Hold

Hold on

Hold on to me

'Cause I'm a little unsteady

A little unsteady

If you love me, don't let go

-The Renegades – "Unsteady"

Chapter 2/8

"Okay, clearly I am stirring up some unresolved feelings inside you…"

"Wait a minute," Mon-El insists, his feet padding steadily on the treadmill at an easy two-minute-per-mile pace. "Isn't that what you are? A manifestation of unresolved feelings?"

"You're not entirely wrong. But I meant more unresolved feelings. I don't know if you've noticed, but you have a lot of them."

"As evidenced by the hallucination of my dead friend."

"Yes, and I'd really like it if we could deal with me first. I think I'm a little more pressing in the overall scheme. Also, something tells me that the unresolved feelings about what just happened in there are going to take care of themselves."

"Fine," Mon-El capitulates. "How can I help you?" He rolls his eyes, utterly aware that he's offering his assistance and his undivided attention to a figment of his imagination.

"Okay, let's start with this. We are cohabitating with Kara. Now…I know there's a lot to be happy about here. Making your latching official—"

"Mating," Mon-El hastily corrects.

"Pot-ay-to, po-tah-to," Ral chuckles, disregarding the correction.

"It's not the same," Mon-El insists. "Not here, it's not. There's mating first, and then there's latching…if both parties agree. As I understand it."

"I think we both know where this is going, Brother. Why obfuscate it?"

"Because…"

"Because she doesn't know everything about you yet?" Ral offers.

"And when she does, this relationship will be over faster than you can say 'liar, liar – pants on fire'."

"Why would anyone-?"

"I don't know. It's just a crazy thing they say."

"Maybe you're not giving her enough credit...?" Ral shrugs.

"Our history when it comes to all things Daxam-related isn't exactly stellar." Mon-El feels his tense muscles finally begin to loosen as he slips into the rhythm of his run. Ral leans against the concrete wall in front him, his arms crossed while he strokes his chin thoughtfully. A stance he remembers well from the times when Ral's devious mind was pressed into service in order to extract Mon-El from some mischief in which he had inevitably found himself embroiled. "What are you thinking about?" Mon-El asks, as if he doesn't already know.

"She suspects something," Ral announces. "We'll have to be careful in our communications."

"I'll leave you secret notes on the fridge," he whispers, conspiratorially.

"Will you be serious?"

"I don't think that's what you really want," Mon-El answers.

Unexpectedly, Ral's form shifts, and the image in his mind suddenly wears the form of a once beautiful young woman, blood pouring down her face from a savagely torn scalp. "Help me," she begs. Her hand, clutching a small bouquet of desert blooms, reaches out for him. His feet falter on the treadmill, and before he can catch himself he's face down, the moving belt spitting him off the machine like he's a nasty tasting morsel.

When his body stops rolling, Mon-El comes to rest on his back, eyes staring up the fluorescent lamps on the ceiling. "What in the name of Bask!" he curses. He isn't hurt, of course, just slightly disoriented and unable to get the sight of the woman out of his mind, as though she's burned on his retinas. He digs his fingers into his eyes, attempting to erase the image. Mercifully, when his eyes open, Ral is standing above him, peering down upon him.

"Very graceful," he comments, his eyes blinking slowly as though unimpressed by Mon-El's full-bodied impression of tumbleweed.

"Stop doing that," Mon-El groans between gritted teeth.

"Doing what?"

"Changing into her."

"Oh, that wasn't me," Ral explains, lodging his hands on his hips. "That was all you."

"But why would I…?"

"Unresolved…blah, blah, blah," Ral says, checking beneath his fingernails as though their cleanliness might soon be witnessed by someone of incredible import. "Get used to it, my friend. Something tells me it's going to be happening more and more often."

"That doesn't make any sense!"

"Doesn't it?" Ral wonders. "It doesn't make sense that the more secure you start to feel in this life, the more your mind might start to loosen its stranglehold on everything you've been keeping so tightly locked down? Seems legit to me. Maybe J'onn was right. Maybe you should see a Preceptor."

