#Ms.Grant

[werebutterfly-deer20]

Ms.Grant & Max

[smugraccoon137]

Supergirl Season 1 Episode 2 Review and Thoughts

*Bluey Voice* This episode is called “Let's all make Kara Cry”

Kara: Is this because I'm a-

J’onn: Woman?

Kara: I was gonna say Alien

Yes this is how painful it is every time the writers try being “allies”

*The news anchor talking about Supergirl being a fuck up*

Me: IS that The word with PERDD?????

I do love Kara flashbacks actually aiding her knowledge of aliens on earth

Slightly uncomfortable with how much kryptonite the DEO has just on hand. Also regardless of the dilution/percentage used wouldn’t the rock still like make Kara super ill and in pain??

Yes, let's take the girl who's never been in a fight before and just kick her ass instead of teaching her. Because that’ll make her learn faster?? Instead of just making her feel stupid and isolated. OH but its fine because they weren’t trying to teach her anything other than she sucks at fighting and needs to be careful. Mission accomplished!

This writing is lazy for having 45 mins to achieve something. Especially when it’s obvious Alex didn’t want to tackle it that way. And apologized for it anyways like 20 mins later.

I understand conflict resolution. What I can’t forgive is just writing characters however is convenient to your episodic plot

Wow episode two is all about lets make Kara fucking cry huh? Thats it thats the title of this review

Okay so Cat Grant’s speech was actually really good. I’d say probably one of the best parts of the episode actually

Like it bit. It was painful to hear and to watch Kara hear. But it was actually informative and motivating. And more helpful than anyone else has been so far to Kara’s journey. Alex has mostly been unsupportive, making Kara feel bad about the whole thing, and trying to push her back into normalcy. Winn and James have been supportive for sure helping her with the costume, talking her feelings out, and even helping her find crimes to handle. But no one has given her any advice. I’m looking at you Clark. No one has jumped in to say “Hey you know what would be a good idea? Or what you should do?” She’s been very isolated in her decision making. Which I dunno, maybe thats just normal adulthood. But it certainly feels lonely.

I like that Ms.Grant is Kara’s irritable fairy godmother/voice of reason character. It’s actually interesting because it contrasts Kara’s sunshine nature so hard. You expect Ms.Grant to put her down or to try to diminish her ambitions. But on some level you can see the genuine care she has for her assistant. And how she does uplift her and give her advice quite often. So far she’s one of the only people to put something into Kara not take away.

Gotta love Winn and James meeting in the alley and treating each other like an awkward hook up you’d rather not talk to right now

Not a huge fan of Kara's only friends both being dudes who are into her and are probably going to end up competing with each other. I’d really love for the girl to just have some regular friends who care about her and don’t want anything in return.

Which kind of adds to my thoughts on the writer's attempts at being feminist allies. Why spend all that time writing bad “is it because I’m a girl” one liners when you’re just going to make her just a girl anyways. Why try so hard to be like “We’re doing it! We’re writing a show about Supergirl a woman!!!” When you’re going to take the only two friends she has and make them romantically interested in her just because they’re both men?

It’s eye rolling

I appreciate the boys tag teaming to help her though

Not bicurious Winn lol

“I ahhhh helped make that outfit” Looking into James eyes with like 3 inches between them

“I got some mad sewing skills” awkward flirting noted

Ohhhh more super hero montages to hit me with your best shot!

I love all the classic crimes from bank robbery to car chase to rescuing a pet from a tree

Autism headcanon is holding up

Baby Kara scared of the popcorn maker. Thats audio sensitivity bitchhh

Can we talk about the fact that the DEO has government possession of the craft that got Kara here? And like how weirdly invading that is. Clarks ship had message crystals in his. Information and wisdom to help him on Earth. It was the first contact he really had with his heritage.

For Kara it's like the last thing her family gave her. I mean Alex brought that message from her mother in ep 1, where do you think she got it? Karas ship obviously

Like you don’t think Kara would have loved to here that message like 10 fucking years ago? Would have loved to hear her mothers voice again 10 years ago? Would have cried herself asleep with at least evidence of her home.

The fact that the DEO just confiscated her shit and hasn’t even relinquished it back to her as an adult is sickening to me.

Gotta love the government “shoot it shoot it now with lots of guns” that'll get that alien done in just fine

I really love this common ground between Kara and James about being in Clark’s shadow. That's a really good place to start for their relationship, and I’m curious to see them relate more over it

“Growing up, I was taught that to accept help from people is not a shame, it’s an honor” - Kara 

I have a feeling this is something that will be ignored or something she will struggle with in the future

AHHH “El Meyarah” Stronger Together

Okay I get it. Shes different from Clark. She wants super friends. I gotcha I gotcha

Not Kara educating James on Krypton when Clark don't know shitttttt

Alex dont fucking reveal you know shit holy fuck dude thats like first rule of secret ops. Bitch really just started running her mouth immediately 

I love this idea of Twins being rare on Krypton because of the matrix. Why would it make a copy when it already made what it needed?

Fight scene between Kara and her Aunt was good, but that was some bullshit about Kara actually learning from Alex and their “training” session earlier in the episode. You can’t act like she learned something when no one taught her anything!

I don’t like how quick to adapt Kara is about the whole Aunt Astra thing. That's a pretty big deal wtf

Alex: My parents had me prepared to deal with you being really sad and fucked up because your whole planet got destroyed. But then you were like super happy and not sad at all! You’ve always been like that tee hee

Sounds like Kara was really good at hiding all her sadness as a kid dude. Big oof

I like that Alex and Kara are going to work on defense stuff in the future and it's a mutual decision

I just realized that Clark never took Kara to the Fortress of Solitude  >:[

Love Alex introducing Kara to her Living Memory mother. But fuck this is torturesome. Again Clark has his crystal ai Dad. But it's like that's obviously not his father, that's not Jonathan. Jor-El is there to help him learn about Krypton. To understand the history, ability, and nature of his people. A people he doesn’t know. Jor-El isn’t a parent he goes to for comfort or advice. He’s an informant, a wise man.

For Kara that living memory is like a reminder. A reminder of everything she's lost. Of something that she will never have again. It's almost cruel. To come to it seeking guidance and affection, and not being able to receive that. Only information and calculations. 

You may say “But her foster parents! Her sister!” I’m not saying they aren’t her family, but if you’ve never had your family taken from you in some way, you won’t understand that it's just not the same. 

That's totally general Zod isnt it

Gotta love Kara picking Cat Grant's car up for her interview

[ao3feed-supercorp]

Coffee and confessions

by DrunkShapeshifter

Kara Danvers was not a coffee person. She didn't need to be, caffeine didn't have any effect on her. She was aware that humans apparently adored the drink, judging by the amount of times she had to order it a day for Ms.Grant, but still she wasn't that fond of the drink. She was more of a hot-chocolat type of person. That changed when she met Lena Luthor, the embodiment of a caffeine addiction, who completely changed her view on the drink. But what she didn't expect, was that said drink would end up spilling all her secrets.

Or

Kara reveals her identity in the dumbest way possible.

Or

Identity reveal until it becomes so much more

Words: 6033, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Supergirl (TV 2015)

Rating: Not Rated

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: F/F

Characters: Kara Danvers, Lena Luthor, Alex Danvers

Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor, Lena Luthor/Kara Zor-El

Additional Tags: SuperCorp, Fluff, it's cute, coffee is Karas number one enemy and wingman, dorky, Humor, Identity Reveal, Love Confession, There is a really small bit of angst but nothing severe, Coffee

from AO3 works tagged 'Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor' https://ift.tt/pOFa8VD via IFTTT https://ift.tt/pOFa8VD

[kaiswritingcorner]

It was another slow day of news and assignments at CatCo, Kara looking through her notebook at the interview she conducted earlier that day to try and write out some semblance of an article to submit. The assignment was nothing special, the usual gossip. There just wasn’t much happening in National as of late, which made her day job boring and her secret one practically nonexistent. The only thing that kept her from truly passing away of boredom was you, and you endless questions on what to do with Cat.

You had become her more permanent replacement as Cat Grants assistant and you were just as lost as she was her first few months with the woman. And in your short few weeks, she had grown fond of your short bits of company. The way you stumbled over your words was something she thought to be adorable, the way your eyes sparkled when you’d come to tell her of your success in pleasing Ms.Grant made her heart flutter. The small gifts you began to leave for her as a thank you was a hat solidified it for her. She was beginning to fall for you....big time.

Her friends took note of it, whenever she DID have super work to do and she was at the DEO, she almost always only talked about one thing and that was you. Alex was the first to notice, always finding ways to bring you into the topic just to see the bright smile and the heart eyes her sister had. It made her happy to see Kara so in love for once. Winn also quickly picked up on it, and since he worked with Kara at CatCo, you can bet he found any opportunity to gain your attention and leave you with Kara. Even if that meant he’d get a lecture from her after for ‘embarrassing’ her.

You couldn’t say you didn’t notice the glances she shoot your way, the way she would find ways to come talk to you even when you didn’t really need her advice. You didn’t mind, though. You shared your own crush on the blonde. You just never acted on your crush, chalking up all her attention to her just trying to be a good friend or colleague. Oh how wrong you were.

[superfem-imagines]

Cosmetology Confusion

Hi can you do a oneshot where Kara and Alex find out that baby danvers has a successful Youtube channel where she does makeup tutorials, and also works as a makeup artist? B!D was worried .  Requested by anon

Hope you like it!

---------------

“Kiera!” the voice calling her name made Kara snap her head up, quickly standing and going into her boss’ office.

“Yes Ms.Grant?” Kara stood with her pen poised, ready to take notes.

“The gala is tomorrow and my makeup artist is incompetent. I need you to find a new one,” Cat never looked up from the layouts in front of her.

“I- yes Ms. Grant,” Kara left the office, giving Winn a stressed look. Sitting down she powered up her computer, seeing an email from Winn.

Everything alright?

Yeah, I’ll tell you later at game night.

------------

Alex popped a couple beers as the others gathered food and games. She frowned as she realized they were missing someone. “Hey, wheres y/n?”

“Oh, she said she wasn’t able to make it. I thought she texted you guys?” James answered, frowning.

“That’s alright,” Winn interjected, monopoly set out in front of him. “Now she can’t steal all my money!”

Alex shrugged and handed James a beer as she passed by him. Winn looked over to Kara with a slight frown. “Hey Kara, what was it Ms. Grant wanted earlier?” Winn asked, remembering her panicked glance.

“She fired her makeup artist and now I have to find her a new one before the gala tomorrow,” Kara sighed, knowing she might not find someone on such short notice.

“Oh! I know someone,” Winn said as he typed into his phone. “Kelly mentioned her, said she was good. I just sent you her webpage and email.” He shut his phone off with a grin.

“Thanks Winn, you're a lifesaver,” Kara looked relieved before suddenly brightening. “Now, I’m about to kick all your butts!”

“Not if I have anything to say about it, Little Danvers,” Maggie exclaimed as she grabbed the dice.

------------

Y/n sat at her desk, laptop open with both her Youtube and editing program when an email came through. Opening it, she found a job offer as Cat Grants makeup artist along with a pay offer. She closed it and finished her editing while contemplating whether to accept or not.

It’s good pay, she thought to herself, But I also risk running into Kara. Y/n frowned at that thought, not sure if she wanted her sisters to find out yet. I guess now's as good a time as any, she thought as she sent an email back, accepting the job offer.

-----------

“Winn,” Kara jogged up to him, a worried look on her face. “The person you recommended, please tell me they're good. I forgot to actually check them out and emailed them. They actually accepted and if they aren’t good-”

“Kara!” Winn interrupted her mid ramble, shaking his head. “I never checked their webpage, Kelly just told me about them. If it doesn’t go good, call in a favor from J’onn and bring in one of the people from the DEO.”

“Your right, I’m sure it will be fine. I’ll have a text ready just in case, though.” Kara nodded to herself before leaving with a quick wave.

Downstairs, y/n was getting checked in at the entrance desk. A quick pat down and bag check later and she was in the elevator going to the 5th floor where she was to meet Cat Grant. She knew it was likely her sister would be there, afterall she is Ms. Grants assistant. But if Kara is there then y/n knew she wouldn’t make a scene, she’d just have some explaining to do.

The elevator dinged and y/n walked out and into the bustling floor. A few wrong turns later, you found yourself in front of a simple looking door. Taking a deep breathe, you knocked and entered. Stepping in you found Kara organizing the lighted desk in front of her, while Ms. Grant was nowhere to be seen.

Clearing your throat, you addressed Kara who had now spun around with a confused look. “I’m here to do Ms. Grants makeup.” You announced, chin held high. Before your sister could say anything, Cat came out of the changing room.

“You better do a good job, Ms..?” Cat turned to you, an eyebrow raised in a questioning manner. You quickly stepped forward and held out your hand, “Y/n.”

“Well Ms. Y/n. You better be competent at your job.” Cat sat at the table, making it obvious she was ready. ‘Later’ you mouthed to Kara as you passed by her, setting down your makeup kit. 

“Kiera, get me a latte,” Cat called back to her. Kara conceded and left the office, eyebrow wrinkle in place. 

----------------

“Hey y/n?” Kara called, jogging up to you after the gala. “Can we get takeout and talk?”

You falter in your steps but don’t break pace. “Yea, sure.” Kara put her hand on your shoulder, making you stop walking. 

“It’s nothing bad, I promise. Alex and I just wanted to have a sisters night, ok?” Kara ducked her head, trying to catch your eyes. She straightened up and smiled after you nodded, continuing on back to her apartment.

------------

Alex plopped onto the couch with a groan, beer in one hand and remote in the other. “Busy day?” You ask, receiving only another groan in reply. You chuckle as Kara sits on Alex’s legs, floating so she wouldn’t hurt her.

“What about you guys?” Alex shifted so she was laying across your lap with her legs propped up onto Kara.

“Gala was fun,” Kara grinned, pinching Alex’s toe. “Y/n did a pretty good job on Cat’s makeup, even got a compliment.”

“She said I was competent, Kar. That’s not a compliment,” you protested, carding your fingers in Alex’s hair.

“Why did y/n do Cat’s makeup? I thought you hired someone to do that?” Alex tilted her head in confusion, not entirely sure what she was missing.

“Yeah well, turns out we have a prodigy in the family,” Kara teased, a soft smile aimed your way.

At Alex’s continued confusion you explain how you do makeup and run a YouTube channel. “Why didn’t we know? I’ve been doing my own makeup for dates when you could have,” Alex exclaimed, mock outrage coloring her voice.

“I didn’t want to tell you guys,” you admit, looking away from them in guilt. “I was afraid you guys wouldn’t approve of my pastime. I mean, you guys are badasses and I do makeup tutorials.”

Sitting up, Alex touches your chin, encouraging you to look at her. “We wouldn’t have judged you, y/n. I think it’s really cool.” Smiling back at her and Kara you took a deep breathe. Turns out you worried for nothing.

“Now,” Alex said as she leaned back into your lap. “What's your YouTube? I want to check it out.”

[katiemcgrathseyebrow]

Kara and Lena AU

After Kara got fired from CatCo after making one too many mistakes with Cat Grant's coffee, she went searching for a job. The job found her.

After leaving the CatCo building she got far enough away from the building so that she couldn't be seen by someone she knew and called Alex.

“Alex she fired me, where are you right now? I need someone to talk to."

"Oh Kara I wish I could but, there has been an attack and all the DEO agents are needed. I'm sorry but if you want me to come over later, I will"

"Yeah, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have called, I know you're working really hard, ill see you at 7 then"

Kara wished her sister Alex was with her, she always knew what to say to make her feel better.

As Kara hung up the phone she heard a voice call out,

"Hey, have I seen you before? Oh, you're Cat Grant's assistant."

Kara immediately recognized the put together looking woman standing in front of her. Lena Luthor. Lena recently moved here so she could make something good of Luthor Corp, according to a few of the reporters Kara had heard running around CatCo.

"Was. I was Cat Grant's assistant. Until today."

"Oh, I'm sorry... I know you probably don't want to, but could you show me how to get to CatCo. I'm still pretty lost" Lena said with a half smile, trying to seem sympathetic.

Although Kara had originally not liked the idea of a Luthor living in National City after all that had happened to Clark, something about the way that Lena talked on tv seemed like she genuinely wanted to be a force for good.

"No, its fine ill bring you there. I know what it's like to move to a new city"

Kara said with a quick smile. The truth is Kara knew the exact feeling that Lena was feeling, when she landed on earth she was completely lost and often accidentally used her powers. After a few years on Earth Kara swore that she would never stand out, not like her cousin Clark anyway. Kara just wanted to be normal and not have to risk her life every day.

"Brilliant, I really appreciate this Ms..."

"Danvers, but please call me Kara"

"Very well, Kara it is then. If you don't mind me asking, how long did you work at CatCo for?"

She said with a genuine smile

"Four years, I just made a few mistakes and then today as I was bringing Ms.Grant her coffee, I tripped and spilled it all over an Editor she was working with"

"That's awful, and definitely not a reason to fire a person. You seem like somebody who takes her job seriously, I know I'm not supposed to say this but a few positions are opening up at L-Corp so if you wanna drop in and arrange an interview, the secretary is in till 6 from Monday to Tuesday"

"Wow, Thank you Ms.Luthor, that so kind of you to tell me."

"You're welcome, but if I'm calling you Kara, you are calling me Lena."

"Well Lena, we are just about here, if you haven't already seen the massive CatCo sign."

Kara said, with a bittersweet smile, she was glad she got to talk to Lena Luthor but she had to face reality.

She had no job and the chances that she would even be qualified enough to work at L-Corp were slim.

Let me know if i should continue this, i know its probably shitty as im really shit at English, for my finals i got a 45% so thats saying something and this is my first fic so that probably doesnt help either

With the feedback I've gotten I think I'm gonna do a 3 part fic, I'm new to writing and I don't want to take on something I won't be able to handle l, I hope y'all can understand👍

[naturalhero-archive]

"What an incredible article Miss Danvers" Olivia said approaching Kara with her trademark smile plastered across her face. Since the reinstating of the act and the arrest of Baker and Lockwood, Olivia was more comfortable coming out of hiding, the fear of being killed on sight wasn't gone but it was certainly less than before. "I can see why Catherine was so fond of you" (HI IDK WHAT THIS IS BUT LIV WANTS YOUR KARA AND I WANNA WRITE WITH U SO HAVE THIS???)

˖˙ː ⸢ @marsdin ⸥ ―― kara still gets giddy when olivia is around.

the voice took her by surprise but it was one that she knew and had grown fondly of. kara’s heart rate had changed as she stood almost star struck by the former president her mouth agape as she listened to the Durlan. kara didn’t need to use her x-ray vision to know which article Olivia had been talking about the alien amnesty act had always been something close to both of their hearts and having it reinstated had been a great accomplishment for all aliens on the planet and any that may come to the planet to seek refuge. 

“Ms. Marsdin" getting up from her seat and like clock work kara extended her hand for the woman that had become an important role model for her. “thank you. i know how much the act meant to you.” offering a warm smile she stepped to the side gesturing towards a chair for olivia to sit in brows quickly knitting together as momentarily wondered who Catherine was before reminding herself that Ms.Grants real name wasn’t Cat.” clear blue hues scanning her surroundings like she was in search of something or someone fingertips play with the frames of her glasses as she took her seat once again. “ how is Ms.Grant? ” it was no lie that CatCo had been different without Ms.Grants presence and Kara often found herself in situations where she missed her former boss and her strong, well worded opinions or advice.

[notoriousjae]

72 Rules of Cat Grant || Supercat (10/?)

Chapter Title: Deadlines

Pairing: Kara Danvers/Cat Grant

Rating: M

Chapter Description:

"So…how are you going to revolutionize CatCo and the world, Kara Danvers?”

