The sounds of the construction site were deafening. Somewhere someone was using a pneumatic drill with unrestrained enthusiasm, every staccato machinegun blast seeming to rattle Stephen’s hardhat. It didn’t fit properly, he thought. It wobbled on his head with every step.

He followed in the shadow of the foreman, trudging through the loose sand and patches of mud that were underfoot everywhere.

“They’ll be around here,” the man shouted over the noise in that casual way of someone used to making themselves heard.

He was right. They turned the corner of a nondescript slab of concrete, and there sat a collection of beast-people, loudly talking about one thing or another. They were massive, several of them having taken a flatbed trailer for a bench, taxing its suspension to the full. That would have been intimidating enough, but the fact that they fell silent and turned their stares on him made him clutch his clipboard like a badge of authority.

“Hey boys!” the foreman called, swaggering forward with a total disregard for the hostility they were showing the pencilpusher. “This is Stephen. He’ll be following you around for the day.”

“You the safety guy?” Rumbled the elephant man in a voice like two granite slabs rubbing together, a roll-up the size of a normal man’s arm dangling from his lip. He expelled smoke from his trunk, throwing up a curtain of noxious fog.

“Uh… yeah.” Stephen held up the clipboard as if it were meant to prove something. It just had a collection of checklists under the clip, nothing more. He gave a smile he hoped would be disarming, but did nothing to move the frowning faces of the enormous beastmen. Each of them was large enough to function as construction equipment, which is exactly why they worked here.

“I don’t see the point,” said the bear man in a deep rumble. Neither him nor the elephant needed to speak up to be heard. He was the smallest of the bunch, still taller than any healthy human could hope to be, but also with a stocky, broad build. He had claws like kitchen knives.

“No complaining. The boss says it’s gotta happen, so it’s gotta happen,” the foreman shouted.

There was a grumble of begrudging assent. The tortured undercarriage of the trailer creaked as someone shrugged in response.

A high whistle sounded, miraculously cutting through the noise pollution of the site. The foreman turned his head, then nudged Stephen again.

“Gotta go.” He looked back at the beastmen. “They’re good guys. Just don’t let them push you around too much.”

With a wink and a smile, the foreman made himself scarce, hustling to the source of the whistling.

Stephen looked back at the beastmen. He was on his own.

“Can’t follow us all, can you?” the bull with the nose ring asked.

He was right. They all worked at different locations, where-ever they were needed. But they had their own foreman of sorts all the same. Stephen tapped the clipboard with his pen, and looked at the name he’d been given.

“I’m looking for Frank.”

Silence. The men exchanged glances, then looked back at him. He could see their faces beginning to contort in the typical way of someone who was trying to hold in laughter, but as soon as one realized the other was doing the same there was no stopping it. The entire group erupted in a deep, booming laughter. The elephant slapped his thigh, causing localized seismic activity.

Oh Christ, was that going to be it? Either Frank was some sort of shitty in-joke, or he was the psycho of the group.

“What the fuck are you idiots laughing about?” a deep growl issued from behind Stephen. From behind, and far up.

He turned around.

There stood a tigress, with fierce orange fur and aggressive stripes. Like the rest of them, she’d fought gravity for every inch, twice as tall as him, and many times heavier. Part of that was the gut that seemed standard issue on any construction site, stuffed into coveralls that could house a human family. But under the fat was obvious muscle. Any one of them would have the strength of a crane or earth mover, and she was no exception. The belt holding up his pants would just about fit around one of her arms.

She noticed him too. Yellow eyes meant to stalk prey looked him up and down, noticing the clipboard, the color coded visitor’s hardhat, the jeans and sweatshirt that screamed ‘I just dressed to get dirty, not to actually work or anything’.

“Who’s the squishy?”

“Safety guy,” the elephant puffed out another cloud of smoke that could smother a trench and force a breakthrough, “meet Frank.”

The predatory eyes turned fully onto him, blazing beneath a knitted brow. He’d say she was sizing him up, but it felt more like she was sizing him down.

“You’re here for me?” she said, the suspicion in her voice icing her words.

OK, she might be able to crush him into a ball and shoot a three-pointer with him, but she wasn’t going to. No sense in being afraid, no matter how much the screaming, primitive part of his brain was trying to make it seem like a good idea.

“I’m doing a safety evaluation of working conditions for large scale employees,” he yelled over the noise of the site, up to her round animal ears.

Good job, Stephen. Got the sentence out in one go, and having to shout his words concealed the tremble.

“Why haven’t I been told?” the giant cat woman growled, planting her clawed hands in her sides.

“It’s not fair if you get to prepare,” Stephen shouted up at her, hoping to break the ice a little. No success. “They should have told you this morning.”

She rolled her eyes and seemed to curse under her breath.

“Bus broke an axle. I only just got here.”

He felt her eyes bore into him for a few seconds more before she flicked her gaze briefly back to her colleagues, then back to him. There was a subdued, heavy chuckle from the men.

“Fine.” Frank let out a heavy sigh. “Follow me.”

She turned on the spot with surprising speed. There was a woosh, and a brief breeze as her tail swept through the air over his head, pushing his hardhat askew.

Jesus, there was some fur padding on the thing, but it’d still be like being hit by a fur-padded baseball bat. Did she even know that thing was dangerous to wave around like that? Should he note it down? There was no category for tails, and technically they hadn’t started yet. He opted for quickly jotting ‘tail danger?’ in the margin before following her.

It took some doing to keep up with her. Obviously, her strides were long, and she made no effort to adjust to a more human pace. For every step she took, Stephen had to take four, leaving him to scuttle after her uncomfortably, trying to maintain some dignity by not going into a full jog. To questionable results.

Her ass was as fat as her stomach. That wasn’t something he normally would have been on the search for, but with it being this clearly in view, there was no getting around it. Quite literally, too. When she ducked into the unfinished hulk of the building there was no room to walk beside her. So he kept to her rear, wary to keep clear of her swinging tail.

They came out at the other side. A crew of normal size was waiting besides a trench in the sand. When they caught sight of Frank, and it was hard not to, they got off their asses and started moving around in reluctant Monday morning activity.

One of them jokingly commended her on her lax working hours, and she responded in a growl about the bus before taking hold of a truly enormous shovel. By all appearances it was a normal shovel, sized up, with a steel handle instead of wood, and menacing earthbreaking spikes much like the bucket of a mechanical excavator.

“You just sit and watch, right?” she spoke in his direction.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “Just do what you’d normally do.”

The meaning of the stares he got was obvious. The same man who called out Frank said something about having an easy job. Stephen just shrugged. He was right enough, at least for this part. He’d have to write a report, too, but no-one who lifted stuff for a living could ever believe that was the hard part. And if he was a smart-ass and asked why they didn’t do it, then… things got less amiable. He thought it was a healthy habit to not piss off people who did physical labor.

The large cat got to work without further comment, thrusting the spade deep into the ground and bringing up mountains of sandy soil. It was a sight to behold, the muscles of her arms and back bulging under the coveralls. Her extra weight seemed to be no impediment, and with a few swings of the shovel she had excavated another length of the trench.

As she worked, he ticked off his checklist. Did people stay clear of the equipment? Questionable. Was safety equipment properly used? Yes. Everyone wore their hardhats.

The purpose of the trench became clear. When Frank judged it long enough, she lumbered out with two large steps, and went for a stockpile of concrete sewer pipes. With a grunt, she moved one from the top and carefully rolled it to the edge.

That thing could crush a man.

The crew moved around her, threading heavy duty hoist ropes around the bulk of the pipe. Frank took a length of rope in each hand and started lowering the thing into place, leaning back to provide counterweight. Two men of the crew jumped into the trench to give her directions and make adjustments. Within a few minutes, it was where it supposed to be.

Damn, she really is as strong as a crane, Stephen thought, then jotted down that a man could be caught under the weight due to equipment failure or operator error.

More of the same followed. While he kept an eye open for potential safety hazard, most of his notes for this activity were done. He just watched as the cat and crew moved earth and pipes. She looked impressive just standing around, but at work she was another beast entirely. At one point she decided she didn’t have a good way down into the trench, and simply jumped. The ground shuddered, and he could see the water in puddles ripple.

Eventually, that most sacred hour rolled around. Lunch. Workers around the site abandoned their equipment to sit, unwrap sandwiches, light up cigarettes, go on coffee runs, or retreat to where-ever they had left their lunch. This, at least, wasn’t too dissimilar from the office.

The trench crew, too, put down their work. Frank stabbed the shovel at the ground, burying it to the hilt. That was the real Excalibur, right there.

She made to move away, then stopped near him, looking down. Her eyes seemed somewhat less baleful than they had been.

“You’re not as much of a pain in the ass as I thought you were going to be, safety guy.”

Not a high bar to reach, with one as large as yours.

He slapped the thought down.

“Thanks,” he said instead. “My name’s Stephen, by the way.”

A grin spread over her face, showing sharp teeth. “My name’s Franky. With a ‘y’.”

So that’s what was up with her name. That single letter made a real difference. With ‘Franky’ he imagined some slight, quirky girl, not the striped tank before him. But with ‘Frank’, he didn’t imagine a woman at all, and he had an instant flashback to various times he’d been called ‘Stephy’. It was hard to imagine who would be courageous enough to pull that joke on Franky.

It was still a weird name, though.

“So, Stephy…”

Goddamnit!

“…What did you pack for lunch?”

And shit. He knew he’d forgotten something this morning. He’d been looking up the commute to the site, he didn’t work here, after all, and it had messed up his morning routine, he’d had to leave earlier, and… just shit.

“Nothing.”

The tigress blinked at him. “You on a diet or something?”

“No, I just forgot.”

“Fuck it, you can have some of mine. I don’t think I’ll miss your little mouse bites.” She rubbed her belly. No, she shamelessly grabbed at it, digging her fingers into her fat, and let out a growling laugh. “Been trying to lose weight anyway. Come on, I bet the boys think you’re cute.”

She set off at a relaxed stride. This time the tail didn’t swish dangerously over his head, but he was on his guard all the same. At least he could keep up, this time.

He didn’t like the feeling of having to borrow lunch from someone, freely offered mouse bites or not. But at the same time he found himself wondering what it’d be. Raw meat? Certainly meat of some sort. Would he be eating a bloody chunk of steak, or a messy handful of tartare?

When they cut past a section of the building to be, there was a faint rumble. Chunks of concrete started hitting the ground around them, and Stephen felt the icy grip of crystal clear realization on his stomach. Somewhere in the distance people started shouting, their voices muddled and slow, as if he was stuck in amber. Everything seemed to slow down as his body’s survival instincts kicked in. He was surprised at the sudden clarity it provided. He noticed the jagged edges of the rubble, the pitter-patter of the small chunks hitting his hardhat, the hail hits on his shoulders. He even had time for a few errant thoughts. Just like in a video game, he thought. Ironic, that the safety guy was going to be crushed by rubble. And he really should have cleared his browser history.

Despite going into bullet time, he couldn’t will his limbs into movement. They felt sluggish, undefined, as if they’d anticipated the accident and just done away with their bones to get things over with.

Heavier chunks started hitting the ground with equally heavier thuds, sending up sprays of sand. This was it, then. One of them would hit him, probably more than one, and that’d be the end. The light of day was already dimming in the shower of debris, dust swirling into his eyes and nose.

Then everything went black.

Oh well, he thought.

But he noticed it wasn’t sharp, jagged concrete choking him. It was soft, but coarse, with the smell of musky sweat. The weight bore down on him all the same, squeezing the air out of his lungs and preventing him from getting any in to replace it. If things were black before, they now went slightly blacker still.

-------------------------------------------------------------

The weird thing about waking up was that he wasn’t really waking up. Rather, Stephen gained a mounting awareness of the things around him, such as the fact that he was lying in bed, that everything around him was white, that there was a dull, but distant, pain in his ribs, and that he was saying… something to the other person in the room. A middle-aged man with a leg lying above the covers in a thick cast.

“What…” he said, trying to recover from the initial surprise, “…what was I saying?”

The man with the broken leg registered surprise.

“You’re finally out of it, then?”

“Out of what?”

The man let out a single laugh. A loud ‘hah!’ that you’d need some form of advanced age to really get right.

“I don’t know what they gave you, but it really messed with your head. Son, you’ve been rambling like a drunk.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” the man continued, eager to share the story now Stephen would actually remember it, “you asked what time it was twenty times. At least!”

Stephen dug himself into his sheets, preparing for the recounting of shameful things he probably said. He’d seen that video of the girl at the dentist going on about how she wanted to be railed by Ryan Gosling, to the great embarrassment of her mother. He knew his own mind well enough to realize what sort of thing would have been on the forefront if he were in a similar state. But as the man’s eyes lit up with what was no doubt to be a juicy fact, a nurse cut between them. The old, no-nonsense sort. Pear-shaped, short hair, and a chiseled expression of neutrality. She knew exactly what she was doing, and Stephen was grateful for that fact.

“You’re lucid,” she stated.

He took stock of his mind. Yup, seemed to be all in place. The memory of the last few minutes was entirely intact.

With the fact confirmed, the nurse called a doctor, and wasted no time putting the practical facts to him. His clothes were in the bed-side cabinet, but he might want to get some new ones. Are these your house keys? Yes, they are. Oh, here’s your phone.

Screen cracked, unresponsive.

Fuck. Well, there went calling his boss and parents. At least the former would already know, and the latter didn’t really need to right now, unless the doctor was to come in with a particularly grave look on his face. He felt no bandages beneath the covers, so he figured he wasn’t heavily injured. No, better to wait with calling his parents until he was home. If he called them from the hospital, especially if he put effort into it, he’d have to talk them out of hopping onto the first flight.

Frankly, he thought, it was surprising how well he was taking having been almost crushed to death.

Wait… Frankly… Franky…

The residual memory of musky tiger sweat came back to him. The cat had thrown herself on top of him like a giant, orange airbag. Fuck. Was she OK? She wasn’t here, obviously. But it’s not like she’d fit. Maybe at a large scale ward? He’d have to look into it. But the way she was built it wouldn’t surprise him if she’d shrugged off the concrete shower with nothing to show for it.

Before he could agonize about it too much, the doctor joined them, bearing no grave look on his long face. It was more of a casual disinterest, which was positively the most angelic way a doctor could look in the ER ward.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” the doc said.

Real original.

“I bet you get to say that a lot,” he shot back.

“About once a week,” the doctor said without pause. “Is that a lot?”

Stephen shrugged, and immediately regretted it, as a sharp pain shot through his body, radiating out from his midsection. He winced and sucked in air between his teeth.

“You’ve got a few bruised ribs. No internal damage. Some minor scrapes on your back, arms, and legs. You were without oxygen for a while, according to the ambulance crew, but you were breathing on your own. So I’m afraid you can’t claim you died and came back to life.”

“Guess I’ll have to cancel my daytime talkshow appearances,” Stephen said, refraining from shrugging or any other type of movement.

The doctor lifted his casual demeanor to crack a smile.

“I wouldn’t. You’re the most talkative patient we’ve had who’s been crushed by a ton of rubble.”

It wasn’t rubble. It was a tiger. And she probably didn’t weigh a ton, at least not literally. Probably. But he decided to leave that in the middle, for now. He had no idea how it would go on the books for the insurance company if he wasn’t technically injured by falling rubble. Maybe it was paranoia, but he’d seen things pass his desk that put this sort of worry close to hand.

Oh, the riveting life of a construction safety clerk.

Wait, that was a good pun. He’d have to remember that one.

Then followed more of the same, though Stephen’s mind was really only half there for it. He was shown some X-rays and scans that showed the surprising lack of damage. He was given some papers to sign, a bottle of pills, and a prescription for more. Painkillers, obviously. If he wanted to do anything more than lie on the couch without dropping to the floor and doing the excruciating pain dance, he’d be on them for a while. And even lying on the couch was iffy, depending on the couch.

They offered the use of a phone, naturally, but Stephen refused. Not out of any conviction of one sort or the other, but as a true child of the modern generation he had to admit he didn’t know any number by heart. The reception desk would be happy to call a cab for him, and he could just do all the necessary calling and mailing from home.

He was leaving today, wasn’t he?

Yes, he was. Hospital beds are expensive, and ribs heal anywhere. They’d keep him a few hours for observation, but he’d sleep in his own bed tonight.

And they did just that. He read a dog-eared magazine about interior fashion, dozed a little, and chatted with his roommate. The man’s accident had been dreadfully boring for the horrible compound fracture he’d been given in return. Just a simple slip down the stairs.

Of course, Stephen went into a quarter hour monologue about the danger of stairs. Stairs were one of the biggest killers in modern society. Really, we keep an architectural feature in our houses that’s almost perfectly designed to break bones and fracture skulls if you were to toss someone down it. That’s exactly what the Aztecs did with prisoners and their monstrously steep temple stairs. No, the ideal stairs would be the opposite of Aztec stairs, with large, shallow steps.

It’d take up too much room, the older man wisely interjected.

But we could use playground slides, couldn’t we? Much more fun, and much safer. Sure, you can’t go up them, but that’s half the danger eliminated. Just put them next to the regular stairs.

Eventually the man’s son came to the ward, helping him into a wheelchair for easy transport. As he was about to be wheeled away, their brief intersection in each other’s lives coming to an end, the man turned to him a last time.

“One more thing, son. I’m guessing you’re not together with this Frank guy, but you wouldn’t stop talking about him before.” He gave a wink. “Nobody cares if you’re into fat, hairy guys. Just listen to your heart.”

Stephen attempted a stuttering response, but the old guy was already out of the door before he could think of anything, waving like the queen of Britain all the way. Goodbye, then. Watch out for those stairs.

Shit, what did he even say? Franky’s bulk smothering anyone was sure to leave an impression, and at the time he’d been sure it was the last thing he’d ever experience. Plus, he’d spent a decent amount of time with her ass in front of his face. He knew himself. It had crossed his mind at least once how she had the proportions of a Robert Crumb character, and Crumb was an ass man if there ever was one.

Yeah, he probably talked about crawling up there like the snoid, the tiny man who loves fat asses so much that he lives in one.

It was probably better not to think about it. At the very least he’d have to thank Franky for, you know, the whole saving his life business. Better to leave out any speculations about how he thought he told some random stranger he’d like to crawl up her butt, but only because that’s what his rational self thought he’d say with his inhibitions removed. It wouldn’t be a good look.

Not entirely succeeding in banishing the thoughts of what his zonked out self would have wanted to do with the big tigress, Stephen buried his nose and mind in the interior decorating magazine once more. A bit of a tall order, given how far he was removed from the suggestions it offered. Who the hell would even spend that much on a rug? How come there aren’t any magazines like this for people who don’t have any money to spend? If anyone needed some smart suggestions, it was them.

When he was pondering the meaning of reclaimed wood tea cabinets running into the thousands, and considering that a dedicated tea cabinet wasn’t that bad of an idea, they came to boot him out.

It wasn’t quite that dramatic, but all hints of the stuff that turned him into a filthy-mouthed freak had worn off. Consequently the process of liberating himself from bed… wasn’t fun.

He might have cursed a little.

OK, a lot.

With help of the nurse, who was thankfully built solidly enough to lean on, he eventually got it. She pulled him into some cheap sweatpants and a hoodie.

Just as he was trying to guess where the spare clothing had come from, the answer revealed itself.

“Thank God you’re OK.”

He’d know that voice anywhere, though he’d never heard it say anything close to what it was saying now. In the door opening stood a thin, tall man with a shock of ginger hair on his head, perpetual stubble on his chin, and office casual sense of dress.

Leonard Conroy. Otherwise known as ‘the boss’. Because that’s what he was.

“Wow. I’m getting the royal escort.”

Conroy moved to support him. “I dropped everything as soon as I got the call.”

He couldn’t exactly blame the boss. The most risk any of them were ever in was of developing back pain, and not from heavy lifting, either. Maybe a papercut here and there, but honestly it’d been years since he ever heard anyone complain of one. Office workers really don’t get as many papercuts as most people think.

The nurse rustled up a wheelchair, and Stephen quickly found himself sitting in it as his boss pushed him down the corridors of the hospital, a plastic bag with his own clothes sitting in his lap, the smell of pulverized concrete drifting up out of it.

“I’ll drop you off at your place,” Conroy said as they moved down the sterile white corridors. “And I’m putting you on sick leave for a week. We’ll see how things go.”

“I can work from home,” Stephen feebly offered, but was acutely aware of how weak he sounded.

“What are they putting you on?”

Stephen fumbled around for the pill bottle, read the label.

“Tramadol.”

Conroy laughed. “Just take the week, Stephen.”

They rolled out into the parking garage, dark grays and the smells of exhaust fumes and filthy asphalt replacing the bright whites and disinfectant. Conroy’s Lexus was that sort of management vehicle that slyly tries to look subdued, with enough hints to show that it is, indeed, better than anything you can afford. But that meant the seats were comfortable, which was of the utmost importance right now.

“What about the investigation?” He offered as they pulled out onto the road.

“We’re putting the spotlight on this, Stephen. One of our guys getting into an accident during a safety walk is extremely embarrassing.”

He thought of Franky. Would she catch any flak for this? Officially, she’d be responsible for him on the site. The construction company would be looking for a scapegoat, if he knew companies.

“You’ll get a call in due time. So get a new phone, OK?”

“What about my report?”

Maybe it was a silly question, but he’d made a few observations there that he wouldn’t want anyone else to take any meaning from.

“We found the clipboard, but the entire thing is practically unreadable. Don’t worry about it, we’re starting from scratch on this one.”

They turned down the road to Stephen’s apartment. Conroy helped Stephen out and to his front door. The comfort of his home close, his mind was already wandering to thoughts of doing absolutely nothing at all. Before he closed the door, a quizzical look formed on the boss’ face.

“What does ‘tail danger’ even mean, anyway?”

-------------------------------------------------------------

In his mind’s eye, he had pictured himself weathering his injury with dignity and practicality. What that exactly would have looked like, he didn’t know. It was more of a vague desire, to use his week’s free time to set things up in a way to make things easy for himself.

However, nothing came of it. Tramadol turned out to be a real knockout drug, and Stephen found himself doing very little at all. He became well acquainted with YouTube, Netflix, and the various take-out places near him, as his already rudimentary instinct for housekeeping broke down completely. He got online with his friends, true enough, but his distant, cloudy demeanor was rather more a source of entertainment than anything else.

