Chapter 7: Some time later
Mae woke to the subtle, persistent pressure of a full bladder and the deep, structured embrace of the harness. Dawn light, thin and gray, seeped around the edges of Tom’s blinds. She was on her back, anchored to the bed, the familiar weight of the webbing a second skin. The night’s use had left her diaper swollen and warm, a damp insistent presence between her legs that pressed firmly against the snug crotch of Tom’s borrowed onesie and the harness straps that held everything in place.
She turned her head on the pillow, the movement restricted by the chest straps.
Tom was already awake, propped on one elbow, watching her. His eyes weren’t sleepy. They were dark, focused, drinking in the sight of her—strapped down, vulnerable, utterly in his care. His gaze traveled slowly from her helmeted head, down the column of snaps on the onesie, to the pronounced bulge at her hips. A possessive hunger lived there, quiet and intense.
A soft, involuntary sound escaped her, muffled by the silicone mouth guard still seated between her teeth. A whimper, part need, part awe at the raw intimacy of his look.
He moved then, fluid and silent. He shifted closer, the mattress dipping. He didn’t touch her at first. He just leaned in until his lips were a breath away from the curved shell of her ear, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that vibrated through her helmet. “Morning,” he whispered.
She hummed in response, her body stirring under the restraints.
His hand came to rest on her lower belly, palm flat over the damp, padded bulk. He pressed down, gently. The pressure was direct, undeniable, and a sharp pulse of need made her hips twitch against the bindings. She whimpered again, the sound clearer this time.
“Shhh,” he soothed, his breath warm against her neck. “I know. I felt you get heavy during the night.” His fingers traced the line of the top snap at her hip. “Let me take care of you properly this time.”
Her breath hitched. ‘Properly.’ The word conjured the clinical efficiency of the bathroom last night, contrasted with the charged, creative intimacy of the workshop before it. This felt like a new category altogether.
His fingers found the first snap of the onesie, between her breasts.Pop. The sound was shockingly loud in the quiet roomShe swam up from the depths, awareness returning in slow, heavy pulses. First, the pressure. A deep, even compression around her ribs and torso, a firm hug that held her firmly to the mattress. Then the familiar, swollen bulk between her legs, warm and damp, pressing insistently against the crotch of the harness. The overnight diaper was full, a soggy, inescapable weight that her sleeping body had used without hesitation.
A soft, involuntary whimper escaped her, muffled and distorted by the mouth guard. She blinked, her vision blurred behind the goggles she’d slept in. Morning light, sharp and golden, cut through the blinds of Tom’s bedroom, painting stripes across the rumpled duvet.
He was already awake. Propped on one elbow beside her, watching. His expression wasn’t sleepy or soft. It was dark, focused, utterly still. His gaze tracked over the lines of the harness straps, the swell of the grey cotton onesie where it stretched over the diaper, the way her lips parted around the silicone guard. There was a possessive stillness to him that made her breath catch.
She whimpered again, the sound tinny and small. She shifted her legs, the ankle cuffs restricting the movement to a faint rustle of sheets. The movement made the dampness shift, a cool reminder.
Tom’s hand came up. He didn’t touch her face. Instead, he hooked a finger under the soft cloth bib she now wore, a simple square of navy blue cotton tied around her neck. He used it to gently dab at the corner of her mouth, catching a bead of drool that had escaped the guard’s seal. The gesture was so routine, so unthinkingly intimate, it made her chest ache.
“Morning,” he said, his voice rough with sleep. His eyes hadn’t left hers.
She tried to form a word, but it just came out as a wet, questioning hum around the guard.
“I know,” he murmured, as if she’d spoken. “You’re wet. You’re pinned. And you’re probably wondering if last night really happened.” A faint, warm smile touched his lips, but the intensity in his eyes didn’t fade. “It did.”
His hand left the bib and drifted down. Not to the harness buckle, but to the column of snaps that ran down the front of the borrowed onesie. His fingertip found the top snap, just below her collarbone.
He leaned in closer, his breath warm against her ear. “Let me take care of you properly this time,” he whispered, his voice a low vibration she felt in her bones. “No workshop. No assessments. Just me. And you. Like this.”
He waited. His question hung in the sunlit air, woven through with the scent of lavender from his sheets and the faint, intimate smell of her own night. This was different. This was a choice, made in the clear light of morning, with everything between them laid bare.
She closed her eyes. Then she gave a single, slow nod, her helmet rubbing softly against the pillow.
The sound of the first snap popping open was impossibly loud.
