Chapter Text
The first time Tim Bradford tried to explain it, he almost gave up halfway through.
He sat rigid in the chair across from Dr. London, forearms braced against his thighs, hands clasped so tightly his knuckles had gone pale. He stared at a spot just over her left shoulder like that would make the room easier to survive.
The office was too quiet. Too warm. The kind of carefully curated calm that always made him feel vaguely suspicious.
For the last fifteen minutes, he’d been doing what he always did in therapy: offering up enough truth to satisfy the question without touching the part that actually mattered.
Work. Stress. Sleep, or the lack of it. The way his jaw hurt when he ground his teeth at night. The fact that he still woke up some mornings with his heart already running like he was late to a call that had never come in.
His patience was shorter than usual.
He’d had a rough week.
All technically true.
None of it enough to explain why he’d spent the previous night curled on his couch under three blankets, staring blankly at some cartoon rerun he’d found buried in the streaming menu because it had been the only thing that made his chest stop feeling like it was caving in.
Dr. London was too sharp not to notice.
“You keep circling something,” she said evenly.
Tim’s jaw tightened.
“I’m answering the question.”
“You’re answering around it.”
He let out a dry breath through his nose.
There it was - the thing about therapy that irritated him most: eventually, they always noticed.
For a moment he considered deflecting. Making some sarcastic comment. Ending the session early under the excuse of paperwork.
Instead, he stared at the floor and said, “there’s this thing that happens sometimes.”
Dr. London didn’t interrupt.
Tim rubbed a hand over his mouth, buying himself another second.
“It’s not…” He exhaled sharply. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Try.”
He gave her a flat look. “Very helpful.”
The corner of her mouth twitched, but she said nothing.
Tim looked away again.
“It only happens when things get bad,” he said carefully. “When I’m overwhelmed. Too much stress, not enough sleep, too many things stacking up at once.”
“What happens?”
His throat tightened. The words sounded ridiculous in his head. Still, he forced them out.
“I feel… smaller.”
Dr. London stayed still. She let the silence sit long enough that he had started to hate her for it a little - she was making him keep going.
“Everything gets fuzzy around the edges,” he said, voice lower now. “Like I can’t think straight. I don’t want to deal with anything complicated. I don’t want to talk much. Sometimes I can’t.”
He could feel heat creeping up his neck.
“I get tired. Want blankets. Quiet. Stuff that’s…” He grimaced, “simple.”
Dr. London’s expression didn’t change. That somehow made it worse.
Tim laughed once under his breath, humourless and sharp. “Yeah, hearing it out loud isn’t exactly helping my case here.”
“What does it feel like emotionally?”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“When you’re in that state.”
Tim thought about it. It had always been hard to describe, mostly because once it happened, language itself got slippery.
“Everything feels… less heavy,” he admitted. “Like… I can finally breathe.”
Dr. London was quiet for a moment. Then she said, very gently, “Tim, what you’re describing sounds like age regression.”
The words landed strangely. He looked up.
“What?”
“It’s a psychological coping response some people experience during periods of overwhelming stress, trauma activation, or emotional overload. The mind shifts into a younger headspace as a way to create distance from what feels unmanageable.”
Tim stared at her.
There was a name for it. A real one. Not just some bizarre thing his brain had apparently decided to invent.
He leaned back slightly, brow furrowing. “That’s… an actual thing?”
“Yes.”
He let out a slow breath, processing.
For years, he’d treated it like some private defect. Something to suppress, control, ignore. Hearing it described clinically should have made him feel detached from it. Instead, something in his chest loosened. Barely.
“When did it first start?” Dr. London asked.
The question pulled his attention back. Tim looked down at his hands. “I don’t know exactly.”
“Approximate.”
He hesitated.
“After my dad got really bad,” he said finally.
The room seemed to tighten around the admission.
He kept his eyes fixed on his knuckles.
“Probably when I was fifteen. Maybe sixteen.”
Dr. London nodded once, encouraging but not intrusive. “What was happening around that time?”
Tim almost laughed at the understatement.
What wasn’t happening?
His father’s drinking. The yelling. The unpredictability. The constant low-grade tension of trying to keep the house from tipping into chaos. Trying to shield Genny from as much of it as he could.
“Home wasn’t great,” he said flatly.
Dr. London didn’t push further on that subject, Tim had briefly touched on it already before.
