Tommy and Inu-yasha | Backdated to Jan 29
Jan. 29th, 2018 04:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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ax_mainTommy embarks on an impulsive rescue mission, and has to live with the consequences.
Tommy didn't even bother looking around as he skidded -- not quite at top speed, but close enough -- up the steps and into the school. The only people capable of even noticing he'd gone by were Pietro and the Beaubiers, maybe the telepaths, and even then they weren't likely to try and stop him.
He didn't slow down until an eyeblink later when he was standing in his empty room, the door swinging closed behind him. The coast was clear. He tucked his hands into the kangaroo pocket of his sweatshirt, the tiny, wet and dirty bundle of fur inside promptly sinking infuriated teeth into the pad of his thumb. "Ow!" Tommy yanked his hand back in shock more than in pain. "Watch it, you little ingrate!"
Inu-yasha heard Tommy in the room, talking to someone, but there weren’t any girls that he could smell, so whatever. He threw the window open and let himself in, not caring that it let in a gust of freezing air as he hopped inside.
Tommy'd been distracted and hadn't heard anything until the window started scraping up -- and even then he couldn't think of any options as far as concealing what he was up to. Put it in his bed? Not until he'd given the damn thing a bath. He wasn't about to stick it in the closet, and the desk drawer sure as hell wasn't going to work- So when Inu-Yasha boosted himself inside, Tommy was still standing near the door trying to look nonchalant, his hands in the front pocket of his hoodie... which was wiggling alarmingly.
"There are such things as front doors," he sniped, just to have a distraction.
Inu-yasha offered a gruff “Hey” as he shut the window, rolling his eyes at Tommy’s comment. “This was faster,” he replied with his usual dismissiveness. He crossed his arms over his chest (the gash there had all but healed now, replaced by tender pink skin), glancing over at his roommate. ...and noticing the wriggling pocket. And okay, he didn’t think it was anything demon related and he didn’t smell magic, but what the actual fuck?
Inu-yasha got as far as opening his mouth to ask Tommy that exact question when the pocket in question let out an unhappy mew.
Busted. Tommy'd figured on having a little longer than thirty seconds before getting caught, but that was just his luck all over.
As if to punctuate the moment, needle-like fangs sank into his other thumb. "Ow! Alright, already." He took his hands out of his pocket, and a half-second later a filthy head covered in short, matted fur popped out of one side to look around.
"Some asshole left him in a garbage can in town," Tommy said, already on the defensive. Sometimes he really had no idea how to predict what his roommate was gonna do. "I rescued him."
“Huh?” Inu-yasha blinked in surprise. Now that he was paying attention, the scent of the cat had been obvious. Inu-yasha stepped over, leaning down to get a closer look, sizing up the kitten (who glared back and mewed again). He frowned thoughtfully, thinking of cats he’d known on the streets. “Not surprising. People throw animals away all the time.”
Tommy'd shied away for a second when Inu-Yasha leaned in - not because he really thought the guy would do anything, but... dog demon, right? But he relaxed when Yasha stayed chill. "Yeah, well. This is one who isn't staying thrown out.
While he was talking, the kitten had turned around and grabbed on to Tommy's hoodie with his knife-like little claws, and was now struggling up Tommy's chest, yelling at the top of his tiny lungs.
"Yuck." Tommy looked down, the dumpster-slime or whatever it was all matted up in the kitten's fur a lot more obvious in the light. "You stink, dude. Can cats have baths?" He probably should have considered that when he'd picked the kitten up, but there hadn't exactly been a whole lot of stopping-and-thinking between when he'd heard the tiny cries coming from the closed can, and when he'd scooped the thing up (wrestling it, let's be honest) and brought it back to Xavier's.
Inu-yasha stood straight again, nose wrinkling and ears flattening as the full effect of dumpster was released. Ugh. No wonder he hadn't noticed the cat's smell. "How should I know?"
"You can give a dog a bath," Tommy thought aloud, trying to peel the kitten off his shirt. Every time he got one paw free the other three would grab back on and dig in further. Back paw up- now front left, and back paw back in. Fine. Front right paw up -- front left paw back in. "Hey. Cut that out. I said cut that out! And cats are a lot like little shouty dogs. So it stands to reason."
Inu-yasha watched Tommy fight a losing battle against the kitten. "Gotta be better than letting it lick itself clean. That's what they normally do, isn't it?"
