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He was tanning in the backyard when the commotion started.
If the weather had cooperated for both of them, he'd likely be basking in the sun next to Hana on the beach while Shinsuke hung five or ten or whatever the hell it was he called it, out on the waves. So long as it didn't actually involve going in the water and ruining his hair, Tana had no objection to spending the day there as a family. Once Hana had worn herself out making friends and tearing from one end of the beach to the other, he'd carry her to a suitable spot to watch the distant surfers, pointing out to her which one was Shinsuke, as though it were that easy to tell which he was from so far off. Depending on the weather, while Hana dreamed her doggy dreams, he'd spend the time working on his tan, or lazing under one of the oversized, colorful umbrellas that dotted the sand.
Unfortunately, between storms, the ocean was flat as glass (at least as far as his lanky partner's requirements were concerned) so after a leisurely stroll along the shore they'd returned home to idle away the day in other ways.
Substituting one source of stimulation for another, Shinsuke'd decided to begin a painting. Hana's choice had been a nap, curled up in a sunbeam by his easel; the prospect of just staying inside with them in pleasant domestic peace was tempting, but in the end he'd decided to take advantage of a quiet sunny day and do a little maintenance on his carefully-cultivated bronze glow.
One minute he was near-dozing on the lounge chair in their modest backyard, and the next he was bolt upright in response to the alarming series of noises suddenly filtering out the screen door.
"Shin-chan?!" he called, up and moving before he'd fully processed the cacophony of barking, growling, shouting and what sounded like...distressed beeping?
The scene that greeted him when he burst into the living room made (if possible) even less sense than the racket that'd drawn him there in the first place; rather than working stoically at his easel, Shinsuke was on his knees on the floor, one arm hooked around Hana's front and the other hand tugging fiercely at something apparently centered between her face and the roomba, which seemed to be attempting to reverse in desperate fits and bursts.
"Shinsuke, what the hell?! Did it grab her fur?" Tana said, immediately crouching down to join the struggling trio on the floor. Usually the very picture of good humor, Hana was actually growling. She didn't seem to be in pain, though...
"No! No, she's fine, um...it's not...ok, you're gonna laugh at this," Shinsuke promised, though he didn't sound entirely convinced of that himself.
"Try me," Tana deadpanned, over the growling, and the uncharacteristic grinding noise emanating from the roomba. "Did it occur to you to shut it off?"
"Hey, my hands are full," Shinsuke said defensively, before a sheepish look stole over his face. "...but no."
Sighing, Tana reached over and flicked the power switch. Hana fought on relentlessly as the little vacuum powered down, claws scrabbling for purchase on the wood floor in her quest to wiggle her way out of Shinsuke's arms and press her advantage.
"D'you know where her off switch is?" he asked helplessly. Tana drew himself up; there would come a time to, without pity, tease the self-proclaimed King of Strong Style about the handicap match he'd obviously lost to an automatic vacuum and a spirited toy poodle, but not until the current crisis had passed.
"Hana," he said sternly. "It's poor sportsmanship to keep attacking after the bell."
"Oh, there's no way that's...going...to..." Shinsuke trailed off, watching in disbelief as she released her hold on whatever it was had caused the impromptu tug-of-war, and Sat, dignified as a shrine maiden.
"That's my girl," Tana said proudly, reaching between his arms to scritch her ears.
"Show off," Shinsuke muttered. Whatever had caused the fracas, he still had hold of however much of it hadn't yet been consumed by the roomba. Tana thought he could make out a streak of neon pink and blue; his eyes narrowed in suspicion. Shinsuke was trying, and failing badly, to project an aura of innocence.
Tana steepled his fingers. "Shin-chan," he said, in a conversational tone, "is that one of your socks?"
"Well..."
"One of the socks you were wearing yesterday, that you left on the floor when you got home?"
"The thing is..."
"One of the socks I asked you to put in the laundry basket?"
"I was getting around to it."
"This is why we can't have nice things, Shin-chan."
"All right," he sighed. "I'm sorry. Think we can get it out of there?"
