Catching Up

So, some background on this one. A few months back, a friend of mine (who knows exactly what I'm about) sent me this TikTok. And she fuckin' got my ass, because even though this is obviously a comedy skit (a funny one, too!), even though it's silly as hell... It was also the hottest fucking thing I'd seen in weeks god dammit. Just an absolute clown show over here as I reacted to this goofy-ass joke as if it was softcore porn.

In fact it was so hot that I've been wanting to write a short story inspired by it for months! So, that's what this is, though obviously it's drifted away from the "source material" pretty significantly, especially since I didn't write it to build up to a punchline. Enjoy the thing my ridiculous, broken brain morphed that video into!

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I paced back and forth a few times in front of the apartment door. Dammit, she can probably hear me out here. I made a fist and raised it up to knock, then splayed my fingers back out, lifting my arm up over my head before dropping it back down to my side.

Gah! Why was I making this so weird?!

Megan was… I mean, bleugh. Nothing. Megan was the sweetest woman you’d ever meet. Warm, bubbly, thoughtful. The kind of person who could turn a cashier into a new friend in the time it took them to ring her up, you know? Fresh-baked cookies for every birthday, thoughtful, hand-written cards at Christmas time, had everyone’s drink orders memorized so that she could take care of buying the rounds. Just a ray of goddamn sunshine.

I know, I know. It’s weird that I’m saying it like it’s a bad thing. It isn’t, it really isn’t. She’s… I mean she’s incredible. And I hadn’t seen her in a couple years, and she hit me up online and told me we should hang out sometime, and from anyone else I’d assume that was just a polite thing to say but with Megan I knew full well it was an earnest invitation, so now I was standing outside her apartment, a bottle of wine in one hand while I struggled to work up the nerve to knock.

Just, fucking, get it over with! I breathed deep, let out a huff, and rapped on the door.

After a beat or two, I heard a click. The door swung open, and there was Megan, staring down at me with that thousand-watt smile of hers.

“Oh my gosh, hi!!!” She threw her arms around me, pressing my face into her shoulder and rocking me back and forth as she squeezed me tightly. “It’s so good to see you! It’s been so long!”

Megan was incredible. She was also nearly a full foot taller than me; I’m a compact 5’5”, while Megan is a towering 6’3”. Being around her made me feel, I don’t know… small. I mean, I’m short for a guy, I know that. I’m used to being one of the shortest people in the room. But something about just how tall she was set me on edge. Being around her made me feel uncomfortable.

And she’s so fucking nice that I can’t even pretend like it’s her fault! It was just my own stupid insecurity gnawing at the back of my brain anytime I had to stand next to her.

“It’s… good to see you too,” I said, my voice muffled by the soft fabric of her turtleneck. She held the hug for a few moments longer before she finally loosened her grip, rubbing my shoulders briefly as she stepped back. I craned my neck and smiled up at her, hoping my nerves weren’t showing through. 

It’s just, you know. When you’re only 5’3”, being around someone as tall as Megan was sort of intimidating.

“Gosh… you look good! How long’s it been since I’ve seen ya? It’s gotta be, jeez… two years?” I’m not sure I’ve ever heard Megan actually curse, just throw around lots of “goshes” and “jeezes.” She grew up in the Midwest and came out here originally for school. Her accent had faded over the years but sometimes it still crept into the edges of her speech, like how every now and then a “you” turned into a “ya.”

It was… I mean, it was endearing. Cute, even. Just like everything else about her. Er, hold on, no. That’s not what I—

Look. Just forget it.

“You look great too!” I said, wincing at the over-eager tone in my voice. “I um. I brought wine.” I held the bottle up and felt myself straining to stand a little straighter, as though a fraction of an inch would meaningfully close the gap between Megan’s 6’3” and my own puny 5’1”. Or, no, sorry, I meant 5’0”.

“Oh! That is so sweet of you!” She bent down to kiss me on the cheek and my face burned red, both from the sudden kiss and from seeing just how far she had to bend to span the 16-inch difference in our heights.

“Jeez, I don’t know why I’m keepin’ us out here in the hall! Please, come in, come in!” She took the wine and stepped to the side of the doorway to let me by. I turned my head toward her as I stepped past, very quickly remembered that my eyes were level with her bust, and shot them upward to meet her gaze with an awkward smile. Making eye contact with her from this close practically put a crick in my neck.

Megan’s apartment was cozy. Shelves filled with little knicknacks and figurines, knitting supplies strewn about the room at random. A large blanket, striped with the same colors as several of the balls of yarn lying out, was draped over the back of the sofa. 

