Chapter Text
Kara just needed to get out there and meet some people.
That would fix all of her problems.
Well. Some of them. Meeting new people probably wouldn’t fix the fact that she was just trying to survive college. That is, without anyone finding out that she was, oh, an alien from another planet, Superman’s cousin, and, oh yeah, had a bunch of really cool super powers. That she could never use.
Because it was dangerous.
Which, to be fair, they were. Maybe they wouldn’t be, though, if Kara could actually practice using them for once. After all, Kal El seems pretty handy with his powers! And what was the point of being orphaned at thirteen and dumped onto some foreign planet that just happened to have a sun that gave her super cool powers if she couldn’t use them?
The point was, according to Jeremiah and Eliza Danvers, to become a functioning, educated member of society.
I feel like I could do that and laser eye some stuff every now and then. But whatever.
So, here she was, a freshman at National City University, fulfilling the “educated” part.
And just in case she got any ideas, good news! Her sister Alex was also at NCU, conveniently enough, to watch her like a hawk!
“What?” Alex had said. “National City University has a great medical program. Not everything is about you, Kara.”
Alex certainly had the “educated” part of her societal duty down. She had finished her undergrad in two and a half years, and was on her way to becoming the best medical doctor on Earth, probably. All while being a total buzz kill to Kara’s formative years in college.
So, since Kara clearly wasn’t going to be able to stretch her super-muscles any time soon, she decided to explore some of her other interests, and make some friends. Because, as Ms. Grant, her freshman advisor, had told her, the best thing to do was get involved in as many on-campus activities as possible. But, when she had went to the activities fair on campus, aka, a bunch of dining hall tables moved out to the east lawn with very disinterested looking upper classman handing out flyers for their clubs, nothing was really jumping out at her.
Except for the theater program. Some of Kara’s best memories from high school had been when she had gotten involved in the school productions.
“Are you an actor?” one of the students sitting at the “NCU Theater Arts Society” table had asked.
He was a little dorky looking, considering he was wearing tie and matching cardigan outside…in August…in California. But he had kind eyes, the very un-intimidating kind, and he actually looked like he cared about his appearance and how he presented himself, unlike most of his sandal-and-sock wearing male peers.
“Um...not really?” Kara replied.
“Do you sing?” he asked.
Kara had a flashback of joining her high school’s glee club, and shuddered.
“Not anymore,” Kara said, shaking her head vehemently. “I actually like the back stage stuff. I worked crew for a couple shows at my high school, and I helped build some sets.”
“Really?” the boy said, perking up instantly. “That is fantastic! No one ever wants to work crew! I’m Winn,” he said, standing and jutting his hand out of her to shake. “I work on lighting and sound for our theater program. I…uh, wanna be a stage technician professionally one day.”
Kara smiled, shaking his hand. “That’s really cool.”
“Heh, you should tell that to my family. They don’t seem to think it’s a great idea.”
“Well, you have a better chance making a career working tech than trying to be an actor.”
“That’s what I said!” he exclaimed. “Anyway, you don’t wanna hear about my family issues. Um, here, if you could write down your name and school email address, I can get in contact with you soon so we can see how we can put you to work. There are three different productions a year, a play in the fall, the student-produced one acts early in spring semester, and the musical at the end of the year. I’d like to say that the spring musical is more tech-intensive than the fall play, but…the director sort of hates musicals…so he tends to be pretty heavy handed with the fall play.”
Kara scoffed.
“How can he hate musicals? Everyone loves musicals!”
Winn tilted his head to the side as if he knew something she didn’t.
“I’ll see if you feel the same way at the end of the year.”
(She should have seen the red flag then. She had no idea what she was in for…)
*
Winn emailed her later in the day, as a part of a group email, letting anyone who had signed up for stage work know that they were going to have a brief meeting with the Winn, the stage manager, and “Professor Olsen” next Friday during the actor auditions.
The meeting couldn’t come fast enough for Kara. She knew that it was a good idea for have a single dorm room instead of opting to have a roommate, in case she would accidentally display her super strength, heat vision, or number of other super powers. But Kara was incredibly lonely so far at school. She had never been good at socializing on her own, she usually just hung out with whoever Alex was friends with. But Alex had mostly night classes, so outside of lunch breaks at the coffee house, she was never available when Kara was. And even when she was, Alex’s apartment was two miles from campus, and since Kara had to use public transportation instead of just flying, she wasn’t always able to just pop by and see Alex. And, truth be told, she didn’t want to be popping in to see her sister all the time, because Kara didn’t want to have to admit to Alex that she was having a hard time making friends.
