Archive of Our Own ^beta

The first time they almost kissed, Lena was holding a glass of champagne and Kara had just saved her life. Not for the first time. Not for the last. Her dress was torn at the shoulder, blood drying at the hem. The gala had been interrupted by some absurd tech-monster Lex had funded through a shell company in Milan, and Kara had shown up two minutes too late to stop the structural collapse but just in time to catch Lena in the fall.

They were standing behind a privacy screen in the emergency staging area set up in the hotel lobby. Lena’s hand was shaking. Kara took the flute from her fingers without comment and set it down on a medical tray. The nurse glanced at them and wisely walked away. It was nothing, really. Barely a moment. Kara’s hand hovered near her cheek. Lena looked up, met her gaze, didn’t blink. The air was thick with dust and oxygen and some kind of promise neither of them ever made.

But Kara stepped back. Not far, not fast, but back. And Lena let her.

She would think about that moment again a hundred times. Never because she regretted what didn’t happen - that was too crude - but because she didn’t understand the part of herself that didn’t lean forward. She’d wanted to. God, she’d wanted to. But want was not a reason. It was an inconvenience.

Afterward, she went home, showered, and scrubbed the imagined kiss from the corners of her mouth. It didn’t work.

By the time Kara started dating someone, Lena had almost convinced herself that ‘almost’ had never been a category. There were just misread cues and bad timing. They were friends. Colleagues. Complicated women in a city that didn’t make room for softness. She told herself it was fine.

The girlfriend’s name started with an N. Nicole? Natalie? Nadine? It didn’t matter. Lena remembered the way Kara said it - too casually - in the elevator up to Andrea’s office. “We might stop by the gallery opening Friday night, if that’s still happening. She’s never been.”

That was the first time Lena registered the sound of a new name in Kara’s mouth. It felt like hearing a lock click in the wrong direction.

She didn’t ask questions. She never did. That was the arrangement. They pretended to know everything about each other and never acknowledged what they didn’t say. It was safer.

Lena lasted two weeks before Jess said something.

It was a Wednesday. There was a quarterly board update due by end-of-day, and Lena had rewritten the same paragraph five times without changing the substance. Jess stood in the doorway with a stack of printouts and said, “Is this about the report or about Kara’s new girlfriend?”

Lena looked up, carefully blank. “Excuse me?”

Jess raised an eyebrow, entirely unfazed. “It’s just that you’ve corrected a hyphen into an em dash and then back again. Twice. Either you’re having a breakdown or you’re jealous.”

“I’m not jealous,” Lena said coolly, reaching for her coffee. “I’m irritated. Different emotion.”

“Sure,” Jess said, setting the stack on her desk. “Irritated that she’s bringing someone new to all your usual haunts. Not jealous at all.”

“She’s not bringing her to ‘my haunts’, Jess, she’s going to Andrea’s gallery opening, which is public.”

“And you’re going?”

Lena stared at her. “Obviously.”

Jess gave a small, amused sigh and walked out.

The gallery was well-lit and over-curated. Andrea had gone minimalist again, which mostly meant three canvases per room and far too much negative space. Jack was already halfway through a gin martini when Lena arrived. He gestured her toward Sam, who stood by a sculpture shaped like an anatomical heart carved from obsidian. Sam looked relieved to see her.

“You’re late,” Sam said, then handed her a glass of something clear. “Also, Kara’s here.”

Lena scanned the crowd. “Is she alone?”

“No,” Sam said, lips twitching. “Nadia? Natalia? Something like that.”

Lena took a sip. The drink was mostly vodka. “It doesn’t matter.”

Jack materialized behind her. “Your face says it does.”

“My face says nothing.”

Jack looked delighted. “That’s not true. Your face says ‘I am not jealous’, which is something only jealous people say.”

“You’re both exhausting.” Lena muttered, but her eyes were already moving across the room, too quickly, too obviously. She saw Kara’s profile near the drinks table, lit from behind by track lighting, shoulder turned toward a shorter woman in a cream blazer. The woman laughed and Kara touched her elbow lightly.

Lena looked away.

After three drinks and an extremely dry conversation about synthetic memory storage with a man from Zurich, Lena made her way to the outdoor terrace for air. She didn’t need it, strictly speaking, but she needed space. She pressed her hands against the cool marble railing and stared at the skyline.

Footsteps behind her. She didn’t turn.

Kara’s voice, quiet. “I thought you’d left.”

Lena took another sip before replying. “Wishful thinking?”

Kara stepped beside her, leaned against the rail. She smelled like something linen-based and citrusy. Lena didn’t look at her.

“She wanted to leave early,” Kara said. “Didn’t feel well.”

“How tragic.” Lena said dryly.

Kara looked at her. “You alright?”

Lena finally met her eyes. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

There was a pause. “You seem… off.”

“I’m busy,” Lena said, too quickly. “Work’s -”

“Sure.” Kara said, not pushing.

They stood there in silence for a beat too long.

Kara turned to go. “Well, good to see you.”

Lena nodded, watching her walk away, her jaw tight enough to ache.

That night, Lena dreamed of Kara’s mouth. Not soft, not hesitant. Intentional. Wet. She woke up with her fingers between her thighs and a curse on her lips. She lay there in the dark, hand sticky, breath uneven, and thought about the way Kara looked at her when she was lying.

There had been so many moments. So many almosts. She remembered once at the Watchtower, months ago, mid-mission, when Kara had leaned close to whisper something and Lena had turned at the same time. Their noses brushed. Kara had looked at her like she didn’t want to move. Then she had, and neither of them spoke about it again.

Lena bit her bottom lip. She didn’t believe in ghosts, not technically. But she was starting to think Kara Danvers might be one.

Or maybe Lena was haunting herself.

Either way, it was getting harder to pretend she didn’t want to be possessed.

*

Lena didn’t ask. It would’ve been grotesque, asking.

Still, she picked up fragments in the way people do when they aren’t listening but can’t quite stop collecting. She heard Alex mention her in passing at a brunch Lena hadn’t meant to stay long at, caught the tail end of “- says she used to teach literature, but now she’s freelancing”, before she excused herself to the bathroom and stared into the mirror for a full five minutes. The name still didn’t land.

Natalie. Noelle. Nadia. It was a vowel-based blur.

Andrea asked her, during a lull between meetings, if she thought Kara seemed happier. Lena replied, evenly, that happiness was not a metric she tracked, and that any responsible CEO understood that emotions were not key performance indicators.

Andrea stared at her. “Jesus. I meant as a friend.”

Lena blinked. “Oh.”

Sam, subtler, texted her a link to a podcast about quantum entanglement. Lena didn’t click it until three hours later, when the office was quiet and she had nowhere to go. The episode was about the theory that particles once linked could remain connected across vast distances - reacting to each other, even if they never touched again.

She didn’t respond. Sam didn’t follow up. Some things didn’t need to be spelled out.

Kara brought her to game night the following week.

Technically, Lena had opted out of the last three - busy with investor relations, finalizing a patent deal, managing a board member’s nervous breakdown - but that night she felt oddly committed to showing up. She wore a sleek black top and minimal makeup, let her hair fall straight, clean, and sharp.

