Archive of Our Own ^beta

On better nights, Kara remembered the sound of Lena’s laugh when it wasn’t sharpened to a weapon. Not the gala laugh—the champagne-glass chime—but the private one, the human one, spilling out over takeout cartons and a couch with one lopsided leg. Kara’s apartment back then had smelled like printer ink and cinnamon tea and rain drying in her hair, and Lena’s heels, abandoned by the door, had looked like something a different woman wore.

The night Kara almost told her, it was storming. Lightning stitched the skyline and the city hiccupped its lights. Lena had taken off her blazer, rolled her sleeves, and read aloud the least believable parts of a sci-fi novel Kara swore she would love. They laughed until Lena’s mascara smudged and Kara’s cheeks hurt, until Lena leaned back, bare wrist resting against Kara’s knee, and said quietly, “You make the world feel survivable.”

Kara had swallowed the truth like a stone. If she told Lena, the world could end. If she didn’t tell Lena, something softer would. She chose the world.

Weeks later, when the truth spilled anyway, Kara stood in the ruins of that choice and learned what it meant to be the meteor, not the sky. Lena’s face didn’t twist; it closed. Not anger first—worse. Mathematics. Kara watched the numbers add up behind her eyes: the missed calls, the “late-night deadlines,” the unexplained bruises, the way Kara always knew when to show up and save the day. Trust inverted into proof.

Lena’s silence was so loud it broke Kara.

After that, every room felt like someone else’s, even Kara’s own apartment. They learned how to talk without touching and how to touch without meaning it. Kara tried apologies the size of buildings; Lena handed them back, polished and unused. They orbited each other anyway, pulled by a gravity neither could name without bleeding.

On the worst nights, Kara remembered the softness and wanted to tear it out of herself, wanted to grind it under her heel until there was only the steel left. On the worst nights, Lena remembered it too.

The DEO lab was never quiet, not really. Even at midnight, with most of the staff dismissed and the overheads dimmed to a sterile half-light, the place thrummed. Consoles blinked and servers hummed, machines whispering with the same relentlessness as Kara’s pacing. Back and forth across the gleaming floor she went, arms folded tight across her chest, cape snapping faintly with each turn.

Lena sat at the far workstation as if she owned it. One leg crossed elegantly over the other, posture a blade of calm. She hadn’t bothered to remove her coat, dark wool draped over her shoulders like armor, the gleam of her eyes unflinching as she followed Kara’s restless movement. The silence stretched between them like wire, taut and brittle.

They weren’t there for each other. Alex had dumped a heat-scored control core on the workstation—salvage from a raid, locked behind Luthor firmware that ignored every DEO key but Lena’s. Lena had looked once, typed three commands, and set a brute-force routine chewing through her own architecture. Protocol said she stayed until the diagnostic cleared; “keep things civil” had parked Supergirl in the room like a visible promise.

Kara paced. Cape ticking. Eyes on Lena the way a bomb tech watches a timer.

“You can stop hovering,” Lena said without looking up. “I’m not your patient.”

Kara didn’t answer. Kept orbiting. The progress bar crawled.

That was what needled Lena into speech—not the machine, not the code. The babysitter.

The hum of the lab seemed to grow teeth. Somewhere, a diagnostic finished with a cheerful chime that felt obscene in the quiet.

“Tell me, Kara,” Lena said, voice even now in that infuriating boardroom way, “if I were anyone else—if my last name were Smith or Patel or Gomez—would you have told me?”

Kara opened her mouth, found nothing but static. “It wasn’t your name.”

“It’s always my name,” Lena said. “It’s in every room I walk into before I do. You let it sit between us like a loaded gun and then wondered why I didn’t hand it back to you with flowers.”

“I was trying to keep you safe.” Kara heard how small it sounded and wanted to bite the words in half.

“By making me powerless?” Lena’s eyes glinted. “Protection without trust is control. You don’t keep me safe by blindfolding me, Kara. You keep me safe by trusting me.”

“Trust you?” Kara’s laugh cracked. “With what, Lena? With me? With my friends? With the city you were ready to ‘fix’ by rewriting it?”

Lena’s lashes lowered; the blow landed. “Says the woman who rewrites disaster for a living.”

“I save people.”

“You save them your way.” Lena’s mouth tilted. “And when I tried to save them mine, you suddenly remembered my bloodline.”

Kara took the final step because retreat felt like drowning. “I remembered what it felt like to lose you. I’m still losing you.”

Lena’s chin lifted, daring the grief to be anything but ammunition. “Good.”

