Bubble Bath

(Chronological index: Ray and Denise Dating)

Ray pulled up behind Denise's car and got out, Annie cupped in his hand. He'd grown comfortable enough with the place that he didn't pocket her.

He'd let her down wherever they found Pet, which could be three inches inside the door. Annie could hardly wait. She was really coming to like being with the younger blonde.

She glanced up at Lurch. She had much to teach the girl about the giants and how to train them.

Small pings sounded as he carried her past the car. "They just got home," she said. "Car's still cooling down."

"Mmm," her master grunted. He accepted her statement as an unchallenged fact. He usually did that when she was right.

Or when he couldn't figure a way to correct her.

He knocked. There was a slightly longer than usual delay. "She's coming," Annie announced when she heard footsteps.

"Oh!" Denise said in surprise when she opened the door. Pet was on her shoulder, one leg wrapped under the shoulder strap of a bright yellow sundress. Neither looked particularly happy to see their guests.

"You're early," Pet said. It sounded like an accusation.

"Lurch's fault!" Annie said in self-defense. If they weren't welcome it could NOT be her little fault. She'd had no choice in the matter. Sylphs never had much choice in being their owners' accessory.

Ray glanced down at his pet, a brief flash of betrayal in his eyes. He'd come home early and suggested a nap until it was time to go see his girlfriend and her pet.

Annie had suggested an early surprise about eleventy-hundred times. But he wasn't going to make it a he-said/she-said scene. Not until they were headed home.

"Yeah, I got off early and thought, uh, no time like the presences."

"Um, yeah, I guess," Denise said. She didn't sound thrilled. Ray took a step backwards off the step.

Annie didn't protest.

"We can come back later," he offered. "If we're too early."

"Okay," Pet said.

"No, no," Denise said. She shook her head and took her own step back. "No, come inside, into the air conditioning."

Ray followed. He and Annie both scanned the room quickly, looking for a reason for the reception.

"Sorry," Denise said. "But we had… plans. For the afternoon."

"We'll come back," Ray said. He tried to project a calm, no-hits, no-fouls tone in his voice. They were just dating and they hadn't been expected for hours, yet. He wanted to know what was going on, but he didn't want to be SEEN as being intrusive. He didn't think they had that right, not yet.

"What're you doing?" Annie asked, far less concerned about Ray's image in Denise's eyes.

"Pet?" Denise asked. The little sylph sighed. Annie glanced up at her, wishing she was closer. Ray immediately raised his hand until his sylph was level with the hostess sylph.

"They'll think it's silly," Pet said softly.

"Oh, I'm sure we won't," Ray started to say.

"And so what if we do?" Annie asked. Pet looked at her suspiciously, but hopefully. "Seriously. If it's something you want to do, it's something you want to do. It can't possibly be SO silly we won't want you to have fun doing it."

She started to wave Master forward, but he was already reaching Annie towards Denise's shoulder.

Denise watched calmly as the hand and the brunette came closer to her person. Sylph owners define 'personal space' quite a bit differently than non-owners do. Annie referred to such people as 'the mundanes' or 'the lonely.'

Annie was close enough to reach out a hand. Ray pinched the other hand gently between thumb and forefinger so she could stretch. Pet grasped it.

"Pet, you're my friend. You shared your birthday with me. I love you and I want you to be happy, even if you spend this afternoon…" She paused, trying to think of the silliest thing she could imagine.

"Even if you're training your pet rock to jump hurdles," Ray offered.

"Binky WAS a racing rock," Annie said. She used her 'talking to idiots' voice, explaining the salient details.

"But you didn't need me to find a clock with a sweep second hand," Ray replied. "The hour hand worked fine." He snorted. "A sundial would have worked to time Binky's performance."

"You were always jealous of MY relationship with MY pet, weren't you?!" Annie had let go of Pet and turned to look pityingly at the giant holding her.

Denise smiled and Pet giggled. Both of them found Annie and Ray's mock fights to be quite silly. They let the two continue for a bit, until Pet broke out into full laughter. She nearly fell off her perch, but Denise scooped her up.

"Okay," Pet forced out.

"Binky LOVED me," Annie was saying. She stopped instantly after Pet spoke. For their part, the two had been impressed that Denise and Pet always could tell which fights were real and which were showing off for an audience. Even Mom couldn't do that 100% of the time.

"Come on," Denise said. "We were going to have a bubble bath."

"Oh," Annie replied. It was her turn to sound less than thrilled.

Ray followed Denise down the hall to the master bedroom and the attached bath. This was going to be a little awkward.

