Chapter 12
Kai wasn’t particularly fond of shopping sprees, but with the maroon pants itching and that fucking blue shirt too tight around his neck, he couldn’t wait to get the clothes off.
It was the noises of the mall, the buttery scent of popcorn hanging in the air, that had soothed Kai with the strange familiarity of a freedom he hadn’t enjoyed in a long while.
A freedom? Was I caught? I guess so. I didn’t have a car, and I couldn’t leave. And Nick, Nick he…
Kai reached for a black shirt on a hanger, not really bothering to examine it closer.
Fian, who was right by his side, whisked the garment out of Kai’s fingers and put it on the largish pile he was already carrying without complaint.
No headache. I’m not getting even the whiff of a headache.
But thinking about Nick makes me feel sick to my stomach.
Like a bee flitting from one flower to another, Kai gathered more clothes in dark monochrome tones.
The model looking down at shoppers from the screen on the wall was androgynous and flawlessly styled, in a love match between hipster and goth, and while Kai didn’t know what to make of this, he was at least encouraged to pick out anything and everything that wasn’t like the clothes he was wearing.
It didn’t take Kai five minutes to get through most of what he was possibly interested in, and when he turned around to see Fian smile, Kai felt bad.
“Uh. Those’re a lot of clothes. Sorry. I think I overdid it. Sorry.”
“Not to worry. You shop, I carry. I told you I’d be good at this.
Are we going to buy all of these?” He glanced down at the pile in his arms. “What if you really do get cold? Don’t you want anything warmer as well?
And maybe a bathing suit just to see if you like it?
And then maybe we can go for a swim together. ”
Kai huffed. “They don’t have bathing suits here, and I’m not buying all of that. Not without trying them on at least. Come on, changing rooms’re over there.”
“Changing rooms. Of course.”
Fian followed Kai. One of the salespeople gave them a wide-eyed look but then just smiled. Kai walked across the blood red carpet to the last changing room on the right and pulled the curtain closed behind him, breathing heavy as if he’d been running.
“Oh!” said Fian.
Kai turned and opened the curtain. Fian was right there as if he’d just managed not to walk straight into the cloth.
“Oops. I guess I was in a hurry there. Let me—I can take some of these.”
“But I should carry them for you so that you have nothing that burdens you. You should just relax and enjoy this. You know, when humans clear oil off seabirds’ feathers, the best thing the seabird can do is relax.
I think humans always provide food as well, and I will feed you the best mushrooms the human realm has to offer, I—”
Kai stared at Fian with wide eyes. “Humans? The human realm? You’re okay, right? You aren’t deluding yourself into thinking you are an alien who’s ship crash-landed here or something?”
“What a silly story.” Fian chuckled. “No! And nooo, not at all, but if you see it from the seabirds’ point of view, that’s what I mean.
Have you ever met a seagull? Those have opinions about the human realm, which is…
the realm of ground dwellers. They rule the sky.
Obviously they’d call where you live the human realm. That’s what I was trying to say.”
He finished speaking with the most innocent smile. Okay, maybe he’s one of these empathic people. Oh, or he’s a vegan. Yeah, that makes sense. The obsession with the mushrooms and the okra and all that. That’s totally cool.
“Most people will tell you that seagulls are fucking assholes though, right?”
Fian exhaled. “That too, but it is sort of a given.”
“Okay. Look, I still need the clothes.”
“I can buy them for you. I have hu—I mean, I have, you know, money to buy things with. I really want to buy these for you.”
Kai shook his head, a reflex.
I’ll take care of you. I’m the breadwinner, and you just lie there and spread your—
Kai couldn’t exactly remember what Nick had said. He couldn’t exactly remember when he’d said it. Everything was so dull, like a haze hung over his memories. He was cold all of a sudden, and he felt so small, so tiny, powerless.
“Kai?”
Fian had a hand on Kai’s shoulder. His touch was the gentlest thing. Kai had no idea at all how the other man managed to not drop half of the clothes.
“Yeah. Yeah. I…I am going to buy my own clothes. I’ll buy them.
I have money from the store. I’ll buy my own things so that they’re mine.
” Kai nodded as if he needed to assure himself of this.
It’s paying for my own damn clothes with my own damn money.
Why is this making me so fucking—I don’t even fucking know.
