He crouches down next to the dog and checks to see if there's a collar. 

The collar says: A PERFECTLY ORDINARY DOG.

........that is deeply weird but okay, probably whoever's dog this is has a weird sense of humor. 

Is there a phone number or anything? 

There is no phone number!

The Perfectly Ordinary Dog licks his fingers.

...well. He can't really take care of a dog and clearly it belongs to someone but he can take care of it for a few days while he puts up signs.

He extends both hands, cupped, to the perfectly ordinary dog. "Do you want to come with me?" 

The Perfectly Ordinary Dog nods.

Sasha is almost one hundred percent sure that dogs don't nod. 

Okay. He picks up the perfectly ordinary dog and cradles it against his chest with both hands and keeps walking. 

The Perfectly Ordinary Dog makes a happy noise and presses against his chest.

He is SO soft.

"I'm Sasha," he says, because despite the collar he is very sure that this is not in fact an ordinary dog, and not just because it's the cutest softest dog in the world. "Do you have a name?" 

The Perfectly Ordinary Dog shakes his head.

...poor thing. 

"Do you want one?" 

The Perfectly Ordinary Dog nods.

It takes him a while to pick through names; names are important. 

He's almost home when he says, "How about Leo?" 

Leo nods very enthusiastically.

"Alright, then. Leo." 

He puts Leo in the pocket of his sweatshirt when he gets into the house, takes him out again and puts him in Sasha's lap once he's sitting down on his own bed with the bedroom door closed. 

Leo curls up on Sasha's lap.

He is VERY soft and VERY pettable and VERY small.

He certainly is. 

"Is English your only language?" 

Leo shakes his head.

"I have English, Russian, and a little bit of Yiddish; is English the only language we have in common?" 

Leo nods.

"Okay. Do you belong to anyone?" 

Leo makes a confused whining noise and paws his nose.

"Okay, so it's complicated. What I was actually trying to ask was, do I need to find the person you belong to?" 

Leo shakes his head VERY ENTHUSIASTICALLY.

"— I will not do that then!" 

What other things are important with dogs. "Bark three times in a row if you need to go outside. Do you eat normal dog food?" 

Leo shakes his head.

...only having yes or no questions is terrible. 

"Do you eat?" 

Leo nods his head and then starts nosing Sasha's backpack.

He opens his backpack, which has two textbooks, one history and one math, several notebooks, a binder, and one well-worn copy of The Shining. 

Leo considers this and noses The Shining.

Sasha opens it to the first page and shows it to Leo. 

Leo considers the page thoughtfully and then points to "hired help."

"....you're hired help?" 

Leo sits, lifts one of his paws, and makes a vague wiggly paw gesture.

What does that mean what does any of this mean. 

"Okay," he says, and then says the thing he really should have asked when he realized Leo understood English, which is "Is there magic in the world?" 

Leo nods.

Alright. That was kind of a forgone conclusion given who he was asking, but even so. 

"...are you the only magic thing near here?" 

Leo shakes his head VERY ENTHUSIASTICALLY.

...on the one hand, "in the stories the ordinary high school student who stumbles upon a magical talking animal and thereby uncovers a secret world turns out to be an elven prince" is a dumb way to make predictions about the world. 

On the other hand, he is in fact an ordinary high school student who's just stumbled upon a magical animal who can understand human language and thereby uncovered a secret world. 

"Am I a magic thing?" 

Leo shakes his head.

He does his best not to be a little disappointed. 

"...I'm going to find you a dictionary so we can communicate," he says, and puts Leo down and looks under the bed for the children's dictionaries that were handed out in elementary school and he doesn't think he ever bothered to get rid of. 

Leo nods.

He did not in fact ever bother to get rid of it. He sits back on the bed and opens the dictionary for Leo to look at. 

Leo eventually manages to convey the message "give", "dog", "type", "orders."

...dog-type orders. What are dog-type orders. Sasha has never had a dog. 

"Sit," he tries. 

Leo sits. 

That was not really very impressive.

It wasn't, but it's at least evidence that he was right about what 'dog type orders' meant. 

"Stay," he tries. 

Leo turns to stone.

"— stop staying!" 

Leo turns back into a dog. He looks confused.

"Did you know that would happen?" 

Leo shakes his head.

Sasha nods, and then pulls out his phone and looks up "dog commands". 

Heel isn't actually applicable, Leo's already lying down and right next to Sasha, but — oh. 

"Speak." 

"Oh, good, that was a pain."

"...I guess a magical dog that talks when I order it to isn't actually any weirder than a magical dog that turns into stone when I order it to. Hi, Leo." 

"Hi! I'm your dog now."

"How did that happen?" 

He scratches his head. "Well, I'm supposed to belong to Fairy Princess Lilith, but I don't like her. And you picked me up and named me and gave me orders so I think I can make a case."

"....Lilith, as in my classmate Lilith, is a fairy princess." 

"Yes. They left her to be fostered by humans and fostered a human baby in return. It's a traditional way of improving relationships between governments."

"Alright," he says, because what else can you say, "I can see why you wouldn't want to belong to Lilith, I'm not sure I'd trust her with a goldfish. What do you mean by 'you think you can make a case'?" 

"Well, I have to prove I'm yours by the law, don't I, or I'm not yours."

"That.... makes sense, I guess. So I found you and carried you and gave you orders and gave you a name, and you have to argue to someone that that makes you mine?" 

"I'm a fairy. I am the laws and rules that constitute me. If it breaks the laws I can't do it."

"Okay." 

He's simultaneously getting the sense that he's in over his head, and getting the sense that this is the ordinary-teenager-stumbling-across-magical-world equivalent of tutorial mode.

