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Jun 10, 2018

chasing after our ends - [4]

part 1

part 2+3

nsfw at the end :’)

Kara has vivid dreams.

Which isn’t to say she’s a deep sleeper, though. Alex had always complained about her erratic tossing and turning the couple of times they’ve slept together in one bed as children. She doesn’t snore, thank God said Alex, but she does other things.

She dreamed a lot, even then. Often woke up panting with her clothes sticking to her chest and sweat on her temples, Alex hovering above her with worried eyes. Cried, rarely, but she still did. The therapist Eliza and Jeremiah had gotten her said it was normal for a girl her age to be having dreams. Perfectly normal for a girl with her trauma to be having those dreams, dreams with her parents’ faces and snapshots of a plane on fire crashing into the sea. Not necessarily healthy, but—normal.

She’d grown out of the nightmares eventually and progressed to light, cautious, tiptoeing sleep. Leslie once slept through a break-in at the apartment below them and Kara had been the first to call the police, mumbling hurriedly on the phone as she listened out by the stairs. The burglar got in through the window with some duct tape and a hammer wrapped in sheets. Kara told the cops she was up writing drafts and knew the tenant below them was out for the weekend. Only one of those is true.

Her time as Cat Grant’s PA in CatCo didn’t much help with her sleeping habits. She thinks that’s one of the things that fascinated Cat, actually, how she’d pick up after two rings no matter the time of day. Efficiency, Cat always said, and suicide. Kara’s body knows how to function on four, five hour sleeps and cups of latte—her body does not know how to sleep without wine or scotch or something absolutely exhausting to drain her brain and body.

So she’s always up at 6 or 5 depending on how well the heater is functioning or what her dreams are. The heater is on 80° spewing 60 and she wakes up with cold feet, blinking away the last visions of dark hair and earthy skin from behind her eyes.

5:16am. Imra isn’t outside yet to write the specials. The ground is wet and the sky is gray with the leftover rain from the storm the night before. The rainfall is a marching band hum of snare drums. It might rain for the remainder of today, Imra did say last night.

Last night.

Imra had kissed her once. She’d kissed Imra twice, once to prove a point and the next because it felt good. It was good. Imra made sounds in Kara’s mouth and Kara took each one, swallowed them all until they were simmering between her thighs. Imra’s mouth was warm. Her hands warmer. The room hot but not because of the heater. Kara could remember how close they were to the bed. And Imra, gentle, sweet Imra, had pushed them apart with dark eyes, a shy smile, and tremors in her breathing. Kara took a long, long shower before going down for her scotch.

She doesn’t know what she’s expecting for the morning after but what she gets, what she gets is Imra joining her outside at around a quarter before 6 with an umbrella and a single cup of coffee in her hand. What she gets is a shy smile and the coffee and what could be a whisper of a kiss with how closely Imra chooses to stand when she offers the cup.

“Good morning.”

“Thanks—morning,” Kara says smilingly. Imra has gone out in the rain, moving the chalk board slate closer to the inn, under some shade. “How’d you know I like lattes?”

“Servers.” Imra winks. “I saw you through the window. You’re up awfully early.”

“The heater’s having some trouble again. My feet were cold.” Kara grins and flaps her hand dismissively when Imra pinks. “It’s fine, don’t worry about it. I’m used to getting up early anyway.”

“You’d think for someone on a break, you’d be sleeping in more,” Imra says. She dries the slate with a rag and looks at Kara sidelong. “I’ll have Mike come up to your room after breakfast. Or… would you rather I sent Brainy?”

Kara rolls her lips into her mouth. That’s still something to be considered—discussed? Confronted?—Mike. Imra had said so herself—she’s still married, technically. Kara knows this as well as she knows Imra has found herself a place in her heart and bones. Imra has stopped writing on the slate. She’s chewing her lip, waiting on Kara with wide eyes.

“Does it matter who you send?” Kara asks without looking. Imra’s writing hasn’t picked up yet.

“I’ll send someone up,” Imra says at length. Kara nods, and nods, and they spend their routine morning meet in silence.

Kara has two Safari windows open with no less than 5 tabs each. Both resized to fit her screen, one is active on a Periscope stream of a coverage at the police station, and the other is opened to an article that reads posted 9 minutes ago below the headline. The TV is tuned to the news and Kara’s eyes dart from the anchor’s face, to the Periscope, to the article in practiced, fluid flicks.

