Chapter 8: Shared Shower
The pancakes were a quiet affair. Travis made a single, silver-dollar sized one in a separate pan, perfectly golden. He placed it on a saucer with a thimble of syrup warmed in the microwave. Mavis ate with a tiny, improvised fork, his earlier theatricality subdued into a contented focus. Travis watched him, a dull ache of fondness in his chest. The morning’s chaos had settled into this: a giant and a tiny man sharing a sunlit counter, the only sound the scrape of a miniature fork on porcelain.
After, Travis collected the plates. He felt the stickiness on his skin from cooking, the vague film of sleep still on him. The idea came to him fully formed, impulsive.
He turned on the faucet at the kitchen sink, letting the water run warm over his hands. “I’m gonna take a shower,” he said, his voice casual. He looked down at Mavis, who was using a damp napkin to meticulously clean his hands and face.
Mavis glanced up. “A bold declaration. Should I alert the media?”
Travis dried his hands on a dish towel. He leaned back against the counter, trying to sound nonchalant. “You could come with.”
Mavis froze, the napkin stopping mid-swipe across his cheek. His eyes, large and suddenly sharp, locked onto Travis’s. The mischievous glint was gone, replaced by a quick, calculating caution. “Into the… watery vortex? My experience with your plumbing has been… observational.”
“It’s warm. You’re kind of sticky. I’m kind of sticky.” Travis shrugged, feeling the weight of the offer hang in the air. It was a massive leap. The port was one thing—a controlled, engineered environment. The shower was vast, chaotic, a torrential downpour in Mavis’s world. “I’ll be careful. You can perch up high. On the shower caddy or something.”
Mavis looked at his own tiny hands, then at Travis’s large, calloused ones. The memory of the morning, of sleeping safely against Travis’s skin, seemed to war with a lifetime of instinct. The wall was safety. The open world was danger. Water was a roaring giant.
“You won’t… flail?” Mavis asked, his voice uncharacteristically small.
“No flailing,” Travis promised, holding up his hands like a surrender. “Slow moves. You call the shots. If you hate it, I get you out immediately. Dry you off on the softest towel.”
Mavis considered him for a long moment. Travis could see the debate raging behind his eyes. The desire for novelty, for a new kind of closeness, battling the ingrained fear of the enormous and wet.
Finally, Mavis nodded once, a sharp, decisive movement. “A reconnaissance mission,” he declared, the bravado forcibly returning to his voice. “To assess the hydrothermal features of your personal rainforest. But I’m not getting my hair wet. It takes forever to dry.”
Travis smiled, a real, relieved smile. “Deal.”
The walk to the bathroom felt different. Mavis rode on his shoulder, but his usual relaxed perch was tense, his tiny hands gripping the collar of Travis’s t-shirt. The bathroom was already warm from the sun, the cracked mirror showing their fractured reflection: a wild-haired giant and a tiny, wide-eyed hitchhiker.
Travis turned on the water, letting it roar to life. Steam began to rise, fogging the mirror further, curling around the edges of the hole in the wall—the one Mavis usually used for drainage observation. It looked different from this side, a dark, damp mouth in the tile.
“Okay,” Travis said, his voice low over the hiss of the spray. “I’m going in first. Get the temperature right. You… stay there. I’ll come back for you.”
He undressed quickly, feeling exposed in a new way under Mavis’s watchful gaze. He stepped into the stream, gasping slightly as the hot water hit his back. He adjusted the temperature, making sure it was warm, not scalding. The steam thickened, filling the enclosure, turning the world into a soft, white haze.
He turned, wiping water from his eyes. Mavis was a small, dark silhouette on the fuzzy edge of the shower curtain, backlit by the bathroom light.
“Ready for deployment?” Travis asked, extending a dripping hand, palm flat, toward the tiny figure.
Mavis took a deep, visible breath. Then he stepped onto the offered hand, his grip vice-like on Travis’s thumb. Travis brought him slowly into the shower enclosure, through the curtain of steam.
The sound changed. In here, it was a thunderous, enveloping roar, the spray hitting the plastic curtain and the tile floor like a constant, hissing rain. Droplets beaded on Travis’s arm, some landing on Mavis, who flinched at the first few warm impacts.
“Woah,” Mavis breathed, his voice nearly lost in the din. He looked around, his head swiveling, taking in the liquid sky, the walls of streaming water, the vast, glistening landscape of Travis’s body. “It’s… loud.”
“You’re up high,” Travis said, raising his hand toward the metal shower caddy hanging from the showerhead pipe. It was a grid of shelves holding bottles of shampoo and soap. He positioned his hand next to the middle shelf. “Step off. Here’s dry land.”
