Work Text:
Kenma hates Mondays.
You know that he does because he’s lived with you for two long years now and every Monday, he’s done this to you, and your brother before that, and probably did this to whoever he lived with before that. You don’t know much about Kenma’s family except that when you asked him, “Uh, do you not, like, want to live literally anywhere else?” He made a face at you that radiated an aura so evil you never asked him about his life before your brother again.
Despite small slip-ups like these, you mostly get along. Again, this excludes Mondays, a day of the week that used to be just mostly annoying and are now nearly as evil to you as they are to him.
As usual, you wake up with a mouth full of fur and one of Kenma’s legs splayed across your chest, because the direction in which a person should lay in bed doesn’t matter to that godless bastard at all. This is normal and you don’t even think about it as you stare at the ceiling, the pressure on your chest tightening as you try to squeeze in a breath between the beeps of your alarm.
Finally, you roll over to shut it off, trying to move out from under Kenma’s leg in what turns out to be a fatal mistake.
He makes a hissing noise and somehow, before your groggy morning-brain can think to defend its meat suit, he contracts his entire body like a spring so that he’s wrapped around your shoulders, one of his knees shoved in your armpit, his long hair covering your face, his nails digging little pricks into your skin where he clutches at you. You can smell his morning breath. This is a fate worse than dying.
You try and fail to shake him off. You try and fail to stand up and are only rewarded by a funny twinge in your back because no part of you weighed down by him is actually strong enough to lift him up.
“Fat cat,” you say bitterly.
“Stupid human,” says Kenma, his morning voice rough. On any other day it’s almost like he’s speaking in a purr, but today it’s more like a growl. “What kind of idiot gets out of bed on a Monday?”
Kenma, of course, is your cat-human hybrid, which is exactly like having a cat except you really can understand him, not like all the other cat owners who say they know what their pet is saying. He was actually your irresponsible older brother’s cat, first, but then your irresponsible older brother did something classically him and had to leave the country to evade the tax collectors, so you made a deal with him that you’d take the cat in exchange for not having to deal with any of the other things that might have subjected you to.
Sometimes he forces you to video call him from whatever city he’s staying in (you don’t want to know, for plausible deniability purposes) just to show him Kenma, doing whatever Kenma does. Usually this is playing games on the PS5 and saying horrible things over the headset in his sweet, mellow voice, or sleeping on your couch using his Switch as a pillow. All things considered, he's pretty low-maintenance.
"I have to get out of bed to buy you your special kidney food," you say, standing up to scrub out your bowl. Kenma, who is still eating breakfast at the leisurely pace of the unemployed and ungrateful, lets his tongue loll out of his mouth, a single piece of chocolate cereal falling to the floor. He stares at you with his mouth open like that until you walk over and pinch it up with a paper towel in hand.
"If you walk out that door today I'm going to puke on the welcome mat so you step in it when you come back," he says.
The joys of Mondays.
"It's not like I want to," you say. "It's a necessity of life."
"I could provide for us," he says, his ears laying flat on his head.
"What, with birds?" You snort. "You're not even an outdoor cat. You couldn't catch prey if you tried."
"No, with my investment income," he says. You put your face in your hands and groan.
"Who even taught you about finance," you say. "Was it my worthless older brother? Anything he told you to do, do the opposite of that."
"I have a master's degree in business administration," Kenma deadpans.
"Sure you do," you pat him between the ears, flattening his hair and watching his tail puff up. "I'm gonna go get dressed."
Many Mondays ago, you learned to select your clothing for the day ahead of time and lock it in the bathroom while you showered lest your horrible creature shred up your outfit in the meantime. Despite this precaution, you emerge this morning to find that the oven is in the process of preheating and all of your left shoes are being piled hastily onto a baking sheet.
"Oh," Kenma says, looking at you with dead eyes. "Aren't you going to dry your hair first?"
You shake your head at him, spraying drops of water everywhere. He yowls and tears down the hallway, abandoning his nefarious plans. You sigh and make a mental note to switch to dialed, cat-proof appliances within the week.
Eventually, you make it to work, fully dressed and hair styled appropriately, breathing a deep sigh of relief as you sit in your desk chair. This is your favorite part of the week, if anyone were to ask. You're finally free of the terror that animal exerts over your life, your house, your left shoes.
You bask in the feeling for about five seconds before turning on your phone to check your home-cam app. Kenma, as he does every Monday, is wandering from room to room, calling your name in a forlorn voice as though you're simply hiding from him and not at your stupid job that pays for his stupid Steam account.
"Hey," says Kuroo, your most bothersome coworker on the clock and your good friend off it. "Lev has been asking if Kenma wants to come over again sometime. We could do a little house party."
Lev is Kuroo's dog-boy, a lanky puppy who never learned volume control in possession of gorgeous blue fur and several show trophies. He is Kenma's self-professed worst nightmare. This is mostly because Kuroo used to cat-sit for you often, before Lev moved in or however normal people with normal relatives acquire hybrids, and Kenma had a special fondness for him.
