SPOILERS: This chapter and further chapters contain spoilers for Academy M - Mistake 4. 181.)

Blossom was as eager as always when she pulled the laptop into her lap. It made her heart warm to have her soggy-bottomed writer-girlfriend scoot up close next to her on the sofa. Blossom's eyes scanned the screen and her lips moved softly; she only subvocalized like that when she wanted to give the utmost attention to a text. It was also how she kept her mind focused on her homework.

"Maria is great at gaslighting. It's like language play, but it's a bit more nonsense. It's like the stakes are both higher and lower."

Blossom commented as she read: word choices she liked, turns of phrase, anything like that. About a third of the way through the chapter, she had something more substantial to babble about.

"Proud was such a wonderful word. You're gosh darn right it is. It feels so good. And even if there isn't a power dynamic, it kind of creates one right on the spot. Which I love."

"I mean, you're talking Ageplay 101. Proud and good girl and stuff are the foundations for regression."

But despite my diminishing her compliment, I really appreciated it. Maria was a lot more in charge than I was used to, and I was anxious I wouldn't be able to write a dominant woman. To be honest, I was drawing a lot of inspiration from the way I treated Maid Blossom last night. To be in control, you just have to act in control.

"Just accept your compliment like a good girl," Blossom teased, then kept reading.

"Oh I am such a slut for the Eli stuff. I love this kind of thing, seeing how the 'bad guys'" – she made actual air quotes for that term – "operate. It really humanizes them."

"Yeah, that's one of my goals with this story," I admitted. "I want you to know that the bad guys aren't just two-dimensional villains."

"That's why Nana is the protag?" Blossom asked.

"One of the reasons, yes."

Blossom went back to reading, but only for a few sentences. Then she had something else to say.

"Who is Kenzō?! He invented the markers?!"

"Yeah, he's another Academy person."

"And he's tracking Candies?"

"Mmhmm."

"Gosh, there's a lot of lore in here just sprinkled around..." Blossom said, more to herself than to Amy.

"I was trying not to lore-dump too much," I explained nervously. There was so much to say, and not a lot of time to say it.

"I really love the lore you're giving, and I don't think it's a lore dump at all. Like, I used to read a lot of sci-fi when I was much younger and a lot of authors would fall into heavy, dry, world-building info-dumping. It's hard to follow along with that, because it's like there is suddenly a textbook in my story. And you don't fall into that trap at all."

"Well, that's reassuring. But tell me if that changes, okay?"

"Yep." And Blossom went back to reading. She was getting a lot of marker lore, about how they were made and who had one. Also, their limitations, which was something none of the other Academy Works stories had explored.

"Okay but real talk, if you had one of these markers, what would you do to me? I'm sure you've thought about it, right?"

"Uh..."

The markers in Academy Works had a lot of power. They could essentially rewrite different parts of a person, like their memories or their associations. I couldn't use them to make Blossom shorter or less attractive, but I could give her a fetish or make her forget something.

But the truth was, if I had a marker like those ones, I'd use it for something much more mundane. I'd use it to learn more about Blossom.

"Probably what Maria does with it in this chapter," I said, tantalizingly. Blossom looked at me, then quickly went back to the story. But now I was curious.

"What would you do to me?" I asked.

"Give you more confidence and help you love you as much as I do. So you can see what I see when I look at you." There wasn't any hesitation in Blossom's mind when she said that; it was like instinct, or a reflex.

"I'm not sure even the marker could do that," I laughed a little. But it was so on brand for Blossom to want to do something helpful and constructive with the marker, while I was selfish and greedy. Maybe I was more like Maria than I thought. Blossom continued reading.

"I love the undercurrent that Judith and Maria don't quite have the power dynamic we'd expect. Judith has more power… like… a tamed lion. Like, you can train it, you can get to know it, teach it tricks, but at the end of the day the lion still has all the power."

"Tamed lion is a good metaphor, actually," I said, wondering if I could work that into a later chapter. I'd probably forget.

There was a lot that Blossom loved about Amy's writing and the Academy series as a whole. Nothing ever seemed wasted, like every single sentence, turn of phrase, expression and analogy had to pull double duty and mean three different things. In that way, it wasn't surprising that Amy always seemed so absorbed and slightly removed from the reality around herself when she was writing. Blossom moved her hair back behind her ear and continued to read.

