Archive of Our Own

“Please tell Kyungsoo thanks for a great dinner as usual,” Minseok said while he signed the bill.

Baekhyun grinned and plunked a plastic bag onto the table.

“Of course,” he said. “Along with the most charming service on this side of the river. And your usual order for your boyfriend.”

The last bit was accompanied by an amount of eyebrow-waggling that required Minseok to sock Baekhyun in the arm.

“Thank you,” he said forcefully.

He took the order – grilled cutlassfish with a side of squid and seaweed salad. He hugged Baekhyun and stepped out into the cool spring night. It was great to have friends who owned a neighborhood café – and even better when one of them (i.e., Kyungsoo) was the kind of person who, learning that one had a shifter friend, researched nutritional requirements and asked questions until he knew their preferences.

After all that work, Minseok hadn’t had the heart to tell Kyungsoo that he hadn’t seen Chen in over two months.

It wasn’t for lack of looking: Minseok was stubborn, so he still habitually called into alleys and took the long way around the neighborhood looking for that familiar crop of curly black hair and bright smile. They’d been friends for over a year now – at least, Minseok had thought they were friends. As much as one owner of a small audiobook studio could be friends with a homeless cat-shifter.

Minseok wanted to be friends.

Chen was warm and cheerful. He had refused all of Minseok’s offers of money and rides to a shelter with firm dignity, but he would happily take food if Minseok sat with him while Chen ate: he was even happier when Minseok brought his own meal and they ate together. Then, Chen would beam at him, a broad smile that crinkled up his eyes. He chattered, wheedled for bites of Minseok’s food, and whacked Minseok with his tail.

On a few occasions, Chen had accepted clothing. He was happiest for time, for Minseok to walk with him, or sit outside a convenience store and chat over soju and snacks. Chen talked happily of light subjects, wanted to know all about Minseok’s life, but rarely spoke of himself.

Truthfully, Minseok wanted to be more than friends.

He’d never dated a shifter, but Chen’s mouth naturally fell into a smile, and his cheekbones could cut glass. He liked to sing when he was happy – and for someone homeless, he seemed happy most of the time. Minseok was captivated by him: not just his face and the expressiveness of his black furry ears or the way his tail would curl around Minseok’s wrist sometimes when they walked together, and impossibly soft, warm grip that always made Minseok shiver. Minseok admired Chen’s resilience, admired how stubbornly he protected his independence.

But Minseok hadn’t seen Chen in 2 and a half months. He kept getting to-go orders of cutlassfish or salmon from D.O.’s, but for 2 months he had carried them home to eat them morosely himself. He didn’t even really like cutlassfish. He just hated for it to go to waste.

He felt a little stupid, the way he couldn’t give up searching. Chen was homeless, and a shifter. There were a hundred reasons why he might vanish – most of which were upsetting. But that was the reality of things, wasn’t it? Life on the streets was hard and dangerous.

He didn’t even have anyone to talk to about it. Baekhyun and Kyungsoo knew enough to cook extra for his “friend,” but Minseok had always felt too awkward to go into the rest of it. He could just hear what his friends would say to him, “you have a crush on a homeless catboy? Are you crazy?” Maybe he was. But he did.

So he wandered the alleys of his neighborhood instead, usually carrying food in a bag. Getting in far more than his 10,000 steps per day – so at least his obsession was good for his body, even if it was hard on his heart.

He didn’t have anything in his hands a few days later, having grimly eaten the cutlassfish for breakfast the following morning. Minseok had had dinner with Sehun after work: steak and a bit more red wine than was wise on a Tuesday. And it was raining – an unexpected thunderstorm, so he had no umbrella. Minseok wanted to be home, to get in a hot shower and cozy sweats, but he was in the habit of looking for Chen. A couple of alleys would add only a few minutes to his day, and he was already soaked. He turned up the collar of his jacket. Someone snarled at his soft “Chen?” in the first alley. That was nothing new.

Nothing in the second alley. But in the third, Minseok thought he heard a sob.

He stopped to listen. It had been a faint sound, and the rain was pretty loud. But he heard something again – not crying, but a thin, raspy noise of distress. Minseok stepped into the darkness of the alley, then heard it again, that choked sob.

Well. Someone for sure needed help. Minseok turned on the light on his phone.

“Hello?” he called out softly. “Hi, can I help you?”

There was a scrabbling sound, another choked noise, another rasp. Minseok walked forward, the light pointing at the ground and calling out softly, trying not to scare whoever it was. The alley stank of garbage and piss, but it was slightly sheltered from the rain.

“Please, I just want to see if you’re okay,” Minseok said when he could see a shape ahead of him.

He stepped closer. Lightning flashed, and Minseok froze in place when he saw that the shape was Chen.

Chen looked terrible. His lips were white and his eyes sunken in his face with dark circles underneath. His shirt was open, and Minseok could see his ribs – could count them, even in the darkness from several meters away. In each arm he held a small, dark shape. He sobbed again – deep, choking sobs that made Minseok’s throat hurt, Chen looked up toward the light, and his eyes seemed to take up half his face. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

“I can’t,” he said, his voice hoarse and desperate. “I can’t feed them.”

It took several heartbeats for Minseok to remember how to breathe, in the face of his surprise and the terror on Chen’s face. But then his brain slammed back into gear, and Minseok slid to his knees in the muck and the wet.

“I’ll help you,” he said. “Don’t worry. You’ll be all right.”

Chen blinked at him, face rumpled with confusion.

“Minseok?”

“Yes, it’s me. I’ve been looking for you. It’ll be all right now, I’ll help.”

Chen drew back a little, curling his upper body over his arms.

“No, I – “

There was the high, raspy sound again, and another rush of tears rolled down Chen’s cheeks. Minseok saw that Chen was half out of his mind. He tried to calm his own breathing, made his voice soft.

“What do you have there? Can I see?” he asked.

With wariness all over his face, Chen straightened and held his arms out slightly. One curled-up shape in the crook of each elbow: tiny tails and fur, one five-fingered hand that rested against his chest. Minseok gasped. Kittens.

“I can’t feed them,” Chen said. “I couldn’t find enough to eat.”

Minseok looked at Chen’s bony chest, his sunken face. One of the kittens cried again, and Chen drew it close, murmured to it. Minseok’s heart contracted.

“Please let me help you,” he said. “Let me help them. You can come to my house. You don’t have to stay. But you can be warm and dry and fed. Chen, please. I’ve been so worried about you.”

Chen looked at him. All his usual brightness had gone out. Minseok’s heart hurt just to look at him.

“We can get your kittens warm,” he said.

“They need to be warm,” Chen said.

“That’s right. We can get them warm and dry.”

Chen stared down at the two small forms in his arms.

“You won’t lock me in?” he asked, so softly that Minseok almost couldn’t hear it over the rain.

“Never,” Minseok said. “I promise, never.”

Every minute of this was worse than the last: Chen was too weak to stand without help. He hissed when Minseok tried to take one of the kittens from him to carry. In the end, the best Minseok could do was to drape his jacket over Chen’s shoulders and drag him along with one arm around his waist. Chen was so weak that it took them ten minutes to get up the single flight of stairs to Minseok’s apartment, and the minute they were inside, Chen sank to his knees, gave a pitiful-sounding mew, and fainted, somehow contriving to fall over without squishing either of the kittens.

Minseok very quietly freaked the shit out, with a half-dead shifter on his living-room floor and two very young shifter kittens, all of whom were soaking wet, starving, and who knew what else.

Then he packed that freak-out away for later and pulled out his phone with one hand, gently prying the more precariously perched kitten with the other. It protested and squirmed against his chest.

Thank all the gods that Yixing wasn’t busy on call – he picked up the phone. And bless him, Yixing didn’t require any detail or context. He promised to call his shifter-doc friend right away and ask whether a house call was possible.

“Are you all right, ge?” he asked.

“For the moment,” Minseok said. “I’ll melt down when there’s time.”

“Good plan,” Yixing said. “In the meantime, try to keep them warm. I’ll text you when Jongin’s on his way.”

Minseok didn’t know whether it would be unsafe to try to move Chen and erred on the side of caution. By the time he had maneuvered a pillow under Chen’s head and covered him with a blanket, Yixing’s friend had texted for details and the address. Minseok reported what he knew. Typing with one hand, a squirming kitten in the other arm, was a bit of a challenge.

For lack of any better idea, he grabbed his laundry basket and a pile of towels and placed the kitten in it, then wormed the other one out of Chen’s unconscious clutches. They rolled toward one another in the basket, their little arms reaching for one another, their faces a weird mélange of cat and human, more overtly catlike than Chen’s, fur covering their tiny bodies. They shivered, and Minseok draped folds of a towel over them. Their rustling slowed a little, but they kept making those quiet, raspy cries. He tried stroking their heads like he would a cat, and that seemed to calm them too.

They were so small, and not at all chubby like human babies. Their little bellies were sunken and their features pinched. He thought their skin looked dry. What did shifter kittens eat? He remembered Chen’s open shirt – and of course a cat shifter was a mammal, they must drink milk. Which he didn’t have, other than soy milk, and he was pretty sure that wouldn’t count.

But maybe water would be good for them. A little water couldn’t possibly hurt, anyway.

Yixing’s friend buzzed the door just as he returned from the kitchen with a bowl of water and a spoon. Dr. Kim Jongin was startlingly handsome, brushing aside Minseok’s thanks and eyes roving over Chen’s prone form before his shoes were fully off.

“The blanket was a good idea. But could I? Do you have a place where I can examine him in private?”

He approved of the towels and water for the kittens and promised to look them over when he was done with Chen. He lifted Chen in his arms in an operation so slow and gentle that Chen didn’t wake, and Minseok set the requested bowl of warm water and towels next to his own bed.

“Don’t worry,” Kim Jongin said, just before he shut the door in Minseok’s face.

Well, there was no chance of not-worrying. But there were thirsty kittens. Trying to get water in them was distracting enough to overwhelm any worry: his smallest spoon was too wide for their mouths, though they wriggled wildly, making their rasping cries, and reaching over the basket with the spoon made for an awkward angle.

After a lot of fumbling and some whispered curses, Minseok finally swaddled each of the kittens in a towel as if they were human babies. Their wriggles thwarted, he could tuck one of them against each knee in his crossed legs and drip water off his fingertips into their little pink mouths. They lapped eagerly at the water until first one, then the other, yawned. By the time Jongin emerged, the kittens were asleep in Minseok’s lap and his feet were falling asleep from being too afraid to move.

Dr. Kim pursed his lips at Minseok’s whispered questions, instead lifting the kittens one at a time and unwrapping them from their towels to examine them, which made the kittens wriggle and cry again. He spent time rubbing their lower bellies with one corner of the towel, and frowned at whatever did or didn’t happen. Then he swaddled them back up again. Minseok heaved a sigh that at least he’d done one thing right.

“Well, this little family has really been through it,” Dr. Kim said.

He had one kitten in his arms, rocking it gently; Minseok did the same with the other one.

“I need to know a few details, please, Kim Minseok-ssi. When Yixing called, he referred to you as ‘my dear ge’ and said that Chen is your friend. But they’ve obviously been living on the streets. What’s going on here? Do you know these people?”

“I do,” Minseok said. “Or, Chen at least. I haven’t seen him in a couple of months but we’ve been. We’ve been friendly for about half a year.”

Dr. Kim frowned at the kitten in his arms.

“Friendly? May I ask what level of friendly?”

Minseok felt his ears burn hot.

“We talked,” he said. “Several times a week, usually. He wouldn’t let me do anything for him. We would eat together, sometimes.”

