The Cat Was Waiting
By Thursday morning, the stray cat had developed a schedule.
It appeared outside the building at eight-ten, sat beneath the broken bit of guttering until someone opened the front door, and then looked disappointed by the entire human race.
Julian had been watching from the window while making woodland-finish coffee, which was what Elias called it when Julian left the grounds in too long.
“It has opinions,” Elias said from the kitchen doorway.
“It’s a cat.”
“So are most opinionated things.”
The cat looked up at their window.
Julian looked away first.
Behind him, Maurice the dramatic plant leaned towards the glass as if attempting to witness the confrontation. Maurice had been leaning dramatically ever since Elias had moved in, though Julian maintained this was because the plant was seeking better light.
Elias maintained it was because Maurice distrusted him.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Julian said.
“I’m not the one who named a plant Maurice.”
“Maurice has earned his name.”
“He has one leaf.”
“He has history.”
Elias smiled, but it faded before it properly arrived. He took Julian’s ugly duck mug from the draining board and filled it with coffee.
The mug had a yellow duck on it wearing a knitted blue hat. Nobody knew where it had come from. Julian had owned it for years. Elias had used it once and, somehow, it had become his.
That was how things happened in the flat.
A mug. A drawer. The left side of the sofa.
Small claims made without paperwork.
A Very Serious Errand
“We need cat food,” Elias said.
“We don’t.”
“The cat has been waiting outside for four mornings.”
“It might be waiting for someone else.”
“It looked directly at you.”
“It may have been judging my coffee.”
“Then it has excellent instincts.”
Julian turned towards him. “We are not getting attached to an animal that has not even introduced itself.”
“That’s fair. We should ask its name.”
“The cat doesn’t have a name.”
“Exactly. It’s rude to expect us to provide breakfast without knowing what to call it.”
Julian gave him a look.
Elias lifted both hands. “Fine. We’ll buy one small tin. A provisional tin.”
“Provisional?”
“Emotionally provisional.”
“That’s not how cat food works.”
“Everything is provisional until someone gives it a name.”
The sentence settled between them.
The creaky floorboard near the hallway gave a long, complaining squeak.
Elias glanced down. “Even the floorboard participates in difficult conversations.”
“It has always been an active member of this household.”
“Does it have a name?”
“Not yet.”
“See? We’re already failing.”
Julian reached for his jacket. “We’re going to the corner shop. We are buying food. We are not naming anything.”
Elias picked up the ugly duck mug and took one last drink.
“Of course,” he said. “And the sock shelf is load-bearing.”
“It is.”
“It contains three socks.”
“The shelf is carrying the emotional weight of the flat.”
“Much like me.”
Julian paused with one arm in his coat.
Elias said it lightly. Almost.
That was the trouble with Elias. He could put a joke around a wound so neatly that Julian sometimes missed the blood.
The Walk Down
Outside, the air had the damp, grey freshness of a morning that had not yet decided whether to become unpleasant.
They walked side by side towards the corner shop. Their shoulders brushed twice before either of them adjusted. The adjustment lasted approximately six steps.
This was an MM romance made of unexpected places: a stairwell, a shop aisle, a pavement where neither man quite knew what to do with his hands. Not grand declarations. Not cinematic rain. Just Julian carrying his keys and Elias carrying a reusable bag, both of them pretending the distance between them was accidental.
“Names,” Elias said.
“No.”
“We need possibilities.”
“We don’t.”
“What about Arthur?”
“Too dignified.”
“Biscuit?”
“Too obvious.”
“Julian Junior?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Elias Junior?”
“I don’t think that’s how cats work.”
“You’re making assumptions.”
They reached the crossing. A bus rolled past, spraying a thin fan of water against the kerb.
Elias watched it go.
“What about Theo?” he said.
Julian’s steps slowed.
They had spoken Theo’s name before, but carefully. Theo belonged to memory now, to the quiet room in Elias’s mind where certain conversations still waited. He had been Elias’s late friend, not a ghost and not a rival. Just someone whose absence had changed the shape of several years.