Annie knew Ray and Denise had gotten rather intimate over the last few months. He'd even invited her to the coming family reunion. And Annie'd given Pet a separate invitation, because that's just how it was done.

But a bubble bath…? The water couldn't be too deep or sylphs slipped and drowned, or slipped and came up under thick icebergs of suds and were lost.

That doesn't sound too bad to humans, but when you're small enough that you can only breathe what's burst out of the bubbles around you, it's kind of threatening.

So there'd have to be at least one human supervising the sylph's bubble bath play time.

Normally she enjoyed that, time spent with Master's attention and a mountain of bubbles. But it was more than a little intimate. Lots of touch, conversation amplified by echoes, rinsing and soaping and slithering and eye contact.

And while Ray and Denise had been at least that intimate, Annie and Denise hadn't. Ray and Pet hadn't.

She realized half of what Pet was worried about wasn't silliness, it was being naked and wet and soapy where Ray could see…and grasp.

But they'd made a big deal about being included (she instantly blamed Master, but only inside her head), so they'd have to bear up and go through with it.

Ray, who'd offered to leave twice, glanced down at the back of Annie's head, betrayal clear in his features. But he gave no more than a long-suffering sigh and continued walking.

Then he saw the box. It was for a chair of some sort. About four feet tall, it was just sitting between the bathroom door and Denise's bed.

"What's that?" Ray and Annie asked together.

"Carla got a new chair for her living room and we got to help put it together and we got to keep the shipping container and EVERYTHING!" Pet said, excitement filling her voice from side to side.

"Uh huh," Ray said. Denise turned to wink at him. Then they stepped into the bathroom.

The tub was filled with crumpled sheets of bubble wrap.

"Um…" Annie said.

"It's our bubble bath!" Pet said cheerfully. "Come on, I'll show you!"

Denise put Pet down on the edge of the tub. There was a bottle of lotion in the exact middle of the side. "Need help?" she asked as Ray put Annie down beside her friend.

"No, we got it!" Pet smiled. She started undressing. Denise took Ray's hand and eased him out. Footsteps receded to the living room.

Annie slowly undressed, laying her clothes next to Pet's.

"Okay, we need to slick up!" Pet said. She'd lost any inhibitions with respect to this particular silly practice, clearly concentrating on the fun. She jumped up and grabbed the pump of the lotion bottle. Annie ran forward to catch the dollop that fell.

It splattered onto her cupped hands and slithered down her forearms.

"One more for both of us!" Pet shouted. She jumped again. Then she directed Annie and got the lotion spread fully along and over both sylph's bodies.

She even made sure to cover faces and ears.

"Reminds me of Mom spreading suntan oil," Annie laughed. She smeared a finger-full along Pet's spine.

"Well, it's very important because bare skin on plastic acts as a brake and if there's the tiniest bare spot you stop, suddenly, and there's a burn and a squeak and it's annoying so make sure it doesn't happen."

"How do you do this when you're alone?" Annie asked. She turned to let Pet get her spine, too.

"Hey, like you always say," Pet said. "That's what the giants are for." She made sure to keep the soles of her feet clear, but everything else was soon well lubricated. "You need track… Trick.. Trickle…"

"Traction?" Annie asked.

"That's it!" She turned and ran along the tub. "Now look for a big fold and-" And she dived down into the plastic. There was no pop, the bubbles were practically armored against the mass of a mere sylph.

But in the blink of an eye, the sylph disappeared.

Annie wasn't sure how fun it was, but she shrugged and jumped.

It was like flying. Sort of. She moved through the plastic easily. The sheets were twisted around, but not heavily compressed, so it wasn't like tunneling. Pushing with her feet or grabbing bubbles with her hands, she could move in almost any direction.

Unlike diving, she could always tell which direction was down. It just didn't matter. Slithering was always possible, and up was as easy as down. Or sideways. Or a spiral, a flip, a spin…

She giggled and tried to find where Pet was.

The plastic filtered the light but didn't block it, so the space around her was translucent. And the bubbles made sure there was room for air to circulate.

And the bubbles flowing over her skin felt like… Not quite like a lover's touch. Not foreplay. But it was a bit better than even Ray's thumb massage. Gentler, and more even.

She heard a pop. She looked around but couldn't see Pet. And it had to be Pet. She looked at a bubble near her head.

With her mass spread over, oh, ten to twenty of the things, they handled it easily. If she concentrated on one single one, though, maybe she could…

The parting of the bubble under her squeezing fists surprised her. There was a burst of dry, flat but breathable air and a snap of sound. Instantly there was an answer.

She moved in the direction the sound seemed to come from. A body's length closer, she popped another one. There was an immediate response and she set off that way.

