Lena, Mariana, and Callie were huddled in the back corner of Lena's longtime, go to bookstore, a pile of books spread on the table out in front of them. Mariana tossed 'What to Expect When You're Expecting' onto the floor, a disgusted cringe on her face. "I'm never having children," she groaned.
"So much positivity. I'm overwhelmed here," Callie deadpanned as she picked up another pregnancy book from the collection off the back table they were occupying. Mariana immediately tried to dodge the flying book coming at her from Callie. "Just kidding."
The girls fell into a bout of laughter for a moment, only to receive a pointed look from an employee. They hurriedly sobered and turned back to the books they'd collected. Callie was currently reading about what to expect week-by-week and from what she gathered, the first trimester was basically going to be a bitch. And in the second trimester, her libido was supposed to kick into high gear. Great.
She was trying her best to not hate every moment that a baby was growing inside her. One of the books said it would be more real after she heard the heartbeat for the first time. Maybe once she had tangible proof that there was a real, live person inside of her she would feel differently.
She handed Lena the few chosen books, and watched her go pay for them, feeling another small sense of reality setting in.
This was real.
The foster family weaves around the hoards middle schoolers, following Stef who lead them to the counter. Marshall, the regular guy working the counter, lifts his eyebrow when he sees her approach his register.
"Hey Ripley, it's been awhile." He chuckles and Stef smiles, "It has."
She pulls out her wallet and pays, Marshall hands her the change and they exchange their light jackets for laser tag vests. They fasten the vests over their clothes, and sit in the waiting area amongst three groups of birthday parties. Callie looks over to Stef, a small smirk on her lips. "Why did that guy call you Ripley?"
The whole family minus Jude, who is just as curious as Callie, laughs. "Cause she's a bad ass." Jesus answers, getting nods of agreements from the rest of them. She looks over to Stef, "So you're on my team."
"One time she showed up wearing black war paint under her eyes." Brandon shook his head, a smile tugging at his lips at the memory.
Marshall walks into the room to give them the laser guns. And they divide into teams; Stef, Mariana, Callie vs Lena, Brandon, Jesus and Jude.
They make their way into the dark room, cheesy techno music playing in the background, indicating the start of the game. Callie's eyes adjust to the darkness after a moment and she scans the room for the other team.
She spots Lena and creeps behind her and aims. She smiles when the lights on her vest flashes, signalling she hit.
The sudden vibration of Callie's vest causes her to turn around, three feet across away stands Brandon, the gun pointed right at her chest.
He smiles proudly and blows fake smoke off his fake gun causing Lena and Jesus to laugh.
"Game on, Callie" he jokes, before fleeing into the safety of the arena.
It is so on.
She runs after him, dodging around the various obstacles in the room, aim, shoot, and score. And then he's chasing after Callie and Mariana, who agreed teaming up on the star player of the opposing team would be smart. He sure was Stef's son when it came to being competitive. He feints around the barriers and smirks when he knows he's got the two girls cornered, takes aim, shoots, and scores. "Brandon!" Mariana shouts stomping her foot before raising an eyebrow at Stef who is a couple feet to the right of them. Stef nods and the three girls run after him. Every single one of them in the room acting like six-year-olds.
Brandon walks over to Callie as soon as the lights come on, steals her laser gun, and reads the statistics on its screen. "Eighty three points? There's no way you hit us eighty three times!"
She grabs his gun out of his hand and smirks "Only forty five hits?" She teases.
10 minutes later, the family exits the arena to tally up their teams scores.
"207 points." Stef states proudly, adding up her teams points. Lena grumbles, "143," as they exchange their gear with Marshall for their jackets. Marshall laughs, "Ripley's teams always wins."
"Callie and I could've taken them, mom only for 62 points this time." Mariana said, a proud smirk on her face. The opposing team look over at her shocked, "Hey," Stef put her hands up before pointing to Callie, "Miss thing over here was hitting everyone that I barely had anyone left to shoot."
"Sure, you keep telling yourself that," Lena teased her wife.
Sorry for the long update! I was decided whether or not I was going to continue this story. You guys asked for fluff and I thought there needed to be a break from the heaviness that is this fic. I got the Ripley idea from a book or a show I once saw, I don't remember. But credit to that. As always, please review and leave feedback and ideas. Whatever you guys want, I will try to include!