#cg nikolai gogol

[snowe-zolynn-rogers]

Pairings: None

Word Count: 1,049 Words

Summary: Nikolai finds out his best friend is adorable.

Warnings: Age Regression, Bullying Mention, Panic Attack Mention, Anxiety Mention, Burn Mention, Fire Mention, Death Mention, let me know if I should tag anything else.

BSD Little Oneshots: Chapter 3: Little!Sigma x Caregiver!Nikolai

"I'm not listening to a four year old!" Nikolai's ears perked hearing this. He'd taken recently to spending the day in Sigma's casino. He liked the particularly fun atmosphere, plus Sigma let him sleep in fluffy beds, much fluffier than his at home. And Sigma also let Nikolai bother him. He was always impressed by his best friend, honestly.

Sigma was always so sweet, like caramel and honey. He had a bite, though, it made him happy to have a friend with a backbone and confidence. But he noticed that backbone was particularly weak today. He wasn't really fond of the way he heard his friend stammering or his hands messing with each other nervously, hidden by his sleeves but Nikolai knew that was what he was doing.

"Well, Mei, I..." Sigma tried with the new server.

"No, why do we listen to an overgrown toddler!?" Nikolai definitely didn't like this situation. He knew of Sigma's panic attacks and high anxiety, sure. But he'd never been witness to it before, Sigma had never let him around during things like that. Today seemed like a bad day.

"Mei, that's our boss! It doesn't matter when he was created, he's the most capable person to run this place. You know he's memorized every guest, right?" Daisuke, the bartender team lead, snapped at her. Sigma was quiet, quieter than Nikolai would have liked.

"Mei, I think it's best if you head home." Ichigo, Sigma's head of security, insisted, escorting her away. He didn't like seeing Sigma so afraid. He hated it, actually.

"Sorry, boss." Daisuke apologized.

"It's fine." Sigma sounded so out of it. Nikolai was now more than a bit concerned about him.

"It's fine, Daisuke. I've got him." Nikolai assured him, arm around Sigma's back as he got his friend into the younger's personal bedroom.

Sigma was oddly silent, he didn't like it. He hated this. He had no authority to do anything up here, but Sigma was incredibly out of it with what he assumed was anxiety. It felt like nails raking at his brain to try to figure out what was happening and how to help.

He noticed his shoulders shaking, odd. He sat with him on the bed, arm around him carefully and Sigma simply burst out crying. He wanted to wring that girl's neck until she got the hint not to mess with his best friend.

"Hey, it's okay." Nikolai gathered him into his arms.

"I'm sorry." Sigma was trying to stop himself from crying but Nikolai rubbed his back.

"It's okay. A smart guy told me you should cry if you need to." Nikolai reminded him.

"That was about you losing a safe food." Sigma sniffled.

"And that was emotional. I cried. A lot. But my bestie helped me. You're emotional, you're allowed to be emotional, birdie." Nikolai assured him, poking his nose, which made Sigma not laugh but giggle. Such a soft, sweet little sound Nikolai was more than a little stunned by it.

"That was cute." Nikolai managed to form after a few minutes of staring at the angel sitting buried against him. This earned him another giggle, it was almost addictive, he was worried to get addicted to the sound.

"I'm sorry. 'M probably bothering you." Sigma muttered against his neck.

"How, pray tell, could you be bothering me? What's wrong?" He asked.

"I..." The two-tone debated a minute. "I don't want to regress right now, I have to work still. I can't."

"Oh, so you're...oh, that makes a lot more sense!" Nikolai hugged him tightly. "Birdie, you can take the day off. You work every single day, I'm sure the place won't burn down on your first day off in a year and a half." Nikolai told him.

"But what if something happens?" Sigma asked.

"They you have people who can take care of it. You don't need to do everything yourself." He reminded him.

"O-Okay." Sigma got quiet again.

"So you'll regress?" He asked.

"I've never regressed around anyone before. I mean, Mao knew, I think, but..." Sigma hated bringing up employees he lost during the Hunting Dogs incident, he was surprised to hear Mao's name even come out without crying following it.

"Well, if anyone's gonna know, it might as well be me. I mean, you know my hyperactive ass, I've tried every coping mechanism once." Nikolai reminded him.

"I can try. I can't guarantee it'll work, though."

"We can just hang out here if you can't. You can still relax for today." Sigma smiled, he heard the small laugh from it, it made him calmer to hear it.

"So, got any regression items?" Nikolai asked.

"Box. In my closet. It's green. Yuri is on top of it." Nikolai sat him on the bed, finding the box and handing Sigma the bear, Yuri, on top and one of the three pacifiers from it. It was weird seeing Sigma drop almost instantly after being handed his bear and hands grabbing his pacifier greedily when he handed it to him.

"Aw, a baby." He poked his face, getting a giggle as he laid on the bed with him.

"Anything you wanna do, little bird?" Nikolai asked.

"Cuddle." Sigma tucked himself up to his front and Nikolai got to hug him close.

"Cute little birdie." He kissed over his face, getting squeals at the result and the body against his own cuddling even closer, getting a pacifier pressed against his own face in response. "Oh, paci kisses from my birdie. I'll die without them." He teased, fingers brushing through long hair while Sigma pressed more paci kisses to his face.

"No die." He smiled at him, looking over the much softer state he was in. He was cute, in a way, all vulnerable and open. Nikolai didn't want anything to ever hurt him like this, he would make sure, in fact, that nothing hurt him in this state. A squeaky yawn met his ears, Sigma was tired. He supposed he would be too if he worked everyday nonstop for a year and a half.

"Pretty birdie, get some rest." Nikolai assured him, getting their shoes off and pulling the blankets up. He was caught petting through long hair until he was sure his regressing friend was sleeping, then followed him to sleep.

[canmom]

Animation Night 119: Dick Williams

heeheehee, dick

So. If you’re an animator, or have even thought about trying animation at some point in your life, you’ve probably ended up recommended a copy of this book...

Which is fair, it’s a fucking great book. It pretty much set the standard for animation pedagogy forever since.

You may also likely know the legend of its creator, Richard Williams. I believe I may even have mentioned him on Animation Night before, but since it’s been some time, let’s set the scene.

Animation is about compromise. On every production, from TV to film, you have to accept some limitation on your vision: drawings you don’t have time to correct, shots that might look better on 1s, CG where hand-drawn animation might look better. Part of the art of the animator is learning to do more with less, like developing a style that demands a more manageable drawing count.

Yet animators are proud creatures. It’s painful to let go of a sequence you know could be better with more time!

Which means... in the great annals of Animation Lore, there are a few times where some industry legend gets enough clout where they can get away with just going completely all out on a film. In the best cases, this results in films like Takeshi Koike’s Redline (Animation Night 19), which occupied Madhouse for a good seven years, but resulted in an exhilarating, one of a kind sakuga feast.

This one paid off, and while it rather strained the resources of Madhouse and they weren’t in a hurry to let Koike do whatever he wanted again, It’s clear that he levelled up a lot from the effort, with the nigh perfect understanding of 3D form becoming the foundation of his later Lupin films. But in these cases, actually finishing the film is maybe more of the exception than the rule...

The next famous case is that of Yuri Norstein - a titan of Soviet animation, who I have regrettably not yet covered on Animation Night! But Animation Obsessive have, in wonderful detail, so please go read what they have to say.

Norstein, famed for his films like Hedgehog in the Fog and Tale of Tales but fiercely independent, had a somewhat tense relationship with his superiors at Soyuzmutfilm. This came to a head when he set out to make an insanely ambitious feature-length adaptation of The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol. In 1985 he was fired from Soyuzmutfilm for working too slowly... but he found private investors after the fall of the Soviet Union... and has worked on it ever since, with an animation team consisting of just Yuri Norstein himself and his wife Francheska Yarbusova whose drawings form the cutouts which Norstein animates. Even now, 37 years later, he is still working on The Overcoat. Occasionally, clips surface.

It probably won’t be finished before Norstein dies, and at that point someone will probably find all the finished footage and edit it into something like a film. But the investors still seem to be willing to indulge him, perhaps because it’s not exactly expensive and it has the aura of a legend so they’re willing to play the long game.

But of course, the most famous of these quixotic passion projects is The Thief and the Cobbler, directed by Richard Williams. So let’s set the stage.

Richard Williams, in his own account, got interested in animation at age 10, in 1943, when he got a paperback book called How To Make Animated Cartoons. He started pursuing it seriously at age 22, while working as a painter in Spain, returning to London and working briefly in advertising while self-funding a short fim The Little Island, which he describes as a ‘half-hour philosophical argument’, released in 1958 when he was aged 25.

After making this film, Williams came to a very familiar realisation: he didn’t know nearly as much about animation as he had imagined. He describes watching Bambi for the second time and ‘crawling out of the theatre’ trying to figure out how they did that. He started idolising the animators at Disney and Warner Bros such as Ken Harris - someone he would one day work alongside, and become a close friend, and in the end be a pallbearer at his funeral. And The Animator’s Survival Kit‘s prose is still soaked in reverence for these animators, with a lot of cute little anecdotes about moments Williams spent with them.

His reverence for the Disney ‘full animation’ school was cemented after seeing the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine (Animation Night 86) and watching an unimpressed audience walk out - something Williams at the time attributed to the jerky animation that didn’t respect the movement principles of Disney. He describes by contrast how completely he was blown away by The Jungle Book, seeing the hand of some of the Nine Old Men like Milt Kahl, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston - so he wrote them a letter about how much he was impressed and they invited him to come visit.

At this point his intro drifts away from autobiography, so let’s give a brief summary from other sources. During this time, Williams had founded a studio in London, which mostly made TV ads and animated segments for live action films such as the comedy Casino Royale (1967).

Notably also in this period, Williams animated segments for a film about the Crimean War, The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968). The drawings for this sequence were insanely intricate, calling to mind the woodcut engraving style of newspaper illustrations contemporary with the war.

1971 saw his adaptation of A Christmas Carol, which was warmly received in the States. At this point he was frequently inviting talented animators from the States to come and teach the pathetic British how it’s done, including Grim Natwick (who is described as ‘still brilliant’ in the Survival Kit) and Ken Harris, who gets a fascinating little paragraph:

It takes time. I didn’t encounter Ken Harris until I was nearly forty and he was sixty-nine. I had to hire most of my teachers in order to learn from them.

I hired Ken in order to get below him and be his assistant, so I was both his director and his assistant. I don’t know if this is original, but I finally figured out to that to learn or to ‘understand’ I had to ‘stand under’ the one who knows in order to catch the drippings of his experience.

This period in the 60s and 70s was also the beginning of the saga that would lead, eventually, to The Thief and the Cobbler. Originally the film was to be titled Nasruddin, about the folk character Mullah Nasreddin. Williams had a hard time finding any sort of funding for the film, falling out with other production companies at times, so he quietly plugged away at it while working on other projects.

The Nasruddin connection runs a little deeper actually, because Williams was hired in 1976 to illustrate a collection of Mullah Nasreddin stories by the Sufi occultist writer Idries Shah. I’m not sure how this came about exactly - whether Williams went out of his way to draw Nasreddin, or if he happened to get hired by coincidence. In any case, the idea was clearly occupying a lot of his thought - but more on that anon.

The 70s also saw Williams work on animation for the title sequences for two of the Pink Panther movies, during which time he invited Art Babbitt to come to London to teach - Babbitt being the man who had been fired from Disney after the animators’ strike in the 40s, thus evading canonisation as one of the Nine Old Men. Babbitt also did some work on Thief and the Cobbler, and rendered this memorable quote about Williams:

He's a director, designer, animator, and has a good layman's knowledge of music. He's a dreamer. He has more to learn as far as animation is concerned, but God, he can draw like a bastard

By this point, Williams would have been 42 years old. He was still making ads, despite ‘despising the form’, and making the occasional film or TV special such as Raggedy Ann & Andy (1977) and Ziggy’s Gift (1982).

Of course, the real point he became famous was when Who Framed Roger Rabbit came about. The strange Disney/Spielberg collaboration is actually one I’ve written about before, back on Animation Night 40, where I said some kinda mean things about old Dick. What I don’t really talk about there is what the film is about: yes, it’s about the animation industry and full of little injokes, but it is also to adult eyes recognisable as a parable for how San Francisco lost its public transport system, leaning on the idea of the auto-makers conspiring to destroy it. The real story may be a little more complicated, but having now seen the strip mall sprawl in both ends of California, I can see why people would come up with it. It’s grim out there.

I also didn’t talk much about the production. Williams was involved precisely because Spielberg saw footage of Thief and the Cobbler and was so impressed that he approached Williams.

By all accounts, working on Roger Rabbit was intense for everyone involved. Williams writes of drawing scenes late at night in the hotel room, and there was all sorts of goofy studio politics with neither Disney or Warner Bros wanting the film to favour one or the other (leading to situations like the piano scene where Donald and Daffy Duck were obliged to have exactly even screen time; the same goes for Bugs and Mickey.

It was also, I learned recently, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for one young James Baxter, then 20 years old studying animation but frustrated by the more experimental approach taken at his course, wanting to learn - like Williams himself - something more tied down like the Disney tradition. Traditionally animated films on the scale of Roger Rabbit are basically never made in the UK (and odds are, never will be again now CGI is king), so Baxter and some of his university friends dived for the chance.

Baxter joined the production as an inbetweener, working basically non stop on animation for that year (‘eat, sleep and animate’) but so impressed the Disney animators with a brief test he did of Thumper from Bambi that they gave him a few small scenes of feet and hands to animate. His success at this led to him getting more scenes, and this is where we get a little anecdote about Richard Williams (see, this is relevant!):

Baxter: Not being a seasoned animator, not being, y’know, knowing kind of the ropes of that, I did the classic junior animator mistake of going too far with something before you show your director or your supervisor, and I got the beatdown! I got the classic beatdown from Dick, which was great. I had gone way too far on like a shot of one of the weasels and, you know, he said ‘yeah yeah yeah! No, get the drawings, go get the drawings!’ So I had to stand behind Dick for an hour or so while he drew over my pencil drawings with a pen, one by one.

