Where You Hang Your Hat: Part X
The apartment had changed dramatically over the course of two weeks. All of that massive, open space was gobbled up pretty quickly once they got their furniture and started arranging it. The bed found a new home, away from what they planned to use as their 'den.' They set it up in one corner of the large main room, partitioned off with a number of Asian themed partitions. The windows in that section had a set of dark colored standard Venetian blinds, accented with some light drapes, creating a nice, private section for their 'bedroom.' Each of them had a chest-of-drawers and they shared a wardrobe for their hanging clothes. Out of season clothes were relegated to the closet in what was originally intended as the bedroom, but had become their 'office' space. The futon found its new home as part of their couch, facing a small entertainment center and the fireplace. That would serve as their 'guest' bedroom if any of their friends came to town and wanted to crash there. So far that hadn't happened. Of all their old friends, only Monique had come back briefly, but she ended up staying with her parents in her old room. Of perhaps a week she was back, Kim only got to see her a couple hours.
Their great 'last summer off' wasn't turning out to be exactly that. Kim found out that she had to make a presentation to the review board at Middleton College for her Senior Project, and that was due in about a week. That meant long hours with her butt planted in the leather swivel chair at her desk, where the main computer was set up. It was nearly complete, with most of the work done in the first few days. Still, despite her physical inactivity, she was tired. Saving her work, she leaned back in the chair and pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to de-fuzz her eyesight. Her vision had tested perfect when she had gone in for her annual physical a week earlier, but that was a fairly cursory exam. Either she was experiencing more strain than she was used to, or she needed to schedule an appointment with a specialist.
She chuckled softly, thinking it would be karma coming to bite her if she ended up wearing corrective lenses. Back during their Sophomore year, Ron had learned his astigmatism was getting worse and he would have to start wearing glasses for reading and driving. She teased him for a while, especially when he had to wear a pair of terrible looking black rimmed spectacles while they waited for his wire rimmed ones to be made. At least she thought it was gentle teasing. Ron was truly upset about the whole thing and accused her of thinking he looked like a nerd with them on. Well, turnabout would be fair play if she had to start wearing them as well. Only, if her eyes were going bad, she was going to wear contacts like her mother did. She was more than a little vain about her appearance and there were no styles out there she would even consider wearing except in private.
Things quieted down considerably after that first night. There wasn't anything they could do about the airplanes, as the runway was pointed directly at their unit, but it was unusual to hear more than four or five planes landing all day. What's more, she knew half the pilots that flew from the private airfield, having accepted rides from them on many occasions.
The 'loving couple' next door turned out to be a Norwegian couple who had only been married about six months. Kim never brought up anything about that first night, but once they realized somebody lived on the other side of that one wall, they apparently made some sort of change and while there were occasional interesting sounds coming from over there, they weren't bothered by it any longer. They even invited the two of them over for dinner, which was an interesting affair. When Ron's plate was served he looked like he was about to crawl out of his skin. She didn't quite understand why. While meat cakes and lamb and cabbage stew weren't anything she would ever ask him to make for dinner, they certainly were edible enough. The couple just wanted to make them something that was enjoyed in their homeland. At least he had the grace to eat a polite portion of his meal and not embarrass her, though when they got back to their apartment he used half a tube of toothpaste and drained a quarter bottle of mouthwash.
It took almost a week before they caught up with the rocker on the other side of them. They were expecting a younger guy, likely even a student just like them. Instead he looked like he was in his mid thirties, with wild reddish hair and a neatly trimmed Vandyke. Before they could even bring it up, he started apologizing profusely for the impromptu concert they were treated to that night. Turned out he had no idea their unit had been rented, and as he had the end apartment, he figured there was a pretty good buffer between him and the Norwegian couple.
A quick call to an electrician who owed them a favor fixed the breaker box problem. Too many things were tied into one breaker, and all it took was a few minutes tracing the wires and reconnecting them to appropriate switches and Kim could dry her hair with confidence.
