Chapter Text
It was Kara’s first year at college and she was extremely excited. She’d annoyed Alex all summer long with how great it would be to finally spend more time together again.
They had packed up their things and Eliza had caught Kara as she tried to fill a whole suitcase with food only.
(Eliza had promised to send enough money so that they could silence Kara’s stomach, but Kara was still scared of starving.)
It took a lot of time and discussions before Alex and Kara were finally on their way.
Alex guided Kara to Ms. Miller’s office, while her sister talked a mile a minute about how excited she was. Alex just laughed, pushed her sister inside the room and waited outside. She was happy that she’d get to see Kara more from now on, because over the last years they finally started to like each other. And being away for college, Alex had missed their movie nights a lot.
About ten minutes later Kara excited the office again.
“Did you get everything?”
“Yep, Room 203 and my roommate’s name is Lena Luthor.”
Alex immediately stopped walking, “Oh shit.”
“What? Is that number like bad luck on earth?”
“No, but don’t you know Lena Luthor?” Kara just looked at her with wide eyes, “Sister of Lex Luthor?” still no reaction from Kara, “the psychopath, who blew up the National City mall, because there was a pro-alien event going on?”
Now Kara’s eyes widened in shock.
“I can’t live with her Alex! What if she figures out I’m not human?”
“That’s what I was trying to say! Don’t worry we’ll just go and ask for another room.”
“What do you mean there is no other room?”
“As I already said all rooms were assigned and you can’t change that. Unless you want to switch rooms with someone I can’t help you,” the secretary said with an annoyed voice.
Alex looked over to her sister and could already see the tears welling up in her eyes. Great, they weren’t even here for a day and Kara was already crying.
“Ok, I’ll switch with you,” she silenced her sister when she was about to object, “Don’t worry about me, I know how to defend myself. I’ll be okay.”
After they talked through everything with the secretary Alex walked Kara back to her old room. There she explained the situation to her roommate Lucy, who promised to look after Kara. Alex packed a few of her old things and made her way over to her new home. Of course not before Kara had hugged her tight and almost cried again.
When Alex opened the door, she was met with a pale girl standing in the middle of the room. She looked smaller than Alex had anticipated.
“Hello, are you Kara Danvers?” Lena asked politely.
“Alex,” she answered and was met with a questioning look, “I’m Alex Danvers. Kara is my sister. There was a… mix up.”
“Oh okay, I’m Lena,” she said with a friendly smile.
“I know.” Lena’s smile immediately died down when she heard Alex’s response. It took only one second before her hurt look turned into a poker face.
Alex took her surroundings in for a second. The room was smaller than her old one, but other than that it looked the same. Lena had already unpacked her things on the right side. Alex wordlessly took the left side. She didn’t want to start a discussion without a good reason.
“Do you need any help unpacking?” Lena asked.
Alex answered with a simple no. She didn’t know what to think of Lena. Was that nice attitude just a cover? Or was she going to snap once Alex did something that Lena didn’t like?
The Luthor family was famous for their xenophobic world views. Lex Luthor had killed hundreds of people, because the mall they were at had a pro-alien event going on. Lillian Luthor on the other hand was a business woman, but no one knew what she was doing exactly. A lot of aliens working for their family company disappeared and were probably used to experiment on. At least that was what most of the magazines said. Alex didn’t know much about Lena. The youngest Luthor would usually stand in the background at press conferences and other events. After Lex’s imprisonment she was supposed to take over the family company once she was old enough, but more than that wasn’t public about her.
Alex could feel Lena’s eyes staring at her back. She turned around to face her. The brunette was sitting on her bed looking at Alex and fumbling with her hands. She somehow looked small and vulnerable and Alex couldn’t help but think that maybe this was an act. When Lena realised Alex was looking at her she blushed.
“So you said you have a sister. Is she here, too?” Lena asked.
Alex sighed and answered with a short “Yep”.
“And where are you from?”
Alex rolled her eyes. Did she really have to make small talk with Lena? She decided to simply ignore it and didn’t answer.
After Alex had unpacked her suitcase she went out to find Kara and Lucy, without even looking back at Lena.
They all met up at the closest pizza place. When Kara saw her sister enter, she immediately got up to hug her.
“I’m really sorry about this, Alex. Did you meet her? Is she nice to you?” Kara asked concerned.
“I don’t know we barely talked. But I’ll be okay. Please don’t worry about me.”
“Hey Danvers,” James yelled as he entered, “I heard you’re living with Luthor now. What happened? Did you lose a bet?” This earned him some laughter.
“You can come over and crash in our room at any time,” Lucy offered.
“And if she gives you any trouble just tell me, I’ll deal with it,” James offered.
Alex promised her friends to make the best out of her situation and she was relieved when they finally moved on to a different topic. They were taking the situation a little too serious.
When she left the restaurant a few hours later, she had almost forgotten about her new roommate for a second. She walked into the dorm with some leftovers and saw Lena at her desk reading a biology book.
“Are you already studying?”
“You can never start early enough,” she responded without looking up.
Alex shrugged out of her jacket and decided to try to be nice for once.
