This is a gift for kellsbells. Sorry you're having a rough time.
Also, this is Romantic Kalex. If that's not your thing, please just move along.
Work Text:
Kara wasn't sure of the exact moment she fell in love with Alex, but she would never forget the exact moment she realized it. The moment she realized that she couldn't live without Alex in her life. It was a few months after Kenny died, a few months after they'd really become family. She'd looked into Alex's eyes as they were sitting and talking, and she'd felt something she'd never expected to feel again. She felt loved. She felt at home.
It was a heady feeling, a bit like the /urvishes/ root candies her mother used to give her to ease the pain when she had a chest cold back on Krypton, and one she found herself chasing every chance she got. She spent all her time with Alex, wrapped up in a happy little bubble that left her feeling like she was flying. It was a dangerous feeling too, because it made her want things she knew she couldn't have. It made her want to reach for Alex in a way that she knew she wasn't supposed to. It made her want to kiss Alex and touch her and love her in every way she could. She pushed those desires down, because they were dangerous, because they could ruin everything.
Alex's company had become Kara's favorite drug, and she hungered for it with an appetite that dwarfed even her near insatiable need for food under the light of the yellow sun. She didn't ever want to be without it, for any reason. But time and fate and a place called Stanford took it away long before Kara had her fill of it.
She tried to deal with it. Tried to ease the ache with emails and texts and letters, but like any addict deprived of their favorite fix, Kara eventually hit rock bottom, and found something else to fill the void.
The first time it happened was Kara's senior year. Alex had been at Stanford for nine days, and Kara had spent ever moment of it feeling like she couldn't breathe, like a piece of her was missing, but Jenna just showed up in four of Kara's classes the first day. A transfer student in an oxford shift, a pinstriped vest, dark jeans that hugged every inch, Doc Martens, short auburn hair, and three diamond studs in each ear. Kara spent all of first period staring at her, wondering if she was a gift from Rao to ease her suffering, or a trap sent by Yuda-Kal to temp her into sin. In the end it didn't matter. Not when Jenna had sat down across from her at lunch and smiled that crooked little smile.
Kara tried to be good. She did. She was friendly, she was kind, she was welcoming, but she did her best to keep her distance, to not be drawn in, but the longer Alex was gone, the weaker she got. Too many nights without the sound of Alex's heartbeat in her ear, without Alex's arm around her, without Alex's shoulder to rest her head on, and Kara's strength slowly left her.
One Friday, four weeks into term, Eliza told Kara she would be working late. Kara invited Jenna over after school. She knew it was a bad idea, knew it was wrong, but Alex had been gone five weeks, and Kara needed something to ease the pain and the emptiness. She knew she shouldn't let Jenna kiss her, but when Jenna leaned in, Kara just closed her eyes and opened her lips. She was a week shy of her 18th birthday, or her 42nd, when she lost her virginity, with Jenna's fingers inside her, and Jenna's mouth on her breast, and a pillow pressed over her face so Jenna doesn't hear Alex's name on her lips.
She's grateful when Jenna and her family spent Christmas in Gotham, because that meant there's no chance of Jenna meeting Alex, or Alex meeting Jenna. She felt relieved and devastated when Alex got in her car to drive back to Stanford. Relieved that she's gone before Jenna got back. Devastated that the two weeks she spent with Alex would have to last her until Alex came home for Spring Break.
She and Jenna date for months, and Kara learned a lot of things. She learned that there's a sex shop in Midvale, because Jenna wouldn't turn eighteen until late November, so Kara's the one that did the shopping. She learned what a strap on is, and that she loved being fucked with one. She learned how to go down on a woman, and that there is a meal she enjoyed more than pizza and potstickers. She learned what packing is, and how to be absolutely silent while she was getting fucked in one of the supply closets at school. She learned what double penetration is, and how to glue the headboard of her bed back together after she broke it in half. She learned how to have sex with her girlfriend in the back seat of a civic. She learned how to crawl in her girlfriend's window at night. She learned to be a giving, uninhibited lover, so Jenna doesn't notice how much she takes, and how selfish she is. Most of all, she learned to lie to Alex, when Alex asked if she was seeing anyone, and how to lie to Eliza when Eliza asked if she was doing okay.
