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natalievoncatte · 4 months ago

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The heat was getting to be a problem.

The power had been out in National City for three days, and those three days were expected to be among the hottest of the year. Lena was, frankly, desperate.

You might think that she’d have it easy, but anyone who would think that a penthouse in a skyscraper would be easy to cool would quickly be disabused of that notion. The windows mostly didn’t open and having the balcony doors spread wide did next to nothing when the breeze felt like opening an oven, even up here.

It had been Alex’s suggestion, sent by text.

Why don’t you go to Kara’s? The loft is pretty breezy.

She was right, of course. When Lena arrived, Kara had every one of her huge loft windows open, allowing the breeze to flow freely through the open, airy space.

There was another problem, though.

When Kara opened the door, Lena nearly keeled over. Kara was wearing a sports bra and shorts so short they barely deserved the name, exposing a vast amount of golden, sun-kissed skin. Worse, her gloriously muscled stomach and shoulders glistened with sweat.

Lena was surprised to see that the heat bothered her, but it clearly did. Kara had forgone her glasses, too, and after she opened the door, she swept the back of her hand across her forehead and sighed.

“Hi,” Lena squeaked.

“Hi yourself. Hot out there?”

“It’s hot in here.”

“Come in, come in,” said Kara.

Lena stepped inside, forcing herself not to stare at Kara’s thick thighs and the swell of her chest under straining fabric. Was that zipper some advanced Kryptonian technology?

“Want something to drink?”

“Isn’t your fridge dead, too?”

“Yeah, but I cheat. Watch.”

Kara slipped a bottle of water out of a pack on her counter and breathed on it. Ice crystals formed on the surface and the water visibly chilled. It shocked Lena when she accepted it and the cold water on her lips was bliss. Lena let out a soft sigh and closed her eyes, savoring the feeling of cold spreading through her chest, cooling her body.

When she opened her eyes, Kara was the one staring. Lena had thrown on a short, a-frame sun dress that bared her back, for no other reason than making sure that her skin could have as much surface exposed to the air to evaporate and cool her down as possible.

“So what are you up to?” Lena asked.

Kara gestured to the notebook and stacks of papers on the table.

“Old-fashioned journalism, I guess. My laptop battery died yesterday.”

“I thought you’d be out there trying to fix the power.”

Kara shrugged. “With what, my super-electrician powers?”

Lena shot her a look, raising her brow.

Kara turned away, heading for the windows.

Oh, Jesus, Lena thought.

It wasn’t as if Lena hadn’t… noticed Kara’s physique. She wasn’t blind, after all. They’d taken spin class together, and Kara liked to wear leggings on the weekends.

But holy shit, those shorts made her ass look… Super.

Lena was still fumbling over a buns of steel pun in her head when Kara turned back.

“Hey, you okay? Your heart raced for a second there.”

“F-fine,” said Lena.

“Alex and the others are coming over tonight for an emergency game night,” said Kara. “I better get ready.”

For the next couple of hours, Lena helped Kara neaten up her apartment and prepare non-perishable snacks and a cooler full of beer and wine coolers, chilled care of Kara. Alex and Kelly were the first to show up, with Alex giving Lena a cheeky look as she walked into the apartment.

“Hey, you two,” she said. “Been having a hot time?”

There was something brittle in Kara’s laugh that set Lena a little on edge, and the Danvers sisters shared one of those looks they shared that made Lena wonder if they could communicate telepathically. Whatever the message was, it made Kara look away first, distracting with an offered beer that Alex gladly accepted.

Lena took a wine cooler, wishing it were wine.

Nia and Brainy showed up next, followed by J’onn, who was the only one fully dressed in a button-down shirt and khakis, while everyone else was dressed for the beach or a track meet.

Lena sat on the floor, because the hardwood was cool under her butt, and leaned back against Kara’s couch. Kara sat beside her and Lena’s heart definitely sped up.

Looking over, it was hard to tear her eyes away. Kara made a magnificent display- the blocky weight of her shoulders, full biceps and strong arms and bulky, sculpted forearms. Lena’s eyes followed the vein on the back of Kara’s arm down the back of her strong hand and the elegant lengths of her fingers.

