#me 🤝 kara danvers: waxing lyrical about every single minute detail of this woman

[searidings]

You’re my favorite writer so I just wanted to send a small prompt of SC finally getting together because Kara can’t stop looking at Lena in her look from 6x16 (certainly understandable). I hope you have a great day!

(also on ao3)

It's something Eliza had taught her.

Or maybe even Jeremiah, way back in the beginning. A way to cope with the overwhelming, broadening her stimuli response to prevent overload. For anything that became too much – a crowded mall, a car backfiring in a cavernous parking garage, even a loud sneeze – she learned to employ each one of her five senses with deliberate precision, grounding herself in all incoming sensations to prevent any one individually from taking over.

It had helped with the bad and, over time, had also helped her to appreciate the good. Centring herself, focusing not just on the sight or sound in front of her but also on the feel, the taste, the smell— it brings her clarity. Enhances her appreciation, allows for more comprehensive enjoyment.

She hasn't needed these skills for years, has used them only in moments of extreme joy or pleasure that she wishes to capture and remember as thoroughly as possible. But, Kara realises, it's a good thing she has these tools in her arsenal because right now in this moment there is—

i. sight

—and Rao, what a sight it is.

She'd landed on the Tower's balcony just like any other day, walked into the main control centre just like any other day. And then her eyes had fallen on the lone figure seated on a high stool at the work bench, and suddenly it is no longer any other day.

Today, Lena is not wearing her typical boardroom outfit from her L-Corp days, the soft jeans-and-sweater combos reserved for game nights and sleepovers, or even the slacks-and-blouse ensemble she's frequented since her move to the Tower.

No. Today, Lena has pulled the dark wave of her hair up into a big, messy bun, flyaway hairs framing her face that flicker like molten amber in the sharp morning sun. The style accentuates the cut glass line of her jaw, the regal column of her throat where it disappears into a soft black turtleneck. Kara's eyes track the skintight material down, down, down to the leather belt at her waist, the skirt that hugs the curve of her hips and legs save for the slit cut to mid-thigh, the tantalising peek of creamy skin beneath. Her eyes fall lower still to the black suede of her boots, rising relaxedly to cover her knees, no—

Kara's mouth runs dry. Rising to cover her thighs.

Even if only one is visible, and even if only in part, it's still enough to make Kara's head spin. The whole look is finished off by a smudge of dark plum that draws attention to the full curve of her lips, a striking companion to the dark sweep of her brows, her lashes above the crystalline green of her eyes.

This is very decidedly not just any other day.

Kara doesn't move, doesn't breathe, for a solid ninety seconds while her brain tries to compute the image Lena makes before her eyes. Her heart has migrated up into the Sahara of her bone-dry throat, stomach dropping out her ass as her pulse thuds like a bass drum somewhere deep in the cradle of her hips.

Lena— Lena is always gorgeous. Always, in every shade and hue and state of undress and disarray. But this, this, is something else altogether.

Lena notices her at last, glancing up from the book she'd been perusing, one long elegant finger extended to mark her place. Kara's eyes trace her hands, the slender tug of tendons and the delicate lines of bone, the way the contrast of the faded page beneath her palm makes her skin appear to glow alabaster in the sunlight.

“Hi?”

It sounds like a question, one perfect brow arching as plum lips split into an expectant smile.

Kara, narrowly resisting the urge to check her own chin for evidence of drool, snaps herself out of her daze with single-minded determination. She clears her throat, licks her dry lips. “Hi.”

“Everything alright?” Lena asks when Kara still doesn't move, feet rooted to the same spot from which she'd first caught sight of her best friend. “You're, uh. You're staring.”

She certainly is. “Oh. Oh, uh.” Kara shuffles her feet, unsticking them from the floorboards and forcing them to walk without trembling to the workbench in the centre of the room. “You, um. You look really nice today.”

Lena's cheeks flush the palest pink, the first dusting of sunrise on a snowy morning. Kara's eyes catch on the pulse thrumming at her throat, the near-indetectable flicker beneath the hinge of her jaw.

