Work Text:
Kim let herself into the apartment. It had been a long day at work. She wasn't paying attention to anything but getting her high heels off the first moment after she came inside.
It was only after she'd stretch the kinks out of her lower legs and settled comfortably back to the floor that she began paying attention to the banging coming from the far side of the apartment.
Shego was on the couch filing her nails. The couch was a black leather thing with modern lines that practically screamed her name. Their senses of style didn't always mesh. Drakken's dramatic flair hadn't diminished in the years since he stopped being a villain. Kim mostly wanted her house to be comfortable.
There were fluffy blankets on the majority of the modern furniture. And a large recliner built for two in a soft chenille red that complimented the other two's color scheme but was still very much Kim's.
Normally she'd make her way there after work and one or the other of her partners would cuddle until it was time to figure out dinner.
Kim looked back and forth between Shego's intentionally nonchalant body language and door at the far side of the apartment where a muffled boom sounded from. "Should I ask?"
"He's being a big baby." Shego pitched her voice in a way that made it clear she wanted Drakken to hear her.
"Am Not!!!!" was muffled by the door.
Kim sighed. Five years since Shego had followed Drakken's lead into trying to be a good guy and she still resorted to cutting remarks whenever things got too emotional for her.
"Shego," Kim kept her voice soft but with enough steel to make it clear she was serious.
"He's dropping petals. It isn't my fault he always gets overly emotional when that happens." Shego was too self-possessed to squirm but it was a near thing.
It was true that Drakken got more emotional during molting season, but never without cause. Kim tried to decide which of her partners was likely to give her a straighter answer about what was going on and resisted the urge to call Wade instead.
They had talked it through after their last fight and she was trying to be better about using her crime fighting contacts to monitor her partners. Shego had been clear that it made her feel preemptively judged.
Kim went to Drakken's work room. Shego could follow if she wanted. Drakken hunched over his latest project, his back to the door. His petals drooped around his head and when he made an irritated noise and tugged at one, it popped off in his hand. After a second he dropped it to the floor where it joined a large number of other wilted petals.
She made enough noise to let him know she was coming up behind him, before wrapping him in a hug. She resisted the urge to immediately demand an explanation. Your partner monologued all his plans to you for the first five years you knew him and you started expecting that level of openness about everything.
After a long moment of stillness, Drakken collapsed back into her arms. His petals tickled her nose.
"What are you working on?"
"It's a dehydrator. It targets any cell type you put into it and starts drawing moisture from it."
Kim felt one of her eyebrows rise. It wasn't exactly an evil invention, but it was skirting closer than Drakken usually did these days. Too many treaties and plea bargains involved for him to risk doing anything too obviously nefarious.
Three years ago she'd already be yelling at him and assuming the worst. It'd been hard learning to trust that he and Shego had turned over a new leaf, or petal in Drakken's case, but having them in her life had been worth every moment of struggle.
She combed her fingers through his hair and gently straightened his petals. Drakken rewarded her with an explanation. "We got a call on the Intergalactic Communicator. Some villain's experiment went wrong and let some single cell organisms out into the surrounding farm lands. They need help stopping him and his creations."
Intergalactic Communicator meant an off world mission and probably at least a week away from home. For both her and Shego who would never let her go without backup.
It explained her partners' fight. They had learned the hard way that Drakken's flower didn't do well when he was off-planet. Sometimes he could risk it, but definitely not when he was already molting.
He most likely either demanded to go anyway or got whiney about being left behind. And Shego got angry because either option meant one of her partners doing something dangerous which always brought up old wounds from when she was fighting with her brothers and they wouldn't listen to her before trying to get themselves killed.
"I'm sorry we won't be here for our anniversary, but we can celebrate early if you like?" She could call Wade to arrange a ride and a meal at their favorite restaurant, even if it was short notice.
"I'm just as strong as either of you!"
She almost responded on instinct, but stopped herself in time. That would have seemed like condescension and made everything else worse.
"Do you think I like it when you and Shego go off to do Earth Ambassador stuff without me?"
"No," his tone was petulant.
"I'm proud of the work you are doing to help with deforestion and famine relief but it sucks feeling like I can't do anything but punch the problem." It brought up old feelings of inadequacy from the Tweebs.
Drakken slumped even harder against her.
"Come out into the living-room with us?"
Drakken followed her out of his workshop, shoulders hunched. She bullied him into sitting in the spot next to Shego. Who turned her back to both of them to make sure they knew she wasn't happy about the situation. But she didn't move off the couch. She could be such a cat some times.
Kim wrapped all three of them in one of the large fluffy blankets. "I was thinking we could do our anniversary early? You and I get dolled up and then off to Paris?" The last was addressed to Shego. The other woman loved any excuse to break out her higher fashion clothes and enjoyed both seeing Kim in them and messing her up after.
The french restaurant and public display of their relationship would be good for Drakken who never lost his need for public validation of how special he was. Validation people tended to give him when he had the two hottest women in the venue on his arms.
Shego considered it for a while, even stopping with her filing to do it. "I couldn't enjoy it enough if we are flying out tomorrow."
That was true, once Shego got going she wasn't finished until Kim was a wrecked mess in their bed. Drakken squirmed between them, obviously picturing the coming event too.
"Then after we get back? You can plan us something suitably dramatic can't you?" She addressed Drakken, pressing a kiss to his cheek to make that clear. "I'll even get Wade to help?"
Drakken blushed a darker blue. "I guess."
It wouldn't be the same as having both her partners with her for the coming mission, but having something to plan would help Drakken stay calmer while they were away. And she would enjoy picturing all the possibilities. Often having a semi-long distant relationship was about the anticipation as much as the actual events.
Shego pulled out her phone, obviously done with all the emotions. "I'm getting the biggest order of Chinese. We deserve it before having to put up with weird alien rations."
And if she put a few extra servings of Drakken's favorites in the order so he would have something to eat while they were away, Kim knew better than to mention it.