Kara heard a distinctive hollow pop as she approached Lena’s apartment. The doorman had been gracious enough to let her up, informing her that Miss Luthor was expecting her. She knocked on the door and listened intently. The soft clink of a bottle being set on a table and rather gentle passing of Lena’s feet on the hardwood floor. Kara resisted the urge to peer through the door.
When it swung in, she wished she’d had the chance to prepare herself. Lena was visibly distraught, eyes red rimmed from crying and cheeks puffy. She was dressed down in a a sweater and leggings, and couldn’t meet Kara’s gaze with her own.
It hurt. Seeing her like this physically hurt, gouging a dull ache into her chest. Her first instinct was to reach out and scoop the smaller woman into a tight hug, make her safe, to wall her in with her arms. Kara fought it down and sighed.
“You… don’t look so good.”
“Come in,” Lena said, her voice soft and flat. “If you want to hang out with a monster, that is.”
Lena turned and trudged back into the apartment as if she was walking to the gallows. She fell back into the couch and grabbed the wine bottle from the table, long since having abandoned the pretext of glasses.
“You’re not a monster, Lena.”
She stared at the bottle and took a long pull from it, the wine sloshing around the bottom.
“Yeah I am. You ever watch Godzilla movies?”
Kara blinked. “What?”
“Godzilla. Giant radioactive lizard.”
“Of course.”
Lena snorted a bitter laugh. “Monsters are born too large, too strong, too tall. That is their tragedy. Or something like that. Director of the movie said it. That’s me. I’m not trying to hurt anyone, it’s just in my blood. It’s who I am and I’ll never escape it.”
“That’s not true,” Lena said, softly.
She looked around the apartment, shocked to find dishes piled in the sink and two more empty wine bottles lined up on the kitchen island.
Kara quickly moved to the couch. Lena offered no resistance as Kara took the bottle. Lena stared as Kara took a long, glugging pull.
“There. Now you’re not drinking alone.”
Lena smiled weakly. Kara didn’t mind the taste of the wine but as far as getting her drunk, it was like pouring it down the drain. If she could keep Lena from alcohol poisoning, it was worth it. Kara felt a tug in her chest. Lena looked so soft, her big eyes wet with tears.
“I only wanted to help.”
“You did, Lena. You saved the world.”
“Children, Kara. Sick kids, dying because of me.”
“That’s not true, Lena. Edge is cooking the data, you know that. We’re going to clear your name and I’m going to help.”
“I’m so tired, Kara. My own brother tries to murder me once a week because I won’t help him try to take over the world. I keep getting kidnapped by my insane family and aliens and God knows who else and I’m tired. That woman today almost killed me. One of these times there won’t be someone to jump in front of the bullet and it’ll be my time.”
“That won’t happen.”
Lena shook her head, failing to fight back the tears. “I’m so tired of being everyone’s monster.”
“You’re not a monster to me, Lena. You are so good. You work so hard and care so much, and people don’t even know about your work at the children’s hospital, the reading to the kids. You’re a saint.”
Lena looked at her sharply. “How did you know about that?”
Kara thought, FUCK.
She fiddled with her glasses, knowing it was a tell.
“I um, well I am a reporter. I won’t tell anyone, I know you don’t want publicity.”
“Kara, I’m confused. I put a lot of effort into making sure no one knows I do that, so the kids don’t have to deal with the bullshit my life brings. Have you been following me?”
Kara licked her lips.
Just holding back the truth isn’t make it a lie, did it?
“More like keeping tabs, just to… keep you safe. To watch your back.”
Lena looked horrified. Kara’s chest seized and she thought for a moment that she’d gone too far.
“Kara, I don’t want you doing that. If Edge or my brother come after me and you’re in the way, they’ll kill you. You can’t risk that, you don’t deserve it.”
Lena grabbed her hands. “Listen to me, Kara. I have a target on my back. I have a price on my head. Sooner or later my number is going to be up and I’d rather die than have you be the one to catch the bullet. I just want you to be okay.”
“They won’t get you.”
Lena pressed her eyes shut and choked back a sob. “Yeah, they will. I’m living on borrowed time. It’s just a matter of the odds, in the end. Next time James won’t be there to take a bullet for me and Supergirl will be too busy and I’ll just be another monster on obituary page until-“
“Stop it!” Kara barked, shocked at the sharp snap of her own voice. “Stop it. I won’t let them.”
Lena’s eyes snapped open and she stared at Kara, more than a little shocked. Her hands tensed, closing tightly around Kara’s.
“Don’t put that on yourself. I’m not you’re responsibly and I don’t want you risking your life for me. It’s just not worth it.”
“You are worth it,” Kara insisted, shaking her hands a little as she leaned in. “You are, and I won’t accept that you’re not.”
“I love that you believe in me so much.”
Kara’s heart did a backflip. Love? She loved it? Lena was looking at her with such a softness in her eyes, and Kara scolded herself that she was drunk, that she might say things she didn’t intend or didn’t want to slip out.
“But,” Lena said, “you’re just one person, you can’t save me from this.”
Kara’s jaw set as she bit down on this pressure growing inside her, as if something had taken root in her chest and grown and grown inside until it made her ribs creak and her heart ache and it would split her open if she didn’t let it out.
She wasn’t drunk. She was lucid, clearheaded, but Lena was gazing into her soul with tear-filled eyes and she looked so small and vulnerable and resigned, like she was just waiting for her turn at the headsman’s axe.
