" 'See, now you're cooking,' he chuckled in the brief moment of silence before the cassette clicked and the next song started. 'I am not,' she insisted. He bit his lip, then smirked at her and turned up the music. 'What?' He mockingly called over the blaring lyrics about running away that made her face heat up even before he quipped, 'Sure you never heard this before? Seems like it could've been your theme song.' "
Despite her best efforts, by the time Drew completed his homework and she'd looked it over for him he still insisted she had to help make dinner. She considered locking herself in her room, well, as much as she could lock herself in a room that didn't properly lock, ultimately deciding against it when she realized it would only do more to make her a child in his eyes.
That didn't stop her from glaring at him while she sat cross-armed on the counter. "You do realize that it was veggie fried rice that I gave food poisoning to my whole family with, right? And you're adding chicken, which is even more likely to make us sick."
"For goodness sake, Shea," Drew sighed, as he wandered past her with a frying pan. "For someone who claims not to be afraid of anything, you do worry an awful lot."
"I'm not worried," she lied. "I just don't feel like throwing up."
He leaned onto the counter, propping his chin on his hand. "Does that mean if you cooked just for me it would be fine?"
She shoved his face away with an open palm, laughing, "I don't need to deal with you being a huge baby when you get sick. So no, not fine."
Fixing his glasses Drew stated, almost smugly, "I once ate an entire bowl of raw cookie dough and didn't get sick! I think I'll be just fine."
"You are the biggest dork I've ever met. You don't really think that's brag-worthy, do you?"
"I'm not bragging! I'm just saying, " he whined. "I'm not going to get sick from ingredients I know are good. And I'll be right here making sure everything is cooked through and going fine. Please, Shea?"
"No."
"Please ?"
"Didn't I tell you before that the puppy dog look doesn't work for you?"
"I hoped you would change your mind." He shrugged and turned away to point out a knob on the stove. "Would you turn the stove on for me? It's that one there."
"I will not."
"Shea!"
"If I'm going to burn the building down I'd rather it be via an undetectable source." She shoved a flaming hand toward him, but he merely blinked and took a small shuffle away. "I'm not in the mood to get sent home having been caught committing arson."
"Would you quit being ridiculous and just turn the stove on?" Drew snapped at her, knocking her arm away at the elbow.
She didn't budge. "I thought you liked to cook."
"I do!"
"Then why make me do it?"
"I'm not always going to be here, you know. And– and… And it would be nice to have a little help once in a while if you're going to be staying here! The stove?"
She glared while he ranted, half-tempted to kick him. "I hope you enjoy prison. At least it'll be better for you than being forced to go back home will be for me."
His worried, guilty, look almost made up for his forcing her to help. She slid begrudgingly off her spot on the counter and twisted the knob, careful to leave it on the lowest possible setting.
"I need it higher than that," he instructed, "At least medium heat to start."
"If you want it any higher than that you're gonna have to turn it up yourself. I'm not doing it."
He glared at her for a long moment and she stared back, neither of them willing to give in and be the one to turn the heat up. With a roll of his eyes he finally caved, and practically slapped the knob to a higher setting.
"Was that so difficult?"
"It'll be difficult to get out of here when the place goes up in flames."
"Shea," he whined. "Stop that!"
"Freaking you out?"
"Yes!"
"Good." He whined her name again and she forced herself to stifle a laugh. "Didn't you say you had music you wanted me to listen to?"
Drew gasped and without actually responding dashed around the counter and threw open his bedroom door. She hopped off the counter, intent on following him to get a sneak peek inside his room. The stove caught her gaze as she took a step. An image of the kitchen catching on fire while she snuck up on Drew formed in her mind and with a huff she returned to her spot, glaring at the stove.
Of course, there wasn't even so much as a flicker of smoke in the time it took for him to return. Obviously giddy, he plopped a boombox onto the counter next to her. He held a cassette tape box out to her with an overdramatic flourish.
"Would you like to do the honors?"
She held out her hand, and he dropped the tape into her open palm. She turned it over, inspecting the woman on the cover. Her smudged black eyeliner and choppy dark hair intrigued her. Maybe - maybe - Drew had actually been right in his "very cool" comment.
