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“But I don’t want to go to Kindergarten,” The 25 year old said, her long, dark hair framing her sad face as the words come out in a whisper. She stared down at the picture frame in her slender hands, of herself and her students surrounding her, not recognizing that the teacher in it was once herself.   I sigh, taking a look at my once independent girlfriend, still in her pjs at noon, the telltale sign of her Pull-Up peeking out of the waistband of her sheer shorts in between that the matching t-shirt that clung to her body seductively that now only made me feel guilty of the impure thoughts. “Don’t worry about that, cupcake,” I remind her gently, a conversation that we often have. “You’re not going to school today. Do you wanna watch Bluey?”   She looks over at me with those big, innocent eyes, and pauses in what one might think of as thought, but I know there’s nothing going on between those beautiful, blue eyes that I had fallen in love with. The once school teacher set the picture frame down on the table beside the front door and gave a small nod.   Forcing a smile, I add, “But you have to sit on your princess chair, ok?” I point at the training potty in the center of the living room, next to her playmat full of toys both new and forgotten, donations from her parents and siblings. Her face follows the pointed finger, briefly stopping at the pile of distracting toys, before moving on.   “Otay, Dada,” She says between wet fingers. I’m glad I cut her fingernails, wouldn’t do to have a grown woman with the mental capacity of a toddler hurting her tongue, I had learned that lesson early on. Although, her long, painted nails were the last vestige of her adult side that she had still been attached to. The tears had gone on for an hour, and she had fought me at every finger, begging and throwing a tantrum for getting rid of her ‘pwetty nail’. I thought my heart couldn’t break any more after her accident, but each day I was proved wrong.   Almost daintily, almost with the same strut her long legs could made, just with some extra clumsiness that came with a body one was unfamiliar with, my gorgeous girlfriend made her way from the front door, skipping over the toys. Eyes now glued to the screen as I hit the button on the remote to turn on the show that she used to watch as a way to connect with children in her class that she was now an obsessed fan over, she sat down on the training potty without even the thought to pull down her shorts or the underwear beneath.   I kept my voice calm and collected, keeping the frustration from my tone, I reminded her, “Cupcake,” I tried not to call her baby anymore, “We have to pull our pants down before going on the potty,” I said reminding her.   Looking over at me in confusion, her thin brows furled in a way that I used to call cute and sexy, making me feel guilty now. She took a glance down, past her womanly curves and at the shorts still on her. “Why?”   Hoping that today wasn’t going to be another ‘why’ day, I use my tone reserved for the smallest of children, “Because we can’t make tinkles in the potty unless we take off our bottoms, remember?”   “Oh,” Her reply came out in a bored voice, like ‘making tinkles’ was beneath. Still though, she stood up and dutifully pulled down her pj shorts. I grimace at the Bluey Pull-Ups at her hips, sagging low and discolored with use.   She began sitting down again, and I tell her, “B- Sweetie, pull down your undies too.”   Pursing her lips, my girlfriend looked like she was ready to argue, and I knew why.   She was very attached to her Pull-Ups with the two puppy sisters on it. The plain adult ones I still have in the closet she wouldn’t keep up for more than an hour or two, but when we passed by the diapers in the aisle at the store, her eyes had lit up. I remember that whole day vividly, the morning of she had made a spectacular show of why she needed bibs now, and how much she adored ‘nakie time’ by making a shallow pond that still stained the couch. She had begged me, “Dada, Dada, Bluey! Dada! I wan’ dat!” She cried out excitedly pointing at the package, I remember feeling so embarrassed when the other shoppers looked over at me and the grown woman in the large shirt flashing her plain, pink Pull-Up every time she hopped up and down in her flip-flops that smacked the hard tile floor. Their faces were burned in my memory, some of them in judgment at the display the mid twenties woman was making, others were looking on in pity.   But I took the opportunity for a win when I could, “You have to promise to keep them on, cupcake.”   And she nodded and swore whole heartily, “Pwomise! Pwomise!” Snatching up a package, holding it to her chest and yellow shirt with flowers on it that was still marred with the battle scars of my girlfriend’s breakfast.   The whole rest of the day she proudly flaunted her new underwear, in a way that reminded me of her getting new lingerie before the accident, showing me and her sister that had decided to visit that day. Each time she raised her shirt to show her older sister her fancy puppy covered Pull-Ups, her sister had forced a grin and said each time, “So cool!” She had made an excuse to leave early when her younger sister began her marathon of said show and sat down on the princess potty, just as she did now, forgetting to take off her Pull-Up.   I went about the morning routine, making my childlike girlfriend her oatmeal, the rubber tipped spoon balancing on the sides of the bowel, bits of fruit floating around the gruel that I had just chopped by hand. Sometimes, when I’m in a rush I would try to feed it to her without the fruit, but she would always make a face and say its ‘icky’. Putting the top on her sippy cup that I had found was a necessity very quickly after she had returned from the hospital.   Stepping into the living room, I barely glanced over at the TV. I had seen this episode a dozen times, and no doubt so had she. She still sat on the potty, totally engrossed in the cartoon, her protective padding still around her hips. Its one thing in one ear and out the other, I supposed. She glanced over at me as I sat down on the couch, her blue eyes staring at me through a thin veil of hair.   Standing up, she started walking towards me, nearly tripping before I reminded her to pull up her shorts. She made an ‘oh’ sound, like I was the weird one for telling her she needed to cover up her drenched training pants. Doing what she was told, she hopped over her toys and climbed up on the couch with, and then on top of me, making a show of nestling her bottom on top of my lap before leaning into me and holding out her hands.   She had quickly fallen in line with this daily routine. Getting something in her belly was always easier when she got to sit on Dada’s lap. Graciously, she accepted her sippy cup, and I went to work tying the bib embroidered with an even more infantilized version of the Cookie Monster on it. All the while her body weight was pressed heavily on my crotch. There was a point in time when this action may have led to something more romantic, but it was hard to imagine that now, given the fact that her pajamas didn’t hide her soaked Pull-Up from touch much more than they did from sight.   Opening her mouth, she made a little, “Ahh,” and I deposited a spoonfull of goop on to her tongue. Her eyes half closed as her mouth processed the banana, strawberry, and blueberry, “Mmm,” Her chest vibrated with purring as she laid her top half on my chest, body wrapped around my arms. She swallowed, opened up her mouth, and looked up at me with those beautiful blue eyes full of a mixture of expectation, adoration, and love, reminding me why I couldn’t give her up.   A few more spoonfuls. And I could feel her shifting her rear on me. Rubbing against me. Reminding me of something else.   Though her mind had been reduced, her body had not. There were times when she felt the urge to play as we had long ago. The signs were always clear. A lot more touching. Grinding. Subtle reaching down for her Pull-Ups, whether they were wet or dry. At first, I tried to keep everything on the level, she didn’t understand what she was doing, and taking advantage of her in her state was the last thing I had in mind. That came to a stop after I found her humping her large stuffed teddy. I could only sigh and go grab one of her ‘adult toys’ she had gotten when she was still in the right state of mind to use a credit card.   She made a few pitiful sounds while rubbing against me. I stayed resolute and put another spoonful of oatmeal and fruit into her mouth. There was a flash of disappointment on her face as she brought her sippy cup to her lips and washed down breakfast.   Breakfast finished, she got off my lap and headed back towards the mesmerizing screen, a new episode already starting to play, when she did something new. Not in that she never did it before, but never in the day.   I watched my girlfriend let out a groan and a grunt, bending down to balance on her haunches.   “Bab- Cupcake, go sit on your potty.” Standing up quickly, I took a few steps towards her, almost tripping on some of her toys as I made my way over to her.   