She was having such a hard time being social, in fact, that Kara would sometimes make it through a whole day of classes without saying a single word to anyone. She felt amazingly isolated, and she didn’t know what to do about it. So, when Friday rolled around, she was half tempted to fly to the stage crew meeting just to get there faster.
When she found her way to Luthor Hall (she had no idea why the Luthor family would donate enough money to a university to have their name slapped all over several buildings, despite being nowhere near Metropolis), a group of students were sitting in the lounge outside the theater doors. She knew instantly that these were the actors, because none of them had any concept of personal space with one another. One guy was attempting to braid his friend’s hair, four students had formed a “massage chain”, and one girl was sprawled across three of her friends’ laps, napping. All of them held stapled packets of paper, which were likely the scripts they were going to be reading from. The only person she could see who was actually reading over the script was a girl in a form fitting black skirt, white button up blouse, long, dark hair, and ruby red lips. She stood a few paces apart from the rest of the group, mouthing the words on the page to herself.
Kara found herself staring at this girl for a moment, before the doors to the theater cracked open, and Winn stepped out. “Um, we can take the first person now, so, either somebody volunteer or I’m gonna randomly pick one of you. Oh, Kara, hi! Come on in.”
“Oh, um, okay. Am I late?”
“Huh? Oh, no. We like to have tech meetings during rehearsals to see if the actors can perform during interruptions.”
“Screw you, Winn!” one of the actors called jokingly.
Winn tilted his head to the side, and lifted a middle fingers towards the waiting group.
As Winn ushered Kara in to the theater, and she instantly felt at home. The entry doors opened to lowest level of the “house”, or, the audience section of the theater. To the right was the stage, and to the left were the audience seats, ascending upwards, with a set of wide, faded blue carpet steps on each side of the dark blue audience seats. At the very top of the audience seating there was a small, walled in booth with a wide window facing the stage. That must be the sound booth, Kara thought.
This theater was a little bit smaller than the one she was used to at her high school. For a university as large as NCU, she had expected a larger theater.
A grumpy, balding man sat at a “desk” Kara was accustomed to seeing in her high school theater. It wasn’t actually a desk, it was a sheet of plywood nailed to two wood planks positioned atop seats in the audience, so that the director had a sturdy surface to write on while still sitting in the audience seats to watch the actors. Sitting next to the scowl faced man was a girl in a leather jacket and ripped jeans, with bleached white hair and neon blue colored contacts. Her expression was similarly as full of disdain as the older man next to her. The difference was that he was hunched towards the ‘desk’ and she leaned away from it, combat boots resting atop the plywood, legs spread in a very unfeminine manner.
In the row behind them, a tall man with a strong jaw and a kind smile was sprawled leisurely in his seat, leafing through a binder in his hand.
Winn guided her up to the trio.
“Hey, so this is Kara! Kara, this is Dr. Carr,” he gestured to the grumpy man, “Leslie Willis,” he gestured to the white haired girl, “and Jimmy Olsen.”
“Winn,” the tall man warned.
“Right! Sorry! It’s, um, Professor James Olsen. James is standing in as our Stage Craft professor, you know, for now, until we can find a replacement for the last guy. He graduated two years ago, so I’m still used to calling him Jimmy. Sorry, dude.”
James smiled. “No worries, man.”
“Uh, nice to meet you,” Kara said to the three of them, but more so to James. He was pretty cute, honestly.
Dr. Carr regarded her for a moment with more condescension in his face than Kara could have ever thought possible.
“Uh huh,” he said, and that was the end of that introduction, apparently.
She wasn’t even going to try anything more towards Leslie than a smile, which was not returned.
“So, Kara,” James piped up, “I heard you have some stage craft experience?”
Kara grinned broadly.
“I mean…I know my way around power tools, if that’s what you mean,” she said, laughing breathily at her own joke.
She didn’t blame Winn, Leslie, and Dr. Carr for giving her a strange look.