In a few thrilling minutes she was sure she was near and slightly above Pet. Maybe they could make this a game, like a slow-motion aerial dogfight.

Winner would be whoever found the other, came down from above…

Or like a shark, came up from below?

Or would the goal be to sneak into the other sylph's layer?

Annie had just a moment to notice the bubbles above her were digging down into her skin when a weight flopped above her.

Pet wriggled across her legs, her ass, and pushed against the plastic layer between them. "GOTCHA!" she cried, trying to tickle Annie's hips.

Annie squealed and slithered ahead and down. Then the general shape of the fold shifted. She slid over a down slope to find herself sliding straight down, head-first towards the bathtub floor.

She screamed and scrabbled at the bubbles. Two popped under her desperate grasp, but the torn plastic offered no grip to the lotioned fingers.

Blurry shapes started to show. The plastic non-skid panels, pastel flowers everyone had in their bathtubs that year. She screamed louder, falling forehead-down towards unyielding porcelain.

Then bounced. Lucky for her, there was at least one layer of bubbles under the one she slid over. It was still a jarring stop, but not a lethal one. She lay there, breathing deeply, working up the energy to try to climb back up.

Plastic moved and Pet came down to her level. "I'm okay," Annie reported. "I got lucky."

"Denise won't build a bubble bath until she's put four layers of safety bubbles down," Pet said. She stomped a foot and plastic squeaked. "I should have said," she shouted.

"Oh. Yeah, that would have been nice to know," Annie shouted back. She wiggled a bit, more comfortable now that she knew of the safety margin. And felt a straight line under her butt.

Pet mumbled something. "What?" Annie shouted back.

"I didn't want to scare you by goosing you!" Pet called.

"You didn't!" Annie said. "I was having fun, then. It was the headfirst fall to a porcelain death that scared me." She moved her body as if trying to get comfortable. She felt for the straight line, for the edge of the sheet.

Pet nodded sadly and leaned back. She moved about ten degrees before the bubble wrap held her up. She looked like she was floating in water. Annie found the bottom of the current.

"Maybe we should play something else?" Pet suggested.

"No," Annie said. "Gotcha is fine with me." Then her arm stabbed through the gap, grabbing Pet's foot and tickling. Pet screamed. "GOTCHA!"

On the sofa, Denise flinched, a sharp giggle yanked out of her. She slowly lowered her feet back to the floor.

"What?" Ray asked, looking to see if he'd stepped on her or something.

"Nothing," she said. "C'mere." Ray obeyed.

--------

And hour later, Ray was worried about how to retrieve the pets. He didn't want anyone spilled against the hard sides or bottom of the tub. Denise winked at him again, then grabbed an upper layer. She popped five bubbles in quick succession.

The wrap started to wobble and shake. Ray nodded and found a loose sheet. He rolled it up like a bad dog's newspaper, then gripped the middle. He squeezed and twisted his hands in opposite directions.

A dozen bubbles through the twisted part snapped, sounding like a machine gun report. "It's like a radiac!" Ray said cheerfully. Denise stared. The pile of sheets stopped moving.

"You scared them," she said. "Stop popping things." Five more bubbles were popped by the woman and the wriggling began again.

She reached down when she saw an arm and pinched it, then gently lifted Annie into the clear. Pet was a second behind her.

Annie smiled up at her owner. "We need to buy a chair!" she said. "And lotion! And some bathtub decals for navigation. Just not pastel."

"They're all pastel," Ray said. "That's why we don't have any. Now if they were in camoflague…"

"Shut up! This was a blast! A form of fun you can never enjoy."

"Except vicariously through you," he mused. "You know, we don't need to wait for a chair. Comp USA sells rolls of electrostatic bubble wrap."

"Ooooh," Annie enthused.

"What's ecstatic?" Pet asked Denise. She looked a question to her boyfriend.

"Well, it's for computers, but the most important thing for you is that it's pink," Ray said directly to Pet.

"Pink! That'd be NIFTY!"

"Next time you visit, we'll have a bubble bath at our place," he promised her. He reached for Annie at the same time. She was covered with sweat and the remnants of lotion and popped out of his fingers like a watermelon seed.

She landed flat on her back in a drift of bubbles. Denise picked both sylphs up carefully. "Usually at this stage we have a little bath."

"Then we get dressed and go to dinner?" Annie asked.

"Yes," Denise said. Annie turned to Lurch.

"Well, Master? You heard her. Chop chop!"

"I speed to obey," he said with a nod. Then he stood to start running water in the sink, checking the temperature.

"Now THAT's what the giants are for," Annie said to her partner in crime.





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