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It's a dumb idea.
Lena is a scientist. She doesn't believe in ghosts or goblins - with the exception of the fifth dimension kind that she's seen with her own eyes - or anything to do with the Occult really. She does believe in the power of marketing, though, and thinks the decision to promote the Ouija Board to a nineteen-seventies America as a fun parlor game after the hysteria following The Exorcist's release was genius. Because the people that didn't believe would buy it for fun and those that did would forbid their children from going anywhere near one, which would just make them want one all the more. Either way, the games were bound to fly off the shelves as if thrown by poltergeists and they did just that.
How exactly one has ended up in Kara Danver's living room, she isn't sure.
Because Kara doesn't really like the idea of Ouija Boards, which is something Alex had recalled knowing in their childhood but had forgotten since, and so they had all found out together during that particular movie night. Lena tells herself she only remembers that night because it was the first time she'd seen Kara even a little afraid of something.
The real reason is because they'd been sitting together on the couch and Kara had inched closer with every jump scare until she was practically half on top of Lena, her head tucked almost all the way into the crook of Lena's neck while her eyes stayed on the screen. At one particularly frightening moment in the film, Kara had grabbed Lena's hand under the blanket and jerked it from where she'd molded it over top of her own kneecap in order to stop herself from doing something stupid. Kara had gripped her fingers tightly for a few seconds and then relaxed again.
But she hadn't let go.
Still, Lena tells herself it's definitely the other thing, if only so that she can sleep at night.
"Do we have to do this?" Kara groans, dragging herself off of the kitchen stool she'd been perched on and walking over to join everyone in the living room, slow as treacle.
"Come on," Alex bends to take the lid off the box that has been deposited in the middle of the table they're all settling around, holds two opposite corners between her middle fingers and then sends it spinning with her thumbs. "It's Halloween!" Alex raises her eyebrows, hopeful, moving her arms in wide circles like she's performing a magic trick with the twirling cardboard.
"Yeah, so can't we carve pumpkins or just eat candy until we pop instead?" Kara is practically pouting.
"Candy come later." Winn says, monosyllabic like Tarzan, and beats his fist against his chest. "Only scare now." He reaches into one of the bowls set out and shoves a handful of chips into his mouth. Kara makes a disgusted face.
"The candy is the reward?" Sam offers, managing to at least look a little sheepish in her excitement, and Kara drops her head back with a groan.
"You know, this is your apartment." Lena, who hasn't sat down yet either, cradles the bottom of a wine glass in her palm and glances sidelong at Kara. Kara turns to look at her, brightening. Perhaps at the reminder. Perhaps something else. Lena crinkles her nose up and leans in like she's about to share a secret. "You could just kick us out."
"No," Kara laughs, "I want you to say." She sighs, then straightens suddenly, needlessly pushing her glasses further up her nose before thrusting her hand out to gesture towards the rest of the group. "I-I mean, I," another huff of laughter, this one a little too high-pitched, "I want all of you to stay." She looks flushed, Lena notes. "So if I have to-"
"You have to." Alex interrupts, a definitive quality to her voice, and Lena watches as it catches Kara's attention and turns her gaze towards her sister. Sees something pass between the two of them, some secret message that's sent and received in the blink of an eye, and then Kara's shoulders are relaxing in Lena's periphery. "Remember," she sing-songs, "it's just a game."
"Or is it?" Winn bellows, like a mad scientist in a castle, then lets out a chorus of spooky ghost sounds with a manic smile on his face. Lena's face remains frustratingly, she assumes, neutral as she regards him with unflinching cynicism.
"It says Hasbro on the box," she points out with a wry grin. Alex stops twirling the box, looks down at it with a quiet, "Huh." Winn sticks his tongue out at her.
When they're finally all settled on the floor around the coffee table with their shoulders and knees bumping together every time one of them shifts slightly, Alex places the planchet onto the board and Winn takes great pleasure in getting his fingers on it first.
"Don't." Alex darts her arm forward and smacks his hand away. "There are rules."
"I thought you didn't believe in this stuff?" He makes a show of rubbing the spot where she'd hit him.
"I don't, but I do believe in safeguarding against every potential outcome. Whether or not it's theoretically possible." Alex shrugs and Lena hums her agreement.
"I can appreciate that." She punctuates the sentence by taking a sip of her wine.
"Nerds." Winn's disguisal of the insult inside an overly dramatic cough is poorly done on purpose.
"Careful you don't choke." Alex shoots him a glare before Kara, sitting beside him, brings the fingers of both hands down onto the surface of the table three times in rapid succession.
"Can we please get this over with so we can go back to doing fun stuff?" She isn't sweating - Lena isn't even sure Kara can sweat - but the nervous agitation is visible to her in the faint lines creasing Kara's brow and how she's clenching her jaw when she smiles. Lena wonders if anyone else sees these things as clearly as she does.
Alex gives them all a quick run down of the dos and don'ts as Winn jumps up to turn the lights off, almost knocking over his beer bottle in his excitement. From her place directly opposite, Lena sees the way Kara opens her mouth to say something at this but seems to think better of it. There's enough light emanating from the table lamp to ensure it isn't completely dark anyway. It is, however, also enough to bounce strange shadows off the walls and thrust them into a suitably atmospheric setting. She might find Kara's reactions to all of this adorable, if she didn't feel so bad for her.