Interviewer: Ohh, wow.

Baxter: That’s kind of awesome. Not on a separate sheet of paper either, just like, my drawing, his pen.

Still, Roger Rabbit was completed on something like a schedule; the animation helped kick off the Disney Renaissance and now everyone wanted a piece of Dick. Off the back of that, Williams was able to negotiate a ‘negative pickup deal’ with Warner Bros: they would buy the film on a specified date for a specified price. Williams believed he could fund the film through a major studio, so rather than seek European arts funding, he went for the Warner Bros deal - a decision that would eventually be fatal to the project.

So at last the passion project, at this point already ‘in production’ for around 25 years starting in 1989, could really get underway. Thanks to the work done by the visiting animators, it represented the final film for a number of notable animators: Ken Harriss, Errol Le Cain, Emery Hawkins, Grim Natwick and Art Babbitt.

Williams’s approach was... utterly uncompromising. Sakugabooru commenter pkoduah provides a nice summary of the issues:

1. The film was led by animation rather than story. He thought of the most technically impressive animation scenes and then tried to shoe horn them into a story. If even half of the care that went into the animation went into the story and clear locked down storyboards it would had fared better and not been such a hydra. Even after the 2+ decades the story is still not fully resolved. 2. Richard Williams had an almost religious commitment to working on 1's, even for relatively slow scenes. If he just changed that one thing he would have greatly increased his chances of meeting the deadlines. 3. The decision by a particular still powerful animation exec to steal his thunder with Aladdin which is heavily based on the Thief & Cobbler, put further pressure on the execs to take drastic measures with William's glacially paced project.

We can also add that the story - with its goofy orientalist framing featuring jokes like Grand Vizier Zigzag and Princesss Yumyum, and an incredibly simple story that simply revolves around a macguffin - feels like a relic of a different era of animated film. Despite Williams’s disdain for it, it feels like it has a similar feeling to Yellow Submarine.

As an animator who’s tried it, the insistence on working on 1s is especially crazy to me. At first glance it sounds like twice as much work, because twice as many drawings, but it’s worse than this - because issues in an animation, inconsistences of shape and line, become much more obvious on 1s than they do on 3s or 2s where you can get away with larger changes of shape.

The modern worldview is quite different, incidentally. Lower framerates, when used properly, can also create a snappy, impactful feeling (c.f. the Kanada school, or Mitsuo Iso’s ‘full limited’). It requires a slightly different approach with stronger poses and a lot of drawing skill, since each frame is pulling more work, so a sequence designed to run on 1s will not look better with half its frames missing, but a sequence designed to run on 2s or 3s can look just as good.

In the Survival Kit, Williams briefly comments on the issue, saying in his entire career he’d basically only found one sequence that worked better on 2s for reasons he didn’t understand - to him, animating on 2s was purely a cost saving measure, and now he finally had the chance to do his passion project, he wasn’t going to accept anything less than the best possible.

But then, I think Williams’s motivation was less about appealing to audiences, and more about showing off to his art senpais - the great animators he idolised. It’s telling that one of the first anecdotes in the Survival Kit is about Williams and Ken Harris:

In 1967, I was able to bring Ken to England and my real education in animation articulation and performance started by working with him. I was pushing forty at the time, and, with a large successful studio in London, I had been animating for eighteen years, winning over one hundred international awards.

After seven or eight years of working closely with Ken, he said to me, ‘Hey Dick, you’re starting to draw those things in the right place.’

‘Yeah, I’m really learning it from you now, aren’t I?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘you know . . . you could be an animator.’

After the initial shock I realised he was right. Ken was the real McCoy whereas I was just doing a lot of fancy drawings in various styles which were functional but didn’t have the invisible ‘magic’ ingredients to make them really live and perform convincingly.

So I redoubled my efforts (mostly in mastering head and hand ‘accents’) and the next year Ken pronounced, ‘OK, you’re an animator.’

A couple of years after that, one day he said, ‘Hey, Dick, you could be a good animator.’

The anecdote continues with Williams going down to visit Harris in his trailer when Harris was aged 82, and finding that Harris could still correct his work. He still didn’t have Harris’s ‘thing’. But, at least, Harris said he ‘had his own thing going’.

It’s never mentioned explicitly, but the shadow of The Thief and the Cobbler hangs over the Animator’s Survival Kit. The footage that earned this praise from Ken Harris was footage from that film. By that logic, it should have been an immense success for Williams: finally earning him his place among the canon.

So why is it instead such a negative memory for Williams?

Well, in 1992, the film was still in progress, with just fifteen minutes left to complete - but it was too much for Warner Bros, who didn’t want to be seen as making a knockoff Aladdin. Williams was booted from his own passion project, putting Fred Calvert on to hastily fill in the gaps in the story and discard the unfinished sequences, adding a number of musical sequences with far lowre quality animation performed by a number of subcontractors including Sullivan Bluth Studios, Kroyer Films, Wang Film Productions/Thai Wang Film Productions in Taiwan and Thailand, Pacific Rim Animation in China and Varga Studio in Hungary. A second recut was performed by Miramax, removing even more of the original.

The resulting mess landed poorly in theaters, and Williams, utterly dejected for obvious reasons, shut down his animation studio and went back to Canada, spending the next few years as a teacher while nursing his wounds and starting work on writing what would become The Animator’s Survival Kit, published in 2002. And, in a sense, the story has a happy ending: Williams’s book became a bestseller, the reference on animation; Williams could pass on the secrets of the masters he revered, and trust that he would be remembered as a great teacher and animator.

In 2008 he was invited to become an artist in residence at Aardman; in 2010 he finished a film he’d begun in Ibiza in the 1950s titled Circus Drawings, and then he spent the rest of his life setting out alone on a new grand passion project, an adaptation of the ancient Greek comedy Lysistrata by Aristophanes. The first part of the film, titled simply Prologue, was released in 2015, featuring elaborate hand-drawn camera moves and background animation all done in pencils and photographed directly. You can watch it:

What of The Thief and the Cobbler? Well, the workprint of the film prior to the edits has survived, and the legend of it gradually spread across the industry. Williams showed his workprint in 2000 at the Annecy festival, impressing Roy E. Disney, who started on a project to restore and finish the film... but this fell through as Disney turned away from hand-drawn animation and Roy left the company.

Instead, the restoration effort was led unofficially by fans. A filmmaker Garrett Gilchrist, created the Recobbled Cut of the film, which used all the Williams-era footage that could be found from various sources, including unfinished pencil tests and scenes rotoscoped by Gilchrist to deal with dodgy footage, all edited to basically the structure of the workprint with some added music. As more and more people saw the Recobbled Cut, the film began to be rehabilitated, and Gilchrist created further revisions as more sources of original footage came to light.

So a good ending for Williams, right. But I’ve talked a lot about how it is made, what is the film itself actually like?

In its Recobbled form, The Thief and the Cobbler is very very obviously an animator’s passion project lmao. It’s full of Williams’s homages to Islamic art, with the stark geometric patterns creating some very clever shot compositions.

The actual story is very light on dialogue, and in contrast to Aladdin, it keeps its characterisations very simple. The thief and cobbler themselves are both basically mute, driven by very simple impulses: the cobbler is simple and well-meaning and enchanted by simple things, while the thief is single-mindedly determined to steal the Golden Balls, never mind the consequences. It’s not a surprise it didn’t land well in a time when the rule in animation was Don Bluth and the Disney Renaissance: there are no ‘I want’ songs or really, character arcs as such.

So the Cobbler gets with Princess Yumyum, but... like a fairytale or a Golden Age disney film, not because we’ve been sold on them as characters who have chemistry and want to get with each other, but more because Yumyum seems to find the Cobbler kind of... a weirdly endearing little pet and that’s what the plot demands. The Thief continues his thieving throughout. Late in the movie, a massive army of barbarians shows up out of almost nowhere, leading to a spectacular scene in the cogs of their giant war machine, but we aren’t really asked to believe in them as a culture. It is basically a series of setpieces loosely strung together.

I have said in the past that The Thief and the Cobbler is callous in the treatment of the historical Islamic culture it depicts. It is certainly an Orientalist film and certainly very British in its outlook, there’s no question of that. Still, while I do still think the joke names like Vizier Zigzag and Princess Yumyum are tasteless, I think it would be hard to say that Williams does not have reverence or devotion. It’s a different beast than Aladdin - the way he shows this devotion is through his mad, obsessive craft. I’m not quite sure how I’d feel about it if I was on the receiving end of it, mind you. (I would be quite curious to find out what the Arabic dub does with it, if there is one.)

The thing is that Williams is, far more than a director, an animator. Like, say, Masaaki Yuasa, he loved the medium of animation more than anything - no matter what he’s animating, he’s clearly beyond happy if he can make it move in a cool way. The Animator’s Survival Kit is intoxicating because he really sells you in this fascination with how things move - the nuances of a walk, the effects of timing and spacing and gesture, like what does happen if you make this frame go up and this frame go down? The previous generation of animators was his god, but he also was keen to experiment, find new possibilities. For this reason, Williams is still relevant. Even if he had... fascinatingly strange ideas about how gay people walk!

But this means, unfortunately for this film, that he was far, far more of an animator than he was a director. In fact this ends up a very endearing quality. The Thief and the Cobbler is an intensely idiosyncratic film, a true expression of the worldview of Richard Williams both good and bad... the workaholic maniac that he was, a man with something to prove.

And for a man with a great deal to say about acting, we should look at the acting in this film. Since many scenes are wordless, it falls to the acting to convey the emotions of the characters in the scene. And... they’re certainly not subtle, but they are creative, full of clever and surprising images. It is I suppose a very theatrical mode of acting: a lot of exaggeration and big movements.

On the other hand, the characters’ inner worlds are like... well they aren’t really there. Pretty much everything is right there on the surface. Everyone is really exactly what you see. It’s interesting to contrast this with the psychological turn soon to be taken by anime in the 90s, in Eva or films like those of Mamoru Oshii. A character like Motoko Kusanagi has incredibly graceful 3D movement, yet she barely emotes... and nevertheless through the framing and script, we know a lot about what she might be feeling. Shinji sits still listening to his tape player. Sometimes less can be more.

What of the Thief? He is the most enigmatic character in the film, and yet he too is not complex. We don’t know why he wants the Golden Balls, why he tolerates flies buzzing around him, but he surely does. He’s just a weird little slinky gremlin guy, and in the end he gets away.

Of course, Williams talks a fair bit about gender in his presentations on animation acting. The Animator’s Survival Kit bonus DVD includes videos of lectures, so here’s a clip someone uploaded of some examples of what he’d say:

You can see how his interest here is in really pushing and exaggerating that gender difference - of course, pushed to extremes for pedagogical purposes, but still, it says something about the worldview he was operating under. Especially at the end when he gets a laugh by, essentially, animating a very effeminate walk for the bodybuilder character.

So a character like ‘Princess Yumyum’ is exactly what she appears: curious, vulnerable etc., a feminine ideal. There is little room for contradiction, or even straining against the bounds of this role like Princess Arete. The same is true in a lot of Williams films. Animation is about exaggeration, of course, but Williams was inescapably a man born in the 30s.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from him. Learn a lot, really. Thanks to Wiliams, even though the renowned animators of Disney and Warner Brothers have died, we can get a sense of how they used to think about things, and build on them. We can understand the tricks of spacing he uses to create a sense of impact, and pick up on some of his observations and insights about acting. And certainly, his exhortation to do figure drawing has caught on in a big way since the book has been published.

I feel like, in many ways, I can see myself in the young Richard Williams - well, not nearly as accomplished, but the awe he feels towards those old Disney animators, I feel towards people like Weilin Zhang, Mitsuo Iso, Shinya Ohira, James Baxter... the ‘how can they do that’, but also, one very important line:

Irrepressible ambition made me change my opinion that they alone could attain such heights; I figured, I think correctly, that given talent, experience, persistence - plus the knowledge of the experts - why should everything not be possible?

I couldn’t stand it any more. I had to know everything about the medium and master all aspects of it. Cap in hand, I made yearly visits to Milt and Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston and Ken Anderson at Disney.

For my part, I joined a lot of animation discord servers and now, starting this month, I’m trying to hit that “James Baxter’s first year” sort of pace. We’ll see how it goes. But like... all these guys are human. My muscles aren’t any different than theirs - I just need to see if i can shape my brain to acquire that power of observation and intuition for drawing. The method is clear enough. Like Williams, I won’t be an exact clone of my idols - I’ll become my own thing. If I just keep at it.

Anyway, I have gotten over my reluctance to screen The Thief and the Cobbler - orientalist as it may be, it is an important movie to animation history, and one worth seeing again, as well as Williams’s earlier animations to see where he came from. So if you fancy joining me, we’ll be at Twitch tonight - please head to twitch.tv/canmom and we’ll begin the movies in 15-20 minutes probably!!

[animationandmup]

Hoho Entertainment has acquired the global distribution rights to animated family holiday special The Overcoat, produced by Giant Animation and A Film Estonia. The 30-minute film is an adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s classic Russian folk tale,  a bedtime story told by a grandfather to his granddaughter about a lonely office worker who saves up to buy a new coat at Christmas in an effort to make new friends, only for fate to take a ghostly hand. Blending humor and heartache, the timeless story deals with something we all feel deep inside – the desire to belong and to be loved – and advises that material possessions should not be our main pursuit in life.

