Lunar or Later - Chapter 1

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Description:  Lena couldn’t be happier when it comes to light that aliens exist  - until one shows up at her office as a new hire.

Rating:  ABO Dynamics, Alpha Kara, Omega Lena.  This chapter is PG-13, but the story will eventually be explicit.

Tags: Enemies to Lovers; Lena hates Kara, even though Kara is totally smitten with her; comedy, (yeah I changed the title).

When the news broke that aliens not only existed, but that some of them wanted to reside permanently on Earth, Lena had been elated. She was excited to learn about all the new species and the wonderful technology they would be bringing along with them. Over the course of months, she met Green Martians, Daxamites, and even an old Starhavineite, who had spent an entire hour talking to her and gushing over a book of constellations. 

While some people held onto fear and distrust, Lena welcomed the inclusion of the aliens and saw them for who they were – star-crossed immigrants that were tired of hiding in the shadows.

Lena eagerly voted yes on The Alien Amnesty Act when the President allowed the citizens of America to decide for themselves if they wanted to welcome the aliens into their country. The bill opened up a whole new world for humans and aliens alike, and many individuals and companies embraced the new citizens of Earth by hosting them, offering visa sponsorship and hiring intergalactically. 

Not everyone who initially offered to sponsor an alien was comfortable with the process because of what it entailed. The individuals who were interested had to be vetted by the Government as a suitable sponsor, but it went beyond just vouching for the aliens. The alien had to become part of the family, and that brought entirely new obstacles with it. Aliens would rely on their sponsor to teach them the ins-and-outs of living on Earth, and that was often too much pressure for a lot of people. It was one thing to allow aliens to live in America, and another thing to foster them.
 

Lena spent weeks wondering what kind of alien, if any, would apply for a job at Spherical Industries, the fortune 500 tech company where she had worked for three years. The CEO wanted to expand by bringing in a diversity hire to capitalize on the influx of new foreign materials hitting the market.
 

One Monday morning, Lena arrived with her coffee in hand to the whole office buzzing with excitement. She overheard James from Marketing laughing about how the company had finally bagged and tagged their own alien. It was a crude expression that she didn’t like, but Lena was intrigued to see who would show up.
 

Word was that they were expecting a Kryptonian that had more in common with humans than it did with other aliens. This one was alleged to be an alpha. 

Lena was skeptical at first, because the office gossip was notoriously outlandish, but she silently hoped they were wrong. It was bad enough that there were only three omegas that worked at the company, but to deal with another alpha from outer space was a bit much.
 

From the way they spoke of the Kryptonian having insane strength, Lena pictured a ten foot tall giant that looked like a jacked-up bodybuilder on steroids.
 

When a slender blonde walked in an hour later, wearing a polka-dot button up and a pair of olive pants, Lena mistook her for an intern. It wasn’t until her colleagues flocked around the newcomer that Lena grew suspicious, and then the smell of the Kryptonian hit her, revealing that she was actually an alpha, despite all evidence to the contrary.
 

Lena avoided the alpha on principle and scrutinized her from a safe distance. 

The Kryptonian wore glasses and appeared to laugh a lot. She wore her hair tied back and seemed like every other dork that worked in their department. Once everyone made their introductions and rushed back to their desks, the alien began to settle in at her spot close to Lena.  
 

Evidently the fact that the alien, Kara, looked as average as the rest of them diminished the thrill of having an alien as part of the team. They had wanted a spectacle, and instead they had gotten someone who didn’t look special at all.
 

By mid afternoon the stench of Kara wafting through the air was driving Lena to distraction and she wrenched a jar of tiger balm out of her desk and applied it discreetly along the inside of her nostrils. She had yet to introduce herself, and quite frankly had no intention of ever acknowledging Kara’s presence. Her plan went well up until everyone started to leave for the day.

Lena often stayed late to work on her personal projects, so it was a bit daunting to suddenly look up and find Kara sitting at her desk, watching every move she made. Lena narrowed her eyes in return and expected Kara to go back to working on whatever the hell she was supposed to be doing, but the alpha just sat there, staring.

“You know what, I’ll come in early and finish it tomorrow,” Lena muttered under her breath, then closed her laptop. She gathered her belongings and rushed for the elevator, her finger jabbing at the button when she noticed the alien was no longer at her desk.

To her complete frustration, her boss Jack Spheer had wandered over and called out to her before she could leave.

 

“Lena, I want to ask you to do me a favor of sorts,” Jack began with a sweep of his hand and a benign smile. 

 
“For the last time, Mr. Spheer, I’m not going to sleep with you,” Lena muttered under her breath and flicked her eyelashes as she avoided glancing in his direction. 

