I’ve run out of ideas for mermaid scenarios so here’s a Francis and Rory AU where they’re both humanoid ig Francis keeps trying to get Rory to be in her tiktoks but Rory’s had ENOUGH
Congratulations! It’s a beautiful baby another first meeting story!
This is angsty as fuck, and if you’re easily triggered by mentions of anxiety I recommend you skip this story, but I needed to vent a bit ig. No real coherent message or moral here, just me complaining through my OCs :,) In other words...
CW: Anxiety
Edit: Part 2 is out!
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3.5k words, or about 12 minutes (SHEESH I really needed to get this out huh?)
Francis was awoken by a beam of light cutting through a gap in the curtains, whose only job was to prevent specifically that from happening. The fact that her alarm had yet to go off meant it must’ve been early—she was too delirious to make a good guess, but it was at least 07:00, if not earlier.
Francis was not a deep sleeper. Once she was awake, she was awake. Rather than try and probably fail to surrender herself back into the warm embrace of sleep again, she accepted her fate. She was awake now. The rest of the day awaited. Francis reached over to the nightstand beside her bed to look at the clock on her phone. Her eyes stung as they opened, not yet ready to give up the darkness her eyelids provided for them. She located the phone on her desk before noticing something… else… lying there.
Francis may not have been the most organized or posh person on the planet, but she knew the contents of her room well enough to know that she did not, in fact, have a toy-sized bed.
It was grey - no fancy headboard - with white sheets and a relatively thick, plain white comforter that was not even close to being neatly made on it’s surface. Francis had only just woken up. Her brain was fried from sleep deprivation, and her thought process was not steady enough to be able to properly ponder this oddity that materialized overnight barely a meter away from where her head lay in the middle of her sleep.
Had she been more lucid, she may have been more put off by it—she lived alone, after all, and the odds that her cat dragged it in and delicately placed it on the nightstand in the deepest hours of dark were slim. Had she been more lucid, a thought she may have had was that a stranger dropped by her house in the middle of the night, stole nothing, and left only a toy on her desk. Had she been more lucid, the thought that someone had been in her apartment may have scared her. However, Francis was not lucid enough to think these things. Her train of thought skipped over the “searching for an explanation” part and jumped directly into the “I must touch it and examine it” part.
She was tense, with no clear reason as to why. Just a general sense of “bad” in the air. Her hand reached passed her phone to grasp the sides of the bed. She lifted it up and made it a few centimeters before the bed screamed.
With little to no rational thought involved, she responded in tandem. She screamed as well, dropping the bed and leaping away from the thing on her nightstand, sitting on the farthest corner of her mattress. If she wasn’t awake before, she definitely was now. She was fully freaking out. She felt the familiar sensation of a dark, shadowy hand squeezing at her lungs, making every breath she took less fulfilling. Every muscle in her body tensed, and her jaw shivered in that way it does when you’ve woken up early and the adrenaline is pumping through you and your train of thought is a blur of incoherent babbling and was that a mouse or something that just screamed at her? And-
She dared not move as she saw movement from underneath the miniscule comforter. The blanket was thrown off the bed to reveal a very disgruntled-looking… girl.
Just a girl. No wings, no tails, no horns, nothing. Just a normal, tiny, human girl, probably around the same age as Francis, who looked very displeased with the premature end to her sleep. Or, at least, she did look displeased, until she looked up at Francis’ gawking face. Her expression very quickly shifted to terror after that.
The girl tried to stumble backwards, but had very little room to do so. She extended her left hand behind her and grasped at air, having reached the end of her small bed, and she slipped off the edge of the mattress, landing hard on her back. Her body was obscured from Francis’ vision for a few moments before an impossibly tiny head poked out from behind the bed.
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Rory was having the most wonderful dream. She couldn’t be sure, but it had something to do with a game show, and final exams, and maybe there was a hamster involved? It was one of those dreams that you don’t question while you’re in it, and you only realize how weird it was after you wake-
Rory was levitating. This was it. She’d finally died and was ascending to the afterlife—wait. No. The bed below her was still solid. She was… well, she was panicking now. She let out a shriek of terror and immediately dropped like a brick to the hard ground far, far below her. Now fully awake as a result of her rude awakening, Rory ripped off the covers in anger, ready to strangle whatever frat house or group of egotistical fuckboys decided to play a prank on her. Her eyes searched for a target, and eventually met one. A big one.
