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The kitten was not Avery's fault.
This was the first thing Avery established, standing in the rain outside the corner shop at half past eight on a Tuesday evening with a bag of pasta in one hand and a situation developing rapidly at his feet. He had not gone looking for a kitten. He had not done anything to invite a kitten. He had simply stepped outside and there it was, small, grey, extraordinarily wet, sitting in the narrow gap between the shop's exterior wall and a recycling bin with the expression of something that had made several bad decisions and was prepared to make several more.
It looked up at him.
Avery looked down at it.
"No," he said.
The kitten made a sound. Not a meow exactly, more like the conceptual outline of a meow, the suggestion of one, as if it had the intention of meowing and was working within limited resources.
"Absolutely not," Avery said.
The rain intensified, slightly, as if making a point.
Avery looked at the kitten. The kitten was very small. It was the specific grey of rainclouds and old sweaters and it had, he noticed, one ear that was slightly larger than the other, which gave it a permanent expression of mild confusion that was, objectively, one of the more affecting things he had seen recently and he had seen Derek talk to a succulent for twenty minutes.
"I have a partner," Avery told the kitten. "Who is very calm and very rational and has been doing really well and does not need-” he gestured, "additional variables."
The kitten blinked. One slow, deliberate blink that communicated absolutely nothing except the complete absence of any concern for Avery's domestic situation.
"He almost certainly doesn't like cats," Avery said. "He's never mentioned cats. That's practically evidence of not liking cats."
The rain was very committed now.
Avery thought about Derek on the couch at home, reading something, probably talking to Hastur, probably perfectly fine, not in need of any additional complexity in his carefully rebuilt life. He thought about the architecture of their days, the careful good ordinariness of it, the plants and the pasta and the Wednesday appointments and the slow accumulation of okay. He thought about how selfish it would be to walk into that apartment with a wet kitten without discussing it first, without at least asking, without any kind of-
The kitten made the sound again.
It was smaller this time. More resigned.
"Oh no," Avery said.
He looked at the pasta. He looked at the rain. He looked at the kitten, which had tucked its front paws under its chest in the way of something that had decided to wait out whatever this was, however long it took, which Avery recognized as a profoundly relatable coping strategy.
He thought: Derek is going to say no.
He thought: Derek is going to be very reasonable and very calm and explain the practical considerations of adding a pet to their living situation.
He thought: the kitten has one ear bigger than the other.
"Okay," Avery said, to the kitten. "Okay. Listen. I'm going to do something that I'm aware is inadvisable and I want you to know I'm making this decision with full knowledge of its potential consequences."
The kitten looked at him.
Avery put the pasta in his jacket pocket and picked up the kitten.
It was very small in his hands. It was also, which he had not anticipated, immediately and aggressively loud, the outline-of-a-meow replaced without warning by a full volume demonstration of its entire respiratory capacity, directed at close range into Avery's left ear.
"Okay," Avery said. "Yeah. Fair enough."
He tucked it against his chest, inside his jacket, where it was warm and out of the rain, and it went immediately and slightly alarmingly quiet, and he could feel its heartbeat against his ribs, very fast and very real.
He walked home.
He spent the entire walk trying to figure out what to say.
The problem, Avery thought, letting himself into the building and starting up the stairs, was not that Derek would be cruel about it. Derek was never cruel. It wasn't in his nature in any form, had never been in the brief but significant time Avery had known him, and the idea of Derek being dismissive or unkind about a wet kitten was so far outside any realistic projection that Avery didn't even consider it.
The problem was that Derek would be right.
Derek would look at the kitten with the calm assessing expression and say something accurate about the responsibilities of pet ownership and the importance of consulting both parties before introducing a living creature into a shared space and the fact that neither of them had discussed this or prepared for it or researched appropriate care, and all of it would be completely correct, and Avery would not have a good counter-argument because the only counter-argument he had was but look at it, which was not an argument so much as a feeling.
