Betty Pearl's Sissy Stories 20.1
Sissy Story Archives (older stories) => Recent Inactive Sissy Stories => Topic started by: Jacqueline on May 20, 2020, 05:42:43 PM
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[Readers who didn't like what happened in my last story can rest assured that no such thing happens here.]
Zoe did not like her life very much.
Heather, her mother, had given birth to her and her little brother Richard just ten months apart, the perfect age for him to be just immature enough to be annoying and just old enough not to be easily dealt with. Their father had to make a choice between his family and heroin when she was just three years old, and he had come down firmly on the side of heroin. And she'd just recently learned, less than half a year ago, that she couldn't really rely on her mother anymore, either.
But her mother wasn't there that day, and her brother was, and they were arguing over the list of chores she had left behind.
"I know what you're going to do," she told him after he suggested a division of labor. "You're going to go over the house doing a lazy-ass job for fifteen minutes, you're going to dust by wiping a cloth real quick over some things, then you're going to mow the lawn by running back and forth for another fifteen minutes, and then you're going to play Starcraft while I'm doing all the laundry, and drying the dishes properly, and scrubbing the toilet. Which will take me a lot longer than it will take you." Things weren't always quite like this between them, but last Christmas, and his thirteenth birthday two months ago, had soured her on both him and her crazy, stupid mother. Fortunately, her mother had told her that Zoe was free on her own upcoming birthday, and she also hadn't taken her children to the wedding that she had flown out to, saving money by flying out Monday afternoon and coming back Thursday morning.
"I'm not lazy like that, and you're playing that game, too!" he argued. She'd taken it up last month, half to see what he liked about it so much, and half to be somewhere that she wasn't being treated like the girl her mother wanted to treat her as.
"I've seen you sluff chores so many times. There's this this thing called diligence, I have it and you don't. I'm actually practicing that game. Are you even diligent enough to do that?"
The expression on his face changed a bit, and he leaned his head back in a haughty expression. "Have you even looked at the professional Starcraft players? They're all men, literally all of them. Girls can't play this." Her face screwed up in shock. She thought what he said on Christmas was bad, but this... "This just isn't a game for females, Zoe. You can't beat me, I've beat the computer on Harder! There's no way you'd win!"
Zoe blinked. She'd been using the computer, rather than human opponents, to practice. He'd actually offered to help but he did not want him looking over her shoulder, not after those two "celebrations". And now he'd just admitted, although he clearly didn't know it, that she was better than he was, despite him having had it for years and her just starting last month. She'd been watching videos in between practicing 1v1s against Very Hard and had defeated Elite. "You really are a waste. Get upstairs, right now, and sit your ass at your computer and wait for me to beat it."
"Wanna make a bet?" he offered right away.
"Fine. Loser does all these chores, all of them, the right way."
"While wearing a dress!" he yelled at her.
"Fine, you little shit! While wearing a dress!" She was upset, she was deeply upset, and she realized that it had to be intentional, him trying to throw her off her game while thinking he had the chance to humiliate her further. If this little shit thought he was going to make her wear a dress, let alone the same junior prom dress she'd worn on his birthday, or that Christmas abomination...
Seething with rage, she followed him upstairs, and played him 1v1 in Starcraft 2, her Terran and him Zerg. He kept sending individual Overlords to scout, kept sending in small units to probe, but he didn't expand properly, and then the overconfident little bastard had sent his whole army straight into the teeth of her defenses and got destroyed. She'd rolled over him just like the tanks she sent. "Get in here!" she shouted, and waited at her open door for him.
"Before we start, before we even start, I'm going to remind you of last Christmas, just to make sure you know why I'm about to do this stuff to you," she said as he approached. "Mom was telling me that I needed 'more practice in being feminine', and I was telling her that I didn't want to wear that God damn dress because it's awful. But then you said, AND I QUOTE, 'You're lucky you're a girl, because you get to enjoy being pretty,' just rubbing it right the in. And then she AGREED with that, she agreed with that, and she threw me out there and said I was grounded from everything if I wasn't the perfect hostess in a jingle dress. And you know who else was at that party, those cousins, those college cousins who stared at me like they wanted to rape me AND I'M THIRTEEN YEARS OLD. And I swear to God, one of them stuck his tongue out at me, like he wanted to lick my candy cane legs. I told Mom that I was done, I was just done, and I even tried to tell her about the cousin who did that, and you know what she said? She said I wasn't going to get any presents if I kept acting that way. What kind of threat was that? She never gets me anything good, she never even gives YOU anything good. So I came up in here and closed the door."
Richard stayed quiet, his lips pursed and eyes closed.
"But then she comes into my room, and says, 'why didn't you just listen to your brother, Zoe, why couldn't you just enjoy it because you're a girl, why do you keep making a big deal out of nothing', with me in that jingling dress from hell after my literal cousins AND YOU had been staring at me like a piece of meat?" He looked at her like he wanted to dispute that, but she kept going. "And then she tells me that I'M the one who ruined Christmas?" He was going to say something, but she overrode him. "Do you have any idea how hurtful it is, when someone is doing something to you that you hate, that you should just learn to accept and enjoy it, that it's not that bad so you shouldn't take it so hard and should just go along with it? Do you have any idea at all how awful it is to be told that? It's like if..." She didn't finish her sentence, and she realized that she was practically screaming at him and forced herself to calm down.
"I didn't mean..." he started.
"I don't care what you meant," she snapped. "You stared at me on Christmas and you stared at me on your birthday when you weren't playing with your stupid toys. You want to staring someone wearing a dress so much? Here you go, here's your chance. The whole thing, just like I wore it." She furiously dragged a cardboard box out of the back of her closet. "Enjoy your Christmas in May, you sexist shit." Her brother started hyperventilating, just a bit. She grabbed the hateful candy cane-striped tights out of the box and thrust them at him. "Take off your clothes, and I mean all of them, just like I had to, put these on in your room, and then get your sad ass right back here."
"Can I start with that part too?" he asked quietly, pointing to the vest/petticoat, a white concoction from hell that looked like a little girl's dress all by itself. "Just so you don't see my dic-k?"
"Fine. You got it," she said, shoving it at him as well, and he retreated to his room to put them on.
She wondered if he was actually going to wear it. She half-expected him to come back, smirking, and go 'Did you seriously think I was going to?' She couldn't actually make him do it, and, at some level, he had to know that. Her mother would flip her wig if she saw this, and Zoe had seen enough cop videos to know that even if she were twice his size, she certainly couldn't have physically forced him to wear it. Besides, there really wasn't anything stopping him from ripping up what she'd given him or cutting or tearing the dress apart later when she wasn't looking. (She wouldn't have really minded that much if he did. She hated the thing, after all.) The only reason she had worn it was because Heather had threatened to take everything away from her if she didn't, and she burned with anger and humiliation at the thought and wished that she had torn it apart anyway, right in front of her mother's face.
But Richard did no such thing. Instead, he knocked on his sister's door, even more softly than last time, and when she told him to come in, he stood there, looking very demure and very nervous, with his candy-cane legs and his white petticoats. Maybe he'd felt sorry for her - she knew he hadn't known about that thing with that one cousin - or maybe he thought she'd go easy on him if he quietly complied. She didn't know and didn't care. She had the chance for revenge and was not going to waste it.
"What are you worried about?" she asked spitefully. "I mean, you might not be a girl - yet - but you should feel lucky you get to look pretty wearing this stuff! So let's get you in it, just like I was." She pulled out the dress itself, and took a second to marvel at how stupid, how insultingly ridiculous, it really was, and he submissively put up his hands so she could lower it onto him. The bulk of the dress was similar to a Christmas tree, with little bells taking the place of ornaments, but since they couldn't ring freely against the fabric, an entire line of bells had been sewn along the hem, so the wearer- HIM, now, would jingle everywhere HE went. She buttoned up the front, the buttons made of Santa heads, and the long sleeves matched the tights with their candy-cane stripes. She smirked as the somewhat stretchy velvet fit him almost perfectly, although not quite the same way as it had her. A pair of red mittens with white fur cuffs was threaded with a string through the sleeves, and she made sure that the string stayed in front of his chest just like it had hers. "Hands in mittens, and I don't care what you're doing, you keep them in there, just like I had to," she told him, knowing that he had only been a small part of the problem. She wanted to find a way to do something much worse to her mother. "Here's your Santa hat, don't let it fall off your head!" It was just like a regular Santa hat, only with a bell in place of the top pom, and she secured it firmly around his head. "And your boots, we really can't forget your boots, little sissy!" The boots were also red with white fur, with little bells hanging from the tops and three-inch heels with a small platform, and he passively tugged them on one at a time. She couldn't remember if she ever told her mother what she thought of the whole ensemble: that it made the wearer look like an eight-year-old whore.
She wasn't done with him, though, and moved her swivel chair to the vanity she got on that very unmerry Christmas. She'd never used the thing, and she grinned sardonically at the fact that he would be the first. He stumbled slightly in his boots as he sat down on the chair. She applied generous amounts of foundation and dark red lipstick - she'd never used it, she was surprised it hadn't totally dried out - and decided not to continue with more because she didn't want him to look gross. She wanted him to look cute. She pulled out her phone from her pocket - a thing his dress didn't have - and snapped a picture once she was done.
"Are you gonna blackmail me?" he asked in surprise, a lilt in his voice.
"Blackmail is when you threaten to send it. I am not threatening to send anything." She pushed a few buttons on her phone, uploading it to her private, four-person Discord chat. "There. Now The Squad knows." Zoe and her three closest friends had named themselves that, after the political counterpart, shortly after she had met them a few months ago.
"If Mom ever sees that, we're both in deep shit," he said nervously.
"She won't," Zoe said curtly. "We keep our secrets. No, that's just for us, to forever memorialize my little shithead brother as a pathetic sissyboy wearing the world's most girly Christmas dress in May." He pursed his lips and looked downwards, not wanting her to see his expression. He shifted on his seat a bit. "But you know who it's really for? It's for you, because this IS you. As much as you don't deserve them, you'll be back in your boy clothes after Mom gets home, but no matter what happens later, you will always be the little jingle boy who let his sister dress him up like a candy cane tree, for the rest of your life." She reveled in the pure catharsis, the sheer vindication of taking all the humiliation of the last two parties, that totally wasted Christmas and his shitty, friendless birthday party - those cousins were the only males there other than him - and throwing all of it straight onto him instead. There weren't any surviving pictures of her in that damn dress - a very fortunate glitch had deleted the entire album they were saved in, on all devices - but there would always be at least one picture of him. "Well, go on, Jingle Boy! The house isn't going to vacuum itself! Make sure you don't trip over your heels!" Taking uncertain steps in his fur-lined girly boots, he quietly, obediently, minced out of the room, bells tinkling, under Zoe's mocking glare. "Don't worry, there will be someone here playing your game, you don't need to anymore!" she called out as he jingled down one stairstep at a time.
She briefly felt that maybe she was being a bit too harsh, but that monstrosity was what had been done to her and what he'd clearly wanted to continue doing to her. If this wasn't the very definition of karmic justice, what was?
She put on her headphones and played two games, the hum of the vacuum cleaner a pleasant background buzz. The first game, she'd lost, but she wasn't familiar with the limited map and blamed it on that. The second game, she won, not entirely decisively, but enough to feel like she'd proved herself. She heard a light knock on the door just as she was mopping up, and with the biggest, smuggest expression on her face, she opened it.
There stood her little brother, holding the vacuum cleaner with his velvet mittens like the perfect little sissy housewife, pursing his painted lips. "Can I come in?" he asked in a timid, soft voice.
"Ask politely to do what you came here for, and I'll let you in."
"May I please clean your room, Zoe?" he quietly asked, looking at the ground and demurely holding the vacuum cleaner to himself.
"You certainly may. Don't even think about opening anything, and be careful with the cords."
She considered continuing to play while he worked, just to rub it in some more, but it was much more fun to sit in her swivelchair and watch him instead, her in T-shirt and jeans, headphones around her neck, and him in his stupid Christmas outfit. He actually did vacuum her room diligently, using the edging attachment for corners and even using the dusting attachment for other surfaces, slowly and delicately doing everything with the velvet mittens inhibiting his grip and making sure that his dress didn't brush against anything, his petticoats resting against his candy-cane legs as he got on his knees to reach under her bed, the bell on his Santa hat touching the frame. It was exhilarating to watch, and she took a couple more pictures of him doing his chores like the little maid he was. The only thing she regretted was that she couldn't hear the jingling of his bells over the noise of the vacuum cleaner.
Eventually, he finished, and started to jingle away. "Well?" Zoe asked abruptly, and Richard turned to her in confusion. "You asked politely to clean my room. What do you say now that you're done?"
"Thank you for letting me clean your room, Zoe," he meekly said, looking at the floor again.
"You're very welcome, Jingle Boy. Once you're done with the rest of the house, you can go do the laundry." She gestured to her full hamper, and he picked it up and walked out with it and the vacuum cleaner, taking short steps in his heels.
Feeling like the queen of everything, Zoe turned back to play another practice game before she went out into the big leagues, and got utterly crushed in both tactics and unit production. The other player was just that much better, she couldn't figure out what she had done wrong. Wasn't Very Hard supposed to be the equivalent of a really good human opponent, wasn't that what that meant? Who the hell were these people? She remembered that he had his own username and looked him up in the rankings, just to compare; if she was having this much trouble against initial human opponents, surely he was even worse. (It crossed her mind that this would have been a much smarter thing to do before she had challenged him.) She couldn't believe her eyes and thought she was misreading: he was in the Diamond league. Diamond, while she was having trouble winning in the practice maps. "What the hell!" she half-whispered, not understanding. All he said was that he could beat the computer on Harder! Had the little shit just gotten someone else to rank him up or what? That made even less sense.
She noticed that the vacuum cleaner had been turned off, and wondered if he'd finished with that particular task. She thought about how obedient and quiet he had been while she had dressed him, even while he had partially dressed himself, even while he had cleaned her room. Then she got to thinking about what, exactly, he had said on Christmas and what he had been staring at, during both Christmas and his birthday. And then she remembered whose idea this bet had been in the first place.
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"Oh no, Br'er Fox, please, whatever you do, don't you ever throw me in that there briar patch," she said aloud, pissed at him and absolutely furious with herself for not realizing a whole lot of things, about Starcraft, about his behavior both previous and recent, about why he'd put on the petticoat so she wouldn't see the outline of his dic-k. He probably still had a throbbing erection. Closing the game in fury and tossing her headphones onto the desk, she got up from the computer and stomped downstairs, hearing a slight tinkle of bells from the laundry room. She threw open the door hard enough for it to bang against the springy rubber stop, and he jumped in surprise, bells tinkling again, and turned from his clothes sorting to face her, a sheepish look on his face. He knew she knew, and she knew he knew she knew, and he knew she knew he knew she knew.
"You lost on purpose," she accused him anyway. If she could have spat venom, she would have done it right then.
"I threw the game, yeah," he replied, in an ordinary voice totally bereft of all the timidity he'd shown - roleplayed - over the past hour. He'd felt lucky that his plan had worked at all and was hoping that she wouldn't figure it out so soon. The boots, while super cute, were a size too small and were pinching his feet, but he loved the sound his little bells made, loved the slippery-soft feel of his velvety mittens, loved the soft feeling of his dress and petticoats on his skin, loved how cute he was as he looked down at his pretty Christmas tree dress and childishly striped candy cane arms and legs, smiled every time he saw his made-up reflection anywhere, and enjoyed the thrill of doing chores while dressed like this in front of a girl, even if she was his sister. He'd even enjoyed the sensation of being dominated and mocked. He figured that she was certainly going to strip him of all of it now that she knew. At least it was nice while it lasted.
"You little pervert. You got your sister to fulfill your fantasy. I hope you're proud of yourself."
"You wanted to do it, too!" he replied. "You were enjoying doing it! If you didn't want to, why'd you take the bet?!"
"Yeah, because I thought you didn't want to be-" She stopped abruptly, not liking how it made her sound. 'I only wanted to put you in a humiliating dress because you didn't want to be in one' was something a Grade A bitch would say. Still, though... "I didn't know you were getting off on this! Your sex fantasy is of something that made me hurt, you know that, right?"
"I know YOU hate wearing it! That's why I deleted all the pictures Mom took on Christmas, because I knew you didn't want to see yourself like that again." He'd felt enormously guilty at the time, both for saying what he said and for secretly wanting to wear something that had actually, seriously, humiliated his big sister.
"Bullshit, she said she got an email from support," Zoe said, unsure. That had been an awfully convenient glitch...
"I deleted the whole album off the cloud, then her phone and computer, and then sent her a bogus support email with fake headers. I even had to fish it out of the spam folder myself and mark it unread. You'd know it was fake, but of course Mom believed it." Their mother, as she would be the first to admit, was generally incompetent with technology and had previously needed her children to avoid getting suc-kered; they'd even talked her out of sending money to a Nigerian prince a couple years ago. She had zero concept of computer security and wasn't good at keeping track of her phone. "I bet she still has it in her inbox somewhere." He looked at his sister, his heels putting his eye level somewhat above hers. "Think about it, a glitch deleting just one album from both her cloud and local storage on her phone and computer?"
"You would've been in so much trouble if she found out." Because their mother had some idea of just how susceptible she was to falsehoods, that was the kind of thing that would get him grounded, no computer, no TV, no games, no anything, for months. "You could have told me."
"You were really upset," he replied. "I didn't know what you'd do, I thought you might have told her because you were still pissed off at me for saying you were lucky, and then later I figured it'd just be safer, I guess, if you never knew." He took a deep breath, the velvet moving as he did. She knew his big, dirty secret and could already get him in deep trouble, so there wasn't much point in keeping more from her. "Also, after my birthday party, she wasn't the one taking the pictures so I couldn't delete those, but I told her that I'd saw some research saying that two-thirds of all lesbians.. um..." He tried to remember exactly what he'd made up. "'were excessively feminized by their mothers, including forced wearing of dresses and other female paraphernalia.'" Zoe's eyes widened somewhat. "You know she'll believe anything with big words in it. She probably thought that meant that there was a two-thirds chance you'd turn into a lesbian if she kept doing that to you. That's probably why she left us at home instead of dragging us to that stupid wedding, because you'd have to wear a dress if you went." Like most of the rest of their family, their mother was someone that some people would call 'traditionalist' and others would call 'homophobic'. Being convinced that her own actions were actually leading her daughter to become less feminine instead of more had changed her approach immediately.
"And why she's going to let me do whatever on my birthday. Ricky, I don't know whether I want to slap or kiss you, well definitely not kiss you, you're still a pervert, but... okay, I know your secret, now you're going to know mine, and you never tell anyone this." He nodded. "I'm bi. Bisexual. So when you told her that, you might have made her start looking for signs of it, and do you know what the hell she'll do if she ever finds out?" He fumbled for an answer. "You don't know. Neither do I. If you actually do care about me, you'll keep that secret and I mean secret. Also, why did you say all that shit about girls earlier?"
"All of that was just bait so you'd take the bet," he replied, holding his mittens up innocently. "I didn't mean a word, I swear."
She nodded. It really was unlike him to say things like that, especially given what he'd really meant on Christmas. "I sure did throw you right into that briar patch, Br'er Rabbit." Her expression softened a bit. He really was a tricky little bastard, but he'd only been tricking to help her avoid what she didn't want and get what he did. It was her mother who'd been hurting her out of some misguided ideals, and he'd put an end to that, at risk to himself and without even expecting any thanks. If, instead, he'd held real malice in his heart towards her, he would have stomped her in the game, although, she had to admit to herself, she probably would have welshed on the bet. She felt deep love towards her little brother, despite the fact that he was a colossal pervert; after all, a lot of people would call her sexuality perverted as well. She was actually relieved that she'd been playing to his fetish the whole time, as that was better than having actually hurt him. She felt a bit of swiftly dissipating guilt. She'd intended to punish him for hurting her and had actually rewarded him for helping her. No harm, no foul. "Hey, if my friends came over here and saw you like this in person, would you be okay with that? And I'm sorry about sending pictures without asking, that was a bitchy thing to do."
"It's okay, I was trying to piss you off," he reminded her. "And yeah, sure, as long as they don't do anything too weird."
"They won't," she assured him with a smile. "It's funny, because last week, we were talking about boys in dresses, and Susie said some kid's babysitter put him in some weird bondage dress thing and his twin sister almost blew the babysitter's head off."
He rolled his eyes. "Bullshit, video or it didn't happen."
"I said the same thing! Susie swears it's real, though." That was a reminder to check her phone, and the chat was lively, with all three of her friends gushing over how cute he was, and he smiled a bit as she let him read it. 'He lost on purpose', she texted to them, and the chat grew much livelier; she invited them over to watch a movie, and the chat grew livelier still. Then, abruptly, she threw her arm around her little brother and took a selfie with him, both of them smiling widely for the camera. Caroline abruptly stopped chatting; she was the only member of the Squad with a driver's license, and she'd just jumped into her car to pick the other two up as fast as she legally could. Zoe then noticed the piles of laundry Richard had made, and something was off. 'Gtg, see you when you get here,' she texted, and put her phone back into her pocket. "You're separating the laundry wrong."
"How, it's whites and colors, right?"
"Oh my God, I'm glad I came down here." He knew how to vacuum, but he did not know how to wash. "This house, it's regular whites, regular colors, delicates, and permanent press, and I'll show you what gets what." She went through and explained fabric labels, materials, and dyes, and he patiently listened in his sweet dress, trying not to jingle too much when she talked.
"Four loads, that's going to take a while," he noted at the end.
"Yeah, well, normally you're supposed to be doing other stuff at the same time," she pointed out. "But, huh. You did the dusting with the vacuuming, and I bet you don't want to get your dress or mittens dirty by doing the dishes or the toilet, do you?" He shook his head. "I bet you'd love mowing the lawn like that, wouldn't you?" He blushed deeply and looked away. "You really are a pervert." She smiled at him, shaking her head a bit. "We have days to do all that stuff anyway, and my friends will be here in like twenty minutes. Staying on those boots that long is bad anyway."
"Yeah, I think they're too small."
"Then we definitely have to get those off you. I know you love them, but that's really not good for you. And... I still kinda don't like how you did it, but thanks for getting Mom off my back, little bro."
He curtsied, placing one heeled foot in front of the other and pinching the sides of his dress with his mittens, making all the delicate little bells tinkle. "Thanks for dressing me up, big sis."
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Even better story than "Like Father, Like Son", and ever more realistic. Both your stories are like Aesop's Fables for this genre. There always seems to be a little moral to the tale. Bravo and thank you!
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Jacqueline,
I like this story and hope you plan to continue it.
I can't wait to read what Zoe's friends have in store for Richard.
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After she helped pull off his boots, letting his tights-clad feet breathe and relax, Zoe and Richard talked until her friends got there. She'd asked him how long he'd been interested in such things, and he explained that he'd always wanted to do it, that he'd always wanted to try on dresses and look pretty, even though, as he carefully pointed out, he didn't actually want to be a girl. It was an erotic thing for him, but that wasn't entirely the reason. "This is why I never let you see what character I'm playing in some games," he added, and Zoe understood. She explained that she'd only become interested in girls recently, or maybe she just realized that she always was. Both of them stumbled over their words a lot, with awkward silences in between that were filled by Zoe's texting with her friends, and they were interrupted by a message on Zoe's phone telling her that the car had just pulled up. Richard pulled his boots back on and minced to the door to greet them.
Coming down the path were three girls. To Richard's left was a tall, well-developed blonde in a white t-shirt advertising a mechanic shop, jeans, and sneakers, and she had the sort of permanent grime that gave the impression of long experience with manual labor. To his right was a slightly, somewhat less-developed, brown-skinned girl with shiny, long black hair, wearing an expensive-looking purple shirt and skirt set with elegant flats. Unlike him, neither of them were wearing heels, which was just as well because the girl between them could never have worn them.
That girl looked to be about eleven or so, with red hair and a sea of freckles. Like the taller girl, she wore a shirt, jeans, and sneakers, but her jeans had bell bottoms and were obviously oversized to fit something under them. She walked like a frail, old woman, taking one careful step at a time, and Richard immediately realized that this girl had serious mobility problems and was walking between them so that she could be caught if she fell. Before they arrived, Richard had envisioned girls very similar to Zoe, of the same attributes and general height as her, with the same brown hair and blue eyes he and his sister shared. It hadn't really occurred to him that they might look completely different from her and each other, and it certainly hadn't even crossed his mind that one of them might be disabled.
"He is so cute, he is soooo cuuute!" the girl on the right squealed on seeing him as the middle girl smiled at him deeply, her mouth opening in sheer joy.
"Wowwww. I thought those were Photoshopped. He's actually wearing that, no, he actually WANTS to wear that. Holy shit, Zoe," the girl on the left said.
Zoe introduced them from left to right, and he jingle-curtsied to each in turn. "Richard, this is Caroline, who just turned seventeen, Leslie, fourteen and a half," Richard was surprised but understood at once: whatever disease had done that to her had also stolen her puberty. "Susie, fifteen and a half. Be careful, there's a step," she added.
"Zoe, I wet on the way here," Leslie said softly, as her friends gently, carefully moved her up the single step, a step that Richard had taken thousands of times without even thinking about it.
"Our only bathroom's upstairs," Zoe replied. "I'll get you in the kitchen." Richard saw that Zoe did some things with the braces on the girl's legs, lowering her onto the floor, and then he looked away.
"What's...?" Richard asked quietly.
"Duchenne muscular dystrophy," Caroline replied solemnly. "Very rare in girls, Leslie just happened to get unlucky. She's had it since she was nine. It hasn't hurt her brain, thank fuc-king God."
Richard took a breath. He was an intellectually gifted and unusually internet-savvy thirteen-year-old boy, and he thought of himself as as a true swimmer of the waves, having experienced all the sick and disturbing content that he could find just because he was thirteen years old and wasn't supposed to be looking at it. A small fraction of that was diaper fiction, some of which involved genuinely horrific scenarios. A few times, he'd been so disgusted with the story, and himself for reading it, that he'd stopped reading out of fetishy interest and continued out of pure morbid curiosity, simply because it was there and he wanted to see how bad it would get. For someone to actually inflict that kind of total, permanent helplessness on someone else would be unfathomable, Mengele-tier evil that couldn't be adequately described with the word 'sadism'. This disease had done that and more to a nine-year-old girl without giving her so much as a safeword.
"Totally incontinent?" he near-whispered. He knew it was bad manners to talk about her behind her back, but to say this stuff out loud was unthinkable.
"She lost bowel control earlier this year," Caroline said quietly. "The urine's bad enough." There was silence, for a bit, as Zoe applied wet wipes and powder.
"You're already wearing a dress, do you want to know what this is like?" Susie softly asked, straight-out. "Personally?"
The Christmas dress was still just clothes that his sister had been threatened into wearing only once; the idea of fetishizing part of someone's actual disability, in person, was appalling and disturbing. "Wouldn't that be making fun of her?" he whispered.
"Let's ask her," Susie replied as Leslie and his sister came back from the kitchen. "Hey, Leslie, Ricky wants to know if it's okay for you two to be diaper buddies," she said blithely, and Richard stared at her in surprise.
She smiled at him. "Sure, I'd like that," she replied in her weak voice.
"Just so you know, Ricky, I did this for a week," Zoe added. He went from staring at Susie to staring at her - his sister was in diapers for a week, and he never knew?! "It was gross and terrible even though I changed myself, I wouldn't wish it on anybody, and I was worried that you or Mom would find out," she continued, to his shock. "And in case you didn't know, I've been putting absorbent stuff in my pants for a few days every month for almost a year now." At first, he didn't know what she was talking about, and then abruptly he did.
"You keep dressing like that, and you'll learn more about that last part," Caroline teased him.
"I'm not really a girl, and I'm not gonna be," he said, and his slightly pouting, made-up face garnered light giggles, particularly from Leslie. "Leslie... will this actually help you?"
"I just want the people I'm with to know what it's like," she said. "Just a little part of it. You can stop whenever." There was a very faint trace of bitterness. Her friends got to stop wearing diapers whenever. She did not.
"I'll do it until Mom gets back," he agreed. "She'll probably find out if it's me doing it near her, and if she finds out about this, any of this at all, it's gonna be..." He looked to the girls, trying to think of suitable words. "Catastrophically, cataclysmically, grounded-forever bad." He tried to put his finger across his throat in the cartoon throat-cutting gesture, but he was still wearing his mittens so it just looked silly.
"Then we should make the most of the time we have," Caroline said. "Do a twirl for us." Richard did so, spinning his dress around while turning on his heels, and although he was sure he didn't do it properly, the girls clapped anyway. "This isn't even embarrassing for you, is it?" she asked.
"It's not. If other things were different, it totally would be, but it's not."
"Good, because unlike what your" Caroline did not really say the words 'crazy-ass', but Richard heard them. "mom did to Zoe, we are not going to humiliate you in public. But what we are going to do, is, well, Susie?"
"We're going shopping," she said as the washer dinged.
"Perfect timing. Ricky, go put the clothes in the dryer, but don't put another load in the washer, we don't want the clothes to mildew," Zoe told him.
He could have said no, that any going out in public dressed like a girl at all was actually humiliation, that this was seriously going way too far, and Zoe's friends would have accepted that because they were people, not monsters. Instead, jingling to their amusement, he minced off to put the wet laundry into the dryer like his sister had told him to.
Since all he was doing was moving clothes from one machine into another, even with his mittens, it didn't take him that long, so he returned to the living room as Zoe came back down with clothes, both his and hers. He stood off to the side, enjoying the thrill of letting them pick for him. Leslie, he noted, was making the decisions, and he was surprised at them. His sister's shoes were too small for him, so he'd wear his white sneakers and a somewhat skinny pair of his jeans that he usually eschewed. He'd also be wearing one of his sister's shirts, a pink one embroidered with blue waves, that he'd never seen her actually wear. A pink ponytail placed on top of his head and a change of makeup, turning the red lips into something more subtle, completed the effect. Leslie had been spot-on with her choices; in the mirror, he saw nothing but a modestly dressed girl a bit younger than himself, somewhat tall in stature but who hadn't yet hit puberty and wasn't trying to be super girly.
"You get shotgun," Caroline told him as they walked out together, the others helping Leslie down the step. "You're the broadest of all of them, and Leslie needs room." The front seat was definitely comfortable, and he realized that he wasn't worried at all about being seen.
"Speaking of which," Susie said as they got into the back seat, "No, wait, first, Zoe, did you tell him Rule 1?"
"I didn't, I figured you should," Zoe replied.
"Okay. Richard, Rule 1 of being my friend is that you cannot talk to me about money. At all. You cannot ask for it, you cannot ask for anything gained with it, you cannot so much as mention it. This rule is absolute. I have lost so many friends over this stuff and I don't want to lose more."
"I understand," Richard said. He didn't just understand the rule, he understood why it existed. He got the impression, just looking at her, that she was very, very rich. If he were very, very rich, he would probably have a similar rule to keep moochers away from him.
"Okay, I have heard from a trusted friend that a babysitter tried to sissify a ten-year-old with a bondage dress and his twin sister grabbed a shotgun and almost blew the babysitter's head off with it. Do you believe this happened?"
"I don't. It's not that I think you're lying, I just really doubt whoever told you about it," Richard explained. "And I know there's weird real stuff out there, I've seen some of it online." That was an understatement. He had seen very real human monsters, even had one on his Discord friends list, because he had gone looking for them. Knowing that such things existed made being seen in girls' clothes seem much less frightening.
"Right, fine, I'll see if I can get better proof," Susie replied, shrugging. "Maybe you all are right, maybe she really is BS-ing me." She shifted the conversation over to what Zoe has asked him, how long he had worn dresses and how long he had wanted to wear them, and he found the questions only somewhat easier to answer the second time around.
"There's the store," Susie pointed out after a while. The store she pointed to was a thrift store festooned with Memorial Day advertisements and promises of discounts on already cheap stuff. The store had just reopened after the outbreak. No one asked why she picked a thrift store; to do so would be to indirectly violate Rule 1. "It's all luck. You can find nothing or you can find everything," she explained anyway. "But since they've been getting donations they can't sell for the last couple of months, it's probably more everything than nothing."
Caroline parked and Richard did not hesitate in stepping out. This was his first time outside in girls' clothes, but he knew that no one was looking nor cared, nor would they, not when Leslie would catch far more attention with her limping, elderly movements. (It briefly crossed Richard's mind that the actual elderly didn't deserve this any more than she did.)
"Okay, everybody, if you see something you like, go ahead and grab it," Susie said. "Just don't go crazy." This was the flipside of Rule 1. Her friends weren't allowed to question her generosity any more than they were allowed to ask for it.
Zoe went with Leslie, staying close to the disabled girl and letting her pick out anything she thought would be nice for either of them. Caroline simply browsed, looking for knick-knacks rather than clothes. Richard actually took the opportunity to snag some ordinary boy clothes he liked; people would have noticed a boy in the girls' section, but nobody noticed an ostensible girl in the boys' section.
Susie went through the racks of girls' clothes, but she was more interested in the back room, a place of still-bagged clothes that had not yet been processed, and that was where she hit the jackpot. A baby pink, knee-length dress with puffed sleeves and built-in petticoats, a pair of rainbow scrunchies, a pair of pink ruffled socks, and a pair of shiny Mary Janes with one and a half-inch heels were all in the same bag, which was labeled "Donation from GAS". (She chuckled at the acronym but had no idea what it could have possibly stood for.) Excited, she motioned Richard back there to try the shoes on, and they fit perfectly. She squealed in delight. She held the dress against him, and as it was at least approximately his size, she decided to buy it; if it didn't fit, she'd alter it herself. The place was an absolute treasure trove, even better than she'd hoped. She also selected a pair of Santa boots with four-inch heels that also fit him fairly well - they both laughed at the idea that he'd grow into them - another pair of pink, four-inch heels, a pair of wedge sneakers with two-inch heels, and multiple dresses in varying colors and lengths, along with a bright pink purse and a childish pink backpack with sparkling rhinestones.
By the time she was done picking out stuff, the others had been ready for a while, and she paid for them all without question. This was a thrift store offering discounts, so the price for all of it combined was fifty-something; she reached into her well-stocked billfold in her well-stocked purse, handed three twenties to the elderly cashier, and told her to keep the change, to her surprise and thanks. The place was owned by a local charity that had been hit hard by the pandemic, after all. Susie's face was a beacon of pure glee as they walked out with their bags.
They very briefly stopped at a craft store. Susie went in alone and came back out in three minutes. "It's a surprise," she said.
Their next stop was a gas station; Caroline went in to pay with the twenties that Susie simply handed her, and she came back to the car with cups of crappy gas station hot chocolate and small, unhealthy snacks. Between sips, she talked about the last time she worked on her car and what her father had taught her about transmissions. Richard noticed that it was kind of odd listening to a girl talk about cars, but it was probably less odd than a boy in a dress, and she was kind enough to strictly avoid obvious, contextual 'tranny' jokes.
Their next destination was a grocery store, and on the way, they realized that Richard used Discord but wasn't in their group for some reason, and the Squad was then formally a group of five. "I don't think I can walk all this. You don't need to bring me." Leslie said as Caroline parked.
"If you're staying, I'm staying," Zoe said firmly. "You know that."
Caroline popped open the trunk to retrieve a wheelchair, and her voice was a combination of calm and firm. "Leslie, we've been over this. You are not a burden, and you are not a liability. Do you actually want to sit in here by yourself while the rest of us go in there?" She shook her head. "Then c'mon out." She did, and the other girls helped her into the chair. Richard would have helped, except he had no idea how her leg braces worked.
"If you want me to, I'll push," he offered.
"It's okay, Ricky, Zoe's good for this stuff," Leslie said, smiling fondly, and they walked in together. Richard realized, then, that they had made him one of them. He wasn't a circus freak, he wasn't a plaything or a doll to them, he was someone they actually cared about. He was a boy, and they all knew he was a boy, and although they were pretending otherwise to the public, they weren't pretending among themselves. They had welcomed him, not humiliated him, for what he was. He had a group of friends, one he had never had, one he never knew he wanted. He realized that he would have done anything reasonable, as well as a great many unreasonable things, if they had so much as asked. He was expecting them to want to parade him around in frills and lace, and instead, he was walking around like a modestly dressed girl, all the attention on the girl in the wheelchair that his sister was pushing in the grocery store.
This destination was actually Caroline's gift to Susie than the other way around, as she was primarily shopping for herself, selecting ingredients for recipes only she knew. As before, the others bought lightly. Caroline's family had plenty at home already, for Leslie, it was more about what she could and should eat than what she wanted to eat, and Zoe made a point of picking up the burritos that both she and her brother found tasty and easy to make. Susie paid for everything, again, and this time Richard was used to it.
That was all; the group was basically done for the day. Leslie had to get home and take her pills, and Caroline also had to be home fairly soon. "Hey, Ricky, want to spend some more time at my place? You live less than a mile from me," Susie told him to his surprise.
"You want to say yes, believe me," his sister advised.
"She's got a massive crush on you," Leslie told him, and Susie turned to her in exaggerated shock. She wasn't supposed to just blurt that out!
"Okay, you've talked me into it," he said, and they all laughed. Leslie's home was, as expected, on one floor with no steps, and Richard stayed in the car as Zoe pushed Leslie to her door. Her parents thanked Zoe, as Richard was sure they always did, for being so good to her.
-
They drove back mostly the way they came. Richard's home was in the less expensive part of a fairly large suburban area on and around a hill, with property values and lawn sizes generally growing with height, right up towards a cul-de-sac with one particularly large house, practically a mansion, at the peak. He'd always wondered who owned this enormous house at the top of the hill, and now he knew.
She had the pink backpack, but he did carry in more bags than she did; he was, after all, still a boy. He tried not to stare at the high ceiling, the unimaginably expensive rug, or anything else in the lavishly furnished house; he was actually grateful for Rule 1, as he would have felt compelled to compliment her without it. A small, orange tabby meowed loudly as they entered, the cat wrapping itself around his legs as he set the groceries down next to the large refrigerator.
"Whiskers, I know he smells good, but you're going to get stepped on if you keep getting in the way," Susie told her cat affectionately, and Richard pet the tom anyway.
"I didn't see you get any cat food," he noted.
"Cat food? Whiskers does not eat 'cat food', he eats food. Not always the same food, but still food. I'm not giving you a can or a bag of 'people food' for dinner, am I?"
"Oh, okay. We're having dinner?"
"After we put this stuff away, cooking dinner is the third thing we're doing today," she told him. "The second thing is that we're dressing you up. The first thing is that I'm going to teach you the basics of sewing."
He didn't understand what she meant, but once she pulled what she'd bought at the craft store out of her purse, she did. All that she'd purchased was a one-dozen pack of small bells. She pulled the baby pink dress and ruffled socks from the pink backpack, and he learned how to thread a needle - a tricky thing - and how to precisely sew small things without the thread coming loose or falling off. Once they were finished, his prissy pink dress and pink ruffled socks were now a jingly, prissy pink dress, bells positioned equally apart from each other at the hem, and jingly, pink ruffled socks, two bells on each side. She couldn't wait to dress him up in it, and dress he did, his ponytail replaced by the rainbow scrunchies she'd gotten him, his ruffled-sock feet buckled into his shiny Mary Janes. A blissful, content smile reached his face, and it stayed there as he packed his other clothes into the pink backpack; he didn't believe in a heaven, and even if he did, it couldn't have been better than this. She kissed him, right on his nose. "You are so, so cute," she said. "If we had time, I'd have you dance for me like a ballerina. But it's dinnertime, and this is going to take a long time. C'mon." She led him by the hand into the kitchen, and when he walked on tile rather than carpet, he found that his Mary Janes made little ticking sounds in addition to the tinkling of all his bells.
They were making zereshk polom, a name Richard couldn't pronounce, let alone spell. It was a very involved recipe, and Susie bit back a curse when she heard her father's incoming ringtone. "Do not let the rice burn," she told Richard, picking up the phone.
"Hi Dad, I'm in the middle of cooking something," she said immediately. She turned up the speaker so that Richard could hear the other end of the conversation.
"Hey, sweetie." The man's voice was subtly foreign, but there was no true accent at all. "Just checking to make sure that you're doing okay, that you haven't done anything too wild, or brought any boys over, anything like that." There was a smile in his voice, and Richard knew that he was calling just because he wanted to hear her voice.
"Daaaad!" Susie said, affectionately brattish. "Other than Fatima, the only person who's been in the house since you called literally wears a dress," she said, perfectly truthfully.
"Is she there now?" he asked.
"Nope, she's not," she replied, again being technically truthful.
"Okay, honey. Take care. Be careful with the stove. Love you."
"Love you too, Dad." She hung up, and then both she and Richard started breaking up laughing. "What, I didn't lie to him!" They shared laughter some more before continuing to cook.
"Who's Fatima?" Richard asked.
"My aunt, she comes here every morning, early, to check up on stuff," Susie said. "I think my dad's just scared that I'll throw a party that'll trash the place."
He laughed. "Yeah, because that's totally the thing that he should be worried about, right?"
"Don't you laugh, mister," she said in a fake, motherly voice. "You did something bad today, and for that, you must be punished, but we will deal with this after dinner."
"Okay," he quietly, demurely replied. He hoped it wasn't anything to do with how he'd treated Leslie. He'd never had to personally interact with someone that disabled before, and it had been incredibly awkward.
They finished the rest of the convoluted recipe, using techniques that Richard had never seen anyone use on his mother's favorite cooking shows, and although the final result smelled unlike anything he had eaten before - he had never even heard of a barberry before, let alone tasted one - it was, as promised, absolutely delicious as they sat at the family's expansive table, right next to each other, occasionally feeding each other small bites. Even Whiskers seemed to enjoy it. "So, um... what do you think I should be punished for?" he asked once they were finished.
"You tricked your sister to put you in a dress," she said in that affected, matronly tone, "and that was a very naughty thing to do." She marched into the kitchen and picked out a plastic spatula. "Over my knee, sissy." Richard meekly obeyed, laying over her on her expansive couch, and she pushed his dress and petticoats up, exposing his diapered rear to the air. "If you actually, really want me to stop," she added, quietly and seriously, "say the word 'boondoggle'. That's the safeword, just in case something bad happens."
"Okay," he agreed, not wanting to tell her that he already knew what a safeword was.
What she wanted to deliver was stinging slaps that would fade quickly; what she didn't want was to hit him with any real force. After a few experimental, light whacks on each petticoat-framed butt cheek, she found that holding the spatula lightly in her hand let her whip it quickly but gently, producing loud, sharp sounds and reddening his butt nicely. He yelped childishly on each strike, fully in character, as she alternated between cheeks for a dozen times, but even through his diaper, there was no hiding the fact that being dressed up, lovingly dominated, and spanked by this beautiful young princess was turning his dic-k into a tree trunk. And then the spatula slipped a bit, making a quarter rotation in her hand, and she wound up striking him harder than she intended and with the little serrations on the edge rather than the flat.
"Boondoggle! Boondoggle!"
"I'm so sorry, I'm so, so sorry!" she shrieked, dropping the spatula, wincing, and inwardly cursing herself for being so stupid. "Hold still, just let me take a look. Okay, it's just red, there's no bruise or anything. I didn't mean to hit you with the edge!"
He smiled, making himself relax. She hadn't hurt him all that badly and he doubted she even could. "It's okay. I'm sure you'll get a lot more practice," he told her, promising many more sessions just like this one in the future, and that promise triggered her lust. She had the perfect boy of her dreams and she wanted him. She wanted him forever.
"Turn over," she told him, "and I'll make it up to you."
He turned over, and she pushed him along the couch, put her head under his petticoats, pulled down his diaper just a bit, and spent five minutes making it up to him by giving him his very first experience of that kind, using a tried-and-true method of preventing anything from spilling. It crossed his mind that she, being two and a half years his senior, was technically using him to fulfill her own desires. He very deeply wanted to be used just like that, over and over again.
She kissed him when she was finished, and what he tasted on her lips was himself. "You can't stay overnight because of my aunt, so unless you want to walk home in the dark..." Even with the long, near-solstice days, it was getting late.
"Okay, I'm going," he said, and gave her a very deep and heartfelt hug, his chin on his shoulder and her chin on his puffed sleeve. He got up, picked up his cute backpack, and put it on.
"Aren't you forgetting something?!" she asked him as he walked to the door, his bells jingling.
"No, I'm pretty sure I've got everything," he replied. He'd been careful to pack it all.
She stared at him. "What about your clothes?!"
"They're all in here," he said, smiling and patting his glittery pink backpack. "See you tomorrow, Susie!" And then, with his urges so very happily satisfied and his spanked butt still feeling a little sore from where she'd messed up, he waved and started skipping down the hill as she stood at the door, still staring at him.
Of course, she'd expected him to go out the way he'd come in, walking home as a basically ordinary-looking girl. Heck, he was a boy, and it was getting into summer; if he'd wanted to, he could have washed off his face, pulled the scrunchies out of his hair, thrown away the diaper, and gone out bare-chested and commando in just his boys' pants and shoes, leaving absolutely all the girly stuff in the backpack to be picked up later.
But why would he have ever wanted to go out with a bare face and loose hair when he got to wear makeup and his hair in pretty pigtails with rainbow scrunchies? Why would he have chosen to wear ordinary boys' or girls' clothes when he had a pretty, jingly, baby pink dress that showed the whole world what a cutie he was? Why would he have ever chosen a plain, dark backpack when he could wear a really cute, bright pink one with rhinestones that sparkled in the evening sun? Why would he need pockets when he had his bright pink purse to carry his phone in? Why would he have decided to run or walk in his boys' socks and shoes when he could skip down the sidewalk in his ruffled, jingly, pink socks and cute, clicky Mary Janes?
The question wasn't who would let him. The question was, who would stop him?
He realized he had to pee. He'd been in various states of arousal all day, but now that Susie had so generously taken care of that, he felt his bladder pressing. He could have waited until he got home, but he chose to flood his diaper instead and continued skipping along in his pretty dress and wet diaper, just because he could. He got tired of skipping after a while, so he decided to take dainty little steps instead, not because the low heels on his Mary Janes were making him but because he felt cuter doing it.
He went down a bike path between some houses. A couple of kids were bouncing on a trampoline; they yelled hi to him, and he happily waved hello back. An old man walking his dog passed him, and the man was clearly trying not to stare at the pretty thing skipping past him, who smiled and waved at both him and his doggy. (He'd wanted to say something as well, but his voice would have given him away.) There was a shortcut down a dirt path, but he didn't want to get any of his pretty clothes dirty, so he kept going down sidewalks and on paved paths, where everyone could look out their windows and see him jingling along.
He had to poop, so he squatted down, pretending to be looking at something in the nearby tree grove, and went in his diaper. (He somewhat regretted that. The squishy poop brushed against his butt afterwards and it was actually kind of gross.)
It took fifteen minutes for him to make it home while skipping along and taking dainty steps, and he hadn't even made it to the door before she opened it. He'd fantasized that maybe Zoe would tell him to do a little twirl or something before she let him in, but instead, she immediately gestured for him to get in there right away, closing the door immediately once he did.
"Oh my God. She was serious. You actually did that," she said with a combination of amazement, disbelief, and quite a bit of respect. To force him to do that would have been raw, unforgivable cruelty; for him to willingly dress like that much of a sissy in public, ironically, took massive brass balls. "What if some creep was out there?"
He shrugged. "The bait's too obvious. I mean, if you saw someone else skipping out there dressed like this, would you think that you happened to see someone wearing this out there all alone, or that it was some kind of dare, or benefit thing, or ad campaign, publicity, whatever, and someone was already watching? A real creep would want to come after me in regular clothes, but he'd be a really dumb creep to do anything with me wearing this."
"Okay, but what if one of our neighbors tells Mom?"
"I didn't see any of them looking, and when's the last time you saw Mom talk to any of the neighbors?"
She exhaled. "I swear, you are just the most incredible..." she started but couldn't finish. "I put a nightie on your bed if you want it, you just wear whatever until tomorrow." She suspected, correctly, that he would choose to spend the rest of his day in his pretty dress.
"Can you change me first, please?"
