Chapter 21: 21. The Christmas Party - Part 1 (of 2)
“You guys, we’re not getting those,” Kara chastised her daughters for trying to put yet another thing in the cart that they didn’t need. “Don’t make me regret bringing you to the store with me. We’re getting things for the Christmas party, and that’s it.”
The twins pouted, but put the box of fruit roll-ups back on the shelf.
“Can we get Cheetos?” Jamie asked.
“It’s on the list,” Kara answered.
“Yay!” Jamie clapped her hands.
“I want Doritos,” Jessie added. “Cool Ranch ones.”
Kara rolled her eyes. “That’s on the list too.”
“Yes!” Jessie pumped her fist in victory.
The kids were such junk food junkies. She probably should have felt bad about it, but she didn’t. They were her kids, after all. They could eat whatever they wanted, and it would never show. Alex cared more about them eating healthy than she did, though Kara would never let them live off of junk food, like they’d prefer. She wasn’t that irresponsible.
She corralled her children through the grocery store, picking up the snack items they needed for their party. Others were bringing pizza and Chinese and the like, but the Danvers were in charge of snack items. Other than trying to put a few extra things in the cart, the girls were on their best behavior. They knew from experience that their parents could and would ground them from parties if they didn't mind their manners. It was always the twins’ worst nightmare to not be included in social activities at home, so they weren't about to get banned from one of their favorite parties of the year.
“How's school going?” she asked them.
“Boring,” they answered in unison, rolling their eyes.
“I wish you would let us homeschool,” Jamie lamented. “We could have our school work done in months instead of years.”
Kara snorted. This was the same conversation she used to have endlessly with Jeremiah and Eliza when she first came to earth. She hated school on this planet so much, and she would have done nearly anything to get out of it. They thought she should blend in though, so they let her skip one year to be with Alex, and that was it. Kara now believed them to be right in doing so. Insanely intelligent, or not, the kids were still part alien, and they needed to blend in just as much as she did. “And that would call attention to you. You know better. Besides, wouldn't you miss your friends?”
Jamie shrugged. “Jessie doesn’t have any friends, and I could see Shayla other times. Everyone else is just a red shirt anyway.”
The Kryptonian face-palmed at the expression. Curse Winn for turning her children into nerd queens! “That's a terrible way to think of people! I'm sure you would miss them, if they weren't around anymore.”
“Oh, yeah,” Jamie said sarcastically, “I'm totally gonna miss the kid that picks his nose all the time. And the girl who still sucks her thumb? We're total besties, don't you know?”
Kara sighed. Her elder daughter could be so impossible sometimes. “So these people have no redeeming qualities whatsoever?”
“Maybe, but I'm too repulsed to find out!”
Kara pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. Jamie definitely got her Mama’s cleanly tendencies, that was for sure. She couldn't really blame her kids for not wanting to be around certain people, though. They were highly intelligent, fairly sophisticated, and very geeky, and it frustrated them to be around kids who couldn't understand them - which was most kids. In all honesty, Winn was probably their best friend.
“I'm sorry you feel that way, but you're not home schooling. I was twice as educated as you when I got here, and I still had to go to eighth grade. We let you skip a grade. That's all I got to move up, so I could be in the same grade as your mom, so that's all you get. You have each other. You're not alone. You're going to get through it just fine. I know you will.”
Jessie groaned. “We still have a year-and-a-half until we can even go to high school. That feels like forever!”
“Yeah!” Jamie agreed.
Kara’s heart stopped. Yes, she knew in an abstract way that her kids would be going to high school some day, but in only a year and a half? How the hell did that happen? Now she was regretting letting them skip any grade. Her kids weren't ready for high school emotionally. They were still obsessed with Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. In fact that’s the only reason Jamie had the one friend she had - because she and Shayla shared a mutual love for worlds of Magic and The Force. Jessie didn’t have any friends, really. The girls tried to be sweet and kind, and the teachers all confirmed that, but the other kids were intimidated by them, or something. They knew too much. They were too smart, and too good at everything. They never shut up about Star Wars. People called them nerds, snobs, know-it-alls, and all kinds of mean things. What would people call them in high school? Plus, they hadn't shown any inkling of interest in romance or the sexually obsessed world of the high school student's mind. Maybe she would talk to Alex about homeschooling them after all.
