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"...and if everything will go as it should, then I will have a great chance to..."
Yosuke abruptly interrupts his speech when he notices out of the corner of his eye that his boyfriend's attention is not occupied by his voice, but by a creature that fits comfortably on his lap.
"Are you even listening to me?" Yosuke doesn't intend to remain silent. More precisely, Yosuke doesn't know how to be silent. Especially when it comes to Yu.
But Yu himself calmly and smoothly (almost gently, as if it's going to break any second) cards his fingers through the glossy fur of the cat that sits on his lap. Yosuke feels a wave of irritation that this insignificant detail causes him.
Being jealous of a cat is already an unhealthy thing. She's been living with them for the second week, and Yu hasn't taken his eyes off her for the same second week. She, pampered and obviously happy with her new life, caresses and asks for his arms. And this in some way annoyed Yosuke, since more attention was paid to an ordinary animal than to a person with whom Yu has been living for two years, and has been dating for two and a half.
Unfortunately, Yosuke could not help himself, just as he would not be able to voice out loud "for God's sake, break away from this cat at last and come to me!".
Moreover, it's not his turn to speak at all. Yu is talking now, and there is a slight worry in his voice, hardly perceptible in principle:
"Sorry, sorry... I got a little distracted. So what are you?.."
Yosuke doesn't let him finish.
"What's wrong with her, Partner? It's just a cat! An ordinary, damn it, street cat!"
That's right, it's just an ordinary cat that Yu picked up on the street. The story is simple: it was a cold, rainy evening, and on his way from the work, Yu notices a creature shivering from cold and hunger, feels sorry and can't cope with the desire to leave it be.
Yosuke will not forget those tiny sparkles in his Partner's eyes when he, with a sigh, realizing that it is impossible to do otherwise, allows him to keep the animal at home.
But the animal turned out to be imposing, whimsical and selective for a random cat from the street. Yosuke uttered curses through his teeth, so much so that Yu inadvertently didn't hear when he came across wool scattered, it would seem, all over the apartment.
"This is a tricolor cat, Yosuke," Yu said without stopping his actions, "and tricolor cats bring good luck."
Yosuke raised an eyebrow in a skeptical gesture:
"Don't tell me you're falling for this kind of nonsense. You're a smart guy, Partner!.."
Yu smiles out of the corner of his lips.
"This is not nonsense. Sailors and travelers often let tricolor cats on board and returned safely."
The animal on his lap becomes restless, meows, clings closer to him. Yu sighs.
"It's just a coincidence."
"No," Yu said shortly. "Cats have an acutely developed sensory system, they sense danger before it has time to approach. There are certain signs and gestures in the behavior of cats, which have managed to have their own explanation, but, nevertheless, these animals still remain a mystery."
"Even if the things you say are true, then why?.."
Yosuke didn't finish the sentence, stopping himself right in time.
"You can't just shift your fate into the hands of others. There may be only guidelines that will serve as motivation, but everything else is only in your own hands," Yu says, allowing the cat to jump off his lap, and approaches Yosuke so close that his breath began to reach his skin. "Luck is a stretchable concept."
He kisses Yosuke on the corner of his lips, and he feels his body begin to respond reflexively to Yu's closeness.
When Yosuke finds himself on his back, panting, hot and demanding much more than a simple kiss, he doesn't think about anything.
However.
"I have a strained relationship with Lady Luck, and besides, your cat doesn't seem to like me."
Yu breaks away from his favorite point on his body — it's just Yosuke's neck, by the way — to give an answer:
"You're a stranger to her. Despite the fact that she has known you for two weeks, you are still a stranger to her. Cats are selective, they are able to decide who to trust and who to stay away from," he intertwines their fingers, "you need to contact with her more often through touching, feeding and taking care. I'm sure she'll love you just as much as I love you."
Yosuke turns away in embarrassment, but doesn't restrain a wide smile that is bursting out.
"You know, I've been waiting for a long time for the moment when I can confess to you and not look like an idiot, which seemed to me an unrealistic task, but I think it will be easier with a cat, won't it?"
Yu kisses the tip of his nose.
