30
"Can I put on my bathing suit?"
"NO!," they both yelled in unison as they turned their faces away from the water that was spraying from the pipe under the sink.
"You didn't turn the water off?!," Alex screamed, as she blindly felt around for the oblong knob. After multiple rotations of the knob, they were left looking like drowned rats in the middle of the almost complete bathroom.
"You look funny," Jamie says to Alex as her sopping wet hair fell over her face. He held onto the doorframe and climbed into the space between her crossed legs. He places his hands onto her cheeks and smashes them together, "what are we having for dinner?"
Piper pulls him backwards, he tilts his head upside down, "your mama's about to lose her mind, can you go watch your sister?"
"Uhhh, but I'm hungry."
"Cereal, we're having cereal," Alex tells him as she carefully pushes herself up off the drenched newly tiled floor.
With a wide grin at his future cereal dinner, he stands up and leans over the edge of the tub, "t- tur," he looks at the can sitting in the filthy unfinished tub, "turt-lay," he looks over at Piper with slight frustration over his face.
"Close, turtle," she corrects him.
"Turtle," he confirms, "wax." "Turtle Wax." He looks back at Piper devastated, "mom, this has real turtles?!"
"No lovey," she pulls him in, wetting him with her soaked shirt, she looks at Alex and mouths questioningly, "does it?!" The brunette shakes her head with her eyes rolled back to her brain, no.
"Alright enough, out," Alex says to him placing her hands on his shoulders and escorts him out of the bathroom. Her hands run through her hair, she twists it ringing out the excess water and looks around the pool, her eyes end on Piper who's sitting on the floor rubbing her index finger between the tiles.
"Are you just avoiding eye contact with me?," Alex says standing over her, "out of fear that the fire behind my gaze will pierce holes into your very being? I'm nearing my end Pipes."
Piper ignores her comment, "a perfect seal. It was totally worth the extra month of research, the grout versus caulk, acrylic caulk, silicone caulk, latex based caulk."
"Say caulk again," the brunette says with warning in her tone.
The tone grabs the blonde's attention, she looks up at her wife, apologetically.
In a thick southern accent, the brunette tries to diffuse the tension her tone just created, "there's shrimp kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo."
The quotation from one of their favorite movies, relaxes the blonde's face, "what's your sole purpose in this army?," she asks Alex.
"To do whatever you tell me drill sergeant!"
"God dammit Vause, you're a God damn genius."
"Stating the obvious babe."
The bathroom renovation as a whole had tried both of their patience, multiple times. The four of them had been sharing a bathroom for four months and counting, and with Piper having returned to work, the project had dragged on longer than she initially anticipated.
"Thanks for not divorcing me," Piper stated only half kidding.
"Through sickness and in health right? A hard head, this is your sickness."
"No kidding right? I mean look at this mess," she laughs out, "the tiles are soaked under a pool of water," she sighs. "But no cracks or crevices. I may be totally biased, but does this actually look good?"
Alex looks around the disastrous monsoon of a bathroom and sighs shaking her head, "you're lucky you're so fucking cute, like really fucking lucky." She steps out to grab every towel they have to start soaking up the water. She returns with a stack so high that she needs to move her face to the side to see where she's walking. She drops the pile on the floor.
"You don't look half bad in that," Piper tells her tugging at the base of an old Smith College tank top that leaves the two inches below the brunettes belly button exposed.
"Thanks for the sacrifice," Alex acknowledges the shirt Piper leant her.
She wrinkles a brow in judgment as she tries to soak up some water with the towels, "who knew you'd be so attached to all of your clothes."
"Well I have some good memories with my older stuff, great concerts, different countries, I don't want them to get ruined," she drags the towel under her foot to an edge of the floor.
"Some of them are holier than Jesus Alex, I've been trying to get rid of some of those for years."
"Are my shirts hurting you in some way? Let them be."
"We're just cramped for space, I need to go through J's stuff too."
"No," she says in mild protest, "Harper can use his old stuff," she reasons, wanting to hang onto anything that remains of his baby times.
"Some are too boy-ish,"Piper justifies.
The brunette's eyes go wide, her arms stretch outward at the monstrosity of their unfinished bathroom.
"Ok I take it back."
"No such thing," Alex digs her foot into another towel, "don't assign genders. And we'll throw a headband through her mane, it'll counterbalance any 'boy' stuff she wears anyway." She picks up half of dozen saturated towels, "are you good here? Let me go check on them, it's a little quiet."
