An Anniversary of Sorts - Part 1 (Patreon)

Leo is attending a meetup with his friends. The only friends he’s been able to talk to for the last three years. And that anniversary comes with some surprise developments...

This is a trade with the wonderful Personalias, who's works you can find here (https://www.patreon.com/personalias/) He's also posted up the first part of his half of the trade there!

An Anniversary of Sorts - Part 1

Every car ride has that moment where your mind wanders. A few seconds where the radio or playlist you’ve started stops being what your thoughts focus on and instead something new pops into your brain as you look out of the window at the surroundings going past the window.

For Leo, on this occasion it was a realisation. An intrusive one that instantly made him squirm in the oversized and tight car-seat he was strapped into in the back of the family sedan his wife had purchased a year ago. Today was an anniversary. Not of his wedding, though what status that had this point was something he’d have to work out later.

This was the anniversary of “the event”. Not some kind of crazy apocalyptic event that changed the entire world. Oh no, that would be too easy to comprehend for the man in his early thirties. This was the event that had led to him being strapped into the seat in the first place.

Three years. It had been three years since the first of these car rides, three years since his wife had first carefully, but with significant difficulty, managed to get him into this bizarre contraption. There were still small bite marks in the nylon and leather weave of the belt that kept him securely strapped to the soft encasement of the seat. That energetic rejection of his current state hadn’t been something he’d shown for… well for years.

“You ok baby?”

Leo heard his wife from the front seat. He nodded back towards the rear view mirror, where she’d been keeping an eye on his daydreaming face. He knew better than to try to reply with any words. The pacifier in his mouth that he had been nonchalantly sucking on since the start of the journey made little difference to how much she, or indeed anyone else, could understand what he could say anymore.

He saw her smile as she looked back towards the road. As he gazed out the window, Leo started to recognise a couple of landmarks. The road had turned onto a long driveway up to the end of cul-de-sac, somewhere he’d visited over and over.

Wesley’s home.

Well, he guessed it was Wes’ wife’s home now on all the paperwork. Just as his own was. Whatever had happened three years ago had affected him as well, his partner having taken the idea of having a large baby boy to heart just as much as his own.

He looked forward to these meetings but as the thoughts mixed in his head, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of longing. The two of them had had a life before all this, one that was fading slowly into memory. The sound of gravel under tyres greeted his ears as the car turned onto the driveway, stopping slowly as it approached the garage door to the family home.

“We’re here sweetie!” his wife announced, gleefully turning to look at him with a huge smile. She paused for a second as he looked back, her face falling back a little “Everything ok?”

Again, Leo nodded, though with nowhere close to enough enthusiasm to convince her of that fact.

“Mommy knows when her little one isn’t feeling well. You’re normally really excited to see Wes, so something must be up!”

She untangled herself from the seatbelt and worked her way out of the car, opening the car door on Leo’s side. She placed her hand against his forehead, checking his temperature as she did whenever he seemed even the slightest bit out of sorts.

“No fever… hmm..” she unstrapped him from the car seat, a little groan coming from his mouth as she hoisted him onto her arm. Whatever force had influenced her perceptions of him had made her capable of such a feat and the strange sense of vertigo that it gave the man every time had yet to fully go away. He felt a finger go up the bottom of the shorts of his denim short-alls and work its way into the diaper round his waist.

“Just a little wet… hmmm… maybe you’re just dehydrated.” she bounced Leo on her arm and tapped the front of his pacifier guard “Let’s get some milk in that little tummy of yours shall we? I’ll get Aunty Vera to mix you up a bit of your favourite banana flavour, doesn’t that sound yummy?”

Leo nodded in response, an instinctual smile coming across his face. Small things had become highlights in a world that now saw even him making it twenty paces across a room on two feet as a success story. Getting his favourite flavour of drink, when he had no control over it except to whine, was one of those things.

“There, that’s already perked you up a bit. Now remember, best behaviour, Aunty Vera isn’t really a big fan of you when you’re a little brat”

Leo audibly groaned behind his pacifier as he held onto her. Vera hadn’t liked him even before this whole thing, he hadn’t ever been a brat. Well, not anymore than would be expected from a married man turned baby.

As they reached the door, his wife pressed the bell and gave him a little kiss on the cheek. He felt the blush rising to his face as it opened and Vera came out to greet them. Wes had been lucky to find her, a lawyer with an excellent sense of fashion and a quick mind to boot. She’d never been eager to be a mother though.

“Diana! Oh my goodness you’re looking wonderful!”

“Thank you Vera, new haircut and foundation. Think it suits me down to the ground!” Leo felt himself getting bounced a little more as she spoke, as though trying to keep him from making a fuss.

“Well come on in, I’m sure you want to put the little guy down to play. Wes has been a bit of a fussy baby this morning but I’m sure once he’s got a friend he’ll get better.”

