Where You Hang Your Hat Chapter 9: Part IX, a kim possible fanfic

Where You Hang Your Hat: Part IX

Kim's eyes fluttered open. It was still dark outside, but at least the apartment was finally quiet. The moon was high in the early morning sky, bathing the whole place in its pale silver glow. She slid out from under the comforter they were sleeping under and went to the windows, carefully making sure her short sleepwear was all the way down, just in case there was someone outside. She wondered what time it actually was, but they had yet to unpack any clocks, and her watch was still sitting on the bathroom counter where she had taken it off earlier.

Ron was sleeping soundly on his back. She shook her head and smiled softly, watching him sleep in the moonlight. The comforter was pushed down low on his waist and he had his arms behind his head. He looked so beautiful like that, sleeping pretty much on the floor. She had to admit there was something nice about the futon. It was just soft enough as a cushion, while the hardness of the polished wood floor offered surprisingly comfortable support. In the peace of the very early morning, their new place certainly seemed much nicer than it had earlier. Maybe they could come to like the place. In the morning they could ride over to the home center and pick up some nice blinds and other window treatments, improving their privacy. Something else could be done with the space that was ostensibly supposed to be the bedroom. With some blinds up, she wouldn't feel so self-conscious about the windows and their sleeping space could be put somewhere else, perhaps right where they were. The thought of having their bed out in the open like that was a bit strange, but with some creative furnishing, it would be quite nice. Perhaps they could pick up some screens like she used for dressing in her old room, and the bed nook would be a good place to set up their computer center and a couple desks for doing their school work.

She looked back out the window. There were no other units facing theirs, and the wall was about three feet above the floor, effectively putting their bed below the view of anyone outside. Smiling, she padded back over and slipped under the covers. Ron barely stirred as she pulled them up over her. Scooting up next to him, she threw one arm over his chest and buried her head in the nook between his head and his shoulder. He responded in his sleep by wrapping one arm around her and putting his other hand on her bare arm.

"Mmmm. KP? Is it morning?" His eyes never opened, but he started stroking the soft skin of her upper arm.

"Not yet. Go back to sleep, honey."

He turned partially onto his side, facing her. "Guess I'm awake now." He twisted a bit so he could work the light on his watch. Even though he wasn't wearing anything else, he rarely took his off except to bathe.

"What time is it?"

"A little after four." He let his arms back down, wrapping them partially around her. Even in the dim light she could see his frown. "This isn't what we wanted, is it?" he asked, seeing the same expression mirrored on her normally pretty features.

She tried to smile. "It's gonna be okay. We just have to get used to living with other people." She tried to sound confident. Even though they had moved in only the day before, the lease was signed the day after they first looked at the place, and the short grace period had expired. They were locked into it and would have to make the best of it.

"I'm sorry, KP. I guess we jumped at this too fast. At least we know why the place was so cheap. I was thinking maybe it was rent-controlled since it was designated public housing."

"I looked into that. We don't qualify, so we had to pay the going rate. Guess they were having trouble keeping tenants or something."

"I wonder why." He responded sarcastically. "We even going to bother unpacking?"

Kim rolled flat on her back. "Guess we have to. They've got our money and we're under contract. What else can we do? Tuck our tails between our legs and go running back to Mom and Dad…either set?"

"If it's going to be like this every night? Will we have a choice?"

She snuggled back up to him. "I'm not going to do that. Now that it's quiet, it's not so bad."

Ron pulled her closer, drawing the covers up over them. He was very tender and gentle with her. It wasn't how they planned it to be, but like Kim was saying, they had to make the best of it. Both of them quickly fell into a deep slumber afterwards, curled up in each others arms.

It was well into morning when Kim finally awakened, only it wasn't as bright out as she expected it to be. Rain was pelting the tall windows and she half-expected to have a leak start right on her face. Surprisingly, the place actually wasn't leaking, at least as far as she could see for the moment.

She reached to her right, but found herself alone in the temporary bed. That was when she realized it wasn't only the sound of pouring rain she heard on the metal roof. Ron was already up, taking the shower he missed the night before. She looked around and located her nightie and shrugged into it, still being a little self-conscious of the large windows.

There was steam pouring from the open bathroom door, so at least his shower was hot. "Morning, baby. Want some company in there?"

"Yeah, but you're gonna have to make it quick. The water's nowhere near as hot as when I started, and I haven't been in here that long."

True to his word, she barely had enough time to lather up and rinse before it had gone merely lukewarm. She noted the hairdryer still sitting on the counter and was glad she had not washed her hair again, at least until they could get some better breakers, or at least figure out which lights were on the same circuit.

