Kotetsu leaned back on the couch and stretched. It was a pretty nice one, leather, and the seat on the end actually reclined. "What about this one?"
Bunny frowned. "I don't know. It's not right."
"Not right?" Kotetsu looked the couch over again, trying to figure out what he'd missed. "What's wrong with it?"
Bunny stared at the couch, brow furrowed like he was defusing a bomb and not picking out furniture. "It's not comfortable enough. The back cushions are too stuffed."
"Too stuffed?" Kotetsu tested the back cushions. They felt fine to him. "What are you talking about?"
"The cushions push you forward and make it difficult to sit back and relax." Bunny shook his head decisively. "No. Not this one."
Kotetsu sighed and patted the couch. "I'll miss the leather."
"You've been sitting on it for two minutes, and it's not going to be your couch," Bunny said.
"Who do you think is going to be sitting on it at your place?" Kotetsu reminded him, but Bunny was already off the couch and walking on down the aisle. With another sigh, Kotetsu stood up and followed him.
Bunny had decided it was time to get a couch since he did sometimes have more than one person over now, something both Blue Rose and Fire Emblem had pointed out the last time everyone had been at his apartment for dinner. ("Ladies know best, handsome, and ladies don't like to sit on the floor" had been the exact quote.)
Bunny had looked kind of stunned at the reminder that he 1) had friends, and 2) they liked to visit him every now and then, so he'd agreed to find a couch. And Kotetsu had come along because he was the one who was at Bunny's apartment the most and Bunny wanted a second opinion.
If he'd known that would mean spending all day at a furniture store while Bunny rejected every couch in existence, he might have reconsidered. Kotetsu hadn't had any idea how many problems there could be with couches, but apparently Bunny was going to detail every single one of them.
Too soft. Not soft enough. Too light. Too dark. Not big enough. Too big. Too high. Too low. The leather didn't feel right. The fabric was too scratchy. The shape was wrong.
"It's just a couch," Kotetsu said after they'd looked at nearly every couch in the store.
"It's a piece of furniture I'll be living with for years," Bunny said. "It needs to be perfect."
"Bunny, you own a chair." Kotetsu held up one finger to illustrate his point. "Any couch is going to be perfect."
Bunny glared at him, his green eyes sharp behind his glasses. Kotetsu was just about immune to it by now.
"Just about" didn't mean "entirely," though.
He held up his hands in surrender. "Look, it's getting late and I don't know about you, but I'm starving. Why don't we get some dinner and start again tomorrow?"
Bunny glanced around the showroom once more, like he might find the single couch in Stern Bild they hadn't tried yet. "Okay," he finally said.
Kotetsu slung his arm around Bunny's shoulders and ushered him out of the store.
***
They picked up dinner on the way back to Kotetsu's house and settled on the couch to eat. Kotetsu was three bites into his taco when Bunny said, "None of them felt like this."
That came out of nowhere. Kotetsu quickly swallowed his food. "Huh? What do you mean?"
Bunny was staring at the plate of food in his lap. "The couches. None of them felt like this."
Kotetsu looked over his old, well-loved couch. "Like...this one?"
Bunny nodded.
Kotetsu grinned. "Bunny, you like my couch?"
Bunny didn't look up from his food. "It's comfortable."
"It's nearly fifteen years old, I hope it's comfortable." Kotetsu leaned back into the cushions and eyed Bunny. "You know you're not going to find a couch with fifteen years of being lived on at the store, right?"
"I know that," Bunny said stiffly. "But I'd hoped to find something that felt more...right."
Kotetsu could understand that. A couch was a big piece of furniture, and it was obvious it wasn't something Bunny had ever considered owning before now. He could see how it might be overwhelming trying to choose.
Fortunately, he had a little bit of experience in this area.
"You know, the best way to do that is to find a couch you like," Kotetsu said. "It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be one you can live with. Then you have everybody over to sit on it and eat and drink and watch movies and...help you break it in, you know? Or at least, start breaking it in."
"Is that what you did with this one?" Bunny asked.
