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“Yeah, well, Monika’s just like a baby,” Natsuki retorts, pausing for a half-snicker, half-giggle, “She doesn’t know aaanything!”
Yuri’s illicitly-obtained beverage helped take the surface-level sting out of Natsuki’s comments. She was laughing and her voice was sopping with fondness, something the pink-haired girl would probably be annoyed with if not for the anti-annoyance properties of wine - Monika is unsure how to feel about that, so she hmphs and takes another mouthful from her glass instead of thinking about it.
“Aw, c’mon, Naccha~n,” Sayori says, leaning back on her hands, “Don’t be a meanie! Wanna hear a secret?”
”Yes,” says Natsuki, followed by an ‘Mm’ from Yuri and a nod from Monika.
“I hadta teach myself howta ride a bike!”
Sayori grins like that’s the thing to do after saying that. Natsuki blinks in surprise, Yuri nods to herself. Monika tilts her head.
“Your mom wasn’t around for it,” Yuri supplies to the confused looks at the table. Sayori nods readily.
“Yu-p!” Perhaps an inappropriate place to pop the p, but Sayori was like that, and apparently emphatically moreso while intoxicated. “I could do a wheelie down the whole block before she came back! She was surprised,” the peach-haired girl nods, tracing lines and wheels idly on the table.
“Yeah, I bet,” snorts Natsuki, “Not every day y’ leave a kid alone for a week an’ they do somethin’ cool instead of burning down the house.”
“Heeey, I was a good kid!”
Absolutely nobody anticipates Yuri breaking into a fit of giggles over that, but it’s easier to predict the joining-in that follows around the table.
“Okay, okay, I was— I was definitely a dumb kid,” acquiesces Sayori, “But at least I didn’t fall off the roof.”
”You try taking down Christmas lights when you’re eight,” huffs Natsuki, and Sayori laughs.
“Try putting them up!”
“I never learned,” Yuri chimes, entirely casually and refilling glasses as she does so.
“You what?”
“A bike,” she clarifies, “Riding one. Without the extra... little wheels. Never did.”
“You’re eighteen?” Natsuki says, eyes wide. Yuri shrugs, poking the tip of her tongue through her lips at the other girl.
“Nobody wanted to teach me,” she says, ponderously, “And I don’t like skinned knees.”
”Hah!”
“I don’t!” Yuri pouts, muttering the next bit into her drink: “Mom never got the memo you’re supposed to kiss them better.”
“Didn’t stop Sayori.”
“Yuyuri’s sensitive!” Sayori chides, curling an arm somewhat sloppily around Yuri’s waist - at what point in the conversation she had scooted to Yuri’s side of the table, nobody was exactly certain. “S-See, I’m all, you know, bouncy and tough like a superball, I don’t caaare when I fall over ‘cos I bounce. Yuyuri’s... all soft and squishy like silly putty!”
The small spurt of bashful giggles from Yuri was easily made into a river as Sayori playfully dug her fingers into the taller girl’s stomach, scribbling up to her ribs.
”S— S’yoriiiiii!”
“Pffffffft~. You guys want soft? Lookit little miss rules-‘n-schools over there!”
Natsuki is laughing at Monika again, this time because Monika’s upper body is a puddle against the kotatsu top. She thinks. Still, the important thing is that Natsuki is laughing at her and that’s super rude, especially when it was her that egged Monika into saying okay when Yuri decided to try wining everyone up again and so Monika wrinkles her nose at Natsuki in response, and would probably have stuck out her tongue, but that would dislodge her dessert spoon from where it was very comfortably seated in her mouth and she doesn’t want to do that.
“Oh dear,” hums Yuri, sounding very nonchalant, “Monnie’s tired.”
It’s Sayori’s nickname, so it sounds a little strange coming from Yuri, but Monika decides she likes it anyway. Did Yuri ever call her nicknames, anyway? Yuri was all stringy like Monika and says her words right like something important depended on them, so probably not. Monika doesn’t feel very stringy right now. She feels like a puddle of yarn, and Yuri is smiling so much that she thinks maybe Yuri also doesn’t feel very stringy, and that’s...
... good. Like putting down a full backpack after school, light, relieving, deep breaths and stretches and popping things deep inside back into place where they should be.
“Me too,” Natsuki sighs, flopping backwards in a dramatic heap. “Dessert’s gone and cards are boring and so’s talking.”
“Let’s watch cartoons!”
Everyone looks at Sayori.
“C’mon, it’s fuuun,” Sayori wheedles. “You, you do fun things at sleepovers! Besides, it’s totally Saturday morning!”
“Twelve-thirty’s not Saturday morning, Sasa!”
“Uh- huh,” Yuri says, unhelpfully, “It’s AM. That’s morning.”
“Gk— Y-Yuyu, shush, that’s not...”
“C’mooooon,” Sayori pleads again. “I never gotta watch cartoons with someone! It’ll— we, we can pretend it’s like, um...”
She pauses for a second, evidently mulling something over. Yuri and Natsuki both consider Sayori pausing to be more interesting than the technicalities of the hour.
