Page 31 of Conflict Conclusion

“I do,” Leon said, and James let out a soft breath. “And since you’re her owner, darlin’, I guess that means this could be your forever home, too. If you want it to be.”

“Is that what you want?”

Leon gave him one more squeeze before striding across the apartment to toss Yarmen gently into the office. He closed the door and turned on his heel, facing down his boyfriend, his new cat, and his future.

“Yes, my love, that’s what I want. I want to wake up every morning and go to sleep every night with you by my side. I want to—” Yarmen gave a plaintive yowl from inside the room, to which Purrsephone answered with her own loud meow. “—listen to the cries of our children, and ignore them because they’re both little, furry attention whores.”

Leon received two dimples this time, and he strode back across the kitchen to James’ side. “I want to go visit your mom, Howard, and Linda and have Aspen, Noah, Charlie, and whoever else over to our place. I want to watch TV with you on the couch after work and bicker over whose turn it is to do the dishes or who left their clothes in the laundry.”

James’ smile didn’t waver, but a light sheen spread across his eyes. “I want that, too. All of that. I want you to roll your eyes at me when I forget to turn off the lights, and I want to carpool to work so we can hold hands all the way up to our offices. I want to⁠—”

Purrsephone flicked him in the face with her tail, and he spluttered as her fur undoubtedly got in his mouth. Leon wrapped an arm around his waist and gently batted Purrsephone’s tail out of the way.

“I want a whole lot of things,” James said, turning his glassy blue eyes on Leon. “But first, I want to figure out what we’re going to do with her tonight.”

Leon had already thought about that on the way home. Yarmen very rarely came into the bedroom. When he was younger, he liked to sit on Leon’s face in the middle of the night until finally Leon got tired of waking up suffocating. He’d kept his door closed for several years until Yarmen had stopped trying to get in. They would need to find a way to block off the bed, both for their sake and for Purrsephone’s as she healed. Thankfully, he didn’t have anything else in the room that was jumping height, except maybe the end tables. That would be easy enough to fix by leaving the drawers open, at least for a few days.

He wheeled James into the bedroom, shutting the door and leaving him by the bed as he went in search of some of his extra cat supplies. He had a new set of food and water bowls, as well as a bed that Yarmen had taken one look at and walked away from. He was also still working his way through the gigantic bag of gay pride cat toys James had bought him the year before.

With a little huffing and grunting—he was hungry, tired, and it had been a long day no matter how much he tried to reassure James—he pulled everything out and began setting up a corner of the room for Purrsephone.

“We do seem to like this little corner,” James said, walking over to stand next to where Leon was kneeling.

It took him a moment to understand, but then he glanced over at his nightstand, where he still kept the “love scrapbook” James had given him on Valentine’s Day in this very corner.

“Might as well keep making good memories here,” Leon said.

James nudged him gently with his knee, and Leon wrapped an arm around his leg, snaking his hand up a little higher on his inner thigh than strictly necessary.

“Leon,” James murmured, but the way he pressed into the touch did little in the way of chastising him.

“Give me two more minutes to build a pillow and blanket wall, and then I will happily continue,” Leon said.

“We need to eat,” James said, as Leon went back into his closet for extra comforters, blankets, and pillows.

“We should also probably try to give Purrsephone a sponge bath,” James said, as Leon worked around the bed.

“And Yarmen should probably be let back out. Does he need to be fed? Oh gosh, we should probably feed Purrsephone, too. Can she eat Yarmen’s food?”

Leon grunted as he pulled open his nightstand drawer. Bright blue caught his eye, and with only a moment’s consideration, he pulled out a bottle of lube and James’ internal strap.

“We do, maybe tomorrow, yes, yes, and I’m sure it’s fine for tonight,” he said, pulling off his shirt and tossing it towards the somehow almost full hamper in the corner.

James gaped at him, and Purrsephone looked equally unimpressed.

“Uhm, okay, so—” James started to say.

“So,” Leon said, hooking his thumbs in the waistband of his joggers. “You’re going to put our orange princess down, let her start to explore the space without us hovering, and then you’re going to fuck me into our bed. Everything else can wait a little while longer.”

James’ bottom lip began to quiver, and Leon wondered if he’d fucked up their evening by being too pushy.

“Our bed…in our room.”

Leon walked around the side of the bed so he could cup James’ cheeks. He got a very clear smack to the chest from Purrsephone’s tail, but he ignored her in favor of pressing a soft kiss to James’ lips. “It’s all ours, darlin’. The cats, the apartment, the future…ours.”

Tears glittered in James’ eyelashes, but they didn’t fall. He gave Leon a peck on the cheek before taking Purrsephone to her corner. He laid her down, so gently, on the cat bed. She stared up at him like he’d hung the moon before she slowly stood up and peered around.

“Okay, Purrsephone. You stay out of troub—” she darted between James’ legs and began scoping out the place, alternating every few steps on her front paw and off. “Oh god, you’re not supposed to⁠—”