Chapter Text
babe, there's something wretched about this,
something so precious about this,
where to begin.
— hozier, from eden.
Driving through her hometown is something Sam had never thought she’d do again.
From the outside, it looks like the same slow, quiet town it was when Sam still lived here. There are a few new places she notices, like a new pub on the corner of one street that wasn’t there a decade ago, but most of the shops are still exactly as she remembers them. Even the small antique shop that she and her mother would visit occasionally is still up and running, and her eyes linger on the faded wooden open sign hanging from the door.
She wonders if the owners are still there; she wonders if they all know about her being kicked out, or if Patricia had been too embarrassed to admit that she had a granddaughter.
Do they think she ran away on her own accord? Do they think she went insane and joined a cult? She wouldn’t put it past Patricia to make up stories in order to save face, to shift the blame to make Sam look like she wanted to leave.
“I think this is it,” Lena says, tearing her attention away, and Sam looks out the window to see the one place that had taken up so much of her time as a kid.
“It is,” Sam confirms, tone wistful.
It's a narrow building, not too tall, squished between other narrow buildings of very much the same style. It fits in on account of how unique it is, with it's little steps leading to a heavy wood door, a mostly plain storefront that had been painted several times during her childhood, each time a different shade, as if that would change the fact that it was a very old building, in an old part of town, that most people would walk by without much of a glance.
It is a bookstore. Patricia's bookstore; if all had gone to plan, she would have had this a lot earlier. The plans had always been in place, for her to take the reins when she turned eighteen. She was Patricia's only child, after all, and Patricia's own parents had passed down the old bookstore (and a considerable amount of money) over to her when they'd retired.
Needless to say, that hadn't happened.
Just like the town itself, the bookstore hasn't changed much in terms of appearances since she'd last seen it ten years ago. The front is painted a pale green, which the weather has worn down quite a bit. The windows are clouded and boarded up, and the door is firmly locked. Sam has the key, it rests in the heavy yellow envelope that she was given, but she hesitates.
“This place is a shithole,” Lena says bluntly.
“Shut up,” Sam rolls her eyes, shoving Lena’s shoulder. “It wasn’t always. Patricia actually used to take care of this place.”
There's no point in hesitating. This has to be done, she at least has to see what her mother had left behind before they inevitably sell it.
The door is heavy, stuck on its hinges a bit, and she pushes it open, and despite Lena's harsh words about the place, she squeezes past Sam to be the first to enter, her curiosity getting the better of her.
Now, the shelves are coated in layers of dust, the books all packed in boxes and stacked against the chipped walls. The counter is a ways away from the front door, with an old, outdated cash register and a small stack of pamphlets next to a notepad and pen.
She glances towards the books stacked against the walls. Who had taken them off the shelves and packed them up? She wonders if it had been Patricia, if she’d been possibly planning to abandon the store before her death, or if someone else had come in to clean up once her mother was gone.
“I used to come here everyday, you know,” she remarks, coming to a stop in front of one of the open boxes. Inside she can see a few books she’d loved as a kid, and a few she’d never gotten around to reading once she had Ruby. “I never thought I’d be standing here again.”
Sam runs her fingers along the spines of the old books. An old habit, one that got her scolded a number of times. But there's no voice telling her to stop that, she only gathers dust on the ends of her fingertips, that she then rubs on the back of Lena's coat.
When she glances over, Lena is looking over some of the books herself, nose wrinkling and lips curling up in distaste. “I hope you didn’t spend your time reading Sylvia Plath, of all things,” she comments, placing the book back into the box it was in.
“No, definitely not. I was more of a Jane Austen fan myself.”
“Of course you were,” Lena rolls her eyes. Then she turns around. "Well, it has good bones. And demand in this area is high, so you should get some interested buyers," she pauses when she sees the expression on Sam's face, that little distant look in her eyes. "I'm guessing that selling isn't your priority though. That isn't why you brought me along, is it?"
Lena's brow furrows, and Sam can feel her gaze burning holes into the side of her head but she's focused now on that view outside the window. The street, the other buildings on the other side, all as old as this one. The people passing by, without much of a second glance. It's amazing how the noise can't reach them in here, it's a little haven from the hustle and bustle, a pocket of silence in an otherwise chaotic world.
"Remember when you said you wanted to try something new?" she says, and turns to Lena, who isn't glaring at her like she'd thought she'd be. It takes her a second to find her, but she's the only other living thing (the only other living human thing) in this space, so she follows the sounds she can hear, and finds her in amongst the shelves.
She walks slow, perusing the space, pausing every now and again to look at the titles, at the genres engraved on small brass plaques, affixed to each shelf. "It all needs to be sorted out. There's Lovecraft in the romance section, there are travel guides in the poetry-"
Sam's hopes are lifted, just a bit. "I know,"
"The building is old, we might have to get an engineer to see if it's structurally sound. And the electrical..." She's musing to herself, out loud, as she walks through, as her hands touch an old pillar, as she tries the switch on a light and it inevitably does not work. "The electrical might cost us a small fortune, if there's something wrong and we need to replace the wiring. God, and the plumbing…”
There's a chance there, a little spark of potential, that Lena might want to keep the building, and it rests in the word 'us'. Sam can't fight the smile that starts to spread on her face, and when it gets too dark in the building, and Lena pauses to turn around to look at Sam, she stifles a laugh.
"It's a lot to take on, Sam. With our jobs-"
"Maybe I'll quit," She doesn't even hesitate, and that brings pause to Lena, her own smile falls, as she realises Sam is serious.
Her eyes search Sam's for any hint of- well, whatever it is, she can't find it, and her brow furrows again, and her tone shifts. " Sam,"
But this is it, isn't it? The only connection she has to a childhood that she can barely remember, the only good memories she has of her mother. She can't let it go, not when she can remember it all so clearly. There’s always been gaps in her memory, but this one has always, without fail, been as vivid and authentic as if she was just here yesterday, curled up in the nook with her nose buried in a good book. She’d stay like that for hours, up until Patricia shooed her out right after closing time, demanding she actually get some real homework done before the day is over.
She can’t just… abandon it like her mother might have. She can’t just leave it like this, an empty husk of what it used to be. It’d be like abandoning a part of herself, and Sam had already done that without a choice when she was sixteen.
She refuses to do it again.
“I think… I think I want to fix this place up. Leave the city, come back here.”
"Your job is good," It's a weak argument, and Lena knows it.
"It's boring," she argues, and it is — while she’s always been somewhat of a math nerd, especially in high school and continuing on throughout college, calculating finances at L-Corp is one of the least rewarding jobs in terms of personal satisfaction. Her heart has never been in it.
But this place? She can’t help but feel like she never left.
Lena shakes her head, she can't look at Sam in the eyes, she pinches the bridge of her nose, and that's how Sam knows she has her convinced. "You love your job,"
"I love you. Working with you. But this..."
Those green eyes glance up at Sam as if pleading for her to at least make her role as the naysayer easier, but Sam's mind is set.
"You don't have to be a part of this. I won't take you away from L-Corp, I just... I can't let this place go, Lena. I can't let these memories go,"
Lena shakes her head, and sighs heavily. "You've really put me in a difficult position here. You're my right hand,"
"You're ambidextrous," Sam smiles, and that gets her a sharp glare that withers into a very long and awkward staring contest.
“Actually, I’m left-handed. I thought you knew this about me.” Lena glances about the space again, her eyes decidedly don't linger on the dust-covered spiderwebs arching between the beams overhead. "You're really going to take this all on yourself? This isn't going to be as easy as patching up a hole in the wall and calling it a day, and I'll-" she lets her words trail off, but Sam can fill in the blanks. 'I'll miss you.'
"Hey, just give me the summer, and I reckon I could make this into something. You'll see," Maybe her confidence is misplaced, but she can almost feel the potential buzzing in the walls. She doesn't want the story of this old bookstore to end here.
“I can do this, Lena,” she insists, sure of it. “I’m not going to let this place be turned into some shitty back alley pub.”
“You better be right,” Lena tells her, and Sam only smiles in response.
As she’d expected, it takes a big chunk of the summer to settle into the small apartment above the store and get things in order downstairs, starting first with the electricity and plumbing; it’s one of the very, very rare moments that she willingly lets Lena pay for everything that costs more than a few thousand dollars without feeling bad about it.
Buying the furniture is the easier part, and the part Sam looks forward to the most. The store is big enough to place a few small couches in the back, behind most of the shelves, as well as adding in a few tables and chairs in the front by the windows. She lets Ruby pick out some of the decor, her daughter ecstatic at the prospect of being part of the process.
Sam tries not to grimace too much at the series of portraits she picks out, each displaying a different dog dressed in various kinds of old fashioned attire.
“This one is my favorite,” Ruby comments as she watches Sam hang one just above the front counter. It’s a beagle with a top hat and a wooden pipe in his mouth, donning a monocle on his left eye. “I really think it’ll make this place pop, Mom.”
“I think it looks horrendous.”
