Jason tapped his right foot against the cold cement outside of Kara's apartment complex, on occasion switching feet and and gritting his teeth impatiently. There were a few moments where he almost began crushing the tiger lillies he'd gotten for her a few hours ago. They were mostly a spur of the moment thing, but worst case scenario, he was out twenty dollars and at best, it would be one of the things that made her night.

Staring at his wrist next, his blood pressure rising along with the longer hand on his electrum watch. He knew that she could probably see him standing down there like an idiot and Jason should have known that.

"I'm an idiot," Jason mumbled to himself before leaning back on the red brick wall.

"I knew that when I agreed to go out with you," he heard the high-pitched voice of his date: the young Kara Zor-El.

"How did you-" Jason thought before realizing she was floating as silent as the grave. "Right," he smiled. "And here I thought I was the ninja." That was when he actually noticed her.

She was wearing a denim skirt and jacket with a light red, almost salmon blouse beneath it that loosely fit her body, along with a matching red hair band. Along with that came two small slip on shoes, their shade being a sort of scarlet with white trimmings to match a pair of bracelets she wore over each wrist.

Kara smiled, taking the way Jason had been starring, subtly she could admit, as a sign of his approval.. "Are those for me?" Her eyes lit up as Jason began to hand her the brilliant orange flowers. "What are they called?" She asked, taking them and smelling them slightly, smiling as she did so.

"Tiger lillies," Jason answered, returning the grin. "You like 'em?"

"Mmm…" Kara hummed vaguely, lowering them. "They smell like the Kandorian yam bread my mother used to make back before Krypton…" she hesitated and Jason furrowed his brow. "Back before I moved here. They remind me of home," she reached up and pecked Jason on the cheek. "Thank you, Jason, truly. Just let me get these up in my apartment and I'll be-"

"Back in a flash?" he suggested with a cheshire grin on his face.

"Back soon, Cave-man," she retorted with an elbow to his side before she went back and back down the building in what took, at most, a solid ten seconds, the same amount of time it took Jason to check his watch to time her. "I'm back," she announced, taking the lead of the two.

"What do you have planned for our evening, Jason?" Kara asked with Jason moving faster to catch up with her.

"Well, and this is just a general idea," he began. "The thought is that, first off, we can go get some food from one of the best restaurants here in Metropolis where I have reserved a nice little corner booth, thanks to my rather austere connections," he smiled as he finished those last few words.

"Exactly how much do you make as an international outlaw?" Kara asked him, her worry mingled with genuine curiosity.

"I got a few fake identities lying around with some stocks attached to them," he answered with a tinge of arrogance in his voice. "The corporate types don't generally care what happens as long as their cash gets left alone."

"It seems that some things in this life are universal."

"True enough, but if not for that," Jason moved in front of her. "Then we wouldn't be here, would we?"

"Maybe, maybe not," Kara replied, keeping her pace. "Who know's what Rao's plans are?"

"Point conceded," Jason admitted. "I mean, there's a few different universes out there. Who's to say there's not one where I was the last of Earth and crash landed on Krypton?"

That earned him a smile from her. "Then you would have been crushed by our planets gravity, that is, if you weren't saved fast enough," Kara let out a haughty laugh. "Honestly, Jason, use your head. I know that you didn't survive War-World based solely on your looks!"

"I prefer to think that's exactly how it happened," he argued back. "Now c'mon, Tiny-girl," he picked up his own speed. "We got a booth with our name on it!"

…

"Alright, everybody!" A loud voice with a guitar sounded off and a drum riff ended. "That one was call 'Earring guy is an alcoholic! This next one is called…" he strummed his guitar for dramatic effect. "Hard… core… GRANNY!"

Jason had Kara's hand as they made their way through the hustling and the bustling of the underground bar and grill that had been hidden away from the town at large. She tried covering her ears, but at that point she was used to how Siobhan played her music enough to tolerate the loud solos of amateur metal heads.

"I may have implied we were going somewhere nicer than I intended," Jason almost shouted, evidently forgetting his date's super sensory abilities. "My bad!"

"No need to worry," Kara met his tone. "I had a feeling it would come to this and I'm actually not to adverse to this type of place! You should thank Siobhan for that!"

"I think I…" Jason paused and cleared his throat, stopping as well to realize that it was a bit quieter in the corner booth he'd reserved. "I think I'll have to take you up on that," he finished with a more subdued volume.

