Someone Else’s Dream

Chapter 2
Sweetness

Chapter Description: Fleur awakes to a brand new Sophie - perhaps even a too perfect Sophie?

Fleur was an adult baby. She had known this about herself on some level since she was a teenager, though she didn’t have language to articulate it at the time. The eldest of three sisters, she had grown up as her parents’ little helper. When they couldn’t be bothered, the job of parenting her younger sisters fell upon her own young and inexperienced shoulders. When the burden wasn’t taken up by anyone else, it was Fleur who had to play with them to soothe them, prepare their lunches when they were hungry, and change their nappies when they did their business. The younger siblings, Emily and Maisie, were nine years younger than Fleur. They weren’t even her full siblings: they were the product of her mother’s second marriage. 

All of this responsibility at such a young age was bound to take its toll. Compounded by the lack of attention she received from her mother and stepfather, no matter how well she did at school or how impressive she tried to be at home, she acted out in subtle ways. When her parents were otherwise occupied, she started pinching unused baby items that collected dust in the cupboards under the stairs. Unused dummies, toys, and other items found their way into her room where, on the odd evening, she would get them out quietly and use them. If only for a moment, she could pretend she was the baby and someone had to take care of her for a change. That all this coincided with her earliest teenage urges sealed her fate: when she imagined herself with another boy or girl at school, she thought of them as her caregiver and herself as their nappied, happy, bouncing little girl. 

Romances at school were fleeting. She was considered ‘cute’ by her peers and hadn’t quite grown into herself like other girls at school. A few snatched kisses with a girl in the year above (whom she later discovered married an estate agent and “discovered Jesus”) came to naught when she asked to call her “mummy”. Getting that lesson learnt, Fleur aimed to be a bit more cautious in pursuing her deepest desires. 

By the time she was 18, she wanted nothing more than to leave home and start afresh in London. There, she could be her authentic self with less fear of being caught - even if she couldn’t practice her true sexuality openly. She had her own laptop for uni work, ostensibly, but she soon used it to discover whole online communities catering to her predilections. Forums and pornography and ABDL suppliers furnished her with a new language, a new community, and a new sense of self. Still, she kept it all hidden and didn’t even dare to buy anything online until her second year, when she moved in with Sophie and Mia. Neither of them seemed the nosy types to go poking around in her business, which meant she could hoard her infantile treasures in a Barbie pink lockbox under her bed. 

She could recall the first day Sophie noticed Bobo the bear upright against her pillows. Fleur was so embarrassed and almost acted like she’d been accused of murder by her housemate rather than simply being asked the name of her stuffed friend. She told Sophie and Sophie just laughed before asking if it was a childhood toy. For some reason, perhaps wanting to be caught in some perverse way, Fleur replied “yes, he’s been mine since I was little”. That was the truth, after all: the real ambiguity was when her littleness had started and whether it would ever end. 

Boyfriends and girlfriends came and went, none of whom ever got close enough to Fleur to see what lay under her bed. The lockbox stayed locked and could never find the right person to open it. The men at university were not ‘daddy’ material by any stretch of the imagination, and any young woman she found who stirred her ‘mummy & baby’ fantasies almost invariably turned out to be painfully straight. The latest boyfriend, Tom, was possibly the closest to finding out about her deeply ingrained fantasies. She had asked to call him ‘daddy’ in bed and had insisted she be spanked during foreplay, engaging in the more socially acceptable end of sexual brattiness. He was clearly a bit perturbed by her left-field sexual preferences and, after six months of dating, he decided to call the whole thing off. This is where the accusation of Fleur’s immaturity had arisen and from whence she would swear off men altogether (for at least a few months). 

And so it was that she turned to Sophie, a friend but never an interest in that regard, to moan about her partners in the lead-up to dumping them. She was a good listener, Fleur thought, and had an unwavering commitment to supporting her female friends no matter what. 