"Of course."
"Rest assured, Partner, we'll get along."
And Yosuke has not yet decided whether he said this in order not to disappoint Yu, or in order to first of all assure himself that the cat has become a part of their life, clearly not the last figure in it.
"I hope so, too."
//
During the day, Yosuke comes to the conclusion that he is too self-confident. For a long time, he could not choose a safe way to win the heart of a desirable girl (or a guy, but Yu was the main option and goal of all guys), but now the task was easier than simple — it's just a cat, damn it!
And the fact that Yu left for work early in the morning and would stay there until ten at night didn't make the situation any easier. Or bearable, at the very least.
"Don't go, Partner..." Yosuke drawled sleepily, not daring to open his eyes, especially since the rays of the early sun still managed to break through the barrier. "Call your superiors and tell them that you have more important things to do."
"What kind of things are these, then?" Yu still tries to get up, trying with all his persistence to get out of the shackles called "Yosuke doesn't want to let his boyfriend go to work too much, and so what?"
"Well, there is one thought crossing my mind," Yosuke's hand slowly strokes Yu's chest, and then it goes lower and lower and...
Yu manages to intercept his hand.
"Not on my work shift, Yosuke."
And although his voice sounded stern and firm, his face didn't reflect any of the listed emotions. Yosuke doesn't need to open his eyes to know this for sure — they both managed to study each other to such an extent that not a single detail will pass through them unnoticed.
"By the way," Yu finally gets up from the bed, already pulling on his trousers, "today you are responsible for our new resident. You can feed her, obviously, and also play with her, pet her... You can even talk with her. Cats are actually great listeners. They are better than any psychologist with a certificate on their hands and a huge experience behind them. "
"Cats can't talk, therefore, they can't maintain a simple dialogue with you," Yosuke frowns. "And it's so boring."
"True, so far there are no creatures that could be endowed with the ability to speak besides humans", Yu nods, "but, again, cats are very smart. They are able to detect signals in human behavior. Their hypersensitivity and observant nature are helping them to catch the state in which their master is currently in, and they try to adjust to this mood, deciding whether to approach or leave them on their own for a certain amount of time."
"Hey, isn't our cat is some kind of the goddess by any chance? You keep talking about them like that, as if these creatures are something more than just, you know, creatures," Yosuke answers somewhat irritably, with a certain hoarseness, a remnant from his sleep.
"That's right. Cats are sacred animals among adherents of the Sunni Islamic religion."
Yosuke sighed heavily.
"Partner."
Yu let out a soft chuckle:
"I'm sorry. I meant the Egyptians, for the most part. In ancient times, a cult was created around these, as you prefer putting, creatures, pyramids were built and sacrifices were made. Muslims are faithful to their traditions to this day. And what's wrong with having such a lovely creature at home?"
Yosuke pouted, scratched his head, and finally answered with great feeling:
"After such strong reasoning, I am unlikely to find the strength in myself to continue the argument."
"It doesn't make sense though, Yosuke," Yu replied. "But.. you know what?
The sudden gleam in his gray eyes and the sly grin on his face didn't bode well. In any case, there was a hidden intent here.
"Wh-what?"
"Besides the cat, you are the most lovely creature in this apartment," Yu continued, his voice an octave lower, almost in a whisper, "but if I were in a situation where I had to choose between you, I would choose..." he runs his tongue over his lips, as if tasting the next words slipping under them, "..Shi-chan."
Well, of course. What a bastard.
Yosuke blushed and threw a pillow at Yu, who then managed to dodge the attack by going out the door.
The pillow lands on the floor, and Yosuke leans back on the bed with a groan, which then made a characteristic creak under the pressure of his weight.
The door creaked slightly, opened lightly, and a voice was heard through the gap of free oxygen:
"And also I have to add," Yu cleared his throat, "that I probably won't have time to cook us breakfast today, so you'll have to take care of that, too."
"It's all right, Partner."
Yosuke escorted his Partner to work, exchanging a couple of kisses and giving him a phrase, albeit ordinary, but still keeping the warmth and sincerity of feelings inside itself:
"I'll miss you."