“... we ‘kin, like. Pretend we’re really watching Saturday cartoons,” Sayori says, slowly, “With each other. Like, you know, like kids.”
“... um,” says Natsuki, sitting back up. “Are you, like—”
“‘Kay.”
“Huh.”
Yuri shrugs again, still smiling as she lilts her head around to the other side, nodding. “Yeah, ‘kay. Didn’t get to either. ‘S sounds fun.”
Sayori beams and Natsuki blinks and Monika kind of stares, mostly because she’s a puddle.
“... huh.”
“I want cereal,” Yuri continues, and then Natsuki rolls her eyes.
“No milk, you’ll knock it over.”
“Nuh- uh,”
“Yeah-huh, you’re all wobbly!” Natsuki insists, lightly pushing at the other girl to make her point. Yuri does wobble and Natsuki sighs, deep and long-suffering and overdramatic and fond.
“I’ll go get cereal ‘f Sasa turns the TV on.”
“I love you so much!” Sayori bursts, almost knocking her knees right on the end of the table as she leaps somewhat unsteady to her feet. “You’re, you’re the best— the best little friend sister person ever I love you let’s Doraemon!”
Then Sayori is already halfway to the living room and Natsuki walks kind of funny to the kitchen but she doesn’t say anything like “hold on” about being the best little friend sister person ever, and maybe that means she doesn’t mind it.
It catches up with Monika a bit too late that yes, she is in on this as well, and that will probably require walking or crawling or dragging herself hand over hand to the living room. She doesn’t particularly want to get up from the kotatsu, because it’s warm and she’s a puddle and she would probably look stupid trying to move anyway and Monika is terribly uncomfortable with looking stupid doing anything, for many reasons, and especially in this circumstance. She’s about to say something - well, probably make some kind of noise around the spoon she hasn’t gotten around to relinquishing yet - but as it turns out, Yuri has more ideas when she’s wobbly and probably not the best ones, and Monika is being dragged on her rear by Yuri’s warm hands under her arms and she blinks and she isn’t very upset about it, surprisingly.
“I brought Mo~nnie,” Yuri singsongs, and Sayori giggles a little at the sight and says “Don’t drag your sister!” with much more laughing than rebuke, and Yuri hums and flops onto the heap of blankets and cushions and beanbag chairs that Sayori has made her living room into and pulls Monika into her lap.
Yuri’s lap is warm and soft and Monika likes that and the way Yuri’s holding her, arms circled firmly around her chest, like Monika’s a favorite teddy bear or doll or baby sister. She curls into Yuri and feels settled but small and she mumbles haphazardly what tried to be but barely sounded like ‘the Shimizu family doesn’t watch cartoons’.
Sayori hears it, somehow, and hmphs lightly.
“W-Well, good thing you’re notta Shimizu ‘nymore. You’re a— an Aijoumoto!”
“A what?”
“Cheerios!” Yuri sings, reaching one arm cheerfully and lazily towards the entering Natsuki. “Ple~ease.”
Natsuki puts the bowl of Cheerios in arm’s reach and Yuri proceeds to care little about the lack of spoon, which Natsuki watches thoughtfully. Monika lazes on Yuri’s shoulder and thinks about names.
“Aijoumoto,” Sayori repeats, looking a little rosy in the cheeks, “I read it in a book and I like it and I want that name instead. It’s better than Kimura.”
“Like it,” Yuri parrots, “Better than Nakahara.”
“Fuck Fujioka,” Natsuki agrees, flumphing down into the pillow heap, and Sayori crosses her arms.
“No bad words, Natsuki!”
Natsuki stares.
Frowns.
Opens her mouth.
“... heck.”
And Sayori grins, snuggling down on Yuri-and-Monika’s other side with a satisfied nod.
“An’ it’s better than Shimizu, too,” says the peach-haired girl, “Because there’s love in it. So there.” Tugs lightly at the handle sticking out from Monika’s mouth, and Monika blinks in surprise when it slips free before—
Whining.
Just once, with her cheeks flaring crimson less than a second after, but Sayori squeaks and pushes the utensil back where it was - bowl down over Monika’s tongue - as Yuri protectively holds Monika a bit closer.
“Monnie likes it,” mumbles Yuri, cheek pressed against the side of Monika’s head, “Don’t be mean.”
“I wasn’t tryna,” Sayori says, “I thought she forgot about it. You like it?”
Monika nods.
“Mmkay,” Sayori smiles, “You’re cute. You’re a good baby sister. Wanna watch Doraemon?”
“‘S good,” Natsuki pitches in, “You’ll like it, ’s fun an’ the cat’s really funny.”
“Ple~ease?” Asks Yuri.
Monika ‘nnn’s, brow creased in thought.
“... it’s okay,” Sayori says, slowly. “The Aijoumoto family watches cartoons.”
Monika pauses.
(Natsuki tilts her head.)
And thinks.
(Yuri squeezes her gently.)
And nods.
The Aijoumoto family watches cartoons at 12:45 on Saturday morning, until there’s a pile of softly snoring kids in a pillow disaster in the living room.