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Kara Danvers was clumsy. She was a goof with slippery fingers, a tendency to be distracted and always looked like she was a few seconds away from walking into something. It was part of her charm, it was key to her illusion. It was how she flew under the radar, so to speak, of being noticed by anyone.
Supergirl, on the other hand, was none of these things. She had poise, balance, grace. She could catch a flying saucer with her bare hands and never miss a beat. She was the girl of steel and if she ran into something it was most likely because she got thrown there in a fight. She was so far outside of Kara Danvers day to day life that the two practically had nothing in common.
Except. Lena Luthor was not a stupid woman. And it’s possible that while she was not her brother or any other member of her family, she was still not a person to be crossed. She spent enough time with Kara Danvers to be able to recognize the qualities in her that made her Supergirl. She spent enough time around Supergirl to be able to see the things that were also part of Kara Danvers, all the more so when she began seeing Supergirl around Alex Danvers, Kara’s sister.
The line between point A and point B was not hard to draw and her anger was immediate, but her ultimate revenge was subtle.
Her anger sustained her through only a few harsh conversations. She was mad, not heartless, and whether dealing with Kara or Supergirl, the anguished eyes were the same, and she just couldn’t do that more than a few times without it hurting her as much as she was hurting Kara. Apparently she didn’t have the Luthor staying power for that kind of sustained rage against aliens. Or maybe it was because unlike Lex, she hadn’t been spurned yet, not outright anyway.
The first sign of her change in tactics was the morning the illusion of Kara Danvers took over Supergirl long enough for her to drop a coffee mug in the middle of the DEO lobby. The sudden noise of it was enough to make heads turn and Supergirl blushed bright red, possibly from embarrassment, but possibly because Lena Luthor was wearing an outfit that was...just slightly less than professional. Not enough to cause an outrage, but clearly enough to display her assets to best advantage. She smirked as she walked past the stuttering superhero.
She never crossed the line of professional attire. But, if her shirts were undone just one button more than was usual, or her skirts happened to show off the fine shape of her calves, or her perfectly manicured nails tapped lightly on tables only when Supergirl was in the room, well, she could afford the fallout. Whether or not the DEO was going to be able to was another matter entirely.
After the coffee mug, there had been a broken chair, an unfortunate ending for a very nice table, Supergirl had almost been banned from the ops room after she walked into an array of very expensive equipment because Lena happened to bend over to pick up an “accidentally” dropped pen at just the right moment. She was only allowed in the room now if she stood in the middle of it and didn’t walk around and didn’t touch anything.
Lena suspected that Alex was onto her, but keeping her mouth shut about it for the moment, which was fine by her. She didn’t want any interference.
On the Kara Danvers side of things, the outfits weren’t enough. She’d worn extremely flattering outfits around Kara for quite some time before and gotten nowhere. She’d been flirting for months with no real response beyond Kara getting just a bit more flustered. The illusion was just too strong when her guard was up (Lena knew there was no way she was really that oblivious) and Lena had to resort to stronger tactics.
Touch ended up being the breaking point for Kara. Soft, flirtatious touches applied at a regular rate over the course of mere days took down the girl reporter with an admirable speed. Combining that with the outfits, the continued flirtation, and in any aspect of her life, Supergirl or Kara Danvers, she was a flustered, stammering, goofball with no ability to function if Lena was in the room. (Or within about a mile of the room, Alex later told Lena.)
Alex was the tipping point, and maybe Lena should have factored government budgeting into some of her scheming because she’d planned to keep it up for at least another week, but Alex had had enough. All Lena did was lick her lips after a particularly pointed use of euphemism and Kara tried to lean casually against a wall and took out a segment of it instead. At that point Alex threw them both out of the DEO and told Lena to stop breaking her sister because she was tired of the paperwork all the damage was causing.
So they talked. And Kara was surprised and slightly outraged to find that she’d been played so easily. And Lena found that her anger had melted into something that more akin to hurt. Talking about that and the flirtations and outfits led into other things too. Like how aside from the initial period of anger none of it was faked on her end of things. And how anyone with eyes could see that Kara was attracted to her right back, even if she wasn’t as suave about it.
And it turned out that the clumsy goof was more than just an act, it was in fact part of the whole person Kara Zor-El, who could be found in Lena’s apartment the next morning apologizing profusely and promising to replace the bed while Lena laughed so hard she had to sit down. And while she toned down the outfits and flirtations in highly breakable environments, she didn’t mind having a household account just to handle the things that occasionally didn’t last when she, Lena Luthor, managed to bring a Kryptonian down with just a single look or touch or carefully chosen outfit. Rather satisfying to the ego actually, and more than made up for their rough beginning.