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“I really want a cat.”
Kai’s statement breaks through the comfortable silence of a lazy afternoon Saturday that had settled between him and his roommate. Taehyun’s bright eyes flicker away from his little blue DSi, settling on Kai.
“A cat?” The sounds of a Pokémon battle fade out as Taehyun mutes his game.
“A cat!” Kai confirms, abandoning any half-hearted attempt to make this seem like a casual thought. His words flow out in a burst of excitement, Taehyun’s full attention trained on him. “Imagine how fun it would be! Like, you come home from a long day of working at the office… the subway was delayed and your lunch was stolen by one of your evil coworkers… a bunch of other things go wrong. I don’t know,” Kai rambles, feeling embarrassment rise up in his chest. Taehyun’s encouraging look urges him on. “The point is, imagine how nice it would be to come home and find a cat, a perfect, adorable, happy cat, purring and running to give you so much love!”
Slightly breathless, Kai tilts his head to gauge Taehyun’s reaction. The older boy is amused, a faint smile playing across his lips.
“I don’t need a cat. I already have a dog,” Taehyun informs him, his eyes sparkling with suggestion. Kai feels his ears go red.
“That is totally besides the point. I— I’m not like that! Am I?” Kai tugs at his lower lip, thinking. He regrets ever introducing Soobin to his roommate/best friend/secret third thing. Soobin knows too much and talks too much and is way too insistent on his whole “puppy Kai” agenda.
“It’s cute, Hyuka. Seriously,” Taehyun reassures him, which earns him a shy, half-smile, “but my point is, I don’t see any real reason to get a cat. I don’t need any cheering up after work. I see you.”
Defying all laws of biology, Kai’s ears get redder. He tugs at his hair to hide his furious blush and pouts instead. “But I want a cat, Tyunnie! Please? Oh, it’ll be so cute… just imagine! And we could name him Toothless, and he’ll have huge green eyes… and he’ll like that brand of canned tuna you’re so obsessed with, so we don’t even have to spend any extra money, not really! He’ll watch movies with us and come cuddle and act all cold and cool, but really, he loves us a lot and…”
Kai trails off, sending a look at Taehyun. Oh my god. How have I not realized…?
“Taehyun, he’ll be just like you!”
This statement is enough to fluster Taehyun for once. Not that one could tell if one wasn’t Huening Kai, expert in Taehyunology. “I’m not a cat.”
“You’re basically like a cat! You’re all nonchalant—”
“Please don’t describe me as nonchalant.”
“— and ‘I’m cooler than you’, but, like, deep down you really love me—”
“This conversation is getting away from us both.”
“The point is,” Kai says loudly, in a feeble attempt to distract from just about everything he’d just said, “I think you deserve a cat-friend. Since you’re a cat. And it’s your birthday.”
Taehyun huffs a laugh, flopping backwards on his bed and turning up his game in a way that signals the end of the conversation. “That’s ridiculous, Kai. I’m not a cat. Besides, it’s my birthday. And I don’t want a cat.”
Huening Kamal Kai gazes across the room at his best friend and forever roommate and makes a vow.
I’m gonna get him that damn cat.
He thinks about it when they pass by a sharp-eyed stray cat on their way to the grocery store, dark brown form darting away from the pair into the lengthening shadows. He thinks about it when they encounter a huge poster of a fluffy white cat on the subway, advertising for some overpriced and second-rate cat food. He thinks about it when Taehyun buys his damn six cans of tuna and Kai adds another six with a sly, sideways look.
Taehyun knows better than to question or open up the discussion again. He knows Kai better than this; he’d known Kai better since the very first time they’d met, awkward teenage souls trapped in college freshman bodies. Kai had wandered into the dorm, feeling lost and out of his depth, clutching his Wobbuffet plushie to his chest and trying not to feel like a childish idiot. Taehyun had glanced back at him from his spot perched on his bed, hanging up a frankly oversized and hilariously worn out Pokémon poster. Their eyes had met, something had clicked, and the rest was history.
