somethingwithturquoise | Some Space Bar in some Space Galaxy; Dimension FH-001; Friday Evening [05/12].

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Some Space Bar in some Space Galaxy; Dimension FH-001; Friday Evening [05/12].

Summer and Stark were, at this point, on their third space bar, and the evening had been going well. There was a little bit of space shopping before hand, to ensure that they looked their space best, and the first two space bars had been great. This one, however, was not impressing Summer very much, so it might not be too long before they found their way to Space Bar #4. She was pretty sure those were strands of 'Get Schwifty' mixed into whatever god-awful dub-step garbage the DJ was pumping out, and she was having some issues with the jerk bartender.

"That's so speciesist!" she declared. "You can't just assume I can't handle it just because I'm from Earth. I once huffed an entire K-Zax Array!"

"You huffed a Marlazzeh Gay?"

"No!" said Summer. "Well...maybe. I've had some pretty wild weekends lately, but what I said was K-Zax Array! Do you know what that is? That's like smoking The Ring, okay? Most pilots die after three days!"

"I still can't serve that to Earthlings. Federation law."

"Bitch," said Summer, "I destroyed the Federation!"

The bartender looked unimpressed.

"Ugh! Fine! Just...get me two of those glowing smoking ones in the fancy glasses, then, I guess."

And, once she had those two glowing smoking drinks in the fancy glasses, she drifted back over to where Stark was waiting to hand him one and then liberally take a drink from her own. "That bartender," she announced, "sucks. I swear to god, if you tip him over ten percent, I'm leaving you here."

She knew it would probably be impossible to convince Stark not to tip at all, so she figured that was a good compromise.

"....okay, fifteen percent," she allowed, looking at her drink, impressed, "because, damn, that's actually really good. Or I'm already really drunk. One of the two."

[[ for the egregiously modded alien with her, and NFB for distance, obvi ]]

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"We have the portal gun," Summer pointed out, "and the Portalocity app. Unless we lose our phones..."

She took a moment to pat at her hips for her pockets, remembered that even in space, cute little dresses still had no pockets, but she had a purse, and, good, good, she did still have her phone, and it was her phone, she didn't wander off with someone else's or something, and she was almost pulled in by the sweet lure of several notifications taunting her and begging her for attention and piquing her curiosity...

"Twenty-two would be a lot," she agreed. "For space bars. Earth booze is so amateur hour compared to space booze, anyway. And that wasn't my ship, so it was okay to crash it. I couldn't stand it if I crashed my ship, ohmygod. I love my ship."

A beat.

"Not like that."

Very important specification, and they were nearing where she'd parked it, now, anyway, and she just looked at it with a fond, proud little sigh.

"I mean...just look at her. That's a good ship, right there. Still can't believe tonight's the first time you've ever even been it, though, Stark, that's fucking wild."

"It's a very nice ship," Stark agreed, patting his own pocket to make sure his phone was still there. "Very nice. Very pretty."

Maybe he wasn't just talking about the ship.

"I'm glad I finally got to see it. See her. With you. Thank you. For bringing me."

"You're welcome," said Summer, with an important lift of her chin, but she was a little distracted by her phone after all. Since she had to dig around in her purse for her keys, she couldn't ignore the siren's call of all those notifications and was just checking real quick to make sure there weren't any, like, emergencies or whatever, because you never could tell! "Thank you for letting me drag you along."

You know, because there was a real concern there, that he'd have to go all kicking and screaming...

But, lest one thing lead to another with her phone, Summer shook her head a little and slipped it back in as she held up her keys.

"So!" she declared, with maybe a little more swaying than she cared to admit to. "Where to next?"

"Summer, you can drag me anywhere you like," Stark said with another dopey grin.

"Should we find another bar? With dancing? Or...we could just dance here. On your ship. You have the little shiny ball and everything and then you know you'll like the music and you won't have to fight any bartenders. Or...can it fly itself? At all? We could find another bar and...dance on the way? I like dancing with you."

It was probably time to pull Summer close again. Just in case.

When Stark pulled her in, Summer mistook the movement, at first, and thought she was just losing her balance, and that it was a good thing he was there for her to catch herself against, wasn't it? And maybe she clung to him a little bit, and all the talk of dancing brought a little more pink to her already flushed cheeks. They had already gotten some pretty good dancing at the last two, not terrible bars, too...

She shook her head a little. "No auto-pilot," she said, "too risky. But..." Her lean into Stark became significantly more intentional. "I might have an idea. It's not far from here; we'll portal most of the way there. And it's quiet. Private. I think," think seemed to sound an awful lot like know, "you'll like it."

If there was going to be leaning then Stark would just have to use both hands to steady Summer against him.

"Hmmm, I like private," he said, grinning at her. "Private is good. And you have good idea. I like your ideas."

"Mmmm. That's true," Summer agreed. "I do have pretty great ideas."

And she was just going to take a moment to revel in that. Almost long enough for her to nearly forget what she was reveling in in the first place, and then she remembered, and she grinned, patting a hand on Stark's chest before pulling away again to climb into the ship.

"Well," she said, "hop in, buckle up, and let's get going. This place's got the best bartender in the whole multiverse. And she's cute, too."

