Becoming Monsters: I'm Blue 02

Becoming monsters is the creation of AiLovesToGrow, setting used with permission

This first idea comes from Amethyst Dragonfly.

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Chapter 2: Itty Bitty Living Space

The alarm Justin used in the mornings was not a loud one. Never had been, never needed to be, he was a light sleeper by nature. He very much had noticed when his shy girlfriend had come into their room. He had watched as she dried off and got changed, obviously not wanting to wake him. He shifted to hold her close when she snuggled into the crook of his arms, and loved every moment of it. Her comforting warmth and weight just made him feel complete. Like he was finally doing the right thing, for the right reason.

He slept much better for the last half of the night.

The gentle beeps did not wake Abbey. Getting out of bed with her in it was a trickier matter, not the least of which because he really did not want to. Too close to graduation to give up now, though. Gently, he lifted her head to slide his arm out, replacing it with the firmest pillow on the bed.

Since when do I have five pillows?

Gingerly, he climbed over her to get onto the ground. Grabbed his clothing, went to the shower. He had only the one class this morning, Abbey didn't get to work until noon according to his newfound knowledge, so hopefully he'd have time to talk to her before lunch. She might even sleep in, given how her night went, and he wouldn't blame her at all for it. Water on hot, he started doing something new. He stretched out under it, with a smile on his face.

"Dude, you're in way too good a mood for it being this early in the morning." It was the voice of a... well, maybe not friend, but acquaintance. A fellow creative, though in the music program. A kindred spirit on a parallel track.

"Oh! Sorry, Tim, didn't see you."

"I can't even see you in that stall, and I can hear your smile. You finally get a girlfriend?"

"Yeah, and we click really well. Feels like we've been together forever." There's more confirmation. He doesn't know about her.

"Blue girl who was doing the walk of shame last night? She's cute."

"That's her, but nothing like that happened!"

"Yeah, sure buddy. Nobody is gonna believe that one. Not sure if I do. You don't cuddle your way through a full self-care recovery program overnight."

Nope, but you can definitely Wish your way through one... "I gotta get moving, but you might be surprised. She's all I could ever want."

"Well, if you have a thing for Smurfs, that's on you."

"Real mature, Tim. See you at lunch?" Justin got dried off and dressed, thankfully nobody else was there yet. Abbey was still asleep in the room, so he just grabbed his pack and got going. Tim, though, was hardly the only one to notice his changed mood. It seemed like every few minutes, someone was asking him about it. To all of them, his answer was the same. A girlfriend, who he was head over heels for. All of them gave knowing nods, though. Justin was, unbeknownst to him, fairly well-known around the school as an object lesson in burnout.

He was also now the subject of three separate betting pools concerning the identity, status, and length of relationship with the lady who was apparently either Miss Right or Miss Right Now.

In the dorm room at midmorning, the gently sleeping woman slowly woke. She had never been in this bed before, but she wasn't panicking. She felt the pillow like a touchstone. Recognized the scent of Justin. Her boyfriend. Even the thought of that sent a little shiver through her. Romance hadn't exactly been on her radar. Life was too complicated in the Changed world, even just trying to make it through. As a result, she just hadn't given the situation too much thought or effort.

The interest was there, just not the priority. She still had time left, after all. Especially for her, everything she found said she now aged very slowly unless abused heavily. She could make a life for herself, make a way ahead, get herself set and safe, THEN go to find people who shared an interest in the Blue Man Group. That all got... well, shuffled. She had a job and the ability to sustain herself (though that would be much more difficult without two thirds of her abilities), and now she VERY MUCH had a boyfriend. One who may or may not become serious. One whose smell kept her calm.

Alright. Wishes. Bigger wish, bigger cost. I'm not the most powerful of the Djinn, so my wishes have limits. Duration. This one feels like it'll be self-sustaining for the middle term. One thousand and one nights. I think I don't mind that, much. Two years of phantom experience being a good girlfriend. About three more of it being a primary life driver. Maybe less if he uses the other two wishes quickly. Mana pool has some charge back in it, so I know I'll be able to do things that way eventually. Hopefully my Ten comes back faster than that. One more check...

She slowly, sleepily got up. Focused, not on releasing her form to return to being giant, but to change. To shift into her preferred face for the bank. The blue smoke flowed forth, and though the process was perhaps a bit slower than her usual she got there. Taller, more slender. It would seem that what she was locked out of were the big powers. Time to do this part the old-fashioned way. She went to the showers, thankful that she still didn't need to worry about eating. They were... just as lacking as she remembered from just a couple of years back. There was a lot to get used to again. Making sure to be careful, to get ready for work later.

