Sweat from stress smells worse than regular sweat. Tom knew this. He had known this a long time. He found it out after a curious google search from the last time he had gotten behind on his furniture commission timetable. He had promised himself and his girlfriend that he wouldn’t put himself in that position again. Looking at the half completed couch and smelling harsh sweat, he knew that he had made himself a liar. He let his eyes glance over to the clock on the unfinished cinderblock wall.

Ten PM. He had also promised her that he’d never work this late again, a promise he had made one night. If he was lucky, he could put things away before she noticed he wasn’t inside. He powered down his dust collector, and the swirling dust settled to the bottom of the plastic bag. Just a few minutes and he could clean up enough to start fresh early to-

“Baby,” He heard her voice call from the workshop door as it opened on its expertly oiled hinges, “You should have been in bed an hour ago.” A door in an audiobook or a movie would have creaked on its hinges, but neither Tom nor Jessie were the sort to tolerate rusty hardware.

“What?” Tom asked, and pointed to the clock, “Jessie, it’s only a couple of minutes late.”

“No, sweetheart.” She walked over to him and grasped his hands gently. “The clocks shifted back two days ago. And you’ve been in here all day. Did you stop and eat?”

“Y-yes,” He said.

“And what did you eat?” She asked gently.

He went quiet for a second, and she could tell from the carefully blank expression on his downturned face that he was debating on whether or not to lie to her. She raised his chin so that he had to look at her, and he melted.

“I had a poptart.” He admitted.

“A poptart?” She asked. “And how much water did you drink?”

“None,” He sighed, “I’m sorry, Jessie, I’ll do better tomorrow, I promise.”

“No, Tom. I’m sorry. I should have checked on you earlier. I know what you get like when you have a deadline approaching.” She wiped the wood dust from his forehead, and gently pulled him down to kiss it. “Now, you’re going to go inside, sit down at the dinner table, and drink some Pedialyte while I get you something approaching a proper meal together. It’s ok if you can’t take care of yourself sometimes, but you don’t want to make me sad by fighting me on this, do you?”

He shook his head, and she took his hand and walked him to the door. She looked at his overalls, covered in wood dust. She sat him down on the windowsill, took off his boots, unbuckled the front panel of the overalls, guided them off his legs, and folded them over one arm. His work-shirt he handed over willingly. She took in the look of his trunks and undershirt. They were a matching pastel blue, an odd color choice for a man.

“I can take care of those,” He reached for his clothes.

“I know you can, big boy,” She told him, and held onto them anyway. She brought him inside, sat him down at the table, took the overalls into the laundry room, and brought him a pedialyte from the fridge. She shushed him and tilted his head back to make him drink. “Good boy,” she said.

She went into the kitchen and pulled out a tupperware of basil chicken soup. She poured it into a small copper saucepan and heated it over the gas stove, stirring occasionally. She got out the cutting board and prepared a cucumber and tomato salad. When she had the food plated she brought it into the dining room, where Tom was staring at the timetable on his phone.

“Thomas William Everret,” she said sternly, “Where did you even have that? Nevermind. Just put it away, please. You don’t need to be stressing yourself more than you already have.” She pulled up a chair to sit beside him, and placed a finger over his lips when he opened his mouth to object. She delicately scooted the phone out of his reach, and held up a spoon to his lips. She fed him both the soup and salad, occasionally whispering, “Shush, baby.” whenever he opened his mouth for anything but eating. She wiped his face when he was finished.

“I’m getting up to go draw you a bath,” She told him, and grabbed his phone, “And I’m putting this up to charge, and you know better than to grab it again.” It wasn’t an instruction. It wasn’t a putdown. It was a simple statement of fact. “You stay seated, and keep sipping your drink.”

Tom nodded. It was one of those slow nods that people give each other when they’re too tired to really process what was said. That was the problem when Tom was in a state like this, Jessie knew. He was agreeable. He didn’t actually agree with anything, not anything in particular, because he was so damn eager to agree with everything.

She turned on the taps in their garden tub, tested the outpouring water with the back of her hand. She measured and poured epsom salts in it, and after it was half full went to retrieve Tom. Who was on his tablet. HE was on his tablet, going over the blueprints. His tablet. She put a hand on his shoulder. He jumped in his seat, tossing the tablet in the air and inadvertently juggling it. She took it from him mid juggle, and set it down on the table.

“Do you need a timeout?” She asked.

“What?” He laughed nervously, “Jessie, no. I’m ok.”

“No, you’re not,” She said, “That shop isn’t heated. I know how cold it was in there, and yet you reek of sweat. You are not ok.”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” He insisted.

“Yes, I do, baby,” She explained, “You work with dangerous machinery. It’s not safe to work like this. You’re trying to make up for working too long and too hard to be effective by working longer and harder. Does that make any sense to you? How long do you think you’d be out of work if you ran your hand through the table saw because you nodded off. Don’t think I didn’t see where you nicked your thumb on the bandsaw. So, you can either let your client know that the product will be a few days late, or I can do it for you and put you in time out. It’s for your own good.”

“Honey, please-”

“If the next few words aren’t going to involve telling me I’m right, there’s going to be a problem,” She warned, “There’s a nice relaxing bath prepared for a good boy who does what his mommy tells him, but don’t think I can’t find something suitably paddle shaped in our wood scrap bin if there’s a bad boy who might hurt himself.”

