Chapter Text
Lena looked at the clock and sighed. She was going to be late unless she got out of the office. She had to attend the L-Corp Autumn gala tonight. Both Cat Grant and Kara Danvers would be there and that alone was reason enough to get home and be on time.
She’d met Kara because of the Vanguard Shuttle Incident, when her cousin, that reporter from Metropolis, had clearly insinuated that Lena had been involved in that bombing somehow. Events had proven him wrong but Lena was especially grateful that Kara, in the aftermath, had not held her family name against her.
Lena shook her head as she exited the elevator to the garage where her limousine waited. She walked to the car, and her driver, Byron Small, was a quiet, professional man with proven deriving skills and several years of military training. Although not formally part of her security detail, he was always armed, and her chief of security, Walter Bolton, clearly approved of Mr. Small and his driving skills.
“I assume you’ll need me to wait at the penthouse to take you to the gala tonight?” asked Mr. Small.
“Yes, I will, Byron,” said Lena. “I’ll be about 45 minutes getting ready then I’ll come back down and we’ll be off. I’ll need you to be available during and after the gala as well, depending on when I feel the need to leave.”
He closed the door as she slid into the back seat then went around and got in on the driver’s side. Turning back to her, he said, “You really are a powerhouse, Ms. Luthor. I couldn’t keep up the schedule that you do.”
She smiled and raised the privacy partition. She needed some time to think. And her focus was a blonde reporter. Kara had become a reporter shortly after Lena arrived in National City, having apparently done the impossible - managed to stay on as Cat Grant’s assistant for over two years.
While she had lived in Metropolis previously, the rumors about Cat Grant going through personal assistants every two months were common in her social circles. Cat was a demanding woman and Lena liked that about her. Lena was a perfectionist herself though she’d learned to go easier on her friends. She had driven people away in the past by expecting too much from friends and acquaintances. But the funny thing was that her perfectionist tendencies hadn’t driven Kara away at all. Lena was now even a regular at Kara’s Thursday evening game nights.
“You don’t even know if she likes women,” Lena muttered to herself.
Soon enough, the car arrived at Lena’s building, stopping in the underground garage near her personal elevator to her penthouse. Since she knew exactly what she was wearing tonight, getting ready took less than her planned 45 minutes, and she was back down in the garage getting back in her car in just over 30 minutes.
Cat Grant was usually early to these things because she liked to keep an eye on who was coming and going and after a year of wondering, she was going to ask Cat Grant if she knew if Kara was interested in women.
***
Lena’s arrival had been noticed by everyone from the event coordinator to the head chef and she was annoyed. She paid these people to do their jobs, not for her to be asked to fawn over them. She’d look at a new event coordinator and a new head chef for future events after tonight.
But unfortunately, the whirlwind of activities had kept her from cornering Cat Grant before the party and she hadn’t had time to ask the question she desperately wanted an answer to. So the evening wore on, presentations, speeches, and finally the entertainment began and people began to mingle.
When the pompous ass who owned Space-Z tried to get her to dance and whispered in her ear, “You’d be a wonderful baby momma for our kids,” she had simply walked away. She almost slapped him but refrained because she knew it would be the entire world against her if she did.
But that didn’t stop her from seeking out her mother to discuss it.
Lillian could see the annoyance on her daughter’s face as she approached. “Did that overgrown bowl of South African potato salad insult you, dear?” Lillian asked.
“He wants me to be his baby momma!” said Lena in a huff. “And he wasn’t subtle about it.”
“Such a crude man, with the manners of a pig at a trough,” said Lillian. “But don’t do anything. Ajax Van Wyk will get his comeuppance someday and hopefully the world will be watching.”
Lena turned, looking for Cat Grant and instead her eyes locked with the eyes of Kara Danvers, who smiled at Lena then looked away. Kara was chatting with Cat Grant. Lena made a beeline for the pair but just as she arrived, Kara said, “I’ll get us both more champagne, Ms. Grant.”
Lena felt the loss of Kara’s presence immediately but still, it was probably better if she asked this question of Cat Grant alone. She watched Kara walk off and Cat said softly, “Has my reporter caught your eye, Lena Luthor?”
“You might say that,” said Lena, who turned from looking at Cat to look across the way at Kara. Kara was picking up two glasses of champagne but Lena’s attention went to Ajax Van Wyk, who suddenly appeared to dive face first into the punch bowl. He fell into the bowl face first and as he tried to stand up, he ended up falling backwards on his ass, pulling the tablecloth as he tried to stabilize himself, and just as suddenly, the huge crystal punch bowl came down on top of him, drenching him from head to toe in red punch.
“Who pushed me!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, dragging himself clumsily to his feet. “Who pushed me?”
Lena walked over with security hot on her heels. “No one pushed you, Mr. Van Wyk. You fell face first into the punch bowl then pulled it over on top of yourself.”
“I was pushed! Someone pushed me!” he shouted.
Lena turned to her chief of security. “Mr. Bolton, do we have security camera footage covering these tables?”
“We do, Ms. Luthor,” said Mr. Bolton. He immediately pulled up the feed from the security camera so everyone could see, including Ajax Van Wyk. And it was just as Lena said, there was no one around him when he nose dived into the punch bowl.