She arrived to find Kara already there, curled on the armrest of the couch, laughing at something Winn said. The new girl sat cross-legged on the rug, comfortable in the way of people who assumed they belonged. She was pretty in a quiet, wool-sweater way. Pale pink nail polish. A small tattoo behind her ear. Kara handed her a beer without asking. Muscle memory.

Lena dropped her coat on the back of a chair and helped herself to a drink. James nodded to her from the kitchen. She ignored the glance.

“Hey stranger.” Kara said. Lena’s stomach twisted at the ease in her tone.

“Hi.” Lena replied, cool and brisk.

Kara gestured. “This is -”

“Nice to meet you,” Lena said to the girl, not giving her the chance to introduce herself. Her smile was tight.

The girl blinked. “You too. I’ve heard a lot -”

“I’m sure you have.” Lena said, then sipped her drink.

Winn coughed into his sleeve. Andrea bit back a grin. Jess, curled in a corner with a laptop, didn’t even look up.

They played a card game no one seemed to understand the rules to. Every time Kara won a round, she laughed and glanced reflexively at Lena, like she expected a quip. Lena gave her none. Kara’s smile faltered on the fourth time.

“Alright,” Andrea announced when the game collapsed into chaos. “I’m ordering food before this devolves into a fistfight.”

“I’ll help.” Sam said, dragging Lena into the kitchen under the transparent excuse of needing her opinion on dumpling ratios.

“She’s nice.” Sam said, deadpan, while tapping through a delivery app.

Lena rinsed out her glass. “Is this some kind of intervention?”

Sam didn’t answer. She selected three types of gyoza, then glanced over. “You’re being weird.”

“I’m not -”

“You are. It’s weird, Lena. You don’t sulk. You ice people out with finesse. You don’t do passive-aggressive. This is new.”

Lena leaned against the counter. “I’m not jealous.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“She’s perfectly… fine.”

“Again, I didn’t ask.”

Lena exhaled. “Then what is this?”

Sam looked at her, sharp but not unkind. “This is me wondering why you’re haunting yourself over something you never even had.”

She didn’t sleep that night. She didn’t even try.

Instead, she sat in her bedroom and replayed every moment from the evening, searching for cracks. Kara had looked at her. Several times. Not lingering, not inappropriate - just glances that Lena caught too quickly, which meant Kara probably caught her catching them. The girlfriend had touched Kara’s hand twice during the game. Kara hadn’t flinched. Lena tried to remember if Kara had ever touched her like that. She hadn’t. Not casually.

That was the thing about Kara. When she touched you, it was never casual. It was deliberate. Focused. Like she was cataloguing what you felt like under her fingers.

Lena remembered once - months ago - when they’d brushed hands reaching for the same notepad in the lab. Kara had frozen. Lena hadn’t moved either. Just the brief press of skin, heat, and then Kara had stepped back. Always back.

Lena had spent the next hour writing gibberish formulas on a whiteboard until Kara left the room.

The next morning, Jack called while she was in the car.

“Tell me why you looked like you wanted to commit a felony last night.”

“Good morning to you too, Jack.” Lena said, tapping through emails.

Jack, undeterred. “Was it the cardigan? Because I agree. That was a hate crime.”

“She was perfectly pleasant.”

“God, that’s worse.”

“What do you want, Jack?”

“To offer you a theory.”

Lena sighed. “Let me guess. It involves me being in love with Kara and not admitting it.”

“Oh no,” Jack said cheerfully. “Much less sentimental. I think you’re furious that someone else got to touch her first. That someone else gets to confirm what you’ve only imagined. And worse, they’re not even special.”

Lena went very still. The car passed through a tunnel. Her phone signal flickered.

“She’s not the point,” Jack continued. “The point is, you’re mourning an entire relationship that never existed. You built it in your head. You rewrote timelines. Now she’s with someone else, and suddenly it matters that you never kissed her in Tokyo. That you didn’t sleep with her in Prague. That you could have - and didn’t.”

“Well, you’re wrong.” Lena said, voice thin.

Jack hummed. “Then why do you look like you want to strangle the cardigan girl every time she breathes?”

Lena hung up.

That night she went home and opened the locked drawer in her bedside table. Inside, a sleek black box. Inside that, a thin stack of photos - Polaroids from a team retreat last year, one Kara had taken in the sunlight. Kara in sunglasses, lips parted, laughing at something off-camera. Kara barefoot in the grass. Kara holding a sparkler at dusk.

None of them were intimate. But Lena had kept them.

She laid them out across the bed like evidence. She wasn’t sure of what. Maybe that she had been haunted before she even realized it.

Maybe that she’d been in love with a woman she’d never touched.

She closed the box. Locked the drawer.

Then she went to sleep and dreamed about Kara pressing her down into her own mattress. About blue eyes looking between hers like they'd never seen anything like it before. About Kara whispering mine against her neck. About feeling whole, calm, Kara's.

When she woke up, she didn’t even pretend to be surprised.

*

Lena didn’t drink during the week. It was a rule she’d made years ago, the same week she stopped biting her nails and started timing her cardio sessions. Control was a practice. A discipline. A reputation, once earned, that could not be afforded the luxury of slippage.

So when Andrea offered to open something good on a Thursday, Lena said yes only because she didn’t want to talk about why she usually wouldn’t.

It was the four of them - Lena, Andrea, Sam, and Jess - which meant the barbs would be affectionate, the snacks underwhelming, and the judgments inevitable. They sat around Andrea’s living room, sprawling and cross-legged, expensive throw blankets dragged off the back of armchairs and carelessly tucked around ankles. Jess claimed the entire couch in a diagonal and handed Lena a glass of wine without asking.

“Drink that and try not to look like you’re waiting to be cross-examined.” Jess said.

“I’m not.” Lena replied, sitting primly in the armchair. She took a sip. It was a Viognier, bold and dry. She hated how much she liked it.

Andrea raised an eyebrow. “You are. She is. Isn’t she?”

“She is.” Sam said, lifting her own glass.

Lena exhaled, but not with enough amusement to be read as surrender. “This is going to be about Kara, isn’t it.”

“No,” Andrea said, far too quickly. “It’s going to be about you. Kara is just a… symptom.”

“Of what?”

“Chronic repression,” Jess said. “Terminal, probably. But let’s get a second opinion.”

Lena rolled her eyes. “This is very productive.”

Andrea refilled her glass. “No one’s being flippant.”

“You literally just diagnosed me with a fatal case of the closet.”

“Emotionally, yes,” Sam said. “But we’re also being sincere.”

Jess pulled her legs under her. “Look, we’re not trying to pry. It’s just… Kara brings someone new to game night, and suddenly you’ve got the posture of a cat watching another cat eat from its bowl.”

Lena set her glass down. “This is absurd.”

“Then why does it bother you?” Sam asked. “That she’s dating?”

“It doesn’t,” Lena said, a little too quickly. “Why would it?”

Andrea leaned forward. “Because you used to look at her like you were considering something.”

Jess nodded. “And now she’s not yours to consider.”

Silence spread across the room like ink. Lena didn’t look at any of them.

