Archive of Our Own

Minho’s first year in his new house was full of surprises.

The joys of homeownership, he called it, especially whenever he was updating Jisung about the latest calamity. A first-week flood thanks to a busted pipe. The freezer inexplicably icing over two weeks after that. His oven fizzling out the week before Christmas, and the dishwasher refusing to drain at New Year’s. The next weekend, he returned from shopping for replacement appliances and discovered his garbage disposal was leaking under the kitchen sink. He was still waiting for a plumber to give him an estimate on repairs when one of his dining room windows inexplicably cracked during a severe cold snap. At this point, he was bracing himself for his ancient furnace or laundry machine to give up the ghost as well.

(Minho didn’t think they’d make it to year two. Jisung predicted something else would break first.)

Nevertheless, despite all the hassle and expense, Minho still loved his money pit of a house, because it was his. He could dance in his living room without worrying about noise complaints from downstairs neighbors. He could hammer nails into the walls to hang up pictures. He could paint things whatever damn color he wanted.

Best of all, he didn’t have to negotiate with a landlord about his cats.

An entire two-bedroom, one-bath house for him and the cats felt like the ultimate luxury after too many years crammed into small apartments. No extra security deposits or “pet rent.” No leases with clauses that limited the number, weight, or breed of his pets. He could even brush his teeth without having to look at one of the four litterboxes he had for his three furbabies, since there were other out-of-the-way spots in the house where he could set them up.

Yes, it was a modest starter home, but it was more than enough for him and the cats. The kitchen counters had enough space for his coffee machine, rice cooker, and stand mixer. There was a perfect corner for a cat tree in almost every room. The bay window in the living room had a lovely view of the front garden. Soonie, Doongie, and Dori spent much of their days there, watching the neighborhood squirrels’ acrobatic attempts to plunder the supposedly squirrel-proof bird feeder. 

All in all, it was a pretty good life, even if Minho’s appliances were prone to unexpected failure. Minho had no regrets about becoming a homeowner—until the day that Dori went on the lam. 

🌳

In hindsight, the only surprise was that it took this long. Dori had always been interested in Going Outside. More than once he’d attempted to dash past Minho when he was struggling inside with a week’s worth of groceries from the nearest H Mart. Of Minho’s three cats, Dori was also the most offended by the general existence of closed doors, and he protested mightily whenever Minho tried to claim a few minutes of privacy by shutting him into or out of a space. 

(As a kitten, Dori had especially hated when Minho would close the bathroom door so he could take a shower. On one memorable occasion, the door didn’t latch properly, so Dori managed to sneak in while the shower was still running. At first he just meowed for attention. When Minho ignored him, Dori decided it would be a good idea to leap from the edge of the bathroom sink to the top of the shower enclosure to get closer to his beloved human. Dori was surprised when the top of the enclosure proved to be both narrow and slippery and moist. Minho was surprised when a panicky cat fell on his head while he was shampooing his hair. Minho had a faint scar on one shoulder from Dori’s frantic attempts to escape the water.)

The first clue that something was amiss was when Minho cracked open a can of tuna while making lunch, and only two cats came running to investigate. Minho dumped the tuna into his boiling pot of kimchi jjigae instead of their food dishes, much to Soonie’s and Doongie’s disgust. They tried to trip him as he carried the empty can over to the sink so he could rinse it out before putting it into his recycling bin.

“This isn’t for you,” he told them sternly, though he also leaned over to pat their butts. “Your dinner’s not until six.”

Minho was tidying up after lunch when he realized he hadn’t seen his trio in a while. That often meant that there was some silent mischief in progress elsewhere, so he went hunting for them. He found Doongie at the top of the dining room cat tree and Soonie curled up on the living room sofa. Dori wasn’t with either of them. Strange. Minho searched the bedroom and the bathroom and made sure that Dori hadn’t managed to trap himself in one of the closets. Minho even poked his head into his office, even though it was technically off limits to the cats. There was no sign of Dori there either.

There was only one place left to check—the laundry room off the back hallway. Dori sometimes lounged on the windowsill above the washing machine, because it got a lot of afternoon sun. Unfortunately, the sunny ledge was empty, and even worse, the window screen was partially torn away from its frame and flapping gently in the fall breeze. 

Minho lunged to close the window over the torn screen before he lost another cat, but the damage was already done. Dori had escaped.

🌳

Minho was crawling out from under a particularly prickly shrub when he heard a polite cough from his neighbor on the north side of his fence. 

“Everything okay over there?”

Minho struggled to his feet and brushed dirt and grass off his jeans before answering. The Chois had welcomed him warmly to the neighborhood when he was a brand new homeowner. They offered fresh vegetables from their garden, free cat sitting, and referrals for plumbers, electricians, and other tradesmen. Minho had definitely needed all those referrals. Unfortunately, their friendship also came with long conversations every time Minho attempted to do yard work. The Chois might have been empty nesters, but apparently their son was the same age as Minho, and they were determined to introduce them some day. It smelled of matchmaking, and dodging their attempts to have him meet the mythical Hansol were getting harder and harder.

Today the inquiry came from the wife, Melody. She was holding a rake and wearing a big floppy gardening hat as she leaned over the fence.

“Cat got out.” Minho knew she’d be sympathetic. They had a fluffy orange cat named Leo. “You don’t happen to have seen one around?”

“Oh dear, I’m sorry I haven’t. Which one?”

“Dori. The brown tabby with white feet who sits in that window a lot.” Minho pointed over his shoulder at the screen Dori had decimated. 

“You must be so worried. I’ll look around our yard.” Melody pointed over his shoulder. “Have you searched the back yet? I did hear some meowing earlier today, but I didn’t see any cats. Not even that Silas who’s always digging in our vegetable beds. They say lost cats usually don’t go very far.”

(Silas was a hefty indoor-outdoor tuxedo cat who had a home one street over. He had apparently reigned as the king of the neighborhood for a number of years. Soonie, Doongie, and Dori were very offended by his frequent presence in what they considered to be their territory and caterwauled at the windows every time he prowled through Minho’s yard.) 

Minho thanked her for the tip and headed to his backyard. It was not a very impressive place, to be honest. Minho had dreams for the future—raised beds for vegetables, or perhaps a patio and a fire pit—but for now it was just a scrubby patch of grass with a row of trees along the back property line.

“Dori?” He shook the bag of Dori’s treats for the hundredth time. “Doridori? Dori-ya?”

For a moment, there was just the wind in the trees and the distant sound of traffic on the main road a couple blocks away. Then he heard it, too—a faint, plaintive meow.

Minho took a few steps in the direction of the sound, but he still couldn’t see Dori anywhere. “Dori? Where are you?”

More meows, increasingly urgent. Minho walked toward the noise, scanning the ground, until he was under the branches of a cedar tree near his back property line. He walked carefully around the trunk, looking for his foolish cat. Then the meows started up again, nearly frantic, and Minho finally thought to look up. Way up. After a few minutes of scanning the canopy, he finally spied Dori, who was clinging to a branch that was higher than the roof of Minho’s house. 

Oh, fuck.

