Work Text:
There are things that are different about Kara’s life on Krypton and her life on earth that she can articulate, and things that she cannot. Even as a child she had realized that there were certain objects, truths about herself, that she had to hold close to her chest for fear of losing them. The rituals she went through, the nicknames her mother called her, the dances they did. All of this, filtered through the harsh light of Earth, would lose it’s magic. Where was there room for Rao in a place where computers listened to you and busses sometimes didn’t stop, even when you were right in front of the doors just as they closed, and already late for work?
Kara loves Earth. Sometimes she feels like Earth has no room for her.
For instance: in her previous life, she’d had the gift of foresight. Kara had always known things, everybody had said so, and had little thoughts and feelings that seemed like they would always come true. She could wake up in the morning and feel the day—a good or a bad one, a difficult one or one she would slide through as if being pulled by her ankles from her bed.
In her now-life, she goes to a therapist who tells her that this is a symptom of obsessive compulsive disorder. They work on CBT together, and breathing exercises, and Krypton becomes blurrier. Magical thinking, Dr. Soll called it.
This is the magical thought Kara has this morning at 2 AM: something is wrong. On autopilot she stands, the soles of her feet making quiet contact with the hardwood floor, and takes suction-sounding steps to the kitchen. Why do I feel like this? She asks, pouring a glass of water. She sips, answers, nothing. It’s not real.
The thought fades like steam and she walks back to her bed with the water, lies down.
Something is wrong with Lena.
Here is the other thing, the thing within the thing. Lena makes Kara feel like she really knows things. The first time they met Kara smelled her perfume and knew that they would fall in love. That knowing is a walnut in her stomach. When Lena asks, what do I want for lunch today? Absently, while they’re on the phone doing other things, Kara says pizza, or salad, and she’s always right.
So when Lena’s name passes through her mind and gets attached to the thought, Kara picks up her phone from her nightstand without thinking and presses it hotly to the side of her face. It rings twice.
“Hello?” Her voice is like medicine. There are other things that Kara does to soothe her thoughts, the quiet ones and the loud intrusive ones, but hearing Lena’s voice is the sweetest. It sounds clear and, to Kara’s consternation, alert.
“Hi.” Kara says, and squeezes her eyes momentarily. “Hi. Sorry. I’m sorry. I just—“
“One of those thoughts again?” Lena murmurs. There’s the sound of keys clacking in the background.
“Yeah.” Kara replies. She knows she doesn’t need to explain any further. “You sound awake.”
Lena hums. “Finishing some reports.” As if sending the words about to leave Kara’s mouth, she says: “Don’t you start. They’re almost done, anyway. Keep me company?”
Already drowsy and relaxed, Kara rolls to her side and uses the pillow to keep the phone pressed to her face. She counts the things she can hear in the room: traffic melting in and out beneath her window, the blinds lifting away and gently clacking back against the sill with the wind. Lena’s typing.
“I just finished my wine.” Lena says. “What should I do next, red or white?”
“Red.” Kara mumbles, and drifts off to sleep before she can hear Lena say you read my mind.
...
The next day, Kara meets her bad feeling. Her name is Mimi Sweetwater.
Once upon a time, a great many weeks ago, Lena had mentioned she was hiring a new CFO to work directly below her. The woman, Mimi, came highly recommended from a C-Suite position at Netflix, and after many rounds of drinks and as Kara imagined it, Goodfellas -type negotiating, she’d agreed to come on at L Corp.
When Kara thought of Mimi she imagined a wan, stern-faced woman. Box dyed hair and Dior suit and older than Lena, by 5 years at least. But when she walks into Lena’s office, coffees in hand, greeting on her lips, she has to stop in her tracks.
As if in slow motion, the head sitting in front of Lena’s desk turns. Mimi is handsome. She has pretty features framed by a short-cropped men’s hair cut, brown-black eyes, cupid’s bow mouth. When she stands to shake Kara’s hand her full figure is cut by a tailored suit and, on her wrist, a gold watch.
Kara is shaken. At first by Mimi and then, looking behind her, by the look on Lena’s face. She looks hungry.
