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Uranus yawned, eyes sliding shut from the force of it.
He really didn’t want to get out of bed. Really, really, really didn’t want to. Sleep hadn’t come easily to him, and he’d gone to bed late enough already, and then he’d roused when Saturn had left, then when Erebus had left, then—
Well, safe to say he’d experienced a very fitful sleep.
But the sunlight beaming in through the half-shut curtains was bright enough that it had to be at least the early afternoon, and while spending the entire day in bed seemed like a fun idea, sleeping was nice… falling in and out of sleep constantly less so. Uranus knew he’d be bored half to tears unless he got up.
So he got up, took a shower, changed into something that made him look at least ready for the day, and only looked at the clock once he’d finished.
11:14 am.
Not the most ideal time, he could admit—he had to leave for the university at least before twelve thirty if he didn’t want to be late (and considering he was the instructor… being late wouldn’t be a good look), which gave him a little more than an hour to do whatever he wanted. Not much time to paint, unless he wanted to immerse himself in one and then look up only to find he’d somehow missed the entirety of his class.
TV? Or maybe he could borrow one of Jupiter’s books and—
He stopped, brows pinching, and then he wheeled around and made straight for the stairway he’d just left behind. “Blazes, what is this?” Uranus bent down and picked something up off the ground; it looked almost like a stick, but it felt too thin and looked paler than wood, and there were more scattered on the stairwell leading down to the basement. Baffled, he slowly made his way down the stairs.
Only to find a pile of the same stuff sitting on the floor, right next to…
“Erebus?” he asked, mouth falling open.
Erebus’s head jerked up, his eyes wide. “Stars—Uranus, what are you doing here?”
“What am I doing—mate, what are you doing here?” Uranus threw one hand out and gestured at their basement, at the tubs in a pile behind Erebus, the pale stuff laid out next to thin blocks of something cyan, the… knife in his hand? “And what is all of this on the stairs?” He held up what he’d found in his opposite hand, and Erebus’s eyes snapped to it before he groaned, head tipping backwards.
“It’s straw,” he muttered, almost too quiet to hear. “I’ll clean it up.”
Uranus was too busy puzzling out what he was doing.
“Are you making something? What’s with the tubs, mate?”
“No,” Erebus said, expression flattening out. “I’m goring these tubs to let my anger out. You should try it sometime.” He pushed to his feet, shoving aside some straw with one foot. “Yes, I’m making something.”
Uranus waited. Erebus stared at him.
“…Making what?” he finally asked, stepping off the stairs and into the basement itself.
“That’s for me to know, and you to never find out.”
“Come on, mate. Just tell me.” Uranus dropped the straw he’d picked up into the nearest pile, eyes skating over everything within the room. “How many are you making, anyway?” He finally found a second tote just behind Erebus, a neat circle cut into the side. Straw was piled up within it, the lid taped down with duct tape. “And why in the basement?”
“What is this, an interrogation? That’s my job.”
“Stop joking around and just tell me,” Uranus said, crossing his arms as he turned to face Erebus fully. Of course, Erebus just stayed silent and stared right back at him, inhumanly patient. “Please?” He tried to remember what Saturn’s pout looked like and made one of his own, brows pinching as he pursed his lips.
Erebus squinted at him. “Are you trying to pout at me?”
Uranus blinked, keeping up the expression. “Is it working?”
“No,” Erebus said, flatly. “It’s not.” His jaw set, though, and he sighed, crossing his own arms. “Fine. Fine. Come here, and I’ll tell you.” He bent down and scooped something off of the ground, and when Uranus was close enough he realized it was a box cutter. “But you better not say anything to Jupiter or Saturn.”
“Is it… bad?” he questioned, making Erebus shoot him a look. “Never mind.”
Erebus grabbed the tote he’d been sitting behind before and sat back down, gesturing him over a moment later. “You wanted to know what it was, didn’t you? Don’t stop being nosy now.”
“I was not being nosy,” Uranus muttered, stepping over straw to settle at his side.
Up close, the tote had a circle drawn onto one of its short sides in black marker, a little off-center and a few inches up from the bottom. Erebus set the tip of the box cutter against the line before he said anything else. “There are cats,” he said, to the tote rather than to him. “Out past the back fence, in the trees. Three that I’ve seen, so there’s probably more. You never see all of them.” The blade bit into the plastic with a crunch, striking through it. “And it’s supposed to freeze next week.”
Uranus stared at the side of his face.
Cats. Erebus, who had spent every holiday dinner locked in a silent war with Guillermo across Neptune’s living room, was sitting on the basement floor in a pile of straw so he could build houses for cats.
“You hate cats, mate,” he said.
“I hate one cat.” Erebus dragged the blade another inch along the marker line, jaw tight with the effort. “These ones haven’t done anything to me yet. Guillermo is a menace to the world.”
Uranus opened his mouth, then shut it again. (There was no arguing with that, considering.)
“So why can’t Jupiter and Saturn know?” he asked instead.
“Because Saturn will name them,” Erebus said, “and Jupiter will start buying food for them, and then before long we’ll have six cats living in the kitchen and everyone will remember that I started it.” The circle of plastic popped free and dropped into the tote with a clatter. He fished it out and flicked it at the pile of scraps behind him, and only then did he glance sideways, eyes narrowing. “Wipe that look off your face.”
“What look?”
“That one.”
Uranus pressed his knuckles against his mouth, which did nothing whatsoever to hide his smile. Erebus glared at him for another second before he huffed and shoved a yardstick into his free hand, followed by the marker.
“You’re the one with the art degree,” he said. “Make yourself useful and draw me some straight lines.”