Her eyes widened as she moved backwards, no destination in mind, anywhere that was further away from, from that, that woman? That giant woman? That colossal creature that looked down at her with shock, that could not possibly be anything other than hostile, that-
She tried to place her weight on her hand, not realizing that there was no more mattress underneath it to support her. Her world flipped as she fell backwards. Her head screamed in pain as it clunked against the hard, unforgiving surface of the nightstand below. She lay there for a moment to catch her breath before slowly peeking out from behind the cover of her bed to look at the giant creature beyond.
The woman seemed… normal, given the circumstances. The room seemed normal. The posters and pride flags and tapestries on the wall seemed normal, all save for their sheer immensity. This broke uni student’s bedroom which, by the way, looked very similar to Rory’s own bedroom, was a building, a city, to the comparatively diminutive girl. It was a whole world on its own, and there, sitting on her proverbial throne, was its ruler. The colossal woman staring down at Rory in shock.
The giant was the first to break the silence. She spoke in between her panicked gasps of breath. “…hey.” The single syllable left her mouth slowly. Those impossibly distant eyes narrowed in confusion, and Rory followed suit. She decided to test the proverbial waters a bit too. “…hi there.”
Both women stared into each other’s eyes, searching each other, looking for an explanation. Each was waiting for the other to come out and address the elephant in the room, hoping that at least one of them had at least some semblance of an idea of what was happening.
Being given no information from the giant in front of her, Rory began to ponder her situation on her own. People don’t just… wake up like this, at this… height. Whatever had happened to Rory must have been done to her, by someone, right? And, well, the only real… suspect… that Rory had at the moment was directly in front of her.
She had been kidnapped, right?
A pit grew in her stomach. A pit that sucked all emotion that it deemed unnecessary. It absorbed all of Rory’s thoughts and feelings before corrupting them, perverting them, and churning out fear. It wasn’t a blind panic. Rory wished it was a blind panic. You’re not as aware of your actions in a blind panic—you act on instinct alone, abandoning rational thought. This was far worse. Rational thought was all there was left in her, and she was painfully aware of every move she made, every tremor in her knees, every thought that passed through her brain. It was a hollow fear that choked the breath out of her lungs.
She focused on what she could do right now. She’d been kidnapped. That was the only logical answer, but the giant seemed equally surprised to see her here, so maybe it was an accident of some kind? If nothing else, she definitely wasn’t supposed to be here, so there was a chance she could talk her way out of this… situation she found herself in.
She swallowed her anxiety and once again spoke to the giant. Out of fear, she tried to find the least confrontational and hostile way to make her accusation. “What, uh… what did you do? To me?”
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Francis was left speechless. She was far too deep into her panic to try and process such a loaded question, let alone formulate a reassuring, or even a coherent, response. The cold, dark hand squeezed tighter around her lungs, and those vital organs shrunk further. She opened her mouth to speak, to defend herself, but couldn’t find the words.
“Uh..?”
Apparently the lack of an outright denial in her response was enough of a confirmation for the small girl on her nightstand. “Listen, I’m, like, cool..? Like, I didn’t, you know, see anything today if that’s, um… how you wanna go about this.” Francis screamed at herself in her head, demanding a response of some kind, any kind, literally anything at all, yet she couldn’t come up with the words. Her chest felt yet colder, yet darker. The hand continued to squeeze. The miniscule woman swallowed hard before continuing. “Like, I barely understand what’s going on as is? So if this was a mistake of some kind on your end, I promise I’ll make it easy for you to, uh, fix? If that’s how this all works? Like, I’ll cooperate, is what I mean.”
For whatever reason, Francis finally regained control of her tongue. In her rush to defend herself, to prove that she wasn’t the evil monster that the girl clearly thought she was, she may have shouted a bit too loudly. “You think I did this?”
The doll-sized woman responded with widened eyes and furrowed brows. Her voice was suddenly more unstable and shrill. “Well how else would I have ended up here? You can’t expect me to believe I just teleported here in the middle of the night, right?”
Francis’ honour was at stake. She was sensitive to accusations like this. She knew that she was overreacting, that the other girl had every right to be scared, that it was impossible for her fear to be a comment on Francis as a person, yet the thought that she was being viewed as a malicious, evil threat was maddening. She knew what was going on—she was feeling and acting quicker than she could think. It was not an uncommon occurrence for her, yet she could do nothing to stop it. Francis jumped to defend herself faster than she could realize that calmly explaining her own perspective would have been a much better way to do things.
“You-you can’t possibly believe that. I’m not some kind of mad genius who shrunk and kidnapped you, or whatever you’re thinking! Don’t pretend you have some semblance of an idea of what’s going on here! I have no idea, and I’m certain you don’t either!”