What the hell was that, Kara?
James, however, continued to smile brightly.
“Well, that is good to know,” he said. “You have no idea many students come through here that don’t even know how to use a hammer. Here, I’ll show you the set designs I’ve been working on to give you an idea of what we’ll be building this semester.”
James ushered her to sit next to him, and she obliged, blushing slightly.
“Well, are we gonna sit here all day waiting for someone to grow a pair or what?” Leslie barked suddenly, causing Kara to jump.
Kara got the feeling that Leslie’s current level of annoyance was pretty typical.
“Oh, yeah,” Winn said, and sprinted back down the steps. “Hey, guys!” he called to the entry door of the theater. “The fuck? Somebody get in here!”
Well, Kara thought, college was apparently a bit more…blunt than high school.
“So, uh,” she said to James, “what show are we doing?”
The theater doors groaned open, and a tall, shaggy haired guy handed Winn his audition sheet and trotted up to the stage. Winn handed the paper to Dr. Carr, who tossed it at Leslie. Winn then plopped down in a seat behind James and Kara.
James flipped to the first page of his binder. Meanwhile, Leslie called out a page number and character for the actor to read.
“It’s called ‘The Birth of Merlin’,” James said to Kara, “ever heard of it?”
Kara shook her head.
“Yeah,” Winn whispered, poking his head between Kara and James as the student on stage began to read the part out loud. “There’s a reason for that. It’s one of those plays Shakespeare put his name on as a co-author, even though if you have any familiarity with Shakespeare at all you’d know that this isn’t his writing style at all. It’s…um…interesting.”
“Is that the nice way of saying that it sucks?” Kara whispered back, careful not to be overheard by Dr. Carr.
James chuckled.
“Pretty much, yeah. Snapper- that’s what we call Dr. Carr, he tends to pick more…unknown plays. He likes to feel like everything he does is ‘original’. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a brilliant director, really knows his stuff, but…he’s not helping the theater department out at all by producing plays that no one wants to see.”
Kara was no stranger to actors and crew members having negative comments about their director, but she still thought that James and Winn were pretty bold to be talking about ‘Snapper’ in this manner when he was literally right in front of them. Either Dr. Carr was hard of hearing, or he just didn’t care about what anyone had to say about him anymore.
The actor on stage was making a pretty atrocious attempt at a British accent, distracting the two from their chat.
Dr. Carr cleared his throat.
“Just speak in your normal voice, kid,” he said.
The actor seemed to deflate at Dr. Carr’s critique, but he pressed on.
“Anyway,” Winn said, “best summary of the story I can give is that the devil disguises as a hot dude and hooks up with a girl. The girl gets pregnant with the future magician Merlin, while the British court is slowly taken over by the recently defeated Saxons because they have a hot princess and straight men are weak. Merlin is born, becomes a full grown adult in like five seconds, helps the British defeat the Saxons, again, basically slut shames his mom into exile, tells his Devil dad to fuck off, and by the end of the play, becomes King Uther’s right hand guy.”
Kara blinked a couple of times.
“Alright then. Good summary,” Kara said.
“The stage design I have in mind is pretty simple,” James cut in, “Jacobian era designs, with a flair of steampunk to make some visual differences between the British and the Saxons.”
Kara’s eyes widened. “Cool. I totally know what all those words mean.”
James laughed.
“Here, take a look,” he said, flipping through his concept drawings.
At some point while the trio were talking shop, the first actor had left the stage and the sound of heels clacking filled Kara’s senses as the dark haired girl she had noticed earlier stepped up to the stage.
Kara was aware that James was still talking to her, explaining various dimensions and mechanisms of the larger set structures, but she couldn’t bring herself to pay attention. Something about the girl’s presence was impossible to ignore. She stood on that stage like she owned it, like this wasn’t an audition but a performance that the group sitting in the audience was blessed to witness. Kara realized that the description that came to mind was a description she would typically think of for the bratty theater girl type she was used to enduring, but this was different. Those types of girls demanded attention, whereas the girl on stage captured your attention instantly and effortlessly.
Leslie, who seemed to bristle at her entrance, spat out a page number and part for the girl to read.
“Who is that?” Kara asked, completely interrupting James mid-sentence.
“Are you serious?” James asked.
