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Lilia's house smelled old. Yuuri didn't know how to describe it: mothballs, tarnish, aging wood. His nose wrinkled as he navigated the path to Yuri’s room, hoping he remembered the maze of narrow halls.
"Yurio!" He called. “It’s time to --"
He had Yuri's jacket in his hand as he opened the door, but the room was empty besides Potya, sitting on the bed next to a pile of Yuri's dirty sweats from practice.
"Yurio?"
Lilia had said Yuri was in his room. The bathroom light was off, the closet open and leaking clothes. Yuuri stepped inside to see into the bathroom proper, just in case, and that's when the pile of laundry on the bed wiggled.
Yuuri yelped, accidentally closing the door behind him as he backed into it. A tiny, fluffy head popped out of the hole in Yuri's pantleg, followed by two and then four paws and finally a whole tumbling ball of fluff. It unfurled into a white-orange kitten with big green eyes.
Yurio got a new kitten? Yuuri's eyes lit up and he went to scoop it into his arms, but Potya gave Yuuri A Look and put her paw on the kitten's head like its guardian protector.
The kitten did not look pleased.
"What's your name?" Yuuri asked the kitten, hunkering down by the bed so he was eye level. "You're so cute."
The kitten walked awkwardly to the edge of the bed, all gangly and long-limbed, but as Yuuri went to catch it before it could fall, he suddenly found himself with an armful of Yuri Plisetsky.
They both screamed.
There was a flurry of action, and at the end of it Yuuri had his back against the door again, hyperventilating, and a very naked Yuri was hiding behind the bed, pointing furiously.
"DON'T TELL ANYONE," Yuri shrieked.
Potya stretched on the bed, walking very calmly to Yuri with a purr.
"Potya! Don't hit my head! You know I don't like that!" Yuri growled at the cat.
It took another second for Yuuri to pick the pieces of his brain off the inside of his skull. "Yuri - you - you were a kitten!? You're a kitten!? You turned into a kitten!"
"I swear to god if you tell anyone --"
Yuuri waved his hands in denial: "No no! No one! -- you were a kitten! What!?"
“Stop freaking out about it, okay!” Yuri yelled.
“I’m not freaking out about it!” Yuuri cried out.
Potya meowed into the ensuing silence.
“It’s just a — a thing, okay?” Yuri said. “I have to be a kitten sometimes.”
“You… have to be?” Yuuri wondered.
“Yeah and I’m running out of time so if you could fucking lea-” Mid-sentence Yuri disappeared. Potya hopped behind the bed and came back holding the little flame-point kitten’s nape in her mouth.
The kitten struggled and squirmed, mewling pitifully until Potya set him down.
Yuuri covered his face in his hands at how adorable it was. He approached the bed more cautiously this time, holding his hand out to Potya for approval before petting Yuri’s head.
The kitten gave a pathetic “myah!” in protest.
“Can I hold you?” Yuuri asked, holding out his hands, but the kitten bat at Yuuri’s fingertips, claws extended. “Ouch! Yurio!”
The kitten almost looked like it was smirking.
“How long do you have to stay like this?” Yuuri asked.
The kitten blinked at him, then dove into the pile of clothes as Lilia knocked on the door.
“What is all this noise, Yuri?” Lilia asked.
“He - uhm! He showed me a funny video!” Yuuri called through the door.
“… are you being indecent,” Lilia asked.
“NO!” Yuuri felt the blood rushing to his face as Lilia jiggled the handle of the door.
“Why is this locked. Yuri!”
Yuri sprouted from the pile of clothes, scrambling to pull on a pair of pants before ripping open the door.
“WE’RE FINE,” Yuri barked. “YUURI WAS JUST LEAVING!” And he shoved Yuuri through the doorway and slammed the door in their faces.
—
“When does it happen?” Yuuri asked. They were at the rink, in the little cafeteria area eating lunch.
