Repairmen and Pizza

by Racke

Post-SAO, Klein finds a new apartment. His new neighbor is good at cooking, and though Klein would happily try, he can't actually live on pizza indefinitely.

XXX

Story: [Repairmen and Pizza]

Summary: Post-SAO, Klein finds a new apartment. His new neighbor is good at cooking, and though Klein would happily try, he can't actually live on pizza indefinitely.

Crossover: (Fate Stay Night) / (Sword Art Online)

Genre: Humor, Romance, Friendships

XXX

Finding a new apartment after the SAO-incident was... not a painless process.

Streamlined, pre-planned, bureaucratic, and with very little in the way of available options, but an awful lot easier overall than it'd been to find his previous apartment, back in the day.

The government couldn't be expected to pay the rents of several thousand apartments simply because the person living in them had been indisposed, and the landlords couldn't have tenants who didn't pay the rent. The result was that a lot of rented apartments had been cleared out, with all of the furnishing carefully documented and placed in storage, all waiting for the SAO-survivors to return and claim them.

Yes, a lot of people had ended up having a fit at realizing that their hard-earned apartments had been effectively stolen from them in their absence, but it wasn't like Klein could entirely blame the government for having chosen to do what it had. They'd all been plenty enough of a cost for the government to commit to already, what with being coma-patients that needed some very specific care that – in some cases at least – probably had to be developed on the spot.

Between being abandoned to die, and having his apartment cleared out, Klein was pretty okay with having to go apartment-hunting again. Especially since the adult SAO-survivors had a kind of 'first in line'-card to play when apartment-hunting, sponsored by the government.

That they were all heavily encouraged to move towards certain specific cheaper areas of the city? Well, Klein could guess that it was being done for the same reason that they were all being so very carefully screened for any detrimental effects to having been stuck in SAO for so long. Best to keep the nutcases carefully out of the way of regular citizens. Not that they phrased it like that, obviously.

Klein wasn't exactly happy about apartment-hunting, or about the government leaning over his shoulder every step of the way, but he could deal. It wasn't any worse than Kayaba's Cardinal recording all he did into data, to be reviewed for 'future patches'. Something that had mostly amounted to fixing various minor annoyances and not bothering at all with others.

It was kind of fascinating, really, the things that Cardinal decided needed to be changed in comparison to the things that it considered to be perfect.

Nearly two years of constant gripe about the menu-system and the endless sub-menus and the ridiculous awkwardness of equipping a new weapon, and nothing. Not a single twitch in the layout. Literally everyone Klein had ever met had agreed that the menu-system was clunky at best and oftentimes downright painfully frustrating. And yet Cardinal didn't even give you a 'subdue during dark times'-option to keep yourself from being temporarily blinded by the bright layout of the menu when you were in a dark room.

On the other hand, boss-encounters, NPC-relatability, streamlining fetching-quests, skill-animations, and a whole slew of other minor frustrations were all patched to high heavens.

It kind of made it all the more obvious that Cardinal didn't think like a human being, and that whatever Kayaba had been doing with his time, it hadn't been to direct Cardinal into improving the full experience for the players.

The fact that the game hid away skills until you unlocked the prerequisites yourself, Klein could sort of understand. It was a definite change from how regular MMOs worked to give players a chance to simply beeline for a specific build from the get-go, but considering how it sometimes seemed like at least half the game was about 'exploring new things', hiding something like that away until you'd done something arbitrary to achieve it made a twisted kind of sense.

In the end, it spoke rather highly of human creativity, in comparison to that of the greatest AI ever made. Not that Klein would be mentioning it to anyone. Less because of a distrust in programmers who might try to follow in Kayaba's footsteps, and more because Klein was sure that somebody else who'd noticed the oddity of it all had already spoken up.

There was no point in drawing attention to himself when he didn't need to. Drawing attention to oneself lead to politics, and Klein had absolutely no interest in getting involved with something more complicated than eating all of the pizza he could shove down his own throat.

No, Klein was perfectly happy to fade into the background, following along with the bureaucracy surrounding his new apartment, and try to get back on his feet in a world after SAO.

It was weird only being responsible for himself, but for all that they'd been close, Fuurinkazan had in truth never been all that reliant on Klein's abilities and good sense. They were all adults, and they could generally keep their own feet moving forward. That at least one of them had decided to get out of the country entirely there at the end of it-...

They all knew that Klein's metaphorical door was always open, and he'd hunted them down enough times that if something ever bothered them, he'd be the first to know. But... life moved on, and Klein really just wanted to eat his pizza in his new apartment and not have to think too deeply about the nastier moments of SAO.

XXX

Agil owning a bar was kind of funny. Not because of any irony or anything, but rather because it was an easily available public gathering-point. For adults. Who drank booze.

So obviously all of the underage SAO-survivors showed up all the time, and if they'd been served alcohol someone would've probably been majorly outraged about it. But they weren't, and Agil was happy to see them, so nobody could really throw them out for invading an 'adult space'.

Klein had seen more than a few scandalized customers huff angrily on their way out through the door after another pack of teenagers showed up to cause a ruckus. It was always greatly entertaining.

Also, the fact that Klein was allowed to drink all he wanted was great fun too. He could lord it over their teenage-heads that he was allowed to get drunk in the middle of the week, because he was both an adult and didn't have a proper job anymore.

Great fun. Vaguely fatalistic in the sense that Agil wasn't the type of guy to give out discounts unless you were willing to haggle for them, separately for every single drink. It wasn't like Klein was exactly made of money, after all, so there was always a vague sense of the whole thing being a really stupid idea long-term. But that didn't make it any less funny to tease his fellow survivors about his ability to get drunk in public.

Kirito was a pretty good sport about it, Silica mostly just pouted whenever her age was brought up by anyone at all, Liz kept coming up with elaborate plots to steal the booze for herself because she was a sore loser, and Asuna just kind of glared absently at him for getting drunk in the first place.

The Vice Commander was kind of a stick-in-the-mud.

Also, Kirito's little sister was younger than him – who'd have thunk it – which kind of meant that Klein felt a little bit like a creep for having asked Kirito to introduce them, once upon a time. It didn't help matters that she had curves usually reserved for women about a decade older than herself.

No wonder Kirito was able to keep a straight face whenever talking to a pretty girl, instead of gibbering like a moron. If his sister – and himself, because Kirito's face was ridiculously pretty for a guy – was any clue, their mother was probably just unfairly attractive. And considering that they both referred to 'their parents', she was no doubt off the market too.

Life was terrible.

But regardless of Klein's lack of luck with girls, life continued on. And it wasn't all that bad, to bicker with Kirito over what kind of pizza was owed to whom.

XXX

Klein's apartment was in a relatively cheap neighborhood. There were cheaper ones of course, but either other SAO-survivors had claimed those apartments first, or they were already occupied by people not willing to move.

Klein didn't mind it being cheap, and didn't mind it not being cheaper, it was pretty easy to get to all the places he wanted to get to from it. And if it was a little bit cramped at times, then it wasn't any more cramped than his previous apartment.

No, the closest thing to a problem he could think of with his new apartment was his neighbors. Or rather, one very specific neighbor.

The neighbor that followed the weirdest day-schedule Klein had ever heard of, and seemed to cook a full-course dinner for breakfast every day. Klein was very aware of exactly how much the man cooked, because the smells were mouth-watering, and – though it was probably some level of blasphemy – his body often ended up craving food that wasn't pizza.

It didn't really help matter that the man was young, handsome, and built like a brick wall. The kind of brick wall that was more lean than unwieldy, but still very much made of bricks.

