Dren didn’t really care who they got as long as they kept him fed and kept the house clean enough that dirt wouldn’t stick to his feet as he walked through. His job title might be occupational therapist but he spent a significant part of the day with people using him as a stim toy and he came home all touched out and needing quiet time to decompress.
Vinny could cook and somehow managed to get the guys to clean up after themselves. That was good enough for him.
Today, he was a little late. Someone had ground crackers into his surface and there was no way he was going home without showering first. He was surprised when he got home and found an extra seat at the table. He was not up to guests. He decided to ignore it as he hung up his clothes at the front hall closet.
Vinny bounced over looking a little stressed and slightly manic. “Hi! I’m so glad you are home! Your nephew got here early and the poor little guy is really shy. But I set him a place at the table and we are all ready to go!”
Dren stared at her. Kogan stared at her. Derick looked appalled.
“What?”
“I don’t have a nephew,” Dren said slowly.
Vinny frowned, “But Kevin said…” she trailed off as her ears caught up to what she said. Then she pointed at the big glass bowl on the table. “That isn’t your nephew?”
Dren shook his head. Derick cleared his throat. “That’s a bowl of orange jello.”
Vinny narrowed her eyes, then moving faster than Dren would have guessed, she bent down, scooped up a pair of shoes and threw them one after the other hard enough to scuff Kevin. “You ASSHOLE!” she screamed. They were all trying not to laugh but it wasn’t really working.
Vinny looked over at them and was just looked so embarrassed. She had blushed bright red, her eyes were shiny with tears and she just mumbled something about dinner being on the table and they could start without her.
Then she turned and ran up the stairs.
Dren closed his eyes. He turned to the dining room. “Kevin? How are you going to make this up to her?”
Kevin was currently a trunk and he just shrugged his handles, “It was just a joke.”
Dren scrubbed his face with his hands. He was not in the mood to deal with this. “Yeah. That you made at her expense.”
Kevin just muttered, “It was funny. Can’t she take a joke?”
Dren turned and walked up the stairs while Derick explained that it would also just be a joke if she put pink dye in his wood oil, but that he would likely be as impressed with that as she was with this.
He got up to the third floor and looked for something to knock on her door with. His hands were too squishy just now to manage to make much noise. In the end he just said, “Knock, knock. Can I come in?”
“Yeah, sure.”
She was sitting in the corner with her fists clenched.
“Kevin is an asshole and I’m sorry he did that to you.”
Vinny shook her head and wiped her eyes. “I feel like an idiot.”
Dren shrugged, “You just haven’t met many-”
“NO! Not even that! I didn’t believe him at first, but he was so sincere and I thought that since I had been helping him with his shell, that maybe we were friends now. But after that, I feel like he was just using me and I wonder if he has just been exploiting me this whole time.”
Dren felt sick. “Wow. Um, shell care is something that mimics need or they end up with chronic pain. I didn’t know you were helping him with that. That makes tonight …really messed up. He’s trying to run you off so that you won’t help him.”
Vinny gritted her teeth.
Dren continued, “It’s up to you what you want to do about this, but it would help the rest of us if you told him how you feel betrayed and that he abused your trust. Otherwise he is just going to complain that you overreacted.”
Vinny nodded and stormed down the stairs. Even from the third floor, he could hear her shouting.
“Have you ever not lied to me? If you dicked me around about this – how can I believe anything you say? That has to be ten boxes of jello! You can go out and get fucking jello but not shell goop? I am such an idiot! I believed that whole bullshit story!” And her she said the thing that made Dren pay attention. “I thought you were actually trusting me, so I trusted you back. But that wasn’t it, was it? Was it all some sick scheme to make me touch you?”
That was interesting. She had made it what it was, a trust issue. If she had said she thought she was helping or that she was taking care of him, then she would be speaking from a position of power in the relationship. But as the person who was conned, the fault was clearly Kevin’s.
Which it was. But Kevin wouldn’t have seen it that way. He would see it as her holding power over him and him taking that back.
