Chapter Text
The bartender at Sylvain’s usual haunt down the street must know him by now – or, more accurately, know of him. Enough women (and some men, for that matter) have shown up there alone and left alone, running up Sylvain’s tab with a couple hundred dollars’ worth of drinks in the meantime. Maybe sometimes Sylvain shows up – and gets a face-full of fruity, sticky alcohol; or some choice words that would sting if he hadn’t heard them a million times before. You’re pathetic; you’re such a child; are you so insecure you need constant attention? Sylvain just nods, unbuttons his soaking wet shirt, and tries to ignore the eerie green, impassive eyes of the bartender.
And, as soon as he leaves, Sylvain texts Ingrid.
“Make me do this one more time and we’re not friends anymore.”
There are some universal constants. “Where have I heard that before?”
Ingrid scoffs, shoving a plastic bag into Sylvain’s arms. Tonight’s unwitting victim is a girl from work – from Ingrid’s department, in fact – and so she has the unenviable task of picking up all the items Sylvain’s left at the girl’s apartment.
Sylvain shakes the bag in his hand. Just a toothbrush and some boxers. The bag gets lighter every time he does this.
Ingrid wipes a hand down her face. “Honestly, Sylvain…”
“I know, I know.”
“No, you don’t know,” she snaps. And, just as quickly, softens. She’s been giving him this lecture since they were teens. “Next time, you’re on your own. Call literally anyone else.”
Anyone else, huh. There’s Ingrid, Dimitri, and – well, that’s it. He hadn’t realized the list had been whittled down so much.
Sylvain gives Ingrid a wobbly smile, “Gotcha.”
He makes busy with his keys, and Ingrid sighs in the way she always does. And just when he’s sure she’s about to start off another lecture—
“Meow!”
“… Say that again?”
Ingrid’s face goes pink. “You have a visitor, I think.”
Coming around the corner of Sylvain’s porch is a pair of orange eyes stinging through the darkness. And slowly, as it emerges from the shadows, the shape of a small cat.
“Oh!” Sylvain crouches down instantly. “Reminds me of how many cats were on campus – come on, come here little one!” The cat (and Ingrid) looks unimpressed, but it makes a tentative way over anyway, leaving small paw prints in the dust on Sylvain’s deck.
“Hey cutie!” Maybe Sylvain really does need glasses, because up close the cat is nothing but scraggly, battle-worn, with thin pink scratches running down his torso, patches of fur missing on his back. But he’s still cute, in the way all cats are, with a per pink nose, cold and wet when it presses against Sylvain’s outstretched hand, and those honey-orange eyes that watch him warily. Sylvain coos and scratches under the cat’s chin softly. And, finally, the cat presses his face against the soft jut of Sylvain’s palm, closing his eyes, nuzzling softly. Trusting.
“Needs a bath,” Ingrid says, flatly. And Sylvain decides – well, he has a bathtub. And a devastatingly cavernous, lonely house. And no roommates to speak of.
Maybe it’s time he got a cat.
+
Sylvain buys a house because – well, what else is there to do with a massive inheritance? He tries at first to contact his MIA brother (no success), buys a lot of ostentatious presents for his fling of the moment (which works, until it doesn’t), and finally decides to pay in cash for a sizeable house just outside of town.
To call it lonely – it’s a bit of an understatement.
Ingrid watches the cat while Sylvain takes a trip to the local pet store for supplies. It’s ten minutes from closing, but the freckled boy behind the register isn’t immune to a wink and a pout, and Sylvain makes quick work of grabbing a litter box, food, cat shampoo, and some treats.
“You sure this isn’t, like, a quarter-life crisis thing?” Ingrid and the cat have apparently reached a truce in his absence, with her sitting on the loveseat scrolling through her phone while the black cat walks back and forth across the cushions, like a tiny, watchful sentinel.
“Not totally sure it isn’t.” Sylvain shrugs, scratching under the cat’s chin. “Do you think I should name him?”
Ingrid scoffs out a good luck and takes her leave (with a small hug on her way out, because she’s always soft for Sylvain in the end). Sylvain scoops up the cat with one hand, ignoring the way he starts to squirm and hiss.
“Geez, you were so happy a minute ago!” He makes it to the bathroom and half-throws the cat into the tub – he lands on its feet and hisses loudly at Sylvain, ears folded back, tail puffed up to at least three times its size. “Do you want to be nasty and dirty, is that it?”
The cat might be… actually listening to him, Sylvain thinks in a dizzy, ridiculous moment. Because the second after Sylvain speaks, the tiny animal actually pauses, looks up at him with those orange eyes, and then sits down in the tub, nose turned up toward the ceiling. Ah, so he has an attitude, too. Fabulous.
Sylvain’s never shampooed a cat before, but YouTube exists, and he gets the little cat lathered up and washed easily enough. He coos and soothes his new friend through it, and only gets maybe a dozen scratches up and down his forearms. That’s a win, right?
“What should I name you, little guy?” Sylvain gets the cat relatively dry with a towel, propping him in his lap and shimmying the towel around him. He’s not purring, but the cat looks pretty pleased, eyes closed, tail swishing happily. “How about… Salem? Since you’re a black cat.”
