal, more loved, more natural in her own skin, there was still this hideous, dark creature gnawing at her insides, just beneath the surface.

There was a difference in Lena Luthor, and she knew it the moment she met Kara, despite her best efforts to hide away from it. They were just normal, and that was easy. Kara made her feel hopeful, which was foreign and addicting. But still there was the Luthor Curse, unacknowledged and worrisome.

“Jess, do you believe in karma?” Lena asked, leaning against her desk, back to the door, face toward the windows and the city just outside them.

“Not this again,” the assistant mumbled.

“Sorry, what?”

“I said in some ways I do,” she lied.

Lena pursed her lips and cocked her head as she surveyed the world, her head busy with a few different thoughts, though one primarily outweighed the rest. It spurred forth this ramble of a conversation.

Across the room on the couch, Jess typed on her tablet, only occasionally sneaking a peak at the form of her boss who remained statuesque against her desk.

Things had done so many loops since she’d last asked that question, the Jess wasn’t even sure where to start, or where this preoccupation with the idea of karma was going to take them this time, but she was there for the ride.

Now, her boss was happy. Not the fake kind of happy she tried to make herself out to be for so long, but an actual kind of happy that meant pondering and dreaming and thinking and enjoying herself. Jess liked that she now stuck to her pretend rule of leaving work at a reasonable hour. She liked that Kara would sneak in, give Jess a wink, and kidnap her boss for hours when given a chance. She even liked that there was a plus one to the boring dinners Lena always seemed to dread, and she didn’t mind them as much.

Things were very different.

“Do you think you can do enough good acts to really earn some good karma in a lifetime that seemed almost destined for complete ruin?”

“Well, I don’t quite know the payment formula for Karma.”

“I should read up on it a bit.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s just that soulmates exist, right?” she nodded to herself, as if she were writing out a problem on the board. “And we blindly accept it because there is some fate involved. So how much of life is written out. Do two people have the same words? Surely there must be about a million people with the word ‘hello’ written there. And if my life is set, what happened to free will?”

“No offense, but you’re getting a little off the reservation and over both of our expertise on the subject.”

“I know,” she nodded, crossing her arms and tilting her head to the otherside. She paused for a beat as Jess looked back down at her tablet and finished adjusting a few things. “I think I’m in love, Jess. And I’m trying to figure out my karmic debt. I have a feeling a girl like Kara costs a pretty cosmic penny.”

Despite herself, Jess smiled at the admission and the business-like manner her boss approached something as organic and lovely as a soulmate and love. Finally, she stood and tucked her tablet in her arm, no longer interested in it.

“It’s not like you’re a bad person.”

“Thank you, but I’m not so sure.”

“You’re a person who was surrounded by bad people,” Jess explained. “There’s a difference, and I’m fairly certain the universe can differentiate.”

“Maybe,” Lena smiled softly and agreed.

“No matter what you call it, I think as long as you try to live well, you get good back. What you put out, you get back.”

“Maybe I’m complicating it.”

“Maybe you’re focusing on the wrong thing,” the assistant ventured. “Maybe it’s the love thing that’s really bothering you.”

“Yeah, I suspect that’s closer to the truth.”

“So you love her?”

“Yeah,” Lena nodded. “I’m not sure what or how or why, but yeah. I really do.”

“Well, why do you think you do?” Jess tried.

“Oh come on, Jess,” she snorted. “Have you seen her? She’s sunshine and happiness and she has these muscles everywhere.”

“Kara? No way.”

“I swear,” Lena added eagerly, turning around finally. “She’s got the personality of someone who doesn’t believe the world can be bad, and yet has the body of a… god. I don’t know.”

“Welp, that makes sense about why you love her.”

“You think?”

“I do.”

“I think you probably earn a bit of karma for dealing with me,” she chuckled.

“Yeah, I think so,” Jess teased.

“Hey,” Kara peeked her head into the office. “Sorry, Jess wasn’t– oh, there she is! Hi Jess.”

“Hello, Ms. Danvers.”

