Written for this prompt: 'I've always wanted a college AU fic where Kara barges into Lena's room and is in a Bad Mood bc she thought all her friends like James, Winn, and Mon-El wanted to be friends with her but actually had romantic/sexual motives. She's like, "Why can't I just have a normal friendship with someone who doesn't want to date me?!" Lena the whole time is like :['
Warning for discussion of unwanted kissing.
"Lena, you will not believe what Mon-el just said to me," Kara fumed as she barged into Lena's dorm room.
"Kara, I could have been changing," Lena said mildly, taking off her glasses and putting a big textbook aside.
Kara took a break from her fury to note how entirely adorable Lena looked like this, sloppy and studious and comfortable. "I'm sorry, I should've texted, I know, but, this just keeps happening to me and I really wanted to see you," Kara explained in a rush.
"Slow down," Lena said, purposely calm. "What keeps happening?"
Kara gestured indistinctly with her hands. "These—these guys that I thought were my friends wanting to—wanting something else from me!"
"Get in here." Lena reached out to her until Kara took a few more steps into her room. "Mon-el said something to you?"
Kara nodded.
"Kara, I need you to be honest with me, and I swear to god if you act all coy, 'aw shucks it's no biggie' I will leave my own room," Lena said very seriously. "Is he—is anyone making you feel unsafe?"
Lena's shoulders were tight, fists tucked in her lap, jaw visibly struggling not to clench. She looked absolutely ready to grab a man by the front of his tacky nylon jacket and throw down. And Kara knew for a fact that Lena Luthor had never thrown a punch in her life, got winded climbing a single flight of stairs, had in fact weaseled her way into a P.E. exemption in high school, but—alien constitution or no—Kara was pretty sure she'd never felt this well protected in her life.
"Aw, come here." Kara kicked off her sneakers, hopped onto Lena's bunk and held her arms wide open, and Lena still looked tense and a little scary, but she folded herself into Kara's embrace, so easily, so naturally, that Kara felt a thrilling little pang in her chest.
"This is not an answer to my question," Lena said grumpily, wiggling her hip closer to Kara's body.
Kara held her tight and flopped onto her back on the bed, dragging Lena along. She looked up at the bottom of Lena's cool but mean roommate's bunk and considered her question seriously. "James has always made me feel really safe," she said. "More than safe. Um, serene, I guess. It's really my fault that our relationship kinda fell apart."
She could feel Lena get all bunched up in her arms, probably on the verge of a fiery rebuttal, and she laughed. "Okay, okay, no self-recrimination in your presence, I remember."
Lena hmphed. "I'm fine with you taking responsibility, but I won't be party to this flagrant defamation."
Kara stole a glance at her. Lena's jaw was twitching again, her mouth pinched, and she'd clenched one hand in the hem of Kara's sweatshirt. Just, impossibly endearing.
"Okay," Kara said. "I'm just saying, James is one thing. But then Winn, who's been, you know, I've known him almost as long as I've been here, and I guess I leaned on him a lot, emotionally. And then he kissed me, and told me he loved me, and he was—he was a little insistent. And he was so hurt after."
"His feelings are not your responsibility."
"Rationally, I know that. But looking at your friend and seeing him so sad, so… despondent. I felt like such a horrible person."
"Kara." Lena twisted her hand tighter in Kara's shirt, looking at her with hypnotic intensity. It caused an interesting reaction in Kara's belly. "You are the least horrible person I have ever met. Can you hear me? I'm telling you something very important right now. I want you to take this great wisdom to heart."
Kara laughed. "Thanks, Lena. Maybe if I was a little more horrible, all of my friends wouldn't fall in love with me all the time," she said. "And now, this!" She gestured at Lena's room, as if it embodied Mon-el somehow. Fortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.
Lena rolled her eyes dramatically. Kara wanted nothing more than to move into this bed with her forever.
"You know my thoughts on… that man," Lena said.
