Penny collected his small bundle of clothes from her bag and quietly slipped out of the bedroom, snatching a quick look back at Jack before she left. Her body language was a bit subdued, which suggested to Jack that she was uncomfortable or embarrassed about what had just transpired and was trying to hide it. He himself felt particularly insecure about the depth and scope of the revelations, though he was sure about one thing – after all he’d been through recently, if he could be anywhere in the world right now, it would probably be here.
He smacked himself lightly on the side of the cheek with his hand and rolled his eyes, trying to snap himself out of this… stupor. Now was a good opportunity to put on the clothes Penny had brought for him, despite his aching and exhausted body feeling as if basic movement was beyond it.
With considerable effort, he forced himself to sit up and remove the jacket covering him, stretching forward and reaching through gritted teeth to grab at the pair of baggy, green jogging pants and haul them back towards him.
The pants were almost definitely something Penny used to wear as a child, and whilst he wasn’t really trying to look at the size he caught a glimpse of the label – Age 9 Girls (A). What was even more humiliating, though, was how baggy even these children’s clothes were when he dragged them over his weary limbs – he had to pull the drawstring out to quite some length to scrunch the waist of the trousers tight to his hips, and even then he had a good number of inches of excess leg to pull over his feet and ruck up to his ankles.
The accompanying pastel-yellow t-shirt was mercifully much closer to his size – Age 7 1/2 Girls (A). It still looked a bit like an overly large and suspiciously short tee on Jack’s skinny frame, but the slightly faded, oversize Wonder Woman logo on it was a dead giveaway.
Satisfied he was at least now clad in something clean, and adequately covered, he fell back onto the bedcover expecting to feel relief, but the brief exertion instead drew focus to all the various parts of his anatomy that were aching and sore. His face and mouth particularly felt like they had borne the brunt of Caitlin’s physicality when she had struck him; his teeth felt a bit weird, like they were too light and a bit loose to the touch, and he knew the bruises and dried blood would need to be examined later, when he regained the strength to clean himself. The rest of him, especially his arms and legs, just felt dirty, weak and lifeless, having been bound, stretched, contorted and manipulated in ways that he quite frankly didn’t want to revisit right now. It felt like he’d had the workout of the century, or been run over by a steamroller… a bit of both, really.
The physical pain was one thing, but more painful still was knowing that the person who had subjected him to so much physical and mental torture could do so again easily, and without warning, if he attempted to go back to his life ‘as normal’.
It was so horrible and fucked up, and yet… the way she had handled him, the way she had made him feel, it had been so highly charged at times. Now he was safe, and not in fear of being hurt or abused, he could finally process the idea of her incredible body touching him, her prodigious assets…
He fought the urge to visualise it, it was wrong, she was dangerous, unhinged. The things she had done to him, any ordinary person would be horrified, he couldn’t afford to be side-tracked by just how attractive he found her, and how much he maybe actually wanted her… to do stuff… to him.
It wasn’t exactly a revelation, he had been fantasising about the giant girls at school since he could remember, but to be unable to separate Caitlin the abusive misandrist from Caitlin the supersized vamp; what the fuck was wrong with him?
It made him feel sick to the stomach to think about how pathetic he was… how even a woman abusing him couldn’t keep his mind from sexual thoughts.
He closed his eyes and tried to think of something else for a while…
Oh.
He didn’t even realise he had fallen asleep. The bedroom was very dimly lit, illuminated softly by some kind of night-light in the corner of the room and the artificial green-ish glow of an LED alarm clock display by the bedside.
His brain was alert in seconds, surprising even himself. He’d expected to wake up with a scream, struggle to locate himself, take a few minutes to calm down, but no, he was on Penny’s bed, aching quite a lot as his body recovered, but overwhelmingly in a safe, secure place.
He could see that Penny had fallen asleep, clad in a t-shirt and pajama pants on the floor with just a pillow and a shawl, and he looked down at her sleeping on her side, facing towards the bed. Her expression looked very peaceful, her eyebrows raised up slightly as she slept, giving her a look of innocence, almost childlike. Her long hair was swept underneath her head and shoulders, and her long limbs were tucked into her body.
He felt bad that he was depriving her of her own bed, and that she had to sleep on the floor so as not to disturb him. The glowing display told him that it was 1.36 AM so he had probably been asleep for something like 3 or 4 hours.
Out of nowhere, his stomach grumbled something fierce, and he realised that he was in fact ravenous. Recovery was clearly hungry work. Grimacing, he slowly contorted his stiff limbs so that he could sit by the bedside table with his baggy legs hanging over the mattress edge, able to pick at the smorgasbord of bits Penny had generously provided for him earlier. It tasted a little bit stale and had warmed to room temperature, but fundamentally it was food, and mouthfuls of meat, cheese, grapes and chocolate were put away in double-quick time until his belly felt much rounder and happier indeed.
