Chapter 8 Cam
eight
cam
Cam, you’ve earned this.
No, no, you haven’t, because you still have to deal with—
Nope, we agreed moving here meant not thinking about that.
Did everyone else make it to adulthood and still have an angel and a demon fighting over their shoulders whenever they struggled with a decision? Asking for a friend.
The friend was me, obviously, as I stared into the part of the wardrobe I’d unpacked mechanically so that I didn’t do anything rash I could regret.
I had convinced myself that there would be no time, no entertaining the idea of a Daddy, or playtime, or any of the things I didn’t deserve because I hadn’t been a good friend or a good anything.
But… But it had been the longest week, and I felt ready to crash out, and the pups and Golden were doing okay, and Sofía was working today so she could handle it if anything happened, and I had promised Saúl I wasn’t leaving the house no matter what.
And it was important to manage my anxiety, right?
Not that I thought of the adult-sized diapers in front of me as a coping mechanism per se, but being Little helped stop the thoughts.
Thoughts were still there because I was a human being, but they weren’t the ones that traveled too fast to keep track of and went from catastrophic event to catastrophic event, or made me hate myself to the point I wanted to claw my skin out.
I hadn’t fixed shit with Kara, and the private investigator had sent me another email I kept unopened in a hidden folder, but maybe it wasn’t too selfish or evil of me if I just had today to reset.
That was what it would be. Resetting.
I nodded to myself before I got off the bed and started grabbing all the things I needed for a relaxing, Little day.
Mostly so that I didn’t have time to talk myself out of it again.
I knew how I worked, and I also knew I needed this, and I’d have to deal with what it said about me later.
At some other time that wasn’t today, when I already felt on the edge of a meltdown.
It was going to be all right, and I was going to stay safe.
I just had to chuck off my normie clothes, grab some baby powder, wrap the bulky diaper around my hips and through my center, and…
Voilá. I had onesies too but just a diaper would work for now.
My plan was to stay under blankies anyway, and I hated dealing with the zipper in the back all on my own, and I didn’t want to start crying in frustration, so diaper alone it was.
Then, I climbed up to the bed because babies were obviously too small to just get on it and wrapped myself in a messy burrito of blankets.
Finally.
Was this the first time I took an actual deep breath since… Since when? Since I’d arrived at the sanctuary? Before that?
I didn’t know.
The blankies were so soft. I curled my fingers around the material and took a sniff.
Saúl didn’t buy just one type of detergent.
He went for whatever was on sale and he could buy in bulk, but they were always the kind that left the clothes smelling warm and nice.
This one smelled like clouds, which was one hundred percent a thing.
I buried my face deeper into it.
I woke up hours later. I didn’t check the time, but I could tell from the sunlight making it through my window. It was darker. Not eerily dark—I didn’t like the dark—but it was darker. And there was a chance that I was overheated.
Ew.
I hated sweat when I was Little. It was gross.
I moved the blankies away until they pooled around my feet and looked around. I didn’t have any of my coloring books around, or anything else I could do.
This was a dilemma.
Immediately, I pulled my thumb to my mouth and started suckling on it. It was what Littles did when they needed to think extra hard. I was a resourceful boy, so I was sure there would be something I could come up with.
“Hey, the guys want to crack a few beers, you—”
No.
No, no, no, no, no.
WHY THE FUCK DID I KICK THE BLANKETS?
I tried to hide behind them again, but he had already seen, and it didn’t matter that he closed the door almost as quickly as he’d opened it. Saúl had seen.
My thoughts might not run as fast when I was Little, but it didn’t mean I didn’t process shit—like the widening of his eyes or how his throat bobbed, or how he cursed under his breath, but it had either been in Spanish or there had been too much white noise in my head to process the words.
Probably for the better.
I’d screamed, too, most likely. I couldn’t say I remembered it, but my throat felt funny in the way it did every time after I shrieked in shock, so it must’ve happened.
Oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh, fuck.
I was definitely fired.
My feet somehow carried me to change back into something appropriate. Maybe packing ahead of time was a good idea. I’d have to face the guy, but I’d rather save the extra embarrassment of having to head back upstairs to pack up everything.
I’d come to really like it here, dammit.
The sanctuary was good. They were doing good work.
