Switching Heights Chapter 1: The Mouse
[masterpost]
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Roman didn’t bother to turn the light on as he went into the kitchen, which is why he was nearly at the sink before he spotted the mouse. It was on his counter, ew, and at first it hadn’t moved, just a small dark blob in the dimly lit kitchen, but as Roman got closer, it darted across the counter and caught his eye. Roman startled, nearly dropped his bowl, and then, without time to think about it, let alone make an actual plan, lunged closer and slapped the bowl down on the counter over the mouse with a loud clatter.
He stood there for several seconds more with his hand on top of the overturned bowl, breathing heavily, eyes wide. He’d caught it, right? He didn’t see anything on his counter anymore; hopefully that meant he’d caught the mouse, and not that he’d missed and it had escaped. Slowly, Roman crouched to be eye level with the counter, and tipped the bowl just slightly up.
There was something under there all right, a small creature that scrambled away from the opening as Roman lifted the bowl. He clapped it back down quickly. Okay. Okay, yes, he had caught the mouse.
Now what?
Light would be helpful, but the lightswitch was on the other side of the room, by the door, and he couldn’t reach it without taking his hand off the bowl. Probably, he could let go of the bowl long enough to turn on the light, but he wasn’t sure. How strong were mice? It was a pretty light bowl.
Cautiously, Roman lifted his hand off the bowl. He stood there, watching it, and nothing happened. The mouse didn’t lift the bowl to escape, and it didn’t slide it across the counter. Keeping his eyes on the bowl, Roman edged back to the lightswitch and flipped it on. Still, the bowl didn’t move.
Roman had never caught a mouse under a bowl before. Actually, he’d never caught a mouse at all before.
Theoretically, he should kill it. That was what mousetraps were for, to kill mice. But while Roman certainly didn't want mice living in his house, he didn't much like the idea of killing it himself. A kill-trap was one thing, and Roman was capable of disposing of the tiny body afterwards, but this was an alive mouse. An alive mouse with a beating heart and tiny little bones, and the biggest thing Roman had ever killed before was a particularly large roach, and he'd certainly never killed anything with bones and blood and guts rather than just crunchy exoskeleton and squishy bug innards.
He didn't think he could do it, kill a creature with his own two hands when it was already trapped.
Keeping an eye on the bowl just in case the mouse managed to move it after all, Roman pulled his phone from his pocket to text his beloved nerd.
if I dump a mouse outside will it get back in my apartment?
Logan didn't reply immediately, which made sense, as it was late, and Logan might even be asleep already. Roman set his phone aside to stare at the overturned bowl again. He placed a hand on top of it again, and tapped a finger thoughtfully against the plastic. What to do, what to do…
He'd have to find something to transport it in, and a way to get it out from under the bowl and into the something else without it escaping. If he just lifted the bowl, the mouse would probably run off, and he wasn't about to grab it in his bare hand. Mice had teeth, and they might be small teeth, but they were probably sharp, and also he didn't know if this mouse, specifically, had any diseases.
He could do the paper-and-a-cup trick, maybe, except that the opening of the bowl was much bigger than the opening of a cup, and a mouse would be considerably heavier than a bug or even the tiny lizard he'd relocated like that once, so keeping it trapped would be way harder.
Roman looked around the kitchen, hoping for inspiration. Toaster, kettle, knife block, a couple plates in the sink that might’ve been what the mouse had been here for in the first place, he should really take care of those… There was a cup on the counter too, that Roman hadn't decided yet if he was done with. He took it and filled it with water, and set it on top of the overturned bowl. There, now there was no way the mouse could get out, and Roman was freed to look around for a solution without having to keep so close an eye on it.
He wasn't going to leave the kitchen just yet though, just in case. Roman started opening cabinets at random. Mice could jump, right? So whatever he picked needed a lid, preferably one that he could put on quickly.
There was a pitcher; that definitely had a big enough opening to transfer easily from the bowl, and it had a lid. Roman almost grabbed it before he considered that using a pitcher to transport the mouse would then mean that he had a mouse in his pitcher, and honestly he didn't know if he'd be willing to use it again after that, even if he washed it. The bowl was one thing, the mouse was under it instead of in it, and at most it would touch the sides a little bit, but it would actually be in the pitcher, and maybe poop in it while he was taking it outside or waiting for Logan to text him back, and just– no. Gross.
Something disposable, then.
He settled on a tall round container that had originally held takeout soup. He had a couple of these already, because the local Chinese restaurant had really good dumpling soup, so the loss of one was not too big a deal.
It had a nice big opening at the top, too, which should make transferring the mouse easier. It wasn't as big around as the bowl, though, so he'd have to be careful.
