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The rain was coming down hard. It sounded like the sort of storm where everything would be encased in a crystalline layer of ice the next morning. Oh well, not his problem. Sylvester felt safe and cozy tucked in his childhood kitchen, with a cup of coffee palmed close to his nose.
Something rustled by the piano. Because the detective in him never turned off, Sylvester mosied over to investigate. His mother's wicker basket of yarn was trembling. A pair of ears stuck out the top.
"Heh," Sylvester crouched to stroke the cat's head. "You're ok, buddy."
Reaper put a plaintive, mittened paw on his hand.
"Make it stop."
Boom.
Another crash. Reaper zipped beneath the yarn. Sylvester felt a streak of a feeling he could only describe as red, and looked at his thumb. It already itched from the graze. Nasty little claws.
The front door slammed. That cat and his owner were giving him the runaround.
"Hey," Sylvester announced, as to not startle the man. Luciano still jumped, his eyes snapping to Sylvester standing halfway up the stairs.
"Hey, hey," he shook his coat off like a dog.
Beneath that, Luciano wore a faded hoodie and sweats. It wasn't Luciano's usual: they were bulky, wrinkled, yet Luciano wore them in a way… Well, if Luciano said purple hair was the height of fashion, then other people would follow suit. If Sylvester said the same, they'd laugh him out of the room. Lucy could make anything look good.
"Don't tell me you were trying to smoke in that weather," Sylvester set his mug aside.
"Under the awning," Luciano said, gruffly.
"Here, lemme throw it in the dryer."
Sylvester's fingers were just brushing Luciano's jacket when there was a terrible crack. Sylvester felt it in his teeth. The hairs on his neck raised. The windowpanes rattled, and the kitchen light winked out. In its tremendous, rolling wake, Reaper wailed. He sounded more wolf than cat, howling mournfully.
And Luciano was… He was breathing hard. Sylvester was kind of used to Lucy being a congested mouth breather, but this was laboured. Luciano hitched as though he'd gotten the hiccups.
The frayed cuff of Luciano's sweater brushed Sylvester's wrist, and something squeezed his hand.
"Luciano?" His fingers were holding a little… tight. Sylvester tried not to wince. "Lucy?"
No one was home behind those eyes.
Sylvester tried grazing a thumb across Luciano's boney knuckles. It worked. Luciano jerked, his fingers curled, and somehow they laced. In Sylvester's palm was Luciano's rapidly beating lifeline, and the raised roughness of scar tissue across it.
"Syl?" There he was, returning as if he'd woken from one of his catnaps.
"You ok, Lucy?"
"Ah-ahah, yeah," Luciano rubbed the back of his neck. "There's just two things I don't like, y'see: lightnin' and the dark."
This was the same Luciano who greeted his murderous Lonardo friends with a simple, shameless, "How are ya'?"
Luciano could handle the abstract fears of betrayal and unworthiness. Concrete ones made him shudder: a thunderstorm, the dark… Sylvester saw Lucy in his lightless house alone, wearing the same hoodie and sweats. They were his comfort clothes of choice. Sylvester could tell because the fabric was pilled with linty bits from countless wash cycles. The image of Lucy clinging to ways to calm himself made Sylvester's chest ache.
"Does that mean you've rescinded your opinion on disliking my old apartment's coffee maker?" Sylvester asked, slowly.
"There are three things I do not like," Luciano corrected.
"Rosewell-"
The whites of Luciano's teeth flashed. Sylvester managed a smile back. The tightness in his chest began to unravel.
"We can light candles. Or steal the solar lanterns from the garden. My laptop's fully charged, we could watch a movie-"
"Candles sound good," Luciano swallowed. "Yeah."
His mom kept buying more beeswax candles than they could burn. Their clutter included rolled honeycomb sticks, a corn on the cob, pine trees, bee hives, prisms, the moon, and tapered spirals like a narwhal's horn.
Kitschy mom stuff, in short.
"So, your hoarding is hereditary," Luciano muttered.
"The Swinub just appear somehow!"
Sylvester went quiet as he realized that was the exact same thing his mom said about the candles.