As far as Klein could tell from catching him in his peripheral and nodding a friendly hello when passing each other by in the stairwell, the redhead – though Klein thought he'd spotted gray mixed in there – was quite possibly the most blatantly perfect catch of a man he'd ever met. And Klein was on good terms with Kirito, who'd been willing to put a ring on Asuna the moment she convinced him that she didn't care what her parents' reactions might be to it, so he knew what he was talking about.

Kirito was just so perfect of boyfriend-material that Klein was pretty sure he himself had climbed several ranks simply through osmosis. Not that he was ever going to say that out loud, because Liz would no doubt mock him relentlessly for it.

So that Klein's new neighbor managed to beat his friend who was clearly an ultra-material boyfriend? It was impressive, and more than a little bit intimidating. Even if Klein hadn't spotted any young women – or men – following him around.

It was entirely possible that he just kept his apartment private, and that his schedule was so weird because he visited his girlfriend far into the night or something, but Klein didn't know anything about it, so the mystery lingered.

The mystery lingered so much that Argo had finally dared him to strike up a proper conversation with the man, because she'd gotten curious too, and it'd be less weird if Klein did it than for herself to pop up out of the woodwork and start an interrogation.

XXX

Emiya Shirou was a bit weird.

Ignoring how his apartment looked very much like he hadn't bothered to unpack much of anything beyond the kitchen since moving in, he was still a bit odd.

Also not dating anyone apparently, which made Klein silently wonder if he secretly had some really specific tastes or habits that drove everyone around him away with due haste. Not that he'd managed to figure out what those might be.

Shirou wasn't the most talkative of people, but was perfectly at peace with Klein's stumbling attempts at conversation. He'd mentioned that Klein reminded him a little bit of his childhood sister-figure who'd more-or-less lived at his house in order to mooch off Shirou's cooking.

And whilst it wasn't the most flattering of comparisons when put like that, the fond exasperation in his voice when he talked about her was more than enough to remove any sting Klein felt over it. They'd grown apart when he'd moved away, but she was clearly still dear to his heart.

Honestly, for all that he had enough of a sharp tongue to catch Klein whenever he walked straight into a joke, Shirou was a very soothing kind of individual. To the point that Klein had been peculiarly relieved to find that the man had at least two points of things he felt vocally strongly about.

Cooking, and idealistic philosophy.

And the fact that Klein had managed to guess that Shirou's childhood dream had been to 'become a superhero' was both hilarious and very vindicating. Even if Klein couldn't help but wonder at how – for all that he seemed embarrassed to have it being so easily guessed – he refused to condemn his younger self's dream.

Emiya Shirou was the kind of person who wanted to save people.

It reminded Klein a bit about Kirito. Except Kirito was a kid who kept stepping up because he didn't want to condemn someone else to do so in his stead. A grudging kind of heroism that was honestly a bit of a relief for his friends, because the boy managed to get into plenty enough of nasty situations without actively seeking them out.

Shirou on the other hand would step forward to help simply because he still had feet to step forward with. Which reminded Klein a little bit about some of the more... emotionally fractured individuals of the Clearers. Less of the borderline suicide-watch people, but more the ones that just kind of... stopped thinking about themselves, and instead rebuilt their personalities around what they could do to help someone else.

Considering that Shirou had apparently been orphaned twice over, with the first one having included being literally dragged from a fire that burnt down a city-block? Klein was pretty sure it was trauma-related. Not that he could really bring up therapists in the conversation without sort of overstepping the bounds of 'neighborly visitor'.

Besides, it wasn't like the man was trapped in SAO, where any day of the week could be a Boss battle. Sure, Shirou might leap in front of some kid running out into traffic, but it was Tokyo. What the hell kind of kid would run out into traffic in Tokyo? For all that it was probably massively unhealthy, Shirou had clearly managed to survive with his particular personality for a great many years previously, and Klein really didn't know him well enough to try and push him into changing his personal code of ethics or whatever.

No, Klein's only real plausible impact on Shirou's way of life would be to corrupt him into cooking Klein all of the pizza he could ever need.

Which, considering Shirou's abilities in the kitchen, sounded very much like an impact worth aiming for.

XXX

"So now you're mooching off of your neighbors food?" Kirito frowned at him, radiating the disappointment of a parent. Which was unfair, because – no matter what was up with the Yui-situation – Kirito was way too young to be a parent, let alone be Klein's parent.

"I don't want to hear the from you." Klein glared at him, puffing himself up in slightly-exaggerated outrage.

Kirito blinked stupidly at him for a long moment, clearly not understanding at all what Klein was getting at. Despite literally having just unpacked Asuna's bento. The bento made with all of the talent and hard work of a woman who was proud to have once maxed out her Cooking Skill, and determined to replicate it into the real world.

Klein felt his face falling a little in sheer disbelief at Kirito's apparent inability to notice his own hypocrisy. "Dude." He waved his hand at the bento. "You have no room to talk."

Kirito continued to frown at him in confusion for another moment, before realization kicked in. "Umm..." He fidgeted. "It's not mooching! She wanted to try new recipes, and-... and-..." Kirito faltered, a little bit embarrassed about referencing his newlywed lifestyle with the Vice Commander when she wasn't there to hide behind.

Kirito was a nice kid, and he loved his girlfriend wholeheartedly, but he always faltered whenever he ended up in a position where he felt like he was 'bragging' about her. He'd totally rattle on about her for hours at a time, happily reminiscing about anything and everything, but put him on the spot and he got quiet real fast.

Klein hadn't quite decided if it was hilarious or adorable. The Vice Commander seemed to enjoy it rather thoroughly though, so all's well that ends well. Even if Klein really wished that those two would stop flirting right in front of him.

He was the older one, he was the one who was supposed to have a mushy relationship with someone and embarrass the hell out of the youngsters around him. And watching those two act like newlyweds made him feel old.

Also jealous of his own terrible luck with the ladies, but mainly old. He'd come to terms with an existence entirely based around good pizza a long time ago. He might not have resigned himself to it by any means, but it was an existence he could admit to having its own kind of charm.

"And your lovely wife is trying to train an addiction to her cooking into you so that you can never leave her. I know." Klein nodded wisely, ignoring Kirito's spluttering at that faulty summarization. "But it's not like Emiya-san can't throw me out if he didn't want to cook for me too."

"I'm telling Asuna that you said that." Lisbeth warned from the corner, grinning like a loon.

"Gurkh." Klein felt his entire body wince in sympathy for the pain that was suddenly laid out in his future.

The Vice Commander was many things, but merciful wasn't really one of them.

XXX

"Hey, Emiya-san, you exercise and stuff, right?" Klein said from where he was sitting in front of the kotatsu.

Shirou blinked, glancing back at him from where he was in the kitchen. "I guess? Why?"

"You know any good places for practicing kendo or something?" Klein really had looked into it himself, but it wasn't like even the ones with a proper homepage ever managed to be anything but blatantly partial to themselves.

Shirou might not be some kind of ridiculous health-nut, but you didn't fill out a shirt like he did without some clear effort put into it. So he should have some idea about a good gym in the area at least, and if he was as affably social in public as he was at home then he'd probably ended up in contact with quite the number of people who were health-nuts, or at least interested in martial arts and swords.

Shirou frowned thoughtfully. "I've never really looked? I mostly keep fit from doing my job and a bit of daily exercise. I never really had much interest in sports."

Klein felt his jaw drop. "No way." There was no way that Shirou filled out his shirt like that by doing push-ups and sit-ups and some jogging, and Klein hadn't spotted any weights in his apartment or anything. "There's no way you don't lift weights or something."

Shirou hummed for a bit. "I did archery way back in high school, but otherwise it's been just daily stuff, and my job."