And feelings, Avery had learned, were things Derek was increasingly good at receiving, but this kitten exists and I couldn't leave it in the rain was a slightly different category from I found a therapist three weeks in advance just in case.
The kitten shifted inside his jacket. Its claws found purchase on his shirt in a way that was technically uncomfortable and somehow also the most endearing thing that had happened to him this week.
"You need to be very cute," Avery told it, quietly, on the landing outside their door. "Like, peak cuteness. Whatever you've got. Now is the time."
The kitten looked up at him from the neck of his jacket with the asymmetrical ears and the resigned expression.
"That's actually perfect," Avery said. "Don't change anything."
He opened the door.
Derek was on the couch.
Of course Derek was on the couch. Derek was almost always on the couch in the evenings now, which was one of Avery's favorite developments of the past several months, the way Derek had learned to be still in a space, to just exist in a room without the particular tension of someone who wasn't sure if they were allowed to be there. He had a book open on his knee and his coffee on the side table and he looked up when Avery came in with the expression of someone who had been perfectly content and was glad to be interrupted.
"You were gone a while," Derek said.
"Got held up," Avery said.
He was standing slightly behind the door. He was aware this was suspicious. Derek's expression shifted fractionally into the assessing mode.
"Avery," Derek said.
"Hey," Avery said.
"What's behind you."
"Behind me?" Avery said. "Nothing. Just. Me. And my jacket."
"Your jacket is moving," Derek said.
"Jackets do that," Avery said. "With the, uh. The wind."
"We're inside," Derek said.
"We are," Avery agreed. "Inside. Where I am. With my jacket."
Derek put his book down.
"Avery," he said, in the tone that meant he had completed his assessment and reached a conclusion and was waiting for Avery to catch up.
"Okay," Avery said. "Okay. Before I show you what's in my jacket I want to say that I want to preface this with some context."
"Show me what's in your jacket," Derek said.
"The context is important-”
"Avery."
Avery opened his jacket.
The kitten emerged from the collar of his shirt like a small grey announcement, blinking in the light, one ear up and one ear slightly less up, and looked at Derek with the complete lack of social awareness of something that had no concept of the conversation it was interrupting.
Derek looked at it.
The kitten looked at Derek.
"Avery," Derek said.
"It was raining," Avery said.
"Avery."
"It was very small," Avery said. "And it was next to the recycling bin and it was making a noise-”
"What kind of noise," Derek said, which was not the response Avery had expected.
"Like, a small noise. Like it had the idea of a meow but limited budget for it."
Derek looked at the kitten. The kitten looked at Derek. It made the noise.
Something moved across Derek's face. Very quickly. He controlled it, but Avery had been watching Derek's face for months and he caught it, the almost-imperceptible thing that happened when Derek encountered something he had not prepared himself against and did not immediately have a framework for.
"It needs to be checked for a microchip," Derek said. "And vaccinations. And it should see a vet to assess its age and general health before we make any decisions."
"Yes," Avery said carefully. "Absolutely."
"We don't know if it belongs to someone."
"We don't," Avery agreed. "I can post in the local group. Tonight."
Derek looked at the kitten. "It's wet," he said.
"It was raining," Avery said.
"I can see that." Derek stood up from the couch. He crossed the room and stopped in front of Avery and looked at the kitten in Avery's jacket with the expression of a person conducting a very serious evaluation.
The kitten looked back at him.
"One ear is larger than the other," Derek said.
"I know," Avery said. "Is that-”
"It's normal," Derek said. "In young cats the ears sometimes develop at different rates." He paused. "It should be warmed up. Wet cats can get hypothermic." He paused again. "We need a towel."
"Yeah," Avery said. "Yeah, okay."
"And we don't have any cat food," Derek said, going to the linen cupboard. "We'll need to check what's safe for cats in the short term. There are some human foods that are appropriate."
