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It was a standoff.

On their flank, crouched and ready to pounce, was Cade, the shiny white of his clothes making him a brilliant, intimidating sight. Ahead of them stood Charlie, most of his body shielded by a large cookie sheet — big enough to bake a dozen kiddie-pool-sized cookies. Grasped tightly in the giant boy’s hands, its distressed metal surface bore a dull gleam as it hovered several feet over the ground, tilted toward the elf and his werewolf mount.

Mac had his bow trained on Cade while balancing on Alaki’s back, his friend prowling back and forth in his dire wolf cub form, growling with a mixture of menace and uncertainty. Knowing that one false move would allow one of the giants to spring forward, Mac moved his aim back and forth. It was clever for Charlie to shield himself. In fact, he was thankful that his huge friend hadn’t realized his advantage, since he didn’t think his toy arrows could shoot higher than the edge of the cookie sheet, and firing under it would also be difficult.

Alaki called the shot — he suddenly bolted toward Cade’s truck-sized feet. The quick move startled Cade, and he almost seized up in shock. It was just enough time for Mac to let an arrow fly, and it bounced off the giant’s ankle, its magic spreading immediately.

Charlie didn’t know what to do as he watched his cousin’s eyes flutter and body slump forward. The boy’s knees hit the floor with a solid BOOM, and he blocked the little elf and wolf cub from Charlie’s view momentarily. Nimbly, he tried to hop over Cade’s prone form and keep himself covered with the cookie sheet while looking for a way to scoop the little guys up. As his giant feet hit the ground, though, he saw the wolf cub darting around Cade’s leg, and he tried to make a split-second decision … but then he felt something tiny snap under his foot.

It was a toy arrow — one of three that Mac had purposely shot onto the ground surrounding his location. Charlie felt his whole body become warm and relaxed. His vision faded.

“Noooo…” he groaned as he flopped over, the cookie sheet clattering noisily out of his hands, and his face comically landing directly onto his sleeping cousin’s protruding butt.

Watching the giants crash to earth was always nerve-racking for Mac and Alaki, and the clanging of the massive sheet of metal made them wince in pain, but seeing Charlie’s final position set them both into fits of laughter. After collecting themselves, as well as some of Mac’s loose arrows, they set off in search of their final target.

With an air of nobility, Mac rode Alaki into the Cooper house’s main hallway, lit only by the light coming from the cracks around a couple closed doors. He kept his bow at the ready, his gaze held high, eyes peeled for Conor, the last of the giant boys at large in the house. Ominously, a door at the end of the hallway — the door to the playroom — hung open, revealing only darkness. Mac felt as though he and Alaki were heading for the final boss of their game.

They both almost had heart attacks as one of the giant doorways suddenly flung open. Standing up in a glow of light was a humongous, 90-foot-tall man: the adult version of Charlie, except with glasses and a short beard. He looked down at his tiny guests on the floor.

“Hey, guys. I heard something fall a few minutes ago. Is everything OK?” Mr. Cooper asked in his soft, but resonant, voice. He was wearing a rumpled button-up shirt and khaki pants, and he looked a little frazzled.

Mac was silent for just a moment, struck with Mr. Cooper’s massiveness, as well as the fact that he didn’t want to fess up to their activities, which involved using somewhat dangerous magic on the underage giants in the house. He forced a smile.

“Everything’s OK, Mr. Cooper! We’re just playing a game of chase with everybody,” he said.

Mr. Cooper smiled and adjusted his glasses. “OK, Big Mac, I trust you guys,” he said. “Just be careful, and have one of the big boys come and get me if you need anything.” He calmly stepped back and closed the huge slab of a door, getting back to whatever work it was that he did at home. For Mac, he represented the perfect chaperone: not really present.

Centering their focus again, Mac and Alaki slowly moved onward, the dire wolf cub’s paws cautiously padding along the expansive hardwood floor. The pitch dark playroom loomed before them, and hugging the wall, they entered, eyes scanning the whole place.

With so little light, they could barely make out the huge black shapes arranged around the room. Slowly, Alaki stepped past a giant barbell made of several tons of concrete, lying many meters away from a similarly-scaled weight bench, which had other barbells and weight plates stacked near it. In the distance, striped with moonlight filtered through the window blinds, the boys could see a monolithic bookshelf full of what looked like board games and action figures. In the corner behind the door, they could make out a large shadow, and so they crept closer.

