#all because they couldn’t pony up a little more to get in an actual submarine with an experienced crew

[ditaliaa]

Me hearing people talk about the Titan submersible as if this wasn’t something that could be avoided and how it’s the price of innovation for the advancement of science

[ramenfallsbutnotudon]

3% Season 1 Episode 1 Re-watch (w/ spoiler commentary)

(by spoiler commentary I mean my stream of consciousness watching and thinking about the entire 2 season series)

·         I didn’t realize how prevalent Marco was in the beginning. We see him walking behind Michele and even leaving his home’s caretaker (?) with the note for his son.

·         Michele seems to have just been waiting for this day. She gratified her walls to keep track of time like a mock calendar, and of course the photo of Andre (her brother).

·         I didn’t notice the wooden-faced man (forgot his name) seen her pass in the window on the way to the procession.

·         Ivana, The wooden faced man, and I’m assuming the other dude (the one who works with Joana in S2) ((Silas??) are in that La Causa meeting – along with another I can’t recognize or remember right now.

·         Joana speaks to Rafael because his registration is fake. We find out hers is as well. Although hers is “official” so to speak, maybe she wanted to see if it worked.

·         Homegirl really did take that kiwi from Rafael’s bloody hand.

·         Rafael was willing to do anything to pass (steal the cube) because he knows this is his only chance after stealing his brother’s registration and failing La Causa the first time. This also seemed to resonate with Joana, since we know why she can’t “go home” and who she’s running from.

·         They think the fruit is too sweet because they have no goddamn fruit everything is on the offshore. Could also be an analogy for the pretty, sweet appearance of the off shore. Like it’s too good to be true.

·         Bruna was shown La Causa’s symbol and asked about her opinions of them. This should be some sort of foreshadowing. Also Bruna’s little sister standing alone with three other girls, and the camera dramatically panning to her leaving up the stairs – going to a place her sister and family can no longer reach. (RIP girl)

·         Did Michele help Fernando because it was a part of her cover, or because she actually wanted to help him? She grabbed that necklace in the beginning and also seen the wooden faced man, so it’s safe to assume the moment she stepped out of her house she was in anarchy mode. If Fernando hadn’t helped her, she would have been eliminated. Interesting the two moles both couldn’t pass the test, but one relied on himself and the other outside help. This mirrors the s2 ending where Rafael is alone trying to help himself and repair things with his girlfriend Elisa, and Michele is asking Fernando for help.

·         Fernando really does hate his father. My first time watching this series, until his dad double crossed him I thought maybe he was exaggerating. But he really does detest him and doesn’t want to be like him. He also mentions something about wanting his mobility back, but we know that’s a lie because he’s comfortable in his wheelchair. Unless, he did feel that way but after his elimination those feelings also went away. Or maybe it was when he was told he could walk again and confided in Michele? Either way, this is something to look out for.

·         Marco really isn’t shit. I knew this my first watch, but seeing him again lie and (seemingly) flirt with the interviewer just re-affirms that. Then bragging about how he is an Alvarez to Agata. Then decided to play “good guy” and breakup the mob that was attacking Rafael. Again, interesting that they have this parallel again but instead Rafael is trying to stop Marco from harming people.

·         Joana is an absolute fucking genius, I mean can we just give it up for her? She was my favorite, along with Rafael and Fernando being a close third.  11 cubes? Seeing through everyone’s bullshit but not getting involved? Catching Ezequiel’s eye early on?

·         Speaking of Ezequiel, during his speech he looked up to where Julia used to stand. He also did some jedi mind fuckery with speaking to certain candidates. Still not sure how he pulled that off.

·         Michele, like Gloria in s2, does not repeat Ezequiel’s mantra the first time he has everyone else repeat it.

·         Vape Goddess™ Aline was serving looks and being sexy as all hell. Even dare I say, a bit intimidating? She really got Ezequiel good about his wife’s suicide, would have loved to have seen the outcome of that before he was interrupted.

·         Of course, Ezequiel enjoys half drowning himself because it reminds him of his dead wife who soothed him with water and sensatory manipulation. His stress triggers him to resort to that.

·         The murder had just taken place where Andre murdered someone after finding out the truth of the founding trio.

·         Also before the process began, we saw some religious founding couple fanatics praying outside. I think Fernando rolled by and gave them dirty looks.

·         I forgot how tiny the offshore really is. 4,000 miles away by submarine.

·         They hyped the hell out of the Alexandre character by showing him, his interview, and his suicide. I thought he was going to be one of the main crew during my first watch, but I see it’s just an early on way to show what the process does to people. And hits at the “coping methods” (i.e. have a fuck ton of kids for our sterile island of passive-aggressive hell). I think he would have passed if he just shut the fuck up when the lady was smiling.

·         Did I already mention that Ezequiel has a hard on for Joana and that he probably knew who Michele was as soon as she was passed and got the mole news?

·         Joana is great.

·         Its funny Ezekiel called Denise in to talk to her and decided to drown her and she thanks him. I know Aline is appalled, and I don’t know if that was some sort of dog and pony show he was putting on – but can we talk about how toxic that water dunk has become? It was initially sensual and calming, but mixed with E’s feelings of grief and his slim grip on shifting power paradigms, it’s turned into something terrifying. Forcibly shutting out the world – silence – but also a sort of sick rebirth for those he manipulates. I think of Michele a lot writing this bullet point and her s2 relationship with water after Joana tells E to go fuck himself and Michele becomes the protégée.

·         “I do this every day to remind myself that what we do is a matter of life and death” so maybe it is also to bury feelings of guilt, shame and inadequacy – the voluntary near death drowning in a glass sink thing.

·         “Thank you for almost drowning me, I loved it. I’ve learned so much, you’re such a great mentor”  “You’re welcome, young grasshopper” as Aline looks on disgusted lmao.

·         I bet Ezequiel is into some really kinky shit since his wife died. Maybe bondage. He seems the type.

·         Oh, fuck off Cassia.

