Like Humans Do (by Sexghosts)

Fandom: Supergirl
Author: Sexghosts (Archive of Our Own author, this work is merely copied to get more publicity for them)

Rating: M

Cat's perfume was strong in Kara's senses, so strong she could almost taste it; the notes of lavender and wood and jasmine scraped at the back of her throat as the heat between them grew. Cat's breath, her quiet moans, seemed louder than everything, but everything else seemed loud too; she could hear the bang of the steam in the pipes, the salsa music playing in the apartment three floors down, and Cat's heartbeat… Cat's heartbeat was the loudest thing, drumming in Kara's ears, its stumbling, achingly uneven rhythm banging in her chest, with Kara's own heartbeat stumbling after it.

Cat's scent … it was almost too intense, the smell of her body, her hair fragrant with honeysuckle shampoo and whatever product she used in it. But Kara also smelled the meals cooking down the hall, the exhausts of the cars outside the window, the musty wool of her jacket in the back of the closet, and felt the shifting currents of the air in the room.

She felt Cat, inside her, felt the texture of her fingerprints and the little pulsing veins in the pads of her fingers, felt her pushing, and felt herself giving under the pushes… And unlike before, the more she felt, the more she wanted to feel, this hot craving growing in a way that must be the elusive feeling anyone she'd ever slept with had gotten from sex.

And God, it was bright in the room all of a sudden, so bright it hurt. She didn't dare open her eyes to look at Cat because she was so sensitive right now, she didn't want to accidentally look down into her bones.

She was feeling something she had never felt, colliding with something she had felt before, but not in a very long time. The volume and intensity of everything grew with each movement, each kiss, and she didn't know why it was happening but at some point, she couldn't stop it, couldn't block it out, couldn't process it, and she had to tear herself from Cat, and stagger away. Her mind was a traffic jam, a riot, and she couldn't turn it off. She didn't want to pull away, but she couldn't help it. She was dimly aware of herself sobbing, "It's too much, it's too much," as she made her way unsteadily to the bathroom, slammed the door and locked it.

She collapsed on the tile floor and breathed hard, trying to focus herself, trying to bring her senses back to dull normal. She focused on the cool tile under her hands, the wood of the door against her back, closing her eyes and steadying herself with it. She hadn't had to do that since she had arrived here at twelve as a frightened child in an overwhelming world that she didn't understand. It had been a painful process, learning to numb herself to the incredible amounts of input. She had flashes of sense memories as she sat meditating on the cool of the floor, split second moments of her foster mother gently rubbing her arms with a soft brush, of placing her palms against the vibrating dryer in the basement, learning gradually to block more and more stimuli. The sense of touch had been the hardest to learn to manage.

It must have been the emotion of Cat turning up at her door, of realizing that Cat felt as much for her as she did, the revelation of how strong her own feelings were, the relief of touching her again. It must have shorted out all of her filters for a moment. It began to make a little sense.

She wasn't sure how long she had been sitting, focusing on the floor, before the volume of the world settled down to something bearable, and she heard Cat's voice outside the door. "Kara," she was asking, her voice sounding concerned, "are you alright?"

Kara took a breath. "I'm sorry Cat, I'm alright, I just need a few more minutes. Don't move."

She heard Cat's footsteps go back to the living room.

When Cat had taken her glasses off, taken her hair down, she was almost glad. She wanted Cat to recognize her. She couldn't be away from her and she couldn't keep lying, so she had hoped that Cat would finally see. And she almost did. But then she didn't. Supergirl looks like you, she'd said. Goddamnit.

But she was ready. She was ready to take Cat at her word and tell her the whole truth, be her whole self with her. She said she could handle anything, so let her handle. It didn't feel like a choice anymore. She looked up at the back of the door, saw her blue and red suit hanging there. There was only one way to do this.

