ppl talk about Lena having tattoos all the time and lowkey she would have smth written in binary as a tattoo cuz she’s a NERD
Absolutely correct, and it would be something weird and nerdy just for her which Kara would swiftly figure out
“God, you know me. I don’t have the conviction; I’d hate whatever I picked within the month.” Winn shrugged, took another sip of his concerningly orange cocktail, and turned his attention back to the instruction book for the Battlestar Galactica boardgame they hadn’t dared to start yet.
“None here either,” J'onn rumbled.
James took off his shirt to show two old-school photo film rolls on his shoulder - the cartridges read ILFORD HP5 PLUS and KODAK PORTRA 400. The workhorse camera films from the analog days, he offered as explanation. The Ilford was for black-and-white, and the Kodak for color.
Sam shook her head in an absolutely not. “But for transparency’s sake,” she said, “…and so Lena can’t weaponise it against me later, I did have a painfully generic lower back tattoo for a while. Got it removed as soon as I’d recovered from having Ruby.”
“None,” Alex said. “They just weren’t done round our way. Then I never got round to it since graduation.”
“None here either,” Kara gave a squished little apology smile. “Same reasons, really.”
“…six,” Lena croaked out.
Rancor and curiosity erupted through the amassed friends, and the soundscape became a thick crouton-studded soup until Sam’s voice blessedly cut through it all. “Do the tat sweepstakes!”
More chaos and noise, until Sam had explained the rules of the sweepstake. Ordinarily there would be a central pot, everyone would put in a couple of dollars, and everyone who worked out what one or more of Lena’s tattoos actually was would win a cut of the pot.
Lena tamped down hard on a couple of specific memories that came back every time she reminisced on that game. Memories of tattoo guessing turning into rather more back at MIT, with anywhere from two to four enthusiastic and very touchy-feely guessers dedicating themselves to the game.
“Right,” she roughed out. “Starting from the easiest, then…”
She pulled up her left sleeve and before her hand had even finished moving, Winn had barked out “forty-two in binary!”
“Nerd,” came an amused chuckle from at least three different people.
“That’s one. Now…” She pulled up her right sleeve, and proffered the ink to the group.
A few seconds of silence, then J'onn chimed in. “That’s the pulsar map from the Pioneers and Voyagers.”
“Very good,” Lena grinned. “Right. Three.” She pulled the same sleeve up further, and stretched her arm down to show the group her tricep.
Another excited noise from Winn. “That,” he said with a flourish, “is a Gosper glider gun. Conway’s Life. One of the first computer science thought experiments that proved the sheer scope of emergent complex behaviour from simple systems.”
“Excellent, Mr Schott.” Lena said. “I may have to headhunt him, J'onn.”
J'onn gave an even chuckle that sounded more like you better not than anything else, and Lena threw him a grin.
“Number four,” she said, pulled up her left ankle cuff, and rucked down the sock with her thumb.
“Architecture?” James peered closer. “It’s either brutalism or a way-too-simple technical diagram.”
“Technical diagram,” Kara chimed in. “That’s a transistor - well, a MOSFET. Tiniest part of any processor. The single thing propping up the entire information age. Very Lena,” she finished with a smirk.
Lena nodded, then smirked herself as she pulled her beltline halfway down her hip - thankfully revealing only plain black underwear to the group - and Kara promptly choked on her drink.
“Five,” Lena said sweetly, as Sam giggled somewhere behind her.
“Oh, I wish we did have a pot. I’d be taking you all to the cleaners.” Winn drained his glass. “That’s the final design for Babbage’s Analytical Engine. If it had been built it would have started the computer age eighty years early.”
“Definitely headhunting him,” Lena threw over her shoulder to J'onn, then turned back to the others. As she returned her pants to decency, Kara’s cheeks lost some of their flush - and regained it immediately as Lena slid her blouse almost all the way up her side, showing off the final ink on her torso.
“And… six,” Lena smirked, just barely resisting the urge to give Kara a sliver of underboob. The blonde looked like a concussed goldfish. “And hey. I know there’s no pool, but I’ll make you a bet,” Lena added. “Nobody’s ever got this one before. A hundred dollars if one of you does. No assistive tech.”
And Lena could feel herself psychosomatically generating the sensation of Kara’s eyes tracing paths up and down her torso, the blonde’s sheer attention more than enough to trick Lena’s sensation pathways into imagining feather touches along molecule diagram lines.
“…serotonin?” Winn’s voice. Kara’s muttered ‘nope’ reached Lena’s ears even as Lena said it herself, much to Winn’s dismay.
“Caffeine?” James this time, and all three of Winn, Kara and Lena noped him in chorus. Kara’s quiet 'really?!?’ wrenched a smirk from the corner of Lena’s mouth.
“DNA?” Sam this time. Lena scolded her lightly, mostly for having snuck in a guess every time this had happened and never getting it right. But Kara’s murmured 'hmm’ was of significant interest.
“Myelin?” Alex this time, with a frankly fantastic guess that was still way off. And this time Kara’s 'oh’ had Lena staring right at her.
“I get it.” Kara looked up, right into Lena’s eyes, with that same staggering focus she’d been stroking molecule marks with, terrifying and addictive. It dispelled just a moment later, when Kara nodded more to herself than anyone else. “These are organic polymers, but they’re not myelin. The benzene style notation throws you off - these,” and Kara’s fingertip brushed on her skin several times, “should be drawn kekule-style, as single bond rings with inner circles. Molecular donuts. Each pattern is its own resonant electron field, and resonant electron fields absorb light.”
Lena crowbarred the look of astonishment down, and brought her best bluffing face back to the table. “Big words, Kara. What’s your bet?”
Kara looked right into her eyes again, that focus boring through Lena in a way equal and opposite to Lillian’s most vicious death glare, and twice as exhilarating.
“Two different strains of melanin,” she murmured. “To match your eyes.”
Time fizzed through Lena’s awareness.
“Holy shit,” Sam cackled. “She got it, didn’t she? Kara fucking Danvers, I think you broke my bestie.”
Her nervous system finally caught up with the world around it, and Lena couldn’t help but roll her eyes at Sam.
“Oh, no, you don’t have to…!”
Lena fished out her continental wallet and looked Kara directly in the eye, daring the blonde to keep protesting as she made a very specific sort of a show out of taking the zipper between two fingertips, dragging it around the edge of the wallet, reaching inside, and retrieving a single crisp hundred-dollar bill.
“I make good on my promises,” Lena drawled, holding it out and noting with great satisfaction just how much effort Kara had to make to look back up from her fingertips to her face. “Enjoy the absolute shit-ton of potstickers, Danvers.”
“I’m… I… yeah.” Kara blushed, and finally took the bill. “Well, maybe some donuts too.”
Laughter filled the room.
