smilestopscars | A House, Currant, Maine, Wednesday

A much younger version of Kathy had promised Ezra lunch and ice cream in exchange for his help and pep talks (and because she'd been thirteen and infatuated, not to put too fine a point on it). And since Kathy would take any opportunity to hang out with Ez, here she was on his doorstep, a container of cookies in one hand and cash for food in her pocket.

Knock knock

Well, Ezra had managed to find a pair of pants, at least? He also had a shirt, when he came to the door, he just wasn't wearing it yet. Instead he was holding it with one hand, but hey, progress.

Though he wished he'd actually put it on when he opened the door and saw who it was.

"Well hello there, dumpling," he said. "Fancy seeing you here all grown up."

Kathy appreciated the view--right until she remembered she wasn't supposed to be appreciating the view and snapped her eyes back up to his face where they belonged.

"Hey," she said, giving him a smile; a smile that was genuine, if a little chagrined. "Grown up and bearing tribute, as is right and proper." She held up the tupperware container of double-chocolate cookies she'd brought along.

Yeah. Ezra was going to be putting the view away as soon as possible. Or in a second, anyway.

"Ooh," he said, tilting his head as he looked at the container. And then inhaled deeply. "Oh, is that double chocolate I smell? Excellent choice, darling."

"I like baking," Kathy said with a small smile. "It soothes me. It's precise, like chemistry, except instead of weird-smelling concoctions, I end up with food." Her chuckle was wry. "I'm pretty sure my housemates stick around because I'm easily stressed and then there's an oven full of cupcakes and a full Korean meal complete with banchan."

"I'm fairly confident in saying that's not even remotely it," Ezra replied with a stray bit of wryness of his own, as he stepped back and gestured for her to come in. "And I say this as someone who loves eating."

Kathy did not reply 'I know' to that, nor did she wink, and she deserved a medal.

Instead, she headed over to the couch, setting the cookies down on the table for Ezra to enjoy at his leisure, and grinned up at him. "And that's why I'm here, actually," she said.

Wait no.

"I owe you lunch and ice cream," she added quickly. "And figured today was a good day as any to treat you for it."

They were already off to a stellar start.

After closing the door, Ezra took a second to actually pull the shirt on, although he was still buttoning it up when he made it to the couch. "And what a good day for it is," he declared. "I have suffered poor working conditions and deserve a treat."

Kathy sat up in alarm, then realized that Ez would never have actually said that if he'd really gone through something terrible and relaxed back into a lazy sprawl again. One she'd probably learned from him, because she'd come to school with perfect posture.

"Poor baby," she said, hitting about 85% sympathy. The other fifteen percent was amusement, pure and simple. "Do share about the deplorable working conditions they forced upon you."

"There was mud," Ezra told her dramatically as he, too, flopped onto the couch. Now that he was fully dressed and everything. "A lot of it. No place for a fox. They should've found a werepig instead."

"How deeply you must have suffered," Kathy said, dimples deep as she attempted not to laugh. Out loud. "Are were-pigs a thing, though? For real?"

Ezra shrugged. "I've never heard of one," he said, "but that doesn't prove anything."

In his world, creatures didn't tend to much advertise their existence for obvious reasons, so unless you lived in the same area with a population of something or other, you might never even hear about them.

As opposed to Kathy's world, where the first thing anybody did after developing superpowers was pull on a costume and go off to fight crime.

"Can you tell me what you were actually doing?" Kathy asked, amusement still playing around her mouth. "Or were Lock and Ava just messing with you and making you deal with mud for funsies?"

Ezra scoffed. "They wouldn't." Well, not unless he was an ass to them first! Like that time he'd gotten distracted by some wild turkeys.

He sighed and leaned back. "We had a lead on someone hiding out on a farm, but he wasn't there." Which was better for everyone, really, but he wasn't going to say that. "But his traps were." A beat. "They were far too focused on mud-flinging, if you ask me. Absolutely no variety."

"Well, is this really the kind of guy you expect creativity from?" Kathy asked, tentatively tucking her bare feet under his thighs. Her sandals left by the door because who wore shoes inside the house? That was rude.

But Ezra was tactile and Kathy was, too, and she was trying to find little ways to comfort and touch that wouldn't push.

"But anyway, you've showered, you have cookies, and you've got the promise of lunch and ice cream. And delightful company, obviously. Your day can only improve."

Ezra rested her hand idly on her leg. Anything below the knee was probably fair game, even if he was exactly the type who could eroticize anything given enough incentive to.

"That is very true, darling," he agreed, with a glance over at her, and a lazy smile. "Honestly, the shower was already a high point. It was a good shower."

Magically not being muddy anymore was a nice thing.

If he started panting after her ankles, she was going to laugh at him and make Victorian puns all day long.

"Showers are amazing," Kathy said, deliberately thinking only of G-rated showers because her poker face was laughable at best. "Though I'm also a sucker for a bathtub with a book and a bottle of wine. If I ever end up beating the Millennial Curse and owning a home, it had better have a tub big enough that the only thing above water is my chin."

There. That was wholesome enough, right?

It wasn't hot, at least. Although Ezra had to hold back a comment about how he found baths to be boring by himself. That way lay danger.

"Well, that shouldn't be hard to accomplish," he said instead. "You're not a very big person."

Kathy had nearly said her bath needed to be big enough for two, swapping in the chin-thing when her brain had flashed big ABORT! signs at her.

"Hey now!" Kathy said, poking him with her toe, the nail painted a soft baby pink. "I'm tall! For a girl!"

It had been the despair of her old gymnastics coach.

Ezra shrugged one shoulder, and swatted at her foot, very lazily indeed.

"Maybe, but there still isn't a whole lot of you, is there?"

Kathy looked down at herself, then back up at him, nose in the air. "It's quality, not quantity," she declared, trying to sound as haughty as possible.

...Keep trying, Kathy.

Ezra snickered while he pulled her feet into his lap. "Are you taking this as an insult, dumpling? I'm just stating a fact!"

Only because the other way of responding was still firmly in the DMZ.

"Well, I'm certainly trying," Kathy said, with a small chuckle of her own. "Do you think it's working?"

Because, well, she was pretty small. In most places.

Ezra shook his head, and patted her ankle. "Barely teenaged Kathy wouldn't have taken it so badly," he tsked.

And barely teenaged Kathy was definitely a non-sexy topic.

Enough so that Kathy didn't think that pointing out, "If you think barely teenaged Kathy wasn't already looking into her bra and sighing, you've got another thing coming," was too outside the line. "Besides, she was taller than most of the boys in her class, and she spent a lot of time dying over that, too."

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