Chapter Text
One thing Ren nor Doc had not accounted for – when going to sleep last night – was that Ren very often had things to do early in the morning. Usually, Ren would be woken up by Bdubs if he wasn’t already out and about, so that he could get ready for the day ahead. This morning would have been no different, except the little hermit is woken up by a hushed argument between the aforementioned hand of the king, and his caregiver.
Groggily sitting up in his bed, Ren looks to where Doc and Bdubs were standing right outside his door, which was left halfway ajar.
“He’s got things he needs to do,” Bdubs says, motioning towards the door.
“He can’t do them today. Can’t you find an excuse? Say the king is sick or something.” Doc says, voice low and sounding about ready to snap.
“I shouldn’t even be listening to you,” Bdubs huffs, pulling out his communicator and vigorously typing something into it, “The king’s court is going to be upset I’ve canceled a meeting, but as long as he doesn’t leave the Crastle they might believe he’s sick.”
Moments later, Ren hears the ping of a notification from his communicator, which had been set near his clothes from the previous night. He’s much too tired to get out of bed and grab it, not to mention he doubts he’d be able to bring himself to read whatever it said.
“As soon as I’m positive he’s feeling himself again, I’ll leave and let you get back to your–” Doc waves a hand around, rolling his eyes as he does so, “Duties or whatever.”
Mumbling something akin to “Fine,” Bdubs walks off with his communicator still in hand. Doc pushes the door open the rest of the way as he steps back into the room. Upon noticing Ren was sitting up, his demeanor softens and he gives a smile.
“Good morning,” He says, coming up to the bed and sitting on the edge of it.
Blinking away the bleariness from his eyes, Ren pulls his arms from under the blanket and reaches over to Doc; who quickly gets the idea and pulls the little one into his lap, securing his arms around him.
“Have we got a wee-baby on our hands?” Doc questions. He grabs the pacifier from off the nightstand, which he had placed there after he found it on the bed when he woke up, likely to have fallen out while Ren had been sleeping. After pressing it up against the little’s lips, Ren takes it without a hassle and nods in confirmation to his question.
While Doc expected Ren to be little when he woke up – he was always one to still feel small in the mornings – he had not expected him to be so young. After wondering if it was the result of Ren having not regressed in quite some time, he decides to try not to feel pessimistic about the reasons and instead focus on the moment at hand.
“Up we go then,” Doc hums gently, standing up with a secure grip around Ren. The dog hybrid holds onto him tightly, head resting on his shoulder. Soon he’s being brought to the kitchen, where he’s gently set onto the counter.
While Ren didn’t want to let go of his carer, he doesn’t have much fight in him. As he’s left to sit up on the countertop, he kicks his feet back and forth and watches as Doc shuffles around the kitchen, looking through cabinets and pantries. At some point, he hears him mumble something about there not being much of anything fit for a baby, just before he gives an “A-ha!” and pulls out some oatmeal.
Dutifully Doc begins preparing the oatmeal, pouring a small amount of milk into a pot and putting it on the stove to begin heating up. While he waits on that, he grabs out a small container of strawberries from the fridge. He cuts the fruit up into very small pieces, setting it aside to add later. Then, once the milk has started to boil, he stirs in the oats. Letting them cook, he searches for a bowl, quietly cursing how big the kitchen was.
As soon as he had everything put together in the bowl, a spoon set inside as well, he takes it to the dining area and sets it on the table before going back into the kitchen to grab the little. Ren seemed very pleased to be picked up again, and Doc gave him a few encouraging bounces with his arms. Once he had the dog hybrid sat down in a chair, he pulled up a seat for himself and sat down right next to him. He also takes the soother from the little one, setting it aside on the table for later.
Already anticipating Ren’s inability to feed himself without getting it everywhere, Doc was picking the spoon up by its handle and scooping up a bite of oatmeal. The little hermit can’t help it as he giggles slightly, tapping his hands against the table a few times as he opens his mouth for the spoonful.
Being fed his oatmeal goes on without a hitch, and the only mess that had been made was a dropped bit on the table; luckily nothing got onto his pajamas. As soon as Ren had finished his breakfast, the pacifier was popped back between his lips. Doc takes the bowl out to the kitchen, and on his way back to the dining room, he spots the way Ren’s braid had gotten slightly undone over the night.
“How about we fix your hair up and then we can see what there is to do around here, how does that sound puppy?” The creeper hybrid muses to him, scooping him out of his seat and holding him up with his robotic arm.
Nodding in agreement, Ren hugs around Doc and is happily carried back to his room. When he’s set on the bed, he scoots to the side to give his caregiver room to sit as well. Doc picks up a comb he spotted earlier on the small desk in the corner before he also sits on the bed. After gently pulling the hair tie out, he undoes the braids with his hands and begins running the comb down through the soft hair.