“Dude, that’s Lena Luthor,” Winn chimed in.
Kara stiffened at the name, thinking of her cousin and all the hardship the Luthor name had caused him.
“Like, Luthor as in..”
“Lex Luthor’s little sister,” Winn replied. “Yeah, I know.”
“Why does she go to school so far away from Metropolis?”
“Nobody knows,” Winn said, “but her family donated a ridiculous amount of money to the school to make sure it was smooth sailing for her here. That’s why their name is on a couple of buildings. They paid to have the science and medical buildings totally redone and upgraded. We have like, the most state of the art tech now. Which is convenient for Lena, seeing as she’s a double major in computer science and biology, with a minor in theatre. Honestly, I don’t know if she even sleeps.”
“It must be nice to be able to practically buy your own university,” James said.
Kara frowned, unsure of how to respond to this new information. On one hand, she totally understood why the general opinion of the students was to dislike Lena. But on the other hand, at least at first glance, Lena didn’t seem to carry the same air of arrogance that most of her family likely had. At least, that Kara assumed that they had. And Kara couldn’t help but empathize with someone who was overshadowed by a family member…
Plus she couldn’t help but be totally enthralled with her audition. Lena was…really talented. She used the whole stage to her benefit instead of standing in stoically in place like so many other students had. She seemed actually familiar with what she was reading; really performing it instead of stumbling to pronounce half the words and sentence structures (it was, supposedly, Shakespeare, after all). Kara honestly wasn’t even able to pretend to pay attention to James and Winn until Lena had finished her monologue and stepped down from the stage. As she thanked Dr. Carr and Leslie, her eyes met Kara’s, and Lena let the unreadable expression on her face break for a moment to smile at her.
Kara swallowed hard.
“Um,” she said, quickly trying to change the subject, “aren’t there supposed to be more stage crew people here?”
James and Winn shared a knowing chuckle.
“Yeah,” James said, “you probably won’t see any of the stage crew until tech week. I never have been able to get people to come to meetings.”
“Honestly, we were surprised that you showed up,” Winn said.
“Oh,” Kara said, feeling a bit foolish for being so excited to come.
Still, she was glad that she met James and Winn. She could tell that she was going to get along with both of them pretty well. She regretted not taking a Stage Craft class this semester. It would have been fun to have James as a professor. Not because she thought he was cute or anything…
The rest of the evening went by fairly quickly. Kara agreed to hang around through the remaining auditions. The three of them swapped their personal theater horror stories, almost all of them involving tech week (the week before performances when all of the light, sound, and special effect cues were tested), and Kara took the opportunity to observe Dr. Carr and Leslie, since she would be working with them more in the future. The pair’s collective disdain for their work made Kara glad that she had Winn and James as a buffer between them and her. She wondered why Leslie had even agreed to be a stage manager, since she was apparently so miserable doing it. She kept that question to herself, however.
Kara was little bummed when the last of the sub-par auditions were through. She didn’t want to go back to her lonely dorm room already.
James walked with her out of Luthor Hall.
“So, I’m in the theater pretty much all day Tuesdays and Thursdays with my students working on the set. You’re welcome to come by and lend a hand if you’re ever bored.”
Kara smiled brightly. “Sounds like a plan, professor.”
On her walk back to her dorm room, Kara sent Alex a text.
Message To: Big Sis
I’ve found my people!
(Alex was in the middle of a boring night lecture, so she quickly replied.)
You theatre geek.
That is insulting! PS, did you know that
Lex Luthor’s sister went to school here?
Umm..no. Are you okay with that?
Should you tell Clark?
No…she doesn’t seem to be as crazy.
Plus, no one knows Superman has a
cousin. It should be fine.
Alright. Wait. Is she a theatre geek
too?
…maybe?
Then she’s definitely crazy. :P
Whatever, med school nerd!! :-*
*
It was amazing how much more comfortable Kara felt in her own skin once she felt like she had a place where she could belong. She got more interested in her class subjects, she started to participate in lectures, her professors even started to know her name. Her favorite class to go to, however, was James’ stage craft class. Which she went to every week, even though she wasn’t getting any class credit for it. She had tried to get credit for it, but Ms. Grant had, affectionately, informed her: “You are already maxed out at 18 credits this semester. Be an insufferable over-achieving freshman, if you must, but do it on your own time.”
