Trading Post

He did already have a few accidents before diapers... we will have to see. Without saying too much, I'm trying to convey Jacob's split desire to be mature with his desire to go potty in his pants and feel little. 

Chapter 42: Lunch and Facades Fjellstua sat in full sun at the top of the mountain, a massive timber lodge that reeked of chip fat and expensive perfume and that particular electric charge that happens when several hundred young people are packed into the same space with altitude and adrenaline as the backdrop. The queue for food snaked out through the main doors and down the steps, but the queue for tables was worse — every bench, every stool, every windowsill with a flat surface had been colonised by bodies in bright ski gear, and the noise was a wall of competing voices and clattering plates and the relentless thud of a sound system playing something Scandinavian and upbeat. Liam and Sophie found the Millfield group at a long table at the far end, near the panoramic windows. It wasn't difficult; they were the loudest. Jake sat at the head with his cap turned backwards, mid-story, gesticulating with a chip in one hand. "And then — bam!" He slammed the table. The plates jumped. "Straight into the headmaster's car. I swear on my life. The dent is still there." Will was crying with laughter. Mia and Jade were shaking their heads with the practiced indulgence of people who had heard Jake's stories before and would hear them again. As they approached, a girl Liam hadn't met looked up. She had dark hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, a vintage ski jacket in burnt orange, and a wide, open smile that reached her eyes before it reached her mouth. "Oh my god, is that Liam?" she said, half-rising to make space on the bench. "The bodyguard? Sophie literally did not shut up about you yesterday." The warmth that climbed into his face was, for once, the good kind. "That's me," he said, and sat down. "Hope it wasn't too bad." "Not at all," the girl laughed, and pushed a bread basket towards him. "She said you were the only reason she didn't die of boredom with the oldies. And that you're pretty decent on skis — you know, when your leg isn't playing up." She winked. It was friendly, easy, and something inside Liam unclenched for the first time in hours. A new person, treating him like a normal person. No hidden knowledge. No double meaning. Just a girl with a warm smile and a bread basket. "I'm Millie, by the way," she added. "In case Sophie didn't mention me." "She did," said Liam. "The vintage jacket and the fake-girlfriend thing." Millie grinned. "Classic rescue manoeuvre. Works every time." Liam wrestled his jacket off without standing up — a manoeuvre that required twisting sideways and pulling one arm at a time, because standing meant exposing his back, and the back of his salopettes was where the pull-up's waistband sat highest, the elastic ridge just visible above the belt line if his thermal layer rode up. He managed it with what he hoped looked like casual laziness and not the careful choreography it actually was. Then he flagged down a passing waitress and ordered a large hot chocolate. Not a Coke or a Sprite. Not anything with bubbles. The carbonation might accelerate things — gas expanding in his bladder, pressure building faster, the timeline to crisis shortened by an hour he couldn't afford. He hadn't been to the toilet since Grace's bathroom at seven that morning. Seven hours. The cocoa was warm and slow and wouldn't hit his system for a while, and the sugar would give him energy without the diuretic punch of a cola. These were the calculations nobody at the table could see — the invisible spreadsheet he lived inside, where every milliliter of fluid was an input that would eventually become an output that would fill a pull-up that could only hold so much before it became a catastrophe. Sophie slid in beside Jake. He immediately draped an arm along the bench back behind her shoulders — not touching, but declaring. Sophie didn't move it. She was laughing at something Will had said, leaning forward, her ponytail swinging. From the other end of the table, Mia and Jade sent looks that could have frosted glass. The territorial battle from the Stavkroa had clearly not been resolved. Millie didn't seem to care about any of it. She turned back to Liam. "So you two are childhood friends?" she asked, nodding towards Sophie. "That must be nice. Having that kind of... history." "Yeah," said Liam, taking a sip of his cocoa. "Our dads have worked together since the dawn of time. We're basically forced to holiday together." "I know exactly what that's like," Millie nodded. "My family has those couples too. You love it and hate it in equal measure, right?" The conversation flowed easily. They talked about school, about parties, about how bad the music at the Stavkroa was. Liam felt his shoulders drop. He almost forgot the thick padding between his legs — the constant, dull awareness that had been his primary focus all morning. Almost. The bench was hard, and when he shifted his weight the pull-up compressed against the wooden slat beneath him, a faint crinkle lost in the general noise but deafening inside his own skull. "What do you do when you're not skiing?" he asked, when there was a small pause. "I'm in Year Twelve," said Millie, dipping a chip in mayonnaise. "And I work quite a lot on the side. Saving up for a trip." "Where do you work?" "I'm a disability carer," she said. "For a young guy, actually. He's our age, but he's in a wheelchair after an accident." The words hit him like a door slamming shut in his chest. Disability carer. He felt the blood drain from the surface of his skin — not visibly, he hoped, but internally, a cold tide pulling back from his extremities and pooling somewhere dark and deep. His heart struck one heavy, arrhythmic beat against his ribs. "Oh," he said, and concentrated on keeping his voice level. "That... that sounds like a big responsibility." "It is," said Millie, and her expression shifted to something more serious. "You get really close. I mean, I help him with everything. Bathing, dressing, toileting. You sort of lose your boundaries after a while, you know? You just learn to see the body as something practical." She took a sip of her Coke. Liam sat very