“Do you want to know what I think?” Sam asked, softer now. “I think it’s not about what you did. It’s about what you didn’t.”

Lena tilted her head, almost smiling. “What are you, my therapist?”

“No,” Sam said, “but I’ve known you long enough to spot regret when it’s dressed up as indignation.”

Lena held her gaze for a long time. Then she took another sip of wine and said, “Guilty as charged.”

That night, Lena let herself imagine it.

Not the relationship - not the holding hands or the matching coffee mugs or the smiling-in-public like a woman who hadn’t done terrible things with precision - but just the touch. The basics. What it would’ve felt like if she’d let Kara’s hand stay on her cheek that night at the gala. If she’d tilted her chin. If she hadn’t let fear lace itself through want like barbed wire.

She thought about Kara’s fingers. Stronger than they looked. The way she used them when she explained something - firm, articulate, pointed. She imagined those fingers sliding under silk. Tracing the waistband of Lena’s sleep shorts. Pressing her open.

She didn’t make herself come. That would’ve been too easy. Too indulgent.

Instead, she stared at the ceiling and catalogued the ghost of Kara’s breath on her skin - a ghost she’d never actually felt.

The next day she worked late. She claimed it was a backlog of patent filings, but really she didn’t want to go home. Her apartment felt too clean. Too sharp-edged. No place to rest her thoughts.

Jess knocked once and entered. “You’ve been staring at that same document for twenty-two minutes.”

“Time flies.”

“It’s a spreadsheet.”

“I’m considering the formatting.”

Jess crossed her arms. “Are you going to do something about it?”

“About what?”

Jess didn’t bother hiding her exhale. “You’re not subtle, Lena. At this point, you’re haunting your own life.”

Lena looked up. “Do you all rehearse these lines together?”

“We don’t need to. You make it easy.” Jess paused. “When did it start?”

Lena didn’t answer.

Jess sat in the chair across from her, legs crossed at the ankle. “Was there a moment?”

Lena leaned back. “There were a hundred.”

“Pick one.”

She didn’t want to. But something about Jess - her exactness, her quiet lack of agenda - made refusal seem performative.

“There was a mission,” Lena said eventually. “Three years ago. The Daxamite detonation thing. I was reprogramming the trajectory code, and she was standing behind me. Just close enough that I could feel the heat of her. She leaned in to check my math. Her hand brushed mine. I thought -”

Jess waited.

“I thought if she kissed me right then, I wouldn’t stop her.”

“But she didn’t.”

“No.”

Jess nodded once. “And you never did either.”

Lena stared at her monitor. “No.”

“Why?”

Because if Kara kissed her and Lena kissed her back, it wouldn’t be a diversion. It wouldn’t be a mistake. It would be deliberate. Consequential. Devastating. And Lena was not a woman who survived devastation lightly.

“I didn’t want to ruin it.” She said aloud.

She went to a fundraiser that Saturday. One of those quiet ones where donors mingled over warm champagne and the real deals were made over duck canapés. Kara was there. Alone.

Lena spotted her by the donor wall, dressed in navy, hair up. It was a look Lena had always liked. Controlled. Crisp. Less girl-next-door, more woman-who-doesn’t-forgive.

She didn’t approach her. Not immediately. Not until she’d had half a flute and watched Kara talk to three different people without smiling the way she used to.

When she finally walked over, Kara’s face shifted. Something unreadable passed through her expression - not quite guilt, not quite hope. Something softer.

“Lena,” she said. “You look -”

“Save it.” Lena said, dryly.

Kara blinked. “I was going to say professional.”

Lena gave her a tight smile. “Not your type, then.”

Kara tilted her head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m sure Naomi or Natasha or whoever she is has a much lower neckline.”

Kara crossed her arms. “So you are jealous.”

Lena took another sip. “Not jealous. Bored.”

“Of me?”

“Of the performance.”

Kara’s voice dropped. “What performance?”

“You pretending that none of it mattered,” Lena said, meeting her eyes. “That you never almost kissed me. Never looked. Never paused.”

Kara stepped closer. “Maybe I was waiting.”

“For what?”

“For you to say something first.”

Lena didn’t flinch. “Then I hope you brought a blanket.”

That night, Kara texted her at 1:47 AM.

Are you awake?

Lena didn’t respond.

*

Lena didn’t text back. She read the message at 1:49 AM, let her eyes linger on it just long enough to imagine the pause on the other end - the way Kara would be holding her phone, probably under a blanket, probably biting the inside of her cheek, probably hoping the ellipsis would appear and disappear just enough times to mean something. Lena didn’t give her the satisfaction. She clicked the screen off and left the phone face down on the nightstand, as though the angle of a rectangle could protect her from the weight of wanting.

It was the kind of message you sent with no real plan. Are you awake? Not an invitation, not a question, not even a door left open - just the idea of one. A soft rattle of the handle in case someone might be waiting on the other side.

She didn’t touch herself that night. She lay still, hands flat on the sheets, hips locked tight against the tension in her thighs, and stared at the ceiling until the room stopped spinning. She refused to indulge the image of Kara’s hands, Kara’s mouth, Kara’s need softening into something messy and half-whispered. If Kara wanted her, she could damn well say it.

The name dropped into her awareness on a Wednesday. Naomi. She overheard it through the glass wall of the Tower’s observation deck - Alex saying it in that casual, half-distracted way people use when they assume the context doesn’t matter. “Naomi can’t do Thursday,” she’d said, laughing into her comms, “she’s got a deadline for that article.”

And there it was. Naomi. A name with a soft open and a decisive end. Perfectly formed. Symmetrical. Lena hated it on sight.

She didn’t say anything. She just stood by the monitor bank, eyes fixed on a spreadsheet she wasn’t reading, and let the syllables repeat like a pulse in her head. Naomi. Naomi. Naomi. The type of woman who wrote long-form think pieces for online journals no one read all the way through. The kind of woman who probably made her own almond milk and wore linen sets in the fall. Kara always did like a lost cause with a good heart and a shelf of poetry.

What Lena hated most wasn’t that she existed. It was that she was being treated like a footnote. Like she could be mentioned in the same breath as Kara’s brunch or Kara’s deadline. She was being normalized. Softened. Made palatable. And Lena, despite her best efforts, had always wanted to be the one who ruined Kara’s taste for all of that.

The next time she saw Kara was at a Tower briefing, where they barely made eye contact. Kara arrived with wet hair and a coffee she didn’t offer to share. She said Naomi’s name once, offhand, and Lena felt the click behind her teeth as she clenched her jaw. Not enough to break anything. Just enough to feel it.

Later that night, when Lena got home, she didn’t pour a glass of wine or take a hot shower. She locked the door, turned out the lights, and went straight to bed. She lay down still in her clothes, arm draped over her eyes, and replayed every time Kara had looked at her too long and then looked away.

Then she unzipped her trousers, slid a hand beneath the waistband of her briefs, and touched herself the way she imagined Kara might: unsure at first, then firmer, then slow. She didn’t rush it. She spread her legs wider and let herself press two fingers in - gently, then deeper - and exhaled against the back of her hand when her hips started to rock forward.