Kai was determined to ensure that a cat was included in their history.
On the subway ride back to their apartment, a cat in a bubble bag stretches its mouth in a wide yawn. When Taehyun does the same in the next moment, Kai shoots him a look that’s pointedly ignored. The cans of tuna click together merrily in his penguin-patterned reusable shopping bag.
“Stop,” Taehyun says instinctively when Kai opens his mouth as they unload groceries. Which feels supremely unfair. Taehyun hadn’t even been looking at him!
“Stop? Stop what? Just saying, we have an awful lot of tuna now… wonder who’ll eat all of that…” Kai muses, reaching up to put the last two cans on top of the dangerously teetering stack. He sets to work folding up his shopping bag, refusing to meet Taehyun’s eyes.
This comment earns him a purring laugh. Seriously, how had he never connected these dots? “You’re ridiculous. Acting like I wasn’t there with you when you bought all of this.”
“C’mon, Tyun,” Kai complains with a pout. Screw his dignity, there are more important things at stake. “You really won’t consider it? A cat? That I’ll take care of so, so, so well? And love and care for and—”
Taehyun walks away with a shrug and a long, cat-like stretch. “Why would I? I’m fine with hogging your attention.”
Before Kai can think of a proper response, his face burning, Taehyun turns back towards him. “But I’ll consider it. If you want it so badly.”
Pure joy fills Kai up like a balloon, buoying him up to the sky. He bounds over to Taehyun (like a ridiculously oversized puppy—fuck) to embrace the smaller man. He shrinks himself down to joyfully pat Taehyun’s stomach, which graces him with another happy, purr-laugh. “Thank you, Taehyun! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
Taehyun pushes him away in a light, teasing way, grinning. “I didn’t even say yes yet. Save your thanks for then.”
“It’s the thought that counts,” Kai insists, chasing after Taehyun, determined to tackle him again. “Thank you, Tyunnie, thank you!”
“Anything for you, Kai,” Taehyun replies, and in that moment, it really feels like it's true.
Just to be safe, Kai starts making wishes.
At 11:11, he wishes for a cat. At 12:34, he does it again, just to be safe. A final time at 2:05, because he really does believe Taehyun is good luck.
He wishes for a cat on the white tufts of an unlikely dandelion. He wishes for a cat on Taehyun’s fourth (kitten-like) sneeze. He wishes for a cat sandwiched between Beomgyu and Yeonjun at their shared apartment (last names work, too, right?). He wishes for a cat when Taehyun blows out the candle stuck haphazardly in the cupcake brought to them by the waiter when Kai had loudly declared that it was Taehyun’s birthday, even though it’s tomorrow.
Is that bad luck? He really hopes not. He hopes it’s actually double good luck, or something, to wish for a cat like his roommate on his roommate’s birthday. But he’s totally stressed out now, because it feels like bad luck, maybe, and he really, really, really needs that cat.
“What are you wishing for?” Taehyun asks with a huff of amusement, because he just knows him like that. He slides a fork across the table and raises his eyebrow in invitation. Kai folds immediately, digging in.
“Something for you, Tyunnie,” Kai tells him after he’s finished chewing. It’s a decent cupcake.
Kai wakes up early on the day of Taehyun’s birthday, excited energy leaping beneath his skin.
He swears he looks forward to Taehyun’s birthday more than Taehyun himself, ordering food (he’s decided it’s best for everybody involved not to cook it), deciding on a location, inviting him and Taehyun’s (admittedly small, but definitely comfortable!) circle of friends. The thought of the small, tender smile that slides across his best friend’s face when he sees what Kai has planned makes every harrowing second worth it.
He’s out of bed in an instant, grinning across the room at Taehyun’s sleeping form.
Or what would be Taehyun’s sleeping form… if he was still there. And sleeping. No, it’s not the sight of the lumpy shape of a comfortably slumbering Taehyun tucked beneath his simple white comforter that greets Kai. It’s something he never would have expected.
