Where You Hang Your Hat Chapter 2: Part II, a kim possible fanfic

Where You Hang Your Hat: Part II

Later that morning, Kim lay stretched out on the bed, facing the front of her room, watching as Ron paced back and forth. Both of them were still trying to absorb her father's sudden pronouncement at the breakfast table that morning.

He really said nothing more than to make his suggestion. Finishing his coffee, he got up and excused himself before going out to his car, leaving the two of them sitting stunned at the breakfast table. It wasn't until their cereal had turned to mush and Kim's coffee was fit only to make an iced latte before they actually said anything.

"Did we make too much noise last night?" Ron finally asked, still staring at the back door.

Kim buried her face in her hands. "No more so than we have the last couple months. I just can't believe he said that."

"I thought he was happy you were still living here." Ron muttered, leaning back in his seat.

She put a hand on his thigh and gave it a light squeeze. His legs were hairier than they looked at first glance since his blonde hair didn't show up against his skin all that well. "Honey, I don't think that's whats got him like this. I think it finally sank in that you're living here with me."

That gave him pause. There never really was any discussion about them 'officially' living together, it had just happened. The fact he had never moved more than the clothes he actually needed, or any of his furniture into their room really didn't change anything. In that moment he realized that it was actually true. For all intents and purposes, they were living together full time.

They went back up to 'their' room, but their original plans were pretty much shot. With the house empty and the local equivalent of a monsoon set to envelope the Tri-City area later, they pretty much intended to spend some special time together. Even though the house was well insulated, they had always been somewhat reserved when they were together, even during the intense first few weeks. Having the place to themselves they could cut loose a little bit.

"It almost feels like we're being kicked out." Ron said, sitting down beside her on the bed. "So what are we going to do?" He lightly stroked the groove in the small of her back.

She crossed her arms, putting her chin down on them. Part of her was trying to enjoy his touch, but for the most part her mind was awhirl. "I guess we need to go apartment shopping. Honestly, Ronnie, I've got no idea how to go about it. I've lived in this room my whole life."

"Do you think maybe we should, I dunno, stop living together? Wow, that sounds kind of strange saying it out loud. I never really thought of it like that. Living together. Wow." He repeated.

Kim shook her head emphatically. "No." She rolled onto her back so he could knead her tummy. "That would feel almost like we're breaking up at this point."

"But you said you've always lived in this room. It seems a shame to screw that up just because we're, like your Dad says, 'living in sin.'"

That brought a little smile to her face. "He does not say that."

"Yeah he does. He keeps asking me when I'm going to make an honest woman of you."

"That's not the same thing, and I don't think he's said that once since you…well…moved in. You're right, though. It doesn't seem fair. Now if he wanted you to chip in and help with the mortgage, or the food, I could see that."

Ron leaned back, but kept his hand on her tummy, carefully running his fingers in circles just so it wouldn't make her ticklish. "Do you think we screwed up?"

"How's that?"

"Well, we kinda did this without asking, you know. True, he did sit down with me after a couple nights and laid down the law, but, well, we just kinda…started."

Breakfast that first morning of their new arrangement wasn't as uncomfortable as he thought it would be. Ron was thankful Kim insisted on the pajamas when her mother shook him awake by the shoulder to call them down to breakfast. He was also thankful the covers were up since the bottoms of said night clothes were stuffed down at the foot of the bed. Only an hour earlier Kim had awakened him for a little wake-up call of her own.

With the exception of a confused look Jim and Tim gave each other when they witnessed the two climbing down the black iron staircase together, nobody acted as if anything were out of the ordinary. Ron had spent the night enough that his appearance at the breakfast table was nothing special, even though before it had always been after a night on the couch or later in the guest room.

"You kids still planning on going to the mountain this weekend?" James asked from behind his fresh copy of The Examiner.

Such an…ordinary…response wasn't what either of them had been expecting. They were ready for anything, from the silent treatment to having their ears bent for their brazen decision. "We were going to head up there straight after class tomorrow night." Kim said as she dug into her pancakes, all the while running her bare foot up and down Ron's shin.

Her father let the upper half of his paper tip down. "Says here it's supposed to rain all weekend, with the possibility of ice. Doesn't sound like a very good weekend of skiing."

Anne set a plate of pancakes down in front of her husband. "I don't think that's what they had in mind for their trip, dear." She smiled at her daughter, who blushed crimson.

"Actually, that was the plan. I love having the chance to ski when there's no super-freak chasing me down the mountain."

"Or nosey chaperones making sure it's one to a bed." Her mother said, sitting down with her own plate.

"Mom!" She turned even brighter red.

