Lena had seven scars on her legs. Two were on one ankle, a third was on her knee, and four were grouped as four light but parallel lines across the inside of her right thigh. The former were clearly the result of childhood accidents, but the last group were uncomfortably similar to scars that Kara knew Alex had. Lena also had the bone scars from a broken finger, three ribs, and both bones of her right forearm, all but the finger with the smoothness and stability of old breaks long healed over and the bone grown out. She'd clearly been young, or in any case pre-pubescent, when they'd broken.

She also had nightmares, which was something Kara was more familiar with.

Once upon a time, she'd spent a long time in space. Twenty four years half dreaming in the phantom zone, with her last remembered sights her parents and the aura of her exploding planet? She had blocked much of it out, could barely remember most of it consciously these days, but in her dreams… well. She could never recall most of it afterwards, never explain what had her bolting upright and flailing - breaking beds and furniture and in one memorable instance, part of the roof - but she could always remember the insistent sense of danger, the panic, heat washing insistently over her as she struggled to get away, and worst, the demanding belief that it was somehow her fault

Yeah, Kara understood nightmares. They'd returned, briefly, in the wake of the red kryptonite incident, but those at least had been different, even if the dream of a broken Alex crying and turning away from her had turned her guts to water. She'd never eaten anything that made her sick in her life, but after that night she'd spent hours locked in a bathroom, insisting to her worried sister and friends that she was fine, she'd just had some bad seafood. Or something.

It ensured that when Lena's sleep moved from interrupted - her breathing going from slowed to quick and then elevated, her heart rate picking up in concert with the frequency of the twitch of her foot - to disturbed, Kara had no compunction about waking her. She slid over in the bed, near but not touching Lena, and leaned over to trace her hand down the length of her forearm, careful to never close her fingers or hold on.

"Lena. Lena. You're dreaming, there's no one here but us. Lena, you're in bed in your apartment. Lena? Darling, you're safe."

She came awake with a start, controlled in a moment but noticeable for the twitch of her arm under Kara's fingers. Lena looked over, clearly identifying Kara in the slight light of the room, eyes wide and questioning. Kara let go of her arm, withdrawing her hand to her own side of the bed.

"You were dreaming," she said again, and Lena blinked, her eyes coming back into focus.

"Thank you." She sat up in the bed, pulling the sheets with her and lifting her hands to her face. She touched the corners of her eyes and then her mouth before turning away, lowering her legs over the side of the bed to get up and disappear into the bathroom.

Kara bit her lip, sitting up in the bed. After a moment, she turned to the side and turned a lamp on. Despite herself, she could hear Lena in the bathroom - washing her face and hands, carefully controlling her breathing. Her fingers holding onto the sides of the basin, the pads gripping and beginning to release as she calmed down.

Kara was still sitting up when she came back into the room. Lena had stripped off the slip she was wearing while in the bathroom, and now she went to a drawer, finding another and slipping it over her head, careless of her nudity. Kara hung back, watching Lena as she returned to the bed, pulling back the covers and turning her pillow over.

"I'm sorry I woke you," she said briefly. "I appreciate you waking me." She slid down in the bed, pulling the sheets back over her and tucking the pillow under her chin to her liking. "You can turn the light off."

Kara didn't make a move toward the lamp. "Are you sure?" she asked. "When I had - have - nightmares, Alex always got me to talk through them, so I could see how they weren't real…"

Lena tilted her head on the pillow, somehow managing to give the impression of confusion and scepticism. "Did it help?"

"Of course!" Kara was aghast. "Have you never tried?"

Lena bit her lip, rolling back on the bed. "No. I'd have needed someone to listen, and, well," she shrugged. "Mother always emphasised not showing weakness, and a nightmare would have fit right into that category. So."

Kara slid lower on the bed, still not turning the lamp off, and damning Lillian Luthor in her head. She wouldn't say it aloud, not to Lena, but everything new thing she heard about the woman made her hate her more. It wasn't bad enough that she'd preferred her biological son to the daughter she had adopted, nor that she had required Lena to become the perfect little Luthor without ever intending to put her in a position of power. No. The anti-alien bigotry alone was enough to make Kara fight her, but the breadcrumbs of information Lena dropped about growing up made Kara want to spend an hour in a soundproofed room with her.

"My mother was more along the lines of always carry a spare pair of underwear," Kara murmured, and against expectation, Lena actually laughed.

"Was that before or after you came out as Supergirl?"

"Before, but - wait, why are you laughing?"