Kara usually would only go to one of the two classes a week. She didn’t want to seem over eager, or like a nerd with no friends. Or that she had a little crush on James…
James always seemed to appreciate whenever she was there, however. After the first week, he had even started letting her work unsupervised while he would give technical lectures to the students. (he had a really great speaking voice. Like, a really great speaking voice). Sometimes he would even give her a handful of his students to help her with projects. Once or twice, students had mistaken her for a TA. She didn’t correct them after the first time it happened, because people tended to give her a weird look when she informed them that no, in fact, she was just a freshman with some free time.
Kara was pretty excited about what the end product of the set was going to look like. She often found herself looking at the small diorama of the set design that James had built, spinning the little gears on the walls, because she was allowed to touch it, and none of the other students could. She always imagined little mice dressed in costumes, running around the tiny set, little fake swords attached to their hips. She chuckled to herself.
“You good, Kara?” James called, snapping her out of her mouse daydreams. She spun around rapidly, her face feeling hot.
“Oh, uh, yeah. I was just…um, yeah.” She fidgeted with her glasses. “What’s up?”
“I know we don’t do much work during the actor rehearsals, but would you mind coming by tonight, anyway? Winn needs some help getting measurements for the costumes.”
“Wait, Winn designs the costumes, too?”
“You bet your ass, I do!” Winn yelled down to them.
He had been sitting on the catwalk above them, fiddling with the light plugs so the currents all matched.
“I have handmade all of the costumes since sophomore year,” he continued proudly. “I think it’s a pretty manly skill to have. I just don’t like the whole…touching people…part.”
Kara laughed. “Yeah, that’s fine. I can come by to help. What time?”
“Seven…ow!” Winn yanked his hand back from the plugs. “I forgot to switch the fuses off, didn’t I?”
“You’re gonna get yourself killed, Winn,” James said, shaking his head.
*
That night, Kara brought some of her homework in to the dressing room, since her work load had gotten pretty intense pretty fast. It was a stark white room, bright, round lightbulbs framing each of the vanity mirrors that lined the wall. Since they were the only way to light the room, they were all on so that Winn could see what he was doing. And since the bulbs burned hot, the room got really warm really fast. And in case she were capable of forgetting how hot the room was, each time an actor walked in for their measurements, they made sure to complain about it. Loudly. As if Kara weren’t already aware of this.
There were fifteen cast members, and somehow, miraculously, they were all in the same place at the same time. Typically, if an actor found out that they weren’t in any of the scenes being rehearsed that night, they were somehow sucked into an alternate dimension of existence, never to be seen or heard from again until the next rehearsal. Not that she could blame them. The page requirements to writing assignments at NCU were ridiculous.
Kara was half convinced that Leslie had made individually horrifying threats to each and every cast member to get them to hang around this evening so they could be measured.
Winn had racks of old costumes lined up in a bare corner of the dressing room. Most of them made by him. Kara was pretty impressed by his work.
“How do you find time to do your school work?”
“Eh,” Winn said. Flipping through his booklet of rough costumes sketches and looking through his existing creations for inspiration. “You get to a certain point of your college career when you’ve hit max capacity of how much anxiety your body can handle, and the whole system just overloads and short circuits. Once that happens, you’d be surprised how much you can get done, you know, when you no longer have a functioning soul.”
Kara was mildly concerned by Winn’s expressionless face and monotone voice as he said that last part.
“Besides,” he continued, “all of my basic courses are out of the way, and all the classes I have left to take are about stuff I already know how to do. PS, for future reference, frosh, you can just have Dr. Carr sign all of this stuff off as course credit. No use doing anything around here for nothing.”
“I know about that, now,” Kara lamented, trying to find a recurring theme in Beowulf for a paper due next week, and just generally hating her life.
One by one the actors came into the dressing room to get measured. Kara knew that it wasn’t going to be the most fun thing in the world to do, but after the first two actors that came in were upperclassman guys who were a little too interested in the fact that Kara was a freshman as she tried to measure their inseams, she really regretted agreeing to this. By the fourth person she put herself into a numb routine to avoid freaking out on someone: nod along as the actors tried to make chit chat with her or Winn, look only at the measuring tape and nothing else, and if anyone made Kara uncomfortable, she would ‘accidentally’ prick them with a fabric needle.
