Disclaimer: I do not own Ben 10 or its sequels, spin-off and related characters. All is the property of Man of Action and Cartoon Network. I'm just borrowing them for some non-profit entertainment.

Growth

Chapter Ten: Where the Watch Belongs

Kevin was already waiting for them in the parking lot when both boys teleported planet side from the Weekend Academy station. Leaning against the car, reading what looked like an automotive magazine in one hand, and holding a fresh can of beer in the other. Calm and casual.

"Oh you gotta be kidding me!" Devlin growled under his breath. He stomped across the parking lot toward Kevin.

It was all Kenny could do to shake his head in resignation and follow the older boy.

"Are you drinking!?" Devlin demanded the moment they were close enough to speak. Sure enough, there was a brand new 24-case of LöBrau in the back seat. With a snarl of much more frustration than the situation actually merited, Devlin yanked open the back seat, pulled out the case of beer and threw it in the trunk instead. He then shoved a condemning finger in his father's face. "You're not driving! Get in the back seat. What the hell's wrong with you?"

Not one to intimidate easily, especially not by skinny teenagers half his side, and doubly especially not by his own progeny, Kevin just heaved an unaffected sigh. "Still uptight and pissy I see."

"I am not uptight!" The younger Osmosian all but screeched. Passers by in the parking lot turned at his exclamation, recognized him as that uptight rule-humper Devlin 'Tennyson' being uptight again, and looked away uninterested. Nothing new here, lets move on.

"Dev, I'm tired." Kenny groaned, climbing into the back seat. "We've got school tomorrow and its Finals Week. Can we just go home already. You can bitch and growl at Kevin on the way."

Deciding to let the 'bitch and growl' comment slide, Devlin insisted, "I'm driving."

Heaving a second sigh -this one of exasperation- Kevin took another sip of his beer and sat down in the passenger seat.

"Back seat!" Devlin snapped. "I'm not driving with an open alcohol container up front with me. You wanna ride home with us, you get in the back next to Kenny."

"Gawd. You're worse than your mother." Kevin groaned as he got out of the passenger seat, walked around to the other side of the car and climbed in the back. The seat was cold from the 24-rack but the Osmosian chose not to comment on it. Instead, he flopped down, buckled his belt, took another sip of his drink and asked, "So, how was your weekend?"

Devlin chose to use adjusting the seat -Kevin was a bit taller than him- as an excuse not to answer. So, instead, Kenny volunteered, "Dev ruined the combat exercise for his team again."

"He doesn't need to know that, Kenny!" The older boy growled as he pulled out of the parking lot and into the flow of traffic.

While at the exact same time, Kevin asked, "Again?"

"Oh, yeah." The younger man nodded with a bit more enthusiasm than was necessary. "Its like Devlin's thing. In our first combat exercise he bullied the rest of the team into following him and stole command from the team leader -that's why Billings hates him, he was the team leader-, he abandons his team to go solo, and this time he just wasn't paying attention and let one of the other team's guys get through the perimeter." A pause, "Devlin's really bad at team stuff. Sometimes I wonder if -because Aunt Gwendolyn home schooled him for so long- he never really learned how to get along with others."

"I'm right here!" Devlin snapped from the front seat, insulted.

"Sometimes I wonder if you never leaned how to get along with others." Kenny repeated, this time speaking directly to his older cousin. "Since Aunt Gwendolyn kept you locked up in the tower for the first decade of your life. You didn't really get to socialize much in your formative years. That's something that's always bothered me about Disney's Tangled, by the way. Rapunzel was way to well adjusted and social for someone who'd never had any other human contact besides her 'mother' before."

Kevin blinked at the tangent.

"Kenny, it was a cartoon." Devlin reminded him.

Deciding not to allow himself to be distracted by the tangent, Kevin steered the conversation back to his son and his apparent poor performance during combat exercises. "Ya know, it took me a really long time to get along with others and work on a team too. Tennyson and Magister Labrid had to practically beg me to help them find the Highbreed and protect Earth -and I live on Earth!"

