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Alex smacked her car keys down on the dresser, heat rising in her cheeks as the reality dawned heavily on her that she had, perhaps, miscalculated. Ripping her coat and scarf off and letting them both fall messily on the back of the closest chair, she tried to rub the feeling back into her cheeks with the palms of her hands.
It had been easy enough to make her excuses for putting off her two and a half hour drive to Midvale to the absolute last minute; her scientist mother had not asked many questions when Alex chalked her delay up to labwork, and her little sister – the entire reason she was at National City University of all places for her PhD – had shrugged at the thought of her being caught up in work, again .
Alex just hadn’t budgeted for the fact that the early spat of winter storms would close every road in a ten mile radius that connected her to either major highway that led to Midvale. Even with snow chains she’d had the rare foresight to put on her tires, there was no way she was getting back to her mother’s house in time for the most obnoxiously early dinner of the year.
Fumbling for her phone with wind-numbed fingers, Alex braced herself for the disappointed diatribe that was undoubtedly headed her way once her mother found out. Eliza’s voicemail message was welcome relief, and Alex muttered quick apologies before she attempted to gather her wits about her to figure out her unexpected stay in the virtually empty graduate student apartments over Thanksgiving break.
A key turned in the lock just as Alex picked her coat up to hang it properly.
Of course, the graduate student apartments were virtually empty over break. With the exception of Alex’s apartment, that was. A snowed-in Thanksgiving break with no one around but the roommate she never quite got comfortable with. Alex didn’t know if this was better or worse than her original plans.
Her coat still in hand, Alex watched as her flatmate shuffled in from the cold, the lapels of her coat folded up in a weak attempt to shield against the biting wind that whistled through the lines of bare trees and tallish buildings that made up this corner of student housing.
Lena’s head popped up to glance at Alex as she toed her damp boots off by the shoerack, words tumbling out of her mouth in surprise, “You’re still here?”
Chuckling sheepishly, Alex shrugged, “I got carried away in the lab, and I’d planned to leave too last minute to make up for the fact that they were closing all the roads. I hope you weren’t banking on absolute solitude for the rest of the week.”
“I don’t know why I’m surprised,” Lena replied, the lilt at the end of her sentence suggesting either mockery or teasing, though Alex couldn’t tell which.
It made something churn in Alex’s gut – the uncertainty. It had since they started living in the apartment together when Alex transferred to NCU in Kara’s first year. Every interaction with her roommate, whether in their apartment or on the not-so-rare occasions both PhD students ran into each other in their connected labs, made a lump form in her throat and her hands get clammy.
“Yeah,” Alex muttered, finally moving to put the coat and scarf on the right hanger in the hall closet.
Lena moved almost noiselessly around their common space, putting away her outerwear and setting the kettle on the stove as she unwound with her usual post-lab routine. The silence unnerved Alex. She was used to Kara’s heavy feet, or her mother’s habit of jostling things as she puttered around the house. There was always noise in the Danvers home, but Lena seemed to make it a point to move around a space as soundlessly as possible. Even after a year and a half of living in the same small space, Lena still startled Alex more often than she would like to admit. Alex leaned stiffly against the back of the couch, still parsing her next steps, when Lena’s voice pulled at her once more.
“–Do you want some?” Lena asked, her voice half muffled by the cupboard door that obscured her face.
“What?” Alex replied.
“Tea,” Lena explained, setting one mug down on the counter and pausing as she reached for a second, “The water’s ready. I asked if you wanted some.”
“Oh,” Alex sighed, shaking herself out of whatever trance she seemed to have been lost in, “Sure. Thank you.”
Having pulled Alex’s usual mug from the cabinet, Lena shut the door – again, silently – and made for the fridge.
“No milk,” Alex was quick off the mark as Lena reached for the door.
Lena laughed, a small almost sharp sound, and grabbed the carton of milk anyway.
“No milk, two sugars,” Lena assured, “I do know how you take your tea after more than a year as roommates. The milk’s for me.”
Alex had the good sense to duck her head and blush before she protested, “That’s not how I take my tea–”
“–That’s how you take your tea when no one is looking,” Lena corrected, “At three AM after you’ve dragged yourself back from dealing with your sister and labs and your off-campus job, and you leave the teaspoon you stirred sugar into your cup with on the counter attracting ants.”
Alex took a step back, her eyes wide.
“I am a scientist, just like you are, not to mention an insomniac,” Lena reasoned, “I notice things, even if you think I’m shallow.”
“Lena–” Alex’s protests died quickly with a steady look from Lena.
The younger girl shrugged, flipping her dark hair over her shoulder before moving to prepare both mugs of tea, the teaspoon clinking quietly in the still air between them.
“I know what you think about me,” Lena explained detachedly, “It makes sense – the rich girl who dresses and acts the part, who doesn’t have to worry about affording her degree – even if I don’t think you have enough data to form a conclusion.”
