Work Text:
Terezi moves her bag off the seat next to her so that you can sit down beside her. You drop a stack of borrowed comics onto her lap and she grins at you, stroking the pile as if it's her pet. She's always had an obsession with those Blind Justice comics and you're starting to see why. It combines Terezi's favourite traits: justice and blindness. You guess the title gave that away.
You dedicated your weekend to reading them because she loves them and you love her and you've been trying to love the things she loves a little more, now that she's your girlfriend. She's been your girlfriend for four weeks and three days. You'd be lying if you said you hadn't enjoyed every single minute of that team. Terezi makes you crazy, in both means of the word.
"Hey." She grins at you and bumps you with her elbow, "How was your weekend?"
"We hung out yesterday, dumbass." You roll your eyes, "Remember, I took you to a crappy movie about the girl with the two-tone hair and the guy with the fire and the crazy guy and-"
"That's the worst description of Suicide Squad I've ever heard." Terezi laughs, "And I know you liked it. I saw the look on your face when we left the movies. You were pumped."
"Terezi, you did not see the look on my face!" This is what you mean by the whole "she drives you crazy" kind of way. Because Terezi Pyrope is annoying by nature and has pissed you off every single moment since childhood. But if Friday night is anything to go by, that's enough to turn you on as well. Well, that and her hands running down your back.
"You're so cute when you get flustered." Terezi shuffles closer to you and you're glad that buses don't have seat belts to restrain you because you like her sitting closer to you; her head rests on your shoulder, her curls tickling your neck, "Listen, I need to ask you something."
She could ask you to slay a dragon. You'd do it. Not that she'd ever ask. Everybody in the state knows that Terezi Pyrope is a fiend for dragons- she wears shirts proclaiming her love for them every single day. You can see the neck of her favourite, most hideous shirt poking out from under her hoodie ever now. There's a dragon-patterned patch on the knee of her pants.
"I want you to meet my mom." Terezi says and you freeze up instantly.
"Your... Mom?" You've never met her Mom before. Every time you've been to her house, you've only ever seen her Aunt Redglare or her older sister, Latula. In fact... The only ever time you've seen her Mom is in an old picture she keeps on her dresser. The one with a small Terezi that hasn't even been blinded yet and doesn't have to wear her stupid sunglasses. It's a cute picture.
"Yeah." Terezi's hand slips into yours, "After school today. I already told her that you're coming."
"She won't like me." You say, instantly, because no parents ever do. You swear a lot, you yell a lot, you look like a hot mess. Parents never like you because they reckon you're a bad influence on their kids. You hate it but it's not something you can change.
"She will like you. I promise. After all, she raised me." Terezi assures you, as the bus finally jolts and sets off towards school. She digs around in her bag until she finds her cellphone and offers you one of her earphones, which you slot into your ears. Terezi plays some of that feminist rap that Dave The Douchebag introduced her to in your ear and you grumble but listen contently.
When you step off the bus, she walks you to your locker and leans against it, flirting with you and insisting that she won't move until you give her a kiss. Eventually, you give in and flip off the Sollux lingering nearby, who whistles at the pair of you. Terezi steps aside and says she's going to go get her things from her locker.
Before she leaves, she wraps her arms around your neck.
"I'll see you later, Karkles!"
Sollux waggles his eyebrows at you. You give him several suggestions of where he should go stick his stupid, sarcastic expression. He just laughs at you in his usual nasally way. You really wish you'd picked out your friends better back in elementary school.
You don't catch sight of Terezi for the rest of the day because she's in a different building to you. She has entirely different lessons because she's blind and can't see the teachers writing on the board. You have no idea if this is normal procedure at a high school with a blind student but it's how your school does things. Her lunch matches up with yours and she slips out of the building to meet up with you in the courtyard. She joins you in the grass with her friends.
"Heard you're taking KK to meet your Mom tonight, TZ." Sollux says, leaning over and picking at his girlfriend's ramen with a pair of chopsticks.
"Ooh, bold move." Aradia says, holding her lunchbox closer to her boyfriend to stop him from spilling her lunch everywhere, "I didn't meet Sollux's dads for a whole three months into our relationship because he was so scared they wouldn't like me. Jokes on him."
"They love her." Sollux sounds almost disappointed, "Way more than they like me, I'm sure of it."
"Hey, how come I've never met your Mom?" Nepeta is lazing across her girlfriend's lap.
"I've told you before, she works a couple of states over. I feel like I've never met her." Feferi sighs, playing with Nepeta's hair, "I'll introduce you one day. Anyway, to get back on topic, that's super exciting, Karcrab! Are you looking forward to it?"
