It took a few weeks, but with Gwen's help, Kevin got into a groove with studying for his GED. At her suggestion, he dedicated four nights a week to studying, one for each subject, though he did study on his own on other days if he had the time. Sometimes, he'd meet Gwen at her house. Other times, they'd meet at his house, or at a public place like Mr. Smoothy or Burger Shack. Never the library, in spite of Gwen's insistence. Too many rules for his liking. Even with some unpredictable circumstances that stalled his progress here and there (most notably, alien attacks), Kevin was making good headway.

Today's subject was science. Kevin's knowledge of it was all over the place, to say the least. Although he remembered some of what he'd learned in school, most of what he knew came from his experiences. Thanks to his powers, he knew a lot about energy and matter, and he'd learned about things like anatomy and health, both human and alien, during his time on the streets and his adventures in space. However, he barely knew anything about chemical reactions or chromosomes, for example, and the things he couldn't pick up from experience, like the scientific method, eluded him entirely.

Science involved a lot of reading, which didn't gel too well with him considering he was more of a hands-on person. He told himself that, since could get through the Plumber Handbook at the Plumbers' Academy, which was several hundred pages long, the GED textbook wouldn't kill him.

Overall, though he was thus far intrigued by some of what he'd been learning, he could no doubt be learning more fascinating things that the GED syllabus didn't account for, like alien planets he'd yet to visit, or the chemical elements which came from them.

Kevin had just arrived at Gwen's house for their study date, several minutes late. Grabbing his backpack from the front passenger seat, he stepped out of his car and sprinted to the front door, knocking it three times. To his surprise, Gwen's mother Natalie opened the door, dressed in an elegant teal evening gown. Gwen had told him that her parents were going to what she referred to as a 'fancy lawyer dinner', and he assumed they would have left by now. He only now noticed that their car was still parked in the driveway. The thought of having to interact with them made his pulse quicken.

"Kevin," Natalie addressed him with a hint of disdain.

Instead of greeting her in an equally scornful manner, Kevin chose to take the high road, and forced a smile. "Good evening, Mrs. Tennyson."

Natalie stepped aside to grant Kevin passage into her home and closed the door behind him. "Gwen'll be down in a minute. She's in the shower."

"Thanks." He took a seat on one of the couches in the living room.

Sitting on the couch opposite him, Natalie gestured at his backpack. "What's in the bag?" As far as she knew, he always visited the house empty-handed, save for whatever he could store in his pockets. She was oblivious to how he came over far more often than she aware of, since he usually parked a few houses down the road and snuck in through Gwen's bedroom window.

"Uh, Plumber stuff," he fibbed. No one except Gwen knew he was studying for his GED, and he intended to keep it that way. "Gwen's helpin' me with somethin'."

She nodded in acknowledgement. "Is Max involved? Or Ben?"

"Nah, it's more of a side project. Nothin' important. Besides, Ben ain't big on Plumber work that doesn't involve beatin' up aliens." He expected her to reply with some sort of snobbish comment about Ben or dig deeper into the 'Plumber work' in question. Aside from an "mhm", she remained tight-lipped, effectively killing their conversation. It seemed that she wasn't interested in talking to him beyond exchanging pleasantries and sating her curiosity. It was for the better, he figured. He wouldn't have to keep coming up with lies.

A door opened on the second floor, and Kevin eyed the top of the stairs, hoping Gwen was coming to save him from the unpleasant situation he was in. Unfortunately for him, the distinctly masculine fragrance of cologne indicated that it was Gwen's father Frank instead. Dressed in a dark blue two-piece suit, he walked down the stairs, his footsteps filling the silence in the room. As reluctant as Kevin was to admit it, Gwen's parents had a good sense of fashion.

Natalie's face lit up at the sight of her husband and she went over to lay her hands on his chest. "You look stunning, dear." Kevin forgot that, despite Natalie's frosty demeanor, she was indeed capable of expressing positive emotions.

"I was going to say the same about you," Frank responded with a grin, pulling her into a quick kiss. Kevin's gaze quickly fell to his shoes. He had a front row seat to something he wasn't supposed to see and now understood how Ben felt whenever he and Gwen were affectionate in his presence. He almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

"Hello, Kevin," said Frank, his smile diminishing. "Just got here?"

"Uh, yeah. Waitin' for Gwen to finish showering," he replied as he stood up.

Frank turned to Natalie. "I think we'll have to leave without saying goodbye. We're going to be late."

As Frank opened the door, Natalie directed her attention to Kevin. "Tell her we'll be back around midnight. Don't take this the wrong way, but we expect you to be gone by then."

"Got it." There was nothing preventing him from moving his car out of their view and hiding in Gwen's room, but her parents didn't need to know that.

