2025-01-31 - Faceplanting in the Park

[TXT to Katrin] Viktor: hey loser

[TXT to Katrin] Viktor: get your board

[TXT to Viktor] Katrin: right now?

[TXT to Viktor] Katrin: cause i could do right now.

[TXT to Katrin] Viktor: yeah right now

[TXT to Katrin] Viktor: we're going to the skate park

[TXT to Viktor] Katrin: sure! just lemme get ready and i'll be good to go. 😀

[TXT to Katrin] Viktor: meet you downstairs in....?

[TXT to Viktor] Katrin: 20?

[TXT to Katrin] Viktor: 20 it is

Twenty minutes later, Viktor has made it downstairs to the building lobby. Given the warm weather, the blissfully sunny day, he hasn't bothered with a coat--no, not even after all the times he's given Kat a hard time about buying a real one for herself instead of continually ending up wearing his. (Because if she's cold, he's going to offer. Of course he's going to offer. He's also going to complain about it.)

Nah, he's in jeans and a plain black hoodie, layered over a gray thermal. And sneakers, obviously. The man's wearing his Vans--which have seen better days and are probably due for replacement soon--like they're part of a uniform. He's apparently started skating Welcome decks at some point, since the brilliant blue jackalope splashed against a red and white background is recognizable as one of their recurring designs. Unlike his shoes, the deck must be pretty new. It's scraped up in only a few places, with the art still mostly easy to make out.

With both hands in use to blast off a message to someone somewhere that isn't Kat, since her phone doesn't ping as he types, he's left to grip the jerky he's in the middle of eating just by keeping his teeth clamped down on it, half of it stuffed into his cheek, half of it sticking out of his mouth, unchewed. Must be the last piece. The packaging is nowhere to be seen.

Twenty-seven minutes.

Katrin ends up being late - but it isn't by too long, at least. And when the elevator dings to unleash her upon Viktor at ground level, she does take those initial steps out of the confines of the compartment at a hurry. Her hair is done up in a long, loose braid today. Likely one of the better choices for getting up to some skating. And held by the trucks in her left hand, hefted nearly to her shoulder is her board. Birds of many feathers, whether roosting, landing, or taking off from some unseen surface litter the pale black, scratched maple surface of what is not just a longboard - but a longboard with a freestyle, dancing deck. It's a far cry from what she used to ride, but some of her interests shine through.

She's in her slip-on VANS, some black thermal leggings, and a cropped hoodie that's likely letting in more cold air than it's insulating warm. But there's been some effort made to compromise with the mild winter of the park, at least. And the hem of the hoodie nearly reaches the waistband of her leggings, even. On the front of the hoodie, in sketched white text are the words 'Re: morse' over a sequence of dots and dashes in the same typeset.

"Pretty confident I was gonna be awhile - not to bring enough snack for two," she teases in greeting, with a nod of her chin toward the jerky held captive by his teeth the way that a cat might carry their litter. But her attention goes to the board soon enough, and she dips her head to get a good look at the art on it before she smiles in what seems to be appreciative review.

Viktor fires off his last message, then shoves his phone in his pocket. He has to, because he needs to tear off the end of the jerky he's snacking on before saying anything. The end hanging out of his mouth is too much, even if he is willing to talk around the bit still tucked into his cheek. "When," he accuses her, both of his eyebrows lifting slowly upwards towards his currently visible hairline. "Have you ever been on time for anything in your entire life?"

There's a bit of a huff that follows and then he silently offers her that chomped off end, chipotle lime flavored as it is. Sure, he's just been holding the edge of it in his teeth and yeah, that's honestly kind of gross, but there's also something that's casually and carelessly intimate about it, too. Like they've shared enough of everything over the years, from toys to top-secret 'secrets', from Christmas cookies to crushes, from hobbies to a horrible case of chickenpox, that he's assumed she won't really care. Besides, she's teasing him, however gently, about not sharing. And he's learned the hard way that the easiest way to get her to stop teasing him is to give her what she wants. Just ignore the gloating that follows. It's fine. This is fine.

He spends the next few seconds in silence, simultaneously chewing and taking a long look at her longboard. Dancing decks? They're huge. But it's only after he's swallowed what may or may not be his last bite down that he says, "Jesus, Kat. That thing is almost as tall as you are. You drive your kids to daycare drop-off on that beast?"

"Plenty - just took losing a few gigs for it to start to become a trend," Katrin retorts, on the subject of being on time. It's self-deprecating, but only in the slightest of ways; taking that minor dig at her own acknowledged habit toward tardiness that certainly predates her move out west (save for when her time was in the hands of her parents or teachers; and even then, not as a given). "And concert tickets - I'm absolutely way early for those. You've never seen me up at the crack of dawn getting ready for a presale." Which would be online, in most cases. But she's still counting it.

She takes the offered jerky before she even realizes that she's doing it. She looks to her right hand and the freshly gnawed hunk of seasoned and salted meat, batting her dark eyelashes from some blinks of processing. Then? She takes a bite. Just a small bite, with a jerk of her jaw to tear off a chunk with her front teeth while her lips are drawn back; a provision that probably helps prevent her from adding her pale pink lipstick to the meal. She's equally unbothered, given the way her smile inflates into that predicted smug smirk, holding her chin high as she intakes her weekly dose of sodium with some chipotle lime. She hoists her longboard for Viktor to get a good, proper look at it when she catches him checking it out.

"Seen girls nosedive off of stages," she quips back before swallowing, on the size of her board. After she does, she continues, "And west coast tricks deserve a lot of stage." It's not really a Californian quality, that tendency toward the performative. She had plenty of that before she left. Before she got caught up in a different cultural filter and spat out the other end as a kind of coastal hybrid. She shrugs as she lets the end of the board rest on the ground, and gives a more appropriate response of, "Longboard is a lot more fun out at Venice beach. Even if there are proper skate parks to hit along the way."

"Never been," Viktor says. Then blinks a few times, considering. "Never been west of the Rockies, actually. Kind of funny, considering Mama and Tato hauled me off to Ukraine for two summers before I turned eighteen. Made it three right after graduation." He means from college, not from high school, but that may or may not be obvious, given that he didn't clarify. He only shrugs, like he's honestly not sure whether it's strange or sensible that he's traveled almost half the world away, yet never really seen much in the way of the coasts of his own country.

"I did think about it, though. Take a job out at Boeing out in Renton, see if I could get Coffman to transfer me out to Seattle or Oakland. Even applied at Disney, actually, before I settled here," he continues, vaguely distracted as he considers the bird pattern on her board, bright blue eyes tracing the lines of their wings. "Ended up in Atlanta, of all places, for about two years." It's a gap he's filling in, all that information--the desire to wander, despite the fact that he's only one state away from where he spent almost his whole life. The fact that he actually, however briefly, for whatever reason.

But then he shakes his head, as if trying to clear out the cobwebs of memory. Or as if realizing he's rambling, sharing more than he meant to say. A lopsided smile touches only one side of his mouth. His chin lifts towards the door, to outside beyond it, presumably to the skate park. "I'm gonna roll you home on that if you wipe out in the half-pipe. You know that, right?"

"It's weird - the way that lines on a map can feel like walls, or a cage. But the further you get from where you started, the more and more negligible the act of passing through them feels," Katrin muses, curiously pleasant in tone. "It's when you're home - or close to it - that they start to feel tangible." She readjusts the truck-in-hand to her shoulder to put the weight of the board there, rather than just on her wrist. But she props it up in a way that the deck's artwork is still displayed alongside her. She noticed Viktor looking, and doesn't seem keen on robbing him of this opportunity to scrutinize.

"You'll have to tell me about the Ukraine - Atlanta too. Family vacations were usually about beaches and ski hills; not heritage and work," she admits. When she had a family to vacation with, that is. But the context with which she says it seems distant enough that this isn't a self-deployed tripwire to get tangled up in. It's an off-hand observation of the contrasts, of where they're lives has taken them and what opportunities used to exist. She lifts both eyebrows in open curiosity regarding those stated locales - Disney, Oakland, Seattle, and Renton. It's here she hesitates as she follows his gesture toward the door. If she gets to it first, she'll open it with her right shoulder and let Viktor through with her - if he gets to it first, she'll hurry out after him.

"You were pretty dead set on the west coast, huh?" she asks, pulling the band-aid in the least patient way. "At least for awhile."

But she segues into the follow up of his critique with a cocking of her head, back and to the side and with both eyebrows going up instead of just the one. "That's another plus to it - I'll be rolling back in comfort. Plenty of room to lie down," she answers, with a teasing quality of 'isn't it obvious?' to her tone.

"Mostly I was set on the northwest. Oakland was a fallback if Seattle wasn't an option. Disney was a lark when I saw them hiring for the same job I have here, and the chance to work somewhere that I wouldn't have to sit in an office more days than not," Viktor answers. He even says it easily enough to believe that it's true. Probably because it is. Did she factor in somehow? Maybe. Maybe not. If she did, it may have been some unconscious tug in the back of his brain, something he wasn't thinking on with any real clarity of intent. After all, only two of those cities are in California. And California is a very, very big state.

He actually laughs for a second, this quick, quiet chuckle that comes from him before asking, "Did you know that there are seventy-one streets in Atlanta that are named Peachtree or have it in the name somehow? Peachtree Drive. Peachtree Lane. Peachtree Center. West Peachtree Drive. Peachtree Valley Road. New Peachtree Road." There's a cant of his head. A sort of conspiratorial look. It's obvious; not only does Viktor consider this absurd, it's beyond absurd. Surely the sign of deranged minds among both the city government and the residents who tolerated this affront to anything remotely logical, nevermind actually trying to navigate whenever someone indicated 'Peachtree' with an address number and no other context. "And besides, it was too damn hot."

Disney probably would've been a poor choice with that complaint, though at least Los Angeles doesn't get sticky the way the South does. Maybe it's for the best he ended up in Michigan. Especially since she did, too. Eventually.

When they reach the door, he lets her shoulder it open, but quickly thrusts an arm out, palm flat against the smooth surface, to keep it open while she's got her longboard held awkwardly over her shoulder like that.

"Think you'd like Seattle," Katrin decides, of all the places that Viktor listed. After Viktor reaches to hold the door open for her, she backpedals out, away from the building to face him as she talks. "It's all jeans, hoodies, flannels, and beanies. And you look pretty decent in all of the above-" she notes, trailing off like she's pondering something before she takes another bite from the chunk of beef jerky in her right hand. This time she goes through all the process of chewing and swallowing before returning to the subject, and by then, she has her board laid out on the ground with its birds set to face the earth for the time being. She sets her right foot on the grip-tape, just to place it - like she's Captain Morgan with the shortest barrel of shitty spiced rum to conquer. "You'd just have to get used to the wet kind of snow. Doesn't get as cold - but you need twice as many layers."

She looks doubtful at first, on the subject of just how many streets can claim the same name in Atlanta until Viktor goes about naming a few of them. "Google Maps would go wild there," she determines, after some assessment and a gentle nod. "Telling you to take the next right off of Peachtree, onto Peachtree, on your way to Peachtree. It'd be like getting caught in one of those old highway ghost stories. The ones where the same stretch of road just keeps happening again and again. At least until you sort out what's going on."

The instances of Peachtree almost certainly do not intersect each other. But she seems rather attached to the surreal quality of if they did - rather than the reality of the thing. "And no such thing." As 'too damn hot' she must mean. But that could just be the mild winter poking at her exposed midriff speaking.

"Always wanted to do Ibiza. Amsterdam. Vienna. Tokyo. Made a collage of them once, like that was gonna help me decide which to do before college," she admits, with a little snort of amusement.

"Peachtree Street, Peachtree Place, and Peachtree Center Avenue all intersect around Hardy Ivy Park, right in front of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus," Viktor informs her, in response to that skeptical look, to her theorizing of the existence of some strange liminal space on the streets of Atlanta where Peachtree becomes Peachtree becomes Peachtree. "I'm convinced that if you stand on that street corner at midnight, prick your finger, and spin backwards, you can open a portal straight to hell." The words are delivered in a complete and utter deadpan, though he's not entirely humorless. There's still that lopsided half-smile on his face as he stares down at her, brows lifted as if daring her to challenge the validity of his storytelling.

(Or maybe to defend whoever in the streets department approved that, because really?)

His own board gets dropped down to the sidewalk with a toss down to one of the top of his feet, which rises to meet it. He hooks it in against his ankle, then flips it once so it lands on the concrete wheels down and without too much clatter. It frees up his hands to reach into his hoodie, pulling out the aforementioned beanie. He wasn't wearing it inside, so it may be tempting to think it's only to keep off the chill, but there's a second where he adjusts the black knit fabric so that it's pulled down low enough to cover his hair, the nubs that seem an awful lot like the beginning of horns, and even his forehead and his temples where the skin looks more like scales, hiding almost all of it away.

It's like she's allowed to see it now, but not anyone else. Not yet. Not if he can help it. Unfortunately, it won't do a damn thing to cover up the faint sheen to his skin once they step out of the shadow of the building, but it's a start.

A beat later, he's looking over to her, that brow he's got half-covered furrowing. "You ever pick one? A city you wanted to end up in?"

"Would've been better if it were a strip club at all the intersections of peach - but I'm pretty sure churches are a cash heavy business too, when the collection plate starts going around," Katrin observes, with an absent air of 'what do you know?' coupled with a hint of amusement. A hint that grows into something more potent, at the deadpan delivery of just what happens at that street corner at midnight. Her face lights up when her laughter isn't something she produces for the sake of someone else - for the sake of tricking them into thinking this way or that about her. The corners of her eyes crinkle, and her cheekbones press upward as she squints. At the other end of it, she shakes her head and plays along. "Guess the pits of stone fruit were just allegory for the pit of hell all along."

