Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It happened instantaneously. One minute, Mon-El was perfectly capable of understanding and communicating with all the humans around him. The next, they were all speaking gibberish.

His first thought was that it must be an effect of the alien ray-gun he had just jumped in front of. Kara - Supergirl was busy beating the bad guys that had previously been wielding said ray guns, so she would probably figure it out.

Covering the big fiery hole the ray-gun had punched in his suit with one hand, Mon-El wandered outside until he saw the DEO vans pull up. He recognized Kara’s sister as one of the first ones who popped out.

“Alex!” he called. “Alex Danvers!”

She frowned and whipped her head around, frown deepening when she saw him and his suit’s condition. “Je wo, whco hepapne ke che?”

“That,” Mon-El said, pointing. “What is going on? I can’t understand anybody. Do you know what happened?”

“Mon-El, dkw the soe sy? Cu wld ned t amdik?” Alex asked back.

His eyes widened, and he lifted one hand to touch the skin behind his ear. “Oh, fuck, Alex. I think something’s wrong with my universal translator. Am I speaking Daxamite right now?”

Alex followed his hand to the side of his head, grabbing him by the shoulder to manipulate him until she could see the area. “No, you’re not going to see anything that way,” Mon-El said, exasperated. “I can’t even feel it. Universal translator is a little something all Daxamites are born with, it’s just a chip that goes in your brain, the birthing matrix takes care of it all. Painless, really - hey!”

Alex stopped yanking on his hair and let go of him entirely. “Y nono k i wn clell antoldn.”

A thought struck him. “Hey, Kara is Kryptonian. Kryptonians all have one of these too! She should be able to understand me!”

Alex pulled back. “Kara es Krypton. Kara?”

“Yes!” Mon-El said, nodding enthusiastically. Names were good, they could both understand names “Kara!”

“Ijsight. Uld goien ti dckljdde, cu trmed nd wyl tehme.” Alex started off back towards the party, only to stop after Mon-El took two steps to follow her. “Nuhoh.”

“What?” Mon-El asked.

Alex pointed at the ground beneath them. “Uous tled hers.”   She pointed at Mon-El, and then the ground again. “Uous. Hererars. Glt tk?”

“Oh,” Mon-El said. “Stay here. I understand now.” He nodded, pointing at himself and then the ground.

Alex nodded back, and then jogged off to go find her sister.

Mon-El was shepherded into the back of a DEO van by a bunch of agents that looked even more tired of him than usual by the time Alex and Kara caught back up with him.

 “Mon-El?” Kara asked. “Eiy dlso - wzd cubd will ewou?”

“Kara!” Mon-El exclaimed, smiling widely as the two sisters took the seats across from him in the back of the van. “I can’t understand Earth-language right now, but you should be able to understand me!” He looked straight into Kara’s eyes, which seemed just as confused and worried and before. “You should be calibrated by now,” he said slowly. “Can you understand me?”

Alex turned to Kara. “Qu uo ssei quant eie meen?”

“Eys dotn d slje wn alkt ehslkj sir l seigg,” Kara answered.

“Shit,” Mon-El whispered. “Something must have happened to yours, too.”

The two sisters exchanged a glance.

“Don’t be like that, I’m not crazy,” Mon-El snapped. “Though it would be just typical of Kryptonians to program their translators to not understand Daxamite - wait.” His mind flashed back to his 2nd-favorite childhood tutor. “Kryptonian!”

“Qua ehbklt Krypton?” Kara asked.

Mon-El furrowed his brow in concentration, trying to drag up lessons he’d studied a lifetime ago. “Kara Zor-El of the House of El,” he said slowly, trying to get his accent right, “You continue to speak Kryptonian, no?”

Kara’s mouth dropped open. “You speak Kryptonian?” she asked, matching the language.

He let out a relieved laugh. “Yes! Thank Rao,” he said. “Finally. What is going on?”

“You’re speaking gibberish,” she answered.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I was speaking Daxamite. I think something’s wrong with my...” he trailed off, searching for the expression. “I don’t know the word in Kryptonian.” He tapped the spot behind his ear.

Kara’s eyes widened, and her hand flew to her own skull as well. “The translator! Of course! I’d almost forgotten about that.”

Mon-El nodded eagerly. “Yes, the translator.”

Alex tapped Kara on the shoulder, and they had their own little conversation in English. Mon-El zoned out, resting his head against the wall of the van as they drove to the DEO. At least Kara could understand him, so she and her friends would work out what to do. He would be fine.

Once they got to the DEO, Kara immediately grabbed Winn and hustled them all to the medical bay, trying to explain and translate to all parties. “Don’t worry, Mon-El,” she reassured him. “There was some sort of device used to short out all electromagnetic emissions in the immediate area, but Winn knows all about it. We’ll be able to fix you in no time.”

Mon-El smiled. “Perfect.”

After running several x-rays of both Mon-El’s and Kara's heads and Winn staring silently at the computer screen for five straight minutes, Kara came back over and said, “So we might not be able to fix it right away.” 

He let out a large sigh. “I figured.” He looked back over to where Winn, Alex, and J’onn were standing. “Winn looked like he was miming cutting my head open earlier?”

“I told him no,” Kara said firmly, crossing her arms over the emblem on her chest. “The amount of kryptonite it would take to - just no.”