“How often does it happen now?” She asks.
“Rarely.”
“How rarely?”
Tim thought. “Every few months, maybe. Usually if things stack up.”
“And how old do you feel when it happens?”
The question made his shoulders tense. He looked up sharply. “You’re really asking that.”
“Yes.”
He hesitated. “Four or five. Maybe younger. Sometimes older. I don’t really know?”
Saying it out loud made his face burn. He looked away immediately.
Dr. London’s voice stayed level. “And when was the last time?”
Tim was silent long enough that she almost repeated the question. “Properly? About three years ago,” he said.
Her brows lifted slightly. “What happened?”
He exhaled hard. “Is this the part where I’m supposed to bare my soul?”
“This is the part where I’m asking what triggered it.”
He almost smiled despite himself. Almost. “Bad case. No sleep for two days. Too much caffeine. Too many memories attached to it.”
That was only part of it. The full truth was uglier.
A child abuse case. A terrified five-year-old boy with bruises Tim hadn’t been able to stop seeing every time he closed his eyes.
He’d gone home after the shift, showered, sat down on the couch, and abruptly found himself unable to function beyond wrapping up in a blanket and staring numbly at an old cartoon until he finally passed out.
He hadn’t let it happen again after that.
Or at least, not fully.
“What do you usually do when you notice it starting?” Dr. London asked.
“Fight it.”
“Does that help?”
“No.”
The answer came too fast. He frowned.
Dr. London tilted her head slightly. “What does help?”
Tim hated how quickly the truth surfaced.
“Letting it happen.”
There was a pause, before she nodded. “That makes sense.”
He gave her a skeptical look. “You keep saying that.”
“Because your brain found a coping mechanism when it needed one.”
“Feels like a weird one.”
“Weird doesn’t mean harmful.”
He leaned back, crossing his arms.
It should have felt absurd, sitting in a therapist’s office discussing the possibility that his mind occasionally defaulted to the emotional state of a preschooler.
Instead, all he felt was tired. And, underneath that, relief; small, unwelcome, undeniable relief. Because there was a name for it. Because it wasn’t just him.
Because maybe he wasn’t as broken as he’d quietly assumed.
Dr. London studied him for a moment. “Has anyone else ever known?”
The answer was immediate.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Tim let out a sharp breath. Because it was humiliating. Because people already expected enough from him. Because some things felt too strange to survive being spoken aloud.
Because Sergeant Tim Bradford did not get to admit he sometimes coped by mentally retreating into childhood.
He shrugged instead. “Never seemed relevant.”
Dr. London’s expression told him she didn’t buy it. She let it pass anyway.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, “there’s nothing inherently shameful about this.”
Tim looked at her. That should have helped. Instead it made something in his chest twist tighter, because she was being kind and he didn’t know what to do with kindness when it came this close to his ribs.
“Do you know why you’re revisiting it now?”
Tim’s throat worked.
Because everything was too much. Because he’d lost the one person who ever truly cared about him. Because the precinct felt like a pressure cooker half the time. Because sleep had become a negotiation he kept losing.
Because some nights he still woke with the old fear in his body, the one that had never fully learned the difference between then and now.
Because no matter how hard he tried, he still sometimes felt like he was fifteen and trying not to get his little sister hurt.
Because some part of him had always been one bad day away from folding back in on itself.
Instead he said, “no.”
Dr. London nodded. “That’s okay. We don’t have to force it.”
Tim gave a humourless huff. “You’re real big on not forcing things.”
“I’m a therapist.”
“And here I thought it was a personality thing.”
That almost got the hint of a smile from her.
It was the closest thing to relief he’d felt all week.
He hadn’t told her everything. Not yet. Not the details he still kept locked behind his teeth. Not how embarrassed he felt about the whole thing. Not how much he hated that a part of him still wanted to hide it from everyone forever, like it was proof he wasn’t as steady as he was supposed to be.
But he had told her enough.
Enough that the word regression no longer sat in his mouth like a weapon. Enough that, for one brief, impossible hour, he had felt understood.
And that was exactly what made what happened next hurt so much.
Because two days later, when news broke that Dr. London was under investigation for breaching patient confidentiality, the first thing Tim thought was:
She knows.
And suddenly, for the first time in years, he could feel himself slipping toward that smaller headspace again.
Only this time, panic got there first.