The cat’s claws dig into Sylvain’s thigh – just for a second. Okay, so a no.
Actually, now that Sylvain looks closer, the cat’s fur is less black than it is a kind of dark blue. Maybe a Russian blue, or some kind of cross-breed. “Maybe a Russian name,” Sylvain pats the cat’s head absentmindedly. “I could name you after Dimitri, but he’s more of a dog per—fuck, okay—” the cat scratches four neat pink lines down Sylvain’s thigh. “Fine, fine, no Russian names.”
Sylvain’s never had a cat before. He’s not sure if he’s crazy to think that it feels like this thing can really hear him, can understand him. He goes through all the things he purchased, setting out the litter box in the bathroom – “You know how to use this, right?” he asks the cat, and gets what he swears is an eyeroll in return – putting food in the bowl, and grabbing some treats.
“Here, since you were so good,” Sylvain shakes the treats in his palm, watching the cat’s eyes go large, tail flicking back and forth furiously. He flicks the treats to the other end of the bed and the cat goes bounding after them, munching down eagerly. Sylvain smiles and – huh. Maybe it is nice not to be alone in this empty house for once.
The cat follows Sylvain as he goes through his nightly routine, pausing only as Sylvain climbs into bed. “What? You wanna cuddle, little guy?”
No response. Well, what did you expect? It is a cat, after all.
But as Sylvain turns off his lamp slips into sleep, he does feel a tiny weight on the bed, and padded feet press softly against his stomach. And, if he listens very hard, a purr.
+
Having a cat isn’t all that hard, Sylvain decides.
It’s not like he has any experience. His parents never allowed animals in the house, his mother’s nose wrinkling at just the thought of the mess and the dirt, his father just bemoaning the waste of money. Always penny-pincher when it came to anything Sylvain (or Miklan, for that matter) actually wanted.
(Wasting money on lavish shit to project to everyone else just how successful and happy they were, now that was another story.)
The year before they move him into private school, Sylvain’s 5th grade class has a pet hamster. They’re tinier than Sylvain ever thought possible, just a little chittering ball of fur. His classmates take turns taking the hamster – Freddy, he’s called – home for the weekend, a little lesson in responsibility and the weight of caring for another living thing. But Sylvain never does, is never allowed, no matter how he begs and pleads with his parents. He resents them, sure, but he starts to resent his classmates too, their cheerful faces when they return on Monday mornings with the wired cage held high, all proud, toothy smiles. He starts to resent Freddy, running happily in his cage, none the wiser.
Sylvain, it turns out, doesn’t much like to share.
The Cat – so called because none of the names Sylvain suggests ever seem to fit – is a strange companion. He takes to waking Sylvain up every morning with plaintive meows, padding at his chest with those tiny paws until Sylvain finally relents and drags himself out of bed. The cat stops and turns back every few feet, just to make sure Sylvain is still following him into the kitchen. (He always is.)
“You actually like attention, huh?” Sylvain asks the cat one day, thinking, for whatever reason, that he’s going to get a response.
But his assessment isn’t necessarily true; the cat likes attention from Sylvain, and will meow and scratch and beg to get it. He always seems angry when Sylvain returns from a long day at work, meowing at him like he’s delivering a tiny lecture. How could you go away for so long? Sylvain imagines the cat saying.
But whenever Ingrid visits, the cat is cool and distant. Never mind Dimitri, whose mild allergies already have him primed to be fearful of cats. Sylvain’s cat can apparently sense his weakness, and plants himself squarely on Dimitri’s jacket where it’s been laid out on over the arm of the couch. He curls up like a little furry football and hisses furiously at Dimitri when he attempts to edge the jacket out from under him.
“I’ll… dry clean it for you,” Sylvain says, giving Dimitri his most apologetic look.
His old friend is grave as usual, even with pink-rimmed eyes. “I think that might be best.”
Still, Sylvain’s not sure it’s unusual for a cat to only like its owner. They’re territorial things, aren’t they?
The thing is, it’s starting to have an adverse effect on his dating life.
Sylvain’s post-date routine already feels a bit strange now, with that pair of orange eyes judging him as he brings home his flavor of the week, stumbling around the apartment, swinging a bottle of wine and waxing poetic about What’s Her Name’s eyes and the stars and a litany of other well-practiced lines.
It's easy to act like a piece of shit when no one’s watching. It’s another matter entirely with a tiny creature watching you with singular focus.
And then there’s this: Sylvain is convinced the cat is purposefully sabotaging his dates. He throws up on one girl’s shoes; scratches up another guy’s leg; plants himself firmly in the center of Sylvain’s bed and refuses to leave. And Sylvain, never one to take the road least traveled by, starts… just giving up on taking dates home.
“You’re saying all I had to do to get you to stop fucking around all these years was to get you a cat?” Ingrid asks when Sylvain tells her this, and he knows she’s only half-joking.
It’s fine. Maybe this is all the company Sylvain needs: a tiny, purring creature curled in his lap. This cat might very well be too smart for his own good. And despite that, he actually seems to like Sylvain.
“You’re cute but evil,” Sylvain mumbles, rubbing the soft fur of the cat’s belly. He’s all black-blue, save for one small spot at the bottom of his torso, a little white spot in the shape of a heart. Sylvain tickles the spot with his finger and the cat chirps happily, tail flicking against Sylvain’s leg. “No excuse huh?”
