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Protective boyfriend doing some protecting. 2021-2025 I just like drawing old drawings right now.
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local rook forced by evil patrons and commissioners to make the women bigger
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Really important context: she’s humping the tongue ring
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I’m a fake sick deranged pervert gimme love and fluff and kisses w the micro forever and ever
#IT ME#will I read about horrible abuse and like it?#yes#BUT I NEED THE CUDDLES#I NEED THE COMFORT FOR THE HURT
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Tiny friend who assures me they can handle their weed. I’m reluctant to share with them because I KNOW their internals are different to a humans and I’m really really scared of the potency is gonna fuck them up but finally I give and let them eat a little sliver of an edible.
They’re fine at first-until it hits. And then I have to (very light on the ‘have’ part bc I’d find it deeply endearing) take care of a tiny that is waaaay too high for the next 4 or so hours. Carrying them around as gently as possible. Cuddling w them in bed and just watching them watch tv or eat snacks aaaaaaaaaaa I love u inebriated tinies
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First time trying a longer more serious(ish) piece of size writing! This takes place in one of my (many 😅) size-centric OC universes I’ve been cooking up, imagine Victorian nobility era but with tinies.
No sex in this one! Just tension and worldbuilding lol
Ray gets caught trying to pull a fast one to get out of work early
The house was quiet, like it always was in the early morning. Ray didn’t mind it, not really. Others on the waitstaff would take this time to chat, complain, or otherwise do what tinies are absolutely not meant to do when humans were around- doubly so for the nobility.
But Ray didn’t mind the quiet. Actually, he found it had him work a little better, being able to start his duties without the presence of a human in the room. By the time the rest of the tiny staff wing of the house were beginning to eat their provided breakfast, Ray was already lugging his dusting kit to the main sitting room. Not only could he focus better when he started early- he usually got to finish up early because of it.
Edwin always had an affinity for sniffing out rule breakers and people playing the system. It was an easy enough trait to pick up-considering it was what made up essentially the entire personality of his elder brother William. The second he hears the tiny staff entrance (in layman’s terms, doggy doors embedded into doors of important rooms for ease of access) open, he know’s what’s going on.
“Work for you lot doesn’t start for the day until nine.” The young noble says flatly, sitting up in his chair to get a good look at who he’s reprimanding. A tiny butler, looks like, with scruffy black hair and olive skin.
Handsome, almost, if he were human.
“It’s five past eight. Need I remind you the danger of being where you don’t belong?” His voice is cool. Unwavering.
There was truth to his words- tinies were usually only permitted into human areas of the estate during certain times of day to prevent accidents unless they were explicitly invited- which was rare. Sir William would occasionally request tiny staff to serve him booze or otherwise entertain him when he had guests over-he tended to get physical, doubly so when inebriated. And the brothers cousin, Annabelle, would sometimes drag tinies into her room for… well, tinies who came back from there usually seemed too embarrassed to say what she had done. Otherwise, though, tinies of the house kept to rather strict schedules and chore cycles.
All that is, to say, what Ray had been caught doing was a known offense- and it was doubly dangerous that one of the heads of the household was who had caught him.
“S-Sir Edwin, I-“
“I didn’t give you permission to speak freely?” Edwin changes position, uncrossing his legs. A gloved hand taps on his thigh impatiently. “Come to me.”
A beat.
“Now.”
Ray obeys, scrambling towards his master as quickly as he can. He grips his dust mop tightly, having to crane his neck to see Edwin from his position on the floor between his feet.
“Here,” Edwin mumbles, leaning forward and reaching for something Ray can’t quite make out on the coffee table across from him. “Make yourself useful, if you’re going to be here.”
Edwin drops a small disc of shoe polish onto the floor, the scent hitting Ray so quickly and so hard that he physically flinches at it. But he knows what position he’s in. He can’t deny his master. Especially not in the position he’s in. His eyes flick to one of Edwin’s shoes. The man twitches slightly, and the tiny can hear the leather creaking with each movement. Calling the sound “intimidating” would be an understatement.