"There are other things that help-- if I can make an argument you're royalty that would help, because I was made to be a servant to royalty, and of course if I swore an oath to serve you there wouldn't be any more question. It's a promising sign you can make me do magic at all."

"...I guess it's not impossible that someone way back was fucking the Tsar, but it's not very likely. Um. I'm Jewish, that makes me a descendant of Solomon?" 

"That clicks. And it's very good, Solomon was a master of djinn, it's appropriate for a descendant of Solomon to have a fairy slave."

....yes okay he should really have expected that he has ever read about faeries but even so. 

"Servant. Not slave." 

"If you prefer. I can't actually disobey my master."

Not!! Better!!

"Still. Language is important." 

"That's true. Laws are made of language."

"Yeah." This is way more responsibility for another being's welfare than he was expecting or for that matter ready to have. He will think about that later. "...so what do you eat." 

"Cobwebs sprinkled with fairy dust under the moonlight, or alternately sushi."

"I really hope it doesn't have to be good sushi, because I don't have money and I don't have fairy dust, but I can make that happen. — how often do you need to eat?" 

"I can forage my own cobwebs, don't worry."

"Good to know," he says, a little faintly, and then — Leo hasn't seemed to mind so far — picks him up and hugs him and presses him against Sasha's cheek. 

Leo is very soft and cuddly and nice to pet!

"We should probably figure out what other magic they created me with. They didn't tell me."

Sasha unlocks his phone again. 

"Heel isn't really applicable right now, neither is Come, I don't know what Sing is supposed to mean, I don't have a crate and I wouldn't put you in it if I did." 

"Some of them might do something unexpected, I think. They're dog commands because I'm a dog but you wouldn't want a princess to be limited to, like, fetching me."

"That... makes sense." Insofar as any of this makes sense, which it doesn't, which Sasha will deal with later. 

"Sing." 

Leo sings. 

The song isn't English, or in any language Sasha recognizes; some of the sounds sound difficult to make with a human throat. The song is quiet and gentle and beautiful. It says: this puppy is so soft, he is so soft and warm and nice to pet, you're safe, you're okay, you don't have to do anything, all you have to do right now is lie here and hold this puppy, he's so good, the most important thing to do in the whole entire world is to snuggle the puppy and feel warm and safe and okay. You really want to focus on every detail of what the puppy feels like, how soft his fur is, how warm he is, the way his tail wags. You don't want to do anything else at all. Everything is okay.

...oh. 

💙.

Leo is very soft and very warm and very good, and Sasha is warm and safe and okay and everything's going to be okay. It's a little hard to move. He's not sure why he'd want to. 

The song finishes and Leo snuggles up with him. 

"So. Mind control music. That's useful."

The warmth dissipates, but slowly. And Leo is still snuggling him. 

"I probably should be freaked out by that." He's smiling, dreamy. 

"Why? It's not like I can use it when you don't want me to."

"Yeah, but —" and he pushes the last wisps of dreamy floaty warmth aside — "you said you were made for a purpose, right? And if I'm making a servant for the Princess, and one of the abilities I give him is mind control singing, that raises a lot of questions." 

"Possibly for the princess to relax, and possibly for her to destroy her enemies?"

"...I guess that tracks," he says, and lets himself sink into the mattress. "Leo. Sing." 

This time the song says:

Everything in the world is terrible. There is no point to doing anything, because anything you might do is doomed. There is no action you can take that will cause any positive effect. Happiness and joy and love are lies. Everything is suffering and misery and sorrow and hatred. The only solution is to lie down and rot.

Sasha curls up into a tiny ball and whimpers. 

"...okay, so, apparently I have more than one mind-control song, and some of them are awful."

"I am now about one hundred times more concerned about the thought process that went into your magic." He still sounds like he's about to cry. 

"...I can't sing the happy one unless you tell me to."

"I don't know how many you have, and it seems like you can't control them," he says, but after a pause he follows it up with, "Sing." 

The song says:

Your homework is incredibly easy. Here is a brilliant idea for the essay; the evidence you need will be here and here and here in the book, and this is a witty turn of phrase to use in paragraph three. Math is fun, it's just puzzles, and the puzzles aren't at all difficult to solve. Chemistry makes total sense, and social studies is fascinating. You can't wait to get started. Why are you still in bed? You should get a pen right now and write.

This literally never happens but he's up from being curled in a ball on his bed going through his backpack and then being almost immediately stymied by the fact that hearing a song that makes him motivated does not in fact cause him to understand chemistry — whatever he'll just write the essay first and then — 

Leo stops singing. 

"What I meant was," he says, "I think you can give more specific orders, like 'don't ever sing that depressing one again', or 'sing something happy', or 'keep singing until I tell you to stop.'"

"That sounds less like a dog-type command but — hold up I gotta write this down before I forget —" 

Leo really wants to make suggestions but 'hold up' is an order!

He compromises by bouncing in an agitated fashion.

Sasha doesn't notice for about eighty seconds because he's writing furiously in a notebook, and then he reaches for his laptop and notices the bouncing and says "You can say what you want." 

"--You can tell me to keep singing the competence song until you tell me to stop."

"Keep singing the competence song until I tell you to stop." 

He does.

You're smart and creative and things are going to go well for you. Even if you're confused right now, they're going to make sense soon. There's going to be a flash of insight that makes everything click, all you have to do is keep trying and it will happen. You can handle everything you have to do. Your homework is easy and it's fun and you enjoy doing it.)

The limiting factor on how fast his essay gets written is how fast he can type. 

This has literally never happened before.

It takes him about two hours to be done with everything, which is when he tells Leo "Okay, stop." 

Leo bounces. "I helped!"

"You did help! I'm literally never that fast!" 

He rolls over on his back and wiggles his feet.