The word rang, a clean kill. Kara didn’t move for a heartbeat. Then she did. And once she did, there was no walking it back. They circled the same wound and found it fresher. It didn’t cool; it curdled.

“You don’t belong here,” Kara muttered finally, halting mid-stride. Her voice was tight, low, as if she’d rehearsed the line and still couldn’t stop the crack in it.

Lena’s smile was faint and cruel. “Neither do you, apparently. A hero who lies to her closest friend? That hardly screams ‘integrity.’”

Kara flinched, jaw tightening. She spun to face her, fists clenching at her sides. “You think I lied because I didn’t care about you? I was protecting you, Lena.”

“Protecting me?” Lena’s laugh was soft, sharp as broken glass. She unfolded her legs, leaning forward, voice a velvet coil. “No, Kara. You were protecting yourself. Too afraid that if I knew who you really were, I’d do exactly this—look at you and see what a hypocrite you are.”

Heat climbed Kara’s throat. She paced again, but it was jittery now, steps eating up the space between them until she stood only a few feet away. The glow of the monitors painted her in cold light, her fists trembling with restraint.

“You don’t understand—”

“I understand perfectly.” Lena rose smoothly, every inch the CEO in her heels and tailored black dress. Even in the shadow of alien tech, she carried herself like she was in her own boardroom, commanding. “You lied to me for years. You smiled, you laughed with me, you let me confide in you, and all the while you knew I was building my trust on sand. And you—” she jabbed a finger toward Kara, her composure finally cracking at the edges, “—you just let it happen. Because in your mind, my friendship wasn’t worth the risk of honesty.”

Kara’s breath came sharp through her nose, chest rising and falling as though she’d flown a thousand miles to this spot. She stepped forward again, so close Lena had to tilt her chin up. “You think this is easy for me? Every day I kept the secret, I hated myself for it. I wanted to tell you. God, I wanted to—but I couldn’t.”

Lena’s eyes glittered. “And that’s supposed to absolve you? You don’t get points for wanting.”

The air thickened between them, charged as if the fluorescent lights themselves had picked up the argument. Kara’s hand twitched at her side, aching to reach out, aching to shake Lena, aching to do something, anything to break the cycle of her calm poison.

“You don’t get it,” Kara said, voice breaking against the edges of her control. “You’ve never had to carry something so heavy that it crushes every relationship you have. You’ve never had to choose between saving the world and saving yourself.”

“Don’t you dare lecture me about burdens.” Lena’s words were low, lethal. She stepped closer, until her perfume mingled with the faint ozone on Kara’s skin, until her voice was a whisper laced with venom. “I carry the Luthor name. Every look, every headline, every muttered word in a hallway is a reminder that I am her sister, his daughter. Don’t you dare stand there and tell me I don’t know what it means to be crushed.”

Kara’s eyes flared, heat vision threatening at the edges. For a heartbeat, neither moved. Their breathing tangled, sharp and ragged, their reflections caught in the polished glass of the workstation behind Lena.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Kara whispered, almost to herself.

“I know exactly what I’m saying,” Lena shot back. Her hands were fists at her sides, knuckles white. “You ruined us, Kara. You ruined everything.”

That was the snap. Kara surged forward, so close her cape brushed Lena’s legs, so close Lena could feel the thrum of power under her skin. Lena didn’t step back. She lifted her chin higher, daring her.

The silence that followed was more dangerous than the shouting.

Kara’s chest heaved, fists trembling at her sides. Lena stood her ground, chin lifted, eyes glittering like steel struck against flint. The hum of the DEO servers filled the silence, a low electric drone that seemed to amplify the crackling tension between them.

“You don’t mean that,” Kara said, voice tight, shaking.

Lena’s lips curled into a blade-thin smile. “Don’t I? You had every chance to tell me the truth. Every time you looked me in the eye and said you trusted me—you lied. And you expect me to believe that was friendship?”

Kara surged forward, cape flaring, her hand shooting out before she could stop herself. She slammed her palm against the glass workstation behind Lena, pinning her in place with sheer proximity. Lena didn’t flinch. If anything, she leaned a fraction closer, as if daring Kara to try harder.

“I wanted to protect you,” Kara spat, their faces inches apart. “Do you have any idea how many nights I lay awake, terrified that if anyone hurt you, it would be my fault?”

“Terrified,” Lena echoed, voice dripping disdain. “So you hid behind your mask and let me bare my soul to a stranger. That wasn’t protection, Kara. That was cowardice.”

Kara’s jaw tightened. “You don’t get to call me a coward.”