"Derek," Avery said.
Derek came back with a towel and handed it to Avery and then appeared to reconsider and held his hands out instead, the gesture of someone who had made a decision.
Avery handed him the kitten.
Derek held it with the focused careful attention he brought to things that required handling correctly. The kitten, which had been squirming, went immediately and utterly still in his hands and looked up at him with the enormous asymmetrical eyes.
"Hello," Derek said, to the kitten, in the quiet direct way he addressed things he intended to take seriously.
The kitten made the noise.
Derek looked at it for a moment.
"We're not keeping it until we've checked for a microchip," he said, to Avery, who had been watching this entire sequence of events with his whole heart.
"Absolutely," Avery said. "Of course."
"And confirmed it doesn't belong to anyone."
"Obviously," Avery said.
"And seen a vet," Derek said.
"First thing tomorrow," Avery said.
Derek looked down at the kitten in his hands. He wrapped the towel around it with the same careful precision he used for everything, checking that it could still breathe, making sure it was properly contained without being restricted, adjusting until it was correct.
"It's very small," he said.
"I know," Avery said.
"The rain was heavy tonight," Derek said.
"It was," Avery said.
"You were right to bring it in," Derek said.
Avery looked at him. Derek was looking at the kitten in its towel, at the small grey face peering up from the folds of it, and his expression was doing something Avery had not seen it do before, something softer than the soft things, something without any of the careful management that Derek brought to feelings that surprised him.
Just: open.
Just: oh, this thing exists, I am glad it exists.
"Derek," Avery said.
"I'll look up the local lost pets groups," Derek said. "And find the nearest vet that opens early." He turned and carried the kitten back to the couch. He sat down. He placed the kitten, towel and all, in his lap, and looked at it with great seriousness.
The kitten looked back.
Then it climbed out of the towel and walked in a small circle on Derek's knee and sat down again, directly on the open book Derek had been reading, with the comprehensive disregard for literature that cats had maintained across all of recorded history.
Derek looked at the book. He looked at the kitten. He looked at Avery.
"It's on my book," he said.
"I see that," Avery said.
"I was reading that," Derek said.
"You can read around it," Avery said.
Derek looked at the kitten on his book. The kitten looked at Derek. It made the noise again, the small budget version, and then tucked its front paws under its chest in the waiting-it-out position and closed its eyes.
Derek sat very still.
After a long moment he reached over for his coffee with the careful deliberate slowness of someone not wanting to disturb something, and picked it up without moving his lap, and drank it.
Avery sat in the chair across from him and watched this happen and said nothing because there was nothing to say that the situation wasn't already saying.
They did not find a microchip.
The local lost pets group produced no matches. The vet, who they saw the next morning, Derek had found one that opened at eight, which Avery chose not to comment on, assessed the kitten as approximately eight weeks old and in reasonable health for something that had spent recent time in the rain, and confirmed no microchip, and gave them a list of what it would need and when, and looked at the two of them across the examination table and said: "First cat?"
"We're still deciding," Derek said.
The vet looked at Derek, who had spent the past ten minutes holding the kitten with the focused protective attention of someone who had decided something and was implementing it while maintaining deniability, and nodded in the way of someone managing their expression.
"Of course," she said.
The deciding took approximately four more days.
In those four days: the kitten established that its preferred sleeping location was the exact center of the bed, which was a bold territorial claim for something the size of a baked potato. It discovered Hastur on the windowsill and sat in front of him for twenty minutes in the focused way of two entities that have recognized each other as significant. It ate the appropriate kitten food Derek had purchased, researched, Avery discovered, across three separate websites for comparative nutritional analysis, with extraordinary enthusiasm and then fell asleep in Derek's book again.
It also, on the third morning, climbed Derek's leg while Derek was standing at the windowsill talking to the plants.
Derek looked down at it, attached to his shin, looking up at him with the asymmetrical expression.
"Hello," Derek said.