“…in Seattle, found at 4 this morning at the cusp of the I-90…”

“…and here we can see the chief of police now—chief! Chief, excuse me—”

...was called in by MsGrace Parker who was driving down the I-90 from…

Kara’s on the fifth article (saying the same damn thing as the first four) and the news anchor’s long gone on the TV when her phone rings. She snatches it up while staring at the grayed out video of the ended Periscope live stream and answers with nary a glance at the caller’s name.

“Did you see the news?”

“Yeah.” Kara puts the call on speaker to go hands-free, switching tabs and entering searches with lightning quick fingers. “Did Grace Parker say anything useful? She was the one who found them, right?”

“Yeah, she just got—”

“Says here she’s a doctor. Been in practice for seven or so years. Did she have anything to say about the state of the bodies? How many were there?”

“—out of interrogation,” Alex finishes slowly. Her voice is raspy and Kara can easily picture her pinching the bridge of her nose. “You know I can’t tell you that kind of information.”

“I’m not a reporter right now, Alex,” Kara deadpans. She clicks through Twitter snapshots of the I-90 roadside swarming with police tape and civilian cars parked in the distance.

“Which makes you a civilian, and that’s kind of worse, isn’t it.”

“I shut down my blog—”

“Kara.” Kara tightens her jaw and opens tabs for two more searches: no other pictures of the scene, the same information on Grace Parker. A third search yields something useful. A Twitter update from a public profile saying mugged(?) and killed, shame. CADMUS??? “Relax. Breathe,” Alex says.

“Alex. The bodies were the same as all the others you found before.” Kara’s fingers are shaking. She takes a long breath in through her mouth and it comes out in one belting, shrill demand: “why haven’t the police released this information?”

“Because—Kara, stop, no.” Alex’s voice gets hard. Thank goodness for Google’s spell checker, because Kara keeps hitting the wrong keys and the click-clacks of her keyboard are piercing. “Kara. Because we want the information to be disseminated calmly—”

“Calmly?”

“Calmly. And the chief will be holding a conference later today with all the information the public needs to know. We don’t need anymore panicking.”

“Maybe we need to panic,” Kara grinds out, hard disbelief apparent in her tone. A dull slam crackles on the line.

“Oh, yeah, because we know how well the panicking went last time.”

Her keyboard stills. Her heater’s dull hum is all that cuts through the ensuing silence and Kara stands, pacing to the kitchenette and back with her hands on her face. Alex says nothing more. She can hit a nerve when she really wants to, Alex, and she knows when she’s hit one, too. The silence stretches to half a minute and Alex ventures, “Kara,” wearily. Kara’s mouth wakes with a jolt.

“I think I should go home. I need to—I need to help somehow. I can do better when I’m close—”

“Why do you sound like you think this is your fault?”

“Because it is, isn’t it?” Kara collapses on the chair and snatches off her glasses, throwing it at her laptop. Neither the screen nor her glasses break. She’d feel better if one of them did. “I–I gave someone the idea somehow to do something worse to these people. Was it Cadmus? I don’t know. Morgan Edge said—”

“Morgan Edge is a vain, know-it-all bastard who doesn’t know it all and should really stop doing his own PR. This is not your fault.”

“What if it is?” Alex sighs and Kara shuts her eyes. “I’m going home. I’m checking out right now—”

“You will do no such thing.”

Kara’s bark of laughter is toxic. “You’ve literally been telling me to come home for days!”

“That was before I knew you think this whole other thing is your fault,” Alex seethes. Another dull slam and Kara actually feels like she might cry. “If anything this is the best damn time for you to stay away because honestly, Kara, you don’t need anymore of that kind of attention. Some tragic, emotional hero that could end up making things worse.”

The hum of the heater again. Kara’s breaths turn shallow and she throws her head back, closes her eyes, counts to ten and then back in two cycles. She listens to her pulse. She listens to Alex speak again, her sister a lot calmer with apparent effort. “The chief has requested help from the feds. They’re expected to come anytime within the next—shit.”

“What?” Kara asks slowly. Alex curses more on the line and a series of banging and thudding sounds fire from the speakers. Kara sits straighter now. She clutches her phone and demands, “Alex.”

“It’s another protest—fuck—Vasquez, get the fuck out here now! Jesus, don’t–don’t wave your goddamn gun around—”

“Alex!”

“There are people outside the station. Kara, I have to go.”

“Please be caref—”

The line goes dead. On her laptop, a notification pops up that says siobhansmythe.catco is now live on Periscope and Kara closes every tab and every Safari window. She turns the TV off and disconnects from the Wi-Fi. That, she doesn’t want to watch.

