though i don't know what tomorrow's bringing. ( cat )
You dream.
You’re smaller than small and the tables seem larger than large—the walls echo and the floor slants. Not like it’s not supposed to, but like it’s always trying to make you fall.
You do fall.
You can hear your mother on the other side of the house—talking loudly, the click click of her bond mate’s nails on the hardwood floors making you anxious.
“Not this time,” Meraviglia says at your side, small and fluffy and bright red—glowering from where he’s spread across your knees. His nose twitches and you know he’s trying not to scratch at the cut on his muzzle. “I promise, Kit, not this time.” He’s smaller than small too, and you want to tell him not to bother—that it hurts you when he hurts, that you feel the pounding of his heart against the insides of your own ribs.
You remember your mother’s eyes whenever your vulpix rounded the corner on rounded paws, that little lift of her nose, the glower of her bond mate down a long black muzzle. You can’t imagine wanting anything other than Meraviglia, who tells you stories, and keeps you safe. Who levels your heart with his because he’s so much stronger than you are.
He tells you that isn’t the case, but you’re not easily convinced.
You’d been so thrilled when he settled a week ago—much later than everyone else in your grade.
It didn’t matter to you.
“Nothing’s wrong,” you promise him, fingers curled into the rust of his fur, he doesn’t complain about the grip, doesn’t wiggle or shy away—just bristles and shuffles closer to you, further onto your lap. “Everything’s fine.”
It isn’t—it really isn’t.
Your father’s been dead for two years now—a long two years—and he’s your only comfort.
The click click of nails draw your attention down the hall—darkness save the bright glow of reflective eyes…
.
…you wake up.
Startling up from slumber with a thunderous heartbeat—something sharp and bright in your chest, like eyes in the dark. You can’t pin point where exactly you are at first—a cool breeze, a warm blanket, and—cream walls.
Your bedroom.
You can’t remember much of the dream—can’t remember more than eyes in the dark, and a burn on the tip of your nose. Running fingers through your hair you let your heart casually calm—lulling off into a normal beat while you wiggle your toes against a weight. The moon’s bright and even without your glasses you can see the pale fur of your bond mate on the balcony. His eyes bright red and watching you—he hasn’t moved, but you know his heart jumped in time with yours.
“Catherine?” He asks softly, so softly you know it might just be inside you, a silent inquiry—and you shake your head, because you know he knows because of how his nose twitches. The little mark still visible after so many decades of much harder tribulations.
“Everything’s fine,” you say, and you tuck your brow a little at the repetition from your much younger self—smaller than small—and exhale. The weight on your toes is an opalescent rodent in a brilliantly red cape—tail tucked up over his nose, eyelids twitching. You wonder what he’s dreaming of—this isn’t the first time you’ve caught Supergirl asleep on your balcony.
“Rough night,” Mera supplies, a tail moving to drape over the superhero that cuddles into his side—a phantom pressure up your own side that makes your mind a little hazy. There’s none of the uncomfortable buzz that usually accompanies someone inadvertently brushing your daemon. You wonder if anyone’s ever told Kara—that her touch is a balm, instead of a blaze.
“Hm,” you hum, blinking away the sleep still muddling through your thoughts so that you might properly tuck in the rodent on your feet—he’s never actually made it to the bed before. The balcony with Mera and his own bond mate, the chaise lounge across the room, the edge of the dresser beside the bed—you imagine he’s been working up to this.
Surprisingly, you don’t mind.
It’s that silly little flutter in your chest that lets you know you’d do much of anything for this stupid little vermin, and the woman he’s half of. You drape an edge of the blanket over him and aren’t terribly surprised when his eyes crack open and look up at you like you might not notice if he stays absolutely still.
“Make yourself at home, why don’t you,” you murmur, softer than soft, and his little face screws up in something of a grin. Whiskers twitching, and paws curling over the edge of the blanket to tug it more over him.
“Your mongrel bored her to sleep,” the daemon huffs, air jetting out of his nostrils to flutter the blanket until he scrambles to grab it again. All you can really see is the bright blue of his eyes—the amethyst just at his pupil crystalline and sharp.
“Mera can be rather long winded,” you agree, not wanting to make him fly off—you imagine his skepticism is what protects Kara’s tender heart, her bright hope. The pragmatism you almost recognize in his eyes, a skepticism that looks back at you in the mirror. Kara’s balance, curling contently at your feet. Looking over, Meraviglia’s already closed his eyes—absolutely ignoring you, though you know he can hear you.
Laying down, the cool air keeps you awake, but the warmth of your blankets easily try pulling you under again—it’s still too early for you to be Cat Grant, media magnate, still too early to pull all your layers properly into place. To be the person you’ve made over decades of trial and error—from that smaller than small girl hiding under a table, fearing the dark at the edge of the hall.
“Nightmare?” Saoviz—though that’s not what he answers to in this form—asks from the silence, and you swear you feel small fingers gripping your large toe through two layers of blanket. A vague comfort.
