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Negative Capabilities

by kit (me), 23 Nov. 2008, [email protected]

One

Adult Diapers: Jaice and Dad

Jaice chewed on his lower lip as he scanned the pharmacy shelves. All the packages had pictures of smiling, crawling babies--like him, right? Yet, something didn't seem right. He stood there, chewing his lip with increasing vigor, and suddenly realized something--he was wearing pants.

The fox used one paw to explore this discovery further. He tugged at the waist of his jeans. He pulled up on the zipper--with no result. He pulled down on the zipper--it zipped down--and up again. Zip, zip, zip, up and down! He giggled and stuck one paw down the back of his pants. The base of his tail was there so he tugged on it. It sent a quivery feeling up his tail in one direction and his bottom in the other and he bent over slightly, pushing his bottom backwards.

His face ended up pressing against the diaper packaging as a result. Something smelled nice about that--he edged his nose closer and rubbed it on the package. He heard a slight crinkling and for some reason it sent a static shock of excitement through him that left his tongue lolling out a little and his ears flattened against his head, he was dimly aware of it, but couldn't think of any reason not to stand there like that. He rubbed his nose against the diaper packaging. Wasn't he here for crinkles? Or, umm, diapies?

Yeah, he was: A sudden flash of insight cut through the fox's clouded brain and he stood erect, his ears pricked. He had come here on a mission, and that mission was...

Just then, a lion cub of about five or six came charging down the aisle, baggy pants making the waistband he was a little too old for visible. His mother, making haste to keep pace with him, gave Jaice a sidelong look and grabbed her cub by the paw, redirecting him across the aisle. "Ma, is that fox..." "Shh!" said the lioness and bent over, listening to him conclude his question in a whisper. "The word is special, dear," he heard the lioness say. It made Jaice grin as the lioness ushered her cub into the next aisle. He was a special baby, his Da often said that.

He had been about to do something. What had he been about to do--watch cartoons? No, there was no TV here. There were cartoon characters on some of the diaper packaging on the bottom shelf, though. He bent over so he could see better if they had ones he knew, but he wasn't really comfortable that way. To keep his balance he put one of his hands on the floor. He leaned forward on to it, bringing his back parallel with the floor--that was better!--and lowered his knees on to it, he giggled as he felt the cold linoleum through his jeans. Now he could see the characters on the packages! He turned his head to look at them, and tilted it all the way to the left, then all the way to the right.

The characters on the diaper packaging didn't move or talk like the cartoons on TV, and sitting around was getting boring. Jaice slumped down on his side, thinking that if he rested he might remember what he came here for. The cold floor felt good so he rolled over on to his back. Glaring lights shone down on his face and he pawed upwards at them trying to dim the light to no avail. He turned his head sideways slightly and that was a little better. While he was thinking he found his paw gravitating toward his mouth. His thumb entered. Mmm... he sucked on it, it tasted funny. He moved it around a bit and sucked with it halfway out. It still tasted funny. He decided to persist in moving it around and sucking on it until he could think of something better to do.

Jaice wasn't good at telling time, or anything that involved counting. Counting always made his head hurt--so he didn't know how long it was before he heard a familiar, reassuring voice behind his head. "Jai-cee," the voice said, drawing out each syllable scoldingly, and Jaice's eyes rolled back in his head toward the floor, standing up there outside down was Dad, a tall gray wolf wearing a denim jacket and jeans with a gold earring in his left... right... left? (Jaice fumbled his paws in confusion, left was the first one, or was it east?) ear.

"Dada!" Jaice answered with a giggle and reached his paws backward over his head upside down toward the wolf. Some drool escaped the side of Jaice's muzzle. Dad only half-smiled, amused and chagrined. "It's been too long," he remarked musingly, reaching down to grab Jaice's paws. "I thought I'd timed this better, but you're going through them faster and you obviously can't go as long without them. We'd better get double this time."

"Crinklies?" Jaice asked. He couldn't figure out what he was supposed to do until Daddy walked in front of him still holding his paws, drawing his arms in front of his face, and pulling him up so his legs and baby-bottom rose up off the floor. (It wiggled slightly, by reflex, when he thought of it with both words like that, baby-bottom.) Jaice hung there holding onto the wolf's paws until Da said with a grumble, "Get up," and gave his paws a sharp tug. Jaice straightened his knees and pushed his weight down on his heels, standing straight up like a big kit.

Da grabbed the waist of his pants with one paw and held on to his right paw with the other, pulling him along toward the end of the aisle. "Jai-cee's in the wrong section for starters. Don'tcha remember what ya came here for? Did you forget the magic word?"

