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pippytmi · 2 years

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if ur still taking them #13 with supercorp for the prompts

It’s just past five in the morning when Kara blinks awake without knowing why.

She has become used to the sounds of early-morning commuters pattering through the halls, the rhythmic beeps of cars being unlocked downstairs, the coffee maker in the kitchen hissing like it always does when Lena uses it; at first she used to resent her roommate and all other early risers, but now she’s been able to sleep through it like nothing. So it puzzles her now, to be awake for no reason, and especially this time of morning.

“Kara?” comes a sudden whisper, and okay, that makes more sense—Lena sometimes has to wake Kara up whenever Kara accidentally blocks her car, and at this point Kara has maybe-sort-of become attuned to the sound of Lena’s footsteps. Even subconsciously, it seems.

Kara immediately sits up, unsuccessfully hiding a yawn behind her arm. “Hey, sorry, give me a second,” she says. Sometime during the night she’d swept the blankets half off the bed, and as a result she all but tumbles out of bed.

Lena is biting back a smile when Kara catches up to her in the doorway; her hair’s just a touch wet the way it always is after a blow-drying session, her makeup soft and pretty in the light of the hallway, the one that only has two bulbs instead of the usual four because the landlord keeps on making excuses not to come by.

“What happened to being up in time for a drive before the sun rises?”

“Did I say that?” Kara’s head slowly begins to clear, and it dawns all at once; it’s a Saturday. “Oh, shoot. The traffic!”

“Somehow, I think we will survive,” Lena says, and she brushes aside her damp hair and tilts her head down the hall. “I just wanted to make sure you were up. I’m going to pack for the ride if that’s okay?”

“Yeah, of course.” Kara reaches to adjust her glasses but realizes she’d forgotten to grab them in her haste to get up. “So is that a definitive no to the—”

“Nope, absolutely no flying,” Lena calls over her shoulder without so much as a pause, and Kara grins.

Kara has brought Lena to Midvale with her every holiday since they were roommates in college, and even though it’s been a few years since they graduated, the tradition has stayed—and so has Lena’s insistence that she will never, ever allow Kara to take her flying. (She cites a fear of heights, but Kara will forever argue that if Lena hadn’t been drunk the first and only time they tried, she might not have thrown up quite so much).

Today isn’t so much a holiday as it is her grandma’s birthday, but Grandma Danvers loves Lena more than half the family anyway; Lena had been the one to even receive the invite, and Grandma Danvers had lovingly penned at the bottom “bring your roommate if you want, I like that Kara girl” with a smiley face that Kara had taught her how to draw.

In any case, it’s still early enough to beat the morning rush, and Kara uses superspeed to cheat in getting showered and dressed. She also finishes packing everything into the car before Lena even has time to ask, including the half-packed snack bag that Lena is filling. Lena gives her a flat, unimpressed glare in response like she does every time Kara shows off, and Kara laughs because she knows Lena really doesn’t mean it.

They’re on the road before the streetlamps are even out, and as easy as it would be to fly to Midvale, Kara also really likes their drives—Lena plugs in her phone and makes Kara listen to whatever she wants, and she’ll idly tap along on the seat while Kara belts out her best Stevie Nicks impression. And as the drive gets long, Lena will dutifully hold a bag of chips so Kara can drive with one hand and snack with the other. It’s a system that just works, and one Kara would be content with for the rest of her life, probably.

(Not that she spends a lot of time thinking about that. Or anything.)

“Oh, Alex is calling,” Lena announces as they’re nearly halfway there; she’s been playing whatever games Kara has, while her own phone remains faithfully cycling Fleetwood Mac’s entire discography. “Hey Alex. Yeah, we’re on our way, sorry we didn’t come up last night but I was working late. Yeah? What about?” A pause, steady nodding, and then a sharp scoff. “Shut up, no she didn’t.”

“What?” Kara asks, but Lena pays her no mind.

“You are a liar,” Lena says. “Do you have me on speaker? What sick, twisted bet do you have running?”

“What’s happening?” Kara tries again, admittedly a bit more concerned now, and Lena does not spare her a single glance before she smacks Kara on the shoulder. “Ow.”

“You did not feel that,” Lena spares a single ounce of attention to say. “And focus on the road, please.”

“I am,” Kara grumbles, but she stays quiet as Lena finishes the conversation she was meant to be having with her sister.

Lena hangs up without so much as a goodbye, which must mean this is serious. “Alex says hi,” she huffs.

“…and is that all she said, or—?”