"Change... oh. Okay, Diaper Buddy." She knew she'd be the one doing this sooner or later. She used one of the diapers in his backpack to change him in the kitchen where she'd changed Leslie, using a generous amount of wet wipes and powder. At least he didn't have a hard-on, and she probably would have noped out if he did. "I think you should change Leslie next time," she said.
"Why?"
"You're only seeing half the problem, being changed yourself. It's not just her that's affected by that. It's everyone who takes care of her, everyone who spends time with her."
A suspicion became a certainty. "When you said you were bi, did you mean with her?"
She tilted her head skyward. "God damn, Ricky, you are just... Yes. And before you ask anything else, what my girlfriend and I do and how we do it is none of your business. And you tell no one about this, and I mean no one, not even Caroline or Susie."
"If I figured it out, I'm pretty sure they already know," he said. "They obviously don't hate boys in dresses, I don't know why you'd think they hate lesbians. I thought you said no secrets? Caroline's not going to hurt you, Susie sure as hell isn't." He was as certain as any teenage boy could be that she was as desperately in love with him as he was with her.
"Friendships don't always last, and if Mom finds out... God, the things you did today, we did..." She suddenly felt a wave of fear and regret.
"Your friends aren't gonna tell her, and who else would?" Richard felt particularly confident just then. Maybe it was euphoria from his adventure, maybe an ironic wave of testosterone from what Susie had did with him. He didn't care. Wearing his dress made him feel like more of a whole person than he'd ever felt in his life. Earlier, he had been worried that his mother would ground them forever; after what he had done that day, he didn't. "If she tries something really crazy, I'm pretty sure I can stop it. She's not a monster, she's just stupid."
"I just hope you're right." She finished taping him up and patted his thigh gently. "And by the way, I know that not everything in that diaper was pee or poop."
"What my girlfriend and I do and how we do it is none of your business," he replied with a smirk, and then she started laughing, and he started laughing, and she walked away with her palm in her face.
He played three games of online Starcraft 2, and, even in his advanced league, only one of the opponents gave him any challenge at all. He wondered what they'd say if they knew that they'd gotten trounced by a thirteen-year-old boy in a jingly, frilly dress. (Then again, he mused, they could also be thirteen-year-old boys in frilly dresses. This was, after all, the internet.)
He carefully took off his pretty clothes, put on the soft, silky nightie his sister had left for him, and cuddled under the covers for the best sleep he'd ever had.
-
Jacqueline,
Wow! What chapters! They addressed a number of my fantasies.
I started reading your latest sections right after I woke up while I was still wearing my nighttime diaper, which was filled near capacity, and had to change into a fresh one before I finished.
I'm really looking forward to your future chapters.
-
Richard woke up early, a thing very unlike him. He'd had the most wonderful dream. He'd gotten all dressed up cutely and then spent time with some new friends and then been driven up the hill to the a beautiful princess's house and she'd given him the most enjoyable time of his life, then he'd skipped home wearing a jingly dress...
He sat up in bed, rubbed his eyes, and then looked down at his nightie, realizing that he'd actually done all of that. He sat there for a bit, still amazed and in mild bliss before remembering that he had chores he needed to finish. He'd wanted to try on that pink prom dress his sister had been shoved into on his birthday - and which she had left in his room, along with all the other girl stuff she would never wear again - but he'd be doing dishes and scrubbing the toilet and didn't want to risk it getting wet. Instead, he picked out a pink, floral-print housewife dress that could have been sixty years old, the tights that came with the prom dress and, after a bit of thought, his pink four-inch heels. (He'd wanted to wear his jingly socks again, but he'd been skipping in them yesterday and they needed to be washed.)
Then he carried his dress and heels to the bathroom, where he set them down on the closed toilet and started brushing his teeth. His diaper was, of course, still dry, and he would normally just let go in the shower, but that felt like cheating and not at all in the spirit of being diaper buddies with Leslie. Instead, he peeled it off with as little damage as possible, took some of his mother's sweet-smelling floral shampoo, washed his hair very thoroughly, and then took a small dollop of some thickly lavender-scented leave-in conditioner and followed the directions exactly because he'd never used it before. He dried himself thoroughly with a fluffy towel (particularly in his nether regions), put his diaper back on and taped it as snugly as he could, slipped on the light pink tights, lifted the floral dress over his head and buttoned up the front, and slipped on his high heels. He realized he still had to pee, but that's what his diaper was for, and he giggled lightly as he let go.
He looked in the mirror and smiled at his own reflection, twirling a bit. This dress was, of course, nowhere near as frilly or sweet as the thing he'd worn yesterday, but he enjoyed the sensation of the light fabric on his skin.
Four inches really was pretty high for him, especially with such thin heels, and he daintily, carefully minced downstairs, one hand on the railing, to pick up where he'd left off with the laundry. He put in the next load as Zoe had instructed him, but not knowing quite what to do with the dry clothes, he simply folded them up as delicately as he could and placed them on the ironing board. (He'd never heard of his mother actually ironing anything.) He minced over to the kitchen, realizing that everything seemed very far away with such little steps, and found some rubber gloves. Picking out the right cleaners with a lot of careful label reading, he very carefully minced back upstairs, found a stiff-bristled brush, carefully kneeled in his dress so as not to get it dirty, and cleaned the toilet, then decided to do the bathtub as well.
Once everything was nice and shiny, he minced downstairs, checked the timers on the washer and dryer (cleaning the toilet and bathtub didn't actually take that long), and lightly washed the few dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, making sure he was using the right liquid. Zoe had used the wrong one, once. Then he minced back to the laundry room and went through another load of clothes, enjoying the pleasant, girly buzz he was getting from being a good little sissy. What else could he do? Oh, right, the lawn - but the lawn would have to be handled after morning rush hour. Jingling home had been one thing, but waking the whole neighborhood up with a lawnmower would have been very unwise.
Instead, he decided to clean off the cabinets and counters, throwing away a bunch of old trash that had been acc-umulating for a while. (Their mother could be something of a hoarder and would surely be worse without her children. On the bright side, she would never seriously look in either of their closets.) He went for the stove next, and cleaning that out was really rather disgusting and nasty, but he perservered by reminding himself that he was a dutiful little sissy, and he didn't realize how long it was actually taking him until he realized that he couldn't hear the washer anymore, and he minced back to do yet another load of laundry, including his jingly dress and socks. He placed his own clothes in a laundry basket, carefully making his way up the stairs again, smiling coyly at how hard his heels made everything and enjoying the subtle helpless feeling that his wet diaper was giving him. He heard his sister in her room but minced back downstairs to finish his chores.
"Hey, Ricky," Zoe said, going up to him as he worked. He was wondering if she would laugh at him for doing chores he didn't even need to do while wearing four-inch heels no one had told him to wear. Instead, she handed him his phone. "You need to get in our chat, and you've gotta read this." He unlocked it and added them all as friends - even his sister hadn't been on his friends list - got into their private server, and read, or tried to read, what she was talking about.
Leslie, her diaphragm's weakness forcing a degree of quiet on her in the physical world, could be incredibly chatty online. Richard scrolled up to read line after line of her discussing an doctor's appointment that would "finally, actually" happen in the middle of next month, and she continued on and on about a triple approach of some sort of CRISPR-based gene therapy, X-linked reactivation (Richard had absolutely no idea what that was), and engineered, allogeneic (whatever the hell that meant) stem cells. Apparently, choosing to give just one of these experimental treatments to a human being was considered unethical, so she needed to get all of them at once. Dr. Sinchurch, the lead researcher, had advised her parents not to get too hopeful, but Leslie had used the word 'cure' more than once.
"Holy crap," Richard said. "Is she actually going to be free of that?" He was viscerally reminded of the difference between a fetish and a problem. The games he was playing with himself (and, even more enjoyably, with Susie) weren't real, and he would never want them to be.
"She thinks so," Zoe replied. "If it works, that would be the most... God, I can't even describe..." Her voice was breathless, and Richard expected her to start crying tears of joy at any moment. Richard was also reminded that this was her girlfriend, someone she surely cared about the way he cared about Susie, and he could not have even imagined his feelings if it were Susie in Leslie's position.
"Oh, hey," Richard said before his sister really started crying, "I folded up a bunch of your and Mom's clothes, I don't know where they go."
She smiled widely at him. "Don't worry about that part, I'll handle the female clothes," Zoe said, and pretended to think for a bit. "Well, the female clothes worn by actual females," she finished, giggling, leaving him to finish cleaning the stove.
He had a single burrito for breakfast along with his sister, as she'd mentioned that they'd probably be eating somewhere nice that day, and he did the lawn as he'd intended: with his housewife dress on, his feet in his heeled sneakers, and his face made up so that he really looked like a girl. He probably did go a bit more quickly than he should have, but the end result was even stripes around the small front and back lawns, and then he realized that he was actually tired, put his four-inch heels back on because he loved how his feet felt in them, put the last load of laundry into the washing machine, meticulously dried the dishes, and went to play pirated Skyrim featuring mods from places that thirteen-year-olds were not allowed to be, only realizing later that he'd completely forgotten to ask for a change. Oh well. Instead of bugging his big sister, he decided to just be a good girly boy and stay in his wet diaper.
As he put the laundry into the dryer, the Discord chat warned him that his friends were arriving, and he curtseyed to them as they came in, enjoying their light giggles.
"Hey, Zoe, I was going to wait until we got there," Leslie said, "but it's starting to get bad. I'm sorry..."
"Leslie, it's okay, remember? It's always okay. Besides, if it's all right with you, I want Ricky to change you so he can see what it's like." After a bit of thought, Leslie agreed, and Richard realized that what he was about to do was unwrap a piece of plastic trash to uncover concentrated, raw sewage. Immediately, he gained a deep appreciation for the world's parents and a low contempt for all the nonconsensual diaper fetish stuff he'd seen. Doing this for someone he cared about was bad enough; doing it to someone he hated, on an ongoing basis, would have required him to not be merely sadistic but entirely devoted to the cause of sadism, especially if he wanted to do it properly. Trying not to show any visible reaction to the smell - he didn't want to make this worse for her - he wiped her up front-to-back, trying to avoid any hint of doing anything sexual, and added powder before laying a new diaper under her and taping her up as Zoe instructed.
"So, how was it, really?" Leslie asked.
Richard felt put in an awkward position. "I really, really hope that treatment works," he replied to get out of it, and the group laughed, even Leslie.
Leslie smiled at him. "Okay, my turn to change you." She could tell he was wet. "I've never changed anyone before." Richard was surprised, but agreed. Leslie had a difficult time changing herself due to the weakness of her core muscles, but her arms were mostly fine, and with the help of her friends to move her into a good position along with his cooperation, she had lifted up his housewife dress, removed the diaper, and wiped him swiftly.
"Don't put him in a new one," Caroline said. "Probably not a good idea to risk it on the way there. Ricky, go wear your boy clothes and bring a pair of swimming trunks. Leslie has to be at the Y at 12, that's not negotiable." Richard understood and quickly started mincing up to his room to change, the girls enjoying watching him totter on his heels. "And bring those sneakers Susie got you. I'll handle the rest." Richard methodically took off his housewife attire, shoving it all into the back of the closet just in case his mother got home unexpectedly, then put on his swimming trunks and, over those, a set of the boy clothes he'd gotten from the thrift store, putting on his regular black sneakers and tossing the heeled ones in his school backpack.
He hopped down the stairs, locked the door behind him (he'd remembered his house key this time), and rushed out to the car as they were helping Leslie in, jumping into the open front door. "Hey, if Leslie needs room, why isn't she the one up front?" Richard asked. He'd have liked to be next to Susie as much as possible.
"Too dangerous," Caroline replied immediately as she pulled out. "Middle back is the safest place in any collision. And I wouldn't want to hit her with an air bag, either." It was only then that he started really paying attention to the way Caroline drove: focused and careful, with her head on a swivel for people less careful than her. She was, after all, a car girl, and he was certain that she was a better driver than nearly everyone else on the road, let alone other people her age.
"How'd you even meet each other?"
"I was wondering if you were ever going to ask that. Our shop does repair, but it's mostly customs. Her dad needed a wheelchair lift added to his SUV, and our parents just kept going for a while about dimensions, structure, comfort, everything. Business was slow, and I didn't have anything else to do, so we just kind of started talking. Met Susie pretty much the same way. Her dad wanted a whole lot of stuff added to his car."
"And I met Susie after your birthday party," Zoe continued. "This was after I'd taken that junior prom dress off. I just needed to be away from Mom and out of that house. Just had to make sure those damn cousins didn't see me leave. We met on the back trails."
"She really needed someone to talk to," Susie said, "and I am very glad I did." He heard the smile in her voice. He'd expected her and everyone to start treating him subtly differently once he was dressed like a boy again, but they didn't. He was simply Ricky to them either way, even to Susie, and that knowledge gave him a deep sense of well-being.
The Y, as many places were, was mostly empty. Leslie, of course, had a full membership; Caroline casually said "Susie, you or me?" and Susie pulled out a twenty to get the rest of them in. On the way to the lockers, they were swiftly greeted by a smiling, tall woman who looked like she could be a lifeguard.
"Mindy! Did you hear about the treatment?" Leslie asked.
"I definitely heard," the woman replied in an understanding voice that came off as neither clinical nor condenscending. "I really hope this works out. It would mean a lot if it did, to you and a lot of other people as well. Would you like to introduce your friends?"
"This is Susie, Zoe, and Ricky," Leslie said, gesturing to each of them. "This is is my physical therapist, Mindy," she continued, gesturing to the smiling woman. "She's helped me a ton."
"I'm very glad you're all here," Mindy said. "In my professional experience, having supportive friends means a lot. You don't have to get involved, you don't have to say anything, you can swim wherever you want, but I just want you to be around for her. That's important." They all nodded. She gently patted Leslie on the shoulder. "C'mon, let's get you ready." They all went off to change, Richard feeling rather alone in the men's locker room, wondering if he could pass when wearing a girls' swimsuit and figuring he couldn't. Maybe if he were younger, perhaps if there were plenty of frills extending from the midsection to hide anything boyish.
He stripped quickly in the empty locker room, tossing his clothes into his backpack. Lacking a lock, he carefully stashed it somewhere that no one would find it, and went out to swim. Where were they? Oh. Right. Girls, and one of them was disabled. Dipping his toe into the shallow end, he got in. He actually hadn't swam for a while; the last time he'd worn his trunks was at the water park a couple weeks ago, where his mother had fortunately just let him and his sister run around in the warm weather. He experimentally made a few strokes, starting with a dog paddle and gradually working up to moves he'd learned many years ago.
"Having fun?" Susie asked, and he looked up at her in her bikini, which was a few shades darker than her skin, and his swimming trunks immediately began to tent under the water. She slipped in the water next to him, and they hugged deeply and kissed lightly, and he fully realized that he had an actual girlfriend and not just when he was dressed like a girl himself.
"Race you to the other side," she said, and he immediately started going after her. She won handily; she'd obviously been practicing freestyle, and he struggled to really get going with anything but a basic breaststroke, and it felt like his head didn't want to stay above the water.
"I need to swim more," he lamented as he finally reached the other side of the Olympic-sized pool.
"You just needed something to chase," she said teasingly, kissing him again and swimming back. He tried to copy her movements as best he could, learning freestyle swimming the hard way, kicking his legs as hard as he could. He did better that time, he thought, and then she kissed him again and swam back. He realized that this probably counted as some kind of physical training, that she was using her feminine wiles to spur him on. What was he going to do? Not swim after her?
She did the same thing out and back again, and then he confessed that he really was exhausted and out of shape from not having done this for a while, and they sat around watching Leslie and Mindy for a bit, the therapist pushing Leslie as hard as she would go. Zoe always tried to stay close to them, even though she enjoyed diving as deep as she could. Caroline was actually a decent swimmer as well, and there were a couple of older guys, the only other patrons in the pool, surreptitiously trying not to look at her as they did their own swimming.
It was a solid hour of exercise and companionship, and Richard's muscles were burning by the time Mindy helped Leslie out of the pool. He'd have greatly loved to have spent time in the hot tub with them, but it was closed indefinitely 'for the health and safety of our guests'. 'fuc-k this pandemic,' Richard almost said aloud.
And then Caroline walked up to him and whispered in his ear, and he smiled.
-
Ten minutes later, if anyone had been paying attention to the security cameras, it would have seemed like a scene from a spy movie: A disabled girl sits in her wheelchair outside a women's locker room in a lesser-used part of the facility. A boy in swimming trunks approaches, and she presses a couple of buttons on her phone. As he walks past, a couple of girls open the door in front of him and quickly whisk him inside. Two minutes later, four girls leave the bathroom and walk towards the back entrance, a well-developed one wearing the boy's backpack, another pushing the girl in the wheelchair.
Richard was amazed at how quickly they'd managed to transform him, although they'd had not only his consent but his active participation. His swimming trunks had come off at the same time his bra had gone on, a very special something that Caroline had concocted last year as a gift to a friend, which had been worn only once and then returned. She'd used a sports bra, shredded tire rubber, fabric, and epoxy to make it, and although the results were far from bouncy or jiggly, they looked legitimate under the pink T-shirt (advertising her father's business) that she'd given him.
They'd also swiftly put him into a diaper, a set of butt-padded granny-like underwear that Caroline had also made, and pink shorts that barely covered that underwear. Zoe had made up his face in record time, and Susie had put his hair into a high ponytail while he'd put on his pink socks (no bells) and white heeled sneakers. It would take very close observation to realize that he was wearing a diaper or wasn't really a girl, and anyone making observations that close would probably wind up in the back of a police car.
Of course, they didn't want to walk past the receptionist who had let them in, so they took the back way around, Richard feeling very conscious of the way he was swaying his padded butt as he walked, his new breasts swaying back and forth a bit as well. They were certainly even heavier than the real thing, and although the sports bra keeping them steady, he was also self-conscious of his motions and balance. He felt very uncertain of himself, very dependent on the people around him, and very, very girly, and he gave a light, coquettish smile.
He still got shotgun, and he knew that anyone who was looking would see the cute girl with the nice breasts up front. He felt actually worried for a bit, but it wasn't like he had any other friends who might recognize him, and at that moment he just really didn't care anyway, any more than he had when he was skipping along yesterday. The only thing that really concerned him was the way his seat belt went between his rubber boobs.
"All right, what does everyone want for lunch?" Caroline asked.
"Hey Leslie, can you eat sushi?" Susie casually asked. Richard was getting used to her tones of voice. The more casual she sounded, the more money she was preparing to spend. There was no way she could always throw this much of it around. It was certainly because of him, and he was sure without even asking that he was her first real boyfriend.
"I'll ask Dad, it's his lunch break, too." He picked up the phone almost at once. "Hey, Dad. Yeah, swimming went fine. Is sushi okay for me? Well, yeah. Right, cool. Thanks, Dad." She hung up. "He says sushi and rice are good for me, just to stay away from the salt."
"This place, that means stay away from the soy sauce," Susie said, and, seeing no objections from anyone (Zoe and Richard had never had sushi in their lives), gave Caroline the address to put in her car's GPS.
"Can we stop at the pharmacy?" Leslie asked, seeing it up ahead as they drove down a main road. "I'm kinda low." She did not need to explain what she was low on.
"Sure, I'll get 'em." She stopped in and was in and out within a single minute, a package of absorbent, low-visibility adult diapers in a plastic bag.
"Wow, you just walked right in and bought those and nothing else," Richard pointed out. He would have wanted to create a greater shopping list and throw the diapers in with other things.
"Yeah, nobody's going to ask why when you're buying diapers," Caroline said. "What kind of answer would you expect? 'It's for my grandma.' 'It's for my disabled friend.' Or better yet, 'I have incontinence.' And then the cashier just feels like a royal asshole for asking. Besides, not asking questions like that's gotta be something they teach in day one of orientation there. First rule of selling medical shit, don't humiliate your customers."
"I can pay for it, if you want," Leslie said.
"Don't worry about it. I'm not at Susie's level but just don't worry about it." Her father had upgraded her from "Daddy's little helper" to "actual assistant" a couple years ago, paying her increasing amounts of money to do increasingly vital things.
It was, of course, an upscale sushi restaurant, and given that the waitress greeted Susie by name - even despite it being closed for months, previously - he was very certain that she and/or her father had made an enormous splash in there before. The place had re-opened the previous day for sit-down traffic, and there were only a handful of other people sitting in a far booth, and Zoe quietly whispered in her brother's ear, "She's about to keep this place open." He only nodded.
"Just get what you can eat," Susie advised, and then they started talking about all the different items, and Richard had noticed that all of them were worried about whether or not what they were getting would be enough or too much, and pointed out a family smorgasbord platter and a large pot of tea that they could simply split, and that had been the right decision. It also meant that Richard didn't need to talk out loud to the waitress.
Zoe breathed a small sigh. "Just to be able to finally get here... I'm not talking about affording anything, I'm talking about just getting here at all. I actually asked to eat here, something small, just because I wanted to try it, remember, Richelle?" she settled on to call him. He didn't remember, as she'd been ten or so at the time. "Oh no, of course we couldn't afford it. Meanwhile, that Christmas abomination and that stupid vanity must have cost, even second hand..." She realized that she was ruining the mood while probably talking about money too much in front of Susie, and stopped. She looked at Caroline with a smile. "I swear, around here, a driver's license is like a superpower." She wondered when she'd ever be able to make use of one.
"Meanwhile, Susie's got Batman's superpower," Richard quietly said. He knew it was a violation of Rule 1, but it was funny.
Caroline, Leslie, and Zoe all turned to look at him. "Richelle, you know she lost her mom, right?" Caroline asked.
"Oh crap I'm sorry!" Richard whispered, covering his mouth, his arm resting against one of his heavy boobs. It hadn't even occurred to him to ask why Susie only ever mentioned her dad. Fortunately, Susie wasn't familiar with comic book universes, and they gently, patiently explained to her what Batman's 'superpower' was and that his parents had been killed. "So.. what happened to your mom?" Richard quietly asked after she'd understood how he'd messed up.
"Lung cancer happened to her," Susie replied. "And she never even smoked. Zoe told me about your dad." Richard just nodded.
"By the way, I actually do have a mom, we just don't get along well," Caroline said. "And Leslie's parents, well..."
"We're having lunch, and I have a loving mom and dad," Leslie said pointedly. "I am not talking about my birth parents in a good sushi restaurant." She seemed to despise them even more than her disease.
"Yeah, only talk about them in a bad one in case we need to puke," Caroline replied, but did not explain. "Anyway, the reason I hang with you four is that, well, here's ordinary high schoolers," she said, holding her hand at a certain level, and then raised her hand a fair bit. "And here's you. Being someone's friend means having to put up with their bullshit, and the friendship-to-bullshit ratio of the Squad is good enough to make me want to keep driving you around." Her tone gave away the fact that she'd had many friendships that did not have such a good ratio. "Besides," she quietly continued to Richard with a grin, "I never thought I'd ever meet a boy quite like you." Richard blushed a bit, self-consciously holding his arms over his rubber breasts.
"He's mine," Susie said offhandedly.
"Pfft. I don't want to marry him. You wanna know who I plan to marry?" They all looked at her. "A charter pilot. Not some big plane, he goes where the company tells him to, pilot. I want a guy who flies a small plane up in Alaska somewhere and can take me anywhere in North America. Day I find him, I'll take you all up with me." She smiled wistfully. "And then I won't the only one here without a partner." Zoe and Leslie stared at her, mouths open. "You seriously thought you were hiding it?!"
"Zoe, I told you it was really obvious," Richard added. Susie kept quiet, feeling a bit embarrassed at not having realized it earlier. She'd seen some signs but didn't think they were actually girlfriends in that way; upon reflection, it really was pretty clear that they had something going on.
"Okay, look, if Mom finds out..." Zoe started, but Caroline just pointed straight at Richard's fake breasts. She was seventeen and had just actively contributed to the willing feminization of a thirteen-year-old boy. None of them was going to let any of them there get in trouble for anything, or everything would come down on all of them. "Right, sorry, being dumb. Hey, I think that's our food."
It was, of course, extremely high-class, very well presented, and absolutely delicious, and they dug in. With the unfamiliar and heavy mounds on his chest getting in the way of his arms, Richard had to be careful how he ate, and he wound up taking small, girlish bites that made him feel even cuter, and he liked the idea that any boys trying to hit on him would be in for an unpleasant surprise. (Although, he mused, it wouldn't be all that unpleasant for the right - or, rather, wrong - boy. He was very glad he had Susie instead.)
Caring somewhat less about their secret, Zoe and Leslie were feeding each other bites, and then Susie poked Richard and opened her mouth as well, and they took turns feeding each other the same way, giggling softly.
Of course they ate it all. Richard confirmed that the girls were full before he happily ate every scrap of food left on the platter, even if he was doing it with feminine bites as they talked. The total cost was seventy five-something and Susie paid with five twenties and told the waitress to keep the change.
"All right, how's everyone for frolfing?" Caroline asked. None of them even knew what that meant. "Not one of you has played frisbee golf before." None of them had, and they wanted to try. "Fortunately, the park is wide open and nearly empty this time of day, so almost nobody is going to be looking at us."
"I'm not that worried about being seen as a girl," Richard said. It wasn't like he had other friends who would recognize him, and the odds of him being seen by anyone from his school and recognized later were miniscule.
"I don't mean that, I mean no one's going to watch any of you suc-k at it."
Caroline was right about everything. Richard had thought that the boobs, butt padding, and mild heels would get in his way, but they really didn't, not for the distances he was throwing. If he did a full arm movement, he'd have completely missed the mark or wildly overshot anyway, as Caroline pointed out. The game was actually fair to Leslie, although, in her wheelchair, she couldn't pick up her disc on her own.
It actually took patience, waiting for everyone's turn, and frustration, as all of the newbies did in fact suc-k at it. None of them really cared; they were with their friends and they were having fun, four girls and one girly boy out at the park together, and that was all that mattered.
Caroline dropped off Leslie with Zoe - the cat being out of the bag meant that no one had to invente reasons for that - before arriving at Susie's place. She had a show she'd wanted to Ricky to watch with her, and it wasn't what he expected at all. Eating leftover zereshk polo with his girlfriend and other friend, with his head against his girlfriend's breast and her cat laying on top of him while they all watched a Persian rom-com together, wasn't what he expected to be doing that evening, especially not while he wore fake breasts and butt padding, but it was enjoyable all the same. (He would never have watched something like that by himself. Being with Susie made everything better.) And then the show finally ended and Susie gave her boyfriend a deep, meaningful smile.
"I'm going to go practice pool for a half hour or so. I hope you two don't get up to anything while I'm not looking. That would just be a shame," Caroline said, completely tonelessly, as she walked away.
"Do you have a pool table or an actual pool?" Richard asked.
"Both," Susie replied. He almost asked to go try the table, but she clearly wanted to play an entirely different game involving sticks, balls, and holes, and they were pulling each other's clothes off within seconds, and his shoulders were relieved to be rid of the heavy bra. "Well, this one's a waste," she said, laughing as she realized that she'd torn his diaper off. She flipped over on the ground to put them in the standard 69 position, and Richard had absolutely no idea what to do except stick his tongue in and start licking at whatever looked good. It was easier for her, as just having her mouth on it was more than enough for him.
"Ricky, that tickles!" she squealed a few minutes in.
"Isn't that why it's called a coochie?" he asked. "Coochie coochie coo!" He started tickling her intentionally, and as she started laughing, he let loose. Spluttering loudly, she turned to look at him, and he started laughing as well. "You are just the worst!" she shouted, still laughing, and he returned to his task, and under the ministrations of his tongue, her giggling turned into something else entirely, and her rapid movements were a sure sign that she was absolutely not faking it. "I can't remember the last time I ate out twice in one day," he said once she was done.
"Ate out? What.. you're horrible," she said, laughing. "I couldn't have guessed a boy like you would have that kind of mouth."
"You enjoyed my mouth just now," he pointed out.
"And you've enjoyed mine twice. So what are you going to get me in return, hmm?"
"I wish I could. Seriously, I really do wish I could. But what could I get the princess who has everything?"
"Is that how you think of me? As a princess?" He nodded and admitted it. "That's good. That's perfect." She put on an imperious air. "From now on, when we're by ourselves, you will call me 'Your Highness'."
"Yes, Your Highness," he obediently said.
"Good boy. Your first task as my official servant is to help me put my clothes back on," she ordered him. He put her shirt, panties, and skirt back on, and she helped with his shirt and shorts as well, although the diaper was toast and he decided to forgo the heavy padding, making him more obviously a boy in girls' clothes. "Your next task is to massage my feet."
He had no idea what he was doing, of course, kneeling as she sat on the couch with a haughty look on her face, but he kneaded them gently and she seemed to appreciate it. "I am coming up the stairs," Caroline intoned robotically, slowly making her way up. "I sure hope nothing happened while I was down there."
"Absolutely nothing happened at all," Richard said in the same robotic tone, sitting on the couch next to Susie.
"Good, because I need to go get Leslie home. You want a ride or stay here?"
"Take the ride," Susie told him, and he put his socks and heeled sneakers back on, stuffing the padding in his backpack. "We'll have tomorrow, and the day after, and when your mom goes to work and my dad's not home we'll have plenty of time after that." She kissed him goodbye, and with a spring in his step, he followed Caroline out to the car.
"I just don't understand you," Caroline said as they got in. "You're obviously hetero, sometimes you dress like a total sissy, you do chores dressed like a housewife for the thrill, you don't have a problem with going out as a girl, you call yourself a boy..."
"If you want to understand me, stop putting me in categories," he told her.
"Shit. You're right. I'm the asshole, and that was stupid. Sorry."
"It's fine. None of you actually judge me for liking this stuff."
"Honestly, I'm having fun with it. Probably not as much fun as you are, though. Also, just by the way, I know you've just found the girl of your dreams, but don't forget your sister, either. Remember who her girlfriend is. If it all works out for Leslie, some of this'll be different, but she needs you as much as you need her. Especially if your mom gets stupid."
"I know."
Once they arrived, Zoe pushed Leslie out the door in her wheelchair, being extra careful with the step, and Richard wondered whether it wouldn't have been better for her to walk. Oh, right, she probably had just been moving her legs a whole lot while they were doing something that was not his business.
Richard put on another diaper (he didn't want to explain that one to Zoe) and played three games of Starcraft 2 that evening, two in which he completely rocked face and one in which the opponent, exceptionally good, eked out a victory over him.
He went to bed, planning to enjoy another night of excellent sleep. He had friends he absolutely trusted, a wonderful girlfriend, and even his disabled friend was going to be able to get well. He securely and happily snuggled himself under the covers in his freshly laundered nightie and warm blankets, safe and secure in the unconscious certainty that everything was going to be fine, nothing bad was going to happen to any of them, nothing terrible and unforeseen would occur, and absolutely nothing was going to go wrong.
-
Jacqueline,
I'm really enjoying reading your most recent chapters.
Sometimes I dress like a housewife in a diaper when I'm doing housework.
Thanks to your writing, my diaper is not just wet, but now it's sticky, too.
I'm looking forward to your next chapter.
-
[Warning: This part gets very dark very quickly, and not in the way you'd expect.]
Richard awoke to banging on the door. Thinking it was his mom or some other relative, he immediately panicked and pulled off his nightie and still-dry diaper, stashed them in a drawer as fast as he could, tossed on his boxer shorts, and opened the door, his heart racing.
"Oh it's just you," he said in a single quick breath after seeing Zoe. She'd startled him badly.
"Ricky, check Discord," she said in a very, very serious tone, and he did. The messages he saw on his phone were much, much worse than a startling wake-up knock.
[8:30 AM] Leslie: I can't describe my feelings (edited)
[8:33 AM] Leslie: Can't type (edited)
[8:45 AM] Leslie: There was a letter from my birth parents' lawyer this morning.
[8:48 AM] Leslie: They're suing for custody and to stop the therapy.
[8:53 AM] Leslie: THEY HAVE IT OIN FACRBOOK ITS ALL OVER THER FICKING FACEBOOMK
[8:53 AM] Leslie: THAT TTHEY"RE **RESCUING** ME FROM EXPDIRIMENTAL THRAPY
[8:55 AM] Leslie: THEY'RE JUST DOIGN IT TO STEAL MY SOCIAL SECUITY DISABILITY CHKECS
[8:56 AM] Leslie: SO THEY CAN BUY MORE DRUGS (edited)
Leslie posted a link, and Ricky clicked on it. "What the fuc-k?" he said aloud. The lunatics had made a (very low traffic) "Help Us Save Leslie!" Facebook page. And they were accepting donations. It was transparently nonsense, all of it, full of obviously bogus statements and very bad graphics.
[8:58 AM] Caroline: holy fuc-k
[8:58 AM] Caroline: fuc-k it im calling everyone
[9:00 AM] Susie: I don't even know what to say right now.
[9:02 AM] Zoe: What the hell! What even the hell!!!
[9:02 AM] Zoe: Leslie didn't you tell me that your parents won custody forever?????
[9:03 AM] Zoe: How is this even possible
[9:04 AM] Leslie: I DONT KNOW MY DAD IS READY TO SCREAM
[9:04 AM] Leslie: I CANT BELIEVE THEY DOD THIS
[9:04 AM] Leslie: PLEASE TELL ME THIS IS A NIGHTMRAE
[9:04 AM] Caroline: tbh someone should have been planned for this
[9:04 AM] Caroline: *should have planned
[9:05 AM] Caroline: but this is hannibal lecter
[9:05 AM] Zoe: Why tf would a judge let them get custody or stop the therapy?
[9:06 AM] Caroline: you dont know how the courts work
[9:06 AM] Caroline: judges have done way worse
[9:07 AM] Caroline: they push it, they can tie this all up for months or years
[9:07 AM] Caroline: meanwhile the therapy is delayed until it's all resolved
[9:07 AM] Caroline: sorry have to go to work now
[9:07 AM] Zoe: Ricky needs to know too, waking him up
[9:08 AM] Leslie: Let him sleep, he doesn't need this
[9:09 AM] Susie: Neither do you...
Richard tried to comprehend the enormity of the situation. He'd thought that if anything terrible or unexpected were ever going to happen. it would involve him or Zoe. Maybe their mother would find out about the dresses and diapers and freak out; of course, the idea of her punishing him by forcing him to keep wearing them wasn't remotely in the realm of plausibility, and he'd never been able to read those kinds of stories without laughing. Maybe she'd find some small part of it, maybe she'd know he went around as a girl, and he'd have to deflect that. The worst things he had considered were that maybe their mother would find out about Zoe's relationship with Leslie, or, God forbid, something would try to get between him and Susie.
But no, it couldn't be something that nice or simple. It couldn't be a "Someone saw you skipping around in a jingling dress outside". He didn't get a "Hey, a waitress at a restaurant saw you in with breasts and a padded butt" or even a "Are you really wearing a diaper?" He didn't have a falling-out with his new friends, none of them had done anything mean or taken anything too far. Once he'd revealed his secret to Zoe, nobody had tried to hurt him or humiliate him or even slightly embarrass him, unless suc-king at swimming and frisbee golf counted.
Instead, just yesterday, Leslie had been given renewed hope of reversing her disease, of regaining bladder and bowel control along with the ability to walk unassisted. Then her drug addict parents had stolen that hope in order to use it to steal her social security checks as well. And, if they were to succeed, their birth daughter would live an increasingly agonized life of abuse, misery, and despair until she was either rescued later, having suffered from increasingly severe crippling health problems, or her diaphragm gave out and she simply stopped breathing.
The rest of the Squad could never have comprehended it in the way that he did: Leslie's birth parents were fuc-king monsters. If the girls knew just how much anger, how much utterly destructive hate, he was feeling just then, it would have terrified them. He deeply, from the bottom of his soul, wanted nothing more than the death - the utter annihilation - of those monsters.
For a single second, an enormous sense of dissociation hit him and he felt like he could see behind the walls.
There was another monster on his Discord friends list, something he hadn't talked to in well over half a year. Whatever it was - he knew there had to be a human there but he had a really hard time thinking of it as human - had given him, with very little prompting, an introductory lesson on the nature and varieties of evil, for no other reason than to shatter his then twelve-year-old innocence, just as Richard had wanted it to do because he didn't want his innocence anymore. 'Call me', the thing in the darkness had told him at the very end, 'if you ever have monster problems of your own.'
He told it he had monster problems, and within fifteen seconds, even though they hadn't spoken for a long time, it asked for details. He gave them, in between bouts of swearing and vowing destruction upon the monsters that were going to hurt their own daughter for drug money. It dismissed all his feelings as irrelevant, adolescent angst and refused to provide direct help. Instead, it gave him, typed (or copypasted) very quickly in simple language, highly rational and surprisingly detailed instructions that gave him a pattern of exactly what to do, why to do it, and how to go about doing it. He decided to follow them.
He wasn't about to ask Zoe for a change, not while this was going on, so he went to the bathroom first, brushing his teeth quickly, standing at the toilet for twenty seconds, and taking a small sip of water. He took his boxer shorts off, put the diaper back on as a reminder of the importance of his task, and got to work.
[9:20 AM] Richard: I have something I need to do. I probably won't have time to be with anyone today. I'll let you know when I can. I love you, Susie.
[9:21 AM] Susie: Do what you need to. I love you, too.
[9:22 AM] Zoe: He won't tell me what it is either. He just says I should trust him.
[9:22 AM] Leslie: Then you should probably trust him.
[9:22 AM] Zoe: All right, I'll trust that you trust him enough to tell me to trust him.
[9:24 AM} Leslie: But do you trust that I trust you enough to trust you to trust him?
[9:26 AM] Zoe: Yes, I think I can trust you to trust me enough to trust me to trust him, but can I trust you to trust me to trust you to trust me enough to trust me to trust him?
[9:26 AM] Susie: I trust that you two can keep this up forever.
[9:27 AM] Leslie: Then you trust... poorly.
[9:27 AM] Zoe: :laughing:
[9:27 AM] Susie: :laughing:
[9:29 AM] Leslie: I needed a laugh so bad. Thanks.
[9:35 AM] Caroline: lol
[9:35 AM] Caroline: lets just actually trust him, not like theres any good options
[9:35 AM] Caroline: tbh i want to posse up some ptsd veterans with tire irons but dad says no
[9:37 AM] Susie: Where would you find veterans with PTSD and tire irons?
[9:52 AM] Caroline: in the shop where im helping dad rn
[9:52 AM] Caroline: back to work
[10:42 AM] Susie: I want to go back to yesterday, when our biggest problem was having Ricky pass as a girl.
[10:43 AM] Zoe: world's biggest **ikr**
[10:44 AM] Leslie: :regional_indicator_i: :regional_indicator_k: :regional_indicator_r:
[12:11 PM] Zoe: I'm legit scared right now. Really, really scared. For Leslie and Ricky.
[12:13 PM] Zoe: I put my ear to his door and he is saying some SCARY PSYCHO SHIT. Like he's chanting demon summoning in english instead of latin. Sometimes he types and sometimes he clicks, and it's not some game he's playing. It sounds like he's trying to summon internet satan or something.
[12:14 PM] Susie: Maybe he's just being edgy because he's mad?
[12:15 PM] Zoe: This isn't some fuc-king chuuni shit.
[12:16 PM] Zoe: Maybe it **is** chuuni, but he's still **doing** something in there.
[12:16 PM] Susie: Is he a hacker?
[12:17 PM] Zoe: He could be? He's done things like that
[12:24 PM] Zoe: He just sounds like he wants to seriously hurt somebody and doesn't care how.
[12:45 PM] Zoe: He's REALLY frustrated. I hope he didn't punch a hole in the wall.
[12:48 PM] Caroline: would give your mom something else to focus on if he did
[1:17 PM] Zoe: Just right now I just heard him say Got you now, you son of a bitch
[1:18 PM] Caroline: thats leslies bio dad, if its not ILL wear any fking dress you want
[1:20 PM] Susie: Do not try to stop him.
[1:21 PM] Zoe: I won't.
[1:40 PM] Leslie: He's not the only one. Dad just called, he's taking personal time because he's too angry and can't focus. Mom's coming home soon too.
[1:43 PM] Susie: I didn't know your parents could leave you at home alone.
[1:45 PM] Leslie: There's so much space age assistive stuff in here, all on a big UPS so if the grid goes down I'm ok.
[1:47 PM] Leslie: My bio mom and dad have literally 0, will mention that at hearing, thanks for reminding me.
[1:50 PM] Caroline: cant believe they dont just let you choose at 14, seriously fuc-k this state
[1:50 PM] Leslie: That's what Dad said this morning.
[2:40 PM] Zoe: Ricky literally just screamed fuc-k for the past two minutes.
[2:42 PM] Zoe: I asked him if he was all right and he just said no
[2:44 PM] Zoe: He hasn't showered, he hasn't eaten all day, he's just in a diaper and I don't think he's used it
[2:48 PM] Susie: He's in "the zone", don't pull him out.
[2:55 PM] Caroline: he has to drink eat pee poop or pass out eventually zoe. before he does just let him do his thing
[2:57 PM] Susie: He's got a diaper for the third and fourth things.
[2:59 PM] Caroline: lol good point
[3:00 PM] Zoe: Three o clock and all's hell
[3:02 PM] Zoe: just a couple of days ago I told him he had no diligence
[3:03 PM] Zoe: and I swear to god he didn't
[3:05 PM] Zoe: It's like he's possessed
[3:10 PM] Leslie: Tell him he needs to take care of himself too.
[3:12 PM] Zoe: I did at like 10 this morning, he doesn't want to hear it
[3:46 PM] Zoe: Never heard him laugh like that before.
[3:47 PM] Susie: Not even yesterday?
[3:47 PM] Zoe: This wasn't a nice kind of laugh.
[3:48 PM] Zoe: This was some supervillain shit.
[3:51 PM] Susie: So you're saying I have a crossdressing supervillain for a boyfriend?
[3:52 PM] Leslie: Beats who I have for bio parents.
[3:52 PM] Susie: Big oof
[3:57 PM] Caroline: ricky is now officially genghis khan
[3:58 PM] Zoe: lmfao
[4:02 PM] Zoe: he's got boy stuff on and is going for a short walk
[4:10 PM] Richard: My head *really* hurts right now. I can't talk about this until Friday morning. We'll know if it worked by then.
[4:13 PM] Leslie: Was this about me?
[4:14 PM] Richard: I absolutely can't talk about it until Friday. I'm sorry. Susie has her Rule 1 and this is mine.
[4:16 PM] Caroline: leslie it literally could not be about anything else
[4:20 PM] Susie: Ricky, please come over if you can.
[4:21 PM] Richard: yeah, sure, don't worry about food, eating burritos
[4:23 PM] Richard: no dress either, not having fun right now, head's spinning, will start walking after I'm done eating
[4:23 PM] Zoe: And after he takes a fuc-king shower.
[4:25 PM] Susie: You sure Ricky? It sounds like you need some fun right now.
[4:31 PM] Caroline: smell of brimstone doesn't wash off easily
[4:40 PM] Richard: you're right, I'll bring one, won't wear it there today, taking the back paths this time
[4:41 PM] Zoe: Check him for ticks, Susie!
[4:41 PM] Leslie: *Carefully* check him for ticks *all over*, Susie.
[4:42 PM] Caroline: lmfao
[4:42 PM] Zoe: Use your tongue just to be extra safe
[4:43 PM] Caroline: LMFAO
[4:43 PM] Susie: He might bring them onto the carpet, and carpet munching is your job.
[4:43 PM] Leslie: Oh my god :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
[4:43 PM] Caroline: brb dying
-
He took the back paths as he said he would, trying to brush against as little greenery as possible, his mind consumed by worry. He just wished he could tell somebody, anybody, but the thing in the darkness had been very clear that this was all need-to-know and that nobody needed to know. Annoyed, just wishing it would be Friday morning already and he'd know whether or not he'd succeeded, he trudged to his girlfriend's house.
She opened the door even before he knocked. She'd obviously been crying a while ago, to his surprise, and it sort of looked like she still was. She hadn't sounded anything like that on Discord, but he knew how very, very easy it was to fake emotions over text, and he appreciated that she didn't express this in front of the rest of them.
"Take off your clothes right now," she ordered him, a command he was, even in his miserable state, eager to obey, stripping down to his diaper. She actually did look through his clothes for ticks and recoiled slightly as she pinched a small, black insect between her fingers. Oh crap! She'd found an actual tick! She went over to the sink, flushed it all the way down with hot water, and returned to him. He held still as she took the idea much more seriously, searching his clothes and looking up and down his body for anything else he might have picked up.
Then she opened up his backpack and found an unworn, light green dress that went down to his mid-thigh and his pink four-inch heels. "Put them on," she commanded him, "and then bend over my lap." There seemed to be some real anger in her voice, and he obeyed, having a loose understanding as to why.
She pushed up his dress, picked up a hairbrush from the table, and hit him on his butt, right below his diaper. "That's for making me worry about you!" She smacked him again. "And that's for getting all emo and edgy!" She sniffled and sobbed, her voice cracking apart, furiously gripping the hairbrush with tears in her eyes. Wasn't the person getting hit supposed to be the one crying? She spanked him again, harder, growing more upset. "And that's for making me cry!" She hit him again on the other butt cheek, even harder. "And THAT's for making me cry!" She realized that she didn't want to keep spanking him anymore and abruptly threw the hairbrush onto the carpet, making her cat jump, and abruptly bent over with him and sobbed into his shoulder. And he was crying as well, not because of the pain - the harsh, stinging slaps were a welcome relief from what he was worried about - but because of how upset he had made her. "Never do anything like that again!" She realized that those were the wrong words after they were already out. If what he had done was right, she wanted him to do it. What she didn't want was for him or Leslie to be in this position again.
"I hope I never have to!" he shouted, sniffling, his voice cracking as well. "I'm sorry, Your Highness, I'm so sorry, I literally could not do anything else. It's over for now, there's no next step until Friday, and I really hope there's no next step for me at all." He was slightly concerned that she would be annoyed with him at having put so much effort into trying to help a girl other than her. He needn't have worried, as she didn't think along those lines at all and certainly wasn't as selfish as he thought she might be.
She leaned down, petting his hair. "Your princess forgives you. But you are not allowed to be emo or brood ever again. It doesn't matter what you have to do or why you have to do it. If you really have to do something, you can do it, in fact I order you to do it. You are still not allowed to be emo about it. Ever!" She spanked him with her hand, once. "Are we clear?"
"Yes, Your Highness," he said.
"Good boy." She hugged him closely. "Now hold still. I've decided you should have a different hairstyle." She picked up the hairbrush again, but this time she used it for its intended purpose, softly brushing his hair out. Then, she did the right side of his hair up in a standard French braid, then the left side as well, giving him little girlish pigtails that she tied off with pink hairbands. They were snug, but her hands were very soft, and he tried to let himself enjoy the new sensation on his head.
"I heard that bet you made was to do the chores. Did you do a good job?" she asked next to his ear.
"I did, Your Highness." Zoe had clearly never told her just how much he'd done.
"Then I will let you do mine as well. You can do the dishes, mop the kitchen, and vacuum the living room floor. Just the living room, nowhere else."
He got up and curtsied to her. "Thank you for spanking me, for my new hairstyle, and for letting me do your chores, Your Highness," he said, smiling.
"You're very welcome, servant," she said imperiously, trying not to laugh.
Richard allowed himself to relax a bit. He had worried that she was seriously, long-term angry with him. Instead, she'd gone back to enjoyably dominating him instead, and a small part of his tension vanished in relief.
She watched him the whole time, actually moving a comfortable chair to do so and crossing her legs in a queenly fashion, half to make sure that he knew what he was doing (he did) and half because this was much better than any television show or livestream. He was just so wonderfully docile when she wanted him to be, and she loved watching him totter and mince, asking politely for the location of the cleaning supplies.
He did her chores carefully, trying to let the menial work distract his churning mind. It was a buffer, but it wasn't enough. He tried to focus on getting out every last spot and vacuum every last crumb, especially from the extremely expensive rugs, but his mind kept churning anyway. He almost asked her to spank him again, just so the pain could take his mind off what he had done and what needed to happen, but she had specifically ordered him not to be brooding or emo, and he was determined to be a good boy for his princess.
Her dishwasher was substantially faster than his mom's, and it finished long before he was done cleaning the living room under her detailed commands. Once he was done putting the dishes away, he curtsied again. "Did I do a good job?" he asked.