“I was on my way home and realized it was close to quitting time for you,” the newest addition wagered. “I have some stuff tonight, but thought a quick dinner? I have some amazing veggies from the farmer’s market last weekend.”

It was in that moment, as with all of them before, that Jess realized how her boss could imagine that ray of sunshine who shopped local and probably used reusable grocery bags and recycled could be too good for her alleged karmic debt. Even her smile was like a gum commercial. And her hair looked so soft. Jess was certain Kara wasn’t real half of the time. Hell, she was the legend that survived being Cat Grant’s assistant, and that took whatever was a step above tenacity.

The two coworkers shared a glance and a smile, both thinking the same thing, about how Kara just lived up to her stereotypes as perfection, much to their own enjoyment.

“Nothing else on the schedule tonight,” Jess promised. “I’ll have some files sent over for revision in a bit.”

“Aw, great, thank you, Jess,” Kara grinned. “You’re welcome to join us if you don’t have plans.”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

“Next time.”

“Kara, honey, could you do me a favor?” Lena interrupted, nudging her head at her secretary to wait. “Could you put this box up for me at the top of this closet?”

“Yeah, of course,” she nodded.

Lena helped pull out a chair and dutifully Kara slipped off her blazer and rolled up her sleeves before lifting the impossibly heavy box that two men took to get down. The CEO shot her secretary a glance, as if to shout at her, SEE?, though with a bit of a smirk. Jess was wide-eyed.

“Thanks,” she smiled sweetly and kissed Kara.

“Yeah, of course, anything else?”

“Jess, anything you need help with?” Lena offered.

“Nope. I’m fine. Thank you.”

“Perfect,” Kara smiled, oblivious and loped and content. “Do you have to finish some stuff up?”

“No, I think I’m done,” Lena decided. Kara reached for Lena’s coat first and helped her into it chivalrously. “Just have those sent over to Kara’s, Jess?”

“Of course, Ms. Luthor.”

“Thanks Jess,” Kara offered. “Have a good night.”

Hand in hand, they two retreated toward the elevator as the assistant followed them out, ready to complete a few more things before leaving. She smiled as they disappeared, and despite her boss’ apprehension regarding fate and the like, she watched Lena kiss Kara’s cheek for no reason at all before the reporter leaned down again, her smile inflating her cheeks, to deepen it as the doors closed.

If karma was a force, then Jess decided Lena must not have been that bad in past lives to earn a person like that.

“I need to talk to you,” Kara decided as she made her way into the office.

All manner of personnel manned the desk and the brain of the DEO. None looked up as Supergirl strode in with no introduction or warning. But she walked with more purpose than usual, and as if she were on a mission of the highest importance.

“I don’t want to hear about how pretty Lena was at lunch or on a walk in the park or when you wake up every morning,” Alex droned as she tapped a few things on her sidewalk.

“She has a deathwish and I need you to find and arrest Lex Luthor right now.”

“Arrest… Lex… Huh,” she furrowed and ran her hand against her jaw as she thought over the proposition. “Arrest him. That simple. Wow. If only I’d considered that before. I better call J’onn. He’s going to want to hear this idea.”

“I’m serious.”

“Kara, what do you think we all do, all day,” Alex gestured to all of the people doing all of the work. “We’re trying our best.”

The argument did nothing to make Kara feel better, but she realized how ridiculous she sounded, and relaxed slightly at her sisters mocking. With a defeated sigh, she hung her head and closed her eyes as she shook it, trying to keep it together and failing. Frustration and ineffectiveness bubbled up through her blood until it flooded her body.

It didn’t help that the past few weeks she’d spent falling deeper in love with Lena. It didn’t help that she could feel this split in Lena, about her family and her soulmate. It weighed heavily, this feeling of duty and of hope, so much so that Kara could feel Lena deciding things, planning things, preparing, as it was.

“Something’s coming, and I can’t let anything happen to her,” she finally muttered, low and fearful. “I love her too much.”

“Oh, Kara,” her sister sighed, slowly wrapping her arms around the hero’s shoulders. “I know.”

