it's the dirtiest clean i know (alice/bella) r
title: it's the dirtiest clean i know
fandom: twilight
character(s)/pairing(s): alice/bella, mentions of edward/bella
rating: light r
word count: 1394
spoilers: set between twilight and new moon
author's note: title from feist's "my moon, my man"
summary: bella needs some help showering after she breaks her leg in phoenix. luckily, alice is happy to help.
“I feel like an invalid,” I whined as Alice led me into the bathroom. I caught my reflection in the mirror and winced; she had been experimenting with make-up, using my face as a canvas for the last two hours. I had only agreed because I knew the shower would wash the outlandish colors away.
I looked vaguely like a hooker. A high-class hooker, but still.
“That’s because you are an invalid,” Alice pointed out cheerfully. She closed the door behind her. “Now strip.”
I blanched, covering my still-clothed body in a preemptive measure and holding tight to my shirt like she would rip it off me.
(Actually, I knew that she was likely to do just that if I didn’t comply, and my feeble human grip would do little to stop her.)
My hold tightened minutely before I relaxed my fingers with a resigned sigh. I resisted the urge to hold up my arms in invitation with a pout.
The t-shirt fluttered to the ground and my jeans fell afterward with a thwap, leaving me in little but a plain white bra and the kind of cotton underwear sold in bulk. Alice sniffed in distaste.
“We need to get to a Victoria’s Secret, stat. You look homeless… and cold.” I shivered, “Hop-to so you can get in the bath.”
With a hesitance clearly aggravating my vampiric helper, I hobbled over to the tub, sitting down on the lip and divesting myself of the rest of my clothes. There was something wrong with the fact that my boyfriend’s sister was seeing me naked before said boyfriend. It was practically criminal. Not that it was the first time.
Alice stepped into the bath behind me, grabbing me under my arms to gently settle me inside, with my cast-laden leg propped up on the side. I looked up at her, looming over someone for once, and she beamed down at my pitiable state.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” I snarled suspiciously, crossing my arms over my chest. In this instance anger was a convenient cover for my embarrassment. Not only was I handicapped by my injury and needed help to simply bathe myself, but my entire body was laid out for inspection by the second most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Most beautiful, if you accounted for personality; sorry, Rosalie.
She frowned.
“Only because it means I get to help you.” Before I could begin to feel guilty for snapping at her, she reached over to grab at a pink bottle. “What is this, store brand?”
Alice shook her head in disgust at my sad, generic strawberry shampoo and I snatched it back from her, defensive.
“I happen to like the scent, thank you very much.”
Alice laughed as she scrambled out of the tub, turning to snap the detachable shower head from the tile. I smirked when she had to climb up on the side to reach for it, and she glared in response.
A spray of cold water rained down on me and I sputtered, covering my now blue-tinted nipples. (I couldn’t be positive of their actual color since my eyes were busy trying to shoot laser beams into Alice’s face, but I was sure that if I looked down my suspicions would be confirmed.)
“Sorry,” Alice apologized sheepishly, though I could swear I saw a demonic gleam in her eyes, “I can’t really feel temperature anymore.”
I reached up and jerked the hot water tap as a hint. When I settled my hand back into my lap I heard the squeak as she dialed the cold water down a notch. This time, when the spout came on, the jet was pleasantly warm.
“Better?” she cooed, and I nodded, pacified.
Despite the fact that my leg cast was mummified in plastic wrap, I knew soaking the thing in water was probably a bad idea. I leaned forward, letting Alice get my back damp, then back, for her to wet my chest and shoulders. Armed with my body wash (in an inarguably pleasing sweet pea scent, if you must know) I set to work scrubbing the hospital grime from my body. We worked like that for a few minutes: Alice anticipating what parts of my body would need water, my shower puff gliding over my skin, and her aim of the spray floating the bubbles down into the drain. Until I reached for my back.
“Ouch,” I murmured, as my hand collided with the faucet, making me realize I was scooted too far back in the tub to wash there. “Can you help me-“ I stretched my arms forward, indicating I needed assistance maneuvering myself closer to the center of the bath. I couldn’t get the leverage I needed with just one working leg. It was quiet for a moment, and then I heard Alice drop down to her knees on the bathroom floor.
“Here.” She reached for the soap and I handed it over. “Let me.”
At the thick sound of her voice I glanced over, only to find her eyes black as pitch. I checked my hand where I’d rammed it into the faucet; nope, no blood. It made me wonder how closely she had been watching me wash myself.
Alice smiled shyly like she could read my thoughts as she gently pressed on my shoulder, signifying that I should lean forward. I complied readily and rested my chest against my propped leg.
Expecting to feel the scratch of my shower scrubber, I jumped when instead the coolness of Alice’s soap-slicked hands slid up my spine.
“Sorry,” she apologized, like a doctor for her cold stethoscope, but didn’t back away.
Her hands moved in concentric circles up my shoulders and then down to my lower back, careful to be gentle, her touched somehow light but still reverberating right down to my bones. Her cleansing motions eventually morphed into a massage, her thumbs coming into play, and I certainly wasn’t going to complain. Nearly being murdered on camera was sure stressful, and Alice was the first to offer to smooth out the kinks in my muscles that were the result. I knew there was a reason we were going to be best friends.
Her fingers worked from the base of my spine up to my neck, careful not to apply too much pressure. I knew that with one slip she could probably paralyze me, resigning me to a whole life of aided baths just like this one instead of just a few months, and I was surprised how not uncomfortable that thought made me.
I trusted her because she trusted herself.
Her soothing fingers flickered against my shoulders before hesitating, undecided. I felt a small pressure against my collarbone and complied, sitting back against the tub walls. Alice met my eyes and smiled reassuringly, though I could tell she was flustered by the shade of her eyes the way someone could read it in my flushed cheeks.
My breath hitched as she trailed her hands lightly down my arms, just the barest drag of her fingertips against my overheated skin, and rounded my hips. She dug her palms into the muscles in my thighs just above my cast, never too hard or too soft in her ministrations. I tilted my pelvis up to arch against her touch and I only briefly considered how I would go about explaining this to Charlie if he were to burst in right then.
Eventually her strokes slowed and gentled, and her hands left my skin with a slick sound that I probably wouldn’t have noticed if I weren’t already mourning their loss. The warm spray rained down on me once again, washing the last bubbles of my forgotten soap into oblivion, before Alice helped me hobble to me feet.
I shivered, naked and chilly, just seconds before she enveloped me with a dry towel, hugging me in the process. She pressed a kiss to my wet temple.
“Same time tomorrow?”
I hid my grin in the hem of the towel and nodded.
The afternoon I had my cast removed, Alice sent me a gift basket of bath supplies that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe; a generous offering for my newly minted autonomy in the shower. But for the first time in my life of near-constant injury, I was actually sad to see the cast go.
fin.