·         I love how the snake Michele already knows what’s up when they call her and Bruna away. I could point out that there were other people at that table and Fernando couldn’t have been the only one who was around, but then again he might have been the only one who cared. Although the candidates are a small bunch, they seem to have their own cliques and groups. And Michele and Fernando became friends in the cube test.

·         Michele also mentions that she’s sorry for talking shit about the process and/or a candidate. Does she know that they record everything? They are constantly being surveilled? Or most likely, it is a part of her act.

·         Michele put her head down, got her lies together and started the spin of lies for Bruna. The rare snake Michele is born.

·         “…Bruna, please” I felt like this was more of a “please lie for me/cover for me” and not a “please believe me”.

·         SHE SAID “TRUST ME, OKAY?” before getting her best friend killed. Is that not what she told Fernando at the end of s2? This snake is a work of art. In a bad way.

·         In the Michele flashback where the wooden man is coaching her, it reminds me of the scene when Rafael meets Elisa. The computers didn’t pick up in their personality analysis that Michele was lying. Elisa and Rafael were not compatible. Can the machines only pick up certain personality types and not deviants? Do they rely on honesty? Because Marco lied through his teeth, Michele lied through her teeth, Rafael lied through his teeth…Does this have something to do with the Founding Trio or a modification by the Founding Couple?

·         Of course the old man wisely advises Michele to stay away from his protégé Ezequiel. She should have listened too, we could have been spared the poison catastrophe later on.

·         I think she really is grieving Bruna’s death, but it’s interesting the conversation of “holding back tears” comes to her mind just before her actions. Like this is Michele now, crying and grieving before going back to the snake mole that she is 98% of the rest of her time there.

·         Can we talk about homegirl’s shoes though? Are those suede booties? ·         

Is this what Ezequiel has candidates running around in? lmao

·         Fernando stay away from the snake baby boy, she’s no good for you.

[coeurdastronaute]

Either/Or: Duck III

Previously on Duck

Even with a full arm cast, the CEO worked hard, choosing to devote herself to the distraction of her job. High in the belfry of LCorp’s tower, she toiled and tried not to count on a hero showing up on her balcony, though every single night she promised herself to ignore it, and yet she spent the day waiting eagerly. The days were spent waiting to avoid thinking about what her future might hold, which turned into a more exhausting job than her already exhausting one.

Work was a different kind of obstacle with a full arm cast, but Lena persevered anyway. It didn’t hurt that she got doted on behind the scenes. She grumbled about it, but the hero didn’t take it to heart at all. Little things had a way of appearing when she needed them. There was extra aspirin and her favorite juice one morning. There were flowers when she woke and little notes that had inside jokes. She was someone who had inside jokes. There were lunches left while Lena was in meetings, and there were homemade baked goods to get rid of the afternoon lethargy.

She got in the habit as well. One of her finished books made its way into the hero’s possession as she left it with a note on the balcony at the hotel. She made a sandwich and left it waiting, wrapped up nicely when she fell asleep early one night. When she went to a dinner meeting, extra dessert made its way back to the hero waiting. Lena was someone who thought of things like that, now.

More important than all of it, there were evenings, the deep, dark nights spent up much too late talking and shivering on the balcony. It was a delicate dance, to talk and not push. It felt more intimate than Lena could remember having a relationship in a long time, if that was what she could even call it. It was how she learned that Supergirl had to eat constantly due to her high metabolism. It was how she found herself telling a superhero about what it was like to be pushed against a wall and strangled, what it felt like to feel like nothing because of her mother’s words. She hadn’t meant to tell anyone those things, she hadn’t meant to think those things. But they came out at night, when the world was quiet and the stars were dancing brightest against the city lights.

The computer monitor on her desk had another spreadsheet on it that was important enough, that needed her attention, but the CEO couldn’t find it in herself to care at all. Instead, she just kept thinking about the way Supergirl looked when she talked about her own parents, this joy and this sorry that was so intertwined, so precise, it was contagious in equal measures. Lena thought about the way her face looked when she confessed her own childhood.

For even more reasons, in that moment, the CEO found herself hating the former Luthor owner. Her big brother would have known. No one would believe her if she told them about Lex near his wife, or how he mooned over her the first day he met her practically laying himself out on Lena’s bed while he talked about the girl with soft, red hair who smiled at him and said ‘You need a hat.’ Those words were on his ribs and when she knit him one three weeks later, he wore it proudly in the snow.

When Lena was fifteen years old, she held her nephew while her brother beamed from the other side of the hospital room. Dressed in his slacks and shirt rolled up at the elbows, he crossed his arms over his broad chest and the angles of his naturally stern face turned almost soft.

If she had been smarter, if she had been paying attention Lena always assumed that she would have seen the insanity right there. But it lingered below the surface, already coming out in different ways, but non obvious enough to warrant worry. Who would worry about the brilliant billionaire with a new family?

In her dreams, Lena stared at her brother's face and she looked for the signs and beat herself up so bad she woke up gasping from time to time, when the guilt got to be too much.

Lena watched it happen, watched him fall in love and watched him lose his mind, and as she crawled into bed after a hug from the hero, she felt the coldest shiver of fear and dread creep up her spine. She couldn’t help but wonder if she was capable of the same kind of evil, if she was capable of losing something she hadn’t considered.

“Ms. Luthor?” Jess asked, repeating herself for the twelfth time, and only finally getting a response from the distracted boss.

“Yes, sorry, what is it, Jess?” she sat up a little more in her chair and tapped her pen a few times against her desk.

“Can I get you anything for lunch?”

“No, thank you,” Lena smiled and leaned forward, suddenly self-conscious. “I brought something.”

It was almost a lie. She had sushi delivered to her that morning, fresh from Tokyo, and it made her heart giddy. For just a second, of course. And then the dred. That creeping fear of what it all meant overwhelmed her entirely and she found herself lost in those thoughts and memories of her brother and his descent.

“Will you get the boys something though? They’re growing lads and need a bite,” she remembered her guards who sat in the lobby, waiting for her to leave or move down the hall.

