Fic: Minutes and Years
My contribution to 1sentence, no prizes for guessing that it's Drakken/Shego. Non-chronological.
Title: Minutes and Years
Fandom: Kim Possible
Rating: PGish, maybe slightly higher for mild suggestiveness
Spoilers: None, really.
Summary: It's all about the bits and pieces.
#01 - Motion
One of the things Shego loves about her job is that Drakken never stands still; it’s a long time before she realizes that half of the time it’s because she’s pulling him along.
#02 - Cool
She strides into the lair on her first day, all sleek grace and smooth confidence, and suddenly he’s back in high school, praying for the cool girls to look his way just once.
#03 - Young
The age difference that had Drakken so worried when he first fell in love with her doesn’t seem to enter into Shego’s thinking; the way she treats him like one of her young men would be flattering if it weren’t so exhausting.
#04 - Last
The conversation about their respective dating histories keeps circling too close to the one relationship Drakken will never tell anyone about, until he finally stuns Shego into silence by asking why she’s so concerned about his first love when all that really matters is that he wants her to be his last.
#05 - Wrong
He shouts, he argues, he bargains, and he cajoles, but it takes giving up his stupid pride before he figures out what he needs to say (and what she needs to hear): “Please come back, Shego; it doesn’t feel right doing this without you.”
#06 - Gentle
It feels just plain wrong to describe anything Shego has ever done as ‘gentle,’ but on the night when she sits beside his bed for hours, talking softly and stroking his forehead until the fever breaks, no other word feels right.
#07 - One
There have been a lot of villains she’s worked for in the past, but as far as she’s concerned he’s the only one who’s ever had the right to call himself her boss.
#08 - Thousand
At one point he gets it into his head to tally up how many arguments they have in one week; he loses count on Tuesday afternoon around the same time she finds out about it and starts quibbling over his definition of ‘argument.’
#09 - King
It’s a cynical thought even for her, but sometimes Shego turns off the news in disgust and reflects that one good reason to help Drakken take over the world is because he can’t possibly screw it up any more than the guys who are already running it.
#10 - Learn
She gets in the habit of touching him whenever she can, cupping his chin or toying with his hands or running a finger down his ribcage; when he reacts with confusion she simply shrugs and says that she’s still learning him.
#11 - Blur
There was a kiss that left him reeling, a whispered suggestion, a mad race to the bed, and past that Drakken’s memory of last night begins to run together in a pleasant blur; the look on Shego’s face this morning tells him that he’s going to enjoy sifting through the details.
#12 - Wait
He waits for her to make the first move because he’s afraid of pissing her off; she waits for him to make the first move because she’s afraid of scaring him off.
#13 - Change
Drakken expects a certain period of adjustment now that there’s a woman around the lair, but it’s really not all bad; the bottleneck in the laundry room and Shego’s sharp comments when he lets the dishes pile up on a busy day are a fair price for having someone around who’s willing to do half the cleaning and - on rare occasions when she’s bored and desperate - actually talk to him during some of his late-night ‘puttering around’ sessions.
#14 - Command
Their chain of command is so ingrained - he gives the orders, she decides whether or not she wants to follow them - that when she starts deferring to him in regards to their public appearances (“I’ve already done the ‘celebrity hero’ thing; this one’s your turn”) he’s really not sure how to handle it.
#15 - Hold
It’s months of friendly movie nights and hours spent together on her couch before he’s bold enough to reach over and rest his hand lightly on hers; she pulls away (as he expects) but only long enough to reposition her arm so she can twine her fingers through his more securely.
#16 - Need
He hires the strange, caustic young woman because she’s competent and clever - and, okay, in some small part because she’s stunning - and because there’s something behind that proud bearing that tells him she needs this job just as much as he needs her to take it.
#17 - Vision
Drakken glowers at her over the neat wire frames of his new reading glasses, and Shego realizes that if he hadn’t fixed his original vision problems before they met, it would have taken her a lot less time to figure out that she was attracted to him.
#18 - Attention
The day she realizes that the thing he wants most is for someone to listen to him is also the day she realizes that the easiest way to drive him nuts is to pretend not to.
#19 - Soul
It’s a cruel and terrifying thought for a woman in her profession to have, but Shego sometimes suspects that somewhere, deep, deep down, Drakken has a truly good and noble soul…and that the part of her that fell in love with him first is the part that misses when she used to have one, too.
#20 - Picture
Drakken doesn’t actually tell his mother they’re engaged, just e-mails her a vacation photo where Shego’s left hand is visible and waits for the phone to ring.
