Hold | Diaper Story #3
One
Iris found the note on the kitchen table when she got home from work on Friday, weighted down by a coffee mug, in Callum's square, careful handwriting.
Rules for the weekend:
1. You wear from the moment you walk in the door.
2. You don't go unless I say.
3. You ask nicely, and you say how bad it is.
4. You don't come until I say.
5. Anything at any time — say "mercy" and it stops.
She read it twice. On the second read her ears got hot.
She'd been the one to tell him, six months ago, curled up small on his couch with a glass of wine in her hands and her voice at a pitch she barely recognized — and he'd listened with his head tilted and then said, "Okay, but that's hot, why were you nervous?" and had proceeded, over six months, to learn her so thoroughly that it had stopped being a hobby and started being a language.
She'd never been told before. Not in writing. Not with rules.
She put the note down and went to the bedroom and got one out of the drawer — a thick one, a real one, the kind that bulged — and took off her work clothes and stood in front of the mirror in her bra and taped it on. She watched herself do it. She looked at the white band across her hips, the sag of the padding between her thighs, the way her stomach sat above it. She pressed it flat with both palms and the crinkle came out enormous in the empty room.
Then she put her jeans back on, and went and poured a glass of water, and drank it, and waited.
He got home at 6:40 and found her on the couch with her knees up and her glass empty and a flush she could feel across her chest.
Callum put his bag down slowly. He looked at her for a long moment — at the jeans, at the way she was sitting, at her face — and something in his expression changed, went focused and warm and a little bit mean in a way that made her stomach drop.
"You read it," he said.
"Yeah."
"All of it?"
"Yeah."
He came over and stood in front of her and held out one hand. "Stand up. Let me look at you."
She stood. He turned her by the shoulder, unhurried, and put his hand flat on her lower back to hold her there, and then slid his other hand down over the seat of her jeans and pressed.
The crinkle was so loud she flinched.
"Good," he said, and she felt it land somewhere low in her, a hook catching. "Very good. You put it on the second you got in."
"I— yeah."
"Say it."
"I put it on as soon as I got in the door." Her voice was already going thin.
"Good girl." He pulled his hand away. "How bad is it?"
"Not bad yet. I drank a glass of water."
"Then get another."
Two
By eight o'clock the pressure was a steady, nagging ache and she'd stopped being able to sit still.
Callum had made her sit with him on the couch through a whole film, his hand on her thigh, and the jeans waistband cut into her a little and she kept shifting and every shift crinkled and every crinkle he heard and did nothing about. Her bladder was a hard warm knot. She'd crossed her legs, uncrossed them, sat on her heel, sat forward, sat back.
"Callum."
"Mm."
"It's bad."
He turned his head. He took his time. "How bad."
"Like — a seven. Eight."
"And what do you want?"
She swallowed. "To go."
"Ask me properly."
"Please can I go."
"Please can I go where," he said. "Say it."
She felt her whole face go hot. "Please can I go in my diaper."
The corner of his mouth moved. "Yes. Go on. Sitting right there."
She stayed where she was, cross-legged on the couch with her jeans on and his hand on her knee, and let go.
The first second was the resistance — the body asking here? really? — and then it broke and the warmth arrived, hot and sudden, blooming up the front of the padding and out through her hips in a wave she felt with her whole lower half. She let her head drop back against the couch and breathed out shakily and kept going, longer than she had to, because he was watching and because once it started it felt so unbelievably good to just keep going, the padding swelling and going heavy and soft, the wet spreading back under her, warm all the way up.
"Look at you," Callum said quietly.
She made a small sound.
"All the way done?"
"Yeah." Her voice cracked. "Yeah."
He slid his hand from her knee to her inner thigh and then up, and pressed the front of her jeans. They were damp. The padding under them was soaked and warm and gave under his palm, and she felt the pressure of his hand through the wet and her hips jerked up into it before she could stop them.
"Oh," she said. "Oh, fuck."
"Feel good?"
"Yes — yes—"
He rubbed slowly, in a circle, and the wet squelched softly and the padding ground against her and she was already wet enough down there that the diaper wet was doing double duty. She got a fistful of his shirt. He kept going until she was breathing through her mouth and her thighs were shaking, and then he took his hand away and sat back.
"Not yet," he said.
"Callum—"
"You don't come until I say. Rule four." He picked his drink back up. "You can sit in it a while."
Three
She sat in it for an hour.