“I just did.” Lena’s tone was almost playful, except for the ice in her eyes. She shifted subtly, so her body brushed Kara’s, a whisper of contact that sent heat spiraling down Kara’s spine. “What are you going to do about it? You going hurt me, Supergirl?”

Kara froze, breath catching. She knew the smart thing was to pull back, to step away before the tension tipped into something dangerous. But Lena’s challenge—it was gasoline on a flame already too bright to contain.

Her voice came out lower, darker than she meant. “You really want to see?”

Lena’s gaze flicked down to Kara’s mouth and back up. The faintest hitch of breath betrayed her composure. “Go ahead,” she whispered. “Show me the hero you really are.”

Something inside Kara snapped. Her hand left the workstation and closed around Lena’s wrist, hard enough to make Lena gasp, though she didn’t look away. Kara slammed her other hand to Lena’s opposite wrist, pinning both above her head against the cold glass.

Kara held there for a heartbeat. “Okay?”

“Yes,” Lena said, like a dare.

Kara didn’t mean to notice details. Her body had been a map of emergency exits since she was sixteen. And yet she cataloged Lena like a fire she wanted to step into: the smear of thumbprint gloss on her lower lip, the faint powder of setting spray clinging to the soft hair at her temple, the way her pulse jumped at her throat when Kara’s breath hit it. Lena smelled like cool perfume over a warmer thing Kara refused to name. Beneath it all, an electrical ozone from the servers braided into Kara’s own static.

“You’re shaking,” Lena murmured, and it was true; Kara’s hands trembled in the hold.

“Because I’m trying not to break you,” Kara said, and for once there was no performance in it—no heroic baritone, no DEO posture—just the ragged truth scraping its knees on the way out.

“Then don’t.” Lena leaned a fraction closer, as if confiding a secret. “Let me risk me.”

The plea hid in the dare; Kara took the dare.

The first kiss tasted like copper and unsaid things. Lena met it with teeth, with a muffled laugh that was almost a sob, with the kind of ferocity people write ballads about when they don’t know any better. Kara pinned Lena’s wrists because it was the only thing that made the room hold still. The workstation shivered. A stylus rolled, fell, clinked once on the floor. The DEO cameras blinked their indifferent red eyes and kept recording. Kara didn’t care. Later, she would. Later, they both would. Now, there was only heat and friction and the clean ruin of restraint. Later, their red dots would feel like witnesses. Now, they were just stars in a sky she intended to fall through.

Their mouths crashed together—teeth, lips, the taste of fury. It wasn’t a kiss so much as a collision, violent and desperate, a clash that sent Lena arching against her hold, Kara pressing harder, harder until there was no air between them.

Lena’s muffled laugh broke through the chaos of it, mocking even with Kara’s mouth on hers. Kara growled into the kiss, pressing her tighter, hips driving forward until Lena’s breath stuttered.

“Is this all you’ve got?” Lena panted when Kara broke for air, voice husky, eyes blazing. “All that power, and you still can’t break me?”

Kara’s grip tightened, her whole body trembling with the effort not to crush, not to unleash everything she had. “Don’t tempt me.”

Lena arched forward deliberately, brushing her body against Kara’s like it was a weapon. “That’s all I ever do.”

Kara’s lips crushed down again, no space for words this time, no patience for anything but raw heat. Lena writhed against the glass, wrists trapped high in Kara’s grip, her body caught between cold workstation and hotter-than-human strength. Kara pressed closer, hips grinding into hers with the kind of force that rattled every console in arm’s reach.

Fabric tore. Kara didn’t remember deciding to do it—just the sharp rip as her hand dropped from Lena’s wrist, fisting in the front of her dress and yanking. Buttons clattered across the floor, her cape brushing against Lena’s legs as the neat lines of black fabric fell open. Lena's coat slid off her shoulders and dropped to the floor like a shed pelt. She gasped, then laughed, low and throaty, even as her lace bra was bared to the sterile lab light.

“Finally,” Lena breathed, mocking and hungry at once. “Supergirl doesn’t play gentle anymore.”

Kara growled, the sound animal in her throat, and shoved her harder against the workstation. Monitors flickered, warning alarms chirped at the jolt, but Kara didn’t care. Her mouth slid down Lena’s neck, biting at the pale skin, sucking bruises where no Kryptonian strength should leave marks. Lena tilted her head back, a ragged sigh spilling past her lips despite the defiance still burning in her eyes.

“You think this makes you strong?” Lena taunted, voice hitching as Kara’s teeth scraped her collarbone. “Holding me down, tearing at my clothes—”

“Shut up,” Kara snapped, hand tightening on her wrists.