Sitting there, especially after a proper rest and a feed, the surrealness of what was transpiring began to rise up inside of him. Here he was, in Penny’s room, sitting on her bed whilst she slept on the floor. He would have given anything to be here, but with the exact circumstances he had been put through, it felt particularly bittersweet. Lord knows he was grateful, and excited and anxious to be so close to someone, anyone, like this, but everything that went before… he could still feel the hangover of his imprisonment, the sleepless subterfuge, discovery and repeated humiliation and degradation enveloped his skull like an enormous, wet sponge he couldn’t shake off.
He kept telling himself not to think it over, but it was too much to ignore, especially now that he was conspicuously alert and well-rested after over 24 hours of being seriously out of sorts. More than anything, he felt a bit like an imposter in Penny’s private space, particularly because she was unconscious and he could look intently at this gigantic girl without worrying about the repercussions.
He felt creepy and it made him a bit uncomfortable. It wasn’t his fault he had no palpable connection to girls his age, and it was only natural to be curious and enamoured with the intangible, almost hypnotic appeal of watching her sleep, her soft features, her long, slender form.
It wasn’t lustful, it wasn’t a sex thing, he just felt so much… he didn’t know what… but it was directed towards this person in front of him. He wanted her to know that he appreciated her, that he wasn’t just some pathetic beta guy dreaming of fucking her or something, it was a bit hard to explain.
Sliding down off the bed, before his brain had really caught up with his actions he had already taken a couple of delicate footsteps around the sleeping giantess. He wanted to do something as if he was in a romantic movie, like stoop down and kiss her delicately on her soft lips, or gently on her cheek, but he knew he couldn’t do it because it would be taking advantage of her. As if he hadn’t already leant on her enough for her support, he couldn’t assume that this girl would be so forgiving of him for stealing something so intimate; and he didn’t want to put her in an awkward situation as a reward for showing him so much kindness and bravery. She deserved so much more.
He could smell the fabric softener on her t-shirt, and the fragrance of her hair, all these ‘girl’ smells that were still new to him, intoxicating and exotic to a Beta of such limited experience. Even from a short distance away he could feel the heat and power of this enormous human as she slept, how close she was to him, but how far away, in many ways, he was from her.
He already felt so incredibly inadequate around girls of Alpha height, and this feeling overwhelmed him yet again. How could Penny see him as anything other than an inferior version of a ‘normal’ boy her age, a miniscule, weak, defenceless creature who would fall helplessly in love with anyone who showed even the merest morsel of affection or understanding to?
He shut his eyes and shook his head a couple of times to try and clear the thoughts from it. Instead of standing there and feeling mawkish and disillusioned, he turned his attention to Penny’s room, only just realising that she had draped his extra small clothes over a radiator in the corner to dry them off.
He quietly walked over to them, checking to see how damp they were (only a little), and then moved gingerly over to check out her collection of books and movie posters. As he cocked his head to read some of the titles, he heard a sort of rustle as Penny seemed to stir, with a bit of a sniff and the sound of long limbs snaking out across the carpet.
“Uh?” she said softly, rolling her head towards him abruptly. Her eyes were barely open, but he sensed that she hadn’t spent much time asleep, probably because it wasn’t very comfortable to sleep on the floor.
“Hey Penny,” he whispered, self-conscious of how he would have looked sneaking around when she was asleep.
“I didn’t mean to wake you. I had a bit to eat and… just felt restless.”
“Ah, ok,” she said sleepily, stifling a yawn, “I saw that the clothes fit you ok,” she smiled.
“Yeah, just about…” he said quietly, pulling a bit of a face as he stretched out the fabric of one leg of the capacious jogging pants to illustrate just how baggy they were on him.
She stifled a giggle, putting her hand up to her face, “Ha ha, I’m sorry, it’s all I could find.”
The girl sat up and a wave of hair cascaded across one side of her face before she swept it over her shoulder.
“You can’t sleep then? I could put a film on if you want,” she offered, blinking her eyes repeatedly to try and wake up a bit quicker.
“I don’t want to be a pain, I feel really bad as it is,” he explained, watching as she stretched her arms out, inadvertently feeling himself panic a little as the Alpha girl’s dimensions were so much greater than his own. It was hard to keep himself from jumping every time people this large made sudden movements, even completely innocuous ones.
“Nah it’s cool, I’m just pleased you’re ok,” she said with a smile, her expression then faltering slightly as she bent her neck to one side and put her palm against it as if it was sore.
“Have your bed back though, I’ll sleep on the floor,” he insisted, “You should have woken me up and I would have moved.”
