Of Boys and Cats

He'd been crouched in the abandoned outbuilding for at least ten minutes now trying to think and finally he gave in and multi-sent a text.

'Hey. Can either of you take care of a cat?'

Makoto's reply oozed apology and Rin couldn't help but smirk as he read it.

'I'm so sorry, Rin, I really wish I could! But Ren and Ran are allergic... I'm sorry!'

Haru's text was... to the point.

'No.'

Rin heaved a sigh, dragged a hand through damp burgundy hair, and stared down at his problem child. Well, problem cat.
It was definitely a Japanese Bobtail, he could tell that much, and it was young. He could cradle it in one hand. Probably a kitten lost from its home and missing its mother. At least it was able to eat solid food, as he'd found out when it had taken to voraciously eating from a can of tuna swiped from the school's cafeteria. It was currently cleaning itself, purring contently, and with a fond smile he reached down and scratched its chin with one finger.
The purring ratcheted up and its head lifted to luxuriate in the sensation. With a chuckle he stopped and it opened sea-colored eyes to stare at him.
He thought it was really adorable and its eyes were undeniably gorgeous. A stark mixture of blue and green and therefore a potent reminder of both his boyfriends' own eyes. Makoto's reassuring emerald and Haruka's transparent sapphire. The redhead sighed and propped his chin on his fist.

"What am I going to do with you then..?"

His phone buzzed and red eyes broke the staring contest with the kitten. Surprised, Rin looked down at his cell, opening the message he'd just gotten from... Haru?

'Why?'

A grin tugged at the Samezuka student's lips. If it was one kind of animal the three of them could agree on, cats were that animal.

'Found a young one wandering the campus.' The kitten took intense interest with his phone once the tapping of buttons started. With a distracted warm smile Rin extended a pinky and tiny paws started batting at the digit. 'Can't keep it here, but it's so small it won't survive alone.'

'When can you bring it over?'

Rin and his kitten one, Haru zero.

'After practice tomorrow?'

'You practice on Saturdays?'

'Indoor pool. And a strict Captain.'

'When.'

'Should be around noon.'

'Makoto will be over anyway.'

'Good. I'll have to leave it, I'm supposed to help Gou out with something tomorrow.'

'It?'

'I didn't check or anything.'

The smooth flow of messages was broken- Haru didn't reply. When the silence stretched on too long Rin suddenly rolled his eyes and set his phone aside and snatched up the kitten. It peeped in confusion and struggled when he turned it around and lifted its tail.
Her tail.

'It's a she.' He texted the black-haired boy.

Though the 'took you long enough' went unsaid Rin could feel it. 'Bring her tomorrow and stay the weekend.'

'Whatever.'

They both knew that dismissive reply was a yes.

The next day Rin, fresh out of the pool, bundled up the little critter in his Samezuka jacket and took the soonest train. The kitten was a surprisingly good sport and didn't squirm much more than enough to pop its head out of the jacket to look around with wide eyes. The redhead let it stare out the window and when it tired of that and curled up on his lap he scratched it behind the ears until it fell asleep purring.

Two pairs of shoes laid in the entryway, nice and straight, and it was the orderliness of it more than just the two sets that let him know Makoto was inside.

"I'm home!" He called out.

Not for the first time he caught himself saying it and smiled. This wasn't technically his home, but... It was his home. He lived here, and when he lived here he was happier than he ever had been anywhere else, even if it was only on the weekends.

"Kitchen," came Haru's calm tone.

He shuffled into the small dining room and was soon struggling with the kitten- it must've smelled the (what else?) mackerel Haru was cooking- and finally made it just as a small orange-and-black spotted white head popped out of one his school jacket's sleeves.

"H-hey you!" He yelped but she squirmed loose and ran for the black-haired boy.

Before she reached Haru, though, she was snatched by the tall brunette seated at the table (formerly) flipping through a magazine.

"Ahh!" Makoto exclaimed, holding her up and turning her left and right to examine her, "She's really adorable, Rin! She was just wandering around outside?"

"Yeah," the redhead tossed over his shoulder as he hung up his now-empty jacket. "I think she must've gotten separated from her mother or something."

When he turned back around he had to suppress the urge to laugh. Haru had come out of the kitchen with a small curled strip of mackerel and was waving it in front of the kitten's nose.
She didn't want it.
Haru looked mildly disgusted by the feline's adamant refusal.

"We're not having a cat that won't eat mackerel." He said stonily.

Rin rolled his eyes and lost his grip on a single short chuckle. "Yeah because if we did she'd starve to death because you cook nothing else."

Haru, still miffed, whirled to leave when Makoto's free hand caught his wrist. "Haru-chan. Calm down. Put it down and let her take some time."

The black-haired boy crouched on the floor and carefully set the piece of fish down. Makoto gently put the kitten's paws on the floor and after a moment to collect its bearings those powerful eyes landed on the fish and it darted forward.
The mackerel disappeared in two bites- if that hurried chomp-and-swallow maneuver could be called bites- and the little beast licked its chops and lifted those innocent oceanic eyes to Haru's blue.

"Mew?" It whined.

Haru blushed a little and hurried back to his lunch. Rin grinned and padded to Makoto's side, sitting heavily next to the brunette and receiving a welcoming kiss for his effort.

"How'd you know?" He murmured against Makoto's lips as they pulled apart.

Broad shoulders shook with a laugh and Makoto wrapped an arm around Rin's waist, fingers slipping up underneath his shirt to trace nonsense patterns against Rin's hip. "Some cats just won't eat food unless it's on the floor. I've seen it happen like that a few times."