The only problem they had yet to reach a solution to was the hot water. Surprisingly, each unit had its own hot water supply. The electrician wasn't any help, as it was a gas fired water heater. He was able to tell them it was plenty large for a couple, being roughly half the size of the one they were used to in Kim's old home. That meant a call to the complex maintenance people, but they were tied up with something else for the time being and couldn't get to them for a couple of weeks, since they did have some hot water. They resolved themselves to sharing quick utilitarian showers in the morning, each thinking how nice it would be to have a little fun once it got fixed.
All in all Kim was starting to think their new apartment was actually becoming a home. A couple nights earlier they decided to have a housewarming party redux, substituting a bottle of sparkling apple cider for champagne, partly because Kim still recalled the last time she got a little too much of the bubbly stuff, but mostly because they were still just shy of their twenty-first birthdays and didn't want to put either set of parents in a position of buying it for them. There was still a partial bottle of wine in the fridge, but they wanted something sparkling for the occasion. Ron broiled a pair of steaks in the oven and the evening went off without a hitch, including the later festivities.
Leaning all the way back in the modest chair, she caught sight of Ron sitting in the den area. Well, at least she could see the back of his head sticking up above the couch. From the look of the idle video game screen, he had most likely dozed off. It seemed so unfair for them to be cooped up in the apartment on beautiful July day, but she wanted to put the school work behind her quickly. There was perhaps two or three hours of work left on it, but she knew she was tired. She had been up until midnight the night before working on it and had pretty much rolled out of bed at six that morning, pounding away at it while Ron made them breakfast.
That made her stop and consider herself. She was still wearing the same little purple halter top she had slept in for years, along with a pair of jogging shorts. He hair was a tangled mess and she was certain her body was starting to generate its own aroma that had little to do with the soap and lavender smell that Ron seemed to like so much. Well, it was almost lunch time. She could rouse Ron from his nap to fix them a little something while she popped into the shower. Then maybe they could grab their swimsuits and head to the city pool, or perhaps even drive out to Lake Middleton for a little fun in the sun. After a week's work they deserved a little break.
She thought about some other things, but didn't want to tempt fate once more. The day after they moved in they decided to have a little fun together, of the sort they had planned for the previous night. It went well, to the point they were indeed making quite a bit of noise. Only, what she didn't know was that her parents had decided to stop by and bring a few housewarming gifts of their own.
To hear her mother tell the tale, at the very moment her father's finger touched the doorbell, he did not hear a buzzer or chimes, but a distinctly familiar female voice expressing great joy. He stood there frozen for a moment, thinking that somehow his pressing the button had caused that particular sound.
Anne Possible almost collapsed in laughter once she realized what was happening. They had argued briefly on the way over that they really should have called first, in the event they were away, or as the case truly turned out to be, that they were…indisposed. Thinking fast, she pulled out her cell-phone and called Kim's (the land-line phones weren't hooked up at that point,) telling her they were going to drop by, oh, in about fifteen to twenty minutes. Then she dragged her husband back outside and they drove around the neighborhood for a few minutes while Kim and Ron got dressed. Kim was already quite flushed with embarrassment when her mother pulled her aside to tell her what had actually happened, and got even worse when it was pointed out that Ron had his t-shirt on inside out and her blouse was mis-buttoned. Both of them decided later that, even though it was their own home and their own free-time, well, Kim's tried and true axiom of 'time and place' still applied.
Not that it was the last nooner they had. They just…planned a little better after that.
After five nights on the futon, Kim was quite ready for a normal bed. It seemed comfortable at first, but she just couldn't get past the strange feeling of sleeping on the floor. That was fine for camping, but not for home. She didn't know how he managed it for a whole month at Yamanuchi. She was and American and she wanted to sleep like an American, please and thank you.