She waited for him to reply, and he looked at her. He wasn’t shocked. He’d been with her far too long to be shocked at something like this. This was the woman he knew, just amplified by his own behavior as of late. He looked at the bandaid on his thumb.

“What does a good boy say?” She asked him.

“Please, I can’t go into little space right now.”

“What does a good boy say?” She repeated, sternly.

He looked at his feet, and said, “Yes, mommy.” and was instantly putty in her hands.

She grabbed him by the hand and led him to the bath. She stripped him of his underwear, and placed it in the laundry hamper. She watched him toe the water and lower himself into the bath. She folded a washcloth, dipped it in the water, wrung it out, and placed it over his forehead and eyes. There wasn’t enough water left in the washcloth that it should be dripping down his cheeks, but there was water dripping down his cheeks and onto his chest anyway.

“I’m supposed to take care of you,” He said.

“And I’m supposed to take care of you.”

Carefully and gently, she bathed him. She shampooed his hair, rinsed it, cleaned his finger and toe nails with a brush, took a pumice stone to his feet, and scrubbed him clean. She helped him stand and drained the tub. She toweled him off, and set him on the side of the tub, where she flossed and brushed his teeth for him.

Tom relaxed. He let her work lotion into his skin. There was a separate lotion for his hands, face, eyes, feet, and body. He didn’t know what the difference was between each of them. He felt like he was supposed to, most of these lotions had been birthday presents.

“When’s the last time you had a bowel movement?” She asked.

“It’s been a couple of days,” He said, “Why?”

His eyes opened wide as she took the suppository jar off the shelf in the medicine cabinet. She made a small twirling motion with her finger. He gulped. She eyed him. He slowly turned around, and placed his hands on the rim of the tub.

Thirty minutes later, she was putting away the shower douche and he was bright red in the face.

“Shouldn’t that part have been at least open for discussion?” He asked.

“It was,” she told him, “But you wouldn’t have gotten a reward if you didn’t take it.”

She led him to the bedroom, and he looked at the bed. More precisely, he looked at what was on the bed. She smiled at him, and strapped on the harness, and began lubing the dildo. She pushed him gently onto his back, and placed his own ankles in his hands.

She teased him with her finger at first, pulling at the edges of his asshole, and eventually inserting one covered with plenty of anal lube. He squealed slightly at the coldness of the lube, and she grinned at him. She worked her fingers in, stretching him out until he was good and loose.

“See, baby?” She asked as she placed the glossy lubed up tip of the dildo against his asshole, “If you didn’t take your medicine you might have an accident in bed while mommy was tucking you in.”

She teased him with the dildo, stretching it out to accept her girth only to pull it back again and again. He whined beneath her hips. His hand reached out to stroke his erect cock, and she smacked his hand away.

“No.” She told him, “You’re not allowed to do any more work tonight.”

She shoved herself deep inside him so that the o-ring of the harness smacked against his skin. She went in and out. He let go of his legs and moaned. She grabbed his ankles herself and kept him pinned.

“Arms behind your back, sweetie,” She ordered, “We can’t have those naughty grabby little hands getting you into trouble, can we?”

He obeyed immediately, and the raised angle adjusted her thrust. He moaned loudly. She raised into a standing crouch and lifted his lower half as she did so, and kept plowing him the entire time.

“Don’t you love having a strong, stern mommy?” She laughed. “Tell me, baby. Tell me who you love.”

“I - I love my strong mommy!” Tom yelled, and ejaculated onto his own face.

She pulled out of him and lowered him down gently. His hands went to wipe the cum out of his face, but she smacked them again, offering no explanation this time, and just relying on intuition to get the point through.

“Look at you,” She said, “Did someone have an accident in bed? I think we need to take care of that. It’s no surprise. You’ve been so overworked. It was inevitable, baby. She reached into the nightstand and pulled out baby wipes. She cleaned off his face, and then cleaned his bottom of lube with a fresh one.

And from the same dresser, she pulled out a diaper. It was thick, and covered with cartoon alpacas. Tom stared at it.

“But those are yours,” He objected.

“Then I can do what I want with them,” She stated. She pulled his legs up and slid the unfolded diaper underneath him. Tom wasn’t sure when she had time to prepare it, but this one had already been fluffed out. “Whatever I want,” She explained, “Means whatever I want. And I want my little boy to feel safe and secure with his mommy.”

She cupped his now limp dick against her hand and laid out the front of the diaper over it, only removing her hand when the cushioning held it in place. The bottom tapes opened with a satisfying snap, and she pulled the leg gathers tight with them.

“Can you stand for mommy?” She asked. “I know it’s a lot to ask of such a little boy, but it’ll fit so much better if you stand while I tape you in your diaper.”

He nodded, and stood beside the bed. She creased a fold into the upper panel and taped one side, and then did the other the same way for a tight fit. She smiled at him, and brought her mouth against his stomach, and blew a raspberry. He giggled and pulled away, and then flushed a deep red.

“There’s no shame in being happy, baby,” She told him, and worked the harness off, and kicked it off the bed and to the floor. She held her arms out to him, and he crawled back to her, and rested his head on her chest. She stroked his hair and smiled at him. “Don’t you feel better?” She asked, “Isn’t it nice to be taken care of? Wasn’t this what you needed?”

He nodded. She rocked him as much as she could, and let him drift to sleep.

“I think a few days without silly adult things will be good for you.” She tapped his nose with a finger, and she cuddled him until they both went to sleep.