Nico the Knight: #6 Party With the Boys

“Who is at the core of your consciousness?”

This is the question Professor Mars had asked Nico the day after his mistake with the magic stone, and, strangely enough, it represented the extent of his punishment. The mysterious teacher didn’t even admonish him to never do it again.

Instead, for the next two months, Mars put Nico through the most grueling instruction the boy could have imagined; stretching his aura to its limits, snuffing out candles across the giant football field with a puff of air — no incantations uttered. He taught Nico to split his focus and levitate several individual objects simultaneously, increasing his precision and focus. It was like running on a treadmill for days with stilts stapled to his legs.

The magic master always gave Nico a kickstart of mana after his sessions, but as time went on, the boy found his energy dwindling. He was looking forward to the winter break from school, which his master told him would be a good time to practice his skills on his own time, in a more relaxed, recuperative way.

Currently, a brisk afternoon on a Friday the week after the fall semester ended, Nico sat in the darkness, in the lotus position, eyes closed, hands folded in meditation. Huge swaths of silky cloth hugged his body. Behind him thudded the powerful beats of a heart bigger than he was, muffled by tens of thousands of pounds of pectoral muscle and bone. Occasionally, he could hear his giant friend, Randy, clear his throat or shift his weight. Far below, about 80 feet or so, echoed the literally earth-shaking tremors of the colossal teenage boy’s footsteps.

About two months had passed, and Nico’s closest circle of friends remained a clique of giant jocks — a band of huge, muscle-bound dorks who, for some reason, loved Nico’s companionship.

Randy was the biggest of them all, standing at around 100 feet with a back broad enough to hold a full-size basketball court. He was a popular defensive lineman on the giant football team, but as far as Nico was concerned, he was a gentle and goofy guy. Nico had gotten to know the big blond tank as a witty, helpful person who often put on a show of being big and dumb, but was in reality one of the more deep-thinking guys he’d met at the school.

The titanic high school student peered through his floppy golden bangs at the sky above — clouds seemed to be darkening — and he picked up his pace along the giant trail. He passed a human-scaled park to his left and tried to quiet his steps, carefully watching a small group of young humans, likely classmates of his, hanging out, huddled together in the winter cold. A little girl, bundled up tight in a pink coat and knit cap, played on a tiny tire swing, and he saw her wave at him. Shyly, he waved back. The little people didn’t seem to show any fear of him, but he remained wary of that, especially since he was bigger than the average giant.

The last couple of months had been revolutionary for Randy. Among his peers, he was loud and cocky, quick to show off his bulky muscles, and he had been that way even since elementary school. He had known he liked boys since he was 10, especially other giant boys who were skinnier and in awe of his muscularity, and he would flaunt his size and strength.

But not around the little people — the humans and elves and all the others. Around them, he was nervous and quiet. When he was a kid, he lived near a small community of elves, but the elvish and giant children never interacted. He wanted to make some little elven friends, but he never had the guts. One day, he accidentally stepped on some kid’s bicycle that had been left out on the communal parkway, and the tiny machine was so mangled and flattened that it shocked him — it set his imagination running. What if somebody had been on that bicycle?

Even after joining the integrated Academy a couple years ago, Randy remained very leery of the little ones. He had no little friends until Nico arrived, but the tiny musician changed his point of view almost entirely.

Now, he felt more comfortable introducing himself to the little students at school. He attended one or two of the human-scaled football games, and he was surprised to have a couple of the human spectators approach him and talk to him. He made a new minotaur friend (and desperately needed study buddy) in his physics class, and he even found an after school job that required human interaction: He worked at Phelps’ Auto Shop and Tow Company, assisting a human mechanic, Mr. Bergamot, with moving and fixing little cars. On three occasions so far, he (instead of a tow truck driver) had been asked to collect wrecked cars from precarious situations on the road, loading them up into his muscular arms and reassuring their stressed-out drivers. So far, he hadn’t seen anyone injured in any car accidents, and he dreaded that, but he wondered if his future might involve rescuing little people and their property as a career.

He smiled as he thought about that, continuing to thunder down the walkway, vaguely feeling the lump that represented his human friend nestled against his chest. If not for Nico, he might have continued to ignore humans and hope they ignored him. Instead, he had determined that the little guys were cute, and it made him even prouder of his personal massiveness. There was this one sweet blond kid in his history class who sat near the wall — he wore thick, black-framed glasses and stylish, hipster-ish clothing. His hair was more spiky and styled than Randy’s, and it made him look to the giant like a kind of pretty little flower. He had noticed the boy staring at him during the past week, and he had made sure to stretch and surreptitiously flex in front of him. On the last day before break, Randy offered to give him a lift to his next class, and the boy, Trevor, accepted. After winter break was over, Randy planned to test the waters a little more.

Ahead of him, just a couple hundred more paces, stood the towering monolith of the Giant Recreation Center, built in a dip in the land so it wouldn’t totally eclipse the environs.

