11

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Chapter Text

Kara flopped down face-first across the couch and groaned in relief.

"At least the public isn't running and screaming at the first glimpse of you, mostly?" Daisy offered laughter in her voice from where she was cooking something that smelled very nice.

She pressed her forehead into the cushions of the couch. "It's not fair, humans get to run their cars into things on purpose because they're angry, all day, dozens of them, just because the temperature is elevated and I can't even flex."

"Oh, it's very fucked up and unfair. But even if things are getting better for you, it's not going to go away." Daisy set something on the counter from the sound of it. "Come on, we're going out."

Kara frowned, looking up, her neck twisting as she looked at Daisy. "Why? Where?"

"Moping over ice cream isn't going to help you with this one." Daisy turned the oven off, walked over, and nudged her foot. "Come on, we need to get out of our apartments for something just fun."

She squinted suspiciously at Daisy, "Where are we going?"

"I found a bar, I think it's exactly the kind of place that'd do you some good." Daisy gave the super-suit a pointed look. "You're going to need to change."

Kara realized that Daisy was dead serious. "Do we have to?"

"We do." Daisy's face was smugly serious. "Come on, out of the suit, into something civilian."

She sighed, but she'd be lying to say she wasn't a little excited, and a little dubious. "What kind of bar is it? I don't have leather."

"It's the kind of place you can just be you, so whatever you want." Daisy's head tipped to one side slightly. "But I'd say go casual, denim wouldn't be out of place."

Kara looked over at her rack of few remaining outfits she hadn't incinerated with heat vision. What would Alex suggest? Blue, Alex always said blue. And jeans? She had jeans. Daisy said denim, so blue shirt and jeans? It was so much easier when the dress code was established and clear.

Kara wasn't entirely sure a grey sweater over a blue oxford and jeans was the right look, but Daisy hadn't said it was wrong, so she was hopeful. She followed her out of the apartment complex. "Your car is parked in the other direction?"

"It is, but we're about to drink and if I get so much as a scratch on it Robbie will figure out how to follow me to this reality out of sheer supernatural vengeance. And having my vengeance demon ex-something cry about his car sounds terrible. He's already going to be pissy I borrowed it." Daisy waved off.

Kara wasn't sure where to start with that. "Ex-something?"

"We were both in a rough place, he was being compelled by a magical spirit of demonic vengeance to drag murderers and pedophiles and garbage to hell, while I was chasing down anti-Inhuman terrorists. We met up, tried to beat the crap out of each other, he managed it, realized we had overlapping goals, and worked together on some stuff while our interests aligned. He's a good guy, if the timing had been different maybe we'd have been something. It wasn't though."

She blinked at that, "And you stole his car?"

"Borrowed, he's a magical vengeance demon who can travel between worlds. I figure he'll show up for it at some point." Daisy shrugged, throwing a grin over her shoulder at Kara. "Don't worry, he's good people, and I'm paying for his brother's college. He's going to be pissy, not angry."

Kara sort of understood that. She paused looking at the alley Daisy had led them to. "Why are we in the back alley behind the apartment?"

Daisy turned facing her, shaking her arms out. "Well, I did say flying someplace could happen. I mean what I do is more jumping, but figured it'd be more fun than the bus or an Uber. That cool?"

"But we're not in costume?" Kara babbled, why was she babbling? She'd been excited at the thought of someone else who could fly!

Daisy's head tilted back, "Well, it's twilight, and if we get high enough and land precisely, it'll be fine." She grinned at Kara, and then there was a hard gust of wind and she shot straight up.

Kara laughed flying up after her friend, wind through her hair was cool with the fading heat from the day. She realized what Daisy meant about more jumping than flying, the woman's arch slowed as she hit the peak of the curve, laughter, and excitement on her face, and then she was falling back downwards. "Do you want me to catch you?" Kara wasn't sure if she should grab her or not.

Daisy just laughed, "I'm good!" She did a somersault in the air before cushioning herself at the last second before landing on the roof of an older building.

She alighted on the roof by her side, looking around. It wasn't a part of the city she spent a lot of time in, but she'd stopped a corner shop robbery up the road. "I didn't know there was a bar here?"

"You're not supposed to notice it," Daisy turned, her face serious. "You can never, ever tell anyone connected to the DEO that this place exists. No matter how much you trust them."

Kara stilled, and the seriousness there felt like a physical thing. Her shoulders fell back, a quiet certainty settling inside of her. "I promise."

"Great, let's go then," And Daisy stepped off the edge of the building dropping down to the shadowed alley below.

Kara sighed but floated down after her. She straightened her glasses, this was just an alley? But she followed Daisy's lead towards a metal door in the brick wall about halfway down. She could hear, barely, the sound of an old rock ballad on the other side and the quiet murmur of voices?

