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Logan Shelf knew that, logically, he was making a big mistake.
But he had been making this same mistake almost every evening for months now, and he hadn’t died yet.
Besides, the chances of the giant actually waking up were next to zero, he reflected, picking his way carefully around a reddish puddle wider than he was tall.
This close to him, the scent of alcohol on the giant’s breath was almost overpowering: inhaling too deeply made his head spin, and the first few nights he had tried this he had ended up staggering home, woozy enough that he had been almost unable to make the climb up the side of the ferret cage to the painting that obscured the front gate. Patton had been furious with him, wrongly assuming that his nephew had been borrowing from the giant’s liquor cabinet.
Logan couldn’t blame him for that.
Not when Patton and his sister had spent several years doing the same thing with what Patton called religious fervor. Not when Logan’s mother had taken a drunken dare to walk across one of the strings supporting a large plastic spider suspended in the ground floor hallway, a feat she had managed plenty of times sober, and had fallen to her death. Not when Patton had gone cold turkey the day after the funeral, a subdued affair attended only by Cages and Shelves, and struggled to remain sober for the last eight years.
There were five families living in the house: the Cages; the Shelves in the office; the Washers, who lived somewhere under the tumble dryer in the scullery; the Easels, who lived in what had once been a bedroom but had been converted into a crafts room some years ago; and the Cabinet-Chimneys, the largest family, who had once been the Cabinets with their front gate in the bathroom and the Chimneys with theirs near the kitchen fireplace, and had merged into one several years before Logan had been born.
And then there were the giants. There had been five of them when Logan had been young: two adults, a pair of boys (Logan had only heard stories about them, unruly and dangerous, making borrowing difficult to get away with quietly), and an old woman who rarely left her bed and often left food uneaten - the rights to borrow from her had oft been contested between families, and Logan could remember the afternoon his mother had come home triumphant, tipsy from the wine on the woman’s bedside and carrying a squishy, sugary lump she had called Turkish delight. The stuff had been horrible, but the ham and fresh bread and butter that had accompanied it had been delicious, if far from the hot meal Logan had been hoping for.
Then they had gotten a ferret and a cat, and Logan’s uncle Patton had taken some friends from each of the four families and vanished to start his own. Borrowing had gotten more dangerous, with additional obstacles to avoid.
The old woman had died when Logan was ten.
It hadn’t just been the other four humans in the house to mourn her (although Logan heard murmurings that one of the adults - the woman - had been relieved to see her gone, and that the newfound subduedness in the boys made borrowing easier): plenty of borrowers lamented the easy pickings of meals left all but untouched on her bedside as she slept, and still more spoke reverently of the stories she used to tell the boys. Logan’s mother had spoken about her as though she had been an old friend.
Nine years later, and the house was empty apart from the sleeping man that Logan was currently creeping toward, senses on high alert for signs of wakefulness, for other borrowers watching him risk being Seen and bringing scrutiny down on all of them, for the sound of the front door that would signify the return of the other brother or the two older giants.
The giant had his arms crossed loosely on the table, pillowing his head; the hand with the eyes on the knuckles was closest to Logan and flat on the table, so that was where he started. Only two rings on this side today: a bumpy, ridged, neon green one on the fourth finger, and a massive silver skull on the third.
The first few times he had done this, he hadn’t removed the giant’s rings for him. Logically, it was incredibly stupid to be in such easy reach of a giant. It would take barely a second to grab him and crush him to death. Before he had known how deeply asleep the giant truly was, before he had gotten brave enough to attempt the rings, he had stuck to just removing the earrings.
Now, though, Logan removed the two rings with the comfortable ease of an action he had done many times before. They were large enough that Logan could probably wear them around his waist like a belt - although he was very thin, and doubted any of the other borrowers he knew would manage that. He stacked them neatly in the middle of the table, beside a still upright beer bottle.
“Other hand… Then ears…” Logan murmured, beginning to skirt the sleeping form. The other hand was usually more difficult: when one was pressed against the table, the other tended to be tucked between face and elbow, or else arm and body.
It would be wiser not to try to slip the rings from fingers clenched into a fist and hidden so that Logan had to stand directly under the giant’s head to pull them off - it would be wiser not to be doing this at all - but Logan couldn’t help himself.
Six months ago, the older giants had left on a trip around the world. They were in Japan at the moment (Logan had memorised the schedule they had spent months planning out, but even if he hadn’t taught himself to use the computer in the office, he would have been able to tell from the most recent addition to the pile of postcards on the kitchen counter), and would be away for another six months.
