Kara rushed back into the office trying to keep the latte balanced while she surreptitiously looked over her clothes to make sure she didn’t miss any buttons during her quick change. She was well aware that her excuse of running to get Ms. Grant a fresh cup of coffee was most likely not going to fly as she’d been gone for well over an hour, but it was going to have to work for the rest of the office. They tended to ignore her comings and goings anyway. She’d not really ingratiated herself with the rest of the floor very well, something about being so close to Cat on a regular basis had made the rest of the staff wary of getting too close lest Cat tire of yelling at Kara and decide to direct her ire toward someone else. Winn and James were enough, though, and since she’d started doing Supergirl things her anonymity had been more of a blessing than a curse.
Making it to her desk she ran her hands down her dress, hopefully smoothing out any wrinkles that might have remained from her quick change back into civilian clothes. She was mentally preparing herself to go into Cat’s office with the procured coffee when that was made unnecessary as Cat herself walked straight up to Kara’s desk and snatched to coffee out of her hand.
“Kara, I understand that you have things to do that are important but please do remember to get someone else to fetch my coffee should extracurriculars cut too much into your time running errands.” Cat had made sure to keep her voice at a slightly lower tone than she normally would have used in the past when upbraiding Kara for her absences or for her tardiness. Which Kara was, obviously, grateful for.
Bringing Cat in on her secret after so many months of lying and half-truths had been a relief that Kara hadn’t expected. Cat was much more willing to let her absences go, covering for her in those few moments when the staff did notice her. And with the secret that had been looming over them for so long out of the way she found herself spending a lot more time with Cat. A couple of nights a month out grabbing dinner with Carter, it was always Carter’s idea, of course. And sometimes after a particularly nasty fight she’d make her way to Cat’s balcony for some silent company and the best view in National City. But more often than not they just ended up staying late at the office. This wasn’t in and of itself unusual, she’d more often than not ended up staying late whenever Cat did just to make sure that things were taken care of quickly and painlessly. It had always made the mornings after Cat had to stay late go a bit more smoothly. The real change came from Cat, who had started to invite Kara into the office to sit with her while she worked. It was a nice change and Kara would have been happy with just that, but then Cat started talking to her. Opening up, some, to her. To Kara.
But while Kara had been nursing a crush on her boss for much longer than she really thought was healthy, she was unwilling to look too closely at the late nights at the office. At least she was unwilling to look more than was strictly necessary. She wasn’t entirely naive and she knew that a relationship between her and Cat would have more problems than either of them really necessarily needed to handle at the moment. And she knew that even if they were able to work past all of that Alex would throw the biggest fit if Kara started dating the Queen of All Media. Not because she thought Cat would tell, at least not anymore. More because she’d spent the last two years hearing Kara complain about how she was treated at work and the past two months of good behavior wasn’t likely to make up for 2 years of bad behavior. So Kara put it out of her mind, as best she could at least, and tried to remain as professional as she could while maintaining the weird pseudo-friendship she’d created with her boss.
The boss that had been standing at Kara’s desk for slightly longer than was strictly necessary for coffee collection. Quirking her eyebrow Kara almost asked if there was anything else Cat needed, but stopped when she noticed the dilemma that seemed to be playing across Cat’s face.
Cat paused for a moment, seeming to waver between two decisions before finally gesturing for Kara to follow her.
Kara did so immediately, she’d been trained to follow Cat’s instructions without question, and she only very rarely broke that training, wondering what on earth could be so bad that Cat couldn’t do it in front of the office. They were walking down a corridor that Kara was pretty sure led to a women’s bathroom that wasn’t used by many people due of its strange location. She was about to ask what was going on as they finally reached their destination, when Cat rounded on her and started pulling rubble out of Kara’s hair and dropping it into one of the sinks along the wall.