"Do repairmen need to bench-press cars these days?" Klein muttered to himself, feeling a bit offended on behalf of everyone who'd ever tried to be healthier.

Shirou chuckled, amused. "No, but there's plenty of heavy stuff that we can't exactly ask our clients to move for us. And there's only so much you can do with leverage-tools before things start to get too cramped."

Klein made a whining noise at the unfairness of the world, and slumped back across the floor.

Shirou made another amused sound, and went back to cooking. Or, well, serving the cooking actually, apparently he was finally done with the mouth-watering scents he'd been creating so far.

Klein immediately perked up, pushing himself into a properly seated position.

"But if it's kendo you're interested in, I might be able to ask Fuji-nee." Shirou said as he set everything out at the table. "She doesn't compete, but she usually enjoys visiting dojos to keep from getting too rusty."

XXX

In hindsight, perhaps Klein shouldn't have agreed.

Fujimura Taiga was a personality and a half. The kind of crazy enthusiasm that Klein had never really seen in anyone before. Liz came close when she was in the right mood, but for all that those moods were all memorable enough to overshadow the rest of the time, normally she was a fairly regular girl.

Fujimura Taiga was about as regular as a nuclear-powered moped. And just about equally ridiculous.

Taiga had stormed into the city with all of the intent of an estranged family-member who were wholly aware that it'd be their one opportunity to rebuild the relationship. Or, that was Klein's impression of things, anyway.

Shirou had looked more exasperated than surprised about it when his dinner-preparations were interrupted by the door. And in hindsight Klein wouldn't put it past the woman to have some kind of sixth-sense about when Shirou was planning on making food or not. If she'd been off with about an hour either way she'd have either missed him because he'd been at work, or been unable to bully Shirou into making enough food for all of them – seeing as the food would've already been well on its way.

Taiga was probably a bit on the older side of Klein's hit-zone, but she certainly didn't act like it, and she definitely hadn't aged badly. Not that Klein was remotely willing to mention that out loud. He didn't know much of anything about Taiga's history with men – which always had the potential to be a minefield – and though in most cases he wouldn't mind braving that for long enough to at least express an interest, he really didn't want to step on Shirou's toes by flirting with his sister-figure when he was still blatantly mooching off of the man's food.

As for her advice about the local clubs, Taiga's opinion could mainly be summarized as lots of kendo-places with decent shots at tournaments and the like, and basically nothing at all that taught swordsmanship. An opinion she offered freely and somewhat dismissively, rather than something Klein had to fish for on his own.

Kendo had rules that'd been set in stone about what counted as a 'hit'. Which basically meant that the style which had grown from the sport completely ignored being hit in areas other than those, and would in fact happily take hits to other places if it meant that they could land a hit in the enemy's target-zone.

A kind of reckless swinging of the shinai that would've seen themselves killed even if they'd managed to defeat their opponent had they been fighting with weapons made to kill.

It was... a bit ridiculous in Klein's eyes. He understood the principle of the thing, but for someone who'd been trapped in SAO, the idea of treating swordsmanship as a sport without any kind of lethality to it... It sounded so absurd, and it was a great relief to at least see his opinions vaguely reflected in Taiga's own casual acknowledgment of kendo's separation from actual swordplay.

She wasn't competing in tournaments, and had apparently grown infamous for having a 'bloodthirsty shinai', but she was someone who'd learnt about swords in the real world, rather than from a death-game. Her opinions matching his own meant that he at least wasn't quite as crazy as he could've been, even if Taiga probably wasn't the best measuring-stick for sanity.

XXX

"She's yakuza." Shirou finally explained, looking a bit chagrined. "It's-... Fuyuki City has a lot of yakuza, it always seems like."

Klein felt his jaw drop a little. "So what, you were raised as some kind of young master of the yakuza?"

Shirou made a startled laugh, shaking his head. "No no. Kiritsugu... my old man, he worked with Fuji-nee's dad. And we were next door neighbors, so Fuji-nee stuck around even after he died. Wanted to look after me." He shrugged. "I did some repair-work for free for them, way back in the day. You know, fixing their bikes or what not. But I was never... involved."

Klein made a noise to show that he was following, even if he was now wondering exactly how much Shirou's yakuza-connections might have to do with him still being single, despite being ridiculously handsome, intimidatingly kind, and all-around amazing at housework.

"Seemed like you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a yakuza back in Fuyuki though." Shirou leaned back, thoughtful. "They all got along." He paused. "Well, they mostly got along. No real fights or anything. One side was Raiga-san's, the other was Tohsaka's. Not a lot of overlap." His lips twitched at the mention of the second name, the one that didn't belong to Taiga's dad. "Princess of the school, genius at everything she tried, a bit squeamish about the rougher side of the yakuza, and perfectly willing to disappear her sister's fiance without a trace." His smile faded at the last comment, turning into a frown. "Not that he didn't deserve it."

Klein was suddenly both terribly curious and very uncertain about whether he should ask.

Shirou seemed to pick up on it, because he sent a wry smile Klein's way and continued. "It was sort of an arranged engagement. She had bruises. He disappeared. It was a long time ago."

"Sounds like you knew them, personally?" Klein said.

"Tohsaka's sister was in the archery-club. So I knew them a bit." Shirou nodded. "Fuji-nee was always very determined to not let me get close to 'their rivals', though." His wry smile widened. "And I suppose we ended up bonding over how very embarrassingly unsubtle her attempts at it were."

Klein couldn't help but snicker at the image that conjured in his head. Everything he'd seen of Taiga had been... blunt. Terribly, hilariously blunt. He'd never met a blunter person in his life, and he was including his own mirror in that. Her trying to be subtle was more likely to include her literally charging in with a shinai, screaming at the top of her lungs, than it was to be in any way actually subtle.

"Never got all that close though, and well... time and distance." Shirou shrugged again. "It's not really a big part of my life."

Going unsaid was that there didn't ever seem to be a lot of things that were part of Shirou's life. Klein would've considered him a workaholic, if he hadn't been so aware that the man's issues were a little bit different from that.

It's hard to get attached to things when a large part of you is still caught up in survivor's guilt. When you're constantly trying to find ways to repay the world for not dying when others did, taking moments to yourself didn't exactly come naturally.

Kirito had some of the same problems, though Asuna had been good for him. Really good.

Shirou hadn't had an Asuna to drag him back to his senses though, even if he'd had a sister-figure smacking him over the head whenever she could find the time. It made Klein wish Asuna all the best of luck, honestly. Kirito shouldn't end up living in an empty apartment where he didn't even bother to unpack properly. That image was just too depressing.

Which was why Klein had cheerfully decided to start properly unpacking Shirou's things for him. Much to the man's obvious exasperation.

XXX

Agil placed a drink Klein hadn't asked for in front of him, not even trying to hide his amused smile.

Kirito didn't even blink, still too busy snickering about Klein 'meeting the parents' of his neighbor. Lisbeth tried to reach for it by sheer force of habit, even as she was mostly blinded by her tears of laughter, forcing Klein to grab it himself unless he wanted her to spill it all over his lap with her fumbling fingers. Argo and Asuna had unsettlingly similar expressions of curiosity. Silica was glancing around her and making vague sympathetic gestures at Klein for the madness of the rest of their friends.

He was being pitied by a fourteen-year-old. A fourteen-year-old who looked like she could still be twelve – and could probably pass for ten.

It wasn't the best of feelings.

Klein dutifully ignored the only nice person among his friends – Agil only gave him a drink because Klein was a bit of a noisy drunk, meaning that he'd be all the quicker to stop dodging their question the faster he got drunk, also, Agil hadn't actually said that it was on the house, so Klein might still have to pay for it – because she was nice. Even if her pity filled him with a kind of bleak despair.

