" 'Stop that!' Shea blurted. 'Stop what?' he demanded, annoyed, and confused, and annoyed that he felt confused. 'Trying to apologize?' She threw her hands up, all but shouting, 'Yes!' as if that should explain everything she was feeling."
It took precisely twelve minutes of trying to explain himself to her door for Drew to give up and retreat into the kitchen. He wondered briefly if she'd just turned her implants off so she wouldn't have to listen to him. Remembering how upset she'd looked the entire time they were broken, he dismissed the thought. He couldn't imagine she would do that by choice.
Thirty minutes after he'd given up trying to coax her out of her room, the smell of his freshly baked peanut butter stickies did the trick. He knew they would. She darted in and out of his personal space, snapping the tray from his mittened hands before he could so much as blink. As she moved away from him, she popped a piping hot fresh-from-the-oven cookie into her mouth. His warning that they were hot died on his tongue when she didn't so much as flinch - clearly, she could handle higher temperatures just fine.
Knowing that didn't stop him from gently prying the tray from her hands before she could blister them up again. He took the fact that she let him as a good sign. Or at least… not a bad sign.
"I really am sorry, Shea," he said for what had to be at least the tenth time. She grunted, granting him only the faintest trace of acknowledgment. He decided it was better not to stop her when she scooped the tray back up and all but stomped over to plop down on the couch. He followed - giving a cautious few steps worth of space - and sat in the chair across from her, lacing and unlacing his fingers. She bit into a second cookie and the swell of pride that blossomed in his chest at the fact that she clearly liked them had him reaching for one for himself. Without even bothering to turn her head she swatted his hand away with a quick smack, like his old speech therapist striking his knuckles with a ruler.
"Mine," she snapped, as he hastily retracted his hand. At least she was eating, he thought, with a slight roll of his eyes. Despite the fact that she was glaring at the TV with such malice that he worried she'd blow it up with her mind, her voice was quiet when she spoke again a few minutes later, mumbling, "We're out of strawberries."
He froze with his fingers locked together, startled by her statement. "You ate the entire–? I mean… Um… We can get more next week," he began to say, but Shea was shaking her head before he finished speaking.
"No," she protested. In a weird way, it was nice to see her acting like a normal teenager. Even if that did come with grumpy, grumbly demands. "I want more now."
Unsure if he should be mentally sighing or mentally grinning, Drew reminded himself once again that at least Shea was eating. "Fine. I'll get more tomorrow." Her lack of response outside of an annoyed sounding and entirely incoherent grumble made him add, "I'll even go before class if you just talk to me!"
Her glower moved from the TV to him and he couldn't help pressing himself back into the chair as if he could phase right through the fabric to safety. "There's nothing to talk about."
Gulping past the fear forming a lump in his throat, he managed a choked, "Shea–"
"I'm not talking until I have more strawberries."
At least she stopped glaring at him with that murderous look in her eye.
Taking a risk he let his eyes dart around the room, looking for the sweatshirt he'd lent to her the last time they went out. Spying it on the back of her chair in the kitchen, he stood and retrieved it. She was watching him coldly, another half-eaten cookie held up to her lips.
"Then let's go," he said, stepping in front of her and dropping it into her lap. He would have laughed at her flabbergasted expression if he wasn't so worried it would send her over the edge and make her decide to blast him. Briefly, he considered how lucky he'd been that she had been desperate enough for a place to go that she hadn't followed through with her threat to hurt him the night they met.
"I'm not going with you," she protested, flinging the sweatshirt to the ground.
Hoping she didn't notice his nerve fading as he took a step back, he forced himself to shrug. "Fine, then I'm not getting you any strawberries."
Not that he would admit it to her, but he did have two… fairly fair… reasons for not wanting to leave without her. The first was just that, on principle, he thought if she wanted something she should at least be with him to get it. The second was that it was quickly getting dark outside earlier in the evening - in synchronization with the cooling September air. And to be honest with himself, the idea of going out this late made him nervous. He figured she was more capable of defending herself than he was, so going out without her to, well… protect him was out of the question. By now, she must have figured out that he didn't exactly live in a great area.
Her chest heaved, her nostrils flaring, and he took another hurried step back, no longer caring if she noticed his fear. Staring at him, Shea loosened her grasp on the tray of cookies and let them unceremoniously clatter to the ground.
Again, he was tempted to laugh. There was something so wonderfully childish about her way of expressing her emotions. She might get annoyed with him for pointing out how young she was, but he found it endearing, in its way. As much as he enjoyed her company over the last few days, something about her that he found deeply unsettling vanished only when she behaved the way he was used to teenagers behaving - which he supposed was to say when she did anything other than sitting or reading in silence. She always looked like... She looked as if she were waiting to be told what to do with herself. He found that odd, to say the least.
