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“Ever wish you could have had more time with Matt as a kid?” Kai asked casually as they washed dishes with Wend after a delicious Sunday morning brunch.
“Plenty of times.” Wend shrugged, mind flooding with preschool memories of playing in the sandbox, singing on the bars, skipping around the schoolyard holding hands. “Why do you ask?”
“You said you knew about age play.” Kai raised their eyebrows as they reached fr the last platter to be washed. “Matt wore pajamas with kittens on them to breakfast. Baby animal patterns mean he wants time as a little today.”
With all the comfy but distinctive clothing Matt wore, Wend hadn’t registered the kittens as unusual. “How much baby animal clothing does he own?”
Kai’s eyes went wide as they laughed. “Not one of the questions I prepared for, but now that you mention it, at least five outfits I’ve seen. His footy pajamas with baby cheetahs are my favorite.”
Wend set aside the large bowl they’d been drying. “What answers did you prepare?”
Passing the platter, Kai held up fingers to tick off three items. “Verilyn is Momma. I’m usually an older sibling and sometimes babysit. You can wear whatever you want, but I have younger stuff you can borrow if that helps with headspace.”
“I’m not sure I have a headspace for any of this stuff, but I’m curious what clothing you’ll come up with.” Curiosity built in Wend like corn popping until they could barely stand still.
As Wend dried the final platter, Kai studied them with an appraising eye. “Okay, let’s try some dress up.”
By the time they entered the safe space where Matt sat coloring under the loft and Verilyn reclined on the shikibuton they’d used for pet play before, Kai wore ripped leggings and a tee shirt for a band Wend didn’t know. Wend smoothed their hands down the surprisingly soft heather grey sweat pants they’d borrowed. The bottom hems rolled up into cuffs to show off Steven Universe socks with a lavender background. A purple “Shuri is my favorite Disney Princess” hoodie, completed their look and sort of matched the socks. Wend wasn’t sure they felt young exactly, but there was something exciting and freeing in the display.
As soon as Matt glanced up from coloring he smiled brightly. His words came out soft and mumbled as he asked, “Wend, want to color?”
Wend shivered at the voice, not at all what they remembered from preschool, but stirring their own gentleness, the way Avery once had.
Not waiting long enough for Wend to find words, Matt held up two pages with black line drawings, a bit more complex than most kids’ coloring books but not as ornate as those made for adults. “Tera drew cuttlefish and jaguarundi. She made extra to share!”
The need to color a cuttlefish pulled Wend across the room without thought. They barely remembered to say “thanks” as they sank down beside a bin of colored pencils and pulled up a cuttlefish page.
“Color?” Matt asked, gazing up at Kai.
“Nah, I’m going to make us a fort.” They gathered two blankets from a pile by the wall and clamored up into the loft.
“Yes!” Matt hissed. He used a box of crayons labeled “skin tones” on a jaguarundi he was already halfway through coloring. “One-color ears,” Matt intoned, soft but serious, as he colored the ears. “Big cats mostly have two-color ears, but not jaguarundi.” He seemed to be talking to himself, focus entirely on his coloring.
Wend started with a purple pencil, possibly in a purple mood after choosing clothing. They considered drawing a display they remembered from their cuttlefish dream, but ended up tracing purple edges where they’d shown yellow. They added yellow where there had been purple, but it couldn’t rival the intensity of their aquatic form. As dream memories flowed past their mind’s eye, Wend switched to patterns they’d seen on a different cuttlefish, using pink and red, but no black lines because they wouldn’t be able to move and do justice to Wend’s memory.
Matt clamored up from the table and half ran the few steps to Verilyn. “I made you a picture, Momma!”
“Thank you, baby. That’s lovely.” Verilyn took the picture and Matt clamored in beside her on the shikibuton. “Do you want to tell me about your picture?”
Matt nodded seriously. “This jaguarundi was called Spot by people in Florida who tried to keep him as a pet. But he didn’t want to be a pet. He wanted to hunt snakes. So he ran away to the Everglades where he made friends with other snake hunter jaguarundi.”
The story went on, becoming more and more a rambling kid story about snakes and swamps as Verilyn nodded along and rubbed Matt’s back.
Wend took their time coloring and listening. After much shuffling above in the loft, Kai suspended two large blanket walls that blocked much of the already diffuse sunlight. Then they threw down several pillows before swinging over the loft railing to land on the padded floor.
