Full Chapter Title is "The Boy on the Beach and the Girl on the Couch"

Note: Sorry it's been so long between updates. I can't really promise it will get any better, but have a chapter.

The sun had already started it's decent by the time they got to the beach, which made in harder. In fact, if it weren't for the fact that her eyes worked in areas of the spectrum humans could only dream of, she probably wouldn't have been able to do it at all, and for just a moment, she wished they lived on the east coast instead of the west. It was a fleeting thought though. A moment of annoyance before she pulled her sketchbook and her drawing tin and selected one of the graphite sticks.

She sat on the sand and watched as Alex stripped out of her t-shirt and board shorts, waiting for the moment she wanted to capture. It was always a little different, but that day, inspiration struck as she watched Alex start smearing anti-chafing gel on. Still, she didn't start drawing right away. She didn't want to miss a moment of Alex climbing into the painted-on wetsuit.

"Are you good?" Alex asked.

"Yeah," Kara said. "Go have fun."

Alex gave her a smile before she headed for the water, and Kara couldn't stop herself from smiling back, and once Alex was in the water, Kara looked down at her sketch book and started drawing. She placed every line carefully and used her fingers to smear the graphite to provide shading and depth, recording every contour of Alex's body on the paper. She let her fingers linger in the places she longed to touch. Alex's neck, her abs, the swell of her hip, her lips. The hands she saved towards the end, spending more time on them, imagining what it would feel like to be touched by them not as a sister, but as a bond mate.

She glanced up at the sound of someone approaching and saw a boy headed in her direction. She turned back to the drawing, wishing they were out in front of their house, instead of at Swan Beach, but Alex liked to surf here because the swells were higher. It was a mixed bag. On the one hand, it gave Alex more opportunity to show off, and Kara loved watching her, but on the other hand, Swan beach was always crowded, and she could never watch Alex the way she wanted.

Still, the drawing was almost enough. Committing Alex to the page, recording the shape of her body, every curve and contour, was an intimate act. It made her feel connected to Alex in a way nothing else did. And of course, there was the fact that the charcoal and the graphite gave her a way to edit her reality for a moment, to give them the connection she truly longed for.

A smile tugged at her lips as she got ready to add the bonding bracelet that she always added to her drawing of Alex. It was the moment she always saved as late as she could, the moment she wanted to savor, the moment when, however briefly, she could be Kara Zor-El.

"What are you drawing?"

Kara snapped the sketch book shut and look up at the boy she'd seen coming her way earlier. She felt her heart pounding inside her chest as terror flooded her. Had he seen?

No. No, if he had seen, he wouldn't have asked.

"Nothing!" she said, wincing at how obvious it was in her voice that she felt guilty.

The boy smiled. "Well, it must be something interesting for you to react like that."

"It's none of your business," Kara said.

The boy held up his hands. "Okay. Sorry. I didn't mean to poke a sore spot. It's Kara, right?"

"How do you know that?"

"I'm in one of your classes, at school. Third period. Advanced Oil Painting."

"Oh," Kara said. She felt a little guilty, because honestly, she wasn't sure if she'd recognize anyone in that class other than her teacher, Ms. Rafaque. She'd had at least one class with her every semester since she started high school, and she might have been nursing a bit of a crush.

"Can I sit down?" he asked.

"Sure."

"I'm Grant," he said.

"Nice to meet you," Kara said, even though it wasn't. She'd much rather be finishing her drawing.

"I'm kind of new here," he said. "My family just moved to Midvale a few weeks before the school year started."

"Well, that would explain why you're talking to me," Kara said.

"What?"

"Most people at Midvale High don't want anything to do with me," she said.

"Well, that's crazy. Why wouldn't they want to hang around with the prettiest girl in school?"

"I got the quarterback kicked off the team for smoking pot and the most popular teacher in the school arrested for sleeping with a student," Kara said.

"Given how boring this town is, those sound like great reasons to hang out with you," Grant said.

Kara forced herself to smile, even though she didn't really want to, and part of her wished she was back home. On Krypton, it would be perfectly acceptable to tell Grant that she was busy, and wished to return to her task, but on Earth, that would be considered rude, and she didn't know a good way to get out of this conversation.

"Kara?" Alex called.

The forced smile became genuine, as she turned to see Alex walking towards them, board in hand with a concerned expression on her face.

"Everything okay?" Alex asked.

"Yeah," Kara said, giving Alex a pleading look. "Grant was just introducing himself."

Alex turned to Grant. "Nice to meet you," she said, in a tone that made it clear that it was anything but.

"Are you two friends?" Grant asked.

"Is that some kind of joke?"

"Um… no."

"Grant's new in town," Kara said, because she wanted Alex to get rid of him. Not kill him.

