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“Happy birthday, Felix!” Sylvain watched eagerly for his friend’s response as the three of them jumped out from behind the sofa, arms laden with gifts.
Felix’s eyes widened. “Oh,” he said. “ Oh .” Just for a moment, a small smile snuck onto his face before it fell away again. “So that’s where you were. I thought I told you not to bother.” Even though there was a tiny note of annoyance in his tone, Sylvain was sure he was pleased. He just didn’t want to admit it.
“Well, you’re a lucky birthday boy,” Sylvain said with a grin, holding his gift out to Felix, “because we bothered anyway.”
Felix shifted under his gaze, his eyes flicking between the gift in Sylvain’s hands and something just beyond Sylvain’s shoulder. He reached out and plucked the soft (Sylvain had made sure it was soft - he’d stroked every toy in the shop) cat plush from Sylvain’s arms, and he...frowned. Ouch.
“I’m sixteen,” he said, “not some kid. I don’t need girly baby stuff.” Sylvain ignored the twinge of disappointment prickling in his chest and looked past Felix’s words; even as he spoke, he placed the plushie on the sofa carefully, and his hands ghosted over its head as he pulled away from it.
He wasn’t rejecting it, then. He just didn’t like it enough to tell Sylvain that.
Come Felix’s nineteenth birthday, Sylvain hadn’t seen him for a solid six months. It was an accident that was only half Sylvain’s fault - Felix asked for space and a chance to be independent when he headed off to university, and Sylvain granted it perhaps a little too eagerly.
It wasn’t every day you got the opportunity to create a little distance from the antisocial friend who constantly cramped your style in public, after all. At the time, Sylvain had expected a weekly meetup rather than one every couple of days, and texts a handful of times a day rather than near constantly.
It turned out that when you gave Felix an inch of distance, he backed up by a mile and managed to make Sylvain feel incredibly guilty for ever even thinking about how he could do with some breathing room. Since that tiny exchange, he’d been treated to radio silence from one of his oldest and closest friends; it didn’t feel good.
What did feel good was reconnecting. One day, Sylvain just decided that fuck it, he was tired of distance, and if Felix only had the settings of clingy or absent then he’d take the former any day. He texted him, organised a visit, and bam. Everything was back to normal.
Catching up was...Felix had grown when Sylvain wasn’t looking, and it left him slightly breathless around him in a way he hadn’t experienced before. There was a maturity to his words and a weight to his voice that was entirely new. His smiles came more naturally, and there was something about him that felt more open. It was good to see.
When Felix left ever so briefly to fetch something, Sylvain took the chance to cast his gaze around the room. Felix said he was fine, but Sylvain could see evidence to the contrary; an unpacked bag in the corner of the room, a heap of unwashed laundry.
And...holy shit. Sylvain blinked when he spotted it. It wasn’t quite as pale brown as it had been, and it looked a little worn around the edges, but that was definitely the cat plushie he bought Felix for his fifteenth birthday. No doubt about it.
The sound of Felix’s footsteps just outside the door had Sylvain tearing his eyes away from the sight of the cat, half tucked under the bed covers, and hurriedly pulling his phone out of his pocket. Hopefully he didn’t look too suspicious.
Sylvain didn’t say anything about the cat; he didn’t think there was anything to say. At least, nothing that wouldn’t raise Felix’s hackles, making him withdraw into himself again. The knowledge that Felix kept the gift, remembered it and apparently cherished it, was good enough for him.
“It’s for you,” Sylvain said. He held out the grey pusheen with a little sword stitched into its hand as casually as he could manage. He didn’t want to admit just how long he’d spent looking for exactly the right kind of gift for Felix. It was their first date, after all, and he wanted this to be as special as he could make it.
“Thanks,” Felix said, taking the cushion from him. There was a tiny smile on his face, and it made Sylvain’s heart beat just a little faster. Goddess, he was sort of a mess over this whole dating Felix thing. It was more of a surprise than he wanted to admit. “I don’t know why you bought me something like this, though.”
“I don’t know, Felix,” Sylvain said, shrugging as he accepted the flowers clutched in Felix’s right hand in return. A small bouquet of dahlias; Felix had clearly read up before their date. “I guess you’ve always seemed like a cat person to me.”
“My family have always had dogs,” Felix shot back, as if he didn’t sleep with a cat plushie in his bed every night. “We’ve never had a cat. How could you even get that impression?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Sylvain decided, taking Felix’s free hand in his. That shut him up; Felix blushed bright pink and let out a little flustered noise that Sylvain definitely wanted to hear more of.
When Felix finished up his time at university, there was conveniently some space going free in Sylvain’s shared house, previously occupied by some friends. He absolutely hadn’t gently prodded them to move out together to do couple things, and that definitely wasn’t so Felix could move in with him and they could do couple things.
It was special for Sylvain. He’d known Felix for a long time, but they’d never lived together. It was an important step in making a real, steady commitment to Felix, and he wanted Felix to know he was taking their relationship seriously.
So, naturally, he threw a housewarming party for Felix, and there was only one request for any of their potential guests - if they wanted to bring a housewarming present, as so many uncomfortably upper middle class young adults were wont to do, they had to be cat themed.
