Latest News and Updates

I keep my area shaved smooth. At least once a week I shave 🪒 in the shower and clean up my whole diaper region. Bald is beautiful. 

Maybe its best that I don't say I'll have another chapter done by a certain period of time. My word is as good as a politician's at this point - no trust from the people, and rightfully so! Sorry! Then there was the days-long outage of the forum! Yesterday, 430 million people didn't have outlook for a day, but at least they didn't miss days of diaper story fap!! So, I got to take my time a bit with the feel of this one. 4000 words. Sit back and relax, we ain't goin no where fast!   Chapter 34 The women walked towards the water. Jacob watched their curves sway and the low-sun glowed on their oil-glistened bodies. They went in slow, gasping at the cool in the way that heat makes you want the cool and hate it — step, *oh*, step, *ohhh God*, hip-deep, then all at once, and then they were two heads and two sets of shoulders drifting in the turquoise, glasses safe on the pool shelf in their plastic stemware, and their voices came across the water flattened and smeared by the breeze, arriving at the pen in pieces. Jacob suckled the pacifier — his pacifier — and stacked the cups. *Tonk. Tonk.* Unstacked them. The sun crawled. The filter hummed its one long hymn. The air smelled layered: chlorine off the pool, coconut off the women, and under it all — as the afternoon tipped past its peak — the first cool breath of the season, carrying somebody's woodsmoke from three streets over, a chimney being tested early for a fall that was technically already here. September doing two seasons at once. A heat wave lying over the turning leaves like a blanket over a made bed. The whole yard was two things at the same time, and Jacob, idling in his mesh box in his diaper with his duck, understood it perfectly without being able to name it. Fragments drifted across the water: "—Denise said she'd bring the — so we don't have to —" "— Thursday's supposed to be even *warmer*, which is —" Thursday. The word went by like a boat. He watched it go. "— oh my god, *she’s* coming too —" a shriek of laughter from Lana, water slapping, "— no. *No.* You didn't." Jacob felt a chill go up his spine. The word landed in him and sat there, numb, wrapped in laughter he couldn't decode. *An outing perhaps —maybe lunch with the girls, Amanda set to introduce Lana to a few of her other friends—* But it never occurred to him to ask the only question that mattered: where was he going to be? He'd heard them decide the pen's placement before they came outside — so we can see him — and being seen had sounded, for one second, like safety. *Please — just some ladies while I’m— would they actually — No —* The warmth came while he was paddling through the memories of all of the mentions of Thursday. It came with no ceremony at all — a spreading warmth through the front of the padding, slow as syrup, and Jacob registered it the way you register a cloud crossing the sun: a fact of weather, noted, filed, unremarkable. It took his mind off things temporarily, but it had become more and more natural — too natural. His face did not go still. His face did nothing. The tell was fading, dissolving like a contrail, and it was Lana — treading water, gin-far, eyes like a hawk even lazy — who registered it for him, calling across the pool with a lazy delight: "Baby just went pee-pee and didn't even blink!" A laugh, water-lapped. "Oh, we're getting *so* relaxed." And Jacob took the pacifier between his teeth and looked at the women — two glossy heads in turquoise water, wet and laughing and lit gold at the edges, sisters or more, an image out of a life he used to have, a beer commercial or a memory of a house he'd lived in before this one — and the one lucid thought of the swim hour surfaced in him and held: *They look like something from before all this. Like the life that was outside the window. And I'm peeking over the rails of a playpen.* The fog let him keep it a while, this one. It floated him on it like a raft. Then the breeze came through the mesh and carried a smell of chlorine off the pool, and the cups needed restacking, and it went. After a short while, they climbed out. The climbing-out was its own event, and Jacob watched all of it: Amanda first, hauling up the ladder steps, water sheeting off her in ropes, the black bikini gone painted-on, every line of her printed through wet fabric, and then Lana, sleek as an otter, wringing her hair at the top of the steps, and the two of them walked the pavers toward the pitcher and the towels, dripping long ropes of chlorinated water, ...and the route took them straight past the pen. They didn't pass. Wet feet came *slap, slap* up the hot stones, large drips of water unwinding off both of them, and then two shadows fell across the mesh and stopped, and the playpen — his whole territory, his mesh nation — filled up with wet women. Amanda leaned over the rail first. The bikini had gone painted-on in the water — every line of it printed through wet black fabric, the cups clinging, the bottoms riding, nothing left to the imagination that the imagination wasn't already doing — and she hung there over him with her arms folded on the rail and her dripping hair curtaining down, close enough that he could see the water beading in the fine hairs of her collarbone, close enough that a drop fell off her and landed on his knee with a fat cold *tk*. "Hi, baby," she said. "Did you miss us?" Jacob had the duck in his lap and his pacifier in his mouth and nowhere on earth to put his eyes. Her chest was right there — six inches above his upturned face, shifting as she breathed, the wet fabric doing what wet fabric does to a secret, which is end it. Amanda, historically, had not been merciful about his stares. "Auntie's all wet," she crooned, "isn't she. Yes she is. All soggy and drippy on baby's — oop—" And she shook her hair out like a dog. Both hands raking it back off her face, her whole head whipping once, twice, and the water came off her in a sheet — cool chlorinated needles landing across his face, his chest, his lap, speckling the duck, beading on the pacifier shield — and Jacob flinched and ducked, and shivered from the coolness, a helpless hiccup of a thing, before he could get a single hand up. "Auntie got you!" she crowed, delighted with herself, dripping on him, on his whole nation. "Auntie *got* you!" "There's a face," Lana said, arriving wet beside her, wringing one twisted rope of dark hair over the rail with both fists, deliberately, a long-braided stream of water that landed square on his head and ran down his temple and behind his ear. "Ohh. Okay, that's better. Somebody was looking a little warm." He wiped his face with the back of his wrist. It was useless — they were a weather system, both of them, still shedding — and his chest was beaded all over with cold dots shrinking and evaporating one by one off his bare skin in the heat, tickling as they went. Both women hung on his rail, laughing, thighs pressed to the mesh at his eye level, and the contact — the drops, the flicked water, the cold needle-spray — was the closest anything adult and female had come to his actual body in days, and it meant nothing. That was the whole architecture of it. It was affection the way rain is affection. He was something you could drip on, something to play with. A tease or a game to make a baby laugh. Jacob was not laughing. And his body — his stupid, unconsulted body, days behind on every account — did its arithmetic anyway. Eyes drifting, curve to curve, crevice to crevice. He wished he could touch — wished he could squeeze. The damp padding cradled him, the padding always cradled him now, and the ache came awake at half-strength under it all, stirring against the fresh bulk like a sleeper turning over, and he sat very still with his duck and prayed it away. Amanda's eyes flicked down. Once. To the front of the diaper, the shelf of padding, whatever movement was or wasn't happening under it. Then back up to his face, quick and easy, one corner of her mouth lifting — and nothing. Nothing said. Not a word, not an eyebrow, not a glance at Lana. She just dripped on him and smiled at him and reached through the mesh to straighten the duck on his knee with one wet finger. The not-saying was so much worse. He'd take the teasing, he'd take the leaky-baby jokes — those at least *said*. This was a door closing quietly somewhere in another room of the house. Ignoring his natural manly physical reaction was as emasculating as anything the last few days. The women peeled off to the towels. That was its own event — the *snap* of cloth shaken out, Amanda putting her hair up with a twist and a tuck and a gasp of relief, Lana blotting her long and thorough in the gold light, and the pitcher came around again for refills, the ice in it mostly melted now, the drinks going pale and thin and cold, glasses clinking *tink* against the plastic stemware on the table. Jacob watched from the mesh with his chest drying in the sun and the pool filter humming its one long hymn behind everything. The afternoon broke, then. Slowly, by a degree, the way a fever breaks — you couldn't say when, only that the shadow of the fence had crossed the pavers and the light had gone from white to gold, deepening, and the first honest coolness came moving across the yard under the heat like a draft under a door. Autumn, remembering itself. The maples past the fence caught the low sun and went up like matches, reds and yellows lit from inside, and the women went soft with it — wrapped, warm-skinned, gin-mellowed, their voices slowing down into the register that had no schedule. "God, this was *so good*," Amanda said, sunk sideways into a lounger, sunglasses up in her hair, one leg off the edge, her towel gapping over the damp suit. "I needed this. We needed this. Look at him," and her hand swam in his direction, "he needed this." "He did," Lana agreed, from the other lounger, and she was right, and that was the worst of it — he sat there in the gold with his duck and his stacked cups and felt *good*, felt sun-warm and fed and ‘watered’ and attended, and knew it. “I’ll check his diaper.” Amanda sat up and took a big sip of her cup before setting it down, “his rash was mostly on his bum, so he should be okay if he’s still just a bit damp.” “Aww, thanks for checking.” Lana leaned back and stretched her arms behind her head. “He’ll need a bottle soon, too” Amanda rose from her chair in one liquid motion — the cover-up settling around her thighs, bare feet in the scorched grass — and came around the table, and Jacob's suckle slowed against the rubber without stopping, because his body no longer permitted a full stop. She lowered herself to the edge of the pen, her gin-warm shade closing over him and the stuffed animals both, close enough that he could smell her — faint sunscreen under the juniper and citrus-sweetness of her gin-breath. "Look at you," she murmured. Her hand came out and turned his chin, gently, left, right, examining his face with exaggerated movements, poised to address him. "Drifting. Paci in. Squeezing your little ducky." She glanced down at his hand — he hadn't known he was still squeezing it, rhythm gone lazy, in time with his mouth — and her laugh came out low, almost private. "Lana and I built all of this, you know. Every piece. And you just — *moved in.