Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Kim sat far above the dining room on a small bench suspended from the ceiling by a thick rope. While the patrons dined at small, intimate round tables with white tablecloths and flickering candles, the hero listened to the incredibly mundane drone of polite conversation through a small device with a parabolic dish the size of the appetizer plates down below. It wasn’t her usual mission—breaking into villain lairs, fighting, bantering, apprehending, the sort of things that got her blood pumping and the adrenaline flowing. This gig wasn’t much better than her 8 am Calculus class. But Dr. Director had specifically requested that Kim run this mission, claiming it was of the utmost importance that they gather intel on the talented and ever-elusive villain Shego, who had apparently been up to some ‘concerning’ activity of late. Her job, Betty was clear, was to collect intel and not to engage. Since the Lowardian Invasion, the pardoned villain had been completely off-radar, seemingly reformed. Naturally, Global Justice had been concerned when she began meeting up with all manner of villains and private citizens for clandestine meetings with an unknown purpose.

Kim had no idea why Dr. Director had insisted that she be the one to run reconnaissance on Shego. Something about her history fighting Shego and knowing the villain best. Whatever. If it got her out of her history midterm tomorrow, she was so game.

Kim checked her watch for the third time in the last two minutes. 7:28. Twenty-eight minutes past the time GJ had said Shego was due to arrive.

“Wade?” she asked into the watch.

“Hey, sup?” His image flickered onto the watch, a french fry half hanging out of his mouth.

“Where do you think they get their intel for this gig? I think it’s a bust.”

“I’m not sure,” Wade responds, finally finishing the french fry and taking a large slurp from the soda in the view next to him on the desk. “Betty didn’t send along any info other than the case notes you’ve already read. But I can do some quick scans to see if I can find anything on Shego myself?”

Kim nods her assent and the video feed flickers off again, leaving her to swing above the diners alone. She swallows down the feeling of disappointment. Missions were a lot lonelier now that Ron was away at culinary school and she was mostly doing the mission thing by herself. She swings her legs in anticipation, causing the contraption she was on to creak loudly. Thankfully, no one seemed to notice.

Ugh. She settled for twisting the bracelet her sort-of boyfriend Ryan had given her the day prior. It was clunky and not at all her style, but he seemed so excited to give it to her. It made her feel owned somehow, like a dog with a too-tight collar. She wears it because she doesn’t want to see his look of disappointment if he saw her bare wrist.

Twist, twist. Twist, twist. Bored, Kim focuses the parabolic machine on the conversation of two men in tasteful suits in the corner.

“I do not think we can accept an offer as low as that. The patents alone…” said one man with a thick accent from…somewhere. Russia, maybe?

He’s cut off by the other man. “The patents are worth nothing without the raw materials for production.” He pauses for effect. “And you and I both know that I hold exclusive rights to one of them.”

The Slavic one laughs. It’s a deep belly laugh that seems entirely out of place for the conversation. “Do you intend to blackmail me?”

Kim never hears the rest of the conversation, because her hand suddenly drops the machine as her eyes lock on a figure with gorgeous, cascading black hair. She quickly hooks the listening device to her utility belt and picks up the binoculars around her neck.

What she sees hits her like a freight train. The sculpted eyebrows. The catlike eyes. The pale, alabaster skin and shock of black lipstick emphasizing full lips. She’s wearing a dark green cocktail dress and her usual bored expression. It brings a smile to Kim’s face knowing that even though it’s been over a year since she’s last seen the woman, she’s still as Shego as ever.

The thought surprises her. Why should she care that Shego remain as she was? She shrugs off the question and forgoes the binoculars for the listening device once more. Aimed at Shego and the woman she was sitting down to eat with, she could hear their conversation exactly as if she’d been the waiter who was just getting to the table.

“Good evening. Can I interest either of you ladies in a drink?”

“Yes” and “Vodka, neat” run over each other, surprising both women and the waiter.

“Uh. Right. I guess I’ll have the…” Shego pauses and scans a small menu lying in the middle of the table. “Château Canon-La Gaffelière. The bottle, not the glass.”

He relates the day’s specials—some amazingly complex and extraordinarily expensive-sounding steak and seafood dishes—before sliding away, leaving the two women alone for the first time.

“You prefer the wine?” the other woman asks in a deep accent that sounds similar to the businessman she had been spying on earlier.

“My parents owned a vineyard,” Shego shrugs.

Huh, Kim mused. Shego grew up with parents owning a vineyard? That was news to her. She filed away that information, eager to have another piece of the woman.

Kim caught Shego finishing up whatever she had been saying about the vineyard. “…So yeah, I guess I have a taste for it.”

“We drink vodka in my home country. I much prefer it,” the other woman responds. There’s a few beats of silence that has Kim internally cringing. Wow. Who knew villians could be this awkward?

“So what do you—”

“So what’s—”

Their words tumble over one another again, leaving Kim cringing once more. She wishes Wade had provided her with binocular glasses for this mission rather than the recording binoculars she was sent with. She really wishes she could read Shego’s expressions while she listens to this painful conversation.

“Oh, you go first.”

“You. I insist.”

“I was just gonna ask what your deal was. Yunno. The villain thing and all.”

“My ‘deal’? I did not make a deal.”

Shego sighs heavily. “I mean, what do you do. For evil?”

“Ohhh.” The woman draws out the noise. In her deep, almost guttural, voice, it sounds somewhat like a bag of rocks being dragged on gravel. “I do the assassinations. The killing. The maiming,” she waves a hand, vaguely indicating a host of things. “Standard contract work.”

Kim blinks in surprise. Wow. She had never taken Shego for a killer. What did her archenemy have up her (well, currently nonexistent—had Kim ever seen so much of Shego’s arms before?) sleeves?

Shego hums noncommittally in response. “Funny. Drakken failed to mention that.”

Drakken? Last she had heard, the man had opened up a very successful (and very legal—she had done her due diligence there) flower delivery business. Had he gone to the dark side again? And was Shego, who had gone dark since the Lowardian Invasion that turned her to the side of good, working for him once more?

“And you?”

The waiter arrives again, setting a glass down in front of the other woman and a bottle of wine down in the middle of the table. He sets down an additional two wine glasses and sets about opening the wine bottle with practiced ease. He pours a small sip for Shego, who accepts it and nods her assent after taking a sip. He fills her glass and melts away once more.

There is an awkward silence again. Each woman takes a sip, and then another. “So how long have you been…ah…how do you say it in your country? A uh, lady-lover?”

Two things happen simultaneously: one, Shego sputters and wine flies everywhere. Two, Kim’s finger, which had been nervously running through the bracelet she had been given by her almost-boyfriend, breaks the chain. Which falls down. Into the glass of the woman who was ostensibly…Shego’s date?

Two pairs of eyes, one piercing and thrilling and green, shoot up to look at her.

“Princess?”

And then, all hell breaks loose.

Shego’s date hikes her dress up and grabs a gun holstered there, training it up and on the hero. Agents in black suits emerge from the woodwork. Patrons scream. Shego says something in her date’s ear and the woman gives a curt nod before pulling a second gun out from under her dress and somersaulting over the bar. Out of immediate line of fire, Kim jumps into action, her heart already beating wildly from the excitement of a chase.

“I’ve got Shego,” Kim says into the headset that connected her to the rest of the agents. Gods did she miss this!

Kim has her feet on the ground in mere seconds—just enough time to see a flash of black hair before the door to the kitchen swings closed. She dashes to catch up, wondering if Shego had kept up her training since they’d last battled.

Her chase brings her through another door and a set of dark stairs that lead down into a dank basement. She spends a second listening for any sounds, but it’s in vain. Shego was always ridiculously good at being stealthy.

So Kim chooses a direction at random, moving as quickly and silently through the semi-darkness as she can. The basement feels bigger than it should be, with stacks of crates that are too long and sturdy to be food. Wine, maybe? With as many boxes as there are, it would certainly be excessive…

Bam!

Kim is knocked backward, falling flat on her back on the hard floor and thoroughly winding her.

“I’m so sorry—”

“I didn’t see—”

“Princess?”

“Shego,” Kim breathes out, suddenly feeling winded all over again. A pallid green hand reaches down towards her, and the hero grabs onto it. It’s firm and strong and warm as it pulls her to her feet.

Kim should be doing something. Talking. Arresting. Fighting. Certainly not staring like she is. But all her mind can think is: Gay. Gay. Shego’s gay.

“Not gonna fight me?” Shego cocks a thin, mocking eyebrow at her, crossing her arms in an entirely Shego fashion. Bored. Uninterested. But somehow also challenging and smug. It always makes Kim want to punch her…but first.

“Shego. I need to know. Were you,” Kim pauses. Takes off her headset and smashes it with her heel. She drops her voice, “Were you onadate?”

“I’m sorry, pumpkin. I couldn’t quite hear that. What did you say?” It’s entirely mocking. Shego knows exactly what Kim said, but she never can make things easy. She’s got a reputation to uphold.

Kim sighs harshly. “You know what I asked. Were you. On a date.” She pauses. Closes her eyes. Exhales. “With that woman.”

Shego laughs, but also looks somewhat…surprised? “You really didn’t know? Yes, sweetheart. I’m a dyke. Gay. A raging lesbian.” And then something in her shifts. The humor drops from her voice entirely, instead replaced by something much more challenging. “Why? Is little miss perfect princess a homophobe?”

Kim swallows. She watches as Shego’s eyes trace the path of it down her throat. She’s nervous and hates that Shego knows it. “No.”

Shego’s lifted eyebrow convey her disbelief.

“No! No, really. I’m just…I’m just surprised, is all.” The puzzle pieces slot together in her mind. All of the meetings Shego had been having recently. Villains. ‘Reformed’ villains. Private citizens. All of them women. She hopes against all hope that Shego doesn’t see the hot red flush creeping up her neck and face. Gods, Global Justice really was fucking dense sometimes.

Kim scrubs a hand down her face. “You’ve been going on dates recently, haven’t you?”

“Uh, yeah. What’s it to you?” Shego asks defensively. “Unless.” She smirks. “Unless you want to jump in line?”

Kim inhales sharply. Her? Date Shego? If she had thought she couldn’t get any more red, Kim as dead wrong. She could feel the heat in her ears and the dark thrum of it in her pulse.

No—that was utterly preposterous. Plus, the woman was simply baiting her. She always did know how to get a rise out of Kim.

“No, I asked because GJ thought you were plotting something. They had me here tonight because they saw you meeting with all these villains and thought…”

Shego laughs, short and sharp and sardonic. “Of course that’s what they’d think.” Her gaze turns dark and stormy. “What you’d think.”

“No, I—” but Kim is cut off by the sound of steps running fast and hard down stairs. Shego stands frozen, her eyes trained wide on the hero.

“Shego!” Kim whispers. She grabs her hand and gives it a small, apologetic squeeze. “Go!”

The woman looks down at their joined hands and then back up at Kim. Her gaze is piercing, and Kim has to fight the urge to look away. She can’t even begin to comprehend the emotion swimming in those green orbs, but if the small smile the woman gives her is any indication, she at least takes Kim’s gesture as the olive branch it is.

“Until next time, Pumpkin.”

And then, in a trail of entirely unnecessary plasma fire, Shego is gone.

Kim stands, glued to the spot, for another few seconds until three agents run noisily up behind her.

“Kim! Thank god.”

Kim turns around to find Ryan standing before her in his tactical gear. He holsters his gun before wrapping her up in a huge bear hug. The other two officers run down the path still burning with plasma fire, but Kim knows it’s futile. Shego will be long gone by now.

“I’m so glad you’re safe! I was so worried when you said you were going after her.”

Kim plasters on a smile and fights to keep the frustration from her voice. “I’ve fought her hundreds of times, Ryan. This isn’t my first rodeo.” They had conversations like this often. Ryan, already a Global Justice agent, would often accompany her on missions and would always display far too much concern for her safety. She had at least as much, if not more, experience in the field! She knew his concern was coming from the right place…but every time he said he was worried, all she could hear was that he thought her capable of gross incompetence. She never worried for his safety like that. He was a trained agent and she had confidence that he would complete a mission without putting his safety or that of others in danger. Was it so much to ask that he do the same?

“I know, I know. It’s just…she’s one of the most notorious villains around.”

“Good thing I’m one of the most celebrated heroes then, right?”

Chapter Text

Kim would be lying if she said that she wasn’t excited to get a call a week later about a robbery. She’d also be lying if she had said she wasn’t hoping it was a certain reformed villain who favored green and black bodysuits.

She was joined this time by Monique, who had taken to filling in for Ron on missions when her hectic social life, college classes and part-time gig as Assistant General Manager of Club Banana allowed. Suffice to say, Monique was an infrequent mission partner, but a welcome one all the same.

“Shego? As in, the Shego who helped save the world and hasn’t been heard from since? That Shego?” Monique asks when Wade briefs the two of them on the gig.

“The very one,” Wade answers, switching the view to a feed from a security camera. They watch as a person in a trench coat and hat strolls into the bank lobby and casually gets to the back of the line. A burly man walks in soon thereafter, then a second, third and fourth. Once they’re all in place, the person in the trench coat shrugs it off, revealing the infamous green and black catsuit. She pulls off the black fedora and the woman’s black hair cascades out, tumbling down her back. She lights up her plasma and says something that the cameras don’t pick up. People scurry over in the direction she’s pointing and the men—very obviously HenchCo lackeys—begin securing everyone with the usual rope and gags.

Shego then looks straight at the security camera, winks and mouths something that Kim is pretty sure is, “Come on, Princess.” She crooks a finger in a ‘come hither’ motion and then darts off the camera screen view with a wicked smile.

“Kim?” A voice asks her, and the girl shakes her head to clear the fuzz that had settled itself inside her ears.

“Uh, huh. Yes.” She looks around to find both Monique and Wade staring at her oddly. “What?”