"You did a very good job. And for doing such a good job, you get to play a game with me. Hold still." She'd prepared two pieces of ribbon. The first went around his ankles, and she deftly gave him six inches of slack between them, somehow tying the ends off into two floppy bows. (The fact that she knew so much about knotwork made his heart beat faster.) Then, she tied his arms to his sides just above the elbow, restricting his reach. "Now, all you have to do is catch me, and I'll give you a kiss," she said, smiling widely.
He could have easily gotten out at any time - actually, he was trying to make sure that the the top ribbon wouldn't slip off - but he happily played along, knowing that he'd never win unless she wanted him to. He minced as quickly as he could with his heels and ribbon restricting him, and she simply giggled and walked backwards and around him. He couldn't lunge anywhere with his restricted reach, and his heels made hopping around even slower than his little quick minces, and she spent a quarter hour leading him around the living room as he tried not to bump anything or trip over Whiskers.
Eventually, she walked in front of the couch and embraced him with a deep kiss. "Oh no," she said, giggling, "it looks like you caught me." She pushed him onto the couch easily, then jumped on top of him. "Let's see how your diaper deals with a different kind of mess." He was, of course, absolutely rock hard, and five minutes of teasing and light jerking of his uncut pen-is had him orgasming in his diaper. She kissed him again, smiling, and helped him sit up next to her, still lightly tied.
She turned on the TV, picked up her Switch, and showed him her Animal Crossing layout. He'd actually never seen it played before and asked questions, and she sat there with him, just an ordinary teenage girl and her loosely tied-up, cross-dressed boyfriend with his hair in pigtails (and, halfway through, a wet diaper; he hadn't peed all day and that was what it was for), drinking tea and playing until it grew late.
"So how would you like to go home?" she asked.
"I don't really want to go as a girl today," he admitted. "Not in these, anyway. Maybe I should have brought lower heels."
She chuckled and untied the ribbons. "You wouldn't want all my hard work braiding your hair to go to waste, would you?"
"No, but I didn't say I'd unbraid it," he sad with a wide smile.
She laughed. "Then let's see how you look."
"Umm, can you change my diaper first?"
"Of course, servant," she said, giving an exaggerated sigh. "Hmph. What kind of princess gives her servant a diaper change?"
"Then maybe it should be the other way around?" he suggested, giggling.
She giggled in return as she pulled the fresh diaper from his backpack. "You're so bad." After he was changed, he put his boy clothes back on, his hair still in the pigtails. She smiled, adoring him. "This suits you so well. I think you should always have your hair like this, every morning after you've washed until you go to sleep at night."
He sighed. "You know I can't."
"You can't now," she corrected him. "Maybe, someday soon, that will change." He desperately hoped that day would be soon.
"You're just so wonderful to me, Your Highness," he said as he walked with her to the door, relieved of most of the emotional stress he'd built up. "I love you. I love you so much."
She kissed him, on the lips, deeply. "I love you too, Ricky." He walked out with a spring in his step, going back the way he came in his boy clothes, his pigtails bouncing with his walk. (He would check himself thoroughly when he got home, after his sister had seen his new hairstyle.)
As he left, it occurred to her that he'd actually addressed one of her misgivings earlier. She had been thinking of what it would be like to spend the rest of her life with him, and she'd worried that a boy who liked to be dominated and dressed up really was useless, a pathetic toy for real, a house-husband at best, rather than someone who would be a man when she needed one. But he'd just shown that he was very capable of significant effort, if nothing else, and if he was willing to go that far in protecting someone he'd just met, what sorts of things would he be willing to do for her if she were in trouble?
Her heart thumped in her chest as she thought of the next time she'd see him.
-
Jacqueline, Your last lines of that chapter, tells me that things are going to go haywire. I love your story and want you to continue. Thanks for being a great writer.
-
Jacqueline,
I think your writing is excellent.
I'm just catching up now and things have really taken a turn!
I'm really eager to read what happens next.
-
[Note: This part deals with trust and humiliation.]
Richard had a couple of private messages from Susie waiting for him when he woke up the next morning. Her aunt had lightly scolded her that she had to be careful when wearing her new shoes, as the heels had left some soft indentations in a couple of rugs. That was definitely the sort of behavior that warranted a spanking for Richard, although he'd have to take a rain check on it because it was going to be storming all day and Caroline would be at work.
Of course, something like that certainly wasn't going to stop him - he was a teenage boy, after all, a mere mile's walk through a thunderstorm was nothing compared to the demands of his dic-k - but Susie mentioned that the thunderstorm wasn't the only thing that was having a 'heavy flow' that day, and he caught her drift.
He considered whacking off, but decided against it. Susie had taken charge of that, after all, so his orgasms weren't up to him anymore. Instead, he squatted down, messed his diaper like a good boy because that was what it was for (it was still gross, but his mom was coming home so it'd obviously be the last time he'd get to even try it for a while), and walked downstairs, still in his nightie, to where he smelled eggs and burritos.
"You're up early," he said.
"Can't sleep," she replied. She obviously had been worried sick over Leslie. "Hope you like it."
"Yeah, thanks." He sat down and ate with his sister. In a way, it was a normal morning, except for the fact that he was in a poopy diaper and wearing a pink nightgown, in which he felt more normal than he did before. They ate in silence because they didn't know what to say to each other, but it was a comforting sort of silence. At least Mom wasn't home yet. Given how his poop was smearing itself against his butt, he wasted no time in hurrying to the shower, throwing the diaper away (he really didn't want to show THAT to his sister), and washing himself off, his pee running down with the water. After trying them a few times, he decided that used diapers were very much not his thing.
His sister did change him into a fresh one, though, the last one in the house for presumably the last time, and at his request, she started braiding his hair into the pigtails he'd had yesterday. They were so little girlish, so innocent-looking, and just so him. She wondered if Susie would be able to find even more frilly, little-girl dresses in his size. This was the sort of person he really was, the person he'd (wisely) protected behind a shield of social avoidance, and she was glad she could help him be that person.
Of course, he'd tried to help her, too. "Ricky, we're both worried about whatever that thing on Friday is going to be, but I just want you to know that whatever you did for her yesterday, the important part is that you tried."
"No it's not!" he hotly replied. "What matters is if it worked or not! If I only tried, it means I just wasted my time! Just trying isn't gonna lead to her getting better!" Zoe really wanted to ask what he'd done, but she knew she'd find out tomorrow, and he'd obviously said too much as it was. "Sorry, I didn't mean to yell at you."
She smiled at him, shaking her head at the absurdity. "Look at you. I've just put you in a diaper, I'm braiding your hair into pigtails, and the only reason you're getting mad is because you think you might not have helped someone enough. I wish I'd known this about you before." Doing this for him, giving him the compassionate and caring treatment he wanted, felt like making up for lost time.
His reply was simple and honest: "I didn't trust you to know it before." He'd read a definition of trust a while back, written by some professional intelligence something-or-other in the context of computer security, that had made a lasting impression on him, right around the time when he consciously realized he really liked playing game characters who wore dresses. Trust, simply put, was the ability of someone else to hurt you. The more trust you had in someone, the more that person could do to ruin your network, your files, your friendships, your life. A great deal of the various stories he'd read on sites he was too young to visit had featured various females discovering the secrets of males just like him and then completely fuc-king them over to the point of lifelong dependence and physical mutilation. He knew such stories weren't real, but he was certain that some people had to want to do that; why would they have wrote them otherwise? Trusting anyone with his sissy secret was obviously a very bad idea, and making the bet with Zoe was an impulsive act, a chance taken. If he had thought beforehand, he would never have done it, and he was very, very glad he did.
Zoe was somewhat annoyed with herself that she didn't, couldn't have, trusted him, either. She had been reading stories of her own, but they were all presumably real, of girls being disowned and worse by their parents as soon as they came out of the closet. She had far less interest in expressing herself as she did in being able to live anything like a normal life, and if that meant staying hidden, then so be it. She intended to stay firmly in a very fortified closet until she was financially independent. At least she didn't have to keep her bisexuality hidden from her brother anymore, and if he somehow made this thing with Leslie's evil birth parents go away, she'd never be able to repay him in a thousand years.
"Speaking of, Zoe, you didn't trust me before, but do you want me to actually teach you Starcraft, the way I play it?" He had offered to help when she'd first gotten started and had been harshly rebuffed.
"I'd like that, and there's one more chore you didn't do," she said. "You actually didn't finish the laundry."
"I did all four loads, like you showed me."
"You did all four loads of clothes. You didn't do the sheets and blankets. It's all right, I didn't realize it either."
He went to put on a blue dress with floral accents he hadn't tried on, but the chest area was too baggy, so he put on his fake boobs so it would fit and, after a bit of thought, his butt padding as well. He put on his jingly socks and favorite pink heels and twirled around, watching his dress flare back and forth, smiling at how pretty he looked, not wanting this to end and knowing that it had to, at least while their mother was home.
That was how they spent their morning, brother and sister: him as a cute, pigtailed, high-heeled houseboy, her in shorts and a T-shirt, as he used Archon Mode to show her how he managed building and units in between mincing downstairs to do sheets (on hot) and blankets (on warm). He was honest and genuine with her, both when she messed up and when she did well, and she greatly appreciated that. This week had felt for the first time in her life that she had an actual brother and not just some kid who lived in the same house. Even if he was the sort of brother that obediently and carefully made everyone's bed while trying not to overbalance with his rubber boobs and high heels.
Then they prepared for their mother's arrival by putting a reluctant Richard back in his boy clothes, throwing away his used diaper, and unbraiding his hair, right before they took out all the trash, washed all his girl stuff, and moved it to the back of his closet where their mother never went. No heel-prints in the carpet, no dirty diapers in the house, no evidence anywhere that any of this had ever happened at all.
And then their mother called when she arrived at the airport, and they found themselves waiting in the living room together, watching something they didn't care about on TV. It wasn't really conscious on either of their parts. He was anxious, and she was anxious, and they just kind of hung out together because neither one wanted the other to be alone with their mother at that point.
She finally showed up with a tired expression and suitcases in hand, took one look at them, and mutual misunderstanding struck.
Despite Susie's command not to brood, Richard's mind had been wandering into a dark place as he awaited their mother, and he'd been considering plausible but unlikely scenarios cooked up from some of the worst real-world shit he'd heard about online. His mother was anti-pharma in general so he didn't worry about her trying to put them on some psychotropic drug. But one of his least favorite scenarios, and therefore the one that got the most fixation, was that his mother was going to call up a Focus on the Family "counselor" once she found out who her children really were, or, worse, some "educational consultant" asshole who was going to force one or both of them into nightmarish "residential treatment". If she gave a single hint that she had put any thought into doing anything like that, his very first resort would have been to go straight to the thing in the darkness and give it the full names and home addresses of everyone he knew in his entire extended family, beginning with himself. (Richard strongly suspected that it had a great deal more life-ruining and perhaps physically destructive power than all of 'cancel culture' put together.) Then he was going to find Caroline's PTSD veteran workshop buddies and trick the asshole into an in-person meeting somewhere else, telling him about a troubled teen with the unusual name of Ty Ryron and asking him to please come and receive Ty Ryron immediately.
Of course, Heather had no knowledge that such things even existed and would have never interacted with them if she did. What she did have was a fairly solid grasp of nonverbal communication and a modic-um of social awareness. Her children - usually avoidant of one another - were standing unusually close together, both of them looking at her with anxiety and distrust written all over their faces. She didn't understand why. The house was sparkling like new, all surfaces tended to and everything neat and clean; she'd half-expected to need to start yelling at them about doing chores properly or break up some spat that had occurred between them. This situation made no sense to her. They'd done everything right, had grown close somehow, and yet they were looking at her that way? The thought briefly crossed her mind that maybe they'd killed somebody and had spent plenty of time cleaning it up, and she found herself checking the walls and floor for bloodstains. "What happened?" she asked immediately.
"Our disabled friend's biological parents are going to get her killed," Zoe answered. Richard hadn't wanted to tell her anything at all, but Zoe pointed out that she was probably going to figure something was up, so Richard offered the idea of bringing this up instead.
"What?"
-
They both explained, taking turns, what Leslie's condition was, the hope she had, and how it had been cruelly taken away; what Richard had been doing yesterday went totally unmentioned. Heather understood the situation in broad terms, but the thing that she had found most fascinating was that Richard was actively caring about someone else. The boy had always been aloof and unconcerned, spending a lot of time on his computer, and Heather had found it nearly impossible to get him to show any concern for anyone, even his own family. Since when had he started caring about other people? A suspicion grew in her mind. "Richard, is Leslie your girlfriend?" she asked when he was done explaining, and Zoe took great care in keeping her face unchanged.
"No," he said immediately, as casually as he could, "Susie is." He wanted to pull his mother away from other suspicions.
"Susie, from up the hill?" she asked, her eyes widening. Zoe had told her about her friends, because Heather wasn't going to let her daughter run around with people she didn't know. All she had really known, though, was that Caroline's dad was a mechanic, Leslie had some debilitating condition, and Susie was extraordinarily rich. "She's a couple years older than you. You're not messing with me, are you?"
"Not messing with you, Mom."
"He's really not," Zoe added.
"I certainly hope this works out for you," she said, and her children saw through her greed. The only way any of Susie's money was going to reach Heather's pockets was via winged swine. "By the way, Zoe, your cousins were asking where you were."
Both of her children tensed up and she realized immediately that she had said the wrong thing. She couldn't fathom why. Her daughter had been upset, but that was months ago, so what was the problem?
"Yeah, Mom, did they ask how I was doing, or did they just want to see my body again?"
"Zoe, that's not right. They're your family."
"So they didn't ask how I was doing. They just wanted to see my legs in striped tights so they could pretend to lick me again."
"Zoe!" That had been six months ago! Heather could not understand, at all, why she would bring something like that up again. "I told you then and I'll tell you again, I don't know what you thought you saw, but I'm certain that wasn't it!"
"Weren't you yelling at the television about how we should believe a woman when she says things about this stuff?" Richard asked quietly. He couldn't even remember which woman it was. Was it Tara Whatsherface or Christine Blaggowhocares? Conventional, mainstream politics were a mystery to him. He was thirteen and had other things on his mind.
"That's different," Heather said, keeping a patient tone. This was not the conversation she'd expected to have when she got home.
"No it's not," Zoe said. "You forced me to wear disgusting dresses in front of disgusting literal incest cousins. Twice." Zoe inwardly grinned a bit, imagining what her mother would say if she knew who had been wearing them instead.
"Zoe, I didn't intend for you to be disgusted by them. I thought that if you wore things like that enough, that you'd come to accept it and like it."
She knew, immediately, that this was an even bigger mistake. She had entirely rubbed both of them the very wrong way - no, that was an understatement.
Her daughter was staring at her with betrayal and no small amount of hatred in her eyes, the same way she had looked after that terrible Christmas (she wished she still had the pictures, as she figured that, later in life, her daughter might appreciate what she was trying to do for her) and even after her son's rather dismal birthday. She had actually been quietly grateful when he'd given her a reason to stop trying to make her daughter more feminine. Those looks, along with her lingering avoidant and distrustful attitude, even after it was all over and she figured Zoe had no reason to be angry with her anymore, had stayed with her. Was she really going to turn Zoe into a lesbian doing this, as her son had explained? Why couldn't her daughter just accept that she was a girl?
But that was a picnic compared to the look of sheer contempt that her son was giving her. His body language told her that he was willing to do absolutely awful, unforgettable things to her, perhaps violent and perhaps not, at the drop of a hat. Richard never acted like this, especially not towards her. She had seen this look directed at her only once before in her entire life.
Heather wasn't quite the queen bee of high school, but she was up there, and she considered the nerdy Jessica to be lucky to have her as a friend. She couldn't remember all that her and her friends did - occasionally stole her homework, called her names, got her to participate in harassment of other students, generally things that Heather considered to be harmless kid stuff. And then they had been arguing by her locker, something about how Jessica didn't want to do something or other, asking if she really wanted to be their friend, and then Heather had taken a small pair of scissors, reached under the collar of Jessica's shirt, and snipped her bra strap just to remind her who was in charge. A fun little prank, really.
And then Jessica had given her that look, the look that said she had gone too far, then made a beeline straight for the principal's office and told the principal absolutely everything, including, in incredibly self-incriminating detail, her own role when the group had targeted someone else. They all knew that this much tattling would basically end her social life at that school, but Jessica hadn't cared one whit. She was more interested in hurting them than protecting herself, and it had, of course, worked for its intended purpose. Heather had nearly been expelled right there, but the principal was clear that she was being merciful by giving her two weeks of suspension instead. Heather's parents had been absolutely livid with her and she spent the rest of her senior year grounded, subjected to humiliating therapy sessions in which she was accused of sexual bullying, and forced to write an apology letter of which she didn't actually mean a word and that she was sure Jessica didn't even read. One of her other friends had been so pissed off that she'd concocted a convoluted, probably unworkable plan to get back at Jessica at prom, but it hadn't mattered because Jessica simply didn't go to prom. They simply never saw her again outside of classes, where they were strictly forbidden from talking to her, on pain of expulsion, and Jessica didn't show up to graduation, either.
Heather's friends had gone off to college while she had gotten married and pregnant by the jock she'd had a crush on, and then he had gotten hurt playing college football in a low-division league, and once the prescription for oxycodone had run out, he'd turned to heroin. The only thing left of him was two children, one of which didn't even want to look at her and the other of which was silently staring at her with the exact same expression that Jessica had, back then.
She'd never told her children about what had happened in her senior year. Originally, the reason had been because she didn't want them doing things like that to anyone; now, it was that she expected a reaction of 'We figured you were always like that.' She felt agonized and frustrated that her daughter couldn't or wouldn't receive her good intentions in the spirit they were given. Why couldn't Zoe just accept that her mother she was just trying to teach a fun lesson in femininity?
Although Zoe didn't say anything out loud, Heather could read her lips: 'fuc-k you, Mom.' She turned around and walked upstairs to her room.
Normally, Heather might have said or done something just then, some threat of punishment or admonishment, but her intuition was absolutely screaming at her that if she said anything like that, her son was going to do something so unimaginably hurtful that their family life, at the very least, would never be the same. It did not miss her perception that her son, who had apparently just learned to care about people, had it in his mind that he needed to protect his sister from their own mother.
"I was only trying to help," she protested.
"You failed," Zoe replied simply, not even turning around. Heather breathed an audible sigh of relief when her son started going up to his room as well. She decided to let it go for now. Despite the hurt being flung back and forth, they hadn't actually done anything, and so she wasn't going to do anything. Richard, too, was relieved that his mother was not going to do anything and so he didn't have to do anything.
Something had changed, and Heather didn't know what it was. It had to be about their disabled friend, of course. That was the only explanation that made sense.
She was still their mother, of course. They hadn't had dinner, and now that she was home, that was up to her. She put away her suitcases - noting that every single surface had been expertly dusted, sheets and blanket washed, bed made perfectly - changed clothes and took a bath (the toilet was spotless), and went back downstairs to the kitchen. Every surface washed, spic and span. "What on Earth happened?" she asked aloud to no one, in total confusion. She fished a couple of cans of Spam out of the cupboard - she cooked it with canned vegetables in a way that her children found somewhat palatable - and called them down for dinner, only after noticing something very weird. The looks on her children's faces had only somewhat changed, but they sat at the table to eat anyway.
"May I ask why there are baby wipes and powder on the counter?" she asked, eyebrow raised, certain that she had caught them in something. If the two of them were quietly making money babysitting other people's children while she was out, that would explain at least some of their behavior.
"Mom, were you not even listening when we told you about our friend?" Zoe snapped, and Heather stared in confusion.
"Leslie, the one with the serious disability," Richard reminded her as if she were very, very stupid.
"Oh! Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that you were doing that for her here. Why aren't they in the bathroom?"
"Because she can't do stairs, Mom," Zoe said. "Even our doorstep is hard for her." Heather realized that she was only giving her children more reasons to think of her as a gigantic bitch, and they ate in mostly silence. Maybe she'd bring this all up with them later, but it obviously wasn't the time. Heather tried to lighten the mood by talking about the wedding, not mentioning the cousins Zoe hated, but they obviously didn't care and it just bounced off. They ate in a very uncomfortable silence, after which both of them went right back to their rooms. There wasn't really peace in the house, but at least it was only a cold war.
Heather couldn't help but feel that she had lost something very important and had no idea how to get it back.
-
Jacqueline, Richard and Zoe have a very complicated life. Now that their mother is home, the tension is so thick that they could cut it with a knife. I'm sure that Ricky wishes he could be his true self; but, Heather might get Focus on the Family involved and Zoe would be pulled in and both of them would be forced into conversion therapy. I don't envy either of them.
This is a great story from a great writer. Keep up the good work, Jacqueline. :D :D :D :D :D :D
-
As a general rule, I don't spoil my own stories, but I assure you, that's not where this is going. The story even says outright that that particular thing was a groundless fear. If it did happen, everything would burn, and I'm not going to sit here and write a(nother) story in which everything burns.
Nah, what he's getting in the end is something particular that nobody in any of these sorts of stories ever gets in the end. And that's all I have to say on the topic.
-
Jacqueline,
I'm enjoying your story and wonder where the current drama is going to lead.
I'm eager to read your next chapters.
-
As a general rule, I don't spoil my own stories, but I assure you, that's not where this is going. The story even says outright that that particular thing was a groundless fear. If it did happen, everything would burn, and I'm not going to sit here and write a(nother) story in which everything burns.
Nah, what he's getting in the end is something particular that nobody in any of these sorts of stories ever gets in the end. And that's all I have to say on the topic.
Jacqueline, Sorry I felt that way. It must be because of the fact that I am a transgender female and that has always been a fear of mine and that discussion sort of triggered me. Mea Culpa.
-
[Content warning: This part contains a vicious and nonconsensual screwing involving two complete monsters and a thirteen-year-old.]
Richard woke up his computer seconds after he woke up himself. He fired up Jailtracker for his local area, fully expecting not to find anything, and there was Leslie's biological mother's name. His jaw opened a bit, and his breathing grew rapid. He clicked it and blinked, staring at the screen, looking at the magic words appear before him: POSS W/ INTENT DISTRIB HEROIN. Richard knew, from personal experience, that you stop getting a say in your children's lives when you get busted for things like POSS W/ INTENT DISTRIB HEROIN.
"It actually worked," he whispered. He looked down, and then up again, in disbelief. He had actually pulled it off. Relief, euphoria, and elation washed through him, along with a strange sense of dissociation, not quite the same as he'd felt when he first started doing this. Dazed, halfway in a dream, he posted the Jailtracker link in the Discord chat and told them how to sort by new, not expecting anyone to be awake.
[6:10 AM] Leslie: This is what you were working on? :astonished:
[6:12 AM] Leslie: How the f u c k did you do it?! :open_mouth:
[6:12 AM] Richard: Dark sorcery, how else?
[6:13 AM] Leslie: Funny but I'm not kidding. I have to show my parents this. BRB
Richard winced, but he understood. If the worst thing that came out of this was that he'd have to face the music, it would surely be better than the funeral dirge Leslie would have faced without it.
[6:15 AM] Caroline: HOW THE fuc-k DID YOU FRAME HER BIO PARENTS FOR DRUGS
Parents, plural? Oh, the other one had just appeared as well, along with someone else, probably the mule. Similar list of charges, beginning with the magic words CONSPIRACY DISTRIB HEROIN. (He noted that the police had probably gotten the charges of husband and wife flipped but didn't care.)
[6:17 AM] Richard: LOL I didn't frame them. Don't think you can get busted for POSS W/ INTENT DISTRIB without actually having drugs. I didn't plant or give them anything either lol
[6:18 AM] Caroline: ok then how the fuc-k did you catch them
[6:20 AM] Richard: I **really** don't want to explain that here!
Zoe needed to know, so he threw on his boxer shorts and tapped on her door quietly as their mother was still asleep. Receiving no reply, he decided to call her on the phone instead.
She opened the door half a minute later, wearing pajamas, her hair a mess, her phone in her hand. She'd known why he'd called her but couldn't believe it. "Ricky, is this a prank?"
"I can't prank Jailtracker," he quietly pointed out. "This is real, Zoe. It's over." He was very, very glad it was over. His next steps would have gotten him even more involved than he already was. Bereft of words, she hugged him, still holding on to her phone.
[6:23 AM] Leslie: This is Leslie's mother. Richard, Leslie's father and I would like to speak with you privately, in person. Can you get your mother to drive you here before we have to be at work at 9?
[6:24 AM] Richard: Ok.
Getting their mother out of bed took less effort than Richard had expected and more effort than Zoe had. They'd needed to show her the specific line in the chat room before she was convinced that this is a thing she actually needed to do, asking her if she wanted to call Leslie's parents on the phone, even after they'd promised her the answers she so sorely wanted. She wondered if she'd get the answer she really wanted: why and how had her children changed so much?
The chat had moved forward:
[6:26 AM] Caroline: sorry maam but were all invovled. we cant let him do this alone. just called susie
[6:28 AM] Leslie: Mom here. I understand.
[6:31 AM] Susie: She's picking me up. Will be there in 45 minutes or so.
[6:31 AM] Susie: HOLY SHIT btw.
[6:32 AM] Zoe: We're coming. Also what Susie said!
They were in the fairly old car within half an hour, mostly forgoing morning rituals except for excretions and tooth brushing, as Richard decided to transfer some screenshots to his phone, Zoe stared at her brother with a mixture of shock and outright awe, and Heather thought of the last time her children had woken her up so early. Christmas? No, certainly not last Christmas, and not the one before. Richard wondered if Caroline should have picked them up instead, but Leslie's father had specifically requested for Heather to be there, and Richard figured that maybe explaining what he'd done in front of her would give his mother a much-needed hint.
They arrived at a fortituous time, Heather arriving just as Caroline and Susie were walking in, and the full group met in the living room together. Leslie hadn't been kidding; the house really was full of assistive devices, some of which Richard and Zoe had never seen before. Leslie sat on a very comfortable-looking chair, her parents on the couch, Heather on another chair and the teens on the floor. They introduced themselves quickly, and Richard took note of Leslie's parents; they looked nothing like her. Willa had a harsh, lined face bereft of makeup, and her husband, Robert, looked almost like a version of Richard that had grown up, only with a neatly trimmed beard and glasses. He looks like Gordon Freeman, Richard realized, and would have laughed if he thought anyone else there would have had any idea what he was talking about.
Unlike the Half-Life protagonist, though, Robert had a voice, a deep, educated one that sounded like a guidance counselor. "If anything, and I mean anything, we say in here leaves this room, it's going to get very ugly for everyone in here. Especially Leslie. Do we all understand this?" The one person that Richard and Zoe worried about not understanding that was their mother, but Heather had worked a union job for longer than her children had been alive and was very, very good at knowing when to keep her mouth shut. "Richard, I want you to explain, step by step, what you did, and I don't want anyone interrupting or distracting him." He spoke with serious authority, Richard noted, like a principal or warden. It was a skill the man had spent time cultivating.
There were things that Richard had decided to leave out. The first was who, or rather what, had taught him to do this. The thing on his friends list had told him exactly what investigative procedure to use: search everything you can find, then use that to look into more things to find, and never stop doing that, not even when you think you've found something good. Think of what they would least like to be discovered about themselves, and then discover that. Dig into every rabbit hole. Analyze every piece of information. Consider the future state of things every step of the way. (Richard, a veteran Starcraft 2 player, did not need to be told that one.) Do not give up until you can no longer physically continue.
Richard would also not mention his missteps and false leads. He had made a hell of a lot of mistakes and crawled down a lot of blind alleys, including spending two hours tracking down an account that turned out to be owned by somebody else. If he had really known what he was doing, he figured, he would have had it done in maybe an hour and a half and probably would have felt a hell of a lot less emotion in the process. As it was, he'd actually spent an hour in total looking general information up simply because he was thirteen years old and had no idea what certain things meant.
He also had no intention of discussing what he had felt while he was doing it. It wasn't relevant, it sounded really stupid when he said it out loud, and his princess had specifically ordered him not to be emo.
The final thing he would not mention, not even to himself, was that he hadn't entirely done it for Leslie. He'd done it because he saw monsters, and monsters needed to be destroyed.
He took a breath. "Okay, I was actually just originally going to look up things to show your lawyer for the hearing. So, the first thing I did was I looked on their Facebook stuff, and on some of their older posts, they'd shown a bunch of screenshots." He showed Leslie's parents his screenshots as he talked. "One of them had her bio dad's computer username, and that username was also his Reddit account, which had posted a bunch of drug related stuff a few years ago. But I really wanted to look at his private messages, and his password was the third one I tried: p, 4, s, s, w, 0, r, d." Heather looked like she wanted to interrupt but kept quiet. "On there, he was talking to this one guy who said that he used a forum all about drugs. I found his account on there, and you're not even gonna believe what his password was. It was leslie, no caps." That was about the tenth one he'd tried, and he was utterly shocked and disgusted when it had actually worked. "I get on there, and he's talking to somebody else about a drug market on TOR, the dark web. I found his account on that site, same password, and he'd actually set up regular transactions with their escrow people. That's why we had to wait until Friday, because the next one was scheduled to be picked up at the Mission parking lot at 4 AM this morning. I called the cops and told them I overheard a couple of guys talking about transferring drugs there. As soon as I said Mission I knew they believed me." The 'Mission' had failed miserably; it referred to the name of an entirely local, heavily understaffed, and notoriously mismanaged homeless shelter, halfway house, and home of a wide variety of registered sex offenders.
"You said you overheard it," Robert said.
"What else was I going to tell them?!" Richard replied.
"You could have used some crimestopper tipline, but don't worry about it. They probably knew you were lying about how you got the info, but big secret, they don't care around here as long as the info's good." Richard nodded, having thought the same thing. "Did you give them your name?"
"I did, just to make sure they'd actually send someone, but I asked them to keep me anonymous."
"All right, it probably won't be a problem. At least I don't think so. Willa?"
"If we all keep our mouths shut about this, yes," she replied in exactly the voice Richard and Zoe had expected. "Even if they were told that someone overheard, if they admit to using a computer network to traffic drugs, they could be facing federal instead of state charges. They're going to just plead guilty, 99 times out of 100."
"I wish I understood more about computers," Heather lamented. Not for the first time, she could simply not entirely comprehend what her son was talking about.
"Here's the short version: Your boy's a freaking Jedi," Caroline said, sharing a knowing look with the rest of the teens. What Richard had done in his room that day had not involved the light side of the Force.
"The other short version is that we owe him a lot," Robert said. "You don't understand what he did for us. When you have a biological parent opposing an experimental therapy, it is almost impossible to get a judge to not issue a stay on something like that. They could have dragged this out for months and months." Caroline just nodded as the looks went her way; she'd called it. "What she has and how she has it, it's a progressive disease. I don't even know if this therapy is going to work, but I do know she'd just get worse without it."
Heather shook her head. "I don't understand that either. If this is supposed to save her life, why would her parents oppose it?"
Willa chuckled without humor. "That's basically asking us why we have jobs."
Heather shook her head again. "I just couldn't imagine a parent doing something so hurtful." There was more chuckling in the room, and she had a vague idea as to why.
Robert held up a hand. "Anyway, I need to be clear about something. All of what we just talked about would be true if Richard had been the one who did this. Instead, what happened was, I told you to give that story to the police, and I was the one who did all of this." A moment while that sunk in. Willa drew in a breath. "Phone," he told Richard in a clinical tone, one professional to another, and Richard immediately gave it to him. Robert was absolutely embarrassed at himself and decided that, if he could do nothing else, he could at least do this, even though nothing was likely to come of it. He could have done everything Richard had done, and probably done some of it better, if he'd really tried.
"You're tanking for him," Heather realized. She had played World of Warcraft while Zoe and Richard were babies.
"Don't know what that means," Robert replied.
"She means you're eating the damage," Zoe answered.
"That I am. Honestly, I concur with Willa in that I don't actually expect anything to happen over this, this was a minor giving a tip for a future event and they got caught red handed, but I'm not going to let there be even a chance of a thirteen-year-old going down over saving my daughter's life and putting away a couple of sc-umbags in the process. There, now the screenshots of everything I did are on my computer, and your phone has nothing related," he said, handing it back to him. "Make sure nothing at home does. Did you save to a cloud service at all?"
Richard raised an eyebrow at him. The guy had shown him professional courtesy and then he asked him that? "Hell no."
"Good, well, we almost certainly won't ever hear about any of this again. And Heather, there's something else Willa and I should probably talk to you about. It's unrelated. In private, please." They led her past a couple of assistive devices into their bedroom and closed the door.
"What do you think that's about?" Susie asked, worried.
"Probably about the dresses," Leslie said.
Richard's eyes bugged out. "What?!" he blurted out quietly.
Caroline laughed. "She didn't mean your dresses, they don't know about that, at least I hope they don't." Leslie looked away for a bit, but no one noticed. "She meant that shit that your mom pulled on you, Zoe. Leslie's parents are not gonna let that slide while they've got her in here. Now c'mon, we have messages to delete. Pretty sure deleted actually means deleted here." Many of the previous conversations they'd had were unhappened in minutes.
"Also... they're not going to tell her..." Leslie's lip curled up a bit. "...but I told them everything. Everything. They're my parents, it's different between me and them than for any of you." Susie inhaled a bit. Caroline whistled faintly. "Dealing with abused kids is literally their full-time job." It was how they'd met, and they'd decided to adopt a child in need of serious help themselves shortly after they'd married. That child happened to be an, at the time, eleven-year-old girl with truly abominable parents and a serious progressive disease. "Ricky, they don't care about that stuff as long as it's up to you. Even before this." It was a breach of trust, but it was forgivable. Given what was going on in the other room - Richard overheard Willa nearly losing her temper with "can last for decades" - he was sure that they were on his and Zoe's side.
Zoe looked at Leslie. "About us?" Not for the first time, Richard had to remind himself that the preteen-looking Leslie was actually older than his sister.
"They said it's fine, that it's even good for me, as long as it's an equal relationship." She looked down at her broken body, as if to suggest that she could never have one while she was like that.
"Leslie, if they start talking to my dad..." Susie winced and moved her hands back and forth in a highly negative gesture. Ricky also winced a bit; after all this, there weren't many things that could scare him anymore, but despite his abilities, he had a pretty solid idea that Susie's dad was not a man with whom he wanted to fuc-k.
"They won't. Trust me, they won't. They have to worry about stuff like this all the time. That's why it was safe to tell them." Robert and Willa could not even count the number of times that a child had admitted something personal to his or her parents and received extremely vicious abuse in return.
The adults left the bedroom then, and it was immediately evident that Heather had been crying. Zoe and Richard both knew what that meant, and Richard gave a small sigh of relief, thinking of all the things that he wouldn't have to do, at least not then, including calling his Sith master to go full Palpatine on his own family. None of the teens had any idea what Leslie's parents had said to her nor exactly how they'd said it, but whatever it was, it had worked.
Heather offered a very awkward and too-long apology that involved her tripping over her words and repeating herself more than once, saying that she was sorry for not believing her daughter, putting her into dresses she hated, and not seeing the signs that Zoe's cousins were giving off, and that whoever Zoe chose to be, Heather had to, as her mother, accept that choice. Richard had expected her to apologize when they got into the car; for her to do it right then meant that she was completely defeated. Zoe was still not willing to tell her mother the full truth, and Richard never even considered it.
Zoe's reply was very simple: "If you never do anything like that again, for any reason, we can forget about this." It was a lie, of course; she would not forget about it for a very long time, if ever (as Robert and Willa had just been explaining), but the alternative to pretending was to live in simmering antagonism with her mother until she moved out. Heather readily agreed.
-
Robert offered to buy breakfast at a local diner for all of them, an offer that was immediately accepted. Treating Richard, his family, and his friends to a nice breakfast was the very least he could have done. Repay him? How? With what? He didn't even know how to thank him.
Richard and Zoe rode with their mother, who was obviously deep in thought. Heather knew the WoW analogy wasn't quite right but kept drifting back to it: Her children had become higher level than she was. She was in the mid-levels, hunting monsters and gathering herbs, and apparently her children had been powerleveling while she was gone, and now her son had joined the same guild as his sister and friends, kitting himself out with endgame loot after having defeated a raid boss. She thanked her intuition for telling her what she needed to hear yesterday -- her son had just singlehandedly sent two people to jail with nothing but his computer and his determination, and she'd almost been insane enough to seriously piss him off!
Both Robert and Willa had been very clear with her: As their mother, it was her duty to keep them safe and help them grow, and whoever or whatever they were was not something that she could force into one identity or another. She took this advice very much to heart. She did, however, allow herself one point of pride: if her son could do that, it meant that she had, in some way, succeeded in parenting him.
The diner had recently reopened, and obviously the same people were working there; the staff recognized Leslie's family on sight and immediately found a table that would accomodate all eight of them, including Leslie's wheelchair.
As before, Richard's friends simply didn't treat him any differently than they had the last time they'd eaten together. It never crossed their minds that they should. Richard developed a new metric for judging people: 'How much would this person treat me differently if I were in a dress?' In fact, they were all regularly stealing looks at him - even the adults were doing that, and for reasons that had nothing to do with how sweet he liked to look. He understood, very thoroughly, that some statuses were more critical than others, that real life really did resemble many of his games. In the greater scheme of things, his pretty dresses were almost entirely cosmetics; his stats were what counted, and apparently those were enough to complete a very critical quest. He was not merely Richard, the boy who liked to look cute and girly; he was Richard, the Sith apprentice who liked to look cute and girly.
"Hey, Ricky, there's somewhere I want to take you today," Susie told him. She'd been using her phone at the table, and he'd caught a glimpse of a map.
"Yeah, Mom, I think we're going to spend the day with them," Zoe added.
"Go on ahead," Heather replied. What else was she going to say? She'd taken off Friday so that she could spend time with her children, get them to see things her way, but that had been pulverized before it even started.
Robert tipped well, and no one but Richard noticed when Susie slipped a twenty under her plate for the waitress to pick up. Caroline chuckled as they got in the car together, shaking her head. "Your mom. From hyena to pussycat. I bet she thought you were going to do her next." She had meant it as a joke and was surprised to get general agreement.
"She thought I was going to do her next yesterday, and she didn't even know what it was," Richard said, and abruptly decided that the best definition of it was 'do dirty'. "She'd said some real ugly shit." Did the woman not get that forcing people into dresses just wasn't something you did, especially to your own children? Was this hard somehow? He didn't want to do his own mother dirty, didn't even really want to intimidate her, and really, really hoped that what she'd learned today in addition to Leslie's parents telling her off would put a stop to stupid parent tricks forever, even if she found out things the Squad didn't want her to know.
"No, we're not talking about this now," Zoe said. It was killing the mood. "We can talk about where we're going."
"No we can't," Susie replied. "It'll be a pleasant surprise for at least one of us. Assuming it's open."
"We can talk about what Ricky did," Leslie offered. She understood, mechanically, what had happened. She did not understand why Richard had delved deep into all-consuming hatred and monomaniacal fixation to do it. Wasn't it her problem? She'd only known him for a few days! She knew that this was the kind of 'low self-esteem' thing that her parents talked to her about fairly often, but she had a difficult time understanding that people cared about her. Was he the same sort of rarity as the rest of her friends and her parents? She had to remind herself that her parents were telling the truth, that this was just the sort of thing real friends did for each other.
"Heroic," Susie said, simply. "Is there a better word?" She intended to reward him for it, reward him in a way that the both of them would very much enjoy. Today's trip was something she was probably going to do anyway, but she had even more exciting plans in mind for later.
"Isn't that what's supposed to happen with a princess around?" Richard joked. The girls giggled and he realized his mistake: he'd never called her that before in front of the rest of them. Susie didn't seem to mind, though, as she was giggling as well, although she added yet another item to her to-do list for when they were alone.
"It was the best timing, but not the worst revenge I ever heard of," Caroline said, looking behind her as she merged onto the highway to downtown. Traffic was much lighter than it was before everyone who could had started working from home. "I heard this like five years ago, it's a rumor, but I think it actually happened. There were these mean girls, and this nerd, and she didn't have any other friends so she kept hanging out with them even when they made her help bully other people, and then she was arguing over something, and one of the mean girls cut her bra strap in school, and then she waited for years and then... it was her boyfriend, husband, I forget, but she hooked him up with a drug dealer, something really addictive, meth or coke or something. Totally fuc-ked them."
Leslie whistled. Susie's lips pursed. "Ouch," Zoe said.
"That is hardcore," Richard added. He felt a great deal of respect for whoever pulled that off and wanted to meet to swap notes.
"Hey, Ricky, lean your seat back," Susie said, and he found the lever that would let him do that, putting his head near his girlfriend's lap.
"Not entirely safe, what are you doing?" Coraline asked.
"Braiding his hair," Susie replied. "Don't worry, it'll be okay for where we're going." Caroline's car had good suspension, and he smiled as she put his hair back into its familiar, comfortable pigtails. She kissed him on the forehead when she was done, and he sat back up happily, not caring one whit if anyone saw him. They chatted the rest of the way, about Leslie's treatment (which Leslie had to remind herself was actually, for-sure, going to happen now), about everything else they'd been doing, about the food they'd eaten. The agreement was that the bacon and eggs had been good; the milkshakes had been excellent.
They arrived at their destination, a place close to the upscale part of the downtown area, and Caroline had to check her phone to make sure that it was the right place, frowning. "This is the address," she said, unconvinced. It wasn't a bad neighborhood, but weren't they going to a boutique? Where was the glass storefront, the displayed clothes? Why would a 'boutique' be a plain brick building with a single, forbidding-looking door? Okay, it did say "Spectral Boutique" on the small glass window, in rainbow cursive, but other than that, it looked almost like a crime den. She decided to go in first, and as they entered, Leslie walking, the group was startled by the sheer colorful flamboyance of two things.
The first was the proprietor. He had the certain look of the guy who owns the place, and he also had a massively overdone, glittery, pastel rainbow concoction of a suit festooned with an abundance of buttons and pins, a Mad Hatter-style top hat, and sparkling rimmed glasses with no lenses. Not his fashion choices but his overall demeanor marked him as unquestionably, undeniably gay, leaving them all to wonder how much was of it was an act. Susie, who knew more about these things than a fifteen-year-old probably should, strongly suspected that the man had additional items on underneath.
The second was everything else in the store. If the store had a theme, it was 'rainbows', with 'pastels' and 'fishnets' vying for second place. There was a section in the back labeled "Must Be 18 To Enter", which Susie found relieving because she'd worried that maybe the whole store was like that.
"Okay, I'm seeing four girls, three underage, and one underage boy in pigtails," the proprietor said in exactly the sort of super-gay, lisping voice they were envisioning. (Caroline smirked but did not correct him.) "Before we even start, I have to ask, are you coercing, punishing, blackmailing, or threatening him in any way to be here?"
All five of them burst out in spasms of uncontrollable laughter, Leslie needing to hold on to Zoe for support. "Coerce HIM?!" Caroline exclaimed, pointing. "Oh my God, he'd kill us all, there would be a giant smoking crater. You have no idea, we can't even tell you what he's capable of. Why would you even ask that?!"
The man's voice became several notches less campy. "Three months after I opened, there was a boy, middle school age or so, and his face had been made up really garish, and his hair in super tight curlers, and he had so obviously been crying heavily. And his mother, could have been his aunt, and two sisters, cousins, whatever, were telling me to pull down the most ridiculous sissy stuff I have in the store to punish him with, and he's just standing there sobbing. Not sure if you noticed, but I have some pretty ridiculous stuff in here." Richard held his tongue; it would be mean to point out that the most ridiculous thing in the store was its owner.
"What happened?" Leslie asked.
The man raised an eyebrow. "What do you think happened? I told them to get the hell out of my store before I called Child Protective Services! And then I followed them out to their car, got their license plate, and called CPS on them anyway before they did something else to him. Never found out what happened after that, but from the conversation I had, it wouldn't surprise me if the kid got put in a home somewhere and the adult got sent to county for child abuse. To hell with assholes like that, our community doesn't need more crap coming down on it and I sure as hell don't. Anyway, that was a couple years ago." Richard considered asking for more details, just so he could make sure that family was well and truly destroyed, but there was no way this guy remembered what he'd need to know. The man turned the camp back on. "Welcome to the Spectral Boutique, my name is Franklin, what can I get you?"
"I actually want to see your ridiculous stuff, just to see what it looks like," Susie said, and he pointed to the wall behind her. She turned and looked, as did the others. A long line of extremely, comically frilly, mostly babyish, and nearly all pink dresses hung on that wall, answering the question of why there were no windows. If anyone could just look through and see this stuff, somebody would target the place for sure. A lot of it had price tags that made even her suc-k air between her teeth, which wasn't surprising for things that shouldn't have existed outside a drawing or cartoon. Each one of them must have come in multiple layers; how else would you wash a thing like that? All of the teens were awed at seeing something like that in person. It was like something from a movie. "Wow. Holy... wow. That's not what we're here for, though. What we're looking for is that rainbow dress you've got, the one that goes from red to violet."
"Yes! The Spectral Dress. Our flagship product, this is for him, right?" She nodded. "Okay, his size is right here," he said with the authority of someone very experienced at telling sizes at a glance. The dress he pulled out made a very smooth transition through all the colors of the rainbow, from red at the collar to a deep violet at the hem, which was slightly elastic in nature and retained a circular shape on its own. "Pockets are here and here, and the hoop part down here actually comes out, makes it easier to wash," he explained.
"Nice!" Richard exclaimed, smiling from ear to ear.
"If you're going to get it, I recommend the Spectral Gloves, at least one pair of Spectral Boots, and Spectral Socks. We've got them all in your size." The Spectral Gloves were soft, satiny, elbow-length opera gloves that didn't go through the full spectrum; instead, they matched the colors on the dress where his hands would be at his sides. The Spectral Boots were knee-length suede, going from violet to red, and coming in three heel heights: flats, two and a half-inch wedges, and five-inch wedges that he was both nervous about and thrilled to try. The socks were exactly the same length and color as the boots. "Buy the whole set and I'll throw in the Spectral Pants, the Spectral Shirt," These items were normal for boys except that they followed the same color pattern as the dress. "and a set of Spectral Hairbands." He held up a ten-pack of elastic hairbands that looped around the RGB color spectrum.
"Ricky?" Susie asked, and he eagerly agreed. "We're buying all of this. Do you have a fitting room so he can wear some of it home?"
"We certainly do, it's right over there." The two of them held hands into the fitting room, Susie selecting the dress, gloves, and medium heels for him, and she pulled out a makeup kit and a spare, folded diaper from her purse. Less than five minutes later, the two of them emerged, with Richard wearing his new Spectral outfit, his new rainbow hairbands holding his pigtails, subtly cute makeup, and a gigantic smile, his ordinary clothes in his arms.
"You're pretty good on heels," Franklin noted with a smile. Richard was exactly the sort of kid he'd envisioned wearing that outfit when he'd made it. Most of his customers were adult men, with adult females in second place followed by curious teenage girls, but it was definitely an outfit for boys like him.
"I've been practicing," Richard admitted. "I kinda always want to wear them, unless I'm doing something physical where I really shouldn't."
"Just make sure you lift your toes and stretch your calves regularly," Franklin advised. "The shortened tendons thing can happen for real, especially since you're still growing. All right, you got the whole set, and there's tax, you know, let's just call it two-thirty even." Caroline whistled faintly, but Susie plopped down a dozen twenties like it was nothing and received a picture of Alexander Hamilton in return.
"By the way," Susie said, "since you know a lot about this stuff, can you confirm a rumor for me? I heard that some babysitter tried to put somebody's ten-year-old kid into some bondage dress thing and his twin sister almost blew her head off for it."
Franklin suc-ked in a long breath and dialed the camp down to zero. "You know, that actually might explain something. There's kind of a fetish, swinger group around here, the Greater Area Sissies," Susie abruptly recognized the acronym. "and they had a maaaajor falling out. I heard from one sissy who came in here, like half their members left, some won't even talk to each other anymore. I asked, but she just flat refused to say why. I might not ever know for sure, and that rumor sounds like bullcrap, but if it's true, it would explain a lot. By the way, can you not spread this? If this is true and gets confirmed to the general public, the feces is going to hit the rotary oscillator so hard it'll get on both me and him," he said, gesturing to Richard, and the group nodded in understanding.
