"Everything okay?" Lena asked as she came out of Kara's bathroom, finding Alex and Kara with their arms crossed and worried looks on their faces. As soon as she was in front of them, she saw Alex's face harden and Kara's eyes became accusatory.

"Have you been working with Kryptonite?" Alex asked with a cold voice, the same one Lena knows is reserved for criminals.

"If I were a photographer with an eye for capturing the true personality of a person, I would have snapped dozens of shots as soon as Lena brought out her company's new alien detection device. This is who Lena Luthor is. Someone truly excited to share ideas with the world." 🪶

Our tortured poet's first words were about Lena ♡

Lena, Alex, Kara and Sam playing truth or dare in Kara’s apartment

Sam: Lena truth or dare

Lena: Truth

Sam: How many hours have you slept this week

Lena: A healthy amount

Kara: Lena 10 hours is not a healthy amount

Sam: 10 hours! Lena answer the question

Lena: Dare

Sam: Go to fucking sleep

Lena: Fine Kara truth or dare

Kara: Dare

Lena: come be my weighted blanket

Lena walks to Kara’s bed and Sam and Alex look at Kara

Kara: I mean it’s a dare can’t say no to that

Alex: Just go we will clean up

Kara: Thanks love yous

Kara gets up and goes to her bedroom and lays on top of Lena

Joining The Superfriends - Chapter 28

AO3 Link

“Alex, where’s Lena?”

Alex pushes back on Kara’s shoulders, stopping her from trying to sit up and get out of bed for at least the sixth time in less than two hours. “She’s got a lot on her plate and I think she needs some time to come to terms with everything.”

“What do you mean?”

“She sat by your side for five days straight, Kara. She spent most of that time doing nothing but worrying about you and hasn’t taken the time to properly process what happened with and to Lex. Her brother just died and that will impact her life massively.”

Kara closes her eyes, trying to get the image of Lex’s corpse out of her mind. “Yeah. That’s a lot. Is she mad at me?”

Alex looks down at her sister’s panic-stricken face. “No, no, of course not. She understands, and she actually told Kelly that she’s grateful it wasn’t her that did it, even if she hates that you now have to carry that burden.”

Hi.

I’m working on coming back to the world of fic writing after a very long hiatus. TLDR I got sober and had a baby and my perspective on the whole world changed, as it does. So if you’ve liked my fics in the past, I’m sorry I’ve been MIA for so long. Here’s a teaser of what I’m working on right now. It’s called State Lines.

“there’s no such thing as a clean break when your heart starts bleeding out.” - chance peña

Day 1

She sold her penthouse and bought the car. A gray sedan, plenty of room for all of the belongings she cared enough to travel with. Nothing flashy, something reliable and low maintenance that wouldn’t call too much attention to her presence as she made her escape. All that mattered to her was that the car’s suspension wasn’t impacted by all of the emotional weight she was bringing with her on this journey to nowhere. She should have said something, she knows that. But what do you say when you’re leaving everything and everyone behind?

She didn’t know where she was going, not that it really mattered. She’d been driving for two days, only stopping for gas and compulsory restroom and food breaks. The more distance she could place between herself and blonde haired blue eyed loves of her life, the better. So she drove, vaguely eastbound with stinging eyes and an aching heart.

Miles passed and the road lines started to feel like metaphors, lines in the proverbial sand. Endless expanses of pavement and exit signs beckoned her forward, the promise of anonymity and rebirth lingering somewhere on the horizon as she drove. As her old life burned to cinders behind her, she felt less like a phoenix and more like a nondescript speck of ash, floating aimlessly on the wind. And maybe that’s all she was now, without her.

Day 3

By day three, Lena had to stop to sleep. She’d pushed herself as far as she could, coffee and disgustingly sweet energy drinks sustaining her only to the point of blurred vision and shaking hands. So she found a slightly innocuous looking hotel a few miles off the highway in northern Texas, pulling her borrowed (now stolen) NCU baseball cap down as far as it would go to obscure her features as she checked in. It helped, she supposed, that the kid behind the counter couldn’t drag his eyes away from the football game he was watching long enough to look her in the eye, so being recognized wasn’t an issue. She paid for the room in cash, as she had with everything else on this trip, and she tipped the boy an extra $100 bill to ensure housekeeping left the room alone until she’d checked out. Leaving a paper trail would defeat the purpose of a clean break, and she couldn’t risk being recognized by a well-meaning staffer trying to offer more towels.