“Do you even look in a mirror before coming back into work or is under construction a new look that’s being taken literally now days in millennial fashion trends?” She brushed something that could either have been dust from the building Kara had been bursting through or from the alien being that she’d blasted into dust with her heat vision. Wincing at the fact that she’d gone back to work with dust and rubble in her hair, Kara looked into one of the mirrors for the first time. Her face was streaked with loose dirt and her hair was completely covered in dust. And from the green tint to it, most likely monster dust.
Kara winced again at that thought and went to step back from Cat, not wanting her to get more destroyed monster particles on her person than was strictly necessary. This wasn’t part of the their new contract, as Kara had drawn it up in her mind. Cat was supposed to accept her as Supergirl and everything was supposed to go back to normal with perhaps a bigger media presence from Supergirl and Cat’s silence on the whole alter-ego side of things. Things had changed, of course, the dinners and the late nights, but this was going beyond even that and Kara didn’t know if she could keep the control she so dearly needed when she was this close to Cat Grant. Cat brushing dust from her hair, be it monster or otherwise, was not written into the contract. Cat touching her at all aside from the various times when she fixed Kara’s collar was unprecedented and Kara didn’t know what to do with the new info. She’d only stepped a pace back and was therefore only somewhat surprised by Cat’s continuation of her clean-up. This time, though she’d apparently decided that Kara’s face was fair game and she was rubbing a bit of dirt from Kara’s cheek.
“M-Miss Grant, I-I’m sorry, I’ll make sure to clean up next time. I only wanted to make sure to get back as soon as possible. Because of your latte…” she went to take another step back.
“Yes, Kiera.” Kara winced, yet again, at her slide back into the name she used now only when Kara said something particularly stupid. “I am aware that I was wanting a latte, but as I explained not five minutes ago, your little hobbit friend could probably have gotten one in much less time had you had the foresight to let him know you were going to be off fighting the dust monster of Boov or whatever. Remind me again why these monsters from other planets seem to like National City so much?” She stood back from Kara, finally, apparently having deemed her suitably cleaned up.
Kara shrugged in response before noticing that Cat was actually wanting a real answer. “I think the appearance of Supergirl made National City more of a target than it would have been had I not shown up…” She ducked her head, it was something that had been bothering her more and more lately. “At least this one was fairly simple to defeat, he was more of a drone from a distant dust planet. Not really sentient but not totally random in his decision to pick National City as his new place of residence,” Kara shrugged again.
Cat was looking at her with narrowed eyes and seemed more than a little displeased with her casual tone about the monster that, if she were being honest, hadn’t been the easiest to defeat.
“You do realize that there are cameras watching your fights, don’t you? That didn’t look like it was as ‘simple’ as you’re making it out to have been.” Cat placed a deliberate hand on her hip and quirked an eyebrow.
“I’m Supergirl. It’s not like a tough fight is going to do any lasting damage.” Kara wasn’t really sure what the point in this line of conversation was.
“Unless, of course, they manage to procure kryptonite, or happen to be just as strong as you are since they also happen to be aliens from different planets and are thus stronger than your average bank robber.” Kara’s eyes widened at that. She’d known as soon as she mentioned it that Cat was going to use the existence of kryptonite against her in these little arguments that they sometimes had after a particularly nasty fight. But this one hadn’t really been particularly nasty. It had been a little difficult but not enough to warrant this much discussion.
“There isn’t exactly much I can do about that, though, Miss Grant… I’m not going to stop protecting the city just because I might end up going up against an alien that’s stronger than I am. That’s the risk of being a superhero. I have to be willing to give my life for this place, for this planet. With the things I can do I have a duty to not just sit around and do nothing while the place I live, the place the people I care about live, is attacked. Especially when I can stop it. Why are you making such a big deal...” Kara didn’t get to finish her sentence. Cat was suddenly kissing her but before she could react Cat was stepping back again and dusting her hands on her dress.
“That’s why, Kara. Now, if you’ll excuse me I have a company to run, and I’m sure the layouts won’t deliver themselves.” She stalked out of the bathroom with her shoulders tense and Kara was left in the bathroom even more confused than when she’d gone in.