Chapter Text
This is how it is with me:
so strong, I want to draw the egg
from your womb and nourish it in my own.
I want to mother your child made only
of us, of me, you: no borrowed seed
from any man. I want to re-fashion
the matrix of creation, make a human being
from the human love that passes between
our bodies.
—Love Poem to a Butch Woman, Deborah A. Miranda
Lena had gotten used to game night, and somewhere along the way she began to love it. There were certain things that didn’t take any time at all to love. She loved the warm refuge of Kara’s lived-in apartment, and the way Alex would top up her wine before she even thought about having another glass. She loved Winn’s brash awe at her world history knowledge every time they played Trivial Pursuit, James’ high-fives, and, to the detriment of her heart, Kara herself. At game night Kara was pink-cheeked and quick to laugh, usually picking Lena as her partner (regardless of how awful she was at charades) and teasing, witty, but ultimately encouraging if they were competing against one another. It was good to see her happy. It had been a hard year. For all of them.
Lena had come to look forward to the end of the nights the most, when James and Alex would commandeer Kara’s Nintendo to face off in one final game of Mario Kart while Winn did his best to sabotage whoever had wronged him the most that evening. She and Kara would sit together, Lena more than a little wine-drunk and Kara drowsy and affectionate.
Some nights Kara would drop her head against Lena’s shoulder and offer commentary on what was unfolding on her TV screen in a quiet, mirthful voice meant just for her. Other nights she would sit on the floor in front of Kara under the pretense of letting Kara practice her French braid skills, only to have it turn into Kara running her fingers through the length of Lena’s hair, over and over, until both of them were nearly lulled to sleep, Lena’s head resting on one of Kara’s knees. (“How do you get your hair this soft?” she asked once, and Lena was thankful Kara couldn’t see the traitorous blush that rose high in her cheeks, “Do you have some sort of top secret ‘Conditioner’ division at L-Corp?”)
Without fail they would end up relaxed against each other somehow, half-asleep and warm to the bones, until one of the others had to leave and they’d separate to say their goodbyes.
Looking over at Vasquez, called upon at the last moment to even out their numbers when J’onn couldn’t make it, Lena remembers all too well the things that took her a while to adjust to. Kara’s penchant for adding rules to the games as they were playing them was one, now reaching over the board to move Vasquez’s yellow car ahead a few spaces in the name of affirmative action (“Women have it hard enough in regular life, we should get an advantage in the game version”). Another was the sheer volume the relatively small group could achieve, which was pretty fucking loud judging by Vasquez’s shocked expression when they all cheered for James after he spun a ten.
“Our turn!” Kara leans towards the board before stopping herself. “Unless, you wanna have a go this time?”
Lena smiles and shakes her head. “No, you go ahead.” A very small sacrifice for Kara’s pure delight over getting to spin the wheel.
“Hey,” Alex says, raising her eyebrows at Kara from the other couch. “Gentle, ok? I don’t wanna have to buy another one of these.” It was their fourth board. Kara’s excitement gets the better of her, occasionally.
She spins with a flourish, shoulders drooping when the arrow ends up on three.
“Damn. Oh well, I got to spin so you drive.” She leans back to give Lena some room. Reckless and a little tipsy, Lena braces her hand against the hard muscle of Kara's thigh as she reaches over, catching the way Kara adjusts her glasses in her peripheral vision.
She slides the car along two spaces before she gets to the “STOP: GET MARRIED” tile. She frowns.
“I don’t like this new ‘You have to pay $20000 if you roll for marriage because weddings are expensive’ rule. Kara can you hand me the –”
“Lena.” Kara says, looking up at her from where she’s now kneeling between the couch and the coffee-table, on one knee in fact. She's got one of the little pink pegs like the one already stationed in their car held between her thumb and index finger. She takes Lena’s hand, and Lena's stomach flips. They all laugh, Lena mostly out of nervousness, and Winn lets out a scandalised ooooooh that rises into falsetto at the end.
“Lena Luthor, you make me so happy.” God, Kara’s eyes are all softness and sincerity as she looks into Lena’s, and Lena can’t even manage to smile, just takes deep breaths and hopes can’t hear how her heart-rate is steadily climbing. “You’re my best friend. And, you’re the best game night partner I’ve ever had.”
“Hey!” Winn interjects, scorned. “Me and you had a five-game streak before Alex banned Monopoly!”
“You had a three-game streak because you won the last two by cheating.” Alex fires back, nearly sloshing wine on Vasquez as she gestures broadly with her glass.
“Guys, guys, calm down.” James says, putting a hand on Winn’s shoulder to still him. “Let’s not get into this again, it’s in the past. Kara, continue.”
“Thank you James.” She nods in his direction before turning back to Lena, still holding out her makeshift ring. “As I was saying, there’s no one else I’d rather spend this game of Life with.” She grins and Alex boos at her pun, Vasquez giggling beside her. “Lena, will you marry me?”
None of this is unexpected. Overwhelming, but not unexpected. Kara had taken to performing increasingly outlandish stunts just to make her laugh, especially now that her secret identity wasn't so secret anymore. More than once Lena had arrived at Kara's apartment to find her upside down, her knees hooked over the exposed rafters, just so that she could greet Lena with, “Hey, come hang out.”
“Oh, Kara.” She says with what she hopes comes across as mock sincerity, collecting herself just enough to play along with the joke. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“You guys are gonna make me cry.” James clutches at his chest, fanning his eyes with the other hand like he’s just been crowned Miss America.
“Yay! Thanks Lena, I’ll be the best husband ever just you wait.” Kara fixes the second pink peg in the passenger seat of their car, and Lena swallows down her feelings with a few gulps of wine. When she looks away from Kara she catches eyes with Alex, who breaks eye contact quickly like she’d been caught staring. “Your turn, Vasquez.”