Then there were the dreams. Weird, waking dreams, and weird, sleeping dreams. They were filled with falling rubble, the smell of dust in the air, and giant, fluffy tigresses. The dream tigresses jumping on him, smothering him beneath big bellies, breasts, and butts. One time he woke in complete clarity, the pain in his ribs gone. He cleaned his apartment in a breeze, pulled on his coat, and opened the door to step outside, only to see that before him there was only a sheer drop down. Soft, orange fur to both sides, and a giant tail swishing to and fro overhead. Then he woke up for real, sweating in his bed, morning wood mocking him from under the covers.

Well, he had himself to thank for that image. Himself and Robert Crumb.

It was only near the end of the week that he started looking into phones. It was hard enough to make sense of all the features, payment plans, and whatever when your brain is off floating somewhere near the ceiling. If it hadn’t been an absolute necessity he’d have put it off as easily as he did with the dishes and the laundry, but the words of the boss nagged in his mind. An investigation, and a reevaluation of his sick leave.  The pain had lessened, so maybe he could be of some use again.

Thanks to the blessings of modern society the next day a delivery guy dropped off the package, within a nondescript, budget line phone he’d picked more out of randomness and need than any real interest. He made the painful decision to leave the pills be for a while, and slotted in the SIM from his previous device.

As soon as he booted up, a long list of notifications rolled down the screen. He should have seen that coming. All of his app groups went on without him. But… no, he hadn’t installed his apps yet. He squinted at the icons. New e-mails were nicely condensed in their own category, but the rest had that tell-tale icon of an old fashioned telephone next to them.

Missed calls.

Who called people anymore? He got maybe two calls per week, on average.

The feeling he’d done something wrong sneaked up on him. The opiate had been a snug blanket against the world, and without it he was suddenly reminded of such things as responsibilities and obligations. Sure enough, there were multiple calls from his boss, from his parents, friends, but also a load of numbers that didn’t ping number recognition.

Maybe if they were old fashioned enough to call, they were old fashioned enough to leave voice mail.

“Hello honey,” his mother’s voice chimed from the tinny speaker, “we heard there was an accident on the news. I know it’s silly to be worried, but give us a call, OK? Your aunt says hi.”

The news? Of course, there had been an article somewhere saying ‘man injured in construction accident’, but those didn’t even gain traction on the internet. And his mom still read the paper.

Next message.

“Hey Stephen, Leonard here. I told you to get a new phone. Look, the case has blown up, so just sit tight, alright? Call me when you can.”

Next message.

“Hello Mr. Clover, I’m calling on behalf of the Local Bugle. We’re covering the accident you were involved in, and would be interested in interviewing you on the ordeal you went through. If you’re interested, ask for Sam Worthy. Take care.”

He knew the Local Bugle. They were neither local, nor a bugle. They printed lurid tales about weird, gullible people for weird, gullible people. Stuff like how a celebrity with a rumored allergy was rumored to visit exclusively labradoodle prostitutes. How the fuck had these vultures gotten his number?

It didn’t stop there, either. An impressive array of media people paraded past on his voicemail server, not even all of them total ambulance chasers. There were some real newspapers represented here, some real websites, and even a real television show.

Daytime television.

The more unscrupulous headline-hunters called multiple times, checking in a few days later to turn off their unresponsive target with increasingly hyperbolic language, offers of payment where there first had been the public interest, and vaguely threatening language.

Christ, the boss wasn’t kidding. At least it was only the ass-end of media that no-one took seriously. Without planning or intending it he’d gone off the grid quite successfully. Maybe the entire thing had already blown over.

At that moment, as he pondered the treasure trove of trash media in his hand, the phone’s standard ringtone blared through its tiny speakers with amazing volume. Stephen jumped at the sudden noise, immediately regretting it owing to the equally sudden stabbing pain in his sides, clutched at his sides in pure instinct, and immediately dropped the phone.

And that thing was so new there were still stickers on it. Cursing himself, Stephen got down to floor level at the best speed he could manage. Which is to say, his grandfather would do a better job of it. Granted, the old man could get down on the floor with such alacrity that it could, and had, landed him in the hospital, whereas Stephen had taken the reverse course. But he was in luck. The screen was uncracked, and the caller persistent.

Another unknown number. His first instinct was to let it ring, to remain excommunicated for another day, but the words of Conroy swam back into his memory. Investigation. Not to mention the other in-word, insurance.

With a smooth motion he flicked his thumb over the phone’s screen and listened, half expecting a media vulture.

“Hello? Stephen? You there?”

A voice like the rolling thunder of an early autumn storm. It had a familiar growl around its edges, spoken past sharp teeth.

“Franky?”

“Yeah. Listen, we need to talk.”

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With some effort he managed to locate some socially acceptable clothing, and with considerably more effort managed to pull it onto himself. Just a hoodie and jeans, of which he was sure at least one had seen a washing cycle somewhere recently. Hands thrust in pockets he fondled the pill bottle, unopened, like a talisman. It’d be there if he needed it.

Franky hadn’t been talkative. No ‘how are you?’ or ‘glad you’re not dead’, just the name of an establishment. It stuck in his head as the city passed by the bus’ windows. In fact, the entire tigress had stuck in his head for a week, now. Maybe that’s why he thought there ought to have been a bit more.

The bus vomited him out at his stop, in a neighborhood he normally only saw from the other side of the windows. Once, it had been the heart of the city’s blue collar population, but that time was visibly coming to an end. Modern glass facades stood tightly drawn up between rustic, unassuming brickwork, here and there oppressive concrete reminding people what efficiency looked like. Where once factory workers with flat caps would have lounged aggressively on street corners puffing on roll-ups, now stood hipsters with beards and beanies being aggressively non-offensive. They at least still smoked roll-ups, though. Away from the main streets some old-fashioned businesses still clung to a precarious half-life between their modern counterparts. Stuck away in side streets and alleys still existed unassuming dive bars, simple barbers, and the like. But even here the spectre of gentrification crept closer, as evidence by a run-down old noodle place sat across the street from its alternate reality self, loud advertisements rolling past on flatscreen billboards behind floor-to-ceiling glass.

In one of those side streets an old warehouse stooped wearily between two modern buildings, unassuming aside from the garish neon sign over its giant double cargo doors. ‘Big Joe’s’ the sign read, though the ‘s’ flickered more off than on. That’s the place Franky told him to come to, and the big doors weren’t just there for nostalgia. The giants standing outside, drinking and smoking at standing tables the size of parasols, cast strange glances at him as he made his way inside. His being out of place was obvious, but it was so obvious that it couldn’t be chalked up to any sort of social unawareness. He clearly meant to be here, so they said nothing.

Inside, in that typical bar gloom, his confidence left him somewhat. It was a bar writ large, everything being bigger and louder. A dozen conversations rumbled together like a freight train, glasses slammed onto tables or clinked in toasts like industrial activity. The cadence of people simply walking, let alone stamping their feet, traveled through the floorboards with a subtle vibration that made Stephen realize just how tiny he was. Subconsciously he put his arms around his aching ribs, though it would do him little good if one of these people didn’t see him and stepped back…

Even as he searched the crowd for a flash of orange and black, the flash of orange and black found him. With a call and a waving arm Franky brought his attention to a table near the wall.

“Squishy coming through! Watch it! Squishy coming through!”

Eyes turned to him as people gingerly checked their feet. Legs like tree trunks moved aside to let him pass. Sure, it was better than tapping people on the thighs and hoping they didn’t think he was an itch, but it felt very much like being on the other side of that thing everyone does when there’s a toddler at an adult party.

Franky sat casually leaning back in a battered chair, legs wide, one arm slung over the back. With the other she gestured to the opposite side of the table, a real shit-eating grin plastered on her fuzzy face. The sharp teeth made it look somewhat menacing still.

“Have a seat.”

There stood not an upsized normal chair, but a straight-from-the-beach lifeguard chair. Turns out they’re just the right size to let a ‘squishy’ sit at the table. Give it its own, little table and the toddler theme could continue.

Forgetting himself, Stephen took hold of the rungs and made to pull himself up, winced, cursed, and nearly doubled over at the stabbing pain in his sides. God damnit. Of course he can’t climb a ladder. What was he thinking?

“You OK?” Franky said with a casual form of concern.

“My ribs are fucked.” He glanced up at the impossible height. “I’m going to need a hand.”

That was the literal description, as it turned out. Franky just scooped him up, carefully, with both shovel-sized hands, depositing him in the chair with only a brief stab of pain.

Yeah, she looked incredibly pleased with herself as she put her fat ass back down in her own chair, predatory eyes twinkling with mischief, whiskers splayed proudly wide, the tip of her knock-out tail swaying behind her back.

With no hardhat to obscure it he could see she had a haphazardly cut head of hair, though it seemed more an outgrowth of thick fur battered into submission, continuing the pattern of her pelt in an unintentional display of avant garde fashion. That was really the only bit of fashion about her, because otherwise she was unapologetically the opposite of fashionable, wearing a baggy T-shirt with a faded print that did nothing to flatter anything while also not hiding her belly or…

Tits.

They were pretty big, Stephen noticed. Hey, it’s the male gaze, he couldn’t really blame himself. And not just big in the absolute sense, which they absolutely were, but also in the relative sense. For her size, Franky was well endowed, her bust being just as robust as the rest of her.

Jesus, Stephen, get a grip. First you’re checking out her ass, and now her breasts? This woman could bend you into a pretzel and then eat you like one. He might go well with the barrel of beer she’d worked half her way through.

“You look like shit warmed over.” Franky said.

“Glad to see you’re doing well, too. I was kinda worried.”

She bellowed out a burst of laughter. “It’ll take more than a few pebbles.”

“Thanks, by the way. For saving my life and all.”

“Nah,” she waved away the accusation with a meaty paw, “you were just in the way, is all.”

“In that case, fuck you for crushing me.”

She seemed to appreciate that.

“So how’s it feel to be dead?” she asked.

Wait. What?

“You’re going to have to explain that one to me.”

“Haven’t been keeping up with the news?”

“Uh, no?” He attempted a moderate shrug, but didn’t feel like he got it across. “I’ve been high off my ass on painkillers, and my phone was busted. Still is. I got a new one. Anyway, I had a dozen missed calls from journalists.”

Her black lips curled into a grimace. “Guess that explains it.”

From a pocket she fished a phone, or rather a tablet that looked like a phone in her hands. She stabbed a finger at the screen a few times and turned it to him. Corralled between bands of bottom feeder advertisements and the very latest celebrity gossip was a thick and flashy headline:

‘Crushing news: Construction behemoths kill safety inspector.’

The Local fucking Bugle. He hadn’t picked up the phone, and that’d been enough for them. That wasn’t the only thing, either. A quick glance at the body of the article revealed lurid, and entirely made up, details about an anti-human conspiracy among the large scale workers.

“Nobody takes that shit seriously,” he said more for his own benefit than anything, then thought of something that would benefit him more. “I need a beer.”

As he turned to search the room for a server he found his senses jarred by the perspective. It wasn’t like he had truly forgotten where he was, but the autopilot part of his brain had taken him sitting at a table as a sign that everything had returned to normal. It hadn’t, and that part did responded to that revelation by inducing a spike of vertigo. Not enough to make the room spin, but it definitely moved by a few degrees.

The problem was, Stephen decided, the deceptive normalness of everything now he was up high. The barkeep tapped a glass, and the way the beer gushed from the tap just didn’t look quite right, just as the foam collar it formed didn’t look quite right. Without any other frame of reference, such as a normal sized person, these were the only things that hinted at the fact that the bar was actually large enough that you could rent out the cupboards as student housing.

Did everything look like this for them, too? The entire world a delicate dollhouse? Or did the brain stop jolting itself after enough exposure?

Having refrained from flagging down anyone, a waitress came over anyway. Then again, he could see her coming from across the room, and he was pretty sure she’d seen him, too. Because she was a giraffe, slender neck reaching out even above most of the giants in this place. She probably never went to the movies, but she was born for a job like this.

“Hey Franky!” the giraffe girl gave a cheery greeting from on high.

Figures. This place might as well be a small town bar, with its select clientele.

“Zoe. Looking good.” Franky flashed her a toothy smile. Was she capable of giving a normal smile, or did they all look like she was about to pounce? She held up the barrel-sized glass, which had somehow become empty while he wasn’t watching. “I’ll take another one, and one for my tiny buddy.”

It was understood he’d also be drinking from a tiny glass, he hoped. After a week of no drinking and bad food he wasn’t particularly in the mood to level the big guns at his liver quite yet.

“What about the other papers?” he asked once the waitress had left.

“Eh…” The tigress shrugged her broad shoulders. “Same bullshit, kinder words. They’re just guessing, and they’re guessing wrong.”

“But you didn’t call me over just to talk about the news, right?” It seemed pretty obvious to him. Even though it was slightly paranoid, if the more unscrupulous journalists could in some way eavesdrop on his phone, they would.

She leaned back with a deliberate slowness, the wood of the chair creaking like an old house in winter. “This shit’s hurting people. Good people, not just me. They’re spinning this into being about all of us, big people I mean. Guys’ve been put on half hours already, union won’t stand up for us.”

“But that’s all nonsense. No serious paper would print it.” He hoped he was right in having that much faith in the media. No doubt it was only contained to tabloids and agitator websites. “Besides, the investigation isn’t even looking into large scale workers. As far as they’re concerned rocks fell, nobody died.”

“You know who gives a fuck about the investigation? No-one.” The growl in Franky’s voice grew as she spat the words, whiskers bristling. “And the ‘serious’ newspapers just use it as a reason to talk about the shit they really want to talk about.”

She was scary when angry, but at least she looked kind of cute doing air quotes.

“And what’s that?” she continued. “Big folk doing jobs little folk can’t, big folk earning more, and this bullshit pseudo-scientific, Freudian glorification of machine power as if introducing a collection of designers, mechanics, trainers, drivers and shit doesn’t add way more opportunity for failure!” She simmered down to a grumble. “I swear, there are people taking kickbacks from CAT.”

Zoe the giraffe returned with their drinks, placing another pool’s worth of beer under Franky’s nose, while thankfully giving Stephen something more manageable. Still a larger glass than he was used to from any regular bar, but he’d soldier his way through it somehow.

The interruption left Franky to stare sullenly at her glass for a while. Where first her whiskers had bristled fiercely, they now hung limp. Even the black and white stripes on her face seemed to accentuate a more contemplative expression. Her eyes flicked up at him, and for a moment she seemed more kitten than tigress before they returned to their previous hardness.

“I got kinda carried away. You’re pretty easy to talk to, you know that?”

In fact, he did know that, because people had said it before. Instead of saying that, he just answered “Thanks.”

“Thing I wanted to ask is, it’d be nice if you could do… something.”

For the moment Stephen hid behind his glass, taking a generous swig of generic pilsner. The first beer since the accident. He feared the favor Franky was about to ask, and he feared whether he’d be able to refuse.

“What were you thinking of?”

“You said they tried calling you, yeah?”

He nodded.

“So do an interview, tell ‘em what you just told me. That we’re not even on the radar.”

Yeah, that was what he was expecting.

“The investigation is still going. Going to the media about that… I might as well climb onto my boss’ desk and piss in his face.” He tried to sound as apologetic as possible, but the beer was hitting him with unexpected confidence. “Besides, it’s giving them exactly what they want. Accidents happen, we investigate, improve, and the media never gives a shit.”

It’s not like accidents in construction were particularly rare, least of all with things falling down. Though, most of the time that was the workers themselves. Falling from great heights was the leading cause of death among construction workers, and it had nothing to do with their size or animal nature.

On the other side of the table Franky grumbled, shifting in her chair to creaking protest. Under the need for action, he figured, she realized he was right. Her slouch was oddly photogenic, making her appear like an understated, ill-kempt, furred Venus. That is, until she idly scratched her big belly.

Or maybe that was just the beer talking. Boy, it packed a punch.

“What if they don’t stop?” she growled. “What if your investigation says I crushed you, and they just cherry-pick that?”

He shrugged, and didn’t regret it quite as much as before. Thanks, beer. “Then I’ll come out and say they’re full of shit. The company will, too. We could even hit them with a lawsuit.”

“Union won’t pay for it,” she said, washing the acidity in her voice down with a swig.

“What’s this with the union?”

Those yellow eyes hardened. “Officially, we do construction equipment work. Some work-around to make sure we get enough pay to eat, but now some bastard got it into his head that means we fall outside regular union representation.”

Stephen didn’t say anything. It sucked, but he knew nothing about how the union worked.

“There’s always been people gunning for our jobs,” Franky continued to fill the silence. “It’s not like we can go work in a fucking office pushing pencils or something…”

Those yellow eyes regarded him from behind a giant glass of beer. “No offense.”

“None taken.”

It made sense. People her size were, what, 3% of the population? 3% that needed special… everything. Clothes, transport, services… bars. And, naturally, jobs. It hadn’t been too difficult in the past, but in modern society construction was one of the few places left where they could leverage their size. Consequently they were massively over represented in the construction business, hence his safety evaluation in the first place. That, the military, heavy industry, and beyond that you had to look at specialist jobs. Of course, Franky wasn’t being completely honest: They could just get an office job. With a regular office salary having to pay for all those specialized services, not to mention the food. Shit, the beer Franky was working her way through was already a good night out for most people.

With that in the back of his mind, he could understand her concern.

“It’ll be fine. Some bottom feeding ambulance chasers or some cunt in the union aren’t going to make you less essential.” He made a sweeping gesture with his arms and caught himself letting out a laugh. “What are they going to do? Buy a bunch of machines, train the people to use them, do that at higher cost? In a world of emission standards an anti-discrimination laws? It’s just not going to happen.”

He could feel a fuzzy mellowness radiate off Franky and felt a deep sense of satisfaction at that. Beer always made him a little more willing to put the truth out there. Yeah, she seemed positively like a soft plush animal, now. One he wouldn’t mind snuggling up to.

Wow, where did that come from? Damnit, Stephen. Though, the world did seem to have a softer hue around him. Was the beer really hitting him this hard after a week of no drinking?

“I guess you’re right. So we just do nothing? Wait it out?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, feeling like a bobblehead. “We can always do something later.”

“We should keep in touch.”

Yes! Yes we should!

“That’s sensible.”

He looked at the glass in his hand. He’d only drunk half of it, but he’d had enough. In fact, the world seemed to swim before him as if he were looking out into it from an aquarium, his limbs having a watery weightlessness to them.

“Maybe I need to go,” he said. “I feel kinda woozy.”

Franky arched an eyebrow, big fuzzy face leaning closer to examine him, cocking her head slightly. She looked him in the eyes, then smiled.

“You on painpills?”

“Yeah.” Was his voice slurring? He couldn’t tell. “But I didn’t take any today. Except for one in the morning.”

Did Franky take a lot of regular pills, or did she use giant pills?

“Maybe you’re a little extra sensitive. It happens.” The tigress gulped down the rest of her beer and slammed the empty glass onto the table with a startling boom. “I’ll help you down.”

It’s not like he could have gotten down on his own, anyhow. Not without performing the graceful move of falling onto his face.

Standing on his feet, he realized he’d made the right call. While the floorboards had the look of well worn wood, they felt more like rubber under his feet. In fact, his legs felt like rubber, but at least still a stiff sort of rubber. He remained standing.

Behind and above him Franky bellowed his war cry.

“Squishy coming through!”

With all the confidence he could wring out of his rubbery legs Stephen stumbled forward, and immediately had the world disappoint him. What he could only perceive as a blur, a big blur, came from the forest of legs around him and slammed into his side. The pain was immediate, as was the momentum. He made a cursory attempt at keeping his legs under him, but it really only were his instincts trying to do something for the sheer hell of it. He hit the floor, slid, rolled, and came to a stop.

The very first thing he noticed was the pain. He’d noticed it when he’d been hit, but it were now fiery streaks down his sides, so it was perfectly acceptable to notice it again. The second thing he noticed was that the din of the establishment around him dropped to silence, only to pick up again shortly after in a very localized way.

Franky, not exactly dainty at the best of time, growling, hissing, and spitting at a hapless looking moose man. A low, rumbling sound like rolling thunder in which he could only barely make out words.

“Are you fucking deaf? You fucking idiot, you could have killed him. You fixin’ to go to jail? You want this place closed down?”

Her fur stood on end, eyes ablaze, ears flat. Sharp teeth flashed like knives. With a final growl she shoved the moose back, arms like industrial pistons slamming into the guy’s shoulders with a thunderclap. Immediately she seemed to forget about the moose and turned to Stephen, motioning others away from around him.

“You OK?”

“Been better,” he said through gritted teeth.

Before he could fully grasp what was going on he felt the touch of coarse fur, powerful arms lifting him from the ground. She didn’t set him on his feet, rather cradling him like a child. And he was perfectly OK with that, given the combination of the world feeling like a bouncy castle and his ribs feeling like a portal to hell. When he realized that the soft cushion he was resting against was one of Franky’s breasts… well, he’d agonize later on how he was supposed to feel about it, but for the moment he wasn’t complaining. Being this close to her he caught a familiar, musky scent.

“I do mean it, you know,” he spoke up to her as she carried him to the door.

She gave a grunt with a question mark at the end.

“I really would’ve been dead without you. I’ll tell everyone who wants to hear.”

“And now I almost got you killed. We’re even.”

“No, we’re not.” He smiled. “You still owe me lunch.”

She returned the smile. “When this shit blows over, I’ll fucking wine and dine you.”

That seemed nice. He wouldn’t mind being wined and dined, even by a tigress who probably wasn’t being entirely serious about it.

As they exited the warm rays of the sun reached down to blind Stephen, his eyes still used to the dim interior of Big Joe’s. This was symbolic for rebirth, wasn’t it? Being carried out of the womb into the gentle, yet overwhelming light of the world. He could hope, couldn’t he?

The answer came in the form of the sound cue of a digital camera, then several more.

Across the alleyway stood a man, just a guy, with a too-large camera, wearing a leather jacket he had a bit too much pudge for, and too much stubble for his pudge. But the smile, the mirthful eyes above it squinting at them, spoke the true story.