They had one too many uncomfortable moments behind closed doors, and even though they resolved that tension after a private discussion, it was still lurking in the air whenever they were together. 

 
“Ah, no,” Jack sheepishly corrected and searched his pocket for a folded piece of paper. “It wasn’t that. I was just going to ask you if you wouldn’t mind helping out with Kara. She’s the Kryptonian who started here today. It’s a company requirement that someone see to her needs — I mean, review the company policy with her and make sure she’s settling into National City without issue.”

Lena jutted her chin out as she realized why Jack had chosen her to handle the Kryptonian. “You’re asking me to do this because I’m an omega.” She concluded with a squint at his apologetic face. 

 
“I just think you’ll be all around kinder to Kara,” Jack insisted with his smooth, velvety voice that was always so persuasive in business negotiations. “Most of the alphas are threatened by her.”
 

Lena wanted to complain and refuse on principle, and she would have done it under other circumstances – but then she caught notice of Kara standing near the elevator with her head tucked down, like she had overheard what Jack had said.

Lena’s bleeding heart took over and she tried to seem enthusiastic as she uttered, “Fine. I’d be happy to help Kara get up to speed.”

Jack grinned and handed her the company credit card. “Right, then, just take her out to dinner and maybe a few drinks. I appreciate it, Lena.” He patted her on the shoulder and then hurried off into his spacious office, like he had other plans for the evening that couldn’t wait.

Lena glared at his back and held in the urge to sigh as she turned towards where Kara had been standing seconds ago. 

Kara was suddenly back at her desk, and Lena eyed the Kryptonian with suspicion as she clicked on over in her heels and extended a hand. 

“I’m Lena,” She muttered in greeting, and to her embarrassment, her susceptible omega reacted to being so close to Kara. Her light fragrance wafted around her and she became flushed in the face when Kara grinned up at her.

It all seemed like such a normal meeting, until Kara grabbed her hand to shake it with a very flimsy grip and blurted, “You smell really strong.”
 

Whatever good will Lena had mustered up vanished in an instant and she snatched her hand back with a look of thunder. “And you look basic.” She snapped, unable to contain the anger that roiled in her gut. How dare this alpha say that she smelled? She had worked her ass off all day, and perhaps she perspired a little, but she didn’t stink.
 

“Oh,” Kara laughed, her hands smoothing down her shirt with pride. “Thank you, my Alex took me shopping. I like the spots.” She said with a smile, her fingers lingering on some of the polka-dots.
 

“Of course you do,” Lena huffed under her breath, her hand tightening on the strap of her bag as she considered the consequences of just leaving without taking Kara to dinner. She was loath to admit it, but Jack would probably let her off if she casually flashed him in the office. Just the thought of it made Lena feel queasy, and she resigned herself to the lesser of two evils by pointedly staring at Kara and gritting out, “Well come on, I have to buy you dinner and I’d rather it didn’t take all night.”

Food was apparently a good motivator, because Kara shot out of her seat so fast that the papers on her desk actually fluttered. Lena’s hair blew in the slight gust of wind and she tucked it behind her ear with a glare.
 

“Do you have a preference of where we go?” Kara asked with raised brows and wide blue eyes that oddly reminded Lena of animated characters.
 

“What do you want to eat?” Lena stressed, already knowing her own meal would be a bottle of expensive wine. “Are you even hungry?”

“So hungry,” Kara agreed with a fast nod, and grinned at Lena warmly before rushing on to say, “But uh—not—not enough to eat a horse.”

 
Lena’s eyebrows scrunched together in confusion and a smile spread across her face as she tried not to laugh at the bizarre alien. “What a shame. I was planning on taking you to a farm and leaving you there.”

Kara’s devastated face filled her with amusement, but Lena schooled her features into one of neutrality as she gestured to the elevator. She had no idea why any of the other alphas in her office would feel the slightest bit threatened by this Kryptonian idiot. 

In the end, Lena made the executive decision to take Kara out for Mexican, and by the end of the meal, she firmly detested the alpha. 

Kara bumped into a waiter on the way over to their table, which caused a chain reaction that ended with Lena covered in refried beans. When Lena had just managed to wipe herself down, a tall, macho alpha came over to their table to make their night worse.

“That’s my food you’re wearing.” The alpha complained, so obvious in how he dragged his eyes over Lena’s chest. “I don’t have time to wait for the kitchen to replace it. Why don’t you pay for my meal, or maybe just take your shirt off and we’ll call it even?”

“I’ll tell you what, there’s still some left,” Lena drawled with a meaningful flick towards the mess on the tiles. “Why don’t you go eat off the floor if you’re going to act like such a dog?” 