Curled up on Taehyun’s pillow, back rising and falling in sleeping breaths, is a little black cat.
Kai doesn’t react for a solid forty seconds. He just stands there, staring at Taehyun, his grin still plastered stupidly across his face.
What. What?
He snaps out of his daze, moving closer slowly. He studies the cat, getting as close as he dares without disturbing the creature.
The moment he gets a little too close, his nose a mere six inches from the cat’s face, a pair of green eyes snap open.
“Shit!” he swears involuntarily, reeling back. His foot gets caught on a stray pile of clothes (he really does need to clean his side of the room), sending him to the floor. The cat regards him with no small amount of amusement.
Kai watches in awe as the cat stretches out, black fur rippling as it moves. Its tiny paws knead Taehyun’s pillow happily before it straightens up, leaping gracefully from the pillow to the bed to the floor.
The cat glides over to Kai, green eyes glinting in the sunlight streaming through the window between the two beds. Kai doesn’t move a muscle, letting the cat bump its nose against his own. It purrs softly, happily, eyes fluttering half-shut.
“Holy shit,” Kai whispers, shock still flowing through his system. Then he smiles again, letting the reality sink in.
Huening Kai has gotten his cat.
It follows him into the kitchen with bright, curious eyes. Kai feels like Orpheus, determined not to look at his Eurydice.
He glances back, unable to resist. The black cat is right behind him, looking amused, whiskers twitching.
“Oh! Are you hungry?” Kai asks the cat. He instantly feels stupid for asking, but the cat walks up to him, gliding between his legs with a low purr. Kai giggles, crouching down to give the creature pets.
“Lucky for you, we have tuna,” Kai tells it smugly. “Oh my god, Taehyun is going to freak out.”
Which reminds him. Where on earth was Taehyun?
Kai takes a can of tuna out of the cabinet distractedly. He’d been so caught up in the whole there’s-a-cat-on-my-roommate’s-bed issue that he hadn’t even given a thought to the there’s-no-roommate-in-my-roommate’s-bed problem.
He dumps what he deems an appropriate amount of tuna into a small bowl for the cat (he’s, like, 70% sure that it’s a male cat, and is not particularly eager to violate its privacy to confirm) and watches fondly as he digs in. With a final look to determine that the cat is absorbed in his meal, Kai returns to his and Taehyun’s room.
Sure enough, there’s nobody there. Honestly, it would probably be terrifying if Taehyun had suddenly appeared, snoring happily beneath his sheets, but Kai’s not sure what he can do with the knowledge that the man is completely absent.
With a bit of prodding around, Kai discovers Taehyun’s abandoned phone. What human, in this age of digital communication, leaves his phone when he wanders out of the house at the ass-crack of dawn on his birthday without even a note for his roommate?
Kai’s a little worried, which in turn makes him a little annoyed. How could Taehyun be so irresponsible?
But an angry text to locate and bring Taehyun back home is out of the question, so Kai settles for the next best thing.
He calls their best friend.
Kai discovers that the cat is clingy, huge green eyes begging for attention every time he turns. He huffs in amusement, placing the washed bowl carefully into the dishwasher to dry and moving to the tiny living room. He settles down for the cat to clamber onto his lap.
Luckily, the cat is small enough for him to pet with one hand while he dials his friend with the other.
“Kai?”
“Ah! Hi, Beomgyu-hyung. Have you heard from Taehyunnie?”
“What, no good, proper ‘hello’? No ‘good morning, hyung’? Not even a ‘how are you’?” Beomgyu’s voice is teasingly annoyed.
“Sorry! Good morning, Beomgyu-hyung! How are you?” Kai amends quickly. The cat meows loudly on his lap, butting his hand with its head when Hyuka ceases his affection for too long.
“Hah! Okay, good morning and I’m fine, thanks. And I don’t know. Wouldn’t he be at the gym?”
“Like… on his birthday?”