Four months ago, the red brother moved out. Well - that wasn’t quite right. He had left most of the things in his room, and he came back every week or so. It had taken Logan a while to figure out that he had moved across town (“just across town,” he had said, as though that were like walking between the sink and the pantry rather than going somewhere no more accessible to Logan than Japan) to live with his boyfriend. At least he had taken the cat.
Two months ago, Logan had been collecting carpet fibre from under the living room couch in a spot of midnight borrowing when the green brother had stumbled into the living room, bringing with him the strong smell of alcohol. His steel-toed shoes were accompanied by a pair of heavy boots attached to a giant Logan had never seen before, and when Logan peeked out to see what was going on, he saw that the green brother looked as though he was leaning heavily on the stranger. Then the couch dipped above him under the weight of two people. There had been the unmistakable sound of wet lips on skin, the sound of shifting fabric, and a slurred voice. “No, sstoppit… ‘M too drunk t-mmph…”
When the kiss ended, there was another complaining murmur, followed by shushing and a much more steady tone. “Shh, shh. You’re fine, see? Brought you home like you asked. Gonna be just fine…”
Logan had spent almost half an hour hiding under that couch, listening to the green brother’s complaints be drowned out by the creaking of furniture and the sounds of skin against skin, terrified that if he moved he would be noticed, sick to his stomach at what he was hearing. It was when he realised that his giant had stopped begging the stranger to stop that Logan finally gave in and made the dash across the room to the cage. If either giant saw him, he’d take the repercussions as they came: he couldn’t bear to listen to what was happening for a moment longer.
He had thrown up halfway down the tunnel leading to the Cage home, and spent the next two days in bed, not wanting to think about anything he had just seen. Then Logan had pushed the memory aside, gotten up, and started borrowing again.
There wasn’t anything else he could do, after all.
It had been a week after that that the Rem- that the giant had started drinking.
Logan shouldn’t have been paying attention as much as he should, but he had started looking out for his giant. The yellow friend had stayed for a week before moving out; it wasn’t as though there was anybody else here to make sure he was eating and sleeping (although Logan couldn’t actually do anything to ensure this). He had started trying to make sure he knew when his giant was in the house, listening for the slamming of the front door or footsteps. He could see the bowl on the living room coffee table where the giant stored his housekeys from the front gate, though keys weren’t the most reliable way of telling whether he was home. Logan had listened to several arguments between the brothers and gathered that the green giant frequently ended up climbing in through a window when he forgot to bring them out with him.
And so Logan had noticed the first night that his giant fell asleep at the kitchen table, and again when he had done it three days later, and again the following night.
Logan had noticed the way he started twitching a few hours after falling asleep, the way he started pawing at his hair and face, at his torso and shoulders and neck and hips.
Logan had noticed the bloody scratches appearing on his bare skin where his giant’s many rings cut against his skin.
Logan had noticed the tattered mess of the torn-out piercings.
It had been painfully obvious, after the first few mornings and the first dozen plasters, that his giant didn’t care enough to remove his often very spiky jewellry before drinking himself into unconsciousness.
Really, it hadn’t taken Logan as long as it should have to gather the courage to sneak close enough to the giant to help him. Logan should have taken weeks to gather data, to use the never-charged tablet to look up giant sleep patterns and the effect of alcohol upon them, to sketch up plans and weigh benefits against costs, to conclude that he needed to keep the giant healthy so the giant could keep bringing food into the house for them to borrow.
Instead, he had found himself sneaking across the table and trying to figure out how to remove a spike as long as his forearm from the giant’s ear.
There were six rings on his giant’s left hand this evening: a thick black one with a large claw on the thumb; a spiked circlet and a golden snake swallowing its tail on the forefinger; the black ring with moving parts that his giant sometimes fiddled with on the middle finger; a silver loop with glittering red and green stones (glass: Logan had checked his giant’s internet shopping history), and an unwieldy ring shaped like an octopus that covered almost the entire distance between the first and second knuckles on the fourth. It took Logan three trips to carry them all down to the small shiny pile he was making in the middle of the table.
The giant let out a rumbling snore that shook the table, and Logan froze, exposed, as he shifted, stirred, and then was still again.
He wasn’t waking up. The night before Logan first started removing his earrings, the borrower had watched a broom propped against the table (Rem- the giant had smashed a bottle on the floor and gotten halfway through cleaning up before giving up) slip sideways until it glanced off his shoulder and crashed to the ground. If the light impact and the subsequent noise hadn’t been enough to wake him, Logan doubted that his own near-silent working would.
Going still at the first loud noise was one of the first tricks Logan had learned, though. The giants rarely seemed to see things if they didn’t move.
