I'm alternating between both POVs from now on, so here is Melon's again :P
/TW:\ very vague suicidal ideation\, but honestly this is the tamer chapter so far.

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Melon briefly considered killing the young lion – because, let's face it, he can't let him live after everything that happened the night before. To be fair, he doesn't see the issue with oversharing; he has already told the lions many things, from his hatred and disgust for leopards to the tale of his first murders. He has even talked about the bullies, back at this school, how they urged him to jump from the building, just to see if he would survive, if his mother – feline – side was strong enough…

… only to follow it soon after, before the lions have the time to fully picture a frightened, weak half-gazelle kid, with the very cold fact that the bullies, for their part, did not survive the fall.

In fact, just as with that story, Melon has always very carefully chosen which parts of his past to disclose. Sure, he also genuinely wants to talk – more precisely, a small part of him still hopes he can connect, someday, have someone who listens, who understands, and sometimes that part wins. However, there is one thing that's more important to him: witnessing that spark of genuine fear in their eyes. Anger, too, it can do the trick. He's not picky.

Anyway, in the stories he has told them, there is one constant: he always plays the part of the monster.

His mind drifts back to Agata. He left his gun in his room, on the ground floor, but it's not that far away. He knows the two bullets are safely lodged here, as usual. (Actually, he checked the day before. It's… reassuring, to have this escape mean always within reach.) It would take five minutes, top, to step out of the bathroom, take the stairs down, retrieve it, more stairs but the opposite way, the achingly familiar feeling of his index on the trigger- and it would be done.

Are the other kitties even in the mansion right now? If so, they would all flood the room as soon as they hear the gunfire, scream, lament… probably demand his head too. And he doesn't quite fancy dying right now. (Well. Not like this, at least.) Would they guess it was him even if they discover the body once it's cold? Yeah, probably. They aren't this stupid, plus they all think he has a beef with the younger lion – it's not entirely true; in fact, he likes Agata. He's fun. And he's just the right amount of afraid whenever Melon is around – enough that it feels right, but not too much so he doesn't dare open his mouth.

But anyway, if he kills Agata, it's over for his place at the head of the Shishigumis. Moreover, he would also have to avoid the Black Market altogether for some time. The kitties have a lot of sympathizers along its dark alleys, and Melon would very much like to avoid a rerun of that last night.

(His nails dig painfully into his palm at the thought.)

"So, no," he says out loud. "Today is a no-murder day."

His voice echoes against the tiled walls and he giggles. What would the young lion say if he heard him right now? Would he be relieved, or horrified that he even considered it? Melon's mind draws a blank at this.

Maybe he would have to ask him directly for the answer.

He steps out of the shower, grabs the nearest towel with his valid arm. It doesn't smell like lions, so it must be clean. Actually, his main concern right now is to not smell like lions. He has to go outside. Play the gazelle part. And normal herbivores don't live with a bunch of big cats in a mansion deep into the Back-Alley Market. He shakes his head as if that could get out the image of spotted dark fur and big, kind eyes.

Fuck, why is he thinking about Agata again?

To be honest, he didn't decide against killing him only because of the other kitties' reaction. (And if he can't be honest with himself, then with who?) He wonders, did Agata for his part save him solely because he was his boss? Or is he having some kind of internal crisis right now, a few rooms away?

The mirror catches his eye. Melon freezes halfway from grabbing his toothbrush, slowly puts it back down. He straightens. Forces himself to face his reflection.

Reflexively, he does the usual check – no new spot has appeared during the night, and the ones already here stayed tactfully hidden under the tattoos. With the tip of a nail, he traces the outline of one of the leaves. The scar is still slightly raised. His mind flashes back to the salon, to the blood and the slow, so very slow hands of the sloth artist, to the delightful needle, and he smiles.

He goes back to the present – to the goddamn mirror – and the smile falters.

(I hate this body.)

He looks like shit. Tired, bloodshot eyes, and the usual bony limbs, now adorned with a proliferation of ugly bruises. The swelling has finally gone down enough so he can open his left eye completely, but it's useless, he's gonna squint for most of the day anyway – and the purplish color, for its part, hasn't left. At least his mask will hide some of it.