"Okay, yeah. That's super-gross." Tommy managed to get three paws up, four- the kitten wriggled and squirmed, leaving crud on Tommy's hands, but he got it off his shirt and promptly held it out to Inu-Yasha. "Hold this. I'll go find..." what did you need to give a cat a bath somewhere where it wouldn't be a big hairy deal? The sinks in the shared bathroom were a bad idea. "Something. Be right back."
"Wait, wha--?" Inu-yasha only put his hands out on reflex, given his experience with Tommy's speed. He hadn't thought it through enough to be prepared for actually catching the grime-encrusted kitten. For a second he was left alone in the room, staring down at the disgruntled creature plopped in his hands. Apparently not fully aware of it's surroundings, the kitten took a step toward him, nearly toppling off his hands and making him adjust to catch her. "Hey, what're you--"
The kitten opened its mouth and mewed sharply, then dropped its head and started to sniff Inu-Yasha's hand and wrist with sudden and intense interest.
Tommy, meanwhile, had made it all the way down to the kitchen before he found something useful, and was on his way back up with the largest, deepest mixing bowl in the cupboard and a bottle of dish soap shoved halfway in his hoodie pocket. A stop in the bathroom to half-fill the bowl with warm-ish water, and he headed back to the room a little more carefully.
"Google says we can't use people shampoo, but dish soap is okay," he announced, turning around.
Inu-yasha watched Tommy set up with only mild confusion. "Oy, what's it doing?"
Tommy put the bowl down on his desk for lack of any better options, and turned around to check. And he shrugged. "Beats the hell out of me. Smelling you?" He grinned, his eyes alight. "Maybe it's hungry and you smell like dinner."
Inu-yasha snorted dismissively, holding the grimy creature out to Tommy. No cat would be that stupid.
Tommy ignored him, hunting around for one of the cheap towels they'd been given by the school when they'd first arrived. He had the feeling the one he found by the back of the door was Inu-Yasha's, but really, who could tell? Either way, it would have to do. He squirted a hefty splash of dish soap into the water and swirled it around until it was bubbly... but he couldn't exactly just drop the kitten in and hope for the best.
"Okay, put it down on the desk and hold it still," Tommy gestured, towel in hand.
Inu-yasha frowned as he stepped over to the desk, depositing the little beast near the bowl and pulling a face at the bits of grime left on his hands. The kitten stood unsteadily in place, apparently confused by the change of surfaces. "Thought you were gonna put it in the water?"
Tommy frowned in thought, staring at the tableau in front of him. "Yeah, so did I. But I don't want to drown it, and you can't just wring a cat out like a washcloth." He darted forward and grabbed for the kitten before it could topple off the edge of the desk, and the ungrateful little twerp just yelled at him some more. "Okay, fine, yeah - before he gets everything covered in crud."
He hesitated for a second, holding the cat over the bubbles, but it bit his thumb again. "Ow!" Tommy flinched, the kitten wriggled free, and fell with a splash into the couple of inches of soapy water at the bottom of the bowl.
"Serves you right."
"She," Inu-yasha corrected gruffly, using the back of a hand to wipe a splash of soapy bubbles off his cheek. When Tommy turned to look at him, he added defensively, "S'a girl."
Tommy cocked an eyebrow at him, while an ungodly high-pitched shriek and more splashing reverberated up from inside the bowl. "How do you know? There's no -" Tommy gestured at the kitten's rear end, the drenched angry spike of a tail. "Equipment. Of either kind." Just a butt. Which he assumed both had. In the meantime, the cat was in the soap, so he might as well wash it. Tommy carefully tried to grab the kitten without getting his thumbs near the mouth end.
"I can smell it, okay?" Inu-yasha replied, cutting off anything more equipment talk sharply. He grabbed the towel and wiped the grime off his hands, watching the kitten was attempt to climb out of the bowl.
He could smell it? Tommy'd already resigned himself to a lot of Inu-Yasha's layers of weird, but that was a new one he hadn't considered. Mind you, the guy claimed he could smell magic as well, so who really knew? He managed to hold the kitten still enough that he could wash his-- her -- sides, the dish soap cutting through whatever oil was stuck in her fur and dissolving it away.
She stood still enough for a bit when he had her by the scruff, long enough to get the matted junk out of her belly fur as well. He turned her over to get a better look at her paws, just in case, and her blue eyes narrowed at him. In a flash she twisted around in his hand, the soap making her slippery as hell, dug her claws into his wrist and used it as a springboard to launch herself halfway across the room.