“All right then. But the food, the food at least must be my treat. Please? You already gave me food, and now it’s my turn, hmm?”
Kai looked up. He’d been staring at his balled fists, his mind sort of drifting as if he were daydreaming, only in his gut, it felt as if he were having nightmares. The carpet in the changing rooms was such a bright shade of red.
“That’s okay. You can buy me food.”
Fian smiled. His hand was still on Kai’s shoulder. It felt like an anchor, so strong. I can hold on to this, and when I do, I won’t be swept away.
“Okay. Now, do you mean to take clothes in there and change?”
Kai nodded. “Yeah. Let me take these, and, yeah, just a few things. Sorry. I’ll go fast so your arms don’t fall off.”
Fian snorted and lifted his chin. “Preposterous. My arms wouldn’t just fall off. They are strong. Also very symmetrical. I am not vain about them like my brother about his teeth, but my arms are really good arms.”
That made Kai laugh even though it really wasn’t particularly funny. “You are just so weird.”
He closed the curtain before Fian could respond.
Then he went about getting out of his clothes and nearly tore the damn shirt, actually managing to rip off the topmost button of the pants.
Destroying things had never felt so good, and when he was finally wearing nothing but his underwear, Kai felt like he could finally breathe again.
He did so, looking at himself in the mirror.
It was the oddest thing. Kai saw himself, but also saw a stranger looking back at him. He wasn’t like he knew himself to be. His hair was different, something in the set of his mouth was off. He ran a hand over his belly, feeling and not feeling, there and not there.
When something warm and slightly rough tickled his ankle, he yelped and jumped, his old fear of oversized arachnids raising several of its eight legs.
“Hey, you guys okay in there?” someone asked, and Kai fell back into the present, into where he was, a changing room with a man he barely knew but trusted more than Nick who, who—
“We are okay. It was just a small sea breeze,” Fian said.
“Uhm. All right. Let me know if you need anything in a different size.”
“Absolutely.”
The salesperson went away presumably. Moments later, the curtain was pulled open, and with his armful of stuff, Fian walked inside the cramped space.
All humor was gone from his features. “I realize I’m intruding, but this is an emergency.
You tasted like panic and the fear of certain death just now.
Something isn’t right with you. It’s the magic and—the magic and everything else.
But the important thing is that it doesn’t matter.
Kai, you are not alone. I am here with you.
Last night, what we did in the ocean, it wasn’t a dream.
I told you, and you wouldn’t believe it, but it wasn’t a dream.
I’m forcing you to believe now, because if you’ll let me, I think it would be best if I held you for a while, just until your skin tastes normal again. ”
Kai’s mouth had fallen open. “Last night…I don’t know what you mean. At all. We did nothing.”
Fian’s mouth pressed tight. He crossed his arms, and the clothes, all the clothes, they were just being lifted by…
“Tentacles?”
One appeared in front of Kai’s face, the suckers kind of blinking, undulating.
“Yes. I kept telling you. But you told me to take my pants off. Maybe I shouldn’t have.”
Kai poked the tentacle. He had no idea why he was so fucking calm about everything.
But I know. This is a mental episode of some kind.
But there doesn’t seem to be much I can do about it except roll with it.
This is much nicer than thinking about Nick, how he smelled and those grunting sounds when he—
“Okay.”
Fian’s eyes widened and his mouth fell open. “Okay? Just like that?”
“Sure. Why not. Oh, this is why you were going on about the bathing suit? I get it. Funny.”
“I don’t like that you are being like this, but I really don’t know enough about humans. Kai, either way, can I hold you? Not like last night, of course not. I just want to hold you until your body knows it’s safe.”
That was a strange way to phrase it, but it hit a mark, somewhere in Kai’s heart, somewhere in his nervous system where thoughts couldn’t easily reach.
He nodded and leaned forward, and all of a sudden, there were arms, so many, so warm, the suckers rough but grounding him in his own skin with their roughness.
It didn’t take very long at all for silent tears to come, buckets and buckets of them.
Fian truly became an anchor then. He didn’t say anything, barely moved except to hold and tighten his grip as needed. At some point, he started cooing.
They stood there for a long time, for a very long time. If he had been alone, Kai might have lost himself, a broken kite tossed to the wind, but as it was, he floated, floated.
For the first time in a long while, Kai felt safe.