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If anyone was to ask Lena what was that one specific moment when she realised she was in deep, she wouldn’t know which one to choose. So many of her “light bulb” moments began and ended the same way, with Kara being her usual self and Lena realizing just how much she… cared? Yes, cared is a good word. How much she cared for the young reporter. Caring is simple, safe. No- underlying feelings or implications. Caring is good.
For Kara on the other hand, though the moments were equally great in number, there was one particular instance that would always pop up in her mind when thinking back to her blossoming friendship with Lena: the chain of events that led to her getting her very first, and absolutely favourite Eevee.
“What are you doing for the weekend?” Kara asks during one of their now standard lunch dates, her mouth half-full of pasta and her eyes glued to Lena’s own.
Lena swallows hastily before she answers; hanging out with Kara hadn’t taken a toll on her savoir vivre just yet. “Work,” she says simply with a tiny raise of her shoulders. “I have this big meeting on Monday I have to prepare for and reports to catch up with.” She smiles at Kara’s eye roll. “What about you?” she asks curiously before taking another bite off her food.
“Alex cancelled on me,” Kara sighs and Lena thinks her eyes suddenly got three times bigger.
“Aaaand?” she asks despite herself.
“Aaaand now I just happen to have two days full of plans but no one to be with.” She smiles the sweetest smile she can muster and Lena knows she’s already done for.
“Glad to know I’m the afterthought,” she jokes but the smile falls from her face as soon as she sees Kara’s brows frown. “I’m joking,” she hastily says, reaching over to grab Kara’s hand that’s resting on the table, fork still between her fingers. “I’ll have to move some things around on my schedule but I’ll try to free up a day or two. No promises, though!” She says but she can see Kara’s entire demeanour change as her face brightens with excitement.
“You’re here!” Kara is already swinging the door open before Lena even has the time to exit the elevator, let alone knock.
“How- Nevermind, help with the bags, please?” Kara is quick to nod and even quicker to grab all three bags and the pizza boxes off Lena, placing everything on the kitchen counter. “I didn’t know what you had prepared so I brought a bit of everything,” Lena says as she takes off her shoes by the door, her height instantly several inches shorter. Kara chuckles at the height difference between them, she doesn’t think she will ever be over it.
“I have loads of food,” she chuckles nodding towards the living room table where she has laid out an actual feast and Lena’s eyes go wide. “But you know me, I can always use some more!” She has put away everything Lena just brought before the brunette has time to even blink and she’s already making her way to the couch pulling Lena along with her. “So I was thinking, movie first, then maybe board games, then Mario Kart, then another movie? Or maybe a show, I’ve been watching a lot of Disney cartoons lately! And then we could-” Kara is excited, maybe a little bit too excited, it throws Lena off.
“Kara, darling,” she chuckles as she gets plopped on the sofa next to the blonde. “Slow down, this is all too much for one night.” She laughs at Kara’s disappointed pout.
“We can’t just not do anything, it’s our first sleepover!”
“We’ll do stuff, Kara, just not… everything. How about we start with something simple? We can start off with a movie, what’s your favourite one?”
“Lena Luthor,” Kara’s eyes squint looking at Lena, “are you telling me you don’t know what my favourite movie is?”
“The Wizard of Oz?” Lena tries, she remembers Kara talking about it a few days ago.
“I knew you wouldn’t let me down,” Kara jokes. “I’ll put it on, yeah? You get changed and we’ll meet on the couch for cud- food.” Lena pauses. Was Kara about to say cuddles? She couldn’t even remember the last time she cuddled with someone while watching a movie.
“I do have one request, however,” she says, not paying extra attention to Kara’s words. Or the red colour of her cheeks. “I get to have the last potsticker. As your guest, you should accommodate me and my needs, right?” Kara’s eyes grow impossibly wide but the forced smile and nod like Lena expected never comes.
“Of course!” she says instead with surprising ease.
Lena stares. “Really?”