“Mama?” Jamie said worriedly. “Are you ok?”
“Of course I'm OK,” she answered with a smile. “Why do you ask?”
“You looked a little scared there for a minute.”
“I-” She stopped herself before saying what she was thinking. “I thought I saw a spider,” she told them.
The look she received from the twins was priceless disbelief. They both peeked at the people surrounding them and dropped the subject. They must have thought it was something to do with Supergirl. “Do you need to go?” Jessie whispered.
“We still have to get dip,” Kara whispered back with a wink.
The girls giggled and relaxed. It only took them a few more minutes of shopping before they were ready to go. Then they just had to stand in the endless holiday shopping lines.
Forty-five minutes later, they were home putting chips and dips in bowls, preparing for their guests. They were already finished setting up the decorations, and they looked absolutely beautiful. Kara was feeling a little giddy. She loved Christmas. It was her second favorite holiday, and would have been first, if her kids hadn’t been born on Valentine’s Day. She hummed along with the music playing in the background and made sure everything was ready. People were going to start showing up any minute.
James and Lucy arrived first, arms loaded with pizzas. “Hey!” they chimed in unison. “Merry Christmas!” They gave hugs, grabbed some drinks and sat on the couch, where the twins proceeded to ask Lucy a million questions about their wedding plans, while James prepped his camera for the night.
Winn and Mon-El came next, with bags full of Chinese food. Immediately, the twins forgot about Lucy and the wedding and practically pounced on the guys. Mon-El looked a little awkward, but he managed.
Kara smiled proudly at him. He was really coming along nicely in his training and manners. Hopefully he didn't read too much into her look of affection.
Lena knocked next. She was accompanied by a handsome young Latino in a chauffeur’s suit and hat, and both of them were carrying very large, elaborate, homemade desserts, one cheesecake, and one sheet of brownies.
“Whoa!” Kara and the twins gasped and started salivating, though both for different reasons. The twins, of course, wanted the desserts. But Kara only had eyes for Lena. She was wearing an incredible form-fitting red blouse, with a flowing, deep green skirt that stopped at her knees. It really was a simple outfit, and not at all flashy, but the way it seemed to be (and probably was) tailor made to fit the woman made Kara’s heart stop. Gorgeous wasn't a strong enough word. She peeked out of the corner of her eyes to see if anyone noticed her noticing Lena, but all eyes were on the stunning brunette. Clearly, she wasn’t the only one taken aback. Even Alex seemed to be drooling a little, and Kara could hear Maggie's quiet, "Holy shit."
“This is my driver Andy. He won’t be staying. I just needed his help carrying these,” Lena told them nonchalantly. “Where do you want them?”
Kara shook herself out of her stupor. “Oh! Um, here, I’ll take them.” She took the brownies from the chauffeur and put them on the table. “Thanks, Andy.”
“No problem, miss,” he tipped his hat cordially and turned to leave. “I’ll be ready when you are, Miss Luthor.”
“Thanks, Andy,” Lena smiled affectionately at him as he left.
“You got a driver for the night?” Alex asked excitedly. “Does that mean you’re finally gonna drink with us?”
Lena chuckled. “Yep.”
“Yes!” Alex and Maggie high fived. “Let’s get started!” Alex poured Lena a glass of wine - the kind Maggie said she prefered, and prayed to Rao that she liked it.
The brunette took a sip of the wine and hummed. “You remembered,” she said to Maggie, seemingly quite surprised.
“I told you I would,” the Latina clinked their glasses together, and they drank, grinning at each other.
Kara felt a little giddy. Lena wasn’t the only one dressed up tonight. The twins were wearing the little elf costumes that Winn made them, and everyone else looked amazing, even Mon-El. Winn must have taken him shopping. Or Eve. Either way, he looked snappy. That was great because James would be taking pictures all night, although, right now he was letting the twins take pictures of him and Lucy in the bay window by the kitchen table. It was a favorite place for everyone to take photos.
“Can I try?” Mon-El asked.
“And let you break it? No way, dude.”
Lena snickered. “James trusts eleven-year-old girls with his camera, but he doesn’t trust Mike?”
Kara scrambled for an explanation. “Hehe, uh, yeah, he’s… pretty clumsy!”
The brunette didn’t really look like she believed her, but she kept quiet on the matter.
