Tom was only just clinging to some shred of coherent clarity, lost in the sweaty haze of being pummeled by swishing skin again and again and again, when he realized he was being unpeeled from Alaina’s fair flesh and plopped in a wet heap on a washcloth in one of the kids’ shared upstairs bathrooms.
Apparently she didn’t even have the decency to help him get untangled from the heavily dampened super-tape, though at the same time he couldn’t quite count this against her. Relying on Alaina to detach him with even her gentlest touch was akin to having a meter stick smarted across his balls. Eventually he heard the shower turn on and off, then the mighty ruffle of her towel as she returned to her bedroom to recuperate from all the indignity of interacting with such a little heathen.
Instead, he simply closed his eyes, attempting to gingerly crawl his way back into a state of conscious being. Eventually Tom felt soft fingertips pinching him up and steadily working the tape off his body under warm, soapy sink water: obviously Emma’s, as he knew the feel of her digits and especially was accustomed to her more practical and less excruciating methods of removing him from a jam.
This was certainly a welcome trait, as she herself had on more than one occasion found reason to tape him up somewhere, though it was generally something more bearable like the bed in her dollhouse to make out with Barbie back when she was a little girl, rather than the veritable sweat-boarding he received under Alaina’s physical tutelage.
“You really reek today, Tom-Tom,” Emma commented casually as she tenderly scrubbed her sibling down atop the surface of her bent fingers, allowing the suds to rush down his awkwardly squirming frame and off her fingernails like a waterfall. The fingertips of her other hand quickly put a stop to his half-sweat-drunk rebellion, though, pinning him into her palm and allowing her to continue her work. “Hey, cool it with your little hands and little feets, or we’re not gonna get all her grossness off of you, okay?”
He nodded, at last managing to work his way back to reality, and Emma’s fingers relented on his limbs, allowing him to splay openly into her palm and hold still while her probing digits did their work. The liquid sloshed over, actually cooling his body back down despite the fact that the warm tap was twisted further in than the cold. There was quite a way to come down in terms of body heat after being pickled in the cushioned purgatory of Alaina’s gyrating flesh and pulsing sweat.
“Maybe you should ask Alaina to walk it off a little more, huh?” the fifteen-year-old suggested earnestly. “Might not be as messy. Less work for me, then.” It was funny to hear her groan about such things, as if the girl didn’t positively adore the chance to bathe the misguided boy like her own personal pet who’d foolishly rolled in his own feces.
Hell, he couldn’t remember a bigger tooth-bearing smirk on the teen’s face than that day Alaina had taken a tumble in the mud on a particularly slick day during a run last year and returned with Tom caked in nearly an inch of muck. After she’d gotten the requisite before-and-after shots of his goofy visage taken for her social media accounts, Emma had put an admirable amount of attention into chipping away every last granule of mud from her brother’s body. Despite his complaints about having his condition captioned with cartoonish heart emojis for all her friends to see and share, he couldn’t help but feel grateful.
“Think about asking her, that’s all I’m saying,” Emma added. She gave the faucet another twist, allowing a few fresh spurts to plunge out and dampen the last few soap slicks along the heel of her hand that hadn’t yet been inflated into cleansing bubbles. Cupping her hands together and forming a wall with her fingers, the girl briefly turned her palms into a makeshift bathtub for Tom, who sunk leadenly to the basin of his sister’s fleshy confine before she parted her digits, allowing it all to rush out. Of course, she easily caught the boy before he could be flushed out into the drain. “I bet she’d consider it.”
“Right,” he uttered back with a sarcastic snicker that accidentally allowed a swig of violet-flavored soap to choke into his throat, though even this bitter mouthful was infinitely preferable to the dank secretions endured in the balmy hallows of his elder sister’s pits. He couldn’t quite imagine even in daydream the gumption necessary to suggest to Alaina, as she taped him firmly into her smelly skin, that she give him a break of any kind. His younger sister’s statement, in technicality, was not a lie. Alaina would indeed consider his request for all of the quarter-instant it took to process it before flicking him upside the head with a masterfully propelled middle finger for his further insubordination, imparting enough velocity into his skull to wreck a Hot Wheels truck.
Such a concept was beyond preposterous, and Tom might’ve mentioned it to its author, if he didn’t rely so very heavily on Emma’s cheeriness to help him out after the fact without complaint. Having to untangle himself from the tape and attempt to reach the soap for a rinse, let alone twist the spigot to wash away his older sister’s filth, at this scale was the kind of daunting that would most likely just force him into the lifestyle of a permanent sink hobo. That way of doing things probably had its advantages, too, Tom realized, until he considered that his mother might not be keen on him emptying his bladder into the drain.
“All right, kids, dinner’s on the table!” Linda Baker called from downstairs, timed just as a fragrant scent of steamed carrots, juicy beef, and piping cornbread wafted favorably up the stairs and under the crack of the bathroom door.
“Hear that? Time to eat!” Emma crooned, pawing at her brother through the thick padding of the hand towel she was using to dry him off. She gave him a final rubdown in her fist, ensuring he was completely free of all liquids before gently dumping his nearly six-inch body into her palm. She frowned, then, as she grasped the knob and nudged her way into the hall to pursue her hungry normal-sized siblings down to the dining room. “You might not be quite tall enough to fit in a chair yet, though, Tom-Tom…”
“Probably not,” he admitted carefully, determined now to keep what little height he had left.
“You don’t worry, though,” the girl reassured with an airy giggle, ruffling her tiny brother’s hair and softly biting the corner of her lip as her eyes shifted steadily down to the carpet, where her dainty toes were scrunching playfully at the fibers in thought. “We’ll find… somewhere for you to go.”