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Naim fits one ear bud into his ear as the other dangles over his chest, the city bus driving off behind him with a hiss of its breaks.
Fifteen minutes or so and he’d be home, so he fills his queue with the same five songs he’s been listening to over the past week and starts on his way. Naim thinks of what might be in the fridge to make for dinner, or if they should just end up ordering something. It wasn’t uncommon for them to do that on the days where they both worked, now that they could afford it.
Naim wondered if Ryan was on his way home yet. He was working across the city the past couple weeks, so he took a little longer to drive back these days. Especially with traffic.
As if his mind was being read, a text from Ryan comes through and dings through the song that’s blasting in Naim’s ear.
you gonna beat me home?
think so :)
have a good walk. c u soon
Naim hearts the last message and smiles, pocketing his phone. The footpath on the way is a little overgrown this time of year, sun blazing overhead. He can’t blame anyone for not wanting to keep it trim, it’s fucking hot. Ryan however had a thing or two to say anytime they drove by it. Naim could practically hear him saying how he could get it done in less than an hour, if someone paid him to.
His eyes track the lines of the concrete, and the edge of the grasses as he walks. The route home is one that he knows like the back of his hand by now, he would be veering off into the beginnings of his neighbourhood in just a few more steps-
Out of nowhere, a shrill cry pierces his ear that has him whipping the singular ear bud out of ear, looking around for the owner of the noise. Naim’s first instinct is to look at the trees for some sort of bird, but rustling in some nearby grass below grabs his attention instead.
A small black puff of fur tumbles out, tripping over its own paws and mewling at him with big baby-grey eyes, its parted jaw revealing its bright pink little mouth.
A kitten.
“Ho-ly shit. Where the fuck did you come from?” he says aloud, watching the baby.
It pads up to him and puts both its tiny front paws up on his foot, looking at him expectantly while stretching one of them up towards him.
“Oh, uh,” Naim laughs, not sure exactly what the protocol was for a situation like this. He does a quick scan of the immediate surroundings, but there’s no one anywhere nearby looking like they’ve misplaced a tiny little cat. He didn’t even know if any of his neighbours had cats, now that he was thinking about it.
The kitten doesn’t leave him, meowing insistently, trying to claw its way up his bare shins to reach the loose string hanging off his shorts.
“I’m telling you, we gotta get a dog. We have a yard and everything,” Ryan liked to say to him every few weeks. Liked to show Naim listings from the animal shelter while they laid in bed, and tell him if he ever finds a stray he’s immediately bringing it home.
Not exactly a dog, but…
Naim scoops it into his hands, its black fur coated in a thick layer of dirt and crusty bits all around the inner corner of its eyes. Its paws splay wide as it stares him in the eye, already starting to purr.
“Ugh. You’re kinda disgusting, mate,” Naim grimaces when it meows again and the kitten breath wafts into his face, “Ryan’s gonna love ya.”
-
Naim calls one of his friends before he gets home, with the kitten trying to climb up on his shoulders. Stella had cats, so obviously she would know what to do.
“So you just found it on the side of the road?”
“Yah.”
“Were there anymore?”
“Nah, don’t think so.”
“Well, look, you don’t know where it’s been. Might have worms or something, right?”
Naim screws up his nose at the kitten purring away in his arms, “What? Worms?”
“It’s gonna need to go to the vet and get its shots, and you’ll need food, a litter box, toys…”
Stella ends up writing him a list and texting it to him so he doesn’t have to remember it all by heart. He sends her back a picture of the kitten, mid meow and tucked in the crook of his arm, to put up in some animal groups online. Just in case anyone was missing it.
Somehow, Naim doubts that.
“Fuck, what did you get me into,” Naim mutters at the kitten as he places a delivery order and pays extra for the rushed fee. The section on the website that said parasite control made him shudder, and he crossed his fingers that they wouldn’t need anything of the sort.
-
He gives it a bath in the sink of the guest bathroom with the gentlest stuff he can find in their cupboards, which ends up being some baby soap they got when Ryan had a nasty run in with some stinging nettle in some older couple's overgrown back yard.
The water in the sink turns an ugly brown immediately, and again with the second pass.
“Fucking nasty,” he says while drying her off with a clean towel, gentle around its delicate frame. It blinks up at him slowly, shivering and so tiny, and he feels his heart melt a little, “Pretty cute though. Can’t imagine Ryan will say no, if you just just keep looking like that.”
It meows, quieter and more pitiful, and Naim chuckles, “Yah. That’ll get him.”
-
The supplies are still a while from being delivered when Naim hears the car pull into the driveway.
Naim hadn’t moved much from his spot on the bathroom floor, the kitten plodding around and playing with dust bunnies or the ends of his hoodie strings. It was sort of endlessly entertaining, and he liked the idea of a little animal running around their house already.
The thump of the car door shutting kicks him into gear, and he leaves the kitten with its pile of towels and the piece of tissue he’d been waving in front of its face.
“Stay quiet for a bit while I tell him, okay?” Naim says, as if the kitten had any bit of understanding about his instructions.
