A/N: So this is a just a little insight into the daily life of my characters from what I am now dubbing the Fruit Fables series. And if THAT name doesn't get people to take my writing seriously, I don't know what will.

So yeah. This is actually pretty pointless. This is going to be part of a series of oneshots that will all take place before UAAT. It's really not necessary to read these to understand that story since it does little, if anything, to move the plot along.

Seriously, the only reason I wrote this? 'Cause I was itching to finish SOMETHING. And I am nowhere NEAR done with UAAT. Thus, this oneshot was born. Expect more. Much more.

And also expect another chapter of UAAT to be uploaded soon. Ish. Soon-ish.

 

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STEPHEN

"Lionel, it is Saturday and it is three in the morning. Can't this wait?"

"No, Cap!" He switches on my bedside lamp then begins roughly shaking my shoulder. When that doesn't seem to work, he opts to thwacking me with a pillow. When that doesn't seem to work, I foolishly allow myself to think that I'll finally be left alone.

Then the licking begins.

It takes longer than I'm comfortable with admitting for my sleep-addled mind to realize that it's Max lathering slobber all over my face and not Lionel in wolf form.

"Oh, God, fine, fine, what?" I relent, sitting up and rubbing at my eyes.

"I think there's a cat in the house," he—Lionel, not Max, that'd be weird—whispers urgently, eyes darting back and forth.

I scrutinize him for a moment, just to make sure this isn't some elaborate joke he's playing on me at three in the morning. On a Saturday. "Lionel, don't be ridiculous."

"I think he may be right."

I jump, falling out of bed. Lionel effortlessly steps to the side to avoid going down with me. I rub the back of my head, which had collided with the ground, as I roll to my feet. I blink just to make sure I'm not imagining things. "Julia?"

I expect this type of thing from Lionel, and Quin. Maybe even Sebastian. But Julia?

"What're you doing here?"

"I think there's a cat in the house," she says simply, parroting Lionel's earlier statement.

I narrow my eyes at her, then at Lionel. "Why would there be—"

"That's what I wanna know!" Lionel cries out, his voice shrill.

Julia retrieves a knife from . . . somewhere. I really don't know where she hides these things, especially in such a flimsy nightgown, and I think I'm better off not knowing. "I think we've been infiltrated, Cap." With a flick of her wrist, the blade goes up into the air before falling back into her hand. Up, down, catch. Up, down, catch. And the whole while, her gaze doesn't waver from the doorway to my bedroom.

"Infiltrated? Wha—by who?" I ask, bewildered, even as I begin pulling on a shirt and rolling my shoulders, mentally preparing myself for a fight with some monstrous cat-beast.

Won't be the first time some nightmare-inducing creature has appeared in my house (occurrences that are, worryingly, Quin's fault more often than not).

"As of yet, it's unclear." Up, down, catch. "But the problem is definitely originating from Rey's room."

My heart jumps into my throat. "What?" I croak out.

Up, down, catch. "He didn't send out a distress signal of any kind." Up, down, catch. Pause. "That could be either good or bad." Up, down, catch. I've got half a mind to just reach out and snatch the knife away from her while it's in midair. But that wouldn't end very well for me.

"Ah-choo!" An expression of horror crosses Lionel's face as he wipes his nose on his sleeve. "Oh, god, it's starting!" he exclaims, his voice a nasal wail of despair.. "Say good-bye to your lovely Lionel, everybody. He'll j—ah-choo!"

In the blink of an eye, Julia is standing in front of Lionel, hand clamped over his mouth and knife held dangerously close to his throat, just a hair's breadth away from his skin. "Shut up," she hisses, eyes blazing threateningly.

He nods, but the movement is disrupted by another sneeze. Julia grimaces, wiping her hand as thoroughly as possible on Lionel's shirt.

"You know I'm allergic to cats!" he says, voice hushed.

"Oh, God, you are, aren't you?" I groan, pinching the bridge of my nose. I sigh before raising my head. "Okay, Lionel, you need to stay here and—" I'm abruptly cut off by a large clattering from the second floor, soon followed by a yowl that sends extraordinarily terrifying chills down my spine. I glance at Julia, and our eyes meet for a brief, flitting second before we're both taking off towards the stairs. Towards the noise. Towards Quin's room.

Once there, I ram my shoulder into the heavy wooden panel and stumble through the doorway, bracing myself for whatever horrific sight may await me. Julia isn't far behind, gracefully sliding past me and into the room, her ordinarily brown eyes now a bright fuchsia.

Whatever we were expecting, we are sorely disappointed.

Because in the center of the room, lying tangled up in a haphazard mess of books and cardboard boxes is a perfectly innocent, perfectly normal black cat.

