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When Makoto feels soft pinpricks scratching at his chest, his first thought is that Rin’s gotten into the house somehow and is biting him in retaliation for finishing all his spiced seaweed strips two weeks ago.
It’s an unlikely scenario, probably. That being said, Makoto’s had younger siblings long enough to have finely-honed trouble-detector, so it’s really not very difficult for his eyes to fight off the tug of sleep and pop right open. He lifts his head and chances a look down, fully expecting to see a head of red hair and a trademark Matsuoka scowl. If he’s lucky, he’ll have just enough time to scream for Sousuke to come to his rescue, if he hasn’t already been compromised.
It’s not Rin, thank all things holy. It’s just a cat.
“Morning,” says Sousuke from somewhere above him.
“Morning,” Makoto responds blearily, before realising that there is a tiny bundle of feline perfection making itself at home on his shirt, and promptly makes a noise halfway between squawking bird and dolphin squealing. The kitten, fluffy and black with disproportionately large yellow eyes, jumps slightly at the noise and stares at him.
Sousuke snorts. He’s still outside Makoto’s field of vision, although Makoto would have ignored him in favour of the kitten anyway. “Happy anniversary.”
Slowly, Makoto reaches down to offer a hand to the cat. It sniffs at him, only looking slightly offended when Makoto scratches it softly behind the ear. “You got me a kitty.”
“I did.”
Makoto looks up. “But you don’t even like cats,” he says in awe.
Sousuke pets him on the head, mirroring what Makoto is doing to his anniversary present. “No, but I like you. And you’ve been whining at me for so long I had no choice but to give in.”
Another inhuman noise escapes Makoto’s lips, although this time it’s because he’s touched rather than excited. “Sousuke! She has socks! I can’t get up. Come down here and kiss me.”
His paramour obliges, and he tastes like toothpaste. Makoto keeps his lips shut to spare them both his icky morning breath, but Sousuke doesn’t seem to mind. He nips Makoto’s lower lip playfully, making him grin into their weird upside-down kiss. He’s still half-asleep and cocooned in blankets, and it’s with a soft sigh of contentment that he lets Sousuke pull away. “Maybe you can repay me, since I’m such a thoughtful boyfriend with no ulterior motives whatsoever,” Sousuke says mildly.
It’s a request Makoto’s hard-pressed to deny. Before he can say anything though, they find out the cat has other ideas, because it promptly squeezes its way between them, bats Sousuke away, and curls up on Makoto’s face.
Makoto has to turn his head so he can breathe, but lets out a breathless giggle of excitement nonetheless. It’s purring loud enough that he can feel his cheek vibrate, and it tickles, somewhat. “Sousuke, she loves me.”
“You’re not hard to love,” replies Sousuke, although he prods at the cat maliciously in return for having been interrupted. She opens one eye to glare at him, but otherwise doesn’t move.
“We’re going to need a box for kitty litter,” Makoto starts counting things off his fingers. “A scratching post, some kitty shampoo, a brush, oh, and toys! Maybe one of those cute feathery things on a stick? Or a fake mouse? What do you think, Sousuke?”
“I think you’re going to have to do all of that yourself, because I’ve done my good deed for the year.”
Makoto huffs, albeit fondly. “I suppose it was too much to expect for you to plan your present all the way through.”
Sousuke pinches him. “Hey, I already bought the thing. I had to touch it, and it scratched me.”
“You’re right, I’m sorry,” Makoto grins, catches Sousuke’s hand and kisses it. “I never said thank you. She’s perfect. You’re perfect.”
“That’s more like it,” Sousuke rumbles a laugh, and leans on his elbow so he can kiss Makoto again. “The past few years have been the happiest of my life. I’m glad we met each other again at university, and I wanted to thank you, even if all I could do was get you a cat. You're the best thing that ever happened to me, you know that?”