“Girl, we’ve been calling your name for like, twenty minutes now.”

“Twenty-seven seconds, actually,” Wade says genially. “But back to the mission. Mr. Davenport will have you there in another four minutes. In the back pocket of the driver’s side seat, I have some mission items for you.”

Kim checks, and sure enough, there are three different contraptions tucked neatly in the velour pocket.

Wade gives the two girls the rundown of the gadgets: one was a lipstick laser flashlight that for some reason actually also contained lipstick; another was a pack of gum that would hold up to 3000 pounds to whatever surface you spit it on (ew!). It also left the chewer with minty-fresh breath; and finally, the last item was a business card with Kim’s contact information on it that would also slice through just about anything with its razor-sharp edges.

“That one’s just your color, girl!” Monique says as they begin pocketing the new equipment and readying themselves for leaving the van. “Why not give it a try?”

Kim shrugs and pulls open her compact that also can deflect lasers.

Hm. The lipstick really is her color!

“Thank you, Mr. Davenport!” Kim calls as they jump out of the still-moving van.

“Of course! Anything for the girl who saved my fleet of semis from becoming evil monkey transit!”

When the two alight, they sneak around the back of the bank and climb up a surreptitious fire escape ladder. They enter the bank through the roof, each using a blowdryer grappling hook to ascend to the eerily-quiet ground floor of the bank.

Monique and Kim look at each other, shrug, and quietly move towards the basement, where Wade had told them the money and safety deposit boxes were. Once they reach the basement level, they see the large safe door wide open, with bags of money and haphazardly-bagged jewelry already sitting outside it. Still, everything was completely quiet. Too quiet.

“This seems like a trap,” Kim says, narrowing her eyes at the unlikely situation.

“Nahh. Shego’s probably just right inside getting the goods.” Monique smiles as she says it, her eyes glittering in a private joke Kim is not privy to.

“I don’t know…”

Monique strides forward anyhow, refusing to heed Kim’s warnings.

Spoiler alert: it was, indeed, a trap.

“Didn’t I tell you?” Kim asks, exasperated and panting for breath as she struggles to hold up the ceiling with her legs. The pressure is getting to be too much, and she knows at any moment now they’re going to become pancakes if she doesn’t think of something fast.

“Yeah,” Monique starts, but she ends up grunting as the pressure builds on her legs. The two of them are lying on their backs, using their legs to brace the ceiling of the vault up. “But it was a better idea than just standing there.”

“I beg—” The ceiling pushes more violently against their legs causing Kim to pant with the effort of holding it up. “To differ.”

The redhead looks over at her friend and gasps in horror. “Are you really texting right now, Monique?”

“Well, yeah! Wouldn’t you want to send a “Goodbye world” tweet or Tiktok in your last few seconds on earth?”

Ugh. Of all the useless things…

The ceiling pushes methodically down, and Kim’s legs begin shaking with the effort of holding it up. Monique begins holding her phone above her head, trying to find the best angle so she can start recording a tiktok feed.

Suddenly, the ground falls out from underneath her and she’s sliding on her stomach down a chute, the sound of Monique’s screaming getting farther away by the millisecond. She lands with a light thump on something padded…if not a little scratchy. Burlap?

“We meet again.”

That voice. So slow and languorous and casual, as if Kim were merely running into her at a coffeeshop. It sends a shiver down Kim’s back.

Once again, a strong arm is offered to her, and once again, Kim takes it. Shego is still warm like she was at the restaurant, even through her bodysuit.

The sight of Shego in her villain outfit hits Kim strongly in the chest, giving the girl a wave of nostalgia that she had no idea she harbored. She’d missed this.

She misses the strong hand on her forearm even more when it pulls away. But the distance makes it easier for her to think. The older woman resumes her former position, casually leaning against a wall and filing away at her razor-sharp nails. “What are you doing here, Shego?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

Kim looks at the bags of money that had cushioned her fall from the chute. Okay…so maybe that was a bit of a stupid question.

“I’m here to finish our conversation,” Shego finishes.

“Our conversation?” Kim echoes. Apparently, she’s destined to be entirely stupid in this interaction.

“Last week? At the restaurant?” Shego asks, certainly implying with her intonation that Kim was being a bit slow. “When you were sent by Global Justice to catch me and then let me go?”

“Oh,” Kim breathes. Right. Though she can’t fathom why Shego would want to continue what had been an awfully embarrassing two minutes.

“Why’d you do it, Kimmie? Why’d you let me go?” There is something on Shego’s face that Kim has never seen before. It’s curiosity, but it’s also something else. On someone else, Kim would think that it might be hope. On Shego, though, it’s probably just the emotion that comes before mocking.

“Well, I mean. You didn’t do anything wrong. You were just on a date.” She shrugs. Why wouldn’t she let Shego go?

“I think many people would think what I was doing was wrong,” Shego replies darkly. Being gay in the villain world was pretty normal, but people on the good side of things tended to see it as unnatural, and at its worst, perverted.

“No!” Kim replies vehemently. “You love who you love. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that at all.”

At this, Shego smiles. And for once, Kim doesn’t detect a hint of mocking or sarcasm in it. It’s quite beautiful on her, really, and she’s momentarily stunned by the novelty of it.

Shego’s eyes scan Kim’s own, looking for something, though Kim couldn’t venture a guess as to what. Something shifts in Shego again and the soft smile turns cocky. She steps into Kim’s space and laughs lightly, her breath puffing against Kim’s face.

“Whoda guessed the perfect hero had it in her?” Shego asks wonderingly, a gloved hand coming up under Kim’s chin and lifting it. Kim’s heart kicks into overdrive at the other woman’s proximity. What was she doing? She knows she should run. Put some distance between the two of them. Shego probably was just trying to catch Kim in her unawares…

Except Kim was entirely aware of everything that was Shego. The soft minty scent of her breath. The rise and fall of her chest. The green, green, green of her eyes that she was forced to look into by the single finger still holding her chin up.

“Are you…wearing lipstick?” Shego asks incredulously, humor lacing her tone and a smile biting at her lips.

Kim takes a step back and crosses her arms defensively. “Yeah. So? You wear it literally all the time.”

“And you don’t.” Shego’s smile just gets wider and wider, making Kim more and more angry with every millimeter it grows.

Kim stomps her foot (like a fucking toddler—why the hell did Shego have to reduce her to absolute buffoonery?) and looks away, something falling out of her pocket as she does so.

“Mint gum?” Shego asks sarcastically. “Really?” She looks like the cat that ate the canary. “One would think that you might have been expecting to do some kissing on this mission of yours.”

The hero feels her face heat up once more. “No—I”

But Kim doesn’t get to finish her explanation, because Monique begins shouting down the chute, “SHEGO I SWEAR TO THE GODS WHEN I SEE YOU NEXT I’M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU. AND AFTER ALL I’VE DONE FOR YOU!”

Shego has the grace to at least pretend to be ashamed at that. What’s a little trap every now and again? It’s not like it was meant to kill them or anything.

“By the way, the police are on their way. Like…now.” The irate girl adds, at a volume much closer to a whisper than her prior threat.

“Shit,” Shego whispers. She gives Kim a lopsided, but somehow still cocky, grin before picking up something off the ground. It might be Kim’s imagination, but she thinks Shego takes an unreasonably long amount of time bending down to the floor in her skintight suit and patting around on the concrete for whatever it was she was looking for. And if Kim’s eyes were glued to the villain’s ass, well… Shego is a goddess and Kim is only human, right? Shego rises, gives a little wave and then, in a trail of green plasma, she vanishes once again.

Chapter Text

“Ron, it was totally whack. She just…broke into a bank, moved all the money around and left without taking anything.” She fiddles with her stuffed pandaroo on her lap as she speaks. The old toy was worn with use, the fake fur worn down to the mesh from repetitive, mindless petting, and the stuffing lumped in some places and missing from others. She’s sure there are plenty of her peers who would probably made fun of her for it if they knew, but she found herself caring less and less about those sorts of things as time went on.

“She’s got to be planning something else, KP. Maybe she was just casing it?”

Rufus pops out of Ron’s pocket and nods his head. “Yeah, casing!”

“I don’t know. Why go through the effort of making it so high-profile, though? She could have just pretended to be a customer or snuck in at night. It’s gotta be something else.” She flops down on her bed with a sigh. She had been spending far too much time lately thinking of Shego. The woman was everywhere nowadays. Kim thought of her when she saw the specific tabloid magazines that she knew Shego liked to read from her time as Miss Go. Kim thought of her when she saw green grass. Celery. Even a black poodle that had hair that sort of reminded her of the thief. She would see flashes of black and green out of the corner of her eye when she was going to class. And one time she thought she saw Shego in plainclothes getting a coffee at Starbruck’s on campus.

“Well, whatever it is. It can’t be good.”

Kim sighs. “You’re probably right,” she says, even though it feels wrong on her tongue.

“I know what’ll cheer you up!” Ron says, hitting the bed suddenly.

“Let me guess: Bueno Nacho?” Kim’s smile is wry. Affectionate. She didn’t get to spend as much time with Ron as they used to in high school, and both of them were growing and changing with the new experiences their post-secondary life brought them. She was glad some things stayed invariably the same.

“You know it!”

Rufus pops out again to voice his excitement.

“All right. But I’m going in my pajamas.”

“LATE NIGHT NACHO RUN!” Ron and Rufus yell, both doing fist bumps into the air.

The two opt to grapple their way down the side of Kim’s house rather than risk waking her parents or—gods forbid—her incessantly curious brothers. The air is balmy and pleasant, and the moon is particularly bright. Suddenly, a whistling sound comes from somewhere before them and before Kim even really has a chance to register what’s happening, she’s pushed Ron down to the ground and has her body hovering over his. An arrow whizzes its way just above their heads milliseconds later.

“What the—” Ron gets out from under her before yet another whistling noise has her rolling the two of them out of harm’s way and off the concrete path leading up to Kim’s house. She rolls them to the hedges that line their property and slowly clambers off Ron, lifting a hand to make sure he stays silent. She waits like that for one minute, then two, then three. Finally, deeming it safe, she slowly gets up, motioning Ron to stay where he is.

As soon as she’s vertical, she hears Ron struggle with the hedges to get upright, too. It distracts her enough that she misses the telltale twang and whistle of yet another arrow, and before she can properly react, an arrow has burrowed into her shirt and embedded itself in the hedge, narrowly missing her flesh. There is a small hole in the bush, though, and she cringes knowing the anguish her father will undoubtedly feel over it. The man has a very unhealthy obsession with his hedges.

Moments later, once Ron is fully vertical, another arrow is nocked and flying at him. With Kim immobilized, the boy has zero chance of escaping the projectile and is soon pinned by his shirt to the shrubbery as well. A third arrow goes flying as well, lodging itself in the saggy part of the sidekick’s cargo pants, narrowly missing his dangly bits.

“You can’t make this easy, can you, Princess?”

“Shego,” Ron grits out, struggling against the arrows pinning him to the bush.

“Watch it, sidekick. Or next time that arrow will make sure to hit the family jewels.” The voice is dark and menacing and accompanied with a devilish grin. Every bit the evil villain Shego is supposed to be.

Ron quails as she approaches, an involuntary whimper leaving his thin lips. “Anyone ever tell you your boyfriend,” Shego spits out the word, “Is a fucking coward?”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Kim responds, and Ron shoots her a withering look. “Oh. And he’s no coward, either.” ‘You’re just particularly menacing tonight,’ Kim thinks.

Shego relaxes suddenly, going from panther to kitten in a mere moment. Her hands pause over the arrow embedded in Kim’s pajama top. “You can’t run once I take this out, okay, princess?”

“What’s stopping me?” Kim challenges. She would cross her arms to further her point, but one arm is currently trapped, so she settles for setting her jaw and looking really tough instead.

“This, mostly,” Shego says, casually shrugging to reveal the bow slung over her arm. “Maybe this,” she continues, lighting up her plasma in demonstration. It lights up the planes of her face, all sharp angles and full, curvy lips. “But I was hoping you wouldn’t need much persuasion.” The words are almost a purr, dark and rumbling, and Kim can’t help the sharp intake of breath she makes in response.

Kim is…intrigued, but she knows she can’t show it. “What do you want, Shego?” It’s flat, more of a statement than a question. She can’t let her archenemy get to her, especially with Ron right there as witness.

“I just want to talk,” Shego says innocently. “Plus, you sort of have to do what I say,” she adds with a smirk. “Plasma, remember?”

Kim sighs in defeat. “Fine.” She doesn’t trust herself alone with Shego, though. “But for the record, this is under duress.”

Shego nods, eager in a way Kim has rarely ever seen before. “And Ron comes with us.”

Shego groans, but barely spares Ron a glance before agreeing. The thief leans in close to dislodge the arrow from Kim’s pajamas, her breath puffing against Kim’s face and making the redhead dizzy with all of her carbon dioxide. Kim’s heart is beating hard in her ears as Shego concentrates, making sure to not tear the fabric of her clothing any further.

“There,” Shego says, pressing a button on the shaft of the arrow that retracted the hooks that had deployed with it, wiggling the arrow free and finally pulling away from Kim.

Dazed, Kim stumbles down the path.

“Hey! What about me?” Ron shouts.

Shego rolls her eyes and whirls around, yanking the arrow at his shoulder out with a rough rip and tearing the sleeve right off his shirt.

“You can get that one out, can’t you?” Shego asks, her eyes darting to his manhood with a bored expression. “Looks like I was a little optimistic. Next time I’ll know to aim a little higher.”  

Chapter Text

Kim is surprised to find Drakken in the hovercar when they get to it at the end of her street. She’s even more surprised that he looks at her like she’s a shiny and new ‘take over the world gadget.’ The grin is nothing short of maniacal, and it puts Kim understandably on edge.

