Chapter Text
"Are you going to pick your own superhero name?" Kara asks from her seat next to Alex's, in the med bay. "If you don't, then Miss Grant will name you, and then you'll be stuck with whatever she picks. She'll probably call you Gingersnap or something."
Alex frowns from behind her new glasses, looking up from her paperwork to give Kara an incredulous expression. "I'm not even ginger. I'm auburn at most."
"Hair like a Rao eclipse," Kara agrees, and Alex's cheeks flush.
"Why would I need to pick a superhero name, anyway?"
Kara shrugs. "Well, you've got all these new powers, y'know. Ooh, can I help Winn design your uniform?"
"Kara," Alex says, with the patience of a saint. "I'm an agent in the DEO. I'm not gonna start running around as a vigilante."
Kara's pout is sudden and intense, and Alex is thankful that Kara surprised her with a pair of lead-lined glasses yesterday. Otherwise she'd have to see Kara's pout in ultra-high-definition. X-ray vision hasn't shown up (yet) but her vision and hearing are getting uncomfortably sharp. The glasses are helping to dampen the intense things - like The Pout.
"Besides. If I showed up on the scene with a handful of your powers, helping you out, then Cat will decide I'm Supergirl's sidekick, and I don't think the world would survive that much of an ego boost for you." Alex mock-shudders.
Alex expects a joking riposte, or perhaps a little offence on Kara's behalf in regard to the size of her ego. She isn't expecting the intensity of Kara's gaze.
"You're not my sidekick, Alex. I've always been the one inspired by you."
Doctor Hamilton chooses that moment to walk in, and the two of them look away from each other as if they've been caught... caught doing what? Alex doesn't know, and she refuses to think about it right now.
Alex looks back at her paperwork, adjusting her glasses. Next to her, Kara clears her throat.
"Good morning, Agent Danvers. Good morning, Supergirl. How are you feeling today?"
Kara doesn't seem to be taking the opportunity to cause mischief and answer in her stead, so Alex provides her own answer. "I'm feeling good. Strong. Like I'm ready to go home and get back to work."
Amelia levels a flat look at her. "You and I both know we need to keep you here for another day or two. If our findings so far are correct, your Kryptonian blood concentration should be lowering. I'd like to take a sample today - if your levels are falling in line with our predictions, we'll give you another transfusion and you'll be free to go home tomorrow."
Alex nods her assent, and a few minutes later there's a needle being pushed, with an unusual amount of effort, into her arm. She barely even feels it.
"Skin toughness is increasing," Amelia notes, as blood starts to fill the syringe. "Still pliable, but there was significant resistance against the needle."
Alex doesn't really hear her. She's too busy staring at the blood. She raises her free hand to take her glasses off and lets them drop into her lap - she wants to see it, properly. She doesn't know why, really. It's just blood.
But there's something about it, now. It's Kara's blood. Blood of the House of El. It's special.
It's precious.
Kara takes her hand, squeezing gently, and Alex doesn't need to look over to know she's thinking the same thing. They're family, more than ever before.
It doesn't take long for the results to come in. With DEO-grade machinery, and with the obvious differences between human and Kryptonian blood (to the trained eye, at least), Doctor Hamilton is nodding within just a few minutes. "As we predicted. Well done, Doctor Danvers," she says, sending a smirk towards Alex.
Kara squeezes Alex's hand a little tighter in response to the familiar gesture.
"Supergirl. Are you ready to give another transfusion? Alex's levels haven't fallen too low yet, but I'd like to make sure she's as well as she can be before I discharge her."
Everything becomes a little fuzzy after that. Lost in a haze of blood and pleasure and half-mumbled Kryptonian confessions.
_ _ _
Alex steps into Kara's loft, leaning on the cane she doesn't need (but that everyone else had insisted upon) and pushing up her glasses.