Tana rubbed his chin, surveying the unconscious patient. It put him oddly in mind of the time Shinsuke'd gotten a bit tipsy at a buffet lunch and taken the 'all-you-can-eat gyoza' promotion as a challenge. He'd slept for four hours that afternoon, drooling gently onto Tana's leg. "I don't know. At least it didn't get the whole sock, anyway..."
"Yeah, you should have seen Hana - she was on it before I even realized what was happening. I guess she figured she's the only one who gets to eat my socks."
"Slander and lies," Tana sniffed haughtily, pointedly ignoring the obvious teeth marks and slobber marring the sad, dangling, uneaten end. "Is that any way to talk about the hero who saved your sock? Anyway, if you didn't wear ones colored like treat packages, maybe she wouldn't occasionally get...confused."
"See, that wouldn't explain why she's never touched the ones with chickens on them - all right, all right!" Shinsuke said, as Hana raised her head expectantly at the use of the t-word and the c-word in such rapid succession. He put his hands up in surrender. "I guess your selfless defense of my wardrobe does deserve a couple of treats."
"Grab me the toolkit while you're up, huh? I'll prep the patient."
"Sure you don't want your old surgeon disguise too?" Shinsuke teased, getting to his feet. Hana's tail wagged cheerfully as she followed him to the kitchen.
"Actually...maybe the mask might be a good idea, I can't remember the last time we emptied this thing..."
While he awaited their return, Tana pulled the morning paper from where it had been discarded on the end of the couch; he didn't think he'd been in it anywhere, but picked the least-likely sections to lay out on the floor under the stricken little robot anyway. It would be a shame to have an incomplete collection, after all.
Shinsuke breezed past on his way to the stairs, depositing the small toolbox on the floor and a kiss on the top of his head as he went.
Flipping the roomba over, Tana chewed his lip as he tried to get his bearings. He'd done this only once before - there had been a previous unfortunate Tie Incident. He considered that one Shinsuke's fault as well, even if it had been his own tie; if he hadn't been too distracted to focus on where his clothes were ending up as they were removed, it wouldn't have been left on the floor to be mercilessly savaged. Toiling away extracting his good blue tie from a rogue vacuum cleaner hadn't exactly been how he'd expected to end that particular romantic evening, but Shinsuke had provided an appropriate amount of glowing encouragement while he worked, and they'd gotten back on track afterwards.
Drifting off into the fond memory, Tana didn't see the playfully-slingshotted surgical mask coming until it bounced gently off his forehead.
"What's the prognosis, doc?" the culprit himself asked, cheeky grin undiminished by the force of Tana's disapproving glare. Admittedly, it might not have been quite as disapproving as he intended, given the circumstances...
"Shin-chan," he cautioned, suppressing the instinctive urge to wolf whistle, "distracted surgeons are much more likely to lose patients! How's this operation supposed to go smoothly with you dressed like that?"
"Hey, it's not my fault if the doctor can't keep his eyes off the nurse," Shinsuke chided, settling gracefully down in his little white dress and cap. The effect ought to be absurd - Tana knew that without question, but absurd would definitely not be the word he'd use to describe how his partner looked grinning saucily in his sexy nurse costume.
"How'd you change so fast, anyway?" he muttered, hooking the mask's elastic over his ears. With any luck it might partially hide the blush creeping across his face; it'd been a while since he'd had to endure the sexy nurse costume.
"Medical professionals are always prepared for an emergency," Shinsuke said, as though it were the most logical explanation in the world rather than his trademark brand of complete nonsense.
At least he hadn't had time to get into the matching white stockings. Trying to take apart machinery when Shinsuke was distracting him in the white stockings was a surefire way to guarantee a real medical emergency. Tana shook his head, attempting to focus on the problem at hand.
"I guess we should eliminate the easy possibility first," he said, tugging gently on the slobbery end of the trapped sock. However it was tangled around the little brush cylinders, though, it was obvious brute force would accomplish nothing but breaking them.
"We don't seem to be easy possibility people," Shinsuke noted, cracking the plastic clamp on the toolkit. After a moment of rummaging, he held up a vaguely familiar red-handled screwdriver. "It was this one, right?"