Jaice's ears quivered. He did forget the magic word. He wasn't sure even now if he could remember it unless, until... there were crinklies in the next aisle too but these ones were bigger and there were no cartoons on them.

He let Da pick out several packages and hand them to him. He stood there with them stacked in front of his face and started walking forward in a wobbly diagonal, but Da's paw on his arm restrained him. The wolf took one package, then another, and tucked them under his arms by way of illustrations. He hefted his arms and nodded. Jaice smiled, he understood! Da handed him the packages back and Jaice tucked the packages under his own arms, which was better anyway. That way he wouldn't walk into things. And, he could hear crinklies as his arms pressed the packages closer against his sides! He followed Da to the registers, teetering a little as he alternated between squeezing the package on one side tight, then the other, then both at he once.

Da looked for his wallet while he waited to pay. The fox stood behind him looking at the ceiling and realized if he lowered his tongue he could blow bubbles. He was trying to do that while Da, standing in front of him as though to block the cashier's view of him as much as possible, counted out bills and paid.

A sharp tug on his paw from Da set him trotting through the "whoosh!" of the automatic door and toward the parking lot. They were going on a ride! Maybe they'd get ice cream! Jaicee was excited. He started running to the car. "Vroom!" he exclaimed as he dashed, and got there before Da!

The kit fidgeted while Da, smiling, dug into his pocket for the keys. In a few minutes the door was unlocked and Jaice climbed into the back seat. Da climbed in the other side of it and closed and locked the door. The seat cover stretched over the bottom of the back seat had cartoon characters on it and that made Jaice smile. He lay there looking over Da's shoulder at the discolored world visible through the car's tinted windows while Da unsnapped the fox's jeans and pulled them down around his ankles.

"All right," said Da resignedly. "It was a simple errand. I really thought you could make it that long while I was in the video store, but obviously not anymore. We got lucky that time. I've gotta keep a closer eye on you, or have all your supplies delivered."

Da stripped off the briefs Jaice was wearing and laid a crinklie underneath him. Jaicee moaned as he lowered his bottom and lay there on the padding. Crinklies... he had to... oh, shit, he had to do homework... no, not homework, it was... something in front of other kits. Dad applied baby powder and Jaice breathed in the aroma, closing his eyes, reclining his head backward and letting his tongue loll out of his mouth.

"All right the magic word is," Dad flipped the diaper up and fastened the tapes super-snugly, "adult. You're wearing adult diapers."

"Oh, damn," Jaice said, as the mounting pressure in his bladder suddenly relaxed and the front of his diaper became, mmm, warm. "I need to present to the board tomorrow. And what were you thinking, sending me in there like that? Where the hell were you?"

Dad shrugged. "You used to be able to hold it longer. Twenty minutes anyway. You know the rules. You said you wanted babying with no risk of accidents, ever. Adult diapers make you adult. Out of diapers as you get your potty training skills back..." Dad grabbed his nose in one paw and shook it playfully. "Everything else adult goes out the window."

Jaice looked down at his padded bottom and moaned softly. The warmth did feel good. He was going to have to scramble for his presentation tomorrow. He was going to have to hope Daddy got some quiet diapers for him to wear during the day, too. Remember, he reminded himself mentally, to ask tomorrow if I can wear "Aw... crap," he said.

Dad looked down at the very adult fox with a smile. "Yup," he said, "I believe that's next."

Two

The Restroom is for Customers Only: Jaice Meets Fenton

A week later Jaice was swinging one leg back and forth under the table absently and staring down at the empty plate in front of him, trying to avoid looking at the boy seated across the table.

He didn't know why he'd been dragged to this dinner, and he was anything but comfortable. Dad was up to something, he was sure, but he doubted it amounted to more than making him feel like a little kid by dragging him to an adult event and then studiously ignoring him. Still, he kept glancing at the head of the table, trying to catch Dad's eyes. The wolf either didn't notice or (Jaice considered ruefully) he was pretending not to, for he was very involved in conversation with their host, a well-dressed lion, about something boring and business-y.

The terms "joint venture," "pooled resources," "mutual reinforcement," "remote observation," and "cooperative," which struck Jaice oddly only because Dad was using it as a noun rather than as an adjective, kept coming up, and he insisted that he was working on something "paradigm-destroying." He said that was not an adjective, but in fact, his very action, writing scripts that would break down what people falsely perceived as polar oppositions and dissolve what he called "arbitrarily clumped or clustered concepts." The fox kept losing interest, especially as he got hungrier and hungrier and the odor of pork chops drifted out of the kitchen. He had heard plenty of strange things in the years he had known Dad, and had long since stopped trying to riddle them all out as they got progressively stranger.