The other woman shrunk further behind the tiny bed. Her voice wavered even more than before. “Okay! Okay! I’ve got it! We’re cool, everything’s cool, no need to, um… we can just calm down now, ‘kay? Let’s just calm down and breathe.”
Francis’ emotions got the better of her yet again. She was being talked down to, treated like a child by… by- How on earth was she being patronized by someone who was four inches tall? What the hell was going on? The stress of this insane situation drove her to the brink of a panic attack. “Don’t talk to me that way! Stop treating me like a threat.” The girl didn’t trust her. No one did. She would always be alone. She couldn’t breathe. When did her bedroom get so small? Her-
She looked at the girl again. She was trembling, eyes wide, staring at Francis as she broke down. She would’ve given anything, everything, for this to all go away.
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Rory was scared, of course. Who wouldn’t be? This was all so overwhelming, for anyone. And yet, her fear was only a blanket that surrounded what she truly felt in this moment—anger. It was obvious now that she hadn’t been kidnapped, and that brought her some fraction of relief, yet it paled in comparison to her rage.
This woman, this colossal titan sitting in front of her, was panicking. She was having a meltdown. How dare she? Rory was the one whose life may be forever changed. She was the one who felt every tremor the giant’s movements made throughout her entire body. She was the one who deserved to be panicking right now, to be comforted in this awful situation.
But she wasn’t some kind of cold-hearted psychopath. She had empathy. This situation was, admittedly, stressful for both parties. And, of course, it wasn’t like Rory hadn’t been there before herself. But she was still frustrated that, like always, she had to be the strong one. Had to suppress her own anxieties in order to help someone else deal with theirs.
God, how awful of a person was she? A woman is having a full-blown panic attack right in front of her and her first reaction is to bitch to herself about how it was affecting her. She needed to help this woman.
Begrudgingly, she stood up from behind the safety of the bed. She walked to the edge of the nightstand, making eye contact with the woman the whole time. The woman… she felt uncomfortable referring to her in that way. Her throat was dry, but she found the courage to speak despite it.
“Don’t worry, I don’t think you’re a threat. My name’s Rory. Can you tell me yours?”
The woman stayed silent, still breathing heavily, yet maintaining eye contact with Rory through it all.
“Okay… I get that this is… odd, and definitely very stressful. I know it’s scary—I’m scared too—but for now, we’re not in any danger. Let’s just focus on right now, alright? So what do you need right now?”
The woman’s breathing was still laboured, but she seemed to feel a bit better. Her voice was shaky. “…Francis.”
Rory blinked in confusion, taking a second to understand what was just said to her. “You need... oh, that’s your name! Okay, Francis…” Rory looked down at the abyss in front of her, at the gap between the nightstand and the bed, at the long, long trip down to the hard floor. Then she looked at the gargantuan mattress at the end of the pit. It was such a scary sight, that first step to getting closer to Francis, but…
She could probably make that jump.
Swallowing her fear, she ran and leaped over the gap, clutching the sheets as she landed to steady herself. Francis gasped from her vantage point far above. The hard part was over. It would be easier from here. There were no more gaps between them. She looked up at Francis as she awkwardly stumbled over the unstable surface of the mattress. “Do you want to give me your hand?”
Still staring in shock, Francis slowly lowered her hand and offered a fingertip to Rory. It took all her willpower not to flinch as it approached her. It was like a car driving uncomfortably fast towards the crosswalk, and as you looked at it you were pretty sure that it was going to stop—there was no way the driver didn’t see you, right?—but it was still unnerving. Francis laid her digit down on the bed in front of Rory. The tiny woman kneeled down and grabbed it with two hands, stroking it softly with her own miniscule fingers. She sat in awe of the sheer vastness of it. It was just a finger, identical to her own, and yet… it screwed with her mind, but she shoved those feelings down. She shoved it all down.
“You’re getting through this. You’re doing great. I want you to tell me what you need right now.”
Francis finally responded. “I-I don’t know.”
Rory didn’t press further. “Okay, then let’s just sit here for a bit. Will that help?”
Francis didn’t need to reply. They sat in silence for a while. Rory’s mind raced, her ears burned, and she resisted the desire to twitch and bounce around, not letting the anxious energy out, keeping it in for Francis’ sake. She didn’t let her thoughts take any coherent form, but that didn’t stop the general feeling of panic slowly coalesce deep within her. But she could hold out, she could push through it. She always had, maybe not with this stranger she just met, but… life had a funny way of shoving her into these situations. She could handle it, though.
It was a very long time before Francis finally spoke. “I… I should go take my meds.”
Rory met her gaze and smiled. “That sounds like a good idea. I’ll be here.”
Francis looked away and awkwardly shuffled to the end of her mattress before making her way out the door.