She wonders what it feels like. That blush, that heartbeat. She wonders what it tastes like.

"Thanks,” Lena whispers, ducking her head, twin arcs of dark lashes fluttering. She motions to the pages before her, clearing her throat. “I, uh, I think I might have found a spell that could help us.”

Kara rounds the table to stand beside her, making a show of focusing her gaze on the page before them as Lena explains something about energy transfers and containment spells and varying interpretations of third century classical Latin.

This focus lasts all of half a heartbeat before her eyes begin to wander, insatiably drawn to the myriad details revealed by her new proximity. Her visual receptors are overwhelmed, gaze bouncing erratically between each new discovery like a ping pong ball in a vacuum.

Kara swallows hard. Her eyes lock upon the fingertip Lena's tapping against the incantation at the bottom of the page and she finds herself transfixed once more by how long Lena's fingers are, how broad her palms, how the blunt edges of her short nails round against the smooth canvass of her skin.

Next, her field of vision hones in on the soft curls at the nape of Lena's neck, half-trapped beneath the high turtleneck collar where they've escaped from her bun. This is followed by a brief sojourn on the near-translucent shell of her ear, shot through with morning sunlight, then by a rapt fascination with the fine baby hairs that skirt her temple to the arch of her cheekbone, the downy curve of her jaw.

Lena is still talking, and Kara hasn't heard a word she's said. She's just been staring at her best friend like a dumbstruck fool, and she needs to snap out of it before Lena catches on. Resolved, she sucks in a breath so deep it's almost painful, a misstep on her part that ultimately proves fatal because then in addition to sight there is—

ii. smell

—and any hope she had of regaining her composure dies a quick and painless death.

The lungful of Lena she's just inhaled is intoxicating and before she knows what she's doing she's pressing a half-step closer, eager to breathe her in again.

Lena's hair smells bright, fresh and clean like the expensive sea mineral shampoo Kara has taken to stocking in her own shower of late. There's the cloying chemicals of her makeup and the waxy sweetness of her lipstick, the worn leather of her boots and the musky blush of the perfume at her wrists. The nape of her neck and the soft skin behind her ear smell smoky and rich, the warm base scent of her accentuated by the ever-lingering tang of chemical explosions, propane and molten solder.

Unbidden, Kara's mouth begins to water. She sucks in another eager lungful just as her half-addled brain registers the sudden silence between them, snapping her back to herself with a start.

Lena has turned to stare up at her pointedly. Kara finds herself lost once more in the lush curve of her arched brow, the way the movement sends up another heady cloud of samphire-scented conditioner.

"Kara?” the object of her fascination asks, pulling her so sharply from her enthralled haze that she actually jumps. Lena's brow quirks a quarter-inch higher. “Have you been listening to a word I've said?”

“Of, of course I have,” she manages, breathing pointedly through her mouth so as to avoid another assault on her olfactory senses. “You've found a spell that might help us.”

Lena looks as thoroughly unconvinced as the weak cover warrants, but Kara doesn't have the mental capacity to worry about that in this moment. She's too busy trying and failing to focus on anything other than the utterly overwhelming amalgamation of sight and scent that is her best friend right now.

Blessedly, her Kara Danvers phone vibrates in her boot a split second later and she's shooting off to Catco with a hasty apology before anyone can start asking uncomfortable questions about her behaviour. She doesn't relax, doesn't even breathe again until she's hovering in the empty air high above National City, confident she can manage it without losing her mind.

If the crisp scent of Lena's shampoo lingers on the back of her tongue, that's nobody's business but her own.

-

The afternoon at Catco helps to push some of the lingering enthrallment from her mind and by the time her interview prep is complete and the call comes through that she's needed back at the Tower, Kara feels like she might even be able to face Lena without completely losing her shit.