Admittedly, Doc takes a bit of a detour away from his current task to instead run his fingers over the little’s scalp, softly scratching with blunt nails around the bases of his ears. Ren leans against his touch, eyes closed and shuffling his fingers together in silent elation. With his ears slightly flattened towards his head, and twitching every so often, his tail was thumping against the bed as well. He could have stayed like that forever, but inevitably Doc goes back to combing through his head of hair.
Finally fixing together a new braid, the creeper hybrid ties it at the end with the elastic. When he deems his handy work acceptable, he rests the braid over Ren’s shoulder to let him know he was done.
Blinking open his eyes, Ren looks down at his hair and runs his fingers over the braid. Now that that had been finished, he leans back and lays over Doc’s lap, looking up at him with a smile behind his soother. Doc just grins down at him, rubbing his thumb over the little’s cheekbone.
While Doc himself never regressed – he had never felt any pull towards it – he could understand the feeling to an extent. Whenever he would watch Ren (or sometimes babysit a few of the other little hermits) he always felt such a high need to keep him happy. It wasn’t quite the same as it was when he was just talking to a non-regressed Ren; it felt more instinctual and far more important than anything else in the server. And in stressful times, he would even find himself asking if anyone needed babysat, since watching over someone was cathartic for him.
Admittedly, that’s the reason he came to check in on Ren in the first place. He’d been feeling a lack of something, and his first stop was to ask if Etho wanted to regress, then he asked Stress, even Grian (even though he knew his answer would be no); his last stop was to ask Ren. The only reason he didn’t go straight to him was because the last time he did, a couple months ago, Ren was extremely busy and had been upset to see Doc at the time.
So going into the castle uninvited was a shot in the dark, but the creeper hybrid is so glad he took it. Not only for himself, but because Ren surely needed this time far more than he did.
“ ‘apa?” Ren mumbles behind his soother.
Doc blinks a few times as he comes to his senses again, tilting his head as he looks down to the little, “What is it, little one?”
“S’eepy.” Ren responds quietly, and a yawn comes past him as if on cue, his pacifier falling from his lips. Doc was quick to catch it and pop it back in place before he pulled the dog hybrid up into his lap.
“I bet you are, puppy,” Doc hums as he stands, holding Ren comfortably at his hip and starting his way out towards the halls, “You were up very late last night.” With smooth steps, he begins slowly pacing around the long hallways, keeping a good hold onto the other as he does so. He figures this way he can stay busy as Ren falls asleep against him.
And Ren does just that, clutching his fingers onto Doc’s white coat and nuzzling into his neck with a new short yawn. With each step from the creeper hybrid holding him, he feels himself growing sleepier and sleepier, up until he finally falls back asleep against him.
Even when Ren had fallen asleep, Doc continued to pace the halls slowly, finding it calming even for himself. At some point he even passes Bdubs, who was walking oppositely to him and talking into the speaker of his communicator. Someone else’s voice came from the other side, but Doc couldn’t make out who it was. As he passes by Bdubs, the man quiets down his conversation when he sees the slumped over little in Doc’s arms. Other than a nod from both parties, they walk their separate ways.
It takes quite some time before Doc has rounded back to Ren’s room, and at that point he slides past the door inside. Carefully settling the little hermit down into his bed, Doc tucks him in with a blanket before plopping himself down at the desk in the corner. Pulling out his communicator, he scans through it and sits back to play a few games to pass the time.
After a while, he moves his attention to the room instead. He’s not sure when Ren will wake up, so he decides to spend some time cleaning; it’s really the least he can do in his situation. After gathering up the clothes from the end of the bed and off the floor, he stuffs them into a hamper basket and starts organizing the items from under the bed. Then, he cleans off the desk, fixing up stacks of paper and grabbing the dirty sippy cup. Making sure the little was still asleep, he goes off to the kitchen to clean it out and preemptively fill it with water.
Once he deems the room sufficiently clean for now, he goes back to his communicator and chats with some other hermits. It didn't take too long after that before Ren was stirring awake from his nap, rolling over in his bed and stretching out. Just as Doc stands up, ready to greet his little one awake, something flies right by his head – whizzing straight past him and bouncing against the wall.
With wide eyes, Doc turns on his heel to look at what it had been. Spotting the pacifier now laying on the floor, he leans down and picks it up. His shocked gaze moves back towards Ren, who was hurriedly getting out of the bed and tossing the blanket aside.
“Woah, woah, what’s the rush?” Doc questions, putting the soother on the desk.
