kara doing all of that for her dog is completely understandable btw. like on a surface level yeah most people would go to hell and back if their pet was unreasonably injected with a lethal dose of poison, but krypto is her only connection to her home other than clark, and one of her main sources of comfort after everything she went through. like he was a raggedy stray who ran up to her and her only during her moms funeral where she instantly picked him up and took him in, stuck with her when her father sent her to earth, kept her company on a planet where she was grappling with her sudden superpowers under the yellow sun and her only living relative spoke a language she couldn't understand at the time, and went with her as she travelled from planet to planet to drown her sorrows, and you're telling me you wouldn't go berserk for that dog if you were her??
"home is wherever you are, buddy"? yeah, yeah it is
The door closes softly. Not a slam. Not anger. Just a quiet click that feels final in a way Kara isn’t ready to understand.
Kara doesn’t move.
She’s still standing exactly where Lena left her, arms half-lowered like they forgot what they were doing, fingers curling faintly into nothing, like they’re still expecting to find her there, within reach. But she isn’t.
And the space between Kara and her already feels wrong. Too wide. Too empty. Like something essential has been pulled out of the room and taken all the air with it.
Kara exhales slowly, except it doesn’t really feel like breathing. It feels like something collapsing.
“She loves me,” she murmurs, the words fragile, almost disbelieving, like they might break if she says them too loud.
They don’t comfort her.
A part of her, the version of herself from an hour ago, would have clung to that, would have replayed it over and over again, smiling, hopeful, certain that love meant something solid. Something safe. Now it just feels unfinished.
But I don’t know about her.
Kara squeezes her eyes shut, like she can push the words away, like she can rewind the last day and do it differently this time, like there’s a version of this that doesn’t end with Lena walking out.
There isn’t.
There’s no telling her sooner, or telling her everything, that would change this. No waiting. No saying it right off the bat. No lying. No telling her the truth. There’s nothing she could have done today that would have made this go a different direction.
Her chest tightens painfully, a sharp, unfamiliar pressure that has nothing to do with any fight she’s ever been in, nothing to do with physical pain at all, and everything to do with the way Lena looked at her like she didn’t even know her in the first place.
Like Kara had been standing in front of her this whole time, and Lena is only now realizing she never actually knew who she was.
Kara drags a hand down her face, her fingers catching briefly against the edge of her glasses before she pulls them off entirely, pressing the heels of her palms into her eyes like she can hold this in. As if it’s not already spilling over.
Her shoulders drop as she exhales, the tension draining out of her all at once, leaving her heavier somehow, like gravity has doubled just to make sure she stays exactly where she is.
One day. Just one damn day, and she managed to blow this up to unrecognition.
Yesterday, Lena was her best friend. Today Kara kissed her, realized she was in love with her all along, told her the secret, and then lost her.
And she feels it, big and everywhere. In the way her apartment feels hollowed out. In the way it feels like the absence of life and love and certainty.
But it’s worse.
It’s the absence of Lena.
No sense of her, steady and constant, somewhere in the city like something Kara could always reach if she needed to.
Kara’s breath catches.
Because she doesn’t reach. She could. She knows she could.
But this isn’t something she can punch her way through. It isn’t something she can outrun or outfly or solve in the span of a heartbeat. This is something she has to wait for. Something Lena has to decide.
Kara has never felt more powerless in her life.
She leans forward slowly, pressing her forehead into her hands, shoulders curling in just slightly like she’s trying to hold herself together, like if she stays still enough maybe the world won’t shift any further out of place.
It doesn’t work. It never really does.
Because the truth is still there, sitting heavy and undeniable in the center of everything.
Lena loves her, but not all of her.
She tries to breathe, tries to let the moment pass, to let the feeling dull into something manageable, something she can carry without it cracking her open from the inside, but it doesn’t. It builds instead, loud and overwhelming now, a pressure behind her ribs, steady and insistent, like her body is trying to move without her permission.
Go.
The thought comes without warning, barely even a word before her muscles tense in response. Kara stills immediately, her jaw tightening as she shakes her head once, sharp and instinctive.
“No,” she mutters, quieter than she expects. “She asked for space.”
But it’s easier said than done.
Because her ears are tuned to Lena’s heart. They have been for a while now, even if she never noticed it before. Her hands are wired to Lena’s skin. Her eyes have always worked better when they were looking at her.
And now she has to do this. This space thing she has never really been good at.
Because space feels like distance, and distance feels like loss, and loss is something Kara has never accepted easily. Not when she can do something about it. Not when she can just go.
She hears it without meaning to.
A soft, muffled sound. A break in breath. The kind that doesn’t need words to be understood.
Lena is crying.
Kara’s whole body reacts before she can stop it, something in her pulling tight, ready to move, to close the distance, to fix what she broke before it settles into something permanent.
She should try to make this right.
Go.
“No,” Kara says, sharper now, the word catching on something fragile in her throat. “No. I’m not going.”
But the words don’t hold.
Because not going feels wrong in a way she can’t explain, not logically, not even emotionally, just wrong, like ignoring something important, something urgent, something she is built to answer.
“I can’t. I can’t go to her.”
The realization comes right after, quiet but absolute.
If she can’t go to Lena… then she can’t stay either.
Because staying means listening. Staying means feeling the distance every second, every breath, every heartbeat she refuses to stop following. Staying means breaking in a way she won’t be able to come back from.
And staying means not respecting what Lena asked for.
She already crossed that line once today.
She won’t do it again.
The Fortress doesn’t greet her. It never does, but today the silence feels wrong in a way Kara can’t quite name. She lands too fast, boots scraping against the frozen ground, and the sound echoes sharp and distant, swallowed by the kind of quiet that doesn’t soften anything.
She doesn’t stop moving once she’s inside.
If she does, she knows exactly what’s going to happen.
Her steps carry her forward, then sideways, then back again, an uneven path that turns into pacing before she even realizes it, like her body is trying to burn something off that won’t settle. Her hand drags through her hair as she turns again, sharper this time, breath uneven.
“I should call Lena,” she mutters, the words slipping out before she can stop them.
A soft chime answers her from somewhere behind, quiet, unnoticeable.
She huffs out a breath, already shaking her head. “No. No, I should— I should practice first. That’s… smarter.”
Her gaze drifts, landing on a familiar crystal console, and after a second she steps toward it, fingers brushing along its surface until a small image flickers to life. It’s simple, a captured moment she wanted to have forever. Lena mid-expression, eyes sharp, lips just barely curving like she’s about to say something Kara will pretend to be offended by.
Kara stares at it for half a second too long, then exhales.
“Okay,” she starts, already shaking her head like she’s arguing with something that hasn’t even spoken yet. “Okay, look, I—I know what you’re going to say.”
Her hands lift, gesturing vaguely toward the image before dropping again, restless.
“Real mature of me, running away again. Yeah, yeah, I know. Not very Supergirl-ish of me. I got that part, thanks.”
She turns at the end of her path and comes back the other way, not quite looking at the hologram, not quite not.
“But you didn’t exactly leave me a lot of options, did you? With the whole ‘I need to think this through and I need to be alone’ thing? What was I supposed to do with that?”
She lets out a breath that almost turns into a laugh, except it falls flat halfway through.
“Just stay there? Just stand there and—what—pretend I couldn’t hear you walking away? Pretend I wasn’t feeling it? Because that’s kind of a big ask, Lena,” she says, pacing faster without noticing. “I’m not exactly built for sitting still while someone I care about walks out the door. That’s not— that’s not how this works for me.”
She turns again, sharper this time, her eyes landing on nothing and everything all at once.
“You expected me not to lose my mind over this? Over you being in love with me while I’m also in love with you? Over not being able to kiss you breathless again?”
The question hangs there, and for a second it almost sounds real, like she might actually get an answer.
There’s only silence.
Kara exhales, slower now, the edge in her voice catching on something as she keeps moving.
“Yeah,” she mutters, quieter, glancing away for a second before dragging her gaze back. “I’m hearing it. And yeah,” she adds, the words heavier now, “I know that’s exactly how you felt.”
The admission lands harder than everything else.
“When I kissed you and then just left you there to figure it out on your own. I didn’t give you a choice either, and of course I know that was wrong. I know it, you know it. And you know I’m sorry about it too. I’ve said it a million times.”
She swallows, the words catching now instead of rushing.
“But it’s not enough, is it? It’s never going to be enough.”
She slows, just slightly, but she doesn’t stop. She can’t. There’s too much inside, pushing to get out instead of taking up all the space in her chest.
“I keep telling myself there wasn’t a better way to do this. That no matter what I said, no matter when I said it, it would’ve ended like this anyway.”
Her gaze flickers toward the hologram for half a second, then away again.
“But that’s not really true, is it?”
The question is quieter, almost careful, like she’s testing it.
“I just didn’t give you the chance to decide before everything got complicated, and if I had… if I—”
Kara finally slows to a stop, her chest rising and falling a little too quickly, like she ran farther than she meant to.
“Rao, Lena, I can’t go back. I can’t make it what it was supposed to be. The only thing I can do is…”
Her eyes fix on Lena’s mouth, steady now, even as they start to burn.
“Make it right from now to forever. Make it up to you for the rest of our lives.”
Her voice breaks on the last word, quiet and unguarded.
“Please. Please, Lena, just give me the rest of our lives to make this right.”
Silence stretches, heavy and complete.
And then—
“…Kara?”
The voice is small. Careful. Real.
Kara doesn’t move.
For a second, she genuinely thinks she imagined it.
Then her head snaps up, eyes darting around the Fortress like the sound might have come from the walls themselves.
“…Lena?” she breathes, the name fragile, disbelieving.
A faint crackle answers her this time, and then Lena again, so soft it sounds like a dream.
“You didn’t mean to call me, did you?”
Kara’s stomach drops.
The chime. The console. The stupid voice-activation feature Kal insisted on installing last week.
“I—” Her voice fails her, and she swallows hard, trying again. “I didn’t know— I wasn’t—”
“I know,” Lena says quickly, and there’s something gentler than Kara expected in it. “I figured that out.”
Kara presses a hand to her chest, like she needs to keep her heart from climbing out of her throat.
“You talk a lot when you think no one’s listening,” Lena adds, and there’s the faintest trace of something there, not quite humor, not quite sadness, but something that feels like both.
Kara lets out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding.
“Lena, I—”
“I heard you,” Lena cuts in, not harsh, but firm enough to stop her from spiraling into apologies. “All of it.”
That stops her.
Completely.
Kara swallows, her throat suddenly too tight, every word she could say feeling smaller than the ones Lena already heard.
There’s a pause on the other end, and when Lena speaks again, her voice is more careful.
“Forever is a very big promise, Kara.”
Kara closes her eyes for a second, her grip tightening slightly on the edge of the console.
“I know,” she whispers. “But I promised myself forever with you a long time ago. Least I could do is make that promise to you now.”
“You always do that,” she says, and there’s something fragile in it now, awfully honest. “You say something that sounds impossible… and then somehow make me want to believe you anyway.”
Kara’s breath stutters while Lena exhales softly, the sound faint but there.
“Okay,” Lena continues after a moment, quieter now, but steadier in a way that matters. “I’ll give you the rest of our lives to try.”
Kara’s breath stops, like her body forgot how to do it.
“You… will?”
There’s the faintest shift on the other end, almost like a smile threaded through Lena’s voice.
“If you get here in the next thirty seconds—”
Kara is already moving before Lena finishes the sentence.
The Fortress blurs around her, crystal and ice dissolving into streaks of light as she launches forward, the ground cracking softly beneath the force of it. There’s no hesitation, no second thought, no careful planning this time. Just instinct pulling her in one direction and one direction only.
She’s never flown this fast.
There has never been an emergency that felt bigger than this, sharper than this, more urgent than the sound of Lena’s voice not hanging up.
The sky tears open around her as she breaks through it, wind screaming past, the cold biting at her skin, but she barely registers any of it. All she can hear is the echo of Lena’s words, looping, grounding, impossible and real all at once.
The rest of our lives.
Kara leans forward, pushing harder, faster, like she can close the distance between them and everything that went wrong in the same breath.
Thirty seconds.
It’s never felt so long.
It’s never felt so short.
“Twenty seconds,” Lena is there when Kara lands on her balcony, looking at her watch.
Kara can barely breathe, unsure of what it means, of what to do next.
“That means you have ten seconds left to kiss me breathless again.”
And Kara? Kara doesn’t even need a second.
The distance between them disappears in a heartbeat, Kara crossing it in one step that turns into two that turns into nothing at all as her hands find Lena’s waist and her mouth finds hers like she’s been holding this in for too long and it finally snapped.
It's not gentle, anything but. It's desperate as if it's the only thing keeping her alive right now. It's messy and breathless and deeper than all the words they’ve been trying and failing to say.
And when Lena cups her face and kisses her back like she’s never going to stop, Kara’s hands, treacherous things she can’t control, are already lifting her, pulling their hips flush without thought, without pause, like closer is the only thing that matters.
They kiss until Kara forgets everything that isn't this. That isn't now. Until the only thing in the world is Lena Luthor and the steady rhythm of her heartbeat, loud and constant, something Kara can’t help but listen to even as she feels it under her palm.
“Okay, Kara Zor-El Danvers,” Lena murmurs, voice soft and certain. “The rest of our lives start now.”
Supergirl. Supercorp. Kara Danvers, Lena Luthor, Alex Danvers, Sam Arias, Ruby Arias.
Word Count: 3.3k
It was supposed to be a game night, but it soon turned into a girl’s night instead. James and Winn had a secret project they refused to elaborate on, and J’onn was a no-show. Kara decided this was clearly fate intervening. A girl’s night was necessary.
Her definition of it involved a romantic comedy and braiding each other’s hair. They all tried to argue. Hair-braiding, however, was not optional.
So while Alex and Ruby debate dinner choices with Kara in the kitchen, Sam and Lena watch the chaos unfold from the couch. It's loud in that comfortable way. The kind of noise that makes an apartment feel like a home. One that Lena is finally getting used to.
Lena only realizes she’s been watching Kara a little too closely when Sam nudges her knee.
“You know,” Sam says in a low tone, eyes still on the chaos in the kitchen, “at some point you’re going to have to tell her.”
Lena blinks away from it. “Tell who what?”
“Kara. How you actually feel about her.”
Across the room, Kara stills after she hears that. Not visibly. Not enough for anyone without super senses to notice. But her name paired with the sound of Lena’s heartbeat shifting is enough to get her attention.
On the couch, Lena exhales through her nose, “It’s not like that.” It's what she manages, even though it is exactly like that.
Sam raises an eyebrow. “Come on, Lena. I've known you for years. You've never looked at anyone the way you look at Kara. Why don't you just tell her?”
“Sam.” It’s meant to end the conversation. A warning. A full stop disguised as a name. “This isn’t the place,” Lena mutters under her breath, glancing toward the kitchen where they are still loudly debating toppings like national policy depends on it.
“They can't hear us. I'm surprised they can even hear themselves.”
In the kitchen, Kara’s hands curl tighter around the edge of the counter, knuckles paling.
“Do we really have to?” Lena tries, but Sam just shrugs. “Fine.” She exhales, the fight draining out of her all at once.
“I realized I was in love with her when she was dating that douche, Mike. I hated him far more than he deserved. Still do. But I think she’s still not over him. So there’s no version of this where I get to tell her about my feelings, okay?”
Sam tilts her head. “Maybe you could help her get over him.”
“Or maybe I destroy a good thing. You said it yourself. We’ve never had this before. Women who show up for us. Who don’t compete. Who don’t leave.” Her voice softens, almost betraying her. “It’s great. It’s family...”
Lena swallows, half exposed, half heartbroken. “I don’t want to be the reason that ends just because I caught feelings.”
In the kitchen, Kara stops hearing the argument in front of her entirely. Alex is still talking. Ruby is chiming in with extremely loud confidence. But it all fades into a dull hum and all she can hear is how her heart is beating too loud.
Sam studies Lena carefully. “Can you handle not doing anything about it?”
The question hangs there, heavy and patient. Kara swallows her own breath just so she can hear it better, as if she needs that. As if she isn't hearing Lena's heart drumming on the other side of the room, caught, bare, honest. As if she can't hear her own blood rushing through her veins all the way to her cheeks as if she were the one exposed.
Alex throws her hands up in triumph. “Pizza. Settled.”
