Alan lay in bed staring with a wrinkled nose at the soup and crackers that Tin-Tin had brought up to him for lunch. The soup was his least favorite kind of soup, but he knew that his grandmother had made it with a "dash of love" as Tin-Tin so quaintly put it and he didn't have the heart to turn it away. Swallowing, Alan gazed at the bowl of minestrone soup with trepidation. He preferred chicken noodle soup, but his grandma had been out of chicken so she decided the next best thing would be minestrone.
"Come on Alan, if you want to get better you'd better eat your lunch while it's still hot." Tin-Tin gripped Alan's hand in hers and made him take hold of the spoon.
Alan sniffled as he felt his nose begin to run and he dropped his spoon in favor of grabbing a couple tissues to sneeze into rather than to sneeze into Tin-Tin's face. Tin-Tin exhaled loudly as she grabbed the spoon and dipped it into the minestrone soup before lifting the spoon to lightly blow on the soup to cool the hot liquid. When Alan discarded the balled up tissues into his partially filled trash receptacle he crossed his arms with a pout to match even the most temperamental of toddlers.
"Come on Alan. It's time for you to eat." Tin-Tin lifted the spoon up to Alan's mouth but Alan however turned his head away like a child that was a picky eater. Tin-Tin followed Alan's movements and slipped the broth into Alan's mouth when he opened his mouth to protest eating the despised flavor of soup.
Alan swallowed what was in his mouth but he did it while choking down the gross soup. After swallowing the broth, Alan released a cough and pouted immediately after when he saw Tin-Tin doing a repeat of what she'd previously done. Alan didn't want to eat minestrone soup, it was the devil as far as he was concerned.
"Come on Alan, it won't kill you to eat this soup. If you're lucky, maybe you'll feel better tomorrow." Tin-Tin forced the spoon between Alan's lips and she watched satisfied as Alan swallowed another spoonful of the soup. She knew minestrone wasn't Alan's preferred soup flavor – he was a sucker for chicken noodle soup as opposed to any other flavor. But he'd have no choice but to take what he could get.
"Fine, I'll eat it…but only if you'll be a doll and feed it to me. Pretty please?" Alan pulled the puppy eyes on Tin-Tin and she felt her resolve crumble. Nobody could say no to Alan's puppy eyes, and Alan knew that tidbit of information, that's why he pulled it so often.
"Okay, fine. But no and I mean no complaints about the flavor." Tin-Tin held a finger up and pointed at Alan before she made Alan scoot over in his bed so she could sit rather than perch. "Okay, open up."
Alan listened to Tin-Tin and opened his mouth to accept the spoonful of soup which was followed by oyster crackers.
"Is that better?" Tin-Tin inquired as Alan seemed to be able to eat the soup without grimacing.
"Much. Thanks Tin." Alan smiled his thanks at his friend and accepted another spoonful of soup. "When I get to feeling better, name your price and I'll do it for you."
"Can I trust you to give me a mani-pedi without tickling my toes?" Tin-Tin raised an eyebrow in Alan's direction and watched Alan roll his eyes before nodding.
"Yes, you have my sworn oath, I will not tickle your toes. So is that what you want then as payment for being my nurse?" Alan inquired as he finished the last of the soup.
"Yeah, you did a spectacular job the last time…of course you tickled my toes last time and I almost kicked you in the face." Tin-Tin shot a false glare at Alan and watched him blush slightly.
"Well you were wiggling your toes and you know I often have tickle wars with my brothers…you should have known not to tempt me." Alan grinned with a wink.
"Okay, now that I know about your tickle fetish…I'll keep that in mind to hold perfectly still during my next mani-pedi you give me." Tin-Tin shook her head with a wry grin.
… … … … … …
Alan walked through the house, his slippers on and blanket draped over his shoulders. He was beginning to feel better, still had a pretty gross sounding cough (one that still was bringing up crap from his lungs). He'd already been home for almost two weeks trying to get over this respiratory and sinus infection…thankfully Virgil sent a doctor's note to the school informing them that Alan was on antibiotics (unfortunately not the oral kind). Alan had to work to not blush like crazy when each morning Virgil came to his bedroom with a hypodermic needle to give him a shot right in the butt. Thankfully Virgil didn't require him to drop trou completely and only asked that he lower the hem a little bit.
