Kara is sprawled on Lena's couch, happy and cuddly and sluggish after a nice meal when it happens. Supergirl flashes on TV, holding together a ruptured ammonia tank before it could leak any further, and Lena makes this approving little hum, and Kara just says it.
"That was me, you know."
Lena leans against her shoulder. "How'd you mean?"
"Supergirl."
"What? Did you convince her to do it?"
Kara shakes her head. In all the hundreds of versions of this conversation that she'd run in her head like an anxiety-inducing computer simulation, none were this insultingly casual. Maybe it's for the best.
"I am Supergirl," Kara says. Simple and done. She slips her glasses and hair band off in easy concurrent motions, one with each hand.
Lena is giving her an indulgent smile. She looks like she does just before an extravagant gift or lighthearted teasing. It's a very appealing look, overall. "Is that right?"
She leans closer, hand braced on Kara's thigh, getting right up in her face. Her smile gets smirkier, gaze flickering between Kara's eyes; briefly downwards.
Lena gives a theatrical little scoff. "Don't see the resemblance," she concludes, withdraws away from Kara's space. Withdraws the hand, too.
Kara feels light, feels like she could laugh. Feels like she could kiss her. "Oh, really?" She starts to unbutton her shirt.
She catches the quick moment of panic in Lena's face, the instinct to look away, before the top of the suit is revealed rather than something more scandalous. At which point the alarm shifts to mock outrage, and Lena covers her mouth with the back of a hand. "Oh, miss Danvers!"
Kara pulls the shirt to part dramatically around the crest. She can't believe she's actually enjoying this. "How about now?"
"You could probably fool a few children on Halloween," Lena says, tone careless but eyes glued to the emblem of Kara's family. "If it was sufficiently dark and they maybe needed glasses."
"I'm sorry it's taken me this long to tell you," Kara says quietly, sincere, circumventing the pretense.
Lena reaches out, touches the edge of Kara's open shirt, touches the sleek, bright fabric beneath it. She runs her fingertips over the tight knit of it, scratches at it with her nails. She must feel its quality, recognize that this isn't store-bought Halloween costume material.
"This is real, isn't it?" She pinches the material, watches it bounce back. "You're really her?"
"I am," Kara confirms.
"Oh, god, I have so many questions," Lena mutters. She glances up at Kara. Her face looks drawn, eyes clouded. Kara can almost see the thoughts racing through her head a mile a minute.
Kara braces herself, nods solemnly.
"Did you really sleep with Wonder Woman?"
The laugh that tears itself out of Kara is as exuberant and obnoxious as her relief is tantalizing. She grabs at Lena, wraps herself around her, cradles her close; Lena splays her hands over Kara's back, holds on just as tight. Kara's carried warships, works of art, truck beds full of cash, but she's sure she's never held anything quite so precious.
"Were you scared to tell me?" Lena asks gently.
Kara sighs through her nose. What's the point of pretense, at this point? "Yeah."
Lena remains quiet for a moment. "Well, you are a bit of a scaredy cat, aren't you."
Kara laughs helplessly, gratefully. She loves her.
"Just a big ol' coward," Lena teases affectionately.
She gives Kara a squeeze and makes to move back, and Kara relinquishes her hold only very reluctantly.
"This is a tacky question, but please indulge me," Lena says, and there's a painful lack of accusation in her demeanor when she asks: "Was it the Luthor thing?"
Kara shakes her head, grateful she can be completely honest in this answer. "It was more of a ruthless businesswoman thing, initially," she admits.
"The detection device," Lena says.
Kara nods.
"I'm sorry. It was reactionary garbage."
Kara certainly isn't about to dispute that. "It didn't take me long to realize you would never want to intentionally hurt me, though. After that, it was just a selfish thing. An identity thing. I don't know."
"An identity thing?"
"I wasn't always, you know, super." Kara mimics an explosion and follows it up with jazz hands. Lena laughs loudly; Kara loves her. "I lived for twelve years as just an ordinary person. An ordinary Kryptonian. And then—then everything, everything was just gone and then I could break people between my forefinger and thumb." She thinks of synthesized kryptonite, her head filled up with fog, Alex with a radial bone snapped cleanly in two. "Anyway, I—I don't even know how I feel about Supergirl half the time. I don't know if I love her or resent her, if I'm proud or ashamed of her. I don't even know what part of her is me."