Leo smiled and looked back around as they walked into the house. It had changed so much in the last three years. At first only Wes’ room had really been affected, but then Vera seemed to just buy more and more baby gear over the years for him. Everything was sized up, the highchair in the kitchen, the position of the baby proofed foam on the corners of the cabinets, the bouncer in the doorway of the study… he didn’t even want to think about how often Wes had been stuck in that while his wife had been working.

“Isn’t Pearl coming to visit as well today?” Diana asked.

Pearl? Leo’s ears perked again. She was the mother (the actual mother) of another of his friends. The third, and final, acquaintance who had been taken down to the level of a toddler. Jonathan, a young guy who he’d only known for six months beforehand. It was hard to believe he’d known him longer as an oversized baby than as his true age.

“She’s already here, Jonny is napping in the crib. He might come out a bit later but the drive tuckered him out”

“Oh goodness, poor boy. I heard he was struggling a bit with weaning?”

“You can ask Pearl about that yourself, Di”

As the door to the lounge was opened Leo looked over his shoulder and took it all in again. The playpen in the corner, the pictures on the wall of Vera carrying Wes everywhere, a changing mat was strategically placed just outside the playpen with some diapers on the bottom shelf of the adjacent bookshelf…. Everything felt like it belonged there and yet, Leo knew, it really didn’t.

“Oh Di! Lovely to see you!” the voice of an older woman came from the couch. Her hair was visibly greying, her face made up to cover the wrinkles that were developing around her eyes. Pearl had been a helicopter parent, taking care of Jonathan as if he’d barely been older than a teenager. When she’d become the mother to a baby again, it was like she’d been in her element, back to a perfect place for her cooing and overzealous lovey dovey attitude to express itself with no way for her kid to respond.

“Pearl! You’re looking radiant dear. I hope Jonny isn’t keeping you up too much at night” Di moved to the playpen, allowing Leo to look down into it. There was Wes, his back turned towards the door but his head turned to see his friend. Their eyes met, the understanding between the two of them immediately clicking as Leo was lowered onto the oversized foam playmats.

The conversation between the three women faded into the back of Leo’s mind as he looked over at his friend. He had been building a block tower, the small primary coloured blocks were scattered around his legs, a few neatly ordered into a small square as if starting a base. He was in nothing but a bright blue t-shirt and a diaper, nothing covering the image of Mickey Mouse on the back of his sized-up Pampers. His hair was thinned, once a thick curly ponytail had been held back by some simple hair-ties. Now he had a bowl cut, his blonde hair straightened, shiny and looking typical of a toddler. As with all three of them, no hair was anywhere else on their bodies. They’d woken up the morning when this had all started and it was gone, not even wisps of a beard, and certainly nothing downstairs. His pacifier was bobbing back and forth as he waited for Leo to get closer, and once he was sitting in front of him, he crossed his legs as both of the men pulled their respective dummies from their mouths.

“Hey Wes”

“Hey Leo”

They stared at each other for a second. This was still hard to get used to. What did you start a conversation with when your days were void of your own choices? When you couldn’t talk about the latest TV show? Or sports? Or hobbies?

This time though, both of them knew what to begin with, though it took Leo breaking the silence for it to start.

“So… three years today.”

Wes nodded “Yeah… three years. It feels like it’s gone by so fast.”

Leo picked up one of the blocks and turned it over in his hands “But nothing has changed huh?”

Wes smiled “Except the diapers?”

Leo frowned, Wes responding in kind when he saw his friend's reaction “Sorry. I’ve picked that up from Mommy… I mean Vera.” he shifted in place, blushing at the slip “She likes to make that joke about me.”

Leo just sighed “It’s alright, I can’t even really say those feel like they’ve changed”

Wes looked down at his feet “Yeah. I just… I do remember what it was like to use the pot.. The toilet, you know? But when mommy takes me to the bathroom it just… I tense up when I see it.”

“You’re scared of it?” Leo raised his eyebrow “You’ve not mentioned that before”

Wes shook his head “It started a couple of weeks ago. I was feeling kinda hyper, Mommy had just given me a bubble bath and she sat me on the potty and I felt myself start to… start to pee”

“Wait, you actually…”

“The cover was down” he sniffled, holding back a few tears “I just… I just felt it happening and then it was… it was everywhere and… and…”

Leo quickly crawled over to Wes’ sobbing form and embraced him, keeping his head close to his shoulder to let him hide in it. They’d all had these moments since, their bodies or the world throwing them into a humiliating situation that they had no way to stop. Park bench changes, leaks in supermarkets, diaper blowouts… Leo could vividly remember so many of his own.

“It’s ok bud. It’s ok. Just breathe”

“Awww, looks like the little ones are glad to see each other!”

The voice of Pearl carried over to the playpen, shaking the two of them out of their intimate moment. Wes wiped his eyes clear on Leo’s shoulder and composed himself, looking away from the women and heading towards a pile of plush toys.

