A Temporary Solution – Chapter Seventeen (Commission) (Patreon)

Thanks once again to our Gold-tier Patron Devin for sponsoring this latest installment in the saga!

***

God, why isn't it five o'clock already?

I've never thought of myself as the clock-watching type of employee. I'm Devin, after all: dutiful, eager to prove myself, always looking for ways to demonstrate my value to the company. But these last few days have been… well, tough. Tougher than anything I've dealt with before, to be perfectly honest.

And while I'm being honest, I've gotta admit: it's really all because Clair's still away on vacation.

I shift in my seat, forcing my gaze back from the stubbornly immovable hands of the clock that read 2:18 to the rows of figures in the spreadsheet before me. Nothing for it. It's the post-lunch ennui, the mid-afternoon boredom that I'd normally never even notice if Clair was here. She and I would be in one of our impromptu meetings in her office. Or maybe she'd drop by my desk about now and ask if I was running into any problems. And maybe I'd be rising obediently from my chair and heading down the hall to the bathroom once again, there to slip into a stall and relieve my bladder which seems to hold so little these days…

Oh, yeah. Bathroom break. Better do that like the big boy I'm trying to be.

But ugh – when I get there, someone else is in the other stall! I'm not about to embarrass myself by letting my coworker hear me undoing the velcro tapes of my carefully concealed diaper. No way. I'll just head back to my desk… wait a bit longer…

When I feel the warm burst between my legs only a few minutes later, I bite back a sigh… and then relax into it, grudgingly letting the inevitable happen. Shit. I guess I shouldn't have waited so long, huh? But then again, it wasn't really my fault! Definitely not. Not in the least. My currently warm diaper was just a one-off accident, an unfortunate product of my coworker's bad timing and the soda I'd had for lunch…

Though the red-splotched spreadsheet I'm calling up discreetly on my second monitor seems to tell quite a different story.

Yep, I admit internally, scanning over the rows of red x's and green check marks for the past weeks. I can't really deny it any more. Before Clair left, I was getting four, sometimes five green checks a week. I could hardly help but earn them, as frequently as she came by my desk with that little smile on her face and her polite little inquiry about how I'd been doing. She has been my conscience, my safeguard, my constant reminder to pay attention to my body and take care of its needs like an adult should.

And without her now… well, I'm realizing anew just how little control of my own I actually have. Not to mention just how much I've been coming to rely on her.

I don't like to think of myself as particularly prone to depression. But there's no denying that as the minutes tick by and I sit there in my wet diaper, I feel myself slipping down into a self-absorbed spiral of negativity. No point in trying anymore, is there? Here I am, a grown man who can't even keep his pants dry. Well, at least I'm wearing a diaper like the freaky, leaky little loser I am. Oh, need to pee again? Might as well just let it go. I'm already wet, so no point in holding it. No one's here to check on me anyway. My water bottle? Sure, why not gulp at it, loser? Might as well get wetter and wetter. Serves you right…

It's the quiet patter of liquid onto the plastic chair mat beneath me that jerks me at last out of my gloomy reverie and sends my blood pressure skyrocketing. Holy crap, no – not like this! But sure enough, there it is; my diaper's leaking, visibly and dramatically, and my trembling fingers can tell immediately that a massive, incriminating splotch of moisture is already blossoming out across the left hip of my jeans. Shit, shit, shit-

A panicked glance at the clock shows me that it's a bit after four, and I make the decision to bolt for it. So what if I leave work early? It's not like Clair's going to really notice. I just have to get home, back in my safe refuge where I can find dry jeans and hide my humiliating accident from the searching eyes of my coworkers…

***

And so here I am now a few hours later, tucked away in a corner of the bar a few blocks from my place and feeling more depressed than ever.

Oh, don't worry – I cleaned myself up. I'm still able to do that, at least: able to trudge up the stairs and slip the concealing coat from around my waist and pull off my shoes and tug off my jeans to see just how awful the damage is. Able, too, to rip off the soaked diaper that clearly couldn't handle how much I was peeing. Able to wipe my stupid naked ass and trudge over to the drawer and pull out the sort of diaper that's better suited for the job.

The booster I thrust down between those extra-tall leak guards only makes sense. Yep – Megamax plus booster. A thick, thirsty diaper for a stupid, leaky, overgrown baby. Complete with tapes so sticky and strong that they're virtually impossible to remove… because let's face it. There's no reason to think I should even try.

That's right, I muse fiercely now, gulping vindictively at my beer and finding a savage, dark pleasure at the sensation of the unusually thick padding underneath my ass. This is what I deserve to be: sealed away. Locked into an extra-thick diaper where I freaking belong. Waddling through life having flunked fucking potty training. That's me: the loser whose sweet coworker tried her very best to help him, but whose complete inability even to do something as basic as use the freaking toilet made that coworker throw up her hands in frustration and despair…

After all, there's something not even Clair knows. I haven't told her about the number of mornings I've woken up to find myself – well, at least on the first morning – in a puddle of my own piss. And at least three more times since then, in a bulging, cool, and thoroughly soaked diaper. Precisely like the sort of incontinent, pissy-assed loser I've lately been trying so hard not to be.

Maybe there's a sadistic side to me after all. After all, why am I ordering a second pint to follow this first one? Surely not because I want to see just how quickly I can send my bladder and kidneys into overdrive. Surely not because in my morbid desire to prove to myself my own helplessness, I'm deliberately stacking all the odds against myself…

Shut up, brain. Just shut up. Shut up and drink your fucking beer. Or better yet, try a couple of shots after this. Sure, why not? Get drunk. Lose your mind. Let it all go. Doesn't matter, anyway. Brain empty, diaper full – just like you fucking want. Just like those stupid, fucked-up fantasies you've had all your life…

***

It was just another late evening for Scott. Work had been, well, work. And supper had been nothing special – just microwaved leftovers for one. And after all the email-checking and the website browsing and the social media check-ins had eaten away the hours, he was thinking languidly of heading to bed and getting the sleep he knew he needed. Or maybe he should text Clair again and see how her day at the beach had been. Mmm… God, that bikini pic she'd sent had been something else…

And then it came: the unsteady thumping on his door, followed by a long-drawn ring of the doorbell and a loud rattling of the knob.

What the hell?! Who could be calling this late? And more suspicious still, who on earth would be so insistent on being let in? Thoughts of robberies and pranksters and doxxing flitted through his mind, but in the end he shrugged them away and stepped toward the door. He was a big guy, after all. Worst came to the worst, he could slam the door in their fucking face and call the cops-

But nothing had prepared him for the sight that greeted him upon cracking open the door and peering out. For there on the stoop stood Devin, of all people: snot-nosed, blubbering, gazing up unsteadily into Scott's face through a haze of tears and intoxication.

"Dad-dee," he slurred, before stumbling forward and dropping heavily to the threshold. "Pleeze- I- I need- yoo…"