It had been inevitable, and he had been expecting it, ever since Mr Kitty had turned greyer and mangier, and begun to throw up more and eat less. Regardless, when he finally did pass, Eric couldn't help the overwhelming pain he felt. He had lost not just a cat, but a friend and family member. When he found the listless stretch of grey fur laid out unmoving on the living room carpet, he didn't bother to hide the evidence of his weakness as he usually would have, and allowed it to drop from his eyes and make damp the floor.

His mother pointed out that Mr Kitty had been sunbathing underneath the window in his last moments, and that that was a good thing, but it only made him cry all the harder, and she, too in love with the wizened furry thing as well, was unable to keep up the strong mother act, and so joined Eric sitting on his knees beside their dearly beloved moggy to make the floor damp also.

They cried over his body and picked it up and held it close to them for Eric didn't know how long, but, as inevitable as the end of Mr Kitty's time, their tears dried up. When they were all cried-out, they got an old shoe box out of the attic, and they softened it by placing Mr Kitty's favourite perforated, filthy, smelly blanket within, and they filled it with his much-loved, much-punctured toy mouse and his beloved ball that had once been bright red in colour but had dulled with age and wear, much like its owner.

While Eric dug a hole beneath the tree in their back yard, his mother stood aside and watched with damp cheeks, hugging a cat in a box tightly to her chest. When the time came for her to place the cardboard construction into the cold, dark, dirty hole in the earth, she did so hesitantly, gently, and in a way that wouldn't have seemed any more loving had she placed a kiss upon it.

Eric piled the earth back on top of the box, fighting the urge to sob with every weighty whump of dirt against cardboard, and afterwards he stood over the grave and played the violin soft and slow and sad with dirty, earthy hands. It affected his playing, as did his being unable to see the strings for his bleary eyes, but his mother was too busy shedding tears to care, and far too invested in finding as many daisies sprouting out of the grass as she could, to gather them into the simplest bouquet ever formed, and lay them to rest atop the fresh dirt mound.

For the next few days, Eric confined himself to his house, where the only person he had to be in the company of was his mother, who understood how he felt and shared in his sadness. Together, they mourned for their cat – their friend and family – in quiet sombreness, where she made him hot chocolate and powdered doughnut surprises and towers of pancakes without him needing to ask, and he helped her with house chores and watched her favourite chick-flicks with her without a single complaint. But life went on, even if his cat's life didn't, and Eric found himself being jolted back to reality by a text from his boyfriend one fateful morning.

What are you up to today?

Eric responded to it half-heartedly, not quite ready yet to embrace the cheeriness of normal, everyday life.

nothin

Kyle's next text came almost immediately after Eric's, as though he had been sat waiting for it alone and nothing else.

Is it alright if I come over?

Eric, having been in mourning, hadn't seen Kyle in a long while, for Kyle, understanding what Mr Kitty had meant to his boyfriend, had given him the space and time he had needed. Even with his cat being the centre of his thoughts though, he had still had Kyle floating around in the back of his mind over the past few days. He had missed him, and he thought that perhaps his boyfriend was just what he needed. With that in mind, Eric sent his response.

yh

Cool, I'll be over in 30. :)

Kyle never used smiley faces in his texts. Seeing as he had done so just then, it was a sign that he was already trying to cheer Eric up, even before he got to him. Eric, despite his woes, couldn't help his lips quirking upwards at the corners at the sight of it.

For the next half an hour he actually found himself getting excited about something for the first time in ages, so that by the time the doorbell rung he was shaking slightly with nerves and eagerness. When he opened the door, and saw a tangled mop of red curls and wide, intelligent eyes and a soft, small smile, he couldn't stop himself from lunging forwards and wrapping Kyle up into a big hug. He rubbed his face into his shoulder, gratefully inhaling his familiar scent, and wanting to cry from how much comfort that alone gave him.

"Whoa, careful!" Kyle laughed, sounding a little surprised by the sudden display of affection, and pushed Eric away by a hand at his chest. Eric stepped away accordingly, and looked down to see what he had to be so careful about, to be met with the sight of a cardboard box in Kyle's hand. It reminded him of what was buried in their garden, stabbing a stinging jolt of pain into his chest.