The film switches between beautifully portrayed 1930s New York and late 1800s St. Petersburg, and combines classical hand-drawn 2D animation with modern CG animation techniques.

[snowe-zolynn-rogers]

Pairings: Sigma x Nikolai

Word Count: 868 Words

Summary: Nikolai is taking care of Sigma when a familiar face needs an adult.

Warnings: Age Regression, Fluff, Food Mention, let me know if I should tag anything else.

BSD Little Oneshots: Chapter 7: Little!Sigma & Little!Poe x Caregiver!Nikolai

Nikolai liked showing Sigma the ground world on days they got the chance between Nikolai and Sigma's schedules that sometimes didn't allow them to even see each other. Sigma had finally taken a week off to relax and Nikolai was on vacation for the next week as well.

So they'd decided on a park where Nikolai could take care of his regressing boyfriend. Sigma had come up to him with several things already, from shells to rocks to a stray kitten that Nikolai was sure was coming home with them.

Nikolai was going to push him on the swingset soon enough, at Sigma's very hyper request, he almost regretted giving him sugar if not for the pure cuteness of it. Sigma was very happy with himself getting Nikolai to push him on the swing, very much making Nikolai smile at him and his childish antics.

"I know you." Nikolai was shocked enough by the hand on his sleeve enough to stop Sigma on the swing, looking to find a person he vaguely recognized, trying to figure out who they were.

"Nika! Swing me!" Sigma whined.

"In a minute, baby bird." He told him. "Who are you?" He asked.

"I'm Poe. Ranpo's friend." Oh, so that was how he knew him. He'd helped Ranpo stop the Decay of the Angels incident and the Infection Outbreak Incident.

"Well, I'm Nikolai Gogol, this is Sigma. You can call me Nika too if you want." He offered, looking over the person before him looking very similar to a nervous regressed Sigma. "You're regressed, right?" He asked, getting a nod. "Alright, I'm taking care of Sigma too, I don't mind taking care of you too." Nikolai offered.

"You don't have to!" Poe panicked.

"It's okay, you should be alone if you're regressed. Come on, I'll swing you with birdie." Nikolai offered, seating him in the swing next to Sigma's, pushing the two until Poe was laughing and Sigma was back to his own laughter too.

"Has the candy worn off yet?" He asked Sigma, who shook his head.

"Play tag!" Sigma requested.

"Wanna play tag with us, Poe?" Nikolai asked.

"Okay!" Poe seemed very happy now that he was relaxed around them, because Sigma being small also helped him be small. Playing tag with two friends in the park was even better than just with Sigma, he was matching Sigma's energy so he could regress better with them.

Poe and Sigma squealed happily when he got them, both of them chasing after him to tackle him to the ground, both making him 'it' again and he couldn't help laughing at the two.

"Guess you both got me." He admitted his defeat, he wouldn't make these two work any harder, since it seemed like Sigma was coming off his sugar crash now. "Sugar's wearing off now, birdie?" He asked his boyfriend.

"Mhm." He nodded for him.

"Alright, we'll have lunch with Poe and then we can go home. Sasha's waiting with the kitty." He reminded Sigma, who giggled and began running to their picnic towel to sit with Sasha, Sigma's german shepherd, who was sitting with that stray kitten that Sigma had already named Mischa after his old fake name during his days as Tonan's secretary.

He led Poe back, which made Sigma hand him one of the various sandwiches they'd brought. Poe cooed over the kitten, petting him and Sasha as well. Poe and Sigma were going on with each other about kittens and how cute they were, which made him smile watching over them.

"Ed!" Nikolai saw that detective coming over to them. So he guessed Poe was here with Ranpo and, was that a racoon now clinging to his arm, grabbing for his sandwich.

"No, Karl, be nice to Nika!" Poe forcefully took the raccoon away and held him in his arms.

"Hi, Karl." Nikolai greeted him, handing him a piece of strawberry from the containers. "Hi, Edogawa." He looked up at the detective, giving a wave even as Sigma looked over the detective unsurely and Ranpo was taking deep breaths.

"What are you doing, Ed? I got worried when I came back and you weren't there." Ranpo accused.

"I went to look for you. I couldn't find you. Then I found Nika." Poe looked up at the detective with a big smile.

"Poe, he's a war criminal." Ranpo warned him.

"But he swung me on the swings. And we played tag. And he's nice." Poe defended.

"You didn't do anything to him?" Ranpo asked.

"Nope, just made sure he was safe since I'm already babysitting my birdie and they get along." Nikolai held out a spare sandwich for Ranpo to join them instead of standing there awkwardly.

"I suppose I'll overlook seeing you two here today since Ed had fun and I don't want to cause a scene in the park." Ranpo grumbled.

"Ranpo, look at Mischa! Isn't he cute? His Mama left him so Nika and Birdie are gonna take him home and take care of him." Poe requested, showing the baby kitten to his friend.

"He's cute." Ranpo smiled, Nikolai supposed taking care of two babies was worth it, it was twice the cuteness to spoil, after all.

[snowe-zolynn-rogers]

little!nikolai content is the content the world deserves got any headcanons on it??

Absolutely! I haven't seen much regressor content for the BSD fandom so I figured I'd make it myself since I'm hyperfixated on BSD and I've been regressing again lately and clown man and has somehow become one of my favorites.

Nikolai is calmer when regressed than when he's not.

He always shows up around someone in the DOA and the Rats.

Fyodor doesn't like babysitting? Too bad, he now has a clown child to look after.

If Sigma's busy but Nikolai's regressing at the Sky Casino, he follows him around and tries to help.

Fukuchi keeps him on a child harness attached to his desk with coloring books. He stays with him, of course, but he'd rather not lose him again.

Bram will tell him stories of his time in Europe. Nikolai loves all of his stories.

Ivan matches his energy so they tend to interact a lot while Nikolai's regressed.

Shibusawa treats him like proud father. Nikolai very much likes being referred to as 'little treasure'.

Mushitaro tried to babysit him once and both of them ended up crying. Nobody knows how it happened. Mushitaro is no longer allowed to babysit Nikolai without someone else with him.

Nikolai gets overly attached to things he's given when regressed because he never had many things of his own growing up and now he's trying to make up for it.

He once wouldn't give up a wrapper Fyodor gave him and cried until he had it back. He does get rid of them when he ages back up, though.

Mushitaro won him a bear at the carnival once and he never lets it go when he regresses, it's now a comfort item. If you take it away, he cries until he has it back.

Sigma spoils him. Why? Because he can. Nikolai has many regression items solely from Sigma due to this. It's also because Sigma gets not having a childhood and trying to make up for it.

Fukuchi gives him coloring books and markers and just lets him run wild. This is how Fukuchi ended up with a marker-colored mustache not once, but seven times. He still hasn't learned, but he can't punish Nikolai for it or the others will try to kill him.

Fyodor pretends to ignore him when he's around him while regressed, but he'll secretly slip him snacks and toys to keep him happy every so often.

Nikolai frequently coerces Shibusawa into showing him his horn because he thinks it's pretty. Shibusawa is incredibly fond of this tiny child calling his horn pretty.

Ivan takes him out places. He likes going places, Nikolai likes following him. Nikolai's favorite place to go is the park because he can 'force' Ivan to push him on the swings.

Nikolai usually can be found lulled to sleep by stories in the bottom half of Bram's coffin when he's regressed around him since he tends to fall asleep when Bram tells him stories.

Pushkin asked him exactly once if he was useful at all while he was regressed. He was in the hospital for six months afterwards. Nobody knows exactly who it was and none of Nikolai's caretakers will tell.

Everyone refers to regressed Nikolai as the 'communal child'.

Nikolai falls asleep on everyone, nobody minds. Except Fyodor, Fyodor loses his ability to move but it's a sacrifice he's willing to make for a sleeping clown child.

Nikolai hides a lot when he regresses. This has ended up with five people frantically playing an impromptu game of hide and seek for him only to find him sleeping in Bram's coffin or somewhere in the Sky Casino on multiple occasions.

Everyone fought over who got to babysit him at first, but Nikolai solved that by choosing for himself and completely disregarding them.

Fyodor teaches regressed Nikolai to curse at people he doesn't like.

Regressed Nikolai will call you a bitch if you mess with his caregivers. He has made Fukuchi cry before by doing this after Fukuchi called the others 'a bunch of mother hens'.

Nikolai will randomly burst out cursing while regressed. Nobody knows why. Nikolai doesn't even know why. It's a mystery. Everyone blames Fyodor.

[snowe-zolynn-rogers]

Pairings: None

Word Count: 805 Words

Summary: Nikolai is stressed after a mission and Sigma accidentally finds out just how stressed.

Warnings: Age Regression, Food Mention, Anxiety Attack Mention, let me know if I should tag anything else.

BSD Little Oneshots: Chapter 12: Little!Nikolai x Caregiver!Sigma

Sigma wasn't busy today, the group managers were taking care of most things and he wasn't needed yet besides to fix numbers and go over information he'd already done. Not to mention, that gave him time to check up on his colleague, who had arrived a half hour ago and hid in his room almost immediately.

He knew he was likely sleeping, probably hungry but Nikolai hadn't ordered anything, and he'd certainly felt the distinct lack of a chaotic jester in his office. So he'd brought a food tray with him and knocked on Nikolai's door.

Nikolai opened it, sure, but saw him and quickly closed it. Sigma was concerned now, why did he look so scared when he saw him? What happened on that mission that made his colleague scared of him.

"Nikolai, I brought you food." The door opened slowly again.

"Food?" Nikolai asked.

"Yes. Can I come in?" He asked softly, matching the vulnerability in Nikolai's voice. He was worried about what happened to him if he was scared enough to even sound vulnerable. He got a soft nod and Nikolai let the door open.

Sigma saw the room a bit messy, but as was expected of Nikolai, he wasn't the cleanest person but Sigma understood that he knew where everything was in his room, despite the slight messiness. Hell, he'd watched Nikolai pluck a particular paper he needed for a plan from the middle of one of the various stacks on the desk before.

However, he was slightly thrown by the stuffed bears on the bed, the pacifier he could see discarded onto the bed, the bottle half full of water snuggled into a blue bear's arms, the television playing a children's movie. Had Nikolai snuck a child in? Did he need to worry about the safety of said child?

"Nikolai, did you bring a child?" He asked. Nikolai looked first at him, then wide panicked eyes looked at the childlike belongings in the room before shaking his head.

"Mine." He said simply.

"Yours?" Nikolai nodded at his question, looking rather fearful as Sigma closed the door behind him, setting the food tray on Nikolai's bedside table. Nikolai picked up the pacifier to hold, hiding it in his hands protectively.

"Oh." Sigma realized, looking at him softly. He was regressing, Sigma had looked it up once after he'd done it once himself.

"How old are you?" Sigma asked. Nikolai wordlessly held up one finger. "Would you like to eat?" Sigma asked, getting a soft nod.

"Okay, let's watch TV and you eat, okay?" Nikolai nodded, quietly sitting on the bed and eating while Sigma sat with him, brushing through his hair.

"Mama." Nikolai babbled, wide yellow eyes gazing over Sigma, shining with a childlike awe that Sigma couldn't help smiling at, even as Nikolai's eyes went impossibly wider and filled with fear.

"I'm Mama?"

"Name hawd." Nikolai was quiet trying to explain himself, eyes filling with tears.

"My name is hard?" Sigma asked.

"'M sowwy." Nikolai began sniffling. Oh, Sigma wasn't good with crying children.

"Hey, it's okay. Why are you sorry?"

"Can' say name! Gonna be mad! I'm bad!" Nikolai was panicking. He had detached himself from leaning against the manager, choking hiccups and leaving the bed to hide in the corner.

"Nikolai, I'm not mad, it's okay. I don't mind." Sigma assured him, kneeling by him on the floor, hand gentle moving Nikolai from where he was hiding his face in the corner.

"I'm bad. Time out."

"No, no time out. You're not bad." Sigma assured him, hand moving him gently against him again.

"But Dostoy said."

"Well, he's wrong and I'll deal with him. You've done nothing wrong." Sigma accepted the albino's shaky breaths against his neck, hands grasping at his clothes while he rubbed over his back to calm him.

"Not mad?" Nikolai asked, making sure.

"I could never. Just look at my baby, he's so cute." Sigma assured him.

"No time out?"

"Never again." Sigma got him up, setting him on the bed and Nikolai cuddled up to a fluffy white bear, cuddling up and getting comfy.

"Mama stay." Nikolai requested.

"I am."

He sat, brushing his fingers through Nikolai's hair, watching the clown slowly calm further, pacifier in his mouth as he fell asleep, head cuddled to Sigma's lap, soft noises coming from him as he slept. Nikolai looked cute, he did. For all the times Nikolai had been the bane of Sigma's short existence, he looked soft and vulnerable and precious.

Sigma knew, realistically, he'd have to talk to him when he was in the right mindset again. But, for now, he could enjoy some time off with his friend cuddled up to him, both finally calm and the pleasant background noise the children's show was making slowly lulling Sigma to sleep as well.

[snowe-zolynn-rogers]

Pairings: None

Word Count: 2,227 Words

Summary: How Sigma accidentally became the caretaker of a shy clown child.

Warnings: Age Regression, Food Mention, Nightmare Mention, let me know if I should tag anything else.

BSD Little Oneshots: Chapter 1: Little!Nikolai x CG!Sigma

Sigma expected a lot of things in his casino. He'd poured over notes and forcefully memorized them for the year of his life of having this place to call his home. His only friend showing up, escorted by seven workers, was usually one of them. He had always instructed them to send many a worker to get Nikolai to his office without issue.