So Kara drops the coffees. She drops them right on the floor, perhaps the human equivalent of a dog pissing on the rug. It’s worth it to see the desire plain on Lena interrupted and replaced by something easier to digest.
“I am so, so sorry--” Kara says with what she hopes is a convincing amount of sincerity. Ten dollars worth of coffee is reduced to nothing more than a brown splotch on the carpet. “I’m such a klutz. Lena, let me help you--”
Lena is already on the intercom asking Jess to get the cleaning people into her office. Mimi, to her credit, looks only faintly amused, side stepping Kara’s accident and moving her hands into her pockets. The pose she assumes is confident and casual. Kara finds herself thinking unkind thoughts.
“You must be tired, darling.” Lena clucks, honey smooth. She’s leaning against the edge of her desk, arms crossed, a faint smile on her mouth. It occurs to Kara in that moment that this is one of the things she loves about Lena--her unflappability, her gentleness. “Mimi, this is my dear friend Kara. Kara, this is Mimi Sweetwater. She’ll be taking over the CFO position starting today.”
“It’s a pleasure.” Mimi says, and extends her hand again. Her voice is deep but not masculine and has a floral edge. Kara imagines herself taking Mimi’s hand and crushing it. She doesn’t, of course, and if Lena notices the one sided tension coming off Kara in waves she doesn’t mention it. She’s saying something about moving into the conference room to continue their meeting and flashing Kara with an apologetic look.
“Sorry, we were just in the middle of—“
“No worries!” Kara chirps, and waves her off. She’s digging inside of herself to sound more confident than she feels. “It was really nice to meet you, Mimi.”
“Likewise.” Mimi says in that stupid, stupid voice. And then something terrible happens. Right before Kara’s eyes, Mimi walks forward and past her and opens the office door for Lena. And Lena blushes. It’s something that’s impossible to miss. Her face turns a shade of bright schoolgirl pink, something Kara would find almost distractingly becoming on her if it didn’t cause her stomach to knot up.
On her way past Kara, Lena lays a hand on her forearm, which Kara realizes is dangling stupidly at her side like a piece of meat from a hook. Her palm is clammy. This makes Kara feel even worse. “I’ll see you for lunch?”
“Yeah.” She agrees, and watches them disappear.
…
The meeting runs long, and they don’t get lunch. Kara uses every tool in her arsenal not to think about it.
They’re having sex a voice in her head points out without context. Kara blinks hard and throws a red bouncy ball against the wall opposite her, catching it in her palm. Next to her Alex is sitting on her couch, reading something on her laptop. Lena is loving it.
She blinks again, throws the ball again. It comes back to her hand with a smack. Alex doesn’t look up at all. Her head is back, Mimi is kissing her neck, she’s running her hands through her hair, they’re on the conference room table--
The ball crashes through her apartment wall and, if the startled gasp is any indication, into her neighbor’s unit. Alex looks up from her computer and looks blankly at the hole now framing Kara’s refrigerator, and then back to Kara, who can feel her face heating all the way down to her chest. Alex closes her laptop and slides it off her lap.
“Uh, hey buddy.” She says. “Have anything you want to talk about?”
“No.” Kara barks. She feels immediately bad for being so harsh and blinks again, this time holding her eyes shut for 5 solid seconds before she opens them again. “Yes.” She slips off the arm of the couch where she’d been sitting and onto the seat next to Alex, who automatically angles her body toward her sister. In the background, her neighbor is talking loudly. “Lena hired her new CFO today.”
“Oh?” Alex’s brow furrows. “And this has to do with—“
“She’s so beautiful.” Kara blurts. Her hands, which until now had been placed carefully on her knees, clench into fists. “Handsome. I don’t know—“
“ Oh.” Alex says again, bright with understanding. “And you’re—“
“I don’t know what I am.” Kara twists her body away. “I’m worried.”
“Worried about what?”
Worried that Lena will leave. Worried that nothing will be the same. Worried that we’ll never have lunch again. “ That things will change, I guess.” Is what comes out, and she means it. Nothing supports this but the dark, nasty feeling in her gut.
