"Sigh…" he sighed wearily.
Before stepping further into the bathroom, the lingering, exhausted hysteria from his manic laugh episode draining away, leaving behind the heavy, familiar cloak of annoyance and exasperation. He desperately needed the simple, silent peace of a hot shower to wash away the collective weirdness of the day, the scent of Ignis's pheromones, and the undeniable filth of having a magically-inflicted tail.
He locked the door, stripped off his oversized, sweaty hoodie and clothes (boxers), —freeing the voluminous fluffy tail to twitch and swish in vexation—and step into the tub, turning the water to near-scalding.
Even with the shower running, his cursed, sensitive cat ears were an active source of torture. He could still clearly hear Tamsin and Marcus through the thin apartment walls, their voices raised in a muffled but clearly audible argument about their complicated dating dynamics.
"I'm not saying you have to like my father, Marcus, I'm just saying you can't tell him his business is a Ponzi scheme!" Tamsin's voice was sharp.
"It is a Ponzi scheme! I'm a paramedic student, I deal with facts! It's irresponsible of me not to tell him!" Marcus retorted.
Kaelan slammed his palm against the tiled wall, a low, frustrated growl rumbling in his chest. "Just shut up!" he muttered and groan , knowing they couldn't hear him, but feeling marginally better for yelling anyway.
He tried to concentrate on the water, letting the heat work on the tight, stressed muscles in his neck. He briefly entertained a fantasy of the water dissolving his tail and ears, restoring his livid sanity.
It was in that fleeting moment of distracted hope that he felt it: a slimy, cold, and utterly invasive touch wrapping around his left ankle.
Kaelan froze, his eyes snapping open. Before his brain could register the impossibility of the sensation, another cold, shockingly slick length curled around his inner thigh, sliding dangerously close to his private part.
The effect was instantaneous and violent. Kaelan's profound aversion to physical touch collided with his hair-trigger short temper and his sheer outrage at being violated in his only sanctuary.
He let out a sharp, strangled sound of pure disgust and fury. He didn't think; he reacted. With a surge of martial arts training fueled by enraged panic, Kaelan brought his foot up and down in a swift, powerful kick, snapping the slimy grip on his ankle. Then, with a grunt of exertion, he reached down, grabbed the nearest slimy rope, and yanked it out of the water with enough force to nearly pull the creature attached to it over the edge of the tub.
The water splashed violently as Kaelan glared down at his intruder, his entire body tense and trembling with livid disgust.
Dangling limply from Kaelan's fist were several long, thick, lavender-colored tentacles. The tentacles belonged to Ryuu, their third roommate and Kaelan's most annoying acquaintance. Ryuu had shrunk his body into a small body and shift his arms into tentacles.
Ryuu, a Shifter who inherited the traits of a deep-sea octopus, was currently grinning up at Kaelan from the floor, where he'd been crouched, having somehow snuck into the apartment and the bathroom. Ryuu was known for his love of pranks, his relentlessly sexual nature, and his tendency to go into heat at the most inconvenient times.his long tentacles , were an extension of his notoriously touchy-feely personality.
Ryuu was also the one friend Kaelan perpetually dismissed as being "too much." Ryuu had, in fact, famously bred with a dog shifter boy last semester, a detail Kaelan tried to scrub from his memory weekly.
"Hey, Kaelan…," Ryuu greeted, completely unbothered by being manhandled mid-shower. His wide, golden eyes were sparkling with mischievous amusement, and he was already sweating slightly, the familiar musk of his heat beginning to fill the steamy room. "Just wanted to see if the rumors were true. And to give you a little 'welcome to the Shifter club' greeting."
"You... infuriating, tentacled pervert!" Kaelan roared, the final vestiges of his composure shattering. He dropped the tentacle as if it were burning him, scrambling out of the tub without even bothering to turn the water off. He snatched a towel, frantically wrapping it around his waist and tail.
His cat ears were now standing bolt upright, twitching so fast they were a blur, broadcasting his intense, visceral outrage.
"Get out!" Kaelan hissed, pointing a trembling, wet finger at the door. "Get out of my bathroom! I will call maintenance and tell them I found an illegally squatting cephalopod!"
Ryuu just giggled, a breathy, aggravating sound. He pushed himself up, his numerous tentacles slithering playfully around his own legs. "Aw, don't be so uptight, Kaelan. You're so cute when you're flustered. And that tail! It's magnificent. Why are you hiding it?" He paused, tilting his head. "And your pheromones... they're spiked with adrenaline and pure resentment. So hot."
"I am going to end you," Kaelan stated flatly, his voice low and dangerous, reverting to his cold, fearless threat. He took a menacing step toward Ryuu, forgetting he was only in a towel. "I don't care about your heat or your weird urge to grope people. Leave me alone."
Just then, the bathroom door rattled. "Kaelan? What was that noise? Did you drop the shampoo again?" Marcus calls out , his voice edged with concern.
"Yeah, Marcus!" Ryuu called out cheerfully, leaning against the door. "Kaelan's just wrestling with a new toy I brought him!"
Kaelan lunged at Ryuu, seizing the back of his shirt. "You absolute troll! I'm going to lock you in the shower until your tentacles shrivel!"
The chaos, the noise, the presence of the slimy, sexually-charged creature, and the sheer audacity of the whole situation was so overwhelming that Kaelan's internal stress meter broke. His tail whipped against the tile wall with a loud thwack.
He closed his eyes, inhaling a shaky, deep breath. His exhaustion was total, his annoyance absolute. He was a livid cat-boy being terrorized by a horny octopus while his complicated friends argued about finance.
"I need a different apartment," Kaelan muttered, his voice defeated. "Or a different planet."
" before you get a different one, please have sex with me at least once! I'm already hard!" Ryuu smirk. Licking his lips
" you…you perverted! I told you to get out!" Kaelan veins throbbed from his neck and forehead.