a/n: a while ago one of my friends (splattery on twitter, a Rad Person) suggested kumirei adopting a cat for a prompt, so i wrote it and it ended up being. quite fluffy.

i might make this into a series of sorts with little snapshots of kumiko and reina's married life? idk

"Reina . . ."

The name lay soft and sweet on the woman's tongue as she lazily rolled over to face her sleeping wife.

"Reina, 's time to get up. We can't sleep all day."

"You can't," Reina grumbled, tucking herself tighter into a ball. The sunlight danced along her face. "I can. The orchestra's on a break."

"Hmm." Kumiko let out a hum of frustration before promptly whacking Reina on the head with the nearest pillow.

"Hey! What was that for?"

"Lazybones." Kumiko held back a laugh. "C'mon, I'll make breakfast." Reina reluctantly slid out of the queen-sized bed, blearily rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

"You'll burn breakfast, you mean."

"To each their own, Kousaka-san."

"Oumae-Kousaka, now."

"Right." Kumiko stared again at her glittering wedding ring, snug on her finger, and smiled. "Oumae-Kousaka."

"Y'know, it's kind of ridiculous, how domestic we are," Kumiko chuckled as she tossed her attempt at pancakes in the trash and opted instead for a fresh box of Pop-Tarts. "Like, this is the kind of thing I would've daydreamed about when I was a little kid. Marrying my high school sweetheart, living with her in a cozy one-bedroom apartment uptown. It's . . . perfect."

"Your pancakes certainly aren't," Reina teased. Kumiko snorted.

"Need I remind you of the time you set off the fire alarms because you were trying to cook dinner? We had to explain the rose petals on the bed to the cops."

"I think they were jealous." Reina, despite all her talk of never wanting to leave her bed, prepared extraordinarily fast, already dressed in her usual professional ensemble.

"Probably." Kumiko gave Reina a peck on the cheek before starting for the door.

"Wait." Reina stood up. "You forgot something."

"Eh?" She kissed Kumiko on the lips.

"Now you're ready. I'll make sure to tell you when I've taken a break from practicing."

"You're already special, Reina, I dunno why you're still trying to prove that."

"I can't get rusty, Kumiko."

"Can't argue with that, I guess." Kumiko cheerfully stepped out the door, giving Reina one last wave before heading down the hallway.

The first cat was a mistake. This was something Kumiko insisted when she came home with a gray tabby in her arms, its fur ragged and its aroma distinctly resembling that of a dumpster that had at some point been shoved into another dumpster.

"Are we going to talk about the cat, or are we just going to pretend it isn't here?" Reina finally asked. The cat in question was too busy lapping up the milk Kumiko had neatly laid out in a bowl to say anything in response.

"He followed me home, Reina! I couldn't just leave him there." Reina eyed the cat again.

"Do you remember the time we tried to raise a stray dog at school?" Kumiko chuckled at the memory.

"Yeah, and a few people thought you were pregnant. We had to give the puppy away, though."

"Exactly." Reina crouched down and stroked the cat between the ears. "I don't really want a repeat of that."

"We were kids, Reina. We're adults now, we can have all the cats we want." Kumiko looked up at her wife with pleading eyes that - rather ironically - were reminiscent of a puppy's. "Besides, our parents'll start asking us about grandkids soon. We can use this little guy as an excuse."

"That's . . . an appealing offer," Reina mused. The cat let out a strangled meow of agreement. "I get to name him, though."

"You've got a deal." Kumiko planted a kiss on the cat's smelly head. "You're gonna be our new son, Mr. . . . uh . . . what do you want to name him?"

"Dvořák."

"Dvořák," Kumiko echoed. "We should get him cleaned up. The poor guy doesn't look like he's seen a bath in years."

Dvořák settled into the Oumae-Kousaka household fairly well, often accompanying Reina's trumpet solos with his own caterwauls, and Kumiko woke up more than once to feel his furry tail resting on her face.

It shouldn't have come to anyone as a surprise, then, when the second cat showed up.