“I’ll sue you for this!” Ajax Van Wyk screamed. “I’ll…”
Cat Grant had chosen that moment to walk up and say, “Your clown show already has 114,000 views in just three minutes, Mr. Van Wyk.”
“You streamed this?” he shouted yet again.
“My cameraman just happened to be pointing that direction when you had your little mishap,” said Cat. “Have you had too much to drink again? Are you mixing alcohol and drugs again, you vain little man?”
Ajax Van Wyk roared incoherently then stormed off to the exit with his security detail following.
As the crowd dispersed, now talking about the utter embarrassment of Ajax Van Wyk, Lena turned to Cat. “How did you just happen to have your camera pointing that direction, Cat?”
Cat laughed. “Luck, and maybe a little bit of stardust,” said Cat.
Kara stepped back into the personal space of Cat and Lena and offered Cat another glass of champagne. “Here you go, Ms. Grant.”
Cat immediately turned to Kara and said, “Kara, you’ve gotten to be friends with Lena here over the last year. Have you ever told her about your senior homecoming dance?”
“Oh, Ms. Grant, please don’t…” started Kara, but Cat cut her off.
“This is too good of a story, especially with that pompous buffoon acting as the perfect lead-in for it!” said Cat. Kara blushed, shut her mouth and let Cat continue because she knew she couldn’t stop Cat Grant when she got like this.
Cat turned to Lena. “Kara had taken her date, here let me show you,” and Cat brought up an image from Kara’s Instagram page from several years earlier.
Lena took a sharp breath in. Kara stood there in a white suit with a light blue camisole top underneath alongside another girl who was in a beautiful red dress.
Cat continued. “Kara and her then girlfriend, Monica Sims, were both pretty popular around school and they’d been campaigning to be crowned king and queen for nearly a month before that.” Kara was blushing now and Lena was trying to listen but Cat was answering the question she wanted to ask without her asking it.
“Anyway, final votes get tallied and right before the announcement is made, the school principal, a nasty man who was later convicted of molesting a student, leaped up on to the stage and said there had been a change of plans and that faculty felt they should weigh in on who should be homecoming king and queen,” said Cat.
“And then he promptly named the high school football quarterback, whose tux didn’t even fit right, and his girlfriend as king and queen, and the entire student body roundly booed,” said Cat. “He demanded people settle down and they did but just a few minutes later, the quarterback fell into the punch bowl and in his attempt to stand up, spilled the bowl all over his girlfriend’s white evening gown.”
Lena laughed, not a forced manufactured laugh but a genuine happy laugh. She turned to Kara, “Do punchbowl disasters follow you wherever you go? Should I be careful around punchbowls when you’re present?”
“Oh, I…” started Kara. Then she said, “I don’t think you’d ever fall into a punch bowl, Lena.”
And Kara blushed even more, making Lena smile even more broadly but Lena saw the way Kara looked at her and she was pretty certain she had her answer.
Kara suddenly turned her head, looking over Lena’s shoulder, and appeared to be distracted. Kara waited just a moment then looked at Lena and asked, “Would you like to dance, Lena?”
“I’d love to!” replied Lena, but as she turned to the dance floor she noticed another of the wealthy tech bros who had apparently just walked up behind Lena, either expecting to talk or perhaps ask Lena to dance. And frankly, Lena couldn’t conceive of anyone more revolting except Ajax Van Wyk, who had already left.
A few seconds later, out on the dance floor with Kara leading, Kara leaned in and said, “He looked like he wanted to dance with you and I’d seen the way you looked at him before so I didn’t want to give him the chance.”
Lena looked up into Kara’s blue eyes for a long moment, then leaned in and whispered softly, “Is that all you were doing, Kara? Just saving me from an oaf of a man?”
She pulled back and watched Kara after asking those questions. “Well, I… I mean,” Kara was clearly flustered.
Lena leaned back in. “If I were to ask you out on a date, Kara Danvers, would the answer be yes or no?”
Kara continued dancing, apparently from memory, because the look on her face was one of absolute surprise.
“Well?” asked Lena, as the dance continued.
Finally, Kara smiled. “Yes, Lena, yes. I’d like that very very much.”
***
Lena got ready for bed with a smile on her face. She promised to call Kara to arrange their first date and while they already had each other’s numbers, Kara had texted her after the gala to be sure she got home safe and sound.
Lena had removed her makeup, taken a long hot shower, then sat down for a snack and a glass of wine. Earlier in the day, she’d already arranged to leave National City for her getaway home north of the city. She was aware that her personal hideaway wasn’t far from Midvale either, a thought that made her smile again tonight.
Movement outside on the penthouse terrace caught her eye and she rose to look. What she saw was Supergirl, hovering beyond the edge of the terrace. When Supergirl saw Lena, she nodded, turned, and continued flying through the city slowly.
“Out making rounds, even at midnight,” said Lena to herself. National City was safer because of the Girl of Steel but for tonight, Lena needed sleep. It was a 45 minute ride to the Midvale Airport by helicopter, then another half hour via car to her hideaway. It would be a long morning but the clear air of the California coast would help soothe her mind this weekend. At least, that’s what she hoped.