“Mhmm. Mhmm! I agree,” Grace said, nodding along as she failed to retain anything she’d heard in the last five minutes.

It was her own damned fault–her bladder was aching, but she refused to wet herself in front of a client. She doubted anyone would notice the faint pee smell–her client had far too much of a lingering B.O.-Plus-Old Spice smell to pick up anything else. But even if they’d never know, and even if her diaper would hold it all perfectly, she found it simply too undignified.

But, as a result, her aching bladder distracted her from listening to a single word that’d been said in the past five minutes. The meeting had already dragged on far longer than she expected, and her bladder didn’t seem to have as much fortitude as she’d expected–in the past twenty minutes, she’d gone from not having a need at all to bursting at the seams.

“So, I was thinking,” her client continued, oblivious to Grace’s distraction. “If you’re on board with it, we should just have the launch be a full on party.”

She blinked. “The website launch?”

“Yes, that’s the idea. Get people really excited about the Web3 integrations by throwing a rager!” he continued. “In the metaverse space, of course.”

Grace didn’t know how to respond. She’d clearly missed something.

“Can you excuse me for one moment?” she asked. “Just–one moment, I need to go use the bathroom.”

Her client nodded, a bit taken aback but understanding.

Grace stood, hurrying off to the cafe’s bathroom and locking the door behind her. Once in privacy, she muttered, “This is stupid.”

Leaning against the bathroom wall, she shut her eyes and released her bladder, soaking into her diaper. Having the modicum of privacy helped, even if she’d be waddling right back out to finish the meeting in a soggy diaper.

Sighing, she turned. This client was already a pain just from insisting on an in person meeting, and now this, just an extra nuisance. Resting her hand on the door handle, she braced herself to get back out there–

…

Grace stumbled inside, grumpy and fuming. She was glad to be busy, but a basic design meeting had no reason to last three full hours.

But for now, she needed a beer and a good, old fashioned bitching.

Walking towards the stairs, she passed Brains heading the opposite direction. He gave her a nod, sliding to the side to let her pass. “Hey, how’d your meeting go?”

“Pain,” Grace replied. “Is Melody around?”

“Off on a date, I think,” Brains replied. “I’m actually headed that way too.”

Grace perked up. “On a date?”

“Yeah, you remember that guy from before?” he grinned.

She rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah, the one you didn’t know you were dating?”

“That’s the one,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows dramatically. “I’m apparently a ‘hot ticket’ or something. Don’t wait up!” He turned to walk towards the door.

Grace smiled. She couldn’t help but be happy at her friend’s happiness, though the overall ‘Grump’ of her afternoon still wore down on her; By the time she reached the top of the stairs, the burst of cheer had largely deflated.

Melody was gone on a one night stand, Brains was gone on a date, and Skip would be at work. If she wanted someone to complain to, only one real choice remained.

Rapping on Pearce’s door, she said, “You there?”

He answered a moment later, opening it to reply rather than just calling from across his room. “Yup. How’d the meeting go, soggypants?”

“Awful,” she replied. “How many times can you tell a client, ‘Using copyrighted characters in your banner is going to get you sued’ before you’re legally allowed to slap someone? I don’t think he understands trademarks, or web design, or, like…basic hygiene, for that matter.”

“Ugh, the worst,” he said, rolling his eyes in response. Leaning over, he gave the front of her jeans a squeeze, testing her diaper through the denim. “Well, I think you could wait a little bit before your change. Let me slip you into something less comfortable, and then I’ll get you a bottle of beer if you promise not to brat and leak on purpose?”

She smirked. “Sure, that sounds nice.”

The ‘something less comfortable’ ended up being a onesie with a whole entire pillow shoved down between the legs, which made her bottom puff out like a comic exaggeration of a diaper bulge. It did the least to hinder her walking of the various waddle-inducing garments Pearce had recently picked, but perhaps the most blush-inducing. She had to toddle down the stairs, with Pearce snickering at her all the while.

Splaying out on the couch, she stretched her arms, waiting for Pearce to return with her beer. He waltzed in with two bottles a minute later–one glass with a long neck, the other plastic, wide, and with a rubber nipple on the top, but both full of fresh, frosty beer.

“So tell me about the awful scrooge of web design,” he said, passing her beer down. “And scoot, I want to sit.”

She accepted the bottle, and shimmied butt-first towards the edge of the couch, throwing her legs over the armrest. That placed Pearce on the other end of the couch, sitting right by her head. “Ugh, it’s just–a garbage client, you know?” she said, taking a long suckle of her beer.

“Yeah, I’ve had a few like that,” he said. “Getting paid well, at least?”

“I’m getting paid,” she said, stopping to get another sip. The nipple only allowed a slow trickle of beer, adding long pauses to her speech, but Pearce waited for her to finish. “I’m actually giving him a discount, though.”

“Why?” Pearce asked. “He caught you on a sale?”

“No, I just wanted the job,” she admitted. “I knew they were talking to a couple other clients, and I thought it wouldn’t be this much of a pain. It’s going to be like, a full week of work, and I am not looking forward to the client back-and-forth.”

“Have you done any of the work yet?” he asked.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “No, we just did the initial design meeting–which absolutely could have been a phone call, let me tell you. But when I couldn’t meet him in his ‘Web Three Metaspace Zone’ bullshit whatever, he insisted we talk in person.”

“So…why not just drop the client?” Pearce asked.

Grace stared up at him, almost choking on her sip of beer. “What?”

“Are you super pressed for work?” he asked. “Struggling to pay your bills?”