It cooled. That was the thing about it — the warmth went, and what was left was a heavy wet slab between her legs and the damp denim clinging to her crotch and the knowledge of it pressing on her all the time, inescapable, and the smell starting to come up off her, faint and warm and her. Every time she shifted the padding moved and she felt it and her cunt ached.
At nine-thirty she said, "Callum. Please."
He looked up from his book. "Again?"
"Not — it's wet." She couldn't keep the whine out of it. "It's cold and it's heavy and it's been an hour."
"So?"
"So can I change?"
"You want to change," he said slowly, "or you want to come?"
"...Both."
"Which first."
She thought about it. The truth was the wet had gone clammy and the chafe was starting at her hip creases and what she actually wanted, more than anything, was the drag of a wipe and the cool of powder. "Change," she said. "Please. Change first."
"Good answer."
He put the book down and stood and held out his hand, and she took it, and he walked her to the bedroom by it and made her lie down on the towel he'd already put on the bed — already put there, before he'd even come home, and the forethought of that made her stomach flip.
He knelt beside her.
He unbuttoned her jeans and pulled them down her legs and she lifted her hips to help and he pulled them all the way off and dropped them on the floor. Then he just looked at her. Her in a soaked, sagging diaper, the front of it yellowed and swollen and heavy, her thighs a little apart.
"God," he said. "Look at the state of you."
"Shut up."
"I will not." He ran a flat hand over the front of it, pressing, and the wet sound it made was obscene. "You did this. All on your own, sitting next to me, on the couch."
"Callum."
He got the wipes.
He took his time. He pulled the bottom tapes first, both of them, and folded the front down between her legs so the wet padding lay under her, and the cool air on her skin made her hiss. He cleaned her with slow, long, front-to-back strokes of the wipe, and then again, and then pressed a fresh one flat and held it there a second, and she watched his face while he did it and saw him completely absorbed in it.
Then powder. He shook it into his palm and pressed it onto her, hips first, then down between her thighs, the flat of his hand spreading it, and the cool bloom of it made her eyes close.
"Open," he said, and she opened them, and he was holding a fresh diaper — thick, white, the printed one she only wore for him — and he slid it under her, and lifted her legs one at a time to seat it, and smoothed the pad flat.
He brought the front up over her and pressed the tapes down one at a time. Bottom left. Bottom right. Top left. Top right. Holding each with his thumb, seating it, and then his palm flat over the whole front, twice, warm and firm.
"There," he said. "Clean and dry and thick as anything. How's that?"
"Good." Her voice was wrecked. "Really good."
He stayed kneeling there. Then he said, "Keep your knees up," and slid his hand down the front of the fresh diaper, and pressed, and rubbed, and the dry crisp padding was a completely different sensation from the wet and it was somehow worse — the friction of it, the thickness of it between his hand and her, the way he had to press hard to get through it.
She came in under two minutes, hard, with her heels dug into the bed and her hand over her mouth and the crinkle of it under his hand the whole time.
Four
Saturday morning he woke her at seven with a glass of water and made her drink it.
"All of it," he said. "Then another."
"Callum, it's seven."
"And?"
She drank it. He watched. Then he pulled the duvet off her and looked at the diaper she'd wet twice in the night — she'd stopped waking properly for it, just gone in her sleep and gone back under — and he pressed the front of it and made a low sound.
"You're soaked."
"I know."
"Did you wake up for any of it?"
"Some."
"Good." He got up. "Coffee. Come on."
She waddled after him in the wet one and sat at the kitchen counter and drank the coffee, and the coffee hit her bladder almost immediately, and by half past seven she was squirming on the stool with her thighs pressed together and the wet padding squelching under her every time she moved.
"How bad," he said, from the stove.
"Eight."
"Hold it."
"I am."
She held it through eggs. She held it through him eating them. She held it while he did the dishes with his back to her, and her leg jiggled, and the pressure went from a knot to a proper straining ache, and she had to press her heel up against herself through the diaper to take the edge off, and that only made it worse.
"Callum." Her voice had gone high and tight. "It's a nine. It's a nine and a half."
"Nine and a half," he repeated, turning. "That's a lot."
"Please."
"Please what."
"Please can I go."
He came over and stood in front of her stool and put his hand on her stomach, low, and pressed. She gasped. The pressure doubled under his palm.
"Hold it a bit longer," he said, "and I'll let you go."
"Callum."
"Count for me. From twenty."
She counted. Her voice shook on fourteen. On eleven her hips were lifting off the stool. On eight she grabbed his wrist and he didn't let up. On four her eyes were wet. On one—
"Go," he said.
