Bottoms Up, Part 4 (Patreon)

Four: Funny-Man

He knew that he overslept, if only because he was well rested. That sort of thing wouldn’t have happened if he was at home.

“Well fuck,” he muttered to himself. He looked at his phone. More bad news: it was a little after 9:30. The odds were good that Effie was not only in the store, but had probably seen him in his current state.

One of the things he had liked most about Effie was that she had never once asked him about his personal connection to diapers. Like Kiri the night before - most people, upon finding out he ran a diaper store, would ask if he too wore them. She never asked, nor did she seem to care. So much for that.

He slid off of the table, grabbing his pants. He considered hoisting them up over the diaper, but opted against it - it was bad enough that Effie had probably seen him in the diaper, he probably didn’t need to flaunt extra-padding under his pants now.

But, he was never one to waste a diaper either. He closed the door entirely and let out his morning piss into the mostly clean - briefly sticky - padding. He let out a pleasurable sigh akin to one Harper might after taking a hit from her vape after a long day without it. The swelling. The warmth. He missed this, and if Effie wasn’t somewhere on the other side of the door, he’d probably sit in this squishy bundle a bit longer.

Alas, gotta make the diapers. Or something like that. He peeled the still-warm diaper off, catching a whiff of the urine soaked padding. It always smelled different in a diaper, he thought. He bundled it up and tossed it into the trash can - making a mental note that he’d have to remember to finally change that trash bag now.

“Coming out of the closet?” Effie said as he emerged from the nursery. So much for waiting on the awkwardness to come after both of them skirting around it for a bit.

“No jokes, please.”

“Hold on,” she said. “I have one more: I’m glad to see we’re finally using that room.”

“You couldn’t have been late? Just one morning?”

“I’m late every morning. You’re just later than I am.”

“I’m thinking about going back in there,” he said, pointing back to the room. “I’ll sleep away the rest of the day.” It was framed as a threat.

“Are you cranky? Wake up wet?”

“I thought you were done.”

“Bear with me. I’ll be workshopping some more comments all day.”

He had been wrong - it wasn’t awkward in general, it was just awkward for him. Still, for as much as Effie was the worst person to have spotted this - she was also the best. He trusted her not to say anything to anyone else.

“I trust this will stay between us?”

“Yeah,” she said, sounding disappointed but sincere. “Everything alright?”

“Huh?”

“Well, I mean, you coming in early - probably very early - and the diapers and all that. Are you good?”

The previous night flashed before his eyes. The brief argument with Harper. The brief flirt with Kiri. The not-as brief stay in the backroom of the store.

“You know what? I don’t feel too bad today.”

“Is it because you…”

“I don’t want a smart ass comment from you about it,” he interrupted. “We had a, uh, embarrassing start here today, but we’re going to move past it. We sell diapers, right? I was, uh, testing the merchandise. And I’ll tell you what - they’re good. You tell the next customer who walks in here that. You tell them that the owner has put his own personal stamp of approval on the Carnivals.”

“Should I show them the pictures I took?”

“Did you...take photos?”

She shrugged, but then burst out in laughter, shaking her head. “Sorry - I wish I could’ve pulled that off. The look on your face…”

“I’m demoting you.”

“To what?”

“Diaper-pail emptier. You can start now. I left a present for you in the Nursery.”

--

The toilet seat was still down. There wasn’t a stray glob of toothpaste in the sink. There wasn’t a glass sitting on the counter with a quarter-inch of orange juice left in it that wasn’t either just finished or put in the sink.

Layne hadn’t come home last night.

She wasn’t exactly upset about it. Layne wasn’t the type - nor did he have the skill - to pick a random someone at a bar for a one-night stand. It was far more likely that he fell asleep somewhere he didn’t intend to. Maybe an alley or at a friend’s house.

She considered the possibility that he was lying on the floor at the store. Maybe a pile of diapers had collapsed on top of him. How poetic.

Harper would’ve loved it if she could move on with her morning and not let it bother her, but she kind of needed to know where he was - or at least that he wasn’t dead or buried. She briefly considered calling his cell, but opted to call the store instead.

