Chapter 10

Author's Note: Wasn't planning on actually writing out the date, but I stalled on how to move the plot forward. Enjoy!

As usual, this has been proofread only by me, so there will probably be some mistakes somewhere. Please do point those out for me.

Despite Lena's initial concerns, deciding to put her fears about Kara's family aside proved to be more than the right call.

Beyond her sudden revelation that Kara's natural accent was one of her absolute favourite sounds, the evening had continued amazingly. The first bottle of Thessia Red had been consumed before any of the plates of food Kara had ordered had arrived, and another had quickly followed. With wine flowing freely and the delicious meal in front of them, there had been very little conversation between them. Mostly, it had been limited to softly trading how much they were enjoying the meals in front of them, and Kara grinning smugly at being spot on in every dish that she had ordered.

It was a little remarkable how quickly Kara had been able to gage what Lena's preferences were. The night at the dive bar on campus, the food they had ordered to the table had mostly been Kara's choice, and Lena had been loath to get in the way of a woman reacquainting herself with food she had loved as a teenager. To the best of her own memory, Lena hadn't commented much on her own preferences, but Kara had clearly been paying a great deal of attention to her every word to have been able to perfectly pick every dish to Lena's taste.

While Kara's comparison to sushi made a certain amount of sense, the differences were stark. The dishes themselves were mainly comprised of various kinds of fish and vegetable parcels, dipped in sauces that had flavours Lena had never tasted before. The rice that typical Earth sushi was wrapped in was exchanged for something that resembled pastry or dough in its appearance, but tasted very similar to rice, or some other grain. Whatever it was, Lena had fallen slightly in love with the chef who invented it.

Over the course of the meal, Kara had explained some of the more curious culinary differences between Earth and Krypton. Most kryptonians were, by Earth standards, functionally pescatarian or vegetarian. Krypton had no mammals that would fall under the jurisdiction of cattle, and so kryptonians consumed very little meat. The closest they had were a species of large, reptilian birds that had been hunted to near extinction before Krypton's society evolved into a technocracy, and now only existed in protected environments. According to legends, the beasts had been incredibly delicious.

In fact, Lena had noticed that to be a pattern observed on most planets across the galaxy. Very few had cattle in the same way that Earth did. The salarians, reptilian in their origin mostly subsisted on fish and various water-bound planets before their introduction to galactic society. For turians it was large bird species. The asari, much like the kryptonians and salarians, depended on their oceans for food. The only exception that Lena was aware of was the quarians, who had apparently had many domestic mammals for food sources before they had fled Rannoch.

After Earth had joined the galactic society, the genetic code for animals like sheep and cows had been exported and grown in clone banks on a few dozen different planets across Citadel Space. Even the batarians had been fans before their separation from the rest of the galaxy.

The meat that came with Earth cattle was far from what the rest of the races of the galaxy were interested in though. The lack of any distinct or widespread species mammalian cattle across the galaxy had meant that most species had no access to milks, or creams, or cheeses. Those more than almost anything else had been humanity's greatest export to the rest of the galaxy.

Which lead to the other races of the galaxy quickly developing dessert menus the were remarkably human. Even for the species that had analogues of sugar cane and were capable of producing sweet treats, the concept of dessert was relatively quiet among the galaxy before humanity. With cattle came ice cream, custards, and a whole range of other treats that tripled the sizes of dessert menus across the galaxy.

Lena was thrilled to see that the restaurant had a dessert menu that was almost the exact same size as the regular food menu.

She had insisted the waitress gave them only one copy of the menu, and she hogged it shamelessly, not wanting to let Kara see what she was looking for. Kara had protested, telling Lena that she had studied the menu intensely before they came and that she knew almost every item on it, but that didn't deter her. Omni-tool casting an orange glow over it, Lena skimmed over the holographic translation of the menu until she landed on a dish she knew Kara would love. Seemingly sensing that Lena had made her choice, the waitress drifted back over and, in lieu of a verbal response, she pointed at the selection she had made, and added an order for another bottle of wine. The waitress regarded her for a moment, before taking the menu with a nod and heading off for the kitchen.