Chapter 1: AO3 Link | FF.Net Link | Tumblr

Chapter 2: A03 Link | FF.net Link | Tumblr

Chapter 3: AO3 Link | FF.Net | Tumblr

Chapter 4: AO3 | FF.Net | Tumblr

Chapter 5: AO3 | FF.Net | Tumblr

Chapter 6: AO3 | FF.Net | Tumblr

Chapter 7: AO3 | FF.Net | Tumblr

Chapter 8: AO3 | FF.Net | Tumblr

Chapter 9: AO3 | FF.Net | Tumblr:

Chapter 10 (Current): AO3 | FF.Net | Below:

When Catherine pushes open her office doors to a nervously-waving Kara Danvers, glasses set on a nose and a bounce in her step (despite the dark circles Kara doesn’t actually know how to cover underneath her own eyes with concealer adorning them) she takes it for a win that she’s not immediately thrown out when she hastily admits:

“Okay, so I’m still narrowing down my options but I—”

Because Kara isn’t narrowing anything, at all. She’s just doing a very, very poor job at avoiding the questions behind them.

“Oh, no. Too early for your indecisiveness. If I wanted that, I would have watched the Bachelor with Snapper. Go away.” Cat waves a hand, sunglasses set on her nose as she pushes into the office at precisely 7:05 AM, Eve skittering behind with a confused, smiling wave.

“Oh, Kara, I didn’t see you—”

“Ah-ah, Eve, we do not talk to non-employees. Just ooh and aww at them until they decide to pick what they already clearly know is supposed to be their career.”

“Even employees offering really great cupcakes that I can’t afford with a latte on top?” Kara offers, hopeful as she makes a wide-sweeping gesture towards the adorned desk. “A latte metaphorically on top. I did not get latte cupcakes. The latte is here. In my hand.” She doesn’t have time to inform Eve that her’s is on her desk and doesn’t think that little tidbit will win her any favors with the unimpressed woman in front of her.

“No. You’re a professional ghost, Patrick Swayze.”

Kara thinks she’s totally winning at this relationship thing because Cat at least snatches up the coffee before pushing her aside and sliding into her chair.

“I’m not a horrible dancer, Ms. Grant, but I really think I’m more of a…baby at the start of the movie, not really a Patrick—”

“Should I…come back, or—” Eve clears her throat by the door and from the look Cat gives her the assistant rushes in with a second latte before slamming the door on her way out, probably disappearing to another state and changing her name before imploring Witsec to take her under their federal care.

Kara’s pretty certain a lot of Cat’s ex-assistants are in Witsec for fear of their once-employer—she hasn’t confirmed it with J’onn, yet, but she has a sneaking suspicion—Cat would never actually hurt anyone, of course, but the fear she inspires is particularly real and efficient. A fact Cat likely knows and revels in, Kara knows. 

“Different movie. Unless you have your decision, I don’t want to hear it, Kara. And I don’t eat cupcakes before pilates, the last thing I need is a PR stunt of me emptying my stomach like Mel Gibson in the back of a cop car.”

“Okay, eww,” Kara grumbles, nose scrunching, “And no. I don’t—” Imploring hands raise up in the air, exhaustion keeping her shoulders tucked instead of raising, as well— “But!”

“If you ask me for an extension, I am going to fire you, Kara. I’m not even kidding.” Cat’s face looks like she’s particularly serious about that and the hand Kara had been holding up sags just a little.

“I—I don’t need a—who said anything about a, um—” Breath sucks through clenched teeth, “Okay, please don’t fire me. I wasn’t going to ask for an extension, I was going to…” A frustrated, petrified noise, because any other words or possibilities elude her.

“Twiddle your thumbs when you have the whole world at your feet? What are you doing, Kara?” Cat snaps and Kara realizes she might not be doing as well at the relationship thing as she thought, the rest of her sagging with her hand.

Though this is hardly the relationship part of this—this is the…her part. The Kara part.

And, Rao, Kara has never been good at the Kara part.

“Not…what I should be doing.” It’s a weak admission, eyes closing.

“Obviously.” It’s nearly a huff, “God, you’re young. Where’s your fire? I’ve seen that fire, where did it go? It was in you, yesterday, but still no decision. There is no reason you should be wasting your youth and talents on Netflix reruns of Great British Bake-Off in onesie pajamas with something ridiculously offensive on them like bunnies or penguins--"

“I--” Kara sputters, “They're not onesies.” Quieter, more of a grumble, “And maybe if you stayed over you'd know they're just plaid--”

Cat continues on with a waved wrist, “Your breasts are perkier than Frenchie in Grease and you’re still bemoaning--”

“Ms. Grant,” Kara hisses, pulling her cardigan a little tighter around her chest, eyes flicking towards the closed door before looking forward, despite the fact that there’s very few people in the office, this early on a Friday, and certainly no one that can overhear Cat’s casual hum. Not through thick wood or so many layers of casual dismissal. “I think we're a little off-topic--”

“Oh, stop blushing. I've seen them. Your legs have been wrapped around my head, Kara.” It’s blunt in a way that makes a flush break out on cheeks in the daylight despite the fact that the legs in reference step closer, eyes dropping to lips as Cat opens her mouth to make a quick retort, “And as much as I’d love to help you waste one of your few dwindling hours left making good use of the fact that I’m not paying you for this little sojourn right now--”

“I think it would decidedly not be a waste, Ms. Grant.” Kara perks up, voice husking a little at the way Cat skims a knowing finger down the neckline of a blouse when she’s close enough, no doubt reveling in the feeling of Kara’s eyes tracking it like a raindrop in the middle of a desert. She clears her throat. Shifts when she feels Catherine’s eyes so shamelessly upon her in this small little bubble of glass and reminds herself that there’s a meeting in fifteen minutes that she has no part being in, anymore (She might have had a small little peek at Eve’s schedule on the way in. Accidentally, really. After she put in the password and had to flick through half of the apps to find it) cheeks turning redder at the smirk on familiar lips because for a very weak breath, she’d give up her job at CatCo entirely to feel that smirk on a clenching thigh. “Stop it.” It comes out an octave higher than it should, “You’re doing this on purpose.”

“Was I? Observant. You still have some fire in you, at least.” It’s anything but innocent as Cat waves a wrist and if Kara’s pouting she’s pretty certain she’s earned the right. “My point is, if I don't push you into making this decision, you're going to be a Golden Girl by the time you actually realize any of your potential. I never should have extended your deadline.”

Kara doesn’t point out the fact that she was trying not to die during the time it would have passed because that won’t do either of the circles under their eyes any favors.

“I'm not--that isn't--I am...I am perfectly capable of--”

“So--” Catherine levels her with a look over the bridge of her glasses that makes Kara feel like she's going to spend the next six hours hand-delivering fruit baskets, straightening her shirt and then her glasses. “Then you've arrived at your decision?”

“Well, that's…” She keeps fixing her glasses like that will somehow repair her life and from the look of an ever-casual (forced) stance, fingers barely curling over the lip of her desk, Cat’s probably close to reaching up and snapping them. So Kara stops fidgeting. Let’s out a huff of a word: “No.” That word doesn’t fit. “I mean, maybe--?” Kara skitters along that specific poor choice, remembering just how much Cat hates maybes, “I mean…no.”

“So you came into my office to just waste my very valuable time when you're currently not under my employment.” It's a drawl and Kara barely keeps from going back to the fidgeting. “A waste, since you’re not telling me what’s rattling around in that head of yours and you haven’t arrived to a decision.”

“I...happen to feel like that's entrapment to answer that question at all.”

“Because your answer would be a yes. A leading question isn’t not necessarily entrapment, Kara, fundamentals.” A tsk of her tongue and Kara closes her eyes. “I have an assistant that you personally vetted and trained.” Cat moves back around to her desk, fingers tenting along familiar wood. “Do you think she's going to refrain from setting the office on fire indefinitely, or is that a fickle little feeling?”

“Yes, Ms.Grant.” Kara's shoulders sag. “No fires, Ms. Grant.”

“So she won't be utterly useless like you're trying to imply.” Cat’s baiting her now and it's difficult to hold a curling tongue--to argue in defense of the woman who she’s had to whirl around the corner and offer tissues several times this week--and from the barest hint of amusement on her (ex?) Boss’ face, she’s well aware.

“No, Ms. Grant.” Kara straightens her shoulders because she can't help it. One area she’s indomitably certain of is the defense of others, “In fact, I think Eve Teschmacher will be an exceptional replacement for me in every possible way.” And there's the blush, again, “Well, um. Almost. Every possible way.”

“Well at least there's one area you're still confident. Go get her to stop looking through the window like a nervous Pomeranian one step from wetting the carpet and then you're out of the building until you give me your decision, Kara. I’m revoking that ‘unless professional’ little loophole.”

“Ms. Grant--”

“Sometimes a bird needs a little push to remember it can fly and all that nonsense. Go.”

“Catherine…” There's a hint of hesitancy here, now, shuffling before she steps forward and can't watch the change in Cat to respond--not here. Not with so much breath resting against her creaking, exhausted ribcage like a rusty jail cell. If Astra had been kept in a cage like that, she would have burst into the night air in a vicious flash of black and white, brilliant and determined and knowing. “How…” Breath catches, rattling against her tongue. “How do I know I'm making this choice for me. Not for...what everyone expects me to be. Because you…you know how I—” She pauses, then, not wanting to admit it in such an open office, even with the door closed, because there’s so much space between them. So much time and hours of both of them spent awake, tossing and turning across the city. Or did Cat sleep? Kara hopes she did. Pressing, instead, “How do I know I’m making this choice for me?”

Dark eyes search her face and without a word Cat glides over to the windows, a shutter of wood closing the office off in muted shades of white, Kara's arms crossing over her chest because she still feels like she's in a little box of glass. There's another sharp draw of wood as Cat pulls something from her desk, tucked away in the back of it. An article. Blinking eyes highlight surprise as blue traces the line of the title, familiar.

It's an article that hangs on the edge of Catherine’s desk with the other bestsellers, but this is a first print copy, tucked away in a CEO’s desk like something precious. Special.

Like the copy of Watership Down that Catherine keeps in her home up high behind glass, a first-edition, inscription clear behind the cover.

This feels like something special and for a brief moment, Kara forgets how to breathe, at all.

'Supergirl Saves the Day’.

“Did anyone tell you to do that? Did anyone expect that of you, then, or tell you how to start saving the day?”

It's a faraway picture of a blonde popping up from the water by a plane before she'd climbed onto it, gasping and proud. No super-stance, no supersuit, hair clinging to her back better than an evening dress has ever hoped to. Very few in the world know who that hair belongs to and a hitch of breath causes hesitant eyes to look up over the frames of glasses, teeth biting at a lip.

It’s decidedly a rhetorical question.

“No, they didn't, Kara.” Catherine notes, a hint of knowing pride tucking up her lips, “It's time you learn that the decisions you make for yourself are, yes, often the most daunting,” Kara hooks fingers in dark glasses to slide them down a nose--to look into her lover’s eyes as fully as she can--and the smile she receives is small but sincere, a long, powerful finger raising up to brush down the bridge of a nose in gentle greeting, “But there's no danger of making the wrong one if that's your goal. You became Supergirl to help change the world. To protect it. To save it. You'll do this, whatever it is you choose, to do the same. Don't second guess yourself. Go do some soul searching. Talk to your friends--your sister--ask them the important questions you're scared to ask yourself, of course. Well, ask them again since I’m sure you’ve been doing that all week. God, the indecision is nauseating,” But Cat’s still smiling—still stepping closer, “But at the end of the day, you're the one making this decision, Kara. Trust yourself with it. Trust your instincts.”

Kara catches her hand and lets out a quiet breath, shoulders straightening underneath the weight of it. “Keep diving.” She repeats the earlier phrase with a wistful tuck of lips, certain it won't be all that bad as long as she always dives back to this.

“Keep diving.” Cat agrees. “Go. You’ve already cost this paper thousands of dollars with your insecurity.” It's said with a wink and Kara just laughs and gently kisses her.

“Thank you.” The glasses are back, eyes a little lighter behind the frames. “Ms. Grant.” A moment passes between them, before Kara looks down at her chest, flushes, and stumbles: “Wait, do you...really think my--”

“Go, Kara.”

“Right, going.”

She paces all of National City until she makes it back up those forty floors because a handful of hours feels like change overflowing out of her pockets, tumbling out into the streets with each nervous step. And Kara is taking a lot of nervous steps considering she’s pacing. Back and forth. In front of Eve’s empty desk (on an errand halfway across the city booking something for something, apparently) before she pushes open Cat’s office door when listening ears hear an acceptable lull, clearing her throat and trying—

She almost tells her, right then and there, but there’s no one at the desk behind her and for a weak moment, Kara can’t—

“Okay, but what about your--”

“Go.” Cat dully commands, not looking up from her computer.

“But no one’s here to--”

“Go.” Cat repeats.

“All of your--”

“G-o.” Cat’s tongue lilts up at the end, “I am not a child. Unlike the mindless drones that putter about claiming that the holocaust did not happen, I am of sound mind. And, as I’m sure you’ve taken great delight in noticing, even sounder body.”

Kara flushes, “Very sound.” The agreement is a murmur--one that Cat doesn’t seem surprised to hear, barreling on ahead:

“Unlike Donald Trump, I am of rightful mind and age to make my own decisions.”

“Bu--”

“I feed myself.”

“But you c--”

“I even dress flawlessly in the morning without any assistance, Kiera. Shower. Drink water. I always remember to screw off the cap. Even, miraculously, tend to my son without any form of interference, go figure. It’s almost like I’m a talented, driven, exceptional adult who doesn’t need to be pandered to.”

“Ca--”

“Ah-ah-ah,” Cat looks up, now, standing, folded glasses an accessory to the murderous glint of her tone. “I am not your excuse. I rose an empire with my own two hands. It will not all crumble underneath itself in the few days you’ve been gone, however self-important you think you are. Now go. I’m about to leave, and you’ll need to feed me your decision via phone. You know how many hours you have left, don’t make me remind you, because if you miss your second deadline, you’re not coming back. Decision?”

Kara sighs and moves to leave in explanation, the momentary confidence she’d had when she first entered dying underneath the weight of a sigil burned on her chest, almost making it out of the door before she turns on a heel, desperately trying, “…I could just reschedule your—"

“I swear to every God Matthew McConaughey ever believed in while dropping LSD on the back of Heidi Klum’s yacht in 1999, if you do not leave my office this instant, I will throw you off of the balcony myself.”

Kara’s mouth snaps shut, admittedly a little afraid of the devilish, sincere look in familiar eyes. “I…” A cleared throat. Fidgeting with glasses. Shoulders sagging. “...yes. Ms. Grant.”

“Good. Now that you’ve wasted my time, you have--” A wayward glance to a watch, “Eight hours and seven minutes.”

“Yes, Ms. Grant.” Her head hangs.

“Was my motivational speech not enough motivation? Do I actually have to kick you out like a delinquent? What are you, seven?”

Oh, the anger’s becoming real, now, Kara can hear it. Can feel it light like a wick against the edges of the flammable wood of Cat’s desk and she knows people have been fired for far less.

“No, Ms. Grant.” Shoulders hang with her head, frowning, “And your motivational speech was…great. Inspiring. I’m just…”

This isn’t a moment of weak indecisiveness she should have in front of her boss.

“Of course it was!” Cat snaps, “So why are you still here? Soul-searching.” She claps her hands, “Go. Go. Go.”

Kara pauses at the doorway like an idiot—“...so is that a no on lunch, or--”

“For fuck’s sake, Kara!”

If she jumps and skitters from the doorway, she’s just glad Alex isn’t there to see it and make fun of her for the rest of eternity.

Despite herself, some of her few precious hours later, fingers tap along a phone as she hovers aimlessly along the clouds above National City’s horizon, the sky a canvas of watercolors. It’s probably painting Cat’s desk like J. M. W. Turner danced fingers along its tips and she can imagine Cat sitting there as easily as she can fly.

So...Heidi Klum in 1999?

A red cape flutters in the wind as she pushes higher, a soft vibration her response, settling in the clouds underneath the fading sun as her finger swipes along a picture of a smiling Cat Grant, a spatula curled in fingers. She promised Alex no cape during superhero mode, but flying…well, she felt like being close to home, today.

Besides, she hasn’t saved anyone all day, lest of all herself.

An utterly dreadful party until Goldie’s daughter decided to re-enact Overboard. That’s where I turned down Rob Lowe the first time.

I’ve seen that one!

It might be a little over-excitable, but her backlog of pop-culture movies is something even Winn hasn’t been able to help rectify. She tries, she does--consistently and with gusto--but there’s just so many of them. She can speed-read through books, there’s no way to enjoyably speed read a movie.

Good for you. Next you’ll tell me you own a TV. What a modern development.

But even Kara can hear the hint of a smile in it. A few more seconds pass before she leans hands up--backwards--snapping an upside-down sunset over another country and sending it before she can think twice about it.

A few more minutes, twirling amidst the clouds, imagining Cat propped up by her desk, thumb swiping along a phone, glasses tucked on the bridge of a nose—

That’s beautiful.

It is—it reminds Kara of the West Hills of Argo and she rests upside down above the clouds, fingers reaching up to hopefully catch a wisp of the color against her skin, phone resting on her chest. But the only thing she catches is intangible light, the light of it sinking into her skin like water into dry dirt

Watching it play along her palm recalls a faint memory of the way the sun set in her mother’s eyes, and a lagging mind wonders what her mother’s guild would have done?

But the guilds were nothing like CatCo and Kara…

Kara’s never been gladder for it, a spattering of memories of the day before flashing through her mind.

--

Brad spreads his arms wide, cheeks redder than a cape hiding (unbeknownst to anyone save for one in this building) across the street, reverently tucked away in the closet as the prized possession of a hidden hero.

Karen pokes his chest, a bold move for someone in H.R., and Snapper just bites into his bagel, not looking up.

“God you are such an ass, Bra—”

“I’m an ass who’s right, Karen! Metallo, Reactron, who even was that lizard guy, etcetera, etcetera, etcet—”

“You mean E.G., not I.E.” Kara’s eyes haven’t left the pages of his article, trying to clandestinely skim through them without Cat seeing. A task that’s becoming more and more difficult, thoughtlessly providing: “I.E is the shorthand for ‘id est’, which means ‘that is’. It’s used to...to introduce a rephrasing or elaboration for something you’ve already said. Something we already know. What you mean is E.G., an abbreviation for the Latin term ‘exempli gratia’, which literally translates to ‘for the sake of this example’ or…’for example’. I.E, for this particular situation you should probably use ‘E.G’, exempli gratia how I’m using it right now.”

The whole room just stares at her before Kara clears her throat, Karen huffing through her nose before turning towards Brad with an almost victorious smirk, “Yeah. That, Brad. You asshole. You’re wrong about latin, and you’re wrong about Supergirl!”

“Hey--”

“Quid quid latine dictum sit, altum viditur and Caecilius est in horto, thank you Daily Demo Danvers for pointing out Captain Obvious in the corner. Everyone with a job to the newsroom, puppy prodigy, go get a sandwich or something.” Snapper lives up to his name, snapping at everyone until all of them scramble out of the room, leaving Kara sighing in the chair, chin tipping back as she searches the ceiling for something that won’t find her.

She listens to the hustle and bustle down the hall, fingers skimming along her empty container, eyes settling across glass on James as he makes a wide gesture, arms stretching out towards the sun.

“Cerebrus tamen in villa mansit.” Is the idle quote that rests on the edge of pursing lips, slowly standing to take in the chaos of life in front of her, pressing fingers against glass like a little girl had to a pod three decades ago. It’s a barrier she doesn’t cross. Maybe Cat’s right--maybe she is a golden retriever.

The one left in the town while it burns.

Snapper is reading through the paper she reluctantly put aside but Kara still feels like his eyes are on his back. Her glasses keep the rest of the world at bay, but she’s certain Snapper’s must have the opposite effect.

“Well, you know what Oscar Wilde said—”

Kara tips her head curiously, lips parting in thought as she looks at Brad, his insistence of Supergirl’s corrupt nature a few moments earlier curling her tongue, “By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community?”

