Guilty as Sin?
Supergirl. Supercorp. Lena Luthor x Kara Danvers
Words: 2.3k
Notes: part 2 with Kara's POV coming soon :)
What if she's written 'mine' on my upper thigh only in my mind?
It's been a few weeks since everything happened.
A few weeks since Kara confessed. Since longing stopped being something Lena kept locked in lower case inside a vault and became something she could hold in her hands. Since fatal fantasies gave way to messy kisses and tangled sheets and Kara's sleepy smile waiting for her in the morning.
The strange thing is that Lena spent years imagining this exactly.
The stranger thing is that reality somehow feels less believable.
She thinks about Kara constantly now. In board meetings and elevator rides and quiet moments between phone calls. She catches herself smiling at memories that are only hours old. She sees futures where Kara is standing beside her and feels her heart stumble over itself.
Sometimes she wonders if she's finally lost her mind. Sometimes she wonders if happiness simply feels a little like madness when you've gone your whole life without it.
And sometimes, late at night while Kara softly snores beside her, she wonders if she's just lying to herself by thinking that Kara being in love and love are the same thing. That Kara wanting her now is the same as forever.
A soft kiss lands against her temple and Lena startles. When she turns her head, Kara is waking up slowly, blue eyes shining in the darkness.
"Babe, what's wrong? Can't sleep?"
"Oh. Guess not."
A smile tugs at Kara's mouth.
"Did I not tire you out enough? Should I try some more?"
The laugh escapes Lena before she can stop it, loud enough to feel out of place in the quiet bedroom.
“You did, darling. I was just thinking.”
"Oh yeah?" Kara shifts closer, her voice still thick with sleep. "Wanna tell me what?"
Lena draws in a slow breath.
No.
She doesn't want to tell Kara that she's terrified one morning she'll wake up and find all of this was borrowed time. That one day Kara will look at her and realize she deserves something easier. Something lighter. Someone less complicated than Lena Luthor.
She doesn't want to admit that even now, with Kara's arm draped over her waist and her warmth pressed along Lena's side, some part of her is still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Just work.”
“Lena, you can't be serious.” She pulls Lena even closer, so so close they're sharing the same breath. “It's two in the morning, sweetheart.”
“Hey, you knew that about me and you still wanted this.”
Lena almost regrets what she said, because what if Kara finally realizes that she does not want this? That she doesn't want to be dragged into the hedge maze that is Lena's life and mind?
“Yeah,” Kara smiles, right next to her ear, then kisses her temple again. “and I always will. Now, come on. Let me take your mind off of it.”
By the next morning, Lena has convinced herself she was being ridiculous. This relationship has been years in the making. Kara clearly never wanted somebody more. She needs to get rid of these bad thoughts, drilled into her skull by the Luthors.
She has learned that only actions talk. And Kara's actions are loud.
But the problem with actions is that Lena has a postgraduate degree in dissecting them. She places them under a microscope, looking for hairline fractures, looking for anything that proves what she's suspected her whole life: love can't be that easy.
It simply can't. Because if it is, then what was her life before this?
The luncheon is boring.
Painfully, spectacularly boring as most of these things are.
Lena has spent the last twenty minutes trapped in a conversation with a councilman who seems incapable of answering a question without first hearing himself speak for five minutes. She's smiling on instinct at this point, nodding at pauses that feel socially acceptable, while secretly debating whether throwing herself off the terrace would be considered unprofessional.
It's when she glances away for a moment that she spots Kara across the room, laughing at something one of the donors has said.
The sight of her is immediate relief, arriving so fast it almost embarrasses Lena. Because that's ridiculous, isn't it? The woman has been on the other side of the room for less than twenty minutes. And yet…
As though feeling the weight of her gaze, Kara looks up. Their eyes meet. And Kara doesn’t just smile at her. She beams. It’s a ridiculous, open-hearted expression that breaks through the entire room, completely indifferent to who might see it.
And this smile, this one Lena knows so damn well, it belongs to her. She feels it somewhere beneath her ribs.
And then, without breaking eye contact, Kara raises her glass in a tiny, private toast, innocent enough if not for the next part, because her lips start moving to shape words that look horribly like I love you.
Three words. Small enough to miss. Easy enough to mistake.
I love you.
Lena's heart stutters. The conversation around her fades into background noise. She stares, mind in knots.
Kara just smiles that sure smile of someone who knows exactly what she just did. Then somebody says something beside her and she's turning away, laughing again, gone as quickly as she'd looked.
Leaving Lena alone with the words. Or what she thinks were words. Because surely not. Surely Kara hadn't looked across a crowded room full of politicians and journalists and donors and simply mouthed I love you like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Did she actually say it? Lena thinks, her gaze dropping to the marble floor as a cold prickle of sweat forms at the nape of her neck. Or did I just translate a polite twitch of her mouth into the only words I’ve been dying to hear for weeks?
The doubt follows her home. It sits in the backseat of her car with her; it shines bright behind her eyelids when she closes them at night; it becomes tangible and breakable, true and fake all at once; it lingers in the margins of her data sheets while she tries to work next day; it consumes her days and nights.
Not because of the words themselves. Kara has said them before. When they were friends, when they were best friends, when they were... whatever it was they'd been before finally finding the courage to stop pretending.
But hearing it now it's different. There is a quiet certainty to it. An ease.
As though Kara hadn't been making a declaration at all. As though she'd merely been reminding Lena of something they both already knew. Something that would still be true tomorrow.
And next week.
And next year.
And the rest of their lives.
Wait! The rest…?
Lena's mind stutters, shocked with itself. Why would she think this? Why would she go that far?
Because Lena can handle the certainty of tomorrow, the plans for next week, hell, she can even handle the promise of next year! But forever? It feels too much like a vow they'd both have to uphold somehow.
