vanillajello | Overland Park, KS, Wednesday Afternoon

Current Mood: nostalgic

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Overland Park, KS, Wednesday Afternoon

Ah, blissful days off. Perfect for doing pointless things! Okay, maybe not so pointless, they had some minor things to shop for. But mostly, Kate had gotten her mother's car and dragged Bod off to her old favorite mall just for the hell of it. Just to see if it was still the same and you could still get decent ice cream from the food court.

She stopped near the entrance after coming in, and looked around. It was your basic Midwestern mall. A little on the small side, and maybe it had seen better days. "Jesus, I haven't been here in years." A little over three years, to be exact. "And it's exactly the same! You'd think they'd have renovated a little."

She actually sounded a little gleeful.

[ooc: NFB. For the boooy about to meet someone from the past, oh em gee.]

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Kate managed to snap herself out of staring. "Uh, right." She gestured from one to the other. "Bod Owens, Benjamin Lambert. And..."

She looked down at the kid.

"Ro," Ben supplied.

"Ro. Right."

Bod offered a hand towards Benjamin because he was polite even if this was a strange situation.

"Hullo," he said again.

Ben, who still looked pretty startled, reached out to shake his hand just because he wasn't sure what else to do.

Glacing at Bod, Kate looked unimpressed. Not at him, though. "You know, you should know, Ben used to shove m--" She got cut off by the elevator stopping. Except it wasn't on the third floor yet. Just past the second, in fact. "Oh, seriously?"

"Wait, he used to what?" Bod asked sharply, giving Kate a look and completely ignoring the sudden stopping of the elevator. "What?"

"Push me around," Kate replied, distractedly, looking for a button to press to get them moving again.

"That was a long time ago," Ben said, holding up a hand. "I'm sorry."

"Uh huh."

Bod...maybe tried to move a little more in front of Kate in the guise of actually checking the elevator console to find an emergency button or a telephone.

"Well, congratulations on time passing for you, Benjamin."

"He also punched Mom," Kate added, helpfully. Before raising an eyebrow. "Bod, are you seriously trying to shield me?"

"Katie, come on," Ben tried, "didn't we have that conversation last time? Besides, I've changed. I know I was a dick."

"Yeah. You were."

"No."

Yes, he was.

"I'm trying to find the emergency alarm button for this elevator. Pushing the buttons for the floors probably won't work."

Wait.

"He punched your mother? And you dated him?"

"She hit me first!" Ben exclaimed, which only made his little son make more displeased noises. He tried shushing him.

Kate rolled her eyes. "Well, she was Buck at the time. And we broke up after that, I wasn't that stupid."

"All right, all right, let's attempt to leave the past where it is," Bod said, trying to bring things back to level. "Is your child all right?"

"Yeah, yeah," Ben said, giving up and just picking the kid up, now, to try rocking him in his arms. "He just gets upset. Like, a lot."

Kate eyed him and his akward way of handling the kid. It was obvious he was still inexperienced, though the kid wasn't exactly a newborn.

"Hopefully we'll be out of here soon," Bod said having pressed the button to signal an emergency. He'd picked up the phone and spoken briefly with someone about the situation as well.

"Are you all right, Kate?" Bod asked her.

"I'm fine," Kate said, then raised a pointed eyebrow at Benjamin. "You're not holding him right, you know."

"How am I supposed to be holding him?" he asked, half petulant, half helpless. She sighed and moved closer, to move his hands where they should be.

"My aunt had a baby last year," she said, by way of explanation when he looked at her liked she'd grown an extra head. "What the hell kind of a name is Ro, anyway?"

"Short for Ichiro," he said. "Means first b--"

"First born son," Kate completed for him, just a touch absently, like she'd remembered something halfway through. (Dani. She was thinking about Dani.) "Yeah. I know."

Oh, if this situation wasn't strange before, it definitely was now. Bod sighed and watched Kate help her ex-boyfriend while he leaned against the wall.

He stayed quiet.

It was pretty weird for Kate, too. But Ro seemed pretty content now that she'd helped his dad figure stuff out, so that was something. She stepped back again. Ben still looked a little startled. "Thanks," he said. "And, you know... I'm sorry, or whatever."

Kate couldn't fault him for the 'or whatever', since she said that a lot too. And, he looked sincere. (And a little lost, holding a child.) And, weirdly, she could remember something she really hadn't been able to grasp for the last four years.

She could kind of see why she'd thought she'd been in love with him.

She reached for Bod's hand again, though her eyes were on Ben. "Don't raise him into a douche." Then, to Bod, "Are we getting out of here soon?"

"They didn't give me an estimate but they were sending someone immediately," he replied, taking her hand and giving it a reassuring squeeze.

"It didn't sound like it would be long. They mentioned a possible shorted fuse somewhere and that we were safe."

"Didn't even think we wouldn't be." She'd been too busy dealing with this other crisis in there. "So getting the hugest ice cream for this, though."

Ben focused on his kid, for the moment. Because this whole thing was awkward.

"I will buy you two ice creams," Bod said easily, smiling over at her. "You can have as many toppings as you want and I won't complain at all about ruining your dinner."

"Good," Kate decided, with a small smile up at him, because at least he wasn't angsting or anything. "I like the sound of that." She leaned against his side a little more, and fell silent.

It was Ben who broke the silence, with an idle question. "You guys been together long?"

"For...going on two years now if my arithmetic is correct," Bod said, looking down at Kate for confirmation.

"Like... A year and nine months," Kate said. "But we met like almost exactly three years ago, so it's been a while. Why? How long've you been together with Ro's mommy?"

"... A while."

Kate was going to take that as meaning 'not a whole lot longer than the kid had been in some form of existence'.

"And where is she today?" Bod asked curiously. "Is it just your bonding day with your son?"

"She had a thing," Ben said, in a casual way that seemed little... not entirely sincere. "So it's just us."

And you could tell it was rarely just them.

"And you probably didn't expect to spend it in an elevator," he said lightly. "Kate was going to show me around a place she used to come to in high school since I've never been here before."

"Guess it's exotic for you," Ben replied, because there was a certain sense of snark about most people Kate had ever let even a little bit close to her.

Also, Bod's accent was prominent when you were in Kansas.

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