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Chapter 3: Panic stricken

His stomach was trying to get out through his mouth. The palm of his hand was sweaty and his legs were shaking as if he was lost in a blizzard. The Minor teenager looked at his alarm-clock. 8.12. p.m. He had spent the last five minutes frozen in place, unable to even move. His mind was reeling, unable to stay focused on anything. He was not ready to meet those strangers! He was not ready to have to endure hours of MAJORS eating their insane amount of foods! They gorged on so much meat, pastas, fried potatoes and the like that it was already sickening usually, but tonight, he would have to endure idle chat with people he barely had any memory off, probably with some crazy girl or boy trying to hit on him!

Worst, his world was changing far too quickly. He thought he had prepared himself to see his twin go to the University, something unheard of for a Minor, obviously. After all, Alaric spent most days at school anyway, so Alejandro had assumed that it would barely change anything. Yet, the idea of not seeing Al’ for weeks on end was taxing. His brother had been a roc in his life, there before, during and after the Incident. Without him, the Minor was sure he would have died years ago at the hand of Mac Ferlan, or would have suffered far more than he already had. Lindsey would remain here for some more time, perhaps up to two years but she would then move to. And he doubted his parents would be very happy with their older kid remaining hidden in his room…

“Get your shit together, you wimpy little coward”, he growled at his reflection. “You promised Lindsey you’d come with them to eat. You said to your mom that you were ready to see other MAJORS than your family or the nurses and doctors at the hospital. It was your fucking idea to agree with this visit, nobody forced it upon you!”

If he was honest with himself, Alejandro knew he hadn’t really had a choice. The Matthewson family would have come by and visited them, it had been decided when his mom had returned from her convention or whatever at New Orleans. His will had been heard only on very minor (ah!) details, such as the fact that he wouldn’t have to get all dressed for a party or that he wouldn’t have to stay the whole night with their guests. But he was expected to show at the dinner, and stay until it ended. Which meant hours on the edge. Hopefully, he would be between family members, which would help him remains calm, but something in his mother’s eyes when she had set the table earlier this day had made him think it wouldn’t be the case.

A new contraction of his guts made him wince. He felt so bad! His skin hadn’t been this white since the first few months spent in the hospital just after the Incident. His heart was pounding in his chest, as if ready to burst at any moment. Being so afraid he felt sick made him angry at himself, because he had chosen this path for himself weeks ago, on Joseph Mac Ferlan’s tomb. But his anger only exacerbated his malaise. He wanted to curl into a ball and cry like a baby, he wanted to scream and rage and seethe and he couldn’t pick a choice and do something.

The unmistakable stomping of Lindsey brought him back to the situation at hand. His sister and he had made a deal, so he would have to honor it. He had to go to the door, open it, walk, wave at Lindsey and go to the dining room. Otherwise, she would be really angry at him, and he hadn’t it in him to disappoint her simply because he was afraid of strangers. Yet, instead of doing what he had to do, he remained still, frozen in place. He saw his door open, the incredibly huge door made for MAJORS he always had never managed to open alone, and Lindsey bounced into his room. He half expected her to judge him, to berate him from not being with the family in the dining room. He began to shake and looked at his shoes.

With a massive boom, his little sister fell on her knees before him. Alejandro felt her powerful arms take him in a warm embrace. For once, she didn’t say anything, she didn’t try to lift him from the ground. To the contrary, he felt her weight shifting, grounding him a little more, and getting a weak grunt out of him. A rustle in his short hair gave way to a tickling sensation when her lips kissed his head.

“Do you want me to take you by the hand while we go down the stairs, big brother?”

A simple question, but which did so much to appease him. It did not deny him any agency, it allowed him a choice and he knew his Little Lind would respect it. She knew that the stairs where incredibly difficult for him to navigate, especially when he had to go up, but even going down meant repeated huge falls, which was exhausting. Most of the time, he proudly went at it alone, in a display of his ability to be autonomous. Well, as much as he could be, obviously. Tonight, he hadn’t the heart for such bravado.