Kara doesn’t respond. She can’t. The world feels oddly tilted, like gravity shifted half an inch to the left.
On the couch, Lena stares at the blank TV screen for a long moment.
“Yeah,” she says finally, her voice steadier than she feels. “The only thing I can’t handle is not having Kara in my life.”
And in the kitchen, Kara’s fingers press so hard into the counter there's a finger-shaped dent on the granite she'll have a really hard time explaining later.
Alex is saying something about extra cheese. Ruby is cheering. The world keeps moving with the audacity of it.
Kara hears Lena’s heartbeat settle after the confession. Hears the soft exhale that follows like she’s just placed something fragile back in its box.
“Okay, okay. I won't bring it up again,” Sam murmurs.
Lena huffs a quiet laugh. “Doubt it.”
It hits Kara, then. Too fast, too bright, too honest. Lena is in love with her. Her best friend. The only person who can make her feel safe in her humanity. One of the few people who has no idea she has an alter ego.
Across the room, she drops a spoon. It clatters loudly against the counter, metallic and accusing. She’s grateful for it. Grateful for something she can blame the way her hands are shaking on.
Alex glances at her. “You okay?”
“Yep. Totally. Pizza. Great choice. Love it. Pizza, I mean. I love pizza.”
Her smile feels like it was stapled on.
From the couch, Lena looks over. And there it is. That look Sam was talking about. Soft. Open. The kind of gaze you don’t use on someone you only see as a friend. She sees it now, how obvious it had always been. Obvious enough that not knowing felt less like ignorance and more like deliberate denial.
Kara almost looks away. Almost.
Instead, she meets Lena’s eyes for half a second too long. It’s not enough to expose anything. But it’s enough to make her chest tighten painfully. Because now she knows.
Now she hears the word love and feelings and longing. She hears it all again just by looking into Lena's eyes. And she doesn't know what to do with the words.
By the time the pizza arrives, Kara has already rehearsed what normal looks like.
She laughs when she is supposed to. Argues passionately about toppings. Insists on one particular rom-com and one specific braid-style.
On the surface, she is exactly the same as she was an hour ago. Underneath, she feels like she unlearned how to stand under Earth's gravity.
They end up on the floor in front of the couch. At some point, hair-braiding becomes inevitable. Alex makes an elaborate show of sectioning Sam’s hair with clinical precision while Ruby offers loud and entirely unqualified advice.
Lena settles behind Kara without either of them acknowledging the choice. It feels instinctive, like something that has happened a dozen times before. And it has. Kara remembers other evenings where Lena’s hands ended up in her hair, where she leaned back without thinking, trusting the closeness.
Now she is thinking about it far too much.
Kara feels Lena before the first strand of hair is gathered, the quiet warmth of her presence settling behind her in a way that has started to feel dangerously close to home. Then comes the gentle press of Lena’s knee against her lower back, close enough to blur the edges of personal space. When Lena’s fingers finally slip into Kara’s hair, careful and deliberate, Kara has to concentrate not to let out an inappropriate sound.
“Good?” Lena says softly, her tone light, almost teasing.
Kara nods, because she does not trust her voice.
Lena’s touch is patient, familiar. It is such an ordinary intimacy, the kind built over months of comfort and shared evenings. The only difference now is that Kara knows those hands belong to someone who said she was in love and meant it.
The knowledge prickles under her skin, impossible to ignore.
“You're okay? Is it too tight?” Lena asks after a moment, her fingers pausing at the nape of Kara’s neck.
“No, it’s good,” Kara hears the thinness in her own voice.
Behind her, Lena goes still for half a second. Kara does not need super hearing to feel the change. She has always melted easily into touch, leaning back without thinking, tilting her head to give Lena better access. Tonight she holds herself carefully, as if any additional movement might betray her. Because apparently all of her old movements have already betrayed her in this friendship.
Lena resumes the braid more slowly, more thoughtfully. Her fingertips brush the back of Kara’s neck as she gathers another section of hair, and Kara’s breath catches before she can stop it.
The sound is small, but not small enough. She's scared that someone other than Lena has noticed.
The movie is in the grand confession scene, complete with swelling music and a dramatic kiss in the rain. Alex groans at the predictability of it, and Ruby hides her face behind her hands with delighted embarrassment. Sam watches the screen with a small smile, but her gaze flickers toward Kara and Lena, sharp and observant.
Kara barely register it. She is too aware of the space behind her, of Lena leaning just slightly closer as she secures the end of the braid. Close enough that Kara can feel her breath on her shoulder. Close enough that turning her head would mean their faces are only inches apart.
Kara wants to turn.
She wants to say something reckless and honest and ruinously sincere. She wants to tell Lena that she is not still hung up on Mike, that she barely remembered his name before Lena said it tonight. She wants to tell her that Lena would not ruin anything by catching feelings, that in fact the only thing ruining this is secrecy.
Instead, she stays perfectly still.
Because she was never meant to hear any of it. Because responding now would mean admitting she did.
By the time the night winds down and goodbyes begin, Kara feels scraped raw from the inside. Every glance has felt like a minefield. Every accidental brush of hands like contraband she is not allowed to keep. Her heart has been racing so furiously she is half afraid someone will hear it over the television, half afraid she'll pass out over the sheer violence of it all.
She has had enough.
And she has no idea where to go from here.
Everyone leaves, but Kara doesn't. Not because she is in her own home, but because she can't leave the moment behind.
She re-reads every single undertone, overanalyzing it from every angle: front, back, sideways. Looks for signs in the gaps in the silence. Kara re-lives it until she knows the words by heart, until the way Lena looked at her gets embroidered into the fabric of her being.
Sleep does not dissolve it. Morning does not either.
She tells herself nothing has changed. Lena said she wouldn’t act on it. Lena said she wouldn’t risk what they have. That should make Kara feel safe. Stabilized. Protected.
And yet she can't understand why the idea of Lena deciding to want less from her feels like a structural weakness in her bones. Lena choosing distance would be reasonable. Lena guarding herself would be healthy. Lena folding those feelings back into something smaller and safer would be mature.
So why does the thought claw her insides? Why does it haunt every minute of her day until the only thing she can think of is seeing Lena again?
By the time Kara lands outside L-Corp that afternoon, she has convinced herself she is being dramatic. Lena deserves peace, clarity, someone who doesn’t come with entire galaxies of secrecy stitched into her identity, someone who is, at least, sure.
Kara tells herself this as she walks in the building, repeating it like a mantra, as if repetition might make it true.
It falls apart faster than she expects.
She is making a habit of it. Listening to conversations she shouldn’t, that is. A habit she spent most of her life trying to break. But when it comes to Lena, Kara has always listened way too closely.
“Okay Lena, listen,” Sam starts.
Kara’s hearing sharpens instantly as the elevator doors slide closed.
“I know you’re in love with Kara,” Sam continues, matter-of-fact, “but you’ve decided not to do anything about it… correct?”
“I'm pretty sure you said you wouldn’t bring this up again,” Lena replies, weary.
“Lena, I don’t want you breaking your own heart. Bottling all this up isn’t exactly healthy.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Lena answers dryly. “A lifetime of being a Luthor made me very good at it.”
There’s a rustle of paper.
“Right. Well. Here.”
“What’s this?” The edge in Lena’s voice is immediate. Kara feels it like a tug in her chest. She glances at the glowing numbers above the elevator door and wonders why the ride suddenly feels endless, like the building has decided to grow extra floors out of spite.
“That woman you thought was hot at the fundraiser,” Sam says casually. “The one in the blue dress?”
Woman. Hot.
Oh.
Oh no.
“She asked me if you were single. I told her you were and I gave her your number. But if you wanna speed up the process of forgetting Kara Danvers… That's her number.”
The words land gently. The impact does not.
When the elevator dings open, Kara is suddenly afraid to move. For a moment she just stands there, staring at the open hallway like it might bite. The only reason she eventually steps forward is because her body does it without consulting her.
“Oh,” Lena says faintly somewhere down the hall.
That one soft syllable is enough.
Before Kara realizes what she’s doing, she’s moving (more like running) toward Lena’s office. She needs to see her face. Needs to know not just what Lena is saying, but what she isn’t.
Needs to know how happy she is to actually move on from her.
“Hey—hi—hey! Lena, hey!”
Lena looks caught. Her cheeks are flushed, color high along her cheekbones, and her breath is just a little short, as if Kara has interrupted something important.
“Hi, Kara.”
Kara searches her face automatically, cataloguing everything: the surprise in her eyes, the way her fingers are curled against a piece of paper, the faint tension in her shoulders.
What does it mean? Embarrassment? Annoyance? Is she upset that Kara barged in like this?
“Oh, Kara,” Sam says smoothly, as if none of this is strange at all. “I was just giving Lena someone’s number. I think she needs to go on a date, she's been in National City long enough and she is too hot to be single. Don’t you agree?”
“I—Um—”
That’s all Kara manages because what would she be agreeing to? Is Lena too hot? Duh, is like saying the sun is too hot. Or would she be agreeing to Lena going on a date?
She touches her glasses and smooths her hands down the front of her cardigan trying to calm herself, but nothing helps. Her heart is pounding so loudly she’s surprised the entire office can’t hear it.
Lena. On a date. Lena. Who is in love with her. Lena. With someone else.
“Anyway,” Sam says, already moving toward the door, “I have to get back to work.” She passes Kara, pausing just long enough to rest a hand on her shoulder, smiling like she knows something Kara does not. “Counting on you to convince Lena to have a love life.”
“B–Bye, Sam.”
Lena does not speak at first. Kara doesn’t either. Words feel impossible, too small for the chaos currently rattling through her chest. She tries very hard not to look at the paper beneath Lena’s fingers.
She fails almost immediately.
The small square of paper might as well be glowing. Kara can picture it vividly: herself stepping forward, plucking it from under Lena’s fingers, and reducing it to ash with the smallest flicker of heat vision. The imagined relief is vivid, a burst of satisfaction she cannot quite justify, but feels in her bones all the same.
“So,” Lena says at last, recovering with that smooth composure she always seems able to summon first. “What brings you down during work hours? Please don't tell me it's for an interview.”
The question opens a door inside Kara’s mind that she has been bracing against for hours. Behind it waits a chaotic flood of realizations that refuse to line up in any orderly fashion. Lena is in love with her. Lena might go on a date with someone else. Lena might slowly build a life that does not include Kara standing awkwardly in the doorway, pretending that friendship is enough.
The thought hits with surprising force, like gravity decided to play games with her again. And it's winning. Again.
Kara opens her mouth to answer Lena’s question and discovers that honesty has staged a coup against her better judgment. Her heart is racing so violently she feels it in her throat, and before the rational portion of her brain can intervene, her body simply decides to act.
She moves around the desk in two quick steps.
Lena straightens in her chair, clearly startled by the sudden shift in proximity. Kara is so close, she can see the faint freckles across Lena’s nose, close enough to notice the slight widening of her eyes as confusion flickers across her face.
Then Kara kisses her.
The kiss is impulsive and clumsy in the way all deeply honest things tend to be. Kara is not thinking straight, because if she were, she might be terrified of Lena pulling away, of ruining everything they have carefully balanced for so long. Instead she only feels the warmth of Lena’s lips beneath hers.
Her hands, traitorous things that they are, slide instinctively to Lena’s waist as she pulls her closer and up her desk.
Lena inhales sharply as she sits on it, and that's when her stillness breaks. Her hand rises almost automatically, catching lightly at Kara’s sleeve before slipping upward into her hair as she leans forward and returns the kiss.
The world tilts. Falls. Holds its breath.
And Kara? Kara doesn't stop. Instead, she kisses Lena harder. Better. Deeper. Her mouth tilts, her tongue slips, and the whole thing shifts into something dizzying and electric. Kara feels it everywhere: along her spine, in the low of her belly, in the center of her chest where jealousy and relief and something dangerously close to awe collide.
Lena’s hands are in her hair, her legs wrapped around Kara’s torso as if she’s afraid Kara might pull away, even though Kara is basically on top of her now.
Eventually they’ll have to breathe. Kara knows that much, somewhere beneath the blur of sensation and racing thoughts. Air will become a necessity, gravity will reassert itself in the most inconvenient way possible.
Gravity has been fucking with her a lot lately.
But the moment they break apart, they will have to face reality. Words will follow. Explanations. Consequences.
And Kara is not ready for any of them.
But Lena breaks apart whether she is ready or not.
Kara can't believe what she's done. Can't believe what she is seeing. Lena, flushed and wide-eyed and utterly stunned. Her lips are parted, swollen. She has never looked as beautiful as she does right now, Kara knows this much, even if she doesn't know a whole lot right now.
The silence that follows is louder than anything that came before it. Kara’s stomach drops. Rao, what was that? What did she just do? How bad did she fuck things up?
The question detonates all at once. She has kissed Lena without explanation. Without context. She heard something she should not have. She acted on something Lena explicitly chose not to just a mere day ago. She also still hasn't told Lena that she is Supergirl.
Footsteps echo faintly in the hallway outside. Lena’s phone begins to ring on the desk under them. Reality slams back into place.
Kara steps back as if the space itself has burned her. Lena’s hands fall away slowly, reluctantly, confusion etched into every line of her face.
But Kara does not trust herself to stay. She does not trust what might spill out if she does.
“I–” She wants to say she is sorry. She wants to tell Lena everything.
Lena wakes up earlier. She isn’t even surprised to find Kara tangled up in her, limbs going in impossible directions, even if they all seem to find Lena in the end. That’s how they usually wake up anyway.
It’s been happening more and more lately. Sleeping like this. Together.
Weirdly so. Amazingly so.
She chuckles when Kara snores, soft and unguarded, breath warm against her collarbone. Lena shifts just enough to free one hand and nudges Kara’s shoulder. “Hey, Supergirl. We have to wake up.”
“Mm,” Kara hums, words dissolving before they’re fully formed. “Let’s stay in bed.”
Lena smiles despite herself. “Let’s not. The world needs you.”
Kara tightens instinctively, as if the idea of distance alone offends her. “But if you needed me more,” she mumbles, face pressing into Lena’s neck, “I’d have the perfect excuse.”
There it is. Casual. Devastating. Said like it’s obvious.
Lena goes still for half a second, heart doing that quiet, traitorous flip it’s been practicing lately. Kara is already drifting again, having dropped the sentence like a pebble into deep water, utterly unconcerned with the ripples.
Lena exhales, slow and careful, and lets herself stay exactly where Kara keeps finding her.
She always does this. Says the first thing that crosses her mind, bright and unfiltered, and never stops to wonder what it might do to Lena. Whether it will build her up or undo her entirely. Whether it will make her believe it’s true, even when everything else insists it can’t be.
Kara’s watch lights up against her wrist, pulsing insistently, and Lena is certain that if Kara were the swearing type, the air would be considerably bluer by now.
“Fine, fine. I’m up,” Kara groans, untangling herself at last. Late, as usual. Lena really shouldn’t be surprised anymore. “Sorry, I have to—”
It’s a blur after that. Kara vanishes into Lena’s bathroom and reappears seconds later already dressed, cape settled, boots laced like the laws of physics have simply given up around her. “Okay, Alex, I’m on my way.”
She’s halfway to the balcony when she doubles back, like she’s forgotten something essential. She presses a quick kiss to the top of Lena’s head, easy and familiar, like punctuation. “Emergency in London. See you tonight?”
“Yeah,” Lena says. “Call me if you’re coming for dinner.”
Kara pauses, eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “If I don’t, will you eat?”
Lena doesn’t answer. She just smiles, small and telling.
Kara grins, victorious. “Then I’m definitely coming for dinner.”
“Go,” Lena says, warmth threading her voice despite herself. “Go save the world.”
Kara’s gone a heartbeat later, leaving behind quiet and the faint echo of wind. Lena stays in bed longer than she needs to, staring at the ceiling, wondering when this became normal. When Kara wove herself so thoroughly into the fabric of her life that every night seems incomplete unless it ends like this. Tangled, half-asleep, unnamed.
It’s just another one of their rituals. Lena knows that.
They accompany each other to boring work things. That’s all. It was settled ages ago, back when Lena invited Kara to the first L-Corp event she hosted in National City, back when it made sense to have someone familiar in the room. After that, it simply… stuck.
The habit is so embroidered into their friendship—relationship?—that neither of them needs an invitation anymore. Just a heads-up.
