A red boot on his chest pressed him down on the floor and he blinked against the sun, trying to figure out which part of his body hurt the most.
“Hello to you too, Kryptonian, ” he wheezed, his eyes fixed on the glyph on her chest.
“This is my city, and I won’t let any harm come to it.”
Mon-El groaned and tried to wiggle into a slightly more comfortable position. “Why would I care about your city?”
“You are here, aren’t you?”
He rolled his eyes. “Let me assure you that my intentions towards your city are entirely honorable.”
“Why are you here? To steal? To conquer?”
“I’m a refugee on this planet. In case you aren’t caught up on the news, Daxam isn’t doing too well.”
She glared at him wordlessly.
“Look, if you’re gonna kill me, just do it and stop wasting my time.”
The boot on his chest pressed down harder.
“Otherwise I’d like to get back to what I was doing, finding a way off this damn planet. ”
“I got my eye on you,” the creature said, her face, any expression obscured by the by the dark red mask she was wearing. “I’ll be watching your every move. I’m not gonna let you hurt anyone.”
With one whoosh she was gone.
*
That night Mon-El had an uncomfortable, scorching dream where he bent the haughty Kryptonian over his lap and spanked her, till she mewled like a kitten and begged for his cock.
He woke up angry and hard and with the conviction that there was no alcohol strong enough on this planet to wipe the memory of that dream from his mind.
Stupid, high and mighty Kryptonians. Wasn’t it just like them to arrive on a planet and decide to take it upon themselves to impart justice? Who was she to tell him what to do? Who was she to tell anybody what to do?
*
“I want to be a cop,” he announced.
M'gann started laughing.
“What’s so funny? You said yourself, the cops are keeping an eye on that ratfaced jerk Lardov, but you don’t know what’s taking them so long. Ergo, I’ll join the police and see what’s wrong.”
“You are serious about this.”
“Why? Don’t you think I could do it?“
"I’m not answering that.”
“You would need papers, references, a whole fake identity,” Boris, one of their most faithful patrons piped up. The Valdorian rubbed his hands in expectation of a good business opportunity. “I happen to know a guy.”
*
The building was bland and nondescript, like so many that littered the city. Seriously, what was it with humans’ obsession with cuboids? He had already scouted it out a few times in preparation, but today was the grand day.
“Hi, I’m Mike,” he said demonstratively cheerfully and held out his hand. “Mike Matthews. It’s my first day. I’m transferring in from,” he concentrated to make sure he didn’t mess up the word. “Oklahoma.”
The middle aged lady at the reception eyed him with suspicion.
“Sawyer said you would come. She and Danvers are waiting for you in the interrogation room.”
Mon-El blinked at her, perfect picture of innocence.
The woman sighed. “Down the hall, second door to the right.”
Mon-El followed her directions and soon found himself peering into a dark room. On the other side of the one way mirror, three women congregated around a table. A petite brunette with long curly hair was chatting to a tall woman with a short bob. Behind them, a younger blonde woman wearing the uniform of the street police was pacing back and forth.
He opened the door. “Hi, my name is Mike. I’m new.”
The curly haired one rose. “Sit,” she said. “I’m Detective Sawyer, this is Agent Danvers from the DEO.”
“Nice to meet you, Detective Sawyers.” Mon-El sat down gingerly and crossed his arms before his chest.
“You are an alien! You faked your papers!” The blonde almost lunged across the table and glared at him.
“Kara,” the agent woman said and pulled her back.
The Kara grumbled and kept staring at him, but at least she had stopped yelling. The two brunettes exchanged a poignant look. Detective Sawyer closed the blinds in front of the two way mirror and locked the door.
“You are Daxamite, aren’t you?”
There wasn’t much use in denying that. “Yes, you got me. I’m sorry. I’m just your normal alien immigrant, trying to make a contribution to society.”
“Why come here of all places? What are you planning? ” The Kara snarled.
“I was a guard on Daxam,” he lied, “I figured being a police was basically the same thing.”
The Kara was about to respond angrily, but Detective Sawyer silenced her with on movement of her hand.
“It’s not,” the curly haired woman clarified while the Kara glowered in the background. “On earth police uphold the law. They won’t be the same laws you know.”
“I can learn. I mean, I have learned. Look, just let me go, I’ll find another place.”
“You can stay,” she interrupted him.
“I can?” That seemed easy. Too easy.
The detective and the agent exchanged another knowing look.
“Yes,” Detective Sawyer continued. “On a trial basis.” She nodded in the direction of the Kara. “Danvers here will take you under her wing.”
Mon-El frowned. “I thought Danvers was the other one.”
“That’s my sister,” the Kara and the agent woman said in unison.
“Don’t draw attention, don’t tell anybody you’re an alien. Follow Officer Danvers and do everything she says.”
“Got it, yes, sir, Detective!”
“Like that. Don’t do that. Dismissed.”
Kara grabbed him by his arm and dragged him out of the interrogation room, down the hall and towards the lockers. She pointed at one with the number 15 on it. “Here, this one is yours.”
He nodded and began to place his few belongings inside while she leaned against the next locker, watching his every move.
“Why on earth do you want to be a cop? You don’t even know how to drive a car. This is the stupidest plan I ever heard,” she blurted out eventually, her eyes glaring up at him, sparkling with anger. He wondered what it would be like to have sex with her.
*
M'gann had gotten him one of those communication devices, to celebrate his first day at work. He hadn’t even made it home when he got the first angry text from Kara. Her message had been oblique, just instructing her to meet him on the weekend and so he stood here, at the designated time and location.
Kara pulled up in a vehicle too rickety and dirty that he couldn’t believe that it was owned by her. Even the air freshener dangling from the mirror looked old and worn out.
“Hop in,” she said.
Kara didn’t talk much, always staring straight ahead on the road. She drove them out into the desert, the city not even visible anymore.
“Why are we here?” he asked.
“Look, if we are really supposed to pull of this ruse, you gotta learn how to drive. And here you can do it, without endangering any innocent bystanders.”
“Why are you helping me?”
She grumbled something unintelligible.
He spent the next few hours driving in circles and cursing at earth style machinery while Kara yelled instructions at him from outside. Why couldn’t they design their vehicles more like gliders?
They took a break a few hours in. She pulled a cooler from the trunk and handed him a sandwich. They ate in silence, sitting on the hood of the car. They sun burnt down and there was just desert and emptiness as far as the eye could see.
It felt good. Comfortable. A bit more like home.
He looked at her from the side and pondered whether it would be considered appropriate to offer her sex as a thank you for her help.
*
“Who is this Lardov?” Kara slammed a file down in front of him.
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t play coy. You were trying to access his case.”
“So what, he’s a badguy.”
“Why do you care about this particular badguy then?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“Of course it’s my business!”
Angrily, Mon-El crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Fine. He was trying to shake down M’gann’s bar. M’gann wouldn’t let me beat him up, she said on this planet the police handle that kind of thing.”
“So that’s why you’re here. You know, you could just have filed a report like a normal person.”
Mon-El shrugged. “I wanted to help. M’gann said there had been reports, but the guards weren’t doing anything. I wanted to find out why.”
“You’re impossible. Maybe everybody on your home planet is corrupt, but not here.”
*
He wasn’t sure if this was supposed to be serious or a trap of some sort, when Kara invited him to the gym after their shift. He did notice the bellicose glimmer in her eyes and prepared for the worst.
“You are alien,” she explained. “You are strong. You need to keep your powers in check. If you are my partner I need to know that you can hold back, that you won’t injure anybody by accident.”
“Not even the bad guys?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, not even the bad guys. Option one: you let me handle it. Option two: you call for back up. Option three: you let it go. This is only for extreme emergencies.”
They went over arrest procedures. He found himself on his belly with his hands behind his back more times than he cared to admit, but he would be lying if he claimed it wasn’t fun when we got to do the same thing to her. Afterwards they sparred. It was strange to focus on holding back his powers, not using his speed and he found himself end up as victim to one of her killer throws and sweeps over and over again.
“Enough for today, rookie?”
Mon-El massaged his aching shoulder. “So you can smile, Danvers, don’t let anybody know that.”
“I smile. I smile all the time. Just not for you.”
He held her up before they hit the showers. “You’re pretty strong yourself.”
Kara’s face turned red. “I learned a lot from my sister. It’s, it’s all about technique, if somebody puts in a lot of power, you can use that power against them and that’s the whole trick to it.”
“You should teach me one day.”
She mumbled something and darted towards the women’s section.
*
He felt strangely excited to see her again the next day.
“So, when will you teach me some more? We could hit the gym together right after work.”
“We shouldn’t do that again,” Kara said, clinging to her folder and not meeting his eyes.
“How come?” He was confused. “I hope I’m not overstepping, but it seemed like you were having fun. I was learning a lot about being a good cop.”
Kara sucked in her lower lip. “We just can’t.”
“Look, I know you don’t like, but I thought this was important. ”
Kara looked positively miserable, maybe even a tad bit guilty.
