"Do you think, um, maybe..." Ollie played with his fingers as a tinge came to his cheeks. Excited as he was, the boy wasn't as adept at taking advantage of adults as his friend, and as such the blackmailing words were slow in coming. "Do you think you might wanna be a baby for a little bit?"
It would be safe to say that that was the last thing Nevin had been expecting. He gaped at the boy as Justin, practically beside himself with giddiness, giggled and bounced on his heels.
"Yeah, that's whatcha gotta do!" He exclaimed, immediately on board with the plan. "If you don't we're gonna go up to Ollie's mom right now an' tell her about all the stuff you've been doing."
"I mean, it's not like you'd be that little forever..." Ollie gushed, gaining momentum as he was carried along by his growing excitement. "It'll be just for tonight. I promise. You can even turn back before we go to sleep to make sure nothing bad happens. Right Justin?"
"Right!" Justin chirped, willing to agree to anything that would make this happen.
Nevin numbly looked between the boys' eager faces for a long moment, the few words he could come up with dying in the desert his mouth had become. The main issue wasn't that he was being blackmailed by a pair of seven-year-olds, though that certainly added to the utter absurdity of the whole situation. No - what was really making his heart and mind race was the fact that what was unfolding right now was almost exactly what he had fantasized about ever since he was Ollie and Justin's age. That someone who had sensed his yearning desire to re-visit his babyhood would turn him back into an tiny, adorable, utterly dependent little toddler. Nevin would make a show of fighting - even though the entirety of his resistance would amount to little more than kicking and crying and pouting around his pacifier - but inwardly he would love every last little moment, love the way his regressor smirked down at him as he was tenderly wrapped in a crinkly, soft little disposable. Back in diapers, he'd inwardly coo as he squirmed in his infantile undergarment. Little baby Nevin's back in diapers.
That yearning only grew stronger as he plowed deeper into his adulthood and grew more distant from the carefree days of which he dreamed. Even so, Nevin could only bring himself to become that young when he was one hundred percent certain that he had the house to himself for a good long while, and even then he didn't dare stray out of the basement for fear of being caught. The habit had become the most fulfilling part of Nevin's life, those times spent in solitary toddlerhood what kept him going when the grind of being an adult became too much to bear. Restored to his two-year-old form, Nevin would squeal indignantly at imaginary captors even as he clumsily diapered himself, whining about wanting to be a big boy again until his invisible regressor - via his own stubby hand - silenced him by pushing a pacifier between his lips. Subdued, the baby would pretend to slowly but surely give into an infantile mindset, one that allowed him to gleefully play with his toys and toddle in exploration around the basement in nothing but his size four Pampers.
Admittedly, his fantasies never featured a pair of second-graders as his ostensible captors (that role was typically assigned to Melissa), but beggars couldn't be choosers. He knew that this was a bad idea on a lot of levels - but he also knew that he might never get another chance to make his fantasy a reality, especially if one of the boys went ahead and spilled the beans on him anyway. After a long moment - in which both Ollie and Justin had grown visibly impatient - Nevin took a deep breath and addressed his blackmailers, doing his best to fill his voice with hesitance and distaste.
"...fine," He grumbled. "If it's just until you guys go to bed, fine."
Ollie and Justin looked as though they might explode from excitement but Nevin silenced them with a sharp look and a finger in their faces.
"But not one word of this to anybody, do you understand? Not one word."
The boys nodded in unison. Nevin studied them for a moment...and then he strode over to the box and plucked out the articles of clothing he used to erase the last twenty-nine years of his life, the tiny Care Bears socks (with Hugs on the left one and Tugs on the right) that had been his favorite when he was two the first time. With trembling hands - and the boys watching his every move with unblinking excitement and awe - Nevin slowly slipped one of the socks onto two fingers and closed his eyes.