Sn0wmom Knows Best

Might as well dedicate this to Sannam, since she does love Sn0wman and requested this lol. And also to Ren because she drew that totes adorbs Sn0wmom fanart that I drooled heavily on. :D Yeah tumblrians.

-()-

Outside, rain gently pattered against the window, and every little while a roll of thunder grumbled through the clouds. The streets of Midnight City, below the hill the mansion was perched on, were saturated with rain, rivers of dirty water gushing across the blacktop and into the storm drains. The storm had been a bad one, but it had exhausted itself not long ago, and now the rain was coming down in earnest – not particularly hard but with the stupid determination that only weather and Clubs Deuce could manage.

Inside the mansion, Terezi Pyrope was sitting cross-legged on the floor of her room, her laptop open in front of her. Every once and a while she would idly click something or brush a key, but there was no particular direction to any of it. She had been chatting with Karkat, but the storm had knocked out the power grid for his part of the city, and subsequently his desktop computer. Why he refused to upgrade to a laptop she'd never understand.

Bored, she picked up two of her scalemates and sniffed them. Perhaps they could have a brilliant adventure or a thrilling trial, culminating in a moment of such monumental tension as so take away the breaths of the assembled jury, witnesses, even the legislacerator and the judge . . .

The scalemates squeaked when she threw them against the wall.

Or maybe she could draw something, make a clever .gif animation to make Karkat laugh when he finally got back online . . . if he got back online that night. If she ever talked to him before they went back to school that fall . . .

She shook her head. Ridiculous, preposterous, stupid. Of course she'd talk to him sometime in the next month.

She sighed and clicked around in her paint program, half-heartedly making a picture for Karkat. Maybe she could talk to Dave, but no he was offline too – he lived in a high-rise in the city, probably didn't have power either . . .

More scalemates squeaked as she flopped back into the pile of them, her arms out to her sides. Then she pushed her glasses up and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. That was a big old hot mess, no two ways about it. She and Karkat were – very secretly – a near-item at the Alternia Middle School, and that was working out, as long as neither of their guardians ever caught wind of it. Karkat certainly had flushed feelings for her, and seemed to be fiercely committed to the idea of a matespritship. Terezi, though, had been a bit more reluctant. Karkat was funny in his way, and affectionate (in his way), and attractive enough if you overlooked the flat teeth and the nubby horns and the total lack of height, and yet . . .

She'd never really noticed Dave Strider before this year. He'd always been this weirdly quiet kid in elementary school. She'd known he liked music – they were in the band together, after all – and he lived with his Bro, and that was about it. But this past year, as the tumultuous seventh grade year drew to a close and Terezi was closing in on seven years old, Dave Strider suddenly became a part of her life in a big way. Namely, they became partners in their biology lab.

They hadn't been all year – she and Vriska had been partners, since teachers always assumed she and her sister would want to partner up. Dave had been partnered with Gamzee, which had been a fabulously if unwittingly terrible idea. By the final quarter of the school year, the teacher had gotten so tired of their incessant rap battles that he randomly re-assigned groups, and suddenly Terezi found herself sharing a lab desk with Dave Strider, and the world had rotated.

He was quiet, yes, but not because he was shy. It was just because if he was going to talk, he wanted to make sure you were going to listen. He was funny. And he seemed to like her, which was usually how things went but for some reason it was much more exciting when Dave liked her.

She groaned.

"Terezi?" The girl jumped, sitting up quickly. She hadn't even heard the woman open the door, how did she do that? "Is everything alright, Terezi?"

"Just fine, mom. Just, uh, fine." She hastily tapped away at a few keys on her laptop, and then felt fabulously stupid when she realized it had run out of power and shut off.

"Mhm." Snowman stepped into her daughter's room and sat on the bed, legs crossed. "What's bothering you?" Terezi felt her hand – thin, cool, delicate – on her head.