In the safety of a locked hotel room, Lena took her hair down and tossed the duffle bag on the bed. It was getting dark out, and she closed the heavy curtains to keep her eyes from searching the clear sky for familiar streaks of red and blue. It was only a matter of time, she knew, before her absence would become obvious. She’d left LCorp on sabbatical, leaving Sam at the helm for the time being, vaguely committing to take the reins again sometime in the future. Her new phone was blissfully quiet, Sam and Jess the only two she trusted with the number. News alerts about superheroes and aliens and secret government agencies were disabled, and all that graced her lock screen was a stock photo of some rainy trees.

As she sat down on the bed, exhaustion starting to settle into every nerve, she couldn’t help but wonder how the hell she got here. Not physically, that was obvious. She bought a car and drove for three straight days until she realized she was endangering the other drivers (though there’d been very few) by continuing on like this. She just didn’t trust herself to keep going without rest, so here she was, in a Hilton hotel in fucking Lubbock, of all places. Trust. That’s what this all boiled down to, wasn’t it? Misplaced trust, betrayal of trust, lack of trust where it was dutifully earned with literal blood, sweat and tears. Trust, broken and shattered and disintegrated in one fell swoop with her former favorite person’s too-little-too-late confession.

I did a collab with the wonderful Chloé (find her on Insta and Twitter for more amazing art) and we hurt ourselves in the process. Please refrain from sending hate mail. Thank you! ❤️💙

It began with a sneeze.

Lena’s entire body tensed, pain wracking her sinuses, and she tried to tamp it down and swallow it. There was a room full of investors, and she paused mid-presentation. She held up a protesting hand, signaling that she needed no help, and waved off her assistants. Finally the feeling subsided and she soldiered on, accidentally repeating part of the presentation. It didn’t matter, it was just a formality.

After, she was sitting alone in her office and she did sneeze this time, hard, into a silk handkerchief. A dull ache had settled into her bones and she felt droopy, tired. Still, she had work to do. Not the work she wanted to do. Not running the company, not strategizing. Not inventing or innovating. It was menial. It was assigned. She worked for her brother.

It was his pretty revenge, because Lena shot him two times in the chest. Then a bunch of very strange shit happened and Lena suddenly found herself in an entirely different world where Lex had never died, even though they both remembered it. A hellish nightmare world where Lillian was a philanthropist and Kara and all her friends worked more or less for Lex, keeping aliens in check.

Lena couldn’t go to her best friend for help, because her best friend had betrayed her. Lena almost wished she’d been erased when the multiverse collapsed, replaced by a copy of herself who’d never felt this agony.

There was a truth she would never admit, even to herself.

She’d feel better if Kara was here.

The days dragged on and so did her cold. Except, it wasn’t a cold. On the third day she woke to a high fever, feeling a little wobbly when she forced herself out of bed. Her sinuses burned and she had to breathe through her mouth. When she took her temperature, it was elevated, close to being dangerous. Every muscle and joint on her body ached and the sight of food made her retch involuntarily.

Lena had the goddamn flu.

She did something she’d never done: by a curt email, she informed her staff that she was ill and would not be in the office today. Instead, she rummaged through her closet, her breath catching on a familiar sweatshirt.

It was a Midvale High School Mathletes sweater. It was Kara’s, but Lena knew with a certainty that Kara had not been in Lena’s penthouse since It Happened. There was no way for this to get here but…

She stifled a sob. This world had its own Lena, one whose life she’d appropriated or merged with or God knows what, and that Lena Kara’s clothes in her home. Lena kept stumbling across them and it hurt more every time.

Had they been happy, before? Kara must have spent the night. They must have been close. Lena had been close with her Kara; they hung out and Kara had slept over a few times but they weren’t really on your-clothes-in-my-closet terms. Had that been what happened here? Did they share the bed? Were they…

Did they…

Lena put it on, felt it shelter her body. She put in two pairs of leggings and hoped her laptop would warm her. She curled with it on the couch, and got exactly nothing done. After three hours she closed the computer and flipped channels until she found the old friend of the seriously ill and the chronically unemployed: reruns.

Curling on one end of the couch, she laid her head to rest on the arm and her eyes slid closed.

It seemed that as soon as she did, she opened them again. Her head was throbbing. She tried to push herself up, but it was too great an effort and she flopped down again. Her throat was dry and sticky, and unable to breathe through her nose, air came in reedy wheezes. Swallowing only made it worse, and she felt a rising panic.

Something beyond sleep, thick and heavy, was dragging her down, even as she struggled.

A chill night breeze rolled over her, and she shivered explosively.

"Easy now. I've got you."

Powerful arms lifted her limp body and carried her. Gently, Lena was laid on her bed and a blanket thrown over her.

She opened her eyes. Kara sat her up, cradling her in one arm as she held a glass in another, so Lena could drink. She let the cool water wet her throat and did her best to breathe again. Gently, Kara lowered her back down to rest and folded a cool, damp cloth on her forehead. Lena sighed in relief.