 

The wave of aggression was strong enough to make Lena gag, and she stuck out her chin in defiance when he snarled, “You must be nearing your heat if you’re acting like such a—”
 

“Burrito.” Kara interjected, and much to Lena’s chagrin, handed her own plate of food to the angry alpha that sneered down at her.

He scoffed at the offering, squinting at Kara as if he only just picked up on her scent, and then slapped the plate from under her hand to tip it down her shirt.
 

“Hey don’t worry, there’s still some left,” He taunted, and stormed out of the restaurant before the manager could rush over to handle the commotion. 

 

Everyone was staring at them, and Kara sat slumped in a mixture of beans and steak as clumps of sauce began soaking into her shirt.  
 

Lena had never met an alpha so woefully ridiculous, and she felt humiliated by the fact that everyone assumed she would go on a date with an alpha like Kara.  
 

The morning after her awful night out with Kara, Lena walked into the office to the chuckles of her colleagues. 

She almost dropped her coffee cup when she saw a giant box sitting on her desk which held an assortment of rocks. It was impossible to lift it, and when she glanced across the office she caught Kara with a smug smile on her face. 

Lena picked one of the purple geodes from the box and clutched it like a baseball as James snickered and approached her.
 

“Kara is telling everyone that you rock this morning,” James informed her with a wide grin as he handed over a heavy file. “I’m guessing she had a good time when you took her to dinner last night.”

Kara ventured over and glanced down at the box on Lena’s desk while swinging her arms like she could barely contain her excitement. 

James glanced at the Kryptonian alpha and then mouthed “Good luck” to Lena before rushing off. 

“James, wait, can you at least help me get this off my desk—” Lena sighed, holding out the file as she beseeched him to turn around. 

“Do you like them?” Kara asked with a smile too big to be genuine as she pulled one of the larger rocks from the box to twirl with pride.
 

“No.” Lena answered with just enough hostility to make the Kryptonian’s smile freeze in place. If she possessed the strength to shove the box off her desk and onto the alpha’s toes, she would have done it. Especially with half the office not-so-subtly watching their interaction.

 

Kara’s face scrunched up and she tipped her head to the side before smiling wider. “But they shine—”

“I don’t care if they come to life under a full moon and leave pots of gold at the end of rainbows. I want them off my desk, so I can work.” Lena hissed under her breath, and when Kara didn’t immediately pick up the box, she growled, “Now.”
 

That seemed to get through to the alpha, because she scrambled to gather the box into her arms and retreated back to her own work station with it.
 

Throughout the day, Lena watched Kara try to hand the geodes out to the rest of the office, and only two people accepted them out of reluctant politeness.

Over the next few days Kara kept her distance, and Lena was so busy she barely noticed that all of her pens and post-it notes were mysteriously vanishing. It took her an entire week to finally realize that all of the stationary in her desk drawer was no longer her own. That one by one each item had been replaced with red markers and blue paper clips and other random objects that fit the color theme.
 

How she found out was particularly embarrassing, because upon opening her drawer to grab the stress ball she kept stashed on the right, she had squeezed a red ball intended for dogs. The loud and devastating squeak erupted through the office and Lena dropped it at her feet in mortification.

What the fuck was going on?
 

It drew everyone’s attention, and not the irritating kind she was used to receiving from the alphas in the room. They wandered over in intrigue and then someone blurted, “Hey that’s my pen, I thought I lost it.”
 

Apparently her entire drawer was filled with other people's things, and Jack called her into his office shortly after it with a bemused smile.
 

“I’m not a clepto,” Lena began the second she walked in, hands raised in the air. Jack half laughed as he sat on the edge of his desk, and continued sharply, “I don’t know why that stuff was in my desk drawer.”
 

Though she was starting to suspect she knew who put it there.
 

Lena turned to glare in the direction of the Kryptonian and caught Kara staring at her through the window of Jack’s office. The alpha looked pleased with herself, not a hint of remorse on her stupid, though very symmetrical face.
 

Lena felt the temperature of her blood rising as she quietly seethed.
 

“Oh, god, I don’t care about that,” Jack admitted with a roll of his shoulders and levelled Lena with a look that was too close to smoldering for her liking. “I wanted to ask how your little project with the nanobots is coming along. I think I’ve found us an investor.”
 

Dread crept up Lena’s spine at the thought of having to meet with anyone. “Give me a week to tweak the prototype, it’s not quite—”
 

“It’ll be ready by then.” Jack asserted, like he knew Lena could live up to his expectations, and not drown in the pressure he was creating. He clapped his hands together and motioned to the door. “Well, I won’t keep you. I know you have a lot of work to get done.”
 

“Wait, what about the situation with everyone’s stuff?” Lena asked, sensing the office gossip would already be targeted towards her.
 