Daisy opened the metal door, reached back, catching Kara's hand, and pulled, actually hard enough to move her, through the door and into the warm if dimly lit bar inside.

"Why is the…" Kara's words faded out as she realized the patron by the jukebox had green skin. Her eyes couldn't stop moving then as she realized, aliens, everyone here were aliens. There were a couple of lightly blue-skinned people with white hair and the faintest tiny blue horns.

It didn't stop there, at the bar was a Tsauron with their yellow scales so distinctive of their species. He was wearing a garbageman uniform, looking like any hard-working human at the bar. He was talking to a grey-skinned and wide-eyed woman who was Criq if Kara was right. There were a dozen other people, aliens throughout the bar.

Kara's throat felt horribly tight and thick all at once. Her eyes were wet, as she looked at Daisy, needing confirmation. Her voice was barely a croaky whisper. "Daisy, what is this place?"

"Alien bar," Daisy squeezed her hand, the understanding on her face burned, and then she gently pulled Kara toward the bar.

It wasn't an act as she stumbled slightly as it sunk in. Everyone here was like her and they weren't hurting people, or trying to conquer something, or burning down banks, she didn't have to fight them. People who knew of the worlds beyond Earth. She wanted to cry.

The bartender walked over, "Back again, going to order something besides coffee this time?"

"Do you have that like bright blue stuff they shove a ton of sushi-looking shit into they sell on Kitson here, M'gann?" Daisy asked, grin on her face.

M'gann, the bartender, grabbed a purple glass bottle, "Shots or mixed?"

"I was so high on the puffy things when I had it, so sober now, which is best if I want an actual buzz?" Daisy's knuckles tapped on the bartop slightly, an easy rapport that apparently she could have with everyone.

Kara let herself touch the bartop. It was real, she'd never imagined anything like this before.

M'gann grabbed a tall glass and filled it half up, before grabbing a bottle of something green, she looked at Daisy before she poured, "You're not reptilian of any kind are you?"

"No," Daisy grinned, "Warm-blooded on both sides."

The bartender nodded, and poured, before passing it over as Daisy slid a debit card over. She looked at Kara, "Same for you as for your friend?"

"I…" Kara didn't know. Was this alcohol that would affect her?

Daisy squeezed Kara's hand she still hadn't let go of, "You left your planet as a kid right? What's something your parents would have drank with like dinner or something?"

"Alderaanian rum, my father and uncle used to drink it after dinner sometimes." Kara's voice was soft.

Daisy smiled, and then looked to M'gann, "Do you have that?"

"We have it," M'gann replied easily, kind understanding on her face.

Daisy hummed, "Does that mix well with anything sweet?"

"It can," M'gann turned to get things.

Daisy released Kara's hand, turning so she was facing Kara fully, instead of looking over the bar. "Don't worry, I got you."

////

Daisy knew Kara was overwhelmed. It was a few different things if Daisy was reading her right. And Daisy'd known it before, but it was sinking in just how human and isolated from her… just her identity Kara had been kept for her own protection. It was sad. And Daisy didn't understand it exactly, but she could help before Kara ended up bawling on M'gann. So the second M'gann set Kara's rum and orange juice drink on the counter, Daisy reached out, grabbed both of their drinks and took a step backward. She could see M'gann had noticed some of what Daisy had. "Keep that tab open, if you don't mind." She caught Kara's eye, "Come on, over here."

Kara followed, looking slightly surprised. "Booth?"

"Booth," Daisy answered, easily sliding into an empty booth, and setting both their drinks down. This was supposed to be fun, not that there was anything wrong with Kara possibly crying from being overwhelmed, but she had a feeling Kara would be embarrassed and miserable about it. "So, not a big bar person?"

Kara shook her head, "No, they were more Alex's thing."

"I was always more into clubs," Daisy took a drink of hers, it wasn't carbonated but still felt sparkly on her tongue. "The dancing and music, not that I haven't been in plenty of seedy bars. Seediest bar by far was on Kitsen, which you guys have too, that was a guess, but figured the outer edge of space crime corner was likely to exist in the same system no matter who was in charge. The location was too prime for that kind of thing. Evil scum and villainy, but really good drinks and wildly good drugs."

And as Daisy spoke, Kara looked less and less on the edge of falling apart. And Kara had been apparently paying attention because she burst out with. "You did drugs at an alien crime bar?"

"Technically yes, but Davis offered us the puffies and we didn't know they were like LSD to humans or human adjacent like me. Figured it out about halfway into the bar and too late to turn back then." Daisy shrugged, a grin on her face. "World was very loopy, and I won the bar fight."

Kara groaned, her shoulders slumping as she leaned against the table. "Why are all your stories like this?"

"I mean I could try and be humble and fail?" Daisy kicked at Kara's foot, "You doing ok?"

Kara flushed slightly, looking around the bar, "How did you find this place?"