“I probably should’ve cleaned up a little more before you got here,” she said, suddenly embarrassed.

“No, no, it’s fine! I uh. I like it.” I did. It was a little messy, sure, but in a way that felt lived-in, not sloppy. There was a warm energy to the space, one that perfectly reflected its owner.

“Hope this wine goes well with the pie I made!” she said, pulling a pie tin out of her refrigerator. “Can you gimme a hand and help me find the corkscrew while I cut this? Should be in one of the drawers here.”

“Oh, uh, sure, yeah!” I followed her into the kitchen, and… yeah, okay, as I walked behind her, I snuck a glimpse at her backside. It practically came up to my shoulders, can you blame me!? 

God, did she look good. Megan had been a volleyball player back in college, and still had a toned, lanky build when we used to hang out. She’d put on a little weight in the past couple years, but it had gone to all the right places, and based on the hug she’d greeted me with, she still had plenty of power in those arms. Not that I was really a good judge of that kind of thing; as a 4’9” shrimp, everyone had powerful arms to me.

“You talk to Carl lately?” she asked, making me realize I’d stopped to stare too long. I hurried next to her and pulled open a drawer, rifling through it for the corkscrew.

“Uh, not much really. He’s been pretty busy ever since him and his wife had their baby.” Carl was a mutual friend, the guy responsible for us meeting each other. The two of us, him, and a few other friends had all met up every Friday night for six months for bar trivia.

It was a lot of fun, other than, you know. Megan. Making me feel even tinier than I already felt at my miniscule four-foot height. Smiling at me with a wink every time she caught me staring. With her long legs and bouncy blonde hair and, and…

Anyway. Eventually, our little trivia group fell apart as people’s lives got busier. Every once in a while we’d hit each other up on Facebook to talk about how we should totally get together again, and then never actually do it. Until today, I guess.

Megan had high counters—wouldn’t surprise me if that was one of the selling points of the place for her—and I had to stretch up on my toes to see in the drawers as I pulled them out. It was embarrassing, but Megan was too busy getting some dishes down from a cabinet to watch me struggle. The upper cabinets at my own place were empty; no point storing anything up there when I couldn’t reach them without breaking out a ladder.

The corkscrew was in the furthest drawer, and I huffed slightly as I finally found it, returning to Megan and reaching up to set it on the counter next to her. I resisted the urge to take another look at her butt, even as it jutted into my face.

“Thanks! Could you grab some wine glasses too? They’re over there.” She pointed to a high cabinet on the opposite wall. I looked at them, then back at her.

“...Oh, gosh, right, what was I thinking? Sorry, I’ll get ‘em.” She reached down and gently nudged me aside as I turned bright red, fidgeting with my hands. I shook it off and smiled up at her as she poured a glass and handed it down to me, along with a slice of chocolate cream pie on a small appetizer plate. 

“You got it?” she asked.

“Yeah, yeah! I got it!” I replied, cringing a little. That had sounded more annoyed than I’d meant it to. I just… don’t like people coddling me because of my size. Not even, you know, not even Megan.

“Okay!” If she picked up on my irritation, she didn't let it show. “Well then let’s go sit down and catch up! I wanna hear everything.” With that, she strode off toward the living room. I moved to follow her, but she quickly outpaced me; that wasn’t hard for her to do when her legs were longer than I was tall. I moved as fast as I could, but I quickly grew tired, the weight of the food and drink taking its toll. As I neared the edge of the kitchen tile, I had no choice but to set them down for a moment and catch my breath. It was stupid of me to think I could carry the wine and the pie, especially when I was so exhausted from lugging the wine bottle all the way here. I should have had her take my dish.

“You okay in there?”

“Yeah!” I said, panting just slightly. “Be there in just a sec!” I was glad that I’d relented and let her take my pie dish, because the wine glass was enough of a challenge all on its own. It nearly came up to my waist; why had I let her pour me so much, anyway? A shot glass would’ve probably been more than I could drink in one sitting.

With a grunt, I squatted down, wrapping my arms around the underside of the bowl and hefting it up, waddling forward bow-legged as the base of the glass swung between my legs. My arms and back were threatening to give out by the time I finally made it to the couch, at which point I realized that I now had a new problem: getting up.

Before I could formulate a plan, Megan was there, smiling down at me once again. She reached down and scooped up the wine glass without a second thought, the same glass I’d practically just given myself a hernia hauling over from the kitchen. Then her hands were suddenly around me, her massive fingers encircling my body as she hoisted me up onto the cushion, setting me on my feet right next to where she’d set my glass.