Just then, J’onn, M’gann, and Douglas came in, loaded down with Mexican food.
Lena gasped and hid behind Kara. “Th- that’s the man that attacked my building right after Thanksgiving!”
“No!” everyone rushed to soothe Lena’s fright. “No, it’s OK, that’s not him.”
Shoot! It didn’t even occur to Kara that Lena would be afraid of the Martian. What should she say? “J’onn, explain!” she demanded worriedly. There was no way she could come up with a believable lie to cover for the black ops group she worked with.
The director of the DEO gave Winn the bags he was holding and put his hands on his hips, like always. “Miss Luthor, I apologize for frightening you. The man that you met at Thanksgiving was a cybernetic copy of me, made by Cadmus. You might recall seeing him with a blue cybernetic eye?”
Lena stepped out from behind the Kryptonian. “Yes. Yes, I do remember that. It shot lasers, like Supergirl.”
Kara’s heart leapt. It always did when someone referred to her powers as hers, and not her cousin’s. “Yeah,” she said to Lena. “We can all vouch for the truth of that.”
“Why would Cadmus make a copy of you?”
J’onn nodded. “Because I’m the director of the FBI here in National City.” Oh. That was a simple enough answer. Lena already believed Alex worked for the FBI.
The woman calmed. “I see. Well. My greatest apologies.”
“No apologies necessary,” J’onn assured her.
“Shall we start over?” she insisted. She put her hand out in front of her and greeted J’onn with a smile, “Hello, I’m Lena Luthor, and you are?” Kara was quite proud to be her friend just then.
“J’onn J’onzz,” he shook her hand delicately, but warmly. “And these are my friends, Megan and Douglas.”
Lena and M’gann shook hands and exchanged pleasantries. “Douglas, it’s good to see you again.”
“A pleasure, Lena,” the bodyguard answered in his easy-going way, patting her affectionately on the shoulder.
“Come on, Lena,” Maggie said, taking the CEO by the hand. “Let’s go stake our claim on the couch.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” Lena agreed, and she and Alex followed Maggie into the living room, drinks in hand and grins on their faces.
Kara was really glad J’onn and M’gann couldn’t read Kryptonian minds because she was thinking some very naughty things just then. Although, when she looked at them, she questioned that fact because they were both looking at her like they just knew anyhow. She gulped and started offering them food and drinks. Anything to change the subject that hadn’t even been brought up.
XXXXXXXXXXXX
Alex and Maggie sat on each side of Lena in the living room. As of yet, no one else had followed them in. “Oh!” Alex jumped back up. “I almost forgot...” She went to grab the bottle of tequila and some shot glasses out of the kitchen, and hurried back. She planned on testing the CEO’s limits tonight, since she wasn’t driving. She poured them all shots.
“Are you trying to get me drunk so you can take advantage of me?” Lena joked.
“Maybe, if you’re a good girl,” Maggie purred mischievously, downing her liquor.
Lena took her shot next. “And what happens, if I’m a bad girl?” she challenged seductively.
“Then we get the cuffs out,” Alex answered with a smirk. She shot her tequila and poured them another round, downing those as well.
Lucy appeared in the doorway. “You’re doing shots without me? Rude!”
“Come on, then,” Alex told her.
The petite brunette disappeared for a second and reappeared with another shot glass, which Alex happily poured tequila into. “How many have you guys done already?” she asked, easily shooting the liquor with the group.
Alex held two fingers up.
Lucy pointed at her shot glass for another. Alex poured it, and Lucy downed it. “OK!” she said happily. “Now we’re warm and fuzzy, right kids?”
The redhead flipped her friend off. She hated it when the woman called her a kid. Just because the major was a few years older, didn’t mean Alex was a kid. She was thirty years old, for crying out loud!
“What are we talking about?” Lucy wanted to know.
“We hadn’t gotten around to talking about anything,” Alex lied casually.
“Yeah, right,” the other agent clearly didn’t believe her for a second.
“What do you want us to be talking about?” Maggie smirked.
“I don’t know. Something good.” The younger Lane shrugged.
“Define ‘good,’” Lena used air quotes.
Alex snickered.
“Oh! Little Luthor is playful! I like it!” Lucy took it upon herself to pour them another round of shots. “We’re gonna see what you’re made of.” She held her glass up to Lena, and they all clinked and took their shots.