"I think so," Tana nodded, squinting down at the screws keeping the brushes in place. To his credit, Shinsuke didn't even tease him when he dramatically produced the case containing his glasses from one dress pocket. Not out loud, anyway - but the way his eyes were sparkling spoke volumes.
"Look," he said defensively, "you can't suntan in glasses. I'd have ended up with weird lines on my face."
"I didn't say a word."
"You were thinking it," he sighed. It was the right screwdriver, he realized, as the world swam back into focus. Shinsuke demurely held his tongue, dutifully collecting the screws as he removed them. Licking her lips, Hana trotted back into the living room to observe the proceedings; Tana wondered faintly if doing so by inserting her entire head between his line of vision and the roomba might not mean she needed glasses, too.
"All right, princess," Shinsuke said, relocating her to sit in his lap, "Doctor Tana already has an assistant, and the patient's been drooled on enough for one day."
She went without a fight for once, flopping down heavily on his legs. Probably it counted as a novelty; Shinsuke rarely sat still long enough to be used as furniture, and when he did, Tana was usually right next to him as an alternative.
Carefully, Tana pried up the brush assembly. To his relief, the sock lifted out with it - he wasn't sure what the options would be if it were stuck somewhere further in as well. A solitary piece of popcorn bounced free along with it, accompanied by a small puff of dust.
"Hey, that must be the piece that rolled under the couch when we were watching Ultra Seven last week!" Shinsuke exclaimed. Hana stirred slightly in his lap, sniffing curiously.
"Shin-chan, I swear, if you start eating week-old popcorn straight out of the vacuum cleaner, this relationship is over," Tana said, warily eyeing both of them.
Shinsuke looked mortally offended. "Just making an observation," he scoffed. "Anyway, of the three of us, I'm not the one who eats things off the floor."
"I can never be too careful, where you're concerned. Anyway, Hana just...likes to keep the place tidy, that's all."
"Not that bite-sized pieces of food mysteriously end up under the table on a regular basis, or anything."
"I hope you're not suggesting I'd encourage her if she were to stoop so low as to beg for scraps."
"Nooo, of course not," Shinsuke said, not meeting his eyes. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Tana tsked disapprovingly, but chose not to grant the undeniably true accusation the dignity of further response.
He turned the assembly over in his hands, trying to find the best angle to start pulling. The sock was looped around each of them in turn, stretched out like taffy; the loose end stuck out like a lolling tongue. Shinsuke scooted forward a bit on his knees, being careful not to jostle Hana too much in the process.
"Sure you don't need any help with that?" he asked. "You do have a reputation for accidentally breaking things..."
"I've never broken anything in my life," Tana curtly informed him.
"Hah! No doubt a great surprise to all the door handles, phones, charger cords and laptops of the world. Though...I guess you do have a delicate touch when you need to," Shinsuke grinned, waggling his eyebrows. It was unsettlingly cute, under the little nurse hat; Tana allowed himself a pained sigh, again grateful that the mask hid most of his expression. Not, of course, that Shinsuke wouldn't be able to read it anyway.
"You just...keep helping Hana supervise," he said. "...and don't lose the screws."
"Hey, if you've never broken anything in your life and Hana's never begged for people food in her life, I've never....misplaced...anything in my life, either!"
"Except the key to the fuzzy handcuffs," Tana said innocently.
"That was one time!"
"When you're the one cuffed to the headboard for two hours, then you get to decide it was 'just one time.'"
Shinsuke quirked an elegant brow. "I seem to remember making it up to you," he said.
"Well...fair," Tana admitted. "But it was still an uncomfortable last few minutes."
"Which taught us an important lesson about the safety release."
"Thank god for the internet. For a while I thought you'd have to go borrow Suzuki's bolt cutters..." he muttered, suppressing a shiver.
"I would have used my Ultra Seven mask," Shinsuke assured him, "To preserve your modesty."
"Wouldn't have gone with the Kamen Rider belt," Tana said automatically, putting a hand to his forehead when Shinsuke started snickering. He gestured with the assembly. "You're not helping."
Making no effort whatsoever to disguise his amusement, Shinsuke took hold of it as well. "Here," he said, "How about you keep it steady and I untangle?"