She sighed, her shoulders sagging. "Nothing. Just . . . stuff. Friends stuff."

"Hm?" She could practically hear the woman's eyebrow raising. "Friends stuff? Trouble with school?"

"It's summer, Mom, I'm not in school."

"You know what I meant." The hand was removed and there was the sound of skin on silk, shortly followed by the snap of a match and a whiff of sulfur. She heard the woman blow a line of smoke into the air. Prospit Lites, sweeter than the Morning Golds. "So go on, Rez, what's on your mind?"

Terezi scowled at the black screen of her laptop. The could get complicated, but maybe, with some caution . . . "Have you only ever had a kismesis?"

There was silence and then Snowman laughed. "I see what this is about. So who's the boy?"

"No, Mom, this is important. Has it always just been you and Slick?"

"Well no, Rez, of course not."

"So you've had flushed feelings for someone else before?"

"I . . ." she heard Snowman take a drag. "Yes, I suppose so. A long time ago." The hand was back, stroking her hair. "Are you having flushed feelings, Rez?"

". . . Maybe."

"So who's the lucky boy? You can say, it's alright."

Terezi prodded the touchpad of the laptop. "That's the thing. There isn't . . . I don't know which boy it is."

"Oh. Well." Snowman stood, and Terezi followed suit, because it seemed to be expected. Her mother put her arm around her shoulders and started out of the room. "Sounds complicated."

"It is," Terezi sighed, miserably. "Boys are stupid and confusing and hard to deal with. It's hard and no one understands."

"Oh, I don't know about that." She and Terezi were making their way through the hall – the mansion was so huge, they had their own little apartment, kitchen and all. Terezi deposited herself in a chair at the kitchen table, arms crossed. "So what's the dilemma?"

"Well there's . . . a boy. A troll that I thought I had flushed feelings for, but now there's this other boy and I think I might have feelings for him, but he's not even a troll and anyway me and the troll are sort of together but not really but he thinks we're together and . . ."

"Slow down, Rez." The freezer door clicked shut and she sat down across from Terezi. There was a sucking noise as the top got pulled off a carton of cherry ice cream. "You're using too many pronouns, I can't keep track of who's who here. How about some names?"

Terezi picked up a spoon Snowman had brought over and stabbed at the ice cream. "I'd rather not."

"Not even one name?"

"Mom." She sucked on her spoon for a minute, sullen, and then grumbled, "the human's name is Dave."

"Dave Strider, hm? Not bad, Rez."

"You're embarrassing."

"In the job description, darling. Now, let me get this straight." She tapped the side of her own spoon on the ice cream carton. "You and this mystery troll have been dating –"

"We have not."

"Alright, well, you and Mystery Troll have been interested in one another, and it sounds as though he has flushed feelings for you but you're not sure you have any for him. Meanwhile, Dave Strider enters the picture and you're starting to perhaps have flushed feelings for him? Have I got it so far?"

"Pretty much." Terezi crossed her ankles and swung her legs, taking another bite of ice cream.

"So why Dave and not this mystery troll?" Her tone became inquisitive. "I've never heard you or your sister mention Dave before, by the way."

"Well he's always been really quiet. But it's not because he's shy he's just really ironic, you know?"

"Rez, do you know what that word means?"

"Yes!" Terezi glowered. "He's ironically quiet. Like, he could say so many things but he doesn't because that's the cool thing to do, you know?"

"Uh-huh. Go on."

"And he likes me and he tells me funny jokes and we like, exchange funny pictures and stuff that we draw online and I get all excited when I talk to him and . . . and I dunno it's confusing!" She crossed her arms and looked away, having said more than she wanted to already.

The chair creaked as Snowman shifted her position and took another spoonful of ice cream. "Hardly sounds confusing to me at all. It sounds as though you're very definitely having some kind of flushed feelings for Dave, but where you're confused is that you're still involved with this troll." She ate the ice cream. "So tell me about him."