A story that’d be in print tonight, and in the racks tomorrow.

-------------------------------------------------------------

“Do you have anything useful to say about this?”

Conroy’s voice was shocking to Stephen, even with his low expectations of the day, the baleful tone hitting somewhere in the middle between dour preacher and disappointed dad. That wasn’t enough drama for him, and he tossed the paper onto the empty conference table between them with a frisbee flourish. The paper landed with a slap, skidded down the length of the table and promptly cleared the edge to land in a crumpled heap at Stephen’s feet.

Goddamnit, Stephen thought as he started the laborious process of stooping to pick it up. There was no way the boss didn’t do that on purpose. The ginger bastard had a mean villain routine, he’d have to hand him that.

He knew exactly what would be staring back at him from the front page, under the stylized image of an oldschool mailman’s trumpet. There he was, like a rag doll in Franky’s arms with the opioid-alcohol haze blearing his face into a clueless expression. Franky bared her teeth in an unflattering, lop-sided snarl, clearly having noticed the cameraman. Crammed into the free space above them, and running down the right side of the page, shone the headline of the day in bold, shouting typesetting.

‘Construction conspiracy! Victim found in arms of brute!’

He had plenty of time to take in this glorious scene on his way back up to a standing position. The skeezy journo had clearly landed with his nose in the butter thanks to him being an accidental drug fiend. He was probably gunning for a shot of the two of them just together. Instead, here he was nestled snugly against Franky’s breast.

“It’s all bullshit, you know.” He slapped the tabloid down on the table, hard, to drive the point home. He wasn’t about to let Conroy be the only one to screw open the drama tap.

The boss shook his head and turned to stare out the window, hands folded behind his back.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s bullshit or not. You’re together with her, in public.” He shot a glance over his shoulder. “Normally this is where I’d say you might as well be holding hands, but you’re already at second base. What the hell were you even doing there?”

“Jesus, boss. Just because we’re calling it an investigation doesn’t mean we’re the cops. There are no rules about who I get to hang out with. We weren’t getting our stories straight like some…” his glance drifted to the tabloid headline silently shouting at him from the table, “… some conspiracy.”

“What else are people supposed to think?” Conroy spoke to the pane of glass. “You just struck up a friendship in a morning of work?”

Stephen sighed. “She saved my life, boss. The fuck was I supposed to say?”

Conroy whipped around to face him. It was an odd motion for a man as tall and thin as he was. His drama would probably have been better served by something more slow and deliberate.
“You never told me about that.”

It was true. He hadn’t. But the accusation still made Stephen take a mental step back due to the implied expectation behind the boss’ clipped tone.

“It didn’t come up between having my ribs busted and taking up a drug habit.”

The boss’ eyes narrowed into inquisitive slits. “You broke your ribs because of her, didn’t you?”

“Bruised. And I think so. One moment I’m thinking I’m going to die, the next I’m stuck under half a ton of tigress.”

She had to weigh around half a ton, right? Biggest tiger he’d ever seen.

“It’s good for me to know these things, Stephen.”

Stephen wasn’t a fan of the thing where people used his name in an otherwise normal sentence, but Conroy seemed to look past him, over his shoulder, into empty air. Maybe the guy was just feeling paternalistic. Stephen hadn’t stopped to think how almost losing an employee would look to him. After all, they weren’t the cops or anything.

“I’ll tell the team the full story.” His gaze fell onto the tabloid again, Franky’s angry eyes staring straight at him. “How have people been reacting to the news? Officially, I mean.”

The boss shrugged. A nice, full shrug that Stephen instantly felt jealous of. “As little as possible.”

“Nobody is scaling back large scale workers’ hours?”

Might as well get it out there. There was a moment of silence.

“Nothing official. Part of the site is shut down for the investigation,” Conroy finally said. “Did she tell you that?”

“It came up. I can’t really blame them for the suspicion.”

He was already running a safety evaluation specifically of large scale workers. And he did jot down an infraction when Franky lowered those pipes into the trench. That’s not something that would fall onto the backs of the workers themselves, but not everyone saw it that way. Or wanted to see it that way. There was a long history of division between the bigger people, and just regular folks. The elephant in the room was… well, a saying that didn’t just fall from the sky. The physical threat was real, as he’d experienced recently. Just that possibility made people feel insecure. And insecure people say and do stupid things.

That, too, he had plenty of experience with.

There was the light rap of a politeness knock. The sort that announces entry, rather than requesting it. The door opened with apologetic slowness, then a young woman’s curious face gave a decent Killroy impression through the crack, preceding the rest of her into the room. Shyness and authority made odd bedfellows.

The investigator. If Conroy had any more to say about the subject he certainly wasn’t going to do it in front of her.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” The boss said, snatching the Local Bugle from the table as he went.

Thank fuck for that. If he really wanted to be a bastard, he could have left it to be a millstone around his neck.

The young woman regarded him for a little too long with large, watery eyes before extending a hand in greeting. He more grasped than shook it as they exchanged names. Hers was Karen. Then followed the brief ritual of empathy over his unfortunate situation, with the central point that it must have been quite scary indeed. Stephen confirmed this. Indeed, it was. He neglected to mention that most of that fear had really come moments later, having found himself to be ill equipped to give the proper reaction in the moment itself.

Introductions over, they both settled in chairs. Karen asked him to recount the events of that day, and he did. He went over his job, meeting Franky, sitting by the side of trench as she dug. With everything that had followed it seemed like a lifetime ago. Then the falling rubble, how he’d felt stuck, unable to move despite knowing what was happening, and how his last memory before waking up in a hospital bed had been Franky’s bulk over him, shielding him from the deluge. Karen duly made notes on a tablet, only acknowledging him with small nods. Her phone was on the table between them, recording everything they said.

A round of questions followed. Had he seen anything unusual? Had they broken any rules? Was he under influence? No, no, no.

“How did you get injured?”

Stephen snapped out of the trance recounting the events had put him in. His cadence broken he looked at Karen for a second with an expression he was sure must have been utterly morose. She simply looked back, big eyes unmoving, the corners of her mouth set in a conservative attempt at an encouraging smile.

“I… I think it must have been Franky.” He had to tease the words from his brain. There was just something wrong about implying her.

“That’s the large scale worker you were evaluating, correct?”

Leading question. A wrinkle in her routine. But she wasn’t wrong, so he simply nodded. In response she flicked her eyes from him to the phone on the table.

Right.

“Yes,” he said, “we were going to have lunch together.”

Franky still owed him that lunch. Maybe he should hassle her over that. It’d be nice to be able to thank her properly, once this nonsense was over with.

“Can you go into more detail?”

“Not really? She jumped on top of me, knocked me to the ground.” That was right. It was weird, but he had no recollection of falling down. Just the shower of rubble at one moment, being smothered by a tigress the next. No memory of pain, either. He probably passed out before he’d run out of the shot of sweet adrenaline rationed to him by evolution. “She’s heavy. I guess it’s kind of like getting hit by a truck, except the truck also saves your life. And the truck is soft. And I have no idea how much rubble was weighing us both down.”

Karen pecked at the tablet with her fingers.

“That’s all,” she said, then tapped the screen of the phone as well.

Just as she had entered the room in as inoffensive a way as possible, Karen left. It was the absence of the careless noise of regular life that was off about her, Stephen decided. No snapping of covers or rattling of clutter as she placed her devices in her bag, nor any audible footsteps on the carpeted floor. Even the way she wished him a speedy recovery was as generic as an automated email, forgotten by the time she stepped through a door opened only far enough to admit her.

Was it all calculated? Stephen thought about the matter as he made his own, slower way out. She’d dodged any chance of lingering small talk with an efficiency that had to be calculated.

It was a lesson worth learning from, though. After a week of absence his fellow office stiffs had been eager to poke and prod him with questions, commiserations, and advice. There were some shared experiences about being knocked out by painkillers which was fine enough, and even before hearing it he’d decided he wasn’t ever going to rub stinking eucalyptus lotion on his sides. Maybe some people would think it speciesist, but he was sure Bruce only said it because he was a goddamn koala in the first place. But the cover of the Bugle lingered over his head like the time bomb of Damocles. The more time passed, the greater the likelihood that someone would want to be funny about it.

So he moved silently, hugging walls, ducking behind cabinets, steering clear of familiar voices, and pretending not to see familiar faces all the way to Conroy’s office. Every rule had an exception, after all.

The days of opulent offices were long gone. Conroy’s office was nothing more than a regular work room with a regular desk and a nameplate beside the door. The only thing out of place was the colorful cover of the Bugle glaring at him from the desk, a spot of color in the muted office gray. The boss was on the phone, but he waved him in all the same. The look on his face was the reason video phones had remained a thing of science fiction. Clearly the person on the other line was not a welcome caller.

“… I advise you to get into contact with our PR department. The number’s on our site. If you’ll excuse me, an important appointment just arrived. Goodbye. Thank you.”

He pointedly tapped the call from his screen.

“We don’t have a PR department,” Stephen said.

“They’ll find some poor idiot to fill the role.” Conroy affected a cold smile.

“Press?”

“You got it.” He leaned forward on his desk. “There’s blood in the water. Usually we get away with a little page 3 article, if even that. Even when there’s a fatality. But if there’s one thing the regular media hates, it’s the fringe media screwing them out of a scoop.”

Stephen invited himself to the cushioned seat of the chair opposite the desk.

“What, haven’t they been calling you?” the boss said.

That was a good question. Stephen fished his new, cheap, possibly crap phone out of his pocket and swept the screen into life.

“11 missed calls. I’m guessing most of those are press.”

He barely even noticed the buzz of the phone any more. That had nothing to do with recent events, and altogether more with meme-happy friends, but it certainly made the recent events easier to ignore.

“You don’t pick them up or call back?”

“If I were in the mood for masochism, I’d just ask someone to tickle me. Besides,” now it was Stephen’s turn to affect a cold smile, “I’ve set my voicemail to say I can only talk as an employee of the company.”

“You’re a pain in the ass, Stephen.” The words were harsh, but the tone was not. “But that’s the right way to go about it. How did the interview go?”

“It was an interview. She asked questions, I answered them.”

“That’s good. I was worried it might be… difficult for you.”

Stephen laughed, then winced. He gathered himself. “Come on, boss. It’s not like I just got back from war. Things could have gone a lot worse, but I lucked out. Have you ever been on the road, and you did something stupid, but another driver saved the situation?”

Let’s be real, Conroy was a middle-aged man who’d always been able to afford nice cars. He’d been in situations like that more than once, Stephen was sure of it. The boss confirmed it with a short, self-conscious nod.

“It’s kind of like that. If Franky hadn’t been there, we’d be having this conversation in the hospital,” or the graveyard, “but she was there.”

“About that…” The boss plucked the issue of the Local Bugle from his desk to let his eyes pass over it with an idle glance. “If they’re calling us, I’m sure they’re calling her as well.”

“I don’t think she’ll want to talk to them anymore than we do.”

Franky didn’t strike him as the person to trust the media, especially not when the media were taking a big dump on her and people like her.

“You didn’t think when you talked, but…” Conroy waggled the limp tabloid at him, “…her name and face are out there, now. This trash is making all sorts of claims, and the real papers calling her are going to wave their legitimacy around. I’m not saying it’s a given she’s going to take an offer, but it’s possible.”

He couldn’t see it happen with the Franky he’d met at Big Joe’s, but only one honey-tongued journalist needed to penetrate that hard, tough exterior. All the worries that were swirling through his head about the entire thing were surely much greater with her. After all, he had the entire company around him to deflect everything on. What did she have? The Union? No, she was facing this shit alone.

“We agreed to stay in contact.” It was time to come clean. “And she… might have asked me to clear things up with the media.”

“Oh?” Conroy just looked at him, letting the tabloid drop from his grasp like a piece of refuse.

“I told her I couldn’t, but,” he gestured to the crumpled paper in front of the boss, “we’re on the cover together, now.”

“You sure are.”

“What I’m saying is, the company is going to have to say something sometime, right?”

Conroy nodded.

“I think we should get Franky in on it. We get it out there she saved my life, drown the crazy suspicions in feelgood, make large scale workers look good, and keep control of the situation.”

“That way she won’t feel like she needs to seek out the media on her own,” the boss finally said. “And you get to reciprocate her heroism. Smart.”

Stephen liked to think he wasn’t that calculating and callous, but took the compliment as Conroy leaned back in his chair, seeming to mull the proposal over. Ah shit, what if he was going to say no? It was a matter of boring, office honor, and he still owed her.

“I’ll put out some feelers about the media response. You call her and say we’re looking into it. Don’t make any promises you can’t keep.”

Thank fuck for that.

-------------------------------------------------------------

The construction site was as loud as ever, and the hardhat as wobbly. He was beginning to think they were supposed to wobble. He’d gotten a weird look on showing up, but a few quick words about being here for the investigation and the fact that Franky had made it known she was expecting someone made his entry as matter-of-factly as it could be, considering the circumstances.

Even the pneumatic drill was at it again, and he found himself involuntarily reaching for his sensitive side with every pounding blast like a veteran at a fireworks display. He looked up before passing by the towering concrete facades of the building-to-be, the rumble of falling debris playing somewhere in the back of his mind. If it weren’t ten to five on a Friday there might be more eyeballs on the skittish guy crossing the ground, but most people’s thoughts were already on the weekend.

Every morning he came to work he’d feared Conroy was going to slap another issue of the Local Bugle onto his desk. It hadn’t happened, though. Sure, there were a few more respectable newspapers speculating about the issue with opinion pieces, columns, and one or two articles of actual journalism, but their nuance just didn’t give as damning a sound when it hit a surface. And more importantly, none of them felt the need to put unflattering pictures of him on the cover. Or anywhere.

The last time he’d seen Franky she’d been surrounded by people her size, and furniture to fit them. On the site, however, she was easy to spot, lumbering around regular sized colleagues with a careful, pondering deliberateness much like how Goliath must have marched with the Philistines. In her arms she carried tarp-wrapped bundles, enough to fill a pickup’s bed, to a waiting truck. Clean-up before the weekend, he guessed.

The truck rocked as she deposited her load. Like a toy, his mind wanted to say, but that was wrong. It rocked like a full size truck. As she turned he could see her luminous eyes flash. They passed over him, and the recognition was obvious.

“Ya made it,” she said in her now-familiar rumble.

“Did you expect I wouldn’t?”

“Thought you might’ve bumped into someone again.” A lop-sided grin bared one finger-long fang. “Maybe drank a beer.”

Oh, he had something to fire back with.

“Maybe end up under another tiger?”

She barked a laugh with a woodsaw purr. “Don’t go making me jealous, now.”

“I… wouldn’t dream of it.”

Considering the joke war won, Franky turned to the other workers and shouted that she was clocking out.

“Let’s go,” she said, and set off.

She was three strides ahead of him before she remembered his much, much shorter legs and let up her pace.

“Why even meet up here?” Stephen asked when he caught up. “Was there something you wanted to show me?”

“There’s something I wanted to not show you.” A quick glance up past her bulk confirmed a smug look that said she was proud of her play on words. “Look around, what do you not see?”

Tricky question, Franky. There was quite a lot Stephen didn’t see. No leprechauns, dinosaurs, or robots.

“Why don’t you just tell me?”

“No journalists!” she rumbled, sweeping both arms through the air to encompass the entire site, stirring the air as she did so. He could feel the hardhat wobble.

Yeah, it made sense. No unauthorized personnel allowed. Construction sites were guarded against people trying to sneak onto the grounds to steal equipment or material, so some slimy fence-hopping paparazzo wasn’t going to have an easy time. And no real newspaper or program had the stomach for the risk of looking like an idiot over the lawsuit they could possibly get nailed to their asses.

Not to mention the guts someone would have to possess to confront monsters like Franky and her co-workers on their own turf.

“I’m assuming we’re not actually going to hang out here?”

“I guess you are.”

OK, she was getting carried away with these words games.

“Damnit, you know what I mean. You want me to start calling you Frank again?”

“Sure thing, Stephy.” Her menacing grin now bared both fangs, and all her other sharp teeth to boot.

“I can take it, Frank my boy,” he shot back with a grin just as wide, though not as sharp. “Nobody’s going to take it seriously. But you’re already big and hairy. You look like Frank might just be your real name. In fact!” He thrust a pointing finger up to her. “I already thought it was your real name!”

He let the accusation hang for a while. When he sensed she was about to return fire, it was time for the good news.

“Besides, the boss said we might get to clear things up with the media. Wouldn’t want me to make a little mistake when relaying your name, now would you?”

Now was the time to bask in his own smugness, as his words had robbed the tigress of whatever glib, coarse comeback she was cooking up.

“Are you serious?” Franky stopped in her tracks, the cool, detached facade suddenly broken. She registered surprise with large, round eyes. A total transformation from Franky the cynic.

Stephen took the opportunity to show off a modest shrug, giving himself only a slight stab of pain. Christ, he was glad to have the ability returned to him.

“No guarantees. The company’s going to get the story straight at one point or another. But I asked the boss if we could get our story out ourselves.”

He must have blinked. She always moved with so much purpose he’d allowed himself to forget that she was actually built for speed and grace. Well, she was also a bit fat. That also contributed to the image. At one moment Franky was towering over him like the pillar of strength she was, despite the innocent eyes she was throwing. The next she’d gone to her haunches, bringing them almost face to face.

Black-bordered gold stared at him, starting the hairs on the back of his neck on end, despite the disarming expression Franky gave a good attempt at. Was it his pesky lizard brain, or a more developed self-consciousness? It wasn’t just the eyes, either. The hypnotic striping, so strangely extravagant for camouflage. The side-burns, so fluffy. The large nose of an apex feline with, he now noticed for the first time, a funny black spot, just right of center.

“Um…” He really didn’t know what to say.

“Thanks,” She said, in a supersized mewl. Her eyes darted briefly, as if she was aware how her stare stripped him to the essence. For the first time he noticed her eyelashes, those of a CGI-assisted model, almost a mockery of anyone who’d think her scary from a distance. “I’m kinda shit at this, but I mean it.”

“It’s the least I could have done,” Stephen managed.

With a delicate motion she put her hand on his shoulder. Or rather, she took his shoulder in her hand, the weight pressing down. She gave a light squeeze that felt like half a hug. A real hug could break him.

“You still did it. I’ll buy you a drink.” She rose again, casting a long shadow in the waning afternoon light. “If you can handle it, this time.”

“I can.”

He could.

They resumed their pace, and it was obvious where Franky was taking him. Next to a large scale sized construction trailer, with large scale workers milling about, stood several trucks parked on the packed sand. Big ones, with double axles, meant to move heavy loads. These had no normal beds, but instead tall superstructures with obvious, and large, windows.

“Safety guy’s back!” One granite voice called, belonging to an elephant spewing smoke from his trunk. Eyes stuck in a wizened, wrinkled face flitted from him to Franky. His lashes, Stephen now noticed, were even more luscious than Franky’s. “Riding the tiger through all this bullshit, huh?”

“You need to work on your material.” Franky punched his shoulder with a blow that reverberated through the ground. He laughed it off and took another drag.

“Sounds like you have shit taste in newspapers,” Stephen said to the elephant.

A gleam shone in the man’s eyes.

“We’ve got the picture up in the trailer. They got ya real good.”

Stephen looked up at Franky. She looked back down and confirmed it with a suffering smile.

“We can’t all be famous. We’ll remember you when the big bucks start rolling in.”

That elicited a chuckle. One that sounded like a landslide.

“Name’s Stephen, by the way.” He held out his hand.

The elephant reached down to shake, putting the tip of his trunk between Stephen’s fingers.

“Roderick. You can cut the crap about what kind of name that is for a pachyderm and just call me Rod.”
With the ice broken the two giants proceeded to exchange jargon about the day’s work that Stephen really only half understood. Before long calls went out to board the trucks. Something much like a set of kitchen steps gave hope there were provisions for his regular sized self, but inside he only saw rows of giant seats with only enough room between them for the workers ahead of him to struggle through.

“Uh, Franky?”

“I’ll help ya.”

Before he had time to question the situation further he felt padded palms and fingers close around him and raise him up. She deposited him on the window seat. Standing, he could look out over the site’s rough, sandy surface, carved by wind and machinery, puddles gleaming luminescent in the low sun.
The view was robbed from him when the world shook beneath him. He bounced down on the soft seat, instinctively rolling to fall on his good side with a short, sharp curse.

“Ah shit, I’m sorry.”

Franky had seated herself with all the grace of a construction worker at five on a Friday. That is, letting gravity do all the work.

“It’s OK.” He said, seating himself properly. With his back against the backrest his feet didn’t even reach over the edge of the seat. At least reaching not even a quarter the expected weight meant that what would be barely adequate for Franky was, for him, the softness of an expensive mattress.

The final punctuation to the strange situation of being a lilliputian came when Franky reached over his head, pulled down the safety belt, and rammed the buckle home like joining two train cars. A thick cummerbund stretched over his stomach, pressing down uncomfortably.

He looked at Franky.

“This is ridiculous,” he said.

A sly smile spread across her face. Really sly. The sort that reaches the eyes by means of the corners of the mouth. Then she kicked home a sports bag in the place he wasn’t using to keep his legs.

“Welcome in my world, squishy.”

Point taken.

“Are we going to Big Joe’s?”

“Where else?”

If he had anything else to say, it’d have to wait. The truck’s engine barked to life, shaking the cabin, suffusing it with the churning of its labor. Lurching and rocking it pulled away, shoving Stephen left and right with its motions. Between the sounds of the truck, the booming conversation the others struck up between them, and the distance he’d have to shout his squishy words up to Franky’s fuzzy ears, conversation was essentially impossible. She’d already realized it, having pulled out a book from somewhere. To weather the journey, Stephen reached for his sparkly, new phone.

He’d better not drop it. If it slipped from the seat, it’d do more than crack the screen. The same was true for him, so maybe there was something to be said for the oversized seatbelt.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Big Joe’s on a Friday rivaled the construction site for noise. Where the site still had something of order about it the bar only knew wild abandon. Everywhere giants jostled against each other, tossing back barrels of beer and dinner-sized snacks. The very structure of the building buzzed with the activity. Phantom pain spread across Stephen’s injured side at the memory of the moose’s careless kick.

