Diaper U, Chapter 7

Contains: Messy diapers, public embarrassment 

Daniel blinked awake, bleary eyed and freshly padded.

He didn’t recognize the space he’d awoken into. Greenery and plant life wound up brick walls, and a glass ceiling refracted blinding sunlight into something muted and comfortable. He could hear birds and other wildlife skittering about, as well as…hooves?

Sitting up, he found himself in a semi-rigid hammock, halfway to being a cot but with a little swing to it. His diaper had been changed, mercifully, though the lingering ache of his spanking still stung.

And there was a centaur standing over him.

“Uh…hi,” he said, looking the horse woman up and down. Her human half had on a pair of medical scrubs, with half-moon spectacles over a button nose. He couldn’t gauge her age–anywhere from thirty to fifty might have been reasonable–but she radiated a calm energy that was caring, if not very matronly.

“I’m Pensive,” she said.

He swallowed. “...what’s got you feeling that way?”

“No, my name is Pensive,” she corrected. “I’m the healer here at Alphabeta. You were in quite a state when they brought you here.”

Blushing, Daniel pulled down his skirt. “It was–”

“A curse, I’m aware,” she said, tapping her clipboard. “And an irresponsible one at that. I’ve dispelled it from you and restored your olfactory function to normal. I’d prefer to dispel everything else, too, but Penelope–I’m sorry, the dean informed me that it’d be interfering with your detention.”

Looking around, Daniel took in the space a little more. They were clearly in a greenhouse, with flower beds and potted plants in a sort of untidy, ordered chaos. “...was the medical wing unavailable?”

“This is the medical wing,” Pensive explained. “I practice herbal healing. Were you expecting a stuffy, mundane laboratory that stinks of disinfectant?”

“I mean…I guess,” Daniel admitted, swinging his legs over the edge of the cot. “But…”

He trailed off as a ‘visitor’ came to see him. Rachel, his tormentor.

She looked…uncomfortable. Arms crossed over her chest. “Hey, Spark. You’re still in detention. Once you leave here, you’d better head straight back to your room.”

Daniel swallowed, waiting for her to mention his tardiness, that he’d not made it back to his room as soon as he should have. “Yeah…I’ll do that.”

The penny hung in the air, never quite hitting the ground. Rachel looked away, mumbling something under her breath.

“What?” he asked.

“Sorry I screwed up the spell,” she repeated, loud enough to be heard.

Pretending not to have noticed, Daniel again pressed her to repeat it, “I didn’t catch that.”

“I’m sorry–oh, screw you,” Rachel said. “I didn’t mean to put you in the hospital. That’s it. That’s all I came to say.” She turned to stalk out, stiffly stomping away.

“Wait,” Daniel got to his feet. “What’d you do to Jen?”

Rachel turned, a little smug confidence returning to her smile. “Oh, her? Don’t worry about it.”

And with that, Rachel strutted away, smugly satisfied with having ended the conversation on a note of power.

Daniel swallowed, worried for Jen, but there was nothing he could do to make the situation better. “Alright, well–”

“One more thing, young man,” Pensive said, before he could leave. “Now that Rachel’s gone, I should tell you one more thing.”

He glanced back at her. “What?”

“Whatever concoction it is you drank, I purged from your system,” Pensive said. “From what I understand of your detention, potions are just as off-limits as any other spells, and by the gunk clogging your chakras, that potion was hardly healthy.”

Swallowing, Daniel pictured his punishments racking up. “So are you–”

“Corporal punishment is disgusting,” Pensive said. “Just be careful out there.”

He smiled, a little. “Thanks.”

…

Daniel would have thought that, having already destroyed a diaper in front of half the student body, using his diapers again might have been easy. In practice, though, without magical pressure forcing his hand, he just couldn’t compel his body to do it.

And that, in turn, made it hard for him to sleep.

He had to pee, just a little, but he couldn’t. No amount of coaxing his body into compliance would help with that.

On other nights, if he couldn’t sleep, Daniel might have walked around a little, but for one, he wouldn’t risk the wrath of Rachel inventing new punishments for him, and for two, once he’d gotten into his crib to sleep, the bars had sealed up, trapping him inside. He hadn’t yet taken off most of his uniform clothes, intending to just lie down for a bit first before sleeping, so instead he’d been forced to wriggle out of them in bed and–without access to his trunk–skip pajamas for the evening.

“What if I need something to drink?” he pondered aloud.

A glass baby bottle with a rubber nipple conjured itself into existence, sitting next to his pillow. The contents were milky white and it felt warm to the touch.

Great, he thought. He wasn’t thirsty, anyways, so he set it aside and tried to sleep.

