AN: Takes place sort of semi-during-right after 'Graduation pt. 2', after the big showdown but before the award ceremony. For the first two drafts of this I was trying to make it really mellow and romantic. Only it didn't work, because Drakken and Shego aren't mellow or romantic people. Like, at all. So here's this, instead.

It was late and very dark, and Drakken thought she was asleep. Shego never had any trouble falling asleep. Hundreds of his flowers trailed down the cliffside to the beach, where the waves murmured and roared at him. He lay back to back with Shego in the hovercar, under the thin spare blankets, with the thin spare pillows beneath their heads. The new lair was a ruin now, but they'd been tired, and they had nowhere else to go.

Drakken couldn't sleep. He was drained, frightened, happy, and his brain was surging as though driven by electric currents. They were parked in the sand dunes far up on the beach, still wearing the clothes they'd put on yesterday morning. And they had never slept so close to each other before, not ever. Her presence at his back sent warmth curling over every part of him.

That warmth was ten times more worrying than the fact that he might be permanently mutated, and a thousand times more important than the fact that he'd saved the world earlier that day.

Shego, her back pressed against his, was breathing deeply and evenly, and Drakken wished the ocean would stop making so much noise, so he could hear her. He fidgeted now and then, just to make sure, sort of, that she was still there. He wanted to turn over, but he didn't want to lose that warmth, so he stayed as he was.

The scents of the sea and of flowers mingled in a heavy haze. Drakken breathed it in as his memories of the day, quick-moving, ran together like watercolors. He'd won.

He'd won.

He shot straight up like an arrow, shaking the whole hovercar.

"SHEGO!"

"What, oh my god, what? She jolted up next to him, shocked right out of sleep.

"Shego, we won," he said.

Her eyes were sleepily bloodshot; her mouth in the dark was a wry black slash across her face. She said, "Wake me up again and I'll knock you unconscious," and she flung herself back down on her pillow.

Big bright marigold petals popped out to frame Drakken's face like a ridiculous lion's mane, and as he impatiently tugged them out, he knew he had it bad.

He dozed fitfully for hours after that, sleeping and waking, too bone-tired to sleep soundly, too achy on the reclined seat of the hovercar.

"Shego," he whispered.

Nothing.

"Shego."

"Mmmm." She shifted minutely.

"The sun's coming up," he whispered.

"Mmmm."

"Just look at the ocean," he whispered.

"Mmm."

"I think we should date," he whispered.

"What?" That got her eyes open. She clawed her unruly hair up off her face and glared at him with exhaustion which still managed to seem sarcastic.

He asked, "Don't you think so?"

"Not right now," she deadpanned.

"Come with me and watch the sun come up, Shego."

"Are you serious?"

"It's so romantic, look!"

"Uuggh." She scrubbed at her eyes, childlike. "No way. Sleep."

"But Shego,"

"Sleep," she ordered, "or I will make you."

"Well, I'm going to watch the sunrise," he huffed, hopping rather stiffly out of the hovercar.

"You do that," she answered shortly, pulling her blanket up to her chin.

Drakken walked alone down the beach to nearly the edge of the ocean and stood with his hands behind his back, feeling uncommonly good about himself. No big yellow petals this time, but a single vine lazily slithered out from beneath his collar to face the light.

"Well," he said to it, smiling in mild satisfaction, "she didn't exactly say no, did she?"

The flower seemed to agree.

Drakken sat and leaned back on his hands, happy. A winner. A winner for the wrong side, but whatever. Just a detail.

A whump right next to him made Drakken jump, as first a pillow then a blanket landed in the sand, and Shego rolled herself into the blanket and curled up in a ball.

"You are so annoying," she growled, her eyes glued shut.

The sun spread out to gleam, diamondlike, on the water.

"Happy first date, Shego," Drakken said.

All Shego could do was groan laboriously.

…But it still wasn't a 'no'.