chaos but small

🐇 - likes alice in wonderland. i think she relates a lot to both alice and the mad hatter, so she adopts the vibes and uses the story when she's small as a way to sort through her thoughts and feelings. she likes having tea parties, bunnies, and the royal fantasy aesthetic so it works well as a way for her to bring some continuity within her chaos.

💔 - she enjoys regressing because it means she can create her own memories, ones that finally belong to her—in theory, at least. she likes being able to relive a childhood she never had, discovering things she likes but that the human never wrote about. her memory is still pretty fuzzy overall, so there are a lot of days she doesn't remember a whole lot about herself, but it just means she gets to rediscover everything she likes all over again.

🐇 - she’s very up and down with her headspace. some days she’s hyperactive and excitable, and other days everything is overwhelming and scary. she's very sensitive when she's older, and that's even more true when she's small. she has a lot of self-loathing, and struggles to understand why anyone would like her while she's little. regressing helps her process her feelings, both good and bad, so there's a lot of emotional baggage that comes with it.

💔 - very attached to her plushies and cries when one gets left out or lost. she sees them as imaginary friends (or like they’re alive—similar to toy story) and takes their friendship very seriously. she knows that she hates being alone, and hates being abandoned, so she projects that on to them. she can do the same to her cg too. she isn't necessarily codependent, but it's something to be wary of. she becomes very attached very quickly to anyone that shows her kindness while she's small, and it can really mess with her mental health.

🐇 - she's very hands on with activities. she likes drawing, scrap booking, and playing pretend. she's, surprisingly, not super into being read to, even for bed time stories. she gets too emotionally involved with the characters and gets upset at the rigidity of a story when/if bad things happen—with the only exceptions being her favorite versions of alice in wonderland (though, she does prefer the movies).

Tonight had piled onto you quickly, left you feeling as though you’d done nothing right all shift. It’s hard to ignore even with the distraction that comes from focusing all your undivided attention onto your patients. Little mistakes irritated you most, small what if’s or i should have’s grasping at your ankles and knocking you down despite your best efforts to push past it and do better, work harder.

Words of encouragement hadn’t done much to help you up the figurative slope you’d been climbing all night either. They felt undeserved coming from those around you, quick pep talks from residents and nosy comments from med students refusing to settle the anxious churning in your stomach.

Jack sent you off on a short break with a granola bar and a promise to take a breath after a few particularly hard cases. It’d annoyed you at first, instinctively made you want to bristle and bare your teeth, knowing your attending was getting entirely too good at reading you at times. You’d quickly brushed the feeling aside though, feeling more warm at being cared for than you’d like to admit aloud.

The break wasn’t much, but it gave you a second to recenter yourself, screw your head back on, and get back out there. With a little more confidence than before, you stepped back out. You felt better for a total of five seconds before you realized tonight was just not going to be a good night.

By the end of your shift, you’d managed to barely pull through. Your eye bags had somehow deepened in the span of hours, your scrubs had definitely seen better nights, and simply blinking felt like it took an exhausting amount of effort.

In reality, you looked as worn down as you felt.

Still you kept going, stubbornly lingering in the hospital far longer than you reasonably should after the absolute shift from hell that you’d just experienced.

You shouldn’t be surprised when Jack makes his way into the empty break room you’re in, but you are anyway. His brows are already pinched together into that knowing look, the kind that makes you feel as if he can see right through your every nerve and muscle. His hands twitch at his sides with the urge to comfort and soothe but he does his best not to make you feel smothered after an already overwhelming day.

He sighs quietly when you purposefully ignore him, turning your back to him and shifting your focus on trying to make yourself one of the terrible cups of coffee known to keep the staff at ptmc running. Your hands shake as you fumble with the paper cup and your shoulders tense further up the longer you stand there.

Jack doesn’t say anything for a moment, just leans his weight against the counter and tracks your frazzled form with his eyes. You’ve already taken to prattling your own excuses for why you’re still here.

Whether you’re trying to prove something to yourself or to others, he’s not sure of yet.

He only manages to catch your skittish gaze when you glance over briefly at him. The worried look he’s fixing you with is enough to make you pause your ranting, breath hitching in the back of your throat when your voice stutters to a slow stop.

Jack is entirely familiar with this state of mind, felt that way time and time again when faced with his own difficulties. He’d fought the urge repeatedly to throw himself into work until he’d felt satisfied and distracted from his own thoughts. He’d even been guilty of it in recent moments, spent too much time either at work or somehow managing to bring work closer through his hobbies.

