Chapter Text
The coffee shop is emptier than usual, not that Lena minds, she prefers the quieter setting. She gets more work done when the coffee shop is less crowded. She’s been working on her application for graduate school for the past hour. Even though this was only Lena’s second year of undergrad, she took enough college classes in high school and taken at least one extra class per term so she could graduate early.
The coffee shop is usually her favorite place to get her work done, especially when there are less costumers like right now. Not that that matter at the moment since her graduate school application has remained untouched for the past several minutes.
There are things that are much more distracting than noisy patrons. Dividing her attention at the moment was Kara Danvers.
Lena has been nursing a crush on her since sharing a class with her freshman winter. For the past year, Lena has been captivated and confounded by the amount of passion and enthusiasm Kara seemed to put into everything she did. Kara was also one of the few people than hasn’t treat her any differently since her brother was arrested.
Lena’s used to people treating her differently because of her last name. Before Lex became a super villain though, it was more people trying the take advantage of her family’s fame and money. Now she just gets glares and looks of fear.
Lena takes note of the two girls next to Kara, Maggie and Alex. Kara introduced them to her once in passing as her sister and her sister’s girlfriend. Both seem slightly wary of Lena, but at least they make an effort to be polite to her. She sometimes catches Alex watching her curiously as if she were inspecting her, which is still better than the outright glares Lena is used to.
Kara has never been anything but kind and friendly to her though, seemingly eager to make conversation with Lena whenever they run into each other and offering to be her partner for projects. Lena may have signed up for enough classes, just to be with Kara, to minor in journalism at this point.
Lena steals another glance at Kara and catches what seems to be Alex and Maggie sporadically nudging Kara while talking to her animatedly. Suddenly, they’re all looking at her direction, and Lena quickly lowers her gaze to avoid being caught staring.
Lena tries to finally start focusing on her lab report again when she hears a loud crash and Kara’s exasperated “Fudge nuggets!”, at which Lena has to conceal an amused smile.
“Shit. Kara are you alright?” Alex says concerned even though she’s also laughing.
Lena looks up to see Kara and a barista on the ground with the worker’s tray and the contents it was carrying scattered around them.
Lena doesn’t see Kara again until their class together two days later. Even though Kara seemed to have no injuries from her encounter with the café floor, Lena wanted to ask her if she was okay. She paused when she saw Maggie and Alex somehow appear, each of them holding two coffee cups and each handing one cup to Kara. The three of them now seem deep in conversation, and Lena, not wanting to interrupt, turns around and starts walking back to her dorm.
“Lena! Wait!” Lena turns to Kara’s voice calling her name from across the room. She sees Kara walking hurriedly over to her with two coffees in hand.
Somehow, this ends with Lena finding herself with both of those cups of coffee soaking through her shirt, burning her skin, and Kara clinging onto her shoulders.
If it wasn’t for the hot liquid burning her stomach at the moment, she may have enjoyed the feeling of Kara pressed up against her. The liquid isn’t hot enough to cause severe burns but it is still quite painful.
“Oh Rao!” Kara exclaims finally prying herself away from Lena. “I’m so sorry.” Kara is now frantically dabbing her shirt ineffectively with the ends of her sleeves. Lena winces slightly when Kara touches an especially tender part of her skin.
Behind Kara, Lena can see Alex trying to hide her amusement and Maggie laughing hysterically.
“I’m going to the bathroom.” Lena mutters as she turns and quickly walks out of the lecture hall, not noticing Kara following right behind her.
As soon as she enters the bathroom she immediately takes off her shirt and goes to sink to splash cold water on her stomach, not caring if her leggings and bra got wet. The cold water helps ease the pain, and Lena is finally thinking clearly again, remembering the light jacket in her backpack for in case she got cold.
Lena hears some light shuffling next to her and finally realizes that Kara entered the bathroom with her.
“Kara, I have a jacket in my backpack. Could you get it for me?”
She gets no reply.
“Kara?”
“Hmm? Sorry. What?” A flushed Kara finally replies. Lena turns to face Kara and wonders what she was so distracted by.
“My backpack. Can you get it for me?” Lena asks noticing Kara staring at her torso, probably inspecting the seriousness of her burns.
“Uhhh…Yeah. Backpack.” Kara replies, her eyes finally meeting Lena’s. “I can totally get that for you.”
Kara quickly scurries out of the bathroom, and promptly returns with Lena’s backpack.
“Thank you.”
“No problem. It’s the least I can do. I was kinda the one that spilled hot coffee on you and ruined your shirt.” Kara says with an apologetic smile. “Sorry again. I hope you weren’t burnt to bad.”
“It’s fine. The cold water helped.” Lena assures her as she buttons up her jacket.
“Is there anything else I can get for you? I can fl—run and get your anything you need. I have a class in 20 minutes, but I can be late for that. I’m really sorry about burning you. I’m just so clumsy sometimes,” Kara rambles on. “Alex says it’ll get better went I get used to being here, but I’ve been here for 6 years and I still not used to the gravi—the gravel. There is a lot of gravel here. By here I mean National City! Not Earth because I’m from here, Earth!” the Kryptonian tries to correct herself.