"We get it. You're a selfish asshole." Devlin grumbled from the driver's seat.

Kevin made a face of displeasure but decided to take a sip of his beer instead of biting back a scathing retort. Instead, he said, "My point is, it took me a long time before I could be a team player."

Devlin did not seem the least bit moved as he made a lane change and then a left turn.

"My main issue," continued Kevin, "was trust. I had been on my own for so long that I didn't know how to work within a team. To trust others to have my back when something like that had never happened to me before. It was really your mom, and not my friendship with Tennyson that helped me get over that. Sometimes, all you really need is just one person to care about besides yourself."

"I do care about someone besides myself!" The younger Osmosian snapped. Then went quiet, muttering more to the steering wheel than to anyone else in the car. "That someone just doesn't trust me anymore."

Kenny fidgeted in his seat next to Kevin.

The older man glanced between the boy next to him and the back of his son's head. He reached a hand to touch the faux-Omnitrix in his pocket, remembering how he found it hidden in the Kenny's room. Not just taken off by the boy and misplaced, but actually hidden with intention and care. When Kevin asked Tennyson if he ever took off the Omnitrix his first though was that Kevin was going to try and absorb it again. Did Kenny take off his faux-Omnitrix as an attempt to keep it out of reach of his own Osmosian comrade?

Kevin studied the boy. Staring out the window with just a little to much intention. Trying to avoid looking at Devlin in the driver's seat or the other Osmosian next to him.

"Ya know what I think you two need." Kevin blurted out, an idea suddenly occurring to him. "A road trip! Like the ones I used to take your mom, and your dad on!"

"Weren't you trying to collect allies to defeat an alien threat that no legitimate authority believed was real?" Devlin asked.

While at the exact same time, Kenny grumbled, "I have to spend the summers with my mom. If I don't, my mom and dad go to war with each other again, and now that I'm actually old enough to speak at custody hearings, they're always trying to make me pick a side. But maybe you and Devlin can go on a road trip this summer."

"How about no." Devlin growled as he pulled the car into the Plumbers' Headquarters hanger. He climbed out of the car and retrieved his weekend bag from where he'd thrown it next to Kevin's case of beer. "Now, if you'll excuse me, Finals star tomorrow and I have to at least pretend to study if I'm going to scrape by with a grade my mother will accept."

He left.

Kenny, likewise, climbed out of the car but hesitated to follow his cousin into the living area.

Draining the last few drops of beer, Kevin crushed the can in his hand and tossed it to the recycling bin against the opposite wall (he did not make it in). He came up beside the boy and crossed his arms over his chest. "All this tension between the two of you is getting annoying." He said. "And your therapist doesn't seem to be helping."

The boy turned to the older man, flashed him a goofy smile that didn't quite reach his eyes and asked, "What tension?"

"Don't play dumb with me, kid. I never did have much of a tolerance for enabling other people's bullshit." The Osmosian replied in a tone that was somewhere between deadpan and exasperated. "When I first got out of the Void, you and Devlin were so close, I thought the two of you were gay for each other. Now you're acting like Tennyson and I did before we became friends."

For a moment, it looked like Kenny was about to object again. Deny that there was anything amiss between himself and his cousin. Instead he looked away, avoiding eye contact when he said, "Oh, no. We're not both gay." A pause. "You're really nice, Kevin. But you can't understand."

Feeling slightly more like Gwen rather than himself in that moment, Kevin asked, "Why not?"

"He tried to kill me! Okay?" Kenny snarled. Turning to face the older man and glare up at him. "Look, I know you and my dad didn't always get along and used to be rivals or whatever, and I know you hurt a lot of people all over the universe, but has your best friend ever tried to kill you?"

"Well, yeah." Kevin blinked at the boy as if this should have been obvious. "Twice, actually. And I tried to kill him right back. More than twice."

