[multifandom] Free to a Good Home
Title: Free to a Good Home
Fandom: B.A.P./IU
Rating: G
Genre: fluff
Word count: 2,764
Pairing: IU/Yongguk
Summary: Yongguk likes small things, small like Jieun herself is, so in a way it's not really surprising.
Notes: In Which Emily Writes People She Doesn’t Know That Well. (THIS IS ALL MIA’S FAULT SHE ENCOURAGED ME TO WRITE CUTE PEOPLE SHIP)
Based on Actual Life Experiences in college. When will Emily stop writing college aus? Never! this is completely unbeta’d i don’t even care whatever i wrote it it’s done oh my god i am so glad to be done with sncj
When Jieun pulls out her phone to unmute it after her early class, she finds a text from Yongguk waiting on the screen for her.
cant make it to breakfst w you, it reads. stuck in my rm
She hangs back just inside the door, out of the cold, to text back before she puts her gloves on.
You're not sick are you? Why does it look like you're typing with 1 hand?
It takes a little while before she gets a response, by which time she has already made it to the little cafe standing next to the bookstore.
come n see
She sighs. He can't be sick, at any rate, or he'd be trying to warn her away like he'd caught the plague, even if it were only the tiniest cold. She's out of ideas now. Jieun makes sure to get enough food for two before heading back out. She's going to get her breakfast date one way or another.
She's wondered many times before why her boyfriend prefers to continue living in the dorms rather than finding himself an apartment, the way she had. Yongguk always tries to explain it to her by saying that he likes seeing all the new students coming in at the start of each year, and she can only assume he actually likes having the constant company of a roommate. Jieun likes having the sanctity of her own space, and she likes the location of her apartment, only five minutes from most of her classes.
What she doesn't like is having to wait outside for someone to open the door for her, because her boyfriend had decided to live in a passcoded building. The door swings open violently and Jieun has to jump aside to avoid being bowled over by Yongguk's roommate on his way to class.
Himchan forgoes the far-too-mundane "hello," instead choosing to look balefully down at her for a long moment. "He's gone too far," he finally pronounces. "Make him stop."
"Stop what?" she asks, but Himchan just flings up his hands and walks away. She would demand an explanation, but if she stands there much longer, the door alarm will go off, so she resigns herself to finding out on her own.
Yongguk never locks his door, so Jieun is able to walk right in to the sight of her boyfriend lying on his bed in full winter scarf, coat, and hat. His gloves are off though, lying on the floor where he'd dropped them, because he is currently occupied in stroking what appears to be a fuzzy, gray tennis ball.
"Oh, you're here," he whispers. "Can you take her? I think I'm about to overheat."
And that's how Jieun finds herself in a college dorm room at nine-thirty on a Thursday morning, with a lapful of sleeping kitten.
"I found her when I went out to meet you," explains Yongguk, shedding layers of clothing until he's left in a tshirt and jeans. "She was crying under a bush."
"And you brought her back here?" Jieun asks. He nods. "Why?"
"It's cold."
Now that she's sitting on the bed and he's not, he towers over her even more than usual, and when he grins, all teeth and gums, it looks like the sun shining down from a far away sky. He crouches down next to her leg, and when he reaches out to pet the kitten again, it fits completely under one of his hands. He likes small things, small like Jieun herself is, so in a way it's not really surprising that he would take in a stray kitten, in spite of dorm rules.
"Is your roommate okay with having a cat in his room?" Jieun asks dubiously. "He looked-" she tries to find a kind word for it "-ruffled."
"Himchan's just upset she made a mess on his bed when I put her down," says Yongguk, looking sheepish. "I told him I'd do all the laundry, but you know he always overreacts. He'll come around when he's calmed down."
She has her doubts about that, but when the kitten stirs in her lap and yawns, tiny pink tongue curling, the look on Yongguk's face is so enchanted that she just doesn't have the heart. Jieun directs him to the to-go boxes of food, and they eat their way through it all. The kitten sleeps the entire time, and Yongguk sits on the floor, continuing to pet her between bites of pastry.
