Kara’s frown deepens. She pouts up at her best friend as Lena pushes up from the couch to refill their glasses, bottom lip at maximum extension. “You guys have a group chat without me?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Lena calls from the kitchen over the sound of pouring wine. “Tell me more about this quiz.”

Kara huffs. “You know I can’t be that easily distracted, right?”

Lena crosses back to the couch, depositing their drinks on the coffee table and flopping down beside her. She presses close, curling into Kara’s side in a cloud of expensive perfume. “Of course you can’t, darling,” Lena soothes, stroking a consoling hand over her forearm as she drops a large bag noisily into Kara’s lap. “Look, popcorn.”

Kara beams, ripping into the snack and devouring it with gusto. “Okay, so, the quiz,” she mumbles around a loud mouthful. “I guess we should take it separately? Nia wants as many guinea pigs as possible.”

Lena nods, settling in at Kara’s side as she unlocks her phone. She’s really close, and she smells really good, and her teal cashmere sweater is really soft against Kara’s skin so she makes the executive decision to hook her chin back over Lena’s shoulder. Just, like, for convenience.

“Hey!” Lena’s fingers dig lightly against her ribs, and Kara squirms. “No cheating.”

“How am I gonna cheat?” she huffs, but pulls her head back anyway, settling for hooking her pinkie through Lena’s belt loop instead. “This is a quiz designed to tell me who I should marry: my sister, my sister-in-law, my honorary father, my little brother, or his girlfriend. The results are gonna be pretty funky whichever way you slice ‘em.”

“Still,” Lena hums, wiggling her socked feet beneath Kara’s thigh. “Eyes to yourself, Ms Zor-El."

The loft falls silent as they tap away at their respective screens. She has to hand it to Nia; this quiz is no walk in the park. She spends a solid ninety seconds deliberating between pico de gallo and guac on her tacos, and is just making a mental note to tell Nia to add an all of the above option to every question when Lena sucks in a sharp breath, lets it out in a giggle.

“What?” Kara asks, craning her neck to get a look at the other woman’s screen. “Did you finish already? Who did you get?”

Lena’s still laughing, head tipped back, the elegant line of her throat exposed. Kara forces her eyes away from the arc of creamy skin, reaching over to pluck Lena’s phone from her limp fingers.

“Dreamer?” she all but shrieks, reading the name on the screen once, twice, three times. “You? And Dreamer? You and Dreamer? Dreamer?”

“Apparently so,” Lena laughs, head tipping back against the cushions. “Do you think Nia set herself as the only possible answer?”

“Apparently not, since I just got matched with Sentinel.” Kara shudders, the mere suggestion too icky to contemplate for long. She stares at Lena, who’s still chuckling.

“I can’t believe you got Dreamer,” Kara huffs, teeth grinding. “That’s ridiculous. I’m gonna tell Nia her quiz doesn’t work.”

Lena presses her lips together, holding back a smirk. Kara’s eyes get stuck there a moment; on the pretty pink sweep of plump flesh, the delicate bow, the deep plum tint left over from her wine.

“Why is it so ridiculous?” Lena chuckles, white teeth digging into the plush of her bottom lip. Kara’s eyes follow the indentation, the willing yield of her flesh to the pressure. She watches the way Lena’s mouth moves, entranced by the formation of words she’s barely registering.

When Lena’s mouth stops moving altogether, Kara manages to tear her eyes away only to find her best friend is staring at her pointedly, looking decidedly unimpressed.

Right. Lena had asked a question.

“It just— it’s wrong,” she manages at length, feeling a little like she’s having to manually fire her own synapses just to make her brain focus on anything besides the sight of Lena’s mouth. “The quiz is obviously faulty.”

“Why?” Lena repeats, a hint of indignation beginning to bleed into her tone. “I love Nia very much. There are certainly worse matches.”

“Yeah, but there’s also way better ones,” Kara insists. The collar of her shirt feels too tight all of a sudden, the room too hot and the air too stifling.

One perfectly manicured eyebrow quirks. “Such as?”

Kara opens her mouth. Closes it again. Opens it once more. “Well, I mean—”

Lena’s brow lifts another quarter inch. “Yes?”

“Lena, come on.” She doesn’t know why she’s so adamant on making this point. She just knows that Lena and Nia, it’s— it’s wrong. She just needs Lena to see that too. “You can’t honestly— Rao, if you were going to marry any of us it wouldn’t be Dreamer, it would be—”

Her jaw snaps shut with an audible click that echoes through the suddenly silent living room.

Kara’s heart is pounding. Her fists are clenched around the corners of an unsuspecting throw pillow, her breaths coming in short, ragged bursts. She becomes aware of this, mainly, because of how conspicuous her own noisy exhales are in comparison to Lena. Lena, who all of a sudden doesn’t appear to be breathing at all.

“Who?”

Lena’s voice is barely a whisper. In the unearthly quiet of the loft, it feels deafening.

Kara swallows, sandpaper rough. Doesn’t answer. Can’t.