Snapper snorts.

“I was going to say, ‘I don’t want to go to heaven, none of my friends are there’, but I don’t like any of my friends anyways. Now you’re starting to sound like a dem mag, Danvers. Didn’t know you had it in you.”

She shuffles, turning away from the glass to take him in, shuffling lead on her nose with an intentionally meek smile.

“It’s more of a…um, momentary…lack of sleep pragmatism. Newly development and…short-lived, I promise.” A sigh, “Hopefully I’ll be back to being…you know,” She waves a hand and winces when Snapper’s mouth immediately unhinges to provide exactly what he knows.

“Insufferably up everyone’s asses with a smile that acts like a slowly-spreading, rusty protractor?”

“…well, that’s not really what I’d call it. Like, at all.” Grumbling, “Sort of offensive.” Lower, eyes slitting as she looks at him while he does anything but look at that article, “And mean.” 

“My doctor warned me that your early morning optimism and sunshine was single-handedly causing my frequent bouts of nausea in the little boy’s room, people were starting to think I got my dazzling figure from bulimia and not by biting off the head of justice, truth, and the American way, chewing it, and spitting it out into an expose.”

It’s official, all journalists talk the same, because she’s fairly certain Cat said something very similar to her just last week without the bulimia bit.

“I literally have no response to that. Like, at all.” Shuffling a little, “Can we…stop talking or do I have to—That sounds rude. I just mean, you said I shouldn’t…”

“Nope, you’re at my mercy.” Snapper drawls.

“Oh, well…right-o.” A little louder, eyes flicking up to look through windows and mayhem to see Cat nowhere in sight, quieter, conspiratorially, “I, um…not that I’m here. I’m not here. But I did happen to notice that on Brad’s second paragraph his stet was decidedly not stetted and would love the opportunity to—”

Snapper doesn’t look up, biting into his bagel as his wrist flicks through.

He hums and she does not yet know enough to know that this is his version of Cat’s pursed lips—the sign of a good job.

“I won’t tell her if you don’t, girlscout.”

Kara beams and grabs the pages and scurries towards the door, pausing when she hears a rough grumble behind her.

“Danvers.”

“Hmm?” She shuffles glasses—nods—tries to wipe the beam off of her lips, “I mean, yes…sir?”

“That was a joke, she already knows, otherwise you wouldn’t be in the building. Welcome to little league.”

He slaps a second paper to proof against her chest, stomping past her towards the office and Kara just blinks, watching him leave, suddenly understanding why Cat likes him so much.

-- 

Another moment—either busy or a hint of hesitation and since Cat Grant doesn’t hesitate, it must be the former—a soft ping dinging amongst the soft rustle of wind.

Are you okay, Kara?

But Kara does hesitate, features contorting as she pauses, fingers hovering as wordlessly as her body, breathing in the sun. She could chase it around the world for all of her days, if she wanted, floating above the atmosphere. Warm.

Did you sleep?

Kara writes and re-writes the same message what feels like a thousand times before Cat seems to save her.

For the record, Heidi has nothing on your legs.

A wistful, almost bittersweet smile swells, slowly following the path of warmth along the clouds.

Why, Ms. Grant, are you hitting on me?

There’s something to be said for being honest. I never had the pleasure with Heidi, but I find myself thinking about the pleasure with you, often.

A stomach clenches--her heartbeat hums like the breath caught in the back of her throat--and Kara stops amidst the clouds, watching the sun recede. She doesn’t feel cold often, but she does feel cold here. Her phone, on the other hand, feels a little warmer.

Why do you think I messaged you while watching the sunset? Beautiful things always make me think of you.

Teeth tuck at a lip. It takes longer than it usually should.

Your prose and confidence have certainly improved.

Did she fluster her? That couldn’t be possible. It’s a nice image, though--imagining Cat Grant’s soft, wistful smile in the fading light of her office, reverently skimming fingers down a phone. Kara knows the majority of details of Cat’s life--her time schedules and routines; how she looks when she smiles or laughs against a shoulder; how she dances in a kitchen, now, or ruffles fingers through Carter’s hair--but one detail she doesn’t know is what image pops up on a phone whenever Kara calls it.

Has Catherine stolen pictures like Kara has, a quiet flicker of something precious and sacred? Saved on the edge of phones with tucked smiles and hums in the back of her throat?

I blame you. Brilliance by osmosis, maybe?

That’s blame I’ll gladly take.

It gets colder and colder and eventually Kara can’t fight the lump in her throat--can’t fight the chill at her fingers--every breath in the atmosphere chasing icicles along her lips. Even she can feel the cold, here.

--

“Kara,” Cat snaps, not looking up from her debriefing as she passes the desk, Eve scrambling beside her.

“I—” Kara scrambles to hide the evidence of scattered pages in front of her, pen hanging limply from her mouth, a faint hint of ink staining the corner of her mouth because Cat wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near here— “This isn’t what it looks li—”

Cat stops at that, slowly turning on the axis of her heel.

Kara is certain that the fire up her neck must be tangible.

That was decidedly the wrong thing to say.

There’s a hint of a devilish smirk there that flares a blush underneath the rim of Kara’s collar, pen sagging further from her lip, causing her to strike a startling resemblance to a bright balloon with a pen hanging out the edge of its thin skin, waiting to pop and inelegantly raspberry every ounce of air out of her lungs into the office air.

Before Kara can stutter out a reply, long fingers snatch the pen from her lips and there goes all of that air in a shuddering gasp, because Cat’s gaze—intense and unwavering and knowing—can still petrify her.

Without a word, Cat snaps the pen in half and Kara shouldn’t be so unreasonably attracted to that. (Oh, God, is that a fetish? Kara has no idea what that would even be).

“Wow…um…” Kara clears her throat, “Those pilates classes are…particularly effective, aren’t they, Ms. Grant?”

“Exceedingly.” Cat drops the pieces of the pen on Kara’s desk like a warchief dropping the head of her greatest enemy on the doorstep of her neighboring kingdom—a warning. A dusty swallow at the word. “Flattery will only manage to keep you from being kicked out for so long, Keira. Silent.”

“Yes, Ms. Grant.” She shrinks back in her chair.

“Invisible.”

“Yes, Ms. Grant.” She adjusts her glasses.

“Shadow.”

“Yes, Ms. Grant.”

“Some might say a dog, even.” There’s a hint of a smile there, for both of them and Kara can't help the way her own spreads, despite the nerves.

“Woof, Ms. Grant.”

Cat starts walking away and Kara’s eyes flick down before she hears Cat call over her shoulder.

“That means stop working, Kiera!”

Kara clears her throat and drops the page.

“Yes, Ms. Grant.”

An attentive ear listens until heels click outside of a personal elevator—until the doors slide open and then close—to pick an article back up, again, glasses firmly on place as fingers uncap a new red pen, white margins already smeared with it.

She doesn’t need speed-reading, for this—she won’t—not in this hidden office, and with the absence of a very intense Cat Grant, Snapper’s words bouncing around her skull, she’s determined. Kara’s determined.

Determined to pass a test for a job she hasn’t even decided on. After all, Supergirl has always thrived underneath the worst conditions—destruction and mayhem and chaos—and this is no different.

Whether Kara knows how to admit it, or not.

--

Another hour ticks off that clock before she admits in the tap of fingers along the bright edge of the screen in the fading darkness of the thin atmosphere.

I don’t know what to do, Catherine. I heard you, I did, it’s just...big.

There’s no delay in response, this time, and when Kara closes her eyes, she can hear Cat say it.

Take two (take eight?) since you always need to hear everything two to eight times. There’s only one thing we can ever really do, Kara:

A soft, gentle ping:

Keep diving.

So Kara does, a flash of red and blue plummeting through the air towards a city never abandoned or left behind, eyes stinging as she does, one last memory tucked in the back of her mind.

Determined and maybe, just maybe, ready.

--

“Brad, you made a lot of changes in the past hour.”

“What?” Brad blinks.

Cat waves the article in front of him, as unbiased a piece about Supergirl potentially destroying the city as Supergirl herself might be able to frame, the hints of misogynistic cynicism toned down underneath a realistic thrum of failure. An article that had started as a one-sided piece about Supergirl’s negligence an hour ago (cynically juxtaposing how easily she had defeated Reactron against how easily she had defeated Metallo suggesting that National City might not know if she was really ‘defeating’ anything at all) turned into a realistic tale of how self-sacrifice wasn’t necessarily the best course of action for everyone’s safety.

Perhaps the most dangerous oversight of Supergirl’s, even ignoring the wellbeing of those seemingly under her protection, was the notion that she might callously brush aside her own safety to the point of no return. This blatant disregard for her own life showcases a pattern of self-destructive behavior that cannot be ignored, and should not be, not by the people of a city she’s sworn to protect. Ignoring the possibility that this path might put National City in a precarious position, defenseless against a future threat upon Supergirl’s untimely demise brought on by next week’s bout of martyrdom (or maybe the week after next, who can keep count) I’m particularly distraught by a deeper truth.

The article took on a new life after an hour of editing, an unbiased (although, truthfully, particularly biased) look at the cruel realities of the damages Supergirl had caused and risks she had taken with not only her own safety, but everyone in National City with her actions, coming to light.

Supergirl heralds herself as a beacon of hope to everyone in the city but disregards the most prevalent notion behind the idea of ‘hope’—that we might all fight another day. While the idea of self-sacrifice is a noble one and perhaps a genuine possibility in the heroine’s chosen line of work, the reality of it leaves the city unprotected against something worse than the next super-villain in tights that crawls out of the wood work.  What is the ‘hope’ when the greatest chance of saving someone else means losing yourself in order to do it? Was there no other way, Supergirl? Someday, will there be no other way?

Kara dutifully sank further into the shadows of her chair as Cat read through it, Brad’s name signed underneath the author, ignoring the red ink that stained underneath nails.

‘Hope’, I’m discovering, is desperately clinging to the chance that one day we will live in a world where we won’t find out—where we won’t be forced to trade one person’s life for another—and despite my issues with Supergirl and her methods, I can imagine both of us believe that there couldn’t possibly be a better future for National City:

But Cat’s lips thinned the moment she finished reading it.

A future, I hope, where the hubris of the righteous don’t feel compelled to sacrifice themselves, at all, and the brave meek don’t seek to join them underneath the twisted guise of ‘heroism’.

“Normally you’re sickeningly biased—and God knows you still are—but your cynicism is a necessary counterbalance to a potential puff piece.” Cat’s brows rise and Snapper adds:

“You somehow managed to pull your head out of your ass long enough to make something decent. Wordy. Arrogant. Unnecessary, but not the pig’s shit you normally slap on a bagel before trying to send it to print.”

Brad’s lips part but nothing comes out.

Two sets of editor’s their eyes flick towards her across the pen and Kara shrinks back into her chair, making a great show of doing absolutely nothing, at all, trying to pick lint off of her sweater or something (but not being suicidal enough to pull out her phone), clearing her throat.

The two-second silence is unbearable.

Snapper hums. Cat’s lips purse.

And James doesn’t look away from Kara for a second, fingers nearly snapping his pencil in two when he closes his eyes, veins bulging about a wrist.

“It’s in.” Cat decides, “Keep all of your work this compelling, Brad, and maybe next week you won’t wind up as a male gigolo for alternative clients outside of a backyard country wet bar. The prose is awful, but passable. It’s in. Next.”

The article is pushed through and Kara tries to hide her beam, somehow managing to make it all the way up to her unnamed, undecided office before she dances around like an absolute idiot, squealing into the insufferable whiteness of it, flopping down onto the desk with a happy hum.

Magic.

It’s like magic.

And she swears, in an office across a sea of white offices just like her own—through the hustle and bustle and life she’ll spend the rest of the night remembering—she hears an almost grunt of a sigh around a bagel.

“Way to go, Danvers.”

“What was that?” Cat’s cutting voice might retort.

“Nothing.”

And only once a door closes, someone might hum, a pen clicking on the edge of a table, proud and full of velvet and more Catherine than Cat.

“Way to go, indeed.”

At lunch Brad had jostled her shoulder and Cat hadn’t looked away and Kara decided to make herself scarce, after that, her own words pressing heavily against her chest, all of it--all of it lost in a breath the moment Cat curled her finger hours later, beckoning her towards a finished paper and an art room.

Hope wasn't loss. Hope was fighting another day.

For Cat, she'd fight as many of them as she could.

--

Ask the questions, Cat had said—ask the questions of others that she’s too scared to ask, herself.

That’s exactly what she does.

It’s not to her sister or Winn or James. It’s not Cat or Lois or even Eliza, who would try her best and make mountains out of pancakes, patting an indomitable cheek like she could conquer the world with a civilian smile.

(Eliza could. She could conquer anything.)

It’s a woman who tucked the hair behind her ears, once, and told her that she didn’t need to be a hero to be extraordinary.

And Kara shuffles, nerves caught in her chest when she stands in front of an office that’s not as familiar as it once was, fingers skimming along the lettering of a door before she leans, watching.

It was always so easy for Lois, to lose herself in a stack of papers, and some things haven’t changed, a dark set of eyes not noticing her for a moment as she watches.

“Knock-knock.”

“Kara?” Lois’ eyes slowly skim upwards, surprise blinking into excitement, immediately hopping up from a cluttered desk to move forward, removing silver frames from above a smile.

“Surprise.” Kara’s hum is bashful, holding up croissants from Paris, something that’s sure to be a welcome gift.

“Oh, wow, you shouldn’t have.” The coo turns into something close to a moan when Lois tucks open the bag, inhaling a familiar scent of crumbling layers of buttered flakes that might make a grown man cry. They actually have if Clark being the grown man counts. “Are these…?”

“Oh, yeah.” Kara winks, “The real stuff. I’ve been...floating around for a little while.” She clears her throat, “And I thought I’d bring something by.”

“Ohmgod,” Lois already takes a bite, humming, leaning back onto her desk with a happy noise in the back of a swallowing throat. “Between you and Clark spoiling me, I’m never going to fit into my old jeans again. I know you don’t get this, but I’m not as young as I used to be. Metabolism’s slow.”

“Well you look fabulous. Buuut...” Kara plucks back up the bag and happily holds it out of a short reach, “If you don’t want me tempting you.”

“Hey!” Lois hops up twice before managing to snatch it back to a happy laugh, shoving Kara’s shoulder. And Kara, breathless and smiling and nostalgic is more than happy to let it be shoved. “Let’s not get too hasty, Danvers. First off, happy you’re alive.” Kara bows and then does a quick spin on her heel (not too fast, she doesn’t want to whirlwind Daily Planet) to showcase this very fact.

“Very alive. Still okay, like I was the past twenty times you texted me.” The jest is intentionally kind in a way Kara would never be able to help, with Lois, eyes soft as the bag wrinkles in the air between them, “And here I thought only Alex could give Eliza a run for her money.”

“You know us Lanes make competitivity an actual sport. A sport with rankings, a constant commentating father, and a running byline about who’s the most competitive. I’m in the lead. Because I’m busy writing the bylines and Lucy is too busy either punching people or arguing about it to catch up.” Kara, of course, knows this. Because Lois wasn’t the only one who blew up her phone—another Lane did, as well—but the older sister probably knows that, too.

“Lois—”

“Yeah, yeah.” Lois waves a hand. “So...what brings you a couple hundred miles over to my neck of the Metropolitan woods.” Brows raise, looking over her shoulder like a man of steel might appear, hushed, “Is Clark--”

“Clark,” Kara pushes off of the doorway, lowering her voice a little, “Clark...doesn’t actually know I’m here.”

“Oh.” That causes the reporter to lower the bag and the croissant, entirely, immediately surprised and concerned in a way that makes Kara feel guilty for not visiting because that immediate level of concern really shouldn’t be the first response, should it? “So you came to see...me. Which means--” Her eyes slit and Kara’s never seen the resemblance between the Lane sisters quite so clearly, before, “What did he do?”

“Lois,” Kara shakes her head, raising hands as a short ball of protective fury comes closer.

Between Lois and Cat, Kara’s certain high-heels and writer’s fury in a short package might become a mythological fury that prevails far after Supergirl is gone.

“You know I love him, but Kara you have to remember it doesn’t matter how old he is, he’s still a man-child. He says stupid things some--”

“It’s not Kal’s fault.” It’s a rushed defense, voice raising an octave at the end, coming forward into the office to correct, “I mean, it’s not even Kal.” A cleared throat, far more careful with Kal-El’s secret than her own, clarifying, “No one’s in the building.” She sits down in the chair across from a woman she’s known for a decade—longer than a sister she left snoring in her apartment miles away—smile a little timid, “I came to ask...” A sharp breath that swells shoulders, “I came to you for some advice.”

“Oh.” Lois tents hands on a desk, rapt attention set on Kara’s eyes in a way that makes her both comfortable and nervous. Similar to how Alex can see right through her, sometimes. Would she have been as close with Lois, had she stayed? “Well if you flew all this way, the least I can do is listen. What’s wrong?”

“Do you feel like you make a difference?” Kara’s voice is quiet, eyes falling down to palms in her lap, “With everything else you could be doing. Your sister...your dad...they think they make the largest difference fighting.”

“Lucy is pretty good at that.” Lois quips and blue eyes immediately snap up, defensive, still, of her missed friend—this is the second snipe—and the older sister raises hands in surrender, “Okay, before I get a lecture about my own sister and listening to her and...yada, yada, yada, why don’t you keep going and I’ll stop talking and be nice.”

Kara sighs because that’s as much as she’ll get on the truce front.

“I think I do sometimes. Think that the only difference I can make is by fighting. Sometimes I think all I know how to do is fight because I…” A breath, eyes flicking away, “I’ve spent so long on this planet just fitting in….” The words are hard to straighten on her tongue, crooked and twisted with no meaning in sight, a frustrated breath in her nose.

“What happened?” Lois gently prods, getting out of her chair to cross the small distance, leaning on the desk above Kara’s averted gaze, hand falling down to curve fingers around a shoulder. Gentle: “Hey, you make a difference by more than just fighting, Kara.”

“I just...sometimes I feel like I can’t talk about it with Alex or Clark. The fact that I’ve been...forced to hide myself for so many years. Not just the powers, Lois.” There’s a strangled curl in her voice, remembering what red felt like on her tongue even a year later--remembering the way Cat’s fingers trill down her spine at night.

Remembering the way Catherine looked at her and informed her that she hadn't believed she was ordinary for a second and Kara felt almost shamefully relieved.

Remembering who she could be and who she has a chance to be with one quivering breath.

“Oh, Kara.” It’s soft, almost a little broken--guilty--and from the way Kara’s spine straightens, that might be exactly what she was trying to avoid. “I’m sorry.”

“I suppressed my culture. My...my intellect. What I learned, there. My dreams. Jeremiah taught me to always fit in and I’m...so thankful for that. I don’t want to sound like I’m not thankful. They taught me to rely on my heart. But sometimes, I wonder...I wonder who I would have been on Krypton. If I would have become a scientist like my father, or a justicar like my mother, or...”

“You would have been as much of a hero there.” Lois says like there’s no doubt in her mind, stooping down on heels in front of the chair, hands falling to knees tucked knees like Kara’s twelve, all over again. And Kara feels twelve. “As you are here. The profession doesn’t matter, Kara. The difference does.”

The words settle between them and Kara swallows.  

“Cat told me I could have any job at CatCo I want.” Kara murmurs, quoting: “Within reason.”  

“Cat?” Lois straightens a little, surprise obvious on her face--voice--because no one had been more vocal about Kara staying as far from CatCo as possible than her boss’ nemesis two and a half years ago. “Cat Grant did? Are we talking about the same Cat Grant, because she--” There’s a momentary pause when Kara looks back up with a withering, tired look, “Okay, okay. Again, sorry. No catty Cat talk. That’s just...wow. That’s pretty big, Kara.”