Mon-El smiled at her. “Many thanks.”

“They’re able able to whip up a portable Kryptonian-to-English in the meantime,” Kara said. “That should be ready the day after tomorrow, while they’re looking at this.”

His face fell. “Do you think they could make Daxamite to - what did you say, English? Kryptonian is...” he trailed off on the look on Kara’s face.

“That’s what their language is called,” Kara said. “And what about Kryptonian?”

“It’s a difficult language, that’s all,” Mon-El said. “The words are long, and kind of flowery-”

“Flowery!” Kara huffed. “Kryptonian is a scientific language. If you weren’t using such formal tense-”

“Formal is the one I know best!” he interrupted. “I don’t see you knowing any Daxamite!”

“Oh, no one needs to learn Daxamite,” Kara scoffed. “How do you even know Kryptonian, anyways?”

"I-" His heart skipped a beat. “It was part of my job,” he said. “All the guards were to know the language of the planet’s most dangerous enemy.”

“Krypton wasn’t dangerous!” Kara said. “It was a peaceful-”

"Yeah, right."

"-and good!" she continued. "So if you don't like it or our 'dangerous' language-" 

“Well, it literally killed my planet and all my people on it,” Mon-El snapped, “So it turned out to be the most dangerous planet in the system after all.”

Kara’s fists clenched, and for a moment he was sure he was going to get punched in the face, but she turned on her heel and stormed out instead.

J’onn, Winn, and Alex were all staring at him in her wake.

His mouth twitched. “Krypton,” he enunciated carefully, rolling his eyes and jerking his head in the direction Kara had left.

They all still frowned at him.

Mon-El sighed again. “Right,” he muttered. “Mon-El,” he said, pointing to himself. “Bed?” he mimed laying down and going to sleep.

Winn quickly typed something into the computer he was holding, then waited until some text popped up on the screen. Do you want to go back to your quarters? It read in Kryptonian.

Mon-El looked from the screen to Winn and nodded solemnly.

J’onn said something he didn’t understand, but Mon-El would know the dismissal hand-wave in any culture - he’d used it enough himself on Daxam. This is my life now, he thought, and saw his way out to his bunk. 

Chapter Text

Kara, much like the last two days of escorting him to his CatCo internship, burst into his quarters at the DEO at the crack of dawn. “Hello!” she chirped.

Mon-El woke with a start, jerking out of bed, as usual - after the fall of Daxam, he didn’t think he would never not jerk awake like the planet under his feet was about to be destroyed.“Eugh,” he said, “every day with you.”

She gave him a wide-eyed look behind her glasses. “Mon-El,” she said. “Kryptonian, remember?”

It all came rushing back to him then - the broken translator, the fight they had last night. “Oh,” he said, struggling stupidly in his mind for the right words in the right language. “I remember.” He sat up hesitantly, pulling his pillow onto his lap. “There’s no way I can go to work like this, right?”

Kara stepped forward. “You were fired anyway.”

He snorted. “It was probably for the best.”

“Yeah,” she agreed shortly, stopping right in front of him. “Listen, Mon-El, about last night-”

“I apologize,” he started.

“-I’m sorry,” she finished, glancing up at him. “Um...you first?”

He nodded, gripping the pillow more firmly in his lap. “I apologize for saying that stuff about your planet,” he said. He tried to hold eye contact with her, but couldn’t for more than a few seconds. “Krypton obviously didn’t destroy itself just to take Daxam down with it. I shouldn’t have been so defensive.”

Kara sat down next to him. “I’m sorry too,” she said. “I dismissed your language just like that, and - the reason we can do Kryptonian is because the escape pods we landed in have the language and database on them. We don’t - we don’t have any written Daxamite records. If you wanted, you could try to create a basis for the language, and give it to Winn and he could work on that?”

He gave a halfhearted smile. “Maybe I should work on learning English before teaching the whole world Daxamite.”

Kara nudged him with her shoulder. “Yeah. That’s why I’m here, actually,” she said. “It’s the weekend so - I can break you out of here? We’ll probably have more luck teaching the names everyday objects out of the DEO.”

“Lead the way, Kara Zor-El of the House of El,” he said.

She smirked at him. “You don’t have to use my full name every time, you know.”

“I thought that was customary amoung Kryptonians,” Mon-El admitted.

“Maybe for strangers,” she said. “But we’re friends, Mon-El.” She nudged him with her shoulder again. “Right?”

Mon-El stared down into her bright blue eyes. “Right,” he agreed.

By midday, Kara’s apartment was covered in little yellow reminded that were known as ‘Post-it Notes.’ Mon-El’s written Kryptonian was slightly better than his spoken (Daxam and Krypton shared an alphabet, for the most part), so this was most helpful.  

“Food,”   Kara said in English.

“Food,”   he repeated.

“Water.”

“Water.”

She pointed to her comforter. “Bed,”   he answered.

Kara clapped her hands together. “Excellent! I think you’re ready for a real conversation.”

“Bring it on,” he answered.

She smiled. “Winn!” she called, summoning their friend from the couch. “We arehday fer yu!”

“Finelly,” he said, depositing his phone back in his pocket and walking over. “Soh, Mon-El,” he said very slowly. “Whats up?”

