say what? two updates in less than a week. y'all, i was on a roll and i couldn't stop. before i knew it, this one was all typed out. but don't expect this to happen regularly. maybe the next update will come in six months. who knows? this pandemic is messing with everyone's head.
now, read, ponder, and enjoy!
Contrary to popular belief, Kara did not kiss Lena first. Yes, Kara had been the one to ask her out for a date, which eventually turned into many dates, and then marriage, and then collapsed into a divorce. Yes, Kara had been the one who knelt on one knee on Thanksgiving, amidst a trove of trees and in front of firewood, with the nocturnal animals as witnesses, and asked Lena to marry her.
But Kara had not been the one who kissed her first. To the day of her death, Lena would insist that if she hadn't gathered the courage to kiss Kara that day, they wouldn't have been where they were today. To the day of her death, Lena wouldn't be certain as to how exactly she found the bravery to make the first move and unleash an array of passion and an age of incomparable love between two ordinary girls.
And it went like this.
It went like a second date. A drive-in movie date, in Alex's first car with Kara's careless driving under Lena's careful gaze. It went like a boring romcom, which had no substance and no good characters worth getting attached to.
It went like the two of them going from watching the movie to sitting on the trunk of the car, moongazing with the movie as white noise.
It went like Lena staring mindlessly at Kara. Freckles and blue eyes and glasses and impeccable fit that it was very curious how she was still single. Bright smile that was not dimmed by pouring rain and blonde hair that glimmered under the moonlight and the huge screen behind them.
It went like Lena losing her impulse control and sitting up abruptly, shocking Kara into silence.
"Can I kiss you?" Lena had asked, because consent was important – her mother taught her that much.
It went like Kara gaping at her. Truly. Mouth opened like a goldfish and eyes so wide it's a miracle her eyeballs didn't pop out, though that would be gross. Still, gross as it would be, Lena wasn't certain she wouldn't still find Kara hot as fuck, though maybe a little blinder than expected. And then Kara nodded.
It went like Lena leaning forward, refusing any sense of propriety or cowardice. Their mouths met. Closed at first. Then Kara opened her mouth, teasing her tongue at the edge of Lena's crevices. And it was all, as they would say, history.
Three years later, the kiss felt…renewed. A dying ember that was reignited. It was more than just a kiss. It was a reawakening. And Lena could only keep running.
With Lionel's improvement, Lena had no choice but to return to National City. No more avoiding phone calls or texts. No more pretending that wild romp in the forest didn't happen. No more acting as if the emotional turbulent she'd been through for the past two weeks was simply because of her father's condition.
Well, sure, but she could try her very best to avoid meeting Kara at all. She opted out of all shifts in ER, because while her father may be improving, he was still a pretty good leverage. She rejected dinner invitations that would potentially involve the firefighter, citing exhaustion and heavy workload after two weeks of missing work.
Even when she finally met Ruby, it was without Kara or Alex's presence. Say what you want about her, but you couldn't deny that Lena was exceptionally at escaping ghosts, even the ghosts are very real people. Or one ghost. One person.
Ruby was a toddler. Tiny. Only as tall as the bottom part of Lena's thigh, and Lena was short. A wary toddler who never relinquished a teddy bear in her arm, which Lena could relate with, considering her teddy bear was still sitting on a shelf in her childhood bedroom. Adorable. And surprisingly, the toddler took to Lena almost instantly. Wide-eyed. Good-natured smile. Constant curiosity in her eyes.
"Are you gonna tell me what happened?"
Lena briefly looked up from watching Ruby play with the little chess set that she had gotten her. "What happened?"
Sam raised her brows, a fond smile on her face as she watched her best friend and her new daughter. "Let me paint the picture: I got the call from you. I got concerned, and I was pretty sure Kara would be concerned too, so I told her immediately. Except I didn't think she would be so concerned to the point where she would steal my car and drive hundreds of miles to see you." Well, the woman was definitely still miffed about missing her car for two days. "So, like I said, what happened?"