"I like helping."

That sounds like a prompt to pick Leo up and cuddle him and kiss the top of his perfect extremely soft head. 

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Leo is pretty sure he has picked the best master in the whole world. He has only met like six people in his life so far but Sasha is definitely the best.

Sasha is pretty sure he got the best possible way to be introduced to the entire concept of magic existing in the world. 

"So what other magic things are there?" 

"Lots-- vampires, weres, djinn, witches, angels, demons, unicorns, snake people--"

"Wow." The extra energy is wearing off. "Any idea which of those I'm most likely to meet?" 

"Assuming you don't make a habit of summoning extraplanar entities, probably vampires and weres and witches? They're the most common."

...he does have that incredibly annoying Wiccan classmate, but. 

"Okay. Can you identify magic things if I show them to you, or?" 

"Yes. I can see that they're magic."

"I'm debating just taking you to school and asking you how many of the people there are magic, for context. — do you want to be taken to school, it'd be a lot more interesting than being left here for eight hours a day but it'd also be logistically sort of complicated on account of how dogs aren't allowed in classrooms." 

"I want to go to school but I'd probably also be okay with, like, some way of reading books or listening to podcasts with paws."

"And finagling the logistics of taking you to school is almost certainly easier than figuring out a way for you to turn your own pages." 

"I saw a thing-- I think maybe it's called a Kindle?-- that I think I could use. But point taken."

"Those do exist but I don't have one and don't have money." 

He snuggles Leo some more. 

"--Sorry, I really want to figure out what the rest of my magic is."

He checks the list and then sets Leo down on one end of the bed and sits at the other. "Come." 

Leo teleports into his arms.

Gosh. "Heel," he tries, even though it's just about the least applicable thing ever. 

Sasha's wrists had hurt from typing too much. They don't hurt anymore.

"Oh," he says softly, "that's really good, thank you." 

Leo wiggles with delight.

It is very cute.

It is very cute. 

"I should probably text my boyfriend at some point but you'll meet him tomorrow." 

"I bet your boyfriend's great."

"He is great — he's kind of shy but I bet he'll like you." 

"I don't know how likeable I am, I'm only"-- he glances at a clock-- "eight hours old."

"Well, I haven't even spent all eight of your hours with you and I think you're lovely." 

Tail wagging!

"MORE magic."

He kisses Leo's head again, mostly because it's right there and he can, and then says, "Down." 

A hole opens in Sasha's bedroom floor.

If Sasha looks through it, he sees from above a Japanese garden in spring. A stream babbles to itself. Cherry blossoms drift slowly to the ground. A path winds through the trees.

"....do you know if it'd be easy to get back —" 

"It looks to me like you'd be able to reach the gate from one of the trees."

Yeah, okay, that's good enough. Sasha grabs a sweatshirt so he'll have something to put Leo in while he's climbing, puts Leo in the pouch, and goes through the hole in his floor. 

The air in the garden is cool and smells wonderful, like it just rained. The sky is blue as the ocean with only a few wisps of cloud. There are statues along the path, beautifully carved in a Japanese style; Sasha doesn't recognize any of the people. Not far away, there's an old wooden bridge so he can cross the stream.

There doesn't seem to be anybody else here.

It's gorgeous. Sasha walks around in it for — he isn't sure how long. 

The garden never seems to repeat itself, but he does occasionally find himself looping back to the gate, and to other landmarks: a pavilion through which swoop red-crowned cranes; a bridge around which drifts streams of mist; a stone temple; a black rock surrounded by benches. The environment around the landmarks has the same general themes-- cherry blossom trees, winding paths, eroded statues-- but it is never exactly the same twice.

There's still no one here.

He takes lots and lots of pictures.

After — Sasha isn't sure how long — he finds the gate and climbs a tree and comes back up through the floor of his bedroom. 

The clock reveals that he was gone for about ten seconds.

"...damn." 

He takes his shoes off and sits back down on the bed. 

"That place is called the Garden of Peace," Leo says. "It's one of the friendlier planes. I think 'down' might just create a gate to a random plane if you don't specify, though, and some of them are much more dangerous."

"Good to know. Do you happen to know what other planes there are, or is it the sort of thing you have to find out by trying to go there?" 

"There are billions of planes," Leo says. "Uh, off the top of my head, there's Heaven and Hell and Faerie of course, although you can argue about whether those are planes themselves or just categories of planes. There's the platonic realm where math lives, there's the place where lost property goes, there's the library of unwritten books, there are the Eternal Stairs--"

"Wow. 

....at some point I want to ask about the library of unwritten books but maybe not right now." 

"It's the library of all the books that people thought of but didn't write. A bunch of titles like 'that really cool spy novel I thought of when I was bored on the bus that one time.'"

"...I love it." 

"Magic is pretty cool. Terrifying, but cool."

"Yeah. Magic is incredibly cool." He's looking right at Leo when he says it. 

Leo is incredibly cool!

He accidentally rolls over from excitement. 

........adorable. 

"I assume the time dilation isn't always that friendly, do you know if it's predictable whether a plane will be 'you're there for a couple hours but you're only gone for ten seconds' or 'one night in Faerie and a hundred years at home' or do I just have to take my chances?" 

"Planes have consistent rules about how time passes in them compared to other planes. That's one of the reasons we think Heaven and Hell and Faerie might be categories of planes rather than their own planes, time runs differently in different parts of them."

He nods and looks back at the list of commands. 

"...Leo. Beg." 

Leo starts bouncing up and down, agitated, and bashing his head repeatedly and ineffectually against Sasha's leg.

"Give me PETS I want PETS I need PETS I want SNUGGLES PET ME SNUGGLE ME PET ME SNUGGLES! GIVE ME SNUGGLES! I WANT SNUGGLES!"