"Uh, Reina?" Kumiko set down her coat and stared at the fluffy tuxedo cat sharing Dvořák's feeding dish. "Did our son have kittens without me knowing or something?"

"One of the flutists in the orchestra is moving back with her parents, and her dad's deathly allergic to cats, so she brought this sweetie with her and I couldn't quite say no." Kumiko looked at the tuxedo cat again, who was currently working on trying to flip over the dish. She didn't particularly look like a "sweetie."

"What's her name?"

"Veronica." Kumiko gingerly patted Veronica on the head, afraid she might bite her hand off.

"I guess Dvořák might be getting lonely," she sighed, and from Reina's triumphant smirk, she knew that she'd already lost the battle - if there had even been a battle to be won in the first place.

The microwave beeped, and Kumiko took out the plate with a flourish.

"Dinner's served!" Veronica and Dvořák clambered over each other to reach her first. "It's not for you two. We really should eat out sometime," she mused as she set out the plates at the wooden table. "Neither of us can make anything."

"You know how to make pasta," Reina pointed out, poking her probably-radioactive dinner curiously.

"I know how to burn pasta, you mean."

"To each their own, then. I don't really mind, as long as I'm eating it with my darling wife." Kumiko started to kiss Reina's cheek, working her way down to her neck, when the doorbell rang. Kumiko more or less fell over onto the floor, nearly landing on Veronica in the process. "I'll get it." Hazuki stood in the doorway, a basket of fruit held out in her arms.

"Hazuki?" Kumiko said in disbelief, still on the floor. "It's been so long!"

"Yeah, well, I figured I'd give you two lovebirds a housewarming gift!" Hazuki chirped.

"We've been living here for six months," Reina deadpanned. "Thank you, though. Do you want to come in?" Hazuki shook her head.

"It smells like cats in here, and I'm really allergic, but maybe we'll all meet up some other time! See ya, Kumiko, Kousaka-san!" Hazuki gave a fluttering wave before closing the door and skipping away.

"I see Katou-san hasn't changed," Reina said once Hazuki was out of earshot.

"I've missed her." Kumiko picked herself up off the floor and dusted the cat fur off of her pants. "I think she lives somewhere out in the country, now."

"Alone?"

"With Midori."

"That makes sense." Reina prodded at the dinner again. "I think this might've gone cold. We should . . . treat ourselves, just for tonight. We could get dressed up, go on a date like we were high school kids again."

"We'd walk hand-in-hand down the street," Kumiko dreamily sighed. "It'd be even better than when we were kids, though, b-because now there won't be any doubt about what it- what this is." She looked at her ring again. "Shall we go, then?" Reina mock-curtsied, an amused smile on her face.

"We shall," she said, taking Kumiko's hand in her own. "Behave yourselves, you two." Veronica and Dvořák didn't seem to take any notice when the two women stepped out the door and left them alone in the apartment.

The night air tasted crisp, sharp, wonderful. Kumiko breathed it in like a drug.

"Where were you thinking for our date, Reina?" she asked, emphasizing the word date like it was the most important word in the world. It might as well have been.

"I was thinking we could see the fancy place that recently opened down the corner," Reina replied, swinging the hand enclosed in Kumiko's as she walked.

"Ooh, the one with the lanterns hanging from the porch?" Reina nodded.

"I hope it's not too crowded," she mused. "There might be a lot of people here, what with it being new and all." Kumiko bumped her wife's shoulder.

"Don't worry about it, I'm sure we can find somewhere else if it's . . . oh." The line snaked around the block, filled with restless people. "Why don't we see if that microwaved dinner can survive a second heating?"

Kumiko knew something was wrong as soon as she opened the door. It was a sort of premonition, a feeling deep in her gut, only confirmed by the feathers daintily seeming to fall from the ceiling while Veronica bit Dvořák's hindquarters so hard that sticky blood dripped onto the carpet.

"Hey, hey, break it up!" Kumiko ran for the two squabbling cats, trying to bat them apart with a nearly-destroyed pillow.