“Of course.”

New files were put on the corner of her desk, but Lena didn’t particularly care. She had too many thoughts for her office.

“When is my meeting with the Beta team?” she finally asked as she stood.

“Not until two.”

Jess moved around the desk, knowingly pick up what she knew needed refiled, organizing what remained while Lena grabbed her purse and moved toward the fridge beneath her bar.

“I’m going out for lunch.”

“It’s hot out there,” the assistant warned.

“I need some sun. I need to be out of this room.”

“I’ll phone down to security.”

“Just one. I don’t want an entire battalion just to go sit alone at the park.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Could you also call the hotel and have them deliver two large pizzas around ten tonight?”

“Pizza?”

“Yes, you know, that round thing with cheese?” Lena smiled as she moved toward the door. She couldn’t help but recognize a bit of amusement in her friend’s voice. “Sometimes I like pizza.”

“Enough to eat two large ones?”

“Thank you, Jess,” Lena smiled and shook her head. “I appreciate it.”

“Anything else? Maybe some bread sticks? Ice cream? Cheeseburgers?” she taunted.

“Just pizza for now. You’re the one who keeps telling me to expand my horizons.”

“That’s true,” she sighed as she stood behind the large desk and set up the rest of the day. “Have a good lunch.”

Lena wasn’t dumb. She knew that Jess wasn’t either, but she certainly didn’t know where to start when it came to her new friend, and so she took the half-hearted needling and she was thankful Jess was easy enough to not push too far.

It wasn’t even particularly normal for her to want to escape the tower, and yet, Lena found herself doing all kinds of things she never expected recently. That was how her brain now worked.

Years passed before Lena realized she hadn’t had time to think. Life just happened, was thrust upon her. And then her heart fluttered back and her head fluttered twice as hard. Sitting on the bench in the park a few blocks away from her building, she nibbled on delicious sushi and dug out the newest book added to her collection by the hero.

By the time her watch reminded her that there was actual business to conduct, she’d reached an almost state of zen. Children played and ran around the trees. People milled about, the world happened in this tiny slice of life and Lena was actually a part of it, she was actually existing and the sky wasn’t falling.

She dreaded checking her phone, though as she made her way back toward the entrance of the park, Lena found herself compelled to check the damage of her extended absence. Behind her, a behemoth of a man in a suit followed, eyes darting around behind dark sunglasses. It did nothing to make her feel safe. Nothing would. Fate just had a way of smacking her right in the fac--

“Golly, I am so sorry,” a voice hurried as Lena felt herself come in contact with an immovable force. She bounced back a step before strong hands grabbed her tightly.

It was those eyes, she realized, the moment she saw them. All warning signals went off like a submarine about to be torpedoed. It might have even been comical if she had the wherewithal to imagine the controllers in her head scurrying around while red lights swirled and warnings blared over the speakers. Instead, she just stared at those eyes.

“Duck!” she tugged a little as she felt her bodyguard approach and try to swing at the person who was currently holding her tight.

Much too quickly, they were tipped down with ease, avoiding the fist of the protector.

“Oh fuck,” Lena sighed, furrowing deeply as she wound her arms around a familiar neck and inhaled that familiar smell. “Not again.”

“I’m so sorry. I should have watched where I was going, and then--”

Both were speechless, both were terrified, both couldn’t figure out how to move again. That moment, the earth-shattering, life-changing moment they experienced amidst burning rubble and an attack copter, was supposed to be a one time feeling. But they felt it change, for better or worse, right there in the park in the middle of a warm afternoon.

Lena forgot how to breathe, and she didn’t know what to do. She knew, logically, that Supergirl had to exist in the world, and yet, seeing her now, was just completely new and unexpected. It was easier to keep a distance, to not think of this.

“Easy, Peter,” Lena held up her hand as she was righted and the guard fret over her. “I’m fine. Just an accident. Give me some space.”

She waited for him to back up before surveying the girl in front of her. Gone was the suit, the costume. In its place was glasses, soft blonde hair tied up in a pony tail, soft colors and starched shirts. She was anything but super, but standing right there, Lena was positive, and she now intimately understood why she was always afraid to ask about the hero’s real identity. Now it was real. Now it was possible. Now it was there.

Those eyes were wide and worried. All kind of blue and happy and different. Lena couldn’t find the rest of the world to save her life. All that existed was the moment between them when she came face to face with the girl of her dreams.

“I’m sorry again,” the not-so-strange, stranger muttered and adjusted her own glasses nervously.

“Come on, don’t pretend,” Lena shook her head. “Fate made us have the same interaction twice. Surely, that’s a little bit funny.”

“Maybe we’re both so dense it knew we needed a second go at it,” she smiled. Lena would know that smile anywhere. She spent the past few weeks mapping it in the dark. “Is your arm alright?”

The worry was new and still very foreign to her. But as the hero reached out and held the cast, scanning it tenderly, with a kind of familiarity that was normal for them.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” she promised, looking down to make sure it was still attached. When she met Supergirl’s gaze, she swallowed and cleared her throat. “We don’t have to… do this or whatever. You haven’t said anything before, and I respect--”

“My name is Kara,” she interrupted, hand sticking out, waiting for the niceties to be met. “It’s nice to meet you, officially.”

“Lena,” the CEO breathed, taking the hand offered to her.

They stood there shaking hands as if they’d never learned how before. It was almost the most contact they had mustered.

“I never introduced myself because I wasn’t sure you were ready.”

“I probably wasn’t,” Lena confessed. “I’m probably not.”

“I wasn’t either.”

There was a weirdness to knowing someone and not knowing them, one that lingered between them so that Lena felt a tangible need to say or do or be something, though she couldn’t. They knew each other as much as anyone who spent nearly every evening together could know, and yet they knew absolutely nothing. The dichotomy of knowing that the hero’s favorite smell was lemongrass versus not knowing what she did as a day job was baffling and confounding.

“I hope we don’t make a habit out of this.”

