Chapter Text
You woke up to your phone buzzing like crazy, nearly falling off your bed in your mad grab to get it.
<47 texts from Kalim Al Asim>
You squinted blearily at the harsh light. Now what the hell is urgent enough to risk him waking you up. You thumbed your phone to send him a message.
[what the hell is it kalim i was sleeping]
[OMG SORRY 👉👈 I HAVE A BIG FAVOR TO ASK YOU 🥺]
[Can you take in one of my pets? He's getting stressed out from my parties]
[why are you asking me??? I don't have experience with pets]
[cause you don't like parties hehe]
[which one is it 🙄]
[it's the naga jamil, i swear he's well behaved he’s normally so quiet he can cook and clean too]
[just keep him for a month and see if you like him]
[ fine just let me get my damn sleep]
[ ! ! ! thank you sm bestie 🙌 ]
You rolled over in our bed and let your eyes shut again.
Sharp raps on your door woke you up again, and a voice called out that you had a package. It seems like no one around here could ever give you a bit of peace and quiet. You slid out of bed to pad to the front door. A delivery man was waiting for you with a large animal cage wrapped in a blanket behind him stamped with stickers marking it as fragile. Damn rich kid didn't even come himself to dump a problem onto your hands.
After signing the appropriate papers, the man tipped his hat to you and left, leaving you with more than a bit of regret. You dragged the large box to your living room and took off the large blanket.
The naga, Jamil, was sleeping soundly in his cage on top of what looked like a heating pad. Looking closely at him, you realized he wasn't clothed in anything besides various gold accessories. The upper part of his body was bigger than yours, although still the size of a human's, but his tail was about three times the length of his upper half. Shit you didn't even know what a naga ate. Leaning in closer, you grew very conscious of the fact that he smelled like the incredibly expensive perfume Kalim adored, just how much would this pet cost.
“Why are you sniffing me?”
You jumped back. You hadn't even realized that he had woken, how embarrassing. He watched you from sharp eyes until you spoke again again.
“I'm your new owner. I don't have a room prepared for you right now, Kalim gave you to me on a short notice. This is just a trial period for keeping you, it's going to last a month,” you coughed a bit at the end of your sentence, the perfume was far too heavy for your liking. “First things first, let's get you a shower, can you get up?”
He nodded hesitantly and slowly uncoiled from his balled up position. To your surprise he unlocked the cage from the inside and slithered out. He could have escaped at any time huh.
You grabbed a blanket from your way out of the living room. Exactly what were you doing with your life.
Jamil slithered behind you as you led him to your spare bedroom, dead quiet. The only sounds following you were the little jingles of jewelry. Why didn't Jamil escape when he had the chance? With the gold on his body and the near silent way he moved, it would've been a long time before he could get caught again.
Absentmindedly you opened the door to your spare bedroom and held it open for him. He looked a little surprised, but went past you, staring through the corners of his eyes. Does being part snake mean that he can't blink? That thought would certainly keep you up at night.
It took you a minute to snap out of your thoughts, but when you entered the room behind him, you were surprised to see that he was doing an approximation of a kneel at the foot of the bed. Curious. You placed the blanket on the bed and went to kneel beside him.
“...what are you doing,” geez that tone of his could boil you alive. It was like he was trying to be nice and scalding at the same time.
“I could ask you the same thing, I wanted to see exactly what you got out of this.”
He simply stared at you, incredulous. It was rather amusing if you said so yourself, maybe you hadn't made a mistake by saying yes to Kalim.
A smile curled on your lips, “I’m going to go grocery shopping, and I think it would be better for you to get used to my home first. Remember that if you see a bed, you should use it properly rather than- well what you're doing right now. The only room off limits to you is mine, but it's already locked so there's no need to worry.”
With that, you got up from the floor to head out and get some shopping done.
When you returned home and opened the door, the first thing you noticed was how neatly your shoes were arranged. What the fuck. Moving farther into your home, you noticed a distinct lack of dust, and an orderly arrangement of all the clutter that was there just before you left. You found your new pet washing one of the many dishes in your kitchen.
“Welcome home, Master,” he didn't even look up from his work, still arms deep in sudsy water.
“...” It didn't make sense for Jamil to be able to do housework. From what you'd seen of housepets, they typically lounged around and occasionally entertained people at parties. Either way, you did benefit from it, no matter how confusing.
He finally turned back to face you, and the strong smell of that damn perfume hit you again.