It all came to an end in March. Alex came home, and by some miracle, Stanford's Spring Break and Midvale High School's were the same week. Jenna called, but Kara didn't answer, because she was with Alex, and she could breathe again in a way she couldn't for months. They spent every moment together, hugging, touching, laughing. Being Kara and Alex. It was like being high after too long without a fix. They made it to Wednesday before it happened. They were sitting in Kara's favorite ice cream shop in town, working their way through Sundays and talking about what they were going to do that summer when Kara looked up and saw Jenna staring at them through the window. Kara could see the tears running down her face, and she felt terrible, but she couldn't go to her, couldn't explain, because then Alex would know, and Alex couldn't know.
Jenna never spoke to her again.
The next time it happened, Kara was a junior in college. She and Alex were at the same school again. Alex had finished her undergrad degree in three years and was in her first year of Medical School and the Bioengineering PhD program at NCU. They should have been closer than ever, but they had never felt further apart. Kara knew something was going on with Alex, but she didn't know what. She only knew that there were no sister nights, no closeness, none of the things she needed.
By the time Crystal walked into Noonan's, Kara was desperate enough, and needy enough that she would take any lifeline she could find, and Crystal was breathtaking. Tall and butch, with brown eyes that could melt your soul. She had auburn hair she wore in a buzz cut, and wore a shirt held together with more safety pins than fabric, a leather jacket covered in studs, a nose ring and a tattoo of the House of El coat of arms on her neck.
All Kara could think about as she took Crystal's order was Alex's punk rock phase, and the nights she would wait until Alex's breathing evened out and her heartbeat slowed so Kara could slip her hands down inside her own pajamas and ease the ache that had been there all day.
It took her time to work up the courage, or to succumb to her weakness, but the third time she saw Crystal in Noonan's she took one of the sharpies and wrote her number on a napkin and handed it to her.
Crystal was the first time Kara had ever slept with someone on the first date. She was also the first girl Kara had been with since Jenna, but Kara had learned in the intervening time how to be careful with someone's heart. She spelled it out. She was in love with someone. That someone didn't want her. She was looking for companionship and sex, not love or commitment. Crystal had practically cried with relief.
Sex with her was different from Jenna, or from any of the boys she'd been with. Crystal was giving and attentive, but she didn't like to be touched in certain places. Kara learned to avoid her breasts and her hips. She learned how to suck a strap on, and how to keep her hands away from what was under the harness. She learned how to be held, but not to hold. She learned to call Crystal Crys. She learned that when Crys's whole hand was inside her, she could almost, almost feel pain, and Great Rao, it was wonderful.
There wasn't a lot of talking at first. They both needed something, and they found it together for almost two years. The talking did come eventually, and with it more learning. Kara learned what transgender meant. She learned to use he and him, instead of she and her. She learned to call her lover Carson. She learned how to give a testosterone shot, and how to take care of someone after a double mastectomy. She learned to say goodbye when Carson went to grad school. She learned to hate Stanford all over again for taking people she loved away from her. Two years later, she learned how to stand up for her ex at his wedding.
She didn't learn to tell Alex the truth though.
The third time it happened Kara had been Supergirl for about a year and a half. Her Earth Birthday had come and gone, and Alex had nearly missed it. Because of Maggie. Because Alex was in love with a woman. A woman who wasn't her.
Kara wanted to hate Maggie, but she couldn't. She loved Alex too much, and Maggie made Alex happy, and Kara wanted Alex to me happy. She just wished she could be the one to make Alex happy. Before Kara could really process everything, there was trouble with Lena, and Lillian escaped, and Metallo exploded, and when it was all over, there was Mxyzptlk, and by the time it was done, she was just tired and she wanted nothing more than to go home and curl up with Alex, except Alex was across town dancing with Maggie in a ballroom Kara had helped arrange.
Kara considered going to see Lena, considered losing herself in the woman's obvious interest, and doing her best to forget Alex for a while, but Lena brought all sorts of messy complications, and she just couldn't do it. There was too much potential for hurt there.
She nearly jumped when she felt Susan's hand on her shoulder, but the understanding look Susan gave her brought tears to her eyes. Tears Susan has spent the night kissing away.
