Chapter 6: The Dreaded Dinner Party
The tranquility of their shared existence, so hard-won and so precious, was shattered by the sound of the main entrance bell. Its deep, resonant chime echoed through the vaulted spaces of Sam’s apartment, a sound reserved for the front door used by Giants.
Sam, who had been sprawled on the living room floor with Ronnie explaining the schematics for a new micro-turbine, froze. Ronnie, perched on the edge of a blueprint, looked up.
“You’re expecting someone?” he asked.
“No one.”
The bell rang again, more insistent. Followed by a booming voice that filtered through the reinforced walls. “Samantha! Darling, it’s Aunt Lydia and your cousin Bartholomew! We were in the district and thought we’d pop in!”
Sam’s eyes widened in genuine horror. “Oh, no. No, no, no.”
“The conservative ones?” Ronnie whispered, already scrambling to his feet. He knew of them. The Biggins family of old stature and older money, for whom the Atmospheric Displacement was not an adaptation but a divine confirmation of natural hierarchy. They viewed Sam’s engineering career as a mildly embarrassing hobby, and the idea of a romantic liaison with a Tiny would be, in their eyes, a perversion bordering on the criminal.
“The very same.” Sam was already moving, a controlled panic in her gestures. “They cannot find you here. They will not leave. They will lecture. For hours.”
“I’ll go to the workshop,” Ronnie said, darting toward the small service elevator they used to access his space on a lower, specially-reinforced mezzanine.
“They’ll want a tour,” Sam hissed, her voice low and urgent. “Aunt Lydia always inspects. She’ll see your lathe, your things. She’ll know.”
The pounding on the door began, a polite but forceful thud-thud-thud that brooked no delay. “Samantha? Are you quite alright?”
Ronnie skidded to a halt. There was no time. The geography of the apartment, usually a haven, was now a trap. His own quarters were too far. The closet? Too obvious. Under furniture? The scale made such hiding places vast, open plains.
Sam’s gaze swept the room and then dropped to her own person. She was dressed in a relatively modest, high-necked day dress of charcoal-grey silk, its bodice fitted and secure.
A mad, desperate idea crystallized.
“Come here,” she said, her voice leaving no room for argument.
He ran to her. In one swift motion, she scooped him up. Instead of holding him in his accustomed place in her palm, she parted the stiff fabric of her bodice just enough. Before he could process the action, she had slipped him inside, between her dress and her chemise, nestled against the soft, warm swell of her breast. The world went dark, muffled, and overwhelmingly intimate. The scent of her—clean sweat, vanilla soap, and her—filled his senses. The profound, rhythmic drum of her heartbeat became his entire universe, a pounding counterpoint to his own.
“Don’t move,” she breathed, her voice a distant rumble from above. “Don’t sneeze. For the love of all that’s sane, don’t giggle.”
She took a deep, steadying breath, which compressed his space thrillingly, and strode to the door.
The entrance to Sam’s apartment was a grand, double-height affair. When she swung the door open, she was forced to look down upon her relatives. Aunt Lydia, a woman of formidable height even for a Giant, stood ramrod straight in a severe lace-trimmed dress, her hair a confection of iron-grey curls. Cousin Bartholomew, a sallow-faced man in his thirties, loomed behind her, looking as though he smelled something unpleasant.
“Aunt Lydia. Bartholomew. What an… unexpected surprise,” Sam said, her voice impressively level.
“We were at the museum,” Aunt Lydia proclaimed, sweeping in without invitation, her eyes performing a sharp inventory of the hallway. “The new exhibit on Pre-Displacement Urban Planning. Dreadfully simplistic. It quite fatigued the mind. We required a restorative cup of tea.”
They moved into the main living space, Aunt Lydia’s gaze like a searchlight. Sam felt Ronnie shift slightly, a minute adjustment against her skin. She coughed to cover the jolt it sent through her.
“The place seems in order,” Aunt Lydia conceded, settling herself onto the largest sofa with an air of taking possession. Bartholomew perched awkwardly on the edge of an armchair.
“I’ll put the kettle on,” Sam said, turning toward the kitchen alcove. Every step caused a gentle, swaying motion for her hidden passenger. She was hyper-aware of the tiny, warm pressure against her, the absolute trust required for him to remain still and silent.
The ritual of preparing tea in the giant-scaled kitchen was interminable. As she filled the colossal kettle, she felt Ronnie’s hand press flat against her, a gesture of reassurance or a need for stability. Her own heart hammered against his small frame.
When she returned with the tray, Aunt Lydia was in mid-monologue. “…and so we said to the curator, the very notion of ‘integrated living spaces’ is an aesthetic and moral nonsense. The scales are not complementary, they are antithetical. Each to their own sphere, that is the natural order.”
Sam poured the tea, her hands remarkably steady. “Some find the interplay of scales innovative,” she offered carefully.