She did the same motion she did in bed, the one that required me to keep her in real, full fledged diapers during the evening. My girlfriend was rather regular. Nearly every morning I woke up to a fowl smell and a dirty girl. It had gotten to the point where after the first couple of weeks after the hospital, I tried to get her to sleep in her own bed, decorated the spare bedroom as the ‘princess’ room. Unfortunately, that had just become her playroom, as every night after I tucked her in and read her a bedtime, she would wail and wail until I finally came into her room and scooped her up and brought her to mine, where she would wrap herself on top of me crinkling the whole time. It was nice, most of the time, if I could ignore the extra bulk that came from her diaper, I could just snuggle up against her and pretend that I didn’t have to care for my lover like my daughter. Until she made the sounds of grunting and groaning on top of me just as she was in our living room in the middle of the morning.   Stopping, I took a long look down at my girlfriend dropping a messy load into the back of her already well used Pull-Up. My stomach churning and heart dropping as I saw the brown spread from the lining of her disposable underwear as it leaked.   As sad as it is. I give up.   When we all first learned about her condition, the doctors recommended treating her as old as possible, in her case, an older toddler. That she shouldn’t be treated as an infant in case that would make it harder for rehabilitation. I dreamed of the day when I could treat my girlfriend as an adult again, have a partner instead of a daughter. But now, I fear that dream is too far out of my grasp.   Stepping around her as she dropped down on her butt, her gaze immediately going back towards the TV, hand grabbing one of the countless plushies she had in her collection to hold to her chest and cuddle with. The evidence of her mistake promptly ignored in favor of playing and enjoying her show.   Collecting the unused training potty, I took one look at my girlfriend, and while I haven’t seen her as an adult in some time, I couldn’t even pretend she was a toddler, no where close to a big girl.   I went away for a moment, collecting what I needed in our bedroom and came back.   Looking up at me, in a small voice, she repeated herself. “Dada, I don’t want to go to Kindergarten.”   “Cupcake,” I said, pulling out a pacifier from a case, under my arm the necessary changing supplies. “Kindergarten is for big girls, you’re just a baby.” Inserting the pacifier between her lips, laying her down, her nighttime diaper next to her that would now be her full time underwear, I began changing my big baby, and I couldn’t help but notice the relief on her face.   ----   Looking up at my boyfriend, now Daddy, I smile behind my pacifier. His deep, chocolate colored eyes were sorrowful, his olive toned features handsome, brown locks of hair covering his concerned face. Every time I look at him I can’t help but feel as though he’s the perfect Daddy.   For the longest time, I had wanted to be a teacher, and more than that, an adult. I had dreamed of being the beloved teacher to all my kids, of being respected. Internally I laugh as I raise my legs and let my lover wipe my sticky mess off my butt.   My dreams turned out to be far, far from the truth. When I finally got my dream job, stepping into the classroom, prepared to be the best teacher I could be, I found my kids to all be glued to their screens, each one not even glancing up at me as I introduced myself. Every. Single. One. Had a tablet or an iPad, or a phone in front of them. I tried. I really did! Tried to coax them into learning. I remember having so much fun when I was their age, but no matter what fun activities I made, what games I invented or found, trying to reach them on their level, it was all for nothing. I even tried to connect with them by playing the games and watching the shows they enjoyed.   That’s when I rediscovered a love of cartoons. My boyfriend gave me weird looks when I started rewatching the cartoons from when we were kids at home, but never said a word. He’s always been so understanding and supportive. Funny how that worked out, I suppose, as he wipes me clean and powders my bottom.   I can’t help but sigh in content as he wraps my diaper around my waist and helps me up, putting his arms around me, snug and dry.   He whispers in my ear, “No matter how long it takes for you to grow up again, or if you ever will, I will always love you and take care of you, baby.”   I melt.   It didn’t take long after discovering cartoons that I started to feel weird for indulging in childish activities. Getting absorbed into the world of Roblox and Peppa Pig, I did a little digging into people like me. Adults who were into more youthful stuff. That’s how I found out about ageplay, and I slipped further down into the rabbithole. I found abdl.   By that point, I was no better than my iPad baby students, spending most of my work day on my phone, watching Bluey or messing around on Roblox. The only time I didn’t I was playing on the playground. Distractions aside, I felt like an absolute failure of an adult. I felt awful at my job, I was becoming more engrossed in the idea of ageplay, escaping into the younger years of carefree play and lack of stress became a fantasy that I couldn’t leave behind. I had even started to look into getting some onesies, maybe talk my boyfriend into putting a diaper on to me.   It was one day that I was coming home from work, I was looking at my phone in the middle of traffic, a habit that had unfortunately cemented into my routine, that it happened. I drove into a red light, and got t-boned.   I don’t remember much after that. I recall waking up in a hospital bed, blinding lights above me, a splitting headache, my boyfriend and family members all looking down at me along with a woman in a labcoat and scrubs informing my loved ones about my condition. “We’re not certain yet, she took quite a bit of damage to her head, there may be some memory issues or loss of cognitive function, we’ll have to run some test...”   More than anything though, I felt something around my waist. I crinkled as I moved, and though my boyfriend and my sister asked me not to move around too much, I couldn’t help but feel fascinated by the crinkling, plastic and cloth fluff around me as I could feel the diaper the hospital put me in warm around my crotch.   The words echoed around my head in the seconds between I heard them and opened my mouth. And I made a decision.   I raised my hand up to my face, the IV line attached to me coming along for the ride. Plucked my thumb into my mouth and mumbled, “Dada buh?” The fear on the faces of my loved ones nearly drove me to drop the facade almost immediately, but I pressed on, looking up at my boyfriend, who everyone took a look at as well, raised my arms and said, “Uppies?” And for the first time, I knowingly wet my diaper. The flash of warmth spreading against me was so ludicrously wonderful I almost dropped my act then and there, but I pressed on. My only wish was that it wasn’t the nurses who changed me the first time but my new Daddy. Not that they weren’t gentle, but they were rather cold.   The next few days were a blur. Tests, both of clinical variety and the development kind. Between the blood tests and the MRI scans, the doctors would have my sit down in colorful rooms and more or less play, try to fit blocks into the correct shape holes and puzzles. It was hard making myself ‘struggle’ with them, to put on a show that I was more baby than the adult woman my body claimed. A soaked diaper always made the act that much easier to do.   And then.   I got to go home with him. It was heavenly. All day he would take care of me, bathe me, change me, feed me. It. Was. The. Best!!!   Until.   He started pushing for me to be more... Older? Training pants, feeding myself, getting me up every day. That had to go, I decided right away. If he wanted a toddler, he’d have a brat for a toddler, I knew right away.   Dada could’ve had a well behaved baby girl, but instead he wanted a tot that would get into everything, cause scenes. Right off the bat, I decided nakie time had to be a thing. Ditching those boring plain adult disposables and having ‘accidents’ on the furniture. I relented pretty quick when I got my Blueys, but I think he got the right idea, childish=better.   It has been a lot of fun. I still get to spend all my time stressfree and playing. Still, the only thing I really miss about being a ‘grown-up’ is the more adult kind of playing. It’s so easy to get pampered and taken care of and get pent up. I tried to restrain myself, but as soon as I slipped my fingers into my Pull-Ups the first time... Every chance I got I was getting handsy with myself. I even tried to get Daddy to play with me, but for obvious reasons, he’s rather hesitant to do anything. I think he feels guilty. At least he lets me play with the buzzy every now and then. That’s alright, I have my ways of getting my way, eventually. I am Daddy’s little princess now, after all. Maybe I’ll slip one night and show how up here I really am.   Until then though, this is perfect.   Daddy lifts me up, my diaper snug against my bottom. I’m nowhere close to the teacher I was, or the adult. I’m just his little girl. Resting my chin on his shoulder, I lay my head against his, our hair getting tangled together, my new pacifier suckling away on my lips.   “I love you,” He whispers again.   My heart beats faster in my chest and I can feel his with our bodies pressed like this. One of his strong arms wrapped around my waist as he carries me somewhere, I don’t care where, his off hand supporting my padded butt.   I’ve won. This is my new life, and I wouldn’t do anything to change it.