“Get out. Don’t want you here.”

“I’m sorry,” Kara whispered. “I can’t leave you alone like this. I’ll be right back.”

She was indeed right back, Supergirl walking into Lena’s budoir carrying a drug store bag full of medicine. She sat Lena up again and administered the foul tasting stuff over Lena’s protests, then shut off the lights.

Lena tried to roll on her side. It didn’t go well.

Kara knelt and slipped out of her boots. Then, she undid one side, then the other, and unclasped her cape from her shoulders. She then swept it over Lena and tucked it around her gently.

“Kara,” Lena muttered.

“Hush. It’s a blanket. It’ll keep you warm.”

Lena wasn’t sure what happened next, if she dreamed it or if it was real, but she felt the bed shift as Kara climbed aboard and laid down beside her.

Eventually, she woke up again. Kara was tucked against her back, one arm thrown protectively over Lena’s side, resting on her blanket cocoon. Kara snored lightly, lying on the bed so that her chin rested on the crown of Lena’s head.

Kara noticed she’d stirred and silently stood, offering Lena her next dose of syrupy, nasty medicine. She accepted it just as silently and laid back down to sleep.

The cycle continued. Day came. Kara didn’t leave her. She drew the curtains and laid on the bed beside Lena, never speaking, never making any demands.

Finally Lena was well enough to roll over and face her.

“Why are you here?”

“I heard Gillian’s Island coming from your living room and thought you must be in danger.”

Lena snorted in spite of herself.

Kara softened. Her big blue eyes, eyes that could launch a thousand ships, carried such a weight of sorrow that Lena felt a surge of pain and regret in her heart, wondering why in the hell they were feuding. No. She couldn’t do that. She couldn’t just…

“I’m sorry.”

Lena tucked herself into the blankets. She wanted to roll over, to turn away, to stop this before she did something she would regret later.

“I keep finding your things in my place,” Kara murmured. “It makes me wonder if it was different here. If we were different. What if I’d made other choices. If I’d been honest with you. Bolder.”

“You weren’t,” said Lena. “You aren’t. That’s the way it is. That door was closed.”

“When I landed on your balcony, it was open.”

“A mistake I won’t repeat. Careless. Thank you for helping me, but I didn’t need it. I don’t need you.”

Kara closed her eyes and sighed.

“I hate doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“You’re lying.”

Lena jerked back, as much as her aching body would allow, anyway.

“How do you know?”

It didn’t hit Lena that she hadn’t offered a denial, at least not until later.

“Easy,” Kara smiled. “I cheat. Skin conductivity and moisture levels. Heat bloom on your skin. Pulse. Pupil dilation. Breathing patterns.”

“I have the flu. That’s why.”

Kara frowned.

“You’re wearing my sweater.”

“It’s not yours. It’s hers. The lives we stole.”

Kara shook her head. “That’s not what he did. Your brother created this world to live out his fantasies and make me suffer. That’s why your things are at my place and mine at yours. It’s showing us the life we should have had,” a tear shone on Kara’s cheek, “had I not been a fuckup and a coward. If I’d trusted you.”

Lena choked back a small sob, and started to cough violently.

Without a word, Kara gathered her up and rested Lena’s head on her shoulder, walling her up in those beefy, protective arms of hers. Lena allowed it, curling her fingers against the twitching muscles of Kara’s back.

Lena wanted to pull away…

No. That was a lie, a miserable fucking lie. She didn’t want to pull back. She didn’t want to fight. She thought she had to, that she needed to.

“Don’t cry,” Kara said, tenderly brushing a tear from Lena’s cheek. “I know you’re furious with me. I know things are bad. I know your brother has power over us. It’ll get better. I won’t let him hurt you. I won’t let anyone hurt you. I promise.”

“You already hurt me.”

“I know,” Kara whimpered, her voice wobbling. “I’m sorry, Lena. I’ve never been more sorry about anything in my entire life. I wake up every day praying I can find some way to take it back."

"You can't."

Kara tensed.

"Maybe you don't have to," said Lena.

Kara's breath caught. She lowered Lena to the bed, and this time wrapped them in the blankets together. She was so warm.

"I've got you."

Blessedly, Lena slept.

Each time she woke, she felt better. Eventually, she was well enough for Kara to leave the bed. A few minutes later, Kara came back, and she brought breakfast. Her appetite back, Lena dug in, enjoying the tea Kara brought.

Kara took the tray and plates when she was done.

"You look a lot better."

Lena nodded. "Ah, yes, thank you."

Silence. There was a heavy pause, and then Kara sat down beside her on the bed.

"I wish I'd been brave before."

Lena looked at her, really looked at her, this enchanting vision looking at Lena like she hung all the stars in the sky, her eyes so full of longing that Lena felt she might fall into them forever.