She muttered something under her breath that he couldn't quite make out, but before he could ask what she'd said, she sniffled and knocked their shoulders together in her hurry to push past him. He let himself wonder only briefly if she was crying before he darted toward her, grabbing her arm.
Jerking out of his grasp she turned to glare at him again. Her eyes looked a little watery, he thought. Not enough to say she was crying though.
"Don't touch me," she ground out, her gaze dropping to fixate on the floor instead of his face.
"I should have told you I knew," he sighed, holding up his hand in surrender and as a promise not to touch her again.
"Stop that!" Shea blurted.
"Stop what?" he demanded, annoyed, and confused, and annoyed that he felt confused. "Trying to apologize?"
She threw her hands up, all but shouting, "Yes!" as if that should explain everything she was feeling.
"You know what?" he muttered, turning his back on her to make his way back to the couch. "I know I messed up with the– with the flyers, but I don't know what you want from me."
Truly, he thought, he would never fully understand other people. But perhaps that had simply been the fault of attending high school from the age of nine. He never did interact much with people his age, let alone anyone younger than him. Then again, maybe she was just confusing. Shouldn't she be happy that he was trying to make sure she wasn't found? Or… or did she secretly want to go home? Maybe she was hoping her family would find her. That thought stung in a strange way, so he pushed it from his mind before he could get upset about it.
"I want strawberries," she said, and he thought it almost sounded like she was trying to make a joke. He wasn't sure if laughing would just be setting himself up for getting shouted at again.
"Yeah well, either you come with me or you're not getting them," he muttered, kicking a piece of a broken cookie out of his way and falling back into the chair. "So, there," he added, putting his own childish spin on the situation by sticking his tongue out like a petulant toddler.
Embarrassed by the impulse as he was, he was glad it at least got a quiet snort out of her. A hint of a smile formed on his own face at the sound, even though he tried to resist it.
"I don't want to go with you," she muttered insistently.
"If you're so mad at me that you don't want to go with me then why won't you just let me apologize?" he argued.
"I don't want to go because I'm already putting you into danger just by– by existing near you, you idiot!"
Rearing back from the sudden increase in volume, he gawped at her. "You're mad at me because... you're dangerous?"
"No," Shea denied, her voice dropping to a mutter as she shuffled back toward the couch and stooped to clean up the broken cookies. "I'm mad because... because... I don't know!"
He didn't say a word, hoping his silence would goad her into finishing her thought. Miraculously, he was right.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor with her gaze averted and his sweatshirt clutched to her chest like a childhood blanket - which he told himself was not cute - she confessed, "I'm just mad that... that you know who I am. I... It was nice, okay? To think someone could like... I don't know, me and not Shego. And I'm mad that... that I didn't tell you even though I knew you could get hurt because of who I am. And I'm mad that I was stupid enough to hope you wouldn't find out before I told you. And just– forget it. All of this is so stupid."
For a moment he managed only a feeble, "Oh," as he processed what she'd said. "You– You know I'm not mad. I get why you wouldn't want to tell me. And really, I don't know anything about... um... about Shego, except that that's your... superhero name?"
With another seemingly rapid change of emotion - at least, as far as he could understand her emotions, she sniffled. "I– I get it if I'm not worth the risk," she choked out, and this time he was more than certain she might start crying. If she hadn't just yelled at him not to touch her he might have even tried to hug her.
"Not...? Shea, I'm not going to kick you out just because you didn't tell me about– about all that," he promised in a rush of reassurance. Strange as he knew it was, there was no part of him that wanted her gone.
"That isn't what I meant. It's not about me not telling you," she insisted with a shake of her head. "It's– You could get hurt, Drew! Or someone could decide to blame you for my running away - they'll say you kidnapped me if you get caught!"
"Will you just come with me?" he interrupted, hoping to stop her from talking before her words could go to his head and make him as worried as she seemed to be. "Why don't we just...? Let's just go buy more strawberries and you can see that everything is fine and you're no more dangerous than anything else."
"But I am more dangerous!" Her hands flared at her sides and he wasn't sure if she was attempting to prove her point or if she didn't have as much control over the flickering green flames as he'd first thought. "You don't know what my family will do for the team." She sneered at those words as if personally offended, disgusted even, by them.
He risked tossing the sweatshirt to her again and her fire quickly went out as she caught it. "So, come with me. Fill me in on the way."
"Just forget it," she muttered. "They don't matter."