“What’s the sidekick doing here?” he asks Shego, completely ignoring said sidekick wedged next to him in the backseat of the small craft. He jabs a vine at Ron in demonstration.

“Unfortunate collateral.”

From the backseat, Kim can barely hear Ron protest as Shego kicks the hovercraft into high speed. Middleton zips quickly past them, wind yanking the hair out of Kim’s messy bun. It’s too loud for them to hold a conversation, so Kim just focuses intently on the landmarks she can pick out, just in case this really is a kidnapping sitch. Her gut tells her that it isn’t the case—that Shego’s motivations, while opaque, were definitely on the level. She just wishes she knew what they were.

In what could have been minutes or hours, they begin descending. The hovercraft zips into a traffic tunnel and maneuvers down maintenance passageways that Kim knew they shouldn’t be in. Finally, they reach a dead end.

“Great! They brought us here to kill us!” Ron shouts from the backseat, throwing up his hands dramatically.

Shego just huffs and rolls her eyes. Then, with a smirk, she slams her foot on the gas and hurtles them right at the concrete wall.

Ron is still screaming when they land safely on the grass on the other side.

“Ohmigod. WILL YOU SHUT UP?” Shego kills the engine and turns to face Ron.

“I haven’t let all the terror out yet, so NO.” He crosses his arms defiantly and continues screaming.

Shego’s hands light up with her plasma, glowing white hot in the darkness and catching all the harsh planes of her face.

Ron screams louder.

Kim probably should be afraid for her friend, but in the moment, Shego looks so beautiful and otherworldly that she can’t bring herself to much care. She is Medusa trained on her target, her eyes dark and dancing with fire. She’s terrifying, and just like when the two of them were fighting, Kim finds it wholly exhilarating. She puts a soft hand on Shego’s shoulder and says her name in warning.

“Ugh. Fine!”

The flames disappear. Kim can’t help but feel a deep sense of satisfaction that Shego actually listened to her. Perhaps there was a pig flying somewhere?

Kim finally takes the opportunity to look at her surroundings. They’re in a field that seems to be functioning as a parking lot. The grass is trampled and browning in spots, but still slick with the rain that came earlier in the day. It’s riddled with motorcycles and trucks and evil flying machines of all sorts. There’s a building some yards ahead and…is that a giant cuddlebuddy tied to a hitching post?

The bass from the music in the building vibrates the ground, making the hula girl on the hovercraft dash wobble. Kim is about to ask what this place is when the door of the building slams open. They’re too far away for her to see inside, but she does see what is unmistakably Motor Ed stumbling out of the door with a curvaceous metallic robot.

“Shit!” Shego exclaims and quickly ducks behind the hovercraft.

“What?” Kim asks, instantly on the alert. If Shego’s hiding from something, it has to be hella bad. Kim’s shoulder feels warm where Shego’s touches her, pleasant in a way that’s somewhat distracting.

“Him.” She hisses, nodding towards Motor Ed. “He can’t see me!”

“Uh, guys. I gotta pee.” Ron begins hopping from one foot to the other and winces. “Actually. I think I already have a little.”

“Yeah, I gotta go, too!” Pipes up Drakken helpfully.

“Not now!” comes from both ladies, sotto voce. Motor Ed is stumbling closer, his Bebe companion occasionally thrusting out a mechanized arm for support.

Is this a mission? Kim wonders. She feels virtually naked without her gadgets, not to mention patently ridiculous in her pandaroo pajamas.

“Shegoooo,” Drakken whines. “I gotta go!”

Motor Ed swivels his head around dumbly. “She go?”

Shego curses and scrubs a hand over her face. “This is not how I wanted this to go,” she groans. Standing, she continues, “Drakken, take the idiot to the bathroom. Kim, would you like to help me beat this guy’s ass?”

The fight goes like this: the more Shego beats him, the more vulgar and lecherous Motor Ed gets. The more crass Motor Ed gets, the more Shego beats him. At first, Kim and the Bebe spar each other. It feels strange, fighting alongside Shego like this, but it also feels strangely familiar, as if the two of them had been doing it a very, very long time. Kim supposes she has been doing this a very, very long time with the green woman. She knew when Shego would punch or dodge or feint or weave. She knew the twitch of her fingers before the plasma came and the quirk of her lips before a quip. She could feel the fluid motion of her, the inhales and exhales that pushed and pulled her body like waves. It had been too long since Kim had seen Shego in battle. Gods, did Kim miss this.

In time, the mecha realizes that Motor Ed no longer has eyes for her, so she lights up the rockets in her feet and jets off, leaving Kim bereft of a sparring partner. And two girls fighting one drunk moron hardly seemed fair.

“Shego!” Kim called.

Shego lands a square punch to the man’s jaw.

“Mmm. Just like that, baby!” Motor Ed croons out.

“You disgusting lech. I WILL DESTROY YOU IF IT’S THE LAST THING I DO!”

“SHEGO!” Kim grabs at the woman’s arm, poised for another punch. The incandescent flames of plasma reflect brilliantly over her soft green skin, and make her eyes glint like polished emeralds. She’s once again struck by how terrifyingly beautiful the woman is. “He’s had enough.”

Motor Ed gives another lecherous grin and lets out a loud wolf howl, a drawn-out awooo that was so cringeworthy, Kim is feeling thirdhand embarrassment from it. “There’s never enough for me, baby,” he says, beginning to gyrate his hips. “I can go all. Night. Long!” he continues, punctuating each word with a pointed thrust.

Kim’s punch knocks him out cold.

Shego looks from Kim to the man laying prone on the grass, a ridiculous smile on her face. Kim’s never seen anything like it on Shego and it’s…nice. It makes her think that maybe, somewhere beneath her sarcasm and tendencies towards violence, her dear friend Miss Go might still exist. Kim never let herself dwell too much on those precious days when Shego had been turned into sweet Miss Go. Once Shego had become, well, Shego again, and it had become plain that what she and Kim had built together was lost, Kim put her feelings about it on ice. Seeing Shego so often, the two of them on opposing sides once more…it was the only thing Kim could do to protect herself from the sharp sting of loss and the deeper, more enduring pain of regret. 

“Gods that’s hot,” Shego says of Kim’s display of violence, ruining the girl’s bittersweet reminiscing with a lecherous smirk of her own.

Ugh. So not the drama. Kim rolls her eyes, the action belying the small smile tugging at her lips.

Chapter Text

“What are you looking at?” Kim asks as they walk up to the building. Up close, it looks even dingier than it had across the makeshift parking lot. The concrete walls are slick with mildew and pocked with bullet holes and hardened gum. The high, small windows are completely black, but it’s unclear whether it’s deliberate or just a happy byproduct of neglect.

“You.”

Kim’s stomach flips at the word, but she rolls her eyes to cover up the reaction. She hopes that it’s too dark for Shego to see the blush burning fast and hot up her face. She distracts herself with the rhinoceros-hare cuddlebuddy tethered just outside the doors. She pets its soft black hare fur and marvels at the feeling of the tough, ridged skin of its face. When she begins babytalking to it, Shego groans and drags her into the building.

Once inside, it becomes exceedingly apparent that the establishment is a bar. There’s loud metal music, and through the haze of smoke, Kim can make out some pool tables and dart boards. She’s grateful that she’s not in her mission gear, because within the first three seconds she sees no fewer than seven villains she’d personally placed in jail.

“Are you trying to get me killed?” Kim shouts in Shego’s ear.

“Don’t worry, princess. None of these fucks are suicidal enough to cross me.” She bares a shark grin to a third-rate villain who dares to double-take at Kim. The man immediately drops his beer and scurries away with a whimper. It seems she’s just as feared by the villains as she is by the good guys.

Must be kind of lonely, Kim thinks.

Shego swipes four beers off the tray of a passing worker, and with a wave of her hand and a glower, she clears three large men out of a booth. She spreads her legs wide in the large booth and grins, “Welcome to my kingdom, baby.”

Kim groans and rolls her eyes again. So cocky.

Shego hands Kim one of the beers and drains two of the others in quick succession. The woman would be a revelation at the frat parties Kim was sometimes dragged to by her college friends.

“Aw, does wittle princess not drink?” Shego asks, using an incredibly grating mocking baby voice.

Kim knows she’s doing exactly what Shego wants, but she feels the burning need to prove her enemy wrong. She puts the bottle to her lips and chugs. The liquid is lukewarm, bitter and tastes burnt, and the bottle is slick with condensation (or, at least, what she hopes is condensation). So what if she prefers pink, fruity cocktails with low alcoholic content? Regardless, she finishes the beer just to spite the smirking woman next to her.

“Happy?”

Shego’s eyes dance as she looks at Kim. There are volumes in those eyes and Kim could stay up til the morning hours reading them. There was a depth to Shego that always fascinated Kim. She usually kept it well obscured under her veneer of boredom and sarcasm, so Kim always found herself savoring the moments where Shego let down her guard enough to get something meaningful out of the woman.

Shego hums noncommittally, casually stretching an arm out behind Kim’s shoulders. The weight of Shego’s arm around her is as comforting as it is confusing. They’ve touched hundreds of times, close enough for Kim to smell her unique musk of sweat and jasmine and ozone, bodies flush together and faces nose to nose as they each grappled for the upper hand. An arm on her shoulder isn’t anything new. But the context is, and it seems that makes all the difference. Kim’s stomach drops and she’s hyperaware of every point where their bodies touch.

Shego’s legs are still spread wide in the circular booth, one thigh pressed against hers. The jasmine of her shampoo wraps around Kim, warm and familiar. Her muscles relax into it instinctively.

What am I doing?

She straightens, willing herself to not fall into complacency. She’s sitting next to her arch-nemesis in a bar filled with villains who had every reason to want her dead.

“So our conversation,” Kim says, for lack of anything else to think of to say, and in a desperate attempt to not enjoy Shego touching her in a dark bar. “You said you wanted to continue it?”

Shego’s hand stops halfway to her mouth, the beer dripping fat drops of condensation on the table. She had completely forgotten that she had used that as a thin reason for kidnapping her tonight. A slow smile makes its way onto her face as she remembers their last conversation. The one where it seemed painfully obvious that Kimmie was hoping for some smooching on her mission.

“Oh, right. The conversation where I let you know that I totally saw through your cute little plan to kiss me and give me your digits.”

“WHAT.”

Both women look up to see a smirking Drakken and a sputtering Ron.

“Kimmie didn’t tell you? She got herself all dolled up for me and gave me this,” Shego said casually, pulling a small card out of a pocket Kim genuinely couldn’t believe existed in the woman’s skintight catsuit.

“Call me, beep me, I want you to reach me?” Ron reads from the card, a thin blonde eyebrows raised skeptically. “Really, KP?”

Kim really should start paying more attention when Wade gives her gadgets. But…why would Wade put that lame pickup line on a business card? That…didn’t sound like Wade at all. Kim racked her brain. What was she missing here? Who would want Shego to think Kim was into her?

Kim groaned with a dawning realization. Monique had been there that night! She’d bet anything that Monique had a hand in it. But that still didn’t explain one thing. How did Shego get the stupid card anyway? This wasn’t making any sense!

One thing was entirely clear, though: she had not asked her archenemy out. “I don’t know how Shego got it, but Wade gave it to me. It was one of his mission gadgets.”

“And the lipstick?” Shego asks dryly, one thin eyebrow raised.

“Mission gadget.”

“Mint gum?”

“Also a mission gadget.”

Shego groans and deflates, scrubbing a hand over her face and her body shifting away from the hero. Kim’s stomach drops, the beer roiling in her stomach. Her shoulders feel bare where Shego’s arm was, her leg cold where it had been pressed up against Shego’s own. “I’m such an idiot.”

“No you aren’t!” Kim immediately jumps in, her arm moving to rest atop Shego’s in a comforting gesture. “I mean…I get how you would think from that…but I’m not,” Spit it out already, Kim! “I’m not, you know. I’m not like you.”

Shego’s face is entirely unamused at Kim’s choice of words…or lack thereof. She waits, her forest eyes challenging.

Kim’s mouth is entirely dry. She opens and closes it once. Twice. “Gay, Shego. I’m not gay,” Kim says weakly. It doesn’t sound very convincing even to her own ears.

Ron nods his head enthusiastically in support. He would know, right? Her best friend in the entire world and her ex-boyfriend. Living, breathing proof that she is one hundred percent, totally heterosexual. Not to mention her almost-boyfriend Ryan, who Kim’s sorority sisters had assured her was about to ask her to be exclusive any day now.

“Suure you’re not,” Shego drawls out, voice dripping with her characteristic sarcasm.

“I have a boyfriend,” Kim shoots back. At Shego’s sharp look, she amends, “Well. An almost boyfriend. He’s the one that gave me that bracelet. The one that dropped in your date’s drink at dinner.”

Shego’s face shutters, losing all the warmth it had gained throughout the evening. “How precious,” she drawls in response. She drains the last beer in one go and slides out of the booth. She looks at Drakken with an I told you so look and mutters, “Let’s get out of here.”

Chapter Text

The ride home is, to say the least, extremely awkward. Shego is monosyllabic, and neither woman will make eye contact with the other. Drakken blithely refuses to admit that the outing was a failure, and punctuates the silence periodically with variations of, “Well this was fun,” but phrased more like, “Well this was a smashing success organized by yours truly.” And Ron, blindsided by the implication that his former girlfriend was a lesbian and thus not at all into him as a man, thought it was wise to inject inane anecdotes about times Kim had definitely found boys attractive. With each mention of a boy, Shego’s grip grows tighter and tighter on the hovercraft gearshift, until finally, somewhere over the suburbia that Kim thought might be her neighborhood, it broke clean off.

“Well isn’t this peachy,” Shego observes, holding up the jagged black gearshift handle for all to see before yeeting it as far as her superstrength could muster.