Lena smiled, lips red and swollen, her voice nothing but a rasp. “Make me.”

The challenge sent fire racing through Kara’s veins. Her free hand slid down, shoving Lena’s underwear aside in one swift motion, palm pressing between her thighs. Lena gasped, back arching violently against the workstation, her legs straining against Kara’s.

“Still talking?” Kara hissed, grinding the heel of her hand harder.

Lena’s breath came quick now, teeth sinking into her bottom lip to stifle the sound. “Barely… started.”

Kara shoved her harder against the workstation until a monitor toppled and crashed to the floor. The DEO tech was fragile, but Lena wasn’t. Lena’s body bowed, caught between fury and need, wrists straining under Kara’s hold as her hips betrayed her, grinding against Kara’s hand.

Kara dropped her grip for a heartbeat only to spin Lena, slam her chest-first against the workstation, pinning her from behind. The glass trembled under the impact, the sterile hum of servers drowned out by Lena’s startled gasp. Kara ripped Lena’s underwear, her hand sliding back between Lena’s legs, fingers slipping against heat.

“You hate me?” Kara growled into her ear, her breath scorching Lena’s skin. “Say it.”

“I hate you,” Lena gasped, voice trembling but fierce, pushing back against Kara’s hand like the words themselves fueled her arousal.

Kara’s teeth closed on her shoulder, biting hard enough to draw a ragged moan that echoed off the lab walls. Her fingers plunged deeper, faster, her hips pinning Lena in place as if she could bury the fury into her body until nothing was left.

Lena bucked, her laugh shattering into a groan, her nails clawing at the workstation glass. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

Kara yanked her back suddenly, spinning her again, lifting her bodily like she weighed nothing and slamming her down onto the nearest lab table. Papers scattered, a tray of tools clattered to the floor. Lena landed sprawled, hair wild, chest heaving, bra straps falling from her shoulders. She looked wrecked already, but her smirk hadn’t faltered.

“Go on,” Lena taunted hoarsely. “Show me how invulnerable you are.”

Kara shoved her knees apart, stepping between them, pinning them wide with her own thighs. Her cape swept across the table as she bent low, seizing Lena’s mouth again, the kiss hot, violent, a clash of teeth and tongue. Lena clawed at Kara’s shoulders, nails raking hard enough to sting even through the suit.

Kara tore her bra down, mouth fastening to a breast, sucking until Lena’s back arched violently off the table. Lena gasped Kara’s name, the first time it left her lips like a plea instead of a curse.

Kara dragged her mouth lower, slow enough to be cruel. Lena’s skin tasted like salt and tension, like control losing altitude. She licked a line down Lena’s sternum and felt Lena’s heartbeat knocking wild against her tongue.

“Don’t you—” Lena began, already breathless.

“Don’t I what?” Kara asked against skin, her breath a hot shiver that made Lena’s thighs twitch. “Stop? Slow down?”

“Give me—” Lena swallowed, jaw clenching around the shape of a command she couldn’t land.

Kara knelt. The cape pooled like a dark spill around her knees. There was nothing left to tear. She slid her palms under Lena’s thighs and lifted, dragging her to the edge until the lab table squealed. Lena’s inhale hitched, the sound jagged as broken glass. 

The first press of Kara’s mouth made Lena’s head slam back into the stainless steel, a stifled cry escaping through bared teeth. “K—”

“Say my name,” Kara murmured, lips wet against the words, and then she didn’t give Lena room to answer. She licked a slow stripe that made Lena curse like prayer, then sealed her mouth and sucked, pressure precise and unrelenting.

Lena writhed against the hold, but Kara pinned her, thumbs digging into the hinge of her hips, holding her open while she worked. She drew careful circles, then ruthless lines, learning the map of Lena’s will with her tongue. Every time Lena tried to grind harder, Kara backed off a fraction, denying the altitude, watching rage and need tangle and throttle in Lena’s eyes.

“You hate me,” Kara said between licks, conversational, terrible.

“I do.” Lena’s voice was a ragged thread.

“Liar,” Kara said softly, then flattened her tongue and dragged, slow, slow, slow until Lena’s fingers spasmed uselessly against the lip of the table.

Lena fought back the only way left to her. She lifted herself against Kara’s mouth, forced the rhythm, tried to ride the heat, tried to own it. Kara let her—then took it away, pulling back just enough to make Lena gasp in fury.

“You’re going to beg,” Kara said, and the arrogance should have fallen off a cliff, should have sounded like Lex, like every man who underestimated Lena Luthor. It didn’t. It sounded like an unbearable truth Kara had no right to want.