Everyone already thought she was cold, but that was a design of her own making, because she would rather be seen as a bitch than a weak little omega ready to give it up for any alpha that glanced her way.

“I don’t know, Lena, bring in cupcakes tomorrow,” Jack suggested with a slight twist of his lips.

“Cupcakes?” Lena deadpanned, her eyes narrowing as she regarded him with disbelief. “You have one of the most brilliant minds of our generation, and that’s your advice?”

“Well yeah, who doesn’t love them?” Jack questioned with a grin like he wasn’t in his thirties, and running a whole company. “Hey, make sure to bring me a chocolate one. I’m part of the office too.”
 

“I’m surrounded by children.” Lena muttered with bitterness and stormed over to her desk while she pointedly ignored Kara’s smiling face. She smelled the alpha approaching before she even sat down, and frothed when Kara delicately placed a can of Coke on her desk.

Lena’s vision went as red as the labelling on the soda and she took it for confirmation that Kara was behind the whole thing.
 

“So you want to fuck with me, is that it?” Lena hissed, barely containing her anger as she stared back at the alpha.
 

“Yes.” Kara sighed, her eyes lighting up with unabashed glee. “I’m really happy you finally noticed.”

Oh, the audacity of this bitch. Just because she had everyone else fooled with her bright smiles and sky blue eyes, she thought she could taunt Lena without consequences.
 

Lena wanted to slap the grin off Kara’s face, and her hand balled around the stapler on her desk as if she might just use it to enact revenge. She envisioned herself stapling the tie to Kara’s chest just for being cocky enough to admit that she wanted to torment her.
 

“Game on.” Lena breathed through a sneer, using her best cold stare that intimidated everyone else in the office. 

By all accounts it should have worked, except Kara was still standing there, still grinning, and Lena raised a haughty eyebrow because she couldn’t get away with using her middle finger in the office.

“We will continue this dance tomorrow.” Kara announced with a flourish, and pushed her glasses up by the frame before walking off with a slight swagger.

Lena considered multiple ways of retaliating against the irritating Kryptonian. She started by rounding up all of the supplies in her desk drawer at the end of the day and dumping it on Kara’s desk.

The next morning, Kara saw all of it, and rather than get angry, she scooped up the one item that belonged to Lena in the pile – a tiny silver pin for LuthorCorp that had gone overlooked.
 

Kara affixed the pin to her shirt and then wandered over with two cups of coffee. 

"I was hoping we could smash after work." Kara stated, matter of fact, with a long glance down Lena's top.

That took Lena off guard and she glared at Kara, infuriated that the alpha decided to take her harassment to the next level. 

“Excuse me?” Lena asked in a low and menacing tone, while peering up at Kara with dangerously cool eyes. 

“What, is our new Kryptonian already making a move on you?” James interrupted and laughed as he took in all of the signs of tension between them. “Anyway, I just wanted to give you both a heads up that we’re expecting a big investor this morning.”

“No, no, that can’t be happening today,” Lena snapped with her eyebrows drawn tightly together in distress. She swiveled around in her chair and stood up to rush into Jack’s office, but then she hesitated.

Jack was already striding over with his arms out, and he placed them around both Kara and Lena’s shoulders. “Kara stayed late last night and finished up the final tests on your prototype,” He announced as he escorted them both towards the lab that should have been secure and accessible only to Lena or her boss. 

“She doesn’t have clearance to do that, and I’ve never even explained my configurations to her.” Lena balked at the thought that Kara’s hands had been all over her pet projects. 

“Oh, we have a similar invention on Krypton, created three centuries ago.” Kara laughed with a bright grin and then tucked her hands unassumingly behind her back. 

Lena wanted to throttle her on the spot, but Jack’s arm was still firmly around her, and the investor strolled in at the exact second she would have lunged at Kara. 

“Miss Grant, so glad you could come by today,” Jack sang out, and then released Lena so that he could go schmooze their billionaire investor. “Come right this way.” 

Cat Grant lifted her shades and sighed in exasperation. “Do you realize that your elevator is one of the slowest in the city?” She asked and then proceeded to school Jack on the importance of building upkeep. “You ought to fix that, along with the mess in your lobby—”
 

“Quite right,” Jack blathered on as he led Miss Grant down the hall. “We are planning on updating our facilities soon.”

Lena dropped back to walk alongside Kara and utter quiet threats. “If you ever go near my lab again, my next invention will be a rocket that shoots you so far into outer space that you’ll never find your way back, not in a million light years.” 

“I just—I wanted to help you, Lena, so you would have more free time, and maybe get to leave early today.” Kara explained with a nervous tilt of her head and a slant to her lips, where a quiet laugh formed.