"Well, if the weather turns nasty, I'd just as soon the two of you stayed right here."

Both their mouths hung open for a moment. "The two of us?" Kim asked dubiously.

"I want what's best for my kids, and that includes my future son-in-law." He put the paper down and started buttering his pancakes.

"Go easy, James. We don't want your cholesterol getting out of control." Anne warned.

"Between the butter and the bacon, if my cholesterol was going to get out of whack, it would have done so a long time ago." He said, ignoring her and putting three pats of butter on each pancake before reassembling the stack and pouring strawberry syrup on them.

Kim and Ron just looked at each other. Then she glanced at her Mom, who smiled back at her. A bit of understanding crossed her mind. Anne Possible had always been on her side when it came to Ron and their attempts to be together were part and parcel of that.

Later, while Kim was taking her morning shower, James climbed the stairs up to the room where Ron was lacing on the hiking boots that replaced his old sneakers. "Ronald, I need to ask you something."

"Uh, sure MrDrP."

"Now, I'm not going into that business about whether you love Kimmie-cub or not. That's just obvious. I just want to know what your intentions are."

He shrugged slightly. "KP and I are getting married when we finish college. I was thinking the fourth of July, but we haven't hammered out the date yet."

"I mean in the near future. It seems the two of you have gotten…quite a bit closer."

"I…I really hadn't thought about that. I mean, until KP told me what she wanted yesterday after class I really never planned to do this." He inclined his head at the freshly made bed. Kim was right about the open access the family had to each other's rooms. Her mother simply came up there just as he put on his pants and made it, fresh sheets and all. "I love you guys like my own folks, but I don't know if I'm be real comfortable with all this. I mean, if one of you had walked in on us last night…"

"Ronald, I'm not one hundred percent comfortable with this situation myself, but that's because I'm just embarrassed knowing what you two are doing. It doesn't bother me that you two are having sex. It's normal and natural and you're both adults. Now, I do think some ground rules are in order, since this is my house."

"Yes sir."

"First, let's be reasonable. What you did last night is perfectly fine since it was the right time and the right place. That said, I want the two of you to keep what belongs in the bedroom in the bedroom. The couch is in the family room, if you see where I'm going with this."

Ron nodded emphatically.

"Second, while the two of you are adults, I hope you're being responsible. Both of you have a bright future and it's too soon for the two of you to bring a child into this world."

"Believe me, MrDrP, we are."

"Finally, there's the issue of privacy. I've got the general idea of what you two are doing and I'm just going to leave it at that. When the two of you are together up here, then close and lock the hatch as well as the hall door. That will save any of us any extra embarrassment of walking in. Also, Anne and my bedroom is off-limits for the same reason, unless you're invited."

"I agree completely. MrDrP."

"Ronald, when are you going to start calling me Dad and Anne Mom like we asked you to?"

He rubbed the back of his neck. "It just feels weird since that's what I call my Mom and Dad. Maybe if I called you Dad P or something."

James slapped his thigh as he got up. "That sounds good. Maybe one of these days I'll break my habit of calling you Ronald."

"MrDrP, uh Dad P, did you mean what you said about us staying up here this weekend?"

He cocked an eyebrow at the younger man. "The two of you were just going up there to spend time together, weren't you?"

Ron blanched just a tad. "We were going to ski a little, but yeah, the main point was making love."

James nodded. "If the weather does turn bad, I'll feel a lot safer if the two of you were doing that up here than out where the roads will be frozen solid." With that he headed down the stairs, passing Kim on her way up, still drying her hair with a towel.

Classes ended in the early afternoon that day, so they rode back to Ron's house to pick up some more clothes. It wasn't like he was moving in with her but they did intend to sleep together that night and over the weekend if the expected rains came. If not, they were going to head up the mountain anyway, if for no other reason than to actually be alone.

"I don't get it, KP." Ron said as he sat on 'his' side of the bed that evening, taking off his boots.

"What's that, Baby?" Kim was already in bed, wearing her old purple tank and sweats pajamas, going over the rough draft of a paper she was preparing. Somehow Ron thought the only thing missing was a pair of glasses. That, of course, was silly since her eyes were perfect but the visual seemed incomplete without them.

"All these years I've been worried about your father sending me to a black hole if he ever caught us doing this and this morning he's like all cool with it and everything."

Kim put down her notes. "Ronnie, tell me something, what was it he said the night of the moodulators?"

"He wanted you to be happy, or he'd send me to a black hole."