*" Lana swirled the last slivers of disintegrating ice left from the gin jug from the final pours into their cups, sitting back and Jacob watched her thighs settle, chest easing with a slight jiggle as she took another sip of her cup and released a satisfying sigh into the cooling breeze. The plastic duck’s neck was warm from his palm. The large nipple of the pacifier squeaked faintly against his teeth. Leaves fell into the yard, not far from his playpen. Her chest was almost popping out of her bikini top again. So close. The thought got as far as the muscle. The muscle didn't get the message. The fog was thicker out here, sun-baked, the heat lying on him like a second blanket. "You know what I said to her?" Amanda leaned in, confiding, her voice pitched under the filter's gurgle. "At my place. After you went down for your nap, after we did the change together — I said, *Lana, that boy is further along than you think.* And she got this little smile." Amanda's finger tapped the duck-button on his pacifier, once, watching the wobble travel down the rubber and into his mouth. "That *exact* little smile.” Looking back at Lana, and back at him. “Like she knew something about you that even you didn't know yet." Jacob felt a shiver go through him at the same time as a hard throb met the front of his damp diaper. He shuddered and felt a rush of heat through embarrassment. The shameful pleasure of it — small instinctive thrusts against the warm wet crinkle — lit him up like a wire, three days of want with nowhere to go. Her hand left his chin and traveled down his arm, to his ribs and arrived at his hip, found the crinkle of the waistband, and went lower, Her palm flattening over the front of the diaper the way Lana's always did, testing, weighing. He flinched around the pacifier, a small *mmnh* escaping the rubber seal. An intense jolt that he felt all the way up his spine to his shoulders. "Wet," she reported, to the yard, delighted. "Yeah. She'll want to know. Hold that thought, diaper-boy — actually, don't hold *that*, clearly we're past that stage, aren't we." Her thumb pressed the padding once, watching his face for the flinch, cataloguing it. *This is just so much fun — he just lies there and blushes. It's the blush. It's the best part.* She retrieved her glass on the way back to her own chair, unhurried, and the ice had melted to thin clicking sheets, and she drank it down like water. Jacob glanced at the sweet sways of her ass with each step as the shadows of the fence knocked against her thighs. She sunk into her chair and threw her towel over her legs, settling down with a deep sigh. Lana had fallen silent. A sun-soaked short nap — or, perhaps, just pure satisfaction. The sun moved. The filter churned to a slower setting, allowing more subtle sounds of nature to settle in. The last few bees on the garden buzzed, a dragonfly circled the pool and bounced around and took Jacob’s attention as if to offer brief reprieve beyond the mesh walls. Some far-off lawn mower started and stopped and started again, and woodsmoke threaded under it from two houses over — September whispering its long goodbye, insisting on itself beneath the heat wave that was evaporating into the receding sunset — and Jacob drifted in the warm amber of it all, suckling, damp, still sat upright and cross-legged, held in place by nothing but the arrangement of the world around him — the pen, and everything beyond it. The gate hinge complained to itself in the breeze. Intermittent deeper breaths from both women. Jacob fell to his back and looked up at the darkening sky. The mesh framed a tall rectangle of sky above him, and he watched the color leave it. Blue going thin. Thin going lavender. The gold drained off the fence slats one board at a time, west to east, like a receipt printing. Somewhere inside the house a timer or a thermostat clicked, and the pool light came on with a soft electrical *thmm* — automatic, unsupervised, faithful — and the water went lit from below, and moving light climbed the fence and the maples and rippled there, silver-blue, the whole yard suddenly breathing. The cool arrived in his padding before it arrived anywhere else — the wet front of the diaper going first cool, then cold, then *heavy*, a small swamp of spent warmth sagging at his hips as the evening air found the damp and worked on it, and Jacob registered the chill the way he registered everything now: as weather happening to him. His body curled its small adjustments. His legs drew up. The pacifier kept its slow, patient rhythm, and his hand found the duck by touch in the darkening pen, tucking it against his ribs without consulting him. The last two or three real sentences of the day surfaced in the amber, and he let them come because resisting them had stopped working somewhere around the fourth or fifth cup restack, and because — and this was the one he could still feel the edges of — he didn't actually want to resist. That was the finding. Not *I can't hold the thought.* Not the old vertigo of watching the fog take things. Just a quiet, damning inventory, delivered without cruelty, without ceremony, in the voice that used to write emails: *I don't check my phone anymore. I don't know where it is. I haven't known where it is for — days. I’ve said nothing. I didn't ask about Thursday. I heard them say Thursday and I watched the word go by like a boat and I stacked the cups. I went pee-pee in front of them and my face did nothing. My face does nothing now. That's the tell gone. That was the last — that was the —* The thought didn't sink. It settled. That was the difference out here in the dusk, the thing that made the evening fog kinder and worse at once: nothing dragged it under. It just lay down on its own, the way a dog lies down in a patch of late sun, and the rhythm of the suckle closed over the top of it, *sck... sck... sck*, soft rubber squeaking faintly against his teeth, and the finding stayed with him — warm, heavy, and entirely without grammar — like a stone at the bottom of a clear pool. He could see it down there. He didn't dive for it. A moan came from the lawn chairs and arms stretched out, shadows nearly reaching the playpen. Flip-flops crossed the patio stones, unhurried — *flap, flap* — and Lana's voice came down to him out of the lavender, low and unhurried, worn soft at the edges like everything about her by this hour. "There's my baby boy." She crouched at the rail, and her hand came through the mesh and rested on his chest — over his heart, over the slow rise and fall of him — and stayed there, weighing nothing, weighing everything. Her hair was still damp, and the smell of chlorine and coconut and the juniper ghost of the afternoon came off her wrist as she leaned in. "Somebody had another big day, huh. Look at those heavy eyes." *He's so soft out here,* she thought, watching the suckle move his cheek, watching his eyelids lose the fight in slow increments. *No fight left in him at all today. And Amanda was right — he is further along. Tuesday we'll see about that rash, and — mm. Lots to prepare for on Wednesday before the big day on Thursday.* "Tomorrow's a baby spa-day, sweetie," she murmured, thumb stroking once across his chest. "Creamy for your rashies first. Then Auntie's bringing something special to take care of that silly hair on your pee-pee and bum-bum.” Jacob flinched at the baby talk, felt embarrassed but just as most of the day, nothing but a barely audible whimper came from his mouth through his pacifier. “So we get you good and dry tonight, and good and slept, because Mommy needs her baby rested for another big day." A soft laugh, mostly to herself, gin-warm. "You're going to hate the smell. It works anyway." She reached down through the mesh and worked the pacifier free of his mouth — he made a small, involuntary sound after it, *mmh*, lips still pursing around nothing — and his lips stayed pursed for three more seconds, chasing the rubber into empty air, and then his breathing found its evening register, slow and full, and his hand tightened once on the duck and went slack. Lana watched him sleep for a while. The pool light rippled silver-blue across the mesh, across the duck, across his slack face, and the woodsmoke threaded through everything, and somewhere three houses down the lawn mower finally stopped for good. She didn't take him in yet. She let the dusk do its work a little longer, one arm folded on the rail, her chin on her arm, humming the tuneless evening hum, while inside the pen the small wet warm fact of him slept on, breathing in time with the filter, in time with the water, in time with the whole arranged world. Amanda's chair creaked its empty complaint behind the sound of her feet on the scorched grass, unhurried, bare, coming around the table with her glass still dangling from two fingers and the last thin clicking sheets of ice surrendered inside it. She set it down on the table's edge without looking. The cover-up shifted around her thighs as she walked, and the pool light found her from below, silver-blue, and Jacob watched her grow taller in the mesh frame until she filled it — hips, towel-gap, the black bikini still damp-dark at the seams — and then she was lowering herself toward him, one hand on the rail, her shadow and her shade closing over the pen and the duck and him together, close enough that the juniper and citrus-sweetness of her breath arrived a full second before her face did, lit from underneath like something in an aquarium. Her eyes did the tour. His slack mouth. The working cheek. The drowsy, failing eyelids. The duck tucked against his ribs, and lower — the sagging shelf of the diaper, gone visibly heavy in the cool, the padding bunched thick and listing south with the evening's wet weight, a fact she read the way she read everything about him now, at a glance, by silhouette. She looked to Lana, then looked back. Amanda’s smile arrived before her voice did, slow and curling, one corner first, the exact corner that had lifted at the rail an hour ago over whatever was or wasn't happening under the padding — and she reached through the mesh and gave his damp, poofy crotch one soft, proprietary pat-pat. "I bet someone needs a diaper change!"  

