Chapter Text
The ambush happens on Kara’s favorite morning of the week, which is just impolite. Monday means breakfast at Bartley’s, means the absolute delight of mini bagels and lox, means zesty capers and three satisfying sides of scrambled eggs. It doesn’t, as a rule, include two quick bursts of gunfire hitting her simultaneously before she even touches the ground. It’s not nice, disrupting someone’s morning like this, especially when it gets in the way of their second breakfast.
“Ooh, guns. How original,” Kara calls out as she lands, brushing absent-mindedly at the shattered pieces of metal clinging to her supersuit while she tries to figure out where the shots came from. “Bet mine are bigger than yours, though.” She plants her fists on her hips and flexes. “I mean. Have you seen these?”
Another burst of — is it buckshot they’re firing at her? Kara takes one round to the chest this time, the second one goes wide. The third bounces off her butt.
“Okay, first of all, rude,” Kara admonishes, frowning down at the shards stubbornly stuck to her family crest. (Was the material always this sticky?) “Second, you must have missed the memo about me being pretty much impervious to bullets? So how about you give up now, and I’ll let you go brag to your friends about how you ruined my new suit.”
That earns her a headshot. It dings off of Kara’s forehead like glitter, barely powerful enough to make her blink. Tiny fragments of metal cling to her skin, settle in her eyebrows, her lashes. Kara’s going to have to talk to Brainy about this static problem. She has an image of flawlessness to uphold, after all. She’s not going to look very Super if she has to pull off all of her heroic acts with frizzy hair.
Hold on, what—
A hollow, drawn out groan of twisting metal draws Kara’s attention. The cast iron streetlight closest to her appears to be attempting a curtsy, which, you know, nice, but also: wildly out of character. Kara barely has enough time to blink at it before a USPS collection box hits her in the head, and then a delivery truck lunges at her, its wide-eyed driver looking every bit as bewildered as Kara feels.
Kara moves out of the way to prevent a collision, but when she moves, everything else does too: the streetlight snaps and screeches along the pavement before it curls around her left calf; the truck snuggles up against her lower back; the collection box tangles in her hair.
And like, seriously?
Kara just wanted to have breakfast in peace.
-
In a carefully emptied out DEO lab, Kara scarfs down eleven blueberry pecan power bars while Vasquez helps her comb two street bollards and a fire hydrant out of her thoroughly mussed up ‘do. Brainy’s performing some sort of technological magic to counteract whatever the hell is happening that makes every single piece of metal in National City suddenly want to cozy up to her.
“We’ve stopped the flooding and fixed the subsequent power outage on Seventh Street,” Alex greets them, eyes on her tablet as she enters the lab. “You’ll be happy to know nobody got hurt, although that truck driver may need some counseling before he gets back behind the wheel.” She takes in the scene in front of her, looking entirely unimpressed as Vasquez finally manages to wrestle the collection box that’s been stuck to Kara’s back down to the floor. “So,” Alex gestures vaguely. “This is new.”
Kara huffs, glaring at Brainy. “New suit’s static,” she grumbles.
“As I already explained to your sister,” Brainy points out to Alex, “The suit is not the problem.” His tone takes on his usual dramatic flair when he continues, “Supergirl herself appears to have become somewhat... magnetic.”
Alex’s eyebrows twitch in a clear effort to keep her amusement from showing. “Magnetic.”
“For lack of a better term,” Brainy revises.
Kara whines, “Half of National City tried to launch itself at me while the other half laughed.”
Alex is laughing now, too. “Guess it’s not Girl of Stainless Steel.”
“Alex, I heard them giggling!” Kara pouts. “I can already see the headlines.”
The smirk is clear in Vasquez’s voice when she suggests, “‘Breaking news: Supergirl’s allure reaches new heights’.”
“Considering the way they usually spin things,” Alex predicts, “they’ll probably be reporting how she got bested by a rusty lamppost, instead.”
“Nah,” Vasquez grunts, resuming her struggle with the fire hydrant. “More like, ‘New Power Unlocked? Supergirl makes metal bend to her will’.”
“What on earth would even do that?” Alex muses, stepping closer but still making no move to actually help.
“Something not of Earth, most likely,” Brainy says.
Alex furrows her brow at her sister, tugging a small metal pellet free from her family crest. “Which would mean someone probably did this to you on purpose.”
