Chapter Text
They were sharing a cigarette and dozing when they heard the front door slam. She felt Slick’s eye twitch open against her neck. “Fuck.”
She blew a smoke ring. “You locked the door.”
“Yeah but the little shits are still gonna know.” He nuzzled closer to her neck. “Karkat wouldn’t fucking talk to me for a week last time.”
She glanced to him out of the corner of her eye. “So you’re going to sleep? How is that helping?”
“Denial.”
“Hm.” There was a pair of footsteps on the stairs. “They have to know I’m here – my car’s out front.”
“Maybe they think we fucking killed each other.”
“Optimist.” She propped herself up on her elbows and nudged him up. “They’re upstairs.”
“I heard.”
She slid off the couch and grabbed the nearest blanket, as well as her clothes. “Come on, then.”
“Huh?” She slid the lock back, carefully and quietly, and pulled the door open. “What are you doing?” he hissed.
“Showering,” she whispered, gesturing to the empty hallway.
“Oh.” He seized his clothes, blindly, and stumbled off the couch after her, the two of them sneaking the five feet to his room. “Bad romcom,” he snickered, after the door had shut.
“Shut up, Paul.”
“After you, Jennifer.”
They ran out of hot water halfway through, and Snowman would have loved to say that neither of them minded. But they were too old for sex in the face of frigid water, and so they frantically finished, Snowman fussing at him for his choice of shampoo through chattering teeth.
“Well if I’d had some fucking notice,” was all he’d managed, before he jumped out, seizing the nearest towel.
“As if,” she stepped delicately from the shower and grabbed another towel, “you would have gone shopping.” He seemed to think about it for a minute and then shrugged, and shouldered the door open.
They could take their time getting dressed this time, not like the last time, in the cramped confines of the front seat of her car. She would have dared to say that they both managed to look a great deal more presentable, too, and so she wasn’t worried when she finally stepped out of his room and started down the hall.
Terezi and Karkat were at the kitchen table. Waiting.
“I thought so,” Terezi said solemnly, hands folded together on the nicked-up wood surface.
“Ew,” was all Karkat managed, hunched over a bowl of macaroni and cheese. Snowman sighed.
“Well perhaps if you’d been where you were supposed to be,” she said severely. Slick appeared behind her and groaned.
“Again?”
“Ew.” Karkat asserted more loudly this time, pointing at Slick with his fork.
“Don’t act like this is our fault,” Terezi said haughtily, sitting up and crossing her arms. “Besides, you knew we were at the park, Mom.”
Snowman just lit another cigarette. “Terezi, Slick and I are adults.”
“EW.”
“Shut the fuck up, Karkat.”
“We can do what we want,” Snowman went on, choosing to ignore Karkat and Slick as they devolved toward a confrontation. Whatever they had to work out, they could damn well do it on their own time. “We’ve had this discussion.” She stepped forward and put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “And now we are going home.”
“But –”
“But nothing, Terezi.” She steered the girl to the front door, smirking back at Slick over her shoulder. He had his metal hand braced against Karkat’s forehead as the troll flailed at him, his other hand in his jacket pocket. “Until next time, I suppose.”
He shrugged. “Later.”
“I hope you don’t mean later today –”
“Terezi.” Her admonishment held until they were in the car and backing off the sidewalk, and then Terezi spoke again, leaning over the front seat.
“Mom, I have a question.”
“Yes?”
“You and Slick aren’t kismesises anymore, are you?”
She looked to her daughter sidelong, eyes widened just slightly in surprise. “Who told you that?”
“No one. Karkat and I figured it out.” Her grin was broad, triumphant. “I knew it,” she sing-songed. “I knew it I knew it I knew it.”
“How?”
Terezi flopped back into the backseat, ticking points off on her fingers. “Well, you hardly every fight with each other anymore, when you do get together you’re sort of friendly, you got each other presents at the Solstice and yeah they were passive-aggressive jabs but still and you have more or less teamed up to keep me and Karkat from turning into degenerate teenage wastes.” She flipped her hair, not unlike her sister in that moment. “I knew it.”
“Have you been talking to Stitch?”
“No but I’m glad you finally did!” She sniffed. “Please, mother, it was mind-bogglingly obvious. Even Karkat noticed.”
“Does your sister know?”
“Does it directly concern her?”
“Good point.” She sighed. “Tell no one, Terezi.”
“Not like I’m gonna have to.”
“Terezi.”
The girl looked at her in the rearview mirror, as shrewd as a thirteen year-old could be. “You know my price.”
Snowman rolled her eyes, sighed theatrically – more for Terezi’s benefit than anyone else’s – and swerved off down a side-street, toward the little back-alley ice cream parlor that did the cherry-flavored custard with the waffle cones. Terezi beamed. “I believe we’ve reached a mutual agreement.”