“I see,” Dr. Kim said. “Well, in that case, if you don’t mind them being in your hair for another couple of hours, I can have someone pick up the kittens and get them to a fosterer tonight. Chen needs a bit more care, but he’ll be released to the same shelter, and they’ll try to keep them – “

“No!” Minseok said.

Even surprised, Dr. Kim’s face looked like something that should be on a billboard.

“Chen is always very clear that he doesn’t want to be in a shelter.”

“They will all die if they go back on the street, Kim Minseok-ssi,” Dr. Kim said.

“They can stay here,” Minseok said.

Dr. Kim’s frown softened a little.

“That’s generous of you,” he said. “But that’s signing on for a lot. All of them are dehydrated and malnourished, and Chen has a fever. I need to do a more thorough examination, but I suspect that the birth didn’t go well.”

Minseok couldn’t help wrapping his hand around the head of the kitten in his arms, as if he could protect it from what it had already been through. Dr. Kim smiled at him.

“They have to be fed every three hours,” he said. “That would be true even if they weren’t half-starved.”

“I can do that,” Minseok said.

“You saw how I rubbed their bellies? That’s to make them eliminate. You have to do that too, until their bodies learn how. You have to clean them up after. Kittens are messy and exhausting. With an apartment like this, you must have a job that needs you. Are you sure you can do it?”

“I – I think so.”

“Even if I take Chen to my clinic for a couple of days?” Dr. Kim asked, his glance sharp.

That was more intimidating: the thought of being left alone with these utterly helpless little beings with a constant mess and no sleep. He didn’t know anything about shifter babies.

Chen’s babies.

“I’ll try,” he said. “I can call you, can’t I? If I get worried? But I’d like to try. For my friend.”

Dr. Kim’s smile was brilliant and stunning. He patted Minseok’s shoulder.

“Let’s head to your kitchen, then. I’ve brought some formula. I’ll show you how to mix it up and we can get to feeding these little grubs.”

Mixing the kitten formula was the same as it was for human babies in movies, including testing the temperature on his arm to ensure that he wouldn’t burn their mouths. Minseok thought there would be tiny bottles and despaired a little to learn that at least at the beginning, he would feed the kittens with eyedroppers. But they woke and sucked greedily at the droppers, formula dripping all over their faces while they wriggled and cried, obviously desperate up until some point of fullness where each of them fell asleep with an eyedropper still in its mouth.

“Good job,” Dr. Kim murmured at the kitten in his arms.

He showed Minseok how to rub their bellies – only one of them peed a little, though they both had a bath with a warm washcloth.

”That’s the dehydration,” Dr. Kim said. “By the third feeding or so, the mess will really start.”

They swaddled the kittens in clean towels, and Minseok followed Dr. Kim’s lead by setting the one he held back into the laundry basket.

“Better go ahead and start a load of towels as soon as I go back to Chen, you’ll be washing them constantly,” Dr. Kim said with a grin.

Minseok was so relieved for the opening that he almost forgot to take it.

“Will he be all right?”

Dr. Kim patted his shoulder.

“I hope so,” he said. “Warmth, food, and antibiotics ought to take care of most of his physical problems.”

“Emotional might be trickier,” Minseok said, remembering Chen’s terror and that quiet plea to not be locked up.

“Oh, you are his friend. That’s good. Let me gather up our patient and get him to an IV and some heated blankets. You start your laundry and try to settle yourself. You won’t have much chance to rest for the next few weeks.”

Minseok did as he was told – put towels in the wash, made a cup of herbal tea. He was looking down at the kittens when Dr. Kim left his bedroom with a slightly larger towel-wrapped bundle in his arms.

“I was able to persuade him to shift,” Dr. Kim said.

Minseok was too startled to speak. He’d never seen Chen shift and wondered how often his eyes had roved over a black cat in the shadows, not knowing it was Chen. His face looked sunken even in cat form. Minseok lifted a hand to stroke his nose but stopped – Chen wasn’t really a cat. Was it rude to pet a shifter?

“I’ll be in close touch, I promise,” Dr. Kim said. “You keep feeding the babies and I’ll fix up their papa.”

Any worries Minseok had about missing a feeding were obliterated by the kittens. When they were hungry, they let him know, loudly and insistently. It was impossible to feed both of them at the same time, which seemed unfair, he had two hands after all. So if he fed the black-furred one first, the silver tabby rasped at him the whole time, and vice versa. By dawn, he was running out of towels and certain that he was in over his head. As Dr. Kim had predicted, once the kittens had had enough feedings to have digested anything, the mess was incredible, and if the kittens had a bath every three hours, Minseok did not.

He called Chanyeol at seven: far too early for a phone call, but Minseok knew Chanyeol would be up and at the gym.

“I’ll give you two extra paid days off if you bring a milk bread and the largest coffee you can find to my apartment and stay here for an hour,” he said.

Chanyeol was easily bribed.

“Done!” he chirped into the phone.

Chanyeol brought a half-dozen milk breads and a four-drink carrier full of coffees, only one his own preferred iced. He stared down at the kittens, now nestled into a pile of decorative pillows and the throw from the sofa, and Minseok could see the hearts bubbling up out of his head and popping into sparkles.

It occurred to Minseok that he was very, very tired.

“My lord,” Chanyeol breathed. “Look at how cute they are.”

He clasped his substantial hands in front of his even more substantial chest and looked at Minseok. Then he tilted his head to one side.

“Hyung, I’ve never seen you look a mess before. Why don’t you go take a shower? I will be ecstatic to watch over these absolute morsels.”

“Thank you,” Minseok said fervently. “That’s why I called.”

“I bet.”

The shower was blissful. Minseok was so happy to be clean that he was able to change the sheets on his bed (ignoring  several spots on the ones where Chen had lay that might’ve been blood) and fold a load of clean towels before he remembered his exhaustion and dropped onto the sofa next to Chanyeol. His friend was cuddling the kittens and wearing a bright smile.

“I definitely want to know why in the world you have shifter kittens in your apartment, but the story had better end in your keeping them forever, because their uncle Chanyeol already loves them beyond reason.”

“Just wait until they wake up and start screaming for food,” Minseok said.

“Oh, I plan to,” Chanyeol said, smiling wider.

His smile didn’t last through Minseok’s story – nor did one coffee and two milk breads that did a lot to fortify Minseok’s ability to deal. Yeollie and Sehun had heard about Chen in passing, but Minseok couldn’t bear the surprise on Chanyeol’s face as he heard the story.

“That poor guy,” Chanyeol said at the end.

He cradled the kittens closer.

“Poor babies! Hyung, let me help you.”

“I need you and Sehun to run the studio.”

“Of course you do. We will. And I’ll come over as much as I can, too. Can I help feed them? Will you teach me?”

“They have to eat every three hours,” Minseok said.

“Then you have to let me help!” Chanyeol said. “I can watch them and feed them so you can get some sleep. You need to call in everybody, hyung. We’ll get them nice and fat by the time their daddy comes home.”

Minseok felt his eyes well up in the face of this kindness. Chanyeol, a sympathy crier, got wet around the eyes as well, until the tabby kitten gave a huge yawn, complete with a little pink tongue rolling out and a squeak, that made Chanyeol coo. Soon after this, both kittens were awake and demanding food. Chanyeol was a natural with the eyedropper and treated even the post-feeding rub and mess as an adventure, murmuring encouragement at the tabby’s amazing ability to poop everywhere. Having an extra pair of hands made feeding and cleaning seem a hundred times easier.

“Whew, every three hours,” Chanyeol said when the kittens were clean and snuggled up against him again. “Hyung, you’ve been doing that yourself all night?”

Minseok nodded.

“Well Sehun’s opening today. How about you take a nap? I’ll stay until they need to eat again, and help out.”

“You just want a third extra paid day off,” Minseok said.

“What I want is kitten time,” Chanyeol said.

“You’re getting that third day anyhow,” Minseok said, and went to his nap.

Minseok had texts from Yixing and Dr. Kim when he woke – but he woke to the sound of the kittens crying and Chanyeol crooning at them to be patient. He hustled out to make up a batch of formula. Minseok hated to see Chanyeol go, even though he was off to the studio that would pay for the formula and Dr. Kim’s bills – his calm enthusiasm made the feeding and cleaning fun instead of frazzled.

When the kittens were asleep again and Chanyeol had snuck out the door (after kissing them three times each), Minseok stepped behind the kitchen door, where he could listen for the kittens without waking them, and called Dr. Kim. He had to sit down with the relief of hearing that Chen was stable, if sedated, and updated Dr. Kim on the state of the kittens.

“Loud and messy is a good sign, if you can believe it,” Dr. Kim said. “Hang in there, Minseok-ssi. Good job calling in reinforcements. Definitely do that as much as you can.”

They made plans for Minseok to take the kittens to the clinic that evening, when Chen might be awake. With a load of towels fresh from the dryer, Minseok settled on the sofa, kittens on his chest with a warm towel over them, and checked in with Yixing, who kept cursing in Mandarin in his surprise and promised to stop by when he could.

Minseok woke, warm and comfortable, to the sensation of one of the kittens trying to suckle on his neck. It was warm, ticklish, and hilarious.

“I don’t think we have a hickey sort of relationship,” he laughed, lifting the wriggly body into the air.

It was the tabby – the slightly bigger and sassier of the kittens. It squirmed in his hold, hands flailing. He wondered how long it would be until their eyes opened and when they would start looking less overtly like cats with fingers and toes: according to the internet, consulted while formula heated and the kittens nosed around sleepily in a towel-draped bowl on the kitchen counter, suggested how very young these babies were – under two weeks, if their eyes were still closed.

“Poor babies,” he said, stroking the black one’s head with his thumb.

The kitten rolled over and grasped his thumb, tried to pull it to its mouth.

“Okay, greedy,” he laughed.

The visit to the clinic undid Minseok’s encouraging day. He felt like he and the kittens had gotten into a nice routine of naps between feedings, and he had kept up with the laundry and feeding himself. And if the taxi driver found it weird that Minseok climbed into the car carrying two swaddled baby shifters in a messenger bag, she didn’t say anything. Desperation measures, even if Dr. Kim’s receptionist laughed at him.

“You’re a problem-solver,” the man said. “Isn’t Chen lucky?”

He didn’t look lucky. He looked pitiful, small in the hospital bed with a tube going up his nose and an IV in his arm.

“He’s on the mend, I promise,” Dr. Kim said. “I’d like to keep him sleepy for another day while we feed him through the tube. He’ll be upset, to be away from his babies. Better for him to be a bit stronger before we upset him.”

Minseok discovered his hand to be stroking the head of one of the kittens in his bag.

“Away for how long?”

“We can talk about that in a minute.”

He leaned over and shook Chen gently until Chen roused, eyes barely open and frowning in sleepy confusion.

“You have some visitors,” Dr. Kim said.

He lifted the kittens out of Minseok’s bag, unwrapped them from their swaddling, and laid them on Chen’s chest. Tears ran down Chen’s face while he fumbled at the kittens, trying to look at them through the fog of drugs and the way the kittens wriggled, making little cries that sounded happier than when they yelled for food. Dr. Kim held each of the kittens in front of his face briefly, murmuring encouragement, then setting them back down and placing one of Chen’s hands over each of the babies. After a moment, the three of them settled; Chen gave a heavy sigh, and his eyes closed again.

“There we go,” Dr. Kim said. “A little bonding time will be good for everybody.”

Minseok blinked back the hot sensation in his eyes. The crease between Chen’s eyebrows had eased. He still looked far too thin, with dark circles under his eyes, but something about the way his head tilted down toward the kittens was sweet and lovely.