That is absolutely a thing he can do. He cuddles Leo against his breastbone and pets the top of his head and applies scritches behind his ears. 

"You are SO GOOD. You are the BEST PERSON IN THE WORLD, because you PET ME, and that makes you the BEST. I LOVE YOU. I LOVE YOU SO MUCH. PLEASE KEEP PETTING ME. IT IS SO NICE. I LIKE BEING PETTED SO MUCH. SCRITCHES. SCRITCHES ARE SO GOOD."

He is definitely going to keep petting and scritching Leo. 

"Do you like petting this much usually?" 

"NO, it is MAGIC. You made me like petting. But it is PRETTY SILLY because petting is SO GOOD and I should DEFINITELY want it this much ALL THE TIME because then I wouldn't EVER have to do ANYTHING except be petted and that would be GREAT."

"I love that you have a spell that makes it easier to make you happy," Sasha says, and bends down to kiss the top of Leo's head and keeps on petting him. 

HEAD KISSES. That is the BEST THING that has EVER HAPPENED to Leo except ALL THE OTHER THINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED TO HIM IN THE PAST FEW MINUTES.

Sasha keeps cuddling him and kissing his head for a few more minutes and then he says, "Okay, stop begging." 

Leo snuggles up to him. "I can sing you to sleep if you want."

There's part of Sasha that's very sure that if he falls asleep he'll wake up and it'll be Thursday again and he'll have dreamed the whole thing. 

"Yes, please. — Sing me to sleep." 

The song is like the first song Leo ever sang to him. It seeps into Sasha's bones; it says you are warm and safe and protected, it says everything is okay, it says moving sounds really hard and you don't want to do that, thinking sounds hard and you don't want to do that, you just want to float and listen to the music, it says the puppy is very interesting and you want to focus on how soft and nice he is.

But it also says: you want to sleep. Closing your eyes and sleeping is the most appealing thing you can imagine. It's hard to think about anything you'd want more than going to sleep. It's so easy, barely even an action at all. Leo wants you to sleep and Leo is so good. You want to make Leo happy, don't you? He is so nice and soft and warm and he makes you so happy and all he wants from you is this one little thing, this one little thing that is so appealing anyway, to close your eyes and go to sleep. Why does anyone ever want to do anything but sleep? Sleeping is so nice.

...yeah. Yeah, that's.... all... 

he sleeps. 

He wakes up to the sound of Leo ferociously attacking an alarm clock.

He gets up and hits the button on the alarm clock and then looks down at himself and realizes he fell asleep in blue jeans. 

"Good morning." 

"There is a circle in your room that makes noises! I tried to defend you but I was not successful."

"...yes. It's supposed to do that, it makes sure I'm awake early enough that I get to school on time." 

He gets dressed and gets his homework from yesterday (which is all done!! even the essay!! which isn't even due yet!!!) together. 

"I will go with you!" Leo says. "And I can meet your boyfriend. And learn English. Except I already know English, I'm pretty sure."

"You can meet my boyfriend and learn about essay-writing and American history! You do seem to already know English." 

He grabs a breakfast and a lunch on the way out the door and starts walking towards school with Leo in his jacket pocket. 

Leo rides in his jacket pocket! Leo is very excited. 

"Am I allowed to ask questions?"

"...you can ask me questions when we aren't in class, but don't talk where teachers will hear you, dogs are not actually allowed on campus unless you're disabled and I'm not." 

"Okay!" Leo says. 

Things Leo has questions about: What is the purpose of a traffic light? What is a church? What do you buy in a coffee shop? Why do humans like drinking coffee? How do cars work? Why don't other dogs talk? Why do humans wear things on their heads? Why do flowers exist?

The purpose of a traffic light is to make sure people take turns going across the intersection in a manner such that they don't hit each other. A church is a place you go if you're Christian to do Christian things; Sasha is not Christian so he's not super clear on what those things are but he's pretty sure there's praying involved. You buy coffee in a coffee shop unless you are Sasha in which case you buy hot chocolate and/or a weird not-quite-milkshake and/or madeleines in a coffee shop. Humans like drinking coffee because some of them are wrong. Cars work by lighting gasoline on fire in a way that makes the wheels turn and Sasha can't provide an explanation more detailed than that because he doesn't understand cars either. Other dogs don't talk because their vocal cords aren't shaped in a way that would let them. Sometimes humans wear things on their heads because it's cold and some religions have rules that you aren't supposed to show your hair and sometimes it's just because it looks good. Flowers exist to help plants create more plants. 

Leo finds SEVERAL of those answers unsatisfying but unfortunately they are already at school.

That is indeed unfortunate. 

Other things that are unfortunate: Lilith is in Sasha's first period. 

Leo can't turn himself to stone but he hides in Sasha's pocket. 

If Lilith can't see him, then Lilith can't steal him from Sasha.

Lilith seems pretty busy making out with Sarah Alchemy as part of some elaborate revenge scheme, anyway.

That's pretty in-character, yeah. Sasha keeps his left hand in the pocket where Leo is, on Leo's back. 

Class goes pretty fast! It's really weird having all his homework done. 

Class is interesting! Even though it is clearly aimed at people who have more context about things like "who William Shakespeare is" and "what's a play" and "why people are going around disobeying laws even after they have been told what the law is."

After English is chemistry. Fortunately for Leo they don't have a lab today; Sasha pets Leo in his lap under the table with one hand and fails to take notes with the other. After chem is math, which felt like solving an engaging puzzle yesterday while Leo was singing but feels like beating his head against a wall today. 

It is too bad that Leo can't sing during class.

