Clark looked up at Wes, with soft, pleading eyes. “Weth,” the boy began to yawn, “can we pwease just go home? I think we’re too tired to pway.”
The little boy held out little hope that his pleas would be met with any sort of agreement, seeing as Wes was clearly hellbent on enacting his humiliation-filled revenge, so both boys were pleasantly surprised when the man actually acquiesced.
“Ya know what, boys? You’re actually kinda cute when you’re all tuckered out. And maybe you’ve suffered enough today, haha! I’m sure we’ll have plenty more time for fun tomorrow anyway,” Wes relayed, unsuccessfully hiding a devilish grin at his mention of “fun.”
Clark looked across Wes’s torso as he carried them out of the bathroom, meeting eyes with Nick, who seemed increasingly exhausted with each subsequent suck of his pacifier. He was grateful that it was Nick, not he, that Wes had forced a pacifier onto, unsure that his ego could handle such a slight.
Finally out of the store, Wes strapped the two into their car seats and took off for home, each of the boys falling asleep after their arduous trip to the store.
…
It wasn’t until he smelled the aroma of someone cooking in the kitchen that Clark awoke, finding himself tucked in on the couch in his living room. He turned toward the kitchen to find Nick sitting at the counter, watching as Wes prepared pasta for the three of them. Suddenly, the toddler was acutely aware that he had not eaten anything nearly all day, and he was thankful that he had woken up right in time for dinner.
Clark pulled the blanket off himself, undoing Wes’s careful work to tuck it under him, and found himself still in just a shirt and diaper; though, he couldn’t complain, since he had woken up dry, sparing himself another diaper change by Wes, at least for the time being.
Carefully, little Clark lowered himself off the couch and took big boy steps all the way to the kitchen. He toddled past Nick sitting on the chair and went straight to Wes, tugging meekly at his pant leg.
“Oh, look Nick,” Wes cooed, bending over to pick up the groggy little tyke. “Your little boyfriend’s up just in time for din din!”
Wes planted a kiss on Clark’s little forehead, asking, “So you must be hungry, huh little guy?”
The cutesy talk definitely rubbed Clark the wrong way, but the way Wes was talking now, the genuine, endearing tone in his voice, resembled more the Wes who had looked after little Clark the first time and not the Wes who had tormented him and Nick at the store. Some part of this man must have truly savored the chance to play daddy with the two boys. In that moment, for as frustrated as he was to be in his regressed state, Clark found himself amenable to this version of Wes. Maybe it was the fact that the man was about to alleviate his swelling hunger pangs, or maybe it was some innate, repressed desire to be taken care of, but Clark soon responded to the man with a hug, wrapping his tiny arms around the man’s neck as he was held there.
Nick, who was currently being entertained by videos on his phone, looked up to see this encounter and was delighted that at least a minor bond had been forged through all of this petty revenge seeking between the two rivals.
Wes returned the toddler’s hug, feeling a deep remorse for his outburst at the store, and he brought Clark over to the chair next to Nick, sitting him down. While letting the sauce simmer on the stove, Wes pulled up a stool to the counter, sitting opposite the boys.
“Clark,” Wes began somberly, “for what it’s worth, I’m sorry about what I said to scare you at the store…”
Nick turned to Clark, curious as to what transpired between the two in the dressing room.
“Tomorrow morning, I’m gonna make this right, okay?” Wes announced, now, to both boys. “And we’re all gonna put this shit behind us.”
Clark offered up a genuine smile to the man. “Fank you, Weth.” The boy was relieved that their would-be days-long stint in diapers was actually ending much sooner. And come to think of it, that meant he could finally indulge his feelings for his best friend and roommate, as an adult, for the first time. He found himself immensely turned on by the thought, but the thick, white layer of padding spared him the embarrassment of being exposed as such.
“You’re welcome, bud,” Wes replied. “Tonight, though, I wanna have one last night with the two cutest little guys in the whole world, so how’s that? One more night in diapers never killed anyone, right?!”
“Whatevuh makes you happy, I gueth,” Nick answered, chuckling slightly at the man’s fervent desire to act as their father figure.
“Perfect!” Wes exclaimed. “All right then, boys, let’s get some food in your little bellies.”
At this point, both Nick and Clark were famished, and they both looked on, delighted, as their de facto caretaker plated their dinners and set them up each with the smallest salad forks he could find in their kitchen drawers.
It only took a few tries each with their forks and shaky toddler dexterity before each boy’s shirt and diaper was adorned with red sauce splatters and only a few tries after that before Wes found himself tenderly cleaning their adorable faces every so often throughout the meal.
After their dinner and Wes’s herculean effort to clean up the boys’ unintentional mess, Wes noted how late it had gotten. “Okay, boys, I’m gonna go grab some clean clothes from my place real quick, and then we’ll get you guys cleaned up and ready for bed!”
The two toddlers, who had been carried over the couch to facilitate Wes’s cleaning of their chairs and counterspace both nodded in understanding before returning to Nick’s phone for entertainment.