Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Ilya Rozanov, Hayden Pike & Jackie Pike, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau/Hayden Pike, Luca Haas/Sasha | Ilya Rozanov's Coach's Son

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Hayden Pike, Jackie Pike, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Sasha | Ilya Rozanov's Coach's Son, Rose Landry, Svetlana Vetrova, Pork | Shane Hollander's Cat (meat ugly - thathastu), Anya | Ilya Rozanov's Dog, Original Characters, (all animals)

Additional Tags:

Pet psychic Ilya Rozanov, client shane hollander, Crack, Fluff and Crack, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Psychic Abilities, Talking Animals, Miscommunication, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, Pork does not love Ilya Rozanov, abuse of supernatural abilities, Ilya Rozanov is a Menace, Ilya Rozanov is Obsessed With Shane Hollander, Idiots in Love, POV Ilya Rozanov, Bottom Shane Hollander, Top Ilya Rozanov, Bratty Shane Hollander, Hayden Polyamorous Pike, Light Angst, Strangers to Lovers, Good Dog Anya | Ilya Rozanov's Dog, Pork Hollander, Sassy Shane Hollander, psychic powers used for getting laid, Love at First Sight, Shane’s such a cat dad, man versus cat, Crack Treated Seriously

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-07-27 Updated: 2026-08-07 Words: 41,419 Chapters: 4/?

lost in translation

Summary

Ilya Rozanov has a gift.

He can speak to animals, which has earned him an incredibly successful career as a pet psychic, and far too much information about what people do when they think their pets aren’t watching.

Shane Hollander has a problem.

His cat, Pork, is permanently miserable. After exhausting every sensible option, Shane turns to the supernatural for assistance.

After their first appointment, Pork grows visibly happier - his cat’s found a hobby and renewed sense of purpose for achieving his only goal: to destroy Ilya for good.

Notes

hello hello !!

this is such a stupid idea lmao but it’s been rattling around in my head for a while

i will attempt to update weekly, and as always i appreciate anyone willing to stick around for my dumbest au yet x

• Inspired by [Restricted Work] by thathastu

Chapter 1: an enemy is made

The tortoise has been considering his question for eleven minutes now.

 

Ilya knows this because the clock above the fireplace ticks loudly enough to aggravate him, although apparently not loudly enough to hurry Thomas - he doesn't think anything is loud enough to hurry Thomas. Ilya's asked him one question since lowering himself onto the living room floor, and Thomas has so far managed to provide half an answer.

 

The floor.

 

“Yes?” Ilya prompts, shifting forwards on his knees to peer at the mottling on his shell.

 

Thomas blinks, and across from him Mrs Cooper cradles her mug in both hands, worrying at the fraying end of her cardigan. “Is he saying something?”

 

“He is thinking,” he says, distracted.

 

“Oh,” she glances at Thomas, as though she's hoping to catch him at it. “Does it usually take this long?”

 

Summoning the very minimal remains of his patience, Ilya exhales slowly and fixes her with the nicest smile he can manage - he's booked up today, and can't afford to overrun. “It can. Nothing to worry about.”

 

Thomas extends his neck another inch or so, and his eyes remain fixed on Ilya with  grave attention.

 

The floor.

 

Ilya waits. Mrs Cooper does not.

 

“I know some people must think I’m being silly,” she mumbles, lowering her voice despite Thomas being directly between them. “My daughter certainly does. She says tortoises aren’t exactly known for being lively, but I know him. He used to come and find me in the kitchen every morning. He’d follow me into the conservatory, or if I was doing the washing, he’d - well, he wouldn’t help, obviously, but he’d be there.”

 

Ilya nods as Thomas continues to contemplate the matter. He can feel the tortoise on the verge of something, whether it's a full sentence or not he isn't sure, but he lowers himself further until he's prone and able to look him in the eye anyway.

 

“He hasn’t done any of it for nearly two months,” she chatters on. “He barely leaves that corner. He eats when I put food beside him, but otherwise he just sits there. The vet couldn’t find anything wrong, his bloods were all normal, his weight hasn’t changed, his temperature - I wrote it down somewhere.”

 

“You sent me the records,” Ilya says, giving Thomas an encouraging smile. “I read them.”

 

“Of course, sorry.” Mrs Cooper looks down into her tea - she's placed Thomas’s food, water and basking lamp beside the bookcase, although faint scratches in the skirting board suggest he once had considerably wider ambitions, and a faded grey towel lies beneath him. From where Ilya sits, the reason for it appears obvious enough, but obvious things are not always correct and he has no interest in interrupting whatever thought the tortoise is attempting to finish.

 

Wrong.

 

Ilya waits a little longer in case there's more, but Thomas only lowers his head towards a dandelion leaf and chews like that's the end of that.

 

“The floor is wrong,” Ilya says, because at this point he has to give her something, even if it's vague.

 

Mrs Cooper looks at the floor with her brows furrowed. It's polished, some kind of knotty pine that likely cost more than it should, and laid recently enough he can still smell the adhesive if he really focuses. “What does that mean?”

 

“I am asking him,” he says politely, turning back to Thomas. “What is wrong with it?”

 

Thomas bites through the stem of the leaf, chews, and swallows. Too smooth.

 

“Too smooth,” Ilya repeats. “His feet slide.”

 

Mrs Cooper stares at him. “But he used to walk all around the house.”

 

“When did you remove the carpet?”

 

The room falls silent, so silent the ticking of the clock is really starting to piss him off.

 

She sets the mug on the table with wide eyes. “How did you know there was carpet?”

 

Ilya feels that part is pretty self explanatory at this point, but the genuine shock on her face is enough to soften him. He's used to this kind of reaction - the chilling, invasive realisation that even though they've willingly booked him to talk to animals, realising he can in fact talk to animals is a hard pill to swallow. “Thomas told me.”

 

He hadn’t, precisely, but Thomas remembers the room through traction, warmth, directional certainty and the location of reliable obstacles. Beneath the complaint sits a broad impression of something rough underfoot where the polished boards are now. A safe pressure against his claws, and something he could move across with as much ease as an ancient tortoise ever possibly could. Ilya's long learnt that animals rarely organise information according to the questions humans would think to ask.

 

Mrs Cooper frowns at the clear stretch of floor between Thomas’s corner and the conservatory door. “We had an old carpet in here. It was horrible, brown with these little yellow flowers. I had the boards underneath it restored at the end of May.”

 

Thomas’s front foot shifts, scraping against the towel. Good ground.

 

“The rug was good ground,” Ilya says.

 

“That disgusting thing?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“But I put this down for him,” she gestures to the towel. “He walks on that.”

 

“He can walk on it.” Ilya rubs his thumb and finger against the rough material. “He cannot go anywhere on it.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Her face changes into something perilously close to tears. Ilya has seen the same relief many times, and he understands it, the gladness that their pet's suffering can be fixed, that it's not terminal. He still never quite knows what to say when faced with a crier.

 

“So he isn’t depressed?”

 

He shrugs. “I cannot diagnose depression, but this does not sound like emotional withdrawal. He has stopped crossing the room because he cannot grip the floor.”

 

“I thought he didn’t want to be near me anymore,” Mrs Cooper's lip wobbles, and he has to resist the urge to offer her a well meaning but highly inappropriate hug. That's what he'd want, if it were Anya.

 

Thomas looks up from the remains of his dandelion. She brings sun food.

 

Ilya looks at the plate beside him, delicate porcelain filled with weeds, leafy greens and several bright yellow flowers dusted with calcium powder. “He remains very appreciative of your catering.”

 

She chuckles and dabs frantically at her eyes. “Yes, well. He eats better than I do.”

 

She eats standing over the sink.

 

Ilya chooses not to translate this. Instead, he checks the rest of Thomas’s enclosure and routine with her, running through basking temperatures, UVB, substrate, baths, diet, access to the garden, and he's pleasantly surprised to discover Mrs Cooper can answer with the sort of overprepared certainty that tells him the most important thing of all - she's a good pet parent. She produces an old notebook containing dates, weights and photographs of droppings. Ilya looks at all of it because she, at the end of the day, has paid for his time and because honestly he gets it.

 

“Keep following the vet’s advice,” he tells her, easing his stiff body upright with a little wave in Thomas's direction. “I would put down a runner between the places he uses most, nothing loose that can gather beneath his feet. Cork or a flat rug that is not brown and yellow should give him grip. If he begins moving normally again, you have your answer. If he does not, you go back to the vet.”

 

“I could bring the old carpet down from the loft, if he likes it so much.”

 

Thomas stops chewing. Yes.

 

“You could,” Ilya says. “I think he would appreciate that.”

 

“It really was hideous,” she grimaces, but she's already jotting it down.

 

Good ground.

 

Ilya hums. “He feels strongly about it.”

 

Mrs Cooper gives Thomas a fond look. “I spent so much money on these floors.”

 

Thomas takes another leaf. Wrong.

 

“He is not concerned by the financial aspect.”

 

“No,” she says. “I don’t suppose he would be.”

 

He's halfway out of the room when a door closes elsewhere in the house, and Thomas pulls his head partway into his shell as footsteps carry from the corridor. Mrs Cooper glances towards the living room door. “That’ll be Martin. He’s been staying with me while his kitchen’s being done.”

 

The loud male.

 

Thomas’s interpretation arrives with unusual speed, enough that Ilya freezes with his hand still outstretched towards the handle of the door. Martin appears from the kitchen a moment later, broad and smiling with the sort of cheer possessed only by middle aged men in pubs or the homes of the person they're fucking.

 

“How’s the patient?” he grins, before crouching and reaching for Thomas’s head - the tortoise retracts with a jerk.

 

The loud male touches my face.

 

“Please don’t,” Ilya cuts in.

 

Martin’s hand pauses, genuinely confused. “Sorry?”

 

“He does not like his face being touched.”

 

“Oh, he doesn’t mind me.” Martin tries again, poking at the sensitive skin of the tortoise's head. “Do you, Tommy?”

 

Thomas disappears entirely into his shell. I would prefer the loud male be removed from the territory.

 

Ilya looks at Mrs Cooper. “He would prefer your partner not touch his face.”

 

Martin straightens like he's been electrocuted. “I’m not her -”

 

“He’s not my -”

 

Ilya waits.

 

“We’re friends,” Mrs Cooper manages, her face flushed.

 

“Yes,” Martin says, not half as convincingly as he might've hoped. “Old friends.”

 

Thomas remains inside his shell. Remove him.

 

“He may need more time to adjust to Martin being in the house,” Ilya says slowly. “For now, it would be better if Martin lets Thomas initiate any contact.”

 

“I’ve known this tortoise for six years,” Martin protests.

 

Thomas cautiously extends his head. Six bad years.

 

“Even so.”

 

Mrs Cooper gives Martin a look over the rim of her glasses. “You do bother him.”

 

“I give him strawberries!”

 

“Those are only an occasional treat,” Ilya says.

 

Too wet, Thomas offers.

 

“He is also not especially impressed by the strawberries.”

 

Martin gapes at them both. By the time Ilya's within reaching distance of the front door again, Mrs Cooper's committed to returning the old carpet before dinner. She's also written down the names of two suitable alternatives in case it’s suffered in storage, though Thomas has made it clear - after ten minutes of waiting - that he considers compromise unacceptable. Ilya packs his iPad into his bag and confirms he'll email a written summary that evening, and Thomas has made his way to the very edge of the towel. His front feet rest against the wood boards, but he doesn't put his weight onto them.

 

Ilya pauses beside him. “Your carpet will return.”

 

Thomas studies him, and only when Ilya's out the door does his response reach him.

 

You understood adequately.

 

For a tortoise, it's a glowing testimonial. He's pretty satisfied with that as he steps outside, fully prepared to stick his headphones in and tune out the incessant ramblings of the city's talkative streetlife, but the first thing he hears is that something good has fallen beneath the silver car.

 

He pauses on Mrs Cooper’s front step with his bag tucked beneath his arm, waiting for the door to close behind him.

 

Good thing. Under. Mine.

 

Not yours.

 

Mine first.

 

Three sparrows are gathered beneath the hedge, their attention fixed on a crushed piece of cereal bar embedded in the pavement below an old Volkswagen. Their thoughts reach him in quick flashes, something about sugar and oats, the looming darkness beneath the car that frightens them enough not to risk it. There’s no real argument beyond possession, or at least not that he can tell - the smallest bird darts forward to snatch a piece larger than its head and retreats into the branches before either of the others can organise a response.

 

Thief.

 

Gone.

 

More?

 

Ilya adjusts the strap of his bag and checks the time - he has thirty something minutes to make a forty five minute journey, which isn’t Thomas’s fault exactly, though Ilya probably should've prepared for tortoise time. According to the calendar neatly displayed on his smart watch, the next appointment is with a Mr Shane Hollander and…Pork.

 

Pork, as listed on the intake form, is a three year old sphynx cat who's displayed persistent signs of unhappiness despite having no identifiable medical condition - Ilya read the veterinary summary twice, along with Shane’s very thorough description of the problem, which began as a concise paragraph and then continued for four additional pages. Appetite normal, weight stable, toileting normal, sleep possibly increased, although Shane had noted that this was difficult to assess in a cat, decreased interest in play. Frequent vocalisation and irritability.

 

The attached comment that 'Pork has always been somewhat irritable, but this appears different' leaves Ilya with several questions, most of them surrounding how unpleasant the animal had been to begin with. He's not new to aggressive animals - Sveta's parrot has all but neutralised him to the threats of the animal kingdom, but on a Monday? It's a grim prospect.

 

A bus shudders past before he reaches the end of the road, leaving him in a blast of warm air and the smell of exhaust. A terrier on the back seat catches sight of him through the glass.

 

Outside!

 

Outside outside outside -

 

The bus carries it away as he reconsiders the merits of his headphones again. The city has spoken to him for as long as he can remember, before he knew that other people moved through it in silence, and as a child he’d assumed everyone could hear the frantic arguments between seagulls over McDonalds wrappers, the mice in the walls deciding whether it was safe to move, the neighbour’s cat reporting every person who had entered the building after dark, or worse still, the incessant thrum of even the smallest insects discussing the very serious business of egg laying. It was only when he’d asked his mama why the pigeons hated a woman outside the bakery that anyone realised something was unusual.

 

Now, most of it flows around him - he's careful to protect his sanity where possible (and is likely keeping the business of ear defenders and noise cancelling tech afloat singlehandedly), because years tormented by migraines or the wailing of ant colonies when people aren't careful enough about where they're putting their feet take their toll. He thumbs one AirPod.

 

Food.

 

Up.

 

Hot stone.

 

Danger above. It's a hawk.

 

Gone.

 

Behind the shutters of a closed restaurant, something small and furry follows the wall through darkness. Ilya receives a route made of gaps rather than street names, warm pipe, wet ground, bitter powder, the place where the large feet strike, and then loses it as he moves beyond range. A gull standing on the roof of the house opposite watches him approach with one yellow eye.

 

Snack?

 

“No,” he mutters, carefully tucking the headphone into his pocket, defeated.

 

Please?

 

“I have nothing.”

 

Liar. I can smell hotdogs.

 

Ilya keeps walking - the gull launches itself from the roof and lands several feet ahead of him.

 

You have a hotdog?

 

He has to think about that one - he'd had a hotdog that morning, takeaway leftovers he'd not even bothered to reheat, cramming the stale combination of meat, bread, and mustard into his mouth before he'd had to dash out the door for his first appointment of the day. “Breakfast. I don't have it now, sorry.”

 

Give it.

 

“You are wasting both our time.”

 

The gull opens its wings and screams directly into his face, and a woman passing with a young child startles with a yelp. Ilya shoots her an apologetic smile despite having done nothing wrong, then steps around the bird with a scowl.

 

I will shit on you.

 

He ignores that, busying himself with checking Maps as he crosses the main road - if he misses the next bus, he’ll be late. Not badly late, but Shane’s form has the unmistakable air of a person who would absolutely notice, so he hurries as much as he possibly can without looking completely insane. Two indoor cats sit several floors apart behind opposing windows, maintaining a territorial conflict neither has the physical means to resolve, and a dog somewhere beyond the row of houses has been left in a garden.

 

Door.

 

The door's closed.

 

I am finished in the garden now.

 

He's still mulling over Thomas when he reaches the bus stop - the display changes from one minute to due, which could mean the bus is around the corner or no longer exists at all. He's lived here for long enough to understand it honestly could go either way. Beside the bench, a pretty, curly haired spaniel in a yellow harness lies against a man’s shoes, apparently asleep. Ilya stands well outside the dog’s space and opens Shane’s appointment notes. She lifts her head the minute he pulls up the veterinary report.

 

You look like you've had a bad day.

 

Ilya glances down, momentarily caught off guard - the dog’s dark eyes rest on his face. She's eloquent, as most dogs are, but her voice carries the sort of pity he's not entirely happy to accept.

 

“Yes,” Ilya says under his breath, casting a wary glance around at the near empty shelter.

 

Her tail thumps against the pavement. My person cannot see you.

 

Ilya looks at the man holding the harness, facing slightly to the left of where he stands. “Okay.”

 

I see for him.

 

She's not boasting - the meaning she shares is a simple arrangement of the fact they move together as one, and the spaniel's pride is warm as caramel, pleasant and intense enough that he finds he’s smiling before he can stop himself. “You do it very well.”

 

I do. The dog lowers her head again, returning her watchful gaze to the road like the conversation is concluded. He is very special to me.

 

Ilya grins and returns to the intake form - Shane's included a list of things already attempted, diligently listing copious veterinary examinations and blood tests, altered feeding schedules, two kinds of pheromone diffusers, increased play, decreased play, new toys, old toys reintroduced after a period of removal, catnip, puzzle feeders and something described only as 'a calming playlist, ineffective.'

 

It’s excessive, but not in the way Ilya sometimes encounters. There’s no attempt to force a human narrative onto Pork, no insistence that the cat is punishing him for working too much or grieving the end of a relationship he’d never cared about in the first place. Shane has documented what he can see and admitted what he doesn’t know, which is refreshing enough that he isn't entirely dreading it.

 

When the bus arrives, the spaniel stands before her person gives the command, and Ilya lets them board first. There aren't any animals upstairs so he takes the front seat, setting his bag between his feet - the relative quiet lasts until the bus pulls alongside a delivery van containing a greyhound who informs him through two panes of glass that he’s going somewhere exceptional.

 

Going! Going, going, going - going with him!

 

Ilya can't exactly respond verbally, surrounded by unsuspecting commuters, so he tilts his head in what he hopes is a questioning probe.

 

Don't know, but going!

 

The lights change before Ilya can uncover any more information - he uses the journey to skim his schedule for the rest of the day, reply to an email about a rabbit refusing to enter one particular room and make a note to send Mrs Cooper’s report before he goes to bed. He also texts Sasha to confirm he’ll let Anya out again if he’s delayed. Anya’s never enjoyed accompanying him to consultations - other animals either become defensive at the presence of a dog or address every thought to her instead, as though Ilya is merely the less qualified half of the partnership. She’s happier at home, where she can sleep across his bed and complain upon his return that no one's ever suffered a longer separation.

 

He checks the photograph Sasha sent an hour ago, and he's pleased to see Anya's stretched on her back in the strip of sunlight beneath his kitchen window with all four legs in the air, coping well enough with his absence. Traitor.

 

The bus leaves him a six minute walk from Shane’s address, and it’s a quieter street than Mrs Cooper’s, lined with colourful painted houses with small front gardens - for a second he watches a bee drift between lavender stems. More. More. Wrong flower. More.

 

There’s very little thought behind it that Ilya can separate from movement. Colour, sweetness, direction, the pull of the hive somewhere beyond the houses, and it lands, drinks and leaves him without ever noticing he’s there. Further along, a pigeon is limping beneath a bench, and the visceral discomfort reaches Ilya before he properly sees the bird in an aching, repetitive pulse around one foot that he can feel in his own toes.

 

Caught. My foot hurts.

 

He checks the time and swears quietly to himself - the pigeon startles but doesn’t fly, which tells him the problem is probably worse than it looks. A loop a six pack ring has tangled itself around two toes, and the bird's leg is horribly swollen.

 

“Come here,” Ilya says softly. “I can fix that.”

 

No.

 

“I am trying to help.”

 

No hand. No hand.

 

“You can keep the foot or avoid the hand. Pick one.”

 

The pigeon backs beneath the bench as Ilya crouches, removing the emergency packet of sunflower seeds from the front pocket - he's nothing if not prepared.

 

Seed?

 

“Yes.”

 

Seed now.

 

“When you come out.”

 

Seed there.

 

“Then remain tangled.”

 

It takes another minute of negotiation and most of Ilya’s remaining patience before the pigeon ventures within reach - he drops his jacket over it and gathers its wings carefully against its body, trying his absolute best to ignore the immediate explosion of panic that makes his own chest tighten with dread.

 

Held, death. You are hurting me. Don't eat me.

 

“No one is eating you,” Ilya huffs, wrestling with the bird as it thrashes.

 

Caught caught caught -

 

“Hold still!”

 

The pigeon doesn’t understand the words so much as the intention behind them, but it stills enough for him to work the plastic loose with the tiny scissors he keeps attached to his keyring. There’s no blood, but he's worried about the swelling - when he sets the bird down on the pavement it staggers a few steps and he stands, brushing away dust and several small, downy feathers.

 

Seed.

 

“You are welcome,” Ilya mutters, tossing a handful out in its direction.

 

Seed.

 

He throws the rest onto the pavement and watches six perfectly healthy pigeons appear from nowhere to claim it. By the time he reaches Shane’s front gate he has three minutes remaining and something deeply unpleasant on the knee of his jeans - swearing, he tries to wipe it away with a tissue as he walks, but succeeds only in making it larger. He decides Shane Hollander will have to accept that communicating with animals occasionally involves kneeling in whatever those animals have left on the pavement.

 

A ginger cat is lying beneath a car two houses down from Shane's, and only its eyes move as Ilya passes. Skin thing watches me.

 

He slows. “What skin thing?”

 

The cat’s attention shifts towards the house he's headed for. Inside. No fur.

 

“Does it come outside?”

 

Would freeze or burn. Would be eaten.

 

“Pork?” Ilya asks.

 

The cat yawns, stretching out both front legs. Wants my wall.

 

“It is not your wall.”

 

Mine.

 

“It is attached to his house,” he reasons, not quite sure why he's bothering.

 

Mine first.

 

Ilya leaves the cat to its legal position and checks the number beside the gate, 1410. The front garden is immaculate, the path clean and there's hanging baskets of vivid red and blue trailing petunias either side of the door. Through the half drawn curtains, he can just about make out a pale shape sat beyond the glass.

 

There’s no clear thought yet, but he can feel the pressure of attention anyway - Ilya wipes his shoes and attempts one last repair of his trouser leg before ringing the bell. The door opens with such haste there's no pretending Shane Hollander wasn't standing directly behind it, and Ilya forgets about the state of his trousers entirely.

 

“Mr Rozanov?”

 

The man standing in front of him is not what he’d pictured from the intake form - he isn’t sure what he had pictured exactly, but four pages of symptom tracking had apparently assembled themselves into someone older, certainly not someone with dark hair falling loose across his forehead and such melting doe eyes that they render him briefly incapable of anything but staring.

 

Shane’s a little shorter than him, and there's a constellation of freckles scattered across his cheeks that don't help in any way whatsoever. His feet are bare, and he's in an ever so slightly cropped white top that exposes just enough of his navel that Ilya's eyes can't do anything but take an unauthorised journey along the soft stretch of skin he finds there. Fuck.

 

“Yes,” he wheezes, suddenly very aware there's pigeon shit on his leg and he's sweaty enough to look like he's patient zero for some kind of birdbourne disease. “Ilya is fine.”

 

Shane smiles, and it’s a friendly smile - probably offered to every tradesperson, delivery driver, normal human or animal psychic who arrives on his doorstep covered in literal faeces, but he almost chokes on it anyway.

 

“Shane,” he says, stepping back from the door. “Come in.”

 

Ilya does, breathing hard through his nose. Shane's hallway is as clean as the front garden, painted a deep green with a dark wooden table against one wall and several pairs of shoes arranged very neatly beneath it - a framed photograph hangs above them, Shane beside an older couple on what looks like a beach, all three of them squinting into the sun. The house itself smells pleasantly neutral, something he's grateful for considering the throbbing in his temples. Ilya glances at Shane’s bare feet again and then at his own shoes.

 

“You can leave them on,” Shane says quickly, and there's that smile again. Ilya wants to chew on it.

 

Instead, he looks down at the damp, contaminated knee of his trousers. “That may be a mistake.”

 

Shane follows his gaze. “Oh.”

 

“A pigeon.”

 

“I didn’t think they did that from ground level.”

 

Ilya gives a helpless shrug that makes Shane's lips twitch, and it takes him an appalling amount of effort not to grin back like an idiot. “Sorry. Do you need a towel or anything?”

 

“No, it is not -” Ilya rubs at the mark with his thumb, which does fuck all but spread the stain. “The pigeon was caught in plastic. There was some wrestling.”

 

“Is it okay?”

 

The concern in his voice is enough for Ilya to set about planning. They'll have a July wedding, perhaps on a lakefront somewhere. Ilya will wear black, and Shane will wear whatever he wants as long as he shows up. Should they get a pianist or a cellist for the ceremony?

 

“I think so,” he says, keeping his voice as even as it possibly can be when presented with the love of his life. “The foot was swollen, but there was no blood. It flew away eventually.”

 

“That’s good.” Shane closes the door behind him with a soft click. “Thank you for helping it.”

 

Ilya briefly considers whether it would be unethical to locate further injured pigeons and rescue them within Shane’s line of sight. Probably, but he's not seeing a grand downside right now, and he removes his shoes anyway to set them carefully beside Shane’s. There's a tiny grey feather attached to one of his laces - he pulls it free and slips it into his pocket rather than releasing it into the house.

 

Bird.

 

The thought presents itself to him alongside a sharp flicker of interest, followed by a memory of wings.

 

Bird smell.

 

Ilya falters - Shane’s watching him with open curiosity, his eyes wide. “Is that him?”

 

“I think so,” Ilya muses, scanning the house for any trace of other pets - he finds nothing but the serene thoughts of a house spider hidden in the corner of Shane's bathroom, hoping for the humidity of his next shower.

 

Shane glances towards the door. “Can you hear him already?”

 

“Not clearly. He knows I have been near a bird.”

 

The curiosity in his face swiftly morphs into that same shock - it happens every time, the first moment a client discovers he can do exactly the thing they’ve paid him to do. Shane at least recovers more quickly than Mrs Cooper. “You smell like it?”

 

“To him. I hope not to you.”

 

“No.” Shane smiles again, and Ilya's mentally sorting through engagement rings. “Just normal.”

 

This isn’t particularly helpful, but Ilya picks up his bag before his hands can tangle themselves in the other man's hair. “Where is Pork?”

 

“In the living room. He was on the windowsill when you arrived, but he’s probably moved to his bed.” Shane hesitates, chewing the inside of his cheek. “He might hiss at you.”

 

That isn't a surprise - he can sense the malevolent aura emanating from the fleshy creature without even having to try. “He would not be the first.”

 

“He hisses at everyone. And sometimes things that aren’t there.”

 

“He may have reasons.”

