Fic: What You See Is What You Get Part 2 (TSN)
<-- Part 1 --
At the end of week two, there’s a bit of an issue.
Chris and Dustin are coming home. Classes are starting soon.
Eduardo muses, “Maybe they’ll like them and they’ll want to help out. Split up the shifts. With that kind of distribution and their decrease in intervals, we’d only have to feed them once or twice a day.”
Mark points out, “Animal shelters will be open by then.”
“Well yeah, but-“
“No, Wardo.” Mark knows he wants to keep them. He can see it in Eduardo’s eyes when he kisses their foreheads, which he basically does like a hundred times per day.
“I’m not saying they should stay forever, just until their development is at a less critical-”
“No.”
“You’re not-“
“Wardo.” Mark fixes him with a look that leaves no room for argument, and Eduardo’s nostrils flare.
“Whatever, I wasn’t asking permission. I can always take them back to my room.”
“You’re forgetting the part where pets aren’t exactly allowed.”
Eduardo just shrugs. “So I can keep them secret,” even as his own doubt is evident, especially when WYSIWYG lifts his wobbly head to wail long and pathetically at Mark.
*
“I expected this out of Dustin, but Chris, I’m disappointed in you.”
They’re on the floor, blanket spread over the span of the common room, kittens staggering around them.
Chris has a definite thing for the calico. “Ohmygod, but look how cute she is, Mark!” He holds the thing to his cheek and turns her to face Mark, waving her little paw. “The cute is strong with this one.”
And Dustin just about falls in love with them all over again, because Chris is a clever fucker and using Star Wars lingo to make Dustin further enamored to them is just shameless.
Eduardo’s talking and talking, “Sometimes I have to split her up from Mark’s because she-”
Mark interrupts, “It is not mine.”
“Yeah okay.” Eduardo says to Chris and Dustin, “You should see how it acts around him. He won’t eat for anyone else and once, swear to god, Mark was cuddling it.”
“Was not!”
Dustin gawks at Mark. “Pause the gay porn, you cuddle?”
“It was hardly consensual.”
No one believes him. Mark’s getting annoyed.
Chris brings up the inevitable, “So what’s the plan?”
Eduardo lays it on pretty thick, even for him. “I wanted to keep them until at least five weeks, but Mark doesn’t want to. Then I thought about taking them to my room, but Mark’s kitten is really loud. I’d get busted.”
“It’s not my kitten.” Everyone ignores Mark.
Dustin says, “This suite has three intelligent and something-like-mature inhabitants. I say we vote. All for keeping the kittens?”
Everyone raises their hand and looks at Mark.
“You have no idea what you’re agreeing to. You’ll never get any sleep. They’ll start smelling soon and vomiting on everything. And anyway, they’ll probably die. Fucking germ incubators. You’ll be lucky if they don’t give you all rabies.”
Dustin is holding WYSIWYG. He says in a Darth Vader voice, “Mark-I am your kitten.”
Eduardo’s doing a shitty job of hiding his smirk.
*
If bottle-feeding kittens had any novelty to Eduardo, it’s worn off by now. Sadly, Chris and Dustin lack the enlightenment that can only accompany waking to shrieking four times in one night.
They fight over who gets to feed the calico.
“Let me do it.”
“Get off, Dustin!”
“It’s my turn!”
“Stop crowding her!”
“Chris. Your sausage fingers are scaring her.”
“Your face is scaring her!”
Mark offers, “Someone can feed this one,” and they ignore him.
WYSIWYG pauses briefly in his suckling to breathe, staring owlishly at Mark all the while. His ears are starting to unflatten from his head, but only a little. He looks perpetually defensive.
Eduardo corners him later, says to Mark, “I’ll try harder to feed that one, okay? With Dustin and Chris helping, you won’t have to even be bothered by them.”
He doesn’t even seem bitter about it or anything. He just looks apologetic, like it’s finally dawning on him that it’s not fair to put this responsibility on Mark when it’s Eduardo who wants it.
Mark agrees, “Okay,” and tries not to stare at Eduardo’s lips, but Eduardo’s face goes a bright pink and Mark thinks he’s pretty bad at pretending.
*
He doesn’t even see WYSIWYG for three whole days.
He hears him sometimes. Angry wails pierce through the thin walls as Mark sleeps or studies or codes. Mark’s annoyed by the knee-jerk reflex he has to venture to the box with a bottle to shut the thing up.
He wonders if Eduardo’s managed to feed it at all, but Eduardo never comes to Mark in resignation, so maybe, who knows.
Mark doesn’t ask.
He doesn’t care.
*
Eduardo stays over one night. He’s just fed the kittens and it’s started to snow, so he decides he’ll stay.
It isn’t until like three in the morning that he comes into Mark’s room, whispers into the dark at him, “Scoot over.”
Eduardo kisses Mark again, but Mark’s less surprised about it and more anticipant than he was on Christmas Eve. Eduardo touches Mark’s chest, and then plays with the hair below his navel, and then mouths at his jaw and shifts into his leg, breathing, “Mark.”
Mark kicks the blankets off them because he’s sweating and he wants to spread his legs so Eduardo can just-
He lies on top of Mark and slides their stiff, aching dicks against each other, fists twisting into the pillows at either side of Mark’s head.
Eduardo comes with a soft cry against Mark’s temple, and Mark’s distracted briefly by WYSIWYG in the other room, crying, but then Eduardo bites his neck and everything dissolves into white noise and thrashing and Mark grunting, “Ah! Ah, fuck.”
*
Eduardo’s already up when Mark awakes. He finds him in the common room feeding the kittens. He looks at Mark, but Mark can tell he’s kind of forcing himself to do it, and turns out, Eduardo’s pretty bad at pretending too.
WYSIWYG is screaming.
Mark wires in.
*
Mark comes in one day and everyone’s there-Chris, Dustin, Wardo, even a couple girls he doesn’t recognize. The four of them form a circle around Eduardo who’s crouched down handling the kittens.
If he’s being honest, Mark thinks he could pick WYSIWYG’s meows out of a crowd of a hundred kittens, just because he’s heard the fucking thing do it so much. Mark’s heard him scream plenty, but this sounds different.
Panicked and roughly distraught, reminiscent of the first day Mark found them.
Mark peers through their circle and watches Eduardo squirt a syringe of formula into his mouth. WYSIWYG spits it out when he cries again, wobbling away from Eduardo. He’s got the stuff all over his mouth and chin, dribbling into his fur.
Eduardo’s frown is tight and distressed.
Mark’ suddenly, inexplicably furious. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Eduardo’s big, guilty eyes shoot to Mark’s and he freezes. “I-he won’t eat, so I’m trying to-”
“Force it down his throat? With an audience?”
Dustin cuts in, “We thought he might like the girls more or something.”
Mark pushes through their circle and says, “You should have gotten me.”
Eduardo’s jaw drops, and now he looks furious, but Mark’s picking up the kitten and reaching for a bottle, so he keeps his mouth shut.
Everyone watches Mark pull the skin of WYSIWYG’s neck back, tilt his head up, and stuff the nipple inside his wailing mouth, squeezing it just barely.
He doesn’t take it-not immediately. He instead looks at Mark and cries, long and sharp.
Like he’s holding a grudge.
Mark pinches his neck harder and says, “Stop being a fucking dick.”
Just like that, WYSIWYG latches on.
“Wow,” Dustin says.
Chris is laughing. “All that drama, and all he wanted was Mark?”
Eduardo uses a washcloth-covered fingertip to clean his chin and fur as he eats, crouched close enough to Mark’s lap that his cheeks flush red and Mark has to look away.
WYISWYG follows Eduardo’s movements with suspicious, betrayed eyes.
WYSIWYG’s ears are almost entirely unflattened from his head now. They twitch with more ferocity as he suckles, and one’s black, but the other’s white, and he’s clawing at the bottle, trying to get it closer to his body.
When the others have turned their attention to the girls (both the kittens and the humans), Mark sneers to him, “This in no way validates your entitlement.”
WYSIWYG begins purring.
Mark’s never heard him do that before and it startles him. He hopes Eduardo doesn’t hear it and make a scene, like with the eyes opening and the standing and every other milestone of their development that doesn’t really matter to anyone else.
After eating a hearty 56 CC’s, WYSIWYG pulls away, smacks his lips, and starts nudging seekingly at Mark’s pant fabric. He tugs on a leg and points him toward the opening at his ankle, but only because Mark would rather he be asleep than crawling all over his lap.
WYSIWYG burrows inside, curls up next to Mark’s calf, and purrs against it until he doesn’t anymore.
Mark’s in that same position two hours later, when one of the girls gives him her phone number.
*
Eduardo stays again that night. He comes into Mark’s bedroom after everyone’s fallen asleep and has his mouth on Mark’s before he’s even gotten into the bed fully.
He grabs Mark’s hand and pushes it down the front of his pants, whispering into his ear, “Please?”
Mark jerks Eduardo off beneath the blankets.
After, when they’re both sweaty and sticky and breathing a little more evenly, Eduardo asks, “Are you going to call that girl?”
Mark rolls over and goes to sleep.
*
Eduardo comes over after class every day. He lifts the towel on the box, which inevitably sends the kittens into an excited frenzy, and smiles at them, singing, “Who’s a hungry baby?”
He doesn’t even ask before thrusting WYSIWYG at Mark.
With only five intervals per day, Eduardo only has to feed them twice. Chris takes the early morning and Dustin takes the late-night, while Mark-
He has to be present for. Every. Single. One.
The late night feedings are the worst. Not because Mark’s tired-it’s actually the opposite. But because Dustin always wants to disturb them sooner than necessary and Mark has to fight tooth and nail to keep him away from the box.
Friday night, Dustin brings home a girl. Lucy Whatever. No matter how often it happens or how obvious it is that at least half of them are less than heterosexual, a girl in the suite will always be something like a rarity worthy of celebration in the form of beer and/or liquor.
Mark’s going to just hermit away in his room, but the company is more familiar than not and Mark doesn’t see why he should have to exile himself for some random girl.
Lucy hovers at the edge of the couch, looking half afraid of touching anything that isn’t her beer and more than a little bored, until Dustin mentions kittens.
Her posture loses all defensiveness. Mark finds it kind of fascinating, almost like she’s been suspicious they were all murderers until kittens were involved, because a murderer wouldn’t foster a litter of orphaned kittens, would they?
She wants to know, “Where are they?”
Dustin looks at Mark and Eduardo like, Don’t be a cockblocker.
Since no one listens to Mark’s protests pretty much ever, they end up in a circle on the floor once again, kittens in the middle of a spread blanket.
They’re getting better at walking. Maybe a little too good. They can stand easily now, and though their attempts at running will only result in eventual faceplants, they’re more mobile than not.
Chris coined the phrase, “Like a kitten to the edge of a blanket.” They never stand still, and they’re no longer satisfied with unproductive circles. The calico is scarily curious and most active of all, still. WYSIWYG would be more active if he weren’t getting so chubby. As it is, he’ll half-climb Mark’s chest to get to a bottle, but not much else.
The runty grey one, or Cora, lags behind as always with her skinny legs and still-wobbly posture.
“This pretty lady is Wicket,” Dustin says, handing Lucy the calico.
Mark can almost see Eduardo swallow his insistence that she needs to wash her hands before handling them.
Her eyes go big and soft and she practically yells, “Awwwww!”