He didn't really expect Nikolai to show up with a teddy bear and to simply lay on the couch without a word. No, he expected something like a glitter bomb or feathers to 'redecorate' or 'spice up' his office. His best friend certainly was an extravagant person, so he expected impulsive and sometimes childish things from him.

He certainly didn't expect such silence from him. But he waved the workers back to their jobs regardless, he could handle anything after they left now that Nikolai seemed to be docile enough. In fact, he seemed transfixed on the teddy bear he brought with him, one he recognized was from the arcade, at a particular claw machine that held all sorts of children's toys.

He hadn't gotten any alert that anyone had broken the machine so he assumed Nikolai won it fair and square, or had used his ability to take it out, but that was easier to overlook than his friend being this oddly calm. But he assumed Nikolai was just satisfied interrupting his day temporarily with his presence.

Nikolai looked at him and ran out at one point, and he did send Nadya, a new worker with a teleporting ability, to tail him to make sure he didn't do anything to the casino, but he found he'd actually left the Sky Casino entirely, going back to his apartment.

Sigma found himself with a silent Nikolai playing with things more often, he didn't feel a need to bring it up, Nikolai seemed to enjoy the time, he didn't particularly mind his presence either. So it continued for months on end, with Nikolai showing up with something or another to entertain himself while Sigma was able to work in a comfortable silence.

Nikolai's giggling sure was something distracting on occasion, but he'd never really speak, nor would he bother Sigma outright. Sigma got used to the occasional presence in his office with its accompanying giggles and humming to boot. Nikolai was calm, he was calm, it was a good arrangement, especially when he was particularly stressed, the humming could act to calm him.

This time, however, was a little different, Nikolai had brought that bear from the arcade again and was asleep when he came into his office for the first time of the day, meaning Nikolai had stayed overnight at the casino from yesterday. It was odd, he swore he remembered Nikolai leaving his office last night at around eleven.

"Nadya, did he leave last night?" He asked.

"No, Sir, he went down to the café to get food before you went to bed and came back up to the office. I thought it better to just let him stay here since you were really tired last night." She informed him as he looked over the man on the couch.

"Did anyone bring him any blankets?"

"No, he didn't request them." She answered.

"A pillow?" He asked, looking at the rather uncomfortable looking way Nikolai had curled himself up on the couch, with his bear tucked up in his arms and his legs up against the bear, curled up in a ball like a cocoon.

"No, Sir, he didn't request them." She was a bit quieter at his both confusion and tenseness.

"Did anyone on overnight bring him anything? Ask him if he wanted anything even?" He saw the way Nikolai's face wasn't calm, it was contorted in fear, he didn't like it, not one bit.

"No, Sir. Anya said he didn't leave after he ate so nobody bothered him." Sigma sighed, he wished they'd have checked on him but he couldn't really get mad at them working around Nikolai instead of dealing with him. He'd always been the one insisting they not bother Nikolai if he was in the casino if he wasn't bothering anyone.

"That's all, you can go back to your tasks." He told her.

"You're...You're not mad?" Nadya asked.

"No, I'm not mad." He assured her before she quietly slipped out of the door. He turned his full attention to Nikolai on the couch, he was beginning to wake up, it seemed, by the whimpers he gave, curling up impossibly more, clutching his bear close and Sigma felt bad. He hadn't even checked to make sure if he was okay or not last night.

"Nikolai." He urged him to wake up, a hand on his shoulder and Nikolai gave a louder whimper, moving away from him, sniffling. "Nikolai." He insisted more tersely, shaking him.

He was worried about him, he sounded like he was crying. He'd never seen Nikolai have a nightmare, let alone cry openly. He was always so happy and loud, never one to show many emotions more than joy. Even anger wasn't shown much on him, Nikolai did so love being the life of any party he managed to find his way into.

"Kolya." He was more gentle, hand smoothing over the albino's arm, shaking him a bit to wake him and he shot up, tears already leaking from his eyes, hiccupping and looking at him with wide eyes.

"Not supposed to be here." Nikolai wiped his face roughly and Sigma watched in confusion as Nikolai shoved himself up and looked at the exit but Sigma was kind of blocking his pathway out.

"Why not? You're allowed here, Kolya." Nikolai looked up at him.

"But mad?" He looked afraid.

"I'm not mad, just worried about you." Sigma smiled for him, letting Nikolai calm down for him, that calmness going back over the two as Nikolai looked over his bear he was about to have left in his office. Sigma spotted something he probably shouldn't have against the bear's belly, a pacifier, white and black with gems and candy-looking charms on it and a dangling chain attaching it to said bear.

"That's nothing!" Nikolai hid it against himself, in his hands so he couldn't see it further, but he already knew what it was. Nikolai looked terrified, he was reminded of a baby deer

"Kolya, it's okay. Deep breaths, calm down for me." Sigma sat with him, rubbing his back until Nikolai's head rested against his shoulder, shaky breaths slowly evening out as Nikolai calmed down.

"You don't need to hide it, Kolya. I won't make fun of you." He assured.

"You won't? Not like Fukuchi?" Nikolai asked.

"I couldn't, it would be a bit hypocritical of me, hm?" He smiled for him, letting Nikolai look up at him with wide, surprised eyes.

"You're small too?" Nikolai seemed amazed. He supposed he would be too if he was in Nikolai's position, hearing his well-put-together best friend was also vulnerable at times when he seemed to take everything on headfirst.

"Not really, but I have regressed before. I get it, you don't have to hide it around me." Sigma assured him.

"You have? But you haven't noticed mine." It kind of hit a bit that he was now realizing Nikolai came to his office all quiet and peaceful when he was regressed. Nikolai had somehow deemed his office a safe area to be in while regressed.

"I guess I never did. To be fair, I wasn't looking to notice. I figured you wanted some quiet time but didn't want to be alone." He pet over his hair, making his friend melt against him.

"Are you sure you don't mind?" Nikolai asked.

"Why wouldn't I be? I mean, you're such a calm child, I don't mind at all. It's nice having someone around, nothing has to change if you don't want it to. If you're more comfortable with it, as long as you're comfortable, I don't mind what you want to do while you're regressed." Nikolai's tension left, he seemed so relieved and Sigma smiled a bit seeing pale fingers twitch holding his pacifier. He wanted to use it, he knew.

"'M sorry, I'm trying not to. I want to be an adult." He rubbed Nikolai's shoulder.

"You don't have to be an adult. There's really nothing else to discuss unless you're uncomfortable with me being around." Sigma was busy unravelling Nikolai's braid, which was rather messy now from being slept in but gentle fingers undid it careful for him.

"O-Okay." Nikolai quietly put his pacifier back in his mouth. Sigma had a better view of it now, a white pacifier with a black handle and button, white and black gems placed like a chessboard with black and white bow charms on the handle and a black and white lollipop on the button.

"How old are you, Kolya?" He asked, watching his body relax against him, regressing and finally calm like he'd been every other time he came to his office to relax in it's peaceful co-inhabitance.

"'M one." He mumbled around the pacifier.

"And do you want anything?" He asked softly, gentle so he didn't startle him.

"Maybe...Maybe food?" Nikolai asked softly.

"Of course. In here or the café?" Sigma asked, fingers in Nikolai's hair to keep him calm.

"I can't..." Nikolai whined a bit. Ah, that's right, his Kolya probably couldn't make decisions when he was this small.

"That's okay. We'll go to the café, maybe the arcade if you want." Sigma offered, holding out the bear for him to take.

"That's Dmitri." He told him.

"He's cute. Like a certain little boy I know." He poked his nose, making him laugh and cuddle his bear close.

"So how about it? Breakfast at the café with me and Dmitri." Nikolai latched onto his arm, letting Sigma lead him around, hiding his face against Dmitri to hide his pacifier from the patrons and workers, he was afraid to be made fun of.

"They won't, you know." He reminded him as they sat at their own table, next to Hana at the bar, in Sora's section. "You're with me, they wouldn't dare make fun of someone with the manager." He calmed him once mismatched eyes looked at him. Nikolai moved Dmitri away a bit, still holding him close though, like a calming lifeline.

"Hi, Sir. Oh, that's such a cute pacifier." Sora smiled brightly at Nikolai, who smiled back a bit behind his pacifier, hiding his face in Dmitri so he didn't have to respond.

"Thank you." Nikolai actually responded, it made Sigma a little shocked, he hadn't expected him to interact.

"Would you like a kids menu?" She asked him, getting a small nod. "I'll bring crayons with it for you." Nikolai gave a small giggle, he looked so happy about it that Sigma swore he'd go blind of the sunshine he was radiating.

"And any drinks you want, Sir? Sorry, just...such a cute baby." Sora directed toward him, still smiling about Nikolai. Sigma would be lying if he claimed he wasn't smiling too.

"Coffee, two sugars, four creamers."

"And any drinks you want, little one?" She asked Nikolai.

"Chocolate?" Nikolai asked, like he wasn't sure if he was allowed.

"Hot chocolate?" Sora asked. He nodded quietly, opting to hide behind Dmitri still.

"He can't handle dairy, so the nondairy milk, please." Sigma reminded her.

"Got it. I'll be right back." Sora was good at her job, he hadn't even noticed when she'd put their separate menus or the crayons on the table. Breakfast was a quiet and quite adorable affair, Nikolai giggling as he made Sigma try a forkful of the pancakes he got and Sigma getting a paci kiss against his cheek as a result of it.

Sigma led him back to his office after, letting Nikolai relax with Dmitri on the couch as he worked. He did notice, however, that Nikolai curled up to sleep again, seeming tired, though he supposed babies got tired.

"Come here, Kolya." He gathered his tired baby into his arms. Nikolai squeaked, obviously not expecting him to be able to do such a thing. He knew he was quite unassuming as well, but he'd rather people underestimate him.

Nikolai grasped both him and Dmitri tightly, very obviously set deep into his headspace at being held. He probably hadn't been held like this before, not in a long, long time, at least. Sigma thought it adorable.

He brought him to his bedroom, settling him into the thick blankets and fluffy pillows. Nikolai whined for him, arms out for him. He supposed he wouldn't have anything to worry about for a while, his workers rarely needed his presence, he was simply an overseer.

"Ichigo, I'm taking the day off. I'll be in my room if you need me." He radioed to his head of security.

"Heard, Sir." He got back. He set the radio on his bedside table, getting into the blankets with Nikolai, kicking his shoes off and letting the other cuddle up against him, asleep almost instantly as his arm went over him to keep him close.

Little soft breaths and hands holding him close, he smiled, keeping him close with gentle hands. He let himself go back to sleep with him, content with the co-dependent calmness they'd made in his room.

[snowe-zolynn-rogers]

Pairings: GogSig (Pre-Relationship)

Word Count: 2,942 Words

Summary: Sigma finds out Nikolai's coping mechanisms in a less than ideal way.

Warnings: Age Regression, Yelling Mention, Death Mention, Injury Mention, Anxiety Attack Mention, Food Mention, let me know if I should tag anything else.

BSD Little Oneshots: Chapter 13: Little!Nikolai x Caregiver!Sigma

Sigma is tired. Drowned in work from the day and just exhausted, he can feel it in his bones even, the ache of having worked all day and having run around to fix things. He knew he shouldn't, he was only one person, but there were just so many things to do today.

His stress had begun with Nikolai showing up a week ago, he supposed. The jester had returned yet again to the Sky Casino and gleefully interrupted Sigma's smooth operation. Granted, he'd do this all the time, but it seemed everything was an interruption now.

With glitter bombs in his office, the staff floor getting flooded with confetti, the break room filled with balloons, jump scares, and more. Sigma was only thankful it stayed confined to the staff floor for now and Nikolai's antics hadn't spread to the guests.

Sigma knew Nikolai liked announcing his presence but this was so far over what he'd done previously that it made him angry to deal with it. Sure, Nikolai usually visited once every three months and, this time, it had been six. But that shouldn't mean he terrorized Sigma's staff.

In fact, the manager was starting to wish Nikolai had stayed in Ukraine this time, with that circus he'd joined, a different one than the one Fyodor had gotten him from. Maybe they could deal with him and his antics better than Sigma could.

But, then, Sigma would miss Nikolai understanding his past through his own in his own way. He would miss their late-night talks when both had just had nightmares and couldn't stand being alone and the gentle reassurance that came with silent conversations and a clingy clown making the feeling of chains on his wrists go away.

Sigma supposed the last six years had changed their friendship quite a bit. Sigma could actually call it a friendship, Nikolai wasn't so distant pursuing Fyodor and Sigma was open with Nikolai.

They'd fought constantly the first few months, but they'd only gotten closer since and they had consistently turned to each other since. Even when other people came to be called friends, Sigma and Nikolai simply changed their titles to best friends. Well, Nikolai did and Sigma went with it.

But Sigma could hear another prank, hear his assistant, Vlad, seeming to finally snap and yell at Nikolai. He couldn't quite make out what it was, but Vlad sounded angry, something Sigma hadn't heard on him before, and the redhead marched Nikolai though the door to him.

"Your clown just tried to kill me! He tried to electrocute me!" Vlad snapped. Sigma glared at the mock innocent expression Nikolai gave. Sure, it was a new expression, but he wasn't weaseling from this.

"Nikolai, what the fuck!?" He snapped. "Do you know how dangerous that is!? Why would you do that!?" Sigma continued.

"I didn't." Nikolai claimed.

"Oh? Like you didn't nearly set my hair on fire yesterday!?" Sigma asked. Nikolai looked him over, eyes wide like his pleading eyes would save him. "I don't even know why you came back from Ukraine if all you'll do is act like this."

"I'll take him to his room." Vlad was calm now, so Sigma had no problem letting him take the jester to his room, finally the calm returning to the offices again with Nikolai no longer bothering anyone.