“At least nothing’s on fire,” Kara grinned. It was purely to the side and all manner of  mischievous. “Are you just out for a walk? Could I walk with you? Maybe? I was just… I had to go--- I mean. I don’t have to right now. But we could, if you want.”

“I actually snuck out of the office for lunch. Sushi and a good book.”

“Ah, sushi sounds good. Did you know they make the best sushi at this tiny restaurant on the fifth floor of a building in Tokyo? Right on the corner near the fish market,” she smiled wider, proud of herself. “I was just there not too long ago.”

If anyone else had been watching, they might not have recognized Lena Luthor. She couldn’t help it though, and with those words, she laughed, genuinely, honestly, right from the gut, laughed.

“I’ll have to keep that in mind next time I make it over there.”

The phone still clutched in her hand buzzed with warnings and the inevitable reminders from her assistant, but Lena didn’t want to go back. She wanted to run away with this stranger who was anything but, who was funny and geeky and unassuming, right in front of her. Despite how afraid she was.

“I shouldn’t keep you,” Kara murmured, her own smile growing as she watched Lena recover from laughing. “I’m sure you have business to get to. I was just on my way to do something. Um. Run a few errands.”

“Right, of course, yeah,” she nodded. “If this, uh. We should… talk?”

“Yeah. Definitely.”

“What do you like on your pizza?”

“Um, well, anything, actually,” Kara answered, confused as to the train of thought.

“Try using the front door this time, tiger,” Lena grinned as her phone vibrated, annoyed and ignored and not taking it any longer. “Maybe tonight we finally figure things out.”

“Is this just because we ran into each other?”

“No,” the CEO sighed. “I mean. I planned on…. I planned on having dinner with you tonight.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she smiled, still unsure of herself. But Kara’s giant smile helped put her at ease. If she was going to do one thing in this world, she was going to earn more of those. And maybe that was what this entire thing was all about. The thoughts troubled her for a split second.

Lena Luthor liked to be good at things, and this was unchartered waters.

“Could I walk you back to your office?” Kara ventured, despite knowing it would make her late for work, despite knowing the lashing that would come from her editor.

“Sure.”

“Okay.”

“Good.”

“Yeah.”

“Awesome.”

Both smiled and nodded and were nervous wrecks, but persisted anyway, diving deep and very aware that they had no idea what the landing was supposed to look like.

The night that Lex Luthor was found in a non-extradition country, Kara spent hours holding back her cousin. And when the League found out, they consulted the government and held him back even tighter. In the back of her head though, her first thought was of a CEO who was undoubtedly glued to the television.

The night that Lex Luthor was found, Lena tried to ignore it and failed. When Jess poked her head in and offered to get dinner, Lena smiled politely and told her to head home. And when she went home, she oddly hoped that no one else would join her.

But she knew her soulmate.

The day she met her, officially, in the park, Lena was a ball of emotions. That was the thing she would never want anyone to figure out and worked hard to conceal, that she was a perpetual roaring river of emotions hidden behind the thinnest dam ever constructed, ready and eager to break at the slightest provocation. That was the thing that Kara knew, despite Lena’s best attempts to prove otherwise, and she hated it, and was in no mood for the weakness of her structurally unsound levee in the torrential flooding of her brother’s reappearance.

After two months, knocking had grown obsolete. But the night Lex Luthor was spotted, Kara hesitated.

Inside the hotel room, she heard Lena pace. She heard her set down a glass that, even from the distance of being behind a door, smelled like vodka. Behind the door to the hotel room, Kara watched Lena finally. Watched her cross her arms and finally go into the bedroom before taking off a work shirt in favor of something more comfortable. Kara blushed and cleared her throat before making her way inside with the key Lena told her to use.

“Hey, Lena, I brought dinner,” Kara called. “I figured you might be busy or maybe forgot and I was in the neighborhood, which is actually a lie. I wasn’t. I was actually in Metropolis, but I remembered you said that this place had your favorite--” she paused as she put bags on the counter of the full kitchen. “Golly.”

Her legs weren’t long, but when they were on display, they were all that mattered. Kara stared, and even though she didn’t mean to, she felt her gaze take a long while as it made the trip up from the ground to the edge of a long shirt that hung just below hips. The faintest edge of shorts could been seen there, but Kara had no time for that fact. Instead, she just stared and felt her eyes go wide.

She stared until she heard the sound of a bag hitting the ground and forgot that her hands held things. Her eyes and seeing took up much more brainpower than previously expected, but when Lena rounded the corner, nothing much made sense.

“Duck,” Lena returned with a smile she couldn’t have imagined all day. But then Kara was right there, and Lena couldn’t help it.

“Sorry, I’m. I didn’t. I didn’t mean to barge in, or interrupt, I was just--”

“In the neighborhood?”

“Yes. No. Wait,” she shook her head and scrambled to pick up the take out. “I was. I thought you might like company.”

“I didn’t think you’d stop by,” Lena shrugged as she put her hair up.

The past few months had been a delicate balance of friendship that neither explicitly knew how to navigate. Kara felt a growing attachment, a natural inclination to care about her soulmate. And she also wanted to kiss her which was growing to complicate things immensely because she was certain Lena was barely handling her being Supergirl.

“I was hoping you’d be… I’ll just. Do you want to put more clothes… I…” the hero turned around and blushed, focusing decidedly upon the bags of food. “I didn’t mean to. Golly.”

“You said that already.”

Without a thought, Lena approached and rested her chin on Kara’s shoulder. She kept her arms crossed, she leaned as best she could and inhaled the new familiar, that Kara smell, of sunlight and something fruity, something like a peach, soft and sweet that fogged up her thoughts.

“Today was shit,” Lena acknowledged. “But this smells good. Is this from Ezio’s?”

“The best clam sauce in the world,” Kara nodded. “I had to test out your rave review. Plus, pasta is the best kind of comfort food.”

For a moment, they looked like a couple. Lena knew it. She saw herself, she felt the pause. Kara swallowed hard and smiled at the feeling of warmth against her back. It was the most intimate they had been, and still, Kara didn’t know how to handle it. Thankfully, her stomach grumbled and she earned a chuckle.