The cat’s eyes squeeze open, and he looks up at Sylvain curiously. Then – one small, slow blink. No excuses at all, apparently.
Sylvain’s phone lights up to his right. Another 2AM booty call, probably, and ordinarily he’d be snapping at the chance to escape his own body, focus on someone other than himself and this hollow, empty house.
“What do you think, little guy?” Sylvain mumbles, scratching that tiny mark again. “Should I answer? Or are you gonna keep me company?”
The cat starts purring a little louder. And Sylvain lets call go unanswered.
+
Over the years, Sylvain wakes up in numerous compromising situations. Drunk in a ditch? Sure. Next to a naked supermodel? Definitely. Under his own desk, covered in liquids indescribable? Unfortunately.
This, he thinks, might rank very high on the list of strange ways he’s woken up. This being blinking awake to a face-full of dark fur and the feeling of another body breathing softly on top of his own. Which might not have been that strange, if he didn’t know for a fact that he fell asleep very much alone.
Wait. Except—
The body on top of him shifts, and Sylvain freezes as a face comes into view. It’s… a cute guy. His eyebrows are furrowed, long black lashes dusting the tops of high, angular cheekbones. He’s got cat ears, and a small pink mouth parted in a subconscious sigh.
Ha ha, okay. Rewind that.
He’s got cat ears. Maybe Sylvain’s manifested an attractive sleep paralysis demon – but the ears themselves are twitching now, like the guy can hear Sylvain thinking very loudly against him.
Or—okay, this is clearly a dream. A weird dream, maybe brought on by how little Sylvain’s gotten laid lately and how much time he seems to be spending with his new cat. Clearly, the two are mixing in his mind, resulting in whatever the hell this is.
And so, Sylvain settles back against his pillow and lets himself enjoy the feeling of warm skin on his own, the small rise and fall of the other man’s body as he breathes. His ears are twitching, probably subconsciously, and when Sylvain reaches out pet at them, they’re velvet-soft under his fingers. He strokes the ears for another minute, before moving down, running his palm across the man’s upper back, feeling the warm, sleep-soft skin.
This is a very realistic dream. And Sylvain’s morning wood is responding in kind.
Still, dream or no, Sylvain takes his time with tentative, barely there-touches that have the man squirming slightly against him. His eyes are still squeezed shut, but he’s mumbling in his sleep, little noises that make Sylvain’s lip curl up in triumph.
And, of course, to match the ears, he has a tail. Of fucking course. Sylvain’s fingers stutter at the spot where it comes out of the man’s lower back, the strangeness of it sending a chill down his spine. His own cat always likes having his tail stroked – Sylvain learned this the very first week he had him. So, maybe this cat boy too—
“Oh,” Sylvain’s looks down and sees a pair of orange eyes looking down at him. “Good morning.”
Sylvain doesn’t feel himself being thrown from the bed. All he knows is that he is, and lands unceremoniously on his ass as the man scrambles and hisses and shoves at him.
“The fuck—” Sylvain creaks to his feet (fuck, he has to listen to Dimitri and start going to the gym more) and retreats to the foot of the bed, holing his hands in front of him, a proclamation of innocence. “W-We’re okay, you’re okay, alright?”
Sylvain’s can feel the bruise forming on his hip. It hurts way too much to be a dream – and that hits him in a wave of delirious lucidity. This is fucking real. There’s a man in Sylvain’s bed who was definitely not there when he fell asleep. And he looks a bit too much like the cat that was there and is now conspicuously missing: his hair is the same color, a dark blue-black. Those amber eyes are the same shade too, an eerie orange burned into Sylvain’s memory.
Now, those eyes dart around the room, and the man’s chest is heaving with panicky breaths. And if Sylvain were a stronger man, maybe his eyes wouldn’t gravitate instantly to the other man’s naked body. He’s lithe and compact, with broad shoulders that taper to a small waist; the muscled flat of his stomach is dusted with a trail of dark blue-black hair that leads to the nest of pubic hair. And Sylvain has had models and business women and all manner of catches decorate his bedroom, but there’s something about this guy – rumpled and bewildered, legs akimbo in Sylvain’s finely-threaded white sheets – that has Sylvain’s mouth watering.
Maybe it’s the fucking cat ears. And the fucking cat tail.
Finally, the man speaks, and his voice is deeper than Sylvain expects, a low tenor with the vibration of nerves right beneath the surface. “What the fuck.”
“Oh, cool, you can talk!” Sylvain is babbling already – a wonderful start. “Is this—are you good? Are you usually a cat or—”
The man – the cat? – actually hisses, ears flattening back against his skull, and Sylvain catches sight of the sharp teeth behind his lips. “Shut up, shut up! I don’t know, I’m—I’m—”
“Hey, no problem, no worries.” Sylvain steps forward, hand reaching out instinctively to stroke the man’s arm soothingly. But he pulls back at the last second – cats don’t like be touched, right? “I get it. Fucking weird, we’ll figure this out together, okay?”
(Sylvain always was the cool head among his friend group, ironically enough. Spend enough time putting out little fires and you start carrying a hose in your back pocket.)
