Chapter Text
Lena’s taken to wearing it again. She had stopped the summer after her sophomore year. After the big to-do at ring delivery and letting herself feel secretly proud of her accomplishment, her perseverance. Halfway there. The excitement was palpable amongst her classmates, the surge of motivation and validation even more so. She’d worn the ring home and Lex had taken one look at the rectangular bezel prominent on her right hand and scoffed. “Wow sis. Gaudy much? Real Luthors don’t need to wear our excellence so garishly.” Real Luthors.
Yeah. Lena stopped wearing her class ring after that.
But things are different now. Lex is gone, Lena is free, and the blonde woman with Lena’s head pillowed in her lap doesn’t mind it at all. In fact, Kara was the one to dig it back up.
While unpacking their boxes in the apartment they’d chosen together, Kara had approached her with a small cherry-wood box in the palm of her hand. The MIT seal emblazoned across the lid reflected the slanted sunlight onto the golden skin of Kara’s forearm. “What’s this?”
“What’s—oh.” Lena turned, found Kara eyeing the trinket curiously, gently brushing off years of accumulated dust. “That’s my Brass Rat,” she answered as dismissively as she could manage.
“Your what?”
“My Brass Rat,” Lena repeated, busying herself with breaking down the cardboard box she’d just emptied. “It’s what the class rings are called at MIT.”
“Oh!” Kara’s smile was recognizable from across the room. Lena didn’t need to turn around to feel its warmth. “Can I look at it?”
“Sure,” she answered with a wave of her hand. Why she felt the need to feign disinterest, she couldn’t say. “It’s a bit gauche. But then again, most class rings are.”
“Mm.” Kara hummed noncommittally from behind her back. Lena pretended not to pay attention, but she listened for Kara’s reaction. Smiled secretly at the soft gasp she heard following the gentle creak of the box’s unused hinge. “Wow, it’s—really unique.”
“Don’t you mean ugly?” Lena offered derisively, more than a little bitter. She scoffed at it, just like Lex had that day.
“No… What’s this animal on the top? Is it a… a rat?”
“A beaver,” Lena explained. She didn’t have to look to remember. She knew the lore, had memorized the tradition, could still picture the details of her class year’s design in acute relief. “Beavers are MIT’s mascot. Nature’s engineer and all that.”
“Oh… cool.” Kara was silent after that. After a long pause Lena peeked over her shoulder. Kara was staring intently at the face of the ring, nestled neatly in the cushion of the box. She scanned it for several more seconds before looking back up. “It’s so detailed,” she said, admiration plain in her voice.
Lena swallowed hard and, for the first time in a long time, stuttered. Because yeah, it really was. And Lena had been responsible for so much of it. As a part of her class’s Ring Committee, she’d spent the better part of a semester refining the endless whorls of symbolism engraved into each tiny face of that ring. Every class year selected a unique committee. Every committee designed a unique ring. Every ring became a unique representation of who they were, what they’d been through so far, of what they believed was to come. It was a snapshot of herself, in a way.
But the intricacies of these engravings were strictly extracurricular. There was no prestige in joining Ring Comm. Not from the Luthor’s point of view, anyway. Putting part of her heart into the design of this ring was one of the few things Lena had ever done just for herself. One of the few things that gave her a sense of belonging she’d scarcely had the luxury of feeling. She’d felt proud of it at the time, and what a rarity that was.
And Kara, of course, had noticed.
Lena cleared her throat and stood up straight. “Um, yeah.” She paused, pinned by the affectionate brightness in Kara’s eyes. As always, she found boundless and unassuming love staring back, a genuine curiosity for Lena’s sake and Lena’s alone. The gentle expectation, pure and nonjudgmental, eroded the barriers Lena had built around this particular keepsake embarrassingly quickly. Her pretense of detachment fell away like sand. She took an eager step forward, extended her hand, silently beckoning for the box.
Kara handed it over with a curious tilt of her head and Lena stole a few moments to really take in the piece she hadn’t let herself lay eyes on in years. She smiled softly. “There is a lot of detail. All of it is intentional, actually.” She glanced up to find Kara smiling at her, a dazzling grin spreading like molasses across her face at the same rate that Lena’s excitement re-blossomed in her chest. Lena blushed. “Every class year’s ring has a unique design. And every single thing engraved on here has a hidden meaning, a reference to something that’s unique to our class and what we’d experienced together so far.” She sighed, pressed the pad of her index finger to one of the bezel’s square corners. “I helped design this one, actually,” she breathed.
