Fianwascreative.Hehad the capabilities to imagine countless scenarios of pain he might inflict on the barnacle human, but he didn’t waste his time on even one.
The only person he allowed to matter in the cramped little room with just that thin curtain between them and the world was Kai.
Kai was soft and stiff at the same time, and his skin tasted both bitter and sour.He was however getting calmer with each passing second, with each stuttering breath.Fian dabbed at Kai’s cheeks with the careful tip of a tentacle, not wanting those cheeks to be soaked in tears or lined with crusted salt.
Kai was also shivering all over, and while he held him tightly, Fian was less certain about what to do about this.Putting his clothes back on him seemed the obvious choice, but Kai clearly loathed them.
I can’t do anything he loathes.He’s so weak right now.If I do something that isn’t right, he might get worse, and that can’t happen.
So Fian waited yet longer.When Kai’s heart beat evenly against his chest, he asked, “I understand you want new clothes.How about we just find one set that fits you for now, and then we go looking for food?Does that sound good?”
A nod.Fian took it.
Finding clothes Kai liked was easy.He had picked out enough to choose from, and he had the wherewithal to point.
“Yeah, those,” he said, voice rough.
Fian helped, but only for stability and warmth.When Kai was dressed, he looked at himself in the mirror.He roamed over the new clothes with his hands, a hoodie in all black with purple lining the hood and black jeans with intricate stitching in the front.Every now and then, Kai stopped to stroke one of Fian’s tentacles, dark blue against Kai’s all-black outfit of choice.
“I need to pay for these.”
Fian nodded.“If you are agreeable, I will do that for you.Using your money, of course.”He plucked the tags from the clothes, barely disturbing them while pulling Kai’s wallet from the pocket of his discarded jeans, along with a set of keys he put in the new ones.“I’ll shift back now.You’ll have to wait for me for a few moments.”
The payment was all too easy, especially when Fian added some of his magic to make the human clerk very ignorant and indifferent.They left a heap of clothes in the small changing room and walked out of the store hand in hand into the brightly lit center of the mall.
There, low music played, and humans talking and laughing created a low background noise that wasn’t unlike the sound of waves echoing through the ocean.
Fian beamed at Kai whose eyes were red but mostly dry.“I get to buy you food now.”
Fian spoke just to fill the silence that came in the wake of whatever scar the magic had left behind on his landbride.Kai nodded, which was a relief, if only because it told Fian the human was still here with him, was still paying attention to what was happening around him.
“I don’t want to go back there.”
Fian looked at Kai.“Back where?”
There was the panicked fear that Kai might not want to dream himself into the ocean with Fian again, but it vanished when the human looked up, his eyes swelling with tears again and his cheeks hollow.
Kai stopped next to a large planter with some type of aggressively growing land flora, one of the tall leaves slightly wilting at the tip.“Back to the Jammery.I’m not sure where else to go.I don’t have anyone.”
Simply taking a human with you might be counted as an abduction of non-dreamers, but this has to be an exception.Except he must have things like identification and keys and bank accounts.Humans need all of those.
Fian nodded.“I didn’t have time to clean my place and get human things so you’d feel more at home, but if you don’t mind that—”
Kai shook his head.“That isn’t what I mean.I don’t just want to move in with you, that’s not what I was angling for.I should go to a hotel, and then I should plan—I have stuff there.My consoles.And I think my old laptop is still in one of the boxes.I need to get a job.Fuck, I’m not even sure I quit the last place I was working for.”
Fian understood.Kai was planning to run, but he was doing so in order to be able to walk by himself again.
“Can I help?”
Kai looked at him, glancing at Fian’s legs every now and then which hadn’t been there when he’d gone into his cecaelia form earlier.“You have tentacles,” Kai whispered.
“I do,” Fian whispered back.“But I can still help.”
“I dreamed about you.And what your tentacles can do.”
Fian nodded and leaned forward.“I told you that it wasn’t a dream.I mean, it was.There’s all kinds of metaphysics—we don’t have to get into science stuff, but it was real.”
Kai scratched the back of his head and looked around.Fian followed his line of sight to a kitchenware store.He wondered whether Kai was really looking at the corkscrews and salad bowls on display or whether he was just drifting on the tides of his own mind.
