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In what Taeyong thinks to be typical, tale-of-witchery fashion—it starts on a cold, stormy night.
They’d closed the shop down hours ago, the winds too torrential for even any lost, weary travelers to come by. The thunder had been loud enough earlier in the night to knock some potion bottles off the shelves, and for Rosie’s tail to have been fluffed up for the good part of an entire half hour.
Which leaves Taeyong where he is now: under soft, wool covers with the cat curled up above his head. Her tummy is warm where it touches Taeyong’s forehead—which is starting to feel less comforting and more akin to the feeling of an oncoming fever—and it’s the main reason Taeyong had even stirred awake, considering that the rainfall and thunder and lightning strikes had been droning off long enough for them to fade out in the background, into the makings of pleasant white noise.
The thing that actually surprises Taeyong is the lack of the warm body beside him, only the crinkled sheets left behind in Doyoung’s wake.
Taeyong—famously deep sleeper—makes himself get out of bed.
He’s gotten used to having Doyoung around.
Doyoung must be around the house somewhere, fixing himself a glass of water or a warm pot of tea. Taeyong knows this logically, and yet he still slips into his soft slippers, blanket over his shoulders, picks up the only other oil lamp left in the room, hanging by the door. It wakes Rosie, too, unsurprisingly, and Taeyong regards the fuzzy blob of white and orange as it follows him trailing out the bedroom, past the hallway, awakening creaky, wooden floors. They make it to the kitchen and it’s dark, then they make it to the dining area, and it’s dark, too. The bathroom door is swung half-open, and the living space is just as they’d left it: curtains drawn and wooden saucers stacked, to be cleaned of their pastry crumbs in the morning.
Doyoung isn’t anywhere home, which only leaves one place—but Taeyong doesn’t know why he’d be there.
Rosie still follows after him, weaving in between Taeyong’s legs with soft meows as he approaches the door that leads to the magic shop, its energy already flowing through the floor and under their skin the moment Taeyong’s hand lands on the knob.
Taeyong sees Doyoung instantly, the faint but unmistakable outline of his silhouette visible through the raindrops cascading down the window.
The rain is even louder when Taeyong crosses the threshold from their little house into the magic shop, a side effect of the thinner walls and the shop being in an entirely different location altogether, nearer the town’s capital where the storm was decidedly stronger. He can even feel the icy wind coming in through the underside of the door, its speed threatening to snap the oakwood off its hinges, and there’s only one reason Taeyong isn’t immediately concerned about Doyoung being outside in the torrential outpour.
The ring.
“Doyoung-ah,” Taeyong calls out, not even remotely audible over the raindrops hitting the ground. It’s more for himself, really, as he opens the door and Rosie stays obediently inside, sitting by the counter while Taeyong makes his way outside. “Kim Doyoung!”
He ought to give Doyoung a scolding for taking so much advantage of Taeyong being a healer, thinking the protection spell in their rings would make him invincible in every sense of the word. In the grand scheme of things, Taeyong has come to realize, Doyoung is the more headstrong between the two of them, and it’s probably exactly what makes him do the things he does that made Taeyong feel the need to imbibe the protection spell in the first place.
Taeyong finds Doyoung on the side of their front steps, entire right side soaked in rain, body shielding what looks just like a mess of gray hair, until Taeyong comes closer.
Doyoung has one of Rosie’s food bowls in one hand and a cat nuzzling into the other, its head peeking out of the mess of soaked fur, the ring on Doyoung’s finger glowing as it provides them with warmth.
“What are you doing out here?” Taeyong asks with a furrow in his brow, voice raised to win over the rain. “You’re getting rained on, Doyoung-ah! Come inside!”
“I can’t leave him out here!” Doyoung shouts back over the rain, looking down with sad eyes at the gray cat. “He’s shivering!”
“Didn’t you hear me? I said come inside!” Taeyong answers, holding the door open just a crack. “Take him with you, come on!”
Doyoung springs into action immediately, lifting the cat carefully into the crook of his arm. Taeyong takes the food bowl from his other hand and lets him go in first, electing not to complain too much right now about how much rainwater Doyoung’s tracking into the shop.