She kept her eyes closed and didn’t picture a scene. She pictured a breath. The way Kara’s voice would catch just slightly if she were above her. The hitch between syllables. The weight of her hair falling forward. The sound she might make, half-sighed, if Lena let herself come while looking straight into her face.

When she did - slow and full and clenched around her own fingers - she didn’t pretend it was anonymous. She came on Kara’s name, silent but definite, and afterward lay there with her hand between her legs and a bitter taste in her mouth. Not regret. Just absence.

Two nights later, she went to the opera alone. It was supposed to be an evening of obligation - a donor box, a glass of tepid champagne, some polite clapping in exchange for corporate visibility - but she showed up in a dark green dress and a pair of heels sharp enough to count as weapons. Not because she expected to see Kara, but because dressing for war was easier than pretending she’d come for the music.

She spotted her at the first intermission, standing by the mezzanine bar with Naomi in tow. Kara wore a navy floor-length gown, low-cut but not obscene, and her hair was swept back in a way that made her neck look more vulnerable than usual. Naomi stood close, angled in, one hand gently placed on the small of Kara’s back like a claim made without asking.

Kara noticed her before Naomi did. Her eyes caught on Lena like a fishhook, startled and sharp. For a moment, neither of them moved.

Lena didn’t smile. She didn’t nod. She turned without hesitation and walked to the bar.

Andrea found her ten minutes later sipping scotch, eyes still fixed on the mezzanine.

“Jesus,” Andrea said, not unkindly, “are you trying to combust her with your stare?”

Lena sipped again, unhurried. “Didn’t know you were here.”

“I wasn’t. Sam texted me. Said I should come watch the world’s most tense eye-fuck unfold live.”

“That’s wildly unprofessional of her.”

“And accurate.” Andrea leaned against the bar. “How long are you planning to keep this up?”

“This?”

“The slow-burn mutual possession fantasy. The cold-shoulder martyrdom. The visual hate sex in public.”

Lena finally looked at her. “Are you finished?”

Andrea smiled. “Not even close. But I’ll say this - if you’re not going to sleep with her, you need to stop looking like you already have.”

Lena drained her glass and didn’t respond.

She slept with someone else the following week. His name was Joshua - clean-shaven, doctoral candidate, charming in the way that came with subtle neediness. They met at a lecture on neuroplasticity. He asked her to dinner after quoting one of her own papers back to her, which was pathetic but not unappealing. She let him take her to an expensive place in Tribeca, let him touch her knee under the table, let him walk her to the car and press her back against the door.

He was soft. Predictable. Eager.

She didn’t let him kiss her mouth.

She let him kneel on the floor of her penthouse and eat her out like he was studying for an exam. She came, eventually, with a detached kind of focus. He said she tasted divine. She said nothing.

Afterward, she sent him home and showered with the lights off. She rubbed at the spot between her thighs like it might erase the shape of someone else’s jaw. It didn’t. She didn’t come again.

On Thursday, Kara texted again.

Can we talk?

Lena stared at the message for several minutes. Then she typed out a dozen different responses - about what, now you want to talk, sure, come over, only if you bring her with you - and deleted each one before pressing send.

Eventually, she closed the app and locked her phone.

If Kara was going to ask, she needed to ask properly. Needed to mean it.

Lena wasn’t in the mood for half-measures anymore. She wasn’t interested in almosts. She was wet-mouthed and raw-fingered and angry with herself for letting ghosts into her bed.

She wanted Kara. Not gently. Not later.

She wanted to be touched.

And if Kara wasn’t ready to ruin it - to earn it - then Lena had no intention of making it easy.

*

The first time Kara knocked, Lena didn’t answer. She was in her office, the one in the penthouse, surrounded by paperweights she didn’t need and a half-empty glass of Syrah she hadn’t meant to finish. The knock was soft, tentative, but not uncertain. Lena heard it over the low thrum of classical piano from the ceiling speakers. She stayed perfectly still. The knock came again. Then silence.

She waited a full minute before crossing the room to the door, not to open it, but to check the monitor. Kara stood in the hallway, her hands in her coat pockets, her shoulders slightly hunched in a way Lena recognized from the nights she was afraid of hearing no. Lena watched her for a moment, then walked away without opening the door.

The next day, Kara didn’t text. She didn’t come back either. Good. Lena didn’t want someone who could be put off by a single locked door.

By the end of the week, she was restless. Not for Kara - that was too generous - but for resolution, for proof that all the tension she’d been coiling around her spine hadn’t been invented wholesale. She’d watched Kara thread herself into someone else’s life and still orbit her own, all unfinished sentences and loaded silences, and now, when the moment had finally presented itself, Kara had shown up unannounced, unprepared, and ultimately uncommitted.

Lena needed more than a knock. She needed an answer.

The second time Kara came, she brought a bottle of wine.

It was a Sunday evening, just after ten. Lena was barefoot in the kitchen, wearing silk pajama pants and a black camisole, reading the last ten pages of a truly mediocre manuscript one of her researchers had forwarded with unwarranted enthusiasm. She heard the elevator hum, then the soft triple knock she recognized now as a pattern: tentative, pause, repeat. She didn’t move for a full thirty seconds.

When she did, she didn’t smooth her hair. She didn’t change clothes. She didn’t even check the monitor.

She opened the door.

Kara stood there in jeans and a grey sweater, the bottle cradled against her ribs like it might protect her. Her hair was damp at the ends, no makeup, her mouth parted like she’d been rehearsing what to say and forgot all of it the moment Lena looked up.

“I didn’t know if you’d let me in.” Kara said.

“I haven’t decided yet.” Lena replied, not moving from the threshold.

Kara held out the bottle. “Peace offering.”

Lena took it without glancing at the label. She stepped aside. Kara entered.

They sat in the kitchen. Lena poured two glasses and passed one across the counter, watching the way Kara curled her fingers around the stem. Her hands looked steadier than Lena expected. She took a slow sip, and for a while neither of them spoke.

Then Kara said, “You look good.”

Lena arched an eyebrow. “That’s what you came here to say?”

Kara shook her head, lips pressed together. “No.”

“Well,” Lena said, lifting her glass, “do get to the point.”

Kara looked at her, eyes dark and unreadable. “I need to try something.”

Lena let that hang in the air. The wine tasted sharp and clean. She swirled it once, set the glass down. “Try what, exactly?”

Kara hesitated. Not the way people do when they’re unsure, but the way they do when the admission costs something.

“I haven’t stopped thinking about you,” she said. “About us. Or… what we never were.”

Lena tilted her head. “You seemed to stop just fine while fucking someone else.”

Kara’s jaw tightened, but she didn’t look away. “That’s not fair.”

“No,” Lena said. “But it’s true.”

“I didn’t bring her to hurt you.” Kara said.

“You brought her everywhere I would be.”

“I didn’t know it would bother you.”

Lena narrowed her eyes. “Then you didn’t know me at all.”

Kara swallowed. “I didn’t think I was allowed to want you.”

There it was.

Lena pushed off the counter, slow and deliberate, and walked around to stand directly in front of her. Kara looked up, lips parted, breath shallow. Lena reached out, touched her jaw with the back of her hand, not gently.