🌳

Minho’s first call was to the fire department. The dispatcher told him that the firetruck couldn’t come out for his cat, because they had to be available for “real” emergencies. Asshole. Still, even if they could have come out, Dori was high enough in the tree that the ladders might not have reached him. So much for that. 

His second call was to his vet’s office. The receptionist was much more sympathetic than the dispatcher, but they still didn’t know anyone who could rescue a cat stuck in a very tall tree. After conferring with their colleagues, they eventually suggested putting some food at the bottom of the tree to lure Dori down, but they also warned him not to leave the food unattended. It would probably attract unwanted animals, like raccoons, and Dori had probably chased or been chased by another animal into the tree in the first place.

Of course, the internet had plenty of suggestions, but Minho suspected much of it was worthless. Some people’s cats came down after a day or two, when they were hungry. Other cats were well and truly stuck until someone managed to physically pry them off the tree. By the time night fell, Minho figured the only thing he could do for now was wait. Even if he’d had a ladder long enough—even if he had the nerve to go up it—he wasn’t going to be able to do anything in the dark.

The next morning found Minho out in his yard again, contemplating the cedar. Dori had moved overnight, but of course he’d headed in the wrong direction. He was now perched on an even higher branch, close to the top of the tree. As soon as he heard Minho’s voice, he started meowing desperately again.

“Oh no, is he in the tree?” It was Melody again, on the other side of the fence.

“I can’t figure out how to get him down,” Minho said. “No one has ladders that long. I don’t think he knows how to get down on his own.”

“Maybe you need someone who can climb up there without a ladder.” Melody’s face brightened, and she dug in her pockets until she found her phone. “Like an arborist. We had a nice guy prune and spray our fruit trees last year. Let me see if I can remember his name. My husband probably still has his business card somewhere inside.”

Melody couldn’t find the arborist’s number on her phone, but an hour later, Minho got a message from her husband with a photograph of a slightly wrinkled business card that read: 

CB’s Tree Care

We be-leaf in great service!

253-555-9797

🌳

CB’s Tree Care answered on the second ring. “Good morning!”

“Hello? My neighbors gave me your number. The Chois on Yellow Wood Road. You did some work for them last year?”

“That’s me. What sort of job do you have? I’m scheduling most new customers about two weeks out, but I might be able to move some things around if it’s urgent.”

“It’s not really about a tree,” Minho admitted. “My cat got himself stuck high—really high—in a tree. I’m trying to find someone who can get him down. Is that something you’d be able to do?”

“I’ve wrangled a few cats,” CB said. There was a thread of amusement in his voice that made Minho suspect the real number was probably more than a few. “How long has yours been stuck?”

“Since yesterday.”

“Well, that’s not good. I’m finishing up a job right now, but I could probably be there around midday, depending on where you live. Yellow Wood Road, you said? What house number? I can give you a call when I’m heading over.”

It was nearly one o’clock when a black truck finally parked at the curb in front of Minho’s house. Minho heard the engine turning off, and he went out to meet the person who would hopefully be Dori’s savior. CB was just coming around the front of the truck when Minho came out. 

Minho couldn’t really say what he’d expected an arborist to look like. Perhaps someone older, tanned from too much time in the sun, with a wardrobe out of the LL Bean catalog. Not like this, for sure. CB turned out to be Minho’s age, Asian, with a few unruly locks of black hair sneaking out from under the edges of his black cap. His black tee shirt showed off a very fine pair of arms, which Minho would have appreciated more fully if he wasn’t sick with anxiety over his flight cat.

“You must be Minho? I’m Chan, nice to meet you.” He offered Minho a strong handshake and a brilliant smile.

“Thanks for coming so quickly. It sounded like you’re really busy.”

“Not too busy for an emergency. Can you show me the tree?”

Chan was remarkably unfazed by Dori’s predicament when Minho led him to the cedar. “Ooh, he got way up there, didn’t he? Maybe 80 ft or so?”

“Do you think you can reach him?”

“Oh, absolutely. How’s he with strangers? Likely to scratch or bite?”

“He’s pretty friendly.” Minho frowned. “Though he sounds freaked out right now.” The meows had started up again when they got near the tree. They had a newly raspy quality, as if Dori had worn out his voice in his distress.

“Does he know his name? What do you call him?”

“His name’s Dori. I think he knows it? I usually call Dori. Sometimes Dori-ya.”

“Oh, do you talk to him in Korean?” Chan asked in Korean. He giggled at whatever face Minho made. “I guessed from the name. Well, let me get my gear, and I’ll get your boy down.”

Chan was well-prepared for someone who probably hadn’t been planning to rescue a cat today. Minho blinked in surprise as Chan pulled a variety of items from the back of his truck. Some of it was probably standard arborist no equipment—sturdy gloves, a climbing saddle, nylon ropes and metal carabiners, a decidedly dorky helmet—but some of it was definitely cat-specific, like a net on a very long pole. 

“Do you think it will be hard?”

“On a day like this?” Chan looked up at the clear blue sky. “No rain, no wind, and a nice healthy tree? Shouldn’t take any time at all.”

“No time at all” turned out to be about twenty minutes. Minho watched anxiously as Chan climbed up a ladder to the first major branches and then began tossing up ropes to help him ascend the main trunk. 

Once Chan was high in the tree, Minho couldn’t really tell what was happening. But he could hear the ropes moving through the pulleys, and Chan’s sweet talk in a mish-mash of English and Korean as he got closer to Dori’s perch. It started with him calling Dori’s name, and it turned into a full conversation as he neared the top of the tree.

“Hi there, sweet boy.” More climbing noises. “Aw, you look so tired. You’ve been on that branch for a long time. I’m here to help get you down, Dori. You picked a good tree, though.” An answering meow. “You’re a good cat, aren’t you? Whoa, hang tight a bit longer and don’t go higher. I just need to get a little further up.” There were a few more minutes of climbing noises, and then Dori’s meows stopped.  Minho craned his neck to try to get a sense of what was happening and only managed to make himself light-headed. He was about to holler for an update when Chan called down, “I’ve got him! We’ll be down soon.”

The descent was much faster. Once Chan had his feet on the ground and had unhooked himself from his network of ropes, he unfastened a wriggling green sack from his belt and held it out to Minho. The sack meowed. “It’s got a drawstring. Take him inside before you let him out. I’ve had cats try to go right back up.”

“I really can’t thank you enough,” Minho said, accepting the sack. When he felt Dori’s familiar warm weight in his arms, something in him settled for the first time since the chilling moment when he’d realized Dori had gotten out of the house. 

“Glad I could help.” Chan undid the chin strap of his helmet and pulled it off with a sigh of relief. The early fall day had turned warm, and for all that Chan made it look easy, the tree climbing must have been strenuous. His hair was a flattened sweaty mess under the helmet.

“Do you want to come in? You must want something to drink.”

“Oh, that’s not—” Chan stopped to push his sweaty hair out of his eyes. “Actually, water would be great. Thank you.”

Minho gestured for Chan to follow him through the back door of the house into his kitchen. Once Minho was sure that the door was securely shut behind them, he crouched down and set the rescue sack on the floor so he could loosen the drawstring. Dori’s head popped out as soon as the opening of the bag was large enough. The rest of him soon followed, and he brushed up against Minho’s legs with a demanding purr.