It was eerily reminiscent of that fifteenth birthday party now over five years in the past. Everyone hid behind the furniture as Felix came into the house with his final few trinkets, and he seemed genuinely surprised when everyone jumped out. Like he didn’t realise just how much everyone cared for him.
“Really?” he asked, raising an eyebrow as he looked at all the gifts; cat cushions, cat pillows, a cat doorstop, and a cat toaster. There was an incredulous note to his voice, and for a moment Sylvain’s heart sank as he remembered the vaguely disastrous birthday party.
But instead of frowning, instead of dismissing the gifts as stupid, Felix...smiled. It was a tiny smile, one he probably wasn’t even aware he was showing, but it was enough. Sylvain’s heart lit up as he took the gifts with an air of eagerness, clearly trying to work out exactly where to put them all.
The afternoon wore on, and at one point in the evening Sylvain caught sight of something he was pretty sure he’d cherish forever - Felix, one of the pillows held gently in his lap, with his head tipped back in laughter and his eyes filled with light. Sylvain hoped he’d get to see a sight like that every day, and he felt privileged to have been the one to influence it.
Felix was, without a doubt, a cat person. And seeing him come into himself enough to enjoy that made Sylvain happy in a way he could barely describe.
Living with Felix was easier than expected. He was, somehow, not a terrible housemate, and as they worked through their little arguments and conflicts it turned out he was a pretty great boyfriend too.
That said, Sylvain was terrible at saying no to him. Case in point: Felix always went shopping in the evening to pick up heaps of food he’d never buy unless the prices were heavily marked down. Normally, he came back with a bag in each hand and set about unloading everything into the fridge or freezer the moment he got back.
Not so much that day. That day, Felix arrived home with a little more fumbling than usual, and the door was open for much longer than normal. When Sylvain went to see what was wrong...well.
Felix was carrying two stuffed shopping bags in one hand. The other arm cradled a cat.
“One of them was drowning,” Felix said, nodding at the decidedly damp looking brown tabby cat. “And this one just followed me back.” To accompany those words, he nodded towards a darker coloured cat with white socks.
Felix didn’t say why he’d brought the first cat home rather than just rescuing it and leaving it to its business, nor did he explain why he hadn’t chased the second one off (or, indeed, why he hadn’t just shut the door on it). But he didn’t need to say, and he also didn’t need to ask the question Sylvain knew he wanted answered.
“Yeah,” he said, letting out what he hoped sounded like a sigh of defeat rather than one of fondness. Watching Felix cradle a wet cat in his arms was really doing something to his heart. “Yeah, we can keep them.”
So the cats stayed, and they were quickly integrated into their lives. Felix worked a lot from home, and spent a lot of time looking after the cats. This essentially meant that, every other day, Sylvain would return home to see one or both of the cats curled up in his lap, snoozing.
“I thought you said this was a work space,” Sylvain said with a chuckle, leaning down to press a kiss to Felix’s cheek. Felix scrunched up his face and returned his gaze to the half drafted email in front of him (Sylvain caught sight of the words ‘incompetence’ and ‘unsustainable’, so he felt like Felix needed a chance to relax a little).
“It is,” Felix grumbled. “But they get nightmares sometimes if they sleep out in the hall, and they pester me if I don’t let them come in here. It’s easier to just let them.” As he spoke, he reached out to stroke Kyphon from the black stripes on his head to the tip of his tail.
“Sure it is,” Sylvain said, a small grin on his face. Felix scowled in return, but he didn’t look angry. He went back to gently scratching Loog behind the ears, and within moments there was a small look of contentment on his face.
Sylvain usually called that he was home when he arrived, but that day he didn’t. He didn’t know why; call it a sixth sense, but he was glad for whatever it was that held him back. He made his way through the house as usual, taking the very familiar path to Felix’s study, but found himself stopping in his tracks when he entered the living room.
There Felix was, fast asleep on a heap of cat pillows. Curled up on his chest in turn was Loog, and to his side was Kyphon, who rolled over to expose his belly fur as Sylvain approached. “Sorry, bud,” he whispered. Felix looked so peaceful; he couldn’t risk waking him up.
That said...when Sylvain reached the edge of the room, he looked back at his boyfriend and found a wide smile forming on his face. Felix looked so different like this, and it was a moment he wanted to preserve. Feeling like his heart was going to burst, he pulled out his phone camera and snapped a picture.
Loog, camera-phobe and traitor that he was, immediately leapt up from his position, landing square on Felix’s chest. Felix stirred with a quiet groan.
“Afternoon, sunshine,” Sylvain said with a little grin. Felix frowned; he was always grumpy when he woke up. “Were you tired?”
Felix squinted up at him. “Mmmhmm,” he said, stretching his arms but being careful not to shift too much - his chest was host to two pieces of fluffy, precious cargo right now, after all. “Coworker was being a dick in a meeting and I’m out of patience.”
“Makes sense,” Sylvain said, deciding not to head into the other room. Instead, he drew closer to Felix, motioning for him to shift aside a little as he approached. When he did so, Sylvain flopped down onto the cat pillows. “You work so hard. Come here?”
Felix fixed him with a look, but Sylvain just replied with a knowing smile. Felix plucked the cats off his chest and placed them both down next to him before clambering into Sylvain’s lap. Sylvain curled around him, relishing in his warmth as he fiddled with the tassels of Felix’s hoodie until his boyfriend drifted off once again.