"I can feel everything, all the time." Daisy reached out, poking Kara's hand, and made Kara's bones vibrate the faintest amount. "Your vibrations are denser than a human's. I figured if there was a place like this, it'd be in this kind of neighborhood, poor, but not so poor as to be crawling with cops, fewer cameras in the area, and then I just had to find the place with people who didn't feel like humans vibrationally. Took me an hour, but I was right, there's enough aliens on Earth to support a real community here. Not a healthy one from the look of it, but still one all the same."

Kara nodded slowly, her eyes still being drawn to the rest of the place. "I never would have imagined a place like this."

"What, your planet didn't have bars? Or were you too dignified for such common activity?" Daisy teased, it was always fascinating to hear about Krypton, and Kara was always just filled with a range of emotions and a depth and realness that didn't come out very often when she spoke about it.

Kara softened, her fingers touching her glass. "We did, but we lacked the kind of poverty and lack of order required for a place like this. Or I think we did, but I was a child of a great house, if we had such places, I would not have been permitted near them."

"So, does that mean this is your first drink that can affect you?" Daisy was def going to have to keep an eye on her and make sure she didn't overdo it if that was the case. Drunk Kara would probably be hilarious, but no one, including Kara, would want her to find out what being black-out drunk was like. And, probably getting any kind of actually drunk would be bad.

Kara looked at her drink and lifted it to her mouth and took a hesitant sip with a delighted smile on her face. "It's sweet!"

"That's the juice." Daisy grinned, nudging her foot under the table again while leaning back in her seat. "Maybe a few mixed drinks before you venture into the land of hard alcohol shots."

Kara as a person was filled with something that was so warm it burned Daisy, "Thank you, for all of this."

Daisy felt like squirming away from the genuine, unfettered gratitude and just everything from Kara. It was just a bar…but even Daisy knew it was more than that. She'd cried at realizing she belonged at Afterlife and nearly cried when she first got her SHIELD badge. Belonging mattered. "Yeah, anytime. And hey, it's more your place than mine. I mean I'm only a quarter alien."

"That's silly, I bet if I sequenced your DNA it'd be wildly different than human DNA." Kara raised her glass, looking pleased with herself and slightly nervous, "We're supposed to toast to something right?" It was cute, moments when Kara seemed to be checking she was doing the right thing, the human thing.

Daisy lifted up her own glass and lightly tapped it against Kara's, "To having a good time, then?"

"To having a good time!" Kara beamed.

Daisy sipped at her drink, she'd made the right choice. Her eyes widened at just how much of her drink Kara downed at that. "Easy!" She laughed, "You don't want that hitting you all at once."

"But it's yummy," Kara's pout wasn't effective, she was smiling too much.

She snorted, "And you can have another one after it, you don't want to trash yourself."

"I've never been drunk before," Kara's nose wrinkled, "It doesn't look very nice."

Daisy shrugged, "It can be, it can also be the worst."

"How old were you when you first got drunk?" Kara asked curiosity, but there was something there Daisy couldn't quite read underneath it.

She still tilted her head in thought, "Uh…thirteen, a foster brother had a friend who got him a bunch of Everclear. We thought we were very cool passing a couple of bottles around in paper bags in this old shopping mall parking lot at like midnight. It was kind of great till the police got called. Hard to run when you're drunk off your ass."

"Oh no, did you get in a lot of trouble?" Kara was laughing.

Daisy nodded, "Some community service and a very unhappy nun picked me up from the police station the next morning."

"Nun?" Kara's brow crinkled.

She blinked, "Oh yeah, no, the foster parents sent Ben and me both right back. Didn't want hoodlums in their house after that. Pretty typical, police getting called, getting expelled, gets you sent back so fast your head would spin. Wasn't a big loss, I never stayed anywhere long enough to really get attached by then." Daisy couldn't help laughing at Kara's face, she pointed at herself, "Delinquent troublemaking hoodlum, it takes skill to have a police record by sixteen. I have it on good authority, I'm a terrible influence."

"That's horrible," Kara protested.

Daisy sipped at her drink, she should ask for one of the little umbrella things in the next one. "I mean yeah, but could have been worse. What about you, do you have some scandalous stories in there? Dumb shenanigans for a hot college boy?"

"I…I've never really had a boyfriend?" Kara took a very long drink of her alien rum, cheeks turning very red, eyes riveted on the table.

Daisy opened and then shut her mouth. "Wait, what?"

"I've tried!" Kara flushed hard. "And sometimes we even date for a few weeks? But it never works out. Human dating is weird, and I broke the nose of the first boy who kissed me! Even if I don't break their noses it's just all awkward, and how am I supposed to explain I'm an alien to them if it is starting to maybe not be terrible when we've just started dating? And humans do it all weirdly. It's just frustrating!"