"They call them therapists here."

"Right. That's what I said."

Mon-El rolls over onto his stomach before popping up to his feet. He stares down at the still-running treadmill, its low-pitched hum now sounding to him for all the world like an aggressive growl. Done for the night, Mon-El reaches over and yanks the emergency-stop tab from the machine's face panel, something he hadn't had time to think about doing when he was busy falling ass-over-teakettle. "Useless piece of shi—"

Kara walks in on what looks like Mon-El abusing and cursing the gym equipment. She had hoped that the hour she took to run a few errands and do some shopping would have given him enough time to cool off, but just in case, she came prepared with her mea culpa. "I really hope it's truly the machine you're angry at and not me," she says, interrupting the angry glare-fest directed at the treadmill.

Mon-El spins around at the sound of her voice, finding that the Supergirl from an hour ago is gone and that Kara Danvers stands in her place, her black floral skirt and pink blouse striking the perfect balance between sexy and innocent. He grimaces, embarrassed to be caught raging at an inanimate object.

"Though it's better than being caught talking to a hallucination," Ral adds to Mon-El's thoughts. "Go with it."

Her brow is crinkled with concern, more for herself than for him it seems, and for some reason, she's waving a white gym towel at him. "Kara?"

"Are you still angry with me?" she wonders, waving the towel again. Perhaps she should have given him two hours to cool off instead of one, especially if his anger is spreading to encompass harmless gym equipment.

"What's with the…?" he nods his head toward the towel.

"Oh!" she exclaims, realizing that he's lacking crucial context to comprehend her display. "It's a white flag," she exposits. "Or at least it's the best I could come up with on short notice."

"A white flag?" he queries, curious about what lies behind this demonstration.

"In most Earth cultures," she explains, strolling towards him, "a white flag is used to indicate surrender by one party for a battle to come to an end. It's also used to request mercy for the conceding party."

Drawn to her as though she's the center of his gravity, he moves in her direction until they meet in the middle of the room. He knows he's not supposed to touch her or exhibit any physical affection for her while in the DEO, but he theorizes that this policy is likely to remain a work in progress – perhaps for a bit longer than a while. "You've never needed a white flag to surrender to me before," he smirks, the lids of his steel-gray eyes drifting to half-mast.

"You've never been this angry with me before," she points out. "I mean, not since we…started seeing each other."

"Seeing each other?" he muses, interest piqued by her use of the term. "That doesn't sound quite complex enough for what's happening between us. Does it?" He wants to reach for her, pull her into his embrace but twists his own gym towel between his hands instead.

"No," she agrees, softly. "It doesn't. It's not nearly complex enough. I just know that you're my partner…my mate…I chose you—" she smiles as soon as the words are out of her mouth, knowing what he'll do next.

"I chose you," he insists, his smile matching hers.

Her lips tingle with the need to brush against his, to feel his breath mingling with hers as though the very act charges the air around them, turning it into a renewable power source. Kara bites on her lower lip in an attempt to stifle the rush of blood there, before she opens her mouth to speak. "Why do I get the feeling we're going to be having this argument for a long, long time?"

Mon-El's eyes widen, and a sadness quickly passes through them, like catching a glimpse of something in the corner of one's eye, only to turn and find that perception mistaken. "I hope so," he replies. "You have no idea how much."

"I didn't mean it the way it sounded," she rushes, misinterpreting the source of his fleeting sadness. "J'onn and I got ahead of ourselves. We shouldn't have been talking about you like you weren't in the room. Making decisions about what you should do without consulting you first."

"Kara, look, I know that you don't think I've trained enough—that I'm not ready—"

"No, but that's not it," she interrupts, grabbing for him, her hands on his shoulders. "It's your lead allergy," she explains. "There's so much of it out there, and it can all be used to hurt you. I just want to make sure you're as protected as possible before you take on those calls, that's all."