Kara sighed. "I just wish I could have a close friendship with guys where we can hug and I can compliment them and tell them I love them and stuff without them reading into every little thing." Kara realized she'd been incorporating an increasing number of Lena's limbs into their cuddle, and Lena's muscles had relaxed considerably in response. A swell of deep affection hit her. "Like with you."
"Mm hm." Lena turned her head away.
"Do you think I'm being unrealistic?"
Lena immediately whipped back to glare at her. "Absolutely not," she scolded. "Your friend standards are abominably low, if anything. You deserve to have an affectionate, reciprocal relationship where your boundaries are respected unconditionally, Kara."
Kara was hit with a strange urge to nuzzle Lena's face with her own face. Just a little.
It felt really, really nice. "I do have that," she mumbled. "With you."
Lena stiffened in her arms. On instinct, Kara dipped one hand under Lena's shirt to caress her stomach, intending to soothe, but Lena jumped beneath her touch and whimpered, heart rate picking up alarmingly.
Kara promptly let go and crawled away, rolling into a sitting position.
In front of her, Lena curled into herself a little. It made her look smaller.
Kara's heart clenched. "Are you okay?" Her voice came out too high and uneven. "I'm so sorry, you're talking so much sense about boundaries and here I am overstepping yours."
Lena made an unintelligible sound in her throat. "You're not," she said, but she sounded almost pained. "I'm just uptight."
"I'm really sorry," Kara repeated miserably. "Do you want me to leave?"
"No, I—just give me a second."
Kara willed her body not to move, her cells not to vibrate so loudly. She tucked her hands beneath her butt and listened as Lena's heartbeat slowly evened out.
Lena took in a deep breath and let out an embarrassed little laugh. "Please excuse the dramatics," she said, rolling onto her back. "You can hold me again. If you want."
Kara did not literally jump at the opportunity. But she might have bounced a little.
Despite the distressing episode, Lena fit back into Kara's arms like she belonged there.
Kara batted away the thought. Boundaries.
"I'm sorry," Kara told her again. "I just really wanted to touch you just then."
Lena made that strange noise again. "That's—that's fine. I mean, I'm fine with it. I mean—" She rubbed her hand over her face, and said, slightly muffled, "I liked it."
"You did?"
Lena let out a harsh breath. "Kara—" She dropped her hand, looked at Kara for a moment, and shook her head. "Ah, fuck it. Tell me about Mon-el."
Kara's outrage flared anew at the reminder. "He just confronted me in the middle of the hallway! With a bunch of his friends around!" Lena was wearing a very vindicating scowl. Kara felt emboldened to go on. "And he was saying all these ridiculous things! He said I always looked at him like I was fascinated by everything he had to say, as if friends are supposed to not listen to each other when they talk. I like listening to my friends talk. That's one of the perks of being friends! I wasn't, like, giving him moon eyes or anything."
Lena was directing a perfect impression of smitten doe eyes at her, and Kara snorted. "Yeah, exactly. Like that."
"What?" Lena blinked rapidly and looked away.
"And then he said that, even though he 'knows' I'm a 'generally reserved' person, I can't help touching him in small ways whenever I'm around him. Which, first of all, I do that with everyone I like! And even if I didn't, the way I act around him is the only way he can observe my way of acting in the first place, so how would he know!" Kara gestured with Lena's hand in hers for emphasis, though she wasn't entirely sure when they'd linked hands.
"Right," said Lena.
"And he claimed that he was the one I always came to when I wanted to complain about something," Kara continued. "I haven't even complained to him that much! He's not a good complainee. Complaineree? Complaining buddy. He barely listens and then he gives bad advice."
"Shocker."
"Anyway, you're always the first person I want to complain to," Kara finished affectionately. "Exhibit A." She nudged Lena's knee with her toe, and immediately wanted to nudge her again. Or run her toe along Lena's leg. Or something. But she didn't.
Boundaries.
Lena frowned. "I think it was manipulative of him to corner you publically like that, where it would be harder for you to explicitly reject him or escape the situation."
Kara nodded. "And that's before he went in for the kiss!"