She finds Jamie on the living room floor with his school folder, Harper's toys are strewn around the border of the co-sleeper which has now permanently migrated to the living room and doubled as a playpen.
"James, mommy asked you to watch her," she whines, she's up to her hairline with the constant mess.
"I diiiiiid," he whines back.
"Then why are all of her things on the outside of the playpen?"
"Because she put them there."
"So you watched her toss her things outside, got it." She lifts Harper up and sets her on the floor before tossing all the scattered toys that've created a moat around the playpen, back in.
"Can you help me?," he asks her holding up the papers in his folder. He'd been working on memorizing his two lines for his upcoming kindergarten school play, but had trouble remembering the prompts.
"Yep. Can you actually watch her for a minute while I pour us some cereal?"
He nods his head and grabs his sisters hands and plays with her. Alex walks back in carrying two of the three bowls of cereal she poured, just as Harper is pulling all of the books from the bottom level of their coffee table.
"Jamie," she says lifting the bowl toward the active baby.
He gasps, "Harper, no!"
She looks at him and tries to lift one of the heavy coffee table books.
"Ahhh, it's alright," she blames herself for asking the six year old to watch the baby. "Come," she says setting the bowls on the table. She settles onto the couch, he crawls up next to her, he balances the bowl on his legs. Alex glances at the disaster waiting to happen and then looks at him,
"I'll be careful, I won't spill it," he says looking at his notes and tilts the bowl, his legs stiffen, he gives her a look, woops. She shakes her head and crosses a leg over the opposite knee. She stands Harper up in the hole of her legs, Harper hangs on and bounces.
"Wow look at that turnip, it's a great big turnip. We can have it for lunch...," Alex reads from his script.
Harper slithers from her entrapment, she holds onto the table for support while walking along the border. Alex leans forward and cups her hand on the sharp corners of the table to protect her.
"Mama, keep going til we get to the duck."
"James, hang on, watch her... you know what, nevermind, just hang on." She puts her cereal bowl down, and brings Harper with her toward the back of their apartment; she sees Piper closing the door of the washing machine, "can you go help him with his lines? He's obsessed with it being perfect."
"From one thespian to another? But of course," the blonde says dramatically.
Alex returns with an armful of her old t-shirts and gently sets Harper on the floor beside her again. She begins taping a t-shirt to the corner of the table when the curly haired blonde pulls herself up into a standing position and starts making her way down the length of the table. Alex brings her back to where she's kneeling tries to race her daughter to cushion all of the corners before she smacks her face on an edge.
"With feeling Jamie," Piper tells him.
"Quack, quack," he says more enthusiastically, "that is a great big enormous turnip, we can have it for lunch."
"No, no, no," Piper stops him. "Take your time, with big pauses on 'great big enormous turnip', do you understand how big this turnip is? All these people and animals trying to pull on it. Try again."
He laughs and nods, "that is a great-big-enormous turnip, we can have it for lunch."
"Awesome," she tells him. "You pull too," Piper says in her best goat voice.
"The duck pulled on the goat," he says his line dramatically; Alex chuckles as he feeds into Piper's advice and projects his line with two outstretched "wings."
She continues changing her voice for each character, he looks at her excitedly, "the goat pulled on the cat, the cat pulled on the dog, the dog pulled on the son, the son pulled on the farmer's wife, the farmer's wife pulled on the farmer, and the farmer pulled on the Great Big Enormous Turnip, but it didn't come out."
"Quack, quack, the duck pulled on..."
"Cack, cack, cack, cack," Harper repeats. Alex picks her up and retreats into the kitchen to pour some milk into Piper's bowl. She brings the cereal to her wife and heads back in, to pick a variety of random foods that Harper can eat. She grabs a cheese stick and the container of grape tomatoes before heading back to join the actors. She settles onto the rug, handing a loudly babbling Harper torn bits of cheese and tomatoes. Her daughter reciprocates the gesture and feeds her pieces, often losing her balance and smearing a sticky hand onto the brunette's, chin, chest, hair, wherever her hand lands.
She hands her another piece of tomato and watches her baby study what's in her hand, squishing it just a little before putting it in her mouth and continues talking loudly.
"Harper, shhh," he says to the little blonde, who's again making her way around the table toward her big brother, she chatters louder.
"Harper! Mama, I can't... I can't remember what I'm supposed to say," he says frustrated with his little admirer.
"Hakuna your tata's, she's just trying to talk to you," Alex says surprised at him.