still. The pull-up was warm against his skin. He could feel every centimeter of it — the waistband hugging his hips, the absorbent core pressed flat between his thighs by the hard bench, the elastic leg cuffs sealed around the tops of his legs. He was sitting at a table with a girl who professionally bathed and dressed and took boys his age to the toilet, and between his own legs was the exact product that would confirm every professional instinct she'd ever developed. He felt like someone had turned on a floodlight above his chair. "But you also get really good at reading people," Millie continued, and suddenly her gaze was directly on him. Her eyes were warm, but there was a sharpness behind them — an attentiveness that went beyond casual interest. "Body language and stuff. People try to hide it when they're in pain or uncomfortable, but you can always tell. Their eyes. The way they sit. I think that's actually a really cool thing to learn." Liam swallowed. He was, at this exact moment, tensing his thighs to check whether the pull-up had shifted, whether it was bunching, whether the outline was visible through the salopettes. He forced himself to unclench. Forced his legs apart an inch, which made the padding settle differently — lower, heavier, more obvious to him but perhaps less obvious to anyone looking. He picked up his cocoa and took a long sip, using the cup as a screen, buying seconds. "Yeah," he said. "That's... yeah. Must be useful." Millie smiled and moved on to something else — a story about her mum's dog — and the moment passed. But it hadn't passed for Liam. It sat in his stomach like a stone. A girl who could read discomfort on a person's body the way a mechanic reads engine trouble was sitting two feet from him, and the discomfort he was hiding was strapped to his crotch with elastic and adhesive. "Okay, people!" Jake stood up suddenly and checked his watch. "It's gone two. If we want to hit the Diamond before they close the top, we need to move. Last one out buys first round tonight!" Chaos. Chairs scraped. Jackets were grabbed and zipped. The table erupted into the competitive, loud-mouthed scramble of a group that ran on Jake's energy and Will's logistics. Sophie leaned close to Liam. She smelled of cocoa and cold air and something floral underneath. "Hey," she whispered, so the others couldn't hear. "We need to do the thing. Your mum." Liam checked his phone. A message from Grace sat waiting: Remember photo at 14:00. All well? ❤️ "Yeah," he whispered back. "I need to—" "Come on," she said, and stood up. She sent a bright smile to the table. "Back in a sec — just popping to the loo!" "See you outside, slowpokes!" Will shouted from the door. They walked against the flow of people, towards the toilets at the far end of the building. The corridor was packed — skiers in heavy boots shuffling in both directions, steam rising from wet jackets, the smell of sunscreen and sweat. Sophie stopped him under the harsh fluorescent lights near the bathroom entrance. People moved past them on both sides. She took his chin in her hand and lifted his face. Her grip was firm, almost clinical. She studied his pupils — left eye, right eye, holding him steady — the way she'd done at the mountain toilet hut that morning, except that this time they weren't alone on a quiet slope. This time there were people everywhere. A man in a red jacket glanced at them as he passed. A woman with a child looked and looked away. Liam could feel the stares — brief, curious, gone — and wondered what they saw. A girl gripping a boy's jaw and staring into his eyes under strip lighting. A drugs intervention? A jealous girlfriend? A very strange couple? "Clear," Sophie said, and released him. "No dilation. You're clean." She pulled out her phone. "Mirror. Quick." They stood at the communal sinks. Sophie positioned herself beside him so that both their faces were in the shot, the tiled wall visible behind them. "Smile," she said. "Look like we've got it all under control." Click. She typed fast: Break taken. Check done. All clean. Regards, the Guard. x She pocketed the phone. Then she looked at him. "Do you actually need a wee? Or was that just for her?" Liam checked in with his body. The cocoa had joined the general mass of pressure that had been building since dawn — a low, insistent weight in his pelvis that was no longer ignorable, more like a bass note that had been sustaining for seven hours and was now beginning to distort. "I could do with one, yeah," he admitted. Sophie glanced through the open doorway towards the men's. The queue for the cubicles stretched back into the corridor. But through the door, the urinal row was visible — half a dozen men standing shoulder to shoulder, quick and efficient. "Use the urinals," she said practically, pointing. "It's way faster. Jake's not going to wait." Liam's gut clenched. "I can't... when there's people," he said. "I need a cubicle." "Seriously, Liam?" She rolled her eyes. "Are you shy? Come on. Just stare at the wall. Nobody's looking at your bits." He stood rooted to the floor. The thought of explaining why he couldn't use a urinal was almost as bad as being discovered at one. "I can't, Sophie. I'll wait." "We can't wait! The queue's twenty minutes deep." She blew out a breath. "Unless you've got a micropenis or something, I don't see why you need to hide in a cubicle." The words landed like a slap — not cruel, just Sophie being Sophie, blunt and impatient and utterly unaware that she'd just brushed against the edges of a humiliation far worse than anything she could imagine. He felt something hot behind his eyes and blinked it away. "I'm fine," he said quickly. "I'll hold it. Let's go." "Your bladder, your funeral," she said, and grabbed his hand. "Run!" They ran. Past the queues, past the entrance, out into the blinding sun where the Millfield group was already clicking into skis and shouting at them to hurry up. Liam's legs moved and the pull-up moved with them — the dry padding shifting between his thighs with each stride, a reminder that was as constant and as quiet as a heartbeat. Seven hours. And counting. Chapter 43: Power of the Bass The afternoon on the slopes was a rush — a temporary, merciful amnesia. They hurtled down the wide groomed pistes in a loud, colorful pack, a snake of