///

Imra is waiting with two plates of the lunch special at the check-in booth. The way she has them set up and the easy smile she’s wearing warms Kara through the rain on the window and the icy jab of the phone in her hand, held in a deathgrip. When she approaches, Imra tilts her head and hands over utensils. Their fingers brush.

“Fish?”

“Salmon,” Imra confirms. “And creamed spinach. You might find it off-putting since it’s leafy and green, but trust me when I say it’s good, just try it.”

Kara, while she does trust Imra, starts with the salmon first. Utensils clink. Imra has a book out and it’s not opened to anything (Paul Valery, The Art of Poetry) and Kara can feel her watching even with her head down. She has a feeling about what’s coming.

“I saw the news.” And she’s right.

“Which one?”

“What?”

Kara looks up with a wry smile and a dry laugh. “Which one? There are two big ones already. The bodies and the riot,” she holds up two fingers to emphasize, “and it’s only lunch time.” Imra’s lips purse. Kara swallows and clears her throat, looking down at her food again. “So, yeah. Which?”

“It’s a demonstration, not a riot,” Imra says. Kara’s laugh is low, bland. “And I just saw it online. I don’t think local’s gotten a handle on that one yet.”

Kara grinds her teeth. She forces her mouthful of spinach down and looks at Imra again. Imra is staring at her with something soft in her eyes and Kara couldn’t help it—Kara’s lip wobbles and she averts her eyes. “I didn’t follow the demonstration.”

Imra frowns. “Come around here,” she says. Kara is set to argue but Imra’s gaze turns imploring, and she’s walking into the booth with her plate and every declination on her tongue wilting away. Imra fetches her a stool from the back room. They eat side to side, brushing arms and elbows, and Kara thanks the heavens for Imra, who knows to give the gift of silence.

///

“I’ve… sort of, never been good at thinking things through,” Kara says. She sighs, leans forward to rest her forehead on the steering wheel. “I’ve always been more, think with your gut, y’know? And plan on your feet. Better than being too slow.”

“You do seem to be the type to be vested in heroics.”

“What?” Kara guffaws.

“Kara Danvers, investigative reporter, righteous personal beliefs,” Imra quips. Kara flushes and scoffs. “Defender of justice, fighter for inclusion.”

“I’m pretty sure no media outlet has said those about me.”

“Not explicitly, but they’re implied,” Imra says with a raised finger. She turns the radio down and Kara feels if she could dim the sound of the rain outside the car, she’d do that too. “You’re a good person, that’s for sure.”

Kara smirks. “But?”

Imra smirks back. “There’s a certain pace required for some things… things that affect a grander scale. You weren’t just warning five or ten people when you put up that article. You were addressing thousands. And thousands and fear don’t mix very well.”

“I didn’t think they’d take it like that.”

“You thought they’d take it like you did. Which was a pretty unfair assumption. They’re…” Imra waves in some vague gesture. “They’re… targets. Try to imagine how that feels for them.”

The rain outside carries on. Kara turns on the wipers so they could at least see the lighthouse. The shape of it on the windshield is blurred, smudged, wet, and still the sight of it is calming. There are no stars though, only rain, and only Imra next to her and the low hum of the radio. Kara breathes. She flexes her hands on the steering wheel and imagines reaching out to the sea to be consumed. “I shouldn’t have tried to… help, I guess.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Imra says pensively. “Imagine—if you didn’t put up the article, people would’ve stayed clueless. There’s no safety in ignorance.”

“But I did put it up, so things went to hell instead.”

“You made a choice,” Imra says softly. She looks at Kara to smile and her hand is between them, reaching for Kara’s with an open palm. Kara takes it. “Which is… better than not doing anything. It’s all a matter of subjectivity.”

“Subjectivity,” Kara parrots. Imra chuckles and pulls Kara’s hand toward her, running her thumb in concentric circles on the knuckles. She’s warm: Kara feels her warmth.

“Subjectivity,” Imra looks at her sidelong, “grays. Hard to tell if it’s right or wrong. A lot of things are, right? Gray.”

“What about your marriage, is that gray too?”

Imra doesn’t even pause to consider it. “Not at all.”

“And this?”

Here, Imra pauses. Kara swallows when Imra lifts her eyes to meet hers. The rain persists. On the radio someone is singing how does it feel to have me thinking about you? and Imra reaches out to hold Kara’s cheek. Her palm is rough and her eyes look strangely afraid, strangely doubtful, and Kara doesn’t know what to think. “This,” is all Imra says. She pulls Kara in for a kiss.