The CEO smirked. “I can hold my own.”
“Tell us something that people don’t know,” the military woman demanded.
Lena pursed her lips in thought for a moment. “I hate asparagus.”
n
“Come on!” Lucy chided her. “Something real. Please?”
Lena bit her lip. “I’m not good at talking about myself. Usually people do it for me.”
“We’re not gossipers, Lena,” Alex put a comforting hand on the CEO’s leg. “We won’t talk about you behind your back, and we definitely won’t go around talking bad about you. We’re Team Lena all the way. We just really want the chance to get to know you better, OK?”
Lena’s eyes watered lightly, and she turned to give Alex a hug. “Thanks. You don’t know what that means to me.”
“Of course. So,” Alex continued, keeping her arm around Lena. “Tell us, from the source, who you are.”
The CEO swallowed hard. “It’s hard to tell sometimes,” she began. “At times, I feel like the same lost little girl who came unwittingly into the Luthor household all those years ago, and other times I feel like I’m a million miles away from there, wondering how I got here.”
“I think we can all sympathize with that to some degree or another,” Alex admitted. “We all feel a little lost sometimes. That’s what friends are for - to be there for us until we find our way again. And sometimes we can even help each other find the way we lost.”
“Yeah,” Maggie agreed, lacing her fingers through Lena’s. “That was a great start. Now tell us something else.”
“I've never had friends like you all before. Luthors don't really have friends. More like minions.”
They all laughed. “Is anyone else picturing the Luthor household overrun by little yellow caricatures?” Alex found this thought quite hilarious.
Lena, honest to God, giggled. “That certainly would have made life interesting growing up.”
“Kara mentioned you went boarding school?” Alex asked. “What was that like?”
Lena rolled her eyes and sighed. “Those were some crazy times. If there was trouble to be found, we would find it.”
“Ooh! Now we're getting somewhere!” Lucy exclaimed, rubbing her hands together in excitement. “What kind of trouble did Lena Luthor get into?”
The CEO looked behind her to make sure no one else was listening. “Well, we drank a lot and did a lot of drugs, snuck out to go clubbing all the time, paid teachers to look the other way when we didn’t feel like doing assignments… Once, I broke a guys nose for grabbing my ass. There’s plenty more, but those are the main ones. Satisfied?”
“Yes!” Lucy and Maggie exclaimed at the same time. “So, Little Lena’s not as perfect as she seems. That’s a relief.” Lucy poured them another shot. “I went to military school. There was some of that there too, although at the time, I was too terrified of my father to get into too much trouble. That came later, after I graduated college.” They all took their shots.
“Alex has always been a goody-two-shoes,” Maggie lamented.
Lucy scoffed. “Yeah, except for the part where she got pregnant at seventeen and started drinking as soon as she started college.”
Alex would have smacked Lucy in the arm, if she could reach her. “It wasn’t that soon. I was still nursing the twins when I started college.”
“Please. As soon as your kids started on the bottle, so did you.”
Lena and Maggie snickered loudly.
“You guys can shut the fuck up now,” Alex told them, though she wasn’t really mad, and they knew it.
“Oh, drinking!” Mon-El came out of the kitchen and wandered into the living room. “Can I join you?”
The girls all looked at each other uncertainly, but when James came in and said basically the same thing as Mon-El, they relented.
“Only if you answer one question each, first,” Lena demanded.
The both agreed easily.
She turned to James first. “James, I know you’re friends with Superman. Does that mean you automatically hate me?”
The photographer sighed. “I didn’t know you were going to ask such a heavy question. But no, Lena, I don’t hate you. I was a little scared of you, at first, but now I know better. We’re good.”
“Good,” the CEO smiled gratefully at him, then turned to Mon-El, who smiled dashingly at her. “Mike,” she grinned salaciously. “Are you an alien?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.
Alex’s heart stopped.
Mon-El just stood there stammering. “Uh, no, of- of course not! Why would you say that?”
“Well, for one, did you know there’s no such thing as Daxam, Michigan?”
“Uh…”
“And at Thanksgiving, you said Kara found you in a pod.”
“Well…”
“And at the dance recital, the kids called you Mon-El. Isn’t Superman’s name Kal-El? Are you two related? Are you a Kryptonian? Do you have superpowers too?” Apparently Lena turned into a curious five-year-old when she was drinking.
