So tiny!

[cutrate_pegasus]

The Borrowers Meme



It turns out it's not just rats and bugs that live in the walls and under the floors of old houses - there are whole families, societies even, living hidden away from prying human bean eyes. They make and gather the things they need, but sometimes...well, sometimes they need to borrow a few things from their unwitting bean hosts.

Post with your character's name and any preferences you have, including whether you prefer your pup to be a borrower or a bean (presumably if your character is a borrower, this is an AU where they've always been one - though you can always say they've been transformed, too). Feel free to either leave your initial comment blank or to put in a little text showing what sort of thread you have in mind. You can make up your own story, or pick (or have RNG pick for you) from the following scenarios:

1. Borrower Sighting: Now you've done it - you've let a bean see you. What are you going to do about it - and for that matter, what are they going to do about it?

2. Borrower Reunion: Hey, it's tough living spread out among bean houses. Sometimes borrowers need to come together, whether deliberately or by accident along their travels.

3. I'm Not Crazy: One (or both) of you is a bean who knows the truth - but no one believes them! Cue the search for proof!

4. Borrower City: Some places - bean shopping malls, for instance - are able to support lots and lots of borrowers, rather than the usual single family per bean house.

5. Animal Attack: The trouble with being so tiny is that even a rat can be a fearsome enemy.

6. Moving Day: You can't stay where you've been living, or you've chosen to move in with some other borrowers. Either way, moving day poses peculiar challenges to borrowers.

7. Life in the Great Outdoors: Forget depending on beans. You live wild and free, even if that means smelling manky and eating bugs.

8. Mix and match/make up your own.

Comments

Peter Vincent [Fright Night (2011)] | all except 7

[fucking_ebay]

[Option 3ish seems most likely -- he could have an inkling what goes on under the floorboards, and set (non-deadly!) traps.]

Aglet Bottlerack | Borrowers OC | OTA

[watchesthebeans]

[Uh, so...he's already a borrower. Aglet's a bit of an auntie's boy, since she was the only one left to raise him after his parents died (just...don't even talk to him about cats).]

Clint 'Hawkeye' Barton - MCU - OTA

[ihazanest]

[He's probably the adventurous sort of Borrower, living in the wild, maybe in a city. And c'mon: Borrowervengers? How awesome would that be?]

1/8: I do what I want! Going with prose but if you prefer action I can switch o7

[starspangledspandex]

There is a mouse in his house. There has to be one. There are minuscule bits of food missing from several places. No droppings, but missing food. It makes no sense. Either way, a trap it is. Either he catches something or he doesn't but at least he's tried.

Luckily for everyone involves, Steve is a decent person and he wouldn't hurt a fly, much less something that might be scrounging for food in his kitchen. So it's a fake breadbox live trap for him. He'll release whatever it is out in the wild well away from his kitchen.

He hums as he slides it into place on his counter and tosses a fresh loaf of bread inside. Lonely bachelor Steve then crosses to the fridge and digs out leftovers to heat up. Nothing fancy or complicated, just food before he heads to bed and hopes he catches something overnight.

Arkady | FreakAngels | OTA

[justalilmental]

[she's a bit of a space cadet, she probably likes watching the beans, she's probably been seen more than once. She also thinks she can talk to animals (and maybe she actually can)]

Ariadne (Inception) - OTA

[justpurecreation]

[She's industrious and clever, also resourceful and cool in a crisis.]

8 (again!)

[littlspecificty]

Arthur returned back to the hotel later that afternoon, still debating on the job that had been pitched to him earlier. It was interesting, of course, but also doable. Nothing too simple or boring. It had its risks like any job in the profession but they seemed very limited.

It was good pay, wouldn't take longer than a month to plan and work out.

It almost seemed too good a deal.

But he didn't want to voice any of his concerns until he got back to the room. As soon as he did, he set down his bag before asking, "So, what did you think of it all?" But he wasn't speaking to himself.

He opened the front pocket on his suit jacket and stuck his index finger in it, waiting for Ariadne to grab onto it.

Molly | Looper OC | OTA

[ladylooper]

[She's a survivor, probably lives in the wild, hunts rats and stoats for food, that kind of thing.]

Eames (Inception) - OTA

[neededforger]

[He's a master thief, he's never been caught, and he's an expert at helping families move in a hurry.]

8!

