✅ My Cousin's Keeper [NaNoWriMo 2021]

2. My Preparation

This extra chapter is dedicated to anon. Thank you, and thank everyone, for supporting me on Patreon.

I read up everything I could find on littles. I wanted to know everything that could go wrong; having decided that a cousin I'd not seen in years was going to be my little, I needed to be sure that I could make it work for her, and that I knew how to make her enjoy it. The hardest part would be getting her into the right headspace, but I'd learned a lot of basic psychology in the time I'd been dating Ffrances, and I knew that the biggest part was the environment. If I could get her comfortable with just a few childish things, maybe a cutesy nickname, then I could build on that. But if she was surrounded by the right environment for a toddler, it would be so much easier for her to slip into her headspace without even noticing.

I had some neighbours around for drinks the day after the first message, so I made sure to get some good photos. People after a few drinks, doing dumb things that they would groan about being reminded of in the morning. Not anything that would give a bad impression; more good friends with lowered inhibitions, not the kind of drunkenness I might have seen in my college days. I didn't send any pictures of the room Tess would be living in, because I wanted her to be surprised.

What I did do for her room was pick out paint, furniture, and details that would be perfect for a toddler. I wasn't sure yet what her little age would be, so I made sure there was stuff in there suitable for any age from 9 months to 9 years. That was practically her real age anyway, so she might not discard everything without a thought, and then I could work on gradually expanding the age range of things she would be willing to play with.

The biggest effort went into getting the walls painted. I could have done it myself, but I wanted it to look perfect. Thankfully there were friends I could call on. A local guy who I'd done some favours for in the past could be persuaded to come in the same day, and give the room a complete makeover. Not just the paint work, but a decorative border set slightly higher than normal, a door handle a couple of inches above the most common height, and shifting the light switches and outlets just a little, would create a subconscious impression that the room was smaller than it seemed; or help the girl waking up here to feel a little smaller than usual. I'd already seen in her father's emails that Tess didn't like anyone mentioning her height, so I had to make sure that there was nothing she would actually notice was off. I needed to make her feel small in a safe place; not feel like I was calling her small.

It reassured me, as well. If she was constantly picking fights if someone treated her like a child, she would put up a wall between herself and the rest of the world. If I could get her to understand that she was still a cute little one, I could help her to get over that. To make the most of her natural cuteness, so she could enjoy it rather than always being in denial. Of course I couldn't be sure that she actually was that cute, because asking for a picture would have seemed weird. But I had no doubt that she would become just as adorable as she'd been ten years before.

Once the decoration was done, I started on the furniture. The bed in there was a camp bed, that had only seem occasional use when college friends came to stay over, but it was quickly packed away and stashed at the back of the attic. I found a new bed for her, with a wooden headboard made of twisted vertical rods. The kind of thing that might be reminiscent of a baby's crib, without any distinct point you could put your finger on. Slightly larger than a standard size as well, which made it harder to find cute character bedding decked out with princesses and stars, but a person with enough determination could find anything. A bigger bed could help her feel nice and small, and she wouldn't even notice the extra eight inches without something to compare it to. The same for the increased height; it wasn't something that most people would even notice.

It took more than a week to get everything ordered; and then once it was delivered I spent an hour every evening pushing the furniture around, trying different layouts. In the end I settled on the first rough arrangement that I'd tried, just with the changing table on the opposite side of the window. Still, the movement had served its purpose. The vivid pink carpet no longer looked or smelled new; there were faint marks that would never quite fade where the a bookcase full of heavy textbooks had stood for a week and a half. It gave the impression that this was a room that had been used as a nursery for several years before I even moved in; so my baby wouldn't be suspicious. And the smell of paint had already faded. Everything was perfect.

I had three more days to plan. I still needed to think about some things; I needed to make sure that I wasn't going to upset my new baby. I needed to be sure that she would be happy here, and for that to work she needed to know that I wasn't mocking her, that I didn't see her as a child. I would be her friend, until she was comfortable letting her little side out around me.

* * *

"You sure she'll like it?" Ffrances asked, when we were reclining on the couch after a tough hour of moving furniture around. And other activities; which were just as tiring, but came with more immediate rewards. We'd probably have to change the bedding in the nursery again before Tess arrived, but we still had a few days to do that. I'd told my cousin Trish and her family that Ffrances and I were away enjoying ourselves, having finally got work schedules that allowed us to take a vacation at the same time. It wasn't really a lie; we'd only been back for a day when I got the first email from Grandma Forton. But if Tess noticed anything out of place, it would be easier to dismiss her concerns if she thought that I just hadn't had time to get the room ready for a child her age.

"Tess?" I answered, not quite sure what the right thing to say would be.

"Yeah. I mean, you said she likes pink, but isn't that a bit too much?"

"She'll love it. She's just... look, I can trust you, right?"

"What kind of question is that to ask your girlfriend?"

"Yeah, I was just thinking too much. Like, I'm nervous about it. But I think I should tell you the truth..."

It was a long conversation, but I'm sure she understood.

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