fandomhighdorms | 5th Floor Common Room, Thursday Afternoon

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5th Floor Common Room, Thursday Afternoon

Kathy had spent much of the morning making a list of all the things about her life that she was going to have to hide from her parents tomorrow when they visited. Sex, powers, Banzai, the island were obvious candidates, of course, but by the time she'd gotten to Raven's abilities, my piercings, Japanese friends, she just couldn't take it anymore. Hiding bits of her life and personality from her family was fine. She was used to that. But having to act like she was ashamed of her friends because her dad was a bigot who couldn't let history go? That was just a line too far.

So, rather than think about her parents at all, Kathy had found the most complicated recipe for strawberry cupcakes she could find, ran to the store for ingredients, and had come to the common room to throw herself into an whirlwind of baking. It was hard to think about, well, anything, when you were trying to made graham cracker crust by hand at the same time you were thickening strawberry filling in a saucepan and beating butter and cream cheese together for frosting.

Normally, she would have tried to distract herself with homework, burying all the things she didn't want to think about under piles of equations, chemical formulae, and essay outlines. It felt good to be doing the same thing with something as frivolous as baking, especially since her parents would have vastly preferred the former. And between snacking on cupcakes (for quality control!) and belting out classic rock, Kathy managed to jolly herself back into a good mood in a fairly short amount of time.

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"That's your one!" Kathy said merrily, picking up a knife to start spreading the frosting around. "Did any of the other cupcakes survive the week, or are they gone already."

That's right, Dante. She'd owed you one.

"Hey, now," Dante said, looking up. (There was frosting all over his mouth. He didn't care.) "You eat fast, but you can't eat all of these. Especially while you're baking."

"No, but I can share them with other friends," Kathy teased. "Or donate them to the Student Council to use over the weekend. Or just hoard them all to myself anyway, just because I can."

She leaned over, swiping some of the frosting off his lip with her thumb and offering it up to him. "Shall I assume this means they're good?"

"So far, so good," Dante allowed.

His eyes darted from Kathy's face to the thumb, then back up. Hey, if she was gonna do that, he couldn't be held responsible for, say, leaning forward and sucking her thumb into his mouth.

That had been the point of her doing it at all, so good on him for picking up on it!

"Mmm," she said, biting her lip. "I mean, good to know. It would suck if I put in all this hard work and they were terrible."

Dante pulled back, tilting his head to consider her. "Nah, it's good," he said. "Though I might have to eat another one just to be sure."

And cover the distance between them by at least one step. For, uh, science.

Of course! Science was very important!

"That's because you wolfed down the first one," Kathy chided. "Forget tasting it, I'm glad you didn't choke." She grabbed another frosted cupcake and held it up to him--though not too far from her. Because of science. Again. Yes. "I'll give you this one as a freebie if you promise to eat it slowly enough to appreciate all the hard work I put into it, huh?"

Kathy had some downright adorable ideas about this stuff. Maybe too many Disney movies growing up, or something. "I promise," Dante said, sounding faintly amused.

Then he plucked the cupcake out of her hands. Adorable Disney ideas, sure, but they were getting in the way of the really important task of bridging the last of that distance. "In a minute."

Acknowledging that someone worked hard on something was not solely the product of Disney movies, Dante! Much like, oh, wearing underwear, it was something that people did!

"Oh?" she asked, eyebrow arching as she looked up at him. "Was there something, Dante?"

"Maybe one thing," Dante mused. "Might have some batter on your face, I'm not sure."

Pressing his mouth to hers would be the perfectly normal way to check, right?

Well, maybe not normal, but it was definitely a very Dante way of checking. And one that Kathy couldn't help but appreciate.

It was also a good thing that Dante had taken the cupcake before kissing her. So she was free to twine her hands in his shirt and tug him a little bit closer still. He tasted sweet, like strawberries and sugar, and Kathy thought this was an excellent reward for a few hours of work.

She could be excused for deciding to nibble on his lower lip, right?

Completely excused, because it was nice. Dante slid his arms around her waist carefully, because he was still holding the cupcake. Didn't want to ruin it.

Took him like five seconds to decide whether he wanted to slip her some tongue in a public common room. At least he was that considerate?

He could be nominated for sainthood at any moment.

She'd been about to tell him that he could put the cupcake down and no one was going to steal it, but then there was tongue and who cared about a damn cupcake anyway? One of her hands let go of his shirt to cup the back of his neck, nails lightly skittering over his skin.

Funny enough, Dante was even better at helping her forget about her incipient family visit than even baking was.

Mmm, the promise of nails.

... was in fact enough to remind him that hey, public common room. Dante pulled back a little. Which is to say he retreated from her mouth and nipped at the side of her neck instead.

"The cupcakes are really nice."

Kathy shivered and hung onto him long enough to make sure she didn't unexpectedly tip over or anything. "Hnnng," she said, intelligently. Licking her lips--which also tasted like frosting now, good show, Dante--she tried again. "Is this your way of buttering me up into sharing more with you?" she asked.

After all, she'd told him on the roof that he'd have to be charm the rest out of her and she hadn't actually specified how.

"I dunno," Dante said thoughtfully. "Did it work?"

"I dunno.." Kathy said, pretending to think. "After all, you already got one free cupcake out of me. Maybe I should be more careful about how easily I give away the rest."

"Or maybe you like giving me cupcakes," Dante suggested merrily. He leaned in and nipped at her bottom lip, in a late kind of retaliation.

The nails on his neck dug in harder at the bite. He did know what she liked and it wasn't exactly cupcakes.

"For that," she said, voice husky, "You can have a third."

Dante groaned softly at the slight sting in his neck. "Sweet," he said, smirking.

Then he slipped out of her grasp, and rolled his shoulders. "I'm liking this you."

Now if only they stopped meeting in places like this. Ah, well.

Funny how most of their interactions were in public. Oops?

"This me?" Kathy asked. "Are there so many of me, then? And--what? You're not fond of the others?"

"The others are all right," Dante said. Which in his general vocabulary of non-effusiveness was basically the same as being fond of them. "But you just going for what you want? That's peak Kathy."

"See, it's a pity you don't hang out with Banzai more," Kathy said, grabbing an unfrosted cupcake to start hollowing it out so she could add the strawberry compote to it. "That's when I find it the easiest to go for what I want. And I'm far more inclined to take it, rather than asking politely."

She shook her head. "And god only knows what you would have thought of me if you'd met me when I first showed up. Or even a year ago, really."

All of her assertiveness was a pretty new development.

Hey, he'd scored another free cupcake, so Dante was going to pick one up before he responded. "Banzai's got weird ideas about running around in rainbows," he said. "This is hotter."

He took a bite of the cupcake.

"Douchebag Dad got you that bad, huh?"

Yeah, that was his name now, Kathy. Deal with it.

"I--I was just a shy kid," Kathy said, shrugging. "Shy and quiet and nerdy. I just had to outgrow that a bit."

And the fact she'd done all that outgrowing here, outside of her parents' influence and in only a few years?

...Dammit, even Kathy couldn't make a good argument for it being purely coincidental.

"Maybe I just meant you'd like me better now just because my skirts are a lot shorter." Or maybe Kathy was using a joke to deflect. WHO KNEW?

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