Notes: Originally posted on LJ, Feb. 2007.
Archive: NO.
Reviews: Appreciated. :D
Characters and pairings: InuKai, slight suggested Fujicest, Hazue.
Cat Tails
By Miki
Kaidou didn't mind being on the floor, playing with a cat or a kitten, or sometimes a puppy.
The young woman next door had recently bought a puppy, and Kaidou liked to walk past her house really slowly, just to see if the puppy was ever in the front yard.
It wasn't usually, but one day Megumi-san - she'd told him her name after she'd realised he was the boy from next door – had come out to ask him if he wanted something.
She'd brought the thing out with her, in her arms; a chubby, fluffy, five week old puppy with not much intelligence apparently, but with a little pink tongue that darted out and licked Kaidou's hand before he'd even touched his fingers to its head.
Kaidou was smitten from the word go.
He couldn't help straying off the path now as he walked past her house; hoping to perhaps find the familiar black ball of fur in between the bushes.
Her name was Rukia and she was six weeks old now.
Megumi didn't mind if he went into the yard and played with her, as long as he made sure to shut her gate properly afterwards and didn't do anything funny, like trying to make the thing eat dirt or sticks, like some of the other younger boys in the neighbourhood were prone to do.
By the time she was seven weeks old, Kaidou realised he was inadvertently turning down Inui's invitations in favour of spending his spare time rolling around on the lawn with a ball of fur with increasingly long legs.
When his mother remarked that he was getting along really well with their neighbour, Kaidou hissed and almost corrected her, before he realised he was too embarrassed to admit he was more interested in the furball than the girl.
Kittens and cats, puppies and dogs were cute things.
He gravitated towards them naturally.
They had cute ears and fluffy, furry, little bodies, and they stared up at you with a look on their faces, just asking you to pet them and stroke them and play with them.
Kaidou always found himself faced with a dilemma whenever he came face to face with something so cute.
On one hand, he couldn't really walk past without wanting to pet them, and yet, he always had to look around first just to check that no one he knew was looking at him.
Right now, however, Kaidou found himself confronted with another dilemma.
Yes, it had fluffy ears, and a tail.
And yes, it was looking up at him with a look resembling hope.
But it was most definitely not a cat.
"Senpai?"
(S)
Inui wasn't stupid.
He did realise that following Fuji's suggestion might not have been his wisest decision ever, but he had been rather desperate.
His usual tactics hadn't worked on Kaidou, and after several consecutive days of being turned down in varying ways, he'd come to the conclusion that something had altered in Kaidou's daily routine.
He was surprised at first to realise he hadn't noticed it sooner, but when he thought about it, he'd looked back over his data and realised Kaidou was now coming to morning sessions happier than usual and was hissing less whenever Inui's hands strayed too near him in Momo's presence.
He'd been happy at first, but when he'd noticed he was now being turned down for after-training activities more and more, he couldn't help feeling a little worried.
Worry had turned to curiosity – data being the omnipresent thing in his life – and he'd followed Kaidou home several days in a row.
He was caught between watching Kaidou lying on the grass in a most disarming manner – did he even realise how he looked from here? – and jotting down rapid notes on the horrible, black thing that kept bounding between the bushes and Kaidou's arms and legs.
He'd waited a few minutes until Kaidou had gotten up, dusted himself off, picked up his bag and gone into his own house, before Inui couldn't wait any longer and snuck along the fence to get a closer look at the thing with which his kouhai seemed so enamoured.
The minute he'd met his nemesis, it regarded him, head tilted slightly and ears perked as though unsure what to make of him.
Then it bounded over playfully, and when Inui squatted down and reached out his hand, it licked him.
Inui decided then that this was indeed a larger problem than he'd initially suspected.
He'd been contemplating his options when Fuji sidled up to him the next morning after practice.
He'd presented Inui with a paper bag and instructed him not to open it until he got home.
The bag had looked normal enough, which had worried Inui, and when he'd gotten in the front door of his apartment and had thrown down his school bags and scrounged around to get out Fuji's bag again, he had opened it and couldn't help but stare at its contents in barely-concealed horror.
Apparently Fuji thought he ought to subscribe to the 'if you can't beat them, join them' notion.
Kaidou's doorstep was uncomfortable beneath his buttocks, and his heart had been pounding for the last ten minutes with the knowledge that if Kaidou didn't hurry up and come home soon, Inui might just find himself greeting Kaidou's father instead, and then he'd have a lot of explaining to do.