Inu-yasha responded without a second thought, lunging to catch the little fur ball, who splatted wetly against his chest. He blinked down at her, and she sank her claws into his shirt, but stayed put, apparently confused by this turn of events. She squeaked in protest, and Inu-yasha couldn’t help an amused little snort. “I don’t think she likes your bath.”
"Join the club." Tommy grabbed the towel back and mopped down the soaking-wet front of his shirt, then his hands- oh, gag. "Aw, man! I think she pooped on me."
Inu-yasha stifled a laugh (but did nothing about the smirk on his face), and the kitten complained loudly again. Probably cold, he figured, and pulled up the bottom of his shirt to start toweling her dry with a gentleness that might surprise most people. The kitten protested, but didn’t try to struggle away, too tangled up in his shirt. Exasperated, he said, “Oy, runt, we’re tryin’ to help you.”
Tommy'd been prepared to rescue the cat from Inu-yasha, or the reverse, but to his surprise the kitten stopped trying to bail on them. At least for the moment. Hunh. He stripped off his wet shirt and headed for the dresser to get a clean one, pulling it on and grabbing a clean towel as he headed back toward them.
"Try this," he offered, more thoughtful than usual. What he could see of the kitten now was grey, and kind of stripy. And thankfully a lot cleaner. "I bet she's hungry. What're the odds they'll have cat food downstairs somewhere?" He asked with a disgruntled frown, already knowing the answer.
"Huh?" Inu-yasha looked up from where he was bundling the kitten in the towel Tommy had just handed him. "Just find some fish or somethin'. Cats love fish." ...which would leave him holding the kitten again, but whatever, it was faster if Tommy went.
That and milk, but hauling the jug of milk back to the room was going to be more of a pain in the ass than finding a pop-top can of tuna. Tommy was back in a burst of air with the can and a dish from the cupboard. It was a little bit chipped, so it wasn't like he'd stolen good china or anything anyone would miss. He had a moment of wondering how old the kitten was, and if she could even eat food yet, but he had ample evidence both that she had teeth and knew what they were for, so how bad could this be?
Tommy dumped the fish onto the plate and kind of mushed it up some with a fork. "There, I guess?" He glanced over in time to see the kitten turned into a towel burrito.
Inu-yasha plopped the towel-wrapped cat on the desk, letting the towel relax enough that the kitten should be able to pull itself free - which she did eagerly, stumbling toward the fish like she hadn’t eaten in days. Which, well, maybe she hadn’t, Inu-yasha figured. Whatever. He pulled out his desk chair and sat, close enough to easily catch her again if she decided to throw herself off the desk, and pulled off his wet shirt, throwing it in the general direction of the laundry hamper.
Tommy sank down to watch, ignoring the chair behind to go down on his knees, folding his arms across the top of the desk and dropping his chin to rest on them. The kitten was a lot cleaner now but still looked ridiculous, half-dry fur sticking out in all directions and her tail still pointing straight up in the air like a warning flag. She made it to the edge of the plate and went face-first into the edge of it.
He reached over to nudge her face up and she hissed at him, mouth full and eyes wide. "Yeah, I getcha," Tommy murmured under his breath. "How long were you in that can, anyway?" He tried to touch the top of her head with one finger, and when she realized he wasn't interfering with her food, she let him do it. She was a lot softer than he'd realized, now that she wasn't all dirty. Like a warm cotton ball.
Inu-yasha raised an eyebrow at Tommy’s doting, but didn’t say anything about it. He was feeling a little smug, though. “See? Fish. The strays used to drive the cook crazy when she was cookin’ fish, beggin’ and tryin’ to steal it.”
Tommy actually flashed a smile at him, one corner of his mouth tugging up. "Trust a dog to know how to feed a cat," he commented, but there was no heat or malice in it. "We had a dog for a while, a big dumb mutt. But he got old and got cancer and had to be put down. We never had cats."
Eyeing his roommate carefully, Inu-yasha decided there weren’t any dog-related insults implied in the story. He leaned back, lacing his fingers behind his head. “Never understood pets.” Animals on the streets, though, that he understood. As a kid he’d learned to scrounge for food or find warm places to sleep by following animals sometimes.