“Oh, Kara.” Alex sighs and takes her sister’s hand, placing them together in her lap. “Lena loves you. Like...really, really loves you. What do you think she likes Mimi for?”
“The way she looks at her, I guess.”
“I look at women all the time. Women are beautiful! You know that.”
“It’s different.” Kara insists, crossing her arms. She feels suddenly petulant, and then embarrassed of her petulance, because if anybody can see right through her, it’s Alex. Alex will not ask her why, why it’s different, because she knows as well as Kara that there’s no real answer to her question.
…
If there’s anything that she doesn’t like about Lena it’s that she knows that Kara is Supergirl, and therefore can’t get drunk off human alcohol, and still makes her drink red wine.
“Mmm.” Kara gurgles, cheeks slightly puffed out. She gulps. “Tastes like…vinegar?”
Lena laughs, the sound mixing in well with the delicate ambiance of the wine bar. She has her own wine glass in front of her, comically large in Kara’s opinion, and is only one or two sips in. Lena is a great lover of wine as well as a notorious lightweight. Two more sips and her cheeks will get rosy, two more after that and her sips will turn into gulps. One more glass and she’ll be telling Kara about the time she met Vince Vaughn at a gala and got him mixed up with Mark Zuckerberg, a story Kara has heard at least 10 times but at every new wine fueled telling still laughs at the part where Lena tries to engage Vince Vaughn in a conversation about micromodal superbug testing.
She’d thought she’d have time. Kara only realizes now how foolish this was—how foolish it is for a girl from a planet long dead and gone to presume she had time enough for anything. Earth had made her too comfortable. Comfortable enough to think that she and Lena could drink wine together until they finally, inevitably, were ready for each other.
“Hello?” Lena is waving a hand in front of Kara’s face. Her cheeks are pink. “Where’d you go?”
“Just—“ Kara manages a little smile and then buries it into the rim of her wine glass. “Thinking.”
Lena clicks a little with her tongue and, to Kara’s great pleasure and infinite chagrin, reaches out to lay a hand on her thigh. Then, in an act of total devastation, she removes the hand and uses it to smooth the wrinkle sitting between Kara’s eyes. Kara’s mouth reflexively parts, and she sucks in a deep breath.
It feels like a reminder that her and Lena are still there, in the same space, hurdling toward each other, that time is still speeding forward with them as passengers. “There.” Lena murmurs. “That’s better.”
Kara gulps.
. . .
“You’re just building her up.” Alex insists, looking both ways before she takes a long step into the crosswalk. Her hands are stuffed into the pockets of a jean jacket. Kara trails slightly behind. “She’s just a person.”
“A really hot person.” Kara babbles. They crest onto the adjacent sidewalk and dip smoothly into the bar. “A really, really—“
“Listen, Kara, she can’t be—“ And then Alex sees Mimi, who is sitting at the bar next to Lena in what Kara guesses to be her casual suit—a navy blazer and slacks with a white shirt unbuttoned all the way down her chest. She has one somehow perfectly crafted hand wrapped around a glass of brown liquid. Alex’s mouth drops open. “That’s not her, is it?”
“Oh, my God. I’m leaving!”
“Wait, wait, Kara. I’m sorry. I’m sorry! She’s not that hot.” Alex has to cover her mouth when she says it to cover her liar’s smile. Her eyes are crinkling at the edges. “I’m sure it’s fine? Maybe her personality is bad.”
. . .
“Whew.” Alex re-dons her jacket. “Well, you didn’t say she was a Rhodes Scholar.”
“I’m gonna puke. I really am.” Kara lifts her glasses and squints down at her phone. Their Uber will be there in 5 minutes. “I mean, she’s in a yacht club.”
“You’re right! Normally I would say she’s an asshole, but.” With a shrug, Alex peers down the road for their car. “It kinda makes her hotter. I bet she looks amazing in a polo.”
“What a complete nightmare.”
. . .
In order to act on her crush, Kara first has to acknowledge it. It’s a beast of a thing. She almost misses the simplicity of boys, as compared to the meat of the object that is liking Lena. Lena, who made her feel like her thoughts could still have a spark of magic in them.
