56.)

Diapers were becoming oddly routine on the weekends. Blossom and I would go upstairs together and she would take a black diaper back down to her room. I'd change, and by the time I was done, Blossom was usually wrapping up. Or, taping up?

Blossom didn't have a lot of modesty on the best of days, and diapers didn't seem to change that. She wore a tight pajama top and shorts that were so short that the black plastic poked out the leg holes. I wore a pair of pajama pants and a t-shirt, like I always did. It was like placing a marble goddess next to a gargoyle on the couch.

"Season two?" I asked Blossom. We had finished the first season of Stranger Things the weekend before.

"I was thinking we could watch something more on brand?" Blossom said, checking out the Kids section on Netflix.

"I thought you weren't into the baby stuff," I said. Blossom's interest in Little activities was limited rather exclusively to dominance.

"But you are," Blossom said simply.

"I..." My face felt a little warm. "You don't have to worry about me. I'm enjoying Stranger Things."

"Oh, wait a second, hold on - there's that one show they talk about a lot on Baby Twitter, the one with the dogs? Is that on Netflix?"

There was a lot of learning that the two of them got from each other; Blossom would teach Amy how to feel sexy, and in return, Blossom wanted to engage in more of the little stuff that Amanda got a lot of fulfillment out of ~ it worked both ways.

"Bluey," I said with confidence, having spent a little too much time on Twitter recently. "I think it's on Disney Plus, though."

"Hm... maybe I should get that." Blossom opened up the Disney Plus app on her TV and signed up for an account. Amy tried to argue with her about spending money on me, but Blossom said:

"It's basically a streaming platform for Littles! I'm actually ashamed that I haven't gotten it until now."

So I relented, and sure enough Bluey was on Disney Plus. Blossom put on episode one. The episodes were really short, like six or seven minutes, so we were burning through them rather quickly.

"These parents are great," I said with an unusual twinge of carelessness in my voice, like I was talking before I was thinking. "They're just so committed. Adults aren't actually like that, right?"

"Bandit's a lot like my Dad used to be; kind of hopeless, a bit dorky, but devoted and loving to an absolute fault. Parents can definitely be that way. Honestly, I'd love to see someone write a caregiver with that kind of energy in a story too."

It was definitely a show that Blossom wouldn't have even watched when high, but watching it with Amy gave her some new context.

"Huh..." I slumped down a little on the couch and squeezed my thighs together. The diaper rustled quietly under my pajama pants and the thickness forced my legs apart. I bit the nail of my thumb and watched the dad act like a robot. I wondered if that was what having a dad was like...

There was something a little bit transformational about the cartoon, and it took Blossom a little bit of time to notice it. Amy was acting… different. A little more vulnerable, a little less guarded, a lot more childish. It made Blossom excited, but she knew that if she shared that level of enthusiasm out loud it could ruin the moment. So for now, she just played along.

"This is the coolest game," I said quietly without thinking, as Bluey and her friends ran from shadow to shadow. I also didn't know Bluey was a girl until I started watching the show. "I dun think the park by my house has this many shadows though."

"We could find a park that does, something with a lot of tall trees around it, and maybe go in the afternoon? I bet you'd beat me though ~ you're pretty clever."

"Not as clever as Bluey, I dun think." The truck thing - using the shadow of a moving object - was genius. I found myself relating very strongly to her.

"I think rules are important," I said, when the episode finished. "'Cause like Bluey said, you gotta have rules to make things hard. And a lot of the fun stuff is when things get hard and you gotta figure out how to solve it. Writing is like that, if you're writing good stuff. You gotta know where the characters are supposed to be and why they're there. You can't just write a scene whenever you wanna, but you gotta wait until the scene makes sense. And it feels better, waiting until it makes sense."

"And I think maybe it's also like... you could just write a scene for the sake of it, but what makes you a good writer is waiting until it's organic for it to happen, right? You're really good at following the rules, cupcake. I'm super proud of you."

I smiled happily at Blossom and kicked my feet without thinking. Another episode of Bluey came on and our conversation came to an end.

Blossom started to flag after a while. I was still wired, which was a little annoying. I wondered if I would be able to sleep at all tonight, and if I wanted to do this scene thing then I needed some decent rest. When Blossom finally turned off the TV, I realized I'd been pulling at my fingers. I wondered if I could just stay here and watch more Bluey, but I knew that I wouldn't be able to stop.