He frowned at it, and pointed an almost accusatory finger towards it as he demanded to know, "What's that?"

Kyle only smiled, for once looking like the one that was up to something out of the two of them. "I'm glad you asked." He stepped past Eric, going further into the living room, and placed the box on the carpet just under the window, so that it was illuminated by the sunlight shining through the panes. "Come see," he said, ushering Eric towards him with a wave of his hand. Eric closed the door and made his way over to Kyle and the box as he had been asked to. He stopped beside it, and stood looking down at it like it was a puzzle to solve. Kyle huffed impatiently. "Come on, open it!"

Eric stooped down beside the box, looking it over warily. It wasn't that he didn't trust Kyle, but he just didn't trust to open a cardboard box and not see a dead cat. Still, Kyle was looking expectantly between him and the box, bouncing on the balls of his feet eagerly in a bout of excitement he rarely deigned to show, and rarely even lost himself to in the first place. Eric hated to disappoint him when he was like that, so reached out, took the flaps of the box in either hand, and pulled them apart. His eyes went wide and his mouth gaped open in a gasp at what he saw within.

It was a live cat. Or rather, it was a kitten – a small ball of fluff with short, black fur and big, luminous-yellow eyes which shone all the brighter in the light of the sun. It looked up at him, and almost seemed to be smiling in a friendly nice-to-meet-you-how-do-you-do kind of way. It meowed at him – a small, squeaky noise – and had Eric not known better he would have thought that it was saying hello to him. He slowly looked up from the kitten mewing in the box to show Kyle's smiling face his own disbelieving one. "What is this?"

"A kitten, dumbass," Kyle chortled good-naturedly. "The rancher's cat gave birth to a bunch of them in his barn, but he can't look after them all so he's selling them. He isn't a replacement," he added quickly before it could be suggested. "I know Mr Kitty could never be replaced, but…Well, he needed a home, and you needed a cat, so…" Kyle bit his lip and fidgeted his fingers, the brightness of his smile lessening as he seemed to grow unsure about what Eric thought of the whole thing. "…Do you like it?"

Eric did like it. He liked it a lot. But, in that moment, he liked Kyle much more. Much, much more. He loved him, in fact, and he wasn't afraid of showing it by getting up from the box, walking over to the object of his affections, and gathering him up into a hug that probably hurt more than it should have, but Eric couldn't control his strength when he was so overwhelmed by the wave of emotions rolling over him.

"I love it," he said softly against Kyle's ear, the confidence in his voice making Kyle relieved. He pulled away, but kept a hold of Kyle by his shoulders, so as to fix him with eyes that had all of his feelings dancing and swimming and leaping within them for Kyle to see. "I love you." He pulled Kyle back to him, simultaneously leaning down to kiss him deeply and eagerly. Kyle made muffled sounds of protest at first, out of surprise and the way their teeth clacked together in the oral collision, but then Eric pulled away again, just a couple of inches so that he could whisper against Kyle's lips, "I love you." After that, his lips were on Kyle's once more, gentler that time, so that Kyle was prepared for it, and could melt into it accordingly.

As they kissed, Eric wondered whether it was possible to pass love on to someone. He wanted to let Kyle know how much he adored him, but no words seemed to express it properly. He wished he could breathe his love into Kyle's mouth like air and let him feel it pass over his tongue and down his throat and into his lungs and stomach, where it would stay, so that he could be ceaselessly sustained solely on Eric's love. 'If only,' he thought. Reality was so cruel. Not always, though. Kyle was in reality, Kyle was real, and yet he was the least cruel thing Eric had ever met. Sometimes reality got it right.

Even when the kiss ended, Eric couldn't resist peppering a few extra kisses to Kyle's face – his nose and cheeks and eyelids and temples and forehead. Only after he had done that, and tickled Kyle into giggling in the process, did he feel content enough to pull back, to get a good look at Kyle as he brushed his cheek with the backs of his fingers, and sigh in a satisfied way. "You're my favourite person."

Kyle's face flushed, in a way that Eric found both endearing and entertaining, and his brow crumpled under the weight of his sudden bout of bashfulness. "You could've fooled me. You always act like a jerk towards me."

