Chapter Text
The first movie Kara Danvers ever saw was a silent one. Of course, at that time her name was Kara Zellman, and she was much different than the woman she’d eventually grow up to be. Her mother takes her to an art-house theater to see a film where a woman dances next to saturn and a bullet lands on the face of the moon. It plays out in front of her like a somebody else’s fever dream. Her mother loves it, and she’s delighted at her mother’s love, as most 6 year old girls are, and after she has a chocolate milkshake so cold it makes her head hurt.
For a long time after that, Kara sometimes feels like her life is a movie that she’s watching from outside her body. Here is her childhood bedroom, made of custom oak furniture and a mural painted on a far wall. Here is her mother lifting her above her head as a baby, her squeals of delight, her father cooking a grilled cheese in the kitchen, thinking about what they’ll watch on TV that night. The camera zooms in on his face. He looks a little old for his age, but calm and happy. The audience knows from his content smile that he loves his wife and daughter.
Her tent, her bedroom at the group home, the couch at Clark’s apartment. He puts her to bed on sheets with Ariel from The Little Mermaid although she’s 14 years old and kisses her forehead. She’s too big for that kind of thing, but she lets it happen all the same. He turns off all the lights in the room and although she needs a nightlight, has needed one for the last year and a half, she doesn’t say anything. This time, instead of laying awake until morning, she’s able to follow him through the camera from the living room to the hallway to his own bedroom. The shot is of the back of his head, his sturdy shoulders, the broad slope of his body. He sits on his bed for a long time, hands folded on his knees, looking up at his ceiling fan.
Kara’s movie has no words, but she’s sure the audience will understand what it all means, maybe even better than herself. They’ll see Eliza’s face, Alex’s short, dirty nails, her bedroom, her final bedroom, with it’s too-big bed and old wood floors. It’s the kind of movie shot in long, languid scenes; the camera will linger over the fury-red, mottled skin of her forearm, over Alex’s stomach as she runs screaming into the ocean with Vicky Donahue, over Jeremiah’s casket, an extension of the audience’s eyes, their hands. When she and Alex hug, they’ll sigh indulgently, when she leaves for her first semester of college, they’ll press tissues to their damp eyes.
“You okay, Kara?” Startled out of her reverie, Kara jerks her head up and off the glass of the passenger side window. She can tell that they’ve gone from California to Oregon by the change in scenery; the trees are denser, more foreboding looking. Alex hasn’t taken her eyes of the road, which is for the best. It’s long and empty ahead.
“I’m fine.” Kara stretches as if she’s just woken up from a long sleep. Alex’s eyebrows twitch together, then relax.
“You’re usually chattier on our car trips. What’s on your mind?” Kara is silent. “Are you going to make me guess?” She presses her forehead back onto the window glass. “Okay, uh. You’re worried about the paper.”
“No. I mean, sort of. I really want to impress Professor Grant.”
“I wouldn’t stress about it too much—you said she liked your stuff when you took her class last semester. And, I mean, you’re awesome. Remember when we were kids and you wrote all those stories for the cul-de-sac paper and circulated it around the neighbors?”
“We weren’t kids, I was 16. And I did it because I didn’t have any friends to hang out with. And this is obviously different—do you know how many freshmen have a chance to get their own beat on the campus paper?”
“I’m guessing not too many.”
“Exactly. If I can impress her with a good pitch, I’ll be set. Even if it is only for crime. But I have that job with campus safety now, so I can like—chase down leads. And stuff.” She demonstrates this by making punching motions with her hands and then lifting her knee and banging it accidentally on the dashboard.
“There’s my Kara.” Alex takes her eyes of the road for one moment to flash her with a lopsided grin. Kara finds herself grinning back, leaning heavily into the nudge Alex gives her. They’re close to campus now, only about a mile away, maybe more. “What about your new roommate situation? Pretty crazy that Connie is transferring so quickly.”
“I mean, okay, yeah. I’m worried that I don’t know who I’m going to be living with this semester. Connie was a little funny but she was quiet and didn’t say anything about my arm.” She waves her right forearm in front of her face. There’s a small patch of scarred skin peeking out from the sleeve of her sweater on her thumb. “But, y’know, also yay that she got into Yale. It just sucks that I’m going to have to start changing in the bathroom all the time again.”
“Well, she was always kinda timid. Maybe your roommate will help you, I don’t know--get out of your shell a little bit.”
“Doubt it.” Kara says. “You know, this conversation has made me realize that I’m really just...nervous about everything, pretty much.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“But you know what? Actually, I think this is going to be my semester. I’ve got a cool new job—“
“I wouldn’t call picking up drunk kids in a golf cart cool, but yeah, okay.”
“—I’m top of your class in my major, I have Winn and James.” Alex pulls smoothly into the parking lot outside of Kara’s dorm building, a massive stone-faced thing. “Things are getting a little better, right?” Alex turns to look at her once the car is stopped, hands still on the steering wheel. She smiles, but it’s waning—Kara wonders if she’s trying to convince herself of this as much as she’s been trying to convince Kara over winter break.