“Yeah. I think I’ll need a little help” he said rather meekly.

Lindsey got up on her feet and her left hand engulfed her brother’s right. The warmth from the gigantic appendage was incredibly, especially when compared with Alejandro’s cold and almost lifeless fingers. It was the kind of things which always reminded him of how small and inferior he was to those giants, at least physically. Hugs, talks, it never bothered him much, well, not too much. But his hand, his arm truly, in the hand of another, it was another matter entirely. The result of his trauma, no doubt, but knowing it had hardly helped him get over it. Only being carried or lifted off the ground as if he weighted nothing was worst, really.

“Okay, we’ll be reeeeaaally slow, okay ‘Rando?” said Lindsey.

Without waiting for an answer, she began to climb down the massive stairs. She made a pause each time to let her brother catch up and stay with her. Alejandro could feel his arm shaking, and he was certain the young giantess alongside him felt it too, but she said nothing. It wasn’t usual, but sometimes, his loud and clumsy sister would be incredibly delicate. The Minor was more than happy that right now was one of those times.

“Aaand, here we are!” she said joyfully when the pair reached the living room. “So, you want to go eat right away or do you need some time to catch your breath?”

Alejandro looked at his younger sister winking at him and smiled for the first time this evening.

“I’ll catch my breath, thank you. I promise I won’t get back upstairs; I’ll join you very soon. Go get your place, Little Lind”.

In three great strides, Lindsey had left him alone in the darkened room. Alejandro began to breathe in and out very slowly. He had to be ready, mentally and physically, as best he could. Now the dance would begin. He was not stupid; he knew fairly well why his parents had actually accepted to receive those long-lost friends. They were anxious at the idea that he could remain single and remains forever with them. They loved him, he knew that, but they had aspirations which weren’t necessarily his. Sure, he wanted to meet a significant other, someone he would be well with, who would accept him as he was, but not at all costs.

“And good luck finding a MAJOR who’ll do just that” he whispered to no one in particular. “Ain’t no giant got time for some damaged and scruffy Minor like me anyway.”

With a sigh, he went to the dining room. The first thing he saw, he did not understood. There was something simply monstrously huge in the chair directly before him. It was like a massive wave of hair which went almost from the ground to extremely high above the table. The chairs on its right and left were empty, and he felt another bout of panic when he understood he would have to sit alongside this enormous being. Farther from the creature, to its right, were a black teenager, probably around fifteen or something, talking with Alaric and, beyond his twin, a forty-something year old man talking with his father. At least he suspected he was forty, since it was his Dad's age, and they seemed to be friends.

On the left of the colossus was an impressive specimen of a MAJOR woman. From where he was, her rack looked quite huge, probably big enough to engulf half of him with ease and her short black hair had been smoothed into a distinguished bob. That woman was sitting alongside his mother, who was talking with Lindsey, who was out of sight because of the monster in the chair.

“Are you sure he won’t return in his room?”, asked Ofelia, clearly worried.

“I made a deal with Lind, mom”, the Minor managed to say in a strained voice.

Just then, the gigantic being turned its head toward him. It had an incredibly beautiful face, with just the right amount of plumpness, and big brown eyes, warm and enticing, so beautiful he wanted to dive in them. But that woman was also equipped with breasts which made Mrs. Matthewson looks rather small breasted, and his mother absolutely flat. He could have been lost twice in it and still have room to spare. It was mesmerizing, sure, but most of all terrifying. He had never seen a MAJOR so massive. Then, it dawned on him that he knew this face. There were adds for her company’s online services, websites and more particularly her Fire-Brand social network, everywhere on the web. It was the soon to be billionaire Shannon Matthewson who was watching him with a rather hungry look in her eyes…

“Hey, Alejandro! Nice to meet you again!”

“Yeah… nice to meet you” he said, almost mechanically.

Putain de merde ! Couldn’t you actually got yourself interested in what mom was cooking, ya damn moron of a Minor! he berated himself silently.