Kara could count the number of serious relationships she’s had with one hand and she’d end up with three fingers free. Flings, she couldn’t remember every single one, but she knows a single hand is enough for that too. So she knows them: the flavors of both. The warmth and comfort of a stable companionship, the mercurial excitement of flings, one night stands, two-time things.

She went to sleep with Leslie every night fully soothed by the thought of waking up next to her in the morning, the room silver with dawn and Leslie’s bare leg tangled around her thigh. She flirted with a boy with nice eyes, a girl with a long, elegant neck, other people, and let herself be taken out for dates and drives with no expectations served on the table or sitting with them on the backseat. She kissed them, slept with them, and would just shrug with no question if they ever texted sorry, can we reschedule lunch?

This thing with Imra skirts the terrible line between both flavors, sitting heavy at the back of Kara’s tongue like something strange and she couldn’t swallow. Kara doesn’t know if asking where were you last night, what were you doing is as acceptable as holding hands and biting Imra’s lip. She sleeps at night unsure if Imra will be around at check-in in the morning, and wakes up wondering where this thing will take them this time.

Today it’s in the stockroom, surrounded by shelves of condiments and produce where they’ve taken a break from restocking beer. This week’s payment is still crammed in Kara’s back pocket. The place smells like nothing a place two people making out should smell but Imra’s hand crawls up her arm, and Kara forgets the mustard bottles behind her head.

“Can you be quiet?” Imra had asked, and Kara’s breath caught in her chest. She nodded.

They left the freezer door gaping and the hum of it joins the sound of wet lips and shuffling feet. Kara’s hands are on Imra’s hips and her fingers toy with the hems of her blouse. She wants to ruck it so far up she’ll feel the valleys of Imra’s ribs, the curves of her breasts, the skin-bare pounding of her heartbeat. She wants Imra to trace her nails down her arm and mark it.

Imra pushes too hard and Kara slips, an undignified yelp breaking their mouths apart. She catches herself on a shelf and condiments wiggle and wobble dangerously. Imra’s eyes are wide blinking searchlights. Her arms have wound around Kara’s waist to catch her.

And they laugh, quietly, quietly. Imra links their hands and cards her fingers through Kara’s hair, tucking a stray lock behind her ear. She smiles at Kara all tender and nips at Kara’s lip, just once. Kara responds with a full kiss. She feels Imra’s chest vibrate with laughter. Imra’s sigh and the smell of the stockroom—it’s all so intimate, and still so casual. Kara doesn’t know what to think.

She wonders, sometimes, what the other people of the inn think when they see them together at check-in. Always, what Mike thinks when his eyes lock on them as he slinks into the booth to shed his apron and wipe off his sweat. Brainy looks but he never lingers, and Kara tries to imagine what he’s seeing when he casually steps out to let them be alone.

“You were right, it was a demonstration,” Kara says. “Alex told me no one was hurt. Or arrested. Lots of yelling, though.”

Imra hums. She’s by the dresser again, looking at picture frames and picking one up once in a while to inspect. Ruby’s purple frame is in her hand: the picture’s that of Alex, Sam, and Ruby from last Christmas, all decked out in the Christmas sweaters Patricia made for them. Both women were gleefully wine drunk, and it shows.

“And there were three bodies.” Kara speaks because it’s. Awkward. Being idle. Just watching Imra go about inspecting her room and her things. She fidgets and bounces a few times, seated at the foot of the bed, hands linked between her knees. Imra shrugs a shoulder.

“I saw the press conference. It was quite the coverage. It was pinned as another possible gang-related activity.”

“Mugging,” Kara scoffs. And then she squints. “Why are you smiling?”

Imra puts down the frame and crosses her arms, looking at the whole of the picture collection atop the dresser. Face alight like someone who’s been assembling a puzzle and has found the last, missing pieces under the carpets. She reaches for them with careful fingers, a curious smile: “you know, I wondered before why you and your sister didn’t look anything alike. I thought at first you were stepsisters.”

Kara rubs her hands together. Knowingly, her eyes dart to the picture of Jeremiah and Eliza, younger and in each other’s arms. There’s another picture taken on the same day as that, displayed in Alex’s apartment. All four of them a year after Kara became a part of their family. “Yeah.” She swallows. “Alex didn’t like me much at first. She wanted a dog.”

Imra moves to sit beside Kara. Her hair is damp, and when Kara sniffs she smells oranges and plumerias, like clean laundry and soap. She edges closer.“Tell me how that happened?” Imra prods.

