KP One Oh One Chapter 18: Part XVIII – It’s All Relative, a kim possible fanfic

KP – One Oh One : Part XVIII – It's All Relative

There was something to be said for being a slacker. For one, nobody really expected anything from you. Oh, there would be plenty of folk getting behind you to push, but in the end if nothing was accomplished, nothing truly unexpected had happened anyway. A true slacker didn't care, and in not caring, was never really disappointed.

Somewhere along the line, Ron Stoppable started caring.

It wasn't like somebody had come along and flipped a switch. No human being could go through life not caring about anything. In the real world, slackers had to pick and choose what they cared about, what they didn't care about and what they cared about but wanted the rest of the world to think they didn't.

Things used to be simple enough for him. He cared about eating, sleeping and Kim, and not in that particular order. Somehow, during the waning days of being a legal minor, all of that had become muddled. Caring about Kim became loving her. Eating was tied up in the more mundane issues of the world. Sleeping became a complex box of tricks he tried not to get into. It wasn't just about his head hitting the pillow and his body shutting down for the night. There was the issue of whether he was getting enough sleep to be healthy. There was the issue of being able to get up in time to get to class, even after being up until two in the morning either studying or doing his homework. There was also the issue about whether he was alone or not. Somehow even that seemed to cloud the issue. It should have been as simple as some nights he could be with Kim, most nights he couldn't.

Then there was the issue of his school work. From Ron's perspective, he was working harder than he ever did in his life. There was so much riding on it, from the large sum of money it cost to go to the school, to his chance of having a real future for himself. Even though Kim would often pay lip service to loving him whether he was still just a do-nothing goof, there was no way he could ever go back to that again.

In short, he cared.

Along with caring came stress. That was the cost. There was stress from his teachers, stress from his family and even stress from Kim. The good thing about being a slacker was being free from such cares. With the proper network of people who cared around them, they would live longer lives, have smoother skin and generally be happier people. Ron just knew that once he actually started caring about more than himself, he could never go back. Happiness was something to be attained, not something that could simply be maintained and along with that came worry. Along with it came the long nights.

Growing up was so not easy.

He sat at his desk, gulping the same black brew that Kim often did. It was well past midnight and he was still busy trying to put together a paper for Barkin's class. There was no way, if anyone had mentioned it even a few months ago, that he would have ever believed he could become a caffeine addict. Yet there he was, putting the finishing touches on an essay, with an Algebra book waiting in the wings for at least two hours of study, all while knowing he had to be on the stoop ready to roll at eight in the morning. If he wasn't, Kim would waste no time mounting the stairs and hurrying him along, no matter what stage he was in getting ready. He tried at first to tell himself that she just wanted a chance to see him just out of the shower or something to that effect, but she was all business in the morning.

Things had been going well between the, as well as could be expected during the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. Just like High School, almost all his professors were trying to get to some kind of stopping point before the break. Even those few days off…a Fall Break if you will…seemed to only tease. They had the whole week off, which would have seemed like an utter luxury in a public school, but the short few weeks leading up to Hanukah and Christmas were the big push to first semester finals.

Ron knew there were some 'all-nighters' in his near future and they didn't involve making out with Kim.

All except the upcoming weekend.

Friday afternoon, their bags were going to be packed and already loaded in the car. The moment he got clear of his last class they were jumping in and heading up for some badical snow-boarding. As long as their holiday homework load was light enough, they were simply going to blow off the whole world and just spend a weekend to themselves. It was cold enough to light a fireplace and if the mood was right, there could be some very nice romance in the mountain air.

That is, if he could get past an inevitable pop quiz from Barkin and a major test in Algebra, not to mention meeting with his guidance counselor to map out his next three semesters and put in for the classes he would come back to after the holidays. He thought it was going to be just a simple matter of taking the classes called for in the academic standards and doing reasonably well in them. Instead, he was going to have to justify almost all of his choices. He could already see the meeting playing out in his head:

Mister Stoppable, why have you selected Introduction to business?

Um, cause it says right there it's a required course?

Going through all that once he was a upperclassman, he could see. The class load he was currently taking was simply the foundation, the scut-work he had to get through before he could get to the meat of his education as a culinary master. Then he knew he would have much harder choices and by then it would not all be about just filling in the dots by completing the bare minimum assigned courses.

