Stay The Night by Lynne Arlington is exactly the Supercorp Fanfic To Make You Sweat. It’s a perfectly crafted friends-to-lovers workplace sports romance with explosive sexual chemistry and a lot of character growth along the way.
This is Arlington’s take on what happens if basketball was the driving force behind Supergirl’s favorite subtext couple.
The story follows the non-canon/non-super power universe of Kara Danvers and Lena Luthor as they navigate Lena’s shift into owner of the Lakehawks, a professional basketball team previously run by her brother, Lex.
Kara is the star player, working non-stop to help her team secure their third national championship in as many years.
Lena, saddled with a lifetime of expectations from her family and last name, wants to prove she’s got what it takes to keep the Lakehawks on top.
Stay the Night shows the possibility of what Kara and Lena’s relationship could blossom into if they were given the space to do so on the television show.
Kara keeps her cornerstone as team leader and all around lovable beacon of goodness, and Lena struggles to fit into a life bound by obligation and otherness.
The story is rich, the characters well-developed, and most importantly, you don’t need to know what happens on the show to follow the plot of this wholly original work. All you need to know is that Kara and Lena are made for one another, in spite of their best efforts to deny it. Maybe you’ll even learn something about basketball along the way!
Pros
I’m a huge sucker for sex first, feelings later stories. Why does it feel less scary to give someone an orgasm than your heart? Kara and Lena have physical chemistry out the wazoo from their first scene together, but it’s so gratifying when the feelings emerge. What they’d wanted to believe was just sex has been growing and evolving into something so much more under the surface, and I was weeping with joy when they finally got honest about it.
Cons
I couldn’t stop myself from re-reading the previous chapters each time a new update was released, so I’ve lost literal days of my life to this fic.
Conclusion
If sports stories aren’t your thing, you may struggle with the premise, but I still implore you to give it a chance. Basketball provides a wholly original backdrop for the characters to come together, but it’s the relationships that keep the story truly moving.
The book also contains graphic sex scenes, which is very much my cup of tea, so if fade to black is more your style, this may not be the fic for you.
Perhaps starting with a 200,000+ word non-canon story for the inaugural fanfic review was a bit ambitious, but how could I not? With a compelling alternate universe plot between professional basketball star Kara Danvers and billionaire team owner Lena Luthor, I still find myself thinking about this fic now that it’s finally over, over a year in publishing time between the first chapter and the last.
This story stretches fanfic to the edges of where the genre teems with possibility, and you’ll finish the last chapter feeling like you’ve just read your new favorite steamy lesfic novel.
Excerpt from Stay the Night (the Supercorp Fanfic To Make You Sweat)
Kara smiles on a deep exhale and Lena finds herself focusing on the errant strands of blond hair curling at Kara’s temples and the slight sheen of exertion visible across the defined muscles of Kara’s bare shoulders and collarbone. “Nice to finally meet you, Miss Luthor,” Kara says.
“And you, Kara,” Lena says trying to fight the sudden inconvenient pull of attraction she can feel happening low in her gut. There’s a reason, Lena realizes, that Kara Danvers is the face the Lakehawks use for nearly all their promotional material. It’s not hard to get caught in her spell.
Before anything else can be said a voice is calling out from the other end of the court. “Superstar! Team meeting!”
Kara turns to look at the source of the voice. “Coming,” she shouts back before turning back towards Lena. “I’ll see you around?”
Lena smiles, hums an affirmative sound. “Certainly.”
And with that, Kara is jogging to pick up the earlier abandoned basketball and down a tunnel.
Find the full story here.
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Bits And Bobs
Fandom: Supercorp (Kara Danvers and Lena Luthor from Supergirl)
Length: 222,939 words
Author: lynnearlington
Rating: Mature
Rating Guide: G= General, T = Teen and up, M=Mature, E = explicit
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