She tapped the tape out of the box and turned to pop it into the boombox. Drew hit play before she could, evidently more excited to share the music with her than she actually was to listen. The stove still burning away had too much of her attention, and she debated reaching over and turning it off while his attention was on the music. The drumbeat blaring through the speakers startled her out of following the impulse.
She gaped at Drew, drumming along in the air, his hair bouncing as he nodded his head in time with the music. She resisted the urge to giggle, reminding herself again that there was no way she could have a crush on him. He stopped just before the lyrics began when his glasses nearly flew off his face.
"Come on," he laughed, his face red with exhilaration. He repeated himself, louder to be heard over the music, and held a hand out to her. His smile started to fade when she hesitated, but she smacked her hand into his before it could turn into a genuine frown. Beaming yet again he pulled her off the counter and she let him spin her around, despite the move not fitting the music.
Before she knew what was happening he'd dropped her hand and whirled around. She tapped her foot to the music, as she watched him. He turned back to her, a spatula clutched in his hand like a microphone, crooning along to the chorus of the song.
She pushed his arm away when he held the spatula out to her to sing - not that she was too embarrassed to sing in front of him or anything. "I don't know the lyrics," she reminded him. He shrugged and brought the spatula back to his lips, dancing around her to pry the fridge door open.
She shifted back and started to reach out to turn the stove off. He turned back to her faster than she would have expected, and, tsking, latched onto her wrist. Throwing the package of raw chicken onto the counter, he pulled her away from the stove. Just before she could collide into him, which she wouldn't have been particularly upset about, he moved, leaving her standing in front of the open fridge.
He listed off the ingredients he'd need out of the fridge and quite literally danced away before she could protest. With a roll of her eyes, she set about the easy task of finding what he'd asked for.
The song ended just as she placed everything onto the counter for him, glaring at the smug smile on his face. "See, now you're cooking," he chuckled in the brief moment of silence before the cassette clicked and the next song started.
"I am not," she insisted.
He bit his lip, then smirked at her and turned up the music. "What?" He mockingly called over the blaring lyrics about running away that made her face heat up even before he quipped, "Sure you never heard this before? Seems like it could've been your theme song."
She shoved his shoulder, careful not to push him hard enough to make him stumble into the knife resting precariously on the cutting board behind his back. "Shut up," she shouted over to him, shaking her head.
He passed the knife to her, which she took from him on instinct more than anything else - being stabbed more than once had left her plenty wary of men holding any sort of blade. "Cut up the chicken. Bite-size pieces work best," he instructed. She thrust the handle of the blade back towards him.
"No. No way ."
He held his hands away from the knife and took a step back. "All you have to do is cut it. There's nothing you can do that could mess that up bad enough it can't be fixed."
She tried to make him take the knife back again, and when he wouldn't she dropped it on the counter. "What if I give you radiation poisoning or something?" she snapped, offering up a glowing hand as lack-luster proof she could make him sick.
"Then I'm just as much at risk standing next to you as I would be eating something you cooked. Go on." He pushed the knife back into her other hand and quickly stepped away so she couldn't give it back.
All she could do was hope she at least looked frightening, glaring at him with a knife clutched in one hand, flames flickering around the other. She must not have, given the way he didn't so much as flinch as he stared back.
"Not really the chicken I feel like cutting with this knife right now," she grumbled. He reached to turn down the music, his eyebrow quirked inquisitively. She didn't repeat herself.
"Come on," he insisted, though his voice had grown gentle and encouraging, taking a bit of the teasing edge off. "I promise you, you can do this. You're not going to mess up anything. And even if you do, so what?"
She felt her face flush again, torn between embarrassment over her own stubbornness and embarrassment over the idea of having him watch her attempt something she knew she was terrible at. She considered throwing the knife back onto the counter and staying in her room until the meal was cooked… or maybe after he'd finished eating and gone back to his room just to avoid having to look at him while she felt so flustered. But she also considered how immature that would seem to him- even if he had been the one dancing around the kitchen using cooking utensils like microphones like a tween girl singing into her hairbrush.
"I'm only going to do this because stabbing things is fun," she told him finally, deciding that giving in and letting them both get food poisoning was better than looking like a child in his eyes any more than she already did.
