Chapter Text
The first night is easy. Kara spends most of the evening dealing with some new Reactron wannabe who’s built himself a mechanized suit that malfunctions before he can even land a punch and leaves Kara trailing after him, putting out fires and protecting innocent bystanders. At Alex’s insistence, she spends a few hours in the sunbed, then flies right to CatCo. And honestly? Who needs an apartment when she’s barely in it anyway?
The second night is a bit more challenging. She soars through the skies, but the city is quiet and still, no threats on the horizon, and she’s learned better than to swoop in and intervene for the little stuff every time. Instead, she floats by her old apartment building and looks wistfully at the massive hole in the side of the building that was once her home. She should’ve been more careful about not flying in and out of the balcony window so often—Alex did warn her—but it was just so convenient… And now she can’t even volunteer all her time as Supergirl to help expedite the building’s reconstruction because Alex is convinced even more people will realize it’s where she lives. Eventually, she heads back to CatCo and unrolls her sleeping bag on the ground in the little office Cat gave her just a few short weeks ago to prepare for her transition into a new job with Snapper.
The next morning, Cat narrows her eyes at Kara as she hands over Cat’s latte. But she’d showered down in the CatCo gym, and honestly, it’s not like she sweats like a human in the first place. Still, she gives herself a quick sniff before hurrying behind Cat and giving her a rundown of the most promising applicants to take over as Cat’s personal assistant. Once she’s handed over her typed notes on each of their strengths and potential “areas for growth” in the position, Cat folds her hands on her desk and sighs.
“Um, did I forget something, Ms. Grant?”
“Kara, how do I phrase this tactfully?”
Kara grimaces and braces herself for whatever is to come.
“If it has gotten to this point, perhaps a conversation about drawer space with Mr. Olsen is overdue.” Kara tilts her head to the side, and Cat gestures up and down with her hand. “The same hideous outfit two days in a row. Do I really need to spell it out for you?”
“Oh! Oh, no! I mean, yes, it is. But it’s not—I’m not—James and I aren’t dating.” She’s not sure why that feels like the most important thing to clarify, but it just is.
“Hmm.” Cat sits back in her chair. “Surprises all around from you, Kara. Be that as it may, a new day, a new outfit, yes?”
Kara’s cheeks flame red as she nods. “Of course.” She curses under her breath as she heads back to her office. She’d taken the change of clothes from the DEO after her night in the sunbeds there, but she’d forgotten that, in the midst of a dramatic change, she’d ripped all the buttons off the shirt she stored in her CatCo desk, and by the time she’d realized this morning it was too late to run back to Alex’s and grab a new outfit if she wanted to get Cat’s latte on time.
On her lunch break that day, she flies to Alex’s apartment and brings the whole suitcase back with her, stuffing it under her desk and hoping no one notices.
Of course, the following morning, she wakes up to a knocking at her office door. She superspeeds into a new outfit, and tries to look industrious, like someone who’d voluntarily started her workday at 6am, when she pops her head out the door. “Ms. Grant! I didn’t, um, expect you. Let me go get your latte, it’ll just take a moment, and I’ll—”
“It is far too early for that much rambling.” Cat rubs at the bridge of her nose, and Kara notices that she’s carrying her own coffee cup.
“Right. What can I, uh, do for you?”
“You remember the upgrades I made to the building’s security system a few years back, right?”
“Yes. Do they need updating?”
“No, no. But you might recall that I am alerted if, say, an employee swipes into the building in the middle of the night. Or if the door to the roof is wrenched open at 2 in the morning.”
“Oh.” Kara blinks back at Cat. “You see, there are actually many perfectly reasonable explanations.”
“Yes, yes, much like I have many perfectly reasonable explanations for deleting bits of my own security footage every time my mild-mannered assistant rips off her shirt in the stairwell and flies out from the roof to save the day.” Cat holds up a hand before Kara can interject. “I haven’t published anything in all this time, so please, no more excuses. We’ll just let it be an open secret…like the sexual history of a straight Radcliffe alum.”
“I’m sorry,” Kara whispers.
“Did I say I needed an apology?” Kara closes her mouth, and Cat continues on. “Now I may not pay you much, but surely you can still afford your apartment in whatever little artsy, half-gentrified corner of this city you call home.”
Rubbing at the back of her neck, Kara ducks her head. “It was, uh, targeted. Remember the Valeronians that came to town a week or so ago? Big guys, powerful axes, grudge against Supergirl for defeating their buddy Vartox last year?”
“Of course. CatCo’s copter caught their little boy’s night of drinking and destruction.”
With a sigh, Kara drops her head into her hands. “Yeah…that was my apartment.”
“I see.”