Mavis, with the cautious grace of a tightrope walker, transferred from Travis’s hand to the caddy. He stood on the warm, dry metal, surrounded by colossal, foggy bottles that looked like monoliths. The spray didn’t hit him directly here; the steam did, wrapping him in a warm, wet blanket.
Travis began to wash himself, moving slowly, deliberately. He watched Mavis from the corner of his eye. The tiny creature was exploring his new perch, peering around bottles, running a hand over the condensing metal. He seemed fascinated, not scared.
Then Mavis looked down at Travis, who was now covered in a sheen of soap. The white lather clung to the coarse hair of his chest, his arms, slicked over the planes of his stomach. Travis saw the mischievous glint return, sharper now in the steam.
“You missed a spot,” Mavis called out over the water’s roar.
“Oh yeah?” Travis asked, playing along, rinsing soap from his face.
Mavis didn’t answer with words. He moved to the edge of the caddy shelf, reached out, and hooked his fingers around the lip. In one fluid motion, he swung down, dangling for a second before dropping onto Travis’s shoulder with a soft, wet plop.
Travis jolted at the sudden, warm weight. “Hey!”
“Reconnaissance includes ground-level sampling,” Mavis stated, his voice close to Travis’s ear. He dug his tiny fingers into the soapy lather on Travis’s collarbone. Then he began to move.
It was nothing like the clinical, tool-based exploration of the port. This was primal, tactile. Mavis used his whole body, his hands and bare feet slick with soap and water, tracing paths down Travis’s chest. The sensation was diffuse, electric. Mavis’s movements were part cleaning, part mapping, part playful investigation. He slid down the slope of Travis’s pectoral, using the soap as a lubricant, his tiny toes finding purchase in the dip between muscles.
Travis braced a hand against the wet tile, his head dropping forward. The steam filled his lungs. The water pounded his back. And Mavis was a determined, slippery explorer charting his own personal continent.
“You have freckles here,” Mavis commented, his voice muffled against Travis’s skin as he examined a spot on his sternum. “Like tiny spice spots.”
Travis laughed, a short, breathy sound lost in the shower’s noise. Mavis continued his journey south, over the taut plane of Travis’s stomach. The soap made everything slick, effortless. Travis’s breath hitched. This was different. Unscripted. Vulnerable in a way the wall-port could never be.
Mavis’s path took him lower, his soapy fingers skating over Travis’s hip bone, heading inward. Travis’s knee buckled slightly, a tiny, involuntary spasm. He caught himself, his palm slapping wetly against the tile.
Mavis paused, looking up. His face was beaded with moisture, his dark hair plastered to his forehead. He wasn’t grinning. He looked curious, intent. “This okay?” The question was almost swallowed by the water.
Travis could only nod, a sharp dip of his chin. Words were beyond him. The heat, the steam, the roaring isolation of the shower, and this tiny, deliberate being moving across him—it coalesced into a single, overwhelming point of focus.
Emboldened, Mavis continued. He found what he was looking for, tracing the soapy length with a touch that was at once clinical and intimate, a study in scale and sensation. His fingers, so small, mapped every contour, every vein, with a thoroughness that was dizzying. He used both hands, the lather mixing with the shower’s flow, creating a world of slippery, warm friction. Travis gasped, his forehead now pressed against the cool tile, his body a tense arch against the unrelenting water.
Mavis worked with a silent, focused intensity, his earlier playfulness transformed into something else. This was ownership. This was claiming a territory in the open, under the cascading sky, with no walls to hide them. Travis was completely at his mercy, and the surrender was absolute.
The climax, when it came, was ripped from him by the water and the tiny, relentless hands. It was less an explosion and more a dissolution, his strength pouring out of him into the steaming, rushing drain. He shuddered, a long, full-body convulsion that Mavis rode out, clinging to him as the waves passed.
For a long minute, there was only the sound of the water and Travis’s ragged breathing. He slumped against the wall, spent.
Mavis disentangled himself, sliding off and landing with a soft splash in the pooling water at Travis’s feet. He stood there, looking up, water dripping from his nose. He was drenched, tiny, and triumphant.
Travis, with effort, reached down and gently scooped him up. Mavis didn’t resist, letting himself be carried. Travis turned off the shower. The sudden silence was profound, broken only by the drip of water from the showerhead and their own breathing.
They were both soaked, steam swirling around them in the sudden quiet. Travis opened the shower curtain. The cooler air hit them, raising goosebumps on his skin. He grabbed the softest, fluffiest towel from the rack and carefully, reverently, began to pat Mavis dry.
Mavis stood on the counter, arms raised, as Travis dabbed the towel over him. He was quiet, watching Travis’s face.
