Chapter Text
“Delivery!” Noel announced as he made his way into the apartment. He kicked the door shut behind himself, humming as sauntered into the kitchen.
“Delivery?” John questioned from the floor, looking up from the coloring book in front of him with big eyes. Noel poked his head around the corner to see him in the living room, and he gave him a big grin before slipping away.
“A delivery for one Arthur Lester!” Noel said loudly as he set the box down on the kitchen table.
John gasped, and he spun around where he sat to face Arthur, who looked entirely confused as he looked up from his book.
“Why do I have a delivery?” Arthur asked. He marked his spot in his book with his magnifier and got to his feet to shuffle into the kitchen. John hopped up as well with his plush lamb, Buttercup, in his arms. He followed Arthur into the kitchen where Noel looked for a knife to open the box.
“The address is from Arkham,” Noel said with a shrug. “I think it’s your things left from your old apartment.”
“Well, I had more than just one box worth of things, but…” Arthur sighed, and he tried to pick up the box to weigh it in his hands. “I suppose this is better than nothing, then.”
“Maybe there’s more coming?” John suggested, gnawing on his finger anxiously. “Why’s it here?”
“When the police station closed the investigation on Parker and—what was his name?” Noel asked.
“Eddie,” Arthur supplied.
“Right, Eddie,” Noel said with a nod. “When they closed the investigation on Parker and Eddie, they released some of the evidence, and I arranged to get Arthur’s things sent here.”
“How do they know what’s Arthur’s?” John asked. He leaned over as Noel cut open the box to get a good look at what laid inside.
“They should just be sending what was in his bedroom,” Noel explained. He sliced the tape that held the box closed and flipped open the sides of the box.
“Let’s see what they managed to get,” Arthur said, reaching into the box. Amongst the paper and straw that packed things tightly into the box, Arthur first found a bottle of cologne and a pocket watch. “Well, at least they didn’t manage to crack the glass on these,” he said, turning them over to make sure they weren’t damaged.
“Lemme smell,” John asked, leaning closer to the cologne.
“You want to smell this?” Arthur asked, amused as he unscrewed the lid enough to give John a sniff. John wrinkled his nose up and shook his head. “Not a fan?”
“Smells like trees…” John grumbled, and he tried to cover his nose with Buttercup.
Noel laughed at that, and he leaned in for Arthur to give him a whiff. “Not bad,” he said with a shrug. “You should wear that instead of that jasmine one you wear, now.”
“What’s wrong with jasmine!” Arthur fussed, and Noel had to laugh.
“I like your cologne, Arthur…” John said sheepishly. Arthur cooed, and he kissed the side of John’s head.
“Thank you, John,” he said, and Noel rolled his eyes. “Glad someone thinks I smell nice.”
John giggled, and he reached a hand into the box to take something out. He pulled out a pair of reading glasses and a couple of books. Uninterested, John tossed them down on the table and reached back in with a clumsy hand.
“And what do you think you’re doing, my darling?” Arthur asked. John froze with his hand in the box. “These are my things, so don’t you think I should unpack them, hm?”
“Okay, you can do it…” John said, blushing. He cuddled Buttercup to his chest and stepped over to Noel’s side.
“You just got excited, didn’t you, love?” Noel cooed. He ran a hand through John’s hair, and John nodded, leaning into Noel’s side. Arthur huffed a laugh, and he reached in to find more of his belongings. He pulled out a couple more books, his tarnished wedding band, and even a couple of his old ties. “They didn’t bother with clothes it looks like,” Noel said with a laugh.
“Maybe those are coming separately,” Arthur grumbled. “Though, I’m not sure how much of my old wardrobe will even fit anymore,” he said. He didn’t mean for it to sound like he was upset necessarily at the weight gain. In fact, that he hadn’t withered away to nothing after all he had been through made Arthur incredibly grateful. As it turned out, consistent hot meals and three partners that insisted on taking care of him made a massive difference, and Arthur did love it. But…there was an inconvenience to sorting through ill-fitting clothes that he didn’t necessarily want to deal with. In a way, Arthur hoped the clothes might be lost in the post forever.