"Nah, he's scared." Terezi flops down onto her stomach, her fingers trailing across the smooth pages of her comic book as if she can absorb the pictures through her fingers.
"I'm not scared." You say, through a mouthful of pizza, "I just know her Mom won't like me."
"He has a good point." Sollux is still trying to keep his noodles trapped between his chopsticks but they keep slipping away from him, "My dads didn't like him, Aradia's mom didn't like him, Eridan's dad didn't like him, Feferi's mom didn't like him-"
"Karkitty's met your mom?" Nepeta interjects, curiously.
"At my party in Sophomore year. Karkat got drunk and puked on her carpet." Feferi helps.
"- Nepeta's Mom didn't like him. And both Terezi's sister and aunt don't like him." Sollux finishes, finally managing to poke his noodles into his mouth.
"Maybe this will be different." Aradia says, hopefully, "Terezi's Mom was nice to me, when I met her once. She's a lot like Terezi... But taller and nicer."
"Hey, I'm nice!" Terezi huffs.
"Yes, I know. But your mom is super nice. If a little crazy." Aradia shrugs.
Terezi sighs. "Yeah..."
You don't get to ask her what she means because quickly after that, the conversation jumps to the double date Aradia is trying to organise for next weekend. Sollux is reluctant about it but both Nepeta and Feferi seem very excited. Honestly, you stare at your girlfriend and wonder why her usual grin seems to have temporarily vanished. Of course, it returns as soon as she starts teasing Sollux about his date. But you can't help but wonder.
When the end of lunch bell rings, Terezi hugs you quickly before she rushes back to the Special Ed building to slip inside before anybody notices she's missing. She's done this every single day since freshman year. You head to Algebra and try to put the meeting out of your mind.
But when the school day ends, you can't put off the meeting anymore. Terezi walks with you to the school bus and you take your usual seats near the back of the bus with her by the window and you sitting on the aisle seat. She digs out her comic books and flicks through them like nothing different is happening. You get to your feet at Terezi's stop but she pulls you back into your seat, grabbing you by the arm. You land in your seat with a thump.
"I thought this was your stop. Where are we going?" You wonder if you're going to meet her mother at her workplace or something.
"You'll see when we get there." Terezi promises and takes your hand. She squeezes it so tightly that you swear she nearly pops a blood vessel.
You get off at a stop much deeper into the city and follow Terezi through the winding streets that you don't recognise. You're not sure you've ever seen this part of the city, except for that one time you had to go to the hospital after a pretty severe asthma attack. That's when you realise that you're headed in the direction of the hospital.
Terezi knows her way around the inside of the hospital too well. Even the man at reception nods to her as if they're old friends. Suddenly, you're even less sure about this meeting. As you head up the stairs, your hand turns almost white from how hard Terezi is squeezing it.
"Please promise you won't be weird about this." Terezi says, as she walks down the corridor.
You dodge around some doctors rushing somebody into an operating theatre. "Why? What exactly is going on, Terezi?"
"You know how I never talk about my mom?" Terezi "looks" back at you.
You hadn't even realised until now but that's right; she never mentions her Mom.
"Yeah?"
"There's a reason for that." Terezi stops outside a door with a number printed on it. There's a name and medical chart posted on the door for a Ms Teresa Pyrope but you barely get a chance to look at it before Terezi pushes the door open. The room is painted bright white, so much that it almost hurts your eyes, and there are foil balloons tied to the bed. A million different GET WELL SOON cards are crammed on the dresser.
A woman, who lno longer looks anything like she does in the old picture Terezi has, lies on the bed. She looks a lot like Terezi with the same dark skin and dark curls and the same short and stacked figure but she's unconscious. She is linked up to a machine keeping her alive.
"The machine sounds like a dragon." Terezi says, "I like to think it's watching over her. I call it Fosarus. Once I tried to make it look like a dragon with markers but a nurse caught me."
"I had no idea." You say, "You should have told me about this. Why didn't you tell me about this? Wait..." You think back to lunchtime, "Does anybody know about this?"
"Nah..." Terezi crosses her arms, defensively, "Are you mad I didn't tell you?"
"I'm mad you haven't introduced me to your mom yet. She's going to stop letting me hang out with you if I don't make a good impression." You gesture to where her Mom is lying, "Terezi, don't just stand there. Introduce us, for gods sake."
A big grin spreads across her face. "Karkat, this is my mom. Mom... This is my boyfriend."