8
ThesinglewindowaboveKai’s bed had only a thin veil of a curtain, nothing that would have kept out the blinding brightness of a warm morning full of sunshine and the calls of hungry seagulls.But as Kai drifted toward being awake, he found he didn’t mind it, none of it, though normally he preferred sleeping in.
This morning, he rubbed the salt from his eyes—so much it was like he’d truly slept in the ocean—and stretched slowly in his tangle of sheets.
I’ve not slept in this late in a long time.Nick doesn’t like it.Nick likes people who are industrious, and I would always bring him breakfast in bed whenever I slept over.
The thought of Nick though, that dulled the morning.It weighted Kai down as if he’d swallowed a bowl of rocks, made him turn on his back to let out a groan.
When he did, he gasped.I feel sort of…loose?And kind of slick?Wait, did I sleepwalk during my wet dream and go for lube or something?
Kai would have worried about that, except when he recalled the dream, he remembered Fian, assertive at first but then also adorably insecure when it came to his tentacles.And what he did with those!I mean, it was over quick, but while it lasted—
Kai hugged himself and smiled at the slice of blue sky he could just about see through the window.Last night had been the best in a long while, though which part of it had made it so, Kai wasn’t sure.Distantly, he hoped that the handsome stranger, the real Fian and not the tentacled one he’d dreamed up, would stop by again.Kai didn’t have any particular plans of what he would do if that happened, but just remembering that face and the brief interaction felt like hope.
Kai went for a shower only to discover that his sexy dream had wrecked him—in the best of ways.He chalked his slickness up to cumming in his pants, more than once from the looks of it.His thighs were ever so slightly sore, but the good kind of sore, and most hilariously, he had acquired a few bruises at some point that looked slightly like the imprints of suckers on his forearms and thighs.I could actually delude myself into believing this entire dream experience really happened.
“Wouldn’t it be cool if tentacle people were real though?”Kai asked his ghost self in the fogged-up mirror after his shower.He stretched, enjoying how relaxed he felt, how much lighter.“Well, I did get rid of, what, two hundred pounds of Nick?”
A small pain started up at the base of his skull, and Kai drank some water straight from the tap.I’m probably just dehydrated after that really good sex dream.That’ll give you a headache, right?And what was more, thinking about the dream, about the tentacles that had held him so close, had cradled him so securely, seemed to dispel that building headache.
The next half hour, instead of opening the Jammery like he had done every day without fail since he’d moved out here, Kai spent sitting in front of his ancient TV with a nice big cup of coffee next to him, wearing nothing but the towel he’d wrapped around his middle.
He didn’t turn on his console, didn’t go for another round of gaming.There was no need to distract himself because his mind was a distraction upon itself.
We were in the ocean, and it was a dream which is why I could breathe.But swimming worked like it normally works, and Fian was really warm.Right, he said I tasted good.
At which point Kai picked up his phone to research octopi.
They could taste with their tentacles, with their suckers to be precise, and Kai blushed reading that.Fian had beeninsideof him with those very sensitive suckers, and while Kai was familiar with the theory of anilingus—he’d never been rimmed in his life—he had no illusions about how that area of his body would taste.
“Kiss my ass takes on a whole different meaning there, doesn’t it.Fuck, did I tell Nick to kiss my ass?I don’t want his mouth anywhere near me, not my ass or any part of me.”Kai was mumbling, and both anger and pain threatened to overwhelm him, but neither did.He was browsing photos of octopi, bright and cute, big and small, some with their arms outstretched as if they were curious, others with them rolled up as if they were shy.One particularly cute specimen reminded Kai of the Fian of his dreams, a Dumbo octopus.It made him smile, almost sad that a tentacled Fian was a fantasy.
“You know what, it doesn’t fucking matter.”Kai rejoiced in the cursing.Nick hadn’t liked it, and Nick wouldn’t have liked Kai downloading the cute Dumbo octopus picture and setting it for his screen wallpaper either.“Makes me feel all the fucking better for it.”
Eventually, Kai decided to go downstairs if for no other reason than he was restless sitting up here in this stuffy, lonely apartment.He went through his clothes, frowning.
All of it was khakis and polo shirts, like colors so bland they made Kai squint.Kai wasn’t vain, but he knew he’d had taste at some point.He used to wear jeans, some of them artfully destroyed, and he’d had that one black shirt with the really cool shimmery cobweb pattern.
“I…I donated all of that.Why the fuck did I donate all my stuff?Why the fuck…”
Kai pulled a polo from its hanger—who the fuck puts polo shirts on hangers?—and stared at it somewhat incredulous.He remembered buying this exact shirt on a shopping date with Nick early in their relationship.Nick had smiled and told him what a nice color this was on him, had guided Kai to a mirror to hold the shirt up in front of him.
I was so fucking pale that day.Was I sick?I don’t remember a stomach bug, but I looked like a zombie, I looked like…
Without knowing exactly why, Kai started trembling, his fingers clutching the fabric of the shirt.Then his vision swam.He didn’t realize he was crying right away, but when he did, he balled up the shirt and tossed it into the kitchen trash, then wiped his eyes.
There were no good options, but leaving the house meant getting dressed.Kai picked what was the least bad option, light maroon pants and a baby blue shirt.Getting dressed was slow business, and as he went through the motions, he tried to remember where his life had gone so far off the rails that he couldn’t locate a single black item in his wardrobe.
“I was going to date again.I set up the new profile, and then I talked to Nick.We went on a date.We had coffee, and he had a chocolate éclair.”
Kai had talked about Python and Ruby—he knew never to do so to excess with non-coders.Nick had smiled along, but more than anything, he’d been bland.Then he’d been suggestive and gropey, and Kai remembered walking home through the city, city noises around him.
Except the next day, he’d woken up as if from a fever dream.“I was in love.First thing I did was call Nick and tell him I was in love with him like some stupid puppy dog, I—”
A slicing pain in his skull made Kai almost keel over.He leaned against the door to the stairs, uncomfortable in clothes he didn’t like and in pain that made no sense.
He did the only thing he could think of doing.He thought of tentacles, warm and dark and strong, holding him tightly and keeping him from drifting away on a dark current.