“You needed the rest a lot more than I did, so don’t be silly,” Penny said candidly, and slid her legs around so that she could crawl on her knees towards a cabinet which appeared to contain lots of video cases.
“Come and have a look,” she beckoned, sliding the cabinet door open and gesturing for Jack to join her. He was self-conscious of moving close to this enormous girl, but she didn’t seem to notice his hesitance, perhaps because she was still waking up and concentrating on the cases instead.
Jack was used to walking alongside the forests of legs in the corridors at school, and occasionally interacting with the teachers or his Alpha peers when they crouched down, usually to intimidate or talk down to him, but to be in the presence of a giant in such a disarmingly relaxed setting felt very novel for him.
He stood alongside her long torso as she rested forward on her knees to reach into the cabinet and select several video boxes, which she then placed on the floor. He could sense her eagerness to show him her collection of movies, something they had discussed briefly when she had walked him home the other afternoon.
“Have you seen this?” Penny asked, showing him a cover with two men wearing tuxedos holding up a blonde-haired woman. It was an old black & white comedy from shortly before the use of growth hormone became prevalent; a film he’d heard was a classic of its genre but which he’d never actually seen.
“No I haven’t, but I’ve heard it’s good,” he replied.
“Oh, it’s one of my favourites,” she said excitedly, resting back on her heels so that she was kneeling, popping open the case to reveal a large silver disc around 10 inches in diameter.
The tall girl smiled, “My Mum always used to put it on when I was a kid, apparently it was one of few things that would hold my attention for more than a couple of minutes!”
She got up to her feet, catching Jack by surprise and almost knocking into him. He took a step back as the fellow teen towered over him, trying to hide how panicked he had suddenly become.
“Oops, sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to… err…”
“I’m fine, it’s fine,” he insisted, looking up at her to make sure she could see he wasn’t afraid. Way up. Being friends with an Alpha was going to take some getting used to.
“If you hop onto the bed I’ll stick it on,” she instructed, walking into the corner and pressing the eject button on a combination TV/video player she had on her shelf.
“No no, you have the bed, I’ll watch from here,” he insisted, parking himself down on the floor, staging a mini sit-in to show that she couldn’t change his mind.
“If you insist,” she laughed, putting the disc into the tray and pushing it closed. She turned the TV on and set it to play the movie, gauging the volume so it would not be so loud as to attract attention, and then clambered into her bed, pulling the covers over herself and propping up her pillows behind her head.
Jack was a bit shocked to see that the bed was only just long enough to accommodate her elongated form, she was so tall, even for an Alpha, that the bed was probably too small for her to fit in it comfortably, at least length-wise.
“There’s plenty of space to sit on the bed, too,” Penny suggested brightly, “You are my guest, you know.”
The thought of going and sitting right next to Penny was an electrifying one, but he felt awkward about it, and his body language betrayed the fact. Before he could stop himself, he felt the familiar tell of his fingers scratching his nose.
“Oh, errr… I’m fine, thank you,” he said unconvincingly.
“It’s not a problem, I won’t crowd you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she continued, and he could see she had moved as far away from his side as she could to make space.
It’s not about that, he thought. I can’t tell you the reason…
He was about to make an excuse, but he didn’t have anything.
“Come on!” she urged in a forced whisper, “I’ll prop you up with pillows.”
“And if I snore, you can kick me out,” she grinned.
That got him. He smiled.
Getting to his feet, he had to sort-of jump to get onto the bed, a bit like climbing out of a pool, but once up he was able to get himself settled near her torso, and, good as her word, she propped him up so that he could see quite comfortably.
He tried to hide it, but his heart was beating so fast just to be near to Penny. She didn’t seem to notice how big a deal this was for him, she was very kind, and friendly, and nonchalant, oblivious to how her every move, the proximity of her arms, the little glances she gave him, were affecting him.
It wasn’t particularly awkward or anything, he was just super aware of everything, and she quite clearly wasn’t – she was quite enjoying having a little buddy, but it felt a bit like that, like he was a little kid having a sleepover, not a 17-year-old boy lying next to a girl his age.
He tried not to dwell on it, it was so easy for him to sink into maudlin introspection of things, and this was a pretty massive thing for him, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that Penny wasn’t even aware that he was a teenage boy in the way that Caitlin so clearly, and inelegantly did. It’s not like he expected her to, or anything, it was just a feeling, an unpleasant one that had been gnawing inside, that she didn’t see him the same way he saw her, at all.
The film began, opening with a gangster car chase in Prohibition-era Chicago and soon introducing the two male leads, a pair of musicians performing inside a Speakeasy. It hadn’t started off as particularly comedic, but Jack was intrigued, and it was always a treat to catch a glimpse of the pre-GH world, where everyone and everything seemed to effortlessly have their place…