"What are you going to name her?" Jieun asks.
Yongguk's hum is like a low rumble. "What about IU?" he suggests, thinking of the nickname some of Jieun's friends have for her.
"You can't name a cat after me," she says.
"Why not?"
"It'll get confusing," she says firmly. "No."
Yongguk stops to think, his fingers slowing in the kitten's fur, and the little fuzzball is quite vocal about making her displeasure known.
"What a little princess," Jieun laughs. Yongguk looks up.
"What about that, then?" he asks.
"What, Princess?" Jieun looks at the kitten, who has curled up again, content with the renewed attention. "Well, it'll be easy to remember."
Yongguk smiles, but it fades just a little when he looks at the clock.
"I've got class in fifteen minutes," he says. "I don't want to leave her alone, but..."
He's got a full day, she knows, with too many important classes for him to skip them all, but it's a long time to leave a kitten this young alone in an unfamiliar place.
"I don't have anywhere to be until three," she says. "I guess I could stay until then." He looks so pleased by her offer that she feels compelled to clarify. "I'm leaving at three," she says. "And I need some sort of litter-box, at least."
"I'll text someone to bring stuff," he says quickly. "Are you sure it's okay?"
"I've got reading to do anyway," she says. He's still looking at her that way he does sometimes, like she's brought him the greatest present he's ever gotten, or maybe like she is the present. Either way, it never fails to make her melt a little inside. "You're going to be late," she prompts him when he shows signs of lingering.
He kisses her on the cheek, then throws his coat back on before slinging his backpack over one shoulder, but he still stops in the door to snap a picture on his phone.
"Hey," he says. From the look on his face, she can tell he's about to say something horrifically cheesy. "I've got two princesses now."
"Go!" she orders, but when the door closes she's laughing along with him.
It doesn't take long before Jongup appears with a box lid, a couple garbage bags, and a container of cat litter, as well as some cat food. Jieun thinks he's nothing if not thorough.
"This ought to last, at least for a little while," he says while he sets up the makeshift litter-box.
"Thanks," she says. "I hear she's made one mess already today."
"Yeah, Himchan hyung told me about that," Jongup laughs. "He didn't sound too happy."
They watch Princess, who is now up and exploring the floor by the bookshelf, for a while until Jieun hears the door open.
"This is the secret police," Daehyun says, in what sounds like a Darth Vader voice. "Hand over your contraband!"
"You scared her!" says Jongup reproachfully, trying to coax Princess out from under the heater.
"Oops," Daehyun says.
Youngjae waves at Jieun from behind his shoulder, and she wonders exactly how many more people her boyfriend has told about his secret kitten stash and, more importantly, how many more of them are going to show up before three o'clock comes around.
“Are you putting up missing cat posters or anything?” Jongup asks as the two others settle in on the floor. “She doesn’t have a collar, right? No one’s going to be looking for her?”
“Actually,” says Daehyun, who, as usual, seems to know all the campus gossip. “I heard they found a mother with a litter back behind the building earlier, but they only found four kittens when everyone who’d seen them said there were five.”
“So she’s probably one of those, then, huh?” says Jieun. She watches Princess weave in and out of the maze of legs now covering the floor. “Who else knows she’s here?”
“Well,” Youngjae muses, “the four of us, Yongguk hyung… and whoever else he showed that picture to.” He grins. “It’s a really nice picture. He’s very proud of it.”
Jieun groans. At this rate, they’ll have the whole school here to see by the end of the day.
Luckily, no one else appears until Yongguk himself returns around two-thirty, apparently having decided that that was enough learning for one day. He makes a beeline straight for Princess, who is basking in all the attention. Jieun, who had set aside her book when he walked in, looks affronted.
"I've been replaced," she says. "I'm in second place."
Jongup pats her shoulder comfortingly, and Yongguk looks up guiltily from where he's dropped to his knees next to the cat.
"You're not second place," he says.
