Work Text:
Readers, you voted, as you have every year since CATCO Magazine’s first run ten years ago, for your favorite celebrity couple to be profiled in our Valentine’s Day feature. This year’s choice, by an overwhelming margin, was the media-friendly pair Lena Luthor and Supergirl, known in internet parlance as Supercorp. We sat down with the couple in Lena Luthor’s Market District loft, to get their take on why people love them so much, how powerful women make time for romance, and what has kept them going strong for as long as they’ve been together.
CATCO: So, a Luthor and a Super. Seems a little counterintuitive on the surface.
Supergirl: Well, we stay out of our family’s squabbles. Also, I mean ... have you seen her?
Lena: (laughing) Please.
Supergirl: She’s too modest.
CATCO: And Supergirl, you’re certainly a bit of a sex symbol in your own right, aren’t you.
Supergirl: Am I? (laughs) I dunno.
CATCO: Well, I’m thinking of all the Instagram accounts devoted to loving closeups of your abs and so forth...
Lena: See? I told you. She doesn’t believe me.
CATCO: Don’t tell us that the amazing Supergirl has self-esteem issues?
Lena: Don’t we all?
Supergirl: No, listen. I think this is a unique cultural moment, you know? Ten or even five years ago, there was this idea that it was weird to view butch women as desirable and stuff. People’s attitudes are starting to change. I just never was in the habit of thinking of myself as sexy or anything like that.
Lena: You are, though.
Supergirl: You’re biased.
CATCO: Is it strange to find yourselves in this position of popularity with the public?
Lena: I’ve always been kind of stuck in the public eye, and usually because of something shady my family was doing. So, yeah, it is a little.
Supergirl: I don’t really think about it most of the time. We’re just too busy enjoying our life together.
CATCO: But surely you’re aware of the fan art... the fan fiction...
Lena: (blushing and laughing) Yes, some of it’s very ... um... it’s very good. Let’s leave it at that.
CATCO: You know of course, that you two are the first lesbian couple to be featured on the cover of CATCO’s Valentine’s Day issue. Want to weigh in on that?
Supergirl: Well, you know. It’s hard not to read into it and say that it represents some kind of progress. You know, that we’re not just everyone’s favorite gay couple, we’re just everyone’s favorite couple. And I can’t lie, that is kind of nice.
Lena: It’s certainly more accepted, being queer, than it was when I was a kid, but I don’t think I would ever have imagined it, to be honest.
CATCO: What do you think it is about you two that so transcends that very strong heteronormative impulse in our culture? In short, why do you think you two are so popular?
Supergirl: I think people know real love when they see it.
Lena: I also think people see us frequently giving and sacrificing and taking risks for each other in a very public way. I think any girl would look at what I’ve got with Supergirl and say, gosh, I wish I could find someone who would treat me that way. Whether it’s a man or a woman, or maybe they don’t even know what they want yet.
CATCO: And maybe an element of the star-crossed lovers defying the odds?
Lena: (snorts) What, because of our families? Let the boys beat up on each other if they insist. It’s not our problem.
Supergirl: Come on, don’t you think, though? I mean, I did crash land from space and through all the odds, ended up here, falling in love with someone from a family that has made life hard for my own family. People enjoy that kind of Romeo and Juliet stuff.
Lena: Or, Juliet and Juliet. Technically.
CATCO: And let’s not forget the sheer glamor of it all. People see pictures of you two sunbathing on your sailboat, Lena, or of Supergirl carrying you in her arms as she floats above the city, and they think...
Supergirl: They think, “that would be really nice if I didn’t get seasick and wasn’t afraid of heights!”
Lena: Jackass.
Supergirl: Come on. (laughs) Yeah, I guess they must. I don’t know, I think we try to remember to keep things romantic, even when we’re short on time.
CATCO: So tell us, Supergirl, what’s one thing that you do for Lena to keep the spark going even when you don’t have a lot of time?
Supergirl: I dunno, what romantic things do I do? Donuts?
Lena: Donuts. Yeah, she’ll drop in on my balcony if I’m working late, and bring me donuts.
Supergirl: Backrubs.
Lena: Oh, the fly-by backrubs. Yeah, those are amazing.
Supergirl: And you know, it’s just... you try to always do those little things. She’ll surprise me with stuff, too. Like, I’ll come home and she’ll have left a couple of takeout bags with sushi if she’s working late. Or a new suit upgrade. And if I’ve had a particularly tough rescue, she’ll come home and like, peel me out of my suit and get me into the bath, and wash my hair, and give me a real...
Lena: Pampering. It’s important. Especially the ice cream.
Supergirl: She knows. The Ben and Jerry’s is key to getting me out of a funk.
CATCO: What’s one thing that would surprise the world about Lena Luthor?
Supergirl: I...I don’t think I’m allowed to say. (laughs) She’s messy. She leaves papers all over the place.
CATCO: OK. And what’s one thing that would surprise the world about Supergirl?
Lena: Well, everyone thinks of her as super wholesome, but she’s actually a huge fan of Game of Thrones.
Supergirl: Excuse me. It’s called the Dragons and Boobs Hour.
CATCO: OK. So, any last words of advice you’d like to leave our readers with on how to keep the romance in a relationship?
Supergirl: Well, you’ve got to choose love. You’ve got to choose romance. It goes away because people let it go away.
Lena: We always make a little time for each other to have a positive conversation, even a short one, about something other than work or the house.
Supergirl: Talk. Touch. Thought. You have to keep some of that for each other all the time.
Lena: We both put a lot into it. We invest in each other, every day. It’s not complicated.
Supergirl: You get back what you put in.