The weeks and months that followed weren't exactly happy, but Susan took care of her. She was kind and gentle. Some nights she made love to her, slow and tender, and helped Kara nurse her broken heart. Other nights, she took her fast and hard, and made Kara remember what it felt like to be wanted and desired. Some nights, she let Kara do whatever she wanted, and other nights, she locked Kara's wrists to the headboard with inhibitor cuffs fucked her raw until Kara begged her to stop. Kara wasn't sure how she did it, but Susan read her like a book, and she knew what Kara needed before Kara knew herself. Some nights, she suspected Susan was an empath, but the one thing she knew was that she never would have gotten through Maggie without Susan there.
And when Alex broke up with Maggie, Susan had pulled Kara into one of the ready rooms, and kissed her goodbye, like she had been waiting for it all along.
The last time it happened, was just after Reign was defeated. Kara walked into the DEO, and saw Alex and Sam talking, and had to fight back the urge to scream the moment she saw the look on Sam's face. She's spent months doing everything she could to help Alex get better, to patch up her broken heart, and there Sam was, looking at Alex like she hung the moon, and for one uncharitable moment, Kara wished she had let Sam stay dead. The moment the thought hit, Kara felt sick. She turned away, and headed out onto the landing deck, and stared out into the city, watching the smoke rise up as the last of the fires were put out.
She kicked off of the balcony and flew back to her apartment, scolding herself the whole way for being so small and selfish. Alex wasn't hers. The fact that she had been there for Alex when Alex needed her gave her no claim of ownership. The fact that she loved Alex did not mean Alex was obligated to return her love in kind. If Alex wanted Sam and Sam wanted Alex, who was Kara to stand in their way?
She would be okay with it, the same way she'd been okay with Alex and Maggie. Because she had to be, because she loved Alex enough to force herself to be. But she would be okay with it tomorrow. She'd find some way to fill the void, just like she had before. There were a couple of girls who hung out at Al's bar that had expressed an interest. It didn't need to be an epic love affair. It just needed to be something that made her feel less alone the nights she needed it. But tomorrow. She would start on that tomorrow. After everything she'd been through, after everything she'd seen and done, the universe owed her one night to wallow.
The universe didn't seem to agree. Not if the knock on her door was anything to go by. She looked over, using her X-Ray vision to see who was there. It was Alex, because of course it was. Kara got up of the couch and opened the door.
She invited Alex in, because it was Alex, and because there would never be a day in her entire life when she wouldn't invite Alex in. They moved silently, like partners moving through a dance they had rehearsed a thousand times. Alex set the food up on the coffee table, while Kara got dishes and drinks.
Kara was on her third slice of pizza when Alex finally asks her why she skipped out at the DEO. Kara considered lying, but she was too tired, so she told the truth. Well, part of the truth. She'd seen Sam and Alex talking, and she didn't want to get in the way. Alex just shook her head and said there was nothing to get in the way of. Sam was nice, and she adored Ruby, but there was nothing there, and there wasn't going to be.
Kara asked why, because apparently, she was a masochist, but Alex confessed that she'd figured something out while the two of them were on Argo. She said she realized that she's spent her whole life since her dad died looking for something she already had. That she wanted something to fill the hole in her life, to make her feel loved the way her parents had before Jeremiah disappeared and her mother vanished into her own grief, and she hadn't realized, until she was faced with the very real chance that Kara would decide to stay on Argo when Alex went back to Earth, that she had everything she needed to be happy.
Before Kara had time to really process what Alex had just said, Alex was kissing her, and her body, thankfully, reacted more quickly than her brain. She pulled Alex into her lap and kissed her like her life depended on it, and years of living on substitutes and half doses, the feel of Alex's lip on her own, and Alex's hands on her body was everything she ever imagined it would be, and so, so much more.
When she opened her eyes again, they were floating halfway to the ceiling, and neither of them could stop the laughter. When it finally did stop, and she could breathe again, Kara asked why Alex had decided to confess now, and Alex had blushingly admitted that when Kara left the DEO, Susan had threatened to shoot Alex with her own gun if she didn't go after Kara and tell her how she felt.
Kara had laughed and leaned in to kiss Alex again. One kiss led to another, and in the weeks and months that followed, led to dates and sex and to a small wedding on the beach in Midvale and a honeymoon on Argo. It wasn't always an easy road. They lost people along the way. Winn to the future, James to a job offer across the country. Olivia to one of Lex Luthor's plots. Some of them they got back. Some of them they didn't, but in the end, Kara had Alex, and Alex had Kara, and that's all either of them really needed.