She let go with her whole body and it came out in a hot rush, flooding the front of the diaper so fast she felt it hit and spread and keep spreading, overflowing back and down and up, and she made a noise against his shoulder that wasn't quite a word. He kept his hand pressed on her stomach the entire time and the pressure of it made it come harder.
She sat on the stool afterward, trembling, the wet diaper hanging heavy and hot and enormous between her legs, and Callum kissed her forehead and said, "Good girl," and she had to put her head down on the counter for a second.
Five
The messing happened at eleven, and it was the one that undid her.
He'd made her drink again. She'd been on the couch, wet, thighs apart because the padding was so full it forced them apart. The pressure had come on slowly, deep and low, and she'd thought it was gas twice before she realized it very much wasn't.
"Callum. I think—" She sat up. "Oh. Oh no."
"What?"
"It's — the other thing. It's coming."
"Then go."
"I can't just—"
"You can. You've been wearing since last night. Go."
She got up off the couch onto her feet because sitting made it harder, and stood in the middle of the room with her hand braced on the arm of the couch, and let it happen.
It came slow and thick, and she felt every part of it — the padding at the back giving and stretching, the warm heavy weight of it arriving and settling, the way it kept coming in stages so she had to keep pushing. She was breathing hard by the end. When it was done she stood there with her eyes closed and the diaper suddenly enormous and warm and full behind her.
"Done?" he said.
"...Yeah."
"Then sit back down."
"Sit—"
"All your weight. Go on."
She lowered herself onto the couch and the mess squished up warm under her and spread, and she made a sound like she'd been punched. The heat of it came through the padding and up her back. She shifted her hips and it moved and the sound was wet and soft and incredible.
"Feel that?" he said.
"Yes."
"Tell me."
"It's —" She swallowed. "It's warm. It's heavy. It's spread." Her voice dropped. "It's all up the back."
Callum leaned over and kissed her, and his hand came down on her knee and slid up her thigh, and he pressed the front of the diaper and the whole thing squelched and she gasped into his mouth.
"How bad do you want to come right now?" he said against her lips.
"Bad."
"Bad enough to sit in this a while longer?"
"...Yeah."
"Good girl."
He touched her through it, on and off, for an hour. He'd rub her through the wet front until she was grinding up into his hand and breathing in little hitches and then he'd stop and let her come down, and every time he stopped she got a little angrier and a little wetter and the mess under her cooled and then warmed again when she wet into it, which she did twice, and both times the warmth spread through the mess and made the whole thing soft and hot and unbearable.
By noon she was nearly crying. "Please. Please, Callum, I can't — please let me."
"Say the whole thing."
"Please let me come in my dirty diaper."
"There she is." He got his hand back where it was and pressed hard and didn't stop. "Go on then. Come."
She came so hard she saw white at the edges and her heels drummed on the couch and she sobbed once, out loud, and the mess squelched under her the entire time and the wet front was grinding into her under his palm, and when it was over she lay flat with her arm over her face and her chest heaving and could not form a word.
Callum sat back and let her breathe.
"You're a mess," he said, eventually, warmly.
"I know."
"Want a change?"
"Give me a minute."
"Take two."
Six
He changed her at half past twelve and it took a long time, because he was thorough, and because he kept stopping to look at her, and because he'd gotten her so worked up that the drag of the wipe on her made her hips twitch.
He showered her afterward — stood her in the warm water and washed her himself with the soap and his hands, unhurried, and she leaned against the tile with her forehead and let him.
Then he taped her into a fresh one, thick and dry, and pulled one of his t-shirts over her head, and put her to bed for an actual nap.
She woke at four, dry-to-damp and warm and loose-limbed, and went to find him, and climbed into his lap on the couch without a word and put her face in his neck.
"Hi," he said.
"Hi."
"You good?"
"Mm." She shifted, and the padding crinkled, and she felt him smile against her hair.
"Rule two still applies, you know," he said. "When you need to go, you ask."
"I know."
"Say it back to me."
She lifted her head. Her face was still sleep-flushed and her hair was a wreck and she looked him dead in the eye.
"When I need to go," she said, "I ask you nicely, and I tell you how bad it is."
"Good girl."
She put her face back down. The afternoon light was going gold across the floor. His hand was on her back and her diaper was crisp and thick between them and there were still thirty hours on the clock.
"Callum," she said into his neck.
"Mm?"
"It's already a four."
He laughed, low, right against her ear.
