Rainbow Diapers

Once again, sorry for the fact that this story is dragging out in terms of updates, that was not my initial intention. I hope that you enjoy Liam's story so much that you will stick it out all the way - I promise to see it out until the end! ... At my own, slow pace apparently... 🙃 Anyway, here are the next chapters for you, enjoy!   Chapter 36: Small Victories The sun had begun drawing long blue shadows across the groomed pistes by the time Liam clicked out of his bindings at the base of the chairlift for the last time that day. He was not tired in the good way. He did not have the satisfying lactic burn in his thighs from pushing himself on the black runs, or the light buzz in his skull from adrenaline and speed. He was tired in his head. Exhausted from being administered. The day had been a long, grey mass of structured togetherness. They had skied the same three blue runs over and over. Grace had stayed behind him the entire time, a sheepdog herding a single, obedient lamb. James had drifted along in their wake, a silent third presence who contributed nothing except the occasional observation about snow conditions. And then there was the clock. Every three hours, on the minute, she had called a halt. The first stop had been at the mid-station toilets at half eleven. Tiny cubicles, barely wide enough for one person in ski gear. Grace had tried the accessible toilet first, but a woman with a pushchair was already inside and showed no sign of leaving. Grace had looked at the regular cubicles, looked at Liam, and arrived at her compromise. "Fine. You go in. But the door stays open." The door had stayed open. A twenty-centimetre gap, enough for Grace to see his ski boots and hear everything. He had sat down as instructed — she insisted he sit, always, for hygiene — and tried to urinate while his mother stood in the corridor and a man in a red jacket waited two metres behind her, scrolling his phone, pretending not to notice the arrangement. The performance anxiety had been crushing. A thin, nervous trickle. Barely anything. "Was that it?" Grace had called through the gap. Sceptical. Audible to anyone in the corridor. "Yes," Liam had hissed. He had pulled everything back into place and escaped. The second stop had been behind a maintenance hut at the top of Run 4. No toilets within reasonable distance, and three hours had elapsed. Grace had looked around, assessed the sightlines, and steered him behind the wooden structure where the snow was deep and untouched. "Just go here," she had said. "Quickly. I'll stand watch." He had stood with his back to her, salopettes open, pull-up pulled down to mid-thigh, urinating into a snowdrift while his mother stood two metres away scanning the treeline like a lookout during a bank robbery. A family had skied past on the other side of the hut. He had heard the children laughing. He had stared at the yellow stain spreading in the white snow and thought: This is what my life is now. The third stop had been at a restaurant at the base of Run 7. Another tiny toilet, another open-door arrangement. This time there had been a queue. Three women and a small girl, all waiting in the narrow corridor. Grace had positioned herself in the doorway, blocking the gap with her body but keeping the door ajar, and Liam had sat down inside the cubicle trying to urinate while a five-year-old girl peered around Grace's legs and asked her mother: "Why is that big boy taking so long?" He had not been able to produce a single drop. "We'll try again later," Grace had said, loud enough for the queue to hear. "Sometimes it takes him a while." Sometimes it takes him a while. The sentence had followed him down the slope like a shadow. Now Grace was brushing snow off Liam's jacket in the car park. "That went well, didn't it?" she said, smiling her tired-but-satisfied smile. The smile of a general reviewing the day's campaign. "No accidents. Dry trousers. See what a bit of structure can do." "Yeah, hurrah," Liam muttered, climbing into the back seat. He could not bring himself to concede the point. The drive home was silent. Liam sat in the back and stared out the window. He thought about Sophie. Where had she been? Had she skied the black runs? Had she laughed? Had she thought about him at all, or was he just "the boy with the leg," parked with the parents while the real holiday happened somewhere else? He shifted in his seat. Shifted again. Something was bothering him, a low itch, the kind you get from too many hours in damp fabric. He reached into his salopettes behind himself and scratched through his thermals without thinking. "Stop that, that’s disgusting" said Grace from the front seat, not turning around. "And