“You’re not in charge of this anymore.” she said.

Kara nodded, not speaking.

Lena leaned down and kissed her.

It was not a gentle kiss. It was not slow or cautious or exploratory. It was all the things that had been left unspoken, undone, unfelt, slammed into one moment with the weight of three years behind it. Lena kissed like punishment. Kara took it like penance.

Their teeth clicked. Kara’s hand came up to Lena’s waist but didn’t tighten - she let it rest there like an offering. Lena bit her bottom lip until Kara made a sound deep in her throat, then pulled back just far enough to speak.

“Take off your clothes.”

Kara didn’t hesitate. She pulled the sweater over her head, dropped it to the floor, unbuttoned her jeans and stepped out of them. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Her skin was flushed across her chest and down her arms. Lena watched her, unblinking.

Lena didn’t undress. She turned and walked out of the kitchen.

Kara followed.

In the bedroom, Lena climbed onto the bed and sat with her back against the headboard. She curled one leg beneath her, the other stretched out, the silk clinging just enough to suggest intention. She nodded toward the space in front of her.

“Kneel.”

Kara knelt.

The silence between them was heavy but not awkward. It was saturated. Kara looked up at her, eyes wide and full of something that looked like awe and guilt and hunger layered on top of each other. Lena reached out, ran her fingers through Kara’s hair, then gripped it tight enough to make her tilt her head back.

“You want me?” Lena asked.

“Yes.”

“You want to fuck me?”

Kara’s breath hitched. “Yes.”

“You don’t get to.” Lena’s hand tightened in her hair. “Not yet.”

Kara’s eyes fluttered shut.

Lena slid her free hand into the waistband of her own pajama pants, dragged it down slowly, and let Kara watch her fingers disappear between her legs. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath.

“You’re going to watch,” Lena said. “You don’t touch me until I say. You don’t come until I say.”

Kara nodded, her mouth slightly open.

Lena pressed two fingers into herself. She was already wet. She worked slow, deliberate strokes, dragging her fingers back and forth through her slick, thumb circling her clit with methodical rhythm. Kara’s eyes tracked every motion like prayer. She didn’t speak. Lena kept her gaze locked to Kara’s as her breath started to shorten.

“You don’t know how many nights I did this thinking about your mouth,” she said, voice low and clipped. “Your hands. The way your voice changed when you came.”

Kara made a strangled sound in the back of her throat. Lena stopped, her fingers frozen inside herself.

“Did you come thinking about me?”

Kara swallowed. “Always.”

Lena smirked and resumed. “Don’t lie to me anymore.”

“I’m not.”

Lena let herself tip her head back, thighs spreading wider, hips grinding into her own hand. Her breathing deepened, her chest rising faster now. When she came, she did it with her eyes closed and her mouth shut, her body locked in tension so tight it looked like pain.

When she opened her eyes again, Kara was trembling.

Lena pulled her hand out slowly, wiped it on Kara’s shoulder. Kara shivered.

“Get on the bed,” Lena said. “Lie down. Face up.”

Kara obeyed.

Lena undressed without fanfare, peeled the silk off like it meant nothing, and climbed on top of her.

“Do you want me now?” she asked.

Kara nodded, desperate.

Lena took what she wanted.

Afterward, Kara lay silent beneath her, breath still uneven, eyes wide and unfocused. Lena sat beside her, legs tucked under, watching her like a problem she was no longer interested in solving.

Kara finally turned her head. “What does this mean?”

Lena reached for the glass of water on the nightstand. Drank. Set it back.

“I don’t know yet.” She said.

And Kara, to her credit, didn’t argue.

*

They woke tangled. Not in the soft, movie-still sense of limbs gently curved around each other, but in a way that made Lena deeply aware of every inch of sweat-cooled skin and the soreness she hadn’t expected to enjoy as much as she did. Kara had one arm flung across Lena’s stomach and her face pressed into the curve of Lena’s neck like a woman too comfortable with the idea of permanence. The sheets were somewhere near the foot of the bed, crumpled and damp. The room smelled like sex - unmistakably so - and Lena felt it settle around them like an atmosphere.

She didn’t move right away. She let herself observe. Kara’s hand was splayed possessively, but not tight. Her breathing was deep, even, with the occasional half-hitch that suggested she wasn’t fully asleep. The tip of her nose brushed the line of Lena’s collarbone every few seconds.

Lena stared at the ceiling and thought: this was not supposed to be gentle.

Last night had not been gentle.

She had taken Kara apart with deliberate cruelty - not violent, not angry, but intentional, stripping her down with the kind of precision Lena usually reserved for deconstruction, for analysis. Kara had begged without words, had gasped into the sheets, had twisted beneath Lena’s hands like someone surrendering not out of weakness, but out of reverence. And Lena, far from flinching, had guided every sound out of her like it was owed.

It had not been soft. But it had, undeniably, been worship.

And now, Kara was sleeping beside her like she belonged there.

Lena shifted slightly, dislodging Kara’s arm. Kara stirred, mumbling something unintelligible against Lena’s skin, but didn’t wake. Lena slipped out from under the covers and crossed the room, naked, unapologetic. She poured herself a glass of water from the decanter she kept on the sideboard, drank slowly, and watched the skyline through the wide windows while the city pulled itself toward morning.

She didn’t look back at the bed until she heard the soft rustle of movement.

Kara sat up, bleary-eyed, hair tangled, lips flushed in that unmistakable way. She looked younger in the morning light, though not in a fragile way. There was still a certain unshakable composure to her - a steadiness that came from knowing she could snap steel with her bare hands. It had always fascinated Lena, the way Kara contained herself. The restraint of it. The discipline. And last night, for the first time, she had handed all of it over.

“Hi.” Kara said, her voice scratchy.

Lena turned slightly, glass still in hand. “Morning.”

Kara smiled, unbothered. “You didn’t kick me out.”

“I was tired.”

“Sure.”

Lena walked back toward the bed and leaned against the footboard, looking at Kara like she was something both familiar and newly discovered. “So what happens now?”

Kara’s smile faded. Not into discomfort - into something more careful. “I don’t know. I didn’t plan past the part where you let me in.”

Lena considered that. “That much was obvious.”

“I just -” Kara pulled the sheet around herself, not out of modesty but as something to hold. “I didn’t want to keep pretending I didn’t want you.”

Lena sat on the edge of the bed, not touching her. “Is that what last night was? Want?”

Kara’s eyes didn’t waver. “Yes.”

“Good,” Lena said, “because if you said it was love, I would’ve made you leave.”

Kara didn’t flinch. “And if it was both?”

Lena held her gaze, something dark and unflinching behind her eyes. “Then you’re going to have to earn the rest of it.”

They didn’t have breakfast. Lena wasn’t the kind of person who indulged in post-sex rituals, and Kara - to her credit - didn’t ask. She got dressed slowly, folding each piece of clothing like she was trying not to give Lena a reason to look away. When she stood fully clothed again, she didn’t reach out. Didn’t kiss her. She stood at the threshold of the bedroom and waited.

“I’m not going to apologize.” Kara said, voice even.

“Good,” Lena replied, “because that would’ve ruined the whole thing.”

