Work Text:
Like.
Adora feels like.
Adora feels like not enough people like, realize that Catra is a cat girl.
Like.
Entirely covered in fur, has cat ears, has a cat tair, cat girl?
( Prehensile cat tail.)
Like, if you pet her ears just right, she purrs, cat girl?
You might be thinking.
Literally no one on Etheria does not realize Catra is a cat girl, Adora.
But no.
No.
Because if people realized that Catra is a cat girl, like.
How would they ever get work done?
Like, how could they go for like ten minutes without being reminded like, how soft Catra’s belly fur is.
Or like, what it feels like when Catra hits them in the face with her tail.
There is a clear lack of understanding
And Adora is the only who understands .
Did you know that sometimes Adora comes back to their room, and Catra is curled up in sun patch?
Purring?
Like.
How does everyone go about their daily lives not thinking about this?
Adora has brought up this concern before.
With, say, Glimmer.
Who, after listening to Adora’s lengthy description of Catra’s many cat girl features just kinda like.
Shrugged.
Clearly, there must have been some misunderstanding.
Like, did you know that you can pet Catra?
Like, she has fur.
You can pet her.
That’s a thing you can do.
I mean.
It’s not a thing anyone but Adora can do.
But you know.
Whatever.
She tried Bow.
Bow was more receptive.
His reaction was more like.
Really, fur everywhere?
Everywhere?
Yeah.
Just like, anywhere you pet.
There’s fur.
Not that Adora has like.
Pet the back of Catra’s thighs.
Or her butt.
Or anything like that.
No.
That’d be…
That’d be weird.
Or at least that’s what Catra tells her to tell other people.
Anyways, Bow indicated interest in further understanding the depths of Catra’s catgirl-itude.
And when she confirmed.
Yeah, everywhere .
He was just like.
Huh.
How about that.
How about that?
Excuse me?
That is not an appropriate reaction for a revelation of this magnitude.
If that is an appropriate reaction for a realization of this magnitude, Adora wants like.
Ten minutes of every hour of the last three months back.
Like, did you know Catra has a cat tongue?
Like, she licks you and it’s rough and scratchy and great?
How can you not.
How can you not think about that at least once a day?
Why does Adora bring this up, you might ask?
Well, the answer is that Catra has just interrupted her by laying across her lap and purring.
This is, by the way, totally ordinary behavior.
It happens several times a week.
“Hey, Adora,” Catra says, giving her a heavy lidded sexy gaze.
Like she’s not purring.
Like she isn’t wapping Adora in the face with her tail.
For the record, Adora is crossed legged on the ground.
She was reading a book.
Catra is laying.
On top of Adora’s book.
Also, critically, Catra is much longer than Adora’s lap, so she’s just flopped over both sides of Adora’s lap.
Adora is an expert on Catra behavior.
So she understands this behavior means.
Pay attention to me .
It’s kinda subtle, but she’s pretty sure, being the Catra expert that she is, that that it is the secret message here.
Adora scratches Catra’s back because Catra is laying on her hands, and Catra purrs a little louder, and squints her eyes closed.
“Whatcha doin’?” Catra asks, dancing her tail in front of Adora’s face.
Which like, Adora is pretty sure means Catra wants her to grab it.
With her mouth.
So she does.
“I’m reading,” Adora says, voice kinda muffled by the tail in her mouth.
The tail in Adora’s mouth twitches, but she doesn’t let go.
Catra opens her eyes to glare at Adora.
“Let go of my tail,” she says.
“Finder’s keepers,” Adora garbles around it, still not letting go.
Catra’s stopped purring, so Adora scratches at her back a little, and she starts purring again.
“It’s my tail.”
“Not anymore,” Adora garbles, shifting her lips to have a bit better purchase.
Catra glares up at Adora, like she isn’t purring in the present progressive tense, and Adora squints back at her.
Adora’s not a great.
Glarer.
Catra, meanwhile, gives the glare the good old Catra try.