The reply startles Sam enough to make her nearly drop the hammer in her hand, and she whips her head around to see Lena observing the portraits with a critical eye, brows arched.
“What- when did you- are you-”
“Do you not watch the news?” Lena scoffs, eyes rolling as Ruby giggles beside her. “If you did, you would have seen that I left National City. And that I held a press conference about it. And that I passed L-Corp onto Jack.”
It takes a few seconds for the words to sink in, but once they do, Sam can’t help the smile that splits across her face. She climbs down from the step ladder she was on and sets down the hammer, staring at Lena.
“You left for me?”
“Oh, don’t be daft,” Lena retorts, waving her hand in the air uselessly. “I didn’t leave for you. I left because it was time for a change of pace.”
“You left for me,” Sam repeats knowingly, eyes crinkling at the corners with how wide she’s grinning. Lena only glares at her through long eyelashes, before she finally shakes her head and looks down towards her feet, scuffing her heels against the wooden floorboards.
“Fine. Maybe part of why I left was for you,” she admits, albeit a bit stubbornly, and Sam’s smile stays plastered on her face. “But that is not the only reason. I meant it when I said it was time for a change of pace, you know.”
“Sure you did,” Sam teases, reaching over and poking Lena in the middle of her chest. “It’s okay to admit you left solely because you just love me too much, Lena.”
“I didn’t,” Lena insists, but Sam is already walking away from her. She calls out again, adamant, “I didn’t!”
(It’s only after a few hours, as the three of them are sitting around the dinner table that night, that Lena reluctantly admits that okay, fine, I left for you. Happy now, Samantha?)
Being back in her old hometown, inevitably takes some getting used to. Sometimes, when she first wakes up, she expects to still be in the large urban house that she and Ruby had lived in back in the city, but instead, she finds herself in the cozy new apartment in the town she thought she left for good ten years ago.
Overall, it’s different but a good kind of different, waking up every morning and going to work downstairs. It's the shortest commute she's ever had in her life, and the fact that this is hers means that she doesn't have to bother with the corporate wear that had slowly taken over her wardrobe. She finds herself replacing her slacks with jeans more often than not, especially with all the repairs that need doing.
A summer storm exposes a problem with the roof that needs patching. Ruby decides that they need to repaint the ceiling after the repairs are done, and Sam agrees, so they spend hours trying to figure out how to get the paint on the ceiling and not all over themselves.
(They end up covered in paint anyways, and it takes Sam several more hours to get it out of her hair. She swears she sees flecks of white paint showing up in her periphery for a week after that.)
Lena takes to it all surprisingly well. There are a few little moments where Sam expects her to leave, to pick up and leave just as quickly and abruptly as she arrived. It's hard to tell with her, she's not quite the type that makes it known when she settles, Sam hadn't even known she'd miss her presence until she'd decided to take on the bookstore and leave L-Corp.
But even when she spots a rat in the alley outside, and shrieks so loud the neighbors almost call the police, she doesn't leave. She stays, and calls an exterminator to make doubly sure that the place isn't "infested with the little plague-carrying bastards,".
She spends hours each day reorganising the shelves, she keeps a laptop by her side, keeps a record of the titles, Sam gets used to seeing her cross-legged with a few boxes around her, her hair messily tied up (no point in keeping it down, with all the dust around). It's summer, but she even manages to get Ruby excited about doing chores somehow, and she's a godsend in that respect.
And every night, Sam will go to bed after a day of patching and fixing and her muscles will have that good ache they get after a day of actual work, and Lena will settle in next to her, always another thought on her lips- 'We need to fix that drafty window tomorrow,' or 'maybe we can repaint the front of the shop another colour this time, I'm not that fond of the green,' like her mind never quite stops thinking about their little project-
And it really becomes their project. There's as much of Lena in here now as there was of Sam, as there is of Ruby, it's in the little things. Ruby finds herself a little nook, and she's almost always able to be found there, perched with a book in her hand- her daughter is reading , and that is a miracle in and of itself. Lena comes in with colour swatches and one of Sam's paint-splattered shirts and she gets Sam to try to choose between different (identical) shades. Sam tries to argue in favour of the old wallpaper, but Lena adamantly refuses on the fact that the flowers look vaguely lewd.
"Look at it properly," Lena says, gripping her by the chin and angling her head slightly. She tries not to wince at how her fingers dig into her jaw, she's ready to complain but-
" Oh," Sam's surprised she never noticed it before, and when she does, it makes her laugh until her sides hurt, and then they're faced with the terrible task of ripping off old wallpaper.
The glue doesn't want to give, and it feels very much like a form of torture. Lena's by her side, humming along to a song on the old radio, she's not sure if she's feeling it too, because she's trying her hardest to focus on the task ahead.
Of course Lena would decide that they desperately needed to change the wallpaper on what felt like the hottest day of the summer. And she'd made it seem so casual, so simple.
"I read online that you only have to remove the old paper and the glue, and you can just put up new wallpaper after that,"
Sam makes a note to search up the facts for herself next time. Not that Lena's wrong , the steps are exactly in that order. It's just that each step requires so much work, a lot of time, a lot of scraping, they have to spray the old paper with warm water (which is Lena's job), and Sam then has to try and get the old paper off with the scraper. Then they'll sand the whole wall down to get it ready for the old glue, but they haven't even gotten to that point yet, they've barely cleared a few feet of it.
The windows aren't properly sealed, and the old fan they'd carried down from upstairs is whirring along, trying its best to cool the space. Sam can start to feel the sweat dripping down her back as she tries to run the scraper under a particularly tough section, and she's getting more frustrated by the minute, especially as she realises that this part of the paper is still dry.
"You're not even doing anything, you're just standing there-"
Her annoyed tone seems to break Lena out of some kind of reverie. Lena meets her glare with a smirk, brandishes the spray bottle, and Sam barely has time to shield her face as she spritzes her with the tepid water.
"Hey!"
"Whoops," Lena shrugs, a sly smile playing at the corner of her lips. Sam seethes at her, and she's ready to- what, to yell? To laugh? Definitely not laugh. She's not going to let herself laugh at the absurdity of this all-
Lena spritz her again.
"Hey stop-"
Another spray, this time directly in the face, and Sam drops the scraper in order to try and grab the bottle out of Lena's hands. The other woman dances out of the way with a peal of laughter, but Sam's arms are long enough to grab the back of her shirt, and from there it isn't very difficult to catch her in her arms.
"Oh I regret everything- get off me you're sweaty ," Lena protests, arching away from Sam's wet shirt, glancing over her shoulder with a grimace.
"This isn't sweat, this is your doing!"
"I'm sorry I made you so wet darling, but I thought you'd appreciate it. You were getting a little red in the face there," Lena bites back with a smug grin thrown over her shoulder.
Sam uses the distraction to wrench the spray bottle out of her hands. She gets her revenge by unscrewing the cap and tipping the entire bottle over Lena's head.
Oh sure, she regrets it the instant she does it (if looks could kill, Sam would be dead twenty times over) but they laugh about it later as they sit by the window to dry off.
Lena's smiling at her, her green eyes bright and clear, she's never seen her like this, without the layers that she puts in place at L-Corp, the layers of armor, the masks that protect her. That's all gone now, this is a different side to her best friend, and it feels like she's seeing her in a new light now.
She's always loved Lena, but she thinks now- maybe she loves her more , if that's even possible.
She sends Lena to the hardware store with Ruby. She's too focused on what she has to do, on itemising the remaining jobs that need to be done before they can even dream of opening, and the task is pretty daunting without adding the stress of a small town hardware store with overly-friendly cashiers.
Outsourcing the job seems like the best choice at the time, but she regrets it when they come back without paint rollers or drop sheets like she'd requested.
Instead they come back with ice cream and milkshakes. Lena smiles at her disarmingly, Sam can't see her eyes behind the dark sunglasses.
"So did you get-"
"The hardware store was closed," Lena cuts her off, and by Ruby's overeager nodding, she knows that's a lie. "We're thinking of painting the front,"
"We got swatches ," Ruby exclaims, and pulls them out of her pocket as if she's performing a magic trick.
Right. Sam is immediately skeptical, and she tries not to let the exhaustion show in her voice but she's tired, and that sounds like yet another job she doesn't have the time for- "So the hardware store was closed, but you got paint swatches ?"
Ruby and Lena both glance at each other, confirming their guilt. "We went to the paint shop," Lena offers, and Sam rolls her eyes.
"We're never going to get this done,"
She's starting to feel that pressure even though there's no deadline. Sam's own savings are more than enough to cover the renovations without even touching Lena's own fortunes that she's so generously donating. They could realistically keep chipping away at this for as long as they'd like, but is it worth it if they never get the shop back up and running?
She rubs at her face with her hands, and Lena takes a few steps forward, offering her a milkshake. "I know I started on this already, but I don't want it,"
She takes the cup, doesn't care about the fact that there's a red mark around the top of the straw from Lena's lipstick. They've known each other for long enough to be able to read each other, and Lena drags over an empty paint tub so she can sit next to Sam, who has settled with her back against the wall.