The scramble up to the green brother’s shoulder took moments, and then he was using two hands to unscrew the backs of a series of pointed studs, to pull apart the hinges of rings, to snap open the catches of cuffs, and tuck them into his bag. Having no desire to repeat the experience of having to scale back down the giant’s arm after removing each piercing, Logan had started bringing a sack with him to collect the small bits of metal and plastic.
He dealt with both ears before returning to the tabletop to deposit the contents of his bag beside the small pile of rings, and then turned to look back at his still-sleeping giant. He had snored a few more times, each time making Logan cling to the shell of his ear or risk taking the fall to the kitchen tiles far below, but had been almost tranquil aside from that.
What next?
Some nights, the green brother wore spiked bracelets velcroed around his forearms - not tonight. Tonight, he was wearing a hoodie that was chartreuse beneath the stains, sleeves long enough that had he not had them pushed back, they would have covered his hands with ease. Even if he were wearing his spiked wristbands, Logan doubted he would be able to cut himself on them.
“... Which leaves the face…” Logan mumbled.
Right.
Five in the eyebrows, one in the nose, four in the lower lip. There had been two in the nose and seven in the eyebrows, but the extras had been ripped out.
It had been the face that had taken Logan the longest to build up the courage to approach, entirely disliking the idea of being that close. Even now, he took a moment to steel himself before moving closer, slipping over one arm and into the space between face, table, and elbow.
There was also one in his giant’s tongue, but Logan wasn’t about to climb into his mouth.
He wasn’t that stupid.
He wouldn’t be that stupid. (At least until his giant started cutting up the inside of his cheeks with it. Or he started trying to rip it out).
The mouth was closest, though, so that was where Logan started. It still felt weird to tug at one of the large lips until he could reach the back of the piercing, saliva warm and slimy - he had had to start wearing sleeveless tunics to avoid questions about why the arms of his shirts were always damp.
Logan was just reaching up to unscrew the glittery nose stud when the front door opened.
He froze, arms stretched above his head, one hand actually inside the giant’s nostril.
Nobody ever came in this late at night.
If he were lucky, it would be the red brother, exhausted, coming to crash upstairs after an argument with his purple boyfriend. The giant wouldn’t bother coming into the kitchen to-
“Remus? Are you here?”
Fuck. It was Ja- It was the yellow friend.
The yellow friend had spent a lot of time in the house in the days after that night, to the point that he had brought a snake in a cage that had sat on the kitchen table for a week. Logan’s giant hadn’t started drinking until after he had moved back out.
The yellow friend would definitely come into the kitchen - Logan could already hear his footsteps approaching. Jerking his hands back to his sides, Logan glanced around, possibilities racing through his brain.
If he left the shelter of his giant’s arms, he would be out in the open, easy to see and grab and squash. The yellow friend would be able to see him with barely a glance over the table: a small pile of jewelry, a sleeping giant, an upright empty bottle, two on their sides and dripping beer, a closed, half empty bottle of vodka, and a tiny person.
If he stayed where he was… Well, he was hidden from sight until the green brother woke up - and Logan doubted that would happen. He had watched the giant sit down earlier that evening and drink with the air of a man steeling himself for the gallows, as he had three nights out of the previous four (the fourth night, the giant had been drunk already when he got home): he wouldn’t be waking up anytime soon.
Inhaling deeply (and regretting it as his head spun with the alcohol on his giant’s breath), Logan retreated closer to the green-clad arm and crouched beside it, hoping the shadows of the crook of the elbow would obscure him completely.
“There you are… Oh, Re…” The footsteps had stopped; the smooth voice was right above him now. Logan hissed in another breath as the green brother shifted in place, then realised that it wasn’t a sign of wakefulness but merely the yellow friend resting a hand on Remus’ shoulder.
(Yes, Logan knew their names. Logan knew all their names: Valerie, the old woman who had told stories and had died when he was ten. Dot, the woman who hadn’t been sorry to see Valerie dead, and her husband Larry, who had always wanted to travel the world and finally gotten to do so. Roman, the brother almost always clad in a red shirt, red jumper, red sash or tie or dress, and his boyfriend Virgil with his purple jacket. Janus, the friend with the black hat and the yellow lining in his coats and jackets, his blonde hair. And Remus, Logan’s giant, the one he looked after because Janus was the only one that was really there for him, and even then he wasn’t there all the time. Yes, Logan knew their names, and Logan knew he shouldn’t have allowed himself to know their names, shouldn’t have allowed himself to care about the huge, clumsy giants that never noticed when things were borrowed yet could destroy their lives with a clumsy footstep. It had become harder and harder to stop himself from using their names in the last few weeks).