After an hour and a half, Winn and Kara were both sweaty and miserable. They had two or three more actors to go, so Kara told her self that if she managed to force through it, and she would reward herself with ice cream. Lots and lots of ice cream.
While Kara was busy fantasizing about mint chocolate chip, lying face down on the floor, groaning loudly to no one in particular, because that made her feel better, that was when Lena Luthor walked in.
Lena knocked on the open door before walking in. Kara sprang up off the floor, cheeks flushing instantly. Lena was always more professional-looking than her peers. Today she had on an emerald green silk blouse that matched her eyes and tight black pants. She locked her gaze on Kara, looking somewhere between amused and concerned.
“You alright?” She asked, holding in a laugh.
Kara noticed Lena still had her signature blood red lipstick on. She swallowed hard, unsure of why Lena made her so nervous.
“Uh, yeah,” Kara replied. “It’s just…been a long day. And it’s really warm in here.”
“No kidding,” Lena said, stepping further into the small room that now seemed more suffocating than before.
“Ah!,” Winn called, popping up from between the racks of clothing, “our Artesia has arrived!”
Kara gave Winn a confused look.
“That’s her character. Our seductive Saxon of the play, right, Lena?”
Lena rolled her eyes, seemingly unimpressed by her given role.
“Yeah,” Winn said to Kara, “Dr. Carr doesn’t really bother to cast Lena as anything other than whatever ‘femme fatale’ role is in whatever production he’s doing. To be fair, she does have the look, but it’s getting kind of old.”
“I can only pretend to be attracted to so many bland college boys before I lose my mind,” she said, sighing.
Kara found herself staring at Lena again.
“Umm, Kara?” Winn said, snapping her out of a trance.
“Huh?” she replied.
“Measurements?” he said, gesturing to Lena.
“Oh, yeah, sorry,” Kara said, grabbing her tape off of the countertop next to her.
“Think I’ve put on weight, Winn?” Lena said, standing in the middle of the room, waiting on Kara.
“What?” Winn laughed uncomfortably, “No! I just…want to be exact. Well, that, and I lost last year’s measurement chart.”
Lena pursed her lips at Winn, feigning irritation.
“What?” he said, “it’s weird to just keep a folder of people’s body measurements, anyway.”
Lena shook her head and looked expectantly at Kara. Kara cleared her throat, wiping her palms on her pant legs in case they were sweaty. She noticed that Winn seemed to treat Lena differently than the rest of their peers did, that is, he didn’t totally ignore her. Of course, Kara figured that Winn probably could get along with everyone he met. He was just one of those people.
Tentatively, Kara wrapped the measuring tape around Lena’s waist, afraid to even let a finger touch her stomach. She didn’t know why she was so much more afraid to touch Lena than any of the other students. Maybe it was the fact that Lena insisted on keeping her eyes on Kara the whole time, when all the other actors had looked straight ahead. Kara could feel her cheeks burning, reminding herself to breathe normally, and wishing that Lena would just quit looking at her like that. She swore that Lena was smirking at her, as if she knew what was going on in Kara’s head. Kara was tempted to prick her with a needle just to get her to cut it out. She measured Lena’s stomach, her hips, and the length of her legs. She thought she was going to get away with not measuring Lena’s bust until Winn insisted on reminder her.
You try measuring her, then, Winn, she thought, irritated.
She held her breath, eyes flicking up at Lena occasionally to make sure she wasn’t making her uncomfortable. Lena was still giving her that damn look, watching her every move, smug. Kara couldn’t help but roll her eyes, frustrated. Lena actually chuckled when she did.
So, she is messing with me.
Finished, Kara tossed the tape aside, sitting in a nearby chair and crossing her arms. Was this why people didn’t talk to her? Because she liked to play mind games?
“Okay, awesome,” Winn said, looking over the numbers he had written down, “I actually have a dress from a few seasons ago I might be able to…sex up a bit for this play. Do you mind trying it on, Lena?”
“No problem,” she said, and immediately started stripping out of her clothes before Kara could even look away.