When Kenma first moved in with you, he had been incredibly shy. You, having little to no hybrid or regular cat experience, had called Kuroo in tears, knowing that he liked cats from all the times HR had met with him regarding his inappropriate usage of cat GIFs in workplace communications. Kenma had emerged from where he had crammed himself into the corner of your closet within about five minutes of Kuroo just sitting there, pretending not to see him, and then crawled into his lap.
You had just died of shock and tried to offer him the care of the cat instead, but for some reason he had refused. Eventually Kenma had warmed up to you, mostly after you resorted to the most desperate measures of all time and bought something called pheromone perfume, but Kuroo was still his favorite of the lesser species.
"I'll have to ask him," you say. "He's going to some sort of convention this weekend. I don't remember what it's called."
"Are you not chaperoning him?" Kuroo asks.
"What is this, the 50s?" You laugh. "He's a private person, you know, and he never gets up to anything that crazy. Gosh, I really can't remember what the con is called. Hold on."
You type "convetnion this wkeendk" in your search bar. Mercifully, the Internet Gods understand what you're trying to say and return:
VidCon
VidCon this weekend
Kenma Kozume panel VidCon
"Oh, yeah," you say. "I think he wants to meet some YouTubers or something."
"You're really not on any social media, huh," says Kuroo, with a kind of amazed look on his face.
"No, I have FaceBook," you say defensively, "'cause my mom is always bothering me about liking her posts."
"Do you ever, um. This might be indelicate, but have you ever looked at Kenma's income? Does he do his own taxes? I always have to log Lev's show income."
"He's a hybrid," you swap back to your Excel sheet, "he doesn't have to pay taxes. How much could he be making off those videos, like, twenty yen a year because of the ads?" Then you start thinking about how many ads there are on the Internet these days, which is part of why you stopped looking at social media at all in protest, and then you start thinking about how probably the whole system needs to be burned down and start over.
For some reason, Kuroo has to steady himself on your desk, his head dropped low like he's feeling a deep sense of despair or maybe exasperation.
You get home and step in Kenma's hairball right away, but as soon as you enter the living room to bitch at him about it, he gets so happy to see you he starts shaking all over. You sit down behind him while he games, cooing in his ear and petting his hair, and he leans into you, purring so hard its broken up on its way out of his chest, and you think fuzzily that he's a perfect kitty who's never done anything wrong in his whole life.
The weekend comes and goes. You feel oddly empty while he's out of town, having completed all your bucket list items the very first day he was gone. You took a bath without him clawing at the door and insisting you were drowning, you wore all black without getting fur on it, you ate sushi and looked at the TV the whole time without having to guard it like a mother bird with its eggs. For some reason, you can't sleep very well during those days, so as soon as he gets home from the airport, you pass out almost immediately and wake up disoriented and breathless from being strangled by an orange tail. Ah, you think, everything is right again.
EMERGENCY?!!!1!?!, you receive mid-meeting some months later. You jump and bash your knee into the table, causing the financial analysis presenters to look at you funny. You try to pretend your phone isn't glowing obnoxiously brightly from your lap and smile weakly.
"Ah, there's an emergency at home," you say. "I may have to duck out for the rest of the day."
The other messages you receive on the way home are no less concerning.
something wrong, Kenma texts you. im so scared pls come home soon
i'm coming, you promise him. are you safe?
for now, he responds. Your heart clenches and you ask the rideshare driver if he can step on it. He shoots you a look like, this isn't GTA, but when you start crying in his backseat he really does get you home three minutes faster. You tip him forty percent.
"Kenma!" You call as soon as you open the door. "Are you okay? Where are you?"
"I'm here," you hear a pathetic whimper from the kitchen. "Thank God, I thought I was gonna die alone—"
You rush into the kitchen, holding the broom you keep in the entryway aloft, just in case you need a weapon of some kind. Kenma is, thankfully, safe and sound, although clearly terrified, sitting on your kitchen counter curled into a ball so that he fits under the wall-mounted cabinets.
"I stayed here to keep an eye on it," he says and your heart melts at the bravery on his face. You'd kill for this baby, this sweet boy with no way to protect himself from the cruel world. "It's evil, it's so evil."
The smoke detector chirps. Kenma just about jumps out of his skin, knocking his head into the cabinet and possibly causing the dishes inside to move and at least one to break against the inside of the door. His tail spikes up.
You sigh deeply.
"Kenma," you say. "Is it just that the smoke alarm is out of battery?"
"It's evil," he says vehemently.
You, callous and cruel human that you are, don't pull out a chair to replace the battery until after you've sent off an email to your boss that you'll be back at work within the hour.
On the weekends, Kenma usually falls back asleep after he confirms that you aren't abandoning him to "work" at your "job" for the day. He generally remains comatose until like 1 in the afternoon, when you eat lunch and he wanders out to see if there's anything worth stealing off your plate.
"You have your own, you know," you say drily as he winds his tail around your arm and widens his golden eyes to look as cute as possible. "I made you a bowl."
"I don't want that one," he pouts. "I want this one."
You are a sucker and a chump, so you pinch a bite between your chopsticks and give it to him right away.