Minho rubbed under Dori’s chin, always a favorite spot. Dori leaned into the scritches with more purrs, tilting his head so Minho could rub his cheeks, too. “I was so worried about you, brat,” Minho told him. “You always find a new way to get into trouble.”

Dori ducked away from a final pet and promptly trotted off in the direction of his food bowl. A minute later Minho heard the familiar sound of kibble crunching. Minho picked up the abandoned sack and returned it to Chan. “You don’t want to forget this.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Chan said. “It’s the sack for good kitties.”

Minho blinked. “What do the bad kitties get?”

“They mostly come down in the net.” Chan grinned, and oh, he had dimples. Maybe they hadn’t popped out earlier, or maybe Minho had been too distracted to notice them. “I don’t take it personally. I’d be pretty mad if I’d been stuck in a tree for a couple days and a stranger tried to scruff me.”

Minho remembered the offered drink. He reached up into a cabinet for a drinking glass, and after a moment’s thought, he took down a second glass for himself, too. It turned out that fretting over his ridiculous cat was thirsty work. “What would you like? There’s water, seltzer, iced tea.”

“Tea would be great.” Then in a very different voice, “Oh, who’s this?”

Minho turned to see Soonie sniffing Chan’s shoes by the back door. “That’s my angel Soonie. He was the first cat I adopted. Dori’s the maknae. There’s also Doongie, but you probably won’t see him unless I open a can of wet food.” He poured their iced teas and set the brimming glasses on his kitchen table. “Have a seat. Let me find my checkbook, too. Unless you take Venmo? What do I owe you?”

“Nothing.” Chan sat down and took a long sip of his drink. “I don’t charge for rescues. Wow, this tea is really good, by the way.”

“But your time—”

“I don’t charge for rescues,” Chan repeated. “Ever. I’m happy to charge you for planting, pruning, and tree removal. If you want to talk about your property sometime, I can give you my card. I don’t have one on me right now, but I have extras in the truck.”

Minho could out-stubborn just about anyone, but even he didn’t think this was the moment, not with a virtual stranger who’d just done him an enormous favor. So he changed the topic. “So how did you end up becoming a cat rescuer?”

Chan laughed, and the dimples made another appearance. “It’s just a side gig. Honestly, I don’t advertise it. If I did, I wouldn’t do anything else. But I’m always happy to help a friend or a client who’s in a pinch. Some of the cats are stuck for days by the time someone thinks to call me.”

Minho wanted to ask how he’d ended up as an arborist, but they were interrupted by Chan’s phone. He glanced at the number and apologized to Minho before taking the call. “Hey, Lix. Yeah, running a little behind. Just tell them I’m on my way. I should be there by 3.” After he ended the call, he said, “Sorry about that. I have to get to my next job. Thank you for the iced tea.”

“It’s the least I could do,” Minho said, accepting the empty glass. 

Minho helped Chan collect all his gear and carry it back to the truck. When almost everything had been loaded, Chan reached into the front pocket of one of his gear bags and pulled out the promised business card. It looked very much like the one that Minho had a picture of on his phone, except it was still pristine.

For a moment, as least. Before Chan offered it to Minho, he flipped it over and wrote something on the back. “I put my direct number there. Good for tree and cat emergencies.”

Minho accepted the card. “Thank you again. I really don’t know how I would have got him down if you hadn’t come.”

“It was my pleasure.” Chan’s phone chimed again. “Ah, I really need to get going. Call any time, okay? And I’ll send you a picture of Dori. I got a good photo of him before we came down.”

Minho didn’t even know where to start with his questions. Did Chan always take pictures in the middle of cat rescues? Wasn’t he afraid of his expensive phone slipping out of his hand and smashing to bits on the ground below? Minho didn’t even like to take his phone out of his pocket if he found himself somewhere that was too high for comfort. 

He ended up asking exactly none of his questions, because Chan was already heading around to the driver’s side of his truck.

What a strange twenty-four hours.

🌳

Minho had mostly put Dori’s excellent adventure behind him the next morning when his phone chimed with a new message from an unknown number. Minho nearly dropped his phone into his oatmeal when he opened it to see a picture of Dori sitting on a branch, reaching his paw toward the camera. It was a ridiculously adorable picture if you ignored the tiny trees and buildings in the background that showed exactly how high Dori had managed to climb. 

Minho put down his spoon and his phone so he could wipe his suddenly sweaty hands on his jeans before beginning to type a message to Jisung. God, he hated heights. He’d only gotten as far as what would you do when a second photo came in.

This one was a selfie that showed Dori cradled in Chan’s very nice arms. Minho stared at it frozen for a full minute before he cursed under his breath and called Jisung instead.

“It’s too early, hyung,” Jisung whined when he finally picked up after the fifth ring. “What’s the emergency? I thought Dori was okay.”

“He sent photos!”

“Dori sent photos?”

“Not Dori,” Minho hissed. “The tree guy.”

“Oh,” said Jisung, suddenly sounding much more awake. “Send them to me. I want to see the dimples.”

Jisung was going to have a field day over the photos. Then again, Minho had called for the specific purpose of having someone listen to his gay panic, so that was the price he was going to pay. So he sent them over and tried not to regret his life choices..

“Looks like all that tree climbing is a good workout,” Jisung said slyly when he’d received the pics. “Was there a message, too?”

“No.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve left him on read.” When Minho was silent, Jisung started cackling. “Hyung!”

“What am I supposed to write back?” 

“Um, just about anything? I don’t know. Hire him to come do tree stuff.”

“It’s gross to flirt with someone who is working for you.”

“That’s usually true,” Jisung admitted, “but he messaged you first. Just text him. I’m going to go back to sleep now.”

“Thanks for nothing.”

“I love you, too, hyung.” He hung up before Minho could threaten him with dire consequences.

Minho stubbornly finished eating his now very cold oatmeal before responding to Chan’s message.

It’s a good thing he’s cute.

Much to Minho’s dismay, three dancing dots immediately appeared, indicating that Chan was already typing a response.

The cutest! Accompanied with a swooning cartoon cat sticker that Minho grudgingly admitted was adorable.

At least only the cats were around to judge Minho when put his face down in his arms. He was really too old for this.

🌳

Fortunately for Minho’s self-respect, Chan had a business to run, and their text conversation trailed off once Chan had to head out to his work site for the day. The bad news was that by the time that happened, Chan had already asked Minho how Dori had gotten out in the first place, and Minho had told him about Dori’s wanton destruction of the laundry room window screen. 

Chan, of course, knew a place that did repairs.

Which is how Minho found himself carefully popping the torn screen out of the window frame and driving over to a small hardware shop two miles away. The store was in a strip mall full of Korean shops, so Minho was not at all surprised when the guy behind the counter introduced himself as Changbin. 

Minho showed him the torn screen and explained how Dori had gotten through it. Changbin inspected the metal frame and shrugged. “I’ve seen worse. It’s pretty easy if you want to do it yourself. You can pop out this cord—it’s called the spline—and pull out the old screen. Then you cut a new piece and push the spline back in. We sell the screen by the foot and a little roller for the spline. Or I can do it for you if you don’t mind waiting. Probably can’t get to it today, but by the end of the week, sure.”

