WHAT: Truth allergies hit and do their job WHERE: Ice cream shop in Vallo City WHEN: April 10th, 2024 WARNINGS: Just feelings and lots of sneezing STATUS: Complete
Kate had never been a person who suffered from allergies. Even when pollen levels were high, she was usually fine. She had a sturdy immune system and rarely even got sick. It was hard to say whether that was from years of braving icy New York winters or simply keeping herself in peak shape with all her training. But it took a lot to take her down, and it was a gift she’d always appreciated.
Did that mean she had never tried to use the excuse of fictional allergies to get herself out of something she didn’t want to do? Absolutely not. She had attempted—shamelessly—but unfortunately, neither of her sisters had been fooled by her con, mostly because her acting skills left a lot to be desired. She was strangely better on the spot than in pre-planned circumstances, and she had been dragged out of bed for morning workouts against her protests.
This year, something was different. She was currently plagued by a runny nose and watery eyes. While it was miserable, it wasn’t at fever or common cold levels. It was definitely something stirred up by existing outside, but there had been no reprieve. She was going a little crazy but wouldn’t let it interrupt her life. Plenty of people existed in this state during the spring, and just because she was new to it didn’t mean she couldn’t do the same.
Plus, she had plans to get ice cream with Violet. These newfound allergies of hers weren’t going to stop that. She popped a Benadryl, crossed her fingers, and leashed up Lucky to meet Violet at one of the shops in the city.
“So, what’s your favorite flavor?” she asked while they waited in line. Did she sound a little congested? Unfortunately. But she was very valiantly ignoring it.
Violet did not have allergies. It was not a thing that she had ever suffered through, not in the English countryside or in New York. She had, in fact, been fairly certain that she’d been dying when she woke that morning, though a quick trip to the clinic had allayed those fears.
She didn’t particularly want to see Kate looking how she was, eyes red and puffy, nose running. She wasn’t looking particularly stunning at the moment. But then, she reminded herself, she didn’t want to attract Kate (this thought set off another bout of sneezing), and perhaps this was for the best.
In any case, the antihistamines she’d been given had helped wonders, and she felt very nearly human again by the time she was supposed to meet up with Kate. She made sure to do her hair up in a cute updo, with an illusionary sprig of violets pinned to the side.
“Oh, I don’t know. I can say that I was not a fan of spinach la creme.” She made a face at the memory. It wasn’t that she had anything against spinach. It just hadn’t quite fit in with ice cream. “I’m not terribly familiar with the flavours they have here, however. What would you recommend?”
Spinach? Kate’s nose wrinkled up in disgust. Spinach didn’t belong anywhere near ice cream, in her opinion, but she was sure there were some weirdos out there who exclusively ate spinach ice cream. “To each their own,” she said, trying (and failing) to sound non-judgmental, “but that sounds disgusting. We’ve got much better than that these days. Actual sweet flavors.”
She gestured up to the menu over the countertop. They had two people in line before them, so there was still time to look it over. The flavors were extensive, and the specials were always good if they wanted to go extra. “I’m a sucker for anything strawberry. I’ll probably go with strawberry shortcake.”
Violet hid her smile behind her hand; the way that Kate’s nose wrinkled was really far too cute to be fair. She was tempted to act shocked at the idea of sweet ice cream, but she said instead, “Oh, we had sweet flavours too. Elderberry and lemon and the link. But it was the truly dreadful ones that stood out more. I’ll try the strawberry shortcake, though. It does sound delicious.”
She bumped Kate’s shoulder, and then asked, “Are you suffering from these dreadful allergies too? I swear I have never suffered through allergies before. Vallo must have some particular flower that is especially bothersome.” It was Violet’s first spring in Vallo, after all. Perhaps it was some local flora that was in neither England nor New York.
“Yeah, I don’t know what it is. Never had them at home or here before, and this is my third spring in Vallo. Who knows, though, maybe it’s bleedover from the last crazy portal thing. We should probably just be grateful the allergies aren’t trying to kill us.”
Kate cleared her throat and beneath one eye with the heel of her hand. She was sure she looked worked over by these stupid allergies, but she actually felt okay. Her Benadryl dosing seemed to have helped the constant sniffling and watery eyes, but her throat felt ticklish, and there was this constant stuffed feeling on the left side of her nose that she hated.