Chemistry makes a lot of sense. Math is really confusing; why would you spend a bunch of time telling grown people about the implications of axioms? Hints are a good idea for small children, but surely Sasha is old enough that he doesn't have to go over every last corollary in such mind-numbing detail.

...when Leo says this, Sasha has to make a detour on his way to fourth period so he can hide out in the bathroom for a while and very determinedly not be outwardly upset about it where anyone can see. 

Leo is confused about what he did wrong but he is VERY small and VERY fluffy and he hopes that helps.

It... doesn't not help. 

Fourth period is French which is whatever. They're watching a movie in French with subtitles; once the room is dark Sasha puts Leo on the desk so he can watch too. 

French is not one of the languages Leo speaks. 

Movies are intended for people who have a better understanding of human psychology than Leo does, but humans are fascinating. They're SO BAD AT RULES.

He doesn't make this observation to Sasha.

If he did make that observation Sasha would readily agree with him. 

After fourth period is lunch where he gets to eat food and see Marlo. 

"Hey, hummingbird," Marlo says when he sees him, sits down next to Sasha and kisses his temple. 

Sasha has the best cutest boyfriend. "Hey, babe," and he leans into the contact and then leans against Marlo's side. 

Leo slips out of Sasha's pocket and onto the floor, kneels with his head between his paws, and says, "Your Purity."

"...reality check, do you have a dog that can talk and did it just bow to me." 

"Yesterday I acquired a dog that can talk. I'm as confused about the bowing as you. Leo, what?" 

"Your boyfriend is a unicorn."

"I'm a what." 

"Your Purity, you're a unicorn who presumably got stuck as a human somehow."

"Sasha, reality check, your talking dog just said I'm a unicorn." 

"My talking dog just said you're a unicorn. Marlo, this is Leo, Leo, this is Marlo, he's not going to stop being freaked out by the 'your purity' thing." 

"It is the appropriate title for a unicorn."

"Please just call me Marlo." 

"Thank you, Marlo."

He sounds somewhat overwhelmed by getting to address a unicorn by his first name.

"You're.... welcome." 

"Leo was created to be a fairy servant of the fairy princess, who is apparently our classmate Lilith, but I accidentally stole him so he's mine now." He curls up against Marlo. "I do recognize that all of this sounds completely batshit." 

"I just. --Unicorns are incredibly rare and incredibly powerful and purely good and it's. A lot. To think that I would get to meet one when I am barely a day old and then the unicorn would invite me to call him by his first name and he's dating my master and I'm babbling oh no."

He stares at Leo for a moment, and then abruptly moves so that his head is in Sasha's lap. 

"If this is a thing that's happening I want to be cuddling you for it." 

Sasha pets Marlo's hair. "Leo, what do unicorns do other than... be purely good?" 

Leo scratches his ear with a foot. "They basically just gave me etiquette information. --The 'head in a virgin's lap' thing is a unicorn thing, though, I know that."

"I'm not a virgin but that tracks." 

(Marlo's face has gone faintly pink.) 

Leo is going to IGNORE MARLO and pretend that ONLY SASHA IS HERE. This is probably extremely rude but he has no rules for this situation.

"Maybe the magic actually tracks something other than virginity? Or maybe there's a very specific definition of virginity." He thinks. "I don't think Marlo can become intoxicated. There's a rule that the normal rules about when to give people alcohol don't apply to unicorns because they can't get drunk. And judging by the amount of etiquette that has to do with paddocks, I think his true form is that of a horse with a horn on its forehead."

He keeps petting Marlo's hair. "That is generally what is meant by 'unicorn,' yes, and in the stories unicorns neutralize poison, that's probably what's up with the alcohol thing. — now I'm thinking about other unicorn stories and I can't get rid of the mental image of you with a two-foot horn on your forehead and it's stuck in a tree —" 

"I love you, hummingbird." 

"I love you too!" 

Leo's tail thumps the ground.

His master has a unicorn boyfriend who loves him, and that is very good, because unicorns are purely good, and probably a unicorn would not date someone who would mistreat him. It would be even harder to find a second replacement master.

Even though unicorns are kind of terrifying. 

"I can do magic when Sasha commands me," Leo says to Marlo, "and probably when you command me as well because you're an ally of my master's. 'Down' opens a gate to another world, 'sing' creates mind-control music-- both of those you can give more specific orders so you don't end up going to a totally random place or being mind-controlled in a random way-- 'speak' lets me speak, 'sit' compels me to sit, 'beg' makes me really want cuddles, 'stay' turns me to stone, 'come' makes me teleport to your side, and 'heel' heals people."

"I don't think we've found everything yet, but that's what we've found." 

"That sounds useful. — I'm a little concerned by the mind control music." 

"It's a little concerning! We found one that makes you stupidly productive and one that feels all nice and floaty and warm and safe and one that makes you miserable." 

"The one that makes you feel all nice and floaty and warm and safe comes in two versions, one that's just nice and floaty and one that's nice and floaty and also makes you want to do some specific thing I'm telling you to do. I used the second one to help Sasha go to sleep."

"I'm kind of concerned about it too, but — he can't use it unless I tell him to." 

"Mmm." He reaches up to take Sasha's hand. "Still kind of concerned but I trust you." 

"Also, I have to obey all your orders and my guiding directive is to promote your wellbeing and flourishing and help you achieve your goals." He scratches his ear with a paw again.

"...hummingbird, any chance —" 

"Yes, you can come over after school and try it out and also make out with me." 

Tail wagging!

He is a GOOD LEO. He is very helpful. 

He is a very good Leo, it's true. 

Sasha and Marlo talk — apparently Price is still badgering Marlo about signing up for track after a year and a half of Marlo telling him he doesn't have time — until it's the end of lunch, and Sasha has to take Leo and kiss Marlo on the cheek and go to fifth period US history. 