“Let’s feed you then. I’m sure your day wasn’t much better.”

The departure of the chin on her shoulder was oddly hollow. Kara turned quickly and furrowed.

“Hey, you’re… how are you?”

“They can’t go get them, can they?” Her arms wrapped around herself tighter. “It’d be illegally obtained. The courts would side with him.”

Kara watched Lena cock her head and squint, and no one else would ever know what a scared person rested in the confident exterior of the CEO. She just shook her head in response.

“I spent all day holding back Clark. And any free moments, we were trying to find a legal way to go about it, but we didn’t… we tried… I mean--”

“You didn’t find anything.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. It’ll… it’ll all work out,” Lena tried. “At least he isn’t trying to kill me at the moment.”

Kara snorted indignantly before her arms moved on their own. She was already hugging Lena tightly, wrapping around the girl tightly because it was the only way to provide comfort. It felt right, and despite Lena’s tensing, she relaxed a moment later, languidly lounging in the reassurance of strong arms.

“He’s not going to hurt you,” Kara promised. Her lips moved against Lena’s hair, against her temple, against the shell of her ear.

“I know,” Lena nodded.

As she pulled away, Kara’s hands fell to her hips, wrapped around her waist. She felt her hips press against the girl who brought her a dinner she’d mentioned weeks ago, just because she thought it would help. Her palms rested on Kara’s chest, her fingertips toying with buttons and collarbones.

“I was weirdly worried about you, all day,” the reporter finally admitted, when staring at lips was too distracting, and those eyes were nothing but an even worse target to keep her mind from taking terribly arousing rabbit holes of thoughts.

“It’s not weird. What do all of the stories say? We’re linked, now, right?” Lena shrugged. The news was welcomed though.

“I always thought that was just part of the story,” she admitted sheepishly. “I didn’t expect it to be so literal. I see my sister and her girlfriend, and they just move so naturally, I hadn’t expected it to be second-nature, or to realize I’m doing it…. Like thinking about you and stuff.”

“I was worried about you, too,” Lena confessed, clearing her throat and trying to stand up a bit straighter, though there were hands still rooted near her spine. “For the record.”

“So long as it’s on the record, you won’t mind me quoting you in my new article, Ms. Luthor.”

“Wait, what?”

“My article, to be titled Beautiful Billionaire Slums with Nerdy Reporter: Does Fate Make Mistakes?” Kara explained, her hands accenting each word as a headline between them.

“Tad lengthy.”

“You’re right,” she nodded. “How about Hot Genius Reluctantly Accepts Awkward Alien Lover.”

“Oh, is that what we are?”

“Oh, um, well,” Kara blanched and stood up a bit straighter. She adjusted her glasses.

No longer was Lena held there, no longer were arms around her waist, but still, she remained rooted, now the force holding Kara against the counter with just the help of gravity and her own hips. It was  mighty power to hold.

“How about Wonderful, Patient Hero Saves Heiress’ Heart From Lonely Future.”

“Lengthy.”

“Bespeckled, Kind-hearted Angel Thaws Frosty Bookworm’s Future.”

“A bit hyperbolic.”

“Not entirely,” Lena shrugged. Her hands wound around Kara’s neck, her forearms resting on her shoulder. “Fine. Pretty Girl With 1940s Vocab Wooes Pessimistic Orphan?”

“We’re getting closer,” Kara nodded with a smile.

“Quote me for whatever you want then.”

Hovering close, Lena watched Kara’s chest rise and fall quicker, she felt her tense and swallow, she felt her eyes grow wider and yet focus in on her own face quite quickly. It was a lot, it was close, it was a position they had been careful to not find themselves in, and just as Kara had explained, it happened so naturally, without either noticing until it was too late.

“We should eat then,” Lena finally decided, clearing her throat and letting her hands fall away from the hero’s neck. It was safer this way, she decided.

“We should. We should… yeah. We should,” Kara nodded eagerly, still dazed. “Yeah. Eat. Yes.”

Lena felt at ease for the first time in hours, and just because someone brought her dinner.

Much the way a fearsome jungle cat becomes a kitten when it is time for a nap, so did Lena Luthor remind Kara when she grew weary. The graveyard of their take out dinner remained on the coffee table amidst stacks of books and files from work, while a few of Kara’s notebooks and laptop made it to the mountain range of easily dismissed work activities neither felt the urge to traverse once they had full bellies and a comfy couch to share.

Normally, a prowling, sleek, menacing man-eater of a panther, Kara watched Lena fight against her exhaustion and her worry, watched her argue against herself until she settled like an innocent kitten against her side. The warmth radiated between them, and before Kara could really take the time to appreciate it, Lena was breathing soft and even, her cheek on Kara’s thigh, her arms wrapped tightly around her calf.

With the smallest of movements, Kara pulled the blanket from the back of the couch and draped it over they exhausted CEO who would rather swallow her own thoughts than let them see the light of day, who could never admit how purely exhausted she was, but succumbed to the mere suggestion of comfort and warmth and safety.

There’d been a moment, once, when J’onn spoke of his wife, when he referenced this idea that he was always exactly where he needed to be when she existed. It wasn’t a thought that made sense or seemed relatable, in fact, it often perplexed her, and yet right there, on the couch while some documentary played, Kara felt, for the first time in a long, long while, that she was exactly where she was meant to be.

With only the smallest of stretches, she leaned to turn off the light and settled into the couch, knowing full well that nothing was going to make her move and wake the sleeping executive from what must have been her first solid chunk of rest in --

And then her phone rang.

“Hm? Is that? Where’s my…?” Lena sat up and squinted, frantic and adorable as her hand patted along the coffee table.

Quickly, Kara dug into her pockets, trying to find the offensive device that betrayed what would have been a wonderful moment.

“I’m sorry, that’s me,” she rattled as Lena tried to still her heart.

“I must have fallen…. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean. What time is it?”

