“Alright, here we go.” Kate pulled a tennis ball out of her bag and placed it in Chris’s hand. Lucky sat before them, tongue hanging out as he panted eagerly. He loved playing fetch; it was one of his favorite activities. At the dog park, he had even more space to run around—it was good for him, and Kate thought it was a good excuse to get Chris out of the house, too.
Yelena and Leon were off on another portal adventure. Chris had gone to Catra and Adora’s to stay the last two times, but now that Kate was home and Catra had joined the portal crew, the responsibility had fallen to her. Which was fine! Chris was a good kid, and she adored him, but he clearly worried about his brother, and she couldn’t blame him. He needed a distraction that wasn’t just TV; she had decided this was the best she could provide.
Violet had been coming around to help her in their absence, too. She didn’t necessarily know that she needed help – she could manage three animals and a little boy without too much trouble – but it wasn’t an offer she had turned down. She would take any excuse to be in Violet’s company at any point in time. She always wanted to be around her, talking to her, touching her. It was kind of insane how much she thought about her, and it was hard not to fully act on her feelings. Because she’d promised that they didn’t have to be what they’d been in the space version of Vallo, and she felt like going back on that would cause problems.
But, God, she wanted to.
She probably could have started on the route to solving the problem if she’d at any point started refusing Violet’s company, but she wasn’t that strong. She had even invited Violet to join them at the park and was surprised but happy that she’d decided to join them. She stepped back to keep an eye on Chris and Lucky’s game of fetch and turned a smile her way.
Violet wasn’t entirely sure why she had volunteered to help Kate out. She wasn’t especially fond of children, except to tell them stories – children were always the best audience, never afraid to react shocked or horrified or delighted at whatever twist in the story she told – but she liked watching how Kate interacted with Chris. It made her feel warm inside, though she couldn’t quite explain why.
And besides, Kate’s two adult roommates had gone off to some other world where, if the portals near Morningside were any indication, a great deal of vegetation was trying to kill them. It would probably be best to make sure that she was still getting adult company so she didn’t go mad only having conversations with a nine-year-old.
“I do not know how children and dogs manage to have so much energy just to run around all day,” Violet said. “I’m exhausted just watching them.” Not that she hadn’t been dragged along on her fair share of adventures, and recently. That running around had at least had a purpose.
Kate chuckled, stepped back to slide onto the bench Violet claimed, and sat beside her. “Some of us don’t lose that energy so young,” she teased, sliding a hand over Violet’s shoulder for a playful squeeze. Violet was only twenty-three and talked like an old British lady sometimes—which made Kate adore her all the more—whereas Kate was twenty-five and sometimes felt like she had an endless reserve of energy. “But maybe energy levels were lower back in the olden days, huh?”
“Oh shush. We all had to wear fancy dresses and pretend to be scandalized when people said the word fuck. It’s very exhausting,” Violet said, grinning. Kate probably knew her well enough by now to know that Violet had been the one doing the scandalizing, and not being scandalized. “I will have you know that I have a great deal of energy. I just prefer not to spend it throwing balls.” The look she gave Kate, and her tone of voice, both were heavy with the suggestion of how she preferred to spend her energy, and it was only after the words were out of her mouth that she’d realized her mistake.
She made a conscious effort not to backtrack her comment, because surely doing so would speak far more to the fact that Violet hadn’t been entirely joking than following through would. So, instead, she gave Kate a saucy, overdramatic wink.
“I handle balls as minimally as possible, too,” Kate replied with a big grin of her own. She could be oblivious in her own right sometimes, but flirting was one of her areas. And if Violet wasn’t flirting with her, she’d eat her own foot. “But I was always a sports kind of girl growing up. Mixed martial arts as I got older, but archery throughout. My mom and sisters have always told me I don’t have an off button.”
“Very unladylike, sports,” Violet said. “I think it would have caused an even bigger scandal in my family had I taken one up than when I ran away to America.” Archery probably was acceptable. On the outskirts of acceptable, but still acceptable by society’s standards. But anything involving fighting most certainly would not have been. “Was it just mixed martial arts and archery, or did you do any others?”
“Oh no.” Kate started ticking off on her fingers. “Basketball, fencing, gymnastics, even a little bit of soccer and softball for a while. I always liked being busy.” That had lessened over her time here in Vallo. She liked getting to breathe and taking it easy sometimes. She hadn’t stopped training, but she’d taken breaks and never felt bad about it. “I’ll teach you if you want. Archery or fencing, maybe? Wouldn’t want to pelt you with balls.”
Violet very nearly made a lewd joke at that. She did, in fact, enjoy laying with men nearly as much as she liked laying with women. But it felt like an awkward joke to make with Kate, even if it was the sort of joke that she might have made with any of her other friends, and definitely a joke she would have made to her family to make them uncomfortable.
“Or maybe martial arts?” Violet asked. “Recent events in my old life made me think that it might not be such a bad idea to know how to defend myself.” And Vallo itself seemed like the kind of place where she would put those skills to use more often than not.
“Martial arts,” Kate agreed. “We can start you off with karate, it’s on the easier end of the scale, and we can work up.” After so long training with Natasha for more practical situations than competition, she knew how to break it down for use it in an impromptu fight, too. “Most of the society I know is past the point of giving a shit if we’re ladylike or not, so you might as well enjoy it.”
“Honestly, one of my favourite things about Vallo,” Violet said and tried very hard not to think right after you. She was very nearly successful in avoiding that particular thought. “Even if I do miss how easy it used to be to shock and horrify people.” She smiled at Kate, eyes sparkling. “But good, I’m looking forward to it. I know a little stage combat, but… well, all that is choreographed, so I don’t know how useful it will be.”
“There’s an element of choreography to training, too,” Kate assured her. “So it won’t be as weird for you as you’re probably thinking. You’ll have to lose some of it in an actual fight, but–”
She was suddenly cut off by the smack of a tennis ball against her arm. She cringed, and the opposite hand immediately rose to soothe the spot where a shock of pain rose. She turned to see Chris and Lucky running their way, and her mouth opened, then closed. This was what happened when she wasn’t paying attention.
“Ow,” she huffed with a small laugh. She looked toward Chris. “That’s a really good arm you’ve got there, buddy.”
Chris winced, looking apologetic. “Sorry Kate,” he called. And then, “My brother taught me to throw,” as if that was some sort of excuse. Which, it kind of was. Leon had never pitched when he’d played baseball in high school – he could throw a basketball and a football with some degree of accuracy, but any time he tried to show Chris how to throw a fast ball, or a curve ball, or any other kind of throw with power behind it, the ball did not go where he’d intended it to go.
Violet tried not to seem too relieved at the distraction, if only because it gave her a bit of time to stop imagining Kate grappling with her. “Does it hurt badly?” Violet asked, though she was already cradling a minor healing spell as she leaned over to ask.
“It’s okay,” Kate assured Chris, flashing a smile. It had surprised her, but in the grand scheme of the kind of injuries she’d sustained in her lifetime, this was nothing. It would be forgotten by tomorrow, and she reached out to cover Violet’s hand with her own, recognizing the movements from the illusion she’d shown her at her birthday dinner. “I’m fine, I swear. Who wants smoothies?”
Violet tried very hard to ignore the way her skin tingled where Kate touched her, and resisted the impulse to turn her hand over to catch Kate’s fingers with her own.
“Yeah!” Chris chimed in, which snapped Violet out of… whatever that was.
Violet smiled too, and dropped her hands to smooth her trousers. “Smoothies sound great,” she said, standing. “Lead the way, Chris.”