Another week without a The Company You Keep update, but eeyyy...maybe take this TCYK-themed in-between scene from the episode The Mentor of Our Discontent.
Mind you, I still stand by my headcanon Drakgo are the old married couple... lol
Discontent
By evening, the mentee had outworn his welcome in her book. What had been intended as a harmless joke – not only to torment the man, but to get him away from hours of scouring an internet archive of items of villainous interest – had backfired, to say the least.
Shego sat perched now on the edge of her chair and watched incredulously as tomorrow's plans were made without her. First thing in the morning, Drakken and Lucre were scheduled to fly out to obtain the URC, and Shego was nowhere in the picture.
Watching Drakken warm up to the intruder made her lip curl. She found herself crossing her arms over her chest and scowling back to the supercomputer in contemplation.
Denying herself the time to wallow in any form of self-pity, Shego jumped up and strode barefoot across the cold polished floor, practically shouldering between the men and shoving Lucre aside. The man made a meek noise of objection, but stayed out of it as Shego grabbed her partner in crime by the sleeve to tow back toward the computer. "You know, I'm taken with that animation ray," she began.
Drakken caught her hand and pried it off. "I'm confident about this one, Shego," he said, seeing right through her. "Why don't you go make sure the hovercar is fueled up, hm? Lucre, so I was thinking—"
Shego's hands fell to her sides as she watched, mouth agape, as Drakken turned away from her to guide Lucre away, going over finer details of tomorrow's plan without her.
She turned sharply on her heel and skulked out of the lab, slapping the light switch on her lamp as she went. She was inclined to plasma blast something or someone – Lucre for instance – but kept the impulse under control.
Back in her own private quarters, she spent far too much time soaking in her tub, hair flopped over the side behind her to stay dry. The water practically boiled as she stewed there, filling the room with dense steam.
The door swinging open without so much as a knock had her sucking in a sharp gasp and ducking further into the water, suds up to her chin and arms crossed protectively over herself. "Hey!" she snapped, spying the familiar blue shape in the haze as the chilly breeze wafted in from the gaping door.
Drakken was already checking the cabinet. "Have you any spare soap?" he wondered without sparing her a single glance.
"Why do you need—?"
He gasped in eureka then, holding up an unopened box like a prize. "Ah, there it is! Thank you, Shego!" he sang, and out he went, shutting the door behind him before she could give him a verbal lashing.
Her question going unanswered, she sank deeper until she could blow some bubbles. The water was much too hot now, and she'd long since gotten pruney.
It was shortly after 6 o'clock when she toweled off and pulled on her pajamas for the evening. She left her room tying her robe securely around her waist with the intention of venturing to the kitchen when noise down the hall pulled her in another direction.
Much to her displeasure, she stared at the backs of the heads of two men on the sofa. She walked up stiffly behind them, snatching the TV guide off the armrest nearest Drakken and scowling at the circled broadcast of a movie he'd been too cheap to see in theaters with her some years back, let alone buy. Just her luck, it went to commercial before she could incinerate the guide or stalk out, and she managed to give Drakken a gentle whap on the head with the magazine the moment he turned to Lucre to open his big mouth about the movie.
Distracted from whatever he was about to ramble about, he ducked and glanced up to Shego.
"Oh, are you going to join us?" piped Lucre before Drakken could utter a word. "This is a great movie! I've seen it five times—"
"Uh, Lucre, I'll be right back," said Drakken in lieu of excusing himself, already jumping up under Shego's heated glare. He walked briskly past her, and Shego turned out of the living room to follow.
"What's going on here?" she hissed at his back.
"I'm taking a break from the lab," explained Drakken with a dismissive wave of his hand.
"Why is he still here?"
He didn't answer her question. "If you'd like to watch the movie too, there's room on the couch for everyone."
"You didn't tell me it started already," grumbled Shego, more than a little miffed as they turned sharply into the kitchen.
"You looked like you were having a nice bath," he said. "I didn't want to disturb you. It's only a few minutes in, so you can still—"
She almost smacked a bag of popcorn out of his hand, but instead she unfolded it and tossed it in the microwave the right way. "I'm not thirdwheeling on your date with Lucre."
Drakken rolled his eyes. "Please, Shego. I'm out of his league."
She crossed her arms and cocked her hip. "Just as long as you don't invite him for a sleepover."
The man fidgeted, flicking a sidelong glance to the microwave as he anxiously waited for the popcorn to begin to pop. "Actually…"
"Whatever. I'm going to bed." She shoved past him, and turned at the door to shake a finger at him. "If you ask me about a threesome, Doc, so help me…"
He scoffed and waved her off.
Shego returned mere seconds later, yanking open the fridge door to grab last night's leftovers. Drakken scowled at her as she took a bite of the last slice of cold pizza.
"Hey!" he whined. "I was saving that!"
"Tough," she grunted around a mouthful as she left the kitchen for good.
By six thirty, Shego lounged lazily in his bed. The television suspended at the foot of the grand round mattress was tuned in to the exact channel as the one in the living room. When it cut to commercial break, she should have expected Drakken to come sprinting in, already yanking off his belt and shedding his lab coat before he could reach his walk-in closet. She leaned a little for a better view, watching the blue man strip buck naked and redress just as fast into his jammies before dashing back out of the room.
If he'd noticed her, he'd done a fine job giving her the cold shoulder.
Quite some time after the movie had ended, Shego had already shut off the television and lay awake in the dark when the bedroom door slid open again, casting light in from the hallway. Drakken was guffawing, to Lucre no doubt, "Alright! See you tomorrow morning, dude." As usual, dude did not sound natural coming out of his mouth.
