When she wakes up, it takes a moment for Lena to remember where she is. Even before she opens her eyes, she knows she isn't in her own bed. The air around her smells of cold smoke and, faintly, of lavender ; she's at Kara's. The hard cushions under her back confirm that she's still on the couch and she's infinitely grateful that Kara didn't move her to the bed when she was sleeping. Not that she truly thinks Kara could be part of the general crowd disregarding her wishes, but it's hard to shake off the lingering concern.

As far as she can tell, Kara isn't here, but she must already be awake because though the microwave blinking at her indicates that the power is back on, all the lights of the apartment have been turned off. She waits for the moment she's going to start feeling uncomfortable, alone in this alien place, but it doesn't come. Instead, she considers going back to sleep for a couple of minutes, the warmth and peacefulness surrounding her crafting ideal conditions for slumber. Micro particles of dust dance in a ray of morning light in a hypnotic way and it almost manages to lull her back to sleep, she snuggles back under the insanely comfy blanket, closes her eyes, behind her, the door creaks open.

She springs up, her heart missing a beat and blood rushing to her head, turning her surrounding into a blurry mess. There's no time for rationality, it's fight or flight, and considering she's in her pyjamas in a foreign place, it's going to be flight.

But it's Kara, just Kara.

She's standing in the doorway in basketball shorts and a muscle tee ; the atrocious neon blue running shoes on her feet don't even manage to make her less attractive.

"I went for a run," she says, pointing to herself, "sorry, didn't mean to wake you up."

"Mmmm," is the only answer Lena can manage, her whole brain grinding to a halt at the sight of Kara absentmindedly flexing her biceps when she brushes her short hair back.

There isn't a hint of sweat on her muscular body.

"I picked up croissants from the french bakery on the way," she says casually lifting a greasy paper bag, "do you like croissants ?"

"Yes," Lena mumbles, "yes," she says more intelligibly, "I do like croissants."

Having to build a full sentence brings her back from her ogling and guilt rises in her stomach ; she just broke up with someone, she shouldn't be checking out her new friend.

"You can freshen up in the bathroom if you want," she says, alluringly moving further into the apartment, completely unaware of Lena's inner fight. "Do you want some tea ? I could pick it up from your apartment if you'd like ?"

Lena only nods, she doesn't trust her capacity to communicate verbally right now.

The bathroom is her safe haven. She locks herself in and proceeds to generously splash herself with cold water. She considers taking a shower, but being naked in Kara's apartment is a level of vulnerability she hasn't reached yet. She washes her hands twice and the soap unlocks a new information about Kara's particular scent, cleanliness, and something spicy. She considers smelling the bar soap, or maybe finding a way to keep her hands close to her nose at all time ; but the thought of Kara somehow knowing stops her, more so than the general creepiness of the action.

She exits the bathroom to find water boiling on the stove and croissants neatly lined on a plate on the counter that acts as Kara's kitchen table. The curtains have been fully pushed back and light streams freely into the room. Kara's apartment is almost identical to hers except for one room of which the walls have been brought down to create one big space that houses the kitchen, the living room and Kara's office with plenty of room to spare. An easel on her right is occupied by a painting of whirlwind greys, blues and greens which on closer inspection turns out to be an angry sea meeting a stormy sky. The floor around it is dotted with paint of various colours, the newest matching the painting. She notices this when she averts her eyes from the ocean, convinced she's going to get sucked in if she looks at it any longer.

"Do you like it ?" Kara asks, coming up behind her. "There was an impressive storm the last time I visited Eliza in Midvale."

"You painted this yourself ?" Lena asks, turning around to meet Kara's timid smile. "It's amazing."

"Really ?"

"You're very talented," Lena says, determined to bring back confidence to Kara's hesitant smile. "It's so expressive, I can almost hear it."

"It's just a hobby," Kara mumbles, scratching her neck as a light blush spreads on her cheeks.

"You can be talented at your hobby, it's not forbidden."

"Yeah you're right," Kara says with a much fuller smile, "I don't know why I'm so dismissive of myself. I'm allowed to be talented. Especially if it prevents me from murdering my boss."

"To be fair, you're also very talented at writing. And your boss is a real cunt."