"So, Maria just used the marker to get some information out of Judith?" Blossom asked. That was kind of anticlimactic.

"Yeah, and added some slight associations. I don't explicitly state it, but the questions she asked were important. She asked about her fears, to make loneliness more prevalent in Judith's mind. She asked about..."

I leaned over so I could read the screen. I already forgot what Maria had asked.

"What she finds attractive," I finished my sentence. "So now, when Maria wears lipstick, it'll be even more attractive."

"And the question about how Judith feels about Maria?"

"I think that was just Maria being curious and selfish," I admitted. But it backfired a little.

"And that's what you'd do to me if you had a marker?" Blossom teased.

"Yeah, I think so."

"Interesting."

Blossom kept reading.

"Ohh, Mistake Four? Am I getting two chapters?"

"Yeah, well... I had good momentum," I said. And, to be perfectly honest, I wanted to see what happened to Judith and Maria next. I had ideas, but it was different when you wrote them down. Characters didn't always behave the way you expected them to.

"I'm definitely not going to argue with getting more writing." It was akin to a child arguing that Santa brought them too many gifts. After getting permission, Blossom allowed her eyes to continue down the page.

"Did you know that there's a lot of recent pushback on the notion of Stockholm Syndrome? Like, if it's even real or if it was originally made up to discredit a woman's experiences or make them her fault. It's really interesting stuff to read about."

"That is interesting…" I didn't know that. I didn't know a lot about psychology outside of Carl Jung, but every time I learned a new fact it influenced my characters a lot. I wanted them to seem like real people.

Blossom was reading the part about Maria giving Judith anti-depressants.

"Judith is just chugging down whatever pills she's given, and Maria could be giving her like… anything."

"I dunno, Judith is pretty cautious," I argued. "But it's the lesser of two evils, you know? She's already stuck in a house with nobody to talk to most of the time. Add depression on top of that..." And Maria would have had to literally create copies of her meds with a different formula, the same shape, size, and color. It sounds reasonable in an ABDL smut story, but not at all reasonable in real life. Judith wasn't a trope.

"That's a good point," Blossom nodded. "And honestly I think it's a lot easier to trust someone if they're making sure you get your meds so you're not trying to fight a battle on two fronts."

Blossom read some more, making comments here and there about her love of guided meditation, but she didn't get truly excited until Maria gave Judith a bracelet. And by bracelet, Blossom meant baby rattle.

"I want one just like that, one that makes ocean noises! How do you get beads to do that? I guess there are mechanical keyboards that sound like the building noise in the Lego Star Wars games, so anything is possible nowadays. But honestly, that is the cutest, most precious concept I've ever seen."

"You can get shakers and maracas and stuff that sound like different things, so I imagine there's a type of bean or bead or something that makes ocean sounds." I shrugged. This wasn't a part of the story I did a lot of research on, but I saw the little rattle bracelets on Twitter and I thought they were so cool.

"I'm totally going to have to look for one," Blossom mumbled to herself, as she got back to reading. It was always such a treat to be allowed to read about like this, to know that she was getting things before everyone else. It made Blossom feel special.

"I love the idea of taking away her reading and writing, by the way. A while back, I had this recurrent fantasy about people spelling things out in front of me so I couldn't understand them. It's such an amazing idea and concept."

"Yeah, it's a shame because you can't help deciphering it when someone spells something. Like how you can't see a word without automatically reading it."

"Is that true?" Blossom asked.

"Mmhmm. That's why the Stroop Test is such a pain. And probably why language play is such a big thing for Littles."

"I wonder how parents of kids in syllabic languages do the spelling-out thing? I should look that up one day."

For a moment, Blossom's eyes went back to the screen, and then she giggled a little.

"Trust your instincts, Maria says. Gosh. She's gaslighting Judith and also telling her, 'no no trust your gut though'. That's some next level stuff."

"Maria is very powerful," I laughed.