Which means she gives up after a minute, and flops back onto the ground like she has been served a great injustice.
“Are you sure you shouldn’t be paying attention to your girlfriend? You know, the one you say you—” she lifts her head, make eye contact with Aodra, just to make a face “—looooove?”
Adora scratches her back and Catra squints in pleasure.
“I did eat lunch with her like. An hour ago,” Adora offers, still speaking around Catra’s tail.
She licks it, and Catra makes a face, and uses her hand to pull it out of Adora’s mouth. She makes a face at the slobbery state of it, and wipes it on Adora’s shirt before continuing.
“That doesn’t seem like enough,” Catra says. “You should be more attentive. I mean, think of how low she must be stooping to go out with you . She deserves better.”
Adora lifts Catra’s back with her knees, and slips her hands out from under Catra.
She tosses the book aside, and dances her fingers across Catra’s clothed stomach.
“Does she?”
Catra unsuccessfully suppresses a smile as Adora slips a hand under her shirt, and runs her fingers over the fur she finds there.
“Yeah. You should treat her like a queen.”
Adora scratches at Catra’s stomach, and she lets out a long, contented purr.
“I should, huh?”
Catra just nods, purring again, not opening her eyes.
Her tail wraps around the hand Adora has slipped under shirt, and coils around it.
The end is still a little wet.
Adora takes her free hand, and cups Catra’s cheek.
The rumble in Catra’s chest increases in intensity, and she rubs her furry cheek against Adora’s hand.
Adora takes a deep breath.
Catra is just.
The cutest fucking creature.
On Etheria.
There is literally.
Nothing and nobody cuter.
“How’s this?” Adora asks.
“Not enough,” Catra says, her voice thick.
“No?” Adora asks, rubbing her thumb against Catra’s cheek, as Catra unsuccessfully tries to keep a smile from her face.
“Yeah,” Catra says, voice a little slow. A little dreamy. “Think of how much her back must hurt.” When Adora does not immediately respond, Catra hurriedly continues. “You know, because she’s stooping so low.”
“Oh,” Adora says, “so I should be rubbing her back?”
She makes as if her’s going to pull her hand away from Catra’s face, and finds Catra’s fingers wrapped like iron around her forearm.
“If you stop I will bite your fingers off.”
Her blue and yellow eyes flash open, and she snaps her head up to glare at Adora. Adora scratches at her stomach fur, and her eyes slowly start to squint closed, and her hand relaxes against Adora’s forearm.
Adora laughs, and she guides Catra’s head back to the floor, running her thumb up and down Catra’s cheek as Catra starts to rub her cheek into it again.
Adora slips her hand into Catra’s hair, and Catra makes an unhappy noise at the loss, but she doesn’t start snapping at Adora’s fingers, so like.
She’s probably fine.
Adora cards her fingers through Catra’s thick mane until she finds Catra’s ear, and runs her fingers over it, reveling in its softness.
All of Catra is fur is soft.
(Obviously.)
But her ears are just.
Unbelievable.
Because she can, she flips it inside out.
Catra makes an unhappy growling noise, and twitches her ear in a futile attempt to get it right side out.
“ Adora ,” she says, voice low and threatening.
“What?” Adora asks innocently, dropping her fingers to the base of Catra’s ears giving the skin there a little scritch.
Catra groans in pleasure, and her eyes squint closed again.
“You’re so cute,” Adora says, and Catra gives out a weak growl.
Her right hand comes up, and tangles with Adora’s shirt in protestation.
“I’m not…”
Her voice drifts off into a groan as Adora finds just the right spot at the base of her ear, and her chest vibrates Adora’s whole being with her purr.
“I’m not cute,” she says, after like, thirty seconds.
Maybe a minute.
The hand on Adora’s side kneads at her, claws flicking in and out against her skin.
“How am I doing now?” Adora asks, the hand which had been occupied with Catra’s belly pulling away, twining her fingers through Catra’s tail as it uncoils from her forearm.
“Stop that,” Catra says.