“Busy day, huh?” Dr. Kim asked.

He pulled the room’s two chairs close to the bed, and they sat.

“It’s a lot,” Minseok said. “But I can keep it up until Chen’s ready to come home.”

Dr. Kim crossed his legs and looked at Minseok musingly.

“And there’s a question I had for you. Are you sure you’ll have them in your home? Chen only needs to stay here for another day or so, but he’ll be weak and ill for quite a while. He’ll need help for months, during which those kittens will grow to the size and energy of human toddlers. I know you said that Chen is opposed to shelters, but are you really prepared to give up your home to them for so long?”

Minseok reached out to stroke the back of the black-furred kitten.

“Not prepared at all, I think. But willing.”

Dr. Kim laughed silently behind one hand.

“Good enough,” he said. “Let’s take a look at them.”

A nurse came in, and they examined the kittens one at a time, making a chart for each of them, even drawing a tiny bit of blood from each, to squeals of protest.

“Are they boys or girls?” Minseok asked.

“Too early to tell,” Dr. Kim said. “Give them a week or so and we’ll see whether anything shows signs of popping out.”

He laughed again.

“Keep up what you’re doing, they’re already more active and better hydrated. I was sure I’d need to give them subdermal hydration, but you’ve obviously fed them diligently, so we’ll hold off.”

He laid the tabby back down on Chen’s chest, where it wriggled until its little face was pressed against him.

“I’m going to ask him about a shelter when he’s lucid, Minseok-ssi. There are excellent ones, nothing like the horror stories you hear, with good family services. But I’m relieved that he has a different option.”

Minseok nodded. The hugeness of all of it was hard to wrap his tired mind around. But he could keep pushing that down the road for his later freak-out. In the meantime, the kittens would wake up hungry any moment.

It was five minutes later: the black one woke first, and its cries woke the other. Chen stirred feebly, looking confused and distressed despite still-closed eyes, growling a little when Minseok tried to take a kitten. The nurse bustled back in with bowls and eyedroppers – she folded Chen’s arms for him and tucked a kitten into the crook of each so that she and Minseok could sit on either side of him to feed them.

“Slow down, you little pig, you’re supposed to get milk in you, not on you,” Minseok said at one point.

He blotted the tabby’s mouth with a corner of towel and clicked his tongue. He heard a sniff and looked up to see Chen staring at him, tears running down his face again.

“Are you all right? Is your arm uncomfortable? What do you need?”

“Minseok,” Chen whispered, squinting hard to focus on him. “You’re taking care of them.”

“Of course I am.”

The tabby screeched; Minseok put the eyedropper back in its mouth.

“Why?”

“I’m your friend,” Minseok said, trying to sound as definite as possible.

Chen stared between him and the tabby kitten while it drank down two more droppers of formula. He watched Minseok rub the kitten’s belly and then wipe the resulting mess clean. He let Minseok lift the kitten long enough to wrap it in a clean towel and place it back in the crook of his arm.

“Thank you, Minseok,” Chen said, and closed his eyes.

Dr. Kim (“oh, just call me Jongin, we’ll be up each other’s noses for the next few months”) drove Minseok home, with a pile of ratty towels, another canister of kitten formula, and an entire array of small bottles with assorted nipple sizes.

“It’ll get easier,” Jongin said. “Their basic care, anyway. Bottles and diapers will seem like a breeze after the past twenty-four hours. Hang in there, Minseok. You’re doing wonderfully.”

He didn’t feel wonderful – he felt exhausted, grubby, and almost hungry enough to scream like a kitten. Still, he felt wiser than himself from the previous day: he brought their basket into the bathroom so he could take a quick shower, then into the kitchen to fry a couple of eggs to go over the dried-out two-day-old rice in the cooker and start another batch for morning. He made a pillow nest on one side of his bed and got a wonderful hour-long nap before the kittens woke him up.

Chanyeol showed up unprompted at seven-thirty with Sehun in tow and their arms full of bags: milk breads, a bunch of microwaveable meals, a dozen brand-new towels, and two tiny white shirts that said “CUTEST” across the front in black block letters.

“You’re both getting raises,” Minseok said.

“I haven’t even done anything yet, but okay,” Sehun said, just as one of the kittens started to screech.

Sehun opted out of the post-meal body-functions process but was happy to help bathe them and dress them in their tiny shirts, which were as advertised. Minseok took a photo and texted it to Jongin. Their stay cheered up Minseok entirely. He was able to clean up a bit, and Sehun made a pile of stir-fry and soup for breakfast with enough leftovers for lunch.

Minseok thought he must be doing something right in life, that his employees would come help take care of him without prompting. They even made him sleep. When he woke up, Sehun had washed every towel in the house that didn’t currently have a shifter kitten wrapped in it and Chanyeol was singing softly with both kittens asleep on his chest.

“Definitely getting raises,” he said.

They didn’t visit the clinic that evening: Jongin called in the afternoon to say that Chen’s fever had spiked.

“Don’t worry,” he said to Minseok’s silence. “Just a bit of stubbornness. As long as we can get him cooled down by tomorrow, there’s no need to worry.”

Of course he worried, though: about Chen, about what would happen to the kittens if – no.

“Handsome Dr. Jongin said not to worry,” he said to the kittens, currently nosing around in his lap. “But maybe we’ll worry a little bit, hmm? Just because we want your papa to be all right.”

He sat with his gloom for a little while, then called up his best gloom cure, Baekhyun.

Baekhyun had a great deal of commentary about Minseok having had Chen’s kittens in his house for a full thirty-six hours without having been told about them. Then he demanded pictures. Then he yelled for a bit about how cute the kittens were and demanded that Kyungsoo agree (“very cute, but why am I looking at shifter kittens?”). Then he allowed Minseok’s ears a brief moment of rest.

“Are you taking care of them by yourself, hyung? Are you okay? Is Chen all right?”

Minseok was so tired that he babbled – he was probably incoherent, but he was pretty sure he got the story across eventually.

“Every three hours,” Baekhyun said, whistling. “You must be so tired you can’t see straight. What can we do?”

“Oh, you don’t have to – “

“Hyung.”

Kyungsoo was now on the call too. Minseok took a breath.

“We’re not too booked for a Thursday. I’ll send Baek over with dinner for you and head over after clean-up. We’re practically nocturnal anyhow. You can teach us how to feed them and get some rest until morning.”

“Yippee!” Baekhyun said.

“No way, that’s too much.”

“He’ll be there in forty-five,” Kyungsoo said, and hung up.

Forty-five minutes was a long time to reflect on having such excellent friends, ready to drop their lives in an instant to help him. By the time Baekhyun arrived, Minseok had had a small breakdown on the kittens, who waved their hands and feet around at the touch of his tears like they did during their baths.

“Hyung,” Baekhyun said with a wry little frown when Minseok answered the door. “You look ten kilometers past your very end. Show me these cute babies and tell good old Baek all about it.”

Kyungsoo had sent over a feast of warm, nourishing dishes. Baekhyun dandled the kittens while Minseok ate. And, being Baekhyun, he asked the kinds of questions that broke Minseok open like a dam.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so scared, Baek. And so thin, he couldn’t even stand up by himself. Dr. Kim says he should be fine, but what if he’s really sick? What do I do, if? They’re so little, and I don’t know anything about any of this, they need so much, and he. Even if he – he could be sick for a long time, and what do I do?”

“There are shelters,” Baekhyun said.

“No!”

Baek smirked at him.

“There’s your answer, then. And if not you, Chanyeol probably,” he said with a grin. “People raise babies all the time. You just got a couple unexpectedly. You know that saying – it takes a village. Lucky for you, you have a village ready to help.”

“It’s barely two days in and I already feel like you’ve all done too much, I can’t keep asking – “

“You didn’t ask, did you?” Baekhyun said.

He picked up the tabby kitten and turned it around, bouncing it in front of his face.

“Everybody shows up for hyung because we love him a lot!” he said in a cute, squeaky voice.

The kitten complained loudly, which woke up its sibling, and Baekhyun got a lesson in feeding and kitten poop.

“Wow, I hate the aftermath,” he laughed. “Good thing Soo’s coming over later, he’ll be a champ.”

Soo was a champ, of course. He arrived just past midnight, waking Minseok but not the babies, who slept on Baekhyun’s chest. Kyungsoo gazed down at Baek with a gooey expression on his face; Minseok took the bag out of his hand and scrambled to the kitchen as Kyungsoo bent down.

Minseok unpacked almost a dozen tiny containers – he knew they were bits and pieces left over from the evening’s dinner service, but they were very welcome. Back in the living room, Soo was cradling the black-furred kitten, leaned against Baekhyun.

“They’re adorable,” he said softly.

Minseok looked down at their sleeping faces. The tabby had one ear poking up in a tiny triangle now, instead of folded over, and the black-furred one had a fist tucked under its chin. He’d spent so much time hustling around, worrying about them, that he’d forgotten to look at them.

“They really are,” he said.

When the babies woke, Soo fed his with surgical precision, hardly a drop of formula wasted, and he dealt with the clean-up with perfect calm.

“No worse than gutting fish,” he said with a shrug.

Baekhyun grinned and kissed him on the cheek with a smack. Then,

“To bed with you, hyung,” he said. “We have the process down.”

Minseok tried to argue with them, but they were well-rested and he was emphatically not. He woke once when the kittens shrieked, but heard Baekhyun and Kyungsoo’s soft voices, and the yelling quickly stopped.

Morning seemed brighter after almost six whole hours of sleep, even when Chanyeol texted his (reasonable) excuses. Baek and Soo looked rumpled but pleased, waving aside his thanks.

“Next up: names! I’m thinking BaekBaek and SooSoo,” Baekhyun said over their breakfast of Kyungsoo’s leftovers.

“I think Chen should get to name his own kids,” Minseok said.

“Snoozers are losers,” Baekhyun said. “If he wanted to name Mimi and Booboo, he should quit being sick.”

“Those aren’t even people names!” Minseok protested.

“Fine, Bubbles and Pookie.”

Kyungsoo smacked him.

“Stop being a jerk.”

“Aw, come on! How did I marry such a dud?” Baekhyun complained.

“True love and my cooking.”

“Okay, mostly the former.”

“Mostly,” Kyungsoo laughed.

“Bye bye peanuts, Uncle Baek loves you,” he said during their drawn-out leaving process, which involved a great many kisses doled out to the kittens (even a couple from Soo). It was as bad as Chanyeol. Minseok had to grin: Chen had no idea about the village ready and willing to help with his kids.

Assuming that he didn’t choose to take the babies and go to a shelter. Or resent Minseok for taking over. Or – die.

Minseok paced with the babies in his arms until 8:00, when he could call the clinic about Chen.

“He did okay overnight,” the receptionist said. “Still pretty out of it, but his fever’s down a little. Dr. Kim comes in at ten, I’m sure he’ll call you right away.”

That helped – as did a video call from Chanyeol, demanding to see the babies. Both of the tabby’s ears were up now, and both kittens had round bellies. Minseok patted the tabby’s tummy, and it grabbed his pinkie with its tiny hand. Its grip was surprisingly strong. Warmth rolled through Minseok, so strong that his breath was shaky for a moment. These tiny beings who needed so much.

The black-furred kitten made a rumbling, wet sound that portended something unpleasant in the swaddling towel. Minseok laughed.