She watches Viktor as he puts on his beanie, with a curious tilt of her head that gets all the more accentuated by the points of those keebler ears. But she doesn't comment and she doesn't tease. She even does him the favour of looking ahead, out from the nose of her board in the direction of where she'd figured she'd seen the park. And amidst her mirth, she looks somehow introspective; deep in thought as she settles down from laughter, with the loose braid of her long hair slung forward over her shoulder. She could just as well be at the head of a ship, looking toward points unknown - to further stress the metaphor of bargain rum labels.

"Lost track of where I wanted to go, when it became 'where I'd rather be,'" she admits. "And eventually? I think that became an impatience just to be wherever came next. Though-" She tends toward a softer smile here, when she turns her eyes back to Viktor. It's not a sorrowful expression she gives him, but a warm one. Like she hasn't been asked anything like this in some time - at least not in a way that isn't so surface level. "Never lost the idea of spending a long time somewhere with sandy beaches and warm, swimmable water." She likely had that much in California. "Where I don't speak the language, and I'm far enough from the city that no one local speaks mine. Could just be whoever I wanted to be, whenever I wanted to be it."

She pauses on the thought, before deeming the idea, "Vacation-ception."

It's about the worst time possible for him to look over at her, because it also happens to be about the best time possible--a chance to catch the sight of her while she's laughing like that. Honestly. Earnestly. Openly. Not that sly laughter that she's slathered across her face like a coating of too-thick stage makeup in the Spookeasy, in the building lounge, even for some of the walk through the tunnels of the Boo'edwalk. The real thing that brightens up her whole face and makes her eyes light with something besides mischief.

It's a realization that hits him like a punch right to the gut, how badly he wants to hear her laugh like that again. How badly he wants her to laugh like that for him. How he'd kis--

There's an uneven hitch in his breath, like it's been knocked right out of him, at the last. Because it's Kat. It's Kat and he's not supposed to be thinking anything like that. Not about her, anyway.

Viktor colors faintly, a red that starts in his neck, then creeps up into his face, even the tips of his ears. But fortunately for him, the last of that list is currently covered by his beanie. And the rest of it? The rest of it is probably just a trick of the light, some strange effect of his skin having that slightly burnished look to it when he stands in bright light. Yeah. That's it's. That's definitely it. Just the weirdly shiny skin, bouncing the bright light of a sunny day back off his face.

"Well," he says. "There's a sandy beach about a five minute walk that way." He turns--convenient, if only for a few short seconds--to point in the direction of the water. Which is in most directions, really. It's just a question of how long they feel taking to get there. "And the water is weirdly warm, though it's only warm for 'Michigan in winter'. I can't do too much about the locals speaking English, though. Sorry, KitKat." There's a wry smile plastered to his face as he says that last, like he's making some half-hearted joke about being responsible for the weather on the islands, the existence of the islands themselves.

Or like he's clinging to that old nickname as reminder not only of where it is they are, but who it is he's talking to. His best friend. Friend. Just a friend. Yeah. Same old KitKat she's always been.

Katrin draws her foot to and fro, guiding the longboard minutely like someone playing with a toy truck and too little track. It's a repetitive gesture, but one that doesn't indicate any clear momentum or restlessness, as the rest of her body language and the projected warmth of her expression, even as she turns introspective, indicates that she's happy right where she is. Maybe that motion is for warmth, for what kinetic energy and muscle movement will do for them both while they're on their way to make a mild winter day feel more like autumn.

Does she notice the hitch? The hesitancy? That flush of warmth that recolours the surface of Viktor's skin in a way that might just be the scattering of shades of light against flesh? Only fractionally - and likely only that pause initially that discounts the topic that had made her laugh, in favour of her vague dream vacation; retitled with the theme of a movie has no experience with beyond that dated meme. The curious tilt of her head keeps, complete with the pointed accentuated of her outward angled ears. There's curiosity in that expression. But where she verbally digs is into what else is said.

She swivels her regard toward the beach that's indicated, taking the heat of his face (in a sense) as she looks out toward the water and the reference to sand. When the swirling maelstrom of gray on gray that is her eyes finds their way back to Viktor, there's a lift of her chin instead, pointed in amused critique of his alternative suggestion. "Well, if it gets even warmer by summer, it'll have to do," she decides, with faux seriousness and a lofty air that's put on entirely for effect. "We'll just have to substitute the cultural experience with, like, I don't know-" she squints a little. Like she needs to search her mind for what might serve in a pinch.

"-a dedicated palm-frond waving Viktor. You can lotion up my back, feed me grapes, and shade my eyes or whatever whenever I want to read something." Luxuriating in some royal - or imperial - levels of service, with no notions of recompense. Why Viktor would have to fill in for cultural amenities, she doesn't say. What logic there is behind it, is clearly just her own.

Viktor cocks a single brow at her at that description. The snorts as she stretches it out into her vision of receiving the royal treatment thanks to him. "The 'cultural experience' consists of laying around on a beach where you don't actually have to talk to any other people?," he asks, obviously skeptical of this claim. "Sounds less like a cultural experience and more like hoping the rest of the world fucks off for a few weeks, if you ask me." Which she didn't but when has that ever stopped him from voicing an opinion?

Well, to her, anyway.

"It is nice to have the beach, though," he admits, still considering the water. Or at least the general direction of it. "Barbecues and parties out there more weeks than not, when summer hits. And even on the 'nots', you can still lay out there, soak up some sun while you'd doing whatever. Reading a book. Having a beer. Watching the boats. Watching the people. It's the kinda thing that reminds me, on the days I miss Chicago, of all the days that I don't."

There's a few seconds there where his skeptical expression turns to something a little more thoughtful, a little more pensive, at his own recollections of home and what he may or may not miss. But then he shakes his head like that might clear that thought away, instead finally turning to look back to her. The flush is starting to fade back out of his faintly freckled face as he adds, "I'll bring some grapes for you, though. If you ask me nicely, instead of just making the snacks my problem."

"Just the parts of it that think they know me," Katrin retorts, far too easily. It's a half-form of agreement, compromising toward something closer to the truth on both ends. "And the parts of it I've known," she adds. There's an edge of something humorous to her words - self-amused and teasing at her own expense in some minor way. But there's introspection weaved into her words to an even greater extent. It makes the segue that much more natural when she goes from quips to reciting poetry from an author who predeceased her birth.

"Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason, you sing," she recites, in a purposely casual way that does little to hide just how much she loves the words she's sharing. " For no reason, you accept the way of being lost," she pauses on this line-end, giving in emphasis with a breath. "Cutting loose from all else and electing a world - where you go where you want to." She doesn't share the whole poem. But she hesitates where she stops, like there might be too heavy a feeling somewhere in the later stanzas. Too much feeling for what is a pleasantly freeing day.

"Well - I wasn't planning on going anywhere," she decides, swapping tones back to casual, slightly teasing conversation. "Aside from Easter with the Klymenkos, I mean," she corrects, with a dip of her chin before he can get to making that correction for her. "So, I guess I'll get to see what all of that gets to be like; and maybe be a bit of Chicago for you not to miss, on this side of the shore." Even though she hasn't spent more than a couple of weeks in Chicago since she moved a way; just a frantic return, and a panicked acceptance of a job opportunity to take her back away from it.

That dip of her chin turns to something more sky, though, as she smirks when she brings it back up. A backward-sideways tilt of her head that sizes him up. "Didn't think you were the type of guy to make a girl beg, Lil' Viki," she muses, absolutely twisting his words on the matter of snacks. But she does give him some reprieve, as she swivels to have the regard of her shoulders match that of the nose of her board. Ready to get a move on.

It's his turn to tilt his head, when she recites those lines of poetry. He doesn't say anything, doesn't interrupt her, but his brows do pull together, his forehead creasing as he tries to place them and fails. Yeah, he definitely doesn't recognize it, whatever it's from, whoever wrote it. Despite reading broadly, poetry doesn't often find its way into the pile of paperbacks readily available in the library and doesn't seem to be on the shortlist of things he actively pursues outside of the realm of what's free and readily available.

That means he doesn't have the context for the heavier stanzas that follow or where they may lead. And if he has anything to say on the parts he's heard, it's cut off by her comment about going home with him for Easter, still several months off.

"It's mostly too much food and too many people giving you too many opinions you didn't ask for," he warns her. "My mom is still asking when you're going to call her, though. I think she's starting to suspect you're a figment of my imagination. Like I've been too far away from home for too long and I've started hallucinating you showing up in random places." Blue eyes roll, exactly the sort of way he's doubtlessly been warned will get stuck like that, permanently staring into the back of his own skull. "Obviously a sign I need move back home, for good this time. Eat more borscht. Go to Mass. Marry a nice Ukrainian girl."

At which point, he reaches out to snatch up part of her braid where it rests on her shoulder and give it a bit of a tug, like they're five or something. "One who'll hopefully think 'please' and 'thanks' aren't begging, instead of just bitching at me when I don't automatically hand over half of my fries that she definitely said she didn't want." He even pulls a stupid face at her as he does it.

And with that, he plants one foot on his skateboard, using his back foot to give himself one, two, three good pushes before he picks it up and goes sailing down the street, leaving her to catch up.

Katrin was heavy into poetry - writing it, reading it, reciting it to her bedroom ceiling - when she was still enrolled in her performing arts focused school. It's not that it was what she was known for. The talents that got her special attention had everything to do with her singing, and little to do with the privately held passion for arranging words both within and without the lyrical forms of music. It's hard to say how much she stuck with it in the time since, but she's held onto what she knows hard enough that reciting a full stanza from memory makes her knowledge seem no less fresh.

"So, I do remember Easter dinners accurately. Glad to know I won't need a refresher," she notes. Like what she has attended as more guest or revenant than family on the west coast hasn't been anything comparable. But it might be just that - the weight of history and its implied tolerance for the opinions of relatives one can't just, typically, ghost. "Pretty sure it's me that sees shit. You're getting our magical lines crossed," she adds, at the notion that she might just be a figment of his imagination - or a revenant in more ways than just the one. "Pretty sure me calling won't take the heat off you, unfortunately. I'm one of those 'bad' Ukrainian girls," she teases, as well. But, even with all the opportunity in her retorts to simply sidestep the issue, she promises, "I'll give her a call soon." With the necessary caveat for levity of, "Maybe a video call. Show off all the new ink."

She doesn't expect the hair pulling, though. Or, rather, the tug of her braid from her shoulder that redirects her jawline and chin minutely back as pale pink lips part for a surprised gasp followed by a scoff of accusation. "Into making girls beg and pulling their hair," she observes, playing up an exasperated tone. As he goes, she calls after him, "I'd hate to tell Mama Klymenko that a bad girl is exactly what her son deserves!" As if she has any room to talk. She can't help but smirk at the hit of familiar mischief and just how easy it feels, before she pushes off.

It takes her a couple extra pushes to get that elongated extra weight of her board into motion, but once it has that momentum, the well-cared for bearings do the bulk of the work in sliding her forward - balanced effortlessly at the center of the grip tape doing a whole lot less upkeep as she straightens up to stretch, and to redirect that long braid back behind her, off of her shoulder.

Viktor doesn't say anything, at least not at first. With as long as his legs are, those three pumps of one of them has him far enough ahead of her that she might not hear him, anyway. So what does he do? He flips her off, instead. So much for please, thanks, and generally being polite.

But being that far behind him, having to catch up, does give her a good vantage point.

Viktor moves differently than he used to. He has to, honestly. It's not so much a question of a gangly kid growing out of his awkward stage, when he was more comfortable on a board or a pair of skates, though that's definitely part of it. It's the simple fact that, being so much taller than he once was, having packed on so much muscle, his whole center of gravity has shifted from where it once was. It's obvious even in crisp, clean movements like watching him pop off one curb and back up onto another, the way he leans into a curve, how his balance changes as he swerves around a trio of pedestrians that wouldn't hear him coming up behind them until it's too late to move. Lil' Viki may be cruising the streets of Crescent Isle as smoothly and as easily as he cruised the streets of Chicago--probably even moreso, without the potholes and the ice slicks and the cars to contend with, honestly--but he's not Lil' Viki anymore.

And the fact that she's not the same old KitKat, barely a board length behind him?

Yeah. Yeah, it takes him about two blocks to realize that, looking back over his shoulder to see where she is in relation to him. He doesn't stop when he does; with the momentum he has, it'd be an ugly, sudden stumble down from his deck to a bit of cobblestone, but he does slow, letting some of his speed fade naturally. It's when she's in obvious earshot that he looks back again, just a flick of his eyes to ensure he doesn't crash into anything or worse, anyone, before he calls out, "Gotta break Mama's heart sometime! I already did."

Wait. Break his mother's heart about.... what, exactly? Despite the untold story about the fire extinguisher and drunken physics experiments, despite the dirty jokes he cracked at her under the Boo'edwalk,he doesn't really give off bad boy vibes. Almost exactly the opposite: honest, hardworking, has a good education, got himself a decent paying job, calls home on Sundays and sometimes even in between. It's just the skateboard and the beat up sneakers to go with it that suggest he may not be every inch The Good Son his family raised him to be.

So what the hell's he talking about?

Katrin picks up speed and she keeps it. What the longboard loses in maneuverability, it gains in the maintenance of acceleration - especially with how the board tilts - or wobbles, when she sets her foot to an outside edge, twisting the trucks to initiate a turn with minimum drag. It's that same wobble that often sends uninitiated novices into faceplants and wipeouts on the asphalt, not expecting requisite for conscious balance that comes with working a longboard; especially a dancing board.

This speed gives her front row seats to what Viktor can do with a skateboard, like that sharp swerve that allows him to thread the needle around pedestrians that she circumvents with pressure from her right foot to the right side of her board - then onto the left with her left. Her long braid swings pendulously behind her, and the tips of her elongated ears take on the mild winter air with so much less insulation than what her more human ears had given her, beforehand. It's a sensation that might warrant some adjustment. But what she's adjusting to, presently, is Viktor.