“You first,” Lena hissed, and ground down anyway, and Kara gave it back, deeper, dirtier, until Lena’s voice frayed on a drawn-out “ah—Kara—” that wasn’t a plea and wasn’t not one either.

Kara slid one hand up, found Lena’s hand, laced their fingers without warning, and held. The contact detonated something old and terrible and tender in both of them. Lena’s eyes flew open, a raw sound torn out of her, the kind you make when you realize the knife was always a key.

“Don’t—” Lena managed, meaning don’t be gentle, don’t be kind, don’t make this love.

Kara answered by sucking harder. Lena shattered a little and didn’t let herself fall. Not yet. Kara felt the break in the way Lena trembled, a fault line moving. She eased off, smiled up with a mouth slick and ruined, and then bit, soft and mean, right where she’d learned Lena couldn’t stand it.

The sound Lena made was a ripped silk thing. “I hate you,” she breathed, voice gone high and shaken.

“I know,” Kara said, and dove again, relentless, until Lena’s thighs quaked and the alarms began to feel like applause they didn’t deserve.

Kara lifted her mouth, wiped the back of her wrist across her lips, then shoved two fingers back inside, slick with Lena and her.

“You hate me?” Kara demanded again, pumping harder.

Lena’s head fell back, eyes wild, lips trembling around the words. “I—hate—” her voice broke into a strangled moan, “—hate you.”

Kara’s grin was savage as she drove her fingers deeper, curling them until Lena’s thighs trembled, until her smirk broke into something rawer, messier, hotter. Lena bit down hard on Kara’s shoulder, muffling her own cry, her nails digging in a way that would mark Kara’s back if she wasn’t Kryptonian.

The DEO alarms were shrieking now, triggered by jostled equipment, but neither heard them. It was all heat and fury, glass rattling under their bodies, Kara’s strength crashing against Lena’s defiance until both of them were shaking.

Kara’s answer was a growl, low and lethal, as she shoved Lena back flat on the table, pinning her wrists above her head again. Her body loomed over Lena’s, hair wild, eyes blazing, every muscle taut with barely checked power.

“This is just the start,” Kara promised.

And then she slammed her mouth back onto Lena’s, devouring her like the hate between them had always only been hunger in disguise.

The DEO lab looked like a storm had torn through it. A monitor lay shattered on the floor, papers scattered like debris, Lena sprawled across the lab table with Kara caging her in, both of them flushed, lips swollen, hair wild. Kara’s fingers pumped relentlessly inside her, each thrust wringing a moan Lena tried to twist into a laugh, but the edges broke every time.

“You’ll break before I do,” Kara growled, her teeth grazing the delicate line of Lena’s jaw.

Lena’s smirk was ragged, but it was still there, sharp even through the panting. “Is that… what you tell yourself?”

Kara drove her fingers harder, curling them until Lena’s whole body arched. For a moment Kara thought she’d silenced her—until Lena’s legs suddenly locked tight around her waist. With a swift twist of her hips, Lena rolled them both, and Kara’s back hit the table with a jarring thud that knocked the breath out of her.

For a heartbeat, Kara stared up, stunned—not because Lena had overpowered her, but because she hadn’t stopped it. She could have resisted, could have pinned her again in an instant. But she didn’t.

Lena straddled her now, naked, her clothes in a ruin on the floor, hair falling loose around her face, eyes blazing with triumph and heat. Kara’s fingers were still inside her, but Lena pressed her own hand down over Kara’s wrist, holding it there.

“Don’t stop,” Lena rasped, her voice a whip crack of command. She ground down onto Kara’s hand, hips rolling with vicious precision, using Kara’s strength as her own weapon. Kara gasped, her body jerking under the sudden shift.

“Lena—”

“Shut up.” Lena’s smile was cruel, broken, glorious. “You wanted to touch me? Then you get to watch me take it.”

She rode Kara’s hand mercilessly, hips snapping down, thighs trembling as she forced the rhythm. Kara’s palm was slick, her fingers buried deep, and still Lena moved harder, faster, until the lab table creaked under the strain. Kara’s jaw clenched, a strangled moan escaping despite herself as Lena’s weight pressed against her, grinding with such reckless need that the Kryptonian found herself overwhelmed.

Lena leaned down, lips grazing Kara’s ear, words a hot venom. “Look at you. Supergirl. So strong, so noble. Flat on your back while I fuck myself on your hand.”

