29 Chimera Court, Saturday Morning

[giveittoyoursister]

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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[off_beat_hues]

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.

[off_beat_hues]

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."

[giveittoyoursister]

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."

[drumsticksandd20s]

"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."

[off_beat_hues]

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.

[drumsticksandd20s]

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!"

[giveittoyoursister]

"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.

[drumsticksandd20s]

"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.

[giveittoyoursister]

"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.

[off_beat_hues]

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.

[off_beat_hues]

Most likely, especially once Cerise told her about the making out right in front of their breakfasts.

"It's like they don't even know the meaning of appropriate." A prison cell, Amber. A prison cell.

[drumsticksandd20s]

Amber's parents never needed to know about that, or they'd try to find a way to one-up it. Because clearly what this weird extended family needed was a way to introduce even more levels of competitiveness.

"They never do," Amber said, sighing, and looked at Cerise with a beleaguered expression as Steph cupped her hand around the back of Vi's neck and tried to pull her a little closer.

[giveittoyoursister]

Or worse, Vi might point out that Steph was an exception to the rule about where she'd met every single other woman she'd been with. After all, there was only one thing worse than knowing your parents had sex with each other...

Vi eagerly leaned in, as much as she could without eitehr crushing Amber or pulling away too much from Cerise. Not that it stopped the latter protesting loudly.

[drumsticksandd20s]

Something Cerise was probably already too familiar with.

"This is supposed to be breakfast and you're making me lose my appetite," Amber said loudly, trying (not that hard) to wriggle out from between them as Steph ran her hand through Vi's hair and twirled a lock of it around her finger. "We brought your food and you're not eating it!"

Steph was... a bit too preoccupied to answer.

[giveittoyoursister]

Unfortunately, yes, Cerise was.

"They're too busy eating each other's faces," she told Amber, very judgementally.

Vi pulled back just enough from the kiss to smile at Steph, which honestly might have been even more sickening.

[off_beat_hues]

Amber made a loud gagging noise and rolled her eyes.

"Why are you like this?" she whined.

"Well," Steph said dryly, "when two people love each other very much..."

Amber hit her with a throw pillow. "MOM."

[off_beat_hues]

Cerise helped Amber with that by biffing Vi with the other throw pillow.

"Hey, what'd I do?" Vi asked, knowing full well the answer was Steph.

"I can't hit her!" It'd be rude.

[off_beat_hues]

Amber reached over to high five Cerise, then gave Steph another whap for good measure.

"You know what you did," she said in the dramatic tone of a young GM. "Don't get me wrong, your place here is cool, but when are you guys gonna move into some place with actual rooms so other people don't have to watch you do this?"

Shh, Amber, they didn't actually live together. Really!

[giveittoyoursister]

That was the quiet part you weren't supposed to say out loud, Amber!

"I know you're an exhibitionist," Cerise said, saving Vi from having to reply right away with a pillow to the face. "But some of us are fond of walls that go all the way up." Never mind that this apartment was the size of some of the rooms in the Kiramman house.

[drumsticksandd20s]

"Hey," Steph objected, looking more than a little bit like a deer in the headlights now that Amber had actually said the thing they'd been avoiding. "When I got this place, all I was looking for was enough room for me and my drums, where I could play without bothering neighbors. I definitely wasn't anticipating your mom, much less regular visits from you two."

"You hadn't met mom yet?" Amber blinked a few times. Sure, she knew her parents had clearly met for the first time at some point, but imagining them without each other was just too weird. "I guess you're kind of off the hook for that."

[giveittoyoursister]

"Steph was already living here when I met her," Vi said, dodging the moved in question. "It's how I met her. Borrowed some clothes."

Cerise, who'd heard enough stories about how her mother's had met, snorted. She knew exactly what borrowed actually meant.

[off_beat_hues]

"Oh, so the same kind of borrowing you keep telling me I'm not allowed to do," Amber said dryly, with a knowing look at Cerise. She'd also heard stories.

"She looks very good in them, though," Steph felt the need to add, putting her arm across the back of the couch behind Amber and Vi.

"Mom, you're being gross again."

Steph made an indignant noise. "How is that gross?"

[off_beat_hues]

"And you're going to keep not doing it," Vi told Amber airily as she reached out to link her fingers with Steph's.

"You're flirting." Cerise's tone was the same one reserved for accusing people of kicking puppies.

[drumsticksandd20s]

Steph playfully stuck her tongue out at both girls -- she might have playfully shook a finger at them, but her fingers were tangled up with Vi's now and she wasn't letting go. "It's not like this is your first time visiting us. You knew what you were getting yourselves into. Besides," she added, looking pointedly at Amber, "if your versions of us have been together for a lot longer and still do this, what makes you think we'd have stopped?"

Amber just made a grumbling noise and shoved another bite of pastry into her mouth.

[giveittoyoursister]

Vi squeezed her hand and rubbed her thumb over Steph's knuckles, and did not say she hoped they never stopped. Both because Amber had done enough tempting fate for all of them, and it would've felt cruel to Cerise.

"Mine are just as bad," Cerise told Amber. Just the worst.