"Well, I guess I can't rule out that you were also seeing things, but magic stuff happens all the time, and at the very least you'd notice your own powers."

"...I bet unicorns heal quickly." 

"I have no idea."

"— right, sorry, you don't — when we were in elementary school he hurt his ankle badly enough that everyone thought it was broken, and then when it was healed enough to walk on two days later the general consensus was that he'd just twisted it and was being dramatic — but I know Marlo and I bet unicorns just heal quickly." 

"Or I could have been overreacting —" 

"— or you could have not been." 

"...That sounds like Sunnydale Syndrome."

Sasha wonders, briefly, just how many years Marlo spent ignoring his pain and believing he was just overreacting.

"You might remember things that happened to other people-- the effects of spells, or seeing someone turn into a wolf or drink someone's blood, or maybe a glimpse of an angel or a demon--"

"— I don't know." 

"It really ought to be obvious, a lot of the time-- like, it takes a while for Sunnydale Syndrome to kick in, you can see a demon walking down the street and your mom is like 'holy shit, that's not human' and then six hours later she'd be like 'don't be silly, it was just a guy in a costume, maybe he was going to a costume party'--"

"Leo, we can talk about this later." 

It is very specifically not an order. 

Leo shuts up anyway.

Sasha curls.up against Marlo's side; it's very specifically an offer, not a request. 

Marlo leans into him for a second, two, before he pulls away and stands up. "I'm going to go out to the roof. Love you." 

"Love you." 

He waits until the door is closed before he turns toward Leo. 

"...I'm sorry."

"I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at the entire concept of Sunnydale syndrome but I'm not mad at you, he just — there shouldn't be a just in that sentence —

Remember how when he first saw you his first instinct was to check with me if there was anything there at all or if he was just hallucinating?" 

"Yes?"

"Yeah. He does that a lot. Sometimes with things that aren't even that weird, just sort of unusual, because he doesn't trust himself. I have no idea how many times he's gone 'it's not that bad, I just bruised it' at something that would have turned out to be a break if anyone had looked, because he thinks he's just being dramatic when he's in pain. And that's going to take him more than two minutes to unlearn, and telling him that it should be obvious is just going to convince him he really was seeing things whether it's true or not." 

"...I want to go back to being a dog."

"Okay. 

Do you want a hug first?" 

"You can hug me when I am a dog?"

"Alright. On."