“Right.” She says, corners of her mouth upturned.
Kara twists to snag her duffel from the back seat and wretches the door open, stepping out into the crisp mid-January air. The sky is grey and overcast, a common feature of winter in the Pacific Northwest. It’s still a few days until classes officially begin and the campus is eerily stagnant. “Look, Kara,” Alex begins as she comes up to stand beside her. “I worry about you, kid. I want you to focus a little on having fun this semester.”
“Yeah,” Kara replies faintly, giving Alex a half-smile. “Sure.”
“Maybe try going to a party or two. Experiment with drugs.”
“Mmhm.”
“Take advantage of your new job and your big sister living a train ride away to supply your dorm hall with alcohol.”
“Okay, Alex.”
“Seriously, Kara.” Alex places a hand on her shoulder and turns her to meet her gaze. “I don’t want you to let everything that’s happened ruin this moment in your life. You deserve to relax a little.”
“I know.”
Alex exits with a brief hug and a murmured ‘you know where to find me’ before she hops back into her car and cruises out of the parking lot, onto the road, and out of sight. Kara huffs out a breath that condenses in the air in front of her, slings the duffel over her shoulder, and tromps inside the back entrance of her dorm hall.
The hallway is uncharacteristically quiet. On a normal weekday, it would be buzzing with young, virile coeds getting into no good, but while it’s still the holiday break their RA won’t even be there until the next day. It feels liminal, almost otherworldly, like a grocery store after hours or waking up from a nap when the light outside has changed from day to night. Once she closes in on her room, she can tell that the only other person in McPhearson hall is apparently her new roommate. There’s a light on under the door, and when she enters Connie’s side of the space is completely changed. The double bed has different sheets, there’s different posters on the wall, and curtains draping the window seat between the two beds. Most glaringly, there’s frustrated, muffled female shouting coming from the bathroom. Whoever her new roommate is, she seems to already be present.
“Hello?” Kara calls out timidly, dropping her duffel on the floor near her bed. There’s a distinct bang in the bathroom, followed by the sound of somebody shuffling around. She clearly hears the words hold on, mom. Then, the door opens and a woman steps out, shaky. She has dark hair pinned up in a messy bun, mascara smudged on her cheeks, a phone in one hand with the other covering the receiver. By Kara’s estimation she’s a few inches shorter than her barefoot, wearing black high-waisted skinny jeans and a crop top with a large, loose knit cardigan engulfing the rest of her slight frame.
“Oh my god,” She says, her voice stuffy and wet. She presses her phone back to her face, says “Mom, I have to call you back--no--no-- goodbye, Lillian.” She disappears into the bathroom again, blows her nose. This time the door is left a little ajar and Kara sees her looking at herself intently in the mirror and wiping at her smudged mascara. She averts her eyes.
When she steps back out, she’s looking a little more human, although her eyes are still rimmed red and her face is sort of puffy in that way that happens after you’ve just been crying for a long time. “I’m sorry about that.” She apologizes. “My mom just caught me...well, she’s being unreasonable about something.”
“I totally get it.” Kara responds for no real reason. She doesn’t totally get it and can’t really say she’s ever been in a similar situation. But the woman offers her a small smile and she knows it was probably the right thing to say.
“You must be Kara, right, my new roommate?” She’s digging around next to her desk now, pulling out a pair of shoes and a purse. “I’m Lena.” She looks up to flash Kara with a winning, albeit vacant smile. “And I know this is kind of rude, but I actually have to run—I’ve made plans with some friends tonight, and—“
“It’s not rude at all, go ahead.” Kara waves her off and Lena smiles again, more easily this time. There’s still smudges of mascara on her cheeks, faint ones, aping the outline of tears. Lena flashes her a relieved look as she passes by her and to the door of their shared room. “Thanks, Kara. See you later.”
Kara stands in the stillness of the room for a moment, duffel bag still on her shoulder. She’s aware of the many layers of depopulation outside of her space; nobody in the hall around her, and very few people on campus outside of that. She, Winn and James already have plans for the next day so there’s no excuse to text them. She thinks about reaching out to Alex and maybe spending the night at her apartment— it’s not far, after all, and she knows Alex will turn around from wherever she is to come get her. But she doesn’t want to seem like a baby who can’t spend one night by herself in a familiar but still strange room.
She wishes all at once that Lena hadn’t left, that she’d stayed in the room with her, even if they had eventually just devolved into silence. As she thinks it she crawls into her bed, finds a stupid show on Hulu to watch and tries to turn off the non-essential functions of her brain. She reminds herself of what Alex and Eliza and Dr. Newbold have told her about the normality of inexplicable sadness, but rationalizing it is even less help now that usual. Kara still lays awake in bed until predawn, resting on her arm, listening to the ceiling fan drone on above her.
///
“Wait, wait, wait, go back to the part where your new roommate is Lena Luthor.” Winn is looking up at her in disbelief, hands gripping the bar of the weight above him. He’s got sweatbands on both wrists and his forehead. It’s probably unnecessary for pressing 40 pounds, but he’d insisted on it. Above him, Kara rolls her eyes. “‘Cause I’d like to hear that part again.”