But IF Kara was indeed saying I love you, she wasn't promising forever. She was promising now, then, someday, maybe. And Lena is definitely overthinking this whole thing.
A few days later, Lena is sitting on the couch with her laptop balanced on one knee when Kara emerges from the kitchen, phone in hand and an expression that suggests she's halfway through three different conversations at once.
"Hey," Kara says, finger still scrolling on the phone. "Everyone is complaining about how we haven't done a game night in a while…”
Lena hums absentmindedly, eyes still on the spreadsheet in front of her.
“How busy are you right now and would you hate me if I offered our place?”
The words hit Lena with enough force to make her miss an entire breath. She looks up so fast her neck snaps. Ouch. Wait. What?
Kara is still staring at her phone. Still scrolling. Entirely unaware that she's just detonated something in the middle of Lena's living room.
"So?" Kara tries again when no answer comes for longer than expected.
Lena blinks, "What?"
"Our place." Kara finally looks back at her. "For game night. Tonight."
The words sound no different the second time. Not Lena's apartment. Not ‘your’ place. Our place.
As though Kara has already quietly carved out a space for herself here and decided she intends to stay. As if the lines had been redrawn and Lena just now has learned where they are.
Lena's heart does something deeply unhelpful.
"Huh."
It's the only thing she manages. Apparently satisfied with this highly intelligent contribution to the conversation, Kara nods and returns her attention to her phone.
"Cool. Do you think it's a pizza or dumplings kind of night?"
Lena stares. Because Kara has already moved on. She's talking about food. Meanwhile Lena is still stranded two sentences ago.
"Both?" she offers weakly, incapable of deciding anything at that moment.
"See, that's what I thought."
Kara grins.
And just like that, she's gone again, disappearing back into the kitchen while arguing with someone in the group chat about whether chips count as a real contribution to game night.
Lena remains frozen on the couch.
Our place.
Maybe Kara doesn't mean anything by it. Maybe she's spending so much time there that the phrase slipped out by accident. Maybe it was just easier to say.
But maybe feels wrong.
Maybe belongs to unanswered questions and almosts and things Lena kept locked away where nobody could see them. It belongs to years of wanting Kara and pretending she didn't. To stolen glances and impossible feelings and all the things she never thought she'd be brave enough to hold.
This isn't a maybe anymore.
And that should be comforting.
Instead, Lena finds herself staring at certainty the same way she once stared at uncertainty; turning it over and over in her hands, terrified she's misreading the whole thing again.
It's late when it happens.
The city outside has gone quiet, reduced to distant headlights sliding between buildings and the occasional siren somewhere far below. Lena is lying on her side with her back pressed against Kara's front, suspended somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, her mind still stubbornly running through tomorrow's schedule despite the hour.
Kara shifts behind her, hand splayed over Lena's stomach possessively. It's a familiar movement by now, one Lena has become embarrassingly attached to over the past few weeks. Some nights she wakes up to find Kara halfway on top of her, as though even unconsciousness isn't enough to stop her from seeking Lena out.
A moment later, Kara's hand slides lower.
Lena barely notices at first because Kara is constantly touching her these days. A hand on her back. Fingers laced through hers. An arm around her waist while they're making coffee in the morning.
This should feel no different. Except Kara's hand finds the exact spot on her upper thight that drives her insane. Too close, and yet not close enough.
And Kara's finger keeps moving on that exact spot. Not aimlessly, though. Not the absent little circles she sometimes traces when she's distracted.
The movement is slow enough that she can follow it, deliberate enough that it doesn't feel accidental anymore. At first she only feels the warmth of Kara's fingertip against her skin, tracing a path she can't quite make sense of.
Then something in her stomach drops because that was a letter. And the next one is too.
Lena goes perfectly still.
No. Surely not.
But once the thought appears, she can't seem to make it disappear. She finds herself following the movement despite herself, recognizing shapes where there should only be skin and darkness, and before Kara even finishes, Lena already knows what word is being written.
By the time Kara reaches the final letter, Lena's heart is beating so hard she's convinced Kara must be able to feel it through her ribs.
Mine.
The word settles between them, invisible and impossible.
Lena stares into the darkness. No. That's ridiculous. Kara is asleep. Or at least she must be asleep, because the alternative is absurd.
Kara did not just write mine on her upper thigh in the middle of the night. People don't write possessive declarations on their girlfriends in the middle of the night.
And even if they did, Kara certainly wouldn't. Right?
Lena's stomach twists. Because obviously she has imagined the whole thing. Or misinterpreted it. Or accidentally assigned meaning to a series of meaningless movements because apparently that's what she does now.
Behind her, Kara's hand comes to rest on the exact spot where the final letter had been. The weight of it is almost unbearable. Lena stares stubbornly at the wall.
She does not turn around. She absolutely does not turn around.
Because if she does and Kara is asleep, then she's officially lost her mind. But if she turns around and Kara is awake...
Lena isn't sure that's any better.
Behind her, Kara's hand moves up and settles over Lena's stomach again, its rightful place. A second later, she leans forward and presses a sleepy kiss to Lena's shoulder before tucking herself even closer.
The gesture is so casual it almost hurts. As though nothing unusual has happened. As though she hasn't just turned Lena's entire brain into a crime scene.
Lena closes her eyes. She tells herself Kara was asleep. She tells herself she imagined it. She tells herself she's been overthinking everything lately and this is just another example.
But the explanation never quite lands, because long after Kara's hand goes still, Lena can still feel the shape of the letters against her skin.
And lying awake in the darkness, she finds herself wondering what might be worse: the possibility that Kara actually wrote the word, or the possibility that she didn't and Lena only wanted it badly enough to believe she had.