But the gaslighting was about to hit an all-time high. Since Judith couldn't read - or, she thought she couldn't - she was taking lessons with Maria. And Maria tricked Judith into associating her name - "Maria" - with "love". It was maybe the most subtle manipulation I had ever written.

"How interesting… associating Maria and "love". Your first protag was also named Ai; I'm seeing a theme here, cupcake! Maybe I should do more language play with you…"

I rolled my eyes. Blossom was just being a tease. But as I thought about it, I remembered Blossom spoke Italian. Maybe some language play was a possibility.

"Yeah, Maria. Empathy is a mistake." Blossom scoffed and rolled her eyes.

"For her, it sure is," I laughed. Blossom had gotten to the end of the chapter. Instead of letting Judith stew in her uncertainty, Maria intervened and made her feel better. And Judith feeling better was off of Maria's planned path for her.

"I'm so curious about how this is going to proceed from here, because empathy is absolutely positively counter to the idea of the Academy, so far as we know!"

"Oh, I'm sure it will have dire consequences," I smirked. I already had ideas for the start of the next chapter, but I wasn't sure how to go about it yet. I wanted to think about it over the next week, and then I'd have something to write about next time.

"So, what did you think?" I finally asked, now that Blossom had finished reading. She was four chapters into the story, and Maria and Judith's relationship was finally starting to take hold.

"Oh, it's already on track to be my favorite thing you've ever written."

"Seriously? I haven't even mentioned diapers yet." Obviously there would be diapers. I mean, it wouldn't be an Academy Works story without diapers. Duh.

"I mean, here's the thing: I know that you will mention and involve diapers. But the story between these two here? This is new and exciting and genuine and I love it."

"Okay, cool..." I guess Academy M had the relationship angle going for it, which was lacking in Academy K. And this was told from the caregiver's perspective, though caregiver didn't seem like the right word for Maria. At least it was unique.

"You worry too much," Blossom laughed. "It's amazing."

"You're right, I do worry too much."

After a moment of silence - Blossom re-reading the last few paragraphs of Mistake Four and me checking the time on my phone - I said:

"I'm gonna go get changed."

"Can I change you?" Blossom asked, grinning coyly.

"Uh... I meant, like, into underwear..." And I was wet. She'd never changed me when I was wet. I wasn't sure how I felt about that; it felt... awkward. Not intimate. Kind of gross. It made me feel gross, that I sat around in a piss-soaked diaper all evening.

"Okay." Blossom accepted Amy's answer. She wasn't always good at not getting her way, but she'd been practicing.

I left Blossom alone and went up to the room. I'd been in one diaper for the better part of a day, and I was ready to change back into underwear. But as I wiped my skin with baby wipes and balled up the diaper, there was the lingering feeling of loss. A loss of comfort, a loss of excitement. I felt like I was just back to being ordinary Amanda.

I was conflicted. I never got time at home to dress like this. I never got to wear a diaper around the house. The beach house was my only chance. But after last night, after Blossom and I were both in diapers, I felt a little selfish. I felt like pushing the issue meant something I didn't want it to mean. That wearing diapers with her was an invitation for something. To play? To kiss? I didn't know.

And I knew Blossom never got to wear diapers either, other than at the beach house. I knew she wanted to do it again, because she prompted me downstairs. I knew this wasn't selfish. But my thoughts kept bouncing back to last night. How greedy I felt.

Fuck.

I put on my pajama pants with panties underneath and went back downstairs.

It was late, and neither I nor Blossom wanted to make dinner. She ordered delivery from a pizza place that was too far away and too expensive for the quality. She tipped the driver extra to make the trip.

We ate pizza and watched The Good Place. We were on season three. All the characters were reset to how they were at the start of the first season for "reasons". It made me think of Ai and Academy Works. But I liked the setting change, and I liked watching the characters grow again. In the same ways, and in different ways. Like Ai.

Blossom insisted on laying with me again that night. I'm glad she did, because I wasn't going to ask. But as we were cuddled up in bed, I couldn't stop thinking about the diapers in the closet. About the night before, with her on top of me. About the way Blossom asked to change me. How I went down a different path, a different timeline. I kept running into the same problems I always did, in the same ways and in different ways.

Every time I took off a diaper, it felt like I was starting again in season one.