Jongin called just after ten and invited Minseok to the clinic. The second time tucking the kittens into his messenger bag (wearing their shirts) seemed almost normal. The daytime clinic was full of shifter patients in the waiting room, of numerous types, most of whom looked at his carrying setup with raised eyebrows and/or pursed lips. He waited in line behind a tall bear-shifter woman whose cub, at eye level with the kittens’ faces, kept asking “but why are they in a bag, Mama?” until the woman growled softly and the cub glared up at Minseok. He gathered the bag up into his arms and was glad to be shuttled back into the back quickly, away from all those assessing eyes.

Chen looked both better and worse: no longer pale and dry-looking, but red and sweaty, presumably from his fever. He tossed his head as if trying to wake when Minseok and Jongin entered his room.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” Jongin said, passing his hand over Chen’s lank hair. “You’re all right.”

He took the shirts off the kittens and placed them on the bed next to Chen; Chen’s face wrinkled, though he didn’t open his eyes. He mewed softly and turned over, one arm curling around the babies, who made their happy sounds and pressed up against him. Minseok watched, his throat feeling tight at the sight of it, beautiful and sad/scary at the same time.

“He’s still pretty sick, huh?”

Jongin smiled at him.

“He is. But he’s definitely better. We just needed to find the right antibiotic for him. He should be more lucid by tonight.”

Minseok nodded. Jongin reached out to squeeze his arm.

“Why don’t you leave them here for the day? I’m sure you could use a break. They could use the time together, and the kittens are in better enough shape to get a dewormer and a couple of vaccinations. I think you’d probably like to miss out on the deworming process and to check in on your actual life.”

Minseok cringed at the thought of kitten behinds and the word “dewormer.” Jongin grinned.

“Come back in the evening, and enjoy your day.”

Minseok tried to enjoy the day, but mostly it was strange to go to all of his usual places, as if his life hadn’t been upended just a few days previous. He dropped by the studio: Sehun was in the midst of recording a book on the Korean diaspora in Russia, his steady voice popular with nonfiction authors. Chanyeol was, as ever, working the sound board. He waved his hands and glared at Minseok but couldn’t leave the board while Sehun was recording.

Minseok peered into a couple other of the booths – freelance actors and engineers, someday to be a whole building full of full-time employees, Minseok hoped. His email inbox had hit three digits. Thank goodness he had some office time, because that was going to give him hives if he didn’t deal with it. Kwon Boa, their contract specialist, had been as busy scouting up new contracts as he had been feeding Chen’s kittens. He spent a happy couple of hours answering emails, filling in spreadsheets, and praising Kwon Boa-ssi to the skies over the phone. They’d have to scramble to fit in all the upcoming work, but there were two popular novels in the mix, a webnovel that would require a full-cast recording, and a book of poetry that Minseok hoped to record himself, as long as the author agreed.

Thank goodness. All of that would pay for a lot of kitten formula.

As soon as they took a break, Chanyeol and Sehun invaded the office to demand news of the kittens and berate him for coming to work instead of going home to sleep, haranguing until they drove him out, protesting, to home, a shower, and bed.

The apartment was so quiet that for a few minutes, Minseok thought he might not be able to sleep. But the next thing he knew, his phone was ringing and the light slanting through the windows said it was late afternoon. His caller was Yixing, who picked him up for dinner after a happily busy hour: neither he nor his apartment looked or smelled anymore as if it had been recently hit by two infant cyclones.

In a crisis, Yixing was all action and no questions. Over seafood stew and vegetable pancakes, he had a hundred questions about how Minseok even knew a stray shifter, much less one with newborns, etc. – but only to the point when Minseok’s discomfort made him put down his spoon. Then Yixing waved his hand, apologized, and launched into amusing hospital stories.

“I’ll drive you over,” he said when dinner was over. “I haven’t seen Nini in an age, and I can take you home after.”

Half the lights were off at the clinic, and the receptionist locked the door after them. And in his room, Chen was sitting up, awake.

He still looked exhausted, with flushed cheeks and stringy hair, but Minseok felt a knot loosen in his chest at the sight of Chen’s open eyes. His knees felt wobbly for a second, and he figured he was probably smiling like an idiot.

Chen had the kittens in his lap, each of them now wearing their CUTEST shirts and tiny diapers. He looked over, and Minseok couldn’t read his expression. It was mostly a smile, which was something.

“I am so glad to see you awake,” Minseok said.

Chen looked down at the babies, plucked at the hem of the tabby’s shirt.

“I still can’t quite believe we’re all still here,” he said softly.

Minseok squeezed his shoulder. Chen gave a deep breath.

“You’ve been taking care of them.”

“Trying my best,” Minseok said.

He wanted to squeeze Chen’s shoulder again, to sit down next to them and – what? Take Chen’s hand? Stroke the kitten’s heads? Be part of the moment. But Chen looked brittle and stiff, and Minseok wondered whether all his efforts had overstepped a boundary.

“Where’d you get these shirts?” Chen asked.

“A friend brought them,” Minseok said. “Chanyeol, who works at my studio.”

Chen nodded.

“You’ve mentioned him.”

In the awkward silence, Minseok heard Jongin and Yixing talking in the hall.

“All of my friends have pitched in to help. They’re all half in love with the kittens already and rooting for you to get better,” Minseok said.

Chen looked up at him, face still so sad.

“Dr. Kim said you told him I could come stay at your house.”

“Yes,” Minseok said. “I hope you will.”

“I don’t want to go to a shelter,” Chen said, staring back down at the kittens.

“You’ve always said so. And you don’t have to. You have a place with me for as long as you need it. All three of you.”

“Why?”

“You’re my friend,” Minseok said. “It’s what I would do for any of my friends.”

“That’s true,” Yixing said from behind them. “Hyung let me sleep on his sofa for an entire month when there was mold in my apartment building, and the one time I ever heard him complain about my coming in at three a.m. all the time, he was talking to his coffee mug and thought I was asleep.”

Minseok stared.

“I never did.”

Yixing grinned.

“Sure, we can pretend that, hyung, if it’ll help convince Chen here that your offer’s sincere. Did you warn him that everyone you know will be crowding around trying to snuggle these babies?”

Chen looked up at Minseok, eyebrows tilted together.

“Not everyone,” Minseok mumbled.

“How many minutes was it until Chanyeol declared himself their uncle?” Yixing cackled.

“I’m not sure this is helping me make my point, Yixing.”

Yixing looked down at Chen.

“Minseok isn’t alone, Chen-ssi, and if you’re his friend, that means you’re not alone either. You should take him up on his offer. If for no other reason than you and he can switch off feedings and get a little sleep.”

Minseok couldn’t help laughing at that, which made Chen’s frown ease, and his ears lifted a little.

“I’ll try it,” he said. “But you have to tell me if we’re too much.”

“Promise,” Minseok said.

“It’s a moot point until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest,” Jongin said. “I want your fever manageable for a full twenty-four hours before we let you out of here. And at the moment, I want you to get some actual, un-sedated sleep.”

Of course Chen would look sad at that. He stared at Minseok while Jongin told him to transition to bottles and what size nipple to use, then handed over a package of diapers. He tried to copy Minseok’s swaddling technique – it took him a couple of tries before the black-furred kitten was sufficiently bundled.

He lifted the tabby and kissed it.

“Bye bye, Jiwoo,” he said, “be a good girl.”

He lifted the black-furred kitten for its own kiss.

“See you tomorrow, Minseok.”

“Of course – “ Minseok said, before he realized that Chen was still looking down at the kitten, with flat ears, his cheeks bright red.

Minseok found himself paused with Jiwoo suspended in one hand and his messenger bag now dangling.

“I thought I would never see you again,” Chen whispered. “I wanted to remember you.”

That – did not assist Minseok in remembering how to move.

Jiwoo cried out and wriggled, so Minseok had to drop his bag to ensure that he didn’t drop her, and Yixing plucked the bag out of the air.

“Time for me to ferry you home, some of us have been at work since before dawn,” he said.

Minseok tucked the kittens into his bag while he and Chen very carefully did not look at one another.

“I need a carrier,” he said, watching the babies try to worm around inside his bag.

“You need a carrier,” Yixing agreed. “I’ll get you one. One of my nurses is a shifter. Ermine, I think? She’ll know what you need.”

Minseok tried not to slink out of Chen’s room, even under the mountain of his embarrassment. Which was probably why he handed his card to Jongin and made such a large payment: what was a little added discomfort, at the moment?

“I’d love to not charge you,” Jongin said with a grimace.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Minseok said. “Please just give me a very long payment period.”

Yixing spent the drive home singing along softly to the radio, waiting with his skewer until Minseok was sliding out of the car,

“Everybody sleep well, Jiwoo, big Minseok, and little Minseok!”

Minseok wandered his apartment in circles for a little while, holding a kitten in each arm. In diapers instead of swaddling towels, they were more wiggly to hold, waving their hands and feet around, though Jongin had said they would be tired from their day of shots and cleaning out their systems. He told himself how useful it was to know that they were a boy and a girl. The black-furred – Minseok. Little Minseok had his ears up now. He hadn’t noticed that their noses had grown, even in this few days, into little people-looking nubs, and their faces were less furred.

Jiwoo squawked: Minseok murmured at her, and she turned to press her face against his arm. She made a sound like the one she made when they were with Chen.

Minseok took a moment. Then he settled them in his lap and pulled out his phone.

“I’m having a small emergency,” he said.

“Oh god,” Baekhyun said. “I’m on my way. Wait, where am I meeting you, home or hospital? Which one is it? Will they be okay? What happened?”

“An emotional emergency,” Minseok said before the bustling sounds of Baekhyun preparing to bolt from the café started to sound too serious.

“Oh. Oh, that’s good. Okay. No, babe, they’re fine, we don’t have to close down, Minseok hyung’s just worrying finally.”

“Sending Baek over anyhow,” Kyungsoo said into the phone.

“No kidding,” Baek said. “Be there in twenty.”

It was half an hour, but only because Baekhyun stopped for beer and snacks. He greeted the CUTEST shirts with whispered shrieks and exposed kitten feet with lots of kissing that made the babies squirm and squeak. He took baby Minseok into his arms and bounced him gently.

“Okay, tell me what’s up.”

“Well this young lady is Jiwoo,” Minseok said, taking her hand to make her wave.

Baekhyun gave his rectangular grin of pure happiness.

“Oh gosh,” he said.

“And you’re holding. Um. Minseok.”

The smile was replaced by wide eyes and a gape.

“Oh gosh,” Baekhyun repeated. “Right. Yes. I can see why you freaked out.”

Minseok couldn’t even look at him. He placed Jiwoo on his knees and let her grasp his forefingers, then waved her arms back and forth.

“How’s he doing?” Baekhyun asked softly.

“Better,” Minseok said. “Maybe coming home – coming here – tomorrow. Too thin, still. And.”

“And?”

“And scared.”

“Well, sure,” Baekhyun said, “unexpected parenthood, a close call, and moving in with practically a complete stranger. I’d be scared out of my mind.”

Minseok could only blow out a puff of air in frustration.

“Then there’s you, under-slept on account of two surprise babies in your house, about to be joined by their freaked-out dad whose company you’ve only ever had for like an hour at a time before. Moving into your bedroom, of course, because you would never make a sick person sleep on the sofa. For who knows how long? For who knows how much expensive care they’ll all need?”

Minseok stared at Baekhyun, cringing. Baek gave him a small, close-lipped smile.

“Makes for a really complicated crush, doesn’t it?”

“I can’t possibly,” Minseok said. “He’s – he’s been so ill, Baek, and he’s so frightened, and I know he hates the idea of shelters, I can’t ever think of that.”

“Ever’s a long time, hyung. Especially for a guy who named his son after you.”