I think that for whatever reason Heather is part of a different organization that adopts out Littles while Sarah ended up part of the prison’s adoption program. Though it is unclear how one got Sarah and the other got Heather even though both “mommy’s” are considered Little traffickers. I think it was simply who got to the paperwork first or they take turns or even the location the little was when picked might have a say in it. It could be pretty complicated and might not actually make any common sense or logical sense just like a lot of our rl organizations and government departments. 

I was a bed wetter until around ten years old. I am a bed wetter again after much trying. I love that I need diapers.

I am baby smooth (hairless) from the chest down to my toes.

Hi everyone! Finally an update! Chapter 59: Aftershock The road from El Sombrero to the cabin was long. Twenty minutes, maybe twenty-five. The pavements were narrow and gravelled, and the compressed snow crunched under their boots in a rhythm that filled the silence because nothing else would. The streetlamps thinned out as they left the main road, and the gaps between them grew wider and darker until they were walking in something close to true night, lit only by the moon and the faint reflection off the snow that lined the ditches. They didn't speak. Not at first. Millie walked with her hands deep in her jacket pockets, her chin tucked into her collar, her breath clouding around her in short, visible bursts. Her canvas bag bumped against her hip with each step. Liam walked half a pace behind, his eyes on the gravel, his hands balled in his jacket pockets, and the pull-up shifted between his thighs with a faint, soft sound that he was certain the entire valley could hear. The adrenaline had drained. It had gone the way adrenaline goes — fast and total, like someone pulling a plug — and what it left behind was a hollowness that sat in his chest and his legs and the backs of his eyes. His hands were still trembling. Not violently, not visibly, but a fine, interior tremor that made his fingers feel like they belonged to someone else. Jade's face. Mia's head hitting the wall. The word that died in Jade's mouth. He shoved the images down. They came back. He shoved them down again. Millie broke the silence first. "How's your tummy?" "Fine." "Does it still hurt? The burning?" "No." "Are you sure? Because if you're still sore, I've got cream in the—" "I said it's fine." She nodded. They walked on. Thirty seconds. A minute. Then she tried again, gentler this time, the way she did when she was steering a conversation toward something he didn't want to talk about. "Liam, what happened in there was horrible. And I know you don't want to talk about it right now. But at some point—" "Can we just not?" "Okay." She held up a hand — a brief, surrendering gesture, visible in the moonlight. "Okay. We don't have to." More silence. The road curved left around a stand of birch trees, and the last streetlamp fell behind them. The darkness was complete now, textured only by the snow and the distant cabin lights scattered across the valley like faint, golden specks. Millie cleared her throat. "Can I tell you something? About me. Nothing heavy. Just... something." He didn't answer, which she took as permission. "I was seeing this guy last year. Callum. Met him at a mate's birthday — nice lad, worked at a joinery, dead funny. Third date. He took me to this Italian place in town, proper fancy, candles and everything. And I thought: Right, this is going well. Don't mess it up." She paused. Her boots crunched through a patch of ice. "And then halfway through the main course, I felt it. You know that feeling when your body just — decides? Without asking? I'd come on early. Like, a week early. And I was wearing these light grey jeans, because of course I was." She shook her head. "I sat there for twenty minutes trying to work out if it had gone through yet. Kept shifting in my chair, trying to feel the back of my jeans without actually putting my hand there. And Callum's chatting away about his joinery and his dog and I'm just sitting there thinking: Am I bleeding onto this chair right now? Can he see it? Can the waiter see it?" She kicked a stone. It bounced ahead of them and vanished. "In the end I had to tell him. I literally leaned across the table and whispered: 'I think I've had an accident. Can I borrow your hoodie?' And he was lovely about it, actually — tied it round my waist, walked me to the car, never mentioned it again. But I wanted to die. I genuinely, properly wanted to fall through the floor and never come back. I couldn't look at him for a week." She looked over at Liam. He could feel her looking, even in the dark. "Point is — I know what it's like. Your body doing something in public that you can't control. That feeling of: everyone can see. Everyone knows. It's horrible." She meant it as comfort. He could hear it in her voice — the warmth, the deliberate vulnerability, the see, I've been there too that was meant to bridge the gap between them. And she believed it. She genuinely believed that her period leak and his situation were points on the same spectrum, that the shame was comparable, that the distance between them could be closed by a shared experience of bodily betrayal. But a period was a period. Every girl had them. Every girl understood. Callum had been lovely about it. He'd given her his hoodie and never mentioned it again. There was no version of that story where the girl was broken, where the girl was wearing something she shouldn't need to wear, where two people looked over a wall and saw something that made them recoil. He'd sat on a restaurant toilet in a pull-up designed for children, with a professional carer standing in front of him holding wet wipes, while diarrhoea poured out of him and two girls from his social group climbed the walls to see. And the person trying to comfort him thought a period stain was the same thing. "Thanks," he said. His voice was flat. "That's... yeah. Thanks." Millie seemed to hear the flatness. She didn't push it. They walked in silence for another two or three minutes. The road straightened out along the valley floor, and the snow on either side was undisturbed and pale, and the air smelled of pine and cold stone and nothing else. "Can I ask you something?" Millie said. Her tone had shifted — still gentle, but with the focused quality of someone who'd decided to stop circling and land. "Depends." "When did it start? The bedwetting." He almost stopped walking. The directness of it — no euphemism, no softening — hit him like a door opening onto a room he kept locked. "You don't have to answer," she added. "I'm just... I'm trying to understand. Not as your carer or whatever you wanna call it, just as someone who's been with you for four days and still doesn't know how this started." He kept walking. The snow crunched. His breath clouded. And then, because the darkness made it easier, and because she'd just told him about Callum and his hands-proper-smile-dead-funny, and because there was no one else in the world who could hear them on this frozen road between a restaurant where his life had ended and a cabin where it would have to continue — he answered. "Four months ago." "Four months?" "Four months and a week. If you're being precise." She was quiet. Waiting. "It started in October. A Tuesday. I woke up and the sheets were... wet. Cold. I didn't understand at first — I thought I'd spilled something, or sweated, or..." He kicked a chunk of ice. "But it was piss. Obviously. And I stripped the bed, washed everything before Mum and Dad were up, and I thought: Okay, that was weird. One-off. Too much water before bed." "And then?" "Three days later. Same thing. And then again. And again." His voice had settled into a rhythm — flat, factual, reciting rather than feeling. "First it was a couple of times a week. Then three, four. Then almost every night. I tried everything — no liquids after eight, setting an alarm for three in the morning, sleeping on my side. I even looked up pelvic floor exercises. The ones for old women. Sat in my room doing them like some kind of broken machine trying to reboot." A small, involuntary sound from Millie — not a laugh, more like an exhale pushed through closed lips. "None of it worked. And then Mum found the sheets." He swallowed. "She stood in my doorway holding them, and I could see it on her face — she already knew. She said: 'Liam... are you wetting the bed?' And I just... nodded. Because what are you supposed to say to that?" "Nothing," said Millie quietly. "There's nothing to say." "The GP found nothing wrong. Bloods normal. Everything normal. A young doctor — a woman, younger than you, actually — she said 'idiopathic nocturnal enuresis' and gave me a leaflet about bladder training. And Mum bought DryNites on the way home. 