Tranquil darkness was suddenly shattered by a razor-thin shaft of light, penetrating the inky-blackness of the space. Shooting up from a crack in the floor, it pierced the darkness like a knife, drawing a pencil-thin line of illumination across the far wall announcing the arrival of someone, or something, as yet unknown.
The effect was only temporary, however, as the brilliant ray quickly widened like the beam of a spotlight. The far side of the room was filled with light as the floor-hatch flung wide-open, revealing two bedraggled silhouettes, emerging from the light like a pair of alien figures in some tired, cliché-ridden sci-fi film.
"Ugh, how long was that mission, anyway?" the first figure asked, ascending the decorative iron stairs into the room.
"I dunno, KP." The second figure replied, following closely behind the first. "My watch lost most of its effectiveness when it got clogged with sand."
"Well, that's the Sahara Desert for ya'. That stuff gets everywhere."
"Tell me about it! I've got sand in my eyes, my nose, my ears… I think I've even got it up my…"
"RON!!! T.M.I. alert!"
Ron Stoppable smiled sheepishly toward the young redhead now glaring at him. Even in the still mostly-darkened confines of her attic bedroom, he could sense his girlfriend's stare cutting into him like a knife, indicating dire consequences if he went any farther with his current line of thought.
"Heh, yeah… Sorry 'bout that." He replied with a shrug.
Kim's gaze quickly softened as she sat down on the edge of her bed. It had been a long, difficult, exhausting mission, and with that as a backdrop for comparison, Ron letting his mouth wander a bit didn't seem all that bad.
In reality, the mission could have been much worse. Ron very nearly had to sit this one out, managing to complete an English Lit paper at the last possible moment before they were due to leave. Kim had spent a good part of the trip admonishing him for procrastinating once again, risking a detention period that would have left him grounded back in Middleton for the duration.
Once on the ground, however, he had quickly redeemed himself, carrying his weight and contributing greatly to the success of the mission. To be honest, Kim doubted that she could have even pulled it off without him.
Now they could relax, she quickly reminded herself, snapping herself out of "flashback" mode. Their ride had dropped them off at her front door a few minutes before, a thoroughly empty house waiting to greet them.
This wasn't at all unexpected, however. She knew in advance that her brothers had a sleepover that night, and that her parents had gone out for dinner and dancing; an event which usually predicated them returning at a rather late hour. (Or a rather early hour, depending on how you looked at it.) The net result was that the two of them would have the house to themselves for most of the evening.
"So, what time do you think it is?" Kim asked, too tired to turn around and check the clock on her nightstand."
"As near as I can figure, it's about a quarter-past exhaustion." Ron lamented, heaving a heavy sigh as he slumped down into the bean-bag chair beside Kim's desk.
Kim slowly, almost lethargically, removed her boots, dumping a stream of sand onto the carpet. "Exhaustion" was definitely the operative word right now. The mission had to have been at least sixteen hours in its duration, and she felt as though she had never been this tired. If there was any silver lining to this sitch, it was that Drakken and Shego had decided to strike on a Friday night, leaving the teen heroes all weekend to recover from the ordeal.
"Why don't you crash here for the night?" Kim suggested as she gently rubbed the soreness from her feet. "You can take the sofa in the den if you'd like."
There was no response.
"Ron… Did you hear me?" she inquired, turning to look over her shoulder toward her blond-haired boyfriend. "I said you can take the so…"
Kim stopped abruptly, leaving her half-completed sentence hanging in the air. She sat motionless, as still as the night itself, silently observing the scene that now lay before her.
Ron was sprawled out on the chair, sound asleep. His arms lay flailed out to his sides and his mouth hung slightly open, the steady sound of his breathing clearly audible in the silence that engulfed the house.
A faint smile played itself out across Kim's face, noting how peaceful he looked in that position. Rufus, who had crawled out of Ron's pocket and manufactured a small nest for himself in the material of the chair, was now tucked into a little pink ball, emitting a small snoring sound as he dozed.
