#swallowpitted

"i know we haven't talked in a while," (i miss you.) "and i know you must be super busy with your special and... everything at QVC and - i hear that dj's really breaking ground with her jewellery business, so - that's amazing -" (i've spent months silently scrolling her profile on instagram in hopes of seeing you again).

"oh god - i don't mean literally breaking ground, but - between you and me, i tried some of those earrings on and they almost ripped my earlobes -" (shut up shut up shut up).

"- anyway, i remember when we met and i made that joke about voicemails so... i'm gonna shut up real soon, i promise. but -" (things were simpler in vegas, less messy)

"- i kind of got into something and... well, long story short, netflix want a special. and i have no idea what the hell i'm doing out here..."

the last year's been a whirlwind. three friends (i have friends now) that may or may not have just been there because they spend trivia night in dingy bars which serve peanuts to men that absolutely have more bacteria on their hands than toilet water themselves, and three whisky sours later and there's a mic in one hand, a spotlight that she thinks is only highlighting a problematic t-zone (thank you kiki), and the stories spill out of her. they aren't jokes per se, but they drag laughs out like a reluctant confession. vegas was crazy, LA was even wilder - but somewhere in between there and flushed cheeks, there were tales that resonated somehow in treading that fine line.

six months later and she's in an office in toronto with jimmy on one side and a board of bbc america on the other. it's stuffy, and when she tries to speak, she finds her throat is dry enough for her to excuse herself for a quick ten for a smoke break. so here she is, knee twitching when she sits in the fire escape and watches the smoke curl around her fingers and talks into the void like some asshole on public transport: loudspeaker.

"netflix are offering 500k for a three special run, but - i don't know, i think it's kind of ego-death-y to turn on my tv and my face is just... right there, right? kind of crazy. and then prime are saying 700 for one but - i don't think it's as big a splash, right? no one watches prime and bezos can suck a dog dick, but that's like - so much money. for one? right? jesus, i sound insane."

another drag, and jimmy waves through the reception windows to pull her right back down to earth.

she's toeing off her shoes before her apartment door even closes. her bag hits the floor next to them with a thud, her breath a heavy sigh as she undoes the buttons at the front of her peacoat.

LENA LUTHOR & KARA DANVERS: INSPIRATIONAL OR INAPPROPRIATE?

she'd known the press would be insatiable, as if nothing more exciting happened in the cosmos today than lena luthor confirming she's gay, but disparaging kara's achievements by associating her with her boss rather than a luthor was not the dig she'd expected.

the man sitting on her couch was not either.

dread speared through lena, a shard of ice to the heart that made it skip a beat before thundering along. he's not supposed to be here; he's not supposed to be anywhere, and yet she knows if he catches her being anything less than composed, it's only going to hand him another weapon.

" oh my god. " sam's shoulders sag in the mirror & seeing that, her expression does, too. the whole outfit feels like a costume, put upon, meant for someone else. the proportions that had felt so intentional now seem ... downright silly ... the jacket swallows the slim cut of her shoulders & fits too boxy around the hips.

" you're totally right. "

"hmm, ok. so do you see how problematic it is to pretend to be gay in some... misguided attempt to boost ratings in the 18-30 bracket? not only does it completely lie to your audience, but it sets a precedence for straight people occupying queer spaces without threat of persecution- annnnnd you're not listening to me." deb has that particularly glazed look on her face that befalls her every time ava opens her mouth to form the word problematic, but this is fucking insane!

hi, is that ava daniels? i'm calling from cedars-sinai -- she doesn't remember much else from that. she had one finger plugged into her ear as she took the call - from a number she didn't recognise (see, mom? i'm growing up) - and slipped out of the crowded bar when she couldn't place the voice. it's kind of a blur after that. it's telling ruby that she needs to go, and ruby putting up a fight but reluctantly coming with her, hopping out of her heels and into the vans ava keeps in the back seat. it's trying to figure out the most fucking infuriating hospital parking system she's ever had to contend with, and finding her way through the maze and - deborah. it's deborah. jesus fucking christ, what's happened?

(this isn't how she wanted to see her again - not strapped into a hospital gown with tubes down her throat and god forbid they start dosing her up on anything resembling a truth serum, otherwise they'll be fighting until morning again -)

but it's calmed a little now. she'd nipped out to find a sweater and while ruby burrows her face into her chest and uses ava's blazer to block out most of the light from the glowing machines and the tiny tv in the corner, ava can't sleep. she doesn't think she's felt this awake in six months.

