Despite the balcony door being open and the air freshening system functioning at max capacity, the office is stifling. Lena is seriously starting to regret wearing a dress today because there's little she can do apart from removing her blazer to feel less crushed and sweaty. She's wondering if downright quitting and moving to a remote island would be too much. She's halfway through googling Themyscira to check if they have a landing strip for her jet when the intercom crackle with a call from security.
"Miss Luthor ? We have someone for you down here."
Lena's heart rate skyrocket. At least her dress is black and Kara might not noticed she sweat through it. "If it's Kara Danvers from the Tribune I've already filled her autorisation, she's cleared."
"It's not that Miss Luthor," her head of security stammers, "but she's setting off all of our detectors."
"Well does she have anything prohibited on her ? Did you remember to ask her to remove every metallic object ?"
"We did Miss Luthor."
"Then let her through," Lena says through gritted teeth, "and I'll send a technical team your way to adjust our new detectors' settings," she adds, terminating the call. "Because it's not like I don't already have a thousand things to do," she concludes to herself.
Unless Kara decides to take the stairs, the elevator ride is short, and Lena knows she doesn't have the time to complete the mental prepping she's been working on all morning. What if Kara is only here to tell her she's overstepped ? She did go behind her back to request that she be interviewed by her and only her even after Kara specifically told her not to talk to Snapper. She finishes googling Themyscira. She doubts they have an airport, but it's okay, she can drive a boat. And if all things fail, she can have Sam parachute her there.
In the corner of her office, the television spews grainy footage over grainy footage of Lena's saviour. They're calling them "The Blur" ; it's much better than "Luthor's Latest Experiment", and it's more accurate. After all, Lena can't even remember their face, it happened all too fast. She tried to hold onto their masked features for as long as she could, but they slipped away ; and now, when she tries to invoke the feeling of absolute safety of being taken away in the masked vigilante's arms, all she can think about is Kara coming to her apartment and touching her bruised face.
Kara reaches her office before she has the time to speculate any further, or to ask for a lift to Paradise Island.
A good head taller than her secretary, she appears behind Jess in all her glory. Light blue shirt neatly tucked in dark blue pants, hair carefully combed back but with an unruly blonde strand threatening to get away, she's got one hand in her pocket and the other loosely resting on her messenger bag. Her CatCo lanyard is tangled in her LCorp visitor badge and both hide a heather gray tie held in place by a small chrome bar.
Kara Danvers is unfairly handsome.
She politely hangs back as Jess introduces her, before confidently moving across the room when Lena beckons her closer with as much poise as she can summon.
"Miss Luthor", she says with an outstretched hand and a dazzling smile, "it was quite a surprise to be sent here this morning."
"Kara, please, you can still call me Lena."
"I didn't want to overstep my mark," Kara says, straightening her glasses with a small smile, "this is a professional setting."
"You can relax," Lena says, fully conscious of the irony of her words, "there's a reason why I wanted to be interviewed by you." Kara's shoulders slack as Lena motions for her to take a seat. "I hope you're not mad I talked to Snapper anyway. It's just that I do need to talk to the press but it's not my favourite exercise and I thought it'd be easier with a familiar face."
"No, no it's okay," Kara says, stopping her rummage through her bag to look at Lena in a way that immediately loosens the knot in her throat. "He's a bit of a brick wall and I didn't want you to confront him just for me. If it's useful to you to, then it's okay." She looks through her bag again for a moment before producing a small recorder, a notepad and a pen with a triumphant smile.
"I really wouldn't have minded talking to him you know ?" Lena says, hoping that Kara will understand that she truly does think she deserves it and truly does want to help. "I mean, I just had Jess send a couple of emails and now he's probably deadly afraid of her, but I could have done something myself just to help you, you deserve a shot at a real journalism career. I was just afraid of overdoing it, and that you'd get mad at me."
"I wouldn't have gotten mad," Kara says in the quiet reassuring way Lena is coming to associate with her. It goes against her better instincts, she should be waiting for the other shoe to drop, should be waiting for Kara to snap at her ; after all people always get mad at her, Veronica amongst others, even when she's trying to do good. But she can't help but be comforted by her support, can't help but want to lean in her warmth. Even more, she's starting to push against her own unsteadiness, her fragilities, to see, and to believe, that something good could happen to her.
The interview is surreal, at least from Lena's point of view. For someone who was warned at the last minute, Kara is well prepared, and her questions are razor sharp, but never aggressive. She, of course, has to ask her about LCorp's new security measures following the prior week incident ; but instead of this question segwaying into an attack against her supposed views, Kara asks her about her aliens employment plan, congratulates her even. The last time a reporter interviewed her on this matter, she was accused of lulling her new employees in a false sense of security to experiment on them later. Her relationship with the press isn't really stellar, but Kara is different, quick minded, and her questions, though precise, are open enough to give Lena some room to breathe. From aliens, she transitions to LCorp latest projects using Lena's supposed exploitation of her employees to delve into their work in the R&D department. Kara is focused, professional, and doesn't make her feel like she's having a conversation with a friend, but she still makes her feel at ease, and Lena blames the offer that passes her lips without checking with her brain first on that.