Still, Ray swallows his pride, dipping his dust mop into the dark liquid. He steps forward, beginning to gently buff the surface of the shoe with the polish, trying to turn his head away from the smell as best as he can.
Shooting a glance up at Edwin, he sees that he’s already lost interest in watching the help work, having leaned back to continue reading his novel. Just like that, he had once again been muffled into background noise by his superiors.
He turns to face the shoe, putting as much effort into polishing it perfectly as he can manage. He tries not to dwell on how massive the shoe he’s polishing is. That if sir Edwin ended up upset with the result, Ray would likely end up a stain on the bottom of it. He tries not to think about the fact that the idea kind of turns him on.
His face flushes red as he shakes his head, vehemently trying to toss out any kind of sexual thought towards Edwin, towards any of his masters, damn it! He knew better! He knew not to let himself dwell on feelings like this. But, christ, the way Edwin twitched slightly with each buff. The sheer size of a man totally indifferent to him-
“Are you quite alright down there, mouse?” Edwin peers down from over the spine of his book. The nickname only seals the deal-Ray going fully tomato red. Edwin can feel the body heat of the poor thing through his shoe. Rather quickly, he bookmarks and sets his novel aside, leaning forward with his head in his hands to get a good look at the little butler. “You’re burning up. Are you little ones reactive to this type of polish, I wonder?”
It’s not a question for Ray, not really. But it’s as good of an excuse as any- so he doesn’t deny.
There’s a beat of silence. So tense and heavy that Ray wants to vomit.
“… make your way to the infirmary. Get yourself checked out before your actual shift begins. Do not let me catch you breaking the rules of the estate again.”
“Y-Yes, Master Edwin. T-Thank you, sir.” Ray trembles out, turning heel and practically running out the door. He doesn’t breathe until he’s for sure out of his masters sight. And when he is, he collapses against the wall, gasping for breath.
Getting singled out by any of the nobility was trouble. Edwin knew his face, now. And that was a dangerous thing all on its own.
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Elegant doll-like robot maid: P-please put this one down at once!
Heavy industrial robot butch: Apologies. Was attempting to "pick up girls." May have misunderstood the phrase.
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heavy machinery butch bot,, gonna rotate that one awhile methinks
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Basic overview of the currently plainly dubbed “Victorian Era size OC’s”
All the stories take place at/around TorchWood Manor- the home of Duke TorchWood, his two sons William and Edwin, and his niece Annabelle.
The Duke hardly contacts with tinies beyond his personal one. Any other tiny that’s ever been called to the dukes office has never returned.
William is 28 and a piece of fucking work. His viewpoints on tinies is very much “these little people work and exist for my entertainment and my entertainment only.” He’s not afraid to put a tiny in its place and he’ll probably enjoy doing so.
Edwin is 26 and the quietest of the family for sure. He’s calm and collected- his view on tinies closer to “these are people of a lesser class and therefore below me” which is like. A pinch better than his brother who doesn’t see them as people at all.
Annabelle is the youngest of the house at 21, and she’s normally out at social gatherings. She is deeply, deeply into dolls and fashion. Getting singled out by her is a guaranteed ticket to humiliated. She’s very close with William, and when they gang up on tinies together the result is normally… Less than stellar, on the Tinies side of things. Much like William, Annabelle has a hard time seeing Tinies as ‘people’
On the tiny side of things it’s a little bit more straightforward:
Ray: 24 with a huge huge crush on Edwin. Goes out of his way to be assigned to rooms he knows the young master will be in because he like to steal glances at him and think things about him Ray knows he shouldn’t.
Thalia: 24 as well, hired around the same time as Ray. They’re buddies, but Thalia is way closer to the opinion of the rest of the tiny population which is that nobles should NOT be trusted. And she’s been proven right plenty of times.
Both, of course, have witnessed their fare share of their fellow tiny workers getting punished. It’s part of the job, after all.
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the mood yesterday, today, and the foreseeable future
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(lol I hope it was obvious she was daydreaming in the panels with the sparkly pastel-y clouds in the background).