#21 - Fool
“Maybe I’m just not that smart,” she snaps during a fight when he peevishly demands to know why she doesn’t just leave if he’s as useless as she keeps saying he is; his response - silence, then laughter, then a crushing bear hug that’s actually kind of nice - is so unexpected that she forgets what she was yelling about in the first place (which she later realizes was probably why he did it, and then she really does feel a little stupid).
#22 - Mad
“Mad genius” may not be a recognized mental condition, but when he pulls her close and growls - in a voice that would make her forgive any number of vile puns - that he’s madly in love with her, she thinks that he’s definitely got some kind of insanity going on.
#23 - Child
“I am not robbing the cradle, Mother; she’s twenty-seven, for God’s sake!”
#24 - Now
She’ll probably regret this tomorrow - hell, she’s mentally scribbling ‘regret this’ onto her to-do list in between ‘pick up dry cleaning’ and ‘buy stamps’ - but right now all that matters is the taste of his lips, the heat of his skin, and the surprising, gentle strength of his hands.
#25 - Shadow
When she starts to suggest - mostly through careful body language and stumbling smiles - that she’s attracted to him, he balks; he wants this more than anything, but the memory of the chip on her neck and what happened the last time she went after him still looms over him.
#26 - Goodbye
Even the way she leaves changes as they get closer; there are actual goodbyes before she gallivants off on a vacation now, and even when she stalks off because he’s done something stupid or a ‘help wanted’ ad is too good an offer to pass up, there’s always something hanging in the air behind her that says I’m coming back.
#27 - Hide
“No wonder you have to hire someone else to do your thieving,” she quips when she catches his clumsy attempt to sneak a piece of sesame beef off her plate, but he notices that she doesn’t make any move to stop him (although he doesn’t notice the way bits of his barbecued pork keep disappearing).
#28 - Fortune
“‘Your hard work will soon be rewarded,’” he reads, and looks at her expectantly; she makes a “Tch!” noise as she cracks open her own cookie and incinerates the paper without reading it: “I make my own fortunes.”
#29 - Safe
She gives in and nestles against him on the couch, tucking her body under his arm and resting her head on his chest, forcing him to wrap that arm around her, and he suspects that holding her like this for the first time makes him feel safer than it does her.
#30 - Ghost
The longer he knows her, the more amazed he is by her ability to float through a room as silently and invisibly as if she’s haunting it; her usual presence and personality is such a force of nature that he can’t imagine how difficult it must be to turn it off.
#31 - Book
She graciously accepts an advance copy of his memoirs, although she insists she’s only reading it to make sure he isn’t writing lies about her (which it turns out he is; he writes about her like she’s the best thing that ever happened to him).
#32 - Eye
“It’s kinda sexy, actually,” she mumbles when she catches him fretting over the new scar under his eye, and she looks so sweetly mortified to have said it that he has to believe she meant it.
#33 - Never
She doesn’t understand why he seems to think it’s tragic that she’s never really had her heart broken; he doesn’t understand why she doesn’t think it’s tragic that she’s never let anyone get close enough to break it.
#34 - Sing
Not that she’ll ever tell him, but he really does have a halfway decent voice - his terrible taste in music notwithstanding - and she can think of worse ways to spend her Friday nights than slightly buzzed and listening to mediocre performances… but if he ever tries to get her up on that stage, she’s outta there.
#35 - Sudden
“You’re a very attractive woman,” he says without any apparent provocation, and she realizes with great embarrassment that he’s figured out that she’s still hanging around the lair because her date cancelled on her.
#36 - Stop
“Not one word,” he growls through chattering teeth as they duck under a stand of trees while his homemade weather machine explodes behind them; for once she actually listens and just leans against him, stealing some of his body heat, and waits for the rain to stop.
#37 - Time
“You started working here a year ago today,” he explains when she stares blankly at the anniversary card; half of her thinks, ‘it’s really been that long?’ while the other half thinks, ‘it’s only been that long?’
#38 - Wash
She’s practically vibrating with barely-restrained fury and embarrassment as she sheds her clothing and squeezes into the decontamination shower with him, her voice barely audible over the lab alarms and the rush of water: “If whatever you just spilled doesn’t kill you, I will.”
#39 - Torn
It’s the jacket in the hovercraft’s storage compartment that convinces her to go home after this latest fight, the ragged, torn, moth-eaten thing he insists on keeping around ‘for weather emergencies’; the smell of him is something she doesn’t think she’s ever even noticed before, and now it’s making her miss him with an intensity she’s not sure she likes.
#40 - History
Considering that she has a history of taking liberties with the job, undermining his authority, and ignoring pretty much everything he asks her to do, maybe it’s not that surprising when she walks off with his heart without so much as telling him she’s done it.