The man whines, a soft sound that stings Sylvain’s heart, and his panic is evident when he mumbles out, “Just—stop talking. Shut up for a second.”
“Okay, I’ll shut up,” Sylvain says, not shutting up. “Shutting up now.”
The man’s eyes flare, pupils going thin, and his ears flatten back against his head further, if that were even possible. “Are you fucking useless—will you at least get me some clothes or something?”
The words don’t quite reach Sylvain’s ears, or his brain, or his dick for that matter, which is still taking an inappropriate interest in the way the stranger’s lean, muscled legs curve; how his tail curls around his thigh, puffed up from the shock.
His fucking tail.
“Hello?” The guy’s voice is bordering on hysterical, and he chucks one of Sylvain’s (many) throw pillows. It hits Sylvain in the face with shocking accuracy and a deceptively gentle poff! “And if you don’t get dressed too I will claw your dick off.”
“Right. Clothes. Got it.” Sylvain scrambles toward his dresser tossing the first pair of sweatpants he grabs and an oversized t-shirt toward the bed. There’s some discontented grumbling and even another distinctively cat-like hiss as the stranger shucks them on.
Deep breaths, deep breaths. What was that thing Ingrid’s yoga teacher said again? Useless, useless, everything is spilling out of Sylvain’s brain like a sieve. He and Ingrid had only gone to that yoga class because she had a crush on the instructor, there was no chance he retained anything.
He busies himself pulling on some clothes of his own, suddenly a bit too cognizant of his half-chub swaying against his thigh. Goddess, no wonder that guy looked so freaked out.
“Um, so,” Sylvain turns around tentatively, wincing preemptively. “Do you have a name?”
Turning around, as it turns out, is a mistake. Because the second he does, Sylvain is blinded by the image of the man positively swimming in Sylvain’s clothes. He’s standing at the foot of the bed, and Sylvain’s shirt reaches down to his upper thigh. The back of it is lifted up slightly by his tail, and Sylvain can still make out the small curve of his ass.
“No pants?” Sylvan squeaks out.
And, just before the man hisses at him again, and tosses another ornamental pillow at his face, Sylvain is pretty sure he hears the guy introduce himself. Felix. Sylvain turns the name over in his mind a few times. Felix. Felix. Felix.
It feels just a shade familiar.
+
Sylvain leaves Felix to make himself presentable and busies himself pacing around the kitchen. He’s in the middle of making a batch of far-too-potent coffee when Felix tiptoes out, still messing with the elastic of the sweatpants, tying them to keep them from falling down.
“You hungry?” Sylvain looks over his shoulder. “You want your wet food or are eggs okay?”
The murderous look on Felix’s face makes Sylvain think – Okay, eggs. Eggs are probably good.
“I’m Sylvain, by the way.”
“I know,” Felix deadpans. “You know I’ve been living in your house for months now.”
Oh. Right. Still, it’s hard to differentiate the actual cat he took into his home from the man sitting at his kitchen table like there’s nothing amiss.
“Have you—” Sylvain starts and stops his thought because, well, where the hell to start? Why were you a cat? Why are you a human now? Do you remember anything? What’s it like being a cat? Sorry for jacking off that one time when you were in the room?
Sylvain settles on, “What’s it like using a litter box?”
Wrong question, if the way Felix’s face goes nearly purple is anything to go by. He stands up roughly enough to have the whole table rattling, and he makes it halfway to back to the bedroom before Sylvain catches him, hand closing around his wrist.
“This was a fucking mistake, I—”
“Wait, wait, wait!” Sylvain tugs on Felix’s arm gently, brows furrowing. “What do you mean mistake? Did you—” and Sylvain feels like a crazy man for even asking this, but, “Did you do something to become human?”
‘No. Yes? I don’t know, I—” Felix makes a frustrated noise, pulling his arm free. “I don’t know what I was thinking.” And, seeing Sylvain still looking at him, waiting for answers, he shuffles back toward the kitchen, offering, “I think I was human before.”
“Guess that explains why you know how to speak.”
“Ha ha,” Felix rolls his eyes, and crosses his arms across his chest, almost holding himself in the approximation of a hug. “I don’t know. I don’t remember much of anything before you found me, but… this body feels familiar.”
Okay, well, that answers a few questions. Sylvain can’t help but feel bad for the guy – he looks a little lonely, a little small sitting at Sylvain’s kitchen table with his ears pressed back and his face pulled into a frown. It must be disorienting suddenly being human again, and Sylvain has intimate knowledge on how miserable the whole enterprise of humanity is. Maybe he could—
“Sylvain. The eggs are burning.”
Ah. Sylvain turns back to the stove, and the fluffy, yellow eggs have gone black and brown. An acrid smoke is rising from the pan. Those were the last eggs he had. Fantastic.
“How about… we go out for breakfast?”
Out turns out to be going to Ingrid’s apartment, because for one delirious second, Sylvain forgets Felix’s actual cat ears and cat tail, and how both would definitely raise eyebrows if they went out to a diner at 8 o’clock in the morning on a Thursday. For now, he grabs one of his largest sweatshirts from his closet for Felix, pulling the hood up to hide his ears.