“And she’s being an ass,” Lena adds, as if that clarifies anything. “Apparently, your grandma was talking her ear off last night about us.”

“Us? You and me, us?” Kara casts a quick glance in Lena’s direction to gauge her expression, but it’s hard to tell; Lena has an uncanny ability to appear stone-faced, a habit she’s developed in order to keep her sanity whenever it comes to work.

“It’s my fault.” There’s a crack in demeanor there, not visible, but in the softening of Lena’s voice. “I was talking to your grandma last week about a surprise we had for her birthday.”

“Her present?” Kara and Lena had decided on a joint gift: a certificate naming a star for the Danvers family. It was the kind of gesture Grandma Danvers would adore, and it’d been a stroke of genius on Lena’s part. “What about it? Don’t tell me Alex had the same idea.”

“She wishes.” Another tell of Lena’s mood is the way she begins to fidget, the sound of the drum of her fingernails against Kara’s phone case ringing clear as “The Chain” fades out. “I guess your grandma is expecting the big surprise from us to be that we’re together. Like, as a couple.”

Kara has always prided herself on being a rather unfazeable person, but that—that is enough to make anyone choke on air. “Uh,” she stammers, “and is that—that’s something Grandma wants?”

“The way Alex said it, she’s about to throw a wedding on the spot,” Lena grimly replies, and Kara pales.

“Oh.” She mechanically switches lanes as they merge onto the final highway of their journey, mind racing all the while. And as if compelled, her eyes keep drifting back to Lena, who has turned to face the window. Lena’s jaw is set tightly, her shoulders tense, and Kara doesn’t understand why. Is Lena—repelled at the thought? Is she annoyed by Kara’s meddling family? Both answers are disheartening and she really, really hopes it’s neither.

Because, well, of course Kara’s thought about it before. Many times, even. She already loves Lena as a best friend, as a roommate, and there’s been moments when she smiles at Kara while adorably half-asleep and Kara wants to kiss her. Like, in a normal, not-crushing-on-the-best-friend-she’s-ever-had kind of way.

Kara clears her throat. “I’m sorry,” she breaks the quiet. (Or, more accurately, the opening of “Landslide.”) “If her saying that made you uncomfortable.”

“What? No, it’s not that.” Lena reaches across the seat to quickly rest her hand on Kara's shoulder in a silent apology. “I just, I don't want to disappoint her with our actual surprise.”

“I didn't even think of that,” Kara sighs. “Okay. Well, um…” She gnaws on her bottom lip, trying to form thoughts, and is distracted by the dumb bumper sticker of the car in front of them which reads I ❤️ my girlfriend but my wife hates her. And suddenly, that's when it hits. “Wait. What if we did tell her we're dating?”

“What?”

“Think about it,” Kara hastily continues. “I mean, she loves you so much, it makes sense why the two of us being a couple would make her happy. So what if we pretend we're together? That will make her day, and the next time we see her won't be until Thanksgiving so we can just make up an excuse for why we broke up or something then.”

Lena twists in her seat to face Kara, and there's no mistaking her disbelief. “You want me to lie to your grandma?”

“Not in a bad way,” Kara is quick to reassure her. “Just, in a, what-she-doesn’t-know-can’t-hurt-her kind of way.”

“That feels like the opposite of a birthday gift,” Lena says slowly. “For the record.”

Kara's eagerness deflates as quickly as the idea had come. “You're right,” she says, feels her face grow hot in embarrassment. “It's dumb, I don't know what I'm thinking.”

“I didn't say it was dumb—don't put words in my mouth.” And Lena rests a hand on Kara's wrist, skin soft and too warm because she always holds her hands right in front of the car vents while the heat is blasting. “I suppose if she doesn't find out it's a lie, well…it would be harmless.”

“Right,” Kara agrees automatically. “And she wouldn't find out.”

“Because you’re an absolute master of fooling people?” Lena has the ability to quirk an eyebrow, and she always, always, does it whenever there’s even a hint to the whole Kara-having-powers-and-being-an-alien thing. She takes way too much pleasure in teasing Kara over the fact that, well, the fact certainly was never a secret for long.

“I feel like you’re making fun of me.”

“I would never,” Lena hums, all too pleased, and she cranks up the music and gets that distant, faraway look to her eyes as she gazes out of the window. “It's your call, Kara Danvers. If you want me to be your fake girlfriend, then I'm in.”

“Why do you do that?” Kara wonders aloud before she even realizes she’s speaking. “Um, the whole…’Kara Danvers’ thing. You always have a habit of calling people by their full names.”

