#for liz

Luckily, Garrick new Riorson House like the back of his hand, so it took him no time to run through the halls, turn through the corners and jump a few steps on his dash down to the front doors and out to the open courtyard.

Standing amongst a crowd of wailing children was a the supposed venin in question, hunched over. Oh, it was on. Yet, right before Garrick could arch his hand back and put his signet to work, the figure turned around, startled.

Garrick immediately jumped backwards, losing his footing and falling onto his backside. Once the bewilderment passed he found himself holding back a laugh.

The 'venin' in question was you. An incredibly sick, congested, and feverish you.

"I told you!" The girl, Julianne, who sounded the alarm shouted as she made her way out to the courtyard, her small, relic bound hand pointed forwards, "She turned into a venin."

"I what?!" You shouted.

Julianne wasn't having any of it. Her fingers tightened into fists in preparation for a fight, yet before her small body could move forward Garrick hoisted her back by the back of her shirt collar and sat her down on the stone floor next to him.

"Easy easy." He chided, "I think we have a case of mistaken identity here. But, your most heroic rider is here to save the day."

Garrick slowly began to rise, striding towards you with a cocky grin.

"Garrick," You warned, taking a step backwards, "What in Dunne's name is going on?"

"Remember when I told you that you should've taken it easy last week when you started to feel sick and you called me a, and I quote, "overprotective weirdo'?"

You huffed, not before a few coughs escaped your lips, "I'm fine. Stop babying me."

"You're eyes are literally red. Now, play along."

"Play along with what-"

Garrick suddenly grabbed your arm, spinning you around as if the two of you were in a dance, "Fear not, innocent children, I'll save you from this devious fiend." He bellowed heroically. With ease he lifted you up and hoisted you over his shoulder, much to your protests.

"Garrick! Put me down right now!" Your voice barely audible over the cheers of the children.

"Quiet foul creature." He spoke with a laugh while walking back towards Riorson House.

"My hero." Julianne swooned while pressing her hands to her cheeks.

Now, lets be clear you did not give up the fight that easily. Throughout the entire, embarrassing walk through Riorson House and up to Garricks room you kicked, thrashed, and few a few expletives here and there. It made it even worse that they had no effect on your captor, who found the situation rather funny while he layered on the embarrassment by telling every cadet walking by, "Out of my way, precious cargo coming through."

By the time you made it to his room you were dumped onto his bed with a bounce while he walked into the private bathing chambers without a word.

"Hey!" You called after him as you fought against blankets into find yourself in a sitting position.

Garrick returned to the room with a towel over his shoulder, tossing it gently in your direction, "Okay, water is running. Once your bath is done you're back in bed until I say so."

"You can't just order me around! I'm not in your chain of command."

"But you're in my room." He smirked while raising an eyebrow, "My bed even."

"Against my will! I am not sick, I'm-" you paused momentarily to inhale a dribble of snot that escaped your nose, "Fine!"

"That shouldn't be attractive." Garrick mumbled while walking towards you. "Look, you've been nonstop since we got here weeks ago. Patrol, class, looking after Julianne and the other kids, driving me up a wall. So now, you're going to let us take care of you. And as a lieutenant and someone who is absolutely in your chain of command, I'm ordering you to feel better."

You couldn't help but stare into Garrick's hazel eyes, but he had that determined, yet somehow cheeky look where you knew you were not going to get yourself out of this. He was Xaden's right hand. Power ranking aside, if Garrick had to deal with Riorson on the regular, who knew what level of patience and stubbornness he had stored within in him to subdue you. With a raspy sigh you folded, grabbing the towel and rising to your feet.

"Good girl." He smiled, "Though I wouldn't have minded having to carry you into the tub."

"In your dreams, Tavis." You huffed while walking past him.

You had to admit, a hot bath was much needed for your aching muscles. You didn't know how long you had stayed in the tub, but once the water cooled off you slowly rose from the waters and sheepishly made your way back to Garrick's room. Waiting for you at the side of the bed were a pair of your clothes, a tray of food, and a few tinctures of what you assumed were medicine with a hand written note with dosage instructions.

He didn’t think anybody would leave a baby in a box in alley, but he’d gotten those Uproxx updates in his Apple News feed same as everybody else, and Jonathan Toews was not going to be the one who shrugged and walked on by. Nevertheless, he was thankful to find it was not, in fact, a baby, but rather bushy tailed bedraggled kitten with dark markings on its face. He stared at it, unsure what to do for a long moment. Somewhere in his baby in the box fears, he had failed to anticipate what he would do if it was actually a live creature. 

But then it mewed piteously up at him, with eyes too large for its face, and Jonny found himself, seemingly impelled, shrugging out of his expensive cashmere sweater and gingerly wrapping it up. 

