An Anniversary of Sorts - Part 2 (Patreon)

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

An Anniversary of Sorts - Part 2

“Go on Jonny, go say hello to your friends!” Pearl nudged his back, his body moving into a crawling position as he dutifully obeyed his mother.

Leo had to stop himself moving away from him. There was something terrifying about watching John, now a toothless oversized baby, move towards him with a strange gusto, as if desperate to swallow him whole.

“H… Hey John…” Wes managed to get the first words out, clearly just as perturbed.

“Hewwooooo” John responded, a slight slur as drool seemed to uncontrollably follow the motions of his tongue down the left side of his mouth “Yoush all looksh good”

“Are… are you ok?” Leo managed to stutter out. He knew the answer should be “No! I’m missing my teeth and I’m dressed like a tiny bunny rabbit!”

That was not the response he got.

“Yeah I good! I jush tired” John lay on his back looking back and up at his friends as his legs started to wave around “Jush had nap”

“Oh god” Wes put his hand to his mouth “I think I might hurl”

Leo could only stare with his mouth agape. He hadn’t seen John in a few months, the young man had been fine then, albeit in the same situation as the rest of them. This was all new, to both of them.

“When… when did you lose your teeth?!” Leo’s voice was cracking a little as fear started to work its way into his brain.

“Teef?” John's fingers went into mouth. He started to work his digits around his gums, drool sliding his knuckles to his wrists without anything to stop it from going wherever it desired. Leo noticed the man's eyes, initially glazed and almost blank, suddenly blink into a different kind of life. It was like a flame had been lit behind them, the realisation that something was very, very wrong was like a spark to a gas hob.

“My teef!” He shot up into a seated position, his other hand going into his mouth, pulling it into a bizarre grin “Whash happen to my teef?!”

As he turned back to face Leo his eyes were already starting to tear up, visible distress completely taking over the infantile bliss of the last couple of minutes. The bunny outfit seemed to go from being something he’d been enjoying to a straightjacket as he dropped into a fetal position, his legs pulling up behind his thickly padded rear.

“John honey, don’t be so loud. Use your inside voice for Mommy ok? She wants to talk to her friends for a bit” Pearl shouted over to the playpen. Whatever she’d heard it certainly wasn’t the desperate cry of a man realising he’d never need another dentist appointment.

That man was now shaking from head to toe, crying as his friends crawled over to him. Both of them had realised that their comrade in this mess was now back, at least somewhat, and the initial fear was replaced by a sense of both pity and empathy.

“John, John, listen to me. You need to stay strong bud ok?” Leo put his hand on his shoulder “We’re all still here ok? You’re still here, you’re not a bab…”

“I’M JUSH A BABY!!!” the response was about as far from what Leo had wanted to hear as possible “I… I’m jush… jush…” Johns thumb shot to his mouth, his gums wrapping around it and starting to suckle, tears flowing down his cheeks.

“Oh dear” Pearls voice came from the other side of the room “Sorry ladies I think I need to give my little man some num nums.”

The three men all looked up at the older woman as she reached into the playpen and pulled John back out.

“No! Give him back you…” Leo grabbed at John's feet as Pearl's arms went under his armpits, but the strength of a young man had long since gone.

“Now now Leo, John is a bit fussy today. He’ll have some num nums and then come back ok?”

“Maybe Leo just wants some nummies too?” Vera said “It’s hard to get little ones their age off of us you know.”

“Oh! No, I know what it is!” Leo heard his wife's voice respond “He wants some banana formula! I promised him some in the car. He seemed a bit dehydrated”. He didn’t have a response to that, he actually was pretty thirsty.

Vera sighed “That stuff doesn’t come cheap Di. Couldn’t you have brought your own?”

“I’ll pay you back by babysitting Wes sometime. Come on it’s just a bit of powder, and the kid loves it”

Vera stood up from the couch as Pearl hoisted John onto her arm, the boy now in a full bawl as he was pulled away from his friends “You both need to stop coddling your boys. They’ll never grow into men if you just give them everything they want.”

“Oh Vera, you’re such a bore” Diana responded “We only get them like this for a little while and then before you know it they’re off to college”

Vera smirked “College? I’ll worry about that once Wes stops pooping his pampers in his bouncer.”

Leo heard his friend moan behind his plush toy as his wife talked about his toilet habits without a second thought. John had calmed down, lying in Pearls arms on the couch as she sat down next to Di.

“Now little guy, open up for num nums!”