Lena realized with a start that she had kept that fact a secret from everyone she’d ever cared about in her life. Lex would surely have laughed at her. Lillian would have guilted her with her usual withering disdain for all ‘purposeless’ pursuits. The unexpected understanding of just how far she’d buried this inconsequential passion of hers—and why—jarred her eyebrows into a crinkle and the corner of her mouth into a frown. Kara lurched forward into her space, folding her hands tenderly around Lena’s and the ring box. Her fingertips traced gentle comforts over Lena’s as she prompted quietly, “Will you tell me about it?”
So Lena did. She and Kara had plopped down on the hardwood of their haphazardly unpacked bedroom and Kara listened enrapt at Lena’s descriptions of every minute feature on the ring’s various faces and each of their double meanings. Their conversation ended with her Brass Rat sitting heavy and snug on Lena’s right hand, Kara thumbing at it with a reverent smile as Lena looked on in muted awe.
“Why haven’t I seen you wear it?” Kara’s forehead furrowed, engulfing the tiny scar above her eyebrow. “I don’t think it’s ugly. It looks really good on you.” She paused, chuckled shyly and reached up to adjust glasses she wasn’t wearing. “I think… well. Actually I think it looks kind of, um, sexy.”
Lena blinked up at her, taken aback. Kara flushed a delicious shade of pink.
“What?” The blonde countered. “I’ve always liked your hands.” She threaded their fingers together while Lena’s cheeks took their turn to color. “I think you should wear it.”
“I haven’t worn it in years. Since… well, since I wore it home for the first time.” The truth burbled out of her before she had any chance to stop it, like it so often did around Kara. “Lex said it was too ostentatious. Gaudy. Not something a Luthor would wear.”
“Well, he’s ostentatious and gaudy,” Kara snapped back. Lena’s lips quirked upward at the candor of Kara’s defense. Then, more softly, Kara added, “This is a part of who you are, Lena. Luthor or not. Lex didn’t know what he was talking about. You’re allowed to be proud of it. It’s awesome. You should wear it if you want to.”
Lena smiled, warm all over. “Thank you, darling.” She stroked her thumb over the back of Kara’s hand and admired the visual of their fingers laced together, interrupted only by the visible sliver of her Brass Rat. “I might.”
The first time she wore the ring, days later, Kara’s grin rivaled the brightness of the sun.
Lena replays the memory as she fidgets with the weight around her finger, not resisting the smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. Today marks two years since she and Kara unpacked their belongings and filled this space to the brim with their togetherness. She’s worn her Brass Rat almost every day.
Maybe it’s her drifting thoughts that prompt her to reach up and capture Kara’s left hand from where it’s been stroking her hair. Maybe it’s the memory of the way Kara had coaxed out Lena’s truths and tended to them with unconditional devotion that has her wiggling off her own ring. Kara’s incandescent love has always buoyed her, ceaselessly encouraged Lena to be the most Lena she can be. That’s probably why Lena slips her Brass Rat, bezel side down, over Kara’s left ring finger.
The woman above her freezes. With a sharp inhale, she stares down at Lena, eyes round and questioning. They’re so blue it almost hurts. Lena holds them for a moment, completely still, feeling her own heart take up a galloping rhythm in her chest.
A few seconds pass in limbo and she drags her gaze away, lets it linger on the back of Kara’s hand. With the ring turned into the blonde’s palm this way, worn backwards, the only part visible is a simple silver band wrapping gently above her knuckle. Lena loses control of her breath but she smiles. It looks lovely. Fitting. She places a soft kiss beneath where the band adorns tanned skin and feels Kara’s other hand tighten ever so slightly in her hair.
“Lena…” Kara stammers, a little choked. Lena meets her eyes, smiles again. “What are you—is this…”
It’s not. Lena plans to propose in the most Kryptonian way possible and this certainly isn’t it. But it’s an intent. A quiet, weighted declaration. Deliberate, if Lena gives it any thought.
Lena reaches up and traces the back of her fingers over Kara’s cheek. She’s still smiling, still floating in that hazy warmth she’s been unable to shake since she and Kara shared their first kiss.
She answers truthfully. “Not yet.”
Kara’s eyes widen further and then she just grins, bright and wide, and tilts her head to one side, loving and inquisitive.
Lena spins the ring around Kara’s finger. “I just… wanted you to know.”