Coluan's are Green
Kyle came back a few hours later. The sun had set hours ago. He did the adult thing and pressed his ear to the door and apartment when there was no screaming so he entered. Kyle was very happy to find that there was no longer a war going on in the kitchen between people he barely knew over things he could barely understand.
The teens had gotten some take out, and were sprawled across the couch.
The kid named Lyle was sleeping his head was on top of Querl's left leg, Querl hadn't fixed the patch of green that was showing. was reading one of his books on color theory but it was clear he had gone though half of Kyle books there was two plies of books, it was clear that he was tearing through them, Kara was chatting at Brainy who was participating one hundred in the conversation. The young woman was going on about some girl named Beth.
Kyle half waved hello at them went to the fridge took a bottle of juice out and drank it. Taking his time went for the leftovers on the table. "Do you want to move him to a bed?" he pointed at Lyle.
"We tried." Brainy said very absentmindedly. He didn't look up from his book. "He bite me." didn't sound very pleased with the brown haired kid on his leg. "So go on Beth then tried to seduce Tim, Even though she was sleeping with Jack and was going to have a kid with him?"
"Right!" the piece of hair that wouldn't stay behind her ears fell again and she pushed it back. "All cause Kathryn, called her a whore."
Brainy didn't glance away from the book. He with his free hand retched down picked a new one up and found the first page turned his head and folded the now finished book and put it on a pile. "She sounds like one."
Kara shrugged her shoulders. "I wouldn't call her that, she's a bit easy."
"She lies to her lover, is trying to break a couple up. And only cares about her getting the attention she wants." Brainy went on reading to reading his book. With his free hand he reached down and grabbed a napkin and without looking up whipped a spot on Kara's cheek. "That's sort of the code of whores." he glanced for a second away from the book "Sorry it's been there for ten minutes."
"What the hell are you two talking about?" Kyle started at the two of them blankly. He had taken a set across from the two and was sitting watching them intently. Superman had made it a point to Tell Kyle to keep an eye on his friends, to make sure they didn't do anything he wouldn't do. Kyle was getting the feeling Clark had meant to keep the two teens that where awake in his room apart.
"A Soap". Kara said smiling. "Turns out it's a classic in his time."
He barely looked up as he finished yet another book. "Movie days on the team are usually some lost classic. Nura plays Soaps often and I am very lost when plays them apparently she is missing a few" he repeated the same process with the books as he did before. "Kara was filling me in on the missing parts."
Lyle muttered something in his sleep and moved his head slightly. Brainy took it as his queue to try to move and Kara pulled him away quickly enough that getting a pillow under Lyle's head resulted in no further injuries to anyone in the room.
Brainy had moved to the floor by Kara's feet and after a minute she found a reason to join him.
Kyle had spent a whole of ten minutes watching Kara and Querl talk and chatting and it became painful clear to Kyle, that the two liked one another. Querl kept looking at her then looking away, so he would get caught starting, he was hanging off every word she uttered. And Kara was playing with her hair way to more than normal and was trying to find ways to touch him by brushing off lint that only she could see.
It was kind of cute in the high school kind of way.
Kyle glanced at the sleeping teen on the couch. "Kara you should show him the city while his friend is out cold." Kyle knew that was probably the very opposite of what Clark had been hinting at. But he had a crash course in all that was Querl Dox and he trusted the kid, the boy wouldn't do anything to her.
"It would be a bad idea if he woke up and I'm not here." He glanced at Kara.
"We could go to the planetarium; it's not far just down the road." She had never been to one on earth. "The show is only half hour long and if does wake up soon it wouldn't be that long of wait. You know even though I'm super girl I don't get that many nights off to enjoy a big city."
Brainy looked at his sleeping friend. He would have like to go he really wanted to go, but leaving seemed to be a bad idea. "I really don't want to get into another fight." he still felt horrible about their clash that had happened under two hours ago it wasn't often that Querl need some sense smacked into him but he was smart enough to recognize when it was. Also it was starting to bother him that Lyle had been asleep for most of the time that had been stuck here.
Kyle smiled. "Don't worry you won't be that far way. And I know where you are. Go have fun."
Not surprisingly the planetarium was empty it was a weekday one show before closing. Querl asked if they could just leave the stars up without the show. The man shrugged and did what Querl had asked.
