Chapter Text
Seeing Esme’s integration into the family had a profound impact on Kara, who began to talk about wanting to foster. Sam laughed when Kara first broached the subject. “There isn’t enough chaos here for you yet?” she asked with gentle teasing. As if on cue, there was a loud crash from the direction of Leia’s bedroom, followed by one of the girls yelling, “We’re okay!”
Kara grinned back. “I think our chaos could help some kids out.”
This led to a renewed conversation on what to tell about their relationships. Alex and Esme had officially moved in about a year after Esme first came to live with them, once her adoption had been finalized. Kara had been living there for years. It was now impossible to pretend that they weren’t all one family.
“It’s not uncommon to have a blended family these days,” Lena pointed out. “If we say we’re two separate families living together, no one will balk at that.”
Sam scowled. “I don’t like that,” she admitted, when Lena prodded her. “I don’t like pretending that you’re not my partner too.”
Lena immediately took her hand. “I don’t either,” she said. “It’s just what we have to do.”
The conversation prompted a change in Sam though. She vacillated between standoffish and incredibly needy, particularly with Lena. Lena tried to ride it out; she and Sam had hit rough patches before. But it didn’t take long before she could no longer keep her mouth shut.
“What’s going on with you? I feel like you’re mad at me for something, and I don’t know why.”
Sam looked immediately defensive. “I’m not!” Lena raised an eyebrow, and Sam deflated slightly. “I’m not,” she said again in a resigned tone. “I’m just…” She sighed. “I’m afraid you and I are growing apart.”
“What? Why would you think that?”
Sam shrugged helplessly. “We don’t do things just the two of us anymore,” she said, dropping her eyes to the floor, but not before Lena could see tears shining in them. “We abandoned that schedule of one-on-one time after Esme came to live with us, and I feel like we’ve been so busy with Alex and Kara that you and I don’t do anything anymore. And… and you’re my partner too, Lena! We’re not two couples living in the same house. We’re three couples and two sisters, and I love you, and I miss you.”
The last few sentences came out in a rush, but Lena heard them all, and her feet were moving before her brain fully finished processing. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured, wrapping her arms around Sam’s shaking body. “You’re absolutely right. We’ve been neglecting us. But we’re going to change that, okay? You and I are going to make time for each other.”
Sam nodded into Lena’s shoulder. “Are you sure?” she said. “I mean, you still want to, right?”
“Of course I do,” Lena said. “Sam, I love you. I love being your partner. I’m sorry I’ve let us drift apart.”
“We both did,” Sam conceded, and Lena kissed the side of her head.
“We’ll both fix it.”
Lena was true to her word. The next day, she reinstituted the one-on-one time schedule that Kara had set up when they’d first gotten together, though Lena added some things to it. “Since the girls are growing up, I thought it would be good for each of us to spend a day a month individually with each of them, to maintain those connections. Especially if we’re going to be introducing foster kids into the family. I don’t want them to feel like they’re less of a priority.”
“That’s a great idea,” Kara said, studying the color-coded schedule. “Although I think this thing requires a masters degree to understand it.”
Lena scowled at her and snatched it back as Sam and Alex laughed.
Lena took Ruby out to dinner a week later for one of their nights, and she realized how long it had been since she’d really connected with the girl she considered her stepdaughter. When was the last time they had they spent time alone like this without homework or running to some lesson? Ruby was 12 now, and she was getting to the age where she was going to be too cool to hang out with her mom or her mom’s contingent of live-in partners, and Lena wanted to soak up as much time as she still had.
“How’s your science project going?” Lena asked, as they dug into their calamari appetizer.
Ruby rolled her eyes around a mouthful. “It’s fine. I hate working in lab groups. No one in my group ever does anything, and I wind up doing half the project myself.”
“I always hated that too,” Lena agreed. “When you’re known for being a science prodigy, lab group members always assume that you want to do all the work.”
Ruby grinned at that, but then her look shifted to something Lena didn’t recognize. “There is… there is one person who’s been helping me,” she said hesitantly.
“That’s good!” Lena said encouragingly, though she was trying to decipher why Ruby didn’t look happier about it.
“Yeah.” Under the table, Lena could feel Ruby kicking one foot against the floor, a sure sign she was nervous about something. “Their name is Casey. They, um, they’re really cute,” she blurted out.