Kara twitches when Alex releases the piece of metal she’s just pried free, watching it boomerang right back to where it was. “Pain in my ass.”
Alex hums. “You have to admit it was effective.”
“Whatever,” Kara says, twisting around to face Brainy. “Can you like, outfit me with some sort of giant dryer sheet so I can get out of here? My week has barely even started and James has been in a really bad mood lately.”
“This is not static electricity,” Brainy emphasizes, now sounding slightly miffed, “but yes. I will need thirteen minutes.”
Kara frowns down at her phone. Lena has sent her several texts. “I’ll give you ten.”
Exactly thirteen minutes later, Supergirl is free of static cling (SHE KNOWS OKAY) and patiently allows her sister to brush the final filaments from her suit. “I know you’ve spent the past ten minutes thinking of the perfect pun,” Kara tells her. “Let’s hear it.”
Alex just smirks. “Get out of here. If you hurry you can still make your meeting.”
Kara actually decides to make a quick detour to Lena’s office. Her last text message sounded a little frantic.
-
Kara makes a face as the news ticker on the giant screen in L-Corp’s lobby announces that NATIONAL CITY GETS A LITTLE TOO ATTACHED TO ITS SUPERHERO. Lena smiles at her when she enters her office, breathing out Kara’s name the way she always does, as if the sight of her is an unexpected relief. Kara is glad she decided to stop by. Lena looks lovely, but extra pale, and worried. Kara is distantly aware that Lena worries about her a lot. And that somehow, they never talk about why exactly that is.
She’s also aware that Lena is staring at her.
“Is everything okay?” Kara asks her gingerly as she takes her seat across the great white expanse of Lena’s desk.
“Yes,” Lena says, looking nowhere near as sure as she sounds. “You just, you have a little…”
Oh. There is something in Kara’s hair. She grabs at it. It’s an expensive-looking fountain pen, she discovers. Lena’s own, she fears.
“Oh,” Kara says. “Yes. I was—” she throws a thumb back over her shoulder, ”in the area. Heard the sirens, you know.” She pries the pen away from her scalp and out of her hair, then realizes she’s unable to put it down. It sticks to her fingers like a stubborn piece of tape, or that inevitable strand of hair after she’s just turned off the shower.
Damn it, Brainy.
Lena’s looking at her very closely. Kara squirms a little under her scrutiny. It makes her want to sit up straighter.
“I figured, I’m a reporter, right?” Kara laughs, pointedly ignoring the paperclip that’s inching across the surface of Lena’s desk, slowly making its way toward Kara’s struggling fingertips. “Best go report!” She pulls her hand into her lap. It sends the paperclip flying towards her. She surreptitiously slaps her other hand around it.
Lena blinks at it, then back up to Kara’s face. Her eyes are wide and dark. “Of course. But you’re, you’re not hurt—”
“No! Of course not.” Lena’s pen is cool and smooth, much like every other surface in her office. It always makes Kara feel a little rumpled, a little unwashed, like she’s a child again, getting cookie crumbs all over her father’s workstation. ”I am very careful,” she promises. “Always. Safety first.”
“That’s good.” Lena is breathing as if it’s easier now than it was before, as if there’s suddenly more air in the room.
“So,” Kara says, flicking her fingers uselessly, “this, um. This is nice! A good pen.” It’s time to admit that it’s not going to come off. “Can I keep it?”
Lena’s bewilderment is clear on her face, but she says readily, “Of course. It’s yours.”
Kara sneaks a look down at her watch. “So I should probably head out,” she admits, never eager to leave Lena’s presence. “You know what a stickler James can—”
“Actually, Kara.” Lena rises abruptly from her desk, then looks a little sheepish at the clumsiness of her own interruption. “Could you sit with me, just for a moment?”
Lena gestures her over to the small seating area near the door and Kara follows obediently, performing a rather complicated choreography that allows her to put as much space as possible between herself and Lena’s metal, fragile-looking floor lamp while still maintaining a respectable distance from where Lena has folded one leg beneath herself on the couch.
It’s not an entirely unfamiliar battle — though the floor lamp thing is new. There’s something undeniably magnetic about Lena Luthor herself, something that’s made Kara want to get closer to her from the first time she’d set foot into this office. She figures Lena must get that a lot, with how pretty she is and all, but she still acts flustered each time she catches Kara looking.