The cyan blocks turned out to be foam, a stiff sheet of it about an inch thick that squeaked under his palm when he pulled it into his lap. Erebus talked him through the process in pieces while he worked on the second hole: a floor and four walls to line the inside of the big tote, with the smaller tote sitting inside that, and then a last piece to go on top before the lid went down.
Uranus measured against the plastic and ruled each line twice, tongue caught between his teeth.
“Why not just make one big one?” he asked, capping the marker. “You’ve got enough totes for it.”
“One cat can’t heat a bigger one alone. And feral cats tend not to want to be near each other.” Erebus traded him the box cutter for the foam without looking up. “Two small ones stay warmer than one large one. That’s why the door’s so small, too. Six inches keeps the heat in and the raccoons out.”
Uranus eyed the hole in the finished tote. It barely looked wide enough for his fist.
“And they’ll fit through that?”
“If their whiskers fit, the rest of them fits.”
He blinked. “Did you read all of this somewhere, mate?”
“I do research for a living, Uranus.” The corner of Erebus’s mouth twitched upwards. “I was very thorough.”
He was, as it turned out. The door sat several inches up so rain couldn’t splash in and snow couldn’t pile against it and trap them, and there was a small hole drilled in the bottom corner of the finished shelter for any water that got in anyway. He’d found two-by-fours in the garage to keep the totes off the cold ground, and a few bricks to weigh the lids down against the wind. He had even planned to set the two doors facing each other behind the fence with a board laid across the top, so the cats got a covered entryway and nothing bigger could follow them in. Uranus listened to all of it with the box cutter idle in his hand and a familiar warmth growing in his chest. “We’ve got that old blanket on the fold-out,” he offered, once Erebus had run out of steam and stopped talking, set to building. “The gray one. I could bring it down for the inside.”
“No blankets.” Erebus shook his head, slotting a foam wall into place. “They soak up water and hold onto it, and then the cat’s lying on something wet and cold all night. Straw stays dry, so they can dig down into it.”
He paused, glancing over. “...But thanks.”
Uranus ducked his head to hide another smile, and he set the blade against the foam he’d marked for the second shelter. He made it about two inches before cold fingers closed around his wrist.
“Away from yourself,” Erebus said, turning his hand until the blade pointed towards the far wall, his thumb pressing Uranus’s further back along the handle. His hand was as icy as Uranus’s own and he kept it there, guiding him along the line. “You need those hands, don’t you? I’m not explaining to Jupiter how you lost a finger on a Tuesday.”
“I know how to use a knife, mate.”
“Sure you do,” Erebus drawled, and let go only when the piece came away clean.
They fell into a rhythm after that. Uranus cut foam and Erebus fitted it, and the small tote went down into its cyan nest with a snug push from both of them, shoulders knocking together over the rim. Erebus let him cut the second doorway himself, through plastic and foam and plastic again, though he watched the entire time with his chin nearly hooked over Uranus’s shoulder and his breath cool against his ear.
The circle Uranus pulled free in the end was a little lopsided.
“Uh…” he said, holding it up. “It works.”
“It works,” Erebus echoed, huffing once. “They won’t care, they’re cats. Help me with the straw.”
The straw got everywhere, somehow sticking to everything. Uranus packed handfuls of it into the inner tote until it stood loose and deep enough to burrow into, and by the time he sat back on his heels it had worked into his sleeves and the cuffs of his jeans and, judging by the itch, down the back of his collar. Erebus pressed the last square of foam on top and snapped both lids shut, then ran a strip of duct tape around the seam.
Two shelters sat side by side on the basement floor, now.
“Hold still,” Erebus muttered. Fingers tugged at his braid, once and then again, and a few stalks of straw drifted down into his lap. “You look like a scarecrow.”
“You’ve got it in yours too, mate.”
“I’m aware.”
Uranus leaned sideways until his shoulder met Erebus’s chest, and the hand on his neck squeezed once without pulling away. He could have sat there a good while longer. “I want to see where they’re going,” he finally said. “Let me get a photo first, though, just for me. I won’t send it.”
“No photos.” Erebus shot him a look.
“One photo.” He had his phone out of his pocket already, thumb swiping the screen awake, and the numbers at the top of it stopped him cold.
12:26 pm.
“Oh, bloody hell—”
He scrambled upright so fast that straw skidded out from under his heel. An hour. It had been more than an hour, down here with no window and no painting to blame it on, and it was a twenty-minute drive on a good day, and his bag was still sitting upstairs in the studio.
“Class?” Erebus asked from the floor, entirely too calm.
“I have to leave four minutes from now, mate!”
“So you’ve got four minutes.” Erebus rose and caught him by the elbow before he could bolt, digging into the pocket of his hoodie with his other hand. “Did you eat anything?”
Uranus’s silence answered for him. Erebus sighed through his nose and pressed a granola bar into his palm, folding his fingers shut around the wrapper.
“In the car,” he said. “Say it.”
“Erebus, I’m going to be late—”
“Then say it faster.”
“I’ll eat it in the car,” Uranus said in a rush, heat climbing into his cheeks.
Erebus’s mouth curved as he tugged him in by the elbow and kissed his temple, quick and cold.
“And not a word to the other two.”
“Not a word.” He was halfway to the stairs by then, walking backwards, and he pointed at the shelters with the granola bar. “That one goes on the left. And I’m helping you carry them out when I get home, so don’t do it without me.” Erebus only waved him off, already crouching to gather the scraps, though Uranus caught the edge of a smile before he turned and took the stairs two at a time.
He made it to the car with his bag half-zipped and his keys dangling from one finger.
It took until the first red light, with the wrapper torn open in his lap as promised, for him to spot the single pale stalk still caught in the cuff of his sleeve. Uranus pulled it free and turned it over between his fingers with a helpless little smile, and when the light changed, he tucked it into the cup holder instead of rolling down the window.