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“Your Monopoly set is cursed.”
Lena glares at the board, currently filled with houses and hotels, abandoned pieces still spaced around the edges. She’s sitting on the floor, leaning against the couch instead of sitting on it and looking incredibly disgruntled. Her nose is scrunched in disgust, and Kara kind of wants to reach over and boop it.
Instead, she leans back on her hands and grins at Lena. “I don’t think the fact that you lost means it’s cursed.”
Laughter rings out loudly from the kitchen, and Kara catches Nia’s cackle above the rest. It’s the tail end of game night, the point where the games are starting to be forgotten halfway through and abandoned in favour of fervent drunk rants and trips to the kitchen for more snacks. Right now, Kara can hear Nia trying to convince the others to climb out the fire escape and up to the roof.
It’s just her and Lena left in the living room, and Kara’s had enough aldebaran rum and coke that everything is a little fuzzy around the edges.
Lena falls forwards slightly, like she’s tilting on her axis. She’s a lot floppier when she’s drunk. “I think that’s exactly what it means,” she says. “I always win Monopoly. I am the queen of Monopoly. I do not go bankrupt.”
“You did in this game,” Kara laughs, catching her hands. Lena beams at her, forgetting to be irritated for a moment before she quickly overcompensates with an expression that’s far too serious to be believable.
“Because it’s cursed,” she says.
“Because Alex beat you.”
Lena gasps. “Alex cursed Monopoly.”
“Alex did not curse Monopoly,” says Kara, swatting at her. Lena laughs and swats her back, so they’re hitting each other’s handsas she talks. “There were just a lot of us and you had bad luck this time.”
“Like I said, cursed!”
There’s the sound of a window opening and closing, and the chatter in the kitchen swells and fades slightly. Nia must have convinced everyone to go up to the roof. Kara cranes her neck to try and see if there’s anyone still left in the kitchen.
“Stupid Monopoly,” Lena mutters, mostly to herself. “Fuck Monopoly.” And just as Kara’s turning back to look at her, she reaches out and hits the board off the table, sending cards and plastic pieces flying.
“Lena!” says Kara.
Lena does not have the grace to look abashed. In fact, she looks quite pleased with herself, like a cat who just knocked something over.
“You can’t just knock over the Monopoly,” says Kara, scraping up handfuls of little plastic houses and hotels from the carpet. “What if we wanted to keep playing?”
“Oh, pfft,” says Lena, unbothered, flipping dark hair away from her face. “Everyone’s too drunk to play now anyways. We weren’t going to keep playing.”
“You don’t know that.” Kara plucks a Monopoly house from her palm and throws it at Lena. It bounces off her forehead, and Lena’s jaw drops in a comical exaggeration of betrayal.
“Did you just throw a hotel at me?”
“It was a house, actually,” says Kara, picking another one to throw. This one bounces off Lena’s cheekbone. “That was a hotel.”
“You did not just do that.” Lena leans across the table and snatches a stack of Monopoly money, then launches it in Kara’s direction. It flutters down over the table and carpet. A bill brushes Kara’s ear. One lands on Lena’s head.
“That’s paper, it’s not going to do anything.”
“Don’t test me,” says Lena, scrambling out from behind the coffee table and grabbing the rest of the stack of money. She flicks it off her hand, a few bills at a time, sending a rain of multicoloured money over Kara and scattering the once tidy piles across the floor. The bills slide under the couch and TV. Kara chokes out stop between her laughter, still tossing tiny houses and game pieces at Lena.
There’s a bowl of gummy bears on the table, and when Kara runs out of Monopoly pieces, she reaches for a handful of those and starts throwing them at Lena instead. Lena’s moved on to throwing the cards at her, and it’s really going to be a bitch to pick it all up tomorrow, but Kara’s laughing too hard to care. Lena’s cackling, and she stumbles to the side and crashes into the coffee table, knocking over the remaining Jenga tower as she goes down. It only makes them both laugh harder.
Popcorn. The bowl of popcorn on the couch still hasn’t been knocked over, so Kara grabs a fistful of that and throws it. It’s better than the gummy bears, it sticks in Lena’s hair and falls down her blouse.