Lena touches her fingertips to the yellow line crossing Kara's chest. Her thumb rests just above Kara's heart. "I can answer that for you. Easily." She pushes against Kara's chest, but Kara has no place to move except through the couch, so she stays immobile. "Her compassion, her relentlessness. Her quiet charisma. Her dedication to doing right by people, and not just ideas. That's all you, Kara."
Kara feels the words almost like a blow, reverberating through her. "This, the way you see me," she chokes out, "it means a lot to me."
"You're not losing that," Lena tells her, gaze fierce with conviction. "You won't ever be losing that."
A look of determination passes over Lena's features. She wets her lips. Looks away from Kara, focuses instead on her chest, the synthetic fiber weaved in yellow, red and blue. Deliberately, she removes her fingers from Kara's suit, bends down, presses a careful kiss to the curve of the House of El's crest like a pledge.
The sheer reverence of the gesture just might turn Kara's breath liquid.
Lena draws away slowly but avoids Kara's eyes, looking kind of spooked by her own actions. Quickly, Kara catches her hand, kisses its palm and holds it close, applying pressure she hopes might convey some small fraction of the depth of her gratitude. Lena relaxes minutely, leaning back against her.
"You know what it means? The symbol?"
"S for Super?" Lena jokes, voice low and breathy and distinctly unfunny.
"It's the House of El's coat of arms. El mayarah. Different ancestors assigned different meanings to it, to suit their political maneuvering, I'm sure. My great uncle said it stood for the hope for a better future. But my parents told me it meant strength in solidarity, the power of connection."
"The House of El? Was that your family?"
"Oh! I'm sorry. I guess I haven't even told you my name." She smiles at Lena, giving her hand a squeeze. "Hi. I'm Kara Zor-El."
"Kara Zor-El," Lena murmurs.
"Well, Kara Zor-El Danvers, now," Kara corrects herself. "Wow. I can't remember the last time I said that aloud. Isn't that a mouthful? But I like it. I wish I had more opportunities to say it. I don't get to really introduce myself often."
Lena's eyes are quickly filling with tears. "I'm so—I'm so happy to know you," she rasps; repeats, "Kara Zor-El Danvers."
Her name off of Lena's lips is pure pleasure, is wonder, is love. Is this what Kara has been putting off all these months? She's been such a fool.
"Will you tell me about them?" Lena asks. "About you?"
Kara chews on the side of tongue, leans back to look at the ceiling. How much does she want Lena to hear, knowing that none of these stories have a happy ending?
"My great grandmother on my father's side lived until I was seven," Kara says carefully. "There were almost no vertebrates in the wild on Krypton by the time I was born. But there were, when my great grandmother was young. She was kind of a hobbyist. You know, like an Earth birder? She used to show me digital renderings she'd made of the different species she'd encountered. She wasn't a very talented artist, though. But I was fascinated.
"When she died I got all her old files. It was my first experience with loss. I got so attached to those old drawings. But, they're gone now, too."
Kara rubs over the bridge of her nose. She shouldn't have said that.
"I don't know why I told you that. She wasn't even—she wasn't the hardest person. To, to lose. Ugh, that sounds horrible. There were just—so many of them. People and—and stupid knickknacks and food and things. I miss the smells. I miss the feeling of the fabrics on my skin. Isn't that stupid? What does something like that even matter?" As if Earth's fabrics aren't softer, comfortingly organic. But the yearning isn't reasonable. "I miss—I miss the language on my lips. In my head. I don't even remember when I stopped thinking in Kryptonese."
The words roll out of her almost compulsively. She hasn't done this—not in so long—but Lena makes this wild expression feel natural.
She hazards a glance in Lena's direction. She's covered the lower half of her face with her palm, crying silently into it.
Kara reaches out to lay a bracing hand on Lena's thigh. She hopes it isn't too selfish to continue.
"I remember when I stopped counting in Kryptonese, though. That was the last habit to go. I had to practice so much to get rid of it." So much unnecessary, destructive effort. "I wish I could talk to the twelve-year-old me. Ask her not to work so hard at forgetting. That in the end, it's just another kind of loss. That some lessons aren't worth learning. Like becoming ashamed of who she is. That these things that seem shameful will make her so proud one day."
