Chapter 15: The Gift of Touch
The bedroom was a tomb of warm, dark quiet. Travis lay sprawled on his back across the rumpled sheets, one arm flung over his eyes, the other hanging off the bed’s edge.
He floated into a grey, thoughtless limbo.
A whisper of sound, then a gentle pressure on the side of his neck. He didn’t move, but a breath escaped him, long and slow.
He knew that weight. It was a familiar grammar.
Small, padded feet walked up the slope of his collarbone. A tail, soft as the finest brush, trailed across his throat. A nuzzle so complete and unhurried it made Travis’s breath catch. He felt the delicate whiskers, the cool nose, the impossibly soft fur of his brow.
“You’re pretending,” Mavis murmured, his voice a vibration against the fragile bone. “Your breathing changed.”
Travis let his lips curl, just a fraction.“Guilty.”
Mavis made a satisfied sound but didn’t comment as he climbed up onto his chin, straddling just below the bottom lip.
“Hi,” Travis breathed, the word puffing gently around him.
“Hi yourself.” Mavis bent at the waist, placing his hands on Travis’s lip. He leaned forward and kissed the skin there, once, firm and deliberate.
“My tired giant,” he whispered into the skin.
They stayed like that in the deep blue of early morning. Travis’s arm came up, his hand a gentle mountain range settling over his own face, his thumb coming to rest beside Mavis, a sheltering wall. Mavis eventually uncurled and began to groom Travis’s eyebrows again, a meticulous, soothing ritual.
A dull thump from the office-side made them both flinch. Travis’s whole body went rigid. The peaceful exhaustion shattered, replaced by the jagged, familiar alertness of being unexpectedly perceived.The workday was over. No clients were scheduled. The sound was alien.
Mavis hurriedly tucked himself into the hollow of Travis’s throat, his little body pressing tight against his artery. Travis could feel the rapid, hummingbird beat of his heart.
“What was that?” Mavis’s voice was muffled against his skin.
“Don’t know.” Travis was already moving, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
The pleasant ache in his muscles was now just ache. He grabbed the bandanna and tied it on around Mavis.He peered out from the fabric fold, ears taut.
Travis padded barefoot out of the bedroom and onto the landing. The house was dark, silent. He listened, every nerve a live wire.Another sound.
A scrape. From the office side of the house. Not the private residence door, but the client entrance.His laptop was in there. His tablets. Hard drives with years of work, with client files.
Each step a conscious decision. The door between the residence and the office was solid, locked from this side. He pressed his ear to the cool wood.
Silence. Then, a voice. Muffled, masculine, frustrated. “—told you the code was old. It’s not arming.”
A second voice, higher, strained. “Well, try the other one. He said it’s usually just off.”
Travis’s blood ran cold. They were in his office.They were talking about the alarm.The old code. His parents’ code.Mavis’s head withdrew into the bandanna. He was a ball of tense warmth against Travis’s sternum.This was violation. This was the jagged hole in the fence, magnified, brought inside the sanctum of his controlled chaos. The careful order of his life, the safety he’d just bolted into Mavis’s world, was being pawed through by strangers.A hot, sour wave rose up his esophagus.The eggs. The beautiful, soft-scrambled eggs Mavis had supervised. His body wanted to reject them, to purge this feeling of intrusion.He swallowed convulsively, his hand pressed to his mouth.
A tiny pressure against his skin, Mavis. A reminder. Here. Now. Steady. He wasn’t alone.
Travis took a shuddering breath and backed away from the door.
In the bathroom, he pulled his phone out from his pocket. His hands trembled, but his mind was chillingly clear.
He didn’t call 911. He called the non-emergency line he’d programmed after the last false alarm.
“Yes. I’m Travis Aldridge at 22 Sycamore. I believe there are individuals inside my office premises. No, I’m in the attached residence portion. The door between is locked. Yes, I can hear them. No, I won’t engage.”
He gave the details in a flat, automated voice.The dispatch officer told him to stay put, that a car was minutes away.
He ended the call and stood in the dark kitchen, listening. The noises from the office continued—drawers opening, the faint squeak of his chair.
They were taking their time. They felt safe.
A fury, clean and cold, washed over him. This was his place. His sanctuary. Where Mavis slept in his hair. Where he fought to keep food down and was rewarded with throat-nuzzles. Where he’d just built a perfect, brass-hinged door.
Blue and red lights soon strobed through the front windows of the residence, painting the walls in dizzying cycles. The police checked the office, found the forced lock on the client entrance, took his statement with professional detachment. Nothing appeared to be taken; his laptop was still on the desk. It was likely a routine smash-and-grab, they said.
He should update his alarm code.
He nodded, answering their questions, his voice still that distant, polite monotone. He was the calm homeowner. Cooperative. Unshaken.
Only when they were gone, their taillights vanishing down the street, did the facade crack. He locked the client entrance from the inside, propped a chair under the handle of the residence door, and then his legs simply stopped working. He slid down the wall in the dark hallway until he sat on the floor, his back against the drywall.
The nausea won. He crawled to the bathroom and was violently, humiliatingly sick.
The eggs, the victory, the perfect door—it all spiraled down the drain.
He knelt on the cold tile, trembling, empty, shame a bitter taste in his mouth.
Then he felt it. A small, determined pull on the bandanna. He leaned back, too weak to resist. Mavis emerged, looking rumpled, his fur matted in places from the sweat and panic, but his eyes were clear and fierce.
Without a word, he climbed.
He gently pushed Travis’s head to the side and planted himself in the hollow between his neck and shoulder, the place where tension gathered in dense, painful knots. He began to work.
His tiny hands pressed and kneaded, his body heat a localized brand. He nuzzled, he licked at the salt-damp skin, he purred a low, resonant frequency that travelled straight into Travis’s clenched jaw.
“They’re gone,” Mavis murmured between ministrations. “You were so calm. You called the right people. You protected what’s yours —ours.” His praise was specific, factual. “We’ll fix the client door in daylight, change the security codes for the silent alarm.” He soothed. “You kept the line, Travis.”
Travis let his head fall back against the bathtub, his eyes closed. The purr vibrated through his vertebrae. The meticulous, relentless affection was a tether pulling him back from the void of panic. “They didn’t take anything,” he rasped.
“They didn’t get us,” Mavis corrected, his tone leaving no room for argument. He shifted, lying fully along the curve of Travis’s neck now, his body a living, breathing scarf. “Now.We’re not staying on this floor. Up. Bed. Now.”
It was an order.
Travis, depleted beyond resistance, obeyed. He dragged himself through the door, Mavis clinging to him, a steady, purring pendant.
He fell into the bed, into the nest of their scents—lavender, fur, cedar, him. Mavis immediately took charge, marshalling pillows, tugging blankets.He didn’t ask if Travis was okay. He simply enacted the protocol.
He busied himself in Travis’s hair, grooming, separating strands with a fastidious care that was profoundly normal. He then moved down, his tiny form a dedicated comfort-dispenser, reclaiming every inch of shaken territory with touch and nearness.
Finally, he settled on Travis’s chest, his ear pressed directly over his heart, listening to the rhythm slow and deepen. The crisis was over.The violation was past. But the vigilance, the watchful love thrumming against Travis’s ribs, was a new kind of door, shut fast and solid between them and the world.