But it won't help at all with the broken horn.

Melon touches it, delicately. He has no idea if that's even fixable – to be fair, he doesn't really have a clue how his body works in general. When you're a hybrid, you don't come with a manual. Even the library didn't have enough answers for him – everything feels very much like a crash test. (Maybe he should have jumped off that building, that day. That would be one thing he could cross out on the never-ending list on navigating life as an anomaly.)

That pushes him to finally settle on the matter; he is not going to hold the history lecture today. Not in the mood. Because if his students dare the tiniest comment about his injuries, if one single student does as much as flick their ears wrong, he will be forced to review that "no-murder day" resolution. And Melon likes playing teacher. Also, he's not going through the trouble of crafting a second fake gazelle identity, thank you very much.

He just has to take the tram, gets back the papers the students should have turned in and left in his locker, and then he will go plead for the week off to the principal – and if that damn bull has the balls to refuse, he is going to walk him through a reconstitution of the night events. Do bull horns break? Time to check! He licks his lips, pleased with the idea. Yeah, if he ever gets bored of that teaching job, he knows who will be the first to go.

The bull had been wise.

He can't say he isn't just a tiny bit disappointed. All he had to do was lie (deliberately badly) and say that he fell off his bike, accentuate his limp just a touch, and watch as the principal's eyes grew larger as multiple scenarios flashed through his head. (Always leave it to their imagination; the result will be worse than any truth could ever be. At least, that's how it works with Melon's brain.)

He's back to his room in the mansion, red pen in hand, still very much in the teacher role – except for the big carnivore tongue lolling out from in between fangs, and the gun that lies on the side of the desk. His wrist is angled weirdly – he's not used to writing left-handed, but his other arm is still pretty much useless.

The door opens and he doesn't even spare it a glance. He already knows who this is – he heard him walk down the corridor, stop in front of his room, hesitate. But he has to give him that; he didn't expect him to actually come in.

"… What are you doing?" Agata asks.

"Grading student papers."

"No, I mean, seriously."

Melon leans back in his seat and finally looks at the young lion, trying to hide his amusement.

"Oh, but my dear, I'm very serious."

"So, you're… what, a teacher?"

"Hmm-mh."

"What. Where… How?"

"History." He makes a show of counting on his fingers, taking the questions in order. "The university near the city hall. And I have a Ph.D."

Agata looks completely stunned.

"A… real one?"

"Yes?"

"So then, why the hell are you in the Black Market?"

The hybrid shrugs – flinching as his cracked ribs, already sore by the day of moving around, let themselves know.

"It's fun?" he answers.

A few emotions flash across Agata's face, and Melon would be damned if he could pinpoint exactly what they are. There is still surprise, sure, bewilderment, even… but also something else.

Something like anger?

He's about to… probably taunt him, let's be honest, in the hopes of understanding his reaction (because asking directly is boring and overdone), but Agata hurriedly leaves the room, leaving a very perplexed Melon behind.

"… What did I say?" he wonders out loud.

The wall, like always, doesn't have an answer. Stupid wall. He punches it for the trouble, winces, and shakes his hand to relieve the pain.

"Ah, shit."

He sighs – other animals are fucking weird, he decides – and goes back to whatever bullshit the student wrote. He flips the pages to look back at the name, but he can't remember what they looked like. Deer, maybe? He hasn't really bothered with learning their faces.

He's halfway through the third part when he realizes he has no idea what the last paragraphs he read said. He's very tempted to judge the whole paper by the part he has already graded – not bad, but it kind of goes in circles a bit – but he figures the student would notice the lack of red comments somewhere after the second page. Would they care if he put a good enough mark, though?

His stomach growls and he ignores it. He might have forgotten to eat today, though that's not what is distracting him right now.

Melon throws his pen down with another exasperated sigh.

He knows what prevents him from properly focusing. He also knows how to make it better. What he would very much like the answer to, though, is how the fuck did things go sideways like this?

Welp.

