Chapter Thirteen: Completely

As far as the moon was concerned, it had been pleased just to offer its low, glowing light through the skylight above where Kara and Lena slept soundly. It was one of the many things about the beach house that made Lena fall in love with it, not to mention the book-lined walls just one floor below. Late into the night, Lena had caressed Kara into a well-earned sleep and shuffled the top sheet and quilt of the bed out from under them. Once tucked and fitted back into the blonde's arms, who could have been jostled any which way without waking, she laid flat and stared up at the silvery disc hanging in the sky. A beautiful orb in a sea of sparkling lights, bright and dimpled with shadows, painting everything it touched in a magnificent, brown-tinged gray. It brought to mind a line from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice in the fleeting moments before Lena succumbed to the hard pull of sleep;

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank…

The sun, however, was less gentle in its embrace. Bright and early it had risen, shining its vivid and intense light upon their sleeping forms beneath which hastened Lena's eyelids to open and blink blearily into the brightness. With a grimace, she threw her face sideways into a pillow and an arm across the bed which landed flat, void of the body that once slept there. It was cool to the touch, which meant that it had been a while since Kara had been there. She knew the other woman was, enthusiastically at times, a "morning person" and that they had established a strong boundary of "Let me sleep unless of course your head is between my legs" some time ago… So, she settled upon the fact that Kara was probably up and keeping herself occupied. She halfway hoped the blonde would have found the food stuffs she had stored in the tiny kitchen downstairs the day before and was eagerly working to make them breakfast. A meal which she had discovered was her favorite of the day if Kara was the one cooking.

With a yawn and a stretch, Lena found some underwear and threw on a pair of acid-washed denim shorts over them. She chuckled to herself when she saw Kara's maroon tank top from the day before hanging on the corner of the small dresser opposite the foot of the bed. She decided to pull it over her head and to make her way down the skinny staircase to look for Kara. She quite liked the way a small portion of her breasts could be seen through the large, drooping armholes on each side of the tank. They were the same spaces where Lena was usually caught staring at Kara's latissimus dorsi and obliques from time to time.

"Kara?" Lena called out into the cozy ground floor of the house. She received no answer, but saw that the curtains had been drawn open to let the sunlight in. It blanketed the rows of books along the walls in a striking gold-orange hue and felt warm upon her skin.

She was definitely here…

Kara had a thing for the sun. To no surprise, Lena had simply assumed after spending enough time with the woman that she had grown so fond of it after having lived directly under it for her entire life. They could be walking the streets of New York City when the clouds would part and let a few rays shine through, and Kara would dodge traffic to stand in the one place on the street where it landed just so she could turn her face into it. The way she closed her eyes and let the warmth of the sun consume her was one of the many things that made Lena realize she was wholly, undeniably, and irrevocably in love with her. Watching these formidable yet gentle forces of nature commune with each other was like witnessing an act of God. Not that Lena was by any means religious, but it was about as close to any heaven she supposed she would ever come.

She broke out of her daydream, which was more of a hauntingly lovely memory, and looked through the windows out at the shoreline. The blonde was sitting on her feet at the water's edge and looking out at the vast blueness beyond. An appreciative smile crept along Lena's mouth, and she made her way out of the back door to walk down the beach and join her.

It was still early, but the roar of the gulf was already loud as she sidled up next to Kara. The blonde noticed her as she crouched to sit in the sand beside her and smiled warmly to once again be in her presence.

"It's so beautiful here. I wish we could just escape real life and stay forever." Kara said, her first words of the day clearly coming from her heart. Lena pulled her legs underneath herself to sit on her knees then. The sand grated them at first, then softened with her weight as she leaned on the blonde's sturdy upright figure. All she did was rest her temple on the outermost curve of Kara's deltoid and sigh. She knew the feeling well. Then she reached a hand out and turned Kara's chin toward her with a finger.

"I'm glad we're here now."

Kara leaned back on her heels and sat her tailbone squarely in the sand beside Lena. Then she wrapped her arms around and brought the smaller woman up and over to sit in her lap. Funnily enough, Lena was the one to widen her eyes and scan their surroundings instinctively. Kara had grown bolder in her public displays of affection as time had gone by: months of almost hand-holding, gentle brushes of thumbs on thighs under restaurant tables, lingering hugs and the quick and almost imperceptible back-handed caress of a cheek… none of which she had dared to do back at home, but while out in the world and not necessarily "out", she became more confident and relaxed in Lena's presence and was more and more willing to exchange body language when her words simply could not be called upon.

