[Pinstripes - Lifetimes] Strays
Title: Strays
Story/Character: Pinstripes: The Kitten 'Verse / Caleb & the Twins
Rating: PG
word count: 1,393
(The Pinstrip 'verse, which is already sheer multi-mashup crack, has now spawned its own spinoff crackfics in the form of me and Aster postulating that reincarnation is totally an accepted given in this world and then wondering what interesting combinations you get later on as the main cast reincarnates in new and interesting ways. These ideas are breeding like rabid bunnies on steroids. Expect more.)
She found them late one evening on the lee side of Curtis Wharf, wedged up in a pathetic lump between crates to try to get out of the pouring rain. The right thing to do would have been to chuck them out of the way - or possibly just to ditch them right over the side of the wharf into the autumn frigid waters below and call it a mercy stroke - but she'd always been too damned soft hearted and when one of them peeled open an eye that shone bright grass green in the light of the street lamp she'd cursed herself for a fool and taken off her own coat to bundle them up with instead. It'd been a long, cold, wet walk back to the street car line, and a longer ride home, and by the time she reached her flat she was as chilled through and dripping as her new charges.
She left them on the couch and turned yesterday's leftover soup onto her little portable burner to heat, keeping an eye on it while she towel dried her hair. When it was ready they were still right where she had left them, wrapped up in her coat, but the smell of soup drew them out when she shoved a bowl in front of them. She ate her own supper on her feet, regarding her unexpected guests, and when she was done she went back for another towel because dripping on her coat and the couch wasn't helping anything.
The soup, licked right down to the last drop from the bowl, seemed to do the trick; there was a lot more complaining and struggling during the toweling off then there had been before. By the time she was done it was well past time for good little dock hands to be sound asleep if they wanted to be fresh for another day of schlepping goods on and off and around the docks, but she had her first good look at her new acquisitions.
They were boys, alright, golden honey blond with streaks of white and tan running through it underneath all the wet and grime, and had matching green eyes that blinked at her solemnly when she tumbled them back onto the couch. She was no judge of age but they'd eaten the soup well enough, so she figured that was alright. She made up a spot on the couch with a towel and a spare blanket, put them squarely into it, and then told herself anything else could be taken care of in the morning and stumbled off to bed.
Halfway through the night she woke to the pitter patter of little feet on the floorboards and the ruckus of something far too small for the job trying to crawl into her bed. She shoved them off, rolled over, and hauled her pillow over her head.
She woke up the next morning with one small lump tucked against her hip and the other making a fragile warm spot, so light she could barely feel it, right on her chest bone between her breasts. Her first deep breath woke the little thing up, prompting a monstrous rumble from such a tiny little thing, and that started the other one up in a vibrating cacophony that she could feel all the way through the bones in her ears. It was dark still, a full hour before first light but more than time for her to be getting up, but she wasted a few moments all the same, just laying in the dark and listening to that rumble before she had to oust them both out again and start the new day.
The morning newsprint was torn into strips and went into the shallow lid of a packing box. Thank the lucky gods, they seemed to know what to do with it. She shared some of the milk from her cereal, left a bowl of water out, and hoped that would do until she could get something better, maybe hit up a corner grocer on her lunch break. She was out the door and halfway down the hall to the stairs before she thought better of it - she knew better, damn it, they'd have to go sooner rather than later and at least it'd stopped raining. She could turn them out at the alley and they'd be better off in town, with garbage cans to rummage through, then they'd be at the docks.
Except when she stormed back in, cursing every lost second and the hustle she'd have to make to get to the street car, they were curled up in a fluffy ball of tan and gold right where she'd dumped them the night before on the couch, so tangled together you couldn't tell where one started and the other left off. When she slammed through the door one of them lifted a head, little ears twitching, and meeped questioningly at her with big blinky eyes and damn it, she hated when the guys on her work shift were right. She really was a soft touch.
In the end she compromised and left the kitchen window open - it looked out over the alley and the fire escape shouldn't pose much of a problem for anything built for climbing. If they were gone when she came home, she reasoned, then that's what the Gods wanted, for wild things to be out in the wild, and no harm done for giving them a spot of shelter during the storm.