“We’re almost here,” he murmured as he carefully patted his jacket pocket, where Nico sat. For all he knew the human could have fallen asleep. He claimed to “meditate,” but Randy didn’t see it as anything more than being quiet with your eyes closed. He felt a gentle tap of response against his hand, however, and he tromped over to the rec center’s mammoth metal doors. Silently hoping his little friend had remembered to wear earplugs, he entered the building and was immediately struck by the noises of boisterous laughter and music.

He was fashionably late to the Cherrywood Academy’s giant football team’s mid-year party (Go Sentinels!).

A deafening clap resounded as a huge hand slapped onto Randy’s shoulder, and he winced, not for pain, but for hoping it wasn’t too much of a shock to his tiny passenger. His friend and teammate, Cullan, grinned at him.

“O’Brien!” he said, for that was Randy’s last name. “I was wondering if you’d show up! Coach brought enough food for an army and he expected you to eat about half of it.” The husky fullback glanced at the door behind him. “Didn’t you bring anyone with you?” The party invitations had mentioned a “Plus One,” which for most of the jocks was a bit lame, since the Cherrywood rules forbade bringing girls along, so they usually brought other friends from the all-boys school.

“Yeah, I did, actually,” Randy said, and gently reached into his jacket pocket. Nico grabbed onto his fingers and got himself situated into the giant’s palm as it withdrew from the garment. He squinted his eyes for a moment as he was exposed to the bright flourescent lighting of the cavernous rec center, and he was thankful for the effectiveness of his earplugs, as a giant sound system was blasting somebody’s Top 100 playlist, and colossal football players were talking and laughing at high volume all around him.

Cullan couldn’t hide his surprise, but he smiled and offered his finger for the traditional giant-to-human handshake, and Nico obliged, introducing himself. He noticed the giant, a nice enough looking guy with shaggy brown hair and brown eyes, seemed to be a little bit rigid and nervous, but he had gotten used to that with a lot of the giants he met. A couple other members of the team walked up and greeted Randy with aplomb, but, like Cullan, became a little quieter and more subdued as they greeted Nico. No one was outright unfriendly, but the human was left wondering how awkward this party was going to be.

“RANDY! NICO!” a bass voice boomed.

Malik came thundering forward, followed by a smaller version of him that was looking a little bit apprehensive. Both were wearing green and white letter jackets bearing the Academy’s insignia — Malik’s with the school’s varsity patch, and the smaller boy with an unfamiliar “JH” patch. Malik and Andy slapped their hands together and shook them vigorously, flexing their arms to the maximum.

“Nico, this is my little brother, Dante,” Malik said, gesturing to his younger clone, who just timidly waved. “He’s the star of the junior high team. Future star of the high school varsity team.”

“How’s it going, Dante,” Nico said, shouting a little bit over the music. He stood up as tall as he could in Randy’s palm, raised up his right hand, and snapped his fingers, causing his aura to spark and purple flames to briefly burst from his fingertips. It was showy little icebreaker he’d been learning to use with giants who looked especially uncertain. Dante’s eye’s lit up, and he smiled a little.

“Don’t show off so much, little man,” Malik said, rolling his eyes.

Nico scoffed good-naturedly. “Says the guy who bounces his pecs every time he finishes a sentence!”

Dante laughed at this. “Yeah, that’s Malik,” he said in his crackly adolescent voice before dodging a noogie from his big brother.

“Don’t take his side!” Malik laughed, slapping his little bro on the back. “Nico doesn’t need it. He already knows he’s some kind of magic genius.” The giant muscle man looked down at his human friend with admiration.

Nico blushed. He could take the compliment just fine, but from Malik, it always struck him as weird. He still felt bad about putting him under a sleep spell on his second day of school, and he still had never told Malik about how the giant had flirted with him under the influence of misused magic. In fact, that was why he hadn’t yet met Dante, because even though Malik often invited him to visit his house, Nico always begged off — usually having something he needed to do with his brother. He felt guilty about affecting his friend on that day, but he also worried about getting too close — did Malik have secret feelings for him? Did he have those feelings, too? He was pretty sure he didn’t, though he knew he found all of his titanic friends attractive, and he had received interesting signals from a few of them. Honestly, the emotions were all just too confusing, and they wrecked his magical aura’s stability.

Randy interrupted Nico’s discomfort by lifting him up to his eye level. “Dude, let me show you around the rec center,” he said. “It’s absolutely amazing!” He marched past other giants in the common area/lobby of the building, where guys were loading up plates from the long buffet table and nomming on nachos as they sat in circles of chairs, playing party games and talking. Malik and Dante followed.

The rec center truly was a sight to behold, especially since giants, because of their size, rarely had access to such expensive creature comforts. Randy showed Nico a fully equipped squash court (littles not allowed under any circumstance, according to a tacked-on sign), a well-stocked weight room (with weight plates that could individually crush a house), a lap pool, onsen, and sauna (using lake draining amounts of recycled water), and a calisthenics and gymnastics room (complete with a climbing wall that humans could base jump off of).

Each room contained a few giants messing around and enjoying the party, except for the room with the pool and onsen, and Randy said he figured people were waiting for one hour after eating.