Eric chortled fondly and pulled Kyle into him. "You're great."

Kyle, hidden from Eric's sight in the crook of his shoulder, was finally able to relax, slumping his shoulders and letting his arms dangle at his sides. "You act weird when you get cats," he laughed. "Is this some sort of weird allergy where the reaction is that you just become nice?"

Eric hummed happily and kept his arms wrapped around Kyle's shoulders as he nuzzled the crown of his head, not minding the way the curls of it tickled his cheek. "You're the best thing that's ever happened to me."

Kyle returned the hug, resting his arms at Eric's back, and chuckled, "If you're going to be like this every time I get you a kitten then maybe I should buy the whole litter, one by one."

Eric chuckled too, never stopping in his nuzzling. "I don't need any more kittens. I just need you."

Kyle patted his back. "Okay, enough with the mushy talk now. You're going to make me hurl." Eric was laughing as he finally let go of Kyle and stepped away, to give the redhead space to excitedly ask, "So, what are you going to call him?"

"Adolf Hitler," Cartman replied. "Ow!" he cried as he earnt himself a punch on the arm.

"I'll ask you again," Kyle said, a warning tone to his voice, his fist held up threateningly, ready to be let loose again if the answer was wrong once more. "What are you going to call him?"

"Uh…Not-Adolf-Hitler? I don't know! Just give me time to think of one, sheesh!"

"Fine." Kyle unclenched his fist and let it drop to his side, making Eric breathe a sigh of relief. "But it'd better be one that I approve of, or else I'm taking the kitten back."

The threat wasn't real, and Eric knew it. That knowledge was what allowed him to relax, and stoop back down to the box, with Kyle at his side, to get acquainted with his new feline friend and family. He was nothing like what Mr Kitty had been, energetic and outgoing instead of idle and reserved, but he was perfect all the same. His mother loved him at first sight upon returning from work and entering the living room to find him climbing up Eric's back while Kyle laughed. She abandoned the bags of groceries she had picked up on the way home by the door, and she forgot to take her coat off and put it on its stand, so that the hem of it dragged across the floor as she kneeled down to join them. They looked strange, three grown people in a triangle on the floor cooing over a kitten, but they didn't care.

Kyle got his camera up on his phone at one point and took a picture of Eric grinning widely and ecstatically, the kitten appearing tiny held aloft in his large hands. He posted it to Facebook when he returned home that evening, adding a note:

You've heard of puppy love before, but here is a prime example of kitten love. Say hi to the newest member of Eric's family: Rodion Hannibal Cartman.

Tons of people liked the post, showed that they did by thumbing it up, but none so much as Eric, who showed it by making a Facebook post of his own:

i have the awesomest bf in the whole wide world. :) u d-bags jealous?

And Kyle commented on it in a way that was very like him, just as Eric loved.

Awesomest isn't a word, dumbass.

Eric laughed softly at the words on his laptop, as he laid on his stomach across the length of his bed. He looked with a smile to the small close-eyed kitten curled up next to the laptop fan, purring happily under the warmth of it, and his hand, too, as he stroked it. Eric had thought that it would take him ages to be well again after Mr Kitty's death – weeks, months, maybe years. Kyle, as usual, had proven him wrong. But for once he wasn't sad about it.

Author's Notes:

I've seen this idea once or twice, of Kyle getting Cartman a new cat when Mr Kitty died, and upon seeing my own cat rubbing up against my legs the other night I became inspired to write it out. I don't quite feel that I pulled it off, but I tried my best. I'm not one hundred percent about it, but I'm content enough with it, so I hope you are too.
I dedicate this to my dear, kindly friend, serendipityrain711, who is unwell and thus stuck with nothing to do but read. I know my stories aren't anyone's first choice to read, but if it can make you feel better, Seren - even if just a little bit, even if just for a little while - then I hope you can be satisfied with it. Get well soon, friend, and know that I feel so very uncomfortable uploading a story on a day that is not a Sunday, but it is worth it for your sake.
Thank you for reading this, and I hope you enjoyed doing so as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Disclaimer: South Park does not belong to me, but to its creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Facebook does not belong to me, but to its creator, Mark Zuckerberg.