But guilt still tugged at Sigma, he assumed it was the eyes Nikolai gave him, those damned puppy dog eyes that pleaded and burned guilt into his psyche. He practically felt them staring at him still while he worked. Eventually, during guard change, Sigma decided to check on him during the stall in activity as it was getting late now.

He fully expected to be greeted to a pouting clown and himself apologizing for having wished him to have stayed in Ukraine when he knew Nikolai needed the break from performing, especially after so long of it. He hadn't even had the time yet to check on Nikolai.

Usually he'd go over any injuries his friend had and make sure he was fine, especially when Nikolai was constantly getting injuries the circus again. They made him worry, no matter the size of them.

But he wasn't greeted to Nikolai pouting, he wasn't greeted at all, in fact. He ended up opening Nikolai's door with his own higher-ranked keycard and opening the door himself.

Nikolai was sitting on his bed, faced away from the door. He supposed he didn't want to see him, but Sigma felt the guilt still eating away at him. He had to talk to him, probably apologize, and make sure he was okay.

"Nikolai." He got big eyes on him, shockingly filled with tears, as he shut the door softly. The albino looked terrified, seemingly petrified to the bed, just looking at him.

"Nikolai, I didn't mean it." He blurted out upon seeing the tears on the other's face, but Nikolai moved away when he got closer, breath getting quicker. He had to wonder if he had induced some sort of panic attack into him, which only made his guilt worsen.

"Nikolai, please don't cry. Try to breathe slowly." He tried to help, catching the albino's arm and the crying man nearly screamed, ripping his arm away and moving off the bed, falling off, actually, and hitting against the floor rather painfully if the thud of his head meant anything.

Then the crying really started, well wailing, as Nikolai curled up into himself and Sigma was too stunned to help at first. But he rushed to him once he got himself to move again, checking over his wailing friend and finding a pink mark on his forehead, surely to be a bruise soon.

"I'm sorry, I'm right here, everything is fine." He held him into his shoulder, gentle so he didn't startle him, soft assurances slowly getting him to calm down. The older man got down to hiccupping and burying against him, needing that physical companionship Sigma knew he craved constantly.

"Nikolai, I'm sorry. I didn't think that would happen. I should've warned you before I touched you." Sigma apologized, brushing his fingers gently over Nikolai's head. "And I shouldn't have said what I did in my office either. I'm sorry, I got angry because I'm stressed, but I shouldn't have taken it out on you." Sigma felt hands holding him close tightly.

But Nikolai didn't respond other than cuddling up further to him, he supposed he must be tired. The manager knew that Nikolai was always tired after crying. He showed up crying of nightmares enough to know that.

So Sigma lifted him back onto the bed, getting his friend under the blankets and Nikolai looked over him with big eyes, hands grabbing for him wordlessly, whining for him, tears filling his eyes again when he didn't lay down with him immediately.

"Mama!" Nikolai choked out, startling him and Nikolai hiccupped, still lonesome on the bed. "Mama, cuddle, p'eas." Nikolai attempted to articulate, trying in his desperation to lure him to bed but Sigma was just beyond confused at the title.

"Mama? Me?" He asked.

"Mama!" Nikolai sniffled. He hesitantly laid with him after taking his tailcoat and shoes off, getting the clown cuddled up to him even in his confusion, but he feared he'd cry again if he didn't.

"Why am I Mama?" Sigma asked, getting yellow eyes looking up at him and he noticed Nikolai's thumb in his mouth, not just his nail like usual, but more to the visage of a small child.

"Mama." Nikolai repeated softly around his thumb. Sigma got the feeling he wasn't quite speaking to the Nikolai he knew, this must be the head trauma he'd been through. Did that mean Nikolai forgot everything? Thought Sigma his real mother?

"Nikolai, what's my name?"

"Sima." He slurred but that was good enough for the manager to believe he hadn't lost his memory.

"Nikolai, why are you acting like a baby?" He asked.

"'M baby." Nikolai claimed.

"You're baby?" Sigma asked.

"'M one. Was six." Nikolai looked at his confused expression with those wide eyes that certainly reminded Sigma of a curious little doe-eyed one year old, watching over him in awe.

"You're one?" Sigma asked, getting a soft nod from the other again.

"Scawed, be baby." Sigma couldn't quite decipher that one.

"What?"

"Scawy yell, more small." Nikolai tried to explain in his baby babble but Sigma got it this time.

"You went from six to one because I yelled at you?" Sigma asked, getting a soft nod. "Nikolai, I'm sorry I yelled." He apologized.

"Love you, Mama." Nikolai babbled happily regardless. It made his chest feel warm knowing Nikolai didn't hate him, that he hadn't ruined their friendship yelling and making him cry and stress into this position.

"Mama loves you too." He accepted, fingers in white hair, brushing gently through it.

"Mama." Nikolai murmured, face in Sigma's neck as the manager watched over his small friend as the baby's breath evened out, little noises coming from him as Sigma knew he was asleep.

It looked like he wasn't getting out of Nikolai's needy cuddle session, so he settled in and watched the movie on the television to pass time before he fell asleep as well, still holding Nikolai close, protectively.

He woke up in a similar position, a clingy clown still tucked up to him and he looked at the clock. He'd fallen asleep two hours early so it only was fair that he'd woken up two hours early, but Sigma absolutely hated six in the morning.

Personally, he didn't interact much with the guards that worked the early morning shift from four to ten much. Occasionally, he'd greet them if he did venture from his room for say food or coffee, but nothing more usually. Well, not since the first week being in the Sky Casino and his almost-week of no sleep forcing himself to memorize every guest, at least.

But he figured he should at least get coffee and maybe food from the staff kitchen and try to feel human again, so he slipped from Nikolai's bed, getting a whiny clown waking and grasping his hand softly.

"Sig." His voice no longer had that baby-like softness and the vulnerability seemed gone for now. So maybe he was back to his version of normal again and he and Sigma could talk.

"How old are you?" Sigma asked, sitting on the bed and allowing his friend to lean against him tiredly.

"Six." Nikolai lazed against him still though.

"You're six now?" Sigma asked.

"I have been all week." Nikolai told him, looking up at him.

"Wait, you've been six all week?" Sigma asked.

"I've been regressed since Monday." Nikolai informed him.

"Regression." Sigma remembered bits and pieces of that, a coping mechanism. He hadn't noticed really that he wasn't fully in an adult mindset, he just thought Nikolai was bothering his staff and him for fun.

"Yeah, I've been small." Nikolai confirmed.

"Okay, well, I'm getting coffee and food. Do you want anything?"

"Nuh-uh. I get my drink."

"Are you sure?" Sigma asked.

"I take care of myself!" Nikolai pouted.

"Doesn't mean you should." Sigma told him.

"Just milk, I can do it!" Nikolai whined.

"Alright, but I'm just going to the staff kitchen, okay? Come get me if you need me. Down the right side hall, past the infirmary, next to the employee break room." Nikolai nodded at him.

"I'm bring you back food, probably rice and eggs or something." Sigma told him, patting his hair and the clown slowly detached from him, kissing against his face.

"Love you." Nikolai chirped happily, giggling as Sigma rolled his eyes at his friend's antics and let him up from the bed.

Nikolai got up himself as well to get milk, likely from the small fridge in the corner. He didn't know when exactly Nikolai had put it there, but he didn't quite care either, as long as the clown was pleased with his setup.

"Love you too." Nikolai squealed with joy as Sigma left to the staff kitchen. He tiredly saw Shion and Vitaliy with René in the kitchen talking, saw the light blue glow of René 's effect field glowing at the entrance, he didn't know which effect it was but he couldn't care less with how tired he was, come the consequenses as they may.

"And Sigma comes into the hallway and it's just full of confetti and it's just sticking in his hair and everything and the damned streamers kept getting lost in his hair, he couldn't find them for hours. I'm pretty sure he went to bed with a few still in his hair." Shion was telling the other two.

"Boss." René quickly addressed him upon him entering the effect field, he sensed him come in, he assumed. It seemed the field was to help Vitaliy and his drowsiness, as the blonde looked dead tired. "We were just talking-"

"It's fine, René." He assured the brunette. "And yes, I found more streamers in my hair that night." He confirmed.

"Sir, you're up early." Vitaliy commented.

"Fell asleep early so I woke up early, I don't feel alive yet still." Shion cracked a laugh at him as he got coffee into a cup.

"You know, you look like a mess."

"Shion, that's our boss." René swatted at the redhead.

"I know I do, last night I sort of crashed at ten during guard change." Sigma didn't know how desperately he needed coffee until he drank from his cup.

"Oh wow, doesn't Konstantin say he usually goes to bed at like midnight? I don't think you've ever slept through the 10pm guard change." Vitaliy noted.

"I don't think I have. I've only ever slept through the 4am change." Sigma hummed.

"You know, you seem more human than I thought." Shion alerted him.

"I sure hope so, I am one. Somebody would have a lot of explaining to do if I wasn't and didn't know it myself by now." Sigma looked over his three coworkers.

He knew vaguely these three were something that the 10am guards usually liked talking about. These three were apparently childhood best friends and he could see it in their comfortable banter, it felt more comfortable in the room. At least they didn't butt heads like Konstantin and Rin did.

He went about making whatever seemed easiest, which was rice and eggs, but he also didn't want Nikolai, who was still pretty small, to struggle to feel comfortable eating. Thankfully, he felt a bit more awake once he'd put the rice on so he could more figure out what he was doing.

He remembered the family recipe passed to Nikolai four years ago by his grandmother, Zoya, for Olivye salad, so that's just what he made, eventually getting startled by the hands around his waist.

He was fully ready to turn and tell one of the trio of workers that touching him in such a way was highly inappropriate, only to see Nikolai's face pressed against his neck when he looked back.

"Hi Sig." Nikolai greeted him.

"Hi, Kolya." He sighed.

"I got bored." Nikolai told him.

"Yes, I assumed so." Sigma rolled his eyes, patting his hair.

"What are you making?" Nikolai asked.

"Try." He directed a spoon at Nikolai's mouth, making him try it.

"You remembered Babusya Zoya's recipe." Nikolai realized.

"I have an eidetic memory, Kolya." He felt Nikolai happily press against his neck regardless, quite obviously smiling.

"You're the best." Nikolai told him quietly.

"I know." He felt a smile tug at his lips, he couldn't really hide it.

"Boss, you and Gogol?" René asked.

"We're friends, yes." He told them.

"Wait, you're not dating?" Shion asked.

"What?" Sigma asked, Nikolai seemed quite uncomfortable now and buried against his side. "No, not as far as I know. Just best friends." Nikolai perked up at that.

"Birdie loves being my friend, I knew it." Nikolai giggled.

"Yeah, I guess." He put his head against Nikolai's.

"Regardless, that's sort of nice to know that you have someone close." Vitaliy told him.

"Thank you."

"Are we eating in my room?" Nikolai asked.

"Yes, your drink is in there." Sigma reminded him.

"Didn't wanna bring it." Nikolai told him.

"I know, that's fine." Sigma assured, making up their bowls and handing Nikolai his own bowl of rice and egg and the bowl of Olivye salad to carry.

"You cooked mine."

"You don't like raw eggs."

"You're so sweet." Nikolai beamed at him, he looked like sunshine, it nearly blinded Sigma to see him smile so brightly.

"I'll bet they'll be dating by the end of Gogol's stay this time." He heard Shion tell the other two as they were in the hallway, guiding Nikolai to his room. Sigma smiled a bit, maybe he should talk to Nikolai about that once he was an adult again.

"Big me does like you, but it feels weird thinking about it while I'm small." Nikolai told him, frowning.

"I get that, and we can talk about it later, whenever you feel big again." Sigma told him, poking his nose to make him smile again. He was indeed greeted with that cute smile and a giggle for his troubles while he opened Nikolai's door.

Thankfully, breakfast was a calm affair, watching a children's movie play on the television and Nikolai nearly falling asleep against him still drinking what he assumed was milk from a bottle, but he didn't mind, he got to run his fingers through the clown's hair, watching over him as he worked himself awake watching the movie and his friend.

[snowe-zolynn-rogers]

Pairings: None

Word Count: 1,810 Words

Summary: Snapshots of Nikolai getting babysat by his allies.

Warnings: Age Regression, Bullying Mention, Cursing, Anxiety Attack Mention, Death Mention, Nausea Mention, Caps, let me know if I should tag anything else.

BSD Little Oneshots: Chapter 6: Little!Nikolai x Caregivers!DOA & Rats

Stumbling upon it had initially been an accident. You see, you could argue the DOA and Rats meeting was going as planned. If you weren't a certain Nikolai Gogol, that is. He knew, of course, that everyone else would describe this meeting as normal, business, casual even. Even Sigma, who hated these meetings was perfectly fine today.

Unfortunately, he wasn't able to pay attention. He was busy bouncing between headspaces and trying to keep his mouth shut so nothing stupid came out, no babble, not a word. He refused to speak because he knew his voice would come out wrong, come out like a baby. He'd taken to nodding and shaking his head as a response.

And Fukuchi had taken to asking him things he just simply didn't answer once he'd caught on that he was being quiet today. But, even with his questions, Fukuchi breezed past him easily regardless of answer or not. Fukuchi always did like monologues.

"Can someone remind me again how he's useful? I mean, such a strong ability is wasted if he's so slow mentally." Pushkin remarked and Nikolai felt his adult headspace crash a bit.

He refused to look up, he knew he'd look too stupid if he did, too young. He didn't want them to see him like this, he didn't want to even be here but everyone insisted that everyone attend. Even Shibusawa had joined as a tagalong to Fyodor, like a thorn in his side.

"What the fuck, Pushkin?" Sigma snapped. He looked over at the two-tone in confusion, he felt tears on his face. He didn't know when they got there, he didn't know when Bram began growling at Pushkin, eyes flashing dangerously, either but he was. The whole room was tense and he heard hiccups. Was that him?