“We’ll sort it out,” Noel said with a little dismissive wave.
“Is that all there was in the box?” John asked. One of his fingers found its way between his teeth, and he gnawed on the skin anxiously, staring at the mess of straw and paper strewn across the dining table.
“Uh, we’ll see for sure, hang on,” Arthur said with a shrug. He pulled out the rest of the stuffing, and he shuffled his way over to the garbage can to dispose of the mess of straw.
“…What in the world?” Noel furrowed his brow in confusion and picked up what appeared to be—“Is this a dog collar?” he questioned.
“What?” Arthur said quickly, his head snapping up as he looked at just what Noel picked up.
It was hard to see given the state of Arthur’s poor vision, but he would recognize the jingly bell on that collar anywhere. The collar was mostly black with white and yellow stars patterned across the fabric, and a little bell hung from the ring in the center along with a bronze cat head tag, a twinkly little noise emanating from it with every little movement.
Arthur’s cat collar. The collar he got with Parker. The collar meant for when he…
No, no, no. Arthur couldn’t think about it. He couldn’t think about being a cat too hard. He couldn’t think about Parker or their relationship, their special time… No matter what Parker would tell him about emotional honesty, Arthur couldn’t do it.
“The tag has text on it…” Noel said, but before he could read it, Arthur snatched the collar out of his hands. “Arthur?”
“I-I don’t know what this is doing here, this is—uh—I-I don’t, um—I’m going to just take this stuff to our room!” Arthur said, and he gathered up as much as he could carry, running off to his and John’s room as quickly as his legs could move, and he slammed the door shut.
Arthur sat on the bed with his collar in his lap. He glared down at it, cursing the object for showing up in his life after everything finally, finally, settled down. He didn’t need this to happen. He didn’t need cat time. He didn’t need this thing that was just between him and Parker to rear its ugly head.
Regression was John’s thing. Arthur figured that his cat time as he and Parker tended to refer to it counted as some form of regression, and he was sure if he brought it up to Oscar that he would agree with that assumption. Regressing to the mind of a cat as a way to relax only came about because Parker thought it would be a good idea. He thought it would help Arthur turn off his brain for a while, get his mind on things that made him happy rather than things that made him stressed. But, since it was for him and Parker…Arthur didn’t want it to come back. He wanted to leave the whole regressing thing to John.
Though, Arthur knew that his reaction to seeing his collar again would only make John and Noel ask questions. He needed a story—he had a cat, and that cat died. Maybe he could call it Whiskers, and it would be sad enough to get those two not to ask more questions.
…There was no way that Arthur would get away with that. John knew him far too well to let him get away with a sad sod type of story like that. Shit.
Speak of the devil, though, John knocked on the door, and he pushed it open. “Arthur…?”
Arthur couldn’t hide anything from John, he knew that…
“Come in, darling,” he said with a sigh, and he patted the bed. John shuffled into the room; he still carried his little lamb in his arms, and he had the pacifier Oscar gifted him looped around his finger as he crawled onto their bed. Arthur smiled, and he opened an arm for John to fit himself against Arthur’s side. “Are you feeling smaller, my love?” Arthur asked, and he poked John’s cheek.
“No…” John said with a little giggle. He popped his pacifier into his mouth, and he reached over to pick up the collar. “Can I?” he asked. Arthur sighed, but he nodded.
“I suppose…” he said, so John picked it up and tried to read the tag.
“If lost, return to Parker Yang…” he read, and he looked up at Arthur with confusion on his brow. “Why?”
“Parker thought it was cute, that’s all,” Arthur said. He ran his hands through John’s hair and sighed.
“It’s a cat collar…?” John questioned. It was clear what the real question was there: why did Arthur have a cat collar with Parker’s details on the back?
Arthur braced himself to answer the question. He really, really didn’t want to.