Dad was letting him wear a slip cover over his diaper, and it muffled any crinkling--at least, he hoped it did! The very slight noise his ears could pick up still seemed, to him, as frighteningly loud as when he tore wrapping paper off his Christmas presents, but long experience had taught him that even if strange ears detected a crinkle, diapers were the last thing they would suspect. At least so long as, securely padded, he maintained his adult decorum.

The adolescent raccoon seated across from Jaice let out a long, quiet exhalation, as he rested his elbow on the table and his chin on his hand, making clear that he didn't know why he had been dragged down from his room, either. He was wearing a tee-shirt advertising a videogame about auto theft. The title was familiar, but Jaice didn't know about it, since Dad wouldn't let him play games that were violent.

"So," the fox ventured, leaning forward and resting his chin on both paws, "you start college this fall, right? Are you excited?"

"Yeah," the raccoon said absently, without so much as moving his eyes, which had wandered up to the ceiling, in his interlocutor's direction. He either didn't register this question as an invitation to further conversation, or wished to refuse it. Jaice wasn't sure which was the case and if the boy was just shy or actually put out, so he decided to press further.

"Your dad suggested I might give you advice about something? It was a while ago, I mean it seems like a while ago, time is all bunched-up different-like when you're working, you'll see, but I started college late, too. It's a bit strange, I know, spending your senior year with a class you don't really know, but I think the volunteering you did is really cool."

The raccoon made a noncommittal sound that wasn't quite forceful enough to be called a grunt. "It was all right," he said. He clearly didn't want to talk about this subject further, and Jaice had the vague impression that his decision to take time off from school hadn't been of his own will.

By now, the fox was starting to get annoyed, and he felt an uncomfortable churning in his stomach. He cleared his throat and addressed the head of the table indiscriminately, hoping to get an answer from either the wolf or the lion. "May I be excused for a minute? Maybe even three?" he asked. "Also, where is the, umm, bathroom?"

Jaice's Dad, who was gesturing expansively, and by now speaking in such long sentences that the lion was also starting to fidget a little, paused long enough to smile and nod before returning to his impractical explanation, and the lion added, "Bottom of the stairs, the door on the left--oh, also, the light switch is outside the door, I didn't design this place, you know." The fox stood up, pushed in his chair, and wandered out of the room, and the lion took advantage of the interruption to go into the kitchen and check on his cooking.

As they both left, Fenton had looked down from the ceiling and after Jaice, tilting his head at a suddenly more acute angle, and Jaice realized with a wince that from an adult "May I be excused?" must have sounded an awfully strange question.

Nevertheless, he trudged along to the bathroom, turned on the light, and closed and locked the door behind him. It was one of those bathrooms where the light switch turned on some kind of fan that made noise out of all proportion to its utility, which would have annoyed Jaice, except that the noise cover it provided made him feel relaxed and at ease, like he didn't have to be quite as careful as he usually was to mask loud crinkling in these situations.

On the other hand, he wouldn't have heard anyone knocking on the door, but he didn't think of that at the moment as he stood, staring down at a conundrum wrapped in a mystery wrapped in... well, it was a toilet, was all. It just was an adversary that required him to be very careful. What most adults did without a second's thought was for him a careful and conscious drill. He raised the seat cover with both paws, turned around, unfastened his belt, unsnapped and unzipped his pants, and let them fall to the floor, taking a deep breath. This was the hard part.

Squatting down onto the toilet seat, Jaice fiddled with the tapes on his diaper, which felt uncomfortable, bunched up and hard, so he squirmed around quite a bit trying to flatten it out. There, alas, was no way around removing it for what he had to do. For a wetting, he mused, he could have taken his chances at the dining room table, or simply wet slowly and carefully here without even removing his pants, having retreated to the bathroom only as insurance in the event of a leak. But even having taken chlorophyll, he was not about to well, mess himself, at the dinner table in front of strangers.

Jaice undid the tapes carefully. If he just ripped his diaper off he--well, he didn't want to think about it. So long as it remained pressed against his skin, he would be okay. He raised his bottom and pulled his tail closer to him with his right paw, tugging it out through the tail hole, while his left pressed the crinkly front of the diaper against his crotch. He flipped the back of the diaper up through and under the middle of his legs and pressed both layers of it, with both paws, against his crotch--a pleasant, warm, crinkly feeling, he had to admit, as his bottom came into contact first with the ventilated air and then with the chilly enamel of the toilet seat, sending goosebumps down the back of his thighs.