So when Kara texts her,
Kara: Boring CatCo thing tonight. Cat is going to talk forever. I’ll need distraction.
Lena smiles at her phone, already reaching for it.
Lena: I’ll bring my A game.
And she does.
She chooses her favorite dress, the one that knows exactly what to do with her collarbone and doesn’t pretend not to understand the assignment when it comes to cleavage. She tells herself she’s dressing for the room, for confidence, for herself. All perfectly reasonable explanations.
Kara seems to agree anyway.
She notices it immediately, since it's a little hard not to, and then seems entirely incapable of stopping. Her eyes keep drifting back, like they’ve found a point of orbit they weren’t warned about. She misses half of Cat’s opening monologue. She bumps her knee into Lena’s chair and murmurs an apology that doesn’t sound particularly sorry.
Lena catches it. The looking. The way Kara’s attention keeps snagging and returning.
For a moment, something in her pauses. Tilts.
Then she smooths it over, neat and practiced. Kara is bad at subtlety. And to be fair, she knows this dress is… a little too distracting. Anyone would look.
That explanation settles easily enough.
Lena crosses her legs, leans closer so Kara can hear Cat complaining about bad journalism, and lets the thought dissolve before it can finish forming. She’ll just—
not wear this dress again around Kara. You know. Not to distract her.
It’s somewhere between Cat’s third digression and Kara’s fourth barely-suppressed yawn that someone else notices.
Maxwell Lord, unfortunately, decides to exist near them.
He slides into the space beside Lena like he owns it, smile slick, eyes doing that slow, evaluative drag that makes Lena’s shoulders tighten by instinct. “Ms. Luthor,” he says, voice low, intimate in a way he very much hasn’t earned, “you really should warn people before you wear something like that. It’s distracting.”
Lena’s expression doesn’t change. She’s perfected that. The polite half-smile, the mental note to forget this man later. “I’ll be sure to take that under advisement,” she replies coolly, already turning back toward the stage.
She would’ve let it pass. Filed it away as another small indignity in a long career of them.
Kara doesn’t.
Something in her posture shifts immediately. She straightens. Grows taller. Not metaphorically. Literally. Just enough that Maxwell has to tilt his head up to keep eye contact.
“That’s inappropriate,” Kara says, bright smile gone. Her voice is calm, but there’s steel under it now. “You don’t get to comment on her body.”
Maxwell chuckles, dismissive. “Relax, I meant it as a compliment.”
Kara steps closer. Close enough that Lena can feel the heat of her, the solid certainty of her presence. Kara’s hand finds Lena’s waist firmly. Protectively. Claiming in a way that makes Lena’s breath catch despite herself.
“She doesn’t need your compliments,” Kara continues, eyes steady, unblinking. “Everyone here already knows she’s brilliant. And kind. And powerful.” Her grip tightens, just slightly, a quiet warning. “So if that’s all you’ve got to offer, you can walk away now.”
Maxwell adjusts his posture, chin lifting, pride bruised and scrambling to recover. Lena recognizes the look immediately. The one that precedes a bad decision. She’s about to intervene, about to soften the edges, when Kara steps in again.
“Or,” Kara leans just a fraction closer, voice dropping, “I can make you walk.”
The air thickens, charged, like the room itself has learned how to hold its breath. Something old and unmistakable glints behind Kara’s eyes now, no longer human-small, no longer willing to play along. Maxwell sees it. He goes pale around the edges.
He huffs, scoffs, takes a step back. “Whatever,” he mutters, retreating. Then, smaller. Meaner. “Lesbians.”
The word hits the space between them and falls flat, powerless. Kara doesn’t move. Doesn’t flinch. She just watches him go with the calm certainty of someone who knows exactly how breakable he is.
Only when he’s gone does the room slowly exhale.
Kara’s hand is still at Lena’s waist.
“Kara,” Lena says quietly, not as a reprimand, and definitely not a warning.
Kara blinks, like she’s coming back into herself. “Sorry,” she says, immediately, pulling her hand away. “I didn’t mean to— I just—”
“I know,” Lena interrupts, surprising herself with how steady her voice sounds. Her pulse, however, is doing something reckless and unhelpful. “Thank you.”
Kara nods, sheepish now, hands tucking into her pockets like she’s trying to make herself smaller again. But the echo of her presence lingers undeniable.
They turn back toward the stage. Cat is still talking. The world keeps spinning.
And Lena, heart humming, thinks not for the first time tonight, that whatever this is, it’s starting to resist being unnamed.
It turns out that Kara seems to be more ready to name it than her.
They’re on a thing. Lena doesn’t call them dates, because dates are for couples, and Kara and her are...not that. Right?
They’re having lunch together about a week after the incident with Maxwell Lord, something easy and familiar, when Clark Kent walks into the restaurant like he belongs in daylight. All earnest smiles and impossible posture.
“Kal! I mean,” Kara schools herself quickly, “Clark! I didn't know you were in National City!”
“Had some business to take care of. Thought I'd stop by and say a hello.”
“Oh, it's good to see you!” She hugs him tightly. When she lets go, she points at Lena with a smile, “You know my girl friend, Lena, right?”
Clark’s brows furrow for half a second. Lena’s nearly meet her hairline. “Yes.” He finally says, “Ms. Luthor, how are you?”
“Good.” Lena swallows. Confused, but good. “Please, join us for lunch.”
“I’d love to,” Clark says, already stepping back, “but I actually have to fly—take a flight back to Metropolis now.”
He looks at Kara. A look that lingers, knowing and fond.
Then he’s gone.
Kara sits back down like nothing remarkable has occurred. She picks up her fork, resumes eating, utterly unbothered by the tectonic shift she’s just caused.
Lena stares at her plate.
Girlfriend, her mind supplies calmly. Not a question. Not a panic. Just the conclusion. The word she’s been looking for. Because, if she’s honest, friends couldn’t begin to explain it.
Not the flying almost daily to Dublin just to bring her scones. Not the way they share a bed more nights than not, bodies fitting together with the ease of long habit. Not the hand at her waist the moment someone else dares to show interest. Not the lunches that are somehow always just the two of them, or the movie nights with legs tangled together like ivy, growing wherever there’s space.
And most of all, not the way Kara comes home to her. Like Lena is an anchor point, not a stopover. Like no matter how far she flies, this is where she lands.
Friends don’t do that.
Girlfriends do.
The realization doesn't panic her. Instead, it provides a strange, clinical relief. All the data points finally align. If this is a relationship, she’ll be good at it. Better than she’s already been. Because once Lena commits to a course of action, she is nothing if not thorough.
She starts the ‘campaign’ by sending flowers the very next day. Because that’s what she should have been doing all along, and stupid, stupid her has apparently been falling behind.
Her phone buzzes almost immediately.
Kara: [picture 📸]
Kara: My favorite! You know me so well ❤️
Lena smiles at her phone, warm and pleased, with the quiet confidence of someone who knows she’s doing something right.
Lena: I was selfishly trying to convince you to come to my yoga class with me.
Kara: You’re trying to buy me out?? Whoa. I was not expecting that.
Kara: Do I really have to?
Lena: No, I suppose not. There’s a girl there who seems interesting. I could try talking to her instead.
There’s a pause. Longer this time.
Kara:
Kara: Fine.
Kara: I’ll see you there.
Lena’s smile deepens, slow and satisfied. She's so good at this girlfriend thing.
The yoga studio smells like eucalyptus and quiet ambition. Lena unrolls her mat with practiced ease, stretching like she belongs anywhere she decides to be. The class hasn’t started yet, the room full of soft conversation and polite distance.
Someone settles onto the mat beside hers.
“Hi,” the woman says easily. “I’m Ella. I think I’ve seen you here before.”
“Yes,” Lena replies. “Lena.”
They talk. Lightly. Harmlessly. Ella compliments her balance, asks how long she’s been coming here. Lena answers, relaxed, grounded. She doesn’t invite anything forward, but she doesn’t retreat either. There’s no need.
And then the door bangs open.
“K—sorry! Sorry—hi—sorry!”
Kara barrels in like a natural disaster with legs, bag half-zipped, shoes in her hands. She skids to a stop when she sees Lena, relief flashing across her face so brightly it’s almost embarrassing.
“You started without me,” Kara whispers loudly as she hustles over.
Lena turns, unbothered, serene.
“Oh,” she says, gesturing. “This is Ella.”
“Hi.”
“And this,” Lena adds, smoothly, without looking back at Kara, “is my partner, Kara. She’s usually more on time.”
Kara drops her bag and blinks.
“Oh.” A beat. Then she brightens, entirely pleased with herself. “I didn’t know we needed partners for this class. Good thing I made it.”
She plops down on the mat beside Lena, grinning, stretching like this was always the arrangement.
Ella looks between them. She notices the way Kara’s knee nudges Lena’s without hesitation. The way Lena doesn’t move away. The way her hand drifts, absent-minded, to rest against Kara’s wrist like it belongs there.
“Right,” Ella says, polite, understanding. She smiles again, this time with an edge of resignation. “Well. That makes sense.”
Lena smiles back, perfectly composed.
“Lucky you,” She says to Kara, already rolling up her mat. “I’ll see you around, Lena.”
Kara, meanwhile, leans closer and whispers, stage-quiet, “Did I miss something?”
Lena doesn’t answer. She just lets her fingers lace with Kara’s.
Because some things don’t need clarification.
It’s late, and it’s raining in National City, so Lena assumes Kara isn’t coming tonight. That assumption has never been particularly reliable.
“Hey!” Kara calls as she steps in from the balcony, rainwater still clinging to her hair and jacket. “I’m super wet, so I’ll just take a quick shower first.”
Lena glances over her shoulder and nods, because what else is there to do, and Kara is already halfway to the bathroom anyway, moving fast like she’s afraid of dripping rain into the house itself.
A few minutes later, she’s back, wrapped in a towel and looking sheepish. “So… all the clothes I left here are dirty.”
Lena smiles, small and indulgent. “Just do it. You don’t have to ask.”
Kara’s grin is immediate, bright. She disappears again and returns wearing Lena’s clothes from head to toe, including an oversized sweater that doesn't look big on her, pajama shorts that hug her thighs in a way that almost makes Lena choke, and to complete the look mismatched socks.
“You know I have matching socks, right?” Lena tries, knowing it's useless.
“What’s the fun in that?” Kara replies easily, already heading toward the kitchen. “What did you have for dinner?”
It turns out Lena didn’t have dinner. Not because she forgot, or because she was too busy, but because she was expecting something like this to happen, and she didn’t want to be full when Kara arrived.
“Lena!” Kara protests, head buried in the fridge. “You have to eat! Honestly.” She straightens, frowning. “Am I the only one who cares about your health?”
Lena just smiles, leaning against the counter, watching Kara move through her kitchen like she belongs there. Kara doesn’t ask where things are. She just knows. Opens the right drawer. Finds the pan Lena favors without thinking. Pulls ingredients out like this is a memory she’s revisiting, not a space she’s borrowing.
“Okay,” Kara says, decisively, tying Lena’s apron around her own waist like this is settled law. “Sit. You look like you’re about to argue, and I will win.”
“I don’t argue,” Lena says mildly.
Kara shoots her a look over her shoulder. “You litigate.”
Lena huffs a laugh despite herself and does as she’s told, perching on a stool, chin in her palm. She watches the small things. The way Kara rolls up sleeves that aren’t hers. The way she tastes the sauce, frowns, adds something, tastes again, nods like she’s solved a riddle only she was given.
It’s domestic. Obscenely so.
Kara talks while she cooks, filling the space with nonsense about CatCo and a printer that hates her personally, and Lena hums at the right moments, lets the sound of Kara’s voice settle into her bones. When Kara finally slides a plate in front of her, she doesn’t make a big deal out of it. Just nudges it closer, hand brushing Lena’s fingers.
“Eat, please.” she says, gentler now.
Lena does. Because Kara is eating with her, so it makes sense now. Because it feels like being cared for without being inspected.
They end up on the couch afterward, rain louder now, the city blurred into watercolor beyond the glass. Kara kicks her feet up, mismatched socks resting against Lena’s thigh. At some point, without ceremony, Kara reaches out and tucks a strand of Lena’s hair behind her ear. The motion is so automatic it barely registers on Kara’s face.
It lands in Lena like a dropped plate.
She doesn’t think about it. Not really. There’s no strategy meeting, no internal debate. She just turns, slow, careful, and kisses Kara.
It’s brief. Soft. A question asked with her mouth and answered immediately by the way Kara goes utterly still.
When Kara pulls back, her eyes are wide, bright, a little stunned, like someone just shook her entire world.
“Oh,” Kara says. Then, helplessly, “Oh.”
Lena watches her, heart steady, mind calm in a way it rarely allows itself to be. Girlfriend, it supplies again, softly. Not a panic. Not a question. Just the word settling into place.
“You—We—” Kara stands abruptly, pacing like the room has wronged her personally. She opens her mouth, closes it, rubs a hand through her hair. Words seem to scatter the moment she reaches for them.
“You’re okay?” Lena asks, a sliver of unease finally slipping into her voice.
“I mean—you just—you kissed me!” Kara blurts, stopping short in front of her, eyes wide like this is breaking news.
“Well, yes,” Lena says, genuinely puzzled. “That’s what girlfriends do. It did take us long enough.”
“Girlfriends?” Kara repeats faintly. “You mean, like—like Alex and Kelly?”
“Well, they’re married now,” Lena says reasonably, “but essentially, yes.” She tilts her head. “Why are you surprised? You’re the one who called me that.”
Kara freezes.
Somewhere, very far away, the truth finally begins to catch up with her.
“I said girl—pause—friend,” Kara blurts. “You know. Like… girls. That are friends.”
Lena stares at her.
“What?” She stands too, shock snapping through her composure. “Who talks like that? No one talks like that!”
“I thought—wait—” Kara winces. “Is this what you meant by partner? At yoga?”
“Yes, Kara!” Lena throws her hands up. “How did you not realize?” She sinks back onto the couch, mortified. “The woman who saw us once figured it out before you did.”
She presses a hand to her face, groaning.
“Oh my god. I feel so stupid. I’ve been acting like we’re dating for weeks.”
The room goes very quiet.
Kara swallows, standing there in mismatched socks, staring at Lena like she’s just discovered gravity has been optional this whole time.
“Maybe you shouldn’t stay the night,” Lena says at last. The words come out steady, but they hurt anyway. “I don’t think I want to wake up tangled in someone who isn’t my girlfriend.”
Kara looks like she’s been struck. Her voice drops, barely there. “But I love waking up tangled in you.”
Oh God. Lena absolutely cannot do this. She can’t handle her own stupidity, let alone Kara’s. She is mortified in a way that feels permanent, like a personality flaw. She considers, very seriously, never leaving her apartment again.
“God, Kara,” she says, pressing a hand to her face. “You don’t get to say things like that after telling me we’re just friends.”
“I didn’t say that,” Kara insists quickly. “I just—” She falters. “Apparently didn’t realize we were already… there.”
Lena scoffs, rolling her eyes, and that’s when the tear escapes, uninvited and traitorous. She doesn’t wipe it away fast enough.
Kara’s chest tightens painfully at the sight.
“But hey,” Kara says softly, dropping to her knees in front of her. “I’m all caught up now.”
Lena looks down at her, wary, arms crossed like she’s bracing for impact. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” Kara says, her hands finding Lena’s and holding them gently but firmly, stilling her before she can hide her face, “that I’m an idiot. A huge, flying, catastrophically oblivious idiot.” She lets out a breathy laugh, more fond than amused. “I’ve been living in your house, wearing your clothes, spending every spare second figuring out how fast I can get back to you… and I genuinely thought I was just very good at being a friend.”
Lena’s lip trembles despite herself, annoyance and hope tangling together in her chest. “You called me your girlfriend in front of Clark,” she says. “And for the record, that man absolutely thinks you meant girls who are in love.”
Kara nods, immediate and unrepentant. “Okay. Then he’s right.” She leans in, resting her forehead against Lena’s. “Because you’re my person, Lena. You always have been. You’re where I land. So girlfriend, partner—whatever word you want—they’re all true.”
Lena exhales slowly, the last of the tension draining from her shoulders. “Why am I surprised you’re late even to us?”
Kara laughs, bright and warm and relieved. “I know. I’m sorry.” Her gaze drops, unmistakably intentional now, lingering on Lena’s mouth. “But I’m here. And I want to wake up tangled in you. So I’m not going anywhere.”
