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“Shouta, you were supposed to be at the archery range ten minutes ag-AHH!”
Toshinori turned the corner around the Hades cabin only to see Shouta being laid on by a very large and very terrifying fluffy monster.
He was halfway to pulling out his sword before Shouta raised his head and glared at him.
“I’m supposed to be on bed rest. Chiyo’s orders. Hades is with Apollo for archery today anyway and I’m not dealing with them. They can handle themselves without another cabin lead.”
Toshi just stared at him for another moment, hand still on his untransformed sword.
He could barely hear Shouta grumble, “Oh my gods” before he started to wiggle out from under the gigantic beast.
The beast felt this and made a soft and inquiring thrill before lifting all three heads before standing up and off of Shouta, leaving him covered in giant black strands of fur. The beast arched their back in a stretch, straining their muscles before relaxing and starting to clean their paw. The newly freed human used the beast’s haunches to pull himself up onto his feet, one still wrapped in a boot brace.
Toshi was left pinned with fear as each of the beast’s three heads turned to look at him and individually licked their lips. Yellow eyes pinned him where he stood, their pupils so dilated they were practically edging out the color of their irises. They held a silent staring contest for a moment, him unsure of what to do or which head to keep his eyes on.
That lasted a moment at max before their pupils shrunk and they sat back down. The left head leaned over to start grooming the center one. Likely having a similar urge, the right head lifted its massive paw to lick and clean between its very giant toes (and giant claws). All three ignored him in favor of its grooming.
Finally on his feet, Aizawa limped over to Yagi. His boyfriend immediately caught him under the arm and helped support his weight despite the half-hearted glare Aizawa shot him.
“Sorry if Jelly startled you. My dad sent her up when he called and I mentioned being too hurt for ambrosia to immediately fix. I’m happy though. I missed her and she makes a great pillow.”
“Shouta what the fuck?”
Both men flinched, started by the statement. Toshinori seemed worse off than Shouta considering he was the one who said it out loud.
“Toshi?”
“Sorry,” Toshi mumbled, hanging his head. “My filter kind of vanished when I saw the giant cat monster.”
Any softer expression on Shouta’s face was replaced with an unimpressed stare.
“Jelly is not a monster. They’re my kitty and you shouldn’t talk about them like that. Would you call Cerberus a monster?”
The hesitance Toshinori gave off told Shouta he didn’t want to know the answer.
Shouta turned away, starting to walk back to Jelly, who was now on their back, rolling back and forth on the grass. A subtle click of his tongue and all three heads perked up to look at him.
Still unsure, Toshinori hesitated before he stumbled to catch up with him. All it took was for Shouta to wobble a bit before Toshi had his arm under Shouta’s and was easily propping him up.
The motion caught Jelly’s attention who in turn, rose up on all four feet, their fur fluffing up as they growled low in their chest, deadlocked on Toshinori. Their pupils almost immediately dilated again, blotting out their irises, leaving Toshi feeling like prey.
But of course, Shouta was nonplussed.
“Hey, stop that, dumbass. You’re always trying to pick a fight with everything that moves. Where was that energy when I was being chased by one of the furies for bumping into her.”
With all of his energy diverted to being scared out of his mind, Toshinori’s verbal filter kind of turned off.
“So you’ve been chased by the furies more than once?”
If there was a way to physically embody the feeling of ‘I’m over it. Now it’s naptime’ Shouta would be on the cover. Normally, he would just roll his eyes but at this point, he was in pain and had just been woken up from a nap, so...sue him.
At least with Shouta’s casual comment, Jelly calmed down enough to relax out of their tense stance. Now they seemed simply curious about the new person.
“Just come on.”
Shouta did his best to lead the way back to Jelly who in turn came closer to make it easier on him and Toshi who was still supporting his weight.
Well, they tried to make it easier. But when they decided to show their affection by rubbing two of their heads against the entirety of Shouta’s body, both men were sent tumbling to the ground. Thankfully, with their natural reflexes, neither landed on Shouta’s bad foot.
Oblivious to the rough landing, Jelly flopped down beside him. One head continued to rub against Shouta’s body while the other turned their attention to grooming the now sleeping third head. How they had fallen asleep or managed to pretend to be asleep that quickly was beyond mortal comprehension.
Shouta, relatively unbothered by this change of events, just groaned and pushed at Toshinori’s side to encourage him to get off his chest. Even when Toshinori did, Shouta’s draw-out groan didn’t stop. After a much longer moment than Toshinori thought, he reached over and poked a certain spot over Shouta’s ribs.
The resulting yelp and “gentle” smack caught Jelly’s attention. They watched the two humans playfully poking and smacking each other for a moment before they got bored of petty human antics.
