Lucy didn't like doing this. Lena Luthor was nice enough – Lucy might actually consider dating her, under normal circumstances, but these aren't normal circumstances. Lucy's here for intelligence gathering, to find out if Lena will be attending the conference in Utah with her brother, Lex, while he's out on parole. And it rankles, because she wants to be going out with Alura, Kara, Alex and Astra. They're actually going to a restaurant on the very same street, though Lucy doesn't know exactly what restaurant – they had reservations and everything, and Lucy was stuck here with this gorgeous, potentially-very-dangerous woman doing recon.
"This is nice," Lena observed. Lucy quirked her lip, as it was, after all. "So what do you do on a normal day? Have you got a job? A family you see often?"
"Well, I have a lot of close friends at my work – I used to be in the army, actually."
"I figured, what with the title of Major," Lena smirked, causing Lucy to smile slightly, chuckling, wishing she were with her family, wherever they might be, rather than here.
"Well, yeah, I work for the government, doing stuff with my military qualifications. Strangely though, there aren't a lot of restrictions on if you can be friends outside of work as well as inside, so a lot of the friends I have right now work with me."
"That must be hell when you fight," Lena noted, before Lucy turned the conversation around onto her, not noticing the small group exiting the private terrace. She didn't have superhearing, so she didn't know how one stopped talking mid-sentence, whispering her name in confusion, before Lena held out her hand for Lucy to take – which she did, leaning over the table with dark eyes for the CEO to whisper a semi-come on.
Lucy didn't see, hear, or notice how Alura reacted to seeing her on a date with a complete stranger.
Of course, she is shouted at later, when she comes home, after a confusing conversation that has Alura bitterly finishing her seventeenth – or perhaps eighteenth – tub of ice cream. She is rather like Kara in that regard, where Astra is not. Lucy doesn't quite understand at first, as she thought that Alex would have explained what was going on, seeing as it was Alex who arranged everything by using Kara as a proxy.
Another reason to slyly interrogate Lena – she made friends with Kara for apparently no other reason than to make a friend in National City.
"Alura, it was a mission."
"Cheating on me isn't a mission!"
Lucy groaned, putting her hand to her forehead. "We need to find out if Lena's still in contact with her brother, for Chrissakes – Alura, she's Kara's friend, and sister to Kal-El's arch-enemy! It wasn't real."
But Alura is adamant. "That isn't how missions work. Missions- missions are filled with- with violence! And guns! And danger!"
"Oh my god, why did Kara show you all those spy movies?" Lucy whispers, shutting her eyes, "'Lura, there are different types of missions. What you're thinking of, yes, that happens, but then you've got things like recon, which I was doing just before with Luthor."
Alura has been crying for a while now, but it's only now that her anger fades. "…I love you, Lucy."
Lucy is immediately aloft. Her heart thuds a million beats a second, and that ever-present warm feeling whenever Alura enters her mind magnifies tenfold. She sweeps over, reaching up to thread her hands through Alura's hair, kissing her over and over again, crying herself.
"I love you too, I love you as well, I love you, I love you, it was just a mission, it meant nothing, I love you…"
"Don't do it again, please," Alura whimpers, "Promise me."
"I can't do that," Lucy bites down on her lip, wishing it would bruise like if Alura was human, knowing it wouldn't, "But I promise that nothing will ever come of it, ever. Any fake date, any recon or mission that involves pretending to be single, or in a relationship with anyone fucking else, I'll never mean any of it. Any compliment, or declaration of love, or anything meant for you – it's all for you, nothing is for anything else, I promise, I swear. Fuck, I love you so much."
Lucy is crying now, and they cling to each other, before Lucy kisses her way down Alura's neck, using a single, deft hand to undo her shirt one button at a time, other working on her belt as Alura rips off the tainted black dress she'd borrowed from Alex that had taken hours to modify to fit – she'd have been better off buying her own, if not for the DEO bulletproof fabric, and specially-grafted listening devices.
The next morning, when she hands it back to Alex, she tells her sister-in-law to introduce Kara to better spy movies.