The kitten climbed further.
"That's not-” Derek said, and then stopped, because the kitten had reached his knee and apparently decided this was sufficient altitude and stopped climbing and just. Held on. With all available claws.
Derek stood at the windowsill with a kitten attached to his leg and continued the plant conversation with only slightly altered cadence.
Avery watched this from the doorway.
He had his phone out. He filmed nine seconds of it. He did not post them yet. He was saving them.
The deciding happened on the fourth evening.
Derek was on the couch with his laptop, doing the close reading of YouTube analytics that he did every week with the seriousness of someone who had once decoded cipher stacks and found the underlying logic of the internet not entirely dissimilar. The kitten was in its designated corner, which was a cat bed Derek had sourced with the same comparative-website energy as the food, and Avery was in the kitchen making tea.
He came back into the living room and looked at the couch.
Derek was on the couch.
The cat bed was in the corner.
The kitten was not in the cat bed.
Avery looked around the room. He looked at Derek, who was looking at the laptop with the particular stillness that meant something had caught his attention, except his eyes were not moving across the screen the way they did when he was reading, and his hand was not moving the way it did when he was working.
"Derek," Avery said.
"Hm," Derek said.
"Where's the kitten."
A pause.
"In its bed," Derek said.
Avery looked at the cat bed. The cat bed contained a small blanket that Derek had put in it and nothing else. "The bed is empty," he said.
Another pause.
"Hm," Derek said.
"Derek."
"It was in the bed twenty minutes ago," Derek said, with great composure.
"And now it's not," Avery said.
"It moves around," Derek said. "That's normal for cats."
"Derek, where is the kitten."
Derek closed the laptop. He looked at Avery with the expression of a person who had just been asked to account for a situation they were aware reflected on them in some way. Then he appeared to make a decision, and he opened the laptop again, and he angled the screen very slightly, and there, tucked in the warm gap between the laptop's underside and Derek's thigh, a small grey shape, entirely invisible unless you were looking for it.
Asleep.
"It was cold," Derek said.
Avery looked at the kitten. He looked at Derek. He looked at the kitten again.
"The bed has a blanket," he said.
"The laptop is warmer," Derek said.
"You let it sleep on the laptop."
"It was already asleep when I noticed," Derek said, which was technically a different statement than I let it, and which Avery decided not to interrogate too closely.
"Derek," Avery said.
"It's very small," Derek said.
"I know."
"And the flat can be cold," Derek said, "in the evenings."
"I know," Avery said.
"And it would be-” Derek paused- "irresponsible, to send it somewhere else when it has established patterns here. Disrupting a young animal's routine can cause-”
"Derek," Avery said.
Derek looked at him.
"Do you want to keep the kitten," Avery said.
A pause.
"Yes," Derek said. The way he said it was the way he had learned to say things, directly, without the immediate qualifier, without making it smaller than it was. Just: yes.
Avery felt the warm thing.
"Yeah," he said. "Me too."
Derek looked at the laptop, at the small grey shape asleep in the warm gap. He looked at Avery. He looked back at the kitten.
"We need to discuss names," he said.
"We do," Avery agreed.
"Not Hastur," Derek said, immediately.
"Obviously not Hastur," Avery said. "Hastur is Hastur."
"The name should be appropriate," Derek said. "Considered."
"Agreed," Avery said. He came and sat on the couch beside Derek, angling himself to see the kitten, which was still resolutely asleep and apparently unconcerned with its own naming. "What are you thinking."
Derek was quiet for a moment. He looked at the kitten with the thoughtful considering expression of someone running through options.
"Wif," he said.
Avery looked at him. "Wif."
"Or Wifies," Derek said. "Either."
Avery looked at the kitten. He looked at Derek. "Why Wifies," he said.
Derek was quiet for a moment. He appeared to be considering how to answer this, which meant the answer was something he had already thought about and was now deciding whether to say directly.
