Work Text:
1. Your cat headbutts you.
Arisu had seen many strange things in his life — including, at one point, fighting his way through a series of death games in an alternate world — but nothing had prepared him for the sight of Chishiya being drunk. Of everything he had survived, this might genuinely be the most bizarre thing he had ever seen before.
“You're literally a doctor, baby,” he said, watching his boyfriend sway slightly on their couch. “How did you let Kuina convince you to do shots?”
“She was very persuasive.” Chishiya spoke slowly and with great intention, as if every syllable was a delicate piece of machinery he needed to assemble correctly. “Also, Usagi bet me I couldn't keep up with her.”
“And you, being the competitive bastard that you secretly are, took that bet.”
“Obviously.”
Of course he had. Arisu pinched the bridge of his nose and heaved out a sigh to stay calm before offering his boyfriend a steady hand. “Alright, come on, Shun. Let's get you to bed.”
But Chishiya did none of those things.
Instead, the man leaned forward and — with unnerving precision for someone who had consumed enough alcohol to tranquilize a small horse — pressed his forehead firmly against Arisu's outstretched palm.
Then stayed there, perfectly still, like this was exactly what he had intended all along.
Arisu blinked. “… Shun?”
No response, though his boyfriend simply pulled back a fraction only to repeat the motion once more, pressing into his palm with the exact same amount of pressure as before.
“Are you… headbutting me?”
“Nope,” Chishiya denied immediately — and then headbutted him again, slightly harder this time, in a way that suggested he was offended by the accusation and determined to prove otherwise.
Arisu stared at him, then at his own hand, then back at his boyfriend, who had gone back to gently bonking his forehead against his palm like some kind of affectionate, extremely drunk cat.
“Shun.”
Thump.
“Baby.”
Thump.
“Love of my life, light of my—”
Thump.
”Okay, you know what? You're doing this on purpose now.” Arisu tried to pull his hand away, but Chishiya just followed it with single-minded determination and continued his questionable demonstration of love against his palm. “This is literally what cats do when they love someone. You're being a cat right now.”
That was enough to make the man pause, blonde hair falling into his eyes as he squinted up at him with what might have been the most insulted expression he had ever worn.
“'M not a cat,” Chishiya grumbled, voice dripping with wounded dignity.
“You literally just headbutted me six times in a row.”
“Strategic affection distribution.”
“That's not a thing.”
“It is now.” And then, because Chishiya was nothing if not committed to proving a point even while thoroughly intoxicated, the man headbutted his hand again with renewed vigor.
Arisu had to try really hard not to laugh out loud at the sight.
“You realize you're proving my point, right? This is exactly what the neighbor's cat does to me every time I pass by their door.”
Chishiya's eyes narrowed even more than before. “That cat,” he said with the tone of a doctor delivering a terminal diagnosis while being drunk, “is an attention whore. I am expressing measured affection in a controlled manner.”
“By repeatedly bonking your head against my hand.”
“Yes.”
“Right. Measured and controlled.” He was smiling now, his hands gently cupped his boyfriend's face with both hands as his thumbs brushed across those cheekbones he had grown to love. “Very dignified behavior for a pediatric surgeon.”
“The children love me,” Chishiya said with absolute certainty, leaning into Arisu's touch like… well, a big, drunken cat. “I'm excellent with children.”
“Because you act like a cat?”
“I do not—!” The man started to protest, then seemed to lose track of his argument halfway through and just pressed his forehead more firmly against his palm instead, letting out a soft, contented sound that was really, really close to a purr.
Arisu really couldn't hold it in anymore.
“Oh my god.” He laughed breathlessly, shoulders shaking as he watched his usually composed boyfriend reduced to this affectionate, headbutting mess of a man. “You're actually purring.”
“Am not,” Chishiya mumbled, but he didn't pull away, seemingly content to stay exactly where he was.
“You are. You're literally—” Arisu had to pause to catch his breath, torn between amusement and the overwhelming fondness currently flooding his chest. “God, I love you, you ridiculous man.”
That earned him another headbutt, though this one felt distinctly more pleased than the previous ones.
But that was alright.
Arisu could totally work with that.
𓇼 ˚𓆝 ⋆｡𓆟 ⋆｡𓆞˚ 𓇼
2. Your cat follows you around.
“Ryō.”
Arisu looked up from where he had been contemplating the philosophical differences between regular Pocky and matcha Pocky to find his boyfriend practically bolting towards him — which was concerning, considering Chishiya's usual pace could best be described as “glacially unbothered.”
“Hey, what—” He barely got the words out before the older man was suddenly right there, standing close enough that their shoulders brushed. “Uh. Hi?”