"Really?"

"I couldn't…" She bites her lip, her eyes glancing away from him as a blush stains her cheeks.

"What is it?" he presses, cupping her cheek to turn her face back towards his.

"Remember this morning when I was worried that the DEO would send a tactical team to find you, and you joked that there were worse ways to die?"

Mon-El recalls that she hadn't found his joke funny and had insisted they issue a moratorium on gallows humor. "I remember," he nods, with a shrug. "What about it?"

"Cadmus almost killed you and…" Her guts clench inside as she teeters on the edge of a monumental confession, just a stiff breeze away from tipping over the precipice. A frustrated moan rises in her, slipping through her tightly pressed lips as her eyes squeeze tightly shut, "…and Medusa."

"That was a long time ago," Mon-El says, his voice taking on a soft, soothing tone.

"It doesn't feel that way," she counters. "It feels like it just happened. Mon-El…I couldn't bear it if anything happened to you. If you were hurt out there, I wouldn't be able to…" Her confession trails off as she becomes lost in his gaze, her blue eyes rising to meet his soft gray regard. She shakes her head, as though unable to continue, and seeing her growing discomfort, Mon-El takes over, filling the silence she left behind.

"I feel the same," he admits. "Every time you go out there."

"But—"

"You're not invincible, Kara," he interjects. "You can tell yourself that all you like, but that doesn't make it true. I know that bullets can't hurt you like they can hurt me, but that doesn't mean that nothing can! And…at the risk of making you angry, you can be reckless, Kara – rushing into dangerous situations without gaining a full understanding of the risks. I know who you are," he insists. "I see what you can do. But that doesn't mean I'm ever going to stop worrying. I understand your concerns. I live them every day. But you've never backed down when facing an enemy that could hurt you. I don't understand why you think I shouldn't do the same."

She feels her own brow crinkling as though to mirror his concerned countenance and raises a hand to rub at the overactive muscles there. Here is a topic they've never really discussed, not before they became involved and not after. Kara knows her own feelings on the matter, recalling vividly the events of the Cadmus hostage-taking and his brush with death in the form of the Medusa virus created by her own father.

Mon-El has only been in her life for a few short months and already she's witnessed his near death on two separate occasions. And both of those occasions occurred before. Before she let him in. Before she chose him. Before she learned that she can't breathe without him. Long before discovering that her body sings when he touches her, when he whispers against her heated skin, and when his eyes drift down to her lips, gazing at them like they're his salvation.

She'd kept him at such a distance then, refusing to know him, talking a good game about his potential, but really refusing to see him as anything other than a Daxamite wastrel. She'd treated him accordingly, facing him in the direction she wanted him to go but citing his cultural upbringing each time he stepped off of her pre-approved path. Cursing the place of his birth as though it was something better forgotten to the ravages of an extinction level event, rather than a culture worthy of remembrance because of the loss of so many lives. It wasn't just a planet that died but billions of hearts that stopped beating, and the last heartbeat remaining, stands before her now.

And more than anything, she wants that heartbeat to endure because…because she loves him. She loves him! Her stomach drops to her feet, and everything inside of her freezes as her own realization paralyzes her. Her tongue turns to hot sand, and her hands begin shaking. She loves him, and she doesn't have the first clue if he feels the same – if she's out on this limb all by herself. It's like when she was a child, first learning to fly. The wind would lift her, carry her for a few moments, but then the ground would come rushing, rushing up to her, and all of her efforts, all of that soaring, would be for naught. Each attempt leading to crushing disappointment until one day she just…stopped.

Maybe she isn't ready.

"Kara?" Mon-El's fingers brush against her cheek, and she flinches from it slightly, raising his distress level. He snatches his hand from her skin, his fingers tingling as though venom were spreading through his bloodstream.

Mon-El's voice interrupts her revelatory reflection. Her thoughts had taken her down a bit of a rabbit hole from which she struggles to emerge. "What?" she mutters.