"Keep the change," Susie told him, pushing the Hamilton back towards him. "Knowing that was worth it."
The campy voice returned. "Well, thank you very much, and please come back in the fall for our warmer stuff. You kids have a good day!"
"You too!" Richard replied, giving him a deep curtsey in his new rainbow dress before happily swishing out the door.
As they left, they heard him muttering to himself, "Eris, a freaking ten year old, like we don't have enough problems with the Munchausen's..."
"So, where to now?" Caroline asked.
"There's a local mall I've never been to," Susie said.
"With him like that?" Leslie asked, eyes wide open. Caroline had her eyes wide open as well.
Zoe giggled, remembering what Richard had told her after he'd skipped home Monday. "He's too obviously bait. Especially in a mall, who's gonna harass a 13 year old and all his friends in the middle of a mall, especially when everyone else is staring at him too? Maybe the mall cops?"
"Not around here," Susie said. "I checked, the whole reason Franklin put his store here is because this whole neighborhood is as gay as him. Well, uhh... mmmmaybe not quite that gay." They all laughed. "Unless Ricky's getting cold feet?"
"Pfffffft," Richard blew out, rolling his eyes. His accomplishment and his beautiful outfit made him feel like a transcendent being. He was where he belonged, wearing what he belonged in, and with whom he belonged. Physical danger was basically zilch in a fairly upscale neighborhood with security cameras and mall cops while they walked around in a group of five, and he would gleefully, mercilessly, and irrevocably do anyone who tried to mess with any of them very, very dirty.
"You got it, Princess," Caroline said, putting the car into reverse and pulling out of the parking lot.
The mall was large and fairly well taken care of, but there were still puddles from where it had rained yesterday, and Richard jumped over a small one in his heels. As soon as they walked in the door, they wondered if the place had even opened properly, but on looking through the shutters, they realized that more than half the stores had been shut down for a long time; malls had been dying for years even before the pandemic. Susie had wanted her boyfriend to strut in dress and heels through a crowded mall, not a graveyard, but at least they were out together, and she abruptly held him around the side of his waist, pressing up against his elastic hoop skirt, the side of her breast pressing against his chest. He held her close with his silky glove, smiling, her head against his shoulder as they walked.
They checked the directory, but it hadn't been updated in years, and Susie wanted to at least walk through with her friends anyway even if the place was mostly shut down.
"Check it," Caroline warned. A middle-aged guy with long hair and a stubbly beard was coming straight up to them only a few minutes after they'd entered, holding up a hand in peace.
"Where'd you buy that rainbow stuff at?" he asked immediately, clearly not wanting to be seen as a creep.
"Spectral Boutique," Susie answered, remembering the name first because she'd known about the place.
"Thank you!" the man replied, searching on his phone while leaving. Another nearby lady started tapping on her phone as well. They realized that they'd gotten Franklin a customer or two. It hadn't occurred to Richard, or any of them, that things like that could happen - that he'd be approached not by people wanting to harass him or ask where his parents were or call him gay but by people who were simply curious or envious. He wondered if the man would walk out wearing the Spectral outfit or one of the super-frilly ones.
"So, Zoe, do you want to wear an actually good dress on your birthday?" Susie asked, to her surprise. With everything that had been happening, it was easy to forget that Zoe's birthday was tomorrow, but none of them had.
"I've been thinking about that," Zoe said. "About what I actually want to look like. I wouldn't mind a real dress, but I don't want some humiliating, childish crap, I want to look like a queen."
"You asked the right person," Leslie pointed out, and they all giggled.
-
"Right up there," Susie said, pointing out a highly upscale brand store. "I know this company."
"Oh wow," the lady at the counter said as they walked in. "You're the youngest Spectral customer I've ever seen come in here. So what can I do for you all today?"
"I need a dress for my birthday tomorrow," Zoe said, and smiled when the attendant wished her a happy birthday. "Dark, elegant, and not at all slutty."
"Price range?" Susie intentionally laughed at the question with a smug expression and folded arms. "Are you laughing because... oh. Oh, now I remember you. It's been years. Susie, right? This was when we were back at our old location, you were twelve or so, your dad wanted everything perfect."
"Yup, that's me, and that's him," Susie replied.
"I'll help get your friend the perfect dress for her. This way, please." She led them straight over to the expensive section (which still wasn't anywhere near as pricey as some of the stuff Spectral had), and Richard could no longer follow the conversation after that point. He put on a dress because it fit him and it looked cute, like buying a T-shirt; they were talking about principles of which he had no knowledge. He wondered if that was how his mother had felt earlier that morning when he discussed his dark art. He shifted from foot to foot in his boots, patiently waiting as Leslie and the attendant talked about cuts and silhouettes and bustlines.
Half an hour later, they were ready, and Zoe had a smug, royal expression on her face as well, hanging the well-stocked bag from one of Leslie's wheelchair handles. Richard hadn't been paying attention to how much it had cost and realized that he didn't care for the same reason Susie apparently didn't.
They passed a Gamestop, and Richard was genuinely surprised that it was still open. "If you want to get any games...?" Susie asked, still totally unconcerned with finances. She was on a date with her boyfriend - her absolutely adorable, rainbow dress-wearing, high heeled, pigtailed, gloved, and diapered dark Jedi of a boyfriend - and with her friends as well, the day before the birthday of, assuming everything went right, her future sister-in-law.
"Yar har, fiddle de dee," Richard replied, and Zoe briefly, quitely sang along with him. Their mother had, when given a Christmas bonus a couple years ago, purchased them decent computers but did not give them a lot of games, and they'd discovered other methods of getting them. Zoe was actually the one who'd taught her little brother how to torrent, and she wondered if she'd set him down the path to being able to do what he did.
"Any time I start playing a video game, I just wish I was working on a car or doing something else instead," Caroline said.
"I want one," Leslie replied. "I've got a PS4." She favored games with complex plotlines, things she could lose herself in and forget that she was a cripple for a while, and Susie browsed the racks with her and Zoe.
Although he was still committed to unrepentant piracy, Richard looked around as well for things he might want to play with Zoe, assuming they were on PC or could be emulated. He hadn't been playing much with her and realized that he should have been, this whole time, if not video games then something else. The two of them hadn't ever been that close, even before that nasty Christmas. Richard was generally avoidant of people in general, the sort of kid who hadn't had friends and hadn't really cared that he didn't. If he hadn't conjured up that fake bet, he would have never met Susie (the idea struck utter, primordial fear into him) and never would have saved Leslie, and abruptly he shuddered.
His thoughts were interrupted by the store clerk. "Hey, where's that from?"
"Spectral Boutique," Richard answered.
"No, I mean what movie, game...?" Zoe chuckled. Caroline rolled her eyes.
"It's not from anything."
"Well, that's a pretty good OC," the clerk replied, going back to his computer. Richard just sighed. He really should have expected reactions like that one, too. They finished with Leslie getting four highly recommended JRPGs, all from the used section, and they continued their walk through the mall.
"I just realized, we didn't bring our swimwear," Zoe said as they passed a sporting goods store. Swimwear? Oh, right. Leslie had to be at the Y again at 3.
Susie put on a bit of an imperious air. "That sounds suspiciously like asking me for something."
Zoe sighed. "Sorry, we can stop at home."
Susie laughed and playfully tugged on Zoe's arm towards the store. "I'm joking! C'mon. You must've had that bathing suit since last year! This counts as a birthday present."
Susie noticed something in the girls' swimwear section, and a bit of a smile went across her face. As the others browsed, she quietly handed Richard a twenty and told him to be a good boy, buy his swimming trunks, keep the change, and meet them at the entrance. Dutifully, and while taking stock of the other things in the store (he really did have to become more physically active, he realized), he bought a coral pink pair of swimming trunks in his size because that was definitely his color, paid for the trunks while wearing the Spectral dress and heels without even a hint of anxiety (this was far from the first flamboyant person the experienced cashier had checked out, although he might have been the youngest), and sat on a nearby bench, patiently waiting for the girls like he'd been told to. He realized he had to pee, but Susie had put him in a diaper, so he used it like she obviously expected him to.
He wondered if he'd be hit on. He really was cute, after all, a rainbow vision in a very sweet dress and heels and silky gloves with his hands daintily folded into his lap, his pigtails dangling, a soft little smile on his made-up face. He got looks, of course, from all the passers-by who he smiled at, including a mall cop who very carefully said nothing; none of them were teenage boys, as the number of teenage boys who'd hang out in a dying mall was fairly close to zero. And, as before, he was simply too obviously bait.
He got up as the girls approached, his smile still on his face, as Susie matched it with an unexplained expression of mischievous glee and the others with subtle smiles. The new bag hanging from Leslie's wheelchair had more stuff than a simple bathing suit, but he knew he wasn't allowed to ask what was in it. He'd always hated surprises when he was younger - they'd nearly all been from his mother and none of them had been good - but he was ready to accept any surprise fron Susie.
They returned to the car and decided what to do. None of them had spent very much time downtown before, and they wanted to walk around; there was plenty of stuff to see around the mall. "Hold up one second," Richard said, sitting halfway inside the car and changing into his flat boots. He really did love his heels, but if they were going to keep walking for a while, he didn't want the enjoyable sensation to turn into pain.
Leslie got a couple of texts as they started to explore, and she laughed. Apparently, legal staff from both sides had met in the courtroom while submitting paperwork to do the exact same thing: cancel the hearing. As her dad explained, his amusement visible through the text, her birth parents' lawyer was canceling the court date before he got laughed out of it. And that was truly the end of that.
"Ricky, can you come close? Like really close," Leslie said, and he bent down over her wheelchair. She hugged him, deeply and ferociously. It was a very awkward hug, out on a public sidewalk with him standing over her wheelchair wearing a dress, but neither one of them cared, and it lasted for a good ten seconds. He could feel her weak muscles shaking before she let him go.
The group walked down streets and through parks, taking time to take long, winding paths and even play on unattended playgrounds. They found a swingset, and Richard laughed without a care in the world, kicking his rainbow boots happily in the air, as Susie swung beside him, her own skirt fluttering as she kicked her expensive sneakers, laughing next to him. There was even a seat-swing, and Zoe pushed Leslie a great deal higher than the thing was really meant to be pushed. Richard had never felt so utterly free, so completely euphoric, in his life, and although his intrinsic cautiousness kept patrolling for signs that something was going to go wrong, nothing did. Did the occasional dog walker or jogger know he was a boy? He couldn't have possibly cared less. When they stopped swinging, he leapt out of it, and his dress fluttered into the air, possibly exposing his damp diaper to anyone who might have been watching (no one was) and landing easily in his rainbow boots on the mulched surface.
They went to the public bathroom together, as girls often do, and they were probably the first ones to have used it in days. Being changed on the cold concrete floor wasn't particularly pleasant, even if the day was warm and Susie was changing him, but he was going through the same thing as Leslie. He wondered if Susie would keep him in diapers even if the therapy worked and Leslie no longer needed them, and he realized with a rush of joy and love that she really was his princess and he really did absolutely trust her to take care of him, even make decisions for him, because he knew that she'd never, ever do anything to him that he wouldn't enjoy. (The idea came, unbidden, that she'd betray him somehow, and he shut that down hard and fast. He couldn't turn off his low-level caution, but he could and would keep it suppressed.)
They went into a bookstore next, one full of old books that none of them had ever seen before (along with the characteristic, musty smell), and the prices were so low and the books were so old that Richard was able to snag five Nivens with just the change from buying his swimming trunks. It was Caroline who splurged there, finding books that she planned on giving to her father, manuals and guides to old cars that she thought never existed. The proprietor was also old, old enough to have seen everything, and all he told Richard was that his gloves matched his dress very well. Leslie had the most trouble, as the aisles were way too narrow for her to bring in her wheelchair (Zoe kept looking to make sure no one would steal it) and she couldn't get to low or high shelves.
As they left, they realized that they'd spent way more time than they thought and that it was time to start driving back. Richard wondered where the time went. Did he really spend four hours walking around and having fun in his new dress? It felt like he'd just gotten started! He couldn't remember the last time he'd been so immersed, so completely content with life, that the clock had gotten away from him.
As he lacked a backpack this time, Richard changed in the car, Susie pulling up the dress as he leaned back again and gently tousling his hair out of his pigtails. He changed directly into his swimming trunks from his unused diaper, replacing his boots with his boys' socks and shoes. Caroline chuckled, noticing his contortions in the passenger's seat, but he was thirteen years old and could make them without hurting himself.
As they approached the Y, Susie simply flat-out told her friends that she was buying a month of membership for everyone who didn't have one and that she intended to keep doing so. They were under 18, so the price was fairly cheap, and as Leslie greeted Mindy again, she could tell that the woman had been thinking about something.
"What's on your mind?" Leslie asked.
"It's just stuff your parents told me about, it turned out not to matter." The group obviously knew what was going on, and she relaxed a bit. She'd been worried about her since Wednesday, when Leslie's father had given her the bad news, right up until she got the good news. She was very curious about exactly what the hell had gone down but was simply too professional to ask adults, let alone teenagers. "Good news in the end, but we still can't slack off. You need to be in the best shape possible for it, and that's six more sessions, counting today. You ready?"
"Of course," Leslie replied, and Mindy noted that the girl was even more chipper than she'd been three days ago, the two of them smiling at each other. Mindy didn't know just how much Leslie's friends were helping her, but it was obviously a lot, and Christ, if her birth parents had managed to interfere...
The hour-long swim session went almost exactly as it had on Tuesday's, with Richard chasing his girlfriend around in his pink swimming trunks, but he did somewhat better despite having been walking around all day. The hot tub was still closed - Richard was still slightly peeved about that - and he walked out as he'd come in.
"I guess we better get you home for your pills," Caroline told Leslie as they got in the car.
"I brought a package with me, but I'm really supposed to take them with food," Leslie said. The group had eaten nothing since breakfast, and they were feeling it.
"Where are we going this time?" Zoe asked, looking at Susie, expecting the name of some fancy restaurant or other.
"Let's eat in," Susie said instead. "I guarantee it's healthy and I have a good assistant cook." Richard chuckled and smiled. One of the other girls might have protested, he was the hero of the day after all, but he obviously enjoyed being treated that way. Susie braided his hair again on the way there, tying the braids off with the rainbow hairbands, and helping him back into his colorful dress after he put his diaper back on. He took the opportunity to try the heels he'd never tried before, the five-inch ones that put him firmly on his toes, putting his gloves back on and enjoying their silky feel. He smiled as he stepped out of the car, his first-ever step in heels that high, his butt wiggling a bit as he minced up to the door. There was a slight wind, and his braids and dress fluttered in it.
Richard set the table while Susie began preparations, carefully tiptoeing back and forth as he diligently and carefully placed the tableware, the contentment never leaving his face. The evening's meal was something with the interesting name of 'morgh', and while it had the 'mor-' prefix of death, it was very rich in healthy vegetables and the protein that Leslie needed.
"Make sure no one is going to disturb you on Sunday," Susie whispered to him as they prepared ingredients, his gloves stashed in his pockets because he didn't want to get them messy.
"Yes, Your Highness," he whispered back. He suspected that the unspoken stuff they'd bought at the sporting goods store would play a part in that.
Leslie showed her friends Animal Crossing as the food cooked (the smell was wonderful), and Richard graciously and happily served it once it was done, eagerly sitting next to Susie, and they fed each other bites. It tasted even better than it smelled.
They watched another romantic comedy once they were done eating, all five of them on the couch together, the girls in their socks and Richard still in his heels because he didn't want to take them off, Zoe with her arm around Leslie while Susie and Richard shamelessly embraced one another, his silky gloves often brushing against her breasts. The movie wasn't Persian this time but was still very foreign; Richard had never seen a Bollywood movie before, and neither had any of the girls except Susie, and as they laughed at the very ridiculous plot together, Richard felt such an enormous sense of well-being that he could not even imagine wanting to live any other way. Happiness, joy, love, contentment, peace, acceptance... he could not even think of the right word. Every evening that he wasn't alone with Susie, he wanted to spend just like this, even after he had a job. He did not believe in God, but he prayed from the bottom of his heart that nothing would ever take this away from him, or at least not in a way that he couldn't undo.
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Jacqueline, Oh, WOW. Those are two of the best chapters, yet. I love the flamboyant sales clerk. He sounds like some of the people I have met. That rainbow dress is something I would love to have and wear. Ricky is having a fantastic with all of the girls. I don't know what Ricky did to Leslie's parents; but, I'm glad he did it. Leslie will now get her treatment and possibly be cured.
Great story and I can't wait for the next chapter. ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;)
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Those are two of the best chapters, yet.
I don't know what Ricky did to Leslie's parents
With any forum on which people post stories of any kind in multiple posts at a time, always make sure you're reading the new parts from where the new parts begin. This time, they're at the end of Page 3.
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Jacqueline, This story is getting deep. I don't know why; but, I get this feeling in my chest that is almost like "fight or flight" when I read this. You definitely bring out emotions with your story. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE THIS STORY!!!! 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8)
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Enjoying this. Though Ricky isn't a side dark force user he's a dark pink force user :)
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Jacqueline,
Today is a diaper day so I'm catching up on your newest sections.
I really like your story and would love to have some Spectral Boutique outfits of my own.
Your character development really keeps my interest.
I'm looking forward to your future chapters.
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Richard was really anticipating Sunday, which is why he had stayed up late reading Niven and absolutely crushing it at Starcraft. His own worry, his own fear, had gotten in his way in previous games; that was no more. He'd never felt more confident in his life, and he looked forward to spending more time at Susie's house, this time in the company of his sister and friends.
He was just surprised that Zoe had been okay with him wearing the prom dress that she'd been shoved into at his own birthday party, as he'd thought it'd be a nasty reminder, but she enjoyed the juxtaposition. They realized that they should have planned this better by taking it over there before Heather got home, and they discussed ways to get it past her, but it was Leslie who came up with the best plan: simply carry out the box and, if asked, openly admit what was in it but say that Zoe planned to ritually destroy it. (The heels in his size would be in the bottom of the box.) She'd suggested bringing it back and saying that they hadn't decided to, but Susie had something better: she'd simply leave the stuff at her house. After all, she said with an enormous smile, it was good for Richard to have a dress anywhere he spent a lot of time.
"You should wear your swimming trunks here, too," Susie had told him with a grin, "but don't plan on wearing them into the pool." Richard did absolutely not ask if she was planning on skinny-dipping with him or not.
Saturday morning, Heather's children had come down to breakfast with her as she'd asked, and Zoe was already wearing a dress of her own, and it was obviously very high-class. Heather wanted to talk about it - wanted to ask where she bought it, even knowing who had bought it for her - but she kept quiet. She'd already agreed to let this be Zoe's party, and one of the words that Robert and Willa had used with her was 'vicarious', briefly explaining that some parents try to regain their own childhoods through their children, which never, ever works. Her newly fourteen-year-old daughter was going to have a party at the rich girl's place (Richard's girlfriend, she had to remind herself) with the people she cared about, and that simply did not include most of her family.
Heather felt like she'd pulled back from the brink, a thing she'd done once before. After a long series of failed dating experiences after her separated husband had finally overdosed, she'd found a man who seemed very nice and charming. A couple of weeks later, she'd come home one day, and her daughter, then not even eight years old, had quietly told her through tears that he had gotten drunk, slapped her, and tried to threaten her and her little brother into shutting up about it. He'd denied everything, but she'd seen the mark on her face and smelled the alcohol on him, and she'd wisely believed her sobbing children and not his 'she fell down' nonsense. That was the last potential stepfather her children had ever had. She had a union job, after all, she'd gotten her highly affordable mortgage shortly after the 2008 collapse, and she'd done 'pooled' community daycare until her children were old enough to look after themselves.
No, she really did not want to make bad decisions for them or do things that they would despise her for in the long term, especially not now that Richard had apparently become a powerful internet sorcerer when she wasn't looking. She was just glad that Zoe was doing safe things with safe people and that Richard had found friends and a girlfriend, although she was disappointed that he was just wearing his casual clothes. Would it have killed him to dress up a bit for his sister's party?
The plan to smuggle the dress worked, as Heather hadn't really even noticed the box, being far more worried about what was in her children's heads.
Instead, her children were the ones surprised by a dress, because Caroline was wearing it. It was generally elegant and tasteful, black and coming up to her mid-thigh, but Caroline was not the sort of girl to wear heels higher than an inch. Leslie, too, was wearing a dress, a green one that went to her knees, something that she'd had for a while but never had any occasion to wear. If she wore most dresses for someone her size, she looked like a kid. If she wore a dress with a more grown-up cut, she looked like a kid trying to look grown-up. The dress she had on was somewhat in between, and she didn't care if it exposed her leg braces.
"I didn't even know you owned a dress," Richard told Caroline upon getting into the passenger seat, while Zoe got into the back and tossed the box to the other side of her girlfriend and telling her how pretty she looked.
"I was actually gonna wear it to a school dance before the kung flu hit," Caroline replied.
Leslie broke up laughing. "Kung flu?! Where did you hear that, oh my God, Caroline," she said between giggles.
"President of the United States, who else?" Caroline replied, shrugging as she drove.
"He's not even close to the first person to say that," Richard said. On some parts of the internet he knew well (and didn't go to anymore; having a girlfriend made him want to stop hanging out where people called each other cucks all day), that was among the least offensive of the terms he'd heard for it.
They got to Susie's house where she opened the door for them, and Richard inhaled sharply. She was wearing a white dress, the nearly diaphanous fabric contrasting with her darker skin, and combined with the sparkling gems on her ears and neck and her very carefully applied make-up, she really did look like a princess of some ancient, far-off country. Richard had never seen her wearing jewelry before, and his reaction was better than any compliment. Susie smiled in pure, sublime regality. Her father had told her that she ought not flaunt her wealth too conspicuously, or others might want to steal it from her, so they'd never seen her looking this rich, this elegant, this totally in charge of everything around her.
"Have you the box?" the princess asked with an imperious air.
"The box I have," Zoe said, getting it out of the car as she helped Leslie out. "Talk like Yoda, I can as well." They all shared giggles. She handed the box to Richard. Four of them were wearing dresses, which they were complimenting each other on, and five would be soon; one of them was male, and zero of them would expect anything else from him.
It was only when putting it on in the downstairs bathroom that Richard realized just how poofy the prom dress, with all its layered petticoats, really was. Like the Christmas dress, it fit around his chest differently but still fit him; unlike that dress, it ended at the upper chest but went all the way down to his ankles. If Susie wasn't there to help him, he'd have to put on his jingly pink socks and heels first, because once the petticoats were on, he wasn't touching his own feet without a lot of work. Being thirteen, nimble, and not obese meant that the zipper being on the back wouldn't have slowed him down for a second, even if she weren't there to zip him up. The one thing he couldn't do at all, still, was braid his own hair into pigtails, and he still didn't know enough about makeup to give himself the subtle girly touches Susie was giving him.
They all clapped when he and Susie emerged, and he gave them a deep, slightly jingly curtsy, pinching the sides of his dress with his pink gloves. "That is definitely the dress for you, Ricky," Zoe said with authority and finality. He looked like a precious little girl attending the party of someone much older, a cute little sweetheart trying to look as pretty as she could to fit in. All the other girls, even Leslie, looked like genuine royalty next to his dress-up dress. Zoe smiled in pure, smug satisfaction, feeling like was the way things were meant to be, and the fact that he was smiling and blushing a little, nodding subtly in agreement, only cemented that idea. He felt exactly as cute and as precious as he looked.
"Not all the time," Leslie pointed out. "Doesn't he have to cook sometimes, too?" There was lots of chuckling, from Richard as well. There was no way he was doing anything other than being a precious little cutie wearing that.
"Not right now, he doesn't," Susie said. "Besides, I am your hostess, and the hostess provides. And, before it starts warming up outside, the hostess shall provide entertainment," she said, gesturing to the couch. Richard made sure to daintily walk on his toes rather than put any weight on his heels, as he didn't want to leave prints in the carpet again.
"What movie?"
"Youtube videos," Susie replied. The videos she had selected for the group to watch on the big screen were a carefully chosen list of things that Zoe was interested in, as given by what she'd shared in the chat, although a lot of them were more blurry than any of them might have liked on Susie's enormous widescreen. Most of them were of cute things, and Richard felt absolutely precious in his pretty dress while watching baby animals and snuggling with his girlfriend, feeling much the same way he had last night, only cuter, as her body pressed his petticoats against him. Zoe realized the genius of it after she'd started watching; she'd been worried about what to do all day for her birthday, and Susie had put her into a worry-free situation instead.
They talked some as they watched, and she learned that the house had been fairly well occupied once, with Susie and her three older brothers along with their parents. As the youngest of the family, Susie had always been treated like a princess from the moment she was born.
Eventually, it got warm enough for swimming, and the five of them disrobed and took the opportunity to go to the bathroom. Susie hadn't put Richard in diapers; this was Zoe's day, after all, and him wetting himself and needing to be changed would have been a distraction. Changing Leslie out of her diaper and into her swim diaper was quite enough.
"You told me to wear my trunks but not to wear them to the pool. Why not?" Richard asked Susie in confusion as they approached Susie's moderately substantial outdoor pool. It was well maintained; she'd found time to set everything up or, more likely, she'd called someone to do it for her. (Richard suddenly felt a pang of jealousy on thinking that a 'pool boy' was coming to Susie's house.)
"Because today, that's not your swimsuit," she told him, putting on her imperious air. "This is your swimsuit." She picked up a long-sleeved, iridescent, blue-green leotard with the words "Mermaid in Training" prominently displayed in the chest. Surprised that this was in his size, he eagerly put it on as the girls watched, the stretchy spandex hugging his arms and chest while giving him a mild wedgie. Susie giggled. "Now sit by the pool," she instructed him, and he saw why: the next thing to be put on him was a long, body-hugging mermaid tail, and he eagerly put his legs together so she could pull it up to his waist, his feet fitting into the solid tailfin. She strapped a couple of stiff fins to his hands and gently pushed him into the cool, lightly chlorinated water. "Practice in the shallow end!" she told him, giggling.
He realized very quickly that this wasn't just some outfit meant to make him look silly or girly; this was real swimming equipment, and he practiced with it as the designers had obviously intended, Susie giggling as he dolphin-kicked his way back and forth at the shallow end, Zoe and Caroline stealing looks at him as they helped Leslie undress.
"Wait, you forgot something," Zoe said, and he swam up to her. She kneeled down and applied sunblock to his face and the back of his neck, pulling his wet pigtails out of the way to do so. Then, giggling, she patted her precious sissy brother on the head and he went back to having fun while she applied sunblock to herself and Leslie after getting the girl out of her leg braces. This was always tricky, but Caroline was there to help.
The girls slipped in next to him, playfully splashing the mermaid boy, and that was a mistake because the hand fins also made him a much better splasher than they were, and then Susie challenged him to a race to the deep end and back. This race was much closer than the others had been, as her pool was far from Olympic in size, and he was able to kick off the wall in his mermaid tail and she won by a few feet. The second time was basically a tie, and the third one he actually won, pushing his way through the water as hard as he could. Susie gave him a kiss on the cheek as he hung by the side of the pool, panting. She hadn't let him win.
They stayed in the water a while, playing together, and then Caroline decided to work on her tan and Zoe helped Leslie out of the water, and Susie went to get them banana smoothies.
Zoe luxuriated, exulted, reveled, her arm around her girlfriend's too-light body and the light reflecting off a pair of sunglasses that Susie had given her. There were only two things that could make this more perfect. The first was skin that tanned; she had to wear sunblock just like Richard did, or she was going to get very fried very quickly. The second was that she wanted to be somewhere even more luxurious than this, maybe a mansion or chalet in the Carribean or Monaco, where she and Leslie, her body completely fixed by the treatment, would enjoy a long, sensuous threesome with a very rich, toned man. (She would have to inquire about Susie's three older brothers at some point. Surely they qualified.) Being able to get to a place like that was almost enough on its own, and abruptly she understood Caroline's dream of marrying a charter pilot.
'Do you love her for her personality?' was the age-old question of relationships. She was, in fact, attracted to Leslie's personality, outgoing and pleasant when she wasn't in the depths of self-doubt, because that was how she'd first known her. They'd been chatting for a week before the pandemic had really taken hold, the schools had been closed, and Caroline had found time to take up the habit of driving her friends around. In the first few days of chatting, Zoe hadn't even been aware that Leslie was disabled. They'd experimented together, furtively and awkwardly in the back seat of Caroline's car, and it wasn't until they'd given each other the first true orgasms of their entire lives that they really fell in love. (Zoe was just glad Leslie was capable of that. It wasn't apparent, looking at her.) Zoe was sure that there were depths to her, things that neither of them knew much about, buried by emotional abuse and disability.
Caroline, at least, was somewhat easy to get. She was a physical sort of person, but she'd straight up said before that she couldn't stand the shallow girls that populated her school. If the only people she could deal with were a couple years younger than her, so be it. Besides, driving them around had put her at Susie's poolside too, wearing suntan lotion rather than powerful sunblock because she had the complexion for it despite her blonde hair.
And then there was Richard. Zoe knew so much more about her brother than she had a week ago. If she had been asked to honestly describe him last week, she would have said something along the lines of 'He plays games a lot, he stays in his room most of the time, and he doesn't like talking to people. I think he just kinda despises everyone.' He simply hadn't trusted her or anyone with who he really was, and she didn't want to think about what would happen if one of them betrayed his trust. Giant smoking crater, indeed.
Getting Leslie's birth parents put away was his crowning achievement when it came to helping Zoe, but if it weren't for that 'mermaid in training' happily splashing around the pool in his swim fins with not a care in the world, she would probably be in the middle of yet another vile non-party just like the one he'd had before, after having attended a wedding neither of them wanted to attend, and her cousins would be there and her friends would not, as she'd never want them to go to a thing like that. Either that, or she'd be in a full-on screamfest with her mother, as her mother would have bought yet another humilating, infantilizing dress for this birthday as well, and there was a good chance that she'd have finally snapped and taken a pair of scissors to it.
But he'd done his thing, he'd been doing his thing, and so she was instead sitting on a comfortable pool chair with her arm lovingly draped around her to-be-healed girlfriend while he was the one in the super-childish outfit. If Heather had tried to make her wear a thing like that, tail and all, the scissors just might have gone straight to her mother's throat if not her own. Meanwhile, her brother would willingly and happily wear it until he outgrew it, and knowing Susie, she'd probably have another one made for him if she couldn't find it in his size.
'There's no explaining fetishes', someone had told her a while ago, probably Susie. (She didn't feel like checking.) This was simply pleasant for him, and she'd already resolved never to make it unpleasant for him. She wondered what his limits were, what he really did and didn't want done to him, and figured that Susie would probably find them out if she didn't already know.
Susie... Susie, she thought she understood. A lot of wealthy girls did the 'oh no, I'm not that rich' thing, trying to make themselves look like proletariat rather than bourgeoisie. Susie went in entirely the other direction, obviously valuing wealth, power, and dominance with unrestrained glee, even if she did hostess stuff like serve (very delicious) smoothies herself. The only reason she had friends at all was that she was genuinely a nice person, making her the true inverse of those other wealthy girls, and Zoe wondered how someone like her would fare on social media. (The answer was poorly. Susie had never used Twitter nor Instagram, and she'd been on Facebook for all of two hours before wiping everything and deactivating her account in absolute disgust.)
She'd wanted a boy she could keep to heel - Zoe had known that before she even knew Richard was into this kind of thing - and she'd decisively found the one she wanted. Zoe wondered just how far she'd take this, in every sense of the word, and wondered if Richard would wind up wearing a collar and a maid outfit while feeding Susie grapes by the pool. Yes, Zoe mused. What a terrible fate, to be kept forever as the love slave of the girl of his dreams. Oh no. Shock and horror. Clearly an awful tragedy to befall the boy.
But, for the moment at least, it was Susie who was feeding Richard, holding a banana milkshake with a straw because he couldn't hold anything in his hand fins.
The doorbell rang, and Susie immediately ran off to get it. "Everyone stay here, this is private," she said as she moved.
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At the door was a twenty-something man with messy hair and cheap clothes, carrying a cardboard box. "Oh, crap. No wonder you wanted to do it this way. You're underage!" he shouted on seeing who he was making the delivery to.
"Are you leaving with the money or the box?" Susie asked in response, waving a roll of previously counted twenties that she'd stashed nearby.
Making a snap decision, the man said "I don't know you and you sure as shit don't know me," tossed the box at Susie's feet, snagged the money out of her hand, briefly flipped through it to make sure it was somewhat accurate (she'd actually included a tip), and double-time hustled to his car to get the hell out of there.
Despite it being on the other side of the house, they'd all heard the exchange, even Richard, who was sipping the shake by the pool where Susie had left it, keeping it steady between his hand fins. "Only one person gets to know what that was about," Susie said before anyone could ask anything, "and he gets to know tomorrow."
"Enjoy your bondage gear, just hope it's not a buttplug," Caroline said, deadpan, and Leslie broke out laughing. Richard looked particularly nervous. Did he really want to have something shoved up his ass? Well, maybe if it was Susie, but even then...
"Seriously, there better not be a chastity belt in there," Zoe added. "Or whatever the hell those things are called." Leslie laughed some more, holding her girlfriend close as she did.
"Zoe! I am not about to put your brother in a chastity cage. And no buttplugs either. I swear." Those had actually been two of the things she could have ordered, using that poor delivery boy as an intermediary, but she'd decided against them for a great many reasons. Richard couldn't hide his relief. Having his dic-k locked in metal or plastic would have been a.. well, a 'boondoggle' at the least. "Please, just stop asking about it. If he wants to, he'll tell you after tomorrow. This is your party, and that little delivery wasn't part of it."
"So what are you getting her, anyway?" Caroline asked. "Other than curiosity?"
"Actually, now's the perfect time. I'll be right back." Richard had just finished his milkshake when Susie came back with clenched hands. "Leslie, this is your half, and Zoe, this is your half." She opened her hands to reveal two half-heart pendant necklaces, one with Leslie's name on it and the other with Zoe's, diamonds around the outer curves of each one. The two matched up perfectly, like puzzle pieces, and Zoe got the one with Leslie's name and vice versa.
"Are those real gold and diamonds?" Leslie asked softly, and it wasn't clear whether or not her voice choking up was because of her disability or because she was that touched by the gift. She felt the 'you don't deserve anything good' part of herself well up again, as it so often did, and she forced it back down as her adoptive parents had taught her.
"That's 14 karat gold and real lab-created diamonds because I know the jeweler and Dad thinks De Beers can go fuc-k itself. Rule. One," Susie replied. "You're all done swimming?" They were. "All right, merboy, time to come on land." She pulled up a wide seat and pulled off his hand fins, helping him wiggle out of the pool and onto the chair, still in his restrictive tail. He made no effort to take it off, and Susie sat beside him, running her hands over his wet pigtails as he held her warmth against him.
"Hey, Susie, what were you talking about with the lab-created diamonds thing?" he asked, enjoying her touch.
"They're the same thing as mined diamonds, only without the African child slaves."
"Yes, she prefers her slaves closer," Caroline replied, and everyone except Susie laughed.
"Caroline, you're terrible!" Susie tried to sound indignant, but she was giggling instead. "I'm not going to do any Fifty Shades crap to him!" She held a protective arm around her boyfriend.
"Wasn't that originally a Twilight fanfic?" Richard asked, hugging her back.
"Ricky, how the hell do you know this shit?" Caroline sharply asked in response.
"I went looking for it," he replied. "That's actually one of the most vanilla things out there. Actually, can we just stop with this? We'll ruin Zoe's party if we keep talking about it." He was fairly sure that some of the things he'd read, let alone seen, would make them lose their appetites for days and might even discourage Susie from playing with him.
"Well, then, I have a question," Leslie said. "Ricky, would you rather wear your mermaid outfit to the YMCA pool or your prom dress to the mall?"
"Both sound pretty good," Richard replied to giggles and laughter, "but I think I'd go with the mermaid suit, just to see how I'd do there." He abruptly realized that Leslie was expecting a question in return and that this was a party game. He visibly thought of something. "Would you rather soar like an eagle or fly like a hummingbird?"
"Hummingbird," Leslie replied immediately. "They can fly upside down." The only one in the group who was not of the same opinion there was Caroline, who would use the eagle's flight to go places, as she'd always wanted to do. They kept playing Would You Rather for a solid two hours, discussing things like growing extra fingers and which of the Willy Wonka fates they'd rather suffer, prompting questions about which movie and comparisons between Susie and Veruca Salt. Leslie was, by far, the best at the game, immediately coming up with questions in different contexts and answering pretty much everything immediately as well.
Caroline had to go inside, as she'd get fried rather than tanned if she didn't, and after Susie had pulled the mermaid tail off Richard and Zoe had put Leslie back into her leg braces, they went downstairs to play pool of a different sort, still in their swimsuits.
They agreed on fair rules. The order would be Zoe first, because this was her party, then Leslie, then Richard, then Caroline, then Susie. The goal was simply to sink balls with the cue ball, regardless of number, and sinking a ball would not let you go twice in a row. (It would have been boring without that rule. It was Susie's table, and Caroline also knew what she was doing.)
Zoe imitated what she'd seen on TV, her pendant hanging down on the mat, and Caroline helped her adjust her arms for a good hit. She made a solid break that didn't sink anything but lined Leslie up for a good shot.
Leslie needed assistance just to get into position, and both Zoe and Caroline held her steady. All she had to do was a tap, a tap she made easily. (Zoe swore that she didn't set her up intentionally, but of course she didn't have the skill to do that.)
Then it was Richard's turn. Bent over in his mermaid leotard, his butt stuck out as he imitated what Zoe had done, and it made a wonderfully tempting target. Susie was not mean enough to spank it before he made his shot; besides, that might have made him scrape the cue against the mat. She waited until after he made it - a solid but slightly off-target hit that made the target ball fly to the other side of the table and stay there - to moderately whap him with her hand, and he shouted not in surprise but in smugness. "I knew it! I knew you were going to do that!" Richard suddenly realized that, if any other group of people had done that to him, he would have (at the very least) immediately ran out of the house and never talked to any of them again, possibly even his sister. But she was his girlfriend and these were his friends, and they had no malice towards him, and it was all okay.
"That was for leaving heel prints on my carpet the other day," Susie said with her imperious tone, sparking some giggles.
Caroline simply sunk the next ball, and Susie was able to pop one in as well (Richard considered doing the same thing to her, but decided against it), and the other three mostly fumbled around. Richard sunk one that he wasn't even aiming for in a stroke of beginner's luck, Zoe sunk one in while scratching the cue ball ("Don't worry, it still counts," Susie said), and Leslie wasn't able to do much more that game. Caroline had actually outscored Susie, but she was insistent that if it were a real game, Susie would have smoked her.
The other three played Smash Brothers - Caroline's misgivings about video games did not pertain to in-person multiplayer - while Susie and Richard made a specific variant of lubia polo. They put their dresses back on to have a formal meal, and the sight of Richard happily jingling up to her while obediently serving her in his pretty prom dress was a thing that Zoe would cherish forever.
"I have never tasted this spice before," Richard said on his first bite. "It's like licorice, I think?" It was blended with a great many other spices. Susie watched him carefully and then decided that he liked it.
"Star anise," Caroline said immediately.
"Yeah, my dad gets this stuff by the ton. All of us could eat it at every meal and have enough for fifty years," Susie replied, taking another bite.
"Can we ask the question now?" Caroline asked in response. "Do you want to tell us just what it is your dad does?" Richard was actually half-expecting 'mob boss'. Susie's dad being a member of the Iranian mafia would explain many things.
"He's an importer," Susie replied, which made Richard suspect 'mob boss' even more. "The whole Middle East, Pakistan, even India, basically anywhere he can really. The pandemic really didn't hurt his business, it's just that he has trouble flying home. So he's on one of his own cargo ships right now. He'll be back Wednesday for like... a week. Then he has to take another slow boat."
Something in her voice clued Leslie in. "Is he avoiding you?" she asked.
Susie sighed a bit. "You've told your big secrets. This one is mine. You never fuc-king repeat this to anyone." They all agreed, particularly since Susie so rarely swore. "A couple years ago, Dad said that the more I grew up, the more I looked like Mom, and so he said that he was thinking about me like Mom." There was general revulsion. "He hates himself for it! He really does, he's never touched me or anything, and I really don't think he will. That's why he mostly stays away from me, because he's kinda trying to protect me from himself. And he needs to visit my brothers, and they're all over the world, to make sure they're doing their jobs right. They're getting the business, I'm getting the house and a trust fund," she explained. "I know, it's pure patriarchy, he seems to think that I'll have a man to take care of me." She looked over at Richard and fluttered her eyelashes. "You will take care of me, won't you Ricky?" she asked in a feminine, high-pitched tone, and laughter ensued.
"Of course," he immediately replied, because there was nothing else to say even if he was wearing a pink girly prom dress, and there was more laughter.
"I'm actually kind of glad he's coming home," Susie explained. "He's going to teach me how to drive." The youngest a teenager could be to get a full, real driver's license in the state was 16, and Susie was going to just straight-up get a car for her birthday. (Susie had resolved to drive the same way Caroline did.) "I wonder which lucky boy is going to be in the passenger's seat once I've got my license?" There was giggling, and Richard smiled.
"Just don't drive him crazy," Leslie said, and got the laughter she'd expected.
The Squad talked and kept laughing about silly crap and finished their food, and of course Richard politely and daintily put the dishes away even if he didn't dare wash them in his pretty dress, and eventually it was time to go home and for Richard to reluctantly dress like an ordinary boy again.
Zoe was satisfied. No, she was more than satisfied. That was what a birthday should be, she decided, and she was very, very glad that she had who she had as a sibling, a girlfriend, and friends. Richard, too, was highly satisfied, the contentment clear on his face, and as soon as Heather greeted her children, she only asked if they'd had a nice time as a formality, and barbed, spiked guilt hit her in the stomach as she realized the sort of birthday she'd have given her daughter.
'Another enjoyable day spent,' Richard thought, picking up where he'd left off with Larry Niven. 'Nothing went wrong today.' His mother, not entirely foolish, had taught her children something important a long time ago: it was never what you expected to go wrong that would go wrong. If something went wrong outside his abilities, there really wasn't anything he could do by definition, and if he ever needed to use his skills again, it probably wouldn't be when or where he'd expect to need them, because that was how these things always went. And if anything were to go wrong with Susie, he'd probably fall into depression and never wear a dress again.
He had to stop thinking that way, he resolved. He had an enjoyable life and every right to enjoy it. He went to sleep, dreaming of what the next day would bring.
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Jacqueline,
I'm enjoying your story and hope you continue it with your excellent character development and attention to detail.
I wonder what Susie bought for Richard? Crossdressing, diapers, roleplay, and bdsm are all in my personal wheelhouse so I know I won't be disappointed.
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Jacqueline, This story is really turning into a love fest between the girls and Ricky. They all had fun in the pool and Ricky got to be the Mermaid. Later on, a package came and the surprise is for Ricky. That should be interesting. You have done a great job and I can't wait to read what is in store for Ricky.
;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;)
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Jacqueline, This story is really turning into a love fest between the girls and Ricky. They all had fun in the pool and Ricky got to be the Mermaid. Later on, a package came and the surprise is for Ricky. That should be interesting. You have done a great job and I can't wait to read what is in store for Ricky.
;)
Yeah I think she got him a Rikki sized fishtank with scuba gear so their mermaid in training can go with them anyplace around the town beyond swimming pools. :)
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The mermaid suit....genius!!
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Jacqueline, This a GREAT story. Please hurry with the next chapter. We have got to know what was in that box and how it will affect Ricky. 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8)
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Heather made her children breakfast, a real, traditional one of bacon, eggs, and toast, and they ate in a lot more comity than they had previously, both of them even volunteering to help cook and wash dishes. (Zoe decided it'd be suspicious if Richard was the only one doing it.) It was raining somewhat, and Richard considered his options. Should he just go and walk? Should he tell his mother that... no. No, he didn't need to try to work around her, or he shouldn't. Instead, he asked straight-out as he finished washing up, "Hey, Mom, can you drop me off at Susie's house?" This was a moment of truth. If she said anything but 'Okay, honey' at this point, things were going to get awkward.
"Okay, honey," she said, those exact words, and Richard inwardly relaxed, not realizing what his mother was thinking as they put their shoes on and walked to the car. The girl was extremely well-off and a couple years older than he was, so the responsibility would be on her. Even if her children hadn't powerleveled themselves, there was no way that Heather was going to interfere with this! Her only consideration was that she ought not let her son be used, but that wasn't much of a concern anymore.
Richard, for his part, squirmed in the passenger seat, hiding his growing dic-k in his shorts as he thought of how Susie was going to use him.
Heather looked over at her son when they were halfway there. "Honey, I can't blame you for wanting to spend a lot of time with her and your other friends, but you should be still be spending time with your mother too. I'll pick you up at six for dinner."
"Okay." It was not an unreasonable request. It gave him about nine hours with Susie. She was there, waiting for him, and she opened the door to greet him as he stepped out of the car.
"You two have fun!" Heather called through the open door, and her son smiled at her, waved, gave a friendly goodbye, and closed it.
"Wow, Ricky. Your mom actually just dropped you off here, with me, and said 'you two have fun'?" She abruptly started giggling, and her giggles were infectious. "Wowww. That almost makes up for all that stupid crap she tried on your sister. So there's no way she or anyone is going to interrupt us today, is there?" she asked as they walked in together. She had made very sure that no one would try to get in contact with her that day, even going as far as to call her father earlier that morning so he wouldn't call her later.
"There shouldn't be until six o'clock, she wants me to eat dinner at home," he replied. His mother clearly didn't intend to interrupt this and the rest of the Squad was almost certainly not going to, either. ('Hey, Ricky? Sorry to interrupt you and Susie, but there's a big emergency, there's someone we need you to destroy...') Smiling at his own thoughts, he looked to Susie's side and noticed a lot of pink garments and accessories that he didn't think he'd ever see in person, at least not any time soon. Oh, wow. That was what was in the box? This day was shaping up very, very well for him.
"Good," she said, turning on her maximum princess mode. There are quite a few commands that a teenage girl can give her boyfriend, even in a normal relationship, that he is very likely to obey without question. "Strip!" is among the most obvious of these, and once she gave that order, his clothes were in a pile on the floor in seconds; the only things he was wearing were a look of anticipation and an erection. "On the table are your clothes for the day," she said, pointing at the things that she'd spent so long preparing.
After a lot of careful thought, she had decided that unless she absolutely had to, she would not tell him the whole truth about where this stuff had come from. It would ruin the experience for him - it was almost ruining it for her. She knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that the rumor about the ten-year-olds and the shotgun was true, because these were the products the babysitter's parents had made before that incident. After it, they'd shut their website down and offloaded all their products to a friend of the husband's (with similar interests) well below cost, just to get it away from them before they wound up in deep shit. A friend of that friend had been the one to deliver the stuff, as he'd chatted her up in a femdom-related chat room, telling the story as a 'rumor' rather than admitting at first how he knew it was true, thinking she was far older. The fact that they both happened to be in the Greater Area was just dumb luck.
She had also made some alterations. Many of the items had come with chains and padlocks, and she'd been antsy about the idea of actually locking him into the stuff, thinking that maybe he would object - and then she had realized that she was objecting to the idea herself, that she was uncomfortable with doing that to him regardless of what he might feel about it, and after a bit of worry, the lightbulb had come on and she'd almost slapped herself for being silly. On each of the items, she'd popped the stitches that were securing the middle of the chain to the inside, then she'd threaded it by tying the ribbon to one end of the chain and pulling out the other end. Caroline could surely find uses for the chains that were far from their original purpose.
She blinked in shock when he asked outright, anticipation coloring his voice, "Did these have chains before you put your ribbons in there?" Crap! How could she possibly have forgotten how smart he was?! Of course he knew the ribbons were hers, they were cut from the same spool of pink ribbon she'd used to tie him with the other day, the ribbon spool she'd mentally filed as being for fun times with Ricky. And of course he knew the concept, he was internet savvy and this was his kink!
