#borrower!chase

She reached a support beam that extended from the floor below; she could almost see its base, even from so high up, with the low light vision they had adapted after so long at this scale. They’d fixed a series of rungs to that beam over the years, improvised from nails and pins and the like, to make the climb to other levels of the apartment building easier. Minnie hung over that abyss and hurried down, her sense always on the two life signatures she felt on the other side of that wall. The human’s voice rumbled in the air like a storm, but though she strained she couldn’t make out Chase’s replies if he was talking. She couldn’t imagine him not talking, but if he’d already been threatened …

He was still alive, at least. His life signature remained bright as ever.

She shook away the gloomy thoughts and resumed her climb, quicker than she usually deemed safe but desperate to get there. At length, her feet hit the dusty floor below and she hurried off again, her bag bouncing against her side. The human’s cajoling rumbles went on unheeded.

She reached a spot where the drywall had crumbled under a power outlet, the damage concealed by wallpaper. The struts for the outlet made for a tight squeeze, if one was more than a sparse few inches tall. Minnie, not even three and a half inches tall, easily fit in the space and put her hands on the wallpaper.

If she went out there, she’d surely be captured too. She could stay hidden and hope for a chance to free Chase later. That’d be a wise thing: keeping herself safe with an actual plan.

She muttered a curse under her breath. They were too small. A grand rescue might never work even if the opportunity arose, and in the meantime she couldn’t leave him alone.

She feared being alone herself, too tiny in a giant world.

Minnie took a breath and shoved the wallpaper door open. The light of the room burst into the walls as if reaching in to grab her, but she went quietly into its grasp.

She had to stop to blink at the room. She’d seen it many times before, even since this latest human moved in and arranged his plain furniture. The view from down on the floor always warped the lines to her, as if those cliffs would lean towards her and lose her in their shadows. This time, though, the room was different. As she’d seen from above, the coffee table was pushed back to give the human room to sit on the floor in front of the couch. It hardly diminished how intimidating and huge he was, but it was odd. The human wore a frown on his face, staring at something she couldn’t see.

Standing only feet away against the wall, Minnie couldn’t see the top of the couch. If she didn’t know with her odd sense of him, she’d never realize Chase was up there. They had climbed up onto the couch before; it was easy, after they’d figured out that just about anything made of fabric offered no obstacle. Still, Chase wouldn’t have the time to climb down with a human looking right at him, ready to grab him at any second.

She nearly faltered again, but instead strode forward, her face set in a disapproving frown as she looked up at the man before her. Her cheeks warmed with how silly and futile this all was, but Minnie told herself she could do this. She had to.

Until he noticed her. He glanced to the side after his latest attempt to get Chase talking failed, and then they both froze. Daggers of ice ran up Minnie’s spine as she met the gaze of a giant, one who loomed overhead even seated on the floor. His mouth opened slightly in shock, and his eyes hardly blinked as they looked her over.

Minnie’s heart thrashed like a caged animal and she forgot anything she might have said to the man. Her feet rooted to the spot, hardly making a difference on the gently worn carpet. He was unfairly big; his smallest finger outsized her. She and her brother could completely hide from sight in his wavy hair and no one would notice. The pockets of his hoodie would hide them both with room to spare. And there he was, zeroed in on her with the look of shock she might expect from a human spotting her.

He moved first.

A hand lifted from where it rested on his knee and moved towards her, a massive, powerful, dangerous thing looming closer and closer in a matter of seconds. Minnie let out a squeak of fear and, despite her determination to get to her brother, backpedaled several steps.

It wasn’t enough. Humans were too fast, and this one was no exception. His palm eclipsed her vision as the hand reached her. Fingers and a thumb thicker around than her body flanked her and then slipped behind her. Another thrum of terror raced up her back as the pads of those fingers shoved at her back and swept her against the palm, an inexorable and inescapable grasp solidifying as her feet left the ground. The skin, pliant in the way leather was pliant, cocooned her and cut her off from the light in the room.

The next step, naturally, was wallowing. He didn’t see a point in pushing himself to exhaustion. The human would come back eventually, and the situation would change again at his whim. Then Chase could see if there was a plan worth making.

It definitely wasn’t laziness or a fit of pique keeping him from getting up and trying again to move his prison.

