Just a little fluffy one-shot prompted by lenfaz which I may or may not extend on one day.
"I hear meowing coming from next door and it's 3 AM and I have to work tomorrow so I'm coming over to yell at you bUT WAIT you brought a box of kittens and their mother in from the cold and you're adorable and so are they so let's play with them before we take them to a shelter and maybe we'll keep one and name it Butterscotch." AU
She hates him.
She'd settled on hating him a week into his move, when his ridiculously loud rock music roused her from sleep far too early in the morning. And then, there had been his stupid singing on the weekends. She'd ended up with his mail more often than not. And, of course, there was that one time she'd been in a rush and had collided straight into his bare chest as he was going to do his laundry; the salacious grin and overdramatic wink he'd shot her as she'd snatched her hands away from his abs only made her blood curl further.
She tolerates him, rolls her eyes at his attempts to flirt with her, refusing to give in to the way that his Irish lilt makes her stomach flutter ever so slightly. No, she's pinned him down as one of those men with hollow hearts that strut around getting by on their good looks.
But, in the five months that Killian Jones has, to her displeasure, been her next door neighbour, she's never hated him more than she does right now. Because, really, she's already figured out that he has no consideration for other human beings, but the man doesn't even spare animals. The faint meows seeping through the thin walls have only intensified in the last ten minutes, and she feels her heart clench at the thought of the asshole not taking care of his pets.
And because she makes the most rash decisions when her head is fuzzy with the need for sleep, she shoves on a light hoodie over her tanktop and flannel pajama pants combo, stomps out into the hall and pounds rather aggressively at his door. She's been putting this off for too long, and she can barely keep her eyes open, but the need to yell at him for being so fucking inconsiderate drives her forward like no caffeinated beverage ever could.
When he doesn't answer the door, she raps her knuckles at it again, keeping her hand balled into a fist, narrowing her eyes as she hears a shuffle and a chorus of meows and God, did he buy the whole pet store out?
She's about to knock once more when the door flings open and just the sight of him irks her. (Her mind jumps to how good he looks with his messy hair almost falling into his forget-me-not blue eyes, adorable confusion marring his face, until she remembers that he's a poor excuse for a neighbour with an insufferable personality and she hates him, she hates him.) She grits her teeth.
"Jones, it's three in the morning and I have had it with you and your shitty attitude and I have to get up for work in like four hours so you better feed your fucking pets before -," her eyes dart down to the small, light orange tabby kitten curled up in his arms, the one she failed to notice in her building rage. Its soft purrs fill the silence between them as she loses her train of thought because, who is she kidding, she's never seen a cuter kitten in her life.
When she looks back up at him, he has a soft smile on his face, head tilted slightly to one side as he studies her. She opens her mouth to snap at him once more for waking her up when a rather loud meow and a crashing sound echoes through his apartment. She watches him wince and rush into the living room, kitten still half asleep in his arms.
She's left standing alone at his door, unsure of what to do. She contemplates going back to bed, maybe shoving some cotton in her ears and salvaging some rest, but in the end, it's her curiosity that wins out and she finds herself awkwardly shuffling into his apartment, closing the door behind her.
"No, all of you can't drink from the same bowl, that's not how it works." She follows his exasperated tone to find him sitting cross-legged in the middle of his living room floor, surrounded by a litter of loud and excited kittens, the tabby curled blissfully in his lap.
"Jesus, did you haul home a family of strays?"
He jolts his head up, her voice (or perhaps her presence, he didn't exactly invite her in after all) catching him off guard. The shock on his face goes as quickly as it comes, and is replaced with a ducking of his head as his fingers scratch at a spot behind his ear.
"Uh, aye, someone abandoned them in an alley near my bar and I couldn't leave them out in the cold so -," he brings his hand from behind his ear to gesture vaguely at the kittens meowing and roaming in circles around him.
"Oh."
"Apologies if they woke you, Swan," he shifts slightly as if he's attempting to get up, but the cat in his lap elicits a yowling sound in protest and he hesitantly moves to his original position. "I just - I couldn't leave them alone out there."
The waver in his voice sends a shiver down her spine, and it's the first time she's heard it without the edge of an innuendo, or a curling smirk to follow it up. It's the first time she recognizes him as a lost boy.
His eyes are fixed on the kitten in his lap, his thumb stroking under its chin in a gentle repetitive motion, and he just looks so tired and soft. And he doesn't say it but she knows he understands; strays look out for other strays.
She casts a glance at the the other kittens (she counts five) and then at the two bowls of water he's laid out in front of the sofa, right next to a torn and haggard cardboard box that has FREE scribbled across it in black sharpie. And damn her if she doesn't feel an onslaught of emotions that takes her straight back to when she was being moved carelessly from family to family, stamped with a label en par with the one on the box.
She runs a hand through her tangled curls and lets out a shaky sigh. "Well, they'll never get through the night with just water."