He wished he'd stuck around watching Kaidou a little longer, but then he might have been caught out and he wouldn't have had enough time to get himself ready before Kaidou reached the door.
He shifted a little, and adjusted his tail.
Kaidou was approaching.
He hoped the pen on his nose hadn't smudged.
(S)
Kaidou stopped with a jolt at the sight of the boy on his doorstep.
He swallowed, not quite believing what he was seeing.
"Senpai?" he asked, half hoping the person who looked like Inui wasn't actually Inui, because the person who looked like Inui was currently sitting on his doorstep right in front of the door, and he was wearing cat ears and had a black triangle drawn on his nose.
Then he stood up and Kaidou saw a funny flash of colour behind his legs.
Kaidou breathed in.
It was a tail.
"Kaidou."
The person who looked like Inui adjusted his glasses.
Kaidou breathed out, squeezed his eyes closed, stepped forwards, threw his arm out and felt it hit the person who was most definitely Inui with cat ears, and unlocked his door.
Then he rushed inside, turned around, slammed his door shut and heard a startled yell.
He stood still for a moment, hands flattened against the door, only comforted by the fact that there were three locks on this door and every one of them was Inui proof.
What was Inui-senpai doing?
Really, what was he doing here now? And what was he wearing?
Kaidou flicked all the locks on the door and checked each one twice before pulling off his shoes, throwing them down and running upstairs to his room, slamming his bedroom door.
He checked Hazue's room, but he wasn't there, so Kaidou assumed he was still at his friend's house, like he was supposed to be.
That meant there wasn't anyone else in the house yet because his father should still be at work and his mother should be out shopping.
Good.
He was safe.
No one would think to associate him with that… that thing on the doorstep.
He'd just act normally.
He hurried over to his desk and sat down at it, picking up a pen and fiddling with it.
This was normal enough, wasn't it?
He'd just tell his mother he didn't know anything about the cat ears.
Or the cat tail.
He hadn't seen the cat tail, he told himself, clutching his pen tightly and trying not to hiss too loudly.
Then there was a thump from the hallway and his door was opened.
Hazue stared at him with wide eyes.
Kaidou stared back at him.
Hazue had been in the house.
"Nii-chan?" he asked, stepping further into the room.
Kaidou swallowed.
Act normally.
Act normally and Hazue wouldn't suspect a thing.
"How long have you been home?" he asked.
"Since school finished, but nii-cha-"
Kaidou cut him off.
"Weren't you supposed to be at Izumi's house?"
Hazue looked away, crossing his arms defiantly. "I'm not talking to him."
Kaidou twitched.
Why did Hazue have to choose today of all days to be a brat?
He stood up from his desk, putting down his pen.
"Hazue, why don't you-"
Hazue cut him off.
"Nii-chan."
Kaidou frowned at him. He did realise he'd just done that himself, so he couldn't really tell Hazue off for it, but he ought to know better.
"What?" Kaidou asked, gruffly.
"There's a tail in the door."
(S)
Inui reflected on the fact that removing the tail from his body would take some careful manoeuvring.
Or rather, he'd have to remove himself from the tail.
It was only attached by a band of elastic, but unfortunately the elastic was rather tight around his hips and couldn't be undone since it was a single band and the join was stitched to the tail itself.
He tugged on the tail once more, but it was firmly wedged in the doorway and he wasn't confident he wouldn't break it if he pulled any harder.
That was the downside.
The upside was that he was at least stuck in a relatively comfortable position.
He could lean backwards against the door and look like a perfectly normal person to any passer by who didn't happen to notice the black spot on his nose and the ears on his head.
He was almost glad he hadn't tried to wear the plastic whiskers.
(S)
Kaidou stared at the door.
"Nii-chan, that hurts," Hazue huffed, twisting to get his shoulder out of his brother's firm grip.
Kaidou barely spared him a glance as he did so.
He was too horrified at the fact that there were about thirty centimetres of cat tail sticking into the house through the side of the door.
He approached it, a mixture of anger, disbelief, embarrassment and fascination.
He poked it, almost let down by the way it merely moved for a moment and then swung back to its former position.
There wasn't any sound coming from the other side of the door, so he wondered if Inui had abandoned his tail and left.
That didn't seem a very Inui thing to do though, so he swallowed hard before grasping the tail firmly in two hands and yanking.