"What would you do if you were brave?"

"This."

Warm fingers curled around Lena's chin. Kara leaned in, and Lena felt it happen even before their lips touched. When they did, it was electric. Lena felt the world spinning. Kara caught her and lowered her to the bed.

"I don't care about multiverses and cosmic entities and your evil brother. No matter what they throw at me, I will always find my way back to you. If you want me."

Lena pulled her down into another kiss, and that was her answer.

do you think when lena wants attention she ever holds her breath so her heartrate will get all wonky because she knows kara’s listening and will come rushing to her side to see if she’s okay

Blue and Fire Engine Red, Pt 4

Special thanks to @magicalstripedhorse, who helped keep this installment on track. :)

-----

“Oh no,” Kara drawls the moment she steps out onto the stoop of her building eight days later. “You have got to be kidding me.”

Lena smirks, leaning casually against the side of an old beat up pick up truck. The red ball-cap on her head is just as worn, its frayed bill extending backwards from Lena’s head.

“Flannel? Really?” Kara eyes the shirt in question where it’s tied around Lena’s waist. “Can you be any more of a lesbian?”

Lena spreads her hands. “We’re going to a farmer’s market,” she says. “What did you expect? An LBD?”

“Hm,” Kara hums, bouncing down the steps to greet her girlfriend with a kiss. “Maybe for dinner later.”

She definitely wouldn’t mind seeing Lena in a little black dress. Her mind conjures up an image that very nearly makes her pull Lena back upstairs, but the call of fresh fruit and vegetables proves to be too strong.

“All right, Tegan and Sara, let’s get going.”

The drive is somewhat familiar, as Kara has been to the farmers market before, but it’s been a while and it takes longer than Kara remembers. She’s not mad about it though– it gives her time to catch up with Lena about their weeks, which are relatively tame for a week in the life of first responders.

Lena had a few oven fires, a serious case of whiplash during a fender bender, and not one, but two cats stuck in a tree. Definitely tops Kara’s days of petty larceny, jaywalking, and a single wellness check. But she knows better than to comment on the relative slowness– the moment it’s acknowledged is the moment the sky starts to fall.

Just when the city gives way to suburbs, Lena turns the truck into a graveled parking lot. Kara takes note of the cars already there, and the thin stream of people already circulating through the stalls. It’s only mid-morning, and she expects the crowd will only grow as the day progresses. 

“Come on,” Kara calls as she hops out of the truck, slamming the dusty door behind her. “I need asparagus.” 

She gets her asparagus, and much more. She snags an artichoke and some lettuce as well as some strawberries she makes a note to prep for the next time Lena comes over. Lena splits away for a short moment, and comes back with fava beans and a joke about a nice chianti that makes Kara laugh.

Produce leads to cuts of various meats out of coolers. Lena nudges her. “You like steak?”

Kara’s mouth waters. “Oh, yeah.”

Lena requests two prime ribs, and tucks them and a slab of bacon into her tote alongside her fava beans. By the time they get to the baked goods and crafts, Kara’s own bag is sitting heavy in the crook of her elbow. She moves it to her shoulder instead, and has just prodded Lena towards a live herbs vendor when a call splits the air.

“Hey, Sarge!” 

part 6!

In my experience supercorp shippers are the first to call ourselves delusional clowns but it actually has become canon in the batwoman comics since the show ended

Blue and Fire Engine Red, Pt 4 (smexy times ahead)

Three baskets of onion rings later, Kara feels a pleasant buzz humming through her body. She lets Lena climb the steps back up to street level first, only to find herself having to studiously avoid staring at the woman’s ass. They walk a little ways down the block in comfortable silence. Kara feels confident that they’ve managed to salvage the date– the conversation had recovered relatively well following her tragic backstory. 

She reflects on how Lena hadn’t lingered on the trauma, had neither asked questions nor offered unneeded sympathies. She’d simply let Kara drive the conversation, and followed when Kara had moved on to stories from the academy. Lena hadn’t shared much of herself, but Kara was content with her laughter and effusive smiles.

When they pause at the curb, Kara hesitates. She isn’t nearly ready for the night to end, but she doesn’t want to come on too strong. Now, it’s Lena’s turn to drive–

“So,” Lena says, tucking her hands into her back pockets. “How drunk do I need to be to go home with you?”

Kara jolts, not expecting the forthright question. She barks a laugh. “As drunk as you wanna be,” she says, taking a step closer. “But ideally not so drunk you won’t remember in the morning.”

Kara crooks her arm, and Lena threads her arm through it. She only saw Lena with the one drink, but that doesn’t keep her from continuing to tease. 

“Will I have to take a sobriety test?” she asks puckishly.

“Only if you ask nicely.”