Alex and Vasquez, or “Team Lesbian Supremacy” as they had named themselves, win Life. And Pictionary, and charades, and, much to Winn’s dismay, Super Smash Bros, his eight-game streak shattered by Vasquez’s supreme hand-eye coordination. She fits in easily, and Lena takes some credit for that, having softened the slightly clannish group through their gradual acceptance of someone who they should have, by all accounts, hated. It had been awkward at first. Kara had practically vibrating with nervous energy each time a less-than-glowing comment was passed in Lena’s direction. But that had eased off, though, as Kara’s persistent efforts to include her had worn down the most reluctant of them (Alex and James) and the eventual reveal of Lena’s Scrabble talent had made her a sought-after teammate.
Later in the night she ends up with Kara sitting to her left, close, with her arm around Lena’s shoulders. Her heart flutters each time Kara strokes her thumb over the silky green fabric of her shirt, despite the fact she should be more than used to Kara’s touch by now. It had taken no time at all to notice how effusive Kara was, how physical. Lena estimated that she had been touched more throughout the duration of her friendship with Kara than she had her whole life post-adoption. Although she still couldn’t keep her heart in check she’d improved, that’s for sure. She doesn’t tear up when Kara draws her into a sweet hug anymore, and that had been hard at the start – Kara hugged hello, and goodbye, and before she went to order food, and when Lena made a joke, and when they finalized plans, and when Lena talked at all about the pain of her childhood.
Kara briefly detaches from Lena’s side to cheer and give James a high-five when his Princess Peach comes first over Alex’s Bowser in Mario Kart, dodging a punch on the arm from Alex. She returns to the couch and immediately pulls Lena close again, laughing at whatever smack Vasquez was aiming at Winn. Lena wasn’t listening.
Progress or not, she still feels an afterburn of shame each time Kara provokes something in her body. There’s nothing in Kara’s intentions that matches up with the way her touch makes her feel. She wishes she could just feel how Kara wanted her to feel – loved, protected, like she finally has a friend she can rely on. But there is a part of her that wants more when Kara links their hands together, or swipes cappuccino foam from her upper lip in the middle of a crowded café like it’s nothing, or speaks so close to her ear that she can feel the warmth of her breath ghosting over her neck. There’s part of her that needs more.
“Lena? Are you listening?”
“Huh?”
“I said, how are you feeling tonight?” Kara angles herself so she can see Lena’s face and ends up with her hand on the nape of Lena’s neck. Lena barely suppresses a full-body shiver.
If she answered truthfully, it would probably go something like this:
“No, I’m really not okay. I’m still trying to recover from when you directed a very enthusiastic and well-sung version of Jesse McCartney’s ‘Beautiful Soul’ at me during SingStar earlier (“Well if you’re not gonna do a duet with me then I’m just gonna have to serenade you!”), and every time you touch me, or look at me in that overwhelmingly tender way, or lose your mind and fake propose to me, I feel like I’m either going to lose all control and jump you or keel over from guilt. So no, I’m not okay.”
She folds all of that up in a neat little box and pushes it far into the recesses of her mind, choosing to smile reassuringly at Kara instead. “Oh, sorry. I’m pretty tired, I must have zoned out. I’m feeling good though.” The concerned crease between Kara’s eyebrows loses some of its depth.
“If you say so.” Lena freezes for a moment under Kara’s searching gaze. “I’m glad you’re here.” She offers, nudging Lena’s side with her hip. An hour or so ago Kara had divested herself of the light blue button down she’d been wearing (“It’s too constricting to play charades in, I need full range of motion,” she had said, punctuating the last four words with an exaggerated karate move that made Lena nearly double over with laughter) leaving her in a white t-shirt that felt as soft as it looked.
“I’m glad I’m here too.” Lena goes to take a long, hopefully numbing drink from her wine glass only to find it awfully empty. Kara’s remains half-filled on the coffee table.
“Are you going to finish that?” She asks Kara, reaching for the glass.
“Nah I’m good, you can have it.”
“Thanks, you’re a lifesaver.” She says, despite the fact that Kara was the reason she needed saving to begin with.
“What are friends for?” Kara gives her a teasing smile, and Lena rolls her eyes. When Kara isn’t looking she fits her mouth to where Kara’s had been, drinking from where she’d left a smudge of lip-balm on the glass. When she licks her lips she tastes cinnamon under the wine, and the room lurches sideways in her vision, heartrate picking up speed until one beat blurs into another, stealing the breath from her lungs, and just as suddenly as it had all started, it stops. She sits forward and breathes deep, flexing the feeling back into her hands.
“Gosh, Lena, are you okay? Your h—I mean, you look pale.” Kara rubs her back soothingly, grabs her hand and squeezes.
“I…I’m okay now, I think I just drank that too quickly.” She figures it’s exhaustion, maybe, it had been a long week after all. Plus the alcohol, although her tolerance is usually better than this. “I think that’s a sign I should get going,” she says, and Kara frowns.
“C’mon Luthor, I’ll drop you at yours on my way home. I only have a sitter for Ruby until 11.”
She smiles gratefully at Alex and lets Kara help her to her feet and pull her into a hug.
“Text me when you’re home safe.”
“Of course.”
“And text me when you wake up tomorrow and let me know how you feel. No actually, call me.”
Lena laughs. “Will do.”
As soon as she’s through the door of her apartment she kicks off her shoes and texts Kara. She sets her phone on the counter and a cold glass of water and two Advil, looking out at the city lights. If it weren’t for the towering National City Bank, she would be able to see Kara’s building from her kitchen window. Once, when she had taken the morning off work because she was scheduled to arrive in New York for an investors meeting at midday, she saw Kara flying against the blue sky.
Her phone buzzes.
Kara: ok!! have a good sleep and i’ll talk to you tmrw
Kara: ❤
Lena sends back the same heart, quietly thanking her past self for taking that emoji-based gamble when she had first started running CatCo. Her bed is warm when she crawls under her comforter thanks to her electric blanket.
She’s always a bit restless after game nights, quite content to stay up as late as possible at Kara’s or finish off some work once she’s home so she can practically pass out when she gets into bed. Buying a king was a mistake, in retrospect. She was too used to falling asleep in small spaces (on one of the library couches at the Luthor mansion, her boarding school single, under her desk at college), and she felt untethered amongst her 800 thread count sheets. The electric blanket helped some, but she usually woke up curled into a ball far off to the side.