Dreams. Kara has always tried to imagine how that might’ve looked like. A plane wrapped in hellfire that became a part of the sea, orange to darkness, a new angle of seeing it every time she closed her eyes. “Plane crash. They were on their way home.” She flashes Imra a sad smile. “I was supposed to be up there with them.

“They were visiting family out of the country. I couldn’t go because I had measles.” A shallow, quiet laugh. “My cousin was house-sitting with me—I was thirteen. He was the one who had to tell me and I…” Her eyebrows screw, her face pinches. It takes a second for her to realize Imra’s held her hand and she squeezes it for breath. “That part is… blank to me. I couldn’t remember. I think I blacked out.”

Imra nods. “And your adoptive family?”

“Clark—Kal. My cousin. Took care of everything. He knew them and trusted them, so… he let them take me in. He visited a ton of times, though. He was all I had.” She looks at Imra and wets her lips, breathes more. “I’m. We aren’t from here. So you can understand why—why I feel the way I do about what’s happening at Seattle. Whoever’s doing it is doing it just because those people aren’t from here.”

“I get it.” Imra squeezes her hand and smiles and it’s small, but she traces her thumbnail on the top of Kara’s hand in a soothing pattern. It’s more than enough. “Thank you for telling me.”

Kara nods and Imra releases her hand, clasping hers together as she lolls forward to look at the dresser again. She sits as she always sits. Knees together, hands on her lap, back straight. Kara thinks of her as a child again: well-mannered and brows damp with sweat, the skin of her hands battered rough. She thinks to ask about that. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Your home. Family.”

A length of muscle skirting Imra’s jaw spasms for a moment and Kara is prepared to take the question back, but—“my parents are still in Liverpool,” Imra says. “I haven’t gone to see them in quite some time. Some…” she pauses, chews her lip in thought, “five or six years now, I think. I call, though.”

“Why’d you leave? Like… why’d you come here? You were in Portland first, right?”

“I was. I was working as an illustrator for an advertising agency. It wasn’t glamorous, but it helped keep me here.” She takes a moment to think, it looks like to Kara. Her eyes narrow a tad and her lips get tight. When she speaks again, her tone is somber. “I had a sister. We were… very close. My parents, they’re good people and I love them but. My sister—it was different with her. I took care of her.”

It’s Kara’s turn to reach out. Her fingers brush Imra’s wrist and Imra extends her hand to be held easily. She doesn’t look at Kara, though. “What happened to her?”

“She was born weak. Her heart.” Imra fingers her chest as she says it. Her face scrunches, as she touches it. “We weren’t the wealthiest family, you see, but my parents still did what they could. I pitched in too, finished college purely on scholarships and did some work on the side but… well, what was bound to happen happened in the end.

“I was angry for a while. It’s irrational, I know, to be upset at my parents for something they couldn’t control but…” Imra sighs. “I went away, applied for a visa overseas and took the first job that was thrown at me. I was so angry and now I’m just… sad, I think.”

Kara watches Imra’s lashes flutter. She’s a chest opening slow and Kara, Kara’s there to see it all. This is the kind of thing that makes you wonder if there’s any meaning. It makes Kara wonder who else knows this about Imra, who cares enough to ask about it. “It happens,” she murmurs. “Anger. It’s… how we protect ourselves. From the pain.”

“Doesn’t sound like a very healthy way of coping.”

“Never said it is.” Kara smiles cheekily. “Just. It happens. Have you apologized to them?” Imra looks to Kara and blinks, and Kara only nods her head. “You should.”

“I know.” A moment’s pause. A moment for Kara to give another squeeze, and a moment for Imra to smile and breathe. “I will.”

“So how does Mike fit into this whole thing?”

Imra laughs under her breath and her expression looks almost fond, for a second. “He was a bartender at this bar my co-workers and I frequented. It was just a block from my apartment—I used to sneak Brainy in there for a pint or two.” She laughs again and Kara grins, enjoying the image of a scrawny Brainy being smuggled into a bar for a drink. It’s a funny image: a straight-faced teenager in a bar with adults, textbooks at home, head down, fingers wound tight around his pint. “He was nice. Mike. Funny. Charming. All my friends were in love with him and he picked me, for whatever reason.

“Hardly matters, though. He went on picking whoever he wanted anyway.” Imra shrugs and frowns, but for just a moment. She’d been laughing just earlier and Kara wants to see the roller coaster of her mind. “I hoped marriage would be the push he needed to change but… Well. I ended up here, a glorified handmaid. Can’t say that went well.”

