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Keys jingle outside the apartment door and the sticky lock rattles. Phichit yelps and drops his phone. He doesn’t yelp very loudly, however; he has a vested interest in keeping quiet and calm and un-predator-like. Yuuri said he’d be home ‘late-ish”. Five is not late-ish, it’s not...oh, damn, it’s already seven. Time sure flies when you’re carrying out half-baked covert operations.
“Hey.” Yuuri slips off his messenger bag and tosses his coat onto his desk chair. He ruffles his hair in the back. It’s already sticking up, which makes it clear that this is not the only ruffling it has received. He looks tired and a little anxious.
“Oh, hey! Hello! Hi!” Phichit grabs his phone from where it’s slid half beneath the couch and attempts to casually insert himself between Yuuri and the...evidence. He puts his phone in his pocket, then puts his hands behind his back. That makes him look like he’s trying to hide something, though, so he just lets them hang at his side. That also feels unnatural. What the heck does he even normally do with his hands? Why are hands so weird? “How, um, was the rink?”
Yuuri frowns. “I wasn’t at the rink, I was at the library. I have a U.S. history exam tomorrow, and so do you...Phichit.” He adjusts his glasses, squinting. “Why is...the couch moving?”
“Huh!” Phichit’s voice hops up a register. “I don’t know what you mean?” Several squeaks come from just behind him, maybe in camaraderie with his own high-pitched noise. Either that or his new friends just have an excellent sense of comedic timing. He sighs and turns to the couch where several suspicious lumps are wriggling beneath a striped blue afghan. “Sorry, guys. I tried. He caught us.”
“Uh…” Yuuri watches him whisk the blanket off. “I thought you said you were going to get a hamster.”
“Um, yeah. The plan got a little...uh, larger. In scope.”
Not one, not two, but five hamsters have staked out couch territory and made it their own. Phichit has an enclosure for them all set up in his room--with fresh bedding and one of those exercise wheels--but it just felt wrong to immediately shove them into captivity without first introducing them to the rest of the apartment. Phichit’s mother had brought him up to be a good host, after all.
Two of the hamsters are brownish-red and almost identical, and Phichit is pretty sure they know it. They keep on opposite sides of the couch, like they’re afraid of their identities co-mingling. Phichit plans to give them really different names to help them retain their individuality...maybe Ying and Reginald. Reginald is the one with the little dot of white on his paw. There’s a butterscotch one that’s the most active of the bunch, sniffing at the pillow and squeaking like a rusty bicycle from a block away. The last two are black and white--not like a cow, all dappled and blotchy, but with half their body black and half white. They stay still and very close to each other, noses moving in a never-ending snuffle.
“I was just going to get Peppermint, I swear!”
“Peppermint?”
“Oh, that’s this one here.” He points at one of the black and whites. “But the girl at the animal shelter--well, first of all she said she was really impressed I tried there first, because most people just go to PetsMart or whatever, because they have them on display all the time.” He picks up Butterscotch; she is investigating way too close to the edge for his comfort. Her little heart pounds against his fingers, so quick it feels more like a steady thrum than discrete beats. “I told her it was mostly ‘cause I’m broke and can’t afford anything fancy…”
Yuuri snorts. “I guess I wouldn’t call five hamsters fancy, but it isn’t...thrifty, exactly.”
“Well, no,” Phichit agrees. “But she said that people bring rodents to shelters all the time because they don’t know what else to do with them, like rats and gerbils and stuff. And nobody goes to the pound to get a hamster. Maybe a rabbit, or something.” He’s babbling. He had his defense all planned out. He knows Yuuri likes animals. Well, dogs at least. But he is currently looking at the couch like it has caught a contagious and very wriggly disease.
“She said that so many hamsters and rats end up put to sleep, ‘cause they don’t have room for them. I couldn’t just leave them there after that.” He holds Butterscotch up for Yuuri, Lion King style.
Yuuri’s expressions softens and he strokes her soft head with two fingers. She squeaks and Yuuri makes an echoing sound, the universal awwww of someone appreciating a cute thing.
Well-played, Butterscotch. You got this. She peers up with beady little black eyes.
“Cute, right?”
Yuuri laughs. “Yeah. Very cute.” He sighs, but it’s fond. “Five hamsters is a lot of hamsters, Phichit.”
“I know! But you won’t even know they’re here. I’ll keep their cage super clean and they hardly ever make noise when they’re comfortable with a place. The girl at the shelter gave me a cage and some food for them and stuff.” She’d also given him her number, which he’s pretty sure he isn’t going to call. Well. Maybe if he needs some rodent advice.
He holds Butterscotch close to his chest. She’s so warm and alive, and Phichit wishes she was bigger so he could actually give her a real hug. And Butterscotch is gonna have to be her name now, even though he really doesn’t want to name more than one of them after a flavor.
“Okay.” Yuuri prods Peppermint and Reginald aside to make room for himself on the couch. “Introduce me.”