“God,” Minseok choked. “He said he wanted to remember me.”

“Well that’s not fair. Misery desperation measures have no business sounding so romantic,” Baekhyun said.

Sadly, Baekhyun was, as Baekhyun so often was, right.

But it still was cheering, the way Baek laughed with delight over the tiny formula bottles, and even the process of threading baby Minseok’s tiny tail through the tiny hole in the back of his tiny diaper.

“Ah, these little sprouts,” Baekhyun said, kissing both babies while they tried to fall asleep.

 By the time Baekhyun left – giving Minseok strict orders to update him and Kyungsoo on the arrival of the cutlassfish fan – Minseok had gotten over the desire to hide behind his own living-room curtains, as if he were the cat. He and the kittens passed an uneventful night. It seemed as if several days of regular feeding had made them less frantic: Jiwoo merely snuffled around, mewing softly instead of screaming while he fed little Min.

Maybe this would be what it was like when Chen arrived. They’d take care of the babies together, so that each of them could get occasional sleep. Kyungsoo would fatten Chen up with gourmet fish dishes, and Minseok could get back to the studio to make sure there continued to be sufficient cash flow for three extra roommates, two of whom would wear a different size clothes approximately every other month for the next fifteen years.

Oof.

Well. Regardless. For the next little bit, anyhow, they would work it out. Minseok felt pretty good about it. Dr. Jongin called mid-morning to say that a clinic worker would drop Chen off in the afternoon.

“Well,” Minseok said to the kittens when he set down his phone. “We’d better clean up for Papa.”

Shower for himself, change of sheets for the bed, fresh rice in the cooker, load of clean towels, and babies fed, bathed, and dressed not only in their CUTEST shirts but also in the ridiculously tiny socks (pale yellow for Jiwoo, neon green for baby Min) Chanyeol had dropped off that morning with his coffee delivery/snuggle session. They wriggled around in the laundry basket, squeaking and knocking into one another while Minseok spent twenty minutes with nothing to do except grow increasingly more anxious until the door buzzer sounded.

And there was Chen, ears low, standing in the hall with his hands balled up in the hem of a nondescript sweatshirt, staring with wide eyes.

“Welcome,” Minseok said.

He tried to ignore the break in his own voice and stepped aside.

“Please come in. The babies are by the sofa.”

Chen moved so quickly that he was a blur, and Minseok found himself blinking at a softly smiling person with wavy chestnut hair into which nestled two long lop ears, one of which twitched.

“Why don’t we give him a minute?” the bunny shifter said. “I’m Kim Junmyeon, a social worker with the clinic. May I come in?”

Kim Junmyeon was subtle about the way he looked around at the apartment, but Minseok was still glad he’d cleaned up. He waited until Chen’s murmurs started to sound upset, then went over to sit on the sofa by Chen’s shoulder and gently ask to be introduced to the kittens. One ear twitched again at the introduction to baby Minseok, but he didn’t otherwise seem to notice.

“They look very well,” Kim Junmyeon said.

Chen had the kittens in his lap; he touched their faces.

“They’ve grown so much,” he said. “It’s only been a few days.”

“It must be a comfort to know that your friend has taken such good care of them while you’ve been ill,” Kim Junmyeon said.

Chen stroked the kittens’ faces.

“Yes,” he said after a minute. “Yes.”

After another long pause, during which Minseok had no idea what to do with himself, Kim Junmyeon clapped his hands softly.

“Let’s see how you’ll be living, shall we? Kim Minseok, will you show us around?”

Chen followed them around the apartment, kittens in his arms, silent while Kim Junmyeon asked questions about how the kittens had been eating and how long it took for the hot water to run out.

“And of course Chen and the babies will have the bedroom. Just – please don’t lock me out of the bathroom.”

Minseok didn’t mean to laugh like an awkward dork when he said that, but alas, he did.

Chen, however, was staring at the doorknob with an expression on his face too much like the one from the alley.

“The door only locks from the inside,” Minseok said.

Chen blinked rapidly and looked over – it was as if he was noticing Minseok for the first time.

“I can’t take your bedroom,” he said.

“Don’t be silly. You’re still recovering, and of course you’ll want the babies with you. The sofa’s neither big nor comfortable enough for all that. It is, however, perfectly comfortable for one, and I’m happy to sleep there.”

“I feel like,” Chen said. “It’s all so much.”

“Of course it is.”

Kim Junmyeon patted Chen’s arm and guided him back out to the aforementioned sofa.

“Kim Minseok-ssi’s right, though. You’re here with a pile of medications and under strict orders to rest. And the kittens need to eat, what?”

“Every three hours,” Minseok said.

“Every three hours,” the bunny shifter said. “Well, Chen-ssi, I’m very glad that you’ll have some help while you continue to recover.”

Chen nodded at his knees, again holding kittens. Kim Junmyeon gazed at him for several minutes, then patted his arm again. He gave Minseok a rundown of Chen’s medications (antibiotics, probiotics, high-dose vitamins, protein supplements) and handed Minseok his business card.

“Anything you need,” he said.

He leaned down to grasp Chen’s arm until Chen looked at him.

“I’ll see you the day after tomorrow, all right?”

Chen nodded. Kim Junmyeon shook Minseok’s hand again and left. Minseok shut the door behind him and took a moment to breathe before he went back to the – to the little family on his sofa.

“Can I get you anything?” he asked. “Water? Some food?”

“The socks are cute,” Chen said.

“Aren’t they? Chanyeol brought over a whole package of them. I can’t believe how small they are.”

Minseok pressed his lips together so he wouldn’t babble anymore.

“Thank you,” Chen whispered.

Minseok could only rub the back of his neck and feel awkward.

“I wouldn’t do anything different,” he said finally.

After several minutes of profound awkwardness, Jiwoo improved matters by giving a hard shudder, balling up her little fists, and squalling for food. Chen’s ears went back immediately, and he picked her up to cradle her, murmuring softly.

“Time to feed them,” Minseok said.

Chen glared when Minseok tried to take baby Min from his knee. Minseok stepped back; Chen put the babies in the laundry basket and lifted it, still glaring. But he followed Minseok into the kitchen and watched the process of mixing and heating formula with his sharply angled eyebrows drawn together. Minseok filled two small bottles and handed one to Chen, who picked up Jiwoo and held it toward her mouth.

“No, you have to test the temperature!” Minseok cried.

Chen stared at him, eyes wide again and tail lashing. He put Jiwoo back in the basket and stepped close to Minseok.

“They. Are. My. Kittens,” he growled.

Minseok rocked back on his heels. Jiwoo was still fussing, with little Min starting up too, and Chen’s fangs were uncomfortably close to Minseok's face. Minseok went a bit sweaty. He took a deep breath, so he wouldn't contribute to the upset filling up his kitchen.

“Of course they are,” he said softly. “I figured you didn’t know that the formula could burn them, since I didn’t know that when they first came.”

He held out his wrist and sprinkled a few drops on it. The liquid was, in fact, a bit hot. Chen, still glaring, copied his motion and hissed. He stepped back, looked down at the basket with a wild expression on his face, then gave a low yowl.

In a blur, the clothes he was wearing dropped to the floor. A small black cat struggled out of them, yowled again, and scrambled out of the room, his claws sliding on the kitchen tile. Minseok sighed.

How was this all going so wrong?

Well. No matter what, the babies weren’t going to stop fussing until they had their bottles. Minseok put Chen’s clothes in the basket with them, tucked the bottles to one side to cool a bit, and went looking under his furniture and behind his curtains.

He found Chen under the bed, backed up into the far corner so that he was nothing but a shadow and eye-shine.

Ordinarily, Minseok would’ve stood there fretting about how to coax Chen out, except that both kittens were full-on wailing by now, and they couldn’t be expected to understand the delay. He sat down cross-legged, tucked one kitten into the crook of each leg, tested the bottles, then stuck one in each kitten’s mouth. Screaming was replaced by squeaks and wet sucking sounds. Minseok wasn’t nearly as comfortable feeding both babies at once like this as Chanyeol was: the benefit of Yeol’s longer limbs and larger hands was really obvious.           But at least having to concentrate on holding each bottle with two fingers while bracing the other three against each kitten’s head left him no mental room to worry about Chen under the bed.

“Well, the quiet is an improvement,” he said after a minute.

There was a pause, then Chen crawled out from under the bed still in cat form, looking scrawny and mussed. He gazed at the babies, each of whom was making a mess given Minseok’s precarious hold on the bottles, and then Minseok was looking at a pair of hairy ankles over small feet.

“Sorry,” Chen said.

“Your clothes are in the basket,” Minseok said.

He tried not to look – especially when his inadvertent glance showed him the line of 3 nipples down each side of Chen’s chest and a ridge of soft-looking black fur that arched over each hip toward Chen’s tail. Then he wanted to stare, so Minseok made sure not to look at anything but Chen’s feet as he climbed back into his sweatsuit and sat down, hands out.

“Baby Min is way less wiggly to start with,” Minseok said.

Chen grimaced, but took the kitten, who protested when the bottle popped out of his mouth. Minseok didn't look at Chen while he took the bottle from Jiwoo’s mouth and repositioned her, then tipped the bottle back in – slowly, so Chen could watch – and right after that, both babies were quiet again.

“Baby Min, huh?” Chen said.

It was Minseok’s turn to grimace.

“Sorry, I feel weird calling him by my name.”

But Chen wasn’t glaring anymore. He was gazing down at baby Min, whose fists were waving around while he ate, with a soft smile.

“That makes sense,” Chen said. “Sorry I freaked out.”

“It’s okay,” Minseok said.

It wasn’t, really. It was excessively strange. He still had two newborns and a traumatized stray shifter about to take over his bedroom for the foreseeable future, not to mention a large debt at Jongin’s clinic. And what had happened to all of Chen’s brightness?

Minseok couldn’t even let himself be sad at the loss of it. There was too much that the three of them needed.

Yet another thing to push down the road.

“What now?” Chen asked when both bottles were empty.

Minseok had to smile at it, Chen’s obvious effort.

“Make sure they don’t have too much air in them first, then wait for them to need a clean-up,” he said.

He set Jiwoo face down on his knee, the way the nurse at Jongin’s clinic had showed him just yesterday, and patted her back gently until she ripped a truly disgusting burp that made him laugh. Chen smiled uncertainly but did the same to little Min, who let go of the air in his tummy in a much more dignified fashion.

“I don’t need to groom them?” Chen asked. “I feel like I should be grooming them.”

Minseok described having to rub their bellies before they were in diapers – it made Chen frown, but Minseok thought he looked like he was trying to remember.

“I was really sick,” he said. “It’s all such a blur.”

Despite using the past tense, Minseok couldn’t help noticing how thin he still was, how pale but with red cheeks.

“I’m so glad you’re better.”

Chen looked at him, dark eyes huge in his sunken face.

“That’s because of you.”

“It’s because of Dr. Jongin,” Minseok said, shaking his head.

He thought Chen meant to argue with him, but baby Min took that moment to fill his diaper, so they got to move on to baths and changes instead.

They got through the first night without any more tussles, though by dawn Chen’s exhaustion was beginning to make his face look drawn and pale again. The only reason Minseok woke him up at all was because Jiwoo’s eyes had opened.

Smiling softly down at her cloudy blue gaze, Chen looked almost like the happy person Minseok had first known and liked.

“Hi there, daughter,” Chen whispered. “Hi, baby.”

She yawned and sneezed, and Chen laughed. Minseok bit his lip to keep his sigh from escaping. Surely it was the sharpness of that bite that made his eyes water.