John obeyed, his gum-less jaw opening as Pearl opened up the top of her shirt. As her right breast popped free the man latched onto the nipple immediately, suckling in earnest. Leo and Wes just looked on, almost entranced by the scene playing out in front of them. A grown man, gum-less and drooling, was suckling on a breast like it was second nature. Leo could feel the blood rush to his face, his cheeks going red as he shifted in place.

Envy, lust, greed. Even if he wasn’t a religious man he was feeling all three with a distinct sense of sin. Whether the want was instinctual or brought on by the years of being fed under his own wife's bosoms as she gave him bottles of formula, the desire for the same treatment grabbed at his mind. He forced his head to look down at the floor, getting back into a crawling position as he went towards the same plush pile that Leo had grabbed the fox from. A large elephant dominated the right hand side, small glinting button eyes grabbing his own. His hands wrapped around its paws as he pulled into his chest, hugging it tightly in order to distract him from the cooing from Pearl as she rubbed her son's steadily filling stomach.

“Such a good baby boy, you love mommy’s num nums so much, yes you do, yes you do!”

Leo looked towards Wes. He’d found his pacifier and had put it back in his mouth, grabbing blocks and trying to continue his building from before. But it was clear he was feeling the same, an occasional glance to the outside of the playpen giving away that desire every so often. They’d talked about these feelings before, small tugs at their adulthood that they felt the need to resist. At first it had been easy, their brains still full of memories of what they were capable of doing day to day, their muscles seemingly endowed with enough memory of that former life to know when and how to push back at their new guardians. They could say “no” through actions, even if the words wouldn’t register.

But that resistance was always based on the idea that there was a point where this would end. Time and time again the three of them had sat, in a park or playpen, and told each other about how they’d forced their new mothers into giving them some small semblance of their adulthood. Chopped up solid food, getting to dip their chicken nuggets in their own sauce in their highchairs at fast food outlets, sippy cups…

The memories of those events ticked through Leo’s mind. Each of them were in the past, none of them close to strong enough to have resisted the inevitable slide towards accepting some of their new reality. They’d stopped caring about the state of their diapers within a year, stopped caring about the time of day or what they were going to eat shortly afterwards. When his wife had stopped feeding him solid foods and gone to oatmeal and baby food, Leo had just shrugged and carried on. That was nearly eight months ago… or was it? Did it actually matter?

“Right Di, your kid better be happy with this stuff. I’ve stopped buying it for Wes, it makes his butt hell to clean up” Vera stood in the doorway, an oversized baby bottle full of a thick, slightly yellowed liquid sloshing around inside. Leo grinned from ear to ear, his favourite meal was on the way and he couldn’t wait a second longer.

“Oh come on Vera stop being so uptight” Di got up and took the bottle from her as she went back to the couch “Let Leo get himself all full up and then we can put the boys down for a nap. I know you want to enjoy some of that soap opera you’ve got on the TIVO.”

Pearl chuckled “Really? I just got this little guy up?” she bounced John on her lap “You two are terrible, honestly”

Vera handed Leo the bottle as she rolled her eyes back towards her friend. Nothing else took his focus as threw the plush aside, rolled onto his back, and shoved the bottle into his mouth, sucking hard at the nipple and closing his eyes. As the banana mixture flooded his mouth he could’ve been anywhere. It didn’t matter, for this short period he had what he wanted. He had something that he enjoyed, that he cared about having. That was like ecstasy to his brain, so often struggling with a sense of malaise and apathy.

That didn’t do quite enough to distract him from what his stomach decided to do next, however.

The act of pooping is a feeling of relief to an adult mind. You sit down on the toilet, you allow everything to unclench, and the feeling in your bowels that let you know this was necessary slowly leaves you. It’s like breathing after being underwater for just a bit too long, your body needing a second to adjust to what has just happened. But then you wipe, wash and clean your hands, and life goes on. A minute, maybe two, taken out of your day to just allow your body to void itself.

Leo had long since forgotten what it was like to poop in a toilet, but that feeling of relief was a constant regardless of how he went about his business. The bowels moved and the body tightened, just as it had before, but he felt no urgency to move off of his position lying on his back on the foam playmats. The potty was an object foreign to him now, the toilet an object of humiliation rather than of day to day existence. He had to stare at it across the bathroom everyday, his memories latching onto sitting on it at the right time and in the right moment.

He couldn’t do that anymore. Now his lower body was pulling up, his legs curling closer to him as his muscles instinctively pushed. There wasn’t any resistance, nor was there anything really substantially solid to release. It was easy, a soft mush that slowly oozed from his rear and settled slowly into the rear of the damp padding, moving around his buttocks and forming a clear bump in the back in his shortalls. As the final push of his stomach muscles kicked in he grunted around the nipple of the bottle, still sucking at the tip.