"Would you like to visit our labs ?"
In her time as CEO, no journalist has ever been allowed to do such a thing. One doesn't just walk into LCorp's R&D without seven separated background check ; but she just gives Kara a basic lab safety reminder, a lab coat and a pair of goggles. And she could have had any lab coat fetched for her, probably could even have 3D printed a custom one if given enough time, but the one she chose is a little bit tight around Kara's shoulder, and a little bit short on the sleeves ; it also happens to have Lena's name embroidered on the breast pocket. The view is enticing, and she can't help but smile smugly to herself at this very good spur of the moment idea.
In the lab, Kara quite literally thrums with childlike wonder. She seems most interested in eco-friendly and global warming reversing technology, but still has a kind and interested word for everyone. She jumps from table to table, vibrating with excitement, asks respectful questions, and at some point, stops for several minutes to make obscure math jokes with Jack Spheer. Lena wouldn't believe it if she weren't seeing it with her own two eyes ; actually, she isn't quite sure this isn't an elaborated hallucination.
"This place is amazing," Kara says when she's done nerding out with the employees, "surgical nanobots ? A wide scale medicine aero disperser to stop epidemics ? And I'm pretty sure this thruster belongs to an actual rocket ship ! I mean it probably won't fly because whoever built it got the math wrong but still, amazing !"
"What do you mean the math is wrong ?" Lena asks, grabbing Kara's forearm and setting off in direction of said thruster.
"Well, um," Kara stammers before pointing to a wall covered in writing, "it goes with what's written on this board, right ?"
"It does," Lena says slowly, scanning the blackboard in search of a mistake. "It's a side project I gave to a couple of interns."
"I think the equation is wrong," Kara says, adjusting her glasses to peer at the numbers.
"You think, or you're sure ?"Lena asks with a little more bite than intended.
"I'm sure," Kara says after a second, straightening up and crossing her arms behind her back. "It should be on r2 and it's on r1. That ship's never going to pull out of gravity."
"Do you want to correct it ?" Lena asks, producing a blue marker from her pocket.
"Oh," Kara says, taking a step back and seemingly nervous all the sudden. "I don't want to intrude on the work that's being done here."
"I think you know what you're doing and I want this rocket to fly." Lena reaches out and puts the pen in Kara's hand, closing each finger around it before squeezing determinately. "I'm giving you permission to do it, you're not overstepping."
Kara stares at the board for a moment, unmoving, and Lena fears that she's the one who overstepped by asking her to do it. Sure, she wants to know how far she can push Kara's intelligence, but maybe Kara's confidence is just a front and she's uncomfortable with rewriting an entire equation in front of strangers. Lena is about to take the pen back to maybe offer to get some burgers instead when Kara tentatively, then decisively moves towards the board. With a swipe of her sleeve, that has Lena shudder at the filthiness of the once pristine white fabric, Kara cleans the board and sets to work. She rewrites part of the equation quickly, having somehow memorised what was written and proceeds to correct it like it's something she could do in her sleep.
"A clean energy rocket," she says, "is less heavy that a traditional one because you don't have to take the weight of the fuel into account, but it still needs a good push off the ground to make it to orbit. Adapting alien technology to Earth's rockets is a good idea, but your interns forgot to take into account the peculiarity of our gravity." She caps the pen, and turns back to the entire room which has effectively stopped working. "I don't blame them," she adds hastily, shifting to focus on Lena, "it's not easy to calculate."
"But you did it," Lena whispers, surprised that she managed to form words with how flabbergasted she feels.
"Um, yeah," Kara says with a somewhat shy grin, "I did."
"Didn't you say you were a journalist Miss Danvers ?" Jack asks, stepping out of the small crowd.
"Science journalist," Kara corrects. "Well I aspire to the science part. But I like science. I know things about science."
"You know more than 'things'. Where did you learn all of that ?"
"School ?" Kara replies, though it sounds more like a question than an actual answer.
"Come on," Lena says, choosing to intervene before Kara starts feeling uncomfortable, putting her on the spot is the last thing she wants, "I want to show you something else."
If no journalist has ever been down to R&D, it's even truer for Lena's personal lab ; actually, no one has ever been invited in, period. It's where she houses her most personal and secret works, it's where she comes to relax or to hide. The secrecy of its existence is stated on the first page of her employees' NDA. She lets Kara in without a second thought. She holds her breath as Kara takes the room in, waiting for her to say something, maybe about the prosthetic abandoned on her desk, or about the shelf overflowing with printed out thesis ; what does come out of the blonde's mouth is the last thing she would have expected.