Kara couldn’t take it. She couldn’t fucking take it, and the words came so easily she scarcely knew how she’d held it in for so long.
“I can protect you, Lena. I’m Supergirl. I can do anything.”
Lena’s soft expression twisted into a scowl.
“Bad time for a joke, Kara.”
Tenderly, as gently as she could, Kara guided Lena’s hand to her glasses.
“Go ahead.”
Lena hesitated, chewing her lip, eyes flicking strangely, gaze surveying Kara’s face- looking at her eyes, her scar, and in a way that pulled at Kara’s heart, her lips.
Slowly, carefully, Lena pulled the glasses free, visibly surprised by their weight.
“They’re lined with lead. It helps with sensory overload.”
Lena raised her now shaking hand and her thumb grazed Kara’s ear as she reached back to unclasp the clip holding Kara’s hair, allowing honeyed tresses to spill free across her shoulders and down her back.
“Look at me, Lena.”
Lena looked. Her expression flickered from pained annoyance to shock to something Kara couldn’t quite identify.
“You lied to me,” Lena whispered.
Kara bit back some lame excuse, like I never said I wasn’t Supergirl.
“I did, and I’m sorry. If this means your feelings about me have changed, that’s okay, but I won’t stop protecting you. I won’t let Morgan Edge or your brother or anyone hurt you. Never you.”
Kara’s jaw trembled as she spoke and her heart was racing.
Lena’s was doing the same, beating too fast in her chest. Kara carefully put her hands on Lena’s shoulders.
“Easy,” she said. “I know this is a shock.”
“When you caught me after… when you saved me from Lillian… when you… the helicopter… that was you?”
“Always, Lena. I’ll never let you fall.”
“Kara?” Lena whispered.
She was staring, but rather than meet Kara’s gaze, she was looking lower, eyes fixed on Kara’s lips. Kara’s gut did a backflip at the way Lena was looking at her, mouth slightly parted, flushed, her heart racing.
If Kara was human, she might pick up on those things, or she might not. She might be confused or briefly wonder if Lena was really looking at her the way it seemed she was.
Kara Danvers was not human. She could look up and see particles dancing across the atmosphere in hues for which humans had no names because their eyes were blinded to them. She could hear the rapid beating of Lena’s heart and see the heat blooming on her skin and taste on her tongue the tangy, pleasant musk of the pheromones Lena was emitting, and she could do it all so fast that her mind processed it so quickly that it could barely be measured. When Lena began to lean towards her, she watched it happen in curious slow motion.
When Lena kissed her, it was an explosion of sensation. Not just the soft warmth of her lips but her scent, her real scent breath the perfumes and sharp tang of wine smell, the pure scent of Lena herself. The soft sigh that broke from Lena’s lips was a symphony, and Lena’s hands on Kara’s flanks was like a blast of firecrackers running under her skin to ignite a sudden flare of warmth low in her hips.
Lena was kissing her. Kara was kissing her back, consuming every aspect of the contact in perfect detail, burning it into her solar-powered Kryptonian mind where it would live in perfect detail for the rest of forever.
She gently, oh so gently, pushed Lena back.
“Lena, stop.”
“Oh,” Lena murmured, her face falling. “I didn’t… I’m sorry… I thought… I misread…”
“No, no Lena it’s not that I promise, you’re drunk. You’ve had too much to drink and I can’t let you do anything while you’re like this, I couldn’t take it if you wake up tomorrow and…”
Lena blinked back tears.
“Oh my God. You really are a superhero, aren’t you?”
“I’m just being decent.”
Lena smiled sadly. “I don’t deserve you.”
“Well, you’ve got me, Lena. You’re not getting rid of me.”
Lena actually laughed, a bitter little chuckle that made her look away in embarrassment.
“I can imagine Lex seething if he found out about this.”
“Alex is going to kill me.”
Lena giggled. “Oh my God.”
“What, um, what is this, exactly?” said Kara, her voice cracking with tension. “I mean, you kissed me.”
“I did,” Lena said, guarded. “I’ve wanted to for so long. How does the saying go? In vino, veritas?”
“In wine there is truth,” said Kara.
“Yeah.”
“Lena, we’re going to get through this, I promise, and I will always protect you. Always. Right now I need to protect you from the hangover you’re going to have tomorrow. I’m putting you to bed, and I’m sleeping on the couch.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I don’t have to, but I need to know you’re safe, and you can’t get any safer than Supergirl crashing on your couch.”
Lena blurted, “I could have her in my bed.”
Kara thought her soul might leave her body.
“Not when you’ve had this much to drink.”
“God, you are amazing,” Lena sighed.
Kara nodded. “If you say so.”
It took a while for Kara to actually get Lena into her bed. Lena was suddenly taken with an extreme tiredness and Kara let her lean on her as they walked down the hall, fighting the urge singing in her veins, demanding that she pick her up and just carry her.
She may have been Supergirl, but even she had limits.
Once Lena was curled up in blankets and safe, Kara puttered around the apartment, doing the dishes, cleaning a little before she fell back on the expansive sofa to sleep.
When the warm morning sun woke her, she sat up and found Lena staring at her.
“I didn’t dream that. You’re really here.”
Kara rose from the couch and approached her tentatively.
“Yeah. I’m really here. Lena, if you’re angry with me because…”
Lena cut her off, darting forward to plant a soft kiss right on her lips. Kara froze as her brain essentially rebooted.
“Oh,” said Kara.
Lena smiled softly. She still looked bedraggled and had clearly been crying, but the smirk on her lips was everything.