"I don't even know what she's saying."
"Maybe not, but she does," Alex explains to him.
Piper adds, "you know, people might be making some noise when they watch you, she's helping you practice."
He stares at Piper disgruntled.
Harper puts her sticky hands on his legs, she's still talking.
"Sometimes she makes me so angry."
"You frustrate her too sometimes. Whenever she's touching something that you don't want her to touch and you just take it away from her, she cries, doesn't she?"
"But it's my things."
"Some things you need to share, and some things are only yours and you can choose to share them if you want to," Piper tells him running a hand over his knee. She lifts Harper off the floor and onto her lap and attempts to nurse her. Harper pulls away too stimulated with all the activity around her.
"Sometimes I don't want to share anything," he says honestly.
"James, you're giving me a headache," Alex tells him.
He gets off the couch and puts his papers in his folder and starts to walk away. "Where're you going?," Piper asks his back.
"I don't want to be in here," he says with some sadness in his voice.
"You need to go to bed then," Alex says as he continues to walk away. "He acts like she ripped his big toe off his foot," she tells Piper.
"Maybe we should move them into separate rooms," Piper suggests.
"No," Alex shakes her head, "they're little enough. I would've killed to have a sibling to share a room with."
"You say that because you never had one."
"No, there's other pressures and annoyances when you're the only kid too. I don't understand how he's so loving with her one minute and then acts like she's an apocalypse the next."
"Al, he was the only kid for five years. I don't think you ever really get used to having nothing truly being your own anymore: objects, space, attention. It's normal," she laughs to herself a bit.
"What?"
"You just have no idea. I used to hide under Cal's bed and scare the crap out of him, Danny used to convince me to get into the toy chest and sit on top of it for what felt like hours. He used to tell me if I told on him that I would lose my voice and never be able to speak again. You know how terrifying that is when you're a kid? If all he does is voice his frustration, consider us lucky. Just wait, wait til she actually does something that really gets him mad. Your siblings can be your best friends, but they can also be your worst enemies."
Alex pushes off the floor and starts picking up the dirty bowls, while Piper tries to get Harper to nurse for the last time before she's put to bed as well. The brunette follows the trail of light into the bathroom in their bedroom where Jamie is brushing his teeth. She opens the medicine cabinet and pulls a bottle of Tylenol from the shelf. He spits, rinses his mouth and dries it on the hanging towel.
"You don't feel good?," he asks her with concern.
"I told you, I have a headache." She takes a sorrowful deep breath feeling guilty for having told him he was the cause of her headache, "go wait in bed, I'll be there in a minute."
He eyeballs the pill bottle on the countertop as Alex crouches underneath the sink to grab some things she needs for evening rituals. He tries to open the bottle and after a few noises of struggle she tells him, "it's childproof."
His eyebrows furrow at the bottle and then he looks at her with curiosity, "but how does it know its me?"
Alex cackles and drags her hands over her face, "it doesn't. Will you please go to bed? Give me five minutes."
"Scoot over," she tells him and climbs into bed with him a few minutes later. "Can we read something?," he asks her.
"Always," she tells him with a tone that says he never has to ask her that. He crawls out from underneath his blanket, she grabs his ankle, "but I want to talk to you first."
He turns around to face her, his attention is undivided.
"James," she thinks over her words for a moment, "it's okay to be frustrated."
"With Harper?"
"Well, with lots of things, but yes with Harper. You're a really great big brother. Sometimes she's going to do things that you don't like. But because she's little, it's going to take her time to learn."
He stares at her blankly.
She purses her lips, "there's lots of great things about having a little sister, you know."
"Like what?," he says unenthused.
"You have someone to talk to at night..."
"She doesn't say words."
"She's starting to, the more that you read to her, the faster she'll start talking."
He shrugs his shoulders.
"You always have someone to play with."
"But she can't do everything I can do."
"But she can do some things, and she'll be able to do all the things you can one day. Help her."
"She always around."
"Are you saying you want some time away from her?"
He nods silently. "Not all the time, just sometimes."
"Well, because you're the older one, you get to do something's that she doesn't get to do."
"I can go to the place by the bridge and climb on the boats," he recalls the last thing he got to do with Piper while Alex stayed on the dock with Harper.
"Right? Or you're allowed to go to a movie, because you can sit in the seat for a long time."
"Can we go on the weekend?"
"I don't see why not."
"With you and mommy?"
"I have to check with aunt Polly or aunt Nicky first but probably."