[littlspecificty]

Eames will find Arthur where he usually does when they are alone in the house: on the bookshelf in the living room. He often complained that there wasn't a library like the other house they had lived in prior to this one but at least they had a good selection often enough.

Katniss Everdeen | Hunger Games | OTA

[not_catnip]

[If there's such a thing as a feral Borrower, Katniss is definitely one of those. People say she once took down a tomcat on her own.]

a fellow borrower lost in the great outdoors okay?

[watchesthebeans]

[Being alone outside is one of Aglet's worst nightmares. He was raised in the relatively genteel family home built into the walls of an old house by his grandfather, and neither he nor his aunt ever had any use for the outdoors beyond very brief trips into the garden for fresh food. Now he's managed to get himself stranded at least a day's walk from home, and --

Bird. That's a bird up there, and it's coming this way and okay, panicking and sprinting for the nearest bit of shelter he can see.]

Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler | X-Men: Evolution | OTA

[thefuzzyguy]

[An observant kid who can't safely leave the family home has a lot of time to look for strange little things, and the Bavarian Alps are more than wild enough to allow free movement of borrowers, mostly away from prying Bean eyes. Besides, Kurt's a bit of an elfin thing himself. He's not gonna judge. Come out come out, strange little people!]

[mightiestgreen]

[ooc: much muse <3 for kurt first off. :) I would love to see if we can thread with these two. preference on scenario? I'm fine with Bruce/Hulk being normal sized or a borrower.]

Erik Lensherr (X-Men First Class) - OTA

[serene_rage]

[He's definitely a loner, he's been in a few Borrower cities, and a few houses that didn't have Borrower families in them, but he moves often, usually staying away from other family units or groups.]

Bobby Singer (Supernatural) - OTA

[unclebobby]

[A bean, but one that knows there are Other Things™ out there. His scrap yard is probably a haven and a half for Borrowers, he might even leave food or supplies out for them, if he suspects they're there.]

Hanna (Movie of the same name) | OTA

[aptoautmorior]

[She could be either a feral Borrower, living in the wild from an early age. Or she could be an incredibly perceptive Bean, one who would protect any Borrowers in her area, because that's what she does.]

Iggy (Maximum Ride books) - OTA

[blindbirdboy]

[Iggy may be blind, but his hearing is excellent. If he's a bean, he'll know if he's got Borrowers, and he'll be happy to host them. If he's a Borrower, he probably has a sixth sense for when there's Beans or predators about.]

Charles Xavier | XMFC | OTA

[calmestmind]

[As a Bean, Charles would be able to feel those minds, no matter how small. As a Borrower, he's probably lived in the same huge house his whole life and doesn't know anything different.]

Re: Charles Xavier | XMFC | OTA

[chang_wufei]

[Big houses were perfect for Borrowers to keep themselves tucked away out of sight, even ones with modern security and fixtures. Which was how Wufei had gotten himself in and had had little trouble settling in so far. As much as he would have preferred to room in the walls of the library and have access to the books beans liked to leave open on the shelves (and then wondered why it was on a different page when they came back), the space near the pantry was more logical, providing him with food after only a short trip.

That didn't mean, of course, that he didn't sneak off to the library for a few days every now and then.]

Arthur (Inception) - OTA

[domsconsigliere]

[Arthur's a Borrower who rarely stays in one place for long, a loner by necessity, though occasionally a team player for the same reason.]

Geir Dagnasson | Scion OC

[odinsscion]

[As a Bean he's probably aware of something going on. As a Borrower he's most famous for being able to get almost anything that they need to get.]

arrietty | the secret world of arrietty

[borrow]

[ pretty self-explanatory. c: ]

Mind if I practice my Luke Smith on you? I'm okay with whatever format and font, btw.

[lukesmith]

[Something's been...off. Clyde jokes about Luke imagining pixies (Luke had to ask what a pixie was), but Luke's sure bits of things have been going missing for ages now. It's always something very small, almost unnoticeable. Sarah Jane is a bit more credulous, but she says that if it's an alien, it's not a harmful one, and they'll show themselves when they're ready. It's only been in the last day or so that Luke's started to wonder if she's just been humoring him.

Tonight he's lying awake in bed, having carefully arranged what he thinks the being wants on his desk. He keeps his eyes fixed on the loose papers, the erasers, the mechanical pencil leads he "accidentally" spilled, and not least, the half-finished biscuit left so carefully carelessly to one side. Maybe he's wrong, and maybe he'll have to start over tomorrow night with different bait -- but he really hopes not.]