On Sunday the 17th of March, at about 8:00am, Fleur awoke as she did after any night of great stress. Her dummy was slick with saliva on the pillow, Bobo was pressed tightly against her chest, and her hair was a wild mess of curls. The first thing that hit her was a smell - faint yet sweet - drifting up from downstairs. Rushing to put her adult baby items away below her bed and pull her hair out it its frazzled pigtails, Fleur got a pair of tracksuit bottoms on and a pink t-shirt over head before racing downstairs to see what Sophie was cooking. At the top of the stairs, the vague smell solidified into something more familiar: pancakes. 

“Morning!” Sophie shouted out from the kitchen in a sing-song voice. Fleur stomped her way down the stairs and turned the corner into the kitchen to see her housemate plating up a stack of blueberry pancakes. She seemed different, less serious and much chirpier than usual. She had gotten dressed in soft tracksuit bottoms of her own, a white vest where her nipples poked out, and a light blue cardigan. 

“Well, well, look at you - you’re like a little housewife. Are these for me or did someone stay over last night?” 

Sophie rolled her eyes as she drizzled maple syrup. 

“Oh, don’t be silly! I just thought you deserved a pick-me-up, that’s all.” Sophie picked up a hand sieve and sprinkled powdered sugar over the thick stack of fluffy, American-style pancakes. “Eat up - we have quite the day ahead.”

As Fleur pulled out a chair and sat down, she threw a quizzical look Sophie’s way. 

“Wait… wha-??” she mumbled, mouth half stuffed with the delectably sweet pancakes and syrup. Sophie picked up her coffee mug and pulled up her own chair to sit across from Fleur.

“Careful not to choke!” Sophie held out a napkin for Fleur to wipe the sticky corners of her mouth. “But yeah, I just thought - ‘Fleur’s having a tough time, we could do with getting out the house, blah blah blah’. You know you don’t want Mia being the only one having fun this weekend, don’t you?” 

She could hardly disagree on that last point. The two stay-behinds needed to stick together and have some fun while Mia was probably sipping cocktails on a yacht overlooking the Mediterranean. When she returned, that’s all they would hear about for the next month, after all. 

When she was done eating and Sophie had drunk the last of her coffee, Fleur hurried upstairs to have a shower and get dressed. Meanwhile, Sophie remained downstairs to clean up. Once Fleur was finished with her shower and had picked out a t-shirt and jeans to go under her lavender zip-up fleece, she rushed back down to find Sophie had not only cleaned up but had dried up, put everything away, and had changed herself into her overcoat and jeans. She really wanted to go out for the day, it appeared.

The park was ten minutes away by foot and was bustling with people. Sunday morning run clubs, young families, dog-walkers, and just about everyone else in the area were all taking advantage of the warm spring day. Summer was coming, perhaps even sooner than most people expected. On that note, the two girls saw that an ice cream van had pulled up by the northern entrance gates and a rather long queue had formed. About a dozen people were standing in wait. Fleur couldn’t keep her eyes off the van the entire time she walked about with Sophie, even when making conversation about topics entirely unrelated to the bounty of cold treats before them. Noticing that Fleur was distracted, Sophie abruptly stopped and grabbed her by the hand.

“Come on, I know you want it!” 

Fleur could not argue with Sophie’s words and soon switched roles to be the dragger rather than the dragged. They waited in line for five minutes, Fleur impatiently fidgeting the whole way while Sophie eyed her. It was different, though. If Fleur ever let out any little behaviours, she usually got an icy and judgment glance from Sophie. This time, however, there was a slight smile on Sophie’s face and a warmth expressed by her eyes.  Rather than judgement, there was a feeling of contentment - perhaps even outright enjoyment - at Fleur’s child-like movements. 

They reached the van and Sophie went ahead to order for the both of them. 

“Almond Magnum for me, please, and a… 99 with chocolate sauce and nuts.” The order was exactly what Fleur wanted - and she didn’t even have to say a word. Sophie even paid! The men in Fleur’s colourful dating history could have learnt a thing or two from how Sophie was treating her.