“I wasn’t, I wasn’t being a good teacher. And you are strong, stronger than humans, you could… cause damage by accident. ”
“Damage, to what? To you? Last time I checked I was getting my ass handed to me, not you. ”
“I know. ”
“Kara …”
“Nothing, nothing is wrong. It just can’t be and that’s the end of it. ”
With that she stalked off and left him behind, bewildered.
*
Mon-El liked the cop bar. He was good with bars. He had experience. He was good with bars and bars were good to him. It didn’t take long for him to narrowly beat out the resident king of darts to the loud hollering of his peers.
He laughed, slung his arms around people’s shoulders, got told names, it wasn’t that different from what he knew. Within two hours he had danced with Margaret from IA, received a new nickname (Oklahoma)
“A drink for you, Danvers.”
“Just club soda,” she sad, nodding to the bartender.
Mon-El scrunched his nose. “Then I’ll have that, too.”
Kara gave him one of those disapproving Kara looks and pulled him aside. “We have to talk.”
“Sure.” Mon-El grabbed both their sodas.
“You need to stop that.”
“What? I’m fitting in, making friends …” He nipped on his drink. “Bah, why do you drink this, it tastes like nothing.”
“Why do you bother, Mon-El, huh? You are not even a real cop. You aren’t going to stick around.”
“What’s it to you?”
“We are supposed to be partners, that’s what it is to me.”
“You could at least wait for me to mess up before you get angry at me.”
They squeezed against opposite sides of the hallway as a group from the neighboring district headed for the exit.
“You don’t respect me.”
“I do respect you. You are a good person. You really care about people.”
“And what about you? What do you care about?”
He frowned.
“I’m not sure yet.”
“Well, maybe that’s not good enough.”
*
Mon-El laid awake that night. Was Kara right? What did he care about? Why was he doing it? Was it the money? M’gann? Proving people wrong?
There were easier ways to get by. So why this one? It wasn’t his job to save the reputation of a dead planet. What was it to him what people thought of Daxam. Its legacy was going to be death and tragedy either way. Maybe the old Daxamites would have appreciated going out with a bang rather than slowly being domesticated into a nicer, more well behaved people.
Mon-El briefly wondered what his mother would have thought about him loitering around on earth and slumming it with low level guards, chasing after earth girls. Despite everything that had happened, he still felt anger at that prospect. Quickly he buried that thought somewhere deep in his mind.
Flipping around on his belly, he buried his face in his pillow and closed his eyes.
Good or bad, he had always enjoyed proving people’s expectations wrong.
*
“What’s up Danvers, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Kara blinked, like she was trying to shake off a bad dream. “It’s, it’s Sawyer. I think she just invited herself to movie night.”
“There’s a movie night.”
“Why does Sawyer want to come to my movie night? Is she keeping an eye on me?” She turned to him. “You!”
“Me?”
“Yes, you, you have to come, too.”
“But why?”
“Because Winn dragged James to a robot convention and I don’t want to be alone with Maggie Sawyer with only my sister as a buffer.”
*
They met up in front of Alex’ place.
“So, why don’t you want to hang out with Sawyer again?”
“She’s basically our superior. And besides, she can be kind of scary.”
“Well, that makes three of you,” he muttered under his breath.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
*
They both found it hard to stay focused on the movie. Kara’s sister and Sawyer, Maggie, had abandoned them to fetch some drinks from the fridge about 20 minutes in and somehow they were still standing in front of it, making no move to return.
“I should go over,” Kara muttered under her breath.
“No,” Mon-El grabbed her. “Let them be.”
They both kept sneaking looks at the amicably chatting women. Mon-El had to hand it to Sawyers. Kara’s sister was giggling and accidentally bumping into glasses from the sideboard, while Sawyers was playing it cool as a cucumber, looking on the nervous agent with mixture of amusement and affection.
“Well, I know somebody who is gonna have a good time tonight,” he whispered.
“What? Don’t say that?”
“Why not?”
“Hey, you two, Maggie and I, we’re off to fetch some more champagne. We’ll be back before you know it.”
“What? You’ll miss the movie!” Kara complained.
“No, no, it’s okay, you two keep watching.”
Kara stared incredulously at the door after the two women had left.
Mon-El sighed and paused the movie just as the king was ready to give his big speech. “I don’t get it. Why does it bother you so much that your sister wants to sleep with Sawyer?”
“What? I…” Kara sank back against the couch cushions. “I want my sister to be happy, but Maggie… We work together, I just wish it could be anybody else.”
“But why?”
“It just makes things more complicated. We, at the precinct, we should be a family. We shouldn’t be having other types of relationships with each other. What if they break up? What if she breaks Alex heart? Alex, all of this is still so new to her. Sawyer is her first real crush, since she realized…”Kara sighed. “Would it be okay if I asked you to leave? I need to talk to my sister when she comes back.”
*
The house calls, or “domestic disturbances” as they were called proper, were always the hardest. Or rather, they were hardest for Kara. It took a while for him to catch on, but it should have been obvious by the tension in her shoulders and by how her words were all clipped when she confirmed for the third time that the woman knew she could press charges, that she knew the number of the shelter.
Afterwards, Kara was often silent for hours, clinging to the steering wheel, seething with quiet range.
Mon-El was good with those calls, he guessed. He went in there, charming, calm. Chatting with the lady of the house, winking at children that peeked out from behind doors or from up the stairs.
One time a boyfriend threw a punch at him and Kara caught the man’s arm and had him in handcuffs and in the car before the children started to cry. That was a good day. He sat with the mother, just chatting. She nodded a lot, but he had a feeling, she would be back with that man in no time. At least the family would get one night of peaceful sleep.
Kara picked him up and thanked him.
“You know he’ll be out within a day.”
“I know,” she said and didn’t look at him. “You tried. And that matters.” She took a deep breath.
“Mon-El?”
“Yeah?”
“There’s, there’s a game night at my place tomorrow. You can join us, if you want.”
“Anybody I know?”
“No, just some old friends. And my sister.”
The next time they drove by, somebody had burned the El symbol into wall of the family’s house.
*
“So this is where you live?”
“Yep, this is me.”
Mon-El stepped into Kara’s apartment in wonder. He had seen palaces all over the universe, heck, he had even grown up in one. But something about this home, it just clicked into place. Then he realized.
It was her.
At work, Kara might seem standoffish and gruff at time, at least to him, but this place, it was spacious, warm and full of light. He felt like he had a chance to peer behind her facade.
This was where she lived.
This was the real her.
“Are those for me?”
“What? Of yes.” He thrust the gardenias he was holding into her hand. “I read its customary to bring flowers, but I wasn’t sure, so just in case I also brought cheese.”
“You brought cheese.”
“Yes, is cheese wrong?”
“Nope. Cheese, cheese is great.”
She grabbed his hand and pulled him over to two men who were standing and chatting. “So these are my friends, James and Winn. James and Winn, this is Mike, my partner.”
Kara turned to Mon-El. “And you know Alex of course, she’ll be here, any minute now.”
*
While Winn and Kara got busy setting up the game, Mon-El found himself with the tall man called James – did Kara like tall? Was he allowed to come here often? - and, having already shaken hands, in the dire need for a topic of conversation. “So, how do you know Kara?”
“We used to work together.”
“You a cop, too?”
“No, photographer. Kara used to work at a newspaper, as an intern, together with Winn and me.”
Mon-El smiled sheepishly.
“A newspaper is where all the important events that happened in the world are collected, written down and distributed to the people,” James explained. “And an intern is a person who is training to learn how to do a job and helps out.”
Mon-El frowned.
“Like a servant?”
“No! Maybe a little bit. Mostly no.”
They both looked over to Kara who was sharing a joke with her sister, while pouring pretzels into a bowl in preparation of their game. Mon-El felt a twinge in his chest. There was an addictive quality to Kara’s laugh, once you heard it, all you wanted was to hear it over and over and over again.
“If she was training as a newswriter, why did she become a cop?”
James winced.
“Kara, she had a friend, her boss at the newspaper. Her name was Cat Grant. She died, died right in Kara’s arms.” James shrugged. “Stray bullet. Just some kid who was angry at his friends, took his father’s gun to take revenge. Nobody saw it coming. He just started shooting in the street and Cat Grant was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Kara took it to heart, that’s why she became a cop. She wanted to keep the streets clean, so things like that would never happen again.”
*
The game they played had something to do with priests and warriors and tiny wooden play pieces. He invented voices for all of them while they traded goods and drew cards and Kara laughed so hard she spilled juice all over the playing board. After that their creatures went to war. Mon-El knew they getting strange stares from the other players, but how did that matter when Kara was laughing like that. He didn’t even care that he didn’t understand the rules and finished last. There was something wrong with him, because his heart kept racing and for a change everything felt just a tiny bit too hot. He didn’t understand what any of the cards did and he couldn’t keep his eyes off Kara. Eventually she gave up trying to teach him and called it a night.
He stayed behind as everybody said their goodbyes and helped her clean up, after all, it was kind of his fault too. They were talking about everything and nothing and Mon-El realized how much he didn’t want to leave, how much he didn’t want to let go with the light and the warmth of this apartment that was so quintessentially her. It also seemed to have the strange trait of seeming even lighter whenever he could make Kara laugh.