#41 - Power
There’s a soft growl and a violent glint in her eye, and he backs down from the challenge before the green starts to flicker around her hands; if this is going to get that serious then he’d rather just let her choose the movie.
#42 - Bother
He snores, he steals the blankets, he cuddles her way too close, and he wakes up at odd hours, none of which is annoyance enough to keep her from staying the night every time she winds up in his bed.
#43 - God
Shego’s mother sizes Drakken up the first time she meets him and immediately shakes her head, muttering something about her daughter ‘living in sin’; Shego bites her lip to keep from pointing out that if God hasn’t already disowned her for years of armed robbery and assorted violence, a little premarital cohabitation is unlikely to be a deal-breaker.
#44 - Wall
As one of nature’s rant-and-ravers, Drakken never knows how to react when Shego gets really mad; she closes down and walks away, and no matter how loud he gets he can’t break through until she lets him.
#45 - Naked
She has a way of looking at him sometimes that strips him bare: peels back all his genius, all his accomplishments, all his pride (which he’s earned, dammit), and leaves nothing but an insecure college dropout who’s way out of his depth…and then the slow grin as she runs her hand through his hair promises she’ll never tell anyone what she sees, provided he never tells anyone that she likes it.
#46 - Drive
“It’s a little bit touchy,” he starts, and gets no further before she shoulders him aside and grabs the hovercraft’s controls with a grin: she taught herself to pilot the Go Jet; this little scooter will be no challenge at all.
#47 - Harm
Shego’s eldest brother gives Drakken the ‘what will happen to you if you hurt my baby sister’ speech, and Drakken has to laugh; the ‘baby sister’ in question is more intimidating than this overgrown dope could ever hope to be (and the fact that he’d rather die than hurt her is too obvious to mention).
#48 - Precious
The first ‘I love you’ tumbles out of her mouth in a rush, surrounded by a flurry of unrelated sentences as if the words themselves are so valuable they can only be delivered covertly and with an armed escort.
#49 - Hunger
She wakes up starving, no doubt because of the heavenly smells drifting through his apartment, and over the sudden growl of her stomach the first thought to rise is, “of course he cooks; why am I even surprised?”
#50 - Believe
She hates to admit that she still gets taken in every time; he grabs her hand and gets that look in his eye, and she can’t help listening and really believing that maybe this will be the global domination scheme that works.
Title: Minutes and Years
Fandom: Kim Possible
Rating: PGish, maybe slightly higher for mild suggestiveness
Spoilers: None, really.
Summary: It's all about the bits and pieces.
#01 - Motion
One of the things Shego loves about her job is that Drakken never stands still; it’s a long time before she realizes that half of the time it’s because she’s pulling him along.
#02 - Cool
She strides into the lair on her first day, all sleek grace and smooth confidence, and suddenly he’s back in high school, praying for the cool girls to look his way just once.
#03 - Young
The age difference that had Drakken so worried when he first fell in love with her doesn’t seem to enter into Shego’s thinking; the way she treats him like one of her young men would be flattering if it weren’t so exhausting.
#04 - Last
The conversation about their respective dating histories keeps circling too close to the one relationship Drakken will never tell anyone about, until he finally stuns Shego into silence by asking why she’s so concerned about his first love when all that really matters is that he wants her to be his last.
#05 - Wrong
He shouts, he argues, he bargains, and he cajoles, but it takes giving up his stupid pride before he figures out what he needs to say (and what she needs to hear): “Please come back, Shego; it doesn’t feel right doing this without you.”
#06 - Gentle
It feels just plain wrong to describe anything Shego has ever done as ‘gentle,’ but on the night when she sits beside his bed for hours, talking softly and stroking his forehead until the fever breaks, no other word feels right.
#07 - One
There have been a lot of villains she’s worked for in the past, but as far as she’s concerned he’s the only one who’s ever had the right to call himself her boss.
#08 - Thousand
At one point he gets it into his head to tally up how many arguments they have in one week; he loses count on Tuesday afternoon around the same time she finds out about it and starts quibbling over his definition of ‘argument.’
#09 - King
It’s a cynical thought even for her, but sometimes Shego turns off the news in disgust and reflects that one good reason to help Drakken take over the world is because he can’t possibly screw it up any more than the guys who are already running it.
#10 - Learn
She gets in the habit of touching him whenever she can, cupping his chin or toying with his hands or running a finger down his ribcage; when he reacts with confusion she simply shrugs and says that she’s still learning him.