“I told you everything I know.” Kara insists. She’s wearing a long-sleeved workout shirt and shorts and has both hands on the bar of Winn’s weights, ready to spot. “She’s my new roommate, and last night she had a nasty fight with her mom on the phone. Haven’t spoke to her since. Are you going to lift this or what, Winn?”
“I’m mentally prepping Kara, give me space. We can’t all be built like Grecian Gods like some present who will remain unnamed.” He glances pointedly at her, and then to James, positioned on a bench near them doing bicep curls on his left arm. “And while I continue to prepare to lift this...this...mountain, I will express again my disbelief that you are roommates with Lena Luthor.”
“ I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware she was a celebrity.”
“Dude, Lena somehow manages to be at like, every party on campus, eye makeup on point, crop top on point, and she wears sunglasses inside and at night. I don’t know how she pulls it off, but she does. Last semester, James was on a flip cup team with her and after they won they got a $25 gift card to Chili’s and Lena kissed him full on the mouth.”
James looks up, nodding. “It was awesome.”
“My point being,” Winn ducks out from under the weight and swings around so he’s sitting on the bench, baggy grey t-shirt hanging off his body loosely. Despite not having lifted anything, there’s a glossy sheen of sweat covering his forehead. Kara wrinkles her nose. “That Lena Luthor is like a campus unicorn. And now she’s your roommate. Come sit down with me, Ms. Danvers.” He pats the spot next to him on the bench and, though she rolls her eyes good-naturedly, she joins him. He has his phone out and is pulling up Instagram, selecting username lena_luhorss.
Winn selects the first photo on her feed and enlarges it. Kara recognizes Lena in the middle, smiling wide with her nose crinkled and her eyes closed, holding a mimosa; a far cry from the woman with mascara trails down her cheeks last night. There’s two women flanking her, one much taller with dark red hair and a face full of freckles, and another with a darker complexion and brown hair pulled into a top bun. “Those are her two best friends,” Winn explains. He points to the red headed one. “That’s Albie Feemster, and the other one is Maeve Davies. They both rushed Delta Chi and got in this semester, but they all used to live in a suite together. That’s probably why she moved in with you. And this,” He clicks away from the photograph and finds another in the same row, this time of Lena relaxing in the arms of a dark-haired man with a beard. He’s sheepish looking and handsome and wearing a roguishly unbuttoned white shirt and Chubbies. “Is her boyfriend Jack Spheer. Rumor has it they’ve been dating since the 5th grade. He’s the head of philanthropy at Pi Lam.”
“Wow.” Kara breathes out. “You still have to do 20 bench presses, though.”
“Kara!” Winn whines, slamming his phone down on his thigh. “Not fair!”
“I don’t make the rules.” She resumes her spotting position. “Ready? We’re going from 1.”
///
There’s a notification on her calendar for mid February telling her that her pitch is due. She eyes it wearily and it eyes her right back—true that it’s still a month away, but Kara is starting from scratch. The most recent interesting crime was a bear swimming in the cloisters fountain and being chased out by a janitor, and that was back in ‘86. Small, rural colleges just don’t lend themselves as naturally to nogoodnicks as some others might. She regards the screen for a second longer before letting her mind drift.
Although she wouldn’t admit it out loud to anybody, last night before she’d gone to bed she’d gone to Lena’s Instagram and looked at her story. There were three pictures, all of them seemingly taken in somebody’s basement, and one Boomerang of Lena doing a keg stand aided by her boyfriend. She considers looking at them again this morning, but thinks better of it. It’s a weird impulse, and although she’s no stranger to weird impulses, she’s able to resist this one well enough.
With Lena on her mind, she does a little research into campus Greek life. There’s nothing notable beyond the general shadiness that usually comes with fraternities and sororities—a sexual assault hearing there, a medical amnesty request there. She finds Jack Spheer’s profile on Pi Lam’s student affairs page and studies his photo for a long time. He’s certainly handsome in a kind of Byronic way—and so is Lena, she supposes. They’re probably a good fit for one another.
The rest of the day passes in a quiet blur. She goes to the gym again, lifts weights, delights in the stretch and pull she feels in her muscles and the mindless, rapid repetition of it. But her heart ultimately isn’t in it and she leaves early. She’s in bed by 9 PM in preparation for her early morning, a few vague pitches outlined in her google docs and the throb of her sore muscles grounding her firmly in reality. Dressed in a tank top and joggers, she folds herself into her comforter and rests her head on her scarred arm. Lena still isn’t back. Kara tries not to think too much about it.
///
When she finally forces her body to fall asleep, Kara has a very familiar dream.
She wakes up in a tent, surrounded on all sides by a dark sky without stars. She’s wrapped in a cocoon of blankets and there’s an oppressive heat closing in on her. She can’t see anything, but she can smell smoke and sulfur and she can hear their screams in the distance, calling her name, they’re always calling her name--
Unlike in the past, this time when she sits up in her bed and screams, somebody else screams back. When her eyes open in the real world, when she blinks back the tears, she sees a ghost that’s not a ghost backlit by the hallway light of her dorm. Her dorm. Of course she’s in her room, which means the woman in the doorway must be--
“Kara?” Lena’s voice is a slurred, tentative whisper. “Are you okay?”
