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A few weeks ago and maybe he'd have felt differently about this situation.

But even Kay’s stubborn optimism had been worn down under months of rejection and (as he was reluctantly compelled to admit to at least himself) self-sabotage, and what shreds remained had shriveled up and blown away under the one-two punch of Assumption of Heterosexuality (questionable, informed by Todd’s apparent imperviousness to Elaine’s trolling machinations although that was possibly evidence to the contrary) and the Ordeal of being Known. In this case, specifically, Known to be a grown man who reacted to the sight of a cat in the same way that other people might react to finding a big ******** spider in their bathtub. The idea of using this moment to antagonize Elaine had also lost some of its savor even if she was back to her snappish normal, but he kept it in his back pocket and considered how he could finagle an incriminating selfie out of this once the man himself arrived.

Still, old habit was old habit, and when he let himself in as directed he was vaguely ruffling his fingers through his hair and smoothing down the corners of his mustache and surreptitiously sniffing his own armpits as he made a nosy mosey around the entrance. He immediately proceeded to attempt to get the lay of the land - wrinkling his nose somewhat hypocritically at the state of the place and doubling down on that Assumption of Heterosexuality as he did so - and also attempt to locate a bathroom with, presumably, a mirror in it to aid in his pathetic efforts to look minimally unattractive. But this process was quickly arrested.

Todd did not have a cat. Was, in fact, something of a patron saint of unowned cats, at least in a very localized way. This was known information. He yelped, therefore, upon being confronted with a cat anyway, and defied gravity for a scrabbling moment in a way that was a little feline in its own right.

“Oh, for the love of God -” he managed, scuttling further away from the sofa just in case it was friendly, keeping a wary eye on it as he went.

The long pause that followed was still and silent aside from the various screams emerging from the TV - Clover, unfortunately being already dead, not there to supply her own absolutely primo scream at this point in the film - and yet it was a pause that was, in its own way, very crowded.

He backed away a little more, a hand still pressed to his chest in the fashion of a scandalized old lady.

Terror had a tendency of making reality lie to you. He was aware of this. The atmosphere was bad enough, between the janky gore on screen and the ******** Cat, to probably get his brain playing tricks on him.

But he was burdened with unfortunate knowledge, as everyone in his position was. At least Todd was probably too broke to be getting all this on some sort of security camera, since he was about to do something that would make him look very, very silly.

"Did you just say meow?" he asked, with wary emphasis on the one word. And then, because he couldn't help it: "Urgh."

Another long few seconds crawled by and he relaxed a little, although he was still maintaining a position of cagey wariness, as if she might abruptly sprout wings and extra legs and launch some sort of offensive. This was, to be fair, how he reacted to every cat.

He had been accused of paranoia before, and this was probably that. Still, he watched her eat the popcorn with a crawling sense of fascination and couldn't help but wonder.

It was a reckless thing to do. Joy would probably have throttled him for it. But Joy wasn't there, and he was a man often inclined to doing stupid things when he wasn't under supervision, and sometimes when he was. Better to know than to wonder. The damn thing had, in fact, said meow. And rolled its eyes. He was sure of it. And that meant - well. And it was in Todd's apartment, and the thought of what that might imply made him feel a little sick. And, after all, if it was just a cat - a horrible awful no good very bad cat - what was the harm?

"Which side are you on?" It was not a demand, panicky though he still was. It was almost nonchalant.

He had tensed up even more at the phrase hero side, aware that it meant nothing and ready to say something to that effect and let the consequences be what they would. But the loser side - well. He relaxed again, leaning back against the wall and trying not to look at her, because watching a cat speaking human language sort of made him want to crawl out through a window.

He still felt sick - maybe more - but it was a different, almost pleasant sort of nausea, as of standing too close to the edge that afforded a particularly beautiful view, or possibly of realizing that you have partied a little too hard and the world is about to go a little distorted and neon and you can do nothing to stop it.

"So uh -" He swallowed. This was almost certainly a violation of some sort of etiquette and probably wouldn't do any good; better to ask the indirect and more important question, anyway. "Tell me you're not like. Staking this guy out. I don't wanna have to kill him," he added desperately, painfully aware that he wasn't going to be doing anything of the sort. "He's got really good hair."

"Of course he ******** does," he said, with a laugh that was a little watery from relief and lacking the angry despair it might have had if he'd received this information in other circumstances. "Some sort of heterosexual priest blesses the ******** vats at the factory so it always works like that for straight men."

It was a little hard to navigate this sentence, due to the very loud mantra of oh thank god oh thank god oh thank god banging around in his brain, but he did so.

Kay being Kay, however, he did hesitate long enough to sort out a sudden thought. "He is straight, right?" There was, unmistakably, a note of hope in that. Nothing was going to beat the knowledge that he didn't ought to be killing this guy, obviously, but it would be nice to get a little powdered sugar on top.

