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The first time Lena sees Jack, she sees the exact color she had always seen. The same color of the chocolate, the trees, the hair of Samantha, and the skin of her favorite actress. She doesn’t care until she suddenly can see the chemical mix color in her hand, and appreciates the green tonality of it.
She looks Jack again, in the eyes, and then directs her vision to the closest window. It has been dark hours ago, but now the color is so calm, she can see a pale shade of a nice blue —or at least she consider it blue, she might need to ask Lex about it later— and white clouds. When she turns again, he directs a charm smile she thinks could have her fallen in love.
The next move is getting coffee, neither of them has slept for almost twenty-four hours, but they don’t want to. Even if she doesn’t know how to talk to him, the Indian-American boy smiling at her seems to know exactly what to say. He makes her stomach hurt in laugh, and she feels alive.
Jack takes her out to the park, and shows her the color of the grass. He says he used to see it not so often, but he always saw the pale green. He says that her eyes are the color of his shirt, because he knows she didn’t have time to see herself. He shows his arms, with a bunch of bracelets. He tells her how his mother tried to get him one of each color, and shows her a pink-red one and says that is the color of her lips.
They spent the day together, without wanting to get away one from each other. She goes to sleep to his dorm that night, and before turning off the light, he kisses her. The kiss feels weird, inappropriate, but she won’t say that to him. Maybe it’s because she didn’t sleep for at least thirty hours and don’t want to do anything more today.
But it results in the same. She never feels comfortable kissing him, but she smiles, and pretends everything is good, because he smiles to her and she likes seeing him smiling. She loves how he’s sensible but at the same time a scientist. He knows exactly what she’s thinking and how to make her calm down. They spent most of their time together talking about theories and books, and Lena doesn’t feel alone anymore.
They start going to art galleries, appreciate colors. They talk about what is their favorite. He says is the color of her lips, the sometimes pink; sometimes pale red color of her smile. She says her favorite color is the baby blue sky, and since that day they take at least five minutes to contemplate the clouds.
For the next months everything stays the same, but then it’s winter and Christmas is coming, she ask him to come with her to Luthor manor. He doesn’t want to leave his family so she invites them over. She learns about his little brother while she talks about Alexander. They talk about their mothers and Lena confesses she’s adopted. He makes her feel okay about that, and says she’s as good as Lex is, or even better. She feels she doesn’t have to prove with him, and for the first time, life is not a test.
Coming home never had her that anxious, or at least not since she came home with a big tattoo on her back. That wasn’t a good day if she can say something. When they get to the manor she enters first. She walks to the studio and hugs her dad, and then gives a hug to Lillian —even though it last lest than a second, she thinks. The green eyed tells them she met her soul mate, and she loves him. Neither Lionel nor Lillian looks happy with the news, until they see the oldest Spheer boy. Lillian congratulates Lena for the first time in what she thinks is years, and Lionel immediately starts thinking about how he could make lots of deals between LuthorCorp and Spheerical industries.
That night in pure enjoyment they go to Jack’s hotel bedroom. She knew the first time usually hurt, but she never thought it would hurt so much. She leaves in the middle of the night and starts crying in the taxi, while they were in the middle of the road. Physical pain wasn’t that much, but the emotional one made it weight in her shoulders.
Consequently, everything advances. She never has the power to tell her soul mate —the only one she will ever have— how she can barely stay with him in a physical way. Lena still kisses him, and they have sex, but they never make love. The girl is sure about how much she loves him, even if she doesn’t enjoy sex, even if he’s older than her. She often thinks about how she would pay him to hear his talking for hours.
He’s intelligent, and ambitious. He wants to cure cancer and talk about Shakespeare, all in matter of minutes, and she loves it. They get married in a private ceremony, with his parents and hers. Because Lex is busy with a secret project.
But they start having fights. The first ends with a microscope in the wall, and the last she runs away to National City to open L-Corp. They still don’t break up, and they talk every day, but it’s not the same. The same thing that had been always wrong is wrong again.
It changed, and they know that. Jack stops using Lena’s eye color in his clothes, and Lena uses red blood lipstick everyday so her lips are never pale red. They talk in FaceTime about banal things. They ask about each other’s day and that is maybe the time when they demonstrate how much they care. Because in a way they still love the other.