“Sheeegooooo!” Drakken whines, “I could have fixed that!”

The sidekick turns around in her seat to bare her teeth at him in a vicious smile. “I think you’ve done enough fixing today, Drew.”

“Uh Shego,” Ron starts timidly. His hands are braced against the back of Kim’s seat and the side of the car.

“WHAT.”

“How are we gonna land?” he asks, just as they start speeding down Kim’s street.

Shego sighs and rolls her eyes. “Drakken, drive this piece of junk,” she orders. And then she leaps into the backseat, grabs Ron and jumps out of the car.

Ron screams, a shrill girlish thing right in Shego’s ear, and it’s all the green woman can do not to end his pathetic life right there. She drops him by the collar on the asphalt in front of Kim’s place, and then uses her plasma to vault her back up into the sky. She intercepts the hovercraft, now careening back down the street from the other direction and scoops up Kim, cradling the girl snugly against her chest.

“Hold on,” she says, far too gently. Kim nods and wraps her arms around Shego’s neck shyly, still not making eye contact with her. It feels so good to have Kim against her body like this, the girl’s lips blowing soft puffs of warm air against her neck. She slows the flames of plasma keeping them aloft to just a fraction of their power, prolonging the seconds she has in the air with Kim, whose fingers are toying at the small hairs at the nape of her neck and whose heart is beating hard right against her chest. But soon, too soon, they alight on the pavement and Kim is finally looking at her.

“Shego?” she asks uncertainly. Her eyes are soft and round and so, so green. A smattering of brown freckles are dusted across her nose and cheeks, and Shego wants to kiss each and every one. Her lips are slightly parted, and Shego could swear that the look on Kim’s face is the look of a girl who wants, desperately, to be kissed.

“Yeah, princess?” A wind stirs the balmy night air, marching a handful of dry leaves against the asphalt. She waits for Kim to make a move, give her any irrefutable indication that she wants this kiss as much as Shego thinks she does.

“Are you going to let me down?”

And that takes the wind right out of Shego’s sails. Oh, right. Kim is straight. Into boys only. A definitely not-in-denial heterosexual.

She gingerly puts Kim down, going right back to the unspoken ‘no eye contact’ rule. There was no way she wanted to see what would certainly be a look of pity or disgust on the girl’s face.

“So this was…”

“Fun,” and “A mistake,” jumbles together, the former from Kim, and the latter from Shego, causing a blunder of ‘I’m sorry’s and ‘Oh, no, you go’s and ‘What did you say’s that scatter over each other.

“Well annnnyway,” Shego says, her voice low and slow and awkward. “I’m gonna…go.”

She stops when she feels a slight pressure on her wrist. She isn’t inclined to turn, but she does when her wrist is gently tugged.

“I’ll see you around, won’t I?” Kim asks, tentative. Shego, hurt and somewhat humiliated by this entire debacle of a not-date, would be inclined to snap something snarky in response, but she’s stayed by the heartbreaking note of hope in the girl’s tone.

She wants to see me again.

And so Shego resolved to officially go back to her life of crime.

Chapter Text

When Kim arrived at the Starbruck’s the next day, Monique was already there at a table. The coffeeshop was lousy with students, most studying either alone or in groups, and Kim nearly tripped twice while trying to dodge the chairs and textbooks and overstuffed backpacks crammed into the space. Monique waved as she caught sight of Kim.

“Hey, girl!” She greeted Kim, a wide and infectious smile on her face. “I already ordered for you.” When Kim goes to say thanks, Monique immediately interrupted with, “Oh, don’t worry, gf. The barista is c-u-t-e and I wanted another reason to keep talking to him.” She even winked for effect.

Kim laughed and rolled her eyes. Of course Monique would be flirting with the barista. Monique’s name gets called and she spent an inordinate amount of time talking to her barista, who Kim admits is cute in a…generic sort of way. She watched them both get out their phones and exchange numbers. Her friend Monique is a masterful flirt and a serial dater, so none of this came as a surprise to Kim. 

She sometimes wished she had that sort of confidence and initiative. She had it in spades in every other aspect of her life, but when it came to boys, for some reason, she found herself hesitant and tongue-tied. Not to mention the amount of time Monique chose to spend dedicating to her craft. Between college classes and saving the world, Kim Possible didn’t have much time to spare for romance, a fact that had led to the end of every single one of her relationships, official or unofficial as they were. She envied Monique, in an abstract sort of way. It would be nice to go on new and exciting dates constantly, with the potential for meeting new and exciting people. But she knew that the serial dating life, and maybe even serious monogamous dating (if things went as they currently were) might never be for her. 

Hence, the awkward status of her relationship with Ryan. She was certainly exclusive, partially out of loyalty but mostly out of convenience, and she was pretty certain Ryan was, too. But they hadn’t gotten around to the whole ‘making it official’ part. And Kim hadn’t really felt much of a rush to push that conversation.

“Score!” Monique said as she set their coffees down on the table. “But more importantly, girl, I need you to dish!”

Kim took a sip of her drink and hummed happily. A matcha tea latte, one of her favorites. The warm, grassy taste bloomed over her tongue, filling her senses with green, green, green. Green like grass. Green like summer. Green like Shego. Long black hair haloed by a neon green glow filled her mind’s eye. Flashing green eyes and a mischievous black slash of a smirk. Kim doesn’t realize she’s smiling. “Dish about what?” Kim asked.

“About Shego, duh!” 

Kim started, liquid from her latte sloshing out of the little sip hole and onto her hand. Why would Monique be interested in Shego? Unless…had she somehow heard about their forced outing? Kim schooled her face into impassiveness, “What about her?”

“Hell to the o! Maybe the fact that you went on a date with her?” 

Kim once again had been caught by surprise and sputtered, choking on her latte. She coughed once, twice, and then Monique was rounding the table and patting her moderately hard on the back. Once she’s settled back in her seat, Monique raised a challenging eyebrow, goading Kim to continue.

If it were anyone but Monique, Kim would deflect. But she knows her friend can intuit when Kim needs to talk, and that the girl could out-stubborn anyone when she knows she’s right. One look at Monique’s arms crossed over her torso let Kim know: Monique knows she’s right. So Kim sighs. 

“Look, Mo. Shego and I did not go on a date,” Kim finally responded, crossing her arms for effect. “I was kidnapped. At night. In my pajamas. With Ron. Does any of that sound like a date to you?”

“Sounds like a date planned by a supervillain.” The words were punctuated by a single, slim raised eyebrow and a very knowing look. 

Kim paused. Opened her mouth. Closed it. Monique did have a point. She thought back to the way Shego had pressed against her in the booth. Her seductive voice saying, “But I was hoping you wouldn’t need much persuasion,” and the intense heat of her gaze on Kim’s lips as she carried Kim down from the Hovercraft.

“Ooooooh,girl. You’re blushing so hard right now!” Monique teased, delight apparent in her sparkling brown eyes.

“Am not!” Kim retorted, burying her hot face in her hands. The blush spreads up to her ears and down her neck. Gods, Kim hated that her blushes looked like a concerning medical problem. Her face and just about every other lick of skin flamed as red as her hair, leaving no room for interpretation.

“Are, too!” Monique laughed, “Well, if it’s any consolation, Shego totally has a thing for you, too. Has for a long time, I think.”

“You really think so?” Kim peeked out from between her fingers, still not quite ready to show her flaming face to her friend’s discerning eyes.

“Girl, she lights up—literally—whenever she sees you. She flirts with you all the time while you’re fighting and comes up with every reason in the book to touch you. Yeah, she likes you.”

Oh. Kim thought back to all the times they had fought throughout the years. All of the quips from Shego. All of the times she had pressed herself to Kim. The increasingly hostile digs at Ron when he was her boyfriend. Oh.

Then why had Shego just up and left once she had decided to turn good after the Lowardian invasion? Why had Kim never seen her again? How could she just…leave Kim like that? It didn’t make any sense. 

Kim resolved to find out.

—

That evening, Kim eyed the assortment of alcohol on the folding table across the room. To drink or not to drink? A point in favor of drinking was that she was incredibly bored and alcohol would invariably make what promised to be an otherwise dull evening watching dumb, drunk college kids somewhat more eventful. But the pull not to drink was strong, too. She had been coerced into coming out despite many protests, and not drinking would be a satisfying act of sabotage. 

“Sure you don’t want any?” Ryan asked, once again offering her the red solo cup in his left hand. Kim’s eyes dart to it and land on his chunky high school class ring glinting in the smoky, low fluorescent light. 

“Totally sure,” Kim responded with what she hoped was a winning smile.

He shrugged and smiled back. “It’s so nice to see you finally. I’ve been worried since the whole Shego thing.”

Kim tensed. “Shego thing?”

“Yeah, you know? The mission that was botched a couple of weeks ago? Shego and that Russian assassin?” His thick eyebrows were creased in concern, scrunched over a pair of objectively attractive blue eyes, set atop a conventionally-attractive, chiseled face.

Kim breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, right!” She cringed internally, hoping Ryan didn’t notice the way her voice pitched higher. “That Shego thing.” Ryan moved his arm to her shoulder and pulled her close for a small squeeze before settling it behind her in a casually possessive gesture. It felt nice, to be wanted like this, but it was a far cry from the tumultuous emotions the same act from Shego had stirred up within her. 

Though…why was Kim even comparing the two? She wasn’t into girls like that. 

She should like this, right? She should be excited to press up against him. So why did she feel nothing? It was just like when she and Ron finally began dating. The excitement of moving from friends to lovers had faded as quickly as it had arrived. In its wake, Kim found their romantic interactions ran the gamut from “fine” to “blah” to awkward and downright cringey. Kim still couldn’t think about their first attempt at passing second base without groaning a little. 

“Hey!” came a shout from across the room, jolting Kim out of her thoughts. She looked up to see a passel of well-muscled, well-chiseled boys, all waving genially at them. They’re Ryan’s buddies, most of them on the swimming team with him. Ryan tipped the solo cup up in greeting, draining the drink to their cheers. He quickly offered Kim the other drink again to be polite, before moving on to that one as well. The boys whooped as he drained the contents of the cup in one go, finishing with a very loud, “Yeahh!” and a boorish drumbeat to his chest for effect. 

Kim rolled her eyes at his antics. It’s stupid and childish, but endearing in a way. She could imagine Ron doing something similar if he were here with here, but perhaps somehow losing his pants in the process. The thought makes her smile, so she cheerfully waves her not-quite boyfriend away to go do whatever frat boys do at parties like this. 

“A ‘right and proper gentleman,’ that one is,” said a husky voice in Kim’s ear in a rather passable affected British accent. 

Kim was caught unaware, but schooled herself into practiced ease as Shego leaped over the back of the couch to land soundlessly beside her. The reformed villain’s eyes were trained on Ryan, skepticism written all over the sharp planes of her pale face as he chest-bumped another of his frat mates, who had just downed an entire beer in one go. 

“Oh, please. As if you haven’t dated a meathead before. I’ve seen you with Señor Señor Junior,” Kim retorted, unable to keep the disgust from her voice. What did Shego see in such a vapid person like him, anyway?

“As if! Those idiots just give me free drinks and private island vacations. Haven’t dated anyone with a penis since eighth grade.” 

Kim can’t hide her discomfort at the word ‘penis’ and it sent Shego into a fit of laughter. “Such a prude,” the supervillain got out between cackles. As her rival was in stitches, Kim was taking note of the woman’s clothing. She had ditched her catsuit for tight black jeans that Kim instinctively knew were designer and incredibly expensive. Her torso bore a tucked-in loose white vintage t-shirt that Kim was afraid to read lest she be caught staring at Shego’s chest. In place of her usual boots were replaced with calf-length, thick-heeled black ones that simultaneously looked halfway between fuck-me boots and I’m-gonna-fuck-you-up boots.

Shego’s hair was pulled back into a loose, high ponytail, revealing her long, sensuous neck. 

Sensuous? Since when did she think of Shego and sensuous in the same sentence? Gods, she was losing it and losing it fast!

Kim had to get to the bottom of…whatever this was with her archenemy before she feel in too deep. “Shego, what are we doing?”

Shego rolled her eyes, and Kim knew the woman was going to respond reply before she even opens her black lips, “Sitting on a nasty ass couch at a lame college party, doy!” She side eyed Kim knowingly, “But we could get outta here. I know a few things that are far more…entertaining that we could be doing.”

The drop in her voice and the implied innuendo went right to Kim’s core like a punch to the gut.

“Awe, little Kimmie is blushing!” Shego teased, and it made Kim flush even more red. 

“Shut up!” Kim fumed, annoyed that Shego was able to get to her so quickly. She got up suddenly and stormed over to the folding table where the drinks were laid out. She grabbed a solo cup, filled it with the red concoction and grabbed two beers for good measure. She stomped back over to Shego and shoved the beers in her hands unceremoniously. 

The infuriating woman had a small smile on her lips as if she was amused by Kim’s antics—which only served to make the girl even more angry. She was about to take a violent swig of her drink when Shego suddenly put a hand over the opening, effectively blocking her.

“WHAT?” Kim asked, and it’s so vicious that Shego started for a moment. 

“Look around the room, cupcake. What are all the boys drinking?” 

Kim looked. There’s nothing out of the ordinary that she can see. “Beer. Like usual. Why?” She yanked back the cup out of Shego’s grasp, nearly sloshing the red liquid over the side, but Shego flips and straddles her instead, managing to pin her arm while still holding on to her open beer bottle. 

“They’re drinking beer, princess, because they drugged the damn jungle juice,” Shego replied, her face suddenly turning serious. “You wouldn’t want to forget our night now, would you?”

Oh. Shego was close. Like, really close. Her voice was a rumble in Kim’s ear, the puffs of her breath warm and wet on her neck. The woman’s thick, muscled thighs were on either side of her own, and Kim could feel the slightest brush of Shego’s ample chest against her own with every shallow breath she took.