“Oh, so that’s it, you want to force me out and make yourself look good,” Lena concluded with a shake of her head, which swished her ponytail along her neck. She was still jittery with annoyance when Jack cleared his throat and beckoned her over to demonstrate the prototype.
 

The nanobot malfunctioned as Lena turned it on, and she had to re-boot her entire system twice to get it up and running. 

“Our nanobot delivers a targeted cancer treatment,” Lena explained as she stood in front of her model and fiddled with its controls. She chewed the inside of her lip as she wondered if Kara had deliberately sabotaged her work. “It runs on a predictive algorithm, taking into account the biometrics and genetic profile of the individual. We designed the bot to resemble a bee—” 

Kara sidled up alongside her and picked up a secondary control, inputting a code that caused the bot to fly around and sting Lena. The system churned out an example health report and Kara passed it into Cat Grant’s waiting hand.

“Yes, less talking and more showing.” Miss Grant commended Kara on getting to the point and turned her full attention to the alpha. “I understand you’re going to be taking over the project, isn’t that right?” 

“Oh—no—no, I’m not, I’m just here assisting Lena.” Kara flailed as she tried to come off as such a modest, innocent person. It was a good act, but Lena knew the truth and that the alpha wanted to usurp her position at the company. 

“Nonsense, Kara will be a key player in seeing this project to its completion,” Jack insisted and patted Kara on the back like an old friend.
 

Lena bristled instinctively, and the sudden shift in her scent evoked a startled laugh from Jack.
 

He waved his hand around her in an attempt to fan the smell of her rage out the door. 

“Of course, Lena will be at the helm of this project,” Jack tried to amend, but he no longer held Miss Grant’s attention.
 

“Show me what else it can do.” Miss Grant instructed Kara in an imperious tone. 

Kara glanced at Lena before entering another code and then the nanobee shot forward and dug its stinger deep into Lena’s forearm. It dragged the sharp tip in a good two inches so fast that it sliced her skin open and ruined her blouse.
 

Lena gasped in shock, the pain hitting just as blood pooled to the surface, and she let out a strangled, “Are you se—”
 

“Seeing the way this technology can be applied to a vast array of medical needs?” Jack spat out in such a rush that flecks of saliva hit Lena on the side of the face.
 

She turned to send him a murderous glare that promised she would be walking away with his balls if she didn’t get a hefty bonus for putting up with this shit. Her facial expression only shifted to a wince when the nanobots repaired her wound, leaving behind no trace of injury.
 

Lena rubbed the spot with an irritated pout and narrowed her eyes at Kara, who blinked back at her owlishly. She stared at her until she was certain the alpha understood that she was going to find a way to kill her in the near future, then turned to Miss Grant with a forced smile.

 
“Not even a scratch,” Lena commented, showing off her arm like a magician with a new trick.

“Impressive,” Miss Grant lilted with a hawkish glance between Kara and Lena’s healed skin. “I do think the two of you should work closely together on this project. You have a good working chemistry.”  
 

Lena suppressed a hysterical laugh and gave a curt nod. “Oh yeah, the type of volatile chemistry that would burn a lab to the ground,” She commented, and she would have gone on to immediately refuse, if Jack hadn’t chuckled over her next words and ushered Miss Grant to the door. 

“You two, have a good day, and we’ll talk later,” Jack called out in parting before shutting them into the room alone together.

Lena considered releasing a whole swarm of nanobees and programming them to attack Kara. Instead she stood glaring at her nemesis until Kara put her hands up and backed off. 

She realized that her heightened irritability could also have to do with her approaching heat. It wasn’t that she believed omegas were any more susceptible to irritability than alphas, but she noticed her uncomfortable arousal just from sharing close quarters in the lab with Kara. Whenever she got too close to Kara, she felt a little flustered, and more than once she caught herself breathing in the alpha’s pleasant aroma. Clearly her hormones were playing a role, because there was absolutely nothing but animosity between them. 

The Kryptonian stood awkwardly with her hands behind her back, and Lena zeroed in on the LuthorCorp pin stuck to her shirt. It shined like a beacon under the harsh lab lighting and Lena flew across the room with her finger raised in accusation, “What the hell is this?”
 

“Oh,” Kara exhaled, seemingly relieved, despite the approaching storm of emotion that was currently trapped inside Lena. “I see that humans wear them on their shirts.” She stroked the pin fondly and murmured in distraction, “Do you want me to put it somewhere else?”

Kara’s cheerful face and her bumbling act was the last straw, and Lena moved without thinking to poke the Kryptonian in the chest as she growled out, “Yeah, you can shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.”
 