Might find it adorable anyway.
Lena decides not to think about it and focuses on the ridiculous questions Winn is asking the so-called 'visitor from beyond' that appears to join them after a few nonstarters. Sam is really the only one who asks anything close to a serious question and Lena doesn't ask any at all. Just drinks the evening in along with half a bottle of wine and smiles her amusement into her glass. Laughs freely. Catches Kara watching her and chuckles to herself when the reporter blushes and looks away, clearly flustered.
And it takes a little while, but Kara does warm up to what they're doing enough to ask the board a question of her own.
"Spirit, did Alex purposefully ruin the Tommy Hilfiger overalls I got for my thirteenth birthday?" Kara glances over at her sister, who is so taken off guard by the question that she dribbles the sip of beer she's taking down the front of her shirt. Kara laughs as Alex flounders, first trying to wipe away the alcohol with the hand holding the bottle, then making a move like she's going to lift the other from the planchet. "Ah-ah!" Kara raises her own free hand to point at Alex. "There are rules!" She reminds her, wagging her finger, and Alex scowls as the planchet starts to move.
It stutters across the board until it's pointing at the 'yes' and then stills.
"This is bullshit," Alex protests, shaking her head furiously. "I did not."
"I knew it!" Kara yells over her, completely ignoring her sister's denials. "Oh, I so knew it! You owe me a new pair of vintage Hilfigers." She's beaming like the cat that got the canary and Lena feels something flutter behind her ribs as she takes in the sight, tipsily enamoured in a kind of too-open way she usually tries to conceal.
"A new pair of vintage? Seriously?" Alex drops her chin towards her chest and sends a withering glance in Kara's direction.
"I know what I said." Kara waves her off, reaching for her glass and knocking back the last few dregs of rosé at the bottom. "You owe me and that's that." And she blows a raspberry in Alex's direction.
"Oh, we're being childish now, are we?" There's an edge of warning to her voice. "Okay, fine, let's be childish."
They go back and forth a few times, never giving any spirit that might be in attendance even the smallest chance to answer between their increasingly specific questions, each one an attempt to one up the last. It finally reaches a point where Sam is sitting there wide-eyed and Winn of all people is the one who tries to turn things semi-serious again, asking about a dead relative who, Lena thinks he says, had been rumoured to have mob ties back in the nineteen twenties.
Both Alex and Kara start booing at his question, though, telling him to ask something fun.
"Can't we just," Kara eyes squint as she grins, "ask it stupid kid sleepover questions? Like, hey spirit, will I ever be rich or who am I going to marry?" The planchet starts to move, towing a stunned silence in its wake as it slides smoothly across the board, its previous juddering gone. Kara blinks owlishly at it, swallowing her surprise and addressing the triangular object directly. "I wasn't actually ask-" The remainder of the sentence falls away as the planchet points to its first letter.
'L'
"Okay, which one of you is doing this?" Kara's laughter is uncertain.
'E'
"Alex, stop."
"It's not me!"
"Well it isn't me!"
'N'
Lena's eyes narrow and she glances around at their friends, looks down to their collection of index fingers resting on the flimsy piece of plastic and tries to discern which one of them is guiding it. Can't. Swallows past the lump in her throat and tries to keep her expression neutral as the planchet slows to a stop.
'A'
Silence gathers in the aftermath, a swirling vortex sprouting from the centre of the board that pulls their voices from them. Alex is staring down at the table, her lips pressed together in a tight line. Winn is glancing between everyone like he's watching a very spirited game of tennis. Sam is looking at Lena. Kara's eyes are closed, her cheeks Rao-red, like the core of the sun is burning underneath the skin, and if there has ever been a moment where Lena's glad for all the practice she's had keeping her cool in heated boardroom meetings, it's now.
Lena mutters a quiet goodbye - because really, who knows at this point - and lifts her hand away from the planchet to sit back. The rest of them quickly follow suit, with Kara burying her hands in the empty space created by her crossed legs, tucking them under her thighs like she's afraid they're the culprits.
It's so quiet, they can hear the ticking of the clock on the wall.
Then, all at once, the same vortex that had sucked up their voices and held them hostage for the last few moments, spits them back out. Words aren't what fills the silence, though; laughter is. Every pair of eyes slide accusingly to Alex, who claps a hand over her mouth the instant the first burst of it leaves her. However, she quickly finds her palm to be a paltry blockade and the sounds spill out around and between her fingers.
Kara's gaze is so hot, Lena is slightly concerned it might burn through Alex without any heat vision being activated.
Alex pulls her hand away from her mouth and holds it out so her palm is towards Kara, hovering in a 'stop' motion between them.