"You have glowing stars on your ceiling ?"
"I do...?" Lena says slowly, looking up to find that the cheap plastic stars she put up when she took over LCorp are still here. "I do."
Kara cocks her head to the side, looking at her like she's trying to decipher the meaning of life.
"My bedroom at the manor is gigantic and when I moved in at four years old, it was downright terrifying," Lena says, sitting down and patting the bench next to her. She inhales slowly ; talking about this, opening up, is almost as terrifying as sleeping at the Luthors for the first time. "I had trouble falling asleep. And staying asleep. And then one day, Lex came home from school with a pack of cheap glowing stars, and he held me up so I could put them on my ceiling. Every evening, he would read me a story before bed, and then he'd check that the stars were charged enough to hold for the whole night. I missed him so much, when I took over LCorp. I tried to hold on to that little something we shared and I put some up here too."
Kara doesn't interrupt, but she does reach out to take her hand and squeezes it softly, tracing soothing patterns with her thumb.
"Veronica always thought they were stupid," Lena continues, tapping a rhythm on her thigh with her free hand, "so I never put any in my new bedroom. But I think I will now, even if they're a bit silly."
"If they make you happy, you should," Kara says, briefly looking down at Lena's fidgeting hand before shifting to look at her again, her gaze gentle and reassuring.
"It's not just about Lex," Lena states, feeling the gut wrenching need for Kara to understand. Because sure, these flimsy pieces of plastic remind her of her brother, but beyond that, it's comfort, it's someone caring for her. "It's more than that," she says, "it's comfort, familiarity. Familiarity is something that I need in my life."
"I think it's sweet," Kara says after a stretch of silent. "That's why I asked. I'm happy that you're sharing this piece of yourself with me, but I don't want you to think you have to justify yourself. With me, you never have to."
"Thank you," Lena whispers because she can't think of anything more appropriate or eloquent to say. "Will you hang new ones with me ? In my bedroom ?" she adds shyly after a rather short moment of deliberation.
An earnest smile spreads on Kara's face ; it shines so bright that Lena swears the room is suddenly brighter. "Nothing would make me more happy. But first, please tell me more about your prosthetic. And don't hold back, please, ramble on, your work is fascinating."
A weird simmering feeling takes hold of Lena's stomach, like the acuteness of her body towards Kara's just got upped several notches. She gazes around the room, letting her eyes fall on everything that isn't Kara until she cannot take it anymore and she has to look at her. As her eyes land on her lips, the clarity of this new sensation hits her harder than a ton of nth metal ; she wants to kiss her.
Long after they've parted ways, Kara to go back to CatCo, Lena to drown in files, she still can't shake her newfound need to kiss her. It's not like it's surprising, she's deeply aware of her attraction to Kara ; but it's distracting, a now always present thought, more at the forefront of her mind that at the back.
She wonders what her lips feel like.
What it would be like to run her hands down her muscled arms.
If the hair at the back of her head is soft or rugged.
If she would kiss her back or if she would push her away.
She wonders if Kara could tell that she was thinking about kissing her. And she tries not to think about it because what if Kara knows, what if she thinks it's laughable, what if she finds her disgusting, what if she ruins everything ?
Her train of thoughts derails, burying her under the too great number of odds ; too little being in her favour. She tries to keep her thoughts parked in a square box but she fails miserably, and they keep on spilling out as she tries to organise her files in a non disturbing colour scheme, and as she tries to remember what possessed her to choose an oval desk on which she can't possibly align anything parallel to the edge, and as she checks seven times that her keys are in the key pocket in her bag. They are. Her keys are always in her bag right where she puts them every morning after closing the door. She has to check anyway, because today could be the day she misplaced them. Or she could have missed their absence the first six times she looked.
To top it off, she spent more time with Kara than her schedule intended and she missed her usual lunch time, leaving her nauseous and vaguely hungry but not that much interested in her salad.
Her phone going off has her jumping out of her skin. She nearly falls off her chair, but it at least has the merit of getting her out of her head.
The screen cuts through the daze, temporarily blinding her before the brightness adjusts. It's a message from Kara, more precisely, it's a picture of a small cardboard box with a childish star drawn on top. Kara has it captioned : "They make them out of recycled plastic now !"
And just when Lena thought Kara couldn't get any more perfect, she does.
She seems to have been literally chiseled out of the finest marble and it's a bit nerve wracking. Sometimes, like right now, Lena can't help but think that Kara's been made for her, to taunt her, tempt her, and that she's running straight into some big cosmic joke. On no planet and in no universe does Lena Luthor gets what she wants. It's her life, her experience, she's seen these things first hand and there's no way that she's anywhere near the level of someone who openly talks about feelings, lends her comfy clothes and buys her glowing stars.