“Wait, there’s one down there,” he said and dove under the table. Before he could react his head banged against Kara’s, who apparently had gotten the same idea.
Kara jerked back like she had been burned and her hand flew to her mouth.
“Oh my god, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I wasn’t…”
“Kara, calm down. It’s not a problem. See, nothing happened.” He scanned the floor, snagged the missing little wood person and held it up. “I even found the missing piece.”
“Yes,” she said slowly, her arms wrapped around herself, like she was forming a protective shield. “Of course, how silly of me. I just forgot.”
“Forgot what?”
“Nothing. Just forget I said anything.”
In the end, he didn’t have any excuses left.
“Well, see you tomorrow, partner.”
“Thank you for staying to help.”
“My pleasure.” Mon-El thrust his hands in his pockets, his feet still firmly rooted in place.
“You, you gonna find your way back home?”
“What? Yes, of course.”
“Of course.” She smiled. “I, I had a really nice time.”
“Me, too. I hope that I’ll get to come back.”
She bit her lip. “I’d like that.”
*
It was just one of those nights, spent in M’gann’s apartment, challenging her to a game of Caldonian poker when suddenly there was a knock on the door.
Mon-El raised an eyebrow. “Are you expecting company?” He grinned. “I heard somebody mention a Alcorian coming to town to do business. They have giant … telepathic abilities.”
M’gann rolled her eyes at him. “You should have noticed by now I’m not exactly the dating kind.”
“I never understood that, I mean, you could be anybody, as beautiful as you want to be.”
“That might be a strange concept to you, but some people prefer to be left in peace.”
M’gann frowned and got up to answer the door. Mon-El started shuffling the deck, listening for the faint voices from the front door.
“Is Mi.. Mon-El home?”
Kara? What was she doing here? “I got it,” he called out. “Kara, is everything alright? Is Alex okay?”
“Yes, everything is fine, it’s not that.” She indicated with a shake of her head that she wanted to talk in private, so he followed her into the hallway, pulling the door closed behind him. Kara was nervous, leaning against the wall. Suddenly he wished he would have grabbed a sweater before coming outside.
“I just wanted to tell you, they got him. Your guy. Lardov. Illegal weapons, racketeering.“ Kara looked down on her feet. “And you were right too. Somebody was protecting him.” She swallowed hard. “It was Hudson.”
Mon-El ran his fingers through his hair. He barely remembered Hudson. He had chatted with her once or twice at the cop bar. She had seemed normal. “How did they find her?”
“They got a tip from Supergirl.”
*
Kara was late the next day. Or rather, she was on time. Anything other than 10 minutes early was late for by Kara Danvers’ standards. She walked in slowly, dragging her feet. When she saw him, she froze and stared at him.
“You are here.”
“Of course, our shift is starting and in case you hadn’t heard, I have a partner who would talk my ear off if I was late again.”
Slowly, a smile spread on her face. “I guess you have.” And then she hugged him in the middle of the precinct and he didn’t know why, but it felt good anyway.
*
Getting involved with a human… was not a good idea. To spend the night with a mutual exchange of pleasure? Sure. One had to take some precautions, exhibit a bit of care, but it was doable, without a doubt. More on the other hand…
From what he had gathered from M’gann, and from what he had seen, humans were fragile, short-lived, prone to injury and sickness. Getting involved with them was a bad idea. And yet, there was something about Kara. She confused him. There was a light about her. What had started as irritation had turned into fondness, and by now, Mon-El burned for her. It was a confusing feeling. There was this swirl of emotion he couldn’t quite make sense of. He should just sleep with her, to get rid of this feeling. But she didn’t want to. And wanting people who didn’t want to was a bad thing.
He should be finding somebody else then, to quench the thirst. For some reason Mon-El didn’t understand,,, he didn’t want to. He just burned.
Maybe it was an illness, an infection native to earth? He had to ask Kara about it. She would be able to ask her sister.
Maybe he could ask Kara for a real relationship, the ways humans had them? Was that even a good idea? Could that ever work, with her human and him being an alien?
Still, she wasn’t any human, she was Kara.
Why didn’t she have a mate, anyway?
Mon-El frowned and tried to picture it, Kara with somebody else. Maybe that tall phonographer from game night. His stomach lurched at the thought. He dipped the yellow sponge he was holding into the bucket next to him and continued to scrub furiously at the maddening gap between the tiles.
“You alright, Daxam?” M’gann called from the outside.
“Yes, why wouldn’t I be?”
“I assure you, my washroom is clean enough already.” The Martian woman leaned against the doorframe and looked at him sympathetically.
“Girl trouble?”
Mon-El bristled at the thought. “Me? Girl trouble. I don’t even know what that is.”
“Good. In that case you can stop rage cleaning any time now.”
“I’m not rage cleaning.”
“Of course not.”
*
They stood outside one of Lena Luthor’s extravagant parties, freezing and bored. Lights, laughter and the soft tunes of music poured from the windows above.
“Will you stop fidgeting? We represent the city!”
“It’s cold!”
Ignoring Kara’s exasperated looks Mon-El started to hop around between the snowdrifts.
“It’s not our fault that your planet has a different climate and you don’t know how to dress yourself.”
“It’s not my fault that you are immune to weather.”
“I’m – not – immune to weather.”
“Sure you aren’t.”
Behind them the song changed, swelling into something bigger, more orchestral, that resonated in his bones.
“May I,” he said and extended his hand to Kara.
“No, no, absolutely no,” she said, crossing her arms.
“You can’t be that bad of a dancer. Trust me, I’ll lead.”
“We have a job to do,” she protested, but Mon-El could see it in her eyes that she was tempted. Finally, temptation won out. Kara took his hand and he pulled her close, wrapped one arm around her. He didn’t know the song, but the underlying rhythm was simple enough, he was confident he could pull something off.
“Just, just don’t step on my feet, Daxamite,” Kara warned.
“Come on, Kara, I’m not that bad,” he said and twirled her around.
She tilted her head. “Maybe, maaaaaaaaybe not.” And then she laughed despite herself. Mon-El could have sworn it was the prettiest sound he’d ever heard. They turned and turned, it might have been 10 times or 500, all he could see was the carefreeness on her face.
They broke apart when the shots rang out.
“Mon-El!”
“I got it, call for backup.”
*
“That was very brave of you, to run back in to try and save those people. Mostly stupid, but also brave.”
“I feel a lot more stupid than brave right now. I wasn’t really thinking and once I started thinking I was mostly scared.”
“If it wasn’t scary, then you wouldn’t need to be brave, would you?”
“I’d settle for being less stupid for now.” He looked at the reporters milling around, trying to get quotes for their news shows. “Doesn’t it bother you?”
“What?”
“Supergirl, that she just sweeps in and does all the work. Takes over your cases. In a town with Supergirl, why do you need other people playing hero?”
“Everybody can do their part,” Kara retorted unexpectedly passionate. “We all have to do our best. Supergirl … not even she can save everybody.”
“You mean because she couldn’t save your friend? The one from the newspaper?”
Kara stared at him in shock.
“I’m sorry, James told me. Was I, was I not supposed to know that.”
“No,” Kara said after a pause. “It’s okay. It’s not a secret. And you are right. Supergirl couldn’t save her.”
*
Kara sent him a text that weekend. She came to pick him up in that rolling piece of code violation and they drove off into the desert. He wasn’t really sure why she wanted to give him another driving lesson, considering she never let him drive anyway. From the determined look on her face and from the way she gripped the steering wheel, he guessed that maybe this was more about her than about him.
After an afternoon of screeching tires, driving in circles and the way Kara looked standing there, with her her hair blowing in all in directions against the empty landscape, they huddled down next to the car on a blanket.
Kara pulled her knees up to her chest and scooted closer to him, her gaze turned on the horizon where the sun was beginning to set.
“I checked her background, you know. Hudson. I hoped I would find something. An explanation.” Tears were welling in Kara’s eyes. “I know it’s stupid, but something. A gambling problem. A child dying of cancer. Maybe that she was in love with Lardov, or that he had saved her life.”
Kara turned to him. “There was nothing. Hudson just took the money.”
Mon-El shrugged. “Sometimes people just suck.”
“Geez, thanks, Mon-El, you’re a real help,” Kara mumbled and leaned her head against his shoulder. “You are quite the pessimist you know.”
“And you are quite the idealist.”
“I don’t, I can’t live any other way. I know that I’m wrong sometimes, but that doesn’t mean that hope isn’t real. Sometimes people have good in them,” she paused. “Even where you least expect it.”
In front of them, the disappearing sun colored the heaven brilliant red. He swallowed hard. “You know, when earth’s sun at just this angle, it’s almost like - “
“- the sun of Daxam.”
“Yes.”
It was a strange feeling that if he had remained on Daxam, he’d not just have never met her, but she’d also have looked different. The light of Daxam’s sun wouldn’t have reflected in her eyes, wouldn’t have bounced off her hair the same way. And yet, he couldn’t picture her looking any less brilliant than she did here, even if she seemed made for this light, for this planet.