Kayde is known for talking anyone's ear off if he's given the opportunity. His friendly demeanor and extroverted personality makes him quite popular with most people. Bryn however found this side of him to be incredibly annoying at first, but she slowly grew to enjoy his lengthy stories of his adventures as a knight of the royal court and beyond.
She would never admit it at first, but as time went on, her feelings for him grew, full on crushing on him. Although this deeply conflicted with her. Not only were fairies and humans great enemies during this time, but it was such a taboo concept to even entertain. Fairies and humans could never be romantic toward each other. How could that even work?
But little did Bryn know, Kayde was also starting to fall for her too.
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I do love love the very specific dynamic of “Butch Giant and her tiny girlfriend who wears intricate Lolita fashion so it looks like she’s chartering around a doll”
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At some boring party for nobles and I notice a cute tiny butler up on the tables. He’s just a liiiiittle too close to the edge, close enough that I can “accidentally” bump into it and hold my glass at juuuuust the right angle that he plops directly into it.
All the other human nobility takes notice. All eyes on him and he goes bright red-of course he does. And now he’s trapped, soaked, humiliated. Tiny servants were supposed to be quiet and unnoticeable, after all, and now he’s the source of entertainment for the entire party.
I drink from the glass anyways, everyone guffawing and laughing- and meanwhile the rest of the tiny servants in the room watch in fear as he slides down, pressed against my face by the force of gravity. What are they going to do? Risk punishment for interfering? He’s my toy now, in that moment. Completely and utterly at my mercy. All because he was a little too close to the edge of a table and I felt like fucking with him.
Letting him sit there, for a moment, his soaked clothes sticking to my skin. Not sure how to react that wouldn’t humiliate him further so he just lies flat, his heart beating out of his chest.
Eventually letting him go after we’ve had our laughs but now he’s on edge all the time. Any time he sees me walking towards him in the hall he gets behind another tiny nearby.
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Vaguely Victorian-era romance between the help x nobility except it’s also a macromicro relationship that makes it even more forbidden and fucked up :DD
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probably for the best i’m not a borrower. living in someone’s walls and they’re as loud as they want at all times. even when i’m overstimulated, they’re watching videos on their phone and crunching on chips and laughing and talking and stomping and they don’t even know i’m experiencing levels of mental anguish yet unheard of… and i don’t even have headphones. i don’t even have fucking headphones.
#get the tiny soundproof box#make some tiny earmuffs#make a soundproof pocket in my jacket#hahaha why did I do that last one#well#you know ; )
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macro/micro, m/m, references to rape, brief fatphobia
While attempting to use to social media to better understand the community of vulnerable shrunken people he takes care of out of his guest room, a man becomes secretly obsessed with one of his charges.
It did start out innocent. A friend brought me with him on some errands. He said the whole work from home, living alone thing was making me into a total shut-in. I said that me and my two thousand roommates were maybe the furthest from “living alone” that anyone has ever been, and don’t start about how they don’t count because they are still fully human beings and deserve all the same respect. He rolled his eyes. But then we went to the pet store, and I looked into a big cage of mice, all scurrying about and socializing with each other, and realized that my muted interest was the exact same sensation I experienced looking over the table-height neighborhood that had taken over my guest room.
They are people. They are. Even at two inches tall. They’re my employers, or my customers, maybe, or at least the hundred or so tiny people that pay me for the privilege of living in the largest tiny houses are. They’re the few who retained jobs after they shrunk, or whose relatives allowed them to keep their savings, who largely chose to live in the scaled-down city to retain some sense of normalcy. Barely anyone else had a choice. Without anyone to trust as caretaker, they were stripped of careers, all their possessions, forced into the neighborhood, forced to take jobs doing all the little necessary tasks that I couldn’t. There isn’t much qualification or background check for my role, basically just a government license. In plenty of other neighborhoods, those little non-payers vanished all the damn time.