Yuri glared at Yuuri over his microwaved meal. Despite his blush, Yuuri only managed to be quiet for all of twenty seconds before he piped again: “Does it hurt?”
Yuri groaned into his borscht. “Of course it doesn’t hurt. Look something happened and now I need to spend, like, eight hours every day as a cat. I can control it unless I go too long being human and then it just… happens.”
“Kitten.”
“What?”
“You weren’t a cat… you were a kitten.”
“Yeah well fuck off!”
“Sorry,” Yuuri said. “So…when do you—”
“If you ask me another fucking question I’m going to —” Yuri stopped mid sentence as Lilia entered the cafeteria. He growled in his throat at Yuuri.
This time, Yuuri lasted almost three minutes before he piped up again: “Okay, but, if it’s that many hours every day, how come it’s never happened at the rink?”
“Because I SLEEP as a cat!” Yurio said. Then he glared into his soup. “It’s the one fucking thing a cat’s good at.”
“Kitten,” Yuuri corrected again.
“I’ll kill you.”
—
As if the world itself was out to spite Yuri Plisetsky, Yuuri walked into the locker room that afternoon, found Yurio’s locker slightly ajar, and peeked in to see a tiny kitten curled up on a stack of smelly socks.
“Yurio?” Yuuri whispered. It was the same flame points, the same heart-stopping size and cuteness.
The kitten blinked, looking absolutely exhausted and confused, but when its eyes found Yuuri it let out a hiss and scooted back in its sock pile, nearly tumbling over.
“What are you doing in here?!” Yuuri asked. “What if someone finds you?!”
Another hiss.
“And what if you change back? You’ll get stuck in the locker, here —” Yuuri reached in and grabbed the kitten, much to Yuri’s absolute dismay.
Yuuri had just lifted Yuri - writhing, biting, clawing - from the locker when he flashed back into human form. He pushed Yuuri away from him, glaring, and grabbed a towel to cover his waist. “What the fuck, Katsudon!”
“What?! What if Georgi had found you? He would have adopted you on the spot and then you’d be stuck pretending to be his kitten until you ran away and broke his heart!”
Yuri opened his mouth to argue, but that’s actually exactly how that scenario would have played out.
“I thought you said you slept at home?! Why are you doing it here!?” Yuuri asked.
“I haven’t been getting enough sleep, okay?!” Yuri huffed. “Eight hours is kind of a luxury!”
Yuuri narrowed his eyes.
“What!?” Yuri scoffed.
“You slept for like 10 hours in Hasetsu,” Yuuri pointed out.
“Yeah… well—” Yuri’s face was turning red. “I’ve been — busy.”
“… busy,” Yuuri repeated, doubtful. “At night?”
Yuri looked flustered. “I have a life, pig!”
“Didn’t Lilia give you a curfew?”
Yuri just glared.
“Are you playing some new game?”
“No.”
“Binging a new TV series?”
“No.”
“… Watching porn?”
“NO! Ugh! I’m talking to people, okay!?”
“You hate people.”
“MOST people.”
They stared at each other, Yuri glaring, Yuuri skeptical. Abruptly, Yuuri’s eyes lit up with epiphany. Before he could thrust his realization in Yuri’s face, Yuri Plisetsky flashed back into a kitten, mewl and all.
Yuuri scooped the kitten up in his arms, holding it before his face so they were eye-to-eye.
“You,” Yuuri declared, words elongated from his bemused smirk, “have been staying up late talking to Otabek. Haven’t you.”
Yuri clawed him across the nose.
—
Carrying a kitten through the rink proved less challenging than Yuuri expected. He’d thrown Yuri’s clothes into his bag, put a bandaid over the scratch on his nose, and then tucked Yuri into his jacket to keep warm. Yuri’s claws dug none too gently into Yuuri’s chest, but through the dense flannel they wound up as neutered pricks.