I blink dumbly at the feline for a moment. "Um."

"I . . ." Julia cocks her head to the side. "Huh."

We're both broken out of our dazed stupors when Sebastian comes barging in, hair a wild jungle atop his head, brandishing his twin swords. "Where does the danger lie?" he shouts. "Where?!"

Cass appears next, hands already aflame, casting flickering shadows in the darkened room. I don't miss the way his eyes flicker from side to side, as if searching for something. Or someone.

Apparently, Julia notices too, because she places a placating hand on his shoulder and gently tells him to put out his fire, that Lionel's fine, he's fine, you're going to burn down the house if you don't put the fire out. Eventually, he obeys, shoulders slumping slightly.

I rush over to Sebastian, quickly disarming him before he does some real damage. "Sebastian, it's fine, really, there's no danger."

He analyzes me, suspicion evident on his face. "Are you sure?" he asks slowly. I nod just as slowly.

"Ah-choo!" is the only warning I get before I'm presented with a lapful of frantic Lionel as we both collapse to the ground. "Where is it? What'd I miss? What happened?" I gently shove at him and he rolls onto his back, tilting his head back to look at the cat, which has since pulled itself out from under the pile of books and boxes. Two beats pass. "That's it? That's the giant killer kitty-cat?" he utters in disbelief.

The cat hisses at him, claws swiping harmlessly through the air.

"This is . . . most odd," says Sebastian.

"I'm going back to bed," says Julia.

"Lionel, get off the ground, you look ridiculous," says Cass.

"Um," says I.

Max comes stumbling in then, claws digging into the carpet for traction as he runs. A second too late, I realize what he's aiming for as his hind legs tense. "MAX, NO!" But he's already soaring through the air and crashing into the cat.

The two animals go tumbling, rolling and wrestling, yowling and growling, before the cat—much smaller and more nimble than the 100-pound dog—finally manages to escape Max's clutches and begins scuttling away. Straight to me.

Instinctively, I outstretch my arms to catch it as it flies towards me and Max impacts with the leg of Quin's desk in his confusion. Lionel's by his side instantaneously, cooing and petting the dog as soothingly as possible while trying not to laugh. And failing miserably.

"Max," he chuckles, scratching the dog's head affectionately, "I don't know what you were trying to do. But whatever it was? You fail."

Max whines pathetically, and I shift the cat to one arm before striding over and kissing the top of the dog's head. "What's the matter, buddy? Why'd you go and attack the little kitty?" The cat seems to yowl in protest at the 'little kitty' part.

Then Sebastian's suddenly got ahold of the feline, large hands wrapped around its midsection, and is staring intently into its gray eyes. "What be your purpose, little one?" He squints. "You do not seem to be of malicious intentions. But your presence is most odd."

"Sebs," Lionel starts, wiping his nose on his sleeve again (I really need to have a talk with him about how unsanitary that is), "I don't think the cat really understands you—"

"Tell me, little one!" Then Sebastian turns the poor thing upside down and begins shaking it. The cat yowls miserably, claws scratching at air. Taking pity on it, Julia reaches out and pulls the cat from Sebastian's grasp.

"Really, Sebastian, you're gonna kill the damn thing," she scolds as apathetically as always, cradling it in one arm, eyes trained on Sebastian.

"Okay, I vote that we—ah-choo!—that we toss this cat out onto the street—"

"What about Quin?" Cass interjects, stepping up to Julia and scratching the cat behind its ears. It purrs contently and pushes its head up into his touch.

"I vote that we toss him out onto the street too."

I shoot Lionel a look but he only grins at me.

Then a phone begins ringing, some song by that Beyoncé woman. We all turn our heads to the source of the sound. And we all blink confusedly.

Julia rolls her eyes, shoving the cat into Cass's arms, before retrieving her phone (really, where does she keep these things?). "What?" Her finger slides across the screen as she arches a challenging eyebrow. "I like her music."

Lionel opens his mouth, to make a joke that would end up with him losing at least three of his fingers while obstinately insisting that "It was totally worth it," I have no doubt. But the next words out of Julia's mouth stops him dead.

"Rey? Where the hell are—" She closes her eyes, inhaling deeply. There's a pause as Quin speaks on the other end of the line. "Of course you are," she sighs, eyes opening and head turning to address . . . the cat? I groan, burying my face in my hands, because—just—Goddamn it. "Leave it to you to get yourself turned into a cat."

 

~ * ~

 

"So Stephen is currently hyperventilating in a brown paper bag—"

"I'm not—the bag is just for precaution, really."

"—Sebastian and Maximilian are utterly overjoyed to have another pet—"

"I'm not a pet!"