“I am good,” Mon-El answered. His spoken English was much better than his written - he memorized the alphabet song, thanks to Kara and a puppeteering program known as ‘Sesame Street,’ but he was still having trouble with his memorization of the letters, even though there were fewer in the Earth alphabet.

Winn looked over at Kara, who nodded encouragingly. “Ar you okay?”

“Yes,” Mon-El answered.

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

Winn nodded. “Dou ya need anything?”

“Food and water and bed,” Mon-El answered.

“Andair?” Winn asked.

Kara giggled despite the confused glance Mon-El threw her way. “And air,” she translated.

“Ah,” Mon-El acknowledged. “Andair?”

“And air,” Winn repeated. “Goodgah, men. Tzah wahz mehch behttah.”

Mon-El looked over at Kara again. “He said you’re improving,” she said.

“Oh, great,” he deadpanned. “Better than nothing. I speak English at an infant’s level.”

“Wahzee sai en,” Winn said.

Kara translated back to Winn.

Mon-El sighed and went back to his notebook to review his six noun forms.

He’d just declared his intention to destroy the being known as ‘Elmo’ when Kara decided it was time for a snack break. 

“I shouldn’t have given you so much PBS at one time,” she said as she dropped down the stairs of her apartment building, feet barely touching them. “It’s my fault, really.”

“Human children are really taught that way?” Mon-El asked. “And to think, I once had respect for this planet.”

“I think Elmo’s cute,” she defended. “So, do you want hard-serve or soft-serve ice cream?”

“What is iced cream?” he questioned.

She smiled. “Oh, boy. Somethings I forget just how new you are to this world.”

“How?” Mon-El asked seriously, but she just laughed and led the way outside.

They had walked about two blocks when Kara stopped suddenly, tilting her head.

“What?” Mon-El asked.

“Ahmurjuen- I mean, emergency,” Kara said. She sniffed the air. “Electrical fire? No, gas leak. Something with gas."

“Then what are you waiting for?” Mon-El asked.

She hesitated for a split-second. “You don’t...”

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “By Rao, Kara, I have superpowers. I will be more than fine. Go.”

She smiled, and promptly ducked behind a trashcan before leaping into the sky, transformed into Supergirl.

He smiled. “You’re really not subtle at all, are you?”

“I heard that!” he heard faintly, as she flew away into the sky. “Stay there and wait for me. And stay safe, my dear!”

Mon-El frowned up into the sky after her. ‘My dear,’ he mouthed to himself. He didn’t know that word in Kryptonian.

When the gas leak turned out to be some sort of alien dispute gone bad, Mon-El was eventually collected and returned back to the DEO. Winn came up to him at the end of the day, holding a little rectangular prism. He murmured something into it, and then held the rectangle up to Mon-El.  

“Did you know Superman isn’t that great at speaking Kryptonian?,” the rectangle said, using Winn’s voice and nearly flawless Kryptonese. “We tried to contact him for a spoken sample, and he’s just barely fluent.”

Mon-El raised his eyebrow. “The box seems to be working perfectly, my friend,” he enunciated clearly.

Winn listened, smiling when he got the translation back. “Thanks,” he answered. “I worked all night.”  

A thought struck him. “Actually, I could use help with my Kryptonian language skills as well. Kara called me a dear today. Is that an insult?”

Winn seemed perplexed as the box read out his question. “Deer? Like a deer in the headlights?”

Mon-El tilted his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “She told me to stay still and stay safe.”

“Ah,” Winn said. “Like a deer. That’s not an insult, man. There’s an earth animal, a deer, it freezes whenever it gets caught in a car’s headlights at night, and it’s really good at hiding - did she call you Bambi? She's been on a Scrubs kick for a little while. It just means she thinks you’re new at things.”

He shrugged. “Well, I am new, I guess.”

“There you go,” Winn said, tossing the translator between both hands. “Eezee-peezee.”

“Affirmative,” the translator provided.

Chapter Text

Except she said it again.

Mon-El was actually starting to get used to having a Kryptonian as an alarm clock. She predictably burst in about five minutes after sunrise. “Good morning, my dear,” she practically sang, bounding into his room at the DEO.

He startled awake. “Kara Zor-El,” he said, giving his brain enough time to adjust back to Kryptonian, and then frowned. “There you go again. What does that mean?”

“What, good morning?” she answered. “It’s the beginning of the day, just a-”

“No, no, the other part,” Mon-El interrupted. “What does ‘my dear’ mean? I’m afraid my knowledge of Kryptonian isn’t exactly comprehensive, but you used it yesterday, too.”

“What?”

“When you were leaving,” Mon-El answered. “You said, Be safe, my dear.”

Kara frowned. "No, I didn't."

"And then you did it again just now," Mon-El said. "You said, good morning my-"

To his surprise, Kara let out a sharp gasp and began to blush. “Oh, my god, I did. That was an accident. I haven't spoken - I didn't mean - it’s just something my mother used to say to me,” she stammered. “It’s just a nickname. I’m sorry, I haven’t spoken to someone else fluent in Kryptonian in so long, I - I guess I’m just falling into old habits-”

“-a nickname?” Mon-El interrupted.

She hesitated, and then made a decisive nod. “Yes, a nickname. Like ‘my pal’ or ‘my friend’ or something.”