It's difficult not to notice the changes she has already clearly accounted for, like his height, and his fit, broad shouldered frame. But it's one thing to notice, and another thing to see a body in motion; how much power a calf can produce, tensing with a foot on the ground only to shoot back and propel him forward. The shifting of his shoulders with his intended trajectory. The angle that his hips takes if he has to get low, and what that does to his-

She squints. There's no self-chastisement for the train of her thoughts. But there is a recognition of when these thoughts pull themselves along, catching even her off guard. It takes his words to break that internal processing of her altered order of operations. "Find that hard to believe," she retorts. "Hair-pulling and making girls beg, aside. You're, like-" She ponders on just the right phrasing as she lets herself take the lead, letting momentum push her onward as she instead changes modes into some fancy footwork. Just a little bit of walking on her board to overlap her opposite shoe with every step like she's tight roping with a strut, putting a bit of hoola into her hips.

The movement initiates that aforementioned wobble, letting the longboard lose some speed rather than overtaking Viktor's own any further. Instead, her trajectory takes on a wave pattern, sliding side to side with her stepping until she simply stands on her board and continues. "The Chicago success story. And the sweetest bit of sugar in the kitchen." A good guy, she means - the best, even.

Longboarding? It's not exactly unheard of in Chicago. Not even close to unheard of, in a city so big and so densely populated, and with so many people streaming in from other towns, other cities, the far coasts. But even so, it's more of a West Coast thing, especially the board dancing. So he's watching her. Of course he's watching her, and it's not just the swivel of her hips. It's the shifting of her feet, that shuffle-tightrope-walk across the rough surface of the grip tape in patterns that only vaguely, vaguely familiar. He's watching like he's trying to pick apart how it works, the physics of it all, both the conscious and subconscious parts of his brain trying to parse mathematics and muscle memory at the same time.

It's a distraction, to the point that he almost--almost--forgets the biggest reason he took the lead in the first place. It wasn't just juvenile mischief.

It's because he's the one who knows with certainty how to get where they're going.

"Left!," he calls up to her, like a jogger on a trail might call out to walkers blocking their path. Except it's to her, and it comes almost (almost) too late for her to cut a quick, sharp left in the direction of the skatepark. He lets her take the turn first--he kind of has to, unless they care to crash into each other--but once they're around it, he slaps his back left foot down against the pavement a few more times, picking up enough speed to pass her, but not by much. Enough so that she can follow the path he cuts, the shortest, straightest line that doesn't involve any grass or going right through the central square. He skirts around the edge of it, so dodging clusters of other park employees doesn't become a potential hazard.

Once they're past it, the park is down closer to the waterfront, and he actually grins at the sight of the entrance. 'Cause sure, he could take the easy way in, but where's the fun in that? Not when there's a set of long, shallow stairs, with an equally long railing, right there to present a challenge, even to an experienced skater. So he drops down low, foot sliding onto the tail to force a hard, high ollie that pops him up onto that smooth bit of metal piping.

And he makes it, too, at least at first.

The thing is, it would've been far, far easier for him to make it all the way to the bottom of the rail if he'd landed with the rail somewhere in the wide expanse of wood between the trucks, if he was scraping off a bit more of that bright blue jackalope. But nah. He didn't opt for nice, simple backslide boardslide. He caught the rail longwise, with the pipe grinding right up the metal of his trucks, caught between all four wheels. And his trucks? They're too tight to make for a nice cross-catch as he attempts that 50-50 split.

So he does make it down the rail. He makes it all the way down the rail, and even takes most of it on his board--right until a polyurethane wheel catches and locks, sending him with all six-plus feet of his height, and a few more feet up to where his board is, down to the ground with a crash. If he was trying to impress? Yeah, that's not working out. Not as he takes a hard landing, rolling across concrete until he comes to a stop, several feet from where his board rolled off to.

And then he lays there for a few seconds, blinking and blinking up at the sky from a fresh new perspective. "Fuck," he mutters, half under his breath. At which point, he starts laughing.

There's always some means to make her passions into some manner of performance - but it'd be just as easy to point out that chief among her passions is performance. Katrin must pick up that she has Viktor's eye, for the fraction of their journey ahead of that sharp left turn; because she slides across the grip tape on the toes of her slip-on VANS in a full rotation, hands above her head and elbows level with her jaw out to either side. The posture effects the hem of her cropped hoodie, lifting it further from the waistband of her thermal leggings and giving emphasis to that fluid motion of her hips. The board itself sways, drifting off to the right before she corrects its path, falling back into line with the heel of one foot to the opposite side of the board.

Left!

She does a double take, swiveling her head right to Viktor as she watches him cut into that tight turn. A turn that takes her some additional effort to manage as she sets her left foot nearly hanging off of the left side of her board, and her right foot just far enough back so that she doesn't tumble off as she squats lower, lower, and lower, until her knees are higher than her hips and she's sailing through a wide but exacting arc onto that same pathway toward the park. She loses some of her heightened speed for the length of the maneuver, but she doesn't have to stop and turn around, at the very least.

When she straightens back up, she starts pumping with her left foot, leaning forward for that extra bit of oomph as she trails on after Viktor - with enough competitive spirit to mean to catch him. She only starts to ease off the power to guide her way around those clusters of park employees. At the other side of those walking obstacles (and audience both, given the way she deviates into another replication of that simple step-and-sway), she catches sight of Viktor's own trajectory. The nose of hos board pointed, angularly, across the steps of those stairs leading direct to the park. She straightens up on her own board, more curious than anxious as she watches the set-up.

So it's positioned just so, like a heron planted on a longboard with her chin up that her eyes widen and her jaw drops when Viktor gets air. An ollie was hard enough when they'd just started out. Replicating what circulated in homemade skate videos and glossy magazines was more fantasy for some seasonally restricted teens fresh into the sport. The gulf of time lost between them doesn't account for what progress Viktor might have made since. She sucks in a tight, anxiously excited breath as he connects with the rail.

That same breath escapes her as a gleeful scream of excitement - the expletive riddled, bunched up sentencing of a vulgar cheer squad in which the most recognizable word is the name 'Viktor.'

Then, he crashes and all that noise comes to a stop as her face drops. A moment of despondent shock is followed by a more reasonable wince of sympathetic pain. She coasts close enough to bail from her board at a run, letting her wheels ease into the grass as she makes short work of the stairs like she's well acquainted with speed-running a stair master. She doesn't get to actually killing her momentum, though, opting to be more hinderance than help when she drops to a straddle on top of him and carefully prods with searching hands that'd clearly do more harm than good if there were a bone sticking out.

"Oh fuck - Viktor," she complains, with worry dripping off her tongue as she pats him down for injury the way a bouncer might look for bear mace or a knife. "Are you okay?"

He's okay. He's definitely okay. He wouldn't be laughing otherwise, unless it's the shock of it all, going from being so thoroughly airborne to, well, so thoroughly not. But let's be honest, some of it is shock. Shock that takes a few seconds to wear off, but once it does, he's still laughing.

And sore. Sore enough to be holding his right side with his left hand, because whatever he did or didn't do to his ribs, the laughing isn't helping. If anything, it's making it worse.

"Ow," he says, ineloquently.

So's the fact that she's sitting on him, feeling him up like he owes her money and she's searching for his wallet. (It's in one of his front pockets, digging both into his hip and, probably, the back of her thigh. If she's gonna rob him while he's down, she'd better do it quick.) His fingers feel along his side for a second. There's going to be a bruises, and probably big, ugly ones at that. But there's no ribs broken, not that he can feel, anyway, and his breathing is fine. It's perfectly fine, when he can catch it between his warm, easy laughter.

Of course he's laughing. Of course he is! Because honestly, that was hilarious.

But the waves of worry dripping off of her finally does register, and he eventually answers her with a silly sort of grin that has the skin around his eyes all crinkled up, that has lines etching themselves into his cheeks where the corners of his mouth force them upwards. "Yeah, Kat," he murmurs, staring straight up at her with that stupid, but no longer stupefied, look on his face. "I'm good." His head tilts to one side, the back of his beanie catching on the rough surface of the concrete. Blue eyes are blinking in the bright light that stream straight down into them and he squints against, but doesn't turn away from it. Nah, he lays there, focusing on her face as he says, "I'm really, really good."

The funny thing is? He doesn't sound like he's being sarcastic. Not even a little bit. Not even at all.

It happens gradually, that redirection from utmost concern to the infectious laughter of a thoroughly humbled Viktor. She's still searching for indication of some wounds with her hands - that thankfully lack the fine-tip nail extensions that she sometimes rocks while performing (her actual nails, painted a glossy, reflective black are longer than her fingertips but unlikely to pierce his skin unless she means to) - as her cooing, worried questions as to pain give way to breathless little chuckles that replace them.

The worried knot of her eyebrows lift, becoming something still altogether empathetic but definitively more 'at ease.' The slack set of her mouth is replaced a smile that's both relieved and warmly amused. It's a relief of tension that can be felt in her thighs as she she sets her ass right down atop him as she eases back to sit for a moment, before her chuckling sputters into delayed laughter for what can now be regarded as nearly slapstick. She yoga-poses in a way, bending forward as she keeps her hips down and setting her forehead to his chest as she laughs.

He's good, he tells her. Really, really good.

She overreacted. She knows that - recognized it even in the moment, when she pulled herself back from despondence. Kept herself from dwelling on the shores too, on the outset. Every sharp compression of her lungs gets her further from anxiety and what lurks at the back of her mind, like her relief and amusement paired is a kind of meditative aspect that keeps the day warm, light, and fun. She sets her hands to his ribs when she lifts her face. "Well, good," she agrees. "Because you can't feed me grapes with two broken arms."

She should be getting up onto her feet. It'd probably be for the best, for Viktor catching his breath and easing his way past those dull aches to be able to walk this off. But she lingers for a moment atop him with no real trajectory projected by her body language. No need to unhelpfully dote on him - but no immediate need to be on her feet, either. "That was so fucking sick, though," she admits. "Until it wasn't."

Admittedly, Viktor does have some injuries, but they're nothing major: a bit of road rash on one hand and up onto his wrist, where he first tried to catch himself when he fell and lost some of that top layer of skin for his trouble, a scraped knee behind a fresh new hole in jeans that didn't have any before, and his aching ribs that are no doubt going to be a particularly ghastly shade of purple and blue come morning. But honestly, they're all pretty standard for skateboarding, the sort of thing that'll have him stiff and sore, but not much more than that.

So he'll be fine! Good, even. Just like he said. It's his pride that took the worst of it and he's already laughing about it, albeit with shortened breath. Laughing does kind of hurt right now and probably will for the next few days.

And yet when she drops her head down on his chest, effectively pinning the arm that he'd been checking his own ribs with between them, he doesn't complain. He lifts up its twin, wrapping it loosely around as she settles in against him. The thick sweatshirt she's wearing mutes the feeling of his fingers scratching between her shoulders in small strokes. Does he care about the cold of the concrete against his back, of the scene they're probably making? No, not really. At least not yet. "It looked a lot cooler," he murmurs, "the three times I've landed it."

There's humor in his voice when he says it, too, but it isn't dry or self-deprecating. It's warm. It's soft. So is his face as he looks down at the top of her head, tracing what bits of her he can see. When she lifts her head sooner than expected, it leaves him looking right at her and that look? It lingers longer than it really should, one corner of his mouth twisting up into a small smile as he watches her. Does he realize it, the way that he's looking at her, all bright eyes and dawning appreciation for having her so close? For having her pressed against him in this whole new way?

No. No, not yet. But it's easy to identify the precise moment that he does, because that look changes. He swallows. He lifts his head up off the ground, but only far enough to angle it towards her. He can't really sit up much more than that without dislodging her. "Hey, Kat?," he asks, though it isn't really a question.

Ungently prodding ribs soon to bruise with delicate hands just means for narrower prodding digits set to sensitive skin. But there's a lingering brush of them that's almost incidental with how she traces for sign of injury, caressing out from the center of Viktor's torso with either hand before her face is briefly set to his chest. It's from this proximity that she can breath him in - as she's have to actively try not to. Her button nose flaring with the intake of breath during her spill into that contagious laughter that Viktor starts them both on. And then there's his hands, felt if only for the pressure against the back of her cropped hoodie - especially as she straightens up to face him.

It's such an inopportune (allegedly) time for Katrin to be reminded of a vision she'd had in Viktor's kitchen, detailing breakfast and affection while they'd been eating an impromptu snack-y lunch with tea. She's only just in the middle of a dismissive snort, like she only half believes he's ever landed it. "Sure - you only fell because I was here to see it," she teases gently. A kind of skateboarding stunt variation of the observer effect. But as in all things detailing motion, physics likely has some manner of hand in the workings. "Maybe you should give it another-"

Several notions process all at once, when the memory of that vision is keyed. One, she realizes that her gaze as drifted down from his eyes to his lips; and that the change wasn't at all intentional. Two, that for all his aches and bruises, Viktor feels warm beneath her, as a cushion against the ground. Though, cushion may not be the right word - he's fit, muscular even. And she can feel the natural, work-earned definition of his solidity beneath her. Three, that she's frozen up like she hasn't in years while the back of her mind plays fanciful games with familiar players on unfamiliar ground. She doesn't even account for the gentle part of her lips or the slight haze to her eyes, swirling erratically with that maelstrom as she does what she can and looks to his own gaze.

She's all softness atop him, with the weight settled upon up only cushioning that softness outward as she sits back, conforming to the form of his lap. Her chest had done the same, but more confined by undergarment than what the thermal leggings are - or aren't - doing. She blinks a flash of dark lashes when she recognizes his voice and gets out of her own head a little. "Yeah?" Too automatic. And a little too distant.

Viktor carries with him what may well be slowly becoming a familiar scent: the earthy smell of wood, the sweet ripeness of dark fruit, the warmth of cardamom spices, the smoke of a burnt match, layered with the musk of his own skin and faint, lingering note of whatever detergent he washes his clothes with. There's none of the sharp citrus smell or the faintly chemical smell of adhesive; he either doesn't have a shift today or hasn't gone in yet. The smell of cigarette is absent; if he's been smoking today, it was before his shower. So it's just him. Him and whatever his cologne is and a bit of soap.