“I’m just so tired of everything being terrible.”

“We’ll figure it out. We always do.”

“You never told me how terrible it was going to be, to be in love,” Kara accused, slightly hurt at the realization. “It’s like you’re always afraid and worried and missing them. When she’s not around, it feels like I’m holding my breath.”

“Yeah, those are all things that happen,” Alex smiled and hugged her sister harder. “But it’s part of it. Plus, I think it’s a little magnified with dating a Luthor.”

Despite herself, Kara smiled and softened.

“I have a Luthor problem,” she realized.

“No,” her sister disagreed. “I have a Luthor problem. You just have a girlfriend problem.”

With a groan, Kara leaned forward and let her forehead clunk onto the table in the middle of the DEO headquarters.

“She’s got a deathwish and it’s exhausting.”

“And you think she doesn’t say the same thing about dating Supergirl?”

The realization only slowly dawned, that perhaps Kara was more work to date. She didn’t like it though.

“Mmhmm,” Lena hummed and leaned back in her chair. She ran her hand along her neck to ease some of the tension that started to form despite her best efforts.

The rain was just a drizzle outside, not even registering as a sound for her while the conference call continued. Absently, Lena doodled in the margin of her notepad and stared at the newspaper that remained unopened in front of her.

The headline said enough.

LEX LUTHOR ESCAPES FBI SURVEILLANCE

Surely the article that followed would have nothing of importance. That was enough. The fact that he was unaccounted for was more than enough.

“Thank you, Jerry. Well allocate some time for that during the next meeting,” Lena sighed and pushed the paper away.

Already the call had lasted longer than she would have wanted, but restlessly, she allowed herself to be anchored to her desk, and she bore the waste of time because it was better than the alternative of thinking too much about having something to lose, and for the first time in her life being afraid of her brother.

“Send my love to Donna, will you?” she smiled as the call ended. “Mmhmm, I will. We’ll talk soon. Mmhmm. Goodnight.”

That was almost an hour of her life she’d never get back. But with a sigh, Lena tossed her pen on her desk and turned her chair to the weather and the world. Her mind wondered ceaselessly toward her brother, but it veered in conjunction with a certain bespectacled reporter.

Her soulmate was everything she never allowed herself to hope for, and Lena was beyond happy. Never had anything felt so innate and good. That little twitch of fear twanged in her chest as she thought about missing any time with Kara. Once, she’d been accused of having a death wish, and it wasn’t until now that Lena realized she might have had one.

“Never let Jerry through again so close to the quarterly,” Lena muttered as she heard her door open, making her swivel back towards real life. “He’s okay in small doses, but a real worrier. Which I don’t understand. This company could go under tomorrow and he’d have more money than he would know what to do with.”

“I have a soft spot for him,” Jess reminded her boss as she approached with a vase of beautiful flowers. “He’s the only one who is actually nice to me.”

“Still.

Jess sat down the flowers and picked up the untouched paper from her bosses’ desk, quickly tucking it under her arm.

“These came about an hour ago. Card’s on top.”

“Did you read it?”

It was a quiet question, one that Jess understood as the slight worry about the escaped murdering brother. There really wasn’t a time when Jess didn’t read Lena’s mail though, and both knew it.

“I didn’t have to,” Jess grinned and grabbed Lena’s coffee cup as well. “They were hand delivered by a certain someone who very much wanted to interrupt your call, but wouldn’t admit it.”

“Why didn’t you tell her to come in?”

“I did,” she chuckled. “She refused.”

She was cute. Lena was in love with someone who was cute enough to stop by and not want to interrupt her at work, but also who brought flowers, just because. There was a little glow that started at the base of her heart and kind of spread, warming her entirely with just the thought of Kara.

Dinner tonight? XO- a duck

Lena grinned as she tapped the card against her chest before sniffing the flowers.

“Golly,” Lena sighed to herself. “She’s spectacular, huh?”

“Listen, I am all aboard the Luthor-Danvers train,” Jess rolled her eyes as she made her way back outside. “But I can’t spend another five minutes mooning over Kara.”