“Should I, uh,” Sylvain regards Felix’s tail. This could be an issue. “What about—”
“Hey!” Felix squirms away when Sylvain lays a hand on his waist. “What the hell are you doing?”
“C’mon.” It’s Sylvain’s turn to roll his eyes. “Unless you want to field a lot of questions, I need to hide your tail. I’m just gonna tuck it up into the sweatshirt for now, okay?”
Felix looks dubious, but after a second, he gives Sylvain a small nod, and stays still as Sylvain steadies himself with a hand on Felix’s hip, lifting the sweatshirt to tuck the tail up, hiding it in the bulk of fabric. He can’t help sneaking in a small stroke, feeling the soft fur under his palm. It feels just like the cat’s fur – and that more than anything convinces Sylvain this is all real.
“There.” Sylvain pulls away, holding his hands up just before he can get clawed to death. “Just like magic!”
Sylvain shoots Ingrid a text to warn her he’s on his way, and prays she actually reads it before they arrive. The ride itself is quick. Sylvain will never admit it, but one of the reasons he chose the neighborhood he did was that it was close to Ingrid’s apartment. I’ll be close to clean up your messes, Ingrid tells him when he delivers the good news. He laughs, but it’s the truth. Ingrid – along with Dimitri – has been Sylvain’s rock since they were kids, a steady presence when everything in his life was disintegrating beneath his feet.
Still. Showing up to her apartment with a cat-turned-human in tow might be the strangest problem he’s ever brought to her door.
“Sylvain—” Ingrid must have read his text, because she’s already grumbling when she opens the door. There’s a pillow line across her face and her tank top strap is falling down. They definitely woke her up. “Can you schedule your nonsense to fall on a day that is not my day off, because—”
She trails off, looking at Felix. Sylvain follows her eye line, and sees that Felix has pulled his hood down.
“I thought you told her,” he says, shrugging.
“What the fuck, Sylvain.” Not the first time Ingrid’s said it, but certainly one of the most impactful. Top ten at least, Sylvain thinks.
“This is my new friend Felix,” Sylvain explains, shuffling Felix into the apartment and slamming the door behind them. “He’s super into anime, loves cosplay. That’s why he has cat ears on, no other reason.”
“Sylvain,” Ingrid’s mouth drops open, and she drags her hands down her face. “Sylvain, what the fuck?!”
When she’s mad at Sylvain, Ingrid is like a tidal wave – ruinous, impossible to escape, almost certainly deadly. But introduce another person into the mix? That’s like a safe, dry rooftop in the middle of the devastation. Ingrid is nothing if not a gracious host.
“Do you want some water?” She asks Felix, teeth gritted.
“Maybe some milk,” Sylvain jokes, and that earns him a sharp elbow to the ribs.
“Water would be nice,” Felix says, and Sylvain remembers now that Ingrid was one of the few visitors that Felix would actually tolerate. Some kind of mutual respect, maybe. He watches her head to the kitchen, and turns to Sylvain. “Go get me some clothes.” And, seeing Sylvain’s confused expression, clarifies, “Some clothes that actually fit me. I’ll explain… whatever. I’ll explain this to her while you’re out.”
An hour later, Sylvain returns to Ingrid’s apartment with a couple bags full of athleisurewear charged to his credit card, and this time he uses his spare key to enter the apartment.
Ingrid and Felix are… getting along? Felix is trying on one of her old binders, and tosses a pillow from the couch at Sylvain when he walks in unannounced, before pulling the oversized sweatshirt back on. He looks more comfortable, at least. And Ingrid looks like she’s had at least two cups of coffee. Which is to say, looking more human than when he left.
“Can I have breakfast now?” Sylvain whines, dropping the bags on the couch.
“Omelets,” Felix says, with no further explanation, before snatching one of the bags and absconding to the bathroom to change. Ingrid grabs the griddle.
“You guys hit it off?” Sylvain asks, grabbing himself a glass of water.
Ingrid shrugs. “He’s a good guy. This whole situation is… weird, to say the least. But… I don’t know.”
“Not like I can just abandon him now.”
“Yeah,” Ingrid smiles, and there’s a soft expression in her eyes Sylvain can’t place. What exactly did Felix tell her? “Besides, you need a roommate.”
Felix returns from the bathroom with his hair tied up in a loose bun and a new pair of leggings on. Except – he’s still wearing Sylvain’s sweatshirt. It’s an old, Garreg Mach University one, the logo faded from years of wear. Sylvain wrinkles his nose, “You don’t need to keep that old thing on.”
“I want to,” Felix grumbles, hunching his shoulders up toward his ears, chin tucked down until his nose is buried in the hem of the hood. He looks almost sheepish, even with sharp lines of annoyance drawn on his face.
It’s a struggle for Sylvain to tamp down the giddy laugh in his throat when he remembers – cats are sensitive to smell. And for Felix, being thrown into a completely unfamiliar situation, and then taken out to an unfamiliar place, the recognizable smell of Sylvain’s sweatshirt must be comforting. It must smell, to Felix, like home.
Fuck. Sylvain’s in trouble.
“Okay, okay,” Sylvain wipes a hand down his face to hide his goofy smile. “So, omelets, right?”
