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reborrowing · 3 months

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a strange appearance, part four

look at me, writing! posting it!

Stranger Swap Masterpost | ao3 First | Prev | Next

Mistakes were made. Word count: ~2500 cws: self harm, fear, panic, violence/peril, language, reference to past abuse taglist: @da3dm @whumpsday

The fear Phoebe had been pushing aside all morning hit her all at once—but not half as hard as Val did.

“You can’t do that!” they cried.

Whatever triumph Phoebe had felt in getting her iPad to hear her from across the room evaporated. Val moved so quickly she barely had time to see them react, nevermind get out of their way. She had only a half-second to doubt herself before the iPad actually responded.

And then the world collapsed.

The weight of it was already pressing down on her by the time she processed the shadows, the sounds, the movement, the voice. She couldn’t see anything. The counter shuddered as Val leapt up and claws scraped across the laminate. They’d cleared it like it was nothing, like they didn’t have the mass of a living building, and bulldozed through whatever was left of breakfast. And then she was thrown off her feet and smothered against Val’s palm.

The impact alone knocked her breath away. Val’s hand was a disorienting mass of flesh that snapped closed around her before she had any chance to recover. Their fist swung erratically, enough to make her nauseous, as Val bolted across the apartment. She took a breath and pushed back against whatever finger happened to be in front of her chest. She didn’t think they even noticed.

On the other side, back in the real world, the normal world, the simple setting of her own apartment, the call connected. The line rang. Val made a high-pitched noise that stung at the edge of Phoebe’s hearing.

Without warning, gravity shifted again as they lowered their hand to stuff her into the front pocket of their sweatshirt. Her sweatshirt, really, though by now it made for a pretty effective prison. As soon as Val let go of her, she screamed. She barely made two syllables before a massive weight pressed her back against the fabric, bruising her arm and stuffing her mouth full of fleece.

“Quiet,” Val hissed, as if Phoebe had any choice but to comply.

She thought she was going to die. The experience was very new to her and she didn’t care for it at all. It was searing. That flash of instinct and urgency when you bump your hand against the stove, the automatic flinch when someone jumps at you, the call to the surface as your lungs ache at the bottom of the pool, all at once and turned up to eleven. It drowned out any thoughts of her own to demand she get away, run, now, and all she could do was sweat.

Her eyes watered as she finally gave up the insistence that she was dreaming. This was impossible. But it would be nearly as impossible for Phoebe to sleep through this. She could barely sleep through the sound of traffic outside her window. She’d woken herself with her own snoring before. She wouldn’t sleep through her heart racing like this, not for this long.

After an eternity of seconds, Chelsea picked up. Squished against the thick fabric, Phoebe couldn’t make out anything that was being said. Val’s heart thundered overhead and their hand pressed down even tighter—quiet, quiet, quiet.

Val froze, staring at the tablet with dread as the screen changed to show an active call. A stranger’s voice called out through the speaker. They’d heard that voice before. They came by often enough. Often enough they might have a key. They could come here. Another set of eyes. They might already know what was happening. Phoebe could have called them already, in the bedroom. Clearly phones didn’t need to be touched like Val had thought.

Chelsea called out several times and waited for Phoebe to answer. Val clenched their jaw and quivered, afraid that she might get loud enough that they could hear her. After a few seconds, Chelsea’s tone shifted to mild amusement, maybe annoyance. Not concerned, at least. They didn’t say anything about Phoebe shrinking or magic or impossible things. They hung up.

Maybe they didn’t know anything.

Val’s breath came out all at once, so harsh it almost sounded like a laugh. They fell out of that scared paralysis like a puppet cut loose from its strings. They absently set Phoebe aside on the coffee table as they hurried to turn off the iPad to prevent any other calls, then collapsed onto the couch beside it. They were exhausted. They should have been curled up in bed by this hour, even without the constant fear draining their energy.

They almost let themself pass out. Sleep could help, maybe, or give them a break. And then they heard Phoebe. The sound jolted their heart back into a panic.

They’d attacked her.