For a brief moment, Kim thought about rousing him awake and banishing him to the den, but she quickly abandoned this idea when she realized she simply didn't have the heart to wake him. After all that had transpired the previous day, the boy had earned his rest.
With this thought, she winced slightly, admonishing herself for thinking about him in those terms. He most definitely was not a boy anymore. He was a young man, and his actions as of late had borne ample testimony to that fact. He had been stepping-up more and more on missions. No longer the simple distraction, or a source of comic relief, he was now an integral part of the team. He had grown to show courage under fire, and his usual resourcefulness was now coupled to a sense of determination that made the villains think twice before casually dismissing him as a non-threat. In short, he had finally graduated from the role of sidekick to the role of partner, her partner, and she wouldn't have it any other way.
Yes, his new-found strengths were certainly an asset, and the previous mission had been a prime example of this. Kim suddenly found her eyes misting slightly as she thought back to the events of that day…
Her fight with Shego had been proceeding as such fights normally did, right up until the point where the green-hued villainess had managed to get in a lucky shot that had sent Kim spinning to the floor. She hadn't had time to recover before Shego was on top of her, plasma flaring, poised to strike a finishing, (and potentially fatal), blow.
Kim could swear that for the briefest of moments, her life had flashed before her eyes. Then, there had been another flash: A flash with freckles and blond hair.
Streaking in from the sidelines like a demon-possessed thunderbolt, Ron had launched himself into Shego like a linebacker, sending both of them sailing across the room and skidding along the concrete floor. It only took a few moments for Shego to recover, flipping Ron head-over-heels into some nearby packing crates when she did, but Ron's attack had done its job. He quickly found himself joined on the floor by the green villainess once again, this time with her having been knocked cold by Kim's perfectly executed flying kick.
Her mind thoroughly occupied with these memories, Kim hadn't even noticed that she had stood up and was now walking toward the sleeping figure before her, her bare feet padding silently across the carpeted floor. Moving gently and deliberately as not to wake him, she knelt beside him, drinking in the sight of his slumbering form.
No longer was he the awkward little boy that she had spent most of her life growing up with. The past year had seen him go through a metamorphosis of sorts. He had gone through a growth spurt, and was now a good three inches taller than she was. The slight bulge of baby fat around his middle was gone, and he had filled-out somewhat through his chest and shoulders. Looking him up and down, Kim noticed that even in the darkness of the room, she could see the faint outline of his pectorals, showing through the fabric of his black mission shirt. While he would never be "ripped," as some might say, he would certainly qualify as "lean and strong." He had a "runner's body," as some might describe it.
What was it about him that she felt so drawn to? What made him so much a part of her that she couldn't even bring herself to imagine life without him by her side? He hardly seemed to resemble the person she had fallen in love with at their Junior Prom nearly a year before, and she suddenly found herself wondering if it was better that she had discovered her true feelings that night, rather than at some point further along the road. She quickly concluded that it was, in fact, better this way, as it assured her that what they had found in each other was real. Their relationship wasn't the product of some superficial crush, or a desperate attempt to climb the food chain with physical appearances. Rather, it was the result of two souls being connected together by a lifetime of mutual experiences, tied together so closely that they merged to become one. It was the manifestation of a deep, emotional and psychological bond that few people in this world would ever be fortunate enough to experience.
Through the darkness, she noticed that his cowlick was slightly singed: Evidence of Shego's plasma. Apparently the green villainess had managed to get off a blast during their brief encounter. Wistfully, she reached out to tussle this feature, which had all but become his trademark over the years. He shifted slightly at her feather-light touch, snorting softly and turning his head.
"No monkey touch… hmmm-mmmmm." He quietly muttered to no one, eliciting a stifled giggle from Kim. Ron was a man of many phobias and neuroses, but these were simply the things that made him Ron. They were a part of his unique personality, and in Kim's eyes, they only served to make him even more endearing.