Kai can practically see Beomgyu’s shrug. “I dunno, man. He’s your best friend. It’s the only thing I can think of.”
“You’re right. It’s just unlike him to be out so early… ow! Ow, my hand! Hey!”
The cat blinks happily, glad to catch Kai’s attention at last. He unhooks his claws and rolls over, tail swishing in lazy happiness. Helplessly, Kai resumes his pets.
“You okay, Hyuka?” Beomgyu inquires. He sounds genuinely worried.
“Yup! I’m fine,” Kai replies, switching his call to speaker and leaving it on the floor. It’s not like there’s anyone to disturb with his noise. “I have a cat.”
A pause. Kai imagines Beomgyu’s slow, unamused blink.
“O…kay? Dude, you are so weird. I’ll keep an eye out for Taehyun. Congrats on the cat…? I guess. Keep me updated and I’ll see you later for the birthday dinner.”
There really isn’t much of a point in continuing the conversation, so Kai bids his friend farewell with a, “Goodbye, and have a great day!” before hanging up.
He looks down at the cat. The cat looks back up. “I’ve lost track of my best friend,” Kai informs the little creature. “Also, you need a name. Also, we’re going to the gym now.”
The cat, unsurprisingly, has no response except to purr softly.
In a stroke of absolute genius (or the conveniently timed appearance of a poster in the window of a bubble tea shop), Kai settles on a name.
“Toothless! You’re totally Toothless. Why didn’t I think of it earlier! I mean, I always said that’s what I would name a cat. Black fur, green eyes… it’s so perfect!”
Toothless purrs back in response, clinging to Kai’s broad shoulders carefully, following the rhythm of each of the man’s steps. Kai doesn’t know if it’s exactly a safe way of bringing a cat around their city, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do.
“Anyway, what do you think is up with Taehyun? It’s pretty weird to disappear on the day of your birthday without your phone, don’t you think? Besides, when did he have time to get you? Because you surely didn’t appear out of thin air,” Kai chatters on. The cat just nudges his ear.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Nothing to say, huh? You’re not very talkative,” Kai teases. “Oh, right! Here’s the gym.”
He backtracks a few steps (no, Toothless was not that distracting) and shoves one of the double doors on the way into the gym confidently.
He regrets it pretty immediately. It smells heavily of sweat and the pleather seats on workout equipment. A woman scoots past him carrying a yoga mat with a softly uttered, “‘Scuse me,” that leaves Kai inexplicably confused and dazed.
“Can I help you?” asks a man at the front desk and Kai snaps back into reality.
“Oh, yes! Hi. I’m looking for my friend…?” Kai informs him timidly, following his gaze up to Toothless. Yup. He definitely should’ve thought this through a little more.
“I… see. And what is this friend’s name?” the man questions.
“Taehyun. Kang Taehyun,” Kai tells him, and is totally unprepared for the way this stranger’s eyes light up and… is that a blush?!
“Oh, yes! Taehyun! He’s a very frequent visitor here, isn’t he?” babbles this totally evil and ill-intending front desk man. “Ah, well… I’m sorry to tell you that Taehyun-nim hasn’t stopped by today.”
I’m sure you’re sorry about that, Kai thinks, narrowing his eyes. He tries to fix his expression immediately. “Alright, thanks for letting me know! He’s probably just at a friend’s house and forgot to tell me. Have a nice day!”
Kai decides to get the hell out of there, so he spins on his heel and rushes out the door, narrowly missing a man wielding a yoga mat (seriously, what was up with that?) before making it back onto the sidewalk.
The day is rapidly inching its way towards ten A.M., a suspiciously long time for his roommate to be missing. Kai would be worried, but there’s sincerely nothing in this world he believes could logically take on Taehyun, and Taehyun is not one to disappear without warning, too conscious of his friends and their feelings and concerns to throw them into the deep end like that. He’d once spoiled Kai’s surprise birthday party by texting him to let him know where he was after Kai had frantically called when he couldn’t find Taehyun in their dorm.
