Yixing himself drove them to the soon-to-be-closed agency on Sunday morning. Tao followed Jongdae into the back of the car because Kai insisted if he was going he was riding shotgun. 

“He gets carsick easily,” Jongdae tried to explain in a whisper. Kai heard him of course and denied it hotly. Jongdae gave Tao a knowing smile and the matter was ended. 

Yixing drove in relative silence for most of the way. When they neared the complex, however, he began listing some of the great inroads he and Amber had made in the way of adoption rules. 

“It’s going to be a long hard battle, but we’ve personally screened a half dozen families who want to do this: adopt hybrids as children, and not as pets. We’re being given specific license from the state government to try it out with the litters in this one agency. If it works out, then we can attempt to try it on a broader spectrum.” He seemed pleased with his work so far.

Kai remained impressed. “How young?” he asked, when Yixing mentioned a pair of twin girl kittens who were supposed to go home with their new family within a week.

“Eight,” Yixing answered.

“And are you positive the family is going to treat them right?” Kai questioned him impassively enough, but Tao heard the reserve in his voice, the disapproval.

“Of course. I screened them myself. We’ll also do regular visits, if it makes you feel better.”

He didn’t act like it made him feel better, but Kai let the subject drop into silence as they pulled up to the building. “It’s so young though,” he whispered when he crawled out of the car, Tao and Jongdae standing beside him. “I was sent out when I was fifteen and that… that was bad enough.” He balled his hands into fists by his side and looked stonily at the complex. Jongdae pressed his palm firmly into Kai’s shoulder and the three of them quickly jogged to catch up with Yixing.

They were met by a stern woman at the backdoor who Yixing greeted as Chaelin, the currently disgruntled manager of this particular agency. She greeted the hybrids with a politeness bordering on cold, and then let them sit in the lobby while she rounded up part of the staff. Yixing tried to explain her attitude. She ran a clean business, he said, but ‘clean’ in this industry did not mean profit. The stress of raising litters until they are eighteen was a huge financial burden, and unless a person was willing to make some shady backdoor deals, the agencies don’t necessarily make green at the end of the day. She would be out of a job when the agency was finally closed down.

“Bitter much?” Kai scoffed. “Because she couldn’t sell cats any younger than eighteen?” 

“Uncalled for, Kai,” Yixing warned him in a tone that made Tao’s hairs stand up on end. He stared down at the hybrid until Kai averted his eyes. Yixing was the perfect picture of a kindly old gentleman, but Tao was starting to learn that the man had a streak of authority when it suited him. He filed that piece of information away sometime, in case Tao ever had to remember it. He had a fleeting image of the man's son. Sehun too had that look that could stare a man (or a hybrid) down and make them feel small. He must have gotten it from his father. His adopted father, Tao amended. Not every trait was genetic, apparently.

Chaelin returned a few minutes later with a teenage human in tow. “This is Bobby, one of our volunteers. He’ll show your hybrids around and introduce them to the kittens.”

The human smiled cheerfully. Kai, however, bristled once more at the implied accusation of ownership. He wisely held his tongue though. Tao decided to give Jongdae a break at the comforting business, and this time he gave Kai a friendly pet, knotting his fingers through the white hairs on the back of Kai’s head. The older cat jumped at the touch and scowled when he saw it was Tao, but when one of Tao’s nails strayed over to Kai’s ear, he softened for a moment before shaking off the hand entirely and pretending he hadn’t liked it. Jongdae snorted silently at the two, and they followed Bobby out of the lobby. Tao savored his momentary victory.

“So I hear you guys will be visiting a lot for the next couple of weeks?” Bobby said when they were out of earshot. Yixing had stayed behind to talk business with Chaelin.

“First I’ve heard of that,” said Kai, “but I suppose so.”

“Yes,” Jongdae said stoutly. Tao kept silent. He was only along for the ride after all. Curiosity at the agency-hybrid life had gotten the better of him. 

Bobby paused outside of door that read Female Dormitory. “Well, either way it’s cool you guys are here. Always thought it would be a good idea to get actual hybrid volunteers. Just to play with the kittens. They’re super cute, but they think I’m strange because I don’t have a tail!” Bobby remarked happily.

There were only two girls left in the female wing. The rest of their litter had been transferred to another agency a year ago when all the financial woes had started. Tao learned that litters didn’t necessarily refer to kittens who’d been born of the same hybrid mom. Rather, that was just how kittens were grouped when they left the breeders and were assigned to an agency home.