It was over, and yet at the same time, it was far from over. Rory laid down and twitched her foot, her knees trembling, her breathing shallow and shaky. “Oh god. Oh god…” her entire life as she knew it was over. This would be every day for her from now on.
How long could she possibly hold out for?
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Francis splashed warm water on her face, rubbing the calming fluid on the back of her neck. The hand’s grip on her lungs had loosened, and she could breathe once again. She looked longingly at the shower next to the sink, wanting nothing more than to be entirely soaked in warm water right now.
However, embarrassment repelled her from the shower knob, and pushed her back into her room to face the little woman—Rory. She let herself be so weak in front of this total stranger, dumped all her problems onto her shoulders… oh god, she’s four inches tall! She must be terrified! How could she not be? She must be so overwhelmed…
Francis opened the door to her bedroom and opened her mouth to apologize for her breakdown, but she stopped the moment she saw Rory. The moment she saw her sobbing, laying on her back, staring at the ceiling, trying and failing to control her breath. Francis heard it all, because she had just experienced it herself. Francis made her way to the bed and looked down at Rory. They met each other’s gaze, and Rory quickly sat up straight.
“S-sorry! Sorry about that, I’m fine, I was just…” She wasn’t fooling anyone. Rory knew it, Francis certainly knew it; Rory was not fine, and it was now her turn to collapse.
Francis wasn’t certain of what to say, so she just laid down on the bed next to Rory. “So I guess we both have our own shit to figure out…”
The small girl chuckled through her sobs. Francis turned her head to look at her, and watched as Rory raised one arm toward the ceiling. “It’s all so far away. I’d have to hike a mile just to get from one wall to the other.”
Francis struggled to find the most comforting words. “Uh, I… I’m sure we can figure this out. Y-yeah, we can figure this out, but we can do it later. We don’t need to tackle everything all at once. You’re safe for now.” Francis tried to find the spot on the ceiling that Rory was staring at. “We’re safe for now.”
Rory let out another laugh. “It’s been, like, 20 minutes, and I already miss when a room was just a room. You know, instead of a… like a football stadium.”
Francis smiled. She had an idea, but… no, it was stupid. It would be overstepping. She didn’t want to overwhelm the little thing. But…
“What if, um… like, if it’d make you feel more comfortable, I could… like, make a-a blanket fort for us? Or something?” She blushed heavily. She already regretted opening her big mouth, but she’d gotten this far… “Like, basically I could just pull my blanket over us, and it’d be, like, a more confined… space…”
She glanced over at Rory, who was giving her an… odd smile. Francis quickly tried to take it back, to shove the words back in such that they had never been spoken. “Okay, that was a stupid… I was just thinking of ways to help? Like-forget it, I didn’t say anything.”
Rory voice was a whisper. “I think I’d like that.”
Francis looked back with wide eyes, and quickly reached to pull the blankets over her head. The blanket was thick enough to block out most of the light, but she could still see Rory well enough to form a little den with the blanket such that the only things in it were the tiny girl and Francis’ face next to her. They sat in silence for a moment, but both spoke at once in the middle of the silence.
“Thank you.”
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Oh shit, that one kinda got away from me?? I swear that was meant to be a fluffy, romantic first meeting but I turned it into an anxiety vent somehow?? Wack
Sorry for dumping, and for making this end up being 3,500 words. I guess I’ve been using Gt as an outlet for my irl shit, and writing this really helped for some reason. I hope it did something similar for you! 💜
And yes this is absolutely inspired by cloudwatchingtoday’s one-shot comics how could you tell I literally used almost the exact same colour palette that she uses didn’t I
Idrk what else to do with these characters thou? I like the idea of a mer giant and non-mer tiny but there’s not much to do in the way of interactions after the first meeting… lmk if y’all come up with anything ig!
I have ideas for a part 3 but not much beyond that. If I come up with something, I’d love to keep this going and make more installments!
Part 1
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4k words, or about 13 minutes (I’m so sorry, I have so much I wanna say and I don’t know how to shorten these >/\<)
Rory was somewhere soft and warm. The walls were pleasantly compact, and her eyelids were heavy as kettle bells. She didn’t think it was possible to physically move. Her body simply would not have allowed it out of pure comfort-
The familiar blaring of a phone alarm shook her out of her coma. That looped jingle she so vehemently despised for pulling her out of her sleep every single morning blared in her ears, and she reflexively rolled to her side to reach for her phone to shut it off. And then she rolled some more. And some more. When she didn’t hit the edge of her bed, she pushed herself up in confusion, only to be met with the sight of an unfamiliar room. A room with shifting walls, with a vast floor that caved in with every step…
Ah. Right.