Kara jerked her head upwards, looking at the ceiling, feeling more and more uncomfortable by the second. She was no stranger to actors changing in front of each other like it was no big deal, but she still felt unnerved enough by Lena to make it weird. Winn strolled towards the clothing rack, picked up the dress he had in mind, and brought it over to Lena, clearly unbothered by the fact that she was standing around in a matching set of lacy black lingerie. Kara kept telling herself not to look.
Kara looked down from the ceiling when Lena had the dress on. It was a long dress made of burgundy velvet, with modest white fabric covering her bust.
“Yeah, it’s an okay fit,” Winn said, looking Lena over, tugging at the fabric where it was too loose, “I’ll make some adjustments, and get rid of all of that,” he said, gesturing to the white fabric.
“It wouldn’t be a play worth putting on if I didn’t whip the girls out, right?” Lena remarked, tugging the neckline of the dress down jokingly. “We all good, Winn?”
“Yep, we’re good!” he said cheerfully as he scribbled in his notebook. “Thank you very much, darlin.”
Lena turned towards Kara, hands on her hips likes she was waiting for something. Kara raised her eyebrows, shrugging her shoulders to indicate that she didn’t know what it was Lena wanted.
“Help me out of this, will you?” Lena said, smiling devilishly.
Kara knew that Lena was probably able to get out of the dress herself perfectly fine. She thought about just telling her so and storming out, but instead she sighed agitatedly and got up to oblige.
What a brat, Kara thought.
Lena pulled her dark hair to one side of her neck so that Kara could unzip her. Clearing her throat, Kara unzipped the dress, trying not to let her eyes hover on the pale, soft looking skin of Lena’s back as the zipper rolled slowly downwards. Kara felt heat creeping up the back of her neck as the dress dropped to the floor, and she clenched her hands nervously into fists as she stepped away from Lena, relaxing them again at her sides. Lena turned to face Kara, stepping out of the dress and into Kara’s personal space, entirely too close to her, her bare skin practically pressing up against Kara.
Kara knew her face was red.
“Thank you,” Lena said, tilting her head, looking Kara up and down. “I didn’t catch you name.”
Kara looked off to the right, unable to speak with a half-naked Lena Luthor so close to her.
“Kara. Kara Danvers.” she said through gritted teeth.
“Thank you, Kara Danvers,” Lena said, letting her name roll off her tongue in a way that should have been illegal. Kara swallowed hard.
Lena put her clothes back on, smiling at Kara again before leaving. Kara let the breath out that she had been holding since Lena walked in the dressing room.
Winn started laughing behind her. Kara spun around, scowling at him.
“Don’t freak out, frosh. That’s just how she says ‘hi’.”
“She’s like that with everyone?” Kara exclaimed, collapsing back into her chair.
“Uh,” Winn said, “actually, no. She’s only like that with pretty girls.”
Kara’s eyes widened.
“Oh…so, she’s…”
“Hella,” Winn replied, assuming what she was going to say.
Kara huffed a breath out of her nose, exasperated.
“Well, that doesn’t give her an excuse to make people so…uncomfortable.”
Winn shrugged.
“She’s a Luthor. They’re kind of used to getting what they want.”
Kara snapped her mouth shut, afraid to continue to conversation to be led to the conclusion that what Lena ‘wanted’ might be Kara. That obviously wasn’t true.
Once they were done with the last measurements, Kara couldn’t get out of that dressing room fast enough. She rushed through the theatre to the exit doors, pretending she didn’t notice Lena winking at her from up on the stage as she walked past.
*
When she got back to her dorm, Alex was sprawled out on one the couches of the dorm lounge. Standing next to her, looking slightly peeved, was one of the campus security guards. Not the cranky old guy Kara was used to seeing around her building, but the younger brunette woman that most people mistook for a student when she wasn’t in full uniform.
“Alex!” Kara exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
“My class let out early, I thought I’d come bother my baby sister. Where were you, anyway?”
“Uh, helping out with some theater stuff.”
“Ugh, God you’re a nerd,” Alex said, pulling herself up off the couch. “See, I do know someone who lives here,” she snapped to the security guard. “And I’m a student, so I don’t know why you’re giving me such a hard time.”
The security guard rolled her eyes.
“No one is allowed in these dorms unless they live here or are signed in by a resident at the desk. How did you get past the floor RA?”
Alex shrugged innocently.
“Same way I got past you, sweet heart.”