“You want me to go back to scratching your belly again?”
Catra’s eyes open with what appears to be great effort, and she glares at Adora.
Adora grins widely at her.
“It’s okay to say yes,” Adora says. “This is a judgement free relationship.”
Catra squints an unhappy squint at her.
It is subtly different from her happy squint.
Adora, being an expert on all things Catra, can totally one hundred percent always tell them apart.
She never gets them confused.
This one, though.
This one is definitely unhappy.
Adora meets it for a moment before surveying the state of her girlfriend.
Catra has now achieved a special Catra state that Adora likes to refer as One With The Ground .
She is indistinguishable from a brownish puddle of fur, almost every muscle in her completely relaxed, with the exception of the hand which is still occasionally kneading at Adora’s side.
Adora was concerned for Catra’s back the first time she did this, but as far as she can tell Catra actually has no bones in her back (or really, like, anywhere), so she is completely comfortable lying over literally anything.
Her shirt has ridden over the lighter brown fur on her belly, and Adora tries and fails to resist the urge to bury her face in it.
Catra makes a pleased sound, having apparently forgiven her for the sin of playing with her tail instead of petting her.
Adora mouths at Catra’s belly fur, just because knows Catra hates it, and Catra waps the back of her head with her tail in retaliation.
She stops, and rubs her nose through Catra’s belly fur instead, which Catra seems to be substantially more okay with, because Catra’s other hand comes up to rest on the top of Adora’s head instead.
Adora takes a deep breath of Catra fur, and smiles.
Did you know Catra smells like sunshine and rainbows?
Because she totally does.
Nobody believes Adora when she says this.
But it’s true!
It’s just like.
No one else can confirm.
Because Catra would maul them if they tried.
It’s fine.
Adora’s a private person.
She doesn’t actually like sharing.
Catra’s hand kneads at her hair, claws flicking in and out against her scalp.
Hard enough to notice, but not hard enough to actually hurt.
Adora slips her hand under Catra’s back, and runs her fingers along Catra’s spine, where her fur goes every which way.
Catra makes a happy noise as Adora runs her fingers up, and then back down the sometimes backwards sometimes sideways fur of Catra’s back.
It’s right around then that the door slams open, and Bow’s voice echoes from above her.
“Adora, can I—”
And then Bow’s voice inexplicably dies in his throat.
Catra makes a displeased noise as Adora raises her head from Catra’s incredibly soft belly fur, and smiles at Bow.
He inexplicably looks just bewildered.
“What’s up?”
He opens his mouth, looks at Catra’s eyes, which are now open and glaring bloody murder at him.
“I—”
His mouth flaps.
“What are you doing?”
“If you make Adora stop,” Catra says, her voice still heavy and kinda slow. “I will hide three hairballs in the toes of three of your socks.”
Catra’s made so much progress.
She doesn’t even threaten to kill people anymore!
“I’m petting Catra,” Adora says, because like.
They’ve gone over this.
“I’ve told you about this,” she adds in case he has inexplicably forgotten.
“Uh,” he says.
“You’ll only know when your toes squelch into them,” Catra continues, words still coming kinda slow.
Bow pauses to make a face at Catra.
“Ew.”
“Yeah,” Catra says, her throat rumbling with a purr because Adora’s hands haven’t actually stopped moving.
(Why would they?)
(Do you know how soft Catra’s fur is?)
(Do you know how cute it is when she purrs?)
(Did you know when she purrs, you can feel it just…)
(All through your everything?)
“That’s kinda the point.”
It takes Bow a minute to drag his gaze away from Catra’s puddle face, which Adora has successfully returned her to.
It is a look of supreme relaxation, with just a hint of a smile around the corners of her face.
It is just a vision.
So pretty.
So cute.
Adora thinks about it like, two or three times an hour.
“You told me Catra has fur everywhere,” Bow says.
“You told Bow what?” Catra’s voice is coming back into itself, which means puddle Catra is vanishing into the ether, which is a sad, sad thing.