Kara snuggled closer to him and pulled the blanket she had brought up to her chin.
They stayed like that till the last rays had disappeared and only the stars remained.
*
“We didn’t really fall in love on Daxam.”
Kara’s head whipped around sharply. He could feel her eyes on him, wide with surprise.
“How so?” she finally said, softly.
“I dunno,” Mon-El leaned his head against the car window. The rain was pelting it with heavy drops. Busy rivulets obscured all vision to the outside. “It’s just different on Daxam. You have family. Maybe you have friends. Loyal followers. And you want people, and you sleep with them.“ He shrugged, his shoulder brushed against the inside of the car door. “I guess people think it’s distasteful, to be with any person for too long. Other than your latch of course. But your latch is your family and family is about dedication, not passion.” He realized that he was rambling, and probably not making too much sense. He smiled apologetically.
“It’s a bit confusing, the way humans worship love. How they put it above everything else. It’s very different from what I’m used to.”
Kara blushed and looked down.
“Some people might think that that’s kind of charming.”
A smile lit up Mon-El’s face. “I guess you are right.”
“You and M'gann, are the two of you … an item?”
Mon-El frowned, unsure what she was asking. Then his face lit up. “Wait, you want to know whether M'gann mates with me?” He burst out laughing.
“Why? What’s so funny about it.”
“You, you wouldn’t understand.”
Kara rolled her eyes. “Try me.”
“M'gann is a telepath.”
“So?”
“Well, it might surprise you to hear, but despite my devilish good looks, as a non telepath, I’m about as desirable to her as a box of rocks. I’ve tried to convince her otherwise, but she says once you’ve done what they do, sex is pretty boring.”
Kara tilted her head and grinned. “I knew you couldn’t score highly when it came to internal qualities.”
She fell silent and ran her fingers up and down the side of the steering wheel, before asking softly.
“What was it like then, where you come from?”
“It’s just different. People on earth, there always is so much confusion, about what kind of relationship you have. On Daxam you always know that there is no future.”
*
He didn’t see it coming.
They were careless, quarreling about where to eat as the followed up on a call about somebody shooting up on the steps in front of an apartment complex. He pushed the double doors open, his face still turned to Kara. He barely saw a man with dirty red hair and a wild stare and then there was a searing pain in his shoulder, that threw him flat on his ass.
“Mon-El!” There was panic in Kara’s voice and he thought it had to be pretty bad if she forgot that she was supposed to call him Mike. He barely had time to blink, she’d already disarmed the shooter and wrestled him him to the floor. Mon-El’s ears were buzzing, he registered her calling for backup, and then scan the area.
Suddenly she was back, her arms around him. “Mon-El, Mon-El, stay with me!”
“It’s not that bad”, he mumbled. “it’s just my shoulder.”
“You should have let me go in first,” Kara said angrily. “You aren’t bulletproof, you know”.
“Well, I still heal faster than you.” Mon-El winced. Were there supposed to be red dots dancing in front of his eyes?
Kara bit her lip. “I’m gonna call my sister.”
“Why?” The red splotches were constantly changing size, pulsating.
“Because the doctors can tell you are an alien and if the precinct finds out that you are an illegal alien, it might cost you your job, you dummy.”
“Oh right,” Mon-El said and passed out.
*
When Mon-El came to, he was lying on a hospital bed. By some kind of miracle Kara had gotten him a solo room. His eyes immediately searched for Kara and relief washed over him when he saw that she was standing, arms crossed, next to the window, staring forlornly out into the night.
He cleared his throat. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No, no, I’m just, I’m angry at myself, that I allowed you to get hurt.”
“C’mere,” he said and gestured for her to sit next to his bed.
She came over reluctantly, almost stubborn in her step, but she did come and sat down on his bedside. He’d meant to ask her something, but he no longer knew what. All he knew was that he liked her being there. Mon-El was drowsy and in pain, but somehow none of that mattered because she was close and her eyes were shining in the dark.
“I’m glad you are here,” he said, his voice hoarse.
“Well, I’m glad I’m here too.”
Why were her eyes so sad?
“You should have been more careful,” she said while running her palm along the covering of the hospital bed.
He smoothed one unruly lock of hair that had escaped her pony tail back behind her ear. “You are so special.”
She smiled, the corners of her lips curling upwards, but it didn’t take the sadness out of her eyes. “What does that even mean?”
“I don’t know. I just know that you are.”
“You’re an idiot,” she whispered back. He leaned in to kiss her and he could have sworn that she didn’t pull away.
Before they could reach other, a ball of work friends, led by Russels and Kaine, poured into Mon-El room. They jerked apart. “We heard you got yourself shot, rookie.” Pam from the reception must have told them that he didn’t have any family in town. Russels was the first to his bed. He grabbed Mon-El’s uninjured hand and shook it enthusiastically.
“Wow, even got yourself a doctor from the Dee. Eh. Oh.”
“They think the weapon might have been alien,“ Kara interjected quickly.
“Turns out they were wrong,” Mon-El added.
“Well, rookie, get well soon. We’ll buy you a drink when they let you out.” Russels playfully punched him in the his shoulder. Mon-El winced.
“It was just a graze,” he lied.
Russels winked at him conspiratively and whispered, “Bet she has an amazing bedside manner.”
“Out, everybody out,” Kara shooed the group from the room. “You wouldn’t want him to get any crazy ideas, that you’re going soft on him.”
She left with them and when she returned, she had two cups of coffee with her. Mon-El took his gladly.
“You know, I’ll be healed up in no time.”
“Yes, but as far as the NCPD is concerned, you still got injured in the line of duty. They’ll want to know exactly what happened. They’ll make you attend counseling. It…”, she looked down. “It might be a while till we get to work together again. You’ll probably be on desk duty for a while.”
“Grife,” Mon-El pulled a face. “Maybe I should go back and have that guy shoot me for good this time.”
“That’s not funny,” Kara said sternly.
“It’s not that big a deal.”
“But it is,” she insisted and inched closer, once more sitting down on the edge of the hospital bed. “You survived an exploding star, a journey across the universe. That should matter.”
Mon-El looked away. “That was a freak accident.”
“What if it wasn’t? What if it was fate? You said, that prince, he stayed behind so you could live.”
Mon-El swallowed hard. “I don’t think you’d have liked him very much.”
“Nonetheless, without him, you wouldn’t be here. And maybe, maybe you protected the wrong people where you’re from, but here, you became a cop and you protect the right people. That must count for something.”
“Kara, it’s not that deep.”
It hurt. It hurt to see the doubt in her eyes. When they had met, she’d accused him of joining the force as a joke or worse, for insidious motives. Now he was the one seemingly confirming, what he had denied back then. “You are trying to turn me into some kind of hero and I’m just not.”
“But you could be! You stayed. You tried to save those people. You have your strength all these abilities. Maybe you are wasting your time at the NCPD with me. You could be out there, fighting side by side with Supergirl.”
“Kara, that’s just not me, I could never …”
“Why not?”
“Just because. All I want is to do my job and help people, with you.”
They fell silent.
“Look, I’m tired. I’ll get M’gann to pick me up. See you soon, partner?” He couldn’t quite help his voice becoming hopeful on the last word.
Kara nodded slowly. “Yeah. See you soon.”
*
“Honey, you’re home!”
“Haha, very funny.”
Mon-El grinned at Kara and put the book he’d been reading aside. “So, how was your day? What did I miss?”
“Not much,” Kara said while balancing on one foot as she kicked off her shoes. “Wait, somebody put a live chicken in Ondantje’s office. We are pretty sure it was Sawyer and McPhee.”
Mon-El pouted. “They could have waited till I was back.”
“Are you caught up on Alias yet?”
“Yup, ready for the last season.”
“How’s your shoulder?”
“We both no I’m just pretending to be on sick leave so, it won’t look suspicious. In short: I’m fine, thanks for asking. And thanks for letting me hang out.”
“Well, after all you got injured under my watch.”
Kara plunked down next to him on the couch and tugged at his bandage. She frowned. “Doesn’t look fine to me.” From the location of the gunshot, dark veins, like spider legs, fanned out. Mon-El quickly pulled his sweatshirt back into position.
“Your sister says it’s fine, besides they’ve gotten shorter.”
“Maybe my sister should take another look.”
“I’m fine, I swear. So, ready for season 5?”
Kara pondered. “Naw, I’m in the mood for something shorter.”
Mon-El reached for the remote. “What about this one?”
Kara’s face turned red. “No, we are not watching this one.”
“Why not?” He checked display. “It says here you watched it 53 times.”
“Yeah, no way, we are – not – watching that.”
“Whatever you say.”
*
It was the last day of his official sick leave, the last day before he would return to M’gann’s and Kara was fussing around nervously.
“Okay, we can watch it,” she finally declared.
“What do you mean?”
Despite her best efforts to stay cool, Kara was blushing. “That movie, that one you were asking about.”
“We don’t have to watch it, if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“No, not at all. It’s not a big deal. I have no problem watching it. It’s just some silly movie about giant rats.”