Kara kept her nails neatly trimmed like that because of Supergirl duties, right?

Right?

“Hey Luthor? You having a heat stroke?” said Alex. “You look spaced out over there.”

Alex had a playful grin plastered on her face, though she too was sweating profusely. A cooler breeze rolled in through the big windows and everyone sighed in delight.

Except J’onn. “What shall we play first?” she said.

“Clue!” Nia chirped.

“Brainy always kicks our ass at Clue,” said Alex, “and I am not playing Monopoly with a literal billionaire again.”

“Perhaps we should play Risk,” said J’onn, rifling through the game shelf.

“We could try Twisted,” Kara suggested in a deadpan voice.

Lena swallowed hard, thinking of herself tangled up on the mat with Kara, clothes glued to their skin by sweat, salty skin sliding against salty skin, the scent of her…

“Earth to Lena,” said Alex. “Got any ideas?”

“Exploding Kittens,” said Lena. “We haven’t done that one in a while.”

“Kara, chill us some cold ones, will you?” said Nia.

Once everyone had a rapidly warming drink, Brainy dealt the cards and the game began. Alex called Kara out for peeking several times, with that loaded Danvers Sisters Look and an almost predatory smirk.

She wasn’t the only one peeking.

Lena participate in the game but her mind was elsewhere, specifically the valley of Kara’s broad back, where sweat gathered between her muscles and rain down in heavy beads, or the sweat gathering along her collarbone or sparking along the lush inner curves of her tightly contained breasts.

“Hey,” said Kara. “It’s your turn, Lena.”

Then she reached over and brushed damp lock of inky hair out of Lena’s eyes.

She could have melted. She swallowed hard, brushed the sweat from her brow, and made a hasty and wasteful play that would probably cost her any chance of winning, but she didn’t care. The game seemed at most a distant concern.

Kara’s tongue glazing along her soft pink lips was much more interesting. They’d pretty much all given up on makeup but Kara was still positively radiant, soft and inviting and homey in a way that made Lena ache in her chest.

And, uh, other places.

It was full dark now, so they finished the game and Kara and Alex got up to light a few candles.

“This is like camping,” said Nia.

“We should have thought to procure ‘marshmallows’, said Brainy. “Kara could toast them with her heat vision.”

“We hardly need more heat. I’m boiling,” said Lena.

J’onn let out a soft grunt. “It’s my turn to go on patrol. I think I’ll be the first to head out.

Everyone gave their goodbyes as he headed out the window. The others huddled closer around the table, lit by the candle sitting in the middle.

“We should tell scary stories,” said Alex. “Like around a campfire.”

“Since it was your idea, you go first,” said Kelly.

Alex leaned into it with abandon, leaning in over the table as she started spinning a campfire yarn that Lena quickly recognized as The Hook.

Kara edged closer, until her bare thigh pressed against Lena. She leaned in close, and it wouldn’t have taken much for Lena to… rest her head on Kara’s shoulder. It just kind of happened, Kara’s scent filling her nostrils as she turned into Kara.

Lena flinched as Kara shot her a concerned look.

She can hear my heartbeat.

Kara must have thought Lena was scared, because she casually slipped an arm around her.

Lena’s breath caught. Kara’s powerful arm rested lazily around her hip and her relaxed hand rested on Lena’s thigh, fingers placed lightly on bare skin.

It was a powerfully possessive gesture, not just protective but… more. Lena shifted a little and let herself completely fall against Kara.

Alex kept on telling the story, her gaze pausing heavily on the two of them as she scanned the room. Brainy looked bored but Nia looked genuinely petrified and Kelly was looking at her wife with the kind of adoring reference that was currently plastered on Lena’s face as she looked up at Kara.

Alex reached the crescendo of the story and Lena let out a little gasp, turning her face into Kara’s neck, more for the sake of it than out of fear. Kara’s hand stroked lazily up and down her back.

“Don’t worry, I won’t let anyone get you,” Kara whispered.

“You two okay over there?” said Alex.

“Fine,” said Kara.

“There are two actual couples here and you two are the ones doing the heavy petting.”