Lena gulped and turned back to the toddler, picking up a knight and placing it on the board. Then she started arranging the pieces. "Nothing happened," she said, giggling a little when Ruby stared at the arrangement of the pieces in absolute awe. "Kid's a genius."
"One day, she might beat you."
"I look forward to it."
"Lena," Sam pronounced sternly, getting the woman to look at her again. "I know Ruby's adorable. She's too young to learn chess, still. Let her be."
"My mother taught me chess at five."
"You're a weirdo."
"Rude," Lena grumbled, and tickled Ruby under her chin, grinning wider as the girl giggled happily and proceeded to tumble into Lena's lap, unabashedly wrapping Lena's arms around her. "Oh, I'm stealing her," she stated, tightening her arms around the girl. "You're wonderful."
"Did you sleep with her?
Choking on air. That was a real thing. Lena would know, because she was experiencing it right this moment. She choked so hard that Ruby decided to squirm away from her and return to the chessboard, as if she could absorb its mechanisms by just intensely glaring at it.
"With Ruby? What kind of a weirdo do you think I am?" Lena exclaimed.
"Not Ruby, for god's sake. Kara!"
"Oh, her."
Sam's brows rose higher, obviously expecting more than just two words from Lena. But the raven-haired woman paid her no mind and proceeded to take out the little booklet that came with the chessboard. She pointed at the pieces and read their names out loud, much to Ruby's intelligent delight.
"I'm taking her to the lab with me."
"I'm not letting you ever see her again if you don't tell me what happened," Sam threatened.
Lena rolled her eyes, realizing that there was no way she'd be leaving this apartment today without telling Sam at least something. She could only hope that Sam wouldn't be a blabbermouth to the woman with whom she shared this child with.
Gingerly, she placed the booklet in Ruby's hands, making sure the kid wouldn't put it in her mouth. She could only smile wider when Ruby only attentively started reading, as if those words would make sense to a five-year-old. Then again, she'd already displayed an odd interest in the chessboard without much prompting, so Lena probably shouldn't be surprised if Ruby ended up grasping the concept soon.
"Thank you, Aunt Lena," Ruby politely said as Lena got up.
And dear god, the woman could melt right there. Instead, she just made her way to the couch and snatched a throw pillow from her best friend's hands, cuddling into it and sticking her tongue out when Sam made a noise of protest.
"Technically, I didn't sleep with her." Sam squinted, and Lena made a grimace, fidgeting on the couch. "I – well, it was – there was no sleeping." Sam only squinted more. "You remember the forest where she…proposed to me?" Her thumb absentmindedly rubbed the ring finger, where the ring tan had long disappeared.
"Uh-huh."
Lena shrugged and waited for it all to sink in. Soon, it would all sink in soon. And when the sinking happened, Lena hoped she would have found a way to sink herself into the depths of this very comfortable couch.
"No, you did not."
There it was, and still, Lena had failed to sink into the couch. She shrugged again. "We did." Before Sam could say anything, Lena went on, "We did. Like twice. And it was – I don't know. I've been avoiding her for like one week now." Sam hummed in acknowledgement. "I don't know how to face her."
"You've slept with plenty of people, and you stayed friends with them."
"Okay, no need to make me sound like a whore."
They both look at Ruby, who was mumbling to a rook. Okay, so far so good. They were going to have to be a bit more careful from now on.
"You can't avoid Kara forever. You're Ruby's godmother."
A protest ready at her mouth, Lena shifted in her position to tell Sam all the ways she could actually avoid Kara Danvers. Only to stop without saying a word as she finally absorbed Sam's statement. She closed her mouth and stared at Sam.
That was all she was doing for the next ten minutes. Ruby mumbling to chess pieces and making small cheers as she clumsily moved them. The faucet dripping in the kitchen. Occasional sirens on the streets to indicate emergencies that didn't require her or Sam at the moment. All those, and also Lena staring at her best friend, absolutely gob smacked.
"Damn it, I owe Kara 50 bucks," were the first words Lena said once she composed herself enough. The smug look on Sam's face changed into a confused one. "She bet that you'd get me to be Ruby's godmother."