Kara stepped between the two women before the other woman lost her cool on Alex.
“I’m sorry, uh…”
“Sawyer,” the woman said. “Maggie.
“Okay, Maggie. Can I call you Maggie? Yeah. Uh, sorry about my sister. I’ll make sure she signs in, okay?”
Maggie glared at Alex a moment before nodding to Kara and storming out of the lounge.
Alex had a smug smile on her face as she watched Maggie leave.
“She’s cute,” Alex said.
Kara sighed, walking up the stairs towards her dorm room.
“You are shameless, Alex.”
“What? You weren’t getting a vibe from her?” Alex said, following her, “I definitely got a vibe from her. I think she’s into me.”
“And I think that all those hours in a boring medical lab are making you delusional,” Kara replied, opening her door and tossing her things onto her bed.
“Whoa, now. Med school is super fun. I get to cut into dead bodies. It’s awesome.”
Kara grimaced at her sister, who was making herself comfortable in Kara’s oversized bean bag chair.
“You’re strange, you know that?” Kara said, pulling two pints of ice cream out of her freezer and tossing one at Alex.
“And you’re a dork,” Alex retorted. Kara stuck her tongue out at her in reply.
“So,” Alex said, “how’s college life going, frosh? I haven’t heard much from you in a couple days.”
“Yeah, I have a lot of stuff going on right now. Question, do professors give all the same due dates on purpose?”
“Yes. They’re evil people, Kara,” Alex said, digging a spoon into her ice cream, “don’t let them fool you. But who cares about boring academic stuff? Are you making friends?”
“Yeah, actually, I’m getting to know the people in the theater department pretty well. I really like the one stage craft professor.”
“You mean that young guy? What do you mean by like? You got a little crush on a professor?”
“What? No!” Kara exclaimed, fighting the grin off of her face.
Alex gave her a look of over dramatized shock.
“So that’s it? A teacher? You haven’t given a second glance to any other campus hotties?”
Stupidly, Kara let her mind drift for a second to the visual memory of a half-naked Lena Luthor smirking at her. She physically shook the thought from her head.
“Nope,” Kara replied, “no one.”
“Good,” Alex said, “guys are total creeps towards freshman girls anyway. I will beat anyone up who comes anywhere near you without your consent.” She stuffed a huge spoonful of ice cream into her mouth. “Oh,” she said, mouth full, “what’s goin on with that Lena Luthor chick? She up to any evil plotting?”
Kara rolled her eyes, still irritated with how smug Lena was.
“No. I don’t think she’s evil. She’s just a big pain in the ass.”
“Why do you say that?”
Kara shrugged, not really comfortable telling her about the flustering time Lena had given her in the dressing room.
“Oh, you know. Just, typical theater diva stuff.”
“Hmm, well, maybe her version of evil is gonna come out in a very ‘phantom of the opera’ type manner.”
Kara cackled at the visual of Lena with a half messed up face and a big, black cape. She would have to picture that if Lena ever tried to mess with her again.
“Well, even if she was evil,” Kara said, “It’s not like I would be able to do anything about it. Those are the rules, right?”
Alex sighed, getting up from the beanbag chair to sit next to Kara on her bed.
“Kara,” she said softly, “Mom and Dad and I aren’t just trying to keep you from using your powers to be mean or controlling, and you know that. We just want you to be safe.”
“I understood that before, Alex, but I’m in college now! I’m an adult, by Earth standards. I should be able to make my own choices. And as much as I’m enjoying college and everything, I just know that I could be more than all of…this.”
“And you will be,” Alex insisted, “You will. You will do great things. But you don’t have to be like Superman to be great, Kara. And especially considering that Lex Luthor’s little sister is hanging around, you need to be careful. If she found out who you were…”
Kara slumped against the wall behind her bed, defeated. If she hadn’t won this argument in all the years leading up until now that she’d lived with the Danvers, she certainly wasn’t going to now.
“You’re right,” she sighed, not really believing it. “You’re right.”
Alex pulled her into a hug.
“I love you,” she said. “Now gimme your laptop, there’s a show I want you to see.”
Kara groaned.
“Alex, I have a lot of homework.”
“That’s what all-nighters are for, frosh. Come on, one episode.”
Kara groaned again, but obliged.