The thing is, she's an expert at this. A seasoned pro at blocking out overwhelming sensations, at diversifying her sensory input in order to moderate her own response. She thinks back to her first years on Earth, to the soft knit blanket she'd squeeze to ground herself through the maelstrom of untempered superhearing and the scented dryer sheets Eliza would hold to her cheek when her x ray vision became too much to handle. Thinks of the slew of coping strategies she's been forced to acquire throughout her time on this planet, of how they might be repurposed now.

Because, okay, the sight of Lena today – in that shirt with that lipstick and that slit up the length of her thigh – might in fact be too much to handle. May have quite possibly fried her brain, just a little.

But, she reasons, all she has to do is ground herself, focus on her other senses, and keep it together.

After all, this is Lena. Kara's been practicing the essential art of blocking out the more distracting facets of her best friend since the day they first met.

And so, maybe smell isn't the way to go, given the hard reboot her mind had involuntarily undergone when she'd caught a whiff of Lena that morning. But that's okay, that's fine, because Kara has three other senses that she's going to use to remain centred and stop making a fool out of herself.

This is fine, she's fine. She's a seasoned pro. She's got this.

-

It takes all of three seconds for her to lose it again.

The main room of the Tower is deserted when she touches down, but she doesn't even have time for confusion or worry because then there is—

iii. sound

—and every iota of her previous infatuation comes rushing back full force.

Lena's heels click across the worn boards of the control centre, syncopated perfectly with the white-hot thud of Kara's heart. The material of her skirt swishes against soft suede, cotton stretching and contracting around her arms and shoulders as she sets her notebook down on the workbench.

She turns her head to smile at Kara's arrival and her superhearing picks up the gentle clink of the double sets of gold hoops adorning each of Lena's ears, the near-inaudible whisper of stray hairs against the collar of her shirt. Now that she's focusing on it, Lena is a symphony, from her steady heartbeat to her rhythmic breaths to the quiet knock of her belt buckle against the edge of the desk.

“Hey.”

And there, the sweetest sound of all, the melodic lilt of Lena's voice tripping across the space between them, hitting Kara's ears like the light tinkle of windchimes on a summer's day.

“Hey yourself,” she manages, pulling herself out of her slack jawed stupor and crossing the space to join Lena at the bench. “You called? How's it going?”

Because, yes, maybe her eyes and nose and ears are being assaulted by such a whirlwind of stimuli from this woman that she feels a little lightheaded, but there's a limit to how weird she can be around Lena in the span of twenty-four hours without drawing attention to herself, and she has a feeling she's already hit it.

She breathes through her mouth to avoid Lena's perfume, recites the Prayer of Rao backwards in Old Kryptonian in her mind to drown out the beacon of her heartbeat, keeps her eyes on the lines of the spell book so they don't wander off to any nearby curves, and tries her best to get a grip.

She actually manages to focus – albeit briefly – on what her best friend is saying; a rundown of the afternoon she'd spent in the lab, her progress on tracking Nyxly, the revised translation of that morning's spell. Kara's nodding along, mentally congratulating herself on her iron-clad concentration, when Lena reaches out once more to trace her fingertip along the lines of the hexagram on the page.

Kara's watching her, watching the muscles and ligaments shift beneath delicate skin, and then suddenly she's reaching out too and then there is—

iv. touch

—and a bolt of incandescent electricity shoots from the top of her skull to the tips of her toes.

Her hand lands atop Lena's, stilling it against the page and she can feel the confusion in the other woman's gaze, hear the question already forming on her lips.

Her skin is tingling where it touches Lena's, palm moulding to the mountain range of her knuckles, the knocked arrow of her finger and she only has a second to salvage this before it gets really weird. Her brain is still stuck, wheels spinning somewhere between the scent of the lavender soap clinging to Lena's hands and the sounds of her heels shifting against the floorboards, thus executing no oversight of the words that fall out of her mouth.

“Sorry, I just— I missed you today,” she finds herself saying, not untruthfully. “How about, um. A hello hug?”

As soon as she says it her entire being is screaming for it, for an amplification of the feeling of their hands stacked together and the chance to take Lena into her arms.

