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The first time Kara gives Lena a gift (an actual gift, intentionally, that’s not food, with wrapping paper and a bow), she can’t read Lena’s reaction.
They’re in Lena’s office, where just a couple weeks ago (two weeks and four days, to be exact) Kara had held her breath, slipped off her glasses and shown Lena the suit. That evening, Lena had stilled the same way as she was now. Like glass, Kara had thought the first time - but this second time, now that Kara’s less encumbered by nerves, she can see that it’s more like ice, emotions moving rapidly like water just beneath the surface.
The last thing Kara wants is for things to freeze completely, so she fills the space the best way she knows how: she rambles. She strings words together haphazardly, her eyes focused more on watching Lena’s reaction than on how well she’s conveying how she’d noticed Lena looking at the book display the last time they were out getting coffee together.
When she’s mumbling through a tangent on sustainable printing methods, she hears a soft, sharp sigh and looks up to see Lena breathe in deep. It’s coupled with something swiftly shifting across her face, her shoulders, her feet; her eyes tighten as if staring down a crossroads. Kara’s words trail off into her umpteenth apology, and waits for Lena to choose.
“Thank you,” Lena finally says. It’s stiff, clipped - Kara hasn’t ever heard those two words spoken with such trepidation before. Kara’s careful when she smiles, something in her recognizing the moment as a gift in itself.
*
Lena ‘returns the favor’ the next day with a smile and two tickets to a concert that had sold out minutes after tickets had gone on sale. Kara accepts it on the condition that Lena be the one to accompany her (Kara catches the delighted smile that Lena quickly hides).
A quiet falls and Kara speaks into it without really thinking, just knowing that she has to let Lena know. So she forms her words as softly as she can, so that the ice doesn’t form again on the surface of those cheeks, tries to explain how she didn’t, doesn’t, will never expect anything in return. “Just being with you is enough,” she says, hoping that the words are enough to express this feeling growing, burning inside her.
Kara hears a small sound and looks up, finds not ice but a completely different expression on Lena’s face. It reminds her of one of the first times her breath was well and truly taken away - a dawn that had spread out over the Pacific while she had been floating high in the sky, watching the sun sparkle across the water. She had wanted to dive into it, the water, the sun rays, had felt so warm and both at peace and energized. She’d chalked it up then to adrenaline and lack of sleep.
She could do the same here but she knows it’s not the same (that she’ll never be the same now having seen this smile dawning on Lena’s face), does the best she can to file this too away with all the other gifts that Lena has unconsciously given her.
*
Kara is careful after that not to put too much of a show around the not-gifts she gives Lena - a bag of personalized M&Ms given offhandedly after lunch (deliberately omitting how long it had taken her to decide on the color; omitting also why she landed on green); a blanket, soft and shared often between the two of them; a piece of jewelry (that Kara almost reveals she got because it reminded her of Lena’s eyes but stumbles over a lame excuse of watching a documentary about moss).
There’s still a tension whenever Lena reaches out to accept what’s been given, the barest hint of ice that hardens her eyes, stiffens her jaw, the arc her fingers never quite smooth. But the recovery is faster each time. It takes several weeks but Kara finally does receive a real smile in return.
Kara takes each moment as they’re stripped free of the trappings and wrappings of the weight on Lena’s shoulders, tucks them away on the shelf of her mind with every other gift, every other cherished memory with this brilliant, beautiful, brave woman.
*
When Kara had asked Lena to go with her to the county fair, she never said it was a date (had attempted to, had honest-to-Rao tried, but the words had gotten caught in her throat, so much so that Lena had worried she was choking). But the way their arms keep brushing and the way their eyes keep lingering with each touch (the excuses becoming more flimsy as the night goes on - a bit of cotton candy in Lena’s hair, Kara’s wrinkled collar, a crumb on the stretch of cotton over Kara’s chest), Kara knows that Lena knows that she wants this to be a date.
