Part 1.

Lena was sitting at the desk in her office, staring at the stock-market exchange rates for L-corp on her computer screen when suddenly, a knock on the door snatched her from her graph-infused reverie.

"Knock, knock! Lena?" a doughnut-sweet voice said, the sound of which immediately put a smile on Lena's face. "I'm sorry I keep bursting in like this but I know what a workaholic you are and I wanted to make sure you're giving yourself a break."

"What are friends for, right?" Lena beamed from across the room.

She stood up and crossed the office floor, eager to see Kara in.

"Exactly!" the blonde gushed, hugging Lena with one arm, while concealing something behind her back with the other.

When Lena looked at her quizzically, Kara revealed her other hand, producing a stunning bouquet of flowers, which she extended towards her.

"These are for you," she said smugly.

"Oh! Plumerias!" Lena accepted the bouquet, somewhat taken aback. "My favourites! Thank you, Kara… You're so sweet. But... What's the occasion?"

"Happy Birthday…?" Kara tilted her head with a cheeky, hopeful grin plastered over it.

Lena tilted her own head in confusion.

"Umm... Today is not my birthday," she chuckled.

"Oh. Well," Kara's voice turned flat, her spirit deliberately deflated to illustrate her point better. "Since you won't tell me when your birthday is, you can't really blame a girl for trying, can you?!"

"I… Just don't understand all the fuss, you know?" Lena was amused at Kara's dramatic show but was secretly moved that the reporter cared so much to know her birthday. "What's the point of celebrating a birthday?"

"Um, food? Cake?!" the blonde replied matter-of-factly, almost offended. "And it's a great excuse for all your family and friends to get together and show you how much they love you."

Alas, the mention of family genuinely deflated Lena's spirit.

"I-I wouldn't know, I guess," she responded, trying to maintain the smile from only a moment ago.

"Oh, uhh... Sorry, I forgot…" Kara's face turned pale when she realised her mistake. "Your family... The Luthors… I… Sorry."

"It's alright," Lena did her best to dismiss the whole thing and showed Kara to the couch. "But, yeah… Mother always made a big deal out of Lex's birthdays… And when it came to mine, it just never…"

She smirked at the memory as though it was irrelevant but Kara could see right through the facade.

"I'm really sorry, Lena. I didn't mean to remind you," she said, feeling sorry for everything that her best friend had been put through by her monstrous stepmother.

"It's okay. It's not your fault…" Lena worked hard to pick up her smile again. "I'm glad that you, at least, care."

"I do. And I always will," Kara replied in a way that she hoped would convey her seriousness on the matter.

"You're sweet," Lena smiled genuinely now.

No matter what the circumstances, Kara always managed to make her feel better… And bring about that comforting, radiating warmth in her heart that made her feel safe and loved, unlike anything that Lena could recall ever quite feeling before.

"So what does 'a perfectly normal' family do to celebrate a birthday?" she added, hoping to lighten the mood.

"Well, I don't know what a 'normal' family does," Kara smirked to herself, "But my sister and I, we go crazy! We order takeaways, get cake, go to the movies, go dancing... Or at least that's what we used to do before she got all busy with Detective Dimples."

"Well, I guess now that you have Mike, you get to do all that stuff with him," Lena reminded her.

"Uhh, yeah... Yeah, I guess so," Kara responded with a slight frown, as though remembering something unpleasant.

"It sounds like it would be fun…" Lena added.

Though she smiled as she said this, her lip twitched in doubt. Once again, Kara could tell that her friend was putting on a pretence. Most likely because Lena did not have family or a special someone to celebrate her birthdays with, she concluded.

"I'm sorry, Lena... I didn't mean to make you feel worse," she said, feeling genuinely guilty for bringing up birthdays at all!

"No, it's okay!" Lena placed her hand over Kara's. "It really isn't your fault. In some ways I'm very lucky! I mean, how many people receive such beautiful flowers on their birthdays, let alone on their 'could-be birthdays'?"

Kara chuckled.

"Well, if it makes you feel better, I don't actually know my own birthday," she said.

"Oh! How's that?" Lena narrowed her eyes.

She did not know this about Kara.

"Well, when I crash-landed on—" Kara started to explain but quickly realised her own blunder. Telling Lena the truth, however, was out of the question for her own sake, "—Innn… the hospital, I mean, out-out of my mother's um... It-it, uhh, was almost midnight but there-there was a power-cut and the nurses didn't know whether I was born at one minute to midnight or one minute after midnight!"

She threw her hands in the air as though in astonishment at the absurdity of such an event and chuckled in an exaggerated way that was common for her whenever forced to lie.

"That's crazy!" Lena responded, finding Kara's explanation hard to believe. "So... No one was wearing a watch at the time you were born?"

"Yeah, um, it was a-it was a reeeally bad electrical storm that caused the power-cut," Kara continued while inwardly praying to Rao to make it stop, "And-and it affected everything! The clocks were spinning like crazy... Time seemed to stand still for what felt like years!"

She burst into a nervous giggle when she realised she could not stop her verbal diarrhoea.

"It was like some really weird episode of a sci-fi tv show, like X-files or Smallville or something!"

By now she was laughing maniacally.

"Right," Lena smiled and nodded, knowing better.

Kara cleared her throat, painfully aware that she had just made an idiot out of herself in front of Lena Luthor.

"So! Umm, do you-do you have much work left to, um, do... Tonight?" she said and adjusted her spectles, trying to reclaim her dignity.

"Mmm, some," Lena replied uniformly, her look serious. "But I keep getting these headaches and... I'm starting to think that maybe I need glasses."

"Oh! Well, heh!" Kara chuckled. "Glasses are important!"

"Yeah… I'm beginning to see that," Lena replied and fixed her gaze on Kara.

It was in moments like these, when Lena's stare lingered over her peculiarly long, turning peculiarly intense, that made Kara feel unsettled, made her heart beat fast, as if somehow Lena saw right through her.

"Maybe... You wouldn't mind if I tried yours on?" Lena added, her stare locked with Kara's. "Just to see, you know. Maybe we'll end up sharing the same lens prescription."

Oh crap, Kara thought but promptly realised there was nothing she could do to get out of this. Best thing to do was to play along as if everything was just fine.

"Uhh... Yeah, uh, sure," she said as nonchalantly as she could.

Reluctantly, she removed her glasses and handed them to Lena, who delicately placed them on. While Lena blinked beneath the lens over her eyes, Kara avoided looking in her direction, trying to conceal her face as inconspicuously as possible.

"Hmm... That's strange," Lena said, holding the spectacles by the temples with both hands. She frowned as she looked about the room. "I don't see any difference."

"Yeah, uh, they're-they're prescription, so…" Kara said, turning really nervous now, trying very hard to hide her face from Lena.

Lena leisurely removed the glasses and returned them to Kara, scrutinising the other with narrowed eyes and a sly smile as Kara just about smacked the glasses back on her face, her lips pressed into a downward arch.

Lena waited a moment, while Kara avoided looking her in the eyes. Since it was obvious that Kara was hiding something from her, Lena almost enjoyed making her would-be-friend squirm in the spot. Almost. Except that Lena could never bear the thought of being a deliberate cause of Kara's discomfort.

"Tell you what," she said carefully. "I think... I think you can be trusted with a secret."

"A-always," Kara replied uncertainly, certain of one thing only: Whatever it was, whatever she needed, Kara Danvers Zor-El would always be there for Lena Luthor.

Lena shuffled along the couch towards Kara, leaned close to her and whispered into her ear.

"It's not my birthday today... But... You could try again tomorrow."