“I just have to take this…” Kara pointed at her phone and stood, leaving a confused and disoriented girl in her wake who still squinted and watched her move with only one eye open. “Alex? What’s wrong?”

From the couch, Lena looked down at the blanket and only half heard Kara muttering as she moved out of the living room. It took all of her mental processes to figure out how she’d ended up covered up, and why she was so near delirious from waking from such a deep sleep.

By the time Kara made it back in, she had already adjusted her messy hair and felt somewhat presentable.

“Everything okay?”

“Hm? Yeah, sorry. Alex just stopped by my apartment, and I wasn’t there,” Kara explained. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

“I’m sorry I used you as a pillow.”

“Never apologize for that.”

Though they were quiet, both had words bubbling up in their throats so that they burst out at the same time once they caught the merest look at the other.

“I should--”

“You should--”

Both snapped their mouths shut and stared at the other, willing them to say the next thing they paused.

Lena yawned and pushed messy hair around her head while debating it all. Kara stared back at her and shifted her weight from foot to foot.

“I should head home,” Kara finally managed, rubbing her hand anxiously along her elbow, holding herself together as best she could.

Lena felt her lungs pop at the news, wheezing out like an old party balloon. Still half asleep and very disoriented, the facts of the day swept back into her thoughts.

“Would you… I mean. You could stay, if you wanted.”

“Stay here?” the hero asked quickly. “With you?”

“I could leave if that’d make you more comfortable, but that’d defeat the purpose.”

Still in almost nothing, still very pretty, still doing ungodly things to her heart, Lena had no knowledge of the thoughts in Kara’s head, and for that the reporter was the most grateful. She didn't mean to, or that was her defense, but she caught a glimpse of legs, and then she caught those eyes, and she felt warm all over.

“It is late,” Kara wagered.

Somewhere, in a foreign country, stalked by round the clock surveillance from any number of world governments, Lex Luthor, the more infamous of the Luthor siblings, paced through the halls of his borrowed mansion, plotting and calculating and being utterly miserable and all but dead physically, because surely a man like him did not just appear into the world for no reason at all. There was always a plan, always a motive.

Somewhere else, far away, a more and more dwindling thought, the oldest Luthor heir concocted and hatched and schemed.

RIght there though, in the hotel room on the top floor of the hotel on Twelfth street, Lena Luthor, the youngest of the Luthor brood, the chosen, the adopted, the last one standing, she slid into her bed and kept strict to one fourth of it before facing the middle as, for the first time in a long, long, long while, the other side dipped with another body. Suddenly very much alive inside, she huddled under the blankets and calculated all manner of math that did not make much sense because surely she must be dreaming. A girl like her did not just a hero in her bed for no reason at all. She didn’t have anyone in her bed.

Right there, she swallowed and took a deep breath. The one true heir was too tired to extrapolate.

“I didn’t want to be alone tonight,” Lena whispered in the dark.

Clear on the other side of the bed, what felt like miles apart, the other body rolled to her side as well, and faced the honest voice.

“He’s not going to hurt you,” Kara promised.

“It’s not that,” she bit her cheek  and leaned forward slightly. “I just. I’m very good at being alone. But then you… you’re just. I know what it’s like to have someone around now. I didn’t want to be alone.”

God, did it fucking hurt to say things like that.

“You don’t have to be alone anymore, if you don’t want,” a tiny promise came after a few seconds. “There’s no where in the entire galaxy I’d rather be right now than here, in this exact spot.”

With a small smile that she was grateful Kara couldn’t see in the dark, Lena closed her eyes and ran her foot along her calf, adjusting sleepily and sorely into the big bed. For the life of her, she was not sure how to process an emotion like that. She couldn't figure out where to even start.

“That’s a like,” Kara whispered, shifting slightly.

Just as quickly as her mind tried to forget the equation put before her with Kara’s promise, it short circuited. The body beside her shifted closer, until she felt Kara’s knee on her own knee, until she felt soft breath on her knuckles, until she felt a forehead against her own forehead.

“A foot to the left was the real answer,” she explained as she stopped adjusting. “But now, my answer stands. True, too, considering I’ve been to many places in the Galaxy, and the next four.”

“I’m not as well traveled, but I have to say, that on this world, in this moment, I agree completely.”

“Good.”

“Thank you, Kara.”

The only response came in the form of a warm hand gliding along her back, soothing her toward the inevitable sleep.

[indirispeaks]

Titanic Fail Part the Second

!Presented in convo form!  Apologies for the length

Me:  Okay remember that glorious shipwreck of epic proportions that was the animated titanic movie I told you about with the magic anime girls moonbeam tears?

Him: .....yeah...

Me: I love your suble uneasiness in that 'yeah'. Because THERE IS A SEQUEL.

Him: .....I want to get off this planet now.

Me: "Titanic: Elizabeth And Mullet-Face Go To The Lost City Of Atlantis And There Is A Battle With Sharks And Creepy Clown Toys And Mentally Challenged Racist Caricatures Mice, And Also The Dog Has A Gun For Some Reason."  

Him: fuck my life

Me: Also called "In Search of Titanic" But my version is more accurate.  So Elizabeth and Glove Sniffer, (fuck if I remember the guy's name he made zero impression on me the first time)along with the dog -who can talk now- and the reeeeally awkward mice are riding around in a submarine looking for the wreck of the Titanic.  Which is stupid, since the giant pinkie thing put the goddamn ship back together and lugged it to the new york harbor previously. Whales saved all the people! It was happily ever after all around.  

Him: WHAT IS CONTINUITY?

Me: No one on the production team knows what that word means. It is unclear why the talking mice are qualified to make submersible dives.  Maybe it happened between movies while the dog was learning to talk.  Actually come to think of it, every animal in the first movie could talk except the dog and the whales and yet everyone seemed to understand them just fine even without the glitter spooge and it wasn’tt a big deal to ANY of them. I'm not sure why I'm searching for meaning and logic in a film written and produced by alcoholic lemurs but it still bugs me.