“But I look totally unaffected, right?” She bumped Violet’s shoulder back and attempted her usual playful smile. “And feel free to lie if I look like shit.”
“Comp–” Violet started, but couldn’t finish the word for the violent fit of sneezing that suddenly overtook her. She turned away, pulling a handkerchief from her pocket to sneeze into. She took a deep breath once she had finished, and did her best not to look embarrassed. “As I was saying, I can’t tell at–”
And… she was off again. It was more mortifying the second time around, so soon after she’d been sure she’d had control over herself. Still turned away from Kate, she wiped the snot from her nose, and then turned back toward her.
“You look beautiful,” she said, and waited anxiously for a moment. But no, she felt better than she had almost all morning. “Well. That was all very dramatic.”
“These allergies are really sucking,” Kate replied sympathetically, reaching out to give Violet’s arm a comforting squeeze. She was truly smiling now, war, flutters swarming in her belly. She knew she was hot, even at her most rundown. She had never been self-conscious about her looks in the slightest, but a compliment from a pretty girl she had feelings for was a definite bonus.
With their turn up at the counter, they put in their orders. The workers behind the counter were efficient in their assembly and soon, they were headed outside with Lucky to claim a sidewalk table. The warm springtime weather was perfect, and Lucky was all the more pleased when Kate presented him with a portable water bowl and some treats while he sat at her feet.
“This really is a lovely day for this,” Violet said, turning her face up to the sun once they sat down. “Though, I suppose any day is lovely when I can spend it with you.”
Violet started, a little violently, at that. She had not meant to say anything of the sort, not only because it was the sort of saccharine nonsense that made her teeth ache, but because it was far closer to the truth than Violet would have ever liked to admit.
Kate was surprised by that, eyebrows raising. It wasn’t that Violet wasn’t even sweet, but she wasn’t usually quite so forthcoming. It made her blush, but she wasn’t nearly as startled as Violet herself did. That was weird. Had she not intended to say that?
“Thanks, you’re all right, too.” She barely managed to turn away from her ice cream to sneeze hard, and nearly all over Lucky, who scooted away to avoid her flying germs. She huffed in annoyance, gathering herself before she picked up her spoon again. She could feel this urge to say more on the tip of her tongue, and the more she fought it, the closer she felt to another sneeze.
Finally, the words flew out. “I think about you a l–” There it was, fuck. “All the time,” she admitted, her tone a little aggravated as she reached for a napkin to wipe her face.
Violet should have, by all rights, been horrified at the confession. Some part of her was. And yet, when she opened her mouth, what she said was “Me too. It’s infuriating, really, how much time I spend thinking about you. Like, when I fall asleep, or when I wake up, or when Dorian swears, which is all the time. The other day I saw a street sign with an arrow on it and I thought of you, which is patently insane, Kate, and what the bloody hell is going on.”
This, none of this, was at all normal. She couldn’t stop talking, and the things coming out of her mouth were things she would have never said, even if…
“Kate, I would not say this kind of sappy stuff even if we were together, which for the record, I also think about quite often, and–”
And she had to stop talking. She clamped her mouth shut, only for it to be forced open again by yet another bout of sneezing, which had been entirely unexpected because she’d actually started to feel better during her completely unhinged rant.
This wasn’t how Kate would have wanted this to go down. She had thought about how she felt for Violet for now more than a month straight—all the time, as she’d just confessed totally against her own will—and it was supposed to be nicer, at least. A good part of her had resisted it as hard as she could, though, because she knew Violet didn’t want it. She knew Violet had someone back home that she was still hoping she would see again.
And then there was her own history of relationships here. They’d been good; she’d loved Elsa, then she’d loved Emily, but they were both gone now. So, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to get invested in someone else that could (and with her luck, probably would) disappear at any second. Logically, that was the right way to go, but Kate’s heart had always overruled her logic in these situations, and now didn’t seem to be any different.
Because she should feel bad for saying what she’d said when she knew it wasn’t wanted—except she didn’t. She felt relieved. And when Violet confessed (probably also against her will, too; it felt that way) that she thought about Kate, that she thought about being together, she didn’t want to fight it anymore. Especially because fighting it was only making her feel more and more miserable, and she was here to enjoy ice cream with a girl she liked. Why should that be ruined?
