Chapter 4
No, you should close for yourself. To rest, Kai, for yourself.
Fian had spoken like he gave a damn. Kai gritted his teeth on his way up the stairs in the back that led to his small apartment above the shop.
Nick never told me to do anything for myself, that asshole.
Piece of shit. I want to forget him and leave this place behind.
Kai’s headaches had become more frequent over time. He couldn’t remember ever feeling the slicing pain like a cleaver before he’d moved to Salt Harbor. Then again, so many things had been different before he’d met Nick.
Kai stopped in the middle of the staircase and sat on one of the uneven steps to cradle his head in his hands and wait for the pain to pass, to wash over his vision like a cresting wave.
His eyes were watering, and he just wanted that splitting headache to go away finally.
Nick said he wants us to care for one another.
Why does he have to go and cheat on me after everything I left behind for him?
Kai felt the hard wooden step digging into his back, smelled the dusty air.
Nick liked things neat and tidy, but the staircase was out of the way, and there was a back entrance to the apartment Kai often used when he went out grocery shopping.
It had been a month or more since Kai had mopped these stairs.
And I’m not going to be cleaning anything today either. I’ll do what that stranger said: close and rest, for myself. Not for anyone else.
After several long minutes, the sharp point of the headache had dulled, and Kai made it up the rest of the stairs, hand gripping the rail tightly.
He had a futon up here set under the slanting part of the roof.
There was a small window above it, and from that window, Kai could see the ocean.
At night, he heard it, and sometimes he was certain the waves followed him all the way to his dreams.
He closed the door to the stairs and flipped that rarely used lock, kicked off his shoes and leaned against the windowsill above his bed. The ocean and its waves sparkled in the sun like hope, promising a faraway shore.
“Pretty, but sometimes I wish this whole place would vanish in a flood.” In the distance, past where the waves broke, Kai thought he spotted something dark, a long sleek sea snake, only larger.
He cackled. “Wow. These fucking headaches make me hallucinate. Great, just great. Time to get out the monster-slaying games.”
He heaved himself off the bed and for the next half hour, devoted himself to multitasking: undress and get his comfy gaming PJs on, set up his consoles, and pick a game that was going to keep him busy for the foreseeable future.
“This should do it.”
With his hands on his hips, Kai looked over the setup. It wasn’t perfect. He had this old-looking couch up here with a nineties pattern that had faded with age. Nick had given it to Kai. It’s my uncle’s, but he doesn’t use it anymore. Kai snorted, but he didn’t want to think about that anymore.
Instead, he sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the old TV, yet another item he’d not brought with him when he’d moved. The damn thing flickered to life, and Kai went through his library of games.
“Hmm, witches, demons; nah, none of those. Uh, that one always makes me misbehave, and then the NPCs judge me. I really do need zombies, but medieval zombies.”
Kai clicked on the game and relaxed as soon as the familiar music filled the room.
Getting back into the game was strange at first, like putting on a pair of old shoes, but once he’d been eaten by zombies a few times, the muscle memory was all back, and the game was easy fun. It was distraction from the everyday, distraction from—Kai didn’t want to think about it, so he didn’t.
After a few hours of that, with the light shifting outside, Kai’s eyes got that sandpaper feel, and he knew it was time to go to bed. Before that, he raided his fridge, but the most appealing thing in there that didn’t require any cooking was some peach yogurt one day past its best-before date.
Kai closed the fridge door with his hip, fished a too-large spoon from the cutlery holder, and opened the yogurt.
“You’re a goddamn metaphor for my life here,” he told the expired host of probiotics as he ate right there in the light brown kitchen with the small round table that had a chicken-patterned tablecloth thrown over it, so disgustingly normal.
Kai finished the last of his yogurt. He was feeling petulant, and he knew it, but the frustration he felt in his bones sat too deep, like some kind of rot he knew was there but could do nothing about.
He tossed the plastic container and the spoon into the sink, not wasting a single thought on cleaning that. He barely had the energy left to brush his teeth and get undressed.
The light that was left of the day was red, like skin freshly bruised. Kai fell forward onto his bed, hugging the sheets, his eyes too heavy all of a sudden. The day had been too long. The last few months, they had been too long.
Just before sleep took him, Kai mumbled, “I’m hurting. Please help.”
He fell asleep like that, wearing only his boxers, the room softly lit by the menu screen of his zombie game.
As dreams went, this one started out a full ten in the weirdness ranking. Kai was underwater, floating, and for some reason he could breathe. Bubbles purled from his mouth, and he watched them drift to the surface.
On his left, a school of small silver fish swam past, and from further up, from where the surface was, light filtered down.
It was muted, though, and looking at himself drifting there in his boxers—because he was dreaming of his boxers, of course—everything had taken on softer shades.
It was calming. Then again, this was the ocean, and when he was eight, Kai’d had a recurring dream of a shark in the pool they used for swim practice.
The beast had been out to eat him. It had chased him, opened that maw with all those sharp, sharp teeth…
Kai’s heart beat faster.
“Kai, don’t be afraid,” said a dark, masculine voice drifting through the water like circling waves birthed from a dropped stone.