"I swear, I swear that wasn't me," she starts, shaking her head. "But oh my god, I kinda hope this stuff," she gestures to the board, "is real because…." She trails off, just about controlling her giggling until she makes the mistake of looking over at Lena. And Lena idly wonders what her expression must look like because apparently it's the final straw for the last vestiges of Alex's composure, which flies out of the window faster than Supergirl. "If a god damn invisible ghost can see what you two can't." She stands then, wrapping an arm tightly around her middle as her laughter continues. "Oh, my stomach." She pulls in a tight lungful of air. "I can't breathe." Then she's waving her hand without purpose and walking away from the group, disappearing into the bathroom where the acoustics can really enhance the sound of her absolutely losing her noodle. Sam doesn't make eye contact with Lena when she gets up to follow Alex, but she does have the good grace to close the bathroom door behind her and deaden the sound of laughter.
Winn seems to be holding his breath and staring at nothing, cheeks puffed out like an overinflated hamster as he tries not to smile. He scratches at the back of his head and points at something in the kitchen, stumbling over words that might have eventually turned into fully formed excuses before he just gets up and makes himself scarce.
And it's as she's watching him flee the short distance that she understand one of three things has happened here tonight:
- One of their friends decided to call both Lena and Kara out on their bullshit.
- One of them had fallen prey to the usual cause behind Ouija phenomena and had been subconsciously moving the planchet without realising.
- An actual spirit from beyond the grave decided to pop in and upend their lives for fun.
And it's as she's considering those things that two realisations form in her mind:
- She doesn't really care which one it is.
- She's honestly a little relieved someone has finally said something.
Because all of the lingering glances and touches have driven her way past crazy, driven over it and reversed before speeding off towards the cliff edge of insanity. She isn't sure how many more times she can extract herself from one of their hugs without pausing at just the right moment and leaning back in to kiss her best friend.
It's a daily struggle at this point.
"Well," Lena starts, brushing an imaginary piece of lint from her pants. She lifts a hand to run her fingers through long hair and pull it away from where it's started sticking to the back of her neck. "That was mildly mortifying."
Across the table, Kara draws her hands away from where she'd been covering her eyes and drags her fingers down over her face until the tips of them are splayed across her cheekbones and she's cradling her jaw in her palms, looking as mortified as Lena feels.
"Which part?" She offers Lena an embarrassed smile from between her fingers. "Alex calling me out or what the board said?"
It's the small detail of the word 'me' in what Kara says that makes Lena more fully understand what it is that's going on behind the scenes in this moment. What's been going on backstage of Kara's brain for who knows how long now.
The door to the bathroom suddenly bangs open, jerking their joint attention over in that direction, and they watch with similar levels of shock and amusement as Sam marches out of the small space wearing an expression of frustration that wouldn't be out of place in a kindergarten classroom. She's pulling a still laughing Alex along behind her as she crosses to the kitchen, throwing them both an apologetic glance as she passes a startled Winn and opens the apartment door. She pushes Alex out into the hallway and turns back to where Winn is just about to shove an entire pumpkin-shaped cookie into his mouth, winding her fingers into the collar of his shirt and yanking him out. He yelps, protesting about his jacket being left behind as Sam leans back into the apartment to tug the door shut behind them. She tells him she'll just buy him another one on the way and then yells at them both to get moving.
Kara's shaking her head, half stunned, half amused, when their eyes meet again.
"Well," Lena starts, heaving a sigh that has the immediate and regrettable effect of making Kara's small smile falter. "As far as what the board said…." she trails off, reaching to nudge the planchet onto the table and fold one side of the board over onto the other. When she looks back to Kara, the sight of her sitting there with her lower lip snared worriedly between her teeth sends a familiar swarm of butterflies fluttering through her stomach. She continues, confident but shyly coy with her next words. "We can probably wait a while before discussing the particulars of a wedding."
There's a significant change in Kara's expression then. She releases her lip and curves her mouth into a shy smile, blue eyes brightening with something that makes Lena's chest ache.
"And what Alex said?" She hedges and when Lena sighs this time, a tad over dramatic and heavy with inevitability, Kara's smile doesn't falter.
"Oh, I think that discussion is long overdue." Lena maneuvers onto her knees and crawls the short distance around the coffee table to where Kara is. She sits next to her, side on, bending her legs and scooting closer until her chest is almost pressed to Kara's arm and her knees slot into place, resting overtop of Kara's thighs. She props her elbow up on the seat of the couch behind them and rests her head against a closed fist. "We should probably talk about it now."
Kara's hand has come to rest on Lena's knee, palm fitting easily over the curve of it, thumb absentmindedly rubbing over the material in a way that suggests she hadn't noticed her hand moving at all. As if it had been entirely unconscious. She tips her head back a little and to the side to look at Lena fully, nose crinkling in the low lamp light.
"Yeah?" She sounds so hopeful, looks it too. Can't hide the glow of it on her face or the way it twinkles in her eyes and she doesn't seem to be trying to.
Lena shifts again, letting her arm fall to bracket Kara's shoulders. She lifts her other hand, brushing her fingers over the fine hairs at Kara's temple before slipping them into soft, golden tresses and stroking through the length of them. Kara's eyes flutter and she releases a shaky exhale that Lena feels ghost across her mouth as she leans in.
"Yeah," she whispers against Kara's lips, then finally closes the distance.
And they talk, without words, long into the night.