Not that Kara looks at her. Or like, not a lot. It’s just that, being around her requires its own special kind of attention, a constant need for Kara to remind herself that while Lena Luthor is her best friend, and therefore provokes a sort of loose-lipped unguardedness, it’s one that Kara can’t afford; not when Lena is objectively brilliant, and doesn’t know — can’t know — that Kara Danvers is also Supergirl.
Lena lets out a careful breath and says, “James and I have decided to end our— association.”
What a perfectly weird and roundabout way to describe the end of a romantic relationship, Kara thinks. “Oh?” she says, aptly demonstrating her own comparative lack of eloquence.
It earns her one of Lena’s crinkly smiles at least, affection clear on her best friend’s face. “Should I feel offended that you don’t seem all that surprised?” she flusters.
“No,” Kara says, “I am,” and she is, is the thing, she's actually stunned, but she’s something else, much more than that.
She’s glad.
The simple truth of it is that Kara’s missed getting to see Lena like this, with her heels kicked off and her legs pulled up, a Lena whose ears flush pink when she blushes, who allows herself to accept a compliment every now and then. That Lena has been James’ Lena, these past eight months. And Kara hasn’t begrudged James that, not at all. She can’t blame him for hogging the little time Lena allows herself to be pried away from her work.
But.
Kara will no longer have to feel that familiar pang of disappointment when James brings Lena her coat as game night comes to a close. She won’t have to fight the urge to ask Lena to stay just a little bit later as James spreads a large, possessive hand over Lena’s hip and tugs her close. Kara will never again have to see them emerging from the same car at the office in the morning, won’t have to look away as Lena brushes her lipstick from the corner of his mouth.
A particularly loud part of Kara’s heart is elated.
“Bummer,” Kara says, flinching inwardly at her word choice as soon as it leaves her mouth.
Lena doesn’t seem to know what to do with that, her eyes blinking away from Kara’s face. “I recognize that this might make things awkward between us,” she says stiffly. “James was your friend first, after all. Your loyalty—”
Oh, absolutely not.
“You are my best friend,” Kara stops her, “And my first priority by like, a thousand miles. I mean it may be time to finally separate you and James as game night partners, but that’s honestly been a long time coming—”
“Game night?” Lena furrows her brow. “I can’t participate in those anymore, Kara. Let’s be realistic.”
Kara almost sneers, balking at Lena’s assumption that she would naturally be the one to step aside. “No,” she says firmly. “That’s not how this is going to go.”
Lena’s eyes are on her own fingers, tangled tightly together in her lap. “I think you might be underestimating how much hurt and resentment James harbors towards me,” she says softly. “The least I can do is not involve myself in his life anymore.”
Kara is surprised at the hot flash of indignation she feels at Lena’s words, and she takes a second to tamp it down. “So you and James alternate weeks for now,” she says, a little gentler. “I understand not wanting to run into each other for a while. But James doesn’t get to just kick you out.”
“That’s not fair to James.” Lena’s gaze bounces down from Kara’s eyes to her shoulders, then the floor. “None of this was his call.”
“Yeah, well,” Kara flounders a little bit, then huffs, “It isn’t your call, either. Game night is a democracy, not a dictatorship.”
Lena looks doubtful, but there’s something like hope in the pink of her cheeks, and it breaks Kara’s heart. “I feel like we’re having the divorce talk,” Lena says with a chuckle, but her voice is thick, and she’s turning her chin the way she does when she’s about to cry. She adds, wryly, “Mommy and daddy still love you very much.”
“I love you both,” Kara says, meeting the attempt at humor with stubborn earnestness. “But I like you a lot better, and if I have to choose between the two of you, I choose you. Always.”
The look in Lena’s eyes is soft, so soft when she blinks back up at her, almost as soft as the light that catches the fine hair on the hinge of her jaw when she clenches it, and it makes Kara’s heart thud hard in her chest. “I would never want you to have to choose,” Lena says.
Kara can’t keep herself from reaching for her any longer, bridging the gap between them to clasp Lena’s hand with the one that isn’t still clutching Lena’s various office supplies. “I know that.”
Lena’s eyes are green and blue, and shiny with unshed tears. Kara watches as Lena makes a valiant attempt at drying them without Kara noticing, laughs when she catches Kara looking. “I think this is the first time I’ve cried since I decided to end it with James,” she snorts. “Am I a horrible person?”