"It wasn't like that." He protested to Asuna, because the only sane people involved were her and Kirito, and Kirito was an asshole. "It was more that I asked a question and he used it as an excuse to talk to his estranged family."

Argo made a noise of dawning delight. "A new perspective allowing him to make peace with old demons." Argo nodded with an evil smile, even as Lisbeth struggled helplessly to breathe next to her ear, clinging to the other girl in a desperate attempt to remain upright. "You'd make an interesting kind of wife, Klein."

Klein glared at her over the rim of his glass. "Oi, quit making up weird backstories for people."

Asuna's eyes sparkled. "No arguing about the 'wife'-comment, Klein-san?"

Kirito made a wheezing noise and promptly disappeared from sight as he tilted all the way off his chair and onto the floor. Argo nearly joined him, as Lisbeth continued to hug her for support, a support that she was rapidly destabilizing with what looked more like some kind of seizure rather than laughter at this point.

Argo still didn't seem to mind, and Klein couldn't help but wonder briefly what in the world the two girls' relationship was. As far as Klein knew, for all that the information-broker enjoyed her teasing remarks, she wasn't overly fond of people touching her. So that this blatant violation of personal space was being overlooked either meant that Klein had misread something, or that Lisbeth had found some kind of loophole.

Personally, if Klein was a betting man – which he was – he'd have put his money on somebody having a crush. He wouldn't even blame Argo for that, even if she was a bit older than the other girl. Lisbeth had taken to physical exercise with a gusto, and she had arms that were-... well, Klein was pretty sure she could bench-press Agil if she put her mind to it.

He could hardly fault Argo for having eyes. Even if her taste in personalities left much to be desired.

Asuna's sparkling eyes were far more of a dire thing for Klein to be apprehensive of.

"If I deny everything weird coming out of Argo's mouth, I'll never have room to actually breathe in to speak up in the first place." That was his story and he was sticking to it.

He... didn't really think he wanted to poke his very accommodating neighbor to see if there was any interest there. Especially not when he was still kind of in the process of trying to decide if he enjoyed the man's appearance because of aesthetic reasons, or because he wanted to touch him.

Women were much easier to figure out. If he enjoyed staring at a woman, he should probably ask her out for dinner and see where it took him. If he enjoyed staring at a man, he needed to make a check-list about a variety of things before considering the rest of it.

Argo made an offended sound. "I never spread untrue information. Uncertain, or incomplete? Yes. But deliberately untrue?"

Klein was sure she'd be bristling more if she wasn't aware that half the things out of her mouth was her provoking people for shits and giggles. Also, Lisbeth was kind of hiccuping into the other girl's neck, so that was probably distracting.

"There's a big difference between business and pleasure, Argo." Klein sighed, knowing that she was just as aware of it as he was. "Generally there's a lack of cor involved."

Argo smirked at him. "Not if you're doing it right."

Asuna didn't seem all that convinced however, what with the way her eyes were still sparkling brightly. And Klein really needed better friends. Friends who weren't teenage girls. Or Kirito and Agil for that matter.

Klein nudged Kirito with his foot, causing him to roll around a little bit on the floor, still snickering to himself. Useless. What was the point of having a married friend if they couldn't keep their wife from gleefully imagining you in a wedding-dress?

XXX

"Oh, he used to be pretty popular with the girls." Taiga commented through a cookie she was nibbling on. "Kind of too dense to notice it, but you know." She made a vague gesture in Shirou's direction where he was slaving in front of the stove. "He was the archer-club's ace for a little bit, before he decided to focus on work instead. And he's always been great at cooking."

"Their ace?" That was the first Klein had heard of it. He'd barely even heard of him once having been part of the club.

"Yeah, Ayako-chan was really upset with him about quitting like he did." Taiga snagged another cookie, apparently not all deterred by potentially ruining her appetite before the meal. "Sakura-chan was a bit disappointed too, but-..." She shrugged, her face turning a bit less cheerful at the girl's name. "Well, that was for a different reason, I think."

"Crush?" Klein guessed, willing to continue gossiping, but not really sure how far he should try to push what might be a sore subject. Or possibly a subject connected to that whole yakuza-thing that Taiga was apparently involved in.

Taiga frowned, something distant in her expression. "In hindsight, they probably would've been good for each other, you know?" She shook her head. "I don't really think Tohsaka would've gone for it, and I don't regret running interference or anything, but yeah... they would've probably been good for each other."

"They were dancing around each other, refusing to make the first move?" Klein felt his lips twitch. Asuna and Kirito had always had a... certain chemistry. Hell if Klein knew what had finally pushed them into the relationship that'd quickly escalated things into romance, but they'd sure taken their sweet time getting there.

"If she hadn't been Tohsaka's little sister, it would've been hilarious." Taiga slumped backwards dramatically, until she was splayed out on the floor instead of sitting at the table like an adult. "The jokes I could've made about Sakura being careful, since Shirou 'never missed'-... It would've been amazing."

Klein frowned in confusion down at her, not really sure what she was getting at. Alright, so it was impressive to hear that Shirou apparently had a reputation of not missing the target, but he felt like he wasn't quite understanding why Sakura would need to 'be careful' about it-...

Something clicked. Klein felt himself wince in distant sympathy to a girl who hadn't actually been exposed to the terrible teasing that Taiga was apparently perfectly willing to inflict on an individual. "Pregnancy-jokes? Really?"

"Hey, it would've been funny!" Taiga glared at him.

"It would've been mortifying. Poor girl." Klein said, not wavering from his sudden onslaught of sympathy.

Taiga made a noise of deep offense and straightened up so that she could snatch another cookie to sulk over as she ate.

Still, even as they continued to wait in comfortable silence for Shirou to finish cooking the food, Klein couldn't help but wonder a little bit about what Sakura must've been like. Clearly she had some kind of connection to the Tohsaka-family, and from what Klein remembered Shirou mentioning previously, she was probably the younger sister of the current head of the family. The younger sister whose arranged marriage fell through when her husband-to-be 'mysteriously disappeared' in a way that was apparently perfectly deserved.

Outside of that, everything Klein had heard about her suggested a nice girl. Even her sister sounded like somebody that Shirou considered to be a good person, even if he seemed to think that her 'school idol'-persona was more funny than truthful.

Shirou in general didn't seem to really... remember people all that well. Less of a faulty memory and more a kind of apathy towards most things that passed him by. Too caught up in his own head to pay all that much attention to his surroundings. With that in mind, the fact that Shirou seemed to have such a solidly formed opinion of Tohsaka would imply that they'd either been close or she'd had a very undeniable personality. Or somebody might've had a crush.

Klein tilted his head, a little thoughtful. "Hey, on a scale of one-to-ten, how pretty was Tohsaka-san?"

Taiga's spine straightened in an awkward kind of wince, her head whirling around to stare at him in a kind of bizarre fighting-stance. "What."

Klein suppressed the urge to grin at her. It was fun to mess with people. "I mean I haven't really heard Shirou mention Sakura-san by name, but he had some very vivid things to say about Tohsaka-san?"

All the color started draining out of Taiga's face. And then she leapt to her feet and rushed into the kitchen. "Shirou! Don't be seduced by that devil-woman!"

"Gah! Fuji-nee, what-!" Shirou's panicked voice echoed through the apartment as his personal-space was violently invaded by a ballistic-missile of a woman.

Klein did his best to not snicker too loudly. It wouldn't do to be immediately revealed to have been making fun of the older woman. She clearly knew how to throw a punch, and was reckless enough to be perfectly willing to use it on an uppity freeloading neighbor if they started making fun of her too much.