“Very big. And all I can think is that I…” A hint of a quiet, sad laugh on Kara’s lips, “I really love my job. I really love working with Cat.” Lois opens her mouth, again, but from another look from the Kryptonian, shuts it, “But I don’t...I don’t have what I would have had on Krypton—who I would’ve been—and I don’t know if that’s what’s…if that’s why. When you're 18 on Krypton, you pick your guild but I'm...I’m not that girl, anymore. I haven't been since I left.”

“Let me see if I can’t...untangle this for you,” Lois gently hedges, patting knees, “You’re wondering how you can make the largest difference possible at CatCo...but you’re wondering if that’s what you’re really supposed to do. What you’re meant to do. Who you...would have been on Krypton?” Almost knowingly, “It’s tough to pick something you never thought was possible.”

“...right.” Kara breathes. “I don’t know if I can even do it, Lois. I’m not...I’m not Clark.” It’s a little more insistent, a little louder-- “I’m Supergirl, not Superman. I’m Kara, not Clark. I’m...I’m so tired of not being me, and Catherine’s made me realize I--” Kara looks back up, finally, a little more resolute, not noticing the subtle slip of a name: “I want to be me. Not the person I think I’m supposed to be. Not some...some shadow of my cousin, Lois. I love Kal, I do, but what if I--what if I’m only thinking of choosing what I'm choosing because of him. Because what I would have been isn't an option anymore--”

“Oh.” It’s a quiet look, pieces of a puzzle coming together behind a familiar, sisterly smile, “Kara...do you remember when we first met?” Lois gently asks, brows raising, voice impossibly softer. And Kara nods, the faintest memory of older, kind eyes, surprised and a little scared (on a little girl’s behalf, an adult now realizes), guilt clogging the throat of a girlfriend who didn’t know how to take in a grown child from another planet. “You couldn’t speak English or...anything then, really. And I gave you a book…”

“Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” Kara immediately supplies, brows knitting, “Yeah, did I ever tell you how weird and inappropriate of a choice for a kid that--”

“It was all I had in my apartment, Kara.” Lois shakes her head, cutting her off, “I lived here.”

“Why do you say that like it’s past-tense?” Kara teases and Lois smirks, throwing a pen at her that’s caught with a quick, deft hand before it can land.

“Anyways, it was written by...?”

“Hunter S. Thompson.” It’s an immediate fact that tumbles from ready lips.

“A Pulitzer award winning journalist. Once you realized what a book was, you read every single one in that library we brought you to, remember? And grabbed every book you could at the Kent’s. And all of Jeremiah’s books and I bet that library, too.” Lois smiles, gaze fond and Kara smiles--laughs a little sheepishly and ducks her nose like Alex does when Eliza shows old pictures to J’onn anytime her foster mother visits for dinner--ears faintly picking up the noise of steps down the hall. “You tore through it. And once you stayed at Midvale...you wrote me. Every day for two years.  You still write me.” Gently sharing, tucking up a chin with kind, older fingers than the ones that tucked up a down-turned chin so many years ago, “And I keep every single one of them.”

Kara blinks a hint of moisture away, reaching up to curl fingers around a wrist. “That’s...so sweet, Lois. But I really don’t get what this has to do with--”

“You’re a writer, Kara. Both you and Clark, you have a gift with words. Not when you’re speaking, Clark’s about as eloquent as a sack of rotting meat.” Lois’ smile spreads, a softness as the edges, footfalls pausing down the hall, voices (familiar but faint) fading on Kara’s mind as she searches familiar eyes. “And no offense, you’re right there with him. But, hey, I’m roadkill compared to the both of you—none of us should be speakers—anyways.” A shake of the head, some of Lois’ ponytail falling in front of her eyes and Kara’s fingers itch to put it back in its place.

“Tell me about it. You should’ve seen the pep-talk I needed before that whole Myriad thing.”

“Oh, I believe it.” A fond smile, continuing, “You used to tell me about everyone in town, how you met them. You used to tell me their stories, Kara. And not the made-up, fictional kind. You used to give people a voice. And that was all you, before the cape. You were a girl who wanted to help people be seen--be heard--to give them a chance. Maybe that would've been the science…guild, or whatever it was called, on Krypton like your father. Discovering how the world worked. Or maybe you're fair, like your mother. Or maybe... you're something else, Kara.”

“Or…both.” Kara breathes, nails curving along holes in jeans.

“Maybe both.” Lois agrees, “Either way, you’re right, I think some part of you is ready to be free, Kara. Ready to don a different kind of symbol. To answer your question...yeah. I feel like I make a difference. Because being a journalist isn’t just how I’m heard...it’s how I help people who don’t have voices--people who don’t have a chance to speak for themselves, people like you who had things taken from them--this is how I give them hope. A voice. This is how I change the world, Kara. This is what I can do, and what I can contribute. And, yes, you have a talent for writing.”

“Really?” It’s quiet and doubtful and she leans into a hand when fingers brush along her cheek.

“But...the real truth is, if you’re a writer, you can’t keep it hidden for forever. And I think Kit has given you a fantastic opportunity. Go for it. I see it eating at you.”

“You think...so you really think it’s me?” Kara gently asks, “Not—” A breath, voicing it, “Not me following in Clark’s steps.”

“I think it’s impossible for you to be anything other than you, Kara. Was that your first instinct? Junior reporter?” Lois stands, once more leaning against a desk, crossing her arms, and for a second it’s not hard to picture Lois and Cat younger and causing hell at the Daily Planet, at all, but the next second, she turns the question over on the tip of her tongue.

On Krypton she can imagine picking the Science Guild.

On Earth…

On Earth, she can’t imagine wanting anything else in the world other than hearing Snapper’s hum, watching Cat’s lips purse…and hoping a man named Josh Clay had a voice—a chance—and wanting to be the one to give it to him. She still doesn't know if he will, but she wishes--

“...yeah. Yeah, I think it was.” Kara hesitantly admits, a girl not used to going after what she wants, slowly standing, as well. A nervous smile spreads, “It is.” A breath, stronger. “It definitely is.” There’s a pause, not focusing on the steps as they come closer, closing the distance between them, tugging Lois into a hug that tumbles breath out of her old friend’s lips from the quickness of it, Kara trying not to squeeze quite so tight. But it’s hard—it’s hard—because this is a person who she finally feels like she doesn’t miss, when Lois is standing so close in front of her, because she feels like all of Lois is right here and now Kara doesn’t want to let go. “Do you really keep my letters?”

“Of course I do, Kara.” It’s gentle--soothing--fingers brushing through hair, and when they pull away, Kara’s smile is brighter than the sun. Squeezing shoulders like Kara can feel the weight of it, some of the exhaustion falling to the side because part of her can, “You’re gonna do great.” She waves a finger in her face even as two sets of footfalls stop outside of a desk, “This does not mean you get out of writing me.”

“Try and stop me. Thanks, Lois. And...you know why I couldn’t bring this up to Clark, he would feel so guilty if he knew I--”

“Don’t mention it.” A pat, pulling away to tug up the forgotten bag of food, once more sniffing it like a delicate sin, a knock on the open door pulling both of them out of their gentle reverie, Kara’s heart catching in the throat at the sight of a familiar smile, the scent of ink and something else lingering on skin.

“Kal--”

“Don’t mention what?” There stands Clark Kent, hands fidgeting glasses with a wink, Kara immediately untangling herself to hug him before she catches the woman to his left, both of her eyebrows raising when her nose catches onto what the familiarity of ink is attached to.

Catherine Grant.

It’s more than the exhaustion that causes her to stumble, this time.

“--lark. Clark.” Kara’s voice raises two octaves and she can practically feel Lois resisting the urge to sigh into her hand (likely far too happily pre-occupied with a bag of croissants and a quick kiss from her fiancé that itches the edges of ears to do so). But it’s easy to ignore Lois when there’s Cat Grant, inexplicably in Metropolis, silver glasses donned on a nose and lips spread in an imperceptible line. “Clark and...Cat. Which isn’t weird or unexpected, at all. Totally, completely normal.”

“Kiera, I said take a few days off, not run off to the Daily Planet.” Cat’s greeting needs some work and Kara wishes those glasses weren’t there so that she could properly assess it, a dull pounding that feels in time with a heartbeat in a dry throat. It shouldn’t feel like days but it burns against her chest and Kara wonders what happened to make dark circles sink so deeply into skin.

Cat hadn’t taken off her sunglasses, this morning, and Kara sees every inch of the depths, now.

“Well speak of the devil. Ears burning, Kitty?” Lois’ voice is far too bright--fake--and Cat’s smile spreads to match, a gentle resolve moments before changing into something darker as Metropolis’ ace reporter pops open that brown bag, taking one last bite of croissant before shoving the bag into Kara’s suddenly-useless arms. Quieter so that the other two might not hear her, but from the family trait of superhearing and the slight slit of Cat’s eyes, Kara’s pretty sure they do. “Thanks, Kar.” Kara shifts underneath the pat to her shoulder, immediately taking the bag as Lois dusts her hands, a reflexive rumble on the youngest lips in the office.

“Anytime, Lo’.”

“Well that devil, She does wear Prada.” Cat drones but Kara can feel eyes unmoving from her, burning a searing photograph up a neck and she nervously fidgets with her glasses and snaps the bag closed, sheepishly looking up to Kal-El with a shrug. “Sinful women can’t help but be well-dressed.”

Clark, who Kara is sure has been between Cat and Lois’ feuds for years, doesn’t seem particularly phased, addressing his cousin directly in the midst of it.

“Hey, why didn’t you tell me you were following me to town? I thought you talked it through with Alex—the whole moving thing is still a no-go, right? Either way, I would’ve set up the couc--are those croissants?” Clark visibly perks up and Kara pushes forward, inbetween the two women, handing them to her cousin.

“It was a last minute thing, Clark.” She clears her throat, raising up her hands (and a brown bag) in apology: “I didn’t mean to intrude on...whatever is happening here. No one is moving anywhere. Except me leaving. I should, g--”

“Oh, no interruption. I just ran into Clark on the way up.” For anyone else Cat would leave it there, and Kara doesn’t miss Clark and Lois curiously watch the flush to Cat’s usually stone cheeks when she adds: “I’m here to talk to Perry. It’s a short visit.”

A tongue darts out over wind-chapped lips.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming to Metropolis?” Kara’s voice lowers, a familiar whisper, fingers curling tighter into the bag she hasn’t quite left entirely with Clark, yet, eyes suddenly set on the other woman, ignoring two sets of raised, dark eyebrows. “I would have... ”

She trails off, suddenly unsure of what she would have done, at all, because she still wound have been as decidedly decision-less as she was an hour ago if she hadn’t come here.

“Last I checked, I don’t need to clear my travel itinerary with ex-assistants.” Cat’s voice is sharp and Clark’s raises an octave when it interrupts.

“Ex?” A warm hand falls to her shoulder, gentler--confused--stumbling behind a familiar pair of lead glasses, “Um, excuse me, hah. Ex-assistant? The other day was your last day, and now we’re throwing the whole…ex word into the mix? Kara, wh--”

“Well, I--” Kara sputters a little, standing taller, eyes not moving from hazel. They look browner in Metropolis than they ever had in National City. “I’m still...maybe I’m not your assistant, but I could have--”

“Booked a flight on the tailcoat of my rewards points? Your replacement was adequate. Whatever you do on your day off is none of my business, though I’ll be impressed to see how you’ll make it home if you don’t leave here, soon. Since the only flight home is on charter.” She hums, lifting up Kara’s wrist in familiarity, tapping the white gold of a watch that Cat knows won’t be accurate.

“Tick. Tock.”

“Oh, God, four hours?” Kara squeaks, cheeks far redder in a city that’s never been her home underneath such familiar eyes, swallow rough. There’s more relief that it hasn’t passed.

“Indeed. Lois,” Cat tips her coffee in a false gesture of greeting, “Let’s not do lunch next time.”

“More than okay with that.” Lois falsely coos and somewhere, in that, they share an almost sincere smile. “It’s a tradition.”

“Clark,” Cat practically purrs as she turns around on a heel, heading towards the editor’s office, Kara coughing, any hint of Lois’ sincere smile falling.

“Oh, eww.” She grumbles, finally releasing her food hostage into her cousin’s eager hands.

Clark looks between them, brows knitting—though the curiosity doesn’t stem him for a moment from immediately snatching up a croissant and biting into it with a shrug, but the food distracts him long enough for there to be a question over whether he was curious, at all. He looks presently surprised the moment he chews, perking up, “Paris?”

Kara nods, plopping back down into the seat she was just in, watching Cat stride across the office—and there’s a bit of strain, trying to focus enough to listen to her heels, adjusting glasses over tired eyes—Clark’s smile visible through a mouthful as Lois sighs and sets back at her desk. It’s a lot easier to ignore the eldest Lane sister’s own innate (unique) form of x-ray vision when it’s from behind a mountain of paperwork.

“Nifty.”  

Instead, Kara watches Cat through glass the entire time, the soft smile nervously tucking up her lips eventually melting as she listens to Lois and Clark bicker and talk about their days, sharing another croissant with happy hums.

Their wedding is going to be adorable.

Alex will likely make vomiting motions behind her back the entire time and Kara genuinely can’t wait.

The conversation ebbs and weaves and Cat’s shoulders almost imperceptibly slump in a chair and Perry (Kara thinks he’s aged so much since she last saw him; when was the last time she was even here, when she was thirteen?) leans back in his and a wrinkled hand stretches out to pat her hand and Kara swallows.

“Did...Cat happen to mention what hotel she was staying in?” Kara asks in the middle of a conversation, apparently, raising a hand up, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to--”

“She always stays in the Ritz anytime she's in town,” He immediately turns around to Lois with raised hands, explaining, “Please remember, I am the innocent man-meat she eyes and always tries to lure there, not a willing participant.”

“Okay, eww.” Kara’s nose wrinkles, finally looking up from the intimate vulnerability Cat likely did not expect her to go all voyeuristic on, wanting to give her privacy, “One: Please never say man-meat, again. For the good of all of us on Earth”

“I second that motion.” Lois raises her hand, “For more than one reason.”

“Two, and I repeat with emphasis: eww.”

“I more than second that motion.” Lois, unlike Kara, glowers.

“Yeah...yeah, sorry, it didn’t really come out all that--” Clark’s family resemblance comes in the form of a sheepish smile, Lois pointing towards him despite the peck she leaves on his cheek.

“What did I say? Big man-child.”

“Hey.” The protest is weak, Kal-El sinking onto the leg of Kara’s stolen office chair, the blonde immediately hopping up from it the moment Perry White’s office door opens, watching the way Cat’s shoulders have sagged just the slightest--the way she squeezes his wrist--the way her smile catches when she turns around to see Kara standing there, wordlessly turning on clicking heels to leave before their eyes can meet, at all.

“We’ll do dinner? I have to fly tonight. Home. Fly like a regular human person. On a plane with other regular human--”

“Fuck you’re both so bad at that. Just stop.” Lois grumbles into her stack, reaching one hand up to grab and squeeze Kara’s hand before she’s trotting out of the door. “Dinner!”

“Come by the apartment!” Clark calls after her, posture immediately hunching when he sees Perry’s inquisitive eyes coming closer to Lois’ office and Kara can hear her cousin bumbling (nervous and stutter) from the elevator, skidding on the metal into the back of it just in time to stand next to Cat before the doors close.

Cat looks intent to look at the elevator’s dinging signal over anything else.

“I’ve missed you.” It’s probably not the best way to start a conversation—especially not between them—but it is the truth, hushed and expelling from the back of Kara’s throat into the metal, old elevator between them. The walls rattle like Grodd (she’s heard stories) has gripped the top with over-zealous fingers, shaking it around like dinner, and Kara swallows, trying to focus—breathe. “I know it’s…well, it’s only been a day, but I…I wasn’t myself this morning, I mean I haven’t been myself in—” Her eyes flick over to Cat’s solid, stern profile, watching the way her thumb slams into the button after wiping it with a napkin like that might make it go faster and Kara lets out a sigh, guessing—“Not the way to start a conversation?”

“Not even close.” Cat agrees and Kara barely keeps from sighing again.

“Then can we talk? Back at the Ritz?” At a raised eyebrow is the response, though Cat seems perfectly content not to look at her, Kara explains, “Clark told me. Which, by the way, do you really have to keep hitting on my c…” Pursed lips, “...losest friend?”

“Closest friend?” Cat scoffs, “If you were Clark’s closest friend, I’m sure he would have been mentioned more than this past week, where he mysteriously showed up in your life and I found you having a Lifetime talk with his fiancée. My rival. I’m sure he would have been invited to those little game night sessions of yours--”

“The ones you haven’t been to? For your information yes, he has. We live in different cities, Cat.” Kara snaps, tone surprisingly cold and she watches the way Cat reacts to the rarity--to the harshness of a Kryptonian voice in such small quarters directly solely at her.

“You have a picture of that computer gnome on your desk, your actual closest friend, but you haven’t mentioned Clark once. Although I suppose there was an interesting, albeit hilarious, rumor floating around the office about you sleeping with him.” That, at least, Cat genuinely looks like she’s put no stock in, “Meanwhile, all I hear about is how Winston has done some kind of devious—”

“Don’t.” It’s sharp and cutting, now, and she watches Cat’s shoulders tense--watches her barely jump--and realizes that once-heroic fingers have curled so tightly along the rail at the back end of an elevator that it bends. The anger is quick and swift and righteous as it sets the similarly-bending steel of a jaw, and Kara looks away from her lover’s sharp surprise in case fear is one of the things to greet her. “He was there by my side for two weeks last year when I couldn’t get out of bed.” What else can she be but thoughtlessly defensive--protective--despite the fact that Cat doesn’t know that she’s questioning the only blood family she has left.

Because the fact that Clark doesn’t have a picture of them on his desk but she keeps his blanket close to her heart stings more than she’ll admit. Maybe she doesn’t keep a photo of them on her own desk (maybe it’s hypocrisy), but there’s one on her mantel of a young thirteen year old girl with smiling, nervous eyes and Clark and Lois’ hands on her shoulders. She would like to think the same one is framed in a city lifetimes away by foot by and a handful of minutes by flight.

“He’s been there anytime I’ve ever asked--”

“I suppose I’m just surprised he never mentioned you, then. Given the fact that you’ve worked for me for two and a half years. You haven’t come up once, Kara.”

It hurts more than it should and Kara can’t stop her face from crumpling (not when she’s still exhausted in this small little elevator, anyways) at the weight of it, turning towards silver doors, watching as they near the lowest floor. A soft, slow huff out of her nose. It takes more effort than it ever should to force the anger down underneath curling fingers, leaning off of the rail so that she doesn’t snap it fully in two, fingers curling into biceps, instead.

Kara Zor-El can’t break herself with strength alone, after all.

“Well...I’ve known Clark for my whole life.” She argues, thoughtlessly, face cringing in what could thankfully be taken as pain, not a slip-up, because there’s some truth to that, as well, “Ever since I was thirteen, I mean.” A dusty swallow and when the door opens neither of them make a move to get out. “I get that you’re surprised I’m here, but I’m allowed to have a history and a past outside of CatCo that you don’t know everything about. Those…those things take time to learn.” Arms curl over a chest, slowly turning to face her, but not raising her gaze for a long moment, and when she does she watches Cat blink at whatever greets her. Kara’s not sure she wants to know what’s in her own eyes, not after this week. “I’m...” A useless breath, genuinely apologetic as she laughs, “I’m not even sure why I ran here to explain, anymore. You’ve obviously--you’re obviously--”

Cat’s fingers wrap around her wrist, stilling any form of explanation. The doors have long since closed and the germaphobe hesitates long enough for Kara to sigh and reach into her back pocket where she’s stuffed a napkin (like she would get Lois croissants and not get herself some), idly wiping off the button with a roll of eyes before Cat jabs it, again, the doors opening in short command. A moment later, she’s being tugged out of the elevator and onto the busy streets of Metropolis without another word.

