Archive of Our Own

“Mash, I got you a present!”

Lemon giving Mash gifts isn’t anything out of the ordinary, but the way she’s positively beaming with excitement has the other boys watching her a bit cautiously in trepidation. In a blur, Lemon pulls a mystery object out from behind her back and all but slams it on Mash’s head. 

She squeals, Dot chokes, Lance’s face twitches.

Lemon makes a high-pitched sound, muffled behind her fingers as her eyes sparkle madly. “It’s so…so cute! Oh, this was so worth it! It costed so much, but I don’t regret it at all!”

“What? I can’t see,” says Mash, looking up.

“C-cat ears…” Finn stares up at them with a faintly bemused expression, even as Dot smothers giggles behind his hands. “It looks, ah…”

It looks strangely realistic. The ears are black, settling seamlessly into his black hair, and the insides are an endearing pink.

Dot keels over in poorly contained hysterics. “You look like a cosplayer, dude! A shitty, cheap cosplayer!” He bounds closer with never-ending energy.

Lance gives Lemon a sidelong glance. “Why would an accessory like this cost you so much?”

She grins up at him. “It’s magical.”

Perhaps that caution was well-founded.

“Uh, dude, it’s not coming off?”

“Ow. Ouch,” says Mash.

They look back over to see Dot pulling upwards on the ears, face scrunched in confusion.

“Ouch,” says Mash again.

“Stop pulling on them!” Finn waves his hands frantically, probably putting two and two together. “Lemon, you didn’t…?”

“Yep!” She puts her hands on her hips, chest puffed out proudly. “Limited-edition, realistic cat ears! They’re enchanted to fuse into your head and work like the real thing! I saw it at the mall and just had to get it for Mash.”

“Isn’t that pretty advanced?” Finn tilts his head up, leaning towards one of them to inspect it more closely in fascination. His breath must’ve tickled, because Mash’s ear flicks. Finn jumps back at the unexpected movement. 

At this, the three boys crowd around Mash in fascination, who stands there obediently to let them mess around. With Dot and Finn silently egging him on, Lance reaches up to pinch the tips of both ears lightly between his thumbs and pointer fingers, rubbing small circles to get a feel.

“Is it soft?” whispers Finn.

Lance nods. “It’s soft.”

“That tickles,” says Mash, squirming a little. The pointed ears twitch and tremble.

“…”

“Oh shit,” Dot mutters. “I kinda get it.”

The other two are unable to protest. Mash blinks, oblivious.

“Mash!” comes Finn’s shriek, startling everyone. “There’s a giant worm attached to your—oh, I think that’s a tail.”

“No way,” breathes Lemon giddily, cheeks flushed in delight.

Mash looks down and turns around, granting them view of the long black tail that curls out lengthily from under his cloak. He turns back around, and it idly chases its position behind him. “Where is it?”

“Here, you dingus.” Dot reaches down to grab it. 

“Wait, maybe don’t—”

The second his fist closes around it, Dot goes flying. 

He slams bodily into the nearest tree, splintering the thick trunk under his weight before crumpling into a pathetic pile on the grass below, clutching his stomach with agonized retching. Mash’s raised fist steams with the force of contact, cloak fluttering to a rest. 

Mash looks back up.

“Oh,” he says mournfully. “Sorry, Dot.”

It was instinctual, Finn realizes with a shudder. He’ll have to be extra careful not to accidentally touch Mash’s tail.

“Don’t you know that cats don’t like having their tails touched?” says Lance contemptuously, as if Mash’s reaction was exceedingly reasonable.

“Yeah, that was rude, Dot!” Lemon scolds, cheeks puffed out into a pout. “Don’t do it again.”

“I…I won’t,” says Dot feebly. 

They leave Finn scurrying to make sure Dot isn’t dead. “How long do these things last?” Lance murmurs, leaning left and right to inspect Mash while holding his chin in thought.

“I didn’t check,” she says, much too proudly. “Quite a while, I think.”

He winces. “It’s best to do away with them as soon as possible…”

“Really?” Mash paws at an ear inquisitively. It twitches. “They’re just animal features, aren’t they?”

“Cat ears in particular have a certain…social context attached to them.” Lance coughs lightly into his fist. “Regardless, it’d be embarrassing to be seen around you, so let’s focus on getting rid of them.”

“Oh,” says Mash.

“Don’t forget about the tail,” Lemon reminds him.

“That’s even worse,” Lance sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose in exasperation.

A beat of silence. Confused, he looks back up just in time to see a precious sight that almost sends him hurtling just like Dot. Mash’s gaze has lowered, cat ears drooping down pitifully to match his somehow meek look, voice going quieter than it usually is. “If it’s really that awful, then…”

…Dammit. It’s scarily effective. If Mash was a little more intelligent, this face could’ve been a dangerous weapon.

Behind him, Lemon wails at a glass-shattering octave, shaking poor Finn hard enough to nearly snap his neck. “So cuuuuute! Oh, I need to go rent a camera immediately!”

Lance, still receiving the full brunt of that pitiful appearance, is forced to swallow back his pride. Straining with the effort of keeping his shoes rooted to the ground, it’s by pure instinct that he reaches out to pat Mash’s head, between the downturned ears that are now perking back up at the touch. “No, you heard me wrong. I said, ‘That’s wonderful’.”

If Mash was capable of beaming, he probably would be.

“Dude, I know that group is weird, but…”

“That one is probably the least likely to…”

“No, listen, I wasn’t hallucinating! He really did have—oh, here they come!”

Dot has to come to terms with the fact that he’s definitely not the main character of today. Not when the hallways are packed with other students trying to get a peek. The bustling of school life has all but halted to congest around their newest source of intrigue, and he can’t help but take special notice of all the damn girls fawning over the Mash’ new look as if he’s some shivering little stray they’d brought in. Word of a certain black cat must’ve spread like wildfire.