“Uhm… my friends and I had some pizza. Do you want a piece?” she asked politely showing Lena the pizza.
The brunette gave it a short glance and then looked back to her textbook.
“I don’t eat meat, because I don’t kill animals.”
Alex made a dismissive sound and shook her head. Why did she even try?
The two of them mostly kept to themselves and didn’t speak to each other. When Alex went to bed Lena was still at her desk studying with all lamps on.
Alex sighed. This was going to be a long year.
Alex entered the dorm with her thoughts still on her last lecture. She looked up to see Lena standing near her bed, only wearing her underwear. Alex instantly stumbled and dropped her bag. Lena quickly pulled a shirt over her head when she heard her roommate. Alex rushed to put her bag up, blushed and mumbled some words that Lena didn’t quite get. Lena raised her eyebrow at that, but didn’t comment on it.
She thought that her roommate was acting a little weird, but on the other hand everybody was always acting a little weird around her.
Lena went to bed that night thinking about if it was possible to survive College without talking with her roommate. Or without making a single friend. Not that she had much experience with having friends anyway, but after all these years she was starting to get lonely. She’d only been here for one day, but apart from the professors no one had talked to her. Maybe she would be alone her whole life?
The thought got stuck in her head and she tossed and turned all night, because she couldn’t get rid of it.
Of course the next morning she ignored her alarm and slept right through it. Her roommate didn’t bother trying to wake her up so when she finally opened her eyes she was already incredibly late. And Lena was never late. Not once in her life she had been late anywhere to anything. And that on her second day! What would her mother say?
After getting almost no sleep last night it was no wonder that she’d problems getting out of bed in the morning. And now she was walking around in circles trying to find Mrs. Porter’s class. She decided to ask someone for help, even though interacting with other students was the last thing she wanted.
“Hi, excuse me, can you tell me where lecture hall eight is?” she asked a tall blonde guy, who looked at her with a wicked grin.
“Sure, just go down the hall. It’s at the very end,” he said and pointed in one direction.
Lena quickly thanked him and hurried away. She didn’t even take two steps when she heard someone yelling her name behind her. She acted as if she hadn’t heard it and continued walking.
“Hey! I’m talking to you!” the person shouted and Lena furiously turned around to see Alex running after her.
“What do you want? I’m already late!”
“I know. That’s why I came after you; to tell you that lecture hall eight is the other way.”
Lena looked at her doubtfully and debated with herself for a second and then decided to believe Alex. At this point she’d nothing to lose.
“Fine, where is it?”
“I’ll walk you there.”
They hurried back where they came from. When they passed the blonde guy and his friend again, Lena could hear him laugh at her. She turned bright red and tried not to let it get to her.
There was a reason she hated interacting with people. And she just got proved right all over again.
For the first week both of them rarely interacted with each other. Lena spent a lot of time at the library, while Alex spent a lot of time going out with her friends.
It was Thursday night around 3am when Lena woke up from a weird noise. She turned the light on and looked around, but couldn’t see anything. Then she heard it again. Someone was scratching at the door! She got up and padded to it, a heavy book in her hand as defence. She slowly opened the door to see Alex standing in the hallway with her key pointed at Lena.
“Thanks for opening the door. I couldn’t find the lock. I think someone stole it.”
Yep, she was definitely drunk. Lena lowered the book and opened the door wider to let Alex in. The redhead stumbled to her bed and immediately fell asleep with her shoes and jacket still on. Lena sighed again, turned the lights off and went back to bed. Hopefully this was a one-time thing.
Of course it didn’t remain a one-time thing. At least twice a week Lena was woken up by Alex in the middle of the night, because she was drunk and stumbled around. In most of the cases Alex would come in, turn the lights on and go to bed. So every time Lena had to get up to turn the lights off again. Sometimes she could hear Alex throwing up in the bathroom, but she didn’t want to interrupt so she just pretended to be asleep. The brunette had no idea how to survive her morning classes when her stupid roommate woke her up almost every night.
One morning Alex woke up because she got hit in the face with a pillow. She looked around a little confused.
“What?” she grumbled when she saw Lena standing in front of her, hands on her hips.
“Did you eat my yoghurt?” she asked.
“Uhm… I was hungry last night and ate the one that was there.”
“I wrote my name on it!”
“Do you think I read when I’m drunk and hungry?”
Lena just groaned, “Now I don’t have anything for breakfast and no time to buy something!”
She took her bag from the chair and angrily stormed off. Alex just rolled her eyes and turned around to get some more sleep. It didn’t matter to her.
Only a tiny voice at the back of her head told her that she was being a bitch, while Lena acted mostly like a normal college student.
She turned around again, now angry at her feeling of guilt.
That afternoon Lena came home with tears in her eyes and mud all over her clothes. She threw her books on the table and disappeared into the bathroom.
Alex had an idea what could have happened. It was no secret that Lena was famous around campus, but not in a good way. Everybody knew the Luthor family. Most people tried to keep their distance from her, but a few kept throwing mean comments at her. Alex knew that Lena had no friends, or at least she’d never seen her talk to anyone. And while Alex really tried to hate Lena and her family she mostly felt sorry for the poor girl.