"Are they okay?" Reina asked. Both cats circled each other with their hackles raised and their backs arched. Kumiko picked up Veronica to answer, carrying her all the way to the bedroom and shutting the door once Reina entered.

"I didn't know they hated each other that much." Kumiko grabbed a tissue from the bedside table, dabbling at Veronica's wounds. She could hear Dvořák's wails from the other end of the door, his insistent clawing at the door.

"Neither did I. They seemed to . . . tolerate each other, when we were around."

"I guess we'll just keep them separate until we figure something out, then."

"It'd be a shame, though." Reina started to sit down on the bed, taking Kumiko's scarf into her hands and pulling her down with her.

"Eh?"

"I was . . . looking forward to a night alone together." Reina's eyes glimmered, and Kumiko could feel herself falling in love all over again.

Kumiko found out the hard way the next morning that a cat's claws felt especially sharp when they hit the bare skin of someone still half-asleep. She opened her eyes, expecting to see Reina curled in her usual pose, but she was met with a pair of narrowed amber eyes and a fluffy tail that promptly whacked her in the face when she tried to push said tail away.

"This is why we're never having kids," she groaned, gathering the covers around her naked form as she sat up. "Reina?"

"I've been up since five," Reina said in response. She was sitting next to the bed with her fingers flying across the keyboard of a laptop. "I'm surprised you slept through all of that meowing. I suppose she doesn't like being trapped in here any more than we do." Kumiko caught sight of what Reina had typed into the search bar, looking like she still wasn't fully awake from what she'd written.

cat s fighting?

veronica opening the door

how to..stop meowing

connecting with your teenage children

ways to fix cats fighting?.?

orchestral arrangements to calm your stressed kitten

"Did you find anything?" Kumiko hung over the edge of the bedframe, resting her chin on the top of Reina's head.

would it help

"Would what help?" Reina wordlessly pointed to the article on the screen.

Introducing a Third Cat Into the Household

"Please don't go out and get another cat," Reina said, before Kumiko could even continue. "I'm still reading this, we shouldn't make any decisions before we're both fully awake."

"Do you want me to make us some coffee?"

"I'd love that." Reina leaned up to give her wife a peck on the cheek before Kumiko walked out, slipping through the door as Veronica pawed at it. Dvořák sat up upon hearing her footsteps.

"Hey, none of it's for you." She gently pushed the cat away from the coffeemaker, hiding the smile on her face. "I guess this is what it's like, huh? Living this . . . domestic life." A photograph of Kitauji's band sat on the counter, framed and nearly impossible to look at in the early-morning light, but Kumiko could still see her young self with her arm wrapped around Reina. "I mean, how many people can say they married their high school sweetheart and actually had it work out?" Dvořák brushed himself up against her leg. "I wonder how the others are doing."

"Got the coffee!" Kumiko announced as she creaked the door shut, holding up two mugs triumphantly. Reina looked up from the glowing screen of her laptop. "And, uh, I was wondering, do you think we should try to stay in touch more? With the others, I mean."

"I don't quite follow." Reina nestled closer to Kumiko as she shut the computer.

"I don't really know what Hazuki's doing, or Midori, or Natsuki, or anyone. We j-just see them once in a while. We grew up with these people, Reina. Shouldn't we try to keep up with them?"

"I suppose." Reina paused. "I try not to look back, if we're being honest."

"That's a good way of looking at things."

"I couldn't imagine myself being happier, anyhow." The sun seemed to know just how dearly the two women sitting at the foot of their own bed loved each other, casting a beam of light onto both of them.

"Same here, Reina."

After a good few days of debates and breakups of fights between the two cats, Kumiko and Reina came to an agreement: something had to be done, and that something took on the form of a third cat.

"You're sure that this'll work?" Kumiko asked, with one hand in her pocket and the other held in Reina's.

"I hope so." Reina pulled her scarf tighter. "Otherwise, we'll have to start labeling ourselves as the crazy cat lesbians."

"I wouldn't mind that," Kumiko hummed. "The young couple with three children who just so happen to have pointy ears and tails? I like it."