Nothing happened.
Peeking out through the window, he realised that Inui was still there.
And then he realised that his mother was about ten metres down the street, and he flicked the three locks as fast as his fumbling fingers could manage, and pulled open the door.
(S)
Inui had calculated the circumference of the elastic, and concluded rather woefully, that the only way he'd be able to get it off without damaging either it or the tail stuck in the doorway would be to remove his jeans first.
They added crucial millimetres to hips at the level where the tail was stuck in the doorway, and allowing for the tightness of the elastic band, he wouldn't have a hope of climbing out of it at this height if he didn't get rid of them.
Alternately, he could try to get out by moving downwards, rather than climbing over, but he didn't like the increased risk of injuring his back that way.
He considered ringing Kaidou's doorbell for a moment, but quickly dismissed the idea when he heard a noise from the other side of the door.
He was ninety-four percent certain that Kaidou was on the other side of it, but considering the way he'd reacted before, Inui thought the chance that he'd open the door now was probably less than ten percent.
Inui suspected there was a high probability that it had been the pen on the nose that had done it.
He decided not to delay the inevitable any longer and looked around quickly.
He took nearly a minute to undo the button on his jeans.
Then he took another look around and decided to take off his shoes too.
They would also add another obstacle once he tried to climb out of the elastic.
He had to lift his feet one at a time as he tried to lean back and balance on the door behind him, and it took him another minute to get both shoes off.
He dropped them onto the step beside him.
Then, unable to delay any longer, he hurriedly unzipped his fly, moving the elastic as he did so, and hooked his thumbs under the sides of his jeans.
There was no one around, he told himself.
Being outside in his boxers was not a crime.
It was only a crime once he took them off, of course.
Everything happened in an instant.
Jeans halfway down his thighs, he heard the footsteps.
He recognised them in a split second.
Panic seized him as he fumbled and tried to pull his pants back up.
The elastic was now in the way, and he squirmed, trying desperately to get his jeans up over his hips and past the elastic to zip up his fly again when suddenly he heard the clunk and the whoosh as the door was pulled open behind him.
He was hopping backwards on one foot before he knew it, cursing as he accidentally caught his boxers in the zip of his jeans.
And then he found himself falling over a pair of shoes and sprawling backwards, pain shooting down his legs and up his back as he blearily stared up at Kaidou.
"You opened the door."
Kaidou looked like he was about to explode.
"Of course I opened the door!" he yelled, surprising both of them with the loudness of his voice.
"What are you trying to do? Get arrested?"
Inui wanted to point out that he hadn't wanted to do that at all; that he'd merely been trying to leave Kaidou in peace and quiet.
But then Kaidou glared down at him, hands on hips; cheeks a bright shade of red that Inui usually associated with their training sessions in the park.
He huffed loudly – dramatically – and stomped up the stairs.
Inui stood up, jumping a little on one leg as he hitched his pants up properly and zipped and buttoned them.
He adjusted the cat tail.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" came Kaidou's snappish voice a moment later, and Inui scrambled to get up the stairs before his mother came in the front door.
(S)
Kaidou closed the door of his room with a bang.
"Hazue saw your tail," he said, anger beginning to recede a little as he realised Inui was looking uncomfortable.
He had probably yelled too loudly, and he shouldn't have yelled at a Senpai at all, no matter how stupid Inui was being.
"Why did you do that, Inui-senpai?"
Inui smiled a little before looking serious again.
"It was an error in my judgement, Kaidou. Forgive me."
Kaidou huffed.
That wasn't the answer he'd wanted.
That part was obvious enough.
"I… I've been noticing you're spending less time… I mean," Inui cleared his throat, "we don't seem to be meeting after school with our usual frequency."
He realised that unless Kaidou put two and two together and realised Inui had been spying on him, he wouldn't understand that answer, but he was already feeling embarrassed enough as it was.
He knew that Kaidou knew most of his data collecting habits, but he didn't think Kaidou was aware quite how much time Inui spent following him around.
He realised his reasoning was pathetic and completely illogical.
When it came to Kaidou, he had thrown some of his logic out the window a long time ago.
The rest of what remained; he tried desperately to hold onto, only to find that Kaidou defied it.
"What's this?" Kaidou asked loudly.
The look on his face made it perfectly clear that he wasn't about to let Inui off the hook, despite the fact that Inui knew he wasn't quite angry anymore as embarrassed and probably bewildered.