"You'll more than likely have the chance, Jason," she offered with a grin. "Given how ecstatic she was about sending me out on this outing, I wouldn't be surprised if she showed up out of the blue tonight."

"Well, if she's anything like Roy, then it… will…" Jason slowed down as he saw a vaguely familiar looking young woman with platinum blonde hair getting up on the stage. She was eerily similar to how Kara had described her best friend. "Happen. Kara?"

"Hmm?" she hummed as she drank from the straw of the water glass.

"Didn't you say Siobhan had almost white hair and had a thing for studded leather for her acts?"

"I believe I-" she began, halting then as it began to dawn on her. "Oh no," she turned around.

"Oh yes," Jason countered with extra emphasis. He was barely able to contain the grin on his face. "Ha, well I'll be damned, Kara! She's looking right-"

"At us," Kara's face flushed red and she began to cover it up with the menu that had been placed on the table before they got there. "Yes, thank you, Jason. I gathered."

"Well if you want, we can take off somewhere with a lil' more-"

"Dignity?"

"Ambiance," Jason corrected.

Kara looked at Jason, then to Siobhan, then back to Jason and let out a sigh. "If it's not to much trouble?" she extended her hand for Jason to take.

"Not at all," Jason accepted her offer into his palm as they both began to leave the private booth. "I hear there's a 24 hour sandwich shop. Let's see what trouble we can stir up-" he was cut off by a sharp budge back, face first, back into the seat. "Hey!"

"Hey what?" A definite bowery accent emerged, nearly twice as thick as Jason's with none of the charm, from the ambient roar found in the club. "Hey you," he turned to Kara, trying to take her hand. "You're lookin' a bit too blonde and too gorgeous to be hangin' around with a street rat like that."

"He's wearing his nice jacket," Kara defended.

"Right, like the one that doesn't have any blood stains?"

"You got any idea how hard it is to get blood stains out of leather?" Jason quipped, having then gotten back on his feet. "Go ahead," Jason nodded towards them. "I'm sure Kara's real interested in what it is you've gotta say to her," Jason shot her a smile and she returned the favor.

"Like I needed your permission," he replied, taking Kara by the arm then. "So," he leaned in to whisper in her right ear. "We're in Metropolis, whatcha say to giving me a Metropolis-"

Kara's eyes lit up and her head traveled as a blur into the side of where that man's once perfectly healthy ear had been as he went flying several feet into the crowd of rampant dancers.

"MOSH PIT!" Jason shouted at the top of his lungs, unleashing a hell as the larger man began engulfed by leather studded, metal headed violence. Jason let out a hearty laugh and turned to Kara. "That guy wasn't so-hey!" He shouted, his arm feeling as though it had been yanked from its socket.

He didn't get an explanation, just a smile as Kara pulled him out of the underground in the ensuing chaos and out into the very early morning darkness. That was when he stopped seeing her and watched her.

There was an ear to ear grin plastered on her face as he struggled to keep up. She herself more than likely struggled to keep the pace for Jason's own sake. Her eyes, Kara's unearthly blue eyes lit up from the street lights and the moon light as they rounded the corner and then just stopped.

"Haha," Kara howled, letting go of Jason's hand. "That was something, I'll say that for you, Jason."

"Heh," Jason tried to catch his breath, running his hand through his hair. "Yeah, y'know honestly? I didn't expect the night to go ass backward like that."

"If I can be equally frank, I was afraid it would be too quiet," she admitted herself. "From last night, I got the impression you thought me to be made of cheap lenin, rather than steel," she looked him in the eyes. "I'm a big girl, Jason. I can take the odd thug here and there."

"I know you can, Tiny-girl," he agreed. "That's why I opted for the… ah… shit, you know? I forgot what that place was called."

"It's probably not important."

"Right," Jason concurred with her. "So that takes out the den of steal or whatever. And wouldn't you know it, I still owe you a date."

"Then hold on," Kara gave him her hand once more. "I have food at my place and I happen to know a shortcut."

He looked at it and grinned. "You're not gonna start singing 'I can show you the world', are you?"

"Only if you make me mad, Jason."

"So yes?" he fired with a chuckle.

"Are you hungry or not?" she did the same.

"Yes, Ma'am," he answered with a smirk, taking her hand as she began to rise into the night sky.