Despite herself, Kim trembled. 

Thoroughly distracted, Kim didn’t even react when Shego pried open her fingers and extracted the solo cup from her hands. She leaned away momentarily to place the cup on the sticky side table next to the couch, but then was back, with a dark, searing look in her jade green eyes.

The words Monique had spoken to her earlier that day drift to mind, “She comes up with every reason in the book to touch you.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Shego crooned in her ear. 

“Okay,” Kim squeaked. A look of affection crossed Shego’s face at that, and it caused Kim’s heart to lose its rhythm. 

Oh gods. Oh gods. Oh gods.

“Stop overthinking,” Shego said, and it’s gentler than either of them thought it should be, taking them both by surprise. Shego and ‘gentle’ weren’t exactly words that usually went together.

Kim’s eyes caught the drinks table again. “Before we go, Shego, do you think we can do something about that?” she asked, nodding in the direction of the poisoned red beverage.

Shego’s answering smile was positively wicked. “Oh, sweetheart. I thought you’d never ask.”

Chapter Text

Shego had wanted to rohypnol the beer bottles in revenge, but Kim had managed to talk her out of it (a chip that sat on Kim’s shoulder for the rest of the evening). Instead, with Kim as the distraction and Shego as the master thief, they replaced the jungle juice with plain fruit punch and made sure every single girl who had been subject to the drugged juice made it safely out of the frat house. Kim was disgusted with the perpetrators, some of whom she considered friends, and was equally disgusted with her not-quite boyfriend, who was good friends with many of them.

It prompted Kim to send the text message she knew she should have sent Ryan weeks ago: “I don’t think we should see each other anymore.” She knew it was cowardly to break up over text, but they weren’t actually in a relationship, anyway. Plus she figured that if he was friends with the sort of people who didn’t respect  women, then he wasn’t worth her time.

Shego had delighted in depriving the boys of their potential prey. She had also rooted through their things and wrote them personalized messages threatening them if they were to ever try to drug girls ever again. She planned on following up and stringing them up by their balls if she found her messages were ineffective—but Kim didn’t need to know that part.

It was an eventful evening for sure, but the part that stood out in Kim’s mind was the goodbye they shared on Kim’s windowsill. 

It was late, and the nearly-full moon shone bright behind the pale green villain. She sat casually in the open window, a slight breeze pulling at the thick locks of hair that had escaped from her ponytail throughout the evening. Her trademark black lipstick was smudged slightly in one corner, and Kim had a strong desire to wipe it clean. 

“I wasn’t expecting to see you play hero this evening,” Kim said teasingly. “It looked really good on you.”

“Don’t go telling anyone,” she growled in response. “I have a reputation to keep up. I just hate seeing men take advantage of women like that.” Her eyes flashed, and Kim knew that there was some sort of history behind that comment, but now wasn’t the time or place to ask. 

Just as quickly as the darkness took over her features, though, it vanished, to be replaced by a predatory smile, all teeth and knowing eyes. “So you think I look good?” 

Kim rolled her eyes in response. “Shut up. Of course you do! Anyone with eyes can see that.”

Something unreadable crossed Shego’s face. “Come here,” she said, her voice low and soft. 

Kim’s inner voice screamed ‘Danger!’ but when had that ever stopped her? 

Her heart racing, she rose from her bed and crossed the few feet to the window. When she was close enough, Shego leaned forward and gently placed her hands on Kim’s torso, drawing her closer between her legs. 

“Do you want this?” Shego breathed, her lips inches from Kim’s own. Her arms were loosely linked around Kim’s back, her fingers tracing invisible patterns. Kim’s body was pulled flush against Shego’s core, her knees once again locked around Kim’s body. She had always wanted around Shego: wanted to push, wanted to fight, wanted to win. Now, though, there was a wanting inside her that stole the breath from her lungs, the floor from under her feet and the bottom from her stomach. 

Her blood was pulsing in her ears and instead of hard punches there were just soft thighs, and soft touches and soft words. She wanted those soft lips on hers, to feel their bodies mold together, to run her hands down the curve of Shego’s back, to pull her closer than they’d ever been before. She wanted the heat of Shego’s intense gaze on her body and the warmth of her skin on her own. She wanted her hand on the back of Shego’s slender neck and to run her fingers over the sharp lines of her collar bones. 

“Kimmie?” Shego asked, uncertain. The tone was so unlike the woman Kim had come to know that it jolted her out of the spell she had been under. 

What was she thinking? This was Shego! Her archenemy. A villain. A woman. Not to mention, the very woman Dr. Director had all but expressly ordered her not to get involved with. 

Shego must have seen something on Kim's face because she softly disentangled herself from Kim, something that looked almost like vulnerability softening her sharp features. "I want you to be sure," she said lowly, the words soft but certain. She lifted her hand to trace Kim's cheek, her green eyes searching Kim's own. Kim leaned into the touch, relishing the soft contact from her archenemy, but all too soon, Shego pulled away and disappeared into the night.

--------------

“Hey Wade,” Kim says, giving a little wave to the camera. “What’s the sitch?” 

“Shego again.” 

It was the fourth time in as many weeks. Kim would be getting annoyed with it if she didn’t find fighting Shego so thrilling. It had nothing to do with the fact that Shego might possibly harbor a crush on her. No other villain came close to matching her speed, her strength, her impeccable technique and her wit. She was truly Kim’s equal, and Kim hadn’t realized just how much she had missed it until she had it back.

“What’s it this time?” Kim asks, turning off her video feed and changing into her mission clothes. 

“Another theft. Wine this time.”

First it was one of the rarest flowers on earth, stolen from a private greenhouse of the Queen of England. Next it was the recipe for her favorite cookies from Granny Crocket. Last time, it was the Hope Diamond. And now, it was wine from the most exclusive and expensive winery in all of France? What was Shego playing at?

“If you don’t know that, you’re a lot dumber than I give you credit for,” Monique quips.

Oh, had Kim been speaking out loud?

“Do we know where she took it?” Kim asks, ignoring Monique and her obnoxious questions.

“No, we’re going to have to look for clues at the scene.” 

Wade let them know that he already found a ride for them, and minutes later, she and Monique were off on a propeller plane and on their way to France. When they arrive at the winery some hours later, they’re greeted by a stately gentleman with a greying mustache and an extremely expensive burgundy suit.

“Welcome, Kim Possible,” he says with a thick accent. He takes her hand and kisses it. “Thank you for coming.”

“No big,” Kim responds with a shrug, the humbleness not at all affected. It truly was just another day on the job for her. “This is Monique,” she says by way of introduction. “And Monique, this is Emilien Vigneu.”

He leads them into a stately stone house on the crest of a hill. It’s surrounded by a rolling green expanse of cropped grass and lines and lines of dark green grape vines hanging off of low trellises as far as the eye could see. Paired with the mountains in the background, it was mothing short of beautiful. Kim has the fleeting thought that she’d love to stroll through these fields with Shego, before shaking her head to get rid of the disturbing notion altogether.

He leads them past a reception area. Kim peeks around to the right and sees a gorgeous sunroom, filled with greenery and interspersed with small, intimate round tables and chairs. There are large original paintings in ornate frames on the walls of the hallway he leads them down. They pass rooms styled with plush rococo décor and period-appropriate gold accents. Sitting rooms, meeting rooms, a banquet room…

“Ah, here we are,” the man says, stopping at a large brown door. He procures an unnecessarily large key and opens it with a flourish. “Ladies,” he says, holding the door open for them. Kim goes first, relishing the cool, earthy air that hits her as she descends a set of stairs. The light is dim, but there’s enough that she can see stacks of dark wooden crates nestled into shelves that reach the ceiling. The floor and walls are earthen, but packed smooth from both design and use. The wood of the barrels smells soft and moist, like damp earth and logs after rain. The lighting in the cellar is incredibly dim—a handful of dusty bulbs that leave all but the first few barrels on either side of them in shadow. There are occasional groaning creaks as they walk, the sound of the wooden barrels expanding and contracting, Emilien assures them.

It’s nice down here, Kim thinks. 

Emilien leads them down rows of barrels to the end of the cellar to another door with another lock. There’s another key, and it opens to a much smaller room. It’s no larger than Kim’s bedroom at home, and it contains floor to ceiling wooden racks filled with dusty wine bottles and a tall, wheeled wooden ladder, the kind Kim usually associated with old bookshops or libraries. The bottles’ ivory labels were relatively plain. They merely had the name of the wine, the name of the winery, the year and Grand Cru Classé in ornate script on them. 

“Our best vintages,” Emilien says to the girls by way of explanation. Kim takes a closer look at the bottles and, sure enough, all of them are from well before Kim was even born. 

“So what was stolen, exactly?” Monique asks, getting to the chase.

The man gestures to a spot on the rack where three bottles were missing. 

Monique turns, incredulous, to Kim before saying, “Oh hell no,” she says, crossing her arms. “You brought us here because three bottles of wine are missing?”

“Mademoiselle, I do apologize, but each was priced at $52,000 American dollars.” 

Monique lets out a low whistle. “Well HD!” ( Hot Damn , for those of you who aren’t fluent in Monique.)

Kim took her time analyzing the empty spaces, then finally pulled out her Kimminucator. “Hey, Wade. Can you scan these for me? Look for anything unusual?” 

Kim holds the device over the spaces and sweeps it over them, a blue light falling over the scanned areas. 

“Hmm,” Wade says, click-clacking his computer keys. “There seems to be something…Check the front of the rack on the inside.” 

Kim feels her way around the inside of the dusty wood until she touches something decidedly un-wood like. She grabs at it with her fingernails and pries it from the shelf. It’s a piece of paper, folded neatly into the shape of a heart. She unfolds it and a dried jasmine flower tumbles out onto the floor. 

Shego.

“Whatchu got there, GF?” Monique asks, amusement already coloring her tone. 

“N-nothing,” Kim says, flushing all the way to her scalp. Seeing the unimpressed look on Monique’s face, she continues, “Well, okay. It is something.” She turns to the winemaker. “Mr. Vigneu, I will get you your wine back.” 

“You know where it is?” Monique asks.

“No,” Kim responds, much to the confusion of the other two people in the room. “I think it’s going to come to me.” 

----------

“What’s going to come to you?” asks a voice on the other end of the cellar. All three of them turn towards the sound, but it’s too dark to see that far down. 

“Shego,” Kim responds. 

“That’s what I feared,” says the voice. The figure finally steps into the light, revealing the form of Dr. Director.

Kim had already recognized her voice, but Monique and Emilien are wearing twin looks of surprise. “Mr. Vigneu, this is Dr. Betty Director, Director of Global Justice,” says Kim by way of introduction.

The one-eyed woman nods her head curtly in his direction. “Would you give us a moment?” she asks him. When he doesn’t move, she adds, “Official Global Justice business.” 

He nods quickly and takes a concerned look at his bottles of wine before scurrying out of the room and towards the cellar stairs. 

“You, too, Miss…” Betty says, eye on Monique. 

“Monique,” the girl says warily. She plants her feet firmly on the ground in a wide stance, indicating that she wasn’t planning on going anywhere.

“Miss Monique, I would appreciate it if you would wait upstairs with Mr. Vigneu.” 

Monique eyes the passel of blue-suited GJ agents standing silently behind the Director. She then meets Kim’s eyes, silently asking if it was okay for her to go. There was no way she’d abandon her girl without her express consent. 

“It’s okay, Monique. Go let Mr. Vigneu know that his wine is safe with me.” 

Her friend nods once, her eyes narrowing as she passes the unmoving agents. Once the heavy wooden door closes behind her, the Director speaks again. “I’ve been made aware that Shego is up to her old tricks.” 

The way she says it has Kim on edge. She knows how skilled Betty Director is at interrogation, though, so she tries to maintain a cool, unaffected exterior. “I don’t think—”

But Betty cuts her off, “She doesn’t need excuses made for her, especially from you. Her actions speak clearly for themselves.” It’s meant to be a remonstrance, and Kim feels it as such. At the same time, she has a dueling frustration that arises within her. What right did the woman have to make her feel that way? “She’s back on the Wanted list. I can only imagine what it would do to your reputation if it got out that you were…” the woman pauses, her one eye shifting slightly to the side in thought as she searched for the right word. “ Consorting with an international criminal.”

Without saying as much, the woman was making it known that she knew that something was up between her and Shego. Even though nothing material had changed between the two. “I don’t know what you think is going on here, Dr. Director,” Kim says, trying to keep her tone pleasant, but she knew it was shaking around the edges. “But I think my actions speak for themselves, too. You know me, or at least I thought you did. I would never help Shego commit crimes.”

“That’s not at all what I was implying, Kim Possible.”

Kim isn’t stupid. She knew what Dr. Director was implying—she merely hoped that by deliberately misinterpreting it, she could throw the woman off her scent. But no dice.

“There is nothing between Shego and me,” Kim says, willing her voice to remain firm and resolute. She thinks it actually works, because with it, the older woman softens and her shoulders sink just a few centimeters in what Kim thinks is relief. 

“Very well, then. Be careful, Kim Possible,” the words are much kinder, almost motherly. And then, “Global Justice does not treat those who aid and abet criminals lightly.” Kim was able to see the barest hint of a smirk before the woman melted back into the dark along with her agents. 

Kim carried the woman’s threat with her all the way home.

Chapter Text

It was two hours before Shego was supposed to leave to take Kim Possible on their first official date and everyone at Drakken’s lair was on edge. Shego had checked, double-checked, triple-checked and then sent Henchman Doug to quadruple-check that everything was ready.

“Everything’s good to go, boss!” Henchman Doug informs her, and he recieves a simple growl in response. Normally, the way he scrambled back out of the room in fear would have at least put a smile on her face, but Shego was worried. 