Sighing, she grabs her firmest pillow and positions it so it’s pressed against her back. The underside is warm, and it’s easy to imagine an arm curled protectively over her middle, blonde hair tickling against her neck.
She picks up her phone to take one last look at Kara’s most recent message, and falls into dreamless sleep.
---
Days go by and Game Nights begin to fold into each other until Vasquez’s first melted into only the memory of Kara hamming it up as she sang Beautiful Soul.Two months after that night, Lena wakes up with an urge to vomit so acute that it trembles underneath her skin. There’s no time to think. Her body reverts to primal instinct and she rolls out of bed, feet making quiet slaps against the wood floor on her path to the bathroom.
In the dark, Lena stoops before the toilet and gives in to her nausea. Vomit splashes into the water, her nose runs and her hair sticks in tendrils to her forehead and nape. It feels like hours before she’s finished, intermittently relinquishing the contents of her stomach and flushing only to repeat the cycle. She hasn’t puked like this since drinking too much wine at a family Christmas party when she was 15. In fact, Lena prides herself on a healthy immune system. Face pressed against the cool porcelain, she racks her brain for the origin of her sickness. There was the salad she’d had last night, and it did have tuna on it, which seems like the most likely culprit.
“Siri?” She lifts her head and yells. Her throat is sore from bile. “Siri, make a note to tell Jess not to get the tuna salad from Gino’s again.”
“Ok, I added a note, tell Jess not to get tuna salad from Gino’s again.”
Lena groans and drops her head back onto the toilet seat.
The nausea abates over the course of the morning and she’s able to go through her routine just about as normal. Two strong cups of coffee and a yogurt later, she’s sliding into the backseat of a town car with her phone in her face and a purse on her other arm. Kara Danvers is trying to make plans for brunch on Thursday morning, her heart sings. Alex needs her to pick up Ruby from school that night. It’s doable. Lena wriggles into the leather seat and lets the minutiae of her day sweep her up and wash over the memory of her illness.
It lasts for about 3 hours. By 10 she’s pulling her waste basket from underneath her desk and hurling into it, catching chunks of vomit into her hair. Of all the days not to wear it up. With a trembling finger, she hits the intercom button to summon Jess.
“Ms. Luthor?”
“Jess, will you bring me a glass of water and—“ Lena pauses, rubbing her forehead. “I don’t know, some Altoids? And a hair tie. Please.”
There’s a short, static pause on the other end fitting of the strangeness of her request. She’s still too good at her job to ask questions. Even when she sweeps in to the sight of Lena sitting with her head on her knees she manages her reaction.
“You feeling alright, Ms. Luthor?” Jess asks, setting a water bottle on the desk and offering a pack of spearmint gum. “It’s all I had in my desk.”
“It’s fine.” Lena cracks the top off the water bottle and chugs half of it in one go before tearing a piece from the gum pack and cramming it into her mouth.
“Um, Ms. Luthor?” Jess sounds timid. “You’ve got a little…” She gestures to the front of her face. Lena groans and begins to pick dried vomit out of her own hair, an act that’s rendered only mildly humiliating because it’s Jesswatching her with concern in her eyes, and she’ll certainly never tell a soul.
“I’m fine.” Lena provides as she drops chunks into the wastebin. “I had bad tuna last night.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” Finished with her degrading task, Lena nudges the trash can away with her foot and cradles her head in her hands. “Can you have somebody retrieve that and get me a new bag?”
“Right away, Ms. Luthor.”
“Oh and Jess?” Jess’s ears perk. “The hair tie?”
“Right! You can have one of mine.” Jess rolls the sleeve of her sensible Oxford top up and pulls a back elastic from her wrist, extending it out to Lena. “Good thing we have the same hair color.” She offers kindly. Lena manages a wilting smile in return.
“Siri?” She calls when Jess exits, slumping back into her chair. “Make a note to give Jessica Huang a raise. Please. Thank you.”
---
Ruby is fiddling with her Gameboy on the curb of the school pick up lane when the town car pulls around. Her eyes flick up and she smiles, tucking the game into her Jansport and slinging it over one shoulder. Lena notes with a twist in her stomach that she’s not with any other kids and says good-bye to no one, just makes a beeline for the car and hops into the back seat.
“Hi honey, how was school?”
Ruby shrugs and presses her face against the window, watching the street as their driver pulls away. She’s been morose and difficult to twist out of her shell. The child psychologist said it was normal. It still stings.
“Anything good happen?” Lena prods. Ruby huffs and turns to her, then her face sours as she seems to take Lena in for the first time since she’s gotten into the car.
“Lena,” Ruby says, sounding scandalized. “Did your boobs get bigger?”
Lena gawks and, on instinct, closes her blazer more around her blouse (a little low-cut, admittedly. Alex told her Kara would be the one to pick Ruby up from her apartment that evening). “Ruby!” Lena hisses. “That is impolite.”
“ It’s true.” Ruby scoffs. “They’re huge! Oh my God, are mine going to be like that when I’m older?”
The rest of the car ride and evening pass in icy silence. Chafed by her scolding, Ruby does homework seethingly in the kitchen and stomps out the door of Lena’s apartment and past Kara when she comes to retrieve her. Lena doesn’t miss the way Kara’s eyes scan down to her chest and widen a little before she nods and promises to talk to Ruby about it.
And, well—her bras had been a little ill-fitting lately, but Lena’s pretty sure her period is late and chalks it up to hormones. How late, she’s not sure. Being a 24 year old lesbian virgin means tracking it has never been on the top of her to-do list. Before bed she removes her shirt and underwire and inspects them in her full-length mirror. They are looking a little...full. When she weighs one in her hand, it’s tender to the touch.
One hour and an embarrassing amount of time on WebMD later, she decides her body is trying to jump start her period and leaves it where it is. She doesn’t need any other stress added to an already strange day.
---
When she wakes up on Thursday too sick to get brunch with Kara, Lena knows something is wrong.
Jess: maybe it’s the flu? :(
Jess: should I get you a car to take to urgent care
Lena: no, it’s fine. I’m just going to take the day to rehydrate.