Tana hummed thoughtfully, regarding him with mock-skepticism. "I dunno...that leaves nobody to delicately wipe the sweat from my brow."
"Move a little closer to the couch and Hana can stand up there and lick your forehead," Shinsuke suggested helpfully.
"You know, impertinence like this is why married couples shouldn't work together," he groused. The plan had merit, though, he had to admit. Even if he ought to be performing the operation himself, as befitting his rank...his partner did have fingers better suited to the fiddly bits.
"We do work together," Shinsuke sagely pointed out, beginning to tug the sock loose from the first brush bar. "You like it better when I have you in a headlock than when I'm teasing you?"
"You still tease me when you have me in a headlock!"
"True! Can you blame me, though? It's so hot when you get riled up..."
"Well, I can't deny th....wait," Tana said warily, ego uncharacteristically pausing midway to Smug. "I hope that's not why you tease the other guys in the ring, too."
"Nah...most of the time it's just funny," Shinsuke assured him. "I mean - it's pretty funny with you too, but then sometimes you do that snarling thing...that's when I know there'll be some really inventive makeup sex in the works if we both survive the match."
"Once the ice packs come off, anyway."
"Heh. And after a nap."
Even when they were younger, sore bodies had always tended to have more to do with delayed 'makeup sex' than actual hurt feelings; competitive as they both were, Tana still couldn't honestly recall a time he'd been genuinely resentful after a loss. So far as he could tell, Shinsuke didn't hold grudges either - at least, not against him - though when he was on the losing end of things, he always felt entitled to a little extra affection as compensation for his pain and suffering.
The absolute longest they'd managed had nothing to do with lingering anger and everything to do with injury; the time Shinsuke'd fractured his eye socket with a bomaye and landed him in hospital. Even years later, the memory was too raw to bring up in jest - he'd never seen his partner so utterly wretched with guilt as when his face swam gently into focus through a haze of fading anesthetic and painkillers, post-surgery. Dizzy and drugged, it'd taken him a few wake-up's to fully retain the explanation of what had happened or what they were doing in a strange room, but he did quite distinctly remember asking with complete seriousness if Shinsuke would still love him even if he were ugly when the bandages came off.
Never one to half-ass a show of devotion, Shinsuke'd debuted the sexy nurse costume the day he was discharged from hospital; admittedly, that recovery and every subsequent one had passed more pleasantly as a result. Relentless pampering was somehow that much sweeter when it was accompanied by a view of the finest pair of legs he'd ever set eyes on.
Even the roomba seemed to respond favorably; he remembered the half-eaten tie giving him a lot more trouble than Shinsuke seemed to be having with his poor, abused sock. By the time it was disentangled from brush cylinder number two, the rest came loose as though it had never been stuck at all. He couldn't begrudge the bastard his smug little flourish, even if it had been his own problem he was solving.
"I think this one's gonna live, doctor," he said. "Though...it might be a little longer than the other sock for a while."
"You could always walk lopsided," Tana suggested. "Just wear them when you're drinking, you end up doing that anyway."
"I'm sure the Ace of Laundry will be able to restore it to the right shape well before it's a problem," Shinsuke teased. "You wanna close the other patient up, doc?"
"Provided my lovely assistant hasn't misplaced the screws," he said, laughing in spite of himself as Shinsuke made an exaggerated show of patting his pockets.
The assembly appeared to be none the worse for wear, at least, as he screwed it back into place. Nothing seemed broken, but then, a trial run would be the only way to be certain no more permanent damage had been done.
"All right," he nodded, setting aside the screwdriver. "I guess we'd better test it."
"Preparing for post-surgical exam," Shinsuke announced. Tana watched with some amusement as he broke the sad piece of stale popcorn into scientifically-sized crumbs and scattered them on the bare floor, then sat back with a look of expectation. He raised an eyebrow.
"Shin-chan."
"Yes, doctor?"
"Put your damned sock up on the couch before I turn it on."
"Ah...see, that's why you're so much further up the medical hierarchy," he said, sheepishly placing the sock out of reach of further tragedy. "Attention to detail."
