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Bobby thinks it’s crazy that people are shilling out a hundred bucks for the new Mario Kart game when it doesn’t even have the best kart in the franchise, the one with the horsies.
So sue her, she likes to choose the horse carriage kart every single time for no reason other than it’s very cute, stats be damned. To balance it out she optimizes with the wheels and glider, of course, because no way she’s actually throwing the whole game for the horses, not when playing against Lyle Anderson Jr., who is deeply deeply obsessed with it. She subtly nods her head to the selection music as she creates, as Junior returns from the kitchen with a bowl of pretzels.
He kind of just stands there, in a prolonged pause that borders on hesitancy, like a kid about to ask their parents for concert tickets. While he’s busy lingering, Bobby eyes the pretzel bowl and wonders whether she’d have time to make a goat while he’s busy with his own character selection, though after a certain point it does become a little intriguing.
She’s about to ask him what he’s waiting for when he says:
“Concept.”
“Yeah?”
He lets out a breath. “You’re not cis.”
“That’s more than a concept, Lyle, it’s reality.”
“Shut up, I haven’t gotten to the concept yet.”
“Okay, okay.”
“You’re not cis,” he repeats. “Concept: what if…” His eyes just miss hers, instead aiming for the wall behind her head. “What if I… perhaps… wasn’t cis either?”
Bobby’s on her feet.
“Really?”
And Junior, being Junior, immediately raises an eyebrow on the fake-defensive, as part of his signature tactic of immediately following up his expressions of vulnerability with eye rolls: “Oh, so you’re allowed to be trans, but I’m not? What kind of–”
Now, for the record, at this moment, Bobby intended to fling her arms around him, pulling him into an embrace. She tries to be a good girlfriend, after all, and an even better friend, one high on the adrenaline of the news, ears swimming with excitement and delight and pride and—okay, okay, perhaps her rapture blinded her, just a little.
Because instead:
She trips on the carpet, and her game controller, which she had neglected to remember is still in her hand, slips out of her grasp. Propelled by momentum while bound to her wrist by the strap, it just misses Junior’s eye as the hand slams into the pretzel bowl, which was yet another oversight on Bobby’s part. There’s a clang and a yelp and the bewilderment on Junior’s face as she tackles him, and they fall to the floor with a thud and another clack and clatter. Her face is full of him, and of salty snacks, and of a grin very loosely holding in a bottle of giggles—a bottle that unleashes into full shrieks of laughter as Junior pops his own cork and howls.
The Mario Kart 8 selection screen music continues to wait for them, but it’s millenia away compared to Junior’s chest bouncing underneath Bobby’s weight as her face is buried in his neck and the side of her forehead is imprinted by a piece of his halo of pretzels, and God, never since she’s met him has she ever felt him exude so much joy.