They weren’t heavy petting. Okay sure, Lena had her fingers curled around Kara’s hip and Kara’s hand was staring to pass the platonic zone when stroking her back but…

Oh.

“It’s getting late,” said Kelly. “Maybe we should head home.”

“Agreed,” said Nia. “Come on, Brainy.”

Lena and Kara didn’t get up.

The others did, piling out of the apartment. Alex went last, shooting Kara another of those damned looks, smiling like a self-satisfied cat after a big stretch.

The door closed and Kara yawned.

“Mind if I stay?” Lena said, quickly. “My place is just too hot to sleep.”

“Of course,” Kara said softly.

Lena didn’t move. They were alone now, the apartment dark except for candles that threw flickering shadows and made Kara even more ethereal. Lena could barely believe someone so gorgeous could be real.

“Lena,” Kara said quietly. “Have you ever thought about…” she trailed off.

“About what?”

“Us. What we are to each other.”

“Yes,” said Lena.

“Me too.”

“What are you thinking?” Lena asked.

“You’re my best friend. You mean more to me than basically anyone else, and the thought of you has kept me going through some really dark times.”

When Kara smiled for her, her eyes lit up, sparkling in the candlelight, like moonlight dancing on nighttime waves. She was entrancing.

“I…” Lena began. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you as just a friend. There’s more on the table if you want it.”

“More like… kissing?”

“Yes, exactly.”

This was actually happening. It was real, not a daydream or a fantasy. Kara moved with agonizing slowness, full of a gentle, kind intensity as she leaned down and lightly brushed her lips across Lena’s.

It was like being tossed in a tub of ice water… in a good way. Lena shivered as Kara cupped her jaw and went for another kiss, more forcefully this time, more insistent. The breathed as one.

“Kara,” Lena whispered.

She couldn’t help it. Lena dragged her tongue over Kara’s skin, tasting the sweat pooled at the base of her neck. Kara let out a low moan followed by a deep basso rumble in her chest, pulsating in time with her breathing.

“Did you just lick my sweat?”

“Are you purring?!”

Kara giggled. “I can do lots of things.”

Lena looked up at her with lidded eyes. “Oh yeah? Show me what you got.”

She squeaked as Kara picked her up in a single smooth motion, and with a self-satisfied smirk, carried her towards the bed.

Later, as they lay in a tangle of perspiring limbs atop sweat-soaked sheets, the power thumped back on and the air conditioning began to blow over them, chilling Lena’s skin.

She barely noticed.

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thegreatyin · 18 days ago

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How did you manage to handle not one, but FOUR separate accounts in fl? I recently made the account for my HD little guy but having to do the tutorial again just seems miserable

there's... weirdly several answers to that question, actually??

a HUGE part of it is due to the way FL is structured. the 10-minute action timer is a core part of the game on a fundamental level, and the fact that i can very easily run out of stuff to do on one character and thus have an excuse to quickly and easily swap to another is just... convenient? satisfying? i'm not entirely sure how to explain it. the fact that i can make progress even while i am fundamentally simultaneously Not Making Progress is like pure dopamine for my freak insane awful little brain. there's just something really pleasing about spending all of my actions pursuing The Goal Of The Day™ on one account before casually swapping to another and doing the same without feeling like i'm wasting time or acting to the first account's explicit detriment. the downtime helps! the recharge time helps! the structure really really works!!

i'm technically only actively playing three, maybe two accounts minimum. the only reason the fourth (the one that'll be my future BaL playthrough) currently exists at all is so i can get his earlygame completely out of the way now and not have to waste time running through it all later, when what i actually want to do is play the ambition i've made myself wait a full year to play. and also getting free goodies as seasonal stuff happens,, something something surprise tools to help us later. the only two accounts i'd say i'm really "actively playing" at the moment are caeru and lark- and of the two, lark takes the most priority, since his ambition is the one i'm currently pursuing in earnest. for a couple months now- despite being My Main FL Character- the scoundrel has actually been pretty inactive on a gameplay front outside of the occasional progression in TLC and discordance content. purely by virtue of having Very little left to do outside of Very long-term grinds and vanities. they're in their "now what?" "now you can start playing the game" era. they've graduated to previous protagonist background cameo in a sequel anime series. they're like the yin FLPC equivalent of red at the top of mount silver. they're Literally just vibing rn. i only keep posting about them regardless because i'm insane and i will never ever ever ever ever let that bat go. but yeah, big TLDR, outside of doing the bare minimum to keep making waves/notability up every week, i'm not actually spending that much time on accounts i'm not currently actively interested in playing. and that accounts for way more gaming spoons than you might think.