Franky seemed even more aware of his fragility than he was. She plunged into the crowd with the subtlety of an icebreaker, clearing safe passage, sounding off a foghorn bellow.

“Squishy coming through! Squishy coming through!”

Far be it from him to not appreciate the extra effort Franky was taking to ensure his safety, but he couldn’t help but let the whispers of his brain get to him. The passage through the temporary corridor of giants, eyes on high following him, felt like something of a walk of shame. Even if he was with Franky, he was an outsider. An intruder in one of the places the giants didn’t have to treat like a world of glass. Behind him the crowd merged again with casual violence, as if to prove the point.

With a gentle push Franky moved aside the last of her giant peers blocking the way, revealing his old friend. The lifeguard’s chair, still looming impossibly high despite his recovery.

“Yeah, I’m going to need a hand with that.”

For the second time today tiger paws grasped him firmly and gave him a fair ground ride on high. He was already paying attention to it, so hearing the snickers was inevitable.

“People are laughing at me,” he noted after he’d reacquainted himself with the proper way of sitting in the seat.

“It’s kinda funny, you gotta admit.” She lounged in her chair with the air of an Iron Age king, a smirk confirming her judgement.

He realized he was sitting up straight, and affected a slight slouch to mirror Franky.

“A lot of these people had to learn to laugh at themselves. Makes it easier to laugh at you, too.”

“Does that count for you, as well?”

On her face appeared the widest grin he’d yet seen. Serious tiger toothpaste commercial material. “Didn’t squish ya yet, have I?”

“You tried, and failed.”

A growl rose up from Franky’s throat. “Maybe I should try again.”

You know what? That wasn’t the worst prospect, if she just didn’t take a jump this time around. Did she even realize how soft she must be to cushion a half-ton impact into a few bruised ribs? Maybe it was hard to feel soft for someone who’s job it was to keep high torque engines and hydraulics to a minimum. Under the fluff and fat her muscles were probably akin to braided steel wire.

“Why not?” He grinned back at her. “The last time caused a nice shitstorm. Might as well see how far things’ll go if you do it a second time. Maybe do it on live television?”

“Wait. We’re gonna be on live television?”

“Hey, I don’t know.” Stephen shrugged modestly. He was really getting back into the shrugging game.

“No guarantees, right?”

“Right. Sorry about that. Stuff like this…” his mind wandered briefly through the passages of memory, “…it takes time. People need to look at it, think about it, sign off on it. It’s probably good we asked about it early.”

A shiver seemed to ruffle Franky’s fur.

“Don’t much like the idea of being on TV. ‘specially not live.”

Made sense, given she seemed to regard the media with every bit of suspicion they were due. Indeed, most of a ton’s worth of tigress stuffed into oversized coveralls straining to do the job didn’t look like standard TV fare. Shit, half the time large scale people were on TV, they were beating the shit out of each other.

“TV’s dead anyway,” he said. “They’d be lucky to have you.”

“Flatterer.”

“I try.”

A giant hand appeared out of nowhere. OK, not out of nowhere. It simply came from behind and he just hadn’t heard its owner approach, giant’s footsteps lost in a crowd of them. However, it came bearing beer, placing a large glass held daintily between fingertips before him. Above, on the end of a long, craned neck, the giraffe waitress smiled at him.

“Welcome back!” she chimed before putting a substantially larger glass before Franky and disappearing back into the crowd. At least, metaphorically. Her head sticking out well above everyone else made it quite easy to keep track of where she was.

“We didn’t even order?”

After all, it couldn’t be a mix-up, right? Who else was drinking thimbles of beer in here?

“Ya ever watch those movies where they walk in and order ‘the regular’?” Franky was already speaking from behind the rim of her glass.

“Yeah.”

“What fucking use is it if they still have to order it?”

Fair enough. He took a swig of the unordered beer and then just sort of… waited, swiveling his eyes, tilting his head, raising one arm, then the other.

“What are you acting all goofy for?”

“Checking if I’m OK. You know, with the beer.”

“And?”

“Seems so.” He took another swig.

“Good. It’d be kinda awkward having to carry you out again.”

Awkward, but not unpleasant. And the hidden meaning was obvious: She’d do it again. Riding the tiger indeed.

They were silent for a moment.

“Do they serve normal sized food here, too?” Stephen asked.

“Sure thing,” Franky answered. Some foam clung to her fur. “Same stuff, but less of it. It’s not rocket science. You fixin’ to get a bite?”

“Might as well.” He slid his phone out of his pocket and checked the time. “It’s getting close to dinner time.”

“I wasn’t planning on it, meself.” Franky stretched much like any lazy cat, regardless of size, showing off rows of dangerous teeth and a long, barbed tongue as she yawned. The chair creaked and moaned at the shifting weight. “Feeling kinda funky.”

She flared her nostrils for effect. Yeah, she was still in her work clothes, after all. No doubt those felt all kinds of heavy with filth.

“I’ll get something on the way home, then.”

“Hey, don’t let me stop you.”

“It’s weird to eat something when the person you’re with isn’t.”

Franky shook her head in the typical not-angry-but-disappointed way. “You shouldn’t care too much about shit like that. If you’re hungry, eat.”

“It feels wrong.” Years of official and unofficial social etiquette had ingrained the rule in is mind. It was so well-carved that he didn’t even know it was there, and that he did care, until Franky challenged it.

“Then don’t eat. Your choice.” Franky responded with a shrug, effortlessly raising those massive shoulders and arms, probably the equivalent to serious weightlifting.

Goddamnit, why was he so obsessed with shrugging, now? Just because it hurt when he did it? This shit better not be permanent. Stephen had no intention of becoming a shrug connaisseur. Feeling awkward, he decided to hide behind his glass for a while. When he put it down he’d drained half the liquid from it.

“How have you been, Franky? With… things and all.”

He could practically hear the gears whir in the tigress’ head, a placid, thoughtful expression making itself master of her face. Maybe she was thinking of a diplomatic way of explaining the shitshow, or she just wasn’t used to getting asked about something like this. No real surprise. How often did the media come after the average construction worker?

Oh, no. She was just considering how much beer she was going to drink before answering, as evidenced by the fact that she put the glass to her lips and sloshed down the lion’s share of it. Or the tiger’s share, really. Enough to get him drunk in a single go.

“Alright,” she said.

Stephen eyed her, then the mostly empty glass. “You had to drink that much just to give me ‘alright’? Should we order more?”

She swished the bottom of beer in her glass. “We are running low…”

With an… expression on her face she rolled up a sleeve like some great, fluffy cartoon about to start a fight. Her chair, and then the table, creaked as she shifted her weight and leaned forward, putting her arm on the table for Stephen to inspect.

Oh yeah, a slap from that thing would send him flying. Under the fur the corded muscle was obvious. She laid a living anatomical drawing in front of him. This was the power she was picking him up with just to move him from ground to chair and the other way around. The power she had so gently squeezed his shoulder with. Tips of sickle-shaped claws just barely poked from the tips of her fingers.

“You know what the problem with these stripes is?” she asked, gesturing to the exemplary limb with the other one.

“They’re… really fluffy?”

Franky barked a single, loud laugh.

“No, you idiot. They only work in the jungle.”

She seemed to beam at the point she just made. Must be one of her things, kind of like he liked to say ‘it isn’t rocket surgery’.

“You’re definitely not an easy person to hide.”

“Exactly.”

Point made, Franky pulled her arm back.

“Wait.” Before he’d fully thought about it Stephen reached for the retreating hand, latching onto one of her fingers. She didn’t stop immediately and he was dragged halfway over the table with no real effort, edge nudging into his tender side.

Franky just looked at him.

“Can I see your claws?” Stephen asked, reseating himself.

“What?”

“Claws. Hard, sharp, find them at the end of the arm.”

“Usually it’s only the kids who want to see my claws.”

“I’m young at heart.”

Despite her grumbling Franky put her hand back, pads up. She flexed her fingers and extended her claws. There was no sound, obviously, but even so Stephen couldn’t help but imagine something much like daggers unsheathing. Not that he knew what that sounded like, but he imagined it anyway.

Franky’s claws had the appearance of polished bone, reflecting a dull light. Thinner than he’d imagined, but that didn’t mean a lot at this scale. They were curved to sharp points. One couldn’t design something better to hook and slice flesh.

“These’d make great letter openers.”

Franky flattened her ears against her head. “They make great people openers.”

“I believe that.” Stephen probed the claws for sharpness and was not disappointed. He’d heard some people dulled their claws, but Franky wasn’t one of them. Well, she probably used them at work, didn’t she? 
“Cut up any journalists with these?”

“I wish.” Playtime was over and Franky took her arm back.

“So they’ve been bothering you?”

“Sort of.” She emptied her glass and leaned back again. “Been getting a lot of calls. I think the guy with the jacket’s been trying to get more pictures of me.”

Stephen couldn’t help but smirk at that. Say whatever you want about that guy, but he didn’t scare easily.
“Did he get any good ones?”

She struck a pose, one hand on her hip, the other behind her head, breasts and belly thrust proudly forward, and fluttered her lashes. “Don’t I look like a model?”

Goddamn, she was cute when she was being an ass.

“You look like about ten models.”

She chuckled with the sound of bricks being banged together. “I fuck like ten models, too.”

Yeah, OK. That was too much. Blood rushed to Stephen’s face, and there wasn’t a thing he could do to stop it. Maybe blood rushed to other places, too. He had no comeback to that one.

“Ah shit, I’m sorry.” Franky scratched her head. “Didn’t mean to make ya uncomfortable.”

That obvious, huh? Uncomfortable wasn’t quite the word, you giant, orange, social disaster. And now there was guilt, too. Guilt for making her feel silly about a joke. Stupid, red face.

“It’s OK.”

Oh, that’s just great. Any shred of confidence he’d had, and that wasn’t much, had just about drained from his voice.

“Said it last time, didn’t I? You’re kinda easy to talk to.”

There was a hint of self-consciousness in her voice. It probably wasn’t the first time she’d spoken out of turn in polite company.

“I get it,” Stephen tried to fumble his way to something resembling confidence. “You feel comfortable talking to someone new, so you forget to be normal. I’ve made dirty jokes when I shouldn’t have, too.”

Franky gave a wan smile, cracking her crass facade for a moment.

“Yeah, that’s the way it goes. But if you’ve got any dirty jokes, just lay ‘em on me.”

Shit, it’s not like he could do it on command. If he could, he’d be working the stand-up circuit, not the sit-down office job. He regarded the bottom of beer left in his glass as if he didn’t already know what he was going to do with it, then downed it, and slammed the glass down on the table in the way you just really had to do when the beer particularly hit the spot.

“Maybe if you get me another. Either way, we really ought to talk about the…”

“Journalists!” A literally and figuratively high voice called.

Yeah, that’s the ones. Wait. Stephen glanced up to see the face of the giraffe waitress wearing an expression of conspiratorial concern.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Any softness their social bungling had brought out in Franky was immediately covered by a well-practiced scowl as she swept the room with her gaze. “Thanks, Zoe. Where are they?”

“Outside. The boys won’t let them in.” The giraffe, Zoe, looked smug for a second. Stephen could sympathize. Nobody was going to walk through a wall of large scale animal people. Indeed, if you ever found yourself in the need to refer to a group of bruisers as ‘the boys’, they were the best boys to have.

“Back exit it is, then,” Franky said.

“They’ll be watching it, if they’re not total idiots,” Stephen chimed in, then turned to Zoe. “There’s more than one, right?”

“An entire crew of ‘em. Camera and all.”

Fuck. Looks like someone got tired of waiting and decided to do a little street harassment. So were they a professional crew doing a respectable man-on-the-street type thing, or were they specifically gunning for Franky? Did they know he was here?

Ah, none of it mattered. He really should’ve seen it coming. But was he really going to sequester himself because of this shit? Where else could he hang out with Franky?

“We’d better leave separately,” he said.

“We don’t have to.”

“If we leave together we just give them exactly what they want.” He could already imagine Conroy’s restrained, douchebag anger.

“No, I mean…” Franky gave a meaningful glance. He followed her eyes to where she flicked them, down on the ground by her chair, next to her booted feet.

It was clear why she wasn’t just saying it. There sat the sports bag she’d brought with her. A sports bag sized up for a big, fat tigress.

“You’re not serious.”

“You’ll fit fine. Don’t have much dirty in there, either.”

It probably wasn’t going to be pretty, lace panties, though. But he did have to admit, if they knew they were both here, leaving separately wouldn’t do much. They’d be on the lookout for both of them.

“I’m still not sold.”

“It’s the perfect solution. Ya get out unseen, no weird shit at work, and I’ll buy you dinner.”

Stephen raised an eyebrow. “Then you’ll owe me lunch and dinner. Might as well throw breakfast in there, too.”

A stifled giggle drew both of their attention to Zoe’s remaining presence. She was having way too good a time of their ordeal. Franky gave her the serious eyes.

She got the message.

“I’ll tell Joe you’ll want to use the back door.” The giraffe made herself scarce.

“Don’t matter much with your mouse bites,” Franky said to Stephen. “Just get in the bag.”

Oh Christ, what choice did he even have? It was the only way he’d get away without having to talk to them at all. And if he wanted the company big shots to give any thought to his idea he couldn’t afford to be appearing in the press. If it all went wrong and he somehow rolled out of the bag for all to see, well, might as well fail big.

“Fine. Help me down.”

It was true, there was plenty of space in the bag. He barely even had to tuck in his legs. A small amount of light still filtered in through the fabric, making him feel less protected than he thought he would. Sound from outside came through crystal clear, doing even less for his sense of security. It was also true that she didn’t have a lot of dirty clothing in there, though there was enough to make the air stale and musky. Maybe a dirty shirt, together with a regular change of clean clothes that made for a decent mattress.

When Franky picked him up the bag swayed gently. It clicked for Stephen, then. It was almost like a private hammock. If he weren’t about to be carried past a firing squad he might have been able to chill out quite well in this thing. With some fresh air, that is.

A gentle rocking accompanied by Franky’s heavy footfalls told him they were in motion. The din of the bar fell behind them, until Franky stopped briefly. There was the gruff voice of a large scale man. Big Joe himself? He caught some choice words about the state of modern journalism, then the swaying recommenced. The heavy, tortured wail of rusty hinges, and the click of heavy metal. The back door. Distant noise of the street filtered in as Franky continued her way, her boots echoing in what had to be a narrow alley behind the building.

He had enough time to worry as he heard a flurry of footsteps behind them, before the voices called out. Franky faltered in her gait, swaying the bag as she turned to look. Or so he guessed. A weird sort of fear gripped him, feeling suddenly naked with only the fabric of the bag standing between him and eternal ridicule. Not to mention losing his job.

“Is it true that you caused the near-fatal accident?” an insistent voice called out.

Yeah, they were that type of media crew. He could practically see the prick shove a microphone at Franky’s face. At least he wouldn’t get very far.

“No comment.” There was a distinct growl in Franky’s words.

This wasn’t enough to dissuade the crew. He could hear them jostle around them even as Franky kept on walking, shoes tapping the pavement as they followed at a healthy jog. The light outside was strong enough that he could see indistinct shapes through the fabric. He tucked his legs in further, going full fetal.

A hard reminder that the threat was real intruded upon him out of the blue as one of the crew stumbled. It struck him with careless force. Must have been a knee, Stephen thought as he rubbed his face. It was just as much through surprise as his own innate manliness that he did not cry out at the accidental assault. Thank fuck the guy didn’t knee him in the ribs.

“Are you being brought up on charges?”

“What do you have to say about the danger of large scale workers?”

“Why were you meeting with the victim?”

Stephen pucker up at that last one. They kept hitting her with a flurry of dubious questions, even when her response was only to keep moving down the street.

Then the shadowplay projected on the fabric of the bag was blotted out entirely, as if a cloud passed before the sun. But this cloud was accompanied by many heavy boots hitting the pavement, and a collection of deep voices speaking too loudly for casual conversation engaging in casual conversation. Beneath the blanket of these giant voices he could hear a squeaking protest as the jogging footsteps came to a sudden standstill.

The boys from Big Joe’s. Stephen crossed his fingers and hoped they didn’t do more damage than they were trying to prevent.

He allowed himself to relax, then. It wasn’t long before the gentle sway of the bag got the better of him until a jolt roused him from his slumber. Bright, blinding light exploded into his world from above him as the zipper tore open. Through squinted eyes he could just about make out a striped face with inquisitive eyes peeking in to remind him he wasn’t in his own bed.

“Jesus, were you sleeping in there?” Franky asked.

“Maybe…” He rose to a sitting position and saw that he was in an unfamiliar place with the same industrial red brick as Big Joe’s, a Big Joe-sized door to Franky’s back. “Where are we?”

“My place,” said Franky with a raised eyebrow. “Where else?”

-------------------------------------------------------------

After he unpacked himself Stephen found himself in a typical hall, with a coat rack, a place to put your shoes, and a little hip-high cupboard to put the stuff you want to keep handy. Of course, the coats and shoes were Franky-sized, everything was out of reach for him, and the cupboard wasn’t just the size of an oldschool phone booth, it was one. If it hadn’t been outfitted with a shelf, he might step in and make a call.

The entire thing was perfectly surreal. In the past, when he was a child, he must have seen the entire world this way, but somehow he remembered it differently. Perhaps it was because help would have always been ready, but his independent adult mind was quick to index the impossibilities the environment provided for him.

Franky occupied the end of the hall like a bouncer, leaning against the empty door frame with guarded casualness.

“Wasn’t planning to take anyone home,” she said. “So don’t mind the mess. And… uh… take off your shoes if you want to climb on the couch.”

Seemed reasonable. He did as told, putting his shoes next to Franky’s. She wasn’t a shoe enthusiast, if these were all she owned. There stood a sturdy, well worn pair of boots, and a pair of 80’s neon sneakers. Niké Goliaths. Guess the marketing worked. They weren’t only bigger than normal, but bulkier. He guessed her tiger paws needed extra toe room. Maybe some reinforcement in case she got her claws out.

When he was ready Franky turned, and preceded him. Following close behind, her tail brushed briefly against him with a velvety caress. Being so close, her big ass filled most of his world for the moment, and he was reminded of his ridiculous dream. The primitive part of his brain awoke and took in the sight, drawing his attention to the way she filled out the coarse coveralls.

“Behold, my palace!” Franky boomed with a sweeping gesture.

Indeed, the place did have the proportions of a palace, with a high ceiling and ample space. It had all the appearance of a swanky, up-scale studio that someone had rebelliously filled with giant furniture and, against one wall, an enormous kitchenette. A bank of arched windows on the opposite wall provided a view over a small park, greenery clashing fiercely with the industrial remnants and novel concrete looming around it. The world outside was awash in the warm glow of the sun clinging to the remains of the day, thinly stretched shadows drawing patterns where they fell.

He guessed Franky’s home must have been a warehouse or factory, just like Big Joe’s.

At least Franky held true to the stereotype. People who apologized about the mess a visitor was about to find themselves in were rarely very messy. Chances were that if you were self-conscious enough to worry about it in the first place, you at least took some effort to occasionally toss something in the garbage. No, Stephen had gone to college, where he’d seen rooms with invisible floors, kitchens with enough food clinging to their dishes to feed an African village, and coffee tables supporting the evidence of alcoholic levels of drinking. In contrast, Franky’s coffee table only had three empty cans sitting on it, her kitchen a few dirty dishes, and the floor was only used for modest storage. Maybe it could do with a sweeping, but he figured it was harder to see for her, given her eyes generally traveled somewhat higher above the floor.

“Hey, it’s not so bad,” he said. “The filth, I mean. The house is pretty nice, actually.”

A giant studio apartment in an up-and-coming neighborhood, large enough to give even Franky some living space, let alone a normal sized person. He imagined he could put his stuff in the center of the room and have more space left than he’d use. A yuppie would kill for this. A hipster would never be able to afford it.

“Thanks. Hey, can you entertain yourself for a bit?”

“Uh… sure.”

She unzipped the coveralls and started struggling them off her shoulders, the sleeves down her arms.

“I really need to take a shower.”

Maybe she did. The white shirt she wore underneath was stained at the armpits, and a familiar smell wafted down from her. Acrid and musky, his memory brought him back to the day he’d met her. That is, the feeling of soft, protective darkness enveloping him. Weight pressing down on him.

She got the garment down to her waist, her belly hanging out with complete disregard for anything even approaching elegance, tufts of orange and black fur poking out from under the hem of the shirt. Then she bent over.

OK, she was just undoing her shoes, kicking them off onto the floor with menacing thuds, but she gave a generous peek down the neck of her shirt as she did so. There was a generous tuft of fur between her breasts, which was the only thing affording her some modesty. He could dive into that cleavage and disappear.

Stephen stood somewhat struck. It’s not like it was the first time he’d peeked down a woman’s shirt without meaning to do so, but normally he didn’t get a view of this quality unless he put his face right in there. Which wasn’t something he had a habit of doing.

And Franky wasn’t done, either. With a tug she forced the coveralls down her hips -Stephen’s lizard brain noticed a jiggle- to reveal a thankfully roomy pair of boxer shorts. A true classic, white with red hearts. She slid the coveralls down those tree-trunk thighs and kicked the garment away, towards a corner, but hitting the middle of the floor.

“Could you… maybe warn me next time before you give me a striptease?” Stephen spoke before thinking.

“What? Come on, man. This is decent. Ya see women on the street showing more fur than this.” There was a blush in her voice that didn’t ripple her fierce expression.

She wasn’t wrong, but he wasn’t standing in the apartments of those women on the street. There was a distance there that had disappeared between him and Franky somewhere between her jumping on him, and her stuffing him into a bag to take him home. This was still the most naked he’d ever seen her. Maybe shirt, shorts, and socks didn’t traditionally count as stripper wear, but that did nothing for Stephen’s peace of mind. Under her stained shirt he could see the outline of her bra, straining to do its job. The curve of her stomach poking out from under the shirt with understated indecency. And her legs! Powerful, industrial pistons bound in toned muscle that her fat and fur did little to obscure.

He wanted to ruffle that fur. Surely that was a natural reaction, right?

“I’ma rub some soap on myself. You try not to hurt yourself, OK?”

Swishing her baseball bat of a tail over his head, she turned and stalked off.