Mon-El started slowly backing away, but he wasn’t looking where he was going, so he bumped into the wall instead of going through the doorway.
“You might as well just tell her,” Alex sighed. “She knows I work with Supergirl. I’m bound to know other aliens, right?”
Mon-El grimaced. He was captured by Lena’s mother, after all. He had good reason to be nervous.
“It’s OK, Mon-El,” Maggie assured him. “You can trust her. She’s not like her mother. She turned her mother in, remember?”
The Daxamite nodded his head. “Right. Sorry. I just…”
“It’s quite alright,” Lena told him. “I understand.”
He sighed awkwardly. “I’m not Kryptonian, so I’m definitely not related to Superman. But I am an alien, though. Kinda strong. Kinda fast. Nothing compared to Supergirl, though. So… Can we drink now?”
“I’d say you earned it,” Lena answered.
“But you gotta get your own shot glasses,” Lucy informed them.
The two men retrieved more shot glasses and sat down in the living room, Mon-El in the chair, and James on the love seat with Lucy.
“You guys are the cuddliest people I’ve ever met,” James commented on the fact that Alex still had her arm around Lena, and Maggie was still holding Lena’s hand. “If they get to be too much for you, you just let me know,” he told the CEO “I’ll come rescue you, if you need it.”
Clearly he didn’t understand that they were conditioning her for being in their polyamorous relationship. Alex continued to hold on to her. Lena was a good cuddler - almost as snuggly as her kids.
Speaking of which, “Your kids are in there hanging all over Winn, as usual too,” James let her know.
“Are they spazzing out?” she worried.
“A little,” he admitted. “Nothing out of the ordinary, though.”
The redhead rolled her eyes. Winn would let her girls get away with murder. If neither Douglas nor Kara were saying anything, though, it was probably fine. She poured the guys shots. The gals had had more than enough for now. They should probably eat something.
As if reading her mind, Kara appeared through the doorway a minute later with a couple of plates full of various pizza slices. “I thought maybe you guys should eat some food before you drink anymore.”
“I love you,” Alex told her, overly affectionate from the tequila.
“Love you too, babe,” Kara sat down beside her and kissed her chastely. It was always ‘babe’ when the redhead was drinking. Ordinarily, it was baby or baby girl, but when she drank - ‘babe.’ Alex never could figure out why. She’d asked the Kryptonian if it bothered her when she drank, and Kara always said no, otherwise, she’d think it was that. Unless her wife was lying. But why would she?
The women all dug into the pizza, thanking Kara profusely.
Douglas, J’onn, and M’gann all came in the living room and sat on the extra folding chairs that were placed randomly around the room.
“OK! Who’s ready for some Trivial Pursuit?” Kara asked excitedly.
“How are we going to pick teams?” Alex wondered aloud, then counted the people in the room. “We could do two teams of five.”
“That’s too many people on a team,” Lucy complained.
“Yeah, and that’s not exactly an accurate count, either, my dear,” Kara informed her. “Winn, Jessie, and Jamie are still in the kitchen.”
“Oh, right.” Alex blamed it on the alcohol.
“How about three teams of three, and the short straw gets Mon-El?” Maggie suggested with a smirk.
“Hardy har har,” Mon-El rolled his eyes. He never took Maggie’s ribbing seriously. In fact, he sometimes seemed to like it. He was such a weirdo.
“How about we write down everyone’s name on a piece of paper, and fold it up, and put it in a bowl? Then we’ll draw names to see who goes on what teams,” M’gann offered.
“I like that idea!” Kara declared, running to get a pen and paper. She jotted down everyone’s names, like M’gann suggested, folded them up, put them in a bowl, and started drawing names. “Kids, get in here!” she called over her shoulder.
The twins ran in immediately.
“Where’s Winn?”
“In the kitchen.”
“I asked you all to come here.”
“You said, ‘Kids, get in here.’”
“Well, I meant him, too.”
The girls ran back to the kitchen to grab their adopted uncle. Once they returned, Kara started reading off names and assigning them to teams.
The teams were:
Team 1: Maggie, Alex, Douglas
Team 2: Kara, Jessie, James
Team 3: J’onn, Jamie, Winn
Team 4: Lena, Mon-El, Lucy, M’gann
They rearranged themselves according to teams. Some team members were happier than others, but no one complained. Kara grabbed the game board and started divvying out pieces. The game was close. Not many questions were missed, but eventually Team 3 prevailed, much to the displeasure of the others.
