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When they started dating three years ago, she did not, in any sort of way, imagine herself here.
Cat Grant has never been a people’s person, let alone one who goes on family trips. She prides herself in sharp, well decorated environments, well fitted clothing and orderly drunkenness. She is not someone who enjoys overcrowded spaces, loud chatter or board games.
She never guessed that Kara, with sweet smiles, kind eyes and pure, unaltered joy would be able to drag her into her personal nightmare. Especially not in her own house.
“Do you think this can stay out?” Alex asks her, holding a carton of milk.
“No amount of alcohol is going to be enough if Carter drinks spoiled milk.” She shakes her head, taking a sip from her glass as good measure.
Alex puts the carton back on the shelf and stares at the open fridge, bringing the bottle of wine she still holds towards her chest.
“Well, that’s not gonna fit, then.” The woman sighs.
"What a time for the wine cooler to break down.” Cat checks her phone for the hundredth time, still not finding any reply from the repairman.
“I don’t know why you guys need ten bottles of wine, anyway. We’re only here for two weeks.”
They both turn to find Kara, bikini clad and munching at a handful of grapes, sitting on the kitchen island’s stool. Cat’s heart jumps in her chest, so she looks away. There are tiny little oranges drawn on the woman’s top.
“Two weeks with my mother, my sister, my sister’s girlfriend, my sister’s girlfriend’s son, my wife, my sister’s mom and my sister’s mom’s girlfriend, half of these people being aliens. That’s why.” Alex grunts, hugging the wine bottle closer.
“Lucy and mom won’t get in until Thursday.” Kara offers through a mouthful.
Honestly, Cat has no idea how she got here.
“I’m pretty sure we have some portable coolers in the attic, if you’re willing to go up there.” Cat turns back to Alex, ignoring the nearly naked Kryptonian sitting two feet away.
“How high is the probability of running into spiders?”
“Medium.”
“I’ll go get my mom.” Alex sighs.
“So you don’t have to put on sunscreen?” Carter asks, groaning as Cat reapplies said cream on his back for the second time.
“Our skin cells regenerate too quickly to noticeably burn and we do not get skin cancer.” Astra explains.
“Flying, super-speed, laser sight, freeze breath and super-skin? I wish I was a Kryptonian.” Her son sighs heavily, raising his arms when she asks him to.
“Yes, our bodies are superior.” Astra doesn’t bat an eye, slurping her coconut water through her biodegradable straw.
“Astra.” Alex grumbles from her place sunbathing on the floor, not even lifting her head.
It takes the other woman a couple of seconds of confusion to understand why she was being chastised.
“Sorry, little Grant. Kryptonians are not superior. We are just different.” Astra corrects herself.
Cat has made enough fake apologies to know the woman is probably rolling her eyes underneath her sunglasses.
“And besides, taking care of yourself is always important, Carter. Even if it seems small and annoying.” She adds, tapping him on the arm to sign she is done.
“Amen to that.” Eliza chirps in, speaking for the first time in a while.
Cat doesn’t know much about Kara’s adoptive mother, but she has seemed happy enough in the last few days to just sit on a beach chair and read, which lets Cat know she’d probably like the woman, if they got to know each other better.
Squirting a good amount on her palm, Cat begins to reapply the sunscreen on herself when she hears laughter approaching. Looking up from her already tanning skin (honestly, it’s amazing how much she can burn in a couple of days, even with a FPS 70) she spots Kara and Alura walking closer, each holding a small, net-made bag and dripping salt water.
“Look what we found.” Kara smiles, handing Carter her bag before sitting down beside Cat, noticing the bottle and motioning for her to hand it over.
“Wow, these are so pretty!” The boy exclaims, turning a few shells over in his hands. Glistening under the intense sunlight, they have an almost iridescent look.
Kara’s palms are always cooler than usual after her daily swims, so Cat involuntarily flinches slightly when they make contact with the overheated skin of her shoulders. Pressing firmly enough, her girlfriend applies the cream while also massaging her muscles. A newly discovered comfort brought by this trip.
