✅ My Cousin's Keeper [NaNoWriMo 2021]

63. My Unexpected Bonus

Once Tess was out of the door, I turned my mind back to our plans for Christmas. I had the dates my little would be away now, and I doubted there was anything I could do to change her plans at this stage. So we would need to reschedule the day of regression play to before she went. That gave us less than a week, which would certainly make the process harder. However, I was confident in my ability to organise any event quickly and efficiently; that was one of the things that made me sure I was destined to be a little's Mommy, even before I remembered Tess and knew she was the one I would be nurturing. The big one in that kind of relationship needed to be confident, assertive, playful, and organised; four areas I excelled in.

Once Tess was gone, I quickly finished getting myself ready, and jumped in the truck. I had things to sort out this morning, especially now I needed to make Christmas come early. I didn't need to worry about work; especially now that Reznor owed me for taking on some of his work last Saturday. He would cover for me if Jessop was in before I arrived. I drove down to Pine Ridge, and parked at the side of Brock Street. I had stopped here so many times, to ambush Ffrances for a quick fumble when she was on the way to work. This time it was different; I walked over to the hedges I'd seen her emerge from so many times. It was strange, but in all the time we'd been together, I hadn't actually visited her at home. She lived in Pine Ridge somewhere, but I didn't know if her apartment would be somewhere in sight of work or not. I could only hope.

"Hoping to follow me home?" her voice surprised me as I peered out through the gap in the hedge. As expected, it was a residential cul-de-sac. I guessed that the lack of Ffrances's car anywhere in sight meant that she had walked here, while there was plenty of space to park a car at the end of the little road. So she probably lived a few hundred yards away, where walking would be quicker than starting up the car. Unless she had a garage, of course.

"No, how about I bundle you in the back of my car, and take you back to my place?" I joked. And then the serious thought: "Tess is being weird again. You know I said she didn't want to talk about the details for plane tickets and all that?"

"Yeah. It was only last night. So she admitted she wants to stay? Is she asking if Spike can crash for Christmas?"

"No! No, what world does that even make sense in? A guy like that, she knows we're not going to be so..." I paused, and took a deep breath. That wasn't the issue. "She'd know better than something like that. But anyway, she's tried to do it herself. Doesn't want me to check the details or anything. Some of those forms can be a real pain, but she's sure. Like she feels she'd be letting me down if she asked for help, she has to do it all herself, you know? Well, she told me now she's sent it off. But if she's made even a small mistake on the visa, or the declarations, they won't let her board the flight. She'd be so broken up. So I hope it's right. But..."

"But refusing help is a problem, right?" Ffrances always knew where I was coming from, it was like she was reading the words off the back of my head. "She feels like she has to be an adult even if she doesn't want to. You think that she's finding it harder to find her littlespace?"

"Yeah. She... she acted like the hypnosis helped. And after we treated her like a little one for a day, she was smiling and grateful for the next few days, even if she felt obliged to deny it. But maybe that only lasts so long. I've given her a pacifier, and she said that helps, but I don't know if it's enough. I think she feels like she can't be little, because she has too many responsibilities. She needs another chance to play, I think. To remind her there's nothing wrong with being a little."

"I know someone else like that," she said. I heard a faint sound while she was talking, her phone vibrating, but she pulled it out of her pocket with one hand and didn't look at it yet. "Definitely interested in being little, but can't imagine abandoning their adult responsibilities. Responsibilities they shouldn't even have. I want to help them both, ifI have to move heaven and earth to do it. But the Christmas plan runs into a logistical problem. When's she going?"