She'd half expected him to confiscate the knife and kick her out of the kitchen but he only leaned back against the counter with an obnoxiously satisfied look on his face. "That's the spirit," he laughed. As she began cutting up the chicken - careful not to do so in a way that would make her look like an idiot, but not so careful that he didn't remind her at least once that fingers don't grow back - he began to tell her about the first meal he ever cooked.
"Honestly," he admitted with a small shake of his head, "I don't really remember the story that well myself. I was only seven or so, after all."
Shea glanced over to him just briefly, long enough to let him know she was listening to him over the quiet, energetic hum of Joan Jett playing in the background. He leaned back against the counters on his elbows, watching her cut the chicken carefully. She almost expected him to push her to the side and take over, and she all but hoped he'd try one of those cheesy moves and step closer to her to guide her hands in the proper movements. She almost drove the knife into her own head just to get rid of that thought. It would've been such a sleazy thing for him to do, and she hated herself for being simultaneously relieved and disappointed that he didn't try.
"But my mother likes to tell the story whenever family comes to visit," Drew continued quietly. "Apparently I had been out playing with some of the neighborhood children all afternoon - three children around my age who moved away later that year. Mother tells me that the youngest used to follow me everywhere I went, that she cried when I got on the bus to school every morning, begging to go with me."
She poked his arm with the handle of the knife, teasing, "Your first girlfriend?" She hated the way those words felt coming out of her mouth and hated more that she felt anything towards them at all.
He only scoffed and rolled his eyes. "I don't even remember what her name was," he dismissed with a wave of his hand. "I mostly just called her 'baby', according to Mother. 'Bee' for short, actually."
"Aww, how cute. Pet names."
"Just cut the chicken," he grumbled and crossed his arms, glaring half-heartedly at her through lopsided glasses. She stuck her tongue out at him, not pointing out that she was nearly finished, reluctant to draw his gaze towards the massacred chunks of chicken. "As I was saying, I'd spent all afternoon playing with those children, and by the time I went in, I was caked head-to-toe in mud. Mud pies," he laughed quietly under his breath, and she glanced over again, not sure it was all that happy of a laugh. His smile had dropped a little, his eyes darker than she'd seen them yet, sending a strange, almost nervous feeling through her chest.
"My parents banned me from making mud pies when I was eight," she interrupted, unwilling to let herself dwell on whether or not this was actually a happy memory for him. "Merrick chucked a bunch at this kid. Broke one of his birdhouses. We got sent home before dessert and I was forever banned. I didn't even know why we'd gotten in trouble in the first place until the next time the kid came to our house."
"I don't believe you didn't throw the first one," Drew laughed, the smile back on his face. She felt her shoulders relax, releasing tension she didn't realize she'd been holding. "I just don't believe it."
Shea shrugged. "I liked Wren. He was weird, yeah, almost as much of a dork as you, but whenever he came over to build a birdhouse or something he'd let me paint it. It used to piss Merrick off because he swore he'd paint it better, but he asked me to do it anyway."
"Your first boyfriend?" Drew mocked, throwing her earlier question back at her.
Likewise, she only scoffed and rolled her eyes. "Don't be a creep. Wren was Heath's friend. He used to babysit me and the twins."
"So, your first crush then."
"Not even close."
"Yeah, who was it then?" Drew asked, leaning forward. His teasing smirk made her blush and drop the knife to put a hand on his chest and push him away.
"Tell you mine if you tell me yours," she wagered.
He rocked back on his heels and snatched the cutting board, moving it behind him, then turned and pressed a green bottle into one of her hands, a small measuring spoon into the other. "Olive oil. About a teaspoon and a half, give or take. Into the pan," he instructed, nodding his head toward the stove which she'd all but forgotten was on and potentially moments away from catching the kitchen on fire.
"Not happening. I cut the chicken already. That's enough."
He regarded her carefully, his hand slowly lifting to take the bottle from her own. But then he shook his head and dropped his hand back to his side repeating, "Teaspoon and a half."
She kicked out at his shin lightly but, obviously expecting it, he jumped out of the way and stuck his tongue out at her. Carefully pouring the olive oil into the measuring spoon, she asked, "So? Who was it?"
"I asked you first."
"So?"
"So, if you want mine you have to say yours."
She didn't answer for a moment, too busy cringing as she dumped the olive oil into the pan. She didn't exactly expect the oven to explode or anything, and she didn't really want it to, but she almost wished it would just to prove to him that making her cook was a terrible idea. It didn't.
