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“Close your eyes,” Adora says, a huge grin on her face. “I’ve got a surprise for you!”
Catra narrows her eyes, but doesn’t quite close them. The people of Brightmoon are so syrupy sweet that she gags on it, and Adora—
It’s not surprising that Adora fits in, but she still can’t shake the unease that comes with being told “Sorry that you’re shut up in here” when here is a room full of brightly-colored pillows and attached room that has both a toilet and a shower (with warm water), as if this is a bad place to be.
Adora’s making her eyes get bigger and sadder, the longer Catra sits there with her arms crossed and a scowl on her face, so Catra sighs, tells herself that Adora’s spent a long time going out of her way to not hurt her, closes her eyes, and says, “Fine.”
“Okay! Great!”
Catra’s ears twitch as she hears some clinking sounds, and then she sniffs and pauses. There’s something sweet in the air, and she has no idea what. She isn’t sure if Adora would even be aware she can smell it; all the humans forget that it isn’t just her ears that are better than theirs, but her nose, too. She opens her mouth to ask what it is, and something gets stuck in her mouth.
The first taste to hit her is metal, cold and clean. A spoon, she realises after a heartbeat, as her eyes start to open. Then the sweetness catches up, and her lips—moving to snarl—snap shut again. Milk and sugar and something she can’t name but that tastes wonderful, and she sucks the spoon clean before removing it from her mouth.
At some point, Adora had let go, so now Catra’s just got a spoon in her hand and her eyes fixed on Adora’s delighted grin. “Did you like it?” Adora asks, bouncing in place. “Glimmer and Bow were outraged when they realised I’d never had ice cream, and Frosta showed me how to make it myself, without any magic at all!”
“Ice cream?” Catra repeats, and then she looks down from Adora’s grin to the big bowl of lumpy off-white stuff, slowly melting. That must be it, she thinks, and digs her spoon in. She brings the spoonful to her mouth, slowly lapping at it with her tongue as Adora babbles about how it can come in all sorts of flavors but she’d made vanilla because it was nice and simple and she didn’t know what sorts of flavors Catra liked, because the Horde was good at many things but it wasn’t nearly as good at spices and flavors and—
“Thanks,” Catra says, finally, as she licks the spoon clean. Adora stops in the middle of a word, and Catra laughs at how silly she looks with her mouth still open. “I like it. It’s the nicest thing someone’s done for me in a while.”
Adora blushes, and looks down at the bow. “I— Wanna share?”
“Yeah,” Catra says, a warmth opening up in her chest. “I—” She scratches at her scalp and looks away, making a face. She hates feeling sappy like this, but the sweetness of Brightmoon is contagious or something. “I’ve missed this.”
Adora’s by her side before she can even think another word, arms wrapped around her. Catra lets out an undignified yelp and almost tumbles into the ice cream bowl, but rights herself enough that she’s just leaning against Adora instead. “I’ve missed you too,” Adora murmurs, right into her ear, and—
Catra feels herself flush red-hot, and scrambles to eat more ice cream to help herself cool down and cover for it. But she doesn’t move away from Adora, and does her best to bask in this sign of love.