Kara calls her and offers to bring chicken soup. Lena has to fight against her baser instincts to play the illness up just for a shot at Kara’s attention. In the end she spends the day alone, on her couch, satisfying a craving for fries and red wine. The food settles her stomach but not her mind. She considers calling a doctor but thinks better of it. The process of finding a physician in the city that she trusts would take long enough that it would probably outlast the course of her illness.
Lena gets nauseated again at 10 in the evening and feels the sting of tears in her eyes when she vomits. Stumbling out into the kitchen, she pulls open the freezer door with the force of her frustration and almost doesn’t notice when it comes off in her hand.
Stunned, she blinks into the misty confines of her freezer and then blinks back to the stainless steel door locked in her fist. The first thing she thinks to do is set it gingerly on the floor. The next is to brace herself against her granite countertop while she considers her subsequent step—probably unplug the fridge, because the last thing she needs is for her freezer to replace her AC unit—but this too is foiled when a swathe of granite breaks apart under the pressure of her hand.
Lena sets the granite next to the freezer door, and goes to call Alex.
She bites her nails while she waits for her to pick up. When it doesn’t happen on the first call, she hits redial and exhales in relief when Alex’s tinny, agitated voice materializes.
“This better be good.” She says. “I finally got Ruby into bed and Police Academy just started.” Lena can hear the opening bars of the L Word theme song in the background.
“I think something’s wrong.” Lena explains everything, the freezer door, the granite. The strange sickness. Alex doesn’t talk, but she can hear her rustling around on the other end of the phone. “I just—I didn’t know who else to call.”
“No, you’re fine.” Alex sighs. “I can take you down to the DEO and run some tests. But full disclosure, I’ve already had my two glasses of ‘Ruby’s asleep’ wine and because I’m a mom now, that means I’m a little drunk.”
“I’ll pick you up from your apartment in 10.”
---
Nothing ratchets up Lena’s anxiety quite as much as watching the needle break as Alex tries to draw her blood. It’s this sense of disquiet that causes the regrettable phrase “Oh my God, do you think it’s alien cancer?” To pass her lips.
Alex gives her a well-deserved eyebrow raise and removes the tourniquet with a clean snap. As she scoots away on her little roller stool to retrieve another pack of needles, Lena picks at the paper sheet covering the exam bed. Just like at a regular doctor’s office. The uniformity of it is comforting.
“Kryptonite needles, like the kind we use on Kara.” Alex explains as she re-assembles her workstation, throwing down a clean chuck and placing her cottons, needles, and an open bandaid for easy access. Even admittedly tipsy, Alex works quickly and methodically, re-tying the blue rubber around Lena’s arm and prodding her brachia for a vein. Lena vocalizes as much.
“We used to practice on each other ripped on adderall in med school.” Alex explains, holding Lena’s skin taut and sliding the needle in. It breaks her skin smoothly and with bite. There’s a flash of red at the head of the needle. “Sweet, confusing success.”
“No kidding.” Lena murmurs, watching Alex fill vial after vial with blood. “You don’t think this is like—“
“No.” Alex shakes her head. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s not that.” Finished, she slides the needle out and places a cotton and bandaid over it. Alex strikes Lena as being calm, given the circumstances. She wonders if it’s to protect her.
“What tests are you going to run?”
“All of them.” Alex says, wheeling away to label and place the vials of blood in the correct stands. “You said you were having stomach problems too, right?”
“I’ve been puking every morning. And Ruby says my boobs are enormous.”
“Sure you’re not pregnant?”
Lena snorts. “Impossible.”
“Well.” Alex rubs her forehead, thinking. “I can run an ultrasound. See if there’s anything going on in your abdomen. It’ll give us something to do while we wait for the tests.”
Lena is grateful for Alex and her blend of pragmatism and empathy. She watches her fumble with the tangled wires of the ultrasound machine (“Who the shitput this away? I bet it was the stupid intern, holy fuck—”) and finally assemble it next to Lena’s prostrate body. She warms the jelly between her thighs while waiting for the machine to hum to life and calibrating it.
Lena undoes the snap of her jeans and rolls them down and rucks her shirt up under her breasts, pushing at the anxiety that raises like bile. Alex glances at her belly and her face twitches into something that could be a smile. “You have an outie.” Lena glances at her belly button. “The jelly is going to be a little cold.”
Alex has the screen angled away from Lena, regarding it with sleepy eyes as she applies the lubricant and presses the wand to skin. In a moment of impenetrable silence, Alex’s expression goes from one of disinterest to squinting at the machine in front of her. She looks at Lena, back at the screen, then to Lena again.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but are you positive that there’s no way you could be—uh, pregnant?”
Alarmed, Lena sits up on her elbows. “I’ve gotten close to having sex once, I cried and she faked an emergency from her dentist.”
“Woof. Okay. Well.” Alex turns a dial on the side of the machine, increasing the volume. The room is filled with a soft, rhythmic wub-wub-wub. "Maybe it’s alien cancer?”
With one hand Lena grabs the screen and jerks it toward her. What she sees is a garbled mess of black and white and a small peanut looking object in the center. “I’m going to pass out. Is this a joke?”
“Yes, suddenly I love elaborate and life-altering pranks.” Alex hits a button that causes a screenshot to print, removing the wand from Lena’s stomach and ripping it off the printer. “I need to get a second opinion on this and I’m going to put a double rush order on those tests. I think it’s better if you slept here tonight.” Alex starts to leave the room but slaps her forehead and turns back to Lena. “Fuck. Can you call Kara and tell her she needs to be there when Ruby wakes up in,” She glances at her watch. “2 hours?”
“Can I tell her—“
“Can you wait to explain until she’s here in person?”
Lena nods. It’s probably for the best.
---
When Kara arrives at the DEO Lena’s sipping from a cup of flat lemonade and flipping through an old issue of American Handgunner, her feet resting on an upturned bucket that Alex had placed unceremoniously in front of her before she left for the lab. Seeing Kara appear in the doorway, standing amongst the barren utility of the DEO breakroom dressed for work in her dove grey crewneck sweater and green chinos, is like seeing a tree spring up in the middle of a polluted city street. The relief that Lena feels is so palpable she’s surprised it isn’t glowing out of her.