“Why—” Chishiya panted, slightly breathless in the way he always did when he had hurried his way here — which was also concerning, because this man never ran, “—did you wander off?”
Arisu blinked. “I… didn't? You told me to get snacks while you grabbed the vegetables.”
“I turned around and you were gone.”
“Shun, we're in a supermarket. I was literally one aisle over—”
“Two aisles.”
“—okay, two aisles over, doing exactly what you told me to do.” He tilted his head, studying his boyfriend's face with growing amusement. “Are you… alright? You look kind of freaked out.”
Chishiya's expression didn't change, but there was something distinctly sulky in the way he pressed closer to Arisu's side, like he was trying to occupy the same physical space. “… I'm fine.”
“You're not fine. You literally sprinted through a supermarket to find me.”
“I didn't sprint. I walked with purpose.”
“Shun.” Arisu set down the Pocky boxes and turned to face his boyfriend fully, concern etching on his face. “Are you okay? You know you can tell me if something's bothering you, right?”
For a long while, Chishiya didn't answer his question, choosing to stare at the shelf of snacks like they had offended him instead. Eventually, though, he found his voice and whispered as quietly as possible, “Someone knocked over the canned goods display in produce.”
“… Okay?”
“It was loud,” he continued, his shoulders twitching almost imperceptibly. “Really hurt my ears, and I don't like that.”
Oh.
Oh.
That… made perfect sense, considering how badly sudden noises could hit him — both because trauma lingered long after the Borderland ended, and because Chishiya was, in general, sensitive to basically everything even when he could mask them well.
“… Poor baby.” Arisu murmured, reaching out to gently touch his boyfriend's elbow. “That sounds really awful. I'm sorry I wasn't there.”
“You were doing what I told you to do,” Chishiya said, still not looking at him. “It's not your fault some idiot can't navigate a grocery store without causing property damage.”
“Still.” He gave the man's arm a gentle squeeze. “Do you want to leave? We can order delivery tonight instead.”
“We're already here. It would be very inefficient of us to just leave.”
“Shun, if you're overwhelmed—”
“I'm not.” But Chishiya hadn't moved away from Arisu's side, and if anything, he seemed to press even closer. “I just… prefer to know where you are, and I'll be fine.”
Of course his boyfriend would stubbornly insist on staying rather than go home. He couldn't help but smile at that.
“I see. Well, if that's the case, do you like regular or matcha Pocky?”
“Both. We're not having this debate again next week.”
“Efficient.”
“Obviously.” Chishiya finally met his eyes then, tension finally eased from his shoulders as he relaxed again. “Are you almost done here?”
“Yeah, just need to grab some chips for when Kuina and Usagi come over this Friday.” Arisu put both boxes into the basket in his arm, then turned around and laced their fingers together. “Alright, shall we go?”
Chishiya hummed in agreement and didn't let go, keeping their hands linked for the rest of their — thankfully uneventful — trip through the grocery store.
𓇼 ˚𓆝 ⋆｡𓆟 ⋆｡𓆞˚ 𓇼
3. Your cat falls asleep on you (and their tail curls around your leg).
Arisu was three kills away from a personal record when he felt the couch dip beside him.
“Hey,” he murmured without looking away from the screen, fingers flying across the controller. “How was work?”
The only response he got was a noncommittal grunt — which, in Chishiya-speak, could mean anything from “fine” to “I watched a child vomit on my favorite shoes and then got yelled at by a parent for forty-five minutes” — followed by the distinct sensation of weight settling against his side.
Then more weight.
Then even more weight, until Chishiya had somehow managed to drape himself across his lap like a particularly exhausted and clingy house cat.
“Uh.” Arisu blinked at the blond head now pillowed against him, then back at his character on-screen, who was currently suffering the fate of getting shot to hell. “Shun?”
His boyfriend didn't respond to him. If anything, the man's breathing had gone even slower, more peaceful than before.
”Baby, I'm kind of in the middle of a match here—” He tried to shift slightly to get a better angle on his controller, only to find that he couldn't move at all — because Chishiya, in what had to be a deliberate tactical maneuver even while half-asleep, had hooked one leg over his ankle and threaded the other one behind his calf, effectively locking him in place like some kind of human bear trap.
Even though that was a cute sight to see, it was also extremely inconvenient as well, considering how close he was to a perfect win.
“… Shun.” Arisu sighed and poked him — which, unsurprisingly, did nothing to wake the man from his slumber. In fact, his boyfriend's legs tightened even more around his own, as if Chishiya's unconscious mind had sensed an escape attempt from him and decided to neutralize it before it could even happen.
