Chapter Text
It has been a long flight. Longer than any of them expected when they signed up for this job. The last time Lena set foot on a planet was 3 weeks, 5 days, 2 hours and 24 minutes ago. But who is counting?
The ship shakes beneath her feet. Their stabilisers have been having a rough time lately with the amount of meteor fields they had to evade and lack of downtime for maintenance. At least they do not get turbulence in outer space because there is no air.
Lena clutches one of the walls as she navigates the narrow passageway to the exercise room. Not to exercise but to get some time away. She needs a break. And the exercise room is the best place for that. This also happens to be the time of day most of her crewmates will not be exercising.
As hoped, Lena finds the room empty and quiet. She shuts the door behind her and lowers herself to the floor on top of a yoga mat. The artificial gravity on board is such a blessing in moments like this.
Ever since she was little, Lena has had a desperate need to do her thinking on the floor. A need that is much harder in outer space on a small spacecraft. Especially when it is one without artificial gravity to create something that resembles a ‘floor’.
This ship, however, has everything she needs. Grateful, she spreads out her arms and savours the moment with a deep breath in and out.
She slips the bag of peanuts she snuck out of the kitchen from her pocket and tears it open. Thinking is best done on the floor and with snacks. She takes a few peanuts and puts them in her mouth, relishing the way they break between her teeth. Most of their food consists of flavourless nutrition bars catered to their species needs. Why nobody ever thought to put some taste in them, is beyond Lena because flavourless food is the worst type of food she could ever imagine.
Her mind drifts to daydreams about better food, solid ground beneath her feet, fresh air, plants, and physics.
The door opens with a small whoosh as the air pressure resettles and Lena opens her eyes. It is Kara, with her big blue eyes, looking startled.
“Sorry, I guess– I think we had the same idea,” she stutters gesturing to the rest of the spaceship beyond the door and the quiet in the exercise room. A tinge of red creeps up her neck as she struggles to decide whether to stay or leave.
“It’s okay, we can share,” Lena says with a smile that feels more casual than it is. Kara makes her nervous, but not as nervous as she makes Kara so she can suck it up and deal with it. It was never her intention to scare Kara, but she has been attracted to her crewmate from the moment they got on board of this ship together and she does not want a messy space travel relationship, so she might have been a little stand-offish.
“Oh, yes, o–okay.” Kara shuffles her feet for a few seconds before closing the door behind her and finding a place on the floor next to Lena. Though the exercise room is the most spacious room –floor-space-wise– on the ship, it is by no means big. They are nearly shoulder to shoulder.
“Peanuts?” Lena offers.
Kara nods and takes a whole hand, putting all of the peanuts in her mouth in one go and nearly choking on them.
Lena looks away. She cannot believe she finds this woman attractive even when she nearly chokes herself to death on peanuts. She tries desperately to push it down. To not think about how close Kara is to her. How she could touch her if she just moved her hand a few centimeters…
“Thanks,” Kara croaks when she has managed to swallow most of her bite. “Those Kryptonian nutrient bars are really gross, so I needed to taste something.”
Lena has to suppress a laugh because no sane person would laugh at that. Only a hopelessly gay person who is in love with the person who said it would. And Lena is not in love.
“The human ones are horrid too,” Lena says, her eyes looking purposefully at the ceiling and not at Kara.
Kara hums and takes some more peanuts. A much more reasonable amount this time and she manages to eat them without choking.
They lie in silence, side by side, for several minutes. Lena’s fingers itch to reach out and touch Kara’s skin. She stomps down on those feelings and pulls her hand in closer, crossing it over her stomach so she is less likely to accidentally do something really, really stupid.
“Lena?” Kara asks after a while, turning to Lena.
Lena can see the red in Kara’s neck has not actually gone down. In fact, it might have spread even further and now also covers part of her cheeks.
“Yes.”
“I have a human physics question for you, but if you don’t want to answer it now that’s also okay,” Kara rambles, saying something barely audible about coming here for quiet and peace.
“No, that’s fine. What is your question?”
“So, you humans have made up your own laws of physics, right?”
“Yes, before we got in touch with other species, we had our own laws.”
“I was wondering, how does your string theory work?” Kara turns even redder at asking and adds, in an even softer voice “And what’s quantum entanglement?”
Lena smiles, she loves physics and the difference between human physics and most alien species’ physics. Of course she can teach Kara about string theory and quantum entanglement.
She begins explaining and loses herself in her teaching, drawing Kara pictures in the air. Kara eagerly nods along with the story, her eyes flashing down to Lena’s lips every so often. But Lena is too busy to notice.