"Isn't she beautiful?" Alasdair murmurs and Matthew is fairly aware that the vaguely bug-eyed look isn't a good look on him but what the hell? The texts from Francis spoke of a delicate situation that needed all his diplomatic skills, excuse him if he didn't expect to walk through the door only to see Alasdair cuddling a white kitten, Arthur glowering like some sort of bad sci-fi demon from the doorway in the kitchen.
"What," Matthew clears his throat and glances worriedly at Arthur because it seems like the blonde might just explode. "What are you doing?"
"What he's doing?" Arthur hisses between grit teeth and okay Matthew can suddenly understand why people shat their pants because of nations back in the day. He tries to adjust his expression to exude compassion and diplomacy while also battling his sudden internal fear and the still lingering what the hell in the back of his mind. It's obvious that he fails, but Arthur continues on anyway, blissfully unaware of Matthew's incompetence as a mediator in this particular moment. "He brought hellspawn into this house."
Alasdair huffs and pets the kitty and it makes a decidedly non-hellish sound. Matthew thinks it's rather cute but decides not to say that as Arthur suddenly looks as if he's ready to annihilate.
"This thing -" Arthur spits the words out as Alasdair coos at the cat/hellspawn, "came in here to eat my breakfast ham and piss in my shoes. "It is satan incarnate."
"It's a cat?" Arthur shoots Matthew a look that makes him question every word that has come out of his mouth since the moment he was made and Matthew promptly decides to shut up.
"She's our cat now," Alasdair says and fuck him, he's making Matthew's task harder on purpose, Matthew just knows it.
"You refused to have sex with me because she was in the house and might have overheard!"
"I wouldn't want our little kitty to be traumatized like that!"
"For fuck's sake -"
"Don't curse!"
"I swear to GOD -"
Matthew looks on the unfolding scene with a sense of despair and hopelessness, hand raised in a weak attempt to make them both shut up. The cat is perched on Alasdair's lap and it looks pretty content. In what will be crowned his most Heroic Moment of All Time by Alfred later Matthew dives in and snatches the feline away, leaving the two idiots to sort this out on their own.
He can swear the cat smirks at him.