"Are you giving up?" Lena asks, and Sam isn't sure.
"No. I'm just-" she fiddles with her straw, shaking her head. "Should we have just sold it?"
"No!" Ruby protests, bounding over to sit on Sam's other side. "Are you kidding me? This is the coolest thing. We haven't even opened the shop yet! You can't give up now"
Ruby's enthusiasm is nice, but Sam is more focused on how Lena now has gone quiet. She takes off her sunglasses, tucking them into the front of her shirt, and purses her lips as she thinks. "We can still sell, if you don't want to go through the rest of the renovations,"
That's not it. It isn't remotely the problem here. She doesn't want to sell , but it feels like it will never be done. "I don't want to sell. But this is turning out to be bigger than I thought it would be, and now I've dragged you two into it and-"
"You knew this wouldn't be easy," Lena says with a soothing voice, stopping her rambling in its tracks. "I didn't come over here because I thought it would be a walk in the park. We did it because it would be a challenge,"
"I can help more? With the painting and stuff. We've got ages till school starts again so like, I don't mind, I really don't,"
The offer really warms Sam's heart. She looks over at her daughter, and her eyes are wide, she doesn't want to let this place go either, and so maybe...
Lena inhales deep, thinking for a moment before breaking the silence to ask, "Is this about the wallpaper? Cause if it is-"
"No it's not about the stupid wallpaper," it gets her to laugh, and Lena grins triumphantly- damn it that was meant to distract her and it's working.
They don't bring it up again until later that evening, when Sam is staring at the wall adjacent to the bed, the patch that they'd repainted stands out like a sore thumb, but she's gotten used to seeing it.
They have to share a bed, because there's only two rooms in the small apartment, and it never even occurred to her that Lena could have asked for her own room, or even have bought herself an apartment elsewhere in town. This is the moment where Sam realises, Lena is here of her own accord.
"You stood by me, even with the most craziest idea, to fix L-Corp into something better. I could have let it die in the water, but do you remember what you said to me?"
Sam can't look at her, afraid of the intensity of Lena's green eyes. She can't remember, she's not sure if it's because she's so far in this bad mood or if it's because her memory is genuinely that bad.
Lena continues to talk despite her silence, probably assuming she's asleep, since her voice becomes a little quieter. "You probably don't remember, because it didn't mean as much to you as it did to me, but you said you'd be by my side, at a moment where I had no one. No family, no investors, no other business partners... nobody, "
Sam doesn't respond. She's afraid that if she does, the emotions she's holding in check will just fall right out. Lena doesn't seem to expect a response, she only gets into bed beside her, nestling next to her even though she usually complains that Sam runs too hot on nights like this.
Then there are lips pressing a gentle kiss on her bare shoulder, and a very quiet whispered- 'goodnight, darling' .
In the morning, Sam is sure she's just imagined it.
Things seem to pick up the pace after Sam's little breakdown. Her girls never come back from a shopping trip without what she asks for (although they do sometimes buy a little more than what is on the list). Lena also starts doing the proper research into the amount of work required behind her suggestions, so there are no more 'wallpaper' incidents.
They scrap a few ideas to be able to cram as much of the essentials in before Ruby has to leave for school. Because she does become useful, carrying things and helping to tidy up after a job is done.
Sam's glad she puts down drop sheets, because painting with Ruby is chaos. The floor is safe, but she ends up with handprints on her back, and Lena, being the lovely friend she is, doesn't inform her about them until she comes back from the grocery store.
Then the rest of it passes in a blur, once the drop sheets are lifted and the floors are cleaned and restained. Ruby even helps with cleaning and stocking the shelves, which is something Sam thinks would have never been possible.
“I think we’ve really done something here,” Sam expresses, late at night after they’ve finally finished painting the front, and things finally feel like they're done . They’re celebrating with a glass of wine between them and music playing quietly from the old record player Patricia had left behind, and Lena’s eyes are gleaming and proud and Sam has never felt so warm.
Somehow, she knows it’s not because of the wine in her system.
“I do, too,” Lena agrees, nodding. “I shouldn’t have doubted you for a second.”
Sam shrugs, slipping off the barstool and standing, a hand outreached towards Lena’s. “Well, you can make it up to me,” she smiles, dizzy from the way Lena is looking at her. “May I have this dance, m’lady?”
She even bends down and extends her hand with a flourish. Lena purses her lips. “You’re an idiot.”
“Yes, but I’m your idiot,” Sam answers without hesitation.
It’s the closest she’s ever gotten to outright saying I’m yours.
“Well?” she asks, looking at Lena expectantly.
Lena slides off her own barstool. Her hand is warm when it slips into Sam’s, and she lets out a yelp she’d never admit to making as Sam yanks her close without warning. “You’re ridiculous,” she scoffs, slapping at Sam’s chest.
Sam doesn’t answer. She wraps an arm around Lena’s waist and starts to move along to the song playing through the kitchen. It takes them a few seconds to get into the right rhythm, but soon enough they’re dancing slowly, their bodies intertwined, hands clasped together. Lena’s head comes to rest against Sam’s shoulder and Sam’s eyes slip shut automatically, chin coming down to rest against the top of Lena’s head.
And it’s such a subtle shift that Sam almost doesn’t notice it. It almost slips right past her, the way the pieces slot perfectly into place in a way they hadn’t been before.
Perhaps it's the soft amber light from the lamp in the next room, or the grainy nature of the sound coming from the old player. Maybe it's the alcohol that warms her blood, or maybe it's none of that at all. Sam's hand settles on the curve of Lena's back, and this closeness- they've always been close, but not like this.
She's got her feet on the ground, but she's sure she's falling, and by the look in Lena's eyes when she brings her head up to smile at her- she's not the only one.
"We should bring the record player downstairs. For the ambiance," Lena murmurs, a passing thought, and Sam isn't quite sure why of all things, that's the final straw but it is.
It brings a laugh out of her that they both don't expect, and Lena's looking at her curiously, but she's smiling too, bringing a hand to rest on the side of Sam's face, to draw her back in.
"I'm being serious, Samantha. I don't see what's so funny-"
Her laughter fades, and Lena's hand doesn't move from her cheek, but her smile stays, as she looks down at Lena, and that brings more confusion to the other woman. "I told you that you didn't have to help me, now you're telling me where to put my record player,"
"Yes, well. You know why I followed you to this place," Lena's voice drops to a murmur, her hand slides down from her cheek to rest by her shoulder, her fingertips skirting to the back of her neck, and when her eyes meet hers again, there's an intensity to them that says more than her words ever could.
Kissing Lena, Sam decides, is quite possibly the best thing she’s ever done.
Her mouth is still for a moment before they relax, softening against Sam’s own lips, warm and pliant. Her hand comes up to curl around the back of her neck, Sam’s arms tightening around her waist, and Lena presses up against her, head tilted up.
She could get lost in this, in the gentle give and take, in the soft curves under her hands, and even as the song ends, they stay there, and it feels like she's meeting Lena again for the first time, she's discovering her in a new light, until her lungs start to burn and she needs to come up for air before she drowns in her.
When she pulls away, it takes a second for Lena’s eyes to open again, but when they do, Sam feels herself freeze up. “I’m sorry,” is what comes out her mouth first. Her lips are still tingling. Then, “We’re drunk.”
Lena shakes her head, fingers coming up to brush against her lips. “I’m not drunk. Are you drunk?”
“Not at all,” Sam answers, before leaning in again.
In the morning, neither of them mention it, and it’s only until Ruby comes out of her room to join them at the table that they both look at each other. “Why are you guys being so weird?”
“What do you mean, Rubes?” Sam asks, at the same time Lena says, “We’re always like this.”
Ruby blinks. Her eyes shift from Sam to Lena and then back to Sam, before she narrows them and crosses her arms. “Did you guys finally get your shit together?”
Sam gapes at her daughter. Beside her, Lena’s shoulders shake with quiet laughter. “Ruby! Language!”
Lena rolls her eyes, patting Sam on the shoulder. “Oh, let her have this. She’s not wrong, after all.”
And that’s that. They don’t talk about it again, but they both know something has changed between them, and neither of them seem to mind.
The next day, Ruby decrees that there must be a proper reopening ceremony. That seems to consist of the three of them standing outside at 9am on a Monday morning, with a red ribbon across the properly varnished wooden door.
It's still summer, mid-summer, but the sun isn't too fierce this morning.
It was a stroke of genius on Lena's part, the black paint on what was previously a sickly mint green. It contrasts with the red brick of the building, and seems to make the glimpses of the interior visible through the arched windows look even warmer, even more inviting.
"And you were going to do yellow," Ruby chuckles, and Sam gently pushes her.
"Shush, you. Don't tell Lena she was right, it’ll only encourage her.”