"Hey Alan, what are you doing up?" Gordon came around the corner, towel draped over his shoulders…his swim trunks dripping water – obviously Gordon had just come from the pool.
"Going to go see Tin-Tin. She wanted me to come hang out with her today." Alan murmured. He totally didn't want to be caught giving Tin-Tin a foot massage and painting her toe nails, but he'd promised Tin-Tin a mani-pedi and a Tracy never broke his promise.
"Okay, well try not to pass your cold off to her…none of us want to come down with what you and your sicky self brought home from school." Gordon ruffled Alan's hair while discreetly checking his brother for a fever.
"Trust me Gordo, I think Tin-Tin is immune. She never catches anything I or Fermat manage to bring home from the states." Alan stepped away from his immediate older brother and continued on to Tin-Tin's bedroom.
"I know, but she could still pass it off to one of us." Gordon called after Alan before going off in an opposite direction than Alan.
When Alan reached Tin-Tin's bedroom he found her laying on her bed flipping through a magazine. Knocking timidly, Alan smiled when Tin-Tin waved him into her bedroom. They'd be keeping her door open. Their folks requested that there always be an open door policy if Tin-Tin was going into any of the guy's room or vise versa.
"Hey Alan, what are doing out of bed?" Tin-Tin dog-eared one of her pages before turning her undivided attention to Alan.
"I'm bored, so I figured we could go ahead with the mani-pedi. If you're still up for it that is." Alan rolled his eyes around as he looked at Tin-Tin's bedroom. It wasn't a typical girl's room. No pink and frills, stuffed animals, makeup or thousands of shoes. It seemed more beach themed than anything. Tin-Tin had a two person hammock hanging in the corner of her room. Her dresser, bed and a desk. When Alan was younger and he'd occasionally spend the night in Tin-Tin's family's wing of the Tracy villa, his bed was always the hammock.
"Sure, if you're feeling up for it though." Tin-Tin didn't want to make Alan do anything if he wasn't feeling up to par.
"Yeah, why not…because when I get to feeling better dad is probably going to send me off to school again. So unless you want to wait until spring break for your mani-pedi, I'd say that we'd best go ahead and do it now." Alan stepped into Tin-Tin's bedroom and sat on her bed – facing his friend. "So do you have all the stuff we'll need for your mani-pedi?"
"Yeah." Tin-Tin jumped off her bed and strode over to her closet before retrieving a small plastic suitcase. "Here we go."
"Okay, so how did you want to do this?" Alan opened Tin-Tin's spa kit as she called it and started riffling through it. He may be a boy, but he knew how to color coordinate and he was trying to pick a color of nail polish for Tin-Tin to wear.
"I think I want to do a soak with my fizzy salts before you do anything yet." Tin-Tin leaned over and pulled out one of her hibiscus scented foot soak fizzy balls and smiled as she took a whiff. "Mmm, I love the smell of hibiscus."
Alan shrugged his shoulders. He couldn't smell anything right now, thus the shrug. He liked the smell of hibiscus too, but it'd do no good to agree with Tin-Tin when he couldn't exactly smell anything right at the moment. Instead Alan retrieved a bowl that Tin-Tin kept in her closet for her little foot soaks that she liked to do and went into her personal bathroom to fill it with warm water. When Alan returned with the bowl of water he found Tin-Tin in the process of trying to remove an old nail polish color she had on.
"Nuh-uh…I was the one who'd be giving you a mani-pedi…I can't do that if you start doing everything yourself." Alan walked over and set the bowl down on top of a towel that he'd draped over his shoulder when he'd been in Tin-Tin's bathroom earlier. "Hand over the cotton ball and acetone remover."
Tin-Tin rolled her eyes before doing just what Alan told her to do. Alan sat at the foot of Tin-Tin's bed and grabbed both of Tin-Tin's legs before pulling them into his lap.