Lena spends the rest of the day pondering over this, busying her hands with disassembling and reassembling her supposedly state of the art metal detectors under the astonished eyes of her security team. It's with her arms elbow deep in grease and a shallow gash on her hand that she comes to a definite realisation ; she's smart, she's gifted, and when she's not covered in bruises from encounters with various bits of metal, she's more than conventionally attractive. And Kara seems aware of all of this. The only thing keeping her from going after her might be her own twisted mind, and if she can take just a minuscule step out of her comfort zone she may be able to get the girl.
Lena goes home early, well, early for her and at a normal end of the work day hour for everybody else, and slightly frustrated for a multitude of reasons. Kara isn't here yet, unless she's standing extremely still in her apartment and isn't making any noise at all ; but the array of kids who lives in the building are all home and making their presence known, releasing their after school energy everywhere they can go. The press released a new, less blurry, picture of The Blur carrying an ambulance on their back, and some of the kids are wearing messily painted black cardboard on their heads to mimic the vigilante. It would be endearing if they weren't so loud ; and if they weren't too young to know that their newest hero might be involved in a more than a little violent drug bust that as reporters fighting on TV about the vigilante's goodness ratio. She envies these kids innocence, but they're so fucking loud.
Two minutes in, and Lena already has a headache. Four, and she's planning renovations that would include better isolation. Six, and she's sitting in her home office, sketching and planning for a new waste free and compact isolation material. Cut from the world with her noise cancelling headphones and engrossed in her calculations, she doesn't even notice when the building quiets down around dinner time ; she does however, hear a faint knock on her door, and unsurprisingly, it's Kara.
She's changed after work, and the tank top she's now sporting exposes her sinful arms. Her sweatpants fall a bit low on her hips which is something Lena has never considered attractive until this very moment. Dizzily, she removes her headphones and realises she should probably say something instead of just staring at Kara. She's about to open her mouth, ready to craft an interesting way to say hello again but stops short when she notices Kara openly staring back at her. She didn't change after work, and is still wearing the dress that was so suffocating just this morning. It was a good call apparently, because Kara's eyes are everywhere on her body.
"Are you busy ?" Kara asks after a moment, her lips curling into a small smile.
"No, not at all," Lena lies, discreetly wiping her pencil stained hands on her dress, "come in."
"I brought the stars," Kara says, pushing on the doorframe to move into the apartment. "I thought we could put them up now so you'd have a shot at a good and safe night of sleep." She kicks off her sneakers and after a second of deliberation, bends down to align them next to Lena's. "If that's okay with you that is," she adds, her smile falling a little. Lena wants to kiss that smile back on her face.
"That's perfectly fine," Lena whispers instead, shaking herself out of her daze to lead the way. "My bedroom is over there," she says more assertively.
Hyper aware of Kara's presence, she walks them to her bedroom. Each of her molecules is buzzing in synch with Kara's every moves even though she's standing a good respectful five feet behind her. It wouldn't take much to just turn around and touch her ; Lena doesn't do it, of course, but keeping herself in check is excruciating. The bedroom isn't far from the door, at all, but it's the longest walk of Lena's life and for the century long seconds it takes, the only thing she can think about is if Kara might want to kiss her too.
Without much surprise, Lena is way too small to reach the ceiling, even standing on the bed. She retrieves a step ladder from her office, and puts stars everywhere she can reach standing on this unstable death contraption. She threatens to fall a good couple of times, her legs weaker with each minute Kara spends protectively steadying the ladder. In the end, she waves her away, tasking her with putting stars above her bed, her height allowing her to do so. Lena regrets the absence of a window in this room because the air is so thick that she's sure she's going to be able to see it any second now.
They must work quickly, it's an easy task, but Lena feels like a lifetime passes as they start a weird and complicated dance around each other, Kara standing on the edge of the bed, close to Lena, and Lena moving the ladder away to work somewhere else. The farther away she is, the more she can feel her presence. Soon enough, they're down to one star. Kara hands it to her delicately, like a present.
"You should be the one who puts it up," she says lowly.
And before Lena can point out that she'll never be able to reach the one spot without a star, Kara is lifting her up and holding her like she weights nothing.
Her arms shake as she extend them, Kara adjusting her grip so she can lift her higher.
Her fingers graze the ceiling and the star sticks to it.
Kara brings her down, but doesn't step back ; she holds her close to her chest and they can't risk breathing without their bodies touching.
Lena holds her breath.
Almost imperceptibly, Kara leans forward.
A second pass. Two.
Lena closes the almost inexistant gap between them.