“Hardly,” you whisper back, because it hadn’t been, not really. It was just an unpleasant memory that snuck up on you sometimes. Peeking around the corner when you least expect it—of a little girl who hadn’t much hope because she hadn’t known where to look. Inside, outside—far, far away.
“Hardly,” he intones in mimic, and you shove a toe rudely into his side.
“You’re being awfully rude for someone who is trespassing,” you observe, eyes closed and tucking yourself back under your blankets. Back to the moonlight and the figures curled on the balcony.
“You don’t have to lie,” God, he has that same pleading note as Kara, and you imagine he has the same big doe eyes—you’re luckily tucked away from them, because you know your traitorous heart will do all manner of unseemly things. Fluttering, and such. “We have nightmares too.”
It’s not a non-sequitur, but it trails off and you wonder if there’s anything more.
“Krypton, mostly.” An admission you feel he’s struggling to make—it’s the bristle against the sole of your foot, the shift and then eerie stillness. “—but the Phantom Zone too.” You don’t reach out, you’re not liberal with your touches, not like Kara, but you feel like you might not have to. Not when he settles, not when his paws wrap back around your large toe with a loose grip.
“It’s less—when we’re not alone.”
Fuck, your heart flutters and something else in your chest aches for them—these darling aliens of yours, because in so many ways they do belong to you. Abstract ways that don’t make sense in the light of day—but now? At night with only the moon for guidance, it’s easy to say, “Stay.”
Easier still to fall back asleep.
.
Morning coffee, morning headache—you’re not surprised when Supergirl and her Mew are gone when you’re apart properly for the day. Like they had never been there. The only proof your oddly warm feet, and the open balcony door.
“You’re being rather insufferable,” Mera grouses from where he’s draped himself across the living room couch—your son’s daemon flickering happily between an eevee and a rattata as she rolled all over the fox. Cadeau was old enough now that she should have already settled, but you weren’t worried—or concerned, or embarrassed—no matter how your mother tried to make you feel about the matter.
“Let’s not get into talks of pots and kettles,” you snap, making two sets of ears perk up, Cadeau puts paws up on the back on your couch, and you can’t even be mad when she gives you a grin. All lip and teeth, but your heart melts just a little more. You’re a damned polar ice cap in the age of global warming.
You’re fucked.
“Come over here,” you sigh, so very put upon, but Cadeau doesn’t care—pushing off and sprinting across the room until she can flourish again and land in your arms as a farfetch’d. Tucking her fuzzy head and beak into the side of your neck with a content sigh. “Carter! You’re going to be late.” Combing fingers through downy feathers, you wish your little boy would never grow up—that Cadeau would stay as she is until the end of time. Anything, everything—the kind of possibility that only belongs to children.
“He stayed up playing video games,” Mera mock-whispers, muzzle up on the back of the couch, imperious red eyes blinking lazily in the sunlight. All lazy energy and listless action—sometimes you just like leaving employees with him because they always are leagues more uncomfortable than when you’re also present. They fear you, but Mera makes them feel something primal—all caves walls and lightning strikes.
It’s fantastic.
“We’re pretending we don’t know that,” you coo, still scratching through soft feathers—Cadeau purrs and preens. “Isn’t that right, dear heart?” She’s nodding, though you know she isn’t listening. Carter staggers out of his room and down the hallways—curls messier than usual, shirt askew, but the proof is in the tired look in his eyes. The squint at the sunlight, the little frown between his brows.
“Mom, have you seen—,” he sees Cadeau in your arms and exhales loudly. “Cad! We’re gonna be late!” The daemon in your arms bristles out of her pet induces stupor and wriggles until you let her free—morphing mid-air to a pidgey and fluttering across the room on agitated wings until she lands on Carter’s backpack. They’re sprinting to the door, and you long for the times that he was young enough that he liked you riding with him to school—but that was days, and weeks, and years ago.
“Bye mom!” Shouted as the door slammed shut behind him, not even allowing you a response.
“Absolutely ignored,” Meraviglia bemoans, looking absolutely unbothered.
“Oh, knock it off, we’re not even going to touch the fact that you were with him playing video games.” You’d spotted them in passing as you’d walked from your office to the kitchen—lights off in Carter’s room, the glow of the television on both their faces. Carter explaining side-scrollers to the fox like he actually cared to play—but it was hardly a secret that your beast had the softest of spots of Carter.
“The box said he needed adult supervision,” the fox grins back, blinking lethargically at you, all nine tails limp and piling high on the couch.
Rolling your eyes, you gather your bag, check your hair in the mirror in the hall, and smack a few of Mera’s tails off the couch. “Get down, I just vacuumed.”
“Let us go pretend we don’t know all the things we very much do know,” he drawls, sliding off the couch primly and shaking his limbs loose. Lopping to your side, he rubs up against your thigh, tails twining around you as you wait for the elevator. Scratching your daemon behind the ears, you find contentment in the rumbling purr in his chest—the warmth in your own, and the bristle of something very much like awareness.
“We’re very good at pretending, aren’t we, you senile old fox?”
He rumbles a laugh, nudging his head further into your palm. “The best.”