“It’s rare to have twins like these actually,” Bobby explained. “If they happen, they’re usually separated at birth but Miss Chaelin insisted they come together. Good thing because they’re really close, and they’ll be going to the same home soon. Aww, I’m going to miss them.”

The eight-year-olds Choa and Way were playing happily in their room when the older hybrids got there. The first thing that struck Tao was how very cat-like they were in their infancy, more resembling of their original ancestor than the more human-like hybrids Tao lived with. Had he been that way? Tao wondered. He had no marker for his life though since he’d grown up as the only kitten on the estate. The girls had big wide eyes that stared through their guests, a little mischievous, a lot playful. They seemed at once shy and curious and that left them stranded somewhere between freeze-mode. Bobby had to crouch down next to them to get the first one to speak, and that was little Choa who finally greeted the older hybrids. 

“What’s your name?” her sister Way finally asked Kai, and Tao giggled to himself watching his usually stern housemate melt at the attention of the kittens. Way immediately took a liking to him and crawled into his lap when he sat down, demanding to have a book read to her.

Jongdae smiled at the sight of Choa playing chase with Kai’s tail, but remained aloof as he stood next to Tao. Finally he asked Bobby if there were other kittens and if they could see them. Kai looked occupied and shyly happy to be the center of attention. Even Tao thought Kai was in his element, the girls crawling all over him as he attempted to focus and read through the book. 

“Yep. Right this way,” said Bobby as he lead Tao and Jongdae out and down another hallway. “Okay, here is the male dormitory.”

“Got any teens in here?” Jongdae asked.

“Not yet. This litter hasn’t gotten so old.”

“Oh good,” Jongdae said. Tao questioned him with just a look. “Male teenage felines, Tao? You’re not so far removed that you don’t remember those days? Hell, I remember those days and I’m not proud.”

Now that Jongdae mentioned it, how long had it been for Tao since the days where his blood had frequently run flush and every scratching post was the best thing ever. He’d been parentless by then and his poor owner had had to explain a few facts about life, birds and bees and other embarrassing things, and then he’d given Tao plenty of space and free time to do whatever Tao needed.

Tao blushed, and that caused Jongdae to chuckle. He tapped a hand to Tao’s reddening cheek and started following Bobby down the hallway. 

“Yeah, now you’re remembering. Come on let’s go.” He shrugged, but continued talking. “Poor cats. Just one more proof that you’re not supposed to go messing around with lives in a laboratory. You know, Tao, this is where some humans get the idea about the hybrids’ mythical heat cycles. Some really do expect you to suddenly crave about once a month and it doesn’t matter where you get it from. And really it’s just leftover tales of the poor male teenager. Hybrids aren’t that much different from regular teenagers. It’s just a wiring malfunction from the test tube days that makes it worse on us. Most of it’s supposed to be over by the time we’re sixteen or seventeen though, hence why it’s only legal to sell hybrids after they hit eighteen.” Jongdae cringed.

Tao listened, storing away the facts. “Heat cycle? I’ve never even heard it called that.”

“It’s a mating drive. Female cats get it. Cat cats, not hybrids. And some other animals. Either way somebody was humane at least to spare our breed that. Humane… Hah. That word is still one to laugh at.” 

“How do you know so much of this?” Tao asked.

“Me? I just listen when Yixing talks. Or I listen when the older cats talk… There’s a world of knowledge in your elders, Tao,” he teased. 

Up ahead they heard the sounds of the kittens, mostly playful but quite rambunctious. 

“Ahh, and here we come upon our prey,” Jongdae declared. Bobby verified that there were still six boys in this wing, a full litter between the ages of six and eleven. “Ohh what innocence we’ll find,” he said. They stood before a window and watched for a moment. Several pillows and a trash bucket went flying across the room and at least two or more of the kittens howled in fury. Jongdae smiled, like the chaotic scene before them was actually a tranquil and bucolic heaven. “This is as good as it gets right here, Tao. Beautiful. After this a cat’s life is in constant turmoil and you have no idea where you’ll end up. How I envy them.”

If Jongdae wanted to call this scene beautiful then Tao had no call to contradict him. 

Jongdae was silent with a pleasant, hopeful expression. He flattened his smile into his most catlike, nodded at his reflection in the glass window and said to Bobby, “Can we go in?” Something large and heavy went flying across the room and hit a lamp that went clattering to the floor. To Tao Jongdae cried, “Alright. To war!”

It was mid-afternoon and half of the cats were gone. Chanyeol knocked on the door, waiting a whole two minutes for Kyungsoo to get off his computer and come let him in. Kyungsoo glared at him and gave him a lazy eye, and Chanyeol knew why. He could just have easily gone around to the back where Baekhyun was no doubt having his afternoon nap, but Chanyeol had a surprise and he wasn't too keen to give it away just yet.