XXX

"Oi, what's with that look." Klein glared halfheartedly at Shirou as he pretended as if he wasn't scooting some dirty laundry out of the man's view with his foot.

It didn't really make a difference in comparison to the rest of all of the dirty laundry strewn across the apartment, but it was easily within reach to hide, so Klein was going to hide it.

Shirou sent him a look of wry amusement. "Oh, nothing. I was just reminded of how similar you are to Fuji-nee."

Klein winced, knowing better than to take it for a compliment, no matter how good a person that woman was. It was a bit like being compared to an older and less grown-up version of Lisbeth, and that wasn't really very flattering. No matter what Argo might have to say about it.

Argo was way too desperately thirsty to not be biased. It'd be hilarious if it wasn't so sad.

Still, it wasn't really a comparison he could refute. He'd never seen the full extent of what Taiga's apartment looked like, but if it was exposed to her for extended periods of time without access to a maid or something? It'd probably look a lot like Klein's apartment.

And that was nearly enough to convince Klein that he needed to shape up and live a cleaner existence in life. Nearly.

"Sure, laugh it up." Klein grumbled at him, turning away from his earlier bracing for a verdict and on to the more important part. "They should be over... here."

And they were. Because Klein's apartment might be covered in dirty laundry – the take-out boxes had all vanished mysteriously somewhere around Klein beginning to chip in with groceries for Shirou's cooking – and be filled with junk. But it was more 'cluttered' than 'hopelessly disorganized'.

It was a little bit embarrassing to have become a permanent enough guest at Shirou's apartment that the man had simply given him the keys, even if he tried to phrase it as a way to keep Taiga from having them. So the least Klein could do was provide him with the same thing, even if he'd never use them.

He was sure that Argo and the others would be all too gleeful to hear about them exchanging apartment-keys like this, but it wasn't like he was stupid enough to tell them about it, so it'd be fine.

XXX

Agil's sympathy-toast would probably be a lot more comforting if the man stopped smirking at him.

"Yeah! A toast for Klein's marriage!" Lisbeth reached for a bottle of booze, and missed it by a foot. Klein wasn't sure if it was down to her muscles twitching all over the place in laughter, or if her vision was just so blurry from tears that she couldn't see straight. Either way, her missing what she reached for resulted in her sprawling out across Argo's lap.

Argo made a half-suffocated sound, swallowing awkwardly around whatever words she'd been planning on teasing Klein with.

Klein sent the girl a skeptical glance, because surely she couldn't be that-... Lisbeth was holding on to Argo's breasts in an attempt to steady herself. Ah. Fair enough.

Poor girl. Lisbeth had a grip like a damn vise, and Klein would've been very uncomfortable with being touched in an intimate place by it, even without the hands being attached to Lisbeth of all people.

Though... from the way Argo was squirming, and biting her lip, and-... dear heavens above, that poor girl had it bad.

Klein willfully decided to completely ignore both Lisbeth and Argo for the foreseeable future, because he really didn't want to find out if either of them had some kind of exhibitionist-streak, and he was already clearly on thin ice towards that discovery.

"You know, just because they're exchanging house-keys and introducing each other to family-members, doesn't actually make them married." Silica piped up, likely less to defend Klein's honor and more because the girl had spent like a week glaring at Asuna and Kirito's fingers.

It was hopeless, and she probably knew exactly how hopeless it was, but hopelessness has never stayed the heart from feeling before. And Klein could hardly blame her for falling for the pretty-faced boy with a nice smile. Sad, but kind of cute. Klein wished her the best of luck in future romantic endeavors.

Future romantic endeavors that didn't leave her in the line of fire in case Asuna ever went the extra mile from 'happy newlywed' into 'yandere'. Klein didn't think it'd ever come to that, but... well, Asuna could be plenty scary when she wanted to, and it was one of those things it was better to be prepared for and not need, than need and not be prepared for.

Basically, she was a nice girl, who was in love with a nice boy. She was also a ruthless kind of person who'd climbed to the top of one of the strongest guilds of SAO, and knew very well how to use a sword.

Steering an innocent and slightly lovesick young girl out of the line of fire in case Asuna ever decided to take offense to her crush? It was unlikely to amount to anything, and if she ever caught Klein doing it it'd probably make Asuna eye him with something in between amusement and annoyance, but it wasn't like it was that much of a hardship, and as an adult watching over them, keeping them from killing each other probably counted as his duty.

"Don't phrase it like that." He sent a halfhearted glare Silica's way. "That just makes it sound like you're waiting for me to finish the damn paperwork or something."

"I can print you some copies?" Kirito looked up from where he'd been snickering silently to himself, grinning at him.

Asuna sent Kirito a glance, looking both startled and a little bit excited.

So that was apparently something he was considering seriously enough to look the forms up online, not just finding matching rings. Great. The kid was as ridiculously dedicated as always.

Klein was already developing a headache, and he wasn't even hungover yet.

"I hate you all."

XXX

"Oh, they desperately want to meet you." Klein admitted into the table. "Damn brats."

"I really don't think your drinking-buddies are supposed to be 'brats'." Shirou said, voice distorted from where he was doing something in the kitchen.

"They're allowed into the bar, not into the booze." Klein explained, waving his hand over his head to emphasize the point, even if Shirou couldn't see him.

He wasn't moving his head from this comfortably cool table even if it killed him.

Hangovers were the worst.

"That's an unusual arrangement." Shirou commented as he returned to set the table.

"Agil still charges them through the nose for a glass of water." Klein admitted with a tired grin. The man was a cheapskate of the highest proportions, but it was nice to know that Klein wasn't the only one suffering from it.

Shirou huffed a laugh. "Sounds about right."

"Oh yeah, you used to work in a bar, right?" Klein raised his head to look at Shirou.

Shirou blinked at him. "That's... a bit of a stretch? It was more that I moved stuff around... in a bar. It wasn't like I was allowed to serve alcohol or anything, what with still being in high-school."

Klein saw hours upon hours of future time, spent cleaning glasses and sweeping floors, flash before his eyes in an instant. "Never ever mention that to Agil. On pain of death. He'll work us to the bone."

"If you're that deep into debt, quit drinking." Shirou said bluntly.

Klein snickered a little. "No no. That's not it. He'll hear you, and he'll raise all the prices without telling us."

Shirou stared at him for a moment before shaking his head. "Pretty sure that's illegal somehow, but sure. Now get up and help me move the pots, you freeloader."

XXX

Klein avoided Argo's silent glare in his direction. How the hell was he supposed to have known that they'd hit it off immediately?

He'd known that Shirou had an interest in historical swords. It was kind of hard to avoid learning about that when Klein had been the one to unpack most of the man's small collection. In fact, it'd been one of the reason he'd thought that Shirou might've had some insight into the whole 'place to train with a sword'-idea.

The truth of it was mostly that Shirou just... collected swords. Less to hang them up on the wall as decorative pieces, or because he wanted to use them, and more because he thought they were interesting. Beyond cooking, swords were probably the closest thing the man had to a hobby, though it didn't show up in conversations nearly as often.

So in hindsight, perhaps he should've expected that 'self-proclaimed future real-life blacksmith' Lisbeth would get along well with him.

That still didn't account for how the hell they'd ended up talking about swords, or give Argo an excuse to spend their conversation glaring at Klein. How the hell was it his fault that Argo didn't end up with a lap-full of Lisbeth this time around? If she wanted to sit in Lisbeth's lap, she could damn well ask to sit in her lap, instead of making gooey eyes in the girl's general direction.

"Well, Liz certainly seems to be approving." Asuna commented with an amused little smirk, happily leaning on Kirito's arm.