“I shouldn’t have let this happen, I’ve got to get back to work, I’ve got a meeting. How late is it?” Ren asks frantically, pulling off his shirt and grabbing one of his flannels out of his closet to struggle to put on.
“It’s probably– No, no, hold on,” Doc steps towards Ren, laying his hands over his to stop him from buttoning his shirt up, “You can’t go back to working right now, BdoubleO told everyone you were sick today. He canceled the meeting.”
“What? He can’t do that–”
“Well he did. Everything is taken care of for today, alright? Why don’t you just take right now to relax, and get back into things tomorrow.” Doc suggests to him, looking down at him hopefully and with somewhat of a stern look.
Ren looks up at him, lips pressed in a thin line as he ponders on the suggestion. Sure, he’d be well within himself to tell Doc to leave and go un-cancel the meeting, and he opens his mouth to say such; but Doc apparently must see his intentions because he simply raises his eyebrows up before he can even get a word out.
Closing his mouth immediately, Ren looks away and drops his hands to his sides with a sigh. A few more moments of thought, and he gives in, mumbling a “Fine,” under his breath.
“But I’m not feeling small anymore,” He quickly adds, stepping back away from Doc to finish buttoning up his shirt, “So that’s off the table and you can leave.”
Doc hums from behind pursed lips, crossing his arms and taking a step back from the other, “You’re sure you want me to leave?”
“Positive.”
With raised eyebrows and a shrug of his shoulders, the creeper hybrid turns around and steps towards the door out of the room. Throwing a hand up to wave to the man behind him, he then reaches for the handle.
“I suppose I’ll see you around then.”
As soon as he had turned the handle enough for the door to begin opening, he heard a noise behind him that was quite reminiscent of a whine. After a slow turn of his head to gaze over his shoulder at the other, he stops in his tracks to watch Ren. The dog hybrid wasn’t looking at him, instead staring intently at the ground and seemingly very conflicted over something.
Giving a few moments of time for the other to think, Doc slowly begins opening the door, taking a testing step outside. Only, he’s stopped by another sound, one of Ren shuffling closer to him.
“Wait,” The dog hybrid says, flinching at his own word, “Maybe can you stay a little longer?” The sentence comes out strained, as if he had forced himself to come out with it. His hands had taken up around his shoulders in a type of self-hug, one that he squeezes to himself tightly.
This must have been what Doc had been hoping for, as he was swift to pull the door closed by its handle and turn back towards the other, “Of course I can stay.”
With a soft, relieved sigh, Ren plops himself down onto his bed while keeping the hold around his arms. Doc follows him, settling down next to him and putting an arm around his back. After a bit of fighting within himself, Ren leans against the other, laying his head on his shoulder and keeping his gaze downwards.
He’s not quite sure why he’s fighting back his regression. Already having been told he has all day to relax, and his caregiver being there, he had no reason to try and stay big. Either way, as the fog tugs against his mind, he tries pushing it away with thoughts of what he’d be expected to do the next day. With his meeting canceled today, he’d have a much bigger workload tomorrow – which he was not looking forward to. Although, he will admit having a day off sounded nice; even if he’s probably already wasted half of it.
Within time, he finds himself chewing against the end of his sleeve. As he realizes this, he goes to pull up a chewy bracelet, only to find none around his wrist. Mentlaly cursing himself for omitting such an item, he drops his hand in his lap and stares frustratedly down at it.
Moments later, Doc is moving out from under his head and standing off from the bed. Carefully watching him, Ren notices as he grabs a heart shaped chewy bracelet from his desk. Without hesitation, he raises his hand up, giving his wrist to the other for the chewelry. After it has been secured around him, he’s immediately bringing the chewy bit up to his mouth and latching onto it with his teeth.
With a few relieved wags of his tail, Ren waits until the creeper hybrid has sat back down before he leans against him once again and hums an appreciative “Thanks.”
Doc puts an arm around him, and Ren finds himself slowly laying down across his lap, staring up at him as he chews on his bracelet. While he doesn’t quite want to exclaim out loud that he was, in fact, regressing again, he can only assume his caregiver can tell. The creeper hybrid rests a hand to his cheek, running his thumb across his cheekbone with a soft smile; and Ren can’t help himself as he returns the smile past his chewelry.
“We have all day to do whatever you want,” Doc tells him, “Is there anything you have in mind?”
And Ren ponders this, eyes glancing past Doc and up to the ceiling as he thinks about it. There's many things he could say, and none of them would be a lie, as he would genuinely love to indulge in anything his fogging mind could come up with; but there was one, very simple, thing he wanted to make apparent.
“I wanna stay with Papa.”
Doc’s cheek runs up high with a grin, and he leans down to press a warm kiss against Ren’s forehead while also softly pinching on his cheek.
“I can make that happen, puppy.”