Lena, to her credit, takes the odd request in stride, which probably says more about her years of experience with Kara's weirdness than it does about anything else. There's an incredulous slant to her brow and an uncertain tilt to her mouth but after a moment, she nods.

There's an awkward second that feels like a suspended eternity as they slot together, angling arms and tilting heads but then they click, the circuit completes, and pleasure courses through Kara's veins like wildfire.

Lena's arms slide around her neck, bobbing up on her tiptoes even in her heeled boots to rest her chin on Kara's shoulder. She anchors her own arms at Lena's waist in return, squeezing lightly as they settle into the embrace.

Lena is so soft, so warm and tactile and pliable to the touch and the sum total of it all, the way she looks and smells and sounds and feels is so glorious Kara struggles to remember why she ever lets her go.

She decides to take advantage of the granted proximity, fingertips playing across the brushed fabric of Lena's skirt, the smooth juncture of her belt and up to the ribbed cotton of that goddamn turtleneck. She charts the ladder of Lena's ribs, meets the straps of her bra through the sheer fabric, up and up until her fingers trip against the folded neckline, playing through the escaped curls at the base of her skull.

She scratches her nails gently against Lena's scalp beneath the tug of her bun and Lena lets out a quiet sigh that hits Kara square between her legs.

It starts to make sense, then.

Her obsession with every minute detail of Lena's existence, her need to employ grounding techniques just to avoid being completely overloaded by her best friend's mere presence, every time over the course of their relationship that she's carefully turned her focus away from the finer points of the woman before her in order to keep a level head— it all starts to sharpen into a picture she's been ignoring for far too long.

This particular outfit, the boots and the bun and that motherfucking turtleneck may have been the tipping point, but the effect Lena has on her is nothing new.

Emboldened by her own crisis of clarity she continues her gentle exploration, knuckles brushing the side of Lena's throat as her other hand thumbs sure circles at the small of her back. Touching her is enthralling, addicting, wonderful, made even more so when Lena shivers against her chest.

"Kara?” she whispers and it's another inundation of the senses; the breathy sound of her voice, the tangible hitch of her breathing, the faintest hint of mint tea on her breath. "What are you doing?"

“You feel so good,” Kara hums before she's fully decided to, tightening her arms a fraction.

Lena pulls back, just enough that they're face to face without breaking the circle of their embrace. Her gaze is searching, eyes roving Kara's face intently as though seeking an answer to a question long buried. “Yeah?”

She looks at Lena then, the sum total of her; the purse of her lips and the skate of her jaw and the flyaway wisps of ebony hair, the viridian crystal of her eyes.

She wants to touch her. Wants to listen to her and gaze at her and breathe her in for as long as she possibly can. She wants to put her mouth on her. Wants to press her lips to the pulse fluttering hummingbird-quick at her throat, feel the bright metallic tang of her earrings on her tongue, paint her own mouth with the glossy wax of her lipstick.

Because, she realises, there's one of her five senses left as yet untested.

“Yeah,” she murmurs, meeting Lena's gaze with a steady kind of surety. She tugs her closer still, tracing paths of worship up and down her sides, squeezing as tight as she dares. “I don't want to let you go.”

Lena's gaze on her face, so heavy, so penetrating, softens at last. A breath sighs out of her, her own grip on Kara's neck strengthening. “Then don't.”

For a moment they watch each other, breathing the same air. She thinks of the question they've been skirting for six long years; sees the answer she'd never dared to dream of etched into each beloved line of Lena's face. She hopes her own answer is reflecting back the same.

She thinks that maybe it is, because in the next moment the tension pulling taught between them snaps with all the heraldry of a divine chorus and then she's leaning in, and maybe Lena is too, and there's one more moment of heady, blissful anticipation and then there is—

v. taste

—and the warm press of lips and the slick slide of tongues, the flavour of mingled panting breath and the faintest hint of fresh mint tea as they come together again and again in the most overwhelming, pleasurable, joyous moment of Kara's life and there's not a single shred of doubt in her mind that this woman, this kiss, is the sweetest thing she'll ever know.