'Just for now,' she said. 'Just as a precaution. Just until it sorts itself out.'" He stopped walking. Not deliberately — his feet just stopped, as if the sentence needed a full halt to land properly. "It didn't sort itself out." Millie stopped too. She stood a pace ahead of him, half-turned, her face visible in the moonlight — patient, open, her professional mask set aside for something more human. "Four months is nothing," she said. "I know it feels like forever. But in medical terms — four months, no structural cause, no daytime issues at home — that's textbook for it stopping on its own. Could be stress, hormones, growth. Bodies do weird things at your age and then they just... stop." "It hasn't stopped. And now it's not just at night apparently..." "The daytime stuff started when?" "This week. This holiday." "So maybe it's situational. Stress. Being away from home, new people, the whole..." She gestured vaguely. "Everything. That's different from a chronic pattern. That's your body reacting." "Yeah, well, my body's brilliant at reacting. It reacted all over that toilet back there." She almost smiled. Almost. "Fair point." They started walking again. The cabin couldn't be far now — he recognized the bend in the road, the particular cluster of birches that marked the last hundred meters. The question had been sitting in him for four days. He'd carried it around like a stone, turning it over at night under the plastic sheet, during Millie's morning changes, in the lift when Sophie talked about weather and he stared straight ahead thinking about the conversation he'd heard on day one. "Millie?" "Yeah?" "That thing you said. To my mum." He kept his eyes on the road. "The other day.." "What thing?" "When you were... doing the morning thing. And you and her were talking. About technique." Millie's brow furrowed. He could see it even in the dark — the slight contraction, the mind scrolling back through a weekend's worth of conversations. "Technique?" "The... cleaning. You said something to her about why it was difficult. To get into the..." He made a small, vague gesture toward his own body. "The creases." "Oh." She was still frowning. "I'm not sure I—" "You said there wasn't much bulk." The word landed between them like something dropped. Millie's face went through three expressions in quick succession — confusion, recognition, and then a careful, recalibrated stillness that told him she remembered exactly what she'd said and had hoped he hadn't been listening. "Ah," she said. "Because I was just thinking — I mean, it's cold up here, obviously, and I know that... that probably affects things. And in the mornings it's especially cold on the loft, so maybe what you saw isn't really, like, representative of—" "Liam—" "—and I read that stress can make it, you know, smaller, and there's been quite a lot of stress, so—" "Liam. Stop." He stopped. The excuse had sounded exactly like what it was — a seventeen-year-old who'd been rehearsing a defense of his own body for four days and still couldn't make it sound like anything other than begging. Millie was quiet for a long moment. She pulled her hands from her pockets and folded her arms against the cold, and when she spoke her voice was careful — not unkind, but honest in the way that unkindness sometimes resembles. "Okay. You're asking, so I'll be straight with you." She paused. "Your willy's a bit on the smaller side for your age. That's what I was telling your mum — the foreskin makes it tricky to clean underneath when there isn't much to work with, and that's why the technique matters. It was a practical thing, not a judgement." He said nothing. Something cold and heavy settled in his stomach, in the space the diarrhea had vacated. "But it doesn't mean anything's wrong," she continued. "Boys develop at completely different rates. I've worked with lads your age who were almost as small — some look twenty-five from the waist down, some look twelve. It doesn't settle until you're nineteen, twenty, sometimes later. And you're seventeen. Things can still change." "Right." "I mean it. It's not something to—" "I said right." She heard the finality in his voice and let it close. They walked the last few minutes without speaking. The cabin appeared through the trees — warm light in the windows, smoke from the chimney, the faint sound of a television through the double-glazed glass. A world where people came home from restaurants and talked about the food and didn't think about the thickness of the padding between their legs. Millie opened the gate. The gravel crunched under their feet. "Liam?" "What?" "For what it's worth — what happened in there was shit." A beat. "No pun intended. But we'll deal with it. Tomorrow's a new day and all that." He didn't answer. He followed her up the steps, and the warm air from the hallway hit his face, and somewhere inside the cabin his mum was waiting with questions he didn't have answers to, and the pull-up sat snug and dry against his hips, and his skin burned where the wipes had touched, and the whole world was exactly the same as it had been three hours ago except that now two more people had seen something they shouldn't have, and a girl he barely knew had just confirmed that his body was smaller than it should be, and the only person who'd asked him how he was doing was the same person who'd wiped his ass on a restaurant toilet twenty minutes ago. He took off his boots in the hallway and hung his jacket on the hook and went inside to face whatever came next. Chapter 60: Damage Control The table was set for eleven. That was the first thing Liam saw when Millie opened the front door — the big dining table pulled out from the wall to its full length, plates and glasses and napkins arranged in careful fan-shapes by someone who'd been busy while the world was ending at El Sombrero. Claire was in the kitchen doorway with a stack of glossy menus — grinning chef, neon pizza. "There you are! We're ordering from the pizzeria in town. They deliver right to the door. What do you fancy?" Liam stood on the hallway mat in his socks. He counted the place settings. He counted them again. "We're having people over?" "Yes! Sophie mentioned it this morning, and I rang Jake's lot at the hostel. Pizza, a film, a proper evening in." Claire beamed at him as though she were announcing a birthday party. "They should be here in about an hour." Something cold spread through his chest. Not dread — dread was too slow. This was instant, like stepping off a ledge. "That's still happening?" he said. "After — I mean, tonight's maybe not—" Claire stopped arranging. She looked at him with the mild, unclouded confusion of someone who had no reason to be confused. "Why wouldn't it be?" James appeared from the kitchen with a bottle of wine under each arm. Grace emerged from the small bedroom. Rob was somewhere upstairs. They were all looking at him now — four adults, five if you counted Millie, all waiting for the end of a sentence he couldn't finish. "It's just..." He swallowed. The words were stuck somewhere between his chest and his throat, like food that wouldn't go down. "Something happened. At the restaurant." Claire set the menus down. "What do you mean?" "There