This time, when they kiss, it isn’t a question. It’s an answer. Slow, sure, like something finally locking into place after weeks of hovering just off-center.
When they pull apart, Lena is breathless, composure mostly restored, heart still sprinting ahead of her.
“Okay,” she says lightly, like she isn’t smiling. “Fine. Then take me to bed, girlfriend.”
Kara’s grin is immediate. “You got it, partner.”
Lena rolls her eyes, fond. “Yeah. I hear it.”
“See?” Kara says triumphantly, already picking her up and carrying her to the bedroom.
Lena never liked birthdays. Never really understood them, really.
They were never about joy in her family, never about her. In the Luthor house, birthdays were just another stage to display wealth and power, another way for Lionel to parade his name under the guise of celebration. Every year, the parties were filled with his friends, his colleagues, and his expectations. And every year, she smiled for them like a porcelain girl rehearsing warmth she didn’t feel.
So even after she met the superfriends, even after they formed a bond stronger than family, she never let birthdays mean much. She’d trained herself to pretend it didn’t matter.
But Kara? Kara loves birthdays. She loves everything about them. Loves the hunt for the perfect gift, the glow of surprise parties, the smell of frosting and laughter in the air. Kara Danvers loves birthdays the way she loves people: wholeheartedly, without hesitation.
For the first time in years Lena feels small on her birthday. Small and foolish and almost childlike in her hope because Kara, the girl who remembers everyone, the girl who plans weeks in advance and makes every person feel like the center of the universe on their birthdays, simply… forgot hers.
She wakes early, despite promising herself she wouldn’t. She lies still beneath the sheets, pretending not to listen for the faint sound of boots on her balcony, for that soft knock before the door opens and light floods the room. But the city hums quietly outside, and no one lands.
Lena leaves the balcony open anyway. Just in case.
Sam and Ruby call first thing in the morning, loving and cheerful, and Lena makes herself sound casual, as if it doesn’t matter that someone remembered. She tells herself it’s silly to care, but when she hangs up, her chest feels a little less empty.
At the office, Jess greets her with flowers — orchids, her favorite — and lunch from that place she likes by the river. Lena thanks her with the perfect smile, the one that makes people believe she’s genuinely touched. But the moment Jess walks out, the expression slips, her face returning to something quieter, heavier.
The day goes on like that. The employees stop by her office with well-meaning smiles, gifts she didn’t ask for, kind words that almost reach her. And she appreciates it, she really does, but she keeps catching herself glancing at the balcony, expecting the sound of someone arriving, a familiar voice cutting through the hum of work.
It doesn’t come.
Maybe Kara’s busy, she tells herself. Maybe there’s a crisis. Maybe she’s somewhere halfway across the planet saving someone’s life. And it should be enough, that thought should be enough, but every time she tries to convince herself, her chest tightens anyway, like her body refuses to believe her mind.
By afternoon, the excuses start to sound thin even in her own head.
She shuts her laptop earlier than usual, stares at the city through the tall windows, and tries to swallow the restlessness sitting at the base of her throat. Then, because she can’t stand the thought of waiting anymore, she decides to find Kara herself.
The Tower feels alive when she walks in. The lights hum, screens flicker, voices echo softly. Brainy smiles when he sees her, followed by Alex’s warmth, J’onn's kindness and Nia’s earnest enthusiasm. There’s a cake waiting on the table, a single candle trembling in the air.
“Happy birthday, Lena! We're so glad you're a part of our lives!” Nia says, her eyes bright, her voice full of that effortless kindness Lena both envies and adores. The others follow with hugs, gifts, laughter that fills the space like sunlight.
It’s lovely. It’s everything birthdays are supposed to be. And yet, the longer she stands there, the heavier her smile feels.
Because Kara isn’t there.
Her gaze keeps flicking toward the elevator, toward the sound of the boots landing on the balcony, toward anything that might mean Kara’s on her way. But every minute stretches into another reminder that she isn’t.
She hates herself for the disappointment. Hates the way she can’t seem to stop caring. Hates that she doesn’t even understand why this feels like rejection, or why this feels like heartbreak.
“Where’s, um, your sister?” she asks finally, trying to sound casual, though her throat feels tight around the words.
Alex hesitates. “I’m not sure,” she says slowly. “She hasn’t been in all day, but I’m sure she’ll show up later. You know Kara.”
“Of course,” Lena says with a smile that tastes false even to her.
She stays a while longer, pretending to be present, pretending that she isn’t mainly looking toward the elevator doors. Eventually, she makes an excuse and leaves.
Her apartment greets her in silence. Not the peaceful kind, but rather the hollow one. The kind that fills the space behind her ribs and makes her able to hear her own heartbeat. She drops her bag, slips off her heels, and stands in the middle of the living room without turning the lights on.
The balcony door is still open. She hadn’t realized she’d left it that way.
She almost closes it. Almost.
That night, she dreams of voices and laughter that aren’t there.
The morning after her birthday is worse.
Her phone lies face down on the nightstand. She’s been pretending not to care since she opened her eyes, but she keeps reaching for it anyway. Fingers brushing the edge, heart stuttering each time she gives in. Some part of her still expects a message. Something simple. Happy birthday, Lena. Sorry I was late. Something that would make this ache make sense.
But there’s nothing. No messages. No calls. Just silence.
She sets the phone down with careful precision, because if she doesn’t, she might throw it just to hear something break that isn’t her heart.
She tells herself she’s fine. She’s always fine. She’s outgrown birthdays. She’s outgrown waiting for things that never come.
But by Thursday, the mask begins to slip. She’s shorter with Jess than usual. Her patience frays in meetings. She avoids Alex’s calls, leaves Nia’s messages unread.
She doesn’t want comfort. Doesn’t want pity. She just wants to understand why this hurts so much.
Why one forgotten birthday feels like something else entirely, like something she can’t name, like something that feels too close to being left behind.
By Friday night, the silence has hollowed her out.
She sits on her immaculate white couch. The cushions are untouched, the lines too sharp. A new bottle of wine rests beside her, an empty one next to it. Her laptop glows faintly, a half-written document open and blinking, each unfinished sentence staring back like a reminder of everything she can’t quite say.
She tells herself she isn’t waiting anymore. She’s above this, past this. But her phone lies face-up on the table, and every time the screen lights, her pulse betrays her in a way she can't quite fake. That split second where hope stirs, desperate and uninvited, before collapsing in on itself again.
She hates that she’s doing this. Hates the smallness of it, the absurdity of sitting in the dark waiting for someone that should’ve already come.
She thinks of all the times Kara went out of her way for her, crossing oceans just to bring back the perfect scone from that café in Ireland because Lena once mentioned liking it; dropping by unannounced with takeout when she knew Lena hadn’t eaten; the way she remembered every insignificant detail, from how Lena took her coffee to the melody she hummed while she worked. Kara, who once promised to take her to Argo, to show her around as if she was the prize, or maybe the best thing Kara had on Earth. Kara, who always kept her promises.
Except this one. Except for her birthday.
The thought lands like a weight in her stomach — dull, humiliating, final.
It’s gut-wrenching to want something so small and still not have it.
Her vision blurs, and for a moment she convinces herself it’s just the wine. But then a tear slips free, warm and treacherous, and another follows. She blinks hard, furious, but it’s too late. The sob comes up strangled, raw, as if dragged from somewhere deep and childlike. A sound she hasn’t made in years. She presses the back of her hand to her mouth, trying to quiet it, to cage it, but her chest trembles anyway.
“Pathetic,” she whispers, voice cracking on the word. “When did you become so pathetic, Lena Luthor?”
Her name sounds like an accusation in her own mouth. A curse, almost.
Her chest aches the way it always does when it’s Kara. When she’s laughing, when she's leaning in, when she’s angry, when she’s gone. It’s an ache that knows Lena better than she knows herself. It sits in her bones, quiet and constant, something she pretends not to notice until nights like this, when the silence around her feels carved from it.
The thought cuts through her mind before she can stop it, sharp and reckless and awfully real.
No. That can’t be it.
She laughs under her breath, shaking her head as if motion could undo the thought. “God, no. Don’t be ridiculous, Lena.”
But the wine has softened her edges, and the apartment feels too still, too alive with absence. The silence answers her back like an echo.
That’s why it hurts. Because it’s Kara. Because somewhere along the way Lena's world began to orbit around her and her only. Around her smile, her voice, her presence. Around the way Kara makes her feel like she is more than just a Luthor, more than the sum of every mistake and every headline. The way she is seen, truly seen, in a way that no one else has ever managed.
Her throat tightens.
“No,” she says again, louder now, as if she can drown it out, as if the sound could fill the hollow she’s been ignoring. “I’m drunk. I’m tired. She’s just—she’s my friend. That’s all. Stop—thinking—nonsense.”
But the word friend scrapes against her tongue like something broken, something she’s outgrown without realizing it. It tastes bitter and wrong in this sentence, a lie her heart refuses to swallow.
She leans forward, pressing her palm hard against her eyes, as if she can push the thoughts back inside her skull. Her voice is smaller when she speaks again. “People don’t cry like this for a friend, Lena.”
The admission leaves her body like a wound exhaling air.
It’s absurd.
It’s impossible.
It’s true.
She’s in love with Kara.
The glass slips from her hand before she realizes she’s loosened her grip. It hits the edge of the coffee table and cracks, a sharp, ringing sound that startles her into stillness. Red wine spills across the white couch, spreading like a stain she can’t control.
For a second, she just stares.
Then she sees the blood.
A thin line, bright and wet across her palm. It doesn’t even sting at first. It's just there, quiet proof that she’s been bleeding, inside and out, for someone who never even came. She presses a napkin against it, watching the fabric bloom red.
She sits there like that for a long time, bleeding quietly in the dark.
And still, the thing that hurts most, the thing that sits like glass in her throat, is that Kara still hasn’t called.
She tips her head back, eyes burning, and lets the silence press against her once more.
There’s no knock at the balcony. No voice in the dark. No miracle. Just the slow, steady pulse in her hand, and the echo of her own foolish heart finally telling her what it’s been trying to say all along. She's in love with Kara and Kara doesn't love her back.
Morning comes cruelly bright.
The first thing Lena feels is the pounding in her head. Sharp, rhythmic, merciless. The kind that makes her angry at herself for drinking this much, for letting it get this far. The second is the taste of old wine on her tongue, the bitter kind that clings to regret. Her eyes are half-open, unfocused, and the world tilts when she tries to move.
“Lena?”
The voice reaches her through the haze. Soft, urgent, too real.
She groans, pressing her face into the couch cushion. “Not now, Kara,” she mumbles, voice rasping, half-asleep.
For a moment, there’s silence. Then her eyes snap open. Her heart stutters, then races. She sits up too fast. “Kara?”
The pain flares behind her eyes, but she ignores it — ignores the blur, the nausea, the way her whole body protests — because there she is. Kara, coming in from the balcony, hair wild from the wind, still in her Supergirl suit, eyes wide with panic.
“Lena, Rao, what happened?” She’s at Lena’s side before she can even blink, before Lena can decide whether this is real or some cruel hangover hallucination she’s conjured out of longing.
Lena blinks, dazed. The scene around her sharpens. The glass shattered on the floor, the bottle tipped over, the white couch stained in red that’s part wine, part blood. She hadn’t even noticed the dried streak on her palm until Kara takes her hand, thumb tracing the cut like she’s afraid she could hurt Lena any more.
Kara’s studying her hand, then her face. There’s so much intent in her eyes it almost hurts to look at her. Like she’s seeing too much. Like she might hear every thought echoing in Lena’s mind.
I love you. I’m in love with you. Kara Danvers, I’m so in love with you.
“It’s okay,” Kara says, her voice soft but sure. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”
Lena wants to let out that bitter, acid laughter that’s been bubbling in her stomach alongside the wine. But before she can form it, Kara is gone again, moving through the apartment like she belongs, like this is normal.
She comes back with a first-aid kit, water, aspirin. The domesticity of it nearly undoes her. Kara kneeling before her, golden morning light catching in her hair, focused and gentle as she wraps the bandage around Lena’s hand.
“Oh, Lena…” Kara’s voice cracks on her name. “What happened?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Lena manages, her voice raw and small. “I don’t matter.”
“What?” Kara frowns, and the sound is full of disbelief, not at Lena’s words, but at the fact that she could ever think them.
Her gaze searches Lena’s face like she’s trying to learn it by heart, to understand every fracture. Kara’s hand lifts, hesitates, then touches her cheek — so soft, so careful that Lena can’t help but close her eyes.
“Let’s get some food into you,” Kara murmurs. “You’ll feel better.”
By the time Lena can stand without swaying, Kara’s made her eggs and toast and is watching her with that ridiculous, hopeful expression. The one that’s half guilt, half sunshine, and wholly unbearable.
Lena loathes it. Hates her. Absolutely loves her.
“Feeling better?”
Lena can’t answer. Can’t speak. Realizing she’s in love with Kara feels like stepping onto thin ice. Every breath is a risk, every glance a crack spreading under her feet. How is she supposed to survive Kara Danvers now, with her mind humming her name like a fever? How is she supposed to swallow back this feeling when lying to herself isn’t an option anymore?
She nods. It’s all she can manage.
Kara’s eyes light up immediately, too bright, too warm. “Good.” She smiles and Lena’s stomach somersaults, her pulse betraying her completely. “I, um, actually need a favor.”
There it is. That’s why Kara suddenly remembered her.
Lena forces a thin smile. “Sorry, I think I’ve met my quota of crises this week.”
“It’s… kind of important,” Kara says, fidgeting with her glasses. Restless hands smooth over her suit, as if even her skin can’t stay still. “Just… trust me? Please?”
Maybe it’s the hangover, or the exhaustion, or maybe it’s just Kara — that soft please, that pleading look, eyes shimmering with hope like she’s offering salvation instead of another stabbing in the heart. Whatever it is, Lena gives in. Begrudgingly. Stupidly. Entirely.
The flight is quick, though the scenery changes so completely it feels like crossing continents. When they land, there’s only quiet. Trees stretching high above them, a lake that mirrors the pale sky, and sunlight so gentle it almost feels undeserved on Lena’s skin.
“Kara, where are we?”
“Come on,” Kara says, reaching for her hand, lacing their fingers together as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. As if they’ve always done this. Lena’s breath stumbles in her chest, and she has to ignore the pounding in her heart long enough to make sense of what’s happening.
The cabin is small, simple. A kitchen, a couch, a fireplace, a door slightly open that hints at a bedroom. There’s nothing unusual about it. Nothing familiar.
Except—
A birthday cake on the kitchen table. A banner strung above it, Kara’s unmistakable handwriting curling into Happy Birthday, Lena! Balloons. Flowers. Ribbons. Like a child’s dream of joy brought to life.
“What is this?” Lena asks, voice low, thin, already trembling with disbelief.
Kara’s smile is soft, hesitant. “Happy birthday, Lena.”
And that’s what breaks her.
“Really?” Lena’s laugh is sharp, bitter, cracking halfway through. “My birthday was days ago, Kara. Days! You didn’t call, didn’t stop by, didn’t even text. And now you think you can make it up with a secret celebration?”
Her tone slices the air clean open. Kara flinches, shoulders tightening like she’s taken a physical blow.
“But—”
“What? I’m not even worth being celebrated out loud?” The anger comes out faster now, wild and shaking, the kind that’s born from hurt that’s been stewing too long. “You—of all people—you forgot. You always remember everyone else, but not me.”
“Lena, no,” Kara blurts out, eyes glassy as she shakes her head. “I didn’t forget. I sent you flowers! Orchids, your favorites. A card, and, um, food from that place you love so much. The one you said reminded you of Dublin.”
The words hit like static — flowers? card? Lena’s mind scrambles back through the blur of that morning: Jess handing her the bouquet, saying someone sent them. She hadn’t even seen a card, just assumed it was from Jess.
For the first time in days, Lena doesn’t know what to say. Because she spent all week thinking Kara didn't care, didn't remember her, when there was a card.
"Wait—Wait…You sent the flowers and the food, but you didn't show up there to wish me a happy birthday in person?”
Kara bites the inside of her mouth, looks down, “You didn't read the card, did you?”
“I—Might have thought the flowers were from Jess.” Lena breathes out, confused. “I don't get it, why does it matter?”