“You have your pacifier and your toys, right?” Arthur started. John nodded, and he adjusted his pacifier in his mouth. “Well, I…I had a collar, ears, and a tail…and a few cat toys like little mice or these little feathers on a string, and a little food bowl…that sort of thing.”
“You acted like a cat?” John asked. Arthur nodded. “That’s cute.”
Arthur huffed a laugh at that, and he took the collar back from John to set it on the bedside table. “It was a long time ago, John,” he said. “I don’t do that anymore; I’m much more contented to take care of my favorite little one. You.”
John huffed, brows furrowed together, and he snuggled in closer to Arthur. “You can be a kitty cat if you want to, Arthur,” he grumbled. “We could play together,” he added. “I’d like a kitty…”
“I don’t think I can let myself be a kitty, John,” Arthur said with a little sigh.
“Why not?” John asked. He leaned more heavily against Arthur until they both flopped against their pillows. “If you couldn’t before because you didn’t got your collar, you’ve got it, now, so you can be a kitty, Arthur!” he tried. It was so sweet to see John so supportive. Arthur’s heart ached for it.
“It’s a little more complicated than that,” he said, and he brushed his fingers through John’s hair. “I was Parker’s kitty, not just…a cat.”
“Oh…” John looked up at him with those big, sad eyes, and Arthur felt pressure behind his own. He couldn’t cry over this. He couldn’t. “D’you wanna talk about it, Arthur…?” John asked, and damn him for being so gentle about this. He was meant to be a toddler mentally, and last time Arthur checked, toddlers didn’t do gentle very well.
“I don’t know if I can talk about it, John…” Arthur said.
He glanced over at the collar again, and Arthur felt a sting in his eyes. He wanted to talk, he really did. Cat time hadn’t even been something for him to consider in so long. Hell, the last time he even got to be a cat was a week before Parker died. A week before everything in Arthur’s life flipped upside down.
When Arthur first even tried to be a cat, Parker suggested it so that he could have a better coping mechanism than drinking himself into an early grave. Arthur acted like a cat and let Parker take care of him as a way to deal with Faroe, to deal with everything that had gone wrong in his life. His wife died, he didn’t even love her as much as he thought he needed to, his baby died because of his negligence, and he father-in-law hated him as far as he was concerned. Even beyond those fresh wounds, Arthur acted like a cat to deal with his parents’ deaths, to deal with his upbringing, his lack of true friendships, his…well, depression, apparently.
Really, he needed Oscar not to point it out so often. Arthur understood. They dealt with it together.
…
……Arthur wondered for a moment, just a moment, what Oscar might think about his cat time.
“Arthur?” John called, snapping him out of his head.
“What?”
John squirmed where he laid, and he dragged Buttercup up to his face. “How come you were a kitty…?” he tried in hopes of maybe getting Arthur to talk to him.
“Uh…” Arthur tried to think of how much of this he wanted John to know. “Parker called it emotional honesty,” he decided on. “It came from an author, Hemingway. “A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not,” was the quote. Parker latched onto the idea and brought it to me whenever I came home too late a few times too many, and…it worked. It felt nice, being cared for…”
John nodded. Of course he understood how that felt. He regressed all the time, even at this moment, so of course being cared for like that was something he understood deeply.
“He liked to, uh, call me the stray cat he picked up off the street,” Arthur recalled with a sad little laugh. “I hated it when he did that…”
“Sounds like he cared a lot…” John said. He sounded so guilty, and Arthur didn’t like that one bit.
“Yes, well, that was just one way to care for someone,” he said with a sigh, and he patted John’s back. “He certainly cared, but the cat thing was always a bit strange…”
John didn’t look entirely convinced of that. Damn him. He watched Arthur’s face for a moment with deep concentration, pacifier bobbing rapidly in his mouth, then he shot up a hand to Arthur’s hair. He scritched at Arthur’s scalp and tried to pet him, which only resulted in Arthur yelping and shooting upright in bed.
“I wanna help!” John whined, and he rolled over in frustration.
“I just said that I’m not a cat anymore, John!” Arthur fussed.
The door opened once more as Noel poked his head in. “I sent him in here to calm you down, not to rile you up, you know,” he said as he leaned into the room.