Makoto can’t remember the last time Sousuke’s declared his affections for him without some sort of teasing lilt or a backhanded compliment tacked on, but the look he's giving him now is all soft blue and affection. The feeling makes Makoto laugh, all the happiness he's accumulated over the years coming at him all at once and making him giddy. He graces Sousuke with his out-and-out warmest smile, the kind that makes his eyes crinkle at the corners, the kind that made Sousuke grab him by the hand in Tokyo and eventually led to coffee and a kiss.
“I love you too,” he says, right before sneezing into his boyfriend’s face.
“We’re giving it back.”
“Never.”
Sousuke sighs. He’s standing in the living room, arms akimbo, staring his boyfriend down. Makoto’s backed against the wall with the kitten clutched protectively to his chest. The cat is kneading at him and meowing for attention, obviously unaware of the trouble it’s caused. Makoto looks ready to bolt around Sousuke and flee into the kitchen, so Sousuke shifts his stance enough that he’ll be ready to intercept. “Makoto, listen to me. The cat has to go back to the pet shop.”
Makoto doesn’t actually wail, but it’s a close thing. “You can’t, I love her! She needs me! Please, Sousuke, I’ve never had a cat before. My mother only ever let me keep goldfish.”
“That’s because she knew you were allergic to fur.”
Everything had been fine, at first. Makoto had been over the moon, and the baby-talk was annoying, but Sousuke soon got used to having scenes from the Lion King reenacted on a daily basis. About a week in, though, Makoto had woken up with his eyes almost swollen shut, and Sousuke had all but screamed in terror. The warm, tight feeling of joy in Makoto’s chest, as it turned out, was actually the warm, tight feeling of a histamine reaction.
The cat had been banned from the bedroom after that, but cat fur had this annoying habit, apparently, of getting absolutely fucking everywhere.
Makoto Tachibana, one hundred and eighty-six centimetres tall, eighty-two kilograms in weight and twenty-four years old, looks like he’s about to cry. Sousuke can’t tell if it’s because he’s upset or because the cat has started working its evil magic on his sinuses for the day. “Sousuke,” he pleads, and the cat, hearing its master’s voice and deciding to pretend for the moment that it cares about his wellbeing, pauses to look at Sousuke with the same wide-eyed desperation that Makoto is giving him.
He doesn’t like cats. He doesn’t. But you’d have to be a monster not to soften in the face of Makoto’s quivering lower lip.
He sighs and lets it go, because there are literally thousands of awful things he’d rather do than make his boyfriend cry, even if it is for his own good. Makoto pounces and throws his arms around him, and it’s worth it, really, even if the hell-cat does sink its claws into his arm.
Two weeks later, he’s starting to regret his complacency.
He’s been slept on, thrown up on, and very nearly peed on. There’s cat hair sticking to everything but the cat, and he’s found hairballs in his shoes more than once. His favourite armchair’s been scratched, his favourite vase had been scratched, his favourite leg has been scratched, even though there’s a great big green scratching post in the middle of the fucking living room. Makoto’s been scratched, too, although he doesn’t seem to mind. Sousuke thinks his nose must have been blocked for so long that he’s starting to face oxygen deprivation, so his madness can be forgiven.
The cat, though.
It’s cute and all, sure, but its eyes gleam in a way that Sousuke thinks is wholly unnatural. He’s started calling it Nospurratu as an insult, although that plan has backfired spectacularly, because Makoto, bless his poor strange heart, thinks it’s funny. If he’s going to be honest, the kitten hasn’t actually done much aside from the usual irritating cat behaviour, but Sousuke still doesn’t trust it. The way it purrs and hops into his lap and weaves itself between his legs when he’s trying to make breakfast is annoying.
The way Makoto consistently ignores him in favour of playing with his kitten is annoying, too, but Sousuke doesn’t plan on admitting that anytime soon.
“I want to go out,” he says experimentally. He’s in his mistreated armchair, and Makoto is sitting on the floor at his feet. The feline abomination is strutting on top of the coffee table, investigating their decorative candles.