Chris adds, “She looks all innocent and sweet, but don’t let her fool you. Wicket’s a perpetual violator of the No Claws Clause.”
“This one is Cora,” Dustin continues, pointing out the runt. “She’s super mellow. Never violates the No Claws Clause. Very agreeable.”
WYSIWYG is sitting in the middle, appearing rather bored. “And that one?”
Dustin’s face turns pensive. “We’ve been playing with names for him. He’s umm. High maintenance, I guess. I was thinking of Greedo.”
Mark has the sudden and overwhelming urge to say with finality, No.
He remains silent.
It’s at this point that WYSIWYG spots Mark in the circle.
He beelines right toward him, falling on his face multiple times before climbing Mark’s shin into his lap. He puts his paws on Mark’s stomach and cries.
Mark’s kind of drunk. “Contrary to what I’m sure you must believe, I am not an automatic formula dispenser. Go play or like, be an asshole over there with the rest of your kind.”
WYSIWYG wails.
Mark scowls.
WYSIWYG begins kneading his stomach with his brambly paws, a clear violation of the No Claws Clause-not that Mark ever uses this phrase.
Eduardo explains, “That one also only likes Mark.” And Dustin adds, “He’s really lazy. Kind of fat, too.”
Mark argues, “He’s not lazy, he’s just selective of what warrants his interest.”
“That’s Mark-code for arrogant and lazy,” Eduardo laughs.
“That runt you call ‘mellow’ is just as lazy, if not more.”
Eduardo gasps. “Cora’s not lazy! She’s just a little underdeveloped.”
“She’s clearly genetically inferior. WYSIWYG would take her in fight, easy.” Mark’s gulping though a sip of beer when he realizes his error.
Everyone’s looking at him, confused.
And then, like a click, their faces spread into grins, half incredulous, half taunting.
Eduardo shouts, “YOU NAMED HIM, I KNEW IT!”
Dustin’s pointing at Mark, a little too far into his personal space. “Ohmygod, WYSIWYG, like the rich text editor? What You See Is What You Get?! Mark. Mark! THAT IS SO CUTE!”
Chris is wheeze-laughing too hard to add anything.
Lucy looks lost.
Mark argues, “Acronyms aren’t names!” but no one cares.
Dustin keeps saying, “Wizzy!” and rhyming it with far too many words, and Mark just sighs.
“Come on, Mark, admit it. We all know it. You think he’s cute.” Eduardo gives this sly little half-smile and takes a drink of his beer, and Mark-
He looks down at WYSIWYG, who is now trying to climb him. “I’ve never had an issue admitting that I find him cute, but what good is that observation when he’s just using me?”
Eduardo’s smile vanishes.
WYSIWYG fails his climbing attempt and stares expectantly back at Mark, paws still on his stomach. Chris is wheeze-laughing again, and Dustin is saying to Lucy, “For Mark, that’s like basically a marriage proposal.”
Eduardo stays over that night, but he doesn’t come to Mark’s room.
*
It’s the end of four weeks, and they have to start weaning the kittens.
All four are present when Eduardo makes up some goppy mixture of formula-type gruel and lines the floor with layers of newspaper.
He uses two fingers to scoop some of it off a plate and puts it to Cora’s mouth first. She licks what touches her nose but ultimately looks underwhelmed.
Wicket can’t get enough of the stuff. As soon as Chris dips her chin in it, she laps it up. It’s messy. She stands in the middle of the plate and probably ends up wearing more than she eats.
By then, Cora has expressed some interest in her share, but not enough to rule out bottle feeding.
WYSIWYG is combative.
He looks at Mark and whines, clawing his fingers away whenever he tries to drop some into his mouth mid-cry. He keeps scurrying away and Mark has to catch him, drag him back to the middle and start all over again.
Mark eventually throws his hands in the air and says to WYSIWYG, “You’re such an ungrateful little dick!”
Eduardo starts picking up the newspaper. “It’s not uncommon for it to take a few tries.”
They wash the excess gruel down the sink.
*
WYSIWYG won’t take it on the second try, either.
Nor the third.
By the fourth, he knows what the sight of newspapers signify and starts climbing Mark’s neck to get away from it.
*
“What about this one?”
Mark only gives it a glance before deciding, “Too furniture-ish.” When Eduardo gives him that look-the one reserved for when Mark objects any kitten-related permanence-Mark explains, “It’s fleece. It’ll be too hard to clean.”
Eduardo must agree because he keeps perusing the high shelves of the pet-themed department store. He points another one out and says, “This one is nylon or something.”
Mark decides, “Maybe too small.”
This makes Eduardo nod with enthusiasm. “Yeah, we should take their growing spurts into consideration.”
Mark rolls his eyes. “This one looks good,” he says of a larger nylon kennel. “It zips.”
Eduardo inspects Mark’s choice and observes, “Looks a little flimsy.”
They keep browsing until they decide on a kennel that’s sturdy, large, and easy to clean. It’s also way cheaper than they expected, so they still have fifty dollars left over from the money the four of them pooled together.
They had to because Wicket has flown the nest.
More specifically, she’s figured out that when she pulls the towel covering the box inside with her, she can then scale it up and out.
When they awoke that morning, she was just wandering the common room. Mark and Chris found her batting at an empty potato chip bag, big eyes sparkling whenever it made a crinkle.
Mark considers the money left over and hates to admit it, but, “Maybe we should offer them predatory stimulation.”
“And in Mark-Speak that would mean…?”
“Toys.”
Eduardo’s eyes go big and he pivots toward that aisle, like he’s been consciously aware it existed the whole time, but has been careful not to acknowledge it.
“I think that’s probably a good idea. Predatory stimulation.” Eduardo basically power walks to the toy department, where he borderline turns into a cat himself.
“Oh, look! This one has feathers!” He’s shaking some fuzzy thing attached to a stick.
Mark likes the miniature mice with the bells on the tails. “It’s practical. Mice are something they’ll actually hunt.”
Eduardo gets them both and says, “We should consider potty training too, since we’re here.”
Mark sees like, the Holy Grail of litter boxes.
It cleans itself.
Sadly, it’s ridiculously priced, so Mark settles for the plain box with bag liners and decides to give the duty to Dustin.
Same difference.
They make out with ten extra bucks, which Mark offers to spend on the taxi back to campus, but Eduardo waves him off and pays it himself.
When they emerge from the car, Eduardo says to Mark, “Do you want to like, go out tonight?”
“Go out where?”
Eduardo’s cradling the litter box under an arm and he looks away, grinds his heel against the gravel. “You know like, to eat or-” He trails off into a shrug.
Mark’s mouth is suddenly very dry. “Like what, a date or something?”
Eduardo shrugs again. “Like, I guess, kind of a date. If you want it to be.”
“Do you want it to be?”
“I mean-I would’ve asked you. Before. But I know how you’re like…” Eduardo waves a hand in some vague gesture Mark can’t decipher.
“I’m like what?”
Eduardo pushes a hand through his hair, expelling a flustered breath. “I don’t know, like, resistant. To attention and-affection or whatever. Should we be out here with this stuff? It’s kind of conspicuous.”
Mark opens his mouth but doesn’t know really what to say. He eventually manages, “Affection, that’s-that’s something you want to…?”
He shifts the litter pan to his other side, looks somewhere in the distance, and says, “Well yeah, but-I know you don’t like that, so I was trying to just-I don’t know. Keep it simple. Or something. It was dumb.”
Mark’s a little frustrated. “Why does everyone assume I’m some kind of callous android?”
Eduardo looks at him then, incredulous. “It took you four weeks to admit you didn’t hate a kitten, Mark. A kitten for fuck’s sake. Who doesn’t like kittens?” Mark’s going to object that he’s never actually admitted to not hating the kitten, but then Eduardo continues, “And I’m not innocent and fluffy and small and cute. Don’t you get it? It’s like, setting myself up for disappointment.”
Eduardo makes an agitated, growling-like sound in the back of his throat and stomps into the building.
Mark spends most of the climb to the suite wondering if they’re going on a date or being frustrated with each other or both at the same time.
He never gets a chance to ask.
*
Eduardo looks like someone just ripped out his heart and shoved it down his throat. “What happened?”
Chris has a hand on his waist and the other on his head. “I went to feed her and she was just-like that.”
Cora’s staggering around in a circle and falling over. It’s kind of like when she was only a week or two old, only this time everyone knows she’s learned how to walk.
She keeps getting up and tumbling to her side, until she rests there and lets out a single, weak cry.
Her eyes are unfocused.
No one wants to say it, but Mark can see in their faces they’re thinking it. This is something neurological, and Cora will probably be dead by nightfall.
Eduardo gets down on the floor and strokes the fluff of her side, jerking back when she tries to stand up again.
She falls over and squirms before stilling, crying once more.
Dustin says, “I can’t watch this,” and leaves the room.
Chris is covering his mouth.
“She hasn’t been eating as much as usual, but I just thought it was the weaning.” Eduardo watches her with a stony face, but Mark can see all the emotion lurking just beneath the surface.
Mark’s first thought is that they should separate her from the litter, just in case it’s contagious. But then he looks at WYSIWYG in the box next to her, and maybe Mark has never admitted aloud to not hating him, but he knows what he’d do if it were WYSIWYG.
“Let’s just take her to the vet.”
Eduardo and Chris look at him.
“You have money, Wardo. I know we wanted to split the financial responsibility evenly, but this is an adequate exception, right?”
Chris’ eyes say what his mouth can’t. “But it looks like it’s probably not-” Anything they can treat.
Mark shrugs. “Never know unless you try. And if there isn’t any hope, at least she won’t suffer for an indeterminable length of time.”
It doesn’t matter, anyway.
Eduardo’s already packing them all into the kennel.
*
The vet stinks like, really bad.
Eduardo and Mark sit side by side, the kennel resting on the linoleum before them.
Mark watches Eduardo fill out the forms. He puts down each of their names, including WYSIWYG.
Mark guesses it’s official then, acronyms are names after all.
Wicket is at the door of the kennel, climbing it and falling back, and climbing it again. WYSIWYG is in the back, probably bored and wondering when his next meal will be.
Cora is still falling over and crying.
Eduardo’s face gets really tight when she does that.
They wait for what seems like hours and dogs keep coming up to sniff the kennel and Mark keeps glaring at them and their owners until they’re tugged away.
Finally, a lady comes out of a room and calls, “Saverin-Zuckerberg kittens.”
Eduardo scrambles out of his seat and hefts the kennel into the bright room, puts it onto the silver table and looks inside.
“She’s really sick,” he’s telling the lady. “She hasn’t been eating and she’s been a little constipated. And then today we came home and she was sort of like, staggering-”
The lady smiles sympathetically and nods along, opens the flap on the kennel and takes them out one by one.
Mark has to corral them with his arms so they won’t walk off the table.
The lady pulls out a thermometer and Eduardo’s still babbling. Mark is briefly amused by the mental image of this person trying to get a thermometer into WYSIWYG’s mouth, until he realizes.
It doesn’t go into their mouths.
Eduardo’s words die in his throat as she shoves it up Cora’s ass.
They both look away.
The lady coos to the kitten, “I know, that’s awful, isn’t it? Just a few more seconds, sweetheart.”
When it beeps they both look back at the table but then she repeats the process on Wicket and then WYSIWYG, who lets out a mighty wail and looks at Mark with huge, shocked eyes.
