“Oh, lil’ Danny-Boy. Sometimes I just have to wonder what in the world I’m gonna do with you.”

“Nothing?” Daniel Stewart piped up hopefully. He quickly regretted the comment as two swirling pads clamped upon the sides of his head like a vice, pressing his cheeks together and forcing him into a steady rhythm of puckering and then un-puckering his lips. An unamused emerald glare continued to drill into his little body, held aloft as it was by the pincer-grip of his best friend’s other hand.

The mesh material of his Truplex undersuit, taut enough normally, pulled even tighter as it dug into his upper chest – a fully intended side-effect of dangling limply in front of his holder’s disapproving face from the small amount of material at the nape of his neck being pinched between her fingertips.

“Going with the wishful thinking route this time, huh?” Olivia questioned, albeit rhetorically. The point was driven home as her pinching fingertips continued to palpate along the sides of his head, making reply just a bit difficult.

“It’s a step up from justification, I guess,” she appended with a sigh that belted him with the garlic-y aftermath of her lunch, “but not much of one.”

“Is it?” she asked. Her fingertips slipped away from his cheeks, only to aggressively punctuate the question with a flick of her finger directly into his gut.

The inch-tall teen was sent tottering back and forth in the young woman’s grip, the playfully sharp smack robbing him of a few breaths while such rocking, suspended a few hundred comparative feet in the air as he was, sent a shiver through him. Yet while clutching defensively at his stomach, Daniel remained silent, even as the rocking slowed and then halted, leaving him to once again focus on his friend’s hard countenance as it awaited a response. It was a practiced silence: serenity with a purpose. Daniel knew Olivia had gone through this little game far too many times before.

In regards to her question, he was unsure as to the answer – and that was why he wasn’t going to offer one. And as expected, a knowing little smirk eventually formed on her face, just as he knew it would.

It was an honest silence, after all, and she’d respect that far more than a misleading word.

“But seriously, Danny,” Olivia started again. She swiped at her auburn bangs with her unoccupied hand. “My very first day back home for the summer, and I find you like this? You’re seventeen, short stuff. I thought you’d be doing better by now. You’re just lucky it was me coming over to see you and not your Mom or Dad coming home from work. Or have they been getting lax with you this last year?”

“A bit, yeah… They’re busy with work a lot now. So they don’t exactly… see it a lot of the time,” he sheepishly admitted to immediately softening eyes.

Good.

As much as he’d been looking forward to seeing his friend return from university today, he’d forgotten her tendency to barge into places like his house or his bedroom without announcement. He’d been expecting to have more time. Worse still, he’d been expecting to be taller than her big toe. He was frankly in a deep hole now, one he knew he wasn’t getting out of. But he could still do a little climbing.    

“Well, that little vacation’s over with now,” Olivia declared brightly, earning an understanding nod from Daniel. “I mean, it’s not like you’ve got any siblings to steer you right. I’m the best you’ve got. So, as far as you’re concerned now, your big sister’s back in town, and I have to say she’s not really planning on straying too far from your house. Especially when lil’ Danny-Boy’s apparently in need of some more guidance. So she has all the time in the world to get you nice and straightened out.” Right on schedule, that little grin turned cocksure. “And I guess there’s no time like the present for getting started on that, huh?”

Daniel grunted, pursing his lips. Olivia had always been quick to respond to his lapses, and a year away in her first year at college had apparently not dulled that particular instinct in the slightest. Nor her eagerness to do so, for that matter. That eagerness to help, much in the same way she might have helped him with his math homework in middle school, with fending off schoolyard bullies in elementary. Or, perhaps more accurate to the situation, tending to one of the several scraped knees he had earned in those playground scuffles. Her mood was latching onto that particular brand of earnesty that made what was about to happen even slightly bearable compared to the “guidance” he had received from others in the past – hell, he might even deem it acceptable, as screwed up as that was.

Not that he was going to go into it without some attempt at getting out of it, of course.

“Liv?” he squeaked out, putting on his best little puppy-dog face. The one that had gotten his best friend to take him along on many a trip to the movies, and which had bought him many an ice-cream cone.

The effect was instantaneous, of course. Olivia’s pretty face softened into that of the doting older guardian, despite her mere ten-month advantage in age between them: fully alert of the trouble and trauma facing the younger being.

“Do we have to do it this time?” he continued. A soft little whine permeated his voice. Nice, shy, and sweet. “Can’t we just see how things go from here?”

“Oh, Danny-Boy,” Olivia repeated softly again, eyes locked onto him with a tender squint. “You know how this works by now. You learn the lesson, and I stop teaching it. Nice try, though.”

Damn it.

“So what exactly was it about this time?” Olivia inquired as Daniel’s head hung low in defeat, and she gave him the lightest shake to jostle him out of it. “Figure I might as well know if we’re gonna talk about it.”

If you’re gonna talk about it, Daniel mentally corrected, yet proceeded to fess up regardless. Being dangled like this was becoming more and more a strain, and with his friend’s mind made up, there was little to no reason to stall.

“Was talking to, uh, Mallory, about a soccer game,” he began. “Someone got hurt real bad because of her, and everyone’s kinda been piling onto her about it. I just... I just figured she’s going through enough with it, y’know?”

“Aw,” Olivia cooed, apparently finding his consolations quite cute, “That’s really sweet. Really, really wrong, but still sweet. You’re gonna have to confess to her, of course. That’ll be good for both of you. But we’ll handle that later. “

Olivia bared her teeth in a wide smile, and Daniel couldn’t really say he liked the look or the familiarity of it as a few less than pleasant memories began to bubble to the surface.

“First, I think it’s about time for you to drop into class.”

“Liv, don-! “ Daniel exclaimed with widened eyes, just as the material of his Truplex was unceremoniously released from between her fingers. Panic escalated along with his stomach as he began a deadweight drop of a few hundred feet.

The turquoise material of his friend’s sleeveless shirt blurred by. Daniel’s head jerked upward to spot the pretty billboard of her face smiling down at his descending form, completely unfazed by the fear in the freefalling teen’s expression. Possibly even reveling in it. Because it wasn’t any sort of fear of hitting the ground that sent Daniel into this panic. The gigantic college freshman wouldn’t ever let him hit the ground from such a drop. She’d catch him, just like she always did. There was no doubt whatsoever about that.

No, it was the method of capture that earned his apprehension, and the temporarily giant girl wasted no further time in initiating. In the blink of an eye, the combined underside of five bulbous appendages slapped into his falling body, curling their warm, clammy selves forcefully around his reduced form.

Daniel blanched almost immediately: the powerful, unwashed odor of his friend’s jog over to the house forced itself upon him even as the toes cupped him roughly into the ball of the foot with no amount of gentle pressure. That grip was to ensure his safety, of course, considering he was still questionably secured at least a hundred feet in the air while his friend balanced on one leg. The foot that held him bent inwards as it held him level with her waist while she positioned it parallel to the ground.

Her lips broadened into a triumphant smile.