“You know there’s a ‘friends’ and a ‘family’ version of this game, right?” Alec said with amusement, phone in hand.
Taylor flushed.
“O-oh. We don’t have to play.” She mumbled.
“Nah, dork, it’s fine. Let’s do this.” Alec gamely passed out piles of cards, dealing five stacks with surprisingly adroit hands.
“Play a lot of cards?” Lisa asked, stirring her drink absently.
“I’ve endured levels of boredom that would cripple you.” Alec said without looking up. “Here we go… one round, let’s say one of each? Icebreaker, Deep, Deeper, Act.”
“I don’t think that’s the rules.” Taylor thumbed the little pamphlet that came with the set.
“Fuck ‘em.” Rachel shrugged. “Rules are stupid.”
“That’s why Rach’s my favorite.” Alec shot the girl in question a little grin that she rolled her eyes at.
“Everyone does their set or we go one at a time with each category?” Taylor was paying more attention to the piles of cards now.
“Icebreakers around the room, then Deep, Deeper, and Acts.” Alec paused, checked an ‘Act’ card, and blinked. “Okay, and if you don’t want to answer a question, do a random Act. To spice things up, apparently.”
Brian eyed the cards like a snake.
“When you say ‘Act’ and ‘couple’s game’….” He trailed off. “Is the card game gonna try to make us have sex?”
“Better question.” Lisa scooped up her ‘hand’ of cards, fanning them out. “It’s made for couples as in two people. Who are we asking when we read off a question?”
“Well, we could go boring with the ‘person to our right’ or some shit.” Alec leaned forward, palming his set of cards without taking them off the table to peek at yet. “Or we could get really adventurous and make everybody answer.”
“How’s that work?” Rachel picked up her cards and grimaced. “Somebody read this shit for me.”
“Pick a lap, babe.” Alec said magnanimously. “Whoever you sit next to can read your cards.”
The red-head’s brow furrowed for a moment as she considered it.
“My lap.” Rachel said finally, pulling Taylor– who squeaked adorably– sideways onto her legs. “Read these for me.”
The others laughed without rancor. Even Brian chuckled about it and Taylor blushed a little as she adjusted on Rachel’s lap.
“Grab mine for me?” The brunette asked and Rachel handed her captive the cards in question.
“I still say this is a bad idea.” Brian rubbed the back of his neck even as he pulled up his hand. “I mean… isn’t this type of game just an excuse to flirt?”
“It’s probably an excuse to do more than that.” Rachel said, looking around. “If you don’t want to, say that.”
Tellingly, Brian was silent. Lisa took a shuddery breath.
“It’s also to get to know people better. There is a friends and family version, after all.”
“Yeah, but this isn’t that version.” Rachel stared the blonde down. “It’s the one for couples and shit.”
“That just… means it’s going to ask more personal questions, maybe.” Taylor said, voice surprisingly level as she defused things a little.
“I guess.” Rachel eased back, adjusted her grip on Taylor’s legs. “Who’s going first?”
“Allow me, mademoiselle.” Alec grinned, plucking a card with a showman’s flourish. “Easy icebreaker to the room: “Lose your sense of touch or your sense of smell. Why?”
There was a bit of looking around as the group thought.
“… Smell.” Rachel said. “Maybe if we had dog senses it’d be different but not being able to smell stuff isn’t that bad.”
“Fair enough.” Brian relaxed by degrees. “Sense of touch is being able to touch people, feel them, hold them… I wouldn’t give that up.”
“It’s more than that though.” Taylor spoke up. “Pressure, temperature, texture… I didn’t have a sense of pain to my skin for a while, from nerve damage, and it sucked.”
Rachel rubbed up and down Taylor’s arm as the girl shivered.
“You’d have traded smell to get that back?” Lisa asked curiously.
Taylor nodded.
“I guess I’m the same.” The blonde frowned. “When I smell things my power gives me TMI on it anyway. A faint scent is enough for oh, she didn’t shower in three days or that guy doesn’t wash his hands.”
“Brutal.” Alec said, flicking the card onto the table face up. “I don’t think I have to answer, and that’s everyone. You’re up, Lis.”
“We’re going counterclockwise then?” The blonde pulled her own Icebreaker card from her hand.
“Why not?” Alec pulled his feet up under him, easing– just a little– closer to her as he relaxed into the couch.
Brian was on his other side, now destined to go last.
Taylor and Rachel were in the loveseat to the right.
“If you had to cancel one major holiday, which one would you eliminate?” She read.
“Easy.” Alec said at once. “Valentine’s Day.”
“What? Why.” Taylor looked up with surprise.
Alec’s face did a thing. Not quite a frown but it read as unhappy.
“Dad always went hunting. None of the others were good enough, he wanted someone new.”
Brian wasn’t the only one to suck in air at that revelation. Lisa set her cards down and tugged him over. He adopted an almost mullish look as he allowed himself to be pulled into her with an arm around his shoulders.
Alec gradually relaxed.
“Sorry to get so deep.” He mumbled.
“No, you had… fuck, a really good reason.” Brian tugged at his shirt collar. “Mine was going to be New Years, if that counts.”