There were signs of activity far off in the distance down the length of the beach where people could be seen walking to and fro, but Kara either didn't care or was emerging through yet another ceiling in her climb to self-realization. It wasn't that Lena was impatient with her by any means… She could recognize when Kara genuinely felt the desire to do the things that scared her and she knew that if she was gentle, and if she received her well enough without any unnecessary verbalization or acknowledgement, then the blonde would feel safe enough to keep improving upon her actions.

Sometimes, a gentle and sure-footed landing was best instead of just crashing right through.

Kara's arms weighed her down and felt heavenly around her waist, and Lena secretly hoped that the blonde was feeling bold enough to steal a kiss from her this morning—but what came out of Kara's mouth next caught her entirely off guard.

"Kiss me?"

The joy Lena felt with Kara's request filled her chest with a warm feeling and as a result spread a wide smile across her face. She was so happy in this place, and in those arms. So happy that she could cry. Instead, Lena tucked some stray golden wisps of hair behind one of Kara's ears that had been mussed and set loose by the wind, and with her lips still pulled into a smile, she bent down slightly to press them softly against Kara's. It was perfect; The meeting of two souls, connecting in a single kiss. To Lena, it said:

I could never love another the way that I love you.

It was in that moment that Kara's stomach decided to growl its morning "Hello", causing the blonde to break their kiss with a breathy laugh upon Lena's lips. Seconds later, a robust wave from the ocean had pushed far enough up along the beach to reach them and soak their legs.

"Oh! Cold!" Lena exclaimed.

Kara stiffened at the brisk coolness of the water when it streamed across her sun-kissed skin, and she threw back her head with another laugh. Lena loved the sounds of those laughs, the ones that Kara couldn't hide even if she tried to… or wanted to, for that matter. It hit her suddenly that she'd have the entire weekend to hear them.

A little while later, Kara was admiring the full stores of the small kitchen back inside the beach house with many "oohs" and "ahs", and finally decided on scrambling a few eggs just to have something quick and easy. The blonde genuinely seemed concerned with taking advantage of as much of the time they had together as possible. Lena had nearly talked her into making from-scratch buttermilk biscuits with white gravy, but Kara insisted that the mess from said preparation would overwhelm the limited counterspace, and instead settled for the next morning if Lena agreed to keep out of the kitchen. She did, after all, have a way of distracting the blonde while she cooked and was usually unable to keep her hands to herself. Lena typically brushed this off with "I can't help it if you're cute, even when you're covered in flour".

They sat and ate in the comfortable silence they often enjoyed with one another when Kara spied a stack of cardboard boxes in the corner of the small living room adjacent to the breakfast nook.

"Did you bring those or were they already here?" Kara asked.

Lena swallowed a bite and turned to look at the boxes in their clumsy, haphazard tower next to a window.

"Mm. Those are mine. I brought some books."

Kara huffed a small laugh behind her orange juice. "I know you can read fast, but can you really read that fast? We're checking out on Tuesday morning." The blonde replied with a faint air of disbelief.

"To be fair, those are the ones staying behind." Lena said with some nonchalance as she took another bite of her eggs.

Kara's forehead wrinkled slightly, her puzzled expression making Lena giggle behind a raised hand. The raven-haired woman paused for a moment, as if almost embarrassed, which only served to further perplex the woman sitting across from her.

"I sort of bought it." Lena explained.

A longer pause followed. Kara, thoroughly confused now, asked with a shake of her head, "Bought what?"

Lena simply gestured vaguely to their surroundings with a spin of her finger as her other hand brought her fork back to her mouth.

"You bought the beach house?!" Kara bounced on the bench seat in the small, windowed nook.

"The row of them, actually." Lena said after chewing a bit. "And technically, my company bought them." She waved the fork in her hand in a manner that conveyed her preciseness. "I wanted to try the real estate here in Texas."

Kara blinked rapidly, her jaw slack with her surprise. "You wanted to try… real estate…"

"Sure." Lena squinted her eyes joyfully. "There's licensing involved with state accredited classes and tests to take, but that's pretty much it."