“Innovation is not always progress, dear,” Aunt Lydia said, sipping her tea with a delicate slurp. “Which reminds me of the most shocking piece of gossip. You know the Weldons, in the Hampshire verticals?”
Sam nodded, lowering herself carefully into a chair opposite, feeling the strain on her bodice seams.
“Their daughter—the tall one, Imogen—has apparently taken up with some… some Tiny tradesman. A mechanic, or some such. Can you imagine? The scandal is absolute. Mrs. Weldon is prostrate with grief. They say the creature actually lives in their ancillary suite. Disgusting.”
Inside her bodice, Sam felt Ronnie’s body grow tense. A fierce protectiveness surged in her.
“Perhaps they are happy,” Sam said, her tone deliberately mild.
“Happy!” Aunt Lydia scoffed. “It is a infatuation, a fetishistic delusion. What could they possibly have in common? The conversation alone would be absurd. One bellowing, the other squeaking. And the… the practicalities.” She shuddered with refined distaste. “It is an invitation for disaster. A Tiny is so terribly fragile. One absent-minded gesture…”
She illustrated with a wave of her hand, a gesture that would indeed have sent a Tiny person flying. It was too close to home. The memory of the crushed car flashed in Sam’s mind. A giggle, born not from humor but from sheer nervous hysteria, bubbled up in her throat. She fought it down, converting it into a strangled cough.
Ronnie, pressed against her, felt the convulsion. The sudden tremor, the intake of breath. He understood the struggle. A betraying smile touched his own lips in the dark, warm confines. To stifle it, he did the only thing he could think of. He pressed his lips gently against her skin.
The sensation was electric. A tiny, pinpoint kiss, a secret defiance against the bigotry thundering above. It was also, undeniably, a tickle.
Sam’s breath hitched. She squeezed her thighs together under her skirts, fighting the intense, inappropriate reaction that flowered from that minuscule contact. Heat bloomed across her chest, and she knew a flush was creeping up her neck.
“Are you quite well, Samantha?” Bartholomew asked, his first contribution, spoken with nasally concern. “You look feverish.”
“Perfectly,” Sam managed, her voice slightly strained. “The tea is hot.”
“As I was saying,” Aunt Lydia continued, eyeing her niece with suspicion, “such arrangements never end well. They are against nature. One cannot make a pet into a paramour.”
Another silent kiss from Ronnie. This one lower, a soft brush against the curve of her breast. A reward for her defense, a shared joke. Sam bit the inside of her cheek so hard she tasted copper. She shifted in her seat, crossing her legs the other way. The movement jostled him, and she felt his fingers curl, holding on.
“I find,” Sam said, forcing her mind to form words, “that many pronouncements on nature are merely prejudices dressed in philosophy.”
Aunt Lydia’s eyes narrowed. “That sounds dangerously like the rhetoric of those… inclusivity agitators. Surely you don’t frequent such circles, Samantha? Your mother would be devastated.”
The direct assault required a direct defense. Sam drew herself up, a movement that tightened the fabric around Ronnie, hugging him closer. “My social circle is my own concern, Aunt.”
A tense silence followed, broken only by the clink of Bartholomew’s teaspoon.
It was Aunt Lydia who relented, her curiosity pivoting. “Well, the air in here is close. And your decor is still so… austere. A woman of your stature should fill her space. Have you given any more thought to attending the Harrington ball next month? It is the premier event of the season. A perfect opportunity to meet a suitable gentleman of proper proportion.”
Sam saw her escape route. “You know, I believe I may have a prior engagement that evening. An industry conference. Quite unavoidable.”
“Pity,” Aunt Lydia said, not sounding pitying at all. She set down her cup. “Come, Bartholomew. We have taken enough of Samantha’s time. She seems… fatigued.”
The goodbyes were protracted and glacially polite. Sam saw them to the door, her smile fixed and aching. When the heavy door finally clicked shut, she stood for a full minute, back against it, listening to the receding footsteps in the hall.
Then, with trembling hands, she reached into her bodice.
She drew Ronnie out, holding him up before her face. He was disheveled, his clothes wrinkled from confinement, his hair mussed. But his eyes were bright with shared triumph and laughter.
For a moment, they just stared at each other, the absurdity and the tension and the secret kisses hanging in the air between them.
Sam let out a long, shuddering breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “A pet?” she finally whispered, her voice thick.
“A paramour,” Ronnie corrected, grinning. He reached out and wiped a tiny smudge of her powder from his cheek. “And a damned persistent one.”
She brought him to her lips and kissed him, a full, proper kiss that tasted of relief and rebellion. When she pulled back, her expression grew serious. “They’ll be back. And the Harrington ball…”
“Is a premier event,” Ronnie finished, his grin turning sly. “You know, I’ve always wondered what the canapés at one of those things taste like.”