Careful, and really fast.
Roman set the lid on the counter within easy reach and moved the cup weighing the bowl down. With one hand on top of the bowl and the other holding the container just under the lip of the counter, Roman took a deep breath, readying himself.
Then he swiftly scooped the mouse off the counter and into the container, dropped the bowl, grabbed the lid, and slapped it on top.
There. He had done it. He had caught the mouse, captured it, and now he could safely transport it without getting bitten. Good job, Roman. He set the container on the counter and made sure the lid was properly closed so the mouse couldn't jump up and open it. It hadn't jumped yet, still just down at the bottom of the container, but he didn't want to risk it. Probably he should poke some holes in the lid if he was going to keep it in there for very long, but he didn't think it could suffocate fast enough for that to be urgent.
Roman picked his bowl up from the floor. It had been easier and faster to drop it on the floor than to put it back on the counter, but he wasn't just going to leave it there. He put it in the sink like he'd originally been intending, checked his phone to see if Logan had responded—nope—and then looked back at the container and the mouse within.
Except that… That was not a mouse.
Granted, Roman had seen a lot more animated mice than real ones, but he was fairly confident that real mice did not wear clothes. Real mice, he knew, were wild animals and not civilized little furry people who wore teensy little shoes and waistcoats and ran around solving mysteries or sewing beautiful ballgowns for disenfranchised stepdaughters.
No, a real mouse would not be wearing a scrap of dark cloth like a tiny cloak. A real mouse would not be huddled like that, back pressed against the far wall of the container and knees pulled up against its chest. And a real mouse definitely wouldn't be staring up at him with wide, frightened eyes in a decidedly human shaped face.
Roman and the not-a-mouse stared at each other for several very long seconds.
To be perfectly honest with himself, Roman was not one hundred percent sure he was not imagining things. This would definitely be the most intense imagining he had had, but he wouldn't put it past his weird, imaginative brain. Brains were very good at making things up, and it would make more sense for his brain to be making this up than for there to actually be a miniature, person shaped, not-a-mouse sitting on his kitchen counter.
He was pretty sure fairies didn't exist, was the thing, and also he was equally pretty sure that if he'd actually managed to catch a fairy he would have been super cursed by this point for his audacity. Though, it didn't look like the not-a-mouse had wings, so probably not a fairy anyway? Like, not all fae necessarily had wings, so he wasn't totally in the clear as far as curses go if his eyes weren't deceiving him, but also wingless fae were usually human-sized, right? Well, no, brownies were a thing and they were definitely both super magical and extremely small. Though maybe not quite this small? Unclear, honestly. Also elves. Elves were usually magic and sometimes small. If this was a brownie or an elf he was super fucked, because what they also were in addition to being magical and small was really fucking easy to piss off, even without trapping them first under a bowl and then inside a leftover soup container.
He hadn’t been cursed yet, though, and the not-a-mouse was still just staring up at him without moving, so Roman guessed it probably didn't have magic to curse him with, cause if he had gotten caught under a giant bowl and had magic to do something about it with, it definitely would not have taken this long for him to start slinging curses around.
So yeah, probably not a fae.
Roman remembered then that he was still holding his phone, and also remembered a tip he'd read somewhere once about how to check if you're hallucinating something, which was to take a picture of it cause cameras don't hallucinate and hallucinations often don't transfer over to photographs and if they do you can get someone else to look at it for you to confirm. Roman lifted his phone and opened the camera app, and the not-a-mouse moved for the first time since Roman had looked into the container. By the time the camera app loaded up, the tiny face and hands had disappeared into the fabric-scrap cloak, and the not-a-mouse was nothing more than a very tightly huddled ball of cloth with no visible human-appearing features.
Well, that was not going to be a very helpful picture. It just looked like he'd put a random wad of cloth in a container for no reason. The view through the camera matched what he was seeing normally, but what he was seeing normally was no longer weird except for in the context that he'd thought he'd caught a mouse, not a random wad of cloth.
He still took the picture. It wasn't the picture he'd been wanting to take, of a tiny human-like face and tiny human-like fingers, but it also wasn't a picture of a mouse, which was what he'd originally thought the hopefully-not-a-fae was, so. Potentially still useful for proving he wasn't imagining things.
Roman texted the picture to Logan, along with what does this look like to you? and then put his phone down on the counter to peer into the container again. The not-a-mouse remained huddled up, hardly moving. Roman tapped the side of the container, and the bundle of cloth twitched, slightly, but otherwise remained bundled tightly up.