“Why did you two come here anyway?”

“It was his idea of starting anew. Leaving everything we had and were behind. And me, I hoped again.” Imra sighs and throws herself back, lying down, sighing at the ceiling. Sheets crumple underneath her. She’s amber in the light of the room and her lashes sparkle gold for a moment when she closes her eyes.

And Kara, Kara joins her. She crawls on top of Imra and brushes Imra’s hair from her face, skirting her fingertips on the line of Imra’s jaw. Imra’s eyes open and crinkle, and she reaches up to pluck Kara’s glasses away. “I used to draw for my sister,” she whispers. Kara lowers herself a little more and Imra nuzzles her cheek, the corner of her mouth. “I drew for us. I made things fly,” a laugh, “she asked for flying toasters and houses that could float and we’d laugh about it. I painted her, once.”

“Paint me,” Kara says, and she feels her breath falter when Imra touches her chin. Imra’s gentle about it: rough fingers, soft caresses. Grinning, Kara continues, “I’d pay you.”

Imra laughs. She’s pink in the face. The shape of her mouth is divine and the lines at her eyes deepen with glee, eyes almost shut. Kara couldn’t laugh even if she wanted to. Her breaths are gone, her breaths belong to Imra who grins and says,“just kiss me.”

It’s wet and warm and slow. Kara slides her hand behind Imra’s head to angle her and their lips slant easier, mouths open, breaths gone. Their tongues touch and Kara feels Imra’s hand fist into the front of her shirt. Kara flattens herself against Imra so wholly she feels they’d start sweating. Her teeth graze Imra’s lip, and then she bites it.

Someone pads along in the hall outside Kara’s door and Imra freezes. There’s no other word for it. Her entire body locks up and Kara stops, gathering enough sense to pull back to stare at her. Imra’s mouth shines moist but the color has already started to drain from her face. Wordlessly, she pushes past Kara to sit up, and Kara lets a moment pass before she follows.

“Sorry,” Imra says quietly, wiping her mouth. She brushes her hair back and straightens her sweater at the hems. There’s a distance between them now. Not too much, but enough that Kara thinks and wonders and has to ask.

“Are you scared?” It’s soft, how she asks it. And when Imra reels back to regard her with wide eyes, she shakes her head and waves her hand: it’s fine, it’s fine. “It’s okay, you know. I mean. I get it. Most people don’t—”

“Kara,” Imra says. Kara means to speak again but her voice gets firmer: “Kara. No. It’s not…”

“Are you ashamed?”

“No.” Imra almost scowls. Her face scrunches to do it, but she falters and she couldn’t look Kara in the eye.

“It’s okay,” Kara says, and she means it but her voice still comes out too quiet. She wipes the wetness from her mouth and looks away. “I mean, I get it. It’s just…” gray. She leaves it hanging. “You should probably go.”

It takes Imra a while, but she does finally stand. Her kiss to Kara’s cheek is light, and hesitant, and apologetic and Kara doesn’t know what to think. It’s only when her door closes and she inhales a great whoop of air that she realizes she’d been holding her breath.

Kara thinks about it, sitting in the restaurant with a glass in her hand and eyes to the ceiling. She thinks about it, though she doesn’t know what exactly she should be thinking. There’s a couple behind her and they hold hands as they talk—they’ve done that, haven’t they? Held hands in the car, at the lighthouse, in the stockroom. Julia serves her up her second glass of scotch and she looks at her phone as she swirls it. Thinks about calling Alex for about five seconds. Alex won’t gloat, necessarily, but she’ll say I warned you and Kara won’t know if she’s right.

She doesn’t know what to think. The scotch goes down.

She blames her failure to notice that someone’s followed her up to her room on the nightly glasses of scotch sitting in her stomach. She only realizes it when she’s turned the key and has taken a step inside, and someone’s arm pushes the door open wider.

Even having already seen her so many times, Imra’s presence still has a way of tipping the world sideways for Kara. Especially when it’s unexpected, like right now, with her hair a touch mussed and the collar of her sweater askew like she’d been in bed and for some reason gotten up. Kara twists to regard her, mouth open. Imra only looks at her fingers and picks at them.

“It feels right to me,” she says quietly. Kara’s light is off and the dimmed light of the hallway isn’t enough to shed some clarity on Imra’s face. “But… I often worry what people may think.”

“It’s okay,” Kara says automatically. And it is. She’s been with girls and Alex is gay. She knows for a fact Ruby had to deal with certain things at school and that Alex once grappled with the idea of showing up there and flashing her badge. “I totally get it. I mean, I know why. Don’t worry.”