“Winn said it was an Earth animal,” he told her.

“An Earth animal?” she said. “How did he get that from - oh.”

“What?” Mon-El asked. “Is it an insult? I’m beginning to think it’s an insult. Just because my translation matrix is broken-”

“It’s not an insult!” Kara insisted. “You’ve got the wrong idea. If anything, it’s the opposite of an insult.”

“Oh, really?” Mon-El retorted. “Well, then, good morning to you as well, my dear." 

As he suspected, Kara only flushed more, but she seemed unwilling to admit she was lying about the insultation. “Come on,” she muttered, not meeting his eyes. “It’s time for morning training.”

Kara left after morning training to go to work, while Mon-El showered off and then tried to find someone else to do him a favor for the purposes of improving his second language. Once the spoken Kryptonian language was loaded onto the DEO’s servers, it was pretty easy to modify the Alura-El hologram to also speak Kryptonian. The agency seemed plenty happy to give Mon-El another way to occupy his time, even if it was the hologram of Supergirl’s mother, and Kara (after a little begging) gave him permission as well.

“Alura-El of the House of El,” he always greeted.

She - the hologram - would blink emotionlessly and address back, “Unknown user.”

“I have a question about the Kryptonian language,” he said. “You supposedly called Kara ‘my dear’ as a child, presumably because she was new to many things?”

He could practically see the memory database being accessed. “My daughter Kara was addressed by many varying terms of endearment as a child."

Mon-El narrowed his eyes. “Endearment, huh. You know, I still don’t know what that means. Can you give me some other examples?”

“Examples of endearments commonly used on Krypton include: dear, darling, baby, beloved, honey, angel. It was also common to comment on states of beauty.”

Mon-El frowned. He didn’t know all the Kryptonian words, but they seemed to fit in his insultation theory: calling someone a baby was certainly demeaning, as well as comments on physical appearance, and he thought he recognized the recognized the last world, angel, as a Kryptonian mythical creature which collected the dead. ‘Honey,’ if he understood correctly, was a food, which seemed strange?

“I do not understand Kryptonians at all,” he said out loud. “Alura-El, did you like Kara?”

“She was my daughter,” she told him simply. 

Mon-El stared at her. "Yes, but can you tell me about your feelings? Why did you call Kara those things as a child, but not now?"

Alura-El, as a hologram, stared back innocuously. "Alura-El was extremely proud of her daughter until she perished during the fall of Krypton over 30 years ago. I am merely a holographic recreation." 

He sighed. "Not super helpful. So was it a family thing, the name-calling?" 

He had a sudden memory of Kara interacting with Alex, back when his translator was working. They’d certainly called each other plenty of names - all sorts of hogs (Winn told him later than there was not such thing as a pizzahog, but Mon-El still wasn’t sure) and various jibes to each other’s intellect and tastes.  

Was Kara beginning to treat him like she treated her sister?

“Family. That can’t be right,” he muttered. “I’m from Daxam. Kara can barely stand me on principle.”

Alura-El frowned at him suddenly. “You are from Daxam? It is expressly forbidden for any Daxamite to view Kryptonian data-”

“Whoa, whoa,” Mon-El said, bringing his hands up in surrender. “Things are different now, Kara said it was ok!”

“It is forbidden,” she repeated, and then abruptly vanished.

“Oh, come on.”

An intruder alarm started blaring, and then Mon-El had to spend the rest of the afternoon trying to explain that it was not his fault to a bunch of very frustrated-looking agents who, for all their skills in battle, were really terrible at using the Kryptonian translator. They kept speaking too fast, and all at once, and even if Mon-El could understand them, he’d be no help for the system crash anyways.  

“I go to the gym?” he’d asked in English eventually, and they seemed pleased to have him out of the way.

When Supergirl came down again that evening to check in at the DEO, she met Mon-El who was lifting weights in the training room.

“Mon-El,” she said. “Hey. Listen, about this morning.”

He put a 1000-pound weight back on the floor and sat up to look at her. “Supergirl,” he greeted. “Good evening, darling.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh, no,” she said. “You learned what it means?”

“I did indeed,” he bluffed, crossing his arms over his chest. “I told you that you have a crinkle when you lie. That is revenge for this morning, my dear. You didn’t think I would do research on your terms of endearment?”

“Revenge?” she echoed back, bewildered still. “It was just a slip of the tongue, I told you. I don’t think this calls for revenge.”

Winn’s description of the naive earth animal suddenly seemed very apt. “Dear,” Mon-El stated, pointing at her.

She narrowed her eyes. “Are you - what are you trying to do here?”

“I’m integrating myself with your Earthly customs, Kara Zor-El,” he stated. “I noticed...” he paused suddenly. He’d noticed Kara participating in the teasing insults with her sister, Alex, but no one else. “Actually, I’m sorry. Is this too familiar an address? You said my Kryptonian was too formal the other day, so I just..”

She was looking at him strangely. “Is this just because we danced the other day at Lena Luthor’s party?”

“What?” he asked, thrown. “No, of course not.”

She was tilting her head and squinting, like he was an abstract piece of art she was trying to figure out. “Is this a Daxamite thing? Did you address your friends like that on Daxam?”