"You okay, Kara?" he demands, his concern ratcheting up a few notches and filtering through the tone in his voice.

His voice brings her out of her haze, his face coming into clear, sharp focus. His lips are tight, and his brows have snapped together to create a deep crevice between them, but the most striking thing are his eyes: so deep and fathomless, those bottomless grays that hide nothing when his thoughts center on her; the emotions floating on the surface there inscrutable to her only because of her lack of experience in this arena. If only she could read their messages with confidence. If only her own feelings didn't cause her to second-guess his.

"I'm fine," she lies, shaking off her petrification like loose tree bark.

"No, you're not," he contradicts. She's fearful suddenly, her eyes turning shiny blue, the crinkle in her forehead unmistakable to him. "You think I don't know how you look when something's bothering you?"

"I don't…." she tries but trails off.

"Are you having second thoughts?" he asks gently, assuming he's found the root of the problem.

"Second thoughts?"

"It's okay to change your mind," he promises. "I can keep staying here until I can afford to get my own place."

"No," she answers, violently shaking her head back and forth. "I haven't changed my mind. I'm not going to change my mind." He's trying not to look overly hopeful, and she can't bear the thought of taking that hope from his eyes. She wants him there, in her home, in her bed; promising to make breakfast in the mornings but rarely following through, leaving his pants strewn across her furniture, and putting too much soap in the washing machine. She wants all of that. More than, she realizes now, she has ever wanted anything in her recollection. Her hand brushes against her belly, not enough so that he would notice but just enough to remind her. She wants all of him. Even the part he doesn't know about yet. Reaching up, she presses a kiss on his lips, quick enough that if they're lucky, it might go unnoticed by the camera's monitors.

"Are you sure?" he asks again. "Because you don't seem that certain at the moment. You seem a little…lost."

"I'm not lost," she insists, staring unwaveringly in his eyes. "I know what I want." Kara places a hand on his face, the pad of her thumb tracing the orbital bone of his upper cheek just beneath his eye. "Let's go home, Mon-El," she whispers.

Judging the truth in her eyes, Mon-El breathes a sigh of relief and nods. "I'll pack my things."

"I'll help," she offers.

She takes his hand as they walk out of the gym and head towards his quarters, loving the way it feels when his long, graceful fingers interlace with hers. Loving him and the way he looks at her, eyes soft and unguarded.

"So…this white flag policy," he wonders, information gathering for future reference. "Does it work this well for all disagreements?"

Kara laughs at what she believes to be a jest – the kind of joke he would make to see her smile. "Why?" she teases. "Planning on using the technique?"

The pit of his stomach roiling with the stress of confining secrets bursting toward freedom and mayhem, he forces a smile and hopes she doesn't notice the difference. "I have a feeling I might need to over the next few months. I've heard that living together can be an adjustment. Just…be patient with me?"

Kara squeezes his hand. "Promise," she vows.

In his quarters, it doesn't take very long to pack the modest belongings in his footlocker and to grab a few other things he's hoarded in the months since his arrival. Kara requested a ride home from one of the SUVs in the DEO motor pool, thinking it imprudent to use any but normal means of transport in this situation. Less than half an hour after leaving the gym, they stand in the fourth floor corridor of her loft apartment.

"I got something for you," she announces, her hesitant smile belied by the mixture of sparkling mischief and excitement in her eyes.

"You did?" he teased, setting the footlocker down in front of the door. "A surprise?"

Kara nods, digging around in her purse until she finds what she stashed there earlier. She removes a Supergirl keychain with two keys attached and a tiny bow wrapped around the ring itself. "Your keys," she says.

Mon-El laughs but feels his heart race and his stomach flip flop, a shiver of heat racing down his spine. "For me?" he teases.

"For you."

"A Supergirl keychain?" he wonders.

Kara shrugs. "They were selling them at the hardware store where I had the keys cut. I couldn't help myself."

