giveittoyoursister | 29 Chimera Court, Saturday Morning

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29 Chimera Court, Saturday Morning

You'd think that by now, Vi and Steph may have started connecting some dots about the school dance and started preparing accordingly. But judging from the clothing flung haphazardly around the apartment, no, they definitely had not.

Still half asleep and looking forward to spending a long, lazy weekend in bed, Vi pulled the blankets in tighter around her, curling in closer to Steph to make up for the brazen theft.

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"They don't make it like they used to," Steph said deadpan, piling baked goods onto a plate to bring over to the couch. She couldn't help snickering; it was nice to know that other version of Vi also seemed to have an excellent sex life.

"God, Mom, you're such a dork," Amber said in a perfect replica of Steph's tone when she said (mostly) the same thing.

Cerise muttered something under her breath that sounded remarkably like "priceless antique" as she snugged in against Vi's side in a way she'd be too full of teenaged dignity to do in public.

Vi shamelessly made eyes at Steph as she ruffled Amber's hair again. "She sound just like you."

Amber shoved her knuckles into her mouth to smother the snicker when she registered what Cerise had said and mouthed "four beds" with a wide-eyed look of horror.

"Mom," she said, looking at Steph, "she's being all sappy again, make her stop."

Steph raised an eyebrow. "And why would I do that, exactly?"

Amber sighed. "Yeah, yeah, I know."

Cerise looked vaguely impressed by that. Horrified, but impressed.

"No one can stop her," she told Amber. "It just encourages her."

"Yeah, it does," Vi cheerfully agreed.

Look, they didn't have the Kiramman family budget to work with, Cerise. It was mid-range IKEA or, well, bust.

"And we love that about her, don't we?" Steph asked as she came over with the plate of fancy breads and three bottles of milk, figuring they could have one for each of the girls and the third one for her and Vi to share until she could run out to the store and get more. "Make room, partner and children, your breakfast and I have arrived."

Part of Cerise didn't want to let Steph on the couch, but a much bigger part was aware that was how people who didn't think Vi was good enough for Caitlyn treated her, so she shifted to make room for her.

Admittedly, she was shifting in closer to Vi.

"I for one, am starving," Vi said, wriggling her eyebrows at Steph.

See, Steph was actually doing you a favor here, Cerise.

"Oh my god Mom," Amber blurted out, horrified and burying her face into Vi's side as Steph handed the plate to Vi and the bottles of milk to the girls.

"You are also terrible," Steph informed her lovingly, though not without a brief grimace because there went those plans.

Cerise was definitely not sorry about putting paid to those plans. Just because she could see why her mom liked her (and suspected that her mum would too) didn't mean she had to tolerate any shenanigans.

"Who wants what?" Vi asked, making sure some of Steph's favourites were put to one side before offering the plate to the girls.

Amber immediately reached toward the plate, then hesitated and bit her lip.

"You should pick first," she said, managing to keep most of the reluctance out of her voice. "It was your breakfast to start with anyway."

Steph leaned over to kiss Vi's cheek in thanks, ruffled Amber's hair and got a brief token noise of protest for her trouble, and plucked something extremely chocolatey off the plate for herself.

Across the island, Saffron was mentally offering Cerise her paw for a shake of solidarity.

Vi ruffled Amber's hair again. "It's okay, you go first," she said, nudging her.

"You know we won't win with her on this," Cerise murmured with a meaningful glance in Vi's direction. Even though there'd never been a risk of Cerise missing a single meal in her entire life, ever, she was still weird about making sure she ate first.

Steph gave Amber a little nudge of encouragement too, even if it was Vi she was looking at with wide, adoring eyes. "Yeah, you two spent all that energy to get this stuff here faster than scheduled. You should get it back."

"I know," Amber muttered back, glancing at Vi with a fond expression of her own before she picked something alarmingly covered in frosting. "Have to try anyway."

Vi kissed the top of Amber's head as Cerise selected something stuffed full of fruit and custard.

"Besides there's more than enough for all of us," she said as she picked out a ham and cheese pastry for herself

"I almost wonder if our order magically multiplied itself again because it knew we'd have visitors," Steph said, grinning at the sight of Vi getting cuddled from both sides. "So do your parents know where you disappear to for a few days every year by now, or is that still a mystery?"

"Mine know," Amber said immediately. "They met here just like you did."

A few details were different, so she was starting to suspect her parents weren't the future versions of the ones here, but she wasn't going to say so.

Cerise chewed slowly on her pastry rather than answer right away.

"I've tried explaining," she said, eventually. "I don't think my mom ever came here." Which made not bristling at Steph a little easier, given the alternatives.

Amber, on the other hand, made a soft noise and burrowed in between her parents a little more thoroughly; there was a world out there where they'd never met each other, and to her that was really distressing.

"Did she get that weird look on her face that people do when you try to explain this place to them and it just makes no sense?" asked Steph, who was honestly just glad to know that some version of Vi might never have come here but turned out all right in the end anyway.

Vi put her pastry back down so she could comb her fingers through each of the girls' hair.

"A bit, yes," Cerise replied, definitely not volunteering how long exactly it took for things to turn out all right for her mom.

Steph put her own pastry back down, too, but only so she could take a picture of Vi and the girls and try not to think too hard about the possibility of a timeline where she might have come here and never had the chance to meet Vi.

"It is pretty hard to explain," Amber put in. "Well... Max and Chloe and Alex and Ryan roll with it pretty well, I guess, but everybody else? Oof."

Vi was doing a lot of not thinking about things in favour of nuzzling the top of each girl's head in turn.

"They don't think I'm lying," Cerise said while trying to maintain the shreds of her dignity. "They just get hung up on the details."

"It is a lot," Steph said, leaning over to kiss the top of Vi's head when she turned to Amber. "There were a lot of details I got hung up on after I met you two for the first time."

Probably in a similar way to Caitlyn, given they were both nerds; at one point she'd used a battle mat to try and piece together the way timelines must have branched, and only gave up because she ran out of room.

"Other you literally tried to do the red string wall thingie," Amber informed her. "And then Mom made her stop because it was stressing her out and also she went through like three balls of string."

Cerise snorted. "Looks like Mom has a type."

Because, yes, Caitlyn had done something very similar.

"Given how smart mouthed by kids are, guess I do." Because obviously she hadn't had anything to do with that.

Amber snickered and poked Vi in the side. "Mom always says I get it from you. And then you tell her there's no way she's totally innocent and she waggles her eyebrows... and then you both start making out and being gross."

"Yeah, that sounds like us," Steph said, laughing. To Cerise she added, "Looks like your mom likes 'em nerdy. She has excellent taste."

"Mom, ew!" Amber yelped.

"Oh my god I literally didn't mean it like that!"

"Mine are always flirting too," Cerise informed Amber in a highly aggrieved tone, because obviously they did it only to torment her.

"I do have excellent taste though," Vi said mercilessly.

"You're the worst," Steph and Amber said in unison, Amber hugging her and Steph leaning over to kiss her cheek despite their identical wounded tones.

"Seriously, all. The. Time," Amber added to Cerise, very glad her sort-of-sister could fully sympathize with her on this.

"They're terrible," Cerise said, using the exact same intonation her aunt did.

Vi grinned shamelessly and turned her head to try and catch Steph in a kiss purely to annoy the girls.

Was Amber going to end up getting unsettling commiserating gifts from her alternate universe aunt after this?

Steph had no qualms about contributing to the girls' distress by leaning in to kiss Vi back, even making a soft happy noise on purpose.

"Mom! Right over my head?" yelped Amber, who was now utterly scandalized.

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