She puts the thermometer away and walks out.
Eduardo exhales. “That was-”
“Incredibly invasive.”
“Yeah, god.”
Eduardo holds Cora so that he won’t have to watch her symptoms, and Mark keeps catching Wicket and putting her back in the middle of the table. Ultimately, he decides that’s too much work and just locks her and WYSIWYG in the kennel again.
Their vet is an elderly man with a shiny, bulbous nose. There’s a mole right on the tip of it and it’s all Mark can look at.
He instructs Eduardo to put Cora on the table and he watches with a pensive expression that smoothes when she circles herself and tips over. He puts a light into her ear and says, “Looks like vestibular disease.”
Eduardo looks at Mark and then at the man. “Can you-is there medicine or something?”
The vet says, “’Fraid not,” and Eduardo’s whole face falls.
Mark thinks for a moment he might cry.
The vet continues, “The good news is that it’ll go away by itself with a little TLC.”
At Eduardo’s owlish expression, he explains, “The vestibular system regulates balance and is responsible for telling her body and eyes where she is in relation to the earth.”
Mark thinks he gets the gist. “So everything’s tilted for her. She’s just… what, dizzy?”
The man says, “There’s probably some abnormal flow inner ear. It could be from infection or mites, or even just idiopathic.”
He explains more about the condition and warns Eduardo that Cora could have a permanent tilt to her head. Eduardo asks, “How long will she be like this?” but Mark can see he’s overwhelmed with relief even as the vet says, “Days to months, hard to say.”
He checks Wicket and WYSIWYG next, prescribes antibiotics in the event of infection.
Before they leave, the vet praises their efforts in rearing the kittens so well, and asks if they have any questions.
Mark clears his throat and Eduardo’s looking at him. “Um, the black and white one-WYSIWYG-we’re having some trouble weaning him. He only wants a bottle, is that-will it be a problem, or…?”
The vet assures Mark, “It’s a little early to worry, but you might ought to try straight canned cat food. Could be he’s just a picky eater.”
Mark nods and adds, “They have fleas. Not bad or anything, but-”
The vet says they’re too young to treat and that Mark can use a flea comb and citrus scented dishwashing soap in the meantime.
He then says to bring them back for proper treatment at the appropriate age.
Mark shuffles from the room and knows better than to think they won’t have them when that age arrives.
*
Eduardo camps on the couch with a laptop, spends the entire night researching vestibular disease and caring after Cora.
Mark comes out and sits with him, rubs Cora’s belly and watches late night cartoons.
WYSIWYG jumps on the door of the kennel and peers out at Mark with his big demanding eyes.
Eduardo says, “I think he’s jealous.”
“Jealous of what, his lack of severe, debilitating disorientation?”
Eduardo laughs under his breath. “No, jealous that she’s actually getting your affection because of it.”
Everything’s really quiet after that.
*
Mark walks to the store that morning, just before the sun rises. He grabs three different flavors of pate cat food, a bottle of lemon Dial, and a bag of Doritos.
The convenience store doesn’t sell flea combs, but they sell lice treatments with the same type of tiny comb included. He stealthily opens a package and swipes one, since he’s only got six dollars and refuses to pay good money for something he won’t use, hopefully ever.
The total comes out to seven oh-nine.
Mark begrudgingly puts the Doritos back.
When he gets to the suite, newspapers cover the floor and Eduardo is tediously scooping globs of gruel into Cora’s mouth.
He looks frustrated, like she’s not eating enough.
Wicket needs no supervision whatsoever. Chris puts her in front of a plate and just gives her some space. She shoves her face into it and stomps around, splashing it merrily into her fur.
WYSIWYG gives Mark a challenging look.
He stalks to where he’s sitting on the edge of the papers and scowls when he backs away. “Salmon, chicken, or Super Supper?”
Mark presents these as if WYSIWYG can choose.
The kitten eyes the cans with disinterest.
“Super Supper it is.”
Mark thinks at first it’s a winner. He spoons it onto WYSIWYG’s plate and he actually smells it, walks around the circumference like he might be intrigued.
Then he walks away.
The salmon stinks up the whole room and Chris and Eduardo look on as Mark replaces the spoonful of Super Supper with it.
WYSIWYG smells it again, acts like he might walk away, goes back to smell it once more, and then actually does walk away.
“Why are you such an asshole?” Mark rants, down on all fours to get eye level with him. “I gave up a perfectly delicious bag of Doritos to buy these for you. There are kittens in China starving or something. Just fucking eat it!”
Chris and Eduardo door poor jobs of hiding their laughter.
“Oh fuck you, with your precious kittens who’re actually tolerable and don’t go out of their way to make every little thing difficult.”
Mark pops the top on the chicken and WYSIWYG watches the ceiling fan.
When it’s on the plate, Mark picks him up and puts him in front of it, dips his nose into it and waits.
WYSIWYG jerks back and licks at his nose, eyes thin as if insulted.
And then he keeps licking.
He lowers his face to the plate and smells it, circles the circumference and sniffs it again.
Mark holds his breath until WYSIWYG finally darts out his tongue and takes a bite.
He looks at Eduardo’s who’s grinning all crookedly and says, “Little motherfucker likes chicken. I’m never touching a bottle again.”
Chris stops him with a laugh, “They still need formula, you dumb ass. Just not as often.”
Mark’s mood is not darkened at the prospect. “Whatever. One day, he’ll be self-sustaining.”
WYSIWYG is now standing in the middle of the plate, pecking little mouthfuls delicately from the mound.
Mark couldn’t smother his smile if he tried.
*
Cora doesn’t improve for a long time. Eduardo ends up taking her back to the vet because she won’t eat. They give her a shot of something that helps a little, but Eduardo-
Eduardo’s sad a lot.
Mark wants to ask about before-with the almost-date and the sort-of-fight-but he doesn’t know if Eduardo’s in the mood to deal with that.
He comes over after class every day just like he used to, but now it’s only Cora he takes from the kennel. He whispers to her in Portuguese and frowns and kisses her head when she only just eats barely enough.
Mark’s in his bedroom one afternoon, just surfing the internet on his bed and being a general slob when Eduardo walks in.
He lies next to Mark and asks, “Can I just hang here for a while?”
At Mark’s shrug, Eduardo lowers his temple to his shoulder, watches him click around the screen and type out notes for an assignment.
Mark gives his words a lot of consideration before saying, “I hope Cora gets better soon. I like her.”
He can feel Eduardo’s eyes on him. “She’ll be okay. Just takes time.”
Mark nods and continues typing but eventually, maybe awkwardly, lifts his arm so Eduardo can rest on his chest. Mark runs his fingers through Eduardo’s hair as he reads, occasionally reaching down to scroll.
Eduardo falls asleep like that.
*
WYSIWYG and Wicket begin cleaning their fur, out of the blue. They’re just eating on the newspaper one second, and the next, they’re licking their paws.
Cora doesn’t do that.
Cora just sleeps, and that’s on a good day, when she’s not trying to stand and falling over, making Eduardo’s eyes impossibly sadder.
Her recovery is so gradual that anyone who wasn’t Wardo wouldn’t even notice.
“It’s embarrassing how happy I am about a kitten taking a shit,” he says, grinning as he throws away a baby wipe.
So that’s how it starts. She just begins slowly regaining her functions, and then one night, she stands up and she doesn’t fall-not immediately. She looks to her left, and then her right, and walks right into the couch.
But she walks.
The next night, she eats the gruel upright, sitting down in front of a plate. Eduardo has to steady her now and then, but she gets more of it down than she has in at least a week.
When she’s done, she lifts a paw and licks it, almost loses her balance until Eduardo props her up.
His smile is super bright.
*
Dustin shakes his arms out, hops in the air three times, and claps his hands together. “Okay. Game face, Zuckerberg.”
Mark rolls his eyes. “It can’t be that difficult. We’re intelligent human beings a hundred times their size.”
But Mark’s not so confident.
He’s got on a pair of rubber gloves and the sink is filled with warm, citrus-scented, foamy water. “Wicket first,” he decides.
It’s best to know what they’re up against.
She flails wildly as Dustin lowers her into the sink, eyes going wide when her paws meet water. She claws for purchase against the porcelain, spraying water all over Dustin’s chest.
She wails.
Dustin screeches, “Why did you get the gloves?! No Claws Clause!” and Mark makes quick work of lathering her up, getting under her skinny legs and around her rigid shoulder blades.
She looks at Mark and opens her mouth wide, lets out a loud, body-shaking exhale.
Mark balks. “Was that-did she just hiss at me?”
“How long do I have to hold her like this?” Dustin’s grasping her at arm’s length, face pointed away.
“Just a few minutes, Dustin. Really, grow a pair.” Mark edges away at her responding growl.
Rinsing her fur is an even more perilous task, as the loud hiss of the faucet has her on edge, scrambling to get away.
They finally wrap her in a towel and she looks-
“I think she’s plotting our deaths,” Dustin says.
Mark silently agrees and points him to the designated de-flea’ing area of the bathroom.
Wicket shivers through Dustin’s meticulous combing through her fur, dunking the lice comb into a cup of hot water as he goes.
By the time he’s done, she’s almost entirely dry, and when placed in the kennel, curls up against the hot water bottle and starts the long process of bitterly cleaning herself.
Mark approaches WYSIWYG with a hard inhale. “Okay, look. I know we don’t always get along, and I know you’re opinion of me is probably going to plunge significantly after this incident, but I want you to know it’s for your own good.”
WYSIWYG blinks in response.
Mark picks him up and takes him to the sink where Dustin is waiting.
WYSIWYG’s eyes get a little shifty.
“He knows something’s up,” Dustin worries, pulling the gloves over his hands. “My advice is to hold him low, let the sink take the punishment, and whatever you do, avoid eye contact at all costs.”
Mark puts him into the water and WYSIWYG lets out a blood curdling caterwaul.
Later, in reflection, Mark will realize just how easy bathing Wicket actually was.
WYSIWYG is more bark than bite for most of the bath. He looks up at Mark with deceived eyes and keeps crying at him, shaking water from his paws. He howls and wails and Dustin takes way too long lathering up his fur, but they all survive relatively unscathed.
Mark takes a moment to appreciate how hilarious he looks, fluffy fur all slicked down.
He’s skinnier than everyone thinks.
Everything is fine until the de-flea’ing.
Once they get him into a towel and Mark’s sprinting him to the bathroom, WYSIWYG decides he’s had about enough of this and almost escapes.
Mark just barely manages to catch him before he hits the floor.
He tries doing it himself, wrapping the towel around WYSIWYG’s body to trap his arms, but then Mark has nothing visible to comb, so he has to employ Dustin’s assistance.
It takes forever.
If WYSIWYG is a stubborn bastard, then his fleas are downright impervious. Mark keeps picking them off only to find the comb didn’t actually catch them. It’s tedious and Mark’s neck aches from hunching over, and WYSIWYG leaves superficial but stinging slashes in his hands.
When it’s finally over, Mark just puts him on the floor right there in front of the toilet.
WYSIWYG runs from the room so fast he skids and tumbles.
Dustin and Mark emerge sweaty and scarred.
Eduardo gives them an exasperated look. “It can’t be that bad.”
Mark challenges, “Let’s see you do it,” and since it is Cora’s turn and no one else is really confident with handling her in a still somewhat delicate state, Eduardo does just that.