She shook her head. "No, he said you'd be in deep trouble and when you asked how deep he said black hole deep. He would have just done the usual angry father things, but he never even said a thing to you about kissing me or even sleeping with me, which, let me tell you, if that thing hadn't gone haywire we were going to do that come hell or high water and I don't think your breaking up with me would have stopped me. But it was about you making me happy." She leaned across the bed and ran a hand down his side once he pulled his sweatshirt off. "I think you've done a pretty good job of that."

"It just sounded so funny listening to him laying down ground rules for us making love."

"They make good sense. Guess with that second one he still doesn't know I'm on the pill and the first…think how many times we came close to doing exactly that on the couch at your house."

"Um yeah." He slipped off his boxers and started getting under the covers.

"Ronnie?" Kim said, putting her homework away for the night.

"What's that, KP?" He reached over and turned the light they had set up for his side of the bed off.

"Don't even think of taking this the wrong way, but do you think we could take tonight off?"

He sat back up. "Something wrong?"

"Well, kind of. Baby, I'm a little sore…if you know what I mean."

"I didn't think we were that rough. Maybe the first time…"

"Honey, we went at it for more than four hours last night and this morning. More than that, I would like to try and get eight hours of sleep for once. We do have school to think of."

"Okay, sure KP." He laid back down, sticking his hands behind his head.

"You're not upset are you?"

He gave a sort of facial shrug and said. "No."

Kim raised an eyebrow. "You sure gave in pretty easily."

"Kim, what we do is making love. It's not about getting off. Well, that's a real big part of it, but I don't want to do it for my sake alone. If I pressed you to do it when you don't want to, that's just using you and that's not what I want."

"Oh Ron, that's so sweet." She turned off her touch lamp and threw an arm across his chest.

"Uh, I've kind of got to admit I'm a little sore myself. Back muscles, that is."

"We wore each other out." She played with the light blonde triangle of hair that extended downwards from his belly button. "Gonna be cold tonight, think maybe you should put on your jammies?"

Silently he got up and put them on. They were already laid out on Kim's puffy blue chair. "Hey, maybe when we…recover, maybe we could try something on this. Your Dad said to keep it in the bedroom and this is in your bedroom."

"Dirty boy." She held the covers back to let him into the bed. Wrapping her arms around him again, she started kissing him passionately.

"I thought you didn't want any tonight?" He said when she came up for air.

"I said we weren't making love tonight. Didn't say anything about making out."

Anne Possible stared at her husband as he cowered behind his desk. Stared wasn't quite the word for it. She was giving him "The Glare."

"Do you think it might have been wise to actually ask me before you decided it was time to kick my daughter out of the house?"

"I did no such thing. I only suggested that maybe it was time for them to start actually looking for their own place." He drummed his fingers on his desk, looking from side to side. He knew he was in trouble when she showed up at the Space Center looking for him. She almost never went there. That was his world, as much as the Medical Center was hers and for the most part the two never mixed.

"Oh? Then why did Kim call me at work this morning, almost to tears asking me why? James, you know Ron is working on a place for them when they get married. What's wrong with that?"

"That's not what I meant, honey, and that's more than a year off. I just thought they would be more comfortable living in their own place."

"Oh you did? Did you not stop to think how Kim might feel living in her own room? The same room she's lived her whole life?"

"Anne, I never thought that would mean having a boyfriend come to live with her."

Blue eyes suddenly lit on fire. "Ron…is…not…just…a…boyfriend, James. Maybe you haven't noticed, but he is the single best thing that has happened to her in her life outside of this family. So what if they're living together in our house? He was welcome to live there before."

"But what kind of example is that going to set for Joss? She's going to be here in just a couple weeks and part of the reason Slim is sending her to live with us is to calm her down a little. She worships the ground those kids walk on and if they're upstairs…doing their thing…"

"That's not the same thing, James, and you know it. If Jocelyn had somebody in her life like Ron I don't think Slim would have worried one instant about it. I think Kim and Ron will set a fine example for her. Plus I'm sure she is fully aware that she is seventeen and our kids are twenty. That's a big difference from their perspective."

He sighed. Just as he thought that morning, there was no turning back from this point. The damage had been done, and that probably meant he was going to be the one sleeping either on the couch or in the guest room that night. "Okay, Anne. I'll talk to her."

"You need to talk to both of them. If you had said no after the first time, this would have been different, yet you waited four months to say something. I think it's too late to stand on morals, if that's the reason behind all of this."

With that, she turned on her heels. "I've got a late procedure this afternoon. I think it might be a good idea if you took the two of them out to dinner."

"I'll fix something. I'm not totally helpless in the kitchen, plus I've been hankering to try out my new grill."

Anne shook her head. "I said you should talk to them. Not poison them." She held up her hands, then dropped them in frustration before walking out the door, muttering about idiot rocket scientists.