Saturday, January 28th

162.)

That night, I had a bad dream. Blossom and I were in high school again, but we were still dating. Actually, everything was the same, but the setting was different. I went up to her at lunch in the cafeteria and sat down with her and her friends. She just stared at me, rolled her eyes, and got up.

That happened a few more times throughout the dream. I would find her in a crowd or in a classroom, try to talk to her, and she would ignore me. Then she would walk away with her friends and laugh.

It could have been worse. She could have told the school about my writing. She could have told me outright that she didn't want to be together anymore. But somehow, every alternative felt kinder than that look she had. That annoyance. That disregard.

I woke up feeling nauseous. Blossom was in bed next to me and my cheeks were wet with tears. I reached over to wake her up, but I froze in place. There was a part of me - a sleepy, dreamy part of me - that worried she would open her eyes and give me that same look.

I went downstairs to make cheese scones.

As I was sifting the flour, salt, and baking powder together, I remembered what Stephanie had asked in therapy. What was different about baking now versus when I was younger?

I tried to pay attention to what I was doing. But as I added butter to the bowl, as I sprinkled cheese into the mix, as I made a well and poured in the milk, I couldn't feel anything at all. Not the dryness or the dampness or the coolness or the heat of the oven. I couldn't smell the cheddar or the cayenne. I couldn't even keep my thoughts clear. It felt like a fog fell over the kitchen, and I was just a clockwork toy ticking through the motions.

Before I knew it, I'd made eight batches of scones and I couldn't remember more than a handful of moments. That was when I felt something: Blossom's hands on my cheeks. The expression on her face... it wasn't annoyance or disregard. It was compassion.

"How did you know I loved cheese biscuits so much, cupcake? You woke up early and made all these just for me?"

Blossom Brixley curated who got to see her morning-face and her morning-hair, but she never ever felt self-conscious around Amy. So even though her blonde hair was a mess, and she hadn't taken all her makeup off last night - a bad habit, to be sure - her smile radiated all the same.

"But you know what I want in the morning even more than cheese breads? A kiss. From my cupcake. May I?"

"Um..."

Blossom leaned in and kissed me. I melted like the butter in my scones. She had flour on her cheek when she pulled away.

"You okay?" she asked.

I nodded. I was fine. Probably.

"Couldn't sleep?" she asked.

"Bad dream..." Yesterday was... intense...

"Wanna lay your head on my lap on the sofa, and close your eyes? I can play with your hair? And maybe you'll sleep and maybe you won't."

"I'm a mess," I mumbled, looking down at my pajamas. I hadn't worn a diaper to bed, and it looked like Blossom had changed out of hers. I still felt nauseous, and I realized I hadn't eaten anything since last night.

"So? You know my reading tastes; I have a thing for messy girls."

Blossom winked, knowing the joke would fall flat. She moved her hand down Amy's shoulder, down her arm, over her elbow, and took her by the hand.

I didn't want to get her couch covered in flour, but she was so confident in her movements. She took me to the couch and laid me down so my head was in her lap. A part of me lamented the lack of crinkling.

The first thing I felt was her fingers in my hair. The next thing I felt was the constant ache in my forearms from stirring. Then I felt heavy. Just, really heavy.

"Sorry," I mumbled.

"You're good, baby girl. I promise. You did so good, you made such yummy smelling food, and now you're lying here on the sofa, head in my lap, eyes closed, letting me take care of you. That's all total good girl energy right there, right?"

"I guess..." But I didn't feel like a good girl. Usually when I was baking, I didn't pay attention to anything and that was okay. This time though, I was trying to focus on the sensations and I felt like time kept skipping in place. That didn't used to happen, did it? Was that what Stephanie wanted to know?

It took another hour for me to come back to the present. My thoughts kept looping. It was only Blossom talking about music that kept me grounded. Blossom plated us up some of the cheese scones and I sat quietly on the edge of the couch. I really needed to shower, but the scones turned out very good.

"Do you think maybe if I did some more active aftercare, you might be able to sleep a lil' bit better after a scene?" Blossom asked. She wasn't trying to fall on her own sword, but Blossom was a solutions-oriented girl.

"No, um... it was just that scene in particular I think. It brought up a lot of bad stuff..."

"I didn't consider how triggering it could be until we were halfway in," Blossom admitted.

"Me neither. So, ya know. Both of our faults." We each took another bite of our respective scones.

Truthfully, Blossom did hold herself somewhat more accountable for what had happened; after all, without her tormenting Amy in the first place, then high-school- bully wouldn't have been such a dangerous roleplay. But it wasn't helpful or useful for her to beat herself up, so she just smiled her pretty smile.

"Whatcha wanna do today?" she asked.

"I'd like to write, I think." Last time we talked about Academy M, it didn't get me anywhere. I figured the best thing I could do was just to sit down and give it a shot. What was the worst that could happen?

"Then writing is what you'll do."

