539. Chapter 539
She doesn’t like thunderstorms.
At all.
They make her cringe and they make her shudder, because they’re not just the quick flashes of light and jolting slams of sound everyone else around her hears.
To her, they’re ongoing and oncoming, because she hears thunder from farther away than the others do, and the anticipation of the huge booms she feels brewing make it almost worse than just suddenly jumping in surprise and brief fear.
Alex knows.
Alex knows just how to hold her, just how to soothe her, just how to calm her from her overstimulation, from her memories of nightmares of her entire planet exploding.
But tonight, Kara is alone in her apartment with Lena, and Alex texts to say she’s on her way to get her, but Kara texts her back, no, no, wait.
Because their power just went out, and – even if it’s terrifying to go out into the storm – she’d rather go to Alex’s.
Lena doesn’t complain that they’re venturing out into an awful thunderstorm so they can go to her girlfriend’s big sister’s apartment because her girlfriend is scared and their power is out.
Lena just smiles and kisses Kara softly and holds her close and she calls Joe, her driver, to see if he could possibly pick them up.
She smiles even broader when he tells her that he’s already on his way, because he loves Ms. Danvers, too, and he knows that she needs to be with her big sister during storms.
Kara thanks him with a shaky hug and a ramble about what astrophysicists think storms are like on Jupiter, and Lena thanks him with a knowing smile and a thousand dollar bonus and a weekend for him and his husband in the most lavish hotel in Coast City.
Alex is waiting downstairs when Joe drops them off, wrapped up in Maggie’s NCPD windbreaker. She darts out to the curb the moment she sees Joe’s car through the nearly solid sheet of rain, and she doesn’t care how drenched she’s getting as she opens the door for her sister, waving at Joe to stay inside.
“I got you,” she assures Kara as Lena passes her out to Alex, all three of them sprinting inside, Alex’s strong arms shielding Kara from her own trembling at the flashes of lightening, the slams of thunder, the rush of torrential rain.
Kara doesn’t speak as Alex and Lena usher her up the stairs and into the hallway leading into Alex and Maggie’s apartment. She’s too busy shaking off the shivers, trying to block out the storm.
Maggie opens the door before any of them even touch the handle.
Her smile is warm and the three fluffy towels in her arms are even warmer.
She wraps Kara up first.
“Welcome home, Little Danvers,” she leans up to kiss her soaking forehead.
Lena’s next, and then the woman she’s going to marry.
The woman who gave her this beautiful family.
The three of them laugh as Alex opts to shake her hair out instead of towel drying it.
“Now all of us are wet,” she declares victoriously as Maggie wipes rain droplets off her face.
“That’s what ze said,” Lena murmurs as she dries Kara’s face and Kara dries Lena’s shoulders.
“I have fresh sets of clothes for all of you running in the dryer,” Maggie tells them just as the kettle starts to whistle. “And – “
“Hot chocolate?!” Kara squeals, momentarily distracted from the storm outside.
Maggie beams. “You got it, Kid Danvers.”
Kara throws herself into Maggie’s arms, and Alex and Lena laugh hysterically as Maggie sighs and Kara backs up and apologizes profusely.
“I didn’t mean to get you wet, I’m sorry – “
Maggie just laughs and cuts her off. “I tossed a fresh shirt in the dryer for me, too – figured one of you would get me wet.”
“Hey!” Alex blushes as Maggie winks at her, as Lena laughs into Kara’s shoulder.
“Saved by the kettle,” Maggie giggles, squirms out of Alex’s reaching grasp, and jogging lightly into the kitchen to start their hot chocolate. Lena holds Kara while Alex grabs their clothes from the dryer, and she relishes being able to change in front of her sister again – she’d stopped when she joined the DEO in secret, to hide the bruises and scars.
Now, Kara knows each one. Not in the same way that Maggie does, but well nonetheless. Lovingly. Tenderly.
Maggie bites her lip slightly as Alex strips out of her wet clothes, and just when Lena is about to tease her about keeping her eyes in her pockets, Kara slips out of her soaked shirt, and Lena has to swallow her words.
“Hey sis,” Alex says as she tugs on one of Maggie’s old, oversized college hoodies. “Story Night?”
Kara squeals while Lena arches an eyebrow and Maggie tilts her head.
“Story Night?”
“Mmhmm. Kara was especially fascinated with Earth languages when she first got here, so when she noticed that in English, stormy and story were almost the same word, we turned some thunderstorms into Story Nights.”
Kara chortles to herself. “Because Stormy Night, but without the m, get it?”
“Yes, dear,” Lena kisses the back of her neck, and Kara settles back into her arms, onto the couch, with a soft sigh.
Alex puts extra cinnamon and whipped cream in Kara’s hot chocolate as she and Maggie bring steaming mugs to Kara and Lena.
“So, what kinds of stories do we tell on Story Night?” Maggie wants to know, curling her feet underneath her as she snuggles into Alex’s lap. Alex immediately starts running her fingers through Maggie’s hair, like an instinct. Like it’s what her fingers were made to do. Because it is.
“Anything we want. Only rule is, they can’t be scary, and they have to have happy endings.”
Lena holds Kara’s hand as she weaves a tale of medieval knights and the heroic women who saved them; Alex plays with Maggie’s hair as she tells them about a hopelessly nerdy teenager who found her love in the girl next store; Maggie sits up and pulls Alex into her lap as she paints a picture of an older otter teaching a younger otter how to swim upstream; and Kara?
Kara takes them all to Krypton, to the depths of space and aboard automated interstellar vessels with organic hulls and edible walls.
None of them, entwined in each other’s bodies and each other’s stories, notice when the thunderstorm finally gives way to peaceful stillness, because none of them, entwined in each other, are anywhere close to scared.