you'll irritate the skin. We'll put some cream on when we get home." Liam dropped his hand and looked out the window. They swung into the driveway. Rob and Claire's car was already there. Liam felt a small, involuntary flare of hope. Sophie was home. The day could start properly now. He could shower, by himself, please God, change into normal clothes, and they could just be together. He had earned it. He had paid for it in porcelain and humiliation. Somewhere in the logic of the universe, there had to be a reward for compliance. They went inside. The warmth hit like a wall. The cabin smelled of woodsmoke, garlic, and the drowsy comfort of an afternoon that had already surrendered to wine. Rob and Claire were on the sofa, feet up, a glass of red each. Afterski music drifted from the speakers, something Scandinavian and acoustic. "Hello, hello!" Claire called out. She looked relaxed. Her cheeks were flushed with sun. Liam's eyes swept the room. The kitchen. The loft stairs. Empty. No white fur hat. No boots kicked into the corner. No jacket thrown over the banister the way Sophie always left it, as though gravity were a personal inconvenience. "Where's Sophie?" he asked, before he had even taken his jacket off. The hope was still there, maybe she was in the shower, maybe upstairs, but the shape of the room had already answered him. "Oh, her," said Rob, grinning. He shifted in his seat and took a sip of wine. "We won't be seeing her for a bit. We ran into the Millfield lot at lunch. They asked if she wanted to ski with them for the afternoon. And then they asked if she fancied tagging along to the lodge bar for a soft drink, and we did stress soft drink." Rob caught Liam's eye as he said it. Just a flicker. A half-second of contact over the rim of the wine glass. Not a grin this time. Something quieter. A look that said: I know this isn't the answer you wanted, mate. Then his gaze returned to the newspaper folded on the armrest, and the moment dissolved. "And you let her?" The question did not come from Liam. It came from Grace. She was standing in the middle of the living room, still in her jacket and boots. She had set the supply bag down on the floor with a hard thud. Her face was locked in a mask of disbelief. "Of course," said Claire, taking a sip of wine. "She's on holiday. And she needed to let off some steam after yesterday's discussion. We thought it'd be good for her to get some air." Liam felt it like a blow to the stomach. Sophie was at afterski. Again. With Jake and the Millfield crowd. Without him. While he had been sitting on a toilet with his mother as prison warden, Sophie had possibly been dancing on tables again. While he had been urinating into a snowdrift behind a hut, she had been laughing and skiing and being seventeen. But it was not jealousy on Grace's face. It was fury. "Air?" Grace repeated sharply. "Claire, can I just, can I borrow you for a moment? In the kitchen?" It was not a question. Claire looked surprised but set her glass down. "Um, sure? Has something happened?" Grace marched into the kitchen. She went right to the far corner, away from the living room, but the open-plan layout made it impossible to fully conceal a conversation, even at a whisper. Liam stayed by the door. He leaned against the wall and listened. He could not help it. "What are you playing at?" His mother's whisper was fierce, pressurised. "What do you mean?" Claire's voice, confused, slightly defensive. "We had an agreement," Grace hissed. "Last night. When we split them up. We agreed they'd both face some consequences. That they'd both feel the weight of their behaviour. That there would be calm." "Yes," said Claire. "And we did. We had her with us all morning. We had a proper talk. But, Grace, Sophie hasn't got the same... challenges as Liam. She just lost track of time. We can't ground her just because Liam needs... structure." "This isn't about Liam's challenges." Grace was struggling to keep her voice down. Liam could hear the strain, a taut wire about to snap. "This is about solidarity. About us standing together as parents. How do you think Liam feels right now? He's fought through this entire day, followed every rule, done exactly as I've asked. And then he comes home and discovers that Sophie's been given a free pass to carry on partying? It completely undermines my authority." Liam leaned his head back against the wall. My authority. It was not about him. It was about Grace's project. She did not want Sophie having fun because it made Liam's punishment look even more unjust. She wanted everyone to suffer equally. "I didn't realise it was such a big deal," Claire said, more quietly now. "I just thought the point was to