Kara is silent for a while, like she is choosing word by word to make the most perfect sentence, but when she opens her mouth, she doesn’t say much. “Well, look around.” Her breath catches like she’s been caught mid-confession, like there’s something else buried under all her words that she doesn’t know how to say.
Balloons. Flowers. Ribbons. A banner that says ‘Happy Birthday Lena!', a cake that reads… She steps closer, furrows her brows, reads it more times than she needs to understand those simple words, but she needs to be sure. A cake that reads ‘Happy birthday, I love you like you're mine.’
Wait.
Lena’s throat tightens. The words on the cake blur again, not because she can’t read them, but because she finally can.
Her fingers twitch at her sides, heart drumming against her ribs like it’s trying to break free. Slowly, she looks up. Kara is standing there, hands clasped together in that nervous way she has, shifting her weight like she wants to disappear and stay forever in the same breath.
“Does this…” Lena swallows, her voice quieter than she means for it to be. “Does this mean what I think it means?”
Kara’s lips part, a small, trembling smile forming there, and her voice breaks on the honesty of it. “It means I’m in love with you.”
It’s so simple. So Kara. No theatrics, no hesitation—just truth, bare and steady, like sunlight through glass.
“I’m sorry you thought I wasn’t celebrating you out loud,” she goes on, voice soft but certain. “I just… I wanted you all to myself. For once.”
Lena doesn’t realize she’s holding her breath until it leaves her all at once, a fragile sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. The air feels lighter now, impossibly so, like the world has shifted and she’s the only one who knows it.
For a moment, she can’t move. Just stands there, staring at the woman who has always been too much light for her eyes to adjust to.
“You’re serious,” she whispers, almost to herself.
Kara steps closer, searching her face with those wide, open eyes that feel impossibly soft and loving. “I’ve never been more serious about anything.”
Kara’s still watching her, still waiting for something. Permission, maybe. The kind of patience that makes Lena’s chest ache, because who waits like this for a Luthor? Who loves her like this?
Lena takes one small step closer, then another. The air between them hums. Kara’s hand finds hers again, warm, steady, fingers lacing as if they were made to hold each other like this.
“You’re in love with me,” Lena says, the words tasting strange and holy all at once.
Kara nods. “Hopelessly.”
The confession is still echoing somewhere between them when Lena leans in and kisses her. It’s clumsy at first, a little too desperate, but Kara catches her halfway, one hand finding Lena’s cheek, the other the back of her neck, holding her like she’s something precious and breakable and wanted.
The kiss deepens, softens, finds its rhythm. It tastes like all the unspoken words Lena’s been choking on for years. It tastes like a confession she can’t take back, and doesn’t want to.
When they part, barely breathing, Lena murmurs against Kara’s lips, “Well, Kara Danvers, I’m in love with you too.”
Kara laughs, bright and unguarded, head tipping back, eyes small with joy. “Good,” she says, grinning. “That kiss would’ve been really weird if you didn’t.”
And Kara looks at her again, with those eyes as if she can see right through her, see all of her, want only her. “Happy birthday, my love.” And the word makes Lena's heart stop, explode, and race all at once.
“Next time, please read the card.”
Lena finds it on Monday morning, still tucked between the almost-dead flowers, and reaches for it without hesitation.
Dear Lena, happy birthday.
You’re the best thing that’s ever happened in my life.
I love you.
Not like a friend. Not like family.
I love you like you're mine.
PS: I know this is too much, and maybe you don't feel the same way, so… If you do, give me a call? And if I don’t hear from you, I'll just know to give you some space.
It started with a kiss. Or maybe, it ended with one. Right now Kara isn’t so sure.
She’s circled the Earth three times already, and it still feels like she just left: Lena; The kiss; The silence that followed; The whole mess she made.
She can’t go home. That’s where Lena is. Or was. Either way, the place is still full of her—her laugh, her scent, the warmth she left behind. Kara can’t bear it.
Rao, she should never have kissed her best friend. Not after years of keeping her heart at bay. Not when she knew what it would cost. Why couldn’t she just stop herself? Now she's ruined everything right after she’s been so good for so long.
Well—except for that time. Right after Lena pulled her out of the Phantom Zone. Leaning in like that was… stupid. But she remembers the way Lena’s hand had clung to her arm, the way her own breath had caught. She wanted to kiss her then too, and maybe that was when she knew this want wasn’t something she’d ever outgrow.
Deep down, she's always known. She tried to fake, tried to pass it as friendship, tried to not feel jealous that Alex had had the courage to come out and live her truth. Tried too hard, failed even harder.
Kara has locked her feelings behind bars, scolded them with a frown like they were misbehaved children, repressed her human side even more than she's ever repressed her alien one. For years Lena was her best friend and it was better than nothing.
She lands in Midvale, which is funny, because she doesn’t remember making this choice. She wasn’t thinking of a safe place to go, she just knew she needed one, and then… here she is, on a porch that still smells of lilacs, with the sound of cicadas in the air.
Eliza opens the door. There’s a flicker of confusion in her eyes, quick as lightning, but she smooths it away for Kara’s sake. “Hey, honey.”
And Kara—she doesn’t even know if she remembers how to talk, if she’d even know what to say. But the words fall out anyway, cracked and small, “I didn’t know where else to go.”
Eliza doesn’t hesitate. She just folds her arms around Kara, steady and warm, grounding her like the earth itself. “Well,” she murmurs, holding her close, “you’re home now.”
Which is fine. It's great. She is home. But not the home she wanted to be in. She's inside an embrace that makes her feel safe and loved, and yet, again, it's not the one she wanted to be inside.
She makes an excuse and slips into her old bedroom, the door clicking softly behind her. The room smells faintly like childhood, but it doesn’t matter. Kara doesn’t notice. She collapses onto her bed and stares at the ceiling.
The stars of Krypton gleam down from her poster, cold and distant and beautiful, reminders of the world she left behind and the journey she’s fought to make this planet feel like home. She’d built a life here, piece by piece, trying to make Earth hers in ways that didn’t erase who she was, ways that made her feel… safe. Accomplished. Whole.
And then she kissed Lena.
She had ruined it. Every careful step, every quiet effort to balance her alien with her human, every moment of claiming this world as her own, of building her family—it had been undone in one impulsive, desperate second.
Her eyes close. The silence presses down. And the memory hits like a shockwave. Panic, adrenaline, the tang of fear and desire all tangled together.
Lena hadn’t left. Everyone else was gone—games packed, dishes cleared, laughter fading down the hallway—but Lena stayed. Lingered. Hung close, barefoot tapping Kara’s tights with a teasing rhythm that made her pulse spike.
“I can't believe we lost the game with you having the winning card.” Lena joked, under the blankets, looking comfortable as if she was home.
“Excuse me, how was that my fault? You had horrible cards!” Kara grinned, easy. Always so easy when Lena was around.
“You could've told me yours!”
Kara's face turned serious, “Lena, that's against the rules.”
Lena’s eyes softened, holding Kara in a gaze that made her chest ache. Fond, so fond she couldn't have imagined it. “Yeah, you know… that's one of the reasons why I love you.”
Kara's heart stopped. Lena had told her that before, and yet, she doesn't think she'll ever get used to the feeling of hearing it. How it sounds full of possibilities, full of things unsaid.
She thought about answering, tracing every corner of Lena’s words in her mind. All the reasons she loves her too, all the little things—the tilt of her smile, the way her laughter catches, the quiet strength in her hands and heart. The list would run too long. Too deep. Too honest.
Kara swallowed heart hammering. She wanted to speak, but the words felt like fragile glass in her mouth, impossible to hold together. She tried to smile, tried to keep her voice steady. “Oh yeah?” Her throat trembled, and her blush betrayed her. “What are the other ones?”
Lena’s eyes had light up, bright and steady, and she shifted closer. Her fingers brushed Kara’s arm, fleeting but deliberate, sending a thrill up Kara’s spine. “You’re too precious for this world. Too determined. Too… you,” she whispered, teasing, soft, but there’s a weight behind it too. “You always make me feel like the world is bigger and smaller at the same time. Like… I'm home whenever you’re near.”
Kara’s chest was hammering. Her throat was tight. Every rational thought about boundaries, friendship, self-control—kissed her goodbye. She could feel the heat rising, the impossible pull in her chest that had been drawing her closer for years.
Don't do it. Don't do something you can't take back. Don't kiss her.
She wanted to tell Lena everything. All the daydreams, all the tiny moments she’d obsessively thought about her, all the longing she had tucked away behind her glasses and smiles and fidgety hands. But words failed her. Air did too.
She stared at Lena’s lips. And she was sure. So sure. Never in her life had she been so certain. Lena was looking at her mouth too.
Don't kiss her.
But Lena's heart was racing and her own heart had already quit her entirely and Rao, it wasn't even a decision, it was just fate. She was just obeying the universe, the signs, the truth.
She kissed her.
It was impulsive, yes, desperate, yes, and yet inevitable.
The world shrank to the curve of Lena’s lips, the warmth of her skin, the gentle pressure of her hands on Kara’s shoulders. For a heartbeat, the universe seemed perfect, and Kara thought maybe everything was finally fitting into place.
And then…
Lena froze. Pulled back.
Kara’s pulse pounded in her ears, and panic coiled in her stomach. Lena hadn’t kissed back. Her mind screamed: You’ve ruined it. You’ve ruined everything.
She got away from Lena as fast as she got close. Eyes wide, heart hammering so loud it was the only sound she could hear.
“I'm sorry,” She stood up, put distance between them because otherwise she would feel tempted to kiss her again, and again, and again. She didn't know if she could stop kissing her.
“Kara,”
“I'm sorry.” She continued, cheeks burning. “I don't—I don't know what happened, I—”
“Kara.”
“God, Lena, please forgive me.” And maybe Lena was saying something, maybe she wasn't mad, but Kara wouldn't know. Couldn't hear it. Her own mind was so loud, it was impossible to stop it.
It hadn't been enough. The apologies, the backpedaling, the pleading. Lena was still looking at her as if she was a stranger, as if this Kara wasn't the one she loved. And stupid, stupid Kara did the only thing she could think of in those desperate times. She flew out the window as if she was an encaged bird who just got its freedom. But it was the opposite, really. She had never felt so trapped as she did then.
When she opens her eyes, there’s a text. A few missed calls too, Lena’s name all over her phone, all over her mind.
Lena: Please, come back. Let’s talk.
But she can’t. How could she go back only to hear the love of her life say she doesn’t love her back? She’s always known Lena didn’t feel that way. Rao, Lena hated Supergirl with the fire of a thousand suns for years. Hated Kara too—for the secret, for the betrayal. And then she forgave her. She let Kara back in. And Kara went ahead and ruined it.
She closes her eyes again. Sleeps, or doesn’t. Dreams, or remembers. She isn’t sure.
The weekend bleeds together in Midvale. The hours dragging in a blur of cicadas and silence. Kara moves through the house like a ghost, her feet soft against floorboards that remember her better than she remembers herself.
She tells Eliza she’s fine. Smiles that brittle smile she’s been perfecting since she was thirteen while hiding her bruises. But Eliza’s no fool. She watches her daughter pace, watches her curl up on the couch only to stand again five minutes later, unable to stay still inside her own skin.
On Saturday morning, Eliza brings her a mug of coffee and sits across from her at the kitchen table, the sun slanting through lace curtains. “You know,” she says gently, “sometimes what we run from is the very thing that wants us back.”
Kara can’t answer. Her throat is too tight. She stares into the coffee until it goes cold, and when Eliza touches her hand, she flinches—not because she doesn’t want the comfort, but because it’s not the hand she’s aching for.
Night falls, heavy and long. Kara lies in her childhood bed, staring yet again at Krypton’s stars on the ceiling, the old poster’s corners curling with age. They used to feel like hope. Tonight, they look like accusations. Each point of light whispers the same question: How could you be so reckless with the only thing you’ve ever truly wanted?
She replays it again and again—the warmth of Lena under the blanket, the softness in her voice, the unbearable pull when their eyes met. The kiss that wasn’t careful, wasn’t measured, wasn’t planned. And then the freeze. The flinch. Kara’s mind makes it worse with every replay, stretching that split second until it feels eternal, until she convinces herself she saw rejection written into Lena’s very bones.
Every memory turns against her. When Lena looked at her—flat, honest, small—and said, “Supergirl might have saved me, but Kara Danvers, you are my hero.” Kara remembers the blush, the dizzying want that made her laugh and run. Now, in hindsight, it feels like nothing more than gratitude. A kindness. Not an opening.
The gala comes back to her, Lena’s hand warm at the small of her back, guiding her through the crowd. That touch had burned into her skin, electric with possibility. But what if it was just politeness, a meaningless gesture disguised as something more because Kara had wanted it so badly.
Maybe when Lena said she’d never had a family like Kara, she’d meant only that Kara had been kind in a way the world had denied her. It was nothing about building something with her, nothing about folding their small, messy lives together.
And every time Lena laughed in that soft way, seemingly just for her, maybe that was just a normal laugh, and not a map to her heart.
Perhaps all of her memories were ordinary moments between friends, and none of them was leading them to love.
The thought is a cold thing that slides under her skin and settles there. It contorts the memories until they look like proof, until every tender thing becomes a question she can’t answer. She holds the phone as if it were alive, Lena’s missed calls like small knives. She tells herself she’s protecting Lena by staying away, that this is noble, that Lena is better off without her.
But beneath the lie is the raw, unedited ache that refuses rationality: she wants Lena. She wants her like oxygen, like home. And that want makes the replays taste like acid, because the only thing worse than not having Lena, is knowing that Kara herself pushed away the person she loves with her own lips.
By Sunday, she is hollow. A body on autopilot. Eliza asks if she wants to go for a walk. Kara shakes her head. Alex calls, but she only lets it ring. She curls on the couch and lets the world go over her.
Kara was never one of those people that hated Mondays. But this one in particular presses down on her like gravity. She stands outside the Midvale house for a long time, Eliza’s arms warm and steady around her. The hug feels final in a way that terrifies Kara, like she’s about to walk off a cliff. But she can’t stay here. She has a job, a life, responsibilities. She has to go back. Even if the thought of stepping into her apartment feels like inviting the knife in deeper.
The flight is short, too short. The skyline of National City rises like a question she doesn’t know how to answer. Her chest tightens with every mile until landing feels less like returning home and more like falling.
The door clicks open, and immediately her lungs fill with something that doesn’t belong. Not scent exactly, not sound either, but presence. Lena is everywhere. In the half-empty wineglass on the counter, in the sweater draped over the back of the couch, in the way the air feels warmer than it should. Kara tells herself it’s just memory bleeding into reality. Ghosts of the weekend she’s been replaying on a loop.
She rubs her eyes, snaps back into herself thinking about responsibilities. She needs to change before work, to pretend she’s functional. She pushes into her bedroom and freezes.
Lena.
Curled beneath Kara’s blanket, tangled in sheets that still smell faintly of laundry soap and sun. Wearing Kara’s old NCU sweater like it belongs to her. Breathing steady, soft, like she’s never known a world outside this room. She looks like she lives here. Like she’s been here forever.
Kara’s throat closes. Her knees nearly give out. The word slips out before she can stop it, raw and loud:
“Lena?”
Lena stirs, lashes fluttering as she wakes. Her gaze finds Kara, heavy with sleep, and for a moment Kara thinks she’s dreaming. Then Lena’s lips curve in the faintest smile.
“Hey,” she whispers, voice rough with sleep. “I’ve been waiting for you to come back.”
“You’ve been here all weekend?” Kara manages, though her voice cracks in the middle.
“To be honest, I didn’t think you’d be gone that long.” Lena’s gaze dips, and she tugs lightly at the hem of the sweater she’s wearing. Kara’s sweater. “I had to borrow some stuff. Hope that’s okay.”
Kara doesn’t answer. Her mind can’t process it—Lena here, in her bed, tucked into the scene as if it’s routine. As if this is normal. As if this is real life.
Her heart pounds, too loud for the silence that stretches between them. She wants to step closer, to reach out and prove Lena isn’t just another hallucination born of sleepless nights and wishful thinking. But she’s afraid—afraid that if she moves, if she speaks too loudly, the fragile thread tying this moment together will snap and Lena will vanish.
So she just stands there, staring.