"That, and a sexy nurse costume wouldn't have been much of a disguise outside," he agreed, tossing the newspaper pages up to join it. Hana climbed down from Shinsuke's lap, seemingly unaffected by the atmosphere of tense anticipation. She sniffed at the roomba on the way back to her bed, and somewhat inevitably, sneezed on it.
"They do say you risk getting colds during a hospital stay," Shinsuke said wryly.
"Hopefully we won't have the world's first case of dog-vacuum transmission...I don't think I have a costume specific enough for that kind of science."
Shinsuke patted his knee reassuringly. "You'd think of something," he said.
Tana flipped the roomba back over, positioning it towards the popcorn crumbs; his finger hovered dramatically over the power button. "Ok...moment of truth!" he said.
"Ganbatte, Roomba-san!"
"'Ganbatte, Roomba-san?'" he echoed, raising his eyebrows. Shinsuke shrugged.
"...It just seemed like the thing to say."
"I'm sure the vacuum appreciates your emotional support, sweetheart," Tana sighed, shaking his head fondly. He cautiously pushed the button; the familiar series of beeps and rumbles started up immediately. Hana made a disgruntled noise from her bed, but refrained from further comment. Newly-christened and with a new lease on life, Roomba-san rolled dutifully towards the escaped popcorn; amid triumphant cheering, it disappeared back into the fathomless depths from whence it came.
"Hey, maybe it did catch something from Hana," Shinsuke speculated, as the shell-shocked little robot altered course and headed for its docking station.
"If I'd just had one of your socks down my throat I'd probably think I deserved a nap too," Tana joked.
"Heh. Fair."
There was something tremendously gratifying, Tana thought, about remaining briefly on the floor while Shinsuke got to his feet in a short dress; the view was a deeply impressive one. "You know..." he said idly, following him up and tugging him close with one arm, "according to my records, it's been a while since you had a checkup, yourself."
"Is that so, doctor?" Shinsuke purred, walking his fingers up Tana's chest.
"Dangerous to leave it so long, really. I think...you should come up to my office and let me have a look at you."
"Hmm...give me a ten minute head-start and we can make it a complete checkup...plus I'll have time to get the stockings on first," he said, winking in a most distressingly saucy way. Tana made an inadvertent keening noise, but managed to keep his expression serious; his partner's health was no laughing matter, after all.
"Go on then," he said graciously, "I'll clear up the rest of this mess and put the other patient in the laundry."
"Any idea where it's mate ended up?"
As one, they turned to look over at Hana's basket, where another brightly-striped neon sock clearly peeked out over the edge. He very deliberately looked away again; Shinsuke bit back a laugh.
"I guess that's a mystery for another day."
"We'll have to find your detective hat."
"Go on," Tana laughed, playfully smacking Shinsuke's ass as he swanned towards the stairs. The bastard had the nerve to turn and blow him a kiss before he disappeared from view. Tana shook his head again, turning his attention to the 'missing' sock.
Upon further examination, most of it was trapped under Hana's furry little stomach; whether she was already asleep or just faking it to vex him, he couldn't find it in his heart to disturb her by pulling it loose.
"Just...try not to leave this one on the floor," he warned, pointing sternly down at her and trying to muster some belief that he had any authority over anyone he lived with, be they human, dog or small cylindrical robot. "At least the washing machine respects me," he sighed, retrieving the chewed-up sock from the couching and heading for the lean-to where it resided. Tossing it into the basket on the counter, he checked his watch; surely there was no harm in going upstairs a little early. Doctors should make certain the environment was welcoming for their patients, after all...and he intended to be very welcoming indeed, where this one was concerned.
"The labcoat with no shirt or nothing but the stethoscope and a smile?" he mused aloud, climbing the stairs; deciding which form of professional dress would best raise Shinsuke's...morale...was always of critical importance. Fortunately, Tana knew that his easily-pleased partner would be equally delighted by any combination of clothing, or lackthereof; with any luck, all three of his patients would have happy results today.
"Ah, the Ace's work is never done," he said cheerfully to himself, pushing open the bedroom door.
It was shaping up to be a pretty good day.