Lena expected shock, or at least some kind of confrontation to keep the anger in her heart burning, but Kara just blinked back at her like she had spoken in riddles and then looked around in confusion.
 

“But… the sun doesn’t shine in here.” The alpha pointed out slowly, as if Lena was dense and didn’t understand that they were in a windowless lab with heavily secured doors, impenetrable by the sun's rays.

Lena’s teeth clenched and she pressed herself even closer to utter, “I mean you can stick it up your a—”
 

“Are you guys done in here?” The slight whine from one of the lab techs caught Lena off guard.

 

 She was so angry that she hadn’t even heard the door open, and from the way Kara was huffing at the air, she was intimately aware that Lena’s fragrance was less than appropriate for work.
 

Lena stepped back like she had been struck, her face flushed and breaths irregular, and waved her hands around the empty space with a hiss. “The lab is yours.”

 

She all but ran out of the room, appalled by her own biology, and how it betrayed her right in front of her enemy. God, she hated Kara with the same intensity she had hated all the alphas in high school when they first presented. It brought back waves of emotion that she struggled to coast on, and in her haste to get away, she didn’t realize she had run out of the building and straight into the rain without any of her things.

“Fuck, fuck, no.” Lena hissed under her breath, tugging at the door that wouldn’t budge, because her key card was right where she had left it, in her bag at her desk.

“And I thought I was having a rough day,” A soft voice commented as footsteps came to a halt beside her.

Lena caught a whiff of an omega, and turned to see a woman with short, dark hair that was shaved on one side. She offered Lena a sympathetic smile, and then glanced at her watch. “The door will open in a minute,” She promised and Lena squinted at her in confusion.

“You have a meeting with Jack?” Lena asked, wondering just how many investors he had lined up and why he hadn’t bothered to inform her in the first place.
 

“Nah,” The visitor laughed, her hands stuffed in the pockets of her leather jacket. She inclined her head to the building with a slight smile and added, “Just meeting my sister for lunch. She works here.”

 “Oh, that’s nice.” Lena supplied out of politeness, and wrapped her arms around herself as the chill of the wind cooled down her traitorous libido. She might have said more, if Kara hadn’t barreled through the door like a speeding bullet and latched onto the woman with a happy yell of, “Alex!”

Lena rushed forward before Kara realized she was standing there and hurried through the door and into the elevator without a parting word.

She avoided Kara and her extra potent alpha scent for the rest of the day. It was just part of her nature and she wasn’t at fault for reacting to it. In fact, all it proved was that Lena was perfectly normal and all of her senses were functioning as they should be. Of course she would be able to detect Kara’s pheromones, and being confined in an office space would make her more susceptible to their influence, since they were stronger than the average human alpha’s.
 

Lena wasn’t attracted to Kara. Not to her broad shoulders or obvious abs and certainly not her ridiculously defined biceps that put a strain on every shirt she wore. 

 
Lena didn’t find herself glancing at Kara’s handsome face, or appreciating that she wore her hair tied back to show off her cheekbones at all. No, she wasn’t into Kara in the slightest. She was just suffering from being in range of the stupid Kryptonian.
 

 Like any good scientist worth their salt, Lena left early and spent the rest of the night working out her heat cycles. She wasn’t due to begin her heat for at least a week and that gave her plenty of time. Her plan was to gradually counter each symptom as aggressively as possible so she wouldn’t find herself in any embarrassing situations at the office again. 

Or so she thought.
 

The next day Lena wandered into the office half an hour earlier than her shift began.
 

The entirety of her desk, including her chair, had been decorated. Every inch of it was covered with red and blue wool with highlights of yellow, sewn so tight she couldn’t even open her drawers to find her scissors. It looked like a spider had webbed everywhere, and as she glanced around it became glaringly obvious that only her desk had been hit.

“Kara.” Lena grit out, and stormed over to the Kryptonian’s station to raid through her drawers. Most of them contained empty candy bar wrappers, hidden sodas, an array of sticky notes with random phrases written on them, and a solitary notebook written entirely in symbols.
 

Lena moved on to Sam’s desk and borrowed her scissors, but she got a bit carried away with her slashing and carved a chunk out of the wood as she hacked at the wool.


By the time she uncovered her desk and dumped all of the yarn on Kara’s, people were starting to arrive and she hadn’t even fixed her chair yet. Some of them gave her odd looks, but she ignored them as best she could and tried to forget that she was sitting on a thick blanket that was somehow molded to her chair.

She drank a cleansing juice that was supposed to help with her pre-heat symptoms and focused on sending some emails until it became apparent that every alpha in the office was paying closer attention to her. 