“I’m--” Her sentence is cut off by her laboured breathing. She tries to dig into the back of her mind for the breathing exercises Dr. Newbold had taught her but comes up short, of course they’re never there when she needs them. “Can I have a glass of water?”
Lena doesn’t respond, but she grabs something off of her dresser and shuffles quickly into the bathroom. Kara sees the light go on, squints against it, and listens to the tap run. Lena returns to her bedside, and Kara realizes belatedly that she’s sweating, like, a lot, but her current panic overrides her embarrassment for the time being. She takes the cup, which she registers is the plastic kind you get from buying a $12 daiquiri at a novelty bar, and drinks the water down thirstily. Lena remains next to her the whole time, and Kara can feel her knuckles brushing against her thigh from where she’s gripping the bed.
She’s finished the whole cup of water and still wants more, but the embarrassment about being a sweaty mess is starting to catch up with her. Her sheets are soaked, but her breathing at least has evened out for her to say: “Thank you. For the water. And sorry about all of the screaming.”
“Don’t mention it.” Kara tries to focus on Lena’s face in the dark but can’t really see anything. “I kind of have to puke now, so.”
“Okay! Yeah, go ahead.” Lena shuffles off to the bathroom one more time, closing the door behind her. Kara can still see a sliver of light coming out from underneath, and shortly after she hears the wretched sound of vomiting, like somebody throwing a gallon of water into a plastic bag. She winces. It definitely sounds like a two day bender coming back up. It happens two, then three more times, and then there’s a 10 minute stretch of silence. Kara is still awake, still trying to bring her heart rate down, and when things settle she swings her legs out of bed and snags the cup Lena left at her bedside. She also takes a knit throw from the base of her bed.
Inside the bathroom, Lena is slumped over the toilet which is still, yuck, full of puke. Kara flushes it down, fills the cup with water, watches Lena’s back to make sure she’s still breathing, and then places the throw blanket around her shoulders. The commotion causes Lena to stir and look up. Kara’s face is probably still a mess and she definitely has sweat stains on the pits of her tank top, but to be fair Lena has a smudge of dried vomit on her upper lip and damp flyaway hairs sticking to her forehead and temples. Kara watches as Lena’s gaze falls from her face to her chest finally down to her forearm and the piebald, discolored skin there. She moves it behind her back quickly.
“I’m sorry for how you’re going to feel tomorrow morning.”
“Me too.” Lena grumbles, then lies down on the floor. She doesn’t say goodnight.
The next morning, Kara steps into the bathroom before her 8 AM and is surprised to find Lena still hugging the toilet, albeit looking more alive than she did the previous evening. She’s half sitting up, hair a messy halo around her face, and is taking a noisy drink out of the plastic cup of water. The blanket is draped over her shoulders like a cape. She regards Kara wearily but with no alarm evident in her features.
“What are you doing up?” It comes out in a gravelly, sleep-thick voice. “Don’t tell me you registered for a Monday 8 AM.”
Kara doesn’t say anything, figuring that her full outfit and the Jansport she has slung over one shoulder is probably giving her away well enough. She blinks back owlishly.
“Geeze.” Lena mutters, setting the cup back on the tank. She moves slowly and Kara watches in bewilderment as she crawls on her hands and knees out of the bathroom and into her bed, covering the lower half of her body with her duvet and her head with Kara’s throw blanket. “Thanks for the water, and don’t turn on any lights if you come back before noon.”
Kara beats a hasty retreat out of the room, shutting the door softly behind her. The dorm hall is quiet at this time of morning, as it has been all week. In the stillness of it, she’s all wrapped up in looking forward to grabbing a cup of coffee from Noonan’s before heading to her first class when she rounds the corner and bumps into--
“Dan!” She says in quiet surprise. “Hi!”
Dan Maplethorpe-Armstrong, noted and less-than-esteemed RA of her dorm, is standing in front of her putting the finishing touches on a welcome sign plastered near the entrance of the hall. He’s wearing a Red Hot Chili Peppers t-shirt (typical), and a smarmy smile ( so typical). Kara resists the knee-jerk grimace that usually comes along with seeing him unexpectedly.
“Oh, hey, Keith.” He pauses in the act of gluing the E on Welcome. “Headed to Noonan’s?”
“Dan, my name is Kara. Keith is a boy’s name. We talked about this when you put Kevin on my name tag last semester.” She adjusts the strap of her backpack as he bobs his head in a pseudo-casual nod.
“Sure, sure.” Dan resumes adding the next letter to the sign before stopping again and scratching his head, turning to look at Kara. “Wait. Are you sure you live on this hall?”
“ Yes, Dan, I’m sure. I live on this hall and you’re my RA.”
He turns to her then, scanning her body with a contemplative look on his face. “Oh shit, no, you’re right, you’re that girl with the funny arm who wouldn’t participate in Two Truths and a Lie during Welcome Week.”