teenage overconfidence weaving through slower traffic. Jake and Will rode at the front, pulling tricks and skiing backwards with an ease that was genuinely infuriating, while the girls whooped and filmed for their stories. Liam stayed right on their heels. He didn't feel the pull-up. The cold and the constant motion had turned it stiff and anonymous beneath the thick salopettes — just another layer, no different from the back protector or the helmet. The elastic sat frozen against his skin, the padding compressed by movement into something rigid and forgettable. Almost. When they reached the top of the Totten for the final run of the day, the group stopped to adjust bindings and take the obligatory selfies against the sunset, which was painting the sky in theatrical shades of purple and orange. Liam stood apart and felt it. The pressure. It wasn't urgent in the way that makes you hop from foot to foot — not yet — but it was heavy. A massive, insistent weight low in his pelvis, the accumulated debt of the cocoa from lunch, the water he'd drunk to be "responsible," and the hours upon hours without a single stop. He'd last been to a toilet at seven that morning. Nine hours ago. If he took the demanding route down to the valley with a bladder this full and crashed — landed on his stomach with that kind of pressure — it would be catastrophic. "Just going for a slash," he mumbled to Sophie, who was deeply absorbed in adjusting her hair in the phone camera so it looked perfectly "effortless." He clicked out of his skis and trudged towards a small cluster of pine trees standing slightly apart from the piste, half-buried in snow. It was the perfect spot. Private. Shielded by the heavy, drooping branches. A small pocket of peace. He went behind the largest tree. He packed the snow down with his boots to get proper footing. He checked over his shoulder. Nobody was watching. The group was busy with itself. He pulled off his gloves. His fingers were cold and stiff. He unbuttoned the salopettes. Unzipped. He wrestled with the layers — the thermal underwear had to come down first, and then the hard part. The part that separated him from every other boy on the mountain. He had to pull the high, elastic waistband of the DryNites down at the front, far enough to free himself from the padding, without pulling it down so far at the back that it would be visible if someone walked past. He arched his back and made a strange, awkward movement, fishing himself out from the padded shell that encased him. He managed an opening. The cold air hit his exposed skin — a sharp, stinging contrast to the warm, sealed environment inside the salopettes. He was ready. He closed his eyes. Relaxed his pelvic floor. Waited for the release. Crunch-creak. The sound of heavy boots breaking through the crust of snow directly behind him. "Hey, bodyguard." Liam flinched as if he'd been electrocuted. He let go of the pull-up's waistband reflexively, and it snapped back against his stomach with an audible, plasticky thwack. His hands flew to the front of his salopettes, pulling them together in a desperate, defensive clutch. He turned his head. Jake stood a meter and a half away. He'd clicked out of his skis too. He stood with his legs apart, confident, already unzipping his own salopettes one-handed. He was taller than Liam. Broader across the shoulders. In the sharp backlight of the sinking sun, he looked enormous — a silhouette of casual, masculine dominance. "Bit of a queue at the trees, yeah?" Jake grinned, and positioned himself beside Liam — slightly too close, a deliberate incursion into his space. He found himself with the kind of unselfconscious ease that made Liam feel like a small boy who had wandered somewhere he didn't belong. Liam stood frozen. He gripped his open salopettes with both hands, his forearms covering the front of his body, keeping the white waistband with its childish skater-boy graphics hidden behind his wrists. His heart was hammering against his ribs. "Yeah," he said. His voice was thin. Almost a whisper. Jake started to piss. A strong, warm stream that bored into the snow and steamed in the cold air. The sound was unmistakable — a thick, confident hiss, the kind of sound that belongs to someone who simply unzips, aims, and lets physics do the rest. No wrestling with layers. No elastic to navigate. No absorbent padding to fish himself out of. Jake pissed like breathing — automatic, unremarkable, the most natural thing in the world. The steam rose in lazy curls around his boots, and the snow melted in a dark, expanding circle. He sighed with satisfaction, rolled his shoulders, and tipped his head back to look at the sky. "Listen, mate..." he said casually, still pissing. "You and Sophie. What's the deal?" Liam's stomach dropped. "What do you mean?" "I mean — are you two together? Like, properly?" The question hung in the cold air between them. Jake's stream was still going. Strong. Steady. Endless. The steam rose in lazy curls. Liam stood beside him, hands clamped over his crotch, producing absolutely nothing. "No," said Liam. "We're just friends. Our families are on holiday together." "Cool," said Jake. He shook off — a casual, confident flick — and zipped up with one hand. "Nobody's called dibs or anything?" "No." Jake turned and clapped him on the shoulder. His eyes dropped briefly to Liam's hunched posture, the defensive arms, the fact that he was quite obviously not doing what he'd come here to do. "You need to piss, though, seriously," Jake said, a half-grin on his face. "You look like you're about to cramp up." He tilted his head. "System frozen, mate?" He laughed — not unkindly — and walked back towards the group, his boots crunching through the snow with the heavy, satisfied stride of someone who had just relieved himself of a liter of fluid without a single complication. Liam stood alone. The pine branches swayed above him, dropping a fine powder of snow onto his shoulders. Jake's footprints led away through the crust, deep and confident. The steam from his urine still hung in the air — a faint, pale wisp dissolving into nothing. The yellow hole in the snow beside Liam's boots was dark and deep, melted by heat and volume. He tried again. He was alone now. Private. Shielded. Free. He closed his eyes. He breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth, the way he'd read you were supposed to. He willed his pelvic floor to unclench, tried to visualize the release — running water, a tap left open, rain on a window. Nothing. Everything down there had seized up, locked tight by the adrenaline dump that Jake's arrival had triggered. The sphincter that had been ready to open — had been milliseconds from opening — before the crunch of boots behind him had now fortified itself behind a wall of cortisol and shame that no amount of deep breathing could breach. His body had learned a lesson in the last three minutes: someone can appear at any time. Opening up is not safe. And the body, unlike the mind, does not forget lessons quickly. He tried for another thirty seconds. A minute. The cold was vicious on his exposed skin, and his fingers were going numb, and the pressure was a physical agony now — a clenched fist of fluid behind a locked door. But the door wouldn't open. His body had chosen safety over relief, and it would not be overruled. He gave up. He fed himself back into the pull-up's padded pouch — the absorbent panel that had been waiting, dry and ready, all day — and pulled the elastic waistband up. The pull-up settled against his skin with a familiar, intimate grip. He zipped the salopettes, buttoned them shut, pulled on his gloves. Full tank. Nine hours of accumulation, sealed behind a barrier that was designed for nighttime accidents, not daytime floods. And the day wasn't over. He walked back to the group with his legs slightly apart, the pressure enormous, his jaw set tight enough to ache. The jump was the last feature before the long descent to the valley — a kicker of hard-packed snow at the edge of the piste, maybe two meters of air if you hit it right. Jake went first and landed clean, spraying a perfect arc of powder. Will tried something clever with his poles and wiped out spectacularly, sliding twenty meters on his back while the girls screamed with laughter. Then it was Liam. He didn't think about it. He dropped into the tuck, ignored the sloshing sensation in his lower abdomen, let gravity do the work, and hit the lip at full speed. Two seconds of air. Silent. Weightless. Free. He landed. Clean. Knees absorbing the impact, skis parallel, snow billowing behind him. "Respect, bodyguard!" Jake shouted from below, banging his poles together. "Proper style!" Sophie skied over and punched his arm. "You did it! That was mint!" Liam grinned. He was high on adrenaline. For one second — one clean, bright second — he forgot the bladder, the pull-up, the frozen system, all of it. He had proved something. He was still in the game. "Drinks?" said Will, pointing towards the Stavkroa, which sat glowing like a beacon of noise and heat in the blue dusk. "Or do you need to get back to mummy?" Sophie bit her lip. She checked her phone. "It's... four. We're meant to—" "Come on," said Jake. "Just one. You've got grown-up privileges now, haven't you?" Sophie looked at Liam. Then she looked at the bar. She wanted it badly. "Hang on," she said, and walked a few meters away to make a call. Liam stood with the others. He shifted from foot to foot, trying to relieve the pressure without drawing attention to the movement. Millie appeared beside him. "How long have you got left?" she asked. "We drive home Saturday morning," said Liam. "Nice. We've got a couple more days." She studied him. "You okay? You seem a bit... tense." "I'm fine," he said. "Just knackered." Sophie came back. She was glowing. "Approved!" she announced, waving her phone. "I rang Dad. He's in a good mood — they've had wine. We just have to be back by half ten. Sharp. And we answer if they ring." She paused, lowering her voice for Liam alone. "He did say your mum is quite insistent about the... check-ins. So we should probably do one before we go in. While there's still signal." Liam nodded. The cold was biting into his sweaty body. Every muscle below his waist was working overtime. "Yeah. Okay." Sophie took his chin, checked his pupils — quick, practiced, a one-second scan — and snapped a photo of them both against the purple sky. She typed fast and hit send. Then she pocketed the phone. "Done. Now let's get warm." The Stavkroa was even more packed than the last time. The air was thick with moisture, music, and body heat. There were queues everywhere, but Will spotted a booth at the back of the room, right under the speakers, just as a group of confused-looking Swedes were abandoning it. "Mine!" he shouted, and hurled his jacket onto the bench to claim it. They squeezed in. The booth was designed for six; they were seven. Liam ended up innermost, wedged into the corner against the wall. Sophie sat next to him, then Jake, then the others. They were thigh to thigh. The only empty seat was the one next to Liam — reserved for Millie, who had gone to the bar. "First round on me!" she'd called over her shoulder. Liam sat still. He'd kept his salopettes on, even though the others had unzipped or peeled off their outer layers. Jake was in a hoodie now. Will had stripped to a t-shirt. Sophie had tied her jacket around her waist. But Liam couldn't remove the salopettes without exposing the pull-up's waistband, which sat high on his hips, above the line of any normal underwear. So he sat there, fully insulated, while the room's heat went to work. It was immediate. The salopettes acted like a wetsuit, trapping his body heat — and the pull-up's heat — in a sealed, humid microclimate around his groin. As his body thawed from the hours of cold, moisture began to form between his skin and the pull-up's plastic backing. The padding, which had been frozen and rigid on the slopes, softened and warmed and began to sit heavier between his legs, conforming to the shape of his body with an intimacy that felt obscene in a room full of people. He could feel the sweat gathering in the elastic leg cuffs, pooling in the creases where the pull-up met his inner thighs. And underneath the sweat, underneath the heat, the pressure was becoming unbearable. His bladder had been full for hours — full since the pine trees, full since the jump, full during the entire descent to the valley. He could feel it as a physical mass, a dense, aching weight that pulsed with every heartbeat. The warmth of the room was the worst possible