keep them apart. So you could get on top of Liam's stomach and... his accidents." His accidents. Said casually, as a known fact. As though Liam's incontinence were a weather condition, something everyone in the cabin had long since accepted and now discussed the way you would discuss whether to bring an umbrella. "It matters," said Grace. "He's sitting in there right now feeling like a complete loser. Because you can't set boundaries." "Hang on." A flicker of steel in Claire's voice now. "We set boundaries. But we're on holiday. Sophie is seventeen. We talked it through yesterday and again today, and she understands. I'm not going to punish her for something Liam has done." Silence. An icy silence that seeped out from the kitchen and into the living room like a draught under a door. Liam closed his eyes. Something Liam has done. He was the problem. He was the reason for the argument. He was the sick patient ruining the atmosphere, even when he was not in the room. "Fine," said Grace, cold. "But surely you can see the dilemma? Liam needs some discipline right now, given his behaviour, and it doesn't help if it only applies to him." "Oh, come on, Grace..." Claire's voice carried the unmistakable tone of someone exhausted by an argument they had not signed up for. "It's completely different. Yes, they came home a bit late, but they were honest about it. There's a difference between that and lying about wet nappies, surely." Lying about wet nappies. The phrase floated through the open-plan space and landed on Liam like a physical weight. Claire had said it the way you would say "lying about homework" or "lying about screen time." Just another item on the parenting ledger. Another thing everyone in the cabin knew. Another scrap of his dignity that had been traded between the adults like currency in a negotiation he was not party to. Silence again. Then Grace, tighter now: "No... I suppose that's fair. Maybe I'm letting Liam's... childishness spill over onto Sophie." Liam's childishness. There it was. Out in the open. Not his "condition." Not his "challenges." His childishness. The word his mother actually used when she thought he could not hear. He stood against the wall with his eyes closed and let the word settle into his chest like a stone dropped into water. "But I still think there should be a shorter leash," Grace finished, and Liam heard her turn on her heel. The conversation was over. Someone had won and someone had lost, and it did not matter which, because the real loser was standing in the hallway, listening. She came marching out of the kitchen. Her cheeks were red. She did not look at Rob. She went straight to Liam, and her hand closed on his shoulder, a hard, possessive grip. "Come on, Liam," she said, loudly enough for the room. "Go upstairs and find some clean clothes. I'll be up in five minutes to help you get sorted for the evening. Since we're apparently all staying in tonight, seeing as some people aren't here." She sent Claire a look that could have stripped paint. Liam nodded mutely and walked towards the stairs. Under his salopettes, the pull-up had been on for twelve hours. The padding was compressed and stiff with dried sweat. The itch had returned, low and persistent, and he clenched his buttocks against it as he climbed. On the sofa, Rob was looking at the newspaper again. But as Liam passed, Rob reached out, not to touch him, just a hand that lifted briefly from the armrest, the way you would acknowledge a colleague leaving the office after a rough day. He did not say anything. He did not need to. The gesture said: I saw you walk in. I see you walking out. I know what is happening. Liam climbed the stairs. Each step was an effort. He could hear Grace behind him, her boots heavy on the treads, the supply bag banging against the banister. Below, Claire's voice murmured something to Rob, too quiet to catch, but the tone was unmistakable: the voice of someone defending a position they no longer felt certain about. He had survived the day. He had urinated on command three times. He had defecated under observation. He had skied blue runs like a trainee while Sophie conquered the mountain. He had followed every rule, met every deadline, submitted to every check. And the reward? The reward was an evening alone in the cabin with his parents, while Sophie was out with the people who mattered. And a fresh pull-up, which his mother would put on him in anger. Chapter 37: Skid Marks and Bedtime Grace had not said a word since they left the kitchen. She had marched him up the stairs, one hand on his shoulder, the other gripping the supply bag — the blue holdall with the DryNites packets, the wipes, the zinc cream, the plastic