It’s been so long since she’s been here, that she’s not even sure where they’re heading, anymore, and they walk in silence for all of two minutes before Kara sucks in a sharp breath, closes her eyes, trusting Cat to guide her to the end of the Earth if she wanted, and whispers:

“Lois was the one who found me.”

“What?” Cat turns to look at her over her shoulder and it’s now that Kara realizes she’s had coffee in her hands this whole time, despite the fact that it’s starting to get later and later.

Cat always jokes that caffeine has the same effect on her that the tears of ‘mansplaining Republicans do’, after all—absolutely nothing.

“Lois and...Clark.” Kara gently says. “After the…” A breath because they’re still on an open street, not bothering to look around to see who might be listening, focusing on eyes that flash crimson and green before settling. “Fire.”

“The fire.” Cat repeats, turning on a heel, momentarily giving Kara her full attention. “They found you?”

“After my parents died. When I woke up, I was...I was wandering around in the fields, hurt but...but healing. I was...scared and lonely. I must have la--” Blonde strands fall in front of eyes when she shakes her head, hair tossled from her haste to get to the elevator, “The house that burned was by the Kent’s. Clark’s parents. And Lois and Clark were the ones that found me.”

“...oh.” Cat blinks, coffee barely lowering from her lips, eyes softening around the edges almost imperceptibly in the lights of a different city—in the city Catherine was raised in that Kara knows so little of—Almost. Almost. It’s enough for Kara to be able to skim the line of a cheek, if she wanted, and the knowledge is enough to ease a bit of tension in shoulders regardless of the fact that Kara doesn’t do it. “That’s...new.”

Cat says it the same way she’d said that floating around in space for twenty-four years was new and Kara, like all things with Catherine Grant, is learning to take this for what it is behind the fortress of green eyes.

“I couldn’t speak for weeks. Literally, I couldn’t.” A back finds purchase against the brick of a nearby building, quieter, “But I didn’t want to for...” Shamefully admitting, “For months. And before I met my family--before I met Alex--Clark didn’t really know how to...talk to me, either.” She clears her throat, “But Lois...she was there. She was right by my side. He was kind of freaking out but she was always so patient...” Kara blinks a little bit at the memory, looking away, “She…Lois was the one that convinced Clark to keep me from the orphanage. To…help me find a home. To find the Danvers. I mean, I didn’t really...I didn’t understand that. What they were saying. Until much later.”

A shaky breath, looking down at her palms as she remembers the way Lois used to trace the constellations against her skin. She was wrong half of the time--not that Lois would admit to being wrong about anything--but she had spent so long in awe of Kal-El, looking up to him, she hadn’t realized until she was much older how much she had looked over to Lois. How Lois had looked at her like she was just a scared, lonely girl, not a connection to a lost home—a burned bridge Kara still isn’t sure how to forge for the cousin she was supposed to protect.

“I...didn’t realize.” Cat’s voice is quieter, their shoulders brushing as she settles against the wall next to her.

“We don’t really talk, anymore. I mean…so much has changed, and we’re both so busy, but I write her. I write her every week. And this...this is a big step. This is a big thing. I came to explain because it’s not like I--” A breath, finally looking up into sympathetic eyes. “I didn’t want you to think I couldn’t talk to you. It’s just...you’re still my boss. And there’s some things…there’s some things that…I’m not proud to admit it, but some things that little thirteen year old girl had to straighten out.”

“Kara, you don’t have to explain.” A raised hand between them, moving to pull away but Kara stops her, stepping closer, fingers gently catching a palm before Cat can go too far.

“I know I don’t. But I want to. Lois just...confirmed something for me, is all. That I’m making this choice for the right reasons. You can’t tell me what to do, Cat. Neither can Lois,” Kara admits, “And I’m not asking for anyone to tell me, not anymore. I’m making my own decision. But she made me realize something.”

“Does that mean you finally have a decision?” Cat’s hand turns upwards and Kara’s fingers skim along a palm, tracing proper constellations against skin.

Constellations taught underneath knowing guidance in the twilight of night, an impervious nail skimming along the soft plains of white skin, knowing green eyes tracking every movement—soaking in knowledge like how Cat Grant soaks in everything else—and for once, Kara is certain someone in the world knows exactly what line of stars she’s tracing.

“Yes...I think so.” A hint of a laugh at Cat’s roll of the eyes--softer and sincere, “I know so. It feels right. It makes sense.”

“Then tell me later. During your actual planned reveal. I,” Lips twitching, “Am off the clock.” A flick of Kara’s shoulder from the hand carrying a precious latte, “Someone told me I need to work on being happy. So I started with some personal time.”

“Who was that, a little bird?” Blue eyes are brighter underneath the afternoon sun, tugging Cat a little closer as people thoughtlessly pass by them on the street, the sounds of a foreign city falling underneath the sound of soft, consistent breath below her.

“A little plane.” There’s that same faintest twitch of an upwards smile as Cat allows Kara to guide her closer, once more settling next to her side but, this time, only a breath remains between them. It’s more beautiful than a photographed sunrise hours earlier, watching the way shoulders that had been so tense upstairs relax, just a little. “You only have a few hours left. I’m not sure how you’ll make it in time.”  

“I guess you’re right, I’d hate to miss my little plane back.”

Cat’s lips tip up at the edges, “Right.”

“Though that does raise the question of where my boss will be when I get back to National City.”

“Annoyed and answering your call.” Cat immediately provides, “Likely informing you that you could have had a face meeting if you didn’t take so long.” Kara laughs, but it’s short-lived underneath the softness of the reality of it, because Cat Grant did not do impromptu trips and this was not on Eve’s calendar when she’d looked.

“Cat…” Kara raises hands to shoulders--dip down to elbows, gently curving upwards--hesitating for only a moment before she asks: “Why...are you really here?”

“To subvert impending rumors of a merger.” Cat explains, simple and to the point, but the idea only raises more questions. And, in a way that makes Kara inexplicably nervous, Cat might hesitate before promising: “That’s the official reason. The personal reason is...more complicated. And has everything to do with the personal time.” Dark eyes flick upwards to where an office might be blocks away--to Lois or Clark or maybe an editor that’s aged as memories passed them both by. “I came to...see Perry. That wasn’t a lie.” A slim smile. “You're not the only one with an old mentor.” It sounds like a confession the way it’s whispered in that small sliver of space between them, “Yours is just far more attractive and knowledgeable. I’ll…” Fingers skim along a cheek and breath catches in the cool air between them, “Tell you soon.”

“Okay.” Kara leaves it at that, trusting, leaning forward to gently catch lips among a sea of people that could hardly care less, feeling Cat’s breath settle against her--fingers skim along her shoulder to bunch in a jacket. “I’m here.” It’s more of a promise than her lover likely knows, continuing because she also knows Cat won’t want to focus on it, however honest (and brief) the flicker of gratitude on her face might be, “I meant it, earlier.” Kara murmurs, instead, “I missed you.”

It’s better to just move onto something else Cat doesn’t want to talk about, right?

“It’s been a few hours.” Cat’s chide is gentle and she makes no move to pull away, fingers barely curling in the fabric of her shoulder.

“It feels like longer than a few hours.” Kara confesses because falling for such a short amount of time feels like years and not sleeping for a week only stretches that further. The city is starting to blur into a streak of color and noise as she settles against breath, memorizing the feel of hands so close to her heart. “It’s felt like…so long since I—”

There aren’t words for the staggering memory of time in Kara’s mind, so she settles, instead, on repeating:

“I just missed you.”

“In that case I...missed you, too. Don’t,” One hand raises from bunched fabric to intently point a hair away from Kara’s scrunching, happy nose, “Do not mention that I said that, or I’m not saying it, again.”

The slow smile is easy and quiet and makes an elevator feel far away, a content sigh on the cool evening air warming both of their lips, she knows, because Cat is so close.

“I’ll just stick to dancing around in joy about it when you’re not looking, then. Like usual because, you know, I’m not Patrick Swayze,” She repeats, “But Baby eventually wasn’t that bad. Give me a summer.”  

“Go ahead and make a fool of yourself, that hasn’t stopped you before.” Despite what appears to be her best efforts, Cat chuckles and Kara’s smile is dangerously loving, “As long as I don’t hear about it.”

“I’m going to dinner with Clark and Lois—”

“That will make it even harder to catch that plane. Where do you find the time.” Cat drawls.

“—if you’d like to join?” A hint of hope lingers—a chance to show the softer side of Catherine Grant to her family, maybe—and the way Cat’s thumb gently caresses the edge of her cheek, she might even think about it. “Wait, where were we even going?”

“My hotel. Because I have to get ready for my own dinner with Perry. Not that hours of staring at the boring Lane over an entire bottle of wine--which we'd both need one of to even attempt playing nice over dinner-- isn’t a great selling point,” But Cat’s smiling even as her hand falls down, this time to brush fingers instead of curling around a wrist, guiding Kara down streets she doesn’t remember towards a hotel she could never afford, “Though you make a convincing argument. Which, once again, is really not an argument at all.”

“I don’t even have to try. I think you just like me.” Kara chirps, twining their fingers fully, not missing Cat’s eyeroll or her indulgent smile.

“At first I thought the confidence was cute--”

“Oh, you still think it’s cute.” Kara holds open the door for her to the hotel before a very confused bellhop can, Cat’s laugh punctuated by the staccato fall of her heels.

“Maybe.”

“I’ll take that as a solid yes, Ms. Grant.”

Kara follows her all the way to a hotel room--to a bed that’s larger than Kara’s apartment and a room that’s bigger than her entire building--to a bed she’s firmly deposited on, but not, for once, by need. An owlish blink focuses her surroundings, tugging off glasses to rub at tired eyes, the sound of the hotel muffled and…far away. She watches Cat flutter about the room in a ritual she’s used to, but doesn’t see nearly as much as she likes. Nodding towards a dress when two are held up in wordless question and stifling a yawn behind her hand even as Cat deposits an earring she’s slipped out of a hole in a hand Kara doesn’t remember opening. She tucks it in a hidden suit without a single word as she watches and waits, somehow (somewhen) sprawling back on the bed with a groan because that was a mistake.

Her muscles seize and then ease in rapid fire throughout her body like a machine gun ricocheting, one vertebrae after the other falling into line in a stuttering cascade of dominoes as she groans and helplessly relaxes.

Another owlish blink towards the white, white, dust-less ceiling behind the glinting glass in front of still-blinking (slowly, slowly, slowly blinking) eyes.

The clouds aren’t this comfortable and Kara’s not certain she can get up.

Cat’s halfway through a story about Eve actually doing something competent--not that Cat Grant would ever say that to her face--when she pops her head out of the bathroom and sees Kara casually sprawled with a lazy smile, crossing the distance with a fond one of her own, turning around to offer a zipper.

Okay, she can get up for that.

A shiver dances up a curving spine when Kara trades her lips, instead, kissing up the length of a back, dipping away hair to brush lips along a shoulder--a neck--arms wrapping around a waist to bring a familiar warmth against her chest. And without a word, Catherine settles there, back easing into a chest like Kara’s had against the soft mattress behind them.

“Hmm…for the record, Kara…” Cat turns around, arms looping around a hunched neck, “The best part about this arrangement, other than the mind-boggling sex, of course…is the fact that you have unparalleled access to one of the best resources for life-experiences and fashion advice that you could possibly imagine: Me.” Cat elegantly toes on one heel, though she doesn’t lean far away from the loose embrace, “I obviously understand why you went to Lois given...disguised circumstances and, yes, this is a decision that you alone could make.” A beat. “But...if you ever do need to talk. Or need advice. Even in the event that I’m not in the same city, anymore…” She gestures vaguely to the window--to Metropolis--like it holds all of the secrets in the world when, really, it just holds the key to the largest secret of Kara’s life.

But there’s something more to it. Something more than just we were in different cities, today and Kara finds her fingers clasping around a bracelet at the thought of it, brows barely knitting, searching Cat’s eyes.

“I know.” She breathes, but Cat’s adamant. “I do.”

“You can always reach out to me if you need it, Kara.”

But the sentiment is still warm, regardless of some hollow feeling bouncing behind closed eyelids, and Kara beams, reaching forward to kiss her amidst the skyscrapers of Metropolis she can’t see, like this, leaning into familiar warmth, glad to do it in the anonymity of a city that never cared much about Kara Danvers or Supergirl in a hotel that reminds her of silk sheets cities away. Cat shifts, uneven weight from one solitary heel clinging to her ankle, pressing Kara onto the bed until she flops backwards onto it, smiling as a familiar form lithely crawls upwards, careful not to wrinkle what Kara now understands is a very stunning, very form-fitting dress.

Black, of course. Cat Grant would come back to Metropolis with the intent to kill.  

“Thank you, Catherine.” Kara smiles, sincere and gentle. “I know. And thank you.” A hum is the response, Cat’s thumb swiping over a lower lip before she kisses her, again, lingering and slow and leaving Kara so breathless that the Kryptonian’s not sure whether or not she actually came down from those clouds, after all.

“I really do have to go.” It sounds fortunately regretful and quiet and Kara leans up and kisses her, again, until that regret turns into a satisfied noise that’s anything but satisfied, an insistent hand pressing on an unyielding chest, trying to push her back down onto the bed with determination alone. Eventually, Kara yields, but tugs her closer in compromise. “Stop that.” It’s low—sultry and smooth and low—but wonderfully, deliriously gruff, like there might be a hint of reluctance at the edges, “Or I’m never leaving.”

“That does not sound like a bad thing.”

“Did I really say that I liked this side of you?” Cat laughs, the sound full of so much ease and gravel that Kara’s stomach clenches. “It’s dangerous. A practical menace to society.”

“Oh, I think you did. I’m particularly good with quotes, Ms. Grant.” Kara leans back up on elbows, kissing her again and this time Cat curls, fingers pushing into hair before a distracted writer might have to physically wrench herself backwards, stumbling a little bit on one heel--with a very graceful recovery--in a way that makes Kara bite her lower lip to hide the swell of warmth in her chest.

“Zip.”

Kara does what she’s told, placing the softest of kisses against the back of a warm neck, back easing into a bed with a sigh.

“Come over after dinner, Kara.” It’s gentle and smiling but all Kara sees are bruised lips before Cat disappears into the bathroom, tongue darting over her own.

The bed is so large it might swallow her whole.

Kara’s a little nervous--hesitant--when she admits, waiting until she hears water running in the hopes that her lover might be too distracted to notice, “Have...I mentioned I haven’t really slept in almost…” Oh, Rao, “Eight days? I think. A…long time.”

Cat’s head pops out of the bathroom as she slides in new earrings, smirking, “We can make it a hard nine.” Kara gulps even before she hears Cat fully come out, familiar fingers sliding up knees to rest on clenching thighs. And she waits so patiently until Kara hesitantly looks up to meet her knowing gaze. “You’re an idiot if you think I’m letting you fly across the country when you haven’t even slept. You can barely walk when you have slept.”

There’s a valiant attempt at a scoff in self-defense.

“I usually make it to most places without incident, I’ll have you know.” It’s a weak protest, eyes closing because this bed is so soft and she can’t take the depth to green eyes highlighted underneath the soft glow of an eighty-star hotel.

The room service here is probably amazing.

Do they leave a mint on the pillow, or just an entire tub of Andes?

(Is there even a mint fancier than Andes?)

“Let’s take a moment to remind you that your cover story for Fort Rozz was that a piece of the prison hit you in the head during it's ascent. And it was believable.” Kara doesn't ask how Cat knows the actual name of the very classified government file she’s been hinting at for the past week. Kara’s not sure she wants to know.

“That's just bad luck.”

“And usually anytime I see you fly it's followed by either explosions or an impressive amount of property damage.”

“That's just my job.”

“And how did you meet the gnome, again?”

“...by bumping into him.”

“And what happened to the railing in my balcony?”

“I...tripped.” Kara winces, eyes opening to focus on the ceiling.

“And how exactly did you say the Danvers’ kitchen was set on fire when yo--”

“Okay, okay. Do I need a lawyer for this conversation? Because Lucy will already be mad I didn't tell her I was in town.”

“No. No open court, for you, Lucy Lane would be on my side. You're taking my plane.”

A long moment, not wanting to break two rules so closely to her chest but wanting so much to break them. Despite her better judgment, she asks: “Wouldn’t...that require me spending the night? And arriving to work with you?”  She leans back up on elbows and Kara watches Cat watch her for a long moment.

“Hmm...” Is all Cat says before she leans down and gently--so gently--kisses her and Kara catches her wrist before she can go too far. Curious eyes watch Kara carefully unhinge the clasp of a bracelet, wordlessly snapping it around her lover’s wrist and when Cat kisses her, again, it lingers. “I suppose it would. Come over after.” It’s a warm breath against parted lips, not bothering to wipe off the trace of lipstick left before Cat grabs her clutch on her way out the door.

An extra keycard sits knowingly on the table and teeth bite her lip when Cat winks and shuts the door behind her.

Kara flops back onto the bed and watches the way the light catches along the gold of an earring, a smile slowly spreading over her lips. She grabs the keycard before disappearing off of the balcony in a flash of smiling yellow light.

Dinner is full of laughter and memories and, fortunately, not a single person being handcuffed or thrown through a wall or off of a bridge. Kara calls Alex to check in—calls Eliza to see about cashing in her raincheck of lunch Sunday (Saturdays, after all, are reserved for a twelve-year old across the country)—and when Kara calls Cat a minute before her deadline, it’s on its last ring before a hasty reply of—

Hotel, Kara. Later.

—causes the faintest hint of hesitation, the line only staying open for one more moment (likely long enough for anything pressing) before clicking off.

Hesitation that straightens her shoulders three hours later, pausing outside of a door, eyes having to close and concentrate to hear the familiar beat of a heart inside.

It’s the first time Kara’s come close to a bed in weeks without a fight of some kind weighing down her shoulders, but instead of setting down on a balcony—instead of propping open a window that should have been closed or toeing the lines of glass outside of an office—Kara raises her hand to knock underneath the numbers of a door she was certain to memorize every single detail possible of, hoping it sounds confident over the hesitancy clogging her chest.

Not that a knock can sound like anything other than knocking. Probably. If it could, Kara would be likely to nervously do it and even more likely nervously do it outside of Cat’s door, one of these days.

It only takes a few seconds before she’s greeted by raised eyebrows, Kara’s fingers tucking up a keycard between them before Cat can get whatever sarcastic remark is sure to be on the edge of parted lips.

“Cat, this is the last chance to bow ou—”

“I’m surprised you’re being thoughtless enough to give me a chance to rethink.”

Kara shuffles—breathes—but doesn’t back down. Doesn’t hesitate. “I…wanted to be invited in.”

“That’s what the keycard was for.” Cat points out, voice dry but something catches at the end of it like a stick thrust through the spoke of a bike when Kara hesitantly looks up, trying to shake the vulnerability off of her own shoulders.

Kara’s chin dips further up, still, confidence lacing her breath deciding there’s no point to shaking off the vulnerability, leaning into it, instead, “So that you would have the chance…” Because vulnerability doesn’t necessarily mean wavering, her voice strong and certain despite the thick swallow in the back of her throat. Vulnerability, Kara swears to prove to Catherine Grant, someday, does not mean weakness. “…to think it over and ask me to come in, anyways. I…want to be invited in so that I can say yes.”

It must be only a second that passes, but it feels longer than the whole week has.

“You’re too good for your own good, sometimes, Kara.” Cat’s tongue darts out over dry lips—pursing and then thinning—chin tipping up in either challenge or consideration, or maybe a match of Kara’s own confidence, “You should know better than to discuss something like this--not to second guess. I don't say things I mean and I don't want to--"

"I know."

"It was the first rule I gave you—a walking disaster—have you really not learned how to seize an opportunity, yet?”

“Oh, trust me, I know. On both accounts.” It’s a breathless, pained admission, but she doesn’t move. “Doing it, anyways.”

“That’s your forte, isn’t it? ‘Doing it, anyways’ despite all common sense saying otherwise?”