Really, it goes like this: Kara buckles under the weight of all her things, of her home and her thoughts and her responsibilities, and Lena takes them from her one by one. Like helping somebody carry groceries, or grabbing something from somebody with too much in their hands. And she sets them aside for later.
But this can’t be set aside for a second longer. Kara is sitting on her couch watching Frasier reruns and checking her phone for the thousandth time when she realizes this. Lena is working late—with Mimi, of course—and hasn’t texted her back in hours. She opens her phone and reads her last message again. To her horror, she’d already double texted, and she feels suddenly and completely sure that she has shown her hand to Lena through the act of sending a how’s work going? With a smiley face. Her face heats.
The force with which her crush takes on a definite shape almost knocks Kara off the couch. Of course she knows that she loves Lena. She’s always loved Lena, even before she really did. But it never was quite like that between the two of them. Kara could, when she was being the most honest with herself, acknowledge a certain kind of possessiveness she had over Lena. The other woman had things that she did only for Kara, certain smiles, certain ways of talking, and Kara certainly didn’t want to share those things with anybody else.
She was possessive over other things in her life too, wasn’t she? Lena though, Lena--Lena was hers. Kara’s mouth goes dry thinking about it. It wasn’t just about the things that she did, but about keeping somebody, and being kept by them. How else could Kara describe it? She wanted to be wrapped so completely in Lena’s milieu that there was no telling who was holding who tighter, who’s hand was on who’s thigh, who’s breath was who’s.
On the couch, her phone buzzes.
So boring. Wish you were here :)
She grips the couch so hard that the arm tears.
. . .
Kara wakes up feeling like it’s going to be a bad day. Nothing is different in her apartment--she checks, too. Touches countertops and doorframes, looks under the coffee pot. She checks her phone to see if she’d missed any messages; something urgent from Alex, or J’onn, or Lena. She finds no trace of badness aside from the hard spot in her chest. She sits down, eats two bowls of cocoa puffs, does her prescribed breathing, and then sits some more. Sometimes just the act of allowing herself to be still is enough for Kara to feel better. A little better, sometimes.
This time, in the middle of sitting, her phone lights up. She tries for a second not to look at it but ends up shooting her arm out to snatch it, very nearly shattering the screen with her eagerness. She sees it’s a message from Lena.
Can you stop by the office today so we can talk?
Kara’s heart feels like it turns into a semi-solid state that fills her entire ribcage with goo. What does that mean? What does that even mean? Her mind frantically goes back over her last interaction with Lena. It had been at Noonan’s, yesterday, they’d had a coffee and donut each to
catch up between investor meetings. Lena was wearing Kara’s favorite silk white blouse with black polka dots, one that had a little coffee stain on the inside of the collar that you couldn’t see unless you were looking for it.
The phone lights up again. Sorry, that was ominous. I just need some advice on something :)
Kara shifts in her seat, a little relieved but stomach still feeling like it’s filled with vinegar. She types out a few different potential responses before deciding to leave it simple and vague, tilting back in her chair, and heaving out a breath.
…
Kara comes to Lena’s office to find it odder than she’d left it yesterday. At first it’s a feeling of vague unsettlement, of knowing something is slightly off but not being sure what. And then, little by little, she realizes that the furniture has been rearranged. Only by a few inches in some places and, if one wasn’t a frequent flyer like Kara, you might not even notice that it had happened at all.
There were also flowers. This was not in and of itself unusual--it wasn’t unheard of for Lena to have a carefully selected arrangement sitting on the corner of her desk, usually from Kara or Jess trying to freshen up the proceedings, but in this case there are no less than four vases littering Lena’s desk as well as the coffee table. They’re all of them full of nothing but Gerber daisies, Kara’s favorite. They remind her of the way flowers used to look back home.
Kara’s hand flexes on the strap of her bag as she takes this all in. The daisies, the couch shifted a half-foot to her right. Lena wringing her hands next to the window. There are so many words inside Kara that she just wants to blurt right out but, with a feat of strength, she holds them in. Ever since she was a little girl Alex had been reminding her to select her words carefully. In this case, she’s thinking too of a poster that used to hang on the wall of her 3rd grade classroom, an anagram of the word THINK.
