i just can't seem to stop writing, and i have a pile of coursework haunting my ass. oh my fucking god. supercorp is going to be the death of me.
this fic is inspired by a tumblr post of which i cannot link because ffn is an asshole. but whoever made that gifset, thank you!
now read, ponder, and enjoy!
1. you weren't raised to love tender
She wasn't a royalty here, Kara knew that. At best, she was an alien superhero who could fly and potentially save the world. At worst, she was a marginalized species that many wanted to become or kill – an object of envy and hate.
Still, she was born one – a royalty. The well-crafted product of Zor-El and Alura Zor-El; the prodigy of the prestigious House of El; a potential member of the Science Guild; one of the two who got away. She was guided as she grew up to live life guided by principles and discipline, and not emotions and empathy, which were seen as weaknesses and points of exploitation.
Kara wasn't put in a pod and sent to another planet because she was caring and affectionate. She was put in a pod and sent to another planet because she was older and her duty was to care for her younger cousin. While that didn't turn out well at all, she carried those values in her even when she had landed in a completely foreign world.
And the urge to kiss Lena Luthor whenever she saw the woman was the opposite of that. It was a sign of tenderness, a sign of weakness, and she couldn't let herself be that, no matter how hard she wanted to be.
Kara Zor-El was a superhero and the hope of National City.
Lena Luthor was a human, a genius, a CEO, and the very thing that Kara could never give in to.
It didn't matter how many times Kara had brought the woman lunch. It didn't matter how many times Kara had won game nights being on a team with Lena. It didn't matter how in sync they were with each other that everyone else grew suspicious of their friendship. It didn't matter how Kara's heart fluttered every time Lena called her when she was overseas because, "I just want to hear your voice."
It didn't matter how much Kara Danvers loved Lena Luthor.
What mattered was that deep inside, she was Kara Zor-El, and an El wasn't meant to love unabashedly.
2. when she's around, all you do is tremble. when she's around, you want to get on your knees. look how much power she has over you. it's dangerous.
One word to describe Lena Luthor was beautiful. Kara had known that the first time she stepped into the large office and was smacked in the face with aforementioned beauty who also had a teasing smile and velvety voice. The alien had almost wanted to worship her feet right then and there.
But Lena Luthor was a lot of things too. Kara even had a list: intelligent, confident, passionate, kind, talented, focused, hardworking, and caring etc. Lena was all those things and more.
"I'm just a woman trying to make a name for herself outside of her family." And Kara found the wall she built around herself collapse and trusted her.
"I hope this isn't the last time we talk." And Kara hardly hesitated at agreeing with the Luthor, because she really wanted to see Lena again.
"Finally, I realized that some people are just bad, and there's nothing you can do to change that, but you can learn to protect yourself." And Kara almost wanted to leap forward and tell Lena that she wasn't, neither of them were, and inside, she swore to herself that she would do everything protect Lena Luthor.
"Who would have believed it? A Luthor and a Super working together." And Kara couldn't help but smile as well, followed by a twitch in her fingers as she resisted from experiencing the woman's alabaster skin, to make it more than working together.
"I thought you were different." And Kara almost went down to her knees at the idea of Lena thinking that she was Kal, because she was not – she spent her life trying to not be Kal.
"Why not? I'm a Luthor." And Kara did not speed over to stop both Lena and Lillian when she knew she very much could, because she still believe that Lena was not just a Luthor.
"I've never had friends like you before." And Kara's arms almost lost their functions, possibly voiding her of the opportunity to hug Lena for the first time.
"You're my favorite." And Kara was sure then and there that Lena was swiftly becoming her Kryptonite, other than the real thing.
"I think when I feel things again I'm going to be very, very afraid about the person I might be." And Kara wanted to do everything she could to show that Lena was not the person she thought she would become, but she couldn't, so she made Lena a promise that she had sworn to herself ages ago.
"What do you know about quantum entanglement? Polyatomic anions?" And Kara, while she knew exactly what Lena was talking about – come on, she was going to enter the Science Guild – pretended she knew nothing of those things, just to see that smile on Lena's face.
"You're the only person I can trust with this." And Kara was sure that Lena wasn't her Kryptonite, because while Kara was National City's savior, Lena had eventually become Kara's.
At this point, Kara didn't even need Alex to tell her that if Lena told her to jump, she would just ask how high. And that, more than anything, was dangerous.
