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Ralph's fingers pressed on the back of Laurie's neck were deliciously warm, drifting against his skin in slow, steady lines, back and forth and back again. It was sensuous yet comforting, in that intimately familiar way Ralph always had. Between those rhythmic caresses and the roaring heat of the fire, with a thick fleece blanket drawn around his shoulders, Laurie was feeling ready to doze off with his head on Ralph's (exceedingly comfortable) lap, all the day's weariness seeping heavily into his bones. It was good to come home after a long day at the university to Ralph, who had prepared them a hot supper and drinks, to have a patient ear to whom he could complain about the soporifically dull lecture on medieval French translation he had to endure that afternoon, or the frustrating comments he had received from his impossibly critical tutor on his latest essay, and receive heartfelt sympathy and validation of his own bitchy sentiments. Ralph had made the long drive to Oxford for the weekend, as he did most weekends when he was able to get away from Bridstow, and it never quite felt long enough when he was there.
Ralph's purposeful motions managed to uncover deep, lingering aches in Laurie's muscles that he had hardly been aware of, and he softly breathed out a contented sigh as the soreness gradually ebbed away under Ralph's hands. The proficient, experienced nature of Ralph's touch was reassuring, yet at the same time it caused Laurie's insides to wrench with pangs of insecurity. He tried to ward these off, as it was unfair to harbor such thoughts after all he and Ralph had been through, but something must have still shown on his face, for Ralph asked gently, "What are you thinking?" He had twined his fingers through Laurie's hair, stroking and petting in a way that always made Laurie shiver with pleasure.
"You're so good at touching me," Laurie murmured, bending his head back to gaze up at Ralph. "Did you ever touch...anyone else like this?"
Ralph lifted his eyebrows, then lightly squeezed the back of Laurie's neck. "Does it matter?"
Perhaps it was the lingering effects of the alcohol he had imbibed earlier, or the drowsy warmth from the fire, but in a moment of raw honesty, Laurie confessed, "It makes me a bit jealous when I imagine someone else sitting here and being touched by you, the way I am now." It was strange, because the knowledge of Ralph having slept with others in the past he didn't particularly resent, but the thought of Ralph acting out Laurie's childhood dream with another man, sitting and stroking his hair as intimately and lovingly as he was doing to Laurie's, sparked flickers of irrational envy and possessiveness deep within his gut. Yet Ralph was too good at it for Laurie to have been his first.
"Spuddy."
"I know you love me, and it's silly of me to feel like that, when we belong to each other. It's just a passing feeling, that's all." He reached up and folded his hand over Ralph's, in an attempt to reinforce the meaning of his words.
Ralph looked thoughtful, as he resumed strumming his fingers through Laurie's hair. "As a matter of fact, Spud, there were...others I've done this with. Oddly enough, their reactions were rather similar to yours."
"Oh," Laurie said, trying his best not to pout.
The firm line of Ralph's mouth tilted up in a smile. "They were all cats."
"Oh!" Being an inveterate Dog Person, cats rarely ever entered Laurie's mind, seeming to belong to a different world entirely from Dog and Man. Laurie found them vaguely intimidating, mysterious, and aloof, and had never interacted with them much, beyond nervously watching Aunt Olive's cats prowl around her house when he was a young boy.
"The merchant ships I sailed on often carried cats, to control rat infestation and so forth. Somehow the responsibility of looking after them always fell to me, no matter how high in the ranks I rose. The skippers insisted I had a way with them." Ralph went on to describe a time when he had been tasked with socializing a litter of feral kittens the crew had found, as he was the only one capable of soothing them with his touch. Laurie suddenly had a flash of a brief, endearing mental image of Ralph as a young sailor surrounded by mewing cats.
As he continued with his recollections, Ralph's face seemed to light up with a soft, boyish expression. It was reminiscent of the way Laurie used to talk about Gyp, Laurie realized.
"You like cats, don't you, Ralph?" He and Ralph had previously discussed getting a puppy together at some point, after Laurie graduated and was no longer living in a tiny room at Oxford; Laurie also felt privately that he needed some more time before he would be ready for another dog, after Gyp's death. But it occurred to Laurie that he had not inquired much about Ralph's own preferences in pets.
"I suppose I've grown a bit fond of them," Ralph replied, after a short pause. "We used to take in quite a few stray black cats who had been abandoned on the streets—rather pathetic, abused creatures, when they came to us. Black cats, as you know, were once considered to be bad luck and have traditionally been associated with evil and witchcraft, and the old reputation still sticks to them. At sea, however, it's quite the reverse—black cats are believed to bring good luck to ships, which you can imagine would be well regarded by a highly superstitious lot of sailors."
Laurie smiled, thinking it made a certain sense Ralph would have developed a natural affinity for these animals who were more welcome at sea than they were on land.
"The thing about cats, though, is that they don't seem to need people like dogs do," Laurie said, mostly for the sake of stirring debate and hearing Ralph talk more on the subject.
"See now, Spuddy, that isn't true," Ralph chided. "Cats may act like they're high above us mere humans, but the truth is that they can be extremely needy. There was one ship's cat I sailed with that was quite independent-minded and would stubbornly ignore any and all attempts at petting during the day, but every night she would pounce onto my lap demanding to be stroked and coddled whenever I tried to sleep. Very inconvenient."
"Yes, I can see how that would be—" Laurie began, then caught the gleam in Ralph's eye and blushed furiously.
"Spud!" Ralph let out a howl of mock-pain as Laurie pinched him on the thigh, which then led to a playful tussle on the rug and after some time ended, somewhat inexplicably, in an extended bout of kissing in front of the fireplace.
"So now you know the embarrassing truth of where that particular experience comes from," Ralph laughed, stretching his limbs out across the rug; he sounded a little breathless from all the exertion, Laurie was pleased to note.
"It isn't embarrassing," Laurie said, affectionately. "Would you want to have a cat one day, Ralph?"
"Hmm. Would it be alright with you, Spuddy?"
"Yes," Laurie answered, sounding suddenly sly. "But only if you promise not to pet it more than me."