Travis finished, leaving Mavis wrapped in a fold of the damp towel like a tiny robe. He dried himself hurriedly, then looked at Mavis. Words felt inadequate, too large for the fragile space between them.
Mavis solved it. He shivered slightly, then grinned, his old self again. “Your hydrothermal features,” he announced, his voice clear in the quiet room, “are exceptionally volatile. Risk of eruption: high.”
Travis toweled his hair, the soft cotton absorbing the last of the shower's heat. He looked at Mavis, a miniature monarch wrapped in terry cloth, and felt a surge of protective warmth. "All geologic surveys completed?" he asked, his voice still a bit rough.
Mavis gave a solemn, damp nod. "The data is catastrophic. And enlightening." He hopped from the towel onto the vanity, his tiny feet leaving pinprick marks on the foggy glass. "I require sustenance. The pancake was merely a prelude."
Travis pulled on jeans and a faded t-shirt, his mind already shifting to the day's dull obligations. "I need to hit the store. We're out of coffee. And eggs." He glanced at the tiny creature watching him. "And maybe those little sugar pearls you like for your… whatever you do with them."
"Mosaic work," Mavis stated, as if it were obvious. He tilted his head. "The marketplace? The cavern of echoing carts and cold air?"
"Yeah, the grocery store. Then I gotta swing by the job site office." Travis ran a hand through his damp, wild hair. "My boss is there on Saturdays. Some numbers in the purchase logs aren't adding up. It's probably nothing, but it's bugging me."
Mavis was silent for a moment, his expression unreadable. Travis moved around the bedroom, collecting his wallet and keys from the clutter on his dresser. The familiar weight of his lonely routine settled back onto his shoulders.
"You go into the wide world alone?" Mavis's voice was casual, but there was a sharpness underneath.
Travis shrugged, slipping his wallet into his back pocket. "Usually. It's just errands."
"Today is not usual." Mavis stood perfectly straight on the vanity's edge. "I will accompany you."
Travis froze, his keys half-lifted from the dresser. The idea was ludicrous, terrifying. "Mavis. No. It's… there are people. Cars. Birds. It's not safe."
"I have observed your world through walls and windows for many cycles." Mavis's tone was analytical, firm. "My risk assessment is my own. I wish to see the source of the coffee beans. And your boss's face when you query the logs."
"It's not a field trip," Travis said, but the protest felt weak even to him. The thought of Mavis out there, in his pocket or his bag, sent a jolt of pure anxiety through his gut. "What if something happens? What if you get seen?"
"Then I will be a regrettable figment of someone's imagination." Mavis took a step closer to the edge. "You will be my transport. My cloak. I will be quiet as a shadow in a deep pocket."
Travis looked at him—this tiny, fierce, curious being who had just mapped his body with soapy hands under a torrent of water. The memory of that trust was a tangible weight in his chest. Denying him felt like a betrayal of the closeness they'd just shared.
He sighed, a long exhale that carried his resistance away. "You have to stay hidden. Completely. No peeking. No sudden movements. My jacket pocket. The deep one."
Mavis's face lit with a victory so bright it was almost physical. "The deep pocket. A satisfactory cavern for a mission of reconnaissance."
"God, I'm gonna regret this," Travis muttered, but he was already searching for his heaviest denim jacket. The pockets were deep and thick.
He laid the jacket on the bed. Mavis approached it with the gravity of a mountaineer surveying a new peak. He climbed the fabric folds, disappearing over the hem, and Travis heard the soft rustle as he settled inside. A moment later, Mavis's head popped out of the pocket, his hands gripping the edge.
"Deployable observation post," he declared. "Optimal sightlines when required. Ready for embarkation."
Travis slipped the jacket on, feeling the slight, warm shift of Mavis's weight against his left side. It was a secret warmth, a hidden heartbeat next to his own. He took a steadying breath. "Okay. Rules: you duck down if I say 'now.' You don't speak near people. You don't move if my hand is on the pocket."
"Acknowledged," came the muffled reply from inside the denim.
The grocery store was a symphony of overwhelming sensations for a five-inch stowaway. The fluorescent lights were a brutal sun. The hum of freezers vibrated through Travis's torso into Mavis's bones. The sheer scale of everything—the towering shelves, the rolling metal carts like battering rams—made Mavis's grip on the pocket's lining tighten.
Travis felt the subtle tremors against his ribs. He moved slowly, deliberately, speaking in a low murmur as he pushed his cart. "Left side is produce. Smell that? That's the herb section. It's all plastic and wet paper now."
Mavis dared a peek, his eyes just above the pocket seam. The forest of celery and lettuce loomed like a hostile jungle. A child shrieked three aisles over, and Mavis vanished instantly, a tiny weight pulling downward.