"I don't know what his name is," she admitted. "Just some actor from some old western movie my dad used to watch with me whenever I got sick as a kid." The first and only time she'd come down with a cold since the comet struck she'd spent the day stuck in Go Tower, sniffling and sneezing and begging her father to watch the movie with her. She'd spent the night crying to herself when he never came, more terrified than anything by the realization that Shego mattered more than Shea. She almost wanted to blurt that fact out too, but instead, she added, "Wasn't even a good movie."
"Now that I think about it, I don't know what the name of my first crush is either." He poured the chicken into the pan, though she couldn't tell if it was because he'd finally taken pity on her or he'd just forgotten - either way, she wasn't going to protest. "I don't even know if you could call it a crush," he added under his breath. "Yeah? Why not?"
His face flushed again when he realized she'd heard him. Drew squeaked awkwardly and explained in a rush, "I didn't feel like getting up to change the channel one night as a kid and… And well– um– it's… Let's just say it wasn't particularly appropriate for a six-year-old to watch."
Swallowing the laughter bubbling up her throat, she feigned naivety. "What do you mean? Why not?"
"Don't try that with me," Drew muttered. "We both know you know why not."
"I'm sure I don't know."
"Nngh– then– Fine! Good! You don't get to, either!" Just then he looked more likely to catch on fire than she was, cooling off only as he tossed a bag of frozen vegetables at her, demanding she add a cup's worth of them to the pan. She only realized she'd done what he'd asked without arguing when she turned around and caught his smug grin.
"Shut up," she said before he could speak. He raised his hands up in surrender, but the grin stayed plastered to his face. She tossed a stray carrot chunk that had missed the pan at his face. "Didn't take you for the frozen vegetable type."
"I couldn't even afford fresh vegetables before you showed up. I certainly can't afford it now."
"Well, as long as you couldn't afford it before I have no guilt over that."
"You shouldn't," he told her, suddenly serious. "I'm not trying to make you feel guilty."
She couldn't do anything other than look away from his earnest stare, feeling her whole body warm over and flush. Drew wrapped a hand around her wrist. She let herself be pulled, stumbling toward him, shocked and more flustered than a moment before, only to have him plant his other hand on her shoulder, stopping her before she could collide into him - for the second time that evening. He pressed a wooden spoon into her hand and physically turned her toward the stove, instructing her to stir what was in the pan while he prepared the rice.
She shot a glare at his back when he let her go and turned away, unsure if she was more annoyed at him for continuing to make her cook or at herself for being upset that he didn't pull her into him. "You never finished your story," she noted a minute later, stepping away from the stove as he began to add the rice to the pan. Her voice was colder than she meant for it to be.
His brow furrowed together in confusion, his eyes darting upward as if the answer to all the world's questions were written on his ceiling. "What story?" he finally asked.
"First meal, mud pies, that one."
"Oh! Right! Where was I?"
"Um… I think just… going home covered in mud."
"Yes! Keep stirring," he instructed, waving her back in front of the stove. He didn't even wait for her to begrudgingly return to her spot in front of the stove before he continued his story. "Well, my mother had planned to make chicken pot pie, but she… well, she'd gotten everything out, but ended up getting distracted and wasn't able to cook."
"Why not?" Shea pried.
He just shook his head, dismissively. "It was already getting late, and the girl had followed me inside, crying because she was hungry - I suppose she could have gone home at that point, but we were kids. My mother says I used to do anything to make sure she was happy. And mother's recipe book was right there on the counter."
He paused a moment to take the pan off the stove, and she happily relinquished the wooden spoon. "Are we done now?" she asked, practically begging.
Sighing, he nodded and dumped the food into two bowls she hadn't seen him get out in the first place. "Yes, we're done. Here." He passed one of the two bowls over to her.
She trailed a step behind him on the way to the table, poking the rice with her fork apprehensively. "I'm not sure I want to eat this," she told him as she took her seat, and was immediately met with the sight of him rolling his eyes and shoveling a massive oversized bite into his mouth. She waited for him to spit out the food - or at least choke on an undercooked grain of rice or something, but he didn't.
"It's good," he said, shooting her a grin that made her roll her own eyes to avoid blushing.