Kim suddenly found herself moving even closer to him, soaking in every detail of his appearance, allowing his scent to fill her nose. Ever so gingerly, she laid down beside him, placing her head upon his left breast, allowing the rhythmic beating of his heart to echo in her ear.
She gasped slightly when, without even so much as waking up, Ron's arm came up around her, enveloping her in a tender embrace. It was as if even in his subconscious mind, he was trying to protect her, shielding her from whatever unknown dangers may be lurking in the shadows of the night.
She quickly returned the embrace, bringing her own arm up over his chest and squeezing him gently, molding her own body to his. She glanced upward and gently kissed his cheek, before returning her head to his chest. There was no doubt about it: This was her place… the one place in the world where she truly belonged. Being in Ron's arms, she felt she could let all the problems of the waking world melt away. This was a special place where she could simply be herself, where she would be loved without condition, and where nothing in all of creation could ever hurt her. For her, this was home.
The sheer exhaustion of the day was now quickly proving too much to bear, and Kim could feel sleep beginning to rapidly overtake her. She inhaled deeply, closed her eyes, and released a sigh that could only be described as one of utter contentment. As the last tendrils of consciousness released her into the realm of dreams, her final thought was of just how much she loved him.
-------------------------------------------
The supreme silence of the night was suddenly broken by the distinctive sound of a key being turned in a lock, only to just as suddenly be replaced by the sound of a door being opened, admitting two figures into the darkened room.
"Ugh, how long was that last dance, anyway?" The first figure asked, gripping the small of his back and stretching slightly.
"Long enough for you to throw your back out." The second figure replied with a sly grin. "You should know better than to attempt those up-tempo, techno-remixes, James."
"Everybody's a critic." Dr. James Possible lamented to his wife. "And for your information, I didn't throw it out… It's just a pulled muscle is all."
"Uh-huh, and just who's the medical doctor in this household." His wife retorted with yet another grin. With over twenty years of experience as a trauma nurse and neurosurgeon, Dr. Anne Possible knew a lower-back injury when she saw it. She also knew that her husband would certainly come to the same realization by morning. It would just take a few hours for his mind to register what his body already knew.
"You coming to bed, Jim?" she asked, ascending the stairs toward the second floor.
"In a minute, hon." He replied. "I'm just gonna look in on Kimmie-cub first."
Silently mounting the iron stairs, James poked his head up through the still open hatch, and froze at what he saw.
The sight of his barefoot daughter and her boyfriend huddled together in what he could only describe as a "lovers embrace" sent a jolt through his system that would have been strong enough to wake Frankenstein's monster. He was an inch away from storming into the room and bodily dragging Ronald toward the front door when something inside of him hade him stop dead in his tracks.
As his eyes adjusted to the gloomy darkness of the room, he could tell that both of them were still fully clothed. He quickly felt a sense of relief, realizing that nothing extraordinary had happened. The two of them were sleeping together only in the sense of the phrase's literal definition.
There was something else, however, that caught his attention even more strongly: Something that caused his heart to melt like a box of crayons left out on a hot sidewalk in July.
Straining to see through the darkness, he could make out a beaming smile on his daughter's face. It was a smile so wide and bright that it seemed to illuminate the room, banishing the darkness from its presence, filling the space with an overpowering sense of blissful happiness.
James suddenly found himself imitating his daughter's expression, and a lone tear slowly rolled down his cheek. Like all fathers with daughters, he often worried about the kind man his little girl would ultimately choose. He now realized that he needn't have worried, as his little Kimmie-cub had chosen well. Ron practically worshiped Kim. He would willingly live and die for her, and if push ever came to shove, James suspected that the boy was willing to kill for her as well. He was every bit as devoted to her as she was to him: Perhaps even more so.
His own eyelids now starting to feel the growing pull of fatigue, James silently wished the two sleeping teens a pleasant night, and turned to walk down the stairs. He would leave them be for the night, he decided. They deserved their rest…
They deserved each other.