Pressing his diaper like a poultice against a cut--for he knew too well what would happen if he let it fall to the floor--Jaice hummed to himself softly to calm his nerves and crossed his ankles. "Hmm hmmm hmmm hmmm foxie in the treetop...." Just a few--yes, all squirmy for a minute, wiggling his bottom on the seat and shifting his whole weight from left to right and back again a couple times, but then he was done, heard a splash, and he reached out without looking to his side with his left paw for the toilet paper, pawing at the air hoping to hit the roll.

That was when the lights went off.

"Hey!" he exclaimed. "Turn that back on! I'll be done in a minute! Hey!" And he stood up, one paw just having struck the toilet paper roll, and, afraid of tripping and falling or walking into the wall or the sink or worse--with a shudder, the thought crossed through his mind, was it even possible, of falling backwards into the toilet? No, that was silly!

Still...--he kept one paw on the toilet paper roll to keep himself situated, instinctively raised the other to reach out, feeling toward the wall for any switch inside the bathroom or failing that for the doorknob, and as he grabbed onto the doorknob and heard a click, his stomach coiled itself into a knot as the chill air struck his crotch and his folded diaper, no longer being held against his crotch by either paw, fell limply to the floor.

For just a second abject dread gripped the fox's mind, but no sooner did he fully register what was happening then his intelligence began to relax and unspool. His knees felt wobbly--after all, he wasn't big enough to walk without Daddy holding onto his hand--and, feeling himself falling backwards, he reached up to grab onto the doorknob with both paws, accidentally pulling the door back and open.

Just as his eyes had begun to adjust to the dark, the light from the foyer momentarily blinded them and he stumbled back helplessly, falling, not, thank goodness, into the potty, for he knew where that was well enough to avoid it, but into the roll of toilet paper, which he pawed at and pawed at trying to grab onto it like the doorknob to hold himself up, but it rolled out and rolled out and he grabbed with his other paw at the unspooling paper that was trying to tangle him up and he fell to the floor with the roll nearly depleted, toilet paper wrapped all around him, his folded diaper only a few feet away and, in an impulsive response to his unreasoned panic, his thumb planted in his muzzle, looking up as the light clicked on and the fan clicked off at who was looking down at him, the raccoon in the black Grand Theft Auto tee-shirt, his expression still noncommittal but his eyes now focused and curious, and recognizing him as a friend he'd seen before, Jaice giggled.

The puzzled raccon's mouth slowly relaxed from a flat line into an interested smile. And he giggled reciprocally.

Three

Parlor Trick: Jaice and Dad after Dinner

"I cannot believe you!" Jaice exclaimed with a humph, crossing his arms indignantly as Dad reached over and unfastened his seatbelt. Jaice had been too upset--yes, definitely he was upset, that was the riled-up, excited feeling--on the drive back to talk, and now, wearing a clean diaper under his khakis, his adult reasoning skills, if not his emotional maturity, flowing back, he sputtered, "That was just... that was just... big and mean and... and... despicable and..." He stuck his tongue out and blew a raspberry in a final aggrieved gesture, adding, "is what it was."

The wolf ruffled his headfur playfully. "It was community service. Fenton really hasn't been able to get any social confidence back since, well, it's just been him and his dad and they didn't know what to do when, uh, the embarrassment accidents drove him out of school for a while. Anyway, he was very nice to clean you up in the bathroom, and to help you eat your big kit's dinner. Don't tell me you didn't have any fun."

As Jaice rose from his seat, the wolf reached under his bottom with one arm and over his shoulder with the other, hoisting him out of the car and setting him down in the garage, patting his head once he had.

"Fine," Jaice declared in a tone of defiance, "I won't!" He marched to the door and then paused, fidgeting impatiently as he waited for Dad to finish in the car, shut the garage door, and come over and open the one into the house. Belatedly he added, "What were you talking about with Fenton's dad anyway?"

"Oh, we go way back," Dad said vaguely as he tossed his keys onto the counter. "He's done quite well, Fenton's dad, and now he could be a... generous sponsor for my research." He broke off the conversation, frowning as he looked at the fox's face in the light of the house, and reached into his pocket to pull out some moist wipes. The pouty fox only fidgeted more and became more recalcitrant as Dad scrubbed the remaining applesauce crust off his whiskers and muzzle.

"I'm still mad at you, anyway. None of this changes anything about your trip."

The wolf gestured apologetically. "I told you, it can't be helped. Grown-up business. Anyway I won't be away that long."

"Not that long! September to December! That is like... that is like..." he started to count on his fingers, until Dad interrupted him with a gentle laugh, "Four months. I'll be back for Christmas, though, I told you. I need the semester for research. It would be no fun for you if I dragged you along, trust me. In fact it would defeat a big part of it."