“I hope you at least texted Dimitri before ditching work,” Ingrid deadpans as she prepares their breakfast. She puts Sylvain on duty cutting some fruit, while Felix sits hunched up at the counter, eyeing Sylvain’s glass of water near the edge with just a bit too much concentration.
Sylvain makes an offended noise. “Of course I did! Big guy would be bothering me nonstop anyway, if I didn’t.”
“He worries,” Ingrid explains to Felix, voice lowering to a conspiratorial whisper.
It’s strange, how time can arrange and rearrange things. Not too long ago, Dimitri was the one they were all worried about. His parents’ death seemed to rip something loose in his mind, a kind of grief that refused to be comprehended. His father’s company – his legacy – nearly tanked because of internal power struggles, all while Dimitri put on a happy face through high school and college that rapidly splintered. It was years of long nights and arguments before they could help Dimitri piece himself back together.
But now – it’s Dimitri who worries about Sylvain. Worries about his massive, empty house, the stream of faces coming and going, the way his smile seems to fall the second anyone is out of view.
Funny, that.
“What do you do?” Felix asks. “For work?”
“Blaiddyd Enterprises,” Ingrid says, as if that clarifies. “If you remember Dimitri, his dad founded it. Although, by the time Dimitri took over, they were almost bankrupt.”
“Worked his magic.”
Seeing Felix’s enduring confusion, Ingrid clarifies. “It’s a big tech company.”
“Ethical tech company,” Sylvain corrects.
Felix snorts. “Sounds like an oxymoron.”
“Wow, so you were, like, actually watching all those times I left the news on the TV when I went to work?”
(Felix does not dignify that with an answer.)
Ingrid’s omelets are burnt, but Felix looks nonplussed, scarfing it down like—well, an animal. Sylvain watches with perverse curiosity before Felix swats at him.
“I like him,” Ingrid announces, around a mouthful of food. “He doesn’t tolerate your bullshit either.”
All told, it’s remarkably easy to fold Felix into their usual back-and-forth, even if the last time Sylvain and Ingrid hung out, Felix was literally sitting in Sylvain’s lap. (Not that Sylvain would necessarily mind if Felix wanted to do that again.) If Felix is uncomfortable, he doesn’t show it beyond the way he sometimes hunches further into Sylvain’s sweatshirt, just a pair of orange eyes peering out over dark blue fabric.
“Shit, Sylvain,” Ingrid is swiping at her phone with an annoyed look. “Check your texts, the Sreng guy showed up early.”
“You’re kidding,” Sylvain digs for his phone and, sure enough, there’s three missed calls and an extremely polite and apoplectic string of texts from Dimitri, alerting him that the Financial Officer from Sreng has arrived a day early, and wants to get their meeting over with today. Sylvain groans; this Sreng deal has been a thorn in his ass for over a year now, and ordinarily he’d feel comfortable handing it off to Dimitri – if he wasn’t already booked with representatives from Adrestia Solutions all day.
“Okay,” Felix announces. “So, we’re going to work.”
Sylvain laughs, “Ingrid and I are going to work, you’re going to stay here.”
“C’mon, Sylvain,” Ingrid says, and Felix is already starting to pout, and it’s less cute than it is kind of scary, honestly. “Annie can keep him entertained. Plus, I’m not leaving a cat in my apartment all day.”
“I’m not a—”
Sylvain assesses the situation. It’s not that weird to bring Felix into the office, right? It’s just a few hours at most that he and Ingrid will be in the meeting – the Sreng representatives are nothing if not curt. And it seems wrong, now, to leave Felix cooped up in the house.
Besides, when Sylvain looks over at Felix, he looks – kinda, sorta, just a little bit – excited at the idea of going out.
What could go wrong?
+
Blaiddyd Enterprises occupies an entire floor of one of the skyrises downtown, and it’s only by the grace of the Goddess (and Sylvain and Ingrid’s high ranks within the company) that they’re able to get Felix into the building without any eyebrows raising.
They settle on bobby-pinning a beanie to Felix’s head to hide his ears, and Ingrid delicately tucks his tail into a pair of drop-crotch pants. Altogether, Felix looks a bit like a break-dancer. Or maybe someone’s disaffected nephew. Six of one.
Ingrid gets the conference room set up while Sylvain picks out a busines-meeting-appropriate outfit from what Ingrid once called his Whore Closet. Personally, Sylvain thinks it’s a practical matter to have a selection of clothes in the office, in case he spills coffee on himself, or rips a seam – or spends the night with a sales representative and needs to look presentable the next day. Sylvain never has claimed to be a perfect man.
“Colors are weird,” Felix says, watching Sylvain consider two nearly-identical ties.
“That’s right!” Sylvain decides on the tastefully checkered teal. “Aren’t cats color-blind or something?”
“Uh, maybe?” Felix frowns. “Everything is a little different. Even time.” He pauses, opening and closing his mouth like he’s trying to figure out how to explain. “When you would leave for work, it would feel like forever. But time moves… faster, almost, as a human.”
Sylvain bats his eyelashes. “Is this your way of telling me you would miss me when I was gone?”
“I missed having someone around to feed me.”
“I’ll take it.” Sylvain shucks off his shirt. “So, did you want to watch me change, or?”