“I thought it was food poisoning at first, I’ve been sick a lot, off and on.” Kara nods, chewing thoughtfully on a mouthful of the peanut butter sandwich she produced from her messenger bag. “But then earlier tonight I kind of . . . tore the door of my refrigerator off its hinges accidentally?” Kara stops chewing. “And . . . cracked my granite countertop just by grabbing it?”
“What?!” Kara’s eyes are practically bugging out of her head, eyebrows shot all the way up.
“I know.” Lena says, rubbing at her temples, a serious headache brewing underneath. “And Alex thinks I . . . she did a sonogram and she thinks . . .”
“Okay,” Alex strides into the room, clipboard in hand. “Hey Kar. Did you fill her in, Lena?”
“Uh, nearly. Everything but the, the uh . . . the big thing.”
“What big thing? Bigger than you getting crazy strong overnight?
“Bigger than that.” Lena drops her head forward and takes deep breaths, hoping to calm her stomach.
“Lena’s pregnant.”
“Lena’s what ?”
“Are you sure?”
“Pregnant, Kara. And yes I’m sure, we ran the tests twice. Take a look for yourself, if you want.” It’s there on the page, plain as day. Kara studies it silently, and it occurs to Lena, not for the first time since discovering that her best friend and the alien who saved her life on multiple occasions, that she must have been playing dumb each time she asked Lena to explain anions or string theory or quantum entanglement. To keep her cover, probably. It couldn’t be the other thing.
“That’s . . . Lena I didn’t even know you were interested in . . . I mean, congratulations that’s . . .”
“But that’s just the thing, I’m not. I mean, I haven’t…I don’t know who the father is, and there aren’t any possible candidates. At all. So we either need to call the Vatican, or—”
“That’s what we need to figure out.” Alex cuts in, taking back the clipboard from Kara who had been staring at it, agape. “Something else showed up on the test. Something that could explain the whole—” She mimes Lena opening her fridge only for the door to fall off.
“And?” Lena probes, antsy as Alex flips a few pages over.
“We found abnormal genetic material in your bloodstream.” Lena goes cold. “Kryptonian genetic material, to be exact.”
Kara jolts beside her. “What?”
“I’ve already got a couple of agents going through the security camera footage from your building from the past few months, and I have Winn checking for any evidence that it’s been tampered with. Your tox screen came up clean so that rules out rohypnol or GHB, but if these people had access to Kryptonian DNA they’re probably well-equipped, tech-wise, so we don’t know what they could’ve . . .”
Alex’s voice grows into a drone, and Lena’s nausea becomes so intense she sees spots before she grabs the bucket and vomits for the seventh time in twenty-four hours. She feels someone’s hand on her back, Kara’s. When she raises her head Alex is offering her a square of paper towel and a half finished bottle of water she’d given her earlier.
“Thanks.” Her voice is hoarse. Alex fixes her with a look filled with so much sympathy that Lena can’t bear it, but she can’t look at Kara right now, either, so she stares at a fissure in one of the grey linoleum tiles under her feet.
“We’re going to find whoever did this, Lena.” Alex starts. “And we’re going to bring them to j—”
“I think I have a theory.” Kara pipes up in a small voice. She takes off her glasses, runs her hand over her face and pauses, like she’s searching for the words.
“Arranged marriages were the norm on Krypton, especially for the, uh, nobility.” She makes a vague gesture to herself. “A supercomputer picked our matches for us, or approved relationships if they happened organically.”
“Kara, is this –”
“Alex this is going somewhere, I promise.” Kara says firmly, and Alex puts her hands up in surrender and shrugs a little at Lena. There’s something in Kara’s serious tone that chills Lena to the bone.
“The matches were based on genetic compatibility. For a lot of us there weren’t any feelings involved. Especially for the higher ups. A lot of them were too busy to even . . . you know.”
“Too busy to what, Kara?” Alex asks, evidently having plenty of practice at getting Kara to cut to the chase.
“Too busy to have sex.” Kara takes a breath. “A few decades before Krypton died there was a breakthrough, a sort of…genetic modification. It was optional for Kryptonians at the time, but compulsory for every baby born into the major Houses after that. Including me.”
“What did it do?” Lena asks, and Kara turns to her, an indecipherable look on her face.
“It allowed matches to conceive just with an exchange of bodily fluids. Any bodily fluids. Like, through a kiss, even. It made things more efficient.”
“And you think—”
“How long ago was Vasquez’s first game night?”
“About two months ago.”
“Oh my god.” Alex says, aghast.
“Do you remember finishing off my wine?” Kara asks, searching Lena’s eyes. Her expression reminds her of the first time they spoke on the couch in her office, when she had told her about Lex. Far away and imploring all at once.
Lena can’t speak. She nods, instead, and then the words come back. “Do you think that could even…is it even possible? On Earth? And with . . .”
“I don’t know.” Kara smiles softly at her, fear and something close to awe playing behind her eyes. “I don’t know.”
“Oh my god.” Alex says, again. “Oh my god . I’m doing a paternity test, now. Come with me, both of you.”
Lena finds herself back on the crinkly paper of the exam bed, mind racing while Alex rifles around in the cabinets for a Kryptonite needle thick enough to extract amniotic fluid.
“Found it!” Alex produces a needle of comically large proportions as Kara walks in from the other examination room, holding a little ball of cotton wool to the inside of her elbow.
“Hi.” Kara says, sitting next to her on the exam bed.
“Hi.” She watches Kara dab at her arm with the cotton wool until the needle mark does a vanishing act. Small magic, right in front of her eyes.
“Kara, get down. You can sit on this.” Alex pushes another wheeled stool in her direction, and Kara scoots close by Lena’s side as she lies back, taking her hand once she’d exposed her stomach.
Alex works briskly for someone who hadn’t slept all night. She paints a stripe of yellow antiseptic over the slight curve of Lena’s stomach and covers the head of the ultrasound wand with the same before hooking it back into the side of the machine. Lena’s distantly reminded of the thing that holds the blow dryers at her ludicrously expensive salon. She takes a shuddery breath.
