"So."
It was one word, but the way Kevin's mom said it made him look up from his dinner, noodles still hanging from his mouth. They didn't talk much, despite reconciling after she had kicked him out of the house for his destructive powers. More often than not they acted more like strangers who happened to be living together than actual mother and son.
Twisting the spaghetti onto her fork, she studied him carefully as she asked, "Who's that red-headed girl you've been hanging around?"
Slurping the rest of his food into his mouth, he almost choked in his hurry to swallow. "She's just a girl."
"Does she have a name?" his mother asked, voice unnervingly calm, eyes never leaving his face.
"Uh, yeah. Gwen. Her name's Gwen. Tennyson – Gwen Tennyson."
She took a moment to eat her forkful of spaghetti and wipe the sauce off her chin with a napkin (painfully slow, as if to draw out the strange, uncomfortable moment as long as possible). Pushing her plate away so she could fold her hands together on the table, she asked, "Is Gwen a nice girl?"
"Yeah." That answer required no hesitation.
"Alien?"
"Half-and-half."
His mother pursed her lips thoughtfully, and for an instant Kevin wondered if she was about to go into another one of her tangents about all the trouble aliens had brought to their once-cozy little planet, not to mention her life, and how she wished he could just act like a normal boy with normal friends. He tensed in preparation for a fight.
"You should invite her over for dinner sometime."
Wait, what?
"Uh," He blinked, shoulders relaxing as he took a moment to process her words. "'Kay."
And thus ended one of the most unusual moments of Kevin's life.
Author's Notes: That's right. I'm plunging into a new fandom. Sorry if Kevin seems at all OOC in this - I tried as hard as I could to write him properly, but I think I made him too much of an awkward dork. D: Darn my love for dorkiness!
Disclaimer: I do not own 'Ben 10: Alien Force" or any of its characters.