That was…a lot. Daisy considered that it made a lot of sense actually if she remembered that no matter how human Kara looked, she wasn't. "On your planet, how would it have worked?"

Kara looked at her, surprised at the question, but then she answered. "The Matricomp would have found the most suitable, most compatible partner for us on the planet. Once two people were found compatible our Houses would negotiate and we would be introduced. Then a period of courtship before being bonded as mates before the jewel of truth and honor. And then you were mated for eternity."

"Wait, so you guys didn't pick your own partners at all?" Daisy balked at that, she would not have functioned well on Krypton at all.

Kara bit at her lower lip, "Sometimes? If two high houses wished to be united their children would submit to the Matricomp to be evaluated for if they were compatible. If they were they would be wed, if not they could not be. Matricomp's decisions were final and could never be changed. Sometimes, two people may wish for a mating and bring their pairing before the Matricomp, but such a thing was unusual."

"So arranged but if you liked someone you could request to see if you could be together?" Daisy checked.

Kara nodded, "And you knew you and your mate would be together forever. There was none of this dating and then breaking up, or divorce? Even if you never latched with your mate, you would be loyal companions and confidants, though it was rare not to."

"Wait, no divorce? Not even separating, nobody talks about it, but they're basically divorced divorce?" Daisy's eyes widened as she processed, that was insane.

Kara shook her head, "Never."

"Wow, that is…crazy impressive I think? Ok, so latching is sex?" Daisy was fascinated as she sipped at her drink. She really should have assumed Krypton would be different like this.

Kara's cheeks definitely had a slightly pink shade to them, but she shook her head. "No, um latching is slightly psychic? It's two minds harmonizing, but also emotional? You see your mate and they are yours and they harmonize with you? It's difficult to explain. We only can latch once. It's different than sex, but um…"

"You guys reproduced through the matrix." Daisy's head cocked to one side. "Did you even do sex?"

"Um sometimes? It was private. No one talked about it." She leaned forward. "It was a scandal when Aunt Laura became pregnant with Kal, it was the first natural birth in hundreds of years!"

Daisy couldn't help her amusement at that, "So pretty scandalous they had sex? Or was it the pregnancy part that was scandalous?"

"The pregnancy mostly," Kara bit at her lower lip, hesitating, but then kept talking. "We're related to Daxamites," She made a dismissive almost disgusted sound, "They latch how we do. But they have so much sex." Her nose was wrinkled.

She snickered, someone who Kara Danvers was prejudiced against. "So super kinky mated couples?"

"Well yes, but that's not what I meant." Kara's fingers pressed against the table, "With people other than their mates. Sex is different than being bonded to someone. But even a Daximate would never become separated from their mate."

Daisy was pretty sure she got it? "So a romantic and emotional bond is what's forever, you're still capable of like being horny for other people?"

"That-" Kara spluttered, face flushing before sighing, seeming to slump a bit. "Daxamites are terrible."

Daisy's lips quirked up at that, "So us Earthlings have to seem pretty wild to you?"

"Yes!" She perked up again at the offered change in focus, "Or well, sometimes? I like the idea of a mate who is…more than just a compatible friend whom one might have companionship with? It was safer but it was…we closed ourselves off from so many things. I just…humans are so fickle." Kara huffed.

Daisy was totally going to have to have some words with someone about some of this. Maybe Alex whenever the woman got back to the city? Cause it was fucked up Kara sounded like she'd been forcing herself to try and conform in ways that could have hurt her. What if she'd 'latched' or whatever onto some random college guy? "Yeah, we or they or whatever can be."

"And there are so many considerations, you have to try and gauge compatibility with apps or from conversation? Not to mention humans care about gender and aesthetics which is silly, what does that have to do with compatibility?" Kara looked at her with an adorable amount of frustration, or adorable and kinda sad, but Daisy was taking the positives, so adorable it was.

Daisy gave a helpless shrug, "I mean yeah, people get caught up in weird stuff. But it's not easy on humans or inhumans either. I ended up pining over a Nazi for fucking months before I realized he was a lying, traitorous, friend-murdering, piece of shit. I mean your guys' system would have driven me crazy. But I can see some benefits."

"There are, aren't there!" Kara gave a pleased wiggle, and oh, one rum and juice, and she definitely had a slight buzz starting.

Daisy grinned and finished off her own drink.

Notes:

So like the latching thing is I'm just doing that, but like the mating for life thing like...that's canon. So's the Matricomp and the no divorce, and like all the rest of it. Its really implied that something just happens in a Kryptonian's brain when they like settle/bond in a relationship and that's just it for them. Like they might have a few semi-casual relationships, but once they essentially pick their person, that's it. And we know it's a species-wide thing. So instead of leaving that vague i'm just naming it.

Incidentally, the amount of various different authors and runs makes it somehow more depressing how much of Kryptonian culture just isn't well defined.