“Yep! I’m not gonna eat all the food, I can share!” She can’t share. Lena knows she can’t share, she’s seen Kara stuff her face on far too many occasions to know that that’s not true. And yet her face is far too honest for her words to not be true. She throws one last look at the girl as she gets up and heads to the bathroom, a small smile creeping up on her face.
The movie is over far too quickly for Kara’s taste who spent the entire duration of it mouthing the words along with the characters much to Lena’s amusement. She herself was never a big Wizard of Oz fan, but she can see why Kara enjoys it so much. Kara is talking about something and she has to force herself back to reality. She’s been asked a question, apparently, because now there’s a pair of blue eyes staring at her expectantly and she doesn’t really know what to say. She should be paying more attention.
“So?” Kara asks with a smile.
“So…?”
“What do you want to do next?” Kara’s smile falters slightly. “Are you okay?” she asks. “I hope I’m not being too much or anything, I got too excited during the movie, didn’t I?”
“Kara, no! No, you’re fine!” Lena is quick to say. “I was just a little distracted, that’s all. It’s got nothing to do with you,” she smiles, taking the girl’s hands in her own. “Promise.” Kara’s grin widens at that and she lets out a relieved breath.
“Okay. Okay, good! I didn’t want to overwhelm you on your first sleepover! I’m planning on making this at least a once a month kind of thing, I’d hate for you to already be done!”
“Once a month?”
“Maybe twice, we’ll see how it goes.”
“Do I have no say in this?” Lena chuckles at Kara’s enthusiasm.
“Nope! It’s too late now, a tradition has been formed!” She unconsciously gives Lena’s hands a squeeze, something that doesn’t go unnoticed by the brunette whose heart is suddenly beating a mile a minute. She hasn’t had proper friends since Sam and Sam is all the way to Metropolis. She hadn’t realized how much she had missed this kind of normalcy until now.
Her mind is still wandering as she goes to grab her glass from the table, her grip not nearly strong enough to hold on to it. There’s red wine all over her and all over the floor and Kara is jumping to her feet, asking her if she’s okay and she’s just… staring.
“I’m fine,” she manages to say what feels like an eternity later but is pretty sure is only a few seconds. “Kara, I’m okay,” she says louder when Kara doesn’t stop fussing, quickly examining her all over for any cuts. “The glass just slipped, I’m so sorry. I’ll go get napkins and- where do you keep your mop?”
“Nevermind, that, you go change! I have pyjamas in the second drawer in my room, you can’t miss them.” She’s ushering Lena from the couch to the bedroom before rushing back to the living room to mop up the spile wine.
Lena has never been in Kara’s bedroom before. It’s… different from what she expected even though she doesn’t exactly know what she expected in the first place. The fact that it doesn’t really have a door is the biggest thing. She doesn’t think she could ever have a bedroom with no door, if there was anything the Luthors ever taught her, is the value of privacy. She tries not to duel too much on that as she makes her way to Kara’s chest of drawers in search of a pair of pyjama pants she can borrow. She laughs at the sight. Pairs upon pairs of sweatpants, all with different cartoon characters on them greet her as she opens the drawer. Now this, this she expected. She loves Kara’s child-like charm.
It’s a pair of pants with Eevee on them that catch her attention and suddenly she’s ten years old again, watching Lex playing on his GameBoy and begging him to let her play for a bit. He never does, naturally, and she’s not allowed her own console so she stays there and watches as he lets his Eevee die just because he knows it’s her favourite Pokemon. It’s small things like that, that should have alerted her from a young age to what kind of person Lex actually was. His care for her stopped where her own needs and happiness began. She remembers “borrowing” his game once and then never seeing it again the next morning. Lex didn’t talk to her for weeks after that.
Kara’s voice from the other room brings her back to reality just in time to avoid a spiral. She’s more than thankful for that, right now is definitely not the time or place for a breakdown.
“You good?” Kara’s head pops in through the curtain slash “door”, her eyes looking down and her hand over them; Lena laughs softly at the sight.