"And you thought – you seriously thought I wouldn't?"
"Well, I haven't exactly been around, have I?"
"You were always around when it mattered," Sam said softly, reaching out to grasp Lena's hand. "Though now I might have to reconsider now that you told me you did it in a forest."
"Stop it."
"Honestly, think about the wildlife."
"We weren't exactly thinking."
"Yeah, I can tell."
"It's a one-time thing. That's it." Sam made a face that was very telling of her skepticism at Lena's claim, to which Lena only asserted, "It was!"
Sam sighed, moving closer to wrap an arm around Lena's shoulders and pulling her into her long embrace, because if Sam was anything, she was long. Lena didn't resist and just placed her head in the crook of Sam's neck, suddenly feeling so tired from all the pent-up anxiety over the past two weeks.
"It's a one-time thing," she mumbled, unsure as to whether she was trying to convince herself or Sam.
Before the tentacles of slumber took over her state of mind, she heard Sam whisper, "Sometimes, I wish you'd stop lying to yourself so much."
Well, that too. But for now, she would stay in Sam's arms and listen to her future goddaughter mumble more to herself. For now, she would continue pretending until she couldn't.
The ER was unusually slow today, but there was no way any of the staff would say that out loud. Still, it was uncommonly peaceful; there were empty bays, no sirens filled up the doors, no one crying about a dying parent. Some nurses were even playing Candy Crush on their phones.
Lena walked towards one of the bays that were not empty, summoned by a text from Alex. Despite her very best, there was just no way she could avoid the ER forever – she'd signed the contract as both a neurosurgeon and a trauma surgeon, so she would have to fulfil her obligations if she wanted the paycheck.
She came to a sudden halt after the drapes were drawn back and she was confronted with an unusual sight before her. It was starting to shape up to an unusual day in the ER with this added to the list. Sidling up to Alex, she kept her eye on the patient and cleared her throat.
"Is that an anal plug?" she asked as quietly as possible, although the patient probably wouldn't hear her.
Alex nodded, her face expressionless, though her ears kept twitching, so at least Lena could tell she was somewhat amused.
Lena licked her lips and asked again, "In his ear?"
Again, Alex nodded, her ears twitching more.
Lena inclined her head, taking a deep breath to suppress the bubble of laughter that was welling up in her chest. No, it would be unprofessional to laugh in the face of a patient, especially one who looked as distressed as the one sitting on the bed.
Mustering her professional voice, she offered what she hoped was a friendly smile and immediately went to the boy's other side. One glance at the chart told her that he was sixteen years old. A boy…with an anal plug in his ear. Briefly, she asked the nurse whether his parents were here, who told her that they were on their way.
"Charlie, you wanna tell me what happened?" she asked as she checked his vitals and pupil response, while Alex ran on the monitor.
"Is my boyfriend here?" Lena looked back to the nurse in askance, who could only shrug, so she waved her hand, silently ordering the nurse to go check. "We were trying things out." At sixteen? Lena remembered paying full attention to the decathlon team at sixteen, not messing around with plugs. "And I kind of fell on it."
"You what?" Alex asked, distracted from the stats.
"The plug was on the bed, and we were fooling around. And we were laying down, and it just kind of…" he drifted off, trembling fingers gesturing at the object in his ear. "We were just fooling around," he sniffled.
"Boyfriend's here," the nurse announced from her quest.
There was a mixture of panic and relief flooding Charlie's face. "Okay, um, can you get him to go home? I don't want – my parents don't know. And they're like…big Christians. Full-on."
Lena and Alex shared a look. Of understanding. Of sympathy. Of empathy. Of unavoidable sadness for a boy who was more scared than ever. They had both gone through the same thing with their own sets of parents, so they would know what it was like.
"Okay, what do you want us to tell your parents?" Alex asked softly.
The relief was soon overshadowed by the panic as soon as Alex asked the question. He shook his head and went from sniffling to actually crying. Big drops of tears tracing down his cheeks as Charlie struggled to find an answer that wouldn't get him in trouble.