She keeps telling everyone she's fine to go home to her own apartment, but Kara's been insistent - if Alex starts worsening, she wants to be there. Doctor Hamilton had agreed, so it was a choice between either being discharged now to stay with Kara, or god knows when to go home alone.
Kara's been busy. There's a blood transfusion pump sitting on her table and a small box next to it, along with some medical equipment Alex can't imagine she'll need. That part of the apartment looks more like a hospital room than Kara's loft. Alex lowers her glasses, taking in the room more properly and letting herself see through the world. After that most recent transfusion, x-ray vision had settled in. It should scare her, how quickly her body seems to be adapting. How strong she's becoming. The way her eyes have changed, probably forever.
But she isn't scared any more. She's got Kara with her to guide her round the curves.
Plus, the scientist in her is finding it all just a little bit cool.
It's almost overwhelming, seeing through layers of reality - she knows it would be a nightmare, if she didn't have the glasses to help. There's no way she'd be able to control this without weeks or months or practise. She feels a spike of sympathy for Kara, and a much, much smaller one for Kal-El.
But...there it is. The box next to the blood transfusion pump stays rigidly blocking her vision, and she grins before lifting her glasses again. Lead-lined. Kryptonite needles.
She feels a ripple in the air to her right, and raises her cane in that direction. Kara stutters out of superspeed a moment before hitting the cane, pouting. She pokes the cane and Alex lets it move a little before swinging it right back. "Okay, you having super-senses is going to get really annoying, isn't it?"
"For you, yeah." Alex turns her head and smirks. "For me, it's revenge for our teenage years."
Kara grumbles something too low even for Alex's ears to pick up, and Alex lowers her cane, walking more properly into the loft. Taking it all in.
They fixed the walls.
She runs her fingers along the plasterwork where she'd been thrown through, feeling the slight difference between the old and the new. She doesn't take her glasses off here - she knows she'd see blood they'd missed. See the amount of damage Kara did to her under Red K.
That... isn't really something she wants to see.
Kara steps past her, placing a box of Alex's things on the sofa and determinedly not looking at that particular wall or at Alex.
"Hey..." Alex says, softly. "Are you sure you want us to stay here? If you're more comfortable somewhere else, we could stay at mine?"
Kara shakes her head, forcing herself to look towards Alex. "No. No, it's okay. It...if I don't get to make new memories with you here, now, I don't think I'll ever be able to come back. Y'know?"
Alex nods and steps forwards, wrapping her arms around Kara's waist and hugging her. Unreservedly. She tightens her arms, until Kara lets out a gasp of surprise.
"I could...I could feel you," Kara says, a little breathless. "I'm not used to...I mean..."
Alex smiles and burrows her head against Kara's neck, taking in the smell of her hair. She can feel Kara's pulse rushing beneath her skin, and her eyes drift closed at the comforting rhythm. "Did you like it?"
Kara seems flushed - dazed, even. "Y-yeah."
"See?" Alex squeezes again, until Kara's pulse rushes just the tiniest bit faster. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm still here, and I still love you."
Kara hugs her back, still careful, and Alex thinks this might be what family feels like.
_ _ _
Alex wakes up hungry.
No. Not just hungry. Starving.
She opens her eyes, and realises that at some point in the night, Kara had draped herself over her. She's warm, and safe, and Alex leans back towards her comforting presence. Well. She leans back into the comfort until she starts to feel the hunger too much.
At that point, she extricates herself from Kara, lifting her arm and slipping out of the bed. Kara grumbles something, eyes opening blearily.
"Pancakes?" Alex asks, grinning.
Kara's eyes light up, and Alex takes that as a yes.
It's only a few minutes later, as Alex is cooking her world-famous breakfast, that she sniffs the food and feels her stomach churn.
Okay. That's weird.
She starts searching through the cupboards. Pulls out one of the boxes of her favourite granola, and grabs a handful of the oaty goodness to chew on.
Oh, gross.