 

“That’s what I’m worried about,” Shane mumbles, his shoulders almost up to his ears. There’s an anxious tension around his eyes that wasn’t there a few seconds ago, and suddenly the four pages make considerably more sense - he isn’t simply thorough, he's frightened there’s something wrong with an animal who can’t tell him where it hurts, and most of Ilya’s clients are.

 

“Let me meet him,” he says, much gentler this time. “Then we will see.”

 

Shane leads him through, and the pale shape Ilya saw from the garden has relocated to a heated bed beside the radiator, though bed is generous for what appears to be a small fort constructed from several blankets and tastefully embroidered pillows. Pork's sprawled in the middle of it with his front paws tucked beneath his chest, his wrinkled pink skin visible between a knitted blue and white jumper and an expression that immediately tells Ilya how this session is about to go.

 

The cat pins his ears. Bird man.

 

Shane crouches beside the bed with another one of those soft, sweet smiles. “Hey, buddy. This is Ilya.”

 

I know.

 

Ilya sets his bag beside the sofa, and Pork’s bulging eyes narrow.

 

I am naked.

 

Ilya looks at the jumper. “You are wearing clothes.”

 

Shane turns sharply, his rosy lips parted. “Did he say something?”

 

“He is aware I can see him.”

 

Pork lifts his head, and Shane scratches a finger beneath his chin - he receives a low creaking sound that might be a purr.

 

You are a stranger.

 

The thought carries along with mixed sensations - Shane is warmth, food, familiar hands, the body Pork sleeps against and the voice in every room of the house. Beneath it sits a faint disturbance at Ilya’s presence, hot with aggravation.

 

“Is it okay if I sit?” Ilya asks, eyeing the claws Pork has so kindly unsheathed.

 

“Of course.” Shane stands abruptly, gesturing to the sofa. “Sorry.”

 

Ilya's suddenly aware of every available inch of sofa when the other man perches on the far side of it, still murmuring soothing haikus to Pork, who hasn't taken his eyes off Ilya once. He takes out his iPad and opens the intake form, mostly so he has somewhere else to look.

 

“As I mentioned in my email, I am not a veterinarian.”

 

“I know.”

 

“I cannot diagnose a health condition, and anything physical should continue to be investigated by his vet.”

 

“Of course. They’ve done bloodwork and checked his thyroid, his blood pressure, his teeth -” Shane breaks off, his cheeks pink. “Sorry. You read the report.”

 

“I did.”

 

“All of it?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Even the smaller addition Shane had submitted twenty minutes later clarifying that Pork’s left ear occasionally felt warmer than the right, though he wasn't sure if that was significant or whether the nude beast had just been basking on a windowsill. Shane tucks his hands between his knees. “I know it’s a lot.”

 

“It is useful,” Ilya reasons, attempting reassurance.

 

“I thought you might think I was insane.”

 

“I have a client who sends me photographs of her dog’s bowel movements every morning.”

 

“Oh.” Shane still doesn't seem convinced.

 

“She has not booked an appointment in nine months.”

 

The laugh that earns him catches him unprepared. It’s bright and so warm it lodges somewhere between his ribs and burns there, white hot and enough that he has to make a real effort not to try for another, even as the naked cat stares between them.

 

No.

 

Ilya blinks. “What?”

 

Shane’s smile disappears, and he mourns it the second his mouth turns downward. “What did he say?”

 

Pork doesn’t look away from him. No.

 

“Nothing useful yet,” Ilya says, hesitant. Maybe the cat's just shy.

 

Liar.

 

Okay, maybe the cat is a raging asshole. He turns his iPad so the screen faces him, and glances back towards Shane. “Could you talk me through what changed? Form says you first noticed around six weeks ago.”

 

Shane nods, fidgeting. “He stopped playing as much. He used to chase the feather wand every night, but now he’ll watch it and not move, or he’ll walk away.”

 

Stupid bird.

 

“You do not like the feather wand?” Ilya frowns.

 

I kill it every day. It returns.

 

The impression that follows is one of exhausting futility - neon pink and purple feathers dragged across the rug, Pork’s body gathering itself to strike and the satisfying catch beneath his claws, and then Shane lifting his prey from the floor only to resurrect it the following evening.

 

“He may be bored with that particular toy.” 

 

“I tried others,” Shane's eyes are wide, darting between Pork and his own. “Does he hate it?”

 

“He mentioned that the bird keeps returning.”

 

Shane stares at him. “The feather wand?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“He thinks it’s a bird?”

 

“Not exactly. He knows it is an object when it is not moving.” Ilya looks at Pork, who continues to radiate utter disgust. “When you play, he experiences the hunt. He catches it, but you take it away and bring it back to life. The repetition has become frustrating.”

 

“Oh.” Shane looks genuinely stricken, his face paling. “I thought putting it away made it more exciting.”

 

Ilya has to resist the temptation to start counting his freckles. “It often does. Pork appears to take the continuity of death more seriously than most.”

 

It is dead.

 

“Yes,” Ilya tells him, not quite loving the way the cat's tail whips every time he speaks. “You were very successful.”

 

Shane bounces between them. “Should I let him keep it?”

 

“At the end of play, yes. Give him time with it before you put it away. He needs the hunt to finish.”

 

“I can do that.” Shane reaches for his phone on the side table and makes a note - Ilya watches his thumb move across the screen and briefly imagines that same concentration directed elsewhere. The thought is so incredibly inappropriate that his traitorous cock twitches in his jeans, and he has to force himself to look back at the cat.

 

Pork is watching him. Ilya clears his throat. “You also mentioned vocalisation.”

 

“Mostly at night. He’ll sit outside my bedroom and yell.”

 

Door closes.

 

“Is your bedroom door usually closed?”

 

Shane leans back, bobbing his foot. “Not usually. I started closing it because he kept waking me up.”

 

He has nightmares. I was trying to help.

 

Ilya's invited to a flash of Shane tangled in his sheets with his legs kicking, and an arm thrown across the place Pork considers his. He moves in his sleep, dislodges blankets and occasionally rolls close enough to present what the cat regards as a crushing risk, whimpering with such fear it's all he can do not to put his fist through that very nice wide screen TV just a few feet away on the wall. Ilya tries not to picture Shane in bed beyond that, and succeeds in the sense that he's absolutely picturing Shane in bed. Hitching his thighs up, coaxing him through the first stretch, pushing his head down until he arches so perfectly that he can't do anything but -

 

“He was sleeping with me every night,” Shane says, shuffling forwards to stroke a sweet hand down the cat's velvety behind.

 

“You moved.”

 

He frowns. “House?”

 

“In your sleep.”

 

“Ah,” he winces a little, and there's no mistaking the furious blush now creeping from his cheeks all the way down to his neck. “Sometimes.”

 

He pretends he's not sad. Pork’s ears flick towards him. You are not helping.

 

“I know,” Ilya says, keeping his voice even.

 

Shane watches him closely. “What did he say?”

 

“He says you aren't a still sleeper.”

 

He's affronted by that, and his face creases in concentration. “I move around a little, everyone does.”

 

You kick.

 

“He feels strongly about this. You kick?”

 

“I’ve never kicked him.”

 

Pork sends Ilya a sharp impression of a heel narrowly missing his face, and the way he'd scampered off the end of the bed to the safety of his litter box. “Perhaps not intentionally.”

 

Shane looks horrified at the prospect. “Did I hurt him?”

 

“No,” Ilya says quickly. “He is not describing pain. Only a near miss.”

 

“I didn’t even know!”

 

I found safety. He does not mean to.

 

“He would like it noted that he saved himself.”

 

Shane leans towards the cat, his eyes shiny and blinking hard. “I’m sorry, buddy.”

 

Pork stretches his neck to accept a kiss, and Ilya has to fight to keep his face neutral as those plush, glossy lips touch down on the sentient testicle, who's eyes remain fixed on him throughout.

 

My beloved, the cat tells him offhandedly, and Ilya would be damned if there's not the faint trace of smugness in the way he says it. He lowers his gaze to the intake form before Shane catches anything in his face.

 

“When did you close the bedroom door?” he asks instead, shifting his weight to avoid displaying the half erection already pressing itself to the crotch of his jeans.

 

“About two weeks ago.”

 

“So the vocalisation began before that?”

 

“Yes, that's why I closed it. I thought maybe he was trying to wake me up.”

 

He stops breathing.

 

The change in Pork reaches Ilya so quickly he nearly mistakes it for his own body, despite his experience - his chest tightens, and he's filled with the enormous pressure of darkness, burning lungs and a subconscious, desperate gasp of air. He clenches his jaw even as Pork retracts the memory, rounding on Shane with more concern than he should probably possess.

 

“Do you have sleep apnoea?”

 

Shane’s eyebrows shoot up and his mouth opens again. Ilya wants to bite him. “What?”

 

“Do you stop breathing while you sleep?”

 

“I - no? I don’t think so.”

 

Pork rises from the bed, taking his sweet time. He does. I call him.

 

The thought hits with a strong wash of urgency, and Shane’s face flashes behind his eyelids, turned into the pillow. There's no movement beneath the blankets.

 

Call. I call until he moves again.

 

“Pork is waking you deliberately,” Ilya says, as calmly as he can manage. “He says you stop breathing.”

 

“I don’t stop breathing!”

 

“You may not know.”

 

“I’d know if I wasn’t breathing,” Shane's gaze flits anxiously from the cat to the iPad in his hands. “I'd know, wouldn't I? Would I?”

 

The cat steps carefully from the heated bed and crosses the cushion between them, placing a grotesquely bony paw against Shane’s thigh. Mine.

 

“He is worried about you,” Ilya mutters, averting his eyes - Shane's toying with the spindly end of Pork's tail, and it's making him feel quite ill.

 

“The vet thought he was sick.”

 

“I think he has been trying to tell you that you are. You should speak to a doctor.”

 

Shane nibbles at his lip again, and god, Ilya's considering Mexico for their honeymoon. “I live alone. I wouldn’t know if I did.”

 

Ah, so there's no partner then. Mexico it is. “Pork does.”

 

Shane strokes his thumb between his shoulders. “Is that why he’s been acting strange during the day?”

 

Tired.

 

“Partly. He is tired.”

 

“I knew he was sleeping more.”

 

Pork doesn't seem to disagree, so Ilya gives them both a solemn nod. “He sleeps more during the day because he is watching you at night.”

 

“Oh, Pork.”

 

The cat leans into his hand and Ilya gives them a moment, resisting a wholly irrational (and wildly inappropriate) stab of jealousy towards a hairless animal in knitwear. Shane gathers Pork closer against his chest and presses his mouth to the loose skin above his nose. “You should have told me.”

 

I have been screaming.

 

“He feels that he did,” Ilya adds unhelpfully.

 

“I’m sorry,” Shane's eyes are huge and wet, even if he's staring directly into the soulless, pale eyes of Gollum.

 

Yes.

 

“He accepts your apology.”

 

Pork's head twists in his direction. I did not say that.

 

Ilya keeps his expression neutral as Shane settles Pork in his lap, absently smoothing the hem of the jumper. “Is there anything else? Anything I should change for him?”

 

“Possibly. I would like to ask him more questions without directing him towards the symptoms you have already noticed.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Has anything else changed in the house? Your working hours, visitors, feeding schedule? You are not dating?”

 

Okay, that last question was a little bold, but the other man doesn't seem to notice or care. “No. I work from home most of the time. My schedule varies a little, but it always has.”

 

He talks to small people on the small computer.

 

“Video calls?” Ilya asks.

 

Shane shudders. “A lot of them.”

 

“Your laptop.”

 

He glances towards the dining table, where one sits open beside a stack of papers, the screen wallpaper some sort of black and white bird Ilya hasn't seen before. “Yeah, he walks across it during meetings.”

 

“I imagine he is trying to participate.”

 

Ilya receives an immediate impression of Shane lifting Pork away from the keyboard while several tiny human faces speak from boxes. They see me.

 

“He enjoys being seen.”

 

“That makes one of us.” Shane’s gaze drops to Pork, stuck in the limbo of having said far too much under far too weak of a joke. Interesting, for a man who looks like that.

 

“He also dislikes being moved,” Ilya says hurriedly, happy to move them along if it'll bring back the sunny smile again.

 

Jackpot, because Shane chuckles at that, and the sound pools hot in his stomach. “He sends emails!”

 

“To anyone important?”

 

“Last week he typed a semicolon to my boss.”

 

He grins, and Shane grins back. It would be perfect, a moment for Ilya's hall of fame, had the cat's eyes not narrowed into slits. Stop this.

 

Ilya pauses. This could be a beautiful partnership, between man and cat - who better to tell him what Shane likes than the nudist laying between them? They could plan dates together, concoct a proper courtship - it's perfect. Spurred on by his own delight, Ilya seizes phase one without hesitation. “I usually spend part of the consultation alone with the animal. Some communicate more freely when the owner is not present.”

 

Shane frowns. “You think he’s holding something back?”

 

I know you are lying.

 

“Not necessarily. But your reactions can influence where his attention goes. It may help me understand what he considers important without him monitoring you.”

 

Pork’s horrible tail twitches in warning.

 

“Right, okay, I guess that makes sense.” Shane carefully lifts him from his lap and returns him to the heated bed. “Should I wait in the kitchen?”

 

“That would be perfect.”

 

He smooths both hands awkwardly over the front of his sweatpants, and Ilya looks away so abruptly it’s almost certainly more incriminating than continuing to stare. “If he wants me, can you tell me?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“And if he seems stressed -”

 

“I will come and get you.”

 

Shane lingers beside the sofa, looking down at Pork with enough concern that Ilya nearly feels guilty for what he's about to do next.

 

“Okay,” he says eventually. “I’ll give you some privacy.”

 

Pork watches him cross the room, and Ilya waits until Shane shuts the door behind him.

 

You want to mate with him.

 

There’s no ambiguity this time, because Pork shares a vivid and deeply unnecessary image of Ilya pinning Shane down against the very sofa they’re sitting on, his dark head tipped back and those soft thighs spread around Ilya’s hips. He hadn't thought he was being that obvious about it.

 

Ilya glances towards the closed door before leaning closer to Pork. “I would like to take him to dinner first, at least.”

 

No.

 

“He may want to go.”

 

No.

 

“You do not know this,” Ilya protests, honestly a little offended. His hopes of a mutually beneficial interspecies friendship have very quickly caught fire, but he's no quitter. “I would be a good boyfriend.”

 

I know him. Pork stalks closer, from this angle very much resembling raw chicken, but Ilya isn't about to point this out.

 

Ilya lowers his voice. “What does he like?”

 

Not you.

 

“Come on,” he tries again, not above begging a cat if he has to. “You liked me before, no?”

 

I never liked you. You have served your purpose.

 

Ilya sits back on his heels, blinking. “You are very rude.”

 

You want to mate with him.

 

“Yes, we have established, but not only this!”

 

You looked at his body.

 

“I cannot help that,” Ilya snaps. “I have eyes.”

 

I will remove them.

 

“Then I will look with my hands.”

 

That is categorically the wrong thing to say, as Pork’s back arches, every inch of exposed skin gathering into furious wrinkles. Leave.

 

“No. I am being paid to be here.”

 

Leave and do not return.

 

“That is not your decision.”

 

Mine.

 

The word comes with Shane attached to it again, the familiar weight beside Pork in bed, the gentle touch of fingers beneath his chin, the warmth of his lap and the soft voice he uses when they're alone. There’s love beneath the possessiveness, fierce and absolute enough that Ilya feels it in his ribs. Unfortunately for Pork, this only makes him like Shane more.

 

“I am not taking him from you,” Ilya reasons, holding out a hand in the cat's direction. “Listen, I have a dog - I am a very good human for animals -”

 

Pork bares his teeth, and for the second time Ilya's aware he's said very much the wrong thing. You are my enemy.

 

“This,” Ilya trails off, quickly correcting the way his whisper-hissing has grown louder. “This is childish.”

 

You smelled his clothes.

 

Ilya stiffens. “When?”

 

At the door. You breathed him.

 

He had, technically, but not with enough intention to deserve being spoken to like this. “Yes, well you lick his forehead while he sleeps.”

 

The cat steps closer still, and Ilya has enough self preservation to shuffle back until there's a safer distance between them again.

 

He likes it.

 

“I am sure I could make him like other things.”

 

You are disgraceful.

 

Pork’s mouth opens in a silent snarl, but Ilya crosses his arms. “I am asking him out whether you like it or not.”

 

No.

 

“Yes.”

 

No.

 

“You cannot stop me.”

 

I will tell him.

 

Ilya gestures towards the kitchen, though Shane remains safely out of sight. “Tell him what?”

 

You wish to mate.

 

“He cannot understand you.”

 

The realisation passes between them with almost holy clarity, and for the first time since Ilya arrived, the cat appears to understand the monumental and terrible imbalance of power in the room.

 

Ilya smiles, and Pork’s pupils expand until his eyes are almost entirely black.

 

Do not.

 

“What will you do?”

 

Pork lifts his narrow head, and the yowl that erupts out of him is loud enough he's half expecting every window in the house to shatter - Ilya flinches, scrambling to his feet as the sound rises into an operatic air raid siren, climbing higher and higher until he swears the glass on the coffee table starts to tremble.

 

“You little shit,” he yelps, clapping his hands over both ears. “Pork -”

 

The door flies open and Shane bolts into the room, almost colliding with the side of the sofa - Pork stops mid scream and flees towards him, every muscle in his body performing the very convincign role of a pitiful animal who's suffered unimaginable cruelty.

 

Ilya stares incredulously at him.

 

“What happened?” Shane’s already dropping to his knees, scooping up the beast with trembling fingers. “Is he okay? Did something scare him?”

 

Pork looks at Ilya. Leave.

 

“He is fine,” Ilya grinds out.

 

“That didn’t sound fine!”

 

“He wanted you.”

 

Shane rocks the cat like a baby, and Ilya has to resist the urge to tell him his beloved pet isn't actually a sphynx, he's a demon from hell itself. “You should’ve come and got me.”

 

“I was about to.”

 

Liar.

 

Ilya glares at him. “He became impatient.”

 

“Why?”

 

Because he is trying to violate our home.

 

Ilya picks his iPad up from where it slipped in the chaos, stuffing it back into his bag. “I asked whether calling for you at night was intended specifically to wake you, or whether he was also seeking comfort.”

 

“And?”

 

Pork presses his face beneath Shane’s chin, staring at Ilya from the shelter of his neck.

 

I will expose you.

 

“He preferred to demonstrate.”

 

“Oh.” Shane’s shoulders drop, his hand rubbing slow circles over Pork’s jumper. “Right.”

 

It’s an appalling strategy. Shane believes him immediately, though, so it's working. He'll deal with the moral consequences another day, perhaps on their first family holiday.

 

“He calls because he is concerned about your breathing,” Ilya says, which has the benefit of being entirely true. “He also dislikes the closed door. I would leave it open until you have spoken to your doctor.”

 

“I will.” Shane shifts Pork higher against his chest. “I’ll call tomorrow.”

 

Good.

 

Pork’s agreement comes with enough satisfaction that Ilya almost forgives him - then Shane presses another kiss to the side of his head, and he changes his mind.

 

“Anything else?” Shane peers at him, hopeful.

 

For fuck's sake. “He would benefit from more structured play, with a clear end to the hunt. I would also try adding a raised bed or shelf near your desk so he can be involved while you work without standing on the keyboard.”

 

“He has a cat tree.”

 

Wrong place.

 

“Is it near your desk?”

 

“No, it’s by the window in the other room.”

 

“He wants to see the screen.”

 

Shane beams down at Pork. “You want me to buy you your own office chair?”

 

Yes.

 

“No,” Ilya says cheerfully.

 

Pork’s head snaps towards him, and Shane laughs. “Fair enough. I'll move the tree.”

 

“He intends to send more emails,” Ilya warns, satisfaction blooming warm in his chest when the cat's tail begins to lash again.

 

Shane nods gravely, and they spend a few minutes working through the changes, adding notes while the other man asks questions and Pork contributes occasional demands that Ilya opts not to translate - by the time the end of the appointment rolls around, Shane’s created an extensive list on his phone that he finds so endearing he's almost forgotten they aren't, in fact, lovers yet.

 

“Is that everything?”

 

“For now.” Ilya says. “I will send you a written summary this evening. If his daytime behaviour does not improve once he is sleeping through the night, you should update his vet.”

 

“I will.”

 

Ilya should leave - he's completed the consultation and discovered Shane is single. By any reasonable standard, his work here is done. His shoes are waiting in the hallway - he could put them on, walk home, and spend the next several hours constructing a message casual enough to suggest interest without revealing he’s already planned most of their future together. Shane follows him to the edge of the sofa, still holding Pork.

 

“I can’t believe it,” he says softly.

 

Ilya freezes. “The breathing?”

 

“That too, obviously.” Shane glances down at Pork. “But he’s never stayed this engaged with a stranger before. Usually he hides or starts biting me until they leave. Was he comfortable with you?”

 

No. You repulse me.

 

Ilya meets his gaze and Shane smiles at him - it's small and hopeful and ever so slightly uneven, and Ilya sees the lakefront again. A cellist, he thinks. Definitely a cellist.

 

“More than comfortable,” he says before he can stop himself.

 

Shane blinks. “Really?”

 

I hate you.

 

“He likes me very much.”

 

Your eyes, Ilya. I will remove your eyes.

 

“That’s - I’m sorry, I’m surprised.” Shane gestures, bewildered, at the bundle he's still holding. “He generally hates everyone.”

 

I hate you.

 

Ilya's stupid mouth is moving again. “He appears to have formed an unusually strong connection with me.”

 

The cat’s claws flex.

 

“Sometimes an animal responds to being understood for the first time,” Ilya continues, because he’s already going to hell. Maybe Pork can show him around. “Continued sessions could help him feel heard while you implement the behavioural work.”

 

Shane’s face brightens with relief - guilt makes one perfunctory lap of Ilya’s conscience before dying as quickly as it had arrived. “Okay, that makes sense. How often would you recommend?”

 

Ilya considers the question.

 

You are lying so you can return.

 

“Weekly at first,” he says. “We can reassess after four to six appointments.”

 

Pork’s body goes rigid. No.

 

“That often?”

 

“The sleep disruption has been ongoing for several weeks, and there may be other concerns he has not yet communicated.”

 

There are not. You are my only concern.

 

“Consistency will allow me to monitor any change.”

 

Liar.

 

“And it may prevent the behaviour becoming established.”

 

Liar.

 

Shane nods, already reaching for his phone. “Do you have the same days available each week?”

 

I will expose you.

 

The lovely thing is that Pork can’t. Shane is never going to know that his beloved animal has spent most of the consultation calling Ilya a sexual predator.

 

“I have some flexibility,” Ilya says, maintaining eye contact with Shane while Pork vibrates with impotent fury between them. “What works best for you?”

 

“Let me check.”

 

Shane opens his calendar, shifting Pork into the crook of one arm. Ilya catches flashes of colourful appointments as he scrolls, trying not to wonder what any of them are or whether he can persuade Shane to give him access to the whole thing by their third date.

 

“Thursday?” Shane asks. “Around the same time?”

 

Ilya glances at Pork as though consulting him.

 

If you enter this home again, I will kill you.

 

Ilya looks back at Shane.

 

“He says Thursday would be perfect.”

Chapter 2: this voicemail will have consequences

Chapter Notes

so first of all 🤠 was not expecting this fic to pop off like it has, but i am SO grateful to everyone who's taken the time to read this silliness, i have read every single comment and honestly it means the world <3333

if you've not yet read pork's origin story (meat ugly by the INCREDIBLE thathastu) i highly highly recommend, it is SO funny

also someone commented in the last chapter that pork's voice sounds like venom to them and i just want you to know i laughed so hard i almost puked x

also also, i'm apparently incapable of being chill even for crackfics so there will continue to be worldbuilding at every opportunity i can cram it in

also also also (i'll go away in a minute i promise) i had the advantage of having most of this chapter written already, however beyond a rough appetiser sized word salad i have nothing for the next, so it will be with you soon but not as soon as this one lmao

ok that's all enjoy <33

By the time Ilya gets his key anywhere near the lock, Anya’s already waiting on the other side of it, as she always is. She's also telling him off, as she always is.

 

You're an hour late. Ilya, am I a joke to you? You’re so excited I can hear your heart through the door, so whatever it is had better be good.

 

Her voice hits him all at once, a tonic for the rather spectacular headache he's now sporting, having spent the last appointment of the day discussing different yoghurt flavours with a rat. Apparently vanilla is too plain, but mixed with raspberry it's perfect - who knew.

 

“Hello to you also,” he mutters, finally getting the door open. She moves back just far enough to allow him through, wriggling her plumed tail at such speed it's a wonder she doesn't knock herself off balance. Ilya closes the door behind him with a sigh, letting his awareness drift outwards - he keeps a quiet home, with the windows soundproof and a rainbow of earplugs or muffling devices available to him in any given room, but quiet rarely means silent. Anya doesn't count, strangely. She never has, content to give him space when he needs it and conversation when he needs that more.

 

She cocks her head, and her abrupt concern feels like a hand pressed flat against his chest. The Aussie is far too smart for her own good, and without even looking at her Ilya knows she's already identified his headache, the fact that one leg smells considerably more of pigeon than the other, he hasn't eaten, and every trace of every client he's seen that day and when. She's wasted as a dog - much better suited to private investigation, perhaps MI5.

 

You look like shit.

 

He scowls. “I feel very well. And who taught you that word?”

 

You did. You look like you've been brought up from the sea.

 

That much is sadly true, if his reflection in the hallway mirror is anything to go by - his curls are bedraggled and stuck to his forehead from the unexpected shower of rain he'd had to walk in, because the stupid bus didn't stop. He's paler than he should be (and often is, when his head's troubling him), and his face is drawn and tight. “I have had a long day.”

 

I know, Anya says, pressing her muzzle to his knee. It’s all over you.

 

The pigeon’s fear passes briefly between them, the desperate flapping panic of wings and the burning pain of a delicate limb.

 

This one survived?

 

“Yes.”

 

Good.

 

She moves to his other leg, following a smell Ilya can’t detect through denim and dried bird shit. Her nose travels slowly over his shin and around his knee and halfway up his thigh before he pushes gently at her soft forehead. “What, you are police dog now?”

 

You stink of cat. A very angry cat.

 

“Yes, extremely.”

 

Anya inhales again, her breath warm through his jeans.

 

You liked him.

 

Ilya wrinkles his own nose, projecting her an image of Pork Hollander in his evil little jumper, pawing at Shane's leg. “Not particularly.”

 

I didn't mean the cat, Ilya - don't play dumb with me.

 

Right, okay. Fine - they need to have this conversation at some point, if Ilya's going to be proposing within the next six months, so it might as well be now. Dropping his bag, he sinks heavily into his armchair - it's a ratty old thing, doesn't at all match the modern chic of his apartment, but he'd found it out thrifting with Marly and, as he's been told he often does, became intensely attached to it. “Anya, I have met the love of my life.”

 

The dog freezes. What did you just say?

 

He fixes her with a smile, already mentally noting to give her an extra quail egg with her dinner - maybe a dried sardine or two. “The cat's person. He is my soulmate.”

 

Anya's eyes settle on his face, and Ilya can pinpoint the exact moment whatever excitement she’d detected from behind the door stops being shared. Instead, she very graciously offers him an impression of a disembodied hand (hers if she had one, he assumes) smacking him several times around the face.

 

You only met him today!