After getting dressed, they set about unpacking their things. It was getting close to lunch time when they finished, though the place still looked almost completely empty. Wade would be by later on to set up their computer, though until the cable connection was activated (the place was already wired for it) they were going to have to rely on the wireless cards in their communicators to actually hook it up. Ron pointed out that they were indeed quite spoiled by having things like monster water heaters and dedicated T1 lines in her old house. If they wanted long, hot, steamy showers (or any of their 'good clean fun') they were either going to have to go back to her old house or wait a year.

All the while the rain just kept pouring down, doing nothing to help their mood. Kim stood at the window, looking at the gray skies. The storms were rolling down out of the foothills in waves, though it never let completely up between downpours.

Ron came up behind her and put his hands on her upper arms, giving them a light squeeze. "Think we should ride over to your house and borrow the mini-van so we can hit Builder's Depot?"

Kim shuddered slightly. To her, the big box home centers were only a small step above discounters like Smarty Mart. There used to be lots of little, old-fashioned hardware stores about, but many of them were gone, unable to compete with the huge indoor lumberyards. Still, they were on a budget, and it was wise to buy the generally cheaper stuff they could find there. It was still going to cost hundreds just picking up the things they needed to make the apartment into something resembling a home.

"I'm a little leery of heading home right now." Home. She still called it that. One night did nothing to erase what she still thought of as the one and only place she had ever lived. Ron certainly felt the same way. He barely remembered the condo his parents had lived in before they moved to Middleton when he was a toddler. What made things worse was that the place was really only temporary. A year did seem like a long time, but that would be gone in an instant. At least she could look forward to the place they were having built. Being a townhouse design, it would still butt up against other homes, but it was designed from the get-go as a fully modern, soundproofed domicile, with all the comforts they desired custom built for them.

She had to reconcile herself to the thought that even that would not seem like home for a while. Moving was just something she had never seriously considered when she started sharing her life with Ron. They had gone forward with blinders on, their relationship being the one and only thing they could see. It was such a strange thought that what had been her room for all that time really no longer was hers. Joss had moved in a couple weeks earlier and was already asking if she could move from the guest room into the loft. It was looking more and more like they could never go back.

Ron left her and went back to his current project. He sat down heavily on the puffy blue chair that used to sit in Kim's old room, trying to make heads or tails of the vacuum cleaner they bought a couple days earlier. True, they didn't have any carpets yet, but among the things they wanted to buy were some rugs, so the appliance was a must.

Kim smiled, leaning over his shoulder as he poured over the instructions. It was a canister model rather than an upright like her mother used. Ron actually insisted, after the salesman pointed out the canisters were actually more powerful. Kim thought it was just a line of bull, but the hose attachments would be handy for keeping dust down in all the little nooks and crannies of the place.

"Here, Ron. It goes together like this." She picked it up, shoved the bag into place and snapped it shut. "See, nothing to it. Thought you were the 'domestic goddess' in this relationship."

"Well, if they didn't have to write the instructions in fifteen different languages, and hire a third grader to do the drawings. Hey, how did you know how to do that anyway? I don't remember you even so much as touching your Mom's vacuum."

She shrugged, fiddling with the power attachments. "Just something I remember from our 'Job Fair' fiasco. Guess what Joe had to teach me stuck more than I thought."

"Huh. I thought that vacu-thingie of his was supposed to be a model of Drakken's weather machine, not a real vacuum cleaner."

"Let's just say Joe was really into his cover. He…wait." She looked at the canister sitting on the floor. Ron hadn't connected the hose to it yet, so it did look a lot like the Vacrometer model the Canadian agent tried teaching her with.

"You're not thinking this rain is another weather machine, are you. There were calling for it to be sunny today."

"No. Ron, remember when I said the sales manager looked familiar?"

"Uh, yeah. He kinda looked like a cliché used car salesman, though the only guy I've ever dealt with on a used car lot looked a lot more like Jack Hench than anyone else."

"Not used cars, Ron. Wallace Gruber, that's what he said his name was. Oh, why didn't I see it then!"

"What? Don't tell me you've been looking for a car for me again, cause I've had my eye on an old Trans Am that would look real nice if it was restored."

"No, not used cars. Used Weather Machines."

By that point Ron was really confused. "Why would you want me to buy a weather machine. They got banned after Summer Gale used one to create that snow storm here."

"Gaaaahhh! Ron, Wallace Gruber is Wacky Wally. Wacky Wally's Weather Machines, remember? He was lying when he said he'd never seen us before, he's the one who called us when Drakken stole that weather machine from him."

He perked up a little. "Oh, cool. Glad he found some other work when his lot got shut down. Kinda funny him landing here in Middleton."