“Oh, sorry!” Rory jolted at the immense voice that filled the small space, surrounding her from all sides. “I forgot I had an alarm set…”
Everything was white. Her eyes stung. She couldn’t seem to close them tight enough no matter how hard she tried, and it took a good couple of moments before she was finally adjusted to the sudden light. Francis had yanked the roof off of her safe little cave, and her world once again became a jungle of hazards and vast expanses, a world where simply walking to the door would take a dedicated hour.
Francis was scrolling through her phone far off to Rory’s left. The giant bounced her knee against the floor as she tapped away at the screen. Rory waited a moment, assuming she was turning off her alarm, but a few more seconds of toying with the device made her wonder what was taking so long.
“What are you doing there?”
Francis quickly glanced down at the small girl, still a little on edge and uncomfortable with this whole situation. She stared for a few moments before blinking and shaking her head, finally opening her mouth to talk. “Uh, I’m canceling plans and classes and stuff.” She winced as she finished the sentence, and turned to sit facing Rory cross legged. She was clearly still unaware of how her size impacted Rory—the impossibly fast movement of such an immense being so close to her made her vision swirl and gave her vertigo. “Sorry, I probably should’ve asked first instead of just assuming, but I figured that this maybe isn’t the best day for me to go to school.” She tapped her fingers against her knee as she spoke. Every time Rory had seen a giant animal or structure back when she was 5’8, it always moved so slow on account of its size, but those immense fingers were somehow still so nimble. “Is that okay with you? Like, do you wanna be alone all day so I can go to class?”
She’d been so focused on the giant’s movements that she almost didn’t process what she’d been asked. Rory contemplated her situation for a moment. She was so overwhelmed already with all of the sensory input, and the idea of being alone with her thoughts was so enticing… but it was also so terrifying. The thought of essentially being immobilized on the bed for no reason other than that simply falling to the ground would kill her gnawed at her mind, and that hollow pit at the bottom of her chest started to expand again. No, she didn’t want to be alone.
She looked up at Francis to give the woman her answer, but paused. Francis’ eyes were dark. Her jaw was clenched. Her knees continued to tap restlessly. She did not look away from her phone.
Rory glanced around the room and noticed the messy pile of papers and writing utensils left out from what must have been a very intense study session last night. She remembered that it was around the time midterms started. Rory thought back to a few days ago when her stress was confined to school-related work, and how even that amount of pressure was almost too heavy a load for her to handle. If she were in Francis’ shoes right now, school would be the number one thing on her mind, and as she looked back at the giant’s face, she could almost see the cogs turning, the strategic planning for failure such that Francis could redistribute her class time and would still get at least a passing grade in every class.
Francis spoke again. “I mean, it’s not a huge deal, since this is probably only for a day. Like, I’m assuming you have family that we should call sometime soon to tell about all this.”
Oh, hell no.
More than anything, this was the conversation that Rory dreaded most. She would do anything to avoid it for as long as possible.
She could handle an afternoon on her own. It’d be boring, but she didn’t want to intensify the already stressful situation for Francis by introducing more school-related pressure into her life.
“I-it’s really no problem, don’t cancel your classes, I can wait here for a bit.”
Francis wore her emotions loud and clear, her expression full of worry. “O-oh! Are you sure? It’s really not a probl-”
“It’s fine, I promise!” Rory cut her off, trying to get her to leave as soon as possible before she changed her mind. “It’s just a few hours, right?”
Francis looked… disappointed. She must have still been worried about leaving Rory alone, but she still slowly rose from the bed. “Alright… I’ll get going then. Um, here.” She reached over Rory to the foot of her bed. The ceiling became Francis’ pajama shirt, a night’s sky whose usual stars and galaxies were replaced by the gigantic album cover that was cheaply printed onto the tee’s fabric. It suddenly retreated as Francis returned to Rory’s end of the bed with a laptop. “There’s no texting or anything on this, but if you need anything, I’ll leave my email open for you.”
Rory gazed up at the monolithic screen and keyboard, pondering how she would ever go about typing on such a large device. “T-thanks! That makes me feel a lot better about being alone,” she lied, wondering if she even had enough weight to push down the keys.
Francis stood. “Alright, I guess I’ll get going. See you soon.” She didn’t look back as she briskly walked out the door. Rory released a breath she didn’t know she was holding before sprawling out on her back, cursing herself for not asking Francis to stay.
She looked beyond the room at the door to the apartment’s main living space, and noticed that Francis had left the door open a crack.
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Contrary to what Rory believed, school was the last thing on Francis’ mind.