The next few days were almost a routine: Chen was terrible about remembering his medications, but that was easily fixed by phone alarms. Chen made a small fort of pillows and towels in the center of Minseok’s bed where the babies slept, safe from rolling off onto the floor, and he could curl around them, sleeping almost as much as they did.

He took to feedings and cleanings immediately (no surprise) and glowered at Minseok for the times when Minseok let him sleep. Baby Min’s eyes opened two days after his sister’s, after which his personality grew by seven sizes, and he was continually trying to roll out of laps or bowls to skootch around exploring.

Chen hung back, shy, the first time Chanyeol showed up with milk breads to snuggle, for the point two minutes it took for Chanyeol’s enthusiasm about the kittens to draw him in. He similarly hung back when Kyungsoo and Baekhyun arrived that evening, only for Baekhyun to display an unguessed level of gentleness and Kyungsoo’s plain roasted cutlassfish to prove irresistible. Minseok could tell from the way his tail lashed that Chen remained wary, but his friends’ determination to draw Chen in made Minseok’s throat feel tight with gratitude.

Pretty much any time any of Minseok’s friends came over they brought something for the babies, and Kwon Boa had left an entire bag full of onesies on Minseok’s desk. Every single one had a terrible joke on it. Minseok loved them.

Every couple of days, Junmyeon stopped by to sit with Chen behind the closed bedroom door, or once to take him out for a few hours. During the third of these visits, Minseok strapped the babies into the double carrier Yixing had brought and walked to the studio, where Minseok was treated to the rare sight of Kwon Boa overcome by too much cuteness. He answered emails while his staff carried the kittens through the studio, taking dorky pictures and holding them up to microphones as if they were small, fuzzy voice actors.

Kim Junmyeon texted after about two hours had gone by.

“We saw your note. Everything is fine, but I think our friend would be glad to see you sooner rather than later.”

Well. That put a number of emails about sound board maintenance and updates to his accounting software at a lower priority. Minseok hunted down his wayward kittens, one of which was in Sehun’s lap having a serious discussion about the script for a book about agile manufacturing (baby Min) and the other of whom was halfway down Chanyeol’s shirt doing girl group choreo (Jiwoo).

Retrieving the babies from their duties took a bit of doing, until a certain large employee (Chanyeol) was invited to help sling the babies into the carrier.

Chen was pacing the living room when he returned. He didn’t take the kittens into the bedroom and shut the door behind him, as he’d done a few times when he was obviously upset. He waited, tail lashing and hands clenching, while Minseok unwound the babies from the carrier. Then he took them, but only as far as the sofa, sitting wedged into the corner with his knees up, kittens held against his chest, where they wiggled and squeaked.

Minseok took his time straightening up the shoes at the door and hanging the carrier neatly on its peg, but Chen didn’t speak. Eventually Minseok sat at the other end of the sofa and chatted about their trip to the studio, including baby Min’s diligent work on Sehun’s recording script. By the end of it, Chen’s frown looked less heavy.

“Hungry? I’m in the mood for tuna kimchi jjigae,” he said, and Chen nodded.

He was quiet after dinner and during the kittens’ next feeding. They gave the babies a full, proper bath in Minseok’s hand-laundry bowl, to a lot of squalling and messy clean-up, since their birth fur was starting to fall out. Afterward they both fell asleep while being dressed in their pajamas. Chen tucked them into their nest and returned to the living room, where he stood in front of Minseok with a stubborn expression on his face while he glared at Minseok’s shoulder. His tail lashed, and one ear twitched.

He stepped forward and fumbled at the front of Minseok’s pants.

“What?” Minseok said, batting at Chen’s hands.

He felt the button come undone at his fly, and stepped backward. Rebuttoned it.

“What are you doing?”

“Paying you back for everything,” Chen muttered, tail whipping back and forth and his ears flat.

He stepped forward again, reaching. Minseok grasped his biceps and squeezed.

“No,” he said. “Chen, no.”

Chen looked him in the eye, then. His face looked pale again, like his fever was coming back.

“Why? You’re attracted to me, I can tell. You’ve always been attracted to me,” he said.

“You’re ill,” Minseok said. “You’ve been through too much. You don’t have to pay me back for anything.”

“Bullshit,” Chen said in a flat voice. “That’s not how the world works.”

He tried to pull away, but Minseok squeezed again.

“Even if your ears were up and your tail was still, I’d tell you that you have to get well first,” he said.

Chen blinked rapidly several times.

“You don’t?” he asked softly.

“Not if you’re unhappy about it, never,” Minseok said, and let Chen’s arms go.

Minseok watched him pace the apartment in circles. He growled several times, twice stopped to stare at the door as if he wanted to run. But he didn’t. He paced and growled, until he stopped abruptly and sank to his knees. Minseok dashed across the room and reached him just as Chen put his hands over his face, sobbing like his heart was broken. Minseok hesitated – he had just turned Chen down, he didn’t want to be confusing by trying to hug him. Chen mooted that point by leaning over to put his face on Minseok’s shoulder. Minseok hugged him gingerly.

By the time he stopped crying, Minseok’s knees were stiff. He tried to hide his wince when he shifted to sit cross-legged, but Chen noticed and grimaced.

“I’m so sorry,” Minseok said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Chen shook his head fiercely. He plucked at Minseok’s sleeve.

“Can we make some tea?”

“Of course,” Minseok said.

They washed their faces in the kitchen sink. Chen drummed his fingers on the table until Minseok set down two steaming mugs. He put down a box of tissues in the middle, just in case.

“I was so sick,” Chen said. “I didn’t mean to get – and then I was sick all the time, and it took me a while to figure out why, and I never felt like eating, and then I couldn’t keep anything down, the whole time. And I thought I would go to a clinic when it was time, but I didn’t know it would happen so fast. I didn’t think I was big enough for it to be time, and I was barely able to find a quiet place. And it hurt so much, and they were so little. They were so small, and I kept trying to feed them, but it wasn’t enough, and then there wasn’t anything more, and. And – “

He hung his head and cried again, hands limp on the table.

Minseok pulled his chair around to sit close and took Chen’s hands in his.

“Chen,” he said.

“My name is Jongdae,” he sobbed. “Everything you’ve done for me and I didn’t even tell you my real name!”

“That’s not important,” Minseok said. “Che – Jongdae, I’m so sorry. That must’ve been awful.”

“It hurt so much. I couldn’t take care of them right. Dr. Jongin says I can’t ever have any more or it’ll kill me.”

“I’m sorry,” Minseok said again, even though it seemed like the most inadequate thing in the world to say.

Jongdae cried for a shorter time the second go-round but looked twice as exhausted when he was done. He washed his face again and sipped at his now-tepid tea with downcast eyes.

“Junmyeon said I should tell you.”

“I’m glad you did,” Minseok said. ”You shouldn’t have to hide anything like that. I’m just sorry I didn’t find you sooner, maybe – “

Jongdae shook his head. The name suited him. Minseok liked it.

“Stayed away from you on purpose,” he mumbled.

“But why?”

“I hated being in heat,” Jongdae said fiercely. “I always hated it, and sometimes the free clinics run out of prevention meds. It makes me … I’m not myself. I never wanted you to know about that.”

In lieu of saying he was sorry for the fortieth time, Minseok simply squeezed Jongdae’s hand. He had never wanted to think about Jongdae that way either. He’d searched about cat-shifters soon after they met, and the luridness of websites describing heats disgusted him.

“Who’s the – who, um, sired them?” Minseok asked even though he hated himself a little to do so.

Jongdae shrugged.

“Just some guy,” he said. “Just some cat. I never wanted you to know about that either.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Minseok said.

Finally, finally, Jongdae looked at him. His eyes were so very tired.

“Doesn’t it?”

“No,” Minseok said. “It matters that you’re here now. Safe and healing and those babies getting fatter every day.”

Jongdae looked as if he was going to argue, but one of the babies took that moment to cry out, and he darted away. Minseok cleaned up, then lay on the sofa blinking up at the darkness for a long time. There was too much to fit into his heart all at once, and a future full of unknowns yawning out before him.

Would that bright, happy man he had known ever return, after so much tragedy?

And if not, did it matter? He’d told Jongdae he would give them a home, and Minseok meant it. As exhausted as he and his bank account were, he couldn’t even imagine would it be like not to have the babies around anymore. Every day their gazes were a little sharper and their personalities more clear: if they went somewhere else, he would miss watching them grow.

So they would stay. For as long as Jongdae wanted to. He would cherish his comfortable sofa and his ability to make one little family’s life better. Somehow, they would work it out.

Jongdae dragged more and more slowly during each of the overnight feedings, and in the morning he was nearly as pale as he had been in the alley. Minseok was almost as glad to see Chanyeol as he had been on the first morning, since it meant Jongdae could be convinced to climb into a warm shower while the babies had breakfast.

“Is he okay?” Chanyeol asked, staring worriedly at the bathroom door.

“He looks terrible, doesn’t he? Maybe I should call Dr. Jongin,” Minseok said.

Several minutes later, there was a loud thump from the bathroom. Minseok found himself at the door without knowing how he got there, knocking and calling out.

He took the soft meow as permission to enter.

Jongdae was huddled on the floor of the shower, one hand clutching the edge of the shampoo rack. Minseok called out his name.

“Dizzy,” Jongdae said.

“Will you let me help?”

Jongdae opened one eye and gave him a sour look.

“I don’t want to sit here until the water gets cold,” he said.

Well, sarcasm was a pretty good sign. Minseok reached in and shut off the tap. He got Jongdae to hang onto his arm, and hauled a dripping catboy out of the stall, but Jongdae closed his eyes and grimaced, swaying, when Minseok tried to let him stand on his own.

“Okay. I could. Dry you off?” Minseok offered.

Jongdae nodded. Minseok sat him on the closed toilet lid and discovered that trying to dry off another adult in a way that was thorough without being either sexy or intrusive was not the easiest task in the world. Way less fun than with boyfriends. He did the best he could with Jongdae’s head and all his edges but gave up entirely at the middle, pressing the towel into Jongdae’s hands with,

“I’ll go grab us both some dry clothes.”

When he returned, Jongdae was squeezing his tail in the towel, and Minseok cursed. He’d forgotten about that body part entirely.

“Sorry,” he said, and took over until Jongdae’s tail was basically dry.

When he was done, Jongdae was leaning with one elbow on the sink, staring at him.

“Sorry,” Minseok said again.

“Yeah,” Jongdae said. “I definitely would be happier if I were still stuck in the shower under the cold water. Or lying all damp on the floor. Cats love that.”

Minseok found himself laughing, with relief more than anything else.

“Feeling better?”

Jongdae sighed.

“No, I feel like crap, and I’m terrified that it’s my infection coming back. But you’re in here being terrific and feeling bad about it, which is dumb.”

Minseok sat back on his heels. Jongdae still looked skinny and exhausted, and his lips were white. But there was a bit of the old spark in his dark eyes, and with his damp hair falling over his forehead, he looked beautiful anyhow.

“This is all very weird, but I’m glad you’re here,” Minseok said.

Jongdae gave a small, weary smile.

“Me too,” he said.

It was a moment: Minseok didn’t know how to define it. But they stared at one another quietly, and Minseok felt as if they came to some unspoken agreement.

One of the babies squawked in the living room, breaking the quiet mood. Minseok stood.

“Right. I thought you might want to give your sweats from the clinic a break. We’re basically the same size, and these lounge pants have a drawstring waist. Will that work with your tail?”

They didn’t really – Jongdae cinched them tight, so low on his hips that the fur arcing toward his tail showed, but the hoodie Minseok gave him hung down to cover it.