“Wouldn’t that be a good thing?” Ruby questions. “I mean, you wanted to do yellow. Lena’s always right.”
“Please stop bringing that up!” Sam narrows her eyes at Ruby's cheeky grin, pinching the bridge of her nose. "And- hey! Who's side are you on?"
Lena's voice can be heard from inside, she's muttering to herself as she bustles back outside. "These are all I could find," she says, and holds up a pair of oversized, rusty scissors. "But they should do the job… I hope.”
Ruby's smile falters. "Okay maybe not always," she admits sheepishly.
Lena glances quizzically at her, but doesn't press the matter. It's time for the reopening ceremony after all, but as she's about to hand the scissors over to Sam, she's met with a hand gently pushing her towards the door.
"You should do the honours," she insists excitedly, beaming at Lena.
"Me?" Lena raises her eyebrows. "It's your-"
"It's our building," Sam argues, holding up a hand.
"Then we should cut the ribbon togeth-"
"Oh my god you two just cut the damn ribbon ," Ruby cuts in before their bickering can go any further.
Sam whips her head around to look at her daughter. "This ceremony was your idea Ruby, also mind your language," she reminds her, eyebrows furrowing.
Ruby throws her arms up and grabs the scissors from Lena’s hands. "Fine, then I'll cut the ribbon.”
It takes seven awkward, fumbling tries for the scissors to actually do some minor damage on the thin fabric, and that’s when Ruby throws them down onto the sidewalk in frustration, arms crossed. Sam steps forward and rips apart the ribbon with her bare hands, huffing as both Ruby and Lena stare at her in amusement.
"There. Officially open!”
And it is something beautiful once they all step inside, and Ruby gets to turn the little sign in the door from 'closed' to 'open'. With dark wood and countless books lining the shelves, it feels like the store itself is something out of a storybook.
It's both the store she remembers, and something new entirely. The bizarre paintings that hang on the walls would have never been allowed on the walls while Patricia was alive. The ugly wallpaper replaced with a fresh coat of paint, and a new little brass bell by the door.
She wonders what she'd think if she saw it. If she saw what had become of the place. Would she be happy, that it had a new lease on life? Would she—
No. Sam knows her mother well enough to know she’d probably hate it. She had always been critical of things like this, especially when it came to Sam.
Lena's hand settles on her back, she's noticed her pause, and she watches Sam's face intently, waiting for a reaction.
Ruby has already wandered in, no doubt looking for her new favourite section of the store, but Sam stays for a moment, taking the space in, before she finally takes a deep breath, and grins at Lena.
"And you called this place a shithole,"
“It was a shithole,” Lena defends herself. “You’re just lucky that I have taste, or else it would have looked worse than before.”
As it turns out, getting the bookstore renovated is one thing. Running it? An entirely different beast in and of itself.
The first days are slow. Torturously slow, and Sam isn't sure if she can handle this type of boredom. It gets to the point where Ruby's almost always in her little niche up in the shelves, with little else to do but read for hours.
Sam stands behind the counter. And stands behind the counter. And goes for a walk around the already neat stacks, due to Lena's constant adjusting, the books don't even have a chance to get messy before they're put back in place.
And the idea of Patricia's disapproval keeps gnawing at her, almost as if it knows, she can't quite get closure on that without Patricia being alive to tell her if she agrees or not. And her mind starts telling her that maybe this was a mistake, that the reason why it's not working out is because she's strayed too far from her family's vision.
It feels almost like a miracle when she hears the door open, turning to look so quick that she nearly gives herself whiplash. It’s an elderly man who walks through the door, cane thumping against the hardwood floors, glasses sitting low on his nose.
He looks familiar, but Sam can’t quite put her finger on why. It’s been so long since she’s been here that she’s rusty with recognizing anyone she’d known as a child, and this man seems to be one of them, if the shocked look on his face is of any indication.
“So it is true then,” he states, stopping right in front of the front counter, dark eyes staring at Sam through his glasses. He squints, shaking his head. “Oh, my. I didn’t think they were right when they said the Arias girl was back in town!”
Sam swallows, throat suddenly dry, but she pushes through it and forces a polite smile. “Hello,” she greets slowly, wracking her brain to put a name to the face in front of her. “Can I help you with anything?”
The man straightens up. “Oh, no,” he answers. “I just stopped by to see it with my own eyes. Oh, you’ve grown into a lovely young woman! Your mother should be proud.”
“My mother’s dead.” It comes out of her mouth blunt and completely unexpected, taking even her by surprise as well as the man, and she cringes. “But… thank you.”
It doesn’t take him long to leave after that, muttering to himself and stopping to give her a brief wave goodbye before pushing himself out the door.
Other than that, nobody else passes through the store, and Sam can’t help but feel like she’s already failed.
She tells Lena as much one night, as they sit awake one night after dinner, the TV on in the background, a story about L-Corp's recent acquisition of Spheerical Industries a surprise to neither of them.
"I know it's not the same, but what did you say to me while we were going through the rebranding?"
"Yes, but that's been successful. This..."
"We didn't expect for this to turn a profit. We don't need it to turn a profit,"
"But- do you think maybe I shouldn't have changed anything?"
Lena levels her with a look, one that Sam can't quite decipher. Not in her current state, where she's second guessing herself,
"Mom?" Of course, the talk brings Ruby out of her room. She ends up squishing between on the other side of Sam, her arms squeezing around Sam's waist as if she can get the sad out of her that way.
"It's just... the shop isn't doing as well as we thought it would. In fact it’s not really doing well at all, Rubes.”
Ruby’s face scrunches up. "Do we have to move back?"
"Not yet," Sam says, and Lena's head snaps up, and her stern glance tells Sam that maybe she's throwing in the towel a little too early. "I mean... no. But we're not getting enough customers. Or, well, any customers.”
Ruby ponders this for a moment, before shrugging and simply saying, "Maybe people don't know that we're not a boring old bookshop anymore. We should tell them somehow."
Her daughter is a genius. That's why Sam finds herself seeking out a print shop after closing. Ruby designs the posters, with Lena's help of course, and Sam's given the task of getting multiple copies for the great re-opening sale next week.
The shop is only open from Monday to Friday, nine to five. It's Thursday when they make the posters. Sam gets to the print shop on Friday, she walks there because she figures it's not too far, and she might as well get the exercise while it's still warm and sunny outside.
Summer's last little surprise for her is a storm. The biggest storm the town's had in years.
Right when Sam's carrying back stacks of freshly printed posters in her arms, she's feeling good about herself for once, when that little spark of hope is reignited, the heavens open, and she's standing six blocks out, being pelted with heavy raindrops, trying to run to save as many as she can before the whole stack gets soaked through.
And because of course the day can't get any worse, she trips. Over her own feet, in the middle of the street, nearly faceplants with the ground. The remaining dry posters flutter out in a cloud around her, and she feels the sting of the grazes against her skin and the burning in her eyes but she can't bring herself to do anything but close her eyes for one long moment as she accepts her defeat on the concrete.
This is it. This is what her life has become.
The rain is so heavy that she doesn't hear the footsteps of the stranger who had been walking their dog across the street jogs up to see if she's okay, as she continues to lie face down on the concrete for several awkward seconds.
She does hear the stranger's voice as she asks, "Hey, are you okay?" and that gives her the motivation to at least get up to her knees, wincing as she sees the harsh red scrapes on her skin. The stranger reaches down, a hand extended, and Sam gratefully takes it, rising gingerly to her feet. Her other hand is wrapped around a black leash, attached to a harness wrapped around a grey pitbull’s chest.
"Thank you. I'm fine, this- ugh," It's all been so much, that she finds herself oversharing to this absolute stranger. As far as rock bottom goes, it's not the worst. "Do you ever have those moments where just... everything's going wrong?"
The stranger barely hesitates before answering. "Yeah."
"What do you usually do when that happens?"
"You want the motivational answer, or the honest answer?" she asks, completely serious by the sound of it. Beside her, her dog sits quietly and obediently, staring at Sam as if trying to gauge whether or not she’s a threat.
"Honest answer," Sam decides, wincing slightly as scrapes on the heels of her hands sting from the rain.
"Drink and try to forget about it," the woman says, and Sam can’t help the way she huffs out a laugh; the answer reminds her so much of Lena it’s almost ridiculous.
"And your motivational answer?"
The stranger pauses. "Keep going," And a hand enters her field of vision again, holding ten of her posters, they aren't as ruined as the rest, they're still salvageable.
“If it makes you feel any better,” she says with a sympathetic smile, “it looks like this town is small enough to only need ten of these anyways.”
Sam blinks, wiping the rain from her eyes and pulling a face. “Yeah, I guess you’re right about that.”
It’s only then that Sam realizes that she’s never seen this woman or her dog around, as a child or in the past few weeks that she and Lena had been fixing up and running the bookstore. But before she can think too hard about it, the woman hands her the posters and smiles, the pitbull rising to her feet as she tugs on the leash.