"Pencil," Lena offered. "We can say it's a pencil. Is that okay?"
He softened and nodded. "Thank you."
Lena smiled gently and patted his arm. "We'll take care of you."
For the next couple of hours, Lena and Alex did nothing but take care of Charlie, leaving the rest of the ER in the capable hands of the other nurses and medical officers, only hoping that the ER would stay as peacefully as possible. Quietly, of course, because no one would dare to say it out loud.
The doctors brought him up for a CT scan, contacted an ENT to survey the damage to his ear, and performed a fairly painless procedure to extract the anal plug. When the ENT snorted at the sight of Charlie, Alex threw a glare so impressive that the six-foot-four man practically shrank into a dwarf.
Charlie's parents eventually came. And true to her word, Lena told them that it was a pencil and made up some excuse about him studying so hard that the pencil found its way into his ear. She even made Alex and any other nurses swear to say the same thing, still remember the way she'd been so afraid to come out to her family back in the day.
"You know, your parents seem very worried about you," Lena said when they were alone in the ward, the parents having gone to the cafeteria to fetch him some food.
"Yeah, they are," Charlie lamented, playing with his wristband. "But they're still – we go to church every Sunday. There's a Jesus portrait in our living room. I don't know."
She hummed and replaced the chart at the foot of his bed. He nodded when she gestured at the empty chair by the bed, so she sat down. "I was scared to tell my parents too," she said, smiling when he seemed startled at her revelation. "I didn't even tell them until I met the woman I was going to marry."
"How old were you?"
"20." He made an impressed noise. "I met her when I was eighteen, and she was…" Lena drifted off, recalling the way Kara had to make herself as small as possible under the awning of the bus station, and couldn't help but laugh at the memory. "She was clumsy and charming and blonde as heck, and I didn't know any other way but to fall madly in love with her."
"She sounds nice."
"She does, doesn't she?" Lena leaned back in the chair and swallowed. "We were together for two years. And one day, I realized that I could never leave her, which meant I could never keep her a secret from my parents forever." Good lord, she'd been so young then. "Fortunately, I was already working on the side while studying to become the doctor you see me as today, so I had savings and I could take care of myself, in case my family did kick me out of the house."
"Did they?"
She shook her head. "They were the best. My father was shocked, yes. He didn't talk to me for like two days. I think my mother talked to him about it, and in the end, they love me the way I am."
"Are they religious?"
"They're doctors in their own rights."
Charlie chuckled sardonically and shook his head. "Well, my parents –"
"I would never tell you to come out to your parents just because I did. I would never tell you to come out. Period. Everyone goes through their own pace, and if yours is never, then that's fine. I'm certainly not in the position to tell you to do anything, except to not stick anything else in your ear," she quickly explained, imploring him to understand. "But, if in the future, you do wanna come out, my advice would be for you to set things up for yourself. Make sure you have a safe space. Make sure you can…continue surviving in spite of them. That's all I'm saying."
The kid – the teenager, who was so fearful that he wouldn't allow the person he loved to see him – studied for a long moment before inclining his head. "Thank you, Dr. Luthor."
She smiled reassuringly at him and stood up. "Remember, no more things up your ears."
"Yes, ma'am." She was near the door when he asked, "Are you and your wife happy?"
Lena turned to look back at him, finding the hope in his eyes. The absolute wonder at the idea that two women, people like him, could end up together. Could sign a piece of paper and be recognized as spouses under the eyes of the law.
For a moment, she wanted to tell him the truth. Not all things had happy endings, but that didn't mean he couldn't have one. But the look on his face was so young and innocent, much like the way she was when she thought getting married would be the endgame for her and Kara, that there was no other ending for them.
So instead of being honest, she nodded at his query, reaffirming his belief in the wrong thing. It wouldn't do him any harm anyway. Maybe it would help him be braver in the future. Maybe he wouldn't remember her at all in the near future.
"I've been looking for you."
"What – what are you doing here?"
"Looking for you."