“Theo would hate being named after a cat,” Elias said.
“You think?”
“He’d say the cat had terrible manners.”
“He’d be right.”
“And then he’d teach it worse ones.”
Julian looked at him. “You miss him.”
Elias nodded once. “Sometimes it’s like missing a person and missing the version of yourself who existed when they were here.”
Julian did not try to solve that. He had learned, slowly, that love was not always an answer. Sometimes it was standing at a crossing while the lights changed and allowing someone to miss the dead without making the moment about your fear of being left among the living.
They crossed.
The Argument in the Pet-Food Aisle
The corner shop was narrow, overheated, and determined to stock twelve kinds of crisps but only one brand of cat food.
Elias picked up the tin.
“This one is chicken.”
“Cats like chicken.”
“Some cats are vegetarian.”
“No cat is vegetarian.”
“Some cats have personal journeys.”
Julian took the tin from him. “This is why we can’t be trusted with a pet.”
They stood shoulder to shoulder in the aisle.
The closeness should have felt ordinary by now. It did not. Ordinary was still something they were building.
“What would you call it?” Julian asked.
Elias looked at the tin rather than him. “I don’t know.”
“That’s unusual.”
“I’m considering the consequences.”
“Of naming a cat?”
“Of naming anything.”
The humour slipped out of the aisle.
Elias set the tin back on the shelf.
“When something has a name,” he said, “you can’t pretend it’s temporary.”
Julian waited.
Elias rubbed his thumb along the edge of the reusable bag. “The flat already has names for everything. Maurice. The ugly duck mug. The load-bearing sock shelf. That ridiculous floorboard.”
“The floorboard is called Gerald.”
“You said it didn’t have a name.”
“It has one now.”
Elias gave him a tired smile. “Exactly.”
Julian understood then.
The flat was full of things that had been there before Elias. The furniture had history. The mugs had history. Even the coffee had a past, dark and bitter and apparently capable of staining a spoon.
Elias had arrived later.
Newest thing in the room. Newest thing in Julian’s life.
Possibly temporary.
“I’m not asking you to name me,” Elias said.
“I know.”
“I’m not asking you to make promises because there’s a cat outside.”
“I know.”
“But sometimes I feel like everything here belongs to a story that started before me.”
Julian’s chest tightened.
The shop’s refrigeration unit hummed behind them. Somewhere near the till, a packet of crisps fell from a display with a small, tragic rustle.
“I kept the Luigi’s menu,” Julian said.
Elias looked at him.
“On purpose,” Julian added. “I thought I was keeping a piece of the past. I didn’t realise I was also making room for you to be afraid of it.”
Elias’s expression changed, but only slightly.
“Julian.”
“I’m not saying you’re a replacement for anything. You’re not the newest temporary thing in the flat.”
“That sounds almost reassuring.”
“It was meant to be fully reassuring.”
“You need practice.”
“I’m aware.”
Elias looked at the cat food. “So what are you saying?”
Julian reached for the tin again.
“I’m saying we can give the cat a name because it keeps coming back. And we can buy food because we expect to see it tomorrow.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then we’ll worry.”
“That’s not a very convincing commitment.”
“It’s honest.”
Elias breathed out through his nose. “Fine. Honest is acceptable.”
A Name That Stayed
They bought the chicken.
They also bought treats, which Julian insisted were unnecessary and Elias insisted were an investment in diplomatic relations.
Outside the shop, they stood beneath the faded awning and considered the cat’s future.
“Not Promise,” Elias said.
Julian raised an eyebrow.
“You were thinking it.”
“I was not.”
“You absolutely were.”
“It’s a good name.”
“It’s an intimidating name.”
“It’s a cat.”
“It’s a cat who may one day knock a glass off the windowsill while maintaining eye contact.”
“Then it should understand the responsibility.”
Elias laughed. It was a small laugh, but a real one.
They tried several more names.
Moss.
Sunday.