#11 - Blur
There was a kiss that left him reeling, a whispered suggestion, a mad race to the bed, and past that Drakken’s memory of last night begins to run together in a pleasant blur; the look on Shego’s face this morning tells him that he’s going to enjoy sifting through the details.
#12 - Wait
He waits for her to make the first move because he’s afraid of pissing her off; she waits for him to make the first move because she’s afraid of scaring him off.
#13 - Change
Drakken expects a certain period of adjustment now that there’s a woman around the lair, but it’s really not all bad; the bottleneck in the laundry room and Shego’s sharp comments when he lets the dishes pile up on a busy day are a fair price for having someone around who’s willing to do half the cleaning and - on rare occasions when she’s bored and desperate - actually talk to him during some of his late-night ‘puttering around’ sessions.
#14 - Command
Their chain of command is so ingrained - he gives the orders, she decides whether or not she wants to follow them - that when she starts deferring to him in regards to their public appearances (“I’ve already done the ‘celebrity hero’ thing; this one’s your turn”) he’s really not sure how to handle it.
#15 - Hold
It’s months of friendly movie nights and hours spent together on her couch before he’s bold enough to reach over and rest his hand lightly on hers; she pulls away (as he expects) but only long enough to reposition her arm so she can twine her fingers through his more securely.
#16 - Need
He hires the strange, caustic young woman because she’s competent and clever - and, okay, in some small part because she’s stunning - and because there’s something behind that proud bearing that tells him she needs this job just as much as he needs her to take it.
#17 - Vision
Drakken glowers at her over the neat wire frames of his new reading glasses, and Shego realizes that if he hadn’t fixed his original vision problems before they met, it would have taken her a lot less time to figure out that she was attracted to him.
#18 - Attention
The day she realizes that the thing he wants most is for someone to listen to him is also the day she realizes that the easiest way to drive him nuts is to pretend not to.
#19 - Soul
It’s a cruel and terrifying thought for a woman in her profession to have, but Shego sometimes suspects that somewhere, deep, deep down, Drakken has a truly good and noble soul…and that the part of her that fell in love with him first is the part that misses when she used to have one, too.
#20 - Picture
Drakken doesn’t actually tell his mother they’re engaged, just e-mails her a vacation photo where Shego’s left hand is visible and waits for the phone to ring.
#21 - Fool
“Maybe I’m just not that smart,” she snaps during a fight when he peevishly demands to know why she doesn’t just leave if he’s as useless as she keeps saying he is; his response - silence, then laughter, then a crushing bear hug that’s actually kind of nice - is so unexpected that she forgets what she was yelling about in the first place (which she later realizes was probably why he did it, and then she really does feel a little stupid).
#22 - Mad
“Mad genius” may not be a recognized mental condition, but when he pulls her close and growls - in a voice that would make her forgive any number of vile puns - that he’s madly in love with her, she thinks that he’s definitely got some kind of insanity going on.
#23 - Child
“I am not robbing the cradle, Mother; she’s twenty-seven, for God’s sake!”
#24 - Now
She’ll probably regret this tomorrow - hell, she’s mentally scribbling ‘regret this’ onto her to-do list in between ‘pick up dry cleaning’ and ‘buy stamps’ - but right now all that matters is the taste of his lips, the heat of his skin, and the surprising, gentle strength of his hands.
#25 - Shadow
When she starts to suggest - mostly through careful body language and stumbling smiles - that she’s attracted to him, he balks; he wants this more than anything, but the memory of the chip on her neck and what happened the last time she went after him still looms over him.
#26 - Goodbye
Even the way she leaves changes as they get closer; there are actual goodbyes before she gallivants off on a vacation now, and even when she stalks off because he’s done something stupid or a ‘help wanted’ ad is too good an offer to pass up, there’s always something hanging in the air behind her that says I’m coming back.
#27 - Hide
“No wonder you have to hire someone else to do your thieving,” she quips when she catches his clumsy attempt to sneak a piece of sesame beef off her plate, but he notices that she doesn’t make any move to stop him (although he doesn’t notice the way bits of his barbecued pork keep disappearing).
#28 - Fortune
“‘Your hard work will soon be rewarded,’” he reads, and looks at her expectantly; she makes a “Tch!” noise as she cracks open her own cookie and incinerates the paper without reading it: “I make my own fortunes.”
#29 - Safe
She gives in and nestles against him on the couch, tucking her body under his arm and resting her head on his chest, forcing him to wrap that arm around her, and he suspects that holding her like this for the first time makes him feel safer than it does her.
#30 - Ghost
The longer he knows her, the more amazed he is by her ability to float through a room as silently and invisibly as if she’s haunting it; her usual presence and personality is such a force of nature that he can’t imagine how difficult it must be to turn it off.