The kitten's frantic eating was slowing down and she was starting to look around more intently, bleary blue eyes focusing first on Tommy, then on Inu-yasha as they spoke, then back again. Tommy sat back on his heels, dropping his arms. "We supposedly had Max for protection, but there was no way that was going to work," Tommy snorted. "Unless burglars stood still long enough to get licked to death." He eyed the kitten and grinned. "This thing's more dangerous, with all those sharp points."
“It was stuck in a dumpster,” Inu-yasha pointed out flatly. So much for ‘dangerous’. He scratched absently at his chest, near the edge of the pink scar where his body was still healing. Honestly, being shirtless was less annoying, if not really practical outside. And usually he wouldn’t want others to see him unhealed, but Tommy had seen the worst of it anyway, and it wasn’t sapping his strength anymore so it didn’t really matter.
Tommy glanced up at him, offended on the kitten's behalf. His gaze landed on the scar for a second, then skidded off before he had to think too hard about how that injury had gotten there. It had been more than a month since Limbo and the brutal pink welt across Inu-yash'as torso was still only barely healed. "And if someone twenty times your size dropped you in a giant dumpster? I'd like to see you do better."
Inu-yasha snorted. "Just sayin'. You're the one plannin' to use it for protection."
"I said we had a dog that was supposedly a guard dog when I was a kid," Tommy corrected him, moving on from memories of when things had been different. "But I bet you could be fierce," he told the cat mock-solemnly. She looked back up at him, a nose-hole left in the mashed tuna and her eyes glazing over. "Sometimes things that are smaller, are tougher."
Despite the eyeroll Tommy got for that, it struck another familiar chord for Inu-yasha. Which, of course, he ignored. "She looks more ready for a nap than a fight."
He wasn't wrong; as Tommy watched, the kitten licked her paw, swiped half-heartedly at one side of her face, then her eyes closed and she started to topple sideways. Tommy caught her before she could land in the tuna and need a second bath, the little furry body fitting neatly - and much more calmly, this time - into the palms of his hands. And fell asleep, leaving him kneeling there, hands out, with no good idea what to do with her next. Something soft had to be better than sleeping on the desk, or in the fish. Maybe the end of his bed, just for now. Until he figured out what he was going to do with her.
Inu-yasha watched the kitten topple into Tommy’s hands, dead asleep. It must’ve been exhausted, on top of starving. He cocked his head to the side, wondering what Tommy would do next. “You just gonna stay that way until it wakes up?”
"I... hadn't thought that through," Tommy admitted, consternation furrowing his brow. He could get up without using his hands, right? Sure he could. He couldn't just accelerate to get out of this one 'cause the kitten would come along for the ride, which was the opposite of what he wanted. Tommy rocked backward, trying to keep his hands level and get his feet under him at the same time. He got it, overcorrected, got halfway up and toppled backward to land on his ass, his hands still out. "We're okay!"
Inu-yasha just raised an eyebrow at the strange show, and the kitten perked up just enough to assess that there was no new danger and its eyes blinked shut again. “The hell are you doing?”
"Falling over, what does it look like?" Okay, fine. The cat wasn't really waking up, so the only decent option left was to slide it back into one of his hands and use the other to haul himself up to his feet. Tommy managed it, carefully shuffling the kitten from both hands into one, and struggling to stand. He put the kitten down on the end of his bed. She woke up, blinked, got up and carefully walked three times around in a circle in the same spot before rolling herself back up into a ball and passing out again.
Inu-yasha watched all of this curiously, then looked back at Tommy. “So... what, you have a cat now?”
Tommy folded his arms and looked down at the fuzzball. What the hell was he going to do with a cat? He'd have to go eventually, even if that 'eventually' kept getting pushed further back in his timeline, and having a cat tagging along would cramp his options. On the other hand -- she'd been thrown away and no-one had wanted her. And he knew a whole lot about what that felt like. "Until I figure out where she can go. Maybe Bobby's parents or the Kaplans will take a cat."
"I'm not takin' care of it," Inu-yasha warned, eyeing the furball suspiciously.
"No-one asked you to." Tommy's temper flared up again. "Just don't rat me out. Not until I can find her somewhere safe to live."
Inu-yasha just snorted and rolled his eyes. What did he care? He just didn't want Tommy getting any delusions about who would take care of the thing.
Tommy waited for the next challenge but it didn't come, and he mentally shrugged and let it go. The cat was asleep for the moment, and from what he'd skimmed on google before, cats pretty much did that all the time. No problem. He grabbed his laptop and flopped down on his bed, careful not to disrupt the tiny furball. He couldn't keep grabbing cans of tuna from the kitchen; someone was bound to notice eventually. Looked like he had some research to do.