“Giant rats?”
She blushed again. “You’ll see.”
“If you say so.”
As the title music swelled, he couldn’t help but wonder what it was about this movie that Kara didn’t want him to see. He kept stealing glances at her, looking for clues. Uncharacteristically for their normal routine Kara sat on the edge of the couch, hands folded in her lap, trying very hard to keep her facial expression as uninvolved as possible.
The movie ran on.
“Oh,” he said after a while and Kara blushed more deeply.
There was a blonde girl, maybe even something like a princess and a stable boy she was mean to, but who she actually really loved.
Kara snatched the remote and deftly hit the pause button.
“That’s not us.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were going to!”
“I wasn’t.”
“Well, whatever, I’ll have you know that that so isn’t us.”
“Right.”
“Right.”
Mon-El pursed his lips. “So, you’ve watched this one a lot recently?”
She jumped up. “I’m gonna go make some more popcorn, real quick.”
*
Kara had been right. Desk duty and not being partnered with her was pure hell.
It’s not that McPhee wasn’t a nice guy, but Mon-El felt like he was sitting in pins and needles. He started texting Kara dumb jokes and office gossip on his second day till she threatened to block his number.
“Going stir crazy over the girl, Oklahoma?”
“What, no. I’m just not made for desk duty.” He yawned and stretched in an over-exaggerated way. “Can’t wait to hit the pavement again.”
“Sure, rookie. You know, many have tried, boys and girls, didn’t get anywhere, but I have 50 bucks riding on you. So don’t disappoint.”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t make any plans for that money. Disappointing people is kind of my thing.”
“Well, as long as you disappoint Russels and not me, we are good.” McPhee looked around and rolled his chair closer to Mon-El. “You guys, you guys aren’t already doing it, are you?”
Mon-El grinned. “Wouldn’t you like to know, old man.”
The first day he got her back as his partner he couldn’t stop smiling like an idiot and the moment was only saved by her not not being able to stop smiling either.
*
“Mon-El?”
He didn’t flinch. He loved her apartment, so he had feigned sleep by the end of the movie, because he knew she didn’t have the heart to kick him out and this way he got to stay on her lovely couch.
“Are you in love with me?”
His eyes popped open.
“It’s, it’s okay with you are. A lot of people fall in love with me.”
“I’m sure it’s because of your modesty,” he said dryly and sat up.
“Why are you here, Mon-El?”
“Your couch is really lovely.” She didn’t seem too convinced by his explanation. Mon-El sighed and reached for her in the dark. He pulled her onto his lap and buried his nose in her neck. She smelled of fresh and soap. He braced himself, expecting her to push him away and then he would tickle her and they’d end up play wrestling and he could get to hear that carefree laugh again.
Instead, she sat quietly.
“I just don’t see how this could ever work out, you and me.”
“S'okay,” he mumbled. “I don’t either.”
“I… I don’t want to lie. I care about you. You are different from what I thought you would be.” Mon-El felt the tension in her arm, as she clenched her clasped hands. “I’m not really good with relationships. Every time I tried, things got in the way. It didn’t work out. I’ve, I’ve been thinking about you and I don’t want to keep lying to you.”
Mon-El froze. Wait. Was she just admitting that wanted him, too? He lifted his hand to touch her cheek. He could not see it in the dark, but it was burning, almost feverish.
“Mon-El, I can deal with it, I will deal with it, I…, I just want. Slow.”
Bit, by bit, it sank in, that maybe, maybe he had a real chance. He nodded. “Slow is good. I’m good with slow.”
“You are?” she asked incredulously.
“Yeah.” Mon-El pushed her gently off his lap and stood. “I better get home then.” He cupped her face with his hands and tilted it upwards, towards him and placed a long, gentle kiss on her forehead.
“See you tomorrow partner.”
*
When he saw her again at work, Kara seemed moody, even sullen. It confused him. After all they had talked and he had done what she asked for. Yet Kara spent the entire briefing gnawing on her lower lip and even, could it be possible, Kara Danvers, tilting back her chair?
She just said brief hellos to Sawyer and McPhee and then they walked quietly to their car. Mon-El had never seen her walk like this, depressed lurching alternating with confident strides and back again. She slipped into the drivers seat to take them on their route.
By now he knew that there was no point in rushing her and so he started making up stories about the people they drove past.
“Mon-ElIchangedmymind,” she interrupted him in the middle of an epic tale about how the lady in the red dress was a disgraced garrata chamption from Tellus who was trying to recruit the man in the hispter hat for a secret heist on Garand IV.
Kara was breathing heavily, but she was also smiling at the same time, still clinging to the steering wheel. “I changed my mind,” she repeated. “I don’t want slow. Slow is stupid. Not-slow… Not-slow is fine.“
Her face was tinted pink, but her eyes were shining with hope. “Do you, maybe want to go to the zoo together? Tomorrow?”
*
He met her by the large metal gates that separated the zoo from the park. Kara looked nervous and she stared when she saw him.
“Hi, partner.” She didn’t reply. “What?” He adjusted his earmuffs. “M’gann said those were appropriate clothing for the weather. Wait, she wasn’t lying to me, was she?”
“What? No.” Kara coughed and looked down to the ground before stealing another glance at him. “They are fine, I just didn’t expect … Let’s just get our tickets.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him along towards the long and nearly empty queuing lines. Her cheeks reddened again, but it might have been just the cold. The air was crisp and cool and the gravel of the pathways crunched underneath their boots.
Mon-El had met squirrels and cats and dogs before, but looking at this installation, there clearly was a lot he was missing about earth’s fauna.
“Do they have dragons?”
Kara looked at him in surprise. “Nope, no dragons.”
Mon-El shrugged, “Guess that explains why there’s never any garrata on the sport channels.”
*
Kara went to fetch them some candyfloss, leaving him behind. By the time she returned Mon-El had struck up a conversation with a man in green jacket and high boots, who was evidently bored by the parks lack of visitors. His name was Miles and he’d been working here for 15 years.
He just laughed and declined when Mon-El offered him some of the sticky pink wool Kara had brought. Instead he invited them along behind the secretive “Employees Only” doors to meet the mysterious patient he’d been telling Mon-El about.
The creature had jetblack eyes, a cute little snout and whiskers. It had a dense fur looked like it should feel oily. It looked around nervously when Kara patted its head.
The keeper explained that its name was sea otter and many other things that didn’t mean anything to Mon-El. Mon-El had hoped for a laugh, a joyous glint of her teeth, when the man offered that Kara could hold the little critter. Instead she was all softness, making friends with the creature, before cradling it to her chest underneath her parka, a faint smile on her lips.
Mon-El’s heart did that thing where he wasn’t sure whether he was jealous or just happy and it seemed like he no longer remembered how to breathe.
For all his life, he’d felt useless, superfluous to this universe, but in this very moment, he’d never wanted to live more than he did now. If this was the beauty this world had to offer, if there was a chance that maybe he’d be able to give her happiness the way she gave it to him, maybe there was a deeper meaning to it all.
“Mo…Mike?”
“Hmm?”
“Wanna come and pet his head?”
*
They stood in front of a thigh high concrete wall, looking down into a pool on a company of waddling flightless birds called penguins. Kara had launched into a long explanation, but Mon-El found it hard to concentrate on anything other than on how warm and pink her lips looked compared to the icy winds.
“You didn’t hear anything I just said,” she concluded.
“Not a thing,” he said and beamed at her.
He expected her to be upset, instead Kara touched one index finger to her lips and then started pulled on her gloves. The color of her cheeks darkened once more as the moments passed by without either of them saying a thing. Finally Kara sighed and turned to look back into the animal enclosure. She smiled a soft, secret smile. He could see that her grip on the railing tightened and the way she straightened her back. Whatever was coming was important, but that little smile never left her face.
“I think you should come over to my place tonight. I’ll cook you dinner. There’s something I want to talk to you about. And maybe, maybe you should bring some things, just in case.”
“What’s wrong with your voice?”
“What? Nothing!”
“It just went all deep and husky and stuff.”
“It absolutely did not!”
“It absolutely did.”
Kara’s head was turning red in anger and her eyes sparkled. “Do you want to come to my place or not.”
Mon-El grinned. “Of course.”
“Well, fine.”
“Fine.”
In front of them a flock of penguins chased after each other.
“So what kind of things?”
“What things?”
“The things I should bring. Just in case.”
“What? Nothing! Forget I said anything.“
Two of the penguins had climbed on the artificial reef and were playfully shoving each other towards the water.
“A toothbrush. And a change of clothing. Just in case.”
He couldn’t stop the wide smile that spread out on his face. He hoped she didn’t see. “Just in case, partner.”
“I’m not promising anything.”
“Of course not.”
“It’s really just in case.”
“Just in case.”
*
The door swung open.
“Hi!”
“Hi! Brought what you asked for,” Mon-El said and held up the paper bag contained her beloved pot stickers. Kara had called him on the way over, apologetically.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean for you…, I’m just a really bad cook.” Behind her, the windows stood open as the last plumes of black smoke hovered over the kitchen.