The coffee machine in the sun-drenched kitchen hissed its final sigh. Tom poured the steaming dark roast into two heavy ceramic mugs, the familiar ritual as ingrained as breathing. Through the wide, low kitchen window, he could see the back garden—a curated tumble of lavender and ornamental grasses, paths wide enough for a chair, everything planned for stability and calm.
He carried the mugs across the seamless, matte-finished flooring, his steps quiet. He entered the study, a room flooded with soft, north-facing light.
Mae was already deep in it. She sat in her custom recliner, a throne of padded leather and adjustable supports, tilted back at just the right angle. Her laptop was voice-activated, the screen a scrolling tapestry of text. Her fingers, clad in soft-tipped typing gloves, danced over a condensed keyboard on the lap tray, making tiny corrections. The durable goggles were secured under the familiar, sleek curve of her helmet. A simple grey cotton onesie, today’s choice, covered her. And, as had become her constant preference, the silicone mouth guard was nestled between her teeth, a faint bulge in her cheek.
As he watched, a thin strand of drool escaped the corner of her lips. Her tongue pushed the guard forward slightly, and she lifted a hand—not to her mouth, but to the small, absorbent cloth bib tied around her neck. She dabbed meticulously, never breaking her silent, focused pace with the narrative on the screen. It was a gesture as natural as blinking.
Tom set her mug—half-full, cooled with a splash of cream, the way she liked it—into the secure holder welded to the chair’s arm. He placed his own on the low table beside her, next to a stack of her notebooks and a very real, very fat ginger cat named Barnabas who was shedding on a draft manuscript.
He sank into his own chair, the one positioned to be beside her, not opposite. He picked up his own tablet, pulling up the schematics for a client’s accessible bathroom remodel. The silence between them was rich, full. Not empty.
After a few minutes, Mae’s typing stopped. She leaned her head back against the headrest and made a soft, humming sound around the guard.
Tom looked over. “Stuck?”
She nodded, her goggles glinting in the light. She reached up, her movements slightly clumsy with the gloves, and pulled the mouth guard out. She set it in a shallow dish on the lap tray, already holding a few others in different colors. She swiped the bib across her lips again.
“The assassin is in the ventilation shaft,” she said, her voice clear but bearing the faint, relaxed cadence of someone who’s been silent for hours. “He’s about to drop into the villain’s office. But it feels… predictable.”
Tom smiled, sipping his coffee. “Does he have to drop?”
She blinked. “What?”
“Ventilation shafts are cliché. What if he doesn’t drop? What if he gets stuck? Or what if the villain, who’s paranoid, has the shafts lined with some kind of… sensitive mesh? A silent alarm that isn’t about pressure, but about air displacement.” He shrugged. “Just a thought. From an OT who thinks too much about environmental sensors.”
A slow, brilliant grin spread across Mae’s face. It was the look he lived for. “Air displacement,” she repeated. She grabbed a notebook, her glove making the pen skid a little before she started scribbling. “Yeah. That’s good. That’s mean.” She glanced up at him, her green eyes sharp and full of light. “You’re useful.”
“I try.”
She scribbled a moment longer, then replaced the pen. She didn’t reach for the mouth guard immediately. Instead, she looked out at their garden, her expression turning soft, contemplative. “Remember when you first saw my old apartment? All that stained carpet and my sad little desk?”
“I remember proposing twelve modifications in the first five minutes.”
“You did.” She looked back at him, her gaze unwavering. “Now look at this place. You built a world for me, Tom.”
“We built it,” he corrected gently. “I just drafted the plans.”
She picked up the mouth guard, turning it over in her gloved hand. “I never thought… this. Any of it. The house. The work. This.” She gestured between them with the piece of silicone. “Waking up like that, years ago, in your bed… I thought it was a beautiful, terrifying exception. Not the beginning of a rule.”
“What’s the rule?” he asked, his heart beating a little faster, as it always did when she ventured into this territory.
She popped the guard back in, settling it with a soft click. She picked up the bib, dabbed at a fresh trickle of moisture, and then spoke, her words slightly blurred but perfectly clear to him.
“The rule is you,” she said around it. “Always you.”
The words hung between them, softened by the muffling silicone but sharp in their meaning. Tom’s throat felt tight. He reached over, his thumb brushing the strap of her bib, then the curve of her jaw below the helmet. He didn’t trust his own voice just yet.
Barnabas the cat chose that moment to launch himself from the manuscript and onto Mae’s lap tray, scattering notecards. The spell broke, but gently, like a bubble landing on grass.
“Traitor,” Mae mumbled around the guard, scritching the cat’s ears with her gloved fingers. “You’re supposed to inspire gothic loneliness, not comic relief.”