As she tapped nervously and fidgeted while she was waiting for Rory’s answer, the only thing in Francis’ mind was hope. Hope that the small girl would want her to stay, that she’d feel safe enough to be at Francis’ side, but as Rory thought long and hard about her decision, dread began creeping into the crevices of Francis’ brain, choking the life out of her from within. She was terrified that Rory would want her to leave. And then her worst fear came to fruition.
Francis scrunched her face in embarrassment. Obviously Rory wouldn’t want to spend the day with her. What was she thinking? There was no way such a small, vulnerable person could so quickly surrender their trust to a stranger, let alone Francis. She’d hoped the two of them could come to respect each other despite the odd first impression, but the little woman must have been able to see through her to who Francis truly was underneath, to the broken parts and-
She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t let these thoughts rattle around in her head again. She knew how it ended, how it always ended—in a never ending feedback loop, an echo chamber filled with voices who whispered her insecurities to one another. It had happened so many times before. Each person who had abandoned her, had left her to rot, had decided she wasn’t worth their time; they all added to the voices bouncing around in her head telling her she wasn’t needed. Wasn’t wanted. She was stupid for thinking it’d be different with Rory, it always ended the same, no matter-
She was doing it again.
She couldn’t stop her brain from devolving into a state of self-pity once it decided to do so. She sighed as she grabbed her heavy tote bag filled to the brim with textbooks and prepared herself for a shitty day, accepting that she would simply be battling this mindset she was in for the next few hours. When she got home, maybe she could contact Rory’s family, make sure she was safe, and distance herself from her. Like she always did.
Francis was not in any way religious, or even spiritual. For one reason or another, her brain simply wasn’t wired to believe in something that could not be proven in a way she could understand. Today was the exception, however. Today she truly understood how people could believe in guardian angels, in miracles, in omnipotent beings watching over humanity and protecting them. She thanked whatever goddess, god or deity was watching her for letting her hear Rory’s tiny scream as she suddenly remembered that she had a cat.
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Rory was familiar with anxiety. This was new.
This wasn’t the slow, burning, dark void that steadily padded through her mind and trapped her motivation and ambition in a box. It was more of a blind, “oh fuck” kind of anxiety.
She had done nothing when the cat first entered the room, pawing at the door and widening the tiny crack that Francis had left open. She simply stared as her brain shut down her critical thinking to make room for the aforementioned “oh fuck” feeling. She barely even remembered what she’d been doing mere moments before.
The cat noticed her pretty quickly. Its pupils dilated at the sight of a strange new rodent to kill, or perhaps a new toy to play with. Rory still didn’t move. The cat took a slow step forward, her death inching steadily towards her. She still didn’t move. She did absolutely nothing until the cat raised its haunches, preparing to pounce.
For whatever reason, this was when she turned on her fight or flight response and quickly ducked underneath Francis’ thick comforter. She crawled blindly, deeper and deeper into the depths of the blanket until she felt a harsh weight on her back. She was pressed deep into the mattress below, the cat’s entire mass pressed onto one point on her spine. Her saving grace was the layer of cushioning the comforter left between Rory and the beast’s paws. The pressure was gone suddenly, and Rory finally had enough breath to scream. She covered her head with her hands and curled into a ball as she waited out the storm, wincing at each blow the cat gave. It pawed and pounced and jumped at her from above the safety of the thick blanket until Rory finally heard the thuds of rapidly approaching footsteps.
“MILO!” Francis’ panicked, raspy scream filled the room. Rory didn’t move a muscle, staying safe in her protective ball even as she felt the beast lifted off from the bed. She didn’t move as she heard the now-distant hissing of the protesting cat, and she didn’t move when the door slammed shut, vibrating the room. From beyond her closed eyelids, Rory saw the sudden light as the blanket was ripped off of her.
“Rory..?” To say that Francis’ voice was unsteady didn’t nearly capture the dread that surrounded the word as it left her mouth. Rory wanted to feel sympathy for the obviously apologetic girl - it was an accident, after all. She recognized that, but… she let out a shaky breath as she slowly left the safety of her fetal position to glare up at the giant.
But all she saw was red.
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Francis couldn’t breathe. She physically couldn’t. Those few moments she spent staring at the motionless body of the tiny woman almost suffocated her. Her brain was not powerful enough to process the horror, the dread, the guilt in any coherent way. It was as though there were too many tabs open in the browser that was her mind, and with no more room to process information, the window simply closed. There was only one thought, one single mantra that she had the mental power to repeat in her head.
This is your fault.
