Chapter Text
Tetsuya anticipates danger in its most brutal form when his eyes trail over long, sharp nails – claws – tapping against wood in slow, precise intervals while the owner intently analyzes Tetsuya like a prey.
Waking up to a stranger in his room, a man donned in a fine yukata and what appears to be a pair of ears and a tail akin to that of a feline’s, Tetsuya convinces himself he must still be dreaming.
So he pinches himself on the arm, and he would have slapped himself in the face too for good measure, but he's already as awake as he can ever be and this is anything but a dream.
The person in front of him – if Tetsuya can even call him as such – is very much real and almost human despite his unusual appearance, but that fact offers no consolation to the situation.
“Who… what are you?” Tetsuya questions, cautious so as not to stir whatever beast might be lurking inside him.
Silence meets the question when the man rises from the desk and faces the bed where Tetsuya is at. His eyes do not wane from Tetsuya’s figure, gaze firm as he observes the slightest of movements with a certain curiosity Tetsuya cannot fully understand.
For a moment, Tetsuya ponders on the best possible escape route, one where he can easily slip past the stranger with minor casualties if he’s quick enough–
“Seijuurou.”
He blinks. “Pardon?”
“Seijuurou, is what I was called.”
“Oh.”
Oh.
When the introduction settles in, and as if being faced with a possible threat to his life offered no physical consequence, Tetsuya scrambles up from the bed and on his bare feet, pajamas wrinkled and hair tousled as he lowers his head with all manners intact to pay his greetings.
“Seijuurou…san,” he offers, the pause that follows hinting to the late realization only fools would make, and as such, he commits to the act. “Pleased to meet you… My name is Kuroko Tetsuya.”
Tetsuya hears no response to that, but he later comes to accept his mistake when the hem of Seijuurou’s garment comes to view. A warm hand grasps at his jaw, carefully drawing his head upwards so that he’s met with striking red and gold.
“Kuroko Tetsuya…” Seijuurou drawls, testing the name on his tongue. From here, Tetsuya feels the tip of those nails grazing at his skin, observes how the pointy ears on Seijuurou’s head twitch in alert. “You are rather polite.” He says this as if he doesn’t believe it, like such a trait can be anything but genuine and true.
Even so, it’s short of mocking, with the way Seijuurou’s forehead creases and he purses his lips in attempt to make sense of how to proceed from here; Tetsuya can tell he looks a little lost, a little unsure – but for what reason, he doesn’t know.
Until something sparks, something of a memory of not long ago.
Soft, red fur stained with blood, eyes that never opened again…
“Oh… Oh, it’s you,” Tetsuya chimes in a second later, surprising even Seijuurou himself. Restrictions and the initial fear aside, he reaches over to cup Seijuurou’s face to scrutinize up-close. “It’s you, isn’t it?” A new light glints in Tetsuya’s eyes with sheer recognition, fondness, and relief – one that Seijuurou has never seen nor felt before. “…The cat I tried to save.”
Seijuurou vividly remembers then; a lone cat who had nowhere to go, having its first taste of freedom only for it to come to an end too soon. The culprit, a speeding van, did not even stop to look at what it had run over and continued on with its merry way.
He remembers watching over his lifeless form, remembers how no one had witnessed nor cared.
Yet a boy, one Seijuurou did not even notice in his state of being, came in to scoop the small corpse in his arms and bring back home to nurse back to health, to life. How foolish, Seijuurou thought at the time, for the breath of life had already been stolen and lost to the cat’s soul, but the boy persevered. Only until the very last second when that flicker of hope had died out, that his acceptance to the loss ended with a burial and a short prayer in his garden.
The wish for the cat to have lived a good life, and that the trip to the afterlife will be safe and well.
“Seijuurou-san?”
Seijuurou watches Tetsuya for a meaningful moment, familiarity flowing through him in turns. His sharp eyes soften with foreign emotion, almost peaceful and warm, when he takes Tetsuya’s hands and brings them down from his face, only so Seijuurou can gracefully drop down on one knee before him.
“…What?” Tetsuya fidgets, but he is kept in place.
“Tetsuya,” Seijuurou speaks, drawing the back of Tetsuya’s wrist to his lips. When he looks up, it is of pure devotion as if he has been born anew. Tetsuya takes it all in with astonishment and confusion. “From this day on, I am yours.”