He was restless and he recognized that in you too.

It’s never been unusual for you to get sucked into work after a shitty day, a clear attempt to cling at the semblance of structure that comes with it despite your body actively telling you that you need to slow down. He’d taken to reminding you of this even before you’d regularly started coming to him to help you decompress from the stress you placed onto your own shoulders— sent you off with one of those fatherly pats to the back and a “go get some rest kid, please.”

In the silence of the empty break room, he sees the first crack in your barely held together exterior. He doesn’t acknowledge it directly yet, knows you’re far too sensitive to handle it—your skin burning and prickling and your mind simply all too aware of every little thing around you.

He does what he always finds himself doing, opening himself up to you. He unfurls his arms in a subtle invitation. I’m here if you need me. Your bottom lip trembles with the effort of keeping yourself from letting that final sliver of control go, twitching downwards and upwards again in a shaky grimace.

His heads tilts further down and you finally crumble underneath his gaze.

On shaky legs, you hurl yourself at Jack’s chest with enough force for a quiet oomph! to escape him. Your shoulders slump immediately as if the invisible string keeping them tensed had been suddenly cut above your head.

Your face tucks naturally into his collarbone, the side of your head bumping painfully against his chin for a split second. He doesn’t react to the dull sting of pain that spreads throughout his jaw, instead he nudges his face closer and wraps his arms around your waist in a firm embrace.

His chest rumbles with short soothing hums, gruff and familiar in all the ways that make you melt further against him. Your cries are quiet and muffled against his chest, almost unnoticeable if not for the proximity between you both. One of his hands runs over your back in the same way it always does, an even and firm pressure that seemingly manages to reboot your whole system.

Gradually you begin to relax, your cries fading into sniffles and your hands gently loosening their once tight grasp on the bottom of Jack’s black tee. You let yourself indulge in the comfort of it before taking a clumsy step backwards, the bright and artificial lighting of the room somewhat disorienting you for a small moment.

Your palm wipes messily over your face, roughly brushing away tears and snot to the best of your abilities (which isn’t too well if either of you are being honest). Jack doesn’t protest when you loop a hand around his arm, gently shoving him towards the door and stumbling along only a half step behind him.

“Yeah, we ready to go now, hmm?” It’s the first he’s spoken through this whole ordeal. His voice is a quiet coo, meant only for you as you both finally make your way to the locker room. Gathering your things is a mindless task, fingers punching in the numbers your muddled brain somehow manages to produce to unlock your locker off the top row.

Jack grabs your things without prompt, scooping yours and his own bag into a single large hand while helping to guide you out of the building. No one questions the sight of you two, they only spare a sympathetic glance towards you and take your appearance at face value—you’ve had a rough night.

Your feet kick lightly at gravel with each step taken, pebbles scattering beneath the toes of your sneakers all the way up until you make it to the side of his truck. There’s a water bottle pressed in your palms before you can protest, a strong arm quickly helping you up into your seat and securely buckling your seatbelt over your lap.

Jack’s climbed into the driver's seat in less than a blink, already pulling on his own seatbelt and starting the truck’s engine with a simple turn of his keys. Your eyebrows furrow at the beginnings of a sunny day, nose scrunching up and eyes falling shut to block the light out. Even with closed eyes, you can tell when the sun visor on your side is flipped down— the quiet shuffling of a hand giving the man beside you away.

so he works. and he doesn't ever ask for a scrap of softness in return.

but that doesn't mean he doesn't need it. that doesn't mean it doesn't ache in his chest, constant and hollow. it seeps into his soul, fatigue etching into his skin, weighing him down. it takes more effort to control his temper, to hold tears at bay, to act normal.

pathetically, he just... really wants his papa. a papa, not the man who raised him, an unfeeling stranger. no, the papa he was supposed to have, warm and steady and tugging him into a safe lap. he never had anything quite like that.

it's a busy day at the hospital, and the combination of people dying around him and monitors beeping and orders being shouted and the ache of his feet make tears sting constantly at his eyes. he fights it all day, the tidal wave that threatens to pull him under, make him feel small. not now, not now, please, not now.

he can usually stave it off. he tries not to give into it, his littler side. deep shame sits heavy on his shoulders over it, the needs he has, the yearning for all things soft and small. he gives himself the opposite. harsh words muttered under his breath, calling him weak, calling him stupid, calling him useless. his father's words sour in his mouth.

try as he might, he can't run from it forever. it all comes to a head when he gets home that night.