Lena tries to hide her amusement from the Kara’s poor attempt to hide who she is and her own dark amusement of the irony of the situation, again being reminded that her crush is the cousin of the man her brother tried to kill.
“It’s okay, Kara. I’m okay. You should go to class.”
“Are you sure because—“
“I’m sure. Maybe you can make it up to me some other time.” Lena says with a slight wiggle of her eyebrow.
“I.. Uhhh… Yeah! I’ll do that. Umm bye!” Kara sputters before scampering off.
After a week, the coffee spilling instance is not Lena’s only misfortunate encounter with Kara. Throughout the week, Kara has pushed Lena out of the way of an inconsiderate skateboarder but into a thorn bush 15 feet away, knocked her down the stairs, and thrown a ball of paper hitting Lena straight in the eye.
At this point, it’s hard for Lena to believe that these instances were all just accidents. Even though every time Kara seems sincerely apologetic, Kara’s friends are always watching them and laughing amongst themselves.
As Lena looks in the mirror at her disheveled appearance with her various bruises, scratches and now an eye patch for her scratched cornea. The eye patch really isn’t helping her “I’m not evil like my brother” persona that she’s trying to accomplish. She can’t help thinking that these accidents haven’t been actual accidents. Maybe Kara finally decide to agree with everyone else in the world and hate Lena for what her brother did. Maybe Lena’s crush is actually trying to kill her, because at this rate she probably will sooner or later.
“Lena!”
Lena walks faster at the sound of the familiar voice behind her. For the past few days, Lena has made an effort to avoid Kara to escape the possibility of compiling more injuries.
She’s only a few yards from her dorm building and if she just pretends she doesn’t hear Kara yelling behind her, maybe she can escape.
Once she reaches her dorm building, Lena quickly sprints up the stairs and to her dorm room. By the time she’s there, she’s out of breath and her eye patch is skewed awkwardly to the side of her face.
Lena was almost done compiling herself when she hears a knock of her door. Shit.
It takes a few moments of her internally debating the best course of action. Maybe, if she’s lucky, it’s not even Kara.
“Lena, I know you’re in there.”
Lena is not a lucky person.
“I can see you—I mean I saw you go in there. Lena. Please open the door.”
“You ran away from me.” Kara states with noticeable a pout on her face, when Lena reluctantly opens the door. Lena can’t help but think how cute Kara looks when pouting before remembering the situation. However adorable Kara is, she has been a hazard to Lena’s physical well-being.
“You threw me into a bush” Lena replies matter-of-factly.
Kara blushes and looks down at her shuffling feet and takes a moment before answering. “That was an accident”
“Was knocking me down the stairs and accident too?” Lena asks skeptically.
“Yes. I’m so sorry. I promise everything I did to you this week has been an accident” Kara says fervently finally meeting Lena’s gaze.
“What about throwing that piece of paper at me?”
“That too… Well actually… I did mean to throw that at you…” Kara trails on as she digs out a wrinkle piece of paper from her pockets. “I just didn’t mean throw it so hard and hit you in the eye…”
Kara tentatively holds out the piece for Lena to see. Lena recognizes it as the culprit that scratched her cornea. She also notices for the first time that there is writing on it.
“Here, read it.” Kara says as she places the crinkled note into Lena’s hands.
Lena,
So, I should start off by saying I’m sorry for being such a klutz around you for the past week. I promise I’m not always this clumsy. It’s just that you make me nervous because I’ve been trying to ask you out for the past week, but I always end up making a fool out of myself and injuring you instead. I realized that I should probably write this out in a note instead of face to face since I can’t seem to be around you without injuring you. Hopefully this note will work better than my previous attempts. I heard that you are graduating after this term I don’t want to lose my chance to tell you how I feel. So here it goes.
I like you a lot. I think you’re incredible. You’re so smart and impressive and I really would like to get to know you better. Will you go out with me?
Circle one: Yes or No
P.S. Please say yes :) <3
“I thought the note was a safer choice, but I guess your eye is an obvious example of why it wasn’t.” Kara jokes after she sees that Lena was done reading. “At least you look cute in an eye-patch.”
“You like me?”
“So much. How could I not.” Kara says earnestly. “So…. Yes or no?... It’s totally alright if you’re not interested. I did injure you a lot. But I’ll try not to injure you anymore. I really like you and your so smart and good and gorgeous and—“
“Yes” Lena interrupts.
“Yes?”
“Yes Kara. I would love to go out with you” Lena says with a smile. “There’s this art showcase in a few weeks that I need to go to. You want to be my date for that?”
“I was hoping for something sooner. Like maybe a movie night with some take out this weekend?” Kara asks shyly.
“Kara, you scratched my cornea. That’s going to take weeks to heal. I’m not risking my last good eye.”
“But you look cute in an eye patch. I kind of want to date you while you’re still wearing that.”
“So you weren’t trying to kill me. You just have a pirate fetish.” Lena teases.
“You thought I was trying to kill you!?”