And he received in response no less familiar, but also coming from the very depths of his soul:
"Me too. Take care."
And now, when he methodically chews toast with chocolate paste and watches from under his brows how the cat moves with enviable grace, with every mobile muscle involved in action.
And then, she unceremoniously jumps on the windowsill, dropping a flower on the floor.
"You're getting back at me, aren't you?" Yosuke is not angry or furious now, though; he wants to laugh rather from the irony, from the absurdity and inevitability of the situation in which he finds himself. "But today we will play by my rules. Promise to be a good girl, Shi-chan?"
When a cat waves its tail, Yosuke gives this gesture his explanation, his vision: it won't be easy for me.
Cats are able to decide who they can trust, Yu's words flash through his brain.
"Well..." Yosuke gets up from the table, puts a dirty coffee cup in the sink and opens the cat food cabinet, "you definitely need to be fed, right?" his uncertainty and inexperience (but is there any special experience actually needed here! - these are only the screams of his subconscious) still appear as a barrier that he will try to cross the rest of the day before Yu would come home from work.
However, he copes with the first task easily, about which he notifies his Partner by text message ("There's nothing more to be done!" ).
He watches a satisfied, definitely well-fed cat that is now licking its fur, and starts to understand: not everything is so difficult, but you should not relax either.
By the way, he still needs to get rid of the fragments and soil that were left on the floor after the cat threw off this pot from the windowsill.
It's not that Yu and I are first-class gardeners, anyway, Yosuke took a note for himself and filled the next fifteen minutes of his time by washing the floor in the entire kitchen.
The second task is: to pet the cat.
Speaking openly and simply, Yosuke has not the slightest fucking idea about how it would be possible to win over an animal so that it reaches out to you in response, and doesn't shy away from you in fear, to the point of increasing its badges, with its ears tucked up and hissing somewhere around the corner.
In general, he must do everything so that the cat doesn't find a potential threat in him.
Yosuke has never had a pet, in fact, and there was no tragedy in this, nor a sad backstory: once their neighbor asked him to take a walk with her dog, and as a reward he would have received a chocolate bar. More precisely, he could have received it if his skills included control over the situation ("But I was only five then, Mom!") and attentiveness.
The dog was still found, but instead of praise and phrases like "you tried your best" (which would, of course, not be true), Yosuke was locked in his room for a week. An even greater punishment then seemed to be the prohibition of sweets, pizza and the intense heat at that time.
But now Yosuke is not five years old, he has outgrown this age in two decades, and he is doing everything to match his current one.
Moreover, they are not on the street, which means, hypothetically, that the cat has nowhere to run? At least, where Yosuke would not be able to get it.
It's simple.
Inhale, exhale, go ahead.
He gently touched her fur ("Be careful in your actions, Yosuke, if the cat feels insecurity in them, she will feel threatened in your presence", how good it is that, through the distance, Yu finds time to guide and support Yosuke through the words in his messages). And.. it' s very soft, pleasant. Not that these sensations were new for him, but rather nostalgic. A little reminder of something that has been lost long ago.
After the incident with the neighbor's dog, Yosuke was skeptical about the idea of a pet establishment, he even found himself an excuse in the face of "I have a study and a job, I'm unlikely to be the one who will take care of it," but could he say 'no' to Yu that night? No, of course not (Yu's charm is Yosuke's weakness, a secret weapon to fight his stubborn nature).
But his fate is also inevitable. He needs to make friends with a cat, he definitely needs to!
When the cat begins to respond to touch, arch its back ("They are very flexible and gracious, Yosuke, this is amazing) and accompany all this with a contented purring, Yosuke makes another conclusion, the third one for today:
"You know, there's something about you. No wonder Yu bought into this "something". It would be impossible not to. "
The second task was successfully completed, but there was still inexcusably, painfully much time left before Yu's arrival, and what to do with the gaps between it, in addition to taking care of a pet, Yosuke didn't know.
Improvisation will not have much effect behind four walls, and the limitations in actions still fetters, but doesn't undermine his morale.
The third task for today is a... talking, just another way to build a contact. What if not talking, moving your tongue and moving your lips can take up space in the passing time?
