#the implications on what's happening in this memory of hers is... quite unnerving and sad to be honest

[go-go-devil]

Unused dialogue for the Lonely Old Dear where it is revealed that she is, in fact, the mother of Patches the Spider 🕷

My guess as to why this line was cut was because the writers perhaps wanted the status of Patches's family in each game to be a mystery, since this remains the only time he's ever been given/implied to have a parental figure.

[nonbinary-octopus]

A Very Unusual Visitor

I really love @kieraelieson’s Tiny Tenants AU, and the other day, I sent her an ask: you know what. I am filled with soft gt longing. I want to be tiny and friends with your Tiny Tenants Logan. I want him to hold me and fiddle gently with me and let me sleep in his pocket. Virgil’s got a good thing going on here!

This is a story about that. More or less.

Wordcount: 2.2 K

[More of my writing]

~~~~~

Logan sat down at his desk, intending to read. However, as he glanced over the wooden surface, his gaze fell on a small form. A borrower. And an unfamiliar one, too. Logan thought he knew all of the borrowers living in his house— Virgil, with whom he believed he could confidently say he was friends, and the much more timid Patton and Dee, and Dee’s young charges, the twins Roman and Remus, who were doing their best to be friends with Logan too, despite their guardian’s wishes to keep him away from them.

This borrower was not any of those. The easiest difference to recognize at a glance was that they had red hair, where the others had shades of brown and black. Yet, despite Logan never having even caught a glimpse of them before, here they were, sitting calmly on his desk, as if they were waiting for him.

“Um,” Logan said, surprised. “Hello?”

The little borrower grinned, looking up at him, and got to their feet. “Hello! You must be Logan, right?”

Logan nodded. Perhaps this borrower had just moved in? The others would have told them about Logan, and Virgil probably would have told them that he was trying his best to be the good kind of human, and wasn’t to be feared. But even so, Logan would never have expected a borrower to be so comfortable around him this quickly. Unless they had been around for some time, watching, and only just now came out to introduce theirself, after they’d felt reasonably sure that Logan was nonthreatening. But then why would they need confirmation on who he was? Unless it was just smalltalk to get the conversation going.

“I’m Hann,” the borrower continued, sticking their hand out at Logan. He recognized the gesture, of course, but had never shook hands with a borrower before. Logan lifted his own hand, trying to figure out how he was supposed to shake the hand of someone who could fit entirely in his hand with room to spare. The borrower didn’t even flinch, still looking up at him expectantly.

Gently, Logan pinched their hand between his thumb and the first knuckle of his pointer finger, lifted it minutely, lowered it again, and then let go, pulling his hand back.

“It is… nice to meet you, Hann,” Logan said. “If extremely unexpected.”

“Sorry,” Hann said, looking at their hand and flexing it. “I didn’t really bother to think of a more plausible introduction.” Softer, more to theirself, they murmured, “I guess I could retcon something…”

Suddenly, Logan’s mind started to fill with unfamiliar memories. A snapshot of this same borrower, soaked to the bones, and Logan’s own hands reaching down to lift them out of a puddle. Another, contrasting and completely detached, yet somehow equally real, of Virgil wrapping a white bandage around Hann’s ankle and scolding them, while both sat on Logan’s desk. A third, of a shivering redheaded borrower leaning against Logan’s steaming mug of coffee, as snow fell outside.

Logan shook his head sharply, pushing back his chair in alarm. “Stop, stop!”

The stream of false pasts abruptly ceased, and the ones already in his head faded.

“Sorry.”

“What…” Logan hesitated. “What just happened? Who are you?”

“It’s… kind of a long story.”

“I have time,” Logan insisted.

“Okay.” Hann paused for a bit. “I’m not actually a borrower. Well, right now I am, technically, but most of the time I’m not.”

“What are you, then?” Despite the incredibly unnerving experience he’d just had, Logan found himself feeling very curious. What kind of being had the power to do that? Up until recently, borrowers had been the stuff of myths; were other “fantasy” creatures real as well? Fairies, perhaps?