"You've read my articles...?" Kara asks timidly, her blush spreading down the neck that disappears into the open collar of a sinful henley shirt. The shirt in question is half tucked into low cut faded blue jeans and Kara seems to think that having rolled up her sleeves is a good idea.

"Don't look at her forearms, don't look at her forearms," Lena mumbles before she embarrassingly realises she's talking out loud and not in her head.

"Did you say something ?" Kara asks with a smirk that Lena really hopes is the produce of her imagination and not because she actually heard her.

"I could speak to Mr Carr for you if you'd like ?" Lena says, opting for moving on from words she'll pretend she never said until her last breath. "Request to only be interviewed by you if you'd like ?"

"Thank you, but I don't think it would work. He doesn't even listen to Miss Grant. I just," Kara marks a pause, looking down at her socked feet with a mixture of sadness and resignation, "I just think he doesn't like me very much."

"I didn't know they gave Pulitzer prizes to idiots but apparently I was wrong." Lena accompanies her statement with an unrestrained eye roll which, though she hears Lillian's voice telling her she's going to get stuck like that, at least has the merit of bringing a smile back to Kara's face. "Because I truly do not understand how anyone could find you unlikable." The second part of her statement is an afterthought and she almost regrets it as soon as she finishes talking ; almost.

"Such a high opinion of me already ?" Kara says teasingly with an unimagined smirk this time.

"Well," Lena says, fully leaning into whatever this is even when deafening alarm bells are going off in every corner of her brain, "you're quite impressive."

"You're quite impressive yourself," Kara says back with a dazzling grin. At least, Lena supposes it's what she says because the end of her sentence is swallowed by a real alarm.

Kara tenses, her face contorting in pain for half a second. It passes by so fast that Lena would have missed it if she weren't looking at her so intently. Her smile falls and her body seems on the verge of crumbling before she shakes it off and runs to the kitchen at an impressive speed. Bare handed she removes a smoking empty pan from the stove and turns back to Lena with an awkward smile : "I forgot about the water."

"You forgot about the ? Don't you have a kettle !?"

"I don't drink tea," Kara mumbles with a clumsy shrug, her body suddenly too big for the space around her.

Suddenly very aware of the burning metal in Kara's hands, Lena rushes forward. When she grabs one of them though, it's strong and unmarred as ever.

"I have a high resistance to heat," Kara says, retrieving her hand and busying herself with boiling more water.

Her words sound enough like a question that an interrogation rises on Lena's tongue, who the fuck has high heat tolerance ? But she has a feeling that if she were to voice it, Kara would retract into her shell, and she doesn't want that.

"So what's your hidden talent ?" Kara asks with her back still turned to her. "I was going to ask what you do when you need to distract yourself from murdering your boss, but you're your own boss."

It doesn't take Lena's IQ to understand she's trying to bury the water incident and Lena happily follows her lead. "I may not have a boss," she replies, "but I have a mother that I sometimes want to strangle, does that work too ?"

"Of course it does, anything to prevent you from murdering anyone. You wouldn't like jail."

"Well then I'm really good at finding hidden meaning in books, I would have made a great literature teacher. Of the annoying kind." She pauses, pondering over her next words before she decides to add, as blandly as she can, "and what's telling you I don't already dislike jail ?"

"You've been to jail ?" Kara asks, whirling and leaning back on the counter in one fluid movement.

"A misguided night of drinking." Lena shrugs to hide a shiver. "I was there for two hours and my brother picked me up and laughed about it for a week. It smelled like shit and puke and I had to wear disgusting baggy clothes because my dress was quote-unquote 'inappropriate'. I don't like jail."

Kara bursts out laughing and to Lena's great dismay, it's attractive enough that she can't get mad about it. She does try, but to no avail. "Stop making fun of me," she grumbles, "and check the water."

"I'm sorry," Kara says, wiping a tear from her eye, "I shouldn't be laughing but it's just, the visual, I'm sorry, it's funny."

"Glad one of us is having fun."

"I'm sorry. Here," she says, pouring hot water into a cup, "your water's ready."

"You're supposed to pour the water on the tea bag," Lena chides before she can stop herself.

