piecewise | g/t snippets & drabbles

forever (m/nb)

"Gale, I can't wait to see you at my wedding!"

The borrower chuckled, letting the noise around them overpower their eardrums. The ever so slight shift to the left, combined with a subtle quirk of his eyebrow made the human inconspicuous to the other beings, but Arith knew better. 

They always had.

Sitting near the snow globe, legs dangling without a care in the world, Arith let the gigantic stage around them tell the rest of Gale's story. The eventual shift to other partygoers, the moment of panic that had Gale stricken with doubt, the awful excuse to go to the bathroom. It had happened many times before, but this time seemed different. Arith kicked their feet up from the ledge, being sure to grab their hook as they slipped back into the shadows.

It was time to go human hunting. 

They remembered the discomfort like the back of their hand, resorting to inner tunnels and muscle memory to carry Arith to where they knew he was. It was never the bathroom, they thought as they dodged another cobweb. The hook they once depended on felt heavy as they wondered how painful the thought was, how real it had probably been for the human.

Sure enough, the chill of the outside told them they had made it. Their reward? The human, Gale, that spanned tens of them tall and felt millions of miles away, hunched quietly on the steps of the wooden porch. Interestingly enough, the bean couldn't look smaller - if Arith squinted, they'd swear that Gale was their own size in a realm of his own. Arith dropped their tool as they watched him silently, contemplating the situation at large.

[You...didn't mean it, didn't you?]

Their voice carried, and it was at that moment they realized they said it aloud. Ever so subtly, the form shifted, and glistening brown eyes revealed that the human had indeed heard them.

"It's you..." they whispered, but to Arith, it was a shout of accusation.

You, their thoughts parroted, almost like he'd...seen them before? Arith dared to take a step closer.

"You were the one that told them," Gale had said, tears streaming down his face. "Didn't you?"

Arith stopped. Tell them...what? The 4-inch being looked at the looming form apprehensively, letting the silence fill with echoes of the music and voices mingling about inside. 

Arith had no idea what he was going on about, but they didn't like being accused. [I...didn't?]

It took a total of 7 seconds for the human to cross the distance between them, a distance that would've taken Arith a good fifteen minutes. Looming over them, narrowed eyebrows and fists on either side of their small frame made them more than apprehensive. The brown flesh, firm yet shaky, threatened to lose control as the seconds ticked by. Arith looked up.

And yet...

[I didn't do it.] They found themselves saying again, meeting his intensity with their own boredom. Green eyes squinted as they felt themselves absorbed whole by his, attempting to mimic a fraction of their mystique. [You've never met me before.]

Their heart continued beating out of their chest as a fist moved upwards, beyond its spot on the ground and up to block a part of his face.  "How should I know?" He said, but the slight crack of his voice told another story. Surprise overtook the borrower as they watched the flood drown his facade out in real-time, the tears large enough to leave them soaked on the spot they stood.

They weighed their options as they remembered the hook, the one that lay within arms reach. They could fight his fury, expunge his wrath, and ignore his grief. But for some reason, the thought made them hesitate, like they weren't the one in danger at all. Through each of the 11 times they'd been out here, he'd looked harmless - harmed. And the first time Gale had cried here, on lucky number 7, it had been brief, but he'd still been hurting.

Another look into the human's eyes, and Arith noticed that they still hadn't let the fist strike them. Were they right to think he was harmless?

[You shouldn't.] They affirmed after a while, nodding as he watched them in surprise. The anger was less intense then, but Arith's heartbeat remained troubled. Be brave, their thoughts goaded them. [But I've met you.]

The earth shook as something landed beside them, and it was at that moment Arith remembered their predicament. The fist, taller and wider than their entire existence, had landed on the wood next to them, grit even more than they had been before. Gale used a sleeve to wipe away his tears, but the swollen look of his eyes with the sniffles of his nose told Arith the truth.

"I know I shouldn't promise," he said, and once again Arith found themself grateful he was too troubled to unpack the borrower's revelation. Hushed, yet urgent the twenty-something continued. "Every time they say that, or something along those lines, I know I should tell them the truth."

The truth, they thought to themselves, is hard to swallow sometimes. [Eleven times though?]

They froze. Arith knew they didn't deserve to die for that, but an emotionally volatile bean could do anything. But once again, Gale had ignored what was commonplace for the rest of those like him, instead chuckling sadly. "So you've seen," he remarked, although it came off as more of an answer to its own question.

"They won't understand though, will they?" He supplemented,  somehow even softer than before. His eyes, which seemed to hold worlds of their own, left theirs, opting instead for the stars. "The fear that-"

The thought got stuck in his throat as he continued to stare up, far above what Arith could ever see. The music from earlier had long died down, and with it the chatter, yet Gale seemed in no rush to talk to the guests again. In fact, if Arith turned their head, he seemed...mesmerized, somehow. Although they doubted it was just from the night sky.

"It's beautiful," he boomed, his voice still in a trance of its own. Arith watched him with careful eyes, prepared for a second outburst or another meltdown. 

"The freedom to be."

Arith looked up at the moon, and everything fell into place. They looked at the human from fresher eyes, watching as another round of tears pooled near them. 

[Every night has its day.] They found themselves saying. [Every star has its life.]

A nod answered their revelation, and with it the human brought himself to his feet. Arith stumbled back to the hole they came from, tripping over their hook. But the human, ever so ginormous, remained fixed on the sky.

[Freedom...] They tried, [is not born in permanence. It requires change, growth, and acceptance.]

Arith hugged themself as they watched Gale's shoulders heave, the weight of their words crashing into him. The worlds his eyes held dimmed, the rain that graced the wooden porch floor slowed, all he seemed to have left was the sky above and the borrower below. Still Gale nodded, willing himself to turn and listen to the minuscule being on the ground.

"I know..." he whispered, "I know, but then how do I continue on?"

Arith shrugged, replacing their own warmth for the weight of their hook. [You just...do.] They managed. [You survived the last ten times the same way, didn't you?]

Gale had chuckled at that, finally unfurling himself to his full 5'7 height. "Heh, I guess I did." He said, drying the last of his tears with another wipe of his sleeve. "But you would know all about that, would you?"

Another shrug. [I guess. I do live here, after all.]

Arith knew that they should be afraid, that maybe the bean being in their right mind was a red flag for their existence, but the silence that followed felt too comforting to care. The cars, which had long driven away, just as they had before, left the two beings truly alone for the first time in a few hours.

A squint was Gale's response, but he made no move to verify that information either, instead turning the conversation a different route. "Stalker."

A grin formed on Arith's features as the human began to make himself at home, settling once again on the steps to be on more even ground. They knew Gale better than the other humans, that when the college student sat down to talk to you, the real party was only just beginning.

{I prefer 'Arith.']