“Apparently.” Gentler, “You deserve someone who discusses it, anyways. I just…this is a do something for the right reasons thing. There’s a perfectly good couch I can sleep on across the city. But I’d much rather sleep here with you. I’ll…I think I’ll actually sleep, here, with you. Not that I’m guilting you or—I just…you know what I’m trying to ask, don’t you, Catherine? I’m too tired to—”

And Kara feels it, now. The full effect of it. Like her knees are quaking and her breath is rattling and she’s not certain how much longer gravity can keep her down, at all—if she’ll float up into the sky or crumple in a heap by her lover’s feet.

 "Shush. I do, Kara. And don't ask me why now."

"I don't have to."

Cat’s lips twitch and Kara swears she sees it—sees that vulnerability reflected back at her—before a palm quietly reaches up between them. Brows knit, confused, before Kara nods, sifting out the earring from her pocket.

Another confused moment passes when Cat blinks down at it, fondly shaking her head.

“I wanted your hand.”

“Oh.” Kara offers a sheepish smile, giving her that, too, palm resting over the small gold of an earring, feeling a pulse quicken beneath her fingers. But, for once, she doesn’t apologize, stepping forward, not daring to look past Catherine to the threshold behind them.

And Cat, who never says anything she doesn’t mean—wouldn’t have offered the first if she hadn’t meant it, but Kara had to know—takes great consideration before she quietly offers:

“Would you like to come inside, Kara?”

“Yes.” All the air of the world releases from Kara’s lips into the small space between them, a tired, relieved smile tucking up lips. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”

Catherine’s smile matches, tugging Kara closer, their lips brushing in a soft hello before crossing the threshold, the door closing behind them with a definitive click.

The moment they’re inside knowing fingers gently slide glasses down a nose and there isn’t the whole world—there isn’t an influx of sensations mixing with the sounds—there’s just a murky outline of fading color before she blinks and there’s Catherine, carefully folding the glasses and setting them on the nearby nightstand, guiding shoulders that sag closer to the Earth’s core with each and every step towards that same bed, nodding down towards it.

Kara lays on the bed for a second time, back easing into the soft clouds—and there’s that machine gun of her vertebrae and that breathless exhaustion and contentment—and when she blinks, again, it’s to a fresh-faced Catherine at the edge of the bed, stirring at the feeling of hands tapping her ankles.

It takes longer than it should for Kara to realize what the tapping means, toeing off shoes but otherwise not stirring, breathless as she murmurs, “Oh, Rao, a real bed.” And she blinks, again as Catherine sits on top of her hips, silver frames glasses settled on her nose, a hint of professionalism at the edge of squinting eyes.

There’s no makeup—a tank top and shorts, even, something relegated for weekends and Carter and singing 80's songs and intimacy that means more than sex—but the set of a jaw screams CEO, not lover.

“So, Ms. Danvers…”

“Hmm?” An owlish blink, settling on the glasses and the look settled on tired features, a content smile spreading across her lips before they part, “Oh, is this later?”

The look on Cat’s face, a hint of amused and gentle, is decidedly less CEO.

“Can I…is it weird to ask to tell you this? Not…” Kara’s never verbally acknowledged the boundaries because it feels like something protected in its silence, understood in the shadows of smiles between them, “I want to share this with…you. I want you to be the first person I tell.”

“Your boss should be the first person you tell.” But Cat’s smile is softer underneath the moonlight—the curtains, Kara realizes, are half-drawn and the city’s landscape is open beyond such a small sliver of glass—sliding up hips to rest above her and Kara’s endlessly grateful for the understanding when a finger traces down the line of her nose, a relieved smile tucking up Kara’s lips in response. The hum of the AC kicks on and it feels like it rumbles the Earth when warm breath dances against a lip. “I guess it’s not technically extending your deadline if you tell me, now, and we officially discuss it Monday. I’ll have Eve set up a meeting. So…how are you going to revolutionize CatCo and the world, Kara Danvers?”

Kara smiles and it slides so easily from her lips, now, with the weight of Cat pinning her down more effectively to the bed than it ever has, no longer scared of the constellation she’d traced against her palm hours later.

“I want to be a reporter.”

“Is that so.” Catherine looks the least bit surprised.

“You knew?” Kara leans a little up on her elbows, then, the shift of body taking an unphased smaller body with her. But Cat isn’t just unphased by the physical motion, gaze settled, and Kara just sighs, shaking her head, “Of course you knew.”

“You’re finally coming to the same conclusion the rest of the world is, darling, I’m Cat Grant. I’m all-knowing, all-seeing, and—”

“Fabulous?” Kara supplies, eyes bright and…relaxed, like the weight of the world has finally slid of her shoulders.

At least for tonight.

“I was going to say always right, but that’s also true.” Cat smirks and a content hand raises up between them, fingers skimming along that smirking cheek until it softens into something unspoken and honest, between them, a nose dipping to skim along a palm before lips brush against a pulse. A pulse Cat likely feels jump underneath smiling lips.

“Thank you,” Kara breathes, “For being patient with me.”

“It’s the most infuriating part of being your mentor, so far.” Cat notes, “I was ready to throw you into the printing press, yesterday, out of hopes of a story imprinting itself on your mind. Id Est,” There’s that smirk again and Kara groans, “Force you into what you already knew instead of letting someone else take your credit.”

“Snapper told you?” She leans up, burying herself in a laughing shoulder.

“Snapper tells me everything.” Cat’s fingers slide underneath a raised back to brush nails along the base of a scalp, a hum the content response. “But I happened to listen to that one first-hand. I was around the corner.” A beat, brows knitting in her own journalistic curiosity, “You didn’t hear me?”

“I wasn’t exactly focused on…listening.” The truth is, her senses have been dulling worse and worse, the more she’s stayed awake. It didn’t matter how much sunlight she drained into her body, earlier, she’s not human but, right now, she might be something close. “Well…” Kara sighs but can’t find it in herself to feel embarrassed, quoting the book that Lois might claim turned her into a writer. “In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.”

“Oh, darling, for as staggeringly brilliant you are,” Cat hums in sympathy, leaning down to kiss smiling lips, “You have that in spades.”

Kara, exhausted and happy and sagging into a mattress of clouds with Catherine kissing her, only laughs.

Soon enough, they’ve both settled into bed and she understands Cat’s adamant argument immediately, that quiet, whispered breath of—

I might like it too much

--lighting up breath in her chest. Their bodies sag into the clouds, Kara wordlessly taking up the side she knows is usually unoccupied, boldly wrapping an arm around a waist to bring Catherine closer. This? This is not an opportunity she’ll squander.

Cat's body slowly eases back against her and Kara's whole life turns into a quiet, gentle electricity humming underneath skin. They fit in a way that feels almost deliriously natural because she had always thought those books--those movies and stories and tall-tales--all exaggerated the feeling of someone gently slotting like a missing puzzle piece against her quickened heart, but it seems like they undersold it.

Way undersold it.

Because there’s no word for the breath that tumbles out of lips before breasts press against rolling shoulders. There’s no word for the way her chest aches to bury herself against the warmth against her like a soldier diving for a safe haven amidst a hail of bullets at their back. There’s no word for the way Cat scoots just a hair backwards with her hips or raises her arm up underneath a pillow or turns just so so that Kara’s body can fill the void left from the shifted position. And there’s certainly no word for the feeling of safety that spreads through her chest, warm and wordless and selfishly relaxing the moment she hears—feels—both of their heartbeats fall into easy rhythm.

Kara’s whole body relaxes as she snuggles in closer--as she feels Cat's muscles all relax with her—nose skimming up a neck as she sighs.

This is what it’s like. This is what her mother had warned her of—had promised her—and the tales painted along the hills didn’t do an ounce of the feeling justice and Kara’s lucky she’s so close to sleep because a promise lingers on the edge of her tongue just as easy as the breath settles between them.

“This is nice.” Cat hums, a quiet, sleepy grumble and Kara knows this isn't the first time she's held her, but it's the first time like this. Lips brush over the sensitive skin underneath an ear--a pulse in a neck--bury chastely in the dip of a shoulder, and Cat shuffles closer.

“Mmm.” Kara agrees, already sliding a knee between her, thoughtlessly seeking out every inch she’s allow, tangling a mess of limbs. Cat twines their fingers over her breast—over a soft, beautiful heart—and guides knuckles to lips in a soft breath. “Could spend the rest of my life like this.” It's a thoughtless, happy grunt of contentment, and surprisingly, Catherine just smiles against her skin in favor of chiding her—or, worse, pulling away.

“Me too.” Catherine turns in the embrace and even though Kara can feel eyes on her, she doesn't open her own, happy to let Cat trace the lines of her face as she sinks further and further into the mattress. “We should convince Superman to come to National City more often if it keeps you this relaxed.”

A quiet laugh, eyes sleepily opening at that--to watch Catherine so lovingly smile up at her in a bed, sleep clinging to both of their throats as those fingers trace the line of her brow, hand ultimately falling down between them as they settle, Kara's arm loose around her waist and their legs fully tangled, now.

“Am I always that tense?” A hum of acknowledgement from Catherine is all Kara needs to know on that front. “Okay, operation Cousin Call. We could both write very strongly worded letters pleading our case.” Sleepy and thoughtful, “Or I'll threaten to tell everyone about changing his diapers.” Kara sleepily murmurs, eyes once more falling closed underneath the bird wing’s flutter of Catherine's wry chuckle.

The exhaustion grips her in the ice of an ocean’s unforgiving water’s but a body warms her with a knowing hum.

Kara knows—she knows—she won’t have nightmares, tonight.

“Blackmailing family? I've taught you well.” Catherine's nose presses into the hollow of Kara's neck, yawning against a collarbone as she sighs. As her heartbeat calms and her breathing evens. “I really do…” A hum, fingers slackening but not falling away from her completely. “Love this side of you.”

“Mmm….”

It's anti-climactic--its simple and it's not long until they both fall asleep in each other's arms--but Kara sleeps soundly for the first time in years and when her heartbeat and breath slows, Catherine’s knowingly slows to match it.

There is a word for it, isn't it? All of it--

Perfect, Ehrosh.

Perfect.

--

Rule #47. No sex on the same night as deadlines.

Hastily scrawled in excitement, for once intentionally in English on her own copy of this list, added:

(Especially not for me! I’m a reporter now! :) )

[mrsluthordanvers]

A Coffee a Day Relationship: Kara Danvers/Cat Grant Words: 845 Chapters: 1/? Summary: Someone shared a headcanon, and I kind of ran with it Kara Danvers is a third year biology undergraduate student at National City University that develops a crush on Lois' graduate professor Cat Grant and starts bringing Lois coffee every class.

Read on AO3 or under fold

“Three coffees please”

Alex smirks as she watches Maggie raise an eyebrow as she looks between Alex and Kara.

“Three?”

“You worried Sawyer?”

Smiling Maggie looks down the counter to make sure her boss isn’t watching before she places her hands on the counter leveraging her small height over the counter to brush her lips against Alex’s.

“Never.”

“Good. The coffee is for the other Lane.”

“Lois?” Lucy appears next to Maggie a slight scowl on her face.

“You have another sister we don’t know about?”

Lucy rolls her eyes so hard they almost get stuck in the back of her head. “I just don’t know why you guys hang out with her so much.”

“She’s dating my cousin Lucy! I can’t ignore her.” Kara grumbles as she relieves Maggie of the first two coffees. “Plus I like her.”

“You like everyone Kara.”

The three girls laugh as Kara huffs unable to cross her arms with her hands full as she pretends to glare at Lucy and Alex takes the last coffee and slides a couple bills across the counter shaking her head when Kara offers to pay for her and Lois’.

“You can get the next ones.”

Taking another look around Alex presses a second kiss against Maggie’s lips.

“What no kiss for me?”

Alex wrinkled her nose at Lucy in fake disgust, “You know I always left that job to my sister.”

“Alex!” Alex’s shoulders slumped at Kara’s embarrassed hiss, Lucy’s eyes tinging with sympathy as Kara stalked out the door, her sister close on her heels.

The lecture was still going when Alex and Kara snuck into the back of the room trying not to draw attention to themselves, taking the empty chairs at the back. Kara’s surprised they can get seats at the back so used to them being the first seats to be filled in her undergraduate classes. Setting down the coffees Kara flops into the chair losing her jacket scanning the room for Lois, wondering if sitting at the front of the class is a graduate student’s thing. Everyone desperate to get their money’s worth by being as close to the professor as they can.

The halt of heels clicking on the cement brings Kara’s attention to the front of the room. Eyes dragging over Louis Vuitton stilettos, thin muscular legs, pausing on a yellow and grey print pencil skirt, before traveling over a black top tucked under a black leather jacket.

“Oh.” Kara’s breath hitches as brown eyes framed behind cat eye glasses stare back her.

“What?”

Alex doesn’t look up from her phone as the small sound escapes her sister’s lips. “Is that…”

“Cat Grant? Yeah.” Alex glanced up at the professor who has not stopped her lecture before looking at her sister who is still so obviously staring. “You really need to listen to Clark and Lois more, they only talk about her all the time…and how they have no idea how the university managed to convince her to step down as CEO of her own company to teach journalism.”

Tearing her eyes away from the other blonde’s Kara holds her hands in front of her face like a curtain turning towards her sister, noting the click of heels on cement once again. “Maybe she just wanted something new.”

“Maybe.” Alex shrugged, clearly unconcerned about what decisions Cat Grant, queen of all media, decided to make in her life.

Kara and Alex stood off to the side at the front of the lecture hall as Lois talked to Ms.Grant, her movements animated as Cat met her with an unwavering gaze. Fixated on the professor, Kara watched her lips move as she replied to Lois, whatever she said sending Lois stomping towards them as she snatched her coffee from Kara.

“Ms Lane.” The voice teetered between demanding and clipped as Lois stormed away. Cat’s eyes now uncovered as she held her glasses, the stem tapping her bottom lip as she scanned the three women. Her eyes lingering on Kara drawing out a light pink blush. “Don’t be rude.”

Straightening her back Lois smiled through grit teeth. “Ms Grant, this is Alex Danvers. And her younger sister, Kara Danvers. Clark is Kara’s cousin.”

“The farm boy you’re dating?” Cat hummed, “Yes I remember him. Are you in journalism like your cousin Ms. Danvers?”

“It’s Kara.” Kara practically squeaked, pulling herself together as Lois and Alex turned to stare at her. “And no, I’m in biology like my sister.”

Cat’s eyes rove over to Alex, raising an eyebrow as the woman doesn’t so much as shift under her stare.

“I’m doing my master’s in bioengineering.” Alex offers returning the stare.

“Impressive.” The word falls out of Cat’s mouth, but she sounds more like she’s dismissing them more then she is impressed.

Taking their cue, they shuffle towards the door Kara stumbling behind them turning as they leave.

“It was nice to meet you Ms Grant.”

Lois and Alex barely notice Kara’s last words, already falling into step deep in conversation, but Kara swears she sees Cat smirk.

[werebutterfly-deer20]

Michelle Grant concept by Edouard Caplain

[theragingthespian]

higher

L-Corp stands tall and bright, not quite looming overhead, but there’s no mistaking it. Usually when Kara flies over at this time of night, only a few lights are left on, but now it’s a beacon against the stars.

There’s a faint heartbeat in her ears, steady and sure, and Kara follows it as she steps through the doors. The guards barely offer her a glance anymore, waving her through after she steps through the detector. 

Her back aches, and her shoulders protest as her arms hang by her sides. She needs to go home and curl up under the blankets, hide away from whatever is her fate at the hands of Snapper in the morning.

She wants to go see Lena. So she does.

(Alex barely let her out of her sight. Her fingers had clutched so tightly at her, pulling at the cape where it was clipped at her shoulders. 

Kara had been taller since she hit her growth spurt, but out far past from the city surrounded by falling ash, she let Alex tuck her head under Alex’s chin. 

Fingers had pressed against her spine, pulling her tight enough that she didn’t need superhearing to hear the thundering in Alex’s chest as she asked are you okay, do you need the sunbed, can you breath alright?

But she also didn’t need super vision to see the circles under Alex’s eyes, the tremble to her frame, so as soon as Maggie came sprinting from the suv, Kara had gently nudged her sister towards her.

Alex had made her promise to go home and rest, but a small detour never hurt anyone.)

Lena’s secretary gives her a strange look when she steps past. Not that the look itself is strange. It’s not. It’s suspicious, bordering on almost hostile and behind the desk, Kara can see her hand creeping towards her phone.

Kara liked Jess better.

(Jess turned her nose up at Kara after that one time she slipped, okay, okay sped past her, but it was easily remedied with coffees and yes, I was Ms.Grant’s assistant.

Jess told her when Lena hadn’t ate, resulting in Kara setting up as many lunch dates in advance as she could. Would call her with a suggestion to stop by on the days the media wasn’t being forgiving to the last Luthor standing.

Jess looked out for Lena.)

Kara hopes she conveys as much through the sharp look she shoots back, wondering when Jess gets back from her vacation.

“Knock knock.” Lena’s head shoots up from the computer, shoulders dropping and raising so fast Kara almost didn’t notice it as weariness turned to surprise and then, relief. “Are you okay?”

Lena’s up and around the desk in an instant, and oh, maybe Kara’s just hopeful but she opens up her arms and-

Lena steps right into the hug, raising up on her toes to wrap her arms around Kara’s shoulders.

Her heart’s beating fast, not as much as it had been when oh, when Kara had to pluck her right out of the air, but close to it. Lena’s nose skims across her throat, head ducking close against her shoulder.

“I’m okay.” Lena’s voice is soft and hesitant, muffled against the fabric of her jacket. 

“Good, good.” Kara smooths a hand down Lena’s back. “After what happened-” Lena tenses at that, pulling away and taking measured steps back.

“Did Supergirl tell you?” Lena smirks, but oh, it’s not prideful and in that mischievous way Lena gets. It’s shying on the side of hurt, staying sharp to keep her away. “Returned to tell you over coffee at,” Lena peers at the clock on the wall, “midnight?”

“Over coffee? I- oh.” Out of all the things to say, she chooses that? She will firmly deny it in front of the others, but even she sometimes understands the look of understanding they always share at game nights when talking about her secret keeping abilities.

(Which, um, they’re great?

Out of all the people in National City, only a few know. Ten, tops.

Whether or not the barista who fixes her coffee with just the right amount of cinnamon is in that ten or not does not matter. Or the guy who makes the best subs.

Or-

It doesn’t matter. It’s like ten, she’s sure.)

Kara tucks her chin to her chest, breathes deeply. Her shoulders twinge with the movement. “It’s not- I can’t-”

“I’m sorry,” Lena murmurs. “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s not the time, but,” Lena says, stepping back up to her, eyes darting between her own, “just so you know, my hero saved me again tonight.” Lena’s hand raises up, hesitating just slightly before the tip of her finger nudges Kara’s glasses back up.

She hadn’t even realized they’d fallen.

Lena’s fingers curl into her hand as they draw away and Kara catches them easily, hers slipping beside Lena’s. “We can talk,” Kara clears her throat, “we will talk about it, but can it-” Kara shakes her head, closes her eyes and oh, it’s so hard to open them again. “Can it wait- just for tonight?”

“Of course.” Lena’s hand tightens around her own. “Of course.”

Lena’s thumb is stroking over the back of her hand so lightly that she’s not even sure if Lena is aware. She glances over Lena’s desk, sees papers stacked and Lena’s purse waiting on the edge. “You were about to go home?”

“I was.”

“Flying would be faster.” Kara tilts her head to the side. “But I hear you don’t like heights.”

Lena’s eyes go wide, shocked enough that Kara can pick out the greens and blues there. “I thought you said-”

“-We don’t have to talk about it, we can just,” Kara flattens her palm in the air, raising it to the side with a swoosh, “go.”

Lena taps against the desk, finger sliding along the wood until she nods her head. Reaching over, she presses a button, “Alana, you can go home.”

She says thank you, but Kara hears her huff behind her office, and she can’t help but frown. She’s a little glad she ate the extra pastry she brought over last time, left just enough for her and Lena.

