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"Catra! Stop it, it's for your own good! Ow!"

At the end of a long day of training, Adora is tired, sore, and wants little more than to take a shower and throw herself onto her bed. Wrangling a furious Catra into the showers with her was not on the agenda tonight, until a bot that hadn't been fixed quite right (thanks, Kyle) sprung a leak and sprayed them both with motor oil.

Now, the issue with Catra is that she's willing to shower exactly twice weekly, and both opportunities have passed. But Adora is not going to let her walk around reeking of motor oil until Monday. She's got her arms full of Catra and she's not letting go, no matter how Catra squirms, scratches, bites. In the ten minutes since she's initiated this endeavor, Adora has barely made it two steps into the showers, but her dedication to the cause and can-do attitude have always been cited as two of her strongest points as a cadet.

As they struggle and yell, Lonnie steps around the two of them on her way to the sleeping quarters, and offers Adora a sympathetic nod: "Good luck."

Adora grits her teeth.

"Look! In the time you've spent throwing your tantrum, Lonnie's already finished showering! We could've been done here!"

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"That's way too many," Adora mutters into Catra's neck. But she likes that she's no longer teasing, at least. And her hands. They're nice. It allows Adora to relax just the slightest little bit, walls inching lower as her shoulders slump.

And now that she's no longer on the defensive, she can actually stop and think about what Catra just said.

"... Wait, so people are doing it together? That's--" Really weird, but Catra will just make fun of her again if she says it. "--Is that normal?"

Okay. Okay, it is not making fun of Adora to mouth the words is that normal? incredulously.

(At least, it's not making fun of her in a way she can hear. She can probably still feel Catra's chin moving when she does it.)

"It has to be, or they wouldn't be doing it." Any idiot can figure that out, they don't need to have Catra's ears or her sense of smell. She's pretty sure even Kyle knows all this stuff, and he's like -- the most useless and clueless person Catra's ever met. "I'll show you. After dinner, a lot of Force Captains are going to be taking people back to their rooms. And trust me, the people who go in there with them? They don't come out again until the morning."

Yeah yeah she knows, she shouldn't be sneaking around during lights out. Adora's given her that lecture plenty of times before, spare her. It's worth the chance of getting caught if it means she's not missing out on as much as Adora apparently has been.

"How many people? What's-- what's the average number of participants, Catra?"

Adora's heart is picking up its pace again, and she's starting to sound nervous. Because it's occurring to her that, if everybody's doing it, and everybody's doing it with everybody else, then--

She pulls back just enough to look up at Catra, her eyes big with urgency. "Do you do it with other people, too?"

"Woah, woah, woah." She can feel Adora's heart pounding in panic, and Catra keeps her hands firm on her to keep her from jerking away and launching into a full freak-out. "Calm down, Adora. You're gonna wake everyone up."

The question about the number of participants is fine, and Catra knows the answer from her observations. The question about herself is less fine, and her ears fold back in discomfort. Like there's literally anyone other than Adora she'd even consider. Like she hasn't been waiting for Adora to take her up on her suggestions.

"Obviously I haven't done it with anyone." She sounds a lot more self-assured than she feels. Again, that's just how she is. She gives a derisive sniff, like the question was stupid (--because it was), and then addresses the first one; "Most of the Force Captains only let one person into their room at a time. And why does it matter, anyway?" She pauses, and because this is Adora, feels the need to clarify: "It's not like we're going in there."

Edited 2020-06-15 13:17 (UTC)

"... Okay."

She doesn't know why that suddenly felt like the most important question in the world, but only once she hears that 'no' can Adora settle back down. She just-- can't even imagine Catra with someone else's hands on her. Raking fingers through her fur as they stroke down her body, over her sensitive stomach, making her back arch and her hips lift--

--Oh. She's imagining it.

With nowhere else to hide, Adora quickly plants her face against Catra's neck again. Before she can see it in her eyes, the way she did before. She just hopes she can't tell how hot her cheeks burn.

"Let's-- let's just sleep. You can keep telling me about all this stuff tomorrow."

Adora finally settles down, again; and Catra breathes another sigh, again.

"Sure that's all?" She asks wryly. Because knowing Adora, it's going to be a whole two minutes before she startles herself with another panicked thought (--and why is she panicking) and they'll be right back here all over again.

"That's all. I'm fine. I'm fine."

Adora's ready to not be awake anymore. She just wants to close her eyes, fall into a dark dreamless sleep, and pray that her brain miraculously processes all this by morning. Even she's tired of her own panicking, of her heart in her throat, of the twisting in the pit of her stomach.

Tomorrow will be a new day, and she'll be just fine.

"Good night, Catra."

Catra waits another moment past the assurances, just to make sure. And she still doesn't believe Adora's 'good night', but she still shuffles anyway; shifting her shoulders to make herself more comfortable, keeping her hands still pressed to Adora to assure her she's in the right place.

It's not often that Catra makes herself purr, but it's seemed to -- help, once or twice before, in getting Adora to settle down. So, hesitantly, Catra looks for that part of herself; and a quiet, awkward rumble begins low in her throat, as her fingers resume their careful kneading of Adora's back.

"Yeah," she murmurs, trying not to sound as awkward as she feels. "Good night."