Dammit! Dot shuts his eyes and clenches his fists in grief. If only Mash was a girl! There’s nothing sexier than a black-haired catgirl! 

(Finn is giving him a look of deep horror that Dot doesn’t catch.)

Mash is shoulder to shoulder with Lance as the remaining three trail behind. His face is as impassive as always, but there’s no way he isn’t overhearing all the gossip, and there’s no way he wouldn’t notice—well, maybe Mash really wouldn’t notice—the very blatant staring that hardly anyone’s bothering to hide. At least, no one’s good at it.

“It…kind of suits him? A lot?”

“I just saw it move—it’s really not fake!”

“Urgh, you were right…it is adorable.”

“That’s a tail, isn’t it? I’ll give you a bronze to touch it, I dare you.”

“Cat ears on a kuudere like Mash…it’s kind of super cute…!”

“I’d give anything to get a feel of those little ears…”

“Hey, don’t they kind of look good together?”

“Huh? With who?”

Lemon is gnawing on her nails dolefully, glaring over the boys’ shoulders. “All these people, ogling him for free like he’s a piece of meat! If I had anything to say about it, they wouldn’t have eyes at all!”

Dot gives her a look. “Isn’t it your fault though?”

She shakes her fist. “It’s not my fault! It’s the fault of these tactless perverts!”

There’s really no getting through to her.

They drop off Lemon at her classroom, though she mourned to part ways, and slow to a stop in a loose circle a few paces from their own (barring Lance’s) homeroom.

“I can try looking into whether there’s a way to dispel the effects early,” Finn says with a nod in Mash’s direction. “As well as any other physiological effects, though I’m sure it wouldn’t be on the market if it was anything but harmless.”

Lance rakes a hand through his hair, sighing. “Thanks. That’d be a big help.”

“Physiological effects, huh? Don’t big cats pee on things to mark their territory?” Dot’s face is thoughtful. “Mash, make sure you don’t pee on anything.”

“W…what?” says Lance.

“My bladder feels fine,” says Mash. “In fact, I can hold it in for a week straight.”

Finn looks concerned. “I don’t think that’s very healthy.”

Dot nudges Mash with an elbow. “But, you’re not a black panther or anything, are you? You’re just a house cat.”

“House cats do it too.” Lance lifts his palms. “Not that it matters. Dot’s the one who said something unnecessary.”

Mash turns to Lance. “Then, I’ll try my best.”

Lance makes an expression like he’s in pain.

“Hey, class is starting soon.” Finn glances around at the milling students who’re giving them a wide berth. Not quite because they’re being avoided, but because everyone just seems to be really awful at being inconspicuous in their fascination. “Mash, I know you were…well, I think you were joking about it, but I really would like to know if anything feels off.”

Mash tilts his head. “Sure. But I can still—...eep.”

Eep?

They look at Mash, and then at the figure behind him. Some nameless senior, much too cocky for his own good, has gone up behind Mash and is pulling mindlessly on his tail. “What, so it’s not fake? That’s crazy.”

Mash is doing that wild, stone-faced shaking that usually means he’s on the verge of passing out from stress. His cat ears turn outward, and the fur on his tail bristles like it was struck by lightning.

Still rubbing the tail like it’s a stress ball, the senior grabs Mash’s tensing shoulder with his other hand. “Hey, you gotta let me in on the spell so I can use it on my girlfr—”

“Graviole.”

The other students in the hall yell and reel backwards at the sound of tile breaking as the senior is ruthlessly crushed into the ground, the rest of his sentence choked out of him with the pressure that threatens the durability of his ribcage. He can only stare uselessly as Finn worriedly pulls a catatonic Mash out of reach, but even his eyeballs are straining in their sockets to look upwards. 

Lance Crown looks down at him over the length of his wand like he’s the scum of the earth. 

“Try that again and we’ll kill you dead,” Dot sneers with his lower lip jutted out, very delinquent-like as he leans over the flattened senior tauntingly. “Since you’re already down there, why don’t you kiss Mash’s shoe in apology? Fuckin’ maggot.”

“That’s gross,” says Mash, calmer now but looking a little lost. “I don’t want that.”

The senior can only gurgle in response. 

Finn waits much too long to speak up. “He’ll die if you keep that up,” says Finn monotonously, staring down with raised brows and a rare look of disgust. “You’ll get Mash in trouble.”

Only then does Lance let up, coolly tucking his wand back into his pocket as the senior wheezes in relief. He puts a hand on Mash’s back to guide him casually away from the scene of his crime, the other two in tow. Other nameless extras, probably the sniveling senior’s friends, scramble forward to pull him away when it’s clear that everyone else has moved on to let him collect dust. 

Dot dutifully takes his place on Mash’s other side, slinging an arm around his shoulders, squeezing him through the classroom doors. He glares at his homeroom classmates who’d crowded around the door to catch a glimpse of the commotion, and the combined blazing heat of Dot’s scowl and cold ire of Lance’s raised chin sends them scrambling back to make way. All the while, Mash’s tail flicks back and forth in clueless calm.

Lance remains standing as the three one-liners take their seats, Mash settled in the middle. He leans on the desk across from Mash. After a pause of consideration, Lance reaches out to tilt Mash’s chin up, blue eyes meeting pale gold in silent questioning.

Mash doesn’t get it. “Do you want a cream puff?”

“No. Are you okay?”

“Yup,” says Mash. 

After a moment of consideration, Lance extends both hands, reaching for Mash’s face. For a second, Finn is sort of genuinely convinced that he’s going in for a smooch, and is frozen in a silent shriek until Lance embarrassingly reads his misinterpretation.

“Get your mind out of the gutter.” Lance pulls Mash’s hood up, covering his ears. “Mash, you should cover up for now.” 

Mash immediately removes the hood. “That’s uncomfortable.”