“We’ll get you some clothes.”

“More for me to owe you,” Jongdae grumbled.

“Jongdae.”

Jongdae glared at him, but it was a tired, rueful look with no power in it. Anyway, glaring seemed to be all he was capable of at the moment: he had to lean heavily on Minseok’s arm to be able to shuffle into the living room.

“Oh, babies!” Chanyeol said. “Here’s your Papa. He’s feeling kind of poorly, so you have to give him your very best snuggles, right?”

Jongdae’s surprise made him limp as a noodle while Minseok bundled him onto the sofa and under a blanket. Chanyeol took over from there, laying the kittens on Jongdae’s chest and answering their squeaks as if he and they were having a whole conversation about the need for them to keep Jongdae warm and still so he would feel better. Minseok would’ve fainted from cuteness, except that the day’s fainting quota had already been met.

Dr. Jongin wasn’t at the clinic yet, but Minseok left as detailed a message as he could with the receptionist, while Jongdae attempted to not laugh at Chanyeol’s antics. By the time the call was over, Jongdae was wedged in with pillows and covered by a blanket that had two squirming lumps under it.

“I know you’re going to tell me not to stay, hyung,” Chanyeol said. “So I require a promise that if absolutely anything happens where another set of hands would be useful, even if it’s just running to the convenience store, you’ll call me or Hunnie.”

He loomed. Chanyeol was good at looming.

“All right,” Minseok laughed.

“And update me later!”

He patted the kitten-lumps one more time, ordered Jongdae to feel better, and rushed out in a whirlwind so that Minseok had to take a breath when the door shut.

“Still dizzy?”

Jongdae nodded, head leaned back against the pillows and eyes closed.

“Think you could eat?”

Jongdae grimaced and shook his head.

“Maybe some broth?”

Jongdae opened one eye, sighed, and nodded.

One benefit of being friends with a chef was a freezer full of weird goodies, like chicken stock simmered for an entire day until it was thick as jelly. Minseok swore by it for colds, rainy days, and general lassitude. Under the circumstances, he figured he’d better heat up a mug of it for himself too. Jongdae took more than half an hour to finish his mug, after which he dropped off to sleep with Jiwoo curled over his neck. Baby Min was wide awake and frisky, so he got to go on an adventure of drying and cleaning the bathroom, which mostly meant that he tried repeatedly to roll off the dry towel and onto the wet tile, presumably to spread kitten fur all over the place and squeak his protest at getting damp.

His phone buzzed as he was finishing up: apparently his message to the shifter clinic warranted a house call. Any relationship between that and Minseok’s anxiously sanitizing every flat surface was coincidental.

“Don’t worry,” Dr. Jongin murmured while he took his shoes off, “I’ll only charge you for a regular office visit.”

There was another level of worry he hadn’t considered.

Dr. Jongin winked at him and grinned.

He woke Jongdae gently but insistently: Minseok took Jiwoo and tried to give them a bit of privacy by taking the babies to roll around on the bed in a patch of sunlight. They were much smaller than human babies but seemed more coordinated and mobile. Little Min rolled and scooted on his belly with a purpose, if not always with success. Jiwoo’s gaze was the sharper of the two: she watched her brother’s attempts to move under his own power and rocked back and forth, obviously trying to match him. Minseok wondered how long it would be until he would need to baby-proof his apartment. He sincerely hoped they wouldn’t be able to climb curtains like domestic kittens.

Dr. Jongin called for him after a little bit. Minseok and the babies found him frowning down at Jongdae, who was staring at his knees looking unhappy.

“I know that mental health is as important as physical health,” Dr. Jongin said. “But could you please try to remember that your body is knitting itself back together and regrowing your blood volume while you’re still barely out of starvation mode? You need rest, Jongdae.”

He looked over at Minseok.

“I hope by now he has told you his name. If not, well, surprise!”

Jongdae put one hand on his face.

“Will he need to go back to the clinic?” Minseok asked.

Dr. Jongin narrowed his eyes, which made him zero percent less handsome.

“An admirable attempt at distraction. But the answer to your question is no, if you can make this troublesome cat rest. Three days of total bedrest, and I want him to call me each day, and keep on taking his medications. Show me the bottles, please.”

He examined the bottles and looked down at Jongdae.

“I assume Kim Minseok-ssi has been as diligent at making you take your meds as he has been at feeding the kittens.”

Jongdae looked over at Minseok, mouth twisted up in a wry smile.

“He set alarms.”

Dr. Jongin laughed.

“Of course he did.”

He crouched down and put one hand on Jongdae’s arm.

“Setbacks happen. But please rest. Keep eating as much as you can, stay nice and still. If the dizziness passes by tomorrow and your energy improves with rest, you don’t have to come back to the clinic. Deal?”

“Deal,” Jongdae mumbled.

“Now bring me those kittens.”

Minseok assumed that it was part of Dr. Jongin’s admirable bedside manner than he cooed over the kittens while he examined them, with lots of praise for the roundness of their bellies and their perkiness. Jongdae looked less harassed when Dr. Jongin handed them over.

“Bed rest,” he said. “Lots of food. And now I need to go fuss at my social worker before I can start my clinic day, so you’ll probably get a little break from therapy too!”

He laughed on his way out, high-pitched and silly, while Jongdae hid his face in baby Min’s fur.

Dizzy and exhausted, Jongdae didn’t complain too much about being on full rest. Minseok sat at the other end of the sofa, a football game with the sound turned down on the TV, answering work emails and updating his friends on every twitch of tail or ear. Baekhyun snuck over mid-afternoon with a bag full of food for dinner; in his sleep, Jongdae was only willing to let go of Jiwoo, so she had to bear the brunt of Baek’s affection. She got him back by getting her fist into his hair and trying to yank it all out.

Sadly for her, he was so proud of her improving coordination that he just kissed on her more.

“You’re the strongest,” he cooed at her. “Trying to murder your uncle Baek, good job, baby!”

The second day, Jongdae felt better enough to grouse extensively about staying still – ironic for someone who napped almost as much as his newborns – until Minseok shoved the TV remote at him. That Jongdae landed on a nature show about birds and watched it with silent attention, his tail thumping on the sofa, made Minseok have to hide behind his own kitchen door and laugh behind his hands.

“You should just sleep in here,” Jongdae said that night, while Minseok was setting up everything for the overnight feedings on the nightstand.

Minseok dropped the thermos of warm formula on the floor. Thank goodness it was well sealed.

“Seriously,” Jongdae said.

“You’re supposed to be resting.”

“I’m resting! I’m lying down and everything! But I’m saying, I know you won’t let us take the sofa, which means every time you come help in the middle of the night, you have to get up, turn on a light, come in here, and make a whole production of it that probably wakes you up so it’s hard to get back to sleep. It’s your bed, you should get to sleep in it.”

Minseok thought back to the times when he had come home after spending time with then-Chen – the times he had imagined seeing Chen in his bed, like this. Sleepy-eyed on a pillow, smiling.

Minseok hadn’t ever imagined two kittens in footie pajamas scooting around, though.

“You could sleep on the other side and make sure the babies don’t roll out,” Jongdae said, in a low, pleading voice – the voice that he had used in the past to wheedle snacks or “ten more minutes, do you really have to go?” and that had made Minseok helpless to say no.

“All right.”

Jongdae grinned. Minseok hadn’t seen that grin in months, as bright and happy as a summer morning. It made Minseok rather glad to have two hungry chaperones to keep him out of trouble.

Of course Jongdae was right, too. Minseok climbed into his bed, and his body went limp at how comfortable it was. The babies squeaked their happy sounds, and Jongdae tugged at his arm until Minseok moved closer, so the babies had a warm little cave under the covers between the two of them. Minseok went to sleep with his hand on one small back. When he woke later to their stirring and crying, he rolled over with his eyes barely open to pour out two bottles and hand one across to Jongdae.

He was pretty sure he dozed while baby Min ate, until he felt a weird vibration through little Min’s back. He looked down; Min was holding onto one of his fingers and eagerly going at the bottle, with no sign of discomfort, though Min’s back shuddered like a motor –

Oh.

“He’s purring,” Minseok breathed.

Jongdae’s smile was soft as the pillow his head rested on. He blinked slowly at Minseok, and Minseok heard a second, deeper rumble. The realization that Jongdae was purring made tears spring into his eyes.

“You’re going to be all right,” he said, hearing hoarseness in his voice.

“Thanks to you, it seems that we are,” Jongdae murmured.

Minseok went back to sleep with little Min tucked up against his chest, blinking over at Jongdae on the other side of the bed, Jiwoo curled into the curve of his arm. At the other overnight feeding, they didn’t even speak but seemed to move as one unit, getting formula into tiny bellies with zero fuss and as little time as possible so everyone could go back to sleep.

He felt more like himself in the morning than he had since his dinner with Sehun, which seemed like a decade ago. Jongdae’s color looked healthier, and he was perky enough to demand a shower without the benefit of an attendant. Not that Minseok sat right outside the door the whole time. (He did.)

Chanyeol’s arrival for breakfast cuddles was accompanied not only by pastries and coffee but also by a folder full of papers to sign, Sehun, and a stack of books.

“Benefit of working in an audiobook studio,” Sehun said. “Even if you don’t like to read, all kids need to have someone read to them.”

Jongdae nodded with a serious expression and leafed through all the picture books in the pile while Chanyeol took baby Min flying around the living room and Jiwoo tried to chew Sehun’s shirt. When Minseok called an impromptu business meeting over one of the contracts in the folder, both of his employees looked ready to mutiny over giving up their kittens. But not long after they bent over the page of legalese, a voice rang out:

“Down, down deep in the cold, cold sea, there lived a baby whale.”

Baby Whale’s New Friend had done pretty well for the studio a couple of years previously – a really cute story, read by Kyungsoo, who had a terrific voice for narration but would only do picture books because they didn’t take much time away from his kitchen.

Soo’s reading of it was smooth and calm – Jongdae’s was more dramatic. He went too fast and swallowed a few consonants, because he wasn’t trained, but what a tone he had.

“Boss,” Chanyeol murmured at him.

“Seriously,” Sehun said.

Minseok nodded and pointed at Sehun. They finished up their paperwork and kissed the babies goodbye once storytime was over.

“You’ve got a great voice,” Sehun said. “A few pointers on diction and speed and you could make money doing that. I wonder if you know anybody who hires narrators?”

He breezed out the door without a backward glance while Jongdae stared at him.

“Was he serious?” Jongdae asked soon after.

“Yes.”

Which seemed like the perfect setup for Junmyeon’s visit that afternoon: he arrived bearing a bag full of medicine for Jongdae and apologies for them both, very slightly tempered by “but you know, emotional health strongly affects physical health, so it all had to come out some time.”

Still, it was a good opportunity to go to the gym and the grocery store. Minseok thought about the tenderness of everything overnight, and how comfortable it had been. He let himself imagine what it might be like if Jongdae turned out to be a good narrator: security and safety. Minseok would still get to see him all the time, even if he moved out. Minseok tried to picture that too, Jongdae moving into his own place, taking Jiwoo and little Min with him. Having his own apartment to himself again, so he could watch loud football matches on TV and walk around with no pants on. Silence, and no one to care if he drank too much and fell asleep on the sofa in his clothes.

It occurred to him, imagining this scenario while placing packages of frozen dumpling in his cart, that it all sounded terrible. How could he bear it, if Jongdae and the kittens went away? What was he supposed to do if he wouldn’t get to see them every day and watch how their faces changed, or their ears learned how to swivel around, or find out what color their eyes would turn out to be?

