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“This is a nice surprise.”
Lena breathed the words out before her brain could suppress the thought — tuck it into one of the many, many boxes that housed 90+ percent of the thoughts she’d ever had about her best friend — though the traitorous organ wasted no time signaling her cheeks to blush as Kara pulled back from the one-armed hug, holding her cousin with the other, and her tell-tale crinkle appeared.
“I told you we would pick you up.”
Kara was right. She had.
She’d told Lena when she’d dropped her off at the airport for her conference in Metropolis three days ago, then reminded her last night over the phone and then she’d shot off a text while Lena was at the gate waiting to board her return flight to National City that they’d meet her at baggage claim.
And now here Kara and Clark were. At baggage claim. Precisely when Kara had said they would be. So, in fact, this should really be the least surprising thing that Lena has ever experienced.
Losing her mother.
Getting adopted by one of the most influential families in the country, if not the world.
Losing her adoptive father.
Being told by her adoptive mother, at his funeral, that he’d been her biological father too.
Slowly losing the brother she idolized: first to higher education, then to ambition, and then to the gun in their father’s safe.
Making her first-ever (best) friend as an all but emancipated 15-year-old freshman at NCU.
Those were surprises.
This was someone doing exactly what they said they’d do.
Before Lena could change the subject, lest Kara tilt her head even further and ask if she was okay, Clark intervened: stretching out of Kara’s grasp and reaching for her with chunky arms and a familiar whine.
It was muscle memory that had Lena reaching back. When Clark wanted her attention, she gave him her attention. It was simple.
Well, okay, maybe simple wasn’t an entirely apt descriptor.
When Kara had first asked Lena if she wanted to hold her baby cousin, she might as well have been asking if Lena wanted to hold a landmine — which probably would have been preferable, actually. At least a landmine was something Lena could wrap her head around, could handle with care the way she would dangerous materials in a lab.
Clark was not a hypothetical, though. He was the miraculous newborn survivor of a car crash that had robbed him of his parents, Kara’s guardians since she lost her own parents at 12, and Kara had become his guardian. So Clark becoming a fixture in Lena’s life had not been a hypothetical either. Not to her, at least.
Lena had been horrified — unmoored in a way she’d never been in a lifetime of life-altering surprises — when Kara had casually floated the idea of moving out of Lena’s penthouse. Lena’s home in deed only. Their home in every other sense.
What had she done wrong?
The thought hadn’t been shoved into a box in time, and Lena had subsequently subjected Kara to an hours-long demonstration of what happened when she let her stunted emotions loose.
It was worth the humiliation, though. Ultimately. Kara stayed, outfitted her bedroom to serve as a proper nursery for Clark, and continually expressed, verbally and otherwise, how happy she was to be living with Lena.
Lena had tried brushing it off at first. After all, it had always been Kara’s home too. But Kara remained resolute in her campaign, and Lena gradually found herself questioning why she was resisting it. Until one day she just… forgot to. Let it wash over her instead. And thus was the inception of her secret addiction.
A replacement for the moderate alcohol dependence she never imagined she’d kick entirely. Until one day she’d been feeding Clark a bottle — having finally convinced herself that if she was sitting on the floor and he was laying in her lap, it was highly improbable that she would accidentally drop him on his head — and she’d realized that she not only hadn’t had a sip of wine or whiskey in a week but hadn’t had the urge to.
Now Lena craved… thoughtfulness.
The handbound album Kara crafted and filled with pictures taken throughout their friendship after Lena confessed she’d lost the only photograph she’d had of her mother years ago and the family portrait that had hung in the great hall of Luthor Mansion didn’t include her.
The baby monitor for Lena’s nightstand, Kara having picked up on Lena’s embarrassing habit of stealing the one from the kitchen — obviously unnecessarily since Clark slept in Kara’s room.
The way Kara always invited Lena to the baby classes she signed Clark up for and always introduced her as “my best friend and this guy’s favorite person.”
It was hyperbole, of course, but Lena’s cheeks would warm all the same under Kara’s affectionate gaze.
“He missed you.”
That was the message her brain relayed, anyway, foggy as it was with the feeling of the soon-to-be one-year-old tucking his head between Lena’s neck and shoulder.
“Hmm?”
Kara chuckled. Lena wasn’t sure what the joke was.
“He missed you.”
The sincerity behind the words was unmistakable, so Lena forced a smile. Well, forced was putting it strongly. Good intentions hurt less than no intentions.
“Thank you.”
With divine timing, the baggage carousel behind them whirred to life, and Lena tried not to breathe an audible sigh of relief as she handed Clark back to Kara, preparing to jockey for position. She could almost guarantee that her roommate would insist on carrying her suitcase to the car. But having visible muscles didn’t automatically grant Kara the temperament required to push through a crowd. Being a Luthor, on the other hand…
Only went so far when it came to the sound of a crying child. Evidently she hadn’t inherited the gene that had allowed Lionel to ignore it.
That was what had started it all, really. Lena was more of a night owl than Kara but also couldn’t sleep past 6 am for the life of her. Something she had common with their third roommate. So, once Lena had gotten past the paralysis stage of her infant immersion therapy, they’d settled into a morning routine: Lena would wake up, Clark would wake up, Kara would wake up, Lena would tell Kara to go back to sleep, Lena would do her best for an hour or two.