Felix makes his swift exit. When Sylvain emerges, he’s already chatting with Annette, Dimitri’s perpetually-harried assistant. With Dimitri in meetings all day, she has time to keep my new roommate, as Sylvain explains, occupied while Ingrid and Sylvain deal with Sreng.
“Behave,” Sylvain tosses a wink at them, and the way Felix’s ears go furiously red will definitely get him through the next few hours of torturous meetings.
+
It goes well. Too well, if Sylvain had to say. Ingrid dazzles the Sreng representative, and Sylvain goes in for the kill, sliding the contract across the table with his winningest grin. The man doesn’t smile, but he does gently place the contract into his briefcase. It’s not a no.
It goes well, which is why Sylvain should not be surprised when he comes out of the conference room to see the world dealing him a new punch to the gut in the form of Felix, cat ears out, with Annette stroking them lovingly.
“Oh, Sylvain!” Annette waves him over, and Sylvain creeps close with eyes wide. Felix can’t be that stupid, can he? “Feel these weird hair clip things, they feel super real!”
“Hair… clips…” Sylvain says slowly, at the same time Felix says, “Sylvain doesn’t get to touch them.”
Annette giggles furiously. What the fuck is going on? “Sylvain, tell him to let me try them on.”
“They won’t match your hair,” Felix announces, pulling his hood up. Annette protests, calling him a horrible, mean man, and there’s a bit of a smile playing at Felix’s lips. Again – what is happening?
The phone rings, and Annette excuses herself, putting on her perfect customer service voice to ask Blaiddyd Enterprises, office of the President, how can I help you? And Sylvain uses the conveniently-timed excuse to grip Felix by the arm and hiss, “What the fuck, man?”
“What?” Felix grumbles. “I hate wearing the hat, it’s itchy.”
“So—hair clips?”
Now, at least, Felix has the wherewithal to look embarrassed. “I made something up, she bought it, end of.”
Sylvain drums his fingers against Felix’s arm, and if Felix sees him pouting, so be it. “Why does she get to touch them?”
“That’s what you’re mad about?”
“I’m not mad, just—”
“Okay, sorry about that!” Annette turns back and in a split second, Sylvain and Felix have separated. Play it cool. Play it cool and we can walk out of here and go home. “Where did you two meet, by the way?”
“Online,” Sylvain says, at the same time Felix says, “Alley.” It’s lucky that Annette is already predisposed to find Sylvain strange and amusing; she just giggles helplessly, laugh ringing like a bell around the sparsely-populated office.
“By the way, Annie, where is everyone?”
“Ohh,” Annette presses a pen to her lips. “It’s kind of a long story. But if you remember Adrestia’s CFO, Mr. Vestra? Well, half the office is freaked out by him so they all took lunch to avoid seeing him.”
To which Felix says, “That’s not a long story at all.”
“I’m kicking you out!” Annette pouts, pushing Felix off from where he’s been half-sitting on her desk. “Let me get some work done. And come visit again some other time, okay?”
“Okay, I will.” Felix sounds so sure of it and what is going on, why is this happening?
There’s the sound of polite chatter coming down the hallway, and Annette perks up instantly, hearing Dimitri’s voice. He’s coming out of the private conference room with two men in tow, one with long orange hair tied up in a half-ponytail, the other with dark hair and a sour face, like he’s just smelled something horrible. Or possibly poisoned you. Hard to tell.
Great. Sylvain should definitely get out of here before—
“Gautier!” The dark-haired man doesn’t yell so much as he projects. Fucking theatre kids. Hubert von Vestra glares at Sylvain like he’s just killed his family and stolen all his most prozed possessions. And what he says, is, “I still want a re-match.”
That’s it. Or—well, he does stare them down, eyes scanning Sylvain’s face, then Annette’s, then Felix’s. And he lingers on Felix’s face, just a bit too long.
“Hi Sylvain!” The other man, Ferdinand, peeks out, waving cheerfully. “Come over for wine spritzers again soon, okay?”
“Okay,” Sylvain answers weakly, and Dimitri throws him an apologetic smile before he sees them out, thanking them profusely for the extremely productive meeting.
“What’s that about?” Annette asks, picking at her cuticles.
“I beat Hubert at a game of chess once,” Sylvain leans on her desk. “Kind of destroyed him, actually. So, now he hates me.”
Annette looks pretty impressed. It’s only when they’re halfway down the hallway that Felix asks, “What’s chess?”
+
Because nothing in Sylvain’s life can ever go to plan, they meet one more roadblock on the way out of the office – Dimitri himself, who has circled back after seeing the Adrestia representatives out, and is insisting he help Ingrid clean up the conference room.
“Sylvain, thank you again for coming in on such short notice,” he says, clapping Sylvain on the shoulder. He must be learning how to hold his strength back; the last time he gave Sylvain a friendly pat on the back it bruised for a week. “Your work on the Sreng account has been invaluable. You too, of course, Ingrid!”
“Thanks Your Highness,” Sylvain grins. Dimitri may be the company president, but college nicknames die hard.