She swallows the granola with some reluctance, and pulls out one of Kara's boxes of sugary cereal instead. It leaves her fingers sugary and sticky to grab a handful, but she does it anyway. She's just so hungry.
She chews...and promptly runs over to the sink to spit the processed excuse for food out.
What the hell?
Are her tastes changing? And...what the hell does she need to eat?
She opens Kara's fridge, grabbing the open carton of orange juice and taking a sip.
Nope. She spits that out, too.
"Alex?" There's a shift in the air, and Kara's abruptly next to her. "What's wrong?"
Alex winces, putting the orange juice back and shunting Kara out of the way to check on their pancakes. Or, more likely, Kara's pancakes. "Yeah, I'm okay. Just..." Full disclosure, Alex. Don't minimise this. "...I'm hungry, but everything I'm trying makes me want to go throw up."
Kara frowns, thinking over the puzzle for a few moments. "...Are you pregnant?"
Alex shoves her shoulder, pretending to glare. "Don't even joke about that."
Kara laughs and sidles over to join Alex as she makes the pancakes. She wraps an arm around her, comfortable and secure. Alex's hunger spikes, and she squeezes her eyes shut for a moment.
The moment Alex flips one of the pancakes on to a plate, Kara's there, lifting it up and chewing on it like a hamster, the too-hot pancake held between her hands like something precious.
She tears off a piece to hold out towards Alex experimentally, and Alex feels her stomach lurch again. She shakes her head. No. Not trying that.
"It could be..." Kara pauses, thinking about it. "...When I got to Earth, all my senses were...amplified. Including taste. In my case, I loved the extra flavors, and if you make a joke about how much I eat I'll poke you in the ribs."
Alex holds her spatula up in surrender, before using it to move the bacon on to a plate. Kara superspeeds around to Alex's other side and chews on a piece.
"It could be that for you, your tastes are amplified but it's making you dislike all the food, instead of liking it more. Hypersensitivity to flavor, maybe?"
She...can see that being the case. Damn it.
Alex grumbles and eyes up the bacon and the pancake, doing her best not to smell any of it.
"So, how do we get around it?" she asks.
Kara pauses.
She lifts a rasher of bacon towards Alex.
"Experimentation."
Alex sighs. She had a feeling Kara was going to say that. She obediently bites down on the bacon, and...it's not terrible. She chews on it slowly, and doesn't spit it out.
"Rating?" Kara asks, quirking an eyebrow. Alex realises how close together they're standing, and her eyes flick down to Kara's lips for a moment. Kara's got syrup there, because of course she has. The syrup doesn't actually seem like a terrible idea.
"Eh. Five out of ten."
"Oof, Rao, bacon as a five out of ten?" Kara steps back, and Alex feels herself missing her presence immediately. "This might be worse than I thought."
_ _ _
An hour later, Kara's eaten her way through all of the pancakes, while Alex has taken bites out of almost everything in the apartment.
She's almost thrown up twice, spat out more food than she can keep track of, and she's currently eating oatmeal in strawberry milk, with bacon. Her normal self wrinkles her nose at that concept so, so much, but...damn it, it's the only combination of foods they've found so far that hit 7/10 on her ratings. And she's suffering through the bacon because she refuses to eat nothing but oatmeal and strawberry milk today.
She flips through paperwork on the couch, trying her best not to drip any milk on it.
She's been forbidden from stepping foot into the DEO unless it's a medical emergency for the next two weeks. But that doesn't mean she can't work.
She skims past the requisition forms to get to the results from the lab experiments for the past few weeks. She's missed a lot, between almost dying and trying to deal with becoming superpowered.
Kara flops next to her, putting down a pile of her own paperwork. "You're a workaholic," she says, and shoves Alex's shoulder gently.
Alex grumbles, mouth full of oatmeal, and shoves her right back.
"I mean it! You just got out of hospital, you're eating your weird gross oatmeal, and I still can't drag you away from reading reports!"
"You're trying to drag me away from reading reports?" Alex raises an eyebrow and grins wryly.