They found seats and Kara after a moment moved so she was half lying on top Of Brainy she said she was cold and Brainy had found no reason to object her being so close. Her hair was right below his nose and he could smell some type of coconut product in her hair. He had taken out a laser pointer in his pocket and was pointing it at the ceiling at different stars telling her stories about the legion travels. "And that's where my home world is." he circled point next to a blue star. He moved the laser next to a group of stars. "There is where Lyle and half of the boys on our team lost their virginity at a very shady hotel called the love stuck star."
She laughed. "Really?"
"So they say, amusing thing is they all pretty much have the same story so I really don't believe them." he moved the laser to star far off. "That world." He pointed at a star, this where we most of us took our first real team vacation. the whole word is covered in ice. And we got really drunk one night and Clark wanted to go swimming so ultra boy, along with your cousin picked Sun boy up and threw him into a frozen lake. Within seconds the lake was the right tempter to for a hot tub. Since then sun boy is always sent into a pool first something he does whether he wants to go in or not."
She pushed his hand down and took the laser from his hand and started to play with it. Connecting the stars randomly she didn't know any of earth consolations so she was making her own. They stayed like that for a long moment before she spoke. "So what's a lightning rod? Why did Invisible kid flip when you had one? "
"It's something in our time that can bring someone back to life."
She shifted herself she could look at Brainy in the eye. That didn't sound like something that should be forbidden. "So why is it illegal than?"
He stared to play with her hair running his fingers threw it. At first he didn't realize he was doing it but when Kara didn't say anything he kept going. "Because the person that uses it to bring back the dead, dies." he adjusted his body slightly. The chair was killing his back. But he didn't want to Kara to move off him.
"I see" she readjusted herself and moved closer.
"There is a story that surrounds the lighting rod. They say there was a horrible man the ruled a planet" Brainy took one of Kara's had and pointed it at a star. "Somewhere around there, he had sold his soul to gain all the power and money he wanted, and for twenty long years he had it. No matter how horrible this ruler got his wife stood by him, they loved one another deeply, one night while the king was out of bed an assassin came to kill this horrifying man, instead the assassin killed his wife.
"The man was very distraught and called the devil and begged for him to save her, he said he would give everything the devil had given him back. And the devil could still have his soul, but the devil said no he wasn't going to deal with the man again, so the man made the lighting rod to save her. But when the wife awoke to find her husband dead, she killed herself over the grief."
"That's a very fairy tale like story." she looked up at his face and frowned slightly. And spoke mostly to her. "You've had this green spot on your face all afternoon."
Brainiac 5 looked down at her. And looked a bit lost "you are kidding right?"
Kara sat up and tried to wipe the green spot off. And was supposed to find out she had only made it bigger. "What?"
Brainy sat up now that she was off him. "Kara I'm From Yod. Coluan's are green." he frowned a bit. "I thought you knew that"
"I that's what I thought before I met you, you were always pale, it's not like I've ever met a Coluan before, It's not like Coluan's go out that often. I though you where just from a different part of Colu. Like people on earth are different shades depending on where they live."
Brainy laughed. He could help himself. She looked embarrassed and was blushing and was completely off guard.
Without thinking, Doing something he rarely did he leaned over and kissed her it was a small kiss he pressed his lips against hers, lingering for a moment. She looked stunned but made no movement to pull away.
After a second he pulled back about two inches. "Kara" he leaned closer so they were only an inch apart. "May I kiss you?"
She studied his eyes for a second and closed the gap between them. Pulled her hands up to his head and pulled him closer. Deeper into the kiss, she traced his lips with her the tip of her tongue, and took advantage of when he parted his lips. She could taste the strange face paint, but focused how soft his lips where after a moment there tongues brushed for the first time, shyly they explored one others mouths until they needed to part for air.
They started at another another for a long time; it was probably only second but felt like ages. "We should head back. It's been a while" Brainy looked at her straight in the eyes. Still shocked she had kissed back. He had been expecting her to knock him off her and tell him he was out of line.
Kara nodded, and forced herself to look away from his green eyes. "Yeah I think we should go back too."
They stood and walked to the edge of the isle and he reached for her hand, and she let him take it, they held each other's hand as they walked out of the planetarium. They walked in silence for most of the trip back to the building. When they reached Kyle's building she stopped walking.
She let go of his hand as he moved forward. "I have a boyfriend."
"oh." he didn't hide the disappointment in his voice. It was probably written across his face too.