bags for disposal. It had become such a permanent fixture of her left hand over the past five days that Liam sometimes forgot it was not an extension of her body. A nurse's kit. A mother's armoury. The bedroom door closed behind them. The late afternoon sun slanted through the window, painting warm gold rectangles on the floor. Outside, a group of teenagers crossed the road below in ski boots and bright jackets, laughing, heading towards the village. Someone was playing music from a phone. Liam could hear the bass through the glass, faint and thumping, the soundtrack to a world that was carrying on without him. "Right," said Grace. She dropped the bag on the bed and turned to face him. Her jaw was set, her cheeks still flushed from the argument with Claire. "Trousers off. Let's get this over with." Liam unzipped the salopettes. They fell heavy and stiff around his socked feet, and he stepped out of them, kicking them into a pile. Then the thermal leggings. He peeled them down, and the pull-up appeared — the same one Claire had fitted that morning, the same one Grace had inspected at the family toilet before skiing, the same one that had been on his body for the entire day. It looked tired. The elastic had softened from hours of wear. The waistband sagged slightly at the front. The padding was compressed and discoloured with sweat, no longer the crisp white it had been that morning but a dull, greyish off-white. The skater-boy graphics on the front panel had faded where the fabric had been rubbed and stretched. Grace crouched in front of him. The routine check. She hooked a finger into the front waistband and pulled it forward, peering inside. The quick, clinical scan he had grown to dread — the way her eyes flicked down into the gap, reading the padding the way a mechanic checks an oil dipstick. "Dry at the front," she said. "That's something. Turn around." Liam turned. He faced the window, the golden light, the teenagers disappearing around the corner. He felt Grace pull the waistband away from his lower back. He felt the cool air against his skin. And then the silence changed. It was a specific silence. Not the absence of speech, but the presence of something discovered. A silence that gathered mass and density, that filled the room like pressure before a storm. He could feel it on his skin — the particular quality of someone else's shock radiating outward, invisible and undeniable. "Liam." Her voice was different. Lower. Very controlled. "What is this." It was not a question. He did not turn around. He did not need to. Because the moment she said it, the moment her voice dropped into that register, his body answered for him. The itch. The low, persistent irritation that had plagued him in the car. The thing he had told himself was sweat, was elastic, was zinc cream, was anything other than what it actually was. The morning. The family toilet. The three panicked swipes. The paper he had not checked. The flush he had deployed like a weapon to destroy the evidence. Grace eased the pull-up down. Slowly. She pulled it over his hips and down to mid-thigh, and Liam felt the air hit skin that was warm and damp and wrong. She held the back of the pull-up open, angling it towards the light from the window. "Turn around," she said. "Look at me." He turned. He could not not. Grace was crouched at his feet, the used pull-up held open between her hands. The back panel was streaked with brown. Long, dark smears across the white padding, concentrated in the centre where the fabric had sat pressed against his skin for twelve hours. Not an accident. Not a loss of control. The remnants of a job half done — a boy who had wiped in a blind panic, yanked everything back into place, and sealed the evidence against his own body for an entire day. She held it there and looked up at him, and her face was not angry. It was worse than angry. It was tired. "I defended you," she said quietly. "Downstairs. Just now. To Claire. I told her you'd had a good day. I said the structure was working. I said you'd followed every rule and done everything I'd asked." She shook her head slowly. "And then I come up here, and this is what I find." Liam opened his mouth. Nothing came out. "When did this happen?" she asked. "This morning? At the toilet by the lift?" He nodded. A tiny, fractional movement. "When you insisted you were done. When you practically shoved me out of the way and flushed before I could check." She was piecing it together aloud, reconstructing the crime scene from the evidence. "You wiped — what, twice? Three times? In such a rush to get away from me that you didn't even finish the job." She looked down at the pull-up again. "And then you walked around in