When she floated gently out of the bathroom window, over to the living room window, and pushed it open, she saw Cat, still in her state of half undress, sitting on the couch, scrolling through her phone. And when she descended lightly through the window, onto the hardwood floor, Cat looked up, dropped her phone, jumped up in panic. She grabbed the plaid throw off of the arm of the couch and hurriedly pulled it around herself. "Supergirl! What the hell are you doing here?"

Kara didn't say a word, she just moved softly over to Cat, her steps soundless, walking on air. She knelt down in front of Cat. She pulled her glasses out of her belt and slowly put them on, watching the look on Cat's face change from confusion to consternation. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail, and tied it with an elastic, and sat there for a moment that felt like an eternity, looking at Cat. Please, please see me… please understand.

Cat's mouth slowly went slack. Her eyes flicked up to Kara's face, down to the "S" on her chest, back up to her face. Emotions jostled each other to get onto Cat's face, like the Three Stooges trying to all get through a door at the same time, except there were about ten instead of three. At last, Cat punched her in the shoulder.

"You!" she shouted. "You have been. Lying! To me! This! Entire! Time!" She punctuated each word with a punch to the shoulder. Then Cat grabbed her and kissed her hard on the mouth. "And I have never been so attracted to you." She kissed her again. "And you can't quit, you're fired." She punched her in the shoulder again. "Now take me to bed!"

Relief flooded Kara's chest. Oh, there would be so much to go through, so much to explain, and maybe Cat was mad that she'd been lied to, but it didn't change her wanting Kara, and that was good enough for her right now. She picked Cat up easily, effortlessly, and kissed her mouth, her neck, her chest, as she carried her off to the bedroom. She set Cat down on the bed, carefully peeled her out of the rest of her clothes, their eyes never leaving each other.

She spent a moment, sitting between Cat's feet, looking at her in the light of late afternoon that filtered soft and pale yellow through the closed curtains. She couldn't believe it. Cat was here, was naked in her bed, knew everything now, and still wanted her. She delicately took one of Cat's feet, kissed the top of it, and worked her mouth slowly upward, over her ankle, the swell of her calf. She pushed Cat's leg up toward her chest and kissed the back of her knee, the back of her thigh. "Cat…" she whispered.

"Kara," Cat said back softly, but there was a question in her eyes.

Kara nodded. "Yes, that's still my name. You named me Supergirl," she reminded her with a gentle note of teasing.

"Oh, right, trademark pending," Cat sighed, as Kara smiled and leaned down and kissed between her legs for a few moments, lingering in her taste before continuing upward, up her stomach, trailing up to her mouth. She could see Cat's face, still struggling to take all of this in. She felt her shiver a little in the cool room, so she drew her cape over both of them before continuing.

With a soft kiss, she slipped her fingers inside Cat again, and focused. Focused on Cat's body, on the way she felt, the softness of her skin, on the wonderful little gasp she made. Focused only on her sense of touch, and on lowering her resistance only a little at a time, pulling back the curtains layer by layer, becoming more and more present in her own body. She held still for a moment, dwelling in the feeling of falling deeper into Cat, into her smoky eyes, the warmth and flutter of Cat's wet pussy around her fingers. "I feel you," she whispered, barely able to breathe.

Cat's eyes hovered at half-mast, as if they wanted to close, but were unable to stop gazing into Kara's. She felt Cat's hands clasping her lower back. "I want to feel you too," she breathed, quieter than a whisper.

Kara started to move slowly in and out of her, bathing in her body, her sighs, her warmth, the scent of her hair, the solid feel of her muscles underneath her. Instead of everything crashing in on her, she was lowering herself gently into the experience, giving herself to it, to Cat, to the harmony of soft/firm/wet/hot/silky/rough that was being entangled in Cat's body. It felt like what she had been missing. It felt like home.

Without thinking, the words, "Oh, God, Cat, I love you," came out on the shallow rush of her breath. She paused as Cat looked at her, unreadable, but stunned. "I'm sorry," Kara apologized hurriedly. "You don't have to say it back, it just slipped out and-"

Cat lifted her head and hushed Kara with a kiss. "I love you too, darling," she mumbled back against Kara's lips. "More than I even realized."