His character had just been uncermoniously murdered right then, and he could do nothing except to stare at the screen, then down at his sleeping boyfriend, then back at the screen.
Well.
There went his personal record, though he supposed there were worse ways to lose a match than having his overworked, exhausted boyfriend collapsing on top of him.
Arisu set the controller aside carefully, making sure not to jostle Chishiya too much, and reached for his phone instead. The group chat that they shared with Kuina and Usagi was already lighting up with messages about their Friday plans, and he quickly typed out a response one-handed while his other hand found its way into soft blond hair, fingers carding through it gently.
Chishiya made a small, contented sound in his sleep — something between a hum and a sigh — and somehow managed to curl even more tightly around him, face pressed against his stomach like Arisu was the world's most comfortable pillow.
“You're lucky you're cute,” he chuckled softly at the sigh, thumb still stroking through those pale strands. His phone buzzed with a response from Kuina — a string of cat emojis followed by he's NAPPING on you again isn't he — and he had to bite back a laugh to make sure his boyfriend could have his nap after a long day.
yeah, he typed back. been here for like twenty minutes. send help.
No rescue available, Usagi replied almost immediately. You're legally required to stay put now. Cat law.
that's not a real thing.
it is if Chishiya's the cat, Kuina sent back, followed by a photo of the two girls on their shared couch, Usagi reading a book while she was sprawled across her lap in an eerily similar position to Chishiya's current state. like this, for instance.
oh my god, you're all the same.
and you love it <3
He did. God help him, he really did.
𓇼 ˚𓆝 ⋆｡𓆟 ⋆｡𓆞˚ 𓇼
4. Your cat talks to you.
“Did you know that the human body can survive without a stomach?”
“Good morning to you too, Shun.” Arisu didn't even look up from his laptop, fingers still typing away at the code he'd been debugging for the past hour. “And yes, I slept great, thanks for asking.”
“I'm serious.” Chishiya padded into the living room with two mugs of coffee, setting one down beside his laptop before settling onto the couch with his own. “Total gastrectomy patients can live relatively normal lives. The small intestine just takes over the digestive functions.”
“It's eight in the morning.”
“Yes, and?”
“And you're talking about removing stomachs.”
“You say that like it's weird.” The older man took a sip of his coffee then, looking unbothered as always. “I had a case yesterday where—”
“Nope.” Arisu held up a hand, finally glancing up from the screen to shot his boyfriend a warning look. “Not before coffee. You know the rules.”
The older man's expression shifted into something that could almost be called a pout — if he ever actually pouted, which he would vehemently deny doing. “You're no fun.”
“I'm very fun. I'm just also very attached to my stomach and would prefer not to think about its removability before I've had caffeine.” He reached for his mug gratefully, taking a long sip before adding, “Ask me again in twenty minutes.”
“Fine.” Chishiya was quiet for approximately forty-five seconds before he continued with, “Did you know that the average person walks past thirty-six murderers in their lifetime?”
“That's not real. That's one of those fake internet facts.”
“Actually—”
“Shun.”
“What? I'm not talking about stomachs anymore.”
He couldn't help but sigh when he noticed that same glint in his boyfriend's eyes whenever this menace of a man found a new fixation to latch onto. It was the same look this man had last month in which he had spent three days taking apart and reassembling their coffee maker just to “understand its mechanics better,” and the month before that when he had gone down a rabbit hole about the historical development of anesthesia and subjected him to a two-hour lecture about ether parties in the 1800s.
Objectively, it was one of the many things he had grown stupidly fond of.
“Okay,” Arisu said, saving his work and closing his laptop with the resignation of a man who knew he wasn't going to get any more coding done this morning. “What's today's special interest? Medical facts or true crime statistics?”
“Both, actually.” Chishiya shifted on the couch, pulling his legs up underneath him in that way that made him look even more like a cat than usual. “There's this fascinating overlap between forensic pathology and surgical technique—”
“Of course there is.”
“—because determining cause of death requires an understanding of how the body responds to trauma, which is essentially just surgical knowledge applied in reverse—”
“Uh-huh.”
“—and I was reading this case study about a surgeon in the 1800s who was also a serial killer, and the way he was finally caught was because his surgical precision was too good—”
“Wait, hold on.” Arisu set down his coffee, genuinely intrigued now despite himself. “Too good? How is that a problem?”