Imra shakes her head. “I know it’s unfair to you,” she murmurs. “But this is… it’s new to me.”

“We don’t have to do anything you don’t want.”

“I do want… to…” It’s so low a murmur that Kara thinks for a second it’s all air and she inches close, bent to listen, their hands still on the door. Imra finally looks up. She gestures vaguely to the room. To Kara? “Can I…?”

Kara nods dumbly. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.”

She doesn’t know, really, what Imra had been asking or what she agreed to. Maybe Imra asked both and she agreed to both: to her stepping inside the room, to holding Kara by the back of her neck to pull her in.

The door is nudged closed by Kara’s foot. They’re plunged into darkness and Kara’s hands are her eyes, running down the discernible shape of Imra’s waist to her hips. The stutter of Imra’s ribs and the tiny sound that she spills into Kara’s mouth wakes something inside Kara that makes her muscles twitch and her insides warp into a different shape.

Eight paces to the bed. Eight paces to the bed, she knows, past the little closet with all her coats and the duffels she came here with three months before. They punctuate all eight paces with open mouths and wet kisses and they fall to the bed with a bounce. Their mouths crack apart with a great gasp of air and Imra feels for Kara in the dark, hooking her fingers on the underside of her shirt collar.

“We can stop,” Kara says, to which Imra says no and pulls Kara close.

Something inside Kara wants to go at it hard. Hard and keening and ravishing, primal like the beasts the lot of them evolved from. It’s the same something that makes her jam her fingers between her thighs in the shower and come with an open mouth, but Imra is shaking and Kara places that high above everything. She slips her hand under Imra’s sweater and revels in the feeling of Imra’s abdomen caving inward with a long exhale. She feels the gust of breath on her top lip.

She reaches under the bra, brushes the erect nub of nipples with the webbings of her thumb and forefinger. Imra’s chest expands with air and Kara rucks her sweater and bra up, up, until she can move down and take a nipple in her mouth. Imra’s response is to free herself of the damned clothes, flinging them in some direction with a dull thud.

“I want to see you,” Kara says hoarsely when she comes up. “Can I see you?” Imra whispers an affirmative. Kara slants at an angle and flicks the bedside lamp on. Light washes over them in a warm amber, a fiery luminescence that highlights Imra in all the right ways. Her nose, her wet lips, the fine lines of her collarbones. The pretty curves of her breasts and the heady dilation of her pupils. “Tell me if you want me to stop,” Kara says, and deep down she wishes Imra won’t want her to.

It’s with twitching fingers that Imra undoes Kara’s shirt and tosses it aside. Kara’s bra is unhooked with her mouth on the underside of Imra’s jaw, leaving sloppy kisses with a lot of tongue. There’s a fire in her pelvis that doesn’t want to be put out. She asks Imra quietly. Imra nods—they get each other’s pants off and what Kara feels on the flat of her thigh when she presses it up to Imra’s crotch is a warm moistness that makes her groan.

She isn’t any better. Her own underwear’s ruined beyond comprehension. The urge to do herself in right here, right now is so strong that the thought to excuse herself to head to the bathroom pops into her mind briefly. Imra’s mouth is on the jut of her jaw, just below her ear. Kara pads her hand down between them and pushes Imra’s underwear aside to delve with her fingertips.

Imra stiffens. Her nails dig into Kara’s biceps. Kara starts and means to pull away but Imra closes her legs tight around her hand. “No,” she croaks, and how raspy her voice soundsmakes Kara’s brain fritz. “No,” with want, “no, it’s alright, please.”

Imra’s underwear goes and gets stuck on an ankle but that’s information that registers to Kara only in passing. With single-minded focus, she flattens her palm on Imra’s cunt and smears upward, and Imra’s body paints a beautiful arch.

Kara enters with a finger, slow: two when Imra makes a tiny needy sound and squeezes her elbow. Kara goes down to mouth at a nipple and asks with her chin between Imra’s breasts, “are you okay?” Imra whispers yes. Kara asks again, “can I?”

Imra cants her head to look down at Kara. Her eyes are hooded. She’s crimson from her forehead to her clavicles. “With my mouth,” Kara clarifies, and she swears Imra’s whole body twitches and tightens and Imra nods so vigorously with her eyes closed.

Coarse hairs tickle Kara’s nose and then get sucked into her mouth. The sound Imra makes is so unholy it’s holy. She flattens her mouth on Imra’s clit and drags it in firm circles, swirling shapes, pressing the tips of her fingers upward again and again on the ridges inside Imra. On either side of her face Imra’s thighs shudder, and when Kara closes her mouth to suck on her clit she feels Imra’s nails on her scalp, thighs closing in on her head.