They felt like they were unraveling. She was saying something and they weren’t hearing it and that alone set off a whole new cascade of mental alarms because the last thing they wanted was a hostile host because they didn’t know this wasn’t going to last and then she would catch them with more reason to hurt them than anyone else had ever had. They were dead. They were terrified to even imagine what a human might think was fair retribution for this, not when they’d already been caged for existing and burned for stealing and—

“What is wrong with you!? What the fuck!”

Val forced a hand against their thigh, just below the hem of their skirt, and pushed until they felt blood. They inhaled sharply as their attention narrowed to the shallow pain. Pain itself was much easier than the threat of pain. Pain was urgent, an easy reminder that they had more important things to do than overthink every possible terrible thing that hadn’t even happened yet. Phoebe couldn’t hurt them—not yet, not as she was—so Val took care of it themself to keep themself in line. They raked their claws across their leg with a sigh of clarity.

“Sorry,” they said.

Val folded their shoulders like they could disappear into their own poor posture. They leaned forward, conscious of getting too close, and cringed at what they saw. Phoebe was at least in one piece. Her face was flushed and teary, her hair frizzed and disheveled. One of the knots that had been acting as a sleeve had come loose and her dress was crooked and falling down her front. She crossed her arms in front of her in an echo of a hug and she leaned away from them even as she glared. She was a mess, she was afraid, but she was alive.

And she was mad.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what—I’m better than that, I swear. I…are you okay? Please tell me I didn’t hurt you,” Val whispered.

They knew better than that. They had to be better than that.

They couldn’t have her mad at them.

It was hard to watch Val move up close, even without the new fear that they might choose to reach out and attack her. It was like standing too close to a train. They were so large that it was hard for Phoebe to track how fast and how far they were actually moving. But at least trains had rails. She shivered.

“Tell me why the fuck you—you could have killed me!”

They flinched away against the back of the couch.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t… I mean, I wasn’t, and—are you okay?” they bleated.

She wasn’t. She was shaking, hanging on to a tightrope between fear and anger, and desperately trying not to look at the abyss below.

“What do you care? You did this, you attacked me, you—what the fuck is your deal?”

They slowly slid down to the floor to get closer to their level. This time, she flinched. They were a building falling in slow motion and they didn’t just crash around her, they could choose to lunge at any moment. In either case, they were a force she had no prayer of resisting if they decided to hurt her again.

They were real no matter how much she wanted to pretend otherwise.

And, she realized, they were crying. She hadn’t noticed that while they were still looming over her and she was taken aback by it now. Why were they crying? They put a hand on the table and she saw blood smear beneath their fingertips. She brushed a hand over her most sore points to confirm, but she wasn’t bleeding, only bruised. It wasn’t her blood. In those brief seconds, they’d managed to hurt themself as well. Just how unstable were they?

The table shifted with them as they lowered themself the rest of the way to the floor. Phoebe reassured herself that they were just using it for balance, but her throat went dry anyway. She stepped back and looked for somewhere to run, but of course, there was nothing she could do that would keep Val from just grabbing her again if they wanted to. They wouldn’t even have to get up. Just existing near them meant she was cornered. Helpless.

“Don’t, please,” she creaked.

Val’s bloody hand flew back as if they’d touched a hot pan.

“I won’t. I wouldn’t,” they said, despite the obvious evidence to the contrary. They deflated. “I panicked. I’m sorry.”

They leaned back, like giving her more room might make this better. Like distance was the problem, not her current, inexplicable size. Phoebe didn't have any way to undo it, she couldn’t call for help, she couldn’t—there was that abyss she didn’t want to look at. Despair. She pulled a hand through her knotted hair.

“Why?"

She wasn’t sure what she was asking. Why had they panicked? Why should she believe them? Why were they here? Why was this happening? She knew Val knew more than they were letting on. They knew her, they knew her apartment, they had to know more.

“I couldn’t let you tell anyone! No one’s supposed to know,” they whined.

“Tell anyone what?”