“You doing okay?” Kara asks, looking up to study Lena’s expression.
“I think so. I’m a bit intimidated by that needle.” She’s eyeing it warily from where Alex has it laid out with the other gear – surgical cloth, a couple of vials, and something that looks awfully similar to a coffee plunger.
Kara shakes her head and smiles. “You’re tough, you’ve got this. Just squeeze my hand when it hurts.”
“Kara, can you come around here and hold this in place for me.”
“Oh, uh, sure.” Kara gets up and stands at the other side of the bed, tripping over something on her way because she’s riveted to the amorphous shapes on the monitor that could be her child ( their child , Lena reminds herself). She takes over Alex’s firm grip on the ultrasound wand.
“Keep it steady.” Alex says, and Kara nods, reaching her other hand out to Lena who takes it gratefully.
Alex guides the needle into the soft flesh of her stomach, deep, and Lena lets out an artistic combination of curse words with a few major deities thrown in for good measure. Alex just laughs and hooks up the coffee plunger thing to the end of the needle, drawing out a vial of clear fluid with the slightest yellow tint. Kara watches the monitor the whole time.
“Okay, you’re all done. Bed rest for the next 24 hours, I’ll have someone take you to a comfier room when it’s ready for you. I’ll rush this so we can start planning our next move straight away. You did good, Lena.” Alex touches her shoulder on the way out of the room, leaving her and Kara alone.
“Jeez, you are strong.” Kara flexes her hand when Lena lets go to clean herself up, wincing. “Do you want a snack or something? I can get you anything you want from the break room, and,” Kara feels around in the pocket of her chinos and produces a handful of coins, “I’ve got some quarters for vending machine.”
“I’m not really hungry, thanks though. You can go if you want, I’ll be fine here.”
“No, I,” Kara sits beside her on the bed again, the length of her thigh touching Lena’s. “I’m gonna stay here with you. I guess all we can do is wait.”
There’s a beat, before Kara speaks again in a fragile voice thick with the promise of tears. “I’m so sorry, Lena. I know it was an accident but I’m sorry, and I don’t know how to make it better. You didn’t ask for this, and—”
“Kara.” Lena touches Kara’s forearm gently, over the fine wool of her sleeve. “It’s gonna be okay.” She doesn’t fully believe that yet, but continues all the same. “Let’s just wait until we know for sure.”
Lena offers her a smile and Kara nods, covers Lena’s hand on her forearm with her own. Kara can’t touch the ground from her seat on the exam bed, and she kicks her legs slowly in the air. Kara is always moving—tapping, bouncing, stretching, wiggling—full of cataclysmic potential energy that made true stillness near impossible. Lena nudges Kara’s foot with hers each time it swings past, and Kara ducks her head and huffs out a small laugh.
Lena wishes that she could freeze time here, just live in a little suspended bubble with Kara in this comfortable silence, warmed from the inside out by being beside her. Whatever these test results show will change things irrevocably, and she wants more time in the before of it all. She hopes, for Kara, that the baby is Kryptonian. And she knows that if it is, regardless of parentage, it will be Kara’s all the same. She’ll make it that way. She’ll find a way to right it in her body. She’ll will it to be hers.
---
She gets Siri to call Jess and asks her to bring over her laptop. She nearly asks for her book, too, but then she remembers (from her previous read-throughs) that the ending involved the reanimated corpse of a child, so she decides against it.
When Alex comes into the room, face as inscrutable as always, she says nothing. Instead, she places two sheets of plastic on the tray table lying across her hospital bed, moves them so they’re flush with each other. In the upper left corner, the words “LUTHOR FETUS” and “KARA DANVERS” overlap. Their DNA sequences run down the page like perforated strokes of black calligraphy ink, and there are haphazard red circles around each point of similarity. Lena counts five before skipping to the eighteenth marker, where beside it someone has scrawled “obligate paternal allele ”. It’s circled too.
Alex only tries to stop her once when she gets out of bed and leaves the room, walking down the hall until she sees daylight—a balcony. It’s mercifully empty and she takes gulps of fresh air, sitting down on a bench with cigarette butts scattered at her feet. She doesn’t realise Kara had followed her until she sits down beside her.
“I want you to know that you have the final say over all of this.” Kara starts, weight in her voice. “It’s your body, and your life, and I won’t resent you if you don’t want to go through with it. I promise.”
Lena’s learnt that Kara keeps her promises, all of them, but she hadn’t even considered the possibility of ending the pregnancy since Alex had mentioned the traces of Kryptonian in her bloodstream. She goes to tell Kara as much but Kara continues. “Even . . . even if you want to have the baby but you don’t want to raise it, I can take care of him. You can be involved in whatever way you want, and Alex can help me out, and Eliza.”
Suddenly Kara’s in front of her, half-kneeling half-crouching on the dirty ground, braceleting Lena’s wrists with her fingers and turning them so her palms face upward. “But Lena , I . . . I think we can do this. You and I, together. I know we can do this. I think . . . I think we could give this baby a chance at the things we missed out on growing up. There’s no one better for this job than us. I don’t know if I can explain it, but I have this feeling. I want to do this with you.”
Lena’s breath is stolen from her, and Kara’s thumbs soothe over each pulse point in tandem like she was trying to transmit some of that feeling directly into Lena’s veins. James had told her once that he and Kara argued when she was jailed, that Kara had argued with everyone, striking out on her own away from her friends and family. Kara had fought for her innocence, the innocence of a woman she barely knew despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary, based on something she saw in her eyes. If Earth’s yellow sun can enhance Kara’s physical senses to godlike heights, then it would follow her intuition would be blessed with the same gift. A feeling.
“It wouldn’t matter if we weren’t like regular families. We could move in together, like, now, if you want, so you don’t have to stay at the DEO in case something goes wrong. I could take care of you. I could take care of all of us.” Kara sits back. “But I know this is really overwhelming and I’m not helping that right now, so I’ll let you be.”