On Daxam, no one had dared to tease the Prince. Mon-El looked away. “I did not address anyone in that manner on Daxam,” he said solemnly. “There was no one I wished to, either.”

Kara stilled suddenly. “Oh,” she said. His eyes snapped back to her face, where she seemed suddenly overwhelmed. “Alright then,” she said, her voice suddenly much higher pitched. “Well, I better go.” She started towards the door. “I’ll see you around. Goodnight, dear - I mean, Mon-El!”

His face broke into a smile. “Aha!”

“I slipped again!” she said. “My translation matrix is off too, you know, and my mom used to say -”

“You do like me,” Mon-El said, beaming and pointing at her again.

“Good night, Mon-El!” she bellowed, and flew out of the gym.

Chapter Text

“Good morning, baby,” Mon-El said the next day, continuing down the list of friendly insults the Alura-El program had provided. He actually already knew this word, and could see how it could be classified as lightly offensive.

Kara narrowed her eyes at him. “So there’s no chance you’re going to drop this, huh?”

“I just like to feel included in the traditions of your language,” he said.

“Fine,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I hope you like training by yourself, handsome!” She turned on her heel and started right back out the door.

Handsome wasn’t exactly an insult, but - “Kara!” he cried after her, using superspeed to block her way out the door. “Okay, fine. No more names until after I win today.”

She put her hands on her hips and raised an eyebrow. “It’s cute you think you have a chance of beating me,” she said, meeting his eyes. She blushed a little and added, “Dear.”

Mon-El smiled. “I won’t be a deer for much longer,” he said, and leaped.

They were standing in the medical bay, Winn and Alex presenting their theory of how to restart the implanted translators.

“That’s it?” Kara questioned. “You’re just going to shock him and see what happens?”

“If it works on him, then we’ll try it on you,” Winn added helpfully.

“No!” Kara said, crossing her arms. She glanced over at Mon-El for support, who was carefully monitoring the conversation from his translator box with about a 3 second delay. “If anything, you should let me go first, because you know I’m stronger on this planet-”

“It’s possible we can alternate,” Alex said. “But it’ll be easier to tell if it worked on Mon-El, since he doesn’t natively speak any of these languages.”

“I don’t like it,” Kara said.

Mon-El took a step closer and nudged her with his elbow. “I will be fine, Kara Zor-El,” he said in Kryptonian. “It doesn’t sound that bad.”

She switched back into Kryptonian too. “It sounds imprecise.”

“I trust your sister,” Mon-El said. “Doesn’t she have medical training?”

“Technically,” Kara muttered.

Alex waited for the translation back into English, and then yelped, “Hey! Medikal skool is way more then technicly beeing traned. Ahi’m a real doktor, Kara!”

“See?” Mon-El said, smiling in Alex’s direction. “Perfectly safe.”

Kara sighed, and switched back into English. “Promise there won’t be too much electroshock therapy?”

“I promise,” Alex said.

“We’ll be monitoring him the whole time,” Winn added.

“I would love to be able to actually understand people,” Mon-El added.

Kara sighed, glanced at Winn and Alex quickly, and then put her hand over the microphone of the translation box so it couldn’t hear her. “Just be safe, my dear,” she said softly.

Mon-El smirked. “I will, my darling,” he said. “And thank you for introducing me to your Kryptonian nicknames. It’s been fun.”

She smiled, almost sadly. “Actually, I hope they do shock your brain.”

“Ha-ha,” Mon-El said, and moved closer to Winn and Alex. “I am okay,” he told them, and gave Kara a thumbs-up.

It took a bit of a shock to jump-start the translation matrices, but the idea did work.

“Mon-El, buddy,” Winn said, reading the brainwave patterns from a tablet at his bedside. “Can you hear me now?”

He sat up eagerly. “Yes!” he practically shouted, ripping electrodes off his forehead. “Yes, finally, Winn! You wouldn’t believe how frustrating it’s been.”

“Oh, I have an idea,” Winn said, exchanging a meaningful glance with Alex before noticing Kara’s glare. “What? I did an internship in Hong Kong one summer in college.”

Mon-El practically leaped off the table, grinning at his Kryptonian friend. “Don’t worry, my dear, I feel - whoa.”

He stopped short, because he suddenly knew what my dear meant. An endearment, spoken usually to a romantic partner, similar to calling someone precious or beloved or...

“Mon-El?” Alex questioned, reaching for his shoulder. “Do you feel okay?”

He shook his head to clear it. “Yeah,” he said, “I’m great. I just…” he turned to Kara. “My dear isn’t an insult,” he said accusingly.

“What?” she asked. “What do you mean, insult?”

He turned to Winn. “You told me dear was an earth animal!” Except now that he’s saying the words out loud, he suddenly understands that Winn meant deer and he’s been calling Supergirl dear.

“Deers are an earth animal!” Winn defended, looking around. “Why, what - what did you think I meant? I specifically remember telling you it wasn’t an insult.”

“It was the way she used it,” Mon-El said, but his voice was definitely way-higher pitched now. Maybe no one would notice. “I thought she was teasing me!”

“Mon-El, you looked flushed,” Alex said, frowning and looking between him and the computer. “How are you feeling? Your temperature hasn’t -”

“I feel fine,” Mon-El yelped. “I’m not blushing, you’re blushing.”