“Is the upstairs shower still draining poorly?” he asked Kyungsoo.

“Yup. And it's disgusting. You try bathing in a tub with a constant two inches of dirty water.”

“I'm here to fix it. Don't fuss.” Chanyeol deliberated whether or not he could tease the cat any further. He decided he did dare. “You know you could always shower standing up. Then only your toesies would get contaminated.” He grinned, hoping his innocence would ward off retaliation. It didn't, and he had to jump backwards to avoid a fist. Chanyeol wasn't certain it didn’t have Kyungsoo's full strength behind it, and he didn’t want to find out. Not a cat in the house, not even Tao, would take a shower. It was a bath or nothing, and Kyungsoo in particular hated being reminded of his cat-like sensibilities.

“Falling water, Chanyeol? No thank you,” the hybrid replied. He settled for a seething glare since his punch had gone awry.

Chanyeol couldn't help pushing it further. “Gee, Soo, whatever do you do when it rains? Melt?”

Kyungsoo struck a pose. “Rain? I don't do rain. That's why houses exist.”

Chanyeol smirked as the other walked away. He was never properly cowed by the bristly little cat, a fact Baekhyun claimed would get him killed one day, but he refused to take the warning seriously. Kyungsoo was harmless, he hoped. 

It took Chanyeol no time to unclog the tub since a good bit of it was just hair and fur. He made a mental note to reroute some of the plumbing since the house was older, but it was a job for another day. He trekked back downstairs to inform Kyungsoo of the situation, and received barely a nod from the cat. Then he checked if Baekhyun was still outside, and confirming he was, Chanyeol crept through the house and back to his car from which he retrieved something from his briefcase.

He met Sehun then just as he closed the car door. The younger man had just parked his car in the driveway and froze like he’d been caught.

“Hey, Sehun,” said Chanyeol, amused at his deer-in-the-headlights-look. “Did you know I would be here today? I was just fixing a drain. I’m not even going to charge for such light work.”

Sehun cleared his throat and nodded. “Right. Well, then I guess… I don’t need to sign for a bill…”

Chanyeol chuckled. He hadn’t told Yixing he was coming over today. There was no way Sehun had come to cut a check, which left his purposes for being here entirely personal. Chanyeol had an inkling he knew why, and it all had to do with a certain youngster now living in the house.

“The other cats aren’t back yet,” he said.

“Huh?”

 “Just the older ones are home. Kyungsoo, Baekhyun. I assume Minseok and Luhan too, but of course I haven’t heard a peep out of them since I got here.”

Sehun’s eyes glazed over. “Oh, I… well I needed to ask someone… something… so I’ll probably just wait inside.”

“Suit yourself.” He started to walk back to the front door, Sehun awkwardly in tow. “I need to double-check one more thing in the bathroom so… see you later.”

Sehun sat on the couch to wait [for Tao] while Chanyeol crept up the stairs again, this time walking right passed the bathroom. 

He paused outside of Baekhyun and Kai's bedroom, listening for a moment just in case he was wrong and Baekhyun was inside. No sounds were heard. Silently he pushed the door and let it fall open. 

It was common knowledge that Baekhyun didn’t spend much time in his assigned bedroom. Some nights he slept in here sure, but the room belonged more to Kai by virtue of occupancy, and it definitely looked like it. Kai, for all his troubles, had a thing for collecting stuff. Clothes, bags, figurines and knickknacks. Perhaps the most surprising of all was Kai’s small collection of music boxes. Chanyeol guessed they housed pop-up ballerinas and it made him laugh to imagine Kai sitting up in his room at night watching the little dolls twirl round and round. He never opened them up though to check. For one it would be prying, and also he didn’t want to ruin his fantasy if they weren’t pink tutu-clad ballerinas. Chanyeol by-passed the shelf where they all sat and hovered over Baekhyun’s bed.

The only real hint that Baekhyun lived in this room was a slightly rumpled comforter blanket bearing the hybrid’s imprint, the dresser where he kept his clothes, and a bedside table with a small drawer. Chanyeol didn’t hesitate to open it. Inside were kept the few possessions Baekhyun had acquired since moving into the house. It was a small pittance for someone who’d lived here nearly six years. His most prized thing was a pitiful shell necklace Jongdae had made once when he was bored, and all the cats had one, not just Baekhyun.