Not laziness. His frown deepened and he put an arm over his eyes. It blocked the dismal view over and around him in a way he told himself was perfect for strategizing.

He stayed like that for a while, ears perking at the occasional noise somewhere beyond the apartment door, distant footsteps or rustling bags as humans passed by. At some point, even that stopped catching his attention. Until, at last, he heard a few heavy footfalls and the jingle of keys, closer and lingering near outside the door. It was as if the world closed in again, these sounds heralding Jacob’s return. That massive human was back, probably ready to interrogate Chase some more and maybe lock him up forever. Chase couldn’t resist a full body shudder in time with the loud echo of the lock shifting back.

Any minute now. He had the opportunity to look nonchalant, or feisty, or maybe even try to pull at the human’s heartstrings somehow. The door creaked open, and Chase thought about which angle he could try, which one might work best. The human mostly seemed relaxed and friendly, but that was when other humans were involved. He might not respond well to insults or anger. Those options were out.

Trying to appeal to his better nature could work. Jacob might be the kind to stop and think if he saw something too pathetic to keep messing with. Chase pursed his lips and discarded that option too, even as those footsteps entered the apartment fully and the seconds dwindled away. He wasn’t sure he could cry on cue, and even if he could, he wasn’t sure he could live with making that kind of impression on someone if it didn’t work.

He left himself with very little. Judging by the sound, Jacob was back in the kitchen again. Chase remained lying on the counter, an arm over his eyes, and ran out of ideas. He didn’t want to look but he could swear he felt that shadow fall over him and the strainer.

The metal moved. The edge scraped against the surface faintly as the human lifted it up, so easily compared to how much Chase struggled with it earlier. Still, Chase remained where he lay, arm over his eyes so he couldn’t see a single scary thing as it happened. The strainer touched the counter again, further away, so he could only assume he was exposed to the room with a human looming menacingly over him.

“Uh,” the human’s voice rumbled, noticeably not as menacing as Chase imagined. “You okay?”

Chase had his opportunity. Nonchalant was his best bet. Nonchalant enough to not even care that a human was looming over him while he was vulnerable. Whatever, giant. You don’t scare me a single teeny tiny bit.

There was a pause. Jacob could have a giant neon question mark over his head for all Chase knew. This pretending not to care thing was a great idea.

“Um, little—what was it, Chase? Are you alive?” Jacob’s voice rumbled again, a quieter, more concerned murmur this time.

Chase almost wanted to smirk, to laugh in a triumphant aha! at the human’s gullible response. Instead, he let out an ungainly noise something like a yelp when something suddenly touched either side of his waist. His arms flailed and his legs kicked and he opened his eyes to find the human’s finger and thumb pinching him around the middle, though the hand startled away in time with his own movement.

“Fuckdammit, dude, what the hell was that all about?!” Jacob blurted, keeping his hand hovering near, almost as if shielding a candle from the breeze. He looked as shocked as Chase felt.

Chase, his face burning, scrambled to sit up and then leap to his feet. “I could ask you that!” he shot back, blinking quickly in all the confusion and the light after covering his eyes for so long. “Can’t a man just lie around and contemplate his life under a strainer without someone coming along and plucking him up?”

“I—come on, dude,” Jacob sputtered. He looked confused and caught off guard, which Chase accepted as a tiny victory. “You looked … I thought you fell over and died or something, the way you weren’t moving!”

Chase barked out a laugh before he could stop himself. The absurdity really came as a slap in the face, but definitely the funny kind. “You thought I died?! And here I thought I was the one being dramatic today. I’m not made of paper or anything.”

Jacob sighed. “Well that’s one more thing I know about you than I did before,” he mumbled, not so amused to be the source of the joke. “How would I know? I don’t even know what you are made of.”

Chase held up his hands in exasperation. “I can’t tell you.” He paused, long enough for Jacob to open his mouth for another question, and then went on. “Because I’m not an expert in, what, biology? But I’m made of the same stuff you are, Jacob, give or take a bit.”

The human paused. Standing in his shadow, Chase felt very small indeed, but he didn’t back down or look away. Nonchalant, he told himself. That was the route he’d chosen and he was going to stick to it.