"What did you order?" Kara asked.

"Something I know you'll like."

Given Kara's secretive approach to the venue of their date, and then her commandeering of the ordering of food, Lena was going to draw out the suspense she could manage to create for as long as possible.

She had no doubt in her mind that her selection was something that Kara would enjoy. Among their discussion of all the food Kara had loved on Earth had been a whole list of desserts that she had been obsessed with and greatly missed now she was back on Krypton. Out of those, there had been one that held prize above all, and that had been ice cream.

Kara had raved about it during their discussion of Earth cuisine, it had been one of her favourite food on Earth, and was surprisingly rare on Krypton outside of restaurants. Outside of the small human pockets that existed on places like Argo's student campus, kryptonian grocery stores didn't tend to sell ice cream. It was a frivolity to kryptonians something that was best kept to restaurants as an occasional indulgence during important dinners, not kept at home to snack on.

That didn't stop Kara's eyes from lighting up with the intensity of a thousand stars the moment she laid eyes on the ridiculously sized dessert tray being brought out from the kitchen by the waitress.

Her eyes were fixed on the bowl being carried to their table, and Lena was reasonably sure that Kara was grappling against the urge to start salivating over the sight of the dessert. It seemed to pain her greatly but Kara managed to keep her composure while the dish was brought over to them.

"The 'loaded' chocolate fudge sundae, for two." The waitress said, setting the dish down between them.

"For two?" Kara turned her attention to Lena and grinned. "Dream on, Lena."

A soft laugh flowed over her lips as Lena rolled her eyes. The waitress produced another bottle of wine from somewhere, topped up both of their glasses, then placed the bottle on the table before disappearing again. Kara hardly hesitated before grabbing one of the two spoons, pilling her spoon high with as much of the sundae as she could manage, and swallowing it all in a single gulp. The moan of enjoyment that followed was positively pornographic.

Lena wasn't sure if it was the two bottles of wine, or the sudden flashes through her mind of the last time she had heard Kara moan like that, but she suddenly found herself feeling incredibly warm.

Trying her best to push down the images of Kara that were bubbling through her mind, Lena reached out to grab the second spoon that had been delivered along with the dessert. In a move that seemed more befitting of a three-year-old than a well-educated adult, Kara used her own spoon to bat Lena's away so that she couldn't get at the sundae.

"Really?" Lena shot Kara a look, one eyebrow raised.

"I haven't had a real ice cream sundae in years, this is mine, Lena." Kara said.

Lena went to dive in with her spoon again, only for Kara to try and deflect her again. Quickly deciding to prove a point, Lena's free hand shot up, closed around Kara's wrist and pinned her hand to the table. Kara looked up at her with wide eyes as Lena grinned, digging herself a spoonful of the sundae.

"I'm a trained Alliance marine, Miss Zor-El. You'll need some better tricks than that to stop me." She finished off by swallowing down the spoonful of ice cream, her eyes never breaking contact with Kara's.

Something dark shifted behind Kara's eyes, contact briefly breaking from Lena's own intense gaze to look down at her pinned wrist before shooting back up. A flicker of something else went through Lena's mind, a memory of their night together that had been slightly buried under the alcohol and fleeting seconds it lasted for. Lena's grin widened a little, putting together one more thing about Kara that she would definitely be bringing up again somewhere down the line.

Before her mind could wander any further down that particular rabbit hole, Lena released her grip in Kara's wrist and turned her attention quickly to her freshly filled glass of wine. More alcohol probably wasn't going to help her all that much, but Lena never really had been one for healthy coping strategies anyway. Lena gulped down a mouthful, far too much in one go, and fought down the urge to cough.

