Laundry

The power was out…again. Everything always worked perfectly as long as there were no problems. Except, there always seemed to be problems. And those bigger problems led to little problems. Like laundry. No electricity means no power for the washing machine. So everyone was doing laundry by hand. But not everyone was happy about this.

"This is stupid" grumbled Asuka. No one disagreed with her. She continued to mutter under her breath as she dumped an enormous armload of clothes into a huge bucket of water. Shinji and Misato each added another armful of clothes and Shinji poured some soap on top. He started to mix the soap, water, and clothes together with his hands. The warm water felt good on his hands as he swirled everything together. He continued mixing, but after a couple of minutes he noticed that he was the only one doing any work.

"A little help?" he asked hopefully.

"I'm rinsing" Misato replied.

"I'm hanging everything out" said Asuka.

Shinji sighed and went back to mixing the clothes and water together. The other two left him by himself. Within fifteen minutes he was done and he started to move the clothes to another bucket to rinse.

"Finished already?" Misato asked from behind him.

Shinji jumped in surprise and fell into the bucket. Asuka appeared behind Misato. "You're supposed to wash the clothes, not yourself."

Shinji started to get up, but Misato put a hand on his head and pushed him back down. Misato turned to Asuka and said thoughtfully "You know, it would save Shinji some time if he just washed his clothes and himself at the same time." Asuka grinned back at her, grabbed the box of soap and daintily sprinkled it on top of Shinji.

"Uhhhh…." Shinji started to say, but was stopped when what might have been a shirt landed on his head. Asuka and Misato laughed.

"You agree with us, right Shinji?" asked Misato.

"Ummmm…"

One of them dumped some cold water on him and the other one started scrubbing. It was not so bad. He imagined that this was what a massage would be like, only if the goal was to scrub all of the skin off of the body. It was over quickly, and then they were hauling him out of the bucket.

"Now we have to hang him out to dry." Shinji gave them an alarmed look, and tried to wiggle out of their grasp. It was no use; they started to drag him to the balcony. Asuka opened the sliding glass doors and Misato dragged Shinji outside. "OK, on the count of three we hang him over the railing." Shinji just stared. They were kidding…right? "One." "Two." But they never made it to three. Both of them were laughing too hard. Misato finally stopped laughing and pushed him into one of the chairs. "I'm sorry Shinji, the look on your face…" she dissolved into laughter again. When she stopped laughing for the second time she affectionately patted his cheek and said "We will do the rest of the laundry for you." Misato pulled Asuka back inside and he heard them walk away.

He pushed his wet hair back from his forehead as he started to wring his clothes out. Maybe he should have had an apartment to himself. At least they had not hung him out to dry.