Lance’s face twitches imperceptibly. He pulls the hood back up. “It’s for your own good.”

Mash pulls it down. “No way.”

Lance pulls it up. “It’s because you’re too oblivious.”

Mash pulls it down. “Don’t wanna.”

Finn looks on in silence. Are they children?

Mash wins, in the end. 

His raised tail is flicking idly back and forth, somehow in sync with the tick-tick-tick of the clock. It’s really, unfathomably distracting; there probably isn’t a single person still listening to the professor. Even the students seated in front of him who don’t have good view of his tail have their attention instead captured by the ears that twitch and flick every so often, stealing glances at him repeatedly as if to catch the moments when they move.

It’s a normal class session aside from that—and the fact that Mash is slowly but very, very surely drooping lower and lower in his seat. Dot and Finn take turns shaking him awake when he’s zoned out for a little too long, trading looks of concern above his ears.

The professor drones on dutifully. “It’s a common misconception that the rarity of a wand’s wood corresponds directly with its power output, but there have been multiple studies that call this into question...”

Thonk.

The classroom goes silent. 

Mash, to his credit, snaps upright immediately but disorientedly, rubbing his forehead. Visibly sweating, he pretends to look around as if clueless to what’s interrupted the lesson.

“Mr. Burnedead,” Professor Mevitable enunciates slowly with a threatening air. She taps her wand slowly against her palm, like one would with a baseball bat. “If you’re just going to sleep through my classes, then maybe we ought to evaluate if you should really be here? Or at Easton at all, for that matter?”

This seems to strike a chord. Mash shrinks in his seat and looks down at his desk remorsefully. “S-sorry…”

That pitiful voice, that pitiful demeanor…those drooping ears, so pitifully posed…

It was over before it began.

Because Dot and Finn have already seen this face once before, it’s not as destructive of a blow as it is for everyone else. One of the guys seated right in front of him actually slams his forehead into his desk in cute-aggression agony, ironically.

Professor Mevitable attempts to save face by clearing her throat, but her rigid frame has all but melted and her sharp eyes have softened. “O-Oh, it’s alright,” she all but coos. “Make sure you’re getting enough sleep, alright? And do try to take your naps during breaks if you can. But I’ll let you get away with it this time, just this once!”

Everyone (save for Mash, who seems thrilled to comply) gapes stupidly at her.

The infamous ‘Wicked Witch of the Easton’, reduced to a sappy old lady in the face of a cat-eared Mash?

The craziest part is that no one can blame her.

“Now say ‘meow’,” Lemon sings, borrowed camera raised to one gleaming eye.

“Meow,” says Mash, who’s supposed to be using their break to nap instead of whatever this is. He puts up a peace sign for good measure.

Dot eyes them skeptically. “You’re really going along with this just for cream puffs? Where’s your pride as a man?”

“I’m still a man, meow,” says Mash, putting up a second peace sign and tucking them close to his cheeks.

Lemon nods sagely, camera still clicking away. “Dot, your worldview is just too limited. Being a man doesn’t mean you can’t have fun.”

“That’s right, meow.”

“Argh, stop it!” Dot shouts, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes. 

Mash is actually starting to concern Dot and Finn a little, who’ve been able to observe him from the beginning since they share so many classes. They exchange worried glances over Mash’s slumped form, who now has his face buried into his folded arms after managing to unintentionally charm his fourth professor of the day into special privileges. They know that Mash is certainly the type to zone out in classes every single day, but certainly not the type to sleep through them. Despite it all, he does try to be a good student.

There’s been a strange sound coming from him as well, that reverberates throughout the classroom. It’s meltingly calming, and one of the professors had to swap around their schedule to get rid of the self-study period because too many students were either hopelessly distracted or falling asleep to the sound.

Finn is so preoccupied with the fear that Mash is developing a lung disease that he forgets to consider the biggest factor of the equation.

Mash, the cat, is purring.

He voices this revelation to Dot.

“That can’t be right,” says Dot. “Is that normal??”

Finn shakes his head. “Try…try waking him up,” he whispers. 

“What?” Dot’s eyes are wide. “No, you do it, since you said it.”

“I-I’m not going to do it, so you do it!”

Even though Finn probably would’ve just done it if they went back and forth a little longer, Dot seems to be stumped by this and concedes. Anxiously, gingerly (given that when he last touched Mash without warning he was painfully decked in the stomach), he reaches out.

“Hey, buddy, you good there?” Dot shakes Mash’s shoulder lightly, leaning down.

“Mn…” Mash shifts slightly, peeking up over his arms to squint blearily at them. He lets out a small whimper at the brightness, then breaks into a feeble yawn, ears pulling back with it.

“Sleepy…”

Ack! Finn and Dot clutch at their hearts like dying men. Cute…!

“This is dangerous,” Dot mutters. “Finn, we’ll have to work hard.”

For once, Finn doesn’t cower at the prospect of responsibility. He nods determinedly.

“What is this?” Lance blurts out in bewilderment.

Lemon doesn’t blink. “A gift!”

He sifts through them silently, lips parted bemusedly. “What is he doing? And what’s with this one?”

“I know, right?” she gushes.

As Lemon skips away, his first thought is how to best dispose of these without being discovered—there’d be no recovering from the damage to his reputation if anyone were to find these in his possession. As he continues going through them, though, his second thought is…maybe it’s better to hang onto these for now, just because it’s safer.

“Ugh…what do I even do with these?”

Dot shuffles through the stack of printed photos that Lemon had thrusted into his hands in a flurry before whirling off to do whatever Lemon does. He’d only accepted them because Lemon said she printed them out just for him (it doesn’t matter if she’s planning on giving them to Finn and Lance too!), and made him vow not to hand them over to anyone else. But now he just feels weird about having a whole collection of cutesy pictures of his rival.