Kara resolutely stares at her feet. She kicks at a loose thread in the old carpet with her toe, still fiddling with the strap of her backpack. “Yup, that’s me.”
“Hey, you’re coming to the Dorm Bash right? I know it's not for a couple weeks but there’ll be two kegs and uh, we could use more cute girls there. So.”
Kara has the sudden and distinct thought that she wouldn’t be caught dead within a thousand yards of The Dorm Bash for fear that Dan would do something weird with her body.
“Sure,” She says brightly. “I’ll try to make it.”
///
Syllabus is unequivocally the busiest week for the Tipsy Taxi. Officer Sawyer had told her as much when she took the job, and Kara is seeing it herself now as she runs herself ragged working double shifts. She’s out every night, bundled in a parka over her regulation campus safety polo and khakis, patrolling the popular off-campus haunts like Greek Row as well as the designated pick up spots. She sees Lena on several of these trips, usually ill-dressed for the weather, always in front of the Delta Chi house. She clutches a red Solo cup in one hand and a cigarette in the other and laughs animatedly at a story Albie or Maeve is telling her. Sometimes Jack is with her, one arm flung affectionately over her shoulders, but most of the time he’s not.
As it is, she rarely makes it home before 5 in the morning. And the Friday of syllabus week is no different; it’s still dark outside as she trundles home from the campus safety building talking to Winn on her phone. He’s been up all night working on a project to submit to some conference in Eugene and has just barely made it back to his off-campus apartment. She can hear him shuffling around in bed as he talks to her.
“How’s life with the Luthor?” He asks, stifling a yawn.
“It’s fine. I mean, yesterday night I caught her snorting a line of adderall off my Ethics in Journalism textbook with a cardboard tampon applicator, but overall, things could be worse I guess.” She doesn’t mention the night of her nightmare or subsequent panic attack, nor how she’d thrown her blanket over Lena’s shoulders at the toilet. She’s grown accustomed to telling Winn mostly everything in her life, has nobody else to tell it to really, other than Alex, but something about it feels secret. He chuckles as she comes within spitting distance of her dorm building.
“That sounds about right. If you want to pitch your story to Cat Grant about annual coke consumption on campus, at least you have a pretty good source.”
She snorts. “Shut up.” As Kara walks through the mostly quiet halls of her dorm, she notices that the light under her doorway is on. She bids Winn a goodnight, promising to see him at the gym the next day, and quietly undoes her door lock, stepping over the threshold.
Lena is sat at her desk, headphones in, knee jiggling as she pours over an expensive looking engineering textbook. She perks up when Kara enters, smiling. Much like most nights, most of her body is enveloped in an oversized cardigan. Kara finds herself wondering if she’ll shed it in the spring or the summer, and what takes it’s place after. “Hey, Kara.” Her name sounds like honey coming out of Lena’s mouth. Kara tries to line this image of Lena, sleepy-eyed and soft, up with the image of her doing keg stands in a frat basement. She finds that she can’t. “Long night?”
“Yup.” As Kara begins to shed her layers, a little damp from the condensation outside, she notices that Lena is fidgeting more than usual. She’s observed that her roommate is a little jerky generally after a night of too many stimulants and wine, but this is a touch beyond. She seems almost nervous about something, and her eyes are darting between where Kara is delayering next to her bed and her desk.
“I actually have something. For you. I have something for you.” Quickly, as if not to lose her nerve, Lena opens her top desk drawer and fishes something out. When she turns back around to face Kara, who’s dressed down into her undershirt and long underwear, she’s holding a small succulent in a terracotta pot.
“Oh,” Kara says with surprising clarity. “It’s a succulent.”
“It’s an apology.” Lena clarifies. “For who I am as a person, generally. And for that night I threw up in our bathroom, and for doing all that adderall on your book. I thought about getting flowers, but they tend to die, and succulents pretty much live through anything.” She extends her arms, moving the offering closer to Kara. She accepts it, holds it in her hands, but she’s looking the whole time at Lena, who’s face is red and who’s talking like she’s out of breath. The plant is small but sturdy looking, and blushing a slight pink on the underside of it’s leaves.
“I love it.” Kara says genuinely. She has the sudden urge to place her hand on Lena’s knee to calm it’s frantic movement, soothe it up and down her thigh. She looks so skittish and oddly vulnerable that Kara feels a pang of sympathy deep in her gut. The tips of her fingers tingle. “Please try not to snort any adderall off of it.”
Lena laughs at that, some of the anxiety melting off her body and Kara feels the ease of it, too. She places the plant on the window seat where it can soak up the sun and then sinks into her bed. She doesn’t get much rest that night, even after Lena turns off her desk light and crawls beneath her own sheets. It’s funny, she’s never realized how much a person can make their presence known in a room until she feels Lena as intimately as if she were in her bed with her, breathing against the soft hairs near her ear.