…

"You know," Jason began, dipping a chicken breast into the marinade he'd only just then made up. "Far be it from me to notice something and put my keen detective skills at work, but why does a Kryptonian have food in her appartment? Aren't you guys powered by the sun or something?"

"I'm used to eating. I like the flavor," she shrugged, slumping over the bar that connected her main living space to her kitchen, such as it was. It wasn't a lot, but it came furnished with everything she needed, at least, and everything else she was able to find cheap enough at the local clearance stores, including the tea kettle.

"Granted, but don't you make just above minimum wage?" Jason plied further.

"I make really good tips?" she tried to pass it off.

"You get paid by the JL United, don't you?"

"Green Arrow offered, but most of us declined," she answered with a half truth as she watched Jason rub down the poultry, trading that for proper marination time.

"Did you?" Jason raised an eyebrow at her.

"Well come on! He's a billionaire and I'm a barista at a cafe!" she laughed, earning the same from her guest. "Do you know how expensive it is to wash Kryptonian fabrics?"

"Funny. I didn't think that there was a place on Earth where you can wash your uniform,"

She pointed to him. "That's not the point and you know it, Jason Todd," Kara pointed to him, then closed her eyes. "Rao, that smells amazing. Where did you learn to cook?"

"Amazing what you can do with a welfare check and a discount cookbook, ain't it?" He answered as he took out a pan and began to set the chicken on it. "And you'll know exactly how amazing it is here in the next 30 minutes, there about. And, by extension," he placed the pan on the stove, preheated to medium-high heat. "How amazing I am."

"You're not that great," she rolled her eyes at him, beaming to the side wryfully .

"Nah, girl. They don't call me Jason 'wily as a fox and twice as foxy' Todd for nothing," he winked at her.

"Well I guess that's true, then."

"Wait, seriously?" He chuckled. "Kara, you must have picked that up from a clearance shop because nobody else ever buys that."

"If you hadn't noticed by that pan, Jason," she motioned him to look back at the stove and dinged up kitchenware. "I do,in fact, get most of my things from clearance stores."

"Yeah, I got that," he admitted, looking around, seeing a definite pattern in how she decorated her home. "You, ah… got kind of a fifties retro futurism thing going on here and most of this stuff looks like it's been redone."

"It reminds me of home," she looked down at the blue tinted surface of the bar with a warm, but sad smile. "Not everyone shows up as an alien when they're a baby. Some of us had lives back there before our planet…"

"If it makes you feel any better, when I died and went to heaven?" he leaned over and lifted her chin up with his right hand, purposefully cutting her off. "There was this one blonde chick, right around your height," Jason looked Kara over and nodded. "Maybe an inch taller? Anyway, she would not, for the life of her, shut up about how great her daughter was. Like, how determined and how much she took after her and shit. I almost wished I got sent to the other place just to get away from it."

She perked up at that. "You honestly expect me to believe that you met my mom in heaven?" Kara asked almost rhetorically, moving Jason's hand away.

"Sure," he replied nonchalantly. "And you know, she also said that if you ever meet a dash rogue by the name of Jason Todd, you should 200% absolutely go out with him even if you almost have to twist his arm about it."

"Excuse me?" Kara butted in incredulously. "If I remember right, you showed up in the middle of what little breathing room I have in my shift to pull me aside and ask me out."

"Is that how it happened?" he asked back with his back still facing her. "I'm sorry. That explosion that killed me must have ruined my memory."

"Your explosion that killed you? My explosion killed my whole planet!"

"But I was beat with a crowbar!" he turned around.

"I was manipulated by the only living Kryptonian I wasn't related to!"

"I almost killed my adopted family over not killing the Joker!"

"I became a red lantern!"

"I am the one who framed Roger Rabbit!"

"I destroyed Alderaan!" she countered, ending the exchange.

A long silence fell upon both her and him as they began staring at each other, only inches away from the others face and utterly incapable of keeping it straight. Kara began to break first with the frown she'd become so accustomed to cracking ever so slightly, but was soon followed by Jason unable to keep his trademarked scowl over his eyes.

He saw it in her eyes that she couldn't keep up that face forever and he likewise saw it in hers from the way he was fighting a grin from forming on his face. Nearly a whole minute passed until the two couldn't fight back the flood of laughter that came bellowing from the inside.

"Rao, haha- ah!" Kara fell back in her hysteria, hitting her head of steal on the cheap linoleum floors, created a small groove that would it been bigger had she not weighed slightly less than the average girl.