US history is really confusing. Why is it possible to be a slave and want not to be a slave? Did humans' creators make them that poorly? How did people break laws? Leo listens to try to figure out about the loopholes they used but apparently they just... read the law and decided to do a different thing.

Humans are FASCINATING. 

Sasha actually really likes history; he's happy to answer questions. Humans as far as anyone can tell were not designed or created. You break laws by deciding to do a thing that is not the law, like how Sasha brought Leo onto campus even though dogs are not allowed. Human history is fascinating. 

Leo whimpers when Sasha tells him that dogs are not allowed.

— Leo is allowed, though. Human laws never apply to fairies in the stories and it'd be really weird for a magically created servant of the fairy princess to be bound by school rules. 

Leo's tail wags and he nuzzles Sasha's shoulder.

Is there more school. Leo likes school.

They have one more period and then school is over. 

Sasha meets Marlo at the bike cage and they walk to Sasha's house, Marlo walking his bike and Sasha holding Leo so he can see and ask questions if he wants to. 

Leo has SO MANY QUESTIONS ABOUT HUMANS. Humans are WEIRD.

Sasha does his best to answer questions about humans! 

"It's really weird how humans can just do things even if they're against the rules. How do you know which things to do?"

"The rules still exist, just because they're not literally impossible to break doesn't mean there won't be consequences for it." 

"I think he's trying to ask about ethics but honestly humans are pretty confused about ethics too. Lots of the time we don't know which things to do." Neither he nor Marlo has a free hand but if they did he would take Marlo's hand and squeeze it. 

"No, I mean-- if you can cross the street anywhere how do you decide where to cross the street?"

"Most people still use crosswalks, because they're safer. If I look and there aren't any cars coming in either direction I might cross in the middle of the block but there's an easy thing to default to." 

Leo's tail thumps. "The rules say you're supposed to cross at the crosswalk so I can't cross anywhere else unless there's some other more important rule that outweighs it. That seems easier than the human way."

"...maybe if your society is set up so the laws make sense for people, but for a lot of reasons, most human societies aren't set up that way." 

"Fairies have to follow laws. It's what we are. I don't know what it would mean to set up laws that make sense for fairies, we are laws."

"...like, America has a lot of laws, and there are lots of things that tons of people do all the time that they don't even realize are illegal. If all the laws on the books started getting perfect enforcement tomorrow it would ruin a lot of lives. — I'm trying to avoid telling you details about the American legal system because I do a lot of things that are technically illegal and I know breaking the rules hurts you and I don't want to hurt you, please don't ask." 

"You said I don't have to follow human laws because I'm a fairy. --It's weird to have laws you don't even know about. Humans are weird."

"Humans are pretty weird, it's true." 

Marlo locks his bike to the front porch; he doesn't speak any Russian and Sasha's parents don't speak much English but he nods and smiles at them before he follows Sasha upstairs and sits down on the edge of the bed. 

Leo crawls out of Sasha's pocket and walks around the bed to stretch his legs.

Sasha folds himself up in Marlo's lap, puts his head on Marlo's shoulder. 

Marlo curls around him, kisses his forehead and then his mouth. "Missed you, hummingbird." 

"You could kiss me at school, you know." Kiss. "You could fuck me at school if you wanted to, there's this closet downstairs in the main building —" 

"There are people at school." 

"It's not like there's anyone who doesn't know we're dating," he says, but drops it in favor of snuggling. 

Leo thinks he should be snuggled by two people. 

Leo can be snuggled by two people as long as he doesn't mind those people kissing while the snuggling is happening. 

Leo has no opinion on kissing. His creators didn't really bother to give him a sexuality.

"Do you want to try the thing?" 

"You're the one who's felt it, you'd know better than I would, but — yeah. I do." 

Sasha kisses Marlo and then kisses Leo's head and says, "Sing. The nice song." 

The song says:

You are warm and safe and happy. Everything is okay. You are around people that love you. There's no need to worry about anything. There's no need to do anything, and doing things is really hard anyway. It might be nice to kiss and touch but it's even nicer just to feel his breathing and know that he's there. All you want to do is think about how warm and safe and nice he is and how wonderful it is to be in his arms. Feel his heartbeat, feel his arms around you, feel the way his chest rises and falls, feel his legs intertwined with yours, feel the softness of his skin and the silkiness of his hair and the warmth of his breath. Stop thinking, relax, and be. Nothing is wrong. Nothing has ever been wrong and nothing is ever going to be wrong. How could things be wrong when he's here?

...oh. 

He'd been planning on kissing Marlo once they were under but, Marlo's skin is soft and just, feeling the way he breathes, the warmth of him, is... so much better. 

Marlo closes his eyes and lets his head fall against Sasha's shoulder and feels how soft his shirt is, how warm he is through the worn-soft cloth, the way he smells, like cherry drink powder and coconut shampoo, the way Marlo knows he'd taste if he kissed him, how he fits into Marlo's arms, and loves him, and doesn't move. Why would he move? Sasha's right here. 

The song wraps up and Leo snuggles up to Marlo and Sasha.

"...love you." Moving is still difficult but he reaches up clumsily to touch Marlo's hair. 

"Love you." He puts one hand on Leo's back and keeps it there. 

Leo waits what seems like a reasonable amount of time for the music to wear off, then bounces and says "MORE MAGIC."

"...oh, you should see this. Leo, beg." 

All thought of figuring out what his powers are disappears and is replaced with the TREMENDOUS IMPORTANCE of being PETTED.

He runs towards Marlo's hand and headbutts it. "HI MARLO I AM VERY SMALL AND SOFT. YOU SHOULD PET ME. I AM GOOD TO PET. I LIKE PETS. PET ME."