A piece of fish came sailing in from behind the screen and bounced on the tatami. The kitten zeroed in on it and dashed after it, pounced on her prey, and upon a cursory sniff devoured her meal.
Rin laughed and rested his chin on Makoto's shoulder and the pair watched as the little orange-and-black blotchy creature sniffed the floor to find more morsels of food.
Another piece of fish, then a third. The kitten went nuts, bouncing around the rug to snap them up and eat them, and strutted toward the kitchen with her tiny stub tail straight upright. She knew where her food was coming from now. They couldn't see from their place at the table but after a second there was a soft laugh and Haru hummed "All right, all right."
The kitten followed Haru out of the kitchen, twining around his legs and mewing piteously up at the human holding the food. Makoto chuckled and grabbed the small feline, allowing Haru to set a dish in front of Rin- he blinked and offered up a wryly happy smile at the sight of the beef bowl placed before him- and another in front of Makoto. Then he went back to the kitchen and came out with his own plate and a small sauce bowl held between two fingers.
The kitten began squirming away at the smell of food but Makoto's big hands easily held it. It whimpered and whined until Haru put the sauce container on the floor (full of curled strips of mackerel) and the brunette released it. Eager, the kitten dug into her meal with gusto.

"Thanks for the food," Rin and Makoto chorused.

Haru hummed a noncommittal response but the edges of his lips turned up; then he realized there wasn't any room for him between his boyfriends.
The redhead and brunette slipped apart easily, sliding their dishes over, and though Haru opened his mouth to protest Rin just rolled his eyes and Makoto gestured for their lover.
The black-haired boy settled between them with a content sigh and leaned his head on Rin's shoulder as he picked apart his food.

Between bites green eyes cut sideways at the redhead. "So Rin, what's the plan for today?"

Rin rolled his eyes. "Gou won't tell me exactly. Honestly it's a little worrisome. If she won't tell me, it probably means..." He paused to chew, brow furrowing. "I won't like it."
A hand squeezed his thigh and he didn't need to look to know it was Makoto's. Haru rubbed his cheek against his shoulder and it was all the comfort he needed.

"I'm sure everything will be all right," Makoto mused.

"I guess," Rin grumbled back, digging around for rice. "I'm still going into this meeting fully suspicious. I know my sister."

Haru hummed in a distracted manner. "Gou-chan doesn't seem like the sneaky type."

"Like I said, I know my sister."

The rest of the meal would've gone quietly had Rin not held a piece of beef out to the kitten (who snapped it up equally as eagerly as she had the mackerel previous) and the feline realized all the good smells and yummy food was located UP.
It led to her scrambling over Rin's lap then Haru's, only to fail her leap onto the table and end up in Makoto's. Who, like his normal big-brother self, began to feed it off his own plate, cooing at the little beast.

Rin, finished (with a kiss to Haru as thanks for the food), leaned an elbow on the table, and propped up his chin. With a shark-toothed grin he said "Damn, Mako, you'd make a good dad, you know it?"

Makoto jumped half a mile and his head whipped back around. "Eh?!"

Haru nodded decisively. "You would." He looked at Rin, blue eyes bright, and asked "Should we have kids?"

"We definitely should. You'd be the mom though."

The brunette's chopsticks dropped from nerveless fingers. "EHHH?!" He squawked.

Rin broke into raucous chuckles, purely unable to help it, and Haru joined him a second later because he was simply unable to keep a straight face anymore. The pair leaned against each other, shaking with wild laughter, and Makoto flushed. "I-it's not that funny! I thought you two were serious!"

"H-how were we serious?" Rin spat out between aftershocks of giggles.

"I don't know!" Makoto whined, stressing the syllables and turning redder and redder because Haruka couldn't stop laughing. He fell back to the floor, tears squeezing from blue eyes, and held his sides.

The kitten hopped over Makoto's knees and landed on Haru's shaking chest, peering down at the laughing boy, and it calmed the black-haired teen enough that he scratched behind the little thing's ears and murmured, "She still needs a name."

"Let's just name her what we'd name our daughter," Rin cracked.

A chopstick bounced off his head.

"It should be a boyish name."

The redhead balked. "What the hell, why?! It's a girl!"

"Because we're boys with girlish names. So she can be a girl with a boyish name."

Rin's right eye twitched. "Are you making fun of my sister?"

Blue eyes met red evenly. "No."

"So what are your ideas, Haru?" Makoto, still beet red but recovering, asked quietly.

"Shinji."

Rin shot it down within a second. "Fuck that, sounds stupid."

"Takeshi."

"Are you even trying?"

"Saba."

"We are not naming the kitten mackerel, Haru."

The black-haired boy looked down at the kitten grooming itself on his chest and sighed. "I tried," he told it morosely.

The same flying chopstick from earlier rebounded off his head.

"Concentrate, dolphin-boy."

Ignoring the projectile offense from the redhead, concentrate Haru did, tilting his head and giving the kitten a long hard stare.

"...Akiha." He said at length.

To his boyfriends' surprise, the kitten perked up.
Smiling slightly, Haruka repeated the name and the kitten, with wide ocean-colored eyes, padded down the black-haired boy's chest. The other two watched with bated breath and the kitten braced itself against the slope of Haru's collarbone and pressed tiny paws to his throat.

"Akiha." As Haru said it again, drawing out the three syllables, the kitten carefully reached out and pawed his lips.

Makoto tilted his head and grinned his usual warm smile. "I think we have a winner."

"Not quite boyish," Rin muttered as he leaned over and scratched at the base of its nub of a tail. "But that's fine. It suits her anyway. Color-wise."

Haru craned his neck and pecked the tiny pink nose.
"Welcome to the family, Akiha-chan."