“Yuck,” Grace said, pulling her face back from the sludge on Pearce’s spoon. “What is that?”

“Oatmeal,” he replied innocently. “Breakfast, in general. Something wrong?”

She eyed it, swallowing a little to clear her mouth. “It’s gluey. You cooked it wrong.”

“I cooked it just right,” Pearce replied. “Now. Say aaaa, you’ve got breakfast to eat.”

Grace felt a sliver of suspicion, and tried to cut through Pearce’s innocent expression with her eyes. Had he cooked it poorly on purpose, to make it gross and unpleasant? Was this another ploy? He’d made oatmeal in the past and it hadn’t been this claggy, this gelatinous. Clearly, something was up, but she couldn’t puzzle out what.

“Aaa,” she said. Another spoonful might help her discern the taste, what went wrong in cooking. It just felt…too thick. Like he hadn’t added enough water. The taste was the same–a bit of brown sugar and a little cream, pretty pleasant, the only objectionable element was the taste.

But Pearce had on a suppressed grin, an expression of amusement. He liked that she didn’t like the food.

Swallowing, Grace demanded, “What did you d–mph–”

A spoon interrupted her question, jammed between her lips, more sludgy oatmeal. A little got on her chin, and he scraped it up with the spoon, waiting for her to open and swallow.

She did, swallowing, then raising her hand to block another oatmeal assault. “What did you do to the oatmeal?”

“Nothing you need to worry about,” Pearce replied. “Do you want me to add anything?”

“It’s gross,” she said. “Maybe more milk to un-glueify it?”

He considered her request and shrugged. “I suppose that’s fair.”

While he did as she requested, she suckled on her bottle of coffee. She hadn’t even needed to ask this morning–instead just providing her with coffee just the way she liked it. Maybe a bit stronger than normal–did he want her to have a caffeine buzz?

(What the heck is he planning?)

He thinned out the oatmeal with another splash of milk, then picked up her bottle, topping off the coffee. Lifting another spoonful of less-offensively textured breakfast, he said in sing-song, “Alright then–no more fussing. Here comes the airplane…”

…

Pearce continued to behave strangely that morning. More attentive than normal–regular diaper checks, and he at least walked by her room once every ten or twenty minutes. When her coffee ran dry, he refilled it right away, ensuring she had water to drink as well.

(Is he trying to over-hydrate me?) she wondered, sipping coffee while she reviewed some code. (I don’t really mind being wet, and a change is as inconvenient for him as it is for me. Could he really just be acting nice for the sake of being nice? Does he want to ensure I can’t leak, hence all the checks?)

She couldn’t figure it out.

He had gone through the trouble of souping up her diaper situation to prevent leaks–each change now came with an additional layer of puffy padding stuck inside with an adhesive back, a ‘stuffer’, and yesterday there’d been plastic pants overtop the diaper. Today, though, there was no cover, just the stuffer.

Her outfit had included fewer inconveniences–he’d left her diaper exposed, giving her a T-shirt and stockings. When she asked why, he’d said it was for easier checks. The only issue was the booties, which had their feet lined with metal triangles. Trying to walk in them was like walking on lego–an issue that didn’t matter while she sat down, but it made walking more inconvenient than even the spreader bar.

While she worked on two projects, her programming job and the puzzle of Pearce’s behavior, she felt her stomach grumble.

The pressure came stronger and faster than usual. She’d been generally holding it until the end of the day, shortly before she expected Pearce would administer her evening bath. It made cleanup easier for the both of them, after all.

She eyed the coffee. (Maybe I’ve had enough.)

Then she eyed it again, eyes narrowing. (Is that his plan?)

Pushing up from her office chair, she dropped to her hands and knees. She needed to go see something, even if it meant crawling all the way across the house.

Maybe she’d been wrong to think this outfit was getting off light. Crawling meant sticking her butt up in the air, and her butt being up in the air meant its moderately soggy state was extremely visible. Pearce saw her through his open bedroom door and snickered, though he didn’t otherwise comment.

Stairs were harder. Crawling down seemed like a recipe for slipping and falling, so she turned around, crawling backwards, butt-first down the stairs. While she shuffled down, one step at a time, Melody met her on the way up.

“Hey,” Melody said. “That’s…a look he’s got you in.”

“These booties are a pain,” Grace agreed, blushing as she reached the base of the stairs.

The rest of the crawl saw no interruptions, and she felt glad that the window curtains were pulled, so that her crinkly, soggy bottom wouldn’t be on display to the neighbors. She got to the kitchen, pulled over a stool so she could get height without standing, and clambered up, kneeling on it to get a look in the cupboards.

She found the evidence she needed. In Pearce’s section of the cupboard, a big plastic tub of powdered fiber supplement.

“That ass–” she started to say.

“Feeling snacky?” Pearce asked from behind her.