 

“Sometimes this is enough,” he says dreamily, shifting over enough that she could jump up with him if she wanted - he has a feeling that's somewhat optimistic considering the blatant horror bouncing around the edges of her consciousness. “When you know you know, or whatever the poets say.”

 

Lana Del Rey said that, and I don't think she's a reliable source considering her last album made you cry until you threw up -

 

“- I have thought about it extensively.”

 

Anya stares at him, and Ilya stares back. Does he know?

 

“Not yet.” Ilya frowns at her. “These things must be handled carefully, Anechka. Perhaps you should try this, instead of making eyes at Cliff's dogs, no?”

 

First of all, she leaps up onto the armchair, ignoring his hiss of protest as her weight lands squarely on his crotch. Octavia and I are just friends, and Margot doesn't spare me a second look at the best of times. They also have nothing to do with whatever stupid plan you've concocted, either.

 

Despite the fact she's unquestionably pissed at him, Ilya ventures for the soft fur of her back, threading his fingers through the silvery grey strands. “He knows we will see each other Thursday. And I know you have a taste for Doberman, you cannot fool me.”

 

She blessedly ignores this, shooting him a reproachful look instead. Does he know why?

 

“He believes it is for the cat.”

 

Because it really is for the cat?

 

“Partially.”

 

Ilya kicks off his shoes and leaves them there on the rug, retrieving the tiny grey feather from his pocket before he forgets about it. He places it on the arm, where Anya studies it with brief interest. You arranged another appointment with an angry cat so you could see his person again.

 

“Ah, he will not be angry for long.” Ilya waves a hand in the air. “It is just posturing. Besides, death threats do not bother me.”

 

Her hackles raise, and he can feel her agitation at that - she's never been a particularly combative dog, but even she has limits. He threatened you?

 

“He has a peculiar inclination for my eyeballs, I think. Do not worry, I will win his favour. Or, blessing. Whatever it is.”

 

Ilya reaches for his bag to busy himself, anything to distract from the way his dog's whale-eyeing him into another fucking dimension. She moves, faster than him like always, to bat his hands away with both forepaws. Her claws need clipping again - already. He frowns as the unintentional scratch blooms across his knuckles. Don't tell me you've already mentally married the man.

 

“July,” he admits, flushing. “Perhaps lakefront.”

 

You can't marry someone who doesn’t know you’re courting him!

 

“Why not? He will know eventually.”

 

What's his name? His full name.

 

“Shane Hollander.”

 

Anya considers this, testing the sound through Ilya’s memory. He's happy to give her what she's probing for, letting the image of Shane at the door with that evil cropped top swim to the forefront of his mind, bare feet and trusting smiles, dark lashes peeking up at him while Ilya lies with professional confidence, even when the feline equivalent of a sourdough starter in knitwear promises to remove his eyes.

 

Anya’s ears twitch. He's pretty.

 

Ilya grins, certain he's won this argument at the very least. “You see?”

 

You can stop showing me the two of you mating, now.

 

Fuck. Ilya claws back his runaway hippocampus with an apologetic grimace, unsure when imagination had blurred into conscious memory. “Ah, sorry. I am not doing this intentionally.”

 

I know. It works even better than eating grass.

 

The dog gives a theatrical gag - a trick she'd learned strikes fear into his heart even when he knows she's faking, but his head’s too full of Shane for the images not to leak when Anya’s this close. He's halfway through recalling as many freckles as he possibly can when she finally releases his bag to him, shuffling forwards to lean her full weight into his chest. Ilya sways beneath her, her familiar smell and warmth so soothing he plants a wet kiss to the tip of her muzzle before she can escape the clutches of his affection.

 

“Sorry I was late,” he murmurs. “The bus did not stop for me.”

 

I gathered that.

 

He runs gentle thumbs beneath her eyes, checking for discharge, then folds back one ear and the other - everything is clean, no redness, no new tenderness. His hands continue automatically over her jaw, neck and shoulders while Anya permits the examination with solemn dignity.

 

You should have called.

 

“You do not have a phone, Anya. Your doggy paws cannot click buttons.”

 

You could have called Sasha. He would have told me.

 

That much is true, but he's tired enough that admitting it would be like summitting Everest. Perhaps not Everest. Maybe a really big hill, or something. Instead, Ilya imitates one of her long, aggrieved sighs, and the dog immediately pushes her face harder into his hands.

 

That sounds nothing like me. She licks him from chin to cheek before he can turn away, leaving a wet stripe across his jaw that he scrubs away with a groan.

 

“Anya!”

 

You taste disgusting.

 

“Then why do this? We are a civilised household, yes?”

 

Anya licks his jaw again and Ilya catches her gently beneath the chin, but there’s no conviction in it and she knows it. Her affection moves through him alongside the comforting weight of her head, entirely without reverence. He’s hers, sometimes before he's even his own, from the second Sveta brought her home from the shelter. Ilya couldn't go in himself - far too painful, and he's got little interest in traumatising the kennel staff by having a breakdown of epic proportions trying to choose just one. Sveta had done the hard part for him, and picked him out the one dog that shot her a disdainful look as she passed - apparently that was enough to seal the deal.

 

“Shane is very beautiful,” he tells her quietly, scratching the silky ruff around her neck.

 

Yes, I suppose he is. To humans, anyway.

 

“And kind. He asked me about the pigeon, and he really loves his cat. Though I cannot fathom why.”

 

You really think you'll make friends with the cat? He smells very angry with you.

 

“Pork, yes. I will bring him tuna.”

 

Anya pulls her head out of his hands. The cat's called Pork?

 

“Look at him,” Ilya shows her the image of him again, sprawled on his heated bed. “I would have chosen maybe Salmonella, but he is not my cat, so.”

 

Anya huffs, giving him a pointed nudge when his hand stills. You have terrible taste in men.

 

“Why are you ruining this for me? And that is very rude. You like Sasha.”

 

Someone has to.

 

She presses her forehead to his chest before he can defend himself further, and Ilya wraps both arms around her neck, burying his face between her ears. She smells like the house, her bedding (with a thread count higher than his own bedsheets), the rug by the window, the faint trace of grass from the garden, and beneath everything sits the steady trust that he came home because he always does.

 

I’m glad you’re excited, she says carefully, I just don't want to see you hurt. Again, Ilya. You're a fucking masochist.

 

“Okay, again, who taught you this word?”

 

Sasha.

 

Ilya kisses the top of her head - Anya allows it for a few seconds before pulling away to inspect him again. Her attention travels down his body, pausing at the dull ache behind his eyes, the stiffness in his back and the empty, sour discomfort of his stomach. When she looks at him this time, there’s no amusement whatsoever.

 

“I will eat later,” he says before she can start all over again. “I will make dinner.”

 

You're an awful liar. Order a takeaway.

 

No surprises there - he knows this game well enough. She'll push and push and push, content to ramble on about the convenience of a Dominos delivered to his door, and they'll both pretend he hasn't ordered her anything until he begrudgingly presents her with a portion of chicken strips and some no-salt fries.

 

“You want chicken,” he accuses, gathering up the remainder of his energy to fake offence. “You are using me, and you do not even pay me rent.”

 

You don't need rent, I've seen your bank statements.

 

They order the fucking pizza. An hour or so later, Ilya's sitting cross legged in his armchair with a large Texas BBQ balanced across his thighs, while Anya eats the chicken strips she absolutely had not asked for from the ceramic bowl reserved specifically for food she absolutely does not receive. The fries are cooling on a piece of kitchen roll beside her, and she's very unconvincingly pretending she hasn't noticed them as she crunches through another strip.

 

You should get the Meat Feast next time.

 

“There will not be next time,” he says around a mouthful of crust and garlic dip. “This is a failure of discipline.”

 

You say that every time.

 

“I do not.”

 

You said it literally a few days ago.

 

“That was a McDonalds, it does not count.”

 

I still got nuggets.

 

Ilya peels a mushroom from the surface of his pizza and drops it back into the box - he doesn’t remember ordering mushrooms, having selected their usual in the app he'd rather die than admit he has downloaded, ignored every attempt to make him purchase garlic bread because garlic is toxic for dogs, then bought 21 Frank's Red Hot Wings as an acceptable substitute. Anya watches him find another with her snout coated with crumbs.

 

Perhaps Dominos are trying to broaden your horizons.

 

“My horizons are broad,” he insists, flicking the slimy mushroom at her - she catches it between her teeth and swallows it without chewing.

 

You eat the same six meals, and five of them aren't cooked by you.

 

“I have met my soulmate today. This is a very broad horizon.”

 

Anya takes another chicken strip and elects not to dignify that with a response. The pizza helps, and by the end of his first slice the worst of his headache has receded enough that he no longer wants to toss the table lamp out of the window. “How was Sasha?”

 

Her tail wags at the name - she's always (for some reason beyond Ilya, no matter how maturely he'd handled their breakup) loved the man, and though he suspects it has something to do with the dried duck he brings her from his very fancy Chef de Cuisine job at the French restaurant down the road, she's never not happy to see him.

 

He was great. He told me he'll bring steak frites the next time he's over.

 

He has to resist the urge to roll his eyes. “Did he have the ferrets with him?”

 

Anya's reaction is anything but subtle - her consciousness fills with a rich, anticipatory pleasure she’s plainly been sitting on since before he arrived home. The chicken strip remains half chewed in the side of her mouth, and he doesn't need to guess why. His ex boyfriend is a myriad of things, but a passionate owner of four ferrets is arguably one of the foundational cornerstones of his identity. Ilya knows Natalya, Katerina, Miroslav and Isaak well - Sasha, equally, enforces that with such a strict regime that he hasn't gone more than two days without a detailed review of their health in recent memory. That being the case, he's also hyper aware that where there's ferrets, there's gossip.

 

Ilya narrows his eyes. “What?”

 

Oh, nothing, she says sweetly, swallowing the remainder of her chicken with the certain delight of knowing he'll ask her anyway.

 

“What have they said now?”

 

She looks away, but the memory is already gathering at the edge of their connection. Sasha letting himself in with the spare key, talking to someone on the phone while four ferrets pour out of the carrier at his feet in a furry spillage of brown and cream. Anya had greeted them politely, and Miroslav had immediately climbed onto her back, Isaak dunking his entire head inside her water bowl as Sasha had disappeared into Ilya’s bedroom without explanation.

 

The ferrets visit often enough that she's established something resembling the relationship between a journalist in an active warzone and her charges - Anya enjoys their company in controlled doses, mainly because their understanding of privacy is nonexistent and Sasha appears to discuss his entire life in front of them despite knowing they'll all report back to Ilya through his dog at some point. She does not, however, trust their morals. They’ve committed crimes worthy of turning them into scarves, having once used her sleeping body as part of a coordinated attempt to reach Ilya's leftover bacon sandwich.

 

“They tell you something?”

 

Anya's voice turns haughty. I don’t gossip.

 

“That is a lie,” he scoffs. “Katerina would call you a big furry liar.”

 

The dog glances towards the pizza, and Ilya takes another slice and waits - she lasts no longer than six seconds.

 

Sasha has mated with four of their doctors.

 

The slice stops halfway to Ilya’s mouth. “What?”

 

Four in a row, Anya says delightedly. All from the same place.

 

Ilya lowers the pizza, abruptly put off. “From the veterinary practice?”

 

Yes.

 

“Rose Landry's practice?”

 

Yes.

 

He closes his eyes, trying very hard to ignore the glee in her tone. Rose Landry, mortal enemy and supervising veterinarian of the local surgery, has done nothing in particular that Ilya can use to justify his hatred of her. She's been sweet, kind, excellent at her job every single time he's taken Anya in for a checkup - and still. Ilya isn't sure whether she'd burned him at the stake in a past life, or just what has occurred for him to feel such a visercal dislike towards the poor woman, but god does he feel it. “No. Surely not.”

 

Miroslav says yes.

 

“Miroslav also says the radiator is alive because it hisses at him!”

 

Anya shifts closer to the chair again, settling her chin against its arm so the information can pass between them with greater clarity. There was the first ass touching man who slept in Sasha’s bed, then the angry ass touching woman who also slept in Sasha’s bed. Now they say there's a new ass touching man, who was in Sasha’s shower last Tuesday.

 

Ilya sits very still, wondering for what surely must be the ten thousanth time in all his twenty five years, whether he can return his gift back to whatever supernatural shop it came from. It’s remarkable, really, how quickly several years of minor mysteries can resolve themselves once supplied with the correct piece of information - Sasha’s ability to secure appointments during bank holidays, and Natalya's emergency examination on Christmas Eve. The time Miroslav ate one of Ilya's foam earplugs at eleven at night and Sasha had him seen, scanned and returned home before Ilya had even managed to put on matching socks.

 

“I thought they prioritise him because ferrets are difficult pets.”

 

They are, but that isn’t why.

 

“Perhaps he is simply charming,” Ilya tries, wincing as he says it.

 

Anya honest to god barks at him.

 

He flinches. “To other people!”

 

Miroslav says Sasha mates with the new doctor.

 

“Yes, I have understood this part.”

 

No, Anya says patiently, like he's being really fucking stupid. Mates with him, more than once. The new man comes to Sasha’s house now, his name is Luca. Miroslav was in the laundry basket when they were touching mouths.

 

There are far too many pieces of information in this update, and none of them arranged in a way Ilya wishes to receive them. He pictures Sasha’s bathroom, the shower that barely accommodates one adult without somebody taking an elbow to the throat, and Miroslav sitting unseen amongst the towels - that part makes sense, at the very least. He hasn't seen or heard of a Luca, but if his extensive knowledge of Sasha is anything to go by, he's about to. “Why was he in the laundry basket?”

 

He likes the smell.

 

Ilya fishes out his phone.

 

have you fucked the entire veterinary practice

 

Lovely to hear from you, as always.

They have thirteen vets there.

 

that is not a no???

 

Jealous? 😘

 

miroslav is telling on you x

 

The typing bubble appears and disappears, and Ilya lets his phone fall against his chest. “Unbelievable.”

 

Anya has gone back to her chicken, apparently unbothered.

 

“This is why he can get emergency appointments.”

 

Probably.

 

“He was not even that good in bed,” he mutters, stabbing one of the pizza crusts into his dip. “Mostly.”

 

If you say so, the dog muses, padding to her water bowl and taking a deep drink before she responds. There must be a reason you two were together for so long.

 

“Abuse of - of ferret. I was looking out for them.”

 

The ferrets don’t mind.

 

“And yet you sit here spreading their gossip.”

 

There’s a difference between trusting someone’s integrity and appreciating their information.

 

She returns to her dinner, leaving Ilya to consider the fact Shane appears sane, beautiful and kind, whereas Sasha is for the most part specifically designed to get under his skin. Sasha’s behaviour has never once prevented him from having people fall in love with him, and if anything, it seems to function as some sort of horrific accelerant, like pouring petrol on a bonfire. Ilya lifts the pizza again, and he makes it through half a slice before noticing the dog is watching him - she’s still turned towards the fries, but her attention keeps brushing against him, withdrawing whenever he tries to follow it. There’s something else there, hidden away with the same determined patience she uses when concealing one of his socks beneath her bed.

 

“What is it?”

 

Nothing.

 

“Anya.”

 

Eat your dinner, Ilya.

 

“I am eating.”

 

You’ve stopped.

 

“Because you are staring at me.”

 

Anya licks saltless potato from her teeth. Outside, a car passes through the wet street below, and somewhere in the quiet of the apartment building, a spider beneath his bookcase registers the vibration and withdraws further into her web. Her sudden discomfort is a thorn in his side.

 

Will Shane mind?

 

He's pretty sure he's done with his pizza now - he folds the soggy cardboard down and away, staring anywhere but at the congealed and cooling cheese. “Mind what?”

 

You and Sasha.

 

“Me and Sasha what?”

 

Mating.

 

He coughs, splutters, desperately trying to swallow the remains of a dried chunk of BBQ chicken. Anya lifts her head, concern flashing through her before she remembers she’s actually still annoyed with him. “You cannot say these things while I am eating.”

 

You knew what I meant.

 

“Sasha and I are not -” Ilya reaches blindly for his Coke, taking several mouthfuls before his voice returns to normal. “Why are you asking?”

 

She sighs, glancing up at him from the floor. The ferrets know.

 

“They know what?”

 

That Sasha still sometimes comes here after I go to sleep. I also smell him in the mornings.

 

Even the spider beneath the bookcase has the decency not to move, and Ilya puts his can down very carefully. “They said this?”

 

Isaak did.

 

“Isaak is compulsive liar.”

 

Not about Sasha. He worships him. Anya turns fully towards him now, her fluffy ears lowered just enough to make her disappointment unmistakable. You promised me you wouldn’t do that any more.

 

He had - not recently, but clearly recently enough for Anya to have retained the exact memory of it. Ilya lying on this same armchair with his eyes swollen and his heart flayed open after Sasha had left once again, and Anya had been curled across his feet. She’d made him promise twice, and he'd honestly meant it at the time.

 

Mostly.

 

“Ah. Sorry.”

 

By the time he’s showered and changed for bed, Anya has forgiven him - he thinks, anyway. She's jumped up in her usual spot, sprawled across the mattress with very little space left for him to claim himself, but it isn't on the forefront of his mind right now. Ilya shoots her a sheepish smile and begins his usual circuit of the apartment.

 

There’s rarely anything to find. The spider beneath the bookcase remains in her web, perfectly capable of managing her own affairs, and the tiny beetle he’d noticed near the kitchen skirting yesterday has either left or found somewhere better to hide, because he can't hear him right now. Ilya checks the empty bath and sinks, and is heading into the kitchenette to flick off the spotlights beneath the cabinets when he hears another voice.

 

Stuck, stuck. Light. I cannot reach.

 

There’s a moth trapped between the living room curtain and the closed window, her panic sparking in weak bursts with very little thought behind it beyond base need - that's often the case with small, instinct driven creatures, but he understands her well enough regardless. Ilya switches off the lamp, draws the curtain back and opens the window. When this only replaces one confusion with another, he turns on his phone torch and holds it outside.

 

The moth follows and then it’s gone, fluttering beyond reach.

 

“Goodbye,” Ilya whispers, closing the window again. “Do not come back. There are birds.”

 

The silverfish beneath the bathroom cabinet requires considerably less assistance, as he's found darkness and something microscopic to eat (far less appealing than a Texas BBQ, though Ilya can sense his excitement anyway), and would prefer only that the enormous creature looming above it stop flooding its entire world with light.

 

Ilya switches it off and by the time he returns to the bedroom, Anya’s eyes are barely open. She lifts her head as he climbs beneath the duvet, then permits him to rearrange one of her legs.

 

Sleep now.

 

“I will,” he murmurs, settling against the length of her back. “I must be well rested for Thursday, after all.”

 

She huffs. The cat will hurt you.

 

“He is very small.”

 

You are very stupid.

 

Ilya smiles into her fur, already half asleep.

 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · · 

 

Ilya doesn't often receive cancellations, but he receives one as he's halfway through brushing his teeth the next day - he reads it with one eye open and the toothbrush hanging from his mouth, with Anya pressed against the backs of his legs in an attempt to hurry him towards breakfast. Mrs O'Sullivan is very sorry, but Kevin has finally passed the remainder of the sock and no longer requires an urgent appointment to encourage his shy bowels. She includes a photograph as evidence, and in an attempt to preserve whatever sanity he has left, Ilya doesn't open it.

 

“Good for Kevin,” he mumbles around the toothpaste, moving the appointment in his calendar with his thumb. He’s still staring mournfully at the newly empty block when another email drops into his inbox.

 

New Client Intake Form: HAYDEN PIKE / BASIL

Client Summary: he's eating bin food :(

 

He opens it out of professional obligation rather than any genuine enthusiasm - dogs who raid kitchen bins rarely need him. They need a cupboard latch, consistent boundaries, sometimes the odd colonoscopy, and owners capable of remembering that most dogs will eat almost anything if it smells bad enough. As he reads on, he discovers Mr Hayden Pike has already tried the cupboard latch, moving the bin, replacing it with a different one and placing a dining chair in front of the kitchen door. Basil has defeated every measure so far, most recently opening the pedal bin with one paw while using his head to prevent the lid from closing again.

 

Ilya spits and rinses the sink. “That is quite clever.”

 

Anya glances up at him, having taken a morning swim in his consciousness to discover what's preventing him from making his customary breakfast sandwich. For a dog who keeps eating rubbish?

 

He keeps reading. Basil is a four year old chocolate Labrador, a healthy weight, neutered, friendly with people, dogs, children, delivery drivers, and he began raiding the bin six months ago and has since made himself sick on several occasions. According to Hayden (who Ilya mistrusts for absolutely no reason at all other than the fact he's the psychic in this situation, and therefore can never be wrong), he’s fed appropriately, medically healthy and in possession of enough enrichment toys to count as a wholesaler.

 

The vet believes it’s behavioural, and Ilya suspects the vet is correct. He also suspects Mr Hayden Pike has written the form while Basil was actively stepping all over his last nerve, as the final paragraph begins neatly enough before descending into ‘sorry, he’s got the butter wrapper. One second. Back, the butter wrapper has been recovered. He does know he isn’t supposed to do it, because he only raids the bin when I’m out of the room and looks guilty before I’ve found whatever he’s taken. I’d mostly like to know why he keeps doing it and whether there’s anything I’m missing, because at this point I’m concerned he’ll poison himself.’

 

It’s a reasonable concern, but not a particularly interesting one. Basil likes food and the bin contains food - Hayden leaves the room, and Basil, being a Labrador with a grasp of basic bin engineering, takes advantage of the available opportunity. Ilya can visit, speak to him and determine whether there’s something more complicated beneath it, but most dogs don’t carry elaborate psychological motives for eating a butter wrapper.

 

He scrolls towards the availability section, already considering whether he should leave the cancellation open. An unexpected free hour would let him complete his invoices, take Anya for a longer walk or lie facedown on the sofa while postponing both. He gets halfway to dismissing the idea when he catches the final, and arguably most important, line.

 

Referred by: Shane Hollander. He said you helped him with Pork yesterday and might be able to make sense of Basil.

 

Anya startles at the sudden, delighted flare that moves through him. You're so gross, Ilya.

 

Ilya tsks at her, stepping carefully over her to dive in the direction of the kitchen. Perhaps Shane had called Hayden immediately. Perhaps he’d said Ilya was brilliant. Handsome, even. Unusually gifted and the most compelling man he’d met in years.

 

He probably said you speak to animals.

 

“Compelling, yes?”

 

For people that don't have to live with you, sure.

 

She doesn't mean it, evidenced by the way she sets about lovebombing him the second he reaches for her bowl. It's fate, he's certain of it - fate that coincidentally provides Ilya with an entirely legitimate reason to ask Hayden several carefully casual questions.

 

Anya chews on her spirulina tablet. You’re going to interrogate him.

 

“I am going to help his dog,” Ilya says cheerfully, already lunging for his shoes despite the fact the appointment isn’t until the afternoon.

 

And interrogate him.

 

“I may ask how he knows Shane. This is a normal intake question, important context.”

 

For the dog who eats rubbish? Just so we're clear?

 

Ilya swears as he finds the hallway empty, circling back to where he'd left his shoes near the armchair last night. “Perhaps Shane has witnessed it.”

 

Anya’s silence carries all the judgement she can’t presently fit onto her face. Ilya returns to the email and accepts the booking before Mr Pike can find anyone else - not that there's an extensive list of legitimate pet psychics knocking about East London, but it's not a risk he's willing to take. He offers the cancelled appointment that afternoon, adds Basil to his client records and replies with a brief list of precautions to follow in the meantime. It would be unprofessional to mention Shane directly, so he doesn’t. He only rereads the referral line another three times. Maybe five, he isn't counting.

 

By 4pm, Ilya's standing outside a narrow townhouse with his bag over one shoulder and a container of high value treats tucked beneath his arm, advised by a begrudging Anya who has very strong thoughts about yak chews over dehydrated fish skin. He checks the number against Hayden’s form, shuts the garden gate behind him and hears the dog before he reaches the door.

 

Someone. Hayden, there is someone.

 

Basil’s awareness bursts through him, as bright as sunshine and as loud as, well, as loud as you'd expect a Labrador who apparently eats baking paper for fun.

 

Someone is here.

 

Heavy paws scramble against a hard floor, though he can't tell if he's receiving that through Basil or through his own ears, and there’s the impact of a large body failing to account for the corner of a wall, followed by a brief flicker of surprise that disappears beneath far more important information.

 

Guest.

 

Guest at the door. Hayden, are you going to let him in? Get up, get up now.

 

Ilya stops on the front step, inhaling deep to steady himself as Basil rushes from one thought to another with none of Anya’s careful distinction. He knows well enough that it's an unfair comparison - communication is like a muscle, and after living with someone that can actually hear her for so long, Anya's essentially far more eloquent than she should be. Still, it's Basil's excitement making his temples throb, not a lack of understanding.

 

A man has come through the gate. He smells of dog -

 

Great.

 

Treats. He has treats.

 

The excitement doubles so abruptly that Ilya nearly laughs, and probably would've if it didn't almost floor him simultaneously. Behind the door there's a very human string of curses so creative he raises his eyebrow, a bang, more swearing, then who he presumes is Hayden begging the dog to sit.

 

Basil does not sit, not from what Ilya can sense. He’s moving again, searching urgently for something suitable to bring their guest, and Ilya feels him consider and reject a shoe, and conclude that a blanket is too large. There’s a soft, severely chewed duck beneath the table, but by the time Basil remembers where he left it he’s already returned to the door.

 

Open it. Open it open it open it.

 

Ilya raises his hand and knocks, and Basil’s entire body hits the other side of the door in an explosion of joy.

 

“Okay, I'm going,” Hayden wheezes. “Jesus Christ.”

 

The lock turns, and Ilya has just enough time to hear Hayden swear again before the door opens and a solid mass of dog attempts to emerge through the gap no wider than his own head.

 

Hello, hello!

 

Basil’s excitement hits him only just before the rest of him does, a vast fizzing rush that floods down the base of his skull - Ilya rocks backwards, clutching the doorframe for support as the Labrador barges against his knees, chattering the entire time.

 

You came. You came here. Hello. Do you have treats?

 

“Basil, down!” Hayden hisses, wrapping both hands around his collar like that's going to get him anywhere but dragged along in his dog's wake. “You can’t mug him before he’s even come inside.”

 

Basil’s tongue catches Ilya across the chin. Face.

 

“Thank you,” Ilya says, blinking through the white pulse of energy behind his eyes. “Very nice of you.”

 

Face again?

 

“No, it is okay.”

 

The dog stretches towards him with every available part of his body while Hayden hauls him back, and for a few somewhat disturbing seconds Ilya receives the taste of his own cheek (including the incredibly faint smell of BBQ sauce) before Basil catches the scent leaking through the seal of his treat container - the dog's whole consciousness lasers in with such ferocity he's starting to feel hungry himself.

 

Food.

 

“Yeah, he’ll do that.” Hayden plants his feet with a grimace - he’s red in the face already, chestnut hair falling over his forehead and both sleeves shoved untidily towards his elbows. “Sorry, he has no concept of personal space.”

 

The pressure behind Ilya’s eyes eases enough for him to step into the hallway, noting immediately and with a petty conviction he isn't judging himself for, that Hayden's house is far less tidy than Shane's. There's boots lining the hallway and what looks like a pair of skates, alongside some incredibly Live Laugh Love-esque wall hangings - that said, there's a small brass sign hanging from what he assumes is the door to the toilet, that has one simple request: ‘please don't do charlie in the bathroom’. Hayden closes the door behind him, trapping the strap of Ilya’s bag in it the first time and Basil’s tail the second, though Basil barely notices, too busy examining Ilya’s legs as though they’ve been separated for years.

