Summary: Kim sneaks back into Shego's room, just three hours later. Shego then describes Drakken's inane rules.

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Shego sighed and slammed her bedroom door behind her, casting a despairing glance at her hands and arms. Three hours spent lugging chunk after chunk of blackened and charred pieces of metals and oil-slicked gears and crumbling sprockets out of the bombsite Drakken's lab had become had left her quite the mess; greasy fingers, sticky trails along her arms, and a stubborn streak across the bridge of her nose, even clinging to the back of her neck, not to mention the destruction her clothes had suffered. The mess was everywhere, and though the teen villain had never thought of herself as much of a girly-girl, it was undeniably disgusting.

"Shego!"

Casting a venomous scowl over her shoulder, as if she could shoot daggers at Drakken through the steel door she had just slammed, she resisted the urge to growl. 'Ugh, that man is insane,' she thought, and instead made her way towards her bathroom to wash up.

"Oh, where has that girl gone to now?"

Careful to avoid spreading the muck she was covered in, she walked as if on strings. Shoes covered in the same sticky substance, completely ruined, to her annoyance, she kicked them off by the door, and as she moved, a familiar scent drifted to her nose.

'Kim?' she wondered, glancing around the room. She recognized the perfume instantly, as it was a favorite of her girlfriend's to wear whenever she would sneak in. Roses and citrus; one of the oddest pairs that Shego could ever think of, but it worked surprisingly well for the tiny redheaded heroine. However, no such tiny heroine could be seen, and Shego sighed, deducing that her scent merely lingered on the couch they had been so rudely interrupted upon.

Frowning at the memory of their interruption, she continued toward her bathroom. A hot shower was calling her name, and quite loudly at that, and the thought of waving cheerily at the dirty water as it swirled down the drain in their final farewell lightened her mood some. Of course, she was to be sentenced to an eternity of scrubbing away at the muck before the satisfaction a clean body would bring about would be received, and that was more than a little annoying.

'No pain, no gain; God, I hate that!' she growled inwardly, finally reaching the bathroom. The door was slightly ajar, thankfully, making a much easier job, and she nudged it open with her socked foot, which was, regrettably, the only sanitary limb available. She began to lift the hem of her shirt with careful fingers; it still had a chance to be saved!

"Hey."

"AHHHHHHH!!!"

Shego jumped nearly a foot in the air, landing awkwardly without her shoes, consequently slipping on the tiled bathroom floor without the safeguard of rubber soles to keep her upright. Falling gracelessly to her butt as result, teeth clenched, and thanking God that she didn't taste blood, she looked up into the grimacing face of her girlfriend.

Cheeks nearly as red as her hair, Kim whispered meekly, "Sorry…."

Shego sighed, reluctant to put a filth-encased hand to her thundering heart. "Jeez, Kim…" she muttered, falling back with a quiet thunk, ignoring the minute jar it delivered to her brain. 'So, that's why the shower was calling so loud. It actually had a voice,' she thought, but as usual, she couldn't muster even an ounce of anger towards the sheepish heroine.

"Shego? What was that?"

The brunette jumped to her feet, eyes wide. "Uh, nothing, Dr. D!" she called. Floundering for an answer, she shouted the first thing that came to mind. "Spider!"

"For Heaven's sake, Shego, you're a villainess! Toughen up, will you?"

Shego let out a relieved sigh. 'Thank God.' She wondered for a moment what happened to her previously impeccable skills of excuse, but dismissed it, and allowed herself to slouch back against the doorframe. "I'll get right on that, Dr. D," she muttered.

"Well, that's an insult if I've ever heard one…" Kim pouted quietly.

Shego turned confused jade eyes towards the redhead.

Kim frowned, though she wasn't truly upset. Shego found the crease between her brow and the pout in her lips to be quite endearing effects, oblivious to Kim's ploy. "First, you call me nothing, then you insult my appearance, and say I'm something as gross as a spider!"

Shego frowned as well. After speaking, Kim had lifted her arms to hug herself and dropped her eyes to gaze forlornly at the tile below them. "Awh, Kimmie… I didn't mean it like that," she whispered. She stretched out her hands, intending to comfort the tiny redhead, but cringed at their dirty state. Sighing in the face of defeat, she changed tactics, instead stepping forward and pressing her forehead to her girlfriend's. She rubbed their noses together in a brief Eskimo kiss, barely catching the smile twitching at the corner's of Kim's lips, and whispered, "It was the first thing that came to mind. I had to think of something. Otherwise he would have just barged in here to grill me because my door's shut…."

Kim pulled back slightly, cocking her head to the side. "Because your door's shut…?"

Shego nodded and rolled her eyes. "New house rules."

Kim raised an eyebrow, inviting the brunette to explain.