"my dad taught me to fish." perhaps not the most leading line but ava pads out barefoot across the grassy banking and down the short pier jutting out into the middle of the pond. it is quiet this time of night; just the sh-tck, sh-tck of the sprinklers by the pool, the soft glow of a luum she has set up next to her on the deck, the subtle lap of water underneath her. catfish, carps, a few bass. nothing is biting tonight. ava sits on the bare wood and shivers; tucks her knees into her hoodie until she looks like a grey bulging ball, mumbling i thought you'd like some company, comically rolling side to side in order to get closer to the cooler stocked with beer. it isn't something deborah really drinks at all, except for days like this, when she secludes herself out to the water. "they died pretty early. i was...sixteen? kathy must have been eight or nine, i guess, too young to make much of a fuss or really understand what was happening. and by the time they passed, things had gotten... well, about as bad as it gets." she casts a line out and watches it land in the middle of the pond, left of where she aimed but good enough to leave alone. "i dropped out of school and got a waitressing gig and it paid most of the bills. the problem was my parents had a lean out against a boathouse we barely ever used except for a week or two in the summer. every year, my dad would take me upstate and we'd take the boat out and sit in it for hours and hours... god i hated it. the boredom, i mean. he had this rule about no talking on the water." the float bobs, tackle ignored below the surface. "which for someone like me was near impossible, so we'd always get in a fight and we would always have to go in early because he couldn't stand the tension. always blamed me for 'creating an atmosphere'. the next day we'd do it all again." she starts to slowly reel in. "when we had to sell it, the boat too, i couldn't help but feel like i was...letting him down again. that if i had just kept my mouth shut, we could have stayed longer and had a real conversation in the evening after. maybe i would have known him a little better." she reels the line in, checks the bait and casts it back out. "do you know how to fish?" ava shakes her head no.

she has this trait where she talks at the worst times. sometimes, her mouth opens before her brain catches up, and she has to kick herself for it after. did you know some people in vegas piss and shit themselves when they're on a roll on the slots? seems to always go down a treat and she spends the next twenty minutes replaying every fucking second that led up to that without delay. vegas is... miserable sometimes. the same four walls of that comped casino room, or that one time she thinks she saw cigarette ash in her scrambled eggs because one of the blackjack dealers spluttered out half a pall mall with such a force it dusted her tray, or all those times she was convinced that all this was doing was punishing her for everything she'd done to lead her here.

but most of the time it's her mouth. she's too much. but she's growing - working with deborah teaches her one thing: sometimes, you can't say anything. sometimes, you sit in that uncomfortable silence, and instead of filling every gap with some pithy joke about floridians, you have to keep your fingers from peeling at your skin or digging into the hangnail in your thumb and bleeding all over the counter. sometimes, you need silence.

deborah fishes in her pond like it's ripped straight from some end of the world bullshit rich people utopian apocalypse movie, and ava shivers slightly into the windchill. that's vegas, baby. a desert by day, reaching one-ten, one-fifteen, with a strange man with veneers and a toupee telling you stay out of the sun, folks - it's gonna be a hot one, and immediately dropping to sixty when the sun falls.

do you know how to fish? no. she opens her mouth, searching for anything interesting, or any story she can use to relate to deborah pulling spines from her chest and talking about her father, but there's nothing. her dad worked a lot. too much to really revere the world around them like that. he showed up in his own way, taking pieces of himself out for her, for nina, for anyone except himself, and still - he'd barely ever made it out of the state. she misses him, sometimes. but what hits her harder is how much she doesn't... think about him. about how bad a person that makes her. about how much it doesn't... hurt that much. god, i'm fucking broken. i'm a terrible, selfish person.

so instead of talking, she tucks herself into her hoodie, reaches for a beer, and twists the cap. she takes a slug, offers it back out to deborah, and finds herself leaning her head in against her shoulder.

she's kicking heels outside the back of a dingy comedy club. the lights are flickering - red and blue, like if coors light ever had a national anthem that didn't involve a redneck shooting bullets against the back bar of some swing state. it's been a few days now - once an evening, lurking in the back trying to find some iota of inspiration on where she goes next, what she does next (there's a shadow that she can't shake - her name that's being spat across board and sound for indiscretion in the freest place in the world), and instead of doing anything about it, she thinks she strikes gold.

deborah vance. known global titty-shaking, guns-blazing superstar. the greats fall, and deborah falls harder - she found out about this gig through a friend of a friend (friend... maybe she wouldn't call it that, but jimmy bleated on about it on the phone and she needs a fucking win right now). she paces, one finger being chewed between her teeth and whittling down a hang nail that's been pissing her off since tuesday and -

the door creaks open, and a set of heels with a bodyguard triple the size of ava fan out from beneath the glow. she stands up straight, pauses, and makes a quick dart toward her.

“ this isn't like staying out past curfew, or — or going flying at night when we were kids, ” alex’s rebuke sliced through the room like a fine wire, livid and incisive and just shy of the overwrought, yet well - founded snap of a shout. " you knew that it was dangerous, and you went out there anyway. "

the timbre of her voice quivered with the restless flex of her fingers, the relentless, uneasy tread of her foot - falls on the med bay tile; a pace that only the steel - barred foot of the sunlamp hovering over kara’s assigned bed could bring to a halt. doused in the backwash of the terror she’d felt seeing kara in the midst of such chaos, such a media frenzy, she couldn’t quite summon the patience to feel sorry for the abrasion in her voice.

years at the DEO had taught her to suppress her fears, to co - exist with the human instinct to panic; to shove it all down deep enough to overcome the hardships that came with fighting on the front line, but nothing could have shelved it this time — not when she’d already suffered the loss of her father down the very same path she'd followed. not when he'd died for kara's secret.

it wasn’t difficult to conceptualise a supergirl leeched of her strength and stripped of her dignity for the benefit of some off - books experiment. ( kara’s power was non - negotiable, and alex’s faith in her uncorruptible — and yet even the slightest whisper of attention surrounding her sister's vicinity had sent a thunderbolt through her. )