“I’m human.”

Wait. What?

“But more relevently, I’m an Author.”

“An author,” Logan repeated. Somehow the word didn’t quite sound the same when he said it.

Hann nodded. “At the moment, I’m your Author.”

Logan looked down at himself, then back at the borrower— the Author— standing on his desk. “I’m not sure I like the implications of that.”

“That’s… That’s fair.” Hann rubbed the back of their neck with a little chuckle. “Sorry. I promise, I didn’t come here intending to make you nervous.”

They’d succeeded anyway, Logan thought to himself. But, despite all that, he was still extremely curious. “What all does being an author entail? Can you control me, like… like a puppet?”

Hann wiggled a hand in the ‘sort of’ gesture. “Eh. Yes and no.”

That… wasn’t very comforting.

“I can control your environment, and to a certain extent, what happens, but living things are trickier. Mostly, I can put you in a setting, and watch as you navigate it.” Well, that didn’t sound too bad— “And if I don’t think it’s interesting enough, or I wanted it to go a different way, I can rewind time and give you a nudge in a different direction, and try it again.” Nevermind, still frightening.

“So I have free will unless you don’t like what I do,” Logan surmised.

“You could put it that way, yeah.” Hann shrugged. “But you’d be surprised how many times a story goes off the rails, way outside the original plan, and I just watch it go, because whatever new thing that’s happening is more interesting.”

“Hm.”

“Take right now, for example. I didn’t plan for the conversation to go here, but it did. I could rewind it, but it’s interesting, so I’ll probably leave it.”

Logan pursed his lips uncomfortably. He didn’t much like feeling like a mere source of entertainment, he found. “I don’t suppose it matters if I don’t want to be rewound?”

“Usually? No. But, this is a special case. Very meta, and you’re actually aware of me. I have a feeling you’d know if I rolled time back, unlike most fics. So… I’ll only make minor edits. Wording and flow, stuff like that.”

“Thanks,” Logan said. “I think.”

“Though I’ll probably roll it back if we get too angsty, too,” Hann mused. “This is supposed to be a fluff piece.”

Logan wasn’t sure he knew what those words meant. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. That was an unusual occurrence.

“Did you make me?”

“Oh, no! Not at all! This isn’t even an original fanfic, it’s recursive!”

Logan opened his mouth to ask a question. Then he closed it again to try to figure out where to even start.

“Okay, so I’m willing to explain, but it might give you a bit of an existential crisis,” Hann warned. “Or a lot of one.”

Logan considered it. He sighed. “Tell me.”

Hann nodded. “Okay, so the original Logan belongs to a show called ‘Sanders Sides’. In short, it’s about this guy, Thomas Sanders, and he has the ability to imagine the parts of his personality as metaphysical beings in the room with him, and they have discussions about… well, an assortment of topics. Logan represents— primarily— Thomas’s intellect. Logic. He’s my favorite. Following so far?”

Logan nodded. “Mind if I take notes?”

“Go ahead.”

Logan pulled out a notepad and a pen, jotting down what they’d said so far. He’d have to go back and get notes on the whole Author thing too, but one thing at a time. When he’d gotten it down, he looked up again, and Hann continued.

“You are an alternate version of that Logan. This is what we call an ‘AU’ or ���Alternate Universe’. Instead of being a portion of one man’s personality, you’re your own human.”

“I see,” Logan said, writing that down.

“The rest of the sides got turned into borrowers. That’s Virgil, Dee, the twins, and Patton.”

Logan nodded. Would it be too intrusive on their privacy to ask what his miniature housemates represented in the apparent ‘original universe’? Considering how much they preferred to keep to themselves, he thought it might be. Instead, he asked, “I live in an alternate universe? How did it come to be?”

Hann grinned. “My friend made it, based on the original universe!”

Logan nodded slowly. “Were the differences intentional?”

“Oh yeah, definitely. She’s been going through a long list of gt prompts, writing short stories for each, in various different AUs, and there’s a bunch here. The first one was when you and Virgil met.”

“‘Gee tea’?” Logan questioned, deciding to leave the mention of even more alternate universes for later.

