technomancing

ONE
"This was never supposed to be easy." Kon's voice was incredulous. He'd looked up from his pipe when Shouichi had stumbled in, drunk and red-faced (thanks, Yamamoto). He knew he was hard to live with, he'd confessed, hands twisted nervously into the hem of his shirt. Most days he was able to write their relationship off to eccentric taste, but it just made no sense! What if Kon got tired of trying?

"It doesn't make any sense," Shouichi squeaked, folding early as Kon pulled him onto the floor, sacrificing his bowl of tobacco to reel Shouichi in for a noogie and a hard one-armed hug.

"Maybe not to you," he conceded. "I like you." Shrugging, he shook Shouichi before tucking him up against his side and squeezing roughly.

"Dudes." Neither of them had heard Claudia come in, and she sprawled across the floor looking a little smug, despite the fact that her foot bumped the pipe and she had to stamp out the spill of embers. "Dudes, you're making this too complicated. But you're guys and therefore predisposed to be a little stupid. It's okay."

"Wh-what do you mean?"

"About overcomplicating."

"N-hey! We're not stupid!."

"Shut up." Kon whapped the back of Shouichi's head. "Let her talk. What do you mean?"

Claudia snorted. "It's so obvious. You really don't….? No….? Wow. Yeah, you need each other. It's as easy as that."


TWO
It was surprisingly easy, all things considered, for all three of them to exist in a comfortable rhythm. They were all needy in their own ways, and those needs generally included burying themselves in whatever project had their attention at the moment until one of them, usually Kon, dragged the others out by the scruff and forced some food down their throats. "I do things because I feel like it and I quit when they get boring," Kon would shrug, folding an omelet into a perfect half-moon. Claudia suspected that it made him happy to take care of them, and Shouichi was too caught up boggling over the fact that there were delicious eggs on his plate to think about it too hard. (Shouichi asked a lot of questions, but they were usually the wrong ones. Not that Kon would have given him a straight answer anyway, but it was amusing for Claudia to watch, any way.) So they ate. They slept when they were sleepy and they bathed in a messy, slopping pile of limbs and when something broke they fixed it.

Sometimes they had guests over. Kon had people over the most often, and usually it was that Toki kid or that Heihachi guy (Heihachi and Shouichi connected on a deep level that nobody else understood; they spent so much time spluttering and apologizing to each other that Kon and Claudia wondered amongst themselves if they were aliens from the same home planet). Claudia's brother visited sometimes, and they'd have animated conversations about string theory and astrophysics and gnostic math over baked macaroni and it was good. Shouichi's friends seemed to show up uninvited, and that was always a nice surprise unless it was that guy with white hair and ugly eye makeup. He gave Kon a bad feeling, but apparently he and Shouichi had a lot of complicated history together, and so he usually made an effort to be polite. Most of Shouichi's friends were a good time, though, especially when they visited together. Claudia and Yamamoto would joke while Kon needled Gokudera into lengthy and passionate arguments on inane topics that Gokudera obviously had very strong opinions on.

Eventually they'd leave, though, and the three of them would stagger back to their bed (their bed) and snuggle up to watch whatever was on natgeo. They'd fall asleep wound together, lips pressed to cheeks and arms entwined, and if somebody lost their pants, well, nobody complained.