Chapter Text
Kara Danvers did not believe in leagues. Well, not in a dating sense at least. To her it was a ridiculous notion that one person could be superior to another, especially in the sense that it meant that suddenly they weren’t compatible.
Alex had the misfortune of trying to explain the concept to Kara when she had first arrived on earth. Alex had been trying to explain why she couldn’t simply go up to Sarah Cosgrove and ask to be friends. Apparently Sarah Cosgrove was too cool - her parents took her on international trips every summer and she had been to France .
I’ve been to several different planets and you talk to m-
Don’t be stupid Kara that doesn’t count!
Alex gave up after three days and in that time had also resigned herself to the fact she’d never be friends with Sarah Cosgrove. As it turned out, no-one wanted to be friends with Sarah Cosgrove anyway because she was cruel and malicious. More than anything that just reinforced the idea that leagues didn’t exist. No-one was that cool .
Anyway, that was before Lena Luthor. Lena Luthor as a person was fine. She was lovely, charming and had such a pretty face. Kara was easily infatuated with many people who were similarly charismatic and beautiful. That was nothing new.
Unfortunately Lena had a way of intrusively occupying her thoughts. A toothy grin or seductive smirk almost floored Kara in a way she hadn’t felt in a long while. It was almost childish, really. She felt childish and bumbling and almost idiotic as she stumbled over words or fiddled with her hands. Something in Lena’s eyes set fire to Kara’s soul.
Kara would find herself laughing at something Lena said and god it wasn’t even that funny. It wasn’t. Here she was, though, goofy and red-faced.
Lena was standing by her side at this very moment, gesturing wildly at some abstract piece of art on the wall. She seemed to know what she was talking about but Kara very much did not. Her lips and voice curved up into a stifled laugh as she told some intellectual joke. That’s what landed Kara in her current predicament.
Goofy, confused laughter that was worsened by her now-red face. Lena continued speaking, her words blending back into the hum of the night. She may as well have been speaking another language but Kara enjoyed the sounds and tones all the same. She enjoyed the way the gallery lights brought out the redness of her jacket and lipstick and how it played with Lena’s eyes so brilliantly. She very much enjoyed the way Lena’s hair was pulled back into a tight bun, her pale skin contrasting so nicely with her black hair. Yeah they were in a gallery, sure, but at the risk of being…(what was the word? Cliché?) At the risk of being cliché - Lena was the real work of art.
Kara could fly and stop spaceships from jumping into hyperspace and burn a hole in the ceiling with her eyes - if anyone was out of anyone’s league, surely Kara would be out of theirs. Kara didn’t see it that way because she just saw herself as Kara. So how could leagues exist? Regardless of who was in what league Lena Luthor was babbling about art and Kara’s breath kept catching. Her heart was pounding and she kept giggling like an idiot at jokes that weren’t even funny . So if Lena Luthor, bad joke-teller and liker of art galleries, could reduce the girl of steel herself to a bundle of nerves and laughter then leagues simply couldn’t exist.
Lena pulled Kara from one room to the next and they bumped into some people that Lena knew. They all politely introduced themselves. They were the gallery owners, apparently. They, like Lena, were dressed in very fine clothing which was probably a month’s paycheck for Kara. Including the DEO pocket money. Kara was dressed in the cheapest dress she could find in the most expensive shop she dared to walk into. Boy, did it show.
The entire thing was last minute. Lena had phoned the day before and asked Kara if she liked art. Kara panicked and said yes, despite the fact that her only experience with art galleries were from school and she hated filling out the questionnaires they gave each of the students. Lena mentioned she had an invitation to this exhibition’s opening - it was fairly high profile and CatCo had even run a few stories on it across their various publication platforms. Kara had actually recognised one of the reporters and had masterfully ducked away to avoid eye-contact earlier that night.
Alex, who knew Kara arguably better than Kara knew Kara, had teased her about it being a date. Kara had vehemently refused, though, because Lena Luthor was flirtatious with everyone and just because Kara was easily infatuated did not give her a free pass at calling it a date. Either way Lena had her arm looped around Kara’s the entire night. Kara also wondered if super smell was a power she had because Lena’s perfume was downright overwhelming in close quarters.