Lena's whole body went rigid, her hand flexing in Kara's. "He what?"
"I was trying to be gentle, so he must not have noticed the cues I was giving. But that really came out of nowhere! Even if he hadn't realized I wasn't interested, he should've at least understood that it wasn't a smoochy mood."
Lena scooched forward until their noses were almost touching and placed her hand on Kara's shoulder. "Kara, tell me honestly," she said, voice lowered. "And take this offer seriously, because if you want me to, I can."
Kara's breath felt stuck suddenly. A few wispy strands of hair had been dislodged from Lena's bun and now sloppily framed her face. Her eyelashes were very pretty. Kara nodded silently.
"Do you want me to get Mon-el kicked off campus?" Lena asked intently.
Kara was going to laugh, she was reasonably sure. She was going to laugh or she was going to grin or certainly she was going to say something. But she didn't. She didn't do that.
What she did, did do was close that unimaginable, insignificant distance between them—a gentle tilt of her chin, that was really all it took—and brush her lips across Lena's perfect, tender, darling mouth.
For a blessed, unreal moment, all Kara could register was softness, and feeling, and warmth. And then she realized—Lena had frozen entirely, her body and her breath, except for her heart which was skidding in a cadence that clearly screamed displeasure.
Kara scrambled off the bed, hand flying to cover her mouth.
"Oh, my gosh," she cried. "I've been the presumptuous friend inappropriately in love with their platonic pal all along!"
Lena stared at her for an agonizing moment, then buried her head in her hands and let out a very loud, prolonged groan. "Every other word in that sentence was the precise opposite of the truth," she said crisply when she emerged.
Kara stopped pulling on her hair to eloquently inquire, "Huh?"
"Kara, I want to raise corn on a farm with you," Lena said, improbably earnest. "Wake up at the ass crack of dawn and brush down the herd of goats you've named after boy band members from the nineties. I want to cook homebred breakfast for twelve just for you and watch the sunrise tinge your hair orange. I want to wear ugly boots and work pants with eight discrete pockets and get caked in mud up to my thighs every day. Do you get what I'm saying?"
"I—no?"
Lena, bafflingly, smiled in evident pleasure. "That's all right. That was a long shot." She gave an excited, hiccupy little laugh. "Let me put it like this: you're not presumptuous, and you're not inappropriate. And I certainly do not have to be your platonic pal if you don't want that."
"You mean—?"
"I love you, Kara," Lena said briskly, like she was reading off a shopping list. "I'm in lesbian love with you. I have romantic ulterior motives for you. I want to be more than friends with you. I want to date you. I want to kiss you. I want to taste—"
Kara went down on her knees and cupped Lena's face and pulled her down and kissed her again, this time with intention.
Lena's lips, startled, were soft and delicate. Lena's lips, reciprocal, were firm, insistent, demanding, heady.
Kara felt like she could get drunk off of them. She felt like she could be sustained by the flavor and texture and movement of Lena's lips and tongue and mouth alone. She could coast on this feeling and reach the sky without bothering to fly.
She was in love with her best friend. How cool was that?
Lena sucked on her lip and let go with a graze of teeth.
Oh. Kara felt drunk already.
"Cool," she breathed, and Lena laughed. "Me too."
Lena kissed her again, slow and simple, steady pressure and gentle suction, running a knuckle along Kara's jaw. Kara shivered, electrified.
"I can't believe four out of four platonic friends agree," Lena said, laughing soundlessly against Kara's throat, "Kara Danvers is the bee's knees."
Kara giggled helplessly. "Shut up!"
Lena kissed where her mouth was, right beside Kara's jugular. "I'm so sorry, Kara, you're simply irresistible."
"Lena," Kara whined.
"Clearly marriage material." She caught the delicate, invulnerable skin there between her teeth.
"So, all that farm stuff…?"
Lena shrugged, and continued sucking on Kara's neck. "We'll work up to that."
Kara didn't mention it, unwilling to ruin the mood, but she thought Kal at least would be very pleased.