(RE)UNITED: PART TWO (THANKFUL)

The morning sunlight was already slanting through the crack in the blinds, angling just right off the mirror to hit Matt Stone right in the eyes when he rolled over. He groaned, checking the clock before bounding out of bed, realizing that he'd actually overslept past his alarm. It was almost eight in the morning already and he-

"What the hell?" He stopped halfway across his palatial bedroom, listening. Somewhere, faintly, he could hear music and the clash and clang of metal-on-metal. A frown creased his handsome face as he ambled towards the stairs, figuring he must still be dreaming when the music came in clearer, some generic rock song he vaguely remembered from the 90's. He could smell bacon, too - that quickened his steps so that he arrived in the kitchen doorway before the song ended.

Nessa Wall stood with her back to him, a large bag of flour in her hands as she poured some out, trying to measure it evenly as her butt wiggled to the music emanating from her cell phone on the counter.

He cleared his throat. She whirled and the bag fell from her hands, a cloud of flour wafting up between them. She sputtered, coughing before she ending up sneezing. She leaned against the counter, dragging in a ragged breath in the aftermath before a sheepish smile curved her lips. "Hi," she murmured.

"Ness… wha-"

"What am I doing here?" She waved away the dust, bending over to pick up the bag. "It's Thanksgiving, silly. I came to cook you a nice meal."

Still groggy, half-asleep, all he could do was stare at her for a few seconds. "How-"

"How did I get in?" She plunked the bag down on the counter, "you left the door unlocked." When he said nothing, she sighed, changing her answer. "I still have a key?" When he still said nothing, she turned and looked at him, "okay, I broke the window in your basement. So you'll need to replace that. But it was for a good cause, I swear."

"I see." Was the first thing he said after the confession, rubbing at his eyes. He walked over to the fridge and pulled the door open, grabbing a bottle of water out of the top shelf and cracking it open, drinking a third of the contents before speaking again. 'So you're making a nice meal? Traditionally that's done for dinner, you know, not breakfast."

"No. The turkey won't be done until about three. And I wanted to get the dough ready for the biscuits because that has to rise in the fridge for a few hours. Thanksgiving is a lot of work." She added the flour to the bowl and then started adding water, stirring it with a wooden spoon while she spoke. "I got a couple of those pies from M&M - apple and pumpkin because I wasn't sure which one you'd rather have. Those only take a half an hour to heat so I can do those after the turkey is ready."

Matt just stood there confused for a few moments, looking around and just noticing now the mess that was in his kitchen. Granted, this was the most work his kitchen had had done in it in quite some time, unless you count the counter holding a myriad of pizza boxes over the past several months. "So you brought all this stuff over here to spend all day in my kitchen to prepare food for...who? Just me and you? Or have you invited your whole extended family over to my place now without asking?"

"For you. I wanted to surprise you." There was a little hint of defensiveness in her voice, "and my Uncle Marvin is busy. He's the only one I have left now. Not that I'd do that to you. He's bipolar or manic depressive or something. I wouldn't even want to have dinner with him."

"If he's bipolar and manic depressive, he probably doesn't want to have dinner with himself either." Matt says off the top of his head without any regard of whether Nessa was comfortable joking about that or not. "I hope you didn't plan on me not finding out before three, cause if you thought you could drug me and keep me in a stupor all day, I'm afraid you've already failed."

"Did I?" Nessa glanced back at him over her shoulder, "turned off your alarm to keep you from getting up stupidly early and going to that gym of yours. I'm sure if I wanted to chloroform you or whatever, I could have then."

"Where would you get-" He started to question, then realized the futility in questioning the means of Nessa acquiring chloroform after she broke into his house. "Well thanks for passing on that option, Ness."

Satisfied with the dough, she covered the bowl with a tea towel and then carried it over to the fridge, putting it inside. "I wouldn't have. I'm not that crazy." For a moment, she stood there, watching him. "You're not mad, are you?"