Just as she starts to stand Lena grabs her around the wrist. She looks Kara in the eye as she guides her to rest her hand on her stomach, presses against it, holds it there. The realisation hits Lena square in the chest—that Kara could be her family, more than she already is, even if it isn’t in the way she was hoping for at first. Something in Lena’s cells had sung out to Kara’s, had shifted and changed in both of them so they could fit together, and she can feel it in the heat of Kara’s palm.
“Does this mean you--?” Lena nods, and Kara blinks, tears spilling over onto her cheeks.
“I want to do this with you too. I don’t know how, but I want to try. With you.” The words feel right as she says them, everything else falling to the wayside.
“Lena, oh my god.” Kara pauses for something between a laugh and a sob, breaking out into the brightest grin Lena’s ever seen on her. “Oh my god . . . Are you sure?”
“I’m sure, Kara. I promise. I’m sure.”
Kara surges forward and hugs her, almost desperately, the force of it nearly knocking her off balance. Lena just holds her tight, legs bracketing Kara’s middle, and Lena cries freely into Kara’s shoulder as all the emotion she’d been holding in for the past night crests when she feels Kara sobbing against her. They pull away after a long, cathartic moment and wipe at their faces a little self-consciously, sniffing and laughing, a little giddy. Kara’s hands return to Lena’s belly, holding the barely-changed swell of her stomach reverently through the well-worn sweater Alex had leant her earlier.
“Hey little guy.” She says softly, and Lena tries her hardest not to melt. Of all the times she’d imagined Kara on her knees between her legs, this possibility had never entered her mind. “Or girl. Or, I don’t think you’re either one of those yet?” She looks up at Lena questioningly, and Lena shrugs at her. Surreal doesn’t even begin to cover it. “Nah, I think you’re too little for that still.”
“Me and your mom should download that app that shows you what piece of fruit you are as you grow,” Kara directs at her stomach, and fresh tears spring to her eyes at the word mom . Kara beams up at her and wipes away a tear that had run down to Lena’s jaw. “I couldn’t really see how big you’d be on the monitor. Between you and me,” she drops her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “I couldn’t actually figure out which blob was you.”
Lena laughs, and wants to reach out and tuck a loose strand of Kara’s hair behind her ear, brush her fingers against her face. She thinks Kara would let her, in this moment. It wouldn’t be a big deal all things considered. But she doesn’t want to know what it feels like. It would make denying it to herself harder in the future. So she settles for resting her hand on Kara’s shoulder instead and accepts the achingly sweet smile she gets in response, heart full to the brim.
---
She and Kara explain it, together, more times than either of them can count. When they tell Winn and James the former lapses into referring to her and Kara as “Baby Mama” and “Baby Daddy” as soon as he stops crying, and the latter folds both of them into a fierce hug and quietly calls dibs on godparent.
“Whoa, this means your DNA must have superstrength too.” She overhears Winn say to Kara as they leave the bar. “I mean, I’ve heard jokes about Irish women getting pregnant from just a look, but spi —” The rest is muffled by Kara’s hand.
J’onn knows already, caught up in the hellish night Lena had spent in his offices, but congratulates them with a father’s pride all the same, pressing his forehead to each of them in turn as is Martian custom. Kara flies to Midvale to tell Eliza, Facetiming Lena from her childhood bedroom.
“This is where we’ve had all our big talks,” Kara explains, holding a stuffed monkey to her chest. She turns her phone landscape so Eliza can get into frame.
“Thank you, Lena.” Eliza says, and Lena tries not to tear up. Her hormones were doing a total number on her emotions, tear ducts on more of a hare trigger than usual. “I can’t wait to meet my first grandchild. Thank you.”
Clark visits for the weekend, and although he calls her “Miss Luthor” a few times on the first day, he comes around eventually. They spend most of the weekend at the DEO, Winn fawning over Superman and Alex running tests on the three of them under the guise of routine to begin trying to replicate whatever inspired Lena’s pregnancy for Clark and Lois. Clark and Kara disappear into one of the sub-basements for a while on the second day, and when she asks Alex about what’s down there, she learns about Alura.
Lena only has one person to tell. She lets Jess rattle through her to-do list for the day, handing her schedules and meeting minutes. Her assistant doesn’t look up from her iPad more than once. When she’s finished, she offers a “Anything else, Ms. Luthor?”. Lena takes this as her chance.
“Yes.” Jess lifts her eyebrows and poises her finger to type a note. “I’m pregnant. With Kara Danvers’s baby.”
“Oh.” Jess says. She looks from her iPad to Lena to her iPad again, finger still hovering over the touch screen. “How should I phrase that in the minutes?”
“Sit down, Jess.” Jess does. She settles the tablet in her lap and looks to Lena like she’s searching for any kind of guidance on how to react. “It’s fine. I’m fine. If I try to take maternity leave before the baby is crowning it’s because Kara is holding me captive in our home.”
Jess nods and taps her finger against the screen of her tablet lighting quick. Lena’s brow furrows. “What are you writing?”
“New instructions.” Jess explains, not looking up. “Your morning coffee should now be decaf tea—
“Surely a cup of half-caf a day won’t kill it.”
“And I’m scheduling you for a biweekly prenatal massage.”
“That, I won’t argue with.”
“How do you feel about Lamaze?”
Before she leaves, new schedule in hand, Jess clears her throat and asks for a copy of the ultrasound in a timid voice. It’s a small detail, but meaningful.
All of them, bar none, show some sort of shock when they broach the whole “perfect genetic match” thing. The Luthor/Super irony isn’t lost on her, and thinking about Lillian finding out that Superman’s cousin had knocked her up makes her laugh out loud. The scientist in her can see how it’s at least plausible—she is the smartest Luthor, after all, so she matches or at least comes close to matching Kara intellectually. She’s been healthy all her life (physically, anyway, and current problems notwithstanding), if not slightly lacking in the fitness department, although Kara’s DNA would more than make up for that based on the borderline obscene way she was built.