That was, until Rory moved. Slowly, shakily, but still, she was moving, turning her head to meet Francis’ gaze. Francis could breathe again. Her limbs went numb with relief and the bodily processes that had been frozen finally started up again.
She closed her eyes and let her legs go limp, kneeling in front of the bed. She couldn’t seem to get oxygen into her lungs fast enough. She spoke between ragged breaths. “Oh, oh thank god. Oh, my…” She could think only of calming herself down, steadily slowing her breathing. Finally finding the courage to open her eyes, Francis raised her head to look at Rory, and… And she was met with a gaze of anger. A gaze that could be described only as hatred.
“What. The FUCK.”
And just like that the dread returned. She didn’t know what to do. “I-I’m so sorry-“
“Sorry?” Rory was quick to cut her off. “You just… forgot that you had a cat? What in the absolute hell was going through your mind that you left- you- you almost left for the DAY! You almost left me to die here, four inches tall on your mattress, killed by a housecat. No, sorry doesn’t even begin to fucking cut it.”
Every word was a wound, and Francis was bleeding out. She felt each syllable impale her until there was no square inch of her body what wasn’t damaged. She deserved this. Of course she did. Every single one of Rory’s accusations were true. But she was beginning to feel herself break down again, for what must have been around the third time in the span of barely an hour. She didn’t know if she had the strength to take it again, but she knew that she had to. There was no other choice. She just needed to hope she could hold out long enough to get through it.
…Right?
As she watched Rory yell at her from on the bed, she couldn’t help but see how absolutely tiny the woman was. It was really all she could see.
Francis couldn’t take the conflict—she was always the type to hate confrontation and emotional vulnerability. She was much better at action, at solving problems head-on, than she was at talking things out. She wondered if, perhaps, she could simply… not face this problem. At all. Just abandon it for now. Come back to it later, when she was more mentally prepared.
It wasn’t like Rory was going anywhere, after all.
Francis turned around and left without a word.
“Wh- hey! What are you do-”
Rory’s voice was cut off when Francis closed the door behind her, making sure it was shut tight this time. She was no longer being impaled by those impossibly sharp words.
But the guilt remained. Grew, even.
Francis looked across the room at a very angry-looking cat, livid at the loss of his potential meal. She’d had Milo for years. She loved him, even since she was a kid, and she felt lucky to have been able to take him with her when she moved out.
Rory was here now, though.
Maybe there was a way to make it up to her without having to deal with all of that conflict.
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She just… left.
Just walked out. Without a word. Didn’t even look back. Ran away to where she knew damn well Rory couldn’t follow, across that colossally long distance from the mattress and beyond the impenetrable barrier that was her bedroom door. She was so surprised she almost forgot to be angry.
Almost.
It was hearing Francis leave the apartment that reignited her rage. Listening to that door open as Francis left to put more distance between them, distance that she knew Rory couldn’t close.
She knew she was being unfair about the whole... cat incident. It was an accident, an honest mistake on Francis’ part that in no way stemmed from any ill will. But this. This was deliberate. This was Francis knowingly abusing the power she had for her own gain. Rory was in a vulnerable state. She needed someone looking out for her, and she was starting to question if Francis could fill that role, if there was someone better to guide her through all of this. She could always call her family…
No.
Francis was the best card she’d been dealt. Her only card, really. And she was going to find a way to play it. Rory was smart. She could figure this out, could navigate her way out of this jungle of emotions she found herself in. The first step would be confronting Francis about stranding her on the bed.
So Rory waited. She stared at that closed door and waited for it to open while she rehearsed her lines, needing to be fully prepared for when the giant finally returned.
It didn’t take that long - probably only around ten minutes - but when you’re spending time staring at a wall and doing nothing but thinking to yourself, every second is an eternity. Rory finally heard Francis enter the apartment, and watched as the bedroom door slowly opened to a giant who wouldn’t meet her eyes. A being with unimaginable power over her, yet too afraid to look up. Rory opened her mouth to begin her rehearsed speech.
“You ca-”
“I got rid of the cat.”
Rory briefly choked on her words. This wasn’t exactly going how she had planned it to in her head. “You… got rid of it?”
Francis still didn’t look up. “Yeah, there’s an old man in the apartment next to mine. I don’t really know him all that well, but sometimes we bump into each other, and he’s mentioned before how much he likes my cat, and how much he wants one to keep him company in his apartment. I guess he lives alone. He seemed really happy when he saw Milo.” Francis rubbed at her eyes, trying to block out her tears. This must’ve been hard for her. “I think Milo will be happy there, too.”
It was touching, but… “I– um, thank you, I really appreciate that, and it means a lot that you did that for me, but I’m really not as mad about the cat as I am about how you handled things afterwards. Like, it’s a nice gesture, but you can’t... like...”