Frank led Natalie outside, guiding her by the waist. He cast a glance at Kevin before leaving, speaking in a stern tone. "Be good to her."

"Always."

Satisfied with Kevin's reply, Frank shut the door. Kevin heard the engine of the Tennysons' car start, and the tires grinding against the ground as the car reversed out of the driveway. Once he was sure they'd left, he exhaled deeply. Maybe one day he'd feel at ease around Gwen's parents, though he doubted that day would come soon.

Barely a minute passed before another door opened upstairs. "Mom?" Gwen called out.

Kevin fixed his posture at the sound of Gwen's voice. "Your folks just left."

"Kevin?" Her footsteps hastened until he saw her peeking down at him from the top of the stairs, wearing a plain blue T-shirt and black knee-length shorts. "Oh, hey, you're here!" she shrieked excitedly. The list of things that could elicit such a reaction from Gwen was rather short, and Kevin was happy to be on that list.

Smiling warmly, he waved at her. She ran down the stairs and lunged at him, and he met her halfway in an ardent embrace. He rested his chin on her head, inhaling the sweet scent of her strawberry shampoo emanating from her faintly damp hair. "You smell amazing."

She giggled against his chest, her voice muffled by his shirt. "You always say that."

"I always mean it." He squeezed her petite body tighter. "Your folks'll be back by midnight. Also, I told your mom you're helpin' me with Plumber work. Just roll with it if she asks ya about it, 'kay?"

Under normal circumstances, lying to her parents wasn't the ideal thing to do. In this case, it was a harmless lie about something that didn't concern them, so she was happy to go along with his request. "Okay."

Gwen withdrew from the hug, but Kevin placed a finger under her chin to tilt her head upwards for easier access, attacking her with kisses on her forehead, nose, cheeks and lips in rapid succession. Then, he crouched slightly to nip at her neck, leaving her breathless and derailing her train of thought. It took all her willpower not to melt into mush. Judging by the titter that escaped his lips, he knew it, too. He was toying with her, seeing how far he could go before she'd stop him. Though the idea of forgoing helping him study became more tempting to her by the second, someone had to be the responsible one.

With half of her strength, she pushed him an inch away, and was met with no resistance, just a smug look on his face. Once she managed to get her thoughts back on track, she reproached him. "Kevin, need I remind you that this is a study date? You know how this works. Study first, have fun later."

"Why can't we have fun, study, then have more fun? Y'know, like a fun sandwich," he said, miming assembling his 'sandwich' layer by layer. "Nothin' wrong with mixin' things up a little."

She challenged his charmingly odd analogy, a smirk playing at the corners of her mouth. "Because we'll get carried away with the first slice of fun bread and forget about the meat, which, in this case, is studying."

"'We'? So, you admit you're as guilty as I am?" Kevin leaned forward and cockily raised an eyebrow.

Gwen bit her lip, her smirk shifting into a sheepish smile. "It takes a lot of self-control not to kiss you to death."

"That'd probably be the best way to die." He closed his eyes and puckered his lips, expecting her lips to join his.

For a moment, she considered indulging him, but reminded herself that they were unlikely to get anything done if things went that way. "Nice try." She patted him on the chest. "C'mon, let's get started. I promise, all the fun that comes afterwards will be worth the wait."

Letting out a groan, he opened his eyes. "Fine, you win, but I'm holdin' you to your promise." He scooped her up into his strong arms and carried her upstairs, bridal style. He nudged her bedroom door open with his foot. After setting her down, he closed the door. He put his backpack on the floor by the bed and unzipped it to retrieve his science textbook before lying next to Gwen, resting his head on the headboard.

"Where'd we leave off?" She nestled her head on his shoulder and adjusted her body to get in a comfortable position.

With one arm around her waist, he used his free hand to place the book on his lap and flip through the pages, stopping at where he'd bookmarked it. Bookmarking was one of the many tips Gwen had given him since he started studying for his GED. While he believed it to be pointless at first, he now deemed it better than dog-earing the pages. "Cell theory. Booooring," he grumbled.

She tugged the book so it sat between both their laps. "You know what? Just for today, let's skip around a bit. What do you want to learn?"

Kevin's eyes widened, in slight disbelief at her offer. Gwen was, until this point, systematic with how she taught him. She preferred to stick to an order instead of jumping around. "Ya sure?"

"Yeah, it'll keep you engaged," she encouraged him.

Kevin skimmed the book in search of the chapter that had caught his eye a while ago. "Genetics, inheritance, whatever it's called. What exactly determines your eye color, hair color, that sorta thing. I know the basics, but I wanna know the details."

