“I’m the one who’s sorry,” Olivia breathed. Her voice was now much calmer; gentle, even, with her eyes opening anew to affix him with a matching gaze.

Daniel was so caught off guard by this wholly unexpected display that he didn’t even notice the approach of her enormous hand: the sudden, peaceful rubbing of his back by a thumb now larger than he was. He nearly jumped from his seat.

“I was having a little too much fun with you,” she explained softly. “I needled you too much. And I got you to say something without thinking about it first. I’m sorry for that. It wasn’t right of me.” The stroking on his back continued. Daniel felt he might actually melt into the comforting digit out of pure relief. “We’ll just consider this one on me, okay? So don’t worry about it. I’ll take responsibility for it at confession on Sunday.”

“Thank you,” Daniel murmured rather sheepishly. Relief still washed over him, along with a little guilt over his expectations. Olivia could be a lot of things, both good and bad, but one of those “good” things had always been her sense of fairness. He felt bad for forgetting that truth and attributing to her instead the traits of a much crueler individual. It was impossible not to feel he’d done a disservice to her character.

“So how ‘bout we go ahead and get this bath over with, hmm? The TV’s got a bunch of saved episodes I didn’t have time to see at school; when we get done, we can go watch whatever you want.”

Nope, strike that. She was evil. Pure evil.

Daniel couldn’t help but squirm as the formerly compassionate thumb worked in tandem with its closest partner to pluck him from the counter-top. Olivia’s fingers delivered him over to the stainless white basin of the sink. Already, his friend’s free hand was working the faucet handles to concoct a warm deluge of water for use.

“Liv, please don’t,” he uttered one final time over the gentle crashing of the small waterfall into the valley below. He could already feel his cheeks reddening as this potential humiliation was quickly becoming his reality.

“Oh, just calm down,” came the at-once amused reply. “It’ll be over with before you know it.”

With that, the two digits holding him captive suddenly braced Daniel against Olivia’s open palm. It gave him just enough time to helplessly watch her other hand join in.

Contrary to the shrunken teen’s expectations, he did not, in fact, find himself pressed between two bronze walls. Instead, the titanic hands joined together to form a nice, fleshy cup, the bottom of which he was soon released. An overpowering spray of warm water soon entered the pool of his friend’s cupped hands under the faucet. The admittedly comforting liquid quickly filled up his temporary miniature though still oversized tub, soothing his remaining aches as he floated with the surface to the top.

“Deep breath, Danny.”

To Olivia’s credit, she did wait for the command to both register and be heeded before bringing the tip of her thumb down atop his head. With a single press, she plunged him underneath the water’s surface, even as she retracted her hands out from under the still-pouring faucet.

Nowhere near satisfied with this quick dunk, his friend’s dexterous digit moved to catch him at his side. From there it began to swirl, stir, and whisk him around his little pool. Daniel was grateful he’d closed his eyes upon his rather unceremonious dunking – he was pretty certain he’d be under the influence of motion sickness now if he’d actually witnessed all this spinning on top of actually experiencing it.

Thankfully, that particular act ended quickly enough. Olivia’s thumb withdrew after carefully bringing his little form to a gentle stop, allowing him to float back to the water’s surface, open his eyes, and catch his breath. Of course, no sooner had he risen than he began to lower once again, this time as Olivia carefully allowed the water to seep through a small gap she had created at the bottom of her cupped hands. It didn’t take long for his organic basin to empty, leaving him alone and thoroughly drenched on its squishy, damp floor formed by her palms.

That, of course, was when the soap arrived.

The raspberry gel plunked down onto him with careful precision. The pump worked, like so many things, by Olivia’s thumb as her hands rested underneath the dispensing top. A glob of purifying goop splattered against the back of his head, down the length of his back, prepping him nicely for the dreaded moment to come – and, at last, it arrived. Olivia’s hands closed upon and around him, sandwiching him with utmost care between her palms.

And then they started to rub.

The motion wasn’t rough, but it was certainly firm. Enough to induce the soapy gel into a foaming lather as his little body was rolled back and forth with the motions of his friend’s hands. The cushiony palms overtook every part of him as he felt like he were being spread upon them, leaving a fresh trail of suds behind with every rolling motion. The scrubbing hands didn’t miss much of anything in their work, and that meant anything.

It took a concerted effort to ignore certain presses in certain areas between certain legs. Daniel was just glad to be trapped and out of sight within this muscular mayhem of a human car-wash, lest Olivia notice the heat overcoming his face due to the unwanted physical contact.

This was, after all, just the preliminary scrubbing. If history was any indication, as he was certain it would be, this was about to get much worse, and doubly as personal.

