you can’t play that -
a/n: This is just a little manifest post lol cos I’ve just been watching it and got re obsessed and there’s literally nothing anywhere :) if anyone knows there there is still fan stuff and people in the fandom please let me know <3
Michaela Stone x fem!Reader
word count - 0.9k
warnings - none
reader and manifest family are playing card games one evening and mick seems to really enjoy pissing off reader
It had started off as Mick’s idea.
I mean really that should have been everyone’s first warning sign.
She’d pitched it like it was something simple; harmless.
We deserve a night off, she’d said, like that was a thing any of us actually knew how to have anymore. No Callings. No timelines. No looming, invisible countdowns hanging over our heads like a storm we couldn’t outrun.
Just food, cards, and the extremely ambitious attempt to pretend we were a normal group of people with normal lives who could sit around a table without the universe trying to kill us.
And for the first twenty minutes, it had almost worked.
The Stones’ dining table was completely taken over — cards scattered everywhere in messy, brightly coloured piles, bowls of chips and popcorn placed wherever there’d been enough space to wedge them in, glasses of wine abandoned in favour of aggressive strategising no one had agreed upon beforehand.
Cal was halfway through explaining the rules for what was supposed to be a very straightforward game of Uno, except the rules had started subtly shifting about ten minutes ago and now seemed to exist entirely at his discretion.
“You can’t just invent a reverse-skip-draw-two rule,” Saanvi was saying, in the tone of someone who had absolutely had enough.
“I didn’t invent it,” Cal insisted, which was exactly what someone who had invented it would say. “It’s strategy.”
“That’s not strategy,” she shot back. “That’s cheating.”
Olive leaned back in her chair, watching the entire thing unfold like live theatre.
“I respect it, honestly.”
The vibes were still at a relatively chill level with everyone enjoying the normality, even if the game was teetering on a little bit of over-competitiveness. With most of them a couple drinks down and laughing with Cal’s new rules it seemed like nothing could ruin it when -
“You can’t play that card.”
The words left my mouth before I’d even fully decided to say them.
Everyone’s attention snapped in my direction as I leaned across the table, my hand braced hard against the wood, staring Mick down like this was some kind of high-stakes interrogation instead of a game of brightly coloured cards, aimed at children over the age of six.
Mick didn’t even blink.
“Oh,” she said, entirely too calm and smug for my liking, “I absolutely can.”
“No, you can’t! You’ve already put down a blue.”
“That was two turns ago.”
“But it still counts!” I burst, standing up and gesturing wildly with my hands.
“It literally doesn’t.”
“It does if you’re not trying to manipulate the rules!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ben look between us slowly, like he was trying to work out at what exact point things had escalated from mildly competitive to whatever this was.
“…it’s Uno,” he said carefully.
“I don’t think it’s about the game,” Olive murmured.
“It’s never about the game,” Saanvi agreed under her breath.
Mick leaned back in her chair, twirling the card between her fingers with an infuriating sort of ease, like she had all the time in the world. Like she wasn’t doing this on purpose.
“Sounds like someone’s just mad she’s losing.”
I let out a short laugh that came out sharper than I meant it to, sitting back down determined not to let her get too much to me.
“I am not losing.”
“You have four cards left.”
“And?”
“And I have two.”
“That’s because you keep bending the rules in your favour!”
Her eyebrows lifted, just slightly.
“Bending?” she repeated. “Or understanding them better than you?”
Cal made a soft ooh sound beside me.
Ben reached over and quietly moved the popcorn bowl out of what he clearly sensed was now a splash zone.
I narrowed my eyes.
“You are so—”
“So what?”
“So annoying.”
Mick grinned.
“You like it.”
The silence that followed lasted maybe half a second.
Which was half a second too long.
Zeke coughed into his hand. Saanvi suddenly found the ceiling fascinating. Olive’s gaze flicked between us like she was watching a tennis match and didn’t want to miss the winning shot.
And the worst part, the absolute worst part, was that I could feel the smile already trying to betray me before I’d even processed what she’d said.
I sat back slowly, forcing something neutral into my expression.
“That is not the point.”
“It’s a little bit the point.”
“No, it’s not.”
“You’re smiling.”
“I’m smiling because you’re wrong.”
“You’re smiling because you think I’m funny.”
“I do not think you’re funny.”
“You laughed at my joke earlier.”
“That was a pity laugh.”
“It was not a pity laugh!”
Ben leaned towards Saanvi, voice low.
“Is this still about the card?”
She didn’t look away from us.
“No.”
Mick tilted her head slightly, studying me in a way that made something in my chest tighten in a way I absolutely did not appreciate. Her gaze sliding just briefly down and back up, almost making me wish there was no one else in the room.
“If it was a pity laugh,” she said, softer now, “why are you still smiling?”
I opened my mouth already knowing there was nothing I could say to prove myself otherwise.
So I closed it almost immediately.
Because, annoyingly, she was right.
And when her grin softened, just slightly, like she’d realised she was right too, that was somehow worse.
sorry guys I know this is super random but hope you liked it and let me know if i should do more like this :)) I might do a part 2/aftermath potentially?