“I can.”

“Yes, yes, I know.”

“She’s my favorite person ever.”

“Let’s finish this up because you have a three o’clock. Kara’s beautiful and smart and funny and thoughtful and she does this really cute face when she does things blah blah. I’m in love with her and I can’t tell her blah blah.”

“I pay you to talk to me like this, don’t I?” Lena cocked her head and tried not to laugh.

“Oh yeah, a lot.”

“I thought so.”

The penthouse was finished, rebuilt and repurposed better than ever. There were loving additions added courtesy of Kara’s insistence and worry. Lena reworked the security system and accepted the metal from the DEO to make a strong, explosive proof door. She had a picture of the two of them on the fridge.

The thing was, Lena spent only a few weeks living in the penthouse before the threat was too much, and before Kara insisted that it wasn’t safe. And that was how she ended up turning her key in Kara’s apartment with a bunch of flowers in her arm.

Dinner filled the cozy apartment with a comforting smell. For a moment, Lena thought about life, or what life could be with Kara. This was her life. She was someone who had a dinner date and an apartment that felt lived-in. Her life had been a literal explosion of amess, her brother tried to kill her a few times, and yet she got to crawl onto the couch sometimes with a fit blonde girl who liked to kiss her neck.

Music played softly as an aproned girl stirred something on the stove.

“It smells so good in here, darling.”

“You got my note,” Kara smiled, grinning huge and big and surprised and breathless, as if she never expected to see Lena again.

“I did,” Lena returned it, dropping her things and kicking off her shoes. She moved around the kitchen to kiss her girlfriend. “Thank you for the flowers.”

“I saw them on the way and knew you had to have them.”

“Had to,” she mimicked, kissing her sweetly with a smile. “You should have interrupted my call. I would have welcomed it.”

“This was more romantic though.”

“I’m the dramatic one in this relationship, Kara. You know this already. Wine?”

“You must be rubbing off on me,” Kara decided as she expertly flipped the delicious smelling something in the pan.

Lena moved around her, pouring them glasses and taking her seat on the stool, watching the display of domestic excellence unfold. None of it felt performative, bu rather just normal. It was something that she imagined a show would have, or a scene from a movie. There weren’t any moments from her childhood to really look back on and equate it too, and thus for Lena, it felt a myth.

But she sat and sipped and asked her girlfriend about her day while she cooked a delicious meal for them to share with candles and music and nothing else to do but enjoy each other. It seemed bonkers, but it was real.

Halfway through dinner though, the real world imposed itself.

“I thought you were off tonight,” Lena sighed as Kara’s phone let out a familiar ring that corresponded specifically with her second job of protecting the planet.

“I am,” Kara hurred, giving Lena a sad from. “I’m sorry. It must be really urgent–”

“Go ahead, darling.”

“I’m sorry, I am.”

Lena waved her off and sipped her wine. She knew the perils of dating a superhero. It didn’t make her immune to her annoyance with it from time to time, but she always remembered that she was the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company who frequently worked too much and made too little time for a real life. Sometimes it helped to remember that she was the difficult one in the relationship, and sometimes it felt good to be the good one.

“There’s a big radiation leak over in the mountains,” Kara explained as she tossed her phone down and began digging for her suit. “I’m sorry, but I have to–”

“Dinner was lovely. But you have work, and I can distract myself with work. Thank you.”

Speedy as she was, Lena snagged Kara and kissed her for just a moment.

“You’re going back in just because I’m going back in?” Kara almost whined. “You should just stay here and rest. Relax, drink more wine. I should be home–”

“You’ll be out until tomorrow,” Lena shook her head and grabbed her coat. “But if I work when you work, we can have a whole day off together. I can go in, get ahead on some calls with the time change in my favor.”

“You’re downright gorgeous when you try to take a day off with me.”

Arms wound around her hips, making Lena pause as she tugged on her coat. Lips met her jaw and her neck and her cheek. Arms wrapped around her, keeping her safe and warm and still and she never wanted to move.

