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Seth’s mouth drops open when he sees him. His eyes go wide, and Harumasa waves, smiling brightly to hide his nerves. “Hey,” he says.
“Asaba,” Seth says. He reaches out - not towards his head like Harumasa had been expecting - to cup his cheek. “What happened?”
“Let me in first?” He asks dryly, “Wouldn’t want to give your neighbors a spectacle.”
Seth nods, ushering him inside. His apartment is as clean as always - his kitchen spotless, his shoes lined up straight in his entryway, his yarn and knitting needles stacked neatly on the end table next to his couch. That’s where Seth leads him, making him sit by pushing his shoulders down. He disappears and reappears with two waters before Harumasa can blink. He smiles at him in thanks, taking one.
“Where should I start?” He muses, shifting. It’s kind of hard to sit down - after all, right now he has to accommodate a huge new tail, not to mention the large ears on his head. Seth sits down next to him, perching anxiously. “Soukaku and I were tracking down an organisation composed of rogue scientists. They must have heard us or something, because the next thing I know we were engulfed in a cloud of smoke. The three that we had been pursuing disappeared afterwards.”
“And she’s all right?” Seth asks worriedly, “Your co-worker?”
Harumasa smiles. Seth, sometimes, is too kind for his own good, but it makes him feel warm that he cares about the people Harumasa cares about. “She’s fine. The smoke didn’t affect her like it affected me. We theorised that it’s probably because she’s an oni.”
“That’s good,” Seth says, obviously relieved. He scoots closer. “Are you in any pain?”
“Not anymore,” he admits. “But I’m hearing too much with two sets of ears and I can move parts of my body I couldn’t before.”
“I’m glad you came here,” Seth says. His voice is softer; Harumasa hadn’t realised that his voice had seemed slightly too loud before, even though he was speaking at a normal volume. “Here. Lay down.”
He pats his lap. Harumasa sets his water down on the table and wastes no time getting comfortable. Seth naturally has a lithe build, his muscle more compact than prominent. Still, his thighs make a good pillow. He buries his head in Seth’s stomach. He smells like home.
“I can’t believe your tail’s bigger than mine,” he hears Seth comment absently. Something lays over his tail - Seth’s, he realises. He’s used to feeling it in his hands or over his waist, not through the fur of his new appendage. It curls around his, and almost involuntarily his own tail swishes closer. “And your ears too! I’ve never seen such huge ears on any feline Thiren. Can I touch?”
Harumasa mumbles some sort of affirmative into Seth’s shirt. He feels one of Seth’s hands come to tangle loosely with his own, curled against his chest. The other one settles delicately on his head. Seth’s nails drag lightly behind his ears, and the sensation makes him feel like a shaken can of cola. Seth laughs when he pushes his head into his hand.
“Asaba,” he says, “You’re purring.”
That’s kind of embarrassing, Harumasa thinks. But he can feel it - a low, constant sound from the back of his throat that makes his entire body rumble. He’s a little too content right now to do anything about it. He feels lax and boneless in Seth’s lap, their tails and hands twined together. Seth settles back against the couch, petting his hair. His thighs start shaking slightly underneath his cheek - purring, he’s purring, Harumasa thinks happily. He thinks he might fall asleep in Seth’s lap.
They can figure out the situation with his ears and tail later. This is, after all, why he had come all the way to Seth’s apartment, farther than his home from HAND headquarters. With Seth, he feels - comfortable. Safe. Cared for.
Harumasa likes him altogether too much.