“I’m good, I’ll be out in a second,” she says, pulling out the Eevee pair of pants and looking for a matching top. She doesn’t need it but she kinda wants to see if it’s there. It’s not. The pants are both a little bit big and a little bit small on her at the same time and she isn’t entirely sure how that’s even possible. She doesn’t question it too much as she walks back to the living room, Kara waiting for her on the couch, wine spill all cleaned up and wine glass refilled.
“Crisis averted!” she exclaims as she looks up to where Lena is coming from. “I didn’t know you liked Pokemon,” she laughs looking at the pyjama bottoms that are a tad too long for Lena’s legs.
“Eevee used to be my favourite,” says Lena, consciously fighting a blush from rising all the way to her ears. Lex would never let me play, though, and he would always either ignore Eevees or let them be killed in battles.” Kara gasps at that. “He thought it was funny,” Lena shrugs.
“There’s nothing funny about that,” Kara grumbles. “I was never really able to play either if that’s any consolation,” she adds with a small laugh. “I would get too excited and end up breaking the consoles, Alex banned me from ever touching her games after a few accidents.”
“Well that’s not fair either, is it?”
“I mean… I did keep breaking them so I don’t exactly blame her,” Kara laughs. “Besides, I’ve had my Switch for a couple of weeks now and it’s still not broken! I call that a success!” The smile on her face is enough to make Lena stop breathing for half a second. The broken Switch controller haphazardly hidden away in the corner of the room tells a different story.
“That’s from my… old Switch… May it rest in peace.” Kara jokes and Lena finds herself unable to hold in a laugh.
“Animal Crossing got too intense?” she jokes back.
“No! If you must know, I beat Winn at Mario Kart for the first time like ever and I got a little bit too excited. Powers are good and all, but damn, these things are too flimsy!”
“That’s probably because they’re made for kid strength, not Kryptonian,” Lena jokes but she can already feel the cogs in her brain spinning. She can fix that problem, she knows she can. It’ll take a lot of planning and maybe too many extra hours in the lab, but she’s willing to bet her degrees that she can come up with something. “We can play some Mario Kart if you promise to not break the controller when I win,” she says with a knowing smile and Kara frowns.
“You mean if you win,” she mutters, already putting in the game and handing Lena a controller. It’s tiny in her hands and a little bit uncomfortable so she knows she’s probably not going to win. But teasing Kara is always worth it.
If anyone is surprised at the end of their first race, it’s absolutely Lena. She won by sheer luck and Kara is staring at her with her eyes and mouth wide open.
“That wasn’t fair!” she exclaims. “You only got me because I took that last turn wrong!” They both laugh as Kara presses the replay button. She manages to accidentally break her controller three rounds later when she takes that exact turn equally wrong and squeezes just a little bit too hard in an attempt to not fall off the map. She fails miserably. They don’t talk about it; Kara’s flushed cheeks are enough to make Lena chuckle but also let her know to not tease the girl too much about it.
They’re able to go through another movie and an episode of Kara’s current favourite show before Lena starts dozing off on the couch. She can feel her eyes getting heavy as the episode nears its end and the credits are already rolling when she opens them next.
“You tired?” She hears Kara half-whisper as she turns the TV off and she tries to shake her head in denial but she suspects she fails because Kara is laughing softly at her and taking her hand, helping her to her feet.
“I’m fine,” she mumbles in a voice that doesn’t completely sound like hers.
“You’re asleep,” Kara says matter-of-factly. “I think it’s bedtime, sometimes it’s good to actually sleep during sleepovers,” she chuckles. “You take the bed, I take the couch, okay?”
“We can just share,” Lena says and Kara stops moving for half a second. She’s certain Lena would have caught that had she not been practically asleep again.
“....naaah, it’s okay. I’ll take the couch,” she smiles.
~~~
Lena is gone by the time Kara wakes up the next morning, a pot of freshly made coffee and a note left behind on the kitchen counter.
‘Hi, darling. I had to go change and head to work for early meetings.
Hope you enjoy the coffee, text me if you're free for lunch today,
I can move some things around on my schedule. xx’
Kara smiles as she reads Lena’s note, sipping the still warm coffee, somehow made exactly how she likes it; and she doesn’t like coffee. She texts Lena straight away and ignores Alex’ pointed looks later in the day when she takes off in a haste to go meet her at her office in L-Corp.
