Done Adulting Vol. 1 Ch. 75

“You got it too, huh,” Ella said when Jamie walked into daycare.

“You had it?”

“I think everyone had it. But I didn’t get it as bad as you newbies did. You look like you lost ten pounds.”

“Felt like I was dying. Or at least wished I was.”

“Been there,” she said as they walked toward the reading corner. “You’re walking funny.”

Jamie blushed. “Mom put me in double diapers again, just in case.”

“Hmm. Why do you wear diapers?”

Jamie was taken aback. It was still a sensitive subject even if he didn’t do much to try to keep it secret these days, not that it really was a secret or anyone expected him to wear anything different. “You do, too,” he answered defensively.

“Because they made me incontinent, and the doctors can’t fix that. But you’re not regressed. So, why? Did you ask to be?”

“Why would I do that?”

She shrugged. "Some people who come here like them. That’s a major part of why they adopt themselves out.”

Jamie knew about those people. He didn’t get it before he got to Itali, but experiencing the tenderness and affection he received every day because bigs needed – or thought they needed – to care for him that way, he understood now why people whose lives were fine, or as fine as most lives get, wanted to be adopted and wanted to be regressed knowing it could lead to diapers or even just because they wanted to wear diapers.

“Mom thinks I’m not potty trained,” Jamie told her.

“Why would she think that?”

“She just does. Assumed I wasn’t, and just can’t fathom that I am even when I told her. More than once.”

“Bigs are so weird. Sorry; that must suck.”

“Well,” he hesitated to say, “Amanda knows. She thinks they make me more ... better able to ... they make me more dependent on them, and I have to trust her and Mom, so she thinks they’re good for me because I have such a hard time doing that. She told me she’d get Mom to stop if I wanted to.”

“And you don’t? I’m just asking,” she added when Jamie turned red and looked away.

“I ... I don’t know exactly, but I think … Amanda has a point. I don’t really like using them, but it’s also not a big deal anymore, and Amanda’s right. If I weren’t dependent on them so much, everything would be different, I think … We wouldn’t be as close. I know it’s weird, but … well, it is what it is, I guess. And I do like the extra time with them that it creates; little calm moments when we get to talk … And they don’t feel awful. I thought they’d feel wet and gross all the time, but they don’t.”

“No … I don’t exactly mind now either. It would be weird not to wear them at this point.”

“I can imagine.” Her twelve years to his four months.

“I still use a pacifier, too, and a bottle sometimes. Just not in public like you, ya big baby,” she said with a weak punch on his arm.

“I’m sorry. Could you say that again? I couldn’t hear you over the crinkling coming from under your dress.”

“Whatevs, Mr. Basket Case.”

“Back at ya, Ms. Gimpy.”

“What’s all this name calling I hear,” Jordan said, coming up behind them.

“We’re just playing,” Jamie said. Jordan looked at Ella, who nodded.

“Well, play nice. You’ll set a bad example for the others,” she responded and went back to her regular charges.

Jamie grimaced. “Does that ever bother you, being held to a higher standard?”

Ella shook her head. “Not really. If you want to get away with more stuff, all you have to do is act like a regressed little.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Especially with strangers. Most bigs can’t tell the difference or don’t even entirely get what the difference is. And it’s sort of expected, long term.”

“How do you mean?”

“Being a little, your world being kinda small, just magnifies everything in it. Things that weren’t a big deal become a big deal. You start to take for granted that you area little and littles do certain things and get treated a certain way, and your behavior just sort of starts to fit that expectation.” A self-fulfilling prophecy.

“I’m going to end up like them,” Jamie said with alarm, pointing at some regressed littles across the room.

“No, not like that. Just that you won’t be quite as mature as when you got here. Which for you would probably be a good thing. That’s part of why you came here, right?”

“Sort of,” Jamie demurred. He blushed again but felt he could tell her things, and she would keep them private. He valued her insights; there was no one else who could tell him about his new life and world from the perspective of an unregressed little. “I don’t always know when I’m wet”

Ella’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “You mean you’ve started having accidents?” She knew the bigs had ways of causing incontinence, more sophisticated and less obvious than what had been done to her. With her history, she was mistrustful of all bigs until she had a reason not to be, and such a quick change made her concerned for Jamie, suspicious that his bigs were doing something to him.

“No, just that I’ve gotten so used to going I sometimes do it and hardly take notice of it, then forget I did it. Manda asked me the other day if I was wet, and I didn’t know.”

“O. Well, I guess that makes sense.”

Sitting cross-legged, Jamie looked at the carpet between his legs. “Do you think, maybe, you’d like to, uh, do something together outside of daycare?” Jamie hadn’t asked anyone out since college, not face to face. Jamie wasn’t sure if that’s what he had just done or not. How does a date work when you’re a little? It doesn’t even come up for regressed littles. Exchanging poorly drawn pictures and sharing half a cookie were as close to dating as regressed littles got.

“Like a playdate,” Ella asked. Now she blushed. Ella hadn’t been asked out since college, period. Had she just been asked out? She wasn’t sure.

“Well ... I guess, yes.”

“That’d be fun. But don’t you have to ask your mommy first?”

“Shut up.”

“No, you shut up …”