///
Kara [615 PM] Whats your guyses deal tonight
James [616 PM] Rugby practice
James [616 PM] :(
Winn [620 PM] Still in the lab!! Science never sleeps baby lmao
Kara sighs and flops down onto her bed, arms across her middle, looking up at the ceiling. She checks her phone again, fruitlessly, before wriggling around to try and find her laptop under the blankets. Her attention drifts while she watches House Hunters on her back with the laptop placed on her chest. She looks around the room, at Lena’s side of it, and notices that her throw blanket is still resting on her roommate’s bed.
Eventually, she flops onto her stomach, bored, and switches to her go-to when she’s in a funk: cat videos. Checks her phone again, no notifications. Before she can let herself think better of it she opens Lena’s Instagram and looks at her story; for whatever reason she seems to be at an Applebee’s at 7:30 on a Friday night belting out Take Me Home Country Roads on a karaoke machine with a server. Kara watches it twice before putting her phone away.
Her gaze drifts to the potted succulent on the window seat, noting that the pot looks a little plain. Before she knows what she’s doing she’s sitting at the desk with the plant in front of her, decorating the pot with some old paints she’d used for a Gen Ed art class last semester. She names the plant Henry, paints his name on the pot, and leaves him on some old newspaper to dry.
Kara watches Lena’s Instagram story again before she goes to sleep and catches herself scrolling 52 weeks back into her pictures before realizing how absurd the whole thing is. Predictably, it’s several hours before she’s able to convince her body to rest and even then it’s thin and restless—she wakes up every time somebody tromps down their hallway, startled and disoriented.
It’s no surprise, then, that she wakes up too when Lena comes stumbling in at half past 2 in the morning. The door flies open and hits the opposite wall, causing a commotion followed by a beat of silence. Lena stands still for a moment in the doorway, then quietly edges in, shutting the door behind her. Kara can tell by her stumbling gait that she’s drunk, and the way her body falls repeatedly into the bed frame that she’s struggling to get out of her clothes. It seems to take forever for her to crawl beneath her sheets. But when she finally does, there’s another period of quiet.
“Kara?” She hears Lena whisper from across the room. “You awake?”
Kara says nothing and remains still, focusing on making her breathing slow and even. She hears a small noise coming from Lena’s bed, muffled and wet, and her stomach drops when she realizes that Lena is crying. She hiccups, sniffles into her pillow, and tries to keep quiet but mostly fails. Kara stays where she is listening to the sobs trend further and further apart until eventually they turn into quiet, soft snores.
///
It feels like a minor miracle when she doesn’t wake up until 9:30 on Saturday. Her body feels denser than normal, her eyes a little heavier, and they’re sore to open. When she turns to look at Lena she’s still asleep, drooling a little onto her pillow. Kara smiles fondly.
“Lena,” She whispers, pushing at her shoulder a little. Lena’s eyelid flutter, then open completely. She lets out a whining, gravelly noise. “Hungover?”
“I think I’m still a little drunk.”
“What if I went and got us some food from Noonan’s?”
Lena buries her face into the pillow and makes a keening noise that Kara takes to mean yes, please.
At Noonan’s she picks up a dozen donuts and two large coffees, keeping Lena’s black out of instinct. When she returns to the room Lena is sitting up in bed and rubbing at her eyes, she has indents from the sheets all over her arms and chest and the left side of her hair is poofing up. Kara’s heart speeds up at the sight.
“Oh my God,” Lena moans. “I could kiss you.”
They sit together on Kara’s bed and make light conversation while they eat, and eventually transition to watching something on Netflix. It’s an old ID Discovery crime documentary and they make fun of the production value while licking crumbs off their fingers. Lena tells the story of her night in the bits and pieces she can patch together, laughing at herself the whole time.
“Yeah, I saw your Instagram.” Kara comments. “Looks like you had a lot of fun in that Applebee’s.”
Lena’s got a delighted look on her face, obviously trying to hold back a smile and failing. “I know. I saw that you saw my Instagram.”
Kara balks. “You can’t see it when I watch your stuff!”
“I can.” Lena chuckles and shows a mortified Kara how to get a list of everybody who’s watched your story. “I honestly don’t remember any of that anyway.” She’s picking at invisible lint on her shirt, not making eye contact. “My mom keeps getting on my case about stuff. I kind of lose my cool when she’s on me like that.”
“What stuff?”
“I kind of lied to her about what major I picked when I came to school. She’s like, very invested in me going into business. But I didn’t want to do that.”
“So she’s mad that you’re an...engineering major?”
Lena offers a lopsided grin with no mirth behind it. “Top of my class. She hates it. I know she’s not going to do anything about it, though. I’m kind of her last hope for salvaging the family name.”
“Only child?”
She nods absently. “Something like that. Hey, is it weird that I’m kind of hungry again?”
Glancing at the clock and realizing that it’s almost noon, Kara tells her emphatically that it’s not. They put their heads together and spend 10 minutes deciding on an order that Kara keeps track of on the back of that morning’s Noonan’s receipt. She learns that Lena hates mushrooms, but loves black olives, and that the oly kind of soda she drinks is Diet Coke. And that she insists on paying for everything with her credit card, rolling her eyes and commenting that she’ll never see the bill.