"—Cassius is contemplating various methods of suicide; Lionel has been spewing mucus from his nose for the past two hours; and Quinten is a cat. Am I missing anything?" Preston finishes, voice tinged with just a hint of amusement.

Julia shifts in her spot on the kitchen counter. "No, that's about it." I continue concentrating on inhaling and exhaling deeply—not into the bag. Quin's voice flows out from the phone lying adjacent to the woman swinging her slender legs to an unheard beat, put on speakerphone for all to hear.

"Damn it, Sebs, leave me alone! And why are your hands so goddamn cold?" A yowl soon follows the statement.

Sebastian, rolling around in the living room with Quin, laughs thunderously—which is the only way he laughs. "You have such charming ears, my feline friend!"

"Agh, would you—no, don't do that—I will hack up hairballs all over your bed!"

"And such a delightful little nose!"

"Oh, god, just—just euthanize me, neuter me, do whatever you want, just let me go!"

"Preston, can you . . . fix this?" Julia asks, the sole sane person amidst this insanity.

"I . . . suppose I can. I cannot guarantee success, but I will try my best," the elderly man replies.

"Thank you."

I try to thank him too (especially since he'd let us into his house at five in the morning with minimal threats of homicide), but that's a bit difficult when I can't seem to get enough oxygen into my lungs.

Preston's house isn't big by any means, but it isn't small either. It has a total of two bedrooms and two bathrooms, a den containing nothing but shelves packed tight with books off to the right of the living area, and an exceptionally large kitchen furnished with only the best cooking appliances IKEA has to offer. A door on the west wall of the kitchen leads out to the backyard garden where Lionel is currently preoccupied with keeping Max from digging up Preston's flowers and vegetables.

There's the sound of the front door being opened and Cass soon appears, trudging tiredly over to the kitchen table, slumping into a seat, and then planting his forehead onto the table. "Bad news," he murmurs into the table, "I'm not dead yet. Good news, I found out that guns are highly ineffective weapons for killing phoenixes."

Before I can ask whether or not he's joking (it's hard to tell with these people), the backdoor creaks open and Lionel's head is poking in.

"Guys, I think I need to pee!"

"You know where the restrooms are," Preston calls out, moving about the kitchen preparing coffee (upon Quin's imploring request).

"Nuh-uh, I am not setting foot inside this house with that Quin-cat menace in there!" he announces vehemently, head swinging back and forth just as vigorously.

"Then find a bush to pee in," Julia suggests.

"Y'know what?" he says, face lighting up. "I think I'll do just that!"

A mug clatters to the floor. I turn just in time to catch the sight of dread entering Preston's sky-blue eyes. "Not my rose bushes." Then he's tottering out the door and shouting after Lionel to keep his damn bloody bodily fluids to himself. For a seventy-year-old man, he is extremely spry.

"You feeling better, Cap?" Julia asks gently.

I nod, but don't lessen my grip on the edge of the stool I'm seated on, or the brown paper bag.

"Look, I know it's a lot to take in—"

"I fucking swear, Emmerson, you keep blowing raspberries on my belly and I will piss in your face!"

"Such a magnificent tail!"

"Did you just yank on my tail?!"

"—and none of this is probably making any sense, but we'll figure it out. We've all been through stranger things together."

I look up at her wearily. "Like what?"

"Well, there's that time we'd all switched bodies. That was an excruciatingly awkward week. Then there was that time Lionel brought home those weird mushrooms and we were all colorblind for a whole goddamn month. And we can't forget the time Quin challenged a Greek demigod to a game of poker, of all things—"

"Okay, okay, I get it!" I can't help but laugh, palms held up in a sign of surrender.

Julia gives me a slight pat on the shoulder before sliding deftly off the counter. "I guess I should go save Lionel from the humiliation of getting his ass kicked by an old man," she sighs, sauntering towards the backdoor.

Cass stops her. "Don't," he says, head still firmly connected to the table. "He deserves it."

"What—no, Preston, wait—wait, wait, wait, I'm sorry—ouch! Hey, that really hurt—ow! That hurt too! What the hell are you—oh, GOD, is that an actual broomstick? Oh, GOD. Oh, god, oh, god, oh, god, Cass! Baby! Somebody—ow—goddamn, those bristles are scratchy—I wasn't seriously gonna pee on your roses, Pres, just—OW-UH, damn it!"

 

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A/N: Like what you just read? Check out Under an Apple Tree!

Don't like what you just read? . . . Check out Under an Apple Tree!

Whatever you do, just, seriously, thank you for taking the time to read this. I write to write, but an audience isn't ever something to complain about.