Mac’s heartbeat thumped in his chest, and he kept his bow drawn and ready, his arms straining as they approached. Within a few meters, he could see that the shadow was just a big wooden box, not a giant 10-year-old lying in wait. He let out a breath.

“I don’t think he’s in here,” he whispered, leaning his face down next to Alaki’s fluffy right ear. He gave his wolf friend a little scritch under his neck. “Let’s go back to the living room.”

Still quietly, they started moving back toward the doorway, passing an SUV-sized sneaker that lay on its side, radiating a soft, musky smell. Alaki was momentarily distracted by it, catching his friend Charlie’s scent. In fact, he could smell a few of Charlie’s clothes scattered around the room. They were all dirty, and their scent was overpowering, drowning out other scents…

The wolf cub stopped in his tracks, his eyes widening. But it was too late.

The door to the playroom slammed shut, creating a wind that knocked Mac off his mount. He scrambled on the floor, bow gripped tight, losing some of his arrows out of his quiver. Alaki sniffed the air frantically, and squinted his eyes when the light switch, several stories up high on the wall, flicked on, and the whole room was illuminated.

Mac and Alaki both shook in fright, their breath quick and frantic. They looked around the whole room, but there was no Conor to be found. Alaki’s transformed, his purple compression shorts conforming to his body as he reverted back to this anthro-wolf cub form.

“Why’d you shift back?” Mac said in a hoarse whisper, trying at the same time to pick up a couple arrows. But he got no answer. As he was reaching down, he heard his friend yelp, and when he looked up, the young werewolf was gone. His heart started to pound violently.

He drew his bow and aimed up into the air, rotating his body and trying as hard as he could to see the unseen. But there was nothing more than blue walls, posters of giant wrestlers, cardboard boxes on shelves. In the harsh light, revealing the vastness of the room, he suddenly felt very small. With his sharp elven ears, he thought he could hear Alaki trying to cry out, muffled by something, but he couldn’t place the sound’s origin.

Then, he felt a puff of warm breath blow over his hair, and before he could turn and shoot, he felt a set of strong, giant fingers envelop his body and clasp his arms. Only his pride kept him from screaming as he felt himself lifted high into the air, and his hand let go of his bow, allowing it to clatter onto the floor far below.

Gently — with the kind of gentleness that Mac knew came from a giant who’d had little friends before — the hand maneuvered his body into a sort of cradled position on its massive digits. He looked up, and like paint soaking a cloth, the image of Conor’s big, smiling face materialized in front of him. His mouth hung open with astonishment.

“C-conor … you know the chameleon spell? That’s advanced magic …”

“Yeah, I know,” the giant boy said with a cocky grin. “My mom’s a witch, and she wouldn’t let me and Cade learn how to shrink, so we learned how to sneak into the human village in another way.”

With his left hand, Conor reached into the pocket of his shorts and picked up Alaki, who was clutching his legs to his chest, still a little shaken.

“So, you caught us,” Mac breathed. “What now?”

Conor brought the chubby little elf close to his face.

“Wanna wake everybody up and do it again?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Meanwhile, Nico’s heartbeat was also thrumming in his ears. His eyes closed, his body suspended in piping hot water, his senses were focused in on that heartbeat sound.

It was his way of avoiding the ridiculously jacked, impossibly cute, irrepressibly nice giant boy lounging in the water just a little ways away from him.

Little did he know Rich was also at his wits’ end. He was sitting criss-cross in the onsen, appreciating the heat, but unable to relax, his arms stiff next to his sides. He glanced over to Nico, wondering if the human felt comfortable having to hang by the wall in the deep pool, and he wanted to talk, but for some reason, he was all locked up. Several of his friends had been in the pool room when he and Nico had gotten into the onsen, but then they suddenly seemed to disappear, leaving the two of them alone, and Nico had been acting weird all night.

He cleared his throat.

“So … Nico, did you learn any cool new spells for your final exams?”

Nico opened his eyes and nervously made eye contact with Rich, trying not to ogle the guy’s muscles. It was a hard thing to do with someone so large.

“Yeah, mainly Professor Mars has been polishing some of my skills. I can do a lot more for longer periods now. Like I can do a glide spell that almost makes me feel like I can fly. I guess it is flying, pretty much, or ‘falling with style.’” He chuckled.