"Mad? Well no, I suppose not. I'm certain you're paying for my window though." He added, a hint of a smile on his face as he looked over what she was preparing. "Where did you learn to cook this stuff?"

"My mom and my grandma, actually. It used to be a huge thing in my family. Before my parents separated and… well… with everyone gone now, I thought maybe it was time to revive the traditions." She nodded towards the paper bag on the floor. "There are russet and sweet potatoes in there. I wasn't sure which you'd rather have. I'll make both if you want."

Matt looked down at the bag she was gesturing to, glancing back up at her with a confused look. "I don't even know what a russet is. Sweet potatoes will be fine, I guess...I don't know how you expect me to eat all that, though." He said, reaching over for her phone and lowering the volume of the music.

"They're just regular potatoes." Nessa shrugged, assembling the rest of the arsenal of ingredients on the only clear space on the counter before starting to wipe up the mess from the flour incident. "Leftovers are fun. And the turkey is a small one. Ten pounds, I think? Tomorrow you can take the leftover veggies and potatoes and turkey and make a sort of shepherd's pie with it."

"Yeah, I can totes do that." Matt said, shaking his head, of course he didn't know how to make a pie, or much of anything for that matter, but apparently that's what Nessa was for. "So you keep saying there's no one else any more, am I to take that as you broke it off with foot guy?"

"I…" she fiddled with the dish rag for a few seconds before dropping it in the sink. "He's been flying supplies into Puerto Rico for the Red Cross so… I haven't really had the chance to yet." She turned to look at him, dismayed by his expression, "I'm going to though."

"Uh-huh, you're going to break it off with this white knight of yours?" Matt asked, sounding unconvinced. "Is this going to be one of those things that you just keep pushing off and pushing off hoping it just goes away on it's own?"

She bit her lip, shaking her head slowly. "No. I gave you my word, Matt. I'll do it. I just want to tell him to his face rather than send some random text message." Rolling her eyes, she let out a light laugh, "he tried to bring home a cat for me… as if that was the kind of gift I'd want. Can you believe that?" Before he could answer, she went over and checked the screen of her phone before shutting off the music app. "Almost as bad as the time he tried to give me a massage with freesia body lotion. I nearly died."

"Good," was all he could say at first, taking some more of his water as he watched her check her phone. "Sounds like this guy you're engaged to knows you really well, doesn't he? I'm sure for your honeymoon he had this whole romantic trip to Australia planned, to boot." Matt added sarcastically, heading over to a stool in the kitchen to sit on. "Speaking of cats, you didn't let mine go out through that broken window, did you?"

Nessa's eyes went wide. "Oh… shit." She'd somehow completely forgotten he even had a cat. Clearly she hadn't seen the thing all morning. "I… well I covered it up with cardboard but… I'm not sure. I wasn't watching… her… him..?"

"Oh lovely, first my birthday and now this, what a great weekend this has turned out to be." He mused as he got up off the stool and headed out of the kitchen, going towards the basement to see if there's any sign of his cat escaping. Having a cursory glance around he didn't see any cat hair or things knocked over, except for the box of shirts he'd ordered years ago that Nessa likely knocked over on her way in and hastily tried to put back. Glancing around the room, he didn't see the cat anywhere and just headed back up, keeping his eyes open.

Nessa met him at the top of the stairs, leaning against the doorway. "What was so bad about your birthday?"

"You mean aside from the fact that we didn't even beat dumb and dumber?" He asked, looking around for any sign of his pet. "There was the whole fiasco at the hotel afterwards, too." He added, looking annoyed.

"I already said I was sorry for that. I shouldn't have…" she shook her head, not wanting to go back and relive that trainwreck over again. "I'm sure your cat's somewhere around here. You know he doesn't like me."

"Oh I know, you're probably right." He shrugged, heading back towards the kitchen remembering that bacon smell he had coming down the stairs. "Were you making breakfast, too?"

"There's bacon," Nessa nodded. "I needed some to put on the turkey and I cooked the rest of the package so it wouldn't go to waste. I'll warm it up if you want."