“I—” Kara swallows hard, the word snagging in her throat. She has to break the silence before she does something reckless, before she reaches out, before she confesses the love she’s been hoarding like a secret for years. Her chest heaves with the effort. “Lena, I’m so sorry… I shouldn’t have—”
“Kara, wait.”
The word stops her in her tracks. Lena sits up against the headboard, her hair falling loose around her face, the sweater too big on her frame. But her eyes—they’re wide awake now, sharp and impossibly soft at once. She looks perfect, just like a dream, Kara still can't believe she isn't indeed dreaming right now.
“Please. Don’t apologize.”
Kara shakes her head. “But you—”
“I flinched,” Lena cuts in, voice low but steady, “not because I didn’t want it. God, Kara. I’ve wanted this for longer than I know how to admit. I flinched because for one impossible second, I thought I must have dreamed it. That you couldn’t possibly want me like that. That if I blinked, you’d be gone.”
Her gaze flickers down, then up again, braver this time. “You terrified me, Kara Danvers. Not because I didn’t want you to kiss me, but because I wanted it so much I couldn't even believe it was real, that it was finally happening.”
Kara’s eyes sting, her chest tightening as every hour of self-doubt from Midvale evaporates in a breath. “Really?” she asks, the word breaking small, almost childlike, because she needs to hear it once more, just to be sure.
Lena smiles, slow and certain, and there’s no room for misinterpretation. No hesitation. No lie. “Come here,” she whispers, her voice thick with something that sounds like relief, like longing finally answered. “Let me show you.”
Kara doesn’t think. She just moves. One step, then another, until she’s standing close enough to feel the warmth radiating off Lena. Her gaze drops helplessly to Lena’s lips, her throat working as she swallows hard, trying to summon the courage—
But Lena doesn’t give her the chance. She surges forward, fingers curling into Kara’s shirt, pulling her down as if she’s been starving for this. The kiss is fierce, unrestrained, nothing careful or cautious about it. Kara’s world tilts as Lena climbs into her lap, straddling her, holding her as if daring to ever doubt this again.
By the time they part for breath, Kara is dizzy, her lips tingling, her heart pounding so hard she thinks it might burst. Lena’s forehead rests against hers, breath hot, dangerous smile.
“If you ever run away after kissing me again,” Lena whispers, “I’ll hunt you down and go full Luthor on you.”
Kara laughs, joy spilling out of her in bright, breathless bursts. She peppers kisses along Lena’s cheek, her jaw, the curve of her neck, unable to stop touching her, tasting her. “Oh, trust me, baby,” she murmurs against Lena’s skin, “I’ll never be away from you again.”
It hadn’t started with a kiss. No. This had been years in the making.
It started with a tentative smile across a desk, a voice softer than it should’ve been, words heavy with hope. It started with, “I hope this isn’t the last time we talk.”
And Kara remembers the way her own heart had stumbled, how she’d answered, “I hope not either.”
Now Lena is here in her arms, soft and perfect and real, and Kara knows without a doubt…
Supercorp. Kara Danvers x Lena Luthor. Alex Danvers.
Word count: 2.8k
Lena doesn't know how to explain it. One day she’s being interviewed by Clark Kent and his cousin, and the next she’s Kara Danvers’ best friend.
It starts like these things usually do: harmless, warm. Shaped like something simple and fun. Coffee dates, movie nights, the occasional world-saving detour. Lena tells herself it’s just friendship. Tells herself she doesn’t notice the way Kara lights up when she laughs, or how often she reaches for Lena’s hand without thinking.
And then, it stops being harmless on a Tuesday.
Or maybe it had started the first time Kara smiled at her like that—wide and unguarded, the light catching on her cheekbones like the sun itself is paying attention. Maybe it had started long before that, when Lena first realized she wanted to be seen. Really seen. And somehow, impossibly, Kara always did.
They’re at game night. Alex is complaining about losing. Winn is pretending not to cheat. There’s laughter in the air, soft and golden, curling around the windows and cushions like smoke.
Lena’s half-listening, caught somewhere between the burn of bourbon in her glass and the curve of Kara’s mouth as she teases Alex.
She almost doesn't notice when Kara leans in, low and fond and a little breathless, and says under her breath, like it’s just for her:
“Zrhureiao.”
Kryptonese.
It lands like a meteor in Lena’s chest.
The syllables ripple through her—delicate, devastatingly beautiful. She knows what it means. God, she knows. Knows that it’s one of those tricky words that doesn’t translate cleanly, but always carries the same weight: attractive, lovely, captivating. The kind of word that leaves your mouth when you're not trying to be careful.
She hadn’t heard it in years.
But now Kara’s voice is curling around the word like it’s a secret, like it’s a spell.
Lena thinks about answering. The words are right there on her tongue: you think I’m beautiful? but she swallows them whole. Because of course she understands it, but she can’t explain to Kara Danvers why.
Not without telling her that she studied Kryptonese as a teenager. Not without explaining that once upon a time, she was trying to impress a brother who only cared about aliens if he could control them. That she buried herself in the language Lex found important, until she understood it better than most diplomats. That she kept studying even after it stopped being about Lex at all, because there was something about it. Something beautiful and sacred. Something that told her she would need it. Something more.
Now—now she knows exactly why she felt like that.
Lena’s breath stutters. The moment stretches too wide, too bright, like a spotlight turned inward. Kara leans in again, tucking a strand of Lena’s hair behind her ear like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like she hasn’t just upended everything.
Lena blinks. Swallows. Commands her heart to behave.
But it doesn’t.
It keeps whispering it back to her all throughout the games. On the ride in the back of the car. On the elevator ride up to her penthouse. In the hush of her bedroom when all the lights are off and sleep betrays her—and her heart does even worse. It hopes. It beats hope and love and Kara’s name so loud, she doesn’t know how to keep it a hushed secret anymore.
Zrhureiao.
Gorgeous.
Her fingers brush her own ear like maybe the sound is still caught there. Like maybe she could press it back into her skin and forget it ever happened.
But she can’t. She won’t.
Because Kara said it in her mother tongue.
And meant it like a vow, not something wrong.
And Lena understood it perfectly—like it was hers all along.
It happens again a few weeks later. During an argument this time, of all things.
Lena’s pacing in her lab, fury simmering beneath her skin like static before a storm. Kara made a last-minute decision on a joint mission—something reckless, heroic, infuriating. Something that could’ve gotten her killed.
Kara stands in the doorway, sheepish, trying to explain. But Lena won’t let her.
“You didn’t tell me you were going to do that,” she snaps. “You just flew off like—like you didn’t think I’d be able to handle it!”
“I trusted you to—”
“No,” Lena cuts her off. “You didn’t trust me, Kara. You protected me. Like I’m some fragile piece of glass you can keep on a shelf and hope I never crack. I'm not a damsel in distress!”
Kara’s eyes widen. She steps forward, hands raised in surrender—open palms and soft breaths, always trying to deescalate what she doesn’t understand.
“Lena—”
“No,” Lena says again, sharper this time. “You don’t get to ‘Lena’ your way out of this. You don’t get to look at me like that and expect it to just... disappear.”
But Kara does look at her like that. Like Lena is the axis the universe turns around. Like she’s the only truth left in a world full of chaos. And then, softly, barely more than breath:
“Ta- rrip zrhureiao rrem rrip doshai?”
Lena freezes.
She knows that tone. Knows the weight of those syllables like they were stitched into her ribcage. She wishes she didn’t know what it meant. Wishes Kara didn’t say it like it hurt to hold it in.
Why are you so beautiful when you're mad?
The anger vanishes—like breath on glass. Like it was never real at all.
Lena opens her mouth, then closes it. Looks away before Kara can see what’s breaking loose across her face.
She clears her throat, soft and sharp. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” Kara blinks, confused—genuinely. Like she didn’t even notice the way the words escaped her. Like Kryptonese is just muscle memory now, leaking truth where silence used to be.
Lena shakes her head. “Forget it.”
But Lena, herself, doesn’t forget. She can’t.
Because Kara keeps doing this—speaking in Kryptonese like it’s safer than English. Like it’s a secret place she can feel everything she’s not ready to admit. A language where nothing is casual, where every word is laced with truth.
And Lena… Lena keeps understanding. Keeps translating Kara’s tenderness like scripture. Keeps collecting these slips like sacred footnotes in their history together. Keeps falling a little more, every time.
It’s late. The kind of late that softens the world, that stretches shadows across the walls and melts time into something unmeasurable. A kind of late where it feels like the night might stretch on forever, and Lena wouldn’t mind if it did. Not from where she is standing.
They’re curled together on Kara’s couch, draped in a blanket that clings like the last trace of a dream: light as air, heavy as comfort. The TV flickers with some old rom-com neither of them is really watching, its dialogue a distant hum against the quiet ache of something unspoken.
Lena’s head rests against Kara’s shoulder, her legs tangled in Kara’s like ivy curling toward sunlight.
There’s peace here—but it’s the dangerous kind. The kind that settles in your chest too gently, makes you forget how fragile it is. A stillness that feels earned and borrowed all at once, like the universe is holding its breath, just waiting to take it back.
Lena tells herself not to notice. Not to register how perfectly they fit—how easily Kara’s hand could find hers if it reached, how natural this could all feel if she let it. Like puzzle pieces.
She glances at the clock. A breath drawn in quiet defiance of what comes next. A slow, reluctant untangling.
“I should go,” she murmurs. Her voice is steady, even if everything inside her bends around the words.
Kara doesn’t move. Doesn’t pause the movie. Doesn’t ask her to stay.
Instead, she whispers. Soft. Unarmored. The words barely more than a breath, so fragile they might splinter in the air:
“Khuhp zhind ao rrip zhadif awuhkh vagem.”
Lena freezes.
The syllables roll over her like a tide, salt-rich and moon-drawn, ancient and aching. A language that should feel foreign but lands instead like home. Like something buried under her ribs, waiting to be spoken back into existence.
She doesn’t have to ask. She knows. She always knows.
I wish you’d never leave again.
And something in her breaks. Quietly. Cleanly.
It isn’t fair, the way Kara says these things.
Like she doesn’t understand the gravity of them. Like she doesn’t know they could crush Lena just by existing. Like her words aren’t made of stardust and glass and every wish Lena ever folded small enough to hide.
She could answer. Could let it spill.
But the reply burns too deep. And if she opens her mouth now, everything will come rushing out—untamed, untranslatable. It would sound too much like love.
So she laughs. Or something like it. Something thin, breakable, and kind.
“You’re getting sleepy,” She shifts back just enough to let the cold seep in. A punishment. A shield.
Kara blinks slowly, still somewhere between dream and meaning. “Mm. Yeah.”
Lena rises.
She draws the blanket tighter around Kara’s shoulders, tucking her in like a farewell. Like a promise she wishes she were brave enough to make. Her fingers linger longer than they should, then pull away.
She reaches for her coat without looking back.
“Goodnight, Kara.”
She doesn’t see Kara’s eyes trailing after her like she’s the last light in the room. Doesn’t hear the soft, stunned echo that follows her like a ghost.
“Goodnight, baby.”
But she carries the Kryptonian all the way home. Feels it settle into her skin like stardust. Like a prayer. Like a wish Kara never meant to speak aloud—and Lena can’t stop hearing it, replaying it in her mind like music written just for her.
Like maybe, in another life, she would’ve stayed.
They’re somewhere deep underground, far from the city—old stone, slick with moss, wires cutting across ancient architecture like veins through skin. Kara’s hovering just a few inches off the ground, too impatient to walk. Lena’s beside her, shoulder brushing Kara’s tights when she leans to examine the wall. And Alex is a bit ahead with the flashlight, casting long shadows that stretch like fingers down the corridor.
“Okay,” Alex says, voice echoing. “This one’s got some alien script—Kryptonian, I think? What does this mean?”
Lena doesn’t look at Kara. She doesn’t need to. The words are already burned into her mind. She’s read them before—on dusty pages in old Luthor archives, her fingers trembling, heart young and foolish and already looking for something that might belong to her.
But Kara steps closer to the inscription anyway, her voice low. “Lao zrhureiao divi khuhp skulir kuhs.’”
Lena doesn’t mean to say it. Doesn't mean to make choir to Kara's voice already translating out loud. But it falls out of her like a breath: “The beloved one is a light I can’t look away from.”
Silence.
So sharp, it feels like the air has been sucked out of the entire Earth.
Even Alex just blinks, stunned, slowly turning toward them. “Wait. What the hell did you say?”
But Kara’s already turned. She’s looking at Lena like the words were a key. And now the door’s opened and she’s seeing the whole of her.
“You speak Kryptonese?” Kara asks.
It should sound accusatory. It doesn’t. It sounds... hurt.
Lena swallows. Her mouth feels full of sand. “Um, yeah, sorta.”
Kara doesn’t look away. Her voice goes softer, more dangerous, “Since when?”
Lena exhales. “Since I was sixteen. Lex was obsessed with Superman. And I—” She tries to smile, but it feels brittle. “I wanted something to connect… Wanted him to need me.”
Kara’s eyes narrow, but not in anger. She’s thinking. Tracing things back. Adding it all up.
“How many times?” Kara asks. Her voice is too soft to be angry, too confused not to tremble. “How many times have you understood me when I thought you couldn’t?”
Lena wants to lie. God, she wants to. But she’s tired. Tired of silence. Tired of gathering Kara’s love like contraband—like something precious and forbidden.
“All of them.” she says. “All of, um, your secret confessions.”
Kara flinches. “Like what?”
Lena takes a step back. Her eyes flick toward Alex, searching for escape, for delay—but Alex is already moving. She’s seen enough. Felt the shape of what’s coming. And like someone sensing a storm, she quietly slips out of the room.
No more excuses. No more time.
Lena breathes. And then she answers, her voice barely there—small and yet impossibly brave in the quiet Kara leaves for her.
“Like… things I couldn’t bear to lose.”
Kara doesn’t press. She just watches her, listens like every part of her is tuned to Lena’s frequency. Like the silence is sacred now.
And Lena, against all her instincts, lets herself stay in it.
“Like the first time you called me beautiful,” she says. “You looked right at me when you said it. But you chose another language so I wouldn’t know…”
Her voice falters, like the memory still stings—soft and glowing, but edged with old hurt.
“You said it like it slipped out. Like you couldn't stop it even if you wanted. And I understood every word.”
Kara’s lips part, like she’s about to speak—but Lena keeps going.
“Or the night you said, ‘I wish you’d never leave,’ when I said I was going home.”
Kara’s shoulders tense. Her expression cracks.
“I stayed awake all night just to keep it, as if it would disappear if I slept.”
The words hang in the air between them. Fragile. Shining. Too much.
Kara steps forward. Slowly. Like Lena might vanish into the walls if she moves too fast.
“You knew,” Kara says, her voice frayed at the edges. “All this time. And you never said anything.”
Lena’s reply is barely more than a breath, still sounds too loud in this barren room. “If I told you… you would’ve stopped.”
Kara is close now. Close enough that Lena can feel the heat of her. Close enough to shatter her completely.
Lena’s eyes fall shut. She’s not ready for this—for the shape of truth spoken out loud. She’s spent too long hiding in the margins, surviving on shadows and half-lit moments, on words never meant to survive the air between them.
“I wouldn’t…” Kara’s voice falters, unsteady as a heartbeat in freefall. She inhales. Holds it. Tries again. “I won’t.”
Lena opens her eyes like the act itself might crack the world open. And Kara is looking at her the way sunlight looks at stained glass—desperate to get through, to touch something it was never meant to hold.
“I will never stop saying it,” Kara whispers.
Her hand rises slowly, reverently. And when she cups Lena’s face, it’s not a touch. It’s a vow.
Lena leans in just enough to say yes. Just enough to answer without words. Because Kara’s hand is trembling—not from fear, but from the weight of what comes next. From the sheer meaning of it.
And somehow, the stillness between them feels deafening. Like something holy. Like souls bleeding together. Like love.
Kara steps closer, and their foreheads meet—soft and sure. A contact so gentle it feels like a prayer.
“I meant every word,” Kara says, voice low and certain. “Even when I thought you couldn’t understand me.”
“I know,” Lena breathes. “I know.”
There’s nothing else left to translate.
Kara tilts her head and kisses her like a question.
There’s nothing rushed about it—no fevered urgency, no desperate pull. Just warmth. Just truth. Just the gravity between them finally given permission to exist.