I wanted to get mad, to tell her that she shouldn’t touch me like that without my permission, to shout at her that she shouldn’t presume I needed her help just because I’m only 18 inches tall. But feeling the warmth of her hands around me, seeing her sweet, loving smile looming overhead, all those complaints died in my throat. I just couldn’t muster that kind of aggression against her.

“Th-thank you.”

“Of course!” She lightly squeezed my arm between her thumb and forefinger. “Now let’s get you comfy.” Turning to the coffee table, she picked up a few different little knitted scraps, nothing in any particular shape, probably just things she’d made to practice or to test some patterns. I stifled a gasp as she reached over my head, flinching for a moment when her chest bumped into my glass before she resumed wadding up all the little bits of knitting into an impromptu nest settled against the arm of the couch.

“Boop!” She gently poked me in the chest, applying enough pressure to knock me on my butt, sending me crashing softly into the knit pile. She quickly pulled one of the scraps around me, using it like a blanket to tuck me in up to my armpits, giggling the entire time.

She’d always been like this. Her affectionate, thoughtful nature took on a different tenor with me. Something about how small I was brought something out in her, made her want to care for me like a lost puppy. It was the exact kind of patronizing, condescending treatment I hated, but for… whatever reason, it wasn’t quite so bad when it came from her.

I looked up at my glass. It was nearly as tall as I was standing up. How was I going to drink anything out of it?

I’d no sooner had the thought when Megan grabbed it, clinking it against her own before she started to tilt it toward me. “Here, sit up straight.”

The wine bobbed at the edge of the glass, and leaning forward, I was able to sip at it. Megan wasn’t able to hold it perfectly still, and some of it sloshed out, splashing me.

“Oh, gosh! Sorry, sorry!” She pulled the glass away and started patting me dry with another knitting scrap.

“It’s fine, it’s fine—mph!” She wasn’t trying to smother me, but her hand and the cloth she was using to pat the spill dry were both so big that she couldn’t really avoid it.

“There we go, I think we got it in time!” Her voice had a slightly doting affect. “Sorry again. Can I make it up to you with some pie?”

“That’s, I—” she didn’t really give me time to answer as she took the wine glass away, setting it on the coffee table and picking up the plate with the pie slice on it. She scooped up the tip of it on the edge of her fork.

“Open wide!”

I deflated, though I’m pretty sure I was too small for Megan to notice the gesture. This was exactly why I’d tried to get her to fix me a separate plate. I knew she was going to try to feed me if I didn’t put my foot down.

Putting your foot down doesn’t tend to get much done when you’re only eight inches tall. And, well, when there’s a gorgeous, beautiful giant beaming at you as she looms closer and closer, it’s hard to find the words to argue.

So, I opened up.

If she was trying to apologize for splashing me with the wine, this wasn’t a very good way to go about it. The “bite” on her fork was bigger than my entire head, and I couldn’t help but get a few blobs of whipped cream on my face as I bit into it. 

The second I did, I melted. Oh my God, it was so fucking good! It didn’t look that much different than the kind of frozen pie you’d get at the grocery store, but there was no question that it was homemade. I immediately took another mouthful off the fork, getting my face even dirtier in the process.

Megan giggled. “Be careful, silly, you’re makin’ an even bigger  mess than I did!” She pulled the fork away, then licked the tip of her thumb. I panicked and reflexively squirmed as she reached out and started wiping my face clean, her thumb spanning from one of my ears to the other.

“I’m glad you like it, though,” she said proudly, before popping the rest of the forkful into her mouth. Somehow, she managed to light up even brighter as she tasted the rich chocolate. “Oof. Good thing you don’t eat much, ‘cuz I’m not feelin’ very inclined to share this bad boy.”

“It’s really, really good Megan,” I said, then repeated, louder, shouting as I realized I was too far away for her to hear me speaking at a normal volume.

She smiled, shrugging off the praise. “Thanks. Hey…” slowly, she reached out her hand once more, gently pinching my own hand (more like my entire forearm) between her fingers. “I just wanted to say, I’m really glad you decided to come out and see me today. You don’t owe me anything, but you are my friend, and I appreciate gettin’ t’spend time with ya.”

After my last living situation fell apart, Megan had… very graciously offered to let me move in with her. Initially, I turned her down; I’d had too many bad experiences with normal-sized roommates, and even though she only had the best intentions, Megan wasn’t very good about respecting my boundaries. I was worried that I wouldn’t be signing up to be her roommate, but her pet.