thing. Cold tightened everything, kept the sphincter clenched, bought time. Heat loosened. Heat relaxed. Heat whispered to every muscle in his pelvis: let go. He scanned the room. The toilets were somewhere past the bar — twenty meters and a hundred bodies away. But even if the toilets were right next to him, it wouldn't matter. He was trapped. To get out of the booth, Millie would have to stand, then Sophie, then Jake. Everyone would have to shift. Everyone would ask where he was going. And the walk to the toilets would take him through the densest part of the crowd, in salopettes, with a pull-up that was already warm and damp with sweat and that he couldn't risk anyone brushing against in the crush. He took a sip of water from a glass on the table, then set it down hard. No. Not more liquid. Not now. He looked towards the bar. Millie was on her way back. He could see her pushing through the crowd with a tray of pints held above her head, grinning, triumphant. He thought fast. This was it. There was a gap. The seat beside him was still empty. If he was quick, he could stand up and slip out before she sat down and sealed him in completely — trapped between the wall, the table, and her body. "Hey," he said, and began to half-rise. He gripped the table edge to lever himself up. His thighs left the bench. He was halfway out of the seat, bent forward over the table, his muscles tensed for movement. "I just need to—" But then it happened. The DJ switched tracks. Or something went wrong with the system. From the speaker directly above their heads came a tone. A sharp, piercing feedback screech that made everyone in the room grab their ears in pain. EEEEEEEEE— And then, without warning, the bass. A single, brutal, overdriven hit from the subwoofer that struck like a physical hammer to the chest. The air shook. DUM. The shock was total. The whole table jumped. Millie, who was just about to sit down, gasped and nearly dropped the tray of beer. Sophie grabbed Jake's arm in fright. And Liam— Liam was caught in the worst possible position. Half-standing, half-sitting, bent over the table in an awkward, in-between crouch. Every muscle in his body was already tensed for movement. The shock triggered the startle response — a full-body contraction that clenched every major muscle group simultaneously. Every muscle except one. The sphincter, which had been on overtime for thirteen hours and had already survived a performance-anxiety lockdown at the pine trees and a two-metre jump and the slow, grinding pressure of nine hours of skiing, gave up in the exact fraction of a second that the bass hit. It wasn't a decision. It wasn't a gradual weakening. It was a physical capitulation — sudden, total, and irreversible, like a dam wall cracking down the middle. It felt like the bottom dropped out of him. A stream of warm liquid flooded out with a force he hadn't thought possible — a pressurized release that had been building for thirteen hours and now had nowhere to go but into the thin, dry padding that Grace had put on him that morning in a quiet bathroom a lifetime ago. He stood there, half-bent over the table, his eyes wide open, staring at nothing. He could feel every stage of it. The first surge hit the absorbent core at the front of the pull-up and spread instantly, the gel granules swelling on contact, pulling the liquid sideways and downward through the padding. Then the second wave — heavier, hotter — overwhelmed the front panel and flooded backwards between his legs, filling the seat of the pull-up, the warmth spreading around his buttocks, up his lower back, into every fold and crevice. The pull-up swelled. He could feel it expanding against his skin — the thin padding that had been compressed flat all day now inflating grotesquely, the absorbent core bloating with thirteen hours of accumulated fluid, pressing outward against the elastic leg cuffs, straining against the waistband, growing heavier and heavier between his legs. It kept going. He couldn't stop it. There was no muscle left to clench, no willpower that could override the cascade. His body was emptying itself with the blind, mechanical efficiency of a system that had been held past its breaking point and had finally, catastrophically, let go. He saw Millie sit down. She set the tray on the table and slid into the seat beside him, her hip pressing against his thigh. The escape route was closed. He sank down onto the bench. Slowly. Mechanically. He couldn't go now. He couldn't push past Millie with a pull-up that was filling to capacity — that already felt heavy and spongy and catastrophically warm between his legs. It doesn't matter, he whispered to himself, but the sound was lost in the noise. It's done. "Meyer!" Will shouted, slamming two dice onto the table. "Loser drinks!" They began to play. The mood was high. The music pumped on. Liam sat there while the last of it drained out of him — his body emptying itself completely, methodically, into the padding that was supposed to be a precaution and had now become a disaster. The warmth spread from his crotch, down around his buttocks, up his lower back, filling every millimeter of the absorbent core. He sat in the middle of his own catastrophe, surrounded by his friends, his crush, and the girl who worked as a disability carer, whose thigh was pressed against his. The sound in the room returned to normal. The music played on. "Christ!" Will laughed nervously. "I thought the speaker blew!" "That gave me a heart attack!" said Sophie, pressing a hand to her chest, grinning. Nobody looked at Liam. Not yet. But Liam wasn't there. He was sitting inside a bubble of silence. The only thing he could feel was the all-encompassing, suffocating warmth in his salopettes. The pull-up was so full that he could feel it pressing against his thighs, his groin, everything. He was sitting in a lake. A private, sealed lake, held in place only by thin layers of plastic and elastic that were never designed to contain this much. He didn't dare move. He knew that if he shifted even a millimeter — if Millie nudged him, or if someone bumped the table — the pull-up would leak. It couldn't possibly hold. He stared into nothing while reality, slowly, very slowly, began to seep back in. He was trapped. Chapter 44: Vacuum The world had gone quiet. It