"Don't make her glare at us, Asuna." Kirito muttered out of the corner of his mouth, before sending a perfectly false innocent smile at Argo when her glare shifted from Klein for a moment.

Apparently Klein wasn't the only one to notice Argo's rather blatantly obvious crush. Hopefully, that meant that Lisbeth would figure it out on her own and make the first move, because Argo clearly had all the romantic-courage of the average hikikomori.

"Umm... Argo-san? Are you okay?" Silica asked, looking a bit confused.

And that was just great, because if Silica didn't immediately notice Argo's crush, then Lisbeth would probably remain forever-ignorant of it. Dammit.

"Hm? I'm just fine, Silica-chan." Argo smiled at her, an easy expression that almost made Klein forgive Lisbeth for not noticing the way she drooled after her. Argo was a good actor.

"Is Liz flexing?" Klein said with an innocent tone of exasperation.

Argo's head snapped around so fast that Klein was surprised he didn't hear something break.

Lisbeth wasn't flexing, and was instead very much still deep into conversation with Shirou. Not noticing any of the byplay at all.

Argo slowly turned to glare with even more heat at Klein.

He smiled at her, because it was still funny.

Silica looked even more confused, until Agil placed a glass of juice in front of her and said something silently to her. Then Silica's eyes turned a bit wide and she started glancing in between Argo and Lisbeth with the honest curiosity of a teenager seeing something new for the first time.

Agil could be ruthless like that too. But at least with Silica clued in and likely to be trying to help in her own bumbling way? There might still be hope for Lisbeth figuring out what the hell was going on.

Though, considering that it was Lisbeth?

Klein was seriously considering arranging something for her graduation a couple of years from now, maybe a giant sign with 'kiss Argo you dumbass' on it. Possibly included with a tied up Argo, to keep her from running away or otherwise sabotaging the bluntness of it all.

Really, Argo's taste in girls left much to be desired on the denseness-scale.

XXX

"I didn't know you'd actually done sword-smithing stuff before." Klein commented as he collapsed by Shirou's table, happy to be able to avoid the way his legs were trying to wobble all over the place.

"Only briefly." Shirou said as he went off to grab water, because it was important to stay hydrated after drinking, and Shirou was totally a mother-hen when he didn't feel like it was teaching someone an important lesson. "I was actually learning to weld, but the school shared space with a few other things metal-related, and there were a few classes for blacksmiths about knives, which I ended up attending."

"Knives?" Klein frowned, a bit confused.

"Swords need to be made entirely through 'traditional methods' because of the law." Shirou shook his head with a distasteful expression. "Those methods aren't exactly perfect, so blacksmiths who want to improve? They make knives, or they leave the country. What exactly classifies as a knife can get a bit fluid though."

"So that's where the collection started?" Klein guessed, gesturing in the general direction of the swords.

Shirou blinked, before tilting his head in thought. "That was more coincidence than intent, to be honest." He shook his head. "I think I've always had something of an interest in it, maybe because of Fuji-nee, maybe because of my old man."

Klein felt his eyebrows rise a little. It was rare that Shirou brought up his adoptive father. A man who'd recklessly charged into a fire in order to pull out a small child. A small child who didn't have any family to return to in the aftermath.

The only reason Klein even knew that much was because Taiga was a gossip, and because Klein had asked a few pointed questions about the way Shirou was so... guilty about being alive. He'd been worried if it'd been yakuza-related, but it seemed that it was a more mundane kind of situation than that.

For a small impressionable child to end up being raised by the man who'd risked their life to save them? They'd be trying to mimic them every step of the way, and apparently Emiya Kiritsugu had been... about as desperate to make the world a better place or die trying as Shirou was. Taiga had mentioned a wife who hadn't really survived child-birth, only for the child to die to illness quickly afterwards.

Apparently, Taiga's guess on the matter was that Kiritsugu had more or less been suicidal before he'd managed to pull Shirou out of the fire. At which point he'd tried to stay alive for him. Only for himself to die of a similar illness as his daughter, before Shirou even made it into high school.

It was a pretty miserable situation, and Shirou was clearly a bit messed up in the head as a result, but that seemed to come down to bad luck and timing, rather than active malice. So that was something, at least.

Still, this was a new thing Klein hadn't heard of before. "Your dad collected swords?"

Shirou snorted a laugh as he sat down across from him. "No. The house had a dojo though, and I suppose we play-fought with shinai a few times. It's part of why Fuji-nee decided to keep coming over, early on."

"So, you started with a shinai, before you became the Ace Archer of Fuyuki?" Klein couldn't help but grin a little at the silly title that Taiga and him had come up with for the other man.

Shirou made an annoyed noise. "I wasn't that good at it. I might not have missed the target, but I didn't really follow through with the spirit of things, you know."

"So you keep saying." Klein made a dismissive gesture. "You're a humble kind of guy. I'll believe your lack of Ace-ness when I see it."

"That's not a word." Shirou complained with a flat expression.

Klein huffed at him. "You understood it, right? That makes it a word."

XXX

Taiga hummed thoughtfully. "It's a bit of an old story."

Klein didn't say anything, simply continuing to watch her, still a little bit worried about asking about something quite so personal.

"Alright, so, the reason why Shirou doesn't care that a classmate of his went and got himself killed? It's... a bit of a complicated situation to describe." Taiga scrunched her nose up. "First off, Shinji was his grandfather's only heir, and he knew it. Secondly, after the mess that had been his uncle running away and his father messing around with women and drinking himself to death, Zouken wasn't super-thrilled about letting him grow up on his own terms. So he had a talk with Tohsaka Tokiomi about an arranged marriage, and Tokiomi agreed since the Tohsaka-family could only have a single heir."

"This Zouken-guy was yakuza?" Klein blinked, not really having expected that.

Taiga nodded, making a face. "Nasty old bastard, but clever too. Built the whole family with his own two hands, and was determined to have his kids inherit it. Except one kid hated his guts and ran off, and the other was a dumbass drunkard. Hence Shinji being the last heir."

Klein nodded to show that he understood.

"Anyway, Tokiomi gets himself killed not long after that. Some kind of fanatic priest and his wife's jilted ex-lover or something. Either way, he's dead, his wife goes catatonic from grief or shock, barely lasts the year out, and then Rin is the new head of the family." Taiga made a fast-forwarding motion with her hand. "Rin is very fond of her little sister though, and isn't super-happy about the engagement-thing. Still, a deal is a deal, so she goes along with it."

Klein could sort of imagine that, from what he'd heard of the young woman.

"Of course, apple doesn't fall far from the tree." Taiga made a face again, very clearly not fond of the boy. "Shinji grows up either completely convinced he's better than everyone else, or being terribly afraid of ever being proven wrong. In hindsight he was probably the poster-child for narcissism." Taiga shook her head. "So he doesn't make any friends, and he plays around with girls even when he's supposed to be engaged, and then he gets pissed off at anyone who gets close to Sakura too, because that's 'his future wife'."

Klein was now starting to understand exactly why Shirou hadn't overly mourned the guy's sudden and fatal disappearance. He hadn't exactly been feeling sympathetic towards the guy ending up dead for hurting a nice girl, but there was a thing called 'disproportionate retaliation' and Klein had seen more than enough death and murder to last him a lifetime.

"And then Sakura had bruises, and Rin had him killed for it." Taiga concluded the story. "Not much more to say." She paused. "Well, Sakura had a crush on Shirou, and Shirou liked her well enough, so they'd probably have hit it off if either of them had been willing to make a move. Or if Rin hadn't still been chafing at the idea of arranging a marriage for her little sister. Or if I hadn't been trying to keep Shirou out of things." She shrugged. "Life's like that, I guess."