And because she’s, you know, perfect, she didn’t get upset or offended when I explained my concern. Instead, she kept working on a solution. She cut out a big hole in her wall and built an entire miniature apartment between two studs, furnished with little hand-knit beanbags molded into various shapes. She even mounted up a smartphone to serve as both a TV and a computer for my work-from-home job. Then she patched the wall up and cut another, smaller hole in to serve as a door. After seeing all the work she’d put in, I couldn’t turn her down, and if I’m being honest, it was far and away the best place I’d ever lived. For once, I had a space that actually felt like it belonged to me, instead of struggling to fit into a world made for people dozens of times my size.

But I was still worried about maintaining my autonomy. She was always leaving little baked goods and other food outside my door, and I kind of made a point not to take them, preferring instead to order my own food and groceries (of course, she still had to deliver them for me, from her door to mine). I insisted on paying half of all the bills, even though I used only a fraction of the water and electricity. I literally lived in her walls, but I barely ever saw her, deliberately holing up inside my little hand-crafted studio apartment, because I knew that the more time I spent out in the open with Megan, the more she’d want to take care of me. And… the more I might just let her.

I mean, it was dumb no matter which way you looked at it; I was worried about being thought of as her pet, so I barely ever left the cage she built for me? It was irrational, and I knew that. But it hadn’t stopped me from managing to barely see her at all during the two years we’d lived together. I was… yeah. Listen. I’m a jerk. I know. I feel bad about it, but it is what it is. She just… she has a way of making me feel small, even smaller than I already feel at a measly three inches tall. The only reason I was here hanging out with her today was that, after months without even catching a glimpse of me, she resorted to messaging me online to invite me to come out and visit with her.

In slight defense of myself, my concerns weren’t exactly unfounded. She’d immediately started coddling me when I came out; I still had the scent of the pie she’d fed me in my nostrils.

“It’s good to see you too!” I shouted. “Hey, could you bring the wine back over here?” I pointed with my whole arm toward the glass and she nodded, her mountainous form shifting to bring the glass back my way. In the time it took her to grab it, I was already several inches up back of the couch, using the upholstered stitching as handholds.

“Just set it down right there!” I yelled, gesturing behind me before I continued to climb. Megan was confused, but did as I asked.

When I’d climbed higher than the rim of the glass, I turned and jumped, kicking off the couch cushion as hard as I could. Megan let out a little gasp of surprise as I flung myself through the air, landing with both feet on the rim of the glass.

And then, the glass started to tip, knocked off balance by my weight.

“Careful, careful!” she shouted as she reached out to steady it. She was worrying over nothing; I was only an inch tall, and weighed significantly less than the wine, let alone the glass. There was no chance that I’d tip it.

“I am capable of doing some things myself, you know!” I shouted up at her. I squatted down, planning to hook my feet on the rim to reach my head down deep enough to take a sip.

Instead, I immediately slipped and fell in.

My eyes and sinuses burned as they flooded with alcohol and I desperately flailed, panicking as I tried to push my head back to the surface. Suddenly, something massive wrapped around me and I was pulled upward, Megan fishing me out of the glass with her fingers. I rolled down to the center of her palm, sputtering and coughing.

“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, are you okay?” She asked, holding me up directly under her massive face to study my tiny form.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine…” That was a lie; my ego was bruised beyond recovery, and if I didn’t get out of these sopping wet clothes soon…

“You’ve gotta be more careful, hon! Thank goodness I was here, I don’t know that you coulda gotten outta there yourself!” I wasn’t listening. Instead, I was struggling not to shiver. It wasn’t going well, and I started to ball up into the fetal position, pressing myself into the warmth of Megan’s palm.

“What’s wrong?!” Megan moved her hand to her ear so she could hear my response.

“C-cold,” was all I managed to get out. Immediately, she clapped her other hand overtop of me, and I felt us start to move.

Body heat’s a big problem for me, something about having too much surface area for my size. Getting wet like this was potentially lethal… And yet somehow, the prevailing feeling I felt was shame. I try to do one thing to assert my independence, and I fuck it up so bad that I nearly kill myself. Great. I tried to start peeling off my soaked shirt, but I was shivering too violently. Light suddenly flooded my eyes as Megan removed her hand, and I briefly saw that we were back in the kitchen before she closed her fingers over me.  Through a small gap, I watched as she started running the hot water in the kitchen sink, one finger in the stream as she waited for it to warm up. As soon as it did, I felt another lurch of motion. I couldn’t really keep track of what happened next, but when she opened up her hand a moment later, she gingerly pinched me between two fingers and eased me into a porcelain ramekin filled with hot water. I sighed in relief as the warmth flowed through my body.