Drakken hit the switch to turn on the light and Shego's hand flew up to shield her eyes. He certainly noticed her now, because he hummed curiously. "Shego? What are you doing here?" He didn't sound especially surprised.
She pulled a pillow over her head. "We never installed cable in my room," she grumbled in reminder.
"Oh…I'll get on that." She could hear his footsteps nearing, and felt the bed shift as he knelt on it. "Are you staying tonight?"
She dared to peel the pillow away, relieved to see he'd shut off the glaring overhead light and turned on the dim lamp above the bed. "Dunno. There's only enough room in this bed for two," she said, rolling onto her back and gesturing widely to her sides at the expansive bed before letting them drop to starfish to effectively take up as much space as possible – which still wasn't much. Honestly, the bed could accommodate a lot more than two, but the only guests she wanted to fathom allowing in it would be their children—
She halted the thought. Drakken was distracting her anyway as he crawled over.
"That's fine," he said, and he all but dropped like a rock, the weight of his arm settling over her waist enough to drive the air out of her lungs as his head rested on her chest. After a moment, he snaked his arms around her and hummed contentedly with his face turning into her breast. An involuntary warmth was kindled as he tugged at the string of her robe to loosen it up so he could slip in a hand to begin kneading her. "Three's a crowd anyway."
As much as she would have liked to let him work through her layers of clothing, she pulled his hand out of her robe and squeezed his wrist. Her lip curled. "Did your romantic evening with Lucre put you in the mood or something?"
Drakken propped up on his elbow to grimace and pout. "It was not – I – you said you didn't want to see it!" he argued.
"Doy. Because it was boring and there are better things we could've been doing."
His brow furrowing for a moment, Drakken rubbed his chin in contemplation before running his hand back through his hair to pull out the ponytail for the evening and give her a coy smile. "Care to show me what we could have been doing?" he asked wryly.
Shego glared briefly before pushing herself up to peck his lips. "I don't think so." She dodged and pushed him back when he tried to steal a little more than a chaste kiss. "You reek of pickles again, Doc. Go brush your teeth."
Drakken grunted and slunk off to do just that. He returned quickly. Shego had already tossed aside her robe and nestled down into the blankets in her usual spot. On a reasonably good night, he might sidle up behind her to hook his chin over her shoulder to savor the precious few hours of privacy they had together, which were scarcer now that there was no telling when a teen hero might drop in unannounced.
Shego waited for the familiar ritual. A minute passed before she turned to glance back at Drakken laying just out of reach behind her, twiddling his thumbs and staring at the ceiling. He hadn't even turned off the lamp yet.
Acknowledging him was a mistake. Now that he knew she was awake, he let out a breath and she should have expected him to spiel about Lucre and giving him a chance, and how maybe it wouldn't be so bad taking the man in under his wing. Shego squeezed her eyes shut but couldn't shut out Drakken's optimism that maybe the wannabe could be a villain after all.
She wasn't especially in the mood for it, but she rolled over to kindly shut him up by meeting his lips. Derailed from his train of thought, Drakken blinked up in surprise before melting into her with a happy hum. Shego swung her leg over to straddle him as his hands began to roam, but leaned back just as he managed to pop off the first button of her top.
"Can Lucre do this?" she crooned wryly between pecks.
Drakken shifted his hips and gave a shrug. "He might if I asked nicely," he fired back – and then Shego was leaning away before he could work off the second button.
Without his contacts, he couldn't quite see the dirty look she shot down at him, but the disgust in her voice was unmistakable. "Then why don't you go ask him?" she snapped, and she was already climbing out of bed before he could reach for her.
"Shego!" he whined as she tugged on her robe and made for the exit. "I was only kidding!"
The mood had been ruined – not that there'd been much of one to begin with. Shego stalked out the door, leaving Drakken to sleep alone for the night.
She didn't sleep much better in her own private room, reserved for those times she really needed her break from him, but from the moment she flopped down into her plush welcoming bedspread she was reconsidering returning to the lavish scarlet bed she shared with him most nights.
Come morning, she dressed hastily into her gear before the crack of dawn. She paused outside of Drakken's bedroom door to press an ear to it, hearing him snoring still, and moseyed on to the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee. As she waited, eyeballing the contents of the refrigerator, she weighed her breakfast options of a yogurt cup or a banana.
Somehow she found herself frying up pancakes – a simple palate pleaser her partner in crime could never turn down – and she took a seat at the card table they shared for dining, watching the doorway for signs of Drakken.
By the time she pealed her eyes away from the door, the butter had completely melted and the syrup had been soaked up like a sponge. She took a couple bites of a cold pancake before scraping her plate into the trash and dropping the dish in the sink with enough carelessness that she hoped it would shatter.
She concluded, as she hastily crossed the cavern that sufficed as a garage for the hovercar, that Drakken had slipped by her without her noticing. She shouted uselessly over the rumble of the engine and resorted to throwing a plasma blast past the hovercar to get his attention just as Drakken had been steering the vehicle out of the open port, chattering away happily with Lucre.
The hovercar barely paused long enough at the edge of the cliff for Shego to hop aboard and squeeze herself in beside Drakken, loathing Lucre on his other side a bit too much to put herself between the men. Shego crossed her arms and curtly reminded her partner that he needed her in case he got himself into a bind, but Drakken merely blew a raspberry to disregard her lack of confidence in him.
As Drakken steered the craft out over open ocean, Shego leaned back to cast a stink eye over to the blissfully oblivious Lucre. This was going to be a long day.