 

Guest came for Basil. He did. He came.

 

He crouches slowly, allowing Basil to inspect his hands and the place near his knee where Anya had leaned against him before he left.

 

Dog?

 

Ilya nods. “Yes.”

 

Girl dog.

 

“Yes, my Anechka.”

 

Big girl dog.

 

“Do not say this to her,” he chuckles, peering reluctantly up at the man still clutching the dog's collar.

 

Predictably, Hayden is gaping at him so profoundly it's remniscient of the guppies Ilya had spoken to about the merits of safe sex just last week - he elects not to share this with him, at least not until he's taken the Shane Hollander 101 from the guy. “Did he just tell you something?”

 

“He smells Anya,” Ilya says, straightening. “My friend.”

 

“Got it. Shane said I should call you,” Hayden smiles, apparently unaware that he has just made himself significantly more welcome in his own home. “He was really impressed with what you did with Pork.”

 

Keep calm, act natural. Ilya readjusts his cargos before they can tell on him. “Oh?”

 

“He doesn’t recommend people to me unless he thinks they’re good, though I guess this is the first time he's ever recommended a...” Hayden trails off. “What should I call you? And, sorry, but just to check - do you see dead people? Or is your whole thing just animals?”

 

“Just animals,” Ilya says flatly - he counts his lucky stars for that every day. Waking up to Aunt Zoya perched on the end of his bed one day might just send him over the edge. “How impressed was he?”

 

Hayden glances back at him. “Enough that you’re here?”

 

This isn’t useful information, but Ilya can forgive him temporarily because Shane had been really impressed and Hayden appears to have played some small part in delivering that knowledge to him - Basil trots between them with the chewed duck in his mouth, his mind colliding with Ilya’s. It isn’t the dog's fault, and he likely has no idea he’s doing it, no reason to contain a thought simply because someone else has wandered close enough to hear.

 

“Did Shane tell you what I look like?” Ilya asks as casually as possible, stepping over the chair blocking the kitchen entrance.

 

The other man hesitates, and Ilya looks at him like he's the problem. He is, though he's not sure why yet. Divine intuition.

 

“I mean,” he continues, adjusting the container beneath his arm, “it is relevant that you could identify the correct person at your door.”

 

“You were carrying dog treats, so?”

 

“Many people carry dog treats.”

 

Hayden’s mouth twitches. “He might’ve mentioned a couple of things.”

 

“What things?”

 

“I’m not telling you.”

 

It's also divine intuition that Ilya's been in his house for less than ten minutes and already wants to bash him over the head with the nearest ‘this isn't just a house, it's a home’ sign. However, against all better judgement, he shoots him his most well meaning smile and hopes for the best. “Why?”

 

“Because he’s my best friend,” Hayden laughs, like he isn't dangling information (very, very important information) about Ilya's one true love over his head for fun. That said, he's glad the other man got that out of the way so soon - if he'd been faced with another Sasha type situationship on Shane's part, he might just have a few phone calls to make.

 

Ilya places his bag on the kitchen counter, perhaps with more care than required. The room is warm after the cool air outside, and Basil’s excitement has left a humming itchiness beneath his skin. “I am only asking what information was provided to identify me safely.”

 

“You’re a tall Russian man who talks to animals, so I felt fairly confident.”

 

“This describes more people than you might think. I could have been anyone.”

 

Basil pushes the duck against Ilya’s thigh. Take.

 

Ilya accepts it gratefully, even though the fabric is damp - the dog careens away from him, his tail thunking into every piece of furniture he passes. Maybe he’d said Ilya was beautiful, or even better, it could be the case that Hayden’s (unwanted and frankly infuriating) loyalties prevent him from revealing that Shane had spent an hour or two describing the precise colour of Ilya’s eyes. He's pleased enough with the prospect that he decides he'll order another takeaway tonight. Who cares? He's in love.

 

“Anyway, Shane and I have been together since college, so I know when he’s impressed.”

 

All traces of joy, or any positive emotion at all, leaves Ilya’s body so abruptly he's winded by it. That can't be right. Shane had said -

 

“Together,” he chokes, wondering if it could just be a horrible coincidence and he'd misinterpreted what that word actually means.

 

“Yeah,” Hayden plops himself down in the nearest kitchen chair, gesturing at Ilya to do the same. “We met first year.”

 

Basil sits against Ilya’s shin, radiating affection in Hayden’s direction. Ilya, on the other hand, is radiating such heinous animosity he's surprised it isn't physically leaking out of his pores. “What does that mean?”

 

“What does what mean?”

 

Ilya's beginning to feel nauseous. “You have been together.”

 

“In each other’s lives. He’s been stuck with me for years, roommates for a long time too.” Hayden rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “We’ve shared basically everything at this point. It only makes sense that we share the picket fence dream, too.”

 

Ilya hates Hayden’s kitchen. He hates the chair, the storage box, the smug little child lock and the ugly yellow mug beside the sink. He especially hates Hayden, and is halfway through fantasising about doing unspeakable things to him with said picket fence when the world rights itself again.

 

“He's the brother I never had. Literally, I love him like a brother.”

 

The gory images in Ilya’s head rearrange themselves into something a touch less homocidal.

 

“Anyway, is this relevant to Basil?”

 

“Routine changes can cause scavenging behaviours,” Ilya says quickly. “I must understand who regularly enters the home and what effect this has upon him.”

 

Hayden frowns down at Basil. “Shane doesn’t live here.”

 

“Does he stay overnight?”

 

“Sometimes.”

 

“How often?”

 

“I don’t know. Sometimes!”

 

“Once a week?”

 

“No,” Hayden says, significantly paler than he had been at the door.

 

“Twice?”

 

“Are you billing by the personal question?”

 

Ilya glares. “You asked for a behavioural assessment. If you prefer I perform it without information, I can invent something.”

 

“Shane visits a couple of times a month, sometimes he stays if it’s late. It doesn’t affect Basil beyond making him lose his mind and sometimes pee a little.”

 

Shane. Basil’s response soars through Ilya before Hayden's even finished speaking in the turn of a key, the door opening, a familiar smell moving into the house. Safe. Happy. Hayden happy. Basil happy. Shane belongs here.

 

The Labrador presses closer, offering the memory without reservation, and he sees Shane stretched along the sofa beneath a faux fur blanket, Shane’s fingers moving slowly through the fur behind Basil’s ears, Shane sipping wine in this very seat and Shane Shane Shane.

 

“You gave him a key?” Ilya asks, scraping whatever's left of his professionalism together before the other man files a police report.

 

“What?”

 

“Shane. Basil knows the sound.”

 

“For emergencies. I have a key to his place too.”

 

Every sweep of Basil’s delight produces a wave of nausea that he swallows before crouching to fuss at the dog, desperately needing to put his attention somewhere useful before he asks whether Hayden has ever seen Shane naked.

 

Friend touches Basil, the dog announces. Friend.

 

Ilya takes the container from beneath his arm and sits on the floor.

 

Food now.

 

“First you answer questions,” he says gently. “Why do you open the bin?”

 

Food.

 

“The bin gives you food.”

 

Yes.

 

A landscape of scent unfolds through him, paper soaked with meat fat, butter left smeared on foil, the sweetness of a yoghurt pot, onion skin, eggshell, something decaying at the bottom that turns Ilya’s stomach while sending a surge of enjoyment through Basil. Ilya gives him the treat before his own body can decide it has consumed any of this, and the resulting crunch echoes behind his eyes.

 

More please.

 

“In a moment,” he waits for the dog’s attention to lift from his hand, giving his awareness a fond but firm nudge with his own. “You know the bin food hurts your stomach.”

 

Sick. Basil knows. There’s no confusion in him and no meaningful concern either, illnesses simply exist as an unpleasant but temporary event tangled amongst Hayden’s fear, the awful contractions of his stomach and then -

 

Chicken.

 

Ilya frowns. “Then chicken?”

 

“Chicken and rice,” Hayden whispers, awed. “Oh my god.”

 

That appears to be the crux of the issue - not one reward but several, linked so completely in Basil’s experience that he doesn’t understand why Ilya would consider the illness separately. The bin produces treasure, the treasure produces pain, but pain produces Hayden kneeling beside him with gentle hands, uninterrupted attention and a warm bowl that smells better than his ordinary dinner.

 

Bin. Sick. Chicken. Hayden, Basil confirms, thumping his tail against the linoleum. Worth it.

 

“You make yourself ill because he gives you chicken.”

 

Hayden loves Basil.

 

Some of Ilya’s dislike towards the man falters. Some, not all.

 

“The food comes back up,” he says, tasting the grim certainty of it without needing much in the way of confirmation.

 

Food comes back. Sometimes I eat it twice.

 

Ilya blinks at him. Basil's tongue lolls, entirely pleased with the system he’s devised. “No, you must not do this.”

 

Good food. Chicken now?

 

“You have extorted enough chicken from this household,” he says as severely as he can, ignoring Hayden's snort of laughter.

 

Treat?

 

“So he knows the bin makes him sick?” Hayden asks, peeking over the chair to study the way his dog's shamelessly snuffling at Ilya's hand. “And he does it anyway?”

 

“Yes. You give him chicken.”

 

Hayden blinks. “I give him boiled chicken because he’s been sick. It's meant to be good for settling their stomachs.”

 

“I understand your reasoning, so does Basil.” Ilya gives him another pat on the head. “He thinks the entire sequence is worthwhile. First the bin provides one meal, then he is sick, then you panic and provide a superior meal while devoting yourself to his survival.”

 

“I don’t panic!”

 

Ilya shrugs. “He shows me that you slept on the floor.”

 

The other man balks, gesturing at nothing in particular. “How do you - Basil, you snitch. So your professional diagnosis is that I’m the problem?”

 

Well, if the shoe fits, and all that. “Yes. He has no reason to consider vomiting a deterrent.”

 

Hayden laughs, apparently mistaking this for mutual teasing - Ilya dislikes the sound, mostly because it’s pleasant and Shane probably hears it often. He turns towards the cupboard instead. The latch is low enough for Basil to reach with his nose and badly positioned for the direction the door opens. “You need a proper lock at the top, or move the bin into a room behind a closed door. Not behind furniture he can push and not inside something opened by pressing a pedal, because this only makes it a puzzle feeder.”

 

Once the other man is done bemoaning the cost of industrial strength locking bins, Ilya's thoroughly spent, though it's different to the usual - like the ache after a good run, he supposes. Basil's intensity and subsequent limitless outpouring of love is a rare treat, draining though it is, and when they meander back out into the hallway the dog's energy turns sour.

 

You stay?

 

“He has to leave,” Hayden tells him with eerily precise timing. “Sorry, Bas.”

 

No.

 

“Yes,” Ilya murmurs, even as Basil flops across his path to physically prevent it. Ilya has to stop when the dog’s distress drops like a stone through his stomach.

 

Friend stays.

 

“I have to go home to my Anya -”

 

Stay here.

 

“I cannot. You live with Hayden, but I may come back,” he says quietly. “If you continue these criminal activities.”

 

Bin?

 

“No bin, Basil.”

 

Hayden opens the front door for him - chivalry apparently isn't dead, even in the Pike household - and turns to face him with an expression of such sincerity that Ilya almost can't bear it. “Thanks, genuinely. I’ve been going out of my mind trying to work out what I was missing.”

 

“Your dog has has decided gastroenteritis is enrichment,” he mutters, giving Basil his customary little wave (one he decidedly hadn't given Pork, for obvious reasons) and smiling when the dog perks enough to boof in his direction. A boof is a very serious business, Ilya of all people would know that. “Secure the bin, and ontinue following veterinary advice if he gets sick. If he manages to access it again, record exactly how so you can remove the opportunity properly. Do not give him chicken unnecessarily.”

 

Hayden nods sagely. “Got it.”

 

Ilya steps onto the path, then turns back - he knows what he's about to do, and feels almost as if he's watching himself from above, from the view of whatever guardian angel had been lumbered with his case file, feeling the words form on his lips in horrifying slow motion. “Does Shane have a boyfriend?”

 

The face Hayden makes is almost enough for him to regret asking.

 

“This is not related to Basil,” Ilya hears himself admit.

 

“Ask Shane.”

 

“I am asking you for good reason.”

 

“What reason?”

 

The picket fence is back in Ilya's mind's eye. “I need to know whether asking Shane would result in humiliation.”

 

Hayden shrugs, as unhelpful as he'd predicted. “That sounds like a risk you’ll have to take. Goodbye, Ilya.”

 

The door shuts in his face and behind it, and Basil’s disappointment tugs inside his chest. Come back!

 

“I like you,” Ilya calls through the wood. “Not Hayden.”

 

Hayden’s laughter carries through the door, and Ilya stands at the gate until the ache of his departure softens with his hand pressed to his temple. By the time Ilya reaches the pavement on his way back to the bus shelter, he's decided three things with perfect clarity. Basil is wonderful, Shane Hollander might like him on some plane of professional or personal significance, and Hayden Pike has lived far too long already.

 

“He is smug,” Ilya tells Anya that evening, toeing off his shoes in their rightful place of the hallway. “He thinks because he has known Shane many years, this makes him important.”

 

Anya lifts her head from the armchair, having already completed her sniff inspection and found nothing she cares enough to interrogate. Important to Shane.

 

“Yes, obviously. This is the problem.”

 

She watches him carry his bag into the kitchenette, following his progress over the armrest. She’d been asleep when he arrived, warm and deeply settled - the remnants of it cling to her thoughts in slow shapes that barely reach him from across the room, and Ilya envies her. Basil’s excitement is still thrumming beneath his skin, and every sudden noise in the apartment needles him.

 

“He gave Shane a key,” he continues, waiting for her to match his outrage as he opens the cupboard. “Shane has key to his house also. For emergencies.”

 

Friends do this.

 

He takes out a mug. “He is sinister, you must believe me. Do you not believe me?”

 

Anya's answer is still a resounding no, even when he presents her with the memory of Hayden's very rude secrecy surrounding Shane's referral, wavering only temporarily when he sidles the idea of a kebab from the local Greek takeaway alongside it. Her refusal to recognise him as a romantic threat is becoming increasingly suspicious, and Ilya mutinously fills the kettle and sets it down harder than necessary, taking his phone from his cargo pocket while he waits. There's a few voicemail notifications sitting above a collection of less interesting things, an email from Mrs Cooper confirming Thomas has spent the afternoon walking along the old carpet, and a short voicenote from Sveta - when Ilya clicks into this, it's actually a very sweet message from her flirtatious parrot, Diana, who tells him he's very handsome indeed.

 

“He is very protective of Shane,” he tells Anya. “Very obstructive.”

 

A good friend, then.

 

“He shut the door in my face!”

 

Ilya navigates to the first voicemail and sets his phone beside the kettle. It's a woman enquiring about her leopard gecko, who's recently taken an abrupt and intense liking to his artificial succulent. Ilya listens for long enough to establish that she wants an appointment, saves the message and moves to the next - an older man apologising at length for having the wrong number.

 

The kettle switches itself off with a click and Ilya pours the water, only half listening as the final message begins with a small rustle and somebody breathing a little too close to the microphone. “Hi, Ilya. It’s Shane.”

 

The mug leaves Ilya’s hand and shatters against the floor. Anya yelps and bolts upright as a flood of tea spreads around shards of ceramic, and part of the handle rattles between Ilya’s feet. He mouths a string of ‘sorry’s’ at her, tiptoeing out of the tea to blow her what he hopes is a soothing kiss - from the blatant irritation lancing through her and up his spine, he's missed the mark somewhat.

 

“Sorry. Obviously you know that. I don’t know why I said it like you wouldn’t.”

 

Shane’s voice fills the kitchen, quieter than Ilya remembers it, probably softened by the recording and the unmistakeable hesitation within it. There’s a muffled creak in the background, and although his awareness never quite works properly through the thick slog of technology, he also has two working braincells to rub together in identifying its cause.

 

Pork.

 

Shane is in his house with Pork, holding his phone and speaking to Ilya.

 

“I just wanted to thank you again for yesterday. I called my doctor after you left. Well, I called the surgery. I didn’t just ring my doctor personally. That would be - anyway. I explained what you said about the breathing, and they agree it sounds consistent with sleep apnoea.”

 

Despite herself, Anya's fluffy ears prick up. Good job, sunshine.

 

“He asked me a bunch of questions and I’ve been referred for an overnight sleep study. So, that’s happening. It's, uh. It's also tomorrow. I pay privately, so.”

 

Relief spreads through him as warm as the spilled tea still caught between his bare toes - he waves the dog away from the shards, projecting her an image of spiked paw pads, but Anya steadfastly ignores him and begins to lap at it anyway. He throws a tea towel down over the sharpest pieces of the mug.

 

“And Pork slept after you left. Properly slept, I mean. I left the bedroom door open, and he got into bed only, like, an hour later. He was still there when I woke him up for dinner.”

 

There’s another reproachful creak in the background, that can only be the gates of hell opening for their wrinkled leader.

 

“I know,” Shane says, away from the phone. “I’m sorry. You could’ve starved to death in the additional nine minutes.”

 

Pork does not answer him.

 

“I moved the cat tree too, it’s beside my desk now, facing away from the window. He’s been sitting in it while I work, so I think he likes it. He hasn't hated this quite so loudly, anyway.”

 

Ilya doesn't need to be able to translate to comprehend the sound of sheer outrage the malignant ball of mozzarella makes next, holding his phone away from his own ear with a wince.

 

“That was a joke,” Shane tells him. “Jesus Christ.”

 

The ache behind Ilya’s eye recedes far enough that he can feel the rest of himself again, but when the recording falls quiet, he waits. The silence lasts long enough that he glances down to make sure the message hasn’t ended, but the little progress line is still moving.

 

“So, uh. there was one other thing, actually.”

 

He clutches at the phone and nearly knocks it into the sink, his heart hammering in his chest.

 

“It’s not urgent, and it’s not really part of the consultation, so you can say no. You should say no if you don’t want to. I wouldn’t be offended.”

 

Ilya has never wanted to say yes to anything more in his life, including the thing Shane has not yet asked. Shane could ask him to commit grand theft auto and he'd do it with a smile on his face and a song in his heart.

 

“So the sleep study is overnight. I knew that, obviously. It’s in the name. I just didn’t think about what that meant until after I’d agreed to it. My parents would normally stay with Pork if I had to be away, but they’re travelling for the next few weeks. And I'd ask Hayden, but Pork hates Basil.”

 

Pork's judgement is incredibly clouded if it's Basil the cat has an issue with in that household.

 

“I just don’t really want to leave him alone now, not after finding out he’s been staying awake because he thinks I’m going to stop breathing.”

 

I know exactly what he's about to ask. Anya's glee is teasing enough that he scowls at her, making to turn away.

 

“I know this is a lot to ask, so please say no if you’re busy, or if this isn’t something you do, which I’m assuming it isn’t. I’m not asking professionally. I mean, I can pay you. Obviously. Not because I think you’d need to be paid to - obviously people are paid for pet sitting. I just mean I’m not trying to turn a consultation into some kind of obligation.”

 

Ilya might actually be having some kind of cardiac event - Shane wants him inside his house. Possibly alone, except for Pork. Still - inside Shane’s house, where Shane’s bed is. His clothes, his bathroom. All the unguarded evidence of him that people like Hayden have known for years. Better yet, maybe Shane will come home in the morning with his hair mussed from sleep, and maybe Ilya will make him tea.

 

“But considering Pork likes you so much, would you possibly be willing to stay here with him overnight?”

 

Time slows to the sort of syrupy bliss that comes with watching a David Attenborough documentary after several edibles - scratch that, somehow it's better. Ilya's observance of Emperor penguins trudging through a blizzard can't possibly match up to the gift being presented to him with every um and ah Shane graces him with. At the same time, his body seems to remind itself that it's the body of a young man with something akin to a crush, and chooses that moment to flood every mililitre of blood straight to his cock.

 

That doesn't last long. Pork’s face rises in his memory like an ominous, pink sunrise atop the hill of Shane Hollander's pecs.

 

‘If you enter this home again, I will kill you.’

 

“There’s no pressure,” Shane's saying, chattering at him completely unaware of the fire (and attached Kubrick style horror) he's set alight within him. “I only thought I’d ask because he connected with you, and I’d feel better knowing he was with somebody he trusts.”

 

Ilya closes his eyes and accepts his fate.

 

“Anyway, thanks again, for all of it. Call me when you get this. Or text. Text is fine.”

 

He remains bent over the phone with Anya at his feet, faced with the simple fact there's no possible way to refuse. Even if he did concoct an excuse feasible enough to pass, Shane might be disappointed, and this is intolerable. Ilya picks up his phone.

 

of course

pork and i would love this

we will wear matching pyjamas

 

Anya, having finished with the tea, noses at his knee. You’re frightened.

 

Ilya puts his head in his hands. “His cat is going to kill me.”

Chapter 3: casus belli

Chapter Notes

i was wine drunk writing half of this but shane's phone call might genuinely be the scene i've had the most fun writing ever, i have been on the receiving end of monopoly based hostilities and consider myself quite a brave girl but i simply would never play with pork

as always thank you so much for all the love on this, it has filled my heart with joy and whimsy <3

Ilya arrives at Shane's house at 7pm on the dot - to the minute, to the second, probably. Well, there's no probably about it, because after wishing the ginger cat down the road a pleasant evening, he lingers until the time on his phone ticks over to 19:00 before he rings the bell. He's also carrying enough luggage to survive the collapse of civilisation, which Anya had assured him was completely insane, and that his client wasn't about to invite him to stay in his house for the next fifty years. Ilya's never been a betting man, but he might, and that's enough for him to come suitably prepared.

 

The overnight bag itself is reasonable enough - he needs clothes (just under fifty year's worth) and toiletries. Less reasonable is the separate canvas bag pulled across his shoulder containing two tins of tuna in spring water, a packet of freezedried chicken hearts, a few tubes of gourmet salmon paste, and a furry mouse with wheels he can connect to an app on his phone. Beneath that, packed where the cat won’t immediately smell them as invitation to cause grievous bodily harm, are antibacterial wipes, plasters, gauze, antiseptic cream and a first aid kit Amazon had assured him was travel sized.

 

He's not scared, though.

 

He shifts his weight as tthe first scuffle of feet sound through the door, hoping to all hopes that this doesn't look like an honest attempt at putting himself on Shane's mortgage. The sun hasn’t completely set yet, though there's a pleasant chill to the breeze, and the vivid petunias sway and tangle themselves as they catch on it. They've been watered recently, and Ilya makes a mental note to top them up before he beds in for the night - maybe Shane would appreciate that. Oh god, what if Shane's type is horticulturalists?

 

He glances down at his phone again before he can add another lie to the beautiful salad of mistruths he's currently offering so sweetly out to the love of his life, scanning over the photograph Sveta had sent ten minutes ago. Anya's mid-chew, her head cocked intently in the direction of Diana, her enormous African Grey who appears to be discussing something very serious indeed, if the way her dark beak is parted is anything to go by. It's no surprise the two get along so well - both possess an endless interest in Ilya’s mistakes, a broad category (according to them) that includes Sasha, his diet, several financial decisions, and as of this week thus far, Shane Hollander.

 

Diana had been Svetlana's first and likely only experience with birds, considering they live the equivalent of a human lifespan, and she's so possessive over his best friend that any accompanying bird wouldn't have the time to so much as pronounce ‘lifespan’ before theirs was ended. It's endearing, in some ways - throughout his career Ilya has found that where parrots are concerned, what comes out of their mouth is almost never what they're actually trying to say, yet after some intensive sessions on aligning tongue and brain Diana had achieved more than most. Her verbal vocabularly consists of ‘kiss’, ‘handsome’ (derogatory, and most of the time aimed in Ilya's direction), and ‘fuck’ - always said with emphasis, and often accompanied by multiple descriptors pulled out of a 101 Insults For Edgy Teens book Sveta had found for her on Kindle Unlimited. His phone vibrates - already set to silent, to allow him to fully focus on the simple task of surviving the night unscathed:

 

Anya used her talk buttons to tell me ‘good night’. I assume that's her telling me she's enjoying herself, not that she's sending me to bed.

 

That is indeed what his dog likely means, and it’s comforting to know his absence has brought them such joy. He pockets his phone and gives himself a quick sniff to make sure the smell of tuna hasn't permeated his entire being - Shane opens the door before the bell has finished sounding.

 

Ilya had been prepared for him this time,  he’d spent an embarrassing duration of the afternoon preparing, in fact, mentally revisiting every available detail from the small silvery scar on Shane's shoulder that had revealed itself to him when he'd stooped to pick Pork up, to the tiny crease that appeared between his eyebrows when he was worried - none of it helps. The metaphorical dog has eaten Ilya's metaphorical homework, because Shane's dressed more comfortably tonight, presumably for the clinic, in low riding black joggers and a grey hoodie with the sleeves concealing his hands. The complete lack of visible effort produces an immediate, vivid fantasy of Shane wearing the hoodie the morning after Ilya has fucked him, still sheened with sweat and smelling of them both.

 

“Hi,” Shane says, a little breathlessly.

 

He can do this - just one word.

 

“Hello.”

 

Nailed it.

 

“You found it okay?”

 

“Yes. I have been here before.”

 

“Obviously,” he mumbles. “Sorry, stupid question.”

 

Ilya smiles until it aches his cheeks. “Not stupid. I remembered.”

 

“Right, yeah.”

 

They look at each other then, and from somewhere down by the wall of the front garden, the ginger cat contributes. Good work.

 

Shane steps back abruptly, knocking his heel into a shiny black suitcase he's parked in the hallway. “Come in.”

 

Ilya crosses the threshold awkwardly, turning sideways to avoid clipping Shane with his bags that definitely aren't the portable equivalent of a U-Haul - they pass close anyway and he catches the slightest trace of grapefruit that must be the other man's soap. Ilya inhales without thinking, and thankfully Pork isn’t in the hallway to report him.

 

Shane gives the luggage a curious glance. “You brought a lot.”

 

He toes off his shoes and places them as neatly as he possibly can against the wall, then adjusts them straighter again for good measure. It can't hurt. “Professional supplies.”

 

“Oh.” Shane looks impressed rather than alarmed, which in Ilya's eyes is just further proof that somehow, someday soon, the man in front of him will be his husband. “What kind?”

 

“Food, enrichment. Emergency equipment, you know.”

 

Apparently he doesn't, because his eyebrows climb higher. “Emergency equipment?”

 

Ilya doesn’t elaborate - there’s absolutely no dignified way to tell him that he’s brought sterile gauze in case his suede slasher opens an artery. Shane studies the bag for another second before he smiles again.

 

“You really didn’t have to do all that. He has everything here.”

 

“But perhaps he would like something new,” Ilya says, knowing Pork categorically will not enjoy anything that doesn't directly contribute to his demise.

 

“He might. He’s been playing a little more since I started letting him keep the wand at the end.”

 

“Good.”

 

“He carries it upstairs now - or drags it, I guess,” Shane's eyes brighten. “It gets stuck on the first step and then he screams until I fix it.”

 

Ilya has to resist a shudder. “Then he is enriched.”

