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All things considered, A-Yao thinks he has received a fairly good lot in life.
He has a clowder—a good clowder.
Mingjue is strict and firm but never unreasonable, and Huaisang and Xuanyu take up most of his attention, leaving A-Yao free to roam on his own for the most part.
It’s reassuring to have Mingjue there all the time, watching over and protecting them, but A-Yao likes to have time alone, now and then.
There is also an element of…not quite belonging.
Huaisang and Xuanyu adore Mingjue, and despite his claims to the contrary, it’s clear for anyone to see that he adores them right back. That he would tear the world apart before he’d let anything happen to either of them.
A-Yao is…too competent to have the same need-want relationship with Mingjue, but not nearly strong enough to be Mingjue’s equal. He teeters in some strange in-between, not entirely sure where he belongs.
Certainly, no one would argue that he doesn’t belong in the clowder, and yet…A-Yao can’t help but feel that if one of them were to fall away from the others, that one would be himself.
A-Yao is wandering aimlessly through the twilight, enjoying this time he has just for himself, when he becomes aware that he’s not alone. He freezes in place where he stands on a tree branch, but when he slowly moves his head to look down at the large shadow he has sensed below, the much larger cat is already looking back up at him.
“Hello,” says the puma, entirely too pleasantly. It makes A-Yao’s heart do a strange sort of flip, and he realizes that this must be one of those tricks that are biologically built into predators, that allow them to intimidate and control without seeming to do anything at all.
“Hello?” A-Yao replies, too bewildered to be clever, but he reminds himself—the puma will kill you. It’s a very obvious fact, yet somehow very difficult to remember when he’s looking into those bright, sparkly eyes.
He blinks and looks away. The memory of those eyes does not let him go.
“You’re very lovely,” says the puma, and he sounds impossibly earnest.
You’re very lovely too, A-Yao almost says, but he bites the words back before they make it out.
Barely.
“Would you tell me your name?” asks the puma.
“I—” A-Yao gathers his reason together and remembers to be strong. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“Oh,” says the puma, and he wilts visibly. The sparkle leaves those eyes, and his entire body conveys defeat. The difference is striking, and…deeply upsetting. “I’m so sorry to have bothered you. I just—” The puma shakes his head. “I’m so sorry. I’ll leave you alone.”
And he turns and starts walking away.
A-Yao looks for a trap—for any sign of a trap—but the direction that the puma is walking is the direction opposite the direction A-Yao has come, and there is little cover for the puma to hide and try to loop around to ambush A-Yao.
It makes no sense, which is why A-Yao calls out to the puma, “What are you trying to do?”
The puma looks around, ears just a little perked up, all hope and anticipation. “I…was trying to talk to you?”
The puma’s voice is unsure, just a little shaky, and A-Yao has to dig his claws into the branch beneath him to avoid leaping down and across the distance to go comfort the puma.
“I mean,” A-Yao says carefully, “why are you not going the other way?”
“My home range is this way,” says the puma, cocking his head. “And it seemed that you came from that direction, and I did not want to impose.”
“Why are you talking about imposing when you’re going to kill me?” asks A-Yao, his instincts far too scrambled for his usual tact.
“Kill you?” repeats the puma, sounding thoroughly horrified. “You…you think I want to kill you?”
He sounds almost heartbroken at the very thought. A-Yao blinks down at him.
“Well…yes?”
The puma curls in on himself, like he’s trying to make himself smaller.
“I’m sorry—of course, you’re so little, and I’m…” the most majestic creature on the planet, A-Yao’s brain supplies, unbidden. “Monstrous,” is however how the puma finishes that sentence, sounding grieved, and A-Yao can’t help the hiss that escapes him.
“You,” he says accusingly at the puma, “are gorgeous, and you know it, so stop talking nonsense.”
“You think I’m gorgeous?” says the puma, the sparkles suddenly back in his eyes at full force between one blink and the next.
“It’s an objective fact,” snaps A-Yao. “Why are you acting like this is news to you?”
“Because beauty is…never objective,” says the puma, and now he’s looking up at A-Yao like…like the moon and the stars embodied, and A-Yao is realizing that maybe he’s never felt until this very moment.
“Yours is,” says A-Yao, because he knows that he’s right.
The puma’s tail swishes happily.
“I think,” says the puma, sparkling up at A-Yao, “That you’re the most gorgeous creature in the world. I thought it the moment I saw you. That was why I wanted to talk to you.”
“You,” says A-Yao, incredulous. “Thought I…?”
“You’re gorgeous,” says the puma with an encouraging nod. “Yes. As objectively as beauty could possibly be.”
A-Yao is at a loss for words. It seems impossible—it must be a trick, it must—and yet there is such sincerity in the puma’s words, in his body language, that A-Yao finds his reluctance melting away. Finds himself almost believing.
“I’m called Huan,” says the puma. “You can call me A-Huan, or—”
“Huan-ge,” says A-Yao, without really meaning to. The puma’s eyes light up.
“Yes,” says the puma. “I’d like that.”
“I’m Yao,” says A-Yao, because Huan-ge is…irresistible, in every sense. His claws are still digging into the branch, so hard that his paws are beginning to ache.
“You don’t have to come any closer to me if you’re not comfortable,” says Huan-ge. “We can just talk from a distance, if it would make you feel better.”
“Never any closer than this?” says A-Yao suspiciously.
“Not if you don’t want,” nods Huan-ge.
“Okay,” A-Yao nods decisively. “I’ll meet you here again at twilight tomorrow—but if I see you one step closer to me than this—"
“I won’t,” says Huan-ge, sounding slightly breathless. “I won’t, I promise.”