were..." He stared at the floor. His face was burning. "Those two girls. Jade and Mia. They came into the toilet. And I was there. With Millie. And they — they saw—" He stopped. He physically could not force the words out. They saw my pull-up. They saw me being wiped. They saw everything. But the words refused to join up with his voice, as if his body wouldn't recreate the humiliation by putting it into language. "Liam had a stomach upset and was surprised by two of the girls on the toilet," said Millie quietly from behind him. "They looked over the partition wall. He was mid-way through a visit, and they saw it. That's why we came home early." Silence. A long, heavy, adult silence. Then James said: "Good grief, is that what this is about?" He set the wine bottles on the counter and leaned back. "Claire walked in on me the other day. I was just sitting there, and the door wasn't locked, and in she came. I said 'shut the door!' and that was that." Claire laughed. "You didn't say 'shut the door.' You screamed like a bear." Rob appeared at the top of the stairs. "What's happening?" "Liam got walked in on at a restaurant toilet," said James. "Small cabin, small toilets. These things happen." "It's not the same!" Liam's voice was pressed and thin, and he could hear the edge in it — the edge that came from being treated like a child who'd scraped his knee. "It wasn't just—" "Liam." Grace stepped forward. Her voice carried the administrative finality that closed discussions. "It's a toilet. Everyone sits on a toilet. It's not the end of the world." "But they—" "They saw you on a toilet. That's embarrassing, yes. But it's not a reason to cancel an evening, I bet you they din’t think any more of it." She looked at him steadily. "Claire's invited them. The table's set. We're ordering pizza. And you will sit down and be part of it." The adults looked at him. All of them. With that unified expression that said: We don't understand what the problem is, but we've made a decision. He looked at Millie. She met his gaze. There was something in her eyes — a faint crease between her eyebrows — that said she understood. But she didn't say it. It wasn't her fight to take. "Fine," he said. "Fine," echoed Grace. "Fine!" said Rob, clapping his hands. "Right — pepperoni? They've got a 'Viking Special' with reindeer. Supposedly legendary." He held a menu toward Liam. Liam took it without looking at it. In one hour, Jade and Mia will be sitting at that table. They will look at me. They will know. The adults settled in. Rob opened the wine. James poured. Claire brought out crisps and dip. The television went on — Norwegian news, then a nature programme. The fire was rebuilt. Normal things, performed with the oblivious choreography of people who believed the evening was under control. Liam sat on the sofa and stared at the television without seeing it. His stomach was quiet — emptied, wrung out — but his skin still burned where Millie had wiped him, and the pull-up's elastic chafed against the raw line on his inner thighs. Rob came in from the kitchen with the glasses and set them on the coffee table. He looked from Liam to Millie to Grace, and his face arranged itself into the careful, non-specific concern of a man who sensed something but knew better than to name it. "Everything all right? He looks a bit peaky." "Liam's got a dicky tummy," said Grace from the armchair, not looking up from the menu. "He's had diarrhea," said Millie, because that was her register — clinical facts delivered without embarrassment, the way you'd say someone had a headache. "Will you stop talking about it!" His voice cracked. It came out louder than he'd meant — much louder — and the last word hung in the warm cabin air like a struck bell. Everyone looked at him. Claire, who was coming through with a bowl of olives, stopped mid-step. Silence. Grace looked at him. Not with anger, not with irritation, but with that cool, calculating patience — the expression he feared most. The one that said: I'm choosing not to react to this. But I've registered it. "Okay," she said. She stood up. She looked at Millie. "Millie, can you come with me for a moment?" Millie set her glass down and followed. The two women left the room and walked toward the small bedroom. The door closed with a soft click. Liam sank into the sofa cushions. Rob stood holding the wine glasses, looking at James. James shrugged — a small, helpless gesture that said: Don't ask me. Claire retreated to the kitchen. Behind the closed bedroom door, he could hear them. Not words — just tones. Grace's voice: clipped, purposeful, the sound of someone presenting a case. Millie's: slower, more measured, with pauses that suggested she was choosing each word carefully. Then a silence. A specific, weighted silence — the kind that follows when something physical is produced, shown, set down between two people. And then Millie's voice, clear enough to catch: "I understand the thinking. But if we introduce that now, it could—" Grace cut her off. The words were inaudible, but the rhythm was decisive. Millie again, quieter: "—a regression, not a progression. He needs to feel he's moving forward, not—" Grace's voice, flat and final. A pause. Then Millie: "Okay. But let’s just save it. For now." The door opened two minutes later. Millie came out first. Her face was composed — professionally composed, the mask she probably wore with other of her boy’s parents when they made a decision, she disagreed with but would follow. But there was something behind it. A flicker. Surprise, maybe. Or the careful suppression of an opinion she'd been told to keep to herself. She didn't explain. He didn't ask. But something had been discussed in that room — something drastic, something Grace had prepared — and Millie's assessment had been sought, and given, and overruled, and the thing had been put away. For now. Millie sat beside him on the sofa. She took out her phone and typed quickly, then tilted the screen so he could read. Something happened at El Sombrero. Jade and Mia came into the toilet while I was with Liam. They looked over the partition. I need to know what they're saying. Sophie's reply came within two minutes. It was longer than Liam expected, and it was direct. I haven't said anything. And I'd rather not get dragged into this tbh. The two of them are proper confused. What they saw was him sitting on the toilet and you standing in front of him looking all schocked with paper in your hand. They think it was fucking weird and gross. They've been going back and forth about whether it's some kind of fetish, either his or yours or if you were about to go down on him. Sorry. Liam stared at the screen. Fetish. Either his or yours. He didn't know if it was better or worse. They didn't think he was in a pull-up — the conclusion that a seventeen-year-old boy was wearing a DryNites was too absurd for the brain to land on. So they'd reached for the next available explanation: perversion. He was a pervert who got off on being watched or whatever. Or Millie was a pervert who got off on watching. Or both. He handed the phone back. Millie read the message again. Her face tightened — not with worry but with a controlled frustration that crept in behind the professional mask. "That's a bit annoying," she said quietly. He looked at her. It was the first negative thing she'd said about Sophie since arriving. Her face wasn't anger — it was the look of someone who'd expected backup and received a polite declination instead. "She doesn't want to be involved," said Liam. "No. She doesn't." Millie locked the phone and set it face-down on her thigh. "But she's going to be. Because she'll be sitting at that table in forty minutes." Twenty minutes later, Millie stood up. "Right," she said. "Let’s get you to the toilet. Just to be safe." "I don't need to go." "Your tummy's been through a lot today. Let's not take chances." She picked up her canvas bag from beside the sofa — the bag Mia had noticed, the bag that went everywhere — and tilted her head toward the bathroom. He