Big thanks to @fourtseven for listening to me complain about my writers block (though she’s polite enough to call it expressing frustration).
It’s on their fifth date that Cat finds herself in Kara’s apartment. She’s pressed up against the door before it even closes, her head thrown back, but what she’s managed to see is homey. Not Architectural Digest, but it has appeal. Bright and charming, like Kara.
In the morning, wrapped in nothing but Supergirl’s cape, and light pouring through the large windows, Cat gets a better look. Everything is just so Kara. She can’t find another suitable word, despite her ample vocabulary. There really isn’t one. It’s messy but clean. Like Kara’s desk after lunch. Things, and there are many, fill shelves and cabinets. Cat smiles as she looks over Kara’s eclectic collection of knick knacks, before she heads to the kitchen.
Things are just as diverse in the cupboards, Cat notes as she searches for coffee. No plate, no bowl the same. The mugs are all different, like the chairs around the table. Like all the furniture, Cat realizes as she looks around. Nothing matches, and everything has been painted, touched up. Cat notices the gauges in the wooden top of the island, the chips taken out of the laminate countertop. The coffeemaker looks about twenty years old, the toaster too. Does she pay Kara so little that the girl has to buy everything second hand?
“Machine’s broke. I bro- I’ll have to fly out, if you want coffee.”
Cat turns, pulled from her ruminations by Kara’s sleepy voice, and can’t help but smile at the sight of Supergirl in pajamas, and fuzzy socks.
“I’ll need my cape back though.”
Cat smirks, letting the cape drop slightly, exposing her shoulder as she strides towards her girl. Cat Grant doesn’t need heels to strut. “You’ll have to take it off me.”
Kara pulls her close, when she’s within reach. “Don’t start. I know how you get without coffee. I can go out.”
Cat shakes her head, and let’s the cape fall. “I can think of a few things that are just as stimulating.”
Cat makes a few calls Monday, and is assured by Brenda in human resources, that Kara Danvers might just be the best paid personal assistant on Earth.
A month later, Cat starts to notice the chips and cracks. They’re small, but her penthouse, Carter’s room and the den aside, is immaculate, and the now roughened corner of the marble counter top is glaringly obvious. So are the scratches on her plates, and the cracked tile in the bathroom. And with a sigh she realizes why Kara’s things are second hand. Because Supergirl can bend steel, and crush cement, with little effort. What chance did a coffeemaker have? Why have new things, when they need to be constantly replaced.
So she never mentions it. She’s not sure Kara realizes it’s happening. Cat watches how careful Kara is when she’s at the penthouse. How deliberate all her movements are. Cat had assumed it was nerves before, but as she looks at Kara across the dining room table, and watches how gingerly she cuts up her dinner, how slowly she pushes in her chair, how her shoulders never seem to relax even when she’s playing Nintendo with Carter. Supergirl can’t just smash the buttons when she’s losing.
“I can bring some of my dishes from home,” Kara says, a week later as she helps load the dishwasher. Cat pauses, a scratched plate in her hand, looking up as Kara looks away. “I keep scratching yours. They’re expensive,” Kara rushes out, still staring at the floor. “Or you could get me paper plates maybe? I’m okay with that. I bent all of Eliza’s cutlery, before they got me a set of plastic ones. I don’t want to keep breaking your things. I’m trying not to. Sometimes I just…forget. Forget that I’m an alien. It use to just happen at home, but now I forget here, and I don’t- I don’t want to break your things.”
Cat sets the plate aside, drying her hands and taking Kara’s face between them. “I forget you’re an alien sometimes too. I wake up in your arms, and I watch you with Carter, and there’s nothing alien about it. Except you. And when I see a broken tile, or a chipped mug, because somehow you always manage to knock your cups against your teeth,” Cat says with a soft smile, running her thumbs over Kara’s tear streaked cheeks. “And I’m reminded that you are not of this Earth. You are so much better than this planet could ever produce.You can scratch every dish in this kitchen. I like the scratched one. I like the reminder that this is where you forget. No paper plates. You -this- is not disposable, so break whatever you want. Just no hearts, Supergirl.”
Kara smiled, and nodded. “That won’t ever get scratched.”
Paper Plates
Published
Question of Smoke 