Sunday afternoon, Jamie and Kitty have a snowball fight

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And Kitty displays her true colors as a remorseless, unrelenting cheater.



It would be wildly inaccurate to say Jamie was lurking in the bushes.  Or that he was stalking Kitty.  Exactly.  He had called her outside, and he was standing where someone on the path couldn't precisely see him, but that was irrelevant.

The relevant part was the bobble hat she was wearing.  He snickered to himself as she came within range, then took careful aim and knocked it off with a snowball.

Kitty shrieked as her hat went flying. It took less than a second to put two and two together and arrive at sneak attack. Which made the two snowballs she'd been hiding behind her back less an unjustly-suspicious-preemptive act of war and more a sensible precaution. Of course, that meant she had to get a line of sight on Jamie. Phasing out she dashed straight through the interveining shrubbery and let a snowball fly as soon as she had a clear shot.

Jamie caught it full in the mouth and fell over backward, spluttering. He popped back up again immediately, hands busy with the makings of another snowball.  "No fair reversing the ambush!" he called, and threw.

Kitty dodged sideways and managed to escape the direct shot, although the explosion of snow as it hit the tree next to her dusted her jacket. "Hey, I figure just staying solid is all the fair I need," she said, launching another shot before grabbing at some more snow.

"Well, if you put it that way . . ."  Jamie launched himself forward, snowballs flying from his hands.

It took some concentration to override the instinct to phase away from the attack, but Kitty stayed solid and took her lumps, tossing the insuffiecently packed snow at him, more of a cloud than an actual ball. But it did serve the purpose of getting him covered in snow.

"Thppt."  Jamie grinned down at her.  "Well, I see three choices. One, I dunk you in the snowbank.  Two, we just fling loose snow at each other from close range.  Three, we take ten steps back and start over.  What do you think?"

Kitty nodded solemly. "Ten paces at daw... er..." She glanced down at her watch. "Quarter to two. Turn and fire?"

Jamie saluted with a fresh snowball, then grinned.  "Unless I turn around early.  You never know."

Packing together her own fresh ammo, Kitty stuck her tongue out at him. "Unless I'm not solid."

"You know," Jamie said reprovingly, "you take all the fun out of cheating when you do that."  He lined up back-to-back with Kitty, nudging her lightly with his elbows.

She gave him a bright grin, and just barely resisted starting an elbow nudge war. "Ready?"

Jamie stretched carefully, and a little fall of snow just happened to slip out of his fingers into Kitty's collar.  He grinned back.  "Yep."

Kitty jumped at the cold shock, nudging him more sharply with her elbow. "Oy," she said, wrinkling her nose. "Fine. One... Two..." Starting the count, she paced away from him, grinning to herself.

"Three, four . . ." Jamie continued, pacing it off.  She probably would phase out if he threw early, the minx.  Of course, nothing was stopping her from doing it.  Was that an itch between his shoulder blades?

"Five... Six..." Kitty eyed the path in front of her. Yes, it looked right. She widened her step slightly, just in case. She'd be solid whey they hit ten and turned. She would just also be on the other side of that lovely, also solid oak.

"Seven, eight, nine . . ." Jamie said.

"Ten!" added the dupe leaning against the far side of the oak, casually tossing a snowball in his hand.  He raised an eyebrow at Kitty.  "You should've thrown early."

"Cheat!" Kitty exclaimed, blithely ignoring the fact that she'd started it. She hurled the snowball at Jamie, and then hurled herself after it, looking to tackle him into the snow.

Jamie oofed and went over backward with Kitty on top of him.  He grinned smugly when they landed.  "Decided to get physical, did you?"

"Seemed appropriate, yes," she said with an answering grin.

"You know," he pointed out, "I'm taller, heavier, and stronger than you are.  Right now, just about the only thing you could do to stop me from holding you down and stuffing snow anywhere I can think of would be phasing, and that would be cheating, for which I would justifiably mock you in public."

Kitty's eyes widened suddenly and her lower lip quivered just a little bit. "You... you wouldn't, though. Would you...?" she asked hesitantly, just the slightest hint of a sniff in her voice.

"Which?" Jamie asked, looking distinctly hunted.  "The snow stuffing, or the public mockery?"

The tremble in her lip because more pronounced. "Would you really do either, Jamie? Please say you wouldn't." There was a definite tone of entreaty in her voice.

"But it's a snow fight," Jamie pointed out, sounding desperate. "That's what you do in a snow fight."

The sniff was definitely audible this time. "If you think you have to, I won't stop you. I couldn't. I'm not as strong as you."

"Augh.  You're cheating.  You're a horrible cheater.  And evil!" Jamie stuck out his lower lip.  "That pout has to be against the Geneva Convention or something."

Since she was already kneeling above him, Kitty stretched out on his chest, resting her head on his shoulder and peering up at him through her lashes. "But you were going to use being stronger and bigger than me against me," she said, her voice small and pathetic.

"Only because you were going to hide behind the tree!" Jamie said defensively.  "You started it, and now you're pulling out the heavy artillery to try to get out of trouble."  He grinned slyly.  "And it wasn't like I wasn't going to warm you back up when we went back inside."

"You could warm me up now." There was a hint of wheedling in her tone.

"Oh yeah?"  Jamie eyed her speculatively.  "You sure you're cold enough?  I mean, we haven't been out here very long."

"There's a limit on how cold I have to be?" Kitty shot for a distressed look, furrowing her brow and looking worried. "How cold is cold enough?"

"Hm."  Jamie grabbed a tiny pinch of snow and sprinkled it on Kitty's hair.  "Just about that cold."

"Yeah!" Kitty's face lit up with a bright grin which (mostly) avoided being smug and she completely hid the smugness to it by reaching up to kiss Jamie.

"Hmph."  Jamie pulled his head back after a moment . . . well, a long moment.  "You better not be thinking this means you've won."

She pouted at him. "I would never think that," she exclaimed, finishing in her own mind, I know it.

Jamie shot her a dubious look, then shook his head and stood up, tossing Kitty over his shoulder.  "Either way, we'd better get into a nice hot bath before we catch our deaths. That's what my mom would say."  He grinned.  "Well, she wouldn't say 'we.'"