“Lena.” Kara’s scooted in for a hug before she even realizes it, and Lena melts into it like it’s a relief. “You’re a beautiful person,” Kara promises, Lena’s hair soft against her mouth, “and there’s no way I’m allowing you to fall back into your reclusive lifestyle. I know that you’re wonderful company, but you really should let the rest of us enjoy it, too.”
Kara holds her, and doesn’t let go until Lena is laughing again.
-
Alex is sitting at her kitchen island when Kara finally gets home from work that night, her mouth full of food and a stack of papers spread out in front of her. “You’re late,” she says. “I started without you.”
“I didn’t know you were coming by but I’m so glad you did,” Kara sighs when she spots four flat cardboard boxes, already high on the fragrance of melted cheese and bread baked to perfection. “How did you know I wanted pizza for dessert?”
“You already ate?” Alex narrows her eyes at her as Kara fetches napkins and plates before sitting down across from her sister. Alex gives her a quick once-over before reaching a conclusion that seems to satisfy her. “How is Lena?”
She scares Kara a little, sometimes. “How do you do that?”
Alex shrugs. Then tries to slap at her sister’s hands — too slow — as Kara shoves an entire slice of pizza into her mouth while reaching for another. “You already ate!” Alex protests.
“If you didn’t want to share, you shouldn’t have had it delivered to my apartment.”
“Fine.” Alex does that hiccuppy burp thing Eliza hates so much. “Watching you down half a pizza in five seconds always ruins my appetite anyway.”
Kara makes a point of chewing her next slice like she's a human being. She says, “Lena and James broke up.”
Alex’s wince is equal parts surprise and sympathy. “God. When?”
“Last night.” Kara stops chewing abruptly when a dissonant, soppy-sweet note disturbs the perfectly savory symphony of her pizza experience. “Is there pineapple on this?” she asks sharply, attempting to limit further contact between her taste buds and their suspected assailant.
Alex’s shoulders fall, indignant. “Kara! Are they okay?”
Kara drops the contents of her mouth into her hand and studies them closely. “Lena is far too classy to go into detail,” she says, “but she seemed relieved more than anything. Alex, why is there fruit on my pizza?”
“Stop whining, you ate two whole slices without even noticing.” Alex squints at her. “Doesn’t it feel sudden to you? James was all over her at game night last week.”
Kara shrugs and delicately nudges a bit of pineapple off of her next bite of pizza. It goes flying, hitting the side of the refrigerator with a resounding thunk. “Judging by the stormcloud that’s been following him around the office I’m guessing things didn’t exactly end on James’ terms.”
Kara thinks maybe she should try to feel at least a little bad for him. He’s still her friend, and losing Lena Luthor would be the absolute worst thing that could happen to— anyone, really.
Maybe Kara should text him. Invite him out for drinks.
Then again, awkward.
“Hey,” Kara says around another mouthful of pizza, “it would be kind of inappropriate for me to offer to comfort my ex-boyfriend after my best friend dumps him, right?”
Alex snorts into her beer. “Do you want the AITA or the ‘dear Penthouse’ answer?”
Kara knows she’s blushing and hates it. “Just so you know,” she snips, “I’m finishing all four of these pizzas.”
“There’s only three left. The second box is empty.” Alex ducks as a crumpled up napkin whizzes over her head. “And for that, I’m picking the movie.”
-
Lena updates her contact information the following Thursday. Kara receives the notification while she’s at work, and the excited squeal that escapes her has Nia rushing to her desk, looking panicked. “What is it?” Nia hisses. “More lingering side effects from that encounter with Magneto last week? I don’t think James has forgiven you for wiping this month's entire layout.”
Kara rolls her eyes. “For the last time,” she says, “Magneto is a comic book character, and James isn’t going to fire me for something that wasn’t my fault.” She turns her phone so Nia can see — Lena has exchanged her personal address at the Baldwin Hotel for a recently converted warehouse near the waterfront.
Nia whistles low. “Fancy,” she says. “Good for her.”
Can I come over? Kara has sent it before she realizes she’s used super speed, and hopes Lena won’t notice.
But Lena’s response isn’t any less instantaneous. I’m going to be stuck at the office until midnight at least, I’m afraid. Are you free tomorrow night?
Kara grins at her screen. See you at seven?
Lena starts typing, stops, then starts again. Make it eight thirty. I’ll take care of dinner.