IS IT HELPFUL? IS IT INSPIRING? IS IT NECESSARY? IS IT KIND?
Kara goes over the things she would like to say and decides that no, they are not, and pinches her lips closed as tight as they will go. She observes the way Lena’s body, framed by two garish vases of flowers on her desk, relaxes when Jess opens the door and waves Kara into the room. Her shoulders slump at least a full inch and her chest pumps with a deep breath.
“Hi, Darling.”
And oh, Kara melts. She smooths one hand down the pleated front of her chinos and crouches slightly to set her briefcase on the floor beside the couch before sitting down. Lena remains standing for a moment and then moves jerkily, as if the thought had just occurred to her. “I ordered us lunch, it should be here in a few minutes.”
“Great!” Kara chirps and then, for the first time in a long time, finds herself at a loss for words. There’s a frantic, almost frightened energy radiating off Lena. Kara has seen her prepare to go into boardrooms filled with some of the most powerful people on earth, but has never seen her like this.
“I’m--” “Sorry, I--” They speak at the same time and chuckle. Lena puts a hand against her forehead.
“I’m being so silly, I’m sorry. I don’t know why this makes me so nervous.”
“Why what makes you so nervous?” When Lena takes her hand away from her face, Kara sees that her cheeks are pink and her eyes are--bright, clear. Sparking with all the intelligence Kara knows that Lena possesses. Kara’s chest flutters. “You can tell me anything.”
Lena’s mouth parts at that and she looks as if she’s about to say something that she summarially tucks away. She reaches for a glass of water on the coffee table that isn’t there. “I’m so nervous because I’ve never--I’ve never met somebody like you before, Kara.”
It’s like a bomb goes off and leaves Kara with a ringing in her ears, all other sound locked in some distant place behind her. She swallows, off kilter. “I’ve never--me, either.”
“You’re so unique. And so precious to me. I’m astounded every day that I’m allowed to be in your life and--I guess I’m afraid of rocking the boat.” There’s a brief beat of silence while Lena seems to decide on what to say next. It comes out in a blurt that seems to shock even Lena, judging by her furrowed brow and the way she won’t look at Kara’s face. “I think I have feelings for somebody.”
More explosions. Kara’s ears ring high and bright. The urge to cry announces itself without warning, making her head feel like her head is stuffed with tissues. Of course. Of course. Her silence must signal something to Lena, who begins babbling at an increasingly frantic pace, reaching out to take Kara’s hands. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Nothing has to change. Obviously--nothing has to change, let’s just forget I ever said anything about it.”
“It’s fine.” Kara says, embarrassed to find her voice coming out as a warble. She stands abruptly and feels stupid doing it. Dramatic. She wants to go into Mimi’s office and incinerate the whole thing. “I’m sorry you felt like you couldn't tell me, probably because you thought I would react like this.”
“Kara, please--”
“I’ve gotta go.” Kara stands, almost forgetting her bookbag on the floor, and then almost forgetting which way is out. Behind her Lena is still talking, although it might as well be in Spanish, which Kara had failed her freshman year of high school. She is always right, Kara realizes, even when she doesn’t want to be. Krypton and Earth really aren’t so different.
She bumps into the delivery man on her way out, and then into Jess, who has concern plastered all over her face. On autopilot she goes down the stairs of Lena’s office and into the harsh midday light of the street, disoriented a moment by the sounds of traffic and talking. It’s so different from the sterile quiet of Lena’s office.
Pulling out her phone, she calls Alex. Failing to get through to her, she dials the next best person.
…
Alex is sitting in the lab when her phone lights up on the adjacent desk. She pulls the pair of goggles on her eyes and places them atop her head with a snap, wheeling her stool over an inch to see who it is. Kara’s picture fills the screen. She snaps the goggles back over her eyes, returning to the centrifuge. The buzzing stops and leaves a gap of silence. Then it picks up again, vibrating against the stainless steel of the countertop.