“I’m not much of a DIYer,” Minho told him. The crooked bookcase in his office bore witness to this. “How much?”

“Depends on what type of screen you want. We have some heavy-duty ones that are better for pets. This is pretty flimsy. If you have cats and the rest of your screens are like this, you probably want to replace all of them sooner or later.”

New screens for all his windows—that was another expense that wasn’t on his home improvement list. Later would have to do, when it fit in the budget. Or he’d learn how to fix them himself. For now, though, he was happy to pay someone else to fix this one for him so Dori could safely enjoy the breeze again.

Changbin was a man of his word—the repaired screen was ready on Friday. Minho got Changbin’s text too late in the day to get to the store before closing, but he popped in bright and early the next morning to pick it up. The clerk at the register wasn’t Changbin, and his store t-shirt didn’t have a name tag, but he seemed to be expecting Minho. 

“Oh yeah, Binnie-hyung said someone would be picking up that screen. You’re Channie-hyung’s friend, right? You got the receipt?”

Minho produced the yellow carbon from his wallet, only slightly worse for the wear. The clerk squinted at it, muttered something about messy handwriting, and then disappeared briefly into the backroom. He returned quickly with the repaired screen, which had been neatly wrapped in brown paper. “Here you go. Prepaid so you’re all set.”

“Thanks.”

“Good luck beating the rain! Supposed to be a nasty storm coming in.”

Minho had swiped away some angry yellow weather alert on his phone when he drank his coffee that morning. Perhaps he should have read it, he thought. A torrential downpour started almost as soon as he pulled out of the parking lot, and he could see the trees whipping wildly back and forth in the wind. He ended up taking the long route home to avoid some semi-flooded streets. By the time he pulled into his driveway, he was really regretting not having put on a jacket when he left his house. Still, it wasn’t far from the driveway to the door. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d made a mad dash for it. 

Except this time he was holding the screen, and it definitely slowed him down with its awkward size and shape and pokey corners. He was trying to maneuver it through his front door when he felt something brush against his ankles. Minho looked down just a moment too late to stop Dori from shooting past him and out into the world for the second time in a week.

With a calm that he very much didn’t feel, Minho carefully deposited the screen just inside the door before he firmly shut the door again to prevent Soonie and Doongie from following their younger brother’s bad example. He turned to see Dori five feet away, sitting on the muddy grass, getting wetter by the second.

“Dori-ya,” Minho crooned with false sweetness, “what do you think you are doing?” He took a step toward his exasperating cat. Dori immediately backed away from him. “You don’t want to be out in the rain.”

Unfortunately for Minho, what Dori actually wanted was to play. He danced in a circle around Minho’s legs. He took playful swipes as the drooping branches of the foundation shrubs, which were heavy with rain, and sniffed at the weeds growing in the cracks of the front walkway. Every time Minho tried to scoop him up, Dori gamboled just out of reach. This game of keep away eventually took them around the corner of the house to the side yard. That’s when the last of Minho’s meager luck truly ran out, because Dori’s scampering brought him face to face with Silas in all his twenty-pound tuxedo glory.

Dori spat and immediately puffed into a Halloween cat pose. Silas didn’t even blink before he launched himself at Dori. For an awful thirty seconds they were a yowling tornado of fur and claws that completely ignored Minho’s shouts to stop. Minho was about to throw his sneaker at them to break up the fight when Dori slithered away from Silas’s grasp. Dori hissed one more time, then seemed to decide that he was fighting too far above his weight class and ran. Straight for the cedar tree on the back property line.

“Dori, goddammit, no!”

Dori disappeared up into the tree. Silas didn’t bother following him, just licked his paws a few times before sauntering toward the Chois’ garden without a care in the world. Minho vowed to find its owner someday for the express purpose of convincing them to neuter the annoying beast. Then he went over to the tree to see how high Dori had managed to climb.

The answer, of course, was far too high.

🌳

Chan picked up on the second ring. “Hey, Minho!” He sounded far too cheery for the rainy day and Minho’s equally stormy mood. “How’s your weekend going?”

“Just peachy. Do you get many repeat customers?”

“Hmm, a pretty decent amount, I’d say. We have a lot of regulars for seasonal maintenance. We do have a fair number of one-offs, though, especially for removal of dead and damaged trees.” 

“How about cat customers?”

“There have been a few.” The penny finally dropped. An awkward laugh. “Don’t tell me—”

“It really is a good thing Dori is so cute. Yeah, he’s stuck again. Same tree.”

“Poor baby.”

“Idiot baby who can’t stay in the damn house,” Minho corrected. “Are you by any chance free today for the retrieval of a rascally brown tabby?”

Another huff of laughter. Minho bet the dimples were making an appearance where he couldn’t see them. “I’ll be there in an hour.”

🌳

The worst of the storm had blown through by the time Chan’s truck parked in front of Minho’s house. It was still raining steadily. Minho went out to meet him, zipped into his best raincoat and sheltered under a giant golf umbrella that he’d borrowed from his parents at some point. He was surprised to see there was a second person in Chan’s truck.

“You must be Minho,” the newcomer said as he climbed down from the passenger seat. He had freckles and a surprisingly deep voice and was wearing a bright yellow rain slicker that made Minho think of a duck. “Chris told me about you. I’m Felix, nice to meet you.”

“Lix is my cousin,” Chan said as he came around from the other side of the truck. “He works with me part-time.”

Minho ignored Chan. “What exactly did he tell you?”

“Ah, Lix always just wants to know about the cats I get out of trees,” Chan said hastily, tugging Felix away from Minho by his elbow. “He thinks I should open a cat rescue TikTok. I keep reminding him that my actual business is trees.”

“Except when the cat’s owners are—” Lix started to say, but he trailed off when Chan pointed to the back of the truck.

“Grab the ladder and take it to the back, ok?”

“You got it, boss,” Felix said, sounding far too amused for Minho’s peace of mind. He winked at Minho before trotting off dutifully to start unloading the ladder and other climbing gear.

Chan waited until Felix was out of earshot before he said ruefully, “He’s a gremlin, but he’s family. He was helping me out at the office when you called.”

Minho shrugged. “I have a few friends with gremlin privileges, too. And I’m really sorry to drag you out here in this weather.”

“You get used to the rain in this work. Wind is a different problem, but it’s died down a lot. It’s really no trouble at all.” Chan wasn’t wearing any rain gear, just a long-sleeved shirt in some sporty material, so Minho could only see the shape of his very nice arms. But there was nothing stopping Minho from seeing the smile and the dimples and Chan’s obvious happiness to be there despite the miserable weather. The feeling was mutual, even if Minho felt a little guilty about the circumstances.

“Did I hear him call you Chris?” Minho asked 

“Christopher Chan Bang, at your service. Feel free to call me any subset of that. Only my mom uses the full government name, and that’s only when I haven’t heard her ask me to do something the first time.”