And A-Yao can’t help but believe him. He watches Huan-ge walk away until he’s disappeared into the distance; he keeps alert all the way back to his clowder. But no puma leaps out at him, and A-Yao wonders—what if he is sincere, after all?
He does not mention the strange, gorgeous puma to Mingjue or Xuanyu, who are in their usual habit of curling up together while Mingjue grooms Xuanyu with his tongue.
Technically, Xuanyu ought to be too old by now for this kitten-like treatment, but he makes a point of curling himself up against Mingjue at every opportunity, and Mingjue only gives a few token grumbles before he begins to lick the pampas cat with barely-concealed dedication and adoration.
“You’re in a strange mood today,” says Huaisang.
“Hm,” says A-Yao, watching Mingjue and Xuanyu and feeling a strange ache in his heart, an emptiness that he’s sure had not been there before. “Just thinking.”
“About what?” asks Huaisang.
A-Yao does not answer, and instead climbs higher up the tree, to a height where Huaisang can no longer follow.
The next day at twilight, A-Yao makes his way to the appointed meeting spot with ample vigilance, aware that at any moment he might run into an ambush.
But no ambush awaits, and when he climbs a tree—a different one from last time, just in case—he sees Huan-ge lying on the ground some distance away, waiting patiently, with no sign of impending aggression.
“Hello,” A-Yao calls this time. Immediately, Huan-ge’s head perks up, and he looks straight at A-Yao.
“Hello, A-Yao,” says Huan-ge, sitting up, and it makes A-Yao’s heart twist to hear his name spoken in that voice. “You’re even more beautiful than I remember.”
He sounds so sincere.
“You can’t say things like that,” says A-Yao.
“Why not?” asks Huan-ge. “It’s what I feel.”
“But…” A-Yao fishes around for an acceptable response. “You’re still so much bigger than me.”
“Yes,” says Huan-ge, and wilts with his whole voice and body once more. “I regret that I scare you. If I could do anything about it, I would.”
“You—” don’t scare me, A-Yao almost says, before he realizes that that will not be particularly helping his case. He bites the words back and glares. “It’s not about fear. It’s about trust.”
“Ah,” says Huan-ge, and cocks his head to the side. “That is very understandable. May I continue to visit you here, just like this, until you feel more comfortable with me?”
“Just like this?” asks A-Yao. “Just talking with so much space between us?”
“I don’t want to encroach on your territory any more than you would want,” says Huan-ge. “But if you have an alternate suggestion, I would be happy to hear it.
A-Yao considers this.
He looks down at Huan-ge.
And—
He would love to say that he doesn’t know why he makes the choice that he does, but the truth is that he does know.
There’s an ache in his heart when he watches Mingjue grooming Xuanyu, the way that Xuanyu just melts against his side. There’s an ache in his soul that has been there since the day he was forced to fend for himself when he was still a kitten, that has been eased by the clowder but has never truly gone away.
There’s something that’s awakened in him since the first sight of Huan-ge and the sparkles in his eyes, and A-Yao can’t help but want, want, want, and there is something in his heart that screams that Huan-ge is the answer to that want.
He has watched Xuanyu with Mingjue, the way that Mingjue unravels just a little bit more for Xuanyu than he does for anyone else. He’s reflected how this was not because Xuanyu had proven himself, but simply because he had been helpless and there, and when he had woken up, he had given all of himself over into Mingjue’s care with unparalleled trust.
A-Yao cannot do any of that. A-Yao cannot let himself be so helpless; has already failed to offer Huan-ge that unconditional trust that Xuanyu had given to Mingjue. Even now, there is a part of him that screams that this is wrong, that he is putting his life in danger by laying anything down before Huan-ge.
But listening to survival instincts and nothing else is no way to live—A-Yao thinks he understands this now, better than he did before he met Huaisang and Mingjue and Xuanyu.
So he leaps down from the tree, branch to branch to ground, and breathes evenly through the racing of his heart as he takes one step, then another, moving ever closer to Huan-ge.
Huan-ge does not move; just sits in place, rigid and alert, eyes sparkling at A-Yao.
It’s his eyes that ease the tension, the terror that grips his heart. It’s his eyes that assure A-Yao that he is making the right choice.
A-Yao lets his feet carry him step by step, forward and forward, until he’s standing right before Huan-ge.
Huan-ge is even bigger than he’d expected up close. A-Yao feels like a kitten again, looking up at the much larger cat.
But Huan-ge scoots backwards, then; lays himself down so that his head is lower even than A-Yao, their eyes still locked together.
“I never want to make A-Yao scared,” says Huan-ge, his voice ever so quiet. “I want A-Yao to feel safe, and happy.”
Sitting as he is above Huan-ge, looking down at him, A-Yao feels his fear ebb away, leaving only joy and triumph and something else so vast that it’s filling up every capillary, every nerve, every fiber in his body and overflowing everywhere. He leans down; touches his nose to Huan-ge’s.
Huan-ge purrs.
The sound hits A-Yao’s heart, it is palpable and powerful, and the vastness is far too much to describe now, it’s a part of A-Yao after all, as maybe it always was, and part of Huan-ge too, because maybe they’ve been two halves all along, and have just been made whole with a touch so that the universe can flow in and through them.
“Huan-ge,” says A-Yao, and his voice sounds like it never has before.
“A-Yao,” says Huan-ge, and the moonlight is in his voice too, now, and A-Yao knows, better than he has ever known anything—
He is where he is meant to be.