Page 20 of Coiled Tight
No, no, you haven’t, because you still have to deal with?—
Nope, we agreed moving here meant not thinking aboutthat.
Did everyone else make it to adulthood and still have an angel and a demon fighting over their shoulders whenever they struggled with a decision? Asking for a friend.
The friend was me, obviously, as I stared into the part of the wardrobe I’d unpacked mechanically so that I didn’t do anything rash I could regret.
I had convinced myself that there would be no time, no entertaining the idea of a Daddy, or playtime, or any of the things I didn’t deserve because I hadn’t been a good friend or a good anything.
But… But it had been the longest week, and I felt ready to crash out, and the pups and Golden were doing okay, and Sofía was working today so she could handle it if anything happened, and I had promised Saúl I wasn’t leaving the house no matter what.
And it was important to manage my anxiety, right? Not that I thought of the adult-sized diapers in front of me as a coping mechanism per se, but being Little helped stop the thoughts. Thoughts were still there because I was a human being, but they weren’t the ones that traveled too fast to keep track of and went from catastrophic event to catastrophic event, or made me hate myself to the point I wanted to claw my skin out.
I hadn’t fixed shit with Kara, and the private investigator had sent me another email I kept unopened in a hidden folder, but maybe it wasn’t too selfish or evil of me if I just had today to reset.
That was what it would be. Resetting.
I nodded to myself before I got off the bed and started grabbing all the things I needed for a relaxing, Little day. Mostly so that I didn’t have time to talk myself out of it again. I knew how I worked, and I also knew I needed this, and I’d have to deal with what it said about me later. At some other time that wasn’t today, when I already felt on the edge of a meltdown.
It was going to be all right, and I was going to stay safe. I just had to chuck off my normie clothes, grab some baby powder, wrap the bulky diaper around my hips and through my center, and… Voilá. I had onesies too but just a diaper would work for now. My plan was to stay under blankies anyway, and I hated dealing with the zipper in the back all on my own, and I didn’t want to start crying in frustration, so diaper alone it was.
Then, I climbed up to the bed because babies were obviously too small to just get on it and wrapped myself in a messy burrito of blankets.
Finally.
Was this the first time I took an actual deep breath since… Since when? Since I’d arrived at the sanctuary? Before that?
I didn’t know.
The blankies were so soft. I curled my fingers around the material and took a sniff. Saúl didn’t buy just one type of detergent. He went for whatever was on sale and he could buy in bulk, but they were always the kind that left the clothes smelling warm and nice. This one smelled like clouds, which was one hundred percent a thing.
I buried my face deeper into it.
I woke up hours later. I didn’t check the time, but I could tell from the sunlight making it through my window. It was darker. Not eerily dark—I didn’t like the dark—but it was darker. And there was a chance that I was overheated.
Ew.
I hated sweat when I was Little. It was gross.
I moved the blankies away until they pooled around my feet and looked around. I didn’t have any of my coloring books around, or anything else I could do.
This was a dilemma.
Immediately, I pulled my thumb to my mouth and started suckling on it. It was what Littles did when they needed to think extra hard. I was a resourceful boy, so I was sure there would be something I could come up with.
“Hey, the guys want to crack a few beers, you?—”
No.
No, no, no, no, no.
WHY THE FUCK DID I KICK THE BLANKETS?
I tried to hide behind them again, but he had already seen, and it didn’t matter that he closed the door almost as quickly as he’d opened it. Saúl had seen.
My thoughts might not run as fast when I was Little, but it didn’t mean I didn’t process shit—like the widening of his eyes or how his throat bobbed, or how he cursed under his breath, but it had either been in Spanish or there had been too much white noise in my head to process the words.
Probably for the better.