Stark's face fell when Summer stepped away but only for a moment.

"Oh? I know a very cute bartender," he said, as he followed her into the ship. "My favorite bartender is very cute. Very pretty. Very good at what she does. I wonder if they know each other?"

"Oh, yeah?" asked Summer, shooting Stark a smirk over her shoulder as she slipped into the driver's seat, turning on the ignition and going through all her pre-flight checks like she could do them in her sleep. "They might! It's a pretty small multiverse. She must be pretty good, though, if she's your faaaavorrrite."

"She's very good," Stark said, nodding and grinning like an idiot over at her as he settled into his seat. "The best one that I know."

Sorry, Jane and Jane's arms!

"Much better than that last bartender."

"Yeah, well," Summer snorted, "that bar's so low, I'm surprised we didn't fucking trip on it on the way out. Sorry about this last stop being such a dud; we were doing so well up until this point, too!"

"The drink was good. And it glowed."

Stark appreciated those little touches, Summer. He appreciated them so much.

"So was the company. The company is always good. Maybe my favorite company."

"Clearly," said Summer, with more than enough booze in her to just let that feed her ego very nicely right now as she gave that ridiculous pimp stick gear shift a throttle and got them lifted clumsily out of space bar parking lot, "you have very good taste, Stark."

This guy was good at feeding egos.

"I try to," Stark said, grinning even wider. "Sometimes it's very easy. Sometimes I need help. But I have my favorite stylist to help with that."

"Favorite bartender, favorite company, favorite stylist," Summer mused, and were she sober, this would all hit pretty differently and she would definitely thing better of this next part, but since she wasn't...

"Got any other favorites I should know about?"

"I have a favorite person to dance with," Stark said thoughtfully. "And a favorite person to drink with."

Was he drunk enough to continue? That glowing, smoking drink had hit hard.

"A favorite friend. A favorite person to..."

He probably shouldn't continue. He was going to at least pause for a moment.

Summer bit her lower lip a little, reminding herself that she needed to focus on getting up to speed and breaking atmo and putting in portal coordinates.

"...get high with?" she suggested helpfully.

"Mmmmm, that too. Not what I was going to say, but that too."

Stark's grin had turned into something a little more serious and little more intense.

"My favorite person to... do a lot of things with. Maybe even some things we might do later."

That little bit of seriousness, that little bit of intensity, managed to make the buzz a little, and Summer accelerated that little bit more. The sooner they got there, the better. A little more drinking, a little more dancing.

Summer fished out her phone, nestling into its little nook in the dashboard, and pulled up a playlist.

"You don't think," she asked, as a song began to play, "your favorite person would mind?'

Edited 2023-05-13 03:44 (UTC)

"I don't think she'd mind at all," Stark said. "She can be very understanding. That's part of why she's my favorite."

Summer snorted a little, because that was hardly a word she would use to describe h-- errm, anyone in this random assortment of Stark's favorite people who clearly had no other connections or associations to each other besides that factor. Ahem.

"Well," she said, maybe a little softly, glancing over at Stark with a faint, crooked smile, "so long as she won't mind."

And she gunned the ship a little faster to break from atmosphere to the openness of space, and, once clear of any of the additional affects of gravity, punched in her portal projection button and flipped a switch or two on the dash to open up that glowing, somewhat glittering pink gateway of energy to slip right through and pop, just like that, from one part of space to another.

Stark had found this favorite person to be more understanding of several of his particular issues than other friends were.

"If she did mind I could always apologize to her later. I'm sure I could make it up to her. It's odd, portals on a ship like this. Nothing like Starbursts on Moya. It's so much smoother."

"Well," Summer snorted again, her attention shifted slightly to making a few adjustments now that they'd gone through, and she needed to adjust their coordinates accordingly and get ready for a descent onto the small blue marble of a planet they'd wound up over, "if she's so understanding, and all, I'm suuuure you could.

"And it's rigged up to the portal gun, actually," she said, "so it's, like, just the same technology, only...projected, I guess, through the front of the ship." Her idea, Barry's work, of course, but she was going to very solidly not think about that right now, and focus on landing procedures, because the sooner she did that, the sooner she could bust out some of the alcohol stashed in the back to drown out the annoying little tendrils of sobering thoughts creeping in on her. "Come in clutch during a battle. Makes planet hopping a fucking breeze."

Stark was sure he could think of a few ways to make things up to that favorite person.

"It's clever," he said. "I like it. And I like the ship. What I've seen of it, so far. I'm glad you took me for a ride, finally."

"It is insane to me," Summer declared, "that you have not actually been in my ship until now."

But, to be fair, she hadn't been taking it out a whole lot these days, either. Had talked about doing so with a lot of people, but she'd been pretty lax about the follow-through on all of that.

"You know I actually helped build her, too?" she added, proudly. "Well, not from scratch, obviously, Hera and I found a cheap old junker and souped her up to the glorious little transport you see before you today! And she keeps getting better, too. The pimp stick and the disco ball are the most recent additions, but I'm thinking about updating the cannons soon..."

She didn't need to update the cannons, but replacing the ones Barry had gotten her with something even more ridiculous and powerful, even bigger and more egregious, just felt like it would be...cathartic.

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