Minseok stared at the cartoon chicken in a padded coat on the front of the dumpling bag and re-ordered his inner landscape to incorporate the fact that he loved those kittens. Really loved them, baby Min’s curiosity and Jiwoo’s snuggliness. He didn’t want to be just a friend of the family, dropping in to take them for play dates and buy them birthday presents. He wanted to be there every day.

Was that even allowed?

It would be Jongdae’s decision.

Minseok took that thought home with him to find Jongdae and the kittens napping. Looking as if they belonged in his bed. Which, in his opinion, they did.

The scent of roasting fish reliably woke the resident cat. Jongdae padded into the kitchen with a baby in each arm and his hair sticking out in every possible direction. He looked wonderful.

“No more bed rest?”

Jongdae shook his head, a hesitant smile on his face that became a broad grin as soon as dinner was set in front of him. Afterward, Minseok ignored the surprise on Jongdae’s face and sat right up against him on the sofa, laptop open to a shopping site for shifter clothing.

“I don’t want to spend more of your money,” Jongdae groused.

“You’d rather go without pants? Seems like that could be a little awkward. Not to mention that it relegates you to being a housecat.”

Jongdae’s tail lifted up straight behind him, slightly puffed.

“What.”

Surety rode Minseok’s shoulder like an imp. He shrugged.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll just pick out what I want to see you wear.”

That shocked Jongdae into a wide-eyed silence that only lasted until Minseok clicked on a pair of billowing trousers with tight ankles that had an all-over pattern of green and yellow diamonds.

“Minseok!”

Jongdae smacked him in the arm. Minseok couldn’t recall ever having been so glad to be lightly assaulted. He let Jongdae snatch the laptop from him and happily paid for the several pairs of dark jeans and pajama pants.

“I can’t believe you didn’t get the green ones,” he said once the transaction had gone through.

Jongdae made a rude noise.

“You’re in a mood,” he said.

Minseok had to laugh. His heart felt so light.

“Amazing what a good night’s sleep will do for you.”

Jongdae ducked his head. One ear flicked, and he touched Minseok’s wrist with two fingers: a brief, slight touch that made Minseok shiver.

“Yes.”

Minseok blessed Jongdae’s timing that he hadn't tried his come-on this evening, because while he stared at the angles of Jongdae’s profile, Minseok knew tonight he wouldn’t have had said no, even if no was still what needed to be said.

He could wait, though. He would wait until Jongdae was done with his medications. And then ask.

Not that it was all softness and roses, of course. The nights were still soft and quiet – Minseok often woke to find Jongdae rolling close to him in the night, such that a few times they woke with their foreheads touching. And it got a bit easier as the kittens grew, the time between feedings stretching out to four hours, then five. But Jongdae’s energy levels returned far more slowly than either of them wanted, leaving him sometimes snappish with frustration. No matter how important Minseok knew Jongdae’s sessions with Junmyeon were, it was never fun to return home to find Jongdae weeping or raging, usually over things he didn’t want to talk about.

Minseok wasn’t perfect either: once all the crises were past, he had two full weeks of doldrums so bad that first, Jongdae made him talk to Junmyeon (both mortifying and helpful), then Chanyeol dragged him out for several hours of bowling during which Minseok (a) got the worst score of his life, (b) drank enough for two of himself, and (c) cried a little on his bowling ball that his life had been completely upended and he’d had his heart scared halfway out of him. Plus, you know, that little matter of maybe being somewhat in love with two shifter kittens and possibly also their parent.

“Oh, hyung,” Chanyeol said, hugging him without a single care for getting snot on his t-shirt. “Sometimes you just have to let yourself sink into the happy and let it cradle you.”

That sounded silly, but Minseok tried to follow the advice. It wasn’t so different, after all, from Junmyeon’s comment, “it’s okay to just feel your way through this and trust yourself.”

As Jongdae’s health improved, he took to pacing the apartment until he gave Minseok motion sickness. So they wandered the neighborhood, each with a kitten strapped to his chest. They stopped for snacks and sat in their favorite spots from before. Minseok saw the bright smile he’d missed more and more often. He saw it when Chanyeol held one kitten in each hand and sang songs about them in a fake operatic voice. He saw it when Sehun wriggled away from every messily bodily function, and when Baekhyun and Kyungsoo lobbed jokes back and forth over late-night leftovers.

No longer Chen, slightly mysterious and distant, but Jongdae: the first thing Minseok saw each morning when he opened his eyes. Jongdae who got snappish when he was tired and never saw a serving of seafood that he didn’t want to eat. Jongdae who used too many towels and refused to believe that Minseok’s preferred t-shirt folding method was superior (it was). Minseok could no longer imagine what his life would be like without Jongdae and the kittens in it.

They grew some teeth, which meant many days of miserable howling and chewing holes in everyone’s shirts. They started eating solid food, which first took the form of a horrible fish sludge mixed with formula that stank almost as bad going in as it did coming out the other end. Jiwoo finally learned to scoot like baby Min did, so they grubbed around the apartment mewling and bonking into furniture until Minseok gave himself the hiccups from laughing so hard.

It was perfect.

Even better than perfect was the day when Jongdae was strong enough to walk all the way to the studio, where Kwon Boa immediately claimed Jiwoo “for feminism” and Chanyeol claimed baby Min before he went into kitten withdrawal, leaving Sehun to sneakily escort Jongdae around extolling the virtues of the audiobook life. He pattered and guided without taking a breath until Jongdae was reading Baby Whale’s New Friend into a microphone before he knew enough to protest. In front of the mic, he went too slowly and enunciated too much, opposite to how he read to the kittens at home. But he sat wide-eyed next to Sehun at the sound board afterward, and smiled with delight at how his voice sounded when it was cleaned up.

It took two days for Jongdae to mention it.

“Do you really think I could work for you?” he asked seemingly at random, standing next to Minseok in the kitchen while they chopped vegetables.

Minseok piled greens into a bowl and covered them with water. It was a ridiculous question, but Minseok didn’t want Jongdae to feel like he was getting a favor, even if he was.

“I think you have a good enough flair for it to try,” he said. “Your voice is strong and has a pleasant tone, and you have lots of variation. I give new narrators a chance all the time. You need a little work on clarity and speed, but that’s pretty normal. With your natural sound, I’d say you’re starting out with a bit of an advantage, if it turns out that you like it.”

They fed the kittens, ate dinner, bathed the kittens and put them to bed.

“What if I don’t like it? Narrating, I mean,” Jongdae muttered.

“Then between Junmyeon, Chanyeol, Sehun, and Baekhyun, I figure I have about two years before I have to come up with any other ideas,” Minseok laughed.

Jongdae stared at him, half-smiling. One ear twitched.

“And I could still live here if I don’t?” Jongdae whispered.

Minseok couldn’t laugh at that. In lieu of embracing Jongdae, Minseok took his hand.

“I’ll never lock you in,” Minseok said.

Jongdae’s head snapped up to stare at him, eyes wide.

“But you and the babies are always welcome here, no matter what.”

Jongdae nodded, eyes lowered. He squeezed Minseok’s hand before he pulled his own away.

“I’d like to try it,” he said, and “do you think Chanyeol would be my sponsor?”

Minseok blinked past a hundred questions (most of which were “why not me”) and 18 levels of shock before he could get out a “yes.”

This had apparently been a topic of conversation already, given that Junmyeon brought the paperwork over 2 days later and spread it on Minseok’s coffee table. Chanyeol had squeaked with surprise before Jongdae disappeared into a hug when he’d been asked. Over the papers, he made a long speech about how unfair it was that adults should be forced to have legal sponsors for guardianship just because they had tails. Junmyeon’s nose twitched at him when he was done.

“Of course we agree with you,” Junmyeon said.

“You’d probably be a better guardian of me!” Chanyeol shouted, and the noise made baby Min fuss.

“Well, if you need a guardian, we can certainly talk about that,” Junmyeon said in a low voice that caused and outbreak of blushes among everyone present except for Yixing, who laughed.

Jongdae had a new signature seal, and he kept turning it over and over in his hands while Junmyeon read the sponsorship agreement, for Jongdae, adult cat-shifter, and kittens Jiwoo and Min … woo? Jongdae turned red under the gazes of the entire room.

“Seems like I won’t have to have a remembrance of Minseok,” he muttered. “So I figured I could take away one thing for Baekhyun to tease Minseok about.”

“Nice try, even though that’ll never happen,” Baekhyun said.

Minseok didn’t even try to think of a witty comeback. He was too busy trying not to let the lump in his throat evolve into full-blown tears, especially when Jongdae stamped the contract next to Chanyeol’s stamp and Junmyeon presented him with an official (if temporary until it had a photo) government ID.

Dinner was catered by the Kyungsoo, of course, and the party was loud and joyous until the babies were worn out by volume and being passed around endlessly and both of them started to cry at once: loud, sad wails with fat tears running down their cheeks. It was so miserable and hilarious that everyone went quiet and passed the poor kittens around the room one more time for snuggles and kisses. Chanyeol pulled rank as “official sponsor” and followed Jongdae to the bedroom to put the babies to bed. Minseok’s cheeks ached from smiling. And the following day, Jongdae would start work at the studio.

It was a version of heaven Minseok would never have thought to dream of: waking in the night to one or other of the kittens needing a cuddle or trying to wriggle over him to fall out of bed. Jongdae in the morning, one ear turned inside out, laying his tail over his eyes in protest at waking up. Walking to the studio together, bouncing Minwoo in a chair while he set schedules and paid bills. Recording that book of poetry with Sehun on the soundboard, a kitten in his lap. Walking home again to cook dinner together, bathe the babies, and do it all over again.

When Jongdae got his first paycheck, he and Chanyeol went to the bank so he could open his first bank account. Afterward, over takeout jokbal, Jongdae told them about growing up in a shelter, where they weren’t cruel, exactly – but they put no effort into keeping Jongdae’s family together, and the doors had always been locked. Until his twentieth birthday and he came of age, where they set him out on the sidewalk with only his personal belongings and pocket change. Nobody’s eyes stayed dry during that story, but when Jongdae climbed into bed that night, his eyes were calm, and he gazed at Minseok for a long while before closing his eyes.

The next Friday, Jongdae wasn’t recording. Minseok arrived home to find his tallest employee grinning on his sofa and his newest employee upending the organization of the bedroom closet.

“What’s going on?”

“Wear this,” Jongdae said, tossing over a dark blue shirt that Minseok had forgotten he owned.

“Why?”

Jongdae smiled at him, so wide and brilliant that Minseok ceased to care what the reason might be and started to unbutton the blue shirt.

“I just got my first paycheck recently,” Jongdae said loftily, “so I’m taking you out to dinner. Yeollie’s going to babysit.”

Minseok had to laugh when Jongdae’s restaurant of choice was sushi. But it was like old times to eat with him and laugh – like the old days when Minseok had had a simple crush. To laugh easily with Jongdae in the setting of a huge, life-changing love: that was even better.

They were a couple of blocks from the restaurant when Jongdae took his hand, and Minseok stopped walking.

“You’re as obvious as a neon light,” Jongdae said, his voice so warm and his smile so bright that Minseok’s embarrassment couldn’t really take hold.

Jongdae touched his cheek.

“Minseok,” he said. “My ears are up and my tail is still.”

Minseok felt his own, answering smile spread across his face.

“You’re not my sponsor, and I’ve been healthy for a while. So Minseok, will you believe me if I tell you I choose you with my heart?”

Minseok stepped closer to his own heart’s choice. Stepped in, tilted his chin, and said yes without a word.