"Christmas is forever from now," the fox sulked as Dad unsnapped and unzipped his pants, and let them fall around his ankles. "And the stuff you did, you haven't exactly left me in a situation where I can, be, self-sufficient, day to day..."

Jaice tugged at the waistband of his colorfully printed undergarment meaningfully, and Dad nodded and sighed as he wandered into the other room. "I know. But I have, uh, arrangements, in mind. Wait here."

Not sure what else to do, Jaice waited, staring at the clock for what seemed like a really long time, blushing as he felt a slight warm, wet discharge in the front of his diaper, and finally, almost five minutes later, Dad returned and laid out five flash cards on the coffee table. Jaice pricked his ears, recognizing the game. "Reading comprehension?" he asked curiously.

The wolf shook his head as he turned the first three cards over. "Sentence building. A variation. You put the cards in the logical order and then we fill in the blanks."

The fox nodded. "Because English is not infected!"

"Inflected," the wolf corrected with a laugh. "Or not very much. So word order is essential to the meaning of a sentence." Noting the fox's frown, he added gently, "But you're still very smart. So go ahead. We'll build some sentences that will also be rules for when I'm gone, to keep everything running smoothly for you. And you get to make them yourself, to make sure you're happy about everything."

Jaice sat down cross-legged and frowned at the cards. He didn't like the words he was seeing, not one bit, but he could easily see what Dad was trying to do. "Fenton," he pointed at a card with the raccoon's name on it, and the wolf nodded. "Me! Jaice!" he added, pointing to the last card, and Dad also nodded. Jaice frowned and bit his lip as he pointed to the verb. "Spanking," he mumbled, and proceeded rapidly to rearrange the three face-up cards, "Subject-verb-object. Jaice spanking Fenton. Done," he declared triumphantly and folded his arms.

"Is not a complete sentence. Spanking isn't a stand-alone verb. And you didn't touch the other two cards." Jaice frowned in puzzlement as Dad turned over the two remaining cards, which he had thought he was not supposed to touch. "Privileges, belong to. With the order of those three words fixed, the only sentence you can make without confusion is, Jaice('s) spanking privileges belong to Fenton. There you go, you wrote it yourself. The words you put in order are stuck that way, and then I put in these others where I can. That's how we learn to build sentences one layer at a time."

The fox was crestfallen. Something seemed very wrong about this. "But... but... but..." he waved his paws about and declared, "It's a trick! You changed it to the opposite of what I meant! I didn't want to be spanked! And, and if I did different, I know you, I bet you would have found a way to put it the other way than I did!" The fox was very agitated, but in his agitation, was also rapidly confusing himself. He continued to complain, but had already lost track of what exactly he was protesting.

The wolf smiled widely and swept the cards off the table, dealing five others. "Rule two..."

Four

The Cooperative: Fenton, Jaice, and Romney

Jaice squirmed in his chair when he heard the door click open. It was Saturday, and he was playing--well trying to play--one of the games Fenton had taught him, although he wasn't very good at it. He hadn't expected his roommate to be back so soon. And, he reflected mournfully as he chewed on his lower lip, his bottom was still sore from the spanking he had gotten earlier that morning, for not emptying the diaper pail before bedtime.

"Hi, girly! This is the friend your Dad wrote about!" The raccoon was ebullient; his awkwardness had all but vanished, and the fact that he was 19 and still reliably wet the bed twice a night notwithstanding, he was one of the more relaxed and self-assured freshmen on campus. It helped that he was living in an off-campus apartment with an employed roommate to help pay the bills. Of course, Jaice thought poutily, it was also because he could forcefully expel his negative emotions right onto a fox's bottom. Jaice paused the game with a grumble and smoothed out his skirt, also rubbing at his smarting right butt cheek, as he stood up. "I am not girly," he protested. "I am playing a very violent game, thank you very much. Killing lots of people. If they were real, there'd be blood and guts all over this room."

"Whatever," the raccoon waved his paw dismissively. "If it looks like a fox, and wears a dress like a fox... This is Romney." Jaice looked down, suddenly embarrassed to be wearing a dress, never mind a diaper--he'd all but stopped thinking about it when just Fenton was around--as he noticed the timid mouse, probably a freshmen or a sophomore here, judging by his size, practically hiding behind the raccoon.

"Hi! You're pretty!" The mouse squeaked and immediately resumed trying to hide as Jaice glowered at him.

"Jaice doesn't like being complimented on his sissy clothes," Fenton patted the mouse's head, "except when..."