By the time they reached the backyard, Felix had finished setting up the ladder and was busy aiming his phone camera up toward Dori’s perch in the cedar. As they walked up, he turned and aimed his camera at Chan and narrated, “And this is CB, the man himself.”

Chan sighed. “Lix. Turn the camera off. Did you even ask Minho if you could film on his property?”

“Oh shit, no.” Felix fumbled with his phone. “Sorry ‘bout that. I promise I’ll delete it.”

“Just don’t show my house number or face and we’re fine,” Minho told him. He looked up at Dori. “Ready to come down, Dori-ya?” Dori meowed. “We’ll take that as a yes.”

Once again, Chan made it look easy, casting up his ropes and working his way up to the branch—just about level with the roof of Minho’s house—that Dori was perched on this time. There was one startled meow of protest, probably when Chan stuffed him into the rescue sack, and then everyone was back down on solid ground. 

Chan unlatched the rescue sack from his belt and carefully handed it back to Minho. As soon as Minho had Dori in his arms, he could tell that the unrepentant wretch was purring inside the bag. He probably thought this was all a game. “You know the drill. Don’t let him out until you’re inside.”

Minho looked at Chan, who was thoroughly soaked. “Do you need a towel? Or maybe some hot tea?”

“Oh, that’s really not necessary—”

“You should go ahead, Chris,” Felix said cheerfully. “I can pack all this up. Why don’t you change into your spare clothes from the truck? You don’t want to have to drive like that. I’ll wait out here. I need to make a call anyway.”

Left without any excuses to decline, Chan meekly followed Minho back into the house after retrieving a small duffle bag from the truck. Dori seemed unruffled by his ordeal when he emerged from the rescue sack. He shook himself out—once, twice, just enough to get mud and rain all over Minho’s clean floors—and scampered away before Minho could try to dry him off further. Minho pointed Chan toward the bathroom before taking off his own boots and hanging up his dripping jacket. It had done its job, though his jeans were soaked from their hems to his knees and his own shirt was still damp from chasing Dori around the yard before he went up the cedar.

Well, Minho could mop the floor and change into different clothes later. First, something hot to drink. He flicked on the electric kettle and pulled a canister of green tea out of a cabinet. By the time Chan emerged from the bathroom in dry clothes, Minho was pouring freshly boiled water over the tea leaves in his rarely used teapot. He handed his favorite cat mug to a confused Chan. “You probably want to let the tea steep for a little bit before you pour. I hope you like nokcha.”

“I do.” Chan’s damp hair was curling in all directions. “I didn’t realize how cold I was until I’d gotten into something dry.”

“That’s usually how it is. Did you forget your jacket today?”

“Kinda? I don’t like having too many layers when I’m climbing. It gets really stuffy.” A shrug to acknowledge his own bad decision-making. “I should have had one today. Lix was telling me I was being stupid while we were driving over.”

“To be fair, it doesn’t sound like you were planning to be out in the rain. Thank you again for coming. I promise you that I’m really not a completely awful cat owner. It’s just been . . . a week.”

Chan shook his head. “I know you’re not a terrible cat owner, because you worry about them getting out at all. There’s a surprising number of people who don’t seem to care or even notice when their pets go missing for a day or more.”

It sounded like there was a story behind that comment, and Minho would have asked for it, but Doongie chose that moment to leap onto the kitchen counter between them. He sniffed at the teapot, pawed at the cabinet where the treats were kept, and then meowed at Minho for attention. Minho meowed right back, like he usually did when his cats were being chatty, before he remembered he had an audience.

“Cute.”

From the look on Chan’s face, it seemed like maybe he hadn’t meant to say that aloud. Minho had a lowering suspicion the comment wasn’t just for Doongie. He decided to ignore it, even though he could feel his cheeks turning pink. “This is Doongie. He thinks every new human is an opportunity to get treats.”

“Is he right?”

“A couple treats would be okay.” Minho retrieved the treat jar from its cabinet and handed it to Chan. Bribery was definitely the way to his cats’ hearts. Doongie immediately got his face up into Chan’s business, and a few seconds later Soonie and Dori appeared from wherever they’d been, no doubt having heard the familiar rattle of tasty Greenies. Dori still looked like a drowned rat, so Minho grabbed the nearest kitchen towel and began to pat him dry.  

There were demanding meows and imploring purrs, and each of the cats got more than a couple treats. Doongie abandoned them as soon as Chan screwed the lid back on the treat jar, and Dori slipped away soon after, clearly uninterested in being further towel-dried. That left Soonie, who settled down into a comfortable loaf beside Minho’s elbow. He looked so content that Minho didn’t have the heart to scold him for being on the counter.

“You should take this as a compliment,” Minho told Chan. “He usually runs off with the others when the treats are gone.”

“I guess my shoes must have smelled good the last time I was here.”

Minho remembered the tea and poured it into Chan’s mug. Chan sipped it appreciatively, cradling the warm mug in his hands. They’d been texting back and forth all week, and Minho hadn’t minded the slightly flirty messages, not one bit. But he liked this better: Chan, inside his house, making friends with his cats and looking a little shy as he drank the tea that Minho had made for him.

“Last time you said he was your oldest cat?”

“Yeah, my family adopted him when I was still in middle school. He looks good for an old man cat, right? He’s slowed down a lot over the years, so these days he really just wants love and some canned food every twelve hours.” Minho scratched gently behind Soonie’s ears and was rewarded with a rumbling purr.

“And Doongie is the middle cat?”

Minho nodded. “We adopted him two years after Soonie. Don’t they look like they should be brothers? Soonie didn’t know what to make of him at first, this little mini-me. That was funny to watch.”

“He really liked those treats.”

“He’s obsessed with Greenies. I had to put childproof latches on all my cabinets because of Doongie. The only thing he loves more than treats is Soonie. Doongie used to be this tiny annoying kitten who followed Soonie around for attention, and now he’s a big chonky cat who still follows Soonie around for attention.”

“And Dori’s the maknae? How long have you had him?”

“Only a couple years. I didn’t really mean to get a third cat, but one of my friends fosters for the humane society. Dori was the only kitten not adopted from one of their foster litters. I couldn’t bear the thought of him having to go into some kennel at Petsmart until someone picked him. So I did. Later I figured out my friend pretty much swindled me into that one by deliberately sending me all these cute photos. Anyway, he’s been a demon child since day one, but that’s to be expected. He’s still basically a kitten.”

“It seems like they’re really lucky to have you,” Chan said. Minho felt his face getting warm again. It didn’t help that he was conscious of how much he’d been talking about the cats, as he usually did when given any invitation to do so. He busied himself with topping off Chan’s mug with more tea from the pot.

Chan’s phone vibrated with a text. “Ah, Lix is reminding me we need to get to our next job. Actual arborist stuff.” He looked regretfully down at his brimming mug. “Thanks for the tea—it was really good.”

“Then take the rest to go.” Minho waved off Chan’s protests that it wasn’t necessary. He pulled a rarely used travel mug out of a drawer, filled it with the rest of the tea from the pot, and screwed on the lid before handing it to Chan. “You can return it later, there’s no rush.” And maybe an excuse to see each other again without another cat emergency. 

“I’ll do that.”