Ass.

That big butt moving in those ridiculous shorts, clearly defined as the fabric had ridden up and tightened. With no care for her audience she tugged it back down as she walked.

At this rate, Stephen thought, I’m going to need a shower as well. A cold one.

It wasn’t long before the splashing of water emanated from behind the door through which the tigress had disappeared. She wasn’t a singer, at least. Stephen didn’t know how he’d have taken it if he’d heard growling and yowling come from there.

With socked feet he padded over the heavy beams of the floor. Distracted by Franky’s working class striptease he’d forgotten to ask her to put him on the couch. It was a rough thing, thick cushions resting on a heavy frame of dark, lacquered hardwood. There was place there for three people the size of Franky, with some squeezing, which meant it’d have to support the weight of a truck. This was where their worlds diverged, he thought. A normal upsized couch wouldn’t be up to the job. Either way, he wasn’t going to be able to get up there without her help. Without his injury, he’d just about manage to crawl up there. Maybe with a little jump and roll.

Instead he ambled around the apartment, looking at things. Her television hung obviously on a wall, not the largest he’d ever seen, but getting there. A desk with a computer stood in a corner, the Franky-sized screen, keyboard, and mouse contrasted by a normal-sized tower set on the desk. The cords were probably hell for her to work with.

Of course she had exercise equipment. Weights he’d struggle to bench to train her arms, a bench with a bar set on it that could crush him if it fell. He wasn’t even going to look at the weight she could bench, lest he scare himself. A training bike that looked like industrial equipment, possessing a construction that seemed nothing so much like cast iron given a cool, exercise-white paint job.

But most impressive was the real bike. It sneaked up on him, standing against a wall with some other clutter, in shadow and totally unassuming among the other giant things. It barely looked like the sort of bicycle he was used to, lacking any of the elegance that the mode of transport had. The frame heavy, practical, and reinforced. The tires massive and thick, to better distribute weight, seated on wheels with spokes like propeller blades. Gears to make any Steampunk enthusiast green with envy, running a chain that looked like it belonged somewhere on a locomotive.

It had a freaking basket, though. And a luggage, no, freight carriage above the rear wheel.

Weird as it looked, it made a lot of sense. Even though some people had tried, they simply didn’t make cars in Franky’s size. Most public transport didn’t take them, either. So it was either this, or one of the custom motorcycles large sized animal people sometimes rolled around on.

His mind flitted back to the sight of Franky’s legs. Yeah, she sure as hell would be able to get that thing up to acceptable speeds.

Eventually he got around to checking the bookcase. The lower shelves were reserved for the less interesting work, as is tradition. Some technical manuals, a book about workplace safety, an encyclopedia or two. If he wanted to read one he’d have to pull it out and rest it on the floor. He took a few steps back to look at the upper shelves and cocked his head to read the titles.

Bulgakov, Dostoyevsky, Gogol…

Russians, neatly arranged in alphabetical order. He could feel the arch of his eyebrows and slackening of his mouth before he realized his surprise. Now, at no point did he think Franky was stupid. She clearly was not. But he had to admit to himself he hadn’t expected to find a den of literature in the home of a construction worker.

The sound of water from behind the door was replaced by the howling of a wind tunnel. Her dryer, or dryers? Did she have an array of sorts in there to dry all that fur? He’d have to take a look, if he could.

With the sound announcing that it wouldn’t be long before she came out, Stephen did what everyone always did in a situation like that. He idly looked at stuff without taking anything in, passing his glance over the clutter on the coffee table. 1 liter cans of Bavaria. Not his favorite, but at least it was real beer. And, sure enough, a large, empty mug that had once contained coffee. At least the table was used for its intended purpose.

“Hey,” Franky called from between door frame and door, barely cracked open. She peeked out from behind it like a cartoon, clutching a towel to her chest. “I kind of don’t have anything clean in here. Could ya fetch me some?”

“Uh… sure.”

“Next door over.” She flicked her head to the side. “Top drawer in the closet for underpants. There’s some shirts around there, too.”

With that, she moved to close the door, halted, then cracked it open far enough to peer through with a single baleful eye. “Don’t go snoopin’ around, neither.”

“Ye of little faith.” Stephen shook his head as he left on his quest. Even if her were a snooper, it’d be too much effort. And he’d only have the bottom half of the room to snoop through.

The next door over wasn’t exactly hard to find. He reached up to the handle, pulled, and discovered it wasn’t exactly butter smooth. He let his weight pull it down, belatedly realizing it was essentially the same as pulling himself up. A sharp sting burned in his side.

“Fuck!” He managed to keep it to a whisper.

At least there was a clunk to signify it had worked. With a push the door drifted open easily enough, no longer a cantankerous obstacle.

Well, it seemed Franky had different rules for the bedroom. Those same arched windows, designed to shine the light of day on whatever industrial activity once went on here, now let the faltering rays of the sun fall upon a scene of domestic carnage. The covers of the bed, a two-person monstrosity squatting in the middle of the room, lay where they’d been kicked off. Shallow light picked out shed fur clinging to the sheets. Part of the bed was being used as temporary shelving, as was rather more of the floor. Discarded articles of clothing lay in crumpled heaps, giving a disjointed view into the tigress’ wardrobe. Shirts, jeans, boxers, mostly. A pair of briefs was as adventurous as she got in terms of underwear, it seemed. The bra’s, though. He spotted three, in all. Hard to miss. It had all the appearance of a crazed Medieval engineer having attempted to find a way to let a trebuchet fling two boulders at once, the experiments carelessly discarded in someone’s bedroom.

Visible through the debris of ill discipline the floor bore several rugs, perhaps to soften the rough wood that was also underfoot here. The wall above the bed, bare redbrick like the others, was decorated with a vaguely Eastern tapestry. A classic-looking cabinet with decorative carvings supported an incense burner, a picture frame, some clutter. A corner of the room provided a home to a full body standing mirror, the kind that pivoted on a sturdy frame. More than sturdy, in fact, and really two bodies rather than full body. Just walking around the place felt weird and wondrous, but his reflection that passed through the mirror seemed like a special effect. A tiny man navigating around copses of dirty laundry. An explorer of a wild, forgotten land, lacking only khaki shorts and a pith helmet.

Against the wall opposite of the windows stood his objective, a surprisingly standard bedroom closet. Straight slab sides and sliding doors, all black. A monolith reaching almost to the ceiling. His mind, residual exploration fantasy reluctant to leave, imagined howling winds whipping around this insurmountable mountaintop. Luckily, he only had to go halfway.

The sliding door ran smoothly, revealing just what Franky had promised: A stack of drawers, the topmost one being only just above eye height. With a simple pull it ran equally as smoothly as the door on its rollers.

Small mercies, Stephen thought. Every normal action was an expedition in this giant’s abode, so it was nice when things went well.

Standing on tip-toes to reach into the open drawer, groping blindly, side stinging in protest, he uttered a minor swear under his breath. Just like him to curse his own luck. He patted his hand clumsily up and down the depth of the drawer, finding soft packets of fabric. Socks.

Just keep moving.

Wasn’t it maybe a little weird to be rummaging through a woman’s underwear drawer? The sort of weird that would end with him sniffing everything he found. The only reason it hadn’t already been more embarrassing was that Franky dressed like a lumberjack, and might as well have been one. Her underwear was more manly than his.

He hit paydirt. Folds of soft fabric yielded under his palm, the bounty of his expedition confirmed when he pulled it from the drawer. Boxer shorts, red with polka dots, unfurled like a sail before him. Fairly stylish for something most people wouldn’t lay eyes on. An image passed through his mind of conjoined twins in search of a skirt. This would certainly do, if the sisters had big butts.

Right. Now for a shirt.

The top of the set of drawers made for a shelf, where he spied a stack. He could still reach the lower ones, but the top of the stack was out of reach. Well, that wouldn’t do. He felt little for pulling the entire stack down on top of himself.

But there was a solution. The drawers went all the way down to the floor, and the bottom one should serve him well as a step. He pulled it out.

A warm tickle of shame crept along Stephen’s spine to his head, where it bloomed in a full blush. Lying there as if waiting to challenge him, neatly tucked away in its box with a peepshow translucent front, was the unmistakable girth of a dildo.

It was no exception to the rule. The thing was the size of his arm, the text on the box making no qualms about it. Under the eye-catching XXXL a ripped as fuck horse man looked out at him with bedroom eyes, apparently unsure whether he was gracing the box of a sex toy or the cover of a romance novel.

Man, what was he even thinking, entertaining these half-formed fantasies about Franky? She was a goddamn giant, and he was just a regular guy with a regular dick. He’d have to scale her like a mountain if he ever were to make love to her. There’s no way he could compete with this monstrous battering ram.

His primitive brain immediately betrayed him by imagining Franky naked, on her messy bed, slamming it home to the hilt, growling, sopping wet…

He tossed the boxers over the box, banishing it from sight and the image from his mind. He still had a duty to fulfill.

Balancing himself on the edge of the drawer he could just reach the topmost shirt. The one under it came down as well, leading to a brief wonder about which would be better before he realized it didn’t matter, and tossed one back up. It stayed where it should on the first try. At least that went well.

He snatched up the boxers and kicked the drawer shut, refraining from taking a parting glance at his latex nemesis.

With a knock he announced his return, delivering the goods in Franky’s outstretched hand. She mouthed a quick “thanks” upon retreating.

Behind that door she was quite naked, the no longer dormant, lurid part of Stephen’s brain whispered. Everyone is naked underneath their clothes, Stephen whispered back at his own Id. You’re only thinking about it because you’ve been primed.

Useless stuff, these half formed thoughts jousting at each other in his brain pan. He paced around, kicking his feet. He’d need Franky before he could sit down like a proper person.

Was that it, then? Was his infatuation with this herculean woman just a natural result of a set of disparate circumstances coalescing into a mental schema that seemed to apply to them the most? Or, to put it less pretentiously, was he just triggering thoughts of relationships because he kept seeing her in circumstances he’d normally associate with dating? There was that bit about her saving his life, though. Normal dates, in the general rule of things, did not start with one party saving the life of the other.

Neither was a woman needing to lift you on the couch part of regular dating, come to think of it. That was a dependency sort of thing, but that tended to be part of a developing…

“What’re ya pacing about for?”

She’d slipped past him while he was preoccupied with his thoughts, leaning against the door frame of the bedroom. It reminded him of that come-hither pose he really only knew from movies, though she was hardly wearing lingerie. In flagrant lack of care she had only thrown on some shapeless sport shorts, presumably a fresh bra. Its outline showed through the shirt he’d grabbed for her. Just a plain, white one. No cool print or anything. Her hair, rebellious at the best of times, stuck out in a forest of cow-licks.

“Just thinking about the journalists,” he lied.

Franky growled a single laugh. “I don’t think they’ll follow us in here.” With only a few steps she was besides him, her eyes flitting from him to the couch. “Need a hand?”

“Please.”

Yeah, it was pretty weird how he was getting used to these tiger rides. He’d be fully healed in a week or two –he hoped– after which he could do all his climbing himself. Sitting on a couch too large even to give him space to dangle his legs was going to take longer to get used to, though. He felt like he might roll between the seat and backrest like a forgotten quarter if he didn’t pay attention.

But that’s only if they ever became more than two people forced together through circumstance. And that meant one of them had to say something at some point.

Franky was inspecting the inside of the fridge, a twitch in the tip of her tail betraying mischievous intent.

“Ya still want that beer?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” It’s not like ‘no’ was an option, at this point.

The can cracked open with a hiss. Franky made to set a glass before Stephen on the coffee table, paused as she was doing it, then delivered the glass directly into his hands. It spared both of them some embarrassment that he wouldn’t have to point out that he wasn’t able to reach that far.

What she thrust into his hands was a shot glass. The thing was awkward to hold and held a less than satisfactory amount of beer.

“It’s the best thing I’ve got,” she said as she lowered herself onto the couch. No earthquake this time.

“I guess you don’t get many squishy visitors.”

“Eh…” She bared her teeth in a grin that was supposed to be disarming. A minute crack in that unflappable exterior. “You’re the first one, actually.”

“That’s OK. You’re my first, too.”

Franky’s grin grew, accompanied by a deep purr. She idly scratched her head, flicking one ear about with her finger. The crack widened.

Ah shit, this was as awkward for her as it was for him, wasn’t it? Poor, giant, rib-crushing tiger girl. It’s not like she’d planned to take a somewhat strange dude home with her tonight. Least of all one who’d rummage through her underwear and dildo drawers.

“Cheers.” He held out the glass and Franky gave it a soft tap with her can. They both drank.

Even on her own couch she sat is if thrown onto it, nestling into the corner with her arms on the backrest and one leg half pulled onto the seat. Inelegant, and taking up all the space she could claw for. He was just the opposite, sitting like a doll in this dollhouse, legs neatly together, drink resting in his lap.

“Hey Franky?”

“Hrm?”

Tell her you want to dive head-first into her ass, his lizard brain whispered. For a moment he felt his heart in his throat, a hammer wielded by that primitive part of him.

“Thanks for getting me past that crew. That was a good idea, and you probably saved my job.”

“S’alright. That’s two ya owe me.” The mischief was back in her expression.

“Scratch them off against lunch and dinner.”

She let out a single growly laugh. “At least you’ll be a cheap date.”

Goddamnit, Franky. You can’t just say shit like that in a situation like this. Was there any real meaning behind the joke? That hard, honest exterior made it difficult to spy out anything without directly asking for it. He quickly tossed back his drink, may it give him courage.

“And you’d be a really expensive one.”

She patted her belly, eliciting a gentle jiggle. “You didn’t think I got this godly figure through moderation, did ya?”

That was a gesture none of the other women he knew, mostly office ladies, would ever make. Especially not the ones who had the figure for it. Franky just completely blew past that dreary, socially acceptable dishonesty without knowing it was even there. Her mannerisms were a battering ram to all the values white collar work had rubbed into his brain over the years.

“Now we’re talking ‘bout it, you OK with chicken nuggets?” She asked.

“Uh… sure?”

“We’ll have to order from the kids’ menu for you.”

“Big Joe’s?”

“Only place that serves portions that keep me going.”

Made sense. Though, he could already see her popping regular cheeseburgers down her gullet like potato chips. He had no idea what she would eat in lieu of potato chips, though.

She’d already whipped out her tablet-sized phone and busied herself with pecking her fingers at the screen with fervor. She was a hard tapper, eliciting blunt thuds with every jab. The rapidity with which her fingers moved betrayed a complete lack of doubt.

“Doesn’t it get a little boring? Always ordering from the same place.”

Franky gave a slow shrug, as if the dismissal of the point wasn’t really worth the effort. “It is what it is.”

“Yeah, nevermind…” Stephen let his voice trail off. “I guess I’m just looking at it from the perspective of never wanting for choice.”

“There’s a few other places, but it’s like… if there’s a place that does something the best, and you like the people… why’d ya ever go anywhere else?”

“Variety?”

She jerked a thumb towards the kitchen. “There’s where I get variety. When I’m shelling out big bucks, I don’t want to end up with no mouse bites, shit flavor, or mystery meat. It’s fast food, not haute cuisine.”

She actually pronounced it correctly. Oat kwiseen.

Her eye drifted to his near-empty glass.

“Lemme top ya up.”

Beer fizzed from Franky’s monstrous can into his more respectable receptacle.

“I’m serious, you know,” he said after taking a sip. Maybe he could crack the facade again.

“I’d be an expensive date?”

“About letting me ride in your bag, taking me here.”

“It’s nothing.” She waved the comment away with her free hand.

Stephen couldn’t help but shake his head. “Just take the fucking compliment, Franky.”

“OK, OK, consider it taken. Thanks.” There was a moment of silence. “Felt good doing something smart for a change.”

“Oh yeah, I was convinced you were a complete mongoloid before you stuffed me into a bag,” he said with a healthy dose of sarcasm. “The rest of you is huge, so I’m sure your brain is as well.

Franky let out a wood rasp chuckle. “That’s me, big brain gal. Nah, I mean, I lift things for a living. It pays the bills, but it ain’t exactly mentally stimulating.”

That’s where the Russians on the bookshelf came in, he guessed.

“I get it,” he swept his gaze over the living space, “but at least it pays the bills quite well.”

“You don’t get it.” The words were harsh, though Franky took on a look of embarrassment and flicked an ear, realizing how she sounded. “Sorry. Ya get it more than most squishies, but it’s like…”

She was clearly grasping to explain something she normally didn’t discuss with people. Or, at least, with people his size. He didn’t feel offended for her telling him off. Maybe she’d heard fair-weather sympathy too much to take it at face value.

“…Big livin’ can get expensive, you know? So you have to do what pays well, and that’s stuff where they need big people. It’s kind of a narrow pool, but that’s fine. The thing is… you’re always big. And a lot of folk think that’s kinda scary.”

“Hey, I like your scariness.” He did. “It’s a good kind of scary.”

“Aw, thanks.” Her expression softened. “But it’s not like people’re even wrong. When that guy kicked you, just because he wasn’t paying attention, he could’ve killed ya. I could’ve killed ya during the accident. People think I really did.”

Maybe it was because she was so uncharacteristically worried about something he’d already taken at face value, but Stephen laughed, then winced at the stab in his side. “I would have been glad to die under you instead of a bunch of rocks.”

“It was concrete, busted into rubble.”

“So you’re just going to say nothing about me being OK with you squishing me like a squishy?”

Great play on words, Stephen. You peerless orator you.

“Oh, I’m honored,” she said from behind a man-eating grin, and a swig from her can.

“You should be,” he answered, bringing his own glass to his lips. “Best squishy you’ve ever squished.”

“Christ, I think I knocked loose more than just yer ribs.”

Stephen laughed, winced, and reached for his sore side.

“Still hurts, huh?” Franky’s ears drooped self-consciously.

“It’s nothing. Look…” He moved to put his hand on her shoulder, found it out of reach, and put it on the nearest bit of tigress he could find. That happened to be the rough hewn knee jutting in his direction. At once it confirmed just how massive she was. A kneecap like armor plate, bound to muscle of industrial power, tendons of unimaginable tensile strength. She could have been built in a factory.

Wait.

He was touching her. He didn’t even think of it. Strands of coarse orange-black fur played between his fingers, he felt an instinctive itch to scratch. This was it. Intimate skin-on-fur contact. He looked up at ochre eyes regarding him, waiting, betraying no ire at his touch. There was the mask, its slight crack making it no more readable.

Widen the crack.

Visions of doubt flashed through Stephen’s mind, all riding on a certain horse-sized implement. But whatever impetus he had triggered in himself tumbled forward in an avalanche of intent, as sudden and uncontrolled as the gesture that lay at its origin.

“Franky, I… you’re…”

A shrill buzz made Stephen jump near out of his skin before he could even hope to complete his stumbling sentence. Franky whipped her head towards the door, taking her gaze with it. She pushed herself out of the couch, leaving his outstretched hand without the intimacy of her lovely, fuzzy knee. Her tail swished behind her as she left.

Yup, there went The Moment, riding her furry ass out of here. Was he being cockblocked by a doorbell? Did he ever have a hope? He was being foolhardy, wasn’t he?

“Food’s here.” Frankie returned hefting the classic plain, white plastic of fast food delivery. With a weighty thud she deposited it on the coffee table, knocking over one of the empty cans in the process. She made no move to right it. “Dude gave me some lip ‘bout you being here. You were saying something?”

“Ah… forget ab… Wait, they know I’m here?”

Franky scrunched up her snoot in a lopsided look. “Yeah. Ya were there with me twice. Ya left with me. And I ain’t got no kids to order chicken nuggets for. In squishy terms, we’re practically dating.”

“They think we’re dating?!”

“It’s just jokes.” She spoke half into the bag as she pulled out cardboard containers.

Was that good? Did it matter? He’d never stopped to think how visible he was hanging out with her, despite the hints being shouted at him in the headlines.

“Uh… what kind of jokes?”

She pressed a stack of warm boxes into his hands, greasy cardboard smell wafting up with a purely Pavlovian allure.

“Stuff like to be careful not to break ya.” There was a slight waver to her voice.

He couldn’t help but grin. “Good thing I already gave you permission, huh?”

The last thing Franky extracted from the bag was undoubtedly her own dinner. An honest to God leg of lamb (at least, he thought it was lamb, it’s not like he was an expert), wrapping quickly shredded by claws. The browned meat gave it all the expression of a caveman’s club, as did the way she waggled it in his direction.

“What’s funny is you think I’d need it.”

She brought the leg to her mouth and tore off a chunk. Marinade stained the fur around her mouth only to be wiped clean by that long tongue gliding over her snout. Almost like a big, fleshy windshield wiper. It shouldn’t really be cute, but the messy eating fit in so perfectly with the rest of Franky’s bulldozer charm that it blew right out on the other side in the territory of endearing.

At least he finally had an answer to what she ate.

To the chorus of ripping meat, prolific chewing, and the muted, but strangely audible, sound of her tongue scraping fur he started his own meal. Yeah, he should have expected it, but there was still something singularly weird about the giant chicken nuggets he found in the box. Two of them would form a perfectly normal piece of chicken. A bite confirmed nothing out of the ordinary, however.

“’s good?” Franky asked while also negotiating a piece of meat down her gullet.

Clean snout left, clean snout right.

“It’s a giant chicken nugget, Franky.” He waggled it at her, though it was nowhere near as threatening as the goddamn meat club she was chowing down on. “It’d take an evil genius to fuck it up.”

She gave a deep chuckle, then returned her attention to eating.

OK, while the tigress was distracted by food he had some time to think of some way to not be a total idiot in convincing her to hang out in a slightly less platonic way, unmediated by strange happenings. Should he touch her again? Ruffle the fur? Did she like her fur being ruffled? The questions zipped through his head, unconnected and unanswered, in a storm of confusion. Somewhere in the distance his mind’s ear heard a dour whinnying.

Franky did a good job with her dinner. What remained was mostly bone, the scraps of meat clinging to it quickly disappearing with the lapping of her raspy tongue. Some stains dotted what had only minutes ago been a clean shirt. After a final inspection she judged it good, and tossed the bone mostly into the bag on the table. With a sated expression she sank back into the nook of the couch and licked her fingers.