"No kicking me if I tickle you. Just know I am not doing it on purpose." Alan started off by grabbing one of Tin-Tin's pinky toes and starting to remove the polish. Tin-Tin squirmed because yes it did tickle, but then she was just ticklish on the bottoms of her feet.
When Alan finished removing Tin-Tin's polish from her toenails, he had the girl soak her feet while he worked on removing the polish from Tin-Tin's fingernails.
"So, why were you so gung-ho over doing my mani-pedi today? Last time you acted like it was a chore." Tin-Tin inquired since she had nothing better to do.
"Well, for one I really was bored and …I wanted to hang out. We rarely get to do that just the two of us, so I figured…why not?" Alan glanced up at Tin-Tin shyly.
"Aw, how sweet." Tin-Tin gushed before she reached over with her free hand to pinch one of Alan's cheeks.
"Hey, shut up alright." Alan glared at Tin-Tin before he smiled at the girl with a blush. He truly did enjoy spending time with Tin-Tin. Since the Hood incident, the two of them quit arguing as much and started being more understanding of each other.
"Okay…" Silence lapsed for a while as Alan waited for the water that Tin-Tin was soaking her feet in to quit fizzing. When the bubbles went away, Alan had Tin-Tin bring one of her feet up and out of the water and he dried that particular foot with a spare towel he'd snagged from the bathroom. Reaching into Tin-Tin's spa kit, Alan retrieved lotion and a couple emery boards before setting to work on massaging Tin-Tin's feet. Alan couldn't help but to chuckle at the look of awe on Tin-Tin's face as she practically melted into the foot massage.
"So, this is the color I picked out…what do you think?" Alan held up a peach toned nail polish color and he held it up to Tin-Tin's toes so Tin-Tin could try to envision the color being on her toes.
"I love it." Tin-Tin agreed and she relaxed back into her bed as Alan bent over her feet to concentrate on painting her toenails. Alan drugged his thumbnail along the edge to scrape some of the excess nail polish from her skin before wiping it on his pant leg of his sweatpants. When he'd finished with the color, he retrieved the sealer polish to apply to the drying nail polish on Tin-Tin's toes.
"I'm glad you like it." Alan smiled as he continued to focus on painting Tin-Tin's toenails.
Several more minutes passed before Alan was finished painting Tin-Tin's toenails. When he finished he crossed Tin-Tin's feet at the ankles before laying them to the side and grabbing one of her hands to begin working on Tin-Tin's fingernails. The two of them talked about nothing and everything – even going so far as to discuss and swap flirting tips with each other. Tin-Tin hinted at liking someone, but Alan hadn't figured out if maybe she had a crush on one of his brothers or Fermat. He didn't think that she'd ever have a crush on him, they were enemies for the longest time and now friends.
Tin-Tin learned that Alan did have a crush on someone, but she figured that Alan had a crush on a girl he met through one of the school chatrooms which had a conjoined database with a girl's school in the local area…either that or he had a crush on Lady P…but then he made that one obvious with constantly telling her how nice she looked. Sometimes he'd talk about how nice Lady P looked in a particular outfit whenever he Tin-Tin and Fermat were together or he'd ogle at Lady P when she'd lounge by the pool in a tankini and sarong.
When Alan finished with the mani-pedi – both teens were shocked to find that they'd spent pretty much the entire day together. Alan had stopped by at noon and it was already six o'clock in the evening. Alan helped Tin-Tin straighten up her bedroom, dumping out the foot soak and putting away Tin-Tin spa kit before he started to leave.
"Alan wait!" Alan paused and turned around when Tin-Tin called after him.
"What's up?" Alan wanted to know what Tin-Tin wanted. He was beginning to feel tired and he wanted to go to bed.
"Here." Tin-Tin leaned up close and kissed Alan on the cheek before pulling away. "You're a great guy…thanks so much for treating me today. I had a blast."
Alan smiled at Tin-Tin as he touched his cheek before nodding dumbly. Walking away, Alan returned to his bedroom, feeling like he was walking on clouds.