"Yes, they did. I'm not gonna do that," she said plainly. He simply smiled and nodded. "In fact, I'm not even going to put them on you unless you ask me to." He hesitated for a bit, and she worried that maybe he was about to nope out, but he was actually thinking about what order he'd ask for them in.
"Please put me in my dress, Your Highness," Richard said, still smiling, eagerly lifting up his arms so she could put it on.
"Oh? You want to wear this dress? This is a dress for little babies. Are you a little baby?" she asked in a half-imperious, half-matronly tone as she put it on him. The dress was bright pink with puffed sleeves and lots of soft lace around all the edges, decorated with lambs and hearts. It felt more like a shirt than a dress because it barely went past his waist. It was locking, but she simply didn't apply a lock to the back zipper.
"Mmm hmm!" he replied, smiling. "Please put me in my baby diaper, Your Highness."
"Of course, little baby," she replied, giggling. The diapers that he had been wearing previously were conventional adult diapers, carefully engineered to be as unobtrusive as possible. These diapers were bright pink, extraordinarily thick, covered with pictures of teddy bears and diaper pins, and specifically designed to crinkle as much as possible instead. She followed that up with a pair of thick, clear, and also very crinkly plastic pants that she'd converted from chain to ribbon, and she tied the ribbon in a tight bow before pulling up a big, pink, and fluffy lambs-and-hearts diaper cover as well, with three layers of lace ruffles over his thickly padded butt.
"Please put me in my mittens, Your Highness," Richard continued, eagerly holding out his hands.
"Oh? You want to wear these? You won't be able to hold anything wearing them," she told him as she put them on him, his only reply an eager, happy nod. The mittens had the same lambs-and-hearts pattern as the dress, with soft fleece inside and out separated by a layer of something stiff. She tied the ribbons in tight bows just as she had the diaper. He'd be able to untie those with the crook of his elbow or knee if he had to, but the odds of him ever wanting to do that were very slim indeed.
"Please put me in my booties, Your Highness." The smile was still on his face.
"Really? They won't let you walk. You'll just have to crawl everywhere instead. But if you insist," she told him, giggling some more, slipping the booties over his feet after he sat down on the couch, and he smiled as his booties, dress, diaper cover, and mittens all matched. He tentatively put a foot on the floor, and he felt the springs inside the sole push in, exposing his foot to some blunted spikes. He really would be reduced to crawling around before his princess in his booties, and he absolutely wanted to wear them for as long as he practically could.
"Please put me in my reins, Your Highness!" he almost squealed, his pitch rising as he was giddy with delight.
"Well, you certainly won't be able to crawl away in this," she told him, buckling the pink leather baby harness around his arms and chest. A little bunny motif and the words 'Sissy Baby' spelled out in baby blocks were front and center, and she buckled it around his back, leaving the place for the buckle lock empty. It was supposed to be used with a leash, but she'd substituted ribbon for that as well. "Look at you, Ricky. A helpless little baby in a pretty dress and crinkly diaper, unable to walk or hold anything, totally dependent on your princess to take care of you, and all because you specifically asked for it." She theatrically tsk-tsked, trying to keep up the persona, her breath getting as rapid with anticipation as his was. "Well? What do you have to say for yourself?"
"Please give me my pacifier, Your Highness," he eagerly replied.
"That's what I thought you'd say, and now you won't be able to say anything at all," she replied. He opened his mouth to let her place the teat inside, and the harness went around his head and chin, and she adjusted the straps before buckling it in the back. There was another place for a lock that went unused. "If you really want out, tap on something three times in a row," she whispered to him, and he nodded. He could probably mumble something around the teat, it was big but not that big, but he decided to keep quiet and suc-kle on his pacifier instead. There seemed to be a plugged hole in the center of it, and he didn't know why.
"And now for the piece de resistance," she added, picking up a pair of bulky, very high-quality headphones. They had originally been her mother's, and she had stopped wearing them well before she got cancer because they were simply too good, meant for studio and professional use. With the active noise cancellation, even someone shouting at her, inches from her face, had been barely audible. Susie's father had, as usual, bought his wife extremely top-of-the-line equipment, but the fact that they'd come with a handheld wireless microphone for this exact reason should have clued him in.
Richard almost balked as she lowered them over his head, thinking that Susie was either going to play annoying nursery rhymes to toy with him or play some silly hypnosis files, which would do absolutely nothing other than heighten his defenses and ruin the experience. "Can you hear me?" he saw her mouth, and he shook his head. He really couldn't hear her, and he realized that that was the point. "How about now, is the volume good?" she asked, holding down the button and talking into the small microphone, and her voice came over crisp, clear, and not too loud. He nodded.
"Just one more thing," she said into the microphone, smiling. She put a soft sleep mask over his eyes, wrapped a long strip of fleece around his head and below his chin, tied the ends together, and further secured the whole thing snugly with another length of ribbon, leaving him completely blind, although he could probably have pushed the whole thing off even with his mittens on. She did up his hair as it should be, a pair of very little-girl pigtails to which she applied large bows of pink ribbon. Then, she lightly pushed him over onto the couch, lifting his legs so he laid prone, and then he had no idea where she was or what she was doing. Anxiety washed over him, an unbidden terror caused by sensory deprivation. What if someone broke in? Of course that was ridiculous, they were in the wealthy part of a nice suburb, he could have sworn he saw the county sheriff's car parked in a driveway that morning, and neither home invaders nor rioters had been seen in the area, ever. What if Susie wanted to hurt him? That was even more ridiculous - if she wanted to irreparably hurt him, she would have done it already and could do it with a handful of words. He wondered if he'd feel the prick of a needle and forcibly dismissed the idea from his mind. He had read way too many crappy stories.
Abruptly, something large and fluffy landed on his dress, and he yelped around his pacifier in surprise. Wait, what? Had Susie tossed a pillow at him? No, it was too heavy and moving around slightly, and he laughed through the pacifier and clumsily, blindly, and very gently petted the cat with his padded mitten.
Susie's voice came over the microphone, half speaking and half giggling. "That was amazing, I didn't plan that, I swear I didn't plan that. Looks like Whiskers is enjoying this too. Now get ready for your num-nums, baby." He thought she was going to pull out his pacifier, but instead she did something with the front of it, pushing something into it. Oh! That's what the hole was for! He suc-kled on the feeder pacifier tentatively, worried about what awful-tasting baby food was going to come down into it, and suddenly he tasted the same delicious banana milkshake that she'd made for him yesterday. He could have kicked himself; of course she wasn't going to feed him anything disgusting! More crappy stories, again.
Susie looked at her babified boyfriend, a lovely little teenage girlyboy who'd specifically asked in detail for her to make him cute and helpless, and a deep desire welled up within her, and then she realized that she was tormenting not just him but herself by waiting any longer. She'd originally intended to treat him to an all-day babying session with a final culmination of enjoyment, but seeing him like this was making all her fantasies come true, all of the wonderful dominant euphoria of having her very own beloved sissy that she'd been dreaming about, and it was him and she was desperately in love with him, and she absolutely could not wait another minute. Once he'd finished his milkshake, she popped out the tube and popped the pacifier cap back on. "You told them that I was a princess, without even being asked to," she said, and he expected a spanking. Instead, she said "That deserves a reward," gently moved her cat, guided him to the floor mittens-first, and tugged on his reins to let him know which way to crawl.
Richard eagerly let himself be led like the precious, innocent, helpless baby he felt like, and suddenly he felt something wet tickling his cheek, and the tug on the reins stopped as the tickling continued to his nose and other cheek. Her cat again! Richard laughed a bit through the pacifier at the cat's licking, knowing that Susie must have been giggling like mad even if he couldn't hear her, and the cat stopped after a few seconds and she tugged him forward again. Then she tugged straight up. Up? He tentatively lifted a mitten and found it on a step. then started crawling upstairs at her direction. He would have crawled over Lego to get where they were going.
There was some more tugging forward, and then she paused for a moment and carefully guided him around a corner, and then she tugged up again, lifting his arm to the soft mattress that he climbed up on, feeling the towels over the sheets. 'What are we gonna do on the bed, Susie-hime?' he thought to himself jokingly, as she laid him on his back, pulled down the diaper cover, untied and pulled down his plastic pants, and carefully untaped his diaper so as not to waste it. Something warm and wet enveloped his solid pen-is, and at first he thought it was her mouth, and then he felt a slight bit of resistance go pop and realized that it was definitely not her mouth.
She rode him cowgirl for fifteen minutes. He couldn't so much as hear the bed squeaking, nor any sounds she was making. All he could do was feel her, smell her. That sensation, of her bouncing up and down on him, was his whole world. There was nothing else in his senses, no distractions, no worries, no other thoughts in his mind. There was only his princess and how much he desperately loved her, needed her. He felt her vaginal muscles sharply clench on him more than once, her body shuddering repeatedly, and then pure pleasure overwhelmed him and he came like a firehose, her muscles squeezing again as he made a muffled noise through his pacifier. Slowly, gently, she leaned down and cuddled him with his deflating dic-k still inside her. She kissed him on both his cheeks and then one right on his pacifier. She held him like that for a little while, and then she re-taped up his diaper and pulled his plastic pants back up, and continued to embrace him, and he hugged her back, blindly and awkwardly. That had been the most intense experience of any kind that he'd ever had in his life, and it slowly faded into a deep sensation of joy and complete devotion.
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Had he just really...? Had he just, had she just...? They'd just completely taken each other's virginities, with him as her completely helpless sissy baby pet. If someone had told him last week that he was going to have sex with a modern princess after she'd put him in ribbon-tied baby bondage, he wouldn't have believed it, and yet there he was, the very willing property of a girl who knew exactly what to do with him. He knew that he couldn't stay this helpless forever, that she'd have to let him out of the baby stuff eventually, but he would always be wearing it in his soul. He would do anything to keep his princess happily holding his reins, and if something got between them, he would annihilate it with every ounce of crushing power he could summon up.
Susie looked at his prone body, lightly stroking the reins over his short dress. She'd crossed the Rubicon, there. Her father had given her a lot of lectures on monogamy that she'd taken to heart, that she had to find Mr. Right and stick with him or else wind up living a life of misery, and she'd decisively found Mr. Right For Her before she was even out of high school. He was a boy, and she wouldn't ever want to change that - after what he'd done inside her, she definitely would never want to change that! He had some truly serious abilities, especially for his age, and she wanted to see those abilities honed and amplified because that was what was best for him. But his core, everything his masculinity and intelligence was protecting, was a wholly innocent little sissy who wanted nothing more than to be cute and taken care of, eager to please his princess for the affection she would show him. She wanted to give him that affection for as long as they lived. She knew the statistics on teenage relationships, knew that they were 'supposed' to break up at some point simply due to their age, and she was determined to beat the odds. She had his loyalty, his trust, a plan, and if it came down to it, an enormous sum of money at her disposal even before she'd need to directly ask her father.
She put his diaper back on and pulled up the plastic pants and diaper cover, and she laid there, holding him, playing with his pigtails occasionally. He'd been mostly aroused all day so he hadn't peed since the previous night, and he let the warm urine flow into the thick diaper. She nearly fell asleep with her head on his dress, her cheek resting on a strap of his reins. It wasn't just that she was exhausted from bouncing up and down on him. She had actually been up late, testing things, working on things, before she'd gone to bed where she'd had a hard time falling asleep. Exchanging chains for ribbons had taken her all of ten minutes, more than half of which was spent on carefully popping stitches without damaging the gear, but it had taken her a while to make sure that the headphones would do everything she needed them to do - including charge up! - and she would never apply such headphones or any bondage gear to him without first testing it on herself. She knew that being blinded and deafened could be scary, because she'd tried it out last night. Maybe she'd let him know that, one day. Maybe she'd put things like that on and dominate him in a different way, commanding her sissy, submissive fiance (as she was already thinking of him) to take care of a princess who couldn't physically take care of herself. But that was for later. Today, he was her baby.
But she needed a bath and so did he, so she tugged on his reins and guided him mittens-first back onto the carpet, and he crawled down the hallway and then around another corner and onto a tile floor that mildly annoyed his knees. She was about to untie him, then she realized that she had to use the toilet and didn't want him seeing that just then. She pulled him next to the toilet, and she squatted down, using him as a footrest because it seemed like an appropriately domme thing to do. He quickly grasped what she was doing, feeling her feet on his sissy dress, and didn't mind at all, obediently staying on his mittens and knees until she was done.
There was a brief pause and he felt her start tugging at the stuff she'd wrapped around his head. Wait, she was letting him out already? He was a bit disappointed before she pulled the headphones off and heard the unmistakable sound of bath water. Ah. Yes, they had gotten kind of sweaty. And there she was in front of him, stark naked, with him kneeling before her.
"I love you, Your Highness," he said, looking up at her from his knees, as soon as she pulled the pacifier from his mouth.
"I love you too, Ricky," she said, kissing him on the forehead, and took the rest of the stuff off him. "Oh my, looks like somebody couldn't keep his diaper dry. Are you a baby who belongs in diapers, Ricky?"
"I'm a baby who belongs in diapers, Your Highness," he said, nodding as she swiftly unbraided his hair for the tub. Whether or not he could physically hold his urine was beside the point. He was her baby, so he belonged in diapers.
"Then I'll just have to keep you in them as much as I can," she replied. "But right now, you're a stinky baby. In." 'Climb in the hot tub with me' was another one of those commands that any teenage girl could give her boyfriend, and Susie pressed some buttons, the bubbles came on, and Richard realized that he was cuddling with her in a real Jacuzzi.
"Well, was it everything you jacked off to?" Susie teased him.
Smiling, he replied, "It was better than anything I dreamed, but I haven't jerked off since I met you." Susie was surprised, although it did explain his performance and the fact that she still felt a little bit sticky inside. She'd considered ordering him not to masturbate, but from what she knew of teenage boys, it would have been horribly cruel. She wondered how long he could go without it before he couldn't take it anymore and bailed, but she had no intentions of finding out.
"You are such a good boy," she told him, splashing a bit in the hot tub as she hugged and kissed him. She used a fluffy washcloth to wipe his face and body, and he did the same thing for his princess, being very careful with her skin, paying careful attention to all her parts. He felt another urge in his guts. "How do you feel about poopy diapers?" he asked her quietly after he was done.
She scrunched her face in disgust. "Ugh. If you have to go to the toilet now, just go, Ricky." He obeyed immediately, unleasing a wet fart of all three states of matter into the bowl, and she giggled loudly before coughing. "Air freshener! I'm not kidding!" she shouted, pointing, and he Febrezed the room before sitting back down on the toilet to evacuate himself further. "Tomorrow, you're cleaning this room first," she told him.
"Yes, Your Highness. I'm surprised you don't hire a maid service," he said from the toilet. "Before you met me," he continued, knowing what she was going to say next.
She laughed. "Dad really doesn't want anyone like that coming into the house. He thinks people like that will steal stuff."
"Then who set up the pool?" Richard asked, wiping his butt thoroughly.
"My aunt helped me," Susie replied as he stepped back into the hot tub with her. She kissed him lightly on the cheek. "I'm surprised you know it takes work. Most people think that pools are just always like that."
He smiled at her. "I'm just glad there's no pool boy coming over."
She laughed, somewhat pleased that he was so protective of her. "You are the only boy I want in my pool, Ricky." She kissed him again, this time on the lips. "Now dunk your head. You need a good shampooing." She washed his hair with her shampoo, and at her direction, he did the same thing for her, and they stepped out of the tub before they got wrinkly and started drying each other with large, fluffy towels. She handed him a hair dryer. "Medium setting, and do not get too close to it," she demanded, and he was careful in obeying, drying her hair carefully. "One last thing," she said, leading him to the sink. "Open wide." Confused, he obeyed, and she put a toothbrush in his mouth. She'd never brushed anyone else's teeth before, but she did a good job, making sure she got everywhere with the cinnamon-flavored toothpaste. As before, he did the same thing for her, trying to be abrasive on her teeth but not wanting to hurt her gums, doing her tongue the same way she'd done his. "There we go. Can't have my baby getting a cavity suc-kling on sweet stuff. And now for your braids. One day, you need to learn to do this yourself."
"Can I practice on you?" he asked, and she chuckled softly. "If it's me, I can't see what I'm doing!" The reversal of the mirror would have confused him even worse.
"All right, it's like this." She showed him by briefly braiding her own hair. "Each strand goes between the other two. One, two, three. Like that. You try."
He tried, as best he could, but what he wound up with was a mess, despite her hair being naturally silky and straight. She giggled at his clumsy efforts and he sighed. "I know what I'm supposed to do, my fingers just don't want to do it," he protested, untangling her hair. It looked so simple, and he was a ludicrously fast typist so there obviously wasn't anything physically wrong there, but he couldn't play the guitar, either.
"That's okay, baby. You don't need fingers today anyway." He obediently let her put his mittens back on him before she finished braiding his hair and tying it off with ribbons again. She put him back in his dress, pacifier, and reins, humming something he didn't recognize. "Oh, I left the spare diapers downstairs. You stay here and see how cute you are until I get back," she told him, and he did, looking in the mirror.
It was definitely him, him as a pretty little sissy baby, all precious and cute from the waist up. He preened in front of the mirror, putting his mittens over his face and making cute, coquettish, and dainty poses until she came back, holding a diaper and giggling. "That last pose, make it again, just for me," she told him, and he did, holding his mittens to his cheeks and bending over just a bit, making a kissy-face behind his buckled pacifier. She would have absolutely loved to take pictures, but he was a thirteen-year-old in baby bondage so that really wasn't a safe thing to do. "Okay, back to diapers for you," she told him, and he smiled and sat down on the tile floor so she could diaper him and put his booties back on. She lowered the headphones over his head, turned them on, and wrapped him up again, leading him out of the room. Abruptly, a jerk on his reins pulled him back. She pushed on him gently, putting him into a sitting position. What was she doing? Oh, right, the stairs. She held his reins tightly as he carefully scooted down the stairs butt-first, making sure not to put any weight on his feet.
He wondered if he'd be jumped on by her cat again, but that didn't happen. Instead, she led him back to the couch, leaning him against an armrest. "Five minutes, sweetie," she told him, and left him there. He waited in anticipation, wondering what she was going to get him. trying to keep calm. He suc-kled on his pacifier, immersing himself into his baby role, and abruptly an old radio program started playing in his ears, his biggest 'Wait, what?' of the day. He'd been expecting nursery rhymes or children's tunes, and what he got was a radio host from eighty years ago talking about a baby from Krypton. "I guess you can hear it and me?" he heard Susie say, and he nodded. "Sit up a little," she told him, snuggling herself under him and letting him lie back down on her. "Have you heard this one before?" He shook his head. "I've never heard it either." Oh. Duh. They were listening to the same thing. Why had he even considered that she'd want to inflict annoying crap on him, especially with him bound as he was?
He was in pure bliss for an indeterminate amount of time, never feeling more completely at peace with everything, not able to go anywhere or do anything and having no reason to want to, the only interruptions the occasional "Two minutes" or "Five minutes" from his princess, and she adjusted their positions a few times. Before he got thirsty, his princess attached plenty of pure water to his pacifier and let him suc-kle it all down. He had to pee a while later, but he was in his thick, crinkly diaper and that was what it was for. She changed the content of the radio show after a while - he didn't even remember how many episodes it was - and he laughed through his pacifier at an ad for Lucky Strikes and how doctors considered them to be the healthiest cigarettes on the market. Her cat interfered again, jumping up on both of them, but that was for Susie's attention and she went to feed the kitty some fish. "Five minutes," she told Richard again after a while, and when she came back, she hooked up his feeder pacifier and he suc-kled up... 'Huh.' It certainly was very high quality, and it was pleasantly warm. He tasted copious amounts of star anise and a lot of vegetables, all blended and cooked up in some sort of broth. It was definitely good food that had been through a blender, it was just very unfamiliar to his palate, and he suc-kled it all up slowly, not remotely sure what he was tasting.
Susie was glad that Richard was so relaxed, so happy. She'd been afraid that he'd safeword or just start taking things off because he couldn't take it anymore. Instead, he was genuinely, completely enjoying himself. She considered having sex with him again but she didn't feel like getting up either and decided to do that tomorrow. Eventually, she had to take the stuff off of him, and he blinked at the light as she removed the wrappings.
"Your Highness, what's wrong?" he asked her as she unstrapped his pacifier.
She smiled at him. "Ricky, it's almost six."
"Already?" It didn't feel like it. He felt like he had just laid down on the couch a couple of hours ago, if that.
She smiled and kissed him on the forehead. "You really were enjoying yourself. I'm sure we'll be able to do this again sometime."
"No matter how long it is, it's never enough," he said, smiling at her, abruptly remembering what he'd thought about before. "Oh yeah, do you have any goggles that go with the headphones? You have my hearing, so you should have my vision too," he suggested.
She smiled at him. "I'll get a headset just for you," she told him, smiling and kissing him. "I'm just so glad this wasn't scary for you."
"If you weren't there, it totally would have been," he told her as she pulled off his wet diaper. "Thanks for saying the times when I'd be alone. And for the delicious food." He would never tell her that he had actually been stupid enough to think that she would serve him something nasty. "Although I had no idea what that vegetable stuff was."
"That's all it really was, just a bunch of veggies I threw together," she said. "I made it before you got here, decided it was good, reheated it later."
A suspicion grew in his mind. "How much other stuff did you test before I got here?" He was thinking about the earphones in particular.
Susie winced just a bit. He was way too smart! She was going to tell him later and decided to tell him then. "All right, Ricky, you deserve to know. I don't want to do anything to you without first testing it on myself." Her smile grew wider. "And now that you've got that image in your mind, your mom's here," she said, pointing to the window and kissing him goodbye.
"I love you, Your Highness! See you tomorrow!" he said happily as he walked, almost skipped, to the door.
"I love you too, Ricky. Be here early, somebody has to do the chores," she told him, smiling, sighing as he left. Of course he had to leave at some point, but she didn't think it was fair, to either of them, that he ever had to leave.
"So, what did you do with her?" Heather asked pointedly as Richard stepped into the car.
"We had kinky bondage sex," the thirteen-year-old told his mother casually. She turned sharply to look at him, and he broke out laughing.
"To even know those words at your age... you didn't actually tie her up or anything, did you?" she asked seriously as she started driving.
"Mom, I swear. I didn't actually tie her up," he replied, solemnly and completely truthfully. "We spent most of the day cuddling and listening to old Superman radio shows, and she made me a banana milkshake and some vegetable soup."
"And you bathed as well."
"Yes, I was in her hot tub. She's got a real Jacuzzi."
"With her, I'm sure," she told him. "Don't deny it. I can smell her shampoo on you and your hair's been brushed. I know what you're up to." 'No, Mom,' he thought to himself, 'you really, really don't.' "Just don't make her parents angry."
"I'm not going to piss off her dad." He might be a mob boss, for one thing. "Her mom's gone, lung cancer."
"Oh! That's terrible," she replied. "But that also means he's single." she added lightly. A strangled GLURK bubbled out of Richard's throat before he realized that what she was implying would never happen. The man was fantastically rich, after all; there was no reason for him to settle for her. She laughed the same way he had. "See? Your mother can also tell jokes." Richard just worried whether the ultimate joke would be on him and Susie.
The only thing Susie had told the very curious Squad in the chat was that they had a very wonderful time, and Richard only echoed that sentiment. Heather's spaghetti wasn't terrible food, and he tried to enjoy it, knowing that he was still just thirteen and couldn't move in with his girlfriend forever. Zoe gave Richard a knowing smile and a nod at the dinner table, wishing that she lived closer to Leslie and very glad that Caroline was willing to drive them. She hadn't been home all day, either, but Richard did not later ask what she'd been doing with Leslie any more than she asked about him.
He had fantastic sleep that night.
-
Jacqueline,
Your last 2 chapters were really a huge hit with me!
Do you have the power of mind reading? I imagined myself in Richard's place, and Susie is so caring that she replaced the chains with pink ribbons, which would hold me in the power of her love even more securely than the original chains.
Now my own diaper is very wet and sticky. My diaper's actual model is called Violet Seduction (thick, crinkly, solid violet plastic backed) and couldn't be more appropriate for me as I read those last 2 chapters.
If you wanted to incorporate more diaper detail you could use that model name (or use your artistic license to call them Pink Seduction), in addition to another actual ABDL model called Princess Pink, which is printed with princesses, unicorns, and stars.
I hope you are also going to have a chapter or two on Zoe's day with Leslie.
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Jacqueline, Those two chapters were fantastic. It is great how you incorporate info from "Like Father, Like Son" in the story. The fact that the items in the box were from the same people that tried to make Nate into a bondage baby was ingenious. Ricky did have a fun day with Susie.
Another GREAT 2 chapters from a gifted writer.
:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D
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Jacqueline, Please give us more of this story. I know that I can't wait to read more about Ricky. 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8)
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Zoe thought about the phrase 'new normal', which she'd overheard on the news. Some, not all, parts of the country were being told to accept lockdowns as the 'new normal', with varying degrees of success. She had accepted her brother's 'new normal' state, and she didn't even blink when, wearing his jingling dress, he asked her to braid up his hair and make up his face so he'd look cute for his girlfriend. Her brother was a sissy, and that's just how he was. She just wished Caroline hadn't been working that day; chat was one thing, but she wanted her normal day to involve time with Leslie, not just for the awkward sex but for the close cuddling, the talking, the feeling of togetherness that Richard only had to walk a mile, in his pretty Mary Janes and jingling socks, to enjoy.
Richard took a familiar, paved path, fearing nothing in the mid-morning, smiling happily as he jingled along. He wondered how many people were watching him, how many despised him, how many envied him. A bicyclist was coming and he gave the man room to pass; instead, the man slowed to a stop eight feet away. "Hey, kid, did you lose a bet or something?" he asked with a look of real concern. Maybe he could tell that Richard was a male, but it wasn't like many females dressed like that, either.
The question was so on-the-nose that Richard felt obligated to give a real answer. "Sort of," he decided on. "I lost on purpose." He gave the cyclist a big smile, and abruptly, the man's expression turned from concerned to mirthful, and he laughed as he rode on his way. It wasn't clear whether he was laughing at him for wanting to dress that way, or laughing in relief that Richard wasn't being pressured into it. Probably both. Richard gave a sissy, wiggling-fingers wave that the man couldn't see and continued to walk along.
Knowing he was coming without even having to read the Squad chat, Susie waited patiently, sitting on the couch and watching videos. Right after letting Whiskers spend some time out of the house that morning, she had decided to leave the femdom chat she'd been in after reading some disturbing overnight messages. It wasn't good to spend time in a place like that if someone knew she was underage, even though the guy she'd used for delivery probably wasn't dumb enough to talk about that. (Then again, he had been loose-lipped enough to tell her about that business with the ten-year-olds...) But more importantly, the things they were advising each other - and her - to do were equal parts manipulative and outright vicious, many involving physical and/or chemical abuse, and she was also fairly sure that more than half of the supposed females were actually men describing their masochistic fantasies, and that was before all the insane findom shit. Straight to hell with all of them, she decided; she was not going to lose her dear Ricky by following malevolent advice. She wouldn't even tell him that she had been there at all.
The doorbell rang, and there he was, all pretty and cute and made up, and he curtsied to her with a jingle of bells and a big smile on his face, gently pushing Whiskers, who was rubbing against his calves. "Good morning, Your Highness," he said in as pretty a voice as he could. No, she was definitely not going to risk losing him.
"Why, good morning, Ricky," she said in her princess tone. She decided that she'd only break character that day if he broke it first - which was unlikely - or she absolutely had to. "You may enter." As soon as both her pets came in together, she closed and locked the door behind them, then without a hint of hesitation, she flipped up his pretty dress to see what he had on underneath. "And what are those?"
"My underwear," he admitted. "I don't have any more diapers at home. Please diaper me, Your Highness."
"Of course, sweetie. Lie down. Whiskers, out of the way." She shooed her cat from behind him, he set his glittery backpack to the side, and she diapered him right there on the carpet, sliding off his boxer shorts and putting on a diaper, plastic pants, and diaper cover while pretending to ignore his growing erection. "And what is in your backpack?"
"My rainbow boy clothes and sneakers, just in case." Even the knee-high boots were a little much if he was going to appear to be a mostly ordinary boy. "And my heels, too."
"Oh? And why did you bring those?" she asked with an imperious air.
"To help me take daintier steps, Your Highness," he replied submissively, clutching his hands in front of him.
"Such a good little maid! Put them on, and I will give you another reminder to be meticulous." As he unbuckled his Mary Janes and put his heels on, she retrieved ribbons from the table; two of them went onto his pigtails in big, floppy bows, but she tied the third around each of his ankles as she had before, leaving him eight inches of slack so that he could carefully climb stairs. "There. That will make sure you take your time doing your chores."
"Thank you, Your Highness. That will be a big help." He got up and gave her another, restricted, curtsey. "May I please clean your bathroom?"
"Bathrooms, plural, but you certainly may. Come along, and I'll show you how I've been doing it."
Richard gasped dramatically, theatrically holding his hand to his face. "Your Highness! You've had to do such things yourself?!" he asked in feigned horror as he jingled and minced behind her with his limited steps, trying to keep up as she led him up the stairs. The diaper and cover were pushing his legs apart while the ribbon kept his legs together, making his walking even more childish and clumsy.
"Yes, that's right. Good help was so hard to find," she replied with an exaggerated sigh.
"That's so terrible, Your Highness. I should be doing all these chores for you."
"You will soon enough, little maid. In time, I will show you how to do everything here."
The first thing he noticed was the pacifier gag sitting on the toilet, but she opened up the compartment under the sink, which held a pair of versatile cleaning gloves sat under the sink, as did a small bucket, three different sponges, and three powerful, concentrated cleaning compounds: one for tubs and sinks, one for tile, and one for metal. The bathrooms in Susie's house weren't just tile floors; they were tile walls as well. She pointed out what went where, and told him specifically to clean every surface, and once he understood and didn't have any questions, she reminded him that little maids didn't need to talk while they worked and strapped his pacifier in. She kissed him on his pacifier and left him to his housework in his restrained feet and jingly dress.
He noticed some spots on the mirror and realized that she hadn't specified what to do for glass, but the tile cleaner was labeled as also being used for that, so he started there, cleaning it thoroughly, making sure not to leave streaks and smiling behind his pacifier at his pretty reflection as he had before. He looked so cute! He opened up the medicine cabinet, and there was nothing in there but Susie's electric razor, so he set that down and used diluted tub cleaner for the inside of the cabinet as well. Then the sink, and then the faucets with the metal cleaner, making everything very shiny. He did the light fixtures and plugs very, very carefully, glad that he was wearing gloves. Then he turned his attention to the tub.
As he diligently worked, sitting on the edge of the hot tub and making sure to scrub away every last bit of grime, Richard didn't realize he was having second thoughts until he was well into the middle of having second thoughts. It wasn't the jingly dress, diaper, pacifier, high heels, or ankle ribbons that were doing it; it was the fact that she clearly intended to regularly command him to do real housework for the foreseeable future, particularly because he'd volunteered for it. He didn't have to keep to that, if he really didn't want to. He could just go get his boy clothes, take this stuff off, and tell her that he really couldn't do this anymore; hell, if he were so inclined, he could just go home and never talk to any of them about any of this ever again, even his sister. There was nothing, nothing at all, that could prevent him from simply giving up and going home, sex and relationships be damned. He recognized the feeling very well. He'd done such things before, on a much smaller scale. These flare-ups of unease and anxiety were part of what made him inclined to quit things and cut ties, although they had usually resulted in him simply not getting involved with anyone or anything to begin with.
But, then again, what would he have been doing otherwise as a thirteen-year-old in the summer, pandemic or no? Surfing the Internet, reading despicable tales and looking at vile images, real and unreal, that would only leave him with a bad taste in his mouth, hating both himself and the people responsible for them? Trying to make sense of the news, which was getting more surreal every day no matter who he listened to? Playing single-player video games in which he pretended to be wearing a pretty dress, when he was actually wearing one? He still usually played a couple hours of Starcraft every evening before bed, and he realized that, on average, he was getting more exercise as a sissy than he usually did as an ordinary boy! Most of his old habits had left him with nothing but a feeling of wasted time and important things left undone. His new ones were, at the very least, giving his girlfriend a cleaner house.
Moreover, she wanted him to do it and she was happy that he was doing it, and, for him, that was the most important thing in the world.
Holy crap, had he just been seriously considering going 'fuc-k this shit I'm out', losing Susie and everything else important to him, over keeping her house clean - especially when she kept giving him everything he ever wanted?!
Mentally calling himself all sorts of names as he suc-kled on his pacifier, promising himself that she would never have any idea that such thoughts had entered his mind, Richard diligently continued to thoroughly scrub the grime off of Susie's hot tub - it only took a couple of wipes to get the surface sparkling like new - kneeling as he scrubbed so that his cute heels wouldn't scrape the inside of the tub, his bells rhythmically jingling with his back-and-forth motions. With his ankles kept so close together, he had to carefully scoot over the side of the tub, the bells on his socks jingling, but he retrieved the metal cleaner and proceeded to clean the faucets. The drain grate popped out, so he did both sides of that and then ran the pipe snake down that drain for good measure. The sink was easier, and the toilet wasn't difficult either, but then he realized that Susie had told him to clean the tiles with a sponge rather than a mop. He obediently did so, starting with the walls, his heels clacking against the tiles on the floor while his pretty dress jingled, going back and forth and making everything shiny. (He realized that the door was ajar and that Susie could hear him working.) He carefully cleaned the floor as well, wiping behind the toilet and being careful not to box himself in, as he was still crawling on his knees, the bells of his sissy dress brushing against the tile, smiling at a job well done.
Oh! Of course! He still had two more bathrooms to clean. He was so glad that Susie had such a big house. Sissies like him needed lots of housework to do, after all. Carefully carrying the cleaning supplies, he minced across the hall to the second upstairs bathroom, hearing the music of one of Susie's videos downstairs.
She heard the jingle of his bells as well. "Wait," she commanded him, and he obediently stood there, suc-kling on his pacifier and waiting for her to come up. "Let's see how good of a job you did." She led him back to the bathroom he had just finished cleaning, and she blinked in surprise. He had honestly done a very good job - he'd even done the inside of the medicine cabinet! He'd done as much of the tile walls as he could reach. Her original plan was to find some visible fault with what he did and then promise to punish him once he was done. But what was she going to do, yell at him for not touching the high ceiling? She had already resolved never to play the stupid dominant game of being pointlessly cruel to him over nothing. "You did wonderfully! If you keep going like this, there's definitely a reward in it for you," she said instead. 'Punishment' and 'reward', of course, were two roads that led to the same destination. She patted him on his diaper and he happily minced down the hall to the other bathroom.
The second bathroom was more difficult than the first. Almost no one had used it in a long while, and Susie had not been cleaning it. It wasn't gas-station filthy, and it was fortunately smaller, but even with the powerful chemical, the grime in the regular-sized bathtub required serious scrubbing with the rough side of the sponge to the point that his arms started to ache. He chuckled behind his pacifier at the idea that being a sissy was actually going to put muscle on him. The toilet was the same way, and he flushed dirty brown crud down multiple times as he worked, very glad he was wearing gloves. He realized that he had to... well, other boys would have said 'use the toilet' or 'go to the bathroom'. But he was wearing his pink, poofy diaper, so he used that instead.
To his relief, the third, downstairs bathroom was nearly spotless already and required very little work. As he finished up, he heard boiling water and smelled something cooking. suc-kling on his pacifier, he curtsied to her and gestured to the simmering pot.
-
She giggled. "I don't need your help, we're just having rice with salmon. Go put the cleaning stuff away and then you can set the table." He obediently did so, carefully mincing back up and back down the stairs with the little steps that he was getting used to taking, then putting silverware and dishes next to two close-together dining room seats. He put the fish-laden rice into bowls for each of them and then brought out a pitcher of iced tea as well, and, complimenting him on what a good sissy he was, she unbuckled his pacifier so that he could eat.
"Your Highness, may I please have a pair of soft kneepads?" Richard asked as soon as it was out. This was a Rule 1 violation, but they were a ways past that.
"Oh, of course, Ricky. You're going to be spending a lot of time on your knees, and we wouldn't want them to be chafed. i'll see if we can get a pair next time we go out." He smiled at her.
They ate the delicious meal together, enjoying each other's company, and Susie simply reached under his jingly dress and felt his diaper under the cover and plastic pants. "Oh my. You're wet. You were in the middle of three different bathrooms and you still went in your diaper. Why did you do such a thing, Ricky?"
"Because I'm a baby who belongs in diapers, Your Highness."
"That's right, Ricky. I'm so glad you remembered." She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, and they finished their food, occasionally feeding each other bites.
"So, what's this reward you were talking about?" Richard asked once they were done eating.
"More chores, of course," she said haughtily. "Come along, sissy boy. Your chores are this way." She left the dirty dishes on the table. These particular chores had to be done immediately. He reached for his pacifier. "Ah-ah-ah, leave that there. These chores require the use of your mouth." She led him upstairs and into her bedroom, and it was the first time he'd actually seen it.
He'd almost expected it to be pink and girly, with lots of stuffed animals, but instead it was very tastefully decorated. The walls were hardwood paneling with intricate tapestries of landscape scenes across the walls. Books - not all of them in English - half-filled a bookshelf, and Richard was certain that she'd actually read them. An obviously expensive tower computer, complete with gamer chair, sat at the far wall, and he wondered if she was putting the GPU to good use. Although the blankets were royal purple rather than pink, the bed was the regal four-poster kind he had envisioned, and it was, again, covered in towels.
"My toes need to be cleaned, Ricky," she told him, turning up her nose in a haughty expression. "And do not wear your heels on my bed." He obediently took them off as she removed her socks. She placed her toes to his face, giving him a good look at his task. She did not use nail polish; instead, her toes were kept neatly and regularly trimmed. He obediently licked and suc-ked on her toes, licking all the imagined grime off them thoroughly, tasting her sweat and feeling very enjoyably subservient, kissing her feet multiple times in the process.
"I'm sure you love the taste, but you need something better to suc-kle on," she told him once her toes had been lightly covered with his saliva. "Up here, Ricky. Your next chore is to suc-kle on Mommy's breasts." Of course, Susie wasn't actually lactating, but he obediently suc-kled on her nipple anyway, licking a little bit, remembering to be gentle, pretending he was teasing milk out. She petted his pigtails and kissed him on top of his head, and after a little while, she moved him to her other breast.
She pulled off her skirt and panties, then pulled down his plastic pants and diaper cover and untaped his wet diaper. He wasn't just wet; he was also definitely sweaty down there from a combination of triple layers and hard work, his balls hanging very loose. She thoroughly wiped him down with a towel. "Your next chore is to fuc-k me," she said simply. Of all the commands that a teenage girl could give her boyfriend, that was the undisputed emperor of them all, and after so much teasing and contact, he was definitely ready to go.
It was the missionary position, a nominally dominant position even though his legs were still tied with ribbons, as he was on top of her, thrusting for the first time in his life as she clenched around him and they gasped together. She wrapped her legs around him and they kissed passionately and repeatedly, lost in each other. She came, and he heard that deep moan for the first time, and he came as well, and he kissed her once more and nearly collapsed on top of her.
Richard resolved that from then on, his paranoia and caution would be entirely put to work in strengthening their relationship instead. If that turned out to be a mistake, there was no good future for him after that point anyway; he figured that, if anything went south after this, he actually would go 'fuc-k this shit, I'm out' and end his own life.
Susie almost laughed in his embrace, comparing her experience to the nonsense she had read that morning. She had no patience for anything relating to some sort of imagined sexual hierarchy. Alpha males, cuckolded husbands, full-time maids in chastity? Evil bullshit, all of it. His place was right where he was, with her ribbons around his ankles and in his pigtailed hair, smelling of male sweat and bathroom cleaners. Well, okay, the smells could be nixed, and her toes were a little bit sticky too. "Bath time," she told him, undoing his pigtails, gently pushing him off of her, and sitting up to untie his ankle ribbons, setting them and his diaper coverings on the bed.
They bathed together as they had before, washing each other in the very clean tub. She noticed that Richard was looser this time, easier, less subtly pent-up. He was getting used to this, and it was definitely something he could get used to. "Ricky, do you want to keep doing this forever?" Susie asked him, very seriously with no roleplay in her voice.
It was like she was reading his mind! "With you, yes, I really do," he replied. "I mean, I'll have to be a regular boy sometimes, but I really love being your sissy." She nodded. A thought he hadn't considered entered his mind. "Do you want to keep doing this forever, too?"
She kissed him on the lips. "Of course I do." He heard a different sort of 'I do' in that and realized that what he had was, barring some horrific tragedy, actually forever. He was completely, even the scary, reticient, combative, and dangerous parts of himself, in love with her.
When they were done bathing, drying, and brushing each other's teeth again, she asked him if he knew how to put his hair into pigtails by himself yet.
"I've been practicing," he said, smiling, showing her how he was doing it last night. She giggled. She'd gone through her own pigtails phase, when her mother was still alive, and his attempt looked much like her first few tries before she'd really gotten it down. She considered telling him to braid his own pigtails anyway, even if they were too loose and poorly done, because that would make him look even more like a little girl in its own way, but babies had their hair done by their caregivers so she did them for him again, putting the ribbons back on his pigtails after she'd completely redressed him, his dress jingling once more, light, sweet makeup on his face, a fresh diaper on his groin, her ribbons back on his ankles just under the bells on his socks, and his heels back on his feet. He minced back downstairs to do the dishes, and she found a few things for them to watch together, and as they watched, she texted the Squad about what a good helper he was and how he'd done the bathrooms. Richard blushed but didn't protest. It wasn't like they didn't already know he was a sissy. Time flew again, and eventually Richard had to start going home before his mom did, and so he got up with a kiss.
"Is that how you're going out? In your high heels with my ribbon around your ankles?" Susie asked him, giggling.
"I would love to, Your Highness, but I think I would get in trouble if I did."
"Unfortunately, you would. Turn around, keep your knees straight, and take them off yourself," she commanded him. This basically made him touch his toes, stretching his legs and providing her with a wonderful view of his thickly padded bottom, and he fully expected her to spank it. Instead, she patted it lightly, causing a loud crinkle. "Hmmm... we shall leave the covers here and you may simply wear your diaper home." Judging from all the sweat earlier, things had been getting too warm down there for him. "Your other underwear is in your backpack with the rest of your..." She feigned an aristocratic shudder and a tone of disdain. "...boy clothes." She helped him step out of the plastic pants and diaper cover, taking them and the ankle ribbons from him, and he swapped his heels for his Mary Janes, which were right where he'd left them. Putting his heels into his backpack, he noticed an extra diaper in there as well. "Now go and skip along home, little maid."
Purse and backpack on, he curtsied to her with a melodious jingle. "Yes, Your Highness. Thank you for letting me do your chores!"
"You are very welcome. Fear not; I shall need your services again." And again, and again, and again, Susie knew, feeling a deep glee in her heart of owning something utterly priceless. No one online, in that abandoned femdom chat nor any other, knew what she had, nor would they. She watched, with an enormous smile on her face, as he took her command literally and skipped down the street in the sunny afternoon without a care in the world, just like the precious little girl he looked like.
He knew for sure, then, that was his daily life, as long as her father wasn't home and his mother was at work. He started thinking that he'd be her sissy just for the summer, but he knew better, as his school was almost certainly going fully online this year; he'd have to ask about hers, as she certainly had never set foot inside a public school. If he was trapped, he never, ever wanted to be rescued, he thought to himself as his bells told the whole neighborhood that there was a pretty little girly boy skipping down the path.
Changing into a shirt and pants for his mother's arrival, barely remembering to wash off the makeup and undo his pigtails, he felt like a quick game of competitive Starcraft, and he burst out laughing after he'd ground his opponent down into the dirt, winning himself a place in the Master league. Oh, if only that poor soul had known what had just happened and who he'd just lost to!
After dinner with his mother, who was glad her children were staying out of trouble - and his sister, who knew better - he finished up his Niven, practiced his pigtails until he got frustrated, and climbed into bed, dreaming of what tomorrow would bring.
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Jacqueline, Ricky loves his life now that Susie has him wrapped around her finger. That love making part was HOT!!! You have got to give us another chapter. This is GREAT!!!!
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[1/4]
Richard got the text from Susie half an hour after his mother had gone to work: 'Ricky, what are you doing?'
'The wash,' he texted back. 'And some other chores. :)' He actually was, again. His sister was helping him - she didn't feel right making him do everything around the house - but of course he was wearing his housewife dress and four-inch heels, and he had been washing his correctly separated girly clothes like a good sissy.
'Oh? Your own chores? When will you be here to do mine, pretty little servant boy? :heart:'
He was a little bit confused. 'Do you think I'd have time before Caroline picks us up?'
There was a minute's pause, and then the reply came back: 'Ricky, you will never, ever tell anyone that I completely forgot about that.'
He nodded. He'd forgotten stuff before, too. 'Yes, Your Highness. :)' He was just glad it was a quickly cleared-up misunderstanding. The very last thing he wanted was a genuine tug-of-war between different people wanting his time, especially Zoe and Susie, and he put down his phone because his housewife dress didn't have any pockets. He was in the middle of cleaning out the refrigerator when Zoe handed him his phone, as Caroline was talking to him in the chat.
[10:02 AM] Caroline: ricky, dont bring any girl clothes today, just your white sneakers.
[10:03 AM] Richard: Do you mean the flats or heels?
[10:03 AM] Caroline: flats for where we are going!
[10:03 AM] Caroline: also, everyone, high of 90 today, prepare to sweat
[10:05 AM] Leslie: I 100% love how he has to ask LMFAO
[10:05 AM] Zoe: For him, it's a valid question!
[10:05 AM] Leslie: That's what's so funnnnyyyy!! :laughing:
[10:06 AM] Caroline: actually leslie i dont mean to pick on you but does your wheelchair have any bigger tires?
[10:07 AM] Leslie: I think so. We've never used them. I'll have to ask Dad where they are. Are we going somewhere muddy?
[10:07 AM] Caroline: it can get kinda dirty/sloppy there yeah
[10:08 AM] Caroline: its not that far, like 40 minute drive, big frolfing course
[10:08 AM] Caroline: you all good with that?
[10:09 AM] Zoe: 40 minutes isn't a problem here, just as long as we can still call mom.
[10:09 AM] Leslie: I'll be okay.
[10:10 AM] Susie: As long as we're back before nightfall lol!
[10:10 AM] Caroline: cool beans
He got all the chores done, food back in its rightful places after he was done scrubbing out the fridge, before Caroline arrived. She'd stopped to pick up Zoe and Richard before she went to pick up Susie, and that was fortunate for him because he got to see what happened next.
Holding something in her hands, wearing a dark midriff-baring top and thigh-length skirt over her purple bikini, Susie took the seat behind Richard and reached forward to hand over her present. "Here you go, Caroline, we have no need of these," she said, handing the older girl a length of locked-together chains, the keys in each of the locks.
"What. Holy. Shit. Where did you-- was this from that box?!" Caroline blurted out, while Leslie and Zoe stared, incredulously.
"That's still for Ricky to tell you if he chooses, but these are yours if you want them."
"We didn't use them," Richard quickly added. "They were literally never used for their original purpose."
"Yeah, but what could they possibly have been... you know what, no. I already know the answer. Was it cute, Susie? The stuff you didn't lock him into?"
"It was very cute," Richard answered for her, and Caroline nodded. "And yes, restrictive. And that's all I'll say, okay?" Leslie started giggling, and Zoe followed, and Caroline was going to bring something related up before they went swimming, but she decided not to. Later. It'd sound like an accusation if she said it just then, and she didn't trust herself not to be a bitch about anything that day. Instead, she accepted the gift, and Richard caught a glimpse of a familiar red hat in the car's central compartment before she tossed the chains in there and slammed the lid closed.