In spite of Alex’s silent gaping, Lena quietly handed her the prepared tea and offered, “I’m sure this was far from your ideal way to spend the break. I generally keep to myself, as you know, so I won’t be in your way. I should have enough food stocked to get us through the worst of the storm and the road closures.”
With that, Lena picked up her own mug and breezed by Alex, collecting her messenger bag from the chair she had set it down on.
Alex took a shaky sip from the mug once the door to Lena’s bedroom shut behind her, the latch sliding in with barely a metallic swish. The rich brown liquid was pleasantly warm, and perfectly sweet.
The feeling of her phone buzzing in her pocket barely registered, even as the buzzing became incessant.
Dragging her feet across the cool wood floor, Alex set herself down heavily in the chair Lena’s bag had vacated, wrapping both hands around the mug her flatmate had handed her. It was even the right mug, Alex realised. She almost always used a travel mug for her coffee, even within the apartment, but the sage green mug she got in undergrad with the chemical structure of caffeine printed on it was always saved for tea.
Alex tried to search her brain for a catalogue of things she had noticed about her flatmate, and reeled at the sheer volume of small moments that surged at her.
The churning presented itself again, a burning in the pit of her stomach, almost.
The veritable rolodex of moments that sprung to mind were hardly foreign, but certainly surprising. Alex faintly recalled naming the tugging in her gut annoyance , stringing together these moments in conversations with Kara week after week as she made the case for disliking her flatmate.
First, it had been the polish of Lena’s smooth, low, honey-like voice. Then, the audacity of the younger girl to poke holes in Alex’s research process, reaching across the kitchen table on one of the rare occasions they’d sat down for a meal at the same time and pointing out what had kept Alex stalled for a whole week like it was nothing. Not to mention the way Lena would dress, as if going to the lab was the equivalent of going out on the town.
It wasn’t that Alex wanted to dislike her. She just–
She just hadn’t been able to help it.
She just felt that tug of annoyance since the first day they both moved in, even more so when Lena had made an offhand remark about Kara – a freshman in the undergraduate college and a student in the Bio seminar section Lena TA-ed for – being in their space.
She had never stopped to consider that the tug could be something else. Anything else, really.
The chair scraped the tile floor as she stood with a start, making a beeline for Lena’s closed door. Alex raised one hand, poised to knock, then thought better of it just before her knuckles made contact with the wood.
Instead, she shoved her hovering hand into her pocket to pull out her phone, only to turn the screen off again the moment she confirmed that the barrage of notifications just minutes ago had been a combination of her mother – thinly veiled disappointment masked by a request to stay safe and fed, and to visit when the weather cleared – and Kara – a series of messages to the effect of her little sister reminding her she wouldn’t be depriving Kara and Eliza of a family Thanksgiving if she had just listened and left when Kara was heading back to Midvale .
Classic.
She nearly dropped the phone in her hand as the door in front of her suddenly opened, barely swallowing the squeak that threatened to bubble up in surprise.
“Lena–”
“–Alex,” Lena riposted, then softened as she took in the older girl’s sallow complexion, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing–” Alex muttered, “It’s nothing–”
“Alright,” Lena trailed off, unconvinced.
Alex squirmed under Lena’s steady gaze, but stayed silent.
“Can I help you?” Lena changed tack.
“Uhm, no–” Alex stammered.
“Alex, you’re less quiet than you think you are,” Lena countered, “You stormed over here a few minutes ago, more or less, and you’ve been standing there since. I know you don’t like me, but this is odd behaviour even for you. What gives?”
“I don’t–” Alex scrambled to explain herself, “I mean, Lena–”
“Lena,” Alex breathed, then spoke evenly, trying to temper her own nerves, “I think I’ve given you the wrong impression.”
Opening her door wider, Lena moved aside and beckoned her flatmate in so Alex could enter the room rather than lingering in the doorway. She offered Alex her desk chair, perching herself on the end of her impeccably made bed.
“Explain,” Lena probed, smoothing her skirt down, “Because you’ve given a pretty clear demonstration of your opinion of me so far, Alex, and it is far from a positive one.”
Crossing and uncrossing her legs, Alex shifted in the unfamiliar chair as she stammered, “That’s fair.”
Lena sighed, leaning back on her hands as she waited Alex out.
“To be entirely fair, I think I gave myself the wrong impression,” Alex admitted, a fervid blush creeping up her neck and spreading high over her cheekbones, “Not that that excuses anything. It’s just– In the interest of honesty, I’m just as surprised as you are.”
“You’re still talking in circles, Alex,” Lena teased, her small, barely restrained grin more than enough to confirm the humour in her tone.
Alex allowed herself to crack a smile, one shaking hand tight-knuckled as she dragged it through her hair.
Her brow furrowed, staying that way as she eked out her next words, “I don’t dislike you, Lena. I haven’t been entirely fair.”