She ended up running to catch the street car, barely making it, and slid into work just before the bell. From there it was the same as ever, boxes and crates and palettes and inventory from the ships coming in, and it was easy to forget anything but the next job, the next arrival, and all the checklists of things to be done.
She stopped by the grocer on her lunch break, as much because she was out of shampoo as to pick up a little bag of something that promised it was chicken flavored kibble.
Between one thing and another she'd nearly put it out of her mind before she climbed heavily up the steps to her flat that night. The empty nest of blanket on the couch brought it all back, and she set her bag down and went looking. The window was still open, the flat cool and a little damp from it, the nest empty and no noise anywhere. She didn't have much hope and told herself firmly that it was for the best, but she went around the flat looking in any corners that might look comfy to half-grown furballs anyways. "Here, boys," she called, feeling more than a little ridiculous. "Hey, boys, anyone home?"
There wasn't any answer of meeps or scrabbling paws and she sighed and shook her head - honestly, it was one less thing to worry about and just as well - but when she shouldered open the door to her bedroom there they were, curled up in the same tangle or close enough to atop her pillow. They yawned identical little meeps of curling pink tongue and sharp fangs and twitched their ears and stretched out little needle tipped paws as though to say Where have you been all day? and Come pet us!
It made her warmer in ways that were patently ridiculous, but after a long day on the dock she figured she might be owed a little ridiculous comfort. So she scooped them up - one meeped protest and one didn't - and flopped back across the bed with a double armful of tiny kitten. It only took a fingertip rubbed on the downy fuzz of their skulls between their ears to start both of them up in that larger than life purr and that, she decided, was a damned nice thing to come home to - no questions, no demands, no conversation or human politics, just a rumble vibration that meant simple contented happiness.
She had found them late one evening on the lee side of Curtis Wharf, on a night when the autumn storms were pissing down rain. She named the larger one Curt and his smaller brother who always hung back behind him Lee, and thought herself rather clever. The cats, if they had any opinion of it, never said.
Story/Character: Pinstripes: The Kitten 'Verse / Caleb & the Twins
Rating: PG
word count: 1,393
(The Pinstrip 'verse, which is already sheer multi-mashup crack, has now spawned its own spinoff crackfics in the form of me and Aster postulating that reincarnation is totally an accepted given in this world and then wondering what interesting combinations you get later on as the main cast reincarnates in new and interesting ways. These ideas are breeding like rabid bunnies on steroids. Expect more.)
She found them late one evening on the lee side of Curtis Wharf, wedged up in a pathetic lump between crates to try to get out of the pouring rain. The right thing to do would have been to chuck them out of the way - or possibly just to ditch them right over the side of the wharf into the autumn frigid waters below and call it a mercy stroke - but she'd always been too damned soft hearted and when one of them peeled open an eye that shone bright grass green in the light of the street lamp she'd cursed herself for a fool and taken off her own coat to bundle them up with instead. It'd been a long, cold, wet walk back to the street car line, and a longer ride home, and by the time she reached her flat she was as chilled through and dripping as her new charges.
She left them on the couch and turned yesterday's leftover soup onto her little portable burner to heat, keeping an eye on it while she towel dried her hair. When it was ready they were still right where she had left them, wrapped up in her coat, but the smell of soup drew them out when she shoved a bowl in front of them. She ate her own supper on her feet, regarding her unexpected guests, and when she was done she went back for another towel because dripping on her coat and the couch wasn't helping anything.
The soup, licked right down to the last drop from the bowl, seemed to do the trick; there was a lot more complaining and struggling during the toweling off then there had been before. By the time she was done it was well past time for good little dock hands to be sound asleep if they wanted to be fresh for another day of schlepping goods on and off and around the docks, but she had her first good look at her new acquisitions.
They were boys, alright, golden honey blond with streaks of white and tan running through it underneath all the wet and grime, and had matching green eyes that blinked at her solemnly when she tumbled them back onto the couch. She was no judge of age but they'd eaten the soup well enough, so she figured that was alright. She made up a spot on the couch with a towel and a spare blanket, put them squarely into it, and then told herself anything else could be taken care of in the morning and stumbled off to bed.
