Chapter 7
Fian’s tentacles felt empty without Kai.
His arms did too. It wasn’t just the lack of Kai’s taste that hurt like a missing tooth, though Fian had gorged himself on it, had savored with his suckers and his lips.
It wasn’t convenience either because presumably, courting a landbride required effort on the demon’s part to win them over for good.
Fian drifted in the current, naked and alone and wondering what Kai had done to him to make him feel like a clam without his shell. If he were a demon, I’d say he put a love spell on me. Well, he is a sexy human with a shapely butt, and I made him cum without doing anything about myself, but…
Fian bit his lip, his tentacles coiling in on themselves. “It’s not that either,” he told the ocean.
Fian looked around, wondering what he should do. Go to Kai, run to him, he thought.
Kai would be on his way to waking now. He’d slept so deeply, so peacefully, but that had taken work on Fian’s part.
Kai’s dreams skewed toward dark things, nightmares in which creatures more vile than any demon haunted him.
Fian had found a clear current, had whispered calming words to Kai, and that had worked to keep the nightmares at bay.
While Fian got angry at the magic that had been done to Kai—the magic that was likely the cause for those bad dreams, he almost bumped into two mermaids dressed in shell bras to entertain dreamers at the Carnival.
“Watch where you swim, you mammal head,” one of them said. Her hair was pink with orange strands running through it.
Fian’s color shifted to pale blue and pink. “Sorry.”
Fian righted himself and looked around to get his bearings. The other mermaid, her hair bright yellow, frowned at him.
“At least we have these.” She cupped her bra. “What’s your excuse?”
Which was when Fian recalled about his clothes, his pants specifically, the very ones Kai had commanded him to take off. The memory made him smile fondly.
“Ugh, what’s wrong with his face?” the pink-haired mermaid asked.
The other one flicked her flipper. “Stroke? Hey, kraken-head, are you having a stroke?”
“No. Nope, I’m not. I just met a human and—well, he gifted me rosehip jam if you must know.” Fian’s tentacles flexed with pride.
Neither of the mermaids seemed particularly excited about the gift though, and all of a sudden, Fian felt as if he were talking to Mikano.
These aren’t agents he’s sent after me to make fun of me, right?
That’s paranoid. Yeah, it’s paranoid, and he wouldn’t.
The Human Liaisons Unit has better things to do.
“Do you mean the human threw that jam stuff in the ocean? That’s not them gifting you anything, it’s them littering.” The yellow-haired one ran a hand through her hair before crossing her arms.
The other one nodded. “Yeah. You work at the Carnival long enough, you see all kinds of things. They don’t mean anything by it.” She cocked her head. “Did you try giving the human your clothes in return?”
Fian’s color was becoming agitatedly patchy all over.
“Oh, look at the time. Let me apologize to you once again for not watching where I swim, but I really have to go. I, ah, have carvings to do.”
Fian swam away before either of them could say anything back at him, but he could feel their eyes watching him retreat. “Of course Kai wasn’t littering. He would never.”
Fian was sure of that, and even if Kai did litter occasionally, it was probably a habit he could be broken of. The rosehip jam had been an honest gift, but Fian didn’t have to waste his time convincing mermaids of that.
Yet habits were important, or the right ones were when one was preparing to take a landbride.
Having a landbride meant they would spend time together, swim together, live together, snuggle together on some furniture that allowed Fian to wrap Kai in his tentacles…
Fian thought about that as he swam, not back toward the human world but to a quiet piece of shoreline he called home.
There, not too far away from the Carnival but just enough out of the way to make it a hassle for Mikano to visit, Fian had found a small plot he’d been able to rent.
It had come with a little house—only one room and a dream fire hearth—and a shed next to it.
The shed Fian had turned into what he thought of as his studio.
He did his carvings there. Until very recently, it had been stuffed full of phalli, much like the holes of the hungriest, kinkiest dreamers.
Or like Kai—but no. What he and I did wasn’t just thoughtless dick worship in the dream ocean. I took care of him. And I held him. I made sure he could rest. But still, the taste of him during orgasms…
Fian broke the water and slowly let go of his tentacles. Legs were easier on the shore, and his nakedness irritated no one here.
Except even as he thought himself safe from prying eyes, the front door of his one-bedroom house was thrown open, and there, in Fian’s very own door, stood none other than the nightmare creature that was Mikano.
“Tickle!” His shark smile never faltering, Mikano looked down even as Fian froze, waves lapping at his calves. “Why are you naked?”
“I…well, I…” Don’t tell me he sent those mermaids to watch me after all.
Mikano put his hands on his hips. “Is this an artist thing? Tom says artists are strange like that although I told him you weren’t all that strange.
But, Tickle, this won’t do. We were thinking a beachside wedding, but you will have to wear clothes for that.
And for the party after. The rehearsal dinner as well.
Tom says the rehearsal dinner is important, and the expectation is that you attend it fully dressed. ”
Fian might have felt smaller, but then he remembered Kai, his landbride-to-be, that human who tasted so good in his dreams, that human Fian couldn’t wait to get his suckers on in the waking world. And Mikano cannot take Kai from me. I found him. Mikano has his surfer.