Roman really wanted to see that tiny face again, just to prove to himself that he hadn’t imagined it, but he wasn’t sure how to get the not-a-mouse to uncurl and show it to him. Maybe if he picked it up he could get the cloak off or something? But then he'd have to open the container and reach in and pick up the not-a-mouse, which might still have sharp teeth like an actual mouse, or potentially still be an actual mouse that he was only imagining looked like a tiny human-shaped creature, and yeah, no, that didn't seem like a good idea to be doing. Roman still did not want to get bitten.
A second opinion would really be helpful here, or at least someone to bounce ideas off. Logan appeared to be asleep, so he wasn't really an option at the moment, even if he probably would have some good ideas on how to objectively determine just what it was Roman had caught and if he was gonna be cursed about it.
He was thinking probably not on the curse question, if only because nothing had happened so far, but he wasn't totally ruling it out.
Maybe it would help if he was hospitable. Like, he still wasn't about to let the not-a-mouse-maybe-a-fae out, not til he was actually sure he wasn't just imagining that it wasn't a mouse and it really did have a weird little human-shaped face, but that didn't mean he had to be rude. He could… provide snacks, maybe? Like, technically it was a home invader and also his captive, not an invited guest, but… Well, even if it was a mouse, going to the effort of catching it alive to relocate outside seemed a bit pointless if it starved to death anyway because it didn't know where to find food outside and started on an empty stomach after being trapped in a container overnight. So yeah, even if it was actually a mouse, he'd probably give it something to eat.
Hm. What did mice eat, that would also be reasonable to give to a fae, if this happened to actually be a tiny fae who just happened to not have cursed him yet for some reason? His first thought was crackers, except that crackers were really salty and salt tended to be a fairy deterrent, so offering a fairy a saltine would probably be ruder than not offering food at all.
Maybe cheese? Cartoon mice were always eating cheese, though he wasn't sure how much real mice liked it, and it seemed reasonable that a fairy would be alright with eating cheese. Maybe a bit of bread, too? Bread and cheese were good staple foods, yeah.
Roman went and got the cheese out of the fridge, and cut off a piece he hoped was reasonably sized, and tore the corner off of a slice of bread, and then also thought of peanut butter. Cartoon mousetraps were often baited with cheese, but he vaguely remembered putting peanut butter on a real mousetrap, probably because it wouldn't spoil nearly as fast but also definitely presumably because mice liked peanut butter.
Hopefully fae didn't have peanut allergies, or more specifically, hopefully this particular maybe-a-fae didn't. Hm.
Roman squinted at the tiny bundle of huddled cloth. "Are you allergic to peanuts?" he asked it, and the bundle of cloth that was probably not a mouse and also probably—hopefully—not a fae didn't answer.
Roman got the peanut butter out too and put some on the torn corner of bread, and then considered how he was supposed to get all this into the container without giving the not-a-mouse an opportunity to bite him or run up his arm.
Well, he guessed he didn't need to set it in the container, technically. He could drop it in. It didn't seem very dignified, but it wasn't like he was dropping it on the ground. The inside of the container was clean, except for having a creature inside it, and if it was a mouse, it wasn't like it would really mind eating smeared peanut butter off the ground anyway.
Plus he was already planning on throwing the container away after this, so it wasn't like he was going to need to clean it up or anything.
Carefully, Roman peeled the edge of the lid up enough to shove the miniature meal inside. He accidentally smeared some peanut butter on the lid, but, again, he didn't need to clean it off later so no biggie. The bread actually managed to land peanut butter side up, which was nice.
Roman sealed the container again, and decided that while he had the ingredients out, he would make himself a cheese-and-peanut-butter-sandwich.
Also, since it appeared he was probably going to be keeping the not-a-mouse in the container until tomorrow so he could get a proper second opinion from Logan, who was probably asleep right now, Roman figured he should actually punch those air holes now. He did that with a steak knife, just a few quick jabs, more air slits than air holes, and the not-a-mouse quivered a bit inside its bundle of cloth, but didn't peek out to see what he was doing.
Not through the whole process of Roman making and then eating his sandwich did the not-a-mouse uncurl, in fact. Not even to eat its own snack.
Well, maybe it would eat it when Roman wasn't watching. He briefly considered leaving it on the counter and going to bed, considering that he had originally been planning on sleeping as soon as he'd put his bowl in the sink, but decided he didn't want to leave it all alone like that.
Careful not to jostle the not-a-mouse too much, Roman picked up the container and brought it into the bedroom with him. Putting it on his nightstand, Roman got changed and climbed into bed. Hopefully the not-a-mouse wouldn't decide to scrabble around in there in the middle of the night and wake him up, but on the bright side if it did, he'd be able to foil any escape attempts, so, probably worth it.
One last thing before sleeping. Roman texted Logan again, can you come over tomorrow?
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Chapter 2: Waking up Confused