“What were you thinking, going out there, Doyoung-ah?” Taeyong asks, the question coming out with more concern than the frustration they were probably both expecting. Taeyong absently picks up some towels from under the counter, the soft fabrics likely having materialized the very moment Doyoung had walked in soaked in rainwater. “Why are you even here in the first place? Have you gone insane?”
“I heard him meowing out there in the rain,” Doyoung answers, not even looking at Taeyong as he takes the towel that’s offered. It’s meant for him, but Doyoung immediately wraps it snug around the still-shivering gray cat, stroking its fur with eyes full of concern. “I figured if the ring could protect me, it could protect him, too…”
“That’s not how it works,” Taeyong scolds, even though, technically, that’s kind of how it works. “Wait—how did you even hear it?”
“What?” Doyoung asks, confused. “I just heard it, what do you mean?”
“From our house?” Taeyong asks, wrapping the other towel in his hands around Doyoung’s shoulders. “The door was closed, but you heard something outside the shop, from our house?”
Doyoung finally looks at him then, tilting his head, and he’s probably only realizing now that it was a little strange indeed. “Well… yeah. I guess that’s what happened. Maybe the wind blew the door open, I don’t know.”
Taeyong seriously doubts that—but he holds his tongue. He knows that the natural elements have nothing against the magic imbued into every square inch of the shop, but he can’t, for the life of him, think of any other explanation right now that made sense.
Except that maybe Doyoung was getting attuned, somehow. Taeyong’s not all that personally familiar with the things that can happen to humans who’ve been living around magic for as long as Doyoung has now, but he does recall from books and old scrolls that this is one of them.
Taeyong doesn’t quite know what to make of that yet, so he focuses on what’s in front of him instead.
Doyoung is still holding the cat in his arms, kneading around the towel to dry up as much of its fur as he can. Taeyong only takes notice of Rosie when he sees her under the low table, peeking at Doyoung curiously where he’s seated by the fireplace, nursing an unfamiliar creature to health. Truthfully, right now, Taeyong is just thankful that Doyoung seems to be fine, Rosie isn’t hissing at the newcomer, and the fireplace embers warm themselves up steadily as the seconds flow into each other, the lamps around them gradually burning up with light on their own. All semblance of drowsiness has left him at this point, and he focuses instead on the dilemma at hand—which is that they suddenly find themselves with this new, gray cat, and he’s shivering nonstop even with the fireplace heat and Doyoung’s surprisingly skillful attempt at swaddling.
It doesn’t surprise him as much as he would’ve thought, Taeyong thinks as he springs into action, going over to the potion shelf to find something to give the cat. Doyoung, for as long as Taeyong has known him, has been incredibly kind, compassionate—one of the better things that humanity has ever had to offer—and that never seemed to change, even after having spent over a century together already. It’s a little sobering all of a sudden, to think that Doyoung has lived over a lifetime and a half; most of it inexplicably by Taeyong’s side, and all of it as this warmhearted, beautiful soul.
It makes sense that the first thing Doyoung might have gotten sensitized to would be these small cries for help—the kinds that come out of helpless creatures like the cat now in his arms.
“Here, so he doesn’t get sick,” Taeyong says, offering Doyoung a new water bowl with some water and medicine in it, the liquid tinted with the faintest violet. He sits beside Doyoung and helps him remove the damp swaddling towel, setting the gray cat down beside the bowl and letting him drink.
Doyoung scratches absently behind the cat’s ears as he watches, and Rosie circles cautiously while she makes her way into Taeyong’s lap.
When Doyoung turns his head slowly towards them both, Taeyong catches on surprisingly quickly, somehow well-aware of what Doyoung is about to ask.
“Can we k—”
“We can keep him until the storm ends, Doyoung-ah,” Taeyong says firmly, petting a now curled-up Rosie in his lap. “Okay?”
Doyoung seems to think about it for a second, mouth opening and closing a few times—but then they both seem to have a single moment of agreement that it’s late, let’s not argue, I’ll take it—looking into each other’s eyes and nodding once, a wordless understanding. “Okay.”
