French was utterly useless. He already knew how to speak two languages perfectly fine and now he was regretting letting his counselor talk him into learning a third. It better look really fucking good on his resume for the headache he was going through.

The teacher- or Madame, as she insisted on being called- dismissed them after the test they were taking over conversational French. That was supposed to be the easy stuff and he had sweated through the entire thing attempting to correctly write out the forms of a 'common' sentence.

"Jaime!"

Shit. He forgot that Bart had a free hour this period. He just stuck around the college because it was too hard to walk back and forth to his place without a car. So he just smiled and waved and hoped Bart would leave him in peace to finish writing his ten page paper for Composition 2.

Yeah, like that would ever happen. "Tim wanted to know if you wanted to go out to eat with us tonight. It's going to be like a huge group so-"

"Can't, sorry," He interrupted and Bart's smile disappeared in half a millisecond.

"Dude, why not? Is it cause of the group? I mean, it can just be me, you and Tim if you want, but I thought-"

"I'm, uh, volunteering at an animal shelter. Probably every day this month too, you know how I love kittens," He said, and it was so obvious he was lying through his teeth because he hated cats with burning passion. Bart however took the bait so obliviously and nodded with a smile and told him to have fun while running off towards his lecture class.

"Thank god," Jaime whispered, collapsing onto a bench and pulling out his laptop to get to work.

After his last class of the day, he packs his stuff up and heads over to the animal shelter. Bart was well known for stumbling drunk into his apartment at any hour and he didn't want to try and explain why he wasn't grooming cats and bathing dogs to an extremely intoxicated Bart.

The animal shelter was a quiet, small building with bright lights and rooms that were sectioned off for animals. It was a no kill shelter, the only one in the area.
A woman had him sign in at the front desk and he let out a sigh of relief he didn't know anyone already there personally. She instructed him to help take the dogs out on a walk and he begrudgingly put collars on a terrier and a beagle alongside a guy who looked like he was about ready to pop a vein.

He was probably there for community service. Animal shelters were a popular place for people who needed to work off hours for whatever petty crime they committed. After the dogs were finally worn out from chasing and yapping at each other and they were allowed to return to their places in the shelter, he quietly sneaked off to the kitten room. At least kittens were mellow and let you pet them and wouldn't fucking bark your ear off and try to pull your arm off. At least when kittens hated you, they only gave you contemptuous glances and the feline equivalent of rolled eyes.

He noticed right away how many tabbies there were. He bent down to stroke the tiny head of one that was batting a jingling ball around for a moment before crossing to the back of the room where there was a litter feeding. The mother was pure white, and the little kittens cuddling up to her stomach were all varying shades of gray. A black runt stuck out like a sore thumb among its siblings and against its mom's fur.

He pet that one's head until it stopped sucking for the milk and turned around to bite his hand. He pried it off and set it back down gently, leaving before the fucking thing could try and bite off the rest of his hand. He'd forgotten for a second there why he hated cats.

He checked back in with the front desk and the woman who was organizing papers told him to try and help Cassie with the cats that were recovering from surgery. He didn't know who Cassie was so he just walked into the room labeled surgical care and hoped for the best.

The room was kind of depressing, actually. It's tiny and obnoxiously bright, occupied by a few kittens a girl is using an eyedropper to feed, and a couple of older cats who have bandages around their stomachs. Probably ones recovering from being neutered, he thought, shuddering a little.

"Hey, are you Cassie?" He asked, taking a few steps into the room.
The girl, obviously startled by his sudden appearance, accidentally squirted a few drops into the eye of the kitten she was feeding. "Uh, yeah, who are you?"

"Jaime. I was told to come work with you."

"Fabulous, can you come help feed the babies? I still have to check Stella for any infections," Cassie said, shoving a dropper into his hands along with a tiny cat.

He took the cat by the scruff and attempted to pry the mouth open with the eye dropper. After a couple agonizing seconds, it slowly opened its mouth to suckle and he very carefully squeezed out a drop.

"So what are you in here for?" Cassie asked, holding onto her own kitten carefully. Jaime did a quick 360 spin to make sure she was talking to him.

"I didn't do anything, just volunteering. Why, are you here for community service?"

Cassie groaned, setting the tabby down so she could gesture with sharp hand motions. "This entire thing is stupid. Thirty fucking hours? He was trying to rape my friend!"

Jaime, utterly confused, just nodded his head while she just ranted about the unfair justice system. After two hours, when the shelter finally closed and he started to grab his stuff to go home, Cassie ran up to him, her slip in her hand proudly proclaiming her five hours of service. "Are you coming back tomorrow?"

"I wasn't planning on-" He started but then shut his mouth and nodded. Perfect excuse to not go out with his friends to eat and get a little extra exercise. Cassie grinned, probably because she was glad to have someone that would listen to her prattle incessantly.