Her heart stop as soon as she realises what she said, and the tone she used to say it. She shouldn't be scolding Kara. Kara is being nice to her and she should be grateful for it.

The water Kara poured for her is hot, but Lena feels like she's been plunged into a cold and unforgiving ocean.

She forces herself to look up from her cup, ready to apologise if Kara allows her to do so, but the sight that greets her is puzzling. Kara doesn't look mad. Instead she's sporting an apologetic smile and is carrying another cup, this one with a tea bag in it.

"You'll have to teach me how to make it," she says softly, "so I can make it perfectly whenever you need it."

It takes a full minute for Kara's words to register, even has she's already accepted the new cup. Kara wants to learn the way she takes her tea so she can make it for her. Kara is willing to learn how to do something that she doesn't need and won't use for herself just to be nice.

It doesn't seem real. How can it be ?

She knows a thank you would be appropriate if she doesn't want to anger Kara by rejecting her offer, but somehow, her self destructive stupid brain choses to go for : "You really don't have to."

"I know I don't," Kara replies against all odds, "but it'd make me happy too. So, would you show me ?"

And so despite herself, Lena finds herself answering : "I'll show you. If you show me how you take your coffee."

"Oh that's easy," Kara replies, her excitement on par with a puppy who'd have heard the word walk, "lots of milk, lots of sugar, Alex likes to say that coffee is optional in this."

"That doesn't sound really healthy."

"It's probably not, but I like it."

Kara shrugs, sliding the croissants towards her and motioning for her to sit. Her lips keep on moving and she must be talking ; but Lena is too busy noticing for the first time how her eyes crinkle when she smiles to really understand what she's saying. She doesn't know if she should, but she decides to indulge anyway, if only just for this morning.

Kara is laughing again and for the life of her Lena doesn't understand why. What she said wasn't even that funny. At least she doesn't think so, she's never considered herself a funny person. But Kara is laughing and the fact that she doesn't understand doesn't mean that it doesn't fill her with a strange kind of warmth that she wants to keep forever.

The microwave is glaring at her, displaying an awful hour that she tries not to notice. The digital minutes pass by quicker and quicker and there's a finite amount of time she can spend pretending to enjoy her cold tea before she has to get back to the real world and go to work. It's irrational, maybe, she isn't sure and she doesn't care ; but she doesn't want to leave Kara's apartment. If she does, she might never come back, Kara might never talk to her again, something terrible could happen, the building could collapse, she could have an accident on her way to work, she could never know what's next on the road they now share. It's irrational, or maybe it's not, because she's Lena Luthor and good things don't happen to her, and she can't help but think that if she says goodbye now, there might not be another hello.

She's brought back to reality by Kara's hand hovering over hers. She doesn't touch her, but this mere gesture shifts all the atoms of Lena's body. She wonders if Kara feels it too.

"Hey," she says softly, "are you okay ? I lost you there for a second."

"I'm fine," Lena lies, "I just got lost in my own head. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologise for that, it happens to the best of us," Kara says with the kind of smile that truly makes Lena believe that she doesn't have to apologise. "At what time to you need to get to work ?" Kara asks after a second, glancing back at the clock with a frown. "I can drop you off if you want. I don't have a car, but I have a bike and a license. I'll be super careful."

For a micro second, Lena considers lying about having to go to work, but her brain gets stuck on the image of Kara on a motorcycle and she experiences a reboot factory, back to lesbian default settings. "You," she croaks, "have a bike ?"

"I promise I'm a safe driver. And it'll be much quicker than the bus," Kara says, her smile slipping into a confused expression. "Oh," she adds after a second, "you have a driver, don't you ?"

Lena does have a driver, and it's the safest option, it's what she should say right now to avoid falling head first into a confusing situation. "It's his day off," is what she finds herself saying, which is a blatant lie but Kara doesn't have to know. "I could use a ride."

Lena is convinced that Kara belongs to the kind of people who don't lie, and so true to her words, she is a very safe driver. But Kara being careful leaves her with zero excuse to cling to her desperately except for the fact that she wants to. She's wearing sensible shoes, so precarious heels won't precipitate her on the road, she's wearing pants which allows her to sit securely, and the bulky jacket Kara gave her is protecting her from major harm ; she literally has no reason to cling to Kara so hard, she does anyway.