Adora makes a face at Bow, and Bow looks just baffled at why he is being treated as the villain here.
Adora redoubles her efforts on Catra’s ear and back in an effort to re-puddle-ify her.
“She does.”
Adora is confused.
“What else would you do, if your girlfriend was totally covered fur?”
Catra makes a pleased noise, and slowly puddles back onto the floor.
Bow opens his mouth.
Closes it again.
He seems confused, so Adora gestures at Catra with her chin, because both of her hands are occupied.
“Look at this. Catra is literally the cutest creature that has ever lived.”
“I’m not cute,” Catra protests, lifting her head, kneading more forcefully at Adora’s side.
Adora scratches at the dip in her skull just behind her ear, and her head falls back to the floor, although the claws in Adora’s side don’t grow any less insistent.
Bow opens his mouth again.
Closes his mouth again.
“I’m gonna leave,” he says.
“Great plan,” Catra says, her voice getting heavy again.
His smile twitches in a way that looks really pretty uncomfortable, all non-symmetrical and twisted.
“Gonna leave. Gonna never think about this again.”
“Also,” Catra says, between purrs. “Don’t think about where I have fur. And where I don’t.”
His smile twists a little further.
“Yep. Done. One hundred percent. No problem.”
“Didn’t you need me for something? I can—”
“No,” Catra counters.
“Nope. Turns out. Nope. Didn’t need your help. Just realized. Yep. It’s all fine.”
And then he turns and—
“Close the door on your way out,” Catra says.
Flees, full speed.
Catra makes a displeased noise.
“He didn’t close the door, did he?”
“He didn’t.”
Catra makes her sad cat noise.
“I guess I have to find out where he keeps his socks, then.”
Adora looks down at the puddle of Catra beside her, and smiles.
She slips her hand down from Catra’s hair, ignoring Catra’s sad noises of protest, and slips her hand from Catra’s back to her knees.
She pulls Catra to her chest, and stands.
Catra wraps her hands lazily around Adora’s neck, and blinks sleepily up at her.
“It’s going to take me like a week to make that many hairballs,” she says.
“I hate to be the one to break this to you,” Adora says, walking to the door, kicking it closed, and then carrying Catra to the bed. “But Bow doesn’t wear socks. He puts his boots over his bare feet.”
Catra makes a face.
“Gross.”
Acceptance is important in a good best friendship.
But also like.
Yeah.
It’s pretty gross.
Adora deposits on Catra on the bed and then lies down beside her. She stretches her arms out towards Catra, and Catra nuzzles into them, slipping hands around Adora’s waist.
“Is this queenly enough?”
“No,” Catra says, without a second’s hesitation, into the crook of Adora’s neck. “Try harder.”
Adora slips her hands around Catra’s back, and pulls her tight to her body.
Catra lets her do it, tightening her grip and nestling deeper into Adora’s arms.
Adora slips her hands to Catra’s waist, and tries to slip her hands under her shirt to the soft fur beneath it, but the angle is just.
So bad.
She’s like, trying to subtly pull up Catra’s shirt, but it’s stuck under the weight of Catra’s chest against hers, and—
Catra lets out an explosive sigh, sitting up, stripping her shirt and then Adora’s off, and pitching them into the far corner of the room before falling back onto Adora’s chest like about one hundred pounds of warm blanket.
Warm, vibrating blanket.
On Adora's mostly bare chest.
She’s still wearing a sports bra, but nothing else.
Catra, of course, has never really required one so just all of her is pressed up against Adora.
It feels.
So good.
Adora takes a nice deep breath of sunshine and rainbows, and smiles.
“God, Adora, keep up.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Adora says, spreading her fingers into the fur of Catra’s back, reveling in the vast expanse of fur she now has access to.
Catra gives out a nice little purr, as Adora runs her fingers from Catra's shoulders down to the waistband of her pants.