“Let him finish the water, then bring him inside,” Taeyong says simply, rubbing sympathetic circles on Doyoung’s shoulder while he regards the new cat. “Then let’s go back to bed, okay?”
Doyoung nods his consent, one hand finally joining Taeyong’s to pet Rosie as he whispers, “Okay.”
Taeyong gets up first to bring Rosie back into their house, and then fix up a corner for the newcomer to get settled in for the night.
They do say hindsight is twenty-twenty, and to be fair, Taeyong has a little bit of an idea of what he’d just gotten himself into.
But the rain isn’t going to let up anytime soon, so Taeyong decides he’ll deal with the consequences of that later.
—ฅ/ᐠ. ̫ .ᐟ\ฅ∫ —
The fact that Taeyong had expected it isn’t necessarily equivalent to the notion that he would be more prepared when it happens.
“I want to keep the cat,” Doyoung says to him one morning, in broad daylight when the storm had passed, after a long week of continuous rain. They’re in the shop with a customer looking around, taking interest in the space that had transformed into a flurry of celestial maps and telescopes and bright specks dancing around in the potion bottles like stardust, just for them—and Taeyong can’t just deny him outright. Doyoung says it almost casually, right before he walks around the counter to go and assist the woman who’d walked into the boutique, as if to force Taeyong to actually think about it before he just has the chance to shut it down. Which, to be fair, was well-played—although Taeyong wouldn’t admit this to him later.
Doyoung actually doesn’t bring it back up for a few days, surprisingly. The cat, which they’ve resorted to calling, very creatively, Cat, just roams around the shop most of the day, marking the front steps as his favorite spot and never really even complaining whenever Rosie elects to eat out of his food bowl. Things flow at the shop in relatively the same way—Taeyong brews up potions, Doyoung assists customers, and Rosie sniffs at anything or anyone that seems suspicious—and they just have a fluffy, gray cat somewhere in the vicinity, lurking and waiting for mealtime.
But Doyoung seems to really like him, the Cat. He likes that the Cat comes up to him and nudges his head against Doyoung’s hand for scritches, and that he’ll only let himself be carried for more than two seconds if it’s in Doyoung’s arms. Doyoung likes having another cat who isn’t Rosie, with whom Doyoung is the favorite, the fluffy, gray stray having gotten into the habit of exposing its belly for Doyoung to rub, but only at certain times of the night.
Doyoung feeds this cat. He puts it to sleep, gives it medicine every day. He’ll juggle playtime between Rosie and his new stray, because the former likes fluffy things on a string and the latter likes loose trinkets from the ground that he can chase around on his own. And Taeyong watches this happen day by day, night by night, Doyoung’s voice playing on repeat in his head: I want to keep the cat.
Taeyong is kind of curious how long Doyoung will let it go on. If he’ll never bring it up again and just assume that that means Taeyong will be okay with keeping the cat forever, or if he’ll eventually get antsy enough to ask if Taeyong’s made a decision. And it did really seem as though that first time was just him stating his intentions—because Doyoung has always been quite respectful of the shared part in the phrase, ‘ shared space’—and there was always the unspoken agreement that this space was indeed theirs, from the very moment that Doyoung had walked in and the magic boutique remained wholly unchanged.
It makes Taeyong smile, the parallels of it. Doyoung had stumbled upon the place where he belonged while seeking shelter from a storm, too.
But this—this is a cat. A stray cat, at that, and Taeyong has been noticing some fish disappearing from the pond in their garden. The Cat leaves scratches on the magic shop furniture that Rosie’s learned over centuries not to touch, is eating steadily into Rosie’s supply of food, and Taeyong is starting to get guilty about not letting him sleep on the bed. Doyoung says that the Cat prefers the floor anyway and it’s fine, but what is Taeyong supposed to do with two sets of eyes that are practically pleading with him to let the cat stay?
It takes another week, but eventually, Taeyong weighs in. Doyoung had held out unsurprisingly well, acting casual about the whole thing even though he’s never really been the too-driven, ask for forgiveness instead of permission type (which was more Taeyong’s wheelhouse), and it must have weighed on him quite a bit, the longer that Taeyong dragged it out.
