Work Text
When Elias brought the catboy in, no one complained more than the head archivist.
Sasha thought it was a decent idea, even if she had some overall reservations about the ethics. Even Tim, a self-described dog person, was amenable. Jon threw a fit. Which was not entirely unexpected, given the established pattern of behavior.
“You love cats,” Tim pointed out from his desk.
“Yes, I do, but that hardly matters when it comes to work,” Jon replied testily, standing in the doorway to his office with his arms crossed over his chest, as if he expected to have to physically defend the files inside. “This is a research institution.”
“And you need a third assistant,” Elias said calmly, “which the archival budget doesn’t exactly allow for. This is a creative solution. Not to mention the potential for…stress relief, which I think we can all agree is sorely needed in this department.”
Sasha and Tim looked at each other, then at Jon, who bristled indignantly.
“It’s an animal, Elias, it doesn’t belong in the archives.”
“Oh, I’d hardly call him an animal, Jon,” Elias said, and beckoned. “Come in, please…everyone, this is Martin.”
Martin was a beautiful specimen. So enormous Elias might have had suspicions of Maine Coon ancestry, if he hadn’t Known for a fact he was a purebred British longhair. It showed in his face, round and gentle, and in his thick, dense ginger fur. He had a ruff that spilled out of his jumper, a great peach plume of a tail, and a pair of softly rounded ears.
“H-hello,” he said hesitantly, giving a little wave. There was silence from everyone, very much including Jon.
“I’ll leave you all to get acquainted,” Elias said, and went back upstairs.
The next time he went into Jon’s office, he was not entirely surprised to find Martin on his lap, all but crushing him into his chair, a dreamy expression on his face as he kneaded at Jon’s cardigan and purred loudly enough to be heard on the stairs. Jon was leaning around him at an angle that had to be extraordinarily uncomfortable, writing with one hand. The other was buried in the glossy curls on Martin’s head, scratching between his ears.
“You know, I can take him back if he’s not working out,” Elias said.
“Oh, you and what army?” Jon asked scathingly.
Things began to slowly appear in the archives over the next months. Laser pointers, both of the pen variety and one on gimbals that sat on a shelf and traced a pre-programmed pattern over the floor. Feather toys. Plush mice and frogs and lizards. An enormous round bed in Jon’s office that took up nearly as much space as his desk - apparently, it was heated, which Elias imagined came in handy with the perpetual chill of the Institute basement. He wasn’t seeing expense reports for any of it, so Jon must have been spending his own money. How interesting.
“You - y’know, I’m really not a pet,” Elias Heard Martin say once. “I am here to work. If you need anything that isn’t, well, too far from your office…”
“Of course I know that,” Jon said when he trailed off. “But we’ve got it handled for now. Are you hungry?”
Bottles of milk and cream appeared in the break room refrigerator. Cuts of salmon and tuna and even swordfish. Ice cream in the freezer, pastries and boxes of chocolate on the counter - because the “boy” in “catboy” did a decent amount of lifting in the dietary department. If anyone unwittingly touched any of it in spite of the many large and aggressive notes declaring it to be FOR MARTIN, they invited the not-inconsiderable wrath of the head archivist.
Martin was fond of tea. A splash of it somewhere in with the whole milk, Elias assumed, when he saw Jon making a cup for him.
Martin had been plump when Elias acquired him, having had an overly permissive prior owner in some aspects if not others, but under the care of the archival staff (read: almost entirely Jon), he outgrew the clothes he’d come in with in a matter of weeks, very unmistakably beginning to waddle from place to place.
“You’re overfeeding him,” Elias noted, putting two fingers beneath the ample, buttery hang of Martin’s gut - almost three times the size it had been when he’d gotten to the Institute! - and lifting. Judging by the sloshing and Martin’s little mewing grunt of discomfort, he’d recently had his afternoon snack. “Look at this, Jon, and he’s not even fixed.”
“I should - ” Martin began a little indignantly, then had to cut himself off to stifle a burp. “Hope not.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Jon was surrounded by shopping bags. He fished a knit vest out of the tissue paper of one, held it critically up against Martin’s front. “Just ignore him when he whines?”
“Cats aren’t even supposed to drink milk.”
“He’s not a cat.”
And he wasn’t, though really, Elias might have been fooled. Jon didn’t use him for much at all, or really let him do anything, but that mostly seemed to suit Martin just fine. Lounging about in clothes that were bought new just about every week. Draped over Jon, following him around. Purring in his custom bed. He was pampered, content, and growing lazier by the day with Jon spoiling him rotten the way he was…although Elias did have to admit that his good nature remained.
“Martin, have you seen the file for Melanie’s latest statement?” Elias asked one night as he came into Jon’s office. He had his head down, looking at his phone. “I wanted to review it myself.”
“Oh, sure, just - ” The purring stopped abruptly, and Martin began the struggle of levering himself up out of his bed, grunting with the effort. Elias’s eyes moved to the sway of his ample, well-fed belly, spilling out of his pajamas. He’d had a good dinner, it looked like. And dessert, and before-bed snack… “Give me a second to…whew. When do you need it by?”
“I’ll get it.” And that startled Elias, because he hadn’t even noticed that Jon was still at his desk, poring over several open books. “Tim had it last.”
He brushed past Elias, who let him go, then turned to look down at Martin, who offered him a smile. When Jon returned roughly twenty minutes later, swearing to himself about the state of Tim’s desk, it was to Elias sat on the floor with Martin making rather enthusiastic biscuits on his thighs. He was holding a mug for him to lap out of; it was mostly milk. And decaf tea. Couldn’t keep him awake; he needed at least sixteen hours.
Elias looked up, and could swear he saw a flash of jealousy flicker in Jon’s eyes.
“Why are you still here, Jon?” he asked him.
“Well, I can’t leave him alone.” Jon crossed his arms, and Elias cocked his head.
“He’s got me, hasn’t he?”