They, he thought, weren't precisely what she was trying to claim didn't matter. He couldn't tear his eyes away from her face, waiting in wonder to see if she would begin to cry or if her claim that she wasn't a crier was true. As it was, it had been a long time since he had seen someone look so confused and distressed. And he certainly didn't want to think about the previous times.
"Are you still mad?" he questioned, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose before he could start tearing up himself, at the very thought of seeing Shea cry.
"I don't know!"
He sighed. "Can we please just go so I can buy you more strawberries and at least pretend to make up for not telling you?"
"Still doesn't make up for me not telling you."
"It does if you come with me!" He stood as she slipped the sweatshirt on, throwing the hood up with one final glare in his direction that most certainly did not make him flinch ever so slightly. Grinning back at her, he sifted through his backpack for his wallet and hurried to the door when he realized she'd already stepped into her shoes and was waiting for him.
"You aren't allowed to blame me if something goes wrong," she informed him.
Watching her stuff her hands into the pockets of his sweatshirt, he had a suspicion he wouldn't be getting it back. It didn't really matter, he supposed. He did have one other sweatshirt, which he liked better anyway. And letting her keep that one stopped them from having to spend the money to buy her her own as the weather continued growing colder. Not to mention how cute she–
He shook that thought away and glanced away from her as he promised that he wouldn't blame her if something were to go wrong. Although he would have liked to have promised that nothing would go wrong at all, he couldn't say that for sure and it seemed extra wrong to lie to her when his whole afternoon had already been spent worrying about her being mad at him for doing so.
"To the grocery store!" he declared, thrusting his keys into the air as he followed her out of the apartment. It would have been easy to miss her lips quirking up in a small smile if he hadn't been looking to make her laugh in the first place. She was quick to bite her lip and force the smile away.
"Uh-huh," she answered instead, rolling her eyes at him. Slouching even more than before, she drifted a step or two behind him the entire way out of the building no matter how many times he slowed down in hopes of letting her catch up.
The further down the street they went, the more distance she put between them until he gave up on giving her the choice, snagged her sleeve, and dragged her along beside him. "Would you keep up?" Her only response was to shuffle her feet and shrug her shoulder. "So, you were going to fill me in on your family and 'the team'," he said, almost but not-quite joking.
Shea scoffed and he dropped his hand mid-finger-quote. "Trust me, you don't want to know." She heaved in a breath and barked out a dry, bitter sounding laugh. "Honestly? You'll probably be just fine," she muttered, not without a hint of... something... in her tone that made his stomach coil deep into the realms of nausea. "They've let guys a lot worse than you get away with a lot worse than– Oh, never mind. Who knows? Maybe you won't be fine. It wouldn't be unlike them."
Gulping back his fear, he wiped his clammy palms on his jeans. "And you?"
"What about me?"
"What will happen to you? If we get caught?"
He barely noticed her inch closer to him but felt himself swell with a strange sense of pride nonetheless. Knowing for a fact that she could protect him better than he could protect her didn't stop him from, well, feeling protective over her. And it was nice, he had to admit to himself, to have someone look to him for protection, even if he knew he couldn't supply it.
"I dunno." She gave a half-hearted shrug, and stepped even closer to him, almost pressed against him, as they walked inside the shop. "I'll get dragged back to Go City, probably get stuck under doubled high-security containment measures, and get some damsel in distress script to follow when asked about where I was."
"Containment measures?" he sputtered, then squeaked and promptly fell silent at her less than gentle stomp on his foot. Dropping his voice he muttered, "You could have just told me to be quiet, you know."
"Can we just get the stupid fruit and go?" she whined, giving his sleeve a tug.
He nodded, doing his best to not let how nervous she was making him show on his face. From the way her fingers seemed locked around his sleeve, he suspected he wasn't hiding it all that well. Either that or there was something else that had her clinging to him and glancing around suspiciously as they made their way to the produce section.
Five minutes felt like they dragged on for hours, especially when the cashier miscounted their change three times and had to start over each time. Though he'd pointedly not commented on Shea's proximity it hadn't helped that she was glued to him the whole time. She smelled good. Like the shampoo she'd bought the day before, rather than his shampoo which she hadn't hesitated to tell him was weird. It was... nice, in a horribly distracting way that was all the more horrible for the fact that it shouldn't have been distracting at all.
She finally seemed to relax once they were halfway back to the apartment. Not heeding his warning to wait until they could get home to wash them, she snagged the carton of strawberries from his hands and snuck one out, momentarily staining her lips red in her hurry to take a bite. He realized as he watched her that peanut butter stickies didn't count as dinner - which meant he also realized quite suddenly that he didn't even get one of them, and his stomach was starting to growl in protest. How could he hope she'd take his insistence that she eat seriously if he couldn't be bothered to remember just because he'd been distracted?