“If we’re keeping the cat,” Taeyong declares on a cloudy afternoon, “there’s going to be some conditions.”
Doyoung looks up the moment the words leave Taeyong’s mouth, eyes blinking and lips parted. “I— Oh, well, yeah… yeah! Whatever you want.”
Taeyong smiles, amused. He realizes in the moment that he’s dealing with such a human problem—he’s lived a lot of centuries before meeting Doyoung, never thinking he’d have such a dilemma of whether or not to keep the cat. Rosie’s been by his side forever, and for the longest time, that was his whole world: Taeyong, Rosie, and Rosie’s Magic Boutique. Things were simple, even for all of their complexity.
That just isn’t the case now. “Doyoung. You do realize I’m not just asking you to take care of the cat, right? Because I know you know that. I know that you’ve been doing that. Right?”
Doyoung nods reluctantly, seemingly confused. “Well… okay. What exactly are you saying?”
Taeyong purses his lips, looking around the empty boutique. Rosie is somewhere outside, and Doyoung’s stray isn’t anywhere to be found, either—so, deciding it’s fine, Taeyong looks Doyoung in the eye after clearing his throat.
“We’re not…” Taeyong starts, searching for the way to phrase it that would sting the least. “We’re not going to keep him forever. Not like Rosie. Is that going to be okay with you?”
Taeyong watches closely for Doyoung’s reaction, searching his gaze for any kind of sign. He knows that Doyoung’s already gotten attached—and it’s finicky for Taeyong, this kind of conversation. It’s been quite a while since the last time he had to sit down and consider his own immortality, the way it relates to everything else.
Doyoung seems to read his mind, somehow.
“I guess I haven’t really thought about that,” Doyoung says, voice eerily calm. “Is it— Can I— Can I ask why?”
Taeyong has to look down at the floor to answer that one, the tips of his ears burning, because he doesn’t really know how to explain that, either. “I just can’t do that.”
“Can’t or won’t?” Doyoung asks, though there’s no bite to it regardless. “I’m not trying to argue, I just want to understand.”
Taeyong knows that. “I know.” He searches his brain for a semblance of an answer, something concrete that isn’t just a variation of that’s just how it is. “It’s not that it’s impossible, but there are just things that magic can’t just be used for without restraint, Doyoung-ah. There has to be a limit somewhere.”
Taeyong tells him the truth, because it’s just the right thing to do. Doyoung isn’t the type to take advantage of whatever kind of power Taeyong can offer; perhaps it’s that unwavering trust that holds them together, alongside the fact that Doyoung has always just loved Taeyong, regardless. He would love Taeyong if he was human, if their lifetime together would be just that. A human lifetime.
So maybe it’s not surprising when Doyoung responds with a graceful, understanding nod, voice only a little solemn when he adds on, “Have to maintain some of the balance in nature, right?”
“Yeah,” Taeyong agrees, a little resigned, but mostly relieved. And then, because Doyoung still does look a little sad, “I’m sorry…”
“No, I think it’s fine, actually,” Doyoung answers quietly, seemingly trying to give Taeyong some kind of reassurance with his quiet smile. “Honestly… Now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve forgotten what it’s like to just be human at all, and loss is just—it’s a normal part of living. I mean, I’m technically still human, aren’t I? Well… sometimes it’s like that, Taeyong-ah. Grief is the price for love.”
Taeyong looks at him incredulously, frozen in a mix of sympathy and awe.
Taeyong isn't scared of things that go bump in the night, but something about this Doyoung is… not exactly scary, but close to it. Striking, maybe.
But that’s just how Doyoung is. In Taeyong's eyes, Doyoung has always been, just… something else.
Human, Taeyong keeps having to remind himself. It’s things like this that ensure that Taeyong never forgets—that Doyoung is human. And yet, a lot of the time, more extraordinary than any magical being Taeyong’s ever encountered before. And it seems like Doyoung might not ever lose his humanity—no matter how many more human lifetimes he lives by Taeyong’s side.