He couldn’t really hear what was going on around him as he continued. He heard Vera and his mommy talking about something, he heard his name a couple of times. He smiled around the top of the bottle as a hand came down and started to rub his tummy. An instinctive giggle came out, sending a small dribble of banana formula down the side of his mouth. Eventually the rubbing stopped and he felt fingers un-popping his shortalls.

They must have noticed he’d been pooping. His giggling intensified as he started to kick his legs a little, making it more difficult for whoever was trying to change him. This only smushed the mess around more before his ankles were grabbed and lifted into the air. His eyes opened again to see his mommy staring down at him and giving him a look of caring disapproval.

“Leo, be good for Mommy alright? Suck on your bottle and let me change your diaper, you silly goose.” she cooed, pulling the legs of the dazed man apart and undoing the remaining poppers.

But Leo didn’t want a diaper change. He wasn’t a baby, he knew that, he’d just been speaking to Wes about how he didn’t lose control, how he didn’t fall into the trappings of infancy. So he rolled over, showing his full Huggies off to Diana as he tried to crawl away, dropping the bottle to one side as he moved towards his friend.

Wes was watching him with wide eyes, the pacifier in his mouth going back and forth as panic seemed to set into his body.

“Come back here sweetie, you can play with Wes again in a minute ok?”

One small advantage to having been crawling for three years was that Leo was used to it and his mommy was not. From her seated position on her knees that had previously been just about to untape his heavy Huggies, she initially tried to follow with a crawl of her own. But by that point Leo was on the other side of the playpen with Wes, grabbing him into a hug.

“I dun wanna diaper change!” he screamed, sniffles coming to his nose as he looked back to see his mommy bearing down on him “Please, don’t let her do it!”

Wes started to stutter out a response, his face contorting as the smell hit his nose. He knew as well as Leo did that a diaper change was needed, but like Leo knew how that felt. So he hugged back, the two men in an embrace that from the outside would have looked adorable to all viewers. But within the small bubbles they inhabited, the emotions were clear and distinct, desperation and defeat mixed with shame.

Leo could feel the mess in his diaper, he could feel the hand of his mommy take his arm and try to detach him from his friend, he could feel Wes’ breath on his ear as the hug tightened. All of them pulled at different emotions and desires. The desire to give in, to accept the change and let himself admit that he was a baby that needed his mommy to wipe his butt and give him new Huggies. The desire to resist, to avoid that change however possible, to continue to be messy if it made the point that he had control over when he got changed. Small victories, time spent how he wanted rather than what his mommy thought he needed. And finally the desire to be with Wes, to stay close to the one person he could find right now who understood how all this felt.

“Di, don’t let him stay in it” Vera’s voice pierced through the emotional walls around the pair, bringing Leo back to reality “I know what you’re thinking, but don’t give him what he wants.”

Leo looked back at his mommy, his eyes glazed with tears. She’d stopped next to the pair and had cocked her head, putting her hands together in the most typical “Oh my goodness this is so cute!” pose you can possibly imagine.

“Oh shush Vera. You leave Wes in the bouncer while he’s stinky, don’t act like you’re any better”

“He doesn’t want that, Wes doesn’t like being stinky, do you Wes?”

The boy shook his head, eliciting a smile from Vera “See, he knows what I mean. Come on Di don’t…”

But Diana had already stood up “He’s heading off for a nap soon anyway right? Maybe he knows more is on the way”

Pearl laughed hard enough to make John release himself from her for a brief moment “If he does, maybe he’ll ask to use the potty…”

Vera chuckled as well “Come on Diana, he’ll make the playpen smell.”

Just as she was about to sit down she stopped to look at Wes, who was still hugging Leo and looking up at Diana with a stern face. The woman sighed audibly “Wes, let Di change your friend. You can play again in a…”

“NO!”

While the word wasn’t what the women heard, the noise that Wes made was loud enough to break all three out of their revelry. Both John and Leo looked straight at the man, his arms grasping his friend and keeping him close.

“Wow, when did Wes become such a screamer huh?” Diana looked back to Vera with a raised eyebrow.

Leo felt the fog in his head start to dissipate. Everything still felt wrong, the mess in his diaper wasn’t going anywhere but he felt a measure of emotional control return. He pulled himself out of Wes’ arms and sat next to him, staring his wife in the face.

“I’m staying with Wes”

He knew the words wouldn’t work. He knew she couldn’t hear them as Wes did, but in that moment he felt like he could, and should, say them to her.

“Ok honey, you can stay with Wes for a bit.”

What?

Leo’s jaw dropped, Wes gave both Diana and him a look of complete shock, as if Leo had said something utterly heinous.