Naim gets to the front door just as Ryan opens it, rocking back on his heels with his hands clasped together. He already knows he’s given himself up when he opens his mouth and his voice comes out an octave off, “Hi Ryan.”
Ryan pauses in the doorway, hand still on the doorknob while he raises his eyebrows at Naim, “Alright, what the fuck did you do?”
“Hey!” Naim protests, but as if to rat him out, the kitten starts meowing at the increased commotion that it had no access to.
Ryan steps inside and closes the door behind him. He takes off his hat and tosses it on the table, hair sweaty and matted to his head underneath, eyeing Naim suspiciously, “What was that, then?”
“Come see what I found,” Naim smiles and leads him to the bathroom.
-
Naim watches as Ryan's dry cracked knuckles scratch beneath the kitten’s still damp chin. It meows up at him, and Ryan sighs.
“What do you think?”
“About what?” Ryan says with a crease between his eyebrows.
“Should we keep it?”
“Fuck. Obviously.”
Naim grins, and sets out to call the nearest vet for an appointment.
-
They decide to keep it in the bathroom until the vet appointment, when it can get dewormed and get all its proper shots.
But the first night, it cries. And cries. And cries.
Naim can’t leave it alone, and ends up going to check on it a few times during the night. Each time he finds himself propped up against the bathtub, the kitten sprawled in his lap until it settles enough for him to leave.
Ryan joins him the third time, sits half asleep and slumped against Naim’s shoulder.
“Your neck is gonna kill ya,” he tells Naim, sliding his hand between the hard exterior of the tub and the tight muscles in Naim’s neck.
Naim sighs, can already feel the ache, but just shrugs. The kitten's paws kneed at his thighs, little eyes closed in a way that looked almost like a smile. Oh well.
-
The next night, Ryan sighs deep and gets out of bed to grab the kitten himself, says, “Whatever, we can wash everything or buy new fucking sheets, I don’t care.”
They end up with the little ball of fluff tucked between them, happy and fast asleep in no time at all.
“What do you reckon we should name him?” Ryan murmurs, mouth half smushed into his pillow.
Naim strokes the kitten with a single finger, and can feel it purring beneath his touch. Naming a living animal had never been something he’d thought about, or had to do. His mum had never had pets, and never relented to Naim’s asking for one. A good thing in the long run, because he couldn’t imagine having to leave one behind when he left.
Naim had always liked animals, though. He always enjoyed his friends' pets, and liked to draw them in his sketchbook and he watched all the movies his mum would put on for him with big wide eyes.
“There was this cartoon I saw as a kid, about a cat that gets left on the street and a bunch of dogs, like, adopt it into their gang. The cat's name was Oliver, I think.”
“Oh yah, I saw that one,” Ryan says with a yawn, “I like that. Ollie.”
Naim likes the way it sounds on Ryan’s tired tongue.
As if to agree, the kitten’s eyes fly open. It lifts its head and stares Ryan down for a moment before walking over to him with clumsy paws and butting its head against his chin.
“Hey, mate. Relax,” Ryan complains with his eyes closed, but shifts his head so the kitten can curl up beside his cheek. Naim can hear its purrs fill the space between them.
-
“Well, she’s a perfectly healthy little kitten, wherever she came from,” the vet tells them after the initial exam, holding the kitten in her hands. Oliver dangles her little paws in the air.
“She?” Naim asks
“Yup! A sweet little girl, too,” she confirms, “We can get you guys set up with an appointment to come get her fixed if you’d like.”
-
“Do you think we should change her name?” Naim asks after, looking at the kitten bundled up in his lap.
The ride over had been a disaster, Naim’s arms scratched up from her clawing at him in an attempt to escape the big scary vehicle. They learn from their mistakes, and wrap her up in one of their sweaters that had lived in the back seat for the drive home.
“Hm?” Ryan asks as he waves at the person he was stopping to let cross the road in front of them, “Nah, Ollie’s good. I think it suits her.”
-
Stella and her girlfriend come over for dinner one evening, and she scans their living room with a laugh, “You know she probably doesn’t need this many toys, y’know.”
Naim looks at Ryan pointedly, “See, I told you.”
Ryan just grins, but it does nothing to stop him.
-
“You’re such a pretty girl.”
Naim wakes up one morning and listens to Ryan’s voice, soft and melodic the way he talks to the kitten perched on his chest.
“Lucky Naim found you.”
Naim thinks their house feels a little more homey, now.
-
A few weeks later Ryan comes home from running some errands with an engraved tag for her.
Oliver, it reads in a fancy cursive font on the front of a heart shaped piece of metal. The back has both their phone numbers and their names.
Ryan and Naim Reid.
“They only had room for one last name and yours was shorter,” Ryan says without much fuss.
It was the same way that Naim gave their names over while making reservations, “Yah can you just put that under Naim and Ryan Whelan.” Just assumed to be one and the same. Shared forever.
Naim likes the way it looks and how it mirrors all the initials Ryan had carved out in bathrooms and hotels and the way he drew their names in the sand on the beach. He holds the tag in his hand for a while, letting the metal grow warm in the centre of his palm before securing it safely on her collar.