A/N: Writers camp is this month...

I really like Natsuki, Shizuru, and Mai in a triad pairing, because I simply think it really is fitting for them, in its own way…and love is love, as they say. That being said, if the three of them sharing an open and romantic relationship bothers you, I would avoid this fiction, because that's what this will be about. the first chapter is ungodly short, so I'm doing two chapter uploads today.

Monsoon
Chapter 1

There was something terribly gratifying about watching the prim and proper Shizuru Fujino, yawn into her hand as she stumbled into the bathroom at six in the morning. Every morning she would follow the same pattern. It really came as no surprise that just like every single day, she had some difficulty locating her toothbrush.

It was even more comical to note, that the woman mindlessly brushing her teeth, was the selfsame workaholic that demanded perfection in the company that she owned as a hobby, and as a favor to her retiring father.

With one eye open as she stared blankly at the mirror, she was in no shape for complex thought. If she would have been in a better frame of mind, she would have made note of the fact that her disheveled hair seemed to defy gravity, and that her compulsive tendency for arrangements didn't seem to follow her home at night. In fact, the counter space around her wasn't exactly orderly, it was far from it…not that anyone besides her, and her lovers, would know about that little detail.

Sleepy crimson eyes glanced to the side, as her first love of nearly five years, Natsuki Kuga, also entered the bathroom. Grumbling curses about the early hour she also began her morning routine, splashing her face in cold water, as if that might help rouse her mind from the depths if ineptitude, because truth be told, Natsuki couldn't keep her eyes open, let alone maintain constant thoughts.

It was an average, typical morning, for an abnormal and questionable household.

Such truths made themselves known in the little hints that most would tend to look past. The sweet smell of warmed baked goods drifted in from the kitchen, promising savory delights, and Shizuru hadn't done the baking, that was for sure. It was strange, perhaps, but Shizuru had long ago buried the ghosts of guilt and repression on the topic.

Natsuki also didn't think too much into it, she never really had, and she doubted she ever would. It was agreed among all of them, some things were better left to the heart, and not to the shadows of the mind, where threads of the past might call back spiders to weave another tangled web. The HiME battle in their youth was enough of a debacle, and none of them had any interest of dreaming new monsters up from the depths of hell.

So, when their friends and onlookers questioned their odd arrangement, the three of them had only one thing to say to any of it.

"That's just the way it is." They would say, each with their own reaction ranging from Shizuru's cat-ate-the-canary smile, Natsuki's hostility, and Mai's embarrassed but happy laugh as she retold the events as generically as she could.

It started off as a mutual arrangement among three friends that needed support from each other. Shizuru kept long hours, and, truth be told her demanding job kept her occupied enough without trying to manage the housekeeping, and meal planning. Natsuki wasn't a homemaker by far, and when she wasn't working with the animals that were left in her care, her time was spent dealing with the demands of her relationship, which Shizuru didn't make easy. Mai needed a job to pay off Takumi's medical expenses and also somehow afford a roof over her head.

The answer was simple enough, and it occurred to the three of them so naturally, that none of them even batted an eye to the murmurs that seemed to surround them. They thought nothing of it, because at first there was nothing to think about. It just so happened that their friendship grew, it changed. It was as easy, and as complicated as that...

It wasn't something the three of them were willing to announce to the world, and yet they were very happy together, and that was all that mattered.