“He’s inspiring something,” Tom said, watching orange fur drift onto her grey onesie. He took a steadying breath, the warmth of her declaration settling in his chest. “You’ve got a press interview at two, right? The phone-in with that literary podcast?”
Mae groaned, a deep, resonant sound. She pulled the guard out, dropping it into the dish with a clatter. “I’d forgotten. I was on a roll.” She gestured at the screen, where her assassin was now presumably pondering air displacement physics. “Do I have to?”
“Your publicist emailed me three times,” Tom said, grinning. “She thinks I’m your glorified secretary now. I told her you were in deep-dive composition mode and might be nonverbal. She said ‘perfect, radio listeners won’t know the difference’.”
A snort of laughter escaped Mae. “She’s not wrong.” She sighed, the creative glow fading from her eyes, replaced by the pragmatic focus of preparing for the outside world.“Okay. Help me shift gears.”
The transition from her writing nest to getting ready was a familiar dance. Tom cleared the lap tray, lifting Barnabas away despite his yowl of protest. Mae unclipped the keyboard and voice-mic, powering down her screen with a voice command.
She pushed the lever on the chair’s side, bringing herself upright. The movement shifted the damp bulk of her diaper, a reminder of the morning’s intimacy. She met Tom’s eyes, a flash of something private passing between them before she looked away, reaching for the wheels of her chair.
In the bedroom, sunlight illuminated the stacks of her adapted clothing. She wheeled to a specific drawer, pulling it open. “The small-gauge cotton one,” she said, more to herself than to him. “And the denim overalls. The structured ones.”
Tom knew this meant the version of her public uniform she chose when she needed to feel both protected and professional. He retrieved the items: a soft, slate-blue onesie made of a thinner, more breathable cotton, and a pair of dark denim overalls with modified buckles on the shoulders and extra room in the seat.
“Do you want—” he began, holding the clothes.
“I’ve got it,” she said, her voice firm but not unkind. This part was hers. Her independence was a ritual, non-negotiable. “Just… turn the chair?”
He did, angling her power chair so she faced the full-length mirror mounted at her height. He then gave her space, busying himself by straightening the bed, the harness straps now coiled neatly on the nightstand. He listened to the sounds of her movement: the whisper of fabric, the rustle of a fresh diaper from the discreet drawer built into her dressing table, the soft, efficient tapes being fastened.
When he glanced back, she had changed. The thinner onesie was indeed smaller, fitting her like a second skin, the snaps running from throat to crotch. The denim overalls were sturdy, the bib front providing a sense of containment she sometimes craved. She was attaching her mouthguard not to her person, but to the overalls themselves—a small carabiner clip fastened it to one of the sturdy shoulder strap D-rings.
Next came the bib, a simple square of navy linen. She tied it around her neck with practiced, one-handed ease, tucking the corner into the overalls’ bib front. She surveyed herself in the mirror, adjusting the sit of her helmet, the goggles underneath. She looked, as she always did when geared for the world, both incredibly vulnerable and utterly impregnable.
“Ready?” Tom asked, grabbing his own jacket and the small go-bag he always packed for her: spare diapers, wipes, a backup onesie, a water bottle with a specialist valve.
“As I’ll ever be,” she said, spinning her chair towards the hallway. “Let’s go pretend to be normal for an hour.”
The garage was cool and smelled of concrete and motor oil. Tom’s SUV, a modified model with a lowered floor and a ramp, sat waiting. The rear passenger door was open, the ramp deployed.
But it wasn’t a standard vehicle seat inside. It was her seat. Tom had designed and built it himself over many long weekends in his workshop. It was a replica of the supportive contour of her favorite chair at home, but with five-point harness points integrated seamlessly into the frame. It was upholstered in the same stain-resistant, soft-grip fabric that covered her living room furniture.
Mae powered her chair up the ramp and executed a smooth lateral shift from the chair to the car seat, a move they’d practiced to perfection. Tom secured her wheelchair in the cargo hold, then climbed in beside her.
He watched as she fastened the harness herself. The automotive-grade straps clicked into the central buckle between her legs with a solid, satisfying thunk. She pulled the shoulder straps tight, then the lap belts, snugging them over the denim of her overalls with a series of purposeful tugs. The final strap went across her thighs, securing her firmly into the molded seat. She settled back, her head against the custom headrest, and let out a long, controlled breath.
Tom leaned over and pressed a kiss to her temple, just above the edge of her helmet. “My rules are simpler,” he whispered.
“Yeah?” she said, looking straight ahead through the windshield.
“Always you, too,” he said. He started the engine, and the garage door rolled open, letting in the wide, uncertain world.