“Giant and tiny,” Hann explained. “Anything with a major size difference, really. Some of ‘em have giants and humans interacting, some have humans and borrowers, or humans and fairies, or tiny merfolk, or whatever.”

“Do those all exist in your universe— the one you’re from, originally?” If so, Logan wasn’t entirely sure whether to be glad or sad he was here instead, where there were only borrowers.

The tiny Author drooped sadly. “No. Unfortunately. Just humans. No giants, no tinies.”

“Oh. My condolences.”

Hann shrugged. “It is what it is. And that’s what fiction is for, anyway.”

Logan didn’t read much fiction, but he nonetheless supposed that rang true. “So… you said earlier that you’re my author. How is that, if your friend was the one to create my universe?”

“Oh, I’m just borrowing you,” Hann said.

“��Borrowing’ me,” Logan repeated.

“Just for a bit.”

“I think i would have liked to have been asked first,” Logan said, once again feeling uncomfortably like a plaything.

“Sorry.” Hann paused for a moment. “May I borrow you?”

“Am I allowed to say no?”

“Of course you are! I mean, I’d really rather you didn’t, but if you really don’t want me here, I’ll leave. I’ll even delete the whole story if you want.” They paused. “Though that might feel even weirder for you than me just rewriting a scene. I wonder if you’d even remember, though, once I did it?”

Before they could continue too far along that peculiar line of thought, Logan asked, “If I tell you to go, you won’t just back up to before and ‘nudge’ me toward the other answer, will you?”

Hann shook their head. “No, that seems unnecessarily cruel. If you want me to go, I’ll go. No tricks.”

Logan thought about it. The little redhead waited, looking around his desk. Finally, Logan said, “Alright. You may… borrow me a little bit longer.”

“Yay!” Hann cheered, throwing their hands up happily. “Thank you!”

Logan smiled. Terrifyingly powerful or not, they were kinda adorable. “Why did you want to borrow me in the first place, anyway?”

“Oh!” Hann grinned. “You know that thing you do with Virgil, where you hold him and play with him like a living stim toy? I want that.”

“You… you want me to fiddle with you?”

Hann nodded quickly. “Yes, please! I’ve always wanted to be manhandled by a well-meaning and gentle, but extremely curious giant, and then yesterday I read Kiera’s latest updates to your story, and one of them had you playing with Virgil, and another had you playing with the twins, and I just was filled with a soft but intense longing.”

“Well, alright.” Logan set his notes aside, bringing his hands instead over to the waiting borrower. They bounced excitedly on the balls of their feet.

Carefully, Logan wrapped his hand around them. Hann was smaller than Virgil, though not as small as the twins. They stilled, beaming up at him.

“You’re not even a little bit intimidated, are you,” Logan said with a chuckle, brushing his thumb across the top of their head.

“Oh, I am, but only in the good way,” Hann answered. “Like I said, I’ve seen how gentle and considerate you are. I know you won’t hurt me.”

They were right. Logan didn’t answer, just picked them up. He began to poke gently at them, similarly to how he would interact with Virgil. Hann giggled happily and offered no resistance. Logan pinched their tiny limbs between his fingers, rolled them around on his palm, rubbed his thumb against their back and their sides, and draped them across the back of his hand. Just as with Virgil, he found the activity to be quite pleasant. Hann, meanwhile, appeared to be enjoying it just as much, practically melting in his hands.

Finally, Logan stopped, holding the little author in cupped palms.

They lay, utterly relaxed, with their eyes partly closed, a smile on their lips.

“Was that… good?”

Hann nodded. “That was great!” they said, sitting up. “Thanks so much.”

Logan found himself grinning back. “You’re welcome.”

“I guess I probably ought to be getting out of your hair,” Hann said reluctantly, glancing off to the side. “Let you get back to what you were doing before.”

Logan hesitated. “Well,” he said. “I was intending to read. And if you’ve been, er, ‘watching’ me, you know that I enjoy fiddling with Virgil as I read, so…”

Hann perked up again. “Really?”

“As long as you don’t object to me not paying much attention to you,” Logan said.

“That’s fine!” Hann grinned happily up at him. “You’re doing me a favor, anyway. I’ll take whatever I can get.”

Logan smiled, shifted the tiny author to one hand, and with the other, pulled a thick book from his shelf.