Slim fingers reached up to tug down the sunglasses that shielded tired green eyes. She looked at the woman blocking her sun, all blonde and sunshine in her own right, dressed up in a fitting button-down and a pair of straight jeans that somehow still managed to bring out the shapeliness of her legs.
"This park is nowhere near your station."
"Yes, and look what you made me do," Kara complained goodheartedly, moving to sit next to Lena on the bench. "I just finished a long shift – it was a long night, by the way – and you made me come all the way to Sand Cove Plaza to look for you."
Lena moved away slightly, unwilling to let any part of her touch any part of Kara. She didn't need the memories and she didn't need the echoes of her own pleas in the forest ringing in her ears. Just dreaming about them almost every night was humiliating enough.
"I was running from you," Lena blurted out, looking away from Kara.
Kara only nodded and shrugged. "Yeah, I figured." She followed Lena's gaze to the ducks swimming in the pond, chuckling at the kids blatantly ignoring the sign to not feed bread to the animals. "Look, can we talk?"
"About?"
"Lena, you're not stupid."
The double-board certified doctor clenched her fists in the pockets of her coat, almost crushing the sunglasses she'd deposited in one of them. "I think I like it better when you're angry with me." Even without looking, she could tell Kara was rolling her eyes and slumping back into the bench. "I owe you fifty bucks."
"For what?"
"Sam wants me to be Ruby's godmother."
Kara chortled at Lena's honest and proceeded to thrust a hand into Lena's vision, fingers wiggling. "I told you. Pay up, Dr. Luthor."
Lena sighed, though slightly grateful that she managed to distract Kara. Even for just a little bit. She dug into her purse and fished out a $50 note, making sure to slap it into Kara's palm to show her dissatisfaction at the situation. Dissatisfaction that she lost a bet, not that she would become Ruby's godmother.
"How's the kid with the anal plug?" Lena gasped and snapped her head to the right to gape at Kara. "I brought him in," Kara further explained. "He wouldn't tell us how that happened though."
So then, Lena proceeded to tell Kara the long-and-short of it. The fooling around. The boyfriend. The religious zeal. The short conversation she had with Charlie before she left him in the care of the next doctor on shift.
While she was talking, the humor on Kara's face dissipated. Little by little. Until there was only heartbreak and pity, a mist over her eyes.
"You think he's gonna tell them?"
"Not anytime soon," Lena predicted. "I wouldn't have told my family if it wasn't for you."
She clenched her fists harder at her own accidental confession. Then again, was it a confession if Kara already knew? No, it was more like an accidental reminder. She wanted to break skin for her lack of filter in effect of her exhaustion of working a long shift herself. And maybe also from all the running and pretending she'd been doing.
And it went like this.
It went like Lena looking down her lap while Kara was looking into the side of her head. More like burning her gaze into the side of Lena's head. Though, because she was stubborn, she refused to meet Kara's eyes.
It went like her desperately hoping that Kara would not bring it up. Would not bring any of it up and leave it in the past. Be it a spur of the moment thing or just understanding Lena was unwilling to talk about it at all. Just leave it in the past.
It went like her being so desperate that she wanted to wish it all away. Like that Marvel movie, where the purple giant would snap his fingers and half of the world would be dusted away. She would prefer that she be dusted away, instead of Kara.
It went like her entire body remembering each and every inch of Kara's curves, all slotted nicely into hers. Like two puzzle pieces that had finally found each other since packed into a nicely wrapped box. But this wasn't nice. This was messy as hell.
"So what do you think about Ruby?"
It went like Lena heaving a breath of relief, so heavy that there was no way the blonde next to her didn't at least hear her, if not feel the way her body pretty much collapsed to the frame of the bench.
It went like Lena having never been so grateful for how well Kara knew her. And she kept pushing on her crusade of pretending, talking about the toddler she was teaching to play chess, instead of the thing that had been haunting her dreams since it happened in the woods.
unfortunately, lena is gonna be a bit slow on the uptake here. but don't worry, kara's a patient woman. i'm sure y'all are too.