"Qing's still mad, you know," Boxcars muttered. "And ya know how she is, she waits. It's bad enough with that hanging over our heads, you piss off the two of them too and she'll be able to do anything she likes."
"Fuck them all," Slick said. His arm was still sore but it had almost healed, and it was too early in the morning to care about shit. He gulped another mouthful of black coffee from the cup and scowled at the universe in general.
"Yeah, that's not gonna help anything. Ya could stand to be more subtle in general, if Kaiser finds..." Boxcars continued, but Slick tuned out the grousing. What the fuck was up with him anyway, it wasn't even noon yet, it was like how did you even get that energetic, even fucking Deuce had the decency to be subdued at ungodly hours like this.
He finally tuned back in at "...he's prolly the only one in the whole damn school that doesn't know, Slick, an' - "
Too damn early. He scowled up at Boxcars. "The fuck are you going on about now?"
"Damn it Slick you aren't even paying attention."
"You're talking about some stupid shit, why would I?" Slick slouched further down at he walked. He tried to drink another mouthful of coffee, only to find the cup empty. "Fuck this, I'm getting more. Save me a seat or whatever."
Slick lounged by the vending machine instead of walking back toward class, finishing off the cup at his own pace and then refilling it again before finally leaving. The teacher didn't even look up as he slid into a seat in the back. With the extra coffee in his system he was feeling a bit better.
That feeling lasted roughly a minute after he left. He and Boxcars split up, heading in separate directions. He was making his way through the halls when an arm wrapped around his neck. "There you are."
He clawed at it. "I have class!" he objected desperately as she started to drag him along.
"No you don't," Snowman said. As usual she just ignored his struggles and kept walking at her normal pace as if he was following along willingly. "And we're doing design planning for the dance now."
"Study hall is a class! We had a whole fucking argument about it!"
"It's an obligation, which like all obligations is superseded by more important ones, such as this. Deciding when that's true is a judgment I can make and you can't."
"Fuck you, go find Droog or Boxcars or some other idiot who cares about making stuff fucking clashing or whatever."
"Clashing is what you want to avoid," Snowman said patiently.
"Whatever, find someone who cares! Has your fucking boyfriend run off and hid so he doesn't have to deal with this?"
Instead of any sort of sensible response to this Snowman started talking about decorations as if he hadn't said anything at all.
Slick seethed silently in his seat, glaring at the rest of the group assembled around the table, all of whom looked disgustingly alert and interested in whatever bullshit was being planned.
Snowman was looking through her bag. She frowned suddenly and pulled out a condom package. "I wish they'd stop slipping these into the pockets every time I let it out of my sight."
"Do you know why?" one of the miscellaneous girls Slick didn't care enough about to know her name who he hoped died in some horrible accident said.
"Somehow they've all gotten terrified I'll get pregnant." She dropped the box and kicked them across the cafeteria irritably. "Three conversations about it this week already." She made a face and in a near perfect replica of the principal's voice said, "We wouldn't dream of telling you what to do, of course we wouldn't, but we'd just hate for you to have to deal with something like that when you're so busy and have so much on your mind already." In her normal voice she continued, "He looked like he was about to start crying over just the thought."
Gears were audibly grinding inside Slick's head. "Wait, so if you did you'd get - "
"People don't get expelled for being pregnant, Slick," she said. "Why are you such a disappointment, Slick."
"Why do they care, anyway?"
She shrugged. "The same reason they care about anything, they're worried it'll do something to throw me off and I'll start losing matches. It's like they think winning is some sort of magic trick and everything has to remain just so or it'll stop working, or some superstitious nonsense like that." She lounged back in her chair, half her weight against her boyfriend. "Not how it works at all, but I guess I shouldn't expect any of them to understand that." She nodded toward the Prospitian sitting on the other side of the table. "I suppose that's something to be said in favor of your position, Whist. Not having to deal with this sort of nonsense."
The gray girl across her nodded back coolly. "I suppose it is," Qing replied.
The two regarded each other silently for a minute.
"But you're not actually pregnant," Slick said.
"There wouldn't be any point in handing me condoms now if I was, Slick. Did you sleep through sex ed?" She leaned forward again. "The main issue at the moment is how complex the decorations can be."
"A strict theme might be nice to try," Qing said, nodding. "As long as it's something everyone can reliably follow."
"And even if you did you'd abort it right?" Slick burst out.
Snowman stared at him for a second. Then she said, "You know, I'm hungry. Slick, go get us something to eat."
"Fuck you I'm not your slave."
"Really? Care to check where it says that?"
"Fuck you!" Slick snarled, flipping his knife out and lunging for her.
She sat up sharply, catching his wrist and smacking his hand against the table hard enough to knock it out of his grasp. Before he could pull away she'd scooped the knife up and stabbed it into the table right in the narrow gap between two of his fingers.
She let go. They stared at each other. "Now, Slick," she said.
He growled, pulling the knife out and walking away from the table.
He returned with several bags of hamburgers, dropping them unceremoniously on the table in front of her. "I hope that's to your satisfaction, your majesty," he ground out.
"It'll do." She pulled a burger out and unwrapped it. The rest of the table followed, divying them up and returning to the conversation smoothly.