Lena pursed her lips, trying and failing not to smile. "I just have to wonder what she thought you were getting up to that you would need spare underwear."

Kara wrinkled her nose, finally reaching over to turn the lamp off. "Well, not that - I told you that - but it was useful in college, and when Alex got her own apartment, and then working for Cat you really never knew how long you were going to be anywhere, and as Supergirl, well - you know how I get called off at a moment's notice."

"How very practical," Lena said, and Kara leaned over and bopped her over the head with a pillow, the way she would have hit Alex. She didn't even realise she was doing it until she saw Lena's face, amused and confused at the movement.

"Have I reduced you to assaulting civilians, Ms Danvers?"

"Oh! No - I - wait, you're not hurt, are you?"

She was mortified, but Lena only shook her head. "No, but if you're quite done, I have a teleconference at eight that I would prefer to sleep before."

Lena slid down in the bed again, closing her eyes. Her lashes were dark against her cheek, hair twisted back and onto her pillow, and Kara didn't know what to do. Lena was so beautiful it made her teeth hurt sometimes, but she didn't always know how to touch her. She knew how to reach out to her family, how to hug her sister, but other than that… well, she didn't touch a lot of people outside of the context of saving them.

As Supergirl, she knew how to relate to people - how to shake hands or snatch up a villain or even respond to the hordes of little girls who seemed to idolise her. She'd learned how to behave with each of them, how to be firm but fair and distant, how to let children cling to her skirt and hands, but this was different. This was Lena, and usually when she wanted Kara with her, she was the one to reach out and invite her nearer. Kara knew how to respond to that, knew how to seek her own comfort in Lena's body, but she didn't know how to offer it.

Lena was so much softer than she was. She held up a harsh face to the world because she needed to, always ready to defend against accusations and associations with her brother's crimes, but once you got behind that she offered herself up so freely. She kept up a reserve, the illusion of distance to protect herself, but Kara found her so easy to sink into. Even her body loaned itself to comfort so much more easily than Kara's did - her soft thighs and breasts, the curve of her neck and her waist such inviting places to sink her face and hands into. Kara wanted to offer that to her, but it was hard when she was the girl of steel. She was designed to fight and take damage, every line and angle of her cut to prepare for that, and it felt like there was no space inside that for her to be an object of comfort as well. Sex had been one thing - a revelation, in fact - but other forms of closeness eluded her.

She edged over in the bed all the same, reaching a hand over to Lena again. When it rested onto her waist, Lena's eyes opened.

"Kara, I'm not really in the mood…"

"No, I know. I know," she reassured. "Just… let me?"

Lena searched her eyes, her heartbeat picking up just a little in the artery beneath her chin. She couldn't have seen much, but she nodded once, lowering her head back onto the pillow.

Kara slid over in the bed. Lena was lying on her back, so spooning wasn't really going to happen, but she slid her arm tentatively over Lena's waist, pressing her face into the space beneath her chin. Lena was tense under her, so she nudged with her nose, nuzzling into the side of her neck.

"Relax," she said. "I'm told humans actually have to breathe out sometimes." Lena huffed a laugh, the air coming out her nose, and Kara smiled knowing her face was hidden. Beneath her, Lena's muscles relaxed slowly, her stomach becoming the soft expanse she was more familiar with. "See, I've got you."

Lena shifted beneath her. "I don't know if I can sleep like this," she admitted. Despite her words, her hand came up, finding Kara's on her stomach and interlacing their fingers.

"Sure you can," Kara reassured. She yawned, pressing her forehead into Lena's jaw. "See, it's all warm and soft and cuddly now. I'm not on you, so your arm isn't going to go to sleep, and you can still turn over if you want but we're all warm and safe now."

She felt Lena work her jaw, breathing through her nose. But then she adjusted her head on the pillow, tilting her head to press her cheek into the top of Kara's hair and breathing more deeply. Kara closed her eyes. Her nose was buried against Lena's skin, and she could smell her own shampoo and Lena's skin and the hint of sweat after her earlier nightmare, even traces from when they'd had sex earlier and the perfume Lena had worn during the day. She could not only hear but actually feel Lena's heartbeat, the rate dropping as Lena consciously slowed her breathing, her muscles gradually relaxing into Kara's. She made a point of slowing her own breathing, trying to further influence Lena into relaxing, and knew she'd succeeded when Lena's breathing evened out, her muscles going limp against her.

"See, you got this," she mumbled into Lena's neck. "This is nice, you're good to cuddle, I want this."


I meant to mention this before, but I'm also on tumblr under the same name if you'd like to hang!