“I might be wrong,” Lena says once Kara’s resumed her place next to her on the bed. “But you drive that golf cart full of drunk people around campus, right?”
“It’s called the Tipsy Taxi. But yeah, that’s me.”
“But I never see you at any parties. Outside of the golf cart.”
“I have a lot of studying to do.”
“Kara, no offense, but aren’t you a journalism major?” There’s no malice in Lena’s words, necessarily, and Kara finds herself not taking any genuine offense at the statement. She’s too busy being pleased at the kind of singular, invested interest that her roommate is regarding her with.
“Yeah.” Kara chuckles. “I mean, I also don’t get a lot of invites, other than from James and my other friend Winn. And uh, partying isn’t really my thing. I mean, I’m sure it’s fun and all, but I always feel kind of lost in big groups of people.”
“So you’d rather drive them around in a golf cart all night?”
“Oh yeah. I mean, it’s great because you have the best conversations with people when it’s just you and them and they’re drunk. People really want to talk to you and they care about what you have to say, and you don’t have to worry about sounding like an idiot or sharing too much of yourself. And they’re always so thankful and nice because you’ve picked them up. I like it much better.”
Kara doesn’t really think about the words coming out of her mouth, she just says them because they’re her truth. It’s not until she realizes that Lena is smiling, the kind of smile that makes Kara think that all of her past smiles may have been slightly forced, a little disingenuous now that she knows what her real one looks like, that she thinks maybe she said something silly. Lena’s nose is wrinkled and she has the sweetest expression on her face, like she’s about to say something but too taken by the situation to formulate the exact words. “That’s very well put.” She decides on finally, holding Kara’s gaze. It’s only broken a moment later when Kara coughs and looks down, shifting a little on the bed and reaching out with a foot to hit play on her laptop.
“Speaking of parties,” Lena continues. Kara glances over at her and sees that her gaze is focused on her lap now and she’s scratching the back of her neck. “Are you coming to the Dorm Bash tonight?”
“Shoot, I totally forgot. No, I think I’m going over to my sister’s. The Dorm Bash isn’t really my thing.”
Lena laughs, a little more high pitched than usual, and flaps her hands in a way that Kara’s meant to understand conveys casual. “ Me neither, it’s totally not my scene either, I wasn’t planning on going anyway. Just curious if you were.” She clears her throat and focuses on the computer screen, where a woman in a bad Lizzie Borden costume is comically hacking away at her father.
“Are you going anywhere else tonight?”
“I don’t know. Jack wants to do something, but.” She shrugs one shoulder. “We’ll probably end up doing what we always do.”
“Which is…”
“Using our fake IDs to get into a stupid townie bar and blacking out.”
“Ah. Yes. As American as apple pie. Does Jack like that kind of thing too?”
“He doesn’t mind it.” She says, then adds, “I think he wishes I’d do it less.”
Kara drops the conversation after that and they continue to watch the TV in silence, mow through the pizza when it comes, talk about classes and teachers and tests. Kara is surprised by how easily she connects with Lena and how different she appears from the image she’s been building up of her in her head. This Lena is a little high strung but funny and interesting, seemingly full of stories from boarding school, about her nights out, and snarky comments about the show playing on TV. She realizes that in the course of a day she’s let things like her newspaper pitch drift to the back of her mind, which hasn’t happened in weeks. When it gets close to 7, Kara checks her phone and sees that it’s time to leave. There are only a couple of trains left running to Alex’s apartment.
Lena talks on the phone with Jack while Kara gathers her things to catch the train. She can’t always hear what she’s saying, but she catches some of it; a soft laugh, a murmured I love you. Lena is drifting around the apartment with her hair tossed over one shoulder and an arm crossed over her chest. She looks happy and at ease as Kara has ever seen her. It leaves a bad taste in the back of her mouth.
Kara doesn’t want to interupt her conversation to say goodbye, so she exits as quietly as she can, taking out her phone in the hallway as she makes her way to the exit.
“I’m going to grab the next train over to your place.” Kara says as soon as Alex picks up. “They’re having the Dorm Bash tonight and I want to get some studying done.” Instead of Alex’s voice assenting, there’s a brief, foreboding silence. Kara feels her stomach drop.
“Kara,” She pauses, and Kara can tell that she’s choosing her words very carefully. “Why don’t you hang out at that party for a little while? At least for like an hour or so, before you bail?”
“Alex--”
“I’m sure James and Winn would want to come. They both live off campus now, they probably miss going to the Dorm Bash.”
“ Alex--”
“I mean, what do you need? I can buy you booze, if you want.”
“It’s not that.” Kara sighs. “I just don’t think I’m going to have fun.”
“You might end up surprised. But if you’re really uncomfortable with going, come on over.”
Kara is stopped mid-quad, one arm wrapped around her middle, the other pressing the phone to her face. The only light at this time of night are the large lampposts that illuminate most of campus, giving her position on eerie, ethereal glow. She knows Alex won’t push it much further but she has less fight in her than usual tonight. Her heart just isn’t in the argument.
“If I miss the last train,” She begins, voice tired. “Will you come pick me up from campus?”
