The Apartment Above Luke's, Saturday

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After a big day outside - playgrounds! puppies! snow! - Katherine had come back to the place where she'd woken up and had promptly fallen asleep, all tuckered out by her adventures. Now she was awake again and hungry. The only cereal in the house was a sugar cereal, which she wasn't supposed to have and she wasn't allowed to use the stove without adult supervision.

But there didn't seem to be an adult in the whole house! Just her. That was funny. Who had a house with nobody in it?

She took a shower in the pretty bathroom and got dressed, figuring maybe she could find somewhere to eat. And another funny thing - she found a twenty dollar bill tucked away in the exact place she hid money back home: hidden in a pencil box in the top drawer of the desk. She painstakingly wrote out an IOU and put it there, and then sat down to plan her day.

First, breakfast. Then...puppies again, maybe?

[Open! Dante's thread chronologically last]

Comments

[rebelseekspizza]

"At least twenty-five?" Dante said. "They have the fancy Italian shit too, c'mon, let's take a look."

He pushed open the door. "Yo, Eric, what's up?"

The middle-aged blond man by the counter looked up... and beamed immediately. "Dante," he said, "You got your niece visiting or something?" She was adorable!

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Katherine ducked her head and blushed. She liked being thought of as his niece, not his job for the weekend. She wasn't sure how they would be related, since she was Korean and he was maybe-but-probably-not Italian, but it was fun to think of.

She reached up and held his hand again.

[rebelseekspizza]

Limbo City was a diverse place; Eric assumed she might be mixed-race.

"Definitely family," Dante said merrily. "The lady wants some ice cream."

"Lucky for her, I've got some," Eric said, tapping the display with the different flavors. "What do you want, sweetheart?"

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Katherine looked at all the flavors with wide eyes. Gone were the familiar matcha and red bean and green tea and in their place were so many more. "Oh, umm, I'm not sure," she said quietly, wishing she could try them all.

She wasn't even sure how many she was allowed to have, and didn't want to ask in case the assumption she was getting more than one was rude.

"A vanilla?"

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"A vanilla," Dante echoed, nodding at Eric. "And...?"

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"I can have more?" Katherine asked, excited to have something besides dumb old vanilla. "Umm...what's your favorite?"

[rebelseekspizza]

"Strawberry, but people say that's boring too," Dante said brightly. "Anyway, pick as many as you want, it's cool."

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"If you like it, I don't think it's boring," Katherine said, looking at his leather jacket again. She tugged on his sleeve and whispered, "Can I try some flavors first, maybe?"

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Dante shrugged. "Can the lady have a taster?"

That earned him a laugh from Eric, who nodded, making a big show of reaching down to produce... a tiny spoon.

"Which one would the lady want to try first?" he asked.

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Katherine pointed at the bright green of pistachio and then the deep maroon of the cherry garcia. "I like the colors," she confessed. "Bright colors are pretty, aren't they?"

[rebelseekspizza]

"Super pretty," Dante agreed, nodding. "Fantastic choices."

Eric leaned over the counter, holding out a spoon full of bright green for her. "There you go."

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Katherine carefully took the spoon, standing up on her tippy toes to reach over the counter. "Mmmm!" she said, as soon as the spoon touched her tongue. "It's so good! Have you ever tried this one?"

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"No," Dante said, shaking his head while Eric prepared another tiny spoon. "Is that a mistake? Should I fix that?"

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Katherine nodded vigorously, then reached for the next one. "We can try them all together!" she suggested, forgetting to whisper. "And decide the best ones."

[rebelseekspizza]

Eric looked terribly amused as he passed the cherry garcia to her.

"How about you do the taste testing and just tell me what I need to get?" Dante said, grinning. "I trust you."

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"But don't you wanna try new things?" Katherine asked. "How will you find new things you like?"

[rebelseekspizza]

"I mean, through you, my official taste-tester," Dante told her solemnly. "Which is a big responsibility."

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"But what if I like something that you don't like?" Katherine asked, all wide-eyed again with the vast responsibility.

...You know, Dante. Like a vegetable.

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"I think I'll survive," Dante said, thinking about it. "But I don't think that'll happen."

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"If, umm, if you're sure," Katherine said, straightening her shoulders to bear up under this new responsibility. "Which ones haven't you tasted so I can start with those?"

Okay, well, first the cherry garcia before it melted all over her. "This one is also good," she reported. "It had a little bit of cherry in it!"

She looked around. "Do you, umm, do you have a paper and a pencil?" she asked.

Look, you needed to write this stuff down. That's what made it science!

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante blinked. Then he let out a laugh. "Fuck, you're Kathy, of course you want that," he said.

He threw Eric a desperate look while he dug into his pockets. "Uh, I have a pen in here?" he said, offering it to her.

"How about a napkin?" Eric suggested, plucking one out of the dispenser and holding it out.

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Katherine didn't understand what Mr. Babysitter was laughing at. Of course she was herself, who else would she be?

"Thank you," she said gravely to the ice cream man, though she wasn't sure how useful one napkin was. There were lots of flavors to try out! But maybe she should only do a few anyway.

She pointed at a few more and studiously taste-tested each one. "That one is too busy," she said, pointing at the rocky road. "It doesn't know what to be. Fudge ripple and chocolate chip are both okay, but ripple is better."

Turned out she had a lot of opinions. Who knew?

[rebelseekspizza]

"Have you figured out which ones you want on your cone yet?" Dante asked, watching the whole thing with a small smile on his face.

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"Oh!" Katherine said, glancing up from her napkin that was practically indecipherable with her childish scrawl over both sides. "I forgot all about that."

She was actually a little full from all the samples the nice ice cream man was letting her have.

"I think the best combination would be..." She consulted her notes again. "The pistachio - " almost how it was pronounced, kiddo, good job " - and the strawberry, with the double fudge to finish up."

[rebelseekspizza]

"You heard the girl," Dante said solemnly, looking up at Eric. "Two of those, stat."

The guy laughed as he went to get two cones and started scooping.