something harsh didn't set it off. there was no patient death that especially got to him, no text from Amy asking for last minute help, not even anything that inconvenienced him. traffic was manageable. Robby is humming in the kitchen, cooking something for dinner.

no, something soft breaks the dam inside of him. Robby, who's always gentle, taking on a somehow even softer edge. reaching out to tenderly cradle dennis's face, brown eyes rich with concern, thumbs stroking Dennis's even darker-than-normal eyebags. Dennis breaks with a murmured oh, sweetheart, you look so tired. what's wrong, baby?

and Dennis shoves him back, body shaking, tears brimming too quick to hold back. burning at his eyes, slipping down his cheeks. he opens his mouth to shout something, fists curling— maybe a don't touch me or an I'm not a baby or don't pretend like you really care. don't act like I'm more than just a burden to you. or maybe a pitiful please hold me.

none of those words make it out. instead a sob scrapes the walls of his throat as it pushes out of him, loud and ugly as he sinks to the floor, curling up. his cries turn to wails, childish and overwhelming, so violent they hurt. they ache in his chest and burn in his throat and eyes, hiccuping and tearing their way out of him.

whoa whoa whoa, baby, sweetheart, oh, angel, what's going on?! dennis? denny, baby, ohh, oh... robby's words sound muffled in Dennis's ears, his fists beating on a solid chest as arms try to scoop him up. petulant no's sob out of him, but Robby pays them no attention, curling Dennis tightly into his embrace.

it takes a while. Dennis is pent-up from burnout and shoving his little side so far down inside of him for so long. the wails shudder to cries shudder to sobs shudder to sniffles. shaky little breaths against robby's shoulder, the fight draining out of him, fists no longer beating at robby's chest or arms. he is utterly, completely, wholly exhausted.

papa.... whimpers weakly out of his mouth, and humiliation doesn't burn through him as it usually does. having Robby here, a safe person, a warm presence, slips him deeper into littlespace than he's ever been on his own. his brain is fuzzy, his body made up of more feelings than thoughts. small. he feels so, so small.

Robby picks up on it instantly. he takes in the information and does as best he can with it. adjusts Dennis more comfortably in his embrace, starts rocking him slow, gentle. oh, baby, papa's here. papa's here, little one, it's okay... shh, you're safe. you're not alone. not alone anymore.

not alone seeps into Dennis's sensitive little mind, soothes something lodged deep inside of him. not alone, not alone, not alone. papa's here. it makes him hum soft in the crook of robby's neck, slump a little further, tension draining out.

there you go, Robby whispers, starting to pet his back in warm, rhythmic circles, there's my sweet boy. my little angel.

Dennis struggles to speak, words slurring as they come out, too fuzzy and tired for much more than that. his voice is a little higher-pitched, softer and shyer. m'sorry.. m'sorry, papa, don' wan' be a bad kid... didn' mean to...

robby's heart aches in his chest, the thought that this precious boy could ever feel like he was bad so devastating. oh, sweetie, no. papa's so proud of you for getting all those big feelings out, okay? so proud. you're such a good boy, such a good kid.

dennis nods against him, words all used up, little sniffles starting up again at the sweetness he's still so unused to. being taken care of feels so, so good, but it's still hard to process. it emphasizes how lonely he has been, how bad the ache was that forced him into regression. but as the pain comes out, it's immediately soothed, for... the first time that Dennis can remember. and that's nice. it's really, really nice.

Robby is tender and careful with him for the rest of the night. tugs him into his lap on the couch, Den's back pressed to his front as Robby hand-feeds him bites of creamy mac n cheese. an easy, comforting food to get down, easier with Robby praising him for every bite. there you go, baby, good job. can't have my little one going to bed hungry.

he bathes den, gently, uses a sweet smelling bath bomb that had been sitting unused in a cabinet for a good while. robby wants to get some bubble bath, now, let dennis pick out a scent he likes. this isn't going to be something robby lets dennis shove under the rug, this is a part of them now. he can't see pain that deep and ignore it. he can't let his baby be alone ever again.

he dresses den in the softest clothes, a pair of baggy, worn boxers, and an old, softened t-shirt. curling up around his precious boy, he cuddles dennis as close as he can, starting up soothing circles on his back again. there, there, little one. papa's here. just rest now, angel. close your pretty eyes for me.

dennis is quiet for the rest of the night, and it's more than okay. he doesn't need to speak. Robby is soothed by the sight of tension draining from his boy, the tired, harsh edges of his expression softening. and now, the slowing of his breathing, deepening as he drifts off.