He pauses on one where Mash is crouched on all fours with his butt out like he’s about to pounce on something just over the camera. The next is an overhead shot of Mash laid out in the grass and looking to be in the middle of a big stretch, bent like a banana as he sticks his arms and legs straight out. The next one is a close-up of Mash drawing a primly curled fist over a folded ear like he’s grooming himself, eyes fluttered closed. And the next is an even closer-up of him with his head tilted and pillowed into his arms, one eye pressed shut against his sleeve and the other one gleaming bright yellow directly into the camera, ears slightly cropped off the top edge.

It’s a lot of very stereotypical cat poses that probably would’ve killed him on sight for various reasons if he hadn’t already been there for the photoshoot. Dot feels a little more incentivized to make sure no one gets their hands on these.

He leans back against the tree trunk, legs sprawled out in front of him, and continues flipping through them like a deck of cards. “You wanna take a look at ‘em, Mash?”

Mash offers no more than a flick of his ear to indicate that he heard, and stays otherwise silent. He doesn’t seem too keen to move from that sunny patch of grass he’s taken claim of a little ways off, curled up in a tangle of limbs that Dot swears shouldn’t be comfortable, but Mash somehow makes it look like it is.

The tip of his tail twitches up and down leisurely, just barely tickling Dot’s calf. Dot almost physically has to fight the urge to touch it. Tempting as it is, death by angry cat is a shameful way to go.

“Excuse me…?”

Perhaps as mercy from the gods above, Dot is granted a lovely distraction when a gaggle of second-year girls approach him, the ones in the back whispering excitedly among themselves. His heart begins to soar…until he notes that they’re hardly looking at him, instead stealing glances at Mash’s prone form. Rather than flare up in jealousy, his skin prickles with an unfamiliar kind of distaste.

Oh, but they’re all so cute, and they look so sweet! He shouldn’t rush to such negative conclusions. “Wh—what can I do for you, ladies?” He attempts a suave smirk.

The girl before him tucks her hair behind her ear, looking down at him with mirthful eyes. “We were just wondering if this cute little kitty—hehe— belongs to you? Do you think we could possibly touch—”

It surprises himself that it isn’t disappointment plummeting his heart, but a protective fury.

“GET LOST!” Dot roars. They scramble backwards as he leaps out to place himself in front of Mash’s peaceful form. He waves his wand and fires manically into the air to scare them off, lighting the sky red. “GET LOST!!”

It’s extremely successful.

He stands there huffing and puffing as they shriek and flee, anger sizzling beneath his skin. How dare they try to lay a grimy hand on Mash while he’s sleeping vulnerably! How dare they ask Dot for permission like Mash isn’t even a person!

“Dot…?” Dot whips around as Mash sits up groggily, hair a bit tousled. He rubs at his eyes and blinks slowly, yellow eyes landing on the thin stream of smoke that rises from the tip of Dot’s lowered wand. “What’s happening?”

“Don’t you worry about it,” Dot says with a self-satisfied expression, tucking his wand away and dropping back down to the grass. He leans back and pats it invitingly. “Take your nap.”

“Mmkay, if you say so.” Mash scoots closer and flops back to the grass, doing a hefty stretch and rolling onto his side to sprawl lazily in the sun. Dot’s almost jealous of how damn peaceful he looks.

“That’s the one! There, with his head down.”

“Ooh, it really is cute! Can’t you do something to wake him up?”

“I wanna go in and get a closer look…”

“Ugh, it’s hard to see him because of that stupid-looking kid with the freckles!”

Finn winces, shooting them a furtive look as he instinctively tries to block Mash’s dozing form with his body. 

Aren’t they being way too tactless, huddled by the window like that and staring into the classroom so blatantly? Is there really no one else bothered by this? He glances around, and there are some other students giving them weird looks, but no one’s going out of their way to really drive them off.

He doesn’t want them barging into the classroom to corner Mash! This is already creepy enough…but no one’s doing anything about it…

Bracing (and uttering an inaudible prayer), he discreetly reaches into his wand-pocket and mumbles something under his breath.

The ceiling lights shatter. People scream.

“Again?!”

“Who keeps pulling this shit? I’ll kill you!”

“Can all of you shut the hell up?! What do you think screaming’s gonna do?!” 

“Oh, as if you’re making yourself useful! At least I’m not acting like a dick!” 

Amidst the chaos, Finn manages to pull Mash to his feet and hurry him out of the classroom. Mash stumbles after him blearily with a faint “whuh…?” as Finn leads him to a neighboring hallway.

The door looks like a shabby janitor’s closet from the outside, but it’s Finn’s safe space in the school, other than his own dormitory. It isn’t nearly as well-kept as the study they were just in, being so much smaller and lacking in textbooks and hence going unused, but it’s perfect for hiding Mash from those uncomfortable eyes.

Pulling Mash inside, Finn peeks out the door, looking left and right before breathing a sigh of relief. “Phew, we’ve definitely lost them. You can rest here, Mash.”

He pauses when he turns back around to look at Mash, who hasn’t moved. Mash is holding his head, pressing his ears flat into his hair. “Ow…that was loud…” He sways dizzily. “My ears are still ringing…”

“I’m so sorry!” Finn frets, but makes sure to speak quietly. “I’m so, so sorry! Is it really that bad?”

Mash lets go of his ears and shakes his head, as if also trying to shake out the feeling. “Why would you apologize for something that wasn’t your fault?” He takes up Finn’s offer though, moving past him to curl up small on the end of a slightly dusty sofa. 

“Y-you’re right! Silly me, haha!” It sounds stiff and awfully suspicious even to himself, but he’s lucky that Mash isn’t someone who pays any attention to that kind of thing. Mash nods briefly as if satisfied with himself for being right, and otherwise doesn’t move from his position.