“And the D—uh, the people who help Supergirl, it’s just really cold and clinical there. And my sister is letting me stay with her, but also she’s dating James’s ex, and her bedroom doesn’t really have a door, and honestly, super-hearing is kind of a curse sometimes. A lot of the times, actually.” She shudders, and rubs at her eyes, realizing that she’s forgotten her glasses. Though, she figures, it really doesn’t matter anymore. At least not with Cat. “And hotels, well, they have security cameras and windows that don’t open, so it’s not really conducive to…you know.”
“Up, up, and away?” Cat asks, a teasing lilt to her voice that’s enough to have some of the tension easing from Kara’s shoulders.
“Something like that.”
Biting at the arm of her glasses, Cat nods her head a few times. “Give me a few hours.”
She’s gone before Kara can think to ask what she means, though a moment later, Cat pokes her head back in the doorway. “Oh, and I’ll need another latte at 8 to make up for how early I got here to have this little chat with you.”
“Yes, Ms. Grant.”
---
Kara figures Cat might have found a few short-term apartment listings. (Honestly, she’s been looking at them herself, but the idea of moving seems so…ugh.) Still, it would be thoughtful and helpful, and she’s pretty done with sleeping on an office floor and lying to Alex about why she hasn’t been back to sleep on her couch.
Instead, Cat comes into her office later that morning and tells her, “You can stay with us until your little apartment is fixed.”
Kara accidentally crushes the pen she’s holding and grabs a handful of tissues to blot up all the ink that’s now staining her hand. Cat shoots the offending object a disdainful look, but she shakes her hair out of her face and clarifies, “Obviously you’re coming over as Supergirl—there are plenty of large windows and balconies for you to leave from. I won’t suffer the optics of my assistant traipsing in and out of my home at odd hours of the night.”
“Soon to be former assistant,” Kara mumbles, even as she nods. “But, Ms. Grant, you really don’t have to do this.”
“I know, Kara. I’m rich enough that there are very few things I still have to do.”
“And what about Carter?”
“Why do you think I told you to wait a few hours? Obviously he was the first and only person I cleared this with.”
“Right. And he doesn’t mind?”
“Oh, he’s ecstatic at the idea.”
“And you? I mean, people might see Supergirl flying in and out of your apartment and think…you know.”
Cat shrugs. “And? Significantly less flattering things have been said about me.”
There’s no good response besides a very sincere thank you, which is how Kara finds herself landing on the balcony of Cat Grant’s penthouse apartment, two suitcases in her arms and a bag of pastries from Cat’s favorite French bakery clutched in her hand.
“Supergirl!” Carter cries, flinging open the balcony doors and motioning for her to come in.
“Hey Carter, it’s been a while, huh?”
Carter shoots an unimpressed look at her that’s strikingly reminiscent of Cat’s own work expressions. “I saw you last week, Kara. You helped me with my math homework.”
“Oh, you, uh, know?”
Cat cuts in, reaching out and taking the paper bag full of pastries from Kara before her fingers tear through it. “Like I’ve said, he’s quite brilliant. Also, you abandoned him while babysitting him every single time Supergirl was needed, then knew exactly where he was on the train and made sure he was safe before everyone else.”
Kara cringes at the reminders of exactly how disastrous that whole incident had been. “Right.”
“This way.”
She strides through the rooms, cutting as imposing of a figure barefoot in her own home as she does at CatCo. “Your room until your apartment has walls again.”
Kara peers in, her eyes widening at the plush carpeting and the bed that looks much more comfortable than her own. She carefully stows her bags in the corner before turning back to Cat.
“Some ground rules.” Kara fights the urge to pull out a notebook. “No shoes on inside.” Kara has her boots off and stowed in the closet in an instant. “I gave you the guest room with big bay windows for you to come and go, though you’re also welcome to the balcony. But if you come back covered in soot, grim, dirt, alien…goo, anything of the sort, you are not to step foot into this house until you are clean.”
Kara grimaces, remembering the time she’d insisted to Alex that she didn’t need to go back to the DEO with her, only to find that the supersuit she’d thrown into her hamper the night before had left her whole apartment smelling of rotten eggs by the next morning. “Got it.”
“If you finish something in the fridge or pantry, make a note of it so I can add it to the weekly grocery order. If Carter needs quiet for his homework, that means a quiet hours policy is in effect.”
“Anything else, Ms. Grant?”
Cat frowns. “Just Cat here. If you could manage it as Supergirl, you can manage it as Kara when you’re staying in my home.”
Kara gives a quick nod, then turns to Carter. “Anything I should or shouldn’t do for you?” Kara tries not to preen when she catches sight of Cat’s approving smile.
He shrugs. “We do weekly game nights if you have any games you want to play. Just don’t eat all the snacks here, okay? Mom doesn’t let me get that many.”
“Deal,” Kara agrees with a handshake and an easy smile.