Mason threw his backpack against the edge of the couch and pulled his earbuds out upon entering his apartment after a frustrating and tedious day of work. He plopped down, pulled his laptop out of his backpack, connected it to his bluetooth speaker, and navigated to Jargon's self-titled album on YouTube before getting back up and approaching the kitchen area. 

Mason sighed. "Alright, let's see if this is any good," he mumbled to himself, opening his cabinet and grabbing what granola and almonds he had left over from eating them separately on Sunday. Next, he opened the fridge and pulled out a container of strawberry yogurt. Just as he was about to grab a bowl, Mason heard a familiar voice.

"Can I have some?" Domino requested, exiting Mason's room slowly and casually.

     Mason's intention was for Domino to stay at his apartment for a day or two and then find a different place to stay. Truthfully though, Mason couldn't really picture leaving someone this ...enigmatic out on the streets, and while Mason's usual routine of sitting on the couch and having a somewhat late lunch was being interrupted, he couldn't muster the courage to say anything about it just yet. Still though, he was taken by surprise and a bit overwhelmed. 

Domino waved a paw in front of his face.

"Uhh... Just give me a second." Mason replied, somewhat more monotone than usual.

"You say that a lot," Domino replied, their head tilted ever so slightly. "Do you usually take this long to do everything? You didn't have a problem when Tristan came over."

"Well," Mason began, focused on pouring everything into the bowl so as to stay calm, "I just got home, and Tristan's visits are really... Important. I just don't wanna mess them up, okay? But yes, you can have some. I just need to sit down."

"Oh, okay!" Domino replied, "But how are you gonna make the thing if you're sitting down? There isn't a chair over here. I mean there's the couch, but-"

"Domino, please," Mason started, cutting Domino off while pulling out a spoon from a drawer and figuring out whether or not he's supposed to stir the ingredients together. "I wanna focus on what I'm doing. We can talk in a bit but I just got off work and people were being annoying today and I just need some space."

Domino stood back. "...Sorry."

Mason picked up his bowl and started towards the couch, now facing Domino and feeling a pang of guilt at their dejected and somewhat confused expression. "It's okay; You can sit next to me if you want. I didn't mean to snap at you."

"...Okay."

Domino cautiously sat down next to Mason once he was situated in the couch and examined him from a safe distance. He seemed a little bit calmer at this point. His eyes were closed and he seemed to be focused on his food. 

"You know," Domino began quietly, "I don't know what you mean by work, but Tristan would often come back home upset and tell me about his day, and he seemed better after that, even if I didn't understand him at the time."

Mason finished chewing and lodged his spoon into the bowl. "Well, there was this one lady. I work at a clothing store up by Northgate and people just don't seem to understand that if something is out of stock, we obviously can't sell it to people until we get a new shipment. I'd tell her that we were out of the specific size of jeans she was looking for over and over again and she would just keep asking me to check in the back or something. If I was allowed to be more blunt with her I would have been, but my manager has a stick up his ass and doesn't seem to actually care about his employees' wellbeing."

Domino eyed Mason's food intently. "Uh-huh. Why don't you just like... Get him a different size or whatever it's called?"

Mason stared blankly at Domino for a solid ten seconds before letting out a chuckle. "Wait, do you just use whatever pronouns you want for people?"

Domino blinked and sat up, breaking their death stare with the bowl of food. "I... Don't know about all that stuff. All I know is that I think it's weird that your 'man-ager' didn't let you get mad at them. At the same time, and you know about this better than I do, but I still don't know why you couldn't just get her a different size or find a different jeans or whatever." Domino replied, their eyes darting back and forth from Mason to the food. 

Well, that explains why they misgendered Tristan yesterday, I guess.

Mason blinked and pushed the bowl over to Domino before continuing. "Well, the reason we have clothing sizes is so that... Huh. I've actually never had to think of a reason before. I think it depends, but usually if your clothes are too small for you it cuts off circulation and if they're too big they fall off, although nowadays most people don't wear clothes for survival anymore and I've heard of people wearing summer clothes in the winter and freezing their asses off. I've actually seen people buy clothes that are too big for them..." Mason paused. He didn't know how to explain fashion trends to a cat. "...For presentation reasons?"

Domino lifted their head from the bowl, their face somewhat covered in yogurt. "Ooh! To make them bigger looking right? I wanna wear clothes like that so I can be as tall as you. It seems nice."

Mason scratched his head. "Uhh... It's less useful than that. Either way, enough people do it to where people who actually need that size can't find it anywhere. It's kind of a problem. I don't really care what people wear but people already made baggy clothes that fit properly. I understand though, because it's hard to actually find properly fitting baggy clothes that aren't incredibly expensive around here. I just think they should be made more readily available so people can wear whatever they want."

Mason looked up from the corner of the coffee table he was zoning out at while speaking to see that Domino had completely cleaned the bowl.

"Uh, I was gonna eat that," he nervously proclaimed. "I said you could have some."

"Oh yeah, sorry." Domino replied, apparently shocked at how much they ate.

"No, that's my bad; I don't think I've fed you since yesterday. I'll try to be better about that," he said, grabbing the now empty bowl. "I'll just make another bowl for myself."

"Okay."

Mason stood up. "Well, how are you feeling?"

Domino's ears swiveled a bit. "What do you mean?"

"Like, is the food going down?"

Their pupils dilated and they began to space out, focusing on their stomach before snapping out of it and responding with a nonchalant "I don't know! Guess we'll see."

Mason sighed and mentally prepared to clean up a mess of some kind in a bit.