Him: Alcoholic lemurs could have written a better story. meth addicted squirrel monkeys though.

Me: No the squirrel monkeys wrote the sequel.  In the snow.  With their own pee. But yeah the dog can talk now and I think his name is Lucky.  Or Fritz. Or Frank.  Steven? He doesn't like being down there because there are sharks.  Water is blue, Stevie-boy. But speaking of sharks, the criminal shark gulag is back, again with the whaler asshole, still after the whales.  There are no whales in this movie.  The giant pink thingie is apparently called Tentaclino, but no one even calls him that and he's not really in the movie either. For that matter, neither is the Titanic.  I don't know what they were actually calling it, because 80 percent of the dialogue in garbled to high hell in some way or another.  

Which I guess is what happens when three different countries work on the same movie in a fourth language none of them actually speak.  They gave up 20 minutes in anyway and just started trying to out-stupid each other.

The new head shark (also with names changing every other scene) gets da boyz to attack the sub and cut it loose because it's yellow.  All submarines are yellow. Also sharks are colorblind IRL but that's the least of this movie's issues.

Him:  Of course it's yellow.

Me: Everyone in the sub is understandably shocked and upset at this development, except for Glove Sniffer who says that everyone should remain calm while the sharks chew through their tether and oxygen tube.  The breach causes implosive decompression and kills them all instantly.  The End.

Him:  That's not what happened is it.

Me: Nupe.

Him: Joy.

Me: What actually happens is Da Boss shark and his dudebros chew the Technodrome loose to the complete and utter indifference of everyone inside it because the animation budget did not have enough money to pay for more frames when the dudebros start playing tether ball with it.  They ask Da Boss shark if they should finish destroying it but he says no, first he has to stop and brush his teeth. Dental hygiene is important, yo!  This calls for a rap number!

OH YEEEEEEEEEEAH THIS ONE'S A MUSICAL!  YAAAAAY!!!

Him: This is a hell dimension.  We are in a hell dimension.

Me: It sets the precedent for the whooole circus though, because NONE of the "songs" in this technicolor nightmare make any sense to anyone who doesn't just happen to be an acid-tripping squirrel monkey.  The most I got out of this one was the opening line of "YO! YO! YO! LOOK AT MY TEETH! HOOGA HOOGA HOOGA SO WHITE AND NEAT!" and the rest of it was sung by a chorus of small clams who'd come back from the dentist with mouths full of Novocaine.  It SOUNDED like they were singing "Oh, you, you!  There's no white meat out of you!  Oh, you, you!  There's wuh walla, walla WOOOO!!" You can look it up on youtube, the comments are full of people taking guesses at the actual lyrics.

Him: ....

Me: After that incomprehensible nonsense, it cuts back to where Elizabeth, Glove Sniffer and co. have been hanging out awaiting their cues for the last five minutes that you just spent listening to cartoon prison-shark rapping.  Literally.  Upside down and motionless.  Elizabeth's long flowing hair is unaffected by gravity. They come back to life just in time to realize they're probably going to drown and are understandably panicked....except for Glove Sniffer, natch, who tells them to stay calm again but then they go unconscious again and merpeople on multicolored My Little Pony steeds (WHY) come to the rescue and save everybody by spraying air bubbles on their heads....

hang on sec

I missed the part where it became possible for the merpeople to open the top hatch without turning the people into ground sausage. I.

Magic glitter spooge.

I guess.

They're unconscious again in any case.  They're also wearing life vests like that's going to help you 7 miles down. I couldn't tell if they were dead or not as they were not sausage, but if they were it would have saved the audience 70 more minutes of this shit.  Actually I think the dogs name was Pete.

Him: I'd suggest rewatching it as a drinking game but I don't think anyone would survive the alcohol poisoning.

Me: Yeeeeeah.  The mersquad lugs their unconscious asses back to the Lost City of Atlantis, populated by more merpeople who are really just different colored normal people walking around in frog feet with artistically placed fish scales.  Pete wakes up halfway there, catches sight of a merwoman and is utterly convinced he's dead and she's taking him to doggy hell.  Doggy.  Hell.  Full throttle Don Bluth. She tells him to stay calm, they're safe now. He doesn't buy it but WHO THE FUCK WOULD.

You might be able to make a drinking game of how many times they actually say some version of "stay calm." They are met at the door by a blue guy whose name we never find out, who tells them that in order to visit the city they have to drink this incredibly suspicious green potion.  Elizabeth questions the wisdom of accepting drinks from people wearing sexy-nurse costumes complete with white cowboy hat emblazoned with a red cross.  Blue guy tells her to stay calm...and then says "GET EVERYTHING READY!!" to the sexy nurse in a tone that is in no way menacing and foreshadowy.

And from this point on, Elizabeth "I can talk to dolphins with my magiccy-farts" becomes the SOLE VOICE OF REASON.  To which the blue guy tells her to shut up and drink it already..  Total dick move. Glove-Sniffer has lost what few brain cells he had (probably from sniffing other things, like wet paint and cat piss), and says that he understands.  Just stay calm, and isn't this potion a pretty color? Can't possibly be a bad thing! CHUGGALUGGALUGALUG.  I'm not kidding he actually says that. Elizabeth questions her own sanity.

Him: .........she's just now questioning that?

Me: Yeah, well. Elizabeth has seen some fucked up shit in her day. Then the blue guy takes them on a tour! They go and meet this jack in the box clown...fish...pokemon thing with a cape and a pimp cane because why the hell not, who says he's the ambassador or something and oh by the way everything in the city can breathe underwater, never go to sleep, everything can talk, and live forever.  Scary Toy sounds like a cross between Marilyn Manson and Fozzie Bear which is creepy as fuck.  I can totally see Jeff Dunham using that voice in his stand up.  Then it gets bizarre.

Him: again, just now?

Me: More bizarre.

Him:  I didn't know it was possible to go downhill from the deepest pit of hell.