 
Jack asked her to join him in his office with a familiar gleam in his eye that reminded Lena of the last time she was in heat. She narrowly avoided it because Miss Grant phoned and Jack’s secretary called him away. 

James found excuses to use the copier by her desk, Kate Kane brought her coffee, and Ben Lockwood actually perched himself backwards in a chair to talk to her about some sporting event that was of no interest to her.

The collective and oppressive scents of alphas were all around her and Kara’s pungent pheromones joined the mix.
 

Kara noticed the alphas encroaching on Lena and came over right away, as if to make her interest clear.
 

Lena laughed at the absurdity of that and the strange edible bouquets Kara carried. There were dumplings arranged like a croquembouche, and a second bouquet with sliced fruit and vegetables shaped into roses. Upon closer inspection, Lena also noticed sushi and giant prawns stuck in the mix.  
 

To her horror, each bouquet was also slathered in chocolate, and Lena almost gagged as Kara placed them on the desk.
 

“Lena, I brought you all of my favorites,” Kara explained with a proud sweep of her arm. “I thought you would appreciate a snack to energize you.”
 

Lena was tempted to push them off the desk and straight into the trash, but it would absolutely reek by the end of the day, and she wouldn’t punish the custodian the same way that Kara saw fit to punish her. 

 
“I thought you outdid yourself when you decorated my entire desk, and yet I can still confidently say this is the weirdest gift anyone’s ever given me,” Lena remarked, surprising herself as she perversely smiled up at Kara instead of rudely telling the alpha off.
 

She regretted it three seconds later when Kara, emboldened by her lack of hostility, pulled out one of the skewered shrimp and offered it to her. Or at least, Lena assumed it was an offer and not an attack, though it was hard to tell as the Kryptonian brandished the shrimp like a sword and wiggled it in front of her face.

Lena was horrified at the sight of little limbs all wiggling in front of her nose, and she had the misfortune of looking it in the eyes before suddenly jumping up.
 

Kara wasn’t finished though, she waved the shrimp around like a kid with a sparkler, sending flecks of chocolate all over the desk.

Lena felt hot and queasy, and the fact that half of the chocolate was sliding over her work station was a concern all on its own.
 

“Jaaack,” Lena called out before she could stop herself, and Kara suddenly stopped dancing in front of her desk.
 

She squinted at the Kryptonian, who gingerly placed the shrimp back into the bouquet, and watched as Kara tripped over her own feet in her haste to sit at her desk.
 

“Weirdo,” Lena muttered under her breath, and waved Jack over as he poked his sweaty face out of the office.

“Look I know you own this building, and you can do as you please,” Lena started before he had even gotten over to her, “but turning our floor into a sauna isn’t going to increase productivity.”
 

“It wasn’t me,” Jack insisted, responding as though she was the boss because his eyes were lost somewhere in her cleavage.
 

Lena cleared her throat and crossed her arms and he snapped out of his haze to explain, “Our heating system seems to have malfunctioned this morning, but I have a technician coming out to fix it. But while I’m here, do want to grab lunch later or—”

Lena narrowed her eyes at him and he backed off as if coming to his senses. “Right, well, keep up the good work.” He blurted, and hurried back into his office.
 

Lena’s gaze landed on Kara, who shifted guiltily in her seat and dropped her chin to her chest. She had utterly no proof and no motive, but Lena knew the climbing heat was all the alpha’s doing. 

She put up with it for four hours, rolling up her sleeves and opening enough buttons on her blouse to be considered pornographic, but as more alphas flocked over to talk to her, Lena’s patience dwindled and she finally snapped when the rest of the office went out to lunch.

She made a beeline for Kara and all but shoved her back into the seat to hiss, “Whatever you did to the heating, make it stop. I can’t take it, okay? You win.”
 

“Oh but I—” Kara muttered, her eyes stuck on the obscene swell of Lena’s breasts barely concealed by her bra. “I just thought it would help you.”
 

“Help me?” Lena shrieked, manic as her clammy skin was rubbed raw by the wet fabric of her shirt. “I’m boiling in my skin! How would that help anyone?”
 

“Well you..” Kara scrunched her face up and avoided Lena’s eyes as she whispered under her breath, “You looked like you were ready to begin nesting, and since we’re, you know—”

 
“Listen to me,” Lena spat, her brow furrowed as she tried to wrap her head around Kara’s insanity. “I don’t know why you want to screw me over so much, or what the fuck nesting is, but if you come at me again, I will ride your ass so hard—”

“You can do that?” Kara asked breathlessly, her bright eyes slightly glazed as she gaped up at Lena.
 

The alpha must have been suffering from the heat as much as her because she looked to be panting slightly, and Lena squinted indignantly, “Don’t underestimate me just because I’m an omega. I can do everything an alpha can, and then some.”
 