That didn’t work very well when Jacob’s hand approached again, a living wall slowly and inexorably closing the distance despite Chase’s attempts to backpedal away from it. It simply moved behind him, blocking his retreat while the thumb also moved down to block his way forward. He put his own hands up in meager defense, but soon enough found himself gathered up in a fist again. “W-wait, wait, what are you doing?”

Jacob moved slowly as he lifted Chase off the counter, but he didn’t stop. “This conversation isn’t getting anywhere fast, so I figured we might as well sit somewhere and get comfortable.”

Chase tried and failed to twist around and watch where Jacob was taking him. It wasn’t as though he had many paths anyway. “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s a great idea, you know what makes me the most comfortable? When the nearest human is at least a full room’s length away from me and can’t see me. What are the chances of that happening?”

Jacob continued into the living room, a faint smile playing over his face as he walked. “Let’s work up to that, maybe.”

Chase had seen the living room many times, through many tenants. There were only so many ways to arrange furniture in the space, with the doors and windows being where they were. Jacob had a fairly sparse but typical setup, with a couch facing away from the kitchen archway and a TV on a stand opposite from it with a plain coffee table in between. A couple bookshelves flanked the TV, floor to ceiling packed with a few DVDs but mostly paperback novels, the smaller kind that always looked ridiculously tiny in Jacob’s massive hands.

Seeing the room from this new angle almost made it look normal. Carried at Jacob’s chest height, Chase was nearly the height he assumed he’d be if his life had gone very differently. It was a weird glimpse into that lost possibility, and then things felt warped and wrong again. He shouldn’t see the room from this angle, he should see it from a well hidden spot behind or under some furniture, or from the openings in the vent high in the wall. Not from a human’s hand as he casually stepped around a couch that may as well be a building in itself as far as Chase was concerned.

And then, to Chase’s surprise, Jacob nudged the coffee table away from the couch, pushing it along with his shin. He forgot to be afraid of what was happening in the midst of his confusion over what the human was doing. The coffee table nearly bumped against the TV stand before Jacob stopped.

Then, everything dropped suddenly as Jacob lowered Chase to the couch. Chase flinched as the hand around him opened again, this time with a much nicer short fall to the cushioned surface waiting below. Even then, he didn’t manage to keep his feet as the hand retreated, and he flopped onto his back for a moment.

When he looked up, the situation didn’t feel any less strange. Jacob, a six-foot-something human, sat on the floor in front of the couch. He didn’t loom overhead as much, though looming was unavoidable with bulk like his. Closer to eye level, at least, Chase could look right at him.

And tell him his thoughts. “This might be a little overkill, man. A whole couch?”

Jacob shrugged. “You’re not about to dash off of it without me noticing. It’s comfortable. We can talk without me being all …” he trailed off, only to awkwardly lift his arm over his head, hand held flat as if to indicate height, far above where Chase sat.

“I don’t mean to alarm you, Jacob, but you’re stupid big no matter where you’re sitting. I know this might be tough to hear but someone’s gotta tell you. Sorry.”

Jacob shrugged. Even that motion, so casual to him, was so magnified and nearly intimidating to Chase’s view. “Okay. Fair enough. Are you ready to chat?”

Chase tried a confused smile, though he doubted it would work. “Chat about what? Are we not chatting right now? Lovely weather over here in the living room, isn’t it?”

Jacob sighed. “Man … come on, Chase. What’s going on here? You can call me ‘stupid big’ all you want but you’re tiny. What’s that about?”

Confused didn’t work. Unamused wouldn’t either, but this time Chase wasn’t pretending. “Yeah, I noticed. I notice it all the time. Not your business, though, is it, Jake?”

“I mean. It might be my business a little bit. Since you were about to steal something right off my counter.” Jacob didn’t seem bothered by it. He remained casual, relaxed. He wasn’t the one stuck in view of a giant that could catch him in one hand.

“Like you’d have missed one orange,” Chase shot back, more barbed than he’d expected from himself. “Is me being small all you wanted to talk about? Because I don’t want to talk about it, so if the conversation is over … do whatever it was you planned to do with me.”

He saw on the human’s face that he had given something away. An instant later, the man leaned forward slightly, looking closer at him, appraising something. “So you’ve been doing this a while? Stealing stuff and hiding out right in my apartment?”