“Bottoms Up, Effie speaking.”

“Effie, hey. It’s me. Is, uh, Layne there?”

There was a blink-and-you-missed-it moment of hesitation before the response: “Yeah, he is. Did you want to talk to him?” She sounded like she was smiling or had been laughing.

“No. God, no. I just wanted to make sure he was alive.”

Effie’s tone had lowered a little. Not quite a whisper, but she clearly didn’t want to be overheard. “Yeah, he’s alive. Fell asleep at the store though, FYI.”

“Alright, thank you. Hey, don’t tell him I called, okay?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Harper trusted that response. “Talk to you later.”

With the stress of Layne off her back, she felt like a free woman once more.

“Everything okay?”

Syd stood in the doorway, wearing Harper’s bathrobe. Their black hair, vividly streaked with violet, cascading over their shoulders, framing their pale face. Harper had been actively falling in love with them, though she was nowhere close to admitting such a thing.

The distraction was almost annoying at times, like now. Syd was just standing there, looking concerned and caring. And Harper would’ve liked nothing more than to just answer them. But instead, she had to take them in again; admire everything about them one more time.

“Oh...yeah. Just making sure that Layne was still alive.”

“Is he?”

“So I hear.”

“I guess I’m not going to meet him this morning, then?”

“It doesn’t look like it.” Harper sighed, thankful for such a close call. While she doubted Layne would’ve made a scene in front of Syd, there would’ve been some tension. “You’re not missing much.”

Syd shrugged - an expert on knowing when to butt out of conversations they had no place in.

“What’s for breakfast?” they asked.

“I see how it is now. Shall I wash your laundry too?”

“Please,” Syd said, grinning. “I’m not great at staying on top of it.”

“You were good at staying on top of me though.”

Syd blushed, glancing away.

“Pancakes?”

“That sounds amazing.”

Syd took a seat at one of the barstools tucked under the counter at the far end of the kitchen. Harper had almost forgotten that they had stools over there at all - it was possible that nobody had ever used them before.

Harper compiled the ingredients she needed. Truthfully, she’d have felt more comfortable with a recipe in front of her. While she felt Syd’s eyes on her, though, she opted to wing it. If she could pull it off without the recipe, and she was mostly confident she could, she was sure that it would look pretty impressive.

“You’re...more toppy than I thought you’d be,” Syd said.

“Is that a bad thing?” she asked, cracking an egg into some milk she had just poured into a bowl.

“Gosh no. Not at all. A wonderful surprise, that’s all.”

“That’s just how I roll, I guess.”

“Have you always been like that?”

It wasn’t a hard question to answer, but the answer had a little bit of baggage. Baggage that was, apparently, still alive. “I think that part of me developed a little later in life. One of those things that you never think about. And then one day, you see that there’s an opportunity - a need - within a relationship that needs to be filled. And, so, you take a chance and...voila. Domme-y Mommy.”

Syd laughed, a cute giggle they hid behind a hovering hand. “Is that what you are? A...Mommy?”

Harper sighed, worried she had said too much. “It’s...a name I’ve been called before.”

“I like it,” Syd said. “It’s got layers.”

“Layers?”

“Well, sure. Like, if I was to just call you ‘Mommy,’ I think that I’d…” They couldn’t quite finish that sentence, their cheeks already glowing pink.

“You think that you’d what? Why don’t you try? Call me Mommy.”

“Yes...Mommy.” Another giggle behind their hand, this time letting it develop into more of a chuckle.

“So, layers?”

“Right, right. So, it’s obviously very fun and sexy to just call you Mommy. But, too, I’m sure it’s a name that someone could have a whole set of emotions attached to. Like, expectations for how you look and act and talk.”

“Ah, got it. Yes, layers.”

“I can keep calling you Mommy, right?”

Harper smiled as she whisked the wet ingredients into the dry. “Yes, please.”

--

“...and that’s really what it comes down to: It’s rare that we have an opportunity like this to nip something so dangerous in the bud. We have to act. We have a responsibility - an obligation to our community. Anyone who doesn’t see this from our perspective simply lacks all the facts needed to see things the right way. And that’s what we’re doing here. We’re providing the facts. We’re providing the...oh...well, isn’t this a surprise.”

