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“Kara!” Alex called from where she was kicking butt in Ninja Turtle. “Kara, come here! You have to play this with me!”
Kara would be so good at this. She was a legitimate crime-fighting superhero. She’d have to be good at ninja turtles. Basically the same thing. Right?
“Yeah, one second!” Kara called back from somewhere near the DDR machine that was blasting a tune Alex (may or may not have from being here so often) recognized as being played at a relatively advanced level.
When Kara had first wanted to bring her here, Alex had to be almost forcibly dragged into coming. An arcade? What was she, twelve? It wasn’t like she liked video games, psh, please.
(Of course she liked video games. She and Winn played basically every night that Kara wasn’t around/they didn’t have to be out fighting evil aliens, or Cadmus, or some other insanity.)
Now, however, she was obsessed. Who didn’t want to play Skeeball until their arms hurt, or Guitar Hero (but the weird version this arcade had that wasn’t actually called Guitar Hero…Alex couldn’t read it. Damn her not speaking Japanese) until their fingers bled?
“Karaaaaaa,” Alex whined just as the big boss her Michelangelo was fighting smashed into her for the umpteenth time and GAME OVER flashed across the screen.
“I’m coming, I’m coming!” Kara whipped around the corner and Alex’s eyes narrowed.
“Did you just superspeed over here,” she asked sternly, resting a hand on her waist and cocking her hip.
Kara shifted around nervously, adjusting her glasses in her telltale sign of being nervous. “Nooo…I just…walked. Really fast.”
Alex rolled her eyes. “Kara! We’ve talked about this! SO many times!”
Kara, in her defense, at least had the decency to look guilty about it. “You were rushing me! And I have to get back to…Oh NO!”
Kara had turned around to look back the way she came. Alex tried to look around Kara to see what had inspired Kara’s gasp - all she could see were two teenage boys clustered around the game Kara had been playing a moment ago. It was a machine that had a glowing box at the top. They were poking at some buttons on the machine that were glowing at certain intervals. One was laughing at the other and shoving at the kid’s shoulder who was starting to poke harder at the buttons in frustration.
Typical kids stuff.
“What?” Alex asked, but Kara was already gone. Towards the boys. Looking FAR too upset for a mid-twenty year old adult woman to be looking at two teenage boys doing teenage kid stuff. “Kara! What the fuck!” she tried to hiss at her, but Kara either didn’t hear her or just did not give a flying fuck.
“You can’t just smack it like that!” Alex could hear Kara saying as she caught up to her and the boys. Both boys were looking between Kara and themselves like she was an insane person...and also like they didn’t know what to do with themselves being cornered by a gorgeous blonde adult woman harassing them at an arcade.
“Um...sorry?” the boy not at the controls ventured, then shut his mouth immediately when Kara raised an eyebrow at him. Alex facepalmed.
“Sorry? All you have to say is sorry? You could’ve broken it! You could’ve made it unusable for those of us who ACTUALLY care about it and want to play it, and-” Alex cut Kara off here and thrust her handful of tickets at the boy at the machine itself.
“Here, take these. Please. Just...go. Save yourselves ,” Alex mock whispered at the two of them. The boy who now held the tickets nodded vigorously and then darted away with his friend. Kara watched the interaction before nodding her head triumphantly.
“I mean, normally I’m above bribery, and that’s basically rewarding them for their poor behavior, but it worked!” Kara squealed gleefully. Alex grabbed her arm as she went to thrust more tokens into the machine.
“Oh. My god, Kara, they were children!” Alex admonished her, slapping Kara’s arm gently. Kara jerked her arm back from the machine with a pout.
“They were ruining it!” she whined, pout still in place. “It’s my favorite game!”
“Kara, I know it’s your favorite, but you have to share, remember?” Alex could not believe she was having this conversation with her adult...sister.
That title had seemed a little foggy, lately.
With her adult Kara. Kara was an adult. Who was unable to share an arcade game.
Good god.
“Guys! GUYS!” Winn called from back over at DDR where he and James had disappeared to at least an hour previously. “Did you see! We beat the high score!!!”
“Nice!” Alex yelled back, listening to the whoops and possible chest bump that was occurring (she was inferring this from the groans that were suddenly happening instead of cries of happiness. And the fact that they still did it when they did well every. Single. Time.)
“They don’t have to share,” Kara was pouting again. “You don’t yell at them.”
“Kara, I’m not yelling,” Alex dropped her voice immediately when she heard just how close she was getting to actually doing just that. “I just want you to remember - kids are dumb sometimes. They didn’t mean to. And you’ve been playing for...three hours now.”
“I’m so good at it,” Kara mumbled, honestly looking like she might cry any second. “I know it’s my super reflexes, but I still love it so much.”
Alex melted immediately. The eyes. The tears. Every time.
She reached out and wrapped an arm around Kara’s shoulders. Kara leaned into it immediately...as she slipped three more tokens into the game at the same time.
“Kara!” Alex pulled away immediately when she saw what was happening. Kara grinned mischievously.
“Just one more time!” she was already hitting through the startup options to get to the game itself. “I just want to play “Let’s!” again!”
“Fine. I’m going back to Turtles. If I have to hear that song one more time…” Alex stalked away, shaking her head at falling for Kara’s antics....again.
“Okay! I’ll win you a bear later! I promise!” Kara called back as the song started to play. Alex peeked behind her to watch as each of the sixteen transparent buttons lit up one, two, three, four at a time to the tune of the song and Kara happily tapped each of them with her fingers in time to the beat.
She really was good at it, after all.
“I love you,” Alex said quietly, more to herself than to Kara. Any normal person wouldn’t be able to hear it over the noise of the music and arcade noises all around them.
Kara wasn’t your typical person, though.
“I love you too, Alex,” Kara called, loudly enough to be heard but still softly.
Alex smiled.
She shoved two tokens into Turtles.
Maybe later, she’d finally have that talk with Kara she’d been meaning to have for so long. She couldn’t stand keeping it to herself anymore, when there was the possibility the two of them could be so much more. She only hoped Kara felt the same way.
Alex turned again to look over at Kara. She saw Kara watching her, ignoring the game and clearly had been for several seconds (which was unheard of.) Kara was smiling gently, and a blush rose to her face when she saw Alex catch her staring. Alex blushed back and gave her a short wave before Kara turned away, her hair falling over the side of her face as she went back to focusing on the game.
Alex had a pretty strong inkling that, yeah, Kara probably did.