Dayton: The Junior Guardian Chronicles: Episode 37

The dish clinked faintly against the tabletop as Ezra lowered his face to the water. 

Cool, filtered, faintly plastic. Underneath it, that stubborn, clean chemical tang clung to everything in the cafeteria, the ghost of sanitizer wipes and a mop bucket that had seen too much. He hated how thirsty he was. Hated that his tongue had to flick the surface in small, careful pulls instead of just… drinking like a person. Hated the pace of it, the humiliating slowness. 

But the lapping worked. 

That was the sick part. 

It didn’t just pass through him the way it had earlier when he’d tried to sip from something upright. It stayed. It settled. He could feel it sinking into him gradually, like his body understood this new rhythm on an instinctive level. Like it had been waiting for the bowl, for the correct form of “hydration,” for the kind of consumption designed for something small and domesticated. 

He swallowed, throat tightening. 

He hated that even more than the bowl. 

He hated that Dayton understood his body better than he did. That she’d been right about the pellets. Right about the gulping. Right about the way his new physiology didn’t care about his pride. 

Around him the cafeteria roared, a cathedral of adolescent noise: laughter that burst and echoed, chip bags crackling, plastic forks tapping trays, chair legs screeching in sharp little screams. From this low vantage point, placed deliberately on the table like an accessory, Ezra heard it all with a strange clarity. 

He tried to stay small. To disappear into the normal chaos. 

And then a shadow fell across the table, clean sharp edged and adult. 

“Hi, Ms. Whittaker!” Hayden said brightly. 

Ezra froze mid lap. His nostrils flared on instinct as his brain latched onto the name. 

Cassie. 

Not Ms. Whittaker in his mind, not in that first flash. Cassie Whittaker, his student teacher, the one who used to hover at the back of his classroom with a clipboard and a too eager smile, the one who’d tried to mirror his tone until she found her own. 

Her silhouette stretched long over the tabletop, blazer crisp, shoulders squared, blocking out the cafeteria’s cheap ceiling lights like she brought her own professional lighting rig with her. Hayden had noticed her first, but Nicole and Hannah chimed in with polite echoes, their voices suddenly syrup-sweet in that automatic way kids did when they wanted an adult to think they were innocent. 

Ezra didn’t dare look up. 

Not while his mouth was still wet. Not while a single wrong movement could turn him into a choking, sputtering spectacle. If he jerked his head now, he’d spill. He’d cough. He’d look like a toddler. 

But if he kept drinking? 

He’d look like what he’d become. 

Dayton’s Little. Dayton’s pet. 

He swallowed carefully and forced his body into stillness, muscle by muscle, the way he’d taught kids to settle when they were spiraling. Then, slowly, he rose, easing back onto his knees in the little booster pad Dayton had placed beside her tray. 

It was humiliatingly soft. Plush, like a tiny pet bed. And it wasn’t meant for comfort. It was meant for positioning. For a Little sit. For neatness. 

His spine stayed stiff. His hands curled into his lap. He kept his eyes down even as Cassie’s presence pressed in above him. 

Ms. Whittaker, now. 

She didn’t look at him for long. Her attention went where the new power was. 

Dayton. 

“I just wanted to tell you I’ll be taking over as your English teacher,” Ms. Whittaker said. Her tone was crisp, professional, the parent-teacher-night voice Ezra remembered, tight-lipped and rehearsed. “And I wanted it understood there’s a clean slate between us. I don’t want there to be tension over… what happened.” 

Her eyes flicked briefly, clinically, toward Ezra’s collar. Then back to Dayton. 

“Dayton,” she continued, “I’ll be grading fairly. Based entirely on your work.” 

It was a peace offering. 

It was also a boundary. A quiet promise that she would not be him. 

Ezra’s chest tightened. Something old and instinctive rose in him, that reflex to manage, to smooth, to reclaim an adult footing in a situation that suddenly felt like it was slipping away forever. 

“Cassie—” he started, voice low, trying to force dignity into a throat that no longer carried authority. 

Dayton’s head snapped toward him with lightning speed. 

Ezra felt it like a leash tug, even without a leash. 

“She’s a teacher,” Dayton said, and her voice wasn’t loud, but it had a blade in it. “My teacher. You will address her as Ms. Whittaker.” 

The correction hit him harder than if she’d shouted. It wasn’t just about etiquette. It was about the fact that she could correct him publicly and he had no social weight to resist it. 

Dayton’s eyes flicked up to Ms. Whittaker again and her tone shifted seamlessly, like she’d toggled modes on a screen. 