“...Yeah, I... yeah.” Francis slowly walked over to Rory and sat down at eye level with her. “I just... hate this. All of it. I want us to get along, but this is such a shitty start to a friendship. And then Milo... I just didn’t want to have to have another conflict like that with you. It’s barely 8:00, and I’m already completely emotionally spent. I hoped I could make it better without having to do... this, again. the talking part.”
Rory couldn’t help but agree--she was tired, too, but Francis was still out of line. “So you got rid of the cat. And you thought that’d just... fix everything?” Francis looked away again, breaking eye contact once more. “Again, it’s a nice gesture, but I’m really not that mad about the cat. I know it was an accident, and I was definitely overreacting because I was scared. No, I’m mad because you left me here. And you did it because you knew I couldn’t do anything about it. You can’t abuse this power you have over me like that. I hate this just as much as you do—probably more, but if you really meant what you said, if you really want us to get along, then... well, you’re going to have to put some effort in. You just have to. Even if it is draining or uncomfortable.”
“I know that.” Francis’ voice was harsh and frustrated, but it quickly receded back to a more controlled, measured tone. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s just... I don’t know how much more I have in me, you know? I don’t know how many more of these disasters I can handle. It makes me think that maybe I’m not equipped for this. That I can’t help you right now, that you deserve better, because you have enough to deal with without me dumping all of my issues onto you. Maybe you should call your parents or something.”
With that last sentence, Rory’s heart stopped pumping blood, replacing it with ice shooting down her veins. Her body went into attack mode, every muscle tensed from head to toe. Francis may have abused her power a little when she abandoned Rory in her bedroom, but she was still the better option here. Hell, she’d prefer the cat over handing herself off to her family in this state. Besides, it wasn’t that big a deal. No one got hurt, and Francis obviously felt bad, so there was no need to be so dramatic.
“No! That’s-uh, I mean... y-you shouldn’t talk about yourself like that. I’m sure things will get easier for us, it’s just a rocky start. I know you’re not a bad person, you just made some mistakes. Really the only thing you should be taking from this whole ordeal is just... think a bit more about this weird power dynamic we have going forward.”
Francis finally met her gaze again. “Going forward? You don’t... want to leave?”
Rory tried to give a soft, comforting smile. “Of course not. It’s been a rough... uh, hour, I guess, but I can genuinely say I feel lucky that you were the one who found me. You care, so much, almost too much, and... everything that’s happened, we can leave it in the past if you promise that that won’t change.”
Francis started tearing up. “Okay. Or, I mean, I promise. And the whole, um, stranding you here... That won’t happen again.”
“Then we’re all good. And honestly, I’m pretty tired of all of this conflict, too, so unless you have anything else you want to get out right now, do we wanna just... I don’t know, call it? Like, just say that we’re done for now and get on with our day?”
Francis chuckled. “That feels kinda like cheating. Are we allowed to just say ‘this argument is over now’?”
Rory replied with a giggle of her own. “Maybe we could call it ‘bookmarked’, rather than ‘over’. There’s probably still stuff for us to deal with, but we don’t need to unpack all of our trauma and insecurities within literally the first hour of meeting each other.”
Francis looked at her phone’s clock and chuckled. “Oh my god, how on earth is it only 8:00? it feels like it’s been days.” She abruptly gasped and shot up to her feet. “Oh shit, it’s 8:00. I gotta go now if I’m gonna make...” She looked down at Rory again. “Um, unless you do want me to cancel class now.”
Rory thought for a moment. She looked around at the bedroom, the one window on the far wall closed with curtains blocking out all light. She looked down on the mattress that she’d spent her entire morning on. “...how about we both go?”
Francis blinked in shock. “W-what?”
“I mean, I don’t wanna spend the rest of my life trapped up on this bed, right? And if I come with you, you can still go to classes and I don’t have to be alone.”
“I, um... I mean, if you’re sure that’s what you want!” Francis couldn’t hide her excitement, and Rory immediately knew she made the right choice. The giant was so happy to have been forgiven, to be trusted, and Rory could almost see her spirits being lifted by the offer. That was, until she suddenly stopped smiling. She looked back down at Rory with furrowed eyebrows. “So, then... how do you want to, uh, do this? Like, should I carry you, or...”
Oh.
She hadn’t thought of that.
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To be continued bc I’m fucking EXHAUSTED now ;-;
Uhh more about Rory’s mysterious family history in the next chapter! I’ll try to get it out next week, but no promises bc I don’t have a lot of spare time on my hands 💜