“Then we’ll keep the cat,” Taeyong says decidedly, because what he is not going to do is deny Doyoung his desire to love, to care. Even if it will only be for a blip in time in the grander scheme of it all, a miniscule, human instinct in the midst of a much vaster existence.
“Will you be okay with it, love?” Doyoung asks, softly reaching for Taeyong’s hand, rings bumping together with a soft click. “Will you give your all even for something short-lived?”
That is the question that Taeyong leaves unanswered this time, lost in a contemplative, blank stare, and the eventual squeeze of their interlocked hands.
Taeyong simply has no idea what to say, actually, but he buries the apprehensions somewhere in his heart for now.
He supposes they’ll have enough time anyway to find out.
—ฅ/ᐠ. ̫ .ᐟ\ฅ∫ —
So, they have a new cat.
They’ve spent a month living with the gray stray, though he’s more of a frequent visitor than a permanent resident, and is still nameless for lack of a need to call him all that much, considering he always somehow comes running at the sound of food anyway.
It’s strangely nice, the more Taeyong thinks about it. Not much really changes, except that they need a larger supply of food and the gray cat seems to make Doyoung very, very happy.
But the strange part of it comes in the wonderment that Taeyong holds for the fact that their new pet is, plain and simple—this helplessly mortal creature. Taeyong fumbles a lot, overly-careful movements because the Cat isn’t of magical lineage like Rosie is, could very well wither with one wrong move. Taeyong has never been finnicky with animals, but suddenly it’s Doyoung who’s caring for their little family with such vigorous confidence, Taeyong a little more scared than he’d like to admit even if Doyoung likes to joke about cats and their nine lives.
He’s never had to think so hard about how humans do this, how they somehow remain sane even amidst the knowledge of their numbered days, the concept of a start and an end.
They keep their distance from each other, Taeyong and the Cat. Taeyong has probably made less progress than even Rosie, at this point—though he maintains that it isn’t for lack of trying. Overly-careful sentiments or not, Taeyong is aware that he’s a little bit of a feline-like presence himself, and the Cat doesn’t really seem to like him after weeks of them studying each other from afar.
But he does try. He’s playing with the cat right now—which means he’s trying to coax the blob of gray fur out from under the couch with a crumpled paper ball—and he’s been at this for thirty minutes now while waiting for Doyoung to get back from the market. The Cat follows the movement only with its beady, yellow eyes, as if simply mocking Taeyong’s futile efforts at this point.
“Hey, buddy, come on,” Taeyong basically whines, tapping fingertips on the floor along with the toy. (“Toy.”) “Come on, let’s play. Please? We’re going to have to start liking each other eventually… even a little bit…”
He’s been at this for a while now, a substantial amount of that time spent idly sitting on the floor in contemplation, absently waiting for any response from the Cat. Taeyong can’t help but think that it’s getting ridiculous at this point, even for a cat, because it’s been an entire month and it’s not like Doyoung is the only person who feeds the cat, so Taeyong can’t fathom what the blatant indifference is for. The creature still just lies down lazily under the couch, showing zero signs of getting up anytime soon because apparently, chasing the paper ball around stops being his favorite game when it’s Taeyong who wants to play it with him and not Doyoung.
But then Taeyong tries out an idea that pops into his head—and a little more progress seems to be made.
“I’ll just leave this here, then,” Taeyong declares in a singsong tone, leaving the paper ball sitting in front of him before getting up slowly off the floor. “I’m leaving now, Cat. You can play on your own.”
He sees movement out of the corner of his eye. Taeyong walks away slowly, acting nonchalant, though he sneaks little glances to see if the cat would finally respond—and strangely, in some anticlimactic twist of fate—he does.
Taeyong’s eyes widen when he sees the cat getting into position, ready to pounce in a way that Taeyong’s seen Rosie many times before. The gray cat has its eyes set on the target, calculating the trajectories to jump the few feet towards the paper ball—and when it finally happens, Taeyong is there for it, feeling all too smug about the effectiveness of his tricks.