He gets up to prove it, sitting next to her on the bed and pulling her into his lap, long arms wrapping all the way around to pull her back to his chest and kiss below her ear. Jieun can't help but laugh at the scandalized look on Daehyun's face.
"If you don't like it, don't look," she says and sticks her tongue out at him.
"I think I've figured out the solution to your problem," Youngjae changes the subject.
"What problem?" Yongguk asks.
"How you aren't allowed to have a cat in the dorms," Youngjae reminds him.
"Oh, right."
"Yeah. You're allowed to have fish though, right?" Youngjae spreads his hands in triumph. "Just say you have a land fish."
"A land fish," Yongguk sounds contemplative.
Jongup scratches his headz "I don't know if just calling it something different really-"
"No, hush!" Daehyun claps a hand over his mouth. "It is decided. This is now a land fish." There's a knock on the door, and he gets up to answer it before anyone else can move. "Hello!" he says loudly to the newcomer. "Have you come to see the land fish?"
"Land fish?" says a voice that Jieun recognizes as Jonghyun's. "No. What's a land fish? Has Yongguk finally embraced his amphibious nature?"
Jonghyun comes into the room, stopping dead at the sight of all the people. "Wow," he says. "If I'd known, I would have brought a cake. Hi, IU. What's a land fish?"
Jieun waves back. "Hi," she says, wriggling out of her boyfriend's lap. "This is a land fish."
She picks up Princess and hands her to Jonghyun, whose eyes go wide and mouth drops open.
"Oh, wow," he says again. "She's tiny."
He has to crouch down when Princess tries to escape, so that she doesn't fall all the way to the floor. The tiny gray kitten stalks her way back over to Yongguk, winding herself around his legs and meowing loudly to be picked up.
"Cats like to be high up," says Yongguk, as Princess climbs to perch on his shoulder.
"Ha ha," says Jonghyun. "I'm stealing your girlfriend for practice."
"Practice?"
"We have a duet," Jieun reminds him. "Every time I tell you, you act surprised."
"I didn't think you needed any more practice," he says. "You sounded fine to me."
"Nice save," whispers Daehyun.
"I'll be back later," Jieun pretends not to hear him, instead standing up on tiptoe to kiss Yongguk again without dislodging the kitten. She only mostly succeeds, but he barely even winces at the feeling of needle-sharp kitten claws through his shirt.
By the time she finishes gathering up her things, Yongguk is lying on the bed again. The others are taking turns tickling his feet, watching the kitten bounce up and down as he laughs. She rolls her eyes and leaves them to it.
Yongguk was right when he said that she knew the piece. She and Jonghyun have been practicing for a long time now, so it doesn't take them long to finish up, leaving time for a late lunch before they part ways, Jieun heading off to her evening class and Jonghyun going... wherever Jonghyun went.
She almost regrets keeping her phone in her lap during the lecture because every few minutes it would buzz again, new pictures pouring in of Princess playing, Yongguk's blurry foot in motion, Princess eating, the corner of Yongguk's smile as Princess nuzzled against his face. She spends the first full hour giggling at her lap, earning a sharp look from her professor at one point. She shuts off her phone on a picture of Princess curled up inside a beanie and tries to focus on taking notes instead.
She makes it back into the dorm building after class without too much difficulty, since it's the very beginning of the dinner hour and enough people are going in and out that the door never sits closed for more than a few minutes at a time. It's quiet inside the room and dark now that the sun's mostly dipped down below the horizon. The sky outside the window is pale pink and lavender. Everyone seems to have gone home.
"She's asleep," Yongguk's voice keeps her from turning the light on.
Even without seeing his face, Jieun can tell something's not right. She crosses to the bed, close enough now to see him lying on his side with the kitten curled up beside him. She sits down on the mattress and waits for him to go on. His hand is resting on the bed, fingers just brushing the fur between Princess's ears, and he doesn't look at Jieun when he speaks.
"Himchan came by the room again," he says finally. There's a long pause. "He's still upset about his bed."
Ah. She wondered if it might be something like that. “He doesn’t want her to stay?”