"I don't like him as much as like you." she knew it was stupid to tell him that. But she didn't want to lie. "But we would be stupid. You're going to be gone by the end of the week. I still like him us meeting was an accident. I'm not going to break up with him."
Brainy was confused. And he let go of her hand. "He doesn't go to your school does he?" the taunts of the boy who he had fought with at Kara's school sounded surprised that a boy was defending her.
"He lives in Atlantica. He's a merman"
"So it's still a long distance relationship. So you are willing to have one with him and not with me?"
"There's a difference," the words came out a bit more cruelly then she intended it. "He lives a thousand miles away, you live years."
"Your right the difference is you like me more. You should want to try to make that it work." he didn't give her the chance to say something else. He stormed away from her. Surprised to find he still had it in him to be angry today.
They didn't interact when they got back into the apartment. Neither of them really wanted to look at one another luckily once again the green lantern was called away and Super girl used that as an escape to get away from the legionnaire.
Lyle was up and talking and wisely waited to say something. He and like Querl had been doing reading books. Brainy took one look and started to rearrange the books in a few different piles. Lyle barley glanced up at to see what the coulan was doing. The smart legionnaires gave into Brainiac 5's O.C.D. years ago. Brainiac 5 wanted things his way and he was going to make them like that. And so long as no one life was on the line it was much easier and safer to let him get his way.
"Sit up that's sitting like that is bad for your back." the word came out of Lyle's mouth before he could stop them.
"You really can't turn off the mom thing can you?"
Lyle narrowed his eyes and glared, but he didn't say anything on the matter as he sat up so Brainy could sit next to him, "have fun?" he didn't look up from the book. He didn't need to. He was smart he could multitask.
Brainy paused to think about the good that had happened the fun he had, been vastly outweighed by the bad. "No, not really."
The kept reading for what felt like a long time. It could have felt longer, because most of the subject matters they were looking at were both found to be boring and only being read for scientific papers to be written about life a thousand years from now. To give lectures to a bunch of old people and all the not fun stuff they would be dealing with upon their return to their own time.
It had mostly likely fifteen minutes before Brainy closed his book half way through. "I never got my day off."
He had been due three days off in a row off; he had worked five missions two of three of them forty-eight hour shifts in a row. due to legions laws were very clear that everyone had to take brakes after taking on one mission after another, it wasn't often that Brainy took more days off then required, on the forced day off he normally spent the day visiting someone, it used to Rond but since the two had started fighting he had lately had been visiting Invisible kid and Chemical king with Danni. Every once in a while mostly after mission that's made everyone on it want to crawl into bed and never get out again, he did take a three in a row to go on some type of little vacation. Usually involved a beach, a view, and him getting so drunk he could barely stand. And if Brainy was being unusually social he would convince Rokk to come with him.
At that odd statement Invisible kid looked up way from his book. "What brought that on?"
While Invisible kid was still a part of the legion, but he was mostly a reserve legionnaire, and spent most of his time at the legion as a 'babysitter' training at the legion academy training cadets. He didn't the same kind of days off, but he got to be home every day by six, and every other weekend off.
"I need a drink." he stood up and the cook book that was in the earthlings hand's a tossed it onto one of his many piles that had started off as four but had grown to seven. "And because I don't drink alone, you need a drink too."
There was a voice in Lyle's head that told him it was a bad idea to go drinking, but after being a legionnaire for many years there was one thing that he learned sometimes you just had to ignore that voice, after the day he had had he did really need a drink and more importantly he wanted one.
While Lyle left a note to his host and Kara about leaving, Brainy went to fix the spot on his face that was green. He completed about taking another pill for his wrist, it had started to bother him again. But he didn't know if the pills would react to any alcohol. So he rewrapped it, and put his gloves on covering it. It wouldn't hide the cut/ burn for long. But he just needed a few hours then he could worry about it to the fullest.
It was clear very quickly that looked too young to sold liquor at any type of bar. This however did not discourage them, they left three bars before they found one with a piano, Brainy walked without permission to the piano sat down and started to play, while this distracted the bartender Lyle snuck behind the counter opened the cash register prayer for a bottle of strong liquor, and took one. He noticed they sold cigarettes as well and paid for it the same way. In there was no age limit in their time for alcohol, and although they avoided it most of time. Every once and awhile there was a really need to cut lose, and have some.