Finn feels a bit antsy after pulling off something so rebellious for the first time in his life, so he sits gingerly down by Mash’s head. He stares down at Mash’s softened features for a while.

Finn is a cat lover, you see. It’s hard to think that there are people out there who aren’t. He’s been dying to pet Mash since the very beginning, though he held himself back in order to avoid weirding Mash out or getting teased by the others for it. But he recalls how calmly Mash took it when Lance was touching him that first time, and he clings to a shy hope that Mash can trust Finn just as much as he trusts Lance.

Glancing up one more time at the closed door, he hesitantly reaches out to trail a finger lightly through soft black hair, inching his way over to those delicately pointed ears. He makes sure to give Mash ample time to pull away. 

But it doesn’t take long to figure out that he got himself all anxious for nothing, once his careful path actually reaches the ears.

To his surprise, Mash squirms upwards to bluntly push his head into Finn’s lingering touch, eyes still shut but furrowed slightly in determination. He settles down only when Finn snorts out a shocked giggle and obliges in his friend’s silent but very blatant request, petting him gently into a purr-filled doze, soft ears and all.

Lance shows up late to their bi-nightly hangout with a pillow under one arm and a large bundle of sheets in the other, dressed head-to-toe in light blue pajamas.

When Lemon opens the door for him, he sees Finn sitting on his bed and Mash and Dot both cross-legged on the other, though Mash is practically in Dot’s lap as Dot fondles pliant ears with a lopsided grin. There’s a look of utter bliss on Mash’s face, eyes closed and head tilted back and mouth slightly open. 

“Hi, Lance! Why’re you dressed like that?”

“Is he purring?”

Lance can’t help his outburst, because they’re all acting so nonchalant about something that definitely shouldn’t be anatomically possible without some quite advanced magic.

“Isn’t it adorable?” Lemon gushes.

Even if it’s hard to admit, she’s right. Lance doesn’t have the strength to deny it. Witnessing this, his reason for coming here has only been consolidated. 

Only now does Dot finally spare him a glance. He lowers his hands. “What’s with the getup?” 

The purring halts almost instantly. Lance watches Mash’s eyes blink open, look back at Dot, then drop mournfully to the floor. Even if Mash is really easy to read once you get to know him, the movement of his ears really does make him a lot more expressive.

“I’ve decided to stay here indefinitely. With both of your permission, of course.”

Finn leans forward curiously. “I don’t mind, but…?”

Lance clears his throat. “I don’t trust some of the behavior I’ve been seeing from other students. I think it’s in Mash’s best interest that he has additional manpower nearby while he sleeps, or at least someone who can act quickly upon waking. I’m a light sleeper, so I believe I’m best suited for it.”

“What, you think some stalker might break in at night?” Dot’s tone is light-hearted like he’s telling a joke, but his expression is somewhat anxious.

“Aww.” Lemon cups her cheeks. “Like a guard dog!”

“No, like a person. Why do I have to be a dog?”

“This is a little uncharacteristic,” says Finn, though not unkindly. “Did something happen?”

“Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m just hoping to apprehend anyone who plans to abuse the school’s lenience. And…” Lance pauses, wondering how to phrase this. “Let’s just say that I’ve had my own experiences with…distasteful admirers.”

“Show-off…” Dot predictably seethes, gnawing on his thumbnail in clear jealousy as he processes this information. But in a rare display of restraint, he doesn’t make an outburst, likely understanding what’s at stake.

“Like a sleepover?”

They look at Mash. Is that the only information he got out of this?

“I’m not here for fun,” Lance reminds him. 

“A sleepover sounds fun.” Mash nods, ignoring him. “Finn, let’s let Lance stay.”

“Ahh, I wish I also cou…WAIT!!” Lemon springs to her feet, startling everyone into silence. She makes a big ‘X’ with her arms, head shaking fervently. “Wait, you can’t do that! Absolutely not!”

Lance stares at her in bemusement. 

Lemon points an accusatory finger in Lance’s direction. “I can’t let my cute Mash sleep in the same room as two men! One is already enough, but I can’t accept this! What if you do something weird to him while he’s sleeping?!”

She’s lost him already. “What?!”

“Don’t worry.” Mash lifts an arm and pats his bicep. “If he does anything weird, I’ll just beat him up.”

“Attaboy, Mash!” Dot slaps him on the back.

Lance stares between them in stupefaction. “What kind of person do you think I am?”

“You can stay,” repeats Mash resolutely, completely bypassing his question.

Maybe this was a mistake. After finally getting used to sleeping in the same room as a school-sanctioned stranger (read: roommate), perhaps Lance has taken for granted his own ability to sleep soundly. Even though he can barely see the ceiling he’s staring up at, lying down at a lower elevation is strangely messing with him. At least Mash, whose bed his makeshift futon is lined right up to, seems to be a thoroughly silent sleeper.

With a small sigh, he rolls onto his side, and through lidded eyes he nearly misses the two very bright circles peering down at him.

“Grkh—!”

Lance jolts up into a half-raised position as yellow eyes blink slowly at him. It takes him a moment to collect himself just enough to whisper into the dark, but luckily the whispering helps hide the slight shakiness to his voice. “Mash—”

“Since you’re already awake, will you touch me?”

Well, now he’s definitely awake. “What?”

He hears Mash shift, making a gesture that he can’t make out in the darkness. He uses the silence to rack his brain, then finally lands on the scene he’d walked into earlier with a faint sense of relief. Mash just liked the petting that much, huh?

Lance pretends to give it some thought, and lifts his covers away with a sigh. “Fine, I’ll come up to you.”

He feels around blindly in the dark, accidentally grabbing Mash’s face in the process, but manages to seat himself silently on the edge, shoulders turned to face the bright yellow eyes that blink at him expectantly. They disappear as Mash presumably closes them and tips his head forward, quietly presenting the precious objects of attention that the entire student body has been dying to get a feel of. For some reason, Lance feels a little triumphant.