Kara’s head dropped back, a groan ripping free, the humiliation and arousal tangled into one unbearable knot. Her cape fanned across the table beneath her, her body taut, her breath breaking apart as Lena ground harder. Lena rolled her hips low to drag her pubic bone along the ridged seam of Kara’s suit, grinding straight over Kara’s clit with ruthless precision.

“Stop pretending you’re in control,” Lena hissed, biting Kara’s neck hard enough to leave teeth marks. “We both know who’s really winning here.”

Her hips slammed down again, again, wet and obscene, her nails digging into Kara’s wrist to keep her pinned. Kara’s body shook with the effort of restraint—not because she couldn’t throw Lena off, but because she didn’t want to. Every nerve burned with it, every Kryptonian instinct screaming to reclaim dominance, and still she lay there, letting Lena take and take and take.

Kara’s other hand clawed helplessly at the edge of the table, her moans muffled into Lena’s hair. The composite lip yielded under her grip, shallow half-moons pressed into the metal where her fingertips bit. She was burning alive, undone by the woman who claimed to hate her, undone by the rhythm Lena forced onto her body.

Lena’s laugh was broken now, jagged between gasps. “That’s it,” she breathed, lips brushing Kara’s ear. “You feel it, don’t you? All that power, and you’re still mine.”

The words hit harder than any Kryptonite. Kara bucked beneath her, the motion rough, desperate, her fingers plunging deeper into Lena as if to prove something—but it only gave Lena more leverage to grind harder, forcing Kara to whimper into her throat.

For the first time, it was Kara who broke. The relentless drag on her clit snapped her; she came with a strangled gasp, body bowing under Lena’s weight. Her eyes squeezed shut, her breath shattered, her body convulsing under Lena’s relentless rhythm. Lena gasped in triumph, riding her mercilessly through it, her own orgasm ripping free with a cry that echoed off steel and glass.

They collapsed together, tangled, shaking, the lab reeking of sex, sweat, and ozone. For a long moment, neither moved, both gasping, both trembling.

Then Lena lifted her head, hair plastered to her flushed face, eyes gleaming with vicious satisfaction. “Strong enough for you?” she panted, her smirk returning, sharp even as her body still shook.

Kara’s eyes burned, her chest heaving. She could have shoved her off, reclaimed the table, reclaimed control. Instead she gritted her teeth and dragged Lena back down, slamming their mouths together in another brutal kiss, fury and hunger bleeding together again.

The war wasn’t over. It had only shifted.

Lena slid down Kara’s body like gravity was finally on her side. Kara could have stopped her—Kara didn’t.

“You said I’d beg,” Lena murmured, voice rough silk, and then she laughed, wrecked and razor-bright. “Watch closely, hero.”

She kissed down Kara’s throat, scraped teeth where cape met collarbone, then lower. Lena’s thumb found the DEO medical-release seam hidden at Kara’s hip—Brainy’s post-mission triage failsafe—and pinched, turned. The nanofiber unlatched; a narrow panel retracted under her hands with a hush of light. Kara stayed pinned. Cool air kissed heated skin. Lena’s palms flattened against her ribs, exploring with a proprietary slowness that made Kara’s muscles jump.

“Don’t,” Kara said, which meant do.

“Shh.” Lena’s mouth closed over one aching point, and Kara’s spine arched off the table like a bow. “You had your turn.”

Lena trailed kisses down Kara’s stomach, not gentle, a path of small bites and licks that left heat wherever her mouth had been. Kara’s hands, which could lift buildings, fluttered uselessly in Lena’s hair, then caught, then released like she didn’t trust herself with the hold.

“Touch me,” Lena ordered, and guided one of Kara’s hands to the back of her head, pushed until Kara’s fingers tangled and held. “Harder.”

Lena settled between Kara’s thighs and looked up, eyes glinting. “Look at me.”

Kara looked. She didn’t blink when Lena’s mouth finally closed over her, didn’t blink when pleasure thundered through her like flight without sky. “L—Lena—”

“Louder,” Lena said around her, and then she made it impossible to speak at all.

She didn’t tease. She took. Short, ruthless strokes, then longer, deeper ones, one hand splayed over Kara’s hip to pin her. Kara tried to control the rhythm, failed, tried again, failed better, found herself whimpering despite a thousand saved cities.

“You’re—” Kara’s breath hitched, “—being cruel.”

“No,” Lena said, lips brushing, breath sin-hot. “I’m being honest.”

She broke off to shift angle; her thigh slid under Kara’s, pressed up, muscle to muscle. Kara gasped when Lena added that pressure, grinding Kara against her own leg while her mouth worked, ruthless, expert, unkind in all the right ways.