Sitting back up, she pulled the wireless keyboard back out and connected to the web. Her new system was worlds better than the old one she had at home, with a widescreen flat panel monitor, all sorts of wireless gadgets and no honking big CPU dominating the desktop. Oh, it was there, but the workspace was built so it would no longer be in the way. Eventually they were going to get a dedicated T1 line installed, but that was going to have to wait for clearance from the apparently overworked maintenance department. Everything looked nice and new, but the building was over a century old after all. All in good time, she reminded herself. Wade was also working on a satellite system similar to the one the Kimmunicators worked with, making all of that obsolete.
From memory she called up an old website. It had been several years since she had visited it, and for a moment, she wondered why. Leaning on her elbow, she scrolled though pages of plain Arial text on a light gray background. What she read there wasn't perfect prose. In fact, a lot of it was written in a sort of personal shorthand that only she could completely understand. Still, with all the misspellings and punctuation glitches, what she read seemed like pure poetry.
The last entry in her old online diary almost brought her to tears. A single jpeg image was there, one that also sat on their nightstand and had once taken the place of Shego and Drakken's mug shots on the inside of her high school locker door.
I kissed Ron for the first time last night, the first time for real at least. I never felt like this before. I once told Josh that an evening we spent together was perfect, but now I have a new idea of what perfect is. I love Ron…I love Ron…I love RON! How is it that I never noticed that before? I think now that I've loved him for a really long time. I don't know how or why, but I know now that I do. I don't know how I missed it. Of course, he's still Ron. I can barely remember anything from before we met. I should be able to, I was four, but I can't. He's still slightly shorter than me, a little soft around the middle and he can be such a dope most of the time, but I wouldn't trade him for anything in the world.
Oh, and Ron can kiss. Boy can he kiss! I'm talking spankin, curl my toes kind of kissing. Somehow I'm going to have to find out where he learned, cause he claims he's never kissed a girl, or at least he never did before that time we kissed at my locker. If he's been kissing somebody else I'm going to be so jealous.
He told me he loves me this morning. HE LOVES ME! He makes me want to do things I never even thought about with a guy before. Okay, I mean, I've thought about it, but I've never really considered it for real. Daddy would kill me, no, he'd kill both of us if he knew I was thinking thoughts like this, but I'm sixteen. I'm a grown woman and I'm entitled to think about it. Mom says these things should be done in love, and I do love him! He's my Ron!
My Ron she thought to herself. Her online diary ended right there. From that moment her life had taken such a dramatic turn. It really was so the drama. Sure, it took them over four years to get to the point she was thinking about that one morning, as she sat alone in her room, grounded for spending the entire night out with him, just sitting on a flat boulder out on the bluff overlooking the city, kissing him and talking about what had led them to that point. She felt like she was the luckiest girl in the world then, suddenly having a boyfriend who not only like-liked her, but loved her. They didn't have to go through an awkward phase of getting to know each other, with the fear that some deep, dark secret or strange foible was going to spring up, driving a wedge between them. Sure, they didn't get that walking on a cloud feeling of new love, but they had something deeper, something they knew was real and true.
Ron was still Ron. He had grown a full six inches from that day, most of it over the following year and he had filled out somewhat. He was still on the skinny side of lean, but that soft middle had firmed up and he actually had slightly defined pecs. She decided that first night they spent together just holding hands that he was a man, despite his diminutive stature, and his body had set out to prove her right.
Her curser hovered over the 'add note' icon for a moment. She wondered if the fact her online diary had been hacked so many times by Wade was one of the reasons she had stopped. What she may or may not do with Ron from that point became very private and she feared that, massive intelligence aside, Wade was still a twelve year old at that point and he might not have had the maturity to resist looking at what were supposed to be her innermost personal thoughts. New explorations of her sexuality were so ferociously different than writing about how embarrassing it was to accidentally use the boy's bathroom at her school the first day of her freshman year.
