Welp. Uh. OKAY - first off no actual harm comes to the tiny!
Still kinndaaa def angsty tho ngl - oop
Astel yelped like a kicked dog - all high pitched and suddenly, painfully betrayed terrified - as a hand large enough to crush him beneath it came rushing down from far above. His legs collapsed underneath him, and he shot his arms up in a useless attempt to ward off his impending fate as he trembled in horror, only for the hand to abruptly stop.
For a second, everything was still. Then a giant face peered from around that palm that was now nothing but menacing in Astel's eyes, Chris looking down at him in surprise.
Chris's eyes were wide with his startlement, but they relaxed as he finally spotted Astel, casually moving his hand back away and to his distant side. "Woah, didn't see you there, buddy," he chuckled as easy as anything. He gave a funny little smile when he noticed Astel's tense, stiff posture, awkwardly joking, "Geez man, relax. You're acting like I was trynna kill you, or something."
And then, as if nothing had happened at all, the giant just... walked away, rubbing at the back of his neck as he headed for the living room.
Astel swallowed in large gulps of air, his trembling finally picking up now that the adrenaline from the shock finally hit his system. He shakily put a hand over his mouth, squeezing his eyes shut and scrunching his knees to his chest.
No, Chris hadn't been trying to kill him.
Astel couldn't help but think that that fact made it all the worse that the giant still almost had.
If Chris hadn't heard his scream - if he'd been wearing those headphones and blasting music like he was prone to do - Astel could be dead right now.
He could be nothing more than a smear of mangled bones protruding from his flesh in broken shards, crushed into a pulp without any intention behind it.
Just a giant's careless action, not looking where he was placing his hand before going to lean against a counter to reach a higher shelf, and Astel would be gone.
Or maybe he would've survived. Maybe the seemingly immeasurable weight of Chris's palm bearing down on him would've only landed on part of him - just an arm, or his legs.
And then Astel would be dead anyway. it was a feat approaching impossibility to fix a broken limb at his size. And no borrower could live a long life after losing the use of a limb.
An arm? Maybe. It wouldn't be a very good life, though. Climbing - basically an essential to a borrower's way of life - would from then on be out of the question. His sense of balance that he'd spent his entire life honing to a fine point would return to that of a helpless child's. His ability to care for himself the way a single borrower needed to would arguably be at less than that.
A leg? Both? He might as well kill himself then and there for how long he'd survive on his own afterwards.
And what other option would there be? Staying with Chris full-time? Losing his own autonomy and slowly but surely regressing to being treated as something less than - some kind of pet? Coddled and dehumanized and treated like an object rather than anything worth more -
Astel shuddered, burying his head against his knees.
It was fine. He was fine. None of that had happened, so there was no point in thinking about it.
Chris hadn't meant to come off as so callus about it, either, Astel was sure. The giant was probably thinking about something else, hadn't noticed how truly close he had come to -
Astel swallowed heavily, his arms curling across his chest to clutch at his ribs, soothing, comforting.
Chris cared about him, he did. It was just an accident - one that technically didn't even happen.
... so what if Astel's pulse refused to settle, if waking nightmares flashed across the backs of his eyelids with every squeezed-tight blink.
... so what if Astel couldn't help but now think that every carefully dealt out ounce of trust he had steadily handed out to the giant was built on a foundation of sand, of splintering wood that had already been eaten through from the very beginning.
whow this was uhh another more depresso fic than expected, uhhhhhh ye
Not really loving how this turned out, but it's been a minute since I've posted a story soooo Huhzahz