He tries to mimic what he saw Dot do, even though Mash is facing the opposite direction this time; rubbing his thumbs up and down the delicate insides of the ears, pushing harder at the fluffy base. As anticipated, quiet purring soon fills the room. It’s soft and soothing enough that Lance doesn’t have to worry about them waking Finn.

Mash is melting against him like goo. No wonder why Dot had such a goofy expression when it was his turn.

“A little harder,” Mash mumbles. Lance obliges, and Mash makes a tiny but very satisfied sound, almost making him halt in surprise. “Ooh, right there,” he says with a stupid voice.

It’s strangely satisfying.

Lance adds some variation here and there; scratching the backs of the ears, kneading around their base, fascinated by different reactions felt only through touch. Ultimately, he finds that what Mash likes most is when he presses his thumbs into and almost inside of his ears.

“Feels good?” Lance murmurs. Mash gives a heart-clenching trill of delight that almost makes Lance break away to grab a pillow and scream into it. He’d give...not anything, but a lot, to see what kind of expression Mash is making right now.

Predictably, Lance is the one who has to break it off when Mash has become so pliant that his head’s being held up entirely between the heels of Lance’s palms. He silently lets the still-purring Mash crumple cozily into his nest of tangled sheets, and returns to his own futon after making sure this guy isn’t going to suffocate himself with his face pressed into his bed like so.

Mash’s purring lulls Lance into such a deep sleep that he’s convinced it’s magic.

Meanwhile, an unmoving, sweating Finn tries his hardest to fall back asleep, even though it’s impossible after overhearing something he thinks he shouldn’t have. I knew rooming with Mash was a bad premonition! he silently bewails, wishing nothing more than return to the innocent ignorance he still had just moments before.

So, it ends up being Finn who spills Lemon’s beans in the end…he doesn’t quite remember how the saying goes. In his defense, he was running on less sleep than he’d had in months.

He was using one of Mash’s photographs as a bookmark, because—it was convenient, okay? That’s his genuine answer! Yes, it is a ridiculously cute picture of his best friend batting the air lazily like a cat would a butterfly, but it also has its practical use!

Finn forgets about the fact that his bookmark is an unconventional one until it slips from his textbook while he’s gathering his things up at the end of a class period, tired as he is. The timid girl with long bangs that he’s seated next to catches his attention with a soft call. 

“Finn, you dropped your bookmark!”

He spins around to see her stooping down to pick it up, face breaking into a relieved smile. “Oh, thank you! I appreciate…it…?”

His hand is held out to receive it from her, but she doesn’t hand it over just yet, instead staring at the bookmark like it’s an eldritch god that’s feeding her the secrets of the universe. 

Only then does he remember exactly what this bookmark is.

“Oh, oh, um…! Uh, that’s…” Finn flushes and flounders helplessly for a moment, trying to think of a way to get it back without being rude while also finding a suitable excuse, but it’s ultimately unnecessary.

“Where…” Her voice trembles, lowered face shadowed by her long bangs. “Where did you get this…?”

“I, ah…Lemon took the photos, but she doesn’t want—”

It’s shoved back into his hands, and she’s gone. Finn stands there miserably.

Sorry, Lemon. Finn’s failed you. But this should be fine, right? It’s not like anything can come of this.

“What can I do for it?” The girl with long bangs leans in close, eyes sparkling.

Lemon raises her palms. “Back up, back up! I first want to know how you managed to find out that the picture even exists!”

She falters. “A-A woman never reveals her resources!”

Dammit, she’s good!

“There has to be something,” the girl insists. “Anything.”

“I don’t—”

She slams the table and leans in, something fierce in her eyes. “Coins. Coins are everything in a magic academy. I’ll give you three bronzes—that’s more than half of a silver!”

Lemon almost wishes she was considering it just for the chance to say something cool, like ‘now you’re finally speaking my language’, but the kind of value that Mash’s cute photos have can’t be weighed by mere coins. “I understand how you feel, I really do. But this isn’t something I can budge on.”

“Fine, one silver! One entire silver coin!”

“I’m telling you they’re not for sale!”

“Two silvers!”

“Are you even listening to me?!”

She slams the table again and leans in even closer. “Th-three silvers! I can’t go any higher than that!”

Lemon feels like she might cry. “Please listen, really! This isn’t something I can just hand out willy-nilly!”

They stare at each other, both unwilling to budge. Lemon knows that she has the upper hand in this situation, that there’s nothing stopping her from walking away and ending the conversation here, but for some reason there’s something about the other girl’s expression that keeps her rooted to the spot.

The girl with long bangs squeezes her eyes shut. She opens them.

“One gold coin,” she says quietly, setting it down on the table.

Lemon stares down at it. 

And she realizes, This is it.

This is how she can help Mash. Lemon, who’s been saved by him again and again with no way to repay him other than him promising her life, who’s been nothing but burdening to the Mash who shines so brightly, finally has a way to help him. 

She closes her eyes and makes a decision.

“I’ll get it to you tomorrow.”

Because Lemon only printed five sets of the pictures (one for herself and one for each of her friends, though Mash said she could keep his set so that she has two sets, how gentlemanly!), every single one of the photographs becomes an Extreme Limited Edition Exclusive Rarity. 

Finn apologized profusely for letting it slip, but she simply patted his back and said that it was totally okay as long as he took good care of the rest of them, and she trusts that he will. She watched Dot lock them securely in his safe, and she went snooping in Lance’s room to find them stacked neatly in one of his drawers, right below the apparent shrine he has of his little sister. All three of them are blissfully unaware of the value of the treasures in their possession, which leaves multiple safety nets for her and her friends.