-
Kara shows up at eight twenty eight, wearing a soft pastel blue crewneck sweater she’s noticed always encourages Lena to put her hands on her, citing increased cuddliness. This is a Very Good Thing. Kara is a cuddly person, just, you know, in general, and she’s been trying to bring Lena over to her side in that regard.
“Golly.”
Lena’s smile broadens at Kara’s reaction when she enters her new apartment. It’s one of the smiles that Kara likes the most, one that makes tiny grooves in the bridge of her nose and dimples her cheeks. “Do you like it?” Lena asks.
The place is enormous. It’s also fully furnished and meticulously decorated. Kara was expecting empty walls, stacks of half-packed boxes, and like, she knows she didn’t miss Lena in jeans and a ratty t-shirt, drilling holes in the wall and assembling furniture — Lena would have hired people to do that — but she’s still a little disappointed. She would like to have helped her get settled in.
It’s what friends are for, after all.
Kara is briefly diverted by a rectangular flight case large enough to fit a preschooler, looking intimidating and very out of place in the middle of Lena’s entryway. Kara is tempted to scan it and see what’s inside, but friends don’t invade each other’s privacy like that.
They’re allowed to be curious, however. “Um, Lena?” Kara inquires. “Was this supposed to go to your lab, instead?”
Lena smiles fondly when she sees what Kara is looking at. “Oh no, it’s where it needs to be,” she says, before guiding Kara into her living room.
Kara quickly forgets her disappointment, replacing it with wide-eyed wonder at Lena’s choice of interior. The place feels like a home. Kara has gotten so used to Lena’s sterile office interior that it’s a shock to see her embracing a sort of moody mid-century modern aesthetic, all natural wood and Persian rugs and dark blue accent walls.
And plants, good god. There are so many plants.
“I love it,” Kara says, gasping when she spots the dining room table. It’s magnificent, large and heavy and prominently positioned. It’s a table for entertaining guests, for dinner parties, poker nights. It’s a table for someone who knows she has friends, and the thought makes Kara’s heart surge with pride. “It’s perfect.”
She pats at her overstuffed messenger bag, which Kara has filled with all the comfort items she could think of — Ben & Jerry’s, Eliza’s famous chicken soup, and Kara’s personal laptop loaded with every single episode of Battlestar Galactica. “I know you said you’d take care of dinner,” she says, “but I brought all the additional supplies for a post-breakup girls night.”
Lena sighs out a soft, indulgent laugh. “You didn’t need to do that, Kara. I promise I’m fine.”
Kara takes in Lena’s soft shoulders, her warm smile, and is pleased to find she believes her. “Fine and also hungry?” she tries, opening her bag to reveal the pints of Phish Food and Cookie Dough.
Lena glints at her as if Kara’s offering up something far more sinful than ice cream. “Fine and starving,” she says, her voice dipping so low Kara can feel it in her belly. She leans into Kara as she plucks both pints from her fingers, the nearness and the scent of her momentarily overwhelming Kara’s senses. “Thank you.”
While Lena’s putting the ice cream in the freezer and fetching their Chinese food delivery, Kara is going to go ahead and admit that she’s already a little addicted to the feeling of existing in Lena’s private space like this. There’s an intimacy to it that she hasn’t been able to achieve with Lena before. Lena’s apartment is chic, but not so much that Kara feels she needs to keep her limbs tucked in tight to keep from breaking things. The furniture is inviting, a leather sectional sofa taking up most of the space at the window, oversized and cozy-looking, pillows and a blanket providing warm touches of color.
Lena keeps a tidy home, but even now Kara can spot tiny blips of chaos; a stack of scientific journals all open to different pages on the breakfast bar, a discarded sweater flung over one of the dining room chairs, and — Kara’s favorite by far — a nest of throw pillows in the far corner of the sofa, outlining a spot where Lena had made herself comfortable. Kara takes a moment to imagine Lena like that, lounging in the sunshine as it pours in through the windows, warm, and drowsy, stretching her arms above her head maybe, rolling her shoulders while making soft sounds of relaxed satisfaction—
“You can sit down, you know,” Lena calls out from the kitchen.
“Can I—?” Kara asks Lena, gesturing at the sofa, and Lena grins.
“Of course. Please make yourself comfortable.”
And as Lena is well aware, Kara comfortable is Kara with her shoes kicked off, feet up, knees pressed against her chest. She lets out a contented sigh before she says, “I can’t tell you how glad I am that you decided to get a place of your own.”
