4. Treats
November, 2005
"Shego? Shego, are you listening?"
Shego was pulled from her brown study as Drakken frowned at her, pausing in his mixing of the icing. She looked at him dumbly, unsure what he had just said to her.
"You're the one who asked about how it was made," he said, looking a mixture of disapproving and disappointed that she'd stopped listening.
"Still think it's weird that it's not cooked," Shego said, hugging herself a little tighter. She realized her shoulders were tense and tried to relax.
"There is nothing concerning about an egg in itself," Drakken explained. "Simply the shell, if unwashed."
"Yeah, yeah, you already told me," Shego said, watching one bowl of royal icing come together in the stand mixer, while Drakken made a second bowl with a hand mixer.
Drakken had an unreadable look on his face for a moment that made Shego's shoulders tense again, but he soon sighed.
"Can you get the cookies out of the fridge?" he asked.
Shego went through the motions of getting the cooling cookies out and ready to ice and decorate, as Drakken's mother had requested and that the man himself had been excited to assist with. She set the tray of flat, pale confections down and watched Drakken separate the icing into more bowls and was about to ask why, until he added some food coloring.
'So they're going to be those kind of cookies...'
Her eyes ghosted over the swirls of color coming together, but then she watched the man smiling and humming over his creation. How could someone who worked actively for world domination and created dangerous and violent devices in working toward that goal...also be humming over sugar cookies?
Drakken glanced at her then and her shoulders, which had relaxed, tensed. But more she realized he had caught her smiling. She frowned and hoped her face wasn't flushing purple the way his was.
'Burnt sienna,' rang through her memory in a fog and she was sure if she hadn't been blushing before, she was then.
"What?" she snapped as he stared, not quite sure what she was upset over.
Drakken recoiled slightly, but then he calmed down and seemed to be thinking carefully about his words.
"Shego... Why did you want to come to my mother's Thanksgiving?"
"Oh, this again?" Shego said with a roll of her eyes. "Maybe I just didn't want to sit around the lair..."
She trailed off, realizing she was talking herself into a corner. If she said she didn't want to sit around the lair alone for the holiday, Drakken would point out she usually took tropical vacations.
Her gaze darted around her quickly, looking for distraction. And then her hand struck out toward the nearest bowl of icing.
She had meant to topple the bowl of icing to distract him and had the retort ready on her tongue about his clumsiness, which she knew he wouldn't buy but would have the desired effect. However what happened instead was that her fingers went into the icing, further swirling the green food coloring into the shiny white, and she looked at her hand for only a split second before following through with the action and getting it smeared across Drakken's cheek.
"Whoops, you've got icing on your face. Better clean that off, Doc," was her re-calculated comeback. She stifled a laugh at Drakken's affronted gasp.
"You did that on purpose!" he said pointlessly, which only heightened her amusement.
"Did I?" she said.
She smirked at Drakken's scowling face as she brought her fingers up to lick the remaining icing off of them. What she hadn't planned on was Drakken's quick and ready retaliation, pushing her fingers into her own face. She closed her eyes as icing went over her cheek, nose, and up to her forehead in almost a mirror of how he looked.
"Ha!" he said as she blinked repeatedly in shock. But his gloating ceased as she picked up the entire bowl of icing. She grinned at his look of horror and was about to hurl the bowl as he turned on his heel to flee, but they were both halted by the small but imposing figure of Mama Lipsky standing in the saloon doors of the kitchen, blocking Drakken's exit.
"Ohhh..." the older woman said in a whine, but her hands on her hips spoke of more anger than her voice indicated. "You two aren't wasting all that nice icing playing with it, are you?"
Shego looked between Drakken's mother, who was attempting to keep her cool, and Drakken's back and his shoulders that heaved with his frantic breaths... She was distracted suddenly by how nicely the slate-blue dress shirt fit Drakken and felt her face flushing further.
"Drewbie, how many times have I told you not to play with your food? I promised my friends an array of treats when they come tomorrow."
Shego looked at Mama Lipsky, who was clearly more upset than she let on, and again at Drakken's back as she felt the heat in her cheeks grow. She swallowed anxiously and quickly and quietly fled the small kitchen.