🌳

The next morning Minho woke up to a series of texts that Jisung had sent him at 3 am.

???

why is dori on tiktok?

[link]

so are you

Minho started a pot of coffee, put his phone on speaker, and called Jisung. The first call went to voicemail. So did the second. The third was picked up on the second ring.

“Why don’t you ever let me sleep?”

“If you can text me in the middle of the night,” Minho said sweetly, “I can call you in the morning when functional adults are awake.”

“Texting and calling are totally different, and you know—”

“What’s this about TikTok?”

“Did Dori get stuck in a tree again? This cat rescue video showed up on my TikTok, and I was like whoa, that looks just like Dori, he even has that brown spot next to his nose, and then I heard your voice in the background, and I realized it actually was Dori.”

“It’s a long story, but yes, the tree guy got him down a second time.”

“So how did it end up on Felix Lee’s TikTok?”

“He’s Chan’s cousin and part-time worker. He was with Chan yesterday when he came by to help Dori. How do you know Felix?”

“We were in a couple classes together in college, and we’re friends with some of the same people. I follow him on TikTok. Like 5,000 other people do. He mostly does dance covers though. The cat stuff is new.” 

“Since when are you interested in TikTok dance covers?” A suspicious silence on the other end of the line. “Oh, I see how it is. The freckles are right up your alley. Well, go back to sleep. You can tell me all about your crush when you come over tomorrow.” 

He ended the call, cutting off Jisung’s spluttered protests. Then he clicked on the link to the video. True to his word, Felix hadn’t included any footage that identified his address or his face. It did include some nice footage of Chan going up and down the tree, plus a still photo of Dori perched on a branch. Chan must have taken it while he was still up in the tree, before he put Dori in the rescue sack. Minho was mildly offended that Chan had apparently sent Felix a copy before he’d sent one to Minho.

Not for long. The picture showed up in his messages a couple hours later, with two other unreleased cuts, along with a solicitous How’s Dori today?

Perfectly fine and totally ungrateful, that’s a cat for you.

That earned him another amused sticker, which made up for the delayed delivery. And the TikTok.

🌳

A week and a half later, Minho opened his dryer and found a distressingly damp tangle of sheets sitting at the bottom of the tumbler. Uh-oh. The dial was stuck at mid-cycle. Maybe it had still been running. He pressed the start button. Silence. He reset the entire cycle and tried again. Nada. He went down to the electric panel in his basement and said a little prayer before flipping the breaker back and forth. He tried to restart the machine a third time. Still no luck. The dryer was dead.

Well, at least he had minor satisfaction of having been right about what would go next. He texted a complaint—and a told you so—to Jisung, draped the sheets over a drying rack that he’d bought from Ikea in college, and then texted the Chois to see if they could recommend an appliance repair service. The only good thing about having such an old machine is that it probably was actually repairable. The new ones could connect to wi-fi and probably came with some proprietary app, but they weren’t the sort of thing that really got repaired.

Melody replied with a couple numbers and an offer to share some of her mother-in-law’s nabak kimchi. Minho thanked her for both, and started making calls. The second shop had an opening in their schedule and offered to send out a tech in the afternoon. “You’d be last on their list, though, so they might be pretty late if the other repairs run long.” 

Better than not on the list at all, and better than waiting until next Wednesday, which is when the first shop offered him an appointment. Minho retreated into his office to do some actual work for his actual job, which paid for things like mortgages and appliance repairs and the expensive cat food that his three cats preferred to eat. He tried not to spend too much time checking his phone for new messages. His texts with Chan had trailed off—he’d never been too good at keeping a conversation going by himself, not with someone he hadn’t known for a million years like Jisung. Maybe it was time to request a return of his travel mug, paired with an offer of dinner. He always liked feeding people, and he wanted a conversation where Chan didn’t have to run off to keep his business going.

The repair crew rang his doorbell promptly at 4:30 pm. They were a team of two—a veteran technician who had probably been doing this since Minho was born, and a bored younger assistant who might have just finished high school. “It’s $195 for the visit plus the cost of any parts we might need if it’s repairable,” said the older technician.

Minho nodded. “I’ll get out of your way, but I’ll be in the office there. Just don’t open the bathroom door—my cats are in there so they won’t be underfoot and won’t get out when you have to go in and out.”

Minho went back to his desk to finish out his work day. He had a couple things on deadline for his boss, who wasn’t the sort of person to set a lot of deadlines, so the ones she did set actually mattered. He didn’t sign off until closer to 5:15. When he poked his head into the laundry room, he saw the older technician busy at the back of his dryer, which had been pulled away from the wall. 

“What’s the verdict?”

“You need a new motor. Pretty sure that’s the only thing wrong. Part will cost you another $200, if you want to go ahead with the repair. Up to you. We do have the part in the truck, and we could get you up and running today.”

“What would you do?”

“I’d fix it. Sure, you can almost buy a new one for the cost of the repair, but what you’d get isn’t as sturdy as this old tank. Give it a new motor and it will probably run for another fifteen years.”

The young assistant stomped up behind them carrying a couple boxes. “Got the parts, boss.”

The older technician rolled his eyes. “Did you bother to read the box? Told you to get the large one. And take your shoes off in customer’s houses, you knucklehead.”

“Oh, sorry.” He didn’t sound very sorry, and he wandered off to get the correct size. The older technician waited until he was out of earshot to apologize to Minho.

“Guessing good help is hard to find?”

“God help the business when us old guys retire. Most of the new ones can’t find their way out of the back of the truck. Only good for fetching and heavy lifting.”

The repair was done by 6 pm. Minho wrote a check that made him wince, said good night to the techs, and locked the door behind them. As he did, he noticed that the bathroom door was slightly ajar. Strange. He hadn’t let the cats out yet. 

He nudged the door open further with the tip of his house slipper. With a sinking feeling, he saw the bathroom contained exactly zero cats, and someone had left the toilet seat up. Almost certainly the knucklehead, who apparently had not heard Minho’s warning and had also managed not to read the giant CATS - DO NOT OPEN sign taped to the door.

Something soft brushed against his ankle. Dori, reminding Minho that it was time for dinner. Minho scooped him up and kissed him on the head before putting him back down. At least Dori hadn’t gone far. “Where are your brothers, Dori-ya?”

Dori followed Minho around the house as he searched for the other two. No signs of Soonie or Doongie in their usual spots, and only Dori underfoot, complaining about the delayed arrival of his chicken morsels in gravy. They didn’t even appear when Minho rattled the treat jar temptingly. That was an ominous sign, and it left one other possibility that Minho really didn’t want to consider. It was dusk, so Minho had just pulled his flashlight out of his junk drawer when his phone rang with an incoming call.

“Hello?”

“Oh, this is Melody. Are you missing one of your cats? I was out in the garden earlier and saw an orange cat go by. But it’s not our Leo. I just checked and he’s inside where he should be. You have an orange boy, right?”

“Two of them,” Minho said faintly. His heart felt like it was going to beat out of his chest.

“Well, it was heading for your backyard. Do you need help looking around?”

“I think I do.”