i have a virtually lifelong history of playing MMOs, especially and specifically world of warcraft. i was born in the endless grind for useless video game pixel vanities and/or bragging rights. molded by it. you all have merely adapted to doing the same piece of content a pointlessly excessive amount of times for literally no reason besides whimsy and folly. me? i've done my time. i've served my sentence. i've spent weeks doing the original burning crusade netherwing dailies. i've devoted days to running praetorium over and over and over again, back-to-back, nonstop, long before square enix cut it in half and made it NOT take at minimum an hour and a half per run. i've perfected my silverwastes + auric basin goldfarming strategies. i've (almost) crafted dragonwrath tarecgosa's rest. i've killed the sha of anger so many times its dying scream of agony is embedded into the very fabric of my being. ""only"" doing making your name content four times over? that is nothing to me. it means nothing to me. it is so infinitesimal i can do the persuasive seduction quests in my sleep. it's not a matter of handling misery, or having the capacity, or even sighing as i remember the brass embassy raid segment of the watchful questline seriously i don't know why i keep forgetting that exists or what even is my problem with it i just am so consistently mildly inconvenienced by it and its highly specific resource requirements and it is the worst thing ever. maybe i'm just so used to the scoundrel's near-infinite money and troves of disposable items that i've completely forgotten what being poor is like. despite having done that step 3 fucking times now. ahem. anyway. i have transcended the feeble mortal bindings of my resistant-to-grinding flesh and ascended to a higher plane of enlightenment, they may call me insane but they will be the ones left laughing when they see what that "insanity" has wrought, i've usurped them, i've usurped them all-

hacks and coughs and awkwardly clears my throat. i mean. uh. um. Ahem.

the empress' court artistry + tales of the university nerfs helped too.

#and yes #before you ask #i have forgotten which account has which items/has done which content many a time #i think the most painful incident was forgetting to keep up the scoundrel's making waves while i was still playing nemesis with caeru #given that im trying to build it up to 12 and reset their specialization... that was uniquely painful #then again they have like 40 BDR so it wasnt actually that inconveniencing lmao #fallen london #ask #long post #sorry for the infodump + sudden villain monologue.#all jokes and personal accounts aside i totally get the apprehension abt doing that stuff again #it's not for everyone. not by a long shot.#im only doing this because im genuinely invested and in love with this silly little browser game #and way back when i started i made a (only half metaphorical) solemn oath to experience all of its ''main stories''#and truly see everything it has to offer #(bc i like. physically cant do hyperfixations by halves. i need to consume Everything abt the thing or i'll explode)#(and even then i'll probably explode anyway. it's either completely drop it or go All In until it stops taking up so much space in my brain #(and. given the track record. that is not happening with FL for a while yet)#but like. that isnt actually normal behavior. just. just to clarify.#from what ive seen a VAST majority of people do not go out of their way to play literally every ambition #and that is so valid. it is so overwhelming. you have to juggle so much.#you have to play the earlygame So Many Goddamn Times.#(as i said. served my time. did my sentence. i am my scars. etc etc)#the best advice i can give as someone who's so completely desensitized to that repetition it doesnt even phase me anymore?#the same advice i can stress to all FL players. legitimately just take ur time with it. play when you want to.#dont when you dont.#sometimes you have to grit your teeth and bear things. and when it comes to alts you Will have to grit your teeth and bear it all again #but the beauty of this being a game that one plays for fun is that unlike. say. crushing deadlines or annoying coworkers in real life #you are completely within your power to decide when where and if you want to grit and bear it all #..wow this is ADVANCED yin rambling holy shit. i actually reached the tag limit. i think this ask should be put on some kind of list

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