Jaice pointed his fingers at the raccoon in the shape of a gun and mimed shooting as he interrupted for the guest's benefit, "I am not a sissy. I don't know what your deal is, Mister, umm, Romney--I'm sure if my dad had anything to do with it, I'll wager you're pretty screwed up, but I'll have you know that I play shoot-em-up games with guns, and when I watch cartoons, which is, well not often, it's shows for boys, like about ninjas, I swill show you the action figures in my bedroom..."

The raccoon snorted dismissively as he closed and locked the door, which caused the rodent to panic a little. Jaice noted something familiar about his agitated behavior, and decided to take a risk, asking curiously, "How old are you, little guy?"

"I'm eleven and a half!" he declared proudly, flashing all his fingers, and then one more.

There was something coincidental about that particular number, but Jaice couldn't quite place what it was. He was still pretty occupied thinking about all the ways he was not a girl and was, in fact, the most masculine guy in diapers that he knew. "I go to the gym a lot too," he added, a belated conclusion to his catalog.

Fenton snorted again as he removed his belt and unzipped his pants. "I have to say between the two of you I feel pretty well-adjusted!" As he stood one one foot to shake his pants off the opposite ankle they had got stuck on, he squeezed the front of his diaper experimentally and smiled at the fox. "Pretty soggy. Mind helping a raccoon out?"

Jaice whined, "I'm in the middle of a game. Punished if I don't?"

The raccoon grinned and nodded. "You're getting the hang of this!"

"How about you?" Jaice asked the rodent. "I don't want to pause again. I'll have you know I'm like ten minutes away from a record."

The mouse looked inexplicably alarmed with this most normal statement of the conversation and ran haphazardly into the kitchen. With a shrug betokening his resignation to strangeness, Jaice headed into the next room and Fenton tagged along, flopping on to the puddle pad on top of the rubber sheets on top of his bed, and laughing as he bounced up and down on the bed in his tee-shirt and diaper.

"Does Romney have, uh, bedwetting problems?" the fox asked. "You're the one with the waterworks, and the, uh, defenses against. Just don't drown the little guy..."

Fenton blushed. "I'd spank you for that if it weren't true. Sorry about that time you got flooded."

Jaice grinned, grateful for this moment of advantage. "I'm still not sure I've got the smell out of my fur."

"Well, you want to take turns? Romney won't have any wetting problems by bedtime that GoodNites couldn't solve. You'll see. He has a... script... kind of like you."

The fox looked skeptical, as much as he could in a pink dress with a short skirt that looked like it was intended for a six-year-old girl, and that fell an inch or two short of reaching the bottom of his oversized and droopy white diaper. "I have three," he said ruefully, as he untaped Fenton's diaper and applied kid-wipes and powder to the blushing boy's diaper area.

Fenton giggled at the cold feel of the powder as it penetrated his black fur. "They're all cute," he said with a smile.

Jaice blushed and couldn't help but wriggle his bottom involuntarily as he said, "I could do without the spanking one."

"No doubt, but I couldn't! Your dad told me that was all your idea, though," the raccoon asserted playfully as the fox rolled him over into a new diaper.

For the few seconds he was face-down, Jaice eyed the raccoon's bottom, covered with powder, and thought about slapping it, but the thought itself caused him to shiver, for he knew if he did the force would rebound on him tenfold.

He felt a momentary twinge of fear as he wondered whether Romney would end up spanking him, too, for he recalled his Dad's explanation that "spanking privileges, like other legal privileges, are transferable, licensable, divisible, and assignable." Fenton, alas, held his while Dad was gone, but the mouse seemed too meek to share in them, even if he were invited.

Fenton noticed his roommate's discomfort and offered, "You want back in boy clothes after you're done with me, girly? I think we can do that."

Jaice nodded eagerly. "Please! And stop calling me girly."

Fenton's diaper had just been taped up securely when the mouse wandered into the room, now looking more bemused than nervous. Jaice would have been more curious about the rodent's behavior, but he was pretty eager to get into gender-appropriate clothing, and as soon as he was done he sat down on the floor and raised his arms above his head in a pose more of a demand than of supplication. Fenton giggled and patted his head, saying "All right, all right," as he removed the dress, leaving the fox wearing nothing but purple socks and his diaper, which he clapped both forepaws over at once (not to conceal it, but rather to make sure it stayed on).

The mouse declared seriously, "I'm going to do a little homework," and left the room again, reciting the five times table to himself. Jaice, nervous, was prompted, with the promise that his diaper wouldn't be touched, to hold up his arms above his head so a Star Wars tee-shirt could be slipped onto him. He panicked and started thrashing for a minute when he momentarily thought his head would get stuck in a shirtsleeve forever. Fenton wasn't all that proficient at changing clothes (or diapers, he thought glumly). But everything worked out in the end, and when they emerged from the bedroom, both in tee-shirts, socks, and diapers, they found Romney sitting in front of the television watching CNN.