🌳

Maybe it should have been less frightening the third time around. Nothing terrible had happened when Dori got out, mostly thanks to Chan. This just felt dreadful in a different way because it was Soonie and Doongie, his two old boys who just wanted to sleep on the best spots on the couch and have their chins scratched. They weren’t as fearless as Dori, who probably had cotton candy for his kitten brain and was too silly to be truly scared by his own escapades. They also despised unfamiliar places. Every time Minho had to take them somewhere, they buried their heads in the corners of their carriers, trying to deny the reality of what was happening to them. They were probably terrified by the outside world.

Minho grabbed his keys, phone, and flashlight before slipping on the first pair of shoes he could find and running out his front door. Melody and her husband were coming around from their side of the fence. 

“We checked our yard and didn’t see any cats. Do you think yours got out?”

“I can’t find two of mine,” Minho admitted, more than a little ashamed. “I had some workers in the house—remember, I was asking you about the dryer?—and one of them might not have been careful about closing the door properly when he went in and out. They could be hiding somewhere inside the house, they don’t love most strangers, but they usually come out for me. And they haven’t.”

It didn’t take long to find them. The meows started as soon as Minho started calling their names in the backyard, a mournful duet. Of course they were in a tree. Of course. Except they hadn’t picked Dori’s sturdy cedar. They’d decided to go up the sickly maple beside it, a tree that Felix had side-eyed and advised Minho to have Chan take a look at someday. Soonie was close to the top of the tree, and Doongie just a few feet lower.  

Minho shook the treat jar and begged, cajoled, and even threatened them to come down. Unfortunately, even Doongie’s eternal love of Greenies wasn’t enough to overcome the fact that he couldn’t figure out how to get down. Neither cat budged from their respective branches. But they meowed in hopeful answer every time he called up to them, as if they trusted their beloved human would get them down. Somehow.

Minho thanked the Chois for their help and told them he had it under control with more certainty than he actually felt. When they’d finally reluctantly gone home, he called Chan.

🌳

As always, Chan sounded delighted to be talking to Minho. “You know, I was just thinking of calling you!”

“Chan. I’m so sorry to have to ask this of you.”

Some of the brightness faded out of Chan’s voice. “Is it a Dori emergency again?”

“Soonie and Doongie this time. There was a repair guy, and he must have left the fucking door open, and of course they ended up in a tree, they couldn’t just hide in a bush or visit the neighbors, and—”

“I’ll be right over.”

“I feel horrible—”

“I’m probably 15? 20? minutes away. It’s going to be okay, Minho. You know I’ve got this, right?”

“I really owe you—”

“You don’t owe me anything. Go inside, sit down, breathe, and I’ll be there soon.”

🌳

Minho waited on his front steps in the dark. He was pretty sure he’d crawl out of his skin if he tried to sit on the couch, especially with Dori begging for dinner as if everything was perfectly normal. He texted Jisung, who couldn’t talk on the phone because he was still at work but offered to come over once he was off. Minho was so twisted up in his own thoughts that he didn’t even notice Chan had arrived until there were warm hands wrapping around his half-numb ones. “You look cold. I thought I told you to wait inside?’

On another day, Minho would have tossed back some sarcastic remark about not taking orders. Today he didn’t have the energy for it. “I’m so—”

A gentle squeeze of his hands to interrupt. “Nope, no more apologies please.” 

“It seems like we’re always bothering you.”

“I promise that you are not a bother. Here, put this on.” Chan stripped off his black hoodie and draped it around Minho’s shoulders. It was still warm from being next to his skin. “You’ll be doing me a favor. You know I don’t like to climb with a bunch of layers on.”

It was a comically transparent ploy, but Minho put on the hoodie without protest. Zipped it up to his chin, drew the hood over his head, breathed in a woodsy smell that was either Chan’s cologne or just occupational hazard. It felt like a hug. Then Chan was pulling him onto his feet. “Let’s go get your boys.”

There was no sign of Felix today, so Minho helped Chan carry his gear back to the maple. Chan started buckling on his climbing gear as Minho explained how Soonie and Doongie had probably gotten out. He pointed out where they were perched in the tree with his flashlight, which made their eyes gleam in the dark. Chan inspected the maple tree, gave it a couple good shakes, and deemed it safe to climb. “A few dead branches to avoid, and it doesn’t have many years left, but it’s not dangerous to anyone right now. I’ve climbed worse.”

“I still can’t believe they both got stuck.”

Chan adjusted the headlamp he’d attached to his helmet. “It’s actually not surprising to me, if that helps. Not the first time I’ve been called for two cats in the same tree. It’s almost always siblings. Seems like one gets itself into a jam, and the other one tries to help, and well. Best of intentions, I guess. You said Doongie loves Soonie best, right? And he’s the one a little further down. Bet he went up to help because Soonie was in trouble.” He peered up into the dark. “Well, sooner I go up, sooner we can all come down.”

It was long past sunset by now, and the only thing Minho could see in the dark was the glow of Chan’s headlamp moving up the tree. Once he neared the top of the tree, he started trying to coax Doongie to come within arm’s reach. 

“Just a couple more steps, you got it, oh you’re such a good boy . . . and there we go.” A moment later, he called down, “I’ve got Doongie. We’re just going to hang here for a minute. He needs a few pets before he’ll be ready to go into the sack. After that, I’ll get Soonie and come down.”

There was a quickly muffled meow, presumably when Chan tipped Doongie into the rescue sack. Then for what felt like the longest period of time—but was probably just a couple minutes—nothing seemed to happen. Chan’s light didn’t move any higher, and Soonie kept meowing, now without Doongie’s lower counterpoint. Minho wanted to ask if there was a problem, but it seemed rude to demand explanations from someone who clearly knew more than he did about being fifty feet up in the air. He bit his lip and waited.

Soonie’s cries suddenly grew louder, almost panicked, and Minho couldn’t help himself. “What happened?”

“Got Soonie in the net,” Chan called back. “He’s pretty unhappy about it, but he’s safe. Coming down now.”

As always, the descent was much faster than the methodical climb up, and Minho was ready to relieve Chan of his precious burdens the moment his feet were back on the ground. Soonie was trying his best to claw his way out of the mesh net, but he stopped struggling once Minho got his arms around him. “Mrrow,” said Soonie into Minho’s right ear.

“I agree,” Minho said to Soonie, though he was watching Chan, who was carefully unhooking himself from his climbing ropes and gathering them up. Chan yanked his last rope down from the branch it was looped over and dropped it on the ground at the trunk of the maple. “I’ll come back for that later. Ready to get these two inside?”

“You have no idea.”

🌳

It was dark inside Minho’s house when they entered, each holding one of the cats. There’d still been a little daylight when he ran out the door in a panic to try to find Soonie and Doongie, so none of the lights had been on yet. Minho flicked on the kitchen lights as Chan closed the door behind them. Then Minho plopped right down on the kitchen floor, not even stopping to take his shoes off, and tried to free Soonie from the net. Unfortunately it was held closed by one of Chan’s fancy’s climbing clips, and Minho couldn’t figure out how to release it. He cursed under his breath as he fumbled with the clasp.