(Or rather, the five she ate on the way there, plus the one she had with Lena and Lena’s.

Just enough.)

Lena raises her arms. “Well?”

The stutter in Lena’s chest once she throws them into the air is wonderful. The little laugh that Lena lets out is even better. Lena saying flying isn’t so bad right at her ear, fingers curling in her hair to keep Kara’s head steady as she pushed them through the air? The best.

(She doesn’t think about the nails scratching faintly against the back of her neck, or how they briefly clench whenever Kara goes higher.

She doesn’t think about Lena’s breaths slipping over her neck or the smile pressed against her throat.

It doesn’t keep her up the rest of the night.)

When their feet touch the ground outside Lena’s apartment building, she doesn’t know what to do with her hands. They’ve held Lena and pushed down a spaceship in one night, the dichotomy between soft and hard leaving her unsure.

She shoves them in her pockets and tries to avoid Lena’s amused stare.

“You could come up?”

(She thinks of going home and having people no doubt waiting for her. Of having to entertain when she only wants to go to sleep.

She thinks of falling asleep with Lena’s perfume flooding her senses and follows her wordlessly when Lena starts walking.)

A change of clothes is pressed into her hands as soon as she’s a foot into the apartment. Lena steers her to a bedroom without saying another word,  disappearing just long enough for Kara to change. 

“You seem like the type to like too many blankets,” Lena says fondly, holding up her arms filled with blankets that are dropped into Kara’s arms, and oh, they’re, they’re so soft. Kara holds them close to her face, eyes falling closed without intention.

Hands settle over her shoulders, easing until the touches are barely there when Kara shrugs away from them, her muscles still reeling. Blankets are tugged over her once her head hits the pillow, a soft voice then, “go to sleep Kara.”

She holds the hand at her shoulder, barely managing a slurred, “stay.” Lena hums, but doesn’t let go as she shifts to lay across the blankets.

(Kara falls asleep that night to a warm, familiar heartbeat in her ears and Lena’s hand firmly folded around hers.)

[superkaralovesfanfiction]

Smoky Mountain Rain

Smoky Mountain Rain A Supergirl Story- by superkara For Supercat Week, day 1, abilities ------ This story came from the song Smoky Mountain Rain by Ronnie Milsap. Kind of. It's not as close as I would have made it, or as long as initially intended, but as I thought this up 7 days before Supercatweek, and had 7 stories to write, that's right I'm writing a fic for each day, then needless to say, it's kinda rushed. I might make an extended version at some point, but I have so many unfinished supercat fics at this point that I could write for months and not finish them all, I figure I should devote some time to those. But, alas, every time I start writing one, I think up 3 more, so I should have a fic for any situation now. Anyways, enough with my rambling, I hope you enjoy this. Day 1, supercat week, abilities ------------- Cat stared at the rain pelting the beach and deck of her vacation home and sighed, wondering what National City looked like tonight. Whether it was sunny or gloomy like it was here. Cold and wet. The thought of sunshine brought Kara into her mind for the trillionth time that day, and Cat sighed again, her breath fogging up the window before her, blurring the view. ''Was it a mistake, Kara? To let you go?'' Cat asked to the window, watching with tears in her eyes as lightning crackled dangerously over a choppy, angry sea. ''You told me heroes never run. I did exactly that. So why did you ever call me a hero in my own right? Clearly I'm nothing close to you.'' ---- ''She was the one that got away from me.'' Cat explained sadly to the girl that had joined her at the bar a little while ago, asking if she could use company for a while. She was beautiful, Cat had to admit. Long white blonde hair, pale green eyes, a pouty smile. She was a stunner. But she was no Kara. ''Have you considered calling? Apologizing?'' ''Mm. No.'' Cat said, tear soaked eyes on her empty bourbon glass. ''After running away first, I don't get to do that. I don't have the right to come crawling back for her forgiveness.'' Cat smirked at the memory of their exchange outside CatCo. Kara looking at her in utter shock when Cat had blurted out that she loved her assistant. And then Cat's mistake. Kara had wanted to speak. She'd been about to say something, her cape fluttering behind her in the wind blowing recklessly through the city streets, and Cat had left then. She'd left and stopped whatever Kara had wanted to say, and Kara being Kara, hadn't followed, too struck to speak. ''I just wish I'd had the courage to let her speak.'' ''You were emotional, scared.'' The girl, Kassandra was her name, said in a soft, caring tone, sipping at her mineral water. ''I don't deserve the fear though.'' Cat said sadly, twisting the delicate glassware in her fingertips as she spoke. ''She takes fear and turns it into strength. She uses it as her power. If I can't meet her like that... well. She's so above me...'' ''Tell me about her. Maybe it'll help...'' ''She's... she is, no. She WAS my best girl. Best assistant I ever had. Through the yelling, the anger, even corporate destruction, she didn't leave me. She stayed with me. I suspect I know why...'' Cat stopped for a second, thinking. She knew why. Kara was Supergirl. But she didn't have the right to reveal that name. ''But, regardless, she was like a ray of sunshine, somebody I looked forward to seeing in my office. Which is exactly why I don't have the right to a chance with her.'' ''Because she was your employee.'' ''Precisely.'' ''But it happens. It happens so so much. If she hadn't worked for you, you would probably never have met the girl. Maybe there's a reason...'' ''It's not that.'' Cat said, stopping the other girl. ''I know it happens. I've seen it happen in my office. My photographic journalist, his girlfriend works on the same floor. She was his girlfriend and I still hired her on the spot. I know it can work. But it's the fact that she deserves so much better. She's such a bouncy happy little thing, the last thing she needs is me, such a cold, icy person. She needs someone who will treat her like a precious rose. I'd just wilt her with my cold words. I can't give her what she wants.'' ''What is it you think she wants?'' Cat looked at the woman beside her, eyes narrowed in concentration, wondering why this woman was being so mysterious. ''She wants brevity. Happiness. Beach trips and flowers. Cuddling all weekend and calling in sick to work so she can spend another day with you because two days wasn't enough. All I can give her is coffee addiction and more work. She's 27, and I'm... this. She's practically... I could be her mom. She deserves everything else, not coffee and am meetings and late nights at the office.'' ''Maybe that's what she wants?'' ''I'm sorry?'' Cat asked, a little defiant. ''Not all girls are the same, Cat. Maybe she wants to wake up with you at 4 am and go to CatCo together, with you. And then stay till 8pm and go home together and work until late into the night. Some girls aren't fragile little flowers. Some are stronger, like the stem of the rose, holding up life.'' ''That's insane.'' Cat scoffed softly. ''If she's the stem than I'm the thorn.'' ''Every rose has it's thorns, Cat. The stem holds the thorns.'' Kassandra noted, turning to Cat to speak to her head on. ''Is it insane? You say she's your best. I think, if she kept coming back even after the yelling and company failure, and the cold lattes and the endless work, she's not a fragile rose petal. Maybe she's made or more.'' Now Cat said nothing. Because despite how much she wanted it to be false, to be right, she knew Kassandra was right. Not her. ''Oh, my girl is here. I've got to go.'' Cat looked up with a little smile as Kassandra slipped off the barstool and walked over to a beautiful Latina girl in the doorway, the turned back and came back over for a minute. ''Don't be stubborn, Catherine. Call the girl. If she's moved on, at least you'll know. But if she's as good as you make her seem, then she won't desert you. She's probably just as hurt as you. All you need is $1 and a pay phone to hear her voice.'' Cat watched as Kassandra slid a few coins across the tabletop and smiled, then turned back to her girlfriend, who waved shyly at Cat, and then they walked away together. Cat barely heard Kassandra speak, and saw her girl smile. ''Work time?'' ''Yeah, let's go.'' Kassandra answered, and Cat smiled, nodding to herself. Well damn. Cat watched for a minute, looking at everything and nothing, and then decided that maybe yes. Maybe Cat did need to make that call. --- No answer. Cat sighed and waited, listening to the ever annoying ring of CatCo phones, and thought, praying to hear Kara pick up the other end. Finally someone picked up, but it wasn't Kara's sunny voice. Cat sighed and looked up, wondering where Kara was. It was mid afternoon in National City. Kara should be there, knowing Kara, this was very weird. Kara answered all the phones. Every damn time. ''Hello?'' Cat sighed, her eyes on the rainy grey skies, and felt a stray raindrop land on her nose. James was there. Well, okay. Maybe Supergirl was busy, though Cat hadn't heard anything from the girl on news or otherwise in days. ''It's me.'' ''Cat. Um... calling to check in?'' ''Uh, yeah. Sure. Listen, is Kara around? I need to talk to her.'' ''She actually isn't. She took two days off sick, and hasn't called in yet. I told her she can take as much time as she needs, but...'' ''A Supergirl thing?'' Cat's asked without thought about her words, fear rippling through her veins at the thought of the girl of steel, sick. ''Uh... Ms.Grant...'' ''Relax. I know about her little secret. Is she alright?'' Cat asked, ignoring the rain that was now opening falling heavily, turning the grey world around her a dark brown, slipping through the thin fabric of her suit vest, cold on her shoulders. ''I don't honestly know. You know she lost her powers before. She should be fine, I just told her to take it easy for a few days. Relax. Paint. Sleep. I haven't heard from her besides a text two days ago saying she was a little sick. I wouldn't worry much, Ms. Grant. She's Supergirl. She probably just caught a cold when she lost her powers.'' ''I see. Okay. Well, could I have her cell number? I need to give her a call.'' James relayed a number to her, and Cat hung up sadly, then decided to take her next call off her cell inside, because of the damn rain that felt more like a flood at this point. When she got to her hotel room, soaking wet, went straight for her phone and punched in the numbers with shaking fingers. Both at having Supergirl's private number finally, and because even though James claimed she was fine, Cat felt something off. Cat held herself together for the three separate times she tried Kara's cell, laughing at the message even though she felt sick with worry. Cat tried it one more time, listening through the 4 rings and then Kara's message tone. ''Hi, you've reached the Supergirl hotline, how may I save you?'' ''Kara, please pick up. Let me know you're okay. I know I don't deserve to hear your voice, but Kara, please. Just say hi. That's all I'm asking for.'' Cat stopped the message, clicking the bar away, and fought the urge to throw her phone across the hotel room floor. Cat knew that under all circumstances, Kara should be fine. Of course, Kara should be fine. But for some weird reason Cat couldn't place, something here felt wrong. Something felt off. As if Kara wasn't safe as everyone believed her to be. Cat had always had a sixth sense of Kara, something she also didn't understand, and knew whether the girl was okay. If she wasn't, Cat felt tingly. Every damn time. If Kara was hurt, Cat knew. She couldn't explain it, something along the lines of how Kara always knew things before she did. Right now, Cat was buzzing out of her skin. Which told her something was very wrong. She'd rarely felt this before. Cat grabbed for her phone again, switching to messages. Cat texted her too, leaving multiple messages, apologizing first and then asking for Kara to please get back to her. Even one word. If Kara as much as told her to fuck off and leave her alone, Cat would. But she would not stop this until Cat was sure the girl was okay, because this uncanny sense she had about Kara's wellbeing was making her feel straight up sick to her stomach, and the last time she'd had that Kara had been nearly dead in an underground facility while the world fell apart above her. Cat hoped this wasn't similar in any way. After 15 minutes with no response, Cat couldn't wrack her brain anymore, sitting here sopping wet and scared. She didn't know how she felt Kara like this, she just did. But she was getting worse, and to figure this out, she needed a clear head. And that required a walk. So despite the rain, and the wind, and the cold, Cat grappled for her black trench coat, and stuffed her phone into her pocket and left, going mindlessly, not even looking up to see which street she headed onto. She needed to think. Calmly think. Better for her to mindlessly walk. It helped. It didn't help. 40 minutes later Cat brushed wet bangs from her forehead and sighed at her shaking hands. From the cold this time, not Kara. But her fear of Kara... Cat thought back to her days with Kara, the girl's mismatched desk, oddities and weird things that the girl collected and placed. It became some sort of weird art, and despite Cat's perfectly organized sense of style, Kara's oddity appealed to her. Cat couldn't fathom why, on anyone else it would come off as disgusting. But Kara, with the 4 pairs of vintage sunglasses on her desk, three yellow photo frames with no images, a cup that seemed meant for lost zipper ends, a rainbow of paper notes, and an even wilder array of pens, and a computer screen with so many star stickers on the edges that Cat would get dizzy. What was it about this girl and yellow, in her dresses, in her flowers, in her shoes, in her hair, and if one stared long enough, and Cat had, there was one tiny fleck of yellow gold in her gorgeous blue green eyes, just one. Seemingly only there to amuse. And to sparkle. Oh god how it sparkled. Oh Kara... how had Cat ever done something so idiotic as to leave the girl? Kara... Supergirl... ''Oh, I'm sorry.'' Cat said softly, apologizing for bumping into another pedestrian while she was thinking about this so hard she didn't know where she was walking, and looked up to watch the road more properly, and stopped, noticing the wild rainbow on the window beside her. Normally she wouldn't notice, but she did, because Kara was on her mind, beautiful Kara, and Kara loved rainbows as much as she loved yellow and stickers. Cat looked up at the poster and her lips parted. It was a portrait. Two women. Hugging. Blonde. Beautiful. One slightly older, but not as much as Cat was to Kara. Cat shook her head. She and Kara could never be this. But this, it was stunning. A rainbow of clothes on them, laughing over the same ice cream cone, the younger girl with sprinkles on her nose, the older one with the sweet treat melting down the cone and over her fingers, laughing at her younger girlfriend... Her girlfriend. Cat smiled at the image, and then read the words, and her heart stopped. Everything stopped. The world around her seemed to stop and work in slow motion, broken, wet, cold, the rain falling in slow motion. If she's the one, tell her. Is she your super soulmate? ------ Part 2 ------- Kara sat on one of the cold metal DEO tables, beneath the few sunlamps, and sighed. She didn't feel off, not physically. She could still fly, breathe ice, X-ray anything, it was only her strength. How odd. "Are you sure you feel alright? No weakness, dizziness, nausea? Maybe..." "Nope." Kara confirmed with a shake of her head. "I feel fine. I just don't have my strength." "Kara?" Winn asked, walking into the room quickly. "What's up?" Kara asked, sliding off the tabletop resolutely. "Cat's texting your phone. 4 missed calls and 5 texts." "Ignore it." Kara said tightly, and Alex turned to look at her directly, unable to remember the last time Kara had refused her boss anything. "She wants to know if you're..." "I said ignore it. She... I can't... I have nothing to say to her." "Didn't you at she confessed her love to you?" "And then she told me it was stupid of her to do so. She told me she loved me, and then left. She ran away from me. And she never mentioned Kara. She mentioned Supergirl. I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't be so emotional, but I can't be good about this. I've loved her ever since I walked into her office for my interview. When she told me she loved me, I was thrilled. Then she told me she wished she didn't. Listen, can we please focus on figuring out what happened to my strength, not my love life? Or, lack of it?" Alex glanced around nervously, then focused back on her table of laptops, and thankfully everyone else did too, ignoring Kara's little outburst. Supergirl was dangerous when she was mad, and thankfully everyone knew that enough to know when to let the girl deal alone. ------- Cat sat back and sighed, waiting for a response. Winn had texted her back on Kara's number, which told her that Kara had to in fact be at the DEO, since Cat knew Winn worked there now. And that made her worry more, because if Kara was at the DEO, then that meant she was likely there because she was unwell, because James had said she was sick, a bit. Hopefully it was only a bit. Cat had that feeling that told her it was more. Way more. When her cellphone beeped, Cat nearly jumped out of the seat in the back of the taxi carrying her back to the airport. Cat was going home. To Kara. Now. It was time to tell Kara. That Cat finally knew. That she believed in heroes and demons, in angels and devils, and that Kara was her soulmate. Because Cat had always followed rules. And regulations. Maybe it was time to dive for real, and this kind of diving required taking a beautiful woman's hand in hers, and leaping with someone who could fly. Cat had never believed in the preposterous idea of a soulmate, but Kara had. She'd mentioned the idea more than once in lazy conversations about other people, and now Cat couldn't help thinking, maybe Kara hadn't been that wrong. Because when the girl is your best assistant, your hero, your ultimate, then maybe she should be the one designed for you. Maybe she had been designed for Cat. And because Cat was who Cat was, then maybe the angels went a little nuts and sent her from a different universe. Just because special deserved unique. And Cat definitely deserved a heroine as a soulmate. 'She's losing her powers. She's slowly fading. I don't know what she did, but her powers... she looks tired. She never looks tired.' Cat gasped at the text, then quickly responded. 'I know what's happening. I'm coming home to her. This might sound stupid coming from me, but I think she's losing her powers because of my being gone. It makes no sense, but I can feel her. I know she's unwell. I'm on my way home now.'' 'That's not stupid. You're her one. On her world, there was soulmates. She simply never thought she would find one on earth. She's given up.' 'Tell her I'll be home soon. And that I'm sorry. Tell her not to give up.' 'She... she said I should ignore you. She says she doesn't care...' 'Tell her to believe. She's a hero. It's what she has to do.' ------------ Part 3 ------- ''I can drop you off as far as Houston. I'm turning back from there." "Anything. I can pay you..." Cat offered, ready to pull out her little wallet, or a cheque. $100, $1000, $1,000,000 she'd pay it to get closer to Kara. "Please don't. It'll be good company, someone with me. Someone to talk to other than the radio. I leave in 30. Is there anything you need to get? Are you hungry before we leave?" "No. I have everything." Cat shook her head, messy curls falling over her coat shoulders, still wet. "Well, I don't know about talking. I'm pretty boring, people tell me." "I've heard the rumors of your cold smile. I know who you are. It's odd to me that you aren't using your millions to get to her through the air, but I'm sure you're willing to say. Take a seat." He offered, and Cat gratefully took it and ordered a cup of bold coffee, black. Strong. Dark as hell and hot as fire. "But the thing is, and maybe is my heart talking here, but love is never boring. It's wild, untamed, and painful as hell. But it's good when it's real. Tell me about this girl. I know you've had your share, I read a lot of magazines as I pass through towns, but if this one has you running across the country frantically to find her, well, she must be really something." "I... I'll explain on the way. I... she has secrets I'd rather not reveal in... here." "I think I already know." He said and slid over a magazine, he kept the pages parted with his thumb, and Cat took it and flipped it open partly, and gasped at the sight. Her, telling the world that she was naming the new hero Supergirl. Cat flipped to the front and found the magazine over 2 years old. That explained the faded edges and crippled pages, and met the man's eyes, nodding slightly. He just smiled and finished his meal quickly, then dropped the napkin and a tip onto the counter and got up, offering his hand to Cat as he did so. She didn't take it, but followed gratefully, settling into the passenger seat of the truck as he fired the car up, and the radio came on and softly blared something old and country. He went to flick it off, but Cat shook her head and told him to leave it if he wanted to. That she really didn't mind. And it might come as a shock, but Cat did have a soft spot for that old country, and besides, the sweet sweet love songs spoke of exactly what Kara was, all sugar and spice, all blueberry pie on sunny windowsills, and bluebirds singing. And suddenly all Cat wanted was her kitchen, with a slice of such a pie, Kara in her arms kissing whipped cream off her nose, and sunshine filtering through the curtains. "So, she's quite super, isn't she?" The man said, quoting with his fingers as they slowly took off onto the highway, and Cat sighed and laughed, drying her hair in a few napkins she'd stolen from the tabletop inside the cafe. "To find her, can you make these big wheels burn?" -------------- By the time Cat arrived in the place the man had promised, it was a lot of days later, and Cat had long run out of battery in her phone, and had randomly stopped to make calls from phones to keep tabs on Kara's situation, and had gotten more sad with every call in. Kara was getting worse. She was powerless, and currently so sick she just slept. Always slept. She talked to Alex directly now, no longer Winn, and Alex was as eager to have Cat back as Cat herself was. Kara still didn't talk to her, until this call. Now, Cat wished she had enough power to crush the phone like Kara so often had at work when something ticked her off. Now it was Kara that had ticked Cat off. Kara was gone. Just gone. Alex didn't know where, nobody did. Kara was just... gone. She had left at night, apparently for fresh air, and had gone for a short walk down to the grocery store and back, so she'd said. But now she'd been missing for 7 hours, and nobody knew where to look. Cat told them to search everywhere, call everyone, and hung up. Kara Kara Kara. Where the hell would she go, silly girl? "I'm off back to Washington, I hope you find her." The man said gently, coming up beside her, and she wiped at her tears. "I'll never stop until I find her. She's somewhere. Like this, in her state, she won't get far. I have to go. I'm getting on the next plane flight to National City, and I might just crush her when I find her." "Might want to hug her first." The man joked, and Cat laughed bitterly. "Might buy a ring worth billions first, to show her I'm choosing her, the little heathen. She's a bit nuts, doing this." "I don't know much about aliens, but if she really is the one, then she should get better when you find her." "I know. I just hope I know where to look." ----------- When Cat landed in National City, she knew where to go. Her penthouse. Somehow, Kara would be there. How? Cat had no clue how. She just knew. But finding Kara cold and wet, in the dark, crying, sitting on the beach, that wasn't an expectation. She'd expected a powerless superhero, but still Kara Danvers. Not, this. Seeing Kara like this, sitting by the shoreline in her suit, watching the ocean, crying softly, Cat didn't know whether to say something or not. After fighting her way back across the country to find Kara, Cat wanted nothing more than to wrap Kara in her arms and maybe smack her on the head for being so damn stupid. But seeing her like this, Cat knew Kara wasn't just dealing with her lost powers. She was dealing with way more, stuff she'd lost, stuff she'd thought should no longer exist. It was when Cat stepped up a few meters behind her, her feet hitting the sand as well, that Kara looked up and turned to meet her eyes. Cat expected her to get up, maybe hug her, but she didn't. Kara looked up, but she kept at the water, flexing her hands in the sand now that her powers were coming back. "Kara." It was a whisper. Cat didn't know if she could say anything above that, seeing this girl so broken, even as she was powering back up. "Kara, I'm sorry, I had no idea. I didn't know you could, that we were... I've never heard of something like this in my life, I didn't think you and I could possibly be..." "It's not your fault, Cat." Cat stopped, Kara's words ringing over the ocean, over the beach, cold and broken. "Why did you say you love me?" Kara whispered, and Cat gasped, staring at her head on. "Because I do." "And then you said you wish you didn't." "Because I do." Cat repeated. Kara gasped now, and turned to face her, tears in her eyes. "You wish you didn't love me?" Kara asked, getting up to talk to Cat head on. "Yes. I do. Because I love you more than I ever should." Cat whispered, walking towards Kara. Cat reached up and started running her fingers through Kara's messy gold waves and settling them over her shoulder, fixing the strap of her tank top peeking out from the suit top as she did, a habit for perfection. "I shouldn't want you as much as I do, because Kara, you're my assistant, you work for me. If it ever gets out, that you and I... hell, I knew it wasn't good before you came out as Supergirl. And then you did." "And?" "And... I lost my heart again. I fell all over again, you and your mad colour wheel of power. And I do love the suit. Maybe it is a kink, a stupid thing, but the cape... I have the same problem with Superman and Batman. But this one was you, a girl, so close to me every day, my god Kara... the dreams I have about you... and so I left." "You left Catco because of me." Kara connected, shocked. "I did. But apparently the universe won't let me leave you. God knows I tried." Kara just laughed miserably, scoffing, something she'd no doubt learned from Cat. "Cat, I... the universe only has one soulmate for me. When I lost Krypton, I thought I would lose the chance to find my soulmate. I never thought I'd find the one on another planet. When I figured it out, that it was you, thanks to my mother's hologram, I... I lost it. Paired with what you said... I I should have contacted you back, I was scared. I didn't know I would lose my powers, that it was a soulmate thing, I was scared that I was poisoned or hurt, or... sick, something. I... Alex told me you were coming back for me, and I ignored it. I was scared for my health, more than anything else, and I couldn't even think about love. But when you got in the city, I felt it. The power. The... strength. I didn't know what to think, so I came here. I..." "Are you back at full strength?" "Almost. It'll come. Cat... I, we... do we have a chance?" "I don't know. You're such a nerd, you're strange, and you like comics and toys and... how? Why did the universe... pick you for me? An alien? Isn't human enough?" "You have high standards? Nobody on earth would do?" Kara joked. "Okay, sure, I'll accept that. It's one answer in this mess. It makes no sense... but you fly and shoot lasers and ice and..." "And we're soulmates." "How did you know? On Krypton? How did you know your soulmate?" "Not like this, we would have had an apocalypse..." Cat laughed, and Kara joined her. It felt good to laugh, even like this, dirty and wet and soaked to the bone. Cat looked like hell, matted hair, no makeup, more dirt then bare skin on her, and Kara looked the same, a disaster, her suit messy and wet, muddy and covered in sand, and Cat seemed to have gone through some battles on the way back. "Kara, I want a chance with you, with us. I don't know if we can have one, but I want one." Cat whispered, holding Kara's hand tightly, laughing at the usually white simple manicure that was now dark brown and messy, dirty. "Can we find a way, Kara?" "I don't know if Kara can. Kara is just an assistant. But heroes can, and this hero will." "Well, do you want to come inside?" Cat said, gesturing to her penthouse on the cliff. "Get cleaned up? Then, we can talk." "I'd like that."