"Hold it," he said.
Iris found the note on the kitchen table when she got home from work on Friday, weighted down by a coffee mug, in Callum's square, careful handwriting.
Rules for the weekend:
1. You wear from the moment you walk in the door.
2. You don't go unless I say.
3. You ask nicely, and you say how bad it is.
4. You don't come until I say.
5. Anything at any time — say "mercy" and it stops.
She read it twice. On the second read her ears got hot.
She'd been the one to tell him, six months ago, curled up small on his couch with a glass of wine in her hands and her voice at a pitch she barely recognized — and he'd listened with his head tilted and then said, "Okay, but that's hot, why were you nervous?" and had proceeded, over six months, to learn her so thoroughly that it had stopped being a hobby and started being a language.
She'd never been told before. Not in writing. Not with rules.
She put the note down and went to the bedroom and got one out of the drawer — a thick one, a real one, the kind that bulged — and took off her work clothes and stood in front of the mirror in her bra and taped it on. She watched herself do it. She looked at the white band across her hips, the sag of the padding between her thighs, the way her stomach sat above it. She pressed it flat with both palms and the crinkle came out enormous in the empty room.
Then she put her jeans back on, and went and poured a glass of water, and drank it, and waited.
He got home at 6:40 and found her on the couch with her knees up and her glass empty and a flush she could feel across her chest.
Callum put his bag down slowly. He looked at her for a long moment — at the jeans, at the way she was sitting, at her face — and something in his expression changed, went focused and warm and a little bit mean in a way that made her stomach drop.
"You read it," he said.
"Yeah."
"All of it?"
"Yeah."
He came over and stood in front of her and held out one hand. "Stand up. Let me look at you."
She stood. He turned her by the shoulder, unhurried, and put his hand flat on her lower back to hold her there, and then slid his other hand down over the seat of her jeans and pressed.
The crinkle was so loud she flinched.
"Good," he said, and she felt it land somewhere low in her, a hook catching. "Very good. You put it on the second you got in."
"I— yeah."
"Say it."
"I put it on as soon as I got in the door." Her voice was already going thin.
"Good girl." He pulled his hand away. "How bad is it?"
"Not bad yet. I drank a glass of water."
"Then get another."
Two
By eight o'clock the pressure was a steady, nagging ache and she'd stopped being able to sit still.
Callum had made her sit with him on the couch through a whole film, his hand on her thigh, and the jeans waistband cut into her a little and she kept shifting and every shift crinkled and every crinkle he heard and did nothing about. Her bladder was a hard warm knot. She'd crossed her legs, uncrossed them, sat on her heel, sat forward, sat back.
"Callum."
"Mm."
"It's bad."
He turned his head. He took his time. "How bad."
"Like — a seven. Eight."
"And what do you want?"
She swallowed. "To go."
"Ask me properly."
"Please can I go."
"Please can I go where," he said. "Say it."
She felt her whole face go hot. "Please can I go in my diaper."
The corner of his mouth moved. "Yes. Go on. Sitting right there."
She stayed where she was, cross-legged on the couch with her jeans on and his hand on her knee, and let go.
The first second was the resistance — the body asking here? really? — and then it broke and the warmth arrived, hot and sudden, blooming up the front of the padding and out through her hips in a wave she felt with her whole lower half. She let her head drop back against the couch and breathed out shakily and kept going, longer than she had to, because he was watching and because once it started it felt so unbelievably good to just keep going, the padding swelling and going heavy and soft, the wet spreading back under her, warm all the way up.
"Look at you," Callum said quietly.
She made a small sound.
"All the way done?"
"Yeah." Her voice cracked. "Yeah."
He slid his hand from her knee to her inner thigh and then up, and pressed the front of her jeans. They were damp. The padding under them was soaked and warm and gave under his palm, and she felt the pressure of his hand through the wet and her hips jerked up into it before she could stop them.
"Oh," she said. "Oh, fuck."
"Feel good?"
"Yes — yes—"
He rubbed slowly, in a circle, and the wet squelched softly and the padding ground against her and she was already wet enough down there that the diaper wet was doing double duty. She got a fistful of his shirt. He kept going until she was breathing through her mouth and her thighs were shaking, and then he took his hand away and sat back.
"Not yet," he said.
"Callum—"
"You don't come until I say. Rule four." He picked his drink back up. "You can sit in it a while."
Three
She sat in it for an hour.