Lena exhales into it, and it sounds like release. Like surrendering to something that had always been inevitable. Kara's hand drifts to the nape of Lena’s neck, fingers curling softly on her hair. The other rests against her waist, grounding her, because she can’t quite believe this is real and won't let the universe take it back.
The kiss deepens and it feels as if they're learning a secret language neither of them had dared to speak before. It’s soft, but it burns. And Lena can feel every unspoken word between them written into it: I want you. I see you. I love you.
When they finally break apart, it’s only just. Kara stays close, breath brushing over Lena’s cheek like a touch.
Then, in a whisper spun of stars and honesty, “Khap zhao rrip.”
Lena stills. Her eyes flutter open.
I love you.
There’s no mistaking it. No soft translation. No ambiguity.
And this time Lena doesn’t stay silent.
Her voice is hoarse with something holy when she answers.
The words don’t stumble—they rise. From the part of her that has always known how to speak these languages: Kryptonese and love. The part of her that has been waiting.
“Khap zhao rrip, zrhueiao.”
Her mother tongue coming out of Lena's tongue feels like a key turning in the lock of the universe. Kara’s breath catches. Her eyes shimmer like something celestial.
And when they kiss again, it’s no longer a question.
It’s a promise.
Notes: sorry it took me forever, I kept turning this part over on my hands waiting for perfection, but... It's not perfect. It's messy and funny and, I think, very Kara. Hope you guys like it.
Read Lena's POV here so this can actually make sense :)
I choose you and me… Religiously.
Kara loves Lena too hard.
Always has. Always will.
She loved her through breakdowns, the end of the world, the missteps and mishaps. She loved her against her better judgement and against what people told her, against every warning that said this was too complicated, too dangerous, too much. It never mattered. It never stopped her.
Kara has loved Lena throughout history, as quietly and certain as she could be.
Now she wants to love her out loud. In outbursts and honesty and everything she used to keep locked behind her teeth.
Kara wants to move in, write Lena’s name on her arms like a tattoo. She wants people to know, wants Lena to know. Better yet, she needs Lena to know.
But the thing is, they’ve danced around this for too long. Been scared of it for too long. And those fears of ruining this, of losing her, they don’t disappear just because now Lena is sleeping next to her.
No.
They change shape.
They get quieter. Sharper. Smarter in a way that feels worse.
They start telling her she is going too fast. Wanting too hard. That she is scaring something away just by holding it the way she has always known how to hold things.
At least, that’s what it must feel like to Lena sometimes.
Like when she turns her head away when Kara says “I love you” in a crowded room and doesn’t say it back right away. Or when she goes still for a fraction too long after Kara casually calls the penthouse “our place.” Or when she lies perfectly still in the middle of the night, except for her heartbeat, when Kara wakes up and realizes she’s been tracing words on her skin without meaning to.
Mine.
Kara knows she shouldn't have done it.
Which is unfortunate because she is dying to do it again.
Kara doesn’t really think about distance anymore.
She thinks about presence.
Which is how she ends up in Europe before she fully decides to be in Europe, the decision happening when she stares at her bed and realizes Lena isn't there, and it just feels… wrong.
By the time she knocks on the hotel door, she has had enough time to think once that this might not be what most people would call normal behavior, but not enough time to rethink her actions.
The door opens almost immediately.
“Hi,” Lena says, and then stops, the rest of the sentence seeming to lose its shape halfway through recognition. Then, softer, surprised in a very real and understandable way, “Kara! Oh my god, honey, what— what are you doing here?”
“You know I can only sleep when I'm next to you now.”
She blurts it out, and immediately, immediately, something in her head goes very still before everything else catches up and starts screaming.
That was… not phrased carefully. That was not phrased at all, actually. Kara most definitely should have thought this through.
Because now Lena is just looking at her.
Wide eyes. Still. Heart beating so fast, Kara is actually scared. And the pause doesn’t tell her anything yet, which is somehow worse than if it did.
And Kara cannot stop watching it.
She notices Lena’s expression before she even finishes noticing her own sentence.
The blink. The slight parting of her lips. The way her shoulders haven’t moved yet, like her body hasn’t decided what this moment is supposed to become.
Who does this?
No one does this.
Kara does this, apparently.
Oh Rao, who the hell flies across the world like it’s an impulse decision they forgot to justify? Who doesn't even give a warning first? Or ask for permission? Who just assumes things like she just did?
Kara swallows, hard.
Her hands feel suddenly too present in the room, like she should do something with them but doesn’t know what.
She watches Lena again. Lena is still looking at her. And it feels like too much. Like hours have passed with her standing inside this moment. Maybe she should back off. Say something that could pass as a joke or…
“Come in, honey.” Lena says, stepping aside. “I think you’re going to like this bed.”
And Kara exhales like she has been holding her breath since the second she arrived.
She follows. Still replaying the sentence she said. Still not sure where it ends. Still not sure if it was too much or just… true.
And there’s a pause in the room after she steps inside, quiet enough that it feels like something could happen in it if either of them decided to name it.
Kara looks at Lena for half a second too long and then, because her mouth is apparently not done making decisions without consulting her, “I’ve never actually made love anywhere outside of the US before.”
The silence breaks instantly.
Lena laughs. Immediate. Real. No hesitation.
“Well,” she says, like this is the most reasonable thing in the world, “come on then. Let’s change that.”
The apartment is quiet in the comfortable way it has become over the past few weeks.
Lena is stretched across one end of the couch with a book balanced on her knees, reading with the kind of concentration that makes the rest of the world disappear. Kara had been trying to watch whatever movie Alex insisted was "actually really good this time," but somewhere around twenty minutes ago she'd stopped paying attention.
Not because the movie was bad, but because Lena is right there. Looking like she could be a painting hanging in the Louvre, or what Goddesses would look like if Kara believed in any.
Sometimes Kara still catches herself doing this, looking at her for embarrassingly long stretches of time simply because she can now. Because for years she had taught herself not to stare too much, not to linger too long, not to let her face betray everything her heart had already decided. Now no one was asking her to hide anymore.
It turns out all that restraint had only been accumulating interest.
Lena turns another page. Without looking away from the book, she says, "You're staring."
"I am not."
"I can feel your eyes staring." Lena flashes a look at her. “What's wrong with the movie?”
"Not as interesting as you..."
That earns her a chuckle and then a smile. Kara smiles back automatically, still looking at her. She's thinking about how lucky she is, how Lena is amazing, how they've been together but-not-together for so long, how she wants life to stay exactly like this forever.
Which, in hindsight, is exactly the problem.
Her mind drifts. What would forever look like? How would she even sign her name? Kara Luthor. No. Doesn't roll off the tongue. Maybe Lena could take her last name. Lena Danvers.
...Hm.
Kara and Lena Danvers.
"Hm," she says out loud before she realizes she's speaking, "do you like Kara Luthor or Lena Danvers better?"
The page stops turning. Lena slowly looks up from her book, like a deer caught in the headlights, "What?"
Kara blinks.
Oh.
Oh no.
That was supposed to be said in her inside voice.
"I just..." Kara starts, then immediately wishes she hadn't, because now she's committed to explaining herself. "I was just thinking."
Lena waits. Which somehow makes everything worse.
"About names."
Kara can practically hear the alarm bells going off in her own head now.
Abort.
ABORT!
Except apparently her mouth has other ideas, "You know, like—" she laughs weakly, scratching the back of her neck. "Like what our kids would be called."
Silence.
Complete.
Utter.
Silence.
Kara can hear the refrigerator humming in the kitchen. A car passing twelve floors below. Lena's heartbeat.
Oh no. She covers her face with one hand. Oh, she made it so much worse. Why can't she control the things that come out of her mouth?
Lena is still staring, Kara can practically see the wheels turning inside of her mind. Oh Rao. She's freaked out. Of course she's freaked out. Who talks about children after two months into the relationship? People who have completely lost their minds, apparently.
She swallows deep, "You hungry? I'm hungry. We should—You know what? I'm going to go get dinner."
She is already halfway to the door before Lena finds her voice, "Kara."
"I'll fly to Italy for it.”
"Kara."
"I'll get you your favorite. I’ll be back before you miss me.”
Great. One more line she'll regret while she flies at the speed of light to another country.
She just needs to regroup. It's fine, she tells herself with her inside voice this time, just maybe don't mention wedding and kids for the next year and things will be fine!
By the time she makes it back, Kara has managed to talk herself down.
She'd had an entire flight (which, admittedly, lasted about forty-five seconds) to remember that Lena had smiled when she left. That she hadn't asked Kara to stop. That she hadn't looked horrified. Just... surprised. Which, in retrospect, was a perfectly reasonable reaction to someone casually bringing up hypothetical children before dinner.
Right.
She's fine.
They're fine.
Everything is fine.
Except for the fact that she keeps doing this.
Saying I love you too many times. Touching Lena whenever she's close enough to reach because now she can. Calling things ours without even noticing until the words have already left her mouth.
And Lena keeps looking at her with those wide, startled eyes. She never asks Kara to stop, but she never quite joins her there either, and Kara finds herself wondering if that tiny hesitation means more than she's supposed to read into it.
When Sam invites Lena to Ruby's graduation in Metropolis, Kara overhears her laughing into the phone, "Yeah, of course I'll come. Do you mind if Kara comes too?"
Kara doesn't think much of it. It's Ruby's graduation. Sam's invitation. It makes sense that Lena would ask.
But a few days later Eliza calls to invite her to Midvale for the weekend, and before Kara has even finished thinking about it, the words are already out of her mouth.
"Sounds good. We'll be there."
She only realizes what she's said after the call ends. Not I'll ask Lena. Not if Lena wants to come. Just we. Like there had never been another possibility. Like somewhere, without consulting either of them, her brain had quietly stopped making plans for one person.
It happens again later that week when Alex calls.
"Where are you?"
"Home,"
Alex grunts on the other side of the line. "No, you're not. I'm standing outside your apartment. And I have pizza, so I'm pretty sure if you were home, you'd have opened the door by now."
Kara frowns, instinctively checking with her x-ray vision to make sure Alex really is there before the words catch up with her. "Oh," she says, looking around the penthouse as though seeing it for the first time. "I'm at Lena's."
"Seriously," Alex mutters. "Why are you still paying rent?"
Kara laughs after they hang up, but the question lingers. Not because Alex is wrong. Because she's right.
At some point home had stopped meaning the apartment she'd rented years ago and started meaning wherever Lena happened to be. Kara can't even remember deciding that. She only knows that every future she imagines, no matter how ordinary, somehow already includes Lena in it. She doesn't have to remind herself to think in terms of we. She has to remember that maybe she isn't supposed to.
The apartment has long since gone quiet.
The dishes are still in the sink, abandoned in favor of sleep. Rain taps softly against the bedroom windows, blurring National City into little streaks of gold beyond the glass. Kara is halfway through an article on her phone she hasn't actually read a single sentence of, one arm wrapped loosely around Lena, who has been strangely thoughtful ever since dinner.
She assumes it's work. Or maybe the book Lena just finished reading.
Lena shifts against her, reaches up, and gently plucks the phone from Kara's hand before placing it on the nightstand.
Kara blinks, "Hey, I was reading!"
Then Lena cups her face and kisses her.
It's not hurried. Not desperate. It isn't trying to prove anything. It's slow enough that Kara forgets to breathe somewhere in the middle of it, smiling into Lena's mouth before she even realizes she's doing it.
When they finally pull apart, Kara rests their foreheads together.
"For that you can take my phone away anytime!"
Lena smiles and her thumb strokes lazily across Kara's cheek, "I've been thinking."
Kara laughs softly, "You do that a lot."
"I mean..." Lena smiles, almost shyly. "I've been thinking about what you said a few days ago."
Kara furrows her brows, thinking back, "Oh no, what did I say?"
"Luthor-Danvers."
Kara's eyebrows knit together.
"...What?"
"Luthor-Danvers, we hyphen it." Lena repeats, like she's presenting the conclusion to a problem she's spent days solving. "I think it sounds better."
Kara stares at her, turning her head to the side like a confused puppy.
"For our future kids." Lena explains herself.
For a second, Kara genuinely forgets how language works. Did Lena really just imply… a future?
"It took me a few days," Lena admits. "I wanted to get it right.”
Kara's mouth falls open, "You've been thinking about that this whole time?"
"I may have made a list."
"You made a list?"
"The names have to go nicely with the last name, I mean."
Kara laughs so hard she has to bury her face in Lena's shoulder.
"Oh my Rao."
"I know."
"I thought..." Kara shakes her head, still laughing in disbelief. "I thought I'd completely freaked you out."
Lena's smile softens.
"I know."
The laughter fades between them.
"I didn't answer and I knew that was going to freak you out. But it wasn't because I thought you were moving too fast." Lena's fingers find Kara's hand beneath the blankets, intertwining with hers. "I was staring because... no one's ever spoken about a future with me like it was already real."
Kara feels something tighten painfully behind her ribs.
"I kept waiting," Lena whispers, "for you to realize I was too much and—"
Kara doesn't even let her finish. She kisses her. Once. Twice. A third time just because she can. When she finally draws back, she's smiling so widely it almost hurts.
"You are too much," Kara says softly. "You're brilliant, and stubborn, and you overthink everything, and you're so beautiful it hurts sometimes." she smiles, brushing a strand of hair behind Lena's ear. "And I wouldn't change a single thing."
She pecks Lena's mouth, "You're mine."
Lena closes her eyes for a moment, letting the words settle somewhere deep inside her.
Kara brushes her finger on Lena’s lips, her heart so impossibly full she thinks it might actually spill over. She smiles, leaning in until their lips are barely touching.
What if she's written 'mine' on my upper thigh only in my mind?
It's been a few weeks since everything happened.
A few weeks since Kara confessed. Since longing stopped being something Lena kept locked in lower case inside a vault and became something she could hold in her hands. Since fatal fantasies gave way to messy kisses and tangled sheets and Kara's sleepy smile waiting for her in the morning.
The strange thing is that Lena spent years imagining this exactly.
The stranger thing is that reality somehow feels less believable.
She thinks about Kara constantly now. In board meetings and elevator rides and quiet moments between phone calls. She catches herself smiling at memories that are only hours old. She sees futures where Kara is standing beside her and feels her heart stumble over itself.
Sometimes she wonders if she's finally lost her mind. Sometimes she wonders if happiness simply feels a little like madness when you've gone your whole life without it.
And sometimes, late at night while Kara softly snores beside her, she wonders if she's just lying to herself by thinking that Kara being in love and love are the same thing. That Kara wanting her now is the same as forever.
A soft kiss lands against her temple and Lena startles. When she turns her head, Kara is waking up slowly, blue eyes shining in the darkness.
"Babe, what's wrong? Can't sleep?"
"Oh. Guess not."
A smile tugs at Kara's mouth.
"Did I not tire you out enough? Should I try some more?"
The laugh escapes Lena before she can stop it, loud enough to feel out of place in the quiet bedroom.
“You did, darling. I was just thinking.”
"Oh yeah?" Kara shifts closer, her voice still thick with sleep. "Wanna tell me what?"
Lena draws in a slow breath.
No.
She doesn't want to tell Kara that she's terrified one morning she'll wake up and find all of this was borrowed time. That one day Kara will look at her and realize she deserves something easier. Something lighter. Someone less complicated than Lena Luthor.
She doesn't want to admit that even now, with Kara's arm draped over her waist and her warmth pressed along Lena's side, some part of her is still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Just work.”
“Lena, you can't be serious.” She pulls Lena even closer, so so close they're sharing the same breath. “It's two in the morning, sweetheart.”
“Hey, you knew that about me and you still wanted this.”
Lena almost regrets what she said, because what if Kara finally realizes that she does not want this? That she doesn't want to be dragged into the hedge maze that is Lena's life and mind?
“Yeah,” Kara smiles, right next to her ear, then kisses her temple again. “and I always will. Now, come on. Let me take your mind off of it.”
By the next morning, Lena has convinced herself she was being ridiculous. This relationship has been years in the making. Kara clearly never wanted somebody more. She needs to get rid of these bad thoughts, drilled into her skull by the Luthors.
She has learned that only actions talk. And Kara's actions are loud.
But the problem with actions is that Lena has a postgraduate degree in dissecting them. She places them under a microscope, looking for hairline fractures, looking for anything that proves what she's suspected her whole life: love can't be that easy.