As such, she allows (she never lies about it, they just keep coming to their own conclusion!) everyone to believe that only one of each photograph exists, because nothing’s more enticing than the idea of being the only person in the world with an Extreme Limited Edition Exclusive Rarity. With this, all that’s left to do is patiently wait as word of this transaction quietly branches from the single seed sowed with the help of that sole customer, taking root in the covert social networking of the student body. She really didn’t anticipate just how high of a demand there’d end up being.

Each exclusive photo picks up its own unique code name along the way. “Butterfly Mash” is the one where he’s batting an invisible butterfly. “45 Degree Mash” is the one where his head is tilted cutely like he’s curious. “Yarn Mash” is the one where he’s sleepily curled up tight in a strange pile of limbs like a ball of yarn. “Big Mash” is a close-up of his face (his ears aren’t even visible in that one). “Small Mash” is the one Lemon took by accident that only shows a vague black blur in the corner. So on and so forth.

The coin counter fluctuates wildly between days, leaving the professors entirely dumbfounded. The average student performance skyrockets as they each fight to earn the currency for the photographs, adding an increasing number of coins to circulate in the market.

Thus began the greatest underground bidding war that Easton had ever seen—probably, since she doesn’t personally know of any other underground bidding wars. 

Lemon can be smart when she wants to be, you see.

“Competition’s been rough lately,” Dot says with a sigh, leaning back in his chair. “Everyone's suddenly so fired up. At least it’s Adler that’s hoarding all the coins, but still…”

Finn glances up from his worksheet and nods, brows furrowed. “I don’t think anyone even knows who it is, since the coin counter’s automatic. Lance, have you heard anything?”

Lance shakes his head. With contemplative frowns, Dot and Finn return to their work. 

“Actually, I have heard something.”

They look up at Lance.

“I heard a rumor,” Lance continues conversationally, eyes still not leaving his textbook, “that there’s been a recent uptick in ‘accidents’ resulting in the destruction of school property that strangely corresponds with Mash’s schedule.”

Finn’s quill halts. Dot’s lazy chair-rocking stutters. 

“Charred ceilings, broken lights…falling shelves, self-locking classroom doors, overthrown papers mid-exam—need I go on?”

Dot and Finn lock frantic gazes. Come up with something, Finn silently pleads. A distraction, a distraction…!

If Dot’s good for anything, it’s distractions. An impish grin stretches across his face. 

“I heard a rumor that Lance and Mash are not-so-secret lovers!” 

Finn chokes on his spluttered outburst, scrabbling at his throat.

Lance drags a curious look over Finn’s violently wheezing form, but is blessedly quick to turn and glower at Dot. “Ugh, don’t remind me of that.”

At Finn’s bulging eyes and gaping mouth, Dot is more than happy to take the mantle. He nudges Lance with an elbow, who swats him away. “Get this, Finn. In one of our shared classes, our professor asked Mash if he was getting enough sleep, so Mash says—straight-faced as always— ‘It’s better since Lance sleeps with me now.’ When I tell you you could hear a quill drop in that classroom!” Dot breaks down into uncontrollable cackling, clutching at his stomach.

“I’m glad you’re so entertained,” Lance grumbles, looking unimpressed. “Now an inordinate amount of people think I have some sort of fetish for cat ears. I had to spend the whole day telling people that it’s not true.”

“Wait, it’s not?” Finn blurts out before he can stop himself.

Lance makes a horrified expression. “Are you joking?”

“No! No, not that part—I mean, I just…I thought—” Finn fumbles hopelessly, sweating profusely under Lance’s sharp scrutiny. “The part abou—with—I mean, uh, you see…”

Distraction, distraction, quick!

“W-well, I heard a rumor that the pictures Lemon took of Mash are circulating in a school-wide underground market!” Finn announces loudly.

They stare at him.

“That’s obviously made up,” Dot snorts, turning back to his worksheet.

“We would’ve heard of it if that was the case,” Lance nods, crossing his arms.

Finn shrinks, feeling a little silly. “Yeah, I guess you’re right…”

In spite of the strange circumstances that brought him here, Lance begrudgingly finds himself not really wanting it to end. 

It’s not as if he wants Mash to stay this way permanently, with his behavior just slightly warped enough to leave his closest friends on their toes. He’s been flightier and somehow more inattentive than usual, displacing himself more easily than a feather in the wind. Finn found him not just once, but twice on the school rooftops (the really, really high ones) with a fretful expression as he struggled to map out a route back down. Apparently Dot caused such a big commotion in one of his “distraction plans” that Mash impulsively shot from the classroom, leaving a shattered window in his wake. Lance himself is still healing from several bruises after he’d absentmindedly swatted Mash’s dangling tail away from his face while trying to sleep, only for those accursed cat instincts to pummel him thoroughly before either of them knew what was happening. There’s no end to the various small predicaments they keep catching Mash in, all thanks to that headband—even though ‘small’ is quite generous, but they’re so frequent that they could be called small by comparison.

Yet—there’s also the endearing expressiveness to him that helps everyone know when he’s happy or sad because he doesn’t really tend to voice so until prompted to. The growing gathering of students that are found sprawled asleep in the school’s lawn like clockwork, loosely circled around the lone tree that’s seen sheltering Mash’s drowsy form, therapeutic enough in both sight and sound that they all seek out his proximity just to lay down and take a shockingly restful nap. The quietness that befalls the usually obnoxious chatter in hallways as Mash passes through them, now that Mash’s sensitivity to loud sounds has spread into common knowledge. The way the tired, grouchy students all heading to their morning classes straighten miraculously as they catch a glimpse of Mash trotting by, like coffee addicts getting their hands on their first cup of the day. The school itself seems to sing with the arrival of their beloved stray, lifting that persisting melancholy of educational stress in lieu of the simple stirring presence of a cat-eared boy. That’s just the kind of person Mash is, it seems.