Kara’s underwear is close to drenched. It’s faintly sticky when she rubs her thighs together and she squeezes her legs shut, stars begging to explode in her stomach and lower. She hooks her fingers into a harsh curl inside Imra. Imra’s hips buck high and her clit inadvertently grinds against Kara’s teeth. She sobs. She begs, “no, no,” and gasps, “not in your—no, Kara—”

Kara detaches her mouth. A splurge of wetness touches her chin just so and spills into her hand, between her fingers. Imra moans her name and the sound descends into unintelligible mewling and little puffs of air that make Kara’s head spin. Imra’s body is pulled taut, racked with tremors and labored breathing that Kara helps her get through with hard presses and kisses on her hip. Once Imra has slumped, Kara’s own arousal floods the forefront of her thinking like an angry vengeance. She’s panting. She mounts Imra’s thigh and shoves her hand into her underwear, forehead on Imra’s shoulder.

She claws at the pillow and the spread of Imra’s hair. She’s rocking her hips and Imra lifts her thigh to help with friction. And then she reaches down to grasp Kara’s wrist. “Let me,” she says, voice like her hands, rough but soft in all the right places: fingertips through sand. Kara slides her underwear off and it’s the feeling of her complete wetness that makes Imra’s mouth fall open, eyes wide, dark, blown. They kiss, huffing and open-mouthed. Kara keens.

That’s the thing about doing it with girls, though. Girls know what girls want and while Imra is clumsy and shy and inexperienced, her fingers know what to do. She knows what to give. She reaches past Kara’s hairs and slides her fingers inside with so much ease it’s almost embarrassing.

Kara’s hips won’t stop moving, humping to relieve even just some of the pressure. Her face is pressed to Imra’s shoulder and Imra’s thigh bounces with her rhythm, fingers deep in her cunt and thumb grinding firm ups and downs on her clit. She doesn’t last very long—she was done for the moment Imra said yes to her mouth. “You can be loud,” Imra whispers to her. Kara chokes. She buries her face into the curve of Imra’s neck and shoulder and moans, long and muffled. Somewhere in the sound is Imra’s name, said like a prayer, a mantra, not just once, and Imra whimpers against her temple.

The sheets are cheap. They’re rough, and they chafe, but Imra more than makes up for them with the soft caress of her hands on Kara’s thigh, on the small of her back. “Kara,” she rasps.

“Imra,” Kara breathes, once she can breathe. There’s a twitching in her legs that feel like bone-deep tickles. She holds Imra’s shoulder. “Do you feel okay?”

She looks at Imra. There’s something like wonder on Imra’s face, cheeks red, sweat dotting her forehead and nose. She’s looking at Kara like she’s about to reach for spun gold. She nods. Kara’s heart is throwing itself raw against her ribcage and for a while, it’s all Kara hears. Her own blood rushing in her ears.

It’s calm when the heat between them passes. It’s quiet but not awkward, no: it’s the comforting quiet after a huge storm. They’re on their sides to fit on the bed and Imra’s leg is thrown over Kara’s hip. Kara’s nose is touching the scoop between Imra’s collarbones. Imra smells like sweat. Like sex. And then a faint undertone of just Imra. A moment ago they’d laughed into each other’s skins, bashful. A moment ago they’d kissed.

“Wake me when you do tomorrow?” Imra whispers against the crown of her head. Kara nods. And that’s the key to seeing colors—it’s beyond knowing Imra has two moles on the right side of her chest and three in a triangle on her belly. Beyond knowing how it feels to run her fingers on the stretch marks on Imra’s hips, her thighs. More, definitely, than sloppy kisses on a timer. It’s knowing for sure what will happen in the morning, to know what to expect when you wake. It’s the dawn light surrounding Imra’s shape like a halo.

Kara throws the blanket over them both and Imra lifts up a second to turn off the light. In Kara’s arms she’s warm, undulating with deep breathing. Kara pads her fingertips on the bumps of Imra’s spine. She wants, for once, to sleep in.

also on ao3

#supergirl #spacegirls #!!!#supersaturn #kimra #imra ardeen #i wrote smut and now im sleepy #see i put the wrong chapter number told u i was sleepy #tumblr wont let me edit posts for whatever reason so i had to redo this whole thing #anyway :')#bee writes #fic #caoe fic

m-arahuyo