“He looks fine to me,” Kara agreed quickly. Mon-El turned to her sharply, noticing her own wide eyes and rising heart rate.

“Perfect,” Mon-El said, pushing himself off the bed so hard he accidentally almost ran into Kara, which made him blush even harder. “Well, thanks for fixing me, see you around! Kara, want to join me?”

“Kara still needs to get her own matrix-”

“It’s fine, Alex,” Kara said as best she could, what with Mon-El grabbing her by the elbow and practically dragging her out of the room. “Superhero stuff, gotta go, see you soon!”

Mon-El slammed the door behind them probably a little harder than necessary, dropping Kara’s arm as soon as he could. “Kara,” he hissed between his teeth. “You - you!”

Her cheeks seemed a little pinker than usual, but other than that she seemed relatively calm. “Not here,” she hissed, gesturing to the windows were Winn and Alex were both staring out at them like they’d grown two heads each. “They can still see us. Also, you’ve got to tell me what’s going on in your head there, ba - bud.”

Mon-El followed her further down the hallway. “You’ve been calling me dear, and darling, and - oh, the handsome thing makes so much more sense now -”

She was definitely blushing now. “So, what? I thought it was a Daxamite thing - ”

“I told you it wasn’t a Daxamite thing!” Mon-El interrupted. “I was just trying to muddle my way through your language, while you’ve been...flirting with me!”

“So, what?” she asked, rising an inch or two off the floor to meet him in height. “You’ve been flirting with me too!”

“You started it!” he shot back, which was not his best comeback, but her face was getting really close to his own face and he couldn’t think straight with her eyes and her lips right there.

“Why are you suddenly mad?” Kara asked back. “I’m the one who asked you to drop it!”

“I didn’t know!” Mon-El said.

She pulled back suddenly, which really helped to clear up Mon-El’s thought train. She looked at him, expression guarded. “You didn’t know what?”

“I didn’t know you were flirting,” he said. “I thought it was - like a teasing, thing.”

Something flashed through her eyes. “It was,” she said suddenly. “It was just a teasing thing.”

He crossed his arms. “Oh, come on, Kara. I know what the words mean now.”

“You said you knew what they meant before,” she answered, dropping back down to the ground. “Besides, it’s - it’s a Kryptonian thing, not a flirting thing. I meant them in the purest of friendship ways. That’s just how I communicated on Krypton. It is just a friendly teasing thing. Definitely not flirting.”

Mon-El narrowed his eyes. She was crinkling.

“What?” Kara asked.

Have it her way, then. He threw his shoulders back. “Oh,” he said pleasantly, “I’m sorry for misunderstanding, then. I shouldn’t have gotten all bent out of shape about nothing.”

Kara relaxed too. “Don’t worry about it,” she answered. “We can just chalk another one up to cultural differences.”

“Yeah, I’m glad we got that sorted out,” Mon-El said. “If that’s all, you better go back to the infirmary, sweetie.”

She looked at him sharply.

“Just admit you were flirting with me,” he whispered. “And I’ll stop.”

Kara squared her shoulders. “I’ll see you around, babe,” she said, and marched past him back the way he came.

Mon-El gawked after her. That had not gone how he was expecting.

He needed to stop underestimating Supergirl.

Chapter Text

“Good morning, dear,” Kara had taken to greeting him every day.

Even though he no longer worked at CatCo, Saturday and Sunday were still his favorite days of the week, because Kara had off work and was able to work with him for longer hours. Today was one such Saturday.

“Good morning, sunshine,” Mon-El responded.

They had their usual training session - they were slightly outside the city today, working on his jump. He liked days like this, when he wasn’t competing against Kara, and when he stared at her the breathless feeling he got right at the top of his leap before he fell never seemed to end.

Kara had taken to staring back at him lately.

“So I remembered we never got to that ice cream the other day,” she said, landing heavily next to him. Her hair was messy windswept and there was a flush to her cheeks from the exhilaration.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I forgot about that.”

“Well, you have to try it,” she insisted, beaming at him. “It’s one of Earth’s greatest inventions, probably. There was nothing like it on Krypton.”

Mon-El smiled back at her, amused at her childlike excitement. “I was under the impression it was a dessert, which traditionally follows dinner on this planet?”

“Ice cream is too good to be restricted to a certain time of day,” she told him, bouncing up on her toes. “You’ve earned a reward.”

He pretended to still debate it. “I don’t know, darling...”

She whacked him in the stomach. “Come on, live a little!”

A Kryptonian telling a Daxamite to live a little. Another day for the history books. “It’s just that you don’t have your wallet,” he said, gesturing to Kara’s Supergirl outfit. “How are we going to pay for it?”

She looked down. “Oh, shoot, I forgot. I can just run home and-”

“I’m just messing with you,” he said, pulling his own wallet from his back pocket. “I have some money. It will be my treat, as I believe the expression…” he trailed off, eyes widening. “Oh, is this where that comes from?”

Kara laughed, clapping her hands together. Her eyes were particularly bright today. “Yeah, maybe,” she said, offering Mon-El her arm. “I’ll fly us there?”

And that was how Mon-El ended up buying Supergirl ice cream on a Saturday morning.