Kara rolls her eyes. "Duh."
Alex thinks about it for a moment and then, decisive, she leans back on the sofa. "Okay."
Kara stares at her like she's grown a second head. God, Alex hopes she's not going to grow a second head. "Okay?"
"Okay." She nods. "What do you wanna do that's not paperwork?"
Kara beams at her, bright and happy, and claps her hands together...very quietly. Alex appreciates the effort to not hurt her newly-sensitized...senses?
Okay. So, she needs to work out a better way of describing that because 'sensitized senses' sounds dumb.
"I mean, first, I think I need to call the DEO and report a new symptom from you because there is no way you're feeling okay if you're willingly agreeing to put paperwork down."
Alex shoves Kara full-force. They both seem surprised when Kara actually topples off from her perch at the edge of the sofa, dropping to the floor and almost knocking the coffee table over.
They stare at each other, wide-eyed for a moment.
"Oh, god, I'm so sorry!" Alex says, once the shock wears off. She reaches a hand out to try and help Kara up. "I didn't mean to do that, I forgot for a second that I'm so much stronger now and I'm so used to you not budging no matter how hard I shove you and that wasn't okay and I don't want you to ever think I'd do something like that intentionally, and--"
Midway through Alex's flustered talking, Kara starts with a rambling explanation of her own, and the two end up talking over each other. "No, no, it's totally okay, I forgot too and I wanted to let myself move just a little with it but then I got surprised by you and by the time I realised what was happening it was too late and I'd already started falling, it was my own fault really, I know you'd never do that intentionally, it's--"
They both stop talking at the same moment, and keep staring at each other.
Kara takes Alex's hand, giggling lightly as she lets Alex help her back to her feet. Alex starts laughing too, and that sets Kara off further.
"Rao, we're ridiculous," Kara says.
"Absurd," Alex responds.
"Let's play Jenga," Kara says.
"What?" Alex responds.
She feels like she missed a big and important part of this conversation somewhere. Is this how Kara's friend Winn feels any time anyone at the DEO talks about anything?
But Kara just keeps staring at her like she hasn't made a completely ridiculous suggestion.
"Jenga!" she repeats. "You said we should do something that isn't paperwork. And Jenga is an excellent tool for expressing fine motor control since you need to gently coax out the blocks without breaking them or breaking the whole tower, learning to control your enhanced reflexes to stop yourself from reacting to it tipping, and learning to cope with your enhanced hearing whenever it falls over."
Alex has to admit, it's...not a terrible idea.
As far as Kara's weird suggestions go, this one is both one of the more normal ones, and one which makes actual sense now that she's explained it.
"Are you telling me you played lots of Jenga alone as a teenager?"
Kara pouts. "Are you making fun of me for it?"
Alex stares at the pout. She stares at the pout for longer than she probably should, and she feels something thrum in her chest. She becomes aware, suddenly, of just how close they are since she helped Kara back to her feet. At how close they've been, all day. Have they always been this close? Is it new? Or is it just something she's more aware of with her senses heightened like they are?
And the weird thrumming in her chest isn't going away, either. She really would like that to go away at some point in the next hour or so, because she needs to beat her sister at a block-stacking game. A block-removing game? How does one classify Jenga?
"Oh, I'm absolutely making fun of you." Alex grins, ignoring her wild thought process (god, is this what it's like to be Kara?) and shifting the way she's holding Kara's hand into something more like a handshake. "I'm also about to kick your ass."
Kara's eyes narrow. "Oh, it is on, Danvers."
...
...
"You're also a Danvers, using my surname like that doesn't even work!"
"Shut up!"
_ _ _
Kara's tongue is sticking out in concentration. It's honestly a little bit cute.
It would be cuter if this was a different situation.
Kara reaches out, deft fingers exploring - probing, searching for the perfect spot. Alex has no doubt in her mind that Kara will find it. But, for now, the way her fingers are taking their time is making Alex want to scream.