“You should see how I look when I thank someone for cooking me dinner.”

There it was; the gulp. Lena didn’t have to look to see the blush that would go with it, but she loved earning it.

“I can’t wait. Can I give you a lift into work?”

Fully clad in her uniform, Supergirl now stood in the living room, offering a ride like it was ordering an Uber.

“I’ll call Peter. Thanks though.”

“One day you’ll take me up on it,” Kara grinned, finally stepping away and freeing her girlfriend. “Don’t stay up too late. I’m sorry I have to go. I’ll make it up to you.”

“Nothing to make up. Dinner was perfect. Now go get’em, tiger,” Lena smiled warmly.

With a final surge forward, she kissed Kara, long and deep and in a way that made her own head fuzzy.

“Golly,” Kara whispered as she pulled away, oddly stupefied because she forgot that Lena could do something like that at the drop of a hat.

“Duck.”

The city was a warzone. Chaos erupted, but not in the office at the top of the highest building in the skyline. No, at the top of the LCorp building, Lena Luthor sat and waited for the inevitable conclusion that’d been approaching since the second her brother escaped.

Somewhere between her wonderful dinner date and the kiss that felt like a solid last kiss, if it came to that, and her present predicament, the sky began to fall. Perhaps the sky was the only thing still intact. But whatever Lex was planning was currently exhausting all heroes, and still left the city as a warzone with little else than the noise of guns and explosions peppering the sky.

The vague news reports said he had an army. An army of what, they weren’t as certain.

She thought about Kara though, and how much she wanted to kiss her again, to keep trying to make it more and more perfect, just for her, until it was the best kiss that anyone had ever experienced. If she cracked it, perhaps she wouldn’t feel guilty about dying.

“I believe you’re in my seat, little sister.”

Lena felt her heart thud as soon as the voice began.

“I believe you’re a wanted man, and we don’t allow felons the board.”

She turned the chair away from the rain, away from the city outside, and she stared at the man she thought she’d never see before. Like a ghost, her brother took a step forward, nearly gliding across the floor until he was in the light cast only by the lamp on her desk.

“You grew up,” Lex realized as he met his little sister’s face.

“You didn’t,” she sassed, leaning back in her chair, faux confidence in her bones. He smiled at her barb.

“I need to know if you knew.”

“Knew what, Lex?”

“Did you know that Supergirl was your soulmate?”

For a moment, she watched him grip the gun a little tighter and focus it on her again as he waited for an answer. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the answer he wanted, and so she stood and walked toward the drinks.

“Would you like one? It’s that bourbon you like.”

“Answer me, Lena.”

“I’ve known for a few months,” she explained before turning around and looking back at eyes she couldn’t forget. “It’s going well. She cooked me dinner tonight. Paella. And I stay at her place. I’m in love with her.”

“You’re a traitor.”

“I grew up, Lex,” Lena rolled her eyes and finished her drink, careful to put the cup back with a clink. “I took over this company, oversaw a magnificent growth in it, and I fixed what you and Father so lovingly fucked up. You’re the traitor.”

Blood boiling, the light shone hard on the angles of his face, dissecting him into wild, fiery pieces as he took a step forward.

Lena stared at her brother, refusing to look at the gun he had locked on her chest. She was going to look him in the eye when she died. That was always a fact she just never felt the need to consider until this moment. It was the answer, the content of her character. For a moment, she smiled and thought about Kara, and her angry face when Lena did these stupid things. It was one of her favorite faces, Lena recalled. It was the one that showed how deeply she cared and worried.

And for that, the CEO was sorry.

“I loved you. You were my family,” Lex said between clenched teeth. “But you chose them. You chose weakness, and I can’t allow it.”

“I know you can’t understand this, but I hope one day you remember this,” Lena swallowed and took a step forward until the metal of the gun rested against her collar bone. “I love you. You are my brother. But I knew I lost you long ago. My brother isn’t going to kill me– this monster is.”