“Oh my god,” he moaned. “This is the best thing on the planet.”

“I know, right? You know, when I first got to Earth, I thought the cow’s milk thing was a little weird-”

Mon-El turned to her, delighted. “Exactly! So weird! All these dairy products threw me.”

Kara grinned up at him. “But this makes it worth it.”

“I love this ice cream more than you,” Mon-El said seriously, taking another bite.

“Shut up,” she said, punching him lightly on the shoulder, but she was laughing.

He pretended to be offended. “Darling,” he mock-gasped. “I bought this for you. Is this any way to repay me?”

“Oh, you’ll get your repayment,” she teased back. “Babe.”

Mon-El’s mind immediately went…well, in his defense, she shouldn’t go around murmuring things like that in his ear if she didn’t want his mind to go where it immediately went. He took another giant bite of his ice cream instead of replying and hoped it would cool down the flush spreading across his cheeks.

“Heyyy, buddy,” Winn said, dropping by Mon-El’s rooms the next day. He was looking awkward, hands shoved in his pockets and feet shuffling in the doorway. “I was wondering if you wanted to grab lunch with me? I sort of have to ask you about something.”

“Out with it,” Mon-El demanded. He found it was usually better to get the bad news over with when Winn was fidgeting like that.

Winn wiggled his way into the room. “Well,” he said.  “I know it’s not really my business. But are Kara and you…”

Mon-El raised his eyebrows. “Are Kara and I..?”

Winn made a face. “Look, please don’t be mad, it’s just that ever since the translator debacle you two have been talking a lot in Kryptonian to each other, even after you got them fixed, and I got curious the other day and used the translator, and…”

“Ah,” Mon-El said. “That.” Even though their translation matrices had been repaired, Kara and Mon-El had still taken to conversing privately in Kryptonian to reduce their chances of being overheard, for obvious reasons.

“Yeah, that!” Winn exclaimed. “Just when were you going to tell the rest of us that you were together?”

“We’re not together,” Mon-El corrected quickly.

Winn raised his eyebrows. “Dude, she called you beloved yesterday. Unless my Kryptonian translator is wrong - and not to brag, but I sincerely doubt it is - you guys are basically the definition of the honeymoon stage.”

“First of all, I don’t know what a honeyed moon is,” Mon-El started, crossing his arms over his chest defensively. “And second, this is all Kara’s fault.”

Winn gave him a doubtful look.

“It is!” Mon-El insisted. “We had kind of a...misunderstanding while the translation matrices were out. She thought we were flirting, and I thought it was just a friend thing, but by the time I realized and called her out on it she got all embarrassed and tried to insist it was a friend thing after all.”

“Right,” Winn said, clearly thinking Mon-El was crazy. “You thought ‘darling’ was a friend thing.”

Mon-El threw his hands in the air. “Look, I studied Kryptonian in case there was ever another war between our planets, okay? My vocabulary was mostly military ranks and demanding surrender, not..pet names. I had no idea.”

Winn tilted his head. “If that’s the case… and I’m not doubting you, bro, just double checking my facts here,” he added hastily. “Why are you still doing it? You obviously know what the words mean now, and it seems… out of character for Kara to flirt like that? Not that you’re not, you know, gorgeous or whatever.”

“Thanks,” Mon-El said dryly.

“You know what I mean,” Winn said. “It’s just that Kara’s not like that.”

“I’ve learned that Kara is whatever she wants to be,” Mon-El said. “And currently she wants to pretend that this is a friend thing forever.”

Winn frowned. “But you could just...stop?”

“Then she’d win,” Mon-El insisted.

Winn gave him the look again.

“She started it!” Mon-El defended. “If she just admits she’d been flirting with me, then it’s all over.”

“Let me get this straight,” Winn said. “So you and Kara, despite having only known each other for a few months, are now locked in a fight due to pure stubbornness in which you both have to talk to each other using only phrases found in cheesy Valentine’s Day cards, even though you’re not actually dating, with no end in sight?”

“Well,” Mon-El said. “It sounds dumb when you put it that way.”

“It would sound dumb any way,” Winn insisted.  

“Well, I’m not letting her win,” Mon-El said. “She’d be even more insufferable than she is already.”

“I gotta say. This is the weirdest manifestation of your Daxam-Krypton rivalry yet.”

Mon-El let out a deep sigh and looked down to avoid eye contact. “Yeah,” he said to the floor. “It was too much to hope she’d actually admit to being interested in a guy like me, right?”

Winn threw an arm around Mon-El’s shoulders. “Oh, buddy,” he said. “Believe it or not, I have actually been exactly in your shoes. Want to check out this alien bar Alex found?”

Mon-El perked up. “Now you’re speaking my language,” he said. Winn laughed.

Winn ended up leaving the bar a bit early that evening, as he actually had a job to get back to the next day.

When Mon-El tried to leave around midnight, he stopped to help a homeless man and ended up being kidnapped.

He came to in a unbreakable cell. His escape did not go according to plan.

Chapter Text

“That wasn’t J’onn,” Kara told him, pressing herself into the bars of the cage separating the two of them as much as she physically could. “That’s the original Hank Henshaw.”