He shakes his head and says nothing. Jieun sighs and lies down on the bed next to him. It’s a tight squeeze with Princess there between them, but the kitten doesn’t seem to mind. If anything, she welcomes the addition of another warm body, stretching out to her full, tiny length and blinking sleepily until Jieun starts to scratch her belly. Yongguk’s mouth curves slightly while he watches them, and Jieun can tell that he would rather cut off his own arm than give away this kitten now. She might regret this later, but for now…
“Maybe I can keep her in my apartment,” she suggests.
Yongguk looks up. The hope in his eyes makes her want to go out and buy a cat bed right now. If she handed him the world on a silver platter, he couldn’t possibly look happier. What makes it all the worse is that this is how he looks at her every day, and every single time it makes her feel the same way.
"Can you do that?" he asks. "Are you even allowed to have cats in your apartment?"
"I don't know," she says. "I can ask. And anyway, it's not a cat, it's a land fish, remember?"
He laughs out loud then, deep and rich, and Princess opens one eye to look at him. She lets out a petulant meow.
"Sorry," he says, scratching her belly, but he's still laughing.
Princess goes back to sleep under their combined ministrations, and Jieun takes this opportunity to scoot closer. Yongguk brings up a hand to rest against the side of her face, brushing her cheek with his thumb and she can see his perpetual smile in the fading light.
"Hey," he says.
"Hmm?"
"I've still got two princesses."
She laughs and he laughs too until he kisses her instead. He keeps kissing her until there's an indignant squeak from somewhere between them. Princess has woken up and, seeing that they are busily occupied doing something other than petting her, she climbs over their arms to demand the attention currently being denied her.
Yongguk envelops them both in a hug, burying his face in kitten fur and in Jieun’s hair. Jieun can feel the vibrations of his laugh echoing through her own chest, sending ripples of happiness through her as well, all to the tune of one pleased kitten’s purr.
________________________
Notes: Yes, I did keep contraband kittens in my dorm room. Yes, we did call them “land fish.” This particular kitten is based partially on one of my current cats, Moira, who is a complete princess.
Fandom: B.A.P./IU
Rating: G
Genre: fluff
Word count: 2,764
Pairing: IU/Yongguk
Summary: Yongguk likes small things, small like Jieun herself is, so in a way it's not really surprising.
Notes: In Which Emily Writes People She Doesn’t Know That Well. (THIS IS ALL MIA’S FAULT SHE ENCOURAGED ME TO WRITE CUTE PEOPLE SHIP)
Based on Actual Life Experiences in college. When will Emily stop writing college aus? Never! this is completely unbeta’d i don’t even care whatever i wrote it it’s done oh my god i am so glad to be done with sncj
When Jieun pulls out her phone to unmute it after her early class, she finds a text from Yongguk waiting on the screen for her.
cant make it to breakfst w you, it reads. stuck in my rm
She hangs back just inside the door, out of the cold, to text back before she puts her gloves on.
You're not sick are you? Why does it look like you're typing with 1 hand?
It takes a little while before she gets a response, by which time she has already made it to the little cafe standing next to the bookstore.
come n see
She sighs. He can't be sick, at any rate, or he'd be trying to warn her away like he'd caught the plague, even if it were only the tiniest cold. She's out of ideas now. Jieun makes sure to get enough food for two before heading back out. She's going to get her breakfast date one way or another.
She's wondered many times before why her boyfriend prefers to continue living in the dorms rather than finding himself an apartment, the way she had. Yongguk always tries to explain it to her by saying that he likes seeing all the new students coming in at the start of each year, and she can only assume he actually likes having the constant company of a roommate. Jieun likes having the sanctity of her own space, and she likes the location of her apartment, only five minutes from most of her classes.
What she doesn't like is having to wait outside for someone to open the door for her, because her boyfriend had decided to live in a passcoded building. The door swings open violently and Jieun has to jump aside to avoid being bowled over by Yongguk's roommate on his way to class.
Himchan forgoes the far-too-mundane "hello," instead choosing to look balefully down at her for a long moment. "He's gone too far," he finally pronounces. "Make him stop."