This ride is both the best and the worst experience of her life. The best because she's never been this close to Kara and the vibrations of the bike enhance every point of contact between them. Somehow, even the leather jacket smells like her and it's dizzying in a very pleasant way. The worst, because now that she's outside of Kara's home, she doesn't feel like she has the right to indulge in her like that, she's imposed her presence long enough and the more she stays, the more it's going to be difficult to be away. She's taunting herself with something she's not allowed to have and she knows the fall is going to hurt. Sooner or later, Kara is going to realise their friendship isn't worth it. Sooner or later, she too, like Veronica, will come to the conclusion that Lena is too complicated to be worth the effort.

She presses herself harder against Kara, willing the thrumming of the engine below them to empty her whirlwind mind.

When they come to a stop in front of LCorp, she doesn't dare to look at her. Half because she fears Kara is going to read her mind and see that she's been lusting after her all morning, half because if she does look at her, her outfit will be the only thing she can think about for the remainder of the day. She looks anyway, out of self destructiveness she reckons, it does seem to be her thing.

Kara doesn't dismount of the bike, she props it upright with the sheer strength of her legs, and removes her helmet to reveal pristine hair when Lena knows her owns are flattened against her skull. She looks so good it's unfair.

"Thanks for the ride," she eloquently says, unzipping the jacket with the intent of giving it back.

"Just keep it," Kara says, her voice strangled in a way Lena dares to hope is related to the direction her eyes are looking, directly to the artfully exposed skin revealed by a few opened buttons on her otherwise very professional shirt. "I'll come and pick it up later when I change your lock."

Lena doesn't bother saying that she could pay someone to change her lock, hell, she could even do it herself. But somehow, she trusts Kara much more than any locksmith to keep Veronica away.

"So," she says instead, scrambling to find something interesting to add so that Kara will stay a little longer, even thirty seconds so she can delay reentry in her regular life, thirty seconds to bask in the unnatural glow of her neighbour, thirty seconds to allow herself to believe there is some good in the world, even if not for herself. "I'll see you soon ?" she finishes lamely. "I owe you for last night. Maybe dinner ?" she adds so fast that she isn't quite sure the sentence she produces is cohesive enough for Kara to understand.

"You don't owe me anything," Kara replies with an unfairly charming smile. "You needed help and I was more than happy to provide. You're a strong woman, but that doesn't mean you can't let other people take care of you when you need it. That being said, I would love to get dinner sometime, not because you need to repay me, but because I want to spend time with you. First though, I'll see you tonight, for the lock, if that works for you."

Lena has no idea of if she's free but she agrees wholeheartedly anyway, already thinking of possible excuses to cancel whatever meeting might find itself on the path of spending time with Kara. She might have to be crafty, because Jess has a way of seeing through her and though her secretary would never snoop in her personal life, Lena would still feel compelled to embarrassingly explain herself. And considering she doesn't really understand why it feels so viscerally important to see Kara again tonight, she'd rather avoid the explanation entirely.

"Aren't you going in ?" Kara asks tentatively, her eyes shifting between Lena and the eight feet tall alien who is working security today. There's a tinge of what Lena wants to believe is regret in her voice. "I wouldn't want you to be late because of me."

If Lena is late, it's of her own device, she's the one stalling and buying time ; but she isn't about to correct Kara. Instead she nods, one time, then two, stopping right before she turns into a bobblehead. "You're right," she says," this company isn't going to run itself."

"I'll see you tonight," Kara says before slipping her helmet back on, hiding a smile behind the visor.

Lena echoes her words as she drive away with a confidant wave of the hand, keeping her in sight until she disappears in the morning traffic.

In the end, Lena doesn't need to craft an elaborate story to get out of a poorly timed meeting, she doesn't have much on her planning for that day, a couple of papers to sign, and a follow up conference call with Japan. Jess is as efficient as ever, working quickly and filtering calls so Lena can spend as much time in her lab as she wants. Her assistant in training however is useless, and spends a good portion of the day staring off into the distance with a weird happy smile.