“Franky.” He gained her attention, still not quite sure of what to say. “When all this shit is over…”

A shrill buzz made Stephen jump near out of his skin before he could even hope to complete his stumbling sentence. Again.

This time it didn’t come from the door, but from his own pocket. With an internal cry of frustration he fumbled the phone from his pocket with the intent to reject the call, and pettily block the number. Though he’d expected a known or unknown press person, instead a familiar name lit up on the screen under highly professional, effortlessly flattering headshot.

Conroy.

“Shit, I gotta take this,” he muttered, and accepted the call.

“Stephen? You doing OK?” The boss sounded suspiciously chipper.

“Hey boss. Yeah, I’m fine. Uhm… why are you calling on friday night?”

Before Conroy spoke he could just hear the man smiling on the other side of the line.

“You haven’t heard then?”

“Heard what?” These damn games. Out with it, man!

“Your tiger girlfriend got chased by the press, camera crew and everything. Some of her buddies came to help, and things got… well, they didn’t get ugly, but they looked ugly for a minute there. Long story short, someone put it on Facebook or Twitter or something, some celebrity spread it around. It’s being shared all over as we speak. I was sure you’d know. Don’t you practically live on the internet?”

He’d be the first to admit he already didn’t have a lot of color to his face, but what was there drained. The entire thing went down this afternoon, only scant hours ago. Even with journalists sharing his number like a Thai hooker he’d never have thought things could go viral this fast. He looked at Franky, and even her unflappable expression seemed to have a measure of shock to it. Damn those satellite dish animal ears. Of course she could hear the entire damn conversation.

“Wait, so why are you calling?” And why are you enjoying it so much?

“Remember when I said I’d put out some feelers for your idea?”

“Yeah.” Oh shit.

“One of them got back to me tonight. Long story short, they want you both on The World Keeps Turning tomorrow night.”

Oh, it was only one of the biggest talk shows in the country. The hands of nervousness clasped themselves around Stephen’s throat. Half the fucking populace tuned into it, and the entire thing was live.

“Fuck me!” Franky said, then clasped her hand over her mouth when she realized it.

“Do you have visitors?” Conroy asked.

“It’s just the TV. Jesus Christ, boss. Tomorrow? Couldn’t you have found an earlier slot? Like in five minutes or something?”

Conroy just laughed at that. “News is like fish, you’ve got to sell it fresh. And your tigress just pulled a prize trout. They couldn’t believe their luck that my number was already in their call history.”

His eyes flicked to Franky. “Does she know?”

She clearly didn’t, but when were they going to tell her?

“She’s got a boss, too. He should be giving her a call.”

Right on cue Franky’s phone buzzed. Stephen quickly clamped his hand over the microphone.

“Come on, Stephen. Turn your TV down.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he answered as Franky removed herself to the bedroom to have her own weird news call, already speaking in clipped words to her own boss. “So what’s the deal?”

“You’re familiar with the format of The World Keeps Turning?”

“Yes.” Snappy round-table discussion, safely charismatic host, relevant subjects. Studio audience. Live.

“We’ve got you for a short segment, maybe ten minutes. It’s simple. You talk a little about what really happened, answer a few questions, you know how it works.”

“Oh yeah, simple. Just your every day live television performance.” If his words could drip with any more sarcasm, they’d drown.

“This is what you wanted, remember? We’ll go over it tomorrow at the studio. Just don’t dress like a nerd, get a handle on what you want to say. Just relax. They even made that autistic guy look good.”

That’s true. He even remembered the guy’s name. Case. He certainly had a bunch of unique views on life that went over way smoother with people than you’d normally expect. He allowed himself to feel a bit of relief. If someone with a handicap like that could make it through without fucking it up, so could they. But you could bet your ass they hadn’t sprung it on him the day before. Neither was he a giant, angry tigress.

“Right, so where do we show up? What time?”

“It’s all in the mail I sent you. Chin up, now. I know people who’d kill to be in your position.”

Yeah, that’s what he was worrying about. That he’d have to talk to people like that. On live TV. If Franky didn’t dig her claws into them first. What the fuck was wrong with a nice, controlled interview with some newspaper? Snap a picture of him and Franky not looking ridiculous. Done.

“Alright, boss. See you tomorrow.”

With a tap of the screen the world receded into silence. So much for a calm weekend, then. Not to mention everyone he knew bringing this shit up for years to come. If he’d jam Franky’s dildo up his ass to the hilt, smile for the camera, and upload it to PornHub he’d be able to get away with it better than what they were going to do tomorrow.

“Ya done?” Franky’s rumble sounded tired, its usual edge blunted. Indeed, she looked tired as she lumbered into the living room without waiting for an answer, not that he really needed to give one. “I told ya, please no live fucking TV. How fucking fast do you people work?”

“That camera crew this afternoon? Their shit went viral.”

Franky’s eyes widened. “Yer kidding me. It’s been like three hours!”

He shrugged with only minimal pain. “I guess they don’t edit.”

“No shit.” She leaned on the back of the couch.

Stephen pushed himself upright, standing on the cushions with socked feet, just as instructed. With Franky hunched over and him with a height boost, they were actually close to face-to-face. He focused on the cute spot on her nose.

“You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. Just say you’re sick, whatever.”

“Nah.” She forced her snout into a wry smile. “I asked for this, gotta own up to it. ‘Sides, ain’t ya gonna get in trouble if I flake out?”

He put his hand on hers, scratching the coarse fur.

Wait.

He did it again. What was he even planning to say?

“Hrm?” Franky gave a purr with a question mark on the end, letting that nigh-inscrutable expression rest on him.

“I… I think… we’ll be fine.”

“You know, I’m kinda glad you stuck with me. Pretty sure I’d have busted someone’s head already if I were going it alone.” She gave a smile, then his hand was eclipsed by one much larger and fluffier. “Even if you make my worst fears come true.”

Oh God, she was touching him back.

“Well…” Think, Stephen, think. “…who said you had to be the only scary one?”

It wasn’t a very slick thing to say, but Franky beamed a grin at him that showed every single one of her sharp teeth.

Stephen, there maybe be hope for you yet.

-------------------------------------------------------------

“What about this one?” Franky emerged from her bedroom wearing something Stephen was honestly surprised she owned in the first place. A long-sleeved, button-up shirt. No ostentatious prints, respectable blue stripe, and mostly unwrinkled. The problem was immediately obvious: Its buttons strained to contain her bust in doomed mountaineer style. With one vigorous move they’d be liable to pop off and present a danger to any unprotected eyeball.

“Uh… it’s a little tight.”

She looked down to confirm his judgement.

“It’s been a while since I’ve worn this. How about the pants?”

It was just a regular pair of jeans, Franky not being fashionable enough to own anything with holes in it she didn’t put there herself. He guessed it was a men’s model, given that it only hugged her form in a way that seemed mostly unintentional. The cut was low enough to avoid a pronounced fupa, which he was sure she could rock with a pair of mom jeans and some strategic tucking. And maybe that was a bit too advanced for a television audience.

“You know the rule,” he said, “denim bottoms go with everything, denim tops go with nothing.”

In fact, he was wearing jeans himself. Freshly washed, and even ironed, for tonight’s purpose. Button-up shirt and jacket up top. Understated, expected, and safely boring.

“I was kinda hoping this’d just work.” Franky grumbled.

“It’s fine. Let’s just look at some of the other stuff you have.” After all, that’s why she invited him in the first place. He wasn’t the first, or even second, third, or hundreth place people came to for wardrobe advice, so it was a bit of a surprise when Franky called him to provide it. But here he was, helping a grown woman dress herself.

“Step into my boudoir, then.” She swung open the door, giving a grand gesture more in its place on an old-fashioned doorman.

Stephen followed suit, tipping an imaginary hat as he did. Since yesterday the place had actually experienced some sort of cleaning, though a lot of it amounted to Franky having kicked some of her laundry into a larger pile in the corner.

“Do you have some stuff laid out?”

She gave a noncommittal grunt. “Not really. I’ll grab some.”

He could swear he felt the floor beams depress as she stalked past, passing close by him. The wardrobe’s door slid open smoothly on its rollers with a pronounced rumble. Franky seemed to inspect its contents with the intensity of a general on the eve of battle, the tip of her tail dancing this way and that in betrayal of her stony exterior. He moved closer to have a look for himself, putting a hand on her thigh to make himself known and not be bowled over should she turn.

Hey, he was doing it again. But this time it was practical, not emotional. Did that still count?

However, before he could spend more thought on the nature and logistics of tiger-touching, his eye fell on a piece of fabric utterly anathema to this place. A long, feminine garment suspended from a hanger, with a distinct floral pattern in soft, non-threatening pastels. It was near a miracle he hadn’t noticed it the day before, though admittedly his thoughts had been elsewhere.

“You own a fucking dress.” He blurted out.

He could feel her freeze by his side, the biggest bunny to ever be caught in headlights.

“I’m not wearing that.” She issued in a low rumble.

“Oh, you shouldn’t…” Wait, no. Wrong thing to say. Quick, save it! “… I mean, not that you wouldn’t look good in it… I’d love to see you wear it… but I mean, I don’t think dresses are really done on TV anymore…”

Yeah, she was looking down at him now with that lop-sided expression he was beginning to associate with himself putting his foot firmly in mouth.

“It was for a wedding.” Flat affect. No judgement. She was letting him off easy, wasn’t she? “Pretty sure it don’t fit anymore, anyhow.”

OK, just move on.

“Let’s look at some of the long sleeves.”

It wasn’t much of a chore to pluck them all from the wardrobe. Franky seemed to mostly own T-shirts, some hoodies, and he could see a denim jacket hanging there. Good thing they already ruled that one out. What ended up draped over her arm was a rather paltry collection with no real connecting theme. One stood out to him.

“Let’s try that one.” He tugged at the soft fabric of classic red and black plaid. The stereotypical lumberjack shirt.

“Really?” Franky regarded her own wardrobe as if it were new to her. “Don’t ya think it’ll make me look… you know, dykey?”

Oh Franky, that ship had not only left the harbor, but returned from a circuit of the Indies laden with spices.

“You bring your own charm to it.”

She gave him a look as if he’d slapped her on the tit.

“I’m not joking.” Mostly. “It’s a classic look. Rugged, blue collar. If anyone can pull it off, it’s you.”
Rarely had there been a more truthful statement, Stephen thought. Life wouldn’t have had to go much differently for Franky to be roving the woods, giant axe in hand, ever ready to deplete the beer stores of British Columbia bars.

“Wear it with a shirt,” he offered.

“Fine,” she said, then gave him a look. “I’m going to undress, now.”

Well, he did tell her to warn him if she were ever to do it again. He only had himself to blame for this. The primitive parts of his brain buzzed in excitement, roused by the prospect of a half naked Franky. To their disappointment he gave a non-committal sound he hoped communicated he wasn’t hoping for a free show, and retreated to the living room.

He didn’t have much time for the usual idly looking at things before Franky rejoined him, though he was considering contemplating the couch. After all, she did only put on a shirt.

“So, what about it?” she asked.

She had the uncomfortable stance usually only exhibited by boyfriends and husbands indulging their better halves in malls and high streets across the world. And like those, she had silently taken advice given, wearing the plaid over a forest green shirt bearing a worn print of some nature reserve or another. He could make out trees, a lake, and a beaver.

Had he ever seen her in a shirt that looked like it hadn’t been vigorously worn? She had pristine clothing she’d evidently grown out of, but her ratty shirts suffered no such problems. Maybe she did her own shopping in tent size to gradually work up to a proper fit.

“That’s good.” It was. The lumberjack shirt fell naturally over her frame, dressing down all that needed dressing down, ensuring attention would go to her mind rather than… something else. “Good color coordination, too. I think we’ve got a winner.”

“You sure?” She shifted her stance and moved her arms a little in what Stephen guessed was an attempt to give fresh perspective on the ensemble.

“It’s not rocket surgery. You look rugged, but respectable. It’s a good look for you.” Indeed, if he were of any service here to begin with, it was probably in preventing her from overdressing in the eye-hazard button-up.

“Gee, uh…” she scratched the back of her head, for a moment achieving a perfect outdoorswoman catalog pose, “… thanks.”

“You’re still shit at taking compliments, though.”

Stephen expected her normal stony expression to return. However, instead mischief shone in her eyes and the tiniest of smiles curled her lips. “Keep ‘em coming. I’ll learn someday.”

You better not be batting my heart around like a bloody cat toy, Stephen thought.

“Keep earning them, and they’ll keep coming,” he shot back.

That seemed to be it for TV-Franky. Apparently she agreed, because she only returned the same thin smile and stalked past him like a city bus passing a cyclist.

“I’ma pull on my boots,” she announced as she did so. “Maybe have a beer. You want a beer?”
He wasn’t sure whether he agreed if it was smart, but his nerves certainly did. With the immediate problem taken care of he could already feel the icy claws of impending Big Things crawling up his spine and rummaging around in his guts.

“Sure.”

Before long they were in the same position they’d been in the day before, Franky with giant can in hand, he with the not-quite-right glass in his. It was the same one, too. He was sure of it. Franky struck him as the sort of person to do the cleaning as it came.

“That hit the spot,” she said.

Stephen didn’t answer.

“I’m kinda nervous, ya know.”

“That’s normal. Just don’t spill any on your shirt. I’ve got no idea what else we could dress you in.”
She barked a single laugh. “Thanks for easing my nerves, ya prick.”

“At your service.” He gave a two-fingered Scout salute.

They sat in silence for a while. Pressed into the nook of the couch, one boot placed casually on the coffee table, loose grip on a can of beer, staring thoughtfully into the distance Christian rock band style, Franky once again took on the aspect of a catalog model. Maybe a little less when she took long, greedy pulls from the can. But otherwise, pretty decent. And he had a hand in creating this look, so that was something, right?

The doorbell intruded on Stephen’s peace of mind, shrill buzz rubbing against frayed nerves.

“Damn, you really ought to get that thing changed.”

“Assholes are early,” Franky growled, then drained her can, crushed it, and tossed it onto the table. “Let’s go. Time to be pretty on TV.”

Ah well. Stephen finished his own, rather more modest, beer and wiggled off the couch.

They made their way outside, Stephen utilizing the small strip of squishy-access stairs next to the more chunky variety designed for the likes of Franky. Still he felt the mallet blows of her booted feet reverberate and resound off the bare brick walls. After she swung open the old factory doors, they could see their ride waiting for them, parked halfway on the sidewalk. A big pick-up type truck, with the rear bed given over to a single immense passenger compartment, driver already behind the wheel despite having rung the bell.

“Shit, I hate these things.” Franky spoke in a low tone. “Makes me feel like the fucking pope.”

Nevertheless she pressed on and clambered into the vehicle, rocking it on its creaky suspension.

“You’re up here with me, buddy,” the driver called, leaning out of his window.

Yup, he totally saw me standing there like an idiot, looking for a chair that wasn’t there, Stephen thought.

But he, too, pressed on, hoisting himself into the passenger seat with a groan. This thing wasn’t a low-rider, and his side set about some vigorous throbbing to confirm that fact. As soon as he slammed the door shut the driver shifted into gear and peeled out into traffic.

The man had a no-nonsense voice that fit his look. Receding hairline, mustache, pot belly, and hard eyes that continued to scan traffic without shifting to his passenger for even a fraction of a second.

“So, you two together?” he asked while Stephen was still trying to wrap himself in his seat belt.

The question shot through Stephen’s brain like a bullet.

“Uh… kind of a forward question, don’t you think?” he answered.

“I guess.” The man’s voice was unapologetically upbeat. “I figured I’m dropping off a big girl and a regular guy at the studio, you’re going to be in some show, right?”

The question wasn’t rhetorical. Stephen thought he could see the driver’s eyes flick briefly in his direction before snapping back on the road.

“Right.” He nodded.

“So I figure you’re going to make some point about how you’re living together, and you need a little step ladder to get onto the couch, that sort of thing.”

The step ladder wasn’t a bad idea. If he was going to hang out with Franky more he ought to get one.

“But I guess you ain’t together, then,” the driver continued. “No offense intended and all that. I drive big folk for a living, and I don’t get many double pickups. But you did the thing, you know? The couple thing.”

Christ, was he being that obvious? Franky didn’t seem to notice, but yeah… she was Franky.

“What’s the couple thing?”

“Seeing if you can ride together. Most people are fine riding separately. If we get into an accident, and you’re riding with big folk, things can… they can get pretty messy.” The driver paused for a few seconds, then figured Stephen’s silence meant he could handle the harsher stuff. “Strawberry jam kinda messy, you get me?”

Thanks for the mental image, random truck driver. The man had one arm dangling habitually from the open window. So he probably had a history wrangling big rigs to account for his lack of candor.

“I’m familiar with the risk,” Stephen answered. He certainly was.

They came to the end of the neighborhood, its fashionably eclectic architecture gradually giving way to more boring developments. The driver guided his vehicle into a sharpish turn onto a large thoroughfare, engine rumbling as he gradually coaxed more power from it. The entire truck lurched on its suspension, leaning into the turn.

“You feel that?” the driver asked, then rattled on without waiting for an answer. “That’s one of the problems with driving the big folk around. High center of gravity. It’s OK if you’re driving a big truck, but it gets a little tricky for a small single-seater. I took a special course and all. Good thing your girl’s not a mover, either. Boy, you don’t want them moving around back there!”

It felt like the driver was trying to push the gas pedal through the floor as the truck crawled towards its theoretical top speed, engine erupting in a full, steady roar. The speed was palpable in the movement of the vehicle, in the way the wind pushed against its tall sides, and the gentle sway of the suspension as the driver corrected for the drift.

The nature of modern society was to be dependent on other people, no matter how independent someone thought they were. With his job he was more aware of that than most, he figured. Few people spent any thought on how the only thing between them and danger could be a tired architect forgetting to carry a zero. Or, in fact, a driver being overconfident in his ability and flipping the vehicle you’re in. How often did Franky have to do something like this? The bus at the site seemed safe enough, but to her this thing had to seem like nothing more than a speeding armchair. No wonder she had the bike.

As they sped along Stephen idly observed the world passing by outside, as one does. He had no line of sight on their giant cargo, but the occasional glances up and to the rear of passengers in other cars confirmed she was still very much there. The children were either delighted, or frightened, so he was sure Franky was still her surly self as well.

“I wonder how they do it, though.” The driver left the other half of the sentence hanging like a baited hook.

“Do what?” Stephen bit.

“You know…” the man’s eyes flitted meaningfully towards Stephen for a fraction of a second, “…the horizontal lambada. Creating the beast with two backs. Fucking.”

“Huh.”

“Ways I see it, someone’s either too big or too small, right? In the…” the driver rummaged around in his head for a proper word, “…interfacing department. Either you don’t fit or… ah… you don’t fit.”

Images of a disembodied, rubber horse cock danced in Stephen’s mind. A vague sensation of inadequacy rode its back as it looped and frolicked in the baying, primitive parts of him.

“There are other ways of having sex,” he answered, banishing the vision back to whatever mental strongbox he kept it in.

“Yeah…” the driver seemed to contemplate the possibility even as he conceded it, “…but is it fun, though? Like, with the size difference someone’s always gonna have to do a lot of climbing, right?”

“Maybe that’s part of the fun.” He was sure it was, in fact. If he had to compare Franky to any natural feature, it was surely a daunting rock face. But the driver seemed like the sort of guy who only walked out of absolute necessity, his adipose beer gut looking too large to not get stuck on anything he might attempt to scale.

“Won’t catch me doing any of that.” The driver gave a shrug.

Ain’t that the truth.

“Do you ever ask any of the couples that question?”

The driver laughed. “Shit no. That’d be insensitive.”

He wasn’t wrong, but one had to wonder if he was truly motivated by a desire to be inoffensive, or by a desire to not piss off people who could punt him like a football.

“Do you have a line to the back? We could just ask Franky. Maybe she knows.”

“That’d be insensitive, too.”

Definitely the latter, then.

The line of questioning petered out with that. The driver returned most of his attention to the road, only occasionally putting forward a few random words of wisdom. For his part, Stephen returned to watching the world zoom by, giving some noncommittal confirmations and observations. After a few miles the driver asked if he was OK with him putting on some music. That was only half of the truth, as the driver flicked the truck’s radio onto a station that was at least 50% DJ gleefully segueing between pop classics, and pop flavor of the month.

The road blurred by to the tune of shitty music, DJ gab, and habitual, idle phone browsing. Eventually Stephen was jolted out of his high-tech trance when the driver lurched the truck onto an off-ramp and into a turn that, again, seemed too sharp.

At first glance it seemed like they hadn’t gone far. The neighborhood they found themselves rolling through had the same appearance of an industrial district overtaken by gentrification, though the process was in a far more advanced stage. Little remained of the working class aside from the facades of buildings where they used to work.

Among the buildings one loomed large, free standing, dating back to a time when any large factory or power station had as much architectural effort put into it as a church. Its decorative brickwork spoke of a grandure that had once given rise to the term ‘captain of industry’, though the modern sign at the gate simply read ‘Media Park’.

The driver slowed the truck and turned. After a quick exchange with the guard, the old wrought iron gate swung open on new electrical motors. They turned onto the parking lot, and with a turn of the key the chugging of the engine ceased.

“We’re here,” the driver announced superfluously. The heaving and creaking of the truck’s suspension hinted that Franky wasn’t waiting for anyone to open the door for her.

“So what show are you guys going to be on, then?” Stephen was already halfway out of the truck when the driver asked the question.

“Uh… The World Keeps Turning.” It still felt somewhat surreal to say it, even more when standing in the shadow of the studio.

The driver’s face lit up in surprise, the most emotion Stephen had seen of the man in their brief acquaintance. “Really now? Guess I’ll be seeing you two on TV tonight.”

“Guess so.”

“Good luck!”

With that, Stephen slammed the door shut and glanced around for Franky. She wasn’t hard to find as a rule, and the truck between them did little to hide her as she made her way around it, catching Stephen’s eye from over the cab. She looked… surly, with hard eyes and the corners of her mouth turned down into something approaching a scowl accentuated by bristly, striped sideburns. Nothing out of the ordinary, then.

