Cory sleeps over at Shawn's. What Shawn wants to do on Saturday morning surprises him.

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It wasn't quite 6:15 AM when Shawn and Cory quietly snuck out of the bedroom and into the kitchen.

"So," Cory said in a hushed tone, rubbing his hands together, "what trouble are we going to get into this morning, my Shawn?"

Without thinking, Shawn let go of the refrigerator door. He managed to catch it just before it slammed shut. "Watch as much TV as we can before Jon gets up."

Cory blinked. "Huh?"

"Yeah," Shawn stood on his tiptoes to reach the sugary cereal his teacher had hidden in the back of the high cabinet. "Jon limits my TV time in the morning to an hour if I don't have my homework done. And you know I don't have my homework done." He tossed a box of Lucky Charms to Cory. "Don't eat too much. Audrey's coming over around 8 to make breakfast. And trust me you're gonna want to have plenty of room for her breakfast. She makes the best chocolate chip pancakes with whipped cream and that red rope licorice."

Cory shook out the cereal into his bowl, stopping every so often to pick out the non-marshmallow parts of the cereal and return to it's container. "So you really just wanna watch TV?"

"Yeah, isn't that what you do on Saturdays?"

"Well, yeah, unless you're staying over. Then I have fun."

Shawn shrugged and took the cereal boxes and shoved them back into their places in the cabinet. He grabbed his overloaded cereal bowl and a soda and headed to the couch. Cory followed, more than a little disappointed to be doing something so mundane on his first time sleeping over at Shawn's place.

"Aw, man! We're up too early," Shawn made a face as he flipped through the channels. "Madeline is still on!"

"There's gotta be something better than that," Cory said then frowned. "Not that I would know. Morgan hijacks the TV every Saturday. No matter how early I get I up there she is."

Shawn flipped through the channels with little interest until he hit the WB and Gladiators 2000. "Beats Madeline."

Cory nodded in agreement. They made it through Animaniacs, Batman and Robin, and Bump In the Night before Jon got up and caught them.

"You said I can watch TV for an hour on Saturdays before I have to do anything," Shawn protested as his teacher took the remote from him.

"An hour's an hour," Jon said, pocketing the remote. "It doesn't begin when I get up. It begins when you start watchin'."

"It hasn't been an hour!"

"Yeah, right. Catch the last half of Madeline did you?"

"That does not count as part of the hour."

Cory's eyes bounced back and forth between the two. The dispute felt a bit surreal to him. This wasn't the type of thing that typically caused arguments at Shawn's place, at least not when Shawn was with Chet Hunter. Those were far more serious in nature and resulted in his best friend taking off.

"So you watched Gladiators instead?" Jon rolled his eyes. "That's fifteen minutes off of your hour."

"It's Saturday!"

"We had a deal about this TV stuff on weekends. And your homework isn't done."

"I have a guest," Shawn retorted as if Jon was unaware of this. "This is cruel and unusual punishment to not let me watch TV on Saturday morning with my guest over stuff that isn't due until Monday."

Cory hid a smile behind his hand. He'd heard this same argument over and over as he, Eric, and Morgan had all been through it with their parents. Repeatedly. It was extraordinarily funny to him, to listen to Shawn and Mr. Turner go back and forth over the same, non-serious issue.

"Whatever," Jon headed back towards his bedroom taking the remote with him, even though he knew the TV was going back on as soon as he left. "I'm gonna take a shower. Lemme know when Audrey gets here okay?"

After their teacher was gone, Shawn got up and turned the TV on himself and the boys went back to watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles until Audrey showed up right at eight o'clock. Shawn greeted her with a bear hug before turning and yelling as loud as he could:

"Hey Dad! Mom's here!"

Audrey laughed, took his face between her palms and rested her forehead against his. She then ruffled his hair as she headed to the kitchen.

"Hey, Cory," she greeted the boy with a warm, happy smile that lit up her entire face.

"Hi, Miss Andrews." Cory couldn't help but grin back at her.

"Shawn," Jon came out of his bedroom looking annoyed. "Do ya have to yell? Because of you, the entire apartment buildin' thinks Audrey and I are divorced with the weirdest custody arrangement ever."

"Yeah, I know." Shawn grinned at Cory and dropped his voice to a whisper. "I told everyone that a family judge ordered them to spend all non-sleepin' hours together with me for my mental health or I be committed to a kid's psych ward and they'd face jail time."

As Cory started to laugh, Jon leaned over the couch not looking too pleased. To Shawn he asked, "Do you sit up at night comin' up with ways to make my life more complicated or is that just a rare gift you have?"

Shawn glanced at Cory, then grinned cheekily at their teacher. "To be honest, it's a bit of both."

Jon rolled his eyes as he stood up, took a swipe at Shawn's hair, and joined Audrey in the kitchen. Cory couldn't help but notice that he greeted her in the same way his dad greeted his mom in the morning by wrapping his arms around her waist and talking to her in affectionate, low tones. The only difference was that Jon kissed Audrey on the cheek instead of on the lips. He also couldn't but notice Shawn was watching them out of the corner of his eye and smiling happily to himself.

While Audrey cooked, Jon and Shawn went back and forth with the TV: every time Shawn turned it on, Jon, who was standing in the kitchen with the remote, would turn it off. It evolved into a game with Cory and Shawn jumping the coffee table and trying to block the remote signal to prevent the TV from turning off. Cory had once played this with Eric, but fortunately this game didn't end like the previous one: with a face to the edge of the coffee table and a trip to the emergency room. His face, of course, not Eric's.

As the morning went on Cory spent more time observing than talking. There was something unusual going on here, but something quite familiar, too. He just couldn't quite put his finger on what it was. He thought back to all the Saturday mornings when he and Eric would sneak downstairs extra early to watch TV before they were allowed to and eat as much junk breakfast food as they could before they got busted. Just like today. As he watched, Audrey pile pancakes up onto plates and Jon set them out on the table, Cory thought about all the times his own mom had made her special pancakes and his dad would take them to the table. Cory's gaze fell on Shawn and Jon who were carrying on a conversation about something or other, trading sarcastic quips as they did so. Audrey was ignoring most of what they were saying. Just like his mom did. At one point, Jon put his arm around Audrey and held onto to her as he continued to talk. Just like his dad did.

In all the sleepovers at other people's homes, Cory had never noticed anyone else's parents being around much when the kids got up in the mornings. This was so different because it was so familiar to Cory.

It was like...

It was like being home.

Home.

It was then that Cory understood why Shawn wanted to watch cartoons and eat Lucky Charms; why he wanted to spend the weekends at home doing very ordinary, family-centered stuff and going to very ordinary, family-centered places. Stuff that was so common to Cory that it bored him. But this wasn't common for Shawn. Not in his own home with his own family. This was all new to him. And a really big deal. Huge. He knew how tired Shawn was of always being the guest in other people's homes. He knew how badly his best friend wanted a stable home and to be wanted by the adults who were supposed to take care of him. Cory stayed in the living room not wanting to disrupt the moment. He stared at his teachers overcome with a feeling of tremendous gratitude for what they were doing for Shawn.

"Come on, Cory," Audrey waved him over to the table. "Time to eat."

"Great, I'm starving," he grinned back at her with a strange expression of admiration mixed with adoration. He turned to his English teacher and regarded him in the same manner.

Jon gave him a funny look and shifted uncomfortably under Cory's intense gaze. "You feelin' okay, Matthews?"

"Yeah, Mr. Turner," he said gratefully. "I'm feelin' great."

Notes:

Thoughts? I'd love to hear 'em. ;)