How could have he been so stupid? He knew his mother wanted to find him a safe place to be. Where could be more safe than in the lap of a billionaire that could end being the tallest person in the world? She had dropped hints for two damn months straight, and he had been too lost in his own little world to even see it. Did I learn northing from the Incident or what? I should’ve known that I need to be always careful and not lost in my little bubble! Now, I’ll have to see if I can avoid getting hooked with a titanic woman who probably can’t take no for an answer and must weight a whole fucking ton and a half!

“So, sweetie, where do you want to sit?” asked his mother with a tone far too innocent to be honest.

The small teenager bit his tongue to refrain from a rather enraged comment. He had been played at, and he was the only one responsible for it. Instead of getting ready to play the game of attraction-repulsion that was a Minor’s life with MAJORS, he had buried his head in the sand and screamed from the top of his lungs to be sure that he would neither see nor hear anything of what was coming. Fine. He had a poor hand in this round, but it was the only one he had, and he was used of being dealt bad cards by life anyway. He would just have to make the best of it. A bold move was required to upset the other players.

“Well, there isn’t my special chair” he begun, letting his voice trail, as if he was still thinking. He could see his mother’s face lose some color, and he continued quickly to not be interrupted, “and it would be extremely impolite of me to make all our guests wait even more that I did right? So… Miss Matthewson, would it bother you that I eat with you?”

The gawking that his decision gave to all MAJORS present was well worth the risk. It was how the game had to be played when you were a Minor. He was certain that his family, and their guests, had assumed that he would try to get another chair, and obviously they would have obliged, but such gift would have meant bigger concessions from him down the line. Usually, he would have favored an approach from the distance, but it was too late for it now. Plus, Jules and Ofelia Ferrand had made a common mistake. They assumed that when sitting next to a MAJOR, the view was less impressing for a Minor.

It was far from always the case, especially when the giants were eating. Their casual display of strength were even more obvious when they ingurgitated amount of water or liquors which would have drowned a Minor in mere seconds as if they were sipping one or two drops of water, or when they masticated food so dense that someone like him had no chance to even managed to cut it alone. Plus, those hulking behemoths tended to lean toward the Minors around them, and with the lack of space, it was extremely intimidating.

By asking Shannon Matthewson to let him eat with her, he put her in a dilemma. Either she said yes, and she had to accept the idea that he would have to eat on the table next to her plate. A vision relatively terrifying, sure, but one he was relatively accustomed. Or she would have to decline, and letting such an opportunity to be with a Minor go would basically mean that she was not interested in him. Either way, he would be in a better position to continue the game.

“I…ah…. Eh, sure, yes, yes of course!” stammered the titanic black woman, obviously confused. “Do… ah, do you want me to pick you up, Alejandro?”

“Well…” he said slowly, “I can’t really get up on the table by myself, right? I mean, I’m not really great at mount-climbing, especially things as vertical as those chairs and tables are” he continued, waving his stump.

The eyes of the Amazonian woman were following the move of his left “arm” and she let out a rather confused giggle. Alejandro repressed a smile. Panic was still swirling inside of him, but the tension of the game being played at had put it in the back of his mind. Obviously, it wasn’t over, by a long shot, but he had put that huge lady on her back foot. He would have to press his advantage, but not now. He had already put the MAJORS in a situation they weren’t comfortable with, any more than that right now would be insulting, he knew that.

“Very well”, answered the older of the Matthewson children. “Please, tell me if I hold you too tight”.

“Will do” said the Minor as the enormous appendages of Shannon came to snatch him, slowly. He noticed that her hands were trembling. She was nervous. It was either very good, or very bad, but he hadn’t the luxury to find out now. He would have to discover who she was during the dinner.

“And please, call me Shannon” added the titan. “Miss Matthewson is so formal!”

“Hum”, he said without commitment as her fingers crawled toward his chest.

Chapter End Notes:

Chapter four should come out in a few moments, folks !

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