Shego never worried.

In fact, she went to extraordinary lengths to make sure she never worried. Exhibit A: she made sure her terms of employment expressly excluded her from anything that could possibly cause her stress: “Employer shall never cause employee to stress, worry or fret, nor shall employer ever require employee to assume any duties that may cause employee stress or worry. Employer shall be liable for any remediation activities necessary to restore emotional equilibrium.” Shego made sure to make liberal use of that final sentence. 

Of course, the clause was completely legally unenforceable, but Drakken, the idiot, was none the wiser because his lawyer was a third cousin of his who got his law degree in Barbados and hadn’t even passed the Evil Bar. Which, to be fair, was pretty similar to the regular Bar Exam (lawyers being generally intrinsically pretty evil, and laws being generally morally neutral), but the dunce hadn’t even passed that, either.

Shego smirks, thinking of the bumbling, stuttering mess she had reduced Drakken’s lawyer cousin to when negotiating her contract. The man was quaking so badly in his unfashionably baggy suit and dusty oxfords that Shego had been concerned he would simply vibrate his way to another plane of existence.

Thus, Shego had her stress clause, her “I can refuse anything I want” clause (which she interpreted liberally and invoked often) and 15 weeks of paid vacation a year. 

Unfortunately, none of the stress she was now experiencing was caused by her oft-moronic employer, so she couldn't even manipulate a nice all-expenses paid resort trip out of it. No, the stress was all her own doing and she was, admittedly, not handling it well. Her stomach was in knots and her emotions were pin-balling from excited, to nervous, to angry that she was nervous, to anxious that she was missing something, to aroused at the thought of having Kim to herself, to nervous that Kim would reject her…

“Uh, boss—Shego—uh, ma’am,” a Henchman stutters, a frilly pink apron on over his usual uniform. He quickly changes tactics upon seeing the sharp glare from the woman in question at the word ‘ma’am.’ He glances around desperately at the other Henchmen nearby, but none would meet his eyes. “Uh, sir?” He tries again hopefully. 

Good enough . He must be new, or, at least, Shego didn’t recognize him at all. He’d eventually learn to call her Captain, along with the dozens of other derogatory nicknames they gave her behind her back. She rolls her eyes and growls out an annoyed, “What?”

“The cookies you ordered are ready, sir.”

That lightens her mood a bit. She had ordered him to conduct a blind taste test trial against the store-bought version of Granny Crockett’s cookies and report back to her immediately. The cookies, along with everything else she had planned for Kim Possible, had to be perfect.

“Captain Shego,” another Henchman barks out. He displays a bouquet for her perusal. The bouquet is comprised of a host of exotic plants, some of which were the only specimens of the kind in the world. It was eclectic, but undeniably gorgeous. Kim would love it, at least, Shego hoped she would.

“Hm, yes. That will do,” she says, dismissing the man. 

“ Shegoooo ,” comes a whine, the voice coming towards her. 

“ What , Dr. D?” the ex-villain snaps, “Can’t you see I’m busy here?” 

Shego was, in fact, lying horizontally on a chair, her legs splayed over one arm and her head draped dramatically over the other.

“You know you can’t be using Lair personnel for personal…” the blue man trails off immediately at the sharp look he receives from the woman before him. He pastes a shaky smile on his face. “Uh, but, of course. I can make an exception…this one time. They’re free to use whenever you want.” He puts his gloved hands out in a placating gesture. “ Pleasedon’thurtme ,” he continues, the words jumbling together in his haste to get them out before the look on Shego’s face got any darker.

“That’s what I thought.”

“Uh, right.”

“Good.”

Drakken continues to linger in the doorway, much to Shego’s displeasure. He picks at a string jutting out from his gloves, unsubtly eyeing Shego as he did so. The moments stretch between them, growing more awkward by the second.

“Soooo…” Drakken starts.

“ Can it , Drakken.” 

“You’re going on a date with Possible?”

“Ugh, yes!” At this, Shego flops over, facing away from Drakken. 

“And are we excited?” Drakken asks, his voice coddling and exceedingly irksome. Shego wishes she could punch him, but he was being oddly supportive of her, and it was…nice, even if his wheedling voice was like nails on a chalkboard. She groans and flips over again to face him.

“No—yes. I mean, ugh, I don’t know!” she responds, throwing up her hands. The nail file she’d been holding flies towards the ceiling and sticks there with a comedic thwing noise.

Drakken, wisely, neglects to comment on it. “Does someone need to talk about it?” Drakken asks, still in that infuriating, coddling voice, with a slow smile that would have been incredibly unnerving if it weren’t so well-meaning. 

Shego groans again and wipes a gloved hand over her face. “Yeah, but don’t be weird about it, okay?” 

Drakken’s face lights up in a delighted smile and he claps his hands together. “Goody! I’ll go get the cocoa-moo!” 

Shego groans loudly a third time at his retreating figure for good measure, secretly pleased she has someone to vent to. 

———

Kim wakes to a jolt. Not with a jolt, mind you— to an actual jolt of her body, which had previously been safely ensconced in her bed. She opens her eyes to pure darkness, immediately inducing panic. The air rushing past her brings with it a whiff of familiar jasmine perfume. 

“Shego,” Kim grinds out. “This is so not cool. What are you doing?”

“You’ll see soon, Princess,” a smoky voice replies. Kim couldn’t see her, but knew she’d be winking if she could. 

“I swear, if you don’t put me down RIGHT NOW—“

Shego chuckles. “You’ll what? Beat me to a pulp? As if!”

Kim is jolted again. Did Shego just…?

And it happens again: she feels air rushing past her, a distinct feeling of weightlessness and a swooping feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“Are you JUMPING ACROSS ROOFTOPS WITH ME?!” Kim shrieks, wriggling in Shego’s grasp in an attempt to get away. 

“Maaaaaybe,” Shego drawls, mischief in her tone. She gripped Kim harder, effectively stalling her thrashing. “Careful, princess, you don’t want me to drop you ten stories down, do you?”

“Are you stealing…me?” Kim asked, incredulous. Of all the things! It struck Kim how odd that her one-time arch enemy was literally kidnapping her and Kim was completely unperturbed. She felt completely safe in the thief’s arms, completely trusting of a villain who could produce plasma hot enough to burn through steel. She was a bit annoyed, surely, at being kidnapped ( would it kill Shego to just ask Kim to go somewhere with her? ), but mostly she was curious as to what Shego was planning and disturbingly comfortable in the woman’s strong arms with her cheek nestled against Shego’s ample breasts.

“You’re the most precious thing I’ve ever stolen, baby,” Shego replies, her voice deliberately dropped an octave and so, so silky smooth in Kim’s ear. She was joking, Kim knew, but Kim’s body reacted viscerally nonetheless. She had goosebumps down her left arm and it felt like a weight had dropped into her stomach. She could only hope Shego hadn’t noticed the clenching of her core. 

“You get that line from a ‘70s porno?” Kim quips back, willing her voice not to shake. 

Shego doesn’t respond—instead, there are another two jolts sandwiching the distinct stomach-dropping sensation of flying through the air that indicates another rooftop was successfully cleared. 

“Annnd we’re here. Just in time, too. You’re fucking heavy. What are they feeding you in college?” 

“Rude,” Kim mutters, not remotely offended. She was 140 pounds of pure muscle, and she knew it. 

Kim is placed down on a surface that gives slightly under her weight, but holds steady. She feels Shego’s scent surround her again, and feels Shego’s breath puffing against her lips. Her heart picks up speed—was Shego going to—

“Annnd there,” Shego breathes, stepping back out of Kim’s space as the blindfold drops to Kim’s lap. 

What is revealed to Kim was like something out of a dream (she hadn’t actually discounted the possibility that she was in fact dreaming, to be perfectly honest). They’re on a rooftop filled with beautiful greenery and small, cheery fairy lights overhead. She runs her hand over the silky white fabric of the couch that Shego had deposited her upon. It oozes luxury and taste, and pairs paired beautifully with the intricate Moroccan black and white tile underfoot. Shego lets her have time to take it all in: the large pots and planters sequined in colorful Moroccan tile and overflowing with flowers and leaves of all shapes and sizes, the intimate table covered in white cloth and two intricately tiled chairs, the bottle of wine offset and a vase with a beautiful bouquet centered and flanked by small flickering tea lights and two place settings. 

“Shego,” Kim breathes. “This is beautiful!” And then, “Are we trespassing?” 

Shego smacks her forehead with her hand and groans. “Sure, Cupcake. I dragged you all this way to park you on someone else’s roof when they’re clearly about to have a hot date.” She gestures at the set table and bottle of wine, which was sweating slightly in its ice basket.

“D-date?” Kim stutters out. Her mind is a broken record stuttering on the word. Shego must have given her a concussion with all the jumping–it was the only explanation as to why she was completely incapable of thought. 

The hand, still attached to Shego’s pale green forehead, slides down her face in an exaggerated motion, accompanied by an equally dramatic groan. Shego moves over to Kim’s side in one fluid movement. Shego was always moving like that—fluidly, like a panther stalking its prey, or lazing in a tree, flicking its tail, or striking blindingly fast with power and precision. 

This was the latter, and it left Kim breathless, her heart pounding in her chest at the woman’s sudden proximity. Being the center of Shego’s attention always came with the distinct feeling of being unmoored, divorced from reality on a plane all their own. It was intoxicating and invigorating, and Kim never fought better than when caught within the gravity of Shego’s attention. This wasn’t fighting, but it was still that rhythmic push and pull, lunge and riposte that they knew so well. 

Shego sighs. A light breeze ruffles through the foliage around them. It’s calm up here. Quiet. Kim knows they’re still in the city because the stars are so faint above, but it must be a less populated part. A dried leaf skitters by their feet, and Kim tracks its tumble over the jaunty tiles. The silence stretches between them as Shego continues to gather her thoughts. Kim runs her fingernail over the seam of the couch cushion. Shego follows the motion, her brow furrowed. Her eyes move up to follow the line of Kim’s throat as she swallowed. Shego’s chest rises and falls once, and decision settling into her posture, and then her eyes snag on Kim’s lips before landing on Kim’s eyes once more. 

“Kimmy I—“ 

Shego stops again, uncharacteristically lost for words. They were on the precipice of something, and Kim feels it building up in her throat, pricking sweat on her palms. The breeze snags locks of Shego’s luscious black hair and Kim is hit once more with the sweet scent of jasmine. Shego’s eyes are so bright and unusually vulnerable, and Kim feels as though she’s falling. 

Shego opens her mouth again, but nothing comes out. Oddly, her lack of elocution seemed to amuse her, and she offers Kim a small, genuine smile. Her eyes are bright and so, so soft. Kim had seen that same look before on boys, occasionally directed at her, but more often than not, directed at the girls Kim envied–the girls who had boys falling over them left and right. The look was awe and affection and attraction, and it had never been more alluring than on the face of her archenemy, directed at her.

“Oh,” Kim says in understanding. Shego hadn’t had to say a word, after all. That look had said everything. 

“I’m not normally speechless, Cupcake. But you—I guess you just have that effect on me.” She punctuates it with an exaggerated bat of her eyelashes, a dramatic and somehow incredibly sarcastic hand on her heart. 

“Wow. I think, Shego, that underneath all that sarcasm, you maybe have some feelings!” Kim banters back. 

“Ugh, as if!” Then a wicked grin appears. “Now go through that door and strip.” Kim’s jaw hits the floor as Shego points toward a door that ostensibly led downstairs. 

“Excuse me?!”

Shego laughs, a shrieky thing that had her clutching her stomach. Between laughs she forces out, “You should see your face right now. You’re as red as your hair!”

Her laughter eventually subsides, and then she gets up and disappears, leaving a confused and outraged Kim in her wake.

“You’re a fucking perv,” she says as she returned, a long tan garment bag slung over her arm and a shoebox with a thin velvet rectangle box on top in her hands. “I just want you to put these on for our date.”

Kim sucks in a breath. There it was again. The D-word. Date. 

A date, with Shego. Shego . International supervillain Shego. The one who tried to kill her on multiple occasions. The one Kim had tried to kill on more than one occasion. Kim isn’t exactly surprised at herself when she finds herself nodding mutely and taking the dress and shoebox out of Shego’s hands. Shego had gotten them for Kim and after seeing that look on Shego’s face…Kim wasn’t sure she could ever deny Shego anything again. Kim was surprised, however, that they were here at all after all they’d been through together. How could Shego like her like this, after all that? And how could she be, maybe, feeling the same?

Chapter Text

Honestly, Kim had been expecting something akin to a clown costume in the garment bag. She knew Shego had expensive taste, and knew she had good taste, but she had also had too much faith in Shego’s love of absurdity. 

The dress was beautiful, gold and dripping in brilliant sequins. Kim shed her PJs and stepped carefully into the dress. It felt deliciously silky sliding up her skin and was heavier than she expected. The zipper was short, stopping just at her lower back, leaving the rest of her lean, muscular back on display. A large slit cut up the left side, leaving plenty of room for movement despite the relatively heavy material. She slipped her feet into the pair of heels Shego had given her. They were nearly the exact shade of the dress, and surprisingly comfortable for heels that cost more than her grocery budget for two months. 

She opened the last package, the rectangular velvet box, to reveal a necklace and two chandelier earrings that she hoped against hope were costume jewelry. The delicate gold chain supported a pendant with a large clear stone that nestled perfectly into the notch of her collarbone. It looked like a diamond, but Kim was so naive about finery that she had no idea if it was a rhinestone, diamond or one of those lab-grown things that looked exactly like a diamond. Whatever it was, it was bright and clear and caught light in every one of its many facets. 

