#THANKS FOR ALL THE SUPPRT AND NICE COMMENTS AND TAGS YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST

[catharrington]

Part 9 cat boy house husband Steve and his milk man Billy au!!! Almost finished y’all. I struggled a little with this because I wasn’t sure who to include in this fall out, but I decided I wanted more cat boy whump 🖤🖤 last part will come up Valentine’s Day 😽

tw: domestic abuse

Tag list: @withoneheadlight @spreckle @harringrovetrashh @magellan-88 (meow if you want me to add ya)

Cry me a river

***

The air of that particular night at Niagara Falls was a different sort of cold. A heavy cold that seemed to hold onto every part of Steve’s skin. Every part of his long, brown fur. The water of the falls soaked his fur through. But also made his hair stand on end. He shivered, his ears flattening to try and make their thin skin warm and his tail tucking in cowardance between his legs.

Richard had scoped Steve up into his arms. His warm, secure, safe arms. Steve felt like it was years ago and not just a single year, but he could still remember how they felt.

Now, the air felt about the same. So damn cold and so damn heavy. Every inch of his hybrid self stands on end.

But today, Richard wasn’t the type to reach his arms out. To scoop Steve into safety. It turns out; he never was.

Now, his hand was a weight against his neck. A glinting silver bell. A present of a kitty cat under a Christmas tree. Suffocating under the tightness of its velvet red collar around its throat. Steve opened his mouth to try and breath through the tightness, but he couldn’t. He could only wait breathlessly for his husband's reply.

“You want a what?” He whispered in a soft disbelief.

The hand laxed slightly. Slipping as if untied. The child finally growing bored of his shiny, new play thing.

Steve swallowed thickly. Turning half his body towards his typewriter. The cigarette that was burning between his kissed raw lips tumbled down on the wooden surface. It was kept clean by his well use. The only resting place Steve felt truly his own in this cage of a home.

But now the ash that lingered on the tip of Steve’s cigarette while his husband tried to retain the collar of control spilled out over the clean surface. Smeared black and filthy across the light colored wood. He held his hand out as if to touch the burning ashes, but stopped short. Only laid his arm across the well used desk top. Then he flexed his claws to scrape jagged lines that matched the shivering fear he felt.

“A divorce. I don’t wish to be married to you any longer.” He said to those lines. The snap shot in time of the shaky wounds that should have been ‘happily ever after’.

Mr. Smith’s eyes were heavy on the back of his head. But then the feeling went away with a heavy sigh from the other man. Like he was disappointed. Like he couldn’t even glare at Steve, he was too ashamed to look at him.

For the first time since Steve’s been sitting upright waiting for his husband’s attention, he finds himself content without it.

“You can’t,” his husband starts and then stops. Another large and long sigh. “You can’t just say that to me.”

“Why can’t I?” Steve asks downwards to his claws.

“Because this is more than a damn marriage, this is a deal. A contract—,”

“Contracts can be broken? Can they not, or rewritten?” Steve prods. He knows he’s right but for so long he’s always spoken in a softer questioning tone.

There’s a snarl in his voice, today, breaking though the surface. Twirling and whirling around like freshly poured milk. Overtaking the coffee until it changed the color of the inside of his mug completely.

“This is because of him?” His husband asks disbelievingly.

And Steve wants to bite back the first words in his lips proclaiming ‘yes, it was’. He wants to laugh and claw the wood under his fingers to sawdust. To rip away any broken, molding, boiling pieces of any life that wasn’t with his milk man. But he only smiles weakly to himself.

Thinks of Billy, his simple milk man. Thinks of their fingers touching only for the briefest of seconds. Lingering between the passing of the chilly cold milk glass, or the well loved pages of Steve’s manuscript.

Thinks of all the time he spent working on those pages. How many times he typed the same page until it was good enough. How he’s always been struggling with being good enough. Being the perfect hybrid trophy. First it was for his father to parade around, and now his husband.

Thinks about how the ears on top of his head have a price sticker like a butcher's cut of meat. And how his husband paid that sticker price, without even knowing him at all.

He’s never read a page of his words. Never even asked to. Just rolled his eyes when the machine Steve had ordered from a Trendy Homes Monthly catalogue arrived right after they moved in. His husband couldn’t care less what Steve prattled on about. As long as he was pretty, and he was his.

Yet Billy, Billy’s soft eyes lingered on his words. His expression. Read those inked pages until they crunkled at the sides. And they radiated warm to the touch under Steve’s frozen cold hands.

It wasn’t fair that such a little thing could mean so much. But Steve got a taste. He poured the milk in his coffee until it was sweet, and now he wanted more.

“Yes, it’s because of him.” Steve replied. His voice is steady. And his hybrid part of him is growing happy. And fond. “But not in the way you mean. It’s because of him I’ve realized I deserve better than this.”

Steve turned to face his husband. His captor. He lifted his hands so his silky robe fell open to reveal his heaving chest. He lifts his hand to motion to the silver bars of their home— his cage all around him.

Mr. Smith doesn’t follow his flourish towards their living room. He’s glaring at Steve right down to his core. To the white bones under his skin. To the places he cannot, could not, would never be able to touch with just his hands. To the places Steve’s still himself. Not just this bastard’s hybrid trophy husband.

“He,” Steve repeated the word with a force behind it that was stronger than any gold band on his finger, “made me realize I deserve to be treated like a person, a human. Not your pet.”

Mr. Smith was close enough to smell his anger. It coiled around his body like sulfur. Like rotten things. Expired things.

He took a step forwards in the way he does, heavy footed across their shiny new floors. The sides of Steve’s robe get yanked up into furious hands. The chair under him tumbles onto its side, making a sickening hollow slap against their floor. And the type writer shifts loudly against the table top as Steve struggles to grab for purchase and knocks into the table.

Steve’s hands find his husband's arms, clawing at the thicker forearms to keep steady in the storm of his anger.

He swallowed thickly. Then, he turned his big brown eyes forward to meet Mr. Smith's head on. To take the punishment one last time.

“You are mine!” The other man roars, his lips baring his human teeth. “My husband! You agreed to this, to be my pet. Or don’t you remember?”

He gave a shake to Steve’s whole body. It made him wince and let out a shameful whimper of pain.

“I offered you money, a home, and you agreed to that. Or has this affair with a goddamn milk man made you as forgetful as you are naive?” Mr. Smiths hands on his robe hurt. It dug the fabric into his arms. And his legs felt like they were dangling off a cliff. Shaking loose like a dead tree as a tornado spins around and around.

Steve’s long taken shelter in the places that don’t seem safe. Curled into himself. Laid his ears flat on his head. And used his tail as his own pillow when he had nothing else.

Kept himself warm with a blanket in the trunk of his car when his father would kick him out and lock the door. And now, in their home, Steve’s got a blanket folded neatly in the kitchen pantry for when his husband kicks him out of their bedroom. Locking the door behind him. And Steve’s got to keep himself warm on the butcher’s hook cold of their couch.

It’s been like this so long he didn’t know it could be any other way. He didn’t know love could be sweet tasting instead of bitter.

He never enjoyed coffee until he poured milk into it.

“I didn’t agree to this,” Steve whispered. “This isn’t love.”

Mr. Smith let one hand go from Steve’s robe and lifted it into the air. He sounded like a hybrid in pain as he brought his hand down. But today, Steve wasn’t the one shivering in fear.