This piqued Rich’s interest. His green eyes gleamed. He bunched his shoulders and moved closer to Nico, creating a large wave that jostled the little human a bit.

“That’s amazing, Nico! Have you tried doing it outside? That would be something, just gliding out under the open sky …”

Rich tried to relax more as he looked up and visualized the idea. Without thinking the action through, he drew up his right arm out of the water and draped it over the onsen wall behind Nico, inadvertently creating a little waterfall that flowed over the boy’s back.

Nico didn’t really mind the dousing — it didn’t cover his head, and he had gotten used to the hot water otherwise, but he shyly looked up to see the view he had now of Rich’s armpit, which released a light musky smell — a pleasant smell, he thought — to his nostrils. He was surprised to see that the armpit was hairless. Shaved possibly? More than that, it accentuated the shape of the giant’s arm, chest and side muscles. He was startled out of his temporary enthrallment by Rich’s big voice asking him a question.

“Can you show me the glide spell? I … I mean, if you feel like it,” he said. He scratched the back of his neck, like he often did, flexing his bicep in the process. “I know you probably get tired of being asked to do magic tricks.”

Nico smiled. “You can ask me to do anything,” he said, and then turned beet red, not believing what just came out of his mouth. He tried to recover quickly. “Um … Actually, I might be able to do something on the water, here. I haven’t gotten to try it that way before. Just a sec.”

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and penciled in, allowing his body to submerge before he shot up through the surface.

Quickly, he looked ahead, his eyes flashing purple, and intoned “garuda vangr.”

His feet hit the water’s surface, and he slid across it, like he was on a surfboard, but only for a short distance. His little trip ended right in front of Rich’s huge chest, and he immediately started to sink, flailing his arms as his body got unceremoniously dunked.

Under the water, he felt his feet hit something soft and supple, and his hands reached out clawing across what he knew must have been Rich’s stomach. Rich’s hands came together under him and brought him up, and Nico only sputtered a little bit before wiping the excess water from his face. He laughed, looking up at his giant friend’s slightly worried, but still pleased, expression. “Well, now I know that the spell isn’t so great on water,” he said, and then fell silent again.

Now, he was closer to the giant boy, cradled in his hands, and the view was magnificent. Rich’s hair was wet, his creamy skin glistening, his emerald eyes sparkling in the room’s light. He was smiling his giant smile, and Nico’s gaze was drawn to his soft looking lips. Nico stopped himself again, and looked down.

Rich noticed this. “Nico … are you OK? You’ve been really quiet tonight,” he said.

Nico darted his glance up, but then settled on studying the grooves in the skin of Rich’s palm. “It’s nothing. It’s just been a hard semester, I guess. I’m not totally over it yet.”

Rich detected a hint of evasion in Nico’s tone, but he didn’t press. Instead, he sighed, and brought Nico a bit closer, only half realizing how intimate he was being. “Yeah, I’m really glad to have a break,” he said. “Even though I’ll have three more wrestling matches before school starts again. Today’s was especially long. The guy I wrestled also does jiu jitsu, and I think he was trying to get me to submit a couple times, using chokes and stuff.” He absent mindedly scratched the back of his neck again. “I still beat him, though.”

Nico almost whimpered as his body was drawn close to the giant boy’s muscular chest. “H-how did you beat him?” he asked, just to keep the conversation going.

Rich smiled, his face flushed a little. In the back of his mind, he knew that it was a little strange to cup his little friend close to his pecs. His shoulder angel was saying, “Dude, what are you doing? This is too forward!” But his shoulder devil was saying, “Yes! Yes! You’ve seen him looking at your body! Do more of this, and he will be yours!”

“Well, I try to keep up an advantage in speed and strength,” Rich said. “I know some good grappling technique, but being well conditioned is really important.”

The giant boy pursed his lips in anticipation of Nico’s reaction to his next move. Right in front of the tiny human’s face, he bounced his pecs one time and then flexed his bicep. The well defined muscles ballooned in size, swelling up to rock hardness, looking like perfectly sculpted, huge, fleshy boulders to Nico’s point of view. Rich’s confidence soared as he witnessed his little friend gulp and stare in awe.