It cooled. That was the thing about it — the warmth went, and what was left was a heavy wet slab between her legs and the damp denim clinging to her crotch and the knowledge of it pressing on her all the time, inescapable, and the smell starting to come up off her, faint and warm and her. Every time she shifted the padding moved and she felt it and her cunt ached.
At nine-thirty she said, "Callum. Please."
He looked up from his book. "Again?"
"Not — it's wet." She couldn't keep the whine out of it. "It's cold and it's heavy and it's been an hour."
"So?"
"So can I change?"
"You want to change," he said slowly, "or you want to come?"
"...Both."
"Which first."
She thought about it. The truth was the wet had gone clammy and the chafe was starting at her hip creases and what she actually wanted, more than anything, was the drag of a wipe and the cool of powder. "Change," she said. "Please. Change first."
"Good answer."
He put the book down and stood and held out his hand, and she took it, and he walked her to the bedroom by it and made her lie down on the towel he'd already put on the bed — already put there, before he'd even come home, and the forethought of that made her stomach flip.
He knelt beside her.
He unbuttoned her jeans and pulled them down her legs and she lifted her hips to help and he pulled them all the way off and dropped them on the floor. Then he just looked at her. Her in a soaked, sagging diaper, the front of it yellowed and swollen and heavy, her thighs a little apart.
"God," he said. "Look at the state of you."
"Shut up."
"I will not." He ran a flat hand over the front of it, pressing, and the wet sound it made was obscene. "You did this. All on your own, sitting next to me, on the couch."
"Callum."
He got the wipes.
He took his time. He pulled the bottom tapes first, both of them, and folded the front down between her legs so the wet padding lay under her, and the cool air on her skin made her hiss. He cleaned her with slow, long, front-to-back strokes of the wipe, and then again, and then pressed a fresh one flat and held it there a second, and she watched his face while he did it and saw him completely absorbed in it.
Then powder. He shook it into his palm and pressed it onto her, hips first, then down between her thighs, the flat of his hand spreading it, and the cool bloom of it made her eyes close.
"Open," he said, and she opened them, and he was holding a fresh diaper — thick, white, the printed one she only wore for him — and he slid it under her, and lifted her legs one at a time to seat it, and smoothed the pad flat.
He brought the front up over her and pressed the tapes down one at a time. Bottom left. Bottom right. Top left. Top right. Holding each with his thumb, seating it, and then his palm flat over the whole front, twice, warm and firm.
"There," he said. "Clean and dry and thick as anything. How's that?"
"Good." Her voice was wrecked. "Really good."
He stayed kneeling there. Then he said, "Keep your knees up," and slid his hand down the front of the fresh diaper, and pressed, and rubbed, and the dry crisp padding was a completely different sensation from the wet and it was somehow worse — the friction of it, the thickness of it between his hand and her, the way he had to press hard to get through it.
She came in under two minutes, hard, with her heels dug into the bed and her hand over her mouth and the crinkle of it under his hand the whole time.
Four
Saturday morning he woke her at seven with a glass of water and made her drink it.
"All of it," he said. "Then another."
"Callum, it's seven."
"And?"
She drank it. He watched. Then he pulled the duvet off her and looked at the diaper she'd wet twice in the night — she'd stopped waking properly for it, just gone in her sleep and gone back under — and he pressed the front of it and made a low sound.
"You're soaked."
"I know."
"Did you wake up for any of it?"
"Some."
"Good." He got up. "Coffee. Come on."
She waddled after him in the wet one and sat at the kitchen counter and drank the coffee, and the coffee hit her bladder almost immediately, and by half past seven she was squirming on the stool with her thighs pressed together and the wet padding squelching under her every time she moved.
"How bad," he said, from the stove.
"Eight."
"Hold it."
"I am."
She held it through eggs. She held it through him eating them. She held it while he did the dishes with his back to her, and her leg jiggled, and the pressure went from a knot to a proper straining ache, and she had to press her heel up against herself through the diaper to take the edge off, and that only made it worse.
"Callum." Her voice had gone high and tight. "It's a nine. It's a nine and a half."
"Nine and a half," he repeated, turning. "That's a lot."
"Please."
"Please what."
"Please can I go."
He came over and stood in front of her stool and put his hand on her stomach, low, and pressed. She gasped. The pressure doubled under his palm.
"Hold it a bit longer," he said, "and I'll let you go."
"Callum."
"Count for me. From twenty."
She counted. Her voice shook on fourteen. On eleven her hips were lifting off the stool. On eight she grabbed his wrist and he didn't let up. On four her eyes were wet. On one—
"Go," he said.