 

This is already going exceptionally well. They’re standing in Shane’s hallway, alone, making jokes about their cat - the cat. Ilya adjusts the bag higher and tries not to plan too far beyond breakfast.

 

“Thank you again,” Shane murmurs, scrubbing a hand along the back of his neck. “Seriously, I know this is weird.”

 

“It is not weird.”

 

“It’s a little weird.”

 

“I stay in clients’ homes sometimes.” Ilya has no idea why on earth he's just said that, because that's another lie so blatant he's certain it must be all over his face, wishing he could just clamp both hands over his mouth to stop more spilling out of him of their own accord. He's an honest guy, not the sort to fabricate an intense emotional bond with someone's murderous pet in an attempt to seduce them. “No big deal.”

 

Shane glances at his bags again, and Ilya's about to tell him he makes enough money that he could probably pay off his mortgage, if he wanted, as a gesture of…goodwill, (something like that, anyway) when he breaks the silence. “Still, I really appreciate it.”

 

“I am happy to help.”

 

That part requires no dishonesty at all - Shane’s worry is so plaintively obvious that it hurts to look at, and still he can't avert his eyes. The other man fidgets endlessly, thumbing the cuffs of his hoodie and scuffing his feet, and there's a tiny muscle in his jaw that flickers so intensely Ilya itches to catch it between his lips and sooth the twitching with his tongue.

 

“I don’t sleep very well away from home,” he says eventually. “Not really. I’ve never liked it - I don’t like new beds.”

 

Ilya reverently files this away alongside every other precious piece of information he has acquired so far about Shane, somewhere between drafting the first pitch of selling his apartment so Shane never has to grace an unfamiliar bed with his body again, and the way his cheeks scrunch when he pretends he's not finding him amusing. “I understand.”

 

“I know it’s only one night,” he grimaces, none the wiser. “Less than one night, probably. They said I could leave in the morning as soon as they’ve disconnected everything.”

 

“They will take good care of you.”

 

(They'd better)

 

“Yeah. No, I know. The clinic has really good reviews, and it’s not like I’m worried about the actual test.” He begins walking towards the kitchen as he talks, and Ilya follows, delighted by the simple fact Shane apparently has no intention of stopping. He'd listen to him describe every wire of the polysomnography system - Ilya had looked that up before coming - individually, or listen to him read the clinic’s entire consent form, including the information about data protection. Shane could explain the construction of the building if he wanted, and Ilya would stand here until morning, if he lived that long.

 

“The thing is, they’re supposed to observe you sleeping normally,” Shane continues, listlessly doing a lap to arrive back at the kitchen doorway all over again. “That’s the whole point, they need to see what my breathing does when I’m actually asleep.”

 

“Yes,” Ilya so very helpfully contributes.

 

“But I can’t imagine I’ll sleep normally when I’m covered in wires in a bed I’ve never slept in before.”

 

“That is probably common.”

 

“Exactly, it has to be, right? Everyone there is in an unfamiliar bed, unless somebody brought their own mattress, which I’m assuming they don’t let you do. I didn’t ask.”

 

His eyes catch on the way that muscle in his jaw jumps again. “You could call.”

 

“I’ve called three times already today.”

 

Ah. “Perhaps do not call again.”

 

Shane's hands fall limp beneath his sleeves - his cheeks have turned a pretty pink, and Ilya enjoys this so much he nearly misses the first indication something is wrong.

 

He pauses, allowing his awareness to move through the house - there's something primal in the chill that shudders through him, in the same way the birds stop singing before an apex predator emerges from the scrub. In the bathroom the spider he'd discovered last time rests, now behind the warm pipe below the sink, sated by recent moisture in the air. She knows night is coming through the change in vibration outside, and waits for the small flying things that might follow the last particles of Shane's shower towards her web.

 

There's a fly too, trapped near one of the windows in a room he's not yet seen. Its thoughts reach him without language, oblivious in its odyssey for fresh air, projecting only a kaleidoscopic image of the glass ahead and the shock of collision, over and over. Every impact reaches Ilya without pain, but he'll go up and release it once Shane's gone anyway.

 

There's nothing else - bewildered, he looks towards the living room.

 

The heated bed is visible from here, soft blankets folded and undisturbed, but Pork isn’t in it. The sofa is empty, and there’s no glimpse of the blue and white jumper or the loose pink skin of his horrible back.

 

“The clinic doesn’t offer at home studies, which sucks.”

 

Ilya nods gravely - Pork is probably sleeping, and sleep can make an animal quieter, especially when he isn’t concentrating directly on them. Anya disappears almost completely when she dreams, her consciousness blurring into the rare flash of whatever her she's lost in.

 

“I did check that part,” Shane says, opening one of the cabinets and removing a very large Sports Direct mug. “Not with them, just generally. There are companies that send the equipment to your house, but then I’d have to start the referral process again, and my doctor said I should do this as soon as possible.”

 

“Your doctor is right,” Ilya says, scanning the hallway for any sign of a chicken cutlet. “You are doing the right thing.”

 

“I just think it’s stupid that they want to see me sleep normally and then create the least normal sleeping environment they possibly can.”

 

Nothing in the hallway. Coat rack, maybe? “Yes.”

 

“New room, new bed. Wires attached to my head - hey, that rhymes.”

 

“Yes,” Ilya smiles distractedly, cursing as he shoves his awareness further outwards. Nothing from the living room, and nothing from the stairs or the rooms above. The complete lack of prickling disgust has the hairs on his arms standing on end.

 

“I’ll probably sleep eventually,” Shane says, now staring at the mug. “They said I can bring my own pillow.”

 

“This will help.”

 

“Maybe. I’ve got it in the suitcase, which is probably why it looks so full. I haven’t packed for a week. I know it kind of looks like I have.”

 

“It is fine.” Ilya's getting desperate now - he detects a small train of ants all the way in Shane's front garden, hears them considering whether to cross the great forest of his door mat, but there's nothing, nothing, from Pork Hollander.

 

“I’ve got clothes for tomorrow too. They said I could arrive in whatever I’d normally sleep in, but I didn’t want to travel there in pyjamas.”

 

Ilya inches towards the living room door, craning his neck. “Understandable.”

 

Another silence passes between them, though only Shane’s version of it is comfortable, or as comfortable as it possibly can be - Ilya would quite like to take the nearest flight to an underground bunker. He doesn’t need an animal to speak directly to locate them, and he never has. Consciousness has shape and texture and imprints that work their way through his body like it's their own. It presses against his, sometimes no more than attention shifting in the room beside him, sometimes so firmly his knees shake and and he can no longer determine which flare of neurons belong to him. Pork’s presence was easy to distinguish from the outset (likely something to do with the loathing) - now there’s nothing.

 

He sets the canvas bag down, and the movement disturbs one of the tuna tins with a clunk. Pork should smell the tuna. Worse still, Pork should smell him. Even if the cat has chosen not to speak, Ilya’s arrival ought to provoke something, even if that something is a graphic image of his dismembered body.

 

Out, the fly upstairs pleads, finding her voice.

 

“Do you want tea?” Shane asks.

 

“What?”

 

“Tea. Before I go,” he gestures to the enormous empty mug, evidently remembering he's produced it for no reason at all. “Or coffee? I don’t know what you drink.”

 

Ilya tries his damndest to remain present in the room - the injustice is scorching. He should be enjoying this uninterrupted time with Shane, should be using it to show him exactly why they're meant to be, and instead it's wasted on fearing an aerial attack from from a Pantone 13-1513 TCX blimp.

 

“Coffee is good,” he manages, offering the most normal smile he can possibly manage considering the circumstances.

 

“Milk?”

 

“No, thank you.”

 

Shane fills the kettle and chatters about the timings. He has to be there soon, though the monitoring doesn’t start immediately, because from what his research has shown there’ll be paperwork first. He doesn’t know how long attaching the sensors takes, but the website suggests it's not the shortest of processes. Ilya tries to listen. He really, really does.

 

The other man's voice is soft and nervous, and under literally any other circumstances Ilya would be going to war with the fear lurking behind each word. He'd be watching Shane’s hands and offering comfort, and most importantly of all he'd be husband material. Instead, he finds himself cruelly unable to focus on anything other than the hanging pompoms from the cat tree Shane had diligently moved after their appointment - they're deathly still.

 

Shane notices him looking and misinterprets it completely. “The tree’s been working really well. He spent most of yesterday on the top platform. He can see the whole screen from there.”

 

Ilya forces his attention back to him. “Good. That is good.”

 

“He still walks across the keyboard.”

 

“Of course.”

 

The kettle begins to rumble as he's explaining they’ve asked him to avoid caffeine and alcohol and to eat normally beforehand. He’s already had dinner, though stress made it difficult, and he’s packed a cereal bar in case he gets hungry later. Breakfast will apparently be provided, but the website contains no useful information about what kind. He doesn't drink alcohol, and tends to avoid caffeine anyway, so that part isn't a problem.

 

Ilya nods where appropriate, considering the idea that Pork might be ill. No, that would be too much like wishful thinking - Pork is hiding. That's a rational explanation, except Ilya can't hear Pork hiding. A cat lurking beneath a bed remains a cat, and his thoughts don’t cease just because he can’t be seen. Ilya has spoken to animals through walls, inside cupboards, from surprising amounts of distance, underneath floorboards, and once from somewhere deep within the ventilation system of a restaurant while the owner insisted there couldn’t possibly be a rat. He should hear him. Shane pours the water and holds the mug out to him.

 

“You don’t have to entertain him the whole time,” he says. “I know the voicemail probably made it sound like he needs constant supervision, but he doesn’t, obviously. He’ll sleep most of the evening.”

 

He doubts that very much, but he accepts the mug with a watery smile. “Yes.”

 

“And you can use anything you need. I put the wifi password on the fridge.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

“The television has Netflix, Prime and Disney Plus. I think Hayden’s still logged into that, so ignore any weird recommendations.”

 

“Okay.”

 

The spider shifts behind the pipe, stirred by some tiny movement in the wall.

 

“And you can sleep in my room,” Shane continues, the flush returning.

 

Ilya’s thoughts derail so completely that for several precious seconds, Pork does not exist. “Your room?”

 

“There’s no guest room,” he mumbles. “I changed the sheets this morning and stuck an extra pillow on there.”

 

The mug burns his hands as he pictures Shane stripping the bed for him, the same bed Pork showed him in flashes. Ilya will put his head on Shane’s pillow, surrounded by the soft, private smell of him for hours, and Shane has arranged this knowingly. Willingly, even. Something within him changes so abruptly it almost leaves him breathless - Pork Hollander can go to hell. Ilya's going to put him there himself. There's no way - no way - Ilya will allow anyone or anything to ruin the opportunity presented to him, even if he has to hire a local priest to perform a ritual on feline Beelzebub. He'll do it.

 

“Unless you’d rather sleep on the sofa,” Shane says quickly, paling slightly. “It’s comfortable. Hayden’s slept on it plenty of times.”

 

Priest and a hitman, then.

 

“I will take the bed, thank you.”

 

“Right, good.” Shane peers up at him and Ilya takes a mouthful of coffee far too soon, though the pain at least returns enough blood to his brain for him to remember the immediate crisis at hand. He's probably pushed himself too far, if the first stirrings of an ache behind his eyes is anything to go by. The kitchen is warm, and every sound Shane makes grows distinct, even the smallest of his breaths - it's not an unpleasant feeling, one he's used to after long days, like the sharp sensitivity of a breeze on fresh, new skin.

 

If Pork were dead, Shane would know - if Pork were dying, perhaps he wouldn’t. Ilya places the mug down very carefully.

 

“Are you okay?” Shane asks, worrying at his lip. “You keep looking around.”

 

“I am listening.”

 

Shane’s expression softens. “Oh.”

 

He looks pleased at the idea Ilya's extending his extraordinary connection towards Pork, checking in quietly before Shane leaves. He has no idea Ilya is one unanswered probe away from overturning the sofa.

 

“Can you hear him?”

 

There are several possible answers, and each of them might frighten Shane enough that he cancels the test. ‘Yes’ would be another lie, but hardly significant compared to those already holding Ilya’s life together. ‘He’s asleep’ is plausible, though dangerous if Shane immediately produces Pork from inside a cabinet and asks what he was dreaming about. Ilya reaches outward once more, straining until the fly’s repeated impacts pulse through his skull.

 

Out, please. Out.

 

Ilya projects her an assurance, the only kind he can really give right now, and the suggestion that she settles before he develops a migraine. Shane watches him with complete confidence.

 

“Where,” he asks slowly, each word causing more pain than the last, “is my good friend?”

 

Shane chuckles. “He’s hiding.”

 

“Hiding where?”

 

“I don’t know exactly. He’s been under things most of the day.” Shane gestures vaguely towards the rest of the house. “He does this whenever I get the suitcase out. I think he associates it with travel and thinks I'm going to put him in the carrier. He hates the carrier.”

 

That would be believable if it weren't for the fact Pork was present when Shane left the voicemail inviting him over. No, Pork Hollander isn't hiding - he's waiting.

 

“I should probably go, my taxi will be here soon.”

 

Ilya has never heard anything less convincing in his life, which is an impressive feat considering the company he keeps. “Yes, probably.”

 

Shane makes no attempt to move - instead he collects Ilya’s mug despite the fact it’s still half full, and deposits it directly into the sink. His suitcase remains by the front door, and there's a smart woolen coat slung over the bannister that he keeps glancing at like it might bite him. Ilya could be the responsible adult in this sitatuon, perhaps give him a reassuring push towards the hallway and tell him everything will be fine - alternatively he could allow the clinic to cancel Shane’s appointment for being late, forcing him to remain here (together) for the entire evening. It’s an appealing prospect right up until Ilya remembers the part where Shane might stop breathing.

 

“Go,” he mutters, hating himself. “You do not want to be late.”

 

“I know, I’m going.” Shane nods firmly, then absolutely doesn't go. He opens the fridge instead. “I bought you some groceries.”

 

“You did?”

 

The flush has crept down the other man's neck now, and Ilya has to inhale deep through his nose to prevent imagining what his chest might look like. “Just a few things, I didn’t know whether you’d already eaten, and obviously you’ll need breakfast in the morning. You don’t have to eat any of it. I just thought it’d be weird to ask you to stay and then not have anything here.”

 

Ilya had been pretty set on a summer wedding, but now he's considering the bonus of a tomorrow wedding. A tonight wedding, even, as Shane steps aside to reveal the contents of the fridge. His eyes catch on a large tub of hummus and a smaller tub of Greek yoghurt, and there's so much spinach it looks like someone's emptied their garden waste in there. Ilya's eyes widen in alarm as he scans the neatly cut sticks of cucumber and celery that occupy most of the top shelf in clear containers, and beneath them sits a packet of tofu. Ginger ale lines the door.

 

“I'm not sure what you liked,” Shane toys with his hoodie strings, “so I got a few things.”

 

There isn’t even cheese.

 

“This is very thoughtful,” Ilya mumbles, wondering if it's rude to order a takeaway to someone else's house.

 

“You can make a salad,” he adds. “There’s dressing in the door.”

 

Ilya bends slightly to inspect it, with absolutely no intention of making a salad - he'd actually prefer his chances with Pork over whatever a ‘vinaigrette’ is. “Thank you.”

 

“And there’s bread in the cupboard. I wasn’t sure whether you ate dairy, but there’s yoghurt, obviously.”

 

Ilya thinks of the rat, who would unquestionably consider this fridge a palace. Perhaps he can call her owner - Marie? Maria? - and arrange an emergency extraction of the yoghurt in exchange for even half a cheeseburger.

 

“This is perfect.”

 

Shane glances uncertainly between him and the spinach, and Ilya feels like the world's biggest asshole - he’s made an effort. A huge one, really, considering Ilya’s nutritional requirements could have been met with deep fried mystery meat and access to the tap. Maybe he will make a salad, even if it's just to post on his Instagram and hope by the mysterious powers of the algorithm that he'll show up on Shane's feed. Location pin: Shane Hollander's House.

 

“There’s ginger ale too.”

 

“I see this.”

 

“I like it, so maybe you will too.”

 

Ilya looks at it again and understands - the fridge isn’t a random selection of food Shane believes other people enjoy, it’s Shane food. Shane has stocked it with pieces of himself, maybe things he eats when he’s busy, his favourite drinks, snacks he might choose, things he's decided Ilya might as well.

 

“Then we have this in common,” he decides. It's of course another lie, but this one is well meaning enough that he doesn't chastise himself for it.

 

Shane smiles. “Pork's food’s in the bottom cupboard beside the sink. He gets half a tin at night, but I already gave him dinner, so if he acts hungry, he’s lying.”

 

Extremely believable, though he opts not to tell him this. “Half a tin only.”

 

“Well, no, he’s already had the half.”

 

“No tins.”

 

“Unless something happens to the food he’s already eaten.”

 

Ilya considers this. “What would happen?”

 

“I don’t know.” Shane’s forehead creases. “If he throws it up, I guess.”

 

“Then you want me to replace the vomited quantity?”

 

Shane stares at him, but there's a small smile twitching at the corners of his lips that Ilya wants to chase. “Maybe not. That seems difficult to measure.”

 

“I can use the kitchen scale,” he offers.

 

“No, god. Please don’t weigh his vomit.”

 

That's a fair request.

 

“The fountain’s full,” Shane continues. “There’s another water bowl upstairs. The litter tray is in the upstairs bathroom, but I cleaned it before you came. The scoop’s hanging on the side if he uses it overnight.”

 

“You are nervous,” Ilya says gently, watching him wrap the strings around his index finger until it pales.

 

“Only a little.”

 

This is plainly untrue (evidenced by the way Shane now can't seem to stand still), but Ilya doesn’t expose him. Ilya can stand here and receive it.

 

“You may continue,” he prompts gently.

 

Shane’s eyes flick to meet his. “The windows stay shut.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Even the upstairs ones. They have latches, but Pork can get through a smaller gap than you’d think. And don’t leave the toilet lid up.”

 

He's about to be mildly offended at the suggestion he would leave the lid up, when Ilya recalls he does, in fact, leave the lid up most times. “Why?”

 

“He falls in.”

 

Ilya waits for further context and receives none, but he's content to place that alongside his steadily growing list of ammunition to use in his war against the fiend. “I will protect him from the toilet.”

 

“He’ll probably sleep with you.”

 

He doubts that very much, but follows Shane as he shuffles another step or two towards the front door.

 

“The out of hours vet's number is on the fridge too.”

 

“Beside the wifi password.”

 

“Yeah,” Shane manages to slip on one shoe. “Just in case, and you have my number.”

 

Ilya very nearly tells him it’s engraved upon his heart, but he possesses just enough self control to keep those words from coming out of his mouth. “Yes.”

 

“You can text me whenever, even if it’s late.”

 

“I will.”

 

“Right.” Shane nods, staring back towards the living room as though Pork might emerge in answer. “He’ll come out once I’ve gone, probably.”

 

He reaches for him before he can stop himself, intending perhaps to pat his shoulder in reassurance or physically prevent him from looking any more worried than he already does, but he wrangles back control of his motor system halfway through the movement and succeeds only in freezing with both hands outstretched between them. Shane blinks at him for a second, and then for reasons known only to whatever benevolent supernatural force has finally taken an interest in Ilya’s suffering, offers him his own.

 

Ilya's fingers close around it without hesitation, pressing their palms together. The supernatural force in question has a sick sense of humour, because it possesses Ilya to do the only thing available to him in that moment - to move their palms up and down in a cheery little jerk.

 

Shane gapes at him. “Why are we shaking hands?”

 

Ilya hasn't got an answer for that one, nor does he have any interest in stopping, now that the other man's skin is soft and almost certainly well moisturised against his. He lets Shane shake next, agonising over the confused furrow of his brow.

 

It's getting fucking weird at this point.

 

“I will take good care of Pork,” Ilya lies, still shaking.

 

Shane nods, picking up the pace of their interlinked hands. “I know.”

 

What sounds like the thrumming engine of a taxi pulls up outside Shane's front door - Ilya knows it without having to look, because the ginger cat announces get away from my wall, people car - he, contrary to whatever the hell he's currently doing, does have a working brain to interpret that. One day, Ilya thinks with entirely sane conviction, he will hold this hand in public.

 

Shane clears his throat, which is enough to return Ilya back to his body again - the other man's fingers slip free from his own as he turns unsteadily towards the door, wrenching it open at speed. Cool evening air floods the hallway, and he pauses before stepping through. “You’re sure?”

 

“Go,” Ilya says, stuffing his betraying hand behind his back. “We will have a wonderful evening.”

 

Nothing in the resounding silence from Pork changes, so Ilya raises his voice.

 

“We are going to have so much fun.”

 

Still nothing, damn it. Shane pivots on his heel and hauls the suitcase out after him, and Ilya closes the door before the sight of him climbing into the taxi can have him offering to sleep on the floor beside the clinic bed. That image doesn't last long, because when he clicks the lock shut, Ilya is faced with the solemn truth of his situation - he is alone inside Pork’s territory.

 

His heart thumps as he lingers in the hallway, reaching carefully through the rooms one more time. The spider remains where she is, and the fly upstairs repeatedly introduces herself to the window - there's even the distant barking of a dog shouting for dinner somewhere down the road, but Pork remains impossible.

 

“Pork?” he calls softly, turning towards the living room. “Shane has gone.”

 

He stomps over the threshold, deliberately making enough noise that no reasonable cat (or unreasonable one) could interpret his approach as an ambush, but the heated bed remains empty. One of its many blankets has a small depression in the centre, so Ilya reaches to press the back of his knuckles to it - it's cold.

 

“You can stop this now,” he says, jolting at the sound of a car door slamming across the street.

 

This is fine. Cats hide - Pork is just exceptionally good at it, in the same way certain parasites can remain undetected for years before killing their host. Ilya takes the packet of chicken hearts from his bag and tears open, setting one right in the centre of the living room rug.

 

“I have chicken.”

 

There isn’t so much as a flicker of attention, and his professionalism survives for another thirty seconds - once the final remnants of it drain away, Ilya sets about clearing the house like he’s searching for an armed fugitive.

 

He checks the heated bed properly, lifting every blanket with his body angled away in case the oversized prawn launches itself towards his eyes, but Pork isn’t inside it. He isn’t at the top of the cat tree either, or beneath the lower platform, or balanced behind the curtains beside the windowsill, or concealed amongst the faux logs of Shane's artificial fireplace. Ilya wrenches the curtains back a second time and finds nothing but his own reflection staring wildly at him through the dark glass.

 

“Very funny,” he mutters, already on his hands and knees to search beneath the sofa. He doesn't locate Pork Hollander, but he does find several toys and a black sock. Behind the television is also empty but for the staticky hum of electronics, and the shelves very visibly hold a collection of nonfiction books and framed photographs, so even as he swallows down his rising panic he feels no need to inspect those.

 

The top of the cabinets appears empty, but Ilya stares at them anyway. A normal cat could possibly flatten itself behind the storage boxes though remain easy to spot, but Pork is not a normal cat, and Ilya no longer feels safe assuming he’s restricted by a working skeleton. He drags a dining chair across the room, climbs onto it and peers behind the boxes, but there's nothing.

 

“I do not want trouble,” he announces, climbing down again. “Reveal yourself.”

 

In the kitchen, Ilya opens every lower cupboard. One contains enough vitamins and supplements to keep Shane alive through nuclear winter, with each bottle neatly labelled and lined up according to a system Ilya doesn’t understand but finds very attractive. He checks behind the bin, above the refrigerator and in the gap beside the cooker, then opens the washing machine and examines the empty drum. Pork couldn't possibly have closed the door behind himself, but at this point Ilya isn’t prepared to rule out accomplices.

 

“Shane wants us to be friends. I can tell him you were very affectionate.”

 

There's no response to that, so he tries another tact.

 

“I can also tell him you cried when he left.”

 

Something flickers at that. So minute and barely there that it could also be a worm beneath the shaggy clover lawn of Shane's garden, but it's the first decent clue to confirm he's being watched. Ilya narrows his eyes at the kitchen. “Yes, I thought so.”

 

His mug remains abandoned in the sink where Shane left it, and for half a second Ilya considers retrieving it. Instead, he takes all of thirty seconds to rinse it out and place it very carefully in the cabinet it had come from. It would feel more husbandly if there weren’t something in their marital household preparing to sever his Achilles tendon. Ilya checks behind the kitchen door before leaving.

 

To his (quite significant) concern, the stairs present an immediate tactical disadvantage - he's seen enough horror films to know how this goes, so he takes them slowly with a hand wrapped around the bannister and his awareness stretched thin. Halfway up he stops and looks back, and the chicken heart remains untouched in the middle of the rug.

 

“Coward,” he calls.

 

Pork doesn’t dispute this, likely because he knows it isn’t true.

 

The first door upstairs leads to the bathroom, where the spider has retreated further behind the pipe at the vibrations of his approach. Ilya checks either side of the toilet and inside the laundry hamper. The spider offers nothing, though he hadn’t expected her to - she knows there are two large warm creatures in the house, but neither is of any relevance to her unless they produce water or flies.

 

The fly is still banging herself against the window. Go. Want to go. Out.

 

“I know,” Ilya sighs. “One emergency at a time, yes?”

 

He finds her in the room at the end of the hallway, battering herself against a window above what looks like a small home gym. He paces quickly past a yoga mat laid neatly out on the floor and tries hard not to consider the flexibility implications it holds, cracking the window open enough for her to buzz off. The fly misses it completely in her panic.

 

“Left,” he tells her softly, directing the shape of open air towards her as clearly as he can. “No, your other - there.”

 

Out.

 

She disappears into the evening, and Ilya closes and latches the window immediately - although Pork cannot presently be found, Shane’s instructions regarding his ability to squeeze through gaps remain binding. He has no intention of unleashing Pork upon the innocent world outside.

 

What must be Shane's bedroom remains unexplored across the hall, and Ilya pauses outside it, struck by the fact he has been invited inside. Not just permitted, but specifically instructed to sleep there - granted not entirely under honest circumstances, but invited all the same. Shane changed the sheets for him. He probably pulled the duvet smooth with those lovely hands and wondered, however briefly, what Ilya might look like beneath it.

 

This thought buys Pork approximately five seconds of peace, until Ilya enters and drops to the floor to check beneath the bed before rising to open the wardrobe, moving Shane’s hanging clothes aside with a grim faced restraint. They appear to be sensibly organised by season, containing more colour than he'd anticipated - he lingers on a sunshine yellow sweater that looks so soft he permits himself to touch it with two fingers.

 

It must look good on Shane. Everything looks good on Shane, including the cropped white top he can see amongst several vests and plain tees, the hoodie he wore out the house, and presumably nothing at all. Especially nothing at all - Ilya pictures this with such clarity he has to remember he’s meant to be looking for the cat.

 

He turns towards the bed, considering the dark wood bedside tables - Pork could fit inside a drawer easy enough, motivated by spite if not inherent flexibility. Checking them would be a reasonable extension of the search, possibly even a professional necessity considering Shane has entrusted him with the safety of his beloved animal. Ilya's halfway to reaching for the handle when he looks down at it and considers what Shane Hollander might keep beside his bed.

 

“Ебать,” he mutters, turning on his heel. Irritated by his own integrity (it's situational, he decides), Ilya cranes his neck to peer behind them instead. He finds nothing but a phone charger, and Pork isn’t beneath the pillows, inside the duvet cover or wedged between the mattress and the headboard either.