"Gosh," Marlo says, and pets him. 

PETTING!!!!! BEING PETTED IS VERY IMPORTANT.

"I love you," Leo says, "you are SO GOOD, you PETTED ME, that is the ONLY THING that is IMPORTANT in the WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD. Being snuggled is the BEST."

"Is he just —" 

"Yeah, he is. Until you tell him to stop. It's like a button marked 'make it incredibly easy to make this person happy,' it's great. Leo, stop begging." 

Leo flops. 

"I like caring about more than one thing better. But I like that it makes you happy to make it really easy to make me happy?"

"Yeah." He runs a hand along Leo's back. "'S why I stopped it faster this time." 

"I can't keep you safe if I only care about being petted!"

(This is a mildly absurd statement to come from a puppy the size of Sasha's hand.)

"If something came up one of us would tell you to stop, but you aren't wrong." 

"But what if I need to react quickly to bite them?"

"...I really can't think of anything that would be taken out faster by you biting them than by me punching them." 

Leo's tail thumps unhappily. Marlo is right-- especially since he's a unicorn-- but Leo doesn't have to like it.

Why did they make him so small? 

"We should test more magic," Leo says, "and then maybe there will be something that makes me BIG, and then I can bite people that might hurt Sasha."

Sasha looks at the list of dog commands. "How about... play dead." 

Leo turns into a corpse. His fur is matted with blood and there's a smell like he's starting to rot.

"— stop playing dead!" 

Leo turns back into a fully alive puppy.

"That was gross. I don't want to do that one."

"Yeah. I don't want to do that one either but it's good that we know about it." 

"I guess it might ever come in handy."

(He sounds suspicious.)

"There's gotta be some point to it or it wouldn't have been included, you were designed on purpose, but I have no idea what the point would have been." Sasha picks up the very alive non-bloody Leo and cuddles him.  

"I guess if someone is trying to kill me..."

"Yeah. That'd probably be it." He's just going to bury his face in Marlo's shoulder. 

Leo snuggles up against him and tries to be comforting.

Leo is warm and alive and Marlo is warm and solid and there and all three of them are safe and yeah, that is comforting. 

Leo feels a traitorous sort of happiness about Sasha being distressed when it looked like he was dead. (Or maybe Sasha just thinks corpses are gross.)

Marlo pets Sasha's hair. "Have you tried fetch yet?" 

"No," Sasha says into Marlo's neck. "Leo, go fetch." 

Nothing happens.

"Okay, so it isn't literally every command you might give a dog. — or maybe it's just that there's nothing for you to fetch, we can try again sometime if you want." 

"It feels like it doesn't do anything."

"Then probably it doesn't." He looks at the list again. "I have no idea what this does for actual dogs, but. Leo, off." 

There is suddenly a soft, curly-haired, completely naked boy pressed between Marlo and Sasha and staring at Sasha.

"...You're really pretty."

"— I guess that makes sense as a feature! Hi!" 

Marlo moves away. "Do you want clothes, I bet some of Sasha's stuff would fit." 

Leo is not just naked, he's also getting hard.

"I guess?"

Marlo's just going to ignore that! Leo's a little bit bigger than Sasha is, now, but Sasha keeps stealing Marlo's clothes so he can find a shirt and a pair of boxers that'll fit. 

Leo is now wearing a shirt and boxers!

(This is working less well than would otherwise be hoped to hide how turned on he is.)

"You're really pretty," he says again to Sasha.

He is, in the abstract, not unaware of this. Having a cute boy pressed up against him telling him he's pretty while turned on still feels really nice. 

"Thank you," he says, and hugs Leo. "...Marlo you should come hug me." 

Marlo sits back down behind Sasha and curls around him. 

"Everything is smaller."

"That is what happens when you go from being the size of my hand to being the size of my whole me!" 

"And there are more colors. And you're pretty. You weren't pretty before."

"He was definitely pretty before." 

"Well, he wasn't pretty to me, because I was a dog. Also Sasha is pretty and that makes my genitals bigger. Why."

"That is how human men work! We find it pretty inconvenient too." 

"...why do humans come with a prettiness indicator? And only the men? This is silly."

"It is silly. You get used to it."

Leo wants to think about how human senses are different than dog senses but he's distracted by his desire to... touch?... Sasha. He is totally unclear on what he wants. He tries cuddling up against Sasha and saying, "I want to be petted."

Sasha's happy to cuddle him and pet his hair! 

"I want something," Leo says, "I don't know what I want. I want to be touched but petting isn't right." He looks at Sasha again. "You're so pretty. How are you so pretty?"

"— Marlo, can I —" 

"Yes." He kisses the back of Sasha's head. "We'll talk about it afterwards?"

"Yeah," Sasha says, and then takes Leo's head and kisses him. 

Okay, so, this is what Leo wanted.

In related news he's not sure he's going to manage to think for the next while.

Sasha will keep right on kissing Leo for as long as he wants to be kissed. 

Kissing is extremely good! They should just keep kissing forever. Leo makes good plans.

Kissing is in fact extremely good but maybe they should not keep kissing forever. After a while Sasha pulls back and pushes his hair away from his face and says "You doing okay?" 

"Yes. Kissing is good. I like kissing."

"Kissing is good. — how much do you happen to know about how human sex works." 

"...nothing?"

...yeah, the amount that Sasha wants to give the talk to a fairy who is magically bound to obey his every order is roughly zero. "...actually, Marlo and I should probably talk before anything happens on that front. Sorry for bringing it up." 

"Okay." There should be more kissing. Leo is pretty sure of this.

There can be more kissing! 