Chase shrank back a bit, shoulders inching up to his ears and stomach quivering. “Wh-who said that?” he countered, quieter but trying to keep up his relaxed tone. “You’re making the assumptions anyone would make, that’s all. Not my fault people are predictable. So I tend to avoid … everyone.”

The human’s mouth twisted into a thoughtful frown. Then he leaned back in his chair again. One hand absently drummed at the edge of the table‒Chase felt every tap where he sat‒and the other dragged through his wavy brown hair. “Okay. Okay. We’re off to a weird start, little dude. We can at least agree on that, right?”

Chase’s eyebrows shot up. Did he actually convince the guy of something? “Sure, sure, I mean it’s understandable, right? But I can get out of your way shortly‒”

“Hang on,” the human interrupted, that amusement returning. “You’re not off the hook yet. But I’ll take a step back here. I’m Jacob. Nice to meet you, maybe, if you’ll tell me why you’re sneaking around in my apartment, mister …?”

Chase pursed his lips and didn’t take the bait. “So what’s your secret, Jacob? One of your parents a, what’s it called, a bulldozer? A mountain, maybe?”

Jacob sighed. He was disappointed, but not quite angry, based on the smile that still twitched at the corner of his mouth. Chase was entertaining him, which was probably a good sign. An angry human would be too much to deal with, no matter what few advantages he and Minnie had discovered since shrinking down. Keeping the guy laughing kept Chase out of worse trouble.

The human leaned his chin on his elbow, a casual stance that loomed overhead all the same. “Something like that,” he answered. Chase hadn’t expected him to roll so well with his banter, but it made him like the guy a tiny bit more, despite everything. “Got a long, storied tradition of being mountains in the family. Are you part mouse?”

Chase winced. It was a fair turn. But having his own size pointed out always came with that old sting. “Oh he’s got jokes! Low hanging fruit, dude.”

Jacob shrugged. “You can’t reach anything higher, short stuff, might as well keep things fair, right?”

Chase’s jaw dropped in a stunned grin. “Ha! Okay! You are‒you’re funny, Jacob.” Chase was surprised to find himself really meaning it. In another life, he probably would have been friends with this guy.

“Thanks. I try. But I’m still wondering what you are, little dude. And why you’re really here.”

“Why are any of us here,” Chase shot back, though his following chuckle was a bit more nervous than he wanted. Jacob, still amused, wasn’t budging. He remained looming overhead, calm as could be but putting pressure into the air all the same, and Chase still had no ideas on how to help himself. “I mean. You said it yourself. I’m just. Just a little dude. And I said it myself. I was trying to take an orange. No big secrets there.”

Jacob pondered it, and Chase watched for signs of frustration, or maybe of further amusement on that giant face. The guy had never seemed like the angry type, from what observations Chase had made of him in the past. He might be a reasonable person in most respects. Finding some miniature thief in his home could well test those limits.

“Will you at least tell me a name? I don’t want to just keep calling you ‘little guy’ or whatever else. It’s a little weird.”

“That … is a reasonable ask,” Chase admitted. He also wasn’t sure how long he could stand the nicknames, and Jacob wasn’t demanding anything. What could he possibly glean with just a name? “I’m Chase. And it’s not because I like having things coming after me. So no cat and mouse, Jake.”

That earned a bemused frown, Jacob’s brow knitting and his mouth twisting. “Noted. Don’t think that’d be necessary, seeing as I already caught ya.” He glanced away for a moment, straightening where he sat. “Listen, Chase, I don’t think this talk is over, but I didn’t expect getting a single straight answer would take that much time, and I have some other stuff I need to do today.” His focus returned to Chase and felt like a physical weight. “What are the chances you’ll still be here when I get back?”

“What? If you just leave? Zero, buddy. Are you kidding? Soon as you’re out of sight I’m gonna bounce.” Chase’s heart fluttered again, and he scolded himself inwardly. Would Jacob have believed him if he said he’d wait? Then he could just leave anyway.

“That’s what I thought,” Jacob said, that faint smile returning. His hand approached, prompting Chase to all but leap to his feet again. “C’mere.”

Chase stumbled backwards and came up with a hundred stupid lies, all running rapid fire through his head but none of them sounding like they’d even make Jacob pause and think. He was usually so good at coming up with plans, at getting by just in time.