"Sure, it was last time too," she muttered, pushing the rice from side to side.
"Oh, just try a bite!"
With a groan, she took a bite. Damn him, it was good. "The rice is chewy," she complained. It wasn't.
"Liar! It is not."
She smirked at him, taking another hesitant bite.
"It's good," Drew repeated. "You didn't kill either of us, or blow up the building, or anything."
"Yeah, well…"
He grinned at her again, more smugly, as she took her third bite.
She was halfway through the bowl, listening to Drew finish his story about how his mother caught him and the young girl throwing as much dirt into the chicken pot pie as they did food, when something in the kitchen caught her eye, and she tapped her fork against the table to get his attention, feigning relaxation she no longer felt. "Hey, Drew?"
He glanced up at her, humming his acknowledgment.
"Your paper towels are on fire," she informed him, gesturing toward the smoking roll, quickly going up in flame.
He turned. And then he shrieked, knocking his chair over in his rush to stand up. He ran the few steps back into the kitchen, bouncing from one foot to the next indecisively, tugging at his hair.
Before the wall behind the towels could catch fire too, Shea pushed Drew - busy throwing open drawers, muttering something about oven mitts - out of her way, and the scooped the burning mess up. Her hands stung with the abnormal feeling of regular old fire, but not bad enough to draw her attention for longer than a moment. She chucked it into the sink, the flames starting to die even before she turned on the faucet. A rush of steam fogged up in her face.
There was a long silent moment between them before she turned to face his wide-eyed stare. "Told you I was bad luck in the kitchen," she said, forcing an awkward laugh. She hoped he would laugh too, but he didn't.
Instead, he muttered, sounding horrified, "I forgot to turn off the stove." Then he stepped towards her so quickly she almost stepped back, but he caught her by the wrists. "Are you alright?" he asked, pulling her hands up to look at them.
She blushed and pried her quickly blistering hands away. "I'm fine," she told him. Her fingers still stung a little, but she knew that it would only take an hour or two for them to heal over completely.
"No, you're not," he protested quietly, drawing her hands back up. The look on his face was so sweet and gentle that she let him. "You're hurt."
"I'm fine," she promised him, then amended that to say, "I will be fine."
He let out a ragged sighed, hanging his head. "I'm so sorry. Stay here, I'll be right back"
"Drew?" she called after him, as he retreated into the bathroom.
He didn't answer and returned a few short minutes later, a first aid kit and a bottle of aloe in his hands. He brushed at his face, and she couldn't quite tell if he was already crying or just looked like he was about to.
"I really don't– I'm okay… You don't need to–"
"Hop up," he interrupted, gesturing to the counter.
"Drew, seriously, it'll heal–"
"Please, Shea," he all but begged.
She gave in and hopped up onto the counter before he could start crying. "You know, it's not your fault I grabbed that, right? I've had worse burns from myself before."
"It's my fault for not turning off the stove," he whispered, choking out the words as he took her hand between his own. The aloe was cool enough to send a shiver through her, and then the relief she felt as he spread it into her skin, his thumbs pressing against her palm, was unlike anything she could remember feeling before.
"You know, my parents banned me from using aloe," she said. He kept his gaze focused on her hand, not meeting her eye. She wasn't sure she could handle looking him in the eye either, as he started wrapping her hand up in gauze bandages that were more than useless on skin that could recover from almost any wound in a matter of hours, if not minutes. "They thought it would spoil me or something, make me too weak and fragile to use my glow."
"I like your parents a little bit less with every detail I learn about them." He pulled her other hand toward him and began repeating the process. His ears had gone pink again, she noticed. She watched him silently, as he took care of her singed hands with more… well, with more genuine care than any of the Team Go medical staff, or even her actual family had since she was a child. It was sweet, and she almost hated him for it. She didn't know how to handle being cared for.
She kicked her foot out, bumping it against his leg. "Told you I was bad luck," she said to him again, avoiding her thoughts.
He shot her a small smile as he finished wrapping the gauze up around her wrist to tape it off. "That was entirely my fault, Shea. I'm–"
"If you say you're sorry one more time I swear I'll burn these bandages off and prove I've given myself worse burns."