The day was already coming to an end, the sun dipping behind the skyline on its way to the horizon. Where its rays touched brick they brought out a fiery red that stood at odds with the rapidly cooling air. Stephen couldn’t help but watch the truck roll off the lot. Seeing it in motion somehow made it look stranger than when it was standing still, the pope mobile cab over the bed giving it the appearance of a poorly proportioned toy. It really did look like it ought to teeter over in a corner. It wasn’t his first time seeing one, but the experience took on another meaning after confidently speeding down the highway in one.

Shit, and they’d have to take one back, didn’t they?

He felt Franky standing beside him the way dogs feel oncoming earthquakes.

“Told ya I hate those things, didn’t I?”

“Yeah.” The rumble of the truck’s engine merged with the sounds of other traffic as it turned onto the road and accelerated away. “The view has to be pretty good, though.”

Franky snorted. “Yeah, of me. I can handle the kids. They’re kids. But the adults…” She bent down, looming like an overhanging cliff, “…they stare too much. They think I can’t see, but I can.”

To be fair, it was hard not to notice, what, 12 feet of orange anger. She was probably the biggest tigress he’d ever seen.

“That’s just because your angry face is your cutest face,” he said only partially embellishing the truth.

“Har har.” She cast a glance over her shoulder at the towering turn of the century architecture. “Wanna go in? You might see a lot of it.”

A gust of wind swept across the parking lot, carrying the first sting of cold to herald the coming night.

“Let’s.”

The main entrance was a building’s calling card, and the long dead architect that had worked on this one was well aware of it. A short flight of stone stairs, scaled in one step by Franky, led up to a vaulted archway flanked by pillars and lit by wrought iron lampoons of lanterns. The classic olde-timey look, though the light spilling from the lanterns was no doubt LED, and where once would have been something of oak or teak, there was now the transparent sheen of glass set in a modern frame. At first glance it seemed capable of admitting only a normal sized person through a normal sized door, but an enterprising doorman swung the entire thing open as they presented themselves. Maybe it had been foresight on part of the media company when they acquired the building, but Franky only had to stoop slightly to fit herself through.

“Party for The World Keeps Turning?” the doorman asked. You could tell he worked for a professional outfit because, well, he was wearing a professional outfit. His unwrinkled, tailored suit outdressed both of them without effort.

“You got it,” Franky answered with a hint of a growl.

“Follow me, please.”

From on high Stephen caught Franky shooting him a meaningful look. Quite what it meant, he wasn’t sure, but it was certainly infused with a sense of resignation.

The doorman preceded them through the spacious main hall, the building still affording Franky enough room to move normally. Past and present clashed in the aggressive repurposing the building had undergone, its organic red brick, blue collar origins at times completely washed away by the influx of the tight lines of glass, plastic, concrete, and steel. Set in a modern door frame, set in turn in a bare wall weathered by age, was a matte glass door much like the one at the main entrance. The doorman swung it open in its entirety to admit them.

“One of my colleagues will come fetch you when we’re ready to start shooting,” he said, voice dutifully formal. “Refreshments are provided, naturally. Don’t hesitate to ask if you need anything.”

Beyond the threshold lay a waiting room. At least, that was the function, because the few rooms of that title could boast about having their own bar. And kitchen, too, judging from the subtle smell carrying through the air. An audible sniff from besides and above hinted to the fact that Franky had noticed this fact, too. Comfortable-looking couches set against the walls, standing and sitting tables, large windows looking out over a small courtyard, black and white photographs on the walls, and modern steel additions bolted onto the ancient walls without obfuscation. At all spoke of that modern style that did its best to look Spartan and down to Earth, but came with a price tag that was anything but.

Movement caught his attention. Sat at a table was his lanky boss, waving a lanky arm.

He’s just the sort of guy this interior was made for, Stephen thought. It spoke even in his manner of dress: Ribbed pants of a color that was escaping brown for orange, a well ironed button-up that’d be a Hawaiian if the print were larger and the sleeves shorter, and shoes with a faux-reptilian texture and pattern. He effortlessly danced on the line between frivolously casual and fashionably businesslike, and he wasn’t even going to be on TV. Stephen admired Conroy’s confidence, though not his taste.

“Who’s that… guy?” Franky asked in an attempt at whispering that Stephen hoped didn’t carry across the room. She was already showing restraint by substituting something more neutral for whatever she intended to say originally.

“That’s my boss,” he whispered back up to her fuzzy ears.

The boss, sensing a moment of hesitation, decided to turn it into a moment of action. With a few long strides he made his way over.

“Good to see you made it.” Conroy beamed, then turned his attention upwards. “And you must be Franky. You made quite the impact.”

He thrust his hand upward. Franky gingerly placed two fingers in his waiting palm, and Conroy made a good attempt at a shake, imparting some small motion to the tigress’ arm.

“Hard not to as a big gal. You give as good as ya get, though.” She twitched an ear. “Hear I’ve got you to thank for all this.”

Briefly Conroy turned his pearly whites on full PR strength. “We put some feelers out, called a few people, let them know we were available. They couldn’t believe their luck we’d already reached out when you went viral.” He paused. “Are you excited to be on TV?”

Stephen could practically feel the unease radiate off Franky.

“Super.” Deadpan. As she said it she twitched her tail, slapping its tip against Stephen’s leg like a truncheon.

“Glad to hear it.” If Conroy had picked up on Franky’s sarcasm he wasn’t letting it on. But maybe that was the point.

They took their seats in a corner of the room. For Franky the staff had brought in a chair of the same over-engineered sort he’d seen in her apartment, polished steel arches holding aloft a thick seat. Franky’s ass did the big girl thing, cushioning her weight and seeming even larger for it. Lucky chair, Stephen thought.

Conroy wasted no time waving over the girl who manned the bar and ordering a pineapple juice for himself. Yeah, OK, so the boss was that sort of guy. The girl then turned to them with the unspoken question.

“What’cha got to eat?” Franky rumbled, priorities ever so straight.

The girl quickly rattled through the list. Vegan quinoa with creamy soy cheese that was neither, cod with pommes fondant, boeuf Stroganoff, and a burger.

Before the girl could go into detail of which meat the burger was artistically put together out of, or which unique toppings it had, or even if it came with fries, Franky piped up. That’s what she wanted. The burger. It’s the safe bet, Stephen agreed. If you go somewhere and you don’t know if they’re good, just order the burger. It takes an absolute idiot to fuck up a burger, but a good chef can turn it into a special experience.

Was he thinking more about food since he met Franky? They were certainly eating together more often than you’d expect of people who’d just met. Or was he just primed by hanging out with a chubby apex predator? With that big, toothy maw of hers it really did spring to mind quickly what she liked to stuff down it.

When the girl turned to him, Conroy gave a discrete hand gesture to indicate he would not partake.

“You’re not staying?” Stephen asked.

“Prior engagements.” Conroy checked his watch in a not at all understated manner. “I’ve got about half an hour.”

“Let’s not shoot the shit, then.” A slight simmer of irk started brewing in the back of Stephen’s mind. He’d expected the boss to stick around, sit in the audience and everything. If many people would kill to be on the show, there were just as many who’d commit assault to sit in the audience. Let alone ones who actually had something approaching authority. “What’s the plan?”

Conroy’s eyes flitted from Stephen up to Franky, who was watching over them like an Easter Island Moai, then back to Stephen. He let his body relax and leaned back, one lanky leg crossed over the other. “Just like we discussed. You go on, Newchurch introduces you, you complain about the tabloids, and tell everyone Franky here actually saved your life.”

The man could be credited with not concluding with an ‘easy’, but his expression said as much. He sipped from his glass as another man might light a cigarette.

“Just like that?” Franky rumbled from on high.

“It’s only a ten minute segment.” The boss’ eyes narrowed as he looked up at the tigress. “Weren’t you the one to put Stephen up to this?”

Teeth like daggers gleamed in a smile that was only halfway friendly. “I was hopin’ for a slightly less stark spotlight.”

Good sentence, Franky. Only ate one of your words, threw in a relatively rare one. Conroy, however, didn’t flinch at the array of cutlery in Franky’s mouth. Instead, he issued a soft chuckle, with just enough delay that one might suspect it wasn’t spontaneous.

“That’s the first time I’ve been accused of doing too good a job.”

On the other side of the room the glass door swung open, though only the normal-sized one this time. Several people ambled in, carrying with them the soft murmur of conversation. There was about them the subtle, suit with no tie look of understated wealth that this entire place spoke of. Stephen let half an eye fall on them to see if he could recognize anyone, maybe a politician or celebrity. No dice.

When a few glanced over, he first thought he must have been too obvious, but their gazes were directed quite obviously upward, and lingered only so long as social correctness allowed. Or maybe that was just Franky staring back at them.

“Anything else?” Stephen asked, getting his attention and the conversation back on track.

“Remember, you’re not speaking for the company. Stick to personal experiences. If anyone asks, just tell them the incident is still under investigation.”

He knew better than to stake any professional claim on results that weren’t known yet.

“Speaking of…” maybe this wasn’t the best time to ask, but he was going to anyway, “…any news on that front?”

“It’s slow going.” It was clear that was all Conroy was ready to say.

“Shouldn’t be hard to figure out why some rocks fell.” Franky spoke up. Or down, as was often the case with her. Stephen could just hear that lopsided expression in her voice.

“These things take time.” The boss’ voice carried effortless authority that didn’t come with knowledge, but conviction. “Besides,” he made a gesture that implicated the room from hardwood floor to repurposed ceiling, “they might be waiting for the circus to end.”

Franky, ever the wordsmith, grunted.

It was then that members of the staff approached the table, heralding their arrival with the smell of junk food elevated to please the palettes and wallets of the well-to-do. The drive-through cousin of these burgers would scarcely recognize them, and certainly be jealous. The gourmet burger was a lot like Conroy’s Lexus, luxury pressed into the mold of normalcy, bulging at the seams.

Or burgers, as the case might be. A lot of them. The plate set before Franky -before her knee, to be accurate- was stacked with them, laid out to at least suggest the idea of a single, large meal. And a separate plate of fries, too.

“Y’gotta be kiddin’ me…” Franky growled under her breath. She glared at the plate as if she was waiting for her laser vision to kick in, then turned the baleful gaze onto the closest member of staff.

A rudimentary reflex kicked in for the man, something left over from prehistoric times, when meeting something very much like Franky was an instant life or death moment. He recoiled, and Franky turned the strength of her eyes down from fuming to casual annoyance. That is, pretty much the standard.

“My apologies, miss.” These guys were professionals. He’d regained his composure already, speaking in the benign monotone of the service industry. “The large buns were unavailable, and this is the best solution the kitchen could come up with. If you’re unh…”

“It’s fine.” Her black lips curled up in somewhat of a social smile. “I can deal. Sorry fer scaring ya. Been told I can be kinda scary. But I swear, it’s the good kinda scary.”

Stephen felt a beam of pride at hearing his wise words repeated. Though, his reptile brain was still running with the term ‘large buns’, of which Franky certainly owned a pair. And not the kind with floppy ears, either.

“Looks like it’s time for me to leave,” Conroy spoke up, again checking his watch more for the message than the time. “We’ll talk about how it went Monday, OK?”

“Uh… sure.” The boss had already lifted his lanky frame halfway out of his chair before Stephen could even answer.

“Franky, it was nice to meet you. Take care of Stephen for me, will you?”

“Nothin’ new there,” Franky quipped in return.

The shock of red hair, traveling above most others in the room, sat above the most confident style of dress present, made it easy to follow the boss all the way out. With him he carried the faint feeling of a lifeline disappearing. When a parent lets their child go free for the first time on their bicycle, that kind of feeling. And if memory served him right, he skimmed his knee when that happened to him.

“He didn’t say much of anything.” Franky’s customary rumble was muffled by half of a hamburger she chose to chew while speaking.

Oh well, at least he got to see how she negotiated normal food. It wasn’t quite popping them in like potato chips, but it was close. Certainly she wouldn’t have trouble do so with any sort of bottom rung burger from any fast food joint. Just as he was thinking it, in went the remaining half of the burger. There was something satisfying about it, like watching someone cleaning a room.

Shit, he wasn’t becoming one of those freaks who watch video’s of people eating on YouTube, right?

“He was probably here to smooth things over with whoever is in charge.” He was hoping for more support of the boss, but that’s probably how things were.

“I guess,” Franky said while making another burger disappear. “You know how I feel about this sort of thing.”

“The media and stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t trust them.”

“Tha’s right.” Acting like a hamburger disassembly line didn’t do much for her diction, but the conviction was still clear in her voice.

“Hey, we’re in this together, OK? If you don’t feel good about something, just toss it my way. Say something like ‘Stephen is better equipped to answer that question’. Something diplomatic like that.”
She gave a grunt.

They ate in silence after that. Maybe Franky had no trouble speaking with her mouth full, but the food was enough of a challenge for him on its own, let alone while also fighting years of social conditioning. As the hour of truth dawned on them, he felt his own mind occupied more and more with swirls of half-coalesced emotions. Slippery eels of thought-stuff he couldn’t quite grasp. He’d never been on TV before, and hadn’t ever cared to give it a go. The closest he’d ever come was imagining what he’d say if a TV chef called him a donkey dick sandwich, only to come to the conclusion that he wasn’t witty enough to stand up to someone who cursed at people professionally. Though, maybe Franky could come close.

And of course she finished before he did, despite eating exponentially more. She excused herself to piss the jitters away, as she eloquently put it.

After polishing off the meal that would have been quite satisfactory under any other circumstance, he gave himself over to the rituals of the idly. He glanced about the room, seeing nothing new in the other guests. They sat chatting and laughing among themselves, betraying no nervousness of any sort. He checked his phone, noting they were getting close to the time the program usually started. There were a few notifications. He hadn’t told anyone he was going to be here, but some had put two and two together. They’d all seen the ridiculous photo of him and Franky, a few had seen the video that went viral and shared it with the group, and he guessed they’d used the footage in the teasers for tonight. So he had a few people questioning him if he was going to be on tonight.

Yeah, he wasn’t dealing with that right now. Let them figure it out on their own. He depressed the power button until the screen winked off. He turned to the more traditional method of waiting, twiddling his thumbs and trying to build the scenario in his head, only to find he couldn’t.

Franky was taking her sweet, damn time.

In fact, when a snappily dressed program director appeared to guide them to their places, she could only give a mildly exasperated stare at the very obviously empty giant chair at their table. He checked his phone to see how much time they had left, wondering if he should give Franky a call, to find himself staring at his dark reflection. Right.

“I’ll go get her,” he offered. “Where’s your big bathroom?”

The program director blinked, then understood and gave proper directions.

He filed out together with the other guests, pushing past the slower ones, slipping past in that crowded room crab walk, a man on a mission. Outside they parted ways, thankfully, as he made his way down the empty corridor until the obvious revealed itself: A modern door set in the ancient brick, reaching all the way to the ceiling, with a little pictogram telling of its purpose. Unisex, thankfully. Making himself look like a sex pervert was all he needed before their appearance. Especially one that liked staring up the skirts of giant women.

And… shit, the handle hovered above his head, with no means for normal sized person to open the thing. No matter, he’d done this before.

Reach, grab, hang, pull, pain, pain, pain. The door was open, and his side was throbbing. He slipped in through the crack.

None of the building’s old charm remained here, all clinical tiles from top to bottom, tight lines, and cold fluorescent lighting. This room was, obviously, completely built to the needs of larger people, and he had a mild flashback to Franky’s apartment. Again, he felt like a child without a chaperon. The mirror only reflected the ceiling, and the full length urinal seemed more like a monolithic expression of modern art. There was only one stall, and a pair of familiar boots were visible through the gap.

“Franky? You OK?”

“What?” Her voice hit a note higher than it normally did. “Yeah, jeez. Just gatherin’ my thoughts.”

“We’re starting soon,” he called through the door, trying not to sound too insistent.

There was a nondescript grumble from the other side, then the clank of the massive lock being turned. The door drifted open, but Franky remained reclined on the closed lid of her porcelain throne. With a mild shock Stephen noticed she wasn’t her stony-faced self, regarding him rather with a forlorn, droopy-eared expression. Even her whiskers seemed to be weighed down, wilting down towards the floor.

“I ain’t sure I can do this,” she stated in a soft voice.

Ah shit, poor Franky. Maybe he’d assumed too much strength from the angry, orange ball of social maladaptiveness. Right now, precious little of that was left.

“Mind if I, uh…” he gestured towards the stall she was occupying, “…step into your office?”

He thought he heard the remnants of a chuckle deep in her throat. “Nah.”

He did as much, finding himself craning his neck to look up at Franky in the cramped space, as she sat there like some sort of fluffy grave monument.

“While we’re at it, can I come up there?”

Maybe it was a bit of a weird question, he worried. He wouldn’t have any place to sit, except on Franky herself. But before he could come back on what he said, she reached down to give him another ride on the tiger elevator. From this position she couldn’t get a normal grip on him, and his side seized up in hot stabs of pain. He gritted his teeth and bore it through.

She sat him down on her thigh mother-and-child style, facing inward, his feet resting on the toilet’s lid. Franky made for a comfortable seat, he noted, and she kept her hand to his side to prevent him from falling backwards. Pretty good, he thought. Then he thought about how this was the closest they’d been since she’d carried him out of Big Joe’s and into fame, and he had absolutely no narcotics to shield him from his own awkwardness. Ass to thigh maybe wasn’t the most erotic position, but the primitive parts of his brain weren’t slow to notice quite how much they were touching. They whooped and hollered in the back of his mind, frightening his rationality.

“Ya can just tell ‘em I got sick. Sometin’ with their burgers.”

Thank fuck she started on her own.

“Hey, I’m not going out there on my own,” he returned. He still had to look up to her as he sat, but they were closer. He could focus on the cute spot on her nose.

“Tell ‘em yer sick, too.” She affected a wan smile, letting her fangs slip out a bit. “Ya ate the same burgers.”

He could see she was far off in her mind, imagining the future where they’d chickened out and just went back to their lives. It gave her a bit of a big, wet kitten look. The facade of monolithic strength that came so naturally to her was now well and truly cracked, with her vulnerable self peering through.

OK, it was time to muster whatever kind of charisma he had in his lustful, anti-social mind. Stephen pushed himself upright so he could actually be on eye level with her, standing on a giant toilet pot between the tree trunk thighs of perhaps the cutest piece of construction equipment he’d ever met. She even followed him with her hand, should he fall. A bit of effortless care and thought that didn’t come naturally to everyone. He tugged his shirt in place as he stood and focused on her eyes, normally enchanting, long-lashed, golden pools that seemed to say ‘what are you looking at’ or ‘I’ll fuck you up’. Now, possibly for the first time ever, they were rimmed with fear.

“Franky, you’re just about the strongest person I know. Mentally, I mean. Literally, too, but that’s not what I’m talking about right now.” Not a great start, but she was still humoring him. “I’m pretty sure you didn’t actually like me when we met. I was there to look in on your world and find things wrong with it, so really anyone would have been skeptical, at best. But when the rocks started falling…”

“Concrete,” she corrected him with the sort of whisper of someone who just can’t help but say it.

“…when the concrete started falling, you didn’t hesitate. I was there, I know how fast it all went. There was no time to hesitate, and you just threw yourself on top of me.” He patted his injured side for emphasis. “OK, there was some collateral damage, but I’m not lying when I say it’s the biggest damn thing anyone has every done for me.”

“Aw, it’s nuthin’…” She evaded his gaze for a moment as she said it, almost as if she was embarrassed to say it.

“Hey, don’t get in the way of me saying nice stuff about you.”

“It’s just ‘cause I’m big, ya know? Anyone could’ve done it.”

“What did I just say? Do I need to grab your ears and shout it in?” Without meaning to, he gave her a stern gaze. It seemed to work, and she kept whatever smart-ass, self-depreciating comment she had stored up to herself. Now, to get the point across fully, should he touch the tiger?

Yes, touch the tiger.

He put his hand on her shoulder. Even through the fabric of her lumberjack shirt, and the T-shirt under it, he could feel the hard, tense muscle that lifted girders without a second thought.

“A lot of people would have just stood there, Franky. And no-one would have blamed them for it. I’d have been a smear on the ground, and an article on page 3 of the local paper. Just because it’s something you were capable of doing doesn’t mean it wasn’t a brave thing to do, or something everyone should just expect of you.” He squeezed the small part of her shoulder he had hold of for emphasis, feeling some of the tension slip from the slab of muscle as he did so. “You did what you did because you’re a strong person, and we’re here because of that. Especially me, because I’d have been… dead. I wouldn’t want to be here with anyone else, OK? Whatever all these idiots have been saying about you, and people like you, we’re here to set the record straight. And whatever happens, I’ve got your insanely large, rock-proof back.”

They regarded each other for the moment that his speech needed to trickle through the cracks in Franky’s  hard exterior, until her face softened. He had no time to admire the result of his work as a meaty paw came up behind him, clasping fully around his own shoulder, and pushed him forward into a clumsy collision passing for a hug. There was pain, and the world went dark. Only briefly, though. Vision returned as he lifted his head out of the prodigious fluff of her left sideburn. The bristly fur was comfortable enough, though it tickled his nose and a few loose strands found themselves in his mouth. It had that telltale musky smell he associated with her, though it was lighter, sweeter. Almost a perfume, but the sort that smelled of wood rather than flowers. The stab of pain in his side came from the hard edge of some anonymous part of her giant bra poking his sore side.

Wait.

He was in between her tits. Her giant, fluffy tits.

Don’t you dare get a boner, he shouted down at primitive part of him. This is a special precious moment. Save it for later.

“Thanks, man,” Franky said, oblivious to the battle raging in Stephen’s mind. Her voice had a soft timbre to it. “That’s just real nice of you to say.”

The pressure lifted, and he extricated himself from her pelt. She looked at him differently, now. Confidence had returned to the expression that greeted him, though still somewhat weakly measured. She bore a modest smile, seemingly almost embarrassed at having acknowledged a compliment.

“I’m still kinda scared, but I… I think I can do this.”

“I’m right there with ya.” He gave her a final pat on the shoulder. “Let’s do this thing.”

As soon as they emerged in the hallway they were set upon by the program director. Judging by the fact that her eyes looked to be on the verge of rolling, she’d been looking for a while. In a hasty pace, heels clacking on the floor tiles, she preceded them through the mostly empty corridor to a set of large double doors with a lit-up sign shining over it: SHOOTING IN PROGRESS.