“I meant for the rest of it. For Naomi. For the delay. For not knowing what I wanted sooner.”

Lena walked over, stopped just close enough that Kara could smell the scent still clinging to her skin. “Then you’ve misunderstood the situation entirely. You don’t owe me regret.”

“What do I owe you?”

Lena reached out, brushed a finger down Kara’s throat, slow and impersonal. “Consistency.”

Kara nodded once. “I can do that.”

“We’ll see.”

After she left, Lena didn’t cry. She didn’t sink to the floor or pour another drink or stand by the window waiting for the elevator lights to fade.

She changed the sheets. She started the laundry. She took a long shower and scrubbed her thighs with the expensive salt scrub Sam had given her for Christmas. She put on a robe and walked barefoot through the apartment with damp hair and the scent of eucalyptus in her lungs.

And when she sat down at her desk and opened her laptop, she let herself type out a name she hadn’t dared let cross her mind in weeks.

Naomi.

She looked her up. Read two articles. One about migration patterns. One about grief. They were well-written. Academic but accessible. The kind of thing Kara would admire.

The kind of thing Lena couldn’t hate.

She closed the tabs.

Later that week, Kara texted. Not at midnight, not full of longing. Just a message that read:

Can I come over sometime and cook you dinner? No pressure.

Lena stared at it. She didn’t reply immediately. She didn’t reread it twelve times or dissect the punctuation.

She waited four hours, then typed:

Send me the menu.

Kara replied eight minutes later with a photo of a notepad. Roast chicken. Charred broccolini. Couscous with pomegranate. And something crossed out that looked like it had once read Naomi’s salad.

Lena smiled, just barely.

Then she typed:

I’ll stock up on wine.

That night, she came again. Alone. No audience, no pressure, no spectacle. Just fingers, deliberate and slow, and the memory of Kara’s mouth open beneath her, the sound she made when Lena slipped two fingers into her and pressed hard enough to make her stutter.

She came with her hand clenched in the sheets and her thighs locked tight around her wrist, breath shuddering into the quiet.

When she opened her eyes, the ceiling looked the same. But the weight in her chest had changed.

It was no longer about what they hadn’t done.

It was about what came next.

*

Kara cooked barefoot. The kitchen was clean, sparsely decorated, and absurdly functional - all stainless steel and minimalist cabinetry, a long window above the sink catching the dying light like a mirror left too long in the sun. Lena leaned against the island, one hand around the stem of her wine glass, and watched the way Kara moved - sleeves rolled to her elbows, forearms flexing as she pressed the back of a wooden spoon against the bottom of the pan. There was a looseness to her now that hadn’t been there before, something unwound and almost easy, though it flickered at the edges like a trick of light.

The chicken had been roasted already, resting under foil on the counter beside a bowl of blistered broccolini. Couscous steamed quietly in a ceramic dish, garnished with pomegranate and slivers of fresh mint. Kara wasn’t talking much. Neither was Lena. It wasn’t tension, not exactly, but a silence so deliberate it felt like the prelude to something else, something with sharp teeth and the weight of unspoken things dragging just beneath the surface.

“You cook when you’re nervous.” Lena said finally, not looking up from her wine.

Kara stirred the sauce once more, turned off the burner. “I cook when I want to feel useful.”

Lena didn’t respond. She tilted her glass toward her mouth and drank.

They ate at the table - no TV, no music, no soft background hum of distraction. Just the clink of cutlery and Kara occasionally offering something across the table like they hadn’t been fucking each other into silence the week before. It was polite. Civil. Maddening.

Lena let her plate go cold halfway through. Not because she wasn’t hungry, but because she couldn’t stand the pretense that this was dinner. That what they were doing was normal. That anything about this was casual.

Kara set down her fork. “Is this… was this a mistake?”

Lena leaned back. “If I thought it was, I wouldn’t be here.”

Kara looked at her across the table, hands folded, bare wrist brushing the wood. “Then what is it?”

“You invited me for dinner. You made chicken. I offered wine. We’re being civil.”

Kara hesitated. “It doesn’t feel civil.”

“No,” Lena said, voice low, “it feels like a holding pattern.”

Kara swallowed. “I want more.”

“Of me?” Lena asked, arching an eyebrow.

Kara nodded.

Lena stood slowly, circled the table, and stopped behind her. She bent down, mouth near Kara’s ear, and whispered, “Then earn it.”

The bedroom was too bright. Kara reached for the lamp, but Lena stopped her.

“No,” she said. “I want to see you.”

Kara nodded, eyes wide.

Lena pulled her shirt over her head, unclasped her bra, and stepped out of her slacks. She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to. Kara followed suit, undressing with that particular kind of grace she always had - not performative, not shy, just honest. Her body was lean and strong and already marked from the week before - Lena spotted the faint bruises on her thighs and hips, a scratch at the base of her shoulder blade. She didn’t ask if it hurt. She knew Kara liked to be taken apart.

But this time, Lena wanted something else.

She pushed Kara gently down onto the bed, not rough but firm, and crawled over her like she belonged there - because she did, because she had waited long enough to stop pretending otherwise. Kara’s eyes tracked her the whole time, breath shallow, legs already parting in anticipation.

“You’re not allowed to come until I say.” Lena said, brushing her lips over Kara’s cheek, then lower, pressing a kiss to the base of her throat.

Kara nodded.

Lena didn’t take her time. She took what was hers.

She slid down between Kara’s thighs and licked a slow, deliberate stripe through her cunt - not teasing, not exploratory, but with purpose, with knowledge, with that calculated patience that made Kara’s breath stutter. Lena knew exactly how Kara tasted now. She knew the way her hips bucked when she was close, the pitch of her voice when she needed more, the tremor in her thighs when she was on the edge and trying not to fall.

She fucked her with her tongue, then with two fingers, curling them just right, grinding the heel of her palm against Kara’s clit until she was sweating and moaning and writhing under her.

But Lena didn’t let her come.

She slowed down just before the edge, pulled her fingers out, wiped them against Kara’s stomach, and sat back on her heels.

Kara whimpered.

“Look at me.” Lena said, voice sharp.

Kara did.

“You wanted more,” Lena continued, reaching up to drag a fingernail gently down the center of Kara’s chest. “This is more. You want to be mine? You wait for it.”

Kara nodded again, breathless.

Lena leaned down, kissed her - deep and slow, tongue brushing hers, control pressed into every motion - and then slid back down, between her legs again, and started over.

This time, she made it slower. Crueler. She licked and sucked and used her fingers sparingly, building Kara up with the kind of practiced rhythm that made her gasp and shudder and dig her nails into the sheets like she was trying not to scream.

Lena watched her face the entire time. Every twitch, every twist, every failed attempt at composure. She worked her mouth and tongue with expert precision, taking her higher and higher, until Kara was whispering please, again and again, voice cracked and low and reverent.

Lena didn’t stop. She didn’t let her come.

Not until Kara was trembling, eyes wet, hands clenched, and utterly undone.

“Now,” Lena said. “Come for me.”