Lena’s gaze is so heavy it feels like a physical touch. “Who, Kara?”

“I—” Her voice cracks. She clears her throat, takes a deep breath. “I don’t—”

Lena’s voice is a lit fuse, a thunderstorm on the horizon. “If not Nia, then who?”

The tension stretching the space between them pulls taught, wrought as overworked metal.

The goldfish clock on the wall counts the silent passage of time. Twenty seconds. Thirty.

She watches Lena. Lena watches her. Her lips aren’t smiling anymore. They’re pressed together, braced and tight.

Every molecule of air in Kara’s lungs shudders out at once. Her chest caves, shoulder slumping. The thread between them snaps, disappearing back into the ether. “I don’t know.”

Lena’s eyes widen a little, then narrow. The line of her jaw hardens infinitesimally. “Well, then. Maybe you shouldn’t be in such a hurry to pass judgment.”

Kara nods, cowed. Curls in on herself, hugging the pillow to her chest. Nia’s quiz doesn’t seem so fun anymore. In fact, their whole evening feels sour, curdling rotten in the pit of her stomach.

The movie restarts. Lena’s gaze is fixed on the screen but she isn’t watching, not really. Her eyes don’t follow the action, don’t move, don’t even blink.

Kara watches her, throat clogged with the contents of her slashed-wide heart, afraid to set it free lest its welcome be less than warm.

They don’t speak until the movie ends, some bland easy-listening tune rolling over the credits. It’s barely gotten to the first chorus when Lena shifts, rooting through the blankets for her discarded phone and reaching for her purse on the coffee table.

Kara sees the dismissal, the looming escape, in the tense lines of Lena’s shoulders. Hears it in the fraught silence between them before Lena even says a word. “Well, I should probably—”

Panic flares hot through her muscles and suddenly, vicious as a lightning strike, the dam behind Kara’s teeth cracks.

“Me,” she interrupts, desperate and half-wild.

Lena freezes, halfway off the couch, one foot planted on the floor while the other pushes awkwardly against the couch cushions. “What?”

“God, me.” She doesn’t want to say it again. She says it again anyway. “Not Nia. Me.

Lena’s mouth falls open, a soundless breath escaping her. Her toes twitch against the couch cushions. “What— what are you saying?”

Kara takes a deep breath. The dam has cracked, now. Little point trying to hold back the flood.

“I’m saying, if you’re gonna take a stupid quiz about which of the Superfriends you should marry then the right answer – the only answer – is me.” Kara bites hard at the inside of her cheek. The sting helps to centre her, calms her rapid breathing enough to get the words out. “I’m saying that if you were to marry anyone, anyone in the galaxy, then I’d want— I’d hoped it might be me.”

For a long moment, Lena doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Only stares at Kara, wide-eyed.

Then, slowly, achingly slowly, she sinks back onto the couch beside her. Across the desolate chasm between their bodies, their knees brush. Lena’s voice is very, very quiet. “I’d hoped it might be you, too.”

Kara’s breath hitches. Lena’s eyes are so green it almost hurts to look at them. “Yeah?”

Lena’s mouth, always captivating, quirks into the beginnings of a smile so radiant it could outshine the brightest sun. “Yeah.”

Kara swallows. Snakes her fingers out to where Lena’s rest on the cushion between them, twining tight. “Wow,” she breathes, breathless and still a little disbelieving. “Wow. So, are we— are we really doing this?”

Lena chuckles, squeezing their joined hands. “What, getting married?”

Kara flushes, a heady suffusion of white-hot joy coursing through her veins. “I mean, maybe we could start with dinner,” she chuckles, and Lena nods. Kara tilts her chin until they’re eye to eye. Lets the last blissful secret of her heart run free. “But, one day? Absolutely.”

Lena’s cheeks flush a delicate pink, eyelashes fluttering. “Deal.”

It’s natural, then, the way Lena folds into her. The way their bodies slot together on the couch like interlocking helices, Lena’s head on her shoulder, arms around her waist. Kara encircles her ribcage in turn, holding her tight, peppering the sweet planes of her face with the lightest dusting of kisses. She revels in the softness of Lena’s skin beneath her lips, the way her cheeks heat beneath the tender ministrations into a blush Kara can feel against her mouth.

“I cannot believe,” Lena hums, knuckles tracing the planes of Kara’s stomach through her shirt, “that after six years the thing that finally got us to this point was Nia Nal’s taco quiz.”

Kara snorts, nosing into Lena’s hairline to inhale the warm untempered essence of her. “God, I know,” she chuckles, pulling Lena a little tighter against her. “We’re ridiculous.”

Lena hums, burrowing against her chest, and Kara thinks she could stay here forever quite happily,actually. That she might never need anything else again.

A thought strikes her suddenly and she tenses, hard enough that above her, Lena does too. She raises her head so their gazes can meet, green eyes wide and apprehensive. “What is it, darling?”

“Did you choose salsa rojo or salsa verde for your tacos?” Kara rushes out, wide-eyed. “Because now I'm worried I made the wrong call, what if—”