“Kai, think of the example you’re setting,” Verilyn said, barely interrupting Matt who babbled faster and less intelligibly about snakes and jaguarundi as his story concluded.
“Sooooorry.” Kai’s apology didn’t sound sincere at all. They turned to face Wend with a mischievous grin already splitting their face and flicked a switch to turn on a string of tiny lights. The lights shown like stars on the underside of the loft that formed the ceiling for the coloring nook. Kai carried on, arranging beanbags, pillows, and blankets into a nest shape as Matt returned and picked up a cuttlefish coloring sheet like Wend’s.
Matt’s coloring wasn’t as neat as Wend’s, although it stayed mostly within the lines. As Wend finished, they realized he’d been racing to finish at the same time.
“For you,” Matt said, holding out a cuttlefish with black stripes over a rainbow of other colors.
Wend accepted it saying, “Thanks, and this is for you.”
“Tell story?” Matt asked. He plopped into a beanbag and tugged on Kai’s tee shirt until they sat close enough for Matt to lean against their shoulder.
Wondering how Little Matt would remember the cuttlefish dream, Wend began. “Once upon a time, two little cuttlefish hid together in a rock crevice. Cuttlefish-Matt wanted very much to attend a party in the coral palace across the way and hurried out onto bare sand.”
Matt gasped the way Avery used to, whenever a character named after them did something rash in a story.
“A huge fish passed overhead. The shadow frightened Cuttlefish-Matt, but instead of running back to Cuttlefish-Wend in the rocks, he put on a show. He turned his mantle violet, with amazing bright bursts of yellow and red. The fish saw that display and thought anything that bright on the ocean floor must be poisonous. So the big fish swam away. Cuttlefish-Matt inked and ran the rest of the way to the coral castle.”
Kai shook their head, back where Matt couldn’t see.
At first, Wend worried the story might be too violent or scary for Little Matt. But Matt gazed at Wend with awe and affection, now focused on the drawing he’d made and that Wend had held up and fluttered sideways as Cuttlefish-Matt escaped. As Wend continued, they watched to see if Little Matt showed any recognition of the dream they were describing. “Cuttlefish-Wend used the cloud of ink to make their way safely to the coral castle.”
Matt fluttered Wend’s coloring, which he held pinched between careful fingers, still very pleased with the gift.
“Other cuttlefish were showing off their best colors or how they could send black circles like smoke rings sliding down their bodies. Some fought, turning off the colors on the side facing their opponent. Others snuck by with their colors muted, not wanting to fight.” Wend described the mating displays and challenges without mentioning sex, less because Matt was little at the moment than because Wend didn’t want to deal with the questions a child might ask when they felt halfway between child and adult.
Kai gave a very adolescent or preteen eyeroll, showing they knew exactly what Wend left out. Then their eyes met Wend’s for less than a second, and Wend realized Kai knew exactly what had gone on in those dens beneath the coral, because Kai had been the cuttlefish that rushed to cross in front of Wend. Something in Wend settled, certain they would recognize Kai in any form next time.
Wend finished their story with, “Cuttlefish came together at the end for a great cuttle-festival of cuddling. They each used eight arms, two tentacles, and their frilled mantles to make each other as comfortable as possible in the coral palace that night. The end.”
“Cuddle?” Matt asked.
Wend knew he wouldn’t have asked outside his little headspace. He would have waited for Wend to initiate. But they’d already cuddled together as cats. Even if they weren’t sure what age they felt now of if they even had a separate headspace for age play, Wend responded as they would to a child, at least to a child like Matt. “Sure.”
Wend carefully set the cuttlefish Matt had colored on the table. They saw Verilyn watching, and knew she’d intervene if Wend seemed unable to handle anything that happened. But it was easy for Wend to arrange pillows beside Matt, on the opposite side from Kai. Matt was half enveloped by the beanbag he’d chosen, which limited his range of motion and made it easy for Wend to choose how they were comfortable, wrapping their arms around Matt in a loose hug.
He left the picture Wend had colored on his knees and brought the hand that had held it to rest on Wend’s arm. “I wish we had more arms to cuddle.”
“In our dreams, baby boy,” Kai said with a sly lilt.
Wend leaned closer to Matt, content with the body and companions they had in that moment.