When it came to straight out studying, he preferred doing that with Kim, either in one of the comfortable study halls on campus or at her house. They could spread out on a table and concentrate quite fully on their work while their feet did other things under the table. Kim was quite accomplished in the fine art of footsie. It really wasn't a distraction either. They were so used to physically touching each other they no longer consciously thought about it, though Ron had a theory that if Kim were allowed into the room while he was taking a test and would run a toe up and down his calf, he would get straight As simply because they were recreating the conditions he was studying under.

There was one fly in the ointment. For some reason, when Ron had to write a paper of five hundred words or more, he couldn't concentrate with Kim in the room. They tried on several occasions, but even if she was on his bed and he was at his desk, with his back to her, he couldn't do it. So, when there was writing involved, he'd let Kim drop him off for the evening, set up camp at his computer, then start to writing.

He really wished he had a five-hundred word report that evening. So much was being sacrificed so he could do his work properly. Even with their planned weekend, he could tell Kim was feeling a little romantic. That had become their code word for wanting some private time together. He utterly hated missing out on that, not only because he didn't want to disappoint Kim, but because he really enjoyed it himself. Well, mostly because he enjoyed it. It didn't matter whether it was just some snuggling and kissing or something more, he was down for it.

School work trumped romance every time, however. Kim knew that and the moment he laid his hands on his backpack, yet again another signal they had developed, she dropped it without comment or complaint. In fact, it made her happy that his priorities were in the right place.

That didn't stop her from spending almost twenty minutes kissing him in the driveway.

He looked at the clock and sighed. At least he was in the last stages of the final draft. Twice he printed out the document and had at it with a red pen. He was the type of report writer who had to see it actually printed on paper, rather than onscreen, to catch his errors. The computer itself caught the most egregious problems, but he knew for a fact the grammar function was terrible. Wade may be a genius, but the English language was actually one of his few academic shortcomings. That meant he never actually got around to upgrading his word processor's grammar checking function.

At least since this was a history paper, and therefore going to Barkin, he knew how to do it. He wrote it just as he would speak, with the exception of slang words and phrases. He had grown to believe that long words just made it sound like he was looking down on his readers. He wanted to get his point across using as simple language as he possibly could. Barkin, at least, agreed with that approach, though he did argue with his English professor from time to time over it. His feeling was that if the average person could not understand what he was trying to say, he really didn't understand it fully himself.

Ron stared at the copy on his desk. There were only just a few notes in red this time, so he opened his word processor and made the last few changes. Finally, he printed the document out, pulling his reading glasses off to rub the bridge of his nose. A little sadly, he tried reading the screen without them. Even the year before, he only needed the corrective lenses when he was especially tired, but it was becoming clearer and clearer to him that his astigmatism was getting worse. He needed to get his eyes checked and would likely soon be wearing glasses full time. That, or he would have to undergo laser surgery, a prospect that sent cold chills down his spine.

"Please tell me you're not going to be pulling an all-nighter again, Ronnie." His Mom stuck her head in the door. She was wearing a house coat and was apparently up for the baby.

He blinked back sleep. If CJ had been fussing, he certainly didn't hear it. "Just finishing up a paper, Mom." Throwing his arms up, he stretched, adding an open mouthed yawn. "Guess I'm gonna have to hit the rack and do some quick cramming in the morning."

"Good idea. I wanted to ask you something."

"Sure, Mom."

"You and Kim are out of school all week?"

Ron's mouth and the words were spilling out of his mouth before he could consider the reasons for her question. "Sure. We're pretty much free Monday thru Wednesday. Then it's over to Kim's to help her Mom cook the big Thanksgiving dinner we've got planned."

Jean nodded. "Good. Monday we're driving up to Denver so your father's family can see Catherine. Then Tuesday we're going down to Lake Havasu overnight so Gram Rokowski and your Great Aunts can see her. I'd like Kim to come along too."

"Sure, she…" suddenly what his mother just asked him clicked in his head. No, she didn't ask, she simply told him that not only was he going along on the family trip, his fiancé was going as well.

"Mom, you want Kim…Dad's fam? Your Fam?"

"Sure. The two of you have a full week off, I'm sure you'd love a chance to get away. Besides, it's not like it's the only time she's going to meet everyone."

"But Mom, she's already met most of the family."

Jean smiled and shook her head. "I don't think your cousin Reuben's wedding counts. She barely spoke to anybody and who can blame her. She didn't know anybody there except for us, and the focus was on the happy couple anyhow."