"Ha, heh, you alright, Tiny?" Jason asked, walking around the bar and extending his hand to her.

"Fine," she accepted, rising up. "I'm fine. Wow. It really is, I mean… I haven't laughed like that sense before I joined the red lanterns."

"What'd you destroy that time?" Jason quipped.

She glared at him. "I incinerated a stay puft marshmallow, if you must know."

"And you almost piss yourself like just now?"

"You had to be there?" She parroted the common phrase.

"Well, I guess small things amuse small minds, right?" He turned around, jesting as he headed back to the kitchen.

"Quiet you," she slugged him in the arm playfully.

"Heh," he grabbed the spatula and began to move around the chicken. "Well the food's still not gonna be done for another 15 minutes, bare minimum, so why not tell me about all your… thrilling adventures in space with the Justice League of Canada, eh?"

"Why not?" She waved her hand. Kara then grabbed the stool she'd only then fell off of and sat back down. "Let's start with the beginning, when I was just passing through after destroying a world killer…"

…

"And that's how we and the Legion of Superheroes were able to save the universe," she concluded with her mouth still full of chicken. Kara wiped the grease from her face. "Are you not entertained, Jason? Did I not say it would be a thrilling tale of the ages?"

Jason rolled his eyes. "I'd be more entertained if you stopped him by yourself. The way I see it?" he took a drink of his water and continued. "The martian and that dinomax-"

"Daxamite," she corrected.

"Dinomax guy did the heavy lifting," he teased. "Sure, you were there, but pics or it didn't happen, Kara."

"Your impossible to get a compliment from," Kara pointed out. "You are aware of this, yes?"

"Hey, that's not true!" He defended feebly. "I can give them out, I just don't do it often or directly to peoples faces. I got a rep to maintain, after all. And we can't have people thinking," he covered his mouth and gasped sarcastically. "Jason Todd is a good person!"

"So says the loudmouth who made the two hour trip to dry the tears of his broken hearted teenage girl," she argued back.

"Everybody gets one," Jason lifted a singular finger up.

"I do not believe that for an instant, Jason Peter Todd. I believe that, in you, there's a man right at my cousin's integrity just waiting to get out, minus the preaching. You just haven't been given the chance to show it yet, but I know…" she lifted up a finger herself now. "I know everything."

"Oh really? And what is it that you know?"

"I know…" she trailed off and inched her face closer to him. "I know that you like me, Jason… Peter… Todd…"

"As far as any planet busting hero, yeah," he turned around to the sink, hoping to clean the dishes as a distraction.

"That's not it and you know it," she pushed further. "Jason, would you have come to help me last night if you didn't think we had a chance? Or, barring that, if you didn't like me in that way?"

She was fishing for something and Jason had to answer. Kara pushed him into that and now, if he said no, she'd know for sure that feelings were reciprocated far beyond just asking her out out of some emotionally conflicted, existential crisis. If he said yes, then she'd have confirmation of his integrity as a person, again far above what was thought.

Jason did the one thing she didn't expect: he charged.

"No, Tiny-Girl, you're 120% right. I actually do like you that way, but no, I didn't show up because of that," he turned around to face her. "When a friend asks another for help, you go and help them. Maybe you make them pay you, and maybe you jerk them around for a good two minutes because you think it's funny. When I heard you crying, and don't think you can hide that bullshit from me, Kara, when I heard you crying I didn't think twice. You needed my help? You had it. I would've done the same for Tim, the same for Roy and the same for Kori, because you're right. I might act like the most unbearable prick my family is willing to tolerate, but I don't have it in me to turn away someone I care about. Get me on a good day, and you may even catch me throwing homeless people 12 inch subs," he ended with a joke. "I know I'm a good person. I know you think that and Batman and Batgirl all think that, but even if I know it?

"Maybe I'm just happier believing I'm not."

"Jason," Kara looked down and smiled. "You don't know how happy I am to hear you admit that, do you?"

"Judging by that misty look in your eyes, I really think I do," he added.

She lifted herself from the stool, then, slowly and methodically. Taking her time, Kara began to walk into the kitchen. She rounded the corner and moved past the white and orange and other richly painted and curvy retro-futuristic kitchen furnishings she loved so much that reminded her of home in the way it imitated what real technology was. Her bare feet made contact then with the different texture of the kitchen's floor. Different in that, while they were made of the same material, she could make out the ever so slight change that came from being where food was prepared.