He was all out of close calls. Jacob’s enormous hand was upon him seconds later, fingers longer than Chase was tall curling behind him, gathering him up in a grip he wouldn’t be able to see out of if Jacob closed his fist entirely. As it was, Chase had a view of the ceiling as he was hoisted all too easily off the table, like he weighed nothing. His few ounces probably didn’t feel like much at all, really. He left the table behind, and the world lurched as Jacob stepped around the furniture towards whatever goal he’d decided on.

“Waitasecond, Jacob,” Chase said, pushing against the palm he was pinned to. “I’m totally ready to talk more. Let’s chat now, about whatever you want. Let’s, what do they say, let’s ‘shoot the breeze’ or whatever.”

Jacob chuckled and it shook his hand with the noise, enough that Chase felt every bit of it. “We’ll shoot the breeze all you want, later. I gotta make an appointment. Won’t be long. You’ll be fine chilling here ‘til I get back.”

Chase, surprisingly, didn’t doubt it. He’d be unharmed, and so far Jacob held him carefully, if securely and almost entirely obscured in a hand. But he’d be trapped. He heard a cabinet open, then close. Then another. Jacob must be looking for something to trap him with.

That sting was back, with the reminder that a simple kitchen tool would be enough to trap him.

His stomach lurched as Jacob turned, maybe towards the kitchen counters. He’d found something. Chase suddenly squirmed, tried to do something to change what was about to happen. He’d been out of his depth since the human came back and found him on the counter. All because he’d wanted to one-up his sister in a made up game that didn’t matter at all now.

He opened his mouth to spout off another protest, some more fast talk to get Jacob to hesitate, keep the human distracted. As he did, the hand lowered again, far too fast and sudden, and the only sound Chase managed was a strangled yelp while his whole body flinched from the falling sensation.

He was set down quickly on the counter top, and there was a shadow looming over him. He threw his hands over his head on instinct. It meant he missed whatever it was settling down on the counter over him, though he felt it hit the surface under his kneeling posture. When he looked up, a metal dome sat over him, pocked with holes in an even pattern all around and letting in dappled light.

 A strainer. It left him in a space the size of a decently sized room. He could even stand up if he wanted and probably not reach the top of the dome if he stretched his arms.

The light changed on one side as Jacob leaned in to peer through the holes. Small, disjointed glimpses of his face loomed just outside of Chase’s prison. “Just … wait in there for a while, okay? I won’t be gone that long.”

Chase huffed and slumped in an obvious pout. “Sure, man, I’ll just. I’ll just make myself comfortable. What the god damn hell, it’s almost cozy.”

Jacob retreated again. When he answered, that smile still colored his voice. “You’ll be okay, Chase. It’s only for a little bit.”

Chase had lost his desire to argue. He was barely sure he’d actually had a whole conversation with a human over at the table, without feeling all that much danger. He certainly felt the danger now, trapped under a strainer until whenever Jacob decided to come home. Chase had felt like he might control the conversation if only he said the right words, but it hadn’t worked. He knelt in the dim lighting and listened as Jacob left the room, and eventually, the apartment itself.

I’m an idiot I’m an idiot I’m a stupid goddamn idiot dumbass‒

His thoughts ground to a halt when the human finally moved, one large hand lifting from his side to rub at his eyes. If Chase had anywhere at all to hide, he would have taken the opportunity to duck out of sight. Instead, he awkwardly started to crawl towards the opening of the bag, shouldering against one of the fallen oranges. It moved a bit, only to bump up against more of them and generally be a nuisance and an obstacle. One of them had fallen right into the opening he’d left, but if he could just get past that he’d … be out on the counter and still very much in trouble.

Not that he had a chance. The human finished his attempt to brush the hallucination away. Seeing that Chase had moved, he took a step into the room. “Hey!”

He didn’t shout. He didn’t really need to. His voice was deep, powerful, easily louder than any sound Chase could manage. He stood over six feet tall for sure, built broad like he had a cliff somewhere in his ancestry. Chase froze as a large shadow crept over the counter and engulfed the produce bag.

Chase shuddered in spite of his usual attempts to stay optimistic. There was not much he could say about this one; after a series of close calls, he’d run out of luck. He was a thief, caught in the act.