"I'll be able to carry a piece of you wherever I go now," he says, his storm-cloud eyes growing darker as the pupils expand right before her eyes. "Even when I can't be near you."

Kara finds the notion odd but still romantic. Since their relationship became physical, when have they been unable to be near one another? Mon-El is a romantic at heart—she's suspected this truth for a long time—one of the many things she loves about him. "Care to do the honors?" she suggests, indicating the door in front of them.

He nods and unlocks the door, swinging it open before bending down to pick up his chest of things. When he stands up, his knees nearly buckle beneath him because what he sees before him isn't the loft he's already come to think of as a haven but a burning, exploding wreckage of the palace he escaped decades ago. He can feel the heavy, tugging grip of hands on his shoulders but is drawn instead to the image of Ral lying on the floor, bloodied to the point of being nearly unrecognizable, his broken legs twisted grotesquely to either side of his body.

"There's no time," Ral rasps weakly around horribly split lips. "You have to leave me! I'll only slow us both down. You can still escape."

He can feel the heat of its fires on his face; smell the burning flesh of victims screaming for help as they reach charred arms out for him. His ears fill with the sounds of wordless screams as chunks of plaster and stone fall all around him, narrowly missing him as if their strikes were never meant to land. He can feel the disturbance of the ground around him as they smash against the ground splintering into shards that fly into the air all around him. A molten rock crashes through the crumbling palace ceiling and explodes at Ral's feet, tearing apart the man's body before Mon-El's eyes and sending his remains flying in all directions. Mon-El flinches away from the carnage he can't un-see, and his fingers lose their grip on the box of his things. "Ral?"

Unaware of the onset of his distress, Kara enters the loft as always, dropping her purse and keys on the kitchen island and flipping through the mail she retrieved from the mailbox downstairs on their way up. It's not until she's startled by the sound of his footlocker crashing to the ground that she realizes he isn't in the apartment with her. The envelopes slip from her fingers when she spins back to the doorway, skittering across the flooring like shards of a broken dish.

"Mon-El?" she inquires. He's pale as a sheet, his eyes squeezing tightly shut as his breath comes in quick gasps. Immediately, she's by his side. "Mon-El, what is it?" When his eyes open, she recognizes the thousand-yard stare, one she'd heard Eliza talk about when she was younger. One she's seen on J'onn's face more than a few times. Not wishing to startle him, she refrains from touching his trembling body, using her voice instead to shake him from his memories. "Baby?" she calls, hoping for a response. Her voice is an approximation of cool and calm, while her insides are the exact opposite, performing frenetically like a squirrel jumping from limb to limb in a copse of trees. "Come back to me. Follow my voice. I'm right here, baby. I'm right here. Please?" she begs.

Her plea cuts through the mayhem, finding him in the middle of his hellish landscape. Melting the images away like hot water thrown on a still wet canvas. Slowly, the memory fades as Kara calls for him, softly but with total resolution, her voice becoming louder and louder than the din around him. The world comes back into focus, but it's too late because he's falling, falling to his knees and into her arms, taking her down with him. "Kara?" he croaks, as though he can't quite believe she's truly there with him. He can smell the violet-scent of her hair shampoo, and he clings to that like it's the lone piece of driftwood in a raging river.

"I'm here," she whispers into his neck, wrapping her arms around him, stroking his spine with long, soothing strokes. "I've got you."

"What happened?" he asks, everything spinning around him. "I was…" His breath comes hard and fast, on the verge of hyperventilation. "I was…" He chokes on the words and the air around him. When he opens his eyes again the world whites out, becoming obscenely bright as though a flashbulb has gone off in his face. He slams his eyes shut to block it out, seeing the negative imprint of her and the loft on the back of his eyelids.

"You were there," she hypothesizes, her voice shaking, a bit of fear seeping through. "Is that right? You were there?"

Eyes still shut, he nods into her hair.

"It's okay," she promises. "I'm here. I know what's happening to you. You're going to be all right. Just breathe."