She let go with her whole body and it came out in a hot rush, flooding the front of the diaper so fast she felt it hit and spread and keep spreading, overflowing back and down and up, and she made a noise against his shoulder that wasn't quite a word. He kept his hand pressed on her stomach the entire time and the pressure of it made it come harder.
She sat on the stool afterward, trembling, the wet diaper hanging heavy and hot and enormous between her legs, and Callum kissed her forehead and said, "Good girl," and she had to put her head down on the counter for a second.
Five
The messing happened at eleven, and it was the one that undid her.
He'd made her drink again. She'd been on the couch, wet, thighs apart because the padding was so full it forced them apart. The pressure had come on slowly, deep and low, and she'd thought it was gas twice before she realized it very much wasn't.
"Callum. I think—" She sat up. "Oh. Oh no."
"What?"
"It's — the other thing. It's coming."
"Then go."
"I can't just—"
"You can. You've been wearing since last night. Go."
She got up off the couch onto her feet because sitting made it harder, and stood in the middle of the room with her hand braced on the arm of the couch, and let it happen.
It came slow and thick, and she felt every part of it — the padding at the back giving and stretching, the warm heavy weight of it arriving and settling, the way it kept coming in stages so she had to keep pushing. She was breathing hard by the end. When it was done she stood there with her eyes closed and the diaper suddenly enormous and warm and full behind her.
"Done?" he said.
"...Yeah."
"Then sit back down."
"Sit—"
"All your weight. Go on."
She lowered herself onto the couch and the mess squished up warm under her and spread, and she made a sound like she'd been punched. The heat of it came through the padding and up her back. She shifted her hips and it moved and the sound was wet and soft and incredible.
"Feel that?" he said.
"Yes."
"Tell me."
"It's —" She swallowed. "It's warm. It's heavy. It's spread." Her voice dropped. "It's all up the back."
Callum leaned over and kissed her, and his hand came down on her knee and slid up her thigh, and he pressed the front of the diaper and the whole thing squelched and she gasped into his mouth.
"How bad do you want to come right now?" he said against her lips.
"Bad."
"Bad enough to sit in this a while longer?"
"...Yeah."
"Good girl."
He touched her through it, on and off, for an hour. He'd rub her through the wet front until she was grinding up into his hand and breathing in little hitches and then he'd stop and let her come down, and every time he stopped she got a little angrier and a little wetter and the mess under her cooled and then warmed again when she wet into it, which she did twice, and both times the warmth spread through the mess and made the whole thing soft and hot and unbearable.
By noon she was nearly crying. "Please. Please, Callum, I can't — please let me."
"Say the whole thing."
"Please let me come in my dirty diaper."
"There she is." He got his hand back where it was and pressed hard and didn't stop. "Go on then. Come."
She came so hard she saw white at the edges and her heels drummed on the couch and she sobbed once, out loud, and the mess squelched under her the entire time and the wet front was grinding into her under his palm, and when it was over she lay flat with her arm over her face and her chest heaving and could not form a word.
Callum sat back and let her breathe.
"You're a mess," he said, eventually, warmly.
"I know."
"Want a change?"
"Give me a minute."
"Take two."
Six
He changed her at half past twelve and it took a long time, because he was thorough, and because he kept stopping to look at her, and because he'd gotten her so worked up that the drag of the wipe on her made her hips twitch.
He showered her afterward — stood her in the warm water and washed her himself with the soap and his hands, unhurried, and she leaned against the tile with her forehead and let him.
Then he taped her into a fresh one, thick and dry, and pulled one of his t-shirts over her head, and put her to bed for an actual nap.
She woke at four, dry-to-damp and warm and loose-limbed, and went to find him, and climbed into his lap on the couch without a word and put her face in his neck.
"Hi," he said.
"Hi."
"You good?"
"Mm." She shifted, and the padding crinkled, and she felt him smile against her hair.
"Rule two still applies, you know," he said. "When you need to go, you ask."
"I know."
"Say it back to me."
She lifted her head. Her face was still sleep-flushed and her hair was a wreck and she looked him dead in the eye.
"When I need to go," she said, "I ask you nicely, and I tell you how bad it is."
"Good girl."
She put her face back down. The afternoon light was going gold across the floor. His hand was on her back and her diaper was crisp and thick between them and there were still thirty hours on the clock.
"Callum," she said into his neck.
"Mm?"
"It's already a four."
He laughed, low, right against her ear.
"Hold it," he said.
26-30, M