“You should make sure to wash those scrapes well, you wouldn’t want to get an infection. Plus, you’ve probably got some dirt in there too, since you landed on the concrete.”
Sam nods; she’s cleaned enough of Ruby’s scraped knees and elbows to know that the stranger is probably right. “Will do.”
“And another tip,” the woman calls out as she starts to walk backwards the way she’d been going before, “Try not to fall again. You wouldn’t want to ruin the rest of your posters.”
Sam doesn’t know whether she should roll her eyes or laugh at the comment. “Thanks,” is what she ends up saying, before the stranger and her dog are off again, disappearing around the corner.
So then, the re-reopening is what Sam would call a tentative success. Now it's not just the few elderly people wandering in on their morning shop, but a few families who come in looking for books to help pass the rest of the summer. Ruby is extremely useful there, after spending weeks combing their shelves for anything good, she seems to have memorised quite a few titles and knows where they're stored, and Sam sees her following Lena around when there are other kids in the store to help them find the right book.
As the end of July subtly begins to bleed into early August, she's glad she decided to keep going. And she holds out hope that maybe the mysterious stranger will drop in, since she'd seen the posters of the sale they were having, but as the days go by, Sam wonders if she'd just imagined her.
While there are rarely any teenagers who graduate high school and continue onto college instead of taking a job at their family’s business or farm, the community college down the road is still a viable option for some students who refuse to give into the pressure of their parents; and this proves to be greatly beneficial to the sake of the shop as they wander in weeks in advance, searching for the many books on their syllabus.
The idea to make the bookstore more than just that strikes when Lena makes a fleeting comment one morning while they’re stocking the shelves, replacing all the old, fragile books that had once been there with the newer, less worn copies they’d ordered a few days ago.
“If your daughter isn’t going to help us with these,” she grumbles, somehow managing to sound both affectionate and bitter, “the least she could do is get me a cup of coffee.”
“That’s it!” Sam blurts out, nearly dropping the pile of books in her arms. “A coffee shop!”
Lena cocks an eyebrow. “Yes. Exactly. Is there one around here, or do we have to drive forty five minutes out of town just for an espresso?”
Sam turns around and grabs Lena by the shoulders. “No, Lena, I mean we turn this place into a coffee shop. People can come in, buy books, have some coffee. It’ll bring in more customers than it would if it was just a bookstore,” she points out. “Especially considering that yes, you’re actually right. The closest coffee shop around here is about thirty minutes away.”
Surprisingly, it doesn’t take them as much time to incorporate a cafe into the store as it did to fix up the place in the beginning, and while she’s probably a little rusty, Sam had worked many jobs after being kicked out. One of them, luckily, had just so happened to be a barista.
Lena and Ruby, as joint leaders of the creative team of their little business, work on writing their menu on a chalkboard for three hours, and Sam's left there to remind them that while they have creative freedom for the way the items are written, Sam is still the one who will have to be making the items at the end of the day, so they have to eliminate a few of their more 'creative' options.
The menu is given to Sam, who then has to stand on a stepladder to get it up there, and that's of course when Lena and Ruby start coming up with more crazy ideas behind her back-
"We should have bought that poster of the poodle with a coffee cup. If I'd known back then that we were doing this, Mom, I would have told you to get it,"
"I can find the artist-" Lena starts, but she's promptly stopped by Sam, who turns around with her power drill in hand, and gestures at the both of them.
"No. I draw the line at another dog painting. You didn't let me paint the shop yellow-“
“For good reason,” Lena cuts in, but Sam ignores her.
“We already have enough dog paintings. I think the store will survive without another one.”
So yes. It doesn't take too long, but eventually they do figure out a compromise for the small cafe at the front of the bookstore. Lena doesn't buy another dog painting, Ruby pouts for twenty minutes, but Sam agrees to incorporating a matcha latte and a hazelnut hot chocolate with extra marshmallows to their menu for when the cold inevitably hits once the summer is over.
"We need to take the bell off the top of the door," Lena says, five days after the cafe has been in operation, and the scowl on her face and the absolute annoyance that swells in her eyes when the bell rings another time tells Sam that the cafe was a great idea.
Maybe a little too great for the three of them to handle.
“This town has what, a population of five thousand?” Lena huffs. “How is it that they’re all gathering here?”
She’s in the stacks most of the time, she can't stand to see things out of place. Ruby helps out where she can, but she's still not exactly an employee , so Sam is reluctant to give her any real duties in the shop. She mostly runs the cafe alone then, but there's only so much she can handle, when customers come in for their caffeine and don't take heed of the sign that very politely asks them to leave their cups by the counter.
It's profitable, extremely so, with the fancy espresso machine that Lena ordered that is miles better than anything else in town, but as the word spreads, more customers come, and Sam is gradually stretched way too thin, to the point where she starts to feel a little... out of it .
Most of the customers who wander in only exchange a few words, but others stay for longer chats — chats that Sam normally would be ecstatic to have, but not lately.
Instead, she just wants to take a nap rather than speak to anybody for more than three minutes.
She's on autopilot most of the time, and that's not her preferred state of being. She's getting the work done, but she's tense, she feels like the days are slipping by faster than she can keep track of them.
She crashes on the couch one afternoon, and wakes up a few hours later to Lena's fingers rubbing comforting circles on her scalp. She tries to open her eyes, but the throbbing throughout her skull proves to be far too much to handle.
"Your head is so warm, I think your brain is about to melt out of your ears.” Whether it’s meant to be a joke or not, Sam doesn’t even crack a smile, just moans pitifully.
"I have a migraine.”
"You're working too hard again," Lena chides her, brushing the hair out of her eyes.
"I have a migraine,"
"I know darling.”
Sam frowns, turning over to burrow into Lena’s lap, "Then why are you talking so loud?"
"Please, I’m practically whispering. Anyways, I want to know if you agree with another idea," Lena says, and Sam starts to groan, because that sounds like thinking- but Lena quickly cuts her off. "I think we should get some more hands on board. Employ someone to help run the cafe with you,"
Sam gives her a feeble thumbs up as response.
“I don’t want you to run yourself into the ground,” Lena tells her.
“The ground and I are old friends,”
That at least gets a brief chuckle out of Lena, before she’s patting Sam on the back and- oh no, she’s leaving. “I’ll get started on finding your replacement then,”
“Now?”
“Yes, no better time than the present,” she shrugs. Then she’s gone, her footsteps disappearing downstairs, without another word.
Sam buries her face into the couch cushion and sighs.
Now that they’ve agreed on needing more help, the fun task of finding a suitable candidate begins. Sam leaves that part mostly to Lena, and the other woman doesn’t seem to mind.
She notices a handful of people coming in with the intent of talking to Lena for the position, but none seem to be the perfect fit by Lena’s standards. That wouldn’t be an issue, if it didn’t mean Sam was still single-handedly running the cafe in the meantime.
She’s getting to the end of her rope one afternoon, about to tell Lena that she should quit being so critical and hire the next person who walks in with a resume who knows how to pour coffee, when she hears Ruby shout at someone from where she’s perched up in one of the shelves.
Sam has distinctly told her not to do that, since technically, she shouldn’t even be up there while they’re open for business.
“You look like a protagonist,” She says, and then leans almost all the way down to look at someone, who Sam can see is wearing a grey beanie. “How’d you get that scar?”
“I fought a bear,” It’s a woman’s voice, a voice that is vaguely familiar to Sam, but she can’t quite place where she’s heard this woman before. The scar in question stretches across her wrist down the top of her hand, white and jagged, the rest of it disappearing under a rolled up flannel sleeve. “With my bare hands. And I won.”
Ruby gasps, and leans over the shelf a little bit, before shouting- “Bullshit,”
Sam scowls as she approaches, seeing Ruby speaking to a redheaded woman, bent down slightly to be eye-level with her daughter. “Hey! What did I say about language?”
“Not in front of the customers,” Ruby mutters, before Sam narrows her eyes at her.
She crosses her arms and tilts her head to the side. “I didn’t say that,” she states, raising an eyebrow at her daughter.
“Oh, then that must have been Le- never mind,” she slinks back into the shelf, as if she can somehow disappear out of view.
The woman is clearly trying her hardest not to laugh, covering her mouth with a hand. Sam turns to apologise for her horrible daughter, when all of a sudden it clicks. She’d heard that voice just a few days earlier.
“Oh, hey, you’re-“
“Alexandra Danvers?” Lena pokes her head around the stacks, raising an eyebrow at the mysterious stranger, the mysterious stranger who now has a name , and is here, and-
“Just Alex,” the woman seems to correct automatically, then cringes a bit. “I mean, yeah, that’s me.”
Then Lena’s taking her away for an interview, and Sam’s left to watch her leave, watch her turn around and give her a smile, and—
“Mom, you’re drooling a little bit.”
She glares up at Ruby, who’s peeking over the edge of the shelf with a smile. “No. You don’t get to call me out on things when I’m mad at you!”