Slowly, in excruciating increments, he comes back to himself, back to this place, to her arms, opening his eyes to see everything as he's come to know it. She wipes her fingers across his cheeks; erasing tears he hasn't realized are falling. His heart still races in his chest, and a fine sheen of perspiration has broken out on his face, as well as down his neck and chest.

"Talk to me," she begs, her voice barely above a whisper. "What happened?"

"I don't know," he confesses. "I opened the door, but instead of your apartment it was…"

"Daxam?"

"Yes. That day. There was screaming and fire and so much…screaming and the smell…"

"And you mentioned something," she presses, gently. "A name…maybe? Ral?"

Mon-El remembers and like a flash, the pain sears through his head, his vision going off like a flash bulb again for a split second. He presses the heels of his palms against his temples. "Ahhhhh," he moans, the pain streaking through him like an overload of electricity.

"It's okay," she declares. Something is triggering him, and the memories cause real, physical pain as they emerge. Like an infected boil in need of lancing, his memories require purging if he's ever to process his grief. Her gut twists inside at the knowledge of what she needs to do. "I know it hurts," she says. "Just tell me one thing. Who was Ral? Was he there with you?"

"Yes," he groans. "Everything was collapsing around us, the world was ending, and all he wanted was to see me safe."

"Why?" she wonders. "Who was he to you?"

"He's my…he's my…brother-in-bond," Mon-El confesses, the pain easing slightly, the tightness in his chest loosening.

Kara shakes her head. "I don't understand," she tells him. "What does that mean? Your brother by blood?"

The stabbing pain in his head turns into a dull but insistent throb as he shakes his head. His breathing, at last, returns to normal, his voice dropping in pitch as though his vocal chords are exhausted. "Not by blood. There's a word for it here, but I can't…step!" he proclaims. "Stepbrother. Is that right? Step? I can't think straight."

"Ral was your stepbrother?"

"Yes," he says, breathing a sigh of relief as the muscles in his neck and shoulders release some of the rock hard tension they've been holding. "His mother married my…father when we were just small boys. I was six, and he was seven."

It strikes her then, like a heavy mallet against a gong, that he's never mourned the loss of an individual to her knowledge. It all seems so vast, the loss of an entire world and everything that a person can identify with, that it's hard to see the personal loss sometimes. He's never mentioned his family or even any friends, and, to her shame, she's never asked. "You can talk about him, you know," she reminds him. "You can talk about…any of them. You probably need to."

Mon-El's eyes meet hers, finally, and the deep, incalculable grief in them shreds at her heart. "I don't want you to think I'm weak," he confesses, shame written plainly across her face.

"Mon-El, I would never think that!" she replies, shocked and saddened at the direction of his thoughts. She pulls him into her embrace, wrapping her arms around him with bone-crushing strength. But instead of cringing at her power, his body melts into the hug as though allowing himself to be absorbed by her.

He wants to spill everything, all of his secrets and believe from the bottom of his heart that she will understand – that she won't be angered by it, or worse – sickened by him. Surviving the destruction of his world would be easy in comparison to watching the affection in her sparkling eyes turn to abhorrence. But he's a coward. He always has been, and he'll never be anything more, no matter how strong or fast his body is now or how impenetrable his skin.

Mon-El withdraws from the comfort of her embrace, undeserving of such sweet succor and casts his eyes about the room. "I need…" His shaky voice trails off. It occurs to him that they are still half in and half out of the apartment, the front door still open.

"What do you need?"

"I don't know," he realizes. He struggles to his feet, as if all the solar energy in his cells has deserted him. Reaching down, he picks up the footlocker he dropped, wondering where he's supposed to store his things.

"How about a cup of tea?" Kara suggests, as she stands to her feet. She closes the front door, flipping the deadbolt to lock it. She rarely locks the door of her loft when she's inside, practically daring intruders to try her, but tonight she makes an exception. "It's soothing. And then maybe…a hot shower before bed. That always helps me."