“Oh, honestly. Once you point out they’re being good little boys they get out of the perfect picture moment!” Vera said, putting the phone with which she’d quickly tried to grab a snapshot back into her pocket.

“I’ll go wake up Jonny, I’m sure he wants to see his friends as well!” Pearl got up and walked past the playpen, winking at Leo as she walked past. It was the kind of wink a doting aunt might give when sneaking a child a chocolate. Cheeky, a knowing look between two people who understood.

Leo simply glared back. There was nothing intimidating about an oversized baby in short-alls with a chip on his shoulder. He’d given so many of these looks of annoyance to parents and other actual babies in the past and the intended emotion was never conveyed. To them he may as well have been gurgling away. He’d learned a long time ago that communicating with anyone other than Wes and John was impossible. Sometimes he felt like he could tell babies, who’s understanding of his body language seemed to mirror adults, that something was wrong. Perhaps it was an instinctual understanding, the desperate need to communicate something without the benefit of words.

“Leo… can I ask you something?”

He looked back towards Wes as the man, still a little red around the eyes from the sobbing, was clutching a plush fox to his chest

“Sure, what’s up?”

“When you wake up in the morning, do you sometimes… just lose control? Like, your body is doing things, you can see the crib and everything but… you don’t think about any of it?”

Leo’s mouth opened slightly to respond before closing again with a thoughtful expression. Wes had clearly had a hard time over the last few months. Leo hadn’t ever really felt like he’d lost control, other than his toilet training of course. That had gone along with his ability to walk the moment he’d woken up three years ago. But he could still ensure all his limbs and other feelings were kept in check.

“I don’t think so.” he moved closer to his friend, ready to take another bout of sobbing “I’m guessing you do get that though?”

Wes nodded, sniffling. It was pretty clear from his expression he’d been hoping Leo had been going through similar.

“It’s like, I wake up and my brain and body know I need something before I do. A change, a bottle, a toy. And I… I just go with it”

The two men looked at each other for a moment and breathed out slowly. They’d had discussions about this sort of thing before. Would they get used to it? Would it end before they just lost their minds entirely? Could they keep each other sane… somehow?

“You get back that control right though? Like, right now you seem ok?”

Wes nodded “It’s like it’s a dream I wake up from, but I just kinda shake out. I’ll be lying on the changing table a cold wipe will go up my butt and suddenly… I’m back. I swear Vera knows that it’s happened sometimes. She’ll look at me different, she’ll be cleaning me up and see me frown and just smile at me. It’s weird.”

“Sounds it,” Leo responded, “I can’t say I’ve felt that way. Then again Di and Vera treat us differently. You’ve got the least hands on mommy of all of us. I mean wife.”

Wes just shook his head “Come on, I’m having a hard time keeping that up. It’s been three years Leo. Three years! They’re our mommies now, and yeah she does give me different treatment. She leaves me to do what I want, but nothing around to actually do. I just wallow in my damn memories, watch the same cartoons everyday and play with the same toys.”

Taken aback by the admission, Leo lowered his head. It had been hard, but avoiding that term had kept them all from giving up that sense of equality. A wife? They were a peer, someone who reciprocated love in ways that you could give back. A mother? Oh they had control, they gave you a special kind of love that there was no way to properly repay. There was anger at having that peer taken away, but guilt at having no ability to give anything back.

Wes though, it was almost all anger. Vera was a career driven woman, the breadwinner before the event and the organiser of all the big stuff. Wes had never shied away from it, and she involved him in all the processes but she’d always been in control. Now she essentially had a kid instead of a husband and still treated it the same. No hard knocks, but a level of coldness and efficiency to mothering that Di would never let herself do.

“Jonny look! It’s your friends!”

The two men looked around to see Pearl in the doorway, carrying the dozy form of their friend. His thumb was in his mouth, his brown hair poking up in weird places as if he’d had a restless night out and slept on a couch. Hell, the one-piece sleeper he was in would have looked good at a costume party too. Bright blue, a big back panel with huge buttons and a white circle on the front. The hood hanging off the back was clearly the finishing touch to what could only be described as a “bunny” outfit.

As he saw them his expression immediately switched to embarrassment, pulling the thumb from his mouth and hiding his head in Pearls shoulder, an audible whine coming out as he did so.

“Oh dear, still all grouchy. It’s ok baby, I know you’re shy but these two love playing with you.”

She started to rub his head, the man clinging to her desperately as she headed towards the playpen.

“Now, be good and you can have special mommy num-nums ok?”

The look on Johnny's face went from confusion to elation in less than a second, pulling himself back from her shoulder and stopping his whining. Leo and Wes both looked at each other as he smiled broadly back at Pearl with something that made them both wince as their stomachs dropped.

He had no teeth.