Ruby holds her hands up in surrender but doesn’t wipe the shit-eating grin off her face, and Sam turns away before her daughter can see her blush even harder. It’s the first time she’d really gotten to look at Alex, when she’s not blinking through heavy rain and can barely make out the face in front of her.
Now, she can’t help but be glad she hadn’t gotten a good look at who had helped her that day in the rain; she’s sure she would’ve ended up embarrassing herself even further.
Alex Danvers. The name doesn’t ring a bell, but it’s on repeat in her mind as she tries to somehow listen in for anything coming from the back room. Alex Danvers .
Another iced chai latte. Alex . That little smile she’d shot over her shoulder before Lena whisked her away. She’s not from here, Sam’s sure she would have remembered her if she was.
It’s not the voices from the back room that catches her attention, but a conversation a few minutes later. Ruby’s voice, way too loud in the way it often is (she doesn’t have a filter or any form of volume control, apparently).
“You didn’t really get that from a bear,” she’s saying, and- god, they’re still talking about this?
“Sure I did,” Alex replies. When Sam peers across the store, she sees her leaned against one of the bookshelves next to Ruby’s spot. At Ruby’s expression, she feigns offense. “What, you really don’t believe me?”
“No,” Ruby asserts bluntly, eyes rolling towards the ceiling. She crinkles her nose. Still, part of her seems to remain uncertain, because she prods further, “If that’s true, how did it happen?”
"So it starts like this," Alex begins, and Ruby tries not to let her interest show, but she leans forward just a bit, and her eyes widen with that childlike wonder. "It was the middle of winter, and I was looking for a place to camp. The sun was getting low, and I could feel the chill in the air, you know, the type that settles right in your bones, that makes your teeth chatter like your skeleton's trying to crawl out-"
Ruby grimaces and shudders, and Sam realises that somehow, the woman's entranced them both with this story, fictitious or not.
"So I get my sh- my ah, stuff, together, and focus on starting a fire. I gotta find some wood, cause if I don't get that fire going, I'll be dead by morning, frozen like a popsicle. What I'm not expecting is that the cave wasn't empty in the first place-"
She lets her voice trail off, and Ruby's eyes widen even more, she's paying rapt attention up until-
"Then I heard footsteps coming up behind me while I was breaking down some branches-"
Ruby scrunches up her nose. It doesn't add up, and she cuts in, "Wait, but if it was winter, wouldn't bears be hibernating?"
“It was-“ Alex flounders for a brief moment, “It was a polar bear.”
Ruby narrows her eyes. “In the woods?” she asks, skeptical.
“Uh- yes.” Alex flashes a smile that makes Sam dizzy for a second. “It was… lost.”
At that, Ruby scoffs, folding her arms in front of her and staring Alex down. “I’m not a little kid, I know when a story’s been made up. Like when my mom and Lena tried to tell me they weren’t dating when they so clearly are.”
Sam’s eyes widen at the way Ruby so casually tells this complete stranger about her business, and suddenly her feet are carrying her across the store. “Ruby!”
Ruby freezes up like a deer caught in headlights; she obviously hadn’t expected Sam to have heard that.
“Oops,” she mouths at Alex, just before disappearing into the shelves before Sam can reach her.
“I’m so sorry about her,” Sam apologizes, face hot. “She’s not usually like this.”
“Well, that’s a lie,” Lena pipes up as she brushes by them, only serving to make Sam’s face heat up even more. She shuts her eyes for a moment, mouth set in a thin line, but Alex only chuckles.
“It’s really no big deal,” Alex assures her, more bemused than anything else. “That’s a pretty smart kid you have there.”
“Thank you!” This time it’s Ruby chiming in before Sam can reply herself, her voice echoing proudly through the shelves.
“Hey, why don’t you head upstairs?” Sam proposes loudly. It’s not a question.
From within the stacks, they’re both able to hear Ruby’s groan clearly, as well as the unhappy grumbling as her feet stomp up the stairs. The door to their apartment slams shut, and Sam grits her teeth.
“She’s a charmer,” Alex chuckles, not unkindly. It makes Sam’s face warm again, but she can’t help but notice how Alex seems to actually like Ruby, rather than the fake politeness that she’s so often had to deal with from other adults who don’t have children of their own to give them a better understanding of what it’s like.
“Yeah, she sure is something,” Sam agrees, a burst of pride erupting in her chest despite her initial exasperation towards Ruby.
“It must be nice,” Alex continues. At Sam’s confused frown, she clarifies- “Having a kid, I mean.”
There’s a wistfulness in her tone that Sam doesn’t miss, but she says nothing about it. Alex reaches up to scratch the back of her neck, then runs her hand through her hair so that the messy strands fall into her face slightly.
“Oh, hey!” Alex suddenly exclaims, as though she just remembered something. “How are your- your hands?” She motions down, a slight grimace on her face. “You know, after…”
Sam blinks. She doesn’t know whether she should be embarrassed or shocked or even flattered that Alex remembers her, even if it is because she had made a fool of herself that day.
Whatever it is that she feels, it’s paired with a brief, odd sensation in her stomach as she realizes Alex is checking up on her. “All better,” she waves her hands up as proof. “Just a few small scrapes. Nothing fatal. Thank you, again, for helping me. Do you- do you always walk your dog in the rain?”
Surprisingly, Alex chuckles at that. “No, not always. We got caught in the storm just like you. Unlike you, though, we usually manage not to trip.”
Sam feels a disbelieving laugh bubbling up in her throat. She steps back and stuffs her hands in the back pockets of her jeans, nodding. “Oh, wow- okay.”
Alex flashes her a teasing but kind smile, and Sam tries not to stumble over her next words at the sight of it. “How long have you-“
Before she can finish her sentence, Alex’s phone rings, a photo of a blonde woman flashing on the screen. She curses and looks up at Sam apologetically. “Shit. Sorry, I’ve got to run, but… I’m hoping to hear a call back?”
“Within the next few days,” Sam assures her. “It was nice meeting you… again.”
“You too,” Alex smiles warmly, before rushing out the door and answering the call.
Sam tries hard not to watch her go.
(She fails.)
Later that night, she and Lena are both lying in bed when Sam clears her throat, feeling green eyes shoot towards her as tries to figure out how to say what she wants to say.
“I think we should hire, uh— what was her name?“ Sam feigns a contemplative look, eyes drifting up towards the ceiling. She lowers the book in her lap. “Alex?”
Lena looks at her, eyes glinting with mirth. “Oh?” she asks, a brow cocked. “And why is that?”
Sam shrugs, the tips of her ears burning at the expression on Lena’s face. Like she knows everything. “I don’t know, she just, she seems like the most qualified.”
“To what, make coffee?”
“Yeah.”
This time, Lena does more than raise an eyebrow. She smirks, shifting to face Sam completely. “You think so?” she asks. “That’s odd, considering you weren’t the one conducting the interview.”
Sam tries to laugh it off. She tries to flash Lena a look as if to say yeah, whatever. She tries many things to get Lena to stop looking at her like that.
All her attempts are fruitless.
“Lena,” Sam warns, just as Lena glances away and pretends to be innocent as she says,
“She was pretty, wasn’t she?”
Sam’s throat closes up. “That’s not- what does that have to do with anything?” she demands, voice teetering on the edge of becoming shrill.
Lena shrugs a shoulder. “It was just an observation, Samantha.”
“Well, it was a meaningless observation,” Sam retorts, turning back to the book in front of her.
For a few long moments, there’s only silence between them, not unlike the comfortable kind that they’ve both gotten more than used to over the years. Sam tries to pretend she doesn’t feel Lena looking at her, or that she isn’t still thinking about how their next potential hire.
Then, “ I thought she was pretty-”
“Lena!”
In the end, though, they do hire Alex.
It’s not out of bias — Sam insists upon that when Ruby looks at them like she knows exactly why they favored her — but out of logical reasoning. While there were several other potential hires to choose from, they were all mostly high school and college students trying to find a last-minute job for the summer, and Sam had already been able to see in her mind’s eye the complication of working with limited schedules.
Alex Danvers, somehow, had been the most available.
The morning after they call Alex to tell her she got the job, Sam wakes up extra early and makes pancakes for breakfast. Blueberry, banana, and chocolate chip.
“What are we celebrating?” Ruby asks as she shuffles into the kitchen, rubbing at her eyes.
“We are celebrating the fact that I don’t have to run the cafe on my own anymore,” Sam tells her, flipping a pancake in the pan and grinning from ear to ear. “You know what that means, Rubes?”
“What?”
“I get breaks .” She’s almost too excited for the prospect of having an hour-long break with someone else now able to manage the coffee counter, especially since Ruby will be starting school next month and won’t be around to help them out as much anymore.
“Don’t get too ahead of yourself,” Lena says as she comes up behind her, wrapping her arms around Sam’s waist. Her chin comes down to rest against Sam’s shoulder, head tilted slightly to look at her. “You’ll still have to work, you know.”