“Yes, yes, absolutely.”
Kara sighs heavily. “Okay, I’ll stay. For one hour. And then I’m coming over.” She hears Alex woop a little and can’t help but cracking a small, disbelieving smile.
“I’m proud of you, Kara. Also don’t forget to bring the pepper spray mom got you.”
///
The Dorm Bash sucks, of course. In the back of her mind Kara knew it would, but the reality of the situation is much more grating than she could have ever imagined. James and Winn do end up coming, much to her relief, but 30 minutes in Winn’s attention is stolen by Laurel Perez and James is demonstrating that stupid butt lift they do in rugby in front of the corn hole game, leaving Kara to her own devices.
By the time she’d returned to the dorm, her room had been taken over by Delta Chi girls and she had to struggle through the entryway to her own space to find Lena. When she does find her, she’s crammed in their bathroom with Albie, Maeve, and Jack, doing a bump off of her student ID. She whips her head up, eyebrows raised and lips twitching slightly upwards when she sees Kara. In the background, Maeve and Albie exchange a loaded glance, and Jack just looks bewildered.
“I thought you were going to your sister’s tonight.” She rubs two fingers absentmindedly over her left nostril and purses her lips. “Did you change your mind?”
“Yeah.” Kara chuckles, shifting from foot to foot and rubbing the palm of her hand over her backpack. “I thought I might check it out for a minute.”
“Well, you could come out with us instead.” The girl who Kara knows as Albie chirps. “We’re just going to Bishop’s Collar to dance and scam drinks off of ugly guys.” Lena says nothing, but her eyes are fixed on Kara as if she’s waiting hopefully for an answer. When Kara shakes her head and opens her mouth to decline, Lena takes a few steps closer, her body almost vibrating with pent up energy, and reaches out to touch her upper arm. Kara watches as her tongue darts out to wet the seam of her lips and she seems prepared to say something, but is ultimately cut off by Jack placing a gentle hand on her shoulder and leaning down to say something in her ear.
“Maybe it’s a good idea if we go, huh?”
Lena shakes her head, smiles a little, and nods. The whole herd of them leave together like a flock of birds and she’s left, standing alone again.
That’s how she gets here, standing off to the side and observing the goings-on in front of her. There’s shitty music and shitty beer, which Kara nurses on disgruntledly as she stands off near the entrance to her dorm. The hour is almost up, blessedly, and her only saving grace so far has been that Dan hasn’t tried to talk to her.
“Hey Kar, enjoying the party?” Spoke too soon, she thinks to herself as the looks up at Dan Maplethorpe-Armstrong’s slightly sweaty face. He’s standing way too close to her, a waft of CVS brand cologne causing her features to crumple. He’s wearing another, different Red Hot Chili Peppers t-shirt.
“Yeah, sure.” Kara smiles politely. She finishes her beer in one bitter swallow and grabs her phone, preparing to dial Alex’s number. “I’m actually about to leave, though, I promised my sister I would come over later--”
“Hey,” He grabs the phone in her hand and Kara’s jaw drops open and eyebrows shoot up. “Why don’t you stay a little while longer and hang out? We can go back and drink in my room if it’s too loud out here for you…”
“No, definitely not.” Kara states firmly, pulling her hand out of his grasp. Dan’s eyebrows knit together.
“Shit, how are you so strong?”
“None of your business--move out of my way.” As it is, he’s blocking her path out of the dorm hall, and while Kara is strong he has a good foot on her and is probably at least 20 pounds heavier. “Dan I swear to God--”
“Is there a problem here?” She’s relieved to hear James’s voice, and even more so when she sees Winn standing next to him, arms crossed and trying his best to look stern. Cowed, Dan steps back a little and puts his hands up and out in a defensive posture.
“No, me and Kara were just talking.”
Winn and James both look to Kara, who simply shakes her head. “I’m not really in the mood tonight. Can I just go?”
“Yeah, we’ll walk you to the train station.” Kara retrieves her bag and the three of them leave together, Winn attempting to shoulder-check Dan on his way out but winces and rubs his own shoulder once they’re out of sight.
///
The next morning, Kara wakes up in Alex’s bed with 15 new notifications on her phone. Alex is gone, at work already, so there’s nobody around to stop Kara from lazing in her sheets for an extra thirty minutes. Curious, she opens her group message with Winn and James. She has to double take and rub her eyes to make sure she’s seeing the pictures correctly. The first text is a photo of Dan’s room, with the words Nasty Perv spray painted in sharp across his wall. The text under it says can you believe this shit?
Next there’s a message from an unknown number--another picture, this one of Dan’s face. His eyebrows are shaved off and he has a dick drawn on his forehead. It looks to be candid, taken as Dan is stepping out of his bedroom with a disgruntled, confused look on his face.
Unknown number [832 AM] lololololol
Kara [915 AM] Who is this??
Unknown number [916 AM] Lena, duh.
Lena [916 AM] Looks like you guys had fun after we left haha
Kara collapses back on her bed, letting out a deep breath. Looks like somebody did have fun, after all.