Chapter Text
Kara wouldn’t categorize herself as an artist, she just liked to move her hands, it was nothing of her own doing that those hands could make beautiful things. As she kept trying to tell people, it was never intentional.
A piece of art is never intentional.
Art is unexpected and impractical and messy.
Lena Luthor just so happened to be a work of art. And she just so happened to be Kara’s favorite piece.
Kara was not an artist, but she drew everything she saw. It wasn’t her fault that Lena sat in front of her and to the right, the perfect position for portrait sketches in nearly every single class.
It also didn’t help, as Kara pointed out to her best friend Winn, that Lena’s almost every feature was perfect and proportional.
It was just about proportions, she told herself. It had nothing to do with the major crush on Lena she’s had ever since she transferred from Ireland and smiled at Kara one time.
So Kara sketched and kept every single one of them under the guise of improving her technique. She tried to ignore the fact that she kept them in shoe boxes and looked at them when she couldn’t sleep. She tried to ignore the fact that her favorite drawing of Lena was currently residing alone in her folder, the only folder she owns.
She let her eyes drift during class, she already knew most of the material. They’re drawn to Lena every single time. After that, she let her hands take the lead, let her hands stare at Lena’s porcelain figures and perfect raven hair and striking eyes instead of doing it herself.
She found that she didn’t want to accept the fact that she enjoyed Lena’s face almost as much as potstickers. People would gasp. She gasped when she realized.
Being an art student, your final product was everything. It didn’t matter how many drafts or how many pieces of paper, it was always the color choices and the line work. And Kara was clumsy. She has had to stay up countless nights recreating a piece of work she spilled soy sauce on.
She has also found it hard to find inspiration in something that didn’t have dark hair and an Irish accent. She found it hard to not draw Lena Luthor.
And she was putting together her portfolio. A portfolio that only had an intricate drawing of her favorite subject. Or not favorite subject, only subject.
And her only subject right now was normal, so pristine and polished and perfect. And Kara, well she was in her favorite yellow hoodie that she has washed once at least in the last two weeks. It was good enough.
But she knew, not good enough for Lena Luthor, never good enough for Lena Luthor. No one had ever told her otherwise.
So when Kara was told of their newest art assignment she was already an anxious mess. Then when she was told of the ‘assigned partners’ scenario, it sent her deeper down the rabbit hole. The final kick to the sand was when she went up to the front of the room and read who she would be drawing constantly for the next week: Lena Luthor.
The tension in her shoulders was relieved a little bit when she read the name. Not a total stranger than. Kara did enough internet stalking to know that Lena isn’t a serial killer. Knowing that only helped a little.
“Do you wanna start now then?”
Kara froze and the familiar tension returned full force. She turned around slowly to face the face that she knew better than her own. “Uhhh-- yeah, sure. I’m Kara Danvers, by the way.”
“We have almost every class together, I know your name, Kara,” she shook her head slightly, making her hair fly around at the ends, “I’m Lena,” she said as she stuck out her hand.
Kara took the hand and let her brain overflow with necessary information like the slight calluses on the pads of her fingers and the texture of the carved wooden ring she always wore.
She committed it all to memory before remembering to let go. Kara wiped her palms down on her jeans and finally felt the heat all over her face.
Lena gestured to the door that leads out to the quad and Kara had no choice but to follow wordlessly after grabbing her sketchbook.
“So how do you want to do this?” Lena asked, Kara only shrugged in response. “We could sit and stare at each other until inspiration strikes,” she waited a few moments then shook her head at Kara again. “I’ll take that lack of response as a yes then.”
Kara was too mesmerized by her hair to pay attention to the conversation at all, she only heard fragments coming from what felt like far away, always so far away.
Lena gestured to the tree that Kara happened to eat lunch under every day, “over here then?”
Kara could only nod. She wasn’t concerned though, Kara would’ve agreed to anything Lena asked if given the chance.
So she sat and fiddled with the hem of her sleeves and looked into Lena Luthor’s eyes, which was nothing new, no, the new thing was the eyes looking back at her. It was always from the side and usually moving so fast she couldn’t make out any details.
But she could see it all now, the depths of green overlapping each other and the small flecks of gold scattered around the edges.
Kara didn’t notice how much time had passed until she looked down and there was a pencil in her hand and a near complete drawing of Lena’s eyes.
It’s then that she glances at Lena’s lap and sees a beautiful drawing, perfectly shaded with visible sketch lines around the outside. It took Kara a while to figure out the face. It was her own and it was beautiful. She didn’t understand the contradiction but pushed it aside in favor of looking at Lena’s eyes again.
Only now, her eyes were on Kara’s paper. Only now her eyes were getting blurry with tears and she was grabbing her sketchbook and stuffing it in an expensive looking bag and waving goodbye and walking away before Kara could even comprehend the first action.
She laid back on the grass and looked at the clouds, and she tried to forget the sadness in the eyes she just stared at for hours.
She stared at the sky just as she had with Lena’s eyes, they were certainly both complex enough, and stared until she came up with an answer:
Lena’s eyes were a glass castle waiting to be breached, you couldn’t see past the transparent walls, but a flood was coming, and it would wash out all safety.
Kara walked home that night with a painting being painted in her mind, and she would make it real soon enough.
She was sure of it.
So she didn’t sleep that night in favor of gathering all of her Lena sketches and organizing them on the floor.
Kara knew the final project due at the end of the semester had to be great and inspired. She put all the drawings back in the shoe box and shoved it under her bed and thought about Lena until her breathing evened out.