Chapter 9: The New Normal The door shut and the sound of it went through him like a nail. Ryan stood where Darnell had set him down, in the middle of the guest room, in a diaper, and did not move. The room smelled of nothing yet. It was a room nobody had ever lived in. Twin bed, cotton sheets, one pillow, a dresser with a lamp on it, and a rectangle of sun on the carpet that had been there all morning and would be gone by noon. He sat on the edge of the bed. The diaper rustled under him and he hated it and he sat on it anyway. For a while there was nothing. Then the pipes ran. Then the pipes stopped. Then, faintly, through the wall, a laugh. Her laugh. Not the polite one she used on the phone with her mother. The other one, the one that came out of her when something was genuinely funny to her, and it was followed by a low rumble of a man's voice, and then by nothing at all for so long that Ryan started to hope, stupidly, that they were talking. That they were sitting on the bed with a respectful foot of space between them, discussing the countertop. Then the bed creaked. It creaked in a rhythm. Slow at first, a soft complaining sound, and then the rhythm found itself and settled and became a knock — the headboard, the heavy oak headboard of the bed Ryan had slept in for eleven years, hitting the wall at the end of the hall. And Kimberly made a sound. Ryan sat up straight. It was a long sound. It went up at the end of it and broke off and then came again, and it was not a sound he had ever gotten out of her. Not once. Not in eleven years, not on their wedding night, not in the first apartment with the futon and the neighbours who complained. He had heard her make a lot of noises in that bed and every one of them had been small and polite and quickly over, the way she was about everything, and this was not that. The headboard knocked. She said something Ryan couldn't make out, and then she laughed again, breathless and broken, and the man said something back and she made a different sound entirely. Ryan's hands were cold. He put them between his knees. Six minutes. He lasted six minutes. Then he was up, and his hand was on the guest room door, and he was out in the hall with the carpet cold under his bare feet and the diaper loud in the quiet — that crinkle, that endless crinkle, announcing him — and he walked the eleven feet to the master bedroom and pushed the door open without knocking. The lamp was on. The sheets were half off the bed and pooled at the foot of it. Kimberly was on her front with her hips pulled up under her and her face turned sideways into the mattress, her mouth open, her hair stuck flat to her cheek, one hand fisted white in the sheet by her shoulder. She had her eyes shut. And behind her, kneeling up, was Darnell. Naked. Ryan had never seen him naked. He had seen the shape of it at a urinal three weeks ago and had gone home and thought about it and been ashamed of thinking about it, and it had been a soft grey suggestion then, something glimpsed and doubted. It was not a suggestion now. It was out and dark and shining wet with her, as thick at the base as Ryan's wrist, and it slid out of his wife almost all the way and then drove back in, one long unhurried stroke, and her body moved with it and took all of it, all of it, without the smallest complaint. Darnell had hair down there. A heavy black thatch of it, thick and low, and the cock coming out of it wet and enormous. Ryan stood in the doorway with his mouth open and nothing came out of it. Darnell's hips kept working. He looked over at Ryan the way a man looks at a dog that has wandered into a room. "Out," he said. "Or shut the door." Ryan did neither. He stood there in a t-shirt and a diaper with the light from the hall behind him. "Nobody told me." "Ryan." "You could have said something." Darnell pulled out. It came out of her slowly and shining and she made a small bereft noise and put her forehead down on the mattress. He swung one leg off the bed and stood, and standing he was enormous — chest and shoulders and a flat hard slab of belly and the thing hanging off him still heavy and dark and not going down at all, hanging in its nest of hair like it belonged there. "Come here," he said. Ryan didn't move. Something in him had gone hot and stupid. "I'm the one who lives here. That's my bed, and you're the—" he chopped at the air, "—you're the *help*—" "That's the tantrum," Darnell said. "You finished?" "No." "Finish it, then." Ryan opened his mouth and discovered he had nothing left to finish it with. His eyes went helplessly down the length of the man, to the cock, and then away to his wife's bare back, and then down to the diaper he was standing in, and his face screwed up and his voice cracked straight down the middle of itself. "It's not *fair.*" And then he wet himself. He felt it start and there was nothing at all to be done about it. The sudden spreading warmth against the front of the padding, the sag as it took the weight of it, the way it went from snug to heavy and hot and sloppy between his legs in the space of four seconds. He stood in the doorway of his own bedroom soaking himself in front of a naked man and cried. Darnell watched it happen and said nothing about it. He sat back down on the corner of the bed and patted his thigh. "Over." "I'm already—" "Over, kiddo." Ryan went. Three steps and he was at the bed and Darnell's hand closed round his wrist and pulled, and he went down across a pair of bare thighs with his feet off the floor and his palms flat on the mattress and the smell of Darnell and of his own wife all over the sheet right under his face. His ass was up. The wet diaper was pushed up between his cheeks. Darnell put a hand flat on his back. "You knock. You wait till you're called. Mommy's room you don't come into without asking." The hand pressed him flatter. "Say it back." "It's not just—" "Say it back." "Knock and wait," Ryan said. "Don't come in Mommy's room." "Good." And then, without ceremony, Darnell's fingers hooked the waistband at his hip and dragged the soaked diaper down over his ass and off his legs and dropped it on the floor. Cool air came over him. He felt his own skin, damp and warm and bare, up over a naked man's lap — and then Darnell's palm, resting there a moment before he started, on the smooth skin of his bare cheek. There was no hair on his backside either. There had never been much of anywhere. The hand came down. The first one was a shock — flat, loud, hot — and Ryan jerked and made a noise like a hiccup. "One," he said. The second landed before he had finished the word. "Two." "Count them out loud," Darnell said. "They don't count if you don't." "Three—" Kimberly had turned over. She was up on one elbow with the sheet across her hip and she was watching. She wasn't laughing anymore and she wasn't looking at him with pity either. She was looking at him the way she looked at a set of papers she had to grade before Monday. By four his ass was burning in a wide even band across both cheeks. By five he was squirming and Darnell's forearm came down across the small of his back and held him flat as a board. By six he was crying properly — not the cracked thing from the doorway, but real, wet, open crying — and he had to stop and get the number out around it. "Six. *Six.*" "Keep going." "Seven—" Something else was happening, too, and it was worse than the crying. The friction, the position, the bare thigh under him, the smell, the flat relentless palm of the man — all of it had got together and Ryan's cock had stiffened against Darnell's leg and there was nowhere to hide it. It came up and out and pressed into the muscle of Darnell's thigh, small and hard and utterly obvious. And because there was no hair on him, not a strand of it, there was nothing at all to soften the picture: just bare smooth skin all the way down and two inches of pink standing out of the middle of it, reddening as it filled. Darnell felt it. He landed eight and then paused with his hand up and looked along the length of Ryan's back at it. "Not a hair on it and it's still trying." "*Eight.*" Kimberly made a soft noise through her nose. Not quite a laugh. "Eleven years," she said. "Nine," said Ryan, wrecked. Darnell held the last one a beat longer than the others and then brought it down harder than any of them, right across the sit spot where the halves met, and Ryan bucked and sobbed. "*Ten.*" The hand stayed on him a second, heavy and warm, and then lifted. "Up." Ryan got up. His legs were shaking. His ass was on fire and his cock was still up, standing straight out of bare skin in front of both of them, and he put his hands behind him and then didn't know what to do with them and put them back down again, and his hands did nothing to cover anything at all. Darnell picked the wet diaper off the floor, looked at it, and dropped it in the bin by the dresser. Then he took a fresh one off the stack Kimberly had left on the nightstand and shook it out. "Lie down." Ryan lay down on the wet sheet where his wife had been, on his back, and Darnell took his ankles in one hand and lifted them and slid the diaper under him and lowered him onto it. The powder came, a cold shake of it, and it went onto bare skin and stayed there in a white dusting because there was nothing to work it into. The front came up over the erection and pressed it flat to his belly. The tapes went on one, two, three, four — two at the hips, two more across the front where he couldn't reach them — snug and tight. Darnell patted the front of it. "Back you go." He picked Ryan up off the bed — one arm under the shoulders, one under the knees — and Ryan's arm went round his neck without being told, and he carried him down the hall in a fresh diaper, past his wife getting her breath back, and set him down inside the guest room and turned on the lamp. "Stay in here till somebody comes for you." He stopped with his hand on the door. "And you'd better learn to behave. Next time it's worse." The door closed. Ryan stood in the middle of the room with a hot ass and a clean diaper and his wife eleven feet away in bed with a naked man, and put both hands over his face. --- He cried for a while. Properly, standing up, with his palms pressed into his eye sockets, the way he hadn't let himself cry since he was a boy. It was the crying of a man who has just been spanked over another man's knee and knows it, and it came out of him in ugly gulps, and the diaper crinkled every time his chest jumped. Then it stopped, the way it does. He wiped his face on the shoulder of his t-shirt and sat down on the bed and the burn of the spanking came back as soon as his weight settled and he came up off it again with a hiss. Through the wall, the bed was creaking again. They hadn't finished. He'd been in the middle of it and they had put him over a knee and sent him out and now they had gone back to it, and the creak had that same rhythm, and Kimberly's sounds had come back, and this time she wasn't quiet about it at all. Ryan sat on the sore half of himself and listened to his wife be finished off by another man, and the diaper he was sitting in stayed dry, and stayed dry, and stayed dry. --- The knock at the guest room door came at half past eleven and it was two brisk raps, and then the door opened before he answered, because it was Kimberly, and because Kimberly had never in her life waited for a door to be opened for her. She had her dressing gown on and her hair up and her face washed, and she looked at him the way she looked at a spill. "Are you wet?" "No." She came over and put her hand flat on the front of the diaper and pressed, once, businesslike, and then took it away. "Downstairs, then." She got him up — one arm under the shoulders, one under the knees, the same way Darnell had — and Ryan's arm went round her neck because there was nowhere else to put it, and she carried him out of the