“Here, I got it.” Chan reached over Minho’s shoulder and did something that Minho couldn’t quite follow. The clip fell free. Minho pulled open the top of the net and Soonie wriggled out. Minho swept him into a hug and heaved a huge sigh of relief. Soonie tolerated the attention for a moment, before squirming away, escaping toward the bedroom. He probably wanted to hide under the bed until he was feeling more settled. Minho didn’t blame him. He wished that was an acceptable coping strategy for humans, too.

A second orange-and-white streak followed Soonie. Doongie was also free of his rescue sack. Minho looked up and saw Chan offering him a hand up. When they were standing eye to eye again, Chan offered a big smile, the sort that transformed his entire face, almost impossible not to return. “They’re totally fine. I told you I had this, didn’t I?”

“You did.” Minho desperately wanted to apologize again for imposing on him three times in as many weeks, but Chan had made it pretty clear he didn’t want to hear it. So instead Minho said, “If you don’t have anywhere else to be, do you want to stay for dinner? I make a really good doenjang jjigae.”

Fifteen minutes later, Minho was chopping vegetables for the jjigae while Chan watched from the kitchen table. Minho had firmly rejected Chan’s offer of help with dinner prep. Chan was a guest, and to be honest, Minho didn’t generally like sharing his kitchen with other cooks, unless they were family. And after the day he’d just had, the comforting routine of preparing a familiar meal was helping him feel more like himself again.

As Minho cooked, he asked Chan about some of the things he’d been curious about before. How Chan ended up as an arborist (summer job that turned into something more, plus a genuine love of trees and being outside), what he did when he wasn’t up in trees (wrote songs, which was surprising, and hit the gym, which was not), whether he had any animals of his own (a family dog at his parents’ house). Being Koreans, they also worked out who was older. 

“You can call me hyung,” Chan said. With a little giggle that reminded Minho of the flirty texts and cartoon stickers. It made him want to send a keysmash to Jisung. Oh god, he hadn’t updated Jisung.

He dug his phone out of his pocket. “Let me just tell my friend that the babies are okay. I was panicking at him earlier.”

He had a lot of missed messages that Jisung had probably sent illicitly between customers. 

hyung???

did he get there? 

are the cats ok?

oh felix says chan got them down for you

Minho blinked a few times at that message before reading the last one.

do you still want me to come over

Minho looked at his dinner guest, then back down at his phone. Also at the cuffs of his borrowed hoodie, which he’d forgotten he was still wearing. He typed no don’t come over, before putting his phone face down on the counter.

“I told him everything was okay.” He adjusted the flame under his pot of boiling jjigae and started pulling containers of banchan out of the fridge. And asked Chan, a little reluctantly, “Do you want your hoodie back?” 

“You should keep it for now,” Chan said. “It looks better on you.”

🌳

After dinner, Minho helped Chan gather up all the climbing gear that they’d left strewn around the yard. Chan packed it all tidily back into his truck, despite the darkness, with deft efficiency of a person who did this almost every single day. Once the last bag was slotted neatly into place, Chan closed the tailgate and turned his attention to Minho. This time, instead of offering a bright smile or a promise to text, Chan took four purposeful steps into Minho’s personal space, until Minho found himself backed up against the side of the truck with Chan just a breath away from him.

“Minho.” Oh, he sounded so very fond. “In case it hasn’t been entirely clear, I’d really like it if you called me for non-emergencies, too. That’s not my work number.”

Minho remembered how carefully Chan had written the number on the back of his business card, which had a different phone number on the front. “I had mostly figured that out.”

“It was cute.” Chan’s hands settled on Minho’s waist, warm and sure. Minho kind of hated to admit to himself how much he liked it. “But I’d rather see you again without having to put on my climbing harness.”

There was an opportunity for a very terrible joke there, but Minho was too offended by the implication that his cats would manage to tree themselves again to take advantage of it. He had over a decade of responsible cat guardianship under his belt, not counting the escapades of the last month. “Would four times be a record?” 

“It would.” Chan tilted his head slightly to one side. He was definitely looking at Minho’s mouth. “Can I thank you for dinner now?”

Chan had very nice manners. He’d thanked Minho before he picked up his chopsticks, and he’d thanked him again when they’d been clearing the table. Minho didn’t bother to point that out because Chan was already leaning in, and Minho just let him. It was the softest, sweetest kiss. Minho couldn’t help but think that this must be how his cats had felt at the top of their trees, when Chan showed up with his calm voice and capable hands and wrangled them into the rescue sack.

Though Chan’s pleased grin was infuriatingly hot when he finally decided to let Minho breathe his own air again. “I’ll call you tomorrow, yeah?” 

To hell with being wrangled. Minho tugged Chan back in for another kiss, and this time Minho made sure to give as good as he got. Chan cursed softly under his breath before taking one more step forward, pressing Minho up against the side of the truck. This time when they separated Minho had the satisfaction of seeing his own want mirrored Chan’s face. That was much better.

“When are you going to ask me out?”

Chan laughed. Minho felt it more than he heard it since he was still squished between Chan’s chest and the truck door. “Are you free Saturday?”

He wasn’t, but Jisung would understand. “If dinner’s on you this time.”

That earned him another kiss. “It’s a date.” 

🌳

“I still can’t believe you’re ditching movie night.”

Minho rolled his eyes, even if Jisung couldn’t see it over the phone. “Hello, aren’t you the person who told me to climb the sexy tree guy like a tree?”

“Not on movie night,” Jisung whined. “Who’s going to protect me from Seungmin?”

“You are perfectly capable of rewatching a Ghibli movie without me for one week, and Minnie is all bark no bite, as you very well know.” Minho considered another shirt in his closet and dismissed it. “Or you could invite Felix, since you’ve been getting so chummy.”

“He said Chan is really looking forward to your date.”

“Stop gossiping about us.” A pause. “If you immediately report this to him—”

“Not making any promises,” Jisung said quickly and hung up so he couldn’t hear the rest of Minho’s threat. 

Brat. Minho would deal with that later. For now, he just called Chan. As soon as the call connected, Minho said, “All three cats are accounted for indoors.”

“That’s good.” A warm laugh. “And hi. I’m looking forward to tonight.”

“Can you tell me where we’re going? So I know what to wear.”

“There’s a new izakaya downtown that I thought you’d like. And music in the park after, if you’re interested. I know the band, and one of my songs is in their set.”

“Music in the park in October? Are you looking for an excuse to cuddle?”

“Maybe. I do have a blanket. Though I’d be happy to be yours.”

“You’re very bold, Christopher.”

“By the way, a gremlin told me that it’s your birthday soon.”

“Your gremlin and my gremlin are conspiring, and we need to shut that nonsense down fast unless you want complete anarchy.”

“It’s probably too late for that, but we can talk about it at dinner. Wear something warm.”

“I’ll just steal your jacket if I get cold,” Minho said. “I’m keeping your hoodie, by the way.”

“You’re not getting your mug back, either. I’ll see you real soon. Keep the cats away from the door. And one more thing—”

“Yeah?”

“I’m really glad you called.”

No one could see him getting all heart-eyed, so Minho supposed it didn’t matter that it happened. “Me, too.”