Holding the bottle invisible Lyle took two shot glassed pocketed matched and waited in the back of the bar out of the way, a listened to Brainy play.
There was no doubt The Coluan was good, he could listen to any instrument or watch someone play it and then try it himself, after a few rough seconds he was able to play like he was a master.
The only problem with the music Brainy played, was there was just never any life to it .people would ask ' so you can play?' and he would always smile and say 'no, I do the math.'
Still it wasn't unpleasant, and on the rare occasions when did play around the HQ, someone would sing along with him often Dawnstar, Or Tyorc who both had amazing singing voices. They often balanced out what was the music was missing.
After the first song Brainy was asked to leave. Politely that even though he was talented he was too young to be in the bar and the piano was for the house band that was on brake and he should have asked before just walking up and playing. And if the bartender saw him around again he would call the cops.
They made three stops after that, Querl getting the ingredients for Kono Juice . They found some cheap diner sat in the back and knocked a few back. Lyle watched as Querl downed the drink in less then three minutes, He Himself had only tried Kono Juice once half a shot nothing compared to what Querl had just ingested, and Invisible Kid quickly learned that Coluans drank like they didn't want to live. Querl closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the Both, Lyle nursed his dink for a while not speaking ."I gotta take a leak." Lyle put the bottle under the Table.
Querl Cracked an eye open. "Don't get us caught, walk straight."
When Lyle came back there was food at their table. They both had no intention of eating. He moved to sit next to his friend. And Querl have him a look. "We are not dating, and you are not Sun boy, you don't get to grope me. Sit across ."
Lyle sat down the tingly feeling of moving around too much while buzzed was hitting him. " I don't understand this thing you and all the other guys on our team have for Dirk."
"he's only the most, talented, funny, interesting, and beautiful legionnaire that's ever lived ."
Lyle just rolled his eyes. And took a shot of from the bottle he really didn't see that when he looked at Dirk. But everyone who was 'straight' did. "What Happened earlier with your wrist?"
Brainy broke the bare details down. Lyle Leaned back and finished the bottle. "Lighting rods have other uses; maybe he wants you to use it for something else."
"Whatever it may be it can't be anything good."
"Can we burn that bridge when we get to it?" Lyle leaned down and rubbed his Temples. "I just want to get home."
"We could stay drive Clark Crazy for a while." Querl smirked at Lyle. "You know how he likes to pretend he isn't the dork we know him to be."
"we didn't fill out the form for time traveling we are already going to get an Earful from my dad when we go back we don't need to make it worse."
"You've become such a buzz kill since Danni was born. Six months ago we'd be looking up your list of freebees."
Lyle who still really hadn't gotten over the events that lead to Danni being born. And glared at Brainaic 5. "Well if it wasn't for you Danni wouldn't have existed, I would still be fun, still willing to comment illegal acts, And Cheat on Condo so you really don't have a leg to stand on, in any way shape or form.."
"for the last time it wasn't All my fault, 35% of the blame goes to you for not washing your hands after you touched infectious lass, 30% of the blame goes to her for making you a girl 15 % of the blame goes to me for not translating the text to the that said incubator not insinuator gun. Another 10% goes to you for standing right behind me when I tried to test the gun. And another 10% goes to me for holding said gun backwards." He glared at Lyle. "Who the hell stands right behind a person when they are testing an unknown weapon?"
"You have a force shield; normally the safest place to be is right behind you."
"I could have been thrown back by a blast knocking into you and hurting you."
"But instead you only knocked me up." Lyle smiled. "I bet normal people never have conversations like this."
"Poor them." Brainaic 5 smiled back.
"Did you ever get to do this with gates, sit around and bull shit ?"
"After accident with Rond, I didn't want to sit around and shoot the shit. I wanted to fill every second of my life with busy work, he tried for a while to reach out there was only some may times you could tell someone to leave you alone before they get the hint. And before that he was getting to know the rest of the team, we both know what it is like for the first few weeks, you get up you train, you do missions, you study, you train, you get hazed, and you go to bed."
"I'm sorry you never got to do this with Gates."
"He didn't need to see me drunk." Querl shrugged "we met in a Jungle; trust me enough he got amusement from that to last six life times."
"You without any technology, I know a lot of people who would pay me and would make me richer then RJ, to see that ."
Brainy took some money out and stood and placed it on the table, "we should get back."
"To Kyle's or Home."
"Home, but Kyle's will have to do for now."
TBC…
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