"Why's the baby crying, hmm? You know you aren't useful?" Pushkin continued.

"I am!" He hiccupped, he felt like he was shaking.

"He even sounds like a kid." Pushkin laughed.

"You need to leave, right now. Before you regret coming today." He could have sworn Fyodor was talking to him so that's just what he did, he ran out and home, hiding in his room, hiding in his closet with his pacifier because he knew it was the only thing that could calm him down.

"Kolya!" Came Ivan's voice eventually, he heard the others too. They were looking for him, he knew.

So he didn't make a sound from his place in the closet, hand over his mouth, breath shaking and he was scared. Did they come to kill him? He couldn't escape like this, he was too small to use his ability with any accuracy, he could end up in the middle of an ocean, or falling from the sky.

"I think he's in the closet." Shibusawa told Ivan, probably the others as well.

"Why would he be in the closet? Wouldn't he have left by now?" Fukuchi asked.

"His breathing, it's quiet, but he's there." He hated Shibusawa's senses, he did. He knew too much too often and this is the one time he didn't want to be found.

"Kolya." Fyodor opened the door, kneeling before the closet when he spotted him in the far corner. He would die here, Fyodor would kill him. He didn't want to die like this, his chest felt too tight, he wanted to hide, he needed to breathe but he couldn't.

"He's panicking." Shibusawa alerted them.

"Panicking? Kolya, we made Pushkin leave. You can calm down." Fyodor assured him.

"Here, move." Sigma shoved his way past the others and sat with him in the corner. "Deep breaths. Slowly." The two-tone assured him, hand on his arm softly to give him something to latch onto. He followed his instruction, mimicking the calm, slow deep breaths that the other was taking to guide him.

"See? You're okay." Sigma assured him. "Just relax, you're safe. Nobody will hurt you. You're not stupid, Pushkin is an asshole."  He nodded, hands still over his mouth, now to hide his pacifier more than quiet his breathing.

"Nikolai, are you nauseous?" Ivan asked.

"Yeah, he's still holding his mouth." Mushitaro realized.

"Kolya, nausea's okay, just tell us. Are you sick?" Fyodor asked. He shook his head, that wasn't it. He didn't want to be made fun of again.

"Oh." Sigma hummed. He realized he'd seen it, he'd seen it and he was done for. They'd get rid of him, kill him so they didn't have a baby running around with their secrets. "It's cute, Kolya. Nobody will say anything or they'll deal with me." Sigma threatened. Slowly, hands shaking, he let his hands down and the others got to see his white pacifier.

"Aw." Ivan crooned.

"That's cute." Shibusawa admitted softly.

"See? No need to be scared." Sigma assured him. "Do you wanna sleep? Anxiety attacks can be exhausting." Sigma offered, getting up himself, expecting Nikolai to follow, obviously.

"Up." He quietly requested.

"Up we go then." Sigma crouched down and he latched on, unsure if they'd both tip over but he was a bit shocked when Sigma could easily lift him and carry him to bed. "Get some sleep, Kolya." Sigma was quiet whispering while he tucked him into the blankets, hushing the others and their bickering over who got to take care of the baby next.

Next time he regressed, he himself chose to latch onto Fyodor's arm, following him home from a restaurant that him, Sigma, and Fyodor had visited. Well, into a store and then home.

After the they got to Fyodor's apartment, he got handed a few jingly toys and he happily sat on the floor next to Fyodor's couch playing with said toys for hours, only occasionally sticking them into the other's face and making him look at the pretty, loud toys he'd been given.

He wouldn't complain if he was occasionally handed a kid's sized bag of fruit snacks or goldfish or a smaller toy. He did cry after Fyodor tossed out a wrapper he'd been given until the other had retrieved it, washed it, and given it back. He liked being around Fyodor, despite the other's adamance that he 'didn't care'.

Interrupting Sigma's day was a favorite pastime, he liked bothering him, Sigma had containments for him to not bother anyone else but him. So he followed him around with one of his toys Fyodor had given him, holding onto his arm and trailing along whilst the other man did his job.

Sigma made no complaint, so he just kept going, eventually leaving to go to sleep in Sigma's room. He woke up to quiet bickering and everyone telling him they'd been looking for him for three hours now. He did find that rather funny, the thought of six people frantically searching a casino for a baby who had been in one place the whole time.

Mushitaro got to babysit exactly once, through no fault of either him or Nikolai himself. But they were at the carnival and Mushitaro had won him a white bear with red eyes he'd named Katja.

However both of them ended up crying somehow. He didn't know how, neither did Mushitaro. But Ivan and Shibusawa had to go get them and bring them home. Mushitaro was no longer allowed to babysit him without someone else there.

Following Shibusawa home was odd. The man lived in some weird tower place, but he wanted to follow him around. Tatsuhiko didn't seem to mind, so he sat on a couch playing with his bear until Shibusawa got the bright idea to interact with him.

Said interaction was easy, Nikolai didn't really mind it, he patted where the other's horn would be and giggled claiming the horn was pretty. It was, after all. He liked it, at least. Shibusawa actually showed him the horn and he began sticking stickers and bows to it and into the other's hair.

Being called 'little treasure' made him giddy with joy, he liked it. So he called Tatsuhiko 'Dragon Dad' back, much to the other's already flared hoarding dragon instincts. And he didn't complain getting cuddled to sleep, hair being brushed through gently.

Ivan didn't quite bring him home when he chose him, he brought him to the park. Nikolai got to go on the swings so he was pleased. Ivan actually matched his attention so playing tag at the park was no problem for either of them.

And, certainly, having a platonic 'date' at a boba shop after was fun for them both, and certainly getting to go home and play hide and seek was also fun, thankfully Ivan was good at seeking.

Following Fukuchi home was an unfortunate side effect of Bram promising to tell him stories. He'd made Fukuchi cry earlier, calling him a bitch at their meeting when Fukuchi had called everyone 'mother hens'. At which, Fyodor had been outed as teaching him to curse while he was regressed.

Bram had actually laughed, which made him smile too while he watched the others argue over Fyodor and his teaching of swear words to a child. Fyodor was rather unphased, which was funny watching five others yell at him to stop teaching young children to curse.

So he'd determined he'd spend time with Bram, nobody ever really did. But Fukuchi had begun thinking it was him he was following as he stole a book from Fukuchi's bookshelf for them to read.

He snuck off to Bram's coffin after, sitting in the bottom to keep him company and he listened to Bram's stories of Europe until he fell asleep in the bottom half of the coffin with him, both settling on taking a nap before another story began.

He was once again woken up to quiet arguments about who had been watching him, to which he burst out with 'BRAM!', waking the other who simply sighed and smiled at him and urged him to read to him this time.

Fukuchi got him a child harness and had it on a leg of his desk. He'd been given markers, water, snacks, and coloring books he was occupied with. But then Fukuchi had fallen asleep and he decided coloring his mustache bright pink would be a good activity.

Bram was propped as an extra babysitter in his coffin against the wall, laughing at him and ended up waking Fukuchi up with his laughter. He continued coloring Fukuchi's mustache every time he was babysat by him from then on.

Regressing right before a meeting wasn't uncommon now, but he certainly didn't expect to end up being in a cuddle pile with everyone. Even Bram had been joined, he was hugging him in place of Katja, who Sigma was holding onto for him.

He was happy they'd figured it out. Giggling in the middle of a cuddle pile was the best way to spend an unproductive meeting.

[snowe-zolynn-rogers]

Pairings: None

Word Count: 4,120 Words

Summary: Atsushi finds a small friend in the store. Chaos ensues as usual.

Warnings: Age Regression, Food Mention, Cursing, Past Injury Mention, Fighting Mention, Immunocompromised Character, Xenophobia Mention, Overworking Mention, Fainting Mention, let me know if I should tag anything else.

Translations: Ofitsiant?: Server?; Ni, yo tse vzhe znav.: No, I knew it already.; Brechun.: Liar.; Comment vont les chatons?: How are the kittens?; Ils font du bien. Irina a essayé de se battre à nouveau contre mes cheveux.: They're doing good. Irina tried to fight my hair again.; Ce chat vous teste, il suffit de lui aspergé d’eau.: That cat is testing you, just spray her with water.; Et tirer sur mon bébé ? Je ne pourrais jamais!: And shoot my baby? I could never!

BSD Little Oneshots: Chapter 5: Little!Nikolai x Caregivers! Atsushi & Sigma

Atsushi liked to think he did the Agency's shopping well, he was the most effective at least. The quickest was Kunikida, though he messed up frequently. Dazai was the most incorrect, not shocking.

Ranpo was the slowest, Yosano forgot things, Kyouka only remembered her things, Jun'ichiro usually didn't have time, and Kenji was no longer allowed after purchasing only beef once. Their three new members, Sigma, Poe, and Mushitaro, weren't given the opportunity yet to do the shopping.

But, however, finding a familiar person's smell in the market wasn't a new experience for Atsushi. He'd found all sorts of friends and foes in markets before. He'd run into Poe getting fruit for Karl, Chuuya doing his shopping, even Mushitaro once back when he worked for Fyodor.

But this smell, it smelled like popcorn and peppermint. It was weirdly unique and he'd only ever smelled that odd combination once, during the Decay of the Angels incident, made by one Nikolai Gogol. A certain someone who had been avoiding the police for a year now.

He wanted to check, it could be false, his nose wasn't always correct when he wasn't actively looking for someone. Once he'd even followed Sigma's normal smell of cinnamon and ginger to find it was just Dazai's who had been near Sigma earlier in the day and Dazai, that asshole, his scent was hard to pick up, even when he was actively trying.

So he made a sharp turn into the the frozen aisle and saw him looking over the freezers like they'd offended him. He was quite inconspicuous, for Gogol at least. White hair down but kinked like he'd had it up for a while.

He was hidden away inside a jacket, face obscured by a space-themed mask. He supposed it being Winter, he was also hiding from the cold as well as the police. He saw that he was obviously very tired as he got closer, dark marks under his eyes.

"Gogol." He addressed, getting big eyes to look up at him as he grabbed Ranpo's frozen waffles from the freezer next to where Gogol was standing. Now that he was closer, he could also see that it had been ice cream the clown had been looking at before. "Are you stealing that?" Atsushi asked quietly, getting Yosano's fudge bars into the cart.

"No, I..." He sounded oddly quiet, he supposed hiding from police would make one change their voice. "I can't find it." He looked at him and to the ice cream.

"Find what?" Atsushi asked. He'd decided long ago that markets were peace treaty areas, he wouldn't fight someone in a store. Even if that someone was currently evading police, had stabbed him, planted his leg in the ground like a tree, tore the agency apart, and helped start a worldwide vampirism pandemic.

"Peppermint." Gogol sounded odd still but he spotted said ice cream and directed him to it by the arm. He practically lit up and, with the way his eyes held that same look, Atsushi realized he was regressing much like some of the other kids at he orphanage would.

"Hey, come on. Do you need anything else?" He was abiding his 'no market fights' rule but he also was worried. It smelled like Gogol was alone. Who let someone regressed go out alone without supervision? Gogol tried to take his arm away, trying to shake him off.

"No, you'll arrest me." He looked scared. That was the opposite of the effect he wanted.

"No, I don't arrest people when I'm shopping. I have a rule against detaining people in markets." He assured him and Gogol silently stuck by his side, eventually holding onto his arm with desperate hands as he helped him get the rest of the things on his list.

Whilst they were shopping, Gogol had told him of how he'd just got off from working a fourteen hour shift, he could see his shaking, actually, one he mentioned his shift. It had sent him into high alert because what bullshit was that? Fourteen hours without a break to where your employee was so stressed that they regressed in the middle of a frozen aisle.

"And then I'm done. Thank you, Gogol." He smiled at him, getting a giggle in response that let him know he'd made him smile. Nikolai certainly warmed up to him quickly, he was almost cute. "Do you need to grab anything else? I can bring you home." He offered.

"Dinner. I need dinner." Atsushi realized it was nearly eleven at night. Could Nikolai even cook if he was as small as he seemed?

"What do you need for it?" He asked.

"Want." Nikolai grabbed a pre-made bento with assorted sandwiches from the deli and Atsushi led him up to the counter to pay. "I can pay." Nikolai tried to hand him money.

"Keep it. My treat for helping, the list would have taken me hours. It only took about twenty minutes." Atsushi assured him.

"Thank you." Nikolai still seemed so shy, even for a child. Once they were outside, they moved Nikolai's items into one bag while Atsushi held his own.

"We're out of the market." Nikolai reminded him softly, showing him his hands, trembling wrists held together. He expected Atsushi to arrest him now?

"I've gotta get you home still. You need to eat and I need to get these groceries to the agency after I get you home." Atsushi reminded him.

"I'm not bad? Because I'm little?" Nikolai asked.

"No, you're not in a state where arresting you would be right. And I'm in no state to get you to the Agency even if I did arrest you." Atsushi told him.

"I can go?" The clown asked softly, almost disbelieving he would hold to this. He'd done the same for Chuuya once, after a guy followed him around the store. He smiled kindly at him and Nikolai seemed like he was smiling back under his mask as he nodded.

"What's with the mask, by the way? It know it's winter but there isn't any flu yet." Atsushi asked.

"I can't leave the house without it, my immune system doesn't work, I'd get sick." Nikolai was walking with him, letting Atsushi take him home.

"You're immunocompromised?" He asked.

"Yeah, I get sick a lot. I've been sick twice the last three weeks."

"Why?"

"Because my boss doesn't let us wear masks at work. He says they're unsightly." Nikolai admitted.

"Sounds mean to me. You should be able to wear it if it helps you." Atsushi felt slightly angry at that. someone was practically forcing their staff to get sick to appease themselves only? It boiled his blood.