Kara's heart broke open at this, and released a thousand million stars into her chest.

"Now stop talking and make love to me," Cat added, her face luminous and her cheeks flushed.

Kara dropped her head down, her forehead resting against Cat's, still keeping all her attention on her sense of touch, letting go, but not too far, not too much. She felt Cat's hand move down between their bodies, felt her reach down, slip up her skirt, heard a whispered request for permission which Kara gave happily, felt her slip in again. Cat held her fingers still, her soft breath telling Kara to go ahead, to take what she needed, at the pace she needed. Kara felt herself pushing in long, slow stretches of her hips, against Cat's touch. More breaking, more stars, this time studding up her spine, starting at Cat's fingers.

She had lived a lifetime of lies for this. She had shot away from the burning wreckage of her world for this. She had lost everything, but now, she had this. The joy of sinking in, the joy of being sunk into, of holding each other so delicately and finding the the shared rhythms of their hearts, breaths, and hips, of feeling each stroke build the hunger for more.

Cat came first, falling apart so gorgeously underneath Kara that she stopped her own movement to simply watch and appreciate Cat with her eyes closed, cheeks flushed, lip trembling, moaning, Kara, yes, yes, Kara, darling…

Kara beamed stupidly at her. She knew this had been different, better. And she knew it was because Cat felt her letting go, too. Cat quickly patted her on the back with her free hand. "Don't stop, you don't want to lose your rhythm," she whispered.

She went back to moving herself against Cat's fingers, felt them moving in response. She felt spirals of pleasure twisting through her nerves, constellations of sweat breaking on her skin, the push and pull of their bodies natural as the movement of the planets, and wanted more, more, more of it. She felt the heat of a supernova waiting to explode in her belly, ached for it, begged for Cat to pull it from her in words she couldn't remember later, speeding toward something she had never known how much she wanted.

And when it happened, it was so much more than she could have imagined. Alex had tried once to explain what it was like, and the best she could come up with was that it was like a sneeze. In some technical way, it was a build and release and that was all accurate, but… she felt the sun flood through her body, she felt weak, she felt powerful, she felt high, she felt broken, she felt strong, she felt desperate, but God, it was so good. All of it. She slowly let herself collapse on top of Cat, realized she was weeping into the curve of her neck. Cat's arms embraced her and felt solid as the earth, and Kara watered her body with joyful tears until everything was wrung out of her.

"I love you, Cat," she sighed again through her exhaustion.

"I love you, Supergirl," Cat sighed back.

They lay still and quiet for several minutes after this.

"We have a lot to talk about," Cat said quietly after a while.

"I know," Kara sighed.

"Do you know what your main mistake was?"

Kara knew she was looking for a particular answer, so she lay quiet.

"The moment we became 'we', this should have been our problem that we dealt with together. It was our problem anyway, only I didn't know it, so I couldn't help you do anything about it."

Kara considered this silently for a moment. She realized Cat was right. She had lived a life of secrets, and since becoming Supergirl, had gotten used to thinking she had to carry everything on her own shoulders.

As if reading her mind, Cat added, "Our relationship is one place where you not only don't need to be a hero, but it's actually a terrible idea."

Kara took a few deep, shaky breaths. "You're right. I won't make that mistake again," she promised.

Cat tugged at Kara's cape. "Why don't you take off all this super stuff and we can just lay naked under a blanket like humans do?"

Kara sat up, and Cat watched with appreciation as she peeled out of her suit, and then climbed back into bed. They curled together under the blanket, Kara's head resting on Cat's chest. She listened to their breathing, basked in their shared warmth.

"You've never been able to come with anyone because you've never been yourself with anyone," Cat realized.

Kara yawned. "Something like that. It's… it's about my senses…. I'll explain when I'm not so tired…" She nestled her cheek against Cat's warm breast, kissed it idly, and closed her eyes.

They fell asleep holding each other, and awoke in time to see the sun set outside the living room window.