When she looks up at him like that, her eyes resting on his mouth, her own mouth parted just so, the thought is crystal clear: it'd be so easy to kiss her right now. It'd be so easy and would take so little effort for such a big reward. Tighten his hand on her back. Lift his head only a little higher up off the ground. Tilt, ever so slightly to the right, to ensure their mouths meet gently, their noses nothing more than a warm brush against one another's cheeks, breath a tickle against one another's skin, instead of knocking awkwardly together.

He's thinking about. He's definitely thinking about it. And for a few very short seconds that may seem like very long ones, it's written all over his face, there to read for anyone fluent in his body language. Pupils dilated too wide for that much sunshine. His stare focused squarely on her mouth first, and then lifting to meet her eyes.

And then it happens. His mouth opens...

...and he says, "You're going to have to get off me if I'm gonna get up." Viktor's soft smile shifts into a suddenly smug smirk, like he's fully expecting her mouth to drop the rest of the way open and leave her dumbstruck by what he says next. "Or if you're not gonna get up, at least do a guy a favor and wiggle around a little bit while you're sitting on it. Make staying down here on the ground while everyone's staring at me worth the wound to my pride."

For those that didn't see the crash and tumble, it's certainly a shamelessly suggestive sight: Katrin propped up with her hands on Viktor's ribs, close enough to her hips to warrant a slight arching of her back for balance. Seated, with additional cushion, directly on Viktor's lap, having previously had her face buried in against his chest. Even for those that watched Viktor wipe out, it's probably suggestive enough to warrant a cocked eyebrow or a quick look elsewhere, so that the two might have their privacy in this very public square (public, at least, to those that reside at the park).

She intakes the scent of him with her breath - the conscious choices of dark fruit, spice, earthy wood, and smoke over his own natural musk that she surprises herself by being able to differentiate from the rest. She knows the Viktor smell. Can differentiate it from the rest. What she shares, in kind, isn't the perfume she'd had on before. Presently, she's all bergamot and peach alongside a hint of oakmoss, and heliotrope (which can so easily be mistaken for vanilla undertones to give the rest shape). The joint she smoked some hours earlier is entirely off of her, not sticking the same way that a cigarette might.

Her breathing turns more shallow, like she's suddenly self conscious about its warmth landing against Viktor's skin when they're up this close - but she also doesn't move away from Viktor's breath landing on her own skin. As much as those on the outside looking in might take notice of the pair, for their current positioning, she loses track of everything outside their tight little circle of two. She answers at that daze, behind her blinking lashes, and she tilts her head a little as she watches that smirk form; suddenly at a loss for what he's about to say as she processes that first obvious statement with a huffed exhale of a laugh and a little nod.

Wiggle around a little bit.

Total system reboot.

Her jaw hangs that much looser. Her lips parted well enough to not just show the pearly white edges of her teeth, but her pink tongue behind them. She doesn't blink, she just stares. The usual brain cells go to their battle stations, occupying terminals responsible for the instinctual layering of her self-serving persona. All while the more conscious part of her brain runs his words back a couple of times like she just didn't get it - like there's no way he just said that. "Viktor," she gasps, only slightly more shocked than she is impressed. She lets instinct take the wheel - and, this time instinct drives in such a way that even it shouldn't have a license. Because she wiggles.

It's a counterbalanced shimmy of her shoulders and hips rocking in opposite directions that nestles her down softly against him, in conforming against him. It's a thankfully brief public gesture. Her words are sultry, though shaded with clear humour. Teasing. "What? Don't think it'll be even more awkward, skating around with a hard on?" No sooner than the words are fresh from her lips do they echo in her mind to haunt her. It's the kind of flirtation she'd deploy deflectively with anyone else. The same kind of tease to gain the upper hand with all the leverage that shamelessness brings. But this isn't anyone else. Alarms sound within Katrin's PersonaHQ.

Her cheeks ignite with colour. Bright red on pale is far to obvious not to catch. She drops her face right back down onto Viktor's chest. The end result changing their overall positioning so very little, with Katrin straddling a prone Viktor on the cold cement of the open square.

The huffed exhale. The sudden silence. The way her mouth drops open as she gasps. Even before her whole face flushes red, he's won. He's utterly convinced that he's won, shocking even her with all of her casual flirtation and frequent innuendos. And he grins like a complete and total idiot in his triumph. His teeth flash in a bright, broad grin, a contrast to the way his eyes scrunch up with mirth, another, fresh round of laughter spilling out of him. And just like that, he's shaking underneath her again, his aching ribs subject to a fresh--albeit far more pleasant--round of abuse.

The wiggling and the commentary and the bright red face only makes it worse--better? both?--in a myriad of ways. "God, Kat," he murmurs to her, and for a half second or so, it's unclear if those two short syllables are meant to fill a space where there's no real way for him to parse anything intelligent in the face of a fresh round of (much more adult) amusement, if he doesn't know what else to say to her own quick quip, or if his voice has been tugged away from safe and familiar shores by an undercurrent of something--

"GET A ROOM!," comes a shout that, frankly, they probably should've expected.

After all, it's a sunny day. The skatepark isn't crowded, but it isn't exactly empty, either. And while Viktor hasn't been on the ground for very long--probably all of a few minutes at absolute most--and while Kat's panicked response drew more than a few stares and a bit of muttering about whether or not someone was going to have to call medical, concern quickly faded with the sound of his laughing. Now it's been replaced by a different sort of look, including several eyerolls, a bit of snickering, and one shouting adolescent who is likely straddling right on that divide between legally an adult and not.

"GET A NEW LINE, KID," Viktor calls back, turning his head to try and catch sight of whoever shouted.

But the kid has a point, and Viktor knows it, and so he slides his pinned arm out from between them. The hand he has on Kat's back holds tight as he uses his now free elbow and a good bit of his core to rock himself up into a fully seated position, his hold on her resulting in her begin dropped back onto his lap instead of dislodged entirely. "Come on," he urges her. "Up. You've gotta get up, or we're going to have to add wheel marks running over my face to the list of injuries. We're blocking the railing."

The incoming critique on where they should take this doesn't even come close to amplifying Katrin's embarrassment. Those words just run off her like she never even heard them, at first. Until she chuckles softly, a sound that's muffled by the press of her face to Viktor's chest - a repetition of some earlier press, though she's nowhere near a state that'll have her leaving snot and mascara to stain his clothing. God, Kat. She can't help but agree. She can always take matters a little too far - even prides herself on it. But her confidence clearly didn't hold the way it was supposed to, once the words were out of her, and once she was shimmying in against Viktor's lap with a tight little wiggle of her hips.

Katrin is smiling, at least, when she lifts her face from Viktor's chest with his guidance to place her back onto his lap as he sits up with her. A process that happens with a surprised little gasp that's completely unintentional, when he firmly grips her and rocks her upward in kind. The smile itself is openly apologetic, with the soft cast of her brow - but also amused, in a self-effacing way that tilts said smile a little to the one side. Her cheeks carry a residual hint of the previous colour as she fails to stifle a little laugh to go with it. He urges her to get up, but she lingers for a moment with that expression, letting the words build up behind her tongue until she actually manages to share a few of them.

"You win," she declares, as to this particular exchange of innuendos and the delivery thereof. "But, for the record? I don't regret the wiggle. I only regret that I broke first." She says this with the lofty heir of an actress known for portraying ingenue's being confined to seedier roles after a particular scandal. With an uptilt of her chin, she says to the world (mostly just Viktor) that she has nothing to be ashamed of; or that she does, and is just choosing not to be. And with that being said, she situates her hands upon his shoulders rather than his ribs to help her with what leverage she'll need for getting back up on her feet.

As for wheel marks being added to the list of potential injuries for the already beaten and bruised skateboarder, she shrugs as she applies what pressure to his shoulders she needs to help herself rise. "That's nothing I can't use my drop-out skillset on, to kiss better," she quips - for her utter lack of medical background, which her frisking for his injuries already made plenty obvious.

He's still as she plants her hands on his shoulders, using them as means to push herself up to her feet. Does it hurting, bearing her weight like that? Nah, they didn't catch too much of anything on the way down, so there's no wince that comes over his face from the force that's applied, not even a brief one. Once she's on her feet, he draws his knees in, then slides back far enough that he won't smack into her when he plants his feet flat on the ground and--with his unscraped palm resting on the concrete to help keep his balance--pushes himself back up to his full height.

There's a second spent brushing himself off, mostly down over the length of his jeans, hands running and patting from his waist to his knees to get the worst of the grit he collected off. A bit of a frown comes over his face as he acknowledges yep, that is one knee that is definitely bleeding, but it's not even a trickle running down to his sock. More like a welling up of red behind some grime embedded in the skin, which he'll have to clean out when he gets home.

When he replies? It may not be meant for her ears, because he mutters his words low, like they're spoken to himself. Maybe that's why he chooses Ukrainian for them, instead of English. She's not meant to know, and though he's well aware of how many language lessons she attended given that he was frequently sitting only a few seats away for the majority of them, it's fair to assume she's lost most of it, right? Like how often has she had a casual conversation in their mother(s') tongue in the last ten years?

"Then next time, I will let the kid wheel right over my face," he mumbles.

And then he turns, look away. Not out of embarrassment, given that he assumes she doesn't realize what he said, but to scan the grounds of the skatepark. What he says next comes out in his native tongue, his only accent the distinct sounds of Chicago. "Where'd my board go?," he asks, not quite rhetorically. Genuine question, answer unexpected. Unnecessary, too. It doesn't take him long to spot, since it flipped over, wheels up, and didn't skid far. The fact that it's not broken? That's a relief. It hasn't seen all that much wear yet.

There's a bit of grit for what of Katrin wasn't on Viktor, but not nearly as much - just enough to brush from her knees whenever she should get around to it, and not at all embedded, given the lack of force with which she hit the ground. Especially compared to Viktor, with all the physics that gravity and momentum laid out for him. Not that she bothers to brush it off just yet. Instead, she's watching Viktor get up onto his feet with a careful eye to any signs of injury or pain - but also the unfamiliar sensation of recognizing how much taller than her that he gets, once he's entirely vertical.

That'll still take some getting used to, yet. But in the current context, it's something like an unexpected rush, to go with the frame of his shoulders and the solidity of his form that she is now all too aware of. Is she staring? She must feel like she's staring, because she glances away only to force herself to look back. His frown leads her to look down, to notice the darkening of denim at his knee. "Oh-" she starts, with some anxiety that gets stifled by a holding of her tongue before she stands wholly upright. Whatever she means to say then gets a little lost, though. For the sake of what she thinks she might've heard.

She's not as fluent as she used to be. Conversational, at best. But recognition of those words in that order makes it difficult for her to discern anything he might've meant, beyond her assumption. When he asks about his board, he prompts some words that were delayed from before his lapse into Ukrainian. "That looks bad," she says, more gently than her initial, single-syllable statement of shock. Her eyes follow him as he walks over to pick up his board, finally travelling vertically upward from his knee to what she might read of his expression.

"We should get that cleaned up," she suggests. Despite all her stated lack of knowledge in the medical field coming down to the application of kisses to the affected area.

Her own board is up at the top of the stairs, parked off to the side where momentum carried it after her rapid dismount and run down the stairs. She doesn't look back for it, instead she gives a look of apology for the clunkiness of her attempt at words she hasn't spoken for years and probably never in this sequence. In Ukrainian, she states, "And maybe I'll kiss that better, instead." Her lack of appropriate word for 'knee' really shines through in the open phrasing of her statement - a statement that acknowledges what he said, in part.

"Like I said, it only hurts if you care." Like he said? He hasn't said that in years. Or at least she hasn't heard it from him in a years--a phrase that he uttered often when one of them went tumbling down off their boards while learning simple things like ollies and shuvits, tricks that seemed so far out of reach and resulted in so many, many falls. Was he, however inadvertently, where she learned that idea? Where she latched onto it? That if she just stopped caring, stopped caring about all of it, maybe everything she lost wouldn't be a constant source of sorrow.

But if he had anything else to say, any other reassurance to utter, it's gone when she goes and extends her concern beyond cleaning the grime out of his bleeding knee.

It is a very small mercy that he's in the process of picking up his board when she says that. Not bending over to grab it, but first flipping it over with one of his well-worn sneakers and then tapping his toe against the tail hard enough to make it pop up towards him. He still has to stop some to catch it, grabbing it by the nose, grip-tape rubbing right up against his scratched up palm. That doesn't feel great, but he's not about to drag the thing around by one of the trucks. He knows better than that.

The fact that his back is turned gives him a few seconds to first conceal, then straighten, whatever look is on his face. But it doesn't do a damned thing to help him hide the way he freezes when his brain finally registers that not only did she answer him...

...she answered him in Ukrainian. And that means she probably caught what he said.

There is, no doubt, a string of curse words that may well cut across two languages running through his head in the seconds that follow, and none of them are especially clever or creative. Only a repeating cycle of variations on the F-word and its seemingly limitless forms, sprinkled through with a few other choice words for a bit extra color.

"You want to leave already?," he asks, turning back around slowly. He reaches up to drag his beanie lower down over his brow, a motion that must be a relatively new habit. He wore them fairly frequently back in Chicago, but only in the cold weather. Not every time he leaves the apartment. Not like this. "When you have the chance to see me crash out of a McTwist and screw up my shoulder, too?"

The joke is a dodge. An excuse to stay, to backpedal away from this conversation, from whatever it is they're talking about, whatever it is that's happening between them. A verbal indication that he's happy to stay, to keep skating, to show her that he's fine, to pretend nothing's changed. But it doesn't match his face. It doesn't match the way his bright blue eyes search hers for a hint of something. It doesn't match the faint furrow in his brow that may or may not be obvious for what it really is: the sudden, desperate hope that she wants to go. To be anywhere that isn't here, that isn't full of other people besides the two of them. Just the two of them.

