HTTYD - Day 7, Part 2 (Patreon)

The Christmas Exclusive is coming along great, can't wait to finish the trilogy off too, and just in time for Christmas! Although I'm aiming for a release date on Sunday, and then a flurry of other releases the rest of that week leading up to Christmas. Hope this tides some of you over until then though! I know I wasn't as active as normal for the first half of December so hoping the plans I've had for Christmas Week will make up for it!

This chapter's another mostly character development story, setting up some stuff with Camila so she'll be a lot more involved than in v1 and have her own interesting angle on everyone else. The chapter's a bit on the smaller side, but that just means more time I can spend finishing up the Christmas exclusive that much sooner (and the small scene I didn't include in this chapter so I could get it out for you guys tonight is just gonna be in the next chapter anyways. but day 8 is gonna be a big one, boob stuff and feet stuff and mouth stuff, and then day 9 is gonna blow that biking-to-school chapter that everyone liked so much out of the water)

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True to the idea he had that morning, Marcus decided on cleaning the kitchen counters as his chore that he’d do for the day. And not just his counter and mini-kitchen space; that was easy. He actually got out a bucket, filled it with soapy water, and then carried the bucket and a mop up his little stairs that led all the way up to the main kitchen’s counter. There had been a part of him that wanted Jessie to actually see him do the mopping too, and actually witness his increased productivity that contrasted his depressed state of mind from just a week ago. So he roughly estimated how long it’d take him to clean the counters, and timed it so that when she got home in the late afternoon like usual, she’d walk in on him finishing up the last of the counter. The sound of the front door opening alerted him to his daughter’s return, and he looked up in time to see Jessie coming in—with two other guests behind her.

The first was the Hispanic girl that Jessie had brought over a couple days ago, and the other was Paris, Jessie’s best friend. Marcus had known Paris longer than any of Jessie’s other friends, along with the rest of her family too. Not that Jessie needed it per se, but Paris also was a great influence on his daughter, since she (and the rest of her family) were some of the kindest people Marcus had ever known. About an inch shorter than his daughter, Paris had curly black hair that bounced whenever she got excited, clear dark skin, and an eager set of green eyes that widened along with her smile upon seeing Marcus for the first time in a long while.

“Mr. Tilden! How are you? It’s so good to see you again!” she said, and Marcus grinned back at the polite young girl.

“It’s great to see you too Paris,” he replied, “I’m actually kinda surprised it took this long for Jessie to bring you around.”

“I was trying to be sensitive!” his daughter defensively remarked as she shrugged off her backpack on the table. “I thought you’d want a bit more space after shrinking and stuff.”

“I know I know, I was just messing with you,” Marcus told her. “Although I do have plenty of space now. I don’t think I need any more of that.” He looked around and gestured to the rest of their house: normal sized for them, but massively spacious for the 9 inch tall man. “I think if I were to grow back again then I’d feel cramped in all the hallways and small rooms.”

Paris walked over to Marcus, her eyes more empathetic than they were pitiful. Nowadays, most people looked at him like the latter. “I’m so glad you’re OK,” she said, “I don’t think we’ve seen each other since like, a couple days after your diagnosis, right? That was kind of awhile ago.” Marcus nodded, thinking back on how long it’d been. He hadn’t wanted Jessie to bring people over while he’d been actively shrinking. “Is it OK if I hug you, or does that make you uncomfortable?” she asked, squatting down so their eyes would be level with each other.

It was thoughtfulness like that that made Paris his favorite of Jessie’s friends. Her parents had done such a good job raising her to be polite and considerate, and as a result she’d always seemed the most mature of his daughter’s classmates. There were a lot of other people with Marcus’ condition who were insecure about their body sizes, which led to seemingly half the population treating them awkwardly and different than everybody else. Or shunning them altogether. And there was another huge chunk of people that was constantly ignorant and naive about the impacts of size differences. Forgetting how weight affected them disproportionately, not seeing them on the sidewalk and bumping into them, or simply not caring about their requests for special treatment.

But Paris was one of the few people who acted the same towards Marcus as when he was normal sized—while still showing thoughtfulness to what he was going through and how he might perceive things differently. Even Jessie had been mostly ignorant of DSD’s implications for the first couple weeks that Marcus was shrunken, and though she was getting better at being cognizant of his differences, she’d still slip up from time to time (like accidentally flinging her sock onto him).

So it warmed Marcus’ heart to see Paris asking for permission to hug him, aware of how much incredibly larger and stronger she was than him. “Of course,” he replied with a smile, opening up his arms as she leaned forward so he could embrace her shoulder, while she reached a hand up to ever-so-gently place against his back in return. The hug lasted only a second, just long enough as was appropriate for a man and his daughter’s friend.

“Thanks for asking too,” he said as they pulled away. “I wasn’t very fond of people touching me for a little while. And a lot of people still don’t know how to… well, handle me.” Jessie blushed, remembering some of the times she’d already mishandled him. “So how’s the new school year been going for you?” he asked.

“Really good!” she replied cheerfully, taking off her backpack and sitting on the kitchen table to face him. “I have a B in one of my classes, but so far I’ve been having a great year. I love all my teachers, and I have like two or three classes with Jessie, that’s pretty cool.”