"It seems fitting," he said.
"That's not an answer," Avery said.
"It's the answer I have," Derek said.
Avery looked at him. Derek was looking at the kitten, at the small grey shape asleep in the warm gap of his laptop, and his expression was the open thing, the thing without the management, and Avery thought about everything the name might mean, about the world that had existed and the footage that had started it and the person who had made the thing that had made all of this, in a long improbable chain of causality that had ended here, on a couch, with a kitten and a person Avery loved and a life that was real.
"Wifies," Avery said.
"Fies, maybe," Derek said. "Short."
"Fies," Avery said. He tried it in his mouth. "Fies." He looked at the kitten. "Hey, Fies."
The kitten did not respond, being asleep.
"She doesn't know her name yet," Derek said.
"She," Avery said. "The vet said she."
"She," Derek confirmed. He looked at Avery. "Is Fies acceptable."
"Fies is perfect," Avery said. He looked at the kitten. At Derek's hand, which had moved, he noticed, to rest very lightly at the edge of the laptop, close to but not quite touching the small sleeping shape. Providing warmth without disturbing.
"Derek," Avery said.
"Hm."
"You like her," Avery said.
"She's practical," Derek said. "She's already established a routine and disrupting it would be-”
"You like her," Avery said.
Derek looked at him. He looked at Fies. He looked at Avery again.
"Yes," he said, in the direct way. "She's-” he paused, and for a moment Avery thought he was going to say something analytical, something about routine or practicality or the documented psychological benefits of pet ownership. Instead he said, simply and with mild surprise: "She's very good company."
Avery looked at Derek's face, at the open thing, and thought about a man who had talked to a succulent for twenty minutes and grown sunflowers from seeds and built a library with reading nooks and looked up three weeks in advance and said this is nice in a tone of someone discovering something they didn't know they were allowed to have.
"Yeah," Avery said softly. "She really is."
After that, Fies was just part of the apartment.
The way things became part of the apartment, gradually and then all at once, until you couldn't imagine the space without them. She had the bed in the corner that Derek had sourced, which she used approximately forty percent of the time and ignored in favor of Derek's lap the other sixty. She had opinions about the plants, which she expressed by sitting very close to them and staring, and which Derek addressed by having brief firm conversations with her about respecting other living things that were, Avery documented thoroughly, genuinely the most content he had ever been in his life.
She did not bother Hastur.
This was, Derek said, because she was intelligent.
Avery thought it was because Hastur was doing the thing, the specific quality of his silence that even Fies apparently recognized as do not. He chose not to say this.
She liked the sunflower. She sat under it sometimes in the morning light and looked up at it with the focused attention of a small predator contemplating something very large and coming to a practical conclusion about it. Derek watched her do this once and said, to no one, good instincts, which Avery also documented.
She slept on the laptop when Derek was using it. She slept on his book when he was reading it. She slept on his notes when he was writing them. She slept on his arm when he was on the couch and on his feet when he was at the desk and on his chest when he was doing nothing at all, and Derek in each case made the careful deliberate adjustment of someone who had decided not to disturb her and was reorganizing his entire activity around this decision.
Avery filmed seventeen seconds of Derek trying to reach his coffee without moving the arm that Fies was sleeping on, the expression of intense strategic focus on his face, and posted it with the caption he said he wasn't sure about the cat and twenty-three thousand people said he is absolutely sure about the cat and Derek read the comments and said "the coffee was on the wrong side, that's not-” and Avery kissed him before he could finish the sentence, which worked, as it always did.
One evening, coming home late from a coffee with a friend, Avery pushed open the apartment door quietly because it was past ten and the lights were low and he thought Derek might be asleep.
Derek was not asleep.
Derek was on the couch, reading, with Fies asleep on his chest, and he had one hand on his book and the other resting along Fies's back in the absent way of someone who was not thinking about what their hand was doing because it had found somewhere natural to be, and he was talking.