Layne was late, despite his best intentions. He was often convinced that his chronic tardiness had been inherited from his father. His mother often said as much - usually pointing out the 5 days past the expected due date that he spent in her womb. He had been born late.

He had debated not going to the meeting at all, especially once he realized he’d be showing up late. The last thing he wanted to do was to make a grand entrance. He wanted to quietly observe, maybe get a free cup of coffee. He wanted to know what his enemies had to say about him and to know what he needed to start preparing for.

But instead, Grace stopped herself mid-speech, and the group of 14 or so members of CALM followed her gaze to the back of the room where Layne had just entered.

“I understand that there are refreshments?”

It wasn’t as dramatic a moment as it could’ve been. Nobody in this room, save for Grace Vanderhoeffen, knew who he was.

“And speak of the devil,” Grace said, looking to rectify the audience’s indifference. “That just so happens to be Layne Stanlan - the owner and proprietor of Bottoms Up.”

People seemed slightly more bemused or curious now, but it was still a pretty mild reaction.

“To what do we owe the pleasure of your appearance tonight, Mr. Stanlan?”

“I just thought I’d drop by and see what all the hubbub was about,” he said. He was tempted to leave it at that, but he couldn’t help himself: “Word around town is that this group gets pretty wild.”

“Folks, this is what we’re going to be up against. Mr. Stanlan here thinks he’s a bit of a funny-man and he’ll do his best to charm the city council.”

Baby-man and funny-man. He was starting to accumulate a little collection.

“Honest,” he said to Grace and her club, “I’m not here to disrupt things or cause drama. I was just hoping to hear some of the discourse. I wanted to hear about the concerns.”

“You should’ve been here 45 minutes ago, then,” Grace said. “But we’re actually about to wrap up. Perhaps next week? It might be your last chance, seeing as how the city council meeting is the week after that.”

“I’ll put it on my calendar,” he said.

He stuck around, listening to Grace wrap up the meeting with some less relevant updates about other potential bees in their bonnets. At their dismissal, most of the folks left, barely acknowledging Layne as they shuffled out the door. Those that remained stood in small groups, drinking coffee and eating cookies.

Layne helped himself to a cup of coffee too before approaching Grace as she organized some papers to load into a folder.

“I hope you don’t mind that I helped myself to some coffee. I won’t eat your cookies though.”

“You should at least try one,” she said. “They’re homemade.”

“You made them?”

She nodded.

“See? Look, we can be civil. Polite.”

“Your point?”

“I just want to run my store. I don’t want to have to go to city council meetings or deal with your wild pack of elderly people who have nothing better to do.”

“Insulting the members of my group is not going to help your argument.”

He sighed, nodding. “Yeah, okay. Let’s try that again. I truly believe that I am not a threat to this community. Maybe we can have, I don’t know, have a conversation about that? Like, what if we just met up sometime soon. We can discuss it over dinner or a drink. Or just...here. Anywhere.”

“Mr. Stanlan, it sounds like you’re asking me out on a date.”

He laughed. “No, no. I just think we should have a conversation before things get too complicated. That’s not asking too much, right? Like, if I had a problem with anyone else in my life, I’d want to talk to them before I took them to court or something.”

She sighed, nodding begrudgingly. “You’re not wrong, Mr. Stanlan.”

“You can call me Layne.”

“I could, but I probably won’t.”

“So? You and I can arrange a little meeting? A tete-a-tete?”

“Lunch tomorrow?”

“That’s fine, yes.”

“The Schoolhouse? On 7th street? At noon? Would that work for you?”

“I’ll be there with bells on,” he said.

“As long as it’s not a diaper.” It was intended as an insult, no doubt, but it came off as playful ribbing. At least to Layne - who probably took most insults that way.

“You’re no fun at all.”

--

By the time Layne got home, Harper was reading in bed and Syd was gone.

There were, however, leftover pancakes in the fridge. He thought it was weird that Harper would make pancakes for herself. But who was he to complain?