Jaice looked at him quizzically, although it was the most objectively normal thing anyone in the apartment had done all day. "I'm going to get my civics badge!" the mouse declared, and Jaice shrugged again, sitting down next to him on the couch.

"I bet you want to watch something different," Fenton prompted, which caused Jaice to fidget a little, for in fact, he now did, though it pained him to admit it. "Say, don't you want to get back to your game?"

The fox shook his head. "Later." He tugged at his shirt and stood up and wandered into the kitchen, where he saw.... His Easy-Bake oven! He could make cookies for everyone! That would be fun. He set the timer and went to work.

"Well," asked Fenton teasingly as he came back into the living room with a plate of cookies, "what do you want to watch?"

"I want The Little Mermaid," Jaice admitted sheepishly as he offered the plate of cookies to both boys, who took them and looked at him curiously. "What's his deal anyway?" the fox cocked his head toward the mouse, trying to change the subject.

"Bet you think he's handsome, don't you?" Fenton patted the rodent's head.

The fox squirmed. "He's not a very good conversationalist, which is extremely important to me, but I'd still play house with him," Jaice reluctantly admitted as he sat down on the floor and started playing with a toy pony that had been left beside the couch. He tugged at his Star Wars shirt as he felt his diaper, loose before, drawn taut at front. Fenton knew that thinking about playing house made him imagine how good it would feel wearing a wedding gown someday, and they both knew by now where that line of thought usually carried him.

"I get it!" squeaked the mouse, who seemed suddenly alert and engaged. "When he's dressed like a girl, he wants to do boy things, but when he's dressed like a boy, he wants to do girly things."

Fenton patted the new arrival on the head in congratulations as he started The Little Mermaid DVD.

"So I'm never truly happy," the fox commented with a protracted, theatrical sigh as he played with his pony.

Fenton snorted for a third time and whispered to the rodent, "Liking embarrassment as much as he does, he enjoys it all quite a bit, trust me. Do you need to do something for your civics badge?"

Romney shrugged. "Nah, I decided to quit Boy Scouts, I mean it's such an elementary school thing. Just hanging out is fine." A ways into the movie, he stood up and wandered over into Jaice's bedroom, browsing through the videogames and action figures to occupy himself. After a while he asked, "What time is it, by the way?"

"Almost one."

The rodent started. "I didn't realize it had been that long. I've got to get going. I, umm..."

His watch chimed once and, without any apparent prompting, Romney slumped down on the floor and, putting his left hand around his right wrist, stuck his right thumb in his mouth, holding his paw there and sucking it loudly. Jaice set down his pony and crawled over to the mouse, eying him curiously, and poked him, which only caused the mouse to squirm and squeak something incoherent around his thumb.

"Well, princess," said Fenton. "Do you want a toddler to play with for a couple hours? I do feel bad, just the tiniest bit, that you do so much of the paying the bills and so little of the being in charge here. He's shy so he probably won't talk too much again until, oh, three o'clock or so..."

Five:

A Better Mousetrap: Jaice versus Romney

It was Sunday at noon.

"I think I heard someone at the door!" squeaked the mouse.

Jaice raised an eyebrow skeptically and smoothed out his dress. "There is definitely no one there. You're just stalling because you're about to lose, squeaker. Just die like a man."

"I am not losing!" the mouse said, folding his arms. "I'm certainly not going to lose to a fox in a dress."

Jaice put both hands to the floor (he didn't have to reach far) and used them to help himself stand up from the red, yellow, and blue junior-size folding chair he'd been sitting in. "Fine, I'll check," he said as he trudged off warily, returning in a moment. "You're in my seat," he remarked coolly, glancing at the board and at the mouse. "That's my chair, and also I was red."

The mouse shook his head and proceeded to lie. "You most definitely were not, I triple-checked. You were sitting on that side last game. I understand with your gender sliding around all the time how easily you probably get confused." Not waiting for an answer, he made a quick jump and petulantly said, "King me!"

"You're a real brat at this age," Jaice remarked. "I ignored it when you cheated last time. You know I can't take you to that movie even if you win two out of three."

"Yeah," the mouse said, sticking his tongue out. "Because you can't go out without permission probably. But you said you'd ask Fenton if he would do it when I won."

"I'll ask, but he'll say no, too," Jaice responded, patting the mouse on the head patronizingly as he sat on the two-slat wooden rocking chair the mouse had previously occupied. "Because it's PG-13. You're not old enough."

"I'm 12, aren't I, and that ought to count!" Romeny countered. "I mean I will be 13 soon enough."