Kara looked up to him now. Her forehead was at his chin, soon solved by floating only a few inches to meet him at eye level and give him the lightest of touches on his lips with her own.

"Follow," she softly commanded, taking his scarred, soft hand into her's of silken steel.

There was a little resistance at first, but if the last night was anything to go by, she knew that she may have just won him over simply by not forcing anything of him. Kara could also feel his anxiety, greater than her own, as his heart began to beat faster and his palms became more moist and clammy. She accepted that. What Kara also accepted was what she planned to give Jason that night for the first time in her life.

She felt that he knew that. She felt as well that maybe that was why he was so nervous? The fact that he may lay with a Kryptonian who'd never been laid down herself?

Kara gulped back. Walking through her fifties styled hall, small though it was, she couldn't help but feel something akin to unease herself.

"Are you ready?" She murmured just loud enough for him to hear, her left hand on the door knob and her right one holding his.

"Whenever you are," he answered simply.

Kara smiled, turning the doorknob as she did so and swinging it open slowly. She let Jason's hand go. "Go get ready on the bed. I'll… get more comfortable," she nearly tripped over the cliche. "And then meet you when I'm ready."

He answered with a simple nod. She turned around and went to her restroom, closing it behind her slowly, silent as the heavens. Kara looked in the mirror and then went to work. Her salmon shirt went first, having dropped the denim vest upon arriving in her home nearly an hour before. Upon it's falling, all her bracelets, some from Siobhan and some she found herself, were placed neatly upon the fake granite countertop next to the sink. The socks were taken off next, having no shoes to block them. Finally came the skirt and she was almost entirely revealed to herself then: nothing but a simple blue bra and an orange pair of panties.

Kara took a deep breath. Her hands almost lifted themselves up as she began to fumble over the front buckle to the ill matching brazier. She looked at herself in the mirror one last time, watching her fingers do the work for her until the underwear finally fell to the burgundy carpet at her feet, first one cup, then an instant later the other.

Her eyes never left her body she didn't have a concrete thought in her head. After a long blink, her right hand, the tool for so much that evening, fumbled over the doorknob and opened it.

She walked as though she were in a forced trance back to her room to see Jason in red plaid boxers, sitting at the end of the bed, blushing at her. Kara returned the favor.

"Do you," she could barely look at him. "Do you think I'm sexy?" she asked meekly.

"Kara," Jason began, rising from the bed. "I think you're beautiful," he offered, putting his hand on her shoulder.

What followed was an abrupt, forceful kiss that Jason gleefully surrendered to. They're tongues didn't wrestle for supremacy so much as danced quickly within the others mouth, finding a synergy and swirling as if in a waltz.

Kara felt fire as Jason's left hand began to trace her hip, then her ribs. "hmm," she hummed, forcing Jason to stop. "It's nothing, I'm just ticklish there. Don't stop."

She could tell there was a mental shrug as he began to caress her right breast, slowly and methodically as if he were dialing an old radio, earning a quiet sigh from her.

Kara stopped her tongue, but kept going, reaching for his own chest and feeling his muscles but never made contact.

"Kara?" Jason asked. "Are you okay?"

"I…" she turned away in embarrassment. "No, Jason. I'm sorry, I'm not…" Kara met him in the eyes. "I'm not there yet. I thought I was but," a kiss cut her off, but it was Jason that gave it this time.

"It's alright, Tiny-girl," he smiled with both hands on her shoulders. "It's alright. You do it when you're ready, yeah?"

"Yeah," she agreed.

"Alright, then," he continued. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna hit that couch because I really don't want to drive-"

"Wait, Jason," she grabbed his arm. "Just because we're not sleeping together," Kara looked at her bed. "Doesn't mean we can't... sleep together, right?"

He looked confused at her for a moment and then got her meaning. "Okay, yeah... I can swing that."

"Good," she nodded.

Once more, she took his hand. Kara threw the covers to the side and they began a crawl over the ivory sheets. Jason went down first, then Kara on the outside, holding him as they laid down together.

"Jason?" she asked out, wrapping her arms around his stomach as he threw the blankets over the two of them.

"Yeah, Kara?"

"Thank you for staying."

"You know it, Tiny-girl," he closed his eyes slowly and warmly. "You know it."