He rolls up his shirt sleeves and takes her to the sink, makes it warmer before putting her in.
Her balance is almost entirely restored. Her diet is near-normal, and she may have a slightly tilted head and problems shitting on demand, but Mark thinks she’s going to tear Eduardo to fucking shreds-if they even get that far. Mark’s half convinced one pitiful cry from her will have him instantly caving.
Mark and Dustin look on as Cora stands in the belly-deep water, just staring down at it with her tipped head.
She lifts a paw and smacks the surface, rearing back when it splashes her in the face.
She puts her paw back down and looks up at Eduardo, patiently waiting.
Mark and Dustin share a glance before Dustin bursts, “Aw, fuck you and the kitten you rode in on, Saverin!”
*
Chris comes home an hour later and they’re all on the floor because, as Dustin had-oddly accurately-explained, “There’s something about a clean kitten that makes you want to see it do cute things.”
Mark commands WYSIWYG, “Amuse me,” and tosses him a jingly mouse.
WYSIWYG turns away.
Wicket plays with the feathery stick thing for all of two seconds before finding an old cough drop wrapper beneath the couch. She’s now arching her back and hopping sideways in a circle around it.
Chris gushes, “Ohmygod, she’s so cute!” and drops to the ground to watch with rapt attention.
Mark says to WYSIWYG, “Why can’t you be more like your sisters?”
Cora’s still cleaning after her bath, but she watches Wicket with intense interest. She eventually edges closer to her and the cough drop wrapper, but retreats when Wicket attacks it with a violent crinkle.
Visibly intimidated by Wicket’s aggressiveness, Cora sits next to Eduardo and looks left out.
Dustin says, “No offense, Mark, but your kitten’s kind of boring.”
Mark just watches him sit there with his nose in the air and sighs, “Yeah.”
Wicket plays herself to the edge of exhaustion. She’s a mean little shit, too. She’ll run by Dustin or Mark and slash their feet, skid to a stop and arch her back in defiance.
Chris will invariably laugh at this.
Cora keeps standing up like she wants to join in the fun, but always lies back down the second Wicket does something even remotely Wicketish.
Eduardo introduces Cora to a rampant jingly mouse. He shakes it in her face before dropping it on the floor. She stands up and sniffs at it, watches it for a long moment, and then extends a paw to give it a delicate tap, mid-stretch.
She stares at it with her tilted head, appearing continually confused.
She bats at it with a paw again, and then with a little more force, until she just flops onto her side and hugs it, starts kicking it with her back feet.
With every round of kicks, it jingles.
Eduardo goes on about it like it’s The Most Amazing Feat of Any Feline in the World.
When the girls are both passed out and the others get up to pillage for dinner, Mark looks at WYSIWYG and lifts his pant leg in invitation.
WYSIWYG turns his fluffy head away and licks idly at a paw.
Mark guesses, “You’re mad at me for the bath, aren’t you?” He holds his hand to WYSIWYG’s face, because like, cats respond to scent, right?
He sniffs his hand and looks at Mark.
Just looks at him.
Mark curses under his breath and peers over his shoulder, eventually reaches forward and gently scratches the top of WYSIWYG’s head.
He purrs instantly, rubbing into Mark’s palm and kneading the floor, eyes all squinted almost-shut.
Mark picks him up and puts him in his lap, continues doing that until he’s fast asleep, chin resting on Mark’s knee.
When he looks up again, the three of them are there, and they are staring.
He rolls his eyes and says, “I love the entitled little asshole, so what,” and Eduardo’s smiling.
*
He stays over that night.
Mark’s almost asleep when he hears the door open, but the click of it closing has him hyper-aware of everything.
He scoots over without even being asked.
Eduardo settles warmly beside him and Mark waits a long time for him to do something, until he realizes he’s possibly just going to sleep.
Mark says, “Is this one of those things where you’re going to make me wait?”
He stirs a little and breathes, “What?”
“You know, like,” Mark sighs. “Where we can’t have orgasms for a designated period of time, or until we’ve both expressed our feelings, or something dumb like that.”
Eduardo’s quiet for a moment, and then he laughs. “No?”
“Oh. Good. Because that would be annoying.”
“I agree.”
But Eduardo still doesn’t do anything.
Mark clarifies, “So the situation we’re both mutually engaged in at this point allows for sexual contact?”
“Yeah, I guess. It-it sounds a lot less sexy when you say things like that.”
“You’re not kissing me.”
“You’re not kissing me either.”
Mark ventures, “So this is one of those things where you’re waiting for me to make the first move?”
Eduardo yawns. “Pretty much.”
“See, why-why don’t you just say that up front? I don’t like that. I’m not a mind reader, and I don’t expect other people to be.”
“Because it means more,” Eduardo explains, “knowing you’re doing something because you feel like it and not just because it’s expected of you.”
Mark turns to him and says, “When have I ever done what’s expected of me?”
Eduardo’s pauses, but then Mark can feel his eyes on his face. He says, “Just fucking kiss me already.”
Mark obeys. First they're kissing loudly, smacking sounds echoing through the dark, until the smacking turns to panting and Mark rolls on top of Eduardo, tries to rut against him. Eduardo pushes him off and puts his hand down Mark’s boxers, teeth nipping at his jaw.
He breathes heavy to Mark, “I want to suck it, okay?”
Mark’s showing no objection whatsoever to that, so Eduardo’s head disappears beneath the blankets. He gasps when he feels the warmth of Eduardo’s mouth lowering around him, toggles between watching it rise and fall from above the blankets and pulling them up to futilely strain his eyes at the source of the wetslick sounds there.
He says, “I’m going to come,” and Eduardo hums, so Mark elaborates, “Really hard, you might want to-”
He pulls off right as the first wave of pleasure hits Mark. He strokes him through it, wiping slobber from his mouth as Mark whines and pushes into his hand.
Eduardo’s face appears from beneath the blankets. He hedges, “My turn, right?”
Mark actually honest-to-god snorts and tugs Eduardo’s pants down.
After, he asks Mark if he wants to go out again.
This time, Mark says yes please.
*
Eduardo appears in Mark’s doorway. “Where’s Cora?”
“Hello to you too,” Mark responds wryly, eyes never leaving the screen.
“Hi. Where’s Cora?”
“Do I look like a cat GPS?”
Eduardo clucks his tongue and retreats. Mark can hear him in the common room calling to her, little kissy sounds that make Mark look at WYSIWYG and say, “You’re so lucky you got me instead.”
WYSIWYG is too busy gnawing on a cord to hear it.
Mark pauses at that thought and swivels his chair, snaps once at WYSIWYG. “I’ll put your little ass back in the kennel,” he warns.
He stills and drops the cord, roams for an aimless moment until he sees Mark’s shoelace.
He settles for it.
Mark goes back to coding, and even though he can never be totally wired in-not with a three month old kitten gnawing his cords-things feel normal enough.
Eduardo emerges with Cora trotting close on his heels, her head all angled. “She was in the bathroom again. I keep telling you guys to shut that door.”
Mark grunts but doesn’t stop coding.
At some point, WYSIWYG jumps in his lap and decides he’s ready to sleep.
He does this to Mark a lot-he’ll just look down and WYSIWYG will be there, and Mark won’t remember him ever jumping up.
His warm weight and occasional purr is weirdly comfortable.
By eleven, Mark can hear Eduardo on the bed behind him, growing restless. “Take a break,” he whines.
“Just let me upload this,” Mark promises.
Eduardo comes to stand behind him, peers at the screen over his shoulder. “What’s new today with the site?”
“Just bugfixes actually.”
“Did you fix the thing where I can’t upload big pictures of Cora?”
Mark nods and goes into a convoluted explanation about exif data and encryption, and to Eduardo’s credit, he almost looks like he cares.
Turns out, Harvard students having pets is more common than Eduardo or Mark expected. They’re not always snuck on campus, of course. Sometimes they're just left behind at home and end up being missed or something. Once a little bit of word got around about the kittens, people started showing up wanting to see them and asking about Cora.
First, Mark just made a blog. And it’s not like it was for him or anything. He just wanted to give Eduardo a place to brag about Cora and upload pictures, but then Dustin wanted to make a post, and then Chris made a web comic, and pretty soon, Mark had an idea.
A site to connect the world with their pets.
“How many users are we up to?” Eduardo asks, and Mark closes the laptop, stares down at the ball of black and white fur sleeping on his legs.
“Twelve hundred.”
Eduardo looks surprised. “That’s like, doubled since Wednesday, right?” At Mark nods, he looks thoughtful. “We should set a goal for advertising. Like three thousand?”
Mark disagrees, “A hundred thousand.”
Eduardo’s eyes get big. “Geez, you aim high, don’t you What about like… ten thousand.”
“Ninety, best offer.”
Eduardo gives a put upon sigh and lies back, pushes a hand through Cora’s long fur. “Eighty and I get laid tonight.”
Mark smirks.
*
Eduardo’s hovering over Mark, breathing hot into his mouth as they kiss. Mark spreads his legs further and pushes into his thrust, feels his toes curl when Eduardo’s hips clap against his thighs.
Mark says, “Harder,” and Eduardo adjusts, braces his hands against the pillows and begins pushing into Mark with enough force to make the bed hit against the wall.
He’s looking at Mark with a really intense, breathless expression.
It’s not uncomfortable.
With every collision of the bed against the wall, Mark’s eyes squeeze shut, a grunt pushing between his teeth. Then Eduardo pulls away from Mark’s face and sits back on his heels, holds his hips and snaps them to his body in time with his thrusts.
Mark squeezes his eyes closed again, biting down on a swollen lip.
Eduardo’s hair tickles his chest and Mark arches toward it.
Until he realizes it’s not Eduardo.
Mark opens his eyes and WYSIWYG is sitting in the middle of his heaving chest, cleaning a paw. “Get off me!”
Eduardo freezes and is about to look at Mark with a very confused but you asked for it expression until he sees the kitten.
Mark says, “I thought you put them in the kennel!” and Eduardo looks around, as if disoriented.
“I did, I swear!”
WYSIWYG has this habit.
The first time it happened, it was hilarious to pretty much everyone but Mark, who lost his boner and was effectively cheated out of a good orgasm. The second time it happened, it was annoying. The third, fourth, and fifth times it happened, it became clear that WYSIWYG was possibly a bit of pervert.
Or as Eduardo likes to speculate, “He just wants all of your attention.”
Eduardo gets up and pulls on his pants, wrenches the door open and leaves the room.
Mark shoves WYSIWYG off the bed. “Cockblocking freak!”
He burrows into the leg of Mark’s shed pants, turning so that his head peeks out, and resumes cleaning.
Eduardo appears again, says incredulously, “It’s unzipped.”
They share a look and don’t need to further conjecture on the culprit behind the escape.
They chime in unison, “Wicket.”
She’s scarily smart and Mark doesn’t think it’s much of a stretch. They’ve been witness to her opening doors, after all.
They resolve to shop for another kennel over the weekend. Once Wicket’s found a vulnerability, all hope is lost.
Mark’s almost asleep, Eduardo’s arm draped over his side, when WYSIWYG sneaks onto the bed again. Mark can feel him turn in a circle before delicately lowering himself to lie down, right next to Mark’s face.
Mark pets his head and he purrs.
He’s almost asleep again when he’s jarred awake by the realization that he’s cuddling WYSIWYG and Eduardo is cuddling him.