“You can probably tell that I work out a lot,” Rich said, his face bearing the serene, satisfied smile of an alpha male.

And then his shoulder devil gave him a fabulous idea.

“Um … this onsen is really relaxing and all, but I’m still actually really sore from my match today,” he said, and swallowed in anticipation of his next big step. “My little brother told me that Finn told him that you sometimes give him massages to help him relax, and I was wondering … could you massage me?”

Nico froze, uncertain about his next move, and looked up into his friend’s billboard face, which showed nothing but earnestness in asking the question. It seemed a little bit of a leap in intimacy, but Nico was no dope. He could tell now that Rich was showing off and flirting with him in his own way. If he complied, he could say later that he was just doing his friend a favor, but part of him wanted to go all out and confess his affections. But he rapidly talked himself out of going that far. After all, he didn’t want to seem like some desperate, pathetic human going to pieces over this phenomenally handsome giant — even if that was the truth. And, anyway, part of him found it weird that Finn would tell Charlie about their brotherly massage ritual. There was nothing wrong with it, but it just seemed like weird info for his brother to be spreading around — like, was he advertising his services?

Before he could put a coherent thought together, though, Nico was already nodding his head. He stuttered out an “OK,” and then asked where Rich was feeling sore.

Rich reclined a bit more in the onsen, and set Nico higher up on his chest. He released him from his gentle hold and directed him to rub him on his neck and, as far as he could reach, his shoulders.

Nico gulped, and so did Rich, as both boys felt captivated by the situation. If he were honest, Rich was just wanting to show off his size and musculature to the little human, and didn’t actually think he would get much out of a massage from tiny hands, but he quickly realized he was wrong.

“Whoa … mmmm,” he said, as Nico found a knot right at the base of his neck, connecting to the bulk of his left trapezius muscle. The human’s touch was electric, and he wondered if Nico was using magic. “That feels really good.” His voice deepened with the pleasure.

And the voice made Nico shudder, enthralled by his giant friend’s masculinity. He climbed along Rich’s skin using the spider-climb spell, which also served to make his touch more meaningful to the giant’s nerves, and he followed the thick neck and shoulder muscles around, rubbing hard on knots as he went. Repeatedly, he heard his friend sigh and groan happily, and it filled him with a strange kind of joy. His body tingled with it, and it scared him. He wasn’t just helping his friend, in the same way he helped his brother. This was different. The phrase “I’m pleasing my man” flickered through his mind.

When he got to the other side of Rich’s collarbone, the giant gently picked him up again and cradled him against his huge right pectoral. But Nico wasn’t entranced so much by the impressive muscle this time as he was by the look on Rich’s face. “Loving” is the only word that could describe it.

The sound of guitars and horns swelled on the PA system of the rec center, and Nico was momentarily distracted, having forgotten about the constant playlist of pop music that had been going all night long. But this song was different. He sang along to the chorus.

“Heh heh … ‘Anyone can see … and everyone agrees … that you and I are wrong …’”

Rich smiled and joined in, as softly as he could with his giant voice, “And it’s been that way too long … take it as it comes …”

Together, they sang, really hamming it up, “And be thankful when it’s done … there’s so many ways to act … and so many shades of black…”

Nico smiled a truly genuine smile, and it melted Rich’s heart. “You know that Randy must’ve added that to the playlist,” Nico said. “That’s got him all over it.”

Rich also chuckled. “Yeah, if we hear any interesting songs tonight, we know they come from our little clique, I guess. Randy, Malik and Toby are the only guys on the football team with any taste.”

“Well, it makes sense,” Nico said. “After all…”

“They’re gay,” both boys said in unison, and then laughed.

But then the song ended, and Rich became silent, and nerves showed on his face.

“Nico,” he said, and then paused for a long time. He held his human friend close, warming him with his chest. The human said nothing, waiting patiently for his next words.

“Nico, I … I think you’re really cute,” Rich said, and then inwardly kicked himself for how dumb that sounded. He closed his eyes for a moment, and then picked Nico up and held him directly in front of his face, making direct eye contact. The human’s eyes were wide, but not with fright.

Rich’s voice shook a little. “Nico, I really like you,” he said. “I think you’re really smart, and really powerful, and I love your personality, and …” He wetted his lips, then swallowed. “Will you go out with me? … Or something?”