She whirled, slipped, and nearly fell off the stool. Pearce jumped to help, but she caught herself on the counter before she could tumble down, and she snapped at him, “You’re drugging me?”

“Not even a little.” Pearce smirked triumphantly. “Just making sure you get your fill of nutrients–I don’t think anyone would say fiber is a drug.”

Her bowels gurgled again. Definitely too much coffee. “You want to make me use the diaper more so I get annoyed and quit.”

“Duh,” he replied. “I know you don’t like being Little Miss Stinkypants, so what better way to force your hand?”

She shot him a glare, but couldn’t argue against the tactic. He had a point. Only, there was a counterpoint. “I’ve never known you to like changing my…dirty diapers,” she shot back.

“I believe the rules call them your ‘Little baby poopy diapers,’” Pearce replied confidently. “But we’ll see who balks first.”

“We’ll see,” Grace said, glowering. It seemed prudent to assert her lack of caring just then, so she leaned forward on the stool.

(Fuck it. Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it–)

She would never have described the feeling as triumphant, but when Pearce’s eyebrows raised in surprise, she did at least feel a little surge of dominance. That was undercut by the swelling of mush that bulged out the back of her exposed diaper, and a blush bloomed on her puffed-up cheeks as she pushed, but she didn’t back down.

“Okay then,” she said. She almost demanded, ‘Change me’, but that’d be in violation of the rules, so she just said, “We really will see, won’t we?”

He hesitated, just for a moment, but his confidence returned and he took out his phone. Tapping a few buttons, he turned around the screen so she could see it–a timer for fifty five minutes. Just shy of an hour.

“Have fun, poopy pants,” he replied, turning to waltz away.

She grumbled, dropping to the floor, sticking her butt in the air, and scooting on hands and knees back towards her room. The crawling was easier going up the stairs than down, but every shift of her thighs back and forth made the mush in her diaper squelch.

Back in her room, sitting down in her office chair with a squelch, she realized his other trick. Without clothes, without plastic pants, there was little to contain the stink wafting off her diaper. Her bedroom was going to smell awful if she just sat around and waited almost an hour for Pearce to come around.

(I could open a window,) she considered. (Or…)

Unplugging her laptop, she rolled her office chair away from her desk, pushing against walls and furniture with her hands for locomotion. Rolling out into the hall, she scooted right on into Pearce’s room, moving a halting foot at a time.

He glanced up at her. “What’re you doing?”

“I’m feeling very mischievous,” she said, dragging herself forward until her chair was right next to his, setting her laptop on his desk. “I need supervision, I’d say, so I don’t get into trouble.”

The smell wafting off her diaper struck him, and he wrinkled his nose. “I think you’re fine in your own room.”

“Well,” she replied. “I’d rather be here.”

To Pearce’s credit, he didn’t take her gambit lying down. Standing, he grabbed the back of her office chair, dragging it towards the edge of his room, towards the exit. Grace simply flopped out of the chair, crawling back towards his desk.

“I can sandbag better than you can wrestle me,” she smirked up at him. “You know your options. For me to smell, you’ve got to smell me.”

He checked his phone, looking at the timer, then groaned and walked over to his chair. “Well, don’t let me keep you from working,” he said, sitting down.

Grace wished he’d just capitulate then and there, but he lasted an admirable fifteen minutes before pushing away from his desk and throwing up his hands.

“Fine!” he said. “Let’s get you changed.”

She smirked up at him. “If you insist!”

There was no bathtime before lunch. When he got out the wipes and a fresh diaper, Pearce realized he’d have to be thorough this time–he couldn’t just let the bath deal with getting her a hundred percent clean.

And, relishing her victory, Grace didn’t help in the slightest. She played the sandbag, laying on the ground, only following his instructions to lift her hips after coaxing and whining and complaining. It took him ten minutes to get her clean, and his face was screwed up in response to the stink the whole time.

Half a box of wipes later, though, she was clean, powdered, and freshly diapered.

“Thanks!” she said with a smirk, crawling back to her laptop. “Or, I guess, you’re welcome–this is what you wanted, right?”

He glowered, discarding all the changing supplies into a sealed trash bag. “Do you still want my ‘supervision’?”

“Hmm,” Grace said, thinking. She had another trick up her sleeve, one to really cement things.

When she’d gone in the kitchen, she hadn’t completely gone. A little pressure still remained. A little need.

She briefly pondered how long to wait. Five minutes? Ten?

(Let’s do this now. He doesn’t get a break.)

Leaning forward in her computer chair, Grace almost let out a giggle as she mucked her second diaper in as many hours. Not a lot–just enough to smell awful and be a pain to clean up, all that she had in her.

Pearce stared down at her in shock. “Seriously? I just changed you.”

Grace giggled for real this time. She didn’t care about the state of her diaper, just about the triumph. “Your face…It’s priceless.”

After that day, there were no more concerns of fiber in her food.