It... didn't exactly sound defeatist, the way Taiga said that. It was more a kind of reckless sense of life being what it was, for good and for bad.

"I see." Klein leaned back, trying to take in the whole story. The fact that Shinji had apparently been a scumbag to the last didn't exactly relieve the moral code Klein had developed from dealing with SAO. Assholes were annoying, people who hurt others should be locked up, and executions were bad regardless of the reason for them.

He knew it wasn't necessarily the same kind of moral code that others had when it came to this kind of stuff. Staring death in the face kind of shifted your point of view, just as much as being personally involved with the victim might. Klein wasn't about to confront anyone for actually killing the guy off, but it wasn't like he entirely approved either.

Taiga eyed him for a long moment, eyes narrowed in something that might be suspicion. Then it cleared and became a bit softer, before she leaned back too, breaking the moment.

Klein wasn't sure, but he thought she mumbled something to herself as she sighed.

He decided not to ask. From the wistful curl of her lips, it was probably something a bit too personal.

XXX

"Ooh!" Lisbeth grinned at him. "You've got the big sister's approval! Good job, Klein!"

Klein very deliberately decided to ignore her. He really shouldn't have mentioned Taiga patting him on the shoulder with that super-weird – and almost halfway constipated – expression on her face when she'd gone back.

Kirito and Asuna were sneakily holding hands beneath the table, and mostly ignoring the conversation. Or, at least, they thought that they were being sneaky, seeing as everyone around them could see it clear as day. The couple was as subtle as a rhino draped in fireworks.

Then again, if they hadn't been quite so obvious about the fact that they were holding hands, Klein might've started suspecting them doing something else underneath the table. So he supposed it was for the best that they were so crap at being sneaky.

Argo hadn't really spoken a consistent sentence since arriving, but that was because Lisbeth had decided to wear a rather plunging neckline, and Argo literally hadn't stopped staring at it since. Which Klein couldn't entirely blame her for. It looked like Lisbeth's diet was very much agreeing with her, because she looked a lot more... filled-out, than most of the female SAO-survivors.

Silica also seemed to be paying attention to the girl's cleavage, though from how she kept shifting her arms awkwardly, it was more to do with envy than a desire to stick her face in it.

It was sad, Klein was beginning to realize, that out of all of his friends, the one he kept the most consistent conversations with was probably Lisbeth. Ignoring Shirou, of course.

Argo was too busy being thirsty for Lisbeth to pay attention to the conversation. Kirito and Asuna were off in their own little lovey-dovey dreamland. Silica mostly pouted a lot and drank her juice, piping up with a few stories and observations here and there, but being generally a quiet kind of girl. Agil had a bar to run, and kept trying to good-naturedly bully Klein into drinking more expensive drinks. And Lisbeth was loud and cheerful.

She was, unfortunately, also Lisbeth.

"Key to the apartment, always staying over, helping him to reunite with family, and now gaining the approval of the big sister." Lisbeth nodded, clearly not stopped by Klein pointedly ignoring her. "He likes swords, you like swords. He likes to cook, you like to eat. It's a match made in heaven! Just get married already."

Klein kept his mouth shut, refusing to admit that they were visiting Shirou's hometown of Fuyuki together in the next week. It would only add fuel to the fire, and Klein wasn't an idiot.

XXX

Having a handsome man falling asleep on his shoulder hadn't been what Klein had been expecting of their trip to Fuyuki, but then that was mass-transit for you.

Well, that and Shirou having done more than a bit of overtime trying to sort out his schedule for the trip. The poor guy was clearly exhausted.

It was a bit weird how not-weird it was.

Klein wasn't unused to being the one waking up on someone's shoulder, and the people he fell asleep on tended to be just as uncomfortable about the sudden intimacy as he was upon waking. The only real exception were people like Lisbeth, who instead gleefully reached for the nearest permanent marker, with little thought to anything beyond a prank that they could pull on someone.

Klein could hardly blame her for that, because he'd definitely been tempted to do the same.

Usually, the idea of someone passing out on Klein's shoulder, without causing the immediate awkwardness inherent in strangers being accidentally a bit too touchy-feely? It really only came from close friends where the feelings instead amounted to the casual annoyance of them likely drooling on him.

Notable exception being a few brief dates with cute girls, where the sudden physical intimacy was a bit more blush-inducingly awkward.

Having Shirou sleeping on his shoulder was-...

Honestly, Klein wasn't entirely sure how to phrase it. It was a mixture of wry sympathy and a somewhat bizarre feeling of normalcy.

Klein had been aware that they'd been somewhat living in each other's pockets, what with Klein spending more than one night passed out under Shirou's kotatsu, rather than crawling back to his own apartment. But he hadn't ever really considered that physical touch had become normal between them at some point.

Still, it was also a very clear reminder that Shirou was a handsome man. It was hard not to notice that when their faces were only a few inches apart, especially considering how his face smoothed out in sleep.

He still looked better when he smiled, but Shirou had a tendency to frown in thought a lot, to the point where Klein could indeed spot the first inklings of wrinkles around his eyebrows.

Klein would love to say that Shirou looked better when he was asleep, but whilst it probably made him more handsome-looking for a picture, it lacked a certain animation to it. It was a bit unfair. Klein knew from several sources that he himself looked like a thug even when he was asleep. A silly-looking thug, even.

Sighing lightly at the unfairness of the world, Klein decided to concentrate on making sure that they didn't miss their stop.

XXX

Their main reason for visiting was Taiga.

Klein wasn't entirely sure how she'd managed to convince Shirou to return to Fuyuki, but it seemed to mostly relate to making sure that his old house was still standing.

An old house that was a rather extreme change from Shirou's cozy but rather blatantly cheap apartment.

Holy shit, but Shirou's old man must've either been loaded, or had some serious family-history. Sure, supposedly Fuyuki hadn't been as big back when Shirou had been growing up, but it was a big traditionally Japanese house, and it came with a dojo attached.

The only way that Klein could imagine having been more stunned by it would've been if it'd either been a gigantic western-style mansion, or a literal castle.

Taiga cackled at him for the better part of an hour, apparently grandly amused by Klein not at all having been prepared for Shirou somehow being secretly rich or something. Shirou seemed more exasperated about it than actually embarrassed, so at least he wasn't completely unaware about the 'rich person'-aura his childhood home was giving off.

But of course Taiga wanted Shirou to cook, and Shirou didn't trust Taiga to buy groceries without screwing something up. So off he went, with Klein coming with to help with carrying stuff. Not that Shirou really needed the help, but it was better than lazing about with Taiga in an unfamiliar house for however long it took Shirou to finish.

This lead them towards the shopping-district, and that in turn lead to them running into a very surprised young lady. A young lady with the kind of body that would've made any man weak in the knees, and with a face to match.

Honestly, Klein kind of spaced out for a moment, but apparently the woman was the younger of the Tohsaka-sisters. And was being escorted by a slightly older woman who was even more of a knock-out.

What the hell kind of thing did the people of this place eat? And where could Klein find a bath-tub worth of it?

A bit more polite conversation from both sides, and then they said their goodbyes.

It took Klein nearly a block to realize that he'd been too busy being polite to do his more regular greeting of pretty ladies. Hell, he'd been treating them more akin to Argo than Asuna. As in, he'd been keeping polite and silently eyed the exits whilst internally clutching at his wallet, rather than remained stiffly formal on pain of the Vice Captain deciding to teach him a lesson with a shinai about respecting women.

It was-... The difference mainly amounted to the feeling that Klein was polite to Asuna-like people because they were out of his league and kind of intimidating for all that he'd happily let them step on him. And he was polite to Argo-like people because politeness meant that he could probably dodge out of talking with them for too long, and also save himself a lot of money and the heartache of an empty wallet.