Me:  They have a backhoe for digging, and Buffy missed this particular hellmouth.  There's a bunch of toys that live in the ballroom and Creepy Toy goes into this...this...song and dance number...about how all this works..I must have blanked it out after he made this horrifying demon giggle.  He doesn't exactly sing, either, just spouts more Manson-esque lyrics until all hell breaks loose in a sort of what I can only describe as "Techno Rave Fusion Dance Party Music".  The lights go out and colored spotlights start flying around the raving toy mosh pit (there's a mosh pit) and every single word of whatever the serial killer fish clown is trying to say is completely obscured by WUB WUB WUB, WUBBA WUB WUB WUB!! WUB WUB WUB, WUBBA WUB WUB WUB!!  Elizabeth's voice actor can be heard over the soundtrack saying "THIS IS SCARY!!" and she is so right.

Him: ....

Me: He finishes his routine by abruptly telling them surprise! they're not allowed to leave the city and go home for the rest of their immortal, sleepless lives.  Elizabeth is upset.  Guess what Glove Sniffer tells her?

And then they go meet the king, who is a fushia man I think.  He's wearing a long green robe with attached hoodie cowl from which a black hole exudes so you can't see his face.  Could have been tentacles under there for all I know. He's sitting on a throne which I admit was kinda cool, made out of water with fish and seaweed floating/swimming around in it.  Or at least it was cool until it gets up and starts following the king around and there's a fucking face on it that the king proceeds to sit on and then it blows bubbles right up his ass.  It's a sentient bidet.  

Him: sec, finding the vodka.

Me:  He asks how they are adjusting to the "news" that they are now under house arrest til the end of time, and Glove Sniffer says he's glad they were told right away and in such an amusing manner. Whoever was responsible for writing his dialogue has been huffing rubber cement between sentences. Elizabeth looks irritated.  I don't really blame her.  

Then the movie remembers oh yeah, talking animals!  The dog's name might have been Happy.  Still no clue about the mice.  Happy finds a lady dog that lives in Atlantis because why not, and they frolic a bit  She has no speaking lines and it's love at first sight.  She has no name.  Meanwhile the mice are taken to meet all the other mice and why are there fucking mice in Atlantis?   There, uh.  There's a chinese one.  You can tell this movie was made somewhere other than here because that one would have never got past the MPAA.

Anyway the mice/rats have this plan to overthrow the king and steal the elixir of life and then go Pinky and the Brain.  It is not explained why they the elixir will help them take over the world. They also for some reason have laser guns.  The two sailor mice run and tell the king. He doesn't question their story and neither did I.  Elizabeth did.  

Him: ....

Me: The king decides to let the mice try to take over the world because they're just a bunch of heat-packing mice and he has a bazillion army merpeople and toys and the elixir of life.  He replaces it with water so the mice steal a fake. They test it out by tying another mouse to a rock and tossing him down a well to drown.  I mean if you're going to put Don Bluth-level incredibly dark topics in a kid's movie, you may as well go all in. The Creepy Toy is afraid of the mice taking him apart with a screwdriver because then he'll be dead, (for kids!) but a red dolphin reassures him that screwdrivers are banned in Atlantis.  (Apparently they built the city without screws. I dunno just go with it okay?)

The evil mice are in cahoots with the sharks who are in cahoots with the whaling asshole because there needs to be at least six different plotlines at the same time.  They want to feed the pink thingie to Da Boss shark.  Why? Supposedly he ruins stuff....mainly any sort of continuity when someone tries to inject some sanity into this. stupid.  stupid.  Stupid.  stupid. stupid stupidstupidstupid there's a toy army that goes up against the mice who have their own submarines and how the hell are ANY of them supposed to take over the world when your shark shock troops are stuck underwater and you don't have a tornado handy?

I need a break

Their subs also have lasers but they are outgunned via Glove Sniffer's rampaging stupidity. There's a brief fight montage, the dog sets up a sniper point and starts picking off mice even though he lacks opposable thumbs and he's scared of sharks.  And water.  I'm not sure why he's on this vacation.  Maybe they needed to sell tie in plushies?  

Pew! Pew! Pew!  Pew-pew! WHOOOOMPA! Pew! Pew!

There's also a boy doll who looks like a girl doll because he's got a wig on and it's a curse a little girl put on him to look like a girl and blah blah blah blah it's not important.  None of this is important. He sounds like a pirate even though he's dressed in scottish kit. He off a single cannon shot and ta da! he's a boy again and promptly fucks off the movie never to be seen or mentioned again. Yay, misogyny on top of pointless!  Thankfully he does not sing or rap about it.

Him:  Small mercies.

Me: The war is over!  The mice have slunk back to Atlantis and decide to test their elixir of life anyway even though...their entire battle strategy imploded.  Elizabeth's voice actor has given up entirely and she just sort of stands there, lost in her own little hell.  There's a grand total of 4 seconds where the pink thingie shows up and then leaves so the animators have an excuse to plaster him/her/it on the dvd case.  The king decides to reward the useless tourists, half of whom keep asking nosy questions, and puts the Titanic back together again (I mean this IS a Titanic movie, the ship has to be in the film for at least 12 seconds) There is now a sentient screwdriver in the mix whose supposedly the Creepy Toy Fish's best friend.  They'.....but he's scare...I thought they were ban...the fuck.

Him: Well yeah.

Me: They get the ship cleaned up and put back together (what's continuity again?) and then use it to drop Elizabeth and Glove Sniffer on a deserted tropical island to live the rest of their lives going quietly insane up THERE instead of underwater.  Which is an improvement over hostages, because now they're marooned with the Titanic parked on the beach as their own private yacht.  Thank god they don't have relatives that will miss them or go looking for them. I kinda wonder that since they have issues with continuity if there were dead bodies on the ship.  I assume there probably were but there sure aren't any now. I won't speculate as to what happened to them but you never see anybody eating fish down there, if you know what I mean. That's basically the end, everyone lives happily ever after if you don't count mind never seeing your families and friends ever again.

Him: .....you know I hate you, right?

........the dogs name was fucking “Smile” by the way.