Kotetsu considered how he'd broken in this couch and coughed. "Well, not exactly, but kind of the same thing. You don't get a couch this comfortable until you've made a few memories with it. Unless you want my couch?"
Bunny rolled his eyes. "I don't want your couch, Kotetsu."
"I don't want to sell it, but if it would make you happy—"
"No," Bunny said flatly, but Kotetsu could swear he was smiling. "I'll find a couch tomorrow."
Kotetsu smiled and went back to his tacos.
***
"Did you have to pick the heaviest couch in the store?" Kotetsu asked as he struggled to wrestle the couch through Bunny's front door.
From the other side of the couch, Bunny grunted. "You're the one who insisted we could move it ourselves. Try turning it the other way."
"What other way?"
"The other other way!"
It took another five minutes of negotiating the tight doorway and swearing, but they finally got the couch into Bunny's apartment and settled in the living room. Kotetsu collapsed on top of it as soon as they'd set it down.
Bunny frowned at the couch and then at the wall. "I don't think it's centered."
Kotetsu dropped his head onto the back of the couch and waved the comment away. "Then we'll move it. In a minute. I need a drink."
Bunny sank onto the couch beside him. "I hope you're not expecting me to get it for you."
Kotetsu made a face, but he got off the couch and went to grab two bottles of water from the fridge. "It's terrible how you expect me to do all the work around here."
"Again, you are the one who insisted we could move the couch ourselves. You said it was part of the experience."
"It is!" Kotetsu walked back to the couch and handed a bottle to Bunny. "And complaining about it afterward is also part of the experience."
Bunny accepted the water bottle with a flat look. "Wow, I can't believe I went so long without this absolutely thrilling life experience."
Kotetsu laughed and sat down again. "You're the one who wanted a perfect couch. Part of that is getting it into your apartment yourself."
Bunny scoffed and took a drink of his water, but he didn't say anything. Kotetsu took that to mean he agreed, but didn't want to admit it.
Kotetsu stretched his arm over the back of the couch. It was still a little stiff, but that would undoubtedly change the longer Bunny had the couch (and the more people sat on it). At first glance, it didn't look like it would fit with how minimal Bunny's apartment was, but now that they had it here, it was growing on him.
Kind of like Bunny himself, if Kotetsu was being completely honest.
"So what do you think now that it's here?" he asked.
Bunny ran his free hand over the gray cushions, like he was considering the question. "I'm not sure. It's different."
That was fair. "Eh, don't worry too much about it. After you have everyone over tonight, it'll feel like it's been here for ages."
Bunny shook his head. "No, I don't think that's what it needs."
Kotetsu silently hoped Bunny wasn't having second thoughts about the couch. He didn't want to have to drag it out the door again. "Then what does it need?"
Bunny slid over and rested his head on Kotetsu's shoulder. "This is what it needs."
Kotetsu blinked. Huh? "Someone to cuddle with?"
"You, Kotetsu."
Oh. So that was how it was, then. Surprising, but...looking back, maybe it shouldn't have been. And Kotetsu definitely wasn't opposed to this turn of events.
He dropped his arm from the back of the couch so it was around Bunny's shoulders. "You know, you would get me with any couch. Except maybe that weird black one that felt like it was built on spikes."
Bunny shuddered. "I don't think that one was meant for people to actually sit on."
"It's either for decoration or torture," Kotetsu agreed. "That lime green one was comfortable, though."
"If you ignored the fact that it's lime green." Bunny sounded faintly horrified.
Kotetsu laughed, and he was going to point out that this was also part of the experience—talking about all the other terrible couches that weren't picked—but then Bunny leaned up and kissed him and. Well.
He had a lot more important things to think about than couches.
But the possibility of an affordable leather couch was too strong to resist. Urban Home turned out to be full of cheap leather-like couches. And like I said, furniture has an expiration date. We know that now, so we won’t be surprised, five years from now, when our Urban Home ovo-lacto-leather-blend couch needs to be replaced by a series of (vegan) hammocks and slings.
I laughed out loud at this story. Of course, now I want to go couch shopping. I wonder how much effort it would take to make my current couch uninhabitable?
