Its not like all four of them are together. Well, not really at least. It's not super complicated, alright? There's four of them, but there's only four couples.

So, therefore, all four of them aren't together, because that leaves two couples out of the picture.

They have charts for this, okay? It's all figured out.

Kudo and Neechan had obviously gotten together, because, well…duh. You had to be blind, deaf, and stupid to not see that coming. Kudo came back from the "case" that lead to his "mysterious disappearance", and just picked things up with Ran like nothing ever happened. (Well, okay, that was bullshit - there was a lot more behind the scenes drama. But only a few people knew that, to everybody else it worked that way.) They were that sickenly sweet couple that did everything together, wanted to test for all the same universities, and everybody assumed would get married eventually. Typical.

Heiji had kind of wound up in the same boat with Kazuha, only a lot less "sickenly sweet" and more "how have we not killed each other yet". That was just how they worked, because they weren't carbon copies of their friends. They didn't have plans to attend the same university anyway, so...

But that's only two couples. So you're probably asking where three and four come in, which is where things get slightly complicated.

"Oi! Kudo! Scoot over, you're taking up too much room!"

"Ow! Watch it!"

"Oh my god, do you have to lay across the couch, Ran?"

"Stop, you're going to make me kick Kazuha in the face again!"

The four of them are trying to fit on a couch that's obviously not meant for more that two, maybe three, people. Ran is splayed out with her head on Kudo's lap and her back on Kazuha's, while Heiji is trying his best to get both his girlfriend and his boyfriend to move so he can actually sit down.

Date night is the worst night ever.

They're not a quadrad, no matter how many of their friends they happen to have in their "community" imply or how often people assume.

Heiji can't help but see Neechan as a sister, and he's pretty sure she's still a little peeved at him for keeping Kudo's secret. Plus he's always been kind of a one-boyfriend-and-one-girlfriend kind of guy. Anything more than two people feels excessive to him.

Kazuha, even if she's a lot more open when it comes to polyamory, and Kudo are only just barely friends. They don't know each other that well, nor do they have a lot of the same interests, and only really talk when the four of them are in the same general area. Heiji is also pretty sure she likes girls more than boys anyway, but they've never really needed to talk about it.

He finally manages to squeeze in between Kazuha and the arm of Kudo's couch; Ran's feet wind up in his lap, but he can't complain. "You have a gigantic house and your parents can't spring for a normal couch?"

Kudo rolls his eyes and lets his arm hang off the back of the couch, just enough so his hand can brush Heiji's, "It's a loveseat, idiot, you don't have to sit here if it bothers you that much." Kudo totally wants him to sit there, though, even if he won't say it outright.

"Did someone remember t'pop the DVD in?" Kazuha asks, propping her legs up onto the coffee table, her fingers trailing lightly over Ran's stomach.

Neechan groans, "No, I don't want to move again!"

"Come on, you'll have the easiest time gettin' up!"

"I'm so comfy though!"

"Well at least that makes one'a us, Neechan."

"How about we just turn the TV on and shut up for a while?"

There's nothing good on, because there's almost never anything good on TV on a Saturday night. Saturday night is when normal couples go out, Saturday night is when other teenagers double date or do cutesy romantic things. But they can't do those things, at least, not on Date Night.

Kudo and Neechan can go out on normal dates, and so can Heiji and Kazuha. But once the tables turn, it doesn't work anymore.

The girls can kind of get away with it, neither one of them has a supreme amount of notoriety and it's "normal" for two girls to go out on the town alone together. They can pass just fine as long as they keep hand-holding to a minimum and don't kiss in public. They've only been called out once or twice, but they can hold their own if things get too rough.

For Heiji and Kudo though, it's near impossible for the two of them to even go out without raising suspicions. Everybody knows who they are. They've never had a real date, and always have to keep things behind closed doors. Japan still isn't the best place to be in a gay relationship, even if both members are involved with women as well. Heiji really thinks that kind of sucks.

Double dates are out of the question too. They can't function right if they go out as two separate couples. The last time they tried, there was way too much cross-flirting going on and things got messy. Plus they can never agree on a place to go that'll leave all four of them satisfied. Someone always gets left out and it's not fair.

So, Date Night… their at least once a month trip to either Beika or Osaka, where the four of them try to spend quality time together, both as friends and as four mishmoshed couples. It works out… sometimes, he guesses, but really Heiji is just happy to spend whatever time they can get together.

They wind up stuck on some stupid drama on some random channel that nobody except old ladies and unemployed people watch. Kazuha casually mentions that it looks like it's something from the Philippines, and upon closer inspection the lip flaps don't match the words coming out. It's overly dramatic, and halfway through a cliche declaration of love, Kudo makes a loud gagging noise and Heiji bursts out laughing.

"Heiji!" Kazuha huffs and smacks him upside the head.

"Shinichi!" Neechan glares at Kudo.

"What? Come on, you know that sounded really dumb."

"It's not supposed to be art!"

"That doesn't mean it has to be awful!"

"Seriously! He just kidnapped her an' suddenly he's like 'it's because I actually love you' and now they're suckin' face. A little consistency never killed nobody!"

