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She’s running late to meet Alex at Noonan’s. Her arms are laden with shopping bags, a doughnut gripped between her teeth while she attempts to wrangle her keys with one hand and frantically text her sister with the other. So naturally this is the moment her neighbour emerges from the door next to hers.
Her sweet, charming, funny, completely gorgeous neighbour. James Olsen, the man she’s been crushing on since she first moved in and he’d shown up at her door with a housewarming gift and a winning smile.
She drops her keys. Then the half-eaten doughnut falls from her mouth with the force of her hasty curse.
“Need a little help?” James asks, gesturing to the mess at her feet with a grin plastered to his face, the one that always makes her a little weak at the knees.
Kara flushes what she’s sure is a very unattractive shade of crimson.
“No, no, that’s ok, I- I got it,” she gathers up her keys and the remainder of her late afternoon snack (briefly wondering if she can apply the three second rule in this scenario; maybe once she’s inside and not under the scrutiny of her extremely attractive neighbour-slash-crush), “I’ve totally got it.” Avoiding his gaze, she tries, and spectacularly fails, not to fumble with the keys as she unlocks her door.
She’s almost in the safety of her apartment when he calls out to her- “hey Kara?”
“Hmm?”
That smile again. “You look really pretty today.”
She blinks. “Oh! Uh, thanks!”
He nods in acknowledgment, and to her credit, she only trips a little over her threshold once she finally gets the door open.
Streaky is waiting for her when she closes the door behind her, having scurried up at the sound of her keys in the lock. His yellow stare is unblinking as Kara stands there trying to process what just happened.
“Oh, shut up,” she admonishes, scooping up the cat and burying her giddy smile in his fur.
……….
“James!”
He looks up at the sound of her voice. The hallway is empty apart from the two of them, and she hastens into a jog to catch up with him.
“Hey.” Her voice is only breathless because of the run, she tells herself.
“Hey yourself,” he returns, “what’s up?”
Kara swallows. “So, um, I heard you have a new roommate.” She tilts her head towards the bag of pet supplies in his hand.
She thinks she sounds casual. Well, she hopes she sounds casual. Just talk to him, had been Alex’s oh-so-helpful advice, I’m sure he won’t bite… unless you want him to. To which Kara had huffily replied, oh yeah? You talk to Maggie yet? promptly wiping the smirk off her sister’s face.
James is nodding, “yeah, my sister found a stray, and since her landlord doesn’t allow pets she insisted I take it in. Wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
She chuckles, “well, if you…I’ve had Streaky a while now, so if you need a cat expert or anything,” she shrugs bashfully, “I’m your girl.”
His eyes are warm, “I might just take you up on that.”
“Ok.” She bites her lip.
“Ok.”
……….
“Do they always shed this much?!”
Kara giggles and reaches over to sweep some cat hair off his shoulder (if she lingers a bit…well, who’s going to know?). “Something tells me you’re not accustomed to mess,” she guesses, glancing meaningfully around his well-kept, minimalistic apartment.
“I’m no Kara Danvers, that’s for sure.”
She narrows her eyes at him playfully. The first time he’d knocked on her door with a request that she cat-sit while he was at work late, she’d almost run into a table in her haste to stash all the empty pizza boxes and haphazardly thrown clothes away from his watchful gaze before letting him in. Now, though, they’re beyond knocking (Kara having given him a spare key a couple months back) and he’s well acquainted with her particular brand of mess.
“You laugh, but if you ask me you’re inviting disaster keeping a pet in an apartment as nice as this. Your artistic genius is lost on animalkind.”
He wrinkles his nose in response, “I think there was a backhanded compliment in there somewhere.”
She laughs again. It’s easy to laugh with James; some days she puzzles at the time when she stuttered through all their interactions, afraid to so much as talk to him-
“Hey, speaking of my, uh, ‘artistic genius’… I got you something,” her brow creases in curiosity, quickly smoothing into wonder as he produces- “I hope you don’t mind that I took this,” he adds hastily as he hands her the small framed photo; her, grinning down at the two cats at her feet as they headbutt her toes in an insistent bid for food, “I just… I thought it was cute. And I wanted to capture the moment.”
-until he does something stupidly charming like that, and she remembers why.
“Um,” she fights a giddy smile, “how about I take care of their baths, and you can clean up…all this.”
“Sounds good. Pizza and potstickers will be here in 20 minutes.”
He never even gave her a chance, did he? “You know me well,” she smiles, ducking her head as she scoops up a cat under each arm and makes her way to the bathroom.
……….
“Pregnant?!”
“Yep. Wonder how that happened,” he glances pointedly at Streaky, gifting Kara with a wry smile.
“Huh.”
He rests a hand on her shoulder, “I’ll see you later, ok?”
“Mmhmm,” she murmurs absentmindedly, gears turning in her head.
……….
James comes home to find a parcel on his doorstep. A parcel of pet supplies, to be exact. With a note printed in familiar handwriting that reads ‘child support’.
He raises a brow.
Kara won’t be home for a while, he knows- she has a standing appointment with her sister on Fridays. So he lets himself into his apartment and distracts himself with unpacking the messily wrapped parcel. He tries not to smile to himself too much as he does.
When he does hear her moving around next door, he heads over with the parcel in hand. Forgoing his key, he opts to knock instead. His hands feel oddly clammy.
He doesn’t have to wait long before she opens up. “Hey,” she greets, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Hey.” He holds up the parcel in his hand, “thank you. For this.”
“Oh, it’s no problem…” she rests a hand against the doorframe, fingers drumming absently.
“Seriously, Kara, this is the most…bizarrely sweet thing anyone’s ever done for me. Or- for my cat.”
Her grin is bashful. And completely beautiful.
“Well, you know, I figured since the kittens will be half Streaky I should probably pitch in… and besides I did offer to help you out with cat-related stuff, so… it was nothing, really,” she finishes with a little half shrug.
“Will you at least let me take you to dinner to say thank you?”
Is it his imagination, or does her breath hitch a little? “Oh, well, you don’t have to-“
“Kara. I want to.” He takes a deep breath, “I’ve wanted to for a while, actually.”
“You- you have?”
“Yeah.” He chuckles a little, “I mean, I adopted a cat so I’d have an excuse to talk to you.”
Her eyes widen almost comically. “I thought- that your sister convinced you…?”
Now he’s the one who’s bashful. “I didn’t take much persuading.”
He thinks back to that first day in their shared hallway. It had been a long shot, maybe, hoping she’d offer her help, but he maintains it was one worth taking; fur balls and all. Besides, he’d had a feeling she might… that’s just the kind of person Kara is. Compassionate, giving, the definition of a helpful neighbour. It’s one of the reasons he likes her so much.
Kara is chewing ponderously on her lower lip. It’s extremely distracting. “Well in that case…” his heart does a hopeful little flip, “pick me up at 7?”
He beams. “Ok.”
“Ok.” And she leans up to kiss him.