Kenny stared up at the Osmosian as if he'd never seen the man before. Academically, he knew that Kevin used to be a bad guy and that he did terrible things, and while Kevin was doing those terrible things his dad was trying to stop him. But somewhere along the line his brain just dropped off the trail of thought that would have lead him to the obvious conclusion that one or both of them would have tried to kill the other at some point.

When it looked like the boy didn't quite understand, Kevin continued, "The first time your dad tried to kill me was just after I defeated Aggregor for him. I absorbed the Ultrimatrix and was a little crazy at the time. I, uh… I may or may not have absorbed one or more of our friends. Anyway, Gwen eventually saved both of us and we were cool. The second time was just after Devlin was born and came out… misshapen. I was doing what I thought I had to, to give him a human form and better quality of life, and Tennyson was doing what he thought he had to, to protect the universe."

"And you're still friends?" Kenny stared at him, disbelieving. "After he tried to kill you twice?"

"Of course! What's a little attempted murder between friends? Water near a bridge." The Osmosian offered a self-deprecating smile. "Besides, I tried to kill him way more times than twice! Five or six times before we even hit puberty, at least!"

Kenny thought back to Devlin on the Rooter's base. Newly mutated by his faux-Omnitrix. Bloated with power. Mad with the desire for more. Kenny would have died if he hadn't -literally- run into Kevin. "How did my dad survive?"

"He defended himself." Kevin said, again, as if it should have been obvious. The Osmosian reached into his pocket and pulled out what's he'd been carrying around since he found it in the boy's room. "With this."

Gaping slightly, mouth hanging open, Kenny stared at his faux-Omnitrix dangling from the Osmosian's hand. "That's my-"

"I found this in a place where it doesn't belong." Kevin informed him. He took the boy's bare wrist in his free hand and strapped the watch around it. Right over the tan line it had left there. "This is where it belongs."

Kenny looked down at his faux-Omnitrix, then back up at Kevin. "Most of the best aliens are locked, and it times out to fast." He informed the older man. "How am I supposed to do anything useful with this?"

"Look, I've got a lot of experience with Omnitrixes -Omnetrixies?- and I can tell you, that this is almost identical to your father's first Omnitrix." The Osmosian informed him. "If you don't like the aliens you've got access to, or think it times out to soon, then hack the Master Control and change that."

Eyes suddenly shining with the glimmer of hope and new possibilities, Kenny gazed up at the older man. "You'll help me hack my Omnitrix?"

"Oh, hell no!" The Osmosian took half a step back. He learned his lesson already, he did not need to learn it again. Kevin cleared his throat and reminded himself that he was supposed to be an adult. "I mean that, that's something you have to do on your own."

"Oh." The boy looked back down at his watch, contemplating. "I see. Like one of those 'it won't mean anything if I don't earn it' sort of things."

"Yeah. Sure." Kevin shrugged. "The important thing is that you don't have to be afraid of Devlin anymore and you should get over whatever it is that's going on between the two of you."

Kenny looked slightly less enthused about that. "I, uh, I guess I'll try."

He returned his gaze to his watch and Kevin took that as his cue to leave. Popping the trunk, he pulled out the case of beer he'd bought for Tennyson and was about to leave the boy standing there in the hanger staring at his wrist when Kenny called him back.

"Ya know, Kevin," Kenny began, "I don't know if your advice will work or not, but you make it sound really good. If I grew up with you, I think you would have made a really cool uncle."

"Thanks, kid." The Osmosian nodded, awkwardly shifting the beer case from one arm to the other. "You would have made a- -an interesting nephew."

He left the hanger before their exchange could turn into an actual bonding moment and become more awkward than it already was. As he was putting Ben's beer away for him, he tested the title he almost had.

"'Uncle Kevin'…" It tasted strange on his tongue and sounded even stranger to his ears. "That kid is so weird."

…