Tommy didn't even bother looking around as he skidded -- not quite at top speed, but close enough -- up the steps and into the school. The only people capable of even noticing he'd gone by were Pietro and the Beaubiers, maybe the telepaths, and even then they weren't likely to try and stop him.
He didn't slow down until an eyeblink later when he was standing in his empty room, the door swinging closed behind him. The coast was clear. He tucked his hands into the kangaroo pocket of his sweatshirt, the tiny, wet and dirty bundle of fur inside promptly sinking infuriated teeth into the pad of his thumb. "Ow!" Tommy yanked his hand back in shock more than in pain. "Watch it, you little ingrate!"
Inu-yasha heard Tommy in the room, talking to someone, but there weren’t any girls that he could smell, so whatever. He threw the window open and let himself in, not caring that it let in a gust of freezing air as he hopped inside.
Tommy'd been distracted and hadn't heard anything until the window started scraping up -- and even then he couldn't think of any options as far as concealing what he was up to. Put it in his bed? Not until he'd given the damn thing a bath. He wasn't about to stick it in the closet, and the desk drawer sure as hell wasn't going to work- So when Inu-Yasha boosted himself inside, Tommy was still standing near the door trying to look nonchalant, his hands in the front pocket of his hoodie... which was wiggling alarmingly.
"There are such things as front doors," he sniped, just to have a distraction.
Inu-yasha offered a gruff “Hey” as he shut the window, rolling his eyes at Tommy’s comment. “This was faster,” he replied with his usual dismissiveness. He crossed his arms over his chest (the gash there had all but healed now, replaced by tender pink skin), glancing over at his roommate. ...and noticing the wriggling pocket. And okay, he didn’t think it was anything demon related and he didn’t smell magic, but what the actual fuck?
Inu-yasha got as far as opening his mouth to ask Tommy that exact question when the pocket in question let out an unhappy mew.
Busted. Tommy'd figured on having a little longer than thirty seconds before getting caught, but that was just his luck all over.
As if to punctuate the moment, needle-like fangs sank into his other thumb. "Ow! Alright, already." He took his hands out of his pocket, and a half-second later a filthy head covered in short, matted fur popped out of one side to look around.
"Some asshole left him in a garbage can in town," Tommy said, already on the defensive. Sometimes he really had no idea how to predict what his roommate was gonna do. "I rescued him."
“Huh?” Inu-yasha blinked in surprise. Now that he was paying attention, the scent of the cat had been obvious. Inu-yasha stepped over, leaning down to get a closer look, sizing up the kitten (who glared back and mewed again). He frowned thoughtfully, thinking of cats he’d known on the streets. “Not surprising. People throw animals away all the time.”
Tommy'd shied away for a second when Inu-Yasha leaned in - not because he really thought the guy would do anything, but... dog demon, right? But he relaxed when Yasha stayed chill. "Yeah, well. This is one who isn't staying thrown out.
While he was talking, the kitten had turned around and grabbed on to Tommy's hoodie with his knife-like little claws, and was now struggling up Tommy's chest, yelling at the top of his tiny lungs.
"Yuck." Tommy looked down, the dumpster-slime or whatever it was all matted up in the kitten's fur a lot more obvious in the light. "You stink, dude. Can cats have baths?" He probably should have considered that when he'd picked the kitten up, but there hadn't exactly been a whole lot of stopping-and-thinking between when he'd heard the tiny cries coming from the closed can, and when he'd scooped the thing up (wrestling it, let's be honest) and brought it back to Xavier's.
Inu-yasha stood straight again, nose wrinkling and ears flattening as the full effect of dumpster was released. Ugh. No wonder he hadn't noticed the cat's smell. "How should I know?"
"You can give a dog a bath," Tommy thought aloud, trying to peel the kitten off his shirt. Every time he got one paw free the other three would grab back on and dig in further. Back paw up- now front left, and back paw back in. Fine. Front right paw up -- front left paw back in. "Hey. Cut that out. I said cut that out! And cats are a lot like little shouty dogs. So it stands to reason."
Inu-yasha watched Tommy fight a losing battle against the kitten. "Gotta be better than letting it lick itself clean. That's what they normally do, isn't it?"