"C'mon, cupcake, let's go cuddle together in bed ~ I'll race you up there, and it can be practice for when we play that shadow game, how does that sound?"

"We can't watch one more?" I asked, which sounded like a totally reasonable thing to ask at the time. I wanted her to stay up with me, because the second she went to bed I was alone again.

"I'll fall asleep," Blossom admitted with a sad smile. She did look pretty tired.

"Okay..." I sighed and got to my feet. The crinkling reminded me of the diaper around my hips before I even took a step. My anxiety was high - a fear of not being able to sleep - but knowing what I was wearing... it helped a little.

Blossom led the way up the stairs. We didn't race, but I did get a good look at her diapered butt. My cheeks were red by the time we were on level ground once again and I picked at my fingernails in front of me. She mentioned cuddling... I wasn't going to bring it up, but I wanted to lay with her again this weekend.

"I know you're not too tired, but I think once we lay down together and cuddle up, you'll be on an express train to dreamland, baby girl."

Or that was what Blossom was hoping for, anyway; if she fell asleep and Amy didn't, Amy might get up and go into anxiety baking mode again.

As often as I had changed myself into diapers, I was never quite used to it. And though I had seen her in diapers a lot less than I had seen myself, I wasn't quite used to Blossom wearing one either. She crawled into my bed quite literally, like a child with her butt in the air, and I had to look down at my feet.

"C'mon."

Blossom patted the bed next to her, my side of the bed, and I waddled around until we were once again lying side by side. She didn't ask this time; she just took my glasses off my nose and put them on the bedside table. Then she grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me over her like a blanket. My thigh was pressed to her pajama shorts, just over her diaper, and my head was nestled into the side of her breast. I felt hot.

"Comfy?" she asked, reaching over with her long arm to click off the bedside lamp. Darkness filled the room in an instant, like a camera flash in reverse.

"Mmhmm..." But even with my eyes closed, I wasn't tired. Panic welled up in me again. I wouldn't sleep tonight. I'd ruin tomorrow. Blossom would get annoyed with me. She wouldn't invite me to the beach house anymore. I'd never find time to finish Academy Works.

"Hey, cupcake?"

It was a few minutes of silence before Blossom asked that question, and she wasn't positive that Amy was awake... but she was pretty sure she was.

"You're shaking. And I don't think you're cold. If you wanna talk about something, I'm right here."

Although, she was extremely sleepy.

"I'm fine," I said, trying to still my body. Even my voice was shaking, impossibly quiet in the empty beach house. I felt like I was full of electricity, and I had to grit my teeth to stop trembling. I just wanted to go to sleep...

"I don't think that you are, and it's okay to not be. Sometimes I'm not fine either, you know that right? I'm not invincible, and you don't have to be either."

I didn't say anything. I knew my voice would give me away, but if I pretended to be asleep then maybe Blossom would sleep too. My skin felt prickly and I was ravaged by an unfamiliar sense of claustrophobia. I wanted to kick her and get out of bed. Instead, I locked myself up in imaginary chains and refused to move a single muscle. Tears welled up in my closed eyes.

It was a war within Blossom to keep herself awake; she had some techniques for studying that worked - like doing multiplications or long division in her head - but that tended to also stop her from thinking effectively, or to problem solve. Amy hadn't said anything else, and she had her eyes closed, but every so often she'd twitch and tremble, and Blossom knew she wasn't asleep.

"Hey, Amanda? I wish I could just... take away your anxiety, and bad thoughts. Wrap them up in a box, tie the box with a ribbon, and stuff them into the back of the closet where they can't hurt you."

I could barely hear her. My ears felt like they were ringing, but there was no sound. It was muted, like in a TV show when something bad happens and the character isn't processing things. I felt like I wasn't processing things. Never in my life had I wanted such disparate things quite so badly: to put as much distance between me and Blossom as possible and to never leave her side.

Without a response, without knowledge that she was able to help at all, it was hard for Blossom to keep her eyes open. She didn't blame Amy for being in a tough headspace, or for her own inability to help the girl, but she was reaching the end of the help she could offer. Her eyes were heavy, and she was losing the fight to sleep.