Work Text:
Minho is in seventh heaven.
Buried underneath a pile of tiny fluffballs, he couldn’t be happier.
He thinks he can vaguely hear Chan chuckling from the side, but Minho has nothing to say to that, blissed out from being buried underneath a, well…
A meowtain.
Several hours before…
“You seem stressed.”
“What gave you that impression?”
“Oh, the eye twitching, empty mugs, snapped pencil…”
Chan eyes the small bottle of rum sitting on the corner of the desk, his mind already putting two and two together.
“I swear that that is for cooking and that I did not spike my coffee,” Minho says, not even needing to look to know where Chan’s looking, still highlighting his notes. “Felix wants to try making rum truffles at Christmas.”
Chan backs off of that thought quickly, then. “So anyways, stressed.”
It’s true. Minho has been more stressed of late, biology exams and other detailed research essays having a stranglehold on his life. He feels like sleep is a luxury now, one he can’t afford, with the amount of work he has to do and it sucks.
“Did you actually need something from me or…?”
Minho turns to Chan, raising an eyebrow in his direction. Chan, unperturbed as he was by Minho’s sometimes standoff-ish nature, smiles.
And oh. Oh boy. It is not a smile that Minho likes.
“Two pm, front door, I’m taking you somewhere to decompress, and I am not taking no for an answer.”
Chan whisks out of the room before Minho can properly answer, leaving him blinking in confusion and maybe a little bit of slight panic.
He quickly checks the clock to see the time, 10:32AM, blinking at him in red letters. Three and a half hours should give him more than enough time to wrap up the chapter he was working on.
At first, Minho worries a bit. He has had a lot of things to do, to get ahead on, but he also trusts Chan and knows that the older wouldn’t do anything that would jeopardize his schoolwork. Still, the thought of taking a break for any significant amount of time bothered him, all the way up to when Chan was hustling them out the door and down the street to their destination.
“Where are you taking me?” Minho finally asks, when they turn down a street and start heading into a part of town that isn’t familiar. It’s quieter here, the streets lined with small shops and cafes, people walking instead of driving or biking.
“A surprise,” Chan says with a broad smile. He keeps checking his phone and then signs, and back again, until they finally stop at one building. “Ah, here we are.”
Chan doesn’t give Minho time to see what the sign says before he whisks them through the door and up a flight of stairs, then through a door into a small, cozy lobby.
And there, right on the counter, is one of the most beautiful tabby cats Minho has every seen.
“Chan,” Minho says slowly when he notices another cat curled up in a little bed on the bookcase tucked in the corner behind the door, the wheels of his mind turning slower than he would like. “Where are we?”
Chan nudges Minho’s shoulder a bit, forcing him to turn to the side to face a glass wall.
And there.
Is the best thing Minho’s seen all week.
Which leads him to the predicament he’s in now.
Well, sort of.
Chan had gotten them checked in and handed off a couple packets of the squeezable cat treats to Minho, and set him loose inside the compound absolutely filled with cats of all various shapes, sizes, breeds, and colours.
It was an afternoon during the week, so it was just Chan and Minho and one young couple in the room at first, until the couple left a few minutes after the two had arrived.
And that’s when Minho became the cat’s meow.
It was as if the cats had honed all of their little brains directly onto Minho, because even after he ran out of treats, he was slowly being taken over by the cats. Some where in his lap, others were rubbing against his back and knees as high as they could reach. One had even climbed up onto his shoulders and was sitting as content as could be, napping away.
Minho had let himself be lost among the fur, Chan sitting off to the side with one solitary cat as a companion, happily watching Minho lose track of time and relax.
But then Minho had laid down on the floor, careful to move the cat on his shoulders before he did, and the cats absolutely swarmed him in the best way possible.
And this is where Chan and Minho find themselves. Minho happily buried underneath a pile of cats, Chan snapping the occasional photo and laughing, and the poor employees of the café looking unsure whether or not to intervene or just let things happen.
“You okay, Minho?”
Minho hums contentedly at the question, too busy petting any cat within his reach, and too happy with the weight covering almost every inch of his body in cat-shaped lumps. “Yeah.”
Sadly, all things must come to an end, and eventually their time slot is up.
Minho emerges from the cat café covered head to toe in fur, looking a little dazed and ready for a nap.
He ends up slipping his hand into Chan’s as they slowly walk back to the university campus, taking their time and enjoying the fresh air, squeezing it gently.
Thanks, the hand squeeze says silently.
Chan smiles and squeezes Minho’s hand back.
Anytime.