What makes Kara even more sure is that Lena has said nothing, hasn’t corrected her, hasn’t asked to define anything. In fact, Lena has all out encouraged her with light teasing, slightly less light competition, and heavier teasing (Kara’s experienced in Lena’s verbal teasing, her tactile teasing less so, but Rao are the eyebrows unfair).
Even with all that though, it’s the sight of Lena turning soft at a stall full of stuffed animals that tugs at Kara’s heart the strongest. It’s quick, the glance Lena sends towards the display; she pulls herself away just as quick. But there’s always some piece of Kara watching Lena and as if on cue, she waits a moment more and sees Lena’s eyes slowly track back towards the stall. It’s that second glance that makes Kara’s mind up for her and she’s stepping up to the strongman game before Lena can even register that she’s left her side.
When Kara’s finished, she finds Lena with her eyes narrowed in on one of the dart games, muttering strategy to herself that nearly makes Kara laugh. She holds it back, holds out the bear she’d won instead.
The reaction she gets is not at all what she’d expected. It reminds Kara of a lake frozen over in winter, cracked from something deep within, splinters stretching, pushing across the surface. Alarm rings through Kara's mind, more so when she catches the tremble in Lena’s chin. “For me?” Lena asks. There’s fear but also wonder in those two word, and a weight that lodges Kara’s heart into her throat; she somehow manages a nod.
Lena cradles the bear carefully against her chest, silent as she arranges its limbs. At the glint of the first teardrops, Kara steps in close, gathering her into her own arms. “I’m sorry,” Kara apologizes fervently, “I didn’t mean -”
Lena’s hand grips at her chest, just above her heart. “It’s okay - I just -” she closes her eyes, takes a deep, shuddering breath, curls further into herself and into Kara. “Can you take me home?”
“Of course.” It takes but a moment to find a quiet place to lift off, a few more before they land on the balcony of Lena’s penthouse. Kara’s nerves lessen slightly when Lena lingers in the circle of Kara’s arms, her eyes not quite meeting Kara’s as she asks, quietly, if Kara would like to stay for a bit. It’s a question that’s been passed between them often enough that Kara’s nod is automatic but the sight of Lena clutching the stuffed bear to her chest coupled with the light tug of Lena’s fingers on the sweater fabric in the crook of Kara’s arm that softens her answer (her hands, her heart) even more than usual. “Yes,” Kara says - ‘Always,’ she thinks.
They’ve settled on the couch, mugs of tea in hand, blanket spread across both their laps, the stuffed bear next to Lena, when Kara hears Lena take that deep breath again. She reaches across the space, deposits their mugs onto the table, and takes Lena’s hand. It’s instinct now, this need to reassure, to make sure Lena knows that whatever crossroads she’s facing, she’s not alone ( ‘I’m here,’ Kara tries to convey through her hands, from her heart, ‘I’m here if you want me, I’m here for you always, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here’ ).
Lena takes a shuddering breath, two, and on the exhale says, “The last person to give me a bear was my mom, my birth mother.” Her fingers spread idly atop the bear’s stomach. “He was about this size, had a little hat that made him look like a knight. Sir Bear, I called him.” The smile that lands on Lena’s lips is faint. “She gave him to me on my birthday. I remember her saying that he was to help for times when I wanted to feel brave. That it was okay to be scared. And when that happened, you could always borrow someone else’s bravery. That one day, someone else would borrow mine.”
Lena’s eyes grow distant and Kara can’t help the need that rises in her to tug Lena back towards the shore. “What happened to him?” she asks, as gentle as she can.
A sigh leaves Lena slowly as she runs her fingers over the bear’s ears. “I lost him when I arrived at the Luthors. Though, ‘lost’ might be too generous a word. I have some ideas of what might have happened.” The dark downturn of Lena’s tone and the cutting edge of her jaw gives Kara hint enough of what she’s thinking.
Kara reaches out with her other hand as well, tugs on the bear’s foot, lets her fingers brush against Lena’s. “That must have been lonely,” she says, knowing it doesn’t even begin to encapsulate what Lena had gone through (for all her study and practice, Kara still finds English frustratingly limiting in expressing her deepest feelings).
