✅ My Cousin's Keeper [NaNoWriMo 2021]

149. My Last Deception

This bonus chapter is dedicated to Jordan. Thanks again for all your support!

I woke up smiling again. A couple of days had passed since we watched the DVD, and I had already noticed that Tess wasn't resisting being babied. If I gave her a pacifier, or asked to braid her hair, she would just accept it. I wasn't quite sure what suggestions Ffrances had given her to enforce this, but it didn't matter about the details. Tess couldn't be trusted to manage her own regression now; so it wouldn't be long before she got used to being a complete baby.

The only fly in the ointment now was Spike; and that too was only a matter of time. I could be more comfortable with that boy being around now that I could think of him as a girl whenever he was present; but there was still the fear that he would try to steal my baby away from me. Which had gotten even more intense when I realised the next day just how little attention I'd paid to his attempts to grope Tess during the movie. Sure, I'd had a lot on my mind, while Ffrances and I had spent a good portion of the screen time making out. But seeing the kids following our example should have been an immediate sign that I needed to be responsible.

I had to remind myself that he still had the instincts and urges of a boy, and that how I perceived him didn't actually make him any less likely to take advantage of her. I'd thought it was okay because he was a girl and therefore trustworthy; putting too much weight on how things appeared to me.

It had been the same yesterday. I'd heard that Ffrances was getting off work early, and had signed off on my own work to get back here before her. The kids were both home, of course, now that the school had disbanded for summer. I'd come into the lounge and found Tess reclining on the couch, apparently rewatching Captain Kairo, although the video was paused. I'd heard Spike's footsteps going upstairs, and immediately known that I needed to interrogate them as soon as he returned, to make sure that they weren't doing anything that would impede Tess's regression. But as soon as she came down in a dress, my worries had slipped my mind. That was a big deal now; that he was still a boy, and we'd managed to cure my suspicions, rather than the situation that made it reasonable. Now my perceptions had changed, I needed to make sure that Spike actually started feeling and acting like a girl, then there would really be nothing for me to worry about. And with an email to Tess's parents last night, I'd already set plans in motion to make sure that they would tell Ffrances what she needed to hear.

"What's that?" Ffrances asked, and I realised that I might have said her name out loud. She was awake, of course she was. She could be such a light sleeper at times.

"Nothing big. I was just..."

"Sounds like you're thinking seriously. Want to tell your Mistress what's bothering you, honey?"

"I... uhh..." I stammered, flustered. I wanted to speak to Trish Naylor before Ffrances talked to her about it, to make sure that she said the right things. I wasn't actually ready for this conversation yet. But maybe it would be okay; I was pretty sure that they would wait to talk to me before saying anything about Spike to Ffrances. That had been the whole point of last night's email. I decided to go for it. "I was thinking about Spike. We need to help her."

"Help how?" Fframces asked, giving me a couple of second to think, and to put my thoughts together. The important thing was to tell Ffrances my idea, and then to set up everybody else so that when she read between the lines, it would seem that everybody else agreed but didn't want to talk about it directly. Then I could persuade her to include some gender-change suggestions in Spike's hypnosis sessions, and before long the horny teen boy wouldn't be around to corrupt Tess anymore.

"Did you know he's transgendered?" I said, and immediately realised my mistake. "She, I mean. I should start using the right words all the time now. But I'll do that myself, that's not something I want to cheat with." And I didn't want Ffrances to change my perception full time, because that would just make me too complacent to realise when my plan needed a little nudge.