Travis selected coffee, eggs, a bundle of carrots. He paused by the baking aisle. "Sugar pearls are on the bottom shelf," he whispered, bending down. He grabbed the small vial of sprinkles and dropped them into his pocket. He felt Mavis's tiny hands secure them.
At the checkout, the world condensed into a barrage of sharp sounds—beeping scanners, rustling bags, the cashier's cheerful drone. Julie, the usual Saturday cashier, smiled at Travis. "Find everything okay?"
Travis forced a smile, his hand instinctively pressing over the pocket. He felt Mavis go perfectly still. "Yeah, all good. Quiet morning."
Julie bagged his groceries with practiced efficiency. "You seem a little jumpy. Too much coffee already?" She laughed.
"Something like that," Travis said, his voice tight. He paid quickly, gathered the bags, and escaped into the muted light of the parking lot. Only when he was safely inside his car, the doors locked, did he unzip the pocket a few inches.
A pair of wide eyes blinked up at him from the denim shadows. "The giantess with the red hair emits high-frequency friendliness," Mavis reported, his voice slightly breathless. "Her scanner weapon beeps with malignant precision."
Travis chuckled, starting the car. "You're safe. Next stop: the office. This will be boring, I promise."
The job site office was a single-story trailer parked on an expanse of churned-up dirt. Travis parked next to his boss's truck. "Okay," he said quietly, his hand over the pocket. "My boss, Don. He's loud. Big voice. Don't be alarmed."
He grabbed a folded printout from his glove compartment—the anomalous purchase logs—and stepped out. Mavis was a silent, attentive lump against his side.
Don was inside, sitting at a cluttered desk, his bulk barely contained by a stained rolling chair. The trailer smelled of old coffee and sawdust. "Travis!" he boomed, not looking up from a spreadsheet. "It's Saturday. You got no life?"
"Hey, Don." Travis leaned against a filing cabinet, trying to look casual. He could feel Mavis shifting slightly, adjusting to the new, booming voice. "Just had a quick question. These limestone invoices for the Henderson project."
Don finally looked up, his broad face folding into a scowl. "What about 'em?"
"The quantities. They're double what we quoted. And the vendor code is different from our usual supplier." Travis held out the paper, his finger pointing to the lines. "It looks like it went through, but the math on the material summary doesn't match the delivery manifests."
Don's scowl deepened. He took the paper, his eyes scanning the numbers. The trailer was silent except for the hum of a space heater. Travis felt a strange, focused attention emanating from his pocket, as if Mavis were listening just as intently.
After a long moment, Don dropped the paper on the desk. He leaned back, the chair groaning. "Those're Hank's numbers. He handles the Henderson orders." He picked up his coffee cup, took a slow sip. "I'll talk to him Monday. Probably a typo. Two keys stuck or somethin'."
Travis nodded, but the explanation felt thin, greasy. "It's just… a big typo. For a lot of money."
Don's eyes narrowed slightly. "You let me worry about the money, son. You're here to worry about the load-bearing specs and the plumbing schematics. Yeah?" His tone was final, a door closing.
"Right," Travis said, the word tasting bitter. He pushed off the filing cabinet. "Just thought you should know."
"Appreciate it," Don said, already turning back to his screen. The dismissal was complete.
Back in the car, the silence was heavy. Travis sat for a moment, staring at the dirty trailer. The ordinary worry about work felt different now, colored by Don's reaction. He felt a gentle tap against his ribs, once, twice.
He unzipped the pocket. Mavis's head emerged, his hair slightly flattened from the confinement. He studied Travis's face, his own expression uncharacteristically serious.
"Your large boss," Mavis began, his voice precise, "utilized deflection. His vocal pitch elevated on the word 'typo.' He touched his throat after speaking." He paused, letting the observation hang in the stale car air. "He is concealing something."
Travis looked down at the tiny, serious face in his jacket. The world outside seemed both vast and strangely small. A hidden world in his walls, a hidden problem in his job. He started the car, the engine rumbling to life.
"He's probably just covering for Hank's mistake," Travis said, but the doubt now had a name, given voice by the creature in his pocket. He pulled out of the lot, the grocery bags rustling in the back seat.
Mavis remained at the pocket's edge, watching the world stream by the window—the blur of trees, the hulking shapes of other cars. "Mistakes are one thing," he said, his voice almost lost in the road noise. "The covering of them is another geology entirely."
Travis drove, the warm weight against his side a constant, living reminder that secrets, no matter their size, always sought the light. Or a very clever observer hiding in a denim pocket. He reached down, his pinky finger briefly brushing against Mavis's shoulder. A silent thank you.
Mavis didn't flinch. He leaned into the touch for a second, a tiny, solid pressure, then slipped back into the pocket's depths, a secret kept warm as they turned for home.