was a physical impossibility — they were sitting in the middle of the Stavkroa, where the music hammered against the walls and a hundred people were bellowing along to the chorus of an eighties classic. But for Liam, the sound had vanished, as though someone had pulled the plug on his connection to reality. It was like being inside a bell jar, or deep underwater, where the pressure presses against the eardrums and everything arrives muffled and distant. He saw mouths moving in exaggerated slow motion. He saw Will slam the table and laugh so hard that spit flew from his mouth. He saw Millie toss her head back. He saw Jake raise a glass. None of it reached him. It was a film with the volume at zero. The only thing that existed was the warmth. The pull-up had stopped being warm. It had gone tepid, then cool, and was now settling into a clammy, lukewarm mass that packed itself around his groin and buttocks and upper thighs with the suffocating intimacy of a compress. The gel beads in the core had expanded to their maximum, and the whole thing had swollen into a shape that no longer resembled anything designed to be worn. It pressed against the bench beneath him. It pressed against his thighs. It pressed against everything. He was sitting on a bag of liquid that was held in place by elastic and prayers. He didn't know how long he sat there. It might have been two minutes. It might have been twenty. Time had no meaning inside the bell jar. He was aware, in a detached, clinical way, that his body had evacuated its entire contents into a garment designed for nighttime leaks, and that the garment was now holding approximately thirteen hours of urine against his skin, and that he was sitting in a crowded bar surrounded by people who had no idea. The thought didn't produce panic. It didn't produce anything. He was beyond panic. He had entered the flat, grey territory on the other side of it — the place where the body simply disconnects from what has happened because processing it would be too expensive. "Liam?" A hand touched his arm. A light pressure that sent a jolt through his nervous system like a defibrillator. The vacuum shattered. Sound came crashing back — music, voices, laughter, clinking glasses — a tidal wave of sensation that threatened to drown him. He flinched violently and turned his head, eyes wide. Sophie was leaning across the table towards him. She looked worried. Or maybe just... attentive. Studying him. "Liam?" she repeated, louder this time to cut through the bass. "Can you even hear me? You've been staring into space like a zombie for the last ten minutes." "What?" His voice sounded foreign — hoarse and dry, as though it came from someone else's throat. "Sorry. I just... zoned out. The music. It's loud." Sophie glanced at the others, who were absorbed in the dice game and each other. Then she leaned closer and took his hand under the table. Her fingers were cool — a sharp contrast to his own feverish skin. She squeezed. "It's nine o'clock," she whispered into his ear. She nodded discreetly towards her phone, which lay face-up on the table. "The agreement. The photo. Your mum." She paused. "She's already texted three times. One of them asks why the last photo wasn't at a toilet." Liam stared at her. The photo. It felt so infinitely irrelevant now. So absurd. His mother wanted proof that he was in a bathroom, while he was sitting here in the result of not having been in one. "And..." Sophie continued, sending him a look that was stripped of flirtation but full of conspiratorial gravity, "I think you need some air. You look absolutely done in. You're sweating like mad. Shall we go outside for a bit? Get some fresh air, send the documentation, and then we'll have some peace." It was a lifeline. A way out of the antechamber of hell. But it was also a trap. Because to get out, he had to stand up. "Yeah," he said quickly. Desperately. "Yeah. Let's. Now." He had to stand. This was the most dangerous moment. Gravity was his enemy now. "I need to get out," he said to the table. He tried to sound normal, casual, but it came out like an apology — a plea for permission. Millie stood to make room. "Course," she smiled. Sophie stood. Jake stood. The whole row had to shift to let him out. Every pair of eyes rested on him briefly — a second's idle attention, the unremarkable act of someone leaving a booth. Liam gripped the table edge with both hands. He pushed up with his arms to take the weight off his legs. He lifted himself slowly, carefully, upright. The weight was shocking. The pull-up hung between his legs like a wet, heavy sandbag. It weighed — what? A kilo? More? As he straightened, it sank downward. The waistband pulled away from his stomach at the top, but the saturated core dragged heavily at the bottom, drawn down by gravity and the sheer mass of fluid it contained. He felt the cold, wet inner surface peel away from his skin with a sucking, squelching sensation that made his stomach lurch. He clenched his thighs together and took his first step. The pull-up shifted. It swung — actually swung — between his legs, a pendulum of warm liquid in a plastic shell. He locked his knees and walked with the stiff, wide-legged gait of someone carrying something fragile and catastrophic between their thighs. Nobody noticed. The crowd was too thick, the music too loud, the lighting too dim. He was just another teenager walking through a packed bar. Nobody looked at the way his salopettes sat — lower than before, pulled down by the extra weight. Nobody heard the faint, wet slosh that accompanied each step — a sound that was deafening inside his skull but inaudible beyond the radius of his own body. Nobody smelled anything — not yet — because the room was a swamp of spilt beer and deep-fried food and a hundred sweating bodies, and one more source of warmth and moisture was invisible in the chaos. But with every step, he could feel the pull-up shifting. The saturated core didn't move the way a dry one did — it didn't compress and spring back, it didn't flex with his gait. It sloshed. It moved like a water balloon, a half-second behind the rest of his body, the liquid inside redistributing with every stride. He walked with his jaw locked and his hands balled into fists and the singular, manic focus of a man crossing a minefield. They