Mark stares into the dark and curses.
*
At the end of week two, there’s a bit of an issue.
Chris and Dustin are coming home. Classes are starting soon.
Eduardo muses, “Maybe they’ll like them and they’ll want to help out. Split up the shifts. With that kind of distribution and their decrease in intervals, we’d only have to feed them once or twice a day.”
Mark points out, “Animal shelters will be open by then.”
“Well yeah, but-“
“No, Wardo.” Mark knows he wants to keep them. He can see it in Eduardo’s eyes when he kisses their foreheads, which he basically does like a hundred times per day.
“I’m not saying they should stay forever, just until their development is at a less critical-”
“No.”
“You’re not-“
“Wardo.” Mark fixes him with a look that leaves no room for argument, and Eduardo’s nostrils flare.
“Whatever, I wasn’t asking permission. I can always take them back to my room.”
“You’re forgetting the part where pets aren’t exactly allowed.”
Eduardo just shrugs. “So I can keep them secret,” even as his own doubt is evident, especially when WYSIWYG lifts his wobbly head to wail long and pathetically at Mark.
*
“I expected this out of Dustin, but Chris, I’m disappointed in you.”
They’re on the floor, blanket spread over the span of the common room, kittens staggering around them.
Chris has a definite thing for the calico. “Ohmygod, but look how cute she is, Mark!” He holds the thing to his cheek and turns her to face Mark, waving her little paw. “The cute is strong with this one.”
And Dustin just about falls in love with them all over again, because Chris is a clever fucker and using Star Wars lingo to make Dustin further enamored to them is just shameless.
Eduardo’s talking and talking, “Sometimes I have to split her up from Mark’s because she-”
Mark interrupts, “It is not mine.”
“Yeah okay.” Eduardo says to Chris and Dustin, “You should see how it acts around him. He won’t eat for anyone else and once, swear to god, Mark was cuddling it.”
“Was not!”
Dustin gawks at Mark. “Pause the gay porn, you cuddle?”
“It was hardly consensual.”
No one believes him. Mark’s getting annoyed.
Chris brings up the inevitable, “So what’s the plan?”
Eduardo lays it on pretty thick, even for him. “I wanted to keep them until at least five weeks, but Mark doesn’t want to. Then I thought about taking them to my room, but Mark’s kitten is really loud. I’d get busted.”
“It’s not my kitten.” Everyone ignores Mark.
Dustin says, “This suite has three intelligent and something-like-mature inhabitants. I say we vote. All for keeping the kittens?”
Everyone raises their hand and looks at Mark.
“You have no idea what you’re agreeing to. You’ll never get any sleep. They’ll start smelling soon and vomiting on everything. And anyway, they’ll probably die. Fucking germ incubators. You’ll be lucky if they don’t give you all rabies.”
Dustin is holding WYSIWYG. He says in a Darth Vader voice, “Mark-I am your kitten.”
Eduardo’s doing a shitty job of hiding his smirk.
*
If bottle-feeding kittens had any novelty to Eduardo, it’s worn off by now. Sadly, Chris and Dustin lack the enlightenment that can only accompany waking to shrieking four times in one night.
They fight over who gets to feed the calico.
“Let me do it.”
“Get off, Dustin!”
“It’s my turn!”
“Stop crowding her!”
“Chris. Your sausage fingers are scaring her.”
“Your face is scaring her!”
Mark offers, “Someone can feed this one,” and they ignore him.
WYSIWYG pauses briefly in his suckling to breathe, staring owlishly at Mark all the while. His ears are starting to unflatten from his head, but only a little. He looks perpetually defensive.
Eduardo corners him later, says to Mark, “I’ll try harder to feed that one, okay? With Dustin and Chris helping, you won’t have to even be bothered by them.”
He doesn’t even seem bitter about it or anything. He just looks apologetic, like it’s finally dawning on him that it’s not fair to put this responsibility on Mark when it’s Eduardo who wants it.
Mark agrees, “Okay,” and tries not to stare at Eduardo’s lips, but Eduardo’s face goes a bright pink and Mark thinks he’s pretty bad at pretending.
*
He doesn’t even see WYSIWYG for three whole days.
He hears him sometimes. Angry wails pierce through the thin walls as Mark sleeps or studies or codes. Mark’s annoyed by the knee-jerk reflex he has to venture to the box with a bottle to shut the thing up.
He wonders if Eduardo’s managed to feed it at all, but Eduardo never comes to Mark in resignation, so maybe, who knows.
Mark doesn’t ask.
He doesn’t care.
*
Eduardo stays over one night. He’s just fed the kittens and it’s started to snow, so he decides he’ll stay.
It isn’t until like three in the morning that he comes into Mark’s room, whispers into the dark at him, “Scoot over.”
Eduardo kisses Mark again, but Mark’s less surprised about it and more anticipant than he was on Christmas Eve. Eduardo touches Mark’s chest, and then plays with the hair below his navel, and then mouths at his jaw and shifts into his leg, breathing, “Mark.”
Mark kicks the blankets off them because he’s sweating and he wants to spread his legs so Eduardo can just-
He lies on top of Mark and slides their stiff, aching dicks against each other, fists twisting into the pillows at either side of Mark’s head.
Eduardo comes with a soft cry against Mark’s temple, and Mark’s distracted briefly by WYSIWYG in the other room, crying, but then Eduardo bites his neck and everything dissolves into white noise and thrashing and Mark grunting, “Ah! Ah, fuck.”
*
Eduardo’s already up when Mark awakes. He finds him in the common room feeding the kittens. He looks at Mark, but Mark can tell he’s kind of forcing himself to do it, and turns out, Eduardo’s pretty bad at pretending too.
WYSIWYG is screaming.
Mark wires in.
*
Mark comes in one day and everyone’s there-Chris, Dustin, Wardo, even a couple girls he doesn’t recognize. The four of them form a circle around Eduardo who’s crouched down handling the kittens.
If he’s being honest, Mark thinks he could pick WYSIWYG’s meows out of a crowd of a hundred kittens, just because he’s heard the fucking thing do it so much. Mark’s heard him scream plenty, but this sounds different.
Panicked and roughly distraught, reminiscent of the first day Mark found them.
Mark peers through their circle and watches Eduardo squirt a syringe of formula into his mouth. WYSIWYG spits it out when he cries again, wobbling away from Eduardo. He’s got the stuff all over his mouth and chin, dribbling into his fur.
Eduardo’s frown is tight and distressed.
Mark’ suddenly, inexplicably furious. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Eduardo’s big, guilty eyes shoot to Mark’s and he freezes. “I-he won’t eat, so I’m trying to-”
“Force it down his throat? With an audience?”
Dustin cuts in, “We thought he might like the girls more or something.”
Mark pushes through their circle and says, “You should have gotten me.”
Eduardo’s jaw drops, and now he looks furious, but Mark’s picking up the kitten and reaching for a bottle, so he keeps his mouth shut.
Everyone watches Mark pull the skin of WYSIWYG’s neck back, tilt his head up, and stuff the nipple inside his wailing mouth, squeezing it just barely.
He doesn’t take it-not immediately. He instead looks at Mark and cries, long and sharp.
Like he’s holding a grudge.
Mark pinches his neck harder and says, “Stop being a fucking dick.”
Just like that, WYSIWYG latches on.
“Wow,” Dustin says.
Chris is laughing. “All that drama, and all he wanted was Mark?”
Eduardo uses a washcloth-covered fingertip to clean his chin and fur as he eats, crouched close enough to Mark’s lap that his cheeks flush red and Mark has to look away.
WYISWYG follows Eduardo’s movements with suspicious, betrayed eyes.
WYSIWYG’s ears are almost entirely unflattened from his head now. They twitch with more ferocity as he suckles, and one’s black, but the other’s white, and he’s clawing at the bottle, trying to get it closer to his body.
When the others have turned their attention to the girls (both the kittens and the humans), Mark sneers to him, “This in no way validates your entitlement.”
WYSIWYG begins purring.
Mark’s never heard him do that before and it startles him. He hopes Eduardo doesn’t hear it and make a scene, like with the eyes opening and the standing and every other milestone of their development that doesn’t really matter to anyone else.
After eating a hearty 56 CC’s, WYSIWYG pulls away, smacks his lips, and starts nudging seekingly at Mark’s pant fabric. He tugs on a leg and points him toward the opening at his ankle, but only because Mark would rather he be asleep than crawling all over his lap.
WYSIWYG burrows inside, curls up next to Mark’s calf, and purrs against it until he doesn’t anymore.
Mark’s in that same position two hours later, when one of the girls gives him her phone number.
*
Eduardo stays again that night. He comes into Mark’s bedroom after everyone’s fallen asleep and has his mouth on Mark’s before he’s even gotten into the bed fully.
He grabs Mark’s hand and pushes it down the front of his pants, whispering into his ear, “Please?”
Mark jerks Eduardo off beneath the blankets.
After, when they’re both sweaty and sticky and breathing a little more evenly, Eduardo asks, “Are you going to call that girl?”
Mark rolls over and goes to sleep.
*
Eduardo comes over after class every day. He lifts the towel on the box, which inevitably sends the kittens into an excited frenzy, and smiles at them, singing, “Who’s a hungry baby?”
He doesn’t even ask before thrusting WYSIWYG at Mark.
With only five intervals per day, Eduardo only has to feed them twice. Chris takes the early morning and Dustin takes the late-night, while Mark-
He has to be present for. Every. Single. One.
The late night feedings are the worst. Not because Mark’s tired-it’s actually the opposite. But because Dustin always wants to disturb them sooner than necessary and Mark has to fight tooth and nail to keep him away from the box.
Friday night, Dustin brings home a girl. Lucy Whatever. No matter how often it happens or how obvious it is that at least half of them are less than heterosexual, a girl in the suite will always be something like a rarity worthy of celebration in the form of beer and/or liquor.
Mark’s going to just hermit away in his room, but the company is more familiar than not and Mark doesn’t see why he should have to exile himself for some random girl.
Lucy hovers at the edge of the couch, looking half afraid of touching anything that isn’t her beer and more than a little bored, until Dustin mentions kittens.
Her posture loses all defensiveness. Mark finds it kind of fascinating, almost like she’s been suspicious they were all murderers until kittens were involved, because a murderer wouldn’t foster a litter of orphaned kittens, would they?
She wants to know, “Where are they?”
Dustin looks at Mark and Eduardo like, Don’t be a cockblocker.
Since no one listens to Mark’s protests pretty much ever, they end up in a circle on the floor once again, kittens in the middle of a spread blanket.
They’re getting better at walking. Maybe a little too good. They can stand easily now, and though their attempts at running will only result in eventual faceplants, they’re more mobile than not.
Chris coined the phrase, “Like a kitten to the edge of a blanket.” They never stand still, and they’re no longer satisfied with unproductive circles. The calico is scarily curious and most active of all, still. WYSIWYG would be more active if he weren’t getting so chubby. As it is, he’ll half-climb Mark’s chest to get to a bottle, but not much else.
The runty grey one, or Cora, lags behind as always with her skinny legs and still-wobbly posture.
“This pretty lady is Wicket,” Dustin says, handing Lucy the calico.
Mark can almost see Eduardo swallow his insistence that she needs to wash her hands before handling them.
Her eyes go big and soft and she practically yells, “Awwwww!”