Kara had seemingly had the same idea as Lena. The moment contact had been broken, she had dived straight back into the sundae with vigour. By the time Lena had plucked up the courage to look back over at her, Kara had, in her hurry to distract herself, managed to get a streak of ice cream dotted on one cheek. The sight was so amazingly human, so much more like the Kara Lena had gotten to know at the dive bar than the slightly formal kryptonian she had been most of the evening, that Lena couldn't help but to laugh out loud.

The puzzled look on Kara's face that she got in response was too much for Lena, and her laughter only increased. There were a few curious glances shot their way, but those only lasted fractions of a second, kryptonian propriety was good for privacy if nothing else.

"You've got…" Lena trailed off, brushing two fingertips over her own cheek in roughly the spot where Kara had gotten the ice cream.

Kara's eyes went a little wide, hand immediately rising to scrub at the wrong cheek.

"Other side."

Still, somehow, Kara missed.

"Come here, you child." Lena rolled her eyes affectionately, picking up her napkin from the table and beckoning Kara over.

Kara seemed to hesitate a little, almost as if she was unsure what Lena was about to do, but she moved closer anyway. For a moment, Lena wondered if there was some baffling kryptonian cultural stigma that she had never noticed before, that it would be considered impolite or improper for her to wipe the rapidly melting ice cream from Kara's cheek. If there was though, she didn't much care, and quickly reached up with her napkin to wipe the mess away.

Kara stiffened under her touch fractionally, then softened against Lena's hand, pressing her cheek a little firmer into it, as if seeking the embrace. Lena snaked her thumb out from under the napkin, and gently brushed it across Kara's cheek, feeling the heat there, before dropping her hand back to her side.

When Kara settled back into her seat properly, her hand raised up to press finger tips against her cheek, just where Lena's touch had been. For a long moment, neither of them moved or said a word, both in slight awe at whatever energy crackled around them.

Then, as suddenly as the moment arrived in faded away as Kara turned her attention back to her half-emptied glass of wine.

The dessert was mostly finished off, with only a few pools of melted ice cream still in the bowl, which left only the remnants of that last bottle of wine keeping them both at the table. For a flickering moment Kara met Lena's eyes, and Lena instantly understood the silent message there.

Even if wine wasn't her go-to alcohol, Lena needed little more than three solid gulps to have her glass cleaned off, and Kara was only a few seconds behind her.

Having seen the now empty wine glasses, the waitress drifted back over to them and Kara settled up the bill with a few quick button-presses on her omni-tool. By the time the payment was made and Kara had exchanged the mandatory social graces and compliments for the meal with the waitress Lena was stood by her chair, offering a hand.

Kara accepted the proffered hand without a second thought and it was all Lena could do to ignore the warmth she felt when their skin touched. The heat Kara seemed to be emanating aside, there was a far more internal warmth that flooded through Lena at the contact. The long seconds as they walked from the restaurant and out onto the street only served to dial up that heat Lena felt, before the cool wash of the evening air draped itself over them both.

"Thank you, Kara," Lena said, turning to face her date properly. "That was…incredible."

Kara blushed faintly, a bashful smile coming over her lips before she met Lena's eyes.

"You don't owe me any thanks, Lena. Your company is immeasurably more valuable to me than any dinner."

Something swooped in Lena's gut at the words.

"I…" Kara cut herself off almost as soon as she began to speak. Something was ticking away in her mind, and Lena allowed her a few moments to find her feet again. "Would you like to come to my apartment for another drink?"

The intensity in Kara's eyes told Lena everything she needed. Another drink was the last thing on both of their minds, and they both knew it.

Between the three bottles of wine, exquisite meal, and Kara's endlessly charming self, Lena was completely and utterly wooed.

"I'd love nothing more."

CODEX ENTRIES

Quarian: A nomadic species of humanoid aliens known for their skills with technology and synthetic intelligence. Without a homeworld to call their own the quarians live aboard the Migrant Fleet, a huge collection of starships that travel as a single fleet.

Rannoch: An arid planet in the Tikkun system, the former quarian homeworld. Almost three hundred years ago, the quarians were driven from Rannoch by the geth, synthetic servants who gained sapience and rebelled against their creators.