They hesitated and for a moment, Phoebe thought they might run again. She wondered if that wouldn’t be for the best. The iPad was right there, on the couch, and she was surrounded by clutter she could probably make into a bridge of some kind. But the idea of crashing to the ground was as bad as being grabbed. She was helpless with or without Val.

“You have to promise—swear—you won’t tell anyone. About me, or…”

“What is it you’re so afraid of!?”

“You! Or, I mean, humans, all of you! You…please, just promise me, you can’t tell anyone?”

She swallowed uneasily. She knew they weren’t human, obviously they were something other, but the outburst still unsettled. It sounded like a reveal in a bad sci-fi flick. But they’d already turned on her so she reluctantly agreed not to tell. It’s not like she could reach anyone anyways.

Val sighed. They swallowed and finally explained. Sort of, mostly. They stammered over most of the details, and they emphasized that they really didn’t know what was going on right now, with her either. Shrinking was new to them. But tiny people, not so much. Apparently those were everywhere, living in secret and convinced that was key to their survival.

They didn’t elaborate on why or where this everywhere was that they managed to keep hidden. It still sounded like bad sci-fi. But she didn’t argue. She already had forced herself to accept the absurd for now and she was more than wary of setting Val off again. She was plenty bruised enough.

She remembered the other thing that she had dismissed as a dream, the little figure falling off her dresser. That had probably been real too, then right? Had that been Val? She asked and after several more seconds of hesitation, they confessed that they’re usually just over three and a half inches tall.

Phoebe shook her head, trying to wrap her head around the idea of something so horribly large being so small. Her stomach twisted when she heard the number—and just how small was she, anyway? She glanced around the clutter surrounding her to try and guess, but it wasn’t like she’d left a ruler lying around. Taller than that book was thick, shorter than a cup. No useful measurement, no idea how close she might be to three and a half inches…it couldn’t be an exact trade, not when Val was practically swimming in her clothes, but how far off was it? Some of her own mass had to be missing from this bizarre exchange, but what did that mean? How much? How did this all work?

“I-I can’t do this,” she said.

“What, are you kidding? You’re doing way better than me,” Val said.

“Only because I didn’t think it was real!”

“But other than just now, when I lost it, you’ve been fine. And you’re still okay, right?”

“Now, maybe, but what if you freak out again? What about tomorrow? What about—I have classes! I have a job! How am I—I can’t do anything like this! What if this is permanent? This doesn’t just happen, why should we assume it’s going to unhappen?” she yelled.

Phoebe started to pace, yanking out her hair as she walked. Val reached out for her with their clean hand, darkening her view with their shadow. She slapped their hand away before they could touch her. They bit their lip as they dropped their hand down onto the table beside her.

“Hey. Hey, let me do the panicking, okay? Please?” Val said.

“Because that worked out so well?”

“Because we can’t both be acting stupid. Take a breath, alright? Here, I can…I’ll give you some space to—”

The horizon seemed to shift as they started to stand. The sheer scale of the movement made her sweat but Phoebe lurched after their hand like she could hold them in place.

“No! Don’t you go anywhere!”

“Um, okay,” they said uncertainly, sliding their hand back into her reach.

She was still afraid of them, physically and instinctively, almost overwhelmingly so. After what they’d done, how could she not be? She couldn’t trust them to be nice or even rational. She knew that, at least intellectually. But emotionally? Mentally? She couldn’t face being alone in her own head now. Having crazy around was better than going crazy herself.

“Is there—can I do something to help you? I could—maybe that tea wasn’t such a terrible idea?” Val offered.

Phoebe hesitated. She wanted music, something to fill the quiet other than her thoughts and the relative monster that had made them get so dark. But tea probably wouldn’t hurt. It would probably be best if Val had something to calm their own nerves as well, now that their anxiety attacks had proven to be dangerous. They could start with tea before she tried asking for her phone again.

#not entirely convinced I'm being coherent but here it is #g/t #giant tiny #g/t writing #my writing #stranger swap #a strange appearance #oc: val #oc: phoebe #does this count as gtwac? today's thing was prompt: size swap but that's not why i wrote this lol

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