He looked up, some kind of excuse on his lips. But though he opened his mouth to try to talk himself out of his predicament, only a faint squeak came out. The guy was just ridiculously, unfairly big even for a human. Even if Chase was at an equal scale, he’d be more than a head shorter than this guy.

A hand appeared in Chase’s periphery. He’d seen these hands plenty of times, once or twice coming dangerously close to his hiding place. Even the smallest finger outclassed him. Chase hadn’t worried about the human’s hands so much before; before, the guy didn’t know he was there.

Now, the human wouldn’t take his eyes off where Chase was trapped while he reached for the bag, and Chase couldn’t take his eyes off that hand. When it reached the opening of the bag, he drew in a rattling gasp and balked away. The hand didn’t dive into the bag after him, instead brushing at the edge of the mesh where Chase had worked it open over the course of what must have been an hour.

“Huh. You really almost got away with one of these, didn’t ya,” the guy muttered. He nudged at one of the oranges, the one Chase probably would have rolled into the walls if he’d had just ten more minutes to work with the stupid bag of produce. Now it was just another barrier between Chase and freedom.

Looking back up at the guy, Chase debated on whether he should answer. The smart answer was no, absolutely not. He should not let on that the guy could potentially coax answers out of him. At the same time, there were a thousand and one cheeky responses he could offer to that expectant look.

He landed somewhere in between both options, holding both hands up in an exasperated shrug. He sure did almost get away with one of the stupid oranges. And now that he had failed that, his fate was in a human’s hands.

As if the thought had prompted it, the human tried to reach into the opening of the bag. Chase choked on a noise of surprise to see those huge fingers pushing aside fruit in an aim to get to him. As he scrambled away from the opening, the hand just kept coming. It didn’t exactly fit in the opening, but the mesh simply crumpled before it, shrinking Chase’s available space as it did.

Eventually, he found himself pressed against a pile of giant oranges, his heels uselessly digging into the countertop, when that enormous hand reached him. It was an awkward squeeze for the human, but it didn’t stop him. Giant fingers and a thumb flanked Chase on either side and he thought his heart would come bursting right out of his chest. He slapped at the huge palm before him, panicked moments that probably felt like barely more than a flutter of movement. A couple fingers managed to snake behind him, dragging him forward.

He switched his strategy, grabbing at the mesh as it passed him by. His grip was nothing compared to the inexorable push of a giant hand, and though he wasn’t being moved quickly he found the mesh ripped from his grasp as he moved.

He was almost at the opening. Then there was nothing at all between him and the ridiculously giant man he and his sister had been basically stealing from since he moved into the apartment. Chase’s nerves ran wild and his heart pounded.

As soon as he was out in the open, he lost his nerve at last. “Okay okay okay! You got me! Good job, man!”

The hand, only partially wrapped around him, stopped without lifting him off the counter. The human looked shocked. “Dude … what?”

“Yeah, y-yeah,” Chase said, shifting subtly where he half-lay against a couple giant fingertips. “I’m a real hooligan, a rascal, I’ve heard said. I was definitely planning to steal one of these oranges. But y’see, I didn’t, so what if we just forget this ever happened and move on with our lives!”

Rather than give the man time to ponder his rambled words, Chase sprang into action. He and Minnie had grown up often having to sprint for cover, having to leap over and around strange obstacles.

Chase took advantage of the human’s momentary bewilderment. The hand had yet to close fully around him. Once he slipped down an inch and rolled away from it, it missed its chance. He hit the counter sprinting.

He could cover a decent amount of ground in a few seconds. Chase was proud of the work he and Minnie had done to build up their stamina for runs like this. Granted, they’d never practiced with a human actively trying to catch them, but if Chase could pull this off, they wouldn’t need a repeat. He’d take notes and they’d never revisit them if he had his way.

The human blurted something in surprise, startled by his sudden scurry. His other hand loomed in close. Chase dove forward in time with his heart doing a flip, rolling with the impact while the side of a hand barely brushed the back of his shirt.

“Oh, that was SO cool,” he shouted as he righted himself and pushed to his feet. He was definitely going to have to brag about that one‒

Three steps later, something yanked at the back of his jacket. “Oh sh‒” was all he managed to say before he was hauled off his feet and all his forward momentum came to a stop. He kicked his legs and tried to twist free of the sturdy canvas jacket, but a broad palm appeared beneath him and he stopped; he did not want to fall into that grasp.