“It’s bath day for Nospurratu today, though,” says Makoto, not looking up from where he’s tickling the kitten’s ear. He sounds like his nose is blocked, but then he’s been sounding like that for weeks.
“Bathe her tomorrow. Let’s go on a date. I’ll even buy,” Sousuke offers (quite generously, he thinks).
Makoto turns to pat him on the knee. “Thanks for the offer, but not tonight. We’ll go out soon, okay?”
Sousuke says nothing. Above Makoto’s head, he glares at the cat. Not breaking eye-contact, the kitten reaches over and slowly, deliberately, pushes a candle off the table and onto the floor.
Makoto immediately coos at it and asks if it’s hurt. Only Sousuke sees the look of utter triumph on its face.
It’s with no small amount of satisfaction that he shuts their bedroom door on it for the night. It meows plaintively, and Makoto frets, but Sousuke’s hands soon find their way under Makoto’s v-neck, and whatever noises the cat makes are drowned out in no time at all.
“You don’t like her.”
Sousuke blinks. It’s the middle of the afternoon and he’s on the verge of sleep. They’re curled up on the couch together, Makoto with a laptop on his chest. It’s a tight fit, since neither of them is small, but thankfully the kitten is in the garden this time instead of trying to squeeze herself between them, so Sousuke is free to nap without Makoto sneezing at him every thirty-two seconds.
He glances what Makoto’s researching, which appears to be some new form of child-friendly breaststroke, and yawns. “Who are we talking about?”
Makoto adjusts his glasses and strokes his boyfriend’s hair. “Nospurratu. You don’t like her.”
“I don’t like cats in general,” says Sousuke, settling his head lower on Makoto’s shoulder. “And I don’t like that she’s making you sick.” He neglects to mention that he’s been turning her ears inside out every few days purely out of spite, although he suspects Makoto already knows.
Makoto chuckles softly. “Stop being so over-protective. A stuffy nose is a small price to pay for being able to keep her around. I love her.”
“I know,” says Sousuke good-naturedly. “Sometimes I think you love her more than me.”
“You’re still my favourite, don’t worry.”
“Good to know.”
“Still.” Makoto sighs softly and settles back on the couch, careful not to dislodge the limpet clinging to him. “I can’t be happy if she’s making you unhappy, you know? I mean, I love you for getting me a kitten, but it’s not worth it if you’re miserable.”
Sousuke looks up. Makoto’s watching him with barely-concealed melancholy, obviously searching his face for signs of discontent. He sighs, because as annoying as the cat is, he can’t actually bring himself to hate it, not when Makoto is so obviously enamoured by it.
“I don’t mind, as long as your allergies don’t end up killing you. And pay attention to me too, once in a while,” he adds as an afterthought.
Makoto’s face breaks into a soft smile. “Yes, I have been neglecting you, haven’t I? I’m sorry. If it helps, you’re just as cute as the kitty.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better at all.”
“Would you like the feather toy or the toy mouse?”
Sousuke pinches his stomach. Makoto only grins.
He feels a weight on his leg, and both he and Makoto look down. Nospurratu has hopped onto the couch, holding something suspiciously red in her mouth. She blinks at them slowly, which Sousuke has heard is the cat equivalent of blowing a kiss. He wonders privately if she has sensed his reluctant shift in attitude for the sake of his boyfriend’s happiness.
If he’s going to be honest, having a cat is really not all that bad. Annoying, yes, but not terrible. Makoto is happy, which is the most important thing, and sometimes the kitten does things that are more cute than infuriating. Sometimes Makoto turns to him with this look of utter gratitude, and well, he can hardly grumble in good faith after that. Even if he doesn’t particularly like the little feline Antichrist, he can learn to coexist.
“We’ll call it a truce for now,” he says quietly and fluffs up her fur.