“No matter,” he said and fought the urge to reflexively kiss her as a greeting when he handed her the bag. Kara placed it on the table and then stood next to the table, nervously clenching and unclenching her hands.
“What I wanted to talk to you about, I just wanted you to know, this thing, if it’s gonna be a thing, I mean, if you want it to be a thing, it’s gonna be a relationship thing. A human relationship thing.”
Mon-El’s heart danced and beat furiously in his chest. He couldn’t stop himself from smiling. “That’s fine with me.”
He was sure that her smile was beautiful enough to blot out the sun itself. “You sure?”she asked.
“Yes, I’m sure. I mean, I’m not sure what exactly that is, but I know that I want it, that I want it with you.”
“You do?” Kara moved closer, the curl of her lips both elated and coy at the same time.
“You seem surprised,” he said. He felt barely in control of his voice as she looked up at him like that, her eyes blue and shining. “I know we are from different worlds, but I think we can work, I want this to work.”
She smiled. “Whatever this is.”
“Whatever this is.”
He took a deep breath and leaned in to kiss her. His heart was thumping furiously against his ribs. Kara moved to meet him, but just as their lips were just a breath away from each other, she stopped him, her hand flat against his chest. Mon-El blinked in confusion. Her arms were still around his midriff, her eyes still brimming with excitement, so it didn’t seem like he did anything wrong.
Kara cleared her throat. “This thing, if it’s gonna be a thing, a real thing, a real, real thing, I want us to do this right. I want us to be honest with each other.”
Mon-El nodded. That made sense. Her lips were still less than an inch away.
Kara swallowed hard. “It’s not, it’s not always easy for me to be … vulnerable. To let somebody into my world, but I don’t want it to be like that. With us. I want us to be able to tell each other everything. No secrets. Just us.”
Her eyes were shining up to him, like a marriage between blue skies and the stars themselves, in this moment Mon-El would have promised her anything she wanted. However, in this case, she was also probably right. Honestly was important, if you wanted it to be real. That’s what all the movies they had watched said. He took a deep breath, just as she did the same.
“I’m Supergirl.” - “I’m the prince of Daxam”, they blurted out in unison.
“What?” -” What?”
They stared at each other incredulously.
“You can’t be serious,” Kara exploded, yanking her arms away.
“You lied to me!” He couldn’t believe it.
“I lied to you? You are the prince!”
“You were an alien the entire time and you didn’t tell me!”
“Well at least I wasn’t lying about something terrible! And the prince, how does that even work?”
"How does that work, what kind of question is that?”
“I … Get out! Now!”
“Fine!”
“Fine!”
*
He ran out, anger burning in his belly. Screw that girl. Screw those confusing feelings.
The cold, wintery air hit him. Mon-El shoved his hands into his pockets. His face burned. He walked faster. He was angry at her in a way he didn’t understand. He walked faster, till the anger in his belly turned into a sinking feeling. He looked up a the stars.
For the first time, the reality of his situation sank in. He was alone. When he arrived on earth, he had been scrambling, hiding, surviving. Making connections, finding ways to understand this strange world. He hadn’t really thought of home much.
Yes, something bad had happened. He knew that, at the back of his mind, but it seemed so far away from his situation, a distraction. Something he didn’t like to dwell on.
M’gann had helped him sneak into the observatory and then he’d waited. By the time he knew there would be no answer, no rescue, there had been Kara. Kara, whose clear gaze always looked ahead, who always seemed to know what to do next. It was so easy to just follow her in amazement. There was always a light about Kara, in her eyes, her hair, her smile, in every little move, that Mon-El couldn’t help but follow.
Now all of that was gone. His past had caught up with him. There was no new life. He had lost his friend, his partner, the one thing that had truly made living on earth worth every second. The one thing that had kept him from remembering that there wasn’t anything else out there for him either. He had nothing to go home to.
Angrily he wiped away the tear that way running down his cheek.
So close.
They had been so close.
And then he hadn’t even gotten to kiss her.
*
“What happened? I take it your date didn’t go well.”
Mon-El’s head jerked up from the table. “How did you know I was going on a date?”
M’gann smiled warmly. “Before you were hyper and excited and now you look like the world just ended. I take it, it didn’t go as planned?”
Mon-El laid his head back on his arms. “She’s Supergirl.”
“She what?”
“Supergirl. The woman I love, she’s Supergirl.”
“Kara is Supergirl?”
“What? How did you know that it’s Kara?”
M’gann rolled her eyes. “Of course it’s Kara. I always knew there was something to her.”
“Have you been reading me, Martian?”
“I can’t properly read you. I can’t read her either.”
“You could have warned me.”
M’gann sat down across him and looked at him, all warm and comforting, almost like a sister. Damn, she really was an excellent bartender.
“So, she’s Supergirl. Why is that a bad thing, again?”
Mon-El winced. “Kryptonians and Daxamites, they don’t really get along that well.”
“I didn’t know you had that much of a problem with Kryptonians.”
He sighed. “I don’t.”
“I thought Kara knew that you’re Daxamite.”
“She did, she does, but then we started talking. I told her things, things about Daxam, things she couldn’t live with. Now, I lost my chance.”
“I’m sorry, Mon-El. I really am.”
Drained, Mon-El ran his hand over his face. “Who knows, if you could read me, if you truly knew me, maybe you wouldn’t like me either, just like Kara.”
His hostess looked at him darkly. “Maybe you’d feel the same about me.”
*
He went back to work the next day, full of trepidation, unsure whether he even had a future there. Would this be the end? He couldn’t even fathom being there without Kara. Kara, his job, in his mind they were linked.
This time, she really was late. Her face was so pale, he couldn’t help it, his heart went out to her. They stood helplessly, facing each other, neither of them finding the words, till she lowered her lashes and hurried off.
Was this how it was going to be? What could he do to fix this? Would she ever want to talk to him again?
Just one day before, the future had seemed to bright and hopeful and now the truth had cost him everything.
Mon-El followed Kara into the briefing room and sat down, one empty chair between them, but the distance seemed icy and unbridgeable. After the assignments had been handed out, she stalked off again quickly, ducking into the chief’s office.
He was about to follow her, after all, if she was demanding reassignment, didn’t he have a right to be present? - when Russels grabbed his arm. “Hey, Oklahoma, we’re are up?”
“What? Kara…”
“You’re with me today. Danvers called me last night to switch shifts. She got a last minute opportunity to join some special training. Surely she told ya.”
“What?” He stammered. “Yes, yes, of course.”
*
He couldn’t help it. After his shift, he stayed behind, loitering around at the precinct, joking around, acting like nothing was wrong, but secretly, hoping to come across her again – would she even come by to the precinct? Maybe she would go straight back home? - and now it was a reality.
“We should talk,” she said.
He nodded and followed her to the file room. She closed the door behind them and leaned against it.
“That story, about how you escaped from Daxam, about the prince who gave his life for you, that was all a lie.”
Mon-El froze, then straightened. “Yes,” he said tonelessly without turning to face her.
“How did you escape, then?”
“My guard pulled me from my bed. He led me to the pod. He killed the owner. I climbed inside and left. He stayed behind and died. It was his duty.” The screams of the injured. Running past the bodies of the dead. The air dense with smoke. The acrid smell of escaped chemicals. All those things he couldn’t put into words.
“Don’t, don’t you feel guilty?”
“Of course I do.”
“You don’t seem like it.”
Mon-El felt all color draining from his face. He turned around. “What would you have me do?”
Kara hugged herself and looked away.
He cleared his throat. “There is one thing I want to know. Why Supergirl?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just… everything. Why did you become her? Were you always her? Why the mask?”
“My parents sent me to this earth as a protector, but the person I was meant to protect, he was already a hero. I was placed with a family of scientists - “
“- and Alex”
“- and Alex. They taught me to hide my powers and my identity to protect the people I love. One day Alex was in danger and I just couldn’t hide anymore. I couldn’t justify not using the powers I’d been granted to help others. To help the planet that took me in.”
“How old were you when Krypton…”
“Thirteen cycles.” Color rose to Kara’s cheeks as if it was something to be embarrassed about and she blinked rapidly to get rid of the tears in her eyes.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said, feeling helpless in the face of her pain.
“Me, too,” she said with a pained attempt at a smile. Her gaze dropped back to the floor. “Krypton, there were people there who knew, who knew who was coming. Nobody listened to them. They should have warned the people and they didn’t.” She looked up again to meet his gaze. “They should have warned your people, too.”
“It’s in the past.”
“My parents. They were among the ones who knew. They saved me. Why didn’t they save the others?”
“You don’t know if they would have listened.” For starters, he had a hard time believing anybody on Daxam would have listened. He shrugged. “It’s in the past now. You are not to blame for what your parents did.”
She stepped closer, once more, close enough he thought he could feel her breath soothing over him.
“How?” she whispered.
“What how?”
“How could you, you know, be the prince? How could I not notice?”
“I forgot.”
She stared at him. “You forgot.”