Lena raises a curious eyebrow at her as she arranges the cardboard food containers around the laptop Kara’s set up on the coffee table. “I didn’t realize you were so invested.”
“I guess I didn’t either,” Kara says. “It’s just that— you know, you’ve been at the Baldwin for so long, it always seemed like you thought of National City as a temporary situation. And I was afraid that now, maybe because of the way things ended between you and James…”
Kara flinches at Lena’s wry smile, the way her eyes drop to the floor. Lena asks, very softly, “You thought I would skip town? Over James?”
Kara grimaces. “I’m sorry. I’m being dumb.”
Lena softens instantly at that. “You aren’t dumb, Kara. But please trust me when I tell you I’m okay.”
Kara’s attempts to ingest her dinner with only chopsticks to help her do it require almost all of her attention, so dinner is a mostly quiet affair, her and Lena’s sporadic conversation focused mainly on the food and Starbuck’s brassy antics.
“So. Kara Thrace, huh?” Lena observes, long, elegant fingers wielding her chopsticks with enviable effortlessness, as if they’re not specifically designed to frustrate Kara’s appetite. “Is she why you enjoy this show so much?”
Kara, who’s finally managed to skewer the particularly stubborn shrimp she’s been stabbing at for the past ten minutes, blinks at her. “What?”
Lena looks her over, her gaze sticking briefly to Kara’s shoulders before lifting up to meet Kara’s eyes with a languid, teasing smirk. “A buff, ballsy blonde? You must see the resemblance.”
Kara snorts out an inelegant denial. “Buff?” She guffaws. “Ballsy?” She subtly presses herself down further into the pillows at her back, adjusting her posture in hopes it will make her look less physically imposing. “I wish.”
Lena hums like she’s about to disagree, her eyes still staring at Kara’s arms, dangerously perceptive.
Kara starts squirming when the silence drags on a little too long. “Blankets,” she blurts, grabbing the one that’s thrown over the armrest nearest to her and tugging it around her shoulders. “You must be cold,” she tells Lena, antsy to get her eyes off her. “Why don’t you come over here?”
Lena laughs softly when they’re tucked in together. “You know,” she says, so close Kara can feel her breath tickling her cheek, “you don’t need to fuss over me.”
“Oh, I absolutely do,” Kara disagrees. “You can barely be trusted to feed yourself most times.”
“Right,” Lena says, her voice rich with indulgent humor. “Without you, who would make sure I get the daily recommended amount of starch and saturated fats?”
“Don’t forget Macaroni & Cheese,” Kara points out. “It’s its own separate food group.”
Lena hums. “One day I’ll get you to eat a version that contains actual nutrients.”
“Sacrilege.”
“So you keep insisting, without even trying the real thing.”
“Kraft’s is the real thing, Lena.” She gently nudges Lena’s shoulder with her own. “See how much you have to learn? And now that you’re single again, all the responsibility for making sure you maintain these new healthy habits falls to me.” She lets out an exaggerated sigh, feeling a kind of contented weightlessness she usually only manages to achieve by soaking herself in sunlight. “It’s a heavy load to bear.”
Lena clutches her own fingers at that, suddenly nervous. “About that,” she says. She looks so vulnerable, so delicate that Kara momentarily holds her breath for fear of startling her. “I have actually— well. I’ve started— seeing someone,” Lena clarifies, and Kara’s buoyant mood deflates with the spiteful whine of an expired latex balloon.
“Oh,” Kara says.
“Yes.” Lena is flustered, but powers through. “It’s a very new thing. But I’m confident so far. More confident than I think I’ve ever felt before. It’s a good match.”
“That’s— really great, Lena.” It takes Kara a second to find words that don’t betray the swirl of nausea that’s hit her out of absolutely nowhere. She wants to ask, how? When did they meet, how did this happen, where did she even find the time? But that only reminds her of everything Kara herself is hiding from Lena, and so she goes with something easy, something true. “You deserve good things,” she says firmly.
Lena lights up and softens at the sentiment just the same. “I’m beginning to see that, I think. Thank you, Kara.”
Kara spends the rest of their evening observing Lena in a different light. The looseness in her shoulders, the way her breath seems to sit lower in her chest. The way her smiles seem to happen more easily, and how often she meets Kara’s eyes and holds them.
She’s happy, Kara thinks.
She tries not to wonder why that aches so much.