“He’s bein’ difficult, Noel…” John grumbled.
“Yes, well, that’s our Arthur for you,” Noel said with a chuckle. He took a seat on the corner of the bed just across from Arthur, brow raised quizzically. “So, you regress like John, then?” he asked.
“I did,” Arthur said firmly. “I don’t do it anymore.”
“Is that from lack of trying or lack of interest?” Noel asked. “Because that was a pretty big reaction to seeing that little collar of yours…”
Arthur rolled his eyes at that, and he snatched the collar off the bedside table. “Here, you can see it, I don’t care,” he said. “I’m not a cat anymore because I don’t want to be. It was mine and Parker’s thing, and that was the only reason I did it.”
“So, you never felt like a cat when he wasn’t around, even when he was alive?” Noel asked. “Never decided to get ahead of him, put on your cute little collar and meow around the apartment until he realized you wanted to be a cat?”
“Wha—I—” Arthur huffed, and he crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t have to dignify that with an answer.”
Noel chuckled, and he twirled the collar around his finger. “Sounds like you just did, kitty cat.”
Arthur twisted around to glare at John when he giggled at that.
“Hey, don’t get mad at him for something I said,” Noel said to get his attention back. “Is there another reason you don’t want to be a cat anymore, Arthur?” he asked. “I understand that you and Parker had something special, and I’m not saying that you need to replace that or something…but if liked being a cat because it helped you, then that’s okay.”
“I…” Arthur stared at the collar in Noel’s hands, swallowing thickly. This sucked. “J-John’s small, and that’s already enough to keep track of, I’m sure…”
“Hey!” John whined.
“Try again, Arthur,” Noel said so gently. Arthur wanted to cry.
“It’s hard…” he whined. Arthur squeezed his eyes shut, desperate to keep those damned tears sealed away where they belonged. “I-I don’t want to-to be that…vulnerable. I-it’s too much…”
“We’ll be right here with you, Arthur,” Noel said. “If you’d like, Oscar could even be here to help, too. I bet he’d like to see you with a nice little way to cope like this, and I bet he’d spoil you rotten.”
Why did Noel have to make it sound so enticing? That just wasn’t fair!
“I-I…” Arthur swallowed hard, and he glanced back at John, who stared up at him with big eyes. He turned back to Noel and that patient, sweet smile he usually reserved for John… “C-c-can you…” He sucked in a deep breath. “Can you help put it on…?” he asked, and Noel glanced down at the collar in his hands.
“Yeah, I can help,” Noel said so gently, so quietly. He unclasped the collar, and he wrapped it around Arthur’s neck. “Oh—looks like we might need to adjust it a bit,” he said, though, and Arthur squeezed his eyes shut tight. The ghostly feeling of fabric around his neck stung like ice in a vicelike grip across his throat, burning when he swallowed.
Noel fiddled with the buckle until he adjusted it a bit larger than before. He placed it back around Arthur’s neck, and he clasped it shut. “How’s that?” he asked, scooting it around until he was sure it wasn’t too tight.
“G-good…” Arthur whimpered.
“Are you okay, Arthur…?” John asked. He sat up in bed and scooted just a bit closer, leaning into Arthur’s side.
“Y-yeah…” he managed out, though faintly. John took his hand with a little squeeze, and Arthur sucked in a sharp breath.
“It’s…muh’motional honesty, Arthur…” John mumbled, and Arthur…oh, Arthur crumpled. He gasped out a sob, and the floodgates opened. Arthur cried, and he sobbed, and wailed so miserably as both John and Noel maneuvered around to hold him.
Noel ran his fingers through Arthur’s hair, petting him soothingly as he whispered gentle words in his ear. John rubbed Arthur’s back with a clumsy palm along his spine, rough but full of care. And Arthur just cried, every ounce of grief that he swallowed whole pouring down his face. Kitties weren’t meant to be so sad, but Arthur let himself feel every ounce of sorrow, because kitties didn’t hide their feelings.