They arrived at the Y a few minutes early, as Caroline had planned. Richard never really had a lot of patience for routines, in general. He absolutely hated school, watching the clock in his classes, and he was unapologetically grateful to the pandemic for finally pulling him out of there, at least for the year. But this new routine, the routine of being picked up by Caroline, driven to the local YMCA, and swimming with his girlfriend for an hour - that was a routine he was very much enjoying. A car ride with the girl he loved. A session of swimming, in which he was increasingly able to keep up with her every time he went, especially as the hour came to a close. And then the culmination, the trip to the bathroom in which the girls determined what he would wear until he had to go back to his mother, and so he said "And here's the last part of the bi-weekly fun routine" as soon as he stepped in there with them.
"I'm never going to get tired of this either," Caroline replied as she pulled out what she'd planned and proceeded to dress him in it while Zoe did his hair - using the ribbons he'd brought - and Susie diapered him. (There was no makeup on any of them; they would have sweated it off.) The clothes had been out in the front of a yard sale that Caroline had happened to pass, noticing that they happened to be substantially larger than normal for clothes of that kind. She'd drove around the block to go back there, and understood what was going on as soon as she saw the obese girl who had grown out of them. Of course, the outfit didn't quite fit him in the way the designers intended, as it roughly matched his breadth and width but not his height. The shirt, with its pattern of pink and white hearts over darker pink, was fine, as the skirtall covered the area below it. The skirtall, made of lavender denim with a big, embroidered pink heart in the center, had reached to the knees of the girl it was designed for. On Richard, it was slightly above his mid-thigh. Bending over would show his diaper to everyone behind him.
Caroline nodded and smiled at him, having known it'd be like this when she bought it. He smiled back. He might have spoken up, said that this was too short on him, but it looked incredibly cute and he absolutely loved it. He just wished one of them had brought matching socks. Oh well, the white ones were okay too.
They left the bathroom and were face-to-face with Mindy, Leslie next to her in her wheelchair wearing a 'nothing I could do' expression. The woman had simply had to go to the bathroom, and she realized what was going on as soon as she saw the group, and there was two seconds of awkward silence.
"Sssssssh," Leslie abruptly started doing, putting her finger to her lips. Instead of an explanation, Caroline, Zoe, Susie, and Richard all started doing the same thing.
Mindy laughed out loud. As a physical therapist whose specialty was teenagers, she'd thought she'd seen it all, and for a few seconds, she just didn't know what to make of this. She actually was a mandatory reporter, but this decisively wasn't abusive, as everyone involved - including the boy who'd just been dressed up like a girl - was actively motioning her to keep quiet about it with nervous, conspiratorial smiles behind their pursed, shushing lips. What was she going to do? Lose the trust of her teenage client and get a bunch of other kids in trouble for fooling around with crossdressing? Why? For what purpose? For whose benefit? She made the same finger-over-lips gesture, nodding. "I saw nothing," she whispered, and walked past them to use the bathroom as she'd intended. They all breathed a sigh of relief and headed for the back door.
"Leslie, I thought you said no one knew about that bathroom," Caroline said irritably.
"Yeah, she's the one who told me about it," Leslie replied. "Before I knew you, she changed me back there," she whispered. That had been before the pandemic, on weekends and late afternoons rather than on what used to be school days, and the women's locker room had been significantly more crowded. Caroline thought of saying something sharp in response but made herself not do that. Maybe she could get through the day without needing to tell them what was going on with her.
"Well, now she's in on it," Caroline replied. "Leslie, be straight with me, here. Are we going to have to worry about this? Because I don't want it to be 'oh, cool, she knows and won't tell,' and then suddenly one day it's 'oh, there's Ricky's mom, oh hey, did you know...?'"
"She's not going to tell, Caroline," Leslie replied, trying to talk in as much of a normal voice as possible despite how much it made her chest hurt, particularly after swimming for an hour. "She told me that the only reason she ever wants to make me mad is to make me work harder, and that wouldn't be it. Especially now, she gets to be the first physical therapist to help with the new treatment."
"Put yourself in her shoes, Caroline," Zoe suggested. "Would you screw that up just because you saw a boy in a skirtall?"
"Believe me, if I were in other people's shoes, the world would look a lot different," Caroline replied. "All right, I believe she's sane. That actually kinda reminds me," she said. "Wait, hold up, let's get everyone in the car and then I'll tell you." Getting Leslie out of the wheelchair and into the car was a necessary sort of routine, one that Richard still didn't partake in.
"As I was saying," Caroline continued in a collegiate, speaker tone after making sure the doors were closed and that no one had opened a window (no one would, not with the AC going on a hot day), "I have seen some rather INsane things relating to this, ah, activity that we have been doing with our dear Ricky here." Richard looked unamused. Had she seriously been...? "In particular, I have seen the, ah, desires of many people who enjoy the same sorts of things that he enjoys."
Oh, crap, she had been! "Big mistake, Caroline!" Richard interjected, turning to look at her.
Caroline dropped the faux voice. "Yeah, believe me, I know. Anyway, one of the most common fantasies is, 'Oh no, I am a child being feminized by this domineering woman or all these evil girls, and I cannot do anything about it, and no one will help me because I live in a hell-world where everyone's in on it and no one ever intervenes.' You don't get to even pretend that one, Ricky, you never get to pull the whole 'it's not my fault, they did it to me' schtick. That kind of shit might actually happen to boys, very rarely, but it sure as hell doesn't happen to you." She pointed at him sharply before putting both hands back on the wheel. He just nodded, knowing exactly what she was talking about. She was telling the others what he was never going to tell them about.
Zoe frowned a bit. "How often does anyone even try to do that to boys? I mean, there was that psycho babysitter Susie was talking about, and then there was that kid in Franklin's store..."
"There's another one I know about," Richard said. "There was a kid who wet the bed at night, so his mother and her landlord punished him by putting him outside in a princess dress. In the end, he discovered his girl side and lived happily everNO ACTUALLY the adults both went to jail for felony child abuse and the kid went to his grandma. He was traumatized as fuc-k." He couldn't even imagine how many nightmares that kid must have had. "This was on a news site, I can find it if you want," he said, reaching into his skirtall's pocket but deciding that he didn't want to prove that this *actually happened* unless any of them asked. Besides, the article didn't tell him what he was most curious about: if those people had been taking the wrong sorts of fantasies seriously before reality met them.
"Her landlord?" Zoe asked, confused.
"I don't know, it's what the news site said. Maybe halfway her boyfriend or something."
"Sounds like something Mom's last boyfriend would do," Zoe said. "Remember? The one who hit me?"
"Oh my God, why did you remind me of that?" Richard rhetorically asked, rolling his head back. "I was in second grade or something. I'm still so glad you told and that she believed us. If Mom would have stayed with that guy..."
"Can we please stop talking about this stuff?" Leslie asked quietly.
"I kind of want to know the story," Susie said.
"There is no story," Zoe replied. "He hit me and I told Mom and Ricky backed me up and she threw him out and never found another boyfriend again. The end."
"Yeah, well, guess who she was joking about making her boyfriend a couple days ago? Susie's dad," Richard changed the subject with, chuckling and getting back some incredulous laughter.
"No, no, relax, that would never actually happen," Susie said, laughing but then getting serious. "Dad won't ever have a relationship again. He doesn't want to dilute our inheritance. He's got this whole thing about it. He'll be in love with Mom until he dies."
"It's just so sad," Zoe said. "He loves your mom so much and she got... that."
"Yeah. fuc-k cancer," Susie quietly replied.
"And fuc-k Duchenne's, too," Zoe added. "Two more weeks," she said, putting her arm around her disabled girlfriend. Two more weeks, for a therapy that might have been delayed indefinitely if Richard hadn't intervened. It wasn't just the bad that could have such long-lasting repercussions, Richard realized. The good could as well.
"And, while we're at it, fuc-k drive-thru only," Caroline lamented, managing to get into the back of a very long line of cars without the rear bumper sticking out into the street. "Mid-90s today and get to idle and run the AC the whole time. Hate this shit. Sorry for the wait. It's still worth it."
"Isn't gas cheap now?" Leslie asked.
"Yeah, it wastes gas, but the problem's the heat," Caroline replied. "Wears things down, burns the oil. And the worst part is, poor Ricky here doesn't get to show off his outfit to everyone inside." They laughed, and Susie was about to say something, but Caroline kept going. "So what does everyone want?"
"Just a burger, no fries, and just with vegetables, no pickles." Leslie said. The salt wasn't good for her. "And ice water."
"Plain double cheeseburger, fries, lemonade," Zoe said. "It's been so long since I've ate a burger."
"Just a plain burger, fries, and Coke," Richard said. "Oh yeah, plain with bacon."
"Give me the same as Ricky," Susie added. "I don't like all the stuff they put on burgers."
Caroline looked around the car with exaggerated offense on her face. "Oh my God. You guys. Plain. Plain. Plain. Leslie, I can understand, but I am seriously the only person in this car who eats an everything burger like a normal person. You all deserve each other, and I'm not even talking about his girl clothes or whatever you didn't use these for," she said, pointing to the chains in the central compartment.
"We do, and you were wrong about him not showing off his outfit," Susie told her. "Hey Ricky, go skip around the block so everyone in line can see you," she continued, and Richard immediately took off his seat belt.
"Oh my fuc-king God," Caroline started, but he had already stepped out the door, closing it and then skipping around the burger joint in his ribboned pigtails and pretty skirtall outfit, against the direction of traffic so everyone who cared to look could see his smiling face. He didn't even look at the people in the cars to see if they were looking at him. Did they think he was doing it on a dare? Were they worried about him? Did they think he was cute? Did any of them glimpse the white between his legs, and how many of those knew it was a diaper? (He doubted that any of them saw it. They didn't have the viewing angle.) He didn't know and only cared a little bit, and as he stepped back into the passenger's seat - the car had only moved a single spot forward - he heard the tail end of Caroline's sentence.
"-with great responsibility!" She turned to him. "Ricky, she can just tell you to do things like that and you'll do them."
"Yeah, pretty much," Richard said, smiling and nodding.
"It's not something he has a problem with, Caroline. I'm not going to abuse him, and he knows it," Susie said firmly.
Richard nodded. "Caroline, it's like you were saying before, it's not like I didn't want to do it," he admitted. He very much enjoyed showing off his pretty clothes, especially in an indirect way that probably wouldn't involve any awkward or embarrassing conversations, and especially when Susie told him to do it.
Caroline threw up her hands. "My verdict stands. You deserve each other."
Zoe laughed. "You know that's nowhere near the worst thing he's done, right? You know he goes back and forth to Susie's house in a jingling dress."
"I thought you were kidding. Oh my God. No offense, but you're all crazy, and the person who bought his outfit is crazy too," Caroline said.
"That's not fair to Leslie," Zoe started pointedly. "She never really-"
"Wait," Leslie said. "Ricky, if this treatment works, I want to go skipping with you. We can be twinsies." Richard smiled and agreed, Caroline chuckled, and Zoe looked surprised. Caroline had been fair to her after all.
"Daaaaw. All right, I'll let you borrow him," Susie said with a big smile, getting laughter in response. They made it to the ordering window and Caroline ordered what they had all asked for - combining their orders of fries into a large, shared bucket - plus a stacked double burger and a large Coke for herself. Caroline almost offered to pay, but Susie overrode her with a "Rule 1" and handed her two twenties. For a brief moment, Caroline looked upset and indignant, but forcibly controlled herself.
"Caroline, is something wrong?" Leslie asked quietly.
Damn it, they knew, of course they could figure out something was wrong with her, and Caroline took a sharp breath and forced herself to say the words she'd memorized. "I get really bad PMS, it makes me a total bitch, and I'm sorry I get like this." It had taken quite a few bad months for her to recognize what the problem was and even more to get enough control to stop blaming other people when it struck. It was embarrassing to admit, but having her friends think that she was just being a bitch for no reason was a good way to lose them. "Can't blame you for not wanting to be a girl, Ricky. You don't need to deal with this shit!" she spat out, letting her bottled emotions loose.
"I don't either," Leslie reminded them, "but I used to get roid rage."
Zoe was startled and confused. "Did you just say... ohhhhh. Right." She understood at the same time her brother did.
"What's roid rage?" Susie asked.
"Muscle-building steroids can give you mood swings," Leslie explained. "They changed my prescription so I don't get it anymore. Dad thought it was all just from my birth parents at first."
It was finally their turn to drive up to the window, and the pimply-faced cashier was deeply smiling at Richard as he handed Caroline the bags of food. Smiling back, Richard wondered, again, if the teenager thought he was cute and in what way he thought he was cute.
"You saw him checking you out," Caroline pointed out as she drove to a parking spot. She did not want to eat and drive at the same time, and she didn't want bumps or turns spilling anyone's food or drink in her car either. "I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd asked for your number." General giggling filled the car.
-
[2/4]
"You know, this is actually kind of a dic-kish thing to do to people," Richard said. "Some of them think I'm a teenage girl who's dressing cute and skipping around because she wants to be asked out, but surprise! I'm a trap!" He didn't get as much laughter as he was expecting and took a bite of his plain burger - which actually was really good, considerably better than the larger chains - eating over the paper bag and napkins on his lap so as not to get food all over his pretty skirtall or Caroline's car.
"Any boy who asks random girls out takes his fuc-king chances," Caroline said firmly. "They're the ones rolling the dice, they don't get to complain when it comes up snake." There was a lot more laughter.
"Or he knows Ricky's a boy and he's gay," Zoe said after swallowing a bite of burger. "Is there such a thing as a double trap?"
"He rolls his dice, he takes his chances," Caroline said with emphasis. "I don't do dice rolling and neither do any of you."
"But we all did get really lucky," Zoe pointed out.
"That's called being in the right place at the right time," Caroline said before taking a big bite. "Which, yeah, is kind of the same thing." She almost said how unfair it was, how they all got to have who they wanted while she had to wait, but she knew it was just the PMS talking and clamped down on it.
The girls in the back started a conversation on the way to the frolfing course, and Richard had no idea how it started, and at no point in it did he have any idea what they were talking about. Occasionally, they would talk about characters he vaguely recognized, and he almost started following some of it, but then one of them - often his sister - would bring up some comparison to something else and he would be completely lost again. The worst part was that it was almost like a normal conversation, except it might as well have been conducted in a foreign language, and what was more, Susie wasn't quite on the same wavelength as Leslie and Zoe, and Richard could not even tell if they were actually communicating or if they were simply gabbing about basically nothing. Was this a girl thing? Should he even ask? He tried to get into their mindset, to become part of the conversation, and he just couldn't.
"And I thought you were the weird one," Caroline told Richard quietly, as Zoe was explaining the plot of something based on something else based on something else Richard only vaguely recognized. "How do they get so deep into that stuff?"
"It's probably better than the shit we've been looking at," he replied wryly, and she didn't disagree.
Zoe and Richard put on sunblock in the car before they reached their destination, a very out-of-the-way park near a lake, and Caroline parked next to the bathroom and immediately ran towards it, trying the door, her eyes opening wide. Then, to everyone's surprise, she ran to the men's room. Locked as well. Her mouth moved, and while they couldn't read her lips, her unspoken words were surely of the four-letter variety.
She ran back to the car. "Leslie, I need a diaper and a couple of wipes," she said immediately.
"They won't fit you," Leslie replied.
"It doesn't need to fit me, I'm not really putting it on, just going into it," she replied, and she snatched the items out of Leslie's hands before running to the bathroom area, going behind a concrete barrier where none of the others could see, and Zoe started doing the work of helping Leslie out of the car.
A few minutes later, Caroline came out from behind the barrier with a pile of dirty plastic in her hand and a serious scowl along with a deep-red blush. Richard suddenly grasped why Leslie wanted to have a diaper buddy. Being the gross one, singled out, was not something girls liked to do, and Caroline was actually humiliated by this. "Caroline, you're not gross, people need to poop," Richard said quickly. "There's nobody here, and a boy would have just used a plastic bag and maybe a leaf." Zoe was visibly grossed out at him but didn't say anything coherent. He decided that it was okay if everyone thought he was gross instead.
"Now you know what it's like," Leslie said softly. Richard nodded; he'd been right. "I don't know what I miss more, being able to walk right or being able to use the toilet," she continued. Two more weeks, as her girlfriend had said, before she could even start working on it. And if her girlfriend's brother, that incredibly, girlishly cute boy with the ribbon pigtails, hadn't worked his magic... she tried not to think about things like that. "I just hope I'll be out of them in a couple of months." She really had no idea how long it would take, and neither did anyone else.
"Then Ricky won't have to worry about wearing those either," Susie said with a chuckle. Richard knew what she really meant. Susie had other diapers for him to wear instead.
"Can we just change the subject and never talk about this again?" Caroline demanded, thrusting the used diaper and wet wipes into a nearby trashcan, and they all agreed. She took a breath, trying to calm herself. "This way. You're about to see why I asked for the big tires." The reason was evident: this frolfing course was perpetually muddy in a lot of places and slightly overgrown. The distances were substantially longer than the ones at the park, too, so Richard wasn't sure whether he was doing better or worse than last time. At least this time he was wearing flat shoes and didn't have on any extra padding, but he still wasn't sure if that actually had much of an effect. Leslie went first, and she had to throw as hard as she could, at a perfect angle, just to have any hope of getting anywhere near the goal.
It wasn't until the third course that Richard realized that he was having a lot of fun. It really was burning hot out there and he was very glad his sister had remembered the sunblock, and sometimes one of them (never Leslie) would seriously overshoot and have to carefully step through tall grass to find the disc, especially when it bounced off a tree. Nobody was really keeping score. Caroline was blowing them all out of the water anyway, despite how much she cursed herself for missing the occasional shot that none of the others could ever have made.
But between the eighth and ninth holes, there was a mushy, muddy, slowly running creek, only a few inches deep but about five feet across. If all of them were healthy, they would have simply taken running jumps over it, no problem, but... "Okay, how are we going to do this?" Caroline asked. Richard wondered if a couple of them would have had to carry Leslie over in her wheelchair.
"Can't we just go around?" Zoe asked. "See, there's a bridge." She pointed to a small footbridge only about fifty yards away, but there was a lot of tall grass and brush between them and it.
"We'd have to go all the way around, that'd take forever. Leslie, can you get out for a bit?" Caroline asked before helping her out of the wheelchair. Oh! Right! Richard felt like an absolute retard. It weighed less than the average bicycle, and Caroline easily held it over her head as she jumped across. "Now, getting you across, that'll be a little bit trickier." She considered how to do this, it was the kind of problem she'd seen at the shop. The only issue was that those were steel parts, and this was a girl with serious core muscle problems. Anything that required synchronization or timing was a very bad idea.
Leslie looked unnerved as Caroline visibly thought, and Richard spoke up. "No, it won't be." He also considered how he was going to do this. He didn't trust the strength of his arms to carry her that way, so he kneeled down in front of her. "Can you get on my shoulders?" Zoe helped her sit on the back of Richard's neck, her braces digging into his skin, and with effort, he stood up, holding her ankles and making sure she was balanced, and she held onto his ribboned pigtails like handlebars. She was lighter than he expected, and his legs and back were more than enough.
"You think you can make that jump like that?" Caroline asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I'm not going to jump," Richard replied, walking through the muddy stream with slow, heavy, purposeful steps, kneeling down so that she could sit in the wheelchair again. His socks and shoes, of course, were a muddy, wet mess when he was done.
"Thank you, Ricky," Leslie said, beaming at him as she sat down.
"Yes, thank you, little bro. I probably should have done that, but I'm really kind of glad you did," Zoe added. She'd bought the sneakers she had on just last month.
"I figured someone was going to take one for the team," Caroline said, and playfully flicked one of his pigtails. "Looks like our little sissyboy has a spine."
"Yes, and it doesn't hurt like I thought it would," Richard replied. His skin did hurt a bit from the braces, but whatever. Leslie's safety and happiness were more important, and Susie was smiling at him, and that was worth everything.
Their unscored game continued. Hole #12 was a doozy, twice as long as all the others, and Hole #15 required careful finesse because they were on the side of a hill and if they had tossed one too far there, it would have just kept going. After #18, they finally crossed the bridge that Zoe had pointed out earlier, walking back to the car, which was still entirely alone in the parking lot. "I'm sorry, everybody," Caroline said, shaking her head.
Susie was confused even more than the rest of them. "Sorry for what?"
"For dragging you through all that distance." She pointed to Ricky's feet. "And for your shoes!"
"That was a lot of fun, Caroline!" Susie pointed out.
"Yeah, okay, my shoes are a mess, I don't care, maybe that's a boy thing. But it really was fun!" Richard replied.
"Seriously, stop beating yourself up," Zoe said. "Coming out here was a good choice. We're not saying that just to make you feel better."
"I want to come back here in a few months or so," Leslie quietly added.
"All right, I choose to believe you," Caroline said as they got to the car.
"Just one small thing," Richard said. "My socks and shoes aren't all that got dirty out there." The girls giggled, even Leslie. He'd gone #1 sometime around hole #10. "I don't want to do the whole lie back thing, it's all concrete out here."
He was just going to take his diaper off and replace it with his swimming trunks, but Leslie said something to Susie, who handed him a spare and a handful of wipes right away. "Here you go, Diaper Buddy," Susie told him, giggling, and how could he possibly refuse her?
"Be right back," he said, grabbing the stuff, running off to the same spot Caroline had been to, and changing himself into a fresh diaper without lying back on the solid concrete. He came back with the expectation of giggling, but instead he saw Leslie's legs hanging out of the car with Zoe in attendance, and at Caroline's insistence, he took off his socks and shoes and used his other boy clothes to wipe off his dirty feet before throwing them all back into his backpack.
"Shit, it's almost four already," Caroline said once they were done. "Where to?"
"A gas station for drinks, then the mall," Susie replied. "The same one we went to before. I need to get Ricky a pair of kneepads." The car, just beginning to move, jerked to an abrupt halt as Caroline could not possibly drive laughing that hard, and Zoe and Leslie were also laughing hysterically.
"OH MY fuc-kING GOD!" Zoe shouted. "Ricky. She actually means that, doesn't she. Oh my God. I'm sure it'll go with the rest of the stuff - no, I'm not asking! I'm not going to ask. Actually, wait, one question. Do you want to change back? Are you going to wear your muddy shoes in there with your pink stuff?" She was right, but Richard wanted to enjoy being pretty as long as he could.
"I have an idea," Leslie said as loudly as she could. "But, um... Susie, is it okay if I ask you to buy something for him?"
Susie's face screwed up a bit. "It depends, what is it?"
"I want to go over to Spectral Boutique again. I saw the perfect shoes for that outfit." Susie's worried expression became a smile.
Caroline grinned. "If that's what they want, that's where I'm driving."
"Let's go, then," Susie agreed.
"I'm just glad you're all having fun," Caroline said, and her tone of voice made it clear that she wasn't, despite having done well in their game.
Richard wondered if anger wasn't the only thing being caused by her PMS, and he opened his browser to search - and couldn't connect. There was cell service, but no data. "I can't browse the Internet, we must be in the boonies!" Richard shouted, half-seriously.
"The real boonies, you can't even get a signal," Caroline said.
"Yeah, I know."
"Would you like that, though?" Caroline asked mischievously. "To be all dressed up out in the real boonies?"
"As long as I had stuff that I could live on and the clothes were good for it, I would actually be okay with that," Richard replied. "It'd actually be better, I wouldn't have to worry about anyone seeing me."
"Get you a nice, big pioneer dress, then. The big Thanksgiving kind with the bonnet. Because women totally walked around the middle of nowhere wearing those."
"And then I could fix wagon tongues, hunt animals, drink bad water, get dysentery..." Richard joked, and they all laughed, and then it turned out that Leslie had read the ending of the last book of A Song of Ice and Fire, and the conversation continued until everyone got sick of the foul subject matter and they went back to talking about their favorite fanfics, and when they were finally back in range, Richard started looking up what was really wrong with Caroline. Ah, it wasn't just PMS, it was something called PMDD, and it was a lot more than just anger. He decided not to talk about it right away. It might just make her mood worse.
-
[3/4]
They got Slurpees instead of regular drinks, Richard keeping Leslie company in the car while the others went to the bathroom and Caroline accepting Susie's money this time, and the brain-freeze effect hit them all hard. They'd long since finished them when they got to the Spectral Boutique, and the girls giggled as he very gingerly stepped onto the concrete with his bare toes, carefully watching his steps and tiptoeing around like a little princess. The store had a couple of customers already inside, a pair of men roughly as gay as Franklin, and he recognized and greeted them before noticing what wasn't on Richard's feet.
"Um, I'd never thought I'd need a sign saying no shirt, no shoes, no service, but..." Franklin started awkwardly. His customers were usually appropriately dressed when they were buying things, despite the frequent inappropriateness of the things they were buying.
"That's what we're here to buy for him, though," Caroline said. "And socks."
"I know exactly what shoes match that outfit," he replied.
"So do I," Leslie added, and with Zoe's help, she walked with him to the shoe section, and Franklin and Leslie shared a laugh when it turned out that they were talking about the same pair.
Richard walked out of the Spectral Boutique in his new shoes with a big smile on his face. The socks he was wearing were almost a perfect match for his girly shirt, the hearts around the lightly frilled edges almost the same color, and his bright pink shoes with lavender laces were absolutely perfect, especially as both the two-inch heels and the front parts lit up in patterns every time he took a step, the little hearts flashing various shades of pink, the word 'Spectral' in lavender cursive on the sides. Other than the heels, they would have been perfect for a girl in first grade, and he completely loved them and wanted to go walking around in them, and they went to a mall where he could do exactly that.
The entirely soft, padded kneepads were very easy to find in the sporting goods store, and a few shoppers looked at the tall elementary school girl and disabled girl out with their friends. Susie picked them out for him, he knew they could be adjusted to fit him, and the clerk didn't even give Richard so much as a second glance as he rang up their purchase. Then Susie recalled that he also needed a headset, and he happily walked along to the game store, showing off his ribboned pigtails, pretty clothes, and light-up shoes to whoever cared to look. He wondered if anyone would ask how old he was, and he wondered what he should give as an answer, but no one said anything to them.
Thy browsed the game store for a bit, and Susie found a headset that she thought would work, but Richard whispered back, "No, not that kind. That has attached headphones. This one. 'Compatible with Bluetooth headphones.' The specs are better, too." Bent over and focused on the products, Richard had no idea that he was flashing the bottom of his diaper to the store clerks, one of which was staring and very much keeping his mouth shut; the other one was talking with Leslie, who was gushing about the JRPG she had bought there and nearly finished, although the clerk knew more about the secrets than she did.
Susie went up to the counter to pay, and the clerk was looking at Richard the whole time. "Hey, um, I know this is out of nowhere," the clerk awkwardly asked while ringing up the purchase, "but where do you like to go to hang out?"
The teenage clerk was four or five years older than Richard, but he saw right through his clumsy attempt at flirting anyway. "All over," Richard replied. "With my significant other," he decided on saying. He smiled, and the clerk clumsily apologized and handed Susie the bagged headset and receipt.
He overheard some of the conversation as they left. "Dave, you're such an idiot. That's a boy, and that's his girlfriend." A brief pause. "He was in here last week, you monkeytard!"
"I wasn't in here that day!"
"You seriously couldn't tell he's the kid we told you about, you must be the..." The conversation continued, but the group was out of earshot. Richard sighed inwardly. Confronting him in public? Not likely. Talking about him behind his back? Likely! He'd forgotten how much people enjoy doing that. He decided he didn't really care other than the fact that it made his friends giggle.
"Rolled the dice, took the chance," Caroline said, shrugging, and the other girls giggled louder.
"You need to start taking a tally," Zoe suggested half-seriously. "'Number of males I've fooled today.' I bet you could get to at least hundred a week if you hung out all day in a mall like this."
"God, Zoe, I'm not going to do that!" Richard replied, laughing a bit but actually a little offended. That wasn't the point, at least not for him, but he caught himself in a mental contradiction. Was he trying to fool people by dressing up like this in public? He loved being cute in public, but the problem was that the public was made out of people, and he still thought that getting a random male stranger - who was probably just as horny as he was - interested in him was really kind of a douchey thing to do, even when it wasn't dangerous. He realized that he was dressing for attention but didn't actually want it, at least not the wrong kind. "Besides, Susie, wouldn't you be jealous?"
"I don't care if you attract boys, just as long as you don't attract girls," Susie replied with an aristocratic air.
"But what if he attracts a girl pretending to be a boy?" Leslie wondered.
"Traps trapping traps trapping traps..." Richard muttered, and this time the group laughed.
"Or an actual transsexual that's has bottom surgery," Caroline said.
"Why does it matter how big her butt is?" Susie asked, confused. Leslie giggled, and Zoe and Caroline exploded in laughter, attracting even more attention. "Isn't that what 'bottom' means?" The laughter continued.
Richard wasn't going to let her be made fun of for too long. "It means 'bottom' as in 'lower body'," he explained quietly, making a scissoring motion with his fingers.
Susie frowned. "No, we're talking about turning girls into boys. Can people actually do that?"
"Oh my God, you are the most innocent... how can you be so innocent about this stuff?!" Caroline asked on their way out the mall door. "You're the one doing the whole... I thought you knew about all of this!"
"Caroline..." Richard started, sounding a bit whinier than he wanted to, looking up at her even despite his heels, and then looking around to make sure no one else could overhear. "Susie, they can kinda do it but it's not a real dic-k, they take skin from off the arm or leg, and I've seen the video on Bitchute and you really don't want to see the video." He turned to Caroline. "Okay? Can we please stop?"
"Stopping," Caroline said. "But speaking of traps, I'm really curious what kind of world she's going to trap you in with that and maybe those," she said, pointing to the bags.
Susie reclaimed her arrogant, aristocratic air immediately. "I told you before, that is all between us. Although I do wish there were an interactive world for boys like him." She'd searched for something appropriate in that vein, but all she found was just banal, tawdry pornography videos. Richard nodded, although he much preferred modded AAA games than the low-quality, amateur, boring, and often unfinished games that were usually made for his circle of fetishes, particularly since basically none of them were in 3D at all and many were in text, and in his opinion, anyone could just write stuff. (He briefly wondered if his own life would make a good story but decided that there wasn't anyone lame enough to write it - and who the hell would ever want to read it?)
"Make a pitch to Valve," Zoe suggested. "Capture the VR sissy market, you'll make a killing." It took them a bit to realize she was joking, and they got in the car as usual, doing the same tiring ritual to get Leslie out of her wheelchair and into the seat.
"Everyone, I'm sorry you're not getting any private time today, and I'm really sorry I'm being a total bitch," Caroline said once they were all inside. "I hope you're not pissed at me."
"Caroline, it's fine," Richard said immediately. "It's what I was looking up, it's called PMDD, it's not just anger, you have anxiety too."
"Shit. You're right. I'm not even sure if I should drive like this." Caroline sighed. "I'll just be careful, thanks for telling me. I'll get Leslie home first, and Susie, your dad's going to be here how long?"
"He'll be here early tomorrow morning, leaving in the afternoon Wednesday next week," Susie replied. "And Caroline, it really is okay, it's just hormones and stuff, we had a lot of fun, you never did anything bad." She smiled. "I'm more worried about Ricky. He's going to have to go a whole week without me," she said very femininely, and Leslie giggled.
"And here I thought I wasn't ever going to be tortured," Richard replied wistfully. Spankings, housework, and being dressed up like an elementary school girl in light-up sneakers were all fine; being without her was something he wished he could safeword out of.
"I'm sure you can make it a whole week," Susie replied with a wink in her voice, and only Richard got the full meaning of what she was talking about.
-
[4/4]
Zoe got a text from her mother asking where she was and when she'd get home; she answered with general honesty, saying that they had been frolfing and were just leaving the downtown mall to drop off Leslie first and that Caroline would be dropping them off soon.
"Hey Zoe, switch with me," Richard said once they had gotten Leslie out of the car, and Zoe knew exactly why. Now that Leslie was out, Richard had no reason to be in the front seat, not when Susie was back there, and he didn't care about showing himself because everyone in Leslie's household knew about him anyway. He swapped seats with his sister, and Susie took the middle back seat. She wanted to be pressed next to him, and, smiling, she had her hand under his skirtall, playing with his diaper, their mouths interlocked, even before Caroline had pulled out of the driveway.
"These windows aren't tinted," Caroline pointed out as the two lovers were engaged in a snogging session. Even Zoe and Leslie had never done that in a moving car. (Zoe was starting to wonder if maybe they should have.)
Richard was in too good of a mood to care. He took his mouth off his girlfriend's just long enough to tell Caroline, "fuc-k 'em! Let them all think we're lesbians. They don't like it, they can stop staring into people's cars!" Susie giggled, and the two resumed their clothed, seatbelted lovemaking.
Zoe considered her words carefully. "I never thought that my brother had a such very good sense of the important things in life," she decided on.
"Destroy the enemy and fuc-k the women. Total masculine paragon back there," Caroline replied flippantly, and Richard and Susie laughed while their tongues were in each other's mouths. "Straight up serious, the combination of traits that he has? I never thought I'd see a boy like that. I am not even kidding. Zoe, your brother is unique."
"Yeah, I know." She spoke more quietly, but Richard and Susie could still hear her, despite their divided attention. "I didn't even know more than half of them until last week. I still feel like a bad big sister for that."
"Yeah, well, your mom won't feel much better when she finds out," Caroline replied. Abruptly, she honked her horn. "LIGHT'S GREEN, ASSHOLE! Anyway... sorry. Anyway, I'm just glad your mom found out about his dangerous side first. Means she's waaaay less likely to pull shit."
Zoe chuckled and formulated how she was going to say it. She decided to imitate Susie. "Caroline, you are not the only person in this car to have had such a thought," she said aristocratically.
"This car has a one princess rule," Caroline replied. "If the two of you want to compete, give me time to set up a betting station."
"Well, if we're judging by clothes, we already have our winner," Zoe replied, gesturing with a thumb to Richard, and Caroline pfffted in laughter, and her laughter was infectious to all of them.
Susie broke off their kissing, shaking her head. "We can't even... never mind, it's your car, sorry, Caroline. You have the right to be distracting and funny."
"I also have the right to be a bitch, and that's a right I've been making a bit too much use of today," Caroline added, as Zoe responded to another text from her mother, telling her that they just dropped Leslie off and that she could start making dinner if she wanted. "All right, we're going to go to Susie's house so Ricky can change, then... wait, she doesn't have any GPS tracking shit on your phones, does she?" Caroline asked, and Zoe just stared at her from the passenger seat, hoping that she'd figure this one out on her own.
"Caroline, who does computer shit, us or our mom?" Richard replied, bewildered that she would ask such a thing.
"Oh fuuuuck I am not thinking straight," Caroline said, not rolling her eyes too hard because she was driving. "Sorry! Mega brainfart. I hope you guys never see me like this again."
"Part of the condition makes you make a really big deal out of the condition," Richard reminded her. He'd had similar thoughts about himself. Finally being able to do what he wanted with who he wanted removed most of his anxieties, giving him the perspective to look back at his old self and recognize what he had been doing.
"Right. Note to self, drink a massive pot of chamomile tea next month. And make sure I'm somewhere with a working bathroom."
Not wanting to be distracted again from something deeper, Richard and Susie just held each other on the way to her house. Once Caroline parked, they ran out opposite doors, she unlocked the house rapidly, and the two of them embraced deeply once they were in, kissing passionately once again as Whiskers walked around them, his tail tickling their legs. Richard sighed even as they embraced. God, fuc-k, a week without her. He didn't want to let go, but he knew he had to, his mother was waiting for him. Once he did, he changed clothes as fast as he could, throwing his girly stuff into the backpack, not caring that his shoes and socks were still soggy - he'd wiped his feet on his other clothes and the dirt on his socks and shoes had spread as well, but he didn't care, boys were supposed to be dirty - and running out the door to jump in the car.
"I'll deal with the backpack," Zoe said. "You'll get Mom's full attention like that, believe me."
"I'm not worried," he replied. "I'll just tell her the truth about how I got dirty."
Zoe understood the plan, and it worked perfectly. His mother, predictably, asked him why he was filthy while Zoe was not. He, equally predictably, told her the general truth: that he had been out frolfing and that the reason he was so dirty was that he had carried Leslie across a muddy creek. His mother continued the predictability by telling him to go take a shower and change his clothes before he sat down at the dinner table, and he did just that, and he came back just as his mother and sister were distributing the food on the table. Normal, predictable family dinner.
As they sat down to eat together, Heather decided to begin the conversation she'd planned on having. "The two of you should be pleased to know that one of your cousins you despise so much will be gone for a while," she told them, and Richard wondered how anyone was going to go traveling for a gap year when most international travel was blocked. "Michael's father is sending him to residential treatment."
Richard felt something inside him give way, like a muddy cliff sloughing off into a river.
'So much for a predictable family dinner,' he barely had time to think before his entire mental process slid into a very familiar, very goal-oriented, very ruthless pattern. Of course it would never happen to him, nothing like that would ever happen to him, but the people he knew, even the people he didn't like, were apparently fair game. Richard didn't do anything theatric like drop his fork or spill his drink; he finished his bite without spitting or choking. But he couldn't stop it from coming on, the fury, the dissociation, the raw, burning, electrified connection to something deep within him that was not quite himself. He stiffened immediately, and his mother saw that look again, that desire to destroy. He immediately began formulating a plan. The most likely thing was that his uncle had no idea what he was getting into, that he just plain old didn't know that he was about to send his son to a genuine, certified hellhole.
"Finish your dinner, and then we can talk about what you're going to do," his mother told him, very carefully, as if she were talking to a live grenade. Zoe looked at him abruptly, and she realized he was doing that thing again. For her cousin, who was a disgusting, creepy loser and probably an incel to boot! What the hell?!
"I'm just going to look stuff up and show it to you, and him too, that's all," Richard said immediately. 'At first', he didn't add. This was Plan A. Plan B was to anonymously destroy his uncle's career - whatever it was - so he couldn't afford to pay for it. Plans C through Z would be worse. "Did he tell you the name of the place?"
She answered, and he didn't recognize the name, but it sounded exactly like the sort of place he was worried about. After he was done what he needed to do, he didn't even want to remember it anyway. He did finish his dinner like his mother asked - quickly and quietly, consciously chewing every bite - and then he dealt with his dirty dishes and went to his room.
"Ricky, why are you freaking out about something that's happening to my cousin?" Zoe asked him on the stairs, completely weirded out.
"Because I can't let evil win, Zoe," he replied.
Compared to password guessing and social network tracing, this was a breeze. Search engines - he didn't use just one - did most of the hard work for him. He couldn't believe how easily he remembered the names of the websites he went to, despite them being long deleted out of his browser history. He saw the same forum topics, the same screenshots, the same articles, still all preserved from the first time he'd dived down this particular rabbit hole, one of his first forays into disturbing material, and his very first, fumbling searches as a dark neophyte had pulled down both fictional and real descriptions of child torture, a wonderful and wholesome experience for a boy who had just turned twelve. This particular place was new, with a fancy website promising rehabilitation and family connection, but it proudly put the names of everyone involved on its website, and a few searches of their names showed what those people were really about.
Hell, even the marketing material - the basic marketing material, sent to the parents by the place itself! - had so many giant red flags it made Richard think of some of the worst fantasies he'd seen. Extremely limited contact with parents. A level system with rewards and poorly defined punishments. Deprivation of every sort. A break-them-down, build-them-up attitude that was guaranteed to cause lifelong trauma. Forced marches in the middle of nowhere, gussied up with different words. If he didn't know better, he'd say that this was all a sick prank, that the 'transporters' would show up at his uncle's house and proceed to play Rick Astley's most infamous hit at max volume with the lyrics rewritten into 'You went and tried to send your kid, send him off to be tortured...' But no. The world wasn't that nice.
He still had to go digging, and he really, really didn't want to read the detailed descriptions of absolute mental and occasionally physical abuse, but it wasn't for him to read and he could skim it. Ah, there, a main director of this new place was described by a woman - then a teen girl - on a forum as being sexually abusive at a since-closed facility, that was a good one to add. Another employee... wait, was that an actual criminal record? Throw that in, too. Holy shit, that person had been sued successfully, that goes in there too. Acc-umulating and connecting the direct evidence took him all of half an hour, a bit less than half of which was spent collating screenshots together to provide a clear, unbroken chain. Done. He realized that he'd deleted the old emails his uncle Martin used to send him - bad move, but how was he to know when he was eleven? - and got Martin's email addresses, and then those of Martin's wife and son, from his mother. Richard would have acquired them even if Heather didn't give them to him, and both of them knew it.
He thought for a while as to what to say in the email and just decided to say nothing at all. The screenshots - more than a dozen of them, some made into combined images - entirely spoke for themselves. His uncle got the To line, the wife and son got CCs, and he decided to CC his mother as well, as he figured she deserved to know what the hell he was doing. He then sent a copy of the email to Zoe, with an explicit warning not to read it unless she really wanted to know what the fuc-k he was trying to save such an awful person from.
Zoe was at his door three minutes later. "It's that shit. It's that conversion therapy gulag shit. You should have just said it was that."
"It's similar," Richard agreed. "I thought you knew what the words 'residential treatment' usually meant."
"I do now. fuc-k, Ricky." Her thoughts were a complicated mix of relief and frustrated anger at herself. Sure, she hated her cousin like poison, but there was shit she shouldn't let happen even to the people she hated. Fortunately, her brother had come through. Again. Two for two.
"I thought it was a psychiatric facility," Heather said from the hall, passing Zoe while stepping into her son's room. "Richard, I'm not angry with you, but I need you to tell me the whole truth right now. When did you start learning about this sort of thing? Why do you know so much about it?" She knew her son was a computer genius, but she knew that there was no way - absolutely no way - he could have compiled such things so quickly unless he was extremely familiar with the material.
Richard got up from his chair and went up to his mother to speak quietly. "Last year, just because it was the kind of stuff I wasn't supposed to be looking at," he confessed. "It was all just morbid curiosity."
"A fascination for the macabre," Zoe added, pronouncing 'macabre' perfectly.
"Yeah, pretty much that. I just couldn't stop looking at stuff like that. But I did stop, Mom, I don't look at it anymore unless I have to." There was a bit of accusation with the last two words, but it wasn't at her. It was, after all, his mother's brother who had caused Richard to go back down into that pit.
Heather sighed. No wonder her son was so high level. He'd gone to the Abyss. "Well, I certainly don't think Michael will be going to that place now," she said. She shook her head. "The things we do to each other. The things we do to ourselves." Neither of her children knew quite what she meant. Abruptly, she hugged him so quickly that he didn't even realize what was going on until she was already in her arms. "You're too good, Richard," she said, and he could hear the tears. "I'm so glad you're such a good boy." Richard blinked in shock, not sure what had brought that on. Oh, right. He'd just sent his mother extremely vivid descriptions of real world child abuse. That might have done it. She released the hug and started hugging his sister instead. "You two go to bed on time, and you have a wonderful day tomorrow."
The thing that had shook her the most about the material Richard had sent her, beyond anything else, was the disconnect between parents and children, that the parents were willing to believe someone who was effectively a random stranger, having no contact with their own children for months and months. How bad did a child have to be before that was even considered, she knew Michael wasn't that awful! And the money, the cost! What on Earth had her brother been thinking? She was brooding on the subject in the middle of Candy Crush when, half an hour later, she got an angry, short text from Martin to check her email.
---
Heather, I don't know what possessed you to acc-umulate this material nor why it was sent from your son. You did tremendous damage to us. HE WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE TOLD HE WAS GOING. I told the treatment center and now THEY ARE NO LONGER WILLING TO TAKE HIM because the well has been poisoned. Now my wife thinks I am the devil and my son said he wants to see me dead. So thanks for that. Needless to say, I don't think you'll be attending another wedding of anyone we know. Consider this a goodbye.
Martin.
P.S. I don't believe that a 13 year old could do that, but my wife does. If it was him, you need to get that boy under control right now.
---
Of course, she would do no such thing. Instead, she called her son in to read it, and his sister followed. Perhaps they could make more sense of it than she could. Not telling Michael that he was going away for months? What sort of bizarre idea was that?
"He's crazy, Mom," Zoe said upon reading it. "I know, he's my uncle, but he's crazy."
"I wouldn't even reply to him, Mom," Richard said. "He's totally coco-nuts." The plan hadn't succeeded the way he wanted, and he was very surprised that a place like that wouldn't even want a kid anymore because he was simply informed - he wondered whether something else was going on, but he didn't care. This was still a major win in his book, in fact a double win - neither he nor his sister wanted to want to talk to that branch of the family again anyway. Richard had prevented horrifically evil things from happening to someone he detested. Was that heroism? He didn't know and didn't care. His monster sense wasn't tingling anymore, and he just wanted to relax.
"Just go do whatever," Heather told her children with a sigh. "I'll deal with your crazy uncle." She shook her head, admitting to herself that her older brother had always been kind of a prick, even when she was little, but he was still family and she didn't want to think ill of him.
Richard went back to his room and checked his own email just in case the man had sent him something. His uncle hadn't, but he got something from Michael, an email that had obviously been heavily coached, sentence by sentence, by Michael's mother.
---
Mom says I should thank you, so thank you. I don't know what else to say to you. You prevented me from being sent somewhere bad. People would have come to take me away if you didn't do that. Thank you very much.
Sincerely, Michael
---
Richard reminded himself that he wasn't actually talking to a small child - a lot of disturbing concepts were at play when he thought that - and his reply was terse. He knew he could have said more, but he was creeped out and way too tired and didn't want to communicate with this douchebag any more than he absolutely had to.
---
I just wanted to stop evil from happening. Now stop lusting after my sister.
---
After he sent it, he suddenly realized that he might have gotten Michael in even more trouble - his mother had obviously been looking over his shoulder! - but he got back a reply much sooner than he expected, and this one was not coached at all, nor was it even remotely checked for spelling and grammar.
---
she had fuc-king fetish customes, , why was she dressing like that for, if she don't want people stearing at her then shouldn't dress up to get steared at, you were there you saw her a whore, maybe next time shell think first and be stupid later
you did get my whole ass dad almost a heart attack though so thanx for real
>I just wanted to stop evil from happening. Now stop lusting after my sister.
---
Richard shook his head. It really disturbed him that there were actually people this stupid in his family, and this jackass apparently had no idea what the hell he'd just avoided. ('The well had been poisoned, my ass. He still doesn't know even after I told him!') There were so very, very many things that Richard could have replied to him with, but he decided not to bother. He considered forwarding that last one to his mother, to drive home a point, but that wouldn't have helped anything and he really didn't want to deal with that shit just then, or ever. Instead, he forwarded it to his sister because she deserved to know, but Zoe didn't do anything with it either. It was disgusting and it would just make her mom feel like crap. She filed it away as ammunition if she ever needed to use it.
Richard flopped onto the bed in his T-shirt and loose shorts, lights off, staring at the ceiling until he fell asleep, his computer's monitor on until it went into sleep mode, swearing to himself. It had been a very long and tiring day. Enjoying dressing like a little girl was the very least of the weird shit in his life. He was thirteen years old and didn't want to deal with evil crap anymore. He didn't want to talk to crazy people. He didn't want crazy people in his family nor his life. He didn't want to have to explain bizarre and evil shit to his mother. He didn't want to have to bring out that anti-monster shit again. He wished that Caroline's PMDD-induced bad mood would have been the worst thing he'd had to deal with that day. He realized that he was being selfish - he had enjoyed a mostly fun day and he knew from the different emails that his cousin's family was in chaos - but he was completely exhausted and felt like he really needed to catch a break.
Except he was getting a break from Susie, which was no break at all.
Zoe told the Squad about what Richard had done, but he was already asleep.
-
Jacqueline, Richard had fun on his outing with the squad. Then when Richard got home, he learned that Michael's father was going to send him to a residential treatment center. Richard did his magic with the computer and saved Michael from a horrendous fate. Great chapters as usual. Keep them coming. :)
-
[This chapter starts ugly but ends happily.]
[1/4]
"Well, there she goes," Zoe said as Heather left for work. She smiled at her brother. She'd been meaning to spend time with him, and as Susie's father was home and Caroline wasn't driving anyone anywhere that day, she figured it was the perfect chance. "So. How am I going to be dressing my little sissy up today?"
"I don't feel like it," Richard replied morosely, intending to just spend the day in his T-shirt and boxers like a regular boy. Thinking about spending so much time without Susie didn't put him a good mood. Without her around, dressing up just felt like a big waste of time, like half the equation was missing, like he was going back to the lame part of a game after having enjoyed so much of the fun part.