For some reason, Lena goes MIA after that. She still replies to texts and Kara can still hear her heartbeat, calm and steady, which gives her some sort of comfort but they haven’t met in over a week. It’s cancelled plans after obviously made-up excuses after rain checks and Kara is, evidently, getting sad.
It takes a lot of effort and restraint for her to not fly over to L-Corp and drag Lena out of that room she's been in for the past week -she may have been flying by L-Corp every day just to see that everything was okay, what of it?
Hey, wanna grab some lunch today around two? I haven't seen you in aaaaages :(
She texts as she hovers outside L-Corp for the third time that day.
I'm so sorry, family emergency. We'll meet up soon, I promise!
Another lie. The reply is about to throw Kara over the edge, the second text that arrives almost immediately after the first stops her from storming in, however.
How about a sleepover on Friday? I'm done at 18:00 <3
Are you sure? No take backs!
Kara is hopeful. Cautious , but hopeful.
No take backs.
Friday can't come soon enough.
"Only call me if you absolutely need me, okay?" Kara, still in her Supergirl attire, is pacing up and down the DEO bullpen, one hand on her hip and the other pointing at everyone around her. "Cat stuck on tree, no. Alien invasion that threatens to destroy the world, yes." Alex rolls her eyes dramatically.
“We’ll try to not interrupt your date, don’t worry,” she says and muffles a laugh at Kara’s shocked expression.
“It’s not a date,” Kara replies, squinting her eyes at her sister.” I want to be available in case Lena is… up to something…” She doesn’t want to admit it, but she’s worried. Lena has been acting very suspicious and secretive, Kara has every right to be worried.
“Sure. Just try to keep an ear out in case we need you, okay, Kar?” Alex approaches her with a soft smile on her face and places her hand on Kara’s shoulder. “It’s going to be okay,” she reassures with a gentle squeeze and Kara smiles at that.
“I should go. Lena said she’d be done at six.”
“It’s not even four-thirty yet,” it’s Alex’ turn to squint playfully in pretend suspicion at her sister.
“I need to buy snacks and tidy the whole place!” Kara says already ready to take off. “Call me if you need me but not otherwise!” she practically yells, already flying off the balcony.
“Kara’s nervous for her date?” Kelly’s voice rings from the entrance as she walks in with two bags of takeout, one in each hand.
“Oh, you know it,” Alex laughs.
Lena arrives exactly half an hour after she said she was done with work, not that Kara was counting anyway. She just happens to be looking at the clock mounted on her wall every two minutes. She opens the door before Lena has the chance to knock, an impossibly big smile adorning her face.
“Are you always just waiting by the door?” Lena jokes as she walks in, hands noticeably emptier than the last time she was visiting for a sleepover.
“Super-hearing,” Kara chuckles awkwardly, pointing at her ear. “I heard the elevator ding,” she explains. She’s not going to mention the fact that she was practically tracking Lena’s heartbeat from the moment she left her office.
“I see. Makes sense, I suppose,” Lena says as she takes off her shoes and coat, placing them both by the door. “I didn’t bring much food today,” she starts, both of them making the way to the kitchen, “I imagined you’d have more than enough.” Her eyes widen at the vast selection of food, aptly displayed on Kara’s kitchen counters. “I’d be happy to pay for it, though…”
“Nonsense! I won’t make you pay for the food I’ll eat!” Kara laughs and hands a glass of wine to the brunette. It’s all a well-practised dance, Lena thinks. “Now come! Let’s sit, I’ve missed you!”
Lena’s smile grows tenfold at the words. “I’ve missed you too,” she says, unable to keep her cheeks from turning pink. She laughs softly when her eyes fall on the broken Switch controller, still laying there, half-hazardly hidden next to some cables.
“Please,” Kara says. “I’ve heard enough about this from Alex and the guys,” she sighs.
Lena only smiles and motions zipping her lips. “I have something for you,” she says after a second as they both sit on the couch, Kara’s hand already reaching for the remote.