Ahh, Lena thought. That’s what this was about. “Oh, yeah?” she asked, keeping her voice deliberately casual.
Ruby nodded eagerly, then seemed to realize what she was doing and shifted it to a shrug. “Yeah. I was… I was, um, thinking about seeing if they wanted to go to the movies.” She worried her lip for a second, then asked, “Do you think I’m too young to date?”
“I think that is definitely a question for your mom,” Lena said immediately.
Ruby scowled at that. “Aren’t you all kind of my moms?” she demanded. “You’ve been raising me since I was like seven. You make all the decisions together.”
“That’s… true,” Lena admitted. She had long thought of Ruby as her daughter just as much as Leia was, and now as much as Esme was too. She gave careful consideration to Ruby’s question. “I think you’re smart and responsible. But I think the decision about whether you’re old enough to date is one that we should have as a family, and not one that I should make alone.”
Ruby rolled her eyes at that. “Lenaaaaa,” she whined.
Lena smiled slightly. “Sorry, kiddo. I’m not getting into trouble with your other moms for telling you you can when they think you’re not ready. We’ll talk about it together, okay?”
Ruby huffed and flopped back into her chair. “Fine,” she grumbled.
“But I do want to hear more about Casey. What are they like?”
That perked Ruby back up, and she leaned forward as she talked excitedly about everything they had in common, and the cool band Casey had turned her onto, and the way Casey always got good grades in math class and was helping Ruby with pre-algebra.
“I can’t believe my daughter is old enough to date,” Sam lamented after Ruby told her. It was a night Lena and Sam were spending together, and they were lying together in Lena’s bed talking about it. They had, ultimately, decided Ruby was old enough to go on a date with Casey, as long as Sam, Lena, Alex, and Kara got to meet them first.
“It seems like only yesterday she was climbing trees in her overalls and laughing milk out her nose at cartoons,” Lena agreed.
“I live in fear of having to give her the sex talk,” Sam admitted, and Lena frowned.
“I thought you gave her that years ago.”
“Not the biological one. That was all ‘your changing body’ and ‘this is how you make a baby.’ But the, like, you’re going to have sex soon so I need to make sure that you know what condoms are and that your pleasure is important and it’s okay to feel all these feelings but it’s also okay if you don’t talk.”
Lena blinked at her. “I definitely never got that sex talk.”
Sam rolled her eyes at that. “Yeah, me neither. That’s how I wound up with a kid at 16 and not realizing I was asexual until I was in my 20s.”
Lena considered that. “I never thought about that particular talk,” she admitted. “I may need to outsource that for Leia. How am I supposed to talk to her about something I’ve never experienced?”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “That’s why I’m so worried. I never want Ruby to feel bad about her sexuality as she gets older, but I only had sex the one time, and I hated it, and I don’t know what it’s like to experience the feeling of wanting someone sexually. I don’t want to screw this up and give her negative associations with sex, you know?”
“She won’t,” Lena said, with some measure of confidence. “She models off you, obviously, but also off me and Kara and Alex. She knows that Alex sees Sara sometimes, and I think she’s starting to realize why. We’ve always been careful to make sure that relationship is never treated like it needs to be a source of shame, and I think that will benefit Ruby to see it. And it’s… it’s awkward, but I think as they kids get older, we can explain that to them, and they can see what a healthy sexual relationship looks like as well as non-sexual ones.”
“That’s true,” Sam said, with some relief evident on her face. “It’s settled: Alex is giving all the kids the sex talk.”
Lena snorted with laughter.
Casey, it turned out, was a very polite young person, who shook all their hands and looked them in the eye when introduced, and they didn’t seem fazed by the sheer number of adults in Ruby’s life. “Ruby told me all about your family,” they said. “I think it’s really cool. I really like non-traditional chosen families. My extended family have been kind of jerks since I came out as non-binary, blaming my parents and stuff. So we don’t really see them much, and my parents built a really cool chosen family instead.”
“That’s wonderful,” Sam said. “We’d love to meet your parents someday.” Ruby looked vaguely horrified at the thought.
So Ruby went on her date, and Sam only fretted for most of the night, instead of the whole thing, because Casey seemed like a good kid, and Ruby was a good kid.
And life continued on.