Tossing and turning, he got only a couple restless hours in before, to his surprise, his door was thrown open.

“Rise and shine, spark,” Rachel said. She had out her wand, and with a flick of the wrist, the bars on his crib lowered. “If you want your diaper changed before lunchtime, now’s the moment.”

He sat up, groggy, wiping at his eyes. “I didn’t…I’m dry.”

She raised an eyebrow, eyes drifting down to his exposed diaper. “Huh. Well, alright then. Get dressed, spark–I’ll meet you here after lunchtime to give you a change.”

Blushing, he began pulling on his uniform clothes–blouse, pointed had, skirt that refused to cover his diaper. Toddling out, he hurried towards the great hall, this time taking the correct path, the one that wouldn’t get him in trouble for ‘wandering off’.

Getting into the hall, he found the rows of seating had been replaced with long tables, cafeteria style. There was no assigned seating, so he simply scanned the benches until he saw Jen, sitting by herself on the far end of one table.

He had precisely one friend amongst the students, so he went with that, walking to sit across from her.

“Hey,” he said, ignoring snickers and looks as he sat down. As soon as he took his place, a plate of food–pancakes with syrup–materialized in front of him. At least my food is the same as everyone else’s.

“H-hey,” she replied. “Um. Hi. You probably don’t want to sit with me.”

“Why’s–” he started, before the smell caught him. He’d become intimately familiar with the stench of a messy diaper yesterday, and though Jen’s odor was nowhere near as intense as his had been, it definitely caught his attention. Putting a hand to his nose, he said, “Oh, uh… Rachel?”

“Rachel,” Jen said. “She said since I let you, um–basically since I let your punishment happen to you, in public for everyone to see and smell, I would have to have a punishment everyone could see and smell too.” Her face burned red, and she added, “Three days.”

Daniel swallowed. “You have to smell like…um, this, for three days? Wait, but what was the ‘see’ part?”

“Um…” she looked down, avoiding eye contact with him. “I don’t just smell like a dirty diaper. And she took away my uniform skirt.”

“Ah.” Unable to keep the curiosity away, Daniel leaned to the side, glancing around the edge of the table. Sure enough, below the waist, Jen wore only a slightly sagging diaper that squelched around her thighs.

Jen’s chance at social status had been torpedoed, then, almost as certainly as his. Even if, for now, people were just avoiding her end of the table so they could avoid their meals without the smell, she’d never be remembered as anything other than the diaper girl.

“What a bitch,” Daniel said, picking up his fork and cutting into the pancakes.

Admittedly, eating with that smell suffusing the air wasn’t his favorite thing to do, but he’d push through. Jen needed a friend, and it wasn’t like he was spoiling for choice when it came to company.

Jen smiled, slightly. “Yeah. I can’t believe they made her a prefect.”

“Generally, people who gun for authority are jerks,” Daniel said. “Rachel strikes me as a ‘I’ve only got authority over a handful of people, so I’d better rub it in their faces as much as I can’ type.”

“Heh.” Jen giggled, finally looked back up at him. “I heard she only got to be prefect because her mom is some bigwig donor.”

“That tracks,” Daniel replied. “Oh god, I can’t imagine trying to work under her once she graduates and gets a nepotism hire. Can you imagine? ‘You turned in your TPS report five minutes late, I’m revoking company bathroom privileges!’”

Jen barked out a laugh. “What, you think she’d do that?”

Daniel smirked. “You know–it strikes me as pretty convenient what punishments she picked for the both of us. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s less about us than it is her.”

Covering her mouth, Jen turned bright pink, stifling an even louder laugh. A few students nearby gawked, and when she fought her amusement down to giggles, she said, “No way!”

“Yes way,” Daniel said, aware that his voice carried, uncaring. “Honestly–you don’t do this to two different people, unless it’s because you secretly want someone else to do it to you. One hundred percent, Rachel wants to sniff dirty diaper butts and is projecting.”

He didn’t turn to look at the other students, but he heard more ‘snirk’s and short chuckles behind him. And, more to the point, he knew the power of a good rumor.

It might not help him too much–there were already way too many strikes against him for one rumor to recover his popularity–but Jen might just be saved. With a little selective pressure here and there, Jen wouldn’t be known as the school’s diaper girl. Rachel would.

“Hey,” Jen said, once she’d caught her breath. “Are you in Evocation Essentials at nine thirty?”

He nodded. “Yeah. You too?”

She smiled. “Maybe we can study together after.”

He started to nod, then shook his head. “I’ve got detention. I have to go back to my room when I’m not doing a class activity.”

Jen pursed her lips. “That sucks.”

They both shrugged, and added in unison, “Rachel.”