Chanyeol sighed and pulled out the envelope he’d fetched from the car. He’d braved a trip back home to get this for Baekhyun; braved the possibility of his parents or his older sister finding him creeping through the house. His parents were fortunately not home at the time, but his sister did find him and proceeded to nag him thoroughly. He couldn’t even tell if she was mad he was there, or mad he wasn’t coming home for good with an apology on his lips.

Regardless though, he wasn’t really welcome at ‘home’ and he hadn’t been in years; not since he ran away after a blow-up fight for dodging his parents' blistering expectations about every little thing and life in general. Depending on who told the story, he was kicked out. Chanyeol liked to say that he was the one who left first.

It gave him something in common with the hybrids he’d halfway attached himself too. All of them were forced to seek shelter at a pertinent time in their lives. It was part of the reason he wanted to help the hybrids with as much as he could. Fellow fugitives should stick together.

For Chanyeol, his high school temp job employer Sung Woo became what Yixing was to the cats:  friend, mentor, provider when times turned bad. He’d started learning the trade just for fun and for petty cash. When Sung Woo offered though, he’d moved in with the man and his family and started learning the job for real. Now he ran a whole extension of the repair business and had an apartment all on his own. He was fine and pretty much happy now.

He didn’t like going home, didn’t like remembering the days of his youth. He did it for Baekhyun though. In a box under his bed in his old room was a stack of photographs. Chanyeol had been an amateur photographer when he was younger. He had piles of pictures and Polaroid’s. At least one of the stacks bound in rubber bands captured the endless scores of people from an old neighborhood barbecue. He’d had to sort through them all to find the one he guessed Baekhyun would want.

Chanyeol placed the envelope in Baekhyun’s open drawer. It was seven years old now, he estimated, that picture of a much younger Baekhyun sitting on a picnic blanket with two little girls crawling all over him, his two precious charges that he’d loved like family.

He closed the drawer and walked away.

Baekhyun would probably never acknowledge the present, but that was alright. Baekhyun had a mental block around his heart and memories. He never discussed the past, never talked about it with any detail, never smiled when it was brought up, and it hurt Chanyeol to witness it. How very different it was from when Baekhyun first moved into their neighborhood and was nothing but cheery smiles and a heart ready to love everyone and everything.

He lived in the present now, even if his life belonged in the past and the two worlds didn’t mesh because Baekhyun didn’t allow them too. It was as if Baekhyun had selective amnesia, the way he pretended he didn’t remember things, or the way the two of them pretended in front of the others that they hadn’t known each other before, that they’d been neighbors practically, and that Chanyeol knew everything that had happened to Baekhyun and that so-called ‘great love of his life’. 

When he went downstairs, Sehun had passed out on the couch; either that or he was pretending and so Chanyeol let him snooze. Baekhyun was finally awake though, and pacing around one of his fruit trees with a furious energy. A half-eaten fallen fruit, gnawed on by neither human nor cat, lay on the ground, and Baekhyun was pissed.

“Chanyeol!” he called. Chanyeol lumbered out into the grass. “Hey, I think I have brilliant idea. Tell me if it’s brilliant idea.”

Chanyeol crossed his arms and waited for it.

“Firecrackers! Fireworks! And we can scare these wretched birds away for eternity!”

He laughed and cackled, and Chanyeol had to mirror his enthusiasm. “Brilliant! I love it! We can also blow up the neighborhood and burn down your trees while we’re at it. That’ll work too!”

Baekhyun snorted, his smile unchanged and as glorious as ever. “You’re no fun, Chanyeol. What am I going to do with you, huh? You used to be more fun than this. Tsk tsk. I’m ashamed for you.”

3,486 words

Omg this is like angst! Guys it's not supposed to be angst! I'm so sorry! *Feels ashamed* and all you Baekhyun-biased people are probably lining up to murder me now. Quick, before you do:

Summary no. 1 - Chanyeol knew Baekhyun from before, knows whatever big dark secret happened with Baekhyun and his 'lover' and Baekhyun has a crazy kind of coping mechanism that lets him live in a la-la land in the present day, while still glorifying several things of the past. (What I can do is promise things aren't so deadly depressing as it's kind of appearing to be? I mean, I can't say we'll magically get rainbows and butterflies, but the final scene of Baekhyun's life in this story isn't gonna be him sobbing to himself so...)

Summary no. 2 - Kittens are super cute, Kai's become trapped under their spell, Tao's gonna fall in love with them (psh maybe), and can I hear any guesses about who you think the 6 male kittens will turn out to be?? 

Summary no. 3 - Sehun's totally in lurve and he just doesn't know it yet. 

Until next time (when I take all your faves and stomp all over their poor squealing hearts and give you glorious updates)

<3 Rosie

:(((((