"Stop what?" she asks, but Himchan just flings up his hands and walks away. She would demand an explanation, but if she stands there much longer, the door alarm will go off, so she resigns herself to finding out on her own.
Yongguk never locks his door, so Jieun is able to walk right in to the sight of her boyfriend lying on his bed in full winter scarf, coat, and hat. His gloves are off though, lying on the floor where he'd dropped them, because he is currently occupied in stroking what appears to be a fuzzy, gray tennis ball.
"Oh, you're here," he whispers. "Can you take her? I think I'm about to overheat."
And that's how Jieun finds herself in a college dorm room at nine-thirty on a Thursday morning, with a lapful of sleeping kitten.
"I found her when I went out to meet you," explains Yongguk, shedding layers of clothing until he's left in a tshirt and jeans. "She was crying under a bush."
"And you brought her back here?" Jieun asks. He nods. "Why?"
"It's cold."
Now that she's sitting on the bed and he's not, he towers over her even more than usual, and when he grins, all teeth and gums, it looks like the sun shining down from a far away sky. He crouches down next to her leg, and when he reaches out to pet the kitten again, it fits completely under one of his hands. He likes small things, small like Jieun herself is, so in a way it's not really surprising that he would take in a stray kitten, in spite of dorm rules.
"Is your roommate okay with having a cat in his room?" Jieun asks dubiously. "He looked-" she tries to find a kind word for it "-ruffled."
"Himchan's just upset she made a mess on his bed when I put her down," says Yongguk, looking sheepish. "I told him I'd do all the laundry, but you know he always overreacts. He'll come around when he's calmed down."
She has her doubts about that, but when the kitten stirs in her lap and yawns, tiny pink tongue curling, the look on Yongguk's face is so enchanted that she just doesn't have the heart. Jieun directs him to the to-go boxes of food, and they eat their way through it all. The kitten sleeps the entire time, and Yongguk sits on the floor, continuing to pet her between bites of pastry.
"What are you going to name her?" Jieun asks.
Yongguk's hum is like a low rumble. "What about IU?" he suggests, thinking of the nickname some of Jieun's friends have for her.
"You can't name a cat after me," she says.
"Why not?"
"It'll get confusing," she says firmly. "No."
Yongguk stops to think, his fingers slowing in the kitten's fur, and the little fuzzball is quite vocal about making her displeasure known.
"What a little princess," Jieun laughs. Yongguk looks up.
"What about that, then?" he asks.
"What, Princess?" Jieun looks at the kitten, who has curled up again, content with the renewed attention. "Well, it'll be easy to remember."
Yongguk smiles, but it fades just a little when he looks at the clock.
"I've got class in fifteen minutes," he says. "I don't want to leave her alone, but..."
He's got a full day, she knows, with too many important classes for him to skip them all, but it's a long time to leave a kitten this young alone in an unfamiliar place.
"I don't have anywhere to be until three," she says. "I guess I could stay until then." He looks so pleased by her offer that she feels compelled to clarify. "I'm leaving at three," she says. "And I need some sort of litter-box, at least."
"I'll text someone to bring stuff," he says quickly. "Are you sure it's okay?"
"I've got reading to do anyway," she says. He's still looking at her that way he does sometimes, like she's brought him the greatest present he's ever gotten, or maybe like she is the present. Either way, it never fails to make her melt a little inside. "You're going to be late," she prompts him when he shows signs of lingering.
He kisses her on the cheek, then throws his coat back on before slinging his backpack over one shoulder, but he still stops in the door to snap a picture on his phone.
"Hey," he says. From the look on his face, she can tell he's about to say something horrifically cheesy. "I've got two princesses now."
"Go!" she orders, but when the door closes she's laughing along with him.
It doesn't take long before Jongup appears with a box lid, a couple garbage bags, and a container of cat litter, as well as some cat food. Jieun thinks he's nothing if not thorough.
"This ought to last, at least for a little while," he says while he sets up the makeshift litter-box.