 

By the time he returns downstairs, the search has become faster and considerably less methodical. Ilya checks the cupboard beneath the stairs, behind every coat in the hallway and inside the umbrella stand, despite the opening being narrower than Pork’s horrible little skull.

 

The creature's stopped being a cat in Ilya’s imagination - he’s an apparition, some form of ancient household deity Shane has unknowingly fed and clothed until it gained enough strength to leave its mortal body. Ilya stands in the middle of the living room, panting and wide eyed.

 

“I know you are here.”

 

From the kitchen, only the fridge hums in answer.

 

“You heard the voicemail,” he says, eyeing the untouched chicken heart. “You knew I was coming.”

 

Part of him wishes he'd brought Anya with him - she's always had a nose for uncured gammon, so she'd sniff out the little fucker in a heartbeat.

 

“Well,” he drops himself unceremoniously onto Shane's sofa. “I can wait longer than you.”

 

The television offers a decent variety, and first he navigates to Disney Plus purely for anything he can arm himself with should he and Hayden Pike ever end up in the same room again. He finds disappointingly little but The Devil Wears Prada under his recently watched, though he does take a photo of the last season of Glee under ‘continue watching’. Eventually Ilya settles on something called ‘Hammerhead Sharks Up Close’ and settles in to wait.

 

Every tiny sound makes him jolt, but none of them are Pork. The house remains warm and quiet, and Ilya’s had a long day. His head twinges - there’s nowhere useful for the delayed rush of adrenaline to go, so he sinks lower into the sofa. He watches the camera dip below the waves, following a shoal of silvery fish. He can't hear their panic through the television, even as a large scalloped hammerhead bursts into the fray, scattering them, but he grimaces anyway.

 

He only closes his eyes for a second, yet three hours later Ilya wakes because he cannot breathe.

 

His first priority is the burning in his lungs - his eyes snap open in the dark, instinctively scrambling for the warm weight, and the horrifying sensation of something soft sealing his mouth and nose - panic surges violently, along with the blind certainty that he’s dying. He jerks against the sofa, trying desperately to turn his head, but whatever’s covering his face moves with him, warm flesh pressed tight enough that his first frantic attempt to inhale succeeds only in pulling it closer.

 

Pork's naked stomach is pressed very deliberately across Ilya’s face, his front paws planted on either side of his head and the back pair braced against his shoulders for stability. For one stunned second, Ilya can see nothing but pink, naked skin and what could very much be the ghostly apparition of his mama descending through Shane's ceiling to collect her idiot son for the afterlife.

 

Die.

 

Panic takes over before good thought can reach him, and Ilya claws at the soft rolls beneath Pork’s ribs in an attempt to haul upwards, but the cat flattens himself with a strength that shouldn’t be physically possible, shifting his weight to follow the angle of Ilya’s face. One bony rear paw catches beneath his jaw, the claws puncturing skin as Ilya twists - when he gets both hands around Pork’s middle and wrenches, Pork simply drives them into Ilya’s scalp.

 

“Get -” Ilya yelps, but it's trapped inside his mouth as Pork clings harder, all four legs spreading to counter the force of Ilya trying to peel him away. His lungs convulse, searing now, and he bucks upwards hard enough to nearly throw them both from the sofa, one hand sliding over naked skin while the other flails blindly for a cushion to batter him with. The cat doesn't seem particularly disturbed by this, because he just abandons one patch of his stinging scalp to seize another, scrabbling his claws through Ilya’s hair in his search for purchase.

 

Thrashing, Ilya manages to wedge his palm between his cheek and Pork’s fleshy stomach, forcing open a tiny channel of air that he dives for, choking on a mouthful of skin as he rolls, falling into the back cushions as Pork scrambles over him to restore the seal.

 

Give me your eyes.

 

“No!” Ilya wails, pushing his forearm beneath the cat at last and shoving with everything he has, lifting Pork clear enough to wrench his face sideways. Air rushes into his lungs, and he sucks it down while Pork yowls above him, disregarding the murder attempt in favour of striking at his eyes.

 

He somehow catches him between the forelegs - the cat twists within his grip with such violence that one back paw rakes down the front of Ilya’s shirt, sending his elbow cracking against the arm of the sofa. The television behind them shows a hammerhead shark passing serenely over the ocean floor, the documentary having looped almost exactly back to where it started.

 

“You tried to suffocate me!”

 

Yes.

 

“You have attempted murder!”

 

Pork pauses the struggle, considering this with his body still stretched between Ilya’s hands and one hind leg bicycling furiously against his ribs. I told you I would.

 

“You cannot kill people because they wish to date Shane!”

 

You wish to violate him.

 

“I wish to take him to dinner!” Ilya yells, tightening his grip as Pork writhes again, swiping repeatedly at his face - he uses the momentum to pin him against his chest. “There may also be violation, but this will be very consensual and none of your business -”

 

Pork's head snaps up, and for a half a second Ilya wonders if he's finally got through to the creature - then Pork doubles in on himself and sinks his teeth into the tender skin inside Ilya’s forearm.

 

“Ow!” Ilya's grip falters, and Pork nearly gets free before he snags him again, crushing the cat’s back to his chest while Pork kicks and claws at anything he can reach. Blood already wells in the punctures, a blackish blue in the glow of the television. “Where were you? Tell me where you were hiding.”

 

Waiting.

 

“Where?”

 

Pork doesn’t answer, too occupied with hooking his paws beneath Ilya's sleeve.

 

“I searched this entire house!”

 

Not all of it.

 

The smugness of it is so intense that Ilya wants to throttle him. “You were watching me?”

 

Yes.

 

“From where?”

 

Pork twists his head and bites at Ilya’s thumb - he misses this time, but the movement brings the answer with it as the cat's focus slips, and a warm rush of darkness washes over him, heat and the quiet electrical hum Ilya had felt through his feet while searching the living room, a sliding door nudged open by the hideous triangle of Pork’s face. The interior of Shane’s media cabinet engulfs him, and Ilya can feel cables brushing across bare skin as Pork had forced himself through the opening at the back, into the tight, familiar space between the wifi router and the box connected to the television. There's hard plastic radiating heat into his stomach and a soothing vibration through his paws and something else layered over his awareness, a thick and fizzing distortion of electromagnetism from the router that breaks the cat’s thoughts into scattered fragments before erasing them completely.

 

Ilya freezes, and Pork takes the immediate advantage, wrenching one leg free and clawing him beneath the chin. He hisses and jerks his face out of range again. “You hid behind the router?”

 

Your appointments are face to face only.

 

For a moment the cat's sheer level of comprehension floors him - Ilya can only stare in dawning horror at the nemesis he's made for himself.

 

“You knew technology interferes with my listening.”

 

Pork's sinister satisfaction pushes into him alongside a memory of Shane sitting at his laptop, reading aloud from Ilya’s website while he'd watched from the desk. ‘In-person consultations only, no telephone appointments, no video calls, because it doesn't work like that’ - he's editing that out the second he gets home (if he gets home).

 

Small computer cannot carry us to you.

 

“That does not mean hiding beside wifi will work,” he tries, “I -”

 

It did.

 

“You guessed!”

 

I knew.

 

Pork’s body arches violently in his hands, but beneath the fury comes the unpleasantly clear memories of all the times he’s used that same narrow opening before - the cable hole is large enough for his shoulders if he compresses himself, the precious pocket of heat behind the television box where Shane can’t easily reach him. He’d already known it felt different there, and even Ilya can feel it now that he knows where to look, a small dead patch in the room where the frequencies become static against his consciousness if he tries to hone in on it.

 

“You planned all of this.”

 

Yes.

 

“How long were you inside?”

 

The cat sends him the slow accumulation of warmth against his stomach, listening to him as he'd stomped from room to room. Long enough.

 

“You could have cooked yourself!” Ilya snaps, lifting him higher until Pork's tail whips from side to side. “You could have started a fire!”

 

You would burn with me.

 

“Shane’s house would also burn!”

 

That gives Pork pause, though not enough of one. I would wake him.

 

“Shane is not here!”

 

I would wake my beloved.

 

“You cannot wake somebody who is not here, you stupid -” Ilya adjusts as Pork begins flailing all over again. “Stop. Stop this, you will hurt yourself.”

 

Die.

 

“Hold still!”

 

With a shriek that echoes in the quiet of the room, the cat wriggles free and lands on the rug, skidding to disappear beneath the sofa before Ilya can so much as get both feet under him. He's still gasping for air, each bite and scratch throbbing, and whatever concern he’d possessed for Pork cooking himself behind the television is very swiftly replaced by the infuriated desire to drag him out by his horrible little ankles.

 

“You sat on my mouth!”

 

You use it to lie.

 

With a wordless shout of anger Ilya drops to his knees, reaching blindly beneath the frame and only just manages to brush something warm before claws slash across the back of his hand.

 

“Fuck!” He snatches it back, cradling his hand to his chest. “You are evil, evil -”

 

You returned.

 

“Because Shane asked me to!”

 

Because you lied.

 

“I also saved his life, maybe,” Ilya snaps, flattening himself against the rug to peer into the darkness. Two bulging pale eyes stare back at him from behind the sock he’d discovered earlier. “You can be grateful for this at least.”

 

You did your job. Leave.

 

“He does not want me to leave.”

 

Pork retreats beyond the reach of his fingertips, compacting himself further. Shane wants me safe. You make me unsafe.

 

Ilya grunts, pressing himself forwards again. “I have done nothing to you.”

 

You want him asleep beneath you.

 

The impression slams into him, projected with enough malice that Ilya's heart trips - Shane’s face tucked into the corner of his own neck, Ilya’s hand spread possessively across his waist. It isn’t even something Ilya’s consciously pictured yet, which means Pork has constructed it entirely for the purpose of upsetting himself.

 

“That is private,” he hisses.

 

It is in my mind.

 

“You put it there!” Ilya stretches until his shoulder wedges beneath the sofa frame, catches what feels like one spindly hind leg and closes his hand around it, but Pork kicks free before he can secure it and shoots from beneath the opposite end. Ilya lurches upright too late - a pink blur streaks across the rug, vanishes between his legs and nearly sends him headfirst into the door frame when he turns to follow.

 

Pork makes it into the hallway before him, his claws scrabbling over the polished floor as Ilya gives chase - the cat reaches the bottom of the stairs, changes his mind without visibly slowing and doubles back beneath Ilya’s outstretched hands, while Ilya continues several feet in the original direction before colliding directly into the wall.

 

“Stop running!”

 

Stop returning.

 

“I am not returning right now, I am already here!”

 

Pork flies through the living room again, banking sharply around the chair to head for the kitchen. Ilya follows with one hand clamped against the side of his throat, where blood has trickled sticky and drying down his neck, catching sight of the cat leaping from the floor to one of the dining chairs, then to the table and finally onto the kitchen counter in just a few fluid movements.

 

“Get down.”

 

No.

 

“You are not allowed on the counter.”

 

My counter.

 

“You put your naked ass where Shane prepares food!”

 

He kisses it.

 

Ilya stops dead in the doorway. “What?”

 

Pork uses the interruption to trot along the worktop, stepping delicately around the kettle and knife block.

 

“He does not kiss your ass.”

 

My beloved kisses all of me.

 

“I do not believe you.”

 

He loves me.

 

Ilya lunges as Pork passes the sink, but the cat slips beneath his arm and lands on the other side of a decorative green glass bottle, shoving it towards the edge with his back paw. Ilya’s heart leaps into his throat - it looks hand made, probably from a fucking artisanal market or whatever, and he throws himself across the counter to catch it before it falls. Pork watches from beside the cooker.

 

“You did that on purpose,” Ilya pants, cradling the bottle against his chest.

 

Yes.

 

“This belongs to Shane!”

 

You will never know what that feels like. Shame.

 

He sets it further back, carefully placing it behind the container holding Shane’s wooden spoons, then realises he’s taken both eyes off the cat - Pork launches past him, using Ilya’s ribs as a parkour point on the way down, and by the time Ilya twists around he’s already through the kitchen door.

 

They complete another cursed circuit of the living room, although Pork does most of it while Ilya bumps helplessly around the corners as he disappears beneath the armchair, emerging from behind the curtains without crossing any visible space between them like an evil Whack A Mole. Ilya has to leap sideways when Pork comes directly at him again, frantic now. “You are going to break Shane’s house!”

 

You break it.

 

“You are doing the breaking!”

 

Pork circles, gaining enough distance to leap onto the mantelpiece above the fireplace. Ilya brakes so abruptly his knees almost buckle, because there’s a framed photograph of an elderly lady at one end beside what, terrifyingly, appears to be an urn of some kind.

 

“Do not,” he warns, straightening. “Whatever you are thinking, do not do this.”

 

Pork stands between the photograph and the urn with his back arched, breathing hard enough that the delicate skin around his ribs ripples with every breath. You will leave.

 

“I cannot leave. Shane asked me to stay overnight.”

 

You will leave before he returns.

 

“No.”

 

I will finish what I started.

 

“You have already failed.” Pork’s ears flatten, and Ilya regrets it immediately, but he’s far too angry to retreat. “You could not suffocate one sleeping man. Little kitten.”

 

I will open your throat.

 

“With what? Your tiny mouth?”

 

The cat’s head lowers, and Ilya has just enough warning to raise both arms with a cry before Pork launches from the mantelpiece directly at his face. He turns, taking the impact against his shoulder instead, but his claws catch through his shirt and Pork hangs there for one nightmarish second, pressed against his back like a furious, naked rucksack. Ilya spins in an attempt to reach him, which achieves nothing beyond making both of them dizzy, and by the time he manages to hook one hand beneath Pork’s stomach the cat has already released him.

 

He hits the floor running, springing from the sofa arm back to the perfect launch pad of the mantelpiece. Ilya staggers after him, one hand still searching his own back for damage, watching the cat sail through the air.

 

“We can still be friends,” Ilya attempts a fresh tactic as Pork's paw reaches very slowly for the urn. “Do not be like this -”

 

Pork appears very committed to being like this, because the urn shifts forwards an inch.

 

“What - who is this?”

 

Shane's grandmother.

 

He pushes it another half an inch.

 

“You killed her too?” Ilya spits, inching forwards. “Pork, I will tell Shane.”

 

Pork pauses. Tell him you chased me?

 

“I will tell him you tried to kill me.”

 

Fine. Tell him why, too.

 

Ilya opens his mouth then closes it, incredulous. Pork’s right - reporting the attack requires explaining enough of the circumstances that Shane might begin asking questions, and even if Ilya manages to avoid confessing the reason behind original lie, an account of Pork becoming distressed and aggressive in his presence is unlikely to produce the outcome he wants. Shane won’t blame Pork - he's polite enough to thank Ilya for trying, cancel their Thursday appointment and never leave them alone together again.

 

The spiteful little gargoyle pushes the urn another inch, and before Ilya can formulate a threat with any actual leverage behind it, his phone begins to ring from the sofa - both of them freeze. Pork’s paw remains splayed against the ceramic, and Ilya’s hands are still held out in front of him, and for several seconds they stare towards the cushions as Shane’s name lights up the screen.

 

The phone continues to ring, and Ilya's heart is thundering. “Temporary truce, or I tell him you are distressed and he will come home.”

 

Pork's eyes narrow. No.

 

“He needs the test. You cannot do this forever - he must sleep, and so must you.”

 

The cat's flash of fear is sudden and sour in his throat, enough of it bleeding through the memory of Shane's motionless chest in bed that Ilya shivers, unable to shake it off as his own anxiety climbs.

 

No truce.

 

Ilya crouches slowly beside the sofa, keeping his eyes fixed on Pork. “Then I tell him you have separation anxiety and require me to stay here every other day.”

 

Pork becomes so still that even his tail stops moving.

 

“Yes,” Ilya whispers, lifting the phone to his ear. “Every other day, perhaps weekends also. I will suggest gradual desensitisation, many long visits so you become comfortable with Shane leaving us together.”

 

The horror that moves through Pork is vast enough to wipe away every other thought in the room. You would not.

 

“I have lied before.”

 

The phone nearly stops ringing before Pork finally lowers his head, withdrawing from the urn with a venemous look. Do not touch me.

 

“Gladly.”

 

Ilya swipes to answer before the truce can collapse.

 

“Shane,” he says, still crouched beside the sofa and breathing hard. “Hello. Is everything okay?”

 

“Hey,” Shane sounds muffled, like he's keeping his voice down deliberately. “Sorry, were you asleep?”

 

“No, I was exercising.”

 

Across the room, Pork’s stare flicks briefly towards the scratches on Ilya’s head.

 

“At midnight?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Right.” Shane pauses, but valiantly presses onward. “Sorry to call, I just - has he come out yet?”

 

Ilya glances at Pork. “Yes. Everything is wonderful.”

 

Pork places one paw against the urn again, and Ilya’s eyes widen. The cat pushes, so slowly that the ceramic barely appears to move.

 

“Pork,” he mouths silently. “Stop this.”

 

“Are you sure?” Shane asks. “You sound out of breath.”

 

“Yes, exercising. Completely sure, everything is -” the urn reaches the edge of the mantelpiece and tilts. Ilya’s voice climbs into a lovely falsetto pitch as he dives towards it. “Fantastic!”

 

His fingers graze the ceramic as Pork applies one final shove, and it falls - Ilya catches it against the heel of his hand, fumbling, and sends it spinning into the fireplace instead. It strikes with a crack before hitting the floor and splitting into three uneven pieces. To his utter relief there's no immediate plume of ashes, or any sign at all of Shane’s grandmother, but Shane himself has fallen silent.

 

Ilya remains on his knees, gasping for air and holding one useless shard.

 

“Ilya? What was that?”

 

“We are playing,” he grinds out, setting the shard down carefully.

 

“Playing what?”

 

Fuck. The shark documentary continues on, but opposite Pork amongst Shane’s tidy row of books, there’s a battered Monopoly box shoved horizontally beneath several other board games he doesn't recognise. “Monopoly.”

 

The silence that follows that is painful, and it must be a good twenty seconds before Shane speaks again. “Pork knows how to play Monopoly?”

 

Ilya appeals desperately to the cat, who predictably is no help whatsoever. I own this house.

 

“He was the banker first.”

 

“What?”

 

“He is very competitive,” Ilya continues, his voice cracking. “This game he owns most properties already.”

 

“How is he moving the pieces?”

 

“With his paws, Shane.”

 

Pork’s tail flicks.

 

“Right,” Shane says slowly. “Of course.”

 

Before Shane can ask whether Pork prefers the Scottie dog or the rubber duck, Ilya staggers to his feet and places himself between the cat and the door. “He has used his litter tray and is very relaxed.”

 

Pork opens his mouth, but Ilya points at him with enough warning that only a soft click comes out.

 

“Oh, good,” the relief in Shane’s voice is immediate, and his chest aches in fondness despite the blood drying beneath his chin. “I knew he’d probably hide after I left, but I’ve not been able to sleep yet because I kept thinking about him being alone.”

 

“He is not alone.”

 

“No,” Shane exhales softly, and in the background there's a series of harsh beeps before they fade away again. “No, he’s with you.”

 

Ilya holds the back of his free hand up to the light of the television, eyeing the raised scratches there. “How is the clinic?”

 

“It’s fine - weird, I guess. They’ve put sensors everywhere, and there’s this band around my chest. I’m apparently meant to sleep normally, but I don't like it very much.”

 

“That sounds very restful.”

 

“Totally,” Shane chuckles. “I feel stupid.”

 

“You are not stupid,” Ilya murmurs, tucking his phone between his ear and shoulder as he nudges the other two shards a safe distance from his feet.

 

“I know, I just -” Shane breaks off, and he just about catches the rustle of sheets as he shifts. “I almost cancelled when I got here. I’m not going to, though - I know I need to do it.”

 

Pork has moved away from the edge of the mantelpiece now, settling beside the photograph with his paws tucked beneath his chest. His attention is fixed on the phone, and for once the thought passing through him holds no violence.

 

“Thanks for doing this, again. I was worried you might say no.”

 

“I would not leave you without help.”

 

“That’s…” Shane trails off. “I don’t really know what to say to that.”

 

Ilya grins despite himself - the copious antibiotics he's going to need are worth the sleepy softness of the other man's voice any day of the week. “You can say I am very generous and handsome.”

 

Shane laughs properly this time. “That's bold.”

 

“And still you invited me into your bedroom.”

 

“I invited you to sleep in my bedroom.”

 

“Yes,” Ilya says, unable to keep the smile from his voice. “This is what I said.”

 

Across the room Pork’s head lifts, and the demonic sound he produces rises through several octaves until it's a shriek worthy of Paranormal Activity.

 

Shane chokes. “What the hell was that?”

 

“He has landed on Park Lane,” Ilya says quickly. “Very upsetting. You must sleep now, goodbye.”

 

“Ilya -”

 

“Goodnight, Shane.”

 

Ilya ends the call still smiling, which doesn't last long - when he turns around, Pork has left the mantelpiece. At first he can't locate him in the gloom, until the secondhand sensation of relief prompts him to look downwards to where the cat is standing with all four feet carefully contained inside one of Ilya’s shoes.

 

They stare at each other as Pork squats, releasing his bladder into his faux leather platform.

 

“We - we had a truce!”

 

Pork’s stream only intensifies.

 

Ilya remains frozen, forced to watch it seep between the stitching of the heel - the smell reaches him almost immediately, permeating the air until his eyes water. He's not crying. (He might be crying).

 

Pork doesn’t break eye contact once.

 

“You agreed not to do anything!”

 

I agreed you would not touch me.

 

“So you piss in my shoe?”

 

Exactly.

 

Pork finishes after what feels like an age, stepping delicately out of the shoe and kicking a back foot hard enough to scatter several droplets across the skirting board. Ilya closes his eyes.

 

This has to be some kind of bad dream. A nightmare, like Shane has - this cannot be happening to him, because animals love him. Animals love him. He spends every day helping nature's creations, day in day out, tirelessly working weekends when he really shouldn't, and stewing over complex issues even the most qualified of behaviouralists would reject on sight. This is what he's good at. Somewhere beneath the blood, broken urn and remains of Shane’s grandmother (wherever they are, in the urn or not), there’s a version of him asleep in his own bed beside Anya, having politely declined the invitation to stay with a cat who’d promised to kill him. That Ilya is warm, and still has all the skin on his face. That Ilya still owns those shoes.

 

When he opens his eyes again, Pork is sitting beside the devastation with his tail wrapped around his feet.

 

“Why?” Ilya asks, because he needs to understand if nothing else. “Why my shoes?”

 

You use them to return.

 

Miserable, he picks up both shoes between his fingers and thumbs, holding them as far from his body as his arms will permit. “You are going to cat prison.”

 

Pork begins washing one paw.

 

“I will call the police. I will say there is dangerous man in Shane’s house.”

 

You are the dangerous man in Shane’s house.

 

“Ah, but I have a phone. You do not.”

 

The cat’s tongue stops, and Ilya retreats towards the living room door, nudging it open with his hip. Pork tracks him, but makes no attempt to follow until Ilya steps into the hallway - and then he rises.

 

“No.”

 

Pork continues towards him.

 

“No, you remain here. You are serving time.”

 

My house.

 

“You have water,” Ilya says, gesturing to the bowl beside Pork’s heated bed. It’s not ideal, but neither is being murdered. “You will have access to remainder of the house when Shane is back.”

 

Ilya swings the door shut just as Pork gathers himself to bolt. You cannot imprison me.

 

Pork throws himself against the other side of the door with a thump.

 

“I will release you when you have reflected on your behaviour.”

 

The back door is locked, and finding the key requires him to set the shoes in Shane’s sink while he searches the counters. This turns out to be a mistake, because the smell settles into the kitchen so awfully that he gags even as he locates the key beneath a healthy looking aloe on the windowsill. Outside, the garden is dark and cold, and he just about manages to stumble out towards the waste bin on the patio following the light of his phone torch. By the time he reaches it, moisture has soaked through his socks. He lifts the lid of the bin and tosses them inside.

 

They’re good shoes. Worn in perfectly, soft enough that he could walk between appointments without his heels blistering, and bought during a moment of such severe financial irresponsibility that he’d hidden the receipt from Anya just in case she'd suddenly developed the ability to read (it wouldn't surprise him).

 

“Goodbye,” he whispers, closing the lid.

 

Behind him, something lands in the cypress tree. He turns quickly, his body protesting around his wounds - a beautifully dappled tawny owl rests on one of the gnarled lower branches, with something limp hanging from his talons, its pale tail swinging gently beneath him.

 

The owl studies Ilya with dark eyes. You are leaking.

 

For a brief moment Ilya receives the garden as the owl does, in a cacophony of tiny sounds and bright greyscale, its sensitive rod cells illuminating the clover around them both. He touches his throat instinctively - the scratches have stopped bleeding, mostly, but enough has dried beneath his collar to explain the observation.

 

“Yes,” he mutters. “I have been attacked.”

 

The owl’s head turns further. By the hunter inside?

 

He glances back towards the house, ignoring Pork's radiating fury. “Yes.”

 

He is very small.

 

“Thank you. I had not noticed.”

 

Small hunters still bite.

 

“I am learning this.”

 

The owl shifts his weight, lifting the rat slightly. Its head has been crushed, but he can feel the appeal in it through his unexpected companion regardless. Are you hungry?

 

Ilya blinks. “What?”

 

There is enough.

 

“That is very generous,” he says. “But no, thank you.”

 

You refuse good food?

 

“I have eaten.”

 

I live in this garden, you know.

 

Ilya lowers himself onto the cold edge of the patio with a sigh, resting his elbows on his knees. Every part of him aches now that he’s stopped moving - his scalp burns, his throat stings, one forearm is beginning to swell around the bite and the thin scratches over the back of his hand pulse whenever he curls his fingers.

 

The owl remains watchful above him. You entered his hollow.

 

“I was invited.”

 

Not by the hunter.

 

“No,” Ilya admits. “By Shane.”

 

His human.

 

“Yes.”

 

The owl’s attention touches the house, then returns to Ilya - there's a genuine will to understand within it, a curiosity that often belongs to birds, though he's only really noticed it with corvids before.

 

Your mate.

 

Ilya almost laughs. “No. Not my mate.”

 

You came when he called. I heard you.

 

“This does not make him my mate.”

 

You guard his hollow while he is gone.

 

He shrugs, dejected. “He asked for help.”

 

You fought the other male for your place inside it.

 

“I did not fight him for -” Ilya stops, indignant. “He sat on my mouth!”

 

The owl blinks, and he scrubs both hands over his face, wincing when he catches one of the scratches beneath his chin. “I lied, before tonight. I said Pork liked me so Shane would invite me back, and Pork knew. Most of all I like Shane - this is why he hates me.”

 

Why did you lie?

 

“Because I wanted to return.”

 

The simplicity of it only makes him feel worse - there’s absolutely nothing clever left to hide behind out here, no pretty Shane smiling at him and no urgent medical concern to make Ilya’s presence necessary, only the cold soaking through his socks and an owl holding a dead rat above his head.

 

“I should have asked him to dinner,” he says eventually. “Like a normal person. But if he said no, then that would be it. If Pork needed me, I could still see him.”

 

The owl’s talons close around his branch, and the dead rat swings. You made a false call.

 

“Yes.”

 

And it was answered.