Still astonished, Kara snapped her jaw closed finally and shook her head with a laugh. "So, we can come here whenever we want?" She asked.

Lena smiled proudly, the corners of her lips turning happily upward. "Now you're getting it." She admitted with a wink.

With Kara's stunned silence, Lena took in the full measure of the way the blonde was staring at her. It made her skin light up and tingle along every inch. Comprehending the fact that another human viewed her in such high regard was no simple task, and Lena was almost sure that she would never get used to Kara looking at her this way, or any other way. It spiked her heart rate. She didn't know how this woman could manifest such physical reactions within her, just by simply looking at her. She imagined how many more breakfasts she might get with Kara where her heart raced just like this.

Wouldn't that be grand…?

Kara spent the rest of the day attached to Lena at the hip as they walked along different piers and the shop-lined boardwalk. She even reached down and held her hand as they strolled every so often, and the time passed quickly without her realizing. The day had grown long, and the sun began its tired descent behind the few stringy wisps of clouds along the horizon. Eventually, the two made their way back to the beach where she was sure they would spend most of their remaining weekend in its warm and well-sifted sand.

They stood with their toes sinking further with each trickling wave that climbed along the shoreline, and peacefully took in the end of the day together. The beach was now devoid of any other visitors and only the rushing of water and a few, quiet calls of seagulls could be heard. Their hands were still clasped together, and Kara remarked at how she enjoyed running her thumb back and forth over Lena's smaller one. She had always admired how the other woman's hands could be engulfed in her own. Not that her own hands dwarfed Lena's, they weren't that much larger, they were just… different. They came from a different world. One where they weren't abused and bruised and beaten by manual labor. They had seen their fair share of work, but Kara often found herself imagining Lena's hands dancing along the ivories of a piano or gripping the reins of a horse. When she wasn't swimming in tactile memories of those hands pillowing her cheeks, stroking her jaw, or grabbing at the back of her neck, of course…

When she looked at her, the sunset had perched perfectly behind Lena, painting her in a dazzling warm reddish hue. She seemed to glow to Kara, as if she was some otherworldly being somehow tearing through the fabric of reality. It was as if Lena had been defying her own realm of existence, one that lived in between the physical and spiritual, just to be there with Kara all this time. Especially now. The laws of space and time be damned.

Kara's heart pummeled into her ribs at the sight, sending its dull echo up into her ears. The hairs on her forearms prickled to life and stood straight where the wind blew through them. The hand holding her own squeezed tighter all of the sudden and pulled her closer. Face to face now, Kara's head emptied all except for three little words:

"I love you."

Lena's face dropped into an awestruck, but seemingly unsurprised expression. Kara had only guessed that Lena already knew how she felt—in fact, she was sure of it—but it appeared to hold different weight when those feelings were at last said out loud. Lena could just know things, and Kara had grown to know her. The smaller, dark-haired woman continued to stand there and stare into Kara's blue eyes as they pinged back and forth between her own.

"I think I've always loved you." Kara continued, "Before I even met you and knew who you were, I know how crazy that might sound- but it's true. I feel like I've been waitin' for you my whole life." Her shoulders trembled slightly as she heaved a breath in. "I feel like myself when I'm with you." She then took a moment to swipe a gentle finger at a tear that rolled over the crest of Lena's cheekbone. "I'm myself now, but I need you to know that I'm also yours. Completely."

Lena's lower lip quivered tightly, and her chin bounced in an effort to keep from falling into a teary-eyed mess in front of Kara. "You have no idea how long I've waited to hear you say that."

The blonde smiled sheepishly with her teeth on full display. "Remind me, when did you break down outside of town?"

Lena laughed then and bumped the heel of her hand on Kara's shoulder. "Cheeky." Kara scooped her tighter into her arms in retaliation, making the raven-haired woman squeal with another laugh. Lena's hands reached up and found each side of Kara's jaw then. "I love you so much, Kara."

Without another word, Kara took Lena up by the backs of her legs and carried her into the rolling shallow water, warmer now after having been touched by a full day's sun. She stopped when the gentle waves reached the bottoms of their ribs. Kara would make love to her in that gentle back and forth, push and pull of the ocean, and in full view of Poseidon's domain. Nothing could stop her now, not even the god king of the sea himself.