"Mmmhmmm...bacon." Matt replied with his best Homer Simpson impression, nodding his head. "Yes please." He answered, reaching out behind her and giving her backside a slap. "I miss the 1950's." He mused to himself as if what he just did was the most natural thing in the world.

She actually giggled at the smack, turning back towards the kitchen. "Do you want it with toast or eggs?"

"Ohh, eggs, scrambled." he answered, retaking his seat on the stool and enjoying some more of his water. "And after breakfast, we can call up that boy of yours and tell him that you two need to talk right away and he should stop whatever it is he's doing, sound good?" He asked, hopeful at her response.

"Wait… you want me to call him with you here?" She straightened up after taking the eggs out of his fridge, "today? Matt, I don't think that's such a good idea."

"Why not? No day like the present, right? That's what people say." He said, studying her closely to gauge her reaction, wanting this to be settled as quickly as possible.

"I told you I wanted to tell him to his face." The eggs were set on the counter before she turned to look at him, "and the last thing I want is for him to know where you live."

"Does he have a tracking app on your phone?" He asked, thinking it was a joke but it could very well be true given how crazy that guy seemed the few times he's interacted with him. "Cause that might have been an indication that he wasn't right for you...or right in the head, for that matter."

"Not as far as I know." She snapped, clearly not finding it funny in the least. "That's just scary."

"Well I was watching this thing on the news the other night about people who do that to their spouses and naturally I thought of you. You can never be too careful about who you give access to your phone, never know what they might do with it." He said with a hint of irony considering the last time he had her phone he did a few self-aggrandizing tweets and pinned one of them.

"Oh, absolutely." Nessa started cracking eggs into the pan now that the butter had melted, "he doesn't know my passcode." She looked up with that familiar smirk on her lips, "you do, though. It's your birthday."

"Well that's sweet of you. I'd be more flattered though if I didn't suspect that was done for the sole purpose of you being able to remember it."

"Don't knock it if it works." She added some pepper, a dash of seasoned salt and some milk before whisking the contents with a fork. "My grandpa taught me how to make scrambled eggs…. Though his were the best."

"See these are the sort of things one misses out on when he doesn't have a family. I know how to make toast and order out, that's about it." He got up off the stool and headed to the other room for a moment, grabbing his phone off the charger where he had left it overnight. Coming back in the room, looking down at his phone, he picked up where he left off. "If pressed, I can make a pretty decent bowl of soup, too. Provided the can opener works, of course."

"I've got four can openers." Nessa shrugged, "always have a backup in case one fails." She smiled, remembering the time she'd been sick and he'd brought her some of the pea soup she loved. "You do a great job on soup. That's true." For a few moments the only sound was her stirring the eggs that were starting to thicken up.

"Always have a backup in case one fails, seems like wise words to live with in more ways than just can openers. What we need is a new gameplan, if we couldn't even put those two distracted airheads away in time, what hopes do we have at the tag titles?"

"Those two 'airheads' were former champions," she was quick to point out, defending them, "so it's not as though they're complete scrubs. And that was our first time working together. We didn't get pinned so I wouldn't consider it an utter failure. But you're right. If we want a shot at the champions, we clearly need to focus. Shave a little time off, maybe?"

"Right, we should double our work-outs together to get the chemistry better, work on the timing of everything. In a perfect world, we shouldn't need to say anything to each other and still know exactly what each other are thinking. You okay with that?"

Nessa nodded, a little bit of a blush covering her cheeks at the mention of their chemistry. "The eggs are almost done if you want to heat up the bacon in the microwave."

"Sure." He got up and walked over to her, brushing past her slightly to get to the delicious plate of bacon on the counter, grabbing it and putting it up in the microwave, setting the timer for 30 seconds. "Then it's settled. And after breakfast, we can work on our teamwork right here." He reached out and brushed her hair out of her face as he spoke. "You and I are going to use that nose of yours to track down my cat."