A surge of optimism was squashed pretty quickly at the assessment that he was a loser who probably couldn't benefit from this either way. He chose to momentarily gloss over this last little jab, telling himself that cats were notoriously a bad judge of character and ignoring the little niggling voice that told him that cats were also notoriously pretty cool, in general.

"Who said anything about dating?" he asked loftily. "I certainly did not say anything about dating. But yeah. I guess he does kinda seem like someone you get tangled up with and then wish you hadn't. There's like - he is a type. But I do not get tangled. I'm like a straight guy's hair after using five-in-one. ********."

He was vaguely aware that at some point he had, himself, also been one of those people, albeit in a very different way than Todd presumably was and presumably with less success. He couldn't remember it, exactly, but he knew it. Like recognizes like.

He added, because he couldn't help it: "I do not need to deal with cats." He held up a hand and pointed to a ring on his finger as he said it. It was, maybe, a bit of a relief to be able to say that truthfully. He did not mention that he had had to deal with a cat to get the ******** ring functional.

The leg-brushing was an insult that was almost unbearable, and resulted in the extremely unmanly reaction of waving his hands around in front of his chest with his eyes screwed shut, like a small child being coaxed to eat broccoli.

Her exit was a relief, although he realized, belatedly, she hadn't even given him her name, which at least freed him from an obligation to potentially get in touch with her for professional reasons.

He was courteous enough to clean the popcorn up and dispose of it, or at least sensible that wrecking his apartment in his absence wouldn't be doing him any favors. It gave him time to shake the last of his tumultuous feelings and arrange himself in a somewhat-flattering way on the sofa to watch what was left of this god-awful c-tier backyard horror movie the cat had been engaged in.

That effort might as well have been dispensed with, however, as he could not help bolting out of his lounging posture as soon as he heard the door opening - first in panic, in a momentary confusion about whether the damn cat had returned, and then in a sort of surge of joyful greeting.

He had not known, really, until that moment, how much of a relief it had been to be delivered from a catastrophe he hadn't even been consciously expecting. This wasn't even a friend of his, really - at least not more than anyone else - and was, really, just Some Guy he was often compelled to interact with, largely via Elaine's insistence. But it had been a relief - sickening, dizzying - and the enormity of it broke over him again when he looked at him with new eyes and realized, in the moment, that he had been looking at him with subconscious suspicion before.

Just a normal guy. Holy s**t, what an incredible thing to be.

Kay was nearly always smiling, at least when there wasn't a cat in the room. He had the quiet, resting smile that had carved its early creases under his boyish eyes, and the friendly, animated, often-wry one that emerged when he spoke to someone or some little thought tripped through his head and made him think fondly of the pleasure and ludicrousness of being alive. But this smile, now, was a third thing entirely, and beamed out a radiant admiration that seemed to imply that Kay had never seen anything quite as wonderful as Todd walking into his own sorta-shitty apartment. It was a smile that seemed to imbue him with every good quality, and the relief of knowing that whatever Todd might be, he knew what he wasn't, suffused it with that kind of sincerity that got people described as lighting up a room. As a final girl who was not Clover Argento stumbled into the end credits behind him, he looked at Todd like a returning hero.

In some cases it was probably dangerous to let someone bask in the implied flattery of that expression. But it was possible - probable, even - that such an expression might be wasted on someone like Todd. It would probably have been a relief to Kay to think of that, if he'd been aware that he smiled like that at all.

"I was starting to think you'd gotten lost," he said. "Did you know you've got a stray cat sneaking in here? Scared the ******** outta me."

"Even made sure it actually works," he said, the smile subsiding from something less like a nuclear blast of positive feeling and into his usual just-sunshine. "Figured I owed you for the taquitos the other day. And if you brought me food now," he added magnanimously, hoping like hell that he could back this up from the pile of movies on the coffee table which, he supposed, had been brought here by The Damn Cat, "I'll even give you the first one. Really important - uh - narrative through-line to maintain," he added, breaking up into a laugh.

He could not help but add: "********, I'm glad to see you," and was obligated to add by way of immediate explanation, lest this be taken the wrong way or possibly the right one, which would be even worse: "The ******** - cat thing, you know? Got me jumpy as hell."

It was as good an excuse as any, and probably not entirely untrue - which by Kay's standards made it honest. He was going to keep hoping for excuses to be here - at least until he had a reason to assess the towel situation, not that he knew that - and if every visit was going to be accompanied by the terror of Unexpected Cat Potential both inside and outside, at least it was balanced by the relief of knowing that he was - unless the cat was a better liar than he was - not going to be discreetly hitting on an agent of Chaos.

It probably shouldn't have been the relief that it was. But the way things had gone for him of late, he'd take what he could get, and do it gratefully.