Kara actually gulped at that, and Lena felt somewhat victorious that her threat had finally sunk into the Kryptonian’s thick head.
 

“Fix the heating or your ass is mine,” She demanded over her shoulder, and stormed off to leave Kara sitting at her desk in perplexed silence.

By the next day the temperature had settled, and Kara tentatively smiled every time Lena shot her a glare. They’d been assigned to the lab to fix a recurring glitch with the nanobee. Apparently it was stuck in a loop, so after it stung a participant to extract their biological information, it proceeded to do it again and again until the technician shut the nanobots down.

As Lena set herself up in the lab, she sipped at her drink and ignored Kara, who was already stationed in front of a computer and running a diagnostics report on the project.

It took a little too long to recognize that she was breathing a little deeper, that her body was reacting to the fact that Kara was alone with her in the lab and her pheromones were steadily filling up the space. She eyed the nanobots with a critical eye and pointedly ignored the curious glances that Kara was throwing her way.

“Lena.” Kara intoned with a smile and dragged up a chair with the excuse of working on the nanobee with her. “I think we might have started all of this out on the wrong leg — I mean, the wrong foot.” She blinked as she corrected herself, then smiled even wider as she propped an arm up on the lab table.

“What gave it away?” Lena asked sarcastically, her eyes landing on Kara’s bicep which flexed under her gaze.

“Oh, there were many things. I made a list,” Kara stated, so matter of fact that for a second Lena couldn’t even laugh as the Kryptonian pulled out a folded piece of paper to read. “On Tuesday the eighteenth--”

“Oh christ, stop.” Lena groaned, and grabbed the paper from Kara’s hand to scrunch into a ball without looking at it. Their fingers brushed, and Lena jerked back as a shock raced through her hand. “We have a job to do,” She stated shakily, her voice firming as she stared back at those impossibly blue eyes, “we can’t afford to be distracted, so focus.”

Horrifyingly, Kara seemed to do just that, and it was Lena who found her mind wandering. She watched Kara’s quick fingers typing on her device to the detriment of her own work, and caught herself staring more than once at the way the alpha’s muscled physique strained under her shirt. There was tension manifesting between them, thick like smoke, and she coughed on the acrid stench of it until she realized the smoke was real.
 

“Lena, you,” Kara murmured distractedly, her gaze flicking towards her as she blurted, “You’re—you’re hot.”

 
“I know that.” Lena blurted, snapping out of her haze to see the small crackle of flames erupt from the table where she had been idly sticking the point of a soldering iron into it. “Shit, fuck,” She hissed, slotting the device back into its holder while she slapped at the small fire she had caused. Her thumb ached and she knew she would have a blister, even as Kara grabbed up her hand to inspect it.
 

“You’re injured,” Kara whispered, as if a blister was a mortal wound Lena would never recover from. Then she exhaled cool air, colder than Lena expected, and looked up at her with such concern that Lena felt simultaneously vulnerable and awkwardly aroused at the contact.
 

“I’m fine,” She spat, wrenching out of Kara’s light grip. She could feel heat where the alpha’s fingers had been and bristled from the residual feelings it evoked. “You should be more concerned about the prototype. If I’ve ruined it, we’re all fucked.” She activated it before Kara could protest, and watched as the nanobots formed into the nanobee.

Kara was still gazing at her softly, and Lena did the only thing she could to stop it. She set the nanobee on Kara.
 

It was almost a reflex, a coping mechanism that she could never justify if anyone questioned her later about her actions. As the nanobee locked onto its target, Lena was filled with enough regret to try to undo the command protocol. To her dismay, it didn’t work, and she stared at the device in her hand in confusion and horror as the nanobee rammed its gleaming metal stinger into Kara over and over again. 

By the time she figured out how to get the nanobots to slow down, Kara looked like she had shoved her hand into a beehive. The bee went after every bit of exposed skin along her hands and neck, but avoided her face.  

The splotchy red marks on Kara’s neck looked almost like love bites. They weren’t like regular bee stings, because they began to bruise in areas where they hadn’t been able to break the skin for some reason. Kara jumped around, screaming and grunting until the bee stopped its assault, and Lena rushed from the lab to grab a medical kit. 

She heard James whistle and glanced over to find every alpha in the office gawking at her. It took Lena a few seconds to register that when Kara stepped out of the lab behind her, everyone who was watching them instantly assumed that they hadn’t been working together. 

As Kara staggered off in one direction, James intercepted her, and Lena distinctly heard his damning words of congratulations: “Never thought that Luthor would give it up for anybody. This whole time I thought you were kinda weird, but it turns out that maybe I should be getting tips from you.”