He set a big pillared three-wick on the coffee table, and filled the candelabra on the piano. He left succulent-shaped tealights trailing up the stairs, and he did it all one-handed. Lucy dragged behind.
The unburnt wicks were fussy at first. Sylvester had to hold the flame to them. In a flash of mischievous inspiration, he decided to show off a Lafayette party trick. He poked the pinky of his occupied hand into the fire. When it caught alight, he carried it over to the next wick. Luciano started so bad he almost let go.
"You could burn me!"
"Yes," Sylvester said, simply. "But I won't."
With all the candles aglow, they retreated to the couch. Luciano took the corner, of course, flinging himself down and nearly dislocating Sylvester's shoulder in the process. Sylvester sat more primly, with his feet on the floor.
He closed his eyes to allow himself a breather. The air filled with that honey-musky-waxy scent.
Like the apiary.
He saw the sawdust on the floor and tasted the honey-sweetened coffee. He saw Luciano across the table staring at him still as the grave. Stiller.
Sylvester opened his eyes. Specks of orange flickered, casting shadows larger than themselves.
Feeling silly, perhaps, Sylvester reached over the coffee table candle. He split his fingers apart and made a shadow of a dog, eating Luciano's head. Well, he tried to make it look like a dog. With one hand, it was more "thing with a mouth" nipping Luciano's side.
"What're you doin', thrown' gang signs?" Luciano cracked an eye in the approximation of a wink.
"Uh-" Sylvester made a grabby hand gesture. "Do the Lonardos have a gang sign?"
Luciano sat up.
"Yeah," the shadow of his middle finger flipped the dog off. "That."
"Hey!"
Sylvester's dog bit Luciano's finger, and the two of them snickered.
They were both such idiots.
Abashed by his silliness, Sylvester looked down. He studied Luciano's nails, and found they were neat, except for the pinky. It was chewed to a stub. Sylvester had seen Lucy with his fingers pressed to his jaw, and his pinky pinched between his teeth. When anxious, he would pace and gnaw and think.
The crocheting supplies shimmied. Reaper was trying to get comfortable, but only succeeded in startling Luciano. His owner's resulting yelp made Reaper "mrrrp!" in alarm.
Sylvester stifled a smile.
"You're ok, kitty," he cooed to the cat.
Luciano squinted, and noticed what Sylvester did: glowing green eyes peering through the yarn.
"Oh brother, gimme' a break! Come over here ya' big ham!"
They encouraged Reaper out of hiding in their own ways. The cat slunk between them. Sylvester greeted the cat with his free hand, offering chin scritches. He liked the spot as much as Reaper- the purring soothed him. Reaper headbutted Sylvester's occupied knuckles, demanding their welcoming attention as well.
"Hey, hey, bum, that's mine!" Luciano yanked their shared hands away. Reaper bit his sleeve. When Luciano pulled, Reaper growled.
"Lucy," Sylvester chided, reminding the man of whom they were playing tug-of-war with.
"Sorry."
Sylvester lightly bonked the cat on the head. Reaper let go. Their interlocked hands were heavy, and awkward to move, but Sylvester got a rhythm going. Pleased with the pets, no matter how strange, Reaper grew squinty-eyed. He minced a contented march, kneading his way into Luciano's lap. For his part, Luciano glared around the faceful of tail fluff.
"Fine," Luciano sulked. "Fine. I'll take the other one, then."
With no further warning, Luciano snatched his other hand. Twice as much Lucy was nice in his palms, but the stretch made his shoulder twinge. The only way forward was to nudge his way closer. Sylvester shimmied so their sides touched. Their joined arms formed a sort of bridge around Reaper, encircling him.
Reaper finally settled, sprawling across both their laps in the way only an oversized housecat could. Sylvester got his head and stretched-out front paws. Luciano got his hindquarters. Reaper lay like purring, purple blanket of rosettes.
Watching this made Sylvester's inner clockwork wind down as well. The touch of their hands had gentled. It was no longer a desperate squeeze that kept them together, but the meshing of their fingers.
Lucy's head dropped to Sylvester's shoulder.
"Y'know, there's something I do like," Luciano's sleepy-squashed words tickled his neck.
"What's that?" Sylvester asked.
"You."
FIN
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