"Yes! Maybe when she's a little bigger, she can come too?"
"Yeah! And even now, she might not be able to watch one of your favorite movies, but she can watch some of it with you. You don't have to share everything with her, but some of your favorite things might be her favorite things too. It's usually more fun to do things when you have someone else who likes the same stuff."
He doesn't respond.
"She loves you so much buddy," she says hoping he understands.
"I knowwww. I love her too, I love her more when she doesn't take all my things."
Alex chuckles, "you know, 'people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.' Do you understand what that means?"
He shakes his head, no.
"I could tell you I love you, but if I pinch you while I tell you that, does it feel like I love you?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because it hurts when you pinch."
"When mommy or I come to get you from school, what does Harper do?"
"She kicks her legs."
"Because she's happy to see you, right?"
He nods, "and I feel happy too," he drawls.
Alex gasps, "wait, so even though she doesn't speak 'words,' you know she's happy to see you and you feel happy too?"
He tries to fight his smile.
"So maybe next time she's got something of yours, you could bring her something to trade so she doesn't feel like she's left with nothing?"
"Okay."
"Thanks babe," she motions towards his books so he can pick one out after waiting patiently through her heart to heart. They alternate reading page by page, after a while Piper pokes her head in.
"She can come in," Jamie tells Piper.
"Oh, well thank you for the invitation." Alex glares at her, understanding that while it's Harpers room too, for him to have been so frustrated with his sister just an hour earlier and now so welcoming was a big deal.
Piper sits with her in the glider with a bottle of milk. Alex encourages him to keep reading, she motions her chin subtly toward the bottle in Harper's hands, Piper's hand rests over them.
The blonde mouths, "dried out," and pokes her boob.
Piper places a passed out Harper into her crib, as Jamie's not far behind her, fading fast. Alex leans away from him some, "no, I'm not done," he says sleepily. Alex leans toward his table, careful not to let him fall from the support of her body, and sticks a piece of construction paper in the book, "we'll pick up from here tomorrow," she says shutting the book. She lowers his head down to his pillow, he turns over onto his stomach, "my light," he says to his mom's raspily as they leave his room. He hears Harper breathing a few feet away, he lifts his head off his pillow, he can see the lights of his neon green stars reflect off her cheeks, "sorry Harper," he whispers.
A few months later, late into the night, Piper leans into the sink counter of their new bathroom, Alex comes up behind her and drags her nails up her ribs causing the blonde to gasp and raise up onto her toes.
"I want to smash a champagne bottle over this sink, I'm so freaking excited!," she exclaims to the brunette, "but I don't want to make a mess," she laughs.
"We could christen it another way," she growls into her neck.
"Alex...," she breathes out at the sensation of heat at her neck.
"It would feel left out, being the only room to not have been blessed with a foggy ass print on its shiny tile, no?," her hands rake up the blonde's inner thighs. She presses herself against Piper's back forcing the blonde to lean into the mirror. The blonde's dark eyebrows raise at the reflection of the brunette's smoky stare from behind her. She feels Alex's hand rub down her lower back, past the waistline of her shorts, into her underwear, underneath her ass, and cup her from below.
The blonde moans out once, then blinks hard, "the kids..."
"...are asleep," the brunette finishes.
"The walls, the sound will echo."
"Oh for crying out loud," the brunette pulls her hand out from the heat of her impeding wife, she backs up toward the door.
"Al...," Piper says in a tone that pleads for the brunette not to get upset. "Just wait here."
Piper turns down the toilet set and sits, with one leg crossed over the other. Her elbow digs into her thigh, her chin rests in her palm as she waits, and waits, and waits.
The brunette returns with a crumpled up blanket, bottles clink from within. She sets it on the floor and spreads it out. She locks the door, "sit," she points to the floor.
"If this is your attempt to make fucking in the bathroom with our kids rooms away, romantic..."
Alex leans into her and wraps a hand towel over her eyes, and secures it with a hair elastic, "... it may work," her lips spread out into a grin.
"Look how your mind automatically goes somewhere filthy, and maybe once upon a time I'd have been flattered," the brunette starts opening bottles of various liquor to pour into small glasses, "but a blindfold for sex, really? Aren't we a little old?"
Piper pulls down the hand towel, "old for blind folded sex?," Alex pushes the towel back over her eyes, "aren't we a little old to be making puddles of love on the bathroom floor?," she asks exasperated.