“Oh?”
“It may have something to do with… this.” She motions to the broken controller. “And might also explain why I have been so distant lately. I’m sorry, by the way…”
“I was going to bring that up,” says Kara somberly.
“I know you were, I would expect nothing less. Please believe me when I say it was all for a good reason. At least I hope it was…” Kara picks up the speed of Lena’s heartbeat rising and she raises an eyebrow at that. “You said you’d keep breaking the consoles and that Alex never let you use hers when you were younger,” Lena says after taking a deep, calming breath. “And then when the controller broke last time I was her I just- I thought it wasn’t fair that you didn’t get to enjoy the things you liked just because everything's made to be broken.” She reaches into her purse at that, and pulls out an unlabeled box. “It took me a while but I did it,” she says proudly, her hands offering the box to Kara who is still staring in confusion. She takes the box tentatively and opens it. Her fingers shake slightly for a reason unknown to her. Inside is a brand new Switch, unlike any Kara has seen being sold. It’s red and blue, much like the original, but they’re two very particular, very familiar shades of red and blue. It has a gold rim and it shines so beautifully when the light hits it; her Supergirl symbol is engraved at the back. It’s absolutely gorgeous, she thinks.
“What…?” she whispers, her eyes examining every inch of the custom device.
“It’s unbreakable,” Lena states. “It’s a new steel alloy,” she explains with a smile, “SAM2X5-630. Three times stronger than tungsten carbide.”
“Tungsten…”
“Carbide. It’s a high-strength ceramic used in military armours. Anyway, that’s not important.” She gently takes the device from Kara and turns it on. “What’s important is, it’s completely unbreakable. It can withstand pressure up to twelve point five giga-Pascals. That’s about 125,000 atmospheres of pressure!” She can barely contain her excitement now as she hands it back to Kara.
“That’s a lot,” Kara mumbles, her brain still unable to comprehend how something like this could exist.
“Try it,” she hears Lena say.
“Try… Playing?”
“Breaking it,” the brunette clarifies. “Squeeze with as much force as you can. I promise it’s not going to break.” And Kara does. Reluctantly at first, she starts squeezing the device in her hands. Noticing it really is not breaking or even bending at all, she applies more and more pressure until she’s using all of her strength. A normal console would have been turned into dust long ago. This, however, this little device is still standing strong, unbothered by the alien’s forceful death grip.
“Oh my Rao,” she whispers in disbelief. “You weren’t lying…”
“I wasn’t lying,” Lena smiles. “It’s compatible with all other controllers so you can still play with everyone. And best of all,” she reaches into her purse again and Kara doesn’t know what to expect anymore, “it comes with arguably one of the best Pokemon games out there.” Kara’s eyes grow big as saucers at the sight of the game.
“No... Ooooooh, I haven’t played any Pokemon games in so long !” she exclaims, her hands working fast trying to put the tiny cartridge in the console and Lena can’t help but let out a loud laugh at the girl’s enthusiasm. “Umbron always reminded me of my cat Streaky, I used to beg Alex to catch one but she’d never do it.” Lena raises an eyebrow at that. “Alex and I didn’t have… the best of relationships growing up,” Kara explains. “Streaky was my cat when I first came here. He was a stray and I took him in, he was my best friend for a while.”
“I wasn’t allowed pets,” Lena says after a brief moment of silence. “Lex had a dog when he was young; Ignatius. He had to be put down when Lex was seven, Mother never allowed another pet after that. I think… I think we may have had animals when I was little? I barely remember that, though, it could just be my mind turning imaginary scenarios into memories,” she shrugs and moves on, not giving Kara the chance to say anything about it. “Now come on. Why don’t we see if we can get you one of those Eevee then?” she asks with a gentle smile and Kara can hardly contain her enthusiasm as she wraps them both in the blanket that was draped over the back of the couch and leans in impossibly close.
“I’m gonna name her Lena,” she stage-whispers with a wide grin, her eyes gleaming with joy. “And she’s gonna be the happiest Eevee there ever was!”