followed. Not because he agreed, but because his body had learned the choreography. Stand, follow, close the door. The bathroom was small and familiar. White tiles, single window, the toilet with its wooden seat. Millie closed the door and set her bag on the bathtub edge. "Alrighty, trousers and pull-up down, butt on the toilet." He unbuttoned. Pushed everything to his ankles. Sat. The porcelain was cold, and the familiarity of the position — the exact same sequence he'd done at El Sombrero three hours ago — made something inside him contract. "Try," said Millie. "Even if nothing comes." He sat. His stomach churned — not the violent cramps from the restaurant, but a low, residual unease, like an engine idling after being pushed too hard. He concentrated. Pushed gently. A thin stream of liquid — less volume than before, but enough to sting. His rectum flared with the same raw, burning ache, and he gripped his knees and breathed through his teeth. "There you go," said Millie quietly. "Better out than in." She waited. A second wave — mostly air, a spattering trickle that echoed in the bowl. Then nothing. "Done?" "Done." She stepped forward with toilet paper. Folded, thick. "Lean, please." He leaned. She wiped — once, twice, checking the paper each time. The second wipe came away clean enough. His body flinched at every touch to his sore anus. "I think I’ll use a wet wipe now. I can tell you're still quite sore back here." The packet crinkled. The cool cloth against his inflamed skin made him flinch again, and she steadied him with a hand on his hip. "I know. Almost done." She finished. Paper and wipe into the bowl. Then she reached into the canvas bag and produced the tube of barrier cream — the hospital-grade one, sharper than Grace's zinc, with the medicinal smell that clung to his skin for hours. "Lie down for me. It'll be quicker." He only managed to look at her face briefly before she herself followed up: “Just do it already, Liam…” She took a hold of his upper arm and he lowered himself onto the bath mat. The ceiling was white and featureless. He felt her hands — warm, practiced — work the cream into his groin, along the elastic line where the pull-up had chafed, down between his legs where the skin was thinnest. Quick, thorough, impersonal. Then she tapped his hip. "Turn." He turned onto his side. She lowered her face to get a clear view as she applied cream to his buttocks, working it into the raw skin around his anus with small, circular motions. He stared at the bath panel and counted the tiles. Twelve across. Four high. Forty-eight tiles. "Good. Pull-up on." She helped him stand. Fresh pull-up from the bag — she'd packed spares. She held it open and he stepped into it. She pulled it up over his hips, adjusting the elastic, smoothing the waistband. Then his jeans, buttoned, zipped. "All sorted." She washed her hands. "How does your tummy feel?" "… Empty." "Good. That's what we want." She dried her hands and opened the door. "The others will be here soon. Try to eat something light — plain cheese, bread. Or at least not a full pizza maybe. Nothing spicy." He stood in the bathroom doorway. Through the living room, he could see the table — eleven settings, eleven napkins, eleven chances for someone to look at him and see the boy from the toilet. Millie touched his arm. "We'll get through it," she said. "One hour at a time." He nodded. He didn't believe her. But he nodded, because that was what happened now — someone told him it would be fine, and he nodded, and they both knew it wasn't true, and the evening assembled itself around them like a stage being set for a play neither of them had agreed to be in.  Chapter 61: Truth or Dare Three sharp knocks on the heavy front door, and Liam's body went rigid on the sofa. Claire was already moving — out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a tea towel. "They're here!" The hallway filled with voices, laughter, the clatter of boots kicked against the wall and jackets being shrugged off. Cold air rushed in under the living-room door and crept across the floorboards to where Liam sat gripping the edge of the cushion with both hands, trying to remember how a normal person arranged their face. Jake came in first. Broad and blond and easy, the way he always was, as though every room he entered had been waiting specifically for him. He scanned the living room, found Liam, and grinned. "All right, mate? Feeling better?" Will followed, slighter and quieter, nodding at the room with a half-wave. Then the girls. Jade was the smaller one but the most present — black jumper, dark hair pulled up in a high knot that exposed her jawline. Her eyes found Liam immediately, a quick scanning pass that noted everything and gave nothing back, before she looked away. Mia was taller, broader, with a round face and a mass of curls. She didn't look at him. She focused on Claire's demonstration of the coat hooks with the intensity of someone defusing a bomb. And behind them all, slightly apart, hands deep in her jacket pockets, Sophie. Her expression was unreadable — the studied blankness of someone who knew more than she intended to show. She slipped off her jacket, hung it on the last hook, and sat down in the armchair by the window without saying a word. Millie was cross-legged on the floor by the coffee table, sorting through a pack of cards she'd found in a drawer. She looked up when Sophie came in and their eyes met for a fraction of a second — something passed between them, quick and silent — before Millie went back to her cards. "Come in, come in!" Claire ushered the last of them through. "Sit down, relax! We've ordered pizzas from the place in town, they deliver right to the door." The atmosphere was strange. Like a duvet that didn't quite cover the bed — everything looked normal on the surface, but there was cold at the edges. Jake and Will took the big sofa. Jade took one armchair, Mia the other. Sophie stayed where she'd settled. Liam sat in the corner of the smaller sofa and felt like an exhibit in a museum nobody had wanted to visit. "Drinks?" Rob appeared from the kitchen with glasses on a tray. "Coke, juice, water — take your pick." "Any chance of wine?" said Jake, the tone balanced perfectly between joke and genuine request — light enough to retract, serious enough to land. Rob looked at Claire. Claire looked at Grace, who'd materialized in the kitchen doorway with her arms folded. A brief, silent exchange of raised eyebrows and tilted heads. "Go on, then," said Claire. "You're not driving anywhere, and I refuse to be the boring mum." She came back with a bottle of red and poured for everyone. Jake, Will, Jade, Mia, Sophie, Millie. And Liam. Liam took the glass. The wine was warm and heavy and tasted of something dark and tannin-sharp. He took a small sip and felt it burn down his throat. His stomach responded with an immediate, protesting gurgle — a deep, liquid vibration through his lower abdomen. He clenched his muscles and pressed his free hand flat against his hip. Not now. Not now. The adults retreated to the kitchen with promises to "let you lot enjoy yourselves." James drifted after them, hands in pockets. Rob followed. Grace went last. The look she gave Liam on the way out said everything her mouth didn't. I'm right here. The kitchen door went half-shut. Not fully closed. Their murmured voices carried through the gap. The silence, once the adults had gone, was enormous. Will broke it. "Nice place. We're at the hostel. This is like a palace." "Claire's family cabin," said Millie. "Twenty years." "Nice. We've got a caravan in Suffolk. Smells of wet Labrador." Jake grinned. "Because you've got a wet Labrador." "Touché." The conversation loosened slightly. Jake told the rest of the ski pole story from the chairlift that afternoon — the one he'd started at El Sombrero before everything had gone sideways — and Will filled in the parts Jake forgot, and Jade was laughing again, and for a few minutes the room sounded almost normal. But Liam noticed the way nobody mentioned the restaurant