Looking in the mirror, Kim was struck by how perfectly the dress fit her. The slight cowl neck drew attention away from her modest chest and toward her prominent clavicles. The material was snug on her small waist and powerful thighs, but still loose enough to move with her as she balanced, rather gracelessly, on her heels. She felt amazing, like she was one of the wealthy society women at the charity balls she had been to on a number of occasions, always as a guest of honor or invited speaker. 

As she was making her way back up the stairs the thought struck her: how did Shego know what size she was? 

She opened the door and stepped back onto the roof. Shego was reclined lazily on the couch, quintessential nail file in hand. She pulled her gaze up slowly, sliding her eyes up Kim’s body in appreciation. Kim felt like she was being undressed by those jade green cat eyes, and she fought hard against the blush sweeping down her body. 

“Gorgeous,” she breathed out, barely loud enough for Kim to hear. Then, louder, “I have damn good taste.” 

Kim wasn’t sure if Shego was referring to the dress or Kim, but she certainly wasn’t about to ask. “I don’t think that was ever in question,” she said, choosing to sit on a small patio chair to give her some distance from her former enemy. “Green and black catsuit aside, of course.” 

At this, Shego gawped, her black-stained lips and green eyes wide. “Excuse me, my catsuit dripped with taste! I was the hottest villain in the business and you know it.”

Kim smirked at the finger Shego was jabbing her way—it was too easy to get under her skin. The same could be said in reverse, of course. It was nice, this banter they had. It was easy and fun and familiar in a way that she had never had with anyone she had ever dated. It didn’t hurt that Shego was hot as hell. How had she never considered this before?

Kim scoffed. “You’d be hot wearing a potato sack and you know it.”

“Been there, done that,” Shego responded with an exaggerated eye roll. 

She rose gracefully from the couch. “And yes, I was hot in it,” she finished with a wink that made Kim feel a little hot herself. 

“Shall we proceed to dinner?” She asked in an obnoxious nasally British voice. She held out her hand to Kim and led her to the small table. She sent a text on her phone and flipped over the two wine glasses on the table. 

“It’s French,” she said as Kim took a sip of the dark purple liquid. “And ridiculously expensive. I think you know the place?”

Kim nearly spit out the wine, but ended up in a violent coughing fit. “SHEGO!” she remonstrated, looking aghast at the bottle. “You stole this!” 

Shego seemed entirely unperturbed by Kim’s outburst. She swirled the liquid in her glass idly. “And you drank it,” she said with a wicked smirk before taking a small sip of her own. Her face scrunched a little in contemplation, and it was decidedly not cute or attractive to Kim in any way (a lie, but there were more important matters at hand). 

“You’re reformed now! Do you want to go back to jail?” And leave…whatever it was they had going for them out here, but that went unsaid. 

“No,” she said sulkily. “Ugh, I just wanted to get back a bit of the thrill of the old days, yunno? Me thieving, you chasing. Plus you desperately need to loosen up a bit, cupcake. I’m not saying you have to give up your values or principles or whatever it is that lets you rest easy at night, but just…let yourself live a little.”

“Ugh, fine,” Kim responded testily, but softened the sound with a small smile and an eye roll. They couldn’t exactly cork the bottle back up and return it. She took a healthy swig of the wine with her eyes never leaving Shego’s. It tasted like plenty of other wine she’d had, but she wasn’t about to tell Shego that. The woman would undoubtedly tease her for her lack of a refined palate. “There, okay? I’m living.” 

Shego toasted to that.

“But you have to pay Mr. Vigneu back for it, okay?” 

“Ugh, whatever. Fine.” She tapped on her phone for a minute, then waved it in front of Kim as if she could read what it said. “I sent him some dough to cover it, okay Betty Director ?” 

(Somewhere in France, a literal bag of money would be dropped via drone through the open window of one Mr. Vigneu, waking him up in a panic and causing him to, through a series of events that would leave Shego cackling the next day when she saw the footage, leave him with a very prominent black eye. The true heartwarming moment, though, was when he saw the note reading, “Sawry about the wine :( -Shego” and shook his fist angrily at the drone while shouting an impressive string of inventive obscenities at it in French.)

Unaware of the unfortunate string of events she had just unleashed on poor Mr. Vigneu, Kim smiled in her best impersonation of Shego’s catlike grin and nodded her approval. It was thrilling to have Shego under her finger like that, and even more so to let Shego know it.

A series of appetizers came not much thereafter, a mix of foods and dishes Kim had never heard of and haute takes on some of her favorite dishes. Was this how Shego normally ate? Kim found herself suddenly very curious about how and where Shego spent her downtime. What restaurants did she go to? Where did she even live? She knew next to nothing about who Shego was and what she did when she wasn’t being a royal pain in Kim’s backside or lounging on a beach at an exclusive resort somewhere. The thought of Shego having a life outside that was a revelation, and she suddenly wanted to know everything there was to know about it.

They passed at least two hours over their food, leisurely sampling the various dishes brought to them by a bulky, solemn waiter who looked suspiciously like one of Drakken’s former minions the more she pondered him. 

It had never been so easy talking to someone, Kim thought as Shego laughed at something she had just said. The twinkling fairy lights caught her jade green eyes, making them sparkle, sharp and bright and only for her. She had never seen Shego so free. Sure, she had seen Shego lounging, lazy and dismissive, and had seen her with focused, wild intent while fighting, but it had always seemed somewhat affected—a performance to some end that Kim could never quite ken. 

This Shego was open in a way she had never been with Kim before, even as Ms. Go. She was as pointed as she was soft, each in equal measure. Kim, for her part, loosened up as her wine glass emptied. As soon as the last drop was gone, the truck disguised as a waiter was there, pouring her more. Kim didn’t have the heart to tell Shego that the wine was wasted on her unrefined palate—instead, she flushed under the perverse delight in Shego’s eyes as she watched Kim drink, each drop a betrayal of her heroine image, a compromise between villain and hero that felt like the start of something new. 

Dessert came when Kim couldn’t possibly eat any more. Her stomach was so full that she was concerned she would start ripping the seams of her loaned dress.

“Are you sure you don’t want any?” Shego asked tauntingly. “Just like Granny used to make.”

Kim gaped. “You didn’t!” Did Shego really steal Granny’s secret cookie recipe after all these years? 

Shego smirked. “I did.”

She cut a massive piece of cookie out of a cast iron skillet and scraped it through the mound of gelato, fresh from Italy, before taking it all in one obscenely large bite. She moaned in delight for effect, peeking at Kim through her eyelashes as she did so. 

“You’re disgusting,” Kim said, flushed down to her chest. 

“I think you meant to say, ‘insanely attractive,” Shego corrected breezily, diving her spoon back in for another bite. She loaded it up with gelato again and then leaned over the table to offer it to Kim. 

The spoon hung there for a couple of beats, the gelato dripping back onto the cookie still in the skillet. Kim watched the drips carefully, trying desperately to avoid the way Shego’s breasts were practically falling out of her skintight, but somehow still tasteful, black dress and the way her eyes glowed with something that made it harder to breathe. 

Kim leaned forward, her face only a few inches away from Shego’s own. The woman’s eyes darted down to Kim’s lips and she bit her lip seductively, about as subtle as Ron in a villain’s lair. Kim opened her mouth and Shego slid the spoon in, her eyes laser focused on the way Kim’s lips wrapped around it, making Kim’s stomach tumble and her body flush with heat. Shego’s lips parted slightly as she pulled the spoon out of Kim’s mouth and, with a wicked flash of her eyes, brought the spoon back to her own mouth. 

She proceeded to obscenely lick the last remnants of chocolate chip from the spoon, her rosy tongue wrapping sinuously around the spoon in an impressive display of what it could be doing to Kim. The redhead’s mind went exactly where Shego willed it to go, if the girl’s blown pupils and rapid breathing was anything to go by.

“So, how is it?” Shego’s eyebrow was raised, expectant. 

“I have no idea,” Kim breathed with a small laugh. Kim had never been looked at the way Shego had just looked at her: like she was starving and Kim was just served up to her on a silver platter. “I think I’m going to need another bite.”

Kim made an ‘ep!’ noise that stopped Shego in her tracks as she made to get another bite for Kim. “Let me. You’re far too distracting,” she admitted with yet another flush. 

Her eyes remained trained on the table, unwilling to meet Shego’s own after the confession. Had she looked, she would have seen something akin to happiness flash across Shego’s face, followed by a characteristic smirk. 

The cookie was, invariably, good. It was a classier version of the famous Granny’s cookie, made with the finest ingredients, cooked in a cast iron and topped a la mode with the best ice cream (—gelato, Shego corrected no fewer than five times—) Kim had ever had. 

She had never had a better meal, and she had a professional chef as a best friend. The company might have had something to do with it, but admitting that would certainly make Shego too big for her very, very tight britches. With the meal complete, Kim started to get unbearably nervous. The conversation faded and Kim had the twin desires to go home and escape their now-awkward silence and never go home for fear of what going home would entail. 

It was a good date. In fact, the best date Kim had ever had. And what happens after a good date? She could almost hear Monique in her head, ‘ The kiss, girl! It’s time to get smooching !’

A hovercraft appeared, piloted by yet another goon in plainclothes. A ladder dropped from the craft and Shego made her way up first. “Like what you see?” she called down, smirking at the way Kim’s eyes widened, caught in the act of admiring her perfectly-sculpted behind. What else was Kim supposed to look at? She crossed her arms and stared at the intricate tile beneath her feet.

“Awee, was little Kimmie too embarrassed to keep checking me out?” Shego needled in her infuriating baby voice once she had gotten into the vehicle. She tutted, “Too bad. You could have gotten a peek at what I wore just for you.”

Kim nearly fainted on the spot. 

Shego in lingerie. 

Lingerie that she had put on specifically for Kim. 

What kind of lingerie would Shego even wear, anyway? Would it be her signature green color? Black? It would probably be inordinately expensive, stolen from some very expensive store in France—

“Earth to Kimmie!”

What? Huh? 

“Your chariot awaits,” Shego continued, offering a hand over the craft in invitation. 

Oh, right. Kim deftly climbed the ladder, accepting Shego’s proffered hand despite not needing it in the least. Shego laced their fingers together and gave a squeeze that could, perhaps, be interpreted as an apology for her earlier needling that had completely incapacitated Kim. When she let go of Kim’s hand, Shego traced her hand up Kim’s forearm, leaving goosebumps in her wake, before extricating herself entirely. Kim mourned the loss, swaying forward slightly toward Shego as she moved to the pilot’s seat to kick the goon out. 

Without a word, the man disappeared down the ladder, leaving the two of them alone once more.

“You know,” Kim said, taking a seat next to Shego, “It’s just so totally amazing how easy this is.”

Shego turned her head to look at Kim curiously, surprised a bit at Miss I-was-straight-two-weeks-ago being willing to talk about dating a woman.

“No blindfolds or roof-jumping necessary,” she continued airily, a shit-eating grin on her face as she turned to face Shego more. 

The hovercraft. Kim was talking about the hovercraft, not about how easy and natural their date felt, a sentiment shared by both but too big to be broached by either, one for fear of admitting how she felt about a supervillain and the other for fear of admitting feelings generally. 

Shego rolled her eyes. “I wanted to steal the world’s most un-stealable object. That was the pinnacle of my career, thank you very much. Do you KNOW how many security measures that Nerdlinger of yours has on your room?”

“That certainly is some dedication,” Kim averred. “Forgive me if I still prefer this mode of transportation.” She patted the seat. “Definitely less sweaty.” 

Shego made an affronted noise, turning to glare at her companion. “Plenty of people would kill to have me get all hot and bothered for them. It’s a privilege! You should be thanking me, actually.” 

“I’ve gotten you sweaty plenty of times before this, Shego,” Kim reminded her. 

“Yeah, but not with your face in my boobs.”

Well, no. Not…exactly that. Kim could think of a handful of times where their fighting had gotten them into compromising positions: Shego straddling Kim; Kim pressing Shego against a wall, bodies flush against one another; Shego with her hands around Kim’s waist, front pressed tightly against Kim’s back in an attempt to subdue her. In those moments there had always been very little time to think about their closeness—her mind was always occupied with the next move, the next blow, the next breath. But there always were those fleeting thoughts that took note of the way Shego’s powerful thighs felt around her torso; the feeling of their chests pressing together; the possessive way Shego’s hands encircled her wrists, arms, waist; the whisper of lips against her ear as Shego taunted her. It had always been there, this attraction Kim had to Shego, but buried beneath duty and purpose and outright denial. 

“Well that broke her,” Shego muttered to herself as Kim retreated into her thoughts. She silently flew the hovercraft over Upperton, turning minutely every so often to catch a glimpse of her date. She longed to put her right hand in Kim’s. The girl was so far away that Shego was sure she would be met without resistance, and her palm got sweaty just at the thought of being nestled in Kim’s own. She wiped her hand on her dress subtly once, twice. The glimmer of lights below grew fainter as they flew farther away from Upperton’s center and toward the sleepy Middleton suburbs. She heard Kim shift and turned to catch her staring. When their eyes met, Kim smiled and looked away, embarrassed. 

“Well this is you,” Shego said once the hovercraft was hovering over the street in front of Kim’s apartment. 

“This is me,” Kim echoed with a nervous smile.

“I had a great time–” Shego started at the same time as Kim said, “We should do this again.”

Both laughed breathless little things carried away by the wind before barely leaving their lips. They turned away from each other again, each desperately wondering what to do next. Should Shego walk Kim to her door? Is that what girls even did on a date, or was that too hetero? Did Shego want to kiss her? Did Kim want to kiss Shego?

(we all know the answer is yes, but Kim, alas, was still well and truly in the throes of an epic Gay Panic)

The thoughts crashed through both of their heads, stretching the moments on.