Lena removes her hand from her face, uses it to hold Kara's. It's a little bit wet.
Kara squeezes.
Lena lets out a quiet breath. "If I could talk to twelve-year-old me, I'd tell her, 'You're gonna meet Kara Zor-El. You'll be fine.'" She wipes her eyes. Sniffs. Smiles up at Kara.
Kara's fingers curl near the inside of her knee. Her heart aches with this odd fullness. It's almost too much. She focuses on the cadence of Lena's breath, off-rhythm and sniffly from crying; the drumming of her heartbeat, comfortingly familiar and a little out of shape.
"Kara," Lena hesitantly breaks the silence, "will you—would you teach me how to count?"
Kara knows in this moment that she could easily love Lena Luthor for the rest of her life, the knowledge as natural and necessary as cellular respiration.
She picks up Lena's hand, carefully spreads her fingers open, presses her lips to her palm where she'd kissed before. "Chahv," she murmurs.
Lena's inhale makes a sharp sound above her.
Kara moves on to kiss the accelerating pulse at Lena's wrist. "Tav."
"Non," at the tendons in her forearm.
"Ten," against the tender inside of her elbow.
Suzh lands just below the edge of Lena's sleeve. By duhv she's reached her shoulder, by rraozh her neck, and byth is placed on the angle of her jaw, with Lena's fingers gripped in her hair and a whine building in her throat. She tugs, firm, demanding, and Kara closes her eyes.
She nestles closer. Blindly rubs her lips over Lena's skin until she finds her mouth, kisses it, drags the tip of her tongue along the seam of it until it parts—
Lena makes a high, sharp noise, and Kara surges, wanting nothing more than to feel as much as possible, as much of Lena as possible—
A loud crash makes Kara's ears sting and her heart jump to her throat. She snaps up, glances around frantically, looking for the threat; finds the shattered remains of a porcelain vase on the floor, an incriminating piece hanging from her shoe.
She shakes it off. "Ugh! Sorry about that!"
Lena laughs a little wildly and kicks hard at the scattered fragments. "Fuck this! I just kissed a superhero."
Kara giggles, dives into peppering the length of Lena's neck with kisses. She gets caught on her clavicle, compelled to nose along the length of it, suck on the skin at its divot, a hint of teeth…
"Ah!" Lena cries. She grasps at Kara's shoulder and Kara obediently draws back. "Kara, could you do something for me?"
"Anything," Kara vows.
Lena briefly bites her lip against a smile. "Could you, uh, throw me over your shoulder and carry me to the bedroom?"
The giggling comes back with a vengeance. Kara springs off the couch; grips Lena around the thighs and upper back, lifts her easily off the couch and into a bridal carry. Lena's smile could almost be described as adoring.
"Over the shoulder, you say?" Kara asks innocently.
Before Lena can respond, Kara shifts her grip, maneuvers her smoothly into a fireman's carry and gives her a playful jostle. Lena lets out a thrilled little yelp; the sound finds its home somewhere low in Kara's belly.
She makes it to bedroom in less than a second and promptly tosses Lena onto the bed.
"Shitting fuck! God!" Lena shouts as she bounces a little on the mattress. Kara crawls over her on all fours. Lena lets out a quiet groan. "And I thought you were sexy before."
Kara bites her lip, staring at the beautiful tousled mess beneath her, framed between her arms. "You thought I was sexy?"
Lena rolls her eyes. "Your observational skills are quite lacking, for a journalist." She reaches up to touch Kara's cheek, a smooth caress. "If you'd like to kiss me again, I'll have kissed the sexiest woman on Earth, twice."
Kara bends her elbows, drawn in by a tender, inexorable force. Lena strains her neck to meet her halfway. This kiss is untidy, wet and eager, Kara's hand finding its way under Lena's shirt somehow, Lena cupping Kara's face as if she'd like to keep her.
When Kara pulls back, Lena shifts her head so that her lips and the tip of her nose are touching Kara's hand where it's braced on the mattress.
It's simply impossible not to love her.
Lena turns to smirk at her. "One more time, and I can say I've kissed the sexiest woman—"
"Three times, I get it," Kara says through a laugh, already lowering herself back down.
Privately, she vows to devote the rest of the evening to making Lena lose count.