guest room and down the stairs. She was smaller than Darnell and it was a rougher ride. She took the corners too fast. Ryan held on and looked at the side of her jaw and the soft under-edge of it, and she carried him through the hall and into the living room and set him down on the sofa with a cushion pushed under his hip. Then she picked up the remote and turned the television on and found the cartoons and left them there, and put the remote back down on the arm of the sofa out of his reach, and went out to the kitchen. --- The living room was where the television was, and now the television was showing a yellow sponge shouting at a starfish, and Ryan sat on the sofa at a careful angle and watched it. The kitchen was eight feet away and full of Darnell. He was dressed again — jeans, boots, a grey t-shirt with a bleach mark on the shoulder — and he was on his knees at the base of the cabinets with a caulking gun, laying a bead of sealant along the join, and the sight of him down there doing it properly was somehow worse than the nakedness had been. The nakedness was a fact. The competence was a judgement. The cartoons went on. Ryan watched them. It was the first thing he had watched all day that did not require anything of him, and after a while he stopped seeing the room at all — the sealant, the boots, the bin by the dresser upstairs, all of it went out of his head and left the sponge and the starfish and a crab in a green shirt, and he sat there in a diaper on his own sofa and let himself go slack against the cushion. It happened somewhere in there and he did not notice it. There was warmth, and it spread, and the padding swelled and went heavy between his legs, and Ryan went on watching the cartoon. Kimberly came back through with a glass of water for Darnell. She set it on the plywood, and on her way past the sofa she put her hand flat against the front of the diaper the way she did every time, and pressed, and did not take it away. "Ryan." "Mm." "You're soaked." "I'm not." "Feel it." He put his hand down. The front of the diaper was heavy and hot and soft against him, swollen and sloppy, and it had been for a while — long enough that it had gone from hot to merely warm, and he had not noticed any of it. Darnell had come to the kitchen doorway with the caulking gun in his hand. "Didn't even notice, did you." "No." "Mat's upstairs, Kim. Top of the stack." She went and got it. She put it down on the sofa beside his hip and got him onto it and got the four tapes open, and Darnell came back through with the bin and put it down by the arm of the sofa and went back to the cabinets and knelt down and went on with the sealant as though nothing at all were happening eight feet behind him. She cleaned him and powdered him and taped him into a fresh one, briskly, in under a minute, and the whole time Ryan lay on the mat on his own sofa with the cartoons going on the screen above him and Darnell's caulking gun clicking away in the kitchen. She took the mat and the wet diaper out and put the remote back on the arm of the sofa out of his reach. --- At noon she gave him a cup. It was a trainer cup, blue, with a spout and a lid and handles either side of it, and she set it down on the coffee table with the plate. Ryan looked at it for a long moment. "Where did that come from?" "Darnell. Thursday." He picked it up. He held it by one handle like a man holding a mug that had gone wrong. He put the spout in his mouth and tipped it and got a mouthful of orange squash, and it went down the wrong way because he was tipping it like a mug and it came out too fast and he coughed and it went down his chin and onto the t-shirt. Kimberly was there before he had finished coughing, with a cloth. "It's not a mug. It's a *cup.* You tip it up." She went back to the kitchen. Ryan sat there with the blue cup in both hands and squash drying on his chin and said, to the television, "I've been drinking out of cups for forty-two years." "Not this one," Kimberly said from the kitchen. --- By six the light had gone and the house had gone quiet and the cartoons were still on. Kimberly came in and turned the television off and picked him up off the sofa — one arm under the shoulders, one under the knees — and carried him out of the room. The dining room was the other side of the hall. Darnell was already in it. He was at the head of the table, the end nearest the window, with his back to the dark glass and his sleeves rolled and a bottle of beer open at his elbow. He didn't get up when they came in. He watched Kimberly set Ryan down in the chair on his right hand and push it in under him. It was an ordinary chair. The same chair as the rest of them. Ryan sat in it with both feet flat on the carpet and his knees under the table and he was the same height as everybody else in the room, and it made no difference at all. His plate was already there, and there was a fork missing from beside it, and there was spaghetti on it. Not cut up. A heap of it, the long strands tangled over each other, red with sauce, going soft at the edges. Darnell had the same on his plate, with a fork and a knife and a napkin folded beside it. Kimberly sat down opposite with hers. "Eat," she said. Ryan looked at the plate. Then at the two forks across the table. He picked up a strand with his fingers. It was slippery and it came away in a short piece and dropped sauce down onto the plate, and the rest of the heap stayed where it was, and he tried again and got a longer one and lifted it, and half of it whipped back down and hit him in the chin. Neither of them said anything. Darnell ate. Ryan ate with his fingers. It took a while. The sauce got under his nails and along the side of his hand and round his thumb, and the strands were either too short or too long and the too-long ones had to be lowered into his mouth like a man taking a rope hand over hand, and every few mouthfuls a bit of it came away and landed in his lap or on the t-shirt or stuck to his chin. They talked over him about the screed and the levelling compound, and Ryan ate his heap of spaghetti with his fingers and was not asked anything. He finished before either of them, because they were talking and he wasn't. He sat with his hands up off the table, fingers spread, sauce from the knuckles down, and the front of his t-shirt spotted red, and his mouth and chin a mess. Kimberly looked over at him and put her fork down. "God." Darnell wiped his own mouth and put his napkin down and got up. "Come here, kiddo." He came round the end of the table and got Ryan up out of the chair with both hands under the armpits, the way you lift a child, and Ryan's feet came off the floor and his hands went to Darnell's forearms and his heels knocked the chair leg on the way past. Darnell shifted him onto his hip. Ryan went out of the room over a shoulder and saw the hall from the wrong height. The boots were off by the door. The canvas bag was at the foot of the stairs where somebody had set it down out of the way, and through the window over the door the truck was still out there under the streetlight, pulled in close to the hedge, parked for the night. Then the bathroom. Darnell set him down on his feet on the cold tile and turned the taps on. The pipes banged and the water came out with a hollow roar, and he put the plug in and stood with one hand under it while it ran, and with the other he took the bath mat down off the rail and put it on the floor and pulled the t-shirt off over Ryan's head and unfastened the four tapes and let it drop. The room filled with steam. Ryan stood on the mat and watched him test the water with the inside of his wrist, and then Darnell turned it off and got the cup off the side of the bath. "In." Ryan put a foot in and the water was hot and came up over his ankle and he got the other foot in and sat down, and the water came up to his waist, and it was a normal bath, a normal-sized bath, the bath he had taken a thousand baths in. Then Darnell filled the cup and poured it over his head. Ryan's hands came up too late. The water went over his scalp and down his face and into his eyes and he spluttered and Darnell said, "Tip your head back," and poured another one, and Ryan got his head back that time and it went over his crown and down the back of his neck, and Darnell's hand came under his chin and held his head there while he did it, thumb on the jaw, and Ryan sat in the water with his throat bared and his eyes shut and water running off his ears and let himself be washed by a man who had been his subordinate a month ago. Darnell did his hair with the bar of soap, working it in at the back where Ryan couldn't reach properly, and then said, "Down," and Ryan slid down and got his head back against the rim of the bath and the water came up round his ears. "Rinse." Ryan rinsed. Darnell watched him do it. "Again." He rinsed again, and the water ran clear. Then Darnell took the soap and ran it, without comment, over the bare front of him — three quick passes, no lather to speak of, because there was nothing there to lather — and Ryan's hand came down and covered himself and Darnell said, "I've seen it," and Ryan took his hand away again. Then Darnell sat back on his heels beside the bath, and did not reach for the towel. "You know how long I've known her? Three weeks. And she's got a laugh on her now she'd lost." Ryan looked at the water. "She's been carrying this house on her own for years and now she isn't," Darnell said. "That's all this is." "And me?" "You'll be happier. Not yet. But you weren't happy before, either." Darnell turned the hot tap a quarter with his wrist and steam came up between them. "The worst of it isn't the diapers. It's you fighting them. Every time you argue with it you make it twice as hard on yourself." "How long does that take." "Long as you want it to." Darnell stood up and took the towel off the rail. "Some fellas never get there. They fight it for years and they're miserable the whole time and it's nobody's doing but their own." Ryan put his hand over his eyes, in the water, and Darnell let him have a second of it, and then held the towel open. "Up." --- He was dried and carried down the hall and put down on the guest bed and got into a fresh diaper with the powder and the four tapes, and had the light turned off, and was in bed by seven. Kimberly was on the landing with her glass of wine. "Night, Ryan," she said, and he said, "Night." He lay on his back in the dark and looked at the ceiling and thought about Monday, and about every Monday after it. He was dry when he fell asleep. --- At half nine he heard them come up. Two sets of feet, unhurried, and Kimberly's voice saying something low and Darnell's answering rumble, and the master bedroom door, and then the landing light going off, and then nothing. Then, after a while, not nothing. He woke at half four into a diaper that was hot and heavy and clinging to him, and the sheet dry underneath. He didn't need to check. He lay in it in the dark and thought about how he had gone to sleep dry and how the thing had done its work in the night without asking him and without waking him, all of it, and how down the hall there was a man asleep in his wife's bed. Then, at about five, something else started. It was low down and it was not the wet kind, and he knew the difference straight away, and he lay perfectly still as though stillness might be worth something. He knew the rule. No bathroom without asking. He could get up, walk the eleven feet, knock, and ask. He didn't. He lay there and told himself it would pass. It came on and it ebbed and it went away. He crossed his ankles. He curled onto his side and brought his knees up and pressed his thighs together and it ebbed, and he breathed out, and he thought, there, and he was almost pleased with himself. It came back worse. He counted. He got to sixty and then to sixty again and lost the count and started over. It was a solid thing now, a low hard wall of it, and he could feel his own pulse in it. He turned onto his other side and the angle changed and for a moment it was better and then it was worse than before, and he made a small tight sound into the pillow and pulled his knees up further. He thought about getting up. He got as far as putting a hand on the mattress. Then it turned over. That was how it felt — like something in him rolling, getting ready — and he clenched everything he had and held it and it held, and for three or four seconds he was going to win, and then his body simply took it off him and did it anyway. It came in one heavy push he had no say in, and then the spreading, and then the bulk of it settling hot against him, and then the smell. He lay absolutely still. Then he made a small sound, and it turned into a big one, and then he was crying — loud, open, hopeless crying, the kind that comes out of a person in a hospital corridor — and he put both hands over his face and cried into them hard enough to be heard through a wall. --- A door went down the hall. Then feet, fast, and the landing light, and then his own door and the two of them in it and Kimberly's hand hitting the switch. She got one look and put her hand over her mouth. "Oh, *God.