The most mystifying thing, Kryptonian biology and genetic compatibility aside, was that she of all people had been singled out by Kara’s very cells when Kara being in her life at all was still a source of daily awe from her. Yes, her unorthodox pregnancy made objective sense. But when she lets the dam holding her thoughts break she’s washed in the idea that Kara, who had changed everything by not just allowing but inviting Lena into her world and encouraging her to partake of all the love held within it, had through some fluke of nature sparked new life in her. Sure, she could explain it in pure fact. She could read it, plain as day, from a piece of paper by examining the alleles shared between Kara and the baby growing inside her. But no matter what she couldn’t help hearing, on an unending loop in her mind, a voice saying “miracle, miracle ”.
---
Lena was foolish to think that house shopping with Kara would be an easy endeavor. Her friend’s limitless sense of sentimentality drives their search from downtown apartments (“A baby needs room to grow, Lena!”) to the tangled maze of the hills. Somehow, in her Kara way, she manages to sweep Lena up in the drama of it all. The idea that it might take them, with their limitless budget, weeks to find the perfect house seems absurd. But it’s her life.
They bicker good naturedly about space and what could constitute a nursery, how modern the kitchen should be, and what an appropriate commute looks like. It stops being genuine after a day or two and Lena comes to plainly revel in the sensation of bantering with Kara. She likes the way she asks her if she needs to sit down every 30 seconds, even if she’s not showing yet. She likes her hand pressed into the small of her back as they walk through doorways.
Along for the ride is their game real estate agent Nance, who sticks around even after Kara’s well-intentioned but harrying explanation of their circumstances (“We’re best friends and we’re having a baby together. I’m the father. Does make us technically life partners?”). Nance is responsible for their Wednesday afternoon showing of a house so far into the hills they’re almost in coyote territory. Kara frets on the drive there about the probability of a coyote running away with the baby, punctuated by a lengthy discussion about the dingos ate my baby lady, which is still running strong when they meet her in the driveway of the house.
It’s shrouded in greenery and steep, but there’s a certain charm to it that Lena feels before they even step into the house. Kara keeps a hand on her elbow as they enter through the mud room door and into a bright, white tiled kitchen. Nance is ratting on about something but Lena doesn’t notice, too fixated on Kara’s wide eyes as she stares out the window over the kitchen sink. She can practically see a tiny, blonde toddler being chased through the half-wooded backyard in Kara’s irises.
“The owners are very motivated to sell.” Nance narrates as she leads them through the rest of the house. “It’s 4 bedroom, just like you wanted, with a master. And they already have a room set up as a nursery.” They ascend the staircase and Nance pushes open a door in the middle of the hallway, stepping aside to allow Kara and Lena in.
Lena has had her share of seemingly innocuous moments in her life that have turned out to be extraordinary meaningful, but stepping into the afternoon light of that nursery may top the list. Kara grabs her hand immediately, as if looking for a tether. Behind them, Nance says something that might be “I’ll leave you girls to it.” And bows out.
It’s not quite the content of the room, but the promise of it. The crib is a tangible thing, the rocking chair in a corner that Kara might somebody sit in and rock their baby to sleep. All at once the baby is real. Not just a vibration on an ultrasound or Lena’s anxiety, but a bundle of cells that she and Kara made out of saliva and pure chance. And the baby isn’t just her’s, but Kara’s, bearing half of her genetic makeup, her dominant and nondominant traits. The blonde hair would be nondominant, Lena supposes, but she finds herself wishing in a way that the baby will be blonde.
Lena knows better than anybody that the universe is vast and absurd. She used to call her life a cosmic joke, back when she had a better sense of humor about it. This might be the punchline. She’s doing her best to embrace it. Lena holds on tight to her best friend’s hand and watches the moment of peace flicker away in front of their faces, quick and indescribable as a camera flare.
___
“Lena, we are not unpacking all of this tonight. Come sit with me.”
“I just need to find our dishes!” Lena calls from the kitchen. At this point they’d unpacked their stepping stool, which Lena uses to rummage in their upper cupboards for whatever plates or bowls made their way out. Kara seems to err more towards madness than method. “Are we going to eat pizza without plates like Neanderthals?”
“I’m not going to dignify that with a response.” Lena rolls her eyes and keeps digging, sleeves of her long-sleeved t shirt rolled up around her elbows. “Lena, if you don’t come out here right now, you know what I’m going to do…”
“Kara, don’t.” But it’s too late. The sounds of a plucky guitar and piccolo filter in from the living room, then Kara is craning her head around the kitchen entrance, miming a small flute. Lena turns, still on the stool, and puts her head in her hands to hide her pleasured blush and praying that Kara isn’t listening too hard for her heartbeat. “Kara I’m serious!”
“Having my baby,” Paul Anka sings by way of Kara Danvers holding an invisible microphone under her mouth. She walks towards Lena with exaggerated swagger. “What a lovely way of saying how much you love me.” Kara hoists Lena off the stool and embraces her, arms about her waist, giving her a heart-stopping twirl. The giggle that bubbles up is nothing but organic, springing from a place of delight. Kara sets her back on her feet before beginning to move their bodies in a silly sway.
Lena only puts up a token resistance before giving in—how is she supposed to deny Kara anything, ever, and especially now? Now that they’re bound forever into the vast reaches of time and space, by a chance combination of their DNA. She reaches up and wraps her arms around Kara’s neck and buries her head against her shoulder. Kara reacts by slowing their movements and tightening her grip against Lena’s waist until they’re flush together.
“These lyrics make me so uncomfortable. Why were men in the 70s so obsessed with getting their girlfriends pregnant?”
“Shh.” Kara whispers. “Don’t ruin it.”
Lena is trying her best. She’s working on defining what ruining it looks like, exactly. It might be pressing a kiss to the skin of Kara’s neck and folding to her natural instinct to make things complicated. It might be falling asleep next to Kara on the couch instead of her new orthopedic mattress. It’s anything that would invite Kara’s almost certain rejection and the loss of their friendship. She opts for shutting her mouth and continuing on the path of least resistance. It’s a lucky coincidence that it happens to be her held in Kara’s arms.
Stars hang heavy in the sky and watch over the Big Bang of their new life. Maybe it’s the new structure of her DNA, but Lena could swear she can feel their eyes. They stand in their half formed kitchen, owls chirping, and Paul Anka crooning, seamed together as if cut from the same piece of cloth.