"-if you care." She says the words in time with Viktor, after catching and following along from the first half. Katrin blinks. The phrase wasn't hers after all - a mantra for emotional pain that she carried with her all across the west coast and back again. A mantra she even bruised an ego with when she recited it, walking away from a failed ultimatum and break-up with a smile. She'd said it so many times to herself that she'd come to think it was hers all along. She chuckles softly at that - at how key a part Viktor's words had played at every step along the way, every foster family, every job, every ill fated relationship that she was just wearing to escape whatever situation she'd found herself in - and the very thought of being alone with her thoughts for too long.

She gives a softer smile there, for the genuine bittersweet warmth that blossoms at her core. And she does her very best not to prod at his bloody knee through his jeans the way that she'd prodded at the rest of him. But now, even as she watches him fetch his board, her eyes showcase concern - like she's looking for evidence of suppressed winces and grimaces with every action. If they stuck around and kept skating? These worrying looks might gradually fade away. But, in the here and now, she shows no sign of stopping.

Though, the starting likely has as much to do with what she seems to have thought she heard him say, and how she, in turn, assumes she responded. Her grasp of the language isn't amateur, certainly; but she is more than a little out of practice, and has to take some things on faith. The combination makes her look more thoughtful than anxious, though both qualities are worn on her countenance to see. Neither needing to be suppressed by default, given that said anxiety isn't pointed inward.

"Viktor..." she says, in a way that might be meant to soothe or reassure him, but also serves as an audible conduit for her worries to escape to him, released from her tongue. There's a gentle part of her lips - that shade of pale pink that she tends toward held minutely apart as she searches for just the right way to phrase this. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to have every chance to see you fuck up a McTwist between now and whenever." It's a strange thing to be reassuring about, but those words escape her with genuine feeling.

She tilts her head back the way they came, and one elvish ear points the way. Her eyebrows raise in gestured prompting or expectation as she infers a destination of one of their two apartments. Somewhere where they can get Viktor tidied up and cared for. Somewhere where they can be alone, away from the scant mercies of some teasing post-adolescent observers. Somewhere where it can be just the two of them, if only for awhile.

"The vote of confidence in my skating is doing wonders for my ego, let me tell you," he replies, with that dry, deadpan tone he seems to have adopted as a perpetual habit. It's almost as if she isn't the only one who picked up an unhealthy coping mechanism or two in the decade between their last combined visit to a skatepark and now, and he slathers that straight-faced delivery over his comment, over his real feelings, as if it's a cool, soothing balm that will ease any sting to his pride far better than kisses will help in cleaning out his knee.

But then he lets out a ragged exhale, the effort it takes to expel all the air from his lungs made uneven not by some grimace he's trying to hide making his breath hitch and catch. It's a whole other discomfort, dropping down into a fresh new sort of uncertainty with her when so very, very much of his life has been arranged as a barrier against exactly that. Responsibility as a means of ensuring stability, stability serving as a shield against doubt.

And yet he's inclined to indulge her. He always has been, regardless of cost or consequences. He probably always will be.

It takes very little to close the space between them. It's an indication that yeah, he's been persuaded, though he does stop for a second, standing there peering down at her with that familiar furrow in his brow, like he's got a question he's not yet ready to voice. He wears that look a lot, honestly, and it's not hard to imagine where the first lines in his face will appear as he ages--it'll be there, right above the bridge of his once-broken nose, or laugh lines around the edges of his eyes. Which ones he'll get first? Unclear. Maybe she'll have some influence over that.

But in that silent moment, he stretches his foot to press his toes down on top of hers. A single tap, expecting a single tap in return. A shared ritual of seeking and finding reassurance, one to the other, exchanged over and over between them. And before she can even reply, he says, "Yeah. Let's go." His board drops back down onto the ground. He steps onto it, and gives two good pumps with his back leg to get moving again, headed back the way they came.

"Hey - I'm just working with what I saw," is an attempt at levity from Katrin, regarding Viktor's track record with tricks at the park (that she has witnessed specifically) thus far. She weaves that teasing tone into her voice well enough that it mingles almost naturally amidst her concern. Though this too is followed by a thoughtful concession as her gaze turns up and to the side in very recent recollection. "Though, you did almost entirely nail it." The trick, she means. Right up until he didn't. Her hollering response previously did also indicate that she had faith he was about to land it too. She can't go denying that any easier than she'd be able to deny that Viktor had a hand in making her blush. And who has managed to do that - to that extent? Recently?

She attends his deliberation with wide eyes, like she's pleading with him to see the reason in where he already wants to go for reasons adjacent. To take care of that bleeding that's staining his denim from the inside out - to be alone in the aftermath of what awkward tangle that they'd so incidentally bumped up against, away from the external influences of the observer effect put into action by those others enjoying a mild winter day at the park.

When he gets in close, peering down at her, she has to lift her chin to meet his gaze, adjoining concern with open curiosity. She might be grateful that her hear skipping a beat is something less visibly traceable than the shade of her cheeks, for what fresh context this close proximity to his felt form as he peers down at her entails. She runs her tongue along the backs of her teeth as she prompts him along to whatever he might mean to ask with an open expression and a lift of her eyebrows. Every bit the hypocrite, for everything she doesn't say in turn.

When he taps her toe, her brow furrows. But she's quick about the tap-for-tap response of the toe of her slip-on VANS skate shoes, atop his own toe. With that, she gets at least a little further out of her own head. And with his rush off onto his board, back the way they came - she's brought the rest of the way back to the present as she quick-steps up the stairs to where she left the longboard. "Just don't fall where I can't find you!" she calls, as she situates one foot on her longboard, facing back toward the apartment building and does what she can to build the momentum to catch up.

There's a snort at the comment about falling. He's never going to live this down, not now, and the poor man knows it. It's probably for the best that he started laughing at himself even before she started laughing at him, otherwise it might not be a joke. Otherwise, his ego really might end up being as bruised as his ribs are going to be. Probably are starting to be, underneath the layer of his hoodie and his t-shirt.

It doesn't take her long to catch up with him, either. Or at least it shouldn't. He's taking the ride back to Silver Brook at a perfectly reasonable cruising speed--no mad dash back to the apartment, no stops to show off any other tricks he might fail. Just the occasional grind against the edge of a low retaining wall surrounding a bit of landscaping, a short jump over three steps he could've taken by staying on the downward slope of the street instead of the sidewalk, all occasionally punctuated by steady steady rhythm of polyurethane wheels rolling in a clack-clack-clack over cobblestone pavers in their unnecessary octagonal pattern.

He might not be especially sure of where this is headed aside from the sting of disinfectant against his knee, but he is at least confident in how he's getting there. And if his movements are little stiff compared to the ride out, well, it doesn't really seem to faze him much.

When they get back to the apartment building, he pops up onto the curb, rolling to a slow stop a few feet from the door. A look back over his shoulder--a gesture he's been making every now and then for the ride back--ensures she's still there, not far on his heels. "Two," he asks, "or six?" Meaning are they taking the stairs up to his apartment, or the elevator all the way to the top floor of the building, up to hers.

The ride back is just effortless maneuvering from Katrin, at this pace. The lean from edge to edge with the helpful wobble of the board to guide the trucks where they need to go in the speedier, but wider arc of her own turns - requiring a little more forethought when it comes to reaching a particular destination, or avoiding intermittent copses of people standing in the way like trees on a ski hill; only, made mobile. She greets the laughter she gets out of Viktor with a kind of ease, grateful for its presence and the effect that it has upon her worried nerves. There's no real board dancing from her, though, aside from what flows naturally in a pivot from one fit to another on a turn or an attempt to redirect.

What's residual about her worries is in the way that she watches Viktor ride, for a time, trying to note differences between how he'd moved on the way to the skate park in contrast to how he's moving now. But the end result of this would be the same either way - some much more careful doting over his wound at one of the two apartments. What's up in the air is everything left unspoken in their native tongues, and all that has been packaged with it. It's enough to keep her mind occupied on the way back, once they both hit their riding rhythm.

When she slows at the front of the building, its with a gradual press of the heel of one shoe to the asphalt that gives just enough friction to bring both her and the board to an eventual stop without a stumble or somersault. His question is something she'd been considering as well, but had left to work itself out. When the question is put to her, she skews her lips to the one side and bends to lift her board up to one shoulder by its trucks as she considers. "Don't know Rosemary's schedule yet," she admits, like that matters for the act of disinfected and bandaging.

"You got bandages and shit at your place?" She lets that be the visible deciding factor, with the additionally inferred question of whether his own roommate's presence be the actual.

"Yeah," he answers with a nod. "We've got stuff." The implied question about Fred and his schedule doesn't get a response, though. Either he doesn't know whether he's at work or not or Viktor genuinely didn't catch onto the hint and what that might mean. Even so, the decision seems to be made. He picks up his board with that same move he made earlier, popping it up into his hand instead of bending any more than he needs to. And then he tucks it up against his left side and heads into the building.

Making their way to his suite is a short walk. It's just the one flight of stairs and Apartment 200 is the one right next to the stairwell on this side of the building. Open the door make a quick right where there is no left, and his door is literally the first one they come across. Keys get fished out of his pocket and inserted into both locks, the door nudged open with a sneaker-clad toe. He holds it open long enough for her to make her way in before locking it behind her and slipping off his shoes, depositing them on a rack kept to one side of the door for exactly that reason.

"There's a first aid kit in the bathroom," he says, "but seriously, Kat, it's not that big a deal."

Of course, his statement is contradicted by the sight of his socked feet. Walking up the stairs irritated that scrape on his right knee, opening up a slow trickle of red that his tinged the upper edge of his sock a dingy pink that'll turn a rusty shade of brown when it dries. So yeah. Yeah, it's bleeding, though not very much. Putting an actual bandage on it will be enough to solve the problem, but, well, he'd have to stop insisting it's not a big deal, he's fine, he's good--that he's really, really good, even--for that to happen. But hey, it only hurts if you care, and he doesn't seem to care so much about the state of his knee.

Katrin gives a solid nod to Viktor's answer on having a kit. That she does, as well, without the presence of so many other household standards? Well, that might have something to do with isopropyl - sometimes more cheaply bundled, than bought on its own. And something a lot less conspicuous to purchase alongside other medically relevant items, when it comes to cleaning out her bong. Not that she has any reason for concern from the park on that front, thus far, given how her interactions with local security have gone thus far.

She follows along after him, up the stairs, like she might have any capability to keep him from tumbling if he falters. She doesn't, to her credit, pester him with concerns over whether they should take the elevator. This brand of verbal prodding is kept at bay, at least. A habit that she doesn't allow to form alongside her other hypocrisies - that need to check in that he's okay, despite doing so well and burying her own pains from day to day.

When he opens the door for her, she steps on through. On the other side of the threshold, she moves aside for him and props her longboard up against the wall within the entry.

"Then it won't be a big deal to clean up," she chirps back more reassuringly than worriedly, this time. "I'll just help you clean it up and get it bandaged, so you don't have to to pause mid sit-up or do some yoga to deal with it on your own." She dips hear head toward the bathroom as a prompt for him to show her to the kit. She resolves to do the caring for him, though what ease she might have expected to find in the privacy of his apartment doesn't quite fully arrive to draw the tension out of her shoulders or her neck. Too many unresolved wondering questions that they're both doing a find job of talking their way around.

But the distraction of an immediate task to deal with is a convenient justification, for so long as it lasts.

"And here I thought that yoga meant being able balance on one leg while you touch your toes to the back of your head, not being able to reach your own knees," he says with a slow shake of his head, that same dry tone he used as they were leaving the skatepark. But at least there's a smile this time, as if sincerely amused. It's possible he's taken a particular shine to poking fun at California hippies ever since seeing her, so unexpectedly, at the Spookeasy. "If I'd know it was that easy, I might've squeezed myself into some leggings and gone down to the studio to join in."

But it's the only protest he offers at this point. They've come this far and fighting her about it now would only seem like kicking up a fuss, so what's the point?

A nod of his chin indicates the way to the bathroom; there's two of them, just like there is in all the shared suites. She's seen the one, when she needed to wash smudged mascara off of her face after their failed visit to Ruby's. (They really, really do not have a great track record with plans for visiting places in the park on aligned days off, do they?) Then there's the one with the full shower, wedged between his room and Fred's. The third bedroom in their suite is currently unoccupied. Truthfully, though, the only difference between the two bathrooms is the bathtub and the size necessary to accommodate it. Otherwise, the rooms are pretty much the same--neat, clean, and completely undecorated, as if it never occurred to either Viktor or Fred that the space is something other than a utilitarian one.

Viktor opens the cabinet underneath the sink, fishing out a plastic first aid kit. Some of the items have been mostly used up, some are untouched, others are missing entirely. If they've been replaced, they're in the smattering of other items in the medicine cabinet, which he swings open for her to poke through as she'd like. There's four shelves in there, one for him, one for his roommate, and the third seems be a collection of shared items for occasional use instead of consistent personal application--like bandages. The fourth one? Empty. Like that extra room in the suite.

"Snoop away, KitKat," he declares, as he pulls the shower curtain back so he can sink down on the edge of the tub like it's a seat.

"Gotta start somewhere," Katrin retorts, easily enough. Casually stating, "One day, it's bending over to touch your knees with your hands - the next, it's touching your knees to your shoulders while you lie on your back." That's definitely not a yoga pose that she's describing. Or, if it is, it's a lot easier to draw a connection with other manners of visuals. Maybe that's what the sly smirk is for, while she delivers those words in such a calm, inconsequential manner. She follows Viktor toward the washroom she's already had the occasion to visit. But the point of her prompting has much more to do with getting him there, than with him showing her the way.

While Viktor sorts out getting the first aid kit out for her, she goes through the process of lifting her hoodie up off her by the hem - with only a bit of extra effort to be had in getting the full length of her braid all the way through, once it's up and over her head. Beneath, is a smaller crop top in this game of Russian nesting shirts. It's low cut, with spaghetti straps nestled in against the straps of her bra, beneath. There's a decorative strip of lace along the neckline that mingles and blends with another layer beneath that might likewise be from her bra. She drops the hoodie out of the way, leaving nothing that she has to worry about staining on her pale - thoroughly inked - arms.