"What can I talk to you about? Still, it's a pity that you're not some lovely lady trapped in the body of an ordinary cat..." Yosuke dreamily drawled, when the cat, emboldened (or, rather, it just felt the lack of fear in her's second... master? is that what he is now?), crawled into his lap. "But, however, it doesn't matter anymore. My heart already belongs to your beloved master, and it is unlikely that this will change someday."
The cat, as expected, remained silent.
"Maybe it's for the best that you're not talking right now. It's even easier to say something this way. So you are silent, and you — I mean, me — are prepared for it, you are waiting for this silence, and at the same time you understand that you will not be considered an idiot. D-damn, my bad, I'm talking nonsense now, right?.."
Again, no response. Yosuke is even disappointed to some extent, but can he blame a creature that is not able to speak with human speech for not being able to speak with human speech?
"What level has my anxiety reached, exactly?.. Now I'm apologizing to the cat and justifying myself by saying that I'm talking nonsense, when in fact these thoughts are what I feel and what I can't just start ignoring," he shivered slightly when the cat began to lick his palm, which was free of her fur ("This is one of their ways of showing affection and devotion to the master despite everything"), but still continued: "But I'm glad that even so, being an ordinary cat who doesn't know how to maintain a dialogue, you still listen to me. Who knows, maybe I won't be such a bad master after all? I can't compare with Yu, but maybe... Damn, this is stupid, forget it."
The cat meows in response to him — the first sound ("They may not be able to speak, but cats are empaths, they catch the state of a person even in their voice, and all this thanks to their well-developed hearing") that she has made all this time.
There comes a lull, which is sometimes still interrupted by Yosuke's attempts to provide himself with lunch (quite decent one, if he's being honest with himself), reading books ("It's good for you, you should do this more often"), watching a random talk show on the central channel, and all this ends with Yosuke losing his grip on himself and his body, closing his eyelids and falling asleep, while the cat opposite him settles more comfortably on the pillow and nuzzles his neck ("Damn, she reminds me so much of Yu that it starts to scare me").
Two hours of sleep was enough to fill the void in time before Yu returned.
///
"Missed your daddy that much, huh?" this was the first thing that Yosuke heard, he barely had time to awaken the ability to distinguish sounds in himself, but he did not have time to wake up himself. "So eager, so eager..."
But when he sees his Partner, his boyfriend, his Yu, who is probably exhausted at work today, bending over the cat and scratching it behind the ear, everything immediately falls into place.
"Welcome back, Partner," Yosuke mutters in a hoarse voice, and as a reward receives a kiss on the corner of his lips from Yu. But this is not enough for him: he hugs him to himself as if they have not seen each other not since this morning, but since the morning of the century before last, and kisses him as if an eternity has already passed between this century.
"If you always met me like this, I would be over the moon with happiness," Yu says, looking up from their rather intense (Yosuke doesn't know where it comes from; he didn't expect that heat to come from his own actions, actually) kiss, his eyes filled with desire.
"You miss the opportunity to be happy, because you work a lot," says Yosuke, finally climbing on Yu's lap. "This will lead to emotional burnout eventually. You need some serious rest, Partner."
"You're right," Yu settles his head on Yosuke's shoulder, his lips lightly and weightlessly brush the skin through the fabric of the t-shirt. "I could take a vacation, and we could go somewhere..."
"It's July, the height of summer. It's time to relax."
"That's right. Tomorrow I will work the last shift, and then notify the boss that I will go on vacation, we will pack our things, take our daughter with us and go to Inaba."
"Yes, and then we will also have time to see Nanako," Yosuke dreamily closes his eyes, when suddenly he is struck by realization. "Wait, d-daughter?"
"Shi-chan. She's our daughter. I can't leave her here alone."
Bastard.
"You're weird, Partner," Yosuke lets out a chuckle. "Sometimes even very weird."
"Have a problem with this?"
"Nah, I'm already used to it," and at the moment when Yosuke touches Yu's forehead with his lips, he meets the eyes of a cat that sparkled in the semi-darkness.
There really is something about you.