I was doing good work, for once in my life, instead of just rolling with the punches of whatever my bosses said.
The pups were only two weeks old now. They were doing okay, and I knew getting attached to them was a bad idea because there was no way they wouldn’t be adopted as soon as they were out of the danger zone, and they didn’t need their mom’s milk.
Even Golden would be adopted easily even when she was still scheduled to have a couple surgeries to fix her broken bones.
Now that her fur was clean and she was eating, she was gorgeous and super trusting for the kind of hell she’d gone through.
Shit.
My eyes smarted.
All because I had no chill, clearly, and I couldn’t keep my shit outside of people’s homes, apparently, and oh my god, he was going to be so disgusted, and…
Fine, I couldn’t say I’d stopped being fully awkward around the man, but I thought we were getting somewhere with the horse riding lessons and then Golden and her pups, and I’d started to relax more around him, and—
I was dropping another bunch of very wrinkled, very unfolded clothes into my suitcase when there was a knock on the door.
Had he knocked earlier, too? Maybe I hadn’t heard it, and that was why he opened the door. That would make sense.
“Cam?”
Shit.
He wasn’t even going to let me get myself together, was he?
Fine.
Blowing hot air and clenching my fists made me stable enough, I could stride across the room and yank the door open.
I kept my gaze trained on his chest because there was no way I’d risk losing the tiny bit of bravado I’d amassed.
“Before you try, you don’t have to say shit, okay?
I’m already packing, and I’ll get out of your hair, and I’m really sorry if I’ve traumatized you or some shit, even though I don’t understand why you’d even walk into my room on my day off.
You should invest in some locks, but anyway.
I’ll just get out of your hair, yeah?” I breathed sharply.
“Um. Can you just ask Sofía to send me updates on the pups? I won’t bother you more than that, I swear.
I didn’t want to—I knew I shouldn’t have done it, but I was overwhelmed, and—No, I’m not talking about that with you, just… Just give me an hour?”
I didn’t know if an hour was enough, but I didn’t see why not. I’d managed to fly here on only a suitcase, and I hadn’t bought anything since I’d arrived. It should be more than enough time to stuff everything inside.
Hell, if I left anything behind, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. I hadn’t touched my pay for the past three months, so I could afford the trip to the airport and a plane ticket to… I didn’t know where.
Maybe this was fate, and it was telling me to finally open the unread emails from the PI, that I had to go wherever Kara had ended up and beg for forgiveness.
Vets were needed everywhere because there were animals everywhere.
No, no, that would be too creepy.
A PI was more than enough stalker behavior for a lifetime.
Whatever.
I rubbed my arm across my eyes.
They stung.
“Um. Will you get out of my sight now? Because if you wanna ask about whatever it is you saw, I’m not going to explain shit to you. Google is free; I’m sure you can find resources. That’s what most people do, and they turn out okay.”
“Cam.”
“Bye??”
“Cam.”
There was no hate in his voice. Why wasn’t there hate in his voice?
I still didn’t look, obviously. My lips pursed of their own accord. Ants crawled up my legs, and I took a step back. I needed to sit down, or to curl up somewhere, but that would only make me look more pathetic, and I didn’t want to keep—
“Cam, what is this?”
“I told you I’m not answering questions.”
“I’m not asking about ABDL,” he retorted, and my brain screeched. He couldn’t have been gone for more than what? Ten minutes? Twenty? He’d already had time to research? How the fuck did people just function so efficiently? “Look at my arm. What do I have on my wrist?”
“Um.”
I blinked fast. Everything screamed at me to recoil, but Saúl’s voice was steady and oddly gentle—oddly because I only heard something close to it when he was talking to his horses, but it was actually soothing, and it felt more real than the grumpy version of it?
But I had been burned before. People loved tricks to punch you down when you were already at rock bottom. Bottom, heh.
Oh, look, I still had the sense of humor of a five-year-old. Surprise.
“Why?”
Saúl shuffled on his feet. I didn’t know he could do that.
“I don’t want to invade your space more than I already have,” he said. What kind of cowboy spoke like that? “Just look at the wristband, please.”
Ohh.
Right. I got a peek of the black leather around his wrist a few times, but I’d overheard that he sold leather jewelry and stuff at the cowboy convention thingies he went to, so I hadn’t thought much of it.