She goes to what he fished out. And even glances inside the open medicine cabinet for good measure. "Had every chance to, last time I was here. How do you know I didn't?" she teases, gently. But it's true that she didn't. She'd only bothered to look at what was out in the open. From the allotment of options, she sets gauze, band-aids, clear tape, iso, and cleaning pads aside. Not that she expects to need all of it - but just so that she has her options open before she gives Viktor a curious, then confused sidelong look. Which turns into an expectant look, followed by a glance toward his jeans.

"Gonna be a little difficult to do this if you insist on keeping your pants on," she points out, with just a touch of humour in her teasing words to share that she knows full well how those words would sound out of context. She clicks her tongue against the backs of her teeth in thoughtful effect, or a soundalike play on a 'tsk-tsk-tsk' sound that only really matches the pattern.

"Because if you'd gone snooping through the cabinet, you would've found something to give me shit about, even if it wasn't mine." His head cants to one side. His brows lift. He gives her a challenging look, as if daring her to try to claim otherwise--an attempt that she's welcome to make and will also likely fail at, given that the man a decade or more of history at his disposal to refer back to. Viktor's eyes even flit over to the open cabinet, like he's waiting, just waiting, for her to make a comment about the tube of Icy Hot, or which one of them is using whitening strips to bleach their teeth, or any other number of random things that it's perfectly reasonable for people to keep in their bathroom.

That last comment earns her a blink, though, and a sudden smoothing of his expression. The fact that his jeans would be in the way didn't occur to him, mostly because he tore a hole in the knee at the same time he, well, tore a hole in his knee. But that's really not going to help with the trail of what is probably swiftly drying red streaks running down his leg, is it?

Once that realization dawns, he pushes himself back up to his feet. "I'm starting to feel like this is some scheme to steal my virtue," he mutters down at her. The implication of 'What would Father Whoever, Whose Name Viktor Doesn't Currently Remember say?' left hanging in the air unsaid. He doesn't need to say it. Not really. Not when he goes and crosses himself like that, the gesture already a farce, exaggerated to further extremes by the way he lifts his eyes skyward (ceilingward?) as if pleading with the Lord to intercede on his behalf.

"But sure, I will go put on shorts or something." It's not like it's going to take him long. His room is literally the door right next to the bathroom and it only takes him a few short steps to duck around the corner.

"Tease you about, maybe," Katrin corrects Viktor without missing a beat. "Like, if you had 'war paint' or whatever else they have to call make-up when they sell it to dudes. And that'd just be for not having the spine to just get your shit at Sephora like a normal person." This, apparently, being the line to be crossed in getting her to mock him based on what she might find amidst assorted toiletries and medications. "But, like, scold you? Nah. I'm looking for ammunition - not something to fix." There's a lofty tone she takes here, chin held a little higher like she's about to explain just how humble and virtuous she is for this distinction. As if she should be sainted. But her smirk gives her away, before she double checks the items that she has grouped together for the task.

When Viktor gets back up onto his feet, her eyebrows both lift and she cocks her head back and to the right. She leans her right hip against the sink as she crosses her arms. "Hate to break it to you, but virtue isn't that valuable. Not at street prices," she replies. "And anywhere that buys it, has already banned me from the premises." She's not being literal, there. But there are members of the church back home that would cross their hearts at the occult symbolism nestled in amidst the floral motifs of her tattoos. Only, they'd be a whole lot more literal about it than she is being.

When he insists on going to put on shorts, she chuckles. It's a warm sound, even if it's at Viktor's expense, like she's finding some unexpected amusement in an idiosyncrasy. "Dude," she says, amused yet exasperated.

"Unless you went out commando, your shorts aren't going to cover up much more than your boxers," she tells him, matter of fact. "Plus, you're going to get them bloody just pulling them on." There's a pause there, where she considers that point before stating. "Also - give me a heads up what machine you use, next time you do laundry, if you're going to bloody up your whole next load."

"What're you gonna do, go see what you can scrape out of it after the fact and try to make a Viktor voodoo doll with it?," he calls back. He may not realize what, exactly, all those occult symbols in her tattoos refer to, what they mean, but the fact that she's got a good more than black florals inked onto her otherwise pale skin hasn't been wasted on him. He knows that much, at least, even if he did sort of stare and shrug while she and Danny were talking about John Dee.

The sound of drawers opening and closing follows shortly thereafter. He may've gotten up and done to another room to change his clothes, but he didn't bother closing either door behind them. If he's aiming for real privacy, it's a careless a mistake, but it does make it easier for them to keep talking. Of course, he may just be trying to keep from accidentally flashing her. Nothing but boxers, with one leg propped up so she can see his knee? Yeah, there's a pretty solid chance something would end up dangling into view at some point.

He isn't gone long, though, even if he did dig out more than a pair of shorts. A pair of pants, actually. He opted for a dark gray pair of pants made for lounging, for sleeping. They're soft enough and stretchy enough that he'll be able to yank the leg up onto his thigh when he sits back down. The beanie was ditched somewhere in his bedroom. And the hoodie? That got peeled off and left behind. There wasn't a hole in it, but he did get a good bit of grime on it and with the road rash on his hand and up onto his wrist, he might as well wash that arm, too. It's his right arm, like his bloody right knee, the right side of his ribs.

Standing there in the t-shirt he'd been wearing beneath, all white save for the Thrasher magazine logo scrawled across his chest, she can see what's been covered up by long sleeves every time they've been together: a black and red tattoo, running from his elbow up under his sleeve. The shirt's too thick to really see much of it, but white as it is, there's definitely a dark tinge that extends all the way up over his bicep and onto his shoulder. It'll probably be covered back up shortly, too, since he's holding the sweater she ugly cried into in his left hand.

Was this what he meant when she was joking about his mother hating her tattoos and he replied she'd have to break Mama Klymenko's heart at some point, but not to worry too much, since he already had?

"I have the cleaning pads for that. Knowing what machine you're using means no one else can scavenge and build the same," Katrin claims, playing along with the accusation in an easy way that harkens back to whatever improv games get played in a drama class at a school for the performing arts. "I'm not out for competition when it comes to molding your immortal soul. Who else is going to feed me grapes at the beach, come summertime?" she adds, apparently rather attached to that self-amusing notion.

She waits just so, with her hip to the sink and her head tilted to consider Viktor's former perch on the edge of the bathtub like she might summon him back to it a little sooner for the attention she gives him. If she catches on that he leaves the door to his room open while she's waiting, she realizes it too late to actually peek at what the state of its décor or its layout is. Though, if she actually did, it'd be an act that could so easily be taken for peeping - so maybe it's for the best, with regards to actually convincing him to let her help.

When he comes back wearing pants, her eyebrows go up and her jaw drops just a little bit. "I'm not going to lift that up to find you have long-johns on underneath now, am I?" she teases, gently. But all the same, she uncrosses her arms and shakes her head in gentle self amusement while her gaze scans upward only to hitch on his t-shirt. One that she has only seen the one time previous - in a vision that visited her at the kitchen table some several feet away. Only, Viktor wasn't the one wearing it.

She stares a little longer than she likely means to - long enough to catch that detail, where his shirt ends and his visible arm begins. She parts those pale pink-shaded lips just a little more, like she means to follow up that observation with an immediate curiosity. But the resultant closure of her mouth backburners her question. She's not about to get derailed any more than she has. She blinks her eyes clear and finally meets his gaze as if nothing ever happened.

"Have a seat, Lil' Viki. Nurse Katrin is in the house," she declares, with a gesture to the edge of the tub. She plucks the assorted collected items that she has set aside into her left arm to cradle, like she means to follow him down - likely to her knees, on the floor ahead of where she directs him to sit. "Used to be Doctor Katrin, MD. But they had to disqualify me, on account of all the patients I lost." As if that'd still allow her to become a nurse in this fictional scenario.

It isn't the shirt that he thinks she's staring at, so much as the tattoo. His eye drop to his arm--it's the right one, same side her landed on--then flick over to her own heavily inked frame. Both of his brows shoot up at the obvious hypocrisy, like it's totally fine for her to be covered head to toe in ink and yet she's shocked by him having a half-sleeve?

"Really?," he asks, his lips pressing together into a thin line as he gives her a bit of a Look(tm) at her apparent shock.

It's definitely a half sleeve. While not all the details of the design are visible, it's plain that whatever it all is (with all seeming to be a pretty comprehensive list considering the number of elements to it), it wraps around the underside of his arm, too, some of it tucked in against his body when he's still. But he's not still, and that's why she can see it. He drops back down onto the edge of the tub, leaning forward to grab his pant-leg by the hem. He stretches it wide before pulling it up, making sure he can clear as much of his knee as possible without making the mess any worse than it is. She'll be relieved at the sight. No long johns. Only his calf, complete with two rivulets of mostly dried blood running down his leg, the direction of those two drops occasionally determined by the need to navigate around, well, hair.

"Yeah, I heard they revoke your license if you go around smothering patients with pillows for kicks. Something about it being against the Hippocratic oath, issues with liability and lawsuits and all that," he replies. "But I figure it's only my leg. No risk of falling asleep where I'm weak and vulnerable to your predations. And hey. If it rots off or something, I've got spare, right?" Look at that. That is optimism right there.

It's a game of misinterpreting the meaning behind looks and questions. When he shoots her the Look(tm) along with that singular, prompting word of defiant challenge she gives a little shrug and an amused huff. "Hey - I asked if you had a Trasher shirt. Just hadn't seen the evidence properly, is all." Like it's her staring at his shirt that he's questioning. Though, she's left squinting a little at her own interpretation of things, like whether he'd be challenging her thusly for just a look at his shirt. Did he assume she was checking him out? She technically had been, on the way up to his eyes when her gaze happened to hitch on that logo. The uncertainty continues.

But Katrin goes to her knees. Setting the items down before she reaches to the faucet in the tub, and gets the water going at just enough of a trickle to start to dampen one of those cleaning pads. One of those round, cotton disks better utilized for make-up but seeing so much utility just about everywhere. She means to get at the grit before she disinfects, likely. When she leans back, she sets her ass down on her heels to kneel, and gets a good look at those dried rivulets of blood.

She doesn't shirk away as she does her estimation of where to start. "That's what they got for questioning my bedside manner. Not my fault it was the quickest way to having the quietest ward in the hospital," she jokes, casually before nodding to herself. "But there's no pillows in here. So you should be okay, for now." What urge there is to further glance up at what of his tattoo she can see is suppressed for now, as she starts to dab that damp cotton disk just above the point of injury, moving down from there to clear it of that grit. And to have a better look. Her initial amounts of pressure is minimal, testing his reaction to just that light touch as she cleans.

This part could have been done with running water, sure - but that'd have taken some posturing and careful navigation to have Viktor do, with his desired amount of clothing in place. "If it falls off, I'm going to have to shotgunning it for arts and crafts. It'd probably make for a great doorstop," she observes.

Viktor makes a surprisingly, well, patient patient, once he's been convinced to stop insisting he's fine and actually let someone help him. He doesn't wince or flinch when she starts poking at his injured knee. All he does is stare down at his leg, stare down at her tattooed hands, as she begins dabbing at his skin, clearing away bits of dirty and grit and minute bits of concrete crumbles that have embedded themselves into his skin.

"You don't have to do this," he says, quiet. And at first, that may sound like the dying cry of a failed rebellion against her nursing, unlicensed and unregulated as it may be. But it's not, because a half second later he adds, "Thanks for doing it anyway." There's a soft sort of appreciation in his voice, but there's some degree of discomfort, too. The truth is, he's not really used to anyone taking care of him, or even really trying to. Not anymore. Not here.

As he leans forward to inspect his own knee, a bit of his hair flops forward, down into his face. It dangles there for a second before he brushes it back. It doesn't really help. It's not long enough to tuck behind his ears, but it is long enough fall into his eyes. He either needs a haircut, or better hair product. His hand runs through it a second time. Still pointless.

"I thought you were looking at the ink," he eventually says, "Not the shirt. Not sure why the shirt really matters." The last note of the word 'matters' is a little higher than the rest of it, and though it's all worded as a statement, that rise in the final syllable coupled with the uncertainty of he expresses twists into a question--why does the shirt matter? It is, after all, just a t-shirt bearing the old logo a magazine that's been in print longer than either of them have been alive, a magazine whose glossy pages they spent many hours pouring over, once upon a yesteryear. It's not like it should come as a surprise that he either still reads it or bears some nostalgia for the brand.

'yoU dOn't HavE to Do ThIs.'

That old temptation might be there, like a reflex to mock his dismissal of her helping hand - or, rather, his allowance for her to have an escape hatch out of helping. But Viktor might just have a hand in defusing the effort, when he goes ahead and thanks her with that soft appreciation in her tone. She goes from readily able childish mockery to a flash of a bright smile up in his direction that briefly distracts her from her work. It's one of those genuine smiles, that crinkle at the edges of her eyes and cause her to squint a little. It'd be more heartwarming if the words she sends up directly afterward go a little something like, "Was that so hard?" Spoken with the teasing softness of someone close enough to get away with it, allegedly.

Distracting too, is the way that Viktor's hair falls in front of his face, inspiring a softer cast to her countenance just before she blinks and looks back down to what she's doing.

It's not that she's any good at what she's doing, either. She's operating off of half memories of her own skateboarding injuries - and the more aptly applied medical knowledge of staff tending to dancers whose heels broke at inopportune times, or got a little too close to the edge of the stage for gravity not to try and humble them. She tosses grit and blood soaked pads into the bin, replacing them with yet more as she dabs away all that excess grit until its just fresh blood and his wound - what rivulets have formed below, she has only tackled in a half-assed manner while the source still gently flows. She settles down as she switches to the next step, uncapping the bottle of iso.

She sets the pad to the top of it, and turns the bottle to let some rubbing alcohol soak into the cotton. "Doesn't - just came to mind that you might have one," she answers, in a way that does very little to put logic into her side of this particular topic. But it's stated more distantly, as she sets her focus to what she's doing with a wince of prelude. "This is gonna hurt, like, the worst kind of sunburn," she claims. And gently, she leans in to hesitantly set the iso to his wound. Her jaw tightens in the expectation of a response from him.