Sam smiles. “Yeah, but I won’t come upstairs by the end of the day feeling like I need to sleep for the rest of the week,” she points out, reluctantly pulling away from Lena’s hold on her in order to hand Ruby her breakfast.
Lena hums in agreement as she sits down next to Ruby at the table. “I suppose you’re right. I’m just glad you won’t be working yourself to death trying to keep up.”
It has been unexpected, just how many customers they get each day despite being in such a small town; Sam guesses that’s also why their store is such a hit. With barely anywhere else to get books and quality coffee without having to drive into the city, it’s only natural for everyone to be drawn here.
It’s not that they necessarily need as many customers as they have — Lena still comes from money, after all — it’s still something to be proud of, how much business they’ve generated in the span of a few weeks.
Only a few days into August, and they already have regulars from the small community college that had started classes extra early this year, students who come in with tired eyes and a pile of books in their arms, desperate for anything to keep them up while they study.
“So we’re gonna be alright?” Ruby asks through a mouthful of pancakes. Sam and Lena lock eyes across the table.
“Yes, sweetie,” she answers first, resting a hand on Ruby’s shoulder, smiling softly at Sam.
It feels like everything is finally going to work out.
By the time they get downstairs, Alex is waiting by the front doors. It’s only eight in the morning, an hour before they’re supposed to open; they hadn’t expected to see her here so soon already.
When Alex catches sight of Sam and Lena, she smiles automatically in greeting, stepping inside as soon as Lena unlocks the doors. Then her smile falters as she takes in the confused looks on their faces. “Sorry- am I too early?”
“No, not at all,” Sam reassures her, at the same time Lena says, “Yes, actually.”
Sam's surprised at the bluntness of Lena's response, but realises why when she turns to look at her and notices that she hasn't quite finished getting herself ready. She still has her glasses on- which is a surprise in itself, since Sam can count on one hand the number of times Lena's been brave enough to show her face in public with them on- and she's missing her signature bold lipstick.
"Come back in an hour."
"Don't listen to her," Sam rolls her eyes. Lena's just going to have to get used to their one employee seeing her at less than her best. It doesn't matter anyways, this is a bookstore, not a Fortune 500 company. "She's just grumpy since she hasn't had her caffeine yet,"
A bit of tension seems to leave Alex's shoulders, and she smiles briefly. "Well, I can help with that!” she says excitedly, before immediately setting upon making Lena her first (of many, Sam knows) cup of coffee for the day.
The first day of having Alex here goes by slower than usual, which Sam is internally grateful for, because the only thing worse than working on a busy day is training someone on a busy day.
Alex, however, seems to catch on quickly to how things work around here. Sam runs her through the operation of their espresso machine, and she’s pleasantly surprised to see Alex taking to it almost immediately. She herself had spent a few days getting used to the additional gadgets and features when they'd first bought it, fumbling and cursing most of the time, since it was leagues ahead of anything she'd used in the past.
As they work side by side the first couple of days, she can't help but notice the scar on Alex's right hand, and a few others, much less obvious, scattered across the rest of her arms; it doesn't seem to be hindering her as she works, but it catches Sam’s attention as she runs her through a few of the menu items. She's burning with the desire to ask, but she's not about to follow in her daughter’s footsteps.
Alex isn't really the type to talk much about herself, but that doesn't mean she's a quiet person. Quite the opposite in fact. Sam thought it would be a lot harder than this. Alex is a relative stranger, after all, she'd thought it'd take her some time to get used to someone new in her space, that she'd previously just shared with her family. But Alex is witty, and she's smart, and she's able to keep track of orders while also keeping up a conversation at the same time.
Sam hadn't felt like she was bored before, but she'd had so much on her plate that she hadn't really had the opportunity to find the joy in what she was doing. With Alex there to share the load, she's able to take a moment to really appreciate it all. The smiles on people's faces, the almost comical expressions of relief in the morning when the students get their fix, the vaguely familiar people she recognises from her childhood, the little snippets of conversation she has with the older patrons.
Lena's noticing a difference too, whenever she decides to wander over from the shelves. Alex actually gets to anticipating her wanderings, and it's something that Sam herself didn't even notice until she saw Alex one day, sliding over one of Lena's lattes just as she emerged from the shelves.
“I made this one special,” Sam hears Alex tell her quietly, and then she sees the way Lena’s eyes widen just a fraction as she takes a sip.
“You’re a wonderful addition here,” Lena says immediately, turning towards Sam and snapping her fingers. “Samantha. She’s a wonderful addition here!”
A faint blush spreads across Alex’s cheeks at Lena’s excitement, and she purses her lips as she makes herself a coffee minus the shot of liquor, glancing over her shoulder at Sam and throwing her a wink that nearly makes her knees buckle.
She’s also, more surprising than anything else Sam has witnessed, amazing with Ruby.
Her daughter’s lack of filter doesn’t deter Alex at all; if anything, it only spurs her on, their sarcasm and wit clashing with each other in a way that Sam has rarely seen from adults who have interacted with her daughter.
Rather than treat Ruby like she’s a naive child like many others would, Alex talks and jokes around with her like she’s one of the grown-ups, and Sam can see the amount of gratitude on Ruby’s face as she watches them.
So, yes, Sam would say they’ve all been getting along quite well the past few weeks, and she can’t help but be relieved about that. Throughout her teen and young adult years, she’d had to suffer through tense, quiet relationships with coworkers where talking felt more like a chore than anything else.
With Alex, however, that’s not the case. It’s almost alarming, just how easy it’s been to work with her so far, and despite herself, Sam keeps expecting things to drastically change. Like a switch being flipped.
A part of her expects for Alex to change as she becomes comfortable in her role, and she knows she shouldn't, but years of working similar jobs has her overly cautious. She expects for her to get snappy with her, for her to start showing up late, for her to take longer breaks, because she knows she's not the strictest boss (she doesn't know if she has it in her to be like some of her old managers), and she expects for her to take advantage of her.
But that never happens.
They close on Friday, Ruby flicks the sign over to 'closed', and Alex starts turning over chairs as Sam wipes down the counter. It's starting to get dark a little earlier, the sun's further down in the sky, or maybe it's the heavy grey clouds that make it feel later than it actually is. Without the buzz of customers in the cafe, Sam can hear the rumbling of another thunderstorm somewhere in the distance, just over the quiet murmurings of the record player behind the bookstore counter.
It's then that Lena emerges from the stacks, a bottle of wine in each hand, grinning from ear to ear. "Red or white?"
Sam glances at her with a raised eyebrow, then at Alex. It seems to take Alex a moment to realise the question is addressed to her, and she rubs her hands together, eyes darting between them both. "I'm technically meant to be sober,"
"And yet you carry whiskey in a flask to work," Lena retorts, and the redhead shakes her head with a laugh.
"Don't let my sister hear you say that," she rubs at the back of her neck with a hand, "I wouldn't want to intrude,"
She looks at Sam as she says that, dark eyes wide and expectant, and her voice is quiet as she responds. "You wouldn't be. And we won't tell,"
"Do I get wine too?"
"No," All three adults respond at once to Ruby's question, and she raises up her hands.
"Wow don't all attack me at once, it was just a joke," she scoffs, and Sam rolls her eyes. The nerve of this kid; she briefly wonders if Ruby did end up getting some traits from Lena, somehow.
Alex ducks behind the counter, and Sam is confused until she sees her get out a brown paper bag and a plate, gesturing at Ruby to come closer.
Sam sees the way Lena's expression shifts, instantly skeptical. "Are those pastries?"
"Yes," Alex says, sliding them over to a now very excited Ruby.
"That we could have sold during the day-"
"Well, I put them down here when we were just about to close. They were going to go to waste anyway,"
Sam sees Lena's brow furrow just a bit. She doesn't quite understand, Sam can see the gears churning in her head, why someone would save day-old pastries rather than just throw them out and buy more the next day.
"That's fine," Sam says, and at that, Lena glances at her and seems to lower her defenses just a bit. "But not too much before dinner,"
Ruby gives her a thumbs up, her mouth full of sugar and icing, and Sam struggles to internalise her sigh. “Did you get your summer reading done?” she asks instead, Ruby’s head shaking in response. “Why don’t you go do that?"
Ruby scowls. “You never let me stay down here,” she grumbles, sliding off her seat.
Alex is on edge now, she stays standing until Sam taps the seat next to her. "You've been on your feet all day, I don't get how you're still standing. You never answered Lena's question. Red or white?”
Alex hesitates a second before she sits, “Red.”
“Good answer,” Lena says as she pops open the bottle and starts to pour some out.
For a few minutes, they all drink in silence, and Sam watches out the window as the wind picks up, making the branches on the trees across from the store shake. The rain starts soon after that, pounding against the windows. It's the first time they've really had a chance to sit together since they'd hired Alex, the occasional break not included, because there was always a customer wanting a chat, or they'd need someone else to hold the fort in the meantime.
The silence should bother Sam then, but it's unusually comfortable, especially with the deep, mellow wine warming her chest as Sam sips at it absently.