The words made him pause and think of his sister, the prominent brow furrowing with the thought before adjusting his grip on the gun once again, resolving himself to his mission.

“You die a traitor,” he decided, cocking it.

Lena toyed with the word on her wrist and closed her eyes with a small smile playing at her lips. She could hear the rain beating against the windows that surrounded them. She could hear the sound of the city so far below. For a moment, she imagined she could smell the sun on Kara’s skin on a picnic day on her balcony, and that was a kind of heaven.

A burst of lightning flashed across the dimly lit room. There was a long pause before a crack of thunder erupted so deep that it made Lena fall to the ground.

“She’s finally happy. Let her be happy!”

Certain she’d been shot, scared out of her mine and tasting the feeling of copper pennies in her mouth and her heart in her throat, Lena was certain she was dead. But the words echoed in her head and she clutched at her chest, waiting for the pain.

There were stories of mothers who lifted cars and people who walked miles with their organs in their hands, purely from adrenaline. Lena never experienced it like that, but she thought she’d been injected with pure life.

“Lena, are you okay?” Jess asked, dropping the trophy from the Better Business Bureau that now dripped with her brothers blood.

“Am I?” Lena repeated, unable to form words.

She’d been almost murdered many times, but never had she felt so close to death. Her eyes drifted to her brother’s crumpled frame on the floor beside her. Blood began to pool below his head, though his chest still rose and fell to indicate that he was still alive.

Jess’ hands came next, though they’d been on her body for a moment already before Lena recognized them. All at once, she tried to touch all parts of her before remembering to breathe.

“You’re fine. You’re alive.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m very sure,” her secretary smiled and helped her sit up as she continued to exam all parts of her body. “No one kills Lena Luthor on my watch.”

“Thank goodness we won that award,” Lena nodded, nudging her chin at the heavy, glass item that exited purely in irony. “I sent you home four hours ago.”

“I left for a bit, but when everything started to happen– easy there–” Jess explained as she helped Lena to her feet. “I knew I was needed. I told you, where you are, I am.”

“Lena!” Kara’s voice echoed through the balcony a few seconds before the doors were ripped clean off their hinges. “Lena, are you okay? I flew here as soon… as… I… Jess.”

The storm swirled outside, and Kara stood there with the lightning illuminating her, making her a shadow. She looked to Jess and then to Lena , frantic and annoyed that she’d have to fill out more paperwork. Her sister would never forgive her for outing herself again.

“Kara, I forgot you were on the balcony… Um, I told you to wait there to be safe,” Lena tried, selling it better than any other lie Kara could ever come up with on the spot.

She pushed herself up from the floor as the hero rushed forward and helped her up, carefully checking her for any injuries.

On the ground, Lex Luthor grunted and breathed in a pool of blood, the wound on his head still bleeding from where Jess whacked him.

“I’ve known for months.”

“Known? Known what?” Kara furrowed and shook her head as she helped Jess up. “We should tie him up.”

“I’ll go find some, not-Supergirl.”

“I’m not…”

“I’ll have papers for you to fill out on Monday,” Lena rolled her eyes. “What? She knows. She always knows.”

“I don’t even care,” Kara shook her head and swallowed Lena into a big hug. “I don’t care. I don’t. Oh my goodness I was so afraid.”

Lena let Kara squeeze her harder than normal. She let her press themselves together until there was nothing else. She listened to Kara’s muttering and she relaxed into her chest, happy to have it one more time.

“I got here as soon as I could,” Kara explained, finally pulling away. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t get here sooner. I tried. I just–”

“I’m okay. I might have to give Jess a raise.”

“Please do.”

There was a second for Kara to finally catch her breath. She refused to let go of Lena though, because though she could catch her breath, she couldn’t believe she was still alive, she couldn’t believe that she almost lost her.

“If you don’t stop standing in front of guns and telling people to shoot you…” she shook her head and leaned her forehead against Lena’s. “You’re going to kill me, you know that, right?”

“Yeah,” Lena smiled and held onto her neck.

“As long as you know.”

Lena didn’t argue. She just kissed Kara.

The End