Mao stared back, almost holding his breath for that long minute between Vaughn’s gasp and him actually saying something. His eyes, though not glowing orange in this form, blazed intently serious despite the smile still hovering on his lips. He waited for the burst of anger, a finger pointing dramatically to the door and a yell to ‘GET OUT’ but none of that came. Vaughn was flustered, yes, and that was okay as long as he wasn’t mad. Mao laughed in relief, though he tried to hide it as amusement over his host’s reaction.
“Yeaaah….” The word was drawn out in the reluctant way of a child caught being bad and forced to confess. “This is me most of the time.” The way he was born. Y’know, minus the piercings and the chunks of magenta streaked through his dark hair (which also inexplicably disappeared when a cat.) He was a pretty thing, toeing the line of androgyny. He had his mother’s face, made sharper and imperceptibly more masculine. And he was also a little thing, barely scraping 5’3”.
“I kinda didn’t know how to tell you,” he confessed, looking faintly uncomfortable. Mao didn’t like apologizing or admitting to being scared. He figured the chinese food was a good enough apology so that he didn’t have to actually say the words.
“I’m always hungry.” Not just for chinese food, as Vaughn knew.
The threat of immediate disaster over, Mao readjusted himself into a more comfortable position, feet properly off the edge of the couch now. “I hope you’re hungry, ‘cuz I got a lotta shit.”