Both Shouta and Toshinori gasped when a giant paw reached over them, pressed down on Yagi’s shoulder, and very gently dug their claws in to pull them both closer. Shouta had only a moment to reorient himself before his hair was assaulted by wet sandpaper.
Well, not actual wet sandpaper but considering the texture of Jelly’s tongue, it might as well have been.
Toshinori, of course, had the gall to laugh at his boyfriend’s plight. Even as Shouta was pushing away two separate heads trying to clean his hair, he had time to glare back at Toshi who, in turn, only laughed harder.
Possibly sensing Shouta’s roiling emotions, the remaining head decided to lean over and lick a single long stripe up the side of Toshinori’s scalp.
Distressed and a little disgusted, Toshi sputtered and tried to roll away but Shouta, unwilling to go down alone, wrapped himself around Toshinori’s waist, weighing him down.
Toshi froze for a second, completely overwhelmed and hypersensitized, before bursting into laughter. Jelly went in for another lick but he managed to distract them with chin scritches.
This caught the attention of the other two heads who left Shouta alone in favor of asking for their turn. Toshi had to struggle to keep up as when he started on one head with one hand, the left out head would push their way in. It almost had him worried that they’d start fighting. Shouta managed to save him by reaching up and catching the last head in his own grasp before mimicking Toshinori’s motions.
After a moment of Jelly rumbling like a racecar, Shouta leaned over to speak to Toshinori.
“How’d you know how to do this?”
Toshi huffed out a laugh and smiled before dropping it when he realized Shouta wasn’t kidding.
“It’s a cat thing. Have you never seen this before?”
Shouta’s expression deflated a bit. “No. Normal animals don’t like me. It’s something about the aura of death that scares them away.”
“Oh, is that why you have a giant three-headed cat monster?”
Without skipping a beat Shouta simply said, “yes” before going back to vigorously rubbing his fingers through Jelly’s fur.
When Toshi didn’t react audibly, Shouta glanced over to see a flash of discomfort on Toshi’s face before he covered it up with a shaky smile.
“It’s not that big of a deal,” Shouta grumbled. “I was just claimed and was dealing with it badly. Abandonment issues suck and finding out your dad is a god with a goddess for a wife hit home pretty hard.”
“And so he sent you a cat.”
Shouta laughed bitterly, surprised at Toshi’s bluntness. “And he sent me a giant, three-headed cat monster. That ought to make me popular, right?”
“I’m guessing that didn’t go so well.”
“If you mean they turned the Demeter Cabin into shredded wheat, then yes, it did not go so well.”
Toshi was kind enough to muffle his chuckle at the imagery but Shouta still leveled him with a look that radiated annoyance but couldn’t quite hide his amusement.
“Yeah, yeah, a giant cat can seem funny but they caused so many issues that I had to call my dad to take them back. I promised to visit but we just couldn’t keep them year-round.”
Content with the attention, divided as it was, Jelly laid their heads down, comforted by the humans they laid with. It was a bit heavy even for the two demigods but the unspoken rule about not moving pets when they fall asleep on your lap still counted towards monstrous pets.
“I’m supposed to be at the workshop with Midoriya,” Toshinori groaned, knowing full well he would not be getting up any time soon.
Shouta just grabbed him tighter and mumbled, “Maijima will keep an eye on him. Enjoy kitty time.”
“Are you high? Ambrosia doesn’t make you high, does it? Did Hizashi sneak you something?”
Shouta cracked one eye open to stare at him for a long moment before going right back to napping.
“Okay, he definitely snuck you some edibles or something. You’d never be openly affectionate like this otherwise. I’ll have to thank him later if that means you aren’t in pain.”
Accepting his fate, Toshinori finally leaned back and consciously relaxed his shoulders, trying to get some kind of rest at least. If he was going to be there a while, he should enjoy it. It helped that Jelly’s purring was just right to push away all the old aches and pains.
Then all of it stopped when something caught Jelly’s attention. Aizawa groaned out loud, whining that they needed to stay but in true cat fashion, they were up and gone in a heartbeat.
Toshi managed to sit up to see what they were doing and was treated to Yamada being smothered in kitty kisses, all the while mumbling and cooing at the animal.
“He always does this,” Shouta groaned from his place on the ground.
Toshi just sat there for a sec, not sure what to say but was startled when Aizawa pushed himself to his feet (foot) and tried to hobble over to Jelly.
“Stop stealing my cat, asshole,” Shouta snapped with no real malice in his voice.
Yamada just looks up and sticks his tongue out at Shouta before burying his face back into Jelly’s fur.
Still a few yards away, Yagi watched, dumbfounded as an injured, stoned, and exhausted man was trying to fight someone over a giant cat.
What was their life coming to?