It simply can't. Because if it is, then what was her life before this?
The luncheon is boring.
Painfully, spectacularly boring as most of these things are.
Lena has spent the last twenty minutes trapped in a conversation with a councilman who seems incapable of answering a question without first hearing himself speak for five minutes. She's smiling on instinct at this point, nodding at pauses that feel socially acceptable, while secretly debating whether throwing herself off the terrace would be considered unprofessional.
It's when she glances away for a moment that she spots Kara across the room, laughing at something one of the donors has said.
The sight of her is immediate relief, arriving so fast it almost embarrasses Lena. Because that's ridiculous, isn't it? The woman has been on the other side of the room for less than twenty minutes. And yet…
As though feeling the weight of her gaze, Kara looks up. Their eyes meet. And Kara doesn’t just smile at her. She beams. It’s a ridiculous, open-hearted expression that breaks through the entire room, completely indifferent to who might see it.
And this smile, this one Lena knows so damn well, it belongs to her. She feels it somewhere beneath her ribs.
And then, without breaking eye contact, Kara raises her glass in a tiny, private toast, innocent enough if not for the next part, because her lips start moving to shape words that look horribly like I love you.
Three words. Small enough to miss. Easy enough to mistake.
I love you.
Lena's heart stutters. The conversation around her fades into background noise. She stares, mind in knots.
Kara just smiles that sure smile of someone who knows exactly what she just did. Then somebody says something beside her and she's turning away, laughing again, gone as quickly as she'd looked.
Leaving Lena alone with the words. Or what she thinks were words. Because surely not. Surely Kara hadn't looked across a crowded room full of politicians and journalists and donors and simply mouthed I love you like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Did she actually say it? Lena thinks, her gaze dropping to the marble floor as a cold prickle of sweat forms at the nape of her neck. Or did I just translate a polite twitch of her mouth into the only words I’ve been dying to hear for weeks?
The doubt follows her home. It sits in the backseat of her car with her; it shines bright behind her eyelids when she closes them at night; it becomes tangible and breakable, true and fake all at once; it lingers in the margins of her data sheets while she tries to work next day; it consumes her days and nights.
Not because of the words themselves. Kara has said them before. When they were friends, when they were best friends, when they were... whatever it was they'd been before finally finding the courage to stop pretending.
But hearing it now it's different. There is a quiet certainty to it. An ease.
As though Kara hadn't been making a declaration at all. As though she'd merely been reminding Lena of something they both already knew. Something that would still be true tomorrow.
And next week.
And next year.
And the rest of their lives.
Wait! The rest…?
Lena's mind stutters, shocked with itself. Why would she think this? Why would she go that far?
Because Lena can handle the certainty of tomorrow, the plans for next week, hell, she can even handle the promise of next year! But forever? It feels too much like a vow they'd both have to uphold somehow.
But IF Kara was indeed saying I love you, she wasn't promising forever. She was promising now, then, someday, maybe. And Lena is definitely overthinking this whole thing.
A few days later, Lena is sitting on the couch with her laptop balanced on one knee when Kara emerges from the kitchen, phone in hand and an expression that suggests she's halfway through three different conversations at once.
"Hey," Kara says, finger still scrolling on the phone. "Everyone is complaining about how we haven't done a game night in a while…”
Lena hums absentmindedly, eyes still on the spreadsheet in front of her.
“How busy are you right now and would you hate me if I offered our place?”
The words hit Lena with enough force to make her miss an entire breath. She looks up so fast her neck snaps. Ouch. Wait. What?
Kara is still staring at her phone. Still scrolling. Entirely unaware that she's just detonated something in the middle of Lena's living room.
"So?" Kara tries again when no answer comes for longer than expected.
Lena blinks, "What?"
"Our place." Kara finally looks back at her. "For game night. Tonight."
The words sound no different the second time. Not Lena's apartment. Not ‘your’ place. Our place.
As though Kara has already quietly carved out a space for herself here and decided she intends to stay. As if the lines had been redrawn and Lena just now has learned where they are.
Lena's heart does something deeply unhelpful.
"Huh."
It's the only thing she manages. Apparently satisfied with this highly intelligent contribution to the conversation, Kara nods and returns her attention to her phone.
"Cool. Do you think it's a pizza or dumplings kind of night?"
Lena stares. Because Kara has already moved on. She's talking about food. Meanwhile Lena is still stranded two sentences ago.
"Both?" she offers weakly, incapable of deciding anything at that moment.
"See, that's what I thought."
Kara grins.
And just like that, she's gone again, disappearing back into the kitchen while arguing with someone in the group chat about whether chips count as a real contribution to game night.
Lena remains frozen on the couch.
Our place.
Maybe Kara doesn't mean anything by it. Maybe she's spending so much time there that the phrase slipped out by accident. Maybe it was just easier to say.
But maybe feels wrong.
Maybe belongs to unanswered questions and almosts and things Lena kept locked away where nobody could see them. It belongs to years of wanting Kara and pretending she didn't. To stolen glances and impossible feelings and all the things she never thought she'd be brave enough to hold.
This isn't a maybe anymore.
And that should be comforting.
Instead, Lena finds herself staring at certainty the same way she once stared at uncertainty; turning it over and over in her hands, terrified she's misreading the whole thing again.
It's late when it happens.
The city outside has gone quiet, reduced to distant headlights sliding between buildings and the occasional siren somewhere far below. Lena is lying on her side with her back pressed against Kara's front, suspended somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, her mind still stubbornly running through tomorrow's schedule despite the hour.
Kara shifts behind her, hand splayed over Lena's stomach possessively. It's a familiar movement by now, one Lena has become embarrassingly attached to over the past few weeks. Some nights she wakes up to find Kara halfway on top of her, as though even unconsciousness isn't enough to stop her from seeking Lena out.
A moment later, Kara's hand slides lower.
Lena barely notices at first because Kara is constantly touching her these days. A hand on her back. Fingers laced through hers. An arm around her waist while they're making coffee in the morning.
This should feel no different. Except Kara's hand finds the exact spot on her upper thight that drives her insane. Too close, and yet not close enough.
And Kara's finger keeps moving on that exact spot. Not aimlessly, though. Not the absent little circles she sometimes traces when she's distracted.
The movement is slow enough that she can follow it, deliberate enough that it doesn't feel accidental anymore. At first she only feels the warmth of Kara's fingertip against her skin, tracing a path she can't quite make sense of.
Then something in her stomach drops because that was a letter. And the next one is too.
Lena goes perfectly still.
No. Surely not.
But once the thought appears, she can't seem to make it disappear. She finds herself following the movement despite herself, recognizing shapes where there should only be skin and darkness, and before Kara even finishes, Lena already knows what word is being written.
By the time Kara reaches the final letter, Lena's heart is beating so hard she's convinced Kara must be able to feel it through her ribs.
Mine.
The word settles between them, invisible and impossible.
Lena stares into the darkness. No. That's ridiculous. Kara is asleep. Or at least she must be asleep, because the alternative is absurd.
Kara did not just write mine on her upper thigh in the middle of the night. People don't write possessive declarations on their girlfriends in the middle of the night.
And even if they did, Kara certainly wouldn't. Right?
Lena's stomach twists. Because obviously she has imagined the whole thing. Or misinterpreted it. Or accidentally assigned meaning to a series of meaningless movements because apparently that's what she does now.
Behind her, Kara's hand comes to rest on the exact spot where the final letter had been. The weight of it is almost unbearable. Lena stares stubbornly at the wall.
She does not turn around. She absolutely does not turn around.
Because if she does and Kara is asleep, then she's officially lost her mind. But if she turns around and Kara is awake...
Lena isn't sure that's any better.
Behind her, Kara's hand moves up and settles over Lena's stomach again, its rightful place. A second later, she leans forward and presses a sleepy kiss to Lena's shoulder before tucking herself even closer.
The gesture is so casual it almost hurts. As though nothing unusual has happened. As though she hasn't just turned Lena's entire brain into a crime scene.
Lena closes her eyes. She tells herself Kara was asleep. She tells herself she imagined it. She tells herself she's been overthinking everything lately and this is just another example.
But the explanation never quite lands, because long after Kara's hand goes still, Lena can still feel the shape of the letters against her skin.
And lying awake in the darkness, she finds herself wondering what might be worse: the possibility that Kara actually wrote the word, or the possibility that she didn't and Lena only wanted it badly enough to believe she had.
Ranking your AU supercorps in terms of usefulness in a combat scenario: 1) buffy au (self-explanatory) 2) noir au (self-explanatory) 3) bridgerton au (they can fence?) 4) golf au (can swing clubs with force). Not 100% confident about the placement of 3 and 4
buffy is correct (thank you for mentioning buffy au), noir is a funny one since kara does both have a gun and literally never uses it (lena is happy to use a gun). i think golf jumps bridgerton, bc golf clubs fucking hurt and lena does famously destroy a car with a seven iron. on a rage day i think golf could even jump noir.
this is me coming full circle bc i first started posting on tumblr when i got into the supergirl CW show! anybody remembers?
kara has to be my most comfortest character... i love her so much, each and every iterations of her. i watched the movie!! i liked it a lot... i had read the comic a while ago so i have some opinions ofc but, with the amount of negativity and misogyny surrounding the movie, i prefer to keep those for my friends. either way, milly alcock did a wonderful job!!! truly an inspiring and moving portrayal of kara:)
OFC!! one of my favourite things to explore abt supergirl is her relationship w clark... the supercousins r so dear to me.
most of these drawings are my own version of supergirl though mixed with some of woman of tomorrow, the movie and the show... and well :)) lena... gorgeous gorgeous girl.
the second drawing is me thinking abt how instead of just using glasses as a disguise, maybe kara lets her eyes glow whenever shes in supergirl regalia... taking a page out of woman of tomorrow where ruthye described how kara is ALWAYS holding back instead of doing effort to gain speed or strength or anything, shes just always slowing down and controlling herself...
control, grief and anger has always appealed to me when it comes to kara. i think she's the perfect character to explore those with... yeaeyeayea
“Are you seeing anyone?” Sam asks, her voice rosy with wine.
Kara’s eyes immediately flick to Lena. Their first kiss two days ago had been electric. Fireworks had been a cliché until her lips had met Lena’s, and the searing heat of their mutual desire had arced between them, and pooled warm and wanting in Kara’s belly. And now, Lena’s joy shines so brightly that Kara has to look away.
“Oh, I’m actually… well…” Kara trails off into nothing, smiling awkwardly as she fidgets with her glasses, ducking her chin.
Kara feels Lena’s disappointment before she even dares to glance back up. Her bright, beautiful smile noticeably dims, then returns as a shade of its former self, tight and forced. It’s hollow as she ducks her chin, hiding her sudden discomfort.
No one else seems to notice, but Kara’s stomach sinks further and further as the conversation continues. Lena contributes little, and it comes as little surprise to Kara when she feigns a glance at her phone some minutes later, and rises to her feet.
“Where are you going?” Sam asks immediately, her gaze sharp as it narrows in suspicion.
Lena waves off her concern. “Something’s come up at the office,” she says. “Sorry, but I have to go.”
Sam uncurls from her seat in Kara’s easy chair. “I’ll go with you…”
“No,” Lena returns, sharply enough that she visibly softens. “I’ve got it covered.”
A frown crinkles Sam’s features, but she settles back down onto the cushion. “Okay…”
“You ladies enjoy your night.”
Lena’s eyes land on Kara for a split second before swiftly sliding away. Shame coats the inside of her throat, her chest, keeping her rooted to the floor just wanting to melt into nothing. It’s not until the sensation of being watched pulls Kara’s eyes to her sister’s. Alex’s gaze is expectant, like Kara might be the one to explain what the hell just happened
Kara finds herself on her feet before the thought to follow Lena even registers. She swallows thickly as she crossed to the door, wiping her palms against her slacks before gripping the door knob and twisting it open. She spots Lena heading for the elevator, and finally, finally, Kara’s guilt shifts to panic.
“Lena!”
Lena pauses at the sound of her name, but doesn’t turn. Kara closes the distance between them with hurried strides, but curls her hands into fists to keep them from reaching out. “Lena…”
“It’s fine.” Lena’s assurance is terse, and plainly hollow.
“Clearly it’s not.” Kara doesn’t mean for it to sound so accusatory; she’d been the one who misspoke, by saying nothing at all.
Lena turns to face her, and Kara nearly flinches at the way her eyes glisten with tears. But Lena’s jaw remains tight with restraint, and her gaze won’t meet Kara’s.
“I know it’s not,” Kara amends. “It’s not okay. I just…” Her attempt to explain quickly trails off. She doesn’t know why her gut clenches with shame at the thought of telling others about the moment they’d shared. She’d been fine sharing her relationship with Mon’el, eventually. She’d resented his blatant disregard for her wishes in telling the DEO at large that they were dating, but the tightness that coils in her stomach now is different. But why??
“Look,” Lena says shortly, “I—I really enjoyed our night this week. And you were so into it I didn’t realize you weren’t ready to tell anyone else you’re gay. Unless it’s me specifically you’re ashamed of.”
“I’m not—”
“It’s not like I haven’t been where you are, Kara. I get it. But the thing is, I am too old and too tired to be anyone’s dirty little secret. I’ve come too far for that.”
Kara’s mouth runs dry. She wants to rebut Lena’s claim—they, Lena isn’t a secret. But that was exactly what Kara had made her in that apartment, when she’d shied away from the truth. Not out of a desire for privacy, but from fear.
“So, whatever it is you’re hung up on," Lena continues. "Me, girls, or all of the above—figure it out before you decide to fuck me again.”
With that, Lena stalks into the waiting elevator and stabs the button for the ground floor. And all Kara can do is watch her go.
Kara, at work at Catco, gets a text on her phone from Lena inviting her to an evening at the beach. When she shows up at the intended spot as Supergirl, Kara notices Lena is nowhere to be seen. With her super-hearing, she picks up traces on Lena’s voice and notices a tanker sailing into the distance. Fearing the worst, Kara flies after the ship and sees that it’s guarded by men in balaclavas carrying guns. She descends onto the ship and demands the goons tell her Lena’s whereabouts. A battle erupts, ending with Supergirl beating and knocking all the goons out, then she flies down into the ship’s cargo hold.
Coming up to one of the doors in the brig, Supergirl punches the door in and steps into the cell. She then sees Lena wearing a skimpy black bikini with her hands chained to the wall above her head. Lena notices Supergirl and gives her a saucy smirk, then delivers a rather risqué one-liner. How do you imagine Kara responds?
Lena watches Kara gape for a good five seconds before breaking the silence.
“As much as I’m enjoying your appreciation,” she says, allowing a smirk to curl her lips, “I’m fucking freezing.”
In her defense, Lena hadn’t expected the summer afternoon temperature to plummet so quickly when she’d chosen her attire, and she sure as hell hadn’t anticipated being stuff into the frigid hold of a cargo ship. Even so, watching her rescuer’s jaw work soundlessly for a few heartbeats more keeps any true regret at bay.
“O-Of course,” Supergirl stammers. She crosses the hold in a few powerful strides, and gives the chains a yank, snapping the bolt that tethered them to the bulkhead. In the next instant, she sweeps the cape from her shoulders and wraps it around Lena’s scantily-clad frame. It immediately envelops Lena in a pocket of warmth, easing the ache left by the shivers that had wracked her even before Lex’s goons had swarmed her on the beach.
“Thank you,” Lena hums. Her fear has fully abated in the hero’s presence, and when she steps forward, Kara hugs her close, cape and all. The moment of intimacy is out of place on a ship that could very well have enemies prowling its deck, but Lena doesn’t care. She simply sighs.
“So, maybe not the romantic sunset rendezvous on the beach wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had.”
She feels Kara twitch in surprise. “Romantic?”
Lena nods. “Yep. Had a whole speech planned, intimate picnic, stargazing…”
“We… can still do that?” Kara breathes into a question, before clearing her throat into something more confident. “If you want.”
Lena smiles. “Another time.” The mood for such romanticism has been thoroughly ruined. But there’s still one thing Lena hoped to salvage from this disastrous night. Rising to her tiptoes, she presses a kiss to Kara’s lips.
There.
She pulls back to find Kara’s cheeks have immediately turned a vivid pink. Even so, an incredulous yet hopeful smile shines back at Lena. “Really?”
Lena chuckles, then kisses Kara again. “Take me home, darling.”