When I thought about their awful predicament, they seemed like full people. But when I glanced over the artificial miniature landscape at the people populating the streets and the park on the table edge, I saw… something less. Like bugs, or little robots, like they were high-tech figurines meant to breathe real life in a railroad set. A year ago, they hid and watched me nervously during all of my daily visits, when I was delivering supplies, checking everything over, fixing any issues where my size was a benefit. Now that they had learned to ignore me, it was even worse. Like I was looking over a projection of a real city.
I knew they were people. But I just couldn’t see it. So I found one of their Twitter accounts and started stalking it relentlessly. I slowly found others by scrolling through the accounts that replied to her. They had arguments, retweeted memes, complained about hookups in the perceived privacy of the replies. They were having hookups! It seems obvious in retrospect, but the thought left me smiling all day. Finally, it seemed like there were actual lives happening over there.
The first post I saw from Niall caught my attention immediately. Most of the pictures I saw of the accounts’ owners were indoors, against walls, anywhere that, at first glance, made them seem normal. In a selfie, he was standing right on the guest room’s window ledge, back of his head pressed against the glass, wrinkling his nose and sticking his tongue out while a bird was trying to eat him on the other side.
He flaunted it. Pictures with the baby-blue wall and closed guest room door looming in the background, shots of the carpet, seemingly hundreds of feet below him, selfies with an oversized violet stuck in his hair. He was charismatic (clearly), but also hilarious. Had more followers than I had roommates, mostly from the gags. And he pissed people off all the time and they spouted something cruel about him being a germ under their feet and he ratio’d them to early graves. I did think about him, when I looked over the houses and pedestrian streets. Tried to see if I could spot him without staring at people too hard. Didn’t want to make everyone nervous. But it wasn’t a crush until he posted a picture of me. With my face censored.
He always censored faces that wound up in the backgrounds of his pictures. It reinforced my impression that despite all the ego and arguing, he was a nice guy. Cared about others. But me… well, I didn’t feel like he needed to care about me. I had this obscene power over him. He didn’t pay to live there, so he knew he could get snatched up any second, but he was still using the tiny amount of power that he did have to protect me.
I was, of course, overthinking this. And I kept overthinking it. I found him in the neighborhood registry. He was a delivery worker. I figured out which one of the little apartment windows was his. I identified his favorite hangout spots from his selfies. The first time I spotted him on my daily rounds, my heart skipped a beat. He was standing in front of the faux lake, alone, just watching the water. I recognized the sweater from his pictures, such a particular shade of teal… jumped out immediately. It was hard to keep myself from staring. If I wasn’t big enough for everyone in town to notice immediately, I probably would’ve.
I stalked his following, his replies, his likes. Every time I heard a noise outside, I thought about him reacting to that same noise. He was in the same building as me. He saw me. Every day. I must be incomprehensible, he was shorter than my pinkie. Was I something to be tolerated? Was he curious about me? During a blizzard one night, he tweeted that he missed snow. I fantasized about shutting off the heat and icing the park. Or, God, did I blush, taking him in my hands and bringing him outside myself. He was so, so tiny. Would he be terrified? No. No goddamn way, with how he mocked people threatening to swallow him and called himself a pocket hottie. Fuck, would he be into it? Would he press himself against my fingertip, all hot and eager? Would he let me kiss him?
In a rare moment of vulnerability, Niall typed up a thread about shrinking. About his mistreatment at the hands of authority figures in the weeks afterwards. How old close friends refused to make contact with him. But he was grateful for his new place. He had community and safety. He was lucky to live somewhere with a caretaker like the one he had.
He felt lucky to have me.
He closed it with a tweet expressing support for a bill that required regular check-ins on set-ups like mine, to minimize mistreatment. I knew about it already. God bless him, it was DOA. But I kept thinking about that thread. He’d been through so much shit, I hadn’t even thought about it before. He easily could’ve died before he made it to me. It happened all the time. And he felt lucky to have me. I kept him safe. I was all butterflies for the rest of the week.