"Ah, this?" Inui assumed he was talking about the tail, and pushed the elastic down his legs, wriggling ungracefully.
He wasn't quite sure now how he'd managed to get it on since it seemed even tighter now.
"No," Kaidou huffed, and hissed.
Inui felt his headband being pulled from his head, and he struggled to lift his feet out of the elastic without falling over.
Kaidou was examining the cat ears by the time he managed to divest himself of the troublesome tail.
"Why were you wearing these, Senpai?"
Inui adjusted his glasses, feeling much more like himself without the elastic around his hips and the tail falling down behind him.
"That is…" he fiddled with the tail in his hands. "I…"
Kaidou stared at him, chin tilted in that way that made Inui think he might possibly, almost be forgiven.
If he could just find the right words to say now.
"I thought you liked cats," he said.
Kaidou looked annoyed again.
"I do like cats," he scowled out, embarrassed and irritated again.
Inui cleared his throat.
"But…"
Kaidou hissed.
There was an awkward silence.
Inui suspected he'd pushed his luck too far.
Kaidou was probably past the point of being angry now, and he did have a right to be.
"I should go," Inui swallowed, running a hand through his hair.
He reached out for the cat ears, but Kaidou held them back.
Inui looked at him in surprise.
"Kaidou? I need those back," he said, and stepped closer, reaching for them again.
Kaidou grasped his wrist, holding him still with one hand as he snatched the tail from Inui and threw both the tail and the ears down on the floor.
"Senpai?"
Inui stiffened.
"Yes, Kaidou?"
Kaidou hissed and lowered his gaze until Inui was sure he was glaring at their hands.
"I'm sorry I didn't see you after school this week."
Inui nearly opened his mouth to speak, when Kaidou's fingers tightened their grip and he stopped.
"I don't… I didn't mean anything by it," Kaidou explained.
Inui stood still.
He wasn't sure quite how to take Kaidou's words, but his hands moved automatically when Kaidou let go of his wrist.
He wrapped his arms around Kaidou; his hold tentative at first and then tight when Kaidou sort of leaned into him.
"You don't need cat ears, Senpai," he mumbled.
"I like you without them anyway."
Inui didn't know what to say to that, so he didn't say anything.
He'd have to thank Fuji later, of course, and while he was at it, maybe he could ask him if he could keep the cat ears for a while longer.
Kaidou had given him the distinct impression he didn't like the cat ears on Inui, but he'd never said anything about wearing them himself, had he?
(S)
Fuji sidled up to Inui on Monday morning, as they watched Kaidou and Momoshiro run laps around the outer of the tennis courts.
"You're looking refreshed today, Inui," Fuji smiled. "I trust you found the costume useful?"
Inui halted his scribbling in his notebook and pushed his glasses up his nose.
"Er, about that…"
Inui realised that the probability that Fuji was considering asking him for the ears back was about eighty-six percent, but Inui was still trying to work out what he was supposed to say to that.
Kaidou hadn't liked the idea of wearing the ears, though apparently Hazue had, because he'd worn them at dinner that night, prompting more than the odd question from Kaidou's parents.
Inui was still tempted to ask where Fuji got them from in the first place.
"They're Yuuta's, you know," Fuji said then, and Inui blinked, turning to look at Fuji's face.
"The tail still fits, you know," Fuji smiled, not at all bothered by the fact that Inui's eyes were staring at him from behind his glasses.
"Yuuta… likes cats?" Inui questioned, flicking back through his data book and wishing he'd book marked that page on Yuuta in here.
You never knew when that sort of information would be needed.
Fuji was slow to reply at any rate.
"Perhaps it's not so much the fact that he likes cats…"
Inui scribbled.
"… as the fact that he likes me," Fuji finished.
Inui nearly dropped his book.
"You didn't stretch the elastic on the tail, did you, Inui?"
Inui shook his head quickly.
"No, but it was a tight fit. I suspect-"
"You're right," Fuji smiled. "The costume is made for children so it only just fits, but it's easier to get the elastic on if you take off your clothes first."
Inui wondered if he was imagining the words coming out of Fuji's mouth.
He wondered if Fuji was making it up just to see his reaction.
Inui suspected he didn't really want to know the answer.
Perhaps Kaidou was right about the cat ears.
Maybe neither of them needed them.
He liked Kaidou exactly the way he was now, after all.
.fin.