The vet wouldn’t be open at this hour, and he figured an emergency animal hospital was probably overkill for this little guy. But he could take it home and make it comfortable and then get it on its way before skate tomorrow. Just being a good citizen. He wasn’t a cat person and besides he knew enough from his little cousin’s exploits trying to adopt every stray in her neighborhood back in Winnipeg that feral cats didn’t make great pets. He didn’t need to go falling in love with another animal. Not after the way he and Lindsey broke up and he’d had to say goodbye to Betsy. He could manfully admit he’d shed a few tears. No need to go repeating the process over this pathetic little fluff ball. 

That is until it had rearranged itself in his arms and stuck it’s little face right up against his throat and started purring like it’s life depended on it. 

Oh no. 

*

He told himself over and over he wasn’t gonna keep him. Not after he gave it a bath and discovered yes, it was indeed a him, not after the grime washed off and revealed snowy white fur which made those dark markings look even more stark. Not after he set a little plate of tuna down on the counter and plopped the furball next to it, watching helplessly amused as it chowed down, so eager the plate kept skidding across the granite. 

“I seriously hope your litterbox trained, Buddy,” he said, after the kitten sat back on its haunches with an audible burp. 

Definitely not keeping it, he had to remind himself, as he tugged a shoelace across the floor a few minutes later, unable to keep from chuckling at the way that the kitten kept batting at the floor like it was playing gophers at an arcade. 

When he woke up the next morning and found it curled up in a tight little ball on the pillow next to him, he reminded himself sternly that Buddy had to go. 

In fact he was still telling himself that three days later after he replaced the makeshift litter box of an old cleaning tub and newspaper with a dark gray box Amazon had called Clever Cat. It seemed appropriate because Buddy got into everything. Trying the cupboards in the kitchen, pulling the paper off the rolls in the bathroom, and carefully inspecting all the products next to the sink before sending them crashing to the floor. If Jonny was watering his grow towers than Buddy wanted to water the grow towers too, muching at some of the leaves and sticking his face into the thicket of stems to lap at the water that ran down the leaves. If Jonny was doing yoga in front of the TV, then Buddy wanted to roll around too, right in the middle of his mat. 

Jonny was so fucked. Because rather than finding all this annoying, he was inexplicably charmed.  And by the time he got in to see the vet about a week later in accordance with his original plan to get him inspected before surrendering him to a shelter, Jonny gave in. The vet poked and prodded at Buddy who did not enjoy it in the slightest, but somehow kept up a steady rumbling purr the entire time, and told Jonny he was a lucky guy. Buddy was in perfect condition, and he suspected not feral at all. 

“He’s got a lot of the characteristics of the Ragdoll breed, and he’s comfortable with humans. I think it’s more likely his owner didn’t know what they were getting into and wound up abandoning him.” 

Jonny looked down at Buddy’s little face and found himself suddenly, sickeningly glad. Because he wanted this ridiculous little cat and he certainly never would’ve set out to find him.

*

He tried to keep Buddy secret for as long as he could, but being Captain did come with certain dorm parent type responsibilities, like wrangling all the guys together for bonding activities. He wasn’t about to shut Buddy up in the bedroom just so that Jonny could keep his rep on the team as a man of dignity up. He told Kaner about it as they hit up the grocery store to pick up snacks before the March Madness Bracket challenge party they had planned that night. 

“You...rescued a cat?” Patrick said blankly, staring at him. 

“Buddy,” Jonny explained, handing his cellphone over to show Kaner a video of him under one of Jonny’s shirts, kicking and playing with a belled ball like a squirmy little ghost. “I didn’t mean to—it’s just—”

Patrick looked up from the screen and smirked. “You always want to make friends with everybody.” 

“I mean—well—that’s not—look, he’s just really smart. A super talented cat. You can’t just be giving those away.”

Patrick snorted. “What, can he count to ten?” 

Jonny shot him a look. “No, but he’s figured out how to turn the taps on on the kitchen sink to get water.” 

Granted, Buddy had promptly fallen right into the sink while leaning in to take sip, gotten doused, yowled like a holy terror and then knocked over a pile of dishes in his haste to get away, only terrifying himself more, to the point where he’d hidden underneath the couch for a whole hour before Jonny was able to coax him out with a morsel of chicken. 

“Until you tell me he can flush a toilet, I’m not impressed,” Patrick said, but his eyes were twinkling. “And that’s not a challenge, Toews.”

That sounded very much like a challenge to Jonny. Besides, he didn’t say that the cat had to <i>use</i> the toilet first. Just flush it. Buddy was totally smart enough to master the flush mechanism, Jonny was sure of it. 

When they got back to Jonny’s place, Patrick immediately parked himself in front of the television and turned on Sportscenter. 

“So where’s the cat then?” he called, like Jonny’s open plan kitchen was an entire football field away. 

Jonny didn’t even have the chance to answer, because there was body, leaping up onto the couch besides Patrick’s thigh and then very purposefully climbing into Patrick’s lap. 

“Whoa, this is not—” Patrick started. But then Buddy headbutted his stomach, curled himself into his typical ball, and started purring. Jonny couldn’t help but smile at Patrick’s gobsmacked expression. Yeah. Buddy had that effect.