Javert | Les Miserables, musical-book fusion | OTA, 1 or 4

[order_and_light]

[As a borrower [4], he lives in a hospital. It's a dangerous place for a city, with the beans on high alert for pests, but there's also plenty of food and people misplacing items. And, yes, he's law enforcement—or at least tries to be. In a city like this, if anyone breaks the rules, it risks everyone's lives.]

[As a human [1], he's seeing tiny people in an early 19th-century French jet-jewelry factory town. What.]

Re: Javert | Les Miserables, musical-book fusion | OTA, 1 or 4

[order_and_light]

[I would also totally run this as an Indian in the Cupboard [Inspector in the Cupboard?] meme, because those books. I used to love them. It involves tiny people, I say it counts.]

Jim Moriarty || BBC Sherlock || OTA

[moriarty_was_real]

[Meet the king of the Borrower trolls! Jim oversees an entire legion of pranksters, carefully targeting specific people all over town. His victims get their socks stolen, earrings misplaced, even their Twitter accounts hacked. His favourite beans get tantalising evidence of his existence, including tiny sticky hand prints on their keyboards and possessions shifted around to spell words. Leave him a rare enough treasure and you just might gain a personal audience. Ignore him and you'll get Mentos in your Diet Coke~.]

cosette • les miserables

[euphrasie]

[ here is a lovely and tiny borrower girl who has a great fascination with the beans but is kept from them by her father. ]

Chang Wufei (blind) | Gundam Wing | 1, 3, 6, or 8.

[unseeingjustice]

Option 1 (kind of fits with 6, but doesn't have to be)
For a blind Borrower, Wufei was pretty good at getting around houses and avoiding being seen. Most of the time. But with the lady of the last house complaining about hearing rats in the walls and calling an exterminator, he'd had to move more quickly than he usually liked to, and the place across the power lines (so much safer to cross than the street) hadn't been a single house like he'd hoped, but an apartment building. A new one, without any holes in the walls yet, meaning that a tiny Borrower with only the pack on his back was to have trouble finding a way in and out of sight.

Option 2
Up to you!

Tsuzuki Asato | Yami no Matsuei | 1 or 3

[tsuzuki_asato]

[A lost Borrower with a major sweet tooth. Could be easy to lure out with a few well placed cookies.]

loki | mcu

[sorcerous]

[ Probably a borrower. Asgard = the land under the floorboards? Eh? Eh?

Alternatively, a borrower living alone and determinedly staying that way. ]

combination of 1 and 3

[solifelike]

[It's not that he actually thinks there are tiny people living in hiding places scattered throughout the BAU. Because that would be crazy. And if there is one thing Spencer Reid is vehement about, it's that he is not crazy.

But odd things have definitely been going on for awhile now. He couldn't say without certainly just how long - months, years even maybe? It's always very little things. The kind that even profilers just shrug off with a frown, and forget about. But after long enough, even the littlest of little things start to add up.

Minute amounts of dust disturbed in out of the way places. Incredibly small bits of food that have gone missing. Case files on his or his teammate's desks that look like they've been rifled through even though they swear they left them closed.

The others tell him he's fabricating a conspiracy out of boredom, and to ignore it. But he can't. His suspicion is something along the line of pranksters, or maybe an incredibly nosy and obnoxious member of another team. Though the how is more of a mystery, since a regular intruder would have been noticed by now. Tiny robots? Trained mice?

He might not mention these exact details of his thoughts to the others. See the whole 'not crazy' thing.

But what he does do is leave a few carefully rigged hidden traps behind, just at the start of a long weekend. And then the very next day he comes in early to the open empty office to see of any of them have been sprung.]

Spencer Reid | Criminal Minds

[solifelike]

[Most interested in bean-borrower interactions versus two of a kind, but open to him being either.]

Re: Spencer Reid | Criminal Minds

[unseeingjustice]

[[Tiny witness at a crime scene? Playing him about twenty for reference.]]

[If it had been safe to leave the walls, Wufei would have left the house a long time ago, but with the bean who lived there ready to lash out at the smallest movement, he wasn't even going to chance it. He'd heard what had happened to the other beans that'd been brought there, and if this one was capable of that, what would he do to a Borrower if he caught one? No, better to stay inside and try not to listen.

And then there'd been silence, the angry bean gone and the house empty for a day. Which was why he'd come out to find food, and was still out in the open when he heard someone new in the other room. Damn.]