Outside, the chill of St. Petersburg tried to wedge into Yuuri’s jacket, and even kitten Yuri pushed tight into Yuuri to avoid the knife-like wind.
At home, Yuuri knelt down, letting Vicchan sniff between the unzipped flaps. Vicchan’s tail beat back and forth, whimpering in excitement.
“Wait, wait,” Yuuri commanded. He sat back, like waiting for a treat, until Yuuri reached in and pulled Yuri out. Yuri hissed and waved a claw at Vicchan, and Vicchan whined in overeagerness. He lowered his belly to the floor, making himself as unthreatening as possible, and then even rolled over belly up for the tiny flame-point cat.
“Good Vicchan,” Yuuri smiled. “This is Yuri-kitten. Yuri-kitten is going to stay here and play video games for awhile so he can go home and be Yuri-human for his boyfriend.”
The kitten yowled in protest at the word, thought it came out as only a pitiful squeak.
“Okay, Yuri-human’s wannabe boyfriend.”
The kitten face-planted his head against the carpet. Vicchan’s long lick of consolation gave Yuri a mohawk.
A minute later, Yuuri was on the couch with an animal on either side of him, Vicchan panting mournfully at the separation between him and the kitten he so very desperately wanted to be best friends with. Yuri-kitten watched the TV with wide green eyes, sitting very properly at first until his head started to tip forward.
Yuuri didn’t dare exclaim how cute he was, lest he get another gouge across the face, but he did die several times in a row out of distraction caused by Yuri slowly tipping over onto his side and then waking himself up with the impact. Eventually, even flopping over didn’t disturb Yuri, and he wound up passed out, limbs still extended, against Yuuri’s thigh.
—
“Yurio,” Yuuri whispered, petting the sleeping kitten’s head.
The kitten didn’t wake, but it did start to purr, if the awkward rolling-pebble noise could be a called a purr. Yuuri just barely managed not to squeal. He picked up the sleeping kitten, continuing to pet his rival as he took him to the bathroom and dropped Yuri’s bag of clothes on the floor.
“Yuri-kitten,” Yuuri tried instead. Before he could even set the kitten down, Yuri’s eyes opened and he flashed back into human form.
“Get out!” Yuri said as he collected his bearings, both hands shoving Yuuri out of the bathroom and slamming the door behind him.
“It’s dinnertime soon,” Yuuri said through the wood. “I thought you probably wanted to change back. Did you sleep well?”
“The hell time is it!?”
“Almost seven?”
“SHIT!”
—
“Do you want to play games again?” Yuuri asked at the rink several days later. Yuri Plisetsky could never be considered pleasant, but he was at least far less grumpy than normal since his surprise half-a-night’s-sleep nap on Yuuri’s couch. Yuri ignored him initially, so Yuuri dropped it, but at the end of practice Yuri cut him off on the way to the lockers.
“Witcher,” he said.
“Huh?”
“Play the Witcher today. No more of that Zelda crap.”
“Can you even read the screen?”
Yuri glared at him. “Cats have better fucking eyes than we do, you idiot.”
“Oh,” Yuuri flushed. He could have said aren’t you just going to fall asleep anyway, but he kept that to himself. “See you at three?”
“Whatever,” Yuri growled, but sure enough, at three sharp there was a knock on the door. Almost as soon as Yuuri had let him in, Yuri became a flame point kitten in a pile of angry tiger-print clothes.
—
Yuuri woke up only because of how loudly his stomach was grumbling. His head was pillowed on Vicchan, and it took him a moment to realize that the warmth under his chin was Yuri-kitten all curled up and fast asleep.
In that shape, the kitten fit in Yuuri’s cupped hands. Yuuri carefully untucked him, but as he did the kitten’s eyes blinked open. Unlike normal, Yuri didn’t flash back to his human form. He just lazily butt his head against Yuuri’s chin and then stretched.
