A/N: Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, D36 – write in the humour genre.

Expanding Endowments

He'd promised, but he was still imagining. She could tell. The way his eyes lingered a little too long over any well-endowed chest. How he touched and caressed every part of her body but barely grazed her own endowments. Or lack thereof, as he'd always tease – still teased.

His washing board, he'd affectionately call her.

And it was affectionate, except she knew she was lacking something he wanted and that part hurt.

And she'd almost lost him because of it. That anniversary that tethered on the edge of disaster and only because Keishi had managed to find her before something irreversible happened that they'd been saved. And he'd stopped sleeping the other way. Maybe because of guilt. Maybe because he'd realised what he was doing. Maybe because of something else entirely.

But that didn't change the fact that she was missing something he, and every other man, wanted.

And she couldn't shave so close to disaster again to make up for that.

Drink milk and papaya juice daily, the internet said. So she did. The milk was okay. The papaya juice was disgustingly sweet, but she chugged it down anyway. Keishi didn't notice for quite a while. He still had work. And his guy friends. And other guy stuff… He left before her most days. They'd have dinner together. But sometimes they'd have breakfast together too and he'd see the grimaces she made as she chugged down the papaya juice.

But she had to do it every day, otherwise it wouldn't work.

Number two was exercise. She didn't mind that too much, but it did make her chest hurt on occasion. And her arms almost every day. But it made so much sense she couldn't just drop her efforts.

And then there were herbs and breast creams and a high protein diet that made her feel rather bloated – but it was all for a good cause, she'd tell herself, continuing diligently. She just had to be patient. The fruits of her labour would grow soon enough.

Except it'd been several weeks and they hadn't. Not even a millimetre. She'd measured. She'd obsessed about that even more than she obsessed over her weight.

And even though she knew she had to be patient, that Rome wasn't built in a day and all that, she cried. If there'd been results, she could have continued faithfully. But if there weren't – the possibility that it might just be a sham hung in the air, all too powerfully. And it only grew stronger by the day, with each failure.

Keishi came home that day to find her crying on the floor in the bedroom.

'What's wrong?' he asked, worriedly. 'You're not…'

She held her breath.

'…sick?'

She laughed. 'Not sick, no.' She felt the edges of her breasts. How tiny they still were, even in her hands. No wonder they got lost under Keishi's. No wonder they weren't worth anything.

His eyes followed her hands. Hovered there, on her chest. Then he grinned. 'The guys at work tell me you need to massage a girl's breasts to make them grow.'

'That's ridiculous.' And she laughed again, through her tears. She'd seen that one as well, but how in the world was a massage supposed to help?

Though she'd been pretty desperate to believe the rest.

Keishi teased up her shirt and she let him, still giggling through her tears. Keishi was being extra gentle, extra feathery light. His fingers tickled.

And they were touching her breasts. Caressing them. Massaging them. Without anything else being bigger and better and more grabbing of their attentions. And the bathroom tiles were cold but his hands were worm so that didn't matter either. And he counted aloud, with that silly song he'd probably learned in primary school.

Sometimes Keishi could be surprisingly dense, but other times, like that one, he knew exactly what to do.

And then he snuck the measuring tape from her and measured once he'd passed a hundred – and a few extras for luck, because luck never hurt. And she wasn't going to complain about either of those sentiments.

'I think they grew by a couple of millimetres,' he said seriously.

She swatted him with her shirt. 'Idiot,' she said affectionately. 'You've never measured them before.'

'Neither had you,' he pointed out. 'Why start now?'

She cast her eyes down. They found his well-developed abs under the shirt, and then snuck lower down. She blushed. 'I wanted to have bigger…'

'Boobs.' Keishi rolled his eyes.

She blushed again. 'You don't have to say it so…frankly!' He tickled her under the armpits and she squawked. 'Hey, no fair!'

He grinned. 'If I didn't like my washing board, I'd have ditched her by now.'

Which was flat, tactless, but strangely comforting. Because he hadn't ditched her.

And it was as good a way as any to tell her she was being ridiculous.

And, honestly, the whole coming to her rescue thing should have told her that as well.

'But…'

'But nothing.' He picked her up. 'Come on; this bathroom is cold. And totally kills the mood.'

'I think we'll have to work on the mood actually,' Sakaya confessed. 'It's a little…you know…' She trailed off awkwardly.

But Keishi was good at working out how to fix that. And state it. 'Too serious,' he said. 'And who's ever heard of having sex on the bathroom tiles?'

Sayaka blushed again. Sometimes Keishi was to frank. Even if there was no-one else around to hear them.

'Though I suppose if the mood is right…'

She wriggled around and whacked him. 'It's all the same to you who uses me as a cushion,' she cried. 'I'm the one who'll have my back on the floor.'

He shrugged and kicked open the door. 'I'm not the one suggesting it.'

He might have held his hands up in surrender too, but he'd have dropped her if he had. As it was, he dropped her – after crossing the hallway and before falling on to the bed himself.

He didn't gift any further special attention to her breasts – but that was because they'd both managed to push it aside.

Though they both knew that he'd still stare at other girl's large endowments and she'd stare at her own smaller ones and they'd wound up in a similar state once again.

Or maybe she'd find a different route on the internet. One that actually worked.

Or he'd stop looking at other women.

Or she'd stop feeling insecure about their relationship.