I showered. Blossom tidied the kitchen for me, which was generous. And very on brand. I thought about putting a diaper on for the writing session, but ultimately decided against it. I was playing Maria first and foremost; I had to find a way to get into that caregiver mindset.

By noon, I was hard at work. Or, hard at working at being hard at work. I typed out a first paragraph a dozen times before settling on something. Then I decided to just write and see what happened. Unfortunately, without a good mindset for Judith, it was volatile and uninteresting. I wrote four thousand words and deleted the entire chapter. Ten minutes later, I slammed my laptop shut. Fuck.

In the time that Amy had been writing, Blossom had cleaned the kitchen, taken a shower, and gotten dressed. She'd also opened a can of DC and was halfway through it. In front of her, on the coffee table, school books were laid out in a very particular way, and Blossom's hair was up in a bun with six different pencils and markers pushed into it for safekeeping.

"Still struggling?" Blossom asked.

"I dunno..." I sulked and slid down further into the sofa. "Maybe I just can't write anymore. Maybe I only got this far on a fluke..." I knew that wasn't true, but it sure felt that way. Maybe writing a caregiver was too out of spec for me...

"Do you want emotional support on this, or technical and logical support?"

That was an important question, because Blossom thought herself equally adept at both, but providing the wrong one wouldn't be very helpful.

"I have no idea," I said sourly. I didn't think Blossom could really support me at all here. "I have never had this kind of problem with Academy Works before. I've never felt so stuck on something. Like, yeah, sometimes I have writer's block. But this feels like... Amanda block. Like I'm the problem."

"What's the difference, this time? What makes this different? You've written a lot so far, so something must be different for you to be having such a unique issue, right?"

"This story is different..." First person. But I'd written in first person before. Hell, my style was basically first person anyway. The bigger problem was Maria...

"I honestly thought roleplaying would help," I sighed. "I thought I'd get a better understanding of how to... I dunno. Be in charge of someone."

"I think you're pretty good at it, honestly. You just struggle to see it. Maybe you don't believe in yourself? But I bet you do believe in your characters, don't you?"

"I'm not a good enough caregiver" - dominant, actually - "to write Maria."

"I don't think that's true at all, but I know that feelings don't always make sense. So instead, how about we go back and forth a little bit on some dialog?"

"I dunno..."

"Could it hurt?" Blossom asked.

"I guess not..." Talking out dialogue with someone wasn't something I ever had the freedom to try before. Now I had someone who actually knew about my ABDL stories. Like Blossom said, it couldn't hurt.

"So where are you?" Blossom asked.

"Introductions?" I shrugged. "They haven't even met yet..."

"Okay, so they haven't met yet. How do you want your CG character to come across? Do you want her to be bossy, confident, stern? Or kind of more manipulative; sweet and Machiavellian?"

Ah yes, the two genders of caregiver.

"She's... in control," I said thoughtfully. "Sweet when she needs to be, dismissive when she needs to be. Think... Nana from Academy I." What a great reference point.

"Okay, that's good! So a lot of how I read Nana was that she never needed to directly control her Littles; instead she manipulated things around them, and made them doubt themselves. When you doubt what's real, your mind is open to accepting other realities. I think and I always kind of read Nana that way, like a walking girlboss."

"Yeah, that's pretty on point..." The exact opposite of me. It was so easy to write her from Ai's perspective, like trying to hold onto a mirage. But now that I had to write that kind of person from this angle...

"She would definitely try to be the Candy's friend," Blossom suggested. "She would probably make some concessions to build that trust, so that she could manipulate her later on. Sweet and kind to get an imprint, and then acting helpless when she has to do something to her."

This was actually stuff that Blossom was shamefully good at.

"Huh..." Yeah, that was how I tried to write Maria at first, but it fell apart when she started interacting with Judith. I didn't know what their dynamic looked like.

"I know you know how to write this because you wrote Nana so incredibly; it was honestly your writing of Nana that first enticed me into your writing. So I know you can do it. So what's different this time?"

"I dunno..." I sighed.

"Well let's go through it then. I'll be, uh. Judith, right? Tell me about her."

"I don't know what kind of person she is yet. I usually have a defining character trait or something to play off, but she's a little more complicated. She's a lot more... human than most of my characters. She makes mistakes. She doesn't follow a script. She's... unpredictable. Which means she's a pain in the ass to write."

"It sounds like she might be one of your best characters, then! When a character is realistic, the readers empathize with them more. Or at least, I do. But I think I'm also a pretty good example of your target audience, so my opinions are probably at least a little helpful."

"I suppose..." So maybe if Blossom just acted like Blossom that would give me some direction? I didn't have any better ideas...

"Anything is better than the wall you're staring at right now, right?" Blossom smiled, hopefully.

"Yeah, okay." I faked a smile and sat up on the couch. It couldn't be more of a waste of time than writing for five hours just to delete it all.