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“Okay, so, first off, I want to thank you both for coming,” Kelly Olsen tells them kindly, brown eyes wide with genuine sincerity, a less-than-full-sized notepad with blue-lined yellow sheets sitting squarely atop her lap where she sits in a plush leather armchair—the textbook picture of your stereotypical nosy shrink.
Lena clenches her jaw, refusing to look towards Kara who sits nervously upon the other end of the sofa atop soft suede cream-colored cushions; she’s dressed in khaki slacks and a pink collared button-down (an outfit she’d once told Kara was one of her favorites—damn her for using that), dirty-blonde hair flowing in loose waves, her horn-rimmed glasses neatly folded upon the coffee table that sits between the two of them and Kelly, and Lena hates the butterflies erupting in her stomach and the all-too-familiar sensation of warmth creeping into her chest at the sight of it.
“I—Um—“ the blonde stutters over her words, pausing to clear her throat awkwardly with flushed cheeks—all in all, it makes for a classic Kara Danvers stumble that Lena absolutely refuses to find endearing. “T-Thanks for having us, Kelly.”
Kelly merely smiles in understanding, a ballpoint pen in her right hand poised delicately above her blank notepad as she turns to fix Lena with an infuriatingly gentle stare.
“So, shall we start by saying why you're both here?”
Kara nods emphatically, loose blonde ringlets bobbing along with the movement. “Um, well—"
“Actually,” Kelly interjects, shooting Kara an apologetic grin before turning back to Lena with her ever-calm and unrelenting gaze. “I was wondering if you could answer that, Lena.”
Lena exhales slowly through her nostrils, pushing away the anger and sadness and resentment she’s been feeling since the day she killed Lex, pushing and pushing and pushing until she’s perfectly (unnaturally) calm—just as she’s always prided herself on being.
(She’ll admit, it doesn’t work quite as well as it normally does—not when Kara's sitting an arm’s length away giving her those devastatingly pleading blue eyes, silently begging with Lena to let her make it right, to make them right.
Her heartbeat is still thumping loudly in her ears at an admittedly too-fast pace, she’s tensing every muscle in a desperate effort to keep her hands from trembling, and she still feels that same sadness and anger and hurt hovering over her like grey clouds on a rainy day—but, she’s Lena Luthor; she’s faced far worse than this without showing the faintest hint of unprofessionalism.
She can do this.)
“Apparently, I don’t deal with my emotions in the healthiest of ways,” she states concisely, inwardly lauding herself when her voice doesn’t waver with the sheer emotion she feels bubbling up in her chest at the current moment. “And, recent events,” she feels Kara stiffen beside her at that, “have brought up a great deal of it. Emotions, that is.”
Kelly nods along with that, though her gaze remains steadily on Lena—Lena, for her part, has to fight against the sudden (not to mention, powerful ) urge to squirm under the woman’s intense inspection even as she hears a frosty voice (one that sounds a hell of a lot like Lillian) viciously chastising her for being so weak.
“You don’t agree with that assessment?” Kelly asks neutrally, and Lena purses her lips, forcibly pulling herself out of her thoughts.
“What assessment?”
“That you don’t deal with your emotions in a healthy way.”
“It’s less that I don’t agree, and more that I don’t think it’s anyone’s business but my own,” Lena replies icily, an edge to her tone—she’s growing impatient, and, really, she can’t find it in herself to care who knows it.
“Ok—"
“But, what about me?” Kara blurts suddenly, then flushes a rosy pink when both Kelly and Lena turn to look at her.
Lena quirks a brow. “What about you?”
Kara bites her lip, brows stitched together, forming a tiny (adorable) crease between them. “Well… We’re friends. Best friends.”
“Are we?” Lena asks, voice wrought with wry humor—Kara’s frown only deepens.
“Of course, Lee, I—“
“No, I’m friends with Kara Danvers, not Supergirl.”
Kara blinks. “But… But they’re the same.”
Lena dutifully resists the powerful urge to roll her eyes. “No shit.”
Kara’s face falls. “Lena, I—"
“Friends tell each other things, Kara,” Lena quips back, already feeling the hint of an oncoming headache beginning to form in the back of her skull. "They don’t lie.”
Kara shakes her head, something almost indignant showing upon her crestfallen features all of a sudden.
“You lied, too.”
White-hot anger flares in Lena’s chest at that even as she forces herself to keep her cool, to breathe through the scorching flames licking her insides, the horrid burn of loss and isolation and betrayal.
“You’re right, Kara,” she concedes, the words tasting acrid on her tongue, making a concerted effort to keep her tone genuine but unyielding in nature. “But, then, I came clean. I told you everything, even when I was sure I’d lose you because of it.”
Kara doesn’t respond.
“Hell, I came running to tell you after I tried to kill someone—"
“I’m sorry, you what? “ Kelly interrupts in clear disbelief, brown eyes rounded with shock, the notepad blank and more or less forgotten upon her lap.
“—knowing damn well you could’ve had me thrown in prison for it,” Lena continues, dutifully ignoring a decidedly startled Kelly Olsen who’s currently poised upon the literal edge of her seat and looking back and forth between the two of them as if watching a particularly fast-paced match of tennis.
“But I didn’t,” Kara protests weakly, and Lena shoots her a biting glower.
“Oh, would you like a sticker for that?
Kara squints at her. “Why would I want a… sticker?”
“For being so upstanding, for being such a paragon of heroism and honor—"
“Are you being sarcastic right now?”