Nico was completely at a loss. For one thing, he couldn’t process the level of cuteness that was being displayed before him. For another thing, he felt conflicted. His brain was screaming at him on both sides, making arguments about how this couldn’t possibly work, how it was vain, how it was wrong, just like in the song, while at the same time it was urging him to go for it, to make his dreams with this unbelievably gorgeous boy come true.

Rich felt discouraged by Nico’s silence, and his face fell. “I … I know I’m a giant, and you’re a human, but you’ve … you’ve just captivated me, and … you know that I’ll always be gentle with you, but if you don’t like me, then …”

“I like you!” Nico blurted out, interrupting his friend’s diatribe.

Rich just looked him square in the face and smiled. Nico couldn’t help smiling back.

“I … I’d like to go out with you. … Or something,” Nico said, still with a bit of uncertainty.

What happened next made his brain explode (figuratively):

Without preamble, Rich brought Nico to his massive lips and kissed him, his mouth caressing Nico’s entire shirtless upper body.

Nico was shocked, but then filled with a beautiful sensation as he felt the giant’s moist, warm, soft lips touch him. He reached his hands out and gently petted the giant boy’s skin, boldly leaning into the embrace and kissing him back once, twice, and then three times.

Rich let out a hot breath, pulled Nico back to look into his tiny violet eyes again, and then once more brought him forward, this time planting kiss after giant kiss. On the last one, the tip of his tongue made contact with the crook of Nico’s neck, and Nico gasped.

Rich almost pulled the boy away, worried he’d gone too far, but Nico’s arms resisted, wanted to stay in contact with the giant’s warmth. Rich took the hint and tried again with another kiss, allowing his tongue to slide a little against Nico’s neck and side, and Nico decided to take a chance and kiss the tongue tip back as it came close to his face. Before today, he would have considered the idea of encountering a giant tongue awkward and a little gross, but Rich’s tongue was special — it was wet, but soft and silky at the same time, and it was made all the more attractive by the fact that it belonged to a boy that wanted him.

Suddenly, a stray thought pierced the veil of his pleasure.

“Who is at the core of your consciousness?”

The words of Professor Mars rung in his mind. Words that were his only punishment when he failed to take magic seriously enough on his second day of school. Words that hung in his memory like smoke. He had yet to decipher their true meaning.

For some reason, at this moment, Mars’ curse was revealing itself in his thoughts. Was he doing something wrong? Was he giving in to this giant too quickly? Was having a boyfriend a mistake? A distraction?

“Stop. Stop!” he said, as Rich’s mouth continued to love on him. Rich pulled him away, a nervous look suddenly on his face. “Did I do something wrong?” he asked.

Nico rubbed his head and decided to play it cool. He didn’t want to reject Rich. In his heart, he knew that he wanted to be with him, but he needed to stop and think.

“No, nothing’s wrong. I just … uh … I need to let my heart slow down a bit, I think,” he said, and then smiled at his giant friend reassuringly.

Rich let out a sigh of relief, and was about to say something when the music on the PA system suddenly stopped and squawked.

He and Nico both looked up, confused. The words of a news bulletin came rushing in.

“… outskirts of Atlanta. The attack began at around 7:30 and lasted until only a few moments ago.”

Concerned looks crossed the boys’ faces.

“Police are still combing the area looking for the human perpetrators and survivors, and giant rescue workers have just entered the scene. So far, police information reports that an estimated 200 may have been killed, with many more expected injured.”

Nico let out a worried breath. “A terrorist attack?” he whispered.

“The northern half of the football stadium is in ruins, almost completely destroyed,” the news announcer’s voice said, and at this, Rich’s face paled. “The giant accomplice has been killed, but at the cost of two other giant lives.” He gasped. “A mother and her young son.”

Both Nico and Rich were dumb struck. Rich held his little friend close, and his whole body shook.

Nico looked up at him in time to hear him choke back a sob. The giant’s eyes were on the verge of tears.

Their thoughts were too clouded now to hear the rest of the bulletin, and the door to the pool room swung open. Randy leaned into the room, his face grave and his eyes reddening.

“Guys, we’re all meeting back in the lobby. ASAP,” he said, and then left them.

Atlanta. The other side of the continent, but it felt so close. More than that, in Rich’s mind, a giant had become violent, and he couldn’t believe it.