“Vi,” she said, reaching out to put her hand over top of Violet’s, “I really, really like you. I tried not to, because I know you have Maud and you don’t want anyone else, but ever since we came back from whatever space life we were living, everything’s been different. And spending time with you has just… It’s made everything more intense, and I know you don’t want me to, but I have feelings for you. That was why I wanted to spend my birthday just with you. That’s why I wanted to spare you coming to the party with my family because Kamala, and Carol, and Yelena, they knew, and I didn’t want them to harass you when I wasn’t supposed to be feeling that way. But I do, and I don’t think—no, I know I don’t want to change it.”
She had always been a good rambler, and this particular one came with a whoosh of relief. She felt good as new with all of that off her chest, but although the allergy symptoms had eased, the dread crept back in quickly. Hopefully Violet wouldn’t hate her for all of that.
Violet couldn’t help herself; she turned her hand over and took hold of Kate’s. “I do want you,” Violet said. “I don’t know if I should, but I do, and I have for a long time. And I–”
She tried to bite off the rest of the rambling, which only caused another fit of sneezing into her other elbow; she didn’t let go of Kate’s hand.
She looked furious by the time she finally stopped sneezing. “No, dammit,” she said, though it seemed more like she was speaking to the air in general and not Kate. “These are mytruths, and I get to decide when, and to whom, I divulge them to. I will not let them just come spilling out.”
Maybe it would have been easier. The more she tried to fight it, the more her head pounded, and her throat scratched. But she only had one thing in the world, and that was her truth: her history, her secrets, her feelings. They were hers to give out when she chose to, and not because some stupid fucking allergy was going to make her.
“I’m sorry, Kate,” she said. “Can we continue this conversation once all of this has passed? I do want to finish it. Just not like this.”
That, at least, had been entirely true.
Kate’s shoulders sagged, but the hand still holding Violet’s didn’t release, no matter how violently she sneezed and how obviously she was trying to control herself. She wished she wouldn’t. There was an admittance there, the start of something, and Kate wanted to just hear it all. She wanted to hear she wasn’t alone in this and figure out where they stood, what they should do. They were stuck in such an odd place, making what should have probably been a really simple situation into something messy and complicated, and she wanted to undo that.
But she understood what Violet was saying, too. It was weird to feel forced to say things that would usually be held back out of a sense of decency or self-control. Some aspect of it was freeing, but none of this had come out of their own volition, and maybe that wasn’t right or fair. She didn’t want to force Violet to keep talking if she didn’t want to just as much as she wanted to keep hearing everything she felt.
“Okay,” she agreed softly. “Okay, we can talk about something else. Or, uh—if it’s easier, we can just… go. Meet up when all of this has passed.” A beat, then: “As long as you promise we will. We’ll see each other again, and we’ll talk. I don’t want another weird text conversation where we’re talking around everything before we get to the point, and even then it was the wrong point, and–”
Ugh, she couldn’t stop. She stopped herself by reaching for her spoon and cramming a ridiculous amount of ice cream into her mouth to occupy it.
Some of Violet’s anger did melt at that, and the hints of a smile pulled up at the corners of her mouth. “I think it’s best if I leave,” Violet said. “I don’t know what I’m going to be compelled to say. But I promise you, we will talk about this again as soon as this has cleared up. I can’t lie right now, so you know that I’m telling the truth.” She hesitated for a moment, and then brought Kate’s knuckles to her lips, before catching her pinky with her own. “There, I’ve pinky promised, and everyone knows pinky promises are unbreakable.” She sneezed then, once. Some pinky promises were breakable, she supposed, but she didn’t intend to break this one.
Kate let out a muffled laugh before she swallowed that big bite of ice cream. “Pinky promises are unbreakable,” she agreed, curling hers around Violet’s. “So you better follow through, or I’ll come find you and make you face Lucky and his best big puppy eyes.”
“Oh, no, that would be wonderful,” Violet said, considered the word that had came out instead of the one she intended, and grimaced, a little. Reluctantly, she let go of Kate’s pinky. “I don’t think that this will be a bad conversation, by the way,” Violet said. “So you don’t need to spend the next however long worrying about it.” She winked, stood up, and then licked her ice cream suggestively. “Until next time, Kate Bishop,” she said, sultry voiced.