"Yummy," he says, half-closing his eyes. You kiss his round cheek and he lets you, which is basically a glowing expression of affection from him. "Can we go to the park and see Hinata today?"
"Sure," you say. "The weather's getting nicer, but it's a bit windy. Can I do your hair?"
"You're so forward," he says, blushing, but he lets you brush it out from the black roots to the golden tips and twist it into a neat bun that won't get in his face. He bites you lightly, which you assume is your due payment for the torture of doing his hair, and then you go to the park.
Hinata and Kageyama are two hybrids who are, without fail, at the park every weekend, except when they're at the Olympics. Instead of playing fetch, they play volleyball, and sometimes Kenma plays with them, displaying an athleticism you don't understand how he retains lounging in your house eating nutritionless slop all day.
Today, Hinata plays while Kageyama sits on the sidelines and complains.
"They said I have a 'lower body injury,' and have to go to a 'physical therapist,'" he grumbles, making air quotes. His claws are huge, never retracted like Kenma's, although he does file them nicely into clean points. Today they're painted midnight blue, a little bit sparkly if you look closely enough. "What am I gonna go to therapy for? So I can pay money for them to tell me I'm gay? To find out I'm gay and in the closet? To help me discover that deep down I'm a gay ass homosexual man? Pass. Miss me with that shit. I'm straight. I am straight."
Hinata jumps up, his compression shirt riding up over his abdomen, and Kageyama makes a noise like a literal cat call. You glance at him out of the corner of your eye.
"Uh, yeah, man," you say. "Cool. Cool. How much do they pay you to play with balls?"
Thankfully, both of you are saved from this line of conversation by the appearance of Lev and Kuroo. Lev is wrapped in a giant coat that swallows his skinny frame and Kuroo wearing a hat that seems pretty useless given that his spiky hair keeps it from actually covering any of his, you know, skin.
Hinata and Kenma cease their scrimmage to come say hello. Well, Hinata says hello, bouncing around like the grass is a trampoline. Kenma doesn't say anything when he sees them, but he does blink, very slowly, his golden eyes huge, when Kuroo waves at him. You cross your arms.
"Weren't you playing a game," you say sourly.
"I'm gonna take a break," Kenma says. "Can we sit for a bit?"
He must be colder than you thought, because despite the nice ESSENTIALS: FEAR OF GOD hoodie he brought along, he sits directly on top of you, putting his arms around your neck and smushing your face into his.
"Uh," you say, muffled.
"Good," he says, mostly to himself. "Lev, don't touch me. Ew! Your tongue is wet!"
You pass the afternoon like this. Kenma eventually evacuates your lap, lured to Kuroo's side because he wants to discuss something about "venture capital" and "shareholder value," aka more terms your cat will use to torture you. However, Lev takes this opportunity to bound over, dolphin diving onto the grass in front of you, smearing dirt all over his outfit and then resting his cheek on your leg.
He singsongs your name.
"Please will you come play," he says. "Look, I found a ball you can throw me!"
The ball has dog teeth marks in it. You squint and try to see if Lev has regular, human-looking teeth or canine-style canines, because you kind of really don't want to touch a ball he's drooled on.
Before you can really get a good look, you hear a loud hiss and look up to see your cat looming over you menacingly, a shadow across his face that makes Lev jump up and dart behind Kuroo's back, his neck bared submissively.
"Kenma!" You say, poking him hard in the arm. "Watch your language!"
"Sorry," he says, the shadow dropping from his face. "Will you watch me hunt squirrels now?"
"Sure," you say, "but if you actually catch one I'm not touching that shit."
He doesn't, but he comes alarmingly close. Only your startled shout pulls him away from the kill, looking back at you instead of his prey and letting it slip away.
"This is why you can't provide for our family," you say jokingly when he returns to you. The others have begun to trickle away to eat dinner in their own homes, the sun getting low in the sky.
Kenma stares blankly at you.
"I make almost thirty million yen a year," he says. You laugh. "No, like, actually."
"Right," you say, scratching the back of his neck with your nails lovingly. He purrs for a second, his eyes fluttering shut, before he seems to remember where he is, his body drawing up tight. "Doing what?"
"Day trading, at first," he shrugs. "With the YouTube money. But I didn't like any of my options for money management apps, once I got really good at it, so I coded my own and I guess it kind of took off, a little. Speaking of, I have to go to a photoshoot for Forbes 30 Under 30 next Tuesday. Can you drive me? I don't like cars."
You drop your head onto his shoulder.
"Why do you live in my house, then?" You whine, digging your nails into the scruff of his neck. He makes a noise you've never heard before and goes sort of limp against you, the two of you holding each other up by your body weight alone. "Why do I buy all your stupid video games and kibble?"
"I like your house," he says. "It has you in it. And I funnel all my business through your brother so I don't have to pay as much in taxes. Didn't you wonder why you stopped having to pay rent and the house is in your name now?"
"I hate you," you say. "Don't tell me any more. And I'm not quitting my job to stay with you on Mondays."
"I'll get you someday," he says quietly. You roll your eyes and stand there in the cold for a little while longer, enjoying the contrast of his body heat and pretending you won't eventually give in to your spoiled cat.