Pausing in her work, Alex waits it out. When the phone quiets she returns to the delicate task of pipetting serum from one tube to another. Tuesdays are her off days, and Kara knows that. Tuesdays are her days for labwork and reading journal articles, and certainly Kara wouldn’t--
There’s a loud knock at the door that startles her so deeply she knocks over both tubes, splattering serum all over her workspace. Alex stares down at the wet mess with wide eyes before turning her head to see a young cadet standing in the doorway, looking abashed.
“I’m so sorry, Dr. Danvers, I--”
“What.” Alex bites out through gritted teeth. “Is it?”
“Uh,” Face rapidly reddening, the boy clears his throat and fixes his gaze at the floor. “Supergirl is on the phone for you? And she’s crying?”
By the time she gets to the phone in the main control room, Kara has worked herself up into a hysteria so intense that even Alex struggles to follow along.
“Hello?”
“ ALEXIDON’TUNDERSTAAAAAAAAND--” Several hiccuping sobs follow, and then frantic sniveling, followed by a wail.
“Kara.” Alex begins in a slow, measured tone. “Where are you?”
“ WINNTOOKMETOGETDRUUUUUUUUNK.”
“Okay. Alright.” Shrugging off her lab jacket, Alex mentally prepares herself for a long night. So much for her peaceful Tuesday. “Stay put, I’ll be right there.”
. . .
If Alex really had to quantify her evening, it would go like this: three bars. More than 20 missed calls going in all directions. Lecturing Winn three times, and then, realizing that he was too drunk to absorb any of it, leaving a very pointed voicemail for him to listen to in the morning when his hangover was at its peak. One very cute girl who had given Alex her number while Kara and Winn butchered a song on the Karaoke stage and, when asked if those were her friends, Alex said: “I don’t know them.”
3 AM. Only one Uber, thankfully, enough to get Winn stumbling into his second story walk up and the sisters back to Kara’s apartment. Kara has wound her way from sad, to drunk, to sad again, to weirdly horny, and now her head is nodding around with exhaustion. By the time they get into the apartment her full body weight is slumped against Alex’s frame.
She lays Kara abed, turning the clock around so the neon numbers don’t disturb her sleep later on. On her back, face slack with sleep, she reminds Alex for one aching moment of her restless, lonely kid sister. The little girl who, when they first brought her home, would spend her days in a manic energy, laughing and getting into trouble, and her nights crying softly into her pillow. Alex knows because she could hear it through the thin wall that seperated their bedrooms.
Not for the first time, she considers strangling Lena Luthor to death. And then she considers locking her in an underground prison on trumped up charges with no recourse. And then she considers that missing out on being loved by Kara Danvers might be worse than any punishment that Alex herself could dole out, and decides to let the matter rest.
. . .
The phone calls start pretty much immediately. Kara has three of them on her cell when she wakes up, head crashing with a hangover, and they continue throughout the day unabated. Lena calls her cell phone. She calls her work cell phone. She calls Winn’s cell phone. She leaves voicemail messages, ranging from 20 seconds to 5 minutes, and Kara deletes them all without listening. What is there to say? Kara knows she’s being petty and, if confronted about it, would be unable to defend herself. She needs time to wallow.
But of course, this is Lena Luthor, and avoiding one of the richest people on earth with a penchant for grand gestures is a fool’s errand. Kara may as well be trying to ghost Jeff Bezos.
Huge bouquets of flowers show up in her office and at her apartment. After a week of this, Kara feels like the girl from the fairytale who spat rose petals every time she talked. Flowers trail after her everywhere she goes, some even show up at Noonan’s, and the barista hands them over with her late.
There are notes attached to all of them, like Lena is sending out gilded carrier pigeons to bend Kara’s ear. Kara wonders each time how Mimi would feel if she knew about all this, if she’s jealous. Once she hopes that Mimi is jealous, and that she feels one iota of what Kara felt, and immediately feels bad, and feels worse that she can’t even work up animosity for the woman who is dating her best friend and, very possibly, the love of her life if she’d only acted sooner.
She considers getting a haircut, but Alex talks her out of it. “Just watch the L Word instead.” Her sister says. “You’ll feel the same way after.” It makes no sense, but she’s right. Kara watches it at home alone in her apartment, surrounded by wilting flowers. She barely talks to anybody, afraid of their advice, or that they’re going to tell her the truth, and she won’t be able to avoid the issue anymore.