“Do you have any idea how used and betrayed I feel right now? Does that even matter to you?”
There was a long moment of silence.
“Well? Say something!”
Still nothing. “Fine!” Then the door slammed.
Dren carefully closed the door to Vinny’s room and headed down to eat dinner. There was no sign of the girl. The slow cooker full of beef stew and the fresh buttermilk biscuits were delicious. The crew ate in silence.
——
Dren was sitting in his room while the others were busy out of the house when Vinny came home. He stopped her on her way up the stairs. “Supper was lovely, did you get something to eat?”
She shook her head, “I seem to have lost my appetite.”
Dren considered this. “You look like you need to hit something.”
“Maybe,” she admitted. “The angry walk around the neighbourhood didn’t help.”
Dren held out his arms. “It’s ok, you won’t hurt me.”
Vinny looked confused then upset. “I’m not going to hit you!”
“It’s really ok. It is basically my job.”
She just looked confused.
“I help people find tools to make their environments safer for them. But they are often angry and hitting me doesn’t actually hurt me, so-”
Vinny frowned, “That doesn’t sound right. Gelatinous can feel pain.”
Dren looked away, “Yeah, but it doesn’t do any lasting damage.”
“Wow. That is horrible.”
He shook his head. “It really isn’t. I get the most frustrated violent kids and I am able to find them tools to cope. It is very rewarding.” She gave him a look. “And only sometimes painful,” he added. He waved her in and offered her the other chair. “Do you know what you are going to do about Kevin?”
“Besides not trusting him again? No. I’m pissed but I’m not going to quit over it. But… look, for the first three or four weeks I was here, he didn’t say a single word to me. I am fine going back to that.”
Dren nodded slowly. Kevin’s door was open, so Dren knew he was listening. “What if he apologized?”
Vinny shrugged, “Do you really think he will?”
Dren considered this. “I don’t actually know. I’m not sure what he said about shell care, but he really was trusting you to let touch him like that.”
Vinny chewed her lip, “That’s what is currently worrying me. I thought it was just like… I don’t know, rubbing someone’s shoulders. Now I’m afraid it is some sex thing.”
Dren considered this. “I don’t think so. I come home from work all touched out. But no one touches Kevin. I think he’s starved for attention.”
Vinny looked thoughtful, but when she spoke it wasn’t what he was expecting. “So what do you do when you are all touched out?”
Dren laughed. “I come up here and melt. That’s the point of the bathtub. I can just relax.” Then he snorted, “Or I play with the stim gels myself and the guy tease me it’s porn. It isn’t,” he hastened to add. “It is different having people poke and prod me than having me touch someone else. But unless I want to moonlight as a massage therapist, there isn’t really away to get physical contact without the person touching you back.”
Vinny snorted, “Yeah, well anytime you want to practice those massage skills, just let me know. This place is definitely making me tense.” She reached over and rubbed the crook of her neck.
Dren snorted. “Come here. Sit on the floor and I’ll do that.” She wasn’t kidding, her neck, shoulders and back were a mess of knots.
Vinny gave a little moan, “I feel like I am taking advantage of you.”
Dren snorted, “Stim toys don’t hold up their end of the conversation.”
“I’m not sure I do a much better job. Hey, if you want to touch someone without being touched, why don’t you take care of Kevin’s shell?”
Dren snorted, “Once I get lotion on myself, I can’t get it off. It doesn’t soak in like it does on wood or skin. Anything I absorb, I digest.”
Vinny nodded, “Another food safety issue.”
“Pretty much. That’s one of the things I have in common with Kevin. Along with, we can both change shape and we are both less humanoid than the others.”
“I don’t know, you look pretty human to me.”
Dren shook his head again, “Only when I concentrate.”
“Dren? Thanks for listening to me.”
“Any time, Vinny. But you should really go get something to eat, then let Derick take over this job.”
He waited for her to go, then he closed the door, climbed into the tub and just let go. He sloshed into a puddle and lay there for a moment before falling asleep.