"You're still close enough to the tub for me to shove you into it and turn the faucet on," he warns her when she breaks out with that taunt--like he see the wheels of her brain turning behind her swirling eyes, is aware of the obnoxious sing-song that she's only barely held back and replaced instead with gentle chastisement. Of course, he did warn her he was telepathic. Maybe he can read some of her surface thoughts and just didn't want to freak her out. Or, more likely, he's known her long enough to be well aware of her favorite ways to be intentionally annoying.

The warning that the alcohol-soaked pad is going to sting is heeded, but it doesn't really do much to contain his reaction. No matter how careful she is with it, it still sting and the whole right side of his face scrunches up at the feeling of that cold burn seeping into his raw skin. It's part squint, part scrunching of his nose, the curling of his upper lip, but only on the one side, like he's doing a really dodgy Elvis impression, and without even the thick Mississippi accent or a rocking of his hips to accompany it.

Unpleasant. But also entirely tolerable, and he doesn't flinch, or squirm, or reflexively kick. Only that face.

But it's the first few seconds of it that are the worst and once he's past that part, he relaxes into it again. Both of his hands come down to rest on the edge of the tub, bracing himself against it. "I saw you go all cross-eyed and faded out in the kitchen when you had that vision, KitKat, whatever it was." In other words, he knows she's lying about the shirt, about it being a passing thought, wondering whether he had one. And this time, he's actually calling her out on it instead of letting it go. It could be a dangerous game, calling her on her bull. After all, she could just as easily turn it around on him. That cough in the tunnels that had her worried he was getting sick...

But Viktor can't help it. There's a hint of unease in the way he nudges her in the direction of providing either a clear answer or pushing back against his prodding. Like he knows it could be a step too far, if she really doesn't want to tell him. "

"Hate to give unsolicited advice - but that really isn't the way to get a girl wet, Lil' Viki," Katrin teases, with a short, performative roll of her eyes that's quick enough not to delay her 'treatment' too much. Her voice, just a little too sultry not to have that flirtatious manner that she's picked up in her years away that plays into her stage persona so well - and into her call for immediate distraction, even better. There's no backpedaling this time, though, like she'd done with the much more physically forward wiggle in his lap near to the skate park. Just a flash of mischief that draws her smile a little more sideways in that sly way that she trends toward. No eyelash-batting claim toward innocence to claim that she came by the innuendo innocently.

But she winces again when Viktor scrunches, like she can feel it alongside him. But she grits her teeth, letting her smile falter a little as she sticks with it, disinfecting the initial site of the wound with dab after gentle dab. Not that her gentleness does anything aside from ensuring she provokes what healing is already being done, as little as possible (even if the alcohol itself counteracts that intent, a little).

"I don't go cross-eyed," she contests, a little too hurriedly. Only to pause and let her jaw relax a touch. A ghost of her earlier smile returns. "At least, I don't think I do. I'm not really around to notice." It's tactical, entirely, that she addresses one aspect of what he's saying rather than the whole of it. With anyone else, she might've just stopped there. If she knew she could get Viktor's mind of the subject within a couple of minutes and not have that avoidance fester, she'd probably just drop it. Instead, she just shrugs like the whole thing is inconsequential. Like her vision just gave her a hint of some inane interaction, like a commercial break during lunch. "Saw the shirt in my vision. That's really just it." Half truths. Or, more like 1/10ths of a truth.

With the iso applied and another pad set into the garbage, at a rate that shows clear overuse in a way that hopefully doesn't translate to her bandaging, for the sake of Viktor's mobility, she pauses, hesitates, and leans her hip a little over to the right to rest her weight on the one knee. She cants her head to the side, dips her face in close to the side of his knee, and presses the plush cushion of her lips in against the skin where it doesn't hold any wound. She'd made a promise, of sorts. And she looks up with the pale pink lipstick of her lips still pressed against him, only to retreat ever so minutely and murmur, in question. He can feel the breath of the word on his skin when she says it.

"Better?"

There's a snort from him at the comment about shoving her into the tub, and for a fleeting second, the sound resonates more than it should. Sounds deeper, almost bestial, in a way it surely wouldn't anywhere else. It's the tiled walls and what that means for the acoustics, the same effect that tempts so many people to sing in the shower. It's proof that, as often as he dodges her innuendos, he's not entirely humorless. So is his quick retort. "Pretty sure it'd leave you dripping--just in a way only one of us would enjoy."

Does he catch the implication that they'd both probably--

"Ow," he hisses as she hits a fresh patch of open wound where his knee hit the hardest, where there's going to be bruise beneath the scab that'll form sooner or later.

It's enough to short circuit his ability to track down the implications of his own comment, whether he intended all of them or not. So when she supplies another line of conversation, he latches onto it, following it away from his own prurient reply. "You don't go cross-eyed," he admits. "But you get this kind of distant look, like you're staring off at some point in space that isn't really there. "Or like your eyes are focused on a reality layered on top of ours, seeing shadows of things that aren't there but could be." The description he provides is delivered with a tender ache of concern that's already been eased, much like she's trying to do with her first aid. It freaked him out, seeing her like that, not knowing what was happening or if she was alright. He doesn't bother to hide it, either.

But he does exhale, the feeling of pressing a lipstick-coated kiss to his leg relieving the memory of that moment far more than the stinging and soreness in his knee.

"Better," he confirms. The tub creaks when his palm rubs against the white porcelain. He twists a loose bit of her dark hair between his fingers, tucking it back behind a pointed ear rather than trying to fix her braid. "Thanks, KitKat."

A flash of joy - and a again, awe flashes from behind her eyes when Viktor plays along with that sultry innuendo. What spills out of her after a failure to stifle it with a sputter, is a shortly, but cheerful laugh - pitched nearer to a giggle than a chuckle. But it's not enough to draw her lips too far from where they were just so freshly pressed to Viktor's skin. "Only one of us would enjoy?" she parrots back, no less sultry and with a lift of both brows that form their own question, only for that question to get buried beneath the more serious matters of her visions and his gratitude.

Katrin is grateful as well, as it turns out, when Viktor gives her an honest answer on how she appears for her vision. She expresses this with another brush of her lips in against the side of his knee, and something thankful in the softer cast of her eyes - the openness of the expression that follows. "Sometimes, that how it feels," she admits, to the artistic depiction of what he assumes to be her experience. "Other times, it's like I'm ripped away toward somewhere else - seeing things not at all near me, in places I've never been watching people I haven't met," she shares, with what wealth of experience she's had with this particular talent since her arrival at the park.

"Like the tunnels. Still can't find the ones my visions showed me." She presents this example passingly, rather than as a weighty subject lingering in her thoughts. For the inconsequential nature of that vision pales in comparison to the way he tucks her hair back.

A brush of her ear bring an unexpected shiver. She turns her chin upward, facing him rather directly, rather than with half her regard given to his knee. She smiles, letting that replace the open wonder of her full expression. "Any time," she promises, back, little louder than a whisper. But she's only really most of the way done. A point that she acknowledges with a residual chuckle and a tilt of her head. "Should probably still get you bandaged up, though."

"Maybe they haven't been built yet," Viktor offers, a possibility that she may well have already considered. One she's probably already considered.

But it's better than lingering on the thought of her being ripped away to elsewhere, elsewhen, surrounded by strangers. He may circle back to it in a few minutes, may recall the comment in some later conversation. But for now, he'd rather shove it away into some shadowy corner because even if she only means mentally, even if her visions only last for a moment or too, it sounds a little too much like the past. Like something that already happened and turned the whole world inside out when it did.

"Joey and Jaime are working on building the new attraction on Moonrise Island. Maybe you're seeing the ones they're gonna be digging when it warms up?"

Though the mention of when it warms up, coupled with the way she shivers, has him misreading the cause of the latter. It's the winter weather, even on this sunny day, and not the incidental brush of his fingers against her elongated ear.

One of these days, he'll get better at reading her cues. It used to come naturally, all those years ago. But time and distance and have faded away some of that easy familiarity. It also doesn't help that in trying to repress the reality of his own rising feelings, he's probably made himself ignorant to hers, or at least denying that they're a possibility. No, any hint he's caught onto has to be a false hope, some small thing he's exaggerated or imagined, clearly. So the conclusion he reaches may come as a surprise, even if it seems perfectly logical to him.

"Cold?," he asks, reflexively reaching for the sweater he brought into the bathroom with him, ready to offer it to her. Nevermind the fact that her own discarded sweatshirt is right there.

Katrin produces a thoughtful hum - a little doubtful, but following along. The way she scrunches her face up, though, indicates that there's just so much room for misinterpretation; by her as well. "They looked a little run down. Or maybe just damp, like there's water getting in from somewhere and it's not getting aired out?" she explains, which doesn't explain her doubts in her own assumptions there. But she continues all the same, as she reaches for the gauze and guides Viktor's foot a little further out from the tub with fingertips pressed against the back of his calf.

"But, honestly? I don't know how far into the future that I'm seeing - or how far I can see. Maybe that's just what the tunnel is going to look like ten years from now. Or twenty." She snorts a little, a dry huff of humour at a thought that crosses her mind from an adjacent route. "What I'm seeing could also just be halfway around the world, even if my magical musical sonar is pointing at something between the islands." All in all, she's at a non-starter. Her angles of approach for what she's seen having dried up for now. But another curiosity hitches on after the last.

"What is the new attraction, anyway?" she asks, incidentally - wondering if Viktor knows. If anyone outside of said project knows.

Cold?

She blinks, looking up at him again as she unwinds some gauze, unravelling enough to wrap around his leg three times over. Which she starts to do, with her thumb pinning down the end of it, at the opposite side of his knee from where she'd kissed him. She shakes her head a little, with confusion knit into her brow until she catches onto the reason. Her follow-up chuckle is a little more meek. "Ears. They're just a little more sensitive than I'm used to," she tells him. And before he can even dare to apologize, she adds. "Not in a bad way. It doesn't hurt or anything."

So, sensitive in the way that her ears might have been naturally. Only, amplified in their current state.

"Oh."

It's a stupid response, and what follows a few seconds later isn't much better. "Good to know," he says with a hard exhale. Wait, what? Did he really just blurt that out?

Yes. Yes, he did. But really, what else is he supposed to say in response to that explanation? The apology she clearly doesn't want? A promise that it won't happen again, when the possibilities of what might happen if he did it again are probably going to burning a hole in his brain somewhere around 2AM? Making a crack about it that she will, no doubt, twist into another flirtatious comment she doesn't mean, with how awkward that'll be? Yeah, there aren't many good options here.

So he swallows instead, and pulls that sweater into his lap. He could pull it on, probably, instead of sitting there with it, but he still has to wash part of his arm off and the sleeve with end up getting wet.

"It's going to be some sort of jungle themed thing," Viktor ultimately answers, since it's a safer topic. "Joey--or I think it was Joey? One of the twins. They said they're basically digging moats or something out on Moonrise. Made a comment about filling it in with alligators, presumably animatronic ones, when we were at the potluck. I haven't been out to Moonrise, but if the island's all marshy and they have water drainage problems, it'd make sense for the tunnels to be damp like that. Unless you're seeing older tunnels that they sealed up somewhere or something, but I haven't heard about anything like that."

Of course, him not hearing about it doesn't make it impossible and he tips his head towards his left shoulder, mouth pressing into a thin line as he considers that possibility. "Some of the construction and security crews have been around for ages. They might know."

'Mmhmm,' is how Katrin confirms that it is, indeed, 'good to know.' She loses some of that meekness for how he blurts out his own response. Her uptick of her eyebrows asks the question, 'is it, now?' But she does him the small mercy of not digging in there. Not right away, anyhow. It's a postponement, not a declaration of flirtatious peace. When she turns her attention back down to what she's doing, she's in close enough that he'd feel her breath on his skin. There's a knot of concentration in her eyebrows that isn't there for the effortlessness of the tasks she's actually well practiced at.

She tears the gauze along its edge and tucks it in under itself, keeping it pinned with her index finger while her thumb keeps the other end unnecessarily still. She reaches for the tape, unravels a strip, and carefully binds the gauze at the side of his knee. She tears the tape with her teeth before tossing the roll aside. Her work is a little tight - just tight enough to make note of it - but not so tight as to cut off his circulation. There's pride in the smile she shares; but pride leads to perfectionism.

"Remember hearing him say something about moats. The cool name they lost out on," she confirms. Though she doesn't say which twin those words came from. She doesn't seem to rightly know, in the present moment. "So, like, pirates of the Caribbean? Maybe?" She shrugs a little on the subject of Moonrise island. "I didn't really go in from the shore when I borrowed that boat to take over. You could be right about the tunnels, though." Curious, that the subjects of her visions should become easier small talk than everything they talk their way around.

She wets another pad and starts to tend to the rivulets with one hand, dabbing down away from his bandaged wound. She sets her other hand back to the back of his calf with his her fingertips touching him, like she means to hold him in place just so. That she's kneeling in a low cut crop top with him looking down on her isn't actually an intentional tease (as carefully as she picked out her full outfit, when he messaged her to go skating). She just hadn't wanted to get the sleeves of her hoodie bloodied.

"Who would you ask?" she asks in turn, regarding those crews that have been around longer.

There's a blink from Viktor, then another, then another, each one of them slow and deliberate, as though trying to clear something out of his eyes. Or, more likely, trying to clear away a sudden, unexpected thought as he's staring down at her. As he realizes he's probably been staring too long. He shifts in his seat at the edge of the tub, weight settling more on his left hip now than his right as she rearranges the bend of his leg.

Viktor's head tilts back at the last, staring up at the ceiling vent. Like he's trying to run through a mental checklist of names, instead of trying to find somewhere else to put his eyes. "Uhh. There's a guy in security that's been here forever. Charlie something, I think? I don't know him. Fred might, though. Or one of the twins might know someone in construction. It was construction and security that were the first groups on site, even before I got here."