“That’s good to hear,” he replied, and then noticed her eyes quickly glance at the mop that he’d set aside. He turned around, “Oh, I was just cleaning off the kitchen counters with this thing,” he explained. “Even though it’d probably be a lot faster for Jessie to do it, I like to help out a bit around the house since she’s taken over so many chores. Plus it’s a good to be on my feet a little bit!”

“Aw, that’s really sweet of you Mr. Tilden,” Paris replied, looking between Jessie and her dad.

“Yup, the two of us make a great team!” Jessie grinned, pretending to rest her elbow on her dad’s head, like how tall people do with shorter people sometimes. Except she made sure not to actually put any weight on him, of course.

“Aaaaand Camila, right?” Marcus spoke up, turning to the girl who’d been quietly watching the three of them interact. “How was your day at school?”

A smile grew on Camila’s lips from him having remembered her name. She didn’t have a lot of friends, and was too shy to talk to very many people, so people seemed to forget her name a lot when they first met her. It wasn’t a big gesture—he didn’t even consider remembering someone’s name a gesture at all—but it gave her a surprising amount of happiness.

“I had a good day,” she replied quietly with a smile and a bit of a blush. “Thank you for asking.”

“Hey, can Paris and Camila stay for dinner?” Jessie asked her dad, who glanced at the clock and chuckled.

“My mama would probably be glad if she knew she didn’t need to cook for me when she got home,” Camila added earnestly, her smile faltering a bit.

“Well if I said no, I’d be making you girls leave just after getting here,” he joked, looking back and forth between Paris and Camila. “But Jessie’s gonna have to do the cooking!”

His daughter rolled her eyes, “I always do the cooking. If you had to cook for four people you would’ve had to start hours ago,” she said, referencing how much harder it was for someone his size to cook for multiple fully grown people.

“At least it’d give me something to do with my day though,” he shrugged.

Camila tilted her head and wrinkled her nose, “Do you not have a job Mr. Tilden?” She wasn’t sure if shrunken people really had jobs.

Jessie glanced at her dad, knowing it was a bit of a sore subject with him, and he took a deep breath in. “Well… no, actually. Not as of last Thursday.”

Camila looked more shocked than the reply probably warranted. “Oh… I’m sorry I asked,” she said, looking down in embarrassment.

“No, no no no no no,” Marcus laughed, trying to reassure her. “You didn’t know, don’t feel bad. It’s just life, right? I could’ve shrunk down to an inch and then my life would really be crazy, like I can’t even imagine. But there’s still some stuff I can do at my height.” He smiled, as if trying to be optimistic for his own sake rather than convince Camila. “Between our savings, and the disability benefits, and soon the unemployment ones too, I had a pretty good financial safety net. And the one upside, which is a really, really big upside…” he trailed off, reaching his hand out towards Jessie’s arm, who was standing next to him. “…is that I get to spend a lot more time with Jessie. She’s had after-school sports for the last couple years, so she’d get home a while after I did, and sometimes we’d get less than an hour together before I had to go to bed since I woke up so early.”

Saying it out loud, Marcus realized that their situation actually hadn’t changed that much in regards to how much time he and Jessie spent together. Even though he was home way more, she still had school and sports and her social life. It seemed like things should’ve changed, but it felt like they hadn’t. I wish I could spend more time with her, he thought. Especially since she’s gonna have to move out eventually, even if she lives here during college. And then what’ll I do? I’ll be all alone, and if I could never find a stepmom for Jess (or even a longtime girlfriend) for the last however many years, I definitely won’t find one at this height.

Suddenly he was in a despondent mood again, just from his own words and thoughts. He fantasized about a future where he might live with his daughter beyond her college years, like how some parents did with their children after they became adults. Although most of the time the parents weren't moving in when their kids were still teenagers.

He took a deep breath and sighed, telling himself to move on. A lot could change in the next 6 years before she moves out, so no use in worrying about it yet. For now, he’d simply try to spend more time with his daughter.

Unbeknownst to Marcus, his words had also triggered nearly the same kind of guilt with Jessie, but in reverse. She was all that he had, which she figured was an even bigger statement now that he’d shrunken and lost his job. She wasn’t sure what her dad would do after she left for college—or would he have to keep living with her after she moved out?

“Well it was nice catching up with you,” Paris told Marcus, cutting everyone off from their thoughts. “I’m gonna try and finish tomorrow’s homework before dinner,” she told her friends, heading to Jessie’s room

“Oh yeah,” Jessie said, sighing as she thought about all the stuff she still had to do that evening before she could have some free time. “I’ll make some dinner for us later in a little bit, Daddy,” she told her father, who nodded, before she went to go join her friend.

Camila, the last of the three still standing in the kitchen, nervously smiled at Marcus. It was only her second time, but she liked being at Jessie’s house; her dad seemed to be really caring, Jessie was fun, and her best friend Paris was really nice to her too.

“Um… thanks,” she told the man awkwardly, then hurried down the hallway to join her classmates in Jessie’s room.

For what? Marcus wondered, raising an eyebrow in confusion. But he just shrugged, and went back to mopping up the kitchen counter to get it ready for his daughter.