Ron just smiled and answered the only way he could. It wasn't a request, it wasn't a question. His mother had pretty much just given him an order he would have to obey as if he were a lowly private and she were a general. The "Family Command" had been given.

As his mother left, headed back to her bedroom, he put his head down on his desk, bouncing his forehead off his algebra book a couple times. This was something he had been dreading, especially since he had proposed to Kim.

This might have ostensibly been about the family meeting its newest, youngest member, but that was just a cover. All the tongues were going to be wagging about the real dirt.

It was time for Kim to meet his family.

Actually, outside of little Shawn, he didn't worry too much about his Dad's family. Sure, there were some real characters there and Reuben's wife, Samantha, still held a little bit of a grudge against Ron for his 'Bad Boy' act at her first attempted wedding reception. For the most part, they were a lot like his father. They were modern and accepting of many things.

What frightened him was his mother's family. Gram wouldn't be any real problem. Kim had met her on several occasions and they had almost gone to her cabin in Arizona for their last spring break. It was his great aunts that gave him pause. He could already see the scene in his head. They would take one look at her, at her red hair, at her green eyes. Then two hateful words would spill out of their mouths…

…Not Jewish.

How in this day and age could somebody say something so hurtful? His own mother had come dangerously close to making the same pronouncement when they first started going together, but quickly learned just how important she was to her boy. She made her peace with their differing faiths by thinking of Kim as an 'honorary Nice Jewish Girl.' That wasn't going to fly with the old matrons holding court at Gram's cabin. The only thing he could do now was to prepare Kim for the inevitable, and even then, he knew the disapproving stares, the whispers behind her back were going to hurt. Those women came from another world, another time when much more traditional views held sway.

All that aside, he actually felt a little guilty because of his somewhat lax views on his own religion. There was a time when marrying a gentile would be considered an unpardonable sin. Then too, there was the traditional view that the children would not be Jewish. Ron believed himself to be a moderately religious, moral man, but he didn't keep a lot of the rules that applied to his faith. He didn't even come close to keeping Kosher, nor was he very observant about the Sabbath.

He was sure his great aunts would faint dead away if they knew he regularly went to church with Kim. It was all fair, Kim went to Temple with him just as often. Neither had any intentions of converting, but they still learned quite a bit.

The worst of it, being a 'family' trip, was that beyond the time spent in the car together, the elder Rokowski women were pretty much going to isolate Kim. Oh, they would hide their general disapproval at her faith somewhat, but they were still going to pump her for details about her and her life. It may be an overnight trip, but they might as well have been in separate states that night. It was highly unlikely he would even get the chance to kiss her, let alone curl up in a bed together.

All the more reason to look forward to their weekend trip, a mini-vacation that couldn't come soon enough.

He looked at his Kimmunicator sitting on the desk, wondering if he should take the chance that Kim was still up and call her. He decided against that, one because if she was already asleep he would be disturbing her and two, if she wasn't, they would likely spend the next few hours yapping on them like two lovesick kids. He knew they both needed the sleep, so he slipped out of his battered old house shorts and flopped down on the bed, barely missing Rufus sleeping on his pillow.

Tired as he was, sleep wasn't coming quickly. He wished they had actually taken that trip during spring break. Even though they were seniors, because their birthdays fell during the summer they couldn't go away like many of their classmates had done. Still, they were offered the chance to go to Gram's cabin. It was on a lake, set deep in the woods. To see the place, you would never know that it was in Arizona. Somehow he always thought of the desert when he thought of that state.

Kim had gone there with him once when they were both thirteen. They ended up spending the night sleeping side-by-side in sleeping bags after listening to the aging woman tell them stories of her life in Poland before immigrating to the United States. He didn't know it at the time, but that was the last time they spent the night together like that outside of a mission until they became a couple. Not a wink of sleep was had, unless one counted both of them sacking out in the back of the car for the whole ride home. Instead, the spent the hours of darkness just talking. To the day he couldn't recall exactly what they talked about, only that it was one of the most wonderful trips of his life.

Somehow he felt if they had taken her up on her offer, history could repeat itself. He even wondered if Gram was yet another person who saw what the two of them had together even before they did.

Ron was still thinking about lying on the floor of her cabin, his arms propped behind his head, his legs stuff into the bag, listening to the sound of Kim's voice when he finally drifted off to sleep.