"He is mean. Mister Aoki doesn't like me."

"What? Why?"

"Well, Mister Aoki bought the restaurant I work for almost four months ago and, when he did, the old owner made him sign a contract saying he wouldn't fire anyone the old owner hired for a full calendar year. I'm one of the only five people left that Miss Minami hired, I've been there for eleven and a half months now. Everyone else quit when he began upping our hours and took away our breaks." Atsushi looked over the way Nikolai looked tense. He didn't like it.

"He's convinced HR that I'm lying and I'm just looking for payout because of Miss Minami's contract. The contract said charges would be pressed on behalf of any employee that got fired and the money from the lawsuit awarded to the employee. That's what happened with Annette when he told her to leave last month, at least. Miss Minami did her best to make sure her staff was taken care of when she retired." He looked a little happier, he guessed, less tense thinking about his old boss.

"He doesn't like foreigners but Miss Minami liked having people who could speak to her patrons in whatever language the customer spoke if they were visiting Japan. We used to have these mini-sections based on who could speak what, so we could make sure anyone travelling could speak whatever they were comfortable with." Atsushi would have liked to visit this place back when Miss Minami was running it from how it sounded. The woman sounded like a saint.

"Can't you contact corporate or anything?" He asked.

"I wish. I'd have to be on the phone for hours and I've been working every day for fourteen hours a day for months now. He made sure none of us had a way to contact corporate unless we stayed up all night and came in again the next day. Because he'd give us a write-up if we called out without a doctor's note, which nobody would have time to get."

"But I get more money out of him overworking me, so, at least, I can save up money for now so I have something when he fires me eventually." He sounded resigned to it, actually, like he was used to being overworked. Atsushi could only imagine the hell Fyodor found this guy in.

"He sounds like he shouldn't own that place if he won't run it correctly." Atsushi assured him.

"I'll probably need to quit soon if it keeps up, I can't handle it much more." For regressed, Nikolai knew how to talk very well. Maybe he was fluctuating since he was with someone? He'd only be able to assume but it was likely Gogol never regressed around others before.

"Where do you work?" He asked.

"Minami Café. Four blocks from my apartment. Some of your Port Mafia friends come through sometimes. That dark one? Your partner, I think? Dazai's boyfriend, Chuuya, comes in a lot too, he likes sitting in my section so I'll speak French with him." Nikolai remarked.

"I think I've been there, almost a year ago I think, with Sigma too. My server was Catalina."

"Catalina quit three months ago. I was probably off the day you came in, Catalina used to be my opposite when Miss Minami was there. If I was off, she was working. We shared a section."

"Ah, Atsushi! There you are! Hi, Atsushi's friend! Kunikida sent me to tell you we forgot to put milk on the list!" Dazai reminded him.

"I know, I got it anyway." He showed him the bags.

"And who's your friend? All bundled up and oh, what a cute space mask!" Dazai poked Gogol's mask, making him buzz back to get the finger away from him. "You look so familiar but I can't put my finger on it." Dazai hummed.

Nikolai had stopped moving. Atsushi was sure he stopped breathing, he was scared. He understood it, he was regressed and hungry and stressed. He was overwhelmed with the amount of interaction, he just wanted to get home. Atsushi, of all people, understood that.

"Hmm. It's not cute enough to hide you, Gogol." Dazai's tone went dark and a pair of cuffs were suddenly on Nikolai's wrists.

"Hey!" He protested, trying to get Nikolai away but Dazai was dragging Nikolai to the Agency.

"You get to explain to Fukuzawa why you pinned the Agency for the Decay of the Angels incident. I want it from your mouth, clown." Dazai roughly moved him, Atsushi was following them, growling at Dazai to stop it, that he was just walking him home and they could talk to him later.

But Dazai, instead, dragged him into the Agency and tossed him into Fukuzawa's office, landing on his hands, shaking still. Atsushi had handed the bags to put away to Jun'ichiro on he way to follow Dazai.

"Dazai!" Atsushi roared now that they were behind closed doors, away from the prying eyes of the public. Gogol looked ready to cry and Atsushi wouldn't blame him if he did.

"Tell him." Dazai demanded. Nikolai looked up at the president, who had stood from his chair to look at him on the floor. He looked at Dazai.

"I wanna go home!" Nikolai bit out.

"Dazai, why did you bring me a fake Gogol?" Fukuzawa asked, sitting back down.

"It's the real one. Look at his eyes." Dazai requested.

"Hm. Yellow and white. The same mark on the left one too. I suppose you're correct. Take him to the holding cell down the hall until we can get confirmation and then we'll contact Ango."

Atsushi wasn't fast enough to grab Nikolai to protect him so Dazai grabbed him by the handcuffs and dragged him off to the holding cell, taking the bag off the Ukrainian's arm before locking him in the ability-blocking bars. It wasn't but a few seconds later that Nikolai collapsed, shaking and breathing seeming hard.

"Open it!" Atsushi snapped at Dazai.

"He's faking, Atsushi. He's a criminal." Dazai reasoned. Atsushi yanked the key from his hand anyway, unlocking the door and taking Nikolai from the cell. He was clammy and clung to him, beginning to cry now that he felt safe again.

"It's okay, I'm sorry." No doubt he'd just dropped even more into that vulnerable headspace and he wasn't well now.

"Dazai? Did you get Atsushi?" Sigma came in asking. "Nikolai?" Sigma asked.

"Atsushi, why are you helping him? He could escape!" Dazai snapped.

"Shut up, Dazai!" Atsushi growled.

"Atsushi, why is he here?" Sigma asked.

"He's regressed, he's not in the right mental space to handle being an adult. I was taking him home so he could eat because he probably hasn't eaten since breakfast and Dazai arrested him." He calmly explained.

"Niko." Sigma crouched with them. Nikolai looked up at him with teary eyes. "There you are, huh, Kolya?" Sigma smiled for him.

"Sima." Nikolai sniffled and hugged tight to Atsushi.

"How old are you?" Sigma asked.

"'M two now. Was six." Nikolai whispered, confirming that he'd dropped more when Dazai arrested him.

"It's okay to be small, Kolya. Me and Atsushi are here, you're safe now." Sigma's soft, gentle voice seemed to calm him, Atsushi was grateful.

"What, are we going to let him go too?" Dazai snapped.

"I need to speak with you. In fact, I'm calling an Agency meeting." Atsushi handed Nikolai off to Sigma, who took the clown with little hesitance.

"Hello, baby bird." Sigma greeted him, hugging him close. "Let's eat, huh, your belly sounds hungry." Sigma offered him.

"Okay, Sima." Nikolai happily smiled, letting Sigma take care of him as Atsushi dragged Dazai out of the room and into Fukuzawa's office.

"I'm calling an Agency meeting. We need to talk about Gogol's arrest before we decide anything." Atsushi requested.

"Alright." So Fukuzawa rounded the other Agency members up and off to the meeting room they went. "Alright, Atsushi, what did we need to talk about?" Fukuzawa gave him the floor to speak.

"Dazai brought in Nikolai Gogol today, Sigma is with him, that's why he's not here." The room went quiet.

They'd been looking for Nikolai for a year, he remembered, since the Agency had been reestablished a year ago, four months after defeating Fukuchi and a month after Dazai was released from Meursault on dropped charges. He was reminded that Sigma, Poe, and Mushitaro had been hired on three months after their reestablishment.

"Yes, you were with him, Atsushi." All eyes buzzed between Dazai and Atsushi.

"I was doing the shopping, as you can tell, the fridge is full again and someone had to do it. I found him in the store but you know my rule about causing fights in markets, they're a neutral ground." He reminded everyone.

"Gogol has been here, in Yokohama, for the last eleven and a half months working at a café. he hasn't done anything wrong and certainly, we'd have heard if he did. I was walking him home, I had full control of the situation and I'd know both where he works and where he lives by now if Dazai hadn't interrupted." He reminded the brunette, who huffed.

"Why did you interact in the first place?" Kunikida asked.

"At first, I had found him by scent. I wanted to confirm, I wasn't planning to interact. But he's regressed, he needed help and I couldn't let him walk home alone regressed. Regression is a coping method, some of the other kids at the orphanage did it, it's to help with stress and stuff. You aren't in an adult mindset, you're in a child's mindset. Gogol said he was six before, when I was taking him home. He's now two, he dropped more due to the introduction of more stress." He explained.

"So Dazai effectively arrested a six year old?" Ranpo asked.

"Yes." Atsushi confirmed.

"You two were talking beforehand, what were you talking about?" Dazai asked.

"His job." Atsushi looked at him. "He was talking about how his new boss is xenophobic and overworks him. We started talking because I asked why he was wearing a mask, he's immunocompromised and he's been getting sick a lot lately because his boss doesn't allow him to wear his mask at work."

"That's discrimination!" Kenji whined.

"Yeah, well, I didn't say his new boss was a good one." Atsushi reminded them.

"So what? We let him continue?" Dazai asked.

"I suggest we keep tabs on him instead of arresting him. It would build trust with him should we need a strong ability like his to aid us at any point, while still allowing us to make sure he isn't a threat anymore." Atsushi suggested.

"It does make sense. If he were in a prison, he could easily break out with that ability. Plus the ability is very powerful and useful if we had access to use it." Ranpo announced happily. "I agree with Atsushi's plan!"

"It would be helpful." Kenji agreed.

"Keeping an eye on him would be quite useful, he sounds like he's assimilated back to standard society again from how it sounds." Kunikida shockingly agreed. He expected he'd have to sway both Kunikida and Dazai.

"Alright, if Kunikida trusts this, then I'm for it." Jun'ichiro agreed.

"I agree with Ranpo. He could easily get out of a prison, keeping him monitored and in a controlled environment is a much better solution." Kyouka agreed.

"It sounds like it could be a good idea." Yosano agreed.

"I agree." Mushitaro told them.

"It couldn't hurt to see first before arresting him." Poe agreed.

"I don't like this, but I agree we should monitor him first." Dazai pouted, like he usually did when he was outvoted.

"Alright, so it's agreed, we'll have tabs on Gogol for now instead of arresting him. If he goes out of line, we can arrest him if we need." Fukuzawa announced.

"Hey, guys, Nikolai says he needs to go home and feed his cats." Sigma poked his head into the meeting room.

"He's free to leave now. Dazai, get him out of those cuffs." Fukuzawa told him.

"Niko, honey, here." Sigma held Nikolai, who looked much less pale and shaky now, Sigma must have made sure he ate, and guided his hands out toward Dazai, who unhooked the cuffs.

"Now, let's go home? Huh? Go feed the cats? Get some sleep?" Sigma asked, Atsushi smiled at them both.

"Okay!" Nikolai squeaked out, latching onto Sigma's arm and letting the other lead him, Atsushi following them to Nikolai's apartment so he could help Sigma take care of him. They were greeted to six little kittens awaiting their owner, who sat with them on the floor, distracting them enough to get said kittens food as per Nikolai's instruction.

"Here, kitties." Sigma called the kittens away to eat.

"Annette's cat had kittens and nobody else wanted them since her cat used to be a stray. There's Irina, Viktoria, Zoya, Sichi, Anastasia, and Vladimir." Nikolai smiled showing off his kittens, who seemed to have little to no reaction to him showing them off.

"Well, you trained them pretty well already." Sigma smiled.

"Sichi is named after you. Sigma, Sig, Sichi. I call her baby bird, like I used to call you. And Sticky, because she needs baths a lot because she likes getting into trouble." 

"Well, it looks like you're the baby bird now." Nikolai smiled at him, giggling, as Sigma poked his nose.

"I'm six, birdie!" Nikolai whined.

"Still a baby bird." Sigma told him. "And baby birds should get some sleep. What time is your work tomorrow?"

"Job starts at 8:30. The alarms are set for 7 in the morning so I can shower and get ready." Nikolai told them, letting Sigma pick him up and giggling as he poked at Sigma's arms. "Birdie's strong."

"Always have been. You just never asked to be picked up before." Sigma reminded him, carting him off to bed, helping him get comfortable and Nikolai was out before either of his two companions knew what was happening.

Sigma ended up being the one to stay the night and Atsushi went home to sleep. The next day, showing up to Minami Café with Poe and requesting to be sat in Nikolai's section was fun. Nikolai lit up seeing him and smiled at Poe.

"Any specific way to make your coffee?" He asked Poe once the other had requested coffee.

"Surprise me." Atsushi laughed, Ranpo's influence was rubbing off on poor Poe again.

"So make it how I like it, got it. Four creamers, three pumps of marshmallow syrup, four chocolate espresso shots, with nutmeg. Tastes like hyper Christmas." Nikolai's smile was cute, Atsushi liked seeing it, especially when it wasn't forced.

"And just sprite for me." He told him.

"I know you two are watching me." Nikolai let them know, smile not faltering in the least bit, he appeared friendly still even in his body language. "I don't plan to do anything, but don't get me in trouble, I'd rather not lose money getting pulled into a two hour long lecture again."

"Ofitsiant?"

"Learning Ukrainian for me, eh, Chuuya?"

"Ni, yo tse vzhe znav." 

"Brechun." Nikolai laughed. "I'll be back with your drinks." He went to see what Chuuya wanted.

"Comment vont les chatons?" 

"Ils font du bien. Irina a essayé de se battre à nouveau contre mes cheveux."

"Ce chat vous teste, il suffit de lui aspergé d’eau." Nikolai put his hand over his heart.

"Et tirer sur mon bébé? Je ne pourrais jamais!" He feigned mock offense, making Chuuya laugh a bit.

"I want to take home the most annoying, toddler-looking meal you can manage. Akutagawa's asking me to bring him food when I come into work today and I plan to bother him while helping him." Chuuya asked the Ukrainian.

