Page 46 of Hummingbird and Kraken

He looked miserable with his arms crossed over his chest and mumbled something that Geir was almost sure was “I should have known.”

“What should you have known?” he asked sharply. How had this all gone so wrong so quickly? Why was Declan standing on the other side of the room in the hazy light of the window instead of in his arms?

“What you said before. That was just a sex thing, I guess. Which is, like, fine. Because it’s not like you know me anyway. I’m just some stupid pretty boy passing through town. I’ll, um, I’ll be on my way tonight.” Declan forced a wobbly grin onto his face, but it didn’t match his sad eyes. “We can still have fun until then, right?”

Geir still wasn’t sure what was going on, but Declan was his. He needed Declan closer to him because he couldn’t bear those sad eyes. He needed to figure this out.

He reached out his tentacles and drew Declan back to his lap, catching him in his arms when the movement made him stumble. He wrapped each tentacle around as far as it would go, two or three times around Declan’s squirming body, and then pulled with the suckers at the tips, too. It was instinctive. Declan wasn’t getting away.

Declan stopped squirming. He wasn’t fighting the entrapment or the pressure, but he was still tense. “I guess that’s a yes on the fun?” he said, his voice too bright. He didn’t do a good job of hiding his emotions, which was lucky for Geir because his words sometimes went too fast for him to follow. Declan definitely wasn’t as happy as his smile suggested.

Geir needed a moment to think. It sounded like they were talking about jobs, but maybe they were just talking about Declan being his. He had to figure this out. “Do you want to have a job?”

Declan shrugged, but it was more of a push against Geir’s shoulder and tentacles, since he was so tightly bound. “I mean, I don’t really have a job that I want, but it’s what grownups have to do, right? To make money? And be independent?” He sounded bitter, though. Which meant that he didn’t want a job.

Geir had discovered that he was confused a lot around Declan. He was still convinced that it was worth it.

“But you don’t want those things.”

“I…” Declan started to speak and then buried his head in Geir’s chest, his lips brushing the top of one tentacle. “I thought it would be helpful. But I guess it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

Geir still felt like they were speaking two different languages. He knew more than a dozen, but this was something else. Language and society had shifted more in the past century than ever before, and he hadn’t kept up. He thought that maybe that was part of the problem, but he just didn’t know enough to work around it.

“Declan,” he finally tried. Maybe direct was best. “Do you want to be with me?”

His hummingbird looked wary, but hopeful. “Do you want me to?”

“Of course. You said that you were mine. But I would find it very difficult to let you go each day. And there aren’t any jobs around here. I’m not sure that I could live in a city, either. I think maybe you could reconsider having a job?”

Declan looked confused, and then his expression visibly cleared, like a storm breaking into sunlight. He laughed with abandon, squirming around like he wanted to free his arms, and then subsiding when Geir didn’t let him go.

He was completely limp now, relaxed and happy. Geir wasn’t quite sure what had changed, but this was the way he should always be.

“You really want me,” Declan whispered in awe.

“Yes. You said that you were mine.” He needed to confirm the point.

“You didn’t…” Declan hesitated. “You didn’t act like I was yours.”

Geir gripped him tighter. He wasn’t sure what this meant, but he would figure it out. “I’ll do better.”

Declan nuzzled against his shoulder with his cheek, the only bit of him that was free to move. “I would like to be yours,” he said quietly, like he was testing things out.

“You are mine.” That was the important part to him. But he knew that Declan had other worries. “You don’t need to go anywhere else. You don’t need a job.”

Declan’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “What if it was a job that I could do from here? If we could put a satellite dish on the roof and I could work over the internet? I can pay for the car. It doesn’t have to be full time. And maybe there’s something you’d like to do, too? Because, um, I like to look pretty and that doesn’t come cheap.”

Geir took a minute to let that all sink in. “All of those jobs that you said before, you can do them over the internet? From… the house?”

Declan nodded. Now everything made sense.

There was one more thing he needed to say, though. “You are pretty all of the time.” He lifted one tentacle and brushed it over Declan’s eyelid. The blue and silver paint tasted chemically to his skin, but he liked it anyway. He wondered how it stayed on even in the water. “I like it. I will buy you more.”

Declan beamed. “I can help contribute financially, though. I know you don’t have a lot of money. I mean, I don’t have any money right now, and I’m not complaining about the food situation, but I can help with that.”

“I have money. We can buy food.”

Declan looked skeptical. “How much money are we talking about?”