Mon-El winced. It was hard to explain. “When I arrived, I did what I was taught, in case I got captured, or lost. Don’t tell people what you are, it makes you valuable. After a while, it got easier. My whole life, I was never allowed to choose my own path…”
“… but now…”
“… things are different for me.” Mon-El looked down on his hands.
“I just want you to know that how I feel about you, that was never a lie. At first you drove me crazy and you made me laugh and then I wanted to make you laugh. I wanted to be around you all the time.”
“Mon-El, please, stop.”
“I know I can’t expect you to believe me and I can’t expect it to make a difference to you, but before coming here, I never had truly felt alive, never like I was where I belonged. Till I met you. You, Kara, you showed me, taught me so much.”
Somehow her hands had ended up in his. He squeezed them lightly and didn’t dare to meet her gaze. He wanted to hold on to her just a moment longer, but what right did he have to keep her? What was left for him except to offer her a graceful goodbye? He blinked away the tears that were building up in his eyes.
“Kara?” he whispered. “What’s you real name? I mean, what was your name on Krypton?”
Kara’s hands trembled in his grasp and her voice was shaky when she replied.
“Kara Zor-El. My Name is Kara Zor-El.”
“Thank you. For everything. Ehrosh ‘bem, Kara Zor-El,” he whispered and hoped he didn’t mess up the pronunciation too much.
He turned and walked towards the door. He could sense Kara following him with her gaze.
“You know, I’m glad it didn’t work out,” she blurted out.
Mon-El stopped dead in his tracks.
“I mean obviously, what a ridiculous idea,” she continued. Kara’s voice sounded jittery and when he turned to look at her, he saw that her hands were trembling. “A Kryptonian and a Daxamite, who would ever want something like that.”
“Ridiculous … “
“Yes!” she rushed to affirm and closed the distance between them. Kara stood close, too close. “See,” she whispered. There was panic in her eyes, but also hope? Determination. “I feel nothing,” she said, rose up on her toes and pressed her lips against his. She remained like this for one long moment, her eyes now closed. “Nothing,” she murmured and kissed him again. “I’m not lonely,” she insisted. Kiss. “Not at all.” Another one.
“Of course not,” Mon-El agreed. Entranced by the feeling of her lips against his, he pushed her up till she was sitting on filing table, her long legs dangling freely the air. Then he stopped, his arms still around her, waiting for her to make the next move.
“You jerk. You jerk-jerk,” she sucked in a deep breath and bumped her nose against his and then once more, like a young animal, testing the strength of its horn. “I hate you. You are the worst,“ she weaved her fingers through his hair and stole another kiss. Only this time, she lingered and then, she opened her lips, soft and wet, tentatively requesting permission for more. He felt her freeze when he opened up to her and deepened their kiss and she tasted him and then slowly melted into it. It made him feel like a boy from those old Daxamite myths who had gotten old of a beautiful, almost intangible nymph and tried to persuade her to stay with just one kiss.
And then she bit his lip only to jolt back, surprised by her own tenacity. He caught her lips again immediately and their kiss deepened, grew more hungry. “Jerk,” she repeated, mumbling against his lips. “Jerkjerkjerkjerk.” She covered his face with kisses and suddenly she lunged forward with all her weight and they were tumbling to the floor, twisting and rolling. Kara’s legs wrapped around him and she pulled on his clothes. “I hate you,” she hissed. Mon-El found himself growing pretty pissed as well. He ground his hips down to let her know exactly how crazy she was driving him and pulled her into a long, punishing kiss, angrily plundering her mouth. Two could play this game.
Using her superior strength, she still quickly got the upper hand, fixing him to the floor as she straddled him, licking along his jawline, fascinated with his stubble. Up to the point where she realized what she was doing and jolted up, staring at him in realization.
“Danvers? Matthews?”
They both froze immediately, holding their breath as they saw the shadow of a person walk by through the window in the file cabinet’s door. With a whoosh they both darted behind the desk hoping Russels would just go past and not discover them.
“Mon-El,” Kara whispered, her cheeks flush with embarrassment.
“Hmmm?”
“We have to do this now, before, before I lose my courage.”
Mon-El nodded all too quickly. “Let’s go to your place.”
*
They were still out of breath when they arrived at her door. Mon-El grabbed her waist and kissed the nape of her neck, while Kara ineffectively stabbed her keys at the lock. His caresses grew more bold, softly stroking the side of her breasts through her blouse, while he sucked hard on the side of her throat as she fumbled. With a loud clang the keys scattered on the floor. Their hands bumped into each other as they scrambled to find them. Mon-El got his hands on them first. He backed Kara against the door, with a heated kiss, holding her hands above her head with one hand while jamming the key into the keyhole with the other. He desperately tried to remember whether keys were supposed to go clockwise or counter clockwise, all the while getting lost in the feeling Kara’s body against his.
“Don’t break them,” Kara chided.
Suddenly her arms were around him, there was speed and him losing his footing. He was weightless, kissing Kara, arms tightening around her and gently floating in through her window.
“Wow, that was pretty romantic.” he said when she put him back down on solid ground. She blushed and Mon-El took the opportunity to steal another kiss. She let herself be carried away by it for a moment, before she lowered her head and nestled against his chest. So close he thought he could feel her heartbeat against his. She was shaking lightly, her anger and fervor dissipated as she fought to bring up the courage to say what she wanted to say. She closed her eyes and nuzzled closer.
“I … I don’t want to lie about, about how I still want you. Despite everything that has happened, I still want you”.
He cradled her face in his hand and nudged her to meet his eyes, fighting for the right words to say.
“I wish, I wish that this were a cause of happiness for you, Kara Zor-El, and not pain.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered in a breaking voice.
“It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry that I’m such a mess.”
He kissed her more, willing her to feel in their kiss how he felt. In truth, he didn’t give a damn. To him, she was like this dazzling jewel, with an infinite amount of layers, so many of which he didn’t even know yet. There were so many sides to her, her fury, her determination, her sweetness, her pain, and he wanted to meet and make love to every single one of them. She had his heart and he was sick of pretending otherwise.
“Trust me,” he pleaded and she nodded wordlessly. In lieu of a reply she slung her arms around him.
He walked them back to her bedroom, her legs wrapped around him, her lips never leaving his. They tumbled down together on her sheets. Then they just kissed. Slowly, breathlessly, till Mon-El’s lips started to feel numb and he began to work his way down her body, opening buttons, discarding clothes as he went. He settled between her legs, one hand on her belly, her fingers interwoven with his, trusting him. Part of him still couldn’t believe that this was really happening, that nothing awful would happen to disrupt them again. Relief washed over him when he leaned in and realized that he loved the way she tasted. Not quite Daxamite, not quite like the human women he had been with, just something different and exotic, where he didn’t know if that was Kryptonian or just deeply, fundamentally Kara. All that mattered was that he loved it and it seemed so did she, by the way she grabbed his hand and by the soft sounds falling from her lips.
Suddenly, his soul, his entire being filled with hope, hope that this – was – gonna be a real thing. That it would still be a real thing tomorrow. That one day the she would be comfortable enough in their relationship that he’d be able to tease her about being history’s first wanton Kryptonian.
*
Afterwards, she rested on his chest, her eyes closed. “Want,” she mumbled against his skin. “Want to keep you. Forever.”
Mon-El laughed and patted back her hair that was just crazy and wild from their tumble. “Sounds good to me.”
“It does?”
“One hundred percent.”
He couldn’t resist and inched her slightly higher, allowing him to drop kisses on her forehead.
“Kara?”
“Mmmmm?”
He placed another kiss between her brows, right at the place where her adorable lying crinkle usually sat.
“That place, where your sister works.”
“The DEO?” she yawned and shifted around, trying to find the optimal position.
“Yeah.” Mon-El caught Kara’s hand and pressed his lips against her palm. “Will you, will you take me there one day. I…” he stumbled. “I just want to know all the parts of your life.”
So soft smile slowly spread on her face. “I’d like that. I’d like that very much.”
“You do?” he said, unable to hide his surprise.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah,” he repeated and grinned before kissing her one more time. Kara sighed and leaned into the kiss in a way that made his stomach flutter.
“One more request.”
Kara popped open and raised an eyebrow. “Another request. Already?”
Mon-El’s arms tightened around her, suddenly afraid that his arms would be empty tomorrow and all of this would have been a dream. “Wake up with me.”
Kara looked at him, her eyes opaque and serious, as if she was looking right into his soul. “I’ll be here when you wake up. I promise.”
Epilogue
“You do know,” she said and laughed, “that our shifts start at the same time today.”
“Oh, I know,” Mon-El said and rolled on his belly. He hugged her pillow to his chest, satisfied with having found the perfect position to gaze upon his lover as she closed the last buttons on her blouse.
“Most people prefer watching people get undressed, not dressed.”
A dopey grin spread on his face. “I know.” With a whoosh he was beside her, one arm wrapped around her midriff, hooking into her belt right next to where her handcuffs dangled oh so tantalizingly. His other hand slid up to back of her neck, pulling her in.
“You are naked,” she noted.