"Oh," Alex said. She planted her board in the sand.

"Yeah. I don't really know many people, but Kara and I have an art class together, so when I saw her, I thought I'd introduce myself."

"Right," Alex said. "Well, it was nice meeting you."

Grant seemed to get the point and stood up. "See you in class," he said to Kara before he walked away.

Alex dropped down on the sand in front of Kara. "Was he bothering you?" she asked.

"Not really," Kara said. "He just… He tried to look at my sketchbook." Alex frowned and turned to glare at Grant's back.

"You want to go home?" Alex asked.

"No. I'm fine if you want to surf some more."

"You're sure?" Alex asked.

"Yeah."

Alex smiled and got up. She grabbed her board as she headed back towards the water. Kara watched her go, then opened her sketch book back up, relieved to see that the sheet of wax paper she kept in it had prevented the drawing from being smudged. She smiled as she went back to work, adding the last, and most important detail before she reached for the hair spray to set the image.

Alex sat on the couch, not really watching the movie. They'd seen it a few times in the theater, and as much as Alex normally loved watching Kiera Knighting stab people with a sword and become a pirate king, her attention was elsewhere. Specifically on the alien space heater that was curled up against her side.

Kara had gone through the two bags of popcorn Alex had made in record time, then curled up against Alex's side, rested her head on Alex's shoulder, and promptly fell asleep. Alex had just put her arm around her, turned the movie down, and spent the next hour and a half just enjoying the closeness. She loved moments like this. Quiet moments when she got to just be with Kara without having to worry about school, or other kids, or her mom.

She wasn't sure how it happened, not really, but Kara had become the center of her world, pushing out her friends, pushing out the memory of her dad, even pushing out her mother. Some days, it felt like it had happened overnight, and some days, it felt like it had been inevitable from the moment Kara arrived.

The problem was, tonight, she couldn't seem to enjoy it as much as she usually did. Something about what happened on the beach that day bothered her. She had no idea who Grant was, and at first, she'd assumed he was someone hassling Kara, but that wasn't the case. Sure, Kara had wanted him gone, but that wouldn't always be the case, and she'd felt the same spike of jealousy that she used to feel when boys would ask out Vicki.

Kara let out a small grumbly noise and Alex had to fight down the urge to laugh. She tightened her hold on Kara, and Kara responded by snuggling in closer to Alex, grabbing hold of Alex's pajama top, and burying her head in the crook of Alex's neck. It was a simple thing, something Kara had done countless times before, but it always sent an ache thought Alex that she didn't quite understand. She used to feel something similar the nights she'd sleep over at Vicki's, but never quite as intensely as she felt it with Kara.

It made her wonder if there was something wrong with her. She should have been happy for Vicki that she had a date. She should be happy at the idea of Kara making a friend, or maybe even finding a boyfriend. Those were good things, things that would make Kara happy, and Kara deserved to be happy. Instead, she hated the idea. She'd hated the thought of sharing Vicki, and she hated the thought of sharing Kara even more. Kara was hers, and she wanted every moment she could get with her, from breakfast in the morning, walks to and from school, lunch, afternoons spent talking and laughing, evenings spend curled up on the couch watching movies are just talking, to nights spent talking into the wee hours of the morning, or even sometimes crawling into Kara's bed to hold her when she had a bad dream, or when a storm woke her up. Kara was hers. It was a selfish, greedy thought, but she took care of her, taught her, protected her, comforted her, and loved her, and all she wanted in return was to be able to keep her, instead of watching some boy who would never deserve her come along and take her away.

She wondered, sometimes, if wanting that made her a terrible person. If wanting Kara all to herself was some sort of horrible character flaw. She wondered if her dad would be ashamed of her for it. She wondered if she cared, because honestly, nothing had ever mattered to her the way Kara did.

Kara grumbled again, and Alex reached for the remote. She turned the movie off, then turned and slipped her free arm under Kara's legs, and stood up. It was an easy thing. When Kara was asleep, she tended to regard gravity as a suggestion at best, so picking her up was never that hard, and it made carrying her to bed effortless.

It was a short trip down the hall, and Alex pushed the door to their bedroom closed with her foot, then gently lowered Kara onto her bed, but Kara didn't let go when Alex started to stand up.

"Stay with me," Kara whispered, still half asleep.

"Okay," Alex said. "Float for a minute."

Kara lifted up off the bed just enough for Alex to turn back the covers, then she settled down onto the mattress. Alex climbed into the bed with her and pulled the covers up over them both. It took about five seconds before Kara was wrapped around her like a particularly cuddly Koala.

Alex loved it. She wrapped her arms around Kara, and pressed a kiss to her forehead, then she lay back and closed her eyes, happy that she got to have this, even if she knew she'd have to give it up someday.