The Secret of Us
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.
Instead, she leaves.