And eventually her best was… satisfactory.
It was muscle memory again that had her reaching into the purse she’d brought as a carry-on for the pocket where she kept an emergency binkie. Kara had declared her a “genius” when she’d first seen Lena take it out while they were shopping for groceries, Kara having left her cousin’s “go bag” in the car. Lena hadn’t had the heart, or the guts, to tell her that Lena’s fear of making a scene in public was so deeply-rooted that the binkie was more of a security item for her than for Clark.
Admittedly, Lena felt like even less of a genius now than she had then as Clark promptly spit out the binkie and screamed, eyes shut and face reddening. Naturally, she’d come to learn that babies got upset fairly frequently, and it rarely (so far, never) meant something was terribly wrong. But her belief that she should always know what was wrong had never gone away.
And, well, she didn’t. Clark had seemed content a minute ago, and now—
Kara was suddenly handing him over again, and then he was sniffling and sucking his thumb as he tucked his head back into its spot.
“Huh.”
She didn’t realize she’d actually said it until she heard Kara sigh, though she couldn’t say why it had prompted such a reaction.
“He missed you, Lena.”
Oh? That again?
“Kara, I was only gone for three days.”
The faint smirk, matching her dry tone, died on her lips as she looked up to find a tear slipping down Kara’s cheek, matching her quivering lips.
“Did you - did you not believe me when I told you I missed you?”
“No, I —” Truthfully, she’d had to fight to believe it, even after five years. But the only thing she feared more than making a scene was making Kara cry — which, yes, would also be making a scene but that was coincidental. “Of course I did.”
Kara seemed to believe her enough to move on, though the subsequent gesturing to her and Clark didn’t feel like being let off the hook. Lena barely stopped herself from squirming.
“He’s a baby.”
“Babies miss people more than anyone!”
Even Kara winced, belatedly, at the eyes that turned toward them. But then she was moving closer, reaching out to smooth the (“I told you he would take after you”) curls starting to pop up in Clark’s dark hair.
“Just because they’re easily distracted doesn’t mean their feelings aren’t valid.”
Kara spoke softly and with a finality Lena recognized as an out. A signal they could end the conversation here and return to it later, in the privacy and comfort their home provided. Or just let it go. Kara could be passionate, clearly, but she respected Lena’s limits.
It was Lena who inexplicably found herself pushing.
“Including Clark’s feelings on lemons?”
Lena understood, especially as a scientist, that babies were basically aliens in their first year of life. Constantly reacting to foreign stimuli. But there was reacting… and there was screaming bloody murder at the sight of a small, yellow oval.
“They’re sour!”
Kara’s retort was a hushed shout, but no less emphatic — the older girl sharing her relative’s aversion. Likewise, there was nothing faint about Lena’s smirk as she arched an eyebrow.
“He’s never tasted one.”
“And he never will.”
Clark chimed in with an “ah,” and Lena giggled as only he could make her. Kara had her charms, as Lena knew all too well, but alas she was not a baby. And it turned out baby charm was the only force on Earth powerful enough to free Lena from self-consciousness entirely, if fleetingly.
“He loves you.”
But Kara did have the ability to rain flame-tipped arrows down Lena’s carefully curated mental boxes.
“You take care of him.”
“Kara.”
Leaving Lena helpless to do more than say her name in a tone that Kara had learned through the years of study meant she did not, in fact, want Kara to stop.
“You give him your attention. Even when you’re tired. Even when you have something you could be working on.”
Lena found more words then, though, considering all she had to do was repeat them.
“I’m often tired, and I always have something I could be working on.”
“Even when you could just go out and be a normal 21-year-old.”
Lena tutted as she shifted Clark to her other side. Enjoying holding him didn’t make him any less heavy.
“You know I don’t want that.”
Even pre-sobriety, getting drunk with rowdy strangers hadn’t held much of an appeal. Though Lena often wondered if that would still be the case if she’d met Kara a year or even a few months later than she did.
“You always make time for him.”
“So do you.”
Instantly, Lena felt as ridiculous as she did remorseful for snapping. Especially as Kara’s unwavering smile told her she’d been expecting it.
“Yes, because I love him.”
Touché.
“Of course I love him.”
There was no reason for that to come out so defensive too. Lena meant it whole-heartedly, tightening her hold on Clark subconsciously. It was more a case of when you don’t have a reason to keep whispering… but, therefore, you don’t have a reason to stop.
“So why wouldn’t he love you?”
It might have been a grand revelation to someone else. Lena chuckled.
“That’s not really how it worked in the Luthor family.”
And still Kara was unfazed.
“He’s not a Luthor. He’s a Zorel.”
Lena opened her mouth to fire off another rebuttal… only to come up empty.
Had she—
Had she really—
With her years of elite private education, degree in biomedical engineering and 162 IQ…
Had she really never fucking thought of that?
“And I have it on good authority that Zorels love people named Lena very much.”
Still in a daze, Lena laughed brightly. Kara might not mean it the way Lena wished she did, but for once, Lena couldn’t find a single doubt to cling to that Kara hadn’t meant it.
Then she met her best friend’s affectionate gaze once more… and found herself losing her words again.
All but one.
“Kara?”