And Kara did. Violently. Beautifully. Her whole body arched, jaw dropped open, a sharp cry escaping her lips as she came hard against Lena’s mouth. Lena kept going, drawing it out, licking her through it, holding her hips steady until she collapsed, gasping, blinking up at the ceiling like she couldn’t quite believe she still existed.

Lena climbed back up and lay beside her, chest heaving, hair damp against her neck. Kara turned toward her slowly, blinking, dazed.

“I’ve never -” she started, then stopped.

Lena didn’t speak. She brushed a piece of hair back from Kara’s face and kissed her again - not with force this time, but with something slower, less defined.

Kara reached for her. “Your turn.”

“No,” Lena said, settling onto her back. “Not yet.”

“I want to -”

“I know.” Lena reached over and cupped her jaw. “But this wasn’t for me. It was for you.”

Kara swallowed. “Why?”

Lena didn’t answer immediately. She let her thumb glide across Kara’s cheek, then down to her lips.

“Because I wanted to see how much of you was still mine.”

Kara closed her eyes.

And when she opened them again, Lena knew. She didn’t need the words. Mine.

*

Lena never did fall asleep easily, but that night she didn’t sleep at all. She lay there beside Kara, the room humming with the leftover heat of sex and something heavier, something harder to place. She wasn’t thinking about what came next. She wasn’t building a structure around this, wasn’t plotting its logical extensions or emotional costs. She wasn’t trying to name it. She just watched Kara breathe, her body curved toward Lena’s like it was second nature, like they had always slept this way - tangled legs, warm skin, the occasional soft brush of fingers in sleep. It was terrifying how natural it felt.

At some point in the early hours, when the city outside had gone quiet in the particular way it does just before it starts to wake again, Kara stirred and blinked up at the ceiling. Her hair was a mess and her mouth was dry and she looked, Lena thought, devastating. Not in the way people looked after a one-night stand - not rumpled or dazed - but exposed. Marked. Not by anything visible, though Lena had left plenty of those, but by the unmistakable fact that Kara had let go in a way she probably didn’t even know she was capable of.

Kara didn’t speak at first. She looked at the ceiling for a long time, then turned her head and looked at Lena, her eyes unreadable.

Lena stared back. She didn’t reach for her. She didn’t say good morning. She didn’t pretend they’d woken up in a world that made sense.

Eventually, Kara said, “You’re not going to tell me what this means, are you?”

Lena considered that. “No.”

Kara nodded. “But you know.”

“I know exactly what it means,” Lena said. “I just don’t owe you an explanation for it.”

Kara looked down, then smiled faintly. It wasn’t a happy smile, not really. More a tired one. A quiet concession to the fact that this - whatever this was - had always been about control.

They got up around nine. Kara made coffee, the real kind, not the pod machine Lena kept in the guest kitchen for visitors she didn’t like enough to grind beans for. She moved around Lena’s apartment like she’d done it before, like she already knew where the mugs were, like she belonged. Lena let her. She sat at the counter and watched as Kara poured, then passed a mug over without ceremony.

“Are we going to talk about it?” Kara asked, sliding onto the stool across from her.

“We’ve done enough talking.”

Kara didn’t argue. She sipped her coffee and let the silence stretch. There were no questions about what this meant or who they were now or how often this would happen. No awkward attempts to define the rhythm of them. Just the smell of coffee and the sunlight edging in through the east-facing windows and the vague, shared understanding that they had crossed into something irreversible.

Later, Kara showered. Lena stayed in the kitchen, answering a few work emails, pretending not to notice how long Kara lingered under the water. When she emerged, she was wrapped in one of Lena’s towels, hair dripping down her back, skin pink from the heat. She looked soft. Unarmored. Not fragile - Kara Danvers never looked fragile - but paused, like someone waiting for permission to stay.

Lena didn’t give it to her. But she didn’t tell her to leave either.

They dressed without speaking. Kara borrowed a clean shirt from Lena’s drawer - not the guest drawer, but Lena’s - and didn’t ask if it was okay. Lena didn’t stop her. When Kara turned to leave, hand resting on the doorframe, she looked back once. Smiled. Lena smiled back, briefly, and then she was gone.

Two days passed before Lena heard from her again.

It wasn’t a text. It was a knock on her office door, a familiar pattern - quiet, then another, then a pause. Kara stood in the doorway, dressed for work, coffee in hand, and not pretending she’d come for any reason other than Lena herself.

“I’ve been thinking.” Kara said.

“That sounds dangerous.”

Kara stepped inside, shut the door behind her. “I’m not trying to make this something you can’t control.”

Lena raised an eyebrow. “You already have.”

“I know.” Kara placed the coffee on Lena’s desk. “But I’m not trying to take anything from you.”

Lena studied her. “Then what are you trying to do?”

“Match you,” Kara said. “Whatever this is. Whatever it becomes. I want it to be deliberate.”

Lena let that sit between them. It was not a confession. Not a plea. It was a proposition.

She reached for the coffee, took a sip, and met Kara’s eyes.

“Then stop bringing me things,” she said. “I’m not a project. I’m not someone you earn by making yourself useful.”

Kara didn’t flinch. “What do you want?”

“I want you to stop waiting for instructions.”

Kara nodded. “Okay.”

They stared at each other for another beat, something electric still humming between them - not quite resentment, not quite desire, but something with sharp edges and an ache they’d both gotten used to navigating.

Then Kara left, quiet and sure.

That night, Lena didn’t come. She touched herself, but only half-heartedly, and when she finished she felt more irritated than satisfied. She thought about texting Kara, then thought better of it. She wasn’t interested in being indulged. She didn’t want Kara to show up at her door because she was asked. She wanted her to show up because she couldn’t not.

The next morning, Kara did.

She didn’t knock. She didn’t text. She let herself in with the code Lena had never changed, walked into the kitchen like she lived there, and said, “I want you again.”

Lena looked up from her coffee. “That’s not new.”

Kara stepped closer. “No. But I’m not asking this time.”

Lena stood slowly, let the mug clink softly against the counter.

“Then what are you doing?”

Kara pressed close, hands light on Lena’s hips, her mouth near Lena’s ear.

“I’m taking you to bed,” she said. “And I’m going to fuck you like you’re mine.”

Lena didn’t smile. She didn’t blink.

But she did turn and walk toward the bedroom without waiting to be followed.

And Kara, finally, followed.

*

It was late afternoon by the time the sunlight hit the bedroom windows at the right angle, turning the pale linen curtains into thin gold. Kara stood at the foot of the bed, half-dressed and steady, watching Lena undress with the kind of composure that made clear this was no longer about seduction. There was no hesitation. No unfinished business. No will-they-won’t-they nonsense cluttering the air like static. They already had. They were going to again.

Lena stepped out of her trousers and pulled her blouse over her head, then unclasped her bra with one practiced motion and dropped it onto the nearest chair. She didn’t do it slowly. She didn’t try to make it theatrical. She didn’t need to. Kara’s eyes followed every movement like she was reading a page already half-memorized. There was reverence in it, yes, but also a kind of sharpened hunger - the look of someone who had tasted something once and wanted to commit the act of remembering as much as the act itself.