The muscle in his leg twitches a few seconds after she begins dabbing away the dried blood than ran down into his sock. He's been trying to stay still and has, until the last few seconds, largely succeeded. But her fingers are beginning to tickle almost as much as her breath did a few seconds ago. Is he going to start squirming with impatience, after it took so much effort to get him in here? He might. He very well might.

"It was out by Moonrise where you said the resonance from the song was strongest, right? If that's true, it'd make sense for the tunnels to be the ones they're building out on Moonrise."

Katrin hums a little, in those quieter moments where Viktor is trying to readjust and shift his weight along the edge of the tub. A point that she doesn't pay much mind to, aside from some added steadying pressure from the pads of her fingers against the back of his calf. It's just the melody, slowed down, behind 'Trip Switch' if Viktor would recognize some Nothing But Thieves. And it's over nearly as soon as she's started it, when he gets to reciting his list to the ceiling vent.

"Worth following up on. With the twins, at least. Charlie something too - if Fred can get us a last name." Us. Again, she's roping in Viktor with her, for a probable magical investigation on the basis of a song and a tunnel. Curious hobbies she's picked up, since her arrival at the park. But probably the sort that might just give balance to the other end of her fun-seeking behaviors.

"Not quite," she chimes in, about where the resonance was strongest. "It was strongest on Spellbound, in the tunnel," she notes. The one that she's showed Viktor. Where she demonstrated the resonance responding to the song from the vision. "Second strongest from the shore, over on Moonrise. It's what made me think it might be something underwater, when Danny said he was going out for a look." That was weeks ago, though. And it isn't something that they heard back on, after the exchange of numbers.

She tugs his sock down, a little at a time, as she takes another pad and does what she can to get all the blood that she can find - short of getting it out of what clothes have already been stained. She's entirely unlikely to be much help, there. But she pauses a couple seconds after his leg twitches, letting her gaze sweep up all the way from his calf to his face with a raise of her right brow. "You good?" she asks, with more amusement and curiosity for his fidgeting than concern.

Her amusement is meant with one of his mouth curving into a lopsided smile, but not the other. His face is still tipped up towards the ceiling, though his eyes flick back down, staring at her down the length of his nose, bump where he broke it and all. He still hasn't explained how that happened. Then again, she also hasn't asked, but she might have a few guesses after watching him faceplant down a set of steps today.

"It tickles," he admits, followed by, "and I'm trying not to kick you. You're going through half the first aid kit in one go and at this rate, if my leg jerks and you catch a foot to the face, we won't have any bandages to keep the blood from shooting out of that little button nose of yours." At that, he scrunches his own up several times, a bad imitation of a bunny's wiggle.

But there's still that question about the dive and what they did or didn't find, what is or isn't underneath the water. And she's right. It has been weeks. "I haven't heard from Danny, either. But you've got his number and he's a friendly enough, so text him. Or if you don't want to, if you're worried it'll come across wrong, I can. I don't know him all that well, but I have known him awhile. His dogs like me enough that they gave me a name, so it wouldn't be weird for me to reach out."

He straightens back up then, giving her a quietly assessing look. It's almost funny, that he thinks she might be shy about reaching out, might be worried it'll get taken the wrong way. In a few short weeks, he's seen how brazen she can be, must know she does it deliberately instead of just blurting out whatever's in her head without filtering it. So maybe he's the one who thinks that sooner or later, someone will take her seriously when she means to be anything but.

So the offer is there and he's watching her, waiting for an answer. What does she want to do here?

The notch in Viktor's nose frames one eye more than the other, from the angle that Katrin's head is tilted in looking up at him. Her amusement is still on display, alongside a growing curiosity that inspects the tilt of his smile for indication of what has his eyes directed upward and his body fidgeting so. His initial admission is something half-sold to her in a way that warrants a slight squint, like there's an aspect to the excuse that she isn't quite buying. The comment on her nose is taken to be flattering, and thus, distracting, however.

The corners of her lips twitch a little higher without any conscious guidance as his incidental compliment unfolds in stages. Button nose. As stated by Viktor. Something that maybe he thinks is cute? As much gets inferred as witnessed. His imitation of that wiggle get an unexpected chuckle from her that hitches her shoulders and her chin. Then, smiling too brightly to fully stifle the expression, she tries it back at him - a little bunny-wiggle of the tip of her nose. "Almost done," she assures him. "Don't know what about the ceiling is helping you suppress a case of the giggles - but look to it if you need to, Lil' Viki," she tells him, with a teasing tone but no less warmth.

She performs a couple follow-up dabs before she trashes the latest pad. Afterward, she doesn't get up right away. Instead, she leans back at an angle that has her resting with her legs tucked in beside her rather than under her, and her hand braced against the floor on her opposite side.

"What way do you think it'd come across?" she adds, as a curiousity takes root in Viktor's interpretation. But maybe she thinks she's tormented him enough for one day, because she shrugs nearly immediately afterward with so much of her shoulders laid bare by spaghetti straps layered over her bra. "More just hoping the song didn't result in a big 'nothing' for him, in recorded form. Would be awkward to poke him for follow-up just to get a 'yeah - didn't work - you're not crazy, are you?'" She says, with a performative edge of amusement to her voice for that last bit, that may conceal genuine anxieties of the sort.

"But yeah - reach out. Or I can just get over myself and do the same," she adds, before pointing her chin up at Viktor with a nod. "But, more importantly - how is my patient feeling? Any other ways that nurse Katrin can spoil you, today?"

"Group text, then," he says. "You, me, Danny. That way if he thinks you're crazy, at least he'll know it's contagious, right?"

The offer is made with a huff, the sound of a laugh being stifled, as she goes and mimics his nose wiggle. She really does have a button nose, so it looks far more bunny-like on her face than it does on his. Honestly, when he tried it, it just kind of looked like his nose itched.

The question about making her patient feel better stretches his stifled smile into a full blown smirk. Both of his brows shoot up, lifting towards the burnished scales all at the edge of his hairline.

"Got any lollipops? Didn't even cry at the disinfectent and I'm pretty sure that means I'm supposed to get a treat."

He waits a second, then another, before testing his knee. It's not really a question of how much it hurts, so much as how tightly it's wrapped, how easily he can move or not. Since the bandage seems to be holding, he leans forward to roll his pant leg down, pulling the hem all the way down to his ankle. Standing up? That might have to wait a second. The bathroom's not that big, and while he's happy to offer her a hand up once he's on his feet, she might want to scoot back instead of possibly getting bumped into as he rocks up off the edge of the tub.

"The contagious kind of crazy - the witchy STD of magical visions," Katrin says, turning the words in a playful way - teasing at that choice in phrasing even while a warmth of gratitude shows in the openness of her expression. She nods a little, wholly accepting those terms. And she's quite unable to suppress the smile that goes with his support; the way he puts himself right into the range of judgement alongside her. But this bright expression is also bolstered by the laugh she gets out of him, for the bunny-esque wiggle of her button nose.

She batts dark lashes up at him, to complete the cute imitation; even if that portion of it is only really known to cartoon critters, like those in Bambi.

"None on hand, sorry. I keep my candy stashed up in my room," she starts, half-joking. The candy is likely real, but what follows is certainly not. "Ensures I won't be waylaid by sugar-toothed bandits on my way to and from the park. "All those kidlets hopped up on a vacation-full of sweets never really quite lose the taste for it, unfortunately." As if they're all just werewolves having tasted blood for the first time.

She watches attentively, with maybe as much anxiety as pride as he tests the bandage. She's not nearly as confident with this as she is at all those other skills she has practice with. But when he seems to move alright, her shoulders slacken as she relaxes down into herself. She scoots back just a bit and leans back a little further, sliding back her bracing hand enough so that Viktor can get to his feet without being any sort of bumping-danger to her. At least not without losing his balance

"As long as it doesn't burn when you see." Seriously? Did he seriously just say that? Yes, he did. And he's apparently doubling down on the terrible joke, entirely unapologetic about it. "If it does, let me know. We can take you to the medical clinic to get your eyes and the rest of your head checked."

Viktor shoves himself back up to his full height, although it doesn't last long. Mostly because the first thing he does when he's up onto his feet is to offer her a hand to help her back up onto hers.

"I'll keep my eye out for kids all hopped up on Pixy Stix, all twitchy like they've been snorting blow off the bathroom counter in the Arcande Arcade. Wouldn't want them to mug me for my half-priced Hershey's the day after Valentine's, especially since now I've got a bad knee, like a decrepit old man," he says with a quiet snort. Hopefully she laughs, but if not, at least he amuses himself, right?

Then he jerks his head over to the sink. "Let me wash this and then I'll be out, yeah?" His arm. He means his arm, which has some roadrash going on. Not bleeding the way his knee was, but the skin on his right palm and part of his forearm doesn't look too happy right now. The tattoo, fortunately, looks largely untouched. He had long sleeves on, a heavy hoodie, so it was only the drag of his cuff against the concrete that left bare skin exposed to the ground, and his own weight coupled with sheer momentum grinding his limbs across it.

"Not as of yet - but you'll be the first to know, if it does," Katrin quips right back. The way her lips curve right into that sly smile while she's looking up at him, clearly pleased, showcases again that she's impressed with his joke - that capability to go dirty when he wants to. The follow up has an unexpected hitch in the way an unexpected chuckle spills from her lips, both softly stifled and highly pitched as she brings her free wrist to in front of her mouth.

She shakes her head at him, then. But she does so with such clear approval, whether this is her influence, or this range of comedic commentary has been at his command all along; lurking beneath his presently - usually - stoic surface.

"It'll be even more difficult for you - with your height and all. Might not see them waiting beneath the chairs at the cafe or the diner, ready to sink their teeth in," she explains, as if these little ankle biters can get their fix from literal blood sugars. "I'll try to stick around as much as I can, catch them on-low while you spot the ones further away." She plays along with the imaginary scenarios far too easily. But she's got dual citizenship in a theatre background and living a lie - having but her performing arts education to use in unexpected ways, since she moved away.

She takes his hand with hers, enough to hold onto as she lifts her previously bracing hand to take his wrist as she climbs to her feet in a smooth enough motion that brings her in close before she steps back. Her hold lingers a couple seconds longer than it needs to, before she releases her grip for both hands to slide free.

She does a double check of that road-rash, but concedes after a little delay with a gentle nod to have him handle this one himself - with much less trouble in doing so, without having to reach, bend, or contort in the act of cleaning up. She plucks her hoodie with a hooked finger taking up the hood of it, but doesn't go about slipping it back on now that they've settled in, inside. She cants her head toward the door, as she makes to give him his space. "I'll do my best not to snoop too much. Take all the time you need," she answers, and teases all at once, with a wink of dark lashes.

"On-low?," Viktor asks, lifting a brow at her. Not both. This isn't a natural look, one that comes over his face as a result of whatever inner thought is working its way into an outer expression. No, this is deliberate. A challenge. A taunt. "I'm pretty sure you mean 'at eye level', KitKat, considering that you're about the same size as the little monsters looking to get their fix. If you hadn't been on stage at the Spookeasy, I probably wouldn't have even seen you until I crawled under the soundboard."

Lil' Viki, indeed.

He does have the space he needs to make it to the sink, though, which he does, picking up the various wrappers and a mislaid cotton pad, the detritus of cleaning up his leg, on his way over to it. They all get tossed down into the trash before he turns the tap on, setting it to slightly warmer than room temperature before dunking his arm under it and soaping up his skin. His top lip twitches for a second at the way rubbing it stings, the same way he did with the iso applied.

A half second later, his eyes lift, looking into the mirror not to catch his own reflection, but to look back at her. "Go ahead and snoop if you want to, but I won't be long. I was expecting you to go digging around in my stuff sooner or later, so I already stashed all the cash, drugs, and dirty magazines." Magazines? Who buys dirty magazines anymore? Probably not Viktor, given the way he's giving her that lopsided smile of his. Another joke. He really is capable of humor, even if it's delivered directly, and often in the sort of flat tone that almost (almost) makes it believable.

"Tucked it all up out of reach. You'll need to climb a chair to get to it, and the good snacks, too." Apparently, the concern is no longer being caught with contraband; it's being unwilling to share it.

"Hey - still tower over the sprouts, at least. You can't take that away from me," Katrin shoots back, with the kind of faux outrage that comes easy to the well acquainted; to old friends and to long-term relationships both. It's complete with a performative cocking of her right hip, on which she sets her hand, as she turns to look back from the frame of the door. "And with my heels, you'd have definitely have seen at least the top of my head - even without the point ears."

She gives a little wiggle of her head for that last point, which carries through into a minute wobble of said ears for effect. From her place on the other side of the frame, she watches for a moment as Viktor goes about cleaning up. The twitch of his lip gets an empathetic wince from her. But it's something she covers up well with an easy, slightly tilted smile by the time he looks back at her.

"Always keeping my best qualities in your thoughts," she teases, with a kind of casual pride that's entirely put on for effect - especially since it's in response to his expectation of her snooping. "Just living up there, in your head-" she says, lifting her hand to point a little more at the side of her forehead than at her temple. "-rent free." She sighs there, as if Viktor has a terminal case of 'having her on his mind' in this specific context, like 'Nurse Katrin' thinks the case might just be terminal. The little shake of her head further infers this prognosis.

But, it's as she steps away and toward the kitchen (rather than Viktor's bedroom) that she replies to that last point. "Also - everyone I've dated has been taller than me. I've gotten pretty good at climbing, I'll have you know." There's a suggestiveness to that quip that she's - unfortunately/fortunately - not around to see Viktor's reaction to, as she walks away.

There's a shake of his head and a snort at something she's said, though it's hard to say what, exactly. Mostly because it doesn't come until she's left the room, his eyes following her in the mirror until she's well out of sight. "At this rate," he mumbles under his breath as he pats his arm dry, "forget the rent. I'm going to have to take out a fucking mortgage." A damp hand rubs at his face for a second, then another. And then he pulls his sweater on, careful not to hook it on those budding horns as he draws it down over her head, before following her out to the kitchen.