Lena shrugs. “I don’t know,” and she kind of smiles over her shoulder, a shy smile just hovering on the cusp of amused. “Is it weird?”

“No,” Kara says, and she feels her whole chest ache with the word, because what she means is I like it. And, maybe in the strangest turn of events, she understands what she really means is I like you.

By the time they arrive in Midvale, it’s bordering on noon; Kara stops to put gas while Lena insists on running inside the gas station for a soda, and she emerges holding a new pair of sunglasses and about three sodas too many—at least for her. Kara gives her grief over the fact that she buys all these sodas to taste and abandon, while Lena just rolls her eyes and points out it’s not a waste because Kara will drink them anyway.

(And she does, but not without having an internal freakout about placing her lips on the same can Lena did.)

“You know,” Lena says as Kara pulls up to her grandma’s house after a million Lena-requested stops, “we should probably have a story before we go inside.”

“Huh?” Alright, maybe not all the stops were Lena-related. Kara is currently four bites into a burger from the diner down the street and her attention’s pretty much laser-focused on how much she’s missed the food here.

“Of how we got together,” Lena clarifies, and Kara almost chokes.

“R-right,” she manages—coughs—out. “And we probably have to seem…couple-y.”

“Right,” Lena echoes, voice sort of tight, and Kara nervously adjusts her glasses.

“We can do this,” she says, more to reassure herself than anything. “It can’t be too different than being friends, can it? We’re good at that. Being friends.”

Lena awkwardly clears her throat. “Yeah,” she says. “Best friends.”

“Okay, then, how about we were hanging out—as friends do—and then…” Kara kind of trails off; it’s harder than anticipated, to spin tales about the entirely hypothetical situation of asking her best friend out. And it’s especially hard when Lena is looking at her, biting her bottom lip in a way that has Kara zeroed in on her mouth. “No, scratch that. We need a real story.”

“What do you mean?” Lena frowns. “The whole thing isn’t exactly real, so…”

“It still needs to be believable.” Kara sits up straighter, the perfect image already forming. “We can say we started dating two months ago, when you went on a blind date with Victoria-or-whatever, except in our fake story we say that I got jealous and blurted out I had feelings for you. And obviously you liked me back, or else this would have ended very awkwardly.”

Lena shoots her a very fond, and very exasperated, look. “I know you know her name is Veronica.”

“—and,” Kara goes on, ignoring the comment, “we kept it quiet because we wanted to take it slow. Since, you know, our friendship comes first.”

“Obviously,” Lena says. “So we have the story, but what about the…acting?” She grimaces slightly. “God, it sounds so sketchy the more we discuss it.”

“Only if you make it that way, Lena,” says Kara with a straight face, and Lena balls up a diner napkin and throws it at her. “Hey!”

Before she can initiate a proper war using whatever tools are at her disposal (a Slim Jim being an especially enticing makeshift sword), Kara’s phone starts ringing again; it’s Alex, and Lena answers because of course she still has Kara’s phone in her hand and not her own.

“Hi, Alex.” A pause. “Yes, we’re outside, how did you know?” Another frown, this time deeper. “Ew, why are you watching us? That’s creepy. Tell—tell Maggie I can hear her. And is that—” All at once, Lena bursts into a laugh. “Hi, Grandma Danvers. No, Alex is a liar, you know she is. Kara is just pretending she isn’t eating lunch for the second time before she comes in to raid your pantry.”

“Hey,” Kara repeats, and Lena crinkles her nose at her and just keeps on smiling.

“Okay. Uh-huh. Bye.” Lena finally passes her phone back. “Looks like it’s showtime. Are you ready for this?”

“Yes,” Kara says firmly. Then, “Wait, let me finish eating first.”

Afterwards, as they stumble out into the dust and dirt, Kara watches Lena—Lena, who wears Kara’s flannels with the sleeves rolled up, who insists on a full face of makeup even when it’s just Kara’s family she has to be with, who consciously reviews every step carefully so she will not step on any bugs. She gives a frightened yelp as a bee flies past, stumbling back automatically, and Kara is immediately there to steady her.

“Can I hold your hand?” Kara finds herself asking, and Lena’s face turns a soft pink when she says yes, and Kara doesn’t even know if it’s due to the heat or some other reason.

Suddenly it’s like she is a teenager again, all fumbling fingers and sweaty palms, but Lena is remarkably unfazed. She just squeezes Kara’s hand tighter, allows Kara to grandly sweep open the front door, laughing at the way Kara trips over the loose porch step as if absolutely nothing is different.