“It’s not your wedding today, is it?” Fian asked, his color settling.
Mikano cocked his head. Usually, Fian would be at about his third apology by now. “No. Well, whatever. I was waiting for you. When I told Tom about you being my best demon, he explained about everything you’d have to do in that role.”
Wait, he gets married, and I get chores?
“You didn’t say anything about that before,” Fian said and followed his older brother into his house.
Mikano’s presence here made Fian self-conscious, and yes, he had kept a few of his phalli studies on the mantle of the dream fire hearth that bordered on his small kitchen. Other than that, Fian was neat. Being neat was easier with eight arms, Fian had always thought so.
He headed for his armoire and pulled out a set of clothes in the human style, eager already to make his way back to the surface to see Kai and really explain that the dream they had shared had been real, just like any other dream Kai had dreamed and thought a fantasy.
Mikano plopped into the armchair Fian had carved for himself. It had a low back so he had no trouble using his arms while he sat here.
“I know, but Tom wants to keep things to the human style. I told him I could have abducted him and kept him in my house for a moon year and that would have been it, but he insists that we be humanly wed. His mother wants to see him get hitched, he says, and everything has to be perfect.” Mikano’s sharp mako eyes narrowed on Fian. “You have to be perfect, Tickle.”
Unfortunately, Fian’s skin was slightly wet still, and he had opted for a rather tight set of pants, leading to him jumping on one foot while he tried getting into them, his color growing unsteady while suckers erupted on his hands and fingers.
Mikano clicked his razor teeth. “Maybe…I know a demon who has great organizational skills and won’t mind being your plus one for that day.”
“No!” Fian pulled his jeans up over his ass, glad that his need for Kai wasn’t physically evident just then and remained, for the time being, in his mind alone. “I can do it!”
Mikano frowned. “Tickle, you didn’t put on any underwear, and you were really struggling just now.”
And Fian hadn’t bothered with the underwear, mostly because he was hopeful that Kai would tell him to get rid of the pants when they saw each other next. Ah, it had been so exhilarating when Kai had done that earlier!
“I—am going commando. I heard dreamers talk about it, and I thought I’d try it.”
“Tickle, what kind of shroom skewer did you have earlier?”
“There was broccoli in it! You saw. Also, some people really like mushrooms. And okra too. Maybe I know people who like these things and talked to them, did you think about that?”
Mikano crossed his legs and bobbed his foot. He wore nice shoes, a fashionable human style.
“Are you saying that when you talked to your friends about food that has no texture, you somehow ended up naked? What by all the sand of dreams is going on with you?”
“Nothing! I just—I went for a swim, and I lost my clothes in the current because I spotted a nice piece of wood and it distracted me.”
Mikano was motionless for a long moment. He was more agent than brother now, Fian could feel that. He did everything he could to control the color of his skin, but he didn’t entirely manage to keep it from shifting.
“That is,” Mikano said at length, “actually plausible. But, Tickle, really. You should be old enough to manage such little things.” He sighed and stood, pulled a folded sheet of paper from an inside pocket and handed it to Fian.
“Here. Look this over. Tom says these are most of the things you should be doing as the best man. You will need a cell phone that works in the human world, and you’ll have to make a few trips.
Tom also wants to meet you—I made excuses to give you time to process and possibly reconsider. ”
Fian looked the paper over. It wasn’t written in Mikano’s neat script, so the surfer had done this.
The surfer had either not learned cursive or opted not to use it, making Mikano falling for him even more implausible.
Once Mikano was gone, Fian would be able to taste the paper with his suckers, maybe learn more about this human who was marrying a shark.
“I’ll do it,” Fian said, now contrary. “I’ll organize this bachelor party event.”
Mikano nodded. “That one was quite important to Tom, but you’re just organizing it for me. A friend of his is doing the same for Tom.” Mikano pointed. “That is your counterpart on Tom’s side, his best human, Ell. Give her a call.”
“Okay.” Just after I get a phone. If I can find one that can survive the water that is.
Mikano crossed his arms. “And if you cannot do it, tell me.”
In that moment, Fian wanted to shift, take his full kraken form, and smack Mikano in the head. They hadn’t fought like that in a long time, mostly because Fian wasn’t actually fond of fighting, yet another thing that made him different from Mikano.
“I can do it, and I will,” Fian said.
Mikano heaved a sigh and ruffled Fian’s hair, triggering yet another shift in Fian’s skin color.
“Well, I have to trust you. The success of my nuptials is in your suckers, little brother, sweet Tickle. Please don’t mess it up for me. Tom is the salt of my every waking hour, and all my dreams are his.”
That stunned Fian into silence. Yes, he had assumed some kind of affinity between Mikano and his human, but something so deep, something that rendered Mikano if not demure then at least vulnerable? He’d not thought that such a thing existed, much less that it came with a surfboard.
Fian watched Mikano walk away and close the driftwood door to Fian’s house behind him. In the silence that followed, Fian almost thought that he felt some kinship with his sharkhead of a brother, almost.