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“Hey, Sunny?” Kel nudged Sunny’s arm. They were huddled up on the couch together, just doing their own thing in each other's presence, but Kel noticed that Sunny had gotten so much quieter. Quieter than normal. “Everything alright?”
Sunny only hummed in discomfort as he buried his face in Kel’s arm.
“What’s wrong?” Kel asked, allowing Sunny to hold onto his arm.
He almost looked like a little kid, clinging to Kel like this.
Kel realized what was going on. “Ohh, I see!”
Sunny had told Kel about this little habit, but today was the first time Kel saw it for himself.
Whenever Sunny felt overwhelmed, he’d willingly or unwillingly regress back into a childlike state. He liked to call that version of himself ‘Omori.’
“Are you ‘Omori’ right now?” Kel spoke in a higher voice, the one people only use when talking to children or animals.
Sunny nodded.
Well, it was good Kel had this information now, but he didn’t exactly know what to do with it. Would it be unhealthy to enable this? What had even thrown Sunny over the edge for him to want to regress? Kel thought they were happy together!
Kel wanted to ask if he did something to make Sunny uncomfortable, but decided against it. In a way, wouldn’t that be like looking for validation from a kid? Kel couldn’t even lie and say he didn’t view Sunny as a kid right now, either. It was like his whole demeanor changed.
Yeah, it was Kel’s turn to be the ‘adult.’
Since he knew Sunny would be non-verbal as Omori, Kel grabbed one of Sunny’s notebooks he liked to doodle in, opening it from the back to make sure he didn’t accidentally look at his art without permission. “Could you write down how you’re feeling for me?”
Sunny tilted his head and pouted.
“Ah, right…” It would make sense that when he was Omori, Sunny wouldn’t know exactly how to answer that. Even as a teenager his feelings were hard to explain, no way could a small child do that. “Why don’t we just draw instead?”
Right after Kel suggested that, Sunny snatched the notebook out of his hands and laid on the floor to draw.
“Drawing it is!” Kel smiled and pushed himself off the couch to sit on the floor by Sunny.
Sunny ripped a page out of his notebook and handed it to Kel.
“O-Oh, you want me to draw?”
Sunny nodded.
“Nah, I’m no artist, I can barely draw a stick figure!” Kel chuckled and pushed the paper back towards Sunny.
Sunny looked unimpressed. With a whine of annoyance, he insisted by handing Kel the paper again.
“Well, if you insist…” Kel playfully huffed. He sat hunched over his paper in front of Sunny, who was laying on his stomach to draw. Kel stared at his paper, completely unable to think of anything to draw while Sunny had already begun to draw various shapes. Even as Omori, it seemed Sunny still kept his artistic ability from muscle memory.
Kel decided to just draw some patterns, let his hand guide him. ‘Don’t think too hard, just draw!’ He told himself. This wasn’t part of an art class, he didn’t have anything to prove by drawing, it was just play.
Sunny had already been drawing like crazy, using up the orange and black colored pencils almost constantly. He covered the top of his drawing with his arm, so Kel couldn’t see exactly what he was drawing.
“Can I see—?” Kel tried to reach over Sunny’s arm and see what he had been drawing, but Sunny smacked his hand away and scowled.
Sunny pointed towards the wall.
“Sorry, sorry!” Kel held his hands up and giggled. “Not done yet?”
Sunny shook his head and pointed at the wall again.
“Do you want me to go?” Kel frowned. He wasn’t gonna leave Sunny alone like this.
Sunny quickly shook his head.
Kel had no clue what Sunny wanted from him. “You want me to… um… get you something?”
Sunny let out a sigh of frustration and turned around, giving up on the silent way of asking Kel to do it himself.
“Alright S…” Kel paused. “Alright Omori, no peeking, I got it.”
Silently, Sunny smiled to himself. Just that little ounce of validation for his mindset made him giddy.
Over time, Kel had gotten quite into his own drawing. He wasn’t drawing anything in particular, but just the act of running that pencil along the paper was soothing. He found himself mostly drawing spirals and squiggly lines. No rhyme or reason, just going with the flow.
Soon enough, Sunny scared the hell out of Kel by tapping his shoulder. It was always somewhat creepy to him just how quiet Sunny was, but maybe he was just too focused on drawing to notice him standing up.
“What’s up?” Kel looked up at Sunny.
Bashfully, he held up his drawing and looked away. It was of a cat and a dog snuggled up next to each other. The cat was drawn in black colored pencil and the dog was in orange. He pointed at the cat, then to himself, followed by pointing to the dog, and then pointing at Kel.
This was almost too cute for Kel to handle. It wasn’t even bad art that he had to pretend was good to please a child. Sunny had just carried over that skill with him as Omori. “Is that us?”
Sunny nodded.
Kel stood up to pull Sunny into a hug. “Aweee!! I love it! You’re so cute, Omori! I can’t take it!”
At first, Sunny stood still with his arms to his side, not hugging back. He wasn’t exactly used to this kind of affection so suddenly. If it were anyone else, he’d push them off with a dirty look. Instead, he wrapped his arms around Kel, returning the hug.
“I’m gonna keep it forever…” Kel planted a kiss on Sunny’s forehead. “Can I?”
Sunny nodded and stepped back away from the hug to stretch and yawn. He forgot how tired regressing made him.
“Yeah? Are you sleepy, buddy?” Kel cooed, instinctively bending down to talk to him.
Before Sunny could nod or shake his head, another yawn escaped him.
Kel took Sunny’s hand in his own. “C’mon, let’s go upstairs to my room and get some rest… I’m a bit tired too.” He guided Sunny as he clung to his arm like he was going to disappear. It made it a bit difficult for them to walk up the stairs, but they managed. Kel didn’t see any issue with being a little more patient. “Do you want something to eat before we go to bed?”
Sunny shook his head, immediately letting go of Kel and crawling into his bed the second he opened the door to his room. He sat up against the headboard and beckoned for Kel to come over. Kel smiled, quickly trotting over to lay by Sunny’s side.
After rubbing his tired eyes, Sunny rested his head in Kel’s lap. Right now, he looked so peaceful. He started to drool on Kel’s leg while drifting to sleep. Kel, however, was still concerned about what had happened that made Sunny slip into his regressed mindset.
When Sunny woke up, he’d have to explain it wasn’t just overwhelming stress that made him regress.
Sometimes, it was just comfort, because with Kel, Sunny knew he was safe.