He stands up, shuffling the papers to one side of the desk, and goes to search for Agata.

He finds him on the rooftop. There is a tiny door – even him has to duck to get through – at one end of the attic, one that he has discovered completely by accident a day he was checking for any meat the kitties might have sneaked into the mansion. Agata is seating on the edge, in between two crenellations, facing the town below. The regular thump-thump of his heels against the concrete fills the quiet night air.

"Hey."

The temperature has dropped compared to the daylight; when he talks, his words get out mixed with a thin fog. He wraps his arms around himself, regrets stepping outside with only a shirt on.

"Hey, kitty."

Agata startles, turns around. Again, a few emotions pass through his eyes, before he settles on a closed-up look.

"Oh, Boss. What do you need me for?"

"Nothing."

Do I only talk to them to order them around? … Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.

"So…" Agata trails off, looking a bit confused. "What are you doing there?"

"I was looking for you."

Melon walks up to the edge of the rooftop, leaning on one of the crenellations. Not missing the way the young lion shifts further away from him.

"Why did you leave like that?" he asks anyway.

"That's why y- Well… erm, I'm sorry? I didn't mean t-"

"That does not sound like an explanation, dear."

"It's just…" Agata hesitates, exhales slowly. "You know, half of us here didn't even finish high school."

The hybrid hums, wondering what this has to do with the matter at hand.

"For… for most of us, the Black Market wasn't quite a choice," the young lion continues. "Sure, it's not bad there, we- I enjoy it. I feel free, from society, from expectations, and in tune with what my instincts tell me to. And I got to meet the others, who- Sorry, I'm rambling."

"Go on."

"Well, I… as I said, we didn't have much choice. There is only so much you can do when you're a big, scary carnivore with no education. And crime- it does sound more appealing than cleaning dirty dishes in the back of a restaurant forever. I think that the only other viable option would be to get hired as a security guard, you know?"

"Yep. Still not sure why you left so abruptly though."

Agata rubs a hand over his face.

"It… made me angry, what you said. I didn't want you to see it."

"Why?"

"I thought that if you saw, well… I do not exactly fancy getting stabbed in the hand with your pen."

"… Fair enough."

That, he could understand. Fear is always reliable – reassuringly so.

"And if I promise that I do not have anything sharp on me right now, would you care to explain why you were angry?"

The young lion eyes him warily, seems to do a quick calculation in his mind and end up with the deduction he might avoid getting murdered tonight even if he answers truthfully:

"I guess I can't quite understand why, having the means to leave a comfortable life with a normal, legal job, you would still get involved with the… messiness of the Back-Alley. I would have liked to teach, I think. But it's impossible."

"Oh. So, you were…" He frows, trying to get the right word. "Jealous?"

Agata laughs, and it's a little tense, a little off, but it's a laugh nonetheless.

"Maybe a bit," he admits.

"I see. Well, not really, I… I have never felt jealous. I think."

"Really?" The young lion is surprised enough to talk before thinking: "You never wished to be born a… from a…"

He trails off, and his face very much tells he would gladly take back the words that just escaped his mouth.

"From normal parents?" Melon completes, smiling – and Agata can only nod, tight-lipped and on-guard. "I… I wish I wasn't born at all, honestly. But, I wouldn't be myself if I wasn't a hybrid."

He looks down at his hands – nails too sharp to belong to an herbivore, palms too big, fingers too long, at the end of the frail forearms of a gazelle. He hates this miss-matched body, but it's his. It has shaped so much of his view of the world – distorted it, more like it; crushed it, until he was left with broken pieces that didn't quite fit together, sharp angles that cut if you tried to handle them.

"… You're shaking."

"It's cold outside," he replies.

Agata lays a hand on his arm and the hybrid is too stunned to react immediately. His warmth seeps through the thin layer of his shirt, causing a shiver to run through the rest of his body. He stares at the big lion fingers, because like this he doesn't have to look at his eyes – to face whatever is there.

For once, his gazelle instincts are silent. He doesn't want to run away, only to lean into this warmth. And that's what scares him.