Kara’s hands tightened in Lena’s hair, a ragged “Fuck—ah—” torn from her throat. She didn’t realize she was rocking until Lena’s hands forced her still and did the rocking for her, as if to say, mine.

“Say my name,” Lena said, a command and a benediction.

“Lena,” Kara choked, then again, higher, “Lena—”

“Good girl,” Lena purred, and Kara shattered around the words, pleasure detonating in white sheets behind her eyes, body arching, a low, helpless cry dragged from somewhere deeper than pride.

Lena didn’t move away, didn’t let up, rode her through it mercilessly, until Kara trembled past endurance and yanked her up by the shoulders, crushing their mouths together like an apology she refused to make out loud.

The taste of Kara on Lena’s tongue, the taste of Lena on Kara’s—too much, not enough. Kara flipped them with a Kryptonian shudder that rattled the table legs. The lab’s overheads strobed, a sensor losing its mind. Somewhere outside the door, footsteps hesitated and then retreated. Even soldiers know not to breach a blast zone.

Kara’s growl tore through the kiss as she rolled, this time not giving Lena the choice. One Kryptonian surge and Lena was flat again, wrists pinned hard above her head, legs shoved apart by Kara’s knee. The table rattled beneath them, another alarm tripping on the consoles nearby.

“You think you won?” Kara rasped, hair hanging loose around her flushed face. “You’ll never win.”

Lena’s smirk flickered, but it didn’t die. “If you have to say it out loud, maybe you’re not so sure.”

Kara silenced her with a bruising kiss, biting until Lena gasped, then slowed. Her mouth slid softer against Lena’s lips, against her jaw, down her throat. Lena’s sharp retort died in her throat, replaced by a shudder that betrayed her.

The rhythm shifted. Kara’s hand, still wet, traced slower circles between Lena’s thighs now, dragging every noise out of her deliberately. She wanted Lena undone, wrecked, stripped of that smirk. Lena bucked, trying to grind harder, but Kara held her down, forcing her to take the pace Kara dictated.

“You hate me,” Kara whispered against her neck, tongue flicking over the bruise she’d left earlier.

“Yes,” Lena gasped, but her body convulsed against Kara’s hand, her nails digging into the table edge as her wrists strained against Kara’s grip.

“Say it again.”

“I hate you,” Lena moaned, back arching, head thrown back.

Kara kissed her throat tenderly this time, and Lena’s cry sounded too much like a plea. “You’re still lying,” Kara breathed.

Lena’s eyes snapped open, fury sparking—but her hips rolled helplessly into Kara’s touch, betraying her again.

Kara slowed even more, dragging Lena to the edge and denying her, again and again. Lena cursed, voice ragged, fury dissolving into need. The DEO lab felt hazy, alarms blaring distant, time reduced to the slick sound of fingers, the grind of skin against steel.

And then Lena broke. Her smirk cracked into something raw, her body jerking, her words tumbling free like she couldn’t stop them. “I hate… that I want you.”

Kara froze, staring down at her, both of them trembling. The words hung heavy in the charged air.

Kara kissed her—gentler, deeper than before. Lena kissed back like she’d die if she didn’t.

The kiss tasted like surrender disguised as strategy. Kara wanted to say I missed you; what came out was a low sound she’d never made in the air or on the ground. Her hands shook—not from power, from choice. She could ruin this by being careful. She could save it by not. She chose the middle, the hardest place: gentle mouth, unyielding hands.

Lena went very still at the gentleness—like someone who’d sworn never to need it again—and then she arched into it anyway, furious at herself for wanting.

“I never wanted to hurt you,” she said into Lena’s mouth, and Lena jerked like it was a blade.

“You did.” Flat. True. But her hands wouldn’t release Kara’s wrists. Not when the grip meant stay.

“I’m still here.”

“You always are.” Damn her for it. Bless her for it. Lena turned her head; Kara kissed the corner of her mouth anyway, stubborn.

Kara’s control snapped. She drove harder, fingers plunging deep again, her other hand sliding under Lena to lift her hips, angling until Lena screamed. Lena thrashed, nails clawing Kara’s shoulders, gasps spilling faster than curses now.

“Don’t stop—”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” Kara growled, but she obeyed anyway, slamming her hand faster, harder, until Lena shattered around her.

Lena cried out, voice breaking on Kara’s name. 

The alarms shrieked, consoles flickered, but the only sound in the lab was their ragged breathing. Kara’s head rested against Lena’s chest, both of them sweat-soaked, trembling.