Before they could ask, he elaborated: “Ten thousand new people at the gym, all of them on their new resolutions that they’re not going to follow. It’s good of them to try better lifestyles, but it’s a huge pain in the ass if you’re a gym regular.”
“Huh.” Lisa said, rubbing circles into Alec’s shoulder with her thumb. “I can see that. For me, I guess… wait, ha, I don’t have to answer. Taylor, Rachel, your turn.”
“Fourth of July.” Rachel grunted. “Fireworks scare the dogs.”
Alec laughed a little and Brian smiled.
“Good pick.” Brian said.
“I’ll go with Christopher Columbus Day. Fuck that guy.” Taylor said slowly.
“What’d he do?” Alec asked idly.
Rachel also frowned. “Who?”
“He ‘discovered America.’” Taylor said with finger quotes. “But obviously there were already people here. One of the fucked up things he did was enslave people from Hispaniola, now Haiti and the Dominican Republic.”
“And the smallpox.” Lisa said idly.
“I’ve never heard any of that.” Brian said with surprise.
Taylor shrugged.
“My mom had an entire soapbox she could pull out for the holiday.”
“Dork.” Alec said, but it was fond, and Taylor smiled back a little.
“Do me or Rachel go next?” She asked. “We’re sharing… ah, sharing a spot here.”
“Read mine first.” Rachel said, holding up a card. “Icebreaker, starts with an ‘I’ anyway.”
“Rachel’s is: would you rather be able to fly or be invisible? Why?” Taylor read, before answering herself: “Fly, easily.”
“Yeah that’s fair.” Lisa said, with a light smile.
“I don’t know.” Alec leaned back a bit, careful not to dislodge Lisa’s arm. “There’s been way more times in my life where I’d give anything to be invisible, where flying wouldn’t help.”
“… Fair.” Taylor said quietly.
Lisa’s lips turned down a little.
“Well, that’s depressing. Right now, I’d rather fly, and if we all chose that we could be New New Wave: Undersiders edition.”
Alec snorted hard.
“Demolition Dallon would hate that.” He said. “She’d knock us out of the sky on general principle.”
“Do we get to keep our other powers?” Brian asked. “Mine doesn’t not make me invisible. It makes everything in range un-visible.”
Alec laughed again.
“That’s so fucking stupid, no.” He said. “Blinding people doesn’t make you invisible.”
“Two types of stealth.” Taylor said thoughtfully. “Nobody saw me, and nobody’s got eyes left to see me.”
“Jesus.” Alec put a hand over his heart. “That’s why we don’t let you plan ops, babe. No offense.”
“None taken.” Taylor shrugged one shoulder.
“That was mine. What’s yours?” Rachel hooked her chin over Taylor’s shoulder, pulling her a little closer.
“Oh, um.” Taylor cleared her throat. “What’s the grossest thing you’ve ever tasted?”
“Dumpster food when I was on the streets.” Rachel said, nonplussed. “I think it was spoiled but I was hungry enough not to care.”
“I made my cash last a little longer, thank god.” Lisa said. “That could have easily been me. I had to get a CT scan once and the stuff they made me drink beforehand was the worst.”
Her nose wrinkled.
“Spoiled milk.” Brian said with a casual roll of his shoulders. “Last time I didn’t check the date on it, I’ll say that much. I couldn’t eat cheerios for a year.”
“Oof, you took a bite after pouring the bowl?” Lisa said sympathetically.
Alec was quiet a touch too long when they turned to him. He quirked a smile.
“You don’t want to know.”
Lisa immediately winced.
“What? Why?” Rachel asked.
“Gross sex stuff.” Alec lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. “Not that gross, mind. Just… yeah.”
“I’ve heard eating pineapple and sweet fruits can make emissions taste less bitter.” Taylor said, surprising the room. “Um. It was just something I read, once. I don’t know if it’s true.”
She ducked her chin.
Alec laughed, delighted.
“It’s true, actually. Oh, and hey, since I technically didn’t answer, I have to draw an Act card.”
“You don’t have to for that.” Brian said, jaw tight. “It’s different.”
“No, I’m gonna.” Alec looked up with a little smirk, hand on the deck. “Should you all pick who I’m going to do it with in advance, or is it automatically Taylor since I wussed out on her question?”
“You didn’t–” Brian tried, but Rachel huffed.
“With Taylor.” She said, and Lisa was already nodding.
“Definitely with Taylor.” The Thinker agreed.
“Well, don’t threaten me with a good time.” Alec dramatically flipped the card over. “Switch an article of clothing for the remainder of the game. Huh. Shirts would be easiest, probably.”
Taylor shimmied out of Rachel’s lap.
“Um.” She said, hands hesitant at the hem of her shirt. “Should we… out here?”
Alec quirked a brow.
“I’m fine stripping down out here, ma trésor.” He lifted his designer t-shirt, exposing a strip of his waist teasingly.
He waited for someone to tell him to cut it out and found enraptured faces. Oh.
Cocking his hip a little, he makes a show of it, shimmying the material up higher and higher. His fingers catch and drag the fabric until his abs are revealed and then pinch and pull, leveraging it above his elbows.
At that point he has to put up or let it fall back down, so he shrugs it over his head.