A snore.
“I wish you talked to me…” The giant was moving again, and from the clink of glass on glass, Logan guessed he was clearing up. A few seconds later, there was the sound of cloth on wood - he was wiping up the spilled alcohol. Good - the table had been getting rather sticky over the last few weeks, ruining the soles of Logan’s most comfortable borrowing shoes. Remus never got around to cleaning it.
Then there was the clink of metal, and a faint chuckle. Was he looking at the pile of rings? “That’s not like you. I’m glad, though… Explains why you started looking slightly less cut up last time you answered your phone.” A pause. “Two answers. In a month. Not cool, Re. You’re better than that…”
The green giant didn’t answer. Neither Logan nor Janus had been expecting him to.
“I wish I hadn’t had to go.” More clinking. What was the yellow friend doing? Logan wished he’d leave. His legs were starting to cramp from his uncomfortable crouching position. “If I could have stayed, you know I would, right?” Was Janus aware that Remus couldn’t hear him? Logically, he must be - so could he save the soul-bearing for later? “I didn’t want to leave you alone.” Apparently not. “I did tell you to call me, though - ‘every night’, you promised. And I thought I was the liar here, huh? Dick. Come on, let’s get you to bed…”
Wait. What?
Logan didn’t have time to react as his cover was pulled away. All he could do was close his eyes and cover his head.
There was a sharp intake of breath from somewhere above him.
It seemed that staying perfectly still didn’t quite work when he was the only thing on a table aside from a small pile of metal jewelry.
“ Well, I have to say that I completely expected to see a tiny person hiding under the unconscious body of my best friend.” There was the sound of movement, and Logan hunched his shoulders more tightly. “Come on. You shouldn’t look at me or anything. I’m absolutely going to turn you to stone when you make eye contact.”
He couldn’t make a run for it.
Quite aside from the fact that the yellow friend would probably catch him before he had gone half a metre despite supporting Logan’s giant, any hiding place Logan escaped to would result in the giants tearing up the house to try to find him. He couldn’t go home without leading them straight back to his family.
All he could do was make sure he didn’t do or say anything to give away the rest of the borrowers living around the house.
“Oh, come on. You’re the one hiding underneath my friend.” Movement again.
Slowly, Logan allowed his hands to drop, and tilted his head upward.
Janus was staring down at him, vast face impassive, one arm around Remus’ waist. One of Remus’ arms was draped over Janus’ shoulders, though the green brother’s body was limp in what was quite clearly still unconsciousness. It didn’t look as though Janus was struggling with his weight, and Logan suddenly noticed how thin his giant looked.
Maybe he hadn’t done such a great job of taking care of him after all.
“What are you…” Logan’s gaze snapped back to the yellow friend’s face in time to see his eyes (one grey, one pale brown, which was supremely cool) flick between him and the pile of rings still on the table. There was no sudden comprehension dawning over his face, but one eyebrow lifted ever so slightly. “How long have you been taking out his studs for him?”
Logan swallowed hard, met the giant’s stare coolly, and remained silent. The giant let out a frustrated huff.
“I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to know what you’re doing in my friend’s house.”
Logan licked his lower lip, narrowed his eyes, and said nothing.
“If Re had a fairy godfather, I would have expected him to be a little more…” The giant gestured vaguely. “Rock’n’roll. Grimy. Bigger, definitely. You can’t exactly do mu-”
“At least I’ve been here for him,” Logan snapped, and regretted it as soon as Janus’ mouth twisted into a smirk.
“You do talk! Excellent. I’m going to assume that Remus doesn’t know you exist?” Janus glanced around briefly as he spoke, then lowered Remus into a different chair and took the one his friend had just been slumped in. Logan shook his head jerkily, once. “Well, I won’t tell him then.”
It was Logan’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “How can I trust you? You lie.”
A beat of silence.
Then the giant chuckled, a great wave of sound that Logan stumbled away from on instinct, found that his legs had gone to sleep, and stumbled over. The piercings he had rescued from Remus’ lower lip rolled out of his satchel and across the table; they were swiftly caught by a massive finger and pushed into the pile as well. Remus snored again.
The laughter stopped abruptly, and Janus lowered his face until his eyes were on a level with Logan, the grey suddenly the colour of winter, the amber as hard as the wood of the table beneath Logan’s body. “I never lie about looking after Remus.”
Logan paused, then nodded once, just as sharply. He believed the sudden sincerity in his tone. “Five weeks.”
“Five w- Oh. Right. That’s like… Just after I moved out again.” Logan nodded again, trying to massage the pine needles from his calves, and Janus groaned. “He told me he was fine on his own… How long’s he been drinking like this?”
