Andrew Hussie owns Homestuck. I own this story.
Your name is Gamzee Makara and you are currently standing listlessly in the cold winter rain. Downtown DC is forever lit up with signs advetising this or that, but here, off to the side, pancaked between two buildings there is only darkness. And a dumpster.
You call this particular dumpster home. It is the one between the McDonalds and Metro Station and you find it very convenient if you are ever hungry or need to hop on a sub right away.
You never need to hop on a sub right away, however you do get hungry just about every day. You're not sure why, though; where does the food go? You eat it and you're not hungry for a while, but then the nips and tugs in your tum come back and you have to go on the hunt for a few dollars to buy off of the Dollar Menu again.
Usually this is not a problem. Tourists are a constant, flocking here to look at the different museums and monuments. As a child you experienced it all but now they're simply part of the scenery like they are for other residents. You spend your time making friends on the run and talking a few quarters out of them. No harm done.
Tonight, though.. tonight you feel starved. Your warm dumpster has been filled with the syrup and club soda that usually go into the miraculous sodas in Mickey D's and it is no longer a comfortable home. Now it is a soupy mess that clings to your clothing and tastes terrible. The rain is rinsing it off now as you simply stand there, gazing out toward the street as the traffic begins to eek through a green light.
You've always preffered your sodas in a bottle. Or maybe a cup. But usually only the kind of cup that comes with a lid. For a moment you ponder on just how they manage to find straws that fit the little 'x' poked into the top of the lid and your lips turn up. They were miraculous motherfuckers, those McDonalds workers.
You hear something shifting around behind you and turn, head cocked and mess of black curls plastered to your dripping face. Something is moving around behind your dumpster and you feel it is your solemn duty as the sole resident to check it out. You lazily slide down to your hands and knees, cheek on the dirty cement and half-lidded eyes gazing into the darkness.
Miracle of motherfuckin' miracles.
There's a hiss and you chuckle, reaching out and ignoring the bite of claws and teeth in your skin as you stroke the back of a sleek grey striper cat. She's currently trying her best to keep a bundle of other little fluffy striper cats against her, swatting and spitting at you, but they must have left their little phones off because they obviously didn't get the memo.
One, two, three, four. The four little ones stumble and bumble out into the open, though quickly duck back under the dumpster when they are met with cold water falling from the sky. You simply laugh again and lean forward, now on your hands and knees to create a pavillion of sorts. They peek out at you and slowly, testing the skies above them, toddle back out.
The first one is pretty big with a darker coat than the others. You think you'll call him Captain because he seems to be in charge. The next is a slightly smaller female who seems to be the carbon copy of her mother. Clone. The third is a girl with an uninterupted black coat and big glinting eyes. Hm.. Cocoa. Another C name. The last is itty bitty and you distinguish it as the runt immediately.
In true classy fashion, you name her Wilbur.
You reach down with the hand that isn't supporting you, stroking along Captain's back affectionately. He stumbles in a circle, trying to get at your hand, and you slow your wrist so he can ultimately snag it. His teeth are like little needles but his paws are untrained so he simply ends up lipping and suckling at your finger as he tries to stay up.
The rain seems to be lightening, you notice, and you are finally free to flop over onto your back. The kittens flock to you; Captain concuring your stomach with Cocoa not far behind. Clone seems hesitant to approach you and instead ducks back beneath the dumpster find comfort in her mother's soft tum. You smile brightly, though, because the real kicker is Wilbur, who clambers up, all paws no claws, onto your neck and presumably goes to sleep with her small body cast over it.
You lay there for a long time, idly playing with Captain and Cocoa on your stomach without really seeing them- to move your head was to wake Wilbur up, after all, bless her tiny little heart. At some point or another, your hands grow heavy and simply come to rest on your tum and your eyes slip shut. All and all, even if you're hungry and your home is a soup, you think the kitties make up for it.
-
A week has passed and you are starting to learn why people are always talking about how fast their kids have grown up. You've made good friends with Mama at this point and her babies treat you like one of their own. Now when you snaggle up a few dollars for lunch, you spend half of it on a McRib and half of it on some wet catfood from the 7-Eleven up the street.
They've grown, enough so that Captain can distinguish himself as the alpha (does that mean only? You think it means only) male on sight and Wilbur doesn't seem pitifully underweight. Now she just seems a smidge younger than the others. They play and tumble around in the alley way, mewing and mrowing and just making so many miraculous tunes you can hardly keep up with your singing.