And then there’s Lance himself, who’s grown embarrassingly reliant on these rhythmic purrs for his sleep schedule. Sometimes when Mash doesn’t fall asleep soon enough, Lance will pull himself out of his own covers to massage Mash’s ears until he does, like rocking a restless baby to sleep. He’s considered secretly recording Mash’s purrs to use when he inevitably has to return to his own room, but he doesn’t need to add fuel to the fire of weird allegations against him.

Lance can still hear it right now, rumbling softly away, a lullaby on other nights but a source of sleepless musing on this one. Perhaps he’s more transparent in this restless thinking than he thought, because a timid voice eases through the deep-night stillness. 

“It was us, actually,” comes that whisper in the dark. Ruminating like he was, it takes Lance a moment to place it as Finn, on the other side of the room.

He shuffles slightly to indicate that he’s listening. Finn continues. “Pretty much all of it, I think. Dot isn’t the best at being subtle, so I helped him get away with lots of things…”

“Yeah, I know,” Lance whispers back. “None of you are good liars.”

Finn snickers quietly. “Hah. That bad, huh?”

“Mhm.”

He hears Finn shift. “You’re not going to…report us, are you?”

“Well, it wouldn’t have been smart of you to confess to your crimes if you really thought I’d do that.” Lance huffs at Finn’s chuckle.

“Heheh, you got me.”

He gets the sense that Finn has some more to say, so he waits patiently.

“I’m relieved,” says Finn quietly, “that it turned out alright. I didn’t like it in the beginning, the way everyone treated him like a…toy or something, but I wasn’t strong enough to say something about it. So the different things we did, even if it meant breaking some rules…” He giggles. “It was kind of fun.”

“I could still report you,” he reminds him lazily, but neither of them believe it. “What exactly were you nervous about?”

Finn doesn’t answer for a moment. His whispering pitches a little. “I, ah…had a recurring dream where they called animal control and took him away in a cat carrier.”

Lance has to smother his face into his pillow.

“Don’t laugh!”

He barely manages to keep his voice quiet enough, shaking with the effort. “They—ah—they do say that dreams can be premonitions for the future.”

“Right?” Finn hisses back, surprisingly spirited. “With Mash, anything is possible!”

“Anything.” Lance nods, even though it can’t be seen. 

They fall back into comfortable silence for a little while, both staring at the ceiling.

“Hey…do you get that feeling too?”

Lance rolls his head in Finn’s direction. “Feeling?”

“It’s like…” A faint laugh. “I don’t really know where I’m going with this, I just…he…he’s strange and he’s not very book-smart and his type of magic is really unnatural, and sometimes his otherness scares me a little…but, but even still, I get this feeling like I need to protect him, and I can’t understand how other people don’t.”

It’s hard to find a good way to answer this without also spilling out a little bit of himself. He breathes out a long breath, an audible sound that Finn seems to understand.

That’s what friends are like. They’re all still learning this.

“Lance, is it weird that I want to protect Mash? Even though he’s so much stronger than me.”

“Aren’t we in the same boat then, in that sense?”

Finn pauses for a long time. 

“...Wow. Yeah, I guess so.”

Lance smiles slightly into the darkness.

The quiet that follows is their unspoken agreement, first to sleep well and second to be Mash’s lifelines no matter what, the kind of agreement exchanged only through a certain type of trust. It makes the prospect of falling asleep much easier.

He closes his eyes.

…

Hang on. Mash isn’t purring anymore.

This bastard. “You’re awake, aren’t you?”

“Yup,” comes Mash’s voice, muffled by his blanket. 

“Mash!” Finn bolts upright. “You’re supposed to say something if you’re awake!”

Lance nods, a bit miffed. “That’s the golden rule of sleep-overs.”

“Oh,” says Mash. “Sorry. I didn’t want to interrupt. I’ve never had a sleep-over before.”

Well, now they just feel bad.

“It’s okay,” Finn sighs. He kicks his legs a little. “Ahh, that’s so embarrassing! Let’s just go to sleep.”

“Mhm.”

“‘Kay.”

It goes quiet.

…

“Finn thinks I’m stupid.”

“Wait, I didn’t say that!” Finn cries, surging upwards and waving his hands wildly in the dark. “Mash, you’re taking my words completely out of context!” 

“Did too,” comes the sulky reply, still very muffled.

“Please listen, ‘book-smart’ is a specific thing…”

They banter energetically back and forth, but Lance sees it for what it is—Mash’s version of reassurance, as a boy who’s not very good at words but is good at being Mash. Finn’s quiet confessions are forgotten, put on hold for another night.

Hmph. Cats have always been the sly ones.

It takes two full weeks for Mash to return to normal.

In that time, the Easton administration inevitably catches wind of the strange circumstances and does a thorough investigation. Lemon cooperates heartily, under the condition that they’ll leave her four friends alone if they’re satisfied with the information she can give them. It’s ultimately determined that this underground coin-bidding scheme is technically within school rules, because students are technically allowed to wager coins however they wish, even if it’s for unfathomably strange reasons. In the end, there’s nothing they can really do to stop Adler from breaking the nation’s record of most coins collected by the start of the Selection Exam, through extremely unconventional means.

Within the school, though, the story still lives. There are murmurs of the soothing purrs that emanate from a certain black cat as he settles in for his daily breaktime naps. Whispers of the silent vigil of a certain blue wolf as he watches over that cat quietly, and of a bristling red tiger who breathes fire if you venture too close. Lesser mentioned is word of a black and yellow deer that wanders freely among them all, and behind the curtains, a certain conspiring ‘queen’ of a certain deadly jungle.

It would take a long time for the stories to distort and leave the kids behind, becoming more urban legend than rumor. And it’s inevitable that they do, because there’s no one in the world with enough confidence to point and go hey, isn’t that the cat? That one, with the strength to fight the gods.

“I don’t regret it at all,” Lemon croons dreamily, clutching her most precious photo album to her chest.