Finally, in a burst of bravado, Kim nervously tucked a lock of red hair behind her ear before meeting Shego’s eyes. “Thank you, Shego,” she whispered before pressing a lingering kiss to Shego’s soft cheek. It was so chaste, but also so thrilling to be this close to Shego, to have her skin under her lips and to smell her jasmine perfume once more. Kim pulled away shyly, her stomach flipping wildly as she took in the other woman’s shocked expression.

Kim unfurled the rope ladder and gave Shego a small wave before descending. Shego pressed a hand to her cheek and smiled, smiled, smiled.

Chapter Text

Kim had just taken off the expensive dress Shego had loaned her and slipped into a new pair of pajamas when she heard a tap on the sliding door leading out to a small balcony. The figure on the balcony was haloed by the light of the moon, a black shadow in a shape Kim knew all too well.

“Shego?” Kim asked. The figure put hands on her waist and tapped a foot impatiently. She tapped a few buttons on a pad attached to the wall, disabling the alarm system Wade had set up. She unlocked the door and Shego came breezing in as if she’d done it a thousand times before.

“You’re like, determined to not let me sleep, aren’t you?” Kim asked dryly as Shego paced across Kim’s bedroom floor, her plasma trailing off of her like whisps of smoke. Kim hoped Shego didn’t burn the carpet with how fast she was moving–she’d like her security deposit back, thank you very much.

“Night’s when I do my best work, baby,” Shego quipped in response, but it was absent of her usual salacious tone, vacant and far away. 

Kim sighed. She really was tired, but sat down on the edge of her bed, resigned to hearing Shego out. It was obvious the woman had something to say, and she probably wouldn’t let Kim sleep until she said it. “Shego, what are you doing here?”

“Just picking this back up,” she said, gesturing to the dress, shoes and pendant lying on Kim’s dresser. She continued pacing. “No, that’s a lie. I’m here because we went on a date and I really wanted to kiss you but I didn’t and like, since when do I not do what I want? It’s because you,” Shego jammed her finger at Kim, “Have me all messed up. Is she straight? Does she even like me? Does she want to kiss me? What am I, twelve?” She ran her fingers through her thick black hair and sighed in frustration. Shego would agonize over her losses to Kim when they were still enemies. She would pace her rooms, just like she was now, growling over the move that Kim bested her with. She wouldn’t make that mistake the next time. But this? She had been agonizing over Kim for weeks now, and there was nothing she could do about it. Nothing except—

Shego, so lost in her own head, completely missed the fond smile Kim had on her face when she realized that Shego felt something for her. “Shego,” Kim called. And then louder, “SHEGO!”

The woman stopped in her tracks. Kim heard a distinct hissing sound and looked down to see two burn marks in the carpet where Shego stood. “I’ll, uh, pay to fix that,” Shego said, abashed.

“Come here,” Kim whispered. Shego approached, and Kim could feel the heat of her before she was even within a foot of Kim. Her jade green eyes were wide as Kim pulled her closer, so she was between Shego’s powerful thighs. “Kiss me.”

Shego did. Their kiss was chaste at first, just soft lips and soft hands, testing and tasting. Their kisses came faster, lips moving over one another with teeth and pressure and grasping hands. Shego’s lips demanded and gave in equal measure, parting Kim’s and swirling her tongue inside. Her hands were everywhere: on Kim’s sides, her back, her neck, and—Kim’s favorite—on her jaw, to angle their mouths just right. It elicited a whimper—an honest to gods whimper—out of Kim, to which Shego responded with renewed vigor. 

Kim was dizzy with the way Shego nuzzled at her neck with her nose and the kisses she trailed there. She nearly collapsed at the feeling of Shego’s tongue on the shell of her ear, the sound of her wet mouth utterly obscene and incredibly sexy. If Kim had wanted Shego before, it was nothing to how she felt now that she had had a taste of her. Every muscle and organ and thought was just Shego, Shego, Shego . 

The sound of Shego’s dark chuckle in response to another one of Kim’s desperately needy sounds sent twin feelings of shame and desire coursing through her. The sounds were weak and pathetic, two things Kim generally loathed to be, but the fact that it was Shego’s lips and Shego’s tongue and Shego’s husky voice doing it to her was nothing short of intoxicating.

They broke apart, a shy smile on Kim’s face and a satisfied smirk on Shego’s. They looked at each other for a mere moment, each appreciating the just-kissed look on the other’s face, before Kim dove back in, eager for more. 

As she kissed Shego, her brain had scattered thoughts of biology classes and hormones. Oxytocin and dopamine. Suddenly, Kim understood how new couples were so wrapped up in one another, moony and giddy and obsessive. Boyfriends and situationships had come and gone, and Kim had always thought that she was just better at controlling herself than other people. She would feel the pleasure of being wanted and the adrenaline of something new, but she had mistaken it for infatuation and lust. None of that close to what Shego ignited in her. Kim smiled into their kiss, amused at how apropos the whole thing really was. Of course it would be Shego that drove her wild like this: she always had.

Shego was now straddling her completely, and Kim’s hands roamed the bare skin of Shego’s thighs greedily. The fire licked down her insides, driving her into a kind of frenzy. She had never felt this out of control and it was utterly exhilarating, like parachuting off a plane or freefalling with only her grappling hook to break her fall. The rumble of Shego’s moans was electrifying, tripping down her body like sparks from a transformer and settling deep between her legs, filling her with a satisfaction not unlike when she landed a perfect blow on Shego in battle. She wanted to know all the places that made Shego groan like that, wanted to map every one and make her body shudder like Shego was doing to her with insistent lips on her neck.

Kim had always considered hickeys juvenile, if not entirely trashy, but then there was Shego with her lips and teeth on her neck, growling the word “Mine” and Kim moaned. She had never felt so desired in her entire life, and she would feel the sticky evidence of it between her legs long after Shego had left her flushed and breathless.

“You make out nearly as well as you fight, Cupcake,” Shego said as they took a break, both panting into each others’ necks. Shego’s body was wrapped around her, and Kim was supporting both of them with her arms stretched backwards on the bed. If Kim were to bend her arms, Shego would be on top of her, a dizzying thought that nearly precluded her answering.

“Nearly?!”

Shego laughed, pleased to get a rise out of the redhead. “I’m just thinking you might need a bit more practice with yours truly.”

“As if you weren’t just moaning in my ear two seconds ago!” Kim retorted, scoffing as she pushed Shego off her. 

“You were soooooo into it and you know it,” Shego teased back, leaning casually against Kim’s dresser as if she hadn’t just been making out with her mere moments ago.

“Ugh, whatever!” Kim crossed her arms for effect, but was unable to keep the smile off her face as she did so. 

“Can’t wait to see what those look like tomorrow,” Shego said, pointing to Kim’s neck. “Had to give you something to remember me by,” she added with a wicked grin.

“Perv,” Kim responded with no bite whatsoever. “You’d better return that, by the way,” she said pointing to the pendant on the dresser. “Or I’ll have to take your ass in.”

Shego mock-gasped. “Baby Kimmie using such foul language!” Shego resolved privately that the next time she heard Kim Possible curse, it would be for much more intimate reasons. She picked up the items and moved back to the balcony door. “It’s been real, kid.”

Kim rolled her eyes. “Ew, gross. I’m like, twenty.”

“And I’m like, twenty-eight,” Shego said, mocking Kim’s tone and stepping up onto the thin balcony railing. “See ya, sweetheart,” she said before jumping off the balcony and into the night.

Kim could barely fall asleep for smiling.

—--------

The next morning, the memory of the kiss still lingered on Kim’s lips. It was like nothing she had ever experienced before. Shego kissed just like she fought: all power and hunger and smooth, sensuous grace. 

Her fingers traced the tiny red marks along her neck, a thrill going through her at the evidence of the single best kiss of her life. The thought of it sent heat straight to her core, and she sighed dramatically before stepping into a cold shower.

Kim had just set the coffee to brew when the doorbell rang. Her heart stopped for a moment, then quickened tenfold. Shego . It couldn’t be, could it?

When she opened the door, however, the figure was much shorter than the one she had been expecting.

“Dr. Director!”

Kim flushed, immediately aware of the trail of hickeys on her neck and the sharp gaze of the head of Global Justice sweeping along it. She felt a wash of shame, not unlike how she’d feel if her mother had caught her with hickeys. She schooled her features into something she hoped was polite but neutral. “What’s up?” she asked, going for casual and hoping against hope that the woman would join her in ignoring the elephant in the room. “Is there a mission for me?”

“No,” the director said bluntly. “May I?” She asked, gesturing towards the interior of the house. 

Kim all but grit her teeth, channeling her mom as she plastered a smile onto her face. “Of course. Would you like some coffee? I just put some on.” 

Once they were, rather awkwardly, settled on the couch with their steaming coffees, the older woman began, “I have received some very disturbing news, Miss Possible.”

Calm , Kim thought. Keep calm . She kept the smile plastered on her face. “Oh? How can I help?”

The older woman’s eyes narrowed. “You can help by renouncing your relationship with Shego immediately,” the small woman said, calmly pulling out several large photographs of the two of them and placing them one after the other on the coffee table. 

Kim’s eyes drank them in one by one. The first one was of them sitting on the couch at the frat together. The lighting was dim, but their figures were unmistakable. 

The next was a shot of Shego straddling her on the couch, the resolution so good that Kim could see a droplet of sweat from the beer bottle immortalized on Shego’s left wrist.

Then there was one of Shego dumping out the jungle juice and Kim distracting the partygoers by chugging an impressive amount of beer through a funnel. She flushed in shame, again, feeling incredibly juvenile in the face of the woman who was simultaneously her mentor, a mother figure and a dangerous and singleminded adversary.

The next was of Shego slipping unflavored Miralax into bottles of beer. Ugh! Kim was annoyed that Shego would do that behind her back, but was entirely unsurprised as well. She couldn’t fight the small smile that cracked through her impassive exterior, though, at the look of evil glee captured on Shego’s gorgeous face. It was akin to the look of a child playing a prank, and Kim found herself for a moment lost in thought, wondering what Shego had been like as a child. 

“It’s illegal for someone to give someone else medication without their consent,” Dr. Director said slowly, breaking Kim out of her thoughts and pausing to let the words sink in. “And you, technically, aided and abetted that.”

Rage flew through Kim shockingly quickly. “You’re kidding me, right? Those assholes drugged all those girls with a date rape drug and you’re concerned with some laxatives!” 

Betty Director blinked owlishly at the girl across from her, momentarily stunned by the outburst. Kim Possible had cursed. Kim Possible never curses. Betty would know: it was in her voluminous file on the girl back at headquarters. The girl clearly was further gone than Betty had hoped. She quietly cursed the villainous woman who had corrupted her mentee. 

“What was that?” Kim asked, unable to understand the muttering of Betty Director.

“Nothing. You will cease communications with Shego or these will be delivered to the appropriate individuals who would want to press charges.”

There it was. Betty Director, director of Global Justice, her boss and mentor, was blackmailing her, Kim Possible, teen hero. 

“You know I was going to join Global Justice, right?” Kim asked, her voice far too calm for the rage she felt inside. 

“I do.”

“And you realize that if you stand by your threat, you can kiss me goodbye?”

“I think Shego did enough of that last night,” the older woman replied, a small, satisfied smile on her lips. 

At this, Kim stood up, glaring daggers into the smaller woman’s one hawkish eye. “I think you’d better leave now.”

Betty merely took a final sip from her mug and smiled. “I hope I have convinced you of the correct path forward,” she said.

“Oh, trust me. You have,” Kim responded with gritted teeth before slamming the door in the short woman’s face. 

The nerve! 

Kim’s rage was all but forgotten when she received a text from an unknown number: “6:30 pm sharp — wear something comfortable,” followed by a heart emoji. The five words had Kim beaming, and she could barely concentrate on her required college course reading all day.

——

6:32 p.m.

“Betty said WHAT?” Shego roared as Kim related her early-morning encounter with the leader. “That fucking bitch.”

Kim didn’t like using that word, but she couldn’t help but agree.

“I should have known this could never happen,” she continued bitterly. “I’m sorry I even tried–I didn’t mean to fuck up your future like this.” Her hands were clenched into fists encased in green flames. Shego wanted to hit something, but was loath to ruin anything else in Kim’s modest apartment. She chuckled darkly. “I should have known there was no way the universe would let me have someone like you. Look–” Shego stopped pacing to think. “We’ll pretend I kidnapped you and…forced you into whatever they have on you. I’m still a villain in their eyes and I can take the heat.”

Kim shook her head vigorously. She was touched that Shego would throw away her global pardon for her, but she wouldn’t let Shego do something like that for something Kim willingly participated in. “No way. You’re not going to throw your life away for me.” She walked up to Shego, stopping her in her tracks with a light touch. The flames on Shego’s hands died down instantly as Kim pulled her into a loose hug.

Shego shrugged. “That ship has sailed.” She thought of all the capers she had pulled just to get herself in this position with Kim.

Kim laid her head on Shego’s chest, listening to the strong beat of her superhuman heart. She didn’t want to stop seeing Shego, but she knew that Betty wouldn’t leave her alone if she kept doing so. Then she got an idea. “What if we pretended that you really did kidnap me?”

Shego pushed Kim away slightly so she could look into her eyes. What on earth did the girl mean?

“You and Drakken still have lairs, right? We could go there for awhile and just…get away for awhile. See if this is worth fighting for?” By ‘this,’ Kim meant her and Shego, and Shego couldn’t deny that the prospect of having Kimmie alone for an uninterrupted amount of time didn’t make her mouth water. 

“I guess we could do that,” Shego responded slowly, thinking over the logistics. 

At this, Kim smiled, a beaming sort of thing that made Shego wonder if she was going to clap her hands like a cheerleader and shout something like, “Let’s Go!”

They staged Kim’s bedroom to look like a fight had happened and Kim grabbed a few essentials in a duffle bag. Just before leaving, Kim placed her Kimmunicator on her bedside table, effectively leaving her friends, family and job behind.