Shego shrugged, as if to say, 'Don't as me why; he's crazy,' but replied, "After you left… which was only like three hours ago, now that I think about it…" she added as a side note, like she would always throw in on occasion, "Drakken kind of went all postal-mom on me. Oddly enough, though, he doesn't mind that we're dating." At Kim's dubiously furrowed brow, Shego continued, attempting to assure her. "Well, he was kind of angry in the beginning… 'cause he figured out that I was telling you how to foil all his plans, then he mumbled for a while, dunno about what though, and then he was raving about rules." She shrugged once more, but inwardly winced at her repetitive habit.

'It's Drakken's fault. I'll never understand that man.'

"So… what are these rules?" Kim asked slowly, still a bit unconvinced. 'I mean, what kind of brilliant evildoer would be stupid enough to let their teen protégé date their archenemy?' she wondered incredulously, but then she answered herself easily: 'Drakken.'

Shego thought back a bit to Drakken's tantrum and began recounting the rules. "Well, at first, he said you weren't allowed over after nine…" she said, scowling briefly. "But after a bit of negotiation, we agreed that eleven was okay, and I figured that would be fine because your regular curfew is at eleven anyway…." She glanced down as warm hands found their way to her stomach, fingers splayed lightly, and she couldn't help but smile. It was such a Kim thing to do, she realized, as the redhead had always found a way to touch her when they stood close enough for such an action to occur.

"Eleven works," Kim replied, smiling as well. "The second?"

"The second was that I was to continue to fight you while he attempted to get away with something devious…" Shego answered. She felt quite isolated from her girlfriend, despite the affectionate hands playing over her stomach, as she was unable to return her affections. Her arms hung loosely at her sides, and she cursed Drakken for enforcing his act of manual labor, which had therefore destroyed a chance to touch her girlfriend. She suddenly brightened, however, smiling and continuing her rule-relay as the thought struck her. "I agreed; though, afterward, I got to thinking…" she said, once again pressing their foreheads together and rubbing noses.

Kim giggled, holding tighter to the fabric of the brunette's shirt. "About what?" she asked quietly. Seeing that it was Shego she was talking to, it was probably something that had a very little relation to fighting, perhaps even none at all.

"Well, about the fact that we could just fool around instead," came the simple response, and Shego chuckled lightly, kissing Kim's steadily reddening cheek and nuzzling her nose just under Kim's jaw, forgetting for a moment that the grease hadn't totally avoided her face. All aflutter at the brunette's risqué suggestion, the heroine let out a strangled chuckle. Her hands abandoned their whereabouts against her girlfriend's stomach without her consent, and rose to grip Shego's shoulders instead as soft lips brushed against her throat.

'I should have known,' the redhead thought, a heavy breath escaping her. Inhaling deeply as an attempt to steady herself, one hand curved around the back of Shego's neck; into grease obviously, but she had expected it. "And… and the third?" she barely managed to get out. She hoped that mentioning the rules would deter her girlfriend from continuing, the memory of a very unwanted interruption still fresh in her mind.

Shego grinned, mumbling into the redhead's ear, "I already told you." Still miffed that her hands were quite inoperable for the time being, she didn't bother to stop teasing the heroine. "My door has to stay open when you're here." Saying it aloud after begrudgingly accepting it only hours before had suddenly brought back her annoyance. Scowling, she pulled away from a flushed and wavering Kim. "Blue-skinned, asinine idiot! That rule is ridiculous!" Frown fading, her eyes turned to the slightly unfocused green eyes before her, a small smile forming instead. The flustered look was always a flattering aspect of the redhead, but flustered and with grease smeared across her nose and just under her jaw was absolutely adorable.

'Better not mention that just yet….'

Finally able to form words, Kim inhaled a shuddering breath. "Any more?"

Shego shook her head, fighting off her grin as best as she could. "Not yet."

The redhead smiled. "Then that should be easy…."

"It doesn't mean those three are any less annoying," Shego replied, casting a scowl over a dirty shoulder towards the door. 'Maybe if I glare hard enough, he'll explode….'

Kim pulled her hand back from the brunette's neck, grimacing slightly. The grease clung a bit heavily to her fingers, and from the slight stickiness under her jaw she could feel when she spoke, she supposed that the smudge across Shego's nose had transferred over to her as well. "Well…" she started slowly, drawing Shego's attention back to her.

Shego turned toward her, eager to hear the redhead's words as she recognized the mischief in her tone. Kim's grin only made her point clearer to the villainess.

"I didn't hear anything about not showering together… or have I missed something?"

Shego grinned at the light pink tinge that colored Kim's cheeks after she spoke. She chuckled quietly. 'She has a point. Drakken never said anything about showers or the bathroom door being closed….' Studying Kim's face, her grin grew. "Well, I did get you a bit dirty…" she said, hoping to find more loopholes in her employer's rules. "It would be rude of me to deny you a shower, and a crime to waste water…."

Kim's grin grew to match Shego's, her hands dropping to the hem of the brunette's shirt.

'This is going to be fun….'