It took him nearly a block after that before he realized why.

Klein had been jealous.

Klein had been jealous of the ludicrously pretty woman who in another life could've probably ended up dating Shirou.

As in, he hadn't been jealous of this potential Shirou for dating the super-pretty woman. He'd been jealous of the woman for having had the potential to date Shirou.

Fuck.

He really did have a crush.

XXX

Their visit to Fuyuki hadn't exactly been a long one, what with Shirou not really feeling any particular interest in staying. He wasn't exactly in a hurry to leave, he just couldn't really find a lot of things for them to do in Fuyuki that they couldn't do back at their apartments.

Klein wasn't entirely sure why anyone would choose a dingy apartment over a snazzy-looking traditional home, but then Shirou was very... unbound, by his surroundings.

Taiga – as the only responsible adult in his life, which was vaguely horrifying – had smacked it into Shirou's head that university was important. Not particularly interested in academics, Shirou had gone into a wide variety of practical courses, which hadn't really been available in Fuyuki for whatever reason. From there, Shirou had done a lot of helping out and repairing equipment for the school, until a few teachers took him aside and started shoving money at him, leading him to actually starting to work properly as a repairman.

So he'd been working from out of his dingy apartment whilst studying at university, and then he'd finished university. And just... kept working in his dingy apartment, since he didn't really have anywhere else he needed to be.

It would've made more sense to step back and reassess why he was staying out of Fuyuki, but he had been caught up in work, and Taiga had – somewhat reasonably – assumed that this was Shirou deliberately breaking off from the shadier side of the law that her family represented. So Taiga hadn't been around to drag Shirou out of work and back home, and so Shirou had just continued working, not really paying attention to the world changing around him.

It was a bit of a mess, and Klein was happy to have at least thrown off the man's work-rhythm for long enough that he actually noticed that he hadn't talked to his sister-figure for more than half a decade.

Still, whilst spending time in his childhood home was probably good for him, Shirou was very much the kind of guy who got antsy if he didn't have anything to do, and so their visit was never really planned to go on for very long.

Klein spent most of the remaining time until they got back home, desperately trying to figure out if he was trying to play it cool and sweep his newfound crush under the carpet, or if he should say something. Shirou probably wouldn't hold it against him, but it might make things awkward, and Klein very much wouldn't appreciate that.

Awkward silences at the dinner table was nearly as bad as crappy food.

XXX

Shirou raised an eyebrow when Klein had given him the new 'consumer-friendly' version of the NerveGear – the 'AmuSphere', or whatever it was they called it.

Klein gave him a wry smile. "SAO was hell, but there were moments-..." He paused, trying to think of a good way of describing it, before giving up and shrugging. "There's a reason I picked up a sword again, out here."

Shirou tilted his head, but nodded with a thoughtful frown on his face. "And I'm included?"

Klein scoffed. "Of course." He motioned to the apartment that was still pretty empty-looking. "You could do with a few more hobbies."

Shirou glared halfheartedly at him. "I have plenty of hobbies."

"Work isn't a hobby." Klein told him bluntly. "And even if your food is amazing, you can't spend all your waking hours cooking."

Shirou's eyes narrowed, clearly a bit peeved at him for rejecting his argument. "There's plenty of things that takes a whole day to cook, you know."

"Not the point!" Klein gestured to the mini-NerveGear-thing. "I just think you should see it. Once, at least."

Shirou glanced at the AmuSphere in his hands, and then glanced back at Klein, eyes softening in a way that Klein really didn't want to think too hard about right now. He was there to convince Shirou to accept an invitation to the new VRMMO that Kirito had set up, not to stare into the man's eyes and feel like a young maiden in love.

"Alright." Shirou smiled at him, small and fond. "Maybe I'll find something interesting to cook in there."

Klein blinked as he realized that food in a VRMMO wouldn't actually fill him up – linking eating to hunger was risky, at least when your players weren't fed through a tube at a coma-ward somewhere – meaning that he could theoretically just keep on eating endlessly.

That really hadn't been what he'd been planning on when he came up with the idea to invite Shirou, but now that he'd thought it, it was uncomfortably tempting. Shirou would probably enjoy it too, which was just unfair.

How was Klein supposed to go on romantic adventures with a handsome man who needed more excitement in his life, when Shirou was such an amazing chef?

Life was rough.

XXX

"Heh, don't think I didn't see you on starting-day." Lisbeth grinned at him. "All cozy, flying in circles around each other."

"Flying is hard, okay?" Klein glared at her.

"Sure it is." Lisbeth continued grinning.

"Don't tease him, Liz." Asuna scolded her friend with a small pout. "I thought they were very sweet together."

Klein groaned, not really appreciating the girl's attempt to 'help' him. Mostly because she wasn't actually trying to help him, she was just a hopeless romantic.

Kirito would normally be snickering at him by now, but he'd been weirdly quiet-...

"Klein, is that a hickey?" Kirito chose that moment to speak up.

Klein damn near jumped out of his skin, and his hand was halfway to his neck before he realized that just made him look even more blatantly guilty than if Kirito had actually seen a hickey.

Lisbeth's eyes damn near sparkled with glee. "Invite me to the wedding! Right now!"

Klein glared at her, before a thought occurred. "Only if you invite me to yours!" And then he pointed at Argo.

Argo who'd been too busy staring at Lisbeth's arms as she gestured to actually pay attention to the conversation. As in, she'd been too busy staring at Lisbeth with barely-concealed longing to realize that Klein had brought attention to her. Or, more specifically, that he'd brought Lisbeth's attention to her.

Lisbeth glanced at Argo, and opened her mouth, and then kind of just... froze.

If eyes could sparkle with vindictive glee, then Klein didn't doubt that that was what his own eyes were doing right at that moment, even if he was also pretty sure he was blushing all the way down to his collarbone.

"Holy shit, she actually noticed." Asuna whispered, hands in front of her mouth, looking like Christmas had come early.

"Language, honey." Kirito whispered back, looking just as awed by this sudden turn of events.

Klein slumped back in his chair, helplessly relieved to have successfully deflected attention away from his suddenly-existing sex-life.

They were still in high school. He wasn't talking about this shit with them if it was the last thing he did.

And so what if Shirou had figured out that Klein was messing up his flight-controls on purpose in order to be held in his arms? So what if Shirou had reacted to Shirou's confession about Lisbeth's ideas by snickering and telling him that his bedroom was surprisingly spacious for a dingy apartment?

So what if Taiga had burst through the apartment-door before Klein had managed more than get Shirou's shirt off?

That was Shirou's problem. The brats could deal with their own accidentally-cock-blocking sister-figures. Klein would even be magnanimous enough not to mock them for it!

... Unless they whined about it to him, of course. At that point, all bets were off.

XXX

A/n: Getting this finished has been a pain in the rear, but at least it's done now.

Even if I apparently managed to forget that I'd finished it, and that I ought to be editing it for like a month (I blame Disgaea 5, which was a fun experience all the way up until it demanded that I go through the Item and Chara Worlds, without giving me any way to automate it even in the slightest).

Originally, I wasn't sure if this would be a Magic!Shirou story or a Normal!Shirou story. Honestly, I've been writing it for so long that I can't remember why I decided on doing it this way, but it's been interesting enough, I think.

As for the Fuurinkazan? Dude, I love the idea of them, but trying to write them is basically being asked to invent several OCs on the spot, and I hate that. So here they basically scattered to the winds, with at least one going as far as leaving the country in order to get away from some of the stigma attached to being a SAO-survivor.

Hopefully it's been an interesting kind of read, for a crack-ship.