Chris adds, “She looks all innocent and sweet, but don’t let her fool you. Wicket’s a perpetual violator of the No Claws Clause.”
“This one is Cora,” Dustin continues, pointing out the runt. “She’s super mellow. Never violates the No Claws Clause. Very agreeable.”
WYSIWYG is sitting in the middle, appearing rather bored. “And that one?”
Dustin’s face turns pensive. “We’ve been playing with names for him. He’s umm. High maintenance, I guess. I was thinking of Greedo.”
Mark has the sudden and overwhelming urge to say with finality, No.
He remains silent.
It’s at this point that WYSIWYG spots Mark in the circle.
He beelines right toward him, falling on his face multiple times before climbing Mark’s shin into his lap. He puts his paws on Mark’s stomach and cries.
Mark’s kind of drunk. “Contrary to what I’m sure you must believe, I am not an automatic formula dispenser. Go play or like, be an asshole over there with the rest of your kind.”
WYSIWYG wails.
Mark scowls.
WYSIWYG begins kneading his stomach with his brambly paws, a clear violation of the No Claws Clause-not that Mark ever uses this phrase.
Eduardo explains, “That one also only likes Mark.” And Dustin adds, “He’s really lazy. Kind of fat, too.”
Mark argues, “He’s not lazy, he’s just selective of what warrants his interest.”
“That’s Mark-code for arrogant and lazy,” Eduardo laughs.
“That runt you call ‘mellow’ is just as lazy, if not more.”
Eduardo gasps. “Cora’s not lazy! She’s just a little underdeveloped.”
“She’s clearly genetically inferior. WYSIWYG would take her in fight, easy.” Mark’s gulping though a sip of beer when he realizes his error.
Everyone’s looking at him, confused.
And then, like a click, their faces spread into grins, half incredulous, half taunting.
Eduardo shouts, “YOU NAMED HIM, I KNEW IT!”
Dustin’s pointing at Mark, a little too far into his personal space. “Ohmygod, WYSIWYG, like the rich text editor? What You See Is What You Get?! Mark. Mark! THAT IS SO CUTE!”
Chris is wheeze-laughing too hard to add anything.
Lucy looks lost.
Mark argues, “Acronyms aren’t names!” but no one cares.
Dustin keeps saying, “Wizzy!” and rhyming it with far too many words, and Mark just sighs.
“Come on, Mark, admit it. We all know it. You think he’s cute.” Eduardo gives this sly little half-smile and takes a drink of his beer, and Mark-
He looks down at WYSIWYG, who is now trying to climb him. “I’ve never had an issue admitting that I find him cute, but what good is that observation when he’s just using me?”
Eduardo’s smile vanishes.
WYSIWYG fails his climbing attempt and stares expectantly back at Mark, paws still on his stomach. Chris is wheeze-laughing again, and Dustin is saying to Lucy, “For Mark, that’s like basically a marriage proposal.”
Eduardo stays over that night, but he doesn’t come to Mark’s room.
*
It’s the end of four weeks, and they have to start weaning the kittens.
All four are present when Eduardo makes up some goppy mixture of formula-type gruel and lines the floor with layers of newspaper.
He uses two fingers to scoop some of it off a plate and puts it to Cora’s mouth first. She licks what touches her nose but ultimately looks underwhelmed.
Wicket can’t get enough of the stuff. As soon as Chris dips her chin in it, she laps it up. It’s messy. She stands in the middle of the plate and probably ends up wearing more than she eats.
By then, Cora has expressed some interest in her share, but not enough to rule out bottle feeding.
WYSIWYG is combative.
He looks at Mark and whines, clawing his fingers away whenever he tries to drop some into his mouth mid-cry. He keeps scurrying away and Mark has to catch him, drag him back to the middle and start all over again.
Mark eventually throws his hands in the air and says to WYSIWYG, “You’re such an ungrateful little dick!”
Eduardo starts picking up the newspaper. “It’s not uncommon for it to take a few tries.”
They wash the excess gruel down the sink.
*
WYSIWYG won’t take it on the second try, either.
Nor the third.
By the fourth, he knows what the sight of newspapers signify and starts climbing Mark’s neck to get away from it.
*
“What about this one?”
Mark only gives it a glance before deciding, “Too furniture-ish.” When Eduardo gives him that look-the one reserved for when Mark objects any kitten-related permanence-Mark explains, “It’s fleece. It’ll be too hard to clean.”
Eduardo must agree because he keeps perusing the high shelves of the pet-themed department store. He points another one out and says, “This one is nylon or something.”
Mark decides, “Maybe too small.”
This makes Eduardo nod with enthusiasm. “Yeah, we should take their growing spurts into consideration.”
Mark rolls his eyes. “This one looks good,” he says of a larger nylon kennel. “It zips.”
Eduardo inspects Mark’s choice and observes, “Looks a little flimsy.”
They keep browsing until they decide on a kennel that’s sturdy, large, and easy to clean. It’s also way cheaper than they expected, so they still have fifty dollars left over from the money the four of them pooled together.
They had to because Wicket has flown the nest.
More specifically, she’s figured out that when she pulls the towel covering the box inside with her, she can then scale it up and out.
When they awoke that morning, she was just wandering the common room. Mark and Chris found her batting at an empty potato chip bag, big eyes sparkling whenever it made a crinkle.
Mark considers the money left over and hates to admit it, but, “Maybe we should offer them predatory stimulation.”
“And in Mark-Speak that would mean…?”
“Toys.”
Eduardo’s eyes go big and he pivots toward that aisle, like he’s been consciously aware it existed the whole time, but has been careful not to acknowledge it.
“I think that’s probably a good idea. Predatory stimulation.” Eduardo basically power walks to the toy department, where he borderline turns into a cat himself.
“Oh, look! This one has feathers!” He’s shaking some fuzzy thing attached to a stick.
Mark likes the miniature mice with the bells on the tails. “It’s practical. Mice are something they’ll actually hunt.”
Eduardo gets them both and says, “We should consider potty training too, since we’re here.”
Mark sees like, the Holy Grail of litter boxes.
It cleans itself.
Sadly, it’s ridiculously priced, so Mark settles for the plain box with bag liners and decides to give the duty to Dustin.
Same difference.
They make out with ten extra bucks, which Mark offers to spend on the taxi back to campus, but Eduardo waves him off and pays it himself.
When they emerge from the car, Eduardo says to Mark, “Do you want to like, go out tonight?”
“Go out where?”
Eduardo’s cradling the litter box under an arm and he looks away, grinds his heel against the gravel. “You know like, to eat or-” He trails off into a shrug.
Mark’s mouth is suddenly very dry. “Like what, a date or something?”
Eduardo shrugs again. “Like, I guess, kind of a date. If you want it to be.”
“Do you want it to be?”
“I mean-I would’ve asked you. Before. But I know how you’re like…” Eduardo waves a hand in some vague gesture Mark can’t decipher.
“I’m like what?”
Eduardo pushes a hand through his hair, expelling a flustered breath. “I don’t know, like, resistant. To attention and-affection or whatever. Should we be out here with this stuff? It’s kind of conspicuous.”
Mark opens his mouth but doesn’t know really what to say. He eventually manages, “Affection, that’s-that’s something you want to…?”
He shifts the litter pan to his other side, looks somewhere in the distance, and says, “Well yeah, but-I know you don’t like that, so I was trying to just-I don’t know. Keep it simple. Or something. It was dumb.”
Mark’s a little frustrated. “Why does everyone assume I’m some kind of callous android?”
Eduardo looks at him then, incredulous. “It took you four weeks to admit you didn’t hate a kitten, Mark. A kitten for fuck’s sake. Who doesn’t like kittens?” Mark’s going to object that he’s never actually admitted to not hating the kitten, but then Eduardo continues, “And I’m not innocent and fluffy and small and cute. Don’t you get it? It’s like, setting myself up for disappointment.”
Eduardo makes an agitated, growling-like sound in the back of his throat and stomps into the building.
Mark spends most of the climb to the suite wondering if they’re going on a date or being frustrated with each other or both at the same time.
He never gets a chance to ask.
*
Eduardo looks like someone just ripped out his heart and shoved it down his throat. “What happened?”
Chris has a hand on his waist and the other on his head. “I went to feed her and she was just-like that.”
Cora’s staggering around in a circle and falling over. It’s kind of like when she was only a week or two old, only this time everyone knows she’s learned how to walk.
She keeps getting up and tumbling to her side, until she rests there and lets out a single, weak cry.
Her eyes are unfocused.
No one wants to say it, but Mark can see in their faces they’re thinking it. This is something neurological, and Cora will probably be dead by nightfall.
Eduardo gets down on the floor and strokes the fluff of her side, jerking back when she tries to stand up again.
She falls over and squirms before stilling, crying once more.
Dustin says, “I can’t watch this,” and leaves the room.
Chris is covering his mouth.
“She hasn’t been eating as much as usual, but I just thought it was the weaning.” Eduardo watches her with a stony face, but Mark can see all the emotion lurking just beneath the surface.
Mark’s first thought is that they should separate her from the litter, just in case it’s contagious. But then he looks at WYSIWYG in the box next to her, and maybe Mark has never admitted aloud to not hating him, but he knows what he’d do if it were WYSIWYG.
“Let’s just take her to the vet.”
Eduardo and Chris look at him.
“You have money, Wardo. I know we wanted to split the financial responsibility evenly, but this is an adequate exception, right?”
Chris’ eyes say what his mouth can’t. “But it looks like it’s probably not-” Anything they can treat.
Mark shrugs. “Never know unless you try. And if there isn’t any hope, at least she won’t suffer for an indeterminable length of time.”
It doesn’t matter, anyway.
Eduardo’s already packing them all into the kennel.
*
The vet stinks like, really bad.
Eduardo and Mark sit side by side, the kennel resting on the linoleum before them.
Mark watches Eduardo fill out the forms. He puts down each of their names, including WYSIWYG.
Mark guesses it’s official then, acronyms are names after all.
Wicket is at the door of the kennel, climbing it and falling back, and climbing it again. WYSIWYG is in the back, probably bored and wondering when his next meal will be.
Cora is still falling over and crying.
Eduardo’s face gets really tight when she does that.
They wait for what seems like hours and dogs keep coming up to sniff the kennel and Mark keeps glaring at them and their owners until they’re tugged away.
Finally, a lady comes out of a room and calls, “Saverin-Zuckerberg kittens.”
Eduardo scrambles out of his seat and hefts the kennel into the bright room, puts it onto the silver table and looks inside.
“She’s really sick,” he’s telling the lady. “She hasn’t been eating and she’s been a little constipated. And then today we came home and she was sort of like, staggering-”
The lady smiles sympathetically and nods along, opens the flap on the kennel and takes them out one by one.
Mark has to corral them with his arms so they won’t walk off the table.
The lady pulls out a thermometer and Eduardo’s still babbling. Mark is briefly amused by the mental image of this person trying to get a thermometer into WYSIWYG’s mouth, until he realizes.
It doesn’t go into their mouths.
Eduardo’s words die in his throat as she shoves it up Cora’s ass.
They both look away.
The lady coos to the kitten, “I know, that’s awful, isn’t it? Just a few more seconds, sweetheart.”
When it beeps they both look back at the table but then she repeats the process on Wicket and then WYSIWYG, who lets out a mighty wail and looks at Mark with huge, shocked eyes.
She puts the thermometer away and walks out.