In the middle of the first week, she takes off a day from work to spend time on herself. She gets lunch alone at a streetside cafe and ambles after to the National City Art Museum—of course, it's only after she pays her non-discounted admission fee that she realizes that half the exhibit is a special exhibit on female billionaires.
Kara finds herself sitting on a bench in front of a portrait of Lena that goes so high toward the ceiling that she has to crane her head up to see it. She doesn’t bother reading the placard next to it because she knows it’s incompleteness will make her mad—if a person was going to write about Lena they should write a novel or nothing else.
“Tissue?” Kara looks beside her to the source of the whispered word. A young woman is offering her a Kleenex, leaning in as not to disturb the pin drop silence of the art gallery. Kara doesn’t realize that her cheeks are wet until she touches the cloth to them.
“I’m sorry.” She sniffles. The woman smiles.
“It’s okay. I get emotional about art sometimes too.”
They sit in silence for a few more seconds just looking at the painting, at Lena’s fierce stare. “Have you ever met her?” The woman whispers.
“Yes.” Kara whispers back, and sucks in a wet breath.
An incredible amount of vibrancy can leave your life when another person goes, she discovers in the second week, standing in her kitchen. In the absence of Lena, everything feels like a chore. Punching bad guys, eating food, watching TV. She finds that she doesn’t like what she’s doing, but also finds that she can’t stop. Her life is an endless stream of take outs, scrolling through Tinder, laying on the kitchen floor.
She’s in the kitchen, wiping down the counter for the third or fifth time that afternoon, when there’s a knock at the door. It opens before a muscle on Kara’s body can even twitch.
“Kara. I hate to be pushy, but I cannot—I can’t stand it a second longer.” Lena pushes her way into the apartment. Kara notices the way she corrects herself, slipping for a moment into the cradle of formal language before fighting her way back out.
She’s wearing a light spring trench coat and her hair is loose and frizzy with rain. The silhouette she cuts is devastating, and Kara curses her for it. Her face prismatic; both stern and wild with determination. Lena radiates the energy of somebody who has just worked up the nerve and is hanging on to it with dear life.
“What did I do to make you hate me?” At first her words don’t register. Kara is too captivated by her, how tall she seems, how righteous. “To treat me like this?” With the back of her hand, Lena wipes at her eye, and then resumes her stance.
For all of her grandstanding in the last couple of weeks, Kara cracks immediately. “I’m sorry, I--” She clears her throat. “I guess I didn’t know how to respond.”
Lena scoffs and crosses her arms. “Clearly. I can’t believe I really thought...I’m so stupid.”
“You’re not stupid.” Kara takes a tentative step forward, noticing how Lena instinctively rocks her body back a little. That movement worms into her heart and creates a deep fissure. “It’s my fault. I just don’t know if I can...I don’t know. Talk about it, or hear about it for a little while.”
Looking at Lena’s face, Kara thinks for a moment that she might scream. Her features stretch out completely for a moment and then lose their shape as a loud sob escapes her mouth. Kara’s mouth flops open and she watches as Lena stands, posture proud, and cries. “How could you be so mean ?” Warbles out of her mouth. Kara presses both hands against her forehead, elbows held high, feeling as displaced in the universe as she’s ever been. She wants to go to Lena and comfort her but knows, with that fissure in her heart deepening, that she’s the source of her pain.
“I’m sorry!” She blurts. “We can talk about it whenever you want!” This just makes Lena cry louder, raising one of her arms to bury her face into her elbow.
“I didn’t do anything wrong.” She hiccups.
“I know, it’s me, I’m a baby. It’s just--the thought of you and Mimi together--”
The crying stops abruptly, although Lena’s face remains buried in her elbow. “ Mimi?”
Afraid that she’s just said something else terribly wrong, Kara sputters for a moment. “Yes, I mean, I just--” She licks her lips. “She’s very nice, and so lucky to have you, and I’m so happy for you, I mean, I will be, because I know you haven’t dated anybody since--”
Lena looks up from her arm and straight into Kara’s everlasting soul, stopping her run-on sentence in it’s tracks. “Mimi Sweetwater?”