"Okay, yeah. That's super-gross." Tommy managed to get three paws up, four- the kitten wriggled and squirmed, leaving crud on Tommy's hands, but he got it off his shirt and promptly held it out to Inu-Yasha. "Hold this. I'll go find..." what did you need to give a cat a bath somewhere where it wouldn't be a big hairy deal? The sinks in the shared bathroom were a bad idea. "Something. Be right back."
"Wait, wha--?" Inu-yasha only put his hands out on reflex, given his experience with Tommy's speed. He hadn't thought it through enough to be prepared for actually catching the grime-encrusted kitten. For a second he was left alone in the room, staring down at the disgruntled creature plopped in his hands. Apparently not fully aware of it's surroundings, the kitten took a step toward him, nearly toppling off his hands and making him adjust to catch her. "Hey, what're you--"
The kitten opened its mouth and mewed sharply, then dropped its head and started to sniff Inu-Yasha's hand and wrist with sudden and intense interest.
Tommy, meanwhile, had made it all the way down to the kitchen before he found something useful, and was on his way back up with the largest, deepest mixing bowl in the cupboard and a bottle of dish soap shoved halfway in his hoodie pocket. A stop in the bathroom to half-fill the bowl with warm-ish water, and he headed back to the room a little more carefully.
"Google says we can't use people shampoo, but dish soap is okay," he announced, turning around.
Inu-yasha watched Tommy set up with only mild confusion. "Oy, what's it doing?"
Tommy put the bowl down on his desk for lack of any better options, and turned around to check. And he shrugged. "Beats the hell out of me. Smelling you?" He grinned, his eyes alight. "Maybe it's hungry and you smell like dinner."
Inu-yasha snorted dismissively, holding the grimy creature out to Tommy. No cat would be that stupid.
Tommy ignored him, hunting around for one of the cheap towels they'd been given by the school when they'd first arrived. He had the feeling the one he found by the back of the door was Inu-Yasha's, but really, who could tell? Either way, it would have to do. He squirted a hefty splash of dish soap into the water and swirled it around until it was bubbly... but he couldn't exactly just drop the kitten in and hope for the best.
"Okay, put it down on the desk and hold it still," Tommy gestured, towel in hand.
Inu-yasha frowned as he stepped over to the desk, depositing the little beast near the bowl and pulling a face at the bits of grime left on his hands. The kitten stood unsteadily in place, apparently confused by the change of surfaces. "Thought you were gonna put it in the water?"
Tommy frowned in thought, staring at the tableau in front of him. "Yeah, so did I. But I don't want to drown it, and you can't just wring a cat out like a washcloth." He darted forward and grabbed for the kitten before it could topple off the edge of the desk, and the ungrateful little twerp just yelled at him some more. "Okay, fine, yeah - before he gets everything covered in crud."
He hesitated for a second, holding the cat over the bubbles, but it bit his thumb again. "Ow!" Tommy flinched, the kitten wriggled free, and fell with a splash into the couple of inches of soapy water at the bottom of the bowl.
"Serves you right."
"She," Inu-yasha corrected gruffly, using the back of a hand to wipe a splash of soapy bubbles off his cheek. When Tommy turned to look at him, he added defensively, "S'a girl."
Tommy cocked an eyebrow at him, while an ungodly high-pitched shriek and more splashing reverberated up from inside the bowl. "How do you know? There's no -" Tommy gestured at the kitten's rear end, the drenched angry spike of a tail. "Equipment. Of either kind." Just a butt. Which he assumed both had. In the meantime, the cat was in the soap, so he might as well wash it. Tommy carefully tried to grab the kitten without getting his thumbs near the mouth end.
"I can smell it, okay?" Inu-yasha replied, cutting off anything more equipment talk sharply. He grabbed the towel and wiped the grime off his hands, watching the kitten was attempt to climb out of the bowl.
He could smell it? Tommy'd already resigned himself to a lot of Inu-Yasha's layers of weird, but that was a new one he hadn't considered. Mind you, the guy claimed he could smell magic as well, so who really knew? He managed to hold the kitten still enough that he could wash his-- her -- sides, the dish soap cutting through whatever oil was stuck in her fur and dissolving it away.
She stood still enough for a bit when he had her by the scruff, long enough to get the matted junk out of her belly fur as well. He turned her over to get a better look at her paws, just in case, and her blue eyes narrowed at him. In a flash she twisted around in his hand, the soap making her slippery as hell, dug her claws into his wrist and used it as a springboard to launch herself halfway across the room.