Chishiya brightened like someone had just handed him a podium and an audience. “Exactly! See, most murders are messy, imprecise. But this particular killer's work was too clean, too methodical. The cuts were too precise, the knowledge of anatomy too detailed. It created a very specific profile that eventually led investigators to—”
Arisu's phone buzzed on the coffee table. He glanced at it to find a message from Kuina in their group chat: is he doing the thing where he infodumps at you first thing in the morning again
how did you know, he typed back one-handed while his boyfriend continued his explanation, now fully animated and gesturing with his coffee mug in a way that was probably dangerous but also kind of adorable.
because Usagi is currently telling me about the mating habits of sea turtles, Kuina replied. we're all dating the same person apparently, just in different fonts
That's weirdly accurate, her girlfriend chimed in. Tell Chishiya I said hi and that I'll trade him turtle facts for murder facts
“Ryō, are you listening?”
“Hm?” Arisu looked up to find his boyfriend staring at him with an expression of mild offense. “Sorry, sorry. Kuina and Usagi just said hi. Please continue with your serial killer surgeon story.”
“You weren't paying attention.”
“I was! You were talking about… precise cuts and anatomical knowledge.”
Chishiya narrowed his eyes, seemingly questioning whether or not he was being honest, but after a moment, the man accepted that answer and continued as if nothing happened. “So, from where I was interrupted, the precision actually became a liability because—”
Arisu settled back into the couch with his coffee, watching his boyfriend talk with that intense, animated focus most people found unsettling — but that he found endlessly charming. This was how Chishiya showed affection: by sharing whatever odd, morbid, hyper-specific thing had seized his brain and trusting him to listen — or simply just… trusting him, period.
It was weird, it was theirs, and he knew he would cherish it for the rest of his life.
“—hence that's why you should never trust anyone who's too good with a scalpel,” the older man concluded, looking incredibly pleased with himself.
“I'll keep that in mind,” Arisu said dryly. “Should I be worried? You're literally a surgeon.”
“I'm a pediatric surgeon. These occupations require completely different skillset.”
“Right, because operating on children is so much less concerning.”
“The children love me.”
“The children are terrified of you.”
“Respectfully terrified,” Chishiya corrected. “There's a difference.”
Arisu laughed, reaching over to steal his boyfriend's coffee mug just to watch him protest. “You're silly, you know that?”
“Well, you still love me anyways.” The older man held out a hand then, a smirk dancing on his face. “Now give me back my coffee, won't you?”
“Yeah,” he agreed, softer now as he handed the mug back with a smile. “Yeah, I am.”
𓇼 ˚𓆝 ⋆｡𓆟 ⋆｡𓆞˚ 𓇼
5. Your cat blinks at you slowly.
It was rare to see Chishiya sleep in.
Most mornings, Arisu woke to an empty bed and the smell of coffee already brewing in the kitchen, his boyfriend having somehow managed to wake up at an ungodly hour despite working a twelve-hour shift the day before. It was one of those things he had learned to accept about dating a doctor: sleep schedules were more of a suggestion than a rule, and Chishiya's internal clock seemed to operate on spite and caffeine alone.
But this morning, when his eyes fluttered open to the soft light filtering through their curtains, the first thing he saw was blond hair splayed across the pillow beside him and the gentle rise and fall of steady breathing.
He blinked, momentarily disoriented, before a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
Chishiya was still asleep.
Arisu propped himself up on one elbow, careful not to jostle their shared space too much, and just… looked. There was something almost surreal about seeing his boyfriend like this: face relaxed, breathing deep and even, his usual tension melted away from his shoulders and his frame. His pale strands of hair shone with the morning light dancing on them, and if he were to be the poetic type — which he absolutely wasn't, thank you very much — he might have thought he was sleeping next to an angel this whole time.
(Okay, fine. Angel or not, the man was beautiful. He was allowed to be sappy about it sometimes.)
Unable to resist, he reached out and brushed his fingers along Chishiya's cheek. He didn't want to wake him up from his slumber — god knows the man needed this rest after pulling two back-to-back shifts at the hospital — but he also couldn't help himself. His boyfriend just looked so peaceful like this.
But those brown eyes still fluttered open at his light touch anyways, and for a long, warm moment, they simply looked at each other in the morning light, neither speaking, just taking the other in.
“Morning,” Arisu spoke up first, fingers still tracing his boyfriend's cheek. “Sleep well?”
Chishiya, in response, blinked slowly at him.
“I guess that's a yes?”
Another slow blink, followed by a little lovely smirk, and Arisu couldn't help but fall in love even more.
“So cat-like…” He chuckled softly, leaning in and peppering Chishiya's face with little kisses. “Love you baby.”
“… Love you too,” came the muffled reply, warm against his skin, and Arisu let out a soft, content sigh as he settled in and went back to sleep with his love by his side.