"Never too old for that," she stands up to get a match from the medicine cabinet and lights a ridiculously overpriced scented candle that Piper purchased, insisting that anything labeled 'Tahitian,' automatically made her feel like she was on vacation. "Anyways, I just want you to taste different drinks and see if you can tell what's what, you need to relax," she says easing a glass into Piper's hand.
"How about you don't make me feel irrational for worrying about our son hearing us?"
"He's not," she puts the glass in Piper's hand, "and even if he did, what's the worst that would happen, really?"
She takes a sip, "Belved, no, Grey Goose. Um, he could be traumatized for life."
"I think you're being a bit dramatic. So he'd know his parents fuck, it's a reality that everyone needs to cope with at one point or another," she hands her another glass.
The blonde sniffs it, "Patron. At least give me a harder one," she hands the glass back to Alex and mutters, "giving me freaking tequila, I'm not an amateur. And he doesn't need to know anything of the sort at six years old."
Alex takes the glass and places another glass into her hand, "you're defeating my purpose, you're supposed to sip it, don't smell it."
Piper sips from the glass and laughs, putting the back of her hand against her mouth, "it's still Patron, you idiot."
"Yeah but at least you're one sip closer to being looser...," she leans back avoiding Piper's swat, "relaxed, I meant relaxed."
She holds Piper behind her back and pulls the blanket from underneath her slightly causing her to recline a bit against the tub, "just chill out."
Piper can hear the clinging of a few tumblers, as Alex separates her fingers into the insides of multiple glasses and sets them between the two of them. She leans on her side facing a semi- reclined Piper. She takes a sip from the glass and hands it to Piper,
"bourbon."
"Mmm, hmmm, which?"
"Jim Beam?"
"Excuse you, and I would never buy that." Piper takes another sip.
"Oh, it's the one with the horse on the top, the one that looks like a grenade."
"Tis. And it's a barrel."
"Thank you very much," she says handing the glass back to Alex who swigs the whole thing down like a shot, "and it looks like a grenade," the blonde completes always competing for the last word.
"Let the Mensa induction begin, here," she says giving the blonde another glass.
"How many of these do you have?," she says laughing.
"As many as it takes."
Piper sips from the glass, and pulls the towel down, recognizing the taste from anywhere, "absinthe. Where the hell'd you get this from?"
"I've been sworn to secrecy, not to divulge my sources therefore risking the incrimination of Ms. Nicole Nichols."
"Is she stupid?," Piper asks seriously while not having enough of her own will to resist taking another sip of the drink that stings and reeks of bad licorice, "I should stop."
"Do you have somewhere to be?," the brunette reasons, moving the towel that hangs around Piper's neck.
Piper passes it back to her, Alex takes a sip, "ugh it's disgusting. So many good stories though," she leans up and moves the glasses from in between them, she rests her head under Piper's chin, tracing her hand up the blonde's abdomen and rests her hand on her breast, she teases her nipple between her index and middle fingers, eliciting a moan from the blonde. Piper leans down further so that they're supine, feeling much more relaxed at the prospect of little ears becoming tarnished, the idea seems so insignificant now. Alex's lips press against hers as her deft hands work to open the button of her shorts, the brunette slides them down the blonde's long legs, her lips never break contact. Piper spreads her legs wider to accommodate the brunette who has nestled between them. Alex drags her hands from her ankles, over her calves, her thighs, then over her hips, planting kisses along every space that's not covered by her panties. Piper feels the moisture gather between her legs, the panties failing to absorb anything, she raises her arms over the back of the bathtub and lifts her hips, "take them off."
Alex pulls her panties down, and teases her with sporadic long licks of her tongue, taking her time to lap the wetness she's already caused the blonde to produce.
"Faster, Al, c'mon," she says raising her hips again, against the brunette's mouth, needing the skilled tongue to fill her urgently, "I'm gonna stain this fucking blanket."
"Uh, consider that done," she muffles as she nips the blondes saturated center that continues to cause an ever-growing pool beneath her.
Alex grabs the flesh of Piper's rocking ass as she fills her with her tongue, she pushes and pulls the blonde to and from her face, savoring every sound, relishing in the slight pain, the blonde causes at the tight tug of her hair that she has in her grasp. She keeps the blonde on the edge for a bit before curling her tongue upward and hangs on as the blonde moans out and pulses her hips with each beat of the heightened sensation.
She feels the blonde's graps loosen from around her hair, her back settles into the floor. Piper smirks at her, she smirks back, "now it wont be so lonely."