Inu-yasha responded without a second thought, lunging to catch the little fur ball, who splatted wetly against his chest. He blinked down at her, and she sank her claws into his shirt, but stayed put, apparently confused by this turn of events. She squeaked in protest, and Inu-yasha couldn’t help an amused little snort. “I don’t think she likes your bath.”
"Join the club." Tommy grabbed the towel back and mopped down the soaking-wet front of his shirt, then his hands- oh, gag. "Aw, man! I think she pooped on me."
Inu-yasha stifled a laugh (but did nothing about the smirk on his face), and the kitten complained loudly again. Probably cold, he figured, and pulled up the bottom of his shirt to start toweling her dry with a gentleness that might surprise most people. The kitten protested, but didn’t try to struggle away, too tangled up in his shirt. Exasperated, he said, “Oy, runt, we’re tryin’ to help you.”
Tommy'd been prepared to rescue the cat from Inu-yasha, or the reverse, but to his surprise the kitten stopped trying to bail on them. At least for the moment. Hunh. He stripped off his wet shirt and headed for the dresser to get a clean one, pulling it on and grabbing a clean towel as he headed back toward them.
"Try this," he offered, more thoughtful than usual. What he could see of the kitten now was grey, and kind of stripy. And thankfully a lot cleaner. "I bet she's hungry. What're the odds they'll have cat food downstairs somewhere?" He asked with a disgruntled frown, already knowing the answer.
"Huh?" Inu-yasha looked up from where he was bundling the kitten in the towel Tommy had just handed him. "Just find some fish or somethin'. Cats love fish." ...which would leave him holding the kitten again, but whatever, it was faster if Tommy went.
That and milk, but hauling the jug of milk back to the room was going to be more of a pain in the ass than finding a pop-top can of tuna. Tommy was back in a burst of air with the can and a dish from the cupboard. It was a little bit chipped, so it wasn't like he'd stolen good china or anything anyone would miss. He had a moment of wondering how old the kitten was, and if she could even eat food yet, but he had ample evidence both that she had teeth and knew what they were for, so how bad could this be?
Tommy dumped the fish onto the plate and kind of mushed it up some with a fork. "There, I guess?" He glanced over in time to see the kitten turned into a towel burrito.
Inu-yasha plopped the towel-wrapped cat on the desk, letting the towel relax enough that the kitten should be able to pull itself free - which she did eagerly, stumbling toward the fish like she hadn’t eaten in days. Which, well, maybe she hadn’t, Inu-yasha figured. Whatever. He pulled out his desk chair and sat, close enough to easily catch her again if she decided to throw herself off the desk, and pulled off his wet shirt, throwing it in the general direction of the laundry hamper.
Tommy sank down to watch, ignoring the chair behind to go down on his knees, folding his arms across the top of the desk and dropping his chin to rest on them. The kitten was a lot cleaner now but still looked ridiculous, half-dry fur sticking out in all directions and her tail still pointing straight up in the air like a warning flag. She made it to the edge of the plate and went face-first into the edge of it.
He reached over to nudge her face up and she hissed at him, mouth full and eyes wide. "Yeah, I getcha," Tommy murmured under his breath. "How long were you in that can, anyway?" He tried to touch the top of her head with one finger, and when she realized he wasn't interfering with her food, she let him do it. She was a lot softer than he'd realized, now that she wasn't all dirty. Like a warm cotton ball.
Inu-yasha raised an eyebrow at Tommy’s doting, but didn’t say anything about it. He was feeling a little smug, though. “See? Fish. The strays used to drive the cook crazy when she was cookin’ fish, beggin’ and tryin’ to steal it.”
Tommy actually flashed a smile at him, one corner of his mouth tugging up. "Trust a dog to know how to feed a cat," he commented, but there was no heat or malice in it. "We had a dog for a while, a big dumb mutt. But he got old and got cancer and had to be put down. We never had cats."
Eyeing his roommate carefully, Inu-yasha decided there weren’t any dog-related insults implied in the story. He leaned back, lacing his fingers behind his head. “Never understood pets.” Animals on the streets, though, that he understood. As a kid he’d learned to scrounge for food or find warm places to sleep by following animals sometimes.
The kitten's frantic eating was slowing down and she was starting to look around more intently, bleary blue eyes focusing first on Tommy, then on Inu-yasha as they spoke, then back again. Tommy sat back on his heels, dropping his arms. "We supposedly had Max for protection, but there was no way that was going to work," Tommy snorted. "Unless burglars stood still long enough to get licked to death." He eyed the kitten and grinned. "This thing's more dangerous, with all those sharp points."