Halfway through the night she woke to the pitter patter of little feet on the floorboards and the ruckus of something far too small for the job trying to crawl into her bed. She shoved them off, rolled over, and hauled her pillow over her head.
She woke up the next morning with one small lump tucked against her hip and the other making a fragile warm spot, so light she could barely feel it, right on her chest bone between her breasts. Her first deep breath woke the little thing up, prompting a monstrous rumble from such a tiny little thing, and that started the other one up in a vibrating cacophony that she could feel all the way through the bones in her ears. It was dark still, a full hour before first light but more than time for her to be getting up, but she wasted a few moments all the same, just laying in the dark and listening to that rumble before she had to oust them both out again and start the new day.
The morning newsprint was torn into strips and went into the shallow lid of a packing box. Thank the lucky gods, they seemed to know what to do with it. She shared some of the milk from her cereal, left a bowl of water out, and hoped that would do until she could get something better, maybe hit up a corner grocer on her lunch break. She was out the door and halfway down the hall to the stairs before she thought better of it - she knew better, damn it, they'd have to go sooner rather than later and at least it'd stopped raining. She could turn them out at the alley and they'd be better off in town, with garbage cans to rummage through, then they'd be at the docks.
Except when she stormed back in, cursing every lost second and the hustle she'd have to make to get to the street car, they were curled up in a fluffy ball of tan and gold right where she'd dumped them the night before on the couch, so tangled together you couldn't tell where one started and the other left off. When she slammed through the door one of them lifted a head, little ears twitching, and meeped questioningly at her with big blinky eyes and damn it, she hated when the guys on her work shift were right. She really was a soft touch.
In the end she compromised and left the kitchen window open - it looked out over the alley and the fire escape shouldn't pose much of a problem for anything built for climbing. If they were gone when she came home, she reasoned, then that's what the Gods wanted, for wild things to be out in the wild, and no harm done for giving them a spot of shelter during the storm.
She ended up running to catch the street car, barely making it, and slid into work just before the bell. From there it was the same as ever, boxes and crates and palettes and inventory from the ships coming in, and it was easy to forget anything but the next job, the next arrival, and all the checklists of things to be done.
She stopped by the grocer on her lunch break, as much because she was out of shampoo as to pick up a little bag of something that promised it was chicken flavored kibble.
Between one thing and another she'd nearly put it out of her mind before she climbed heavily up the steps to her flat that night. The empty nest of blanket on the couch brought it all back, and she set her bag down and went looking. The window was still open, the flat cool and a little damp from it, the nest empty and no noise anywhere. She didn't have much hope and told herself firmly that it was for the best, but she went around the flat looking in any corners that might look comfy to half-grown furballs anyways. "Here, boys," she called, feeling more than a little ridiculous. "Hey, boys, anyone home?"
There wasn't any answer of meeps or scrabbling paws and she sighed and shook her head - honestly, it was one less thing to worry about and just as well - but when she shouldered open the door to her bedroom there they were, curled up in the same tangle or close enough to atop her pillow. They yawned identical little meeps of curling pink tongue and sharp fangs and twitched their ears and stretched out little needle tipped paws as though to say Where have you been all day? and Come pet us!
It made her warmer in ways that were patently ridiculous, but after a long day on the dock she figured she might be owed a little ridiculous comfort. So she scooped them up - one meeped protest and one didn't - and flopped back across the bed with a double armful of tiny kitten. It only took a fingertip rubbed on the downy fuzz of their skulls between their ears to start both of them up in that larger than life purr and that, she decided, was a damned nice thing to come home to - no questions, no demands, no conversation or human politics, just a rumble vibration that meant simple contented happiness.
She had found them late one evening on the lee side of Curtis Wharf, on a night when the autumn storms were pissing down rain. She named the larger one Curt and his smaller brother who always hung back behind him Lee, and thought herself rather clever. The cats, if they had any opinion of it, never said.