Work Text:
If there's one thing Da Qing prides himself on, it's his coat, which he keeps lustrous with a steady diet of fish.
If there's a second thing he prides himself on, it's that he runs the SID with an iron paw.
"Oh Divine Cat, I really need the Director to approve my vacation time," Lin Jing intones sonorously as he lays an offering of fish in front of Da Qing, who is lounging in his cat house in the gardens one sunny spring morning.
Da Qing opens one eye and peers at the fish. Acceptable, he decides.
"Granted," Da Qing tells Lin Jing lazily with a swish of his tail before closing his eyes and going back to sleep. He enjoys the fish when he wakes from his nap.
All it takes is a bluff that he'll get Shen Wei involved. The very next day, Lin Jing's vacation time is approved.
---
"Oh gr…great Da Qing," Guo Changcheng manages some few days later from where he's kneeling on the ground, his forehead buried against the grass in the garden. He pauses, as if he's just remembered that he's forgotten something important, and then digs a hastily wrapped package from his coat pocket.
Da Qing can smell the fish even before he's unwrapped it.
"I lost the report Director Zhao told me to fill out," Guo Changcheng whispers furtively. "Please don't let him kill me!"
Stretching in the warm sunlight, Da Qing waves a paw at him. "Your life is safe in my paws," he assures regally, and jumps down out of his cat house to eat the fish while Guo Changcheng stumbles his way back into the building.
When Zhao Yunlan arrives at work, Da Qing pointedly threatens to tell Shen Wei he's bullying his employees if Guo Changcheng doesn't make it through the day.
---
It's an ordinary Thursday after sundown when Wang Zheng floats into the staff room, where Da Qing is just beginning to think about a post-dinner snack. One of the night guards trails behind her and gingerly sets a stack of papers on the desk in front of Da Qing before scampering away.
The stack is almost as tall as the guard is.
"That doesn't look like fish," Da Qing say suspiciously.
The night guard returns with a plate of fish, which he sets down beside the stack of papers.
"I need Director Zhao to sign all of these before sunrise," Wang Zheng explains.
Da Qing eyes the stack of papers, then eyes the fish. It looks perfectly prepared—succulent and tender. He considers the closed door of Zhao Yunlan's office, from which the Director will be emerging any moment.
"That's not going to be easy," he finally says. "He has a date with the Lord Emissary tonight."
"One of the forms is a requisition for more bird feeders in the garden," Wang Zheng says delicately.
"Done," Da Qing says immediately, and settles in to eat his fish while daydreaming of all the new birds he can expect in the garden.
Once he's finished the fish, he heads off for his nighttime snack. This job's not going to be so easy. He has a long night of work ahead of him.
---
"Sign the forms," Da Qing says resolutely. He's sitting in the middle of Zhao Yunlan's bed, starring at the errant Director of the SID. Wang Zheng's forms are on the kitchen table. He'd had Guo Changcheng carry them here for him. "I'm not leaving until you do."
Zhao Yunlan tries to shoo him off the bed, but Da Qing simply moves closer to the middle, where Zhao Yunlan can't so easily reach him. Finally, after failing magnificently to evict Da Qing, he grabs his phone and his keys off the bedside table.
"Fine, you can keep the bed," he sulks. "I'll text Shen Wei and tell him to head to a hotel after his lecture instead of coming home."
"Do you think I can't follow you?" Da Qing demands. "Do you think I can't get into any room I want to? Sign the forms, asshole, or you're never getting laid again."
Zhao Yunlan shudders. "Please never say those words to me again."
Da Qing shudders as well. "Don't you dare ever make me say them again! Don't even make me think about you and…and…" He can't bring himself to say it—it's disrespectful to the Soul-Executing Emissary!—so he just shudders again.
He's going to have add a surcharge for this. Wang Zheng owes him another fish for this.
When Shen Wei returns from his evening lecture, he finds the two of them still bickering. After hearing both sides of the story, he levels a look at Zhao Yunlan. "Yunlan," he says. "You didn't tell me that our date would be an inconvenience to Wang Zheng."
"The deadline isn't until next week," Zhao Yunlan tries to wheedle, but Shen Wei doesn't give him an inch.
"I'll help you with them," he says, and reaches for the top form on the stack. He reads it quickly. "It looks like this one is for new bird feeders in the gardens."
---
Da Qing can hear voices giggling as footsteps cautiously approach the gate to the garden. Slowly, the gate creaks open and the footsteps creep closer, as if their owners are trying not to be noticed.
When he opens his eyes, he sees two vaguely familiar faces looking down at him—two girls, about the right age to be university students. Ah, yes. They're two of Shen Wei's students, ones who had been there on that dreadful trip to Qingxi Village, though their memories of that time had been erased.
"Do you think it will really work?" one of the girls asks the other in a whisper.
The other shrugs and reaches up into the hanging cat house to scratch Da Qing between his ears. She almost has to stand on tiptoes to do it.
Da Qing allows it. Scratches are almost as good as fish.
The other girl pulls a bag of small, freeze dried fish out of her backpack and reaches up to scatter a few on the floor of the cat house for Da Qing. "It can't hurt," she says. "I've heard that if you leave an offering for the cat in this garden, he can make any wish come true!"
The other girl turns seriously to Da Qing and sketches out a bow. "We really, really, really need Shen-laoshi to grant an extension on the final paper for his ancient civilizations class at Dragon City University," she says.
Hmmm, Da Qing thinks. How interesting. Slowly, as the girls watch, he reaches out with one paw and drags one of the fish closer. He can't speak to them like he does to the other members fo the SID, but he figures they'll understand.
Challenge accepted.