He toppled awkwardly over as he hopped from the couch, but Vicchan followed the kitten like an escort until he reached his pile of clothes. When he changed Yuuri looked away, embarrassed that his cheeks were warm.
—
A few days later, Yuuri found himself in the grocery store. He was wearing his winter coat with a tiny kitten hidden invisibly in his hood. The only sign of him was the incessant prick of claws on his neck - left for yes, right for no.
“Broccoli?” No.
“Cabbage?” Yes.
And then a little fuss on the back of his neck as he walked past the fruit strips. Yuuri picked up the box, looking skeptically at the artificially dyed, bright blue sheets of pressed and undoubtedly sugared fruit.
The kittens claws dug into the left side of his neck repeatedly. Yes yes yes!
“You know I could feel it if you just used your paw,” Yuuri grumped.
Full claws: No!
—
When they returned, Yuuri set the kitten on the counter to watch as he made dinner. Yuri flicked his tail side to side, pointing with his claws as if he could conduct Yuuri’s stir fry.
“I’m not adding more soy, it’s salty enough already,” Yuuri said.
“Mya!” the kitten protested.
“Fine,” and he added one last hissing splash. The kitten bobbed its head in approval, but the shift in its center of gravity made it fall over, nearly splashing into the side of borscht.
“Careful!” Yuuri said, scooping up the kitten with one hand and setting Yuri on his shoulder instead. “Stay there, okay?”
He pretended not to notice the way Yuri’s claws kneaded his skin in satisfaction.
Yuri only changed back to his human form when it was time to eat. Afterwards, they sat on the couch, Yuri human for once as he commented lewdly on the game.
“You’re the one who didn’t want to play Zelda,” Yuuri said. Then, with a glance at the clock: “Oh, shouldn’t you be getting back…? Otabek should be up soon, right?”
That made Yuri flush. He ripped the controller out of Yuuri’s hand and kicked back on the couch, ignoring his older rival. “I’ve got some time.”
—
They spent their rest day together, Yuuri cursing his way through Ard Skelling while Yuri-kitten stood in his lap, forepaws braced on Yuuri’s knees as he stared forward in excitement, tail twitching back and forth.
“You’re in my way,” Yuuri said, batting the kittens tail aside, but the next moment it was straight up again. He sighed. When Yuuri had to take a break out of frustration, they just switched to a Twitch stream to watch someone else play Witcher. Yuri curled up in Yuuri’s lap, and for once didn’t hiss or growl when he pet him.
If Yuuri noticed that Yuri spent more than eight hours that day as a kitten, he didn’t say a word.
—
Two months after Yuuri discovered Yuri’s…. situation, Yuri was spending most of his free time at Yuuri’s place. Cooking, games, even just mindless time on their computers; if they weren’t training or hanging out with their rink mates, they were usually together - at least until Yuri’s curfew.
“Your boyfriend’s going to be wondering where you are,” Yuuri said one night, looking down at the kitten in his lap.
Yuri hopped off his lap, turning human again and grabbing the blanket they kept on the couch for just such occasions.
“I told you he’s not my boyfriend,” Yuri said, and for the first time it wasn’t said with any sort of embarrassment or malice. “We’re just friends. Good friends. He’s been helping me a lot.”
Yuuri’s brow furrowed in confusion. “But I thought you were into him… you know, more than that. Late night talks, secret choreography rendezvous..”
“Yeah, well, wrong again pig,” Yuri huffed. His normal prickle melted away as soon as it came. He shrugged. “I’d rather stay here for now, okay?”
Bundled up in the blanket, he looked at Yuuri, daring him to say a single thing as Yuri carefully laid his head in Yuuri’s lap, the same as he always did as a kitten.
With a swallow, Yuuri laid his hand on Yuri’s hair, stroking the strands the same way he always pet Yuri-kitten’s fur.
“Is this okay?” Yuuri whispered, weirdly breathless.
“Yeah,” Yuri grunted. “Yeah, you idiot.”