Backdated - Kevin and Catseye

[x-catseye.livejournal.com]

Both restlessly waiting for news of Yvette's surgery, Catseye and Kevin try to distract themselves.

By nature, cats were very patient creatures. They could stalk prey for days, could stare at walls or the sky or a bug or a leaf for hours. They spent most of their time napping and bathing, which seemed to require a lot of patience when one did it properly. It was perhaps a testament to how much Catseye was becoming humanized by the fact that she was being driven insane by the wait in the hospital during Yvette's surgery. The catgirl's patience was non-existent where her friend's life was concerned. She'd wanted to stay with the others in the waiting room, not wanting to miss anything, but after napping on each lap, staring at the television, staring at a bouquet of flowers at the nurses station, staring at the nurses, staring at the blinking lights on the nurses desks that monitored patients' call buttons, being read to, and sharpening her claws on a few of the waiting room chairs, she was incredibly bored. She had now taken to utilizing her time by bathing her friends. At least bathing was something useful! With a swish of her tail she jumped down from Angel's lap and moved on to her next victim- Kevin. Except Kevin might prove problematic to bathe. Pondering how she was going to go about it, Catseye paused and cocked her head, staring up at Kevin, tail swishing.

Kevin had been watching the purple cat. His sketchpad had quick pencil and pen line drawings of her staring at the television, the nurses, the flowers, the lights, her friends and so on and so forth. She was the one with the most motion and so she had become the natural subject of his attention. When she left Angel, who was either the second or third person to have found herself with a little sandpaper tongue lapping at her skin, she had come and sat down in front of Kevin. His eyes narrowed at the feline who seemed to be either forming a plan of attack or pondering whether or not his head could be made flat enough to act as a perch. "Don't even think about it," he muttered so quickly that the words all ran into one another.

"Mrrrrrrrrrrrrrt?" the cat questioned, and touched Kevin's pantleg with a tentative paw. Whatever does Kevin mean? She gave him her best innocent look. Instead of bathing him, she leapt up into his lap, careful of his skin, and stared at his sketchbook, pawing at it interestedly.
Kevin pointed a finger at the girl in the catsuit, the tip of the gloved digit no more than a hair's breadth from her nose. "No lickin'. Not me or the drawings or anythin' else. Ah don't need a tongue bath. But if you wanna lookit the pictures that's ok."

Catseye gave him a very un-catlike look, that seemed to say that she thought everyone needed a tongue bath once in a while, but she turned her attention to the drawings. She prompted Kevin to change the pages by placing her paw on his glove, and made little noises of appreciation when she really liked them. When he'd flipped a few pages, and she thought his thoughts were occupied elsewhere, she licked his pantleg, watching him out of the corner of her eye surreptitiously as if she wasn't watching him at all, and going back to the sketchbook completely innocently, thinking maybe he hadn't noticed.

Kevin had finally relaxed a bit. The furry body taking up space in his lap had an oddly normalizing effect on the teenager. The tension in his body was leaking away like the last of the water after you'd been caught in a downpour. Another page was turned, then motion was noted. It was a small motion, just the bowing of a furry head. She hadn't even had to bow down all that much considering her positioning. Kevin arched up an eyebrow but he wasn't sure if he'd seen right or if he was imagining things. Nah, she probably just licked her paw or sniffed him or something. That was all. He waited for the next paw tap and then flipped the page to the next one automatically.

Seeing that she'd gotten away with it the first time, Catseye licked his knee again, and again. The fabric didn't taste at all good, but it wasn't about taste, after all. It was about comforting, and about being useful and about having something to do besides waiting and worrying. She began to purr in his lap as she looked at the pretty pictures and washed his knee.

Kevin's eyes narrowed. No, apparently he wasn't imagining that. He scooped the feline up and then held her up so they were nearly nose to nose. "What did Ah say about no tongue baths? You remember the part where Ah said no lickin', right? Bad kitty. No more lickin'?" He was trying to bargain with a cat. Yep, he'd officially lost it. Everyone knew you couldn't negotiate with a cat.

Catseye squirmed out of his hold and jumped down onto the floor, then shifted into girlform, grinning at Kevin the way the cat just couldn't. "Catseye is sorry," she replied, in a not-at-all-sorry tone. "Catseye is tired of waiting. Catseye wants Yvette to be better now, and if she can't be better now then Catseye wants something to do."

Kevin closed the sketch pad and stood up. "Alright, then c'mon. Let's go be useful." He nodded toward the door, then stared at her arm for a moment. After some thought, his hand wrapped around her upper arm and he led her out of not just the waiting room but out of the clinic altogether. "We came to help people originally. Might as well keep it up since there's nothin' we can do for 'Vette. They'll tell us when somethin' changes."

Cocking her head in curiosity, Catseye let Kevin lead her willingly. "What does Kevin want to do? Look for more mines? Help build things or fix things? Drive things somewhere?"

"Build things. Ah can't survive mines and it'll get some of your restlessness out." Not to mention he was a little terrified of the idea of her driving. Him driving things places likely wouldn't distract her for long. "Unless you just really wanna stretch out like a lazy cat on the dashboard and go to sleep while we drive stuff places."

Catseye pondered this last idea, tail lashing in thought. "Can Catseye lay on the dashboard while Kevin tells her about driving and lets Catseye watch?" She was always eager to learn more about driving, and enjoyed observing different people for their different habits. "And Kevin will drive Catseye and Kevin to a place where they can build things? And then maybe Catseye can drive back to the hospital?" she added quickly in a hopeful, innocent voice. "Catseye is a veryverygood driver!"

"If Catseye promises to pull over and give up the steering wheel if Ah tell her she needs to then, yeah, she can drive back to the hospital." He probably should have worried about that whole international driving license thing, but as long as no one got pulled over or run over or anything it would be alright. Right? Just what he'd need, international police trouble to compound his domestic ones.

"Catseye promises. Catseye will drive fast because she does not want to leave Yvette for very long, but not toofast because Catseye knows about being a safe driver from the book Catseye is reading." Driving was quite possibly the only thing that successfully took her mind off of the worry she felt for her friend. "Catseye does not want to drive toofast and hurt Kevin and have two friends in the hospital! And Catseye does not want to go to the hospital either." She frowned. Something wasn't right there. "Catseye wants to go to the hospital, to wait for Yvette, but not be hurt in the hospital."

"Okay, okay, Ah gotcha." Having a catgirl potentially kill him by crashing a car was distracting and it seemed to captivate her attention more than adequately. "So maybe we'll just go drivin' around and you can watch and Ah'll tell you stuff and then we'll swap and see how you do, okay? But no driving too fast." After a moment he added, "And no more baths!"


She waggled her tongue at him threateningly before erupting in giggles. "Alright, Catseye promises no more baths."