With that, Alex abruptly sprung to her feet once more, stumbling out of Lena’s room without another word of explanation, her own door shutting loudly only moments later.
Lena wanted to throw herself backwards onto her bed, to scream or to throw a pillow at a wall, but she restrained herself. There really was something to be said about her flatmate’s penchant for running from the problem.
It started as a suspicion – Alex’s obvious issue with her – in the first few weeks of them sharing the apartment. The avoidance had been pretty evident, but the confirmation had been Alex’s inability to look her in the eye even for the shortest of conversations, and the way Alex pulled her hand away like she’d been burned when their fingers brushed while working together to sort out glassware that had gotten mixed up between their two labs.
They led fundamentally different lives, Lena understood. Lena’s entirely life was her research, especially since her research would invariably lead her directly back to the legacy of her family’s company. The few hours she wasn’t in the lab or teaching undergraduates, she was at home, or in meetings with the shareholders who preferred dealing with her over her brother or step-mother. Alex had hardly a free hour, between her lab and classes, her younger sister who seemed to depend on and flourish with such close family support while adjusting to college, and more than her share of off-campus work to supplement their grad student stipends.
Even their relationships with their respective siblings could not be more different. Lena could hardly imagine reaching out to Lex as readily as Kara seemed to be willing to ask for Alex’s help, and Kara seemed secure in Alex’s willingness to drop just about anything for her baby sister at a moment’s notice in a way that had never even occurred to Lena as a possibility.
For the longest time Lena reasoned away Alex’s coldness by assuming – as she had her whole boarding school-filled life – that their differences simply could not be bridged by what little was similar about them, so she leaned into old patterns.
She ignored the way her eyes would track Alex around a room, or the fact that she was always acutely aware if Alex walked into a space. She swallowed the pinch when the other girl would pass her by wordlessly when she came in late at night, puttering around the kitchen making herself a ridiculously large mug of black tea in a sage green mug she only ever pulled out of the cupboard late at night. Alex’s solution to her issue with Lena seemed to be avoidance, which suited them both just fine.
Lena could deal with avoidance, she had thought for months.
Now, on the cusp of whatever mystery force had kept them at arms length and at loggerheads for the better part of a year and some change, nothing sounded worse than avoidance.
Lena sat up with a groan, determined to get out of her own head. Slipping into comfortable joggers and a faded cotton t-shirt, Lena padded to the kitchen and started collecting ingredients for dinner on the counter. It wouldn’t be the full nine yards for Thanksgiving, certainly, but cooking was just chemistry, really, and Lena was a practiced hand.
Eventually, Alex emerged from her room to find Lena cutting vegetables into a precise brunoise, strands of dark hair escaping from her low bun as she bent over the cutting board.
“Can I help?” Alex ventured, laying one hand flat on the kitchen counter to draw Lena’s attention.
Nodding with a small grin, Lena beckoned Alex with a tilt of her chin, then explained, “You can open two of those big tins of whole tomatoes, then crush them in a bowl.”
“Crush them–” Alex hesitated, “With what?”
Lena laughed, freely and brightly, and explained, “With your hands. Wash them first, of course.”
“My hands ?” Alex exclaimed, “Are you just messing with me, Luthor?”
Her smile widened, if that were even possible, with her next words, “You really don’t cook much, do you?”
“Can’t say I do,” Alex admitted, stepping around Lena to look for the can opener in the drawers to her right.
Lena let Alex rifle through a few more drawers before she nudged Alex with her hip, telling her, “Can opener is in the drawer where you were standing earlier. The one to my left.”
“Lena!” Alex gasped, “And you just let me go on a wild goose chase like that?”
Lena’s giggle truly filled up the whole kitchen. For a moment, Alex just stared, starry-eyed. The tugging was there again, and Alex was certain now that it was not annoyance. Far from it. It probably never had been.
Alex turned, a small and subtle shift, and placed one trembling hand on Lena’s waist. She leaned in, barely.
“I think I convinced myself I didn’t like you so I didn’t have to admit the fact that I had a massive crush on you,” Alex whispered against the shell of Lena’s ear, then pulled away and walked over to the correct set of drawers. She heard the sound of the knife scraping the cutting board clean, then being set down on the counter. Nearly silent footsteps came up beind her, followed by a hand landing on her arm that tugged her gently into waiting arms that wrapped around her.
“Yeah?” Lena murmured, shyer than Alex had ever heard her.
“Yeah,” Alex admitted, letting a feather-light kiss ghost over Lena’s cheek, “I’ve been mesmerised since I first heard your voice. I just didn’t know what it meant. Didn’t know what the rules were here.”
Lena tipped her head to the right as she studied Alex’s smile and the light in her eyes.
“We make the rules,” Lena declared, “And I think we ought to gather more data. After all, that’s all we can do. Gather data and make observations while we try to figure it out, right?”
Alex nodded, cupping Lena’s cheek with one shaking, clammy hand, and kissing her softly, but surely.