"Thanks," she says. "I hear she's made one mess already today."
"Yeah, Himchan hyung told me about that," Jongup laughs. "He didn't sound too happy."
They watch Princess, who is now up and exploring the floor by the bookshelf, for a while until Jieun hears the door open.
"This is the secret police," Daehyun says, in what sounds like a Darth Vader voice. "Hand over your contraband!"
"You scared her!" says Jongup reproachfully, trying to coax Princess out from under the heater.
"Oops," Daehyun says.
Youngjae waves at Jieun from behind his shoulder, and she wonders exactly how many more people her boyfriend has told about his secret kitten stash and, more importantly, how many more of them are going to show up before three o'clock comes around.
“Are you putting up missing cat posters or anything?” Jongup asks as the two others settle in on the floor. “She doesn’t have a collar, right? No one’s going to be looking for her?”
“Actually,” says Daehyun, who, as usual, seems to know all the campus gossip. “I heard they found a mother with a litter back behind the building earlier, but they only found four kittens when everyone who’d seen them said there were five.”
“So she’s probably one of those, then, huh?” says Jieun. She watches Princess weave in and out of the maze of legs now covering the floor. “Who else knows she’s here?”
“Well,” Youngjae muses, “the four of us, Yongguk hyung… and whoever else he showed that picture to.” He grins. “It’s a really nice picture. He’s very proud of it.”
Jieun groans. At this rate, they’ll have the whole school here to see by the end of the day.
Luckily, no one else appears until Yongguk himself returns around two-thirty, apparently having decided that that was enough learning for one day. He makes a beeline straight for Princess, who is basking in all the attention. Jieun, who had set aside her book when he walked in, looks affronted.
"I've been replaced," she says. "I'm in second place."
Jongup pats her shoulder comfortingly, and Yongguk looks up guiltily from where he's dropped to his knees next to the cat.
"You're not second place," he says.
He gets up to prove it, sitting next to her on the bed and pulling her into his lap, long arms wrapping all the way around to pull her back to his chest and kiss below her ear. Jieun can't help but laugh at the scandalized look on Daehyun's face.
"If you don't like it, don't look," she says and sticks her tongue out at him.
"I think I've figured out the solution to your problem," Youngjae changes the subject.
"What problem?" Yongguk asks.
"How you aren't allowed to have a cat in the dorms," Youngjae reminds him.
"Oh, right."
"Yeah. You're allowed to have fish though, right?" Youngjae spreads his hands in triumph. "Just say you have a land fish."
"A land fish," Yongguk sounds contemplative.
Jongup scratches his headz "I don't know if just calling it something different really-"
"No, hush!" Daehyun claps a hand over his mouth. "It is decided. This is now a land fish." There's a knock on the door, and he gets up to answer it before anyone else can move. "Hello!" he says loudly to the newcomer. "Have you come to see the land fish?"
"Land fish?" says a voice that Jieun recognizes as Jonghyun's. "No. What's a land fish? Has Yongguk finally embraced his amphibious nature?"
Jonghyun comes into the room, stopping dead at the sight of all the people. "Wow," he says. "If I'd known, I would have brought a cake. Hi, IU. What's a land fish?"
Jieun waves back. "Hi," she says, wriggling out of her boyfriend's lap. "This is a land fish."
She picks up Princess and hands her to Jonghyun, whose eyes go wide and mouth drops open.
"Oh, wow," he says again. "She's tiny."
He has to crouch down when Princess tries to escape, so that she doesn't fall all the way to the floor. The tiny gray kitten stalks her way back over to Yongguk, winding herself around his legs and meowing loudly to be picked up.
"Cats like to be high up," says Yongguk, as Princess climbs to perch on his shoulder.
"Ha ha," says Jonghyun. "I'm stealing your girlfriend for practice."
"Practice?"
"We have a duet," Jieun reminds him. "Every time I tell you, you act surprised."
"I didn't think you needed any more practice," he says. "You sounded fine to me."
"Nice save," whispers Daehyun.
