Chapter Text
Fall in love. Fall in love?
What was this, some sort of old timey fairy tale? How was he supposed to find someone he liked so very much that it might qualify as love anyway. And how was he supposed to make them like him back? Especially with his current predicament.
Maybe he could figure out some sort of a loophole. Maybe the rules could be bent slightly, or maybe they weren’t the right rules at all even! Surely he could be the master of his own fate, and if this just had to be like some old storybook tale then maybe, just maybe, he could find the right person to just kiss him right on his little nose and everything would be back to normal! Perfectly fine. Surely. Surely that could work.
Right?
Staring down at the slowly evaporating puddle at his own, somewhat pitiful reflection, he isn’t quite so sure.
What stares back at him, slightly warped by the refraction of glaring sunlight above, is a decidedly handsome form. At least, for what it is. He’s got pointed, fluffy ears. Well all of him is pretty fluffy. It’s been nothing but a hassel with the way the weather has been bouncing between stormy and unbelievably hot the past couple of days. His coat is long and only slightly matted with dirt thanks to the hours he spent trying to make himself presentable the night prior.
In his transformation those few weeks ago the witch who had trapped him into this shape had been kind enough to at least let him keep a few similarities to his human form. He was pretty stocky for a cat (Yes, a cat, how original how fun! Better than a frog, at any rate) and was primarily a handsom sunny orange. If he thinks very hard he thinks he might be a specific breed, but for certain his coat bringd the word “tabby” to mind. Except for where his face is concerned, at least. There’s no contrasting stripes there, and both of his ears are a dark, brassy black. The fur that tufts out of them is white and matches his whiskers and the sides of his muzzle. His paws might have a bit of white on them too, but the dirt and dust has rendered that distinction impossible for the moment.
How was he supposed to fix this on his own? And how… how had he gotten himself into this mess in the first place, even. Since when did old fashioned witches go back to skulking the streets looking for poor handsome souls to trap into an animal form. He hadn’t even done anything wrong!
Had he?
Oddly enough, the whole event was such a blur that he can’t quite recall what he had done or what she had said besides that apparently the only solution to turn him back had to do with “love.”
He was too busy glaring down at his reflection to realize that he was planted square in the middle of a sidewalk. Right in the pathway of some poor human with a little too much on their mind to notice the scruffy feline in their way.
The yowl he let out when his tail was stepped on was a little too realistic and, really, that probably startled him more than the shock of pain from nearly having his appendage crushed underfoot someone several times larger than he was.
“Oh! Oh my god, oh I am so sorry.”
He had already scurried off of the sidewalk and stuffed himself between a line of poorly maintained hedges to nurse his poor bruised tail, but the voice that called to him sounded so sincere it bordered on miserable.
“Are you alright?”
There was a hand reached out toward his hiding place now, and some distantly feral instinct told him to lash out at it. Payback. But when he turned his gaze upward, followed the length of pale skin all the way up, he found himself awestruck. Sitting atop delicate shoulders was perhaps the prettiest face he could ever remember seeing in his life.
Against his better judgement, he peeked his head back out from behind the foliage he’d rushed to for cover and took a single extremely tentative step forward. He was rewarded with his first ever head pat by a hand so gentle, fingers so soft in the way they curled around the back of his ear to scratch loose a small mat of fur.
Something in his chest rumbled with joy and the human’s responding chuckle was so warm that it only made his own noise grow louder.
“Miyano! What are you doing over there, we’re late.” Those words don’t come from the pretty human knelt down in front of him, but rather from somewhere off in the distance that Sasaki cannot bother to figure out. If anything, whoever owns the voice to those words is perhaps the worst creature on this planet because the person—Miyano—withdraws his heavenly touch and moves to stand up. Which, wait, no. That’s not right, he can’t just step on him make the worlds cutest sorry face and then.. leave?
He can feel his fur fluff up a bit in offense as he watched the man turn away from him to respond to his friend. Then Miyano says something he doesn’t quite catch and the stranger is darting toward them both.
Sasaki is gone before he can really think about the consequences of his actions. He watches from the shadows of an abandoned deck as Miyano and company look around desperately for where he may have wandered off to, and eventually the stranger ruffles the pretty boy’s hair and tells him to give it up. That he’s seeing things and there’s no strays in this area in the first place. Let alone a big mangy tabby.
When they finally walk away, Miyano throws one last hopeful glance over his shoulder. The disappointment and doubt that clouds his eyes when he sees no sign of the cat makes Sasaki’s stomach twist uncomfortably.
He doesn’t know why, but he follows the pair shortly after they’ve disappeared from his sight. They forget about him quickly, he thinks, because there are no more thoughtful looks or worried mentions of his existence. But he lingers, tailing them for the rest of the day just far enough away that he won’t be seen. And by the time the sun has nearly dipped below the horizon, Sasaki finds himself perched on the railing of some random porch several miles away from where he started.
Miyano has disappeared into this house alone, and something pulls at Sasaki to sit and wait. He wants to see that pretty face again up close. Wants to be pet, wants to sneak inside and maybe curl up alongside the man and fall asleep.
He doesn’t think too hard about the why, but there’s a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach. Nothing like the dread he felt coming to terms with being stuck like this forever. Rather, it was completely opposite to that. Not quite hope but.. maybe this was his chance.
So he stretches himself out across the railing and plants his chin on his paws and waits. Waits until the sun has gone and the moon has risen and falls asleep to the sound of the wind dancing through the trees.
He waits for morning to come, and hopes for his chance.