“Good job, baby!” Alex high-fived her daughter. The guys had let Jamie be their team leader and answer quite a few of the questions, so people didn’t complain about the psychic Martian cheating. The girl got most of her questions right, though she did miss a few, and Winn answered a few that were way above her pay grade. She was only eleven, after all.
Alex loved that her kids were so smart. She was one proud mom. They weren’t quite as advanced as Kara was at their age, but they were still above and beyond the expected. Also like Kara, they seemed to be more interested in using their intellect and talents for the arts. They loved drawing and dancing, and James occasionally gave them photography lessons, which they seemed to be fairly fond of. They couldn’t care less about math and science, much to Alex’s chagrin. They were good at it, to be sure, but they never showed any interest in pursuing it further than what they learned at school. In fact, much to her further dismay, Jessie has consistently been showing interest in Maggie’s job, claiming that she wanted to be just like the detective when she grew up. Alex didn’t want her babies in the field. She wanted them safe and sound at home, playing Just Dance and watching Liv & Maddie. Or maybe some less annoying show, but still.
“Can we sing Christmas carols now?” Kara asked excitedly.
Alex rolled her eyes, but kept the smile on her face. “Sure, Angel. Winn?”
Winn got up and passed out a few pamphlets with Christmas song lyrics on them, then sat down at the little keyboard he kept at their place for just such an occasion. If there was one thing her girls loved, including Kara, it was a sing-along. When the tech had learned that fact, the twins were still little, so he’d dusted off his ill-used piano lessons and started playing songs for them when he visited. Six years later, they’d never really stopped doing that. It drove Alex a little batty, but they had so much fun when they did it, she tried to be a good sport about it.
“Who wants another shot?” she asked the group.
“I resent that!” Winn complained.
“Not you!” she retorted. “S-H! Not S-C-H!”
Everyone who wanted another shot put their glass out, and she poured them all.
“I want one!” Jessie told her.
Alex knowingly swiped her shot glass under her daughter's nose for a second. “Here you go.”
The twin gagged and coughed exaggeratedly. “Yuck! I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean it!”
“Alex!” Kara chastised her.
“What? I wasn’t really giving it to her!” she defended.
The Kryptonian gave her a Look, to which Alex just rolled her eyes. The agent knew how her daughter would react. She knew the kids had no real interest in drinking. If they did, she'd never tease them like that. Kara was just being paranoid. She took her shot and leaned back into Maggie, who shared her sense of humor on the matter.
“OK, let's start with ‘Deck the Halls,’" Winn directed. He lead them through a couple verses of the song. The twins, Kara, and Winn all sang loudly and enthusiastically. Most everyone else sang at a more modest level, and the people who weren't as good at singing sang more quietly. Mon-El just sat there, listening cluelessly.
“I wanna sing Frosty the Snowman!” Jamie announced.
“OK!” Winn immediately started off, “Frosty the Snowman was a jolly, happy soul…”
Alex chuckled to herself. Her kids were fascinated by snow, since they'd hardly ever seen it in real life. She wondered if they'd like it as much if they lived somewhere that it actually snowed a lot.
They sang five or six more songs, including ‘Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer,’ ‘Jingle Bells,’ and ‘Silent Night,’ until Alex just couldn't take it anymore. “OK!” She clapped her hands exaggeratedly. “That was great, everybody! Good job!”
“I wanna sing more!” Jamie begged.
“That's enough,” Alex told her.
“I agree,” Maggie said, stretching.
Lena leaned her shoulder against Alex’s, shaking her shot glass at eye level. “Uno mas?”
Not for the first time, Alex genuinely wanted to kiss Lena Luthor. There had been a couple other times, but this was the strongest. If this woman, that she already really liked, could hold her own drinking this much tequila, she had the agent’s respect, and yes, adoration. This was how she bonded with Maggie and Lucy, after all. Why not Lena too? She poured them all one last shot. “To family!” she toasted.
“To family!” everyone toasted back, even the ones without shots. After that, they all started having separate conversations again.