"Hey, blue girl! Don't recognize you, you new?" The door of her stall had drifted open, and standing on the other side was a blonde Human, towel-clad with hands on her hips. She looked very much like a cheerleader or sorority sister, smooth of skin and tanned. Quite pretty, too, but would have been more so without that aggressive expression on her face. She had the advantage, too. Abbey's nudity in front of that glare was making the painfully shy girl want to retreat somewhere small and hidden, but the shower stall closed her in.

"Ah... yeah... this is my first time here... um, I'm Abbey. What do you go by?"

The girl's eyebrows shot up. "Oh, so you're NOT a student, huh? Only banks and law firms around here have started using Fey-friendly language like that, so which is it?"

"Uh..." Abbeys eyes were going a bit wild.

The blonde laughed, a short bark of a thing. "Never mind. You're too young to be a cougar. Call me Jennifer, and I won't tattle on you as long as you aren't muscling on my man or cramping my style. You can warm any bed you want in this building. Just don't let the RAs see you, and stay away from the fraternities. I'll be mad if we get another crackdown." She strode off.

The shower had gone from feeling like warm cleansing to something remarkably like last evening's icy rain, despite the actual temperature not shifting particularly far. The last bits of getting clean, she took care of with the kind of speed normally reserved for long-tailed cats in rooms full of rocking chairs. In remarkably short order, she was back in Justin's room.

Breathing hard. Getting under control.

She needed to get centered. To do something she knew. Perhaps her mana pool wasn't exactly full, far from it, but she had enough for this. Especially since she showered the normal way and didn't just magic the dirt to oblivion. The domain of the Marid's magic was a broad one, varying wildly between members of the rare Race, but her's was very personal. Hearth and home. This magic was curtailed, sharply limited by her current state. It suited a good wife, not necessarily a good girlfriend. She could feel it looking for an outlet, pacing at the bounds of the Wish like a tiger in a cage.

The powers had a curiously old view of things. Thank you, modern society, for blurring the lines a bit. The gentle flow of her will cast forth into the room, and took hold in the walls. This place would be private. Safe. It wasn't much, really. She didn't have enough back within her to do truly strong things yet. Some soundproofing, some reduction of curiosity, some bit of resistance if someone tried to spy. The pool of power within her ran dry moments later, with the unfortunate accompanying headache only slightly responsive to painkillers. Still, it was better than nothing.

In her head, she could see all that she had "done" in the last couple of years to the room. Things that made it a remarkably cozy getaway for them. Things that were approximately a foot outside of the area the Wish seemed to have altered, and so things that just weren't yet there. It would be a lot of work to set up what she could in the next six months, even where it was possible at all. More so to make it portable, so that graduation wouldn't make them leave it all behind as they moved out.

And that assumes he doesn't make any more Wishes. You know he has two more.

Those Wishes were on Justin's mind as well. His history might not have changed, but his present was in a truly strange spot. His relaxation and state of mind certainly made his class much easier. Problem being, a lot of the good habits he had "developed" with Abbey's help just... didn't come with the stuff he'd picked up using them.

Take this Literature class. Quite clearly, he could remember his work-rest cycles from his studies. The ambiance control. The focus, the stress management. Getting through all of Mobey Dick. The problem, of course, was that he could remember the name Ahab from it and that was it. Much like the test he took at the time had come out to in reality.

His present class was a frustrating mix of this. He was active there for the first time... but what they were looking at lacked the context he'd need to make real sense of it. Everyone was discussing Newspeak this and Duckspeak that, but it came from nowhere and meant nothing to him. Justin did the best he could from context, but there was a lot of work to do.

The class ended eventually, as classes do. Paper assigned, due in a week. Of course, this professor would do that on a Friday. Right when he needed to step up to catch up. Right when he had someone he really would rather be spending his time with. Could he do both? A day ago it would have been unthinkable. Now, he knew he would rather drink bleach than give up on either. He didn't know what he'd sacrifice to make it happen, but it would. As he jogged back to the dormitory, he was already planning out the essay structure in his head.

And, you know, figuring out exactly what I need to relearn to write the darned thing.

The other thing he figured out on that trip? The distance between motivation and fitness. To be sure, he jogged significantly further than he might otherwise have managed. Unfortunately, he had not actually been caring for himself that well the last couple of years. The stress, burnout, and entirely too many energy drinks had taken a toll no matter how cute he actually looked. Two thirds of the way back, he was breathing like a forge bellows. By the time he actually walked the rest of the way to the dorms, he was sweating profusely and regretting the decision.