this all day. Twelve hours, Liam. Twelve hours with faeces sitting against your skin." The word faeces was clinical. Deliberate. She could have said "poo" — the word she had used when he was five. She could have said "mess." She chose the medical term, and it landed like a verdict. "I tried —" Liam started. "You tried what?" She stood up. She was taller than him when he was standing in his socks, and the angle of the light behind her turned her into a silhouette. "You tried to be quick? You tried to be independent? You tried to prove that you could manage on your own?" She held the pull-up at arm's length, the stained panel facing him. "This is what managing on your own looks like, Liam. This is what happens when I give you thirty seconds of privacy." She dropped the pull-up into a plastic bag and knotted it shut. "Stand still." Her voice had shifted again. The fury was receding, replaced by something harder to fight: competence. She unzipped the supply bag and pulled out the pack of wipes. "Turn around. Hands on the bed. Lean forward." "Mum, I can do it myself —" "No." Flat. Final. "You have proved today, conclusively, that you cannot do it yourself. You can't wipe your own backside without leaving half of it there. So now I'm going to do it properly, and you are going to stand still and let me." He turned. He placed his hands on the bed. He leaned forward. Behind him, he heard her pull three wipes from the packet — the soft, wet sound of them separating, the faint chemical-floral scent filling the room. Then her hand was on his hip, steadying him, and the first wipe touched his skin. Cold. Startlingly cold. He flinched, and her grip tightened. "Hold still." She wiped methodically. Thoroughly. With the unhurried precision of someone who had done this a thousand times and would do it a thousand more. She worked from front to back, one wipe after another, each one discarded into the plastic bag with a soft, damp thud. Liam stared at the duvet cover. He stared at the grain of the wooden headboard. He stared at the pillow and the way the late sun caught the cotton fibres and turned them gold. He stared at anything that was not what was happening to his body. "There's irritation here," Grace murmured, half to herself. "The skin's red. That's from sitting in it all day. This is exactly what I was trying to prevent." Another wipe. Another. "Spread your legs a bit more. I can't reach properly." He moved his feet apart. The floor was cold under his socks. He could feel the air on every centimetre of exposed skin, could feel her fingers through the thin fabric of the wipe, could feel the precise, impersonal efficiency of a woman cleaning a body that she had long since stopped seeing as anything other than a maintenance task. "Lean forward more. There's still — yes. There." He felt the final wipe and then nothing. A pause. The sound of the bag being knotted again. Then the lid of the zinc cream being unscrewed — the soft, metallic pop, and the smell. Sweet, thick, medicinal. The smell of nappies and nurseries and everything he was supposed to have left behind a decade ago. "This is going to be cold," she said, and then her fingers were on him, spreading the cream in slow, clinical circles. Along the crease. Over the irritated skin. Across his buttocks and down to his upper thighs where the elastic had left red marks. She worked with the same methodical calm, the same total absence of urgency, and Liam closed his eyes and clenched his jaw and tried to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. "You know what Claire said to me?" Grace said as she worked. Her voice had gone conversational now, almost light, the way people talk when their hands are busy and their mind is processing. "She said I was being too hard on you. She said Sophie shouldn't be punished for your problems. She said there was a difference between Sophie staying out late and you —" she paused, "— lying about wet nappies." She let the phrase hang. "And I stood there and defended you, Liam. I said you were doing well. I said you'd had a good day. I said the structure was paying off." She scooped more cream. "And the whole time, you were walking around with skid marks in your pull-up like a toddler who can't be trusted to wipe himself." She straightened up. "Wipe your hands on the towel. Stay where you are." He heard her rummaging in the supply bag. The crinkle of a fresh DryNites packet being opened. The soft, papery sound of a new pull-up being unfolded. "Step in." She held it open at his feet. He stepped into the leg holes, one foot at a time, and she pulled it up — over his calves, his knees, his thighs, settling it into position with both hands. She smoothed the