As Hitch silently slid another spoonful of mashed bananas into Sprout's mouth, he wasn't quite sure how to start cutting through the air of awkwardness that had surrounded his charge for the weekend ever since he had gotten his former deputy out of bed this morning. The red stallion was mostly silent now, clearly still ashamed of what the tea had revealed the previous night before bed.

In short, today hadn't been nearly as fun as yesterday had been, and Hitch wanted to be careful with his words and not make things any worse or more awkward than they already were.

He honestly couldn't blame Sprout; his actions in bed last night may as well have been done under hypnosis, and the realization of it had shocked him the next morning as much as it did Hitch as it was happening.

The trickiest part of this situation was what Izzy had told him this morning; that the effects of the tea wasn't entirely because of the beverage, but due to feelings that Sprout had been keeping buried inside. The fact that the tea had dug up those feelings against his will was the primary reason that Hitch wasn't holding it against him.

He also didn't quite know what to make of it just yet.

As he almost passively spoonfed Sprout as he sat at the dining table, Hitch thought back to when he had walked into Sunny's and Izzy's hotel room, and his reaction to seeing how Sunny had embraced what had intended to be a punishment for Sprout. He remembered the secondhand embarrassment he had felt when he had seen one of his oldest friends getting her diaper changed by the unicorn.

He hadn't experienced any feelings like that the past 24 hours with Sprout. Was it because this treatment had been his idea in the first place? Or was it because he was mentally trying to warm up to the idea that his other foalhood friend had a crush on him? Honestly, it was probably a bit of both.

He was on the last spoonful of bananas when there was a knock on the front door.

"Be right back, pal," Hitch told him, getting up from the table, going through the living room, and to the front door, opening it to find Izzy on his doorstep once again. He stepped through the doorway and softly closed the door behind him.

"Hey there, Izzy. What can I do for you?" Hitch asked.

"I just did some shopping for the Brighthouse," Izzy explained, motioning to a small wagon back on the road in front of his house. "And I thought since your situation with Sprout is kinda sorta my fault, I'd get something that might help out."

With the explanation out of the way, Izzy pulled a small shopping bag out of her saddlebags, and floated it over to Hitch, who took it in his left hoof and looked inside.

Izzy Moonbow had bought him a bottle of lubricant.

Hitch's eyes widened as he tightly clenched his hoof around the bag, closing it tightly, as heat rushed to his face again.

"And just how is this supposed to help?" He half-whispered, not wanting Sprout to hear him.

"Well, in case you think you might reciprocate Sprout's feelings. I didn't want you two to be... Unprepared if you come to that conclusion. If not, you can certainly donate it to Hoofwill," Izzy answered.

Hitch sighed in resignation.

"Okay, thanks Izzy, I'll let you get back to the other girls," he said. The unicorn gave him a smile.

"Thanks. Hope Zipp hasn't been too overwhelmed while I've been gone getting more supplies. Have a great day, Hitch!"

With that, Izzy turned around and got herself hooked up to the wagon, and continued taking it towards the new lighthouse on the coast. She pulled up to the front doors and took in the contents of her wagon in two separate loads taking them down to the basement.

"Finally, there you are," Zipp said, spotting Izzy coming inside with the new mattresses, pillows, and bed sheets for once the cribs downstairs were put together. "You're cooking lunch, Izz. I was on diaper duty when you were out shopping all morning, and these two were quite the stinkers."

The pegasus' comment made both Pipp and Sunny, who were working on their separate cribs, blush.

"Sorry I took so long, Zipp. Had to make one extra stop. But now that I'm back, you got it; some delicious lunch coming right up. The nursery looks like it's coming along great!"

Once he had stealthily returned to his room and put the bottle of lube in the nightstand drawer, Hitch took Sprout back to the living room, set him among his toys, and started a movie on the TV while he relaxed on the couch, and continued to think his way through the possibilities of getting into a... A relationship with his former deputy. The two of them were no longer working together, so there wouldn't be any implications on any professional front. The other big question was obviously, if he 'went that way'.

The fact that he didn't immediately toss the bottle of lube back at Izzy, and that he had been thinking about it for this long, took him to the conclusion that he was bisexual at the very least. He looked down at his padded friend down on the floor, sitting amongst his PoneBloks and race tracks, splitting his attention between his current building kit, and the movie that was playing on the TV screen. Hitch's eyes slowly widened as he came to an undeniable fact:

He liked the way Sprout looked. Had this been in the back of his mind when he had first given this idea to Phyllis? Of course he had told himself all along it was a chance to set him straight, and make her realize her errors as a parent... But had he wanted to see Sprout like this all along?

Whatever direction he chose, whatever choice they made, he knew the two of them would have to deal with this, directly. This morning's suggestion of 'let's just forget it' was not going to work in the slightest. This was obviously stressing both of them; Hitch had lost his confidence as a caretaker, and Sprout hadn't been firmly in his headspace all day because of his unwilling actions last night.

Hitch knew these were feelings that Sprout had intended on leaving buried; for how long, he had no idea, and maybe Sprout didn't know either. He felt bad that his friend's secret was exposed to both of them. Izzy clearly felt bad too for her unwitting part in it, but the unicorn had been nothing but encouraging to him, giving him what he would need if that was a direction he wanted to try.

Once again, the fact that he was just being overly cautious and not mentally backing away from the idea in disgust made him realize that... Maybe he owed Sprout this chance now that his feelings were laid bare. So did they just... Dive in and see where things went?

"Hitch? You okay?"

Sprout's voice snapped him out of his train of thought, and he glanced back up at the screen, seeing that the credits to the movie had rolled and it was now sitting at the main menu.

"Hm? Oh, sorry, bud. Is that the time already? I'll go get dinner started. How's pizza rolls sound?"

Hitch didn't really even wait for an answer before he was off the couch and over in the kitchen preheating the oven.

Sprout groaned in frustration as quietly as he could, going over to the DVD player and ejected the disc, returning it to its case and shutting the TV off. This weekend had taken an absolute bomb dive. He didn't want to be mad at Izzy, but he certainly wanted to beat her down with a pillow or two for a few minutes, for either not knowing exactly what that magic tea did, or knowing and not warning them of all the side effects.

He plopped himself down on the carpet again in the middle of his toys. They weren't going to be able to forget about this. It wasn't going to be that easy. Thanks to that stupid tea, his friendship with Hitch was changed forever. Even if they were able to move past his little stunt last night, they would be reminded of it every single time they so much as glanced at each other.

It made his stomach cramp up something fierce. No wonder he hadn't had to go all day so far, this stress was constipating him like crazy.

He slowly fell back onto his back, sprawling out on the carpet, staring at the ceiling, wishing that he could just sink under the foundation and disappear. He laid like that, unmoving, until the oven timer pulled him out of his mental fog.

"It's ready, come and get it," Hitch announced.

Sprout rolled over onto his stomach and got to his hooves, sauntering into the kitchen, and took his usual spot at the dining table as Hitch set down a platter of piping hot pizza rolls.

The meal was delicious, but silent and as awkward as everything else in this dreaded day had been. As the bites he took slowly became less savory as he had to try avoid glancing across the table at Hitch, Sprout finally snapped, swallowing his current bite.

"Ugh, I can't take this anymore, Hitch," he announced, his eyes tracing across the designs of the tablecloth to the stallion sitting across from him. "Let's face it. Today has sucked. Maybe it would be better if we just... Called the rest of this weekend off. I could go home tonight, maybe if we spend some time apart, this'll be easier to forget about."

Hitch swallowed his current bite of dinner, and his eyes met Sprout's nervous gaze.

"Is that what you want?" Hitch asked him directly.

Sprout drew in a quiet breath, and his gaze fell back to his dinner plate, which had five uneaten pizza rolls on it.

When Sprout's answer didn't come and all he did was stammer, Hitch got up from his chair, leaving his dinner where it was, and walked around the table to where Sprout sat.

"Come on," he said. "Let's get you out of that," Hitch said, motioning down to his wet diaper.

Sprout breathed a quiet sigh of relief as he was half-pulled out of his chair, out of the kitchen, down the hall, and into Hitch's bedroom. Hitch softly patted the edge of the bed, and Sprout knew what to do, climbing up on the bed, and laid down on his back, letting his hind legs dangle off of the edge while Hitch dug through the diaper bag for the pack of wipes.

To the red stallion's surprise, he came up with not only the pack of wipes, but a fresh diaper as well. He didn't quite know what to say or do as the sheriff promptly unfolded it, fluffed it up, and got the back wings slid underneath his wet diaper, and got the top tapes on both sides of his dock, ready to tape up once the wet one was removed.

"What are you doing? I thought I was going ho—"

"That's not going to work, Sprout," Hitch said as he began to untape his friend's wet diaper, peeling the front off of his groin and immediately going for a wet wipe. "And we both know it."

Sprout shuddered from the sudden change in temperature on his diaper area as Hitch began to wipe down his stallionhood that was quickly growing in size, both from the fresh air, as well as the stallion's gentle touch.

"You're right. Today has sucked. It's been stupidly awkward for both of us, and neither of us has really enjoyed ourselves at all today, because we foolishly thought this situation was just going to disappear. Well, I think we got our answer to that hope today. It's not going to disappear. It's going to hang over both of us until we deal with it. At least that's what I think..." Hitch said, tossing the wipe away, and went over to his nightstand, pulling the drawer open and pulling out an item that Sprout couldn't quite make out.

"What I need to know is what you think. If you really, really want me to, I'll finish cleaning you up, put that clean diaper back in the bag, and send you on your way. But I don't think that's the best solution. In fact, I think that's the worst one, because I don't think that's what you really want. Yeah, your feelings that you've been keeping to yourself were magically revealed last night and clearly neither of us was expecting them to come out in the manner in which they did. But now that they're out, they have to be dealt with. So..."

Hitch paused, revealing the bottle of clear lubricant in his right hoof, showing it clearly to Sprout, and the red stallion's eyes widened when he saw what it was, as well as the fact that he now saw the tip of Hitch's unsheathing stallionhood poking up just above the edge of the bed.

"Do we deal with it? Do we take these feelings, dive in, and see where they go?"

The question was direct, and Sprout knew exactly what Hitch was asking as his best friend stared down at him expectantly, waiting for an answer and balancing the open bottle of lube on the hoof he was holding up.

The poor stallion felt as if his heart was going to burst out of his chest it was pounding so hard.

Screw words. Screw making sense of things. Sprout took one more deep breath, and as he let it out, he nodded at Hitch.

"I need to hear you say it, Sprout." Hitch told him matter-of-factly, as he leaned forward sightly, and put part of his weight on the bed. "Yes, or no?"

Sprout clenched his teeth behind his closed lips as he felt the wet diaper he was laying on squish beneath him as the bed shifted under Hitch's added weight, as well as the crinkling of the clean one underneath that. Nearly breathless, Sprout opened his mouth to give his answer, feeling like he just might spontaneously combust with the words that awaited on the tip of his tongue.

"Yes, Hitch. Please."

Author's Note