"Oh no, hon," Jaice said. "You won't be, not soon..."

He broke off speaking and shifted as he noticed that he had started to wet. The warm, salty feeling was building up on one side of his diaper, around the bunched-up legging; he had been sitting with his legs half-crossed, and his wee wee was kind of caught diagonally pointing down and to the left in the folds of the diaper, so it aimed at the leg-bunching.

No sooner did he realize this then he stuck his finger in his mouth and chewed on it thoughtfully. When would Fenton ever figure out how to put these on other people right? At least they didn't fall off of him any more, but really? He closed his eyes and tried to tell himself that he wasn't leaking, but he couldn't stop himself from continuing to wet, and he now felt a warm slickness a few inches down on the back of his thigh.

He immediately focused his whole mind, every fiber of his body, on trying to stop himself from urinating, biting his lower lip and squeezing his eyes shut harder, but his efforts instead of stopping the continuing stream only made it stronger.

"You," squeaked the mouse gleefully as he looked up from the checker game, "are in so much trouble!"

Jaice didn't open his eyes until the wetting had finally stopped. It took about ten seconds, but to the agonized fox, it seemed like five or more minutes had gone by.

He tried to stand again, but as he did, he heard a sloshing sound, as more liquid trickled from the diaper, and he froze in a crouch, unsure whether to sit or whether to stand, and he remained there as though if he remained immobile long enough, this situation would resolve itself.

"Fenton!" squeaked the mouse, and Jaice cringed as he heard a nonchalant, "Yeah?" from the other room. "That sissy fox wet the rug and his chair!"

After a few moments the raccoon trudged in, grumbling. "Is that true?" he asked, eyeing the fox, who was still in his half-squat.

"Nuh-uh," Jaice said. Summoning all the craft of foxes, he recalled how an article he read for work about Rovean political strategy had often enjoyed success hitting opponents 'where they were strong' regardless of facts, and he decided to try it.

Flying in the face of the visible evidence, Jaice straightened up, rolled his shoulders back, and pointed directly at the mouse's long nose, causing it to twitch curiously, and he calmly stated, "He did it. Then he tricked me into getting up and switched our seats."

The raccoon laughed. "He has a point. You are sitting in his chair. It says 'J. C.' on the back of the seat, in case you hadn't noticed."

The mouse squirmed and jumped up with an alarmed and defensive squeak. "I-- I-- Check his diaper right now!"

Fenton shook his head slowly. "I don't feel like it. I just changed him like twenty minutes ago. Maybe I do let him drink a little too much soda, but it hasn't been that long. Maybe I shouldn't let you drink soda, either. Maybe I need to revise your privileges."

The mouse was nonplussed and, rather than attacking Jaice again, he floundered defensively. "Oh, who are you to boss us anyway? You--you--you wet more than both of us put together! And you always have! You used to wet in gym class for heaven's sake! You wet so much your own dad probably sold you into this strange little baby set-up and you probably had less to say about it than any of us!"

Fenton blushed and frowned, and his shoulders hunched forward and in as he lowered his head, but Jaice moved quickly and decisively, waddling over to the distressed raccoon, putting a paw around his shoulder, and nuzzling his ear. "I'm sorry he said that, Fen. He didn't mean it. You're no baby. I know how big and strong you are."

The fox, acting on instinct and adrenaline, bent over and tried to touch his paws to his toes, as he looked back up at the raccoon over his shoulder. He wiggled his soggy bottom and said with a breathy eagerness that would have surprised even himself, if he could hear it, "I mean, we both know you can spank me whenever you want. It's because, well you're so strong that I can't stop you, and so competent, that I wouldn't want to argue with you."

When there was no immediate response, the fox wiggled his bottom again, and reached up behind him to take Fenton's paw loosely by the wrist and swing it a few inches back and forth in a gentle swatting motion.

Fenton didn't look up for a moment, but the right corner of his mouth curled up in a slight grin. "You," he said to the fox, "are obviously soggy, you little devil. But you," he raised his head as he concluded, leveling his gaze on the mouse, "are even more obviously a brat. They say girls have better manners, so maybe you'll learn from one. I think, as soon as I clean Jaice here up, I'll let him wear a Naruto tee-shirt, and watch him have a tea party for a couple hours and introduce his other toys to his new baby-doll. A posable one that he can dress however he wants. Maybe one that can only say a few stock phrases."

The mouse's ears collapsed and he squeaked fearfully.

The fox, still bent over, looked at the mouse and stuck his tongue out triumphantly. He missed his Daddy, of course, but life until Christmas, he had to admit, was getting more interesting daily.

End, Part One.