Chapter 24 #2
I had to question what it would be like for me, too.
They already knew me as the recluse who kept to himself and did only the bare minimum to keep a semblance of team building while I spent my time with the horses or fixing whatever needed to be fixed around the sanctuary.
With the news about Cam, though, they’d have questions.
They’d reach out. The issue with my father’s philosophy of keeping everyone in our team no matter what—unless they really, really, fucked up—meant that most of them had been there for the fallout.
The ones who hadn’t had heard the stories.
I didn’t even want to know what the stories sounded like.
I’d heard a lot of it the first few weeks, while I didn’t have the luxury to bury my head in the sand and pretend the metaphorical explosion hadn’t happened.
“You’re frowning a lot.”
“Am I?” I cleared my throat. Of course I was. I rolled the window down so that I could rest my arm there before focusing back on him. “Can I ask you something? It’s unrelated to the frowning.”
Mostly, I needed time to figure out what the frowning was about, and how to put it into words in a way that wouldn’t completely ruin it.
“Okay? I thought only we asked random questions, though. Just for the record.”
“Good thing I’m not that rigid with roles.
” I was rigid in knowing what I liked and how I wanted it, and in the expectations, I set on a boy after we’d negotiated a scene, but even those could be bent when the situation called for it.
“When you got interviewed for the role at the sanctuary… did you have a bracelet or something with the ABDL flag on it?”
“Did I?” Cam straightened. “Um. Why are you asking? I don’t… Fuck.”
“Is that a yes?”
Cam didn’t answer right away. Then, his body turned into a rod, he threw his face into his hands and let out the most distraught combination of a groan and a whimper.
“How long has he known?”
“He didn’t know it was the ABDL flag,” I clarified. “He just assumed you weren’t cishet and decided setting us up would be a good idea.”
“Uh…”
I grimaced. “Why do you think you’re boarding in the main house instead of the house every other worker is at?”
I didn’t know how I felt about it yet. For better or worse, my parents didn’t show up that often in the sanctuary, and when they did, there was always something more impending to talk about.
Now, though… It wasn’t a stretch to guess Sofía would be the first to know about this, and she only had my back to a degree.
She had run interference when the whole debacle with Roy happened, and she hadn’t said anything when she saw me making out with one of the volunteers when I was in high school and hadn’t been ready to come out yet.
But that was the big, important stuff. The stuff she knew I’d beat myself over for.
This, she’d see it as something to hold over my head and tease me for.
She was the annoying type of sister who thrived when she had stuff to taunt with in the middle of a family dinner.
“Because I’m the main vet, and it’s closer?”
Right. I’d given him a rhetorical question he clearly hadn’t seen as one.
“I wish it was that simple.”
“Sorry. I’m still stuck on the fact that your dad knows I’m into diapers.”
“He doesn’t,” I repeated. “The worst thing that can happen is that he starts thinking you’re trans because of the colors.”
“I’m not.”
“I know that, darlin’.”
“I mean, being trans is not a bad thing obviously.” He gulped, stopping whatever trail of thought he’d begun to share. “I mean. Don’t you think I’m awkward enough around him? Now I’m going to be picturing this conversation. Ugh.”
“Sorry.”
I was. It hadn’t been my intention, per se. I’d just been wondering about the flag ever since that phone call months ago.
“He’s going to make it weird, isn’t he?”
“Nah.” That, I could reassure him of. “My parents have always made it a point that the sanctuary is one for people, too. I don’t think we’ve ever hired or had anyone volunteer that didn’t belong to at least one oppressed group.
Word spread pretty quickly, so… I’d say about two thirds of us are queer. ”
There was no way he hadn’t noticed the diversity in skin color, bodies, and gender expressions, or how not subtle some of them were with their teasing and banter, but I was beginning to understand more about the way his anxiety worked.
Putting things into words, even when they’d be considered obvious, seemed to help him process.
“Okay…” Cam rubbed his arms. “I hope he doesn’t think I’m trans, though. I mean, I’m really not a good actor, and even if I was, it would feel really wrong. But then I’d have to explain it wasn’t about that, and I really don’t want to explain, um, fetishes to him?”
I nodded. “Just tell him it has no meaning or it was a gift from a friend.”
Da loved gossip, but he wasn’t the type to fish for it or push when someone looked uncomfortable. I didn’t have to tell Cam to look uncomfortable. I had no doubt that would be his default setting the next time my parents remembered to pass by the refuge.
“That can work, I guess.” Cam pursed his lips. “Or it can be a local club?”
“Sure.”
More silence followed after my acquiescence. Part of me wanted to play some music, lull him back to sleep with some soft country I didn’t completely hate even though I didn’t understand how he could stand it. Another part wanted to keep getting all the uncomfortable conversations out of the way.
“But if the diapers thing wasn’t what had you frowning, what was?”
I supposed I should’ve guessed—Cam didn’t let anything go.
I had to stop comparing him to every other Little I’d been around or met.
For as much as he let things stew in his head, he didn’t keep them in forever.
He might give false starts to his sentences, or he had to stop before he stammered his way through a question, but he didn’t let it stop him.
He asked for the things that worried him and the things he wanted to know.
“General life stuff.”
“Meaning what?”
“Everyone giving us shit. Side eyeing me again.”
“Are you sure Roy and you weren’t more than—”
“Completely platonic,” I promised. It felt wrong that I felt the need to make the promise.
There was nothing wrong with what Roy and I did, and I wasn’t under some misconceived notion that I owed Cam a fully wholesome dating life before him.
It didn’t stop the words tumbling out of my mouth, though.
“I told you I was protective of him. He’s the one who discovered age play and started to get into it.
At first, I just wanted to make sure he didn’t end up in a dangerous situation with a creep, and then I started to see the appeal of it, I guess.
With us in the middle of nowhere, it made sense that he’d lean on me when he needed a break, and I got what I needed from him instead of lashing out at any of the newbies with more ego than sense. ”
Cam hummed. “And no feelings developed?”
“Not the ones you’re thinking about.”
Roy had been family by that point. Had I grown more attached to him? For fuck’s sake, of course I had. I was only human, and no one prepared you for another fully grown adult to cradle up to your lap while suckling on a bottle and giving you the biggest puppy eyes out there.
I loved him, but I didn’t love him in a romantic sense.
I didn’t fret about sharing a life together, about keeping him close to the point it wouldn’t be considered healthy.
I didn’t love him with every breath I took, with the knowledge that it was the only thing that made sense.
But I had loved taking care of him. I had loved the certainty that I was the one who could make things better for him, that I gave him exactly what he needed and he was safe because of me.
“Where is he?”
I sighed. Didn’t stop to think what it meant that he was the first person to have asked that question.
“He got help.” It was the short story. “He moved to a psych center in Nevada and stayed there as a gardener. He emailed me a few years back.”
I never replied to the email, but it had healed a wound I hadn’t realized had been festering there.