3. she's too good at forgiving and you're too good at violence.
When one had superpowers like Kara, one would always feel the surge of violence in their veins, regardless whether they wanted to act on that impulse or not. And what scared Kara the most was that sometimes, she wanted to act on that impulse.
She was violent when she took down villains. She was violent when she sparred with Alex in the training room. She was violent when she punched cars and concrete walls due to anger. She was just…violence. And she was more than capable of violence whenever she remembered how Kal had lied to her and told her everything was going to be okay.
Because it wasn't. Nothing was okay. These powers of her, while helpful, were always going to be her vice.
And Lena, well, Lena was something else entirely. She was diplomatic and a full believer in the fact that everything could be done without violence. She used her words to solve problems. She drank alcohol to drown her anger and solemnity. She wasn't a violent person, by any means.
Kara was scared that if she were to kiss Lena, she would be too rough, and Lena would forgive her for it.
4. you know what they say about monsters. you know what happens to the girls who love them. are you going to do that to her?
There was a monster in her. Zor-El's blood flowed through her veins, and it was obvious that he was capable of utter selfishness when it came to it – case in point: Medusa. The great exhibition of the monster in her was her greatest regret: the Red Kryptonite.
Kara had almost killed her mentor, because the Red Kryptonite was capable of revealing the worst in oneself, and the worst in herself was the monster she had always vied to take down. Kara had seen what became of Alura when she fell in love with a monster – her mother became a monster herself, dropping punishments and writing regulations that should never be implemented; otherwise, Krypton would still be thriving.
And Lena deserved better than that.
Lena deserved better than the love of a woman who had a monster hidden within her, waiting to be unleashed at the right moment.
5. your hands don't know how to be gentle. Think about the last beautiful thing that shattered in your palms. the fresh rosebuds crumbling between your fingers like a bruise. you wolf-girl, you war machine. you wouldn't know how to hold something magic and not destroy it.
When she was thirteen, she broke the second-hand bed in the spare bedroom, the oven in the kitchen, the couch in the living room, and the landline phone on the wall in the foyer.
When she was fifteen, she broke the Danvers' car, almost sprained a puppy's neck, broke the swing in the backyard, and crushed the sink in the school's bathroom.
When she was twenty, she broke the door to her dorm, the computer in the laboratory, almost crushed the lecturer's hand, and the window in the classroom.
When she was twenty-six, she met Lena Luthor, and Lena Luthor was the one thing that Kara would never break.
6. if you hurt her, it might kill you.
Kara used to think that Alex was the one thing in the world she could never hurt. Her sister was her anchor in this mysteriously ever-changing world, and she was the only person who honest and genuinely loving to Kara.
Kara would rather hurt herself than hurt Alex, but more often than not, she was always the root cause of Alex's tears. Every time Kara understood that Alex was crying because of her, she wanted to go back to Krypton and spare Alex the pain of ever having to know her.
She had never imagined that Lena Luthor would insert herself into the equation. And the emotions that surged in her increased tenfold. Her heart sped up when Lena looked at her. Her lips mirrored Lena's when the woman smiled. Her mind tinkled when Lena laughed. Her entire body twitched when Lena was in her presence, as if the CEO was her charger.
And next to Alex, Lena was the one thing that she realized she couldn't hurt.
Because if Lena ever did hurt because of her, Kara wasn't sure if the sight of watching Lena wouldn't kill her.
7. if your hurt her, you might kill yourself.
Lena only wanted to help in whatever capacity she could. And whenever Lena helped, she always managed to save the whole world, even if the whole world didn't know it.
However, it always seemed that when she helped to save the world, it was always at the expense of her own safety – physically and emotionally. And she only hurt when Kara involved her in Supergirl-related missions.
And that counted as Kara hurting her.
She had seen Lena cry more times than she wanted to. She had seen Lena try to drown herself in alcohol to hide from the pain that saving the world had cost her. She had seen Lena trash around in her bed from nightmares that Kara had implanted in her mind by introducing herself to Lena.
Every time, Kara wanted to stab herself with Kryptonite, because that would probably hurt less than having to watch Lena suffer and not getting to do anything about it.
8. you are very bad at rehabilitation. this is one addiction you'd fail to give up. she's going to ruin for all other kisses and all other girls and you'll spend the rest of your life trying to forget her name.
There were many addictions in the world: drugs, alcohol, cigarettes. And Lena Luthor was all those things to Kara Danvers.