“So where is he…?” Kai muses, stretching out a hand to scratch at Toothless’s ears. Then he freezes.
A pretty, clingy, black cat that purrs every time Kai so much as looks at him? A cat who had woken up on Taehyun’s pillow, begged for attention, stayed quiet and focused at the gym? A cat who already seemed so attuned to Kai’s moods, hovering close and careful even now, bright eyes boring into his own, scanning for a reaction?
Was it true? Could it be possible…?
Had Huening Kai turned his roommate… into a cat?
Beomgyu is laughing. Kai turned Taehyun into a cat, and he’s laughing.
“Oh, come on! Do you hear yourself, Hyuka? You think you turned Taehyun into a cat? How exactly did you manage that?”
Toothless grabs onto his hand with gleaming eyes, sharp teeth nibbling at Kai’s calloused skin. The words die in his throat. “By… wishing for it?” he suggests timidly and Beomgyu bursts into laughter again, nearly toppling off the couch.
“Alright, Beomgyu, that’s hardly helpful,” Soobin scolds gently from his spot on the kitchen table. “Kai’s obviously under a lot of distress. He lost his roommate and he’s trying to cope.”
“Don’t start, hyung! It’s really him, I swear!”
“How do you even lose a grown man?” Yeonjun ponders from his spot at the stove. Unsurprisingly, it smells like ramen in the apartment. “Like, Taehyun’s pretty big. I don’t think you could misplace him, right?”
“I didn’t misplace him!” Kai wails. “I turned him into a cat!”
“Let me see this alleged Taehyun-cat,” Beomgyu insists, voice dripping with so much condescension that Kai immediately wants to refuse.
But Toothless is quicker to reject Beomgyu’s proposal, leaping five feet into the air when Beomgyu moves towards him and jumping onto Kai’s lap. He hisses softly, ears pinned back. Beomgyu blinks back, surprised. A suspicious laugh-cough emits from the kitchen, smothered when Beomgyu whips around to glare at his oldest roommate.
“No, this can’t be Taehyun. He doesn’t hate me like that,” Beomgyu decides.
“You don’t know that. You’re being very mean to his best friend right now,” Kai tells Beomgyu, reaching out for Toothless. The little black cat relaxes, rubbing his head against Kai.
“Okay, fine. If this is really Taehyun, how… how do we turn him back?” Soobin’s voice is strained, lilting with constrained disbelief. Kai feels his heart sink.
“That’s the issue. I don’t know,” Kai says, rubbing Toothless’ ears absentmindedly. The cat purrs, glancing up at Kai with starry eyes.
“Well, how did you wish for this to happen?” Yeonjun asks.
Kai perks up. There’s a question he can answer. “With a lot of things. Like Taehyun’s early birthday cupcake at a restaurant, and a dandelion, and some different times. Like, for a whole week.”
Beomgyu whistles slowly, amused. “Damn, Kai. You really wanted Taehyun out.”
“No! Not— it wasn’t like that! It was, like… I just wanted a cat like Taehyun. I didn’t want Taehyun to turn into a cat.”
Regardless, it sounds indefensible and pretty darn stupid. Kai opts to stop talking.
Beomgyu glances at the clock. “11:11 has passed, but we still have 12:34. And, well. Taehyun really isn’t showing up. This is his birthday party and yet… whatever. If you think it’ll help, you can wish on the birthday cake we got for him.”
Kai tries not to nod too eagerly. In fact, he thinks whatever weird spell-wish had transformed his best friend will be all the more potent when wished on his actual birthday cake, but he doesn’t want to say so. “Okay. Okay, thanks, Beomgyu.”
Soobin gets up finally, approaching the spot where Kai sits on the floor, Toothless still bunched up in his lap. When the cat ignores him, Soobin places a tender hand on Kai’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Kai. We’ll get Taehyun back, okay?”