But everything changes when she meets Kara. Maybe because her eyes are the bluest ones she have ever saw —she might had only able to see them for six years now, but she knows that they are the bluest she ever saw— and she’s made of pure sun. Her hair and her skin are like honey, and she surprise herself falling asleep thinking if she taste sweet.
And she tries. And a couple of days later she found herself in the bed, legs spreader and Kara’s face between them. And she doesn’t think about Jack, she doesn’t even wonder until he calls her.
But she keeps him in secret. And while kisses pale pink mouth and sun kissed skin she knows someone is getting hurt, but she can’t help it.
She loves the way Kara’s hands touch her hair and she loved how her strong grip can put her up the desk in matted of seconds. She loves the soft skin of her lover’s neck in her hands, but she even love more leave little kisses. The CEO thinks about how she loves to cuddle in her lover’s arms. And how strong they are. She can think all day about how Kara’s legs would open for her, and that brings her a warmer feeling that every time she had sex with Jack.
She also love the mess Kara can make while eating, the first look her blue eyes gives her in the morning and how Kara usually fell while walking. She loves how the blonde calls her “dorky” and how she belongs to her. She can’t believe how she tells her everything, even her deeper thoughts she never told her husband. The CEO loves watching her lover fooling around and the dumb dates they have. Going to the Zoo, the movies or the park never resulted in so much happiness.
But always she ends her night thinking she’s not Kara’s soul mate, and how much damage she can be doing to Jack. She knows she doesn’t really belong to that woman but she can’t help except feeling complete and understood in a way the Indian-American never get her.
And everything comes to an end when Kara finds her crying in her room.
“I am married” she says. “I am so sorry, but I am. I am because he’s my soul mate and I loved him. But sex with him is dirty and gross. But his touch is rough in a way I didn’t like. But I can hear him talking about whatever he wants for days but I can’t kiss him. And with you everything is so easy, and I know you will get your soul mate and leave. And I can’t bear that thought because I don’t want to be abandoned again. Because my mom left me, Lionel left me, Lex too. Samantha won’t talk to me without remembering me how I am cheating on my soul mate, and I just have you and Jack, and both of you will let me, and I will be alone again, and I can’t because I love both of you.”
And Kara shuts her up with a kiss, a loving caring kiss. And she cleans her tears, before opening her shirt showing she crests of El. Lena feels like passing out, but Kara starts talking.
“I don’t have a soul mate. Kryptonians used to have one thing similar to a soul mate, but I never had one. It is fun how humans think that soul mates involves sex. Jack and you are probably alike, you two are probably intelligent, and probably have more things in common that we can have, but there’s a difference. A soul mate is not always a lover. A soul mate can be a friend, or someone who would read you stories all the night. Humans think about love as sex and marriage, but there’s a lot more. Jack and I, both of us love you, and not because you fuck with us. We love you because how you think, because we know you are a good person. I will always love you and Jack will love you too. He’s lucky.”
“Lucky? He got a crappy soul mate that cheated on him.”
“Lucky because he met someone who can challenge his extraordinary high intellect. I would love to give you that competition but I still don’t get quantum whatever. And I won’t eat kale, he probably make that, right?”
And they laugh with tears in their eyes.
Lena asks Kara for time, and Kara says she needs it too.
But it’s so easy what Kara said. It’s so easy to think that society is fucked up and she’s not a bad person, she’s just a lesbian. Thinking about that word gives her stomach butterflies, but she had been having them since she met Kara.
The night Jack comes into her apartment she tells him what Kara told her. She also includes how she cheated, and for the first time she labels as a lesbian.
She still can’t remember another night that Jack had that face of relieve. He tells her he never felt good with having relation but he thought they were meant to do that. They end up the night with an expensive bottle of wine and popcorn, playing and laughing so hard. Jack ask about Kara and Lena don’t stop ramble.
The day after that, Lena looks for Kara. She tells everything, about how she was now happy and free. The blonde held her up, and levitate the both up the floor. Lena can feel herself touching the clouds even if they are just in the Super apartment.
Lena kisses Kara, with love with passion, and thinks about those five minutes watching the sky every day. She might be able to change those, because her now favorite color is the one in Kara’s eyes, because it is like the one in the sky but way too better.
Kara’s eyes are of the color of calm, freedom and love.