Quietly. Too quietly for Avery to make out words from the doorway.
Avery stood in the doorway and watched Derek talking softly to the sleeping cat on his chest, and thought about all the things Derek talked to, the plants, the succulent, the fern that was being dramatic, the seedling on the day it came up, hi, you're late, but you're here, and thought: this is a person who says things to things he loves when he thinks no one is listening. this is a person who has a lot of things to say and has learned to say them to things that won't make him account for the saying.
He thought: I am so glad he is also learning to say them to me.
He came inside quietly and took his jacket off and went to the kitchen and when he came back with two mugs of tea Derek looked up and smiled, the full one, the one that had gotten easier, and Fies didn't wake up, and Avery sat beside them on the couch and handed Derek his mug and Derek took it with the hand that wasn't on Fies and said:
"She waited up."
"She's asleep," Avery said.
"She was awake until about ten minutes ago," Derek said. "Then she gave up."
"She waited up for me," Avery said.
"She likes you," Derek said. "She just likes me more."
"That's not-”
"Data-based conclusion," Derek said, with immense composure.
Avery looked at Fies, small and grey and entirely boneless in her sleep, one asymmetrical ear pressed flat against Derek's chest. He looked at Derek, who was drinking his tea and reading around the cat with the practiced ease of someone who had adapted.
"Derek," Avery said.
"Hm."
"Remember when you said you weren't sure about the cat."
"I said we needed to check for a microchip," Derek said. "And see a vet. Those were practical steps."
"You said we were still deciding," Avery said.
"We were," Derek said.
"You were not deciding," Avery said.
Derek looked at him over his mug. He looked at Fies. He looked back at Avery.
"She was wet," he said. "And small. And the ear-”
"The ear," Avery agreed.
"It's a reasonable ear," Derek said, with dignity. "The asymmetry is within normal developmental parameters."
"It's a very good ear," Avery said.
"Both ears are good," Derek said, with the firmness of someone defending something.
Avery pressed his lips together. He looked at the ceiling. He looked at Derek, who was watching him with the almost-smile, the one that knew it was funny and was choosing when to let it arrive.
"We have a cat," Avery said.
"We have a cat," Derek said.
"Named Fies," Avery said.
"After the creator," Derek said, which was the first time he had said it directly, had confirmed what Avery had understood but not named.
"After the creator," Avery said softly.
Derek looked at Fies. He looked at the apartment, at the windowsill plants, at Hastur in his pot, at the sunflower reaching toward the window, at the laptop on the coffee table with its subscriber count doing its quietly vertical thing. At all the pieces of a life built block by careful block into something that held weight.
"It seemed right," he said. "Fitting. That something good should have that name."
Avery looked at him. He thought about how far that sentence traveled, from the footage and the cipher and the gates and the hospital, all the way to here, a couch, a cat, a name given to something small and alive and found in the rain.
Something good should have that name.
"Yeah," Avery said. "It does seem fitting."
Fies slept on Derek's chest, small and warm and completely at home.
Outside, the city did its nighttime thing.
Inside, everything was exactly where it was supposed to be.
Later that week, Avery would post the nine seconds of Derek at the windowsill with the kitten attached to his leg. The caption would say: "he said and i quote 'we don't have any cat food, we'll need to check what's safe for cats in the short term' at 9pm on a tuesday before we had even decided anything." The top comment: "he was already problem-solving. he decided in the car park of the corner shop when avery showed him the cat. there was never any deciding." Derek would read this and say "there was a legitimate decision-making process." Avery would say "you looked up three vet websites that night." Derek would say "due diligence." Avery would say "you named her." Derek would say "the name is appropriate." Avery would say "Derek." Derek would look at Fies, who was asleep on his book. He would look at Avery. He would say, with the quiet certainty of someone who has stopped making things smaller than they are: "I like the cat." Avery would say: "I know." And that would be that.