“Don’t be scared, don’t be scared! I don’t want to hurt you!”
I’m going to mix this prompt with the prompt “be careful out there, the human might see you!”
The sides are a family of borrowers: Janus and Patton are parents, Logan is the oldest child, Roman and Remus are the middle children and Virgil is the youngest.
Thomas is the human.
(The twins will be close but do NOT tag as remrom, as they are siblings both in cannon and in my story)
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Roman wished he listened. But he had finally figured out the best way to watch those movies that the bean was so fond of. The bean had moved the tv to a different spot in the room. The perfect spot to watch from an open vent in the bottom corner of the room. And he could still keep an eye on the bean! (Because the vent was really close to the couch where the bean watches cartoons)
When he told the younger borrower what he was going to do, he started flipping out. “No! The human will see you! I won’t let you!” He eventually gave in. “I can’t stop you, can I? Fine but be careful up there,” he had said “the human might see you”
Roman thought back on this bitterly. Of course he didn’t listen to his brother! The one time that he didn’t, he got captured. He felt like it was forever ago, but it was less that two hours. He hadn’t even managed to finish the movie! It might as well of been forever, though, since that’s when Roman thinks he will see his family again. He was trapped in a jar with a human staring at him.
He was as good as dead. He was terrified when the human pulled out his phone, scared that he would call a scientist or an exterminator, someone that would murder his family and himself. He started pressing himself against one of the curved wall of the jar, trying his best to get as far away from the human as possible.
The bean did not seem to notice his obvious terror, just looking at his phone and carrying on dialling whoever he was dialling.
“Nico, I need you to come over here”
“Not that I’m complaining, but why?” the voice from the other end of the line said, and Roman could almost picture someone raising their eyebrows.
“I need a second opinion on whether I am or am not going crazy”
“... fine, but only for you”
Roman was just getting more and more nervous as the short conversation ended. He will be seen by another human. It was then that the bean finally looked over, noticing the visibly upset and panicked state the borrower was in.
“Shit. Um,” Roman flinched at the loud words that were directed at him. Thomas sofened his tone “don’t be scared, don’t be scared! I don’t want to hurt you!”
Roman yelped as Thomas moved his arms. Trying to keep his mind off of the terrifying situation at hand, his mind involuntarily wondered to his family. He and Remus, despite their fights, had never managed to be away from each other for more than 7 hours. Not even in a different room in their small house. They both would be tearing themselves apart from the inside if Roman couldn’t get free or if they didn’t rescue him.
Virgil would blame himself for not alerting his family earlier, despite Roman swearing him to secrecy.
Logan wouldn’t let his mask of calmness fall until alone, just himself or with Remus, Roman suspected. He knew that Logan felt that as the oldest, he had a responsibility to help look after the younger siblings, even if it wasn’t necessary. To Logan, this included not showing weakness.
His dad (Patton) would be a wreck. His papa (Janus) would try to reassure his family but everyone would know that it was near hopeless to try to free him.
Distantly, he could recognise the sound of knocking at the door.
Without realising it, the thoughts about Romans family had reduced him to tears. He didn’t notice until a sob escaped his body.
Still scared out of his mind, Roman let out another sob at the thought of what might happen when the second human catches sight of him. His mind helpfully supplied all the things that Remus had ever said about being captured.
He was snapped out of these thoughts by two pairs of large footsteps. Still crying, he nervously looked up at the two humans. Another sob escaped his body, as he thought about what would happen. Would he be crushed? Eaten? He didn’t know what was going to happen and it was unsettling. He pressed his back against the edge of the glass. He knew that the humans were talking, but he couldn’t hear them through the glass and the thumping of his heart.
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Thomas greeted his boyfriend at the door.
“Hi, there is a tiny person on my table, and I put him in a jar, but he’s terrified and I regret putting him in the jar but I can’t let him out because that means scaring him more by getting super duper close and my reassurances have gotten nowhere so I don’t know if he can understand me. Please help” Thomas rambled quickly.
Nico took a few seconds to process the, quite frankly, unbelievable news. “Okayyyy then? Can I see the ‘tiny person’ and possibly lower his fear levels then?”
Thomas nodded and led Nico to the living room, where there was indeed a tiny person crying to himself in a jar. The small boy looked up hesitantly and let out an audible sob, scrambling to get as far away from the two humans as possible, pressing his impossibly small body into the back of the jar.
“I swear he wasn’t crying when I got up to answer the door”
“I-I think he might be just a tad bit overwhelmed. I’d imagine getting captured by someone so big in comparison to you can’t be very good for mental health. I’m sure that he’ll trust you eventually, but you’ll have to move him to a larger space that isn’t a jar”
They looked at the tiny man, who stared straight back, eyes wide with fear as he obviously didn’t take in a single word being said. It made Thomas pity him, he obviously didn’t know English, so Thomas didn’t know how to communicate with him.
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It was about an hour after this little interaction when the rest of the borrowers got worried. They asked around the small family to see if anyone had seen Roman or knew where he was. When they got to Virgil, he just couldn’t bring himself to lie, and even if he did, his papa had always managed to tell when he was lying.
When he told them, everyone was freaking out, Remus, his dad and his papa mostly. Somehow Logan had stayed calm. At least on the outside.
Remus tried his best to not jump to conclusions, but movies don’t take this long. If they do something apart from each other they always hurry back. He couldn’t help the tears that managed to escape.
Patton broke down crying, one of his kiddos had probably been captured, or worse. He didn’t want to think of the worse option, but the best case scenario was still so bad. Why couldn’t he have protected his son? He was probably the worst dad in existence!
Janus went out to search the tunnels, just in case, but when he was going past the living room, he saw something that crushed the small glimmer of hope that he had. A cage, with two humans staring into it, at something that was so unmistakably a borrower. He would never admit it, but he cried. He had to leave quickly, so he didn’t have the same fate as his son, and so he could inform his family of the terrible news.
He managed to catch Romans eye before he left though, mouthing that they will find a way to get him back home.
After he ran out of sight, from both the borrower and humans, hearing as he collapsed “why do you think he was looking at the vent?”
“That’s where I found him, I think he might want to go back, but I don’t think it would be good for him to leave, it’s probably dangerous in the walls”
“More like you want a pet, or scientific discovery, and don’t care who it affects” Janus grumbled under his breath, hating to admit that that was the most likely reason that they wanted to have his son. They didn’t know the pain that they were causing the family, but Janus thought that they wouldn’t care either way. They were humans for goodness sake.
Humans have never cared about things smaller than them.
When Janus got back to his small house, his face was covered in tears and he could barely get the words out.
“Th-the hum-human— an-and- cage” he collapsed, sobbing into his husbands arms.
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That’s the end. Should I make part two?
Edit: link to part two