Mon-El groaned, probably letting a little too much of his pain leak through into his voice, judging by Kara’s expression. “Damn,” he said. “I almost had a pretty good escape going there. If they hadn’t tricked me…”

“This is my fault,” she said miserably. “They’re just using you to get to me.”

He hated to see her like this – miserable was one of his least favorite looks on her. “My dear,” he said gently, reaching out with the one hand not covered in his own blood to hers.

She jerked away abruptly. “Don’t call me that!” she hissed abruptly. “They’ll hear you! And then they’ll know-”

“I think they already know, dear,” Mon-El said. His hand fell back to his side, uselessly, and he wished he had something to squeeze. Or bite down on, maybe.

She rested her head back on the bars of their cell, squeezing her eyes shut. “I never should have called you that,” she mumbled. “It was a stupid mistake and I was embarrassed to admit it to you.”

His leg felt like it was burning – he could feel the bullet acutely, buried in his thing and it was weird to be able to feel the inside of his muscle like that but it was even worse to feel it melting away like the bullet was acid. This overwhelming feeling of pain made in really easy to just compartmentalize the short burst of heartache that erupted at Kara’s words and just pack it away in the back of his mind. “I shouldn’t have pushed,” he admitted. He knew Kara was embarrassed to have accidentally addressed him that way, and he knew there wasn’t even a small chance she returned his feelings. “I just. I just wanted it to be true.”

Tears were starting to leak out from under her eyelids. “I’m the one that put you in danger,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Mon-El.”

“You know,” he said, leaning back and closing his eyes too. “Last time I thought I was going to die, Daxam was exploding under my feet. This is at least better than that.”

“You’re not going to die,” Kara said, but it sounded weak.

He cracked an eye open, and judged the distance between them. She was still pressed against the bars of the cell, but he doubted he hand the energy to lift himself up enough to do the same.

“It’s okay,” he said softly. “I actually have many less regrets this time. And I got to meet you, which was…interesting.”

She laughed croakily in spite of herself. “Just hang on, ok?”

“Ok,” Mon-El murmured. He closed his eyes again.

“Mon-El?” he heard her say, next to him. “Promise me you will. Promise, beloved.”

He opened his eyes and smiled at her. “I promise.”

That was when Jeremiah burst in, and he ended up miraculously escaping death once more after all.

The DEO wasn’t able to tell Mon-El much about his bullet wound. The medics immediately plopped him under a yellow-sun lamp and cut off his pants to stare at it, even as it was already starting to close.

“Lead, huh,” Alex said, mostly to herself. “How did Cadmus…? Nevermind. Mon-El, with your permission, I can use your blood samples to run a bunch of tests, and see if there’s anything else you might be vulnerable to. Most likely not, seeing as you’re able to punch through steel any other day, but-”

“Do it,” Kara said fiercely at his side. She hadn’t left, even to change out of her uniform.

Alex smirked. “Yes, thank you , Mon-El .”

He smiled. “It’s fine, Alex. That’s probably a smart idea.”

Once he was bandaged and given crutches to help avoid putting weight on his bad leg, they all ended up going to Kara’s place. She still did not leave his side, letting Alex, Winn and James the Handsome Man wander around and shoot the pair of them strange looks.

“How’s that feel?” Kara said, readjusting the ice on his leg. “Is it cold enough? I can freeze it more.”

“I’m definitely numb,” Mon-El said, grabbing her wrist. “Stop fussing, I'm fine.”

Instead of pulling away, she surprised him by turning her hand over and interlocking their fingers. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, and he knew she wasn’t referring to the fussing. “I’m so sorry.”

Mon-El ended up tugging his hand away, the guilt weighing out over his desire for closeness. “It wasn’t your fault,” he repeated.

“If I hadn’t kept going with the whole pet name thing-”

Impulsively, he grabbed her hand back again. “Please don’t regret that.”

“How could I not?” she gasped. “It got you shot!”

“It made me happy!” he shouted back. Alex, Winn, and James all stopped what they were doing to stare at them, so Mon-El switched to Kryptonian and started muttering in the direction of the couch. “I know it’s stupid and I know you don’t feel the same way,” he said. “But - sometimes it’s like I’m drowning on this new planet full of rules and customs and everything I don’t know is burying me alive, and talking with you is the only thing that makes me feel like myself.” He swallowed, staring resolutely down at his good knee. “And I would never regret anything that brings me closer to you.”

His face was suddenly covered in hair - she’d launched herself at him, squeezing his shoulders like she could squeeze some comfort back into him. “I know the feeling,” she said. “I’m not sure if I ever said this before, but...I am so, so sorry about Daxam.”

He brought up one arm to embrace her back. “It’s okay,” he said. “You know, I didn’t even like it that much there.”

She pulled back, studying his face.

He poked her in the arm. “Still probably better than Krypton, though,” he joked. “An entire planet of librarians, eugh.”

“We were not all librarians!” she protested.

“I’m surprised you and your cousin escaped that fate,” he said with a straight face, avoiding her incoming attack with a pillow. “Although, to be fair, journalists are really just active historians, which is only one step away from-”

Kara whacked him in the face with her pillow. When she laughed like that, her eyes looked like comets.

Mon-El smiled back at her and promised himself he’d do whatever he could to make her laugh like that again.

Even if it meant stopping flirting with her. It would be okay if she won, this time.