It kind of came to the inevitable conclusion one day, when I was sitting in my living room and decided to look at his replies. His most recent tweet was a reply to another resident, this snarky dude named Rich: “Basic human kindness is not “cocksucking”. I don’t believe anyone ever forfeits their right to respect, and just about everyone who disagrees and clocks in over a foot tall thinks all of us should be in pet stores.”
I clicked through and quickly scrolled to the first tweet.
Rich: hilarious hearing people talk about their futures as if mount lardass won’t just get too lazy to get groceries one day and down all of us
I wanted to vomit.
Niall: Do you have an actual complaint or did you just wake up and decide to be evil? Obviously this is disgusting in itself but seriously? About the guy who’s spent the past year 24/7 caring for us?
Niall: We’re entitled to safety and dignity, but most shrunken people don’t get either. The system actively incentivizes abuse and we lucked out on a guy who rejects that culture.
Rich: lol keep cocksucking and maybe he’ll stuff you down that instead of his mouth. he does not fucking care what his glorified goldfish think about him
Obviously I do.
Like, I’ve never been thin. Ever. Fat baby, fat toddler, fat teen. I’ve heard meaner. But it hurt a lot more. Everyone in that room had to look at me every day. They heard my footsteps throughout the house, heard me bringing in my groceries, making food, probably noticed that I didn’t… leave the house much. And I wondered, was that what they were thinking? All the time? On some level I had thought that, well, all of us were getting shit for our sizes, one way or another, maybe there was some solidarity there. But maybe it wasn’t comparable. There wasn’t exactly an underground slave market for fat dudes.
Niall defended me. Publicly. From one of his friends. As a fellow human. He could’ve ignored it, fuck, I would’ve. And I thought about that, for hours, but later, rereading the exchange (again) I realized something else: he didn’t disagree that he was a “glorified goldfish.”
He wasn’t! None of them were! At least not anymore! Thinking about the whole community that lived on that table became completely overwhelming. But mainly, increasingly, thinking about him. Did he think of himself as my pet? As decoration? I desperately didn’t want him to. I didn’t want to be his owner, I wanted to…
Well, at the very least I wanted to say thanks.
And as I finished up my daily rounds that afternoon, like a sign from God, I noticed Niall leaning on the fence at the very very edge of the park, totally alone, looking wistful. About the Twitter argument? Probably not, but my mind still raced. He didn’t know that when I did this every day, I was just thinking about him. That he occupied more of my mind than anyone my own height. When he looked out at the door that led to the rest of my place, did he… wonder what was beyond it?
He was wearing that nature tone colorblock hoodie. I really liked that hoodie.
Then he looked at me.
I froze. He tensed, barely perceptible when he was down at belly height. His mouth started to open. I barely needed to move to snatch him up, completely hidden within my grasp. No one seemed to notice. Just a flinch, and he vanished.
I could feel him trapped in my coiled fingers, wriggling, kicking, his miniscule hands trying to squeeze between my fingers to pry them apart. He couldn’t do shit. If he had been assigned to a malicious caretaker, this probably would’ve been what went down before he wound up on some shrinkee market…
How could he know that wasn’t what I planned to do to him?
Fuck.
I abandoned the last few things I wanted to check and rushed back to my own bedroom, closing both doors between me and the guest room. I tried my best to let him free gently, but he stumbled and fell onto my desk, crawling backwards, looking up at me in horror. Betrayal. It was such a different sensation from looking at his selfies or glimpsing him in the park. Everything dwarfed him. Every piece of my computer set-up, an empty mug, even the wires were as wide as his arms. I got down to my knees and tried to get eye level with him. His little chest, moving up and down… he bumped into an ear of my headphones and scrambled to the other side.
“I just─” I quietly started, then paused. No, that sounded psychotic. No, that one would also sound insane. Fuck. Okay, start simple. “Listen, nothing─nothing bad is about to happen to you, okay?” He stayed hidden. “You’ll be home within the hour. Please look at me.”
Niall’s eyes poked out from behind, looking me over. I forced myself to not grab him, even if that same urge was overwhelming me again. I wondered what was wrong with me, that someone was going out of his way to be nice and my instinctive response was to kidnap him.