Alex put her glass down, leaned back, and put her arms around Lena and Maggie on either side of her. She was feeling especially cuddly right now, after all that tequila. Both women leaned into her, and she leaned her head against Maggie’s, nuzzing her soft brown hair. “I love you,” she said, kissing her girlfriend’s temple.
“I love you too,” Maggie nuzzled back.
Alex turned to Lena. Any idiot could see the look of longing in the CEO’s eyes. Her heart couldn’t take it. “We love you too, Lena,” she said softly, but clearly.
Lena bit her lip. “You’re just saying that because we’ve had about a hundred shots of tequila.”
The agent shook her head. “Nu-uh.”
The brunette didn’t say anything. She just clenched her jaw shut and laid her head on Alex’s shoulder.
Apparently, Kara couldn’t stand to be left out anymore because she joined them on the couch by squeezing in on the other side of Lena and wrapped her arms around all of them as best she could. That made the twins decide they needed to join in too, and they crawled into the pile, sprawling out across everyone’s laps.
James chuckled and started taking pictures of them. “You guys crack me up.”
J’onn and M’gann shared a knowing look, as they often did as two psychic beings who knew things before the rest of the world did. Alex was indescribably thankful that they were both polite and discreet about what they knew. They must know such horrible, dark, and perverted things from being unable to block out all the noise, but their species seemed to be built for it. They just seemed to understand everyone and everything all the time. They were never surprised, so they could always behave decorously and thoughtfully.
If anyone ever had Alex’s utmost respect and admiration, it was those two. Warriors from across the ages, they carried themselves with poise and strength. Like Kara, they were unaffected by alcohol, so she couldn’t judge them by that measure, but also like Kara, it didn’t matter because of how amazing they were, just by being themselves. She playfully stuck her tongue out at them, making them laugh.
Winn was making Mon-El pick up all the lyric pages from everyone for storage. Lucy and James were drunkenly picking on each other and laughing loudly, and Douglas was lamenting to the girls how he didn’t get to sing any French Christmas carols with them. It was understandable. They hadn’t really needed him much this month. A bank robbery here, a car accident there, and Kara wasn’t usually gone for more than an hour at a time, if that. And with no real alien threats around the city, Alex was usually out of work in time to pick up the kids from school herself and stay with them for the night. The most they’d seen him this month was tonight and the night of the kids’ dance recital.
“Hey, can we play that game with the funny little guys in the cars and the slippery bananas?” Mon-El asked hopefully. “I love that game.”
What the hell was he- “You mean Mario Kart?” Alex wondered.
“Yeah, that!” the Daxamite said happily. “Please?”
Alex chuckled. “Sure.” He had broken several Wii remotes, but it was good for his super-strength control training, so she could always convince J’onn to reimburse her through the DEO. “I guess you’re looking to get whooped.”
“You wish,” he retorted. He was fairly good, when he was in control. And sober. He had had several shots of tequila too, and Daxamites were not immune to the effects of alcohol, much to his delight. He still had to drink more than double what Winn drank to get drunk, but really, that might have said more about Winn than it did Mon-El.
Everyone around Alex groaned in protest when she got up to get the Wii remotes. They had all been warm and snuggly there after all. “I’ll be back in, like, two seconds,” she told them “Geez!” She turned to the rest of the group. “Who else wants to play?”
“Me!” Jessie raised her hand from the couch.
“Of course you do,” She tossed Jessie one of the controllers.
“Winn?” She wanted him to demolish Mon-El, and honestly, she wasn’t all that good herself. Jessie would beat them all, so that was a wash. It was between the three adults that the competition really mattered.
“You got me,” the tech took the last game remote, and they started playing.
Alex cheered her daughter on, but trash talked the guys the whole game, whether she was winning or not. Mon-El gave right back as good as he got, but he got some of his English idioms mixed up, and it lessened the effects a bit when everyone was laughing. Winn did not engage her. He knew better. She was both drunk and in full competitive mode. Jessie, of course, won by a mile, but Alex and Winn were neck-and-neck right to the very end, with Mon-El not far behind. Eventually, Alex overtook them all and won second place, and because she did it with a very strategically placed turtle shell, Winn came in last place with a loud groan.
“Bam! What?” she whooped, quoting 'Liv & Maddie' knowing it would make her daughters laugh.
“No!” Winn complained. “Best two outta three!”