“Thank you, Ms. Whittaker,” Dayton said. “And sorry about him. A lot happened today. I’ll make sure my Little addresses you properly going forward. That’s on me.” 

Ezra watched it happen in slow motion: the teacher’s polite smile tightening, the way her gaze slid over him without landing, like he was an item on Dayton’s tray, not a colleague who used to stand six feet tall and hold a room with his voice. 

Like he didn’t exist. 

Ms. Whittaker nodded once. “No worries,” she murmured, and then she was gone, heels clicking toward the staff lounge with the kind of authority Ezra used to wield without thinking. 

The shadow lifted. The cafeteria sound rushed back in. 

Ezra’s throat felt raw. “She was my student teacher,” he said, quiet and strained, as if stating the fact might anchor him. “We have a—” 

“You will address my teachers respectfully or not at all,” Dayton cut in, not even bothering to look at him as she twisted open her iced tea with a sharp snap. “You don’t have a student teacher anymore, Ezra. You don’t have a class. You don’t have students.” 

Each sentence was a door shutting. 

She took a sip, calm as ever, then glanced at Nicole. Nicole’s mouth twitched like she hated that a part of her enjoyed seeing Ezra corrected after years of watching him zero in on Dayton like it was a hobby. She didn’t like this. She just… understood it. 

“You’re a Little,” Dayton added, setting the bottle down. “And Littles don’t get casual with my teachers. That’s kind of the problem, isn’t it?” 

Hayden leaned forward a little, eyes bright with that half-mischief, half-honesty she couldn’t turn off. “Also… it’s kind of weird, Ezra. There’s like a line. Student-teacher line.” 

Nicole rolled her eyes, but she wasn’t disagreeing. “You’re basically an extension of Dayton. So if you’re calling her Cassie, it’s like Dayton is calling her Cassie.” 

She lifted a crisp and crunched it like punctuation. “And that sounds… too cozy.” 

“It is a little creepy when you say it like that,” Hannah admitted, her voice soft, shoulders rising in a small shiver. 

Ezra’s jaw tightened. “It wasn’t—” 

“It was,” Hayden said immediately, then softened because she couldn’t help herself. “Not like… creepy creepy. Just like… you trying to be an adult in a kid space when you’re not… that anymore.” 

The words landed with a thud. 

Ezra looked down at the table. The water dish sat there, innocently stable, rubber-bottomed, impossible to tip. A tool made for a body like his. A tool that didn’t care what he used to be. 

Nicole, already trying to drag the mood back toward normal, pulled out her planner. The motion was so familiar it felt like a magic trick. Like she could erase what had just happened by making school feel like school again. 

“So,” she said, flipping a page. “Ms. Whittaker is probably going to assign something insane to prove she’s not him. Should we write our next essay for the group project from the point of view of a Little?” 

Hayden’s face lit up. “That’d be hilarious.” 

Hannah giggled. “Oh my god. Like, ‘I am tiny and everyone is loud and I hate bowls.’” 

Nicole nodded thoughtfully, already planning. “We could do it as like… dystopian realism. Make it actually good.” 

Hayden leaned in toward Ezra, grin returning, like the table needed a joke to breathe. “You can be our Little consultant.” 

Hannah followed, smiling too, but gentle. “Yeah. Like, you can tell us what’s accurate.” 

Ezra’s first instinct was to bristle. He didn’t want to be “consulted” like a novelty. 

Then, underneath that, something colder and more practical slid in. 

Academics was one of the only arenas he still understood. It was a place where size didn’t automatically erase competence. Where his mind, at least, could still be useful. 

He swallowed, the faint taste of pellets still on his tongue, water cooling his throat. 

“I…” Ezra began, and he hated that his voice sounded careful now. “If you’re writing from that perspective, you’ll need to avoid turning it into parody. It’s not just ‘everyone is loud.’ It’s… scale. Risk. Dependency. Routine.” 

Hayden blinked. “Okay, Professor,” she said, but it wasn’t mocking. Not really. 

Nicole’s eyes sharpened with interest. “Wait, that’s actually good. Like… the sensory stuff.” 

Hannah nodded quickly. “Yeah. Like how you said the water stays. That’s… a detail.” 

Ezra felt something strange in his chest. Not hope. Not forgiveness. 

A small, uncomfortable sense of being used in a way that wasn’t purely ornamental. 

Dayton watched him for a second, expression unreadable, then went back to her lunch, the conversation sliding naturally into weekend plans and boba flavors and what thrift stores counted as “cute” versus “musty.” 

Ezra sat on his booster pad beside her tray, collar charm faintly jingling whenever he moved, and realized with a sick clarity that this was how the world would keep going. 

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