Because believe her, she had tried to tell herself to leave Lena alone many times in the past, especially when she saw that Lena was hurting because of her. But every time she convinced herself, she failed, because she couldn't go two days without at least hearing Lena's voice.
Somehow, somewhere, somewhat, Lena Luthor had become Kara Danvers' anchor.
She had had many kisses with many individuals, alien or human, men or women, and they were good. She liked kissing. But as she looked at Lena, focused on her lips that were always red and inviting, Kara was certain that if she kissed Lena, she wouldn't ever want to kiss anyone else ever again.
And that just wouldn't do it. She couldn't ruin one friendship because she had an unreasonable addiction.
9. you still aren't sure she isn't a dream.
Nightmares were not foreign. They had become her companion over the years of living on Earth. Her parents telling her they loved her; watching Krypton blow up while she was safely tucked away in a pod; failing to save Alex, James, Winn, J'onn, Maggie, and Mon-El; they were all horror movies in the middle of the night – causes of her waking up with sweat beading her brows and her chest trembling.
Lena Luthor, on the flip side, seemed like a fairytale dream to her – in all her raven haired glory and green eyed wonder.
What if she was? What if she wasn't real? What if she was just something that Kara conjured up to compensate for all the nightmares that had haunted her? What if she was a non-existentialism that Kara had unwittingly fallen in love with?
10. if you kiss her, you might wake up.
Fairytales always made it so that one kiss can wake a princess up, and the princess and the prince would have their happily ever after.
If Lena was a dream, then it would mean that Kara would wake up if she kissed her, which would then lead to the realization that Lena was a dream after all. And that, more than anything else, seemed to be a worse nightmare than the others.
+1. or you might not
Kara tried not to stare as Lena licked her fingers after mouthing down the last piece of her pizza, keeping her gaze focused on the television set in her living room. Except Lena had to moan in that low tone of hers, inadvertently turning Kara's eyes to her, watching as she closed her eyes in pleasure and leaned back against the couch.
And the urge to kiss her was there again.
This would be so much easier if they weren't alone.
"I've really got to hit the gym tomorrow," Lena complained. "This is your fault."
The blonde laughed, leaning back as well. "Oh please, you loved it. And don't worry, you look good the way you are." Her eyes widened when she heard what she said, and she cursed inwardly, unable to believe to herself.
Lena opened one eye, turning minutely in her direction. "Oh yeah?" she asked, her lips tilting at one corner in a smirk.
Kara stiffly nodded. "Yeah," she breathed.
They looked at each other, and Kara almost choked when Lena's eyes traveled to her lips for a second before looking back into her eyes. There were so many reasons not to kiss her – there really was.
But at this moment, with the hand on the metaphorical clock paused, she couldn't think of any of them.
She shifted closer to Lena, lifting her head to loom over the woman. Their eyes stayed on each other – Kara was looking for a reason in Lena's eyes to stop herself from making the ultimate move that might end or rescue their relationship. Lena sat frozen, from what, Kara didn't know. She closed her eyes, her chest shaking.
"Thank you," Lena said, barely more than a whisper.
Kara opened her eyes, frowning. "For what?"
Lena only shrugged. She didn't lean in. She didn't move away either.
The alien swallowed audibly; her heart was pounding in her ears, in tandem with Lena's. She lowered her head a fraction, decreasing their distance so much so that she could feel Lena's breathing on her skin. It was warm, and Kara could smell the mint toothpaste mixed with the cheesy trace of pizza.
Gingerly, she pushed forward, and they touched. Time started again, but she didn't care. She didn't care about the people rushing around in the city outside. She didn't care that there was an intense moment happening on the television. She didn't care that everyone had expected this happen, if they hadn't already thought this had already happened.
There was no war, no rivalry between two names, no suffering, no saving, no nothing, just them.
Kara Danvers opened her eyes, and Lena Luthor was staring right back at her.
Kara Danvers did not wake up.
what? did you really think i wouldn't let them kiss? please, i might like angst, but i know my limits :) okay i'll be honest, i almost didn't want to give them the kiss :P
anyway, shameless self promotion here. if you're into greek mythology au and you're into supercorp, you might want to check out my wip supercorp fic: she is your have to have. please check it out, i'm hungry for favorites and comments.
anyway, i have really got to stay away from fanfictions and stay focused on my coursework now. or i'll die and you won't see another fic from me yikes