“It was stuck in a dumpster,” Inu-yasha pointed out flatly. So much for ‘dangerous’. He scratched absently at his chest, near the edge of the pink scar where his body was still healing. Honestly, being shirtless was less annoying, if not really practical outside. And usually he wouldn’t want others to see him unhealed, but Tommy had seen the worst of it anyway, and it wasn’t sapping his strength anymore so it didn’t really matter.
Tommy glanced up at him, offended on the kitten's behalf. His gaze landed on the scar for a second, then skidded off before he had to think too hard about how that injury had gotten there. It had been more than a month since Limbo and the brutal pink welt across Inu-yash'as torso was still only barely healed. "And if someone twenty times your size dropped you in a giant dumpster? I'd like to see you do better."
Inu-yasha snorted. "Just sayin'. You're the one plannin' to use it for protection."
"I said we had a dog that was supposedly a guard dog when I was a kid," Tommy corrected him, moving on from memories of when things had been different. "But I bet you could be fierce," he told the cat mock-solemnly. She looked back up at him, a nose-hole left in the mashed tuna and her eyes glazing over. "Sometimes things that are smaller, are tougher."
Despite the eyeroll Tommy got for that, it struck another familiar chord for Inu-yasha. Which, of course, he ignored. "She looks more ready for a nap than a fight."
He wasn't wrong; as Tommy watched, the kitten licked her paw, swiped half-heartedly at one side of her face, then her eyes closed and she started to topple sideways. Tommy caught her before she could land in the tuna and need a second bath, the little furry body fitting neatly - and much more calmly, this time - into the palms of his hands. And fell asleep, leaving him kneeling there, hands out, with no good idea what to do with her next. Something soft had to be better than sleeping on the desk, or in the fish. Maybe the end of his bed, just for now. Until he figured out what he was going to do with her.
Inu-yasha watched the kitten topple into Tommy’s hands, dead asleep. It must’ve been exhausted, on top of starving. He cocked his head to the side, wondering what Tommy would do next. “You just gonna stay that way until it wakes up?”
"I... hadn't thought that through," Tommy admitted, consternation furrowing his brow. He could get up without using his hands, right? Sure he could. He couldn't just accelerate to get out of this one 'cause the kitten would come along for the ride, which was the opposite of what he wanted. Tommy rocked backward, trying to keep his hands level and get his feet under him at the same time. He got it, overcorrected, got halfway up and toppled backward to land on his ass, his hands still out. "We're okay!"
Inu-yasha just raised an eyebrow at the strange show, and the kitten perked up just enough to assess that there was no new danger and its eyes blinked shut again. “The hell are you doing?”
"Falling over, what does it look like?" Okay, fine. The cat wasn't really waking up, so the only decent option left was to slide it back into one of his hands and use the other to haul himself up to his feet. Tommy managed it, carefully shuffling the kitten from both hands into one, and struggling to stand. He put the kitten down on the end of his bed. She woke up, blinked, got up and carefully walked three times around in a circle in the same spot before rolling herself back up into a ball and passing out again.
Inu-yasha watched all of this curiously, then looked back at Tommy. “So... what, you have a cat now?”
Tommy folded his arms and looked down at the fuzzball. What the hell was he going to do with a cat? He'd have to go eventually, even if that 'eventually' kept getting pushed further back in his timeline, and having a cat tagging along would cramp his options. On the other hand -- she'd been thrown away and no-one had wanted her. And he knew a whole lot about what that felt like. "Until I figure out where she can go. Maybe Bobby's parents or the Kaplans will take a cat."
"I'm not takin' care of it," Inu-yasha warned, eyeing the furball suspiciously.
"No-one asked you to." Tommy's temper flared up again. "Just don't rat me out. Not until I can find her somewhere safe to live."
Inu-yasha just snorted and rolled his eyes. What did he care? He just didn't want Tommy getting any delusions about who would take care of the thing.
Tommy waited for the next challenge but it didn't come, and he mentally shrugged and let it go. The cat was asleep for the moment, and from what he'd skimmed on google before, cats pretty much did that all the time. No problem. He grabbed his laptop and flopped down on his bed, careful not to disrupt the tiny furball. He couldn't keep grabbing cans of tuna from the kitchen; someone was bound to notice eventually. Looked like he had some research to do.