“Fine, you’re on,” she told him with a smirk. “Winner doesn’t have to help clean up.”
“Yes!” Jessie pumped her fist in victory.
“Not you. You still get to help clean up, and go to bed when it’s bedtime.”
Jessie looked at her phone in a panic, then sighed with relief when she saw that it was only a little past eight-thirty. They didn’t have to go to bed until nine-thirty on the weekends, and they always managed to squeeze out an extra half-hour when there was a party going on.
“Ready, set, go!” Alex started the game before anyone else was ready, but even with her cheating, Jessie still beat her, with Winn in close second. In fact, everyone teamed up against Alex, and she came in last this round. “Bullies!” she complained.
“Serves you right,” Kara told her unsympathetically.
Lena, Maggie and Lucy all snickered loudly.
“OK, one more round,” Winn insisted. Neither of them expected Mon-El to be half a second behind Jessie at the very end. Everyone’s jaws dropped when his Bowser crossed the finish line. “Whoa.”
“Yes!” Mon-El threw his hands in the air victoriously. “Oh, yeah! Take that, Alex!”
The redhead grumbled. “We still have to go one more round to see who wins.”
The Daxamite smirked. “Let’s do it!”
“Rainbow Road. You're going down.”
“Not a chance!”
They hunkered down to play one last round, and everyone watched in anticipation to see who would win. Jessie was ahead for most of the game, but in a huge upset, Mon-El swooped in behind her and hit her with a shell, taking first place and winning the round outright. Everyone in the room cried out in shock. Jessie looked like she didn't know what hit her. No one had ever beaten her at any video game before, not even Winn. (She wasn't allowed to play the very adult games that he could beat her at.) Alex just stared at the TV in shock.
“Yes!” Mon-El hollered. “Oooh, Rao, how awesome was that?” He high-fived Kara, who was the only one who could take his strength in his excitement. Well, the Martians could, but he knew better than to try to high-five them. “Woo!” He scooped Jessie up and twirled her around. “You’re not mad at me, are you?” he checked.
The girl bit her lip, then growled and climbed over his back, putting him in a headlock, though he was pretty much unaffected by this, and she was still dangling from his shoulders while Mon-El just stood there, looking a little bewildered.
Alex was both amused and confused. Where had her daughter learned to do that? She looked accusingly at Douglas.
“What?” he asked innocently.
“Are you teaching my kids how to fight?”
“He rolled his eyes. Just a few wrestling defense moves. No punching or kicking. Jessie, get down.”
The girl dropped to the floor and stuck her tongue out at the Daxamite.
Alex was going to complain, but Maggie spoke first, “That's a good idea, especially with the way they like to run off.”
That was a good point. As much as Alex hated the idea, her girlfriend was right. The kids were going to get themselves into trouble one of these days, and they should know how to defend themselves. She sighed inwardly. This was one of those horrible times when she had to let her child grow up and learn something she didn't want her to learn. Alex's overprotectiveness reared against it, and she wanted to cry a little bit.
Sensing her distress, Lena took her hand and squeezed it reassuringly.
The redhead gave the brunette a look of gratitude and squeezed back, leaning her head against the CEO’s shoulder. Lena was almost as comforting as Kara, who, in the midst of all this, seemed to be having the same struggle as Alex. They both snuggled a little closer to Lena, and Alex tuned out the conversations around her to marvel at how soothing this woman’s touch was. No wonder Kara was so crazy about her! She smelled good too. Alex would bet that that had something to do with Kara's crush as well.
When she tuned back into the room, Maggie was looking at her with a strange little smile on her face. “What?” she asked defensively.
“Nothing!” Maggie insisted.
“Liar.”
“Whatever. Prove it.”
The two women started playfully smacking and poking at one another, resulting in a tickle fight on the floor. Once the twins caught wind of this, they pounced, tickling both women and causing a ruckus in the living room.
“Oh, Lord,” J’onn rolled his eyes, while the rest of the group just laughed, and James took pictures.
When all four girls were wildly out of breath, they finally stopped and laid in a big cuddled heap, still giggling at random intervals.
“You guys crack me up,” M’gann chuckled.
“They’re definitely in rare form, today, aren’t they,” J’onn commented.
“Rare form?” Kara scoffed. “The days are more rare when they don’t do something like this.”
“I am so glad I don’t live here,” Winn commented.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone