Elle nervously fidgeted in place, clapping one paw to the front of her deep blue skirt, barely concealing a lump of damp paper pulp. “Uh, Clyde...? I’m kinda wet. You think you could, you know...” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Change me?”

Clyde looked down at the bear cub with one eyebrow raised incredulously. “Change? Like, diaper change?,” He barked back at an uncomfortably conspicuous volume.

Elle looked up at the sloth bear with burning cheeks and spoke through gritted teeth. “Yes.” Louder please, you dummy. If her little brother Byron found out, he would laugh at her. Worse, he would watch.

Clyde drew in a deep breath and exhaled it in quiet resignation. He was not particularly comfortable with the situation either, but as the only grown up currently in the house, he was the designated diaper-er, whether he liked it or not. “You know I’ll see everything, right?”

Elle stared up at him with weary eyes. “YES. Duh.” She’d worn diapers her whole life, aside from the occasional, optimistic pair of training pants. They hadn’t invented a diaper change without some degree of nudity.

Clyde shyly looked in the opposite direction, a bead of sweat forming on his brow. He changed Byron’s diapers plenty of times, but this was a whole other animal. Or rather, the opposite gender of the same animal. “And I’ll have to clean your butt and sugar walls.”

Elle curled her fingers into petulant fists and threw her arms behind her in defiance. She shot icy daggers at Clyde, raising her voice to a high-pitched, ursine snarl. “I KNOW that! Now stop being a baby and change my- wait, sugar walls?”

Clyde shrugged with an apologetic look on his face, his own cheeks alight under his shaggy fur. “You know, like the song.” The song that was popular thirty years ago. The song many times older than Elle, with lyrics far from appropriate for a child Elle’s age. That song.

Elle didn’t know what that meant, but she was pretty sure there was nothing sweet down there, especially with a drenched diaper swinging from her waist. “Please don’t like this,” Elle moaned, nervously smoothing out the pleats in her dress with an open paw. “It’s gonna be weird if you like this.”

“It’s weird NOW,” Clyde silently lamented. He sank a fang into his thin black lip, thinking it would be better to keep his comments to himself and keep things from getting weirder. Silently, he reached for the cub’s little hand and motioned over to the changing table. “Mfph,” he muttered as a finger was waved in the general direction of the table. Elle solemnly nodded, and the two walked in unison, like outlaws to the gallows.

“Two minutes. Get in, get out, no sightseeing,” Clyde thought to himself. For a three year old, Elle was prim and erudite and quite convinced of her maturity, an island of calm amidst Byron’s ceaseless tornado of chaos. Ninety percent of the time, she was as low maintenance as a goldfish, a blessing for any sitter who already had their hands full. Yet the reality was that for all her posturing, Elle was still just a baby, and she still needed her diapers. Knowing he would see Elle naked, prone, and helpless almost felt like a breach of their unspoken professional relationship. This was going to be like wiping the piss off his accountant’s warm, damp cooch... and the worst part is that Clyde couldn’t honestly say it was going to be an entirely unpleasant experience.

Nearby, Elle’s nerves prickled with nervous anticipation. It would be weird if Clyde liked this, but it would be even weirder if she liked this. The cub expected Clyde to be professional, and had a face full of claws for him if he was anything less, but wasn’t sure if she could say the same for herself. All her sitters were girls... it had been years since she’d been changed by a boy, and that was her father. It was going to be different, somehow. She narrowed her eyes and shot a determined look at the table. “Stay still. Don’t get nervous. And whatever you do, don’t giggle if it tickles.”