It was a certainty that was confirmed when Olivia’s hands parted once more. However, he wasn’t greeted by a torrent of cleansing water under the bathroom’s yellow light, but the pad of his best friend’s thumb pressing once more onto his head.

Gently – always gently – the digit began to rub at his scalp in circular motions that he would not deny were soothing and that he might even dare to label as enjoyable.

It was when the swirling thumbpad moved down his tiny face that his hackles truly rose. The same soothing motions applied to his scalp were now foisted upon his chest, a last look at Olivia as the motions tracked further down his person. It thoroughly unnerved him as the thumb moved over his stomach, closer to his waist. And continued down.

Her thumb traced across the millimeters of space stretched between Daniel’s thighs. The gridded ovals of her fingerprint adjusted infinitesimally for the minor hill formed beneath his clothing. Olivia’s all-encompassing gaze was outright dutiful, with no visible hesitation given what she was doing… or rather, what she was touching, now, though it was something Daniel himself was forced to recognize and bear. Something hormone-filled teenagers were obviously superb at.

Daniel couldn’t help but wonder if Olivia viewed him as utterly sexless in these moments, and he wasn’t sure if he were glad for that distinction or embarrassed even further by it. He was certainly glad for the Truplex material currently acting as the most appreciated barrier in the world, despite its inability to hide foreign shapes beneath its form-fitting fabric. So militant had he become in diverting his gaze away from the alluring event, in fact, he made no notice of the light rosy flush decorating Olivia’s cheeks in the intervening seconds, nor the tug of her tongue against the inside of her cheek as her gigantic finger loitered just a second longer than necessary over the boy’s delicates.

At last, the stimulating motions finally passed over the danger zone and beyond, moving further down his legs and all the way to his feet.

He also wasn’t sure if he should be glad or dismayed that she had handled his front-side first as the tip of her thumb proceeded to tump him over onto his stomach. It was not a comfortable position to have forced upon him in that moment, but at the same time he was glad to have his unwanted reaction and her ministrations hidden from view while he brought it under control.

His mind refocused to its usual method of veiling his biological reactions: scientific documentary footage of a polar bear turning some poor seal into grisly dinner.

While usually effective, it’s propensity for solving this problem seemed to be cut in half as Olivia’s thumbprint found his back and renewed its work, delivering an effective massage that further alleviated his lingering pains.

What was more, though, was that this time the digit lingered in place, making it clear that he was correct to perceive it as a massage. In all likelihood, it was a small apology on Olivia’s part for her contributing role in his most recent shrinking spurt. It was not wholly unappreciated – it was very sweet, honestly – but boy did he need her to move on at the moment. The polar bears weren’t working fast enough, and he could feel his member now prodding into the ridged terrain of his friend’s skin. And the grinding of soft flesh on all sides of his body wasn’t helping, either.

Luckily, her thumb moved on sooner, rather than later, and his relieving thoughts of gory seal death took him through the rest of the digit’s unwelcome but thankfully speedy journey down his lower back.

A sudden rush of cool water onto his big bronze cushion finished the job and in more ways than one. It didn’t take long for the lathered suds to wash away, taking the dirt and grime with them as the water spilled over the sides of her hand. The thumb returned momentarily to flick him onto his back once more. It allowed the serenely flowing water to wash over and complete its work. Soon, no suds were left, and the downpour from the faucet was squeezed to an end.

“All clean,” Olivia chirped triumphantly. A genuine smile beamed down at Daniel on his damp, flesh-toned mattress. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

The mostly rhetorical questioned received little more than a nearly inaudible grunt from Daniel himself. Which in led to an exasperated rolling of his friend’s eyes up above.

“Well just be that way, I guess,” she added in thankfully faux-annoyance.

Daniel soon wondered if he maybe weren’t a little bit mistaken in his choice not to answer – namely, as the oversized hand that held him suddenly flipped over. He was dumped straight onto the hand towel that had been placed nearby. The teen hacked in surprise, which was apparently worthy of a boomed coo from above. He had little time to get his bearings before he suddenly found himself utterly surrounded by undulating walls of navy blue towel. Olivia aggressively folded it around his body, burying him amidst its drying fibers.

“All right, Danny-Boy, the rest is up to you,” Olivia’s voice soon informed from outside his towel fort. It was followed shortly by the tell-tale sound of a shirt hitting the tiled floor.

Damnit was the only word that passed through his head.

“Cleaning you up doesn’t exactly fix anything if we hang out without me washing up, too. I really wouldn’t recommend making your way out of there before I take you out myself, so just sit tight.”

Of course. After she rubs me down like that is when she realizes it’s kind of really fucking awkward, Daniel thought, utterly nonplussed, as the sound of a distant waterfall permeated his night-blue surroundings.