He seemed to accept that I was staying right where I was and slowly crawled out, sitting on his feet. Still so hesitant. He shouted something.
Maybe if he was a little closer… But on the far end of my desk, I wasn’t gonna understand him. “Well, I can’t really-“
Niall threw up his hands. He stood and pulled his phone out of his pocket, then looked to me expectantly.
“Right,” I mumbled. I recited my number while I pulled out my own and felt it buzz almost immediately. I picked up and looked back to him.
“What do you want?” he demanded, firm, but unable to hide the slightest of quivers in his voice.
“I just, um… Well, I never get to say hi to anyone, really, even though you’re all right there-”
“Why me?” he snapped, stepping forward. I was silently impressed at his bravado, interrupting me like that.
“I, um.” I gulped hard. “I like your Twitter.”
Silence from him, and no movement either, at least that I could make out. His face seemed confused, probably… if I could just get a little closer…
“My Twitter?” he finally asked.
“Yeah, um. Like, I follow you.” I shrugged and averted my eyes. I heard him breathe in through the phone, and words were flowing out of my mouth before I could stop myself. “And, like, I saw what you said about me on there and I’m just not used to people defending me, really, and you totally didn’t have to because, like, it is a ridiculous power dynamic, but you did anyways and that was really nice.”
“Oh.”
“So I, um-” I could feel myself getting redder. “I’m really sorry I grabbed you. I just─ it was really compulsive, I─I couldn’t stop thinking about you, or thinking about talking to you, I mean, at least to say thanks, because you’ve been through so much shit and I know I’m not perfect at this and it’s really nice to know someone appreciates it.”
I heard shaky breath through the line and shot my head up in a panic. He was beaming, laughing through his teeth, his shoulders shaking gently. “And this was your plan?”
“I guess,” I mumbled. “Not like I can run into you on the street.”
“You couldn’t have DMed me?”
My face heated up and contorted into horror. I hadn’t even considered that. He cackled. Oh, God, my embarrassment was blown up to billboard proportions to him. Any impression of benevolent protection was unrecoverable. I sunk down, under the desk, putting my face in my hands. He lost his shit.
After he recovered, he cleared his throat. “Hey,” he said. “Henry, right? C’mon, look up.”
I obeyed. Aw man, I was obeying him and everything. He was on his hand and knees looking down at me over the edge of my desk, smiling wide.
“So you got me. Now what?”
“Still miss the snow?” I meekly offered.
“Hell yeah!”
He wasn’t scared of my hands, even a little, or of my face when I pulled him in towards my eyes for a better look. “Can you hear me now?” he asked, and I nodded. He gestured me closer, and closer, and when he was finally close enough he reached out and slapped the bridge of my nose. “You scared me half to death! I thought I was gonna be a red paste by now!”
I smiled. “Sorry.”
We went outside, and I pulled on a single waterproof glove and scooped up a handful of snow. He took a running leap and dived in.
Fuck, he was cute. It was like those videos of huskies playing in snow for the first time, rolling around and burying his head and shit. He made a tiny snowball and threw it at my forehead, and I flicked snow into his face.
“Niall, I think you’re the bravest guy I’ve ever met,” I admitted.
“Aw, it’s not too impressive. I survived shrinking. I figure the rest of my life’s just a bonus.”
Poor guy was soaked through and shaking within minutes. He fell back into my bare palm with a splat . “You gotta warm me back up now,” he teased. “Only fair.”
I took him back in and settled on the couch, holding him at a comfortable distance from my face. He started to tug off his soaked sweater, then paused and looked up to me. “Hey, is it alright if I strip?” I must’ve looked beyond flustered, because he laughed. “Alright, I’ll take that as a yes.” He tugged off his hoodie, shoes, and jeans, flinging them about my palm, and collapsed back, reveling in the warmth of my flesh, hands clasped behind his head.
I gulped. “Niall… what do people… think of me?”