When they got to the calisthenics room, though, Nico’s breath caught in his throat. There, on a huge exercise mat, was Rich Cooper, his muscular body pumping up and down as he did one-arm push-ups.

To Nico’s simultaneous delight and chagrin, Rich was wearing a wrestling singlet, a sheer spandex outfit that hugged his powerful body. It was striped in the Cherrywood colors, green and white, almost like a candy cane, and the lines conformed to the ridges of the giant boy’s beautifully conditioned muscles. His traps and deltoids bulged above the shoulder straps, and the upper part of the outfit could barely contain the bulk of his vast back … a back that Nico knew could often get sore after a workout. A back that he could walk on, and maybe help his giant friend relax. His eyes, beyond his control, panned down … he gulped, blushed, and looked away.

Toby, another member of the guys’ little lunch table group, walked over from the climbing wall to greet his friends, but noticed Nico’s momentary zombie-like stare at Rich and smirked. In fact, Randy and Malik had noticed it, too, and traded knowing looks. It was something they had come to expect from their tiny friend. It was something that had made them slightly jealous in the past, but now, they found it entertaining, if not a little bit frustrating.

Each giant in their lunch group was out and open about his romantic preferences — they didn’t broadcast it, and it didn’t constitute the bulk of their identity, but if asked point blank, they would definitely confirm that they liked guys. In fact, two of them, Ant and Will, were in an overt, committed relationship.

But the human was different. His songs touched them all on a personal level and contained subtext that suggested he empathized with their feelings. Also, he wasn’t always good at hiding his glee whenever his giant jock buddies showed off their masculinity. Still, he never opened up. He never mentioned anything. He had been a fun and cool friend to get to know, but the real Nico Shawshank remained, for the most part, a mystery.

Malik, Randy, and Toby watched as Rich hopped up from the mat and, seeing Nico in Randy’s palm, rushed right over. It was amazing how his eyes would always lock on the little guy — he could spot him from leagues away. He greeted his giant buddies with tacit friendliness, but when he reached out to gently take Nico’s minuscule hand, his gaze and his voice were full of genuine warmth.

“Nico! What’s up!” he said, and wiped a little sweat from his face with the back of his hand. “I barely made it here tonight with Toby. I had a wrestling meet earlier today.”

Nico was still in a state of shock, and now that Rich was up close, he could see how his pectorals warped the singlet’s front, and how his abdominal muscles, a stack of living bricks, slightly protruded through its sheer cloth. Malik and Randy, and even young Toby to a certain extent, had Rich beat on sheer bulk, but the wrestler was supreme in definition, and just the right proportions. He was like a real life superhero. Nico flashed his eyes up to meet Rich’s in hopes that he could ignore the spectacle of manliness in front of him, but in no time at all, he was even more lost in the giant boy’s kind, guileless face. He couldn’t speak. Inwardly, he felt so ashamed for looking at his friend in such a way.

Randy, perceptive as ever, knew that his little buddy was all locked up, so he clapped Rich on the shoulder and said, “I heard about that! Did you … ‘tech fall’ or some crap like that?”

Rich smiled/glared at his big friend and gave him a light punch in the arm. “As if you even know what that means, man.”

“I don’t know what it means. That’s the point,” Randy said. “Wrestling doesn’t make any sense!”

“And football does? What position do you play again? Right-center back-front something?”

Malik chuckled and interjected, “Dude, you’re at a football team party. You’ve got to at least pretend to be a fan.”

“I’ll do my best,” Rich said with a boyish grin, and then yelped when Malik smacked him hard on the backside.

“Why are you wearing this spandex stuff? Don’t tell me you’ve been walking around all day like that!” Malik laughed before shucking his jacket off and throwing it in a corner. His little brother followed suit.

“Of course not,” Rich said. “It’s just perfect for the calisthenics room.” He then, to everyone’s surprise, leapt up and did a perfect back flip onto the mat. When he brought his face up, he made direct eye contact with Nico, as if to see the human’s reaction. Nico, naturally, could not suppress a smile, and Rich smiled back.

The boys’ fun was interrupted, however, by a resonant knocking on the doorway. They turned to see the giant football coach, Coach Pilgrim, standing there, a stocky, stubble-chinned older man with a constantly stern look that hid a sincerely charming disposition.

“You boys better get in here and eat before there’s nothing left,” he said gruffly. “Or at least get what you can before the caterer takes it away.” He peered bemusedly at Rich. “And Cooper, get some shorts on. This ain’t the freakin’ ballet.” With that, he ducked back out of the room.

The football players all pointed at Rich and had a good laugh at his expense before all the guys shuffled out, heading toward the buffet line. Nico, getting a little hot in Randy’s palm, jumped up and lightly levitated himself onto the giant jock’s shoulder. All the guys had seen him do it before except for Dante, who let out a quiet “Wow!”

Nico smiled at the kid. “It’s not as easy as it looks,” he said.

“That’s what he always says,” Randy chuckled.