"Oh, sure, I can teach you that! We'll have to do a deeper dive sometime down the line, but I'll give you a surface-level explanation of what you wanna know for now. It's not always exact, and some of this gets thrown out of whack for people with mutant or alien parents, but..." She traced a finger under the text on the page, paraphrasing as she went. "It comes down to the genes you get from your parents. For each trait, you get two gene variants- alleles- from your parents: one from your mom and one from your dad. Traits can either be dominant or recessive. You only get recessive traits if you inherit the alleles from both your parents, but you can get dominant traits even if they're from just one parent."

Kevin turned to the next page. Taking it as a sign that he was keeping up with her explanation, Gwen continued. "With eye color, for example, brown is dominant, while green and blue are recessive. Doesn't mean it's impossible for someone to have green or blue eyes, though, since, duh."

"Huh... how do you have green eyes?" he wondered, scratching his head. "Not that I have a problem with it. Suits ya better than blue or brown."

Having anticipated his question, she pulled away from his shoulder and gave him a small smile. "See, eye color is determined by the amount of melanin in the iris, and how the genes interact with each other can lead to different shades. Brown eyes have a higher concentration of melanin than blue. Since I inherited the brown eye gene from my dad and the blue eye gene from my mom, the most likely explanation is that the brown and blue pigments combined to make green. Same goes for my brother.

Kevin wasn't sure if the odds of getting green eyes without inheriting the gene were low, but he was certain that the odds of it occurring in both Gwen and Ken were low. "Guess you're kinda lucky, huh?"

She chuckled. "You're not the first person to say that, and you definitely won't be the last."

"Hey, wait, how do people keep track of what genes someone'll get, anyway?" he asked.

"Punnett squares," she answered plainly.

"What's that? Some kinda math thing?"

"You're not totally wrong. It does involve a bit of probability, but there's more to it than that." She tapped her finger on the page to bring his focus to a diagram on the book. "You put one parent's alleles horizontally on a grid, and the other parent's vertically. From there, you can make predictions on what combinations of alleles their kid might get and what traits they might exhibit. You can use it to predict a bunch of things, like someone's eye or hair color, their blood type, even silly things like whether they'll be able to roll their tongue. Gimme your notebook. I'll show you."

Kevin got off the bed to retrieve his notebook from his backpack, giving it to Gwen when he returned. She set the textbook aside to make room for Kevin's notebook on her lap, then conjured a mana lasso to grab a pen from her desk on the other side of the room. Resting her head on Kevin's shoulder again, she began to draw a grid. "Let's use my hair as an example. My dad got the brown and red hair genes from Grandpa Max and Grandma Verdona, and my mom got two red hair genes from my maternal grandparents. We use uppercase letters for dominant alleles and lowercase for recessive ones, so let's use an uppercase 'B' for brown and lowercase 'b' for red." She scribbled on the page, populating the cells in the grid. "Since I got the red hair gene from both my parents, I had a 50% chance of getting red hair, and..." She twirled a strand of hair around her finger to draw his attention to it. "Ta-da!"

"Pretty interesting." Kevin vaguely remembered Gwen studying the same thing during one of his many visits to her house. Though he wrote it off as 'nerd stuff' at the time, the joke was on him since he now liked learning about said 'nerd stuff'.

"Any questions?"

Kevin shook his head. "I'm gettin' it so far. I think I'm ready for that deeper dive, actually."

"Already?" Gwen pulled away to look him in the eye, wanting to make sure she heard him correctly.

"Mhm." He took his notebook away and reached over to Gwen's other side to get the textbook. "We might as well go all the way with this now instead of changin' topics and comin' back to it some other day."

Swiftly, she gifted him with a kiss on the cheek, turning his face red. "That was for showing some initiative."

"Initiative gets me kisses, got it." He touched the spot she kissed, grinning from ear to ear. "By my count, though, you still owe me..." He trailed off, counting on his fingers. "Five kisses."

"When we're done with this, we can take a break, and I'll double that."

As tempting as it was to fantasize about what was to come in the later hours of the night, Kevin stowed those thoughts away and opened the textbook, setting it down between their laps. "I'm all ears."

I wasn't expecting the scene with Gwen's parents to go on as long as it did, but I think it ended up adding some extra meat to the story.

I'm aware that Kevin has some knowledge of inheritance given how he knew Gwen had alien blood in Alien Force, but I wasn't sure about how to work that into the story. I figure he knows a lot about it when it comes to powers, but he's clueless when it comes to mundane stuff like hair or eye color. I did a lot of research to get the science facts right, so I really hope I didn't mess anything up there.

I hope I'm striking a balance between the Gwevin moments and showing Kevin learning things. That's been the trickiest thing about writing this story so far.

About the title of the chapter, I couldn't really think of anything better, but I think it fits given what happened in it. :P