“I’ll change you before your nap, I’m sure Wes will probably need one too anyway” she picked herself up off of her knees and left the playpen, leaving the two shocked men to ponder what had just happened.

“Did… did she hear you dude?”

Leo stuttered, trying to work out how to respond. Had she responded to his words, had she just seen him staying close to Wes and accepted what he was doing?

“I… I don’t know…”

The next few minutes were spent listening to the voices of their wives. John was a lost cause, he’d been suckling on Pearl’s breasts nearly the whole way through the last ten minutes and there was no way to get to him. Leo gave his shortalls, still undone, a quick look over and saw the state of his diaper. It was clearly discoloured from front to back, visibly drooping away from his thighs and fully used. Had he been a father he’d have changed a baby in this state immediately. Leaving one to sit like this was asking for a leak. So why had Di let him stay with Wes? He pondered the question as he helped his friend with his block tower, giving him the occasional reassuring smile. Wes eventually grunted himself, visibly feeling the same gut contractions.

“Got… got to” he mumbled, pulling himself in a crawling position and pointing his diapered butt into the air. There was no mistaking the bump that started to appear in the rear, as clear evidence as Leo needed that they were both now in the same stinking boat.

Keeping track of time was something Leo no longer had the capacity for, but the itching in his rear was certainly something that made him feel like he’d been in the playpen for a bit too long. He’d had diaper rash plenty of times, this was the start of that awful process. He whined a little, attracting the attention of the three women, who all lifted themselves off the couch and came back to the playpen. John had fallen back to sleep, apparently in no need of any further activity other than to feed on the milk of his mothers breasts.

“Two diapers to change and a nap for all three I think?” Diana said, with nodding from the other two.

“Three diaper changes” Pearl responded “John made boom-booms as he fell asleep again. He definitely likes it as much as Leo I think”

As Vera picked Wes up she grimaced, feeling the weight of the mess he’d deposited in his Pampers “Ooff… what did I feed you for breakfast…”

Leo accepted his wife's arms this time, allowing himself to be carried to the back room of the house. The room was once a study, somewhere Wes had written occasionally or read while his wife worked away into the late hours. Now it was just a massive nursery, complete with a changing table and a crib the size of a queen sized bed. All three of them could fit in there without an issue, comfortably and securely contained.

As he was lowered onto the changing table, Leo’s mind started to wander again. As with the car ride this morning, the thought of this being the anniversary of the start of this whole affair wormed its way into his brain. Three years of this, staring up at a mobile four or five times a day while his wife wiped his butt and powdered him down. It wasn’t going to end, it never seemed to even get close to. Even the small little glimpses of hope were just there to tease him. He paid no heed to the cooing from the side of him as a new diaper was secured and his shortalls removed. He was naked except for an oversized Huggies diaper. The fact that the first thought that came into his brain was that he preferred Pampers did little to reassure his concerns.

Di carefully lifted him under his armpits, hoisting him over to the crib and laying him down inside it. He scooted over to the far side, grabbing at a large woolen blanket in the corner. He felt cold with nothing on, naked and exposed. Di simply smiled at him and went to help Vera with Wes, who joined him a few minutes later in a similar state. He offered the blanket and the boy accepted as they both waited for their final friend to arrive.

Except he didn’t come to the crib. John was changed as they were, but rather than come towards the crib, Pearl lowered the boy into a nearby rocker. She carefully secured him in, letting his head drop to one side as he continued his slumber.

“There, all set girls?” Pearl moved towards the doorway where the other wives turned mothers had been waiting.

“Let’s get started then… I hear this episode is a real cracker!” Vera grinned, clearly getting to the point she’d been looking forward to all evening.

As the door closed behind them, Leo and Wes looked at each other again. Both were worn down, mentally exhausted from just the start of the day. Neither knew what to say to one another, a shared understanding between them that maybe now, after both had been changed out of their respective diapers, was not the time for further musings.

“Let… let’s get some sleep” Leo lay down on his back, staring up at the slightly different mobile above the crib.

“Yeah… but… what if we wake up and…”

Leo sighed “Then it’s over. We lost. At this point Wes I’m not sure I care that much. But I’m not going to just let it happen”

Wes didn’t respond, simply turning his back on Leo and settling onto his own pillow. His thumb wandered into his mouth, his body beginning the process of turning down and allowing the man turned toddler to enter a deep sleep.

Leo resisted the urge to suck on his own thumb but felt his eyelids droop downwards. He wasn’t going to give up, not yet at least. He’d do three more years of this if he had to.

He just hoped he could last that long.