“...isn’t that right, Kara?”
Kara was stunned back into reality, her eyes already on Lena but the words leading up to the question now lost to the night.
“W-what was that?”
Lena gave a chuckle, so low and alluring as always, “You’re an ace reporter at CatCo. Jeremy was talking about all the press he’s had to deal with and I just mentioned how helpful you’ve been to me.” Something in the way Lena said ‘me’ made Kara almost zone out again. She wondered if the real reason Lena had no friends is because it was just easier to not be in love with someone you’re friends with. “She’s usually not such a space cadet, though.” She laughed and turned back to the gallery owners as if she was sharing an inside joke.
The gallery owners laughed in response. Maybe it was just a contagious Lena thing, making people laugh at things that weren’t funny.
They parted ways and Lena pulled Kara more off to the side, gently asking, “Everything alright?”
Kara turned red again. She didn’t particularly want to explain that she’d been distracted by Lena’s perfume.
“Oh yeah, sorry. Was thinking about work. But I’m all here now, completely present!”
Lena raised her eyebrows and Kara found herself fixating. Kara was seventeen when Alex finally explained what little she knew about makeup. Kara didn’t know until Lena, though, exactly how powerful a good eyebrow could be.
“I hope I’m not boring you with tedious art rants.”
Kara raised her arms and began to shake them about emphatically, desperately convincing Lena otherwise, “No, no, no not at all, Lena. No I love hearing you talk about art.”
Lena smirked and her eyebrows settled, “That’s not the first time I’ve heard that line.”
Did that really clarify as a line? Was this another pseudo-inside joke? Why did it make Kara smile regardless?
“I don’t know much about art. I really like hearing about it from someone who does. I wish I had an eye for it like you do.”
Lena rolled her head to the side, almost blushing through her layers of makeup, and her smirk turned to a grin, “You’re too sweet. I honestly don’t know that much. Not as much as Lex used to. It comes with the territory of being a Luthor, I guess. All things expensive and fancy.”
Lena perhaps wasn’t wrong. Maybe not a Luthor-exclusive thing, but a rite of passage for all families of grand power and standing. Kara had known quite a fair bit about Kryptonian art and architecture, though all of it was more utilitarian by the time Kara was born. They’d been through their periods of abstraction and expressionism many centuries before Kara’s existence. All that remained from those eras were digital replicas as a reminder of their past, not for any cultural engagement that’s for sure.
“Are you certain I’m not boring you?” Lena said, still a hint of laughter but a taste of concern too now, “You keep wandering off into space.”
Kara laughed dryly, “I do that.”
“Easy to see why you and Supergirl are good friends, then.” Lena quipped back.
Kara smiled, Lena taking that moment to wrap her arm around Kara’s again. As Kara was dragged off to another artwork she couldn’t help but place Lena amongst the hierarchy of Krypton. Where would the Luthors stand? That was uncertain. Lena as a person, though, could easily match the great house of El. Maybe surpass it. Perhaps transcend the hierarchy altogether.
It was then, in that moment, that Kara regrettably came to terms with why she was so giddy and nervous around Lena all the time. Why the stupid pseudo-inside jokes reduced Kara to a giggling mess. Why Kara cared so much about Lena’s stupid eyebrows and the way her lipstick matched her jacket perfectly. It was the same reason Alex couldn’t simply ask Sarah Cosgrove to be friends with her all those years ago.
There were no other earthly words for it. She’d resisted it the entire evening. Especially when Lena kept staring her down with those brilliant green eyes as she babbled on coherently about some great European art movement of the early 1900s. Here she was, dumbstruck in front of another painting she couldn’t understand the purpose of, looking at the face of a woman who could charm her way through an entire crowd of people using nothing but a raised eyebrow. Leaping a building in a single bound meant nothing.
Goddamnit, Lena Luthor was just out of her league.