The thing in her mouth turns out to be half of a frog. Sousuke knows this because it is deposited on the front of his plaid shirt with all the love and gentleness of a creature from hell.
“It’s a sign of affection,” Makoto says, and starts backing away. The cat meows, waiting for approval.
Sousuke shuts his eyes and makes a strangled noise. “For fuck’s sake.”
Makoto, damn him, laughs.
Eventually, Sousuke gives up. The asshole cat has wormed its way so deeply into Makoto’s heart that there’s no longer anything that can be done. Unless he wants to completely shatter his boyfriend, there is no choice but to accept the evil, furry creature into his home.
And, well. The cat’s bi-polar tendencies are frustrating, but even though it acts like a complete brat half of the time, there are times when it is genuinely affectionate. Oblivious to Sousuke’s murderous intent, Nospurratu has made it a habit to settle herself onto his stomach when he watches TV after getting home from work. The stress of being a personal trainer, although he hates to admit it, only takes minutes to melt under the catharsis of running his hands through soft fur. Plus, she eats all of his mushrooms, so he doesn’t have to listen to Makoto nag about starving street urchins every time he picks unwanted bits of fungus out of his food.
He’s sitting with the cat one day when Makoto comes in through the front door and announces, somewhat redundantly, that he’s home. Both Sousuke and Nospurratu turn to look at him as he comes into the living room.
“I got you a present,” he says, and Sousuke notes that his hands are behind his back.
Sousuke suppresses a smile at the eagerness with which he is instructed to close his eyes. The warm furry thing is lifted out of his lap with a soft meow of protest. It is quickly replaced with another furry thing that promptly sticks its cold, wet nose into Sousuke’s hand.
He inhales sharply. “Makoto, did you get another cat?”
“Nope,” says Makoto, irritatingly cheerful.
Sousuke opens his eyes and looks down. A pair of round, brown eyes stare back at him expectantly.
“What the heck is this?” he asks.
Makoto laughs. “It’s a puppy!”
Sousuke looks equal parts incredulous and amused. “Are you sure? It looks a lot more like a salami with a face.”
“We call those Dachshunds,” Makoto says, sitting down.
The dog, comically long and very excitable, sniffs at everything within reach, including the cat. Nospurratu presses herself against Makoto’s stomach in alarm.
“It looks ridiculous. Why didn’t you get a big, manly dog? Like a Rottweiler, or a Doberman?”
“I like this one,” says Makoto simply, and Sousuke grudgingly admits that yes, he likes it too.
“What should we call it?”
“I’m thinking Beowoof,” says Makoto, completely seriously. “You named the cat. Now it’s my turn.”
Sousuke shrugs. Beowoof is a stupid-sounding name, but this is a stupid-looking dog, so he supposes it’s alright. The kitten, surprisingly, begins to bat at it playfully, and the dog barks shrilly in response.
“Do you like him?” Makoto asks, with an undercurrent of worry. “I thought it would be nice if you got your own pet too, since you don’t like the kitten that much.”
Sousuke doesn’t tell him that he’s starting to like the kitten just fine, but kisses him on the cheek anyway. “I love him,” he says honestly. “Even if he’s probably going to pee everywhere and bite all our shoes. You didn’t have to, though.”
“I never did get you an anniversary present,” Makoto shrugs and grins.
Sousuke kisses him again, this time on the lips. “Thank you,” he says, and finds that he means it.
The puppy chews on his fingers, and the cat starts scratching at him through his jeans, but Makoto’s leaning his head on his shoulder so he lets it slide. It’s weird, but he feels like they’ve got a family of their own. It’s a nice thing to come home to, even if his kids are a demonic cat and what looks like a terminally excitable dog.
He shuts his eyes and sighs, content despite the knowledge that he’s going to be cleaning up after two annoying animals from now on.
(Two days later, though, the puppy throws up on Makoto, and this time it’s Sousuke’s turn to laugh.)