○ a trip to IKEA, coupled with a new point of view ◝◜◝◜◝◜◝◜◝◜◝◜◝◜◝◜◝◜◝◜◝◜◝◜ / june 20, 2131 - james nairn / If you were to ask James Nairn what his biggest concern was at the moment, there was a nine in ten chance that it would be the Demons. There was also a one in ten chance that it would be something totally inane and benign. Like achieving a passing grade in math. Or finding out Bradley's favorite flower (he loved daffodils). Or escaping this goddamned IKEA. What was it with this store? Why was it so easy to get lost in? It had all been Todd's idea. "Tertius needs furniture," he had said one day, completely unprompted. "We have the money for it now," Which was true. The Tertius Furniture Fund had really blossomed over the past two years. Sympathy was apparently incredibly marketable, James had discovered, when Todd confessed that he had been using the whole ordeal with the Demons to get people to donate. It didn't matter how they got the money, in the end, as long as they had it. And so Bradley and James agreed, and Bradley's older cousin dropped them off at IKEA, and now James was lost. Splendid. He never did like this store. It was too large, much too large. Full of places where a Demon could conceal itself. He glanced over his shoulder again. Nothing was there, no Scant with its leering grin, no shapeshifting Underling poorly disguised as a person. He was safe. A man, arms laden with knickknacks of all shapes and sizes, lost his balance for a moment and bumped into James, and called out a quick "sorry!" as he hurried away. It was like every part of his body was aflame, and he inhaled sharply and leant against a shelf and he was NOT AT ALL SAFE because that man could have been a Demon, and then he was back in that awful room with the Scants and the Underlings, but he was also in an IKEA, but either way he was lost and separated from his friends and his skin was twisting and jumping and crawling all over the place and this was a stupid idea and he wanted to go home now. He took a long deep breath in and held it, and slowly unclenched his fists as he exhaled. His fingernails had dug into his palms, leaving a neat row of four little crescents on each hand. "Calm yourself. This is a public place," he whispered. It was embarrassing, that all someone had to do was innocently bump into him and he'd immediately panic in that way. Extremely humiliating. Not only had the Demons stripped him of his tolerance for skin-to-skin contact, they had also stolen his dignity. ⋘◦⋙ What could have been years of wandering the store later, James at last found Bradley inspecting a display of wicker baskets and other assorted containers. "Fancy seeing you here," he said casually, planting a hand on the shelf and leaning against it. Bradley turned and grinned. "Thank goodness! I've been looking everywhere for you!" "Do you know where Todd is?" "Actually, heh, no I don't. I was hoping you'd know where he was," Bradley rubbed the back of his neck. "IKEA is a merciless labyrinth," James said. "We'll keep an eye out for him," ⋘◦⋙ They found Todd, or rather, Todd found them, some time later. He was beaming widely. "Lads, I've found us both a couch *and* a desk!" He clapped them both on the shoulder. James definitely did not flinch. "Really?" Bradley said, "Good for you. James and I got lost," "I know," Todd said. "Should have stuck with me, then, since I'm clearly the IKEA master," "We bow to you," James said with mock sincerity. Bradley had wandered off, and now returned holding three rubber rats in each hand. "What, pray tell, are you doing with those rats?" Todd asked. "They're obviously us," Bradley explained. "This handsome one is me, and this other handsome one is James, and this average one is you, Todd, and the two angry ones are Marcus and Vivi, and this smug one is Nicky," James tilted his head to the side. They all looked like rats to him. "How do you know if a rat is handsome?" "Wild guess," Bradley said. "I dunno, something tells me the kids will be offended at being compared to rats," Todd mused. "Must suck to be them," James said. "I'm going to send a picture of the rats to the group chat," Bradley said, taking out his phone. "We have a group chat?" James asked, bemused. "Nicolas has a phone?" Todd asked, equally bemused. "I'm making a group chat right now," Bradley said. "I think Vivi said he didn't have a phone," Todd pointed out. "He lied to you. He has a phone, I just don't think he texts anyone," James said. "Just leave him out of it. He'll find out about the rats when we put them in his bed," "That's terrible. You're so mean," Bradley said. He created the group chat anyway. "I'm horribly corrupt," James said drily.
"Aren't we supposed to be buying furniture?" Todd cut in. ⋘◦⋙ In the end, they did purchase the couch and the desk after careful scrutiny from Bradley and James, who both had nothing to say about it. Todd was the one who was skilled at interior design, anyway. After leaving the IKEA, the three of them found themselves at a loss for what to do next. It was Todd who suggested that they go up in the treehouse in his backyard the previous owners of his house had left behind, and there they stayed, until well past the sun's descent beneath the horizon. Bradley was the first the fall asleep, lying on the treehouse's wooden floor with his head on a floor cushion and repeatedly insisting that he was not at all tired, until his eyes slid shut and did not reopen. Todd was next, feet atop Bradley's legs, an arm thrown over his face. James was still awake. He often found himself in this position, ever since his return to Xiphoid. He used to be able to fall asleep quickly and easily, but, much like they had taken his dignity, the Demons took that from him as well. Falling asleep would be careless and stupid, it would leave him, Bradley, and Todd defenseless and alone. There was no telling what would happen to them then. After all, it had been that careless naivety that had led to the whole mess that his life had been made into. At that time, he, Bradley, and Todd were young and idiotic, had just begun to understand what they were capable of, and felt as though they were invincible, powerful, unbeatable. They played with fate, each day testing the limits of existence a little bit further, finding news ways to detach and alter and modify the threads of reality, and then one day it fell to pieces. It was James who had the idea, James who caught the Demon, James who leaned in close and said "this is going to be so cool". It was James who found the next Demon, James who led the experiments, James who found the Demon after that and the Demon after that. Somewhere along the way, a higher sort of Demon must have taken notice, because James fell asleep one night in Tertius and woke the next morning surrounded by Demons, alone and frightened. You aren't so brave anymore, are you, little Magician? The months he had spent there at the mercy of those creatures were a dim, blurred haze in his memory. What had happened during that time? He could recall small things: flashes of pain, claws, and fangs; glimpses of a Scant's leering face; a booming laugh and a high cackle; a sword in his hand and a blade at his neck; long-fingered hands reaching for him and grasping what they could reach, tearing at his clothes and pinching his skin in a thousand places with long, dirty nails. He could recall the day his rescuers arrived, the day the woman with the stern face and the man with the kind eyes (Caryn and Fred, he later remembered. He had forgotten their faces entirely) lit up his desolate world with an explosion of magical, brand-new hope. He could recall the man with the kind eyes (Fred, Fred, Fred) reaching for him, he could recall crying out and cringing away from his hand— why were his fingers so short and blunt? What kind of Demon was this— he could recall Bradley and Todd, all twelve-year-old courage and valor gone, reduced to frightened children, and he could recall seeing their faces and thinking that it didn't have to be him, it could have been any one of them, so why was it him? The year after was clearer. That was the year that he had spent in that dull fog of hospitals and cold rooms and people asking him was he all right? Was he okay? What did he remember? Did he know that he was safe? He missed a lot of changes that year. Clearer still was the day he returned to Xiphoid to find Clark gone and the two oldest boys whose names he could never remember off on some grand adventure and Bradley a Junior Counselor in Training and all of them taller and older, and new, younger children he didn't know, and everything a contradiction of itself, old yet new, familiar yet foreign. Bradley and Todd welcomed him back as though nothing had happened. He was grateful for that. And now, in the treehouse with the two people who had stuck by his side throughout the hardest of times, struck down the Demons when they reared their ugly heads, he was grateful for this night, too. There was a part of him that thought he should have died a long time ago.