A daring, impossible idea began to take shape in the warm, charged space between them, where his heartbeat had so recently been hidden next to hers.
A daring, impossible idea began to take shape in the warm, charged space between them, where his heartbeat had so recently been hidden next to hers.
Sam’s smile faded into something more solemn as she carried him to the vast sofa, settling herself with a weary grace. She placed him gently on the cushion beside her hip, where he could see the full, troubled landscape of her expression.
“You heard her,” Sam said quietly, her fingers tracing a seam in the upholstery near him. “Every word she said. That wasn’t just Lydia being Lydia.” She looked at him, her eyes behind their red lenses unbearably soft. “You understand, don’t you? A lot of my family thinks like her. Most of them, really. The ‘proper proportions.’ The ‘natural order.’ It’s the water they swim in.”
Ronnie sat down on the cushion, the scale of the fabric’s weave like deep corduroy beneath him. “I figured.” His voice was calm, accepting. “The car incident. The way that officer looked at you. It’s not just one mean aunt.”
“It’s a chorus,” Sam confirmed, the word heavy. “A quiet, disappointed, utterly certain chorus. And they’ll sing it forever if they find out about us.” She drew her knees up, a defensive motion that made the sofa groan. “My mother will cry. My father will lecture me about social capital and legacy. My cousins will make thinly-veiled jokes about zoos.”
“Do you care?” Ronnie asked. Not a challenge. A genuine question.
Sam was silent for a long moment. The evening light through the towering windows stretched long shadows across the room. “I care about the noise,” she said finally. “I care about the hassle. I care that they might try to make my life difficult—financially, socially. The engineering board has several Biggins family allies on it.” She looked at him, her vulnerability stark. “But I do not care about their approval. Not if the cost is you.”
Ronnie walked across the cushion to press his hands against the side of her thumb where it rested near him. The contact was solid, a tiny anchor.
“So,” he said, his tone shifting into the practical cadence of an inventor assessing a problem. “The Harrington ball.”
“A den of those very chorus members,” Sam sighed. “All lace and judgment and whispered gossip over champagne flutes the size of your bath.”
“You said you’d refuse.”
“I will. But refusing is just… hiding. It’s what they expect. The eccentric giantess, too shy for society.” A new light, sharp and rebellious, ignited in her eyes. It was the same light he’d seen when she’d declared herself Gargantua. “What if I didn’t hide?”
Ronnie grinned, sensing her trajectory. “Go on.”
“What if I attended? Not to meet a ‘suitable gentleman of proper proportion.’ But to be seen. With you.”
The audacity of it hung in the air. He laughed, a short, surprised burst of sound. “I’d be a stain on the carpet before the first waltz. A ‘pest,’ at best.”
“Not if you were my unseen companion,” Sam whispered, leaning closer, her voice dropping conspiratorially. “My secret. My asset. You heard everything today from a position of perfect concealment. You could do it again.”
Ronnie’s mind raced, adapting. “Information gathering. Social reconnaissance from a unique vantage point.”
“Exactly. You could hear the unvarnished truth from everyone. We’d know exactly who the allies are, and who the enemies.” Her excitement was growing, animating her features. “And more than that, it would be our secret. Right in the middle of them. A giant middle finger in a silk glove.”
“The logistics are horrific,” Ronnie said, but his eyes were alight with the same thrilling danger as when he tested a volatile alloy. “The noise, the movement, the risk of discovery…”
“We have two months to engineer a solution,” Sam countered, her engineer’s mind now fully engaged, partnering with his. “A secure harness. Dampening materials for sound and vibration. A comms system so you can talk to me. We can design it.”
“You’d be wearing me,” he said, the reality of it settling on him. Not hidden hastily in a bodice, but integrated. A planned, intimate deception.
“I’d be with you,” Sam corrected, her voice softening again. “And you’d be with me. While all those people who think like Aunt Lydia drone on about bloodlines and propriety, you’d be there. Listening. And I’d know it.”
She reached out, her fingertip stroking his back. “It’s a declaration of war, Ronnie. A quiet one. But they’d feel it. I’d walk into that room knowing I’ve already won the only prize I want.”
Ronnie looked up at her, this brilliant, colossal woman offering him a front-row seat to her rebellion. He thought of the crushed car, of her horror, and then of her kneeling by his window. He thought of her whispering in the dark after a client had left her feeling contaminated.
This was the opposite of contamination. This was a claiming.
“Okay,” he said, the word simple and decisive. “Let’s crash their party.”
Sam’s answering smile was radiant, full of a ferocious love. She lifted him, bringing him to rest not over her heart, but in the hollow of her throat, where her pulse beat a steady, determined rhythm against his skin.
“Then we have work to do,” she murmured, the vibration suffusing him. “Starting with teaching you to waltz.”