Lena tangles their fingers together tighter and it’s as if Kara hears an echo - ‘I'm here, I'm here’ - of both the feeling and the words, each reverberation reinforcing, restoring, reaffirming.
“It was.” Lena’s tone is matter of fact, steady atop the support built between them. “I remember thinking, if I don’t have anyone to borrow bravery from, then I just won’t get scared.”
Kara can’t help the soft, sad sound that escapes her. “Oh, Lena.” In her mind’s eye, she can see the child Lena was, ever logical, constantly overcoming and overachieving, doing the best she could to carry the facts foisted onto her with that familiar lift of her chin and a flash in her eyes that would have marked her far older than the child she was, then.
Lena’s smile mirrors the sharp edges of the child she was forced to be, then softens into something fully present, tender. “And then I met you.” There’s something in the way she says it, like a fact in a history book, but the ripples are felt now, deeply, here in the present. It warbles Lena’s voice slightly, an inevitability, a surrender.
“You chipped away at my armor with your warmth and your earnestness,” she says, a blush rising to her cheeks but her eyes lift with it, “You convinced me to trust in people and friendship again.” But it is here that her gaze, her voice falters: “And against my better judgment, I did. And it forced me to come to terms with the truth: that I have always been scared, and will always be scared. Especially when it comes to you.”
By the end of it, Lena’s voice is a whisper, the spark of courage dying out, an ember that Kara wishes desperately to protect, to coax back to life. “There’s nothing to be scared of,” she says, trying to catch Lena’s eyes. “It’s just me.”
Lena reels back, offense writ sharp on her face, the edges of her eyes reddening with tears. “‘Just’ you?” Her hands have found their way into Kara’s shirt, curled into fists within the cotton. “You - you are the best thing that has ever happened to me, the greatest gift to my life and I -” A shudder wracks through her and the strength in her arms dies out, head tipping forward onto Kara’s shoulder. Kara feels the cloth dampen there, under the strangled whisper: “I don’t know what I would do if I were to lose you.”
Kara holds her, the instinct now written in her bones, wraps her arms as tight as can around Lena. “I’m right here,” she says, and she hears the echo of herself in her ear. She fits her palm against the back of Lena’s neck, her lips to Lena’s temple as she murmurs a new promise: “You won’t lose me.”
Lena stills, but Kara can hear her heart stumble, her breath thin, feels her fingers clench ever so slightly. Kara waits, holds her own breath as well.
Finally, Lena lifts her head, pulls back, still within her arms, just enough to see her face, enough that Kara sees her eyes drop to her lips. “Even if …?”
The question is barely voiced but it’s one Kara is familiar with, one they’ve staunchly been avoiding (for years, if she’s being honest, since they first met). There’s a thunder in Kara’s ears - two hearts, rapid, reaching, and she knows, knows that there is only one way forward.
Kara slides her hand around to rest against Lena’s cheek, careful and sure. “Even if you love me,” she breathes into the space between their lips. With her other hand, she uncurls one of Lena's fists, guides the palm to her own chest, over her heart. Take it, she thinks as she loses herself in the depths of Lena’s gaze, Take my bravery, my hope, my heart. Anything; everything: It’s yours, has always been yours. She brushes away a tear just escaped from Lena’s eye and says, “Because I love you too.”
She feels Lena sigh just before their lips meet and it’s the softest touch they’ve exchanged between them. But it’s enough for Kara to feel it, the way a missing piece, a lost soul, sinks into its home. They kiss again, and again, carefulness giving way to wonder, giving way to relief, giving way to joy, giving way to being found, and whole.
*
The next time Kara gives Lena a gift, the smile Lena gives her in return is accompanied with a lingering kiss and sparkling eyes that remind Kara of sunlight over melting snow, dawn over the ocean, mornings in the loft - moments that ground her in the gift of the here and now, together.