Grandma Danvers is all over them in an instant. “I knew it!” she crows. “You two have been keeping this from me, haven’t you?! Oh I’m so happy for you both!” She’s hugging them before Kara can even drop their bags, and from over her head, Alex is mouthing you motherfucker because she most certainly must have placed some sort of bet about this.

“Grandma,” Kara whines, as is her obligatory right as a grown woman being smothered. “Who says we’ve been keeping anything from you?”

“It’s one thing to be keeping secrets, child, but another to lie about it,” Grandma Danvers huffs. “Lena, you’re sure you want this one?”

“Grandma!”

Lena does not bother to hide her blatant amusement. “Unfortunately, yes,” she says, making a show of batting her eyelashes up at Kara, and Kara swallows hard because she’s just—very close. Close enough that she could almost kiss her.

“Gross,” Maggie chimes in, and Lena flips her off behind Grandma Danvers’ back (because as far as she knows, Lena Luthor is the saint among their group). “But I totally called it. Alex owes me twenty bucks.”

“You’re betting on my love life?” Kara asks, half-scandalized and half-unsurprised. “Does Eliza know about this?”

“Eliza also owes me twenty bucks,” Maggie says all-too-proudly; now Kara finds it in herself to be a tad concerned.

“Well,” Lena cuts in, “this is a very…touching reunion, but not why we’re here.” The Lena Luthor that Kara knows has always been able to charm anyone, and she can commandeer a room without trying, but this is the Lena that Kara likes the best—the person whose face practically glows as she hugs Kara’s grandma. “Thank you for having me, Grandma Danvers. Happy birthday.”

“Oh, you know you’re always family, sweetheart,” she replies. “Even if you and Kara weren’t dating, you know I’d pick you first.”

“I’m still here,” Kara is sure to remind her, and Grandma Danvers just laughs and shoos her off to carry Lena’s bag upstairs. This, of course, is what causes her brain to start snowballing. If they’re “dating,” the family will undoubtedly expect Lena to sleep in Kara’s room tonight. And then they’ll have to share the bed. Together. Very close to each other.

(And together).

Lena comes to find her eventually. “I can’t help but notice you didn’t raid the fridge yet,” she says. “And we’ve been here almost half an hour, so…you must be sick, or possessed, I’m assuming?” Teasing as her words are, her voice is decidedly gentler, an unspoken question held in the way she waits patiently at the doorway.

Kara sort of blinks back. “Yeah, no, I—I’m getting to it,” she says. I’m okay is what she means, and even as she’s sitting on her childhood bed and clasping her hands too tightly between her knees, she hopes Lena gets it.

She must, surely, because Lena’s shoulders relax. “Okay,” she says, and takes a seat beside Kara. “Do you feel weird about what happened?”

“Not really,” Kara says. Pauses. “Maybe? I don’t know. I don’t know how I feel right now. I thought we could just come in here and pretend and we would all laugh and move on and—and nothing would change. I mean, nothing has changed,” she’s quick to add.

Lena rests her hand on Kara’s thigh. “I get it,” she admits. “It’s weird. I never thought your family would like the idea of us dating so much.”

“Right! It is weird!” Kara laughs a little too loudly. “Um, not the idea of us dating, just that they’re really on board. With it.”

“Exactly!” And Lena’s—looking right at Kara now, green eyes framed in mascara that’s a little smudged from falling asleep in the car, so beautiful that it makes Kara’s heart skip a beat. “So, um, are you ready to keep on playing along?”

“Definitely,” Kara promises, and she feels the itching need to brush a flyaway strand of hair behind Lena’s ear, and so she does it. “Thank you, for this. You’re…a really good friend.”

“Your best friend,” Lena corrects, not in the usual smartass way that she would say it, but quietly—quietly, like a reassurance they both need, and even as the space between them seems to grow smaller and the air feels heavier on their shoulders, they don’t look away.

“Yeah,” Kara whispers. “Always.”

(And she knows—she knows—that it is definitely not just friendship they’re talking about here.)

#had to write this for u too obviously ❤️#i had to cut it v awkwardly but MAN this was fun!!! tysm :')#supercorp #supergirl #i need a fic tag #lyssa #this is for the prompt: 'my grandma is in love with you and she lives far away #so why not pretend to be a couple for the few days we see her'#i could have written a whole 10k fic on this this is DANGEROUS its why i dont take prompts ...#i have zero (0) self control ok

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