"So do I, if we're being honest." The two stopped at the entrance of the shelter, an ugly gray building that looked like it should've been an abandoned warehouse if not for the cartoonish dog that admonished the door with the hours of operation written in what looked suspiciously like comic sans. "We're here."

"Stop me if I try to adopt every cat in there, okay?"

"The landlord would do that before I did." Kumiko pushed open the door, greeted with a drab carpet and a series of hallways. "I guess we just go and look at the cats, right?"

"May I help you?" Kumiko and Reina both jumped as a tired woman looking to be in her mid-sixties appeared (seemingly from nowhere) and waved them over to a dimly lit hall. "You're looking for cats, right?" Kumiko gulped.

"Uh, y-yeah."

"Right this way."

"How did she know?" she whispered to Reina, who shrugged.

"I heard you two talking about becoming the cat lesbian ladies," the older woman grunted. "Doesn't take a genius."

"Oh, uh, t-thanks."

"You two're a young married couple, then?" Kumiko started to hesitantly nod when Reina stepped forward with a firm yes.

"We've been married for six months, ma'am. It's been the happiest time of my life." The woman smiled, the wrinkles of her face lifting up warmly.

"Enjoy it while it lasts, kiddos. Someday you'll look back on these moments and feel a weird little twinge in your heart, and that's how you know you're getting old. Ha! Anyway, here's where we keep the cats. Call me if you need anything." The woman hobbled away,

"She seemed . . . nice."

It only took fifteen minutes of searching the rows and rows of cages for Kumiko and Reina to realize they had found just what they were looking for.

"He's perfect," they both breathed as the gray cat - hardly even a cat, with fluffy kitten fur still clinging to parts of his pelt - wobbled across the cage floor. A thin scar ran across his left eye, rendering him half-blind, and his tail was bent at an awkward angle, and Kumiko had never seen a more perfect creature.

"What's his name?" she asked the old woman, who was still lurking nearby.

"Jaspers," the woman answered. "That's what I've taken to calling him, anyway. We found him on the street a while back, no letter or anything attached. Poor little guy."

"We'll take him," Reina blurted out. The woman blinked.

"You're sure? He's a bit of a handful, and-"

"We can handle it." Kumiko put her arm around Reina, wondering not for the first time if this was what motherhood felt like, raising a child (or a cat, or several) with the one you loved.

"I'll get the paperwork in order, then. I've gotta attend to the other young couple in here." The woman shuffled away.

"I didn't see any . . . oh." Kumiko leaned against the bars of the cage for support when she saw the pair that had entered the hall.

"I'm not inhaling air freshener and hallucinating, am I?" Reina whispered. Kumiko shook her head.

"I see them too."

"Kumiko! Kousaka-san! We keep running into each other, don't we?" Hazuki bounded forward with none other than Natsuki following close behind her.

"W-wait . . . you two . . . you're d-dating?" Kumiko pointed at Natsuki and Hazuki as if there was someone else she might've been talking to.

"Yep!" Hazuki chirped. "It's nothing super-serious, not like you two-"

"We're married," Reina deadpanned. "Natsuki was the maid of honor. You were there, Katou-san." Hazuki blinked.

"Anyway, we figured the house was getting a little bit lonely with just myself and Midori-chan and Natsuki, so we're looking around for a dog!"

"In the cat section?"

"I tried to tell her," Natsuki grunted, but there was warmth in her tone. "I wouldn't mind having a cat around, in any case."

"I'm back with the papers," the old woman interrupted, ambling towards the group. "Huh. Looks like you all know each other already." Kumiko couldn't stop the wide smile on her face as she replied.

"We do."

"It's okay, Jaspers," Kumiko murmured to the purple cat carrier that currently hosted a fearful kitten. "Dvořák and Veronica are really nice once you get to know them. You'll be a great addition to the family."

"Are you ready?" Reina rested her hand on the doorknob, ready to open it at a moment's notice.

"Yeah." Kumiko tightened her grip on the handle. "I am."

a/n: guess what the cats' names are references to (hint: none of them are references to the same thing)