The first time Kara Danvers touched Lena Luthor was seared on her memory. Lena had offered her hand in the usual way and Kara took it, but it was no ordinary handshake. Her grip was firm, but not controlling, and her flesh was warm, almost feverish. The handshake was like Kara herself- bold and brash at first, then softening, letting Lena take the lead almost with a sense of relief.
(Later, in a darkened room with an empty whisky bottle by her head and a broken picture frame clutched to her chest, Lena would realize that had *not* been the first time that Kara had touched her; the first time was to save her, rescue her, protect her, to bend steel one moment and reassure a terrified woman the next, and that first touch had set a tone for the others, a surpassing tenderness she didn’t deserve)
The next touch she remembered was Kara gently tapping her shoulder on a restaurant terrace. Lena had tensed at the brush of fingers on her shoulder, looking up sharply with a stabbing fear in her gut- it was the first time she’d dined out casually and publicly since her brother committed a literal crime against humanity. She wouldn’t dare do something so ordinary in Metropolis; she’d be lucky if there were only protesters with signs as she was leaving. Only when she arrived in National City did she let her guard down, both literally and figuratively. Kara’s impossibly soft fingers on her bare shoulder jolted her from her reading and she felt that spike of terror for just a moment before she met a pretty smile and those lovely, strangely haunted blue eyes greeting her.
Lena had built walls of steel and stone and pain and the woman who came from the sky took them apart touch by touch, not with fists but with back-pats and handshakes and hugs until there was nothing left but a bare soul, exposed and raw like a frayed nerve, with only Kara to protect it.
The next time it happened was at a gala. It wasn’t an important one and Kara was frankly bullshitting Lena by asking her to tag along to “report” on the goings-on. Lena knew it would be painfully boring for Kara because it was painfully boring for her.
That was what she thought, anyway, until Kara, bold sweet Kara, rested a guiding hand on the small of Lena’s back and lit up every nerve in ending in her body like a Christmas tree, as she defensively stood proud next to Lena, towering over her and the randy city councilman both. She wouldn’t know until later, much later, why Kara had seemed so much more herself, more true, in that moment.
After that was one of the most painful nights in her life. Lena had always known she was trash, that she was nothing but one of Lionel Luthor’s by-blows; sometimes she could hear Lilian at the funeral, snarling at her that she only existed because her father was a second too late to waste her on her mother’s thigh where she belonged. The world didn’t care about her hospital or her charity work or the effort she’d put into making her company a positive force in the world. Someone told them she poisoned the children and the goodwill was gone in a puff of smoke like the thin, gossamer thing it had been. Once a Luthor, always a Luthor.
Then Kara was there, a living, loving fortress of bone and muscle and love, wrapping Lena so tightly in a shield of pure compassion that she could have survived anything, that even as the tears fell she knew that she could live in a world that hated her so long as this one person could would love her so much. Kara carried her through that storm and more besides.
That was also the night that Lena began using her own touch as a substitute, a pale imitation of the one she wanted from Kara but knew she would never have.
But they did not always touch.
Later, after more hugs and more lingering hands and shared dances, they would sit next to each other for nights of games or movies, and their friends would begin to make innuendos and begin to stare and Lena let herself pretend that the touches were more than they were.
In the darkest hours of the night Lena would lie in an empty bed and pray for touches.
Then the worst thing happened, and she denied the touch. Kara reached out, meaning to console, to comfort, to protect, to make it all better with her maddening power, but there was no fixing it. In the frozen tomb that was Kara’s arctic fortress, Lena buried Kara alive in a green hell and wished never to be touched again.
But her anger did not last forever. It never does. They fought, they argued, Kara ruined her plans, called her a villain, resisted her at every turn… but never touched her. Those soft hands were never laid upon her in anger and there were times when Lena almost wanted it, just to feel them again.
Then one day Lena saw too much and learned too much and the enormity of what she had done came down upon her, rushing in on her all at once, and she was as raw and naked and pained as she had been that night long ago when she first realized what Kara’s touches meant.
When she rushed back to the rent controlled side of town, going on foot for fear her brother would learn of her destination if she took the car, she only had wanted to set things right. She knew she didn’t deserve what she’d already been given and would ask no more.
Kara was waiting for her. When she opened the door she stood tall, jaw set, hair down over a pastel cardigan. The effect of Supergirl’s stern, righteous conviction garbed in the soft, inviting form of Kara made her heart do a flip, almost made her run, but she held her ground, feeling like a child begging forgiveness from a hurricane.
Lena stood before the open door, trembling and shaking, tears cutting red lines down her cheeks as she explained herself.
She didn’t expect Kara to touch her, so when it happened she flinched, almost yelped. When those powerful arms wrapped around her, it was as if nothing had changed, but everything had changed, because for the first time, Lena touched her back.
Lena touched her back without fear or reservation. She touched her back without the nervousness that came with hugging her Straight Best Friend. She hugged her back without deceit. She hugged her back with absolute conviction, saying with her arms and hands what her ever broken heart could never speak in words.
Kara’s touch answered her. She cupped Lena’s chin with a softness, a gentle control that no human could ever have, even as she closed the apartment door with such intensity that it left a hand print in the metal. The touches changed; they were no longer announcements but conversations, exchanges, dances and music at the same time. The world became a blur, a dreamscape of hands lifting her from the floor and relieving her of her coat and laying her on a bed, each caress a declaration that Lena answered with her own.
When their lips met, Lena poured into them every thought, every desire, every pain, every longing. She would have swallowed Kara if she could, climbed inside her, and Kara’s hands and lips begged and adored and instructed and finally, after, in morning sunlight, Lena buried her face in a sleeping Kara’s shoulder and wept her joy and freedom, because at last she was home.
When Alex came and Kara told her that Lena would help them safe the world, they were holding hands.
They would be holding hands again much later, after much love and loss and hope and joy, when Kara closed a delicate bracelet around Lena’s wrist.
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