Having finally exhausted the contents of Monopoly, Lena reaches for her own handfuls of popcorn and gummy bears. “Take that,” she says, alternating between throwing the two snacks at Kara. “And that.” A gummy bear lands in Kara’s mouth. A piece of popcorn hits her eye.
Hiccupping back her laughter, Kara reaches blindly across the table for her drink, and without really thinking about it, flicks her wrist and tosses the entire contents directly at Lena’s face.
Everything freezes. Lena looks stunned, blinking rum and coke from her eyes. Amber liquid drips from her chin, her hair.
Kara, eyes wide, only manages, “Oh my god, Lena, I am so—” before Lena’s vodka soda is hitting her in the face. She gasps, inhaling a mouthful down her windpipe. Lena looks far too smug when she finally manages to stop coughing, and some instinct in Kara must take over because she lunges forwards and tackles Lena to the carpet.
Lena shrieks and laughs and squirms, and Kara pins both her hands above her head with one hand, sitting on her knees to straddle Lena’s waist. Instinct still driving her, she leans forwards and licks a wet strip up Lena’s cheek.
When she sits back again, Lena has stopped squirming and is staring up at her, utterly bemused. “Did you just lick me?”
“You’re covered in aldebaran rum and coke,” Kara grins. “Wouldn’t want it to go to waste. It’s expensive stuff, Lena.”
“Oh, so you’re trying to drink me.”
Kara shrugs. “Drink, eat, whatever.”
She’s basically sitting over Lena’s middle, which means she feels the way Lena’s stomach jerks slightly against her pelvis in a sharp inhale. Feels the way Lena tenses, like every muscle in her body has gone taut. Lena swallows, licks her lips nervously, which of course brings Kara’s full attention to her mouth.
Her lips are so pink, and so pretty and plush, and she suddenly looks so kissable it’s unbearable. It feels like Kara has to kiss her, like it’s a physical compulsion. She takes Lena’s chin in her free hand, squishing her cheeks slightly as Lena stares at her, and whispers, “Wait, wait, wait.”
Then, very gently, softly, quickly, she presses her lips to Lena’s.
Lena blinks at her, eyelashes fluttering, when she pulls away. There’s a long silence where she searches Kara’s eyes before she says, voice low, “Again?”
Kara leans forwards and presses a second experimental kiss to Lena’s lips. She lingers a moment longer than the first one, then pulls back an inch, still holding Lena’s hands fast above her head.
“Yes?” she whispers.
Lena nods, like she can’t quite remember how to speak. Then she says, “More.”
When Kara kisses her for a third time, her lips are already parted slightly, and they slot easily between Kara’s.
They’re so soft.
She tastes like vodka soda and gummy bears, and it’s almost more than Kara’s drunk brain can process at once; Lena’s warm body pressed to hers, her slim wrists in Kara’s hand, the softness of her lips, the taste of her mouth, the slick brush of her tongue. She loses herself in it, forgets time, forgets how they got here, forgets everything but Lena.
It’s finally quiet after all their shrieking and laugher, just the sound of their lips melding together. Kara’s not sure how long they’ve been kissing—perhaps a minute, perhaps a lifetime—when someone clears their throat loudly, like they’ve already done it once or twice.
Kara breaks away, and Lena makes a small protesting sound in the back of her throat, a tiny whimper. They both look over Kara’s shoulder at Alex, who’s standing in the doorway looking faintly queasy.
Kara watches her take in the scene: Lena lying on the ground with Kara straddling her waist and pinning her hands above her head, the pile of Monopoly money and pieces that they’re lying in, the gummy bears and popcorn scattered across the floor and in their hair, the drinks that are still dripping from both their furtive, swollen-lipped faces.
Alex opens her mouth, and then presses it closed again.
“You know what,” she says, after a long moment. “I don’t think I want to know. Please, for the love of god, just… do not explain any of what I’m seeing right now.”
Without another word, she turns on her heel and disappears back into the kitchen.
Kara and Lena turn back to each other, still pressed together on the floor, breath uneven. Lena’s flushed, eyes dark, lips parted. She really does look good enough to eat. Her wrists twitch under Kara’s hand.
They stare at each other. Several long seconds tick by. Then, simultaneously, they start laughing.
It’s a long time before they stop.