Sometimes when you sing people pause curiously at the mouth of the alley, but they always start moving along again when they see you. You don't know why. Maybe they don't like your clothes or somethin'. You wear the grey jacket under the purple plaid jacket and over the long-sleeved long-john shirt because it gets right cold. The hat makes your hair do crazy things along the edges, though, so maybe they mistake you for an alley-monster. That's probably all.
You just keep on singing, drumming your fingers on the dumpster to get a good beat out of it and occasionally joining in the fighting. (Don't tell the kittens, but you usually go down without a fight. You think Wilbur knows, and Mama deffinitely knows, but don't tell the others.) It's a hoot and a half playing with them and something inside of you, something that was never realized during your own lonely childhood, seems to stir at it.
You love these kits and they love you and you're all one big happy family.
-
McDonalds was sort of busy today. You think there was a holiday going on or something where people didn't have to go to work, because a lot of the customers were people you see running up and down the sidewalks in suits. They're dressed casually today, however, with their wives and children gathered around them in line.
The cashier, a real nice gal with short choppy curls and big green eyes, recognizes you immediately and waves you up as she opens another register. You call her Kitten because most days she likes to wear a cat-hat and she squeals over your own little brother and sisters whenever she gets a chance to see them.
She says her name is something else, but you call her Kitten anyway.
With a double cheeseburger and soda in your hands and a bag containing off-brand catfood around your wrist, you swag your way on out the door and around to the alley. You blink when the cats aren't already out waiting for you, but you laugh and call for them to wake their sleepy little heads up cos you got some chow for 'em.
You sit down beside the dumpster, knocking on the side with one hand and pulling out the cat food with the other. Still no reply. You grab their food bowl (a real big old plastic container) and fill it up, shifting it tantalizingly in front of the dumpster. Huh.
After giving them a moment, you lean down, cheek pressed to the cement and pitch black eyes searching the darkness for... nothing?
Rocking back so you're sitting up again, you look around. This is your alley alright. Where did your lil kitfam go, then? Maybe they went on an adventure like your own Mama did. Hopefully they'd be back soon before their food got warm.
You lean back against the brick wall and start eating before your train of thought can go any farther.
-
A month has come and gone. Your dumpster has been replaced (thankfully, bless those Mickey D's workers) and is now better insulated and silver. It glints and shines in the bits of sunlight that creep in over the buildings, unlike the green beast it was beforehand. You'll always love the old one, but you have more than enough love to spread around.
You kept up with buying cat food everyday for a while, but you stopped opening it in the hopes of drawing your kittens out and instead just left it sitting back in the corner where it wouldn't accidentally get thrown away. It would mean a big feast when they finally marched their lil paws on home, though.
For some reason the thought doesn't make you smile like you used to.
Nothing else has really changed. You told Kitten and she had started to explain something (the Pound? Is that a fightclub or something?) but she did that little thing with her nose that she does when she gets frustrated and gave up. The next day you came in she wasn't working, that was today, so you think maybe she got a day off after working so hard to make you understand. Her boss had gone to talk to her while you were on your way out cos she'd been talking to you for so long.
The old frenchfries you are snacking on do not taste as good as usual. You think that maybe McDonald's changed what they put on them, but when you tried to ask, nobody wanted to talk to you. You decided to just wait for Kitten to come back to work. And for your kittens to come home.
Sometimes all you can do is wait. And wait. And wait. Time is a miraculous thing, yeah, but sometimes you really wish you could just walk on up to Ol' Father Time himself and ask him to speed things up a little bit. Mabe give the sand timer a shake or two to get a few more grains through. Anything to make your family come home sooner.
-
Kitten still hasn't come back to work. You are starting to worry about her and you went to the boss guy to ask where she was, but all he would yell at you was something about fire and bums. Did she burn her butt? When you asked him, he got red in the face he was getting so loud and when he showed you to the door, he said you were banned. (He said it in a bunch of different ways, though, so you're sure banned means you can't come back in ever again until tomorrow.)
He was standing by the door the next time you tried to come in for some lunch and turned you right the motherfuck back out. He said no, you, my good man, are banned, like he was handing you a Nobel Prize with this huge grin on his face and his beady eyes glinting behind his glasses. You said you just wanted something to eat and he said to stop talking to him because you are banned.
So maybe banned means forever? When you asked him he waved you away with a pudgy hand and used the other to make a "shh" sign against his lips. You think that means you're right. You also think that means you aren't allowed to stay in their dumpster anymore. The thought makes you get all antsy because what if your kitfam comes home? Or what if Kitten comes back to work? What if you aren't here like you're supposed to be?
What will you do now?
Reader input would be nice! I'll probably be more swayed by what I get on dA, but I diffinitely would take any input off of FF into account.