Sneaking a strawberry for himself earned him a mocking repeat of his warning not to eat any before they'd been washed, and his gentle shove to her shoulder finally got him that laugh he'd been needing to hear all day. He was glad, to say the least, that she seemed to be relaxing. And the less she glanced around like there was danger lurking on every corner, the more he found he could relax too.
He finally let his guard down when she made to snag for his glasses - "Payback," she'd claimed, "for stealing a strawberry." With a laugh, he twisted out of her reach and danced backward away from her.
He really shouldn't have let his guard down.
His back crashed into something solid and before he could flinch, let alone turn to see what he'd bumped into, he was roughly shoved forward. He stumbled into Shea who easily caught and steadied him before he could knock them both to the ground. The moment he was stable, he whirled around, pushing her behind him in alarm.
He was fairly certain that the blond man standing before them, not much older than himself, didn't have good intentions - especially considering the sneer on his face and the knife he held up between them. He wasn't sure, however, whether Shea truly didn't understand what the world was like outside of her strange little bubble, or if she was just impulsive. No matter what the reason, she was quick to duck under his arm as he stuttered out apologies.
He squeaked and fell silent for the second time that evening as she angrily demanded, "What's your problem, dude?"
Whatever the man said fell on deaf ears. All Drew could hear anymore was his own heartbeat. Whatever it was, it clearly bothered Shea. He saw her shoulders tense, and then shake up and down, almost as if she was laughing. For a brief moment, he was able to focus past the blood rushing through his head, just long enough to hear her response.
"I'm gonna give you one chance to back off," she laughed, though there was no humor to it. She sounded genuinely threatening - nothing like any of the threats she'd thrown his way over the last several days… How many days was it anyway? Four? Even her threat to "kick his ass" the night they met had been nowhere near as grave as she sounded at that moment.
The blond man clearly didn't take her threat seriously. The next several seconds seemed to pass in slow-motion, and in the blink of an eye at the same time.
Drew might have shouted something as the man lunged for Shea, the slender knife glistening dangerously under the light of a street lamp, but the carton of strawberries was shoved into his stomach with enough force to drive the wind out of him. Doubled over, trying to catch his breath, he watched Shea gracefully side-step away from the weapon, like a ballerina but scarier.
Her leg kicked out with such speed he didn't see it happen until it was over. The man reeled back several steps, one hand shooting to his face. The blood dripping from his nose was enough to turn Drew's stomach, and he would have turned away if it weren't for Shea. Shell-shock was only one of the reasons he didn't try and grab her to pull her away from the fight. The fact that she was evidently winning, which really shouldn't have been surprising, was another good reason to stay still and see how things played out.
With a sense of excitement that terrified him, he realized - as the man cursed and called Shea something foul - that she was… toying with him. She jumped back, firmly knocking Drew out of harm's way as the blond wildly swung the knife at her. She ducked and dodged his sporadic attacks, goading the man into spinning in dizzying circles until he looked ready to fall over.
With a laugh that was closer to a girly giggle than he'd heard from her before, she kicked out again, a blow to the blond's stomach that had him keeling over. That really should have been the end of it. Hell! The first kick should have been the end of it. But Shea launched forward anyway, her fist swinging upward and connecting with his jaw with enough force to seemingly bend the man's spine in the wrong direction before he finally collapsed to the ground, groaning and scrambling away.
Drew was still frozen in place, the strawberries clutched dutifully to his chest, as he stared wide-eyed at Shea who bent down to scoop something off the ground.
"Finders-keepers?" she asked, twirling the discarded dagger between her fingers as if she'd been training with knives for years. He really wouldn't have been surprised if that were true.
His brain all but shut down for a moment and without realizing what he was doing, he grabbed her by the shoulders and started hauling her back to the apartment. It was only once they reached their street that his mind snapped back into his body.
"What the hell, Shea?" he blurted, pushing her a step away from him.
She had absolutely no right looking as… sweet, and innocent, and young as she did, blinking up at him nervously as if she hadn't just gleefully beaten a man bloody. A man who seemed intent on stabbing her, but that did little to silence the buzzing thoughts running rampant through his mind, too loud and too fast to be heard clearly.
"You did hear the part where he threatened to kill you, right?" she asked, mumbling without looking up at him. "He started it," she added and kicked a pebble, seemingly fascinated with the way it bounced into the middle of the street.