The pressure mounted, disorienting Tom as the squishy walls of Heather’s mouth undulated inward.  Balmy waves of vanilla-laced spit doused him again and again, soaking into the shrunken young man and then being absorbed right back into the pink flesh that surrounded him on every surface.  A deep rumble emanated from the darkness as Heather began lightly humming a tune that had recently been rocking the airwaves.  Had he been able to move, Tom might’ve attempted to hum along, though his musical notes would’ve been swallowed completely in the cacophony of gargles bubbling up from her throat anyway.

            Compressed into the tightest corner of the girl’s cheek behind her molars, Tom felt Heather sucking vigorously on him like a tic-tac, though not quite to the point where it inflicted pain beyond irritating discomfort.  This allowed the teen to enter into a neutral state of acceptance.  No matter how all-consuming the cavern of Heather’s mouth became, she at least had the courtesy to leave him little more than dizzily soggy after her game was through.

            Certainly this was not Tom’s first rodeo as his friend’s tongue toy, and even more certainly, it would not be his last.

            Eventually he could hear the bell ringing through the wall of Heather’s cheek, and felt a seismic shift as she rose to her feet to return to classes with the rest of the student body.  Unsurprisingly, he remained swimming in her saliva as she made her way to the next period.  This seemed reasonable to the boy; after all, he wasn’t much larger than a fleck of dust.  What other use could she possibly have for him at this size?  It wasn’t like he’d be capable of transporting himself anywhere without help.

            The antics of Heather’s tongue at least slowed once she had to pay attention to a lecture, allowing Tom the freedom to keep his head above the soupiest layer of her drool, but with the massive muscle resting comfortably over his body, his movement options were limited.

            Occasionally she’d make use of him by lightly licking him along the slimy back row of her teeth, collecting gritty remains from between her molars into his clothes.  She’d then deposit him back onto her tongue and squeeze him into her lips, sucking the chewy remains from his body, before repeating the process.  Having nothing else to do, the boy eventually took to helping her out by trying to grab out particularly pesky chunks of food from between the pearly grinders.  Once the task was completed, she slurped Tom back up and gave him a wet, warm squeeze against her inner cheek in thanks.

            For some time the boy was stuck to the underside of Heather’s tongue like a dishonest barnacle as she casually twisted the muscle against the roof of her mouth.  As he was positioned upside down and glued with gummy sputum far too thick for him to get off without help, he soon fell into a bored nap.

            He was awoken at least a full class period later during a five minute break when he felt his friend’s tongue glide back down to the base of her mouth and rise him away in a fresh pool of minty spit.  Tom sputtered, trying and failing to re-engage his senses in the pitch-black hovel where every moist surface quivered at his touch and every breath was filled with the warm, moist flavors of everything Heather had eaten that day.  It occurred to him that he had regained enough height to actually wrestle his way out from under his friend’s muscular tongue, though that also could’ve just been because she felt like giving him a break; there was no way to be sure.

            “Hey, Heather.  Seen the liar around?” a voice snarked from outside, muffled somewhat by Tom’s disorientation, though he recognized it immediately as the discerning scowl of his older sister Alaina.

            “Oh, I don’t know…” Heather intoned, rattling Tom’s entire world with each simple syllable and bouncing him back up to her lips.  She shoved her enormous thumb into her mouth, liberally coating it in glistening saliva, and quickly pressed it to her miniscule friend’s back, where he immediately stuck.  Dutifully, the boy went limp and allowed her to fish him out from her lower gums.  A moment later she popped her finger and the defeated liar out into the bracing light of day, where he remained glued to the fleshy pad of her thumbprint.  “…I guess I’m not seeing him much.”

            “Oh, for God’s sake,” Alaina groaned, rolling her eyes in disbelief.  “I don’t even want to know how he got down that low.”

            Tom had the difficult choice to look either toward his sister’s bitterly disdainful face looming just ahead, larger than life though she was only a couple feet away, or the towering gateway of Heather’s victoriously smirking lips just behind him.

            Heather shrugged, keeping her thumb propped up as she studied her tiny friend clinging like a smashed insect to her spit-slicked skin.  Her saliva was starting to cool out here in the open, forming a gooey slab over Tom’s clothes and hair.  He’d managed to grow back to around half an inch after all this time, but still had quite a ways to go before there was much of anything else she could do with him.

            “It was just a lot of them, back to back,” the girl answered.

            “I really meant it!  I don’t want to know!” Alaina gasped, cupping her hands defensively over her ears.  “I can’t understand how you even want to hang out with him at all, even when he can’t get through a single freaking class at normal size.”

            “Hey, that’s what friends are for,” Heather said earnestly, looking down to Tom and giving him a winsome wink.

            “You’re crazy.  I’ll see ya around, I guess,” Alaina sighed, adjusting her glasses on the bridge of her nose and turning around in a huff after a final glance at her pathetic sibling glued to the end of his friend’s monolithic finger.

            “And I’ll see you once you’re big enough to do something else with,” Heather reported softly to Tom.  “Sound good?”

            Though it was difficult to respond because of the heavy strands of saliva weighing down his shoulders, Tom managed an awkward thumbs-up.

            “Awesome.  Geometry’s next, so I’ll try to take good notes so you can copy later,” she said, blowing out an irritated raspberry at the thought of it and spraying Tom with fresh flecks from her throat.  “Seriously, be glad you don’t have to sit through that.”

            Noting that she did, indeed, have something of a point, Tom, watched contentedly as his friend’s lips parted again into another self-satisfied smile to receive him.  The darkness and vanilla air enveloped him as Heather stuck her thumb inside her mouth, imbibing her best friend and favorite toy once again into the frothy fray.