“Ha!” Taeyong exclaims—much like the children he sees playing at the Town Square—as he swoops in and snatches the paper ball off the floor before the Cat could get to it. The creature paws at the toy in Taeyong’s hands, claws out to steal it back, and when Taeyong raises it higher above his head, the cat even climbs up into his lap.
It’s a massive shift from earlier, when they were simply staring each other down. Now, the new gray cat is standing on its hind legs on Taeyong’s thighs, one paw on Taeyong’s chest and the other pawing at the air. Taeyong reaches out to pet the cat’s head and the cat lets him, surprisingly enough—and the happiness Taeyong feels is immense and fucking crazy: a full-blown, bona fide labor of love.
“There you go, I knew you’d warm up to me!” Taeyong says with a smile, and he laughs even as the cat starts to bite playfully at his hand.
And then Taeyong bursts into tears.
The Cat pays no mind to it, unsurprisingly. But Taeyong feels his heart hurting inexplicably in that moment, suddenly gripped by the burden of even the slightest affection from this fragile little animal. Grief is the price for love, Doyoung had said, and Taeyong is only starting to understand what that means, and that it’s not an easy thing to accept. The cat bumps its head against the heel of Taeyong’s palm, and Taeyong learns what it means to miss something before it’s even gone. He releases the paper ball when he senses that the Cat starts to get agitated, and he runs off with it into a different corner of the shop.
And Taeyong sits there alone afterward, slouched on the floor, in tears because he loves this cat, and Doyoung is going to get home soon, and he’s not sure he ever wants any of this to change.
There’s a familiar meow beside him after a while—and it’s Rosie, ever the empath, seeing the tears on his face and then trying to lick them off his cheeks. Taeyong smiles at the gesture before taking her into his arms, laying her down in his lap to curl up into a ball in the way she loves. It was a long time ago, but Taeyong remembers when she was a kitten, too. He’s known nostalgia as a word for a while—and now he knows it as a feeling, too.
He doesn’t tell Doyoung of this. Not yet. Taeyong’s not sure what to make of it himself, but soon he’ll come to grips with it. In time.
He makes a show of feeding both cats when Doyoung comes home instead, silently basking in the fact that he and Doyoung’s cat are finally getting along, one day at a time.
—ฅ/ᐠ. ̫ .ᐟ\ฅ∫ —
The rain is pouring again just a couple of weeks after.
It’s been a long day. The shop had attracted more customers than usual to provide momentary shelter from the storm, and Doyoung and Taeyong have only just been able to start settling in for the night, flipping the shop sign to closed but still remaining in the vicinity, just in case anyone else would come seeking refuge.
Doyoung is sitting on the worn-out, tea-stained loveseat by the front window with the Cat in his lap, curled up and fast asleep, gaze far away as he strokes the soft, gray fur.
Taeyong has had time to think about it. He’s gone back and forth in his mind about all the new changes that come with having a family of now-four; another living, breathing creature under their roof. Taeyong observes Doyoung from afar—the way he glances at the cat every once in a while, breaths slow and even but his eyes glassy, a mirror of his soft heart. It’s the same thing that makes Doyoung such a good addition to Taeyong’s life; there’s this gentle, Doyoung-only way that he likes to hold mortal things in his hands, literally or figuratively, and it shows when he convinces people to believe in magic even if it’s just for a second. It shows in his warmth, his way of welcoming when someone walks through the door, the way he treats every presence as something brand new. Doyoung is so used to magic already, but never disillusioned by it. It shows in the simple, heart-wrenching way that he holds this cat that loves him so much—careful, but never afraid.
“I know you’re watching me, Taeyong,” Doyoung whispers without looking up, the smallest of smiles gracing his face. Taeyong only huffs out a soft breath, giving up on trying not be noticed while peeking from behind the counter; they’ve learned to sense each other after so many years, after all, and it’s become second nature after how intently Taeyong likes to watch Doyoung sometimes, even moving about in the most mundane ways.
Taeyong decides right then and there.
“One more condition, Doyoung-ah,” Taeyong says, leaving the counter and making his way to the couch. “One more condition, and we’ll keep the cat.”