*" Darnell came past her to the bed. "Right. Up." Ryan got his hands off his face and got as far as "I tried to—" and it came out mangled. "I know. Up." Darnell's hands came under his arms and lifted him off the mattress and set him on his feet on the carpet, and the weight of it shifted and hung and Ryan's face screwed up all over again. "Stand still. Don't put your hands on it." Kimberly had the window up and was stripping the sheet back. She looked at the mattress, and at the diaper, and her eyebrows went up. "Well. That held, at least." "That's what it's for," Darnell said. He took the changing mat off the top of the nursery stack in the hall and put it down on the bed and got Ryan onto it, on his back, and then went to work. The tapes came off one after another, four of them, and the front came down, and the smell got properly out into the room, and Ryan turned his head away from it and Kimberly opened the window wider. It took a long time. Darnell used one wipe after another, front and back and the creases and the between and then all of it again, and every time he thought it was done there was another wipe and another, and Ryan lay on the mat with his heels drawn up and his knees fallen open and cried quietly and let himself be cleaned by a man who had been his subordinate a month ago. "How long?" Kimberly said. "Since five." "Two hours. You're allowed to shout, Ryan." "I didn't know if I was allowed." "Allowed to ask," Darnell said, without looking up. "You're not allowed to lie in it and hope." The powder, the front, the four tapes. Darnell pressed the front down flat and sat back on his heels. He got Ryan up and Kimberly pulled the clean sheet up and tucked it in, and Darnell put him back into the bed on his side and pulled the covers over him. "Stay there a minute. Let the room air." They went out. The door stayed open. Ryan lay on his side in a fresh diaper with the window open over him and the cold coming in and the bin by the dresser now full, and heard them go back down the hall, and Darnell say something low, and Kimberly laugh. --- They came for him at half six. Kimberly had it down to forty seconds by now and did it with the towel still in her other hand, wiping him over briskly, powdering the bare skin in a white dusting, and then she put him in a clean diaper and a fresh t-shirt and pointed at the stairs, and Ryan went down them with his hand on the rail. Darnell was in the kitchen with the countertop stripped of everything and his tools laid out on a cloth, and there was a bucket and a jug of water and a bag of adhesive and a trowel and a bottle of something that smelled like vinegar, and the whole shape of the day was sitting there on the plywood. "Morning," Darnell said. "Sit." Ryan sat at the table. The morning went like this: Darnell worked, and Ryan watched him work, and every twenty minutes or so Kimberly or Darnell would come past and put a hand flat against the front of the diaper and press, without a word, and carry on. At nine the doorbell went. Ryan froze. Darnell was outside at the truck. Kimberly came through the hall drying her hands and opened the door and it was Mrs. Ferris from number fourteen with a spider plant in a pot and a look on her face that said she had seen the truck in the driveway on a Sunday and had drawn her own conclusions. "Kathleen. Come in—" "Oh, I won't stop, I just—" Mrs. Ferris came in three steps and stopped dead. Ryan was on the sofa. Ryan was on the sofa in a t-shirt and a diaper, and there was nowhere to be, and the television was showing cartoons at nine in the morning. Mrs. Ferris looked at him. Then at the diaper. Then at Kimberly. Then back at the diaper. "Oh," she said. "Oh, *Kimberly.*" "I know." "Is that a *medical*—" "It started as one." Mrs. Ferris came further in and put the plant down on the end table and looked at Ryan over the top of her glasses with a frank, unhurried interest that Ryan had previously only seen her apply to other people's front gardens. "Well," she said at last. "At least he's got the legs for it." Kimberly laughed. Ryan stared at the television. --- Darnell came in at half nine with the sealant done and the sink in and the plumbing connected and the water running, and Ryan was not allowed to touch any of it. "Can I at least—" "No." "Why not?" "Because you'll do it wrong and I'll have to do it again and I've got tiles to lay Monday." Darnell dried his hands on the cloth and tossed it on the plywood. "You can watch." He went past him into the hall and came back with a long flat crate and set it down on the living room carpet. Then a cardboard box. He cut the crate open with the knife and pulled out hinged panels of white-painted wood — a set of them, waist high, each with a top bar and slats under it, chained end to end. He unfolded them across the floor in a zigzag and then brought the ends round and hooked them together, and stood the last one square with his boot. It made a rectangle on the carpet between the sofa and the window. About five feet by five. A fence. A fence in the middle of his own living room with his own carpet inside it. Darnell put his hand on the top bar and shook the whole run of it to test it. "That's for a *baby.*" "That's for you. Get in." Ryan looked at Kimberly. Kimberly was in the kitchen doorway with her arms folded and did not help him at all. He put his hand on the top bar and stepped over it and sat down inside, on the carpet, with his knees up and his hands round them. Darnell looked at him sitting in it. Then he crouched down at the rail so his face was level and said, quietly, so that Kimberly had to lean in to hear it, "That's exactly right. And that bed upstairs is a stopgap. We'll see about something proper." The cardboard box was a changing mat, folded, and a stack of diapers, and a tall pedal bin, and a packet of wipes and a tub of powder and a bottle of cream, and Darnell took all of it upstairs to the third bedroom at the end of the hall — the one that had been a study and then a junk room and then nothing — and Ryan, still in the playpen, listened to him put it in there. --- He was put down for a nap at half one and he fought it. "I don't nap." "You do now. Lie there and be not tired." She pulled the curtains. "Two o'clock, Ryan." He was asleep by ten to. He woke at twenty past two to Darnell's hand on the front of his diaper and the sound of the door, and lay still with his eyes shut while it was pressed and checked, and then Darnell said, "Up you get, champ," and Ryan said, into the pillow, "I'm awake, you know." "Then it's polite of you to let me finish." --- The afternoon was the playpen and the tile. Darnell had the first course down by four and was cutting the rest on the wet saw out on the drive, and every time he came in with an armful Ryan was in the playpen, and by the fifth time Ryan had stopped being able to pretend it was a coincidence and had started to feel the bars on all four sides of him. He tried to get out once. He put his hand on the top bar and swung a leg over and got his foot on the carpet and stood up, and Kimberly said, from the sofa, without looking up from her marking, "Did I say you could come out?" "No." "Then get back in." He got back in. At five he broke. He'd been in it since two. Darnell came in with a board and Ryan stood up in the playpen and stamped. "*It's not even — it's a playpen, Darnell. It's a fence. In my own living room.*" Darnell set the board down against the wall. "Get out, then." "I'm not allowed out." "You're allowed out if you've got something to say. Out." Ryan climbed out and stood there with his fists at his sides and his chin up and his mouth already open, and Darnell waited. Nothing came. Ryan's mouth closed. His shoulders came down. "It's a long day," he said, quietly. "It's a long day," Darnell agreed. "Get back in, ten minutes." He got back in. --- Ten minutes later Darnell came and got him out of it himself, and it was not gentle or apologetic; he put both hands under Ryan's arms and lifted him up and over the rail and set him on his feet and said, "Table." Supper was at the dining table and it was not spaghetti this time, it was shepherd's pie out of the oven dish, and Ryan's portion had been spread flat on the plate to cool. No fork. He got a spoon, and the spoon was too big and the mince slid off it, and he ended up with his fingers in it anyway, which was worse, because now there was cutlery on the table and he was still eating with his hands. Darnell read something on his phone and Kimberly marked, and neither of them talked much. Ryan finished and sat with his hands up. "Bath," Darnell said, and got up. It was the second one in two days and it had already stopped being an event. He was carried up, undressed, put in, washed, rinsed, head tipped back by a hand under the chin, and the only thing said in the whole of it was "Down" and "Rinse" and "Again," and Ryan lay in the water and let it happen to him without being asked anything and without being told anything, and it took less time than the night before because there was no conversation in it. Then the towel, and the hall, and the bed, and the powder, and the four tapes. Darnell sat down on the edge of the mattress beside him and did not turn the light off. "Tomorrow," he said. Ryan's stomach went down through the bed. "You'll be in one of these all day and nobody in that building will know it. In front of people you're the senior analyst and I'm the new man and I report to you. You hand me the work, I do it, and it's the way it's been since the day I started." "And the rest of it." "The diaper stays on. You don't use a bathroom — not the fourth floor, not the third, not the one by the lifts. You use what you're in." "All day." "All day. And you tell me when you're wet. I'll check you, twice, maybe three times — your office, door shut, and you stand there and let me do it. If you don't tell me, that's a consequence." Ryan looked at the ceiling. The eleven o'clock, he thought. The Caldwell review. "And at work you do what I say," Darnell said. "In front of people I'll treat you like the boss. When it's just us you're not one, and if you forget it you'll pay for it, and you'll pay for it in that office." "*In* the office?" "Over your own desk if it comes to it. Quiet. Nobody's any the wiser." He stood up and turned the light off, and stopped in the doorway with his hand on the frame. "It's one day," he said. "You'll get through it." The door closed. Ryan lay in the dark with his hands flat on the shexet and looked at the ceiling, and thought about eleven o'clock, and about eleven o'clock on every Monday after it.