He glanced up. “Oh. Um, they try not to, I guess. There’s a lot of─ like, someone mentions an abuse case they heard about, and people go, oh, glad that doesn’t happen here.” He snorted. “So imagine my surprise.”
“Again, I’m really sorry─”
“Hey, hey, all good. If that’s what it took to get me here.” He winked and clicked his tongue. I fought down a smile. “Can’t say I ignore you as much as everyone else does. I’m, uh, I think the size difference is kinda sexy, if I’m honest.” Couldn’t say I was surprised. He sat up and sheepishly rubbed his face. “I got guys in my DMs telling me what they’d do if they got their hands on me… But I never know if I can trust them, really.” He met my eyes. “I don’t think you’d hurt me.”
I blinked. “I─ I mean, would you want to?”
His sultry expression vanished and he scoffed. “C’mon, man, that’s a second date question.”
“You’re a fucking tease.”
“Aw, little old me?”
We watched a movie. Well, talked, mostly, and kept talking long after the credits wrapped up. He laid on my belly and was very not shy about enjoying it. That felt good.
Niall was very clearly smart and funny and thoughtful. Not a shock, but good to get confirmation. Every so often he slipped into vulnerability; mentioned an old friend and then said they didn’t talk anymore, said he missed some habit from his previous life, made casual jabs at the bigotry online. But he tried not to dwell.
“I just hate that all these things suck for you,” I admitted. “I wish I could do more. I wish it didn’t have to suck.”
He laughed. “That’s really sweet of you. But it’s gonna suck.”
I had to really work up the courage to go back into the guest room. I only ever went in once a day, barring emergencies, and I had this awful anxiety that everyone was already dreading that daily visit, and the second I opened the door back up the place would be overtaken by a chorus of exasperated groans. But I just wasn’t willing to keep Niall against his will for a full day. He told me he had already gotten texts asking where he was at.
“Tellin’ ‘em I was feeling a longer walk tonight,” he said. He looked at me seriously. “I’m not ashamed of this, Henry. But I think we would both benefit from some privacy, at least for now.”
And Jesus, who else would’ve thought to say that? Smaller than my pinkie and taking the initiative to reassure me? But, hell, that had been my first thought. What if people did judge him for it, though? Would there be anything I could do to defend him without inadvertently terrorizing people into submission?
I steeled myself, and opened the guest room door.
The lights were set on timers with dimming to simulate evening and dawn. I knew this, I set them up. But I’d only ever seen it during night a few times, early in set-up, when barely anyone was moved in. Now, the tabletop twinkled in the darkness with windows and streetlights and a single roaming flashlight beam. I’d turned off the hallway lights and had tried to enter as quietly as possible, and I couldn’t sense any disturbance below.
As I approached and knelt down by the side of the table where I kidnapped him from, I realized something: for the first time, I could see everyone else better than they could see me. In the windows, I saw people reading, laughing with friends, watching TV, generally winding down. A few glanced out their windows to me and seemed to lose interest quickly when they couldn’t make me out. Someone waved at me. I smiled.
I knelt down and helped Niall back over the fence. As I started to pull away, he grabbed my fingertip and tugged me back in. “Lil’ closer,” he whispered. I moved further in, and further, and his palms met my nose again, gentler this time. He stroked along my bridge. “This is a little unfair, since you can’t respond. Well, you got my number. Just… it’s kind of nice, knowing that you felt like you already knew me. I’ve felt that way about you for a while.” He chuckled. “If you had just put your hand down for me to get into… I think that I would’ve.” He kissed me. Of course he heard my breath hitch. “But we can start date two that way. See ya round.”
He whistled as he left. For a moment, I sat there. His whistles faded. A few streets away, there was a screaming match. Closer, a peal of laughter from an open apartment window. There were no cars here to drown out these little noises of human life. But no birds either.
I pushed myself to my feet and returned to the couch. Fifteen steps to drop him off at home, and fifteen steps back to my regular life. Somehow, he seemed closer. I shot him a quick goodnight text and turned in myself, just a hallway away.
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