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theimpossiblescheme · 4 years

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*puts chin in hands* Tell me about your headcanons surrounding the relationship between Gus and Old Deuteronomy.

Oh, boy, here we go... *cracks knuckles* And this got long, so it’s going under a cut...

So I always imagined them as being old friends. They go way, way back, before either of them had met Grizabella. And they raised hell as kittens and young adults. Back then, Deuteronomy was the Rum Tum Tugger of his generation (brash, reckless, fun-loving, and clearly a little too in love with the queens for his own good, but still had a big bleeding heart underneath it all) while Gus was more of the Alonzo (quieter and more suave and “sophisticated” with a little more bravado than he could back up, but extremely capable and perceptive at the same time). And once Grizabella came along--flashy, proud, full of Noel Coward-esque zingers and fancying herself a high society sort of cat--the three of them were London’s inseperables.

Then Gus kickstarted his theater career. Deuteronomy settled down as the Jellicle Leader. Grizabella became his mate and the star of the Windmill Follies. And just like that, kittenhood was over. It was time to grow up. Suddenly they had all of these adult responsibilities and heartaches to shoulder, and that took precedent over hitting up pubs together and exploring Covent Garden and just having fun.

It wasn’t until after Gus’s first mate had passed away and Grizabella and Deuteronomy’s relationship was on the rocks that they saw each other again. Grizabella wanted to further her career with a more respectable theater troupe, and Gus couldn’t possibly turn her away. She was his friend and a wonderful actress and singer besides. Between rehearsals, Gus found time to check on Deuteronomy and tried to keep up his usual blithe chatter, as if nothing had changed between them. But things had changed. Deuteronomy was greyer and shaggier, his shoulders a little more bent and his gait much slower. And Gus was still wrapped in his mate’s old quilt and could feel his paws starting to quiver more than usual. Only Grizabella didn’t seem to have changed after so many years, and she had all but disappeared into rehearsals while her mate and her old friend tried to figure out between them where the time had gone.

Even that didn’t last. Deuteronomy, fearing that Grizabella no longer loved him at all, fell in love and had a son with another queen, one of Gus’s costars. Grizabella, though hurt and betrayed, tried to put a brave face on it, but eventually she snapped. She packed up all of her things from her old dressing room, gave Gus a terse goodbye, and left. It was the doorslam heard around the Tribe. The Jellicle Leader, meanwhile--who was supposed to be strong and utterly faultless and unafraid--withdrew into his duties, trying to make amends. And Gus found himself alone again.

So he tried to get used to being alone. He took his second mate to Covent Garden, where he and Deuteronomy had explored the farmer’s market stalls, and gave her a string of bluebells to wear around her neck. He took his theater friends to the Lost Dog, a pub where the three of them had told terrible jokes and sang terrible drinking songs until the crack of dawn, and ordered a round on the house. He tried his damndest to recreate what he’d once had with his two best friends.

Of course, after his second mate passed away and most of his troupe had either moved on or died themselves... he just couldn’t bring himself to it.

One day, some time later, Deuteronomy came back. With a little grey and black kitten who was the spitting image of his mother. Munkustrap wanted to see the theater, where cats dressed up and told stories for a living, and his father promised to show him. With a new burst of energy, Gus obliged, giving them a tour of backstage and peppering in his own colorful narration along the way. At one point, he lifted the little tom into a cat-sized harness and let him swing around the stage like Peter Pan, all the while chasing after him from ground level and waving a hooked claw playfully in his direction. From the sidelines, Deuteronomy actually laughed, that deep booming laugh that Gus knew so well and missed so much. He was nearly unrecognizable from the robust tom of their youth, but his voice had never changed.

At the end of the tour, Munkustrap took a nap in a pile of old costumes, and Gus and Deuteronomy helped themselves to saucers of tea at the bar and tried, once again, to catch up. The Jellicle Leader had three sons now, and the Theater Cat had one (plus a possible daughter-in-law)... imagine them as parents! Them, whose idea of fun used to be catching a ride on the weekly milk truck and filching whole fish from the markets! The Everlasting Cat must have a hell of a sense of humor...

“How did we let ourselves get so old?” Gus asked at length, shaking his head wistfully.

Deuteronomy only gave him a sad smile. “I think... that may be the one answer I haven’t learned.” And suddenly--in a frighteningly kittenish gesture, as if years of fatigue and grief had robbed him of any sense of decorum--he let his head drop onto Gus’s shoulder. Gus sat for a moment in shock before craning his neck and beginning to gently groom his friend’s fur. He used to let him do this whenever he felt too stressed before--it only felt natural now.

Growing old was mandatory... growing apart was never an option.

#This ran away from me but I'm rather pleased with where it ended up... <3 #cats the musical #old deuteronomy #gus the theatre cat #my headcanons

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