That's What Friends Are For [Tier 2 and Tier 3 Exclusive] (Patreon)

It had been the third day in a row I could hear Pia crying in her room. Not all day, mind you, but every now and then, I’d hear her pathetic little sobs.

I felt bad for her. The past few weeks had been pretty rough for her. What, with her breakup, the long hours she had been putting in at work and that whole business with her car being totaled, it seemed like she had been dealt a pretty bad hand.

I tried to be a good roommate and give her some distance. If she needed someone to talk to, I was here, but the last thing I wanted to do was impose.

Still, this was the third day in a row, and besides the occasional sob from her room, or her zombie-like march from the bedroom to the kitchen and then back to the bedroom, I hadn’t seen very much of her. I was getting a little worried.

I had grabbed the bottle of wine I had bought for her earlier in the day and some wine glasses and decided to go check in on her.  I gently knocked on the door. “Hello? Pia? It’s Melanie. I just wanted to make sure you were doing okay. I brought you a little treat though!”

There was no answer.

I gave the door a polite little knock again. Still no response.

She was probably sleeping. Poor girl. I was about to walk away when I had another idea: I’d just leave the bottle of wine and a glass in her room. It’d be a pleasant little surprise for later when she woke up.

Carefully, I opened her door, and as light from the apartment hallway spilled into her bedroom, I could see that she was, in fact, asleep. I placed the wine bottle and a glass onto her desk before turning my attention back to her. She was sleeping on top of her bed, looking cozy on a little nest of blankets. I slowly walked closer to drape another nearby blanket over her.

Was she...sucking her thumb? It was kind of cute, honestly, seeing her so blissfully unaware and vulnerable. Maybe that’s just what she needed right now.

I grabbed the blanket - but as I was about to throw it over her bare legs and panties I had another realization…

Those...didn’t look like panties. They were huge and thick and plastic-like and…

Was that...a diaper? My eyes widened and I did my best to contain the gasp that was begging for release from my lungs. I panicked, tossing the blanket over her before quickly evacuating the room, closing the door behind me.

I wasn’t sure what to do. I wasn’t sure what I’d say. Nothing, I supposed. I had suddenly become privy to information that I probably shouldn’t have been.

I was vaguely familiar with this...kink. Fetish? Lifestyle? Whatever it was, I had seen it around on TV and the internet before. I didn’t really have anything against it - to each their own. But this was different. This was Pia. My roommate. My friend.

All I had to do, I realized, was act like I didn’t know anything. Easy. Perfect. Done.

Well...except for the fact that I had left a bottle of wine in her room. And that I had covered her with a blanket. I sighed and debated about whether or not I wanted to go back into her room. Ultimately, I decided against it. The only thing worse than her later realizing I was in her room would be if she woke from her sleep to find me staring down at her.

I’d just wait it out.

Later that night, as I watched TV in the living room, her door finally opened, followed by the telltale zombie-like steps of her roaming into the kitchen for some food. She was cloaked in a thick blanket, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wonder if she was still wearing her diaper under it.

“H-hey, Pia, how are you feeling?”

“I...I’m good,” she said hesitantly, as she began poking through the fridge.

“Good,” I replied. I was tempted to say more - something about how she could always come talk to me, or something like that. I felt myself overthinking even this, the most basic interaction I could have with her.

She dug around in the fridge for a minute or two before finding something that she stirred up and put into the microwave. I tried to act like I wasn’t paying attention to her.

“Hey…” she said to me over the hum of the microwave. “...were you in my room earlier?”

“Oh…” I replied slowly. “I was, yeah. I thought I’d drop off a bottle of wine for you. It’s on your desk.”

“Th-thank you, I hadn’t seen it.” she said, sounding surprised. Yet, if she hadn’t seen it, I wondered what had tipped her off that I had been in there. The blanket, perhaps.

“Of course! And if there’s anything I can help with, just let me know.”

“I-I will,” she said bashfully, pulling her steaming dish from the microwave. She gave me one more skeptical glance - she even looked like she wanted to ask something else, but thought better of it -  before scurrying off to her bedroom again.