Kai steadies his anxious hands in Toothless’ fur. He can only hope Soobin is telling the truth.
After fifteen wishes on increasingly odd terms, an extra two birthday cakes, and a situation that could only be described as an off-brand occult ritual, Kai and Toothless return to the dark of their apartment at midnight, exhausted.
And, yes, Toothless. Because in spite of their best collective efforts, nothing happens. Not even remotely. Unless you count the scratch bandaged up on the back of Beomgyu’s hand, which Beomgyu totally does.
Kai cradles the cat to his chest, entering the room he’d shared with Taehyun up until this fateful morning and flicking on the lights. Nothing has changed, Taehyun’s phone remains lifeless on his bed. Kai feels his heart sinking once again.
“Happy birthday, Taehyun,” Kai whispers to no one. Toothless purrs, rubbing the top of his head against Kai’s chin.
He lets the cat make room for himself on Kai’s bed, grabbing a more comfortable change of clothes and heading to the bathroom to get ready for bed. When he returns, Toothless is still awake, enormous eyes blinking happily at Kai.
“C’mon, go to sleep, you big goof,” Kai says, managing a smile in spite of his worry. “We’ll work on turning you back tomorrow, okay? Sorry you missed your birthday, though. If you really are in there.”
Toothless only stares. Kai decides to set his anxiety aside, turning off the lights and navigating his way to his bed carefully, one hand outstretched to ensure that he doesn’t crush his poor best-friend-turned-cat.
The second he lays down, Toothless is on him, a weight on his chest. He can feel the steady purr of the little creature against his body and controls his laugh, not wanting to toss him off.
“Goodnight, Taehyunnie,” Kai yawns. Without a response to wait for, he drifts off into sleep.
Kai wakes up to a crushing weight on his entire body.
It’s hard for him to open his eyes for the first minute, still shaking off sleep with great determination. It had been a long day the day before, he recalls vaguely. Something about black fur and dead phones and yoga mats and birthday cakes. Kai wants to return to his slumber, but the pressure on his chest is insistent.
When Kai finally forces his eyes open, the sight that greets him is far from what he’d expected.
He’s staring down at a circle of soft brown hair, growing out slightly into the promising beginnings of a fluffy mullet. That hair, of course, is attached to a sweetly sleeping face, pretty lips puffing out soft breaths as he dreams.
At some point, one of his own arms had slung around the waist of the smaller man, holding him tight. In response, Taehyun’s arms had curled around Kai’s broad chest. Kai can feel their hearts beating in a not-tandem; Taehyun’s even and calm, his own erratic and confused.
But the main emotion washing over him is pure relief. It’s all over, and it’s alright. He has his best friend back.
He can’t resist snuggling down a little closer until he feels Taehyun’s hair brushing over his nose. Kai holds back a sneeze, pressing the slightest of kisses onto the crown of Taehyun’s head.
Impossibly, Taehyun senses the movement and stirs. From this angle, Kai can see every twitch of his eyelid, every shiver of his beautiful eyelashes. “Mmph?”
“Taehyun-ah. Hey. Go back to sleep,” Kai whispers.
“Mm… Kai-yah,” Taehyun mumbles, voice thick with sleep. His eyes don’t open.
“Hmm? What is it?”
“I just… had the weirdest dream.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I was… like, a cat… I was a cat and it was my birthday, and… and you… you were…” Taehyun’s mouth parts into a yawn, his sharp canines glinting in the early morning sun. Kai feels his chest constrict with adoration.
“Just a dream, Tyunnie. Go back to sleep, okay?”
“Mmph. ‘Kay,” Taehyun replies without much fight, his body going slack once more. Kai wants to eat him up.
And, sure, there really are a lot of questions to be answered about Taehyun’s missing day, his birthday, no less. But Kai is warm and content and the man who is everything in his world is laid down atop him, and really, what did worrying ever help him with anyways?
Instead, Kai opts to curl in closer, his own yawn stretching sleep-dry lips, and closes his eyes once more.