He meets her eyes, his eyebrows furrowing, "I couldn't acquire any pet food because all the shops were closed on my way home. All I have are those instant noodles." His worried gaze scans the kittens who have taken to pouncing on one another and she really shouldn't be feeling this strong of a pull towards the whole scene.
"Lucky for you, I have some cold cuts at my place," she shrugs and turns to exit before she can analyze the expression he throws her way, striding into her apartment to grab the packet of food along with some leftover steak that she'd stashed in her fridge. She cuts up the steak into small pieces and deposits it into a plastic container, all tiredness now shifting out of her bones.
She's doing this for the strays, not for him. Not because he looked like he was going to blame himself for letting down the litter of kittens, not because she finds his immediate attachment to the animals endearing, not because she likes how domestic he looks cuddling with a kitten. No, definitely not.
By the time she gets back, Killian has laid out a folded blanket next to the box along with a messily cut up cereal box lined with a plastic bag and filled with dirt to act as a makeshift litter tray. She smiles a little as she makes her way to him, huddled beside his sofa with two kittens (both with dark orange coats but one with distinctly more white colouring its paws) climbing on to him as he laughs. And dear God, she's never seen this side of him before and it scares her how much her insides melt because of it all.
"I brought food," she lamely lifts up the container in her hands in an attempt to get his attention.
"Swan!" He seems more lively than when she'd left him, an undeniable sparkle gathering in his eyes. "Allow me to fetch a few more bowls," he gently picks both kittens off his body, their claws catching on to his shirt multiple times and him prying them apart slowly, and grabs the items from her hands, shooting her a smile as he walks into the kitchen.
As soon as she drops to sit down on his sofa, the tabby that had been his arms comes bolting towards her and headbutts into her leg with a small meow. "Aren't you an excited one?" she laughs breathlessly as she picks up the kitten and places it in her lap.
"She's a bit fiery, that one, took a bit to warm up to me but she's my favourite." He holds her eyes for two beats, countenance intense and searching, before he smirks and winks at her. She clears her throat and drops her gaze back to the animal now nibbling at the zipper of her hoodie. She doesn't want to know if he's talking about just the cat or not.
"Should've known you'd be the kind to pick favourites."
He chuckles, places the bowls of food on the floor and watches as the kittens rush to them. "Can't deny attraction once it's been felt, love," and even though he's smiling, he's looking at her like that again, a building storm behind his eyes. He lightly shakes his head once and plops down on the sofa beside her, petting the kitten that has now settled in her lap, "Perhaps I shouldn't get too attached, have to hand them over to the shelter come late morning."
"You could keep them," the lost girl in her claws at some kind of need to be a saviour.
"All six, Swan?" He regards her with an amused raise of an eyebrow and then sighs, "As much as I would love to, I'd be gone most of the evening and night and I'm afraid that would be true neglection on my part. I'll just have to trust they'll find good homes."
"I could keep one," she blurts out before her brain can catch up with her mouth. She looks down at his hand, still stroking the soft fur, "I mean, I've wanted a pet ever since I got this place and what better way than to adopt, right?"
She doesn't know where it's coming from, but she doesn't want to fight it. Some part of her tells her that maybe having a pet will finally make some of it feel like home; her fourth house had a cat, and that had been the best house she'd been to, the closest thing to a family.
His expression, when she darts her eyes back to his face, is tinged with disbelief but he's smiling broadly, twin dimples flashing on either sides of his mouth. He seems to perk up, scooping up two kittens pulling at his socks with their teeth, and placing them on his lap; they immediately stumble into one another. "On one condition, Swan, you allow me to visit the little furball."
She notes the hint of challenge in his voice, a dare in his eyes. "Fine," she juts her a chin just a bit higher in the air as if to tell him that he doesn't affect her (he doesn't, she refuses to think he does).
He laughs, the sound mingling with the playful meows of the kittens, and he slips down on to the floor, trailing a piece of string across the carpet for the cats to play with. The kitten on her lap jumps down almost immediately, crowding around him with the others and she settles into the corner of the couch. She doesn't let herself think about why she doesn't just get up and go home, just watches as he playfully reprimands all six kittens to play fair.
(She wakes up to the light orange tabby curled on her chest, Killian nudging her shoulder with a mug of coffee in his hands and a "You're going to be late for work, love," spilling from his lips; she doesn't remember falling asleep on his couch or being covered with a soft blanket but she does remember laughing as all the kittens attacked him, remembers his voice joyfully roaring out, "Bloody feline mutiny, Swan!")
(Ten minutes after she gets home in the late afternoon, there's a knock at her door, a grinning Killian Jones holding up the tattered cardboard box, now only housing one small kitten, on the other side; the one she'd seen him holding in his arms, the one that had fallen asleep right next to her heart.
He saunters in with a "I named her Butterscotch while you were away."
She rolls her eyes and huffs, "Original."
"Well, she likes it, so it stays."
A grin slips onto her face as he cradles the kitten in his arms, and fuck, she likes him - and for the life of her, she can't help but hope that he stays, too.)