The doors swung open, revealing a dark room with a mass of people clustered around an oasis of light in the center, with a firing squad of camera’s pointing inward. This was the set so familiar to anyone who still watched evening television, and anyone who just caught the highlights later on the internet. The table and chairs were lifted for Franky’s benefit, but the entire thing still had a surreal quality to it. See something on a screen enough, and your mind starts telling you it isn’t quite real. That modern defense mechanism of the modern person who knew what dragons and space ships looked like, despite never having seen one.

But here it was, quite real before them.

Inexonerably the doors closed behind them with a thunk and the program director ushered them forward down a narrow path through the crowd, the occasional neck craning to look up. The center set grew closer and closer. The host and guests turned to them as they approached, no hints to the future on their neutral faces.

Showtime.

Literally.

-------------------------------------------------------------

They were ushered past the floating feet and eye-level asses of the other guests, already perched atop their high chairs. Stephen spied no ladders on their chairs, the reason for which revealed itself as he was pointed to his own chair. It sat low to the ground, and indeed, the other chairs had been pumped aloft on pistons like office chairs with compensation issues. He shot a smirk up at Franky as she seated herself next to him in a much more normal seat, disregarding its size.

Won’t need your help this time, big girl.

She caught it, and shot one back.

Good on you, squishy. Is probably what she thought.

As soon as ass touched patent leather he did not shoot up, but instead someone with a brush shot out from behind him, rapidly dabbing the powdered thing over his face before he could even ask what was going on.

“It’ll have to do,” sounded the clipped voice from the annoyed face of a professional who was forced to do unprofessional work. Yeah, sorry about that. Guess they really were fashionably late.

Someone started vigorously pumping a pedal at the base of the chair, and then he did shoot up like a mushroom on wet soil, the waiting faces of the members of the panel rising in view over the edge of the table  like the start of a new day. One in an alien solar system with multiple suns, their roles fulfilled by the multitude of studio lights beating down light and heat on their exalted circle. He squinted and blinked until he could look at people without tearing up.

The only person he recognized was the host, sitting at the head of the table to his left, past the bulk of Franky. Few people didn’t know who Matthew Newchurch was, even if they wanted nothing to do with the show. Part of him wondered if the shared feline ancestry between the host and the surly tigress would cut them some slack, but the similarities ended at fangs and fur. The man was rather small, and where suggesting grooming to Franky was akin to threatening her with a bucket of cold water, Newchurch was well groomed by nature and profession. He affected that casual look so popular among people who were anything but, but there was nothing random about the way his hair appeared in the same approachable messy coiffure night in, night out. Where Franky was casually intimidating, Newchurch exuded an aura of calm. Just another night’s work for him.

The space beyond the table melted into an indeterminable muddle under the blaze of the lights. A voice sounded from behind the glaring lens of the main camera.

“Live in ten!”

Not ten minutes, either. The intro tune was already playing on people’s TV’s across the country. Jezus. Here they were. He glanced over at Franky, and the soft side he’d just seen of her had already been subsumed under the face she usually put on. Her claws were out, tapping lightly on the table.

Newchurch’s eyes took on a sort of luminosity as he faced the camera. He took on that expression he always did, nose down, eyes on the camera, head slightly cocked, one ear turned several degrees lower than the other. He honestly hadn’t considered the host to have a ‘look’ before, but seeing him turn it on made it obvious. If Franky looked at you that way, it kicked in your fight or flight instinct. But on the diminutive cat man the predatory face looked assertive, confident.

A dark shape behind the camera gave a gesture.

“Good evening. Tonight on The World Keeps Turning we’re speaking with upcoming author Gemma Anderson about her new book, about what it’s like to actually be as blind as a bat, and we talk to the man who scaled a mountain for charity. But first, the challenges of safety in construction and going viral on the internet.” He beamed a disarming smirk at the camera.

Screens around the studio, both for the audience’s convenience and theirs, lit up. Stephen focused on one hanging over the main camera. In the jolting, halting camera work a large shape came into focus. Blue coveralls, orange fur. Tendrils of nervousness crept up Stephen’s spine, involuntarily his eyes darted across the faces of the other guests, but their attention was firmly on the video. It wasn’t like they could know he was hanging out in Franky’s bag, but he had no idea what he’d say if someone threw it in his face right now.

Franky bobbed up and down in the frame as the cameraman pumped his legs to catch up. At least he could finally put some images to the memory. She flashed them quite the eyes when they came close, growling ‘no comment’ at them. It didn’t deter the reporter in question, a smarmy looking fuck, for long as he thrust his microphone as far up to Franky as he could reach. Which wasn’t very.

And there it was. He’d been on the look-out for this. Somewhere while Franky tried to move on, and he tried to keep up, he firmly kneed the bag aside. The guy actually did a visible double take, falling behind with a single limping step. Serves you right, asshole.

They were about the make their escape, now. The video should be coming to an end. The reporter whipped his head around to face the rear, confidence draining from his face, the picture spinning in a motion blur to face the same direction. A rapidly approaching wall of beastmen face the crew, crashing into their personal space like a tidal wave under boisterous shouts. It was hard to make out what happened during the commotion as the cameraman tried to focus his field of view up, catching more sky than face. But at some point he lost grip of the instrument, and the segment was cut off in a washing machine spin.

There was a bit of polite laughter from the crowd. Good thing, that. If you were going to be implicated in vandalism, it was always better if it entertained a few people along the way.

Newchurch swiveled towards Franky in a smooth, practiced motion. Stephen practically felt the camera switch.

“Of course, this wasn’t your first encounter with the press, was it?”

Franky just looked at him for a second before answering. “Eh… no?”

The screens switched to a shot of the tabloid front page, with its shouting headline accompanying the oh-so flattering shot of him snuggling up to Franky’s titty with the teetering, slack-jawed expression of a practiced junky, and Franky staring straight into the camera with golden eyes shooting fire and her snout scrunched up in an ugly snarl. An earnest wave of laughter traveled across the audience, and even their hitherto still anonymous table-mates allowed smiles to lift their seriousness.

“Franky, you’re a construction forewoman,” Newchurch fixed his gaze on Stephen, “and Stephen, you’re a safety analyst. Why don’t you tell us a little about how you met? Apparently it’s quite the story.”

He looked up at Franky, finding she was looking down at him.

“Eh, you wanna start?” she asked.

“Why don’t you give it a go?” he responded. Come to think of it, he hadn’t really heard it from her side, what it was like. They were both there, after all, so there was no point in going over it.

A thorny thought stuck in his mind as he contemplated the peaceful expression on Newchurch’s face. The half-lidded eyes, slight smile, preened whiskers. All very measured. A man who’s every movement betrayed professionalism had left it ambiguous who of them should speak first.

“It were a regular workday, an’ all of a sudden the boss says I get ta entertain this squishy all day.” She jabbed a thumb down at him. For all her mistrust of the media, she seemed to not have noticed the discrepancy. “So he sits oglin’ me all morning,” a polite chuckle from the crowd, ‘til it’s lunchtime. We’re walking, and there’s this sound, like a rockslide. Like, when you hear that, you know somethin’s off. I look back to this guy,” another jab of the thumb, “and rubble’s just rainin’ down round him. And he ain’t movin’, so… well…”

Aw, was she embarrassed?

“She jumped right on top of me,” he interjected.

“You didn’t walk away completely unscathed from that, am I right?” Now Newchurch was unambiguously addressing him, not Franky, who took the brunt of the impact.

“I bruised some ribs.” He lightly tapped his sore side. “Still beats being crushed by a ton of rubble.”

“My fat may have cushioned the blow a little.” Franky said to the mild amusement of the audience, flashing a sharp-toothed grin.

“It could have ended a lot worse.” The man who spoke now was a Conroy Light, obviously far more accustomed to wearing a suit than he or Franky would ever be. Lean, and appearing fairly tall for a human, with the sort of hair he probably rarely touched himself. It took Stephen a second or two to realize he was referring to Franky, rather than the rubble.

Newchurch immediately turned to the man. “John, you’re here representing the United Workers’ Union. What’s your view on this?”

Wait, a union man. He chanced a glance up to Franky, and her expression had hardened.

“One of the challenges of the modern workplace is integration of large scale workers like Franky, here.” He gestured towards her with an arm in the sort of manner that might have seen it removed in another context. “If her heroic action had ended in the death of Stephen, we’d be having a different conversation.”

“One I’d have far less to say in.” He was sure he sounded a little surly, but the audience seemed to like it. Really, that was the part that made it surreal. With the glare of the lights turning the audience into a chorus of silhouettes he could just about imagine that he was just sitting around a table with a bunch of random people he’d never see again. But when the ghosts stirred, the illusion was broken.

“What do you mean by that?” Newchurch addressed the union man.

Something hard seemed to shine in the man’s eyes.

“Large scale workers have a clear physical advantage over most people, and we’re still approaching that through outdated means.” He paused for a strategic second. “What worked in the past, no longer works today. In the present system, for instance, large scale workers are considered as construction equipment, due to the work they do. This brings with it a number of legal difficulties.”

When you were close to her, it was hard to ignore even the small movements Franky made. The sense of shifting weight was palpable as she crossed her arms.

“Brings with it a few advantages, too,” she rumbled across the table, and the studio in general.

“Obviously.” John the union man took no consideration time before answering. He seemed like the sort of guy who was somehow always ready to go. “However, that’s part of the problem. There have been growing voices in the professional community about a certain… inequality represented in the current arrangement.”

Time to chime in. You’re here to talk, so talk.

“Look, I think…” Newchurch’s head swiveled to regard him like a camera on its tripod, and he could suddenly feel the glare of attention beating down on him with the same heat as the studio lights, “… I think this has really nothing at all to do with the media response to what happened. Let’s not forget we’re here because people tried to turn her saving my life into something negative.”

He could feel Franky un-bristle somewhat.

“Ah, that’s a good point,” Newchurch conceded, then nodded to the woman sitting besides John. She was another person with the sort of haircut that could feed a student for a week in terms for cost, permitting herself the somewhat more colorful style of dress of someone who claims to be ‘in touch’ with things. “Clarissa is a media expert we’ve invited to weigh in on that subject. Clarissa?”

“Thank you, Matthew.” She acknowledged him with a curt nod. “What we often see is that these things are interconnected, whether that’s consciously or subconsciously. Certain viewpoints can manifest themselves in a sort of wishful thinking, and I believe we’ve seen that at work, here. If there’s a belief that workers like Franky enjoy a certain amount of privilege not afforded to others, that informs the interpretation of events.”

She just said the same thing twice. Yeah, he could see what was going on, here. This was a set-up. You get two unprepared yokels off the street, and set them up against people who did this sort of thing for a living. John and Clarissa probably knew exactly who they would be speaking to beforehand.

He should have seen this coming. Franky probably did see it coming.

“We’re all just doin’ the jobs we can.” There was a sharp edge audible in Franky’s usual gruffness. She definitely knew she was on the defensive, here.

“Of course you are, but don’t you think it’s important to get through to the cause of problem?” Newchurch spoke up to her.

That was the way it was going to be, then. They had to survive this for however many minutes they had left without making themselves look like idiots, or confirming the idea that Franky was secretly to blame for her own misfortune all along.

“It wouldn’t be the first time predatory press got things wrong,” he piped up before Franky could growl at the carefully preened cat. “First they reported I’d died in the accident, and they were trying to pin it on the nearest person. The press often likes to think that all insight into an accident ends after the tally of victims. The reality is that it’s premature judgment, and that dry reports don’t make for good headlines. The only thing this has to do with large scale workers is that one was close enough to prevent a bad situation from getting worse.”

There, take that. He just had to toe the line, keep everyone from veering off into tangents. In the corner of his eyes he caught the lights gleaming off Franky’s fangs.

“Tha’s right,” she said resolutely.

“I don’t immediately agree with that,” Clarissa said. Despite the apparent agreement her voice remain aloof to it, droning on in frustrating neutrality. “Optics play a large part in media response and can’t be ignored in the eventual result. If there is pre-existing friction, that will show in reporting.”

“That’s just what we construction experts like to call ‘talkin’ shit’.”

Franky’s directness drew some scattered laughs from the crowd. They’d been so silent to the dry opinions of the other guests that Stephen had almost forgotten they were there. Again.

“Now, let’s keep it civil,” the host cautioned Franky.

They knew what they were doing. Invite a rough person like her, then pretend to take umbrage at it when she bites back after you take shots at her.

“Clarissa is right,” John spoke, “the position of exemption large scale workers enjoy has been a point of contention for a long time, and it’s impossible to have this discussion without acknowledging it.”

Stephen made to speak up against the accusation, but found himself pre-emptively cut off by Franky’s voice rumbling up to speed like a long haul truck.

“Your position of exemption,” she spoke those words with a bit of venom through clenched teeth, “has always been advantageous to construction companies, while it only guarantees jobs for big folk we’ve been doing since people’ve been building. In the end it’s jobs what it all comes down to,” a pronounced creak sounded from the table as she leaned forward, “and we all need jobs, big an’ small, ‘cause we all need to eat. Difference is, big folks need to eat a little more. That’s all we want, and pretendin’ big folks are a new thing who just busted onto the scene to push you around ain’t honest.”

Nobody at the table seemed ready for the orange bulldozer to start speaking in complete sentences, though the union man did manage to flap his jaw open to try and respond.

“I’m not done yet,” Franky cut him off. “If this is where you want to go, you ought to put your money where your mouth is and tell me what your problem with big folk is instead of tryin’ to tell me I deserve to be dragged by fuckin’ tabloids.”

This time the audience remained silent as Franky settled back in her chair. It made the light chuckle issuing from behind Newchurch’s smirk all the more pointed. The host didn’t drop a beat.

“It seems this topic has released some frustrations.”

That was a stalling tactic. Stephen had spent enough time in dreary offices to recognize that confident, hard-hitter’s way of saying nothing.

“It’s a fair question,” he chimed in.

“A lot of people aren’t happy with the current arrangement.” The man’s face had hardened. “You fall outside all of the normal arrangements for regular crew, instead falling into the same category as people who have to go through months of training to operate machinery, and who have to bear responsibility for that machinery.”

Franky chuffed. “I haven’t met those people. And I don’t need no trainin’ to swing a shovel.”

“These concerns don’t come from thin air. It’s not just about bureaucracy, it’s about safety as well.” He turned his gaze towards Stephen. “Wasn’t a safety check the entire reason you were there?”

A jumble of wild thoughts rambled through Stephen’s mind. How did the guy even know? Who had told him? Just watching the others talk was a spectator sport, but now those annoyingly placid faces turned towards him and the studio lights seemed to go up in intensity. He felt like a wilting leaf of lettuce beneath them. He had only one ally in here. He stole a look up at her striped face, and found one ocher eye looking back down, trying to not be obvious. He’d never claim to be an expert at reading eyes, let alone tiger eyes, but they connected for a moment. There was that agreement of brothers in arms. A sense of trust.

Now, there was something else in the back of his mind. The nasty parts of him forming together in a fist of frustration.

“There are safety checks on every construction site, for everything.” He tried to focus on the smarmy, soft face of the union man. “It’s a boring office job done by normal people you probably haven’t thought about twice while you go about your life never breaking your neck over anything because someone already thought about it before you even got there. We look out for loose bits of carpets or misplaced warning signs, and none of it ever makes the headlines, or…” he swept his arm to take in the host, the guests, and the entire studio, “… national television. So what’s your point?”

The corners of the man’s mouth curled up almost imperceptibly, his eyes narrowed. If Stephen had to guess, he was glad he had elicited a reaction.

“So you agree that large scale workers can be dangerous?”

Ah Jesus, this guy.

“I just told you loose bits of carpet can be dangerous. Life is dangerous. If we never took risks, we’d be having this conversation in a cave somewhere. Safety is about minimizing the risks of whatever you want to do, not to never do it.”

In first instance the union man only answered with silence. Just when it seemed someone else would jump in, he returned to his script.

“It’s the opinion of many people that the industry has failed to move with the times. We have people doing jobs of machines, with fail-safes and trained operators. Large scale people shouldn’t be expected to prop up the construction industry, either.”

Probably the union man had thought up that line beforehand, and has just looked for a place to dump it because he just had to work it in. Franky made a rude sound at it.

“Just an opinion,” she said.

Clarissa spoke up quickly, scrabbling for relevance. “If opinions are strong and persistent, you have to ask if there’s something valid behind them. That’s the only way we can move forward as a society. That’s the core function of media, to give people the means to question things.”

“Lady, if you hate the color ora..”

“I’m afraid that’s all we have time for.” Newchurch spoke up over Franky, which to be honest was quite the impressive feat. The small cat had quite the studio voice on him. He ignored all of them, addressing the main camera. “I want to thank our guests for this segment. We’ll be back after the following messages.”

Damn. That was it, then. Ten minutes. It certainly didn’t feel like ten minutes. Now that the tension was gone he leaned back in his chair, feeling very much like a deflating balloon. He could even hear a hiss, and the table with its occupants receded before him…

Oh, that was just the tall chair dropping him down to floor level. An army of staff came scurrying out now the home audience wasn’t looking, taking the chair away as soon as he freed himself from it, putting the table back on its wheels and pushing it off. They were clearly going back to the normal set-up. No big guests for the rest of the evening. Newchurch was getting his make-up touched up while standing off to the side, talking things through with some sort of director. The same staff member that had escorted them to their places appeared before them.

If they wanted to sit in the audience and watch the rest of the show. One glance up at Franky showed she had much the same idea that he had.

“We’re good, thanks. Can you call our transport instead?” He had to work to keep his voice friendly.

If they were sure.

No, he’d just accidentally said the exact opposite of what he had intended to say.

“Yeah, we’re just tired.”

With that, they were escorted past the audience, out of the studio. There seemed to be less stares for Franky, now that they’d had a good show of her chewing on her words in the arena.

If they wanted to wait in the cafeteria until their transport arrived.

“Nah, I’ll be outside,” responded Franky. And that meant he was going to be outside, too.
They made their way through the main hall, past its ancient, repurposed walls, through the glass facade swinging open in its entirety to let the tigress pass. The frigid evening air washed over Stephen like a wave in summer, cooling the sheen of sweat the heat of the lights had coaxed out of him. The entire thing made him feel like a reheated chicken wing, technically crisp, but actually soggy. He took a deep breath to cool the inside as well as the outside. To convince all the panicky, subconscious bits of him that he was really, truly outside. That it was done. Over with. They did it.

Asphalt gleamed before them like a dark lake in the light of the moon, street, and city. Lots of light to go around. Night was more of a state of mind in the city, but one he often found he preferred.

A sound like someone breaking a thousand sticks of celery jolted him from his meditation. Besides him Franky stretched her arms, arched her back, and tail, and showed a terrifying maw in a yawn. The curl of her tongue was cute, though.

“Christ, that noise is you?” he blurted out.

“Just some sore muscles.” She stretched her arms again. There was less sound, but it was still like someone taking an ax to furniture.

Yeah, nothing about her was subtle.

They were silent for a while, looking at the city lights. There was no place for them to sit, so they settled for leaning against a lamp post, Franky bending it one way, Stephen not really the other. Whenever the wind picked up it became evident how cold it truly was, and how truly he wasn’t wearing a coat. Nevertheless, the wind seemed to carry the stress from him. And Franky probably needed the cooling more than he did.

“Did we do well?” she asked eventually.

“Jeesh…” was all he could say for a while. “Shit all went so fast. With everything leading up to it, all that stress and nonsense, and then it just went by like that. At least we told them you saved my life, right?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Another moment of silence.

“So… you OK?” he asked. “You know, with the whole just having been on TV thing?”

“It weren’t as scary as I thought it’d be. More annoying. Thanks again for talkin’ me down, though.”

He smirked. She wouldn’t see it from up there, but he made sure it carried in his voice. “Told you you’d be fine.”

She let out a single barking laugh. “Yeah, well, you had some fire in ya, too. Really shut that union stogie up for a second.”

Stogie. That was a new one. Wasn’t that a type of cigar?

“And you had some eloquence going, there. Guess we really learned from each other.”

She laughed again. “Asshole.”

“Guilty.”

They let themselves marinate in the cool night air for another silent few seconds. The entire thing still didn’t seem to have coalesced into reality. Maybe it’d be full reality by morning. It could become real sooner, if he’d just turned his phone on. No doubt comments were already rolling in. And that was exactly why he’d leave it off for the rest of the night.

“Franky?”

She acknowledged with something between a grunt and a growl.

“What were you going to say at the end there?”

“Ah shit. I was going to say ‘Lady, if you hate the color orange, you might wanna avoid datin’ me, but I ain’t gonna be less orange’.”

Now it was his turn to laugh. Really, he’d planned on a gentle chuckle, but what came out was much more pronounced. Maybe it was the absurdity of it all that left him clutching his sore side as he rid himself of the last few laughs. Or maybe he just needed an excuse to let it out.

“That’s pretty good.”

“Glad ya liked it,” she grinned down at him with all of her sharp teeth. “For what it’s worth, I really liked your line about safety. Ya know, ‘bout takin’ risks and all.”

Huh, yeah, that had been a decent line. He hadn’t though about it at the time, but it was kind of surprising he’d just thrown that out there with zero planning.

“Thanks.”

He looked up at Franky as she casually lounged against the lamp post, lending a small bend to it. The stark lamp light suited her total lack of charm or finesse. A working class model for a harsh world, all muscles, curses, and beer belly. And soft fur, warm eyes, alluring stripes, and cute spot on the nose. He’d thrown himself at that tough facade often enough to soften it up, to make it a welcome sight. And maybe she’d thrown it at him, too. In the least literally.

The chug of a diesel engine closed in on them, headlights sweeping over them as a pope wagon rolled up to them, Franky the obvious calling card for their business.

It came from her, that line. She was his risk.

“Hey, umm, Franky?” Real fucking eloquent.

“Ya?”

“When we get to your place, can I come in for a beer? Unwind a little?”

The light striking from above put her eyes in wells of shadow as she looked down, gold glinting in the dark. Her fangs, and all her other sharp teeth, shone in the night as she widened her black lips in a broad smile.

“Was ‘bout ta ask the same.”