 

Ilya looks up at him - the owl shows him the shape of sound travelling over gardens, a deep and haunting note sent into a rich darkness and a silence that follows while he waits for something to come back. Ilya doesn't understand it as speech, more a beautiful, ancient blend of instinct twisted with desire that speaks to I am here. This is mine. Where are you?

 

Sometimes another voice answers, and sometimes nothing does. Ilya gets the idea of it well enough. “You think I should tell him.”

 

I think you should make the correct call.

 

“That is not very useful.”

 

It is the only useful thing.

 

Ilya scowls into the grass. “You are quite judgemental for someone eating a rat in tree.”

 

I caught my rat honestly.

 

Despite himself, Ilya laughs. The sound feels strange after the night he’s had - the owl fluffs his feathers, apparently satisfied, and a long silence settles between them. It isn’t uncomfortable. Most animals dislike the way humans try to fill empty space with conversation, and the owl’s stillness moves through Ilya until he can feel how deliberate it is. Far beyond the garden, barely audible to his human ears, another tawny owl calls.

 

The one above him lifts his head as the sound comes again, higher this time. A female - Ilya feels the recognition pass through him before the owl answers, his body expanding around a deep note that vibrates in Ilya’s chest, but a response from her never comes.

 

“She is your mate?”

 

Yes.

 

“Where is she?”

 

Beyond the bright road.

 

He can’t entirely map that, because the owl knows the nameless motorway through intervals rather than traffic signs or layby names in the periods when he sleeps, or the small bodies struck and left warm under wheels that never stop no matter how much it hurts. He resists the urge to cringe, steeling himself - it's not his reality, but shrinking away from it would only serve to minimise the owl's permeating anxiety, so he doesn't.

 

“She will return.”

 

The owl looks towards the dark beyond the houses. She has crossed it many times.

 

“But you are worried tonight?”

 

She flies low. She is small, and there are many long backed ones. They drag great currents of air behind them that moves us. It hurts our lungs.

 

Ilya receives the image of great articulated cargo trucks and rushing flatbeds with wooden pallets strapped to them, their lights flashing in the dark as they roar past on wet tarmac. He curses, once again, the selfishness of human nature - it's a bitter argument Ilya knows well as his kind steadily foster the world uninhabitable, expecting the animals to understand how to navigate it. Unfathomably egotistical.

 

“I am sorry,” he says softly. “I believe she will be fine, but I will still think of her tonight.”

 

The owl ruffles his feathers, plucking a few of the itchier ones until they float down onto the ground below. There is also a younger male beyond the road.

 

“Ah.”

 

He calls from the ash trees.

 

“And she answers him?”

 

She did once.

 

The admission comes with a dizzying blend of affection and dismay that almost hurts to absorb. Ilya catches the foreign call as the owl remembers it, higher and stronger than his own, pressing at the border of territory that he's held for years despite his age.

 

It is not his place.

 

“Maybe she told him this.”

 

She answered. I love her still.

 

“Pork answers me constantly, and most of it is hatred. Answer is not always invitation.”

 

The female calls again, and this time the male responds immediately, his call rolling mournfully through the branches. Ilya feels the effort concealed inside it and sees, only when the owl resettles his body, that one wing sits slightly lower than the other. “You are injured also.”

 

Old pain.

 

“What happened?”

 

Wire.

 

The memory is brief and entirely physical, a fence invisible in the glee of a successful hunt, the interruption of flight and the ground rising up to meet him with terrifying speed. There's an impact then daylight, fear and unfamiliar human hands beneath a thick towel. The owl gives him no human faces and no story beyond what mattered to him in pain and the sharp sting of a very thin stick that made him fall asleep. The wing works. It no longer works as well.

 

“She stayed?”

 

Through winter. I told her it was healed.

 

The memory is dense with her presence, her call returning whenever he sent his own into the dark, and a hidden pain that gnaws in his armpit.

 

“But now you think she might leave if she finds out your wing is still bad?”

 

The owl looks away, and he doesn't have to answer in words for Ilya to understand that.

 

He leans forward. “Shane does not know me. He knows the person who helped his cat, who arrives when asked and does not leave him without help. He does not know I am a liar who threatened his beloved.”

 

The small hunter knows.

 

“Yes. This is also the problem.”

 

He knows, and you remain.

 

“I trapped him in living room,” Ilya admits, picking at the crusted blood on his forearm.

 

The owl’s fluffy feathers lift around his face. Still.

 

“You and Pork would like each other, I think.”

 

I would eat him.

 

“You must not do this. Shane would be upset.”

 

Then I would not.

 

Ilya falls quiet.

 

The one you want asked you to stay.

 

“Because he thinks Pork likes me.”

 

He trusted you before that.

 

Ilya stares morosely down at his ruined socks, and the stinging in his eyes has nothing to do with Pork’s claws now. “I am a bad person.”

 

The owl receives this without surprise or reassurance, which is the best gift the bird could've possibly given him. Are you?

 

“I lied.”

 

Yes.

 

“I used my gift to manipulate him, and I am sitting in his garden because his cat urinated inside my shoes.”

 

Would you like some rat?

 

The laugh that erupts from him is loud enough that the owl startles, pressing his feathers so flat he halves in size in the same amount of time it takes Ilya to blink. He braces his uninjured hand to his mouth, for the most part to quiet himself, but suddenly, horribly, his eyes are wet.

 

He’s tired, that’s all - tired and bleeding and outside in wet socks. The owl says nothing about the tears, which is the kindest thing anyone could do.

 

“I wanted him to like me,” Ilya mumbles. “Before I had done anything worth liking.”

 

The owl lowers his head. Then do something.

 

Ilya wipes beneath one eye with the heel of his hand. “This is your advice?”

 

Yes.

 

The female calls again, closer now, and he feels the relief flare through the owl so swiftly he almost gets to his own feet to peer over the fence, searching for her. The bird answers, and this time the silence afterwards is expectant.

 

“She is returning,” Ilya says.

 

Yes.

 

“And you were worried for nothing.”

 

The owl’s black eyes rest on him. The road is dangerous, and the young male is still too close. My wing is still damaged.

 

“Yes, but she returns anyway.”

 

Yes.

 

They wait together for a little while, or at least until the cold becomes too much. Ilya’s teeth are beginning to chatter, and when he turns his attention back towards the house, Pork has stopped throwing himself against the door. “I should go inside.”

 

You should clean your wounds.

 

“I will.”

 

The owl lifts the rat, preparing to move higher into the tree.

 

“Goodnight,” Ilya says hurriedly, before he takes flight. “And good luck with your mate.”

 

As long as she is happy. Luck when yours returns in the morning.

 

Ilya opens his mouth to correct him, and can't. “Thank you.”

 

The owl launches silently from the cypress, carrying the rat into the darkness to meet her. Ilya watches until he can no longer see him, then trudges back towards the house.

Chapter 4: the first casualty is truth

Chapter Notes

i’m on annual leave i feel so renewed i could run through a wall but instead of doing that i have returned to the battleground to bring you more cat related stupidity x

also as a meat free girly myself i cannot wait to make ilya eat quorn

also also, some of you lovely folks in the comments of the last chapter are VERY close if not completely correct in predicting a few things 👀

Ilya only sleeps for around an hour, and only because he locks Shane’s bedroom door and wedges the chair beneath its handle. It’s probably excessive considering Pork remains imprisoned in the living room, separated from him by one closed door, a hallway, the entire staircase and a second closed door, but Ilya has learnt a great deal about his enemy tonight. Assuming he cannot reach the bedroom simply because there are barriers in the way feels fatally naive, so the chair stays.

 

He sleeps on top of Shane’s duvet in his clothes (getting naked feels a step too far, and he’s also not keen on the idea of facing combat with his cock out, should Pork break free), and his arm folded over his face. Every sound sends a shiver through him, and when the pipes groan from within the walls he jerks upright with his heart pounding, certain there are four warm feet planted on his chest.

 

By half past six, he gives up. There’s early sunlight drifting through the curtains, and Shane’s spare pillow smells enough like him, a hint of grapefruit and the tiniest amount of sweat, that it goes straight to his dick. He lies there for another minute with his face pressed against it, willing his erection to deflate or at least make itself less known, then remembers the person returning to this bed in a few hours believes Ilya has spent a peaceful night downstairs playing Monopoly with his cat.

 

He sits up again - the bite on his forearm aches something fierce, the scratches across his throat sting when he swallows, and there’s a stiffness in his shoulder enough for him to remain hunched over until it releases. His scalp feels as though Pork has attempted to peel it away from the bone (he has) and there’s dried blood beneath several of his fingernails, none of it belonging to the cat - when he inspects his reflection in Shane’s bedroom mirror, he discovers a raised red line continuing from his cheek all the way into his hair.

 

He looks appalling, there’s simply no other way to put it. He looks like he’s been forcibly dragged behind a car, released into the wilderness and then mauled by whatever found him there. A naked bear, or something.

 

“Fuck,” Ilya whispers, all temptation of jerking off forgotten as he stumbles to clean himself in Shane’s en suite - with water, because he’d been stupid enough to leave his bags and the first aid kit within it downstairs. He could go and get it, but he doesn’t much fancy waking the bald hellion just yet. His arm is already an alarming shade of red, and Ilya flushes everything twice, hissing through his teeth at the sting. He dithers by the mirrored cabinet on the wall - it’s unlikely Shane keeps anything grievously revealing inside it, and it doesn’t look like it could fit anything more incriminating than condoms or something. Still, it takes him a few painful minutes before he can open it, unreasonably terrified that this small cabinet is a Narnia of dildos - it isn’t, and he’s successful in spotting a box of fabric plasters beside a can of Deep Heat.

 

He applies five before realising they only make him look worse, and removes them again. The bedroom also requires repairs, so Ilya strips the duvet back, smoothing each crease and wrinkle as he remakes the bed as nicely as humanly possible, though the fitted sheet defeats him at one corner and Shane owns far too many decorative pillows. He can’t quite remember how they’d been before he’d removed them, but he arranges them in a queue according to size - it looks wrong, but maybe Shane won’t notice.

 

Ilya’s still considering this when there’s a thump from downstairs. I can smell you thinking.

 

“You cannot,” Ilya calls back.

 

A furious scratching begins as he changes into a pair of sweats he’d somehow had the presence of mind to grab last night, gathering the bloodied ones in his arms - Pork has stopped scratching by the time Ilya reaches the living room, which is significantly more alarming than if he’d continued. Ilya presses his ear against the wood.

 

“Remain calm.”

 

Bracing himself, he opens the door no more than an inch. Pork Hollander is sitting in the middle of the rug, staring directly at him. The water bowl has been overturned and the chicken heart is gone, though whether Pork has eaten or concealed it as part of a later attack involving a biohazard is impossible to determine. Mercifully nothing else appears broken - the scratches on the door will need attention, but if Shane asks, he can say Pork became briefly upset by the separation and leave out the part where he was serving a custodial sentence.

 

Pork’s soulless eyes narrow. You locked me inside this room.

 

“You urinated in my shoes,” Ilya snaps, rifling through his bag for the pair of slippers he’d packed as an afterthought. His dignity is never going to survive this - they’re a pair Sasha had bought him last Christmas, shaped like two shaggy orange Highland cows, with the inside soft and lined with fleece. He had of course intended to wear those in the privacy of Shane’s bedroom, not on the very public walk home, but shit happens.

 

You deserved worse.

 

“I am sure you will try.” Pork rises into a luxurious stretch, and Ilya points at him. “Remember this.”

 

The cat settles back on his haunches again. Remember what?

 

“You are physically well.”

 

I am dying.

 

“No.”

 

Look what you have done to me.

 

“You have had water, food, warmth and approximately six hours without access to my body. You are in a much better condition than I am.”

 

Pork begins licking the inside of one thigh as Ilya finds a towel in the kitchen to mop up the spilled water, diligently taking photographs of the scratches on the living room door so he can find matching paint later. He picks one fragment of Shane’s grandmother’s urn from beneath the edge of the rug, adding it to the others already concealed inside a tea towel on the sofa. The house is quiet when he finishes - too quiet.

 

The cat’s moved to the windowsill, where he watches the street through the gap in the curtains. Ilya keeps his distance, and neither speaks. Their truce has ended (if it had even started at all), though both appear to understand the practical advantages of postponing war until Shane is less likely to catch them at it. At just gone eight, a car turns into the road.

 

My beloved.

 

The thought explodes outwards with such warmth that it blooms in Ilya’s chest, so tender that he almost looks around for the source of it, because it can’t possibly be coming from the murderous earlobe in front of him. Pork tracks the taxi as it slows outside the house, and he glances over.

 

“He is home?”

 

Pork drops from the sill and trots towards the front door, ignoring him with a haughty shove of his consciousness.

 

“You are not launching at him right away. Give him room to come inside.”

 

Open it.

 

“I will open when he is at the door.”

 

Now.

 

“No.”

 

There’s the faint sound of suitcase wheels rolling over the garden path, and Ilya nudges Pork back with one foot, gritting his teeth at the swat this earns him. Shane’s key enters the lock before he can reach to open it for him, but more concerningly, Pork’s legs immediately stop working.

 

Ilya blinks, dumbfounded.

 

The cat’s hindquarters collapse first - one moment he’s standing beneath the hall table, and the next his back legs fold beneath him with such terrible weakness that he drops to the floor entirely. He gives a wavering cry, like a newborn baby, trying and failing to get to his feet.

 

Ilya’s blood turns to ice and he forgets everything in an instant, rushing forward with panic climbing up his throat. “Pork?”

 

The cat drags himself towards the door using his front legs - Ilya can’t feel any pain through his awareness, which is unusual, but also opens up the awful possibility of a neurological emergency as Pork’s useless back end trails behind him, his claws scraping helplessly over the wood. His whole body has started to tremble. Ilya lunges for him before he can think.

 

“What happened? Are you having a stroke? Pork, talk to me -”

 

Pork looks back at him, and the smug delight pouring from the pathetic, quivering wreck on the floor and into Ilya’s prefrontal cortex is so sinister it floors him.

 

“No,” he whispers.

 

Pork releases another weak cry and continues dragging himself towards the door.

 

“Do not.”

 

My beloved will know what you have done.

 

“I have done nothing!”

 

The lock turns, and Pork’s right back leg twitches once before falling still.

 

Ilya lowers his voice, desperate now. “You were walking!”

 

I may never walk again.

 

“You walked five seconds ago!”

 

The front door swings wide, and all communication between them is drowned out by the sound of unbridled terror that tears itself from Shane at the sight. “Oh my - Pork?”

 

He steps inside looking tired enough that Ilya’s first instinct is to put him to bed - his hair is rumpled and his hoodie’s creased, and there's a few faint pink marks along his temple and beneath his jaw where sensors must have been attached. Pork emits a broken wail, making one last valiant attempt to crawl. He reaches Shane’s shoes and collapses across them, his entire body shaking. The cat lifts his head just far enough to give Shane an agonised, exhausted blink before going completely limp in a death curl. Shane drops to his knees like his strings have been cut.

 

“What happened?” his hands move frantically over Pork’s body, scooping him from the floor with such care that the cat’s head lolls against his wrist. “Pork? Hey, buddy. I’m here. Look at me. Pork -”

 

Pork’s eyes open to narrow slits. My beloved.

 

“Ilya,” Shane’s voice breaks, and to Ilya’s horror his eyes are wide and wet, brimming with tears. “What happened to him?”

 

“He is fine.”

 

“He is not fine!” Shane shifts him carefully against his chest, supporting his back legs with one hand. “He can’t stand up! Did he fall?”

 

“No.”

 

“Did he get out? Did something happen overnight?”

 

Ilya looks at Pork. The cat’s cheek rests weakly against Shane’s chest, but one eye remains open in his direction. You did this.

 

“He remained inside.”

 

“Was he acting normal? Did he use the litter tray again?”

 

“He used many things,” Ilya mutters, itching to google the nearest pet crematorium and ask if they accept live animals.

 

“What?”

 

“The litter tray,” Ilya says quickly. “Yes.”

 

Shane presses one hand over Pork’s ribs, his lower lip wobbling. “He’s shaking.”

 

“He was not shaking before you came inside.”

 

Pork’s bony body convulses in a violent shudder for emphasis, one eye still locked on Ilya.

 

Shane scans him for the first time, catching on the scratches across his throat - his eyebrows almost disappear into his hairline. “Jesus, what happened to you? You're all messed up!”

 

Ilya touches his neck offhandedly, resisting the urge to flinch - he refuses to give Pork the satisfaction. “We were playing. Pork likes to wrestle.”

 

Pork’s gaze burns into him from the safety of Shane’s arms, and the other man glances uncertainly between them. “Did he attack you?”

 

Ilya holds his tongue - it’s a truth he can’t afford, because if Ilya says yes Shane will blame himself. He’ll apologise, insist Pork must have been terrified, and decide leaving them alone together had been a catastrophic mistake. Thursday will disappear, and every appointment after it will follow. Pork, on the other hand, seems delighted by the prospect and begins to shake all over again.

 

“No,” Ilya says miserably. “This was unrelated.”

 

“I’m calling the vet.”

 

“He does not need a vet.”

 

“He can’t use his back legs, Ilya!”

 

“He can.”

 

Pork allows one hind paw to dangle lifelessly over Shane’s wrist.

 

“I watched him walk into the hallway,” Ilya says, fighting to keep his voice level. “He only became paralysed when he heard your key.”

 

Shane gathers him closer. “You think it’s stress?”

 

“I think it is pretend.”

 

“What?”

 

The cat’s satisfaction soars. He’s won - Shane is home, Pork is in his arms, and Ilya stands barefoot and injured in the hallway explaining why none of this is what it plainly appears to be.

 

“He is upset,” Ilya says slowly, reaching into his steadily growing combat arsenal. “because he wants more time with me.”

 

Pork’s trembling stops for a second, but Ilya sees it and stifles a grin.

 

Shane peers down at him. “Really?”

 

“Yes,” Ilya crosses his arms, ignoring the pain this sends through his injuries. “He found one night insufficient. He has specifically requested that I visit more often. Just now, in fact.”

 

Pork’s head lifts from Shane’s chest. No.

 

“More often than the appointments?”

 

“Much more.”

 

No.

 

“He feels our time alone has strengthened the connection between us. He wishes to continue developing it.”

 

Next time I will succeed.

 

“Yes, I can see how strongly he feels,” Ilya says. “It is very clear to me.”

 

Shane’s eyes threaten to overflow. “Oh, buddy. You love your Uncle Ilya?”

 

I will cut Uncle Ilya’s jugular.

 

Ilya smiles - he’d have preferred Papa Ilya, but baby steps. “I recommend prolonged bonding sessions. I will not charge you for any of them.”

 

Pork pulls his haunches in, and Shane gasps. “Wait -”

 

The cat immediately lets his legs fall limp again, but it’s too late.

 

“Did he just move that?”

 

“Yes,” Ilya says cheerfully. “He is recovering already.”

 

Pork sends him an image of a dark pool of blood (his own, no doubt) spreading slowly across Shane’s tidy hallway.

 

“Maybe the shock of me coming home overwhelmed him.” Shane adjusts his hold, then carefully lowers Pork towards the floor. “Can you stand, buddy?”

 

Pork remains determinedly boneless in his hands.

 

“I could arrive every morning I am not working,” Ilya offers. “Perhaps stay until evening, some days.”

 

One of his back paws finds the floor.

 

“Or overnight visits would allow deeper communication. He is welcome at my house any time. My very large dog would love to meet him.”

 

Anya is not, in fact, very large, but the lie is one of the least concerning he’s told lately - it’s enough that the second paw follows. Pork hunches unsteadily between Shane’s shoes, keeping his stomach low to the ground. He takes one limping step, dragging his right leg behind him.

 

“We could begin tonight.”

 

The injured leg touches down.

 

“A full week may be best.”

 

Pork stands, and Shane’s whole face brightens. “There you go.”

 

The cat takes another cautious step, checking that Shane is watching to add a slight wobble to his stride. Ilya crouches beside him. “Anya is very excited to play with you, Pork. Shared activities may help us form a healthy relationship.”

 

Pork bolts into the kitchen, skidding across the floor as he rounds the corner, all four legs working so perfectly he nearly knocks into the door frame in his haste to escape. Shane laughs, pressing a hand to his chest. “Oh my god, he scared me.”

 

Ilya straightens. “A miracle.”

 

“He must’ve been completely overwhelmed.” Shane looks towards the kitchen, where Pork is loudly attacking some cardboard. “He’s never reacted like that when I’ve come home before.”

 

“Last night was emotional for him.”

 

“I guess it was.” Shane rubs both hands over his face, exhaustion creeping back into his face again. “God, he really does respond to you.”

 

“More every time.”

 

“Wait, are you wearing cow slippers?”

 

“They are on my feet,” Ilya says stiffly. “Obviously I am wearing them.”

 

Shane’s smile lasts just long enough that he has to physically forbid himself from wearing them at every appointment they ever have together. “Kitchen? I need some water.”

 

He ushers him through, stepping over the shredded corner of an Amazon box without comment - Pork is sitting amongst the remains, and his tail flicks when Ilya leans back against the countertop.

 

“What did the clinic say?”

 

Shane opens the fridge with a tired shrug. “The technician couldn’t officially tell me anything.”

 

“But?”

 

“But there were enough interruptions that she said apnoea is looking likely,” he takes out the water filter, holding it against his chest while the fridge door swings slowly shut behind him. “She was really careful about how she phrased it, kept saying the data has to be reviewed properly and she wasn’t qualified to diagnose me, but apparently I stopped breathing enough times that they’ll probably recommend treatment.”

 

Pork’s irritation vanishes, and Ilya’s consciousness practically staggers at the sudden withdrawal of it, suppressing a grimace at the cold dread lancing through the cat’s thoughts. Perhaps accidentally, Pork shows it to him again - darkness, silence, the shape of the bed in the dark and the unbearable anxiety of waiting for Shane’s chest to move. He jumps down from the box and lands neatly on all four feet, forgetting he’d been apparently paralysed less than five minutes ago, to cross the kitchen and wind his velvety body around Shane’s ankles. Shane looks down and shifts the filter into one hand.

 

“Yeah, I missed you too, Porkie.”

 

Porkie - Ilya files that one away for later, watching suspiciously as the cat paws at his shin.

 

Up.

 

Shane bends automatically to cradle him against his chest, where the cat immediately burrows beneath his chin.

 

You are breathing now.

 

“It’s okay, buddy.”

 

It is not.

 

“They found what they needed to find,” Ilya says, reluctant to interrupt. “This is good.”

 

Shane’s mouth twists. “It doesn’t feel good.”

 

“No, but now somebody other than Pork can keep you breathing.”

 

The relief that ripples through the cat is too tangled with worry to be called relief at all, but some of the terrible pressure eases, releasing it where it’d gathered behind Ilya’s eyes.

 

“I have to wait a few days for the proper report,” Shane says, kissing the top of his head. Ilya shudders at the sight. “Then they’ll tell me what they think the best treatment is. Probably a CPAP, if it’s what they think.”

 

“You will use it?”

 

Shane glances at him. “Of course I’ll use it.”

 

Pork opens one eye. Make him.

 

This is one thing Ilya’s happy to relay honestly. “He says you must.”

 

“I just said I would!”

 

“He does not trust you.”

 

“I went to the sleep clinic, didn’t I?”

 

Late.

 

“You considered escaping,” Ilya reminds him.

 

Shane stares, affronted. “You told him that?”

 

“He was there.”

 

“You told my cat I nearly ran away from the clinic?”

 

“He knows cowardice when he sees it.”

 

Pork’s paw tightens in Shane’s hoodie, even if he does begin chewing at one of the strings. Mine stayed. He is brave.

 

“He is proud of you,” Ilya mumbles. “So am I.”

 

Shane falls quiet, nibbling his lip, until he appears to remember the water filter still on the side. He sets Pork beside it and rolls his shoulders, shaking off something Ilya can’t quite determine before he opens one of the overhead cupboards. “I’m sorry, I’m being rude. Do you want some?”

 

“Yes, please.”

 

Shane takes down a second glass, fills both and passes one to Ilya. The water is cold enough to hurt his teeth, but Ilya drinks half of it in one go - he hadn’t realised how thirsty he was, or perhaps had simply accepted that every physical need must be postponed until he was no longer under siege, but it’s the best thing he’s had since that Dominos for sure.

 

“Oh,” the other man says, hesitating by the fridge when he returns the filter. “You didn’t touch any of it.”

 

Ilya frowns. “What?”

 

“The food.” Shane gestures inside it, where every neatly arranged container and packet remains exactly where it had been when he’d left. “I know there was too much, but - I mean, did you not like it?”

 

“I was not hungry,” Ilya’s chest aches, longing to reach over and erase the little wrinkle of worry between Shane’s eyebrows.

 

“You can tell me if you didn’t like it, Ilya.”

 

Shane’s frown deepens - this is intolerable.

 

“No, I do,” Ilya says, and then his mouth is moving before his cerebrum has had so much as a cursory scan of what fresh bullshit he’s about to spout next. “I do. This is all my favourite things. I am vegan, after all.”

 

The words dangle there, and Ilya’s seized by the desperate urge to clap both hands over his lying, liar mouth - to take it back with enough force it erases it from Shane’s memory entirely, or perhaps move to Costa Rica after seeing a psychiatrist knowledgeable enough to figure out whatever the fuck is wrong with him.

 

Pork slowly turns his head, and Ilya feels a cold sweat break across the back of his neck. Death might be easier than finding a way out of this one.

 

Shane blinks. “You’re vegan?”

 

“Yes,” Ilya grinds out. “Very vegan. The most vegan. I would win vegan awards.”

 

Pork’s stare burns into the side of his face. You are lying again. You still stink of meat and cheese.

 

“For -” Ilya clears his throat, gagging on the mere concept of it. “For the animals. You know.”

 

This is possibly the worst thing he has ever done. He’s going to burst into flames. Soon, if the look in Pork Hollander’s eyes is anything to go by.

 

Shane’s surprise softens, and he’s - to Ilya’s utter devastation - nodding with the sort of expression that indicates he might be impressed. “I guess that makes sense.”

 

“It does?”

 

“Well, yeah - you can talk to them.” Shane closes the fridge with his hip this time. “I suppose eating them would be really fucked up.”

 

“Extremely,” Ilya whispers, hyper aware of the hypocrisy. “I am just the normal amount of fucked up.”

 

I will tell him.

 

“You cannot,” Ilya snaps without thinking.

 

Shane jolts. “What?”

 

“Pork,” he says, glaring at the cat. “He is being insensitive about my beliefs.”

 

Pork’s lip curls in challenge, and the other man looks between them, visibly baffled but exhausted enough not to pursue it. “Well, there’s plenty left. You can take some with you, if you want.”

 

“No.”

 

Shane’s eyebrows lift.

 

“I mean, thank you,” Ilya says, white knuckling his glass. “But I could not take your groceries.”

 

“I bought them for you. I make decent money, it's no big deal.”

 

He briefly envisions Shane walking through a Waitrose and considering what Ilya might want, and the resulting wrench is so intense it briefly (very briefly) makes maintaining a fraudulent plant based lifestyle seem worth it.

 

“I will take some,” he says eventually. “Thank you.”

 

“Good. You know, I have a pretty specific diet too, so I get it. I only really eat whole foods, but I might do some research into -” he pauses, gesturing at him. “Maybe cutting out meat completely. I don’t eat it very often anyway.”

 

Pork cocks his head, needling him. You eat corpses.

