Ranger-of-Estel asked: For the prompt list CC with #1 ("I would appreciate it if you didn't chug the whole coffee pot.") And/Or #2 ("The table is broken. There is icing on the ceiling. The stove is on fire. Explain.")
I'm stillthewordgirl on Tumblr, BTW. I can't always get to prompts (or it takes me forever), but if you're patient, I'll do my best!
"The table is broken."
Laurel's voice comes out puzzled more than anything else. She stands at the door to her kitchen, apartment keys still in hand, and stares at the scene before her. OK, she'd come home a little early today, but…
In front of her, her sister stares back, looking just a little sheepish. The man Laurel's still mentally referring to as Sara's criminal boy toy takes a smooth sideways step to put himself behind Sara, even as he smirks a little.
"Ah," Sara says, sounding at a loss for words for once, "Laurel."
They're both looking a little mussed. Sara's shirt is buttoned unevenly and the usually meticulous Snart is in a rumpled T-shirt instead of his usual layers. And…Laurel peers…there's a smudge of something on his shoulder, and along his jaw…
The man's eyes flick up and Laurel's do, too.
"There is icing," she says after a moment, "on the ceiling."
Snart clears his throat. "The idea," he says carefully, "was to make cupcakes. Sara's idea." He coughs as Sara jams her elbow into his side. "To thank you for letting her stay here a few days."
Laurel stares back at him. Her brain doesn't seem to work to work right now. OK, she's pretty tired, but this is ridiculous. And she can smell…
Her eyes widen. "The stove is on fire."
The pair whirl immediately, and Snart reacts first to the tiny tendril of flame stretching from a mark from the rather messy stovetop, cutting the heat and then dumping part of a box of baking soda on it. The flame goes out. The scent of burnt sugar remains.
Laurel continues to stare at them.
"Explain," she says after another moment, voice loaded with both big-sister and attorney tones.
As usual, that tone of voice leads to Sara's chin going up and her little sister looking rather rebellious. Oddly, or not, it's Snart who responds.
(Laurel likes the man, unexpectedly. She'd been more than a little surprised when he's tagged along with Sara when she'd returned—briefly, she said—from time traveling, but the bond between the two is palpable. Sara, choosing her words in a careful way that led Laurel to recognize the pain behind them, has explained how the former crook had sacrificed himself and how they'd found him in the "timestream," whatever that is, days later.)
("We're…seeing what the future holds," her little sister had said carefully over lunch, staring into her coffee in a way that Laurel knows is a Sara tell for trying to conceal strong emotion, the kind she doesn't want to admit to. What can Laurel do but support her?)
"As I said," he says today, a few weeks after that conversation between sisters, "cupcakes. Ah." He gives her sister a look so fond that Laurel has to hide a smile. "There was an icing…incident. And then things…got out of hand."
His voice drops a little at the end of that sentence and Laurel's smile drops too. She stares at the mussed-looking pair. Then at the table. And the smudge of icing on Snart's jaw. And in Sara's hair.
"You're buying me a new table," she manages after a moment. "Tomorrow. And cleaning everything up. Tonight. With bleach. And then you're taking me to that fancy new bakery for cupcakes."
Sara opens her mouth, but it's Snart's turn to elbow her in a clear plea for silence. (Laurel remembers the man has a younger sister too.) He nods, then, studying her, tips his head toward the full coffee pot in the machine sitting on her counter.
Now, how had he known that she'd really like a drink right now—and since alcohol is out, caffeine will do? Laurel tips her head to him in response, then moves toward the coffee with a sigh.
Sara clears her throat. "I would appreciate it," she says a bit plaintively, "if you didn't chug the whole coffee pot. I could use some."
Laurel hears Snart's faint sigh. Yes, this one gets little sisters. She rather deliberately reaches out, taking the pot off the base—ah, yes, warm, but not too hot—and sips carefully right from the carafe, turning to meet Sara's eyes, holding her sister's gaze.
She also sees Snart biting back a laugh and winks at him.
Yes, police record and broken tables aside, he'll do.
