#questionable situation

“I am supposed to meet a classmate in the park. We’re friends now, though their feelings aren’t as…friendly as yours? Friendly is not exactly a feeling, it’s more of a mix of feelings at a certain level that I’ve come to identify as our friendship but maybe other people have different feelings in their friendships.”

“What feelings?” Theo asked, still reading.

Could everyone read and talk at the same time but Dreamer?

Corvus was sitting cross-legged on the floor across from them as the coffee table. He inhaled to answer and then stopped, pressing his lips. “I’m not supposed to talk about the feelings I can sense unless the person asks…”

“How does my friendship feel?” Dreamer prompted.

Corvus beamed, no longer reading his book. “It feels like happiness and familiarity and sometimes surprise and delight and sometimes frustration but affectionate.”

“Okay,” Dreamer smiled. “And how is that different from the new friend?”

Corvus looked puzzled, considering it. “Not the same. Excited? He is excited. He wants me to meet him very much. He says he’s going to show me aspects of the human experience.”

Dreamer wasn’t smiling anymore.

Lincoln and Theo had stopped studying, both looking at Corvus now. They heard it the same way Dreamer had, hadn’t they? Oh fuck. “What… Um…” Dreamer struggled.

Lincoln sat up, putting his textbook down on the coffee table. “What aspects?”

Corvus looked up at him from his side of the table, open and easy as always, and then something closed behind his eyes. “Oh. I wasn’t supposed to say.”

Theo was frowning too now.

“You’re upset,” Corvus said and then glanced at Dreamer and Theo. “You’re all upset. I’m sorry. What did I do?”

“You didn’t,” Dreamer hurried to assure.

“What do you mean you weren’t supposed to say?” Theo pressed.

“Why are you scared?” Corvus countered, blinking back at Theo.

“Did your new friend say it was a secret?” Lincoln asked, deep voice so steady and gentle.

“Yes.” Corvus looked between them, no doubt reading their feelings. Dreamer often wished there was a way to hide those. “You’re very worried. Are you worried for me? You do not need to be scared. I cannot get hurt in a way that matters on your plane and I do not think my new friend plans to hurt me.”

Dreamer really hated the way he said that–not that he couldn’t get hurt but that it wouldn’t matter. “It matters.”

“We’re friends, right?” Lincoln asked, still endlessly calm when Dream knew they couldn’t have been.

Corvus nodded. “Yes. Of course.”

“We want to make sure your new friend is a friend too, and not someone who wants to hurt you,” Theo said.

“I cannot be hurt in–”

“It matters,” Lincoln said this time. “I know you can heal yourself, but it matters to us when you get hurt.”

Corvus thought about that, and whatever he was reading in their auras. “Me being hurt would hurt you?”

Dreamer nodded.

“Yes,” Lincoln said.

Corvus considered it another second before telling them bluntly, “He wants to do sex to me. He thinks I do not know, but I know. I do not know what exactly he wants to do but I know it will give him sexual pleasure, whatever it is.”

“Fuuuuuuuck,” Theo was out of the chair and taking a walk around the room.

Dreamer pressed their hands into their thighs to keep from punching anything.

Somehow Lincoln managed not to react, nodding slowly and holding Corvus’s gaze like he’d known the answer and was just checking. “Okay, Cor. That’s not a friend.”

“Friend’s do not have sex?” Corvus asked, clearly doubting this conclusion.

“Some do. But this person targeted you because he thinks you don’t know what he wants. He told you to keep it a secret and meet him someplace. That’s sketchy. That’s not a friend.”

Theo was still pacing the room behind Corvus, shaking his head.

“Is it the secret part or the meeting part that is bad?”

“It’s the secret and that the whole thing sounds like he’s planning to do something bad to you.”

“Sex is bad?”

Theo put himself in a corner.

Dreamer held their breath.

“You are very upset,” he said to them.

“Sex is not supposed to be bad,” Lincoln said, not letting the topic go. “But it is supposed to be between consenting adults and it doesn’t sound like this guy wants you to know what he plans to do, right? That’s not consenting.”

“Hm… You are not wrong. He was very excited that I did not know. He called me cute and simple.”

Theo swore, his voice muffled in the corner.

“It sounds like this guy was hoping to take advantage of you.”

“But I can not get hurt.”

Dreamer wished they’d put themself in a corner too. “If it was one of us instead of you, would you tell us to go?”

“What?” Corvus and Lincoln asked at the same time. Theo turned his head from the corner to look back at them.

Dreamer looked at Corvus and reached across the coffee table to catch his hand. “If you think about it again, but instead of you–it was one of us, would you tell us to go alone to meet this guy?”

He blinked and then really focused on them. Dreamer wasn’t sure what he was thinking, but somehow they knew he was considering the things they had talked about–the things Dreamer had told him had happened to them. The world was scary sometimes. He frowned like he’d tasted something bad. “No.” His hand squeezed theirs a little. “I see. You are right…That is not a friend. So, he said we were friends but he did not mean it?”

Dreamer winced. “I don’t think so.”

Corvus thought for a while longer and they all waited in that quiet with him. Theo was calming down, shoulders easing back. Corvus nodded as though he’d come to a conclusion. “I can ask you next time?” he said, glancing between Dreamer and Lincoln. “Next time I make a new friend, I mean, I can ask you if it sounds okay? Or should I not? You were very upset.”

“You can ask,” they said at the same time.

“But I should not ask Theo?” he clarified.

Theo was sitting back down in his chair, looking wrung out by stress. He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Of course you can ask me. Definitely ask me.”

Corvus nodded and went back to reading. The rest of them took a while to absorb what the fuck had just happened, and almost happened.

“I can get hurt,” Corvus said, seeming to think it to himself. His lips pressed, concerned. “If I got hurt, you would get hurt… I think if you got hurt, I would hurt.”

Dreamer realized then that he was still holding their hand. They squeezed it. “Hey… What was the not-friend’s name?” 

“I do not know. He was an elemental. We do not have classes together.”

“What element?” Lincoln asked.