"I'll be back later," Jieun pretends not to hear him, instead standing up on tiptoe to kiss Yongguk again without dislodging the kitten. She only mostly succeeds, but he barely even winces at the feeling of needle-sharp kitten claws through his shirt.
By the time she finishes gathering up her things, Yongguk is lying on the bed again. The others are taking turns tickling his feet, watching the kitten bounce up and down as he laughs. She rolls her eyes and leaves them to it.
Yongguk was right when he said that she knew the piece. She and Jonghyun have been practicing for a long time now, so it doesn't take them long to finish up, leaving time for a late lunch before they part ways, Jieun heading off to her evening class and Jonghyun going... wherever Jonghyun went.
She almost regrets keeping her phone in her lap during the lecture because every few minutes it would buzz again, new pictures pouring in of Princess playing, Yongguk's blurry foot in motion, Princess eating, the corner of Yongguk's smile as Princess nuzzled against his face. She spends the first full hour giggling at her lap, earning a sharp look from her professor at one point. She shuts off her phone on a picture of Princess curled up inside a beanie and tries to focus on taking notes instead.
She makes it back into the dorm building after class without too much difficulty, since it's the very beginning of the dinner hour and enough people are going in and out that the door never sits closed for more than a few minutes at a time. It's quiet inside the room and dark now that the sun's mostly dipped down below the horizon. The sky outside the window is pale pink and lavender. Everyone seems to have gone home.
"She's asleep," Yongguk's voice keeps her from turning the light on.
Even without seeing his face, Jieun can tell something's not right. She crosses to the bed, close enough now to see him lying on his side with the kitten curled up beside him. She sits down on the mattress and waits for him to go on. His hand is resting on the bed, fingers just brushing the fur between Princess's ears, and he doesn't look at Jieun when he speaks.
"Himchan came by the room again," he says finally. There's a long pause. "He's still upset about his bed."
Ah. She wondered if it might be something like that. “He doesn’t want her to stay?”
He shakes his head and says nothing. Jieun sighs and lies down on the bed next to him. It’s a tight squeeze with Princess there between them, but the kitten doesn’t seem to mind. If anything, she welcomes the addition of another warm body, stretching out to her full, tiny length and blinking sleepily until Jieun starts to scratch her belly. Yongguk’s mouth curves slightly while he watches them, and Jieun can tell that he would rather cut off his own arm than give away this kitten now. She might regret this later, but for now…
“Maybe I can keep her in my apartment,” she suggests.
Yongguk looks up. The hope in his eyes makes her want to go out and buy a cat bed right now. If she handed him the world on a silver platter, he couldn’t possibly look happier. What makes it all the worse is that this is how he looks at her every day, and every single time it makes her feel the same way.
"Can you do that?" he asks. "Are you even allowed to have cats in your apartment?"
"I don't know," she says. "I can ask. And anyway, it's not a cat, it's a land fish, remember?"
He laughs out loud then, deep and rich, and Princess opens one eye to look at him. She lets out a petulant meow.
"Sorry," he says, scratching her belly, but he's still laughing.
Princess goes back to sleep under their combined ministrations, and Jieun takes this opportunity to scoot closer. Yongguk brings up a hand to rest against the side of her face, brushing her cheek with his thumb and she can see his perpetual smile in the fading light.
"Hey," he says.
"Hmm?"
"I've still got two princesses."
She laughs and he laughs too until he kisses her instead. He keeps kissing her until there's an indignant squeak from somewhere between them. Princess has woken up and, seeing that they are busily occupied doing something other than petting her, she climbs over their arms to demand the attention currently being denied her.
Yongguk envelops them both in a hug, burying his face in kitten fur and in Jieun’s hair. Jieun can feel the vibrations of his laugh echoing through her own chest, sending ripples of happiness through her as well, all to the tune of one pleased kitten’s purr.
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Notes: Yes, I did keep contraband kittens in my dorm room. Yes, we did call them “land fish.” This particular kitten is based partially on one of my current cats, Moira, who is a complete princess.