Lena lets out a heavy sigh, rubbing exhaustedly at her temples. “10 points for Gryffindor, darling.”
Kara cheeks heat at the term of endearment even as she fixes Lena with a confounded look. “But I’m a Hufflepuff.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sa—"
“Oh-kay!” Kelly interjects in a rather forced sing-songy tone, an expression on her pretty features that can only really be described as “Yikes.” “Clearly, there’s, um… a lot of emotion here.”
Kara nods eagerly at that, and Lena rolls her eyes.
“So, I have a question,” Kelly begins hesitantly, looking between the two of them with curious eyes. “How long have you two been together?”
Wait, what?
Lena freezes in place.
“Wh—I—Us?! ” Kara sputters out, turning an alarming shade of red as she stumbles over her words, features wrenched into an wide (and almost manic-looking) grin that looks rather uncomfortable, by all accounts. “Pffft! I mean—Well, it’s not that I wouldn’t—I mean, we’re just—Anyone would be lucky to—"
Lena sighs heavily as Kara rambles, eventually deciding to put the poor bumbling reporter out of her misery: “We’re not together, Ms. Olsen,” she informs the woman as calmly as she can manage, effectively cutting off Kara’s rather spectacular bout of word-vomit (which, again, she downright refuses to find ‘adorable' or ‘cute' or even 'mildly endearing').
Kelly’s brows shoot towards her hairline. “Huh.”
Lena furrows a brow, indignation rising steadily in her gut even as she forcibly retains a neutral expression.
“‘Huh’?” Kara repeats in something of a squeak, still sounding rather out of breath. “What does that mean?”
“Oh, nothing!” Kelly rushes to assure them, eyes wide, her voice about an octave higher than it usually is. “It’s just… nothing. I’m sorry for assuming.”
Lena nods slowly, still eyeing her suspiciously. “It’s fine.”
Kara bobs her head up and down too at an erratic pace, bright blue eyes wide and frantic, looking rather like a long-suffering addict going through an especially nasty bout of withdrawal—if Lena weren’t so incredibly angry with her right now, she’s sure she might’ve been rather worried.
(Okay, fine, so she is a little bit worried—that doesn’t mean she cares.)
“Yeah! Totally, totally fine—I mean, I should be thanking you, you know, ‘cause who wouldn’t want to be—Not that I’m saying I want to be—Or—Not that I’m saying I don’t want to be, of course, ‘cause duh, look at her,” Kara gestures emphatically to an incredulous Lena, “she’s the most beautiful woman on the planet! Or—Rao, no, in the whole universe! And—Shoot, where was I going with this?”
Kelly opens her mouth to respond, looking a tad bit concerned (though otherwise indubitably amused), but Kara beats her to it:
“Oh! Right. So, it’s totally fine that you would assume that. I mean, I understand th—"
“You do? ” Lena whirls around to ask, red-painted lips slightly parted in disbelief, shock rippling throughout her entire being until she’s positively dizzy with the magnitude of it.
An exceptionally flushed Kara just nods excitedly at Kelly, not sparing Lena a single glance as she continues babbling, “‘Cause, you know, we go out at least every other day for lunch dates—I mean, I never called them ‘dates' at first, but then Lena started calling them 'dates' and that always made my chest feel all fluttery inside—Oh! And, we do texts with heart emojis and—"
“Kara,” Lena interjects, heat flooding her face. “I—"
“—there was this one time where she filled my office with flowers and I couldn’t stop smiling for, like, the whole day, and—Plus! Whenever we go out for lunch, Lena always eats the weirdest things—Like, like, kale! Who eats kale?”
Kara doesn’t wait for a response, barely taking the time to catch her breath (which, do Kryptonians even need to catch their breath? Lena hasn’t the faintest clue, though she suspects that they likely don’t) before powering onward: “Well, anyways, Lena does, ‘cause Lena loves stuff like that, like kale and kombucha and a bunch of other stuff I don’t actually know how to say, ‘cause they’re really really fancy, and she’s really really fancy and sometimes it makes me feel nervou—Oh! Did you know, I’ve never seen her in a T-shirt? I mean, I saw her once in this grey sweatshirt from National City University, and she looked really really beautiful, right, and obviously she always makes me really distracted when she walks past my desk in those really tight dresses at CatCo, but I just really really wanna see—OhmyRao, speaking of her dresses, there was this green one she wore last week that matched her gorgeous eyes and—"
“Kara,” Lena hisses, sure she’s mere moments away from literally dying from pure embarrassment (though, there’s an undoubtedly warm feeling sprouting beneath her ribcage that’s telling her it’d most certainly be worth it).
Kara instantly jolts in her seat at that, the dreamy look on her face rapidly fading as her head snaps back around to see a red-faced Lena on the opposite end of the couch, recognition slowly dawning on her eager features—
“Oh, no,” Kara whispers out, the tips of her ears turning pink as she quickly averts her gaze, turning back to Kelly with a delirious look. “I, um—R-Rao, did I really say all that? I—" she cuts herself off with a high-pitched nervous laugh, rubbing at the back of her neck before abruptly standing from her seat. “O-Oh! I—Um—Well, I just—The D.E.O. needs—I have to go be, um—There’s a crisis that I, um, h-have r-right… now… I… need to… g-go,” she finishes, blushing an even deeper crimson at her stuttered mess of an excuse, stumbling towards the door and yanking it open (leaving the oval-ish door handle mangled and misshapen in her wake) before disappearing in a flash of color, leaving behind a speechless Lena and an equally-speechless Kelly Olsen in her wake.
Oh my God.
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