Kazuha rolls her eyes and shakes Neechan's leg, "Hey, let's order the pizza - I'm hungry."

The girls scramble their way off the couch, Kazuha only accidentally elbows Kudo once and Heiji doesn't get kicked in the crotch - so it's pretty much a rousing success in his book. Maybe they'll get lucky and there won't be any awkward bruises by the end of the night. (Well, at least not until they break off into pairs. He can't help but snicker a little at that thought, but he knows it's better to keep it to himself.) Kudo scoots a little closer to him now that they have room and starts flipping through the channels again. Heiji tosses his arm around the other's shoulders and lulls his head just enough to the side that they're touching.

It takes them a little while to realize that the girls are taking their sweet time in the kitchen.

Heiji pokes Kudo's side, "Get up and check on them."

"You get up and check on them."

"Oh, come on!"

"Hattori."

"Kudo."

They wind up going jan-ken-pon for it, and Heiji loses spectacularly. He rolls his eyes and gets up with a groan, "You're going to pay for this later, ass."

"Oh no, I'm shaking in my boots. Get moving."

When he finally does make his way into the kitchen, he can't really say he's all too surprised about what he finds. Neechan's sitting on the counter - next to the phone that probably never got picked up in the first place - with Kazuha pressed up against her. They're way too caught up in kissing to notice that he's even entered the room and yeah, it may be cute - but he's fucking hungry so…

"Hey…hey! Ladies, I'm talkin' to you!"

Kazuha pulls away from Ran with an annoyed noise and shoots him a deadly glare, which admittedly does make him feel a little threatened, "What?"

"I thought…you were supposed to be—dumbass! If you wanted t'make out with Neechan, y'should have said something!" He crosses his arms and glares back at them, "Then maybe Kudo and I could have ordered dinner or somethin'!"

"Dumbass, you can still order something - the phone is right there!"

"I don't want to hear you two getting all slobbery with each other!"

"Hattori-kun, there's another phone in the library," Neechan pulls Kazuha a little closer, "use that one." And of course they're back to kissing, which is all fine and dandy except, well, he was expecting pizza and you don't just break a promise like that lightly.

He leaves them behind in the kitchen to use the phone in Kudo's ridiculously huge library. Honestly, he doesn't get why the house has to be so big - even when Kudo's parents are in Japan it's only the three of them living there, so it's not like they need all of the space. It has it's benefits for when he and Kazuha come to visit, though - since it's not as cramped as when they used to stay at Kogoro-occhan and Neechan's place so…

He closes the door to the library as he looks at the numbers for local pizza places on his phone. He plops down in the chair behind the desk while he tries to decide between the two of them that don't look incredibly shitty. "Jeez…" he mutters, "would it have killed 'em to at least tell me what place we usually order from?"

Of course, deciding between the two places turns out to be too much of a burden on an empty stomach, so Heiji figures it's probably best to flip a coin. He opens the desk drawer because one time Kazuha opened a random drawer in one of the rooms in the house and found a wad of bills just laying around, so he figures Kudo's parents have to have change lying around somewhere.

Instead he finds a certain pair of glasses, which makes him snicker as he pulls them out. "He still has these? Really? Kudo, you sentimental idiot." Just for the hell of it, he puts them on...and then an idea hits him. "I'm a genius."


Kudo is still sitting on the couch when he comes back into the living room. Heiji grins as he sneaks up behind him before smashing a hat on his head.

"Hey! What's the big idea, Hatt-"

"We're goin' out," he says, simply as that. It didn't take that long to find a tube of hair gel in one of Kudo's bathrooms, so with the glasses and a different hairstyle - he looks completely different. As long as someone doesn't immediately recognize him for his skin color, Heiji should be pretty okay. He'd grabbed his baseball cap from his bag just before coming back downstairs.

Kudo looks up at him as he adjusts the hat, "And this is supposed to make me look inconspicuous how exactly?"

"You look like an average Japanese guy, jackass. I'm the one that has to worry about stickin' out like a sore thumb." He leans against the back of the coach and whines, "Come on, I'm hungry and all the girls want to do is kiss 'nd stuff, so it's not like we're going to be ordering any time soon."

His boyfriend sighs, but still smiles at him fondly before reaching over to adjust the glasses. "Fine, fine...you owe me a date anyway."

"Well, you're the one with the credit card...so I assumed you'd be payin'."

"Wow, maybe I just changed my mind."

Heiji barks out a laugh and punches Kudo in the shoulder, "I'm jokin'. Come on, let's go eat."


So...this is kind of just starting up a universe that I can play in for a little while. I mean, I love all four of these pairings - so why should I have to pick? Plus, as a polyamorous person, I feel we need more representation in fiction. Down with the love triangles and love v's! Up with the multiple people loving and kissing each other!

There will be a fic explaining how this relationship came to be...eventually. I have a lot of ideas I want to touch on.

Orientations of the characters, just in case you're burning with curiosity:
Heiji is pansexual, Ran is bisexual, Kazuha is a lesbian-with-an-exception, Shinichi is heteroflexible.