Work Text:
The first time the man with the long brown hair came over, Patches hid upstairs under her dad’s bed, ears twitching as she listened to the humans downstairs talking and laughing. She could hear her dads, all three of them, and they sounded so happy, that she slowly started to get comfortable. Eventually she decided that if this human was making her humans happy, then he couldn’t be so bad.
She met a small, white dog that day that growled and yipped at her, and the human with the long brown hair often picked up the dog. Skeppy, one of her dads’ friends who she’d seen around before, seemed to like the guy with the dog. He smiled at him the way George smiled at Dream and followed him around the house, finding any excuse to touch him.
Patches had watched from under the table, observing both the yappy dog to make sure she didn’t cause trouble, and the way these two danced nervously around each other, always meeting eyes and reaching for each other's hands.
When they came back the next day, she crept down the stairs into the couch room with the big tree that was always lit up, cautious at first, then bounded into the room with a confident tail in the air when she realized the dog wasn’t there.
“Hi Patches!” the new friend lit up when he saw her and patted his lap, asking her to come sit. Patches made her way around the circle of couches, brushing up against her dads’ legs as a greeting, then finally hopped up onto the couch next to the man with the long brown hair.
“Aww, see, she likes me!” he said, and gave her pets down her head and neck. She tilted her head into his hand, and he scratched her behind the ears. She decided she did like him, since at least he knew how to do that.
“She’s such a good cat, oh my goodness,” he said, and Patches purred at the praise. She heard her dads laughing, and walked across the couch towards them, padding over three laps until she got to George.
George grabbed her under the arms and pulled her up towards his chest, cooing at her in a high-pitched voice she was quite familiar with. He was kind of annoying, but Patches didn’t mind. He had an energy that she adored; he was, in many ways, the most like a cat of her human fathers. He would nap on the couch with her and meow to her, and even if the sounds he made were nonsensical, Patches liked the sound of them. She could tell he had a big heart, and she liked to lay on his chest, right over it, and purr into his chin.
She knew her first dad, Dream, adored him even more, though. The way he looked at him, the way he smiled and laughed and chased his touch. She was glad Dream had someone so wonderful to make him happy after all those years he spent alone, always inside, always a little curled in on himself, a sadness in his chest she could feel when she layed on it.
George set her down in his lap and she curled up, not quite sleeping, but drifting off while her ears flicked to follow the murmurs of conversation around her. Her dads spoke so familiarly with the long haired man, whose name she eventually picked up was Bad, that she decided he must be an old, old friend, one of the ones they talked to in their big and small glowing boxes. Skeppy was like that, too, but now he saw them in person every now and again.
Patches didn’t know what had changed, exactly, but she knew when. She knew something shifted after George started living with Dream and Sapnap, because she’d never seen her dads so happy, nor had she seen so many people in the house.
Eventually, George moved her to get up, which she told him was rude with a loud meow. It looked like her dads were getting ready to go out, while Bad and Skeppy stayed in the living room.
She hopped up onto Skeppy’s chair and sat on the arm. He reached out to scratch the top of her head, then dropped his arm and just stared at her.
“Awww, look at you two,” Bad said, lifting his little light box to do what her dads always called taking pictures, though Patches didn’t have a clue what that meant. Skeppy smiled, though, and reached out to take one of Patches’s paws in his hand. He was gentle, but she still didn’t really like anyone except George touching her there, so she pulled her paw away. Then he started scratching her head again, which she very much preferred, so she leaned into his hand, crouching down on the sofa arm, and he scratched under her chin.
Patches closed her eyes and purred. Skeppy giggled, which made Bad giggle too, and the sound was familiar: she recognized the love in their voices from how Dream and George laughed at each other.
When Skeppy pulled his arm away and Patches picked her head up, she saw them looking at each other, their smiles already so wide, and yet tight, like they were holding back even bigger grins.
“You’re so cute,” Bad said, and Skeppy bit his lip.
“You’re cuter.”
Patches meowed, and Bad reached over, chuckling as he scratched behind her ears.
“But of course you’re the cutest, little Patchy,” he said, using a baby-voice which made Patches purr and Skeppy laugh. With his hand on her head, Patches decided Bad wasn’t a stranger at all. He belonged in this house as much as the rest of them, because he filled it with love, just like all her dads and their friends did, for her and for each other.
“Ready to go?” Sapnap called from the other room.
“Yup!” Bad answered, and both he and Skeppy got up.
Patches hopped up to the headrest, watching them loop their arms together as they left. Then they did something funny. Skeppy paused, one hand reaching out to hold the door frame, and peeked around the corner, like he was looking for the others—not because he wanted to find them, though, but because he was hoping they weren’t there.
When the coast was proven clear, Skeppy reached up and took Bad’s cheek in his hand. Bad smiled, wordlessly understanding the cue, and gave him a lingering kiss on the lips.
“Are you guys coming?” George shouted, impatient as ever, and Bad and Skeppy both giggled as they pulled apart.
“We are! We are!” Skeppy insisted, and finally they both scampered out of sight.
Patches waited until she heard the door shut and lock, then hopped down onto the cushion of the chair where Skeppy had been sitting. It was still a little warm, which was perfect for her. She stretched her limbs out, pushing her back into a long curve, yawned, then shimmied into a comfortable ball. Her limbs tucked under herself, her tail wrapping around towards her face. She closed her eyes, safe and content, and drifted off for her fifth nap of the day.