 

“So do you,” Ilya mutters under his breath.

 

Yours will be next.

 

“Ilya?”

 

“Nothing.”

 

Shane studies him over the rim of his glass. Even half dead he’s the most beautiful person Ilya has ever seen - nobody should be allowed to look like that while Ilya stands before them dressed in cows, forging a confident and blatantly untrue alter ego that absolutely doesn't shove chicken wings in his mouth every day of the week ending in a Y.

 

“There is another thing,” he says, trying to claw back at least some semblance of honesty before he has to locate the nearest confessional booth.

 

“About Pork?”

 

“Technically.”

 

The cat projects him the image of pooling blood again, except this time Ilya’s slippers are in the flood, saturated in crimson.

 

“What happened?”

 

“I must show you something,” he says, swiftly retrieving the tea towel from the living room sofa, holding it carefully with both hands. The broken pieces of the urn clink together within it, and Shane’s expression turns increasingly concerned as he carries it back into the kitchen. “I am very sorry.”

 

Shane looks down at the visible fragment. “Oh.”

 

“I am sorry. There was an incident.”

 

Pork begins to purr.

 

“You knocked over the urn?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“With what?”

 

Ilya glances at Pork. “It was complicated.”

 

There is nothing complicated about the fact you must die.

 

“You should know,” he continues grimly, “that I inspected every fragment. I could not find your grandmother.”

 

Shane stares at him, the corner of his mouth beginning to twitch.

 

Ilya forces himself onwards anyway. “I do not know if she was removed before, or if perhaps some of her escaped beneath the furniture. I checked the rug, but -”

 

“She wasn’t in that.”

 

“No,” Ilya says gravely. “This is what I am telling you. I looked for her, but - Shane, I am very sorry, but I have lost your grandmother.”

 

Shane makes a very strange sound, slapping a hand over his mouth - he turns away, and Ilya’s faced with the chilling concept that he might be crying.

 

His stomach almost falls out of his ass. “I am so sorry, Shane. I - I will help you look for her. Perhaps we can buy a special hoover and see if she - if she ends up in the tank.”

 

Shane laughs. Ilya’s never heard him laugh like this before, a rich sound full of such sunshine that it seems to fill the kitchen with contagious joy - he’s bent over the counter, gasping hard enough that Pork’s ears flatten in offence. Ilya freezes, uncertain whether this is some sort of grief event he should call someone for.

 

“She wasn’t in it,” Shane manages. “Oh god.”

 

“Yes.” Ilya’s really worried now, his brow furrowing in concern. “Shane, I have told you this already.”

 

“No, Ilya.” Shane wipes his cheeks, his eyes bright. “It was hers, but it didn’t contain her. My mum decided to scatter her instead - I’d already bought the fucking thing before she changed her mind.”

 

Ilya looks at the pieces, still confused. “This was a decorative urn?”

 

“I guess, technically,” Shane’s still laughing, breathless. “She ended up on a beach in Cornwall instead. I got some of her in my mouth.”

 

“Why did you keep it?”

 

“Because it was meant for her,” the other man shrugs, his smile going softer. “And because she’d have hated it. When she got sick, she’d always move all of mum’s vases into the cupboard. I guess I was waiting to see if she’d, I don’t know. Visit me from the astral plane, or whatever.”

 

Ilya tries very hard to rearrange this information into something that absolves him. “So she would be pleased it is destroyed?”

 

“She’d probably think it was hilarious.”

 

“Good. Then perhaps I have honoured her.”

 

Shane laughs all over again, and Ilya lets himself watch properly this time. He likes the way Shane’s whole face changes when he laughs this hard, how his nose wrinkles and his cheeks flush. It’s worth every injury and possibly the destruction of several more family heirlooms, honestly.

 

“I’ll replace it,” he says.

 

“Please don’t. She might haunt me properly.”

 

“I do not communicate with dead humans, so this would be your problem.”

 

“Right.” Shane glances towards the living room. “Only the living.”

 

“Unfortunately.”

 

Pork stops purring as Shane gathers the tea towel towards himself. “Seriously, it’s fine. I’m more concerned about what the hell happened in here.”

 

Ilya swallows. “Nothing happened.”

 

“Ilya, you look like you’ve been attacked with a rake.”

 

“Unrelated.”

 

Shane points down at his slippers, grinning. “And the shoes you wore over here?”

 

“Separate incident. Hence the cows.”

 

He shakes his head, smiling as he takes another drink, but the amusement drains from him with startling speed when he sways against the counter.

 

“You should sit.”

 

“I’m fine, just tired.”

 

“Sit.”

 

The word leaves him with enough authority that Shane obeys before either of them can be outwardly surprised by it, sinking heavily into one of the kitchen chairs - Pork follows to jump into his lap, settling in a tightly curled ball across his thighs.

 

Ilya looks towards the kettle. “Tea?”

 

“No, thanks. Think I need to sleep.” Shane rubs both hands over his face, careful not to dislodge Pork. “I knew it wouldn’t be a normal night’s sleep, but I didn’t realise how impossible it would be with all the wires. Every time I started dropping off, I’d remember they were watching me and wake myself up again.”

 

Ilya wants to take care of him so badly it manifests as an ache in his hands. He knows Shane’s bedroom is directly above them now, knows the way there, knows which side of the bed has been disturbed and where it smells most like grapefruit. He could carry Shane’s suitcase upstairs, draw the curtains and ease him beneath the duvet. He could make the tea for when he wakes, organise the groceries he’s now obligated to eat and remain in the house long enough to ensure Shane breathes through every minute of his nap.

 

Memory of the owl’s voice returns through the quiet of the kitchen. Then do something.

 

He takes Shane’s empty glass and refills it, setting it within reach. “Drink this, then go to bed.”

 

Shane wraps his hands around it, frowning again. “You don’t have to rush off.”

 

“I know.”

 

Ilya collects the soft throw folded over the back of the sofa without thinking too much about it and brings it into the kitchen (after giving it a quick check over for blood spatter), laying it across Shane’s knees without allowing himself to fuss - Pork disappears beneath it, and Ilya distantly hopes he suffocates under there.

 

“You need rest,” Ilya says through gritted teeth. “I should let you have it.”

 

“Okay,” Shane says quietly.

 

“Lock the door after me.”

 

“I will.”

 

“And if you feel unwell -”

 

“I’ll call someone.”

 

“Me.”

 

That slips out before he can stop it, but like much else he’s spouted in this house, he can’t take it back now it's been said.

 

“You?”

 

“I am closer than your parents,” Ilya says, though he has no idea whether this is true. “And Hayden is useless.”

 

“He lives literally eight minutes away.”

 

“I can be here faster.”

 

“On the bus? Or running down the street in your cow slippers?”

 

Ilya narrows his eyes. “If necessary.”

 

Shane smiles into his glass. “Okay. I’ll call you.”

 

Ilya reaches the hallway before he remembers there’s one final matter his heart requires him to settle. He turns back, gripping the strap of his bags. “Thursday, I will still see you?”

 

Pork’s head emerges from beneath the blanket. Do not ever return here.

 

“Of course,” Shane says.

 

“For the appointment.”

 

“Yeah. I’m looking forward to it.”

 

Every coherent thought leaves Ilya’s head (not that there was many in there to begin with) - he manages a nod, fumbling with the lock on the door. Shane gets up to follow him as far as the hallway despite having been specifically instructed to remain seated, offering out a carrier bag filled with what’s undoubtedly that horrifying packet of tofu and too many vegetables.

 

“Go to bed,” Ilya tells him, taking it with a grimace.

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

Shane says it absently, already reaching for the door, but Ilya trips over the front step and staggers out onto the garden path with all the airs of someone who’s been very recently electrocuted. “Wha -”

 

Shane appears not to have noticed what he’s said. “I’ll see you Thursday.”

 

Behind him, Pork has climbed onto the hallway table, poking his evil head around Shane’s hip. Filled with the sort of whimsy Ilya’s only ever seen My Little Pony characters possess, he waits until Shane glances down to place his glass safely out of reach before giving Pork the finger.

 

The cat’s pupils flood black. I will finish this.

 

“Goodbye, Pork. I look forward to Thursday.”

 

The door closes between them, and Ilya can barely contain himself. He’s entirely embracing the fact he looks totally fucking insane as he shuffles off down Shane’s street with a pep in his step, even feeling like he’s been fed through a lawnmower and sporting both Sasha’s ridiculous novelty slippers and a boner, it all pales in comparison to the fact he’s - well, he’s in love.

 

He waves far too delightedly at an older couple waiting at the bus stop with an equally grizzled terrier, and continues on his merry way.

 

Sveta happens to live just a fifteen minute walk from his own place, and by the time he reaches her apartment complex, the joy of his exit has dulled into utter exhaustion. His scratches continue to sting and the bite beneath his sleeve has swollen beyond something water can fix - the handles of the bag have cut into his fingers, and his slippers have collected enough dirt from the pavement that he’ll probably have to burn them too. He’s still in love, though.

 

Sveta buzzes him in without asking who it is, and Ilya’s barely made it through the door when Diana spots him from her twisted wooden perch in the living room. “Handsome fuck!”

 

Her wings flare outwards, beautiful silver and grey flashing as she clambers higher to get a better look at him. The thought beneath her words reaches him with none of their cheerful obscenity. You are hurt. Come closer.

 

Ilya sets the bag down in Sveta’s entryway. “Hello, beautiful girl.”

 

“Handsome fuck!”

 

“Yes, thank you.”

 

You are hurt.

 

“I know.”

 

Diana hops impatiently from foot to foot, lowering her head in invitation, and Ilya holds out his arm. She doesn’t hesitate, transferring herself to his shoulder and chewing at his hair with her enormous beak.

 

“Careful,” he mutters as she nibbles through his curls, examining his scalp for damage. “The cat has already tried to remove this once.”

 

Bad cat.

 

“Very bad.”

 

Diana catches a curl between her beak and pulls it straight, releasing it so it springs back against his forehead.

 

“Handsome fuck,” she whispers. You smell happy.

 

Ilya smiles despite himself. “Yes.”

 

There’s a thunder of paws from the hallway, and Anya barrels into Sveta’s living room hard enough that the rug gathers beneath her feet. Her relief reaches him first, fizzy and well rested, and then her entire body collides with his thighs.

 

“Anechka,” he scolds, staggering back into the wall. “I missed you very much, but this is not how we say hello.”

 

Don’t criticise me - you’re the one who left.

 

“For one night.”

 

Or a hundred years. I’m a dog, I haven’t workshopped the distinction.

 

“If it was so bad, why do you feel so happy? You love Sveta’s place, you cannot lie to me.”

 

“Fuck!” Diana contributes from his shoulder. We had a sleepover.

 

Anya ignores her, already engaged in the far more pressing work of discovering exactly what’s happened to him since his departure. Her nose travels over his hands with concentration, but he can pinpoint the exact moment she smells the coppery trace of blood - her hackles rise.

 

Pork tried to eat you, didn’t he?

 

“Only briefly.”

 

She sniffs the scratches on his wrist, then hones in on his thigh. He chased you.

 

“He ambushed me.”

 

He attacked you. Ilya, I’ll handle him - take me with you next time.

 

Ilya looks towards the kitchen. “Where is Sveta?”

 

Anya follows a different trail up his torso, rising onto her hind legs to investigate his chest - he bends so that her nose can brush his chin, distinctly unimpressed. He sat on your face.

 

“He fell.”

 

Onto your face?

 

“Yes.”

 

With his ass.

 

“Anya.”

 

She drops back to all four feet and sneezes. Disgusting. I fucking hate cats.

 

“You have rolled in fox shit before,” he reminds her, trying not to let the surge of righteous fury rolling through his dog affect his face. “Remember, he is a necessary evil.”

 

“Ilya?” Sveta appears in the kitchen doorway with a mug in one hand - she takes a single look at him and sets it down on the side table. “What the fuck happened to you?”

 

“Nothing.”

 

Her eyes travel from the scratches across his throat to the dark circles beneath his eyes, then flicker down to his feet. She doesn’t ask about the slippers, and Ilya finds that somehow this is worse than if she had.

 

“The cat,” she says. “You weren’t joking?”

 

He’s almost offended by the concept that he might have been teasing - he’d gone to great lengths to relay the lore surrounding Pork Hollander, ensuring to convey the threats upon his life with a grave enough sincerity that he had been expecting her immediate assistance in supporting his application for witness protection. Ilya wrinkles his nose. “This is very serious, Sveta.”

 

She hums to herself, approaching to catch him gently by the chin - she tilts his face towards the window, stroking her thumb just beneath the deepest scratch under his jaw. “He needs to die?”

 

“Yes,” Ilya huffs, suitably convinced the inevitable babying she’ll provide might cure the cellulitis he’ll probably get, now that Pork has kindly introduced every bacterium within his mouth to his bloodstream. “But also no. Maybe. I actually do not think he can die.”

 

“Very reassuring - wait here.”

 

Sveta disappears into the bathroom and returns with her own first aid kit, and despite the fact Ilya has one quite literally on his person, he sits without argument. Anya settles across his feet, though Diana remains on his shoulder and tries to take the antiseptic wipe from her hand.

 

“No,” Sveta tells her, holding out a finger in warning.

 

“Fuck,” the bird mutters. Apologies. Habit.

 

She works in companionable silence for a while, interspersed only when Ilya opts to translate Anya’s very thorough review of the Real Housewives episode Svetlana had left on for her overnight. There’s a particularly nasty gash on his shoulder he hadn’t noticed below his shirt, and when she reaches the punctures on the inside of his arm he hisses, jerking away.

 

“Hold still,” she shifts to get a better look at the red, swollen skin. “Jesus, солнышко - you need antibiotics.”

 

“You are hurting me,” he whines, allowing her to manhandle him back by the wrist. In truth he knows he should almost certainly deposit himself in A&E and beg them to throw every marvel of modern medicine his way before Pork’s vile saliva poisons him more than it already has, but that feels too much like admitting he’s able to be damaged. The cat, having drawn first blood, would almost certainly detect this with the supernatural kind of omniscience only ever attributed to malevolent spirits and Sasha on a Monday morning.

 

Sveta wipes harder. “Poor baby.”

 

Ilya glares at her, but she’s close enough that doing so requires him to cross his eyes, which isn’t exactly the stern image he’s going for. “He came at me while I was sleeping.”

 

“You slept?”

 

“Some.”

 

“And Shane? Have you bought an SUV for your seventeen children, yet?”

 

Anya very helpfully presents him with the image of a screaming baby, and Ilya doesn’t have the heart to tell her that isn’t the deterrent she thinks it is.

 

“Seventeen is too many,” Ilya says. “I think sixteen - will be like the movie, Cheaper By The Dozen. I will find a way to get him pregnant -”

 

“And Pork will leave him a widow with sixteen kids to care for,” Sveta grins, now dabbing at the scrapes half hidden in his hair. “But I was mostly asking after the more important fact that, you know, he does not breathe in his sleep.”

 

His cheeks flush. “I checked this with him, obviously. He is likely to have sleep apnoea, but they will confirm in a few days.”

 

“That’s good,” Svetlana pauses, her eyes finding his. “You know, the talking to animals thing has never been the most interesting thing about you -”

 

“If you are going to be sincere at me, I will need a beer -”

 

“- and I wish you could see that, Ilya. Look, I really think if you’d just consider -”

 

“No.”

 

Ilya knows exactly what she’s about to say, because it’s an age old conversation she’s enforced on a weekly schedule ever since his father had kicked the bucket (he makes a mental note to ask Pork if he’s ever come across Grigori Rozanov during his travels along the burning Lake of Fire) - he indulges it sometimes, because that’s what his mama would tell him to do, and others he would simply kiss the suggestion of therapy out of her mouth until she stopped. The latter of those strategies is firmly off the table now, having been pre-Shane. Before Shane. BS. Now, very much in Anno Domini (Anno Hollandi?) he’s in urgent need of a new tactic.

 

“There’s no shame in getting some help,” she says softly, for what must be the hundreth time. “You’ve been through things that would break most, you’ve no self esteem, and your other two best friends are a dog and a man committed to inseminating the entirety of Landry’s practise.”

 

“I do not need help,” Ilya shrugs, picking out the greenest hill to die on. “Say I go, and the therapist has a flea in their office I must, I do not know, discuss tastiest blood types with. What then, Sveta?”

 

Svetlana now looks more likely to suggest him a doctor, but she’s careful to keep her face as neutral as she can. “Then I’d suggest locating a therapist that isn’t riddled with fleas, sweetheart.”

 

“Then the next one may have a snail.”

 

She sighs, tossing the wipe away in favour of an astringent smelling cream.

 

“Handsome,” Diana tells him. She’s right.

 

Her fingers are cool against his skin, her body familiar between his knees - they’ve existed this way for years, close enough that neither of them thinks about it, touching and occasionally remembering there are other things they know how to do in it as well, so Ilya knows the look currently on her face like he knows the back of his hand.

 

“I will think about it,” he concedes, opting not to tell her that this thought will stick to its carefully allotted five seconds before ending up in the miserable landfill of his amygdala. “I will - okay?”

 

Svetlana studies him for a moment, dotting a glob of the cream on his arm. “Okay. Anya, I’m getting you an ‘Ilya is lying’ talk button, so do keep me informed.”

 

The traitorous dog resting at his feet lifts her head. I’d buy several sets of spare batteries, too, or I might burn it out on the first day.

 

“Anya,” Ilya snaps, glowering at her. “Go and chase your tail, or I will buy you a cone of shame and tell Octavia you hurt yourself licking your own ass.”

 

At least I can reach mine - you always call Sasha.

 

There’s absolutely nothing he can counter that with, so he scrubs both hands down his face and tries to ignore the pounding in his head. Unfortunately, he’s given very little time to play the violin over his dilemma, because Sveta pries his fingers away and tilts his chin up again. “You really like him, don’t you? It’s not just a passing insanity?”

 

Ilya sighs, staring at his knees. “This is very different. Not passing, but I will not rule out insanity.”

 

“Then you need to be honest with him. Come clean about the cat -”

 

“And vegan lifestyle.”

 

“- sure, that too. And if he’s willing to stick around, then you have your answer.”

 

Sveta knows him too well. She knows every entertaining fixation that’s swept through his life with all the force of a hurricane, every beautiful human he’s ever declared most likely to treat him kindly, and forgotten before remembering to text back. She also knows Sasha, having witnessed what happens when Ilya doesn’t forget, and that horrible, sickening vulnerability that comes with wanting somebody even after it starts hurting.

 

“He thinks Pork likes me,” Ilya mumbles. “He is so happy about it - if I tell him this was a lie, he will hate me. This I can handle if I must, but worse still is that he would be sad. I cannot make him sad, Sveta.”

 

“Pork tried to scalp you,” she says, unmoved. “If you become the first person on earth to have been murdered by a hairless cat, do you not think this might make him sadder?”

 

It’s a good point. “Yes, probably, because Pork would be taken away. Taken to evil animal jail, or wherever they keep these creatures. Maximum security. Alcatraz.”

 

Svetlana drops her head into her hands with a groan. “No, because of you, idiot. If - fuck, I cannot believe this is an actual conversation I’m having - if Pork kills you, you’d be dead. Shane would be sad because you’re dead.”

 

A sore twinge of Anya’s sadness at the thought ghosts along the edge of his mind. It would also destroy me, if you went somewhere I couldn’t follow. I promised I’d follow you anywhere, remember?

 

Ilya nudges her gently with one cow. “He will not win this war.”

 

“I don’t think your current appearance is helping that defence,” Sveta says.

 

I’d also miss watching you shower, when you sleep over, Diana points out.

 

Ilya, who hadn’t realised she had been, pulls a face. “I will tell him.”

 

Svetlana crosses her arms. “When?”

 

“Soon.” (the year 3000 feels right)

 

“No, I need something concrete - I want to put it in my calendar, so I don’t forget to pick your sorry ass up afterwards.”

 

“After he falls in love with me.”

 

Sveta stares at him. “You cannot be serious.”

 

“It is a good plan! He will be less angry, because of all the,” Ilya gestures defensively around at the room. “Because of the love.”

 

She pinches the bridge of her nose, muttering something in Russian that would’ve made Diana’s spoken vocabulary considerably worse if she’d chosen to repeat it in English. Ilya sits patiently through this display, lowering a hand to scratch between Anya’s ears.

 

“You’re going to hurt him,” she says eventually. “And you’re going to hurt yourself in the process.”

 

“I am trying,” he mutters, abruptly and intensely aware of the truth in it.

 

“I know.” Sveta kisses his forehead, pulling away to screw the cap back on the cream and tuck it into his own palm. “Take your dog and go home.”

 

Ilya gathers Shane’s groceries and the last of his dignity, which isn’t much and never has been - Anya circles him, stopping to shove her muzzle against the bag. What the fuck is this?

 

“It is vegan. Tofu, I think,” he says, his cheeks burning.

 

She looks up at him with a monumental whale eye.

 

Ilya opens the front door, scowling. “Do not start.”

 

The dead are indeed significantly easier company than the living, so they don’t head home straight away - Ilya opts instead for a calming, very normal walk through the local cemetery they frequent together, half tempted to pick himself out a plot while he’s at it. It’s late enough in the afternoon now to render it essentially empty, and (with the exception of a particularly neurotic muntjac deer in the adjoining hedgerow) he’s mostly able to detach from the incessant conversation of the hundred crickets hidden in the grass. It’s as close to peaceful as he ever gets, even if he can technically still hear them, though Anya’s doing her best to ruin it by having him read every headstone aloud.

 

“Christina Carter, wife, mother, and beloved sister,” Ilya points down at the lichen covered stone she’s focused on. “She was ninety when she died.”

 

Yours will say twenty five, because you’re stupid.

 

Ilya walks on, having changed into actual shoes before taking her right back out again, though parting with the cows had been surprisingly difficult now Shane had looked at them with such fondness - he’d left them soaking in the kitchen sink, where their little hairy faces had stared up at him from the brown water. Anya bounds ahead through the grass, stopping before another weathered stone.

 

It’s always so tragic when young people die, even more so through entirely preventable circumstances.

 

“Hush.”

 

I’m just wondering, that’s all. I think Sasha would pick something like Sarah McLachlan for your funeral.

 

He grimaces at the thought, but she moves on, her tail sweeping through the wet ends of the grass. There’s bluebells around some of the graves and moss growing on the names of others, and he can feel her happiness without even having to try - she likes it here because the squirrels are bold and Ilya can speak aloud without having to pretend he’s on the phone. Ilya likes it for much the same reasons.

 

He pauses beside his usual bench and lowers himself onto it - he’d also called by the pharmacy en route, and there’s a strong course of anti inflammatories now stuffed in his pocket alongside a crumpled leaflet about animal bites. Anya eventually returns to inspect him. Does it still hurt?

 

“No, only if I move.”

 

You’ve been moving.

 

“Then yes.”

 

I told you I’d handle him.

 

He shifts over, leaving room for her to jump up beside him. “You would make things worse - you have a terrible potty mouth, Anechka.”

 

I learned from the best. You should also probably be napping - Shane almost certainly is.

 

Ilya looks away, tracking a fat wood pigeon as it lands several graves over. “I only stayed awake because Pork wanted to harvest my retinas, one night will not kill me.”

 

You could have left - I’m sure he would’ve been fine by himself.

 

“No, he requires professional supervision.”

 

You wanted to be there when Shane came home.

 

Ilya plucks part of a dead leaf from her fluffy ear, flicking it away. “You ask too many questions.”

 

You don’t answer enough of them.

 

His phone vibrates in his pocket before he has to formulate a response that’ll get her off his back - he expects Sveta, probably checking whether he’s taken the first pill or simply eaten the leaflet to avoid admitting she was right, but Shane’s name is waiting on the screen, and he reads it like he’s just been struck by lightning.

Shane:

Slept for ages. Pork’s been lying on my chest the whole time.

 

Ilya wants to tell him he’s got very strong feelings about his chest, despite never having seen it, but does manage to type a response that isn't quite so telling.

he is monitoring your breathing )))))

 

Shane:

Either that or preventing me from ever leaving again.

How’s your day going?

 

Ilya reads the question several times over - there’s no real reason for Shane to ask, considering Pork is (regrettably) alive, and Ilya’s overnight responsibility has ended. His heart picks up so suddenly that Anya lifts her head from his knee. What happened?

 

“He asked how my day is going.”

 

Groundbreaking.

 

“Shut up,” Ilya opens the camera on his phone, seized with both inspiration and a pending cardiac event. “Sit there, quick.”

 

Anya looks behind herself. Where?

 

“By the tree - hurry!”

 

Why?

 

“I need a photograph.”

 

You have thousands of photographs of me.

 

“Not from today.”

 

So you draw the line at lying to him about your precise location?

 

She gets up anyway, huffing as she goes, settling back underneath the nearest yew. Ilya crouches several feet away and studies the screen. “No, move left.”

 

She steps to the right, gleeful.

 

“Wrong way -”

 

I’m a dog, Ilya. I don’t know my left and right.

 

He knows this is a filthy lie, and tells her as much - she moves grudgingly in the correct direction, and Ilya takes a few quick shots. In the first her eyes are closed, and in the second she’s turned her head completely away from him to watch the pigeon again.

 

“Look at me,” he pleads.

 

I’m watching something. I’m afraid I can only be convinced by you telling Shane Hollander you’re basically Pinocchio.

 

“Watch it later.”

 

No, it might leave - like you might, when Pork eventually drives you to the brink.

 

Ilya tries portrait mode in sheer desperation - it blurs some of her ears and brings the grave behind her into magnificent focus instead. “Useless, come here and I will buy you all the chicken strips you could wish for.”

 

She trots over at great speed, and he smooths the fur along her neck with both hands before lowering himself almost flat against the grass, ignoring the damp soaking right through his trousers. This angle is much better, with the trees rising up behind her and their branches crossing high overhead.

 

“Stay.”

 

She stays as he adjusts the exposure, keenly aware Shane’s now been waiting nearly five minutes for an answer, which means he may already believe Ilya hates him, has died or, worse, is composing something desperate (because he is, and Ilya’s developed a very recent, sudden onset allergy to the truth). Ilya sits back on his heels and opens his photographs, scrolling - there’s a photograph taken shortly before Shane texted that he’d overlooked, in which Anya’s stood a few metres away between the older graves, her head raised towards the trees. Sunlight’s turned her marbled fur glossy, and she’s got one paw lifted just a little as she examines something in the distance that he hadn’t caught. It’s perfect, and Ilya attaches it before he can reconsider.

anya and i are having a peaceful day

she is recovering from abandonment when i spent one night away

 

Shane’s reply appears without a single second of pause.

 

Shane:

She looks devastated.

she hides pain well

 

Shane:

You let her off the lead?

she does not have a lead

 

we can talk, remember

 

she can go where she likes

Shane:

Right, yeah. The animal thing!

 

That must be so useful.

 

His phone buzzes again.

 

Shane:

She’s beautiful, by the way.

 

Ilya beams, glancing at Anya. “Shane thinks you are beautiful.”

 

As he should.

 

Ilya’s thumb hesitates above the screen.

beauty is common in our household

 

The typing bubble appears, and he stops breathing.

 

Shane:

I noticed.

 

Ilya stares at the screen, and beside him, Anya lifts her head. Are you having a panic attack?

 

“I think he has just called me beautiful, too.”

 

As he should.