[geek-and-nina]

SuperCat Week 3 Day 1: Abilities

@supercatweek

“Cat, would you ever consider letting me take you flying?” Kara asked on one of their rare free-days. They were currently sprawled across the couch every which way; dozing and watching television. It was a lazy Sunday afternoon and Kara was beginning to feel that itch just beneath her skin that drove her to take to the skies.

“Uhm… I don’t know. The last time was kind of traumatic.” Cat reminded her of the Red Kryptonite Incident.

“That wasn’t flying, that was falling.” Kara rolled her eyes though the comment still stung a little. Kara hated any instance in which she wasn’t in control of herself.

“The time before that you were actively kidnapping me.” Cat points out, enjoying the verbal sparring match.

“You have to admit that you deserved a good kidnapping and that I was a much better abductor than any other that you’d ever had. I even provided you with a scoop that any other reporter would have killed for. Anyways, you really need to let me show you some of the more positive aspects of my abilities. I haven’t flown for fun with a passenger since Alex and I were kids. I can rarely get J’onn to go up in the air with me, and you know that Kal and I have been on rocky footing since I banished Mon-El to the Phantom Zone.” Kara pouted adorably.

“I still say that you should have let Clark kill the son of a bitch. The dick would be dead and your cousin might drop some of that ‘holier than thou’ attitude. I must admit that I liked your cousin a lot more before I knew his secret identity.” Cat says with a cheeky grin.

“Don’t remind me.” Kara replies with disgust dripping from her tone.

“You’ve both got those amazing House of El asses. They’re quite distracting and this is just yet another example of how I have one-upped the lesser Lane.” My Super is better than hers in every way.” Cat smiles and leans into Kara’s shoulder.

“Flattery will get you everywhere, Ms.Grant,” Kara says with a particularly languid kiss. “Except out of a date with the clouds.”

Cat groaned, unused to having Kara see through her schemes to get out of the things that she didn’t want to do. It seemed that the ability would be the newest addition to Kara’s roster of super-powers.

“I want it to be noted that I don’t like this.” Cat said firmly as she stood up with only a hint of her good-natured glare turned on Kara.

“Understood.” Kara replied.

“However, you’ve waxed poetic about your view of the National City Skyline enough that the image has wormed its way into my dreams and I would like to see it for myself.” Cat acquiesces apprehensively.

Kara’s eyes lit up and made the harrowing trip worth it for Cat already.

“Thank you, Cat. You won’t regret this, I swear!” Kara jumped up to get everything that they could possibly need together.

“You sound like one of those stupid intern/assistants after you’ve convinced me not to fire them and give them a second chance.”” Kara could hear the eyeroll in her voice.

“They usually deserve a second chance. The only reason that I survived being your assistant was because I had super-powers. You’re holding  them all up to my impossible standard.” Kara protested. She had gotten halfway into her super-suit before she was distracted.

“I miss having Supergirl for an assistant.” Cat said with a sigh, ignoring the solid point that Kara had made and admiring her figure. “She makes a much better girlfriend though.”

“You ought to tell her that Kara Danvers is a jealous woman and doesn’t appreciate aliens infringing on her turf.” the reporter says with a light giggle as Cat’s hands stroke the exposed flanks where Kara had yet to pull on the suit’s top half.

“Maybe flying can wait until after you have shown me some of your other, more stimulating abilities, hm?” Cat hustled the word into Kara’s ear sending tremors down her bulletproof spine.

“In the morning, I’ll take you to see the sunrise. From the actual sky, it’s ten times more amazing.” Kara promised as Cat made her breath catch and stutter in a way that only happened when Cat was seriously trying to distract her.

The older woman fumbled for the skirt’s catch and mentally cursed the IT Hobbit Winn for having ever been born. She was really trying to be nicer to Kara’s friends. It was just a lot harder when you were dating one of the planet’s hottest, best, and kindest residents and her stupid skirt was stuck.

Kara brushed Cat’s fingers away from their conundrum and took over with deft skill, her eyes never leaving Cat’s face and lips never once faltering in their caresses of Cat’s own. She allowed the skirt to fall and lifted Cat up as though she weighed nothing. Strong hands clutched at Kara’s shoulders and strong legs locked around her waist, sending bolts of electricity through  the heroine’s body. Kara soon found all of her senses completely overwhelmed. She could only feel, smell, and see Cat Grant, as though they were the only two people on Earth.

Kara turned so that Cat’s body was pressed against the wall as she helped the older woman out of her clothes. She licked, sucked, and kissed every new inch of Cat that was revealed thoroughly. Cat wasn’t sitting idly by either, her own ministrations were easily distracting Kara from what she was trying to do. Her hips were continuing to grind insistently against Kara’s own. Cat was beginning to get needy and she could already feel that she had soaked through her panties.

Kara pivoted suddenly and gently laid Cat out on the bed, relieving her of the last of her clothes stitch by stitch. Kara Zor-El was the picture of self-control, her hands steady and breath only slightly uneven as she undressed a writhing, wanton Cat whose only thought was of getting Kara to touch her where she needed her.

“Kara, you quit your teasing or I swear that you won’t live to see the morning.” Cat threatened.

Kara smirked before bending down to tease a nipple into a painfully taut peak. Cat cursed her beautiful mouth three ways to Sunday. The Kryptonian gave the same treatment to the other side and was met with the same reaction. Cat couldn’t quite believe the lengths Kara could drive her body to. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Kara started her path southward.

[change-the-rules]

Maggie thought she had gotten used to the weirdness that came with dating Alex and Lucy, with the Lanes and Supers and secret agencies. But that was before Cat Grant (THE Cat Grant) waltzed into her apartment and proceeded to give her a shovel talk.

So this may NOT have been a prompt but oops I kinda treated it like one? idk I saw it over on nerdsbianhokie’s page the other day and since it got submitted to my inbox as well I took a crack at it….

The sudden knocking coming from the front door startled Maggie from her deep concentration carefully pruning her newest bonsai tree. She cursed softly placing down the small shears and swapping them for her gun as she approached the sound.

She wasn’t expecting anyone.

Lucy was attending a meeting in Washington and Alex was running a late night op. Even Kara was busy, with a date Maggie was fairly certain but little Danvers was being rather cagey about it.

Maggie moved silently to the door to check the peephole, nearly dropping her gun when she registered who was on the other side.

Maggie blinked once, twice, three times but the image didn’t shift or change.

She was startled even further when a voice she had only ever heard on television and maybe starring in a few of her dreams as a teenager rang out, “I would leave the stealth missions to your black ops girlfriends, Margery. Now were you planning on leaving me out on your doorstep all night?”

Maggie blinked again. Maybe she actually fell asleep on the couch? That had to be the explanation.

“That was a rhetorical question, I strongly advise against that course of action.”

It hit Maggie all at once that this probably wasn’t some sort of elaborate hallucination and she scrambled to click the safety back on her gun and open the door.

She did remain prepared for a fight should her guest, in fact turn out to be a shapeshifting attacker.

The door was barely open before Cat Grant swept into the apartment like she owned the place(and couldn’t figure out why on Earth she had bought it but still).

Maggie was tempted to pull out her phone and snap a picture because THE Cat Grant, Queen of Media was standing regally in her apartment just staring…at….her…

Which okay that was incredibly unnerving and Maggie had stared stoically into the eyes of many of Gotham’s most criminally deranged.

With what she hopes is subtle clearing of her throat Maggie finds her voice and her manners, “Can I,uh get you something to drink, Ma’-” Maggie wasn’t a detective for nothing and caught the subtle eyebrow raise just in time to smoothly prevent ‘ma’am from escaping her lips,  “Ms. Grant?”

Maggie watches with narrowed eyes as Cat’s gaze sweeps appraisingly over her apartment. “I don’t suppose you keep keep much top shelf liquor around?”

Years of microaggressions piled on top of the macro keep Maggie from outwardly bristling and she decides to meet this woman’s challenge instead of kicking her the fuck out of her apartment before even finding out why she’s here.

“Scotch good? Ms.Grant.”

Cat looks up with her signature smirk, only mmhmming while Maggie ducks into the kitchen.

She surveys her rather extensive liquor options, especially now that she and Lucy had merged their scotch collection, while she ponders how she wants to play this.

Early on she and Lucy had bonded over their love of scotch that had stemmed from each of their formative experiences with 'the old boys club’ in the military and GCPD respectively.

Maggie maintained scotch didn’t have to be expensive to be good and she had a decent collection of rare inexpensive bottles.

And maybe she was known to splurge occasionally on a damn fine scotch but with Lucy’s travels and connections her girlfriend had bottles Maggie could only ever have dreamed of.

Maggie liked to compare her hard found 'bargains’ with Lucy ridiculously priced stuff.

They of course make a big deal of slow sipping to savor the taste and they can only ever do it when Alex is not around.

Because Alex’s preferences mostly start and end with high alcohol content and she is just as likely to knock back a glass twenty-five year old scotch in one go as she is to savor it, a connoisseur she is not.

Maggie knows from Kara’s stories Cat Grant very much is.

There are a few very expensive bottles Maggie figures Lucy wouldn’t mind if she cracked open for Cat freakin’ Grant, though Maggie supposes it would just be Cat Grant to Lucy.

Maggie’s hand hovers just over one of the most expensive bottles of scotch she’s ever seen let alone had in her apartment.

Then she pulls back and eyes one of her prized bottles, it was from a small former speakeasy in nowhere Nebraska.

After prohibition, they opened up a small restaurant and distillery where the usage of some family secret for making scotch taste twice as old as it truly was significantly lowered their pricing.

Satisfied with her choice Maggie pulls out the bottle pouring a generous helping into two tumblers.

She hands one off to Cat who smirks and apparently can’t help commenting, “Straight what an interesting choice.”

Maggie finds herself at an uncharacteristic loss as to what this woman’s motives could possibly be.

She watches as Cat takes a sip and is stunned by the blinding smile she’s flashed. “They did well with you detective, I know Lucy keeps several ridiculously expensive bottles around and yet you chose a cheaper though significantly better fare, cheers.”

Maggie doesn’t quite manage to keep the bite out of her voice, “So that was what a test?”

“Something like that, Agent Mulder.”

“I’m a detective.” It isn’t that she missed the pop culture reference it was just that it was inaccurate and she’s tired of playing games.

Cat rolls her eyes, “And I’m the founder of CatCo Worldwide Media.” She says in the same blatant tone. 

“Oh, are we not stating the obvious? You’re also dating Scully, do try and keep up. I would’ve gone with Reyes but it seemed in poor taste to risk starting off this conversation with a racist misunderstanding. ”

“And that conversation would be?”

“I suppose I am just here to ensure you keep from doing anything to warrant my wrath, detective. Be good to Agent Scully and Baby Lane and we will be just fine.”

“So this is a shovel talk? didn’t realize either of them rated that highly on the Queen of all Media’s radar.”

Maggie had thought she’d gotten used to all of the bizarre happenings that went hand in hand with dating a pair of super secret agents with superhero relatives and alien bosses and vigilante exes.

That did not, however account for a late night appearance by Cat Grant, THE Cat Grant in her own damn living room to give her a fuckin’ shovel talk.

Cat’s eyes flash and Maggie realizes her mistake too late.

“There is one person on this giant hunk of rock that I give more than a singular fuck about besides my boys, that person is Kara Danvers.” And Maggie even with her typically unshakeable countenance takes a tiny step back at the vehemence. 

“And while her completely undiscerning capacity for gooey emotions far surpasses my own she would rewrite the very laws of nature for Scully, ergo I had to find a fuck to spare for her as well. Furthermore, believe it or not once upon a time Lois Lane, arch enemies now we may be was once on that, at the time even shorter list, meaning Baby Lane made the cut too and since she didn’t break my heart,”

Maggie’s eyes widened at the statement, “She got readmitted when she found her way back into my life. Any other comments you’d care to make, Margery?”

Maggie bit her tongue at Cat’s irritating name game power play, “I stand corrected and for what it’s worth I would never intentionally do anything to hurt either one of them. ”

“Yes, well, see that you don’t.”

“That can’t be it, C'mon what’re your threats then, lay 'em on me. Gunna get your protege, Supergirl to toss me into space?” Maggie questioned with a smirk knowing no matter what Alex and J’onn insisted there was no way Cat didn’t know who Supergirl really was.

“Violence? How plebian.”

“Doxx me?”

“Very reddit bottom dweller, I’m almost insulted.”

“Smear campaign?”

“Honestly, just how uncreative do you think I am. I’ve moved on to mildly insulted. Oh no, if you hurt Alex or Lucy I will go to your Captain and with all of the strings I hold in my perfectly manicured hands, I will get you assigned to be my mother’s personal security detail every time she wants to go see Wicked again or get her broom serviced.”

Maggie’s mouth opened and closed but no sound emerged. 

She was tempted to say that Cat couldn’t do that but thankfully some functioning part of her brain that had no desire to see Wicked 47 times (in two months?! thanks Kara’s endless chatter about everything) prevented her from doing so.

She had a feeling Cat would make it happen just to prove a point. Speaking of Cat, she looked rather smug with her handiwork.

“Now if you’ll excuse me I have a date I must be getting back to. Oh and Mulder, Kara seems to have quite the soft spot for you too, I suppose that’s one more fuck I’ll need to dig up.” 

And just as quickly as she swept in Cat Grant was gone leaving a dumbfounded Maggie in her wake.

It was a good fifteen minutes later of fruitlessly trying to return her attention to her bonsai tree that Maggie’s head jerked up, wait….. a date?!

[thirteenthdyke]

ITS MY GIRL MS.GRANT

[naturalhero-archive]

"KIERAH!!!!!!!" Cat yelled from behind her desk as she was looking over the latest spread.

⸢ @naturallygood ⸥ :// MS.GRANT

       she jamp. kara hadn’t even been in the same room as ms. grant when she heard her name being bellowed through-out CatCo. her super hearing picking up on her boss’s yell causing her slight panic. heart racing she continuously pressed the button inside the elevator knowing it wouldn’t in fact make the elevator go any faster but hoped it would and ms. grant wouldn’t be angry at her for taking more than a millisecond to answer her calls.        with the ting of the elevator reaching the floor she wanted to get off at her finger switched from floor number to the door opening hearing the growing frustration in her boss’s voice the longer the young kryptonian kept her waiting. door finally opening after what seemed forever kara flew out between the doors as quickly as she could making her way towards the queen of all medias office.      ❝ Sorry, I’m here!! I have your coffee.. ❞ as the words left her mouth she had already been at the other side of the desk holding the coffee out toward her boss hoping that the temperature had been just right.