Meanwhile Sasha is trying to work out where he and Marlo can talk such that he won't be neglecting the person whose well-being he's responsible for but also Marlo won't be too tongue-tied to do anything but agree to things he doesn't really want to agree to, but he can totally kiss Leo while he's doing that. 

Eventually Leo pulls away and says, "I have HANDS."

"You do have hands! And they have opposable thumbs on them!" 

"I can read BOOKS!"

He bounces. From what he has seen of school, books are even better than kissing.

— oh, that's an easy way to solve this problem. 

"You can read books! Some of them might be confusing but I bet you'd like them." The Shining is still on his bedside table from yesterday, A Face Like Glass is on the floor next to Sasha's desk, he can find a handful of books that Leo might like. 

"You okay if I leave you here to read while Marlo and I find somewhere and talk about the thing?" 

Leo has already started reading The Shining.

Then Sasha will take Marlo's hand and bring him through Sasha's parents' room out to the roof and sit with him there. 

"You okay?" 

"I'm okay," he says, and — can he safely lie down so his head is in Sasha's lap — yes he can. He does that. "...I don't love seeing you kiss other people but I think knowing you were doing it while I wasn't there wouldn't be better." 

He pets Marlo's hair, very gently. "Do you know what specifically upsets you about it? — I find monogamy really confusing, the reason I've been able to do it for this long is that I was basically not interested in anyone else, whether I keep kissing Leo or not it's a conversation we should have." 

"I..." 

Sasha keeps petting his hair, waits for him to figure out his words. 

"...I think I worry about whether I'm important to you. I know it's silly, but — it makes watching you watch Leo a bigger deal than it should be." 

"It's as big of a deal as it is, there's no should." He lets his hand rest on the back of Marlo's head. "I've only known Leo for a day. You're my commitment, I know you know that." 

"I do know that. — you've only known him a day and you're kissing him, though, that's the problem." 

"I can wait." 

Marlo opens his mouth, closes it, squeezes his eyes shut, swallows, opens them again. 

"...you waiting feels like the kind of thing I don't get to ask for." 

"You get to ask for anything you want. I could say no, but you still get to ask, and then I get to say yes." He leans down and kisses Marlo's forehead. (Right in the center, where his horn would be if he had one.) "I don't want to do things that make you worry. And waiting until I know him better is not a problem, it really isn't." 

"....I love you." 

"I love you." Another forehead kiss. "Ready to go back in?" 

"...I kind of want to stay out here with just you for a while first." 

"Okay," Sasha says, and takes Marlo's hand and squeezes. "We can do that." 

It's a while before they go back into Sasha's room. 

BOOKS there are BOOKS books are so GOOD

And also really confusing. 

"Hey! I'm back and can answer questions if you have them." 

"This book contains many factual inaccuracies about haunted hotels."

"...there's an argument to be made that the Overlook is more sentient than it is haunted, I don't know how far you've gotten but Grady's ghost doesn't talk like you'd expect a high school dropout to, he talks like someone who's trying to be as appealing to an articulate well-read writer as possible — anyway, not the point, the point is that I'd be pretty surprised if Stephen King patterned his writing off of things that actually exist. What are the inaccuracies?" 

"Places that are people are almost never malicious, is the thing. You're much more likely to get a street that does drag than a street that tries to bring out the worst in you. And if it's a haunting, which is much more likely to be malicious, then the hotel has abilities that ghosts generally do not."

"That makes sense. I don't know if I'd say the hotel is a person but it definitely seems like more than a haunting, given all of the everything. — humans write a lot about ghosts and vampires and werewolves and magic and I'd honestly be more surprised at a book being accurate than I would at a book not being accurate." 

"It's right that places that exert a psychic influence on you can't make you do things you absolutely wouldn't do, they just draw out what's already there."

"You might not have gotten to the part where the Overlook is literally possessing his body, it does that at the end." 

"Yeah, places can't do that. They can, like, teleport, or create things, that sort of thing."

"Yeah. It's a horror novel, it's not going for realism." 

"But it's all wrong. I know Sunnydale Syndrome is a thing so of course humans don't know about magic, but it's literally all wrong."

"...I mean... yeah? It's an evil eldritch sentient hotel that's activated by people's psychic powers, in a book written by someone who doesn't believe in the existence of ghosts or sentient places or psychic powers. The book isn't really taking place in the real world, it's taking place in a world where sometimes places with particularly grisly histories are sentient and evil and trying to eat you, and in that world, this is how those places work." 

"I dunno, it's like if a fairy wrote a book about humans, and there was an issue because none of the humans liked being slaves but because the Fugitive Slave Act was passed no one can rescue the slaves. Some of the details are right but mostly you clearly have no idea what you're talking about."

"I know it's wrong and none of us have any idea what we're talking about. It isn't trying to be right, it's a made up thing from a story, the thing that makes it work is that it's internally consistent, not that it's how things really work. I would love to read the story written by fairies where nobody could rescue the slaves because of the Fugitive Slave Act, if the fairy who wrote it was good at making their made-up version of humans consistent." 

"...Sorry."

"...this isn't like the math thing, I'm not upset, I'm just not sure how to get at the thing I mean. Most of the point of my favorite kinds of books is that the world of the book doesn't work like the real world. 

You might like A Face Like Glass better, I'm sure it's totally wrong about magic but it seems like it'd have less of the almost-correct-but-not-quite thing." 

"...If I read books that are wrong about things then they might be wrong about humans too and I want to understand humans."

"— no, that's the thing, the Torrances are a great example of how humans work. In that case I do not recommend A Face Like Glass, though, I recommend basically everything by Stephen King and also I should find Suffer the Children like I've been meaning to." 

"Humans are weird." He bounces. "If I can look like a human can I go to school and learn about how humans work?"