“Where did you get them, though? They don’t usually make it to the surface this intact.” Carter muses, twisting around so he can look from Kara to Alura.
“They weren’t on the surface.” Alura shrugs, taking her sister’s coconut, much to Astra’s dismay.
“Wait!” Carter’s eyes widen. “Did you guys swim to the ocean floor? ”
Cat looks over her shoulder sharply. Kara’s hands still.
“Hm…” She hesitates.
“Oh my God. ” Carter groans loudly.
Yet another newfound information: her son is most definitely a teenager.
A cold shower has always been a simple pleasure Cat enjoyed after spending a day out during summer. Having Kara pressed against her just makes things a lot more interesting.
They are more or less past the point in their relationship to have lustful quickies against the bathroom walls (they are always too cold and the last time around, her foot had slipped, caught on a sharp tile edge and her big toe had bled), so now Kara just holds her while they stand under the stream, the house relatively quiet as everyone recovers from the day.
Cat edges her head back enough to rest it against the woman’s collarbone, Kara’s thumb softly rubbing her belly.
“Wanna go walking around tonight?” Kara whispers against the her ear.
There’s nothing special about this, really. Nothing nearly as phenomenal as their first kiss, or the time they went to the Pulitzer and Cat’s first book actually won, or when they told Carter about their relationship and her son just smiled wide and hugged them both.
This moment is not necessarily important. They’ve had many alike before.
But there is something.
Something about the quiet weariness an afternoon on the beach brings, something about plain and simple stillness at the end of a happy day that makes her heart sing.
“Yeah, maybe.” She replies, turning around and standing on her tiptoes. “Or maybe we could do something else.”
Kara smiles, leaning the rest of the way down to her lips.
“I’m not saying your sister was wrong, little Lane. All I am saying is that her judgement of the situation was tactless, at best.”
Cat finishes loading the dishwasher, closing the door and pressing start.
“How would you have reacted, then, if someone had said the only reason Catco is still around is because of your relationship to Supergirl?” Lucy questions, drying a saucepan with perhaps more force than necessary.
“Certainly not by dedicating almost the entire following issue to an exposé on that person.” She pours herself more wine.
“Bullshit.” Lane exclaims, glancing apologetically at Carter, all the way over at the sofa. “You would’ve done exactly that.”
“I would not.”
“Cat,” Kara chuckles, taking the pan from Lucy and placing it on the highest shelf, “you would have.”
“Yeah, mom.” Carter chirps from the living room.
“Sounds like you all right.” Alex nods.
“No, I would not.” Cat motions with the same hand she holds her wine glass. “I would first release a bulletproof edition to shut him up and only then would I expose the bastard.”
“Yes, but Louis’ way did get him to issue a retraction real quick.”
“That’s because he was only after clout and got more than he bargained for.” Kara sighs, feet setting on the ground.
With that Cat can agree.
“I am trying to research this man, but your internet does not seem to be working.” Alura stares at her phone profusely.
“That’s your sister’s fault again.” Stepping in from the porch, Eliza has a smirk on her face.
“For fuck’s sake.” Alex whispers.
“Carter, stop asking Astra to fix the antenna!” Cat exclaims.
“Astra, get down from the roof!” Alex calls at the same time.
“We’re trying to play League of Legends!” They both reply.
“Thank you.” Alura says, breaking their usual early morning silence.
Over the past week and a half, it’d somehow become a routine of theirs. Cat had woken on the fourth day at her usual 6:00 AM, her body too used to early rising to stay longer in bed, and had made her way through the quiet corridors. Looking through the window, she’d seen Alura sitting on one of the outside chairs. It’d been slightly awkward to sit on the companion chair, but it would’ve been more so to stay alone inside. They hadn’t talked, both too enamored with the sound of waves and sea birds.
But now, Alura breaks their rule.
“What for?” Cat asks.
“For opening your house to us. You certainly didn’t have to.”
“Oh, it was no problem. We don’t use this house nearly as much as we should.”
“Perhaps, but it was still kind. And it is nice, to have family moments like these.”