Lena’s fingers slid into Kara’s hair, tugging, not gently. “Satisfied?” she murmured, voice rough.

Kara lifted her head, eyes blazing, lips red and swollen. “Not even close.”

Lena’s smirk returned, though softer now, more dangerous in its quiet. “Good.”

The silence stretched again, but it wasn’t brittle anymore. It was heavy, charged, filled with everything they hadn’t said. Kara shifted, still straddling her, still caging her in, unwilling to let go. Lena didn’t push her away.

Maybe tomorrow they’d be enemies again. Maybe the hate would burn hotter than this moment could contain. But tonight, in the ruins of the DEO lab, tangled in sweat and bruises and secrets, they both knew it wasn’t over.

It would never be over.

The lab smelled like hot metal and rain that never fell. The DEO’s automated fire suppressant hissed once in a vent and thought better of it. Kara rolled off Lena, then didn’t go far, forearm tucked under Lena’s shoulders like she was guarding a wound.

“We tripped half the building,” Lena said eventually, voice sanded raw.

“They’ll reset it,” Kara said, and only then realized she’d answered like a soldier, not a friend, not a—she didn’t finish the thought.

Lena sat up, winced, found her coat among the wreckage of her dress. She shrugged it on like an apology to the cold. Kara watched her slide a hand through her hair, watched the smirk try and fail to reassemble. Her phone buzzed in the pocket—board packet assembling itself—then fell quiet.

“You’re going to say it meant nothing,” Kara said, tone too steady.

“No.” Lena met her eyes. Honesty looked strange on her; it fit anyway. “I’m going to say it meant something unforgivable.”

Kara laughed once, helpless. “To who?”

“To both of us.” Lena’s mouth tilted. 

“I hid behind a symbol,” Kara said. “You got trapped behind a surname.” She swallowed. “Neither of us got to be a person.”

“You have a city to save, Kara. I have a company to keep from being strangled in its sleep. And between those two projects, we’ve already buried the part where we were people first.”

“I still am,” Kara said, almost defiant.

“So am I.” Lena bent, scooped her heels, then abandoned them again with a soft curse. Barefoot, she crossed the lab, and the wreckage parted for her like it knew better. She stopped at the door and didn’t touch it. “Do we pretend?”

“We’re good at it,” Kara said.

“We were.” Lena looked back over her shoulder, eyes like a problem set Kara could spend her whole life failing to solve. “We’re worse now.”

Kara found the medical-release seam at her hip again and pinched it closed; the nanofiber knit itself back into place with a soft ripple, cape settling as the suit sealed.

Kara pushed to her feet. The cape fell right; everything else hung wrong. She crossed the distance and stopped a step too close, a step not close enough. “Come to my apartment,” she said. Reckless. Honest. “Not to—” She flushed, a ridiculous thing for an alien who’d just done what they’d done. “Just… come.”

Lena considered. The DEO door sighed in the silence. Somewhere, someone reset the alarms; the hum returned to its usual pitch. “If I do,” she said finally, “you’ll tell me what you meant to tell me before you didn’t.”

“I will,” Kara said, and meant it, and hated that meaning it wasn’t the same as it being easy or harmless or right.

Lena touched two fingers to Kara’s throat, the place where pulse met skin, then withdrew before Kara could cover her hand with her own. “Then you’d better fly fast. I won’t wait.”

“You always do,” Kara said, but Lena was already turning away, and the door opened at her back like a curtain cut.

—

Kara stood in the wreck of the lab for a long time after that, listening to the building breathe, feeling the outline of Lena’s teeth at her neck, the ghost of Lena’s mouth against her. She started gathering the debris. She stacked the trays. She set the fallen monitor upright like it could be forgiven for falling. She straightened the table. The work took her nowhere; she did it anyway.

Before she left, she checked the security feed. It was still rolling, a silent film of two women making ruin out of the space between them. Kara hovered her thumb over the erase.

“Do it,” Alex said from the doorway, voice very level. Kara hadn’t heard her come in. “I’ll keep the paper trail clean.”

Kara didn’t jump. She never jumped. She hit erase.

Alex crossed to her, took in the lab with a glance that didn’t judge and did understand. “Is this going to fix anything?”

“No,” Kara said. “It’s going to make it worse.”

“Good.” Alex squeezed her shoulder. “Things that live deserve to get worse before they get better.”

Kara nodded, because the alternative was lying, and she was done with that. She rose into the air, hovered for a heartbeat she didn’t deserve, and then streaked into the night, the lab’s dead fluorescent light collapsing behind her like a mouth closing on a secret.