Mon-El swallows the bitter taste in the back of his throat, unable to banish the acrid flavor no matter how many times he tries. "Tea," he agrees with a weak nod. "Lots of sugar."

"You and your sweet tooth," she chuckles forcefully, hoping to lighten the mood as she grabs the kettle from atop the stove and begins filling the vessel with water from the tap.

Mon-El stands in the center of the apartment, footlocker in hand, wondering what he should do next; watching as she tinkers about the kitchen lighting the gas stove and turning the knob until the flame is just right. He wonders if he should just find an unobtrusive corner for his things. Movies don't really cover the protocol for this part of cohabitation. This is usually the part where the credits start to roll across the screen, he realizes, his stomach sinking to his knees.

Confused by his inaction, she glances around the room as she pulls out the ingredients for tea and two mugs. The loft is so…her. She's crammed the place with remembrances and decorative knick-knacks and more chairs than she can possibly fill even if everyone in her life came over at the same time.

She's filled every corner, every nook and cranny. There's not a spare inch of free space for him. Leaving the kettle to boil, she pastes a smile on her face. "Let's make some room," she declares. She takes the chest from him, carries it into her…their…bedroom, and places it on the bed. "I know, I have a lot of stuff," she chuckles, covering her embarrassment at not noticing the problem earlier. Or being prepared for it. Had Kara been thinking ahead, it might have occurred to her to come home and clear a drawer or two for the man she loves, while he stewed in the DEO gym. But after getting his keys cut, she put out a three-alarm apartment fire instead. "Eliza says it's because I came here with nothing, and so I hoard things. Collect them."

"I may have gotten a little overexcited about purchasing clothes once I found the place of Good Will," he points out, completely able to see where she was coming from. He grew up with everything he could have ever needed, and though he is surprised to discover that he doesn't even miss most of those luxuries, he finds that he doesn't like the idea of being without something to wear. Most of his garments, in the beginning, had been borrowed or provided by the DEO. Mon-El finds that the clothes he purchased with his own currency are the ones that mean the most to him.

Kara speeds over to the rack of hanging clothes on the east side of the room and begins pulling blouses and skirts and slacks from the rack. She folds them in a blur of movement and stacks them on the bed. Leaving empty hangers behind, swinging back and forth on the rod, for him to use.

"You don't have to—" he begins, feeling guilty that she's making room to accommodate his presence.

"I do," she disagrees. "You deserve space for your own clothes and jackets. These are all summer clothes anyway," Kara rationalizes with a casual shrug. "I can store them under the bed until May and then switch out the winter clothes on the rack for the summer ones. It's fine."

Following her lead, Mon-El opens the chest and begins removing his clothing, beginning with his growing collection of jackets, which he hangs up on the empty plastic coat hangers. Over by the chest of drawers, positioned against the wall near the bathroom door, she clears the bottom drawer full of novelty sweatshirts and t-shirts she rarely uses. She can go through them later and perhaps find items to donate to the 'place of Good Will' this weekend. Mon-El hangs up his button down shirts on the rack, while she extracts his jeans, t-shirts, and pajamas from the footlocker and organizes them in the bottom drawer of her wardrobe. When she's done, there's space to spare.

She folds his boxers and rolls his socks, placing them meticulously in the top drawer alongside her socks and panties. The blood in her veins thrills at the sight, the visual evidence of their lives edging towards synchronicity. Despite her nervousness, she can't deny that she wants this. His things mixed in with hers.

"You're not a guest," she says, turning around to face him, her hands clasping nervously together. "I want you to understand that. This is your home."

His lips lift up on one side in a cock-eyed smile, hands shoved deeply into his pockets as he rocks slightly back on his heels. But his eyes gaze into hers without flinching away for the first time since his temporary breakdown. "Our home," he amends.

Kara's lips pursing coyly together as though trying to suppress a smile she really wants to give free reign. She nods. "Our home."

TBC