#31 - Book
She graciously accepts an advance copy of his memoirs, although she insists she’s only reading it to make sure he isn’t writing lies about her (which it turns out he is; he writes about her like she’s the best thing that ever happened to him).
#32 - Eye
“It’s kinda sexy, actually,” she mumbles when she catches him fretting over the new scar under his eye, and she looks so sweetly mortified to have said it that he has to believe she meant it.
#33 - Never
She doesn’t understand why he seems to think it’s tragic that she’s never really had her heart broken; he doesn’t understand why she doesn’t think it’s tragic that she’s never let anyone get close enough to break it.
#34 - Sing
Not that she’ll ever tell him, but he really does have a halfway decent voice - his terrible taste in music notwithstanding - and she can think of worse ways to spend her Friday nights than slightly buzzed and listening to mediocre performances… but if he ever tries to get her up on that stage, she’s outta there.
#35 - Sudden
“You’re a very attractive woman,” he says without any apparent provocation, and she realizes with great embarrassment that he’s figured out that she’s still hanging around the lair because her date cancelled on her.
#36 - Stop
“Not one word,” he growls through chattering teeth as they duck under a stand of trees while his homemade weather machine explodes behind them; for once she actually listens and just leans against him, stealing some of his body heat, and waits for the rain to stop.
#37 - Time
“You started working here a year ago today,” he explains when she stares blankly at the anniversary card; half of her thinks, ‘it’s really been that long?’ while the other half thinks, ‘it’s only been that long?’
#38 - Wash
She’s practically vibrating with barely-restrained fury and embarrassment as she sheds her clothing and squeezes into the decontamination shower with him, her voice barely audible over the lab alarms and the rush of water: “If whatever you just spilled doesn’t kill you, I will.”
#39 - Torn
It’s the jacket in the hovercraft’s storage compartment that convinces her to go home after this latest fight, the ragged, torn, moth-eaten thing he insists on keeping around ‘for weather emergencies’; the smell of him is something she doesn’t think she’s ever even noticed before, and now it’s making her miss him with an intensity she’s not sure she likes.
#40 - History
Considering that she has a history of taking liberties with the job, undermining his authority, and ignoring pretty much everything he asks her to do, maybe it’s not that surprising when she walks off with his heart without so much as telling him she’s done it.
#41 - Power
There’s a soft growl and a violent glint in her eye, and he backs down from the challenge before the green starts to flicker around her hands; if this is going to get that serious then he’d rather just let her choose the movie.
#42 - Bother
He snores, he steals the blankets, he cuddles her way too close, and he wakes up at odd hours, none of which is annoyance enough to keep her from staying the night every time she winds up in his bed.
#43 - God
Shego’s mother sizes Drakken up the first time she meets him and immediately shakes her head, muttering something about her daughter ‘living in sin’; Shego bites her lip to keep from pointing out that if God hasn’t already disowned her for years of armed robbery and assorted violence, a little premarital cohabitation is unlikely to be a deal-breaker.
#44 - Wall
As one of nature’s rant-and-ravers, Drakken never knows how to react when Shego gets really mad; she closes down and walks away, and no matter how loud he gets he can’t break through until she lets him.
#45 - Naked
She has a way of looking at him sometimes that strips him bare: peels back all his genius, all his accomplishments, all his pride (which he’s earned, dammit), and leaves nothing but an insecure college dropout who’s way out of his depth…and then the slow grin as she runs her hand through his hair promises she’ll never tell anyone what she sees, provided he never tells anyone that she likes it.
#46 - Drive
“It’s a little bit touchy,” he starts, and gets no further before she shoulders him aside and grabs the hovercraft’s controls with a grin: she taught herself to pilot the Go Jet; this little scooter will be no challenge at all.
#47 - Harm
Shego’s eldest brother gives Drakken the ‘what will happen to you if you hurt my baby sister’ speech, and Drakken has to laugh; the ‘baby sister’ in question is more intimidating than this overgrown dope could ever hope to be (and the fact that he’d rather die than hurt her is too obvious to mention).
#48 - Precious
The first ‘I love you’ tumbles out of her mouth in a rush, surrounded by a flurry of unrelated sentences as if the words themselves are so valuable they can only be delivered covertly and with an armed escort.
#49 - Hunger
She wakes up starving, no doubt because of the heavenly smells drifting through his apartment, and over the sudden growl of her stomach the first thought to rise is, “of course he cooks; why am I even surprised?”
#50 - Believe
She hates to admit that she still gets taken in every time; he grabs her hand and gets that look in his eye, and she can’t help listening and really believing that maybe this will be the global domination scheme that works.