waistband against his hips, ran a finger along each leg elastic to check the seal, adjusted the back panel so it sat flat. The padding was fresh and thick and dry, and the zinc cream made everything slide and stick in equal measure. "Good," she said. She stood back and looked at him. Then she went to the chest of drawers and pulled out a pair of flannel pyjama bottoms — the navy ones with the thin white stripe — and a long-sleeved T-shirt. Liam stared. "It's six o'clock." "I know what time it is." "I'm not going to bed at six." "You're not going to bed. You're getting changed." She held out the pyjamas. "I've cleaned you, creamed you, and put you in a fresh pull-up. I am not doing that again tonight. If you're in your pyjamas now, you're ready. When it's actually bedtime, we just do a quick pee and you're done. Much simpler." "But what if Sophie —" "What if Sophie what?" Grace's voice was steady. "What if she sees you in your pyjamas? Tell her you're tired. Tell her your trousers are in the wash. Tell her whatever you like. But I am not putting you through another change tonight because you wanted to look normal for two hours." She held the pyjama bottoms open. Liam stepped into them. She pulled them up and tied the drawstring, tucking the waistband of the pull-up neatly inside. Then the T-shirt, over his head, his arms guided through the sleeves. She dressed him the way you dress a small child after a bath — efficiently, without asking, without negotiating. She stepped back. Liam stood in the middle of the bedroom in his pyjamas. The sun was still coming through the window. Outside, the group of teenagers had been replaced by a couple walking a dog. Normal people doing normal things at six o'clock on a ski holiday. And he was standing here. Clean, creamed, padded, and dressed for bed. A boy in a fresh pull-up and flannel pyjamas, put together by his mother like a package being sealed for transit. It did not feel like a punishment. It felt like logistics. Like she could not be bothered to maintain the fiction that he was anything other than a body to be managed. She picked up the supply bag and the knotted plastic bag of used wipes and soiled pull-up. She paused at the door. "Come down when you're ready," she said. Her voice had softened, but only slightly. The exhaustion in it was real. "There's dinner in an hour. You can sit on the sofa and watch something." She left. The door clicked shut. Liam stood alone in the golden light. He looked down at himself. Navy flannel. White stripe. The bulk of the fresh pull-up visible as a faint, rounded shape beneath the fabric, the waistband peeking above the drawstring. His feet were bare on the wooden floor. He looked at the window. A skier was still making their way down the last run of the day, a tiny figure against the white, carving long, lazy turns in the fading light. Free. Unsupervised. Unwrapped. He sat on the edge of the bed. The pull-up compressed beneath him, the fresh padding adjusting to his weight with a faint crinkle that only he could hear. The zinc cream was cold and thick against his skin. Everything smelled clean and medicinal and infantile. It was six o'clock, the sun wasn’t even fully down yet. And he was ready for bed.

lol I am now winning!

Maddison froze in place, standing motionless. She finally realized she was being ordered around. Camilla never needed help with anything; she was already very good at it. Then she looked at her colleague and blushed. Maddison looked at herself again and looked like a little child, even more so when she heard about rules, she said.  "Basically, you're now acting as a caregiver or a mom, and that's what it means. What's this talk about rules?"

They came today and am trying one now so far they are great! Super comfy! 

Maddison's heart was beating fast the more she looked the more horrified, embarrassed and amazed she was if she was in college right now dressed like this no one would believe she was a college student they would either think she was a lost little girl or one of the staff members children, maybe even a little sibling of one of the students. Madison looked at Camilla desperation in her eyes, wanting to go home more than anything. but Camilla who still wore that beautiful smile gently shook her head no before resting a hand on her shoulder, "I'm sorry sweetie until you stop having accidents and you can go potty by yourself you'll be staying here where I can keep an eye on you." When those words left Camilla's mouth, Madison felt like she was going crazy, that this was crazy a little while ago she was a college student and now she was someone's little girl and not just any someone but one of the most popular students in college.