"Don't you get it, Ron? They brought him in because he's a real slickster. That's why it took so long for the place to get ready. The law says there's a three day grace period, but it goes from the day we sign the lease, not the day we move in. He stalled us so we'd be trapped in a lease. Grrrrrrrr." She grabbed the instruction booklet and tore it in half before stomping off toward the kitchen. "I've got half a mind to call Daddy's lawyer and see if we can get out of this mess. I'm willing to bet there are rules that apply in this instance. He misrepresented the place! Nobody mentioned there would be a bunch of grunge-rock rejects playing half the night, or a couple banging away like they were shooting a porno movie on the other side. Or that we don't even have enough hot water to take a proper shower, or…"

"Kimbo. Like you said, it's not so bad. Think what it would have been like if we were living in the dorms. They have to deal with all the same stuff, and they don't have a quarter of the space we do."

"Yeah? Well…they don't have a wall that's nothing but floor to ceiling windows, so they're not on display for the world to see? I know I don't like the thought of walking around in our all-together all the time, but there are some times I'd like some privacy."

"KP, did you stop to think, if that couple had waited a few minutes, we would probably be making a lot of the same noises? Maybe even louder?"

"But I don't want to hear them, and I don't want other people hearing us!" She screamed, slamming a bag of bread down on the counter. "I don't want to have to live with our bed out in the middle of what was supposed to be our living room. How long before the tabloids find out I've got my own apartment and they start putting the paparazzi up in the hills with telephoto lens, prying on the two of us doing what we think is private?"

Ron got up, holding his hands out in front of him. "Calm down, Kim. Neither of us got as much sleep as we should last night."

"No? I guess not. But how long is it going to be before one of those planes actually clips the roof here? What are they doing landing there at all hours of the night anyway? Maybe I need to call Wade and run an FAA check on them."

"Whoa, KP, amp down there. For all we know that was just some private pilot types getting in late from joyriding. It was only two planes."

"Two planes, a rock band, mister bangs-a lot, a cold shower when I really didn't want a cold shower and on top of that it's freaking raining again." She sat down on the kitchen stool, hanging her head sadly, spent by her outburst.

Ron wrapped his arms around her shoulders. "KP, remember what we were thinking when we went on that first long trip together, right after we turned eighteen?"

She rested her head on his upper arm, putting her hands on his forearm. "If you're talking about the first time we…"

"Not so much that. We wanted to get out and be normal people for a while. We wanted to live like the rest do, instead of trading in favors to stay in some posh place, or riding in somebody else's private jet. There's other people who live here, and from the looks of things some of them have been here since they opened this place a few years ago. Face it, babe. This is how regular people live."

Kim felt like the tears would start any moment. This wasn't what she had planned for her life. It always seemed things would go on and on just as they had been all her years. She would always have her comfortable little room, in a nice house, surrounded by a family that loved her. Now she was stuck in a place, living with people she had not yet met, people she wasn't sure she wanted to meet. For instance, how was she going to be able to look that one set of neighbors in the eye after last night?

"We shouldn't have unpacked." She said finally, gripping his arm a little tighter.

"Don't think we're going to stay?"

She shook her head sadly and leaned back into him a little more. "I don't know. If we hadn't unpacked maybe I could call a lawyer and we could get out of this lease. I don't want to go running back home, but this is wrong, ferociously wrong."

"You want me to call Dad P? It really won't take us that long to get the stuff boxed back up."

"No…no, I don't know what I want to do. I guess I just had this little fantasy that this was going to be, I dunno, like some little secret love nest for us. That was the whole point, wasn't it? For us to be together without bumping up against our family all the time?"

Ron put his hands on her shoulders and rubbed. "I dunno, that was pretty nice this morning."

"Yeah. But it felt, I dunno, kinda like when we're at your folk's place, being all sneaky quiet about it?"

He walked around in front of her, taking her chin in one hand and kissing her. When their lips parted, her eyes remained closed. "KP, it was more than pretty nice. It was extreme badicalness. I don't care about the quiet, all I care about is being with you, and somehow I don't think we're going to bother those people next door, if you know what I mean. This is our home, and last night we made it that way."

Without another word, Kim hopped up from the stool and went back to their still-unmade futon, grabbing the edge of it and hauling it once more back into the sleeping alcove. Then she went back into the kitchen and wrapped her arms around Ron's waist, kissing him again.

"You know, I'm still not that good about understanding girls, but I think I'm getting some signals here." He said, letting his hands slip down from her waist.

"Ronnie, if I was giving you any louder signals, they'd hear them over at the school." She took his hands and started leading him to the bedroom. Getting out a box of matches, she started lighting the candles once more.

"Let's make some noise." She husked as she pulled him down onto the futon.