I was left wondering if I had said too much. Or not enough.

A few hours passed, and I had mostly stayed on the couch, alternating between watching the TV, reading a book, and falling asleep. It hadn’t gotten late. Late enough that I decided that if I was going to fall asleep doing something else, I might as well do it from the comfort of my actual bed.

As I made the long arduous journey back to my bedroom, I took note of a faint glow protruding from the bottom of Pia’s closed door. It flickered and flashed - clearly the television. I wondered how she was feeling. Had she had any of the wine? Was she...still wearing her diaper?

I lifted my hand to rap on her door, but hesitated. I lowered my hand to my side. If she wanted to talk to someone, she would’ve. But...maybe someone needed to make the first move? My hand lifted to the door again, hesitating once more at the last second.

“Mel…” Pia’s voice said softly from within her room, “I know you’re out there. I can see your feet at the bottom of the door.”

I instinctively stepped back a foot. I must’ve looked like a creep.

“I wasn’t just standing out here like a weirdo. Well...maybe a little. I was just wondering if you wanted to talk or not.”

“You can come in,” she said.

I stepped into her room, closing the door behind me. It was a silly thing to have done. There was nobody else here but us. But the intimacy in just her closed off bedroom seemed right. It was a sanctuary.

“You’re okay?” I asked, sitting on the bed.

“Just bummed. I got my ass kicked this week. I’ve just been trying to work up the strength to get back out into the world again.”

I nodded. I wanted to be delicate with my words: “Everyone...has to do what they have to do. Everyone, you know, processes things in a different way.” Was I trying to convince her or myself?

She laughed a little and shook her head, smiling. It had definitely been a while since I had seen even just a smile on her face.

“I’m going to guess that when you dropped the wine off before...you saw something?”

“Well...no. I mean, you know, I was just in there for a second. Dropping off wine and…”

“You’re not the best liar.”

“Look,” I said, my heart rate increasing as I tried to choose the right words, “I’m not here to judge. Whatever you need to do, you know?”

She smiled again - it was a different kind of smile. Humbled and appreciative. I could’ve walked out of the room in that moment without another word about it. She knew it and I knew it.

“I’m not, like, crazy,” she said. I had to read in between the lines a little. I was thankful that I knew how to talk with her. Right now, she wanted to talk about it. And I wanted her to talk about anything.

“I know that,” I said.

I stepped a little closer to her bed. I didn’t want to just sit down next to her. But I’d see where the conversation went. Maybe it’d end up being a sit-down kind of conversation, maybe it wouldn’t.

“I don’t know where it came from,” she said, almost as if she was picking up a story from where she left off. “I just...knew that I had these urges. I wanted to...dress like a baby. Act like a baby. Like, saying it out loud now? I feel crazy. Those are crazy words. Grown adults don’t want to be babies again. But it made sense to me. There was just something about it that, the idea of it, that brought me comfort.”

I offered a supportive nod. She wasn’t wrong - it was...bizarre. Unorthodox, at best. But because it was Pia, a good friend of mine who I trusted in almost every way, I did my best to look past that strangeness.

“Well,” I said, finding myself thinking out loud - spitting out words the moment they were formed in my mind. I had the concurrent thought of: Don’t say anything shitty. “Comfort and happiness are important things for everyone. Everyone deserves those things. And, obviously, not everyone needs the same things.”

She nodded.

“Cigarettes,” I said.

“Huh?”

I hit the rewind button in my brain and tried that again. “Like...cigarettes, right? They’re dangerous and bad for you. And even if they were completely safe, you’re still sucking on a tube full of dried plants that you lit on fire. That’s pretty weird, right? But people do it anyway. Regardless of what anyone else says or thinks. But for them...it’s a source of comfort.”

“Are you saying...diapers are actually unhealthy for me?”

It was strange hearing her say the word ‘diaper’ aloud to me. I had seen her diaper already, and she had more or less just bluntly stated she liked acting like a baby. Still, it was surreal to me.

“No...I was just saying…”

“I get what you mean,” she said with a gentle smile. “I appreciate you trying to make me feel better about it.”

“Look, do you want to know what I think?”

She shook her head.

“It doesn’t matter if you stepped on a thumbtack or...well...had the worst week of your life. You don’t need an excuse to do the things you want to do. So do them.”

“But...I wouldn’t want to…”

“Don’t worry about me. Take some time for yourself. Do whatever you want to do, and do it for as long as you want to do it. I don’t care how ‘crazy’ you think you’re being, or how awkward you think it’s going to be for me. You’ve earned the right to have some you-time. And here? In our apartment? This is your safe space. No judgments inside this place.”

She sighed. She seemed conflicted. “That...that’s really nice of you to say. But that’s not going to make me comfortable to just…be myself.”

“What could I do to make you feel more comfortable then? Could I go get a hotel room for a week? I could stay over at my Mom’s. Or…”

“No, no, I’m not going to displace you,” she said. “Let me think about it.”

I nodded. “Okay, please. Do that. I mean that too. Don’t just say you’re going to think about it and then pretend we didn’t have this conversation. You need to do what’s best for you.”

“Okay. I...I’ll sleep on it. Okay? We can talk about it in the morning?”

That was probably as good of an answer as I would get from her tonight. Really, I was surprised we had a conversation at all; it felt like progress.

“Deal.”

That girl made me worried sometimes. It wasn’t the first time I had ever stressed a little over her well-being. I lay awake in my bed that night, hoping that she was thinking about everything I said. If she wanted to waddle around the house in a diaper? If she wanted to sit on the couch and drink out of a bottle? If those were the things that would get her back on her feet again, then I wanted her to embrace it. Even if it made no sense to me.

--

The next morning, as I sipped at some coffee and caught up on the news on my tablet, Pia emerged from her room. She looked a little less frightful than she had been the last few days - but she still looked far from ready to venture outside. Her hair was a mess, and her sweatpants and sweatshirt both looked a size or two too big.

Admittedly, I found myself watching her walk. If she was wearing a diaper now, would I be able to tell? Would her butt be...poofy? Would she actually have a waddle? Could I...smell it?

I couldn’t tell. If nothing else, her baggy sweatpants stood in the way of my analysis.

“Well well well,” I said with a wide smile. “I haven’t seen this early bird in a while.”

“Now now. Let’s not make a big deal about it,” she said, blushing. “I’m just...trying.”

I felt a warmth in my chest. That was really all I had wanted - for her to just try a little.

“I can make you breakfast? Anything you want.”

She shrugged. “Oh...you don’t have to do that.”

“Really!” I said. “Pancakes? French toast? Just a bowl of cereal?”

She glanced around the kitchen. “I...uhm...might just have some milk, actually.”

I nodded and was about to return to my tablet with making too big a deal of it - but I had this thought at the tip of my tongue and I just couldn’t decide if it was worth saying aloud or not. But, alas, I couldn’t keep it to myself. I’d have regretted it later if I didn’t say it.

“Do you...want it in a bottle?” I asked. “Like, a baby bottle?” I hoped it hadn’t come off as insensitive or as a joke. I meant in all sincerity.

For a moment, she stared at me as if I had three heads. It was some mix of shock and...maybe confusion?

“Oh...I…”

“I’m sorry,” I said, worried I had already overstepped a boundary. “I wasn’t mocking you. I just thought that...maybe you’d like that?”

“I would like that,” she said finally. Now she was the one shocking me. “Y-you know I have a baby bottle?”

“I assumed.” I shrugged.

“I...I’ll go get it.”

She didn’t bring out a single bottle though. She had brought out a whole collection of childish housewares that I had no clue were in her possession. Not one bottle - but three: a rather simple looking plastic baby bottle; a fancier looking glass bottle; and a pink plastic sippy cup for a toddler - complete with cartoon princess printed on it and little handles. There were also little plates with princesses on them. Little spoons and forks clearly intended for toddlers, with big thick handles. She dumped it all on the counter.

I didn’t say anything right away. No part of me was upset by it - but I wasn’t sure how she wanted me to react either.

“I said this was a safe space,” I said, “and I meant it. So thank you for sharing.”

She nodded, smiling through her bright red cheeks.

“I’ll put some milk in a bottle for you. Would you like that?”

“Yes...please,” she said softly. She didn’t sound quite like the Pia I knew. This was Baby Pia - even softer and more delicate.

My mind spun while I got the milk and carefully poured a bottleful for her. Did I go back to giving her space? Or should I instead help cultivate this little fantasy of hers in the hope that it would help restore her spirit?

I handed her the bottle. She took it and began to slowly walk back to the bedroom before stopping and turning back towards the living room.

“Do you mind if I drink it out here?” she asked timidly.

“Of course! It’s your home too. And I told you before...this place - all of it - is your sanctuary. For whatever you want.”

She nodded, sitting down. I walked into the living room myself now. I hadn’t planned on having this particular conversation, but...maybe it’d be better just to know now, so I wouldn’t have to keep wondering about it.

“Hey,” I said sitting next to her.

“Hi.”

“Look...you can say no if you want to, it won’t bother me. But with this whole...baby thing? If it’s helpful for you  - like, if you really feel like maybe it’d be good for you to get more...immersed - I could help you.”

“Like...how?”

“I...don’t know. Honestly, I haven’t thought it through. But whatever I could to to help you feel more...in that space. I could get you drinks in bottles. Or, cut up your food real small on your cute little plates. Or wrap you up in blankets. Or...I don’t know...change your diapers.”

She blushed and looked down at her lap, breathing nervously. “Y-you don’t have to… I would never ask you to do that.”

“I know,” I said, putting a hand on her lap. “But I guess that’s my point. I’d do any of that. I’d do all of that. I’d do anything you needed. Because that’s what friends are for.”

Tears were in her eyes. This was never a good thing for me to see, of course, because then tears were in my eyes. And then, of course, our arms were tightly wrapped each other as we rocked back and forth on the couch as one single unit - all while bawling our eyes out like literal babies.

“God...I don’t deserve you,” she finally said, composing herself.

“It’s not for nothing,” I replied. “One day I’ll be completely despondent about my life, and I’ll need you to dress like a walrus for me.”

She smiled. “Is that what you’re into?”

I nodded.

“Look,” she said, “I want it - everything you just said… Well, not so much the walrus part, but everything else. But I could never ask you to…”

“I’m telling you,” I said. “I wouldn’t offer it to you if I didn’t mean it. This is a once in a lifetime kind of opportunity. You want to be a big baby? Say the word. I’ll make you my big baby.”

She expelled another little sob and more tears leaked from her eyes. But they seemed like happy tears to me.

“Please,” she said. “I want to be your big baby. I...I need this.”

I nodded, squeezing her little hand tight in mine.

“Should we start? Do you want to go get a diaper?”

She laughed bashfully and shook her head.

“Oh,” I said with a laugh. “You’re...already wearing one?”

She nodded.

“Is it...dry? When did you put it on?”

“Uhm...this morning.”

We both knew she didn’t address the other question.

“But is it dry?”

She blushed and offered only a little shrug. I was curious as to how she expected this little scenario to play out. Was I expected to continue badgering her until she finally caved and told me the truth? Or was I expected to find it out some other way.

I had no experience being in her current role - well, maybe not since being a little girl myself - but if I was to guess, I suspected that she needed a little more authority. She needed to be made to feel as small as she wanted to be.

“Stand up,” I said.

“But…”

“No buts. Stand up right here in front of me.”

She looked nervous, and a little excited. I was nervous too. Maybe even more nervous than she was. It wasn’t just that I didn’t really know what I was doing and had to guess - I was worried that failure on my part would send her even deeper into the darkness she had been sulking in the last few days.

Her body slowly rose from the couch, and even though it was an incredibly short distance from her seat to the spot right in front of where I sat, she moved with a glacial hesitance.

“Could you pull your pants down for me, please?” I tried to find the right balance of needing to check because I cared about her, and making a request that I simply expected her to follow because I was in charge.

“I...uhm…” She squirmed a little. I’m sure this was exactly what she wanted, though I doubted she ever expected to get it.

“Okay. I’ll do it for you then. If I must.”

“Uhm...maybe...just…”

I grabbed onto the side of her baggy sweatpants and pulled them straight down. They barely hung on to her as it was, and I suspected it was her bulky diaper, if anything, that was keeping them in place. I didn’t think I had pulled too hard, but they just tumbled to the ground in a cluster around her ankles.

There it was - her thick white diaper right in front of my face. I had worried that I wouldn’t actually be able to tell if it had been used or not, but the evidence was quite evident. The bottom of the diaper, between her legs, looked thoroughly saturated and discolored to a pale yellow. Without even thinking about it, I reached up and tucked my hand under the sagging bottom, feeling its dense heft in my hand.

“Do you always pee this much?” I asked. “It feels like you let two other people wet in this too.”

“N-no...I...it was…just me.”

“And how long were you going to just sit there in your dirty diaper, young lady?” I had liked the ‘young lady,’ only to remember that that still felt more sophisticated and mature than she deserved. “I’m sorry, I meant little girl. A young lady probably wouldn’t be wearing diapers.”

She turned to look at me, a look that seemed to say: Are you SURE you’ve never done this before? I laughed and shrugged a little. She smiled back - confirmation that I was on the right track.

“I think, before we do anything else, we need to change your diaper.”

“But…”

“Do you want to get a diaper rash?”

“N-no…”

“Have you ever had a diaper rash before?”

Again, she looked back to me, her face blushing pink. “M-maybe…”

“And yet you still sat there, not telling me you needed your diaper changed? Let’s take care of that.”

I stood up and took her by the hand. It was a small gesture - one that I hadn’t even entirely planned in advance, it just happened. By the time her hand was in mind, I wondered if this was awkward. But she gripped my hand tightly in return, much to my relief.

She stepped out of the mound that was once her baggy sweatpants and allowed me to lead her back to her room. I turned the light on and opened the blinds in the windows - maybe the first time both had been done at once in weeks. The light, especially the crisp sunlight from the window, felt good in here. Already, the room was starting to exude radiance, rather than feeling like the dark cave she had made it into.

“Up on the bed,” I said, my voice taking on an almost sing-song tone.

Pia obediently did as I asked, crawling up onto her bed and lying on her back.

“Has anyone ever done this for you before?” I asked

She shook her head. “No. I’ve never shared this with anyone before.”

I felt that in my heart. It was a strange honor to be the person she shared this part of herself with. Now, more than ever, I wanted to make sure I didn’t let her down.

“You...you’re okay with this, right?” I asked. “I can...change your diaper?”

“You really want to?” she giggled.

I nodded.

“Yes,” she said.

She pointed out the location of the clean diapers and various baby supplies. My babysitting years were slowly coming back to me as I unfastened the tapes from either side of her diaper. I found the process to be pretty straight-forward, and for a moment, I almost forgot that I was changing the diaper of my best friend and roommate.

With the diaper pulled open under her bottom, I drew one of the moist baby wipes from the package and began to slowly clean her with it. As I ran it between her legs, they seemed to spread a little wider - a little more inviting. Nothing immediately seemed amiss about this. My hand slowed a little in running the damp cloth across her skin. She moaned softly.

I looked through her knees to her face, and she looked back at me. I was sure she could see the same thing in my eyes that I thought I could see in hers: a need for something more. We were on the verge of something.

I was torn. I wanted to explore that. I wanted to let my fingers linger between her legs a little bit longer. But we had never had that sort of experience with each other before. I certainly never saw so much of her before. So close, and with my hands on her.

It was hard, but I finished with the wipe, quickly discarding it and pulling away the dirty diaper before positioning the new one beneath her. I hoped that she didn’t hold it against me that I didn’t explore other possibilities instead of putting her back into another diaper. But as I dusted her exposed crotch with baby powder, her face didn’t look upset at all - just blissful and thankful.

“Good as new,” I said finally.

“Is it...would it be okay if I...didn’t wear pants over my diaper?”

“Of course,” I said with a smile.

“I just...I think I might like that.”

I nodded. “It’ll certainly make it easier for me to check it.” We both laughed.

--

A few hours passed and we had done our best to move on with our days. I had some work to do on my laptop, while Pia had some depressive wallowing to do on the couch as she watched TV. It wasn’t that much different from the days that preceded it - except that she wasn’t just holed up in her room now. And she wore a diaper with no pants over them.

From where I sat at the dining room table, I could watch her on the couch. While we had spent most of the last few years together in the same spaces, I don’t know if I could think of another time when I wanted to stare at her like this. I just wanted to protect her. I wanted to take care of her. I wanted to...I wasn’t even completely sure what I wanted.

Occasionally, she’d turn from the couch and look back to me and smile. She knew I was watching her. She didn’t seem to mind either.

At some point, I realized that my work just wasn’t going to happen for as long as I sat there watching Pia instead. Instead of taking my computer somewhere else, though, I went the other route and just left my computer behind, taking a seat right next to her.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.”

She leaned against me, putting her head on my chest as we watched the TV. Her hand clutched my hand.

“Do you...want to sit in my lap?” I asked her.

“You’d...like that?”

I nodded. “Would you?”

She nodded too, an enthusiastic nod. I patted my lap and she almost immediately shifted her body off the couch and plopped her padded bottom onto my legs. She looked to me to make sure I was still okay with it. I gave her the warmest smile I could muster. The glow on her face signaled that she received the message loud and clear.

We sat like that for a little while, just her in my lap, snuggling against me while we watched TV. Well the TV was on, but I’m not sure either of us watched much of it. I was running my fingers through her hair. Meanwhile, her body had begun to shift back and forth on my lap, very subtly at first. Yet I was slowly beginning to realize she was grinding her diapered bottom on me.

“Hey Pia?”

She turned to face me, her cheeks a little pink. “Y-yes?”

“Come here,” I said.

She leaned in closer to me.

“A little bit closer,” I said.

Her face was right in front of mine now; inches away. I barely had to lean forward - she may have leaned closer as I did - for our lips to touch.

The moment felt both like everything in the last two days had been leading up to this moment, and that it also happened randomly. We both pulled away from each other, clearly squaring up the other’s reaction while trying to decide for ourselves if we had any regrets. Our lips met again; clearly we didn’t have enough doubts.

“Is this okay?” she finally asked, in between rapid breaths as her lips finally left mine. “Can we…should we…”

The truth was that I had no idea. I suspected that if I asked the opinion of anyone else, they’d probably recommend against making out with your best friend, especially while they were going through a lot emotionally. I wondered if the fact that I put that same best friend in a diaper helped my argument for it, or only made the situation more complicated.

“If we think that’s a bad idea,” I said, “now or later - we can talk about it. Because we’re friends.”

She nodded.

“Mel?”

“Yeah?”

“I...really appreciate you. Nobody has ever taken care of me like this before. I love you, you know?”

“I love you too, Pia.”

“A-and...Mel?”

“Yeah?”

“I...I think I have to go...uh…” Her face grew a shade redder as her eyes motioned towards the bathroom.

“But...you’re in a diaper,” I reminded her. “And you’re a baby who uses her diapers.”

“But...I have to…”

I put a finger lightly on her lips as I shrugged and offered a small smile.

“B-but…”

“I told you what I was willing to do for you. I meant it.”

“I...well...are you sure?”

I nodded.

“What if I did it...right here?”

“What if?”

“On your lap? While you held me?”

“Would you like that?”

She nodded now.

“Then I think you should.”

Tears were in her eyes again. “You’re so good to me.”

“That’s what friends…”

I didn’t get to finish the sentence.