“Of course daddy it’s no big deal.” She said smiling as he was on business trips a lot and she figured that’s what happened  he was gone..  Kayla really needed to go now but she didn’t want anyone to know so she used it a little bit and tried to hold it..  As Kayla was helping with the food she saw her diaper bag and was wondering if her mommy was going to feed her baby food or a bottle..  She shrugged cause she knew she couldn’t do anything about it.. (Yeah I know I kept trying to get on too!) 😂

CW: Violence and Death Chapter Sixty-Nine: The Cost Shik’s gaze snapped up to meet Kang’s upon his proclamation, in a look of shock and anger. Everyone else was frozen. They all understood the weight of what had just been revealed, even Adam. Whatever happened in this room, whatever became of Kang, Shik could take Japok, but not the family. But that wasn’t enough on its own. And it wasn’t the only thing Kang had planned. Taking advantage of Shik’s and the room’s shock, Kang moved first: he jerked his right arm, and a dagger shot out of his sleeve into his palm. He rose on his knees from his seated position and lunged forward, stabbing the dagger into Shik’s right shoulder. The excommunicated brother cried out in pain, but the dagger had apparently caught on something underneath the suit - some kind of armor - and Kang was forced to release it. Shik grabbed the edge of the table as Kang pulled back and flipped it. The elder brother wasn’t fast enough to evade the oncoming tea, so he turned to take it on his back. With the table flipped, Shik moved to grab a sword mounted on the underside, but he winced in pain and grabbed his shoulder, ripping the dagger out first. Hyun, after a slight delay from surprise, drew out his gun and aimed for Kang. Mung was faster and fired a shot that grazed Hyun’s left arm, causing him to recoil in pain. Geon fumbled with his gun and ducked under two shots fired by Hong and Choi from much farther back, still near the light controls. Zhang broke into a run away from the ceremony site and disappeared among the storage boxes below, fleeing the scene. Shik moved to grab his gun from his jacket, but froze as he stared down the barrel of Mung’s. Mung had him. He could end everything right then and there… but he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. The brief standoff ended when Hong and Choi fired again. Mung’s shoulder jerked backward, his face tensed as he fought the pain, though he didn’t cry out. Shik retreated to Hyun while Mung covered for Kang and Geon’s retreat, and both sides fell behind cover of machinery. It all happened so fast that Adam didn’t even have the time to wonder why Yoon hadn’t moved or reacted, process how loud the gunfire was, and how much the earpiece was suppressing the worst of it. 『 BACK DOWN, KANG! 』 Yoon shouted once the shots fired had slowed and the sides retreated to cover. She snarled as she dug her fingernails into Adam, who grimaced, curling his legs up as he tried to weather the pain, but cried out after a few seconds, the pacifier tumbling from his mouth. 『 OR THE – 』 She didn’t finish her threat. She screamed out in terrible pain as a spray of blood launched into the air, and she completely lost her grip on Adam. He gasped as he lurched, his seat slipping on the railing; he turned and grabbed her jacket to keep himself from falling, causing the battery to slip from his hand and tumble far below. He opened his mouth, gasping and meaning to scream for help, until he saw the source of Yoon’s demise. “B-BOJA!” Adam screamed in surprise. Boja had bitten into Yoon’s upper right shoulder near her neck and was clamping down hard, his face in pure animalistic fury; the fur patterns on his face were compressed, the skin of his nose folded several times, and his eyes were barely visible in his snarl. His massive paws and claws were upon Yoon, one on her arm preventing her from grabbing Adam, and the other on her face; with a jerk of his head, Boja forced her backward and down, her shrieking all the way. Adam screamed in pure panic as this motion wrenched her jacket from his grip and he began to fall, feeling a burst of sorrow that he never got to be with his family one last time. But just as he lost line of sight of the tiger, he saw an unmistakable flash of blue. With a groan of industrial machinery, Adam slammed his shoulder into something hard that gave only slightly and knocked the wind out of him. He instinctively curled into a ball, grimacing in pain and gasping for air; after a moment, he placed a palm on the surface to steady himself, feeling the rubber beneath him as he tried to sit up and catch his breath. ‘Adam!’ Boja called out in his ear. ‘Are you all right?’ The machinery rocked slightly, and despite still gasping for air and his wits, Adam could at least recognize he had been caught by one of the robotic arms. “I’M HERE!” Zhang boomed, and Adam felt the machinery’s vibration through the rubber for a few seconds; just as the blonde realized Boja was controlling it, the Yamatoan plucked him from it. Yoon’s screaming had stopped. “Adam? Adam?” Zhang asked in a controlled panic, running a hand over his face. The blonde stared, gasping for air, unable to think, move, or process what had just happened. “Adam, look at me – are you okay?” Zhang jerked his head as gunshots fired again, then he met Adam’s eyes, who was staring up at him in shock. “Are you okay?” Zhang asked again, and as Adam took in his first steady breath in what felt like hours, his mind started coming back under his control. He nodded stiffly, unable to muster any words quite yet. Zhang smiled and lifted a hand, tapping a button on his tie. “I’ve got Adam,” he announced, seemingly to no one. “He’s okay.” A few more shots rang out and reverberated off the metal. Adam looked down at his hands, shaking violently. Though he was “okay”, he felt as if he had fallen out of the frying pan and into the fire. Then he jerked slightly when his earpiece clicked. ‘Added Adam to channel. Yoon is down,’ Boja declared in such a blasé manner, which, after the ferocity he had just displayed, would have been hilarious to Adam, had he been in a better position to appreciate it; he did, however, catch sight of a slight grin from Zhang. ‘Good. Zhang, get Adam to Geon,’ Kang ordered, and Adam’s eyes widened as he gasped in realization; Zhang was on their side! He looked up at the Yamatoan as a smile spread across his face, and the large Amazon winked. Adam let out a relieved laugh as Zhang began peering through the storage boxes, gauging his position relative to Geon. Not only was Zhang on their side, but Boja was free. Adam looked up at the catwalk and grinned in amazement; those buttons must have done it! But his mind quickly shifted to the friend he’d left behind. “Wait!” Adam called out, grabbed Zhang’s tie, and tugged it, pulling his attention downward. “Little Boja! I - I left him up there!” ‘I’m okay!’ Little Boja chirped. ‘We’ll get him, Adam,’ Mung reassured, and Adam blushed slightly, realizing how stupid it was to worry about him now, in the middle of a - a - a whatever was happening. A series of pops rang out, making Adam duck (unnecessarily), and the warehouse filled with flashing purple lights. Zhang cursed, grabbed his suit jacket, pulled it over Adam’s head, and crouched down. What sounded like an electrical storm broke out as buzzing and static cracks rang through the warehouse, and periodically someone would cry out in pain. Adam grabbed Zhang’s shirt and pulled himself closer to the Yamatoan, who was far enough from the conductors to avoid being hit. “Zhang!” The Yamatoan looked up, and Adam turned to see a sweating, heaving Choi duck behind a set of storage boxes, looking between Zhang and trying to find his targets. His eyes darted to Adam, and the man grinned, as if they had won. 『 You’ve got him! 』he declared, jutting his chin towards the blonde. With terrifying speed, Zhang whipped out his gun, and Adam closed his eyes in the nick of time; a shot rang out, followed by a thud. “Sorry,” Zhang murmured to Adam as he turned his back on the body so Adam wouldn’t see. “Choi is down.” ‘I cannot bZZtT until the BBRzzT is down.’ It was Boja, but he was breaking up, and Zhang snarled, looking up. Adam followed his gaze and saw the purple electrical storm form a net overhead; they both knew it was the source of the interference. Adam’s eyebrows tensed as he spotted a familiar orb from which electrical currents connected, likely to another. Boja paced on the catwalk and let out an angry growl, followed by a frustrated roar. ‘It’s an bbrzZzt web.’ “Eomma?!” Adam gasped, able to make out her voice despite the interference. ‘You bzt shoot – Adam! zzT,’ Joomi gasped, and Zhang’s eyes widened at the horrible timing of her greeting. Adam couldn’t help but let out a breathy laugh as he lifted a hand to his forehead, still shaking and dripping with sweat. She was here! In his ear, at least, helping and talking directly to him! ‘Adam, are you –’ ‘Joomi!’ Kang snapped. ‘Right! You must Bbrzpt the orbs!’ “What?” Zhang asked, squinting at nothing as he tried to hear her through the static. Adam stared up at the orb, suddenly confident he knew what she had said. “The orbs!” Adam shouted, pointing to the one he spotted. “They’re casting the net and are the source of the electrical pulses!” “Got it,” Zhang confirmed as he raised his gun. “WAIT!” Adam yelled as he threw up his hands, but Zhang was much too fast; he fired off a shot, and it smacked into a shield around the orb, which absorbed the impact. A blast of energy shot out, and Zhang quickly turned his back, then cried out as a bolt smacked him in the back. “ZHANG!” Adam cried out as he raised his hands and placed them on the Yamatoan’s face. “Are you okay?” “I’m fine,” he growled through gritted teeth, his whole body shuddering a few times before he shook his head. “They’re shielded,” Adam explained, keeping his hands on the man’s face to keep his attention. His suspicion that these were the same tech as Joomi’s lab orbs was now cemented; he had read about them in the labs while practicing his Goryeoan technical words, and he had watched a few test videos of this feature. “And the shields absorb impacts and retaliate. We need –” Adam paused as his face lit up. “Rubber!!” “I don’t have any,” Zhang said, confused. “The arms!” Adam declared, pointing to the industrial arm Boja had used to catch him, which he now understood. “They’re rubber-coated! If we use them to grab an orb, it’ll isolate it and disrupt the sequencing!” Zhang looked at Adam in alarm, but only for a moment; he followed the blonde’s pointing and quickly assessed the robotic arm, nodding as he pieced things together. “Zhang?! Zhang?!” Geon shouted out from a distance. “Here!” Zhang replied, craned his neck down an alleyway between storage crates, glanced behind him for good measure, and ran through the opening. A shot whizzed past behind him, and he pressed his back against the crates, grimacing in pain. “Are you okay?” Adam asked as quietly as he could, which was difficult given the passive noise the electrical net was generating. Zhang only nodded, wincing slightly as he drew himself upright. He jerked as he raised his gun, then sighed when he saw it was Geon. “There you are!” Geon shouted, a flash of fear coming to his face at Zhang’s gun-arm movement, but he quickly recovered when he locked eyes with Adam, who smiled widely at him in turn. “Comms are down; Dad said it’s this fucking electrical shit that Uncle – I mean, that Shik deployed.” Zhang transferred Adam from his arms to Geon’s, then shared a brief look with the blonde; the Yamatoan nodded, looked to Geon, then jerked his head toward one of the industrial robotic arms. “Get to the robot arms,” Zhang ordered as he scanned the area for any danger. “The kid will tell you what to do.” “What?” Geon half-laughed, but the Yamatoan didn’t linger to explain. “Hurry up!” he shouted as he turned his back to them, and Geon and Adam’s eyes widened at the electrical burn on his upper back; it had blasted through the layers of fabric, exposing a small, burned hole showing singed skin. “Fuck,” Geon murmured, then looked down at Adam, smiled, and looked over at the robotic arm. “Okay, so, what’s the plan?” Adam’s face lit up. “The grabby parts of the arms are rubberized – we need to use them to grab an orb, or more, to disrupt the net,” he explained as he pointed to the hovering orbs. “It’ll give Boja an opening to come down here and, hopefully, restore comms.” Geon nodded and began bobbing and weaving through the crates, jerking slightly when there was a cry of pain, but it was impossible to know who. Adam gripped Geon’s shirt, his head on a swivel as he kept watch for danger. Sliding with his back against a wall of crates, the two looked at the arm, and both sucked in a hiss of air at what they saw. The controls for the robotic arm were completely exposed: an open seat at the base of the machine, with buttons and levers. No doors, no walls, no protection whatsoever. Geon cursed. Adam’s mouth dropped open slightly as he realized something, and he spoke before he could let fear kill the idea. “I can do it,” Adam said, looking up at his uncle, who gave him the most incredulous look. “I’m too small for anyone to get a good shot. Look.” He pointed at it, and the pair assessed it again, together. “I can keep the arm angled towards the gunfire, which protects me. There’s an orb right there,” he continued as he pointed up, then pointed back to the seat. “The seat is so large, and the cushion will insulate me; I won’t be touching any metal.” “The controls look metal,” Geon countered with a grimace, staring at said controls. “Give me your tie,” Adam suggested, tugging on his necktie. “I’ll wrap it around my hands.” Geon hesitated, staring at Adam for a few seconds, wrestling with the idea. Just as he frowned and began to shake his head, about to say no, he nearly jumped out of his skin when a crack of purplish-blue lightning hit a piece of machinery. A boom and bang followed, then Kang cursed; somewhere, it sounded like Shik laughed. “Fuck me,” Geon growled as he crouched down, placing Adam on his feet. He set his gun in its holster and began fumbling with his tie. “Dad’s gonna fucking kill me. If Nuna doesn’t.” “Better them than Shik,” Adam said without really thinking, and the pair shared a look, then a laugh. Geon ripped the tie off; Adam held his hands out, and his uncle quickly wrapped them until he couldn’t see any visible skin. They nodded to each other and looked back at the arm once more. “You sure about this?” Geon asked. “Fuck yeah,” Adam grinned at his uncle, who laughed. Together, though unplanned, they took a deep breath, and on the exhale, Geon lifted Adam by the armpit, sprinted to the arm, and planted him on the seat, the diaper squelching beneath. Quickly, the Amazon ducked down, assessing the field. Adam got onto his knees on the seat to get a better view of the controls and leaned forward, pressing a button that was his best guess for movement; letting out a triumphant laugh as the arm extended upwards, he did a few more short bursts to test before ducking as another crack of energy hit a nearby arm. Before either could react to that, they ducked again, letting out cries as a bullet lodged into a crate and the wood splintered. Geon jolted to his feet and returned fire, stepping into the open to pull their aim away from Adam. “What are –” “HURRY!” Geon shouted as he blasted a few rounds. “Right!” Adam replied, looking between the netting overhead and the controls, and jerkily moved the arm upwards. He could only move it in short spurts since he couldn’t directly watch what he was doing, and the controls were far enough apart that he couldn’t easily commit anything to muscle memory (to say nothing of the stress of the situation). The robotic hand was a three-toed prong, and after testing several buttons, Adam found the upward control and got the highest prong into the electrical field, which was already creating a small gap between the currents. He jerked it upwards and winced at a bang, a shot whizzing dangerously close. The earpiece suppressed the sheer power of the sound, but Adam could still feel it. He stared up, trying to ignore the shouts and cries of pain and focus on the task at hand. Two more taps of the button, and the prong was hovering right in front of it, ready to grab. Adam cursed as he stared at the selection; he spent a few seconds assessing, found a pair on opposite sides, and tried one. Looking up, it opened the hand more. He cheered, slammed his tie-covered fist on the opposite side, and the hand collapsed around the orb. The blonde gasped and pulled his hand back when he felt the entire robotic arm vibrate. An electrical current meant for the orb from a nearby pair had struck the metal part of the arm, and the entire system shuddered and jerked as some of the internals fried. Adam grabbed the seat, eyes wide, and held his breath as he sat through it, with little else to do. After a few seconds, the seat settled down, and the blonde looked up: he had done it! It worked! A huge gap appeared in the netting, and Adam let out a triumphant cry, pumping his fist in the air. Boja quickly saw it and leapt from the catwalk onto the first floor with a mighty thud. ‘I’m here,’ Boja announced over the restored comms. Adam cheered and turned towards Geon to celebrate… but the man was sprawled out on the floor. “N-no! NO!” Adam shouted, hastily shaking off the tie around his hands, and fearing he had already wasted precious time, he jumped down from the seat. The weight of the diaper threw off his balance, so he fell back, though its padding absorbed the impact. ‘Adam? What’s wrong?’ Kang asked. “U-Uncle Geon! He’s down!” he panicked as he stood up from the clumsy landing. Another wild crack of lightning searched for its orb and struck the robotic arm, causing a boom that pushed Adam forward; he fell to his hands, his palms slapping against the cold concrete, and in an adrenaline-fueled panic to both flee the blast and reach Geon, he began crawling as fast as he could. ‘Boja, help Zhang and Mung,’ Kang ordered. “Please,” Adam begged quietly and breathlessly as he neared his uncle, pleading with whatever powers were out there that this man wasn’t dead. “Please, please –” Geon interrupted Adam’s pleas with a loud, rasping gasp as he woke with a start, then grimaced and began groaning in pain. The Amazon lifted his shaking hands to his chest, where Adam found a hole in the shirt the size of a bullet, but, shockingly, there was no blood. The blonde’s mouth hung open as he reached a shaking hand to it and saw a strange, refracting light flicker. Putting his fingers in the hole and ripping it open, he found the bullet still there, very visible, but held in place by some sort of vibrating mechanism that was close to Geon’s chest. The point of the bullet had struck him, causing a minor tear in the skin, but the pain had to be coming from the impact. There was already redness and bruising. Suddenly, a shadow came over Adam. He gasped in fear for only a second, then turned and burst with joy. “HALBO!” he greeted with relief, and Kang flashed him a smile as he scooped Adam up and crouched over his son. He quickly eyed the area Adam had exposed and nodded. “Joomi, can you hear me?” he asked, pulling Adam close as his fingers wrapped firmly around the Little’s midsection. ‘Yes,’ she replied breathlessly, sounding quite stressed. “Geon needs a stim; he’s fine, but in pain,” Kang explained, glancing at Adam, who looked between him and his uncle. ‘Understood.’ Adam gaped as the second skin shifted, and green veins began to appear; Geon drew in a startled breath as his eyes flew wide open, as if he had been injected with adrenaline. On the exhale, his face slackened as the painkillers took hold. Kang reached out a hand, placed it on his son’s face, and they shared a brief look before Geon nodded, having gathered his bearings. 『 NO! 』 They all jerked toward the shout as Mung burst out of nowhere to grab at Hyun’s gun, which had been squarely aimed at Kang and Adam, and forced it upward. A shot rang out and soared over them as Kang threw himself forward, ducking to cover Adam and flinging an arm across Geon. He quickly sat back up and reached for his gun, but Mung was wrestling Hyun now, and there was no clean shot. Mung kept one hand on Hyun’s gun, the other grabbed a fistful of the man’s jacket from behind and wrenched him backward. This caused Hyun to stumble back, and his back slammed into machinery; he lifted his free hand over Mung’s, slapped his face once, then jammed his finger into Mung’s eye. Mung cried out, sounding more enraged than in pain, and he released Hyun’s jacket to put two hands on the gun to wrench it free – but with his eyesight compromised, he overshot the attempt to grab, and Hyun fired when Mung’s hand was on the end of the barrel. Adam shrieked at the spray of blood, and two fingers went flying into the air. Mung’s mouth opened wide in pain, though no sound came out; he fully released Hyun and stumbled backward, grabbing his mutilated hand. This gave Kang the opening he needed, and he fired, shooting Hyun right in the temple. Mung collapsed against machinery and slid down it, curling forward in immense pain as the blood poured from his severed digits. “Joomi,” Kang said, staring at Mung, a fear in his eyes that he did his best to keep out of his tone. ‘Yes?’ she asked quietly, nervously. “Mung needs painkillers. Now. Walk Geon through stemming the bleeding,” he ordered as he jutted his chin towards Mung after making eye contact with his son. Geon nodded, briefly glancing at Adam, then got to his feet, crouched, bolted to Mung, and took off his jacket. Kang heaved, looking at Adam, looking to his family, and then over his shoulder towards where the fight had originally broken out; the gunfire had quieted down. A bead of sweat ran down his temple as he stared. For the first time since Adam had known him, Kang looked distraught. It was very subtle, but being this close to him and knowing how carefully guarded he normally kept his expressions, Adam could see it. And, in a way, he could feel it: a lifetime spent protecting his family in the one way he knew how, now mutilated from within. The blonde twisted towards his grandfather, leaned forward, and hugged him, burying his face into the Amazon’s chest. There was so much he wanted to say, but in the moment, only this felt appropriate. Kang’s breath caught for a moment, then he pressed his hand to Adam’s back and returned the hug. Then, after a slight pause, Kang leaned forward and kissed the top of Adam’s head. The Little’s throat tightened alongside the tightening of his hug, and they lingered in the warmth until a sudden, shrill shriek forced them back into the violent reality around them. Kang straightened his back and pressed Adam protectively against him a hair more; the blonde had to turn his head to breathe and swallowed nervously. But when a second shriek of pain echoed through the warehouse, they both realized it was Shik. Kang’s jaw clenched, Adam looked up at him anxiously, and they waited a few more seconds for something, anything, to happen. The first thing to shift was the cascading shutdown of the orbs. One by one, they terminated the electrical pulses, shuddered, and turned off. Once their lights were off, they plummeted to the ground with metallic, clanging thuds. Kang, Adam, and Geon’s heads swiveled as the ambient crackling above them faded to nothing, and the silence made Adam’s ears ring. Mung’s eyelids fluttered from the pain medication coursing through his body, and he slowly looked up and gave a goofy, relieved smile. “Zhang?” Kang called out as he began to stand, bringing Adam with him. “Boja?” After a brief silence, limping steps grew louder, heralding the wounded, sweat-drenched Zhang, who held up some kind of device like a trophy with a victorious grin. He waved it a few times toward the now-deactivated orbs before letting his arm fall heavy at his side. Kang nodded in approval while Adam smiled at him; Zhang limped farther out, giving way to reveal Boja behind him, dragging Shik by his calf, which the tiger held firmly in his maw. Kang drew a breath through his nose and held it, staring at the scene with intensity. When Boja was halfway, he looked over at Mung and Geon and motioned with his hand. “Geon, get your uncle on his feet,” he ordered, slowly regaining his usual tone, though the pain still lingered. Geon grunted more than Mung at the effort, given their height and weight differences, and Mung even chuckled a bit. Once on his feet, he looked down at his hand, wrapped and covered by the sleeve of Geon’s suit jacket; he grinned and pulled his nephew in for a side hug, appearing slightly intoxicated from the painkillers. Kang motioned toward the ceremony area, and they all moved toward it in silence. The teacups were broken, the green carpet stained with tea and blood, and the flipped table showed the hidden sword mounted beneath it that had been meant to take Kang’s head. The Amazon glared at it as anger flashed across his face, quickly replaced by grief. He bent over and pulled the sword from its sheath, lifting it to inspect the blade. Adam looked at the sharp, clean metal, then at Kang, and they locked eyes. Adam realized right then that Kang had known the entire time. He had known Shik meant to kill him, and the patriarch now meant to take his brother’s life with the very same sword. Slowly, all of them converged on the writhing, groaning Shik, who held his thigh and gritted his teeth through the pain. Kang nodded, and Boja released the bleeding leg; Shik howled in pain and let out a string of curses. “I failed you,” Kang started somberly. 『 Fuck you, 』 Shik hissed, his face red and all of his neck muscles tensing. “I refused to see how deep it went. Many have suffered for that,” Kang continued. 『 Y-you really are – 』 Shik paused as he groaned through the pain.『 Fucking choosing him – over your own f-fucking blood. Your brother. 』 Adam’s eyebrows rose in surprise at Shik’s statement, but then it struck him: Kang was speaking in Albionic. His final words to his brother were in Adam’s native tongue. “You placed yourself above your family,” Kang answered. “I place my family above blood.” Shik glared at his brother in pure fury, his entire body shaking as beads of sweat dripped and tears of pain pooled in his eyes. Kang stared at him in long silence. Shik broke the eye contact first, hissing again as he turned his face away. 『 Just fucking get it over with, 』 Shik spat as his voice cracked, straining to hide his fear. Kang frowned as air left him through his nose, and he didn’t immediately draw his next breath. Adam felt the stillness of his grandfather’s empty lungs for several seconds, unsure whether it was disappointment or hesitation that stayed him. But when Kang finally drew a new breath, his face hardened into resolve; he nodded and turned to hand Adam off. The blonde kept his eyes on Kang as he was passed across; then, twisting, he was surprised to find the wounded Mung taking him, already with tears in his eyes and desperately trying to contain his emotions. Adam teared up almost immediately at the sight and wrapped his arms around Mung’s neck. His great-uncle breathed heavily and hugged Adam firmly back. There were no further words. Adam kept his eyes closed and his arms around Mung, and they held each other close. Shik’s stuttering, fearful breathing grew louder as the moment lingered. Adam and Mung stiffened when that breathing stopped. Then came the thud. Mung cried out as he bent forward and began to sink to his knees in grief. Adam hugged him as tightly as he could, his own tears flowing. Kang heaved a terrible sigh, hung his head, and dropped the sword unceremoniously. 『 Forgive me, 』 Kang murmured, though it was unclear to whom.