"He's . . . nice, I guess."

"Not a good start."

"Well, he is! He's really nice even though he kind of acts like a jerk. But he's not a jerk – he always does the right thing in the end, you know? He just gripes about it a lot first."

"Sounds familiar."

"It does?"

"Never mind, keep going."

"Um. Okay, well, anyway, he's nice and he's funny too, in a different way. More like just funny in how he reacts to stuff, not like Dave. Dave tells jokes, that kind of thing, you know? But Ka – the troll just sort of reacts . . ." she trailed off, because she heard Snowman's sharp intake of breath. And then she started again, faster, louder and more frantic, in the vain hope she could distract her mother from what she'd almost let slip. "And the troll really definitely has flushed feelings for me, I mean he thinks we're matesprits and stuff and I just don't know if we're old enough to be making that kind of decision, you know? He's really intense about it! He keeps saying we'll be together forever and he writes me notes and slips them in my locker and he buys me my lunch and –"

"This is Karkat Vantas? The troll is Karkat?" The spoon thudded into the ice cream. "Slick's kid?"

"Mom, please don't be mad."

"Mad? Oh, Rez." And then she was laughing. "Rez, just because Slick and I hate each other with a ridiculous kind of intensity doesn't mean you and Karkat have to feel the same way!" She was laughing so hard now that she leaned back in her chair, legs crossed. "I mean yes, it makes things complicated but if you want to be friends or matesprits or whatever with Karkat you can."

"Really?"

"Yes, Terezi, yes." She lit another cigarette. "Anyway, in-laws typically hate one another, it wouldn't be that unusual."

"Please don't talk like that!" Terezi wailed, letting her head thunk onto the table. "I don't know if that's how I feel about him!"

"But he clearly feels that way about you." She blew a smoke ring. "I wonder if Slick knows . . ."

"Mom, thoughts away from your kismesis for a second, please?" She sat back up, leaning her forehead into the heel of her hand. "Boys are stupid and complicated and no one understands."

"They're not that complicated, Rez, and this situation isn't that complicated either. Karkat is your first boyfriend?"

"Yes."

She heard the woman shrug. "So break up with him. It very distinctly sounds like you two are good friends, but not much more, yes?"

"Easy for you to say. Karkat's going to be impossible."

"Well, I'm sure I don't know. But if he's anything like the man who brought him up, he'll get very, very angry at first, will refuse to speak to you for what he thinks is a great deal of time – maybe even a week, if he's particularly stubborn – and then will continue to sulk for a while longer."

"That's what I was hoping to avoid."

"So you're willing to be confused, stuck in a hard place that no one understands, just for the sake of not hurting Karkat's feelings?" She laughed a little. "I will never understand how I raised both you and your sister." She took Terezi's hand in hers and the warmth was evident in her voice. "Break up with Karkat, dear, and take the fallout. You'll be happier you did and I daresay Dave will be happier too, in time." She shrugged. "And Karkat too, probably – who knows?"

"Probably." Terezi smiled – a wobbly, timid smile but a smile nonetheless. "You think Dave will want to . . . what if he doesn't feel the same way?"

"Terezi I frankly don't understand how he could resist." Her cigarette crunched out in the ashtray and then the chair squeaked across the tile and she laid a hand on her daughter's head. "Just be yourself – if he truly is as ironic as you think he is, I think you two will be very well suited to each other."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Hm." Snowman kissed Terezi on the forehead, patted her on the head once more, and walked from the room. "Put the ice cream away when you're done. Goodnight, Terezi." She paused at the doorway, amusement in her voice. "And do keep me posted, dear."

Terezi nodded and waited for the sound of Snowman's footsteps to disappear down the hall. She prodded the melting ice cream with her spoon and rested her cheekbone on her fist. "Stupid boys."

-()-

AND SUDDENLY IT WAS KIND OF A MARCHINGSTUCK PIECE? I dunno wat do.