Doyoung tilts his head in question. “You already said we will be keeping the cat.”
Taeyong laughs. There’s no more room on the loveseat, so he takes a knee to the floor in front of them—Doyoung and the cat—and it’s oddly reminiscent of the very moment he asked Doyoung to stay with him forever, all those lifetimes ago. “We can keep him forever.”
That’s what finally gets Doyoung to look up—well, down— at Taeyong, eyes widened and lips parted, fingertips halting in between gray fur.
“Wh— Really?” Doyoung asks, more than mildly shocked— “I— Why?”
Taeyong looks up at him, and he doesn’t know what to say. In all honesty, he’s quite surprised at himself, too. He can’t give Doyoung an immediate answer, mostly for the fact that it hurts a little to see Doyoung so surprised about it, and hurts a little more to see the faint sparkle of hope it paints in his eyes.
(It’s because Taeyong loves them, in the end. Doyoung and the Cat. Taeyong loves them.)
“You shouldn’t have to pay a price for love.”
Doyoung’s expression is incredulous. Taeyong can’t even tell if it hits: the implications of what he’s saying. A thousand different emotions seem to flash on Doyoung’s face before he settles on that funny, concerned face that Taeyong would laugh at him for on any other occasion—a face that seems to be asking Taeyong if Doyoung is dreaming or if Taeyong’s lost his mind or if Doyoung is dreaming that Taeyong has lost his damn mind. Taeyong did say that they couldn’t just be playing god whenever they pleased.
“You’ve never asked me for anything since that day that I let you in from the storm.” Taeyong speaks up again when Doyoung still doesn’t say anything, and it’s these words he says—because he’s somehow realizing that they’re true. “Let’s just say that this time, you’re asking me again. Okay?”
Doyoung laughs a little, takes another glance at the cat in his lap. It’s still purring, face content and lips pulled up in what looks to humans like a smile. He seems to agree enough; all that Doyoung had been looking for was refuge from the tempest outside, and inexplicably, he’d found a home for his heart. Or, more accurately, he’d found Taeyong—and then slowly, little by little, they’d built a home for them both.
“What’s your condition, Taeyong?” is all that Doyoung asks in the end, smiling while Taeyong looks up at him with sparkling eyes.
“I want to name him.”
Doyoung tries to hold in his laughter. “That’s it? You want to name him?”
Taeyong rolls his eyes. “Yes.”
“Okay,” Doyoung plays along, though Taeyong doesn’t fail to notice the tears welling up in his eyes. “Okay, what are you going to name him, then?”
Tears clump up Taeyong’s own lashes, too, for some reason, dampening his attempt at being smug, but he tries anyway. “Tokki.”
Doyoung somehow scoffs at the same time that a tear rolls down his left cheek, his free hand scrambling to wipe it away. “Tokki. You’re going to name our cat bunny.”
“I like bunnies,” Taeyong whispers softly, hiding his own tears with a laugh. He gets up off the floor to reach for Doyoung’s face, brushing a thumb over his pouting, bunny lips. “I think it’s cute.”
Taeyong barely stops his voice from breaking on the last word, his hand joining Doyoung’s to pet the Cat—Tokki—feeling the warmth and the life under gray fur.
“Fine,” Doyoung concedes, looking out the window at the incessant downpour outside. His hand finds Taeyong’s, fingers lacing together and rings clinking against each other, a shaky exhale escaping his mouth. “His name is Tokki, then.”
Taeyong smiles, squeezing Doyoung’s hand reassuringly. “And we’ll love him forever, Doyoung-ah.”
“Mhm,” Doyoung simply hums, squeezing Taeyong’s hand back. He looks at Taeyong’s face, and then back at the falling rain. “We’ll love him forever.”
Taeyong smiles, looking out at the rain, too.
And then, in a softer whisper, Doyoung adds, “Thank you.”
And Taeyong realizes that theirs was never a tale of witchery—it’s a tale of humanity. It ends the same way that it starts, and life still goes on.
(And it’s more than enough.)