“It’s a little too deep for you, hold onto the side.” I silently nodded, hooking an arm over the edge. “Are you okay for me to leave you alone for a second? I’ll be right back.” I gave another silent nod, but then, worrying that the motion was too small for her to see, held up a big thumbs up. She nodded and walked off briskly, her fading footsteps sounding like distant rolling thunder. I dunked my head beneath the water briefly, frustrated that I couldn’t get rid of the stench of alcohol. I peeked over the side of the ramekin, and off the edge of the counter I could see a drawer Megan must not have closed all the way when we were in here before, when she’d made a game out of having me explore each of her kitchen drawers to find her corkscrew.

The thunder started to grow louder again as Megan re-entered the kitchen, holding a Q-tip and a microfiber cloth. The water of my impromptu hot tub started to slosh around as she carefully lifted it up to her eye level.

“I’m gonna get you out of those clothes and clean you up, okay?”

My face burned bright red. “What? No! No, no, no. Megan, you’ve been a huge help, really, but I can take it from here. I know what just happened, but it was a freak accident! I can take care of myself!” My throat was starting to get hoarse from all this shouting.

Megan’s gigantic face turned into a sad, sympathetic smile. “Oh, hon… of course you can take care of yourself! But you don’t have to. Listen. No, I can see you wantin’ to argue, just listen. Lettin’ other people help you isn’t a sign of weakness. You just went through somethin’ really awful. Let me take care of you.”

I heaved a heavy sigh. I wanted to argue with her, but… to tell the truth, nearly freezing to death had sapped most of my strength. I felt like I was about to pass out.

“Okay.”

I don’t think she heard me, but she took my apparent lack of response as a “yes” anyway. Setting the ramekin down, she once again pinched me between her fingers, setting me down so that I was sitting on the ramekin’s edge, legs dangling in the water. I looked up at her, blushing, as I started to undress. She wasn’t watching; instead, she was putting a dab of dish soap on the end of the Q-tip, which she then dunked into the warm water before she began very gently rubbing me down with it. I was worried the cotton swab would feel too rough, but the soapy water and her gentle touch made it glide across my skin.

“Pants, too.”

I looked up at her pleadingly, like a sinner praying to God. She couldn’t really look at any part of me without looking at all of me, but even so I didn’t really have the impression that she was meeting my gaze. Instead, she just kept wiping me down. With a sigh, I removed my pants, moving quickly to cover my groin, just barely beating the Q-tip as she brought it down to clean my legs.

Megan squirted another droplet of dish soap onto her finger tip and gently rubbed it into my hair. The shock of nearly dying, the shame at my own incompetence, even the embarrassment of being naked all started to fade away. Instead, I started thinking about how incredible it was that someone so massive, so incomprehensibly titanic, could be so gentle. Her fingertip was as big as my entire body, heavy enough to crush me like a bug, but she was massaging the soap into my scalp so tenderly that it was threatening to put me to sleep. It didn’t seem possible.

Well. That was Megan for you.

Maybe I’d been wrong, all these years that I knew her. Maybe it wasn’t that she made me feel small at all. Maybe she just made me feel… cared for. Maybe I just wasn’t used to that, and it made me feel vulnerable.

She turned the faucet back on, running a small stream of warm water that she held me under to rinse me off. Then, with a slight nudge, she knocked me onto my back, splaying me out in her palm as she dried me off with the microfiber cloth.

“Are you tired? Thumbs up for yes.” 

I held my thumb up high.

“I can take you back to your room, if you’d like. But I don’t really want to leave you alone after all that. Is it okay if I take you back to mine, instead?”

I hesitated for a moment, before holding my thumb up once again. She smiled warmly, and started to move. Once in her room, she set me down on her nightstand as she stripped down to her underwear and the spaghetti-strap undershirt she’d been wearing under her turtleneck. Climbing into bed, she lifted me up once more and set me on her chest, using her finger to gently press me into the nook of her clavicle, casting me into darkness as she clasped her hands over me. The feeling of her warm, soft skin against my body was so relaxing that I didn’t even really think about the fact that I was still naked. I rose and fell rhythmically as her breathing grew deeper and more steady.

“Megan, I… I think I’m in love with you. I think I have been for a really long time.”

I was answered by a soft, rumbling snore, like more thunder. Even if she’d been awake, I don’t think she would’ve been able to hear me.

Maybe I’d say it again when she woke up.