pushed through to the corridor that led to the toilets. The music dimmed. The fluorescent lights were yellow and merciless. Sophie positioned them at the communal sinks, near the mirrors. She took his chin — the same gesture, the same clinical grip — and checked his pupils. She frowned slightly. "Your eyes look a bit glazed," she said. "But not dilated. I think you're just knackered." She pulled out her phone. "Quick photo. Try to look alive." Liam turned his hip away from the camera — a reflexive, practised rotation that kept his crotch in the shadow of the sink. The pull-up was making his salopettes sit wrong: too tight, too low, pulled down by the weight. He couldn't risk it being visible in the photo. Click. Sophie typed: Evening check-in. All clear. At Stavkroa. Home by 10:30. x She pocketed the phone. "Right. Go and splash some water on your face. I'm popping to the loo. Two minutes." She disappeared into the ladies'. Liam threw himself at the men's. He found an empty cubicle. Slammed the door. Locked it with shaking hands. He leaned against the door and closed his eyes. The silence in here was a mercy, but the smell was immediate — a warm, concentrated, unmistakable smell that filled the small space instantly. His own smell. The smell of stale urine that had been sealed against his skin for hours, warmed and re-warmed, concentrated by the body heat inside the salopettes. He went to the toilet. He unbuttoned the salopettes. He pulled them down. The sight was worse than anything he had imagined in his worst nightmares. The DryNites was no longer white. It was dark yellow, almost brownish, stained by the concentrated urine of an entire day. It had swollen to a grotesque size — the absorbent core bloated and distended, the gel beads saturated to bursting point, the thin outer shell stretched taut over the mass like skin over a blister. The surface felt slimy and cold against his fingers when he touched it. The whole thing hung heavy and shapeless from his hips, pulled completely out of form by the weight, the skater-boy graphic on the front panel warped and distorted beyond recognition. He sat down on the toilet. The pull-up splattered out beneath him against the seat with a wet, heavy sound. He could feel the cold of the liquid pressing through against his skin. He tried to piss. Just to make sure. Just to feel like he was doing something constructive. He pushed. Nothing came. Not a drop. He was empty. Completely, totally empty. His body had done its job — in the worst possible place, at the worst possible time, with the thoroughness of a system that had been held at breaking point and had finally, catastrophically, let go. He sat there. The fluorescent tube above him flickered once and then burned steady. Somewhere outside the cubicle, a toilet flushed. A tap ran. Two men were talking in Norwegian by the sinks — something about a football match, voices easy and careless. He looked down. The pull-up sat between his spread thighs like a grotesque parody of what it was supposed to be. It had been designed for nighttime leaks — for the small, unconscious releases that happen in deep sleep. Not for this. Not for thirteen hours of accumulated, pressurised urine released in a single catastrophic flood. The thing had done what it could, and what it could wasn't enough. The elastic leg cuffs were strained to their limit, the seams visible through the stretched fabric, and a thin line of moisture had wicked through the top of the waistband at the back, leaving a damp stain on the inner lining of the salopettes. He stared at it. He stared at the skater-boy graphic — the little figure on a skateboard that was printed on every DryNites pull-up, the same graphic he'd been looking at every morning and every night for six days, the same graphic that Grace smoothed flat when she put them on him — now warped and discoloured and barely recognisable. It looked like something that had been through a flood. How am I going to hide this? He had no reserve. Grace's supply bag was at the cabin, twenty minutes away. There was no spare pull-up in his pocket, no nappy bag, no wipes, no zinc cream. Nothing. He had been out all day, free from Grace's supply chain, free from the scheduled stops, free from the system — and the system's absence had caught up with him with the precision of a machine. He was alone in a toilet cubicle in a Norwegian ski bar with a ruined pull-up and absolutely no way to change out of it. He could take it off. He could rip the sides, stuff it in the bin, and go commando under the salopettes. But then what? The salopettes were damp on the inside already. Without the pull-up to contain whatever residual moisture was left, the stain would spread. And if Grace checked when he got home — if she pulled the waistband and found nothing — the questions would be worse than the evidence. He had to keep it on. He had to pull the ruined, saturated, two-kilo mass of gel and plastic back up and walk out into the world wearing it. He pulled the salopettes back up. It was difficult. The pull-up was so swollen that the zip wouldn't close properly — he had to press the saturated mass flat with his hand, compressing the cold, slimy gel against his skin, forcing it back into a shape that the salopettes could contain. The zip caught halfway. He yanked it. It closed, barely, the fabric straining over the bulk. Bzzz. His phone vibrated in his pocket. Sophie: Are you having a shit or what?? I'm outside freezing. Come onnnn! He flushed — for the sound, for the performance — and washed his hands in a rush. He looked in the mirror. He looked wrecked. Pale, with dark smudges under his eyes, his hair damp with sweat. He splashed cold water on his face and dried it with a paper towel. He went out. The cold hit him like a wall. They had come out through a side door, and the night air was sharp and clean and so brutally cold after the heat of the bar that it felt like stepping into a different country. The snow on the ground was blue in the darkness, and the stars were out, hard and bright and indifferent. Sophie was leaning against the wall, her arms wrapped around herself, her breath coming in white clouds. She looked beautiful. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright from the warmth and the beer, and she smiled when she saw him — a real smile, unguarded and warm. "There you are," she said. "I thought you'd fallen in." "Sorry," he said. "Just needed a minute." They stood in silence for a moment. The bass from the Stavkroa throbbed faintly through the wall behind them. Laughter drifted from somewhere down the slope. The cold was already working on the pull-up — the liquid that had been warm, then tepid, then clammy, was now turning properly cold against his skin, contracting as it cooled, and the sensation was so profoundly, viscerally unpleasant that he had to clench his teeth and press his thighs together to stop himself from shivering visibly. Every few seconds, a small shift in his posture would cause the gel to redistribute, and a fresh wave of cold would touch a new patch of skin, and he would have to absorb the shock without flinching. His phone buzzed in his pocket. He didn't check it. He knew who it was. Grace's third — or was it fourth? — message, sitting in a queue of unread demands, each one a wire tightening around a trap he hadn't even reached yet. "Shall we go back in?" Sophie asked. "Or do you want to head home?" "I don't know," he said. "I'm just... tired." Sophie studied him. She stepped closer. And then, without warning, she kissed him. It was a real kiss. Deep, warm, insistent. Not the quick peck from the mountaintop that morning — this was something else entirely. She put her arms around his neck and pulled him in, and her mouth was hot against his cold lips, and her body pressed against his chest, and for two perfect, terrible seconds the rest of the world ceased to exist. Liam kissed her back. He put his hands on her waist. He pulled her close. He forgot everything for one bright, burning moment. Sophie moved her hands. She let one slide down from his neck. Down over his shoulder. Down onto his chest, where it rested for a moment over his heart. She was still kissing him, more intensely now. Her hand slid lower. Down over his stomach. Liam's brain screamed. Alarm. Alarm. ALARM. Her hand was moving towards his belt. Towards the zip. Towards the place where the swollen, saturated pull-up bulged beneath the fabric like a deformity — soft and heavy and wrong, so obviously not a normal body. If she touched it — if her fingers found the spongy, cold, wet mass instead of a hard, warm boy underneath the salopettes— It was a reflex. A pure survival mechanism — animal, uncontrollable. The instant her fingertips touched the top of his waistband, right above the pull-up, Liam ripped himself free. He stumbled back a step in the snow and shoved her hand away — a violent, rejecting motion. "No!" he said. It came out harder than he'd meant. Almost a shout of revulsion. Sophie stood against the wall. Her hand hung in the air, still shaped around his body. She looked confused. And then... hurt. Her eyes narrowed. "What?" she said. Her voice was small, uncertain. "What's wrong?" Liam stood gasping. His arms were crossed over his crotch in a protective position, covering his shame. "I... I can't," he stammered. "Not here." Sophie frowned. The confusion was turning to irritation. And a flicker of humiliation. She had put herself out there. She had been vulnerable. And he had pushed her away as if she were toxic. "Why not?" she said sharply. "We're behind a building. There's nobody here. What is your problem?" "It's not you," Liam said quickly, desperately. "It's just... I'm... stressed. My mum. And all that stuff. I can't relax." It was a bad excuse. And Sophie didn't buy it. Not after that kiss. "Seriously, Liam?" She crossed her arms. The cold was back in her eyes. "You kiss me, and then you panic the second I touch you? Are you... are you scared of me?" "No! Of course not." "Then what is it?" She stepped forward, aggressive now. "Are you hiding something? Have you taken something after all? Is that why I'm not allowed to touch you?" "No!" "Then what?" She waited. She demanded an answer. Liam couldn't give her one. He couldn't say: I'm wearing a nappy that weighs two kilos and it's full of piss, and if you touch it, you'll know I'm a baby. He said nothing. He just stood there, looking down at the snow, defeated. Sophie stood there for five seconds. Ten seconds. The silence was excruciating. "Fine," she said at last. Her voice was cold as ice. "If you can't be bothered, then neither can I. You're weird, Liam. Really weird. And I'm done playing guessing games." She turned around. "I'm going inside. You can stay out here and... stress about your mum. Or your drugs. Or whatever the hell your problem is." She walked away. The side door slammed shut behind her, and snow dusted from the roof. Liam stood alone in the dark. He could feel the cold, wet pull-up against his skin. He had saved his secret. But it felt like he had lost the girl.

The Dentist Office Snap-Pants Encounter So, picture this: I’m sitting in the dental chair getting a cavity filled, completely relaxed—or trying to be—while dealing with a classic, highly awkward moment. To give you a bit of background, I’ve been wearing 24/7 since 2019, and my wardrobe heavily reflects that lifestyle—onesies, snap-pants, the whole setup. Living in Chicago, Tykables is right here… I’ve collected a pretty solid rotation of them, including a pair of denim snap-pants. Now, when you're standing up, the snaps running down the legs are pretty discreet. But I’m six-foot-two, and when you’re fully reclined in a dentist’s chair, angles change. Mid-procedure, the dentist looks down, notices the snaps running all the way down the crotch and legs, and suddenly pipes up with, "Oh, I like those pants!" Cue absolute panic. I’m laying there, trapped in the chair, totally caught off guard. My brain short-circuits, and instead of just nodding or playing it cool, I blurt out: "Oh yeah, they're made so you can get boots on easier!" I had no idea what I was saying. I was so intensely embarrassed in the moment, but looking back, it's hilarious.

Oddly weird.  Never saw that before

I’ll be honest I wish I would’ve had that done when I went down there to have the bowel incontinence procedure that would’ve been really nice. I didn’t think of that. I would’ve done both of them that would’ve been so ideal. I would’ve loved that in fact I don’t know maybe I’ll just make another trip down there as well worth it for the first one.