“By the way, I don’t believe we’ve met!” And here is where it all goes wrong – Dimitri extends a hand toward Felix, which goes ignored. No mind; he pulls it back with no ill-will on his face. “I’m Dimitri Blaiddyd, what’s your name?
Ingrid makes a crushed, desperate noise, like she’s just been hit in the gut with something hard. She makes eye contact with Sylvain over Felix’s shoulder, and a current of horrified understanding passes between them.
Fuck. We forgot to tell Dimitri.
“What, didn’t Sylvain tell you?” Felix snorts, his quip a bit too quick to respond to the insistent way Ingrid is pulling at his sleeve. “I’m the cat.”
“I see.” Understanding dawns on Dimitri’s face, which is how Sylvain knows that Dimitri doesn’t understand anything. Not even a little bit. Not at all. “The workplace may not be the right place to say this but—I’m, um, proud of you both. For living your truth.”
Sylvain squints, head whipping back and forth between Dimitri, Felix, and Ingrid. Being around Dimitri is a lot like looking at the sun: blinding, dumbfounding. Never mind the actual catboy who woke up in his apartment – Dimitri is the biggest mystery of them all. “I—What do you think is happening here?”
Ingrid is quick to give up damage control. Sylvain can already see her metaphorically grabbing her popcorn. “I believe he thinks you two are in a full-time BDSM relationship.”
“Who—What—Who told Dimitri about BDSM?!”
“Sylvain,” Dimitri says, grave. “I do have access to the internet.”
“He’s. My. Roommate.” Sylvain grits out, giving Dimitri a frantic look that he hopes says not fucking now, dude. Not now, when Sylvain’s over-active imagination is thinking of Felix in a little collar, bell tinkling, the other end of a leash securely in Sylvain’s hand and—
“Oh!” Dimitri looks just as pleased at this revelation. “Happy to meet you, then.”
Ingrid, saint that she is, mouths I’ll tell him, and shoos Sylvain and Felix down the hall to freedom.
+
The second after closing on his new house, Sylvain looks around the empty, cavernous rooms, and feels sick to his stomach. The next day, he hires an interior decorator and tells her – no budget, no limits, no directions. Do whatever you want, as long as I don’t have to.
What he gets is a fairly milquetoast aesthetic. Beige, taupe, brown, maybe a pop of red here and there. Inoffensive and safe. Sylvain adds his small flourishes from his belongings – lithographs and prints from his favorite artists, strange knick-knacks picked up on his last great solo road trip, polaroids from Ingrid’s birthday dinner.
Sylvain cuts off the rest of his living family, all the toxic hangers-on from his darker days, attempts to purge his life of his worst habits. And, after it all, finds that there’s so much room left to fill.
Felix looks small against the giant white sectional in Sylvain’s living room. It is weird, to feel even more protective of him today than he did yesterday? Felix, by all accounts, could probably take care of himself. But Sylvain wants to keep him in sight, wants to hold his hand and tell him that everything will be alright, that they’ll get through this strange and scary thing together.
What he says is, “You hungry?”
Felix blinks up at him. His eyelashes are so long. “Can we have something with meat?”
Sylvain whips up his specialty – three-meat lasagna – and cracks open a beer for himself. And, polite host that he is, waits until they’re halfway through dinner before he takes a deep breath and says, with all the ceremony he can muster, “So.”
“So what?”
Sylvain feels a bit like he’s about to knowingly step on a land mine. “You and Annette, huh?”
Felix pauses, fork still lifted halfway to his mouth. “You’re kidding me.”
“No, no, just that—” Just that what? Sylvain scrambles for an excuse. “I didn’t expect you to be such a smooth operator.”
“It’s not like that,” Felix’s nostrils flare. “I’m not like you, okay.”
Ouch. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Finally, Felix puts down his fork, the metallic clink against his plate echoing around the kitchen. “I don’t—I’m not affectionate. I don’t like people. And before you say anything—” (Sylvain closes his mouth.) “That’s not because I’m a cat, or what the fuck ever, it’s just how I am. I’m not going out of my way to be a dick, or to be extra nice to someone, I just—I’m trying to figure out what the hell I’m doing here. Okay?”
“Okay,” Sylvain repeats, voice small. It’s the most he’s heard Felix say all day.
“Okay? That’s it?”
“No, it’s just, um,” Sylvain pauses. I’m not affectionate, Felix had said. But Sylvain remembers so many nights of Felix curling up in his lap, or by his head as he slept, watchful and still like Sylvain’s personal protector.
And Felix is still wearing his sweatshirt.
Sylvain takes a big bite of his lasagna and says through a full mouth, “I thought you were gonna call me a whore.”
“Oh,” Felix mumbles, blinking back wetness from his eyes. “Well, that too.”
There’s more to be said, more to be figured out. But it’s been a long enough day without a bout of midnight soul-searching. They’ve both just discovered the world is a lot bigger and stranger than they knew – a good night’s rest is warranted.
“I like you the way you are, by the way,” Sylvain offers. “And I meant it, about you being my roommate. You can stay here as long as you want.”
Felix smiles, just a bit. Just enough that Sylvain knows it’s genuine, enough that he can see the relief in the slope of Felix’s shoulders, the way that he seems to finally settle.
“Thanks. I’d like that.”
Fuck. Sylvain is really in trouble.