The human only held him a few inches off the countertop, but both of them paused then, Chase breathing heavily and staring up at the man with a mix of fear and disappointment and the man staring back with open astonishment.

He flinched when the grip on his jacket moved again, lowering him towards the waiting palm below. Chase kicked his legs and tried to fold into himself to avoid being dropped into that grip, but of course it didn’t stop the inevitable. He found himself deposited on a hand that dwarfed him by several times. He even felt the heavy heartbeat pulsing just beneath the thick skin.

The other hand didn’t retreat, though. A fingertip brushed over the top of his head, then nudged a shoulder. Though he leaned away from it and tried to swat it away, it propped under his arm instead. The human never yanked his arm up, but he did stare at the way it leaned on just a fingertip.

Part of him wasn’t all that surprised. If the roles were reversed, Chase would probably be fascinated and all too curious about such a tiny person found in his kitchen. Being on the small end of that situation, though, was unnerving. He jerked his arm back and tucked it close.

The human wasn’t all that discouraged. “Seriously, where did you come from? What’s going on here?” he asked, moving on to Chase’s leg instead. It was all too easy for him to pinch it in a finger and thumb, and Chase couldn’t hope to wriggle it free.

His vow of silence was never meant to last. “Come on, man,” he complained, tugging on his leg anyway. It was an awkward angle and he made no progress. “You just grab anybody’s leg when you first meet ‘em?”

The human paused, a thoughtful look in his eyes. “Okay, dude, you got a point there,” he admitted, freeing Chase’s leg. “But still. What were you doing in the oranges? You definitely weren’t there at the store.”

Chase barked out a laugh. The thought of living in a grocery store, surrounded by so much food but also so many different humans, was all too daunting. “No, I’m not the prize in the cereal box. Orange bag. Whatever.” Glancing up, he saw that the human still wore an expectant look.

Time to come up with a lie, then. Something to stall while he figured out how to get out of this situation. “Iiiiii waaaaas,” he drawled, glancing around the room to all the places he might be able to hide if he wasn’t on a giant hand. “I was celebrating.”

“Celebrating,” the human echoed, sounding intrigued. “Celebrating what?”

“Celebrating oranges. I’m all about, uh, fruit.” Chase might have slapped his forehead if not for the need to appear nonchalant. He’d never realized how hard it was to come up with convincing stories under duress. He flashed a grin anyway. “I was. Going to … throw a party?”

The human didn’t look convinced, which sucked, but also which wasn’t that surprising. “You were going to throw a party. In the bag of oranges. To celebrate the oranges.”

“You bet,” Chase said, his voice higher pitched than he expected. “That’s the long-short of it all. But you caught me in the act. Don’t blame you at all for sending me on my way empty handed. It’d make a ton of sense, this being your apartment and not mine and most people just kick unwanted guests out, right?”

The guy laughed at that, a short burst of noise that made Chase’s shoulders shoot up in alarm. “Okay, this is definitely not a normal ‘unwanted guests’ situation, though,” the human said. “You’re … you look just like … come on. You can’t expect me to believe this story. What’s really going on here?”

Chase put his hands up in yet another exasperated shrug. “Sorry to disappoint you, big guy. I’m a simple man, I see some fresh fruit, I get stoked.”

The human shook his head, though his amusement lingered. “Whatever, little dude. I think you have more going on,” he said, though he had looked away and didn’t look like he was expecting an actual answer.

Chase almost retorted anyway, but flinched as he realized the fingers nearby were curling closely. He balked away, but they stopped before closing over him, instead forming an arch nearby. After that, the human turned away from the counter, quickly enough that Chase had to hunch over against the feeling of motion.

It only took a couple stupidly-long strides to get to the table in the other half of the kitchen. While Chase watched, the human leaned over it and used his free hand to clear up some clutter, moving aside some papers, a bag of shopping that had not yet been unpacked to the various cupboards, and a plate with only a few crumbs leftover from breakfast. Once he had a clear spot, he sat down before it.

Chase thought the movement was bad while the human moved all that stuff around. The hand he was on suddenly dropping to the table was so much worse; he yelped and reached out in panic for anything to steady himself, finding nothing really except a wall of curved fingers.