"Katya, hurry up! Come on!" Illyana shouts without looking back. The cold bites at her face and her heavy boots crunch the snow beneath her feet. She drags her plastic sled behind her as she runs and each rock and branch it hits sends it launching a few inches into the air before it comes clattering back down. The rest of the New Mutants are waiting out by the lake, she knows, but Kitty dared her to race her down the hill to get there and Magik's not one to turn down a challenge.
"How are you gonna win this race if you can't even keep up with me now?" She taunts, slowing to a stop just a few yards from where the slope begins—they've gotta get a good running start, after all. She turns around, a hand on her hip that she cocks out to the side while she waits for the brunette to catch up.
"I'm coming! And you had a head start!" Kitty protests from a little way back, jerking her sled over the uneven, frosty ground. She can barely feel her fingers inside her gloves when she finally gets to the top of the hill.
"About time," Illyana says, pushing the sled in front of her with her feet to get it situated. She squats down then, digging her index finger into the snow and drawing the straightest line she can manage before she pops back up to her full height, "Line'em up, Pryde. This is the starting line."
Kitty pulls her sled forward by its rope and kicks it until it's in position. She makes sure the rope won't get stuck under it as well, and then trudges back in the snow to get her run up. Magik follows close behind her, staying as in line with her sled as possible. When the two find their starting place, Illyana stretches one leg out and bends the other, leaning forward and ready to lunge, "On 'go', got it?"
"Got it," Kitty gives her a determined nod and makes sure that all of the curly mass of her hair is tucked into her beanie. Then, she crouches down, one leg stretched out behind the other, "Ready..."
"Set..." Illyana flashes her a cocky grin, then she's setting her gaze forward to focus on the sled ahead of her. She clenches and unclenches her fists a few times, then, at the top of her lungs, she shouts, "GO!"
"Cheater!" Kitty yells immediately even as Illyana bolts forward. It's only a split second later that she takes off herself, but she had been expecting to be the one to yell 'go', and the blonde's failure to understand turn-taking has thrown her off her game.
Her boots kick up snow everywhere as she sprints, but she manages to reach her sled at the same time that Illyana does. Unfortunately, looking to see where Illyana is, even out of the corner of her eye, completely ruins her jump onto the sled itself. Instead of doing it properly, they'd decided to try and surf down the mountain, but when Kitty lands, on the lip of the board, it instantly shoots out from under her, and when it flies backwards, the brunette face-plants into the snow. Illyana is luckier and makes it onto her sled to successfully propel herself down the hill even as she bursts into laughter at her girlfriend whose misfortune has her sliding and tumbling down it at a steady pace, sans her sled and her beanie.
Magik's laughing so hard she has to hold a hand against her abdomen, and as she continues down the hillside, she twists her body around so she can still see Kitty. Unfortunately for her, it also turns the sled sideways and in her haste to correct it, she loses her balance. She falls backwards off of it, promptly rolling into a backflip once she hits the ice.
By that time, Kitty's desperate scrabbling at the snow-covered ground has come into fruition, and she slows to an very abrupt stop, creating a build up of snow to one side of her when she does. Lying face down, she tries to sulk about her own downfall, but having seen Illyana's, she can't keep her body from shaking with muffled laughter. Illyana can't stop laughing, either, and when her side collides with something sticking out of the snow—she's not sure if it's a rock or a branch—even her pained exclamation can't silence it. She grabs onto it as quickly as she can, managing to stop herself and she climbs unstably to her feet. Seeing as Kitty isn't bothering to move, she stomps carefully over to her.
"Get up," she demands through her giggles, bending down to grab one of the brunette's hands.
Grouchily, Kitty resists, her arm nothing more than a dead weight in Illyana's grip. That is, until the blonde yanks on it. With a groan, Shadowcat lets Magik drag her up onto her feet. She's trying to glare at her, but it's hard when she wants really badly to laugh and she has to wipe the snow off her face with her hand.
"Come on," Illyana's still laughing, tugging on Kitty's arm to get her to walk with her, "nice face-plant."
"That was your fault," Kitty tells her stubbornly, digging her elbow into Illyana's ribs.
"Ow," the blonde cackles. She abandons her girlfriend's arm to grab the front of her jacket instead and pulls her close enough that their hips touch, "Don't be a sore loser."
"You didn't make it down the hill either!" Kitty objects loudly, her lips pursed into a pout.
"I made it farther than you did," Illyana points out.
"Whatever," Kitty huffs, not convinced by that argument at all. She goes to start them walking back down the hill again, then realizes that she's missing something. "My beanie," she says in way of an explanation to Illyana as she turns around to start back up the hillside with the blonde in tow. She only makes it a few steps before her boot catches on a rock hidden beneath the snow, and she falls on her face again, her knees banging against the stone when she does. She starts sliding down the ice too quickly for Illyana to react. Kitty's her feet collide with the blonde's shins in her effort to right herself again, causing Illyana to topple forward on top of her.
It's all a big mess, really. All tangled up together, they roll and slide down the hill again, picking up speed as the ground steepens, completely unable to stop themselves. Illyana's hands are fisted in Kitty's jacket, her eyes are shut tight, and she's laughing again, "Now look what you did!"
Kitty can barely get the words out amidst her gasping laughter, "I have... a... I have a... wedgie!"
That makes Illyana laugh even harder, so much so that she's barely making noise anymore except for her desperate attempts to breathe every now and then.
They're not even trying to find their feet anymore, because in all honesty it is totally fun and definitely hilarious—besides Kitty's wedgie. They wouldn't have been even able to slow themselves down with all the laughing they're doing, anyway. When they do come to a stop, it's because they crash into the side of the lake house hard enough to leave bruises.
It goes something like this:
Thump.
Owwww!
With a lot of exaggerated grunts and groans and moans, they manage to pick themselves up enough to sit and lean against the wooden wall behind them. Illyana tips her head back, another howling laugh escaping her throat once she realizes just how far they tumbled.
"I'm never going to find that beanie," Kitty bemoans, though her complaint is in contrast to the broad grin on her face.
"I'll get you a new one," Illyana promises, partially because she feels a little bad that she lost it, but mostly because there's an R2-D2 one she's been eyeing at the store to get the brunette for the last day of Hanukkah.
"If we ever make it back up that hill," Kitty reminds her. She stretches her legs out in front of her and sighs, "We should just stay here until the snow melts. At least we'll have each other."
"We can make it melt faster," Illyana says as she pushes herself away from the wall. She rotates her body, climbing into Kitty's lap with a devilish grin on her face.
She tries to stop it, but Shadowcat has to laugh at that. She puts her hands on the blonde's hips and pulls her as close as possible. Her smile turns into a smirk, "There's a lot of it..."
Magik wraps her arms around the brunette's neck and leans in close to her. She presses their foreheads together, noses touching. Her teeth sink into her lower lip to suppress a smirk of her own as she looks right into her girlfriend's eyes, "Guess we better get to work, huh?"
"Mhmm," Kitty hums. As her chin tips up to bring their lips together, there's a heavy dragging sound that accompanies a pile of snow that menacingly slides down towards the end of the roof above them. They ignore it, of course, because kissing and biting and tugging on each other's lips is much more important than whatever is making that sound. It starts to fall on them bit by bit, clumps of the packed ice that hit their jackets and heads and break apart to join the heaps on the ground. But then, after just a few more seconds, the whole, giant mound of it falls off and buries them beneath it.
There's a brief moment of silence and then it's broken by their loud, muffled laughter.