“No, I–I mean, I’ve got other projects with looser deadlines I could be working on,” Grace started, shaking her head. “But–”

“And are you worried that dropping him might tank your career or something?” He tilted his head. “Does he have lots of connections in the industry that could cause you trouble?”

“Not connections I care about, just crypto bros,” she replied. “But–”

“I’m not hearing any good arguments to keep him around,” Pearce shrugged.

“I can’t do that!” Grace cut in, finally, sitting up and spinning around to face Pearce. “Are you serious right now? Just toss out work like it’s yesterday’s jam?”

Pearce snorted. “Yesterday’s–never mind. Yeah, just drop the client.”

“I already sat through that whole meeting with him,” Grace said, feeling her heart rate rise just at the thought of it–(Drop a client? Just because he’s annoying?)

“Sunk cost fallacy,” he replied. “Would you rather suffer for another week or two to justify a couple bad hours? You’re overthinking.”

“I’m not overthinking,” Grace shot back.

“You’re always overthinking, crinkles,” Pearce said with a smirk.

“Okay, but…you don’t turn down work just because it’s kinda shitty,” Grace said. “I’ve got to do it. I promised.”

“Sure,” Pearce said. “Or, well. You don’t.”

“You do?” she asked. (I knew you were lazy, but–seriously?)

“Not just because it’s hard,” Pearce said. “I like a hard job, if anything. The challenge is fun. But if the client’s an asshole with unreasonable expectations? Nah, screw ‘em. I know what my time’s worth, and it’s not worth being shit on.”

“Don’t you worry about…like…money?” Grace asked.

“I mean, yeah, but I get my bills paid,” he replied, stretching an arm over the side of the couch and sipping his beer. “We’re splitting a mortgage and utilities five ways and I don’t have any dependents. I’m okay on money. I’ve got a little savings, enough for an accident at least.”

Grace almost couldn’t wrap her head around it. “But…”

“Hey,” he said. “If you want to keep working with this dick, you do you. I’m not going to tell you how you live your life, it just seems like you’d be happier without it.”

She took a breath, cautiously reclining a little next to Pearce, putting up her feet on the coffee table. “I just don’t get you, sometimes.” Putting the bottle back into her mouth, she took a long, thoughtful suckle.

“Yeah?” he asked, looking down at her, taking another pull of his drink. “What’s not to get?”

“You just–you never care about anything,” Grace said. “You don’t get stressed. You don’t worry.”

“I don’t think that’s quite true,” he said, frowning and furrowing his brow as he thought about his answer. “I care, I’m just pragmatic. When I get stressed, I know how to talk to myself, how to walk my anxiety down to reasonable levels.”

“That’s called ‘rationalizing’.” Grace rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t make the problems go away.”

“What problems?” Pearce asked. “Seriously. If I’m keeping myself taken care of, what’s there to worry about?”

“But it only gets taken care of because someone else is doing it,” Grace said. “Like–let’s say I got in a car wreck and got hurt really bad, insurance didn’t cover it, and I couldn’t pay my bills because I didn’t have enough saved up.”

“We’d take care of you,” Pearce said, tapping his chest with a bird-flipping fist. The club salute they’d had since Junior High. “Wasters for life.”

“Right.” Grace nodded. “You’d have to take care of me. I’d be dropping a burden on you because I didn’t save enough.”

Pearce’s face softened, eyes widening. “Grace–that’s what having friends is for. We support each other. Nobody’s mad at you because you aren’t entirely independent all the time.”

“You don’t complain about it, but you still notice,” Grace corrected. “Nobody likes cleaning up someone else’s mess. But nobody likes doing someone else’s dishes, or gathering up their garbage, or picking their hair out of the shower trap. And if I don’t do it, I’m forcing someone else to take that on for me. There’s a reason why acts of service is a love language–it’s because you wouldn’t do that shit for someone if you didn’t care about them.”

“Grace, you’re overthinking it again.” Pearce shook his head slowly. “You’ve got it all wrong. You’re not an obligation that we’ve taken on begrudgingly. Picking up after each other isn’t a responsibility, it’s just…it’s just kind of part of life. We’re here, right now, together, and it’s nicer to be doing life stuff with friends and to have each other’s back than to do it all alone.”

Grace didn’t respond right away, covering her silence with another suckle of her beer. She looked up at Pearce, at his face, not so much reading his expression as just looking at him. “You seriously think that?”

“I mean, yeah,” Pearce said. “You want proof?”

“Duh,” Grace snorted. “It’s a big claim.”

“I’ve been taking care of you for, what, a few weeks now?” Pearce asked.

She nodded, supplying, “Three weeks and four days. So?”

“I have to make all your food, run your baths, deal with your clothes, wipe your butt,” he said. “And yeah, it’s work. It takes time. Sometimes it stinks. Sometimes, you’re an enormous brat, and you make the work harder than it needs to be.”

“You’re not making your case,” Grace said, curiosity building, along with a certain tension in her chest. “What’re you getting at?”

Pearce glanced down at his beer, and took another swig, draining the rest of the bottle. He set it aside on the coffee table, and turned his head to look at her. “At any point has it seemed like I’ve stopped caring about you just because I’m caring for you?”

(Oh.)

(Oh.)

“Mmm,” Grace said, looking down and away from him.

“Does that make sense?” Pearce asked, sitting forward a little.

“Yeah, it…I guess.” She started drumming her fingers on her leg, then stilled, then started drumming again.

“Grace?” Pearce’s tone rose just a touch, with concern. “What’re you doing?”

She took a breath. “Overthinking.”

Before he could ask what she meant, she turned her head to face him, eyes huge. Then, before he could respond to that, she leaned in and kissed him.