Kara was still standing there, bare from the waist up, her hands resting loosely at her sides, not nervous but waiting for instruction. Lena walked past her, opened the bottom drawer of the bedside table, and pulled out the harness. Black leather, clean and worn-in, the kind that said utility more than kink. She handed it over without comment, but her fingers lingered when Kara took it.

“Put it on.” Lena said.

Kara didn’t ask questions. She took the harness, stepped into it, tightened the straps with quick, practiced pulls, and adjusted the angle of the cock with the kind of calm focus that told Lena she’d done this before - maybe not often, maybe not recently, but enough to do it well. When she looked up again, Lena was already on the bed, one leg bent, the other extended, her hand resting casually on her stomach, the picture of self-assured invitation.

Kara climbed onto the bed with the kind of physical confidence Lena would’ve found arrogant in anyone else. Here, it read as intention. Control. Not possession - Kara had never been about that - but presence. Fully felt, fully given.

Lena lay back as Kara moved over her, the cock brushing against her inner thigh, warm from Kara’s skin. Kara leaned down to kiss her, deep and deliberate, and Lena kissed her back with an edge of impatience, one hand threading into Kara’s hair, the other dragging down her spine.

“No teasing.” Lena said against her mouth. “I want you inside me.”

Kara reached down, guided the cock into place, and pushed in slowly - not tentative, but controlled, giving Lena time to feel every inch. The stretch was perfect. Full. Not punishing. Not rushed. Lena exhaled into Kara’s shoulder as she filled her, the friction low and steady, her body tightening around it like something settling into place.

She pulled her legs around Kara’s waist and rolled her hips up, chasing the depth. Kara began to move - not fast, not lazy, just right. Her rhythm was focused, hips grinding with purpose, the base of the harness catching Lena’s clit just enough to make her gasp. Lena wrapped her arms around Kara’s shoulders and held her there, breathing into her neck, dragging her nails lightly down her back with each thrust.

She came with her eyes open and her mouth shut, legs locked around Kara’s hips and her fingers buried in her hair. It was sharp and silent, a full-body clench that made her jaw tighten and her stomach tremble. Kara stayed inside her, still moving gently, her hands anchoring Lena’s hips like she was afraid to let her drift too far away. Lena blinked up at her, dazed, loose, flushed with heat and whatever came after the high.

Kara leaned down and kissed her - not hungry, not victorious. Grateful.

“You’re unreal.” She whispered, and Lena, without thinking, pulled her back down into another kiss that tasted like sweat and breath and satisfaction. It lingered. It softened. It meant something.

When they separated, Kara looked like she wanted to say something else - something worse, something bigger - and Lena touched her face to stop it before it started.

“Lie back,” she said instead. “Don’t move.”

Kara obeyed.

Lena climbed into her lap, straddled her thighs, and reached between them to guide the cock back in. She didn’t ask. She didn’t check. She knew Kara could take it.

She sank down slowly, eyes never leaving Kara’s, and began to ride - slow at first, rolling her hips in tight circles, her thighs tense, her breath caught somewhere in her chest. Kara let her move, hands on Lena’s waist, not guiding, just holding, grounding. Every shift of Lena’s weight drew a new sound from her - deeper now, quieter, more reverent than urgent. At one point, Lena moved her hand from Kara's ribs to her chest, then higher, sliding across hot skin until her hand rested around Kara's throat. She squeezed, hard enough for Kara to look at her as she rode her, hard enough to make the blonde's hips jerk in pure horniness.

The rhythm built, but never lost control. Lena was measured, exacting, grinding against Kara’s pelvis in search of that perfect pressure. She found it. Again. And again. And when she came for the second time, it was all body - no warning, no sharp intake of breath, just a long exhale and the quake of her muscles as she dropped forward, collapsing into Kara’s chest, their skin slick and hot.

Kara wrapped her arms around her immediately, one hand stroking up her back, the other threading through her hair. They stayed like that, Lena still full, bodies pressed together in a slow, shared comedown. Lena’s heartbeat began to slow. Her fingers curled against Kara’s ribs.

She wasn’t thinking about what came next. She wasn’t planning a retort or a shift in power, wasn’t bracing for a comedown or assembling language to explain how this would or wouldn’t change things. She just looked at Kara’s mouth - swollen, parted slightly, still glistening at the corners - and thought, with sharp and devastating clarity, I need to kiss her again.

It wasn’t sentimental. It wasn’t even romantic. It was need in its most concentrated form. Animal. Cellular. Essential. Lena had wanted Kara’s mouth for years - not in the way one desires someone beautiful, but in the way one is haunted by a very specific shape, a very specific curve, a very specific softness at the center of something otherwise so strong. Kara’s lips had always been a problem. The way they curved, the fact she had the smallest of freckles on the top one. They looked too plush to be real, like they belonged to someone less precise, someone less moral. And yet, there they were - mouth of a saint, heart of a martyr, body of a woman who kissed like sin and stayed behind to hold the pieces.

Lena kissed her.

It was soft in a harsh way. She sucked Kara’s bottom lip between her teeth and bit, slow and firm, until Kara moaned into her mouth. Then she kissed her again, and again, and again - open-mouthed, greedy, tongues sliding, breath messy, one hand in Kara’s hair and the other planted against her chest like she needed the physical reminder that this was real. That she could do this now. That she was allowed.

That nothing, absolutely nothing, was stopping her.

By the fourth kiss, Kara was laughing against her mouth, breathless and stunned, fingers tangled at Lena’s waist like she didn’t want to ever let her up.

Lena didn’t intend to stop.

She just needed more. She alternated between soft little pecks and languid kisses, slow ones that made Kara whimper into her mouth and more assertive ones where her teeth sunk into Kara’s bottom lip just enough to pinch. Kara held her close, licking into her mouth and whispering expletives between kisses, never once showing any intent to be the one to stop what they were doing. She simply kept going, reciprocated whenever Lena went in for her mouth again.

They didn’t speak for a while.

When Lena finally lifted her head, Kara was looking at her with a steadiness that didn’t need explanation. There was no question behind it. Just a presence. An answer to something Lena hadn’t dared ask out loud.

“Are you staying?” Lena asked, voice low, not unsure.

Kara brushed her thumb over Lena’s cheek. “I wasn’t planning on leaving.”

Lena smiled, just slightly. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.” Kara said, and leaned up to kiss her again.

Later, after they’d both showered, after they’d eaten leftovers in bed with the duvet draped around their shoulders and the windows cracked open to the sound of the city folding into night, Kara sat with her back against the headboard and Lena curled into her side, fingers absently tracing the line of Kara’s thigh.

“Next time,” Kara said, voice soft but certain, “I want to take you out first.”

Lena looked up. “You mean like a date?”

“I mean exactly like a date.”

Lena didn’t respond right away. She stretched, pressed a kiss to Kara’s shoulder, and rested her head back down against her chest.

“Fine,” she said, feigning reluctance even though her heart had summersaulted thrice. “But I pick the place.”

Kara smiled into her hair. “Of course.”

And for the first time in a long time, Lena felt like maybe they weren’t haunted anymore. Maybe they’d finally stopped living in the space between what was almost and what could never be.

Maybe this - slow, deliberate, earned - was the beginning after all.