She slips the fingers of one hand under the waistband of Catra's pants and runs her fingers over Catra's butt fur (did you know Catra has butt fur? It’s… super soft) and Catra makes a displeased noise.
Oh well.
Worth a shot.
She returns her hands back to the broad expanse of Catra's back, and Catra purrs into her, slowly resting more and more of her body weight against Adora as she slowly liquifies into Adora's arms.
She makes a happy little sighing noise, and starts nuzzling against the crook of Adora's neck.
The bare crook of Adora's neck.
Adora hums happily, and Catra echoes her, still rubbing her face against Adora.
Adora pulls Catra closer, and Catra responds in kind, the pads of her fingers digging into Adora's back, claws momentarily sheathed.
Before Adora's face is Catra's ear.
Just like.
Right there.
So Adora blows on it, just to be annoying, and gets wapped in the face with it for her trouble.
Adora strokes up and down Catra's back, against the grain on her way up, with the grain in the way down, and Catra makes a soft little mewling noise.
And just.
Adora could write a ten page paper.
On the subject of that sound.
She wants to make a sign, carry it around.
It would say.
“Did you know Catra mewls sometimes?”
Unfortunately, Catra swore to her secrecy on the subject.
The world must forever remain ignorant.
Adora tangles their legs together and gets a humming purr in response.
“I bet you’re so cute right now,” Adora says into Catra's ear, getting wapped by it again for daring to speak. “I wish I could see you.”
“Suck it up,” Catra says into Adora’s neck, and she's trying to make her voice tough, and hard, but it comes out real slow, and heavy.
Also, she's still totally nuzzling into Adora's neck and intermittently purring.
Adora drags one hand up Catra's back, up the short, soft hairs of Catra's neck, all the way up the ear that keeps hitting her in the face.
She traces the shape of it, toying with the edges slipping her fingers into the furless interior, tracing the dry skin she finds there.
She toys briefly with the tiny tuft of fur inside of it, and Catra squirms while her ear wacks Adora’s fingers.
Catra is ticklish in exactly one place.
Under the armpit? Belly? Bottom of her feet?
All totally fine.
The tiny adorable tuft of hair in her ear?
Incredibly ticklish.
“Sorry, sorry,” Adora apologizes, pulling Catra impossibly closer, easing the tension she accidentally returned to Catra's back by tickling her.
“You should be,” Catra grumbles, still low and heavy and so slow.
Adora flips Catra's ear inside out because she can (have you seen Catra with both of her ears flipped inside out? She is. Indescribably adorable. It is just. It needs to be seen to be believed), and then brings her hands to the base of Catra's ear and scratches.
The protest Catra and been gearing herself up to make about Adora's treatment of her ears is drowned out by her happy groan.
The best part about flipping Catra's ears inside out?
She can actually forget.
And just walk around, both ears inside out, and just.
Adora squeezes Catra tighter against her chest.
In response, Catra starts kneading at Adora's back.
Adora hums happily at the sensation.
Catra is just.
The cutest.
She finds that spot right behind Catra's ear, and Catra rewards her with a purr and about ten more pounds of body weight.
Adora closes her eyes against it, and smiles.
“Hey Catra,” Adora says, trailing her fingers up the soft messy fur around Catra's spine.
“Hey… Adora,” Catra says after like a minute, voice heavy and slow.
“I think I’m kinda in love with you,” Adora says.
Catra claws poke her back, and then slide back into the pads of her fingers.
She nuzzles a little further into Adora's neck.
“Who wouldn’t be,” Catra says, her tail curling around them both. “I’m perfect.”
Adora scratches the base of Catra's ear a bit harder, and Catra lets out a long, rumbling purr.
Catra's claws knead at her back, in and out and in and out
Adora pulls Catra closer, tangles their legs tighter. Catra makes a little mewling noise, before purring low and log.
Adora toys with the ear before her, whispers, “Yeah. You kinda are.”
Catra sighs against her, and Adora smiles.
This.
It will forever be a mystery to Adora.
How everyone is able to spend every day.
Not thinking about this.