“Mmmm?” he mumbled and began to cover her cheeks and nose and lips with slow, dirty-wet kisses.
Kara blushed. “Very naked.”
He laughed and kissed her again. The only thing sexier than Kara Danvers, no wait, Zor-El, in her snug rookie blues was the expression in her eyes. Ms. By The Rules Officer Danvers genuinely torn between duty and desire enough to genuinely consider not showing up for work. Mon-El took pity on her. He released her and reached for this clothes. They wouldn’t be too late today.
Kara sighed and plopped down on he edge of the bed. It was almost like he could see the tiny cogs and wheels in her brain working, and slowly arriving at the conclusion that it was morally unobjectionable to look at your naked boyfriend get dressed. After which she stared unabashedly. Just the tiniest hint of red tinted her cheeks. A tiny glimmer danced in her eyes. Slipping into the sleeves, Mon-El pulled his undershirt over his head, pulling it down till it covered his abs. A little sound of disappointment escaped Kara’s lips and he smiled to himself. By the time he was on his slacks, she came over. Kara snuggled up against his back. Her arms wrapped around him, as her slender, elegant fingers moved to help him with his belt.
“You know,” he said, his voice rough, “My plan was for us not to be too late, but you are turning this into a real challenge.”
“Sorry,” she breathed, her mouth hot and wet against his shirt. Mon-El turned. Their hands bumped against each other, as he shrugged into his shirt and they both moved to close every button. Rao, she was so close. The reality of his situation truly hit him for the first time.
“Are you really okay with this?”
“Do I seem like I’m not okay with this?” she asked.
Kara. His Kara. His Danvers. His partner. His friend. Here with him. A stranger to this world just like him. His guide. His Supergirl. No, the world’s Supergirl.
He kissed her because now he could. “Can’t believe we found each other.”
A sad little smile danced across Kara’s lips. Her endless blue eyes cloudy for a second with melancholy. Grife. Leave it to him to stick his foot into his mouth and remind her of all the dead people that lay in their wake. He gave her a quick kiss and rubbed his nose against hers.
“Race you to work?”
She grinned. “Ready when you are.”
*
The day at work was pure hell. They were late for the chief’s briefing, sneaking in red faced. Trying to ignore Maggie’s raised eyebrow.
Mon-El wanted to know everything about her. Kara’s parents, her life on Krypton, but he was afraid to ask.
“I want you to know, that, that I don’t care about your past. This is new. A fresh start. You can be different now.”
“Yes, yes. That. That’s what I want.”
Kara’s head jerked around and she looked at him in surprise. Mon-El shrugged. “My old self, wasn’t really a great person.” He felt himself growing somber.
“Can we go to your place? I love your place.”
She laughed.
“Are you asking to move in with me? Already?”
Mon-El gave her his brightest, sunniest smile. “Well, I like M’gann, but I like you more.”
Kara grinned. “Are you sure you aren’t just sleeping with me for my apartment?”
Mon-El reached over and ran his thumb along her cheek. “Yeah, pretty sure.”
A long, breathless moment passed between them and he wanted to kiss her so badly right there, except he was sure it wouldn’t be right for them, in the middle of work, right in their squad car, where everybody could see.
They held out till 5 minutes before the shift was over. They were lucky that no serious emergency came their way, their conversation strained and choppy as they waited for the clock to tick down. Just about when they decided to hand the car back over, he couldn’t take it anymore. He backed Kara up against the wall in alley and smothered her with kisses, every cell in his body singing with joy that he was finally allowed to touch her, jubilating when she threw her arms around him, returning his kiss with equal need.
“You know,” she panted, as she pulled out of their kiss to rest her cheek against his throat for just a second, rubbing her face against his skin like a cat looking for affection. “Alex says that, that your body temperature is just a little bit higher than those of humans. Always like you are running just a bit of a fever,” she mumbled. “Feels really good.”
Mon-El grinned. “So what you’re saying is that you want me to warm you up?”
“Maybe. Yes. Oh gods, the answer is yes,” she squeaked as he started to kiss that spot right behind her ear.
“My place. Now.”
*
The moment the apartment door fell shut behind him, Kara was a blur of air and colors and then she stood in front of him. Naked. She threw her arms around his neck, her body pressed up against his, her lips sucking greedily on his neck. She walked backwards, pulling him along. Mon-El followed her, stunned and dazed.
Effortlessly he was thrown towards the couch and then she straddled him, gyrating on top of him in all her glorious nakedness. He ran his hands down her sides and cupped her ass. It felt perfect, they way it fit into his grip and he teased her hips to roll with the rhyhm he set. Kara moaned and pulled helplessly at his shirt.
“If you rip it, you have to buy me a new one.”
Kara groaned in exasperation. “What on earth do you spend your paycheck on, Mr. Intergalactic Prince?”
Mon-El smiled sheepishly and nuzzled her neck. They tumbled to the side, with him on top of her. He struggled his his belt, not wanting the buckle to bite into her naked skin. If it were up to him, these pants would be preserved in a glass case and not washed for as long as he lived, he thought. Mon-El pulled his shirt over his head. He steadied himself against he armrest and ground his his hips into hers. Her knees tightened around him and she arched upward upon the intensity of the contact. How was he supposed to contend with such beauty?
They kissed breathlessly, their bodies finding their own tune, rushing faster and faster, trying to find completion after having been denied for so long. His name fell from Kara’s lips, over and over and he wanted to catch that sound, keep it forever and listen to it every night before he fell asleep. And then …
“Mon-El, Mon-El, wait.” Kara grabbed his arm and pushed him back to a sitting position.
“Hmmm?” he mumbled questioningly against her hair.
Kara smiled apologetically and snuggled against him. “I might have … bought some condoms,” she confessed.
Mon-El raised an eyebrow. “Condoms?”
“Well yes, I figured you might have some, but I wanted to be sure and I wasn’t sure which size you were and what type feels good and maybe you are allergic and so I just bought all the sizes!” Kara hung half off the couch and rummaged underneath it. She pulled forth a box. A wide box. A very long and very wide box. Sheepishly she opened it.
One thing’s for sure, she hadn’t been lying about all the sizes. And all the colors. And all the textures.
“Too much?” she asked in a worried voice.
“No,” he said softly and kissed her shoulder. “I’m glad you care. We’ll find a use for all of these.”
Her eyes widened. “All of these?”
Well, according to the movies some of them would make for some mean water bombs. “Yes,” he confirmed. “All of these.” Their mouths got tangled in a little kiss, while he reached for one of the orange-purple packages. “These will do.” Mon-El turned to Kara. “Do you know how to put them on?” he asked huskily.
Kara licked her lips. “I want to learn.” She ripped the carton open and brought a condom wrapper up to her lips.
“Wait, don’t, not the teeth!” Mon-El grabbed her hands and smiled apologetically. “Don’t tear it by accident.”
“Right.”
The first one sailed across the room as Kara tore open to protective foil with a bit too much enthusiasm and both of them burst out laughing. She was more careful with the second one, her hands trembling in anticipation. Mon-El couldn’t take his eyes off her, the way her brow was furrowed in concentration, the way she bit her lip. He slipped two fingers inside of her, making her tremble even more.
With shaky hands she managed to extract the condom from its packaging. “You see the tiny exalted tip? Hold I close. Then roll it on slowly.” Kara licked her lips and nodded. His breathing deepened and grew labored as she started her work, but at least the act didn’t leave her indifferent either. Her nipples were hard and she took a break after every little progress, her upper body swaying as her wormed his fingers deeper into her and was rewarded with a gush of liquid running down on his hand and coating the inside of her thighs.
“I, I’ve waited for so long,” she whispered.
“It’s okay,” he calmed her. “You are so close.”
Even through the latex her touch felt heavenly on his cock. After a torturous eternity, she had finally unrolled the entire length.
With a moan, Kara sunk back into the cushions of the couch, her knees falling open for him. “Want you,” she mouthed and reached for him.
His blood was pounding in his ears and he vowed to himself to make her feel good with his lips afterwards, but right now, he couldn’t wait. Not when she was like this, so soft, so open, so needy for his touch.
He was inside of her and she was all around him, they were one. Her eyes were awash with feelings. He saw worry there, and hope, and warmth, and fear. Kara’s hands tightened against his shoulders. Her lips were pressed together as if she was trying so hard to contain her words from spilling out. Something around his heart constricted.
“It’s okay,” Mon-El whispered and pressed a kiss against those lips. He didn’t need her to say it. Not when he could feel with how painfully she was wrestling with it. It wasn’t important. The only thing that mattered was that she was here, with him.
“I love you,” he stated matter of factly and started to move. Her hands, gripping his shoulders, clenched and unclenched. So hard they would have broken a collar bone or two on anybody else. Her eyes were full of love and sadness.
“You sure you know what that means?” Kara’s voice was barely more than a breath, like a tiny bird with a broken wing.
“It’s when first your heart burns all the time, then it dances and in the end, it sings, right?” he whispered.
Kara’s lips were pressed together in a plane, thin line and her eyes were alight with water, but she nodded furiously.
He knew.
“I love you, Supergirl.”