Alura doesn’t look at her as she speaks, eyes fixed on the moving waters ahead as the sky starts shifting from orange to light-blue.
“It is definitely new.” Cat nods, remembering long summers spent only with her son.
They were wonderful, she knows. Being close to Carter is and always will be her greatest joy. He will never cease to amaze her, even at his most obnoxious teen outbursts.
Since Kara came around, though, her days have changed. There are new colors in the blandest of seasons.
“Astra and I never really had this growing up.”
“To be honest?” Cat glances sideways, deciding the woman is trustworthy enough. “Neither did I.”
“Our parents were good, and loved us well enough, I suppose, even if they were harsher on my sister. But they were influential people and vacations weren’t truly seen with good eyes in those circles.”
“Yeah, my mother was just not interested.” Cat chuckles, drinking the rest of her coffee to hide the slight discomfort that follows the statement.
“These people Kara found… Who somehow accepted my sister and I as well…” Alura’s voice shifts softly and when Cat glances over again, the woman no longer stares at the sea, but rather at the sky, seemingly lost behind the sparse clouds. “You all… You don’t realize how your kindness truly matters to us. We have lost much, but at least we have unity.”
She doesn’t know how to reply, so she waits.
“Again, thank you.” Alura shifts, meeting Cat’s eyes.
She can’t do much expect nod.
“I cannot believe this is actually happening.” She mumbles, pulling the cardigan tighter around her body, trying to protect herself from the cold gust windows from the ocean.
“They’ve been literally gathering wood for the past three days.” Lucy laughs beside her, nothing much for her to do either.
Some feet in front of them, the Kryptonians form a wooden structure, Alex pointing here and there for the best placement of each log and branch.
“Isn’t her degree in Biology?” Cat asks.
“My daughter is what I like to call ‘an expert on everything’.” Eliza provides, smirk on her face.
“I can think of a few other words for her.” Lucy grins.
By the forming bonfire, Astra stops with the last big branch in hand and looks back at them. “I would keep those to yourself, Major.”
Cat can’t possibly hold back the low uhhh that falls from her lips.
“Shut up.” Lucy chuckles.
Soon after, they all sit over towels in the sand around the crackling fire.
“Alright, so you have to put the marshmallow close to the flames, but try not to get it on them, otherwise they’ll burn too much.” Carter instructs and the twins pay an almost comical amount attention.
“I actually like the char.” Kara smiles, trusting her own sweet directly into the fire for good measure.
“That’s because I taught you well.” Alex yells from across the burning structure, pointing to her sister, the two exchanging an aerial high-five right after.
“Honestly, Kara.” Cat smirks, leaning closer, arm already looped through hers.
“It’s really good.” She returns her smile, seems to consider it for a moment before placing a kiss on her forehead. “I’ll give you a bite.”
“I’m fine with unburned, thank you.”
“Okay, now you place the marshmallow over the cracker with the chocolate, put the other cracker over it and pull the stick off.” Carter continues to instruct the Kryptonians, demonstrating each step with a spark on his eyes.
It’s a fleeing thought, but her son just might become a teacher.
Taking small bites from her S’more, Cat allows herself to lean her head against Kara yet again, her mind wandering for a bit.
“Here, try it.” Kara whispers, placing her dessert in Cat’s line of sight.
“I’ll pass.”
“You can’t say you don’t like it if you’ve never tried it.”
“Do I look like I’m ten years old?” She sighs, smile on her face as she takes the offering, taking a minuscule bite. It’s on the very edge of too much, but precisely right. She hates being proved wrong, so she just hands Kara her own S’more without a word.
“Told you.” Kara chuckles, not minding one bit.
A blast of blue light catches their attention and they look just in time to see Alura with a smoking marshmallow and some blackened sand by her feet.
“I think this is more efficient.” Alura smiles widely and Lucy begins to laugh.
Cat closes her eyes as the conversations start to mash together.
She does not like family vacations, prides herself in orderly fun. This one time, however, with these specific people, she will make an exception.