Eduardo exhales. “That was-”
“Incredibly invasive.”
“Yeah, god.”
Eduardo holds Cora so that he won’t have to watch her symptoms, and Mark keeps catching Wicket and putting her back in the middle of the table. Ultimately, he decides that’s too much work and just locks her and WYSIWYG in the kennel again.
Their vet is an elderly man with a shiny, bulbous nose. There’s a mole right on the tip of it and it’s all Mark can look at.
He instructs Eduardo to put Cora on the table and he watches with a pensive expression that smoothes when she circles herself and tips over. He puts a light into her ear and says, “Looks like vestibular disease.”
Eduardo looks at Mark and then at the man. “Can you-is there medicine or something?”
The vet says, “’Fraid not,” and Eduardo’s whole face falls.
Mark thinks for a moment he might cry.
The vet continues, “The good news is that it’ll go away by itself with a little TLC.”
At Eduardo’s owlish expression, he explains, “The vestibular system regulates balance and is responsible for telling her body and eyes where she is in relation to the earth.”
Mark thinks he gets the gist. “So everything’s tilted for her. She’s just… what, dizzy?”
The man says, “There’s probably some abnormal flow inner ear. It could be from infection or mites, or even just idiopathic.”
He explains more about the condition and warns Eduardo that Cora could have a permanent tilt to her head. Eduardo asks, “How long will she be like this?” but Mark can see he’s overwhelmed with relief even as the vet says, “Days to months, hard to say.”
He checks Wicket and WYSIWYG next, prescribes antibiotics in the event of infection.
Before they leave, the vet praises their efforts in rearing the kittens so well, and asks if they have any questions.
Mark clears his throat and Eduardo’s looking at him. “Um, the black and white one-WYSIWYG-we’re having some trouble weaning him. He only wants a bottle, is that-will it be a problem, or…?”
The vet assures Mark, “It’s a little early to worry, but you might ought to try straight canned cat food. Could be he’s just a picky eater.”
Mark nods and adds, “They have fleas. Not bad or anything, but-”
The vet says they’re too young to treat and that Mark can use a flea comb and citrus scented dishwashing soap in the meantime.
He then says to bring them back for proper treatment at the appropriate age.
Mark shuffles from the room and knows better than to think they won’t have them when that age arrives.
*
Eduardo camps on the couch with a laptop, spends the entire night researching vestibular disease and caring after Cora.
Mark comes out and sits with him, rubs Cora’s belly and watches late night cartoons.
WYSIWYG jumps on the door of the kennel and peers out at Mark with his big demanding eyes.
Eduardo says, “I think he’s jealous.”
“Jealous of what, his lack of severe, debilitating disorientation?”
Eduardo laughs under his breath. “No, jealous that she’s actually getting your affection because of it.”
Everything’s really quiet after that.
*
Mark walks to the store that morning, just before the sun rises. He grabs three different flavors of pate cat food, a bottle of lemon Dial, and a bag of Doritos.
The convenience store doesn’t sell flea combs, but they sell lice treatments with the same type of tiny comb included. He stealthily opens a package and swipes one, since he’s only got six dollars and refuses to pay good money for something he won’t use, hopefully ever.
The total comes out to seven oh-nine.
Mark begrudgingly puts the Doritos back.
When he gets to the suite, newspapers cover the floor and Eduardo is tediously scooping globs of gruel into Cora’s mouth.
He looks frustrated, like she’s not eating enough.
Wicket needs no supervision whatsoever. Chris puts her in front of a plate and just gives her some space. She shoves her face into it and stomps around, splashing it merrily into her fur.
WYSIWYG gives Mark a challenging look.
He stalks to where he’s sitting on the edge of the papers and scowls when he backs away. “Salmon, chicken, or Super Supper?”
Mark presents these as if WYSIWYG can choose.
The kitten eyes the cans with disinterest.
“Super Supper it is.”
Mark thinks at first it’s a winner. He spoons it onto WYSIWYG’s plate and he actually smells it, walks around the circumference like he might be intrigued.
Then he walks away.
The salmon stinks up the whole room and Chris and Eduardo look on as Mark replaces the spoonful of Super Supper with it.
WYSIWYG smells it again, acts like he might walk away, goes back to smell it once more, and then actually does walk away.
“Why are you such an asshole?” Mark rants, down on all fours to get eye level with him. “I gave up a perfectly delicious bag of Doritos to buy these for you. There are kittens in China starving or something. Just fucking eat it!”
Chris and Eduardo door poor jobs of hiding their laughter.
“Oh fuck you, with your precious kittens who’re actually tolerable and don’t go out of their way to make every little thing difficult.”
Mark pops the top on the chicken and WYSIWYG watches the ceiling fan.
When it’s on the plate, Mark picks him up and puts him in front of it, dips his nose into it and waits.
WYSIWYG jerks back and licks at his nose, eyes thin as if insulted.
And then he keeps licking.
He lowers his face to the plate and smells it, circles the circumference and sniffs it again.
Mark holds his breath until WYSIWYG finally darts out his tongue and takes a bite.
He looks at Eduardo’s who’s grinning all crookedly and says, “Little motherfucker likes chicken. I’m never touching a bottle again.”
Chris stops him with a laugh, “They still need formula, you dumb ass. Just not as often.”
Mark’s mood is not darkened at the prospect. “Whatever. One day, he’ll be self-sustaining.”
WYSIWYG is now standing in the middle of the plate, pecking little mouthfuls delicately from the mound.
Mark couldn’t smother his smile if he tried.
*
Cora doesn’t improve for a long time. Eduardo ends up taking her back to the vet because she won’t eat. They give her a shot of something that helps a little, but Eduardo-
Eduardo’s sad a lot.
Mark wants to ask about before-with the almost-date and the sort-of-fight-but he doesn’t know if Eduardo’s in the mood to deal with that.
He comes over after class every day just like he used to, but now it’s only Cora he takes from the kennel. He whispers to her in Portuguese and frowns and kisses her head when she only just eats barely enough.
Mark’s in his bedroom one afternoon, just surfing the internet on his bed and being a general slob when Eduardo walks in.
He lies next to Mark and asks, “Can I just hang here for a while?”
At Mark’s shrug, Eduardo lowers his temple to his shoulder, watches him click around the screen and type out notes for an assignment.
Mark gives his words a lot of consideration before saying, “I hope Cora gets better soon. I like her.”
He can feel Eduardo’s eyes on him. “She’ll be okay. Just takes time.”
Mark nods and continues typing but eventually, maybe awkwardly, lifts his arm so Eduardo can rest on his chest. Mark runs his fingers through Eduardo’s hair as he reads, occasionally reaching down to scroll.
Eduardo falls asleep like that.
*
WYSIWYG and Wicket begin cleaning their fur, out of the blue. They’re just eating on the newspaper one second, and the next, they’re licking their paws.
Cora doesn’t do that.
Cora just sleeps, and that’s on a good day, when she’s not trying to stand and falling over, making Eduardo’s eyes impossibly sadder.
Her recovery is so gradual that anyone who wasn’t Wardo wouldn’t even notice.
“It’s embarrassing how happy I am about a kitten taking a shit,” he says, grinning as he throws away a baby wipe.
So that’s how it starts. She just begins slowly regaining her functions, and then one night, she stands up and she doesn’t fall-not immediately. She looks to her left, and then her right, and walks right into the couch.
But she walks.
The next night, she eats the gruel upright, sitting down in front of a plate. Eduardo has to steady her now and then, but she gets more of it down than she has in at least a week.
When she’s done, she lifts a paw and licks it, almost loses her balance until Eduardo props her up.
His smile is super bright.
*
Dustin shakes his arms out, hops in the air three times, and claps his hands together. “Okay. Game face, Zuckerberg.”
Mark rolls his eyes. “It can’t be that difficult. We’re intelligent human beings a hundred times their size.”
But Mark’s not so confident.
He’s got on a pair of rubber gloves and the sink is filled with warm, citrus-scented, foamy water. “Wicket first,” he decides.
It’s best to know what they’re up against.
She flails wildly as Dustin lowers her into the sink, eyes going wide when her paws meet water. She claws for purchase against the porcelain, spraying water all over Dustin’s chest.
She wails.
Dustin screeches, “Why did you get the gloves?! No Claws Clause!” and Mark makes quick work of lathering her up, getting under her skinny legs and around her rigid shoulder blades.
She looks at Mark and opens her mouth wide, lets out a loud, body-shaking exhale.
Mark balks. “Was that-did she just hiss at me?”
“How long do I have to hold her like this?” Dustin’s grasping her at arm’s length, face pointed away.
“Just a few minutes, Dustin. Really, grow a pair.” Mark edges away at her responding growl.
Rinsing her fur is an even more perilous task, as the loud hiss of the faucet has her on edge, scrambling to get away.
They finally wrap her in a towel and she looks-
“I think she’s plotting our deaths,” Dustin says.
Mark silently agrees and points him to the designated de-flea’ing area of the bathroom.
Wicket shivers through Dustin’s meticulous combing through her fur, dunking the lice comb into a cup of hot water as he goes.
By the time he’s done, she’s almost entirely dry, and when placed in the kennel, curls up against the hot water bottle and starts the long process of bitterly cleaning herself.
Mark approaches WYSIWYG with a hard inhale. “Okay, look. I know we don’t always get along, and I know you’re opinion of me is probably going to plunge significantly after this incident, but I want you to know it’s for your own good.”
WYSIWYG blinks in response.
Mark picks him up and takes him to the sink where Dustin is waiting.
WYSIWYG’s eyes get a little shifty.
“He knows something’s up,” Dustin worries, pulling the gloves over his hands. “My advice is to hold him low, let the sink take the punishment, and whatever you do, avoid eye contact at all costs.”
Mark puts him into the water and WYSIWYG lets out a blood curdling caterwaul.
Later, in reflection, Mark will realize just how easy bathing Wicket actually was.
WYSIWYG is more bark than bite for most of the bath. He looks up at Mark with deceived eyes and keeps crying at him, shaking water from his paws. He howls and wails and Dustin takes way too long lathering up his fur, but they all survive relatively unscathed.
Mark takes a moment to appreciate how hilarious he looks, fluffy fur all slicked down.
He’s skinnier than everyone thinks.
Everything is fine until the de-flea’ing.
Once they get him into a towel and Mark’s sprinting him to the bathroom, WYSIWYG decides he’s had about enough of this and almost escapes.
Mark just barely manages to catch him before he hits the floor.
He tries doing it himself, wrapping the towel around WYSIWYG’s body to trap his arms, but then Mark has nothing visible to comb, so he has to employ Dustin’s assistance.
It takes forever.
If WYSIWYG is a stubborn bastard, then his fleas are downright impervious. Mark keeps picking them off only to find the comb didn’t actually catch them. It’s tedious and Mark’s neck aches from hunching over, and WYSIWYG leaves superficial but stinging slashes in his hands.
When it’s finally over, Mark just puts him on the floor right there in front of the toilet.
WYSIWYG runs from the room so fast he skids and tumbles.
Dustin and Mark emerge sweaty and scarred.
Eduardo gives them an exasperated look. “It can’t be that bad.”
Mark challenges, “Let’s see you do it,” and since it is Cora’s turn and no one else is really confident with handling her in a still somewhat delicate state, Eduardo does just that.
He rolls up his shirt sleeves and takes her to the sink, makes it warmer before putting her in.