by name. The way Jade's eyes kept drifting back to him. The way Mia held her wine glass in front of her face like a shield. They knew something had happened. They just didn't know what. Jade set down her empty glass. "Okay," she said. "Are we going to talk about El Sombrero, or are we just going to sit here pretending?" Will stopped mid-sentence. Everyone looked at her. "What happened on that toilet?" She was looking directly at Liam. Not hostile — curious, with the edge of provocative honesty that some people wore like a badge. "Seriously. Mia and I have been going back and forth about it. And I'm not sitting here all evening wondering." Millie leaned back. She picked up her wine and took a slow, deliberate sip. Her face was calm. Perfectly, impossibly calm. "What happens between a man and a woman in a restaurant cubicle," she said, and there was a crooked smile at the corner of her mouth, "stays between a man and a woman in a restaurant cubicle" Will's eyes went wide. Jake choked on his wine. And then Will made the gesture — fist to cheek, tongue pushed into the opposite cheek — and the room detonated. "BRUV!" Will was on his feet, both hands out, pointing at Liam. "RESPECT!" Jake was doubled over, forehead against his knees. Jade laughed — shorter, sharper, with something skeptical still alive behind her eyes. Mia looked away with a stifled grin. Sophie was studying the label on the wine bottle with forensic concentration. Liam laughed with them. A thin, brittle sound that came from somewhere high and desperate in his chest. He forced the corners of his mouth up and made a noise that resembled amusement. They think Millie gave me a blowjob. That's better. That's a thousand times better. But Jade was still watching. Her laugh had already gone. Maybe. Or maybe not. She let it lie. "Right," said Sophie, and her voice slid into the silence with the smoothness of someone who'd been waiting for exactly this moment. "Enough about toilets. Anyone fancy something stupid? Truth or Dare?" Jake sat up. "Old school." "We're eighteen," said Jade, flat. "And?" Jake spread his hands. "I still play Pokémon. Truth or Dare's at least as legitimate." "Bit childish," said Mia, but she was smiling. "It's brilliant!" Will was already scrolling his phone, connecting it to the portable speaker on the bookshelf. A bassline filled the room. "Who starts?" "I'll start," said Jade, and her eyes swept the room. "Will. Truth or dare?" "Dare. Obviously." "Down your wine. One go. No pausing." Will looked at his nearly full glass, shrugged, and tipped it back in three long swallows. He slammed the glass down on the coffee table and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Easy." "Revolting," said Mia. "Your turn," said Jade. Will pointed at Jake. "Truth." Jake considered. "Go on, then." "Most embarrassing thing that's happened to you this entire trip." Jake rubbed his chin theatrically. "Okay. Thursday night at Stavkroa, I was trying to buy drinks at the bar and my card got declined. Three times. In front of Sophie." He gestured toward her. "She had to pay. For both of us. And then the barman asked if I needed him to call my mum." The room laughed. Sophie shook her head, smiling. "He genuinely did. He was about sixty and completely straight-faced about it." "Devastating," said Will. Jake turned to Mia. "Truth or dare?" "Truth." "Who in this room would you least like to be stuck in a lift with?" Mia went pink. She looked at the ceiling, the wall, the wine bottle. "Pass." "You can't pass on truth!" said Will. "Fine. Jake." She grinned. "Because you'd talk the entire time and I'd want to kill you after ten minutes." "Fair," said Jake, not remotely offended. The game was warming up. The wine was loosening muscles, dissolving the residue of the elephant that had been sitting in the room since they arrived. Liam sat in his corner and watched and felt the distance growing — the gap between their world and his, measured not in meters but in the things they didn't know about him. Mia was worried about being stuck in a lift. Jake's worst moment was a declined card. Their embarrassments were currency in a game. His were the kind that ended you. Mia pointed at Jade. "Truth or dare?" "Dare." "Finish Sophie's wine as well." Jade reached across, took Sophie's glass, and drained it. "Child's play." She set the glass down, wiped her mouth, and her eyes landed on Sophie with the predatory focus of someone who'd been waiting for this rotation. "Sophie. Truth or dare?" "Dare." Jade smiled. "Kiss Jake. Proper kiss. With tongue. Ten seconds." "Oh my God," said Mia sarcastically, hands over her face. “Daring someone to do a thing they desperately want to do.” Jake straightened with a speed that betrayed how long he'd been thinking about precisely this. "If Sophie's game, I'm game," he said, reaching for casual and landing closer to reverent. Sophie set down her empty glass. "Easy." She leaned across, placed a hand on his cheek, and kissed him. Not a closed-mouth peck but a real kiss — slow, thorough, her other hand finding his collar, his arm sliding around her waist. The room went quiet except for the music and the soft, wet sound of two mouths that had been circling each other for days. Will counted. "TEN! NINE! EIGHT!..." Liam watched. Sophie's hand in Jake's hair. Jake's arm tightening around her waist. Her closed eyes. That was me. Two days ago. Under the stars on the mountain, with her hair against my cheek and her mouth tasting of chocolate and the cold air on my neck and my hands shaking because I couldn't believe it was real. He watched Jake's fingers spread against the small of her back. He watched Sophie tilt her head to deepen the angle. The room was cheering but the sound reached him through something thick and muffling, as though his ears were packed with cotton wool. One of his hands, without his permission, had found the hem of his jumper and was pulling it down over his waistband. "TIIIIME!" Will bellowed, and they broke apart but not before carrying for an extra 4 damned seconds. Sophie laughed, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Jake's ears were the color of raw steak. "Okay." Sophie straightened her hair. "My turn." She looked at Will. "Truth or dare?" "Truth." "Have you ever accidentally sent a text to the wrong person?" Will groaned. "Yeah. Sent my mum a message meant for a girl I was seeing. Something like, 'Can't stop thinking about last night.' She rang me within thirty seconds. I didn't answer for two days." The laughter was warm and easy and Liam felt it wash past him like a current he was standing outside of. His stomach made a low, shifting sound beneath the music. He pressed his palm flat against it under the jumper. The pull-up crinkled faintly as he shifted, and he froze, but nobody was listening to him. They were listening to Will. They were laughing. They were pouring more wine from a second bottle Claire had silently deposited on the coffee table on her way past. He needed the toilet. The awareness arrived not as a thought but as a physical fact — a tightening in his lower abdomen, a warm, insistent pressure that had been building since the wine hit his empty stomach. He pressed harder against his belly and tried to calculate. How long since the last visit. How long until the next natural break. Whether anyone would notice if he just stood up and walked to the bathroom. Millie would notice. That was the answer. Or his mom would notice, and someone would ask, and Jade would file it away alongside whatever she thought she'd seen at El Sombrero. It wasn’t exactly like he could anything without bringing a toilet supervisor, so no chance of doing anything discreetly. Millie glanced at him from across the coffee table. A quick, professional scan — his posture, his hand against his stomach, the subtle shift of his weight. Her expression didn't change. She looked away. Then she leaned toward Sophie, their heads close, one hand shielding her mouth. She whispered. Brief, urgent, practical. Sophie's eyes flicked toward Liam for