"Seriously?" Zoe asked, disappointed, and he nodded. Of course, she knew what his mood was about, but she didn't want to push him, and his spirits needed lightening. "You want to play a game, then? Do that Archon thing again, teach me some more? It beats sulking for a week."
Richard let himself smile. His sister had a point. He couldn't spend the whole week moping; that really was a painful waste of time, and his princess would be angry with him if he did. "You know what, yeah, let's do that."
They ran through a 1v1 against an Elite opponent together, talking through the open doors, Richard telling his sister what to do when and in what context, trying to get across the casual, easy familiarity that he had. He realized that just telling her what to do wasn't enough. He was learning how to teach.
They were in the later part of the middlegame when there was a knock on the door, a sharp, fast, irregular knock that Richard did not like at all. They could have paused the game, but Richard said, "I'll get it, you can finish this yourself." Something was very wrong, and, without thinking through it, he intuitively decided that he did not want his sister talking to whoever was at the door. He silently crept downstairs and peered through the peephole. Nobody. "Hello?" he asked. "Who's there?" Nobody answered. He looked through the windows and saw nobody. He really didn't like this.
Their front door had what their mother called the full monty: latch, deadbolt, chain. Heather had locked both latch and deadbolt on her way to work, and Richard was never happier for that fact. He didn't want to open that door at all unarmed. Getting a three-inch knife from the kitchen, he applied the chain to the door and unlocked it, then opened the door as far as the chain would go. He intended to yell again, but abruptly, an envelope fell from the inside of the door and hit the concrete. 'What the hell?' Looking carefully, listening for the sound of someone breathing, Richard reached his unarmed hand through the door and snatched the envelope in one quick motion, then he slammed the door shut and locked both latch and deadbolt. Abruptly, he dropped the envelope, suddenly certain that he shouldn't be touching it with his bare hands. He retrieved a pair of rubber gloves from the kitchen, and used the knife to very carefully cut open the envelope, emptying the contents onto the living room table.
He had almost expected what was in there. Pictures, of him skipping the neighborhood in his jingling dress, taken from various angles, one from an elevated position and one very uncomfortably close to his house. And a note, printed in Comic Sans, alongside a picture of a location he'd skipped past.
---
You are so unbelievably cute!!! I really appreciate you sharing your cuteness with the whole world. I would like to see some more of you! Meet me at this spot at 11 tomorrow and I will $$$reward$$$ you just for showing up!
Of course, if you don't share your cuteness with me, I will just have to share your cute little secret with the whole world, too! Don't worry, I really don't want to hurt you, so you have nothing to worry about when you do come!
Looking forward to seeing you there, cutie! But come by yourself or you'll be in BIG TROUBLE!
---
Other thirteen year olds would have been intimidated, deeply creeped out, and probably terrified. Richard was offended that whatever psychotic retard had left that there obviously had no idea who the hell he was dealing with. He was also angry with himself for not seeing photos being taken of him, and he was extraordinarily pissed off and frustrated at having to deal with shit like this yet again. First Leslie, then his cousin, and now the monsters of the world had finally come to literally knock on his door. He was just glad that this guy hadn't done this yesterday. If this had happened when he wasn't home, and then his mom had come home to see this stuffed in the door, things would have been very ugly indeed.
"You're actually going to try to blackmail me," he quietly said to the empty room. "ME." He felt like he was playing Fallout 4, wearing modded dress-armor while a ghoul was rushing him from a hundred yards away, consulting his modded, bright pink Pip-Boy and deciding which overpowered weapon to kill it with.
The first, of course, was to send it all straight to the police. He didn't doubt that they could and would find and arrest this dipshit in short order, and he vengefully wished for a very large, very sadistic cop with a very heavy knee. The problem there was that they might involve his mother, and that was an awkward conversation he really didn't want to have.
The second was to pretend to agree and then get Caroline's PTSD veteran crew to ambush him. He was fairly sure that 'Wanna go kill a pedo?' was something that such people would actually be down for. The man might be armed, though, although Caroline's buddies would surely also be, but... no, bad idea, as were similar things such as burning his house down. It wasn't that he had any moral compunctions about doing such things - this monster had thought he was blackmailing an innocent child instead of the Sith apprentice he actually got, he deserved an excruciating death at the very least - but Richard didn't want to get himself or his friends in trouble.
The third was the thing in the darkness, but he already knew what it would say: that he could handle this himself. This required merely apprentice-level Sithery for which he didn't need to call up his master.
The fourth was the nuclear option of telling the entire Internet himself, taking pictures of all of it with his phone and posting the entirety somewhere like Tumblr. If he really wanted, he could do even worse: send it all to every single news organization and law enforcement agency he could possibly contact. This would basically guarantee the end result he wanted, but it wasn't good either. If he wanted to act indirectly, he had access to computer proxies; he didn't need to use meat ones. Besides, the asshole already had his home address - giving him any time to react was a bad move. The after-effects of being widely known as a sissy boy were less important, but this one was just sending it to the cops, only with extra, negative steps.
The fifth was counter-blackmail, 'Surprise, you just sent me evidence on yourself', but that would have required this guy to suffer an outbreak of sanity and could lead to very bad outcomes. It was a dumb fantasy and Richard forced it out of his mind as stupid kiddie shit that he was too old to consider.
The sixth was to break into the guy's wi-fi and sniff his packets. Richard discounted this idea as well. How could he anonymously tell the FBI the guy had child porn - which he probably did - and have them react as quickly as he'd need, even if he could pull it off?
Richard realized that he was totally overthinking this. He really didn't need to get incriminating evidence to smash whoever this was. Few things were more self-incriminating than what he'd just left at Richard's house! Leaving physical evidence that he was attempting to blackmail a child?! That was basically handing Richard an axe and laying his own neck out on the chopping block. Best just to chop.
Wait a minute - if this jackass had been following him, then he also probably knew where Susie lived! Who knew what about himself wasn't even remotely important - this guy had to be chopped, no mercy, no hesitation, as quickly as possible and at any cost!
"You were right, I could finish that myself. So who was it?" his sister asked right after he made his decision.
"Some asshole's trying to blackmail me," Richard replied casually.
"Seriously?!" Adrenaline rushing, she rushed downstairs to look at the pictures and the note.
"Yeah, wasn't sure how to handle it," Richard admitted. "I'm giving it to the cops."
"Let's ask Leslie's parents what to do," she suggested instead, pulling out her phone.
Richard facepalmed at his own stupidity. "Oh, right, cripes, I forgot!" Robert was a more experienced wielder of that particular axe.
Zoe laughed, glad to have something to laugh at. "Yeah, Ricky, you forgot that the parents of your sister's girlfriend are experts in this kind of thing and you don't need to do everything yourself." She chuckled lightly and speed-dialed. "Oh, hey, Robert. Yeah, somebody took pictures of Ricky in one of his dresses and left them here with a really stupid blackmail note." Richard didn't hear the man's response, but it made Zoe laugh and he could guess what it was. "I know, right?! Can you or Willa help with this?" Another response. "Yeah, right now's perfect." Zoe smiled at the response. "Cool, thanks a lot." She hung up. "Get this, he actually goes to people's houses sometimes, and stuff like this counts as part of his job."
"He's coming now?"
"Yup, fifteen minutes. So, have you found out who's blackmailing you yet?" She was only half joking with the question. Her adrenaline was dwindling, as she knew that Robert had been right: the guy had definitely chosen the wrong kid to try that on.
"I'm about to," Richard replied, pointing at the picture taken from a high angle. That one had to have been taken from someone's house, which was almost certainly the asshole's or the house of someone he knew. With Zoe's help and a bit of mapping and triangulation later - he determined exactly which house it was, and they were in the middle of looking him up with free resources when another knock came at the door, this one much more polite.
Zoe peered through the peephole and opened the door. "Hey, Robert. We found out what house he took one of the pictures from, we're trying to find out who lives there."
Robert stepped in the door, and Richard was once again surprised by just how much he looked like Gordon Freeman. 'Forget the axe, this asshole's getting smashed with a crowbar.' "That's good. Did you search the sex offender registry?" Robert asked.
Richard perked up. "No, crap, I didn't even think about that." Lo and behold, searching found a sex offender with the same address that Richard and his sister had triangulated, and Richard laughed. "He really was dumb enough to take that from his own house! While on the sex offender list! Oh my God, what a dumbass!" A grotesque, out-of-shape dumbass who apparently liked to perform Gross Sexual Imposition on twelve-year-old girls and would have certainly done the same or worse to him, given the chance.
"Smart people usually aren't in the business of blackmailing children," Robert replied, looking at all the pictures and the note, exhaling a bit. "Honestly, this is one-and-done, I don't need more than what's right here." The police could get other people's doorbell camera recordings, but they wouldn't even need those. "I know who this is. He's on parole, they let him out because of COVID. Hundred percent, he's going straight back to prison, and he's probably not getting out until you're well over 18. Unless something goes awry, your involvement is no longer necessary and we won't have to get your mother involved either. The investigation'll be on him, not you. I'm still glad you came to me." There was some victim-contact procedures that Robert could make not happen, making sure that neither Richard nor his mother would be automatically called. "Let's pack this all up and I'll give it to who needs to get it."
"Be careful, fingerprints," Richard said, putting his gloves back on to handle the material.
"I wouldn't worry about fingerprints at this point. By the way, I know you like going out like that, and I know, it's your right, it's a free country and a nice neighborhood, but don't do that alone."
"I'm really obviously bait, and my phone is right there," Richard replied, pointing to his purse in the high-angle picture.
"Yeah, well, as I'm sure you've noticed, some people take obvious bait, and when seconds count, the police are minutes away. I'm not saying don't do it. I'm just saying don't do it by yourself, makes you much less of a target."
Richard nodded in acquiescence. This was the guy's job, and he had a point. "Yeah, you're right. Hey, thanks a lot, Robert."
"Pfft. After what you did last week? This isn't even a fraction of that." He got up, taking the envelope with him. "By the way, I don't think he has friends, but if you see anyone else creeping around here, you call the police, or me, somebody."
"We will," Zoe promised him.
"Also..." He sighed. "Your mother is going to find out about you sooner or later, especially if you're doing things like this. You can't keep this from her indefinitely, and it's really better if you tell her in a calm environment. If you want me to be there when you tell her, just ask."
"I just want later and not sooner," Richard replied.
Zoe wasn't in the mood to consider telling secrets, because she figured that once his was out, hers would be as well. "You've got a point, but... for now, just get rid of this guy, please?" Brother and sister had a unified attitude: they just wanted to be done with things like this.
Robert nodded. "All right. You two be safe. I'm not going to try to tell teenagers to properly keep masks on outside, but try not to get within spitting or sneezing distance of anybody you don't know. For multiple reasons." He waved and left, his next stop being the police station, where he and the sex crimes unit's supervisor were on a first-name basis.
[11:20 AM] Zoe: Well, that was fast lol
[11:21 AM] Zoe: Some pedo tried to blackmail Ricky by leaving pictures of him in a dress and a crazy note.
"Hey, Zoe?" Richard asked as he put the knife and gloves away. "Do you think there's any chance of that guy actually having friends to come here?"
"If Robert says he doesn't think it'll happen, it really won't happen, he's super cautious," Zoe replied. She severely doubted that anyone who looked like that freak had very many friends at all, let alone anyone that would help blackmail teenagers. "He'd want Leslie always wearing a mask if she could breathe through it okay."
"Then can we just pretend that didn't happen and go back to what we were doing? I want to see the replay." Zoe heard the deep frustration, the sick-of-it-all, in her brother's voice.
She reached out to run her fingers through his long hair, and he did not pull away. "Sure thing, little bro." They went to her room and replayed the first part on regular speed to focus on early game micro, and Zoe briefly looked down at her phone long enough to type replies as his brother sat on her bed, occasionally pointing things out.
[11:25 AM] Caroline: so what happened to the pedo
[11:26 AM] Zoe: Leslie's dad came over and the guy's going to jail
[11:28 AM] Caroline: the guy should thank his lucky stars tbh
[11:28 AM] Zoe: IKR! lmfao
Zoe actually did laugh and looked back at the screen. Richard explained some more stuff, about units and what the computer was probably doing and what a player would do, doing a very good job of acting like they hadn't just shut down a blackmail attempt.
[11:31 AM] Zoe: Leslie's dad also said that Ricky shouldn't go out there by himself dressed like that.
[11:33 AM] Leslie: Oh wow. Yeah that guy made a big mistake LOL
[11:34 AM] Leslie: Dad's always cautious about stuff like that. It's good advice.
[11:34 AM] Leslie: Even for you, Ricky!
[11:35 AM] Richard: Yeah, he's probably right. I thought I was too obviously bait. Some people just take it anyway. Guess I'll just have to wear boy clothes to Susie's house :(
They sped up the replay some.
[11:41 AM] Susie: Or you just need someone to walk with you instead, sissy boy :heart:
Hearing from Susie, even in text, was exactly what Richard needed just then, and he perked up immediately.
[11:41 AM] Leslie: LOL yeah, or that
[11:42 AM] Richard: Yes please :) Surprised you're on, you're out with your dad?
[11:43 AM] Susie: At the grocery store. He's surprised half the people aren't wearing masks.
[11:43 AM] Richard: Is he at risk?
Susie didn't reply right away, and the replay ended shortly thereafter. Richard exhaled deeply, laying back on Zoe's bed, feeling a mix of emotions, the strongest being that he was missing out on something. "You know, actually... do you want to dress me up?"
She got out of the chair and looked down at him, smiling. "Not just that. I want to treat you just like my sweet little sister," she said with a small, swift pointing motion.
"Okay," Richard said without any hesitation.
"All right, little sissy. Take off all your clothes, turn around, and close your eyes. I've got a surprise for you." He looked a little concerned, and she gently tapped his nose. "Your big sister isn't going to do anything bad to you."
-
[2/4]
He exhaled again. Of course he trusted her, and he had to remind himself of that. He did as she told him, and as he was taking off his shirt and boxer shorts, she was rummaging in her closet. "Lift up your arms," he heard from behind him, an instruction that he completely expected, and once he did, he felt a shirt go over him. "Left leg, then right leg," she instructed him, and he felt her pull up what felt almost like ordinary boys' underwear on him. Then Zoe snapped something elastic, with a lot of fabric hanging from it, around his waist and ran a pair of straps over his shoulders. "Okay, you can look now," she said, and he heard the giggle in her voice.
Richard looked down and saw a lot of yellow. He could read upside down fairly well, and he saw the brightly colored pink words "Little Miss Sunshine" with a picture of a smiling sun. His legs were covered by a full yellow skirt that reached to just above his knee. With Zoe giggling, he pushed up the full skirt and bent over, looking at what she had put under the skirt. "What the heck?"
"Mom called them modesty panties," Zoe said.
"More like granny panties!"
"Yeah, pretty much. But perfect for you when you're not wearing diapers, means your dic-k won't fall out," she said with a giggle. "So, tell me the truth. Do you like the outfit?"
"I really do like it," he replied. He'd tricked her into putting him in that first dress, gone out in public in all kinds of dresses afterwards, even been put in ribbon-tied baby bondage that one time. Somehow, just telling her that he really did like wearing this childish outfit felt like another step. "The only thing I don't like is the straps." They were digging into his shoulders, and he pushed them off to let them hang down.
"Actually, it looks better that way, and they make convenient handles," Zoe determined.
Richard blushed a bit, looking down, but he didn't argue. He could trust his sister, so he didn't mind her holding on to him. It wasn't a sexual thing, not with her. It was just comforting being led, letting his big sister make decisions for him, knowing that she really did have his well-being in mind. He just wanted to know one thing. "Where did you even get this?"
"Mom bought it secondhand when I was eleven, it's been sitting in the back of my closet forever. I swear, I was so relieved when I showed her it didn't fit. She told me to hold onto it, I'd grow into it! She forgot about it first, I forgot about it for a while too. But it looks like its new owner can really appreciate being Little Miss Sunshine." She smiled. "I think I'm going to keep calling you that today. You don't mind, do you, Sunshine?" Smiling in return, he shook his head, and Zoe was abruptly reminded of a less pleasant experience.
When he was nine and she was ten, she'd tried to give him a cutesy name, just for fun. He'd dripped half-melted ice cream onto himself, and she started calling him Sticky Ricky. He'd taken it very badly: he immediately went upstairs to wash himself off, then he retreated to his room, blocking the door, not even finishing the rest of the bowl. She'd kept calling him that through the door, and Heather had told her, very firmly (and hypocritically, in Zoe's opinion), to stop it before telling Richard to come downstairs and finish his ice cream before Zoe ate it. Instead, in total silence and pure spite, he had gone back down, washed out the bowl, flushing the ice cream down the sink in the process, then gone back upstairs. His mother, shocked at the waste and at his reaction, had told him that he wasn't getting any dessert or sweet snacks for a week, and he hadn't seemed to care.
Richard hadn't said a single word to his sister (and not much to his mother) for that whole week and a good while thereafter, and she'd thought of him as an overreacting spoilsport who couldn't take a joke. Zoe, at fourteen, mentally thanked her mother for quickly putting an end to it and kicked herself for having been a stupid brat. If he'd had any inclinations towards showing her his softer side back then, she'd helped to force them down instead of bring them out. If she'd been nicer to him, she probably could have been doing this with him years ago, and she still intended to make up for lost time.
The chat was still going:
[11:50 AM] Susie: Actually he's had antibodies for a month.
[11:52 AM] Susie: He wants to meet you all at the YMCA with Leslie on Friday.
[11:55 AM] Caroline: oh shit ricky is that wedding bells or a funeral dirge i hear?
[11:56 AM] Leslie: LMFAO
[11:57 AM] Zoe: *searches ebay for pink coffins*
[11:57 AM] Leslie: OMFG LMFAO
[11:58 AM] Richard: Et tu, Zoe?!
Zoe giggled when reading his reply, and he chuckled. At least he wouldn't actually have to go a whole week without Susie, even if sex wasn't part of the itinerary. "Well, that's definitely going to be fun. But for now, Sunshine, phone down. I know you've been trying, but today, you're going to get your hair braiding skills up. It just takes practice."
They practiced for a while. She showed him different braiding styles, ways that hair could be intertwined even if she knew that he wasn't ready for them yet, but seeing them done made him a bit more aware of how basic an ordinary braid really was. His fingers were starting to get the knack of it within twenty minutes. Watching her little brother in a yellow shirt and skirt outfit, braiding his long, straight hair with increasing finesse, was far more interesting than anything else she might have been paying attention to. Richard started shaking his hands around at the wrists. "My fingers are starting to hurt, can we leave it like this?" he complained after getting his hair into some decently crafted pigtails.
"Okay, we'll stop here. You're doing a much better job. Let's show everybody." She took a selfie with her brother, both of them smiling, and uploaded it to the chat with an explanation. Richard was worried that maybe Susie's dad was looking over her shoulder, but that hadn't happened, and the other girls daaaaawed over how cute he looked and complimented him on how good he'd become at braiding his own hair. "And now, I have a special little gift for my sweet little sis." She reached up into the upper part of her closet and pulled out a hefty, broad-spectrum pack of crayons along with a reasonably thick coloring book.
As a first grader, Zoe hadn't colored in all the pages in order, with some pages being better done than others, and Richard started on the first untouched one, a panoramic beach view. "Perfect start for our little Sunshine," Zoe said, smiling, and she looked to see whether Richard was an outside-the-lines or inside-the-lines kid. He actually went a step further: he was an extra-lines kid. Most of the pages were generally simple, with lots of open spaces, and instead of just coloring them in or smearing the colors, Richard decided to add complexity when he felt like it, drawing a rudimentary dolphin and surfer after coloring in the sun a bright yellow. He couldn't recall ever having played with a coloring book before.
He turned the page and there was the last picture that the younger Zoe had touched, a picture of a clown's face with a thick black X in crayon over it. "I remember that now," Zoe said before Richard could ask. "Oh my God, I remember. I was, like, six. Yeah, this was for my birthday, my sixth birthday, I think. There was this festival, you were off doing something else, but Mom wanted me to see the performing clown, and I was nervous, and it was doing balloon animals." Richard chuckled at the clown being called 'it' and wondered if he should finally watch the movie. After the things he'd seen, he figured that nothing that Hollywood could submit to the general public could possibly faze him. "And it saw that I wasn't having fun, so it made this.. terrifying face, and it did that coin trick from behind the ear thing." Zoe's expression got serious, as she remembered how she'd nearly caught lasting coulrophobia. "I didn't even see the coin, I thought it had actually pulled something off my head. I screamed. I screamed and ran. I think I made it all the way to the bathroom before Mom caught up with me. I couldn't even breathe, I was screaming so hard. We did not go back to that part, we went to... right, you were in the bouncy castle! And that's where Mom took me, and you were doing flips onto your butt and rolling around. I remember now."
"I kinda remember doing flips, I don't remember the rest of that," Richard said. He had actually been on more than one bouncy castle, having enjoyed them a lot when he was younger. (He realized that he still did - he just didn't have the opportunity to get on one.)
"You didn't see the rest of that, and Mom never told you. I remember now, she promised me that she wouldn't!" It wouldn't have mattered, she realized. She could never recall Richard ever making fun of anyone for anything, even when he was very little. He just never found it an enjoyable thing to do.
"If it'd been me, I'd have freaked out the same way or worse," Richard told her matter-of-factly.
Zoe nodded. "You totally would have. Speaking of which, they did a study in a children's hospital, it was in Britain or something, and guess what percent of the kids found clowns scary. Just guess, pick a number."
"Eighty?" Richard ventured.
"One hundred." Richard laughed. "I'm not kidding. Every. Single. One. Girls and boys. The older ones found them worse. So yeah, big ol' X over that clown, and if you find any more in there, you can cross them out too." He agreed with a smile. "Okay, Sunshine. We have milk, we have bananas that we need to use or get rid of, we have sugar, and we have a food processor that Mom never uses. I'm going to go see if my milkshakes are as good as Susie's. You be good, little sis."
As soon as she left the room, he immediately started flipping through the pages looking for something important. Did it have one? Oh, there was a good one, and he knew exactly what to do. He immediately got to work, but she came back in the room, milkshakes in hand, before he was done, and he flipped the book upside down as soon as he heard her come in.
Zoe chuckled as she handed him his milkshake. "Are you hiding something from me?"
"Yeah, don't look at what I'm doing. I'll show you when I'm done. It's a surprise." Richard, having hated surprises, had never said those three words to his sister before.
She gave him a smile. "All right, Sunshine. Let's see what kind of surprise you'll give me." Milkshake in hand, she turned to her computer, put on her headphones, and found music videos to watch.
-
[3/4]
She had barely gotten through one before Richard said that he was done, the milkshake finished and the page colored.
Zoe took one look at what he'd done and guffawed. The page he was showing her featured five clowns, and he had very much crossed them out, but not in the way she'd expected. The first had been shot with a big black hole in the head, and he'd drawn red lines to make it look like its brain had splattered out from behind. The second was turned into a rotting, green zombie, with a couple of limbs blacked out. The third had its hands in front of its stomach, and Richard had made it look like it was trying to hold its intestines in. Number four had a brown noose around its neck, hanging from an overhead rafter, and number five had a lot of red lines on its body as if someone had slashed it up with a knife. He'd crudely colored in the rest of the page. Zoe laughed more at the idea that her brother, all dressed up as Little Miss Sunshine, had been such an edgelord, and in a way, it was one of the most ordinary-boy things she'd ever seen him do. She giddily held the book to her chest. The idea was silly, but somehow, by doing that with her old coloring book, she felt like he'd reached back into her childhood and retroactively removed a bad experience from it. She wouldn't really remember that awful face, that trick that had disturbed her so much at the time, and her terrified screaming anymore; she would remember her dressed-up brother drawing dead clowns. "Ricky, thank you so much. You can color in the rest of the book, but I'm keeping this one. Wait, I'm really keeping this." She pulled out her phone and proceeded to upload a picture of the page to the Squad chat, where she started to explain how the image had come about and why she'd wanted it.
Richard smiled at her from his seat on the floor, looking up at her in the chair. "I'm glad you like it." He'd thought maybe she'd be disgusted at him for it.
"I absolutely love it. You are the best brother ever." She opened her arms for a hug, and Richard took it, with him on his knees and her still sitting in the chair, a position that made him feel much smaller, much more like a little girl. She kissed him on the top of the head. "And if you see any more like that in there, you do the same thing to them, okay, Sunshine?" He agreed happily and went back to his coloring, and Zoe decided to keep her playlist going in her ears, reading the Squad chat (the reactions to the photo were of amusement and complete understanding) while he laid on the floor like a little kid, his bare feet kicking back and forth in the air as he innocently colored in many other pictures, including an Easter one of little bunnies hopping around, with lots of added flowers (one with a rabbit bite mark on it) and a big smiling sun, and a Christmas one that he spent a lot of time on.
It began as a picture of a fireplace and a tree, with chairs and a sofa facing the fireplace, and Richard began coloring it in before he went for the flesh tones and began creating human figures. Zoe watched him, the music playing in her ears, but said nothing. He drew a blonde head sticking out from the chair, a short, red-haired girl wearing pink and hanging up a stocking, a brown-haired girl in a blue dress opening a present, and a head with brown hair in pigtails next to a head with long, black hair on the sofa.
"Leslie's hanging up the stockings by herself," Zoe said when he was done.
"She should be able to by Christmas," Richard replied, and Zoe clutched the necklace that Susie had given her, one of the matching necklaces that she and her girlfriend nearly always wore. She couldn't resist the urge to hug him again. She paused the video, laid down on the floor with him, put her left arm around him in a solid embrace, and started helping him color the next page with her right.
That was how they spent most of the afternoon together. There were a whole fifty pages that the six-year-old Zoe had left uncolored, and the teenagers took more time together than Richard would have alone, having happily childish discussions about what color should go where. Occasionally, they didn't agree, and swapped the decision-making, leading to a silly patchwork of coloring that looked just like a real kid had gone through it. Under normal circ-umstances, both of them would actually have been a bit snippy about that sort of thing, but it was just a kid's coloring book after all and their defenses towards one another were basically gone.
Zoe's phone buzzed when they were mostly done. It was Robert, who had texted to inform the siblings that the blackmailing pedophile was in the process of being arrested. "Looks like it's safe to go out in the sunshine, Sunshine," Zoe said, smiling. "Want to get some ice cream?"
"Sure!" Richard beamed happily.
His pink socks didn't go with the yellow very well, and it was too warm out for tights, and they both realized that Richard needed more cute socks to go with his shoes. Zoe found a pair of stretchy, ruffled socks that she'd never worn and that could be made to fit around his feet, and he put on his Mary Janes. She gripped one of his hanging straps, as if to make sure that he wouldn't wander off, and he didn't mind at all.
Their phones were in Zoe's pockets along with the money she'd been able to save up with her limited allowance. It was a sad joke, really, especially compared to Susie's seemingly limitless supply of unearned cash. It was basically symbolic, a few dollars here and there with the very occasional five thrown in, and over the course of a month, she only got enough to head to the convenience store a dozen blocks away and take her little sissy brother out for ice cream. Zoe was both jealous of Susie's limitless supply of unearned cash and grateful for the generosity that she had shown with it, and she wondered if Susie even had to ask for it or if her dad just handed her a fat suitcase full of twenties as soon as he got home.
It was six blocks from their suburb to the main road. They were passed by a bicyclist on the sidewalk, who went to the grass to get out of their way, and he was the same guy who Richard had seen before and they knowingly smiled at one another.
They were caticorner from the store, waiting for a walk signal to go one way or the other, when a police car pulled next to them. Almost on a lark, Richard looked to see who was in the back seat of the cop car and holy crap, it couldn't have been, but it was, it was actually him, it was actually the pedo. "Zoe!" Richard whispered quickly, pointing, and the siblings and the blackmailer stared at each other for a split second.
Richard flipped him the double deuce, then, inspired, he clenched his left fist and used his right to point to the man. Then, he curled the fingers of his right hand and extended the middle finger of his left, pushing that finger into the hole made by the curled fingers, and his fingers were too tightly curled for it to go in, but that finger was being forced in anyway.
Knowing exactly what that symbolized, the blackmailer looked Richard in the eyes, and, despite him wearing a shirt proclaiming him to be Little Miss Sunshine and his sister still holding on to him, there was no mercy whatsoever in those eyes.
When he had been arrested, the man had thought that someone else must have intercepted the envelope, that the little skipping sweetheart he had seen had been oblivious to his attempt at building a relationship. Only then did he have some idea of who he had messed with, the enormity of the mistake he had made. He began to sob. The light turned green, and the cop car drove away, the siblings crossing the street at the same time.
"That was a major coincidence," Richard said, a bit spooked once he thought about it.
"Not really," Zoe replied, shrugging. "We left as soon as Robert said that fuc-kclown was getting arrested, it takes the cops time to do it, and we're going the same way." If they had kept going, they would have eventually made it to the local semi-downtown area and the police station on the other side of town.
They crossed the larger street to get to the convenience store with the attached ice cream shop, and Richard's very first thoughts were 'Have we even been here before? Why don't we come here more often?' The answers were, of course, that a convenience store a dozen blocks away wasn't particularly convenient for kids who didn't bicycle, and their mother could buy a gallon of ice cream for what two scoops cost there.
Richard's outfit attracted a bit of attention from the few people in the store, and the college-aged cashier gave the siblings a big, inviting smile as soon as she saw them. "So what will you be having today?" she asked in a friendly tone.
"I'll have one scoop of dark chocolate and one of rocky road with a waffle cone," Zoe replied.
The cashier turned to Richard with a big smile on her face. "And what would you like?" she asked in that happily condescending voice reserved for talking to small children.
Richard had no idea what the girl thought or knew he really was and decided he didn't care. "A cone and a scoop of mint chocolate and a scoop of strawberry, please!" he chirped in the happiest, sweetest voice he could.
"Mint chocolate and strawberry! Delicious. Would you like sprinkles?" the cashier asked, smiling.
"Yes, please!" Richard chirped.
"All right, lots of extra sprinkles, just for you."
To keep up the act, Zoe was going to remind him to thank her, but he'd already chirped "Thank you!" once she handed him his cone.
"You're very welcome." The cashier turned to his sister. "That'll be eleven-oh-five." Zoe fished exact change out of her pocket, then took Richard by the strap again to pull him to an outside bench far from anyone. She didn't know what the cashier thought about Richard, but she wanted to talk to him normally and it'd ruin the act if anyone else heard.
Zoe chuckled. "Wow, she really went full on with that. I wonder how much she knew." The girl hadn't treated Richard like a ten-year-old; she treated him more like he was half that age.
Richard nodded. "I kinda wish everyone would talk to me like that," he said quietly. What other boys would have found belittling and insulting, he felt care and comfort in. "I mean, it doesn't make sense all the time, but, just, as much as possible."
"Oh? Well, then, I guess I can try," Zoe replied in the voice he'd asked for. "I'll treat Little Miss Sunshine just like the little sissy she loves to be." Richard smiled as he ate his ice cream - the sprinkles on the strawberry were very deliciously sweet - and, chuckling, Zoe shook her head. "That's actually pretty tough to keep up," she said in a normal voice.
The two of them sat together for a while, enjoying their ice cream, and Zoe thought for a bit before deciding if she actually wanted to talk about what she'd been thinking about. She hoped she wouldn't ruin the mood just by bringing it up, and she looked around and decided to just go for it. "There's a reason why I picked ice cream," she said quietly, and Ricky turned to look at her. "You remember that time you'd got ice cream on yourself, and I started name calling, and you just went fuc-k this and went upstairs?"
Richard had decided long ago that he'd never bring that up, and he'd gradually kind of forgotten about it, but she'd jogged his memory. "Oh, yeah, that. That was..." He shook his head. He didn't want to blame himself and he didn't want to blame her either, they'd both been a lot younger. "On the day that happened, there were there four kids picking on this other kid in school, the teacher was out for some stupid reason, so we're all just sitting around talking. I forget what they did to him, but they're just standing around his desk, I know they saying some nasty stuff to him, and what really got me was that he was just keeping on talking to them like nothing was wrong, like this was normal. I didn't understand, I still don't. If he would have just done something, or called for help, they might have stopped or someone else would have done something, maybe me, but they all just kept going. Then I promised myself that if somebody ever picked on me like that, I wouldn't keep talking to them like they were my friends."
That made the whole thing make a lot more sense to Zoe. "And then I picked on you that same day."
Richard nodded. "I was keeping a promise to myself, I felt like I'd be betraying myself if I ever talked to you again. Mom came up to me, I think it was like ten days or something, and she was... actually pretty scared. She just said it was over, that I shouldn't keep going with this, I think she threatened to take me to a counselor if I didn't start talking to you again." Zoe nodded. "The funny part is, all four kids had gotten suspended the day after they did that. Somebody must have said something or maybe they did something else. Somebody came from the office and told them to come with her, I didn't see them again for a while." He could recall the exact moment some of the kids in the class had gone 'You're in troooouble!'
Zoe decided that an apology would have been worthless and made no comment on his reactive nature. Instead, she chose to say what had been kicking around in her head, and she lowered her voice. "I just keep thinking that if I'd been nicer to you, we could have been doing this for a long time."
Richard shook his head. "No way, I would have been way too scared to ever tell you about it. I mean, I always kind of wanted to do it, but it would have been way too scary. Even, just like, in the house." Zoe nodded in understanding. It had taken a lot of incubation for Richard's soft side to hatch properly. Despite the fact that he was less passable as a little girl at 13 than 9, Zoe didn't even want to imagine what he might have become if someone had tried to hatch it before he was ready.
Still, if she had been a better sister, she might have been able to help him incubate it. "I still just wish I'd had your trust a lot sooner," she lamented. Instead of replying, he scooted closer to her on the bench and ate every last bite of his waffle cone. Neither of them was sure if it was worth the money, but it had definitely been delicious.
-
[4/4]
As they walked home together, Zoe still holding on to one of his straps, she remembered what she had told him when she was furious with him, that the little sissy in her Christmas dress was who he was and would always be. It had become a real truth. Even if he grew to be quite a bit taller than her and put on enough muscle to be twice her weight, which was very possible given what their father had looked like in his prime, it wouldn't matter. He very much had the same relationship with the rest of the Squad, particularly his girlfriend, and unless something truly awful happened, he would always and forever be their sweet little sissy. Zoe smiled at the thought of Richard lifting her with one hand and Susie with the other while wearing a pretty dress fitted just for him.
When they were almost home, a small hissing sound came from Richard's backside. Zoe laughed loudly. "Milk and sugar!" Richard explained, and Zoe just laughed louder, and he frowned a bit. "People fart, Zoe."
Seeing her sweet little brother frowning in his pigtails and pretty yellow outfit was one of the cutest things she had ever seen in her life, but she felt like she was picking on him and she really didn't want to pick on him, and it took very little effort to make herself poot out her own gas. She giggled. "Yup, people fart," she replied and kissed him on the nose.
The two of them finished their coloring book together, with the occasional bathroom break, and then it was about time for Mom to get home and so Richard, very reluctantly, changed back into his boy clothes. He had loved being Little Miss Sunshine so much, loved being given a coloring book to play with, loved being looked after by his big sister, loved being treated like a five-year-old who needed someone to hold on to him so that he wouldn't get lost. When he was actually that age, part of him had enjoyed it but most of him had been mistrustful of anyone who treated him like that, as he'd felt bullied and humiliated, and he had been so circ-umspect and fearful of such situations that he didn't really want to interact with people at all, and his mother and sister had never understood why and he couldn't remember clearly. Now that he was in close relationships with people who loved him and anyone who tried to actually bully or humiliate him was in for at least one very unpleasant surprise, he was much more appreciative of being treated little.
Their mother came home later than they'd expected, knocking on the door so that they could open it with her carrying two piles of heavy bags, and then she told them to put away the groceries. She'd had a long, tiring, and sweaty day. She still didn't quite understand what was going on with her children, who had been sitting on the couch watching anime together - had they ever done that before? - but at least they were willing to help her put food in the refrigerator and sort the mail.
Sorting groceries was simpler than sorting laundry: frozen in the freezer, cold stuff and all fruits and veggies in the fridge, everything else in the pantry. Richard checked the mail, mostly junk, and his heart lurched, a lump in his throat. One of the letters was for him! A closer look at it relaxed his attitude. It was from the city, not the major downtown but the local area, and he blinked in confusion. He briefly entertained the idea that someone had faked it and that there was anthrax in there, but he saw nothing when trying to peer through the envelope. He decided to stop being paranoid and carefully ripped open the top.
Inside was a check, made out to him, for two hundred and fifty dollars.
His sister looked over at him. "What is it?"
He looked at the ripped top. It had been postmarked Monday, and the local post office was good at getting local letters delivered. So, it obviously wasn't about anything that happened that day, what could... of course! He was being dumb, it wasn't about turning in the pedo, but it WAS about...
"It's snitch money," Richard replied, laughing. He heard the shower running so he didn't yell upstairs to his mother.
"Why is there no explanation?" Zoe asked, starting to giggle.
Richard knew this one. "Because it's snitch money, if there was a guy who didn't want to be known as a snitch, if they put something in there, then everyone looking over his shoulder would go 'hey, this guy's a snitch.'"
"Right, I get it," Zoe said, gradually laughing harder. "Leslie's going to just..." She pulled out her phone, and Richard did the same.
[5:57 PM] Zoe: LMAO
[5:57 PM] Zoe: check this spaghetti out
[5:58 PM] Zoe: the city PAID RICKY $250, there's no note, it must have been for turning leslie's bio parents in
[5:59 PM] Leslie: ROFLLLLLLL
[5:59 PM] Zoe: this is the icing on the cake
[6:00 PM] Leslie: my dad just came in and asked what i was laughing so hard at
[6:01 PM] Leslie: now HE'S starting to laugh
[6:01 PM] Zoe: I legit want to send your bio parents a picture of the check with ```This is how much your lives were really worth, fuc-kfaces!!```
[6:02 PM] Leslie: OMG you and your brother ARE related LMAOOO
[6:02 PM] Zoe: Susie, before you say anything, it's not about how much, it's that THE GOVERNMENT PAID HIM FOR IT
[6:03 PM] Leslie: Paid for mowing but it's not grass
Richard and his sister both laughed.
[6:03 PM] Zoe: BRUTAL HOW DID YOU GET SO BRUTAL
[6:03 PM] Richard: Leslie's sounding like 4chan lmao
[6:04 PM] Caroline: so they didn't give an excuse for the money?
[6:04 PM] Leslie: I wonder where I could have picked it up from?
[6:04 PM] Caroline: usually with stuff like this they make it look like a welfare check
"Wow, she knows a lot about it," Zoe said. "Guess I shouldn't be surprised." Richard got his knowledge from the Internet. The people that Caroline worked with had more direct experiences with the underbelly of the world.
[6:05 PM] Zoe: All they sent was the check, nothing else.
[6:06 PM] Caroline: probably because hes 13 and it was mailed to suburbia
[6:06 PM] Caroline: ghetto would have been way different
[6:06 PM] Caroline: anyway sunshine what will you spend it on?
Richard couldn't answer right away, because his mother was coming down the stairs. "Hey, Mom! I got snitch money!"
"What?"
He showed her the check. "The city paid me, there's no note or anything, it's got to be for me giving them that tip for that drug deal," Richard replied.
She took a pen from a cup on the table. "Sign the back of it, I'll cash this at the bank tomorrow," she told him, and he scrawled out his name. "That's certainly a pleasant surprise. I'm glad they gave you something. Maybe you'll spend it on me?" He stared at her, and she smiled. "That was a joke. What isn't a joke is that I have a somewhat elaborate dinner in mind tonight, and I will need both of you to help me with it." She was glad that her children agreed. She still felt like there was something else going on, but at least she could come home and not have even more things to deal with.
[6:08 PM] Richard: I have no idea lol. Making dinner.
[6:09 PM] Leslie: Three potential housewives in one house.
[6:09 PM] Caroline: omfg, better delete that before zoe reads it
[6:09 PM] Leslie: Why? Even if the therapy works I still want her making me dinner :heart:
[6:35 PM] Susie: I'm back. Was doing driving lessons with Dad. Reading chat.
[6:37 PM] Susie: I think we found Ricky's new career lol!
[6:38 PM] Susie: Rule 1 applies to MY money.
[6:38 PM] Susie: btw Dad says I can have a credit card when I get married or turn 18 :/
[6:40 PM] Susie: So I need to make one of those potentials a reality :hearts:
[6:41 PM] Caroline: so when do you and rickys mom tie the knot?
[6:41 PM] Susie: I KNEW I WAS SETTING MYSELF UP WHEN I SAID IT ARGHHH
[6:41 PM] Leslie: L M F A O
[7:00 PM] Zoe: Sure, I'll make you dinner, Leslie. You can be the main course :heart:
[7:01 PM] Leslie: I guess that makes you dessert :heart:
[7:01 PM] Caroline: i kind of want to say something bitchy but youre actually lightening my mood, ty for that
[7:02 PM] Susie: So what was your actual dinner?
[7:03 PM] Richard: Something called jjigae (awesome scrabble word). Mostly spam fried rice. We were getting in each other's way making it, lol
[7:03 PM] Zoe: Literally too many cooks, at least mom had specific jobs for us
[7:04 PM] Susie: SPAM fried rice??? The actual spam product?
[7:05 PM] Caroline: really not that rare here susie
[7:05 PM] Zoe: We followed the recipe right off Hormel's website.
[7:05 PM] Leslie: I've never had any spam (salt).
[7:06 PM] Susie: OMFG I HAVE TO RESCUE YOU BOTH
[7:06 PM] Caroline: have you even actually had it?
[7:06 PM] Susie: I smelled it once and once was enough!
[7:07 PM] Zoe: we've had it all our lives but I can totally see where Susie is coming from.
[7:07 PM] Richard: ^
[7:08 PM] Caroline: car now has a third rule, no music, politics, or food arguments now
"Never heard of that rule," Richard said aloud, catching his mother's attention. He and his sister had gone from the dining room to the couch, and their mother was watching them use their phones, shaking her head at the state of modern American teenagers. So constantly attached to their gadgets. Didn't anything interesting ever happen in their lives? Then again, she had her own screen she liked to look at, and she went to play her own games.
"Never came up when you were around," Zoe replied. "I think it was the first time I was in Caroline's car, Susie told us her Rule 1, and Caroline said that she didn't play music because she didn't want anyone arguing over it, and she didn't want to deal with political stuff either. Funny because she was the one who started calling us the Squad."
[7:09 PM] Zoe: Could have used that rule yesterday, miss eveything burger
[7:10 PM] Caroline: youre the ones who missed everything
[7:10 PM] Richard: Ooooof.
[7:10 PM] Leslie: Sssss.
[7:10 PM] Zoe: :snake:
[7:12 PM] Susie: Okay, I don't mean to interrupt this fascinating discussion of your barbaric and uncultured culinary practices, but I have something to tell Ricky and the rest of you about my dad.
[7:13 PM] Susie: Well, it's more like instructions. Everyone just follow my lead when it comes to him, even if it seems kinda weird or not what you'd expect.
[7:14 PM] Susie: It's probably just for Ricky but you all should know
[7:14 PM] Susie: also ***HE MUST NEVER KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT RICKY'S DRESSING E V E R***
[7:15 PM] Caroline: copy that
Richard nearly typed in 'Yes, Your Highness' before he remembered he was in a group chat.
[7:15 PM] Richard: I understand. :smile:
[7:15 PM] Leslie: I guess the unexpected part comes later lol
[7:15 PM] Zoe: Yes, we could guess that one :laughing:
[7:16 PM] Caroline: btw i cant drive you friday
[7:16 PM] Caroline: my dad just said he got a massive rush order and ill be helping him as much as i can
[7:17 PM] Caroline: even with me like this
[7:17 PM] Leslie: Mom can take me. Thanks for saying so early :slight_smile:
[7:17 PM] Richard: I'll WALK if I have to.
[7:17 PM] Zoe: I'll be walking with him.
[7:18 PM] Caroline: isnt there heavy rain and wind forecast for friday?
[7:18 PM] Richard: **I'll WALK if I have to.**
[7:18 PM] Zoe: **I'll be walking with him.**
[7:19 PM] Leslie: :heart:
[7:19 PM] Susie: :heart:
[7:19 PM] Leslie: Actually Mom can take you.
[7:20 PM] Leslie: Maybe you'll tell her how you keep getting mixed up in bad stuff.
[7:20 PM] Richard: I have no idea. I'm a monster magnet or something.
[7:21 PM] Caroline: SPAAAAAACE LORD MOTHER MOTHER
[7:21 PM] Caroline: none of you will ever get that ignore me
The Y was about four miles away, and not for the first time in his life, Richard regretted never being into cycling, nor was he familiar with the local buses, and Zoe simply regretted not having more friends with cars. Discomfort, though, was something that didn't even concern him when it came to Susie, and Zoe apparently felt the same way about her girlfriend.
The two of them continued watching their show together, and boy clothes or girl clothes, physically bigger or smaller, Richard knew that he would always be a good little sissy for his big sister.
-
Jacqueline, you knocked my socks off with those four chapters. That part about the pedophile sent chills down my spine. I do hope you have more adventures about Ricky and the squad. I'm really into this story. 8)
-
[1/3]
"Time to get up, Sunshine," Zoe told Richard, zapping him awake with the shock collar around his neck. He stood up and his Little Miss Sunshine outfit was the only bright thing in the room; everything else was dark. "Let's see what we've got for you today," his sister said, rooting through his nearly pitch-black closet. "One of these, a couple of these, one of these, and one of these." She jammed a corset over him, and the flesh that was on his midsection went immediately to his breasts and ass, his ribs crushed. His feet were shoved into ballet boots, and shocks were used to keep him upright. A disc went around his waist, and he knew that if it touched anything, he'd be shocked heavily and for a long time. His mother and sister cooperated in shoving the gag, which looked like a scoop of ice cream, into his mouth.
"Stop squirming, we're just trying to help you," his mother told him firmly. "It's to make you a better person, Richard. You're much easier to carry this way and your new father will appreciate having a son like you." The pedophile who had tried to blackmail him was standing there, naked and smiling. NO, Richard thought, there was NO way she'd do that, NO way he could be...
Wait, there really was actually no way!
Richard, suddenly aware of where he was and what he was doing, tore the collar off with one hand, the bondage melting off of him, and pointed with the other, and the man screamed as he was immolated. His mother and sister stared at him with empty, hollow eyes, but of course it wasn't actually them, and he rocketed himself into wakefulness with anger and disgust.
"Just get fuc-ked," Richard muttered to his subconscious, pissed that it had even fed him such a thing. He could have had a flying dream, a video game dream, even a really weird dream with lots of interesting imagery, but no, he just had to have a nightmare about that crap instead. It was still dark out, and, annoyed with himself, he went back to a dreamless sleep.
Even after a morning shower and brushing teeth and combing his long hair (his mother told him that he could have it as long as he liked as long as it was combed), he looked haggard as he slowly ate breakfast that morning.
His sister was going to wait until their mother was gone before asking him what was up, but Heather had noticed as well. "Richard, is something wrong?"
"Real bad dream," he said.
"What about?" Heather asked.
There was no way he was going to tell her much of anything. "People hated me while pretending to love me," he said. "I went lucid and hated one of them back. It was real bad, I don't want to talk about it."
His mother patted him on the shoulder and kissed him on the head. "It was just a dream, Richard." She'd had bad dreams of her own. A primary recurring theme was her husband, gaunt from drug abuse, pursuing her in the darkness like in a horror movie. Sometimes, he would get her on drugs as well. Other times, he would simply consume her alive. And her children - far younger than in real life - were always there, watching it happen. She would never tell them that they had such a prominent place in her recurring nightmares.
"So, what was the dream actually about?" Zoe asked him once their mother had left for work.
"It was kind of about the stuff we've been doing, and I really don't want to talk about it." He looked away for a moment. "Zoe, have you ever considered the idea that my sissiness might need to be forced out? I mean out into the open, not out of me. Like, if you somehow made me do sissy stuff or pushed me into doing it even if I didn't want to, that I'd become a better person for it?"
The question was so jarring and utterly alien that Zoe blanked for a second. "Ricky, I have literally never thought that about you or anyone in my entire life. Even when I was pissed at you, I just wanted revenge, I didn't think it'd make you a better person or anything like that, that's sick." She thought of what their mother had done to her and decided not to mention it; Heather certainly wouldn't try it on him, at any rate. "I know that you and Susie are doing kinda bondage sex stuff but that's different, and she won't even lock you into anything, remember? You know Leslie doesn't see things that way and neither does Caroline." She almost asked 'Where are you getting this from?' but she had a reasonable guess as to the answer. What he needed at the moment was reassurance, and she had plenty of that to give. "Nobody is ever going to do anything like that to you. Ricky, this is you we're talking about, nobody CAN. You wasted the last guy who tried anything close, well okay that was Robert, but still, you."
"I wasted him in the dream when I went lucid, too," Richard said, smiling a bit.
"See? It was just a stupid nightmare caused by some demented shit you saw on the Internet. I can't tell you that you're totally safe from everything in the world, but you're safe from THAT."
"Zoe, I needed that. Thank you so much," he said, smiling. "You want to do some more fun stuff, like yesterday?" Richard felt like he was spitting in the nightmare's face by asking.
"I've actually got a major backlog I want to catch up on today, but if you want to just hang out and chill for a while, we can."
Richard smiled a bit. His sister needed some time to herself, and just knowing that reminded him that she was a normal person. "It's okay, do your backlog. Do you have any more outfits like that Sunshine one in your closet?"
"I checked, there's nothing else back there that will fit you. We're doing wash tomorrow, I think Mom's got a couple of dresses in there."
"Eeeeeewwww," Richard replied. The idea of wearing his mother's clothes was just plain disturbing.
"Yeah, I figured you'd say that." She put her arm around him, hugging him protectively. "Your big sister is going to go read some healthy and fun stuff. Well, maybe not totally healthy." She giggled a bit. "You wear whatever you want, little sis, and try to stay out of the darkness for a while."
"I will," Richard replied, smiling at her with renewed innocence. He felt like he'd puked rotten garbage all over himself and she'd cleaned him up.
Richard put on his floral print housewife dress and his pink, jingly socks just because he liked how they sounded and felt, deciding not to put on his heels and to leave his hair loose for the moment. He sat at his computer, considering how he was going to spend his time. He wasn't in the mood for games - he wasn't even in the mood for fiction of any kind. He wanted to stay out of the darkness like his sister had recommended. He started browsing around, and he remembered what he'd been into and decided he wanted to get back to. He was going to teach himself to become a real hacker!
Of course, searching 'how to be a hacker' wasn't actually going to help him, and he knew that. Instead, he just immersed himself in every piece of computer lore he could find, learning about opcodes, buffer overruns, cryptography, Ring -3, and TCP/IP, soaking it all up, meditating in a sense, trying not to think about that other stuff, occasionally jingling the bells on his socks and smiling. He was struggling to understand things and he was confused some of the time and he was at peace with himself. If he couldn't understand something, he moved on to something else. It was his angry focus without the anger.
Zoe called him for lunch, snapping him out of his trance, and he actually frowned when he realized she'd already microwaved the burritos they both liked. "I guess there's not really anywhere else to eat within walking distance anyway, just the ice cream place," he lamented. His guts were a little bit sick of ice cream.
"Why'd you want to eat out?" she asked.
"I've got a bunch of money I haven't spent, too," he reminded her. "And Mom's giving me two hundred and fifty bucks when she gets home." He looked at her solemnly, and she smiled at him in his pretty dress. He looked so serious after having jingled down the stairs. "You've done so much for me, Zoe. Especially this morning. I kind of want to spend it on you." In a way, he wanted to reward her for what she wasn't doing, would never consider doing, to him.
"I'd like some of it, but I think you should spend at least some on Susie."
"Why?! What could I possibly buy her that she could want and not have bought already?"
She chuckled. "You don't understand girls, Ricky. You can't buy her something she can't just buy herself. You can only buy her something she didn't know she wanted until you bought it for her. I know, it's tough, but you don't have to even plan it. Just, next time you're somewhere, even the thrift store, and you see something she might want or that just seems to be missing from her house, ask her if she likes it, then buy it for her. You know how you hear people say 'it's the thought that counts'? That's the thought that counts."
"That's twice today you've really helped me."
She smiled at him. "It's like you've totally forgotten who owes who here. You probably saved my girlfriend's life just last week, remember? I'm just glad to be able to help you, little sis. I'm still on my backlog today, but we can spend some more time together tomorrow before Leslie's mom comes to pick us up." She was reading an exceptionally convoluted and wordy fic about some high school kid who got sent to a fantasy world that was more or less of his own making.
"Okay. Thanks again." The siblings smiled at each other and returned to what they had been doing. Richard barely remembered in time to change back to boy clothes before his mother got home, and after giving Richard his money, Heather asked her children to set the table - and scratch her back, which her daughter reluctantly did - as soon as she got home. She'd had a bad itch she just couldn't reach for hours, and rubbing hadn't helped.
She didn't want to have to keep asking her kids, she knew she had a backscratcher somewhere in the house, but where did she put the thing? It wasn't in her drawers, she knew that. Of course! She knew her children's closets were full of storage. It was probably stashed away in there somewhere. Making sure not to touch Richard's computer at all - that was where he kept his private stuff, after all - she went through his closet and started opening boxes.
"Richard, could you come here please?"
-
[2/3]
Even before she'd finished the first couple of words, Richard was immediately rushing to his room, his sister close behind, knowing immediately what had happened just from her tone of voice. Many of the boxes had been opened, and she was holding up the housewife dress he'd worn that day. He'd thought of various things to say to her when she found out, but all he managed to say was the most basic: "Mom, I dress up sometimes, but I don't actually want to turn into a girl."
Her tone was very serious. "Where did you get it all? Does Susie know about this?"
Abruptly, Richard laughed. "Think really carefully about those two questions, Mom," he said, smirking, and she stared at him. "Don't they kind of answer each other?" Heather relaxed somewhat, her major concerns gone. Her first worry had been that he was stealing from her or someone else to be able to get such things, or doing even worse things for the money - maybe even with those skills of his! - and she'd also been worried that this would turn his wealthy girlfriend off. Apparently, the opposite was true. "It's... basically how we met," he continued before she could ask anything else awkward. "Don't ask specifics. Please?" Heather's own parents had pried too much into her own affairs when she was a teenager, and she understood where he was coming from. "I'm just having fun, that's all, and she is too."
"I'm sure of the sort of fun you've been having with her," she said, returning the dress to the box where she found it. "Have you been having any of this fun outside?" He nodded. "Zoe, do you... of course you know. You've been participating in this as well." Zoe nodded. "All your friends know. He's been doing it with your whole group, hasn't he?" She continued to nod. The idea gave Heather some comfort. Doing perverted things with one's significant other was different from doing them in public - she'd done things with their father that she would never tell them about - and Richard certainly couldn't be doing anything really perverted or off-putting in a group of four girls while still remaining their friend.
"Not all the time, though, not tomorrow," Richard said, holding up a placating hand. "Susie's dad's home, and he's going to be there with us at the YMCA at 3. It's Leslie's physical therapy day."
"Susie bought you those swimming trunks, too," Heather said, and her son nodded. She sighed. "Well, I have some more personal time. I'll drive you over there. I haven't been swimming in a while, either."
Richard was mortified at the idea. "Mom, we've already got a ride, and if you tell him about any of this-"
"First, you can tell your other ride that it isn't necessary. Second, I might be dumb, but I'm not stupid, Richard," his mother stated firmly, cutting him off. He still looked nervous and Heather knew exactly what he was worried about. "Your mother is not going to make a fool of herself or you in front of your girlfriend's father!" Her own mother had almost done exactly that. If that woman had been any worse, Richard and Zoe might very well have never been born.
"I don't even think he knows she's my girlfriend, Mom."
"If you're spending any time with her in front of him, believe me, he'll find out." Richard had to acknowledge that she was right. He was very good at roleplaying, as Susie could certainly attest, but convincingly roleplaying 'not her boyfriend' for an hour - with both of them wearing very few clothes! - in front of a man who was surely very suspicious of any male anywhere remotely near his daughter? No, that was not going to happen. Not showing up would have been even worse.
"And, Mom, while we're at it," Zoe suddenly said, "I'm bisexual, and Leslie is my girlfriend." Richard looked at his sister in alarm. She had chosen to drop that on her mother when she was in the middle of processing what was with him. Why had she done it then? To take the heat off him? To make it seem like a minor thing in comparison? (The answer was somewhat of both. Zoe figured that both at once would be faster and have fewer consequences than one at a time.)
Heather took a deep breath, looking at her daughter in shock. "This is what Robert meant," she realized. "He meant this. He knew about you, both of you."
"Yup, he did," Zoe replied.
Heather almost asked 'Why didn't you just tell me?' but realized that the question was foolish. Her children didn't entirely trust her. That was why they'd looked at her that way last week. In a rush, she also realized that as Richard had known so much about the sort of horrible place where her brother had almost sent his cousin, he must have been worried that she would do the same. Granted, the boy was just thirteen and prone to overreacting, but why had he ever imagined that she would do such a thing?! Was she that bad of a mother - maybe she was? Her emotions started getting the better of her. First that, now this. Her tolerance for the unusual was far below that of her children, and she felt like her moral foundations were shifting out from under her. "I need time to think," she said, trying not to cry. "You two just stay up here, and I'll call you for dinner, and we can talk about this then."
Zoe almost said something apologetic, that she didn't really want to stress her out, but then she remembered the thing with the unwanted dresses and that nasty email from her cousin and decided that this was a modest and appropriate revenge. "All you have to do is nothing, Mom," Richard said. He'd been thinking of that one for some time.
[5:22 PM] Richard: Mom knows everything. About Zoe and Leslie, too.
[5:22 PM] Zoe: She's processing it all.
[5:23 PM] Zoe: If she does something REALLY stupid this might be the last time you hear from us for a while.
[5:23 PM] Richard: Until Friday, she actually said she wants to drive us.
[5:24 PM] Zoe: Yeah, hopefully she actually does that and isn't building to a super freakout.
[5:24 PM] Leslie: I just told Mom all that. She and Dad wish you luck.
[5:24 PM] Caroline: wishing you luck here too
[5:24 PM] Susie: Good luck, Ricky and Zoe!! :hearts:
[5:25 PM] Richard: Thanks, everybody. I think we'll be okay.
[5:25 PM] Caroline: lets be real here if she tries anything you'll crater her and she has to know that
[5:26 PM] Susie: I don't want it to come to that.
[5:26 PM] Richard: I don't either, I REALLY don't want to use that on our mom.
[5:27 PM] Zoe: She doesn't hate us too much and we won't hate her too much, it's that simple.
[5:27 PM] Zoe: And if she does anything "for our own good" it's fuc-king asteroid time
[5:29 PM] Richard: Zoe just said that she'll probably just tell me to give the dresses away. One of you can pick them up.
[5:29 PM] Zoe: It's ME we're both more worried about. Her fuc-king BROTHER was about to send his kid to torture prison, remember
[5:30 PM] Richard: Astronauts will know what happened if she does that, they'll see the crater from space
[5:30 PM] Zoe: She's my mom, and I have no idea what she's thinking. That actually hurts a lot.
[5:31 PM] Susie: I always know what my dad is thinking. He told me I should. I wish your mom was the same. :(
[5:31 PM] Richard: She just called us for dinner in a nice voice BBL
Heather felt like she was in a Twilight Zone episode and wished for her child to enjoy being feminine. 'Granted!' the monkey's paw had replied. 'It's your son!' Of course, that didn't help her decide what to do. She vividly recalled a scene at her workplace five years ago, in which an angry, stern member of upper management had asked a tantruming worker, "What are you trying to gain here? What do you hope to accomplish by doing this?" What could she do that her children wouldn't hate her for?
She certainly knew what Martin - who she was starting to consider an incredibly nasty person, worse than the boy she remembered - would have recommended. He had wanted to punish her son just for telling him and his family things that he didn't want them to hear. His answer would have been to forcibly stop their behavior with heavy-handed means, and a part of Heather was suggesting that she ought to be doing the same thing. But her children weren't his, and they certainly weren't behaving in the way that Michael was. Despite their mistrust (and fear, she had to admit) of her, they didn't even conflict with each other anymore!
What was she thinking? Was she really about to ruin her own family, destroying her relationships with all she had left of her husband, because her son enjoyed dressing up like a girl with his friends - and his luxuriously rich girlfriend enjoyed him doing it! - and her daughter had a teenage girl-crush? (She didn't really believe - didn't want to believe - that Zoe had permanent lesbian tendencies that she wouldn't simply grow out of.) Heather thought again of what Robert had told her and abruptly remembered why she'd been talking to him on Friday to begin with - she'd just given her son the money he'd earned for doing that! Good God, was she really about to piss off Richard to no good end?! The boy could destroy people!
She might have been dumb, but she was certainly not stupid!
-
[3/3]
"Dinner's ready," she shouted upstairs, acting like as much of a mother as she could, and her very worried-looking children came down. Heather had mixed spam and peas in with standard macaroni and cheese, with tall glasses of water to wash down the salt, and her children quietly sat down to eat.
She took a breath. "Zoe, if you and Leslie have real feelings for each other, then I'm not going to interfere with that. As long as what you are doing is safe - and I know she is disabled - I am not going to be angry with you." She sighed in defeat. "It's your life, and it's your choice. Just be careful, and don't put any pressure on her. It's her life too."
Zoe breathed an enormous sigh and laughed slightly in pure relief. "I won't, Mom." She still couldn't forget any of the nasty shit that her mother had done to her, but the hatchet could stay well and truly buried if her mother wasn't going to get between her and Leslie. Richard was confused for a bit. Pressure? Leslie wasn't that bad off, she didn't bruise easily or anything like that... oh. His mother had meant emotional pressure. That wasn't going to happen, either.
"As for you, Richard, as long as Susie isn't going to try to put you on hormones or something like that," Heather started.
"The hell, Mom, what stories have you been reading?!" Richard blurted out, interrupting her, before his mind caught up with him and he realized that there was no way she was remotely coming from that point of view. "She's not crazy."
"Well, as it turns out, neither am I. So, as long as it's safe, I don't care what kind of fun you have together. And that goes for both of you." Heather felt a weight lifted from her shoulders as she said that. She remembered her own parents all too well. She felt like she was getting gradually hedged out of her children's lives, and they were so young, and she remembered how her own mother had tried to worm her way into her own life - that word 'vicarious' again - and how it hadn't helped at all. She wasn't going to be the queen bitch. She wasn't going to be the one to blame. Not again. And she certainly wasn't going to be like that prick older brother of hers! She had her children and they had her and that was all there was to it. She shook her head. He was just so young. "Richard, I know that this thing of yours makes you think you're invincible. There's just so much that can happen to you, you're not Superman."
His mother was giving him what he wanted, so he tried not to get angry with her for basically suggesting that he was the kind of teenage moron his cousin was. "I've learned this one, Mom. Believe me, I know. I'm not going to do anything too stupid and especially not alone." How could he possibly tell her that he'd learned that very lesson in an up-close way just yesterday? He was very glad that no one would tell her - she really would freak out if she heard about that!
Instead, Heather was worried that Susie would get tired of him and then do something like expose his secret to people at Richard's school when it reopened. She was dumb, not stupid, so she refrained from saying something like that out loud - he was in love with her, he would be mortally offended by the idea. And society itself was changing so fast, so much activism for causes she'd never even heard of before, maybe it wouldn't even hurt him socially? The heartbreak would, she knew, much more than any exposure, but she certainly wasn't not going to tell him not to date the rich girl because she might break up with him later! Besides, he certainly wasn't emotionally vulnerable in the sense that he could be easily bullied or picked on. The boy was fearsome to adults! God help the child who picked on him, no matter how he liked to look! Wait, how did he like to look? "Richard, if you would like to, I want to see you wearing your favorite outfit. Would you please go and change into it after you have finished your dinner?" Her tone of voice was as polite as she could make it. Especially after her foolishness with her daughter, if her son thought that she was telling him rather than asking him to do a thing like that...!
Richard was startled by the request. He was certain that a mother asking her son to dress up was something that he would only ever see in unrealistic fantasies or outright abuse. 'I'm not going to dress up for my mom!' was, of course, an option, and one he almost took. He turned to Zoe, who was surprised, delighted, and extremely amused, giving him an enormous grin. If he could start openly dressing so cutely full-time at home, then there would be fewer things stopping her from treating him like her little sissy brother the way they both enjoyed. Well, of course, when Susie wasn't treating him the way she wanted.
"Okay," Richard replied. He almost added 'No pictures', but that would have been silly. There was no one in the world that she could have shown such things to, and if she later were to go crazy enough to try to blackmail him with them, it would be like threatening to light herself on fire. He decided to enjoy his food instead of worrying about impossibilities.
They ate quietly, in silence and general relief. It felt like they had all just signed an armistice to end the cold war. And then Richard, smiling a bit, went upstairs to change .
"I don't understand him at all," Heather quietly said to her daughter once his door closed. "How can someone so... well, you know how he was. So antisocial, so... protective of himself, so vengeful, he's still so..." She couldn't think of a word that both matched what he was and she actually wanted to say about him. "...and now he wants to be at least a little bit feminine?"
"Mom, that's WHY he's like that. You know those animals with the armor and the spikes on their backs, and they have soft underbellies? That's Ricky. The whole reason he has that stuff is to protect his soft side."
"And sometimes he can jump on someone's head," Heather replied, and Zoe groaned at her mom's videogame joke. Heather smiled and suddenly thought of a way to possibly patch things up with her daughter. "Speaking of people who need a softer viewpoint, perhaps it's Michael who should be wearing dresses." She was expecting good humor and reconciliation; instead, her daughter stared at her with alarm, almost panic.
"Don't ever say that!" Zoe whispered harshly. "If Ricky heard you say something like that, he'd freak!" She was freaking out a bit herself. Christ, that had been just like what he'd asked her after his nightmare!
"It was just a joke, Zoe," Heather softly replied, a bit startled and not understanding. The way her daughter was looking at her, she had just said something utterly offensive, and she made a serious effort to figure out how it could have been.
"God, you just don't get it," Zoe hissed in frustration. "It's not funny, and if you want to see his soft side, don't ever make him think that you want to do this as a punishment, to anyone, for any reason, ever!" She almost blurted out 'He'll KILL you, Mom!' Instead, she decided on "He'll just do that thing again instead!" She was watching his door upstairs to make sure it was still closed. How could she even begin to explain this?
Heather needed no explanation. "Or you would," she said softly. "I understand." She did understand, then, even better than her children did. Dressing so femininely, especially for a boy, obviously wasn't completely a sexual thing, but it was in that vicinity. Therefore, adding force to the equation was in the same general category as rape. What she had previously done to her daughter was completely unconscionable, extreme fraternity hazing at the very least, and she had basically just told a rape joke. "It's a very personal choice," she chose to say aloud, and Zoe heard all the regret and realization in her voice.
Richard's door opened, and Heather was surprised that there wasn't much to be surprised about, except for the colors on display. He wasn't wearing makeup, but he had done his own pigtails very well, a pair of rainbow ties holding his hair. Heather had worried that he was going to appear wearing something revealing or even pornographic, but instead he wore his full rainbow outfit, his dress against his knees and his gloves at his elbows, his socks and medium heels on his feet. He slowly walked downstairs, smiling the whole time but still slightly expecting his mother to freak out.
"Did you pick that outfit yourself?" Heather asked. They were appropriate first words to ask him, the first time she saw him dressed like that.
"Susie picked it for me, but it's still my favorite."
Heather nodded. "All right. If this is who you want to be, then this is who you should be. As long as it's tasteful and modest, you don't need to dress like a boy or a girl on my account," she said, clearly and carefully. What she had really been afraid of was that he would have looked like that one boy she'd seen on television, that boy whose mother allowed him - or urged him, or possibly even forced him - to wear revealing and rather disturbing outfits. What she saw in front of her was simply a cute hairstyle, what was almost just an extended shirt, a pair of tasteful, long boots, and fancy gloves that he was wearing just because she'd asked to see the outfit. "But I won't have you dressing like a slut in public, Richard, and so we're clear, that goes for both of you," she warned anyway. "That's too far."
Zoe just scoffed angrily, feeling doubly insulted but not replying. Richard's tone was mollifying. "Mom, I don't do that. Even, like, at the pool, you know what trunks Susie bought for me."
"I'm aware," Heather replied. "But now I need to know. Did you actually go where you said you were going?"
"We didn't lie to you, Mom," Zoe replied, annoyed. "Especially not about the pool, Leslie really has to be there on Tuesdays and Fridays and I really want to be there with her. We did go to the frolfing course, and he did get his socks and shoes muddy when carrying her over. What he was wearing sometimes wasn't what you expected, but it's actually where we went, every time."
"And made additional stops I was unaware of. I understand," Heather replied, knowing like she had to sound like as much of a parent, be as much of a parent, as she could. "I'm not a fool, Zoe. I knew that the two of you would start keeping things from me as you grew older, and I know that you're keeping things from me now. And I'm well aware that I've made awful mistakes as a mother, but I'm concerned about you, both of you, about your safety and about your health. I don't want you, either of you, to do anything that's going to ruin your lives later on down the road." She sighed, turning to Richard. "I don't want to be scared of you and I don't want you to be scared of me, either."
He chose his words carefully, trying not to be harsh at all. "Can we just not do bad stuff to each other anymore, Mom? Me or Zoe or you?" He wanted to say more, but he didn't know how to phrase it, and his words got caught in his throat.
Heather was expecting her son to promise something, to do something for her if she left them alone, and she suddenly remembered what she'd come home to last week. "You did all the chores like that, didn't you?" Richard found himself blushing as he nodded. "And you very much enjoyed it. You don't need to say anything, your mother understands. All right, then. No more bad stuff, no more forcing you to wear clothes you hate or attend social events with people you detest," she said, turning to Zoe. "I won't keep either of you from spending time with your friends or anything like that, I won't judge you for the way you are. But. The two of you have shown me that you are not normal teenagers. Therefore, I don't want to see any of the normal teenager crap from either of you. No drinking, no smoking, no lying - and I know you're not going to always tell me everything, that's different - keep your grades up, keep doing your chores however you're dressed doing them, keep the moody phases to a minimum, I know it's all hormones, no pointless arguments or teenager tantrums, you actually use those brains of yours and don't get into any dangerous situations, and above all, absolutely no drugs of any kind. I won't have any of that in this house or in my children. Do we have a deal?"
"Just one more thing, can you never, ever go through my closet ever again? I checked, there's nothing of yours back there," Richard said. He had been through every box in the closet while finding places to store his new wardrobe.
"Either of our closets," Zoe added firmly.
"I'll leave both of you your privacy, I can do that for you. Then do we have a deal?"
Richard glanced at his sister, who seemed much more annoyed than he did. "Deal," Zoe said after a bit. She wanted to slap her mother for her earlier 'slut' comment, but she was more than willing to just put this all to a permanent stop if she could be openly in love with her girlfriend without worry.
"Deal," Richard agreed.
"All right, then. This is our family now. I'll respect you and you'll respect me. I am concerned about one more thing. Richard, you said that this is what brought you and Susie together, and I won't ask details. But would the two of you still be together if you didn't allow her to dress you?"
The question cut to the quick, jarring his sense of self. Yes, they'd been doing a great many very intimate things, but was he really her boyfriend or more like her pet? If, one day, he had to be done with being a sissy, would she be just as done with him?
Zoe came to his rescue. "Mom, she loves him for who he is. Don't ask him if she'd love him if he was someone else, he doesn't know and she probably doesn't either."
"All right, that's fair," Heather replied. "Give your mother a hug." Both of her children leaned in to hug her, Zoe very slightly more reluctant than her brother. "I'm going to go relax now. I love you and I want the best for you. Both of you." She turned to Zoe. "Even if I'm sometimes so terrible at showing it." She went upstairs to play a monotonous game that would let her brain lose focus on everything else.
"My ass," Zoe muttered quietly once her mother was out of earshot. Her brother looked at her. "Never mind. It's fine, it's over, we don't have to worry anymore." They immediately went to give their friends the good news.
[5:35 PM] Leslie: Needing to wait for someone when you're worried about them is one of the worst things.
[5:37 PM] Susie: It really is.
[5:38 PM] Caroline: rickys been feeling the same about you, you must have figured this out
[5:39 PM] Susie: I'm with my dad. Ricky's just waiting to be with me again. He's not waiting while worried. It's different.
[5:42 PM] Leslie: I'm going to play games. I really can't sit here stressed. Zoe TEXT ME when you get this!!
[5:44 PM] Susie: I'll stay in the chat, my dad'll be doing work stuff for another hour or two.
[5:46 PM] Caroline: just sitting here watching a movie rn
[6:03 PM] Richard: /tts We're back!
[6:03 PM] Susie: OMG that made me jump
[6:03 PM] Caroline: ok hacker boy howd you do that
[6:03 PM] Leslie: Didn't even need the text! What was that?
[6:03 PM] Zoe: lol I saw him do it
[6:04 PM] Richard: ```/tts``` (text to speech) is great stuff. :smile: It all went fine, best it could have really! Wearing my rainbow dress right now :grin:
[6:04 PM] Zoe: She ASKED to see it!
[6:04 PM] Susie: I AM SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW!! :hearts:
[6:05 PM] Zoe: Leslie **we don't need to hide from her anymore!!!**
[6:05 PM] Caroline: this ended better than the movie did
[6:05 PM] Richard: Yeah she made us a deal, we can do whatever as long as we don't get into regular teenager trouble like smoking or drugs or something
[6:05 PM] Leslie: This is one of the best days ever, I am not even kidding
[6:05 PM] Leslie: THE BAD THING we were so worried about WON'T HAPPEN
[6:05 PM] Caroline: like the two of you were ever going to do regular bad teenager shit lol
[6:05 PM] Zoe: IKR!! to both caroline and leslie (edited)
[6:06 PM] Susie: And now Ricky can hang up all his pretty outfits and put his boy clothes away for special occasions :slight_smile: Like tomorrow lol
[6:06 PM] Richard: Good idea! :)
[6:07 PM] Leslie: I just want to know, this is just a question, Ricky did you threaten your mom at all?
[6:08 PM] Richard: I tried not to. I think she was feeling a little threatened anyway, but I didn't give her any ultimatum or anything like that, btw SHE MUST NEVER KNOW ABOUT THE PEDO BLACKMAIL THING or she will **actually** have a heart attack.
[6:09 PM] Zoe: It feels like she's doing what she thinks she has to do, not what she wants to do. If she doesn't go back on it, that's good enough for me.
[6:09 PM] Richard: She actually said the word "deal" so we're good.
[6:10 PM] Leslie: If this is all okay now, anyone for Cards Against Humanity?
[6:10 PM] Richard: You play that?!
[6:10 PM] Zoe: Ricky, if you and her get blank cards at the same time, SHE WILL WIN.
Neither Caroline nor Susie had played it before, and it was a very entertaining evening indeed.
Heather found her backscratcher before she went to bed. It was in her secretary in plain view, where it had been the whole time.
-
Richard woke up from a pleasant smear of dreams with the light gently illuminating his room. Practically all his worries, most of which originated from his mother, had been consigned to the realm of never-would. He didn't have to worry about hiding his sissy side from his mother anymore, as she never would try to hurt him for it. He didn't have to worry about his mother doing something extraordinarily regrettable to Zoe anymore; she never would. Horrific things might be happening to other kids around the world for insane and stupid reasons, but nothing of that kind would ever happen to him, and he was thirteen years old and his sphere of real caring was mostly limited to himself and his friends, all of whom, he was sure, were protected by the same never-would shielding that he was. (He abruptly realized that he didn't know too much about Caroline's living situation, but the girl was astute and seventeen years old, worked in her father's shop, and had veterans for co-workers. There were plausible ways that she could get hurt, but the odds were low and she didn't have anything hanging over her head, except maybe car parts.)
No, his greatest worry was what would happen in their next CAH game. Leslie had won, as predicted, simply because she had a better handle on her friends' senses of humor than he did, and it had been an enormous laugh riot when both Leslie and Richard had played similarly transgressive responses to 'What gives me uncontrollable gas?'
Well, okay, he had one real worry: Susie's father. But Susie had given Richard a clear command to follow her lead in that respect, which was quite a bit better than not knowing what to do. He hoped she wouldn't inadvertently tell him to do the wrong thing, but she was the expert on this and he was not.
He showered, brushed, braided his hair into pigtails, and put on a simple, light yellow dress with a bit of lace around the collar and sleeves, and he happily went barefoot to have breakfast (real waffles!) with his mother and sister, neither of whom were in a good a mood as he was.
"It's nothing, Mom," he overheard Zoe say.
Heather sighed a bit. "Zoe, please don't go back on our deal by lying to me. It certainly isn't nothing. If you don't want to tell me, then just say so."
"Fine, I'll tell you. You don't understand me and you really don't understand Ricky," she said, gesturing to the boy who had just happily hopped down the stairs wearing his pretty yellow dress. "I don't understand you either, you're my mom and I have no idea what you're thinking. The only thing I'm sure of is that we only have this deal because something worse would happen if we didn't."
"That's why I'd like to spend more time with you," Heather replied, trying not to get angry at the spite in her daughter's voice and suspecting that hormones were involved. "Because I want to understand you, and I hope you can understand me, too." Zoe looked nonplussed. "I'm taking a half day today and I'll be back before 1. We'll have plenty of time. I'd also like to spend some time with you tomorrow as well." Zoe still looked apprehensive, and Heather sighed. "Zoe, is there anything I can do to heal this rift between us?" She'd already apologized for the big one.
"Would you get mad if we moved that vanity to Ricky's room?" Zoe asked. "I never use it."
"I suppose not," Heather said, a bit defeated.
"Then let's just start with that," Zoe replied, trying to make herself calm down. Her mother had already gotten some things and was on her way to getting the rest of them. "He's the one who actually wants to be pretty." Richard, smiling in tacit admission, gave his mother and sister a little curtsy.
"Well, he's doing a good job," Heather said, taking a closer look at his braided pigtails. She hadn't done that yesterday and was curious. "Zoe, did you teach him how to braid his hair?"
"Yup, that was me," Zoe said. It was the first time she'd smiled all morning.
Heather, on seeing that smile, let herself relax. They weren't normal teenagers, but they were still teenagers, and she could seize neither her daughter's true forgiveness nor her trust. "All right, then. I really should get in early because there's things I need to make sure are done before I leave early today. Just keep doing the chores and taking care of yourselves. I'll see you soon."
"Bye, Mom," Zoe said, trying to actually give her mother the connection she wanted. It was better than the alternative. There would be no third chances, though.
"Bye, Mom!" Richard added, waving.
Zoe sighed as her mother left. "I know, I know, not a monster, just stupid." Zoe finished her food and waited until her little brother had finished his. "It's that thing you said yesterday," she admitted. "That whole 'Oh, if I do this shit to her, she'll be a better person for it.'" She refrained from calling her mother a bitch.
"I don't think she believes that anymore," Richard replied. He could have explained further, about the sorts of people who were, for various reasons, fervently dead-set on the idea that abuse was help, but the conversation would have gone places he really didn't want to go and he would be inadvertently making comparisons to his own mother that he had no plans on making. From his perspective, Heather and Zoe were both normal people with normal people problems.
"Yeah, you're probably right. Let's go move that vanity." It was not particularly heavy and there was readily available space in Richard's room. One of them could have done it; two made it easy. "Actually, there's some other stuff you might like." She was out of clothes that might fit him, but there were toys she'd never played with. She fished an old box out of her closet, a Barbie playhouse with plenty of accessories. According to the faded sticker, the original price had been nearly eighty dollars (for cheap molded plastic!) but Heather had bought it at a yard sale for five. That was five dollars too many, as Zoe had barely even opened it once.
Richard was certain that there was stuff missing out of the box, it was probably like that when Mom had bought it, but he realized he didn't care. "This is way too boring," he said.
"You don't play with dolls?" Zoe asked with a smile. Despite having quite a few stuffed animals, and even having gone through a brief pony phase, Zoe had never particularly cared for Barbie either.
"I actually kind of do," Richard admitted, "but they're all on my computer." One of Richard's first forays into torrenting was The Sims 4, and he'd pirated, hacked, modded, and cheated the heck out of it. It and Skyrim were what had led him down the winding path of deeper computer knowledge.
"Can I see?" Zoe asked, very politely. She was expecting him to say no. There were things on her computer (including her own Sim family) that she would never show him, Leslie, or anyone else. Crushes, extremely childish ideas, half-finished fanfics of things she didn't care about anymore, sources of utter embarrassment that were very particular to her. Her private diary was not kept in a little pink book with a lock on it; it was backed up to the cloud and encrypted with AES-256.
She was surprised, then, when he said "Okay" and started running the game. "I haven't played this in a really long time," he explained as it loaded, and he was surprised when he saw the date on his last save file. Cripes, seriously? 2018? He hadn't touched this since he was eleven? He remembered everything, though, and he went back to his characters as if it had been yesterday.
-
"Why are there six kids?" Zoe asked.
"Because the maximum household size is eight," Richard replied, looking at the characters he'd made. Sextuplets, they were, children who would never grow older, each of them with color-coded clothes (red through purple) and perfect, identical traits along with a mother and father who had extremely high-paying jobs and maxed abilities. None of them were based on anyone he knew or any media he'd watched; he'd simply thought up names based on the colors they wore. He clicked on each of them, showing them off to Zoe, and he remembered why he'd stopped playing: he'd done everything he wanted to do. With cheats and mods, he'd maxed out all their skills and their friendships, made it so that they never had to pee and barely had to sleep and had school one day a week, and then he'd gotten bored.
"They're all happy and with a lot of friends," Zoe noticed. "Are they all girls?"
"No," Richard admitted. It was half and half. They were all wearing modded pretty dresses, but the modder had never made the dresses girls-only.
"This is the sweetest thing," Zoe said, smiling. Richard had been a lot more innocent back when he'd played this. "You'd like to be one of them, wouldn't you?" He just quietly nodded. "You might not have five close siblings, but you do have one big sister." She began to gently massage his shoulders, slipping easily into the caregiver role. No wonder Susie had fallen in love with him so quickly. She'd seen him, not his shields, when she'd first met him.
The Sim family was having a party in the middle of town when Zoe's phone and Richard's computer started blooping.
[10:03 AM] Caroline: well it looks like i cant do much for dad either
[10:04 AM] Caroline: no work, no pool, under the weather with aunt flo
"What does that mean?" Richard asked, confused. It sounded like a euphemism, but did she really have an Aunt Flo...?
"It means she's having her period," Zoe said carefully. Richard could have whacked himself. Of course! Caroline had serious premenstrual syndrome three days ago.
[10:05 AM] Richard: It's not like there's any sharks in the pool, so I don't know what you'd be worried about.
[10:06 AM] Leslie: Sharks?
[10:07 AM] Caroline: ricky you get tell exactly one period joke in your life and that was it, dont do another one ever again unless you get into standup
[10:07 AM] Zoe: You all see what I have to live with?
[10:08 AM] Leslie: OH MY GOD THAT WAS A PERIOD JOKE
[10:08 AM] Zoe: Yeah, this is my brother. Now imagine growing up with him.
[10:08 AM] Susie: You better be careful with period jokes, Ricky. They tend to splash back on you.
[10:09 AM] Leslie: LMAO SUSIE YOU'RE EVEN WORSE!
[10:09 AM] Caroline: were you not listening when i told you they deserve each other?
"You two really do," Zoe said aloud, and hugged him from behind, feeling like he could not possibly be hugged enough. "We need to wash clothes," she reminded him, and like a good sissy, he put on his heels to do his housework. Then he'd recalled what his princess had told him, and so after all the clothes were washed, he put his boy stuff in the back and in boxes and his pretty girl clothes up front, where they belonged. Zoe rearranged her stuff as well, playing keep-keep-toss with old toys. It was her mother, not her, who had a sense of nostalgia for a lot of it, and Zoe was determined to make it so that everything in her space was something she wanted to be there. (A lot of it was just old crap, some of it with long dead batteries. Richard would never use any of it, not even the Barbie playhouse, so into the dumpster it went.)
They had lunch together, and played some Archon and 2v2 Starcraft, and as the leagues were separated, they were starting from the bottom and so proceeded to completely roll face. ("You guys are getting dunked on by a sissy boy!" Zoe had said aloud once, giggling at the screen, and Richard's laughter didn't affect his basically automatic hand movements.)
Heather would arrive later than she'd hoped, but she warned her children in advance. Richard was tempted to put on his rainbow boy clothes, but that would have been too much, so he dressed up like an ordinary boy again, wearing his swimming trunks in place of shorts and bringing another pair of pants for afterwards. He didn't feel like he was pretending when he wore dresses and heels anymore. Those were his normal, everyday clothes. It was boys' clothes and flat sneakers that were the costume, but he'd worn that costume all his life.
Heather retrieved her own (modest, one-piece) swimsuit, drove them to the pool, and was pleased to see that her daughter's mood had improved. Her own thoughts were a bit of a mess, work had been worse than she'd thought, and they got messier when she realized that her children had memberships to the Y that she didn't even know about. Susie, it was all Susie, she knew. She had the idea that her son could buy pretty much anything he wanted without even asking her, and she was never going to do anything about it. That thought made her feel more adrift than seeing him in a dress.
-
Richard was halfway to the locker room when he heard the characteristic bloops:
[2:50 PM] Susie: Got here early, in the changing room right now.
[2:50 PM] Susie: Ricky, today, you don't want to take your eyes off me, you have trouble keeping your hands off me, you'll follow me to the ends of the earth.
[2:50 PM] Susie: The first thing you'll say to me is how beautiful I am. :heart:
[2:51 PM] Richard: Got it. I'm here early too. :heart:
They entered the pool area at nearly the same time, and telling her "You look incredibly beautiful today" was the very easiest thing in the world to do, and she put her arms around him and he reciprocated in kind, one around her back and the other on her thigh. "Well, every day. But especially today." She pursed her lips and they shared a quick kiss, Richard rapidly becoming erect, and as their heads moved, Richard caught a glimpse of a somewhat burly man with a harsh face and skin a touch darker than Susie's, treading water in the pool with precise movements.
And he was staring right at them!
Richard's erection shrank as quickly as it grew. Susie noticed his glance and turned, her right arm still around him and his left still around her. "Dad, this is Richard, my boyfriend. Ricky, this is my dad, Majid," she introduced them with a smile.
"Hello, sir," Richard decided on. Better to sound awkward than risk pissing him off.
"Hello, Richard," Majid said, and there were layers to that hello, layers of unspoken challenge that Richard did not entirely grasp. Majid turned to his daughter. "Susie, where is this girl you mentioned?"
"She's coming," Susie said. "We're still early." She tugged on Richard and pulled away. "C'mon, Ricky. Diving board's this way." The board was only about six feet from the water, and she unhesitatingly bounced once and dove in perfectly. Richard had jumped into pools before, felt the stinging shock of hitting water the wrong way, and his usual approach was to hesitantly jump in feet first - but after watching Susie expertly dive in Olympic style, he was far more afraid of looking like a coward than he was of any amount of physical pain. He dove in right after she swam out of the way, his hands in front of his head, trying to imitate her and what he'd seen on television. The dive was far from perfect, and he felt the water catch him in the forehead and strike him on the back a bit, and he spluttered a bit as he surfaced. He felt a tug on his shorts and wondered if they were coming loose from the dive, but instead, it was because Susie was tugging on his shorts, smiling at him and then quickly swimming away to the other side of the pool. Remembering her instructions, he immediately swam after her, furiously kicking as hard as he could.
Leslie arrived shortly thereafter with her mother, but Richard barely noticed. A few times, he spotted his mom conversing to Majid about whatever, the two of them close together in the pool. ('Small talk,' he hoped. 'Just random bullshit. Please, God, don't let Mom say anything stupid to Majid about anything.') A few minutes later, Heather went off to swim near Zoe and Leslie ('and please don't fuc-k with them either, Mom') while Majid swam with a precise stroke that Richard didn't recognize.
But his beloved princess had given him a very clear order: he was to continue looking at her. And so he did, constantly swimming after her, trying to find a rhythm that wasn't wasting energy. Granted, she was older than him, and a bit taller, but he had the benefit of testosterone - and that very thing was why he was following her. As long as she didn't betray him, a thing she would clearly never do, he was her property, her pet. If she told him to be her baby girl, he would happily do it. If she told him to act like a lovestruck boy (not exactly a difficult bit of acting!) in front of her father, he would happily do it, despite how much his muscles and lungs were starting to hurt. Especially when she took breaks between swimming back and forth, kissing him and holding onto him as furiously as he was swimming after her.
Richard wondered if she knew just what she was doing to him. She would never put him in a chastity device, she had promised, but the combination of close, personal touch on one hand, and exhaustion and her father's presence on the other, was having a similar effect (and, under the circ-umstances, not being able to get a boner was a good thing). He was thirteen years old, he felt like he couldn't wait another five minutes to take her somewhere private, and he had to wait until Wednesday. Still, he didn't want this to end. He was so close to her!
But eventually it did end, all too soon, and of course she gave him a long kiss goodbye, shamelessly and right there in front of everyone, before they all retreated to their locker rooms. There were two males in the whole group, Richard noted as he dripped his way out of the (hastily divided) showers and to the lockers: him and her father. And her father was right behind him.
Abruptly, the man put his arm around Richard, gripping his shoulder tightly, and Richard flinched at the violation of personal space. 'Oh boy, here it comes,' Richard thought. 'He's going to threaten me not to mess with his daughter. I wonder what'll happen if I tell him he's too late?' Susie's plans certainly must have included this. What kind of long game was she playing?
"If you break her heart, I will break your neck," Majid said in his ear instead before swiftly letting go, and Richard visibly relaxed, laughing a bit in obvious relief, inwardly jumping for joy, a great many fears being dispelled at once, Susie's plan suddenly making a lot more sense. For Richard, that didn't even count as a threat - it was effectively a blessing of their relationship!
"I'm never going to do that," Richard promised as he pulled his wet swimming trunks off, dried himself, and put his pants on. Going commando wasn't uncomfortable for him, and having Majid see his junk in the locker room wasn't even on his list of worries. "That's really not going to happen." He didn't think he could even begin to explain. 'Don't you dare suddenly decide that gravity isn't for you and start falling upwards instead!'
Majid dressed very quickly, trunks coming off and pants and shirt going on in smooth motions. "Excellent. We understand each other. Keep her safe." He was out the door before Richard had finished putting his shoes on. Even though his muscles were burning from exertion, he had to refrain from doing a happy dance, although he found himself skipping to the door, as skipping along to Susie's tune was taking him exactly where he wanted to go.
-
"You look happier than I expected," Heather said on their way to the car. "What did he say to you in there?" Heather had caught the man's serious expression on his way to the locker room.
"He said he wants us to stay together," Richard said joyfully. He almost told his mother and sister exactly how the man had said that but decided that was a bad idea.
"And likely warned you not to cheat on her," Heather replied knowingly. "Richard, I know you like playing games in your relationship with her, but your relationship itself, that's not a game. I know, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. But never forget that." Their not-a-performance in front of her father had been demonstrative to Heather as well. She had known that they were doing things in private, but having their mutual devotion shown in public made things very clear.
"Why don't you talk to me about my relationship, Mom?" Zoe asked pointedly. Her mood had improved substantially, Richard noticed; she'd been able to spend an hour with Leslie in the pool, even if the time was occupied by actual physical therapy.
"Because I don't know what to say," Heather admitted. She had asked Willa just a handful of small, uncomfortable questions about it, and Willa's replies had been friendly and informative. They were teenagers, full of rampaging hormones and high emotions. Yes, they really did seem to love each other, and their relationship should be treated as that until contradicted somehow. Yes, Leslie's disability did complicate things, and they were all hoping the treatment would be effective. Trying to interfere with their relationship because her family would not have approved of it was an incredibly, nightmarishly bad idea for oh-so-many reasons, and Heather had already decided not to. It was obvious that Willa was trying to get Heather to come around to her way of thinking, but she was starting to do that anyway. "Oh, I forgot to mention. Susie's father wants to take your group boating on Sunday, so I'll be driving you to the lake as well." She hadn't been there in a long time.
Heather sighed a bit as her children immediately pulled out their phones, but she knew what they were doing, and their group did need to discuss it. "Oh, hey!" her son exclaimed. "Susie's dad is inviting us for sushi!" Heather blinked in surprise and immediately started heading to the restaurant. She knew the place her son was talking about, and it was far, far too expensive for her budget, despite how much her daughter had wanted to go there. It turned out that both of them already had.
It was only until Richard was inside the door that he realized that the last time he'd gone in there, he'd been dressed as a girl, complete with fake breasts. Fortunately, if the waitress or other staff recognized him, they gave no sign whatsoever, and Richard could never be sure if that was out of simple professionalism or if they really didn't remember his face. He tried to make himself calm down. What were they going to do, really? Go 'Hey, weren't you a girl last time you came in here?' right in front of his family and friends? This was an upscale Japanese restaurant, he didn't think anyone working there would do a thing like that. It was a good way to lose a tip if not all their business forever, and struggling restaurants in the middle of a pandemic needed all the business they could get.
Of course, Richard didn't entirely need to hide his excitement, as Susie had positioned herself right next to him. She didn't give him explicit instructions on what to do this time. Her cues were largely physical in nature, feeding him and letting him feed her, constantly happening to rest her hand on his legs and smiling when he did the same.
Majid was watching him, and the rest of them, very closely, even if he did not always look directly at them. The man had not become a powerful mogul by being socially unaware, and he knew considerably more than he let on. He smiled for the camera (Susie was posting pictures in the Discord chat for Caroline's benefit, but Caroline didn't even want to think about eating sushi right then) and learned how much Susie's group valued their absent member; he would have to learn more about Caroline as well, particularly as she had been driving his daughter places. He was very certain that his daughter was engaging in a performance of sorts with her boyfriend, to show him that they were serious with one another. What he did not understand was why the rest of them treated Richard with subtle, unconscious deference, as if he were some sort of hero. The boy had done something for them, he was certain. There was something very particular about him, and Majid was going to find out what.
But a meal was not the time to ask such questions, he decided. A meal was time for his daughter and her chosen boy to engage in courtship rituals. Ah, there - he knew what she wanted, before she wanted it, and the other way around as well. He could not keep the smile off his face, and the rest of them thought he was simply enjoying the delicious food. (He had told the whole group, in an unambiguously firm tone, to get whatever they would like to eat. They chose individual meals rather than a platter, this time.)
Heather's attention was largely on Zoe and Leslie. Zoe did feed the other girl, much as Richard had, but that was almost entirely one-way. Leslie could have fed herself, but her arms were tired, and she liked being fed by her girlfriend. Heather found herself eating deep guilt, and some relief, along with her sushi. She could have, probably would have, gotten in the way of that. What had she been thinking? She looked to Majid, who was sitting next to her with no sexual interest in her at all, and wished that she were young and beautiful again so that he wouldn't be so entirely out of her league.
The plates were completely cleaned and Majid paid for it all, and unlike his daughter he used Benjamins rather than Jacksons, and as they left, Richard and Zoe both independently realized how quickly the tables had turned. Less than a decade ago, their mother would have worried about being able to go to a fancy restaurant with her children, for fear that they'd do something stupid and embarrass her in public, and she had been relieved when they didn't. Instead, they were feeling a bit relieved that she hadn't.
"God almighty, Richard," Heather said as they got into the car, her stomach full of delicious, expensive sushi and similarly expensive mochi ice cream. "You keep her. I don't care what you have to do, you keep her." With effort, Richard kept himself from smirking or chuckling. If she only knew what he was doing already! "And, Zoe? You and Leslie are in love. I'm sorry I couldn't admit that sooner."
"Thanks for getting it, Mom," Zoe said, and Heather understood.
The three of them watched classic anime together that evening, Heather on the couch between her daughter in her loose T-shirt and shorts and her son in his pretty yellow dress, and they were content.