"Oh, come on, it's been your turn for eight minutes already and you haven't even picked a block!"
Kara looks up from where she's leaned over the table, giving Alex a flat look over the top of her glasses. "No backseat gaming."
"This isn't backseat gaming, it's trash talk."
"It's backseat gaming." Kara finally seems to settle on a block, pushing it just the tiniest bit towards herself. A grin spreads over her face, and she reaches around to geeeently tease the block further and further.
Alex waits until it's at the perfect halfway point. Then, she strikes. "I feel like next time we should play speed jenga. With one of those chess clock things."
Kara's burst of laughter is a surprise to her, but not to Alex. The block twists, knocking its neighbour asunder, and the entire tower tips precariously.
Alex just grins, holding herself back from the instinct to rush forwards and stop it from falling. It's a surprisingly strong instinct, but the glee she's feeling in this moment manages to supercede it.
A tower falls. A superhero is laid low. Her nemesis triumphs.
"I win!"
"You cheated!"
"Did not!"
"Did too!!!"
Alex just starts laughing, cackling like a victorious villain who's about to explain her whole plan to the hero, right up until she's hit in the face with a pillow.
"Ow," she says, flatly.
"You're mean!" Kara is pouting, arms crossed over her chest.
Alex look her up and down, her feet surrounded by jenga blocks, and she can't quite bring herself to feel bad about her maybe-slightly-illicit victory.
Kara steps forwards and pokes Alex in the ribs, resulting in another bark of laughter from her. "Say you're sorry!"
"But I'm not sorry!" Alex retorts.
Oh. That was the wrong choice of words.
Kara gets a glint in her eyes. A dangerous, dangerous glint. She leans in close, a predatory smirk on her face.
"Not yet you're not."
Alex doesn't get much chance to respond before she's pinned to the couch by a blonde Kryptonian, being tickled mercilessly.
Now, Alex didn't really consider herself a ticklish person before. It was mainly Kara's persistence with her attempts to tickle her that Alex found made her laugh, in their youth. But that was before.
Now, her senses are hypertuned. She's aware of every nerve ending in her body, of the cant of Kara's hips against her, of Kara's breath close by. But mostly, right now, she's aware of every spot Kara's fingers are touching and tickling her.
Alex starts writhing, laughing and trying desperately to get free. "K-Kara!" she yelps out, between broken, wheezing laughs.
"Say you're sorry!!!"
"Never!" Alex twists herself again, reaching up to try and push Kara aside and only succeeding in knocking Kara's glasses off.
"Say it!!" Her fingers find a point just above Alex's hipbone that has Alex arching and breathless, and Alex can't take any more.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"
Kara lets out a victorious Ha! and, mercifully, stops tickling her.
Alex gasps for breath, wheezing and addled. Her laughter dies down, and, once she regains control over her body, she wraps her arms around Kara's waist.
Kara flops against her, knocking the wind from Alex's lungs for a moment, and she feels those same feelings again. The hunger from when she woke up, the thrumming in her chest. Almost overwhelming. She feels so much - so much more than she ever thought she could.
"How was this for a new memory with me here?" Alex murmurs against Kara's neck, and feels some urge to do...something. She doesn't know what. So she ignores it.
"Hmm..." Kara grins, fingers stroking through Alex's hair, and pretends to think about the question.
Her head tilts as she goes through the motions, exposing her throat, and the feelings in Alex's chest get stronger. She swallows, hard, and tries to look away. It doesn't really work.
Kara looks back at her, mischief in her eyes. "It was okay, I guess."
Alex scoffs and pokes Kara in the side. "I swear, if I didn't love you, blood of mine..." The phrase slips out without thinking - but it feels right. Kara called her it, that first transfusion. It feels natural.
Kara giggles. "Yeah. But ya do, so you gotta deal with it."
"I do." Alex smiles up, staring into Kara's eyes, and finding she means the words unreservedly. "I really do."