I should not find this endearing.
I find this deeply, dangerously endearing.
I back away before either of them wakes and head to the kitchen. Start the coffee. Pull out flour and butter for scones. The familiar motions settle me.
By the time the first batch is in the oven, I hear movement from the storeroom.
Footsteps. Heavy. Then a pause.
"Maris?"
"Kitchen."
He appears, rumpled and squinting against the overhead lights. Hair sticking up on one side. The kitten's perched on his shoulder like a tiny, judgmental parrot.
"Morning," I say, keeping my voice carefully neutral, as if I hadn't just spent the last sixty seconds watching him sleep like some kind of creeper.
"Morning." He looks around the kitchen, taking in the flour-dusted counters and the warm light spilling from the overhead fixtures. His nose twitches slightly. "Smells good."
"Blueberry scones. They'll be ready in about ten minutes." I turn back to the bowl I'm working on, cutting butter into flour with more focus than the task strictly requires. "There's coffee in the pot if you want some."
He nods. Shifts his weight from one foot to the other, making the floorboards creak softly under his considerable mass. Thekitten chirps from its perch on his shoulder, a bright little trill that sounds absurdly cheerful for something that was half-dead yesterday.
"Sleep okay?" I ask, even though the answer's painfully obvious from the dark circles under his eyes and the way he's holding his left shoulder, stiff, like the cot didn't exactly accommodate his frame.
"Cot's small," he says simply. No complaint in his voice. Just statement of fact.
"Yeah. Sorry about that." I fold the dough over itself, press down with the heels of my hands. "It's not really meant for long-term guests. Or, you know, anyone over six feet tall."
"Better than broken glass," he says.
Fair point.
He moves to the sink. Washes his hands. Gentle, methodical. The kitten clings to his shoulder, purring loud enough to hear from across the room.
"You need to name that thing," I say, nodding toward the ball of fluff currently kneading biscuits into his shoulder with needle-sharp claws.
"Already did."
I glance up from the dough. "What?"
"Pebble."
My hands still, mid-stir, butter-coated fingertips suspended over the bowl. I blink at him, certain I've misheard. "Pebble?"
He shifts his weight again, making the floorboards groan in gentle protest, and regards the kitten with the sort of grave consideration most people reserve for naming their firstborn children. "Small," he says, ticking off the qualities on his thick fingers. "Gray. Hard." A pause. His lips quirk—not quite a smile, but close. "Loud when dropped."
Despite myself, despite the early hour and the exhaustion still clinging to my bones and the mental tally of repair costsrunning on a loop in the back of my head, I laugh. It comes out sharper, startled and genuine. "That's terrible."
"Fits," he says, unbothered. Matter-of-fact. The way he says everything.
Pebble, because apparently that's the kitten's name now, God help us all—lets out an indignant meow that could mean protest or agreement or possibly just a demand for more attention. With cats, it's always hard to tell.
Grath sets the kitten down, where it immediately tries to bat at a stray blueberry.
"No," Grath says. Firm. He redirects Pebble with one massive finger. "Not for cats."
The oven timer beeps. I pull out the scones, golden and perfect, and set them on the cooling rack.
