#lucky someone was there to talk him down from that one - macavity isn't exactly the merciful sort

[the-cat-at-the-theatre-door]

“You don’t have to do this.”

"You don't have to do this."

Demeter's voice comes from somewhere behind Alonzo's shoulder, thin and reedy but heavy with intent. She is frighteningly calm, all things in considered, though Mungojerrie can hear the tail edge of something foreign tightening each syllable.

The decided emphasis of the statement gives Alonzo a solid beat of pause; he's hearing what Demeter is saying, but, more importantly this time around, he's deliberating it. It's gotten through to him. Mungojerrie sees every millimeter of muscle beneath his eye twitch and shift. He holds his breath.

The speed at which Mungojerrie had been off his paws and slammed back against the wall was - admittedly - startling, knocking the wind and words clean out of him. He'd been midsentence, explanatory excuse just on the tip of his tongue, attempting to keep pace with the cats walking with him, but every time he caught up front, they continued on. Alonzo wouldn't even look at him - that should have been his first warning.

They'd been silent amongst themselves when he'd made his meager attempt at explanation. Even Teazer was frighteningly quiet, trailing hesitantly behind Demeter, in the way that suggested whatever she'd seen back in that room hadn't been good. The silence had been deafening and uncomfortable, tension thick and wounded like a noose set to decorate a neck, and every nervous bone in Mungojerrie's body screamed to fill it, interrupt it - say something that would diffuse everything and stitch them back together instead of feeling like he'd been trapped behind glass, screaming and screaming with no one around to make it mean anything.

He'd said the wrong thing; he could feel it the moment it whistled through his teeth. He'd said the wrong thing, done the wrong thing, pissed off the wrong cats. Or just one of the wrong cat; the most important of wrong cats. And they'd all surely pay for that slip up down the line. But it could be smoothed over; surely everything could.

The last thing he had heard before being suspended was a sharp, flat exhale - a decisive, frustrated kind of noise that, perhaps if he were paying more attention to his surroundings instead of his fear, Mungojerrie would have recognized as something foreboding.

Now, he was face-to-face with a very angry looking tomcat, and struggling a solid few inches off the ground, every instinct in his body screaming at him to escape, lash out and yowl like his tail was on fire, do something, but he was completely frozen. Alonzo held onto the scruff of his chest firmly, shoving his nose into Mungojerrie's muzzle and the rest of him bodily into his space so he couldn't look away from him even if he tried. There were bright coals of anger burning in Alonzo's eyes, fanned to life with an undercurrent of fear. Danger. A reminder - Mungojerrie thought distantly as his attempts at squirming free from an iron grip slowed to a trickle, then an icy stop - of how he'd gotten to be where he was in the first place. It was easy to forget; easy to pretend they were playing one long hauled game. Alonzo was grumpy and aloof, but never dangerous. Never any real threat.

There is a scar running through his lip and up into his nose, deep and pulled taught against his snarl. Mungojerrie wonders where he got it. He'd never asked.

"What the fuck were you thinking?" the larger tomcat growled, low, menacing, cold, shaking him for emphasis. "What is the matter with you?"

Send me a sentence and I’ll fill at least five more in after it for a little mini-fic.