Kara opens her mouth to say yes but realizes that it is the wrong answer to something she isn’t even sure is a question. Instead of heaving another pile of dirt out of the hole she’s found herself in, she shrugs. Lena blurts a noise out of her mouth that might be a laugh, a residual sob, or a hiccup. Then she drops her hands to her sides, shakes her head a little, turns on her heel, and leaves Kara’s apartment.
The click of the door behind her leaves Kara in shocked silence, standing in her kitchen, not even able to take a breath. It only lasts a moment before Lena comes barrelling back in, somehow completely fresh-faced, as if she’d been to the bathroom to clean up in the two seconds she’d been gone. She’s incredible. She doesn’t even look at Kara. “Do you know how you’ve made me feel for these last few weeks? I’ve been a mess.”
“Me, too.” Kara admits in a strained voice.
“You are—“ Lena licks her lips and shakes her head. “So wonderful. And stubborn. And weirdly good at guessing things. And stubborn.”
“Yeah.” Kara nods. “I’m just mad because I wanted to ask you out. You know when you miss maybe the biggest thing in your life and you don’t know until it’s already over?”
“I don’t have feelings for Mimi Sweetwater.”
“Then who ?” Are the first words out of Kara’s mouth. She realizes that Lena is standing much closer to her now than she had been, and even that her face seems more unhinged. But none of it registers as much as the words coming out of her mouth, and the wheels in Kara’s head are spinning so fast there must be steam coming out of her ears. “Is it Brandy from R&D? Oh my God, is it Je--”
Lena takes two steps forward, cups Kara’s face in her hand hard enough that the skin of her cheeks ponches, and cuts her off with a kiss that partway misses her mouth. Kara thinks that she might still be talking for a moment because Lena presses in and kisses her that much harder, and then the thoughts stop, and they’re embracing, and Kara is pretty sure that she’s lifting Lena so that her stockinged heels come out of her loafers.
“Oh my God.” Kara says when they part. Lena’s forehead is touching hers and they’re breathing heavily. “I’m stupid.”
“Just silly.” Lena murmurs. “A little hotheaded, maybe.” Kara feels her cheeks pink at that. She realizes that she never could have predicted this, not this and not even Lena, really. Lena’s thumb brushes over her bottom lip and she mouths something secret onto the border of her mouth and chin. There’s magic everywhere, Kara thinks, and kisses her again.
Epilogue
Kara’s eyes fly open.
“Lena?”
“Hello, darling.” She heaves her body over, perspective rotating from the window to the ceiling to the shape of her girlfriend sitting underneath her comforter. The sight of Lena, put together even buck naked at 2 AM in the morning, never ceases to amaze Kara. Even more so seeing her against the boho patterns of her bedroom, covered in a knitted throw and looking soft against her headboard. “Bad dream?”
“Weird feeling.” Kara mutters, and roots into the arm that isn’t scrolling restlessly through an excel spreadsheet. “What are you doing?”
“Me and Mimi have to submit a report by 7 AM tomorrow morning, Shanghai time.”
“Hi Kara.” A tinny voice pipes through the computer speakers. “Did we wake you up?”
“Hey, Mimi.” Kara yawns. “No.” And it’s the truth. She sleeps like a rock, which is helpful when it comes to Lena’s impromptu business meetings, largely dependant on the whims of an international clock. She’s already half back asleep, on her back and head lolling, and glad that Lena only uses Skype Business Voice when she needs to talk to Mimi.
“We’ll try and keep it down.” Mimi says, unnecessarily. She really is so nice, enough that it almost still makes Kara angry, but mostly she’s just happy that Lena has a friend. “Should I get Chinese or Mexican?” She says to Lena, clearly carrying on a conversation that Kara had woken in the middle of.
“Get a burger.” Kara mumbles as she drifts off again, the feeling of Lena’s hands stroking the side of her face enough for her to start back asleep. She hears Mimi’s little grunt of surprise and: “Oh, that does sound good.” and Lena’s little laugh before she falls fully, helplessly asleep.