Wade had turned sixteen a while back and seemed to have a much better handle on at least acting grown up. What would happen if she sat down and started detailing the last four years? Could she recount everything, both the good and the bad, the time her mother put both of them to bed in her room, just like she used to when they were six? Ron bringing her straight home when she accidentally got drunk at a party? The first time they actually went further than just kissing? What about their first time? Very few people outside of her inner circle would even believe where that happened. She even wondered if she should write about her theory that they were cursed to be interrupted every time they tried until they were literally no longer on the planet any more.
She clicked the icon, but simply wrote I love Ron over and over again. She followed that with Maybe one of these first days I'll sit down and write my memoirs, then I'll sell it and make my own Naco Royalties like money.
That'll be the day, she thought to herself. Outside of her one-time prowess with babysitting, she had only held down a real job for a few days, before the reality that her lifestyle simply would not mesh with the working world set in. How would her world-saving 'hobby' have gone down if she wasn't the child of a rocket scientist and a brain surgeon, who brought in enough money to be considered independently wealthy? What would she do in the future if her fiancé weren't set to receive a trust fund that, the last time they looked, was worth millions?
Well, they would likely be working full time, in addition to going to classes just to pay for the apartment and all the nice furniture they put into it. Much of that had gone onto credit cards or had been financed so they wouldn't have to dip too deeply into Ron's funds before he was even supposed to get it. That way they could make payments out of his allowance for the next year. Under the conditions of his trust, once they got married (if he was twenty one) they would get the full trust. They could rush things a bit, considering she was hitting that age in a few days and Ron would a week later, but they still intended to hold off on the wedding until the following summer, after they had graduated from college.
Every now and then she thought that might have been a tad silly, waiting like that considering they pretty much were living as a married couple by that point. When she was younger, she actively told herself she would never be 'shacked up' with anyone. My how things changed when actually confronted with the reality of becoming adults.
Their living arrangements didn't sit too well with everyone they knew. Of course, all their parents and all their close friends were behind them completely, but every now and then she would catch a scrap of conversation that they were 'living in sin.' Even the pastor of her church seemed rather cold with her, though they never were especially close.
Thinking about her church reminded her of another reason she needed to wrap her work up early that evening. Ron's Rabbi, Gerry Katz was coming over for dinner that evening with his wife. So far, he had not uttered a single word about them living together, and had known about it pretty much from when they started back in the winter. She wondered how a religious leader could be down with that so easily, but was sure it would eventually come out.
Saving the few lines she had written, she hopped up out of the chair and headed into the den. Ron's head had fallen to one side, drool starting to form at the corner of his mouth. He made a good show of getting up with her that morning, but the lack of sleep simply caught up with him. She touched his cheek. "Ronnie." She said softly.
He stirred, blinking his eyes. Smiling, he pulled Kim down beside him on the couch. She wished he would have wiped his mouth, but gave into the kiss anyhow. As he started pushing her down onto the couch, she did finally have to stop him.
"Nuh uh, baby. You know this isn't a good time for that."
He slumped down, knowing precisely why. Sitting back up, she gave him a great big hug. A few days were all he had to wait, and she was having to do the waiting herself.
"Come on, we're both a little ripe. Let's get cleaned up and you can start working your other kind of magic in the kitchen."
She dragged him to his feet, leading him toward the bathroom. "Okay, KP, but remember, I need to be the one doing all the prep work tonight."
Kim crossed her eyes. "Your not going to let me forget that I was going to try glazing a ham for tonight."
"Wrong on so many levels." He said, grinning as Kim started the water, slipping out of her dirty night clothes.
"What, that I'd actually slip and think of serving ham to a Rabbi?"
"No, that you'd actually try to glaze a ham."
Kim popped him on the shoulder. "It's a good thing it's that time of the month then, cause you sure wouldn't be getting any tonight for a comment like that."
"Pfffft. Like you could survive without your regular dose of Ron shine." He slipped out of his boxers and got into the water, which, at least for the moment, was steaming hot.
She tried to be angry as she followed him, but she really had to admit…
…he was right.
a/n - Thanks to Captainkodak1 for some of the ideas in this chapter. A ring-a-ding-ding!
Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney