You Can Always Go Home Again, Part 1 of 2 [Tier 3 Exclusive] (Patreon)

Monday

The taxi’s door closed, and before I could say “thanks,” it was back on the road again.

Sometimes the last few years felt like just a single minute. Sometimes it felt like an eternity. Looking at my childhood home now, it was all the familiar things that felt the most foreign. There was that bird feeder Judy bought at the yard sale. There was that big rock I tripped over at least five times each summer. There was the old lawn tractor, still rusting under the tree. I had forgotten about those little details, and yet there they were–still waiting for me.

I took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

“What’s the password?” a familiar but muffled voice said from the other side of the door.

“Carrots,” I said with a smile. Once more, it was like no time at all had passed.

The door opened, and I was greeted by Emmy’s smiling face. “I would have also accepted: ‘Emmy is the Queen of the Universe,’ for future reference.”

My step-sister was only a year younger than me, but I never thought of her as a younger sister. Or even a “step” sister. She was my best friend and partner in crime. We had been inseparable, much to the disbelief of my friends and family who seemed to have been convinced that we’d never get along - or so said countless movies and tv shows about step-siblings.

We hugged, and she pulled me into the house, closing the door behind me. Everything looked exactly the same. Maybe not exactly. There was a new rug. Maybe a new picture on the wall of a waterfall? The coffee table might have been new, or maybe it had just been moved from the den.

“So, Mr. Big Business Ben decides he’s finally good enough to come home?”

“Well...my job is overseas,” I said with a shrug. “London isn’t exactly close to New York.”

“Just admit that you hate your family and you’re only here now because you want money,” she teased.

“Now now, I never said I needed money,” I teased back. We hugged again. It felt good–I had no idea how badly I needed to feel that.

Over her shoulder, I spotted a pile of boxes in the hallway that lead from the living room to the staircase. I might not have thought much of it if it hadn’t been for a few familiar objects sticking out from the open tops of the boxes.

“What’s this?” I asked, wandering towards the boxes.

“Spring cleaning,” Emmy said while rolling her eyes. “Mom was on a rampage this week. She’s on the hunt for anything we haven’t touched in a few years so she can donate it.”

“These are on the chopping block?” I asked, picking up an old blanket from one of the boxes.

“To be donated...or thrown away,” she said with a shrug. “I don’t know who would want that ratty old blanket.”

“This was mine when I was a little kid!”

“Well then you obviously haven’t needed it in years.”

“It just feels important,” I said. “Like, the kind of thing you wouldn’t just throw away.” I dug into the box further, finding myself getting hit by waves of nostalgia. “Look at all these things! This was my old sippy cup! And this was my…”

I blushed, realizing what I was holding up in my hand. Emmy tried to stifle her giggle.

“Your pacifier? Were you...looking for that?”

I dropped the pacifier back in the box and cleared my throat. Another memory had come to mind, one that I hadn’t expected. I suspected that she had the same thought.

“We were weird kids,” she said finally, in a tone that I found comforting. Quickly changing the subject, she added: “Come on, let’s go find Mom. She’s going to want to see you!”

—

My dad, Emmy’s step-father, had passed away a few years prior. In a lot of ways, I think it's what drove me to find work as far away from home as possible. His divorce from my mother had been hard enough, let alone her subsequent refusal to be a part of my life. And with his absence, “home” just stopped feeling like a place that was mine.

It wasn’t a bad place. I had nothing against my step-mother. Judy was a loving and caring woman. And I obviously got along well with Emmy. I had a lot of regrets about being away for so long, but the longer I had been away, the more I felt like I had made the right decision.

What I hadn’t expected in coming home again was comfort. I was finding comfort in everything: the old bathroom wallpaper; the way Judy kept fresh flowers in almost every room; the old couches in the living room.

That first night home, after the epic dinner and dessert, and after the long-winded conversations about what I’ve been doing and what we call various snack foods in London, I found myself outside again. It was close to midnight, Judy had gone to bed, and I found myself yearning for the quiet stillness of our suburban backyard.

“Don’t tell me you’re out here for a smoke,” Emmy’s voice said from behind me. I turned to see her stepping out onto the deck too.

“Nah, I don’t smoke. I just miss...this.  A dark and quiet backyard. I feel like everywhere I go at night in London, there’s noise and lights. I took this for granted.”

“I missed you,” she said. I smiled and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.

“What are you doing here anyways?” I asked. “Weren’t you going to move out?”

“I did for a while. I thought you knew about that? I moved in with Kyle?”

“Oh yeah. I guess...that didn’t work out?”

“Nah. And Mom was lonely. So I’m here now. For a while. I’m sure I’ll get an itch to get out of here sooner or later.”

“As long as you’re happy.”

“Are you happy in London?”

“I thought so. It’s funny, I don’t think I realized how lonely I was until today.”

“Well, sure, you were missing your pacifier,” she said, shooting me a playful grin.

I gave her an equally playful shove and we shared a laugh.

“Probably not that far from the truth,” I admitted.

“I suppose that’s why you came back,” she said. It sounded like she was teasing again, but I knew better. There was a sincerity that only the two of us would’ve recognized.

“That’s not why I’m back,” I said. “I came back because I miss you. I miss Judy. I miss home.”

“But…” she said, a playful smirk on her face.

“I’d be lying if I wasn’t thinking about that a little.”

“I thought so,” she said.

I laughed, looking away so that she couldn’t see me blushing.

“Well?” she asked. “What do you think? Should we go get Betsy? See what she’s up to?”

“Not tonight,” I said, composing myself. We leaned against each other in the quiet dark. “But maybe tomorrow.”

Tuesday

“Oh, should I have made tea?” asked Judy as she plated some toasted bagels and scrambled eggs for Emmy and I. “That’s what everyone drinks in the UK, right?”

I laughed. “Well, sure. But they have coffee there too. And I still drink lots of coffee.”

“Really?” remarked Emmy. “You used to hate coffee.”

“When I was a teenager, maybe. But I hated everything that wasn’t Mountain Dew and chicken fingers when I was a teenager.”

“And deviled eggs,” added Emmy.

“I still hate deviled eggs.”

“And…toilets,” she said in a lower tone, a snide smile streaking across her face.

“H-hey!” I quickly looked towards Judy to see if she had heard that, but Judy seemed distracted with something else in the kitchen.

It felt like we were kids again. This was how I remembered breakfasts being before school–Judy readying plates for Emmy and I, and the two of us bickering and teasing each other at the breakfast table.

“I have some errands to run today,” Judy announced. “I was going to take those boxes to Goodwill, and then I had some grocery shopping to do. Ben, is there anything special I can pick up for you?”

“Oh gosh, no. Thank you, but I think I’m good.”

“Well if you think of anything,” she said, “you just text me and let me know. Any snacks. Any special dinners. Anything you want, just say the word.”

“Maybe get him some animal crackers,” Emmy said.

“What? Is that something you want?” asked Judy.

“N-no,” I stammered. “Emmy just thinks she’s being funny.”

Judy shrugged and shook her head. “I never really got the two of you’s jokes. But I’m happy to see you still have it.”

No sooner than Judy had left the kitchen, I had turned to Emmy, playfully swatting her on the head.

“Hey! What the hell?”

“You think you’re funny? Saying stuff like that when she’s around?”

“Oh please,” Emmy said, laughing. “She doesn’t know what I’m talking about.”

“Well I do, and it’s embarrassing when other people can hear.”

“You have to know that I don’t care, right?”

I had to laugh. It was the same relationship we had always had. I wasn’t 26 anymore. We were teenagers again, and nothing had changed. I never went to college and then overseas. She never went to college herself before moving in with, and out from, Kyle.

“The boxes…” I said to her.

“Don’t worry, I saved your precious blanket for you already.”

“Thank you.”

“And your sippy cup.”

“I…didn’t ask you to save that.”

“I didn’t save the pacifier.”

“Again, I didn’t…”

“I don’t think you can donate old pacifiers to Goodwill,” she said. “Hopefully Mom just throws that out. Besides, I got you a gift.”

“A gift?”

“On my run around the block this morning I stopped over at the pharmacy and grabbed something for you.”

“I’m almost afraid to see what it is.”

“You’ll love it.”

Emmy stood up and left the table for a moment, practically skipping out of the room. She bounced up the stairs, and moments later, bounced right back down them and into the kitchen, thrusting a small plastic shopping bag into my hands.

“Oh boy,” I said sardonically.

“Just open it!”

I reached into the bag, feeling a cardboard package. I pulled it out to reveal a new, sealed, pacifier. Reddish-orange in color. A cartoon lion on the front of it. I felt my cheeks warm as I quickly shoved it back into the bag.

“Oh calm down,” Emmy said, rolling her eyes. “Mom’s loading the car now, she won’t be coming back in.”

“All the jokes? Buying me a pacifier? You keep teasing me about this. But if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you want it more than I do.”

She shrugged. “Is that such a bad thing?”

It wasn’t, but I wasn’t quite ready to say that aloud.

“So? Are we going to go get Betsy or what?”

“Well…”

“What else did you have to do this morning?”

“It’s just been a while.”

“Don’t you miss her?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“C’mon. Let’s go get her.”

—

Betsy was, as Emmy put it, her baby sister. Except Judy had no idea that Betsy existed. In fact, nobody knew that Betsy existed except for Emmy and I.

For a long time, Betsy just was. The concept of her, and her purpose, seemed like such a common part of our everyday life that I rarely reflected on the ‘why’ or ‘how’ she came to be. In hindsight, as I looked over my teen years and started to connect the dots, I began to see how strange of a situation it actually was.

It started in a manner reminiscent of how my current visit started–I found some boxes of old things. But these boxes were still in the basement at that time. I don’t remember what I was looking for anymore–old toys or treasures of somesort. I had opened a box to find some of Emmy’s old clothes. Nothing too old, just things that Emmy had probably deemed as either too well-worn or too unstylish.

My immediate reaction was to close the box and move on–clearly I wasn’t looking for feminine fashions. But a nerve had been triggered–one that I didn’t even realize existed before that moment. There in the basement, while nobody else was around, I wondered what it’d be like if I slipped into something a little…different.

Upon reflection, I wondered if I was aware of this interest sooner than I thought. I remembered Judy buying me sports team shirts and athletic shorts, while I watched Emmy come home with colorful sweaters and cutesy pastel-colored skirts and dresses. Cute. I liked cute, and nothing I owned was cute. I wanted to experience ‘cute.’ I wanted to be cute.

That day in the basement, I experienced cute for the first time.

Some of the details get a little murky at that point. Emmy found out–of course she did. She had a knack for figuring out everything. Or, maybe, she was just nosey. But she found out, and for as much as she teased me about it–and she did–she also seemed just as curious in exploring this space as I did. She helped me coordinate outfits, and I’d wear them for her. She taught me how to be cute. We did cute things. Tea parties. Playing with dolls. She’d paint my nails or put makeup on my face.

In those moments, I was Betsy.

Again, it’s tough to pinpoint the exact points of evolution in this game, but I recall the general gist of our conversations. Betsy was the sister Emmy always wished she had. And because Emmy always wished she had a little sister, Betsy was then the little sister. And, as Emmy often reminded me: “I looked better in cute little girl things anyways.”

It became a game, of sorts, for us. She’d suggest something she’d want to try with Betsy, and I’d either let it happen, or I’d resist. I rarely resisted. I liked being Betsy. I liked being the little sister. Emmy was a good big sister, and there was something in our relationship that I wasn’t getting anywhere else.

So, basically, whatever Emmy wanted to do–she did. And that was how Betsy kept getting younger and smaller until she was finally…a baby.

—

“I thought for sure you’d have put on a few pounds since I last saw you,” Emmy teased, playfully poking my belly.

“They have gyms in London, you know.”

“Still,” Emmy said with a shrug, talking past me, “you’re a bigger little-sister than you used to be. I don’t think you’ll fit into all the old dresses that Betsy used to wear.”

“Probably not.”

“I have some things that might work…”

My eyebrows lifted, curious for her solution.

“I mean…I think my panties would fit you.”

“Panties? But I never wore-”

“Well we definitely don’t have any diapers.”

My memory was hazy on some of those details now. I thought aloud: “How did we get diapers then? I don’t remember ever buying any.”

“That’s because you didn’t. I did. I’d hit up the grocery store after work.”

“Oh, wow. I guess I never really thought about that before.”

“I was thinking about it the other day,” she said, laughing. “I went to the same store I used to buy diapers at. They have those self-checkouts now, you know? Perverted teenagers don’t know how lucky they have it. Having to hand a pack of adult diapers over to some stranger to ring up? It gave me the worst anxiety, even though I knew they weren’t for me.”

“Did you have to walk up the hill both ways? In the snow?” I asked with a smirk.

“I wouldn’t joke too much,” she said. “Don’t forget I was buying diapers for you. For Betsy.”

I felt my cheeks warm again as my ego deflated a little.

“But it’s even easier than that now,” she continued, tapping at her phone as she spoke. “I don’t even have to go to a store now.” She tapped a few more times on the phone before smiling. “And…done!”

“Done? What’s done?”

“Diapers, of course. I just ordered some. And they’ll be here…tomorrow!”

“No way,” I said, shaking my head.

“The wonders of e-commerce, right? We just have to make sure we get the package before Mom does.”

Once more, it didn’t feel like we were adults in our mid-20s. We were teenagers again, conspiring to do sinful things in the shadow of a, hopefully, oblivious parental figure.

We both laughed at the same time, probably having had the same thought about how silly we were being.

“Nothing’s really changed,” I said.

“Did you want it to?”

“Are we going to be 40-something and sneaking around to play dress-up?”

“Think of how thrilling that would be, though. Not only avoiding Mom, but our spouses and kids.”

“Our ideas of fun sound very different,” I said, yielding another round of laughs from the both of us.

“Enough chit-chat,” she said. “I just heard Mom pull out of the driveway. C’mon, let’s do this.”

I took a deep breath and readied myself.

“Here,” she said, thrusting a pair of her panties into my hand. “I think these are a good start.”

We were in her bedroom–a shrine to being eternally 17 years old, even if that was 8 years ago for her. Harry Potter and Twilight posters still hung from the wall, while the same Coldplay CDs I remembered her rocking out to when I was a teenager were still sitting atop her dresser.

I unfurled the bundle of cloth in my hands, finding a pair of light pink panties with bright red strawberries printed on them.

“These are…yours,” I said.

“Well, yeah. Wasn’t all of Betsy’s clothing mine?”

“I mean, that was different, right? They were old clothes. Boxed up or abandoned or whatever. These are…yours. You just pulled these out of your drawer. You still wear these.”

“I washed them, if that’s what you're asking,” she smirked. “Afraid you’re going to get cooties?”

“N-no. I just…” I wasn’t sure how to put my thoughts into words. There was something about wearing her panties at all–let alone ones that were seemingly pulled from her current rotation–that seemed strangely…intimate.

I had never worn her panties before. I had worn a lot of her clothes, but never those. It didn’t seem like a hard-limit, nor did it feel too taboo. Maybe it was just the nature of underwear that once outgrown, or stopped getting used, they were just thrown away instead of being relegated to a box in the basement.

And so this–the new iteration of our game–already felt different. Naughtier.

“Go on,” she said. “Aren’t you going to try them on?”

“Yeah, let me just take them back to my room and…”

She rolled her eyes dramatically. “Seriously? Need I remind you that I’ve seen it all before?”

That she had. Every nook and cranny. Still: “It’s been a long time,” I said.

“How about a compromise?” she asked. “I’ll turn around and you do your thing.”

“Fine.”

It was as good a solution as any. I was still apprehensive about her seeing me in her panties at all, but that was sort of the point of Betsy. This wasn’t just my thing, it was ours. It was the reason why I hadn’t put on any feminine clothing, nor had I worn any diapers, since I moved out of this house.

Did I expect this to happen upon returning? No. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hope that it did.

Her back turned to me, and I quickly shoved my pants and underwear to the ground. My manhood, somewhere between nervously-flaccid and curiously-stiff, bounced between my legs as I fumbled with the panties, trying to figure out which was the front and which was the back.

“You have to turn them around,” she said.

“What? But…” I looked up and saw her back was to me still. But then I saw her face anyways, staring at me in the mirror in front of her. “Goddammit.”

“You shouldn’t be so modest,” she said with a little shrug and grin. “You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

I wanted to tell her that it was different. But either I didn’t believe that, or I wasn’t sure how it was. Instead, I quickly yanked the panties up as far as I could. They just barely fit me, the fabric being pulled tightly over the lump between my legs.

“Betsy,” she says, turning around.

“Hi,” I say, feeling myself blush.

“You’re back.”

I shrugged.

“I set aside some things for you,” she said, opening her closet. “Just a few things here and there. You know, in case I ever got to see you again.”

“Did you think that it would?” I asked.

“I hoped,” she said.

“Me too.”

She pulled out a light blue dress from the closet, laying it out on her bed. White collar with seemingly decorative white buttons running down the chest. I could imagine it looking pretty cute on some hipster librarian with thick glasses. Or a toddler.

“Cute right?” she asked, possibly seeing my eyes light up.

“Did you buy this in anticipation for this moment?”

“I bought it for me a while ago,” she said. “It’s not really my style, though. But…I realized that there was someone who it would look pretty cute on, so I held onto it.”

I picked up the dress, removing the hanger from it and tossing it aside. I took my shirt off, and for a brief moment, I stood in Emmy’s room wearing only her panties. I watched her face in that moment, and watched her bite her bottom lip.

I felt my heart flutter a little. I don’t remember her looking at me like that before. If she had, I didn’t notice.

She helped hoist the dress above my head and guide it down over my body, fitting it over my arms and head. I was reminded of being a little kid again, and my parents helping me get dressed for preschool.

“That’s a good girl,” she cooed.

I had forgotten all about that tone. The ‘big sister’ tone. There were a lot of memories of our time together when we were younger that I held onto, but I didn’t realize that this tone was something that had slipped from my mind. Hearing it again hit me hard, further drawing ‘Betsy’ out from the depths of my mind.

“Am I pretty?” I asked.

“Always,” Emmy said. “But we can make you even prettier.” Her hand reached up, stroking my cheek. “Such smooth skin. Keep yourself nice and clean-shaven, do you?”

I had never kept a beard or any sort of facial hair, yet it hadn’t occurred to me until now that it was more than just a preference of style. I wondered if, in the recesses of memory, I stuck to those habits because of Betsy.

“I do.”

“You have no idea how long it's been since I got to put makeup on someone else,” she said. “Mom’s not a fan of it herself. Never was. I needed my little sister.”

“Ta-da…”

“Maybe not now,” she said, her eyes wandering towards her window. “Mom is running errands, but she’s not going to be out forever.”

“Yeah, true,” I said, sounding more disappointed about it than I meant to.

“But she’ll be at work for the rest of the week starting tomorrow.”

I stared ahead into the mirror, looking at myself in the blue dress. It would’ve been hard for me to describe how I felt, but I knew that it was a feeling that I hadn’t experienced in a long time. And just the sight of one aspect of it–the dress–made me yearn for the rest of it. The makeup. The accessories. The girlish games. The diapers.

“Let’s, uh, put this back in the closet for now,” I said, taking off the dress. “We can revisit this when we have more time.”

“Are you sure?”

I nodded. I gripped the waistband of the panties, ready to step out of them and back into my own pants.

“Why don’t you leave those on,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

“I am. Just a little something to get you thinking about what’s next.”

Wednesday

The blissful sleep I had been getting–the kind of cozy rest that I felt I could only get in my childhood bed–was distrubed by the sudden feeling of something being shoved into my mouth.

“Wha-what…”

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Emmy cooed from the side of my bed.

I pulled the object from my mouth. It was the new pacifier she had given me the day before. I was still half-asleep, and while I couldn’t remember what I was dreaming about any more, my mind wasn’t completely back in the real world yet.

“Mom’s gone,” she said. “And I have the week off, just like you. So…”

“What time is it?” I asked.

“It’s only a little after 9,” she said. “Did you think I’d let you sleep in all morning?”

“It’s been a while since I’ve slept in at all.”

“You can sleep later. Play with me now.”

“I guess I could always sleep when I’m dead.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“It’s ironic that you treat me like a toddler when you’re the one bouncing off the walls so early in the morning.”

“Can’t a girl be excited that her little sister is visiting?”

“At least let me use the bathroom,” I said. “Brush my teeth and pee and all that.”

“The potty?” she asked, putting her hand to her mouth in mock-awe. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

My brain still wasn’t functioning at 100%, but her jab still reminded me of something. Diapers. Diapers were coming today.

I shrugged. “I guess I’m a little older than you thought.”

“For now.”

“For now,” I repeated.

She stretched out a hand towards me. “C’mon, Betsy. Let’s get you to the bathroom.”

“I…I don’t need help.”

“That’s not your decision to make. Big Sister is in charge today–that’s me, of course. C’mon.”

I couldn’t help but groan. It wasn’t that I didn’t like her playfulness. Or exuberance. It was just too early for me to really appreciate. Still, it seemed easier to play along with her request than it did to resist and so I grabbed her hand. She helped me sit up, before she pulled away the covers.

“Oh my, what do we have here?”

For a moment, I wasn’t sure what she was referring to, and so I looked down. Oh yeah. I was still wearing her panties. Only her panties. Worse, there was a dark spot on the front of the panties–a little damp patch. A little dribble of something naughty I might have been inspired to drip while dreaming.

It had been a very long time since that happened–and probably in this very bed.

“I, uhm…”

“See? This is why it’d be best if you were just kept in diapers. You just got those panties and you’re already dirtying them!”

I sighed, letting her pull me up and out of bed. Then, as if it was a completely normal routine, I allowed her to lead me by the hand out of the bedroom and down the hall to the bathroom.

“You don’t have to come,” I said to her.

“What kind of big sister would I be if I didn’t supervise? How do I know you’re not going to make a mess?”

“What do you think I’m going to do?” I asked. “Piss and miss the toilet completely?”

“Little girls sit on the potty,” she said. “So why don’t you go pull down your panties and park your bottom on the potty.”

Part of me–the adult part of me that grew up and got a decent job overseas–wanted to question this. I wasn’t supposed to be talked to like this. I didn’t need to be supervised using a toilet. But the other part–the part of me that I left here in this house and was now reconnecting with–was quite okay with it.

I nodded and walked to the toilet. In one singular moment, there were a lot of things I had never done before. I had never had to pull down panties before sitting on a toilet before. I never had someone watching me as I did. I never had someone continue to hold my hand as I sat on the toilet.

“Good girl,” she cooed in that sisterly-tone that never failed to liquify my brain. “Now go on and make your tinkles.”

It should have been hard to do. Peeing under pressure was never exactly a skill of mine. My life was plagued by pee-shy moments in public restrooms when the presence of another man at the urinal next to mine would cause me to flee without having started my task. This was different. I’m not even sure how–it seemed like the sort of thing that should be even harder to manage. Yet it took surprisingly little effort to just release my bladder. The sound of my trickling into the water below me filled the room.

“That’s a good girl.”

When I finished, and after I had given myself a few good shakes, she grabbed a small wad of toilet paper that she used to dab the tip of my cock.

“I just want to make sure it’s nice and dry before you put your little panties back on,” she continued. “They need to last until your diapers come.

She made me wash my hands for her–which, embarrassingly, I realized I probably wouldn’t have done if she weren’t here beside me. I wondered if she’d go as far as to brush my teeth for me too, but she just watched from aside me as I thoroughly brushed out the morning smells from my mouth.

From there, it was back to her room where she was already prepared to ready her little sister for the day. The blue dress was quickly pulled over my head again. Then she began to ready today’s makeup.

“What about breakfast?” I asked.

“One thing at a time,” she said. “We need to get you nice and pretty first.”

It didn’t take much for the face I saw in the mirror to morph from masculine to feminine. I was never especially masculine in the first place. Friends would use a word like ‘boyish’ to describe my soft features. Not even my short dark hair could defend my masculinity as she brushed my cheeks and added extra pink around my eyes.

“Your lips could use some more pink,” she said. “Maybe that can wait until after breakfast. I’m worried you’ll smudge it everywhere.”

I had no response, nor did I really have any objection to anything she did. It felt good to put my trust in her. I was her little sister, if not just a little dolly for her to play with. She’d take care of me.

“You grew out your hair one summer,” she said. “Remember that?”

“Yeah,” I said with a laugh. “Judy thought I was going through some sort of punk-rock phase.”

“But you actually just wanted to look more like a girl.”

“It worked,” I said.

“We went to the mall together, you dressed like a girl,” she added. “I thought for sure someone was going to be able to tell.”

“We were scared to death. Well…I was.”

“But nobody batted an eye,” she said with a shrug. “I guess that’s another thing that’s different these days. You could’ve looked half as girlish and still nobody would’ve cared.”

“You know,” I said, “the funny thing is that I wasn’t as scared about someone thinking that I wasn’t actually a girl.”

“No?”

“I mean, I was. But you had this confidence about it, I guess. And if you thought I was able to pass in public, I trusted that.”

She smiled, her cheeks getting a little bit rosier.

“It was the diapers that I was more nervous about,” I said with a laugh. “It’s one thing to make me go out in public in a dress. But you made me go out in a dress and a diaper!”

“Well, sure,” she said with a shrug. “Betsy is a girl. And a baby.”

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into doing that.”

“I don’t recall ever having to beg too much. You were a little more willing than you’d like to admit.”

“That’s not how I remember it.”

“And,” she added, “I never asked you to use your diaper at the mall.”

“Well…”

“But you did anyway. Remember that? Wet yourself real good while we were in Hot Topic. Thank goodness I had the foresight to pull up the back of your dress and do a little diaper check while we were there, or else you could’ve sprung a leak.”

“You pulled up my dress in the middle of the mall! People were watching us!”

We both started laughing. The whole situation did manage to look a lot more fun in hindsight, even if I remembered it being one of the most stressful days of my life at the time.

“Am I crazy for wanting to do that again?” she asked.

“Yes, absolutely.”

“Yes, I’m crazy? Or…yes, you would want to do that again?”

“Yes.”

—

The diapers arrived midday. Emmy had literally watched the delivery tracker on the store’s app in real time. She had given the delivery driver a heart attack as she opened the front door to snatch the package from his hands as he was about to place it on the front porch.

“It’s here,” she finally said. “Are you ready?”

It was, thankfully, a nondescript box. I wondered if our fears of Judy encountering the box first were a little exaggerated. Then again, with diapers, maybe you could never be too safe.

“Huggables?” I asked, reading the package that she hoisted out from the box. “I think you got the wrong thing.”

“Huh?” She looked at the package. “What do you mean?”

“Look at those diapers,” I said, squinting to study the folded plastic garments in the clear packaging. “Those have little cutesy prints on them. I think these are for actual babies. Cute but…well, I’m not going to fit into those.”

She laughed. “Maybe you need to take a closer look.”

She tore open the package and pulled one of the diapers out. Almost immediately I could see the error in my observation. Freed from the tight plastic package I could see that the diaper–while still adorned with blue and pink hearts and animal shapes–was actually quite large.

“Kind of neat, don’t you think?” she said with a grin. “Clearly you aren’t the only big little sister out in the world.”

In the back of my mind, I supposed I had been aware of the existence of such a kink scene. But it was a world that felt so distant from my own. Except it wasn’t anymore.

I was equally intrigued and hesitant about these new diapers. These were leaps and bounds beyond the cheap incontinence briefs that Emmy used to put me in years ago. These were big and thick. Purposefully obvious. The crinkling noises they made in her hands alone suggested that this would be an entirely different experience.

“Well?” she asked. “What do you think? Should we get you into one?”

I wondered if we needed to talk about this more. These diapers–really, this whole ‘cosplay’ act–felt like so much more than it ever had before. We were older. Supposedly wiser. Weird little games like this seemed like they should have been beneath us–if for no other reason than there was more at stake now.

But I just nodded. Ultimately, I knew what I wanted. I knew what both of us wanted.

She took me by the hand and led me back to her room again. She pointed to her bed, and I immediately knew what she wanted.

“Just like riding a bike,” I said with a laugh, flopping down on her bed on my back.

“It doesn’t feel like it’s been years does it?” she asked. “Sometimes it does. But not right now.”

I shook my head.

“Okay, Betsy. Legs up. You know how this goes.”

As she pushed the fabric of my dress up to my waist and pulled the panties off from my legs, I was reminded how good she was at this. She didn’t have kids. There were never any babies in the family that we spent time around. She hadn’t even been a babysitter when she was younger. But it occurred to me that it was probably just practice. Practice on me. She had put me into a lot of diapers.

Just the feeling of the new diaper, as she slid it beneath me, felt different. Pillowy and thick. This was a diaper. Before, back in the day, we were just pretending. This was the real thing.

“All set,” she said, tightly sealing the diaper around him. “How does it feel?”

I sat up in her bed, immediately feeling the thick, crinkling, bulk between my legs. “Incredible.”

“Oh my god,” she said, clutching her fists to her face. “It’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”

She might have been exaggerating. Though, considering the anticipation leading up to this moment, perhaps not.

“I want to take a picture,” she said.

“Please don’t.”

“I won’t! I want to. But I won’t.”

I slid off the side of her bed, letting my dress flop down over the diaper. It might have been concealed, but it was far from hidden. Looking at myself in the mirror, the dress sat differently on me now. It probably wasn’t noticeable to anyone else, but it was amazing the difference a thick diaper could make even under something as billowing as this.

More jarring, to me, was how I looked as I moved. The thick diaper slowed my movement considerably, giving me a toddleresque waddle. Such was likely the point, and I certainly wasn’t upset about this feature having been added to the new and improved Betsy.

“I love it,” Emmy said as she wrapped her arms around me and hugged me tightly. “The most precious I’ve ever seen you.”

“Now what?”

She laughed. “What did we ever do? I’m going to play with my baby sister, of course. Well, until she needs her diaper changed.”

Nothing she said should’ve surprised me. I had no delusions about putting this diaper on and keeping it dry. Yet hearing it said aloud still stopped me in my tracks.

“Changed?”

“Did you think you’d just wear a wet diaper all day?”

“I guess I didn’t think about it much.”

“Well get thinking about it, missy,” she said, playfully swatting my padded rear. I blushed hearing the cacophonous chorus of crinkles emitted by my bottom. “Because your potty privileges are hereby revoked until I’m done with Betsy.”

—

The evolution–devolution, perhaps–of Betsy from just a girlish boy to a baby girl hadn’t actually taken that long, in hindsight. At the time, however, each step along that path felt like it took years. The time spent just trying on dresses. The slow introduction of makeup. The more childish turn Betsy’s aesthetic began to take. The introduction of things like baby bottles and rattles. Diapers. And then, when I thought there was nowhere else for that path to go, Emmy had been quick to remind me that there was one last step: diaper changes.

When she first tossed out the idea of diapers, we both tenuously agreed that there was no expectation for me to actually use the diapers. I, at that point, didn’t want to pee my pants. She, at that point, didn’t want to have to deal with her big brother peeing his pants. In the back of my mind, I knew this would never last. In every new chapter of Betsy’s origin we looked at each other and said: “This is pretty weird, right?” But then it got weirder.

Of course it would get weirder again.

She began to playfully incorporate the idea of ‘diaper checks’ into her play sessions with Betsy. We’d sip from tea cups, or she’d be brushing makeup on my face, when she’d stop and ask me to stand up so that she could check my diaper. We had never talked about reneging on our arrangement to not have the diapers get used, so I had written it off as just her trying to embarrass me further. Which it did.

But I kept thinking about it. I’d think about it in school, or in bed at night: What if I did? What if I used the diaper?

I attempted to ‘practice,’ using one of the diapers Emmy had bought. Since I wasn’t using the diapers, there was a mostly full pack under her bed, with a few that we kept using until the tapes no longer worked. I had saved one of those discarded diapers, using duct tape to secure it to myself.

Here’s the thing, though: convincing my body that it was okay to wet my pants was hard. Regardless of what my mind wanted, my body knew where it was supposed to do those things, and the diaper wasn’t it.

My solution to that was to make it so my body had no choice. From the moment I woke up one morning, I vowed not to the toilet until my body gave in and allowed me to soak the diaper. It was an exceptionally uncomfortable day, with my bladder hollering at me for most of it. By the afternoon, I felt like I was going to explode.

I hadn’t anticipated this being ‘playday’ with Emmy. My plan was to go home and hide out in my room until I had finally succeeded in wetting my taped-up diaper. Coincidentally, Emmy’s original plans for that afternoon–cheerleading or band practice, maybe–had been canceled and so she too was home. And if we were both home while Judy wasn’t, it was assumed that Betsy would come out to play.

Emmy wasted no time in getting me all dolled up in my dress, makeup, and diaper. She wanted to watch TV with her little sister, and soon after I found myself sitting on her lap as we watched the TV. Within me, there was a great storm brewing in my bladder, and I was unsure of how to deal with it. Could I just ask to go use the bathroom? Or, did I take a chance and finally wet the diaper?

I never really got the chance to make that decision for myself. I was hit with a tickle-attack. I should’ve seen it coming–they came frequently, as she knew I was extremely vulnerable to them.

“N-no! Emmy, no! Stop! I…I’m…peeing my pants!”

This wasn’t how I wanted it to happen. Well, maybe not for the first time. Not in front of her. Not while sitting in her lap. Not in a humiliatingly uncontrollable fit of giggles.

To her credit, she had stopped tickling me immediately. “Oh my gosh? Are you? Y-you’re really doing it?”

“Yes…”

She needed to look. She needed to feel. In the back of my mind, I kept thinking that this had gone too far. She’d be grossed out. She’d realize that this was taking the game further than she had ever wanted it to go. I’d be dismissed to change out of my wet diaper and that would be the end of Betsy.

“This is so amazing,” she said instead. “My little baby sister finally wet her diaper!”

—

A week ago, if someone had handed me a box of crayons and a coloring book, I’d have laughed at them. Despite the ever-shrinking presence of Betsy in the back of my mind, I rarely made time for childish things in my day to day life.

Yet there I was, lying on the floor of Emmy’s bedroom, sucking on my new pacifier and with a red crayon in my hand, filling in the color of Bert’s shirt. Stranger yet? I was loving it. I had no idea how badly I needed this disconnect from reality.

I had no idea how much I needed Betsy. Maybe just as much as Emmy did.

Emmy sat beside me, stroking my back as I colored; her hand occasionally pulling up the back of my dress so that she could rub my diaper.

“No accidents yet,” she announced.

“Uhm…shoon,” I said through the pacifier.

“Yeah?” She laughed at herself, realizing how excited she sounded over that.

“I think tho…”

“Do you remember the first time you ever used your diaper?”

“Thithing on your lap. You thickled me.”

She laughed again. “That was a lot of fun.”

“Don’th thickle me again, p’ease.”

“But it’s so tempting! That cute little belly? I swear, I’m going through tickle withdrawals.”

“There’th no thuth thing!”

“Do you remember the last time you used your diaper? Before you moved out?”

“Yeah…”

“You were such a messy little baby.”

I couldn’t even respond to that. I felt my entire face glow red as I thought back to that night.

“It’s quarter-after 5,” she said, dispelling the memory I was thinking about.

I spit my pacifier out onto the ground. “Really? Already?”

She shrugged. “Afraid so.”

Here, at home, nothing ever changed. 5:15 had always been, and still was, when we had to put Betsy away. Judy had left work and she’d be home in about 15 more minutes. WIthout missing a beat, Emmy had doused a cottonball with some makeup remover and methodically erased Betsy from my face. The dress was pulled off. The pacifier was stashed in a dresser drawer.

“What about the diaper?” I asked.

“I dare you to leave it on.”

“No way! This thing is so loud!”

“Mom doesn’t think you wear diapers,” she said. “Even if she did hear something, I don’t think she’d suspect diapers.”

“But, I…”

“Leave it on,” she said again. It sounded less like a suggestion and more like an order.

“Fine,” I said, despite knowing that the decision had already been made for me.

—

Dinner that night was an adventure in itself. The three of us sitting around the kitchen table and eating Judy’s homemade spaghetti bolognese, carrying on with adult conversations. The state of healthcare in the UK. Judy’s hesitations about retirement. The upcoming elections. The price of gas.

Meanwhile, under the table and in my pants, I wore an epically thick diaper styled to look like a toddler’s. I was conscious of every move I made, trying to minimize the odds of a crinkle that would draw unwanted attention to myself.

Emmy was no help at all, as to be expected. Occasionally, under the table, her hand would wander into my lap, playfully poking at my padded crotch. Once, while Judy got up to fetch some more wine for the table, Emmy had even grabbed my crotch, squeezing the diaper in her hand.

I had been in the diaper for hours at this point. And unlike those early days of experiencing cheap grocery store diapers for the first time, my body was ready to use the diaper. Just like riding a bike. My only hesitation now was Judy. Wetting myself at the dinner table? It just seemed rude, if nothing else.

“But you should,” Emmy whispered to me while Judy prepared dessert. “You know you want to. And you’re wearing a diaper.”

“I just don’t want to be…disrespectful.”

“It’d only be disrespectful if you stood up, dropped your pants, and squatted in Mom’s face while you did it. Just don’t do that and I think you’ll be fine.”

“What if I…leak?”

“Do you remember what these diapers look like? These things are crazy thick. You’ll be fine. Promise. Just do it.”

Once more, I felt like the decision had been taken out of my hands. She had decreed that it was okay, and I trusted her.

“Who’s ready for some pie?” Judy said, returning to the table.

I flooded my diaper right then and there.

—

“Hey,” Emmy said, tiptoeing into the living room with a look on her face that said: Please don’t be mad at me.

“Hey,” I replied. I looked at the clock on the wall. It was almost 11:00 PM.

“Did you…change yet?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“You probably should’ve. I don’t want to see you get a diaper rash.”

“I know. But…”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Mom wanted to see Aunt Sara, but she gets nervous about driving at night. I volunteered to drive her over after dinner but I didn’t think that she was going to stay there for hours. And it’s not even like they talk about interesting things, you know? Sara wanted to talk about birds and…”

“It’s okay,” I said with a laugh. “Really. We didn’t make plans or anything.”

“I know. But you wet your diaper for me at dinner and so I feel obligated to, you know, help you out with that.”

“I wet my diaper because I had to,” I said. “And because that’s what babies do.”

She giggled as she sat down beside me on the couch. “And you didn’t want to change yourself?”

“There’s only one person I want to change me.”

Her hand slid between my legs, feeling the dense bulk my diaper had become. “Oh gosh. This is quite firm, huh?”

I nodded. “Been saving it just for you.”

“Mom went to bed,” she said.

“I know. She said goodnight a few minutes ago.”

“So…I can change your diaper if you want.”

“I think you have to,” I said. “I’m in desperate need of one.”

“Wait here,” she said. “I’ll get a new one.”

“I’m not going to go anywhere.”

Emmy rushed up the stairs, leaving me to marinate for another minute or three in my wet diaper. It had grown a little cold, and sometimes–depending on how I moved–I could catch a faint whiff of stale pee emanating from it.

But that wasn’t the only thing I was feeling. In the front of my diaper, my manhood was stirring. This strange and forbidden game that we played made me want things.

Believe it or not, it had been an unspoken rule that this game wasn’t sexual. Maybe that was a lie we told ourselves. The number of times she had changed my diaper, touching me in very specific ways as she did. Maybe there were lines we tried not to cross in the moment, but I had always been confident that just as I stroked myself at night, thinking of her, she was doing the same while thinking of me.

The energy felt different now. The same, in some ways, just more intense. Speaking for myself, getting older and having spent all that time apart, the fantasy–the mythos–of Emmy had only grown. And seeing her now, and picking up where we left off, seemed to be igniting a series of powderkegs.

I suspected I wasn’t alone on that one, but I couldn’t imagine myself asking.

“I’m back,” she said. Diaper in one hand, a container of wipes in the other. She sat back down next to me on the couch.

“You’ve come prepared.”

“I always do.”

But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let another moment pass without addressing the enormous taboo elephant in the room: “Hey, Emmy, I need to know…”

She put a finger on my lips to stop me. She asked a question of her own: “What’s the password?”

“Carrots.”

She leaned forward, pressing her lips against mine. Below, her hand slid into the front of my soaking wet diaper.