Kai looked around, making bubbles rise from his hair, but all around him there was only water, blue and deep, though not cold.
“I’m down here,” said the voice, and something moved beneath Kai’s feet, something large and coiling.
Kai paddled to get away. This was entirely too much like the shark dream for his taste.
The darkness beneath Kai lost some of its substance, and rather than a sea monster trying to devour him, a diver swam up to meet him. And he looked familiar.
“Hello,” the diver said, and Kai remembered where he knew the guy from.
He was that beautiful man, the one who had come into the store, had been all excited about being given some jam, then had waved like he was drowning.
Fian. His name was Fian. He wore the same clothes he’d worn in the store, sans the jean jacket.
Clearly he had no trouble breathing in this dream ocean either.
Am I having a literal wet dream? Like, a super weird one? That’s the only explanation, right? Zombie games don’t mess with your dreams like this…
Half convinced that was it, Kai stopped his paddling and turned. In this dream ocean, moving pretty much yielded the same result as it did in the real ocean, so that was something.
“Hello.” Kai examined Fian. It wasn’t inappropriate checking out the object of his fantasy, because if this was the dream Kai’s brain thought he needed, well, who was he to argue. Man really is hot. Fuck, I like how that dark hair moves in the water.
Fian slowly, carefully ventured a small smile. It smoothed the lines of his face and made him look warmer.
“You don’t have to do that here. Tread water, I mean.” His smile faltered. “You can of course! If that makes you comfortable. But there’s no need.”
He’s sort of cute. This dream is telling me I need cute in my next lover, whoever that might be. Just this dream lover for now.
“Really?” Kai stopped moving and was distracted by movement from his right.
He looked that way and saw rays, four at least, beating their wings—their fins as they moved through the water effortlessly and with so much grace that Kai knew for a certainty he wouldn’t tire of watching them, not even if he did so for days.
“They won’t do anything.”
Kai turned, and Fian was there suddenly, right in front of him with those big expressive eyes, their grayish blue so much more intense in the ocean light. If he’d been awake, Kai knew heat would have risen to his skin, and possibly, he might have retreated.
But this was a dream, and the only way to waking was through.
“I wasn’t scared,” he told Fian.
“Okay,” said the other man, amusement coiling around the corners of that smiling mouth, making those full lips stand out even more.
Kai swallowed. “Okay.”
He let his eyes roam over Fian, but he tried to be subtle about it. Then he remembered this was only a dream and dropped all subtlety.
Fian didn’t seem to mind. “Do you like what you see?”
It’s a dream. Don’t be nervous. He has to do whatever you dream him to do. It sounded simple enough, but the unfamiliar underwater setting and the clarity of the dream were unusual. Stress. You haven’t dreamed at all when you were in what shithead Nick called a relationship.
Kai cleared his throat, wondering that a dream required it. “You’re wearing a lot of clothes. That really limits what I can see.” If this is a dream, he’ll take his clothes off. If he doesn’t, I probably have a mysterious illness that makes you dream hot dudes and bigger things to worry about.
Fian’s eyes widened in pleased surprise. He licked his lips. “I can do that. But not for just the asking. Tell me something you like, and I’ll give you my pants.” His hand drifted to his crotch, indicating he was willing to give more than just his pants.
This is fast. Ho, boy, this is fast. Not that I’m complaining.
“I like…well. Okay, this is silly. No, wait, it’s really not.
I like ending a day by getting comfy on my couch—the couch I used to own, back at my place.
My old place. In the city, you know. Before I moved.
I liked getting comfy, maybe putting on a facemask which made me look like some sort of nightmare monster, and then I’d just play whatever game I was into at the time.
” Kai smiled. “I haven’t really done this.
But when you came into the Jammery earlier today, the real you, when the real you came into the Jammery, I decided to do it.
I got out my console, and I just did what I wanted to. Felt so good.”
Fian listened with intent, his eyes never once wavering from Kai’s face.
“I’m glad. Hmm. I’ve never played a game like that, I think, although I like games the humans play.
There was that one with the snake on one of the earliest phones I got.
The snake ate treats and got longer and longer. I really liked that.”
Kai cocked his head. “That’s very, uh, old-school. Gaming has come a long way since then.”
Fian reached for Kai’s hand. “I had no idea. Do you think you’d maybe want to show me sometime? Oh, I could cook okra for us, with mushrooms!”
One hundred percent the weirdest dream ever. “Sure. But you were saying about your pants?”
Fian’s mouth formed an oh as if he’d forgotten all about that.
“They are yours, Kai. But before that, I have to tell you that this is not a simple dream. I am not a figment of your imagination. I am real, and whatever you choose to share with me—to do with me—it will be real.”
“Excuse me?”
Fian gestured. “It’s…there is metaphysical laws and stuff. The explanation is normally quite long-winded. All I’m trying to say is, don’t do anything with me here that you wouldn’t do with me on land.”
Kai nodded slowly. Fian was still holding his hand in a strong, warm grip that dispelled so much of the weight Kai had felt upon himself.
“Weirdest dream ever, I swear. Please take off your pants now.”