“So,” Alex speaks up after a while, having already finished her glass. “How did you guys, uh, find this place?”
Sam knows why she’s asking. To anyone who wasn’t specifically looking for it, they would have easily passed by the building without even noticing it, at least before Sam and Lena had fixed it up.
“It was my mother’s,” she answers quietly, sipping her wine. “Then she died. I used to love this place as a kid, and I couldn’t bear to let it go.”
Alex nods along as she talks. She looks genuinely interested, and it’s a stark contrast from the outright nosiness of most of the other people in town, like she wants to know about Sam for reasons other than spreading it around to everyone she talks to.
“You lived here as a kid?” Alex asks, then scrunches up her nose. “Well, I guess no one would intentionally move to a place like this if they hadn’t already lived here.”
“You did,” Lena points out immediately.
Alex’s lips curl up. "I never claimed to have good judgement," she teases, flashing a look towards Sam.
“So why did you move out here?” Sam asks curiously, looking at Alex over the rim of her glass.
"My sister thought it would be good for me. A change of pace, you know, from the city," Alex tells her after a brief moment of hesitation. She pours herself another glass of wine and sips it idly. "Nothing much happens here. It's quiet, calm. Traffic isn't too bad. You don't have to hunt for a place to park, and not as many people shout obscenities at you just for existing, so…”
"You clearly haven't been here for long," Lena huffs into her glass, and Sam rolls her eyes. As if Lena has lived here long enough to experience any of what Alex had talked about.
"It isn't that bad. Most of the assholes have died of old age," Sam rolls her eyes, nudging Lena just a bit, causing her to choke a little on her wine. "Don't listen to Lena. The only bad experience she's had here was when she met my mother a few years back,"
"And that was enough to make me never want to step foot in this place again," Lena wheezes, after clearing her throat.
“And yet you’re here with me anyways, aren’t you?” Sam retorts, shooting Lena a pointed yet affectionate look as Alex chuckles at their exchange.
"How long have you two been together?"
"Too long," Lena groans, just as Sam says, "A few months,"
Alex is amused by all this, she grins over the rim of her glass. "I would have thought longer. You two bicker like an old married couple,"
"That’s because they are one!” Ruby’s voice comes from upstairs, and Sam immediately whips her head over to see her daughter poking her head out of the apartment door, peering down at them. She ducks back inside as soon as she and Sam lock eyes, the door slamming shut.
Sam covers her face with her hands, and she hears Alex laugh- it's a surprisingly bright, carefree sound that almost contradicts what Sam knows of her, and it at least helps to ease the sudden surge of embarrassment.
Lena's hand slides over her shoulder, as if to comfort her. "You really thought she'd be doing homework?"
"I thought she'd be minding her own business,"
"She's a good kid," Alex comments, and this is one of those rare moments where they are privileged with a little sliver of Alex's own backstory. "I was a lot worse when I was her age. Gave my mom hell as a teen, that’s for sure. I don’t know how she did it.”
“Sometimes I still don’t know how I do it,” Sam admits honestly.
“No, I’m sure you’re an amazing mother, Sam,” Alex says, and there’s an eruption of… something, in Sam’s chest at the amount of sincerity in her voice.
“She is,” Lena agrees, nudging Sam’s side. “She just refuses to accept that she’s good at anything.”
Sam frowns. “That’s not true!”
“Are you saying I’m wrong?” Lena challenges with a raised brow. “Tell me again how confident you were before, starting at L-Corp with me last year.”
Sam purses her lips. Her silence is enough of an answer for Lena, who turns back to Alex with a look that says, ‘ see? I’m always right.’
“L-Corp,” she says with slightly furrowed brows, as if just now realizing something. “Used to be LuthorCorp?”
“Yes,” Lena affirms, instantly on edge, her shoulders and jaw tense. Sam reaches out and places a hand on her lower back, feeling the former CEO relax slightly under her touch. “I took over LuthorCorp a few years ago and transformed it into L-Corp. It’s now Spheerical Industries.”
“Why’d you leave the city to run this place?” Alex questions, resting her chin on her palm. Then her eyes widen a bit at the implication, and she hurries to clarify. “I mean- not that this place isn’t great, obviously, it’s just- you know-“
“I understand,” Lena cuts in, seeming a lot less on edge than before, probably because Alex doesn’t have the critical, judgmental expression on that most people do when the topic of Lena’s family and old business comes up. “Like you, I decided I needed a change of pace. And I couldn’t very well leave Samantha to run this place on her own, after all. It would be chaos.”
“Hey!” Sam feigns offense, gasping as Lena and Alex just snicker.
“Do you like it? Better than running L-Corp, I mean?”
“L-Corp had its moments,” Lena says with a shrug. “I must say, I certainly don’t miss meeting after meeting. This is… nice. It gives me a chance to walk through the streets without people crossing to the other side.”
Alex’s eyebrows shoot up. “They did that? Why?”
“Of course they did,” Lena answers, slightly skeptical at how out of the loop Alex seems to be. “As Lex Luthor’s sister, it’s only natural for them to point their fingers at me, next. Have you been living under a rock?”
“Lena,” Sam hisses under her breath, but Alex doesn’t seem to be fazed by her question.
“I guess you could say that. In a way,” she replies, circling the tip of her finger around the rim of her wine glass. “I’ve been… away, for a while.”
Well, that’s cryptic.
As if Lena’s reading her mind, she says, “Oh, fantastic. More mystery.”
Sam rolls her eyes. “Shut it,” she warns. “Sorry about her. She may be a genius, but she never learned what tact is.”
“No, no, it’s fine,” Alex assures her, lips quirked up in an awkward, albeit kind, smile.
There’s a slight lull in conversation then, with each of them falling into a comfortable silence. From the way the sky is darkened outside, Sam knows it’s getting late, but for some reason she doesn’t want Alex to go quite yet. Maybe because they’re finally starting to actually talk.
Her eyes flicker towards the clock on the wall; it’s only ten minutes past eleven, and they don’t open tomorrow, and she can’t help but give into the urge to invite Alex up to their apartment for another drink.
“Would you want to-” Sam starts to ask, as soon as Alex slides off her chair and says, “I should probably get going.”
She tries to squash the disappointment that wells up in her chest. Beside her, Lena’s watching her carefully, downing the rest of her wine. “Oh, right. Of course. See you Monday?”
Alex nods, and when she flashes both of them a smile, Sam wonders if she should be alarmed by the way the warmth seeps right into her chest and curls around her heart.
Beside her, Lena sets upon gathering up the empty wine glasses. “We made a good decision, hiring her,” she concludes, eyes gleaming as they drift over towards the way Sam is still staring at the front door even after Alex is long gone. “Don’t you think, Samantha?”
“What?” Sam’s eyebrows furrow. “Why do you keep-”
“You fancy her,” Lena states, cutting her off. “I’ve known you for many years, Sam. I can tell when you like someone. And you like Alex. Admit it.”
And while they haven’t technically put a label on whatever this… thing, between them is, Sam can’t help but feel like Lena shouldn’t be teasing her for something like this. Like Lena should be jealous, or something.
Then she remembers that Lena has never been the jealous type, at least when it came to her. If anything, the fact that Lena is teasing her rather than arguing with her about Sam’s reluctance to admit she has a little, tiny crush on Alex, is more of a blessing than a curse.
“I barely know her,” Sam shakes her head, frowning, insistent anyways.
Lena rolls her eyes. “Infatuation is a thing. Why do you think I started talking to you all those years ago?”
Sam inhales deeply, immediately turning to shoot a brief, half-hearted glare at Lena. “Oh, whatever,” she huffs, before she whirls around and heads up to the apartment.
“Oh, is that Alex right outside?”
Sam’s head whips over. “She’s still here?” she asks, before ducking her head and searching through the windows. There’s nobody there, nothing but a few kids riding their bicycles along the sidewalk and a man walking his dog. Sam’s eyes narrow.
“Tell me again, how you aren’t interested in Alex?” Lena inquires, a dark eyebrow cocked. Her lips quirk up into a teasing smirk.
Sam clenches her jaw. “I hate you.”
Lena’s knowing chuckle follows her up the stairs.
So, okay- Sam may be a little bit infatuated with Alex, but that means nothing.
Nothing, she thinks to herself, repeating it in her head like a mantra. It means absolutely nothing.
She's never sure about her emotions when it comes to things like this. She can count the number of people she's ever been drawn to like this on one hand.
And when Alex looks at her and smiles, Sam thinks she understands what it means to be lovesick.
She sees her laugh with Ruby, watches the way she never forgets to make Lena's coffee just the way she likes, and Sam can't help but wonder-
But she's happy. This is what throws her off, she reaches a point in her life where things are going well, and life throws her a curve ball in the form of a redhead with gorgeous dark brown eyes. She has Lena, she has Ruby, she has the shop.
And Lena's no help, Lena is almost encouraging her. But this means nothing. Absolutely nothing.