“About six weeks.” Logan glanced sideways at his giant, then returned his attention to the feeling coming back to his toes. “You shouldn’t have left him.”
“He promised he was fine,” Janus repeated. Logan flinched as he lifted a hand, but the giant only moved to rub his face. “And then my cousin died and I had to help pack up and organise the funeral. I came back as soon as I- Why am I explaining myself to a mouse? Why aren’t you explaining what you’re doing in my friend’s house?”
Logan frowned. “I am not a mouse. I am -” He hesitated then. He couldn’t call himself a borrower: Logan knew from years of observation that the yellow friend possessed keen intellect, and didn’t want to imply that there were other borrowers living there. “- Logan. And I live here.”
“Logan, huh? Okay. I’m Janus, this is Remus.”
“I know.”
They lapsed into silence once more, the stillness broken only by Remus’ snoring and the chiming of the grandfather clock in the hall. Two in the morning.
“I’ll stay here tonight,” Janus offered, and Logan glanced back at him - he had been staring at the way Remus’ hoodie hung from his thin frame. “Grab Jake The Snake and some clothes from home tomorrow, and come back to stay with him. I can sleep on the couch, and-”
“He burned the couch.” This time it was Janus that flinched, and Logan felt a momentary satisfaction that the sharpness of his words had been felt. Then he regretted it. Janus was just trying to help his giant, after all.
“What?”
“Three nights after you left. Dragged it into the garden, poured a can of petrol and a bottle of vodka on it, threw one of his lighters at it.” Logan shrugged, working hard to bring his voice back to his usual neutral tone. “I watched from the window.”
Janus frowned. “Why would he…” He trailed off at the flinty look Logan was giving him, and glanced over at Remus. Janus’ face was no longer blank. Instead, a mix of horror and nausea that Logan recognised very clearly were rising on it. “Oh. That’s where…”
Logan nodded.
“You were there.” It wasn’t a question, but Logan nodded anyway. “Oh.”
Silence again. They were both staring at Remus now.
After a moment, Janus turned back to Logan and forced a smile onto his face. It didn’t fit, and slid off a moment later. “You’ve been trying to look after him.”
“He needs it,” Logan agreed. “I doubt he would do it if we just left him.”
“We?”
Logan winced. He probably shouldn’t have said that. This was the problem with allowing himself to care for a giant and learning their names… “I meant, ‘I’.”
“Or… It could be ‘we’.” Janus shifted a little, ran his fingers through his blond curls, then rested his hand lightly on the table. Logan edged away from it, watching the giant pretend not to notice. “We could work together. Make sure this gremlin takes care of himself.”
“How do I know you won’t just put me in a jar and dissect me?” It had to be asked, but Logan regretted it at the smirk that flickered over the giant’s mouth.
“Well, now that you suggest it…” He chuckled weakly, then shook his head. “I told you. Looking after Remus comes first. Besides, I have no interest in chopping you up. We’re on the same team now.”
Logan hesitated, then groaned quietly and pushed himself to his feet. “Fine. But I can’t do much, given my size. You’ll have to make sure he eats. I can watch him. I’ll draw up a schedule for-”
“Fine. Do that.” Janus waved a hand, and a gust of air washed over Logan, almost enough to knock him down. “I’m dead on my feet. We can discuss this tomorrow. Kitchen table. Eleven pm. Deal?”
Logan frowned. “You… Seem quite alive to me. And you are currently sitting down - there is very little -”
“It’s a figure of speech. Deal?”
“Fine.” Crouching, Logan picked up his satchel, double checked that he didn’t still have any of the studs in there, and swung it over his shoulder. He wasn’t going to move until he was sure that Janus and Remus were upstairs and he couldn’t be seen, but he should at least be ready to do so. Who knew how long it would take Janus to put his friend to bed? Logan didn’t want to get caught making his way home. “Deal. Tomorrow, twenty-three hundred hours. Tell nobody. Bring a notebook and a pen and be ready to take notes.”
Janus chuckled and stood as well. “Done.”
Logan watched as Janus picked Remus up again and made his way slowly out of the kitchen and into the hallway, and waited until the third step from the top creaked in complaint before he started making his way back toward the cage in the living room.
As terrified as he was by the prospect of having just been Seen, having just spoken to a giant, having promised to speak to him again… Logan had to say that he was relieved to have help in looking after his Remus. There was only so much he could do, given how small he was compared to the man he was attempting to take care of. Maybe having broken every rule he had ever been taught about borrowing wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
Maybe making mistakes was a good thing sometimes, no matter how illogical that sounded.