Gerald, in honour of the floorboard.
Nothing stayed.
Then Julian said, “What about Here?”
Elias turned to him.
“Here?” he repeated.
“It keeps waiting here.”
“That’s not a proper name.”
“Neither is Maurice.”
“Maurice is extremely proper.”
They walked back towards the building.
Elias considered it. “Here.”
“It’s simple.”
“It’s also a command.”
“Only if you say it like one.”
Elias stopped just before the entrance. “Here.”
The word did something to Julian.
Not because it was romantic. Not because it sounded like a vow.
Because it described a place.
Because it could be said at the door, in the kitchen, from the sofa. Because it meant presence without demanding permanence from anyone who was still learning how to believe in it.
The cat was waiting beneath the guttering.
It stood when they approached, stretched, and inspected the bag.
“Here,” Elias said.
The cat blinked.
Julian opened the tin.
The cat walked towards them.
The Shape of Home
They fed it just inside the entrance, out of the rain.
Not inside the flat. Not yet.
Elias sat on the bottom stair while Julian crouched beside the bowl. Their knees touched.
The cat ate with the grim concentration of someone who had endured a difficult morning.
“Here,” Elias said again.
This time, the cat looked up.
Julian glanced at him. “I think it likes the name.”
“It likes chicken.”
“Don’t undermine the moment.”
“Sorry. I’ll respect the ceremony.”
There was no ceremony, of course.
No witnesses. No flowers. No formal announcement that Elias belonged in the flat, or that Julian intended to make room, or that the past could remain without taking up every available chair.
But when they went upstairs, Elias put the empty food tin in the recycling.
Then he left the reusable bag by the door.
Then, after a pause, he moved his shoes neatly beneath the coat rack instead of carrying them back to the room where he kept the things he had not fully unpacked.
Julian watched from the kitchen.
“Are you staying?” he asked.
Elias looked at him.
The creaky floorboard squeaked behind them.
“Gerald agrees,” Elias said.
Julian smiled. “That wasn’t my question.”
“No,” Elias replied. “But I think I know the answer.”
He crossed the kitchen and stood close enough that Julian could feel the warmth of him.
The flat still held the past. Theo still existed in the shape of Elias’s silences. The Luigi’s menu remained in the drawer. Maurice leaned dramatically towards the window. The ugly duck mug waited beside the sink, and the sock shelf continued to support far more than three mismatched socks had any right to ask of it.
Nothing had been erased.
But something had been named.
Outside, the cat waited by the door.
Here.
And for two men learning that a gay love story could be an emotional journey through errands, old fears, and shared household objects, that was enough for one morning.
Not forever.
Not yet.
Just here.
Read with Pride: Stories that stay with you
For emotionally invested MM readers, Julian and Elias’s story is built from the small decisions that make love believable: walking to the corner shop, sharing a mug, making room in a drawer, and finding language for fears that have been waiting quietly in the hallway.
This is character-driven queer fiction for readers who love an emotional MM romance literary in spirit: tender, domestic, slyly funny, and unafraid of the complicated parts of staying. Explore more LGBTQ+ ebooks, gay love stories, queer fiction, and heartfelt gay novels through Read with Pride or visit Dick Ferguson’s Read with Pride store.
Three possible next instalments
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The Spare Key on the Blue Ribbon: Julian finds an old spare key in the ugly duck mug and jokes that Elias should have it. Elias treats the offer like a life-changing document, while Julian quietly confronts why giving someone access still feels more frightening than being loved.
-
The Night the Flat Lost Its Power: A blown fuse leaves the men navigating the flat by torchlight. Without screens, coffee machines, or the familiar hum of appliances, Elias admits which parts of silence make him panic, and Julian discovers that darkness can sometimes make honesty easier.
-
The Window Box That Refused to Grow: Elias tries to plant herbs beneath the window where Here waits, but everything wilts except one stubborn shoot. As they argue over whether care should feel effortless, the men realise that some things survive not because they are naturally strong, but because someone keeps checking the soil.
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