When his hand landed on his door, it felt another of those curiously familiar unfamiliar sensations. A tingle under his keypad that had nothing to do with electricity. Though his hands shook as he tried to input his door code, the feeling brightened his world. Abbey had been hard at work here. His girlfriend. The thought still gave him a full-body shiver of pleasure, a smile on his face. The side of him informed by two years of phantom experiences felt it just as strongly as the one for whom it was brand new. The feeling was as pure and eternal as gold.

Abbey looked up as he stumbled in, resting after the morning work, smiling at the thought of seeing him again. When he actually came into view? She sprang into immediate action. "Justin, what did you do to yourself? Come on, you have to be hurting and I have some time."

"I... ah... I tried to run back here from class." He was standing, having closed the door. Breathing. Enjoying the noticeably more pleasant air in the room as the air conditioner seemed to be working much more effectively.

The news caught Abbey off-guard. She knew, even before the Wish had changed them, that he had to have been doing more than that to maintain himself. Her admiration of his looks on the one side, and her knowledge of his desire to keep up with her on the other. Had he really been in that bad of a state, and she hadn't noticed? That went beyond embarrassing and into the realms of pain. How many others had she just not realized were hurting that badly? "Just... okay, get into the shower and let me help you. Get the water as hot as you can, don't worry about my skin. I can take it"

The men's communal bathroom and showers were blessedly empty, and any lingering measure of shyness or shame held exactly no sway to her in the face of his pain. Their mutual nudity held nothing sexual at all, her hands seeking the sore points on his body with ruthless efficiency to try to help the hot water relax them away. To help him dispel the sweat he'd built up in the late-morning jog. They took comfort in the feel of each other, embracing under the shower.

It didn't last long, and he was feeling much more human afterwards. Thankfully, the showers were as empty when they exited as when they got in.

It was with some regret that the two realized they had to separate for the second half of their day. Abbey needed money to continue to live. Justin had another class. These would unfortunately not be in the same place. Perhaps later, once he was at work and she was leaving hers, they would be able to link back up. Tomorrow would be Saturday, as well, and though she was working he'd be able to spend much more time with her.

They ate together, the cafeteria's mediocre fare made much more pleasant by the company. There were many curious eyes on them. It would take a blind man, or one who did not know anything about Justin, to spot the changed mood. By the same token? Approximately zero people on campus knew HER. Who was this blue woman, sharply dressed and with an enormous smile, sitting in this cafeteria with him? The rumor mill had a lot of work to do this day.

Abbey was still floating on clouds despite needing to take the bus. She clocked in to work oblivious to the stares of her coworkers, and got to the routine with a smile that was much less fake than the one she wore the previous day. Even the unpleasant Imp furtively glancing around the lobby a short time after her shift began couldn't dampen her spirits.

"Okay, spit it out. What has you so happy today?" Brittaney's voice almost startled her out of her shoes. "Missed you on the bus this morning, too, and you weren't in any of the usual hangouts."

"I... ah..." Abbey wondered to herself how to say it. How much did she know? How much had changed in her mind? Given the state of Justin's walls, probably nothing. "Promise you won't freak out on me?"

"Girl, as long as you don't tell me you got here by sampling something illegal, I can take it."

Best give her the 70% answer. "So you know Justin? The barista? After we got off the bus, he asked me out. We just click super well, it's like we've known each other for years."

Brittany's delighted shriek was enough to turn heads across the bank lobby. "Oh my gosh! How did he even get your number?"

"That was loud. Uh, I don't actually know. Could have been creepy, but it was cute. Heck, we just had lunch together, and some long talks. I slept over at his place last night."

"No! On the first date?"

"Nothing like what you're implying happened! Why is that your first assumption?"

"You're the one who told me you just slept over at his place, Dee!"

"It was only cuddles. He's comfy."

"I can imagine! He give you coffee in the morning?"

"Nah, he had to get to class. Still in college, as it turns out. Hang on..." Abbey had to pause there to help a bank customer. This one was a police officer with very white hair and a remarkably deep voice. It was brief, he knew what he was there for and was in a hurry.

"We're in the slow part, Dee. What's making you go totally head over heels for the guy?"

"Aren't you the one who wanted me to ask him out first?"

"Yeah, because you needed to loosen up! Not because I thought you were about to find your soulmate! Seriously, Dee, the smile was getting so stiff I was afraid it was going to break if you sneezed while you had a customer in front of you."

Abbey paused for a bit. Not because anyone was in front of her, but because, more and more, she was realizing her friend was right. She had been doing alright, but it was a fragile kind of thing. One disaster away from a meltdown. "I... I'm not sure what it is. He's just a good person, not just cute. Trying hard, treating me well even just this day. I feel like I could trust him with my Wishes."