She got up from her bed and looked at the book on Lena’s desk. AP science, Alex hadn’t even realized they were in the same course.
The book was completely covered in mud and probably useless. Alex sighed, maybe she should take a step into the right direction and be a little nicer? She pulled her own copy out of her backpack to place it on Lena’s desk. Then she sat back down on her bed and put on some music so she wouldn’t her Lena’s sobs coming from the bathroom.
A few minutes later the bathroom door opened and Lena stepped out. Her eyes looked red and puffy, but she seemed to be better now. She startled when she saw the book on her desk.
“I didn’t know that you take AP science.”
“What? You think just because I like to party I’m dumb?” Alex threw back without looking up.
“Well, yes.”
This actually raised a tiny smile on Alex’s face.
“You can use my copy. I just need it back tomorrow morning.”
Lena smiled back and thanked her before she started her assignment.
Only a few hours after that, Alex left their room to meet up with her friends at the park. She threw a tiny smile into Lena’s direction before she closed the door and Lena was too baffled to do anything with her dumb face.
She turned back to her work and shook her head slightly. Was this actually happening? Maybe they would start to like each other. The brunette smiled to herself and continued working.
When Alex arrived at the park, she could already hear her friends discussing loudly. She felt sorry for the other people at the park for a moment, before she joined the group.
“Are you guys playing ’Who has the most annoying roommate?’ again?” she asked while grabbing a beer.
“I’m definitely winning,” Winn perked up. “My roommate runs around naked all the time and it’s really not pretty.” He scrunched up his face while talking and the group broke out in laughter.
“But at least he doesn’t get up at six in the morning to exercise,” Nia said. “I mean who does that?”
“Alex, you have good chances at winning. How is Luthor doing?” James asked.
Alex took a sip from her beer and thought for a second. “I don’t know. Actually she isn’t that bad. She isn’t there often or when she is, she’s usually silent.”
She looked up to see the frowning faces of her friends. No one said anything so she quickly added “but we do fight a lot about stupid things. That is really annoying.”
A few of them nodded, but still nobody said anything. Alex was glad that Lucy stepped in.
“My roommate eats all of my food. Doesn’t matter how good I hide it,” she said, looking accusingly at Kara. The blonde blushed as the whole group erupted in laughter again.
Alex tried following the conversation further, but all she could think of was that Lena actually wasn’t a bad roommate. But Lex Luthor had been the same. A nice and normal person until he freaked out one day. Maybe Alex should prepare for Lena’s possible freak-out.
A little while later Lena was alone in their room, Alex still wasn’t back. She was lying on her bed, feet on the wall to get some blood back into her brain. She was debating with herself whether she could afford taking a study break or not. The slight headache had forced her to stop for a few minutes.
She looked over at Alex’s side of the room. It looked like complete chaos over there. Her clothes were all over the floor, paper and books all over the bed. Lena wasn’t sure if cleaning her roommate’s side was acceptable, but cleaning had always helped her clear her head. Sadly her side was already neat and clean.
She got up and decided to tidy up a bit. She took Alex’s notes from the bed and put them on the table, collected her clothes from the floor and threw away some wrappers and a banana.
These few little changes already made the room look much better. Lena smiled to herself and continued studying.
A few hours later when Alex came home, Lena had already forgotten about the cleaning.
“Did you touch my stuff?” Alex asked the second she entered the room.
“I just wanted to clean a bit, it helps me concentrate,” Lena explained nervously.
“I can’t find anything!” Alex exclaimed as she was looking through the things on her table, “I had an important phone number written down.”
Lena started to blush, of course it had been a bad idea to touch Alex’s stuff!
“All the paper is on the desk.”
“It wasn’t on paper, I wrote in on a candy wrapper.”
“Who writes notes on a candy wrapper?” Lena laughed, but immediately shut her mouth when she saw Alex’s look.
“Of course Miss Rich Bitch would never write something on candy or even worse: eat some!” Alex laughed. Not a bad roommate my ass, she thought and angrily grumbled to herself.
Lena opened and closed her mouth a few times, but then decided to just keep quiet. Avoid problems and fights at all costs, that’s what she’d told herself all her life.
She went to the trash bin behind the door and got out every candy wrapper she could find. She handed Alex the one with the number on it and put the rest back in.
Alex gave her an annoyed “Thank you” and then sighed, “Sorry for calling you a-“ but Lena had already thrown the bathroom door shut. Alex sighed again and turned around to sort her stuff while Lena washed her hands for full ten minutes.
She knew it was probably her fault. She had destroyed the ‘process’ they had made and now Lena was angry at herself.
The next day they were almost back to smiling at each other, but only almost. It seemed like they had both decided on their own that acting as if nothing had happened was the best option.
That evening Alex left their room again to go out to a party with her friends. Lena didn’t know if she should be happy that she could study in silence, or jealous because no one ever invited her to anything.
She decided to be happy about it and do something useful just to realize that she had no work to do. She had done all of her assignments, was ahead with all of her readings and even her room was cleaned.
She sighed and laid down on her bed to read a book.
In that moment she was jealous.