He kissed her fingertips before dropping her hand. Her face must have gone as green as his did red, and just as quickly at that. Neither one of them spoke as their eyes finally met again. A million thoughts ran together until they were indecipherable in Shea's mind. She didn't know what to do or say or even how to feel about the fact that… he had just kissed her. It was just her fingers, sure, but he kissed her nonetheless.
"I– Um… Force of habit," Drew said, chuckling nervously. "I've done my fair share of cleaning up my baby cousins' cuts and scrapes."
Her blood ran cold, with none of the relief the aloe had brought. He still thought of her as a child. She'd thought– She didn't even know what she thought! She'd hoped, somewhere in her racing thoughts, that he'd kissed her fingers like that because he cared or something, that it was something friendly, not because she was like a baby cousin to him!
She hopped off the counter before he could step away, putting their bodies unnecessarily close together. "Not a child," she snapped as he moved back.
He was barely even a half-step behind her as she moved back to her probably-cold bowl of fried rice on the table. "That's not what I meant. Shea? I didn't– I'm sorry, okay? I only meant that it's a force of habit."
"Whatever," she dismissed flippantly. What was she getting so mad about anyway? It didn't matter what he thought. He was just some guy she was living with. She still wasn't even sure she liked him, let alone enough for his thoughts on her to matter.
"You're mad at me," he sighed. When she didn't answer he sat back to his own bowl and quietly asked, "Why are you more mad at me for that than you were for getting you hurt?"
"Madder."
"What?"
"It's not 'more mad' it's 'madder'. And I'm not," she lied. "And you didn't get me hurt. This is nothing. And I made the decision to pick it up, so just… Shut up already."
"I'm sorry," he repeated around a mouthful of food. "We should put more aloe on in the morning."
"That really won't–"
"Shea, your hands are completely blistered up! Just– Nngh! It wouldn't kill you, you know, to let yourself… I don't know, not be in pain."
"Sheesh, you're real uppity for someone who tried to set me on fire."
"Shea!" he whined.
"Cool it," she laughed, somewhere between forced and genuine, and kicked him under the table. He flinched and scooted his chair further away from the table with a glare in her direction. "I'm just kidding."
Drew gasped, startling her. "The show!" he cried out. "The new cooking show! It's about to start!" His poor chair clattered to the ground for a second time. He was racing toward the couch before she could even blink, flipping rapidly through channels to get to the new show.
"Are you gonna watch with me?" he asked, turning on his knees to look over the back of the couch at her.
"Cooking shows aren't really my thing," she teased, already standing up to go join him.
"I'd like for you to stay," he told her. His sincerity made her stomach twist and her brain do flips trying to figure out what his feelings towards her were - was she a friend or a child in his eyes?
"Are you worried it's gonna be scary?" she asked, letting herself fall onto the couch beside him, careful to keep her lightly mummified hands up to avoid any unneeded pain from hitting them against anything for the next half hour.
"No," he muttered, "just nice to have someone to watch it with, I guess."
She nudged his shoulder with her own, as the show began. "You're the king of dorks."
"What does that make you?"
Shea paused, then answered, "The supreme leader of the world and everything, more powerful than any king."
"That seems fair," Drew laughed, nudging her shoulder in return, "for someone who can just set fire to anyone who bothers her. Now shush."
She jabbed a finger against his ribs, then flinched as the pressure inadvertently made the burn hurt a smidge more.
"I'm cold," she whined, at the commercial break. Two minutes later found her having to shift closer to him to share the blanket he had brought back out from his bedroom. She forced herself to avoid the temptation to curl up against him, as much as she wanted to rest her head on his shoulder and let herself fall asleep. In fact, she did her best to avoid touching him at all. Except, of course, to elbow him and demand he make the meals the chefs on the show made, her mouth watering at the sight of them. He refused to promise anything, pushing her gently.
She faked a gasp. "First you try and burn me alive, and now you're assaulting me?"
"I oughta put tape over your mouth, is what I should do," he mumbled in return, before gesturing to the television. "Back on. Zip it."
She resisted the temptation for as long as she could, at least. She was barely conscious by the time her head crashed against his shoulder, while the chefs finished up their last meals of the episode. She felt him wrap the blanket more snugly around her, and even though she was attempting to force herself awake and off of him, she slipped entirely out of consciousness, asleep on his shoulder.