half a second — toward his midsection, toward the hand pressed flat against it — and she nodded. Barely. A millimeter of movement. Liam watched them straighten and look away from each other, and he knew, in the sinking way you know something before you understand it, that whatever they'd arranged was about him. Will pointed at Sophie. "Your turn again. Go." Sophie looked around the room. Her gaze landed on Millie with the precision of someone who'd known exactly where it was going to land. "Millie. Truth or dare?" "Dare." Sophie leaned forward. Her voice was light. Teasing. As though what came out of her mouth was a spontaneous idea, a silly whim. "Take Liam to the bathroom. Both of you strip down in front of each other, and you kiss him. Ten seconds." A beat of silence. Then: "Wait — why the bathroom?" Will looked incredulous. "Do it here! That's the whole point!" "Yeah," said Jade, arms wide. "Boring if we can't see, how will we even know they did it?" Sophie crossed her arms. "My mum's in the kitchen. That door's open a crack. Do you seriously want to stand around naked and snogging when she walks past for the crisps?" Jade considered. "Kind of, yeah." Jake and Will laughed. “But suit yourself, I guess.” "Bathroom," said Sophie. "Ten seconds." Millie stood. "Deal." She reached a hand down toward Liam. There was something in her eyes — quick, urgent, practical. Not flirtatious. Not playful. The blink of a professional who'd been given a window and was not going to waste it. He took her hand and stood. His stomach made a low, threatening sound that was mercifully drowned by Will's howl. "GET IN THERE, LIAM!" "WE'RE COUNTING!" Jake roared, and behind him, as Millie pulled Liam into the hallway, he heard Will shout: “REMEMBER LIAM, SOMETIMES IT’S A MARATHON, NOT A SPRINT!” The moment they were out of sight — in the narrow corridor toward the bathroom, the music thinning behind them — Millie dropped his hand and the mask fell away. "Quick. How's your tummy?" Liam was already reaching for his zip. His hands were shaking, the metal slipping through his fingers. His body was pressing, the stomach cramping, the warm insistent wave pushing downward. "Let me." Millie pushed his hands aside. Zip in one motion. Trousers to his knees. Pull-up gripped at the sides, torn open. He threw himself down on the seat. It came immediately. A violent, spraying rush of thin liquid that left his body with a sound he was certain carried through the walls. He pressed both hands over his face. The burning was worse than the restaurant — the skin around his anus already raw from the earlier episode, the barrier cream overwhelmed by hours of sweat and friction. Every wave was acid on open flesh. "They can hear it," he whispered through his fingers. "Music's on." Millie stood with her back against the door, arms folded, one foot braced against the wood. Steady, flat, professionally unimpressed. "They'll have stopped counting by now. Nobody's listening." Another wave. Shorter, sharper. He gripped his knees and bent forward, teeth locked, eyes streaming. “Why didn’t you say anything, for Christ’s sake, Liam…” Millie said in a disappointed tone. "Finished?" He waited. Listened to his own body the way you listen to a house after a storm. The shaking hadn't stopped. But the pressure was gone. "Yeah. Think so." "Lean forward." She wiped him. Toilet paper first, folded into a precise square. Then the wet wipe from the pack in her back pocket. It hit the raw skin and he flinched so hard his knee struck the wall. "Ow — fuck —" "I know. But we need it clean or it gets worse." Another wipe, faster, working between his buttocks and forward with unhesitating efficiency. "No time for cream. We'll do it properly later. Up." Pull-up up. Trousers up. Zip. Belt. Hands under the tap, side by side, the water too hot and then too cold. Millie looked at him in the mirror. "Ready?" Sweat on his forehead. Red eyes. But lighter. Physically lighter. "Ready." She opened the door. She went first. Liam close behind, pulling the front of his jumper down over his waistband out of habit. They came into the living room. The counting had stopped a long time ago. The sofa area had transformed. Jake and Sophie were pressed together in the big sofa, his hand in her hair, her hand on his thigh. Will sat in the armchair scrolling his phone with his feet up, wine glass balanced on his stomach. Jade had her legs stretched across the coffee table, watching the flirting couple with amused superiority. Mia was cross-legged on the floor, giggling at something on her screen. Nobody was looking at the doorway. Nobody had been looking for a while. While I was in there, they were out here. While Millie wiped me, Sophie was probably kissing Jake. While I gripped my knees and tried not to scream, they were laughing and drinking wine and being eighteen. He stood in the doorway and felt precisely like what he was. A child who'd come back from the bathroom while the grown-ups were having fun. "HEEEY!" Will spotted them and threw his arms wide. "They're back! Are you both happier now?" "In your dreams," said Millie, dropping onto the floor with a crooked smile. "No, no, no," said Jake, pulling away from Sophie with a grin. "You can't just walk back in like that. Did you actually strip? That was the deal." "A gentleman never tells," said Millie. "Liam's not a gentleman," said Will. "Liam. Mate. Did you strip? Did she strip? We need to know." Liam opened his mouth. Nothing came out. He could feel his face burning — the heat climbing from his chest to his neck to his cheeks in a wave that had nothing to do with wine and everything to do with the raw, scraped skin under his pull-up and the fact that five minutes ago Millie had been wiping feces off his body and now they were asking him whether he'd seen her naked. "Look at him!" Jake was delighted. "He's gone red! Something definitely happened." "Something always happens in a bathroom," said Millie, and the smile she gave was the perfect blend of coy and dismissive, and Liam understood, in a distant and exhausted way, that she was very good at this. That the performance cost her nothing. "Is she fit?" said Will, leaning forward, his voice dropping to a stage whisper. "Like, properly fit?" "Will," said Jade. "Read the room." "What? He's beaming!" Liam was not beaming. Liam was sitting down, carefully, slowly, onto the sofa, and the pull-up was warm and tight against his hips, and the skin beneath it throbbed with a low, constant burn along the crease of his inner thighs where the elastic bit into flesh that had been wiped and re-wiped and creamed and wiped again until it was the color of undercooked beef. "I reckon he's in love," said Jake, and the room laughed, and Liam tried to arrange his face into something that looked like bashful pride rather than the slow-motion collapse of a person who was being eaten alive from the inside. The doorbell rang. "Pizza!" Rob called from the hallway. The front door opened. A brief exchange. The rustle of cardboard boxes. "Pizza's here, everyone!" Claire appeared in the kitchen doorway. "Table's ready!" The room shifted. Bodies unfolded and moved toward the dining table in one collective, hungry stream. Jake first, already lifting a lid. Will peering over his shoulder. Jade sliding into a chair. Sophie followed Jake, her fingers brushing his arm. Liam sat for one second longer. He watched them all. Jake tearing open the first box. Will reaching for the Viking Special. Mia laughing at something Jade said. Rob distributing plates. Claire counting heads. James settling into the far chair with quiet relief. Grace standing in the kitchen doorway, drying her hands on a towel, watching the table fill. Normal people. Doing normal things. Kissing and laughing and eating pizza and living their lives without thinking about whether their pull-up was holding, or whether their skin was bleeding, or whether someone would check them before bed. "Liam!" Rob waved a slice. "Come on, before Jake finishes the lot!" He stood up and walked to the table.