Her balance is almost entirely restored. Her diet is near-normal, and she may have a slightly tilted head and problems shitting on demand, but Mark thinks she’s going to tear Eduardo to fucking shreds-if they even get that far. Mark’s half convinced one pitiful cry from her will have him instantly caving.
Mark and Dustin look on as Cora stands in the belly-deep water, just staring down at it with her tipped head.
She lifts a paw and smacks the surface, rearing back when it splashes her in the face.
She puts her paw back down and looks up at Eduardo, patiently waiting.
Mark and Dustin share a glance before Dustin bursts, “Aw, fuck you and the kitten you rode in on, Saverin!”
*
Chris comes home an hour later and they’re all on the floor because, as Dustin had-oddly accurately-explained, “There’s something about a clean kitten that makes you want to see it do cute things.”
Mark commands WYSIWYG, “Amuse me,” and tosses him a jingly mouse.
WYSIWYG turns away.
Wicket plays with the feathery stick thing for all of two seconds before finding an old cough drop wrapper beneath the couch. She’s now arching her back and hopping sideways in a circle around it.
Chris gushes, “Ohmygod, she’s so cute!” and drops to the ground to watch with rapt attention.
Mark says to WYSIWYG, “Why can’t you be more like your sisters?”
Cora’s still cleaning after her bath, but she watches Wicket with intense interest. She eventually edges closer to her and the cough drop wrapper, but retreats when Wicket attacks it with a violent crinkle.
Visibly intimidated by Wicket’s aggressiveness, Cora sits next to Eduardo and looks left out.
Dustin says, “No offense, Mark, but your kitten’s kind of boring.”
Mark just watches him sit there with his nose in the air and sighs, “Yeah.”
Wicket plays herself to the edge of exhaustion. She’s a mean little shit, too. She’ll run by Dustin or Mark and slash their feet, skid to a stop and arch her back in defiance.
Chris will invariably laugh at this.
Cora keeps standing up like she wants to join in the fun, but always lies back down the second Wicket does something even remotely Wicketish.
Eduardo introduces Cora to a rampant jingly mouse. He shakes it in her face before dropping it on the floor. She stands up and sniffs at it, watches it for a long moment, and then extends a paw to give it a delicate tap, mid-stretch.
She stares at it with her tilted head, appearing continually confused.
She bats at it with a paw again, and then with a little more force, until she just flops onto her side and hugs it, starts kicking it with her back feet.
With every round of kicks, it jingles.
Eduardo goes on about it like it’s The Most Amazing Feat of Any Feline in the World.
When the girls are both passed out and the others get up to pillage for dinner, Mark looks at WYSIWYG and lifts his pant leg in invitation.
WYSIWYG turns his fluffy head away and licks idly at a paw.
Mark guesses, “You’re mad at me for the bath, aren’t you?” He holds his hand to WYSIWYG’s face, because like, cats respond to scent, right?
He sniffs his hand and looks at Mark.
Just looks at him.
Mark curses under his breath and peers over his shoulder, eventually reaches forward and gently scratches the top of WYSIWYG’s head.
He purrs instantly, rubbing into Mark’s palm and kneading the floor, eyes all squinted almost-shut.
Mark picks him up and puts him in his lap, continues doing that until he’s fast asleep, chin resting on Mark’s knee.
When he looks up again, the three of them are there, and they are staring.
He rolls his eyes and says, “I love the entitled little asshole, so what,” and Eduardo’s smiling.
*
He stays over that night.
Mark’s almost asleep when he hears the door open, but the click of it closing has him hyper-aware of everything.
He scoots over without even being asked.
Eduardo settles warmly beside him and Mark waits a long time for him to do something, until he realizes he’s possibly just going to sleep.
Mark says, “Is this one of those things where you’re going to make me wait?”
He stirs a little and breathes, “What?”
“You know, like,” Mark sighs. “Where we can’t have orgasms for a designated period of time, or until we’ve both expressed our feelings, or something dumb like that.”
Eduardo’s quiet for a moment, and then he laughs. “No?”
“Oh. Good. Because that would be annoying.”
“I agree.”
But Eduardo still doesn’t do anything.
Mark clarifies, “So the situation we’re both mutually engaged in at this point allows for sexual contact?”
“Yeah, I guess. It-it sounds a lot less sexy when you say things like that.”
“You’re not kissing me.”
“You’re not kissing me either.”
Mark ventures, “So this is one of those things where you’re waiting for me to make the first move?”
Eduardo yawns. “Pretty much.”
“See, why-why don’t you just say that up front? I don’t like that. I’m not a mind reader, and I don’t expect other people to be.”
“Because it means more,” Eduardo explains, “knowing you’re doing something because you feel like it and not just because it’s expected of you.”
Mark turns to him and says, “When have I ever done what’s expected of me?”
Eduardo’s pauses, but then Mark can feel his eyes on his face. He says, “Just fucking kiss me already.”
Mark obeys. First they're kissing loudly, smacking sounds echoing through the dark, until the smacking turns to panting and Mark rolls on top of Eduardo, tries to rut against him. Eduardo pushes him off and puts his hand down Mark’s boxers, teeth nipping at his jaw.
He breathes heavy to Mark, “I want to suck it, okay?”
Mark’s showing no objection whatsoever to that, so Eduardo’s head disappears beneath the blankets. He gasps when he feels the warmth of Eduardo’s mouth lowering around him, toggles between watching it rise and fall from above the blankets and pulling them up to futilely strain his eyes at the source of the wetslick sounds there.
He says, “I’m going to come,” and Eduardo hums, so Mark elaborates, “Really hard, you might want to-”
He pulls off right as the first wave of pleasure hits Mark. He strokes him through it, wiping slobber from his mouth as Mark whines and pushes into his hand.
Eduardo’s face appears from beneath the blankets. He hedges, “My turn, right?”
Mark actually honest-to-god snorts and tugs Eduardo’s pants down.
After, he asks Mark if he wants to go out again.
This time, Mark says yes please.
*
Eduardo appears in Mark’s doorway. “Where’s Cora?”
“Hello to you too,” Mark responds wryly, eyes never leaving the screen.
“Hi. Where’s Cora?”
“Do I look like a cat GPS?”
Eduardo clucks his tongue and retreats. Mark can hear him in the common room calling to her, little kissy sounds that make Mark look at WYSIWYG and say, “You’re so lucky you got me instead.”
WYSIWYG is too busy gnawing on a cord to hear it.
Mark pauses at that thought and swivels his chair, snaps once at WYSIWYG. “I’ll put your little ass back in the kennel,” he warns.
He stills and drops the cord, roams for an aimless moment until he sees Mark’s shoelace.
He settles for it.
Mark goes back to coding, and even though he can never be totally wired in-not with a three month old kitten gnawing his cords-things feel normal enough.
Eduardo emerges with Cora trotting close on his heels, her head all angled. “She was in the bathroom again. I keep telling you guys to shut that door.”
Mark grunts but doesn’t stop coding.
At some point, WYSIWYG jumps in his lap and decides he’s ready to sleep.
He does this to Mark a lot-he’ll just look down and WYSIWYG will be there, and Mark won’t remember him ever jumping up.
His warm weight and occasional purr is weirdly comfortable.
By eleven, Mark can hear Eduardo on the bed behind him, growing restless. “Take a break,” he whines.
“Just let me upload this,” Mark promises.
Eduardo comes to stand behind him, peers at the screen over his shoulder. “What’s new today with the site?”
“Just bugfixes actually.”
“Did you fix the thing where I can’t upload big pictures of Cora?”
Mark nods and goes into a convoluted explanation about exif data and encryption, and to Eduardo’s credit, he almost looks like he cares.
Turns out, Harvard students having pets is more common than Eduardo or Mark expected. They’re not always snuck on campus, of course. Sometimes they're just left behind at home and end up being missed or something. Once a little bit of word got around about the kittens, people started showing up wanting to see them and asking about Cora.
First, Mark just made a blog. And it’s not like it was for him or anything. He just wanted to give Eduardo a place to brag about Cora and upload pictures, but then Dustin wanted to make a post, and then Chris made a web comic, and pretty soon, Mark had an idea.
A site to connect the world with their pets.
“How many users are we up to?” Eduardo asks, and Mark closes the laptop, stares down at the ball of black and white fur sleeping on his legs.
“Twelve hundred.”
Eduardo looks surprised. “That’s like, doubled since Wednesday, right?” At Mark nods, he looks thoughtful. “We should set a goal for advertising. Like three thousand?”
Mark disagrees, “A hundred thousand.”
Eduardo’s eyes get big. “Geez, you aim high, don’t you What about like… ten thousand.”
“Ninety, best offer.”
Eduardo gives a put upon sigh and lies back, pushes a hand through Cora’s long fur. “Eighty and I get laid tonight.”
Mark smirks.
*
Eduardo’s hovering over Mark, breathing hot into his mouth as they kiss. Mark spreads his legs further and pushes into his thrust, feels his toes curl when Eduardo’s hips clap against his thighs.
Mark says, “Harder,” and Eduardo adjusts, braces his hands against the pillows and begins pushing into Mark with enough force to make the bed hit against the wall.
He’s looking at Mark with a really intense, breathless expression.
It’s not uncomfortable.
With every collision of the bed against the wall, Mark’s eyes squeeze shut, a grunt pushing between his teeth. Then Eduardo pulls away from Mark’s face and sits back on his heels, holds his hips and snaps them to his body in time with his thrusts.
Mark squeezes his eyes closed again, biting down on a swollen lip.
Eduardo’s hair tickles his chest and Mark arches toward it.
Until he realizes it’s not Eduardo.
Mark opens his eyes and WYSIWYG is sitting in the middle of his heaving chest, cleaning a paw. “Get off me!”
Eduardo freezes and is about to look at Mark with a very confused but you asked for it expression until he sees the kitten.
Mark says, “I thought you put them in the kennel!” and Eduardo looks around, as if disoriented.
“I did, I swear!”
WYSIWYG has this habit.
The first time it happened, it was hilarious to pretty much everyone but Mark, who lost his boner and was effectively cheated out of a good orgasm. The second time it happened, it was annoying. The third, fourth, and fifth times it happened, it became clear that WYSIWYG was possibly a bit of pervert.
Or as Eduardo likes to speculate, “He just wants all of your attention.”
Eduardo gets up and pulls on his pants, wrenches the door open and leaves the room.
Mark shoves WYSIWYG off the bed. “Cockblocking freak!”
He burrows into the leg of Mark’s shed pants, turning so that his head peeks out, and resumes cleaning.
Eduardo appears again, says incredulously, “It’s unzipped.”
They share a look and don’t need to further conjecture on the culprit behind the escape.
They chime in unison, “Wicket.”
She’s scarily smart and Mark doesn’t think it’s much of a stretch. They’ve been witness to her opening doors, after all.
They resolve to shop for another kennel over the weekend. Once Wicket’s found a vulnerability, all hope is lost.
Mark’s almost asleep, Eduardo’s arm draped over his side, when WYSIWYG sneaks onto the bed again. Mark can feel him turn in a circle before delicately lowering himself to lie down, right next to Mark’s face.
Mark pets his head and he purrs.
He’s almost asleep again when he’s jarred awake by the realization that he’s cuddling WYSIWYG and Eduardo is cuddling him.
Mark stares into the dark and curses.
*