"No problem. That would probably be the cheese and garlic soup, mashed potatoes, and the flower and star cut steamed vegetables from the kids menu." Nikolai seemed to take a glee from assisting Chuuya in his torment of poor Akutagawa.

"That sounds perfect, Nikolai, thank you." Atsushi held back a laugh at thinking about Akutagawa eating food meant for a baby. Poe was laughing quietly.

"Nikolai, we'll take the same thing Chuuya asked for back to Dazai after we're done." Nikolai held back his own laugh now, as did Chuuya.

"Getting your toddler to eat is difficult." Chuuya teased. The banter between their two tables continued for all of lunch and both of them getting their to-go orders at the end and Nikolai waved them off before they left.

Eight months later, Nikolai's contract with Miss Minami was up but Chuuya had bought the restaurant two months prior from one Aoki Kenzou once he learned of the conditions that Nikolai was working in. Atsushi was very grateful, so was Sigma when he found out.

Nikolai and all the other workers got a full paid two weeks off after he took over and Chuuya had Nikolai help him send out letters to the workers who had left due to Aoki, both letting them know the restaurant was under new management and inviting them to take their old positions back, no questions or interview necessary, if they wanted.

Atsushi was surprised that half the old staff came back and Nikolai happily welcomed his friends back as Minami Café went back to how it used to work before Aoki came into the picture. Chuuya was running it well if Nikolai not being so constantly stressed was anything to go by.

Nikolai finally had free time and shifts that weren't fourteen hours long without breaks. With his new free time, Nikolai was finally able to help the Agency part time and he finally seemed happy and actually well-rested and not constantly tired.

Atsushi and Sigma still got to 'babysit' him sometimes, which was always cute, Nikolai showing up usually with a kitten or stuffed animal and coloring books to either the Agency office or one of their apartments.

[snowe-zolynn-rogers]

Pairings: Nikolai x Sigma (Pre-Relationship)

Word Count: 3,326 Words

Summary: Nikolai doesn't know how to stick up for himself while working for Tonan.

Warnings: Age Regression, Hurt/Comfort, Harassment Mention, Panic Mention, Assault Mention, Immunodeficient Character, Panic Attack Mention, Death Mention, Food Mention, let me know if I should tag anything else.

BSD Little Oneshots: Chapter 4: Little!Nikolai x Caregiver!Sigma

The wig was too tight today. Nikolai supposed he should have loosened it after cleaning it again, but he'd had barely any time this morning to get dressed, let alone think about fixing his disguise.

He hated this job, he did, even if it was for his Dostoy. Was the job truly worth being abused by his boss? It felt too oddly much like being shown off at the circus when Tonan sometimes decided he'd like to show off his 'pretty secretary' to other people.

His headspace was far too cloudy today staring at mindless paperwork and words he couldn't even make out anymore and glasses that were hurting his head more. He took said glasses off to rub at his eyes, feeling hands on his shoulders that went down over his chest.

He looked up at that, finding Tonan there and he smiled for him regardless. He'd done so well appearing professional around him, despite the very blatant workplace harassment. But he couldn't really do anything about that, now could he? He needed to go with the plan that Fyodor had set into motion already.

"Hello, Sir!" Tonan didn't respond, he assumed it was the taking off of his glasses. He never had before, he knew. They were something practically useless but did well hiding his blind eye from being noticed, allowing that to be overlooked.

"My head just hurts a bit. Paperwork, you know. It's no problem, Sir." He explained, trying to quell his boss' seeming worry over him.

"I don't care." He was confused at that. Even when he wasn't particularly working well, Tonan always cared. He'd assign more work at the least, like a punishment, but it just made it so Nikolai got paid more staying to work late nights.

"Sir-" He tried.

"Shut up." He felt hands on his waist, hauling him up, making him fumble and drop his glasses onto his desk, getting dragged into Tonan's private office. Maybe he had to speak to him in secret and his waist was his only leverage? But he was nervous, he was afraid.

He didn't like people touching him, especially not his waist, where his old ringmaster would forcefully drag him by to force him to move. And he certainly didn't like being pulled along by said waist, it made him nearly panic, which he held back knowing he had to keep his true identity properly hidden.

"Mister Tonan?" He asked, watching the official lock the door and pull the shades down. He was getting scared in this lonesome enclosed space. Is this how Sigma felt when he was held captive by human traffickers?

"Shut up, I waited four months for this." Tonan growled and he felt hands grabbing at unwanted places and he tried to push his hands off. He didn't have another way to stop him, he couldn't use his ability or his cover would be gone. The plan could go up in smoke. And this far in? He couldn't waste their meticulous plan now.

"Stop fighting." The booming voice made him freeze up, breath shaking as he stopped moving, eyes looking over him. "Good boy."

He felt sick, he wanted to struggle or fight back or use his ability, kill this man. But he couldn't do anything but wait until he was unceremoniously dumped onto the floor, like he was just a piece of trash, shaking and hiccups pouring from him.

"Get dressed, go work." He didn't move, respond, he couldn't. He couldn't even bring himself to fully acknowledge Tonan's presence. He was busy trying to breathe, trying to stop shaking.

"Listen to your orders!" He shook getting himself redressed and went back to work out at his desk. He couldn't focus, he couldn't breathe even, but he felt some weird autopilot come over him to make him work.

"See, I knew you'd like some stress relief with me. Go home if you're work's done, my good boy." His skin crawled at the pet name. He felt sick at it. But his work was done, so he got to go home early tonight.

He certainly didn't feel like he was at home, he felt somewhere a million miles away. He hid in his blankets, having scrubbed his skin raw with burning water. His black and white kitten, Vera, practically stalked him, sensing her owner's distress and trying to help solve it the best her tiny self could.

He knew he went to sleep crying, but he couldn't bear to acknowledge it, he couldn't even think about going back to work tomorrow. He'd cry more if he went in again, he knew, so he called out sick.

The first time he had, actually, even with his weak immune system, he hadn't called out yet from this job. Thankfully, the Rats and Angels meeting was the next day. He couldn't think of anything more mindless than sitting through a meeting, getting to spend time with his friends.

Getting to the meeting was silent, he didn't know how to act anymore, he just wanted to not be alone. They all seemed rather shocked to see him, they hadn't expected him, obviously. He didn't really expect to just go completely blank during the meeting.

"Nikolai? Thoughts, since you're here today." Ivan asked and Fyodor looked at him expectantly. Everyone was. He felt so overwhelmed already that he broke from the pressure, feeling tears unwillingly pour over his face, trying his best to hide them. He didn't want them, he didn't want them to think he was weak.

"Is he crying?" Fukuchi asked. He bit back the hiccups that threatened to come from his unsteady breaths. He didn't want to be called weak, he couldn't let them think he was weak. He took a deep breath, trying to even himself out.

"I'm sorry, I'm just sick." He tried to excuse himself, roughly wiping his face, trying to calm himself down for them.

"You don't just burst out crying from being sick, Nikolai." Sigma reminded him.

"Shut up!" He snapped at him, eyes glaring at the two-tone, who rolled his eyes at him and his outburst. "I'm sorry, I just..." He couldn't find a lie, he just couldn't, he was afraid they wouldn't believe him. Sigma looked at him both confused and shocked. Had he really never apologized to him for anything before?

"Does he have a fever or something?" Sigma asked, sitting forward like he was finally intrigued. Nikolai gasped at the hand on his forehead, shoving it away, not letting himself get touched.

"Don't." His voice was trembling, he knew his illusion of being fine had broken.

"Nikolai, what's wrong?" Fyodor asked.

"I can't go back there." He tried and failed to stop the sob that came out, he wanted to hide but he couldn't. He, of all people, knew his ability wasn't one to use when he was this emotional, he could hurt himself that way.

"Go back where?" Bram asked tiredly.

"I can't breathe." He clawed at his chest, trying to undo buttons he knew would have no effect on his difficulty breathing.

"Hey, look at me." Sigma suddenly insisted, hands having taken his own, pressing a hand against the bi-tone's chest. "Slowly, you're having a panic attack. Breathe with me. In through your nose, out through the mouth. You're safe here." He was never more grateful that Sigma wasn't one for humiliating others.

His breath shook, but he did his best to follow the instructions given, hand against Sigma's chest shaking still, hiccups dying down as Sigma tucked him up into his arms. They didn't feel suffocating or frighten him, he felt safer within the other man's arms for now. Perhaps he was just so tired his body wouldn't react.

"Kolya, what happened? Where can't you go back to?" Fyodor asked. He sounded to tense, almost like he was holding himself back from going on a rampage. He was frightened he would be the first one killed in said rampage.

"Tonan." He managed, wiping his face and looking at the Russian, eyes looking over him.

"What did he do? Is your cover broken?" Fukuchi asked.

"Got me alone. Called it stress relief. I was too scared to fight back." He could practically feel the dark aura his admission made settle over the meeting room.

"Tonan assaulted him." Fyodor sounded disgusted. He wanted to burst out crying at the sound. Dostoy probably thought he was disgusting, he felt his heart in his throat, sniffling like a child. He supposed it was rightful of him, someone who had no proper childhood to speak of, to cry like a misplaced child.

"It's okay now, Kolya." Sigma held him close. He felt an odd calmness settle over him, like someone just put clouds in his mind. He felt foggy but he felt fingers so calming in his hair from Sigma. He buried against him, he needed him there right now. He needed to have someone close.

"I'll kill him." Fyodor alerted everyone. Nikolai was too busy clung to Sigma to care what everyone was talking about.

"Kolya?" Sigma asked him, voice gentle and he looked up at him, confused about his own weirdly foggy headspace and Fyodor's disappearance when he looked for him.

"Where Dostoy?" He asked. His voice sounded tiny, it sounded weirdly childish, more than normal, at least. Sigma simply smiled at him.

"Dostoy went out for a minute. How old do you feel?" Sigma asked. He thought for a minute. His age? He was ripely twenty six, his birthday had been recent too. Sigma surely remembered his chaos of a birthday party.

But his mind kept feeding him the answer of two. Why did he feel two? What was happening? He felt scared, he didn't like this confusion. He held two shaky fingers for Sigma.

"Alright, little one. You're safe, it's okay now. Maybe, if you ask him, Pushkin will go get you some candy." Sigma offered. He lit up, he liked candy, he wanted candy. He giggled, nodding.

"Please!?" He chirped at Pushkin.

"Why does he need candy?" Pushkin asked.

"Get the candy and kids snacks. Now." Sigma's voice was commanding, staring at Pushkin with a very scary glare.

"Okay, okay, fine." Pushkin left and Nikolai smiled at Sigma, his thumb tucked into his mouth, other hand playing with Sigma's, poking his face as well, making the other begin smiling fondly again.

"He'll be dead by tomorrow midday." Fyodor announced as he came back in.

"No murder around the baby." Sigma requested.

"Baby?" Fyodor asked.

"Our Kolya has regressed from stress." Sigma informed the rest in the room finally.

"Ah. Truly, a cute baby." Fyodor smiled at him and Nikolai smiled back at him, giggles coming from him, he was happy.

"I don't know what candy or snacks he likes, I got some most of whatever the store had." Pushkin frantically put the bags of food on the table as he came back in. Sigma offered him a handful of whatever he managed to reach. Nikolai slowly, making sure he could, took one of the matcha kitkats.

"Kolya, that's unsanitary." Ivan let him know, handing him a pacifier. Where he got it, nobody knew, nobody probably ever would. But Nikolai took it nonetheless and he giddily settled against Sigma, eating his kitkat and giggling as Fyodor, instead of proceeding the meeting, simply put on a kids movie for him to watch and everyone else to relax to.

The next day going into work was stressful, but he was back to his adult mindset, working until about twenty minutes before his lunch break and he realized he hadn't brought his lunch in his scramble not to be late getting to work.

Once he'd figured out the plan Fyodor had to kill his boss today, he'd put a stop to that, he needed their plan to go through and killing Tonan now would destroy said plan. Tonan had just opened his office door and Nikolai dreaded his entry to the room when he saw a familiar face in very unfamiliar hair.

Sigma, all dressed up in a short light brown wig he'd thrown at him whilst picking the wig for his own disguise, having gone for this current black one instead. He carried a bag and a big smile, a pink visitor's pass clipped to his shirt.

"Mischa, love." Ah, his fake name. Sigma's voice was purposely soft to greet him. "You didn't bring lunch." He held out the bag for him. Tonan was out of his office now, watching him with a keen eye.

"Thank you, Nikita." He picked the first name that came to mind, he didn't care which one it was, but Sigma couldn't be called 'Sigma' in front of his boss.

"And who is this, Mischa?" Tonan asked at him nervously taking the bag from Sigma.

"Just his husband, sir. My Mischa forgot to bring lunch with him today, I hope you don't mind I showed up to bring it to him." Oh, so Sigma was playing the husband card to check on him while also bringing him the lunch he'd forgotten to bring.

"Thank you, honey." He smiled at him, garnering a smile back at him.

"You have a husband?" Tonan asked.

"Yes, sir, we've been married for six years now, going on seven. Sorry for the intrusion, but my husband is just worried about me since I was sick yesterday. You know my immune system isn't the best, so Nikita gets worried about me when I get sick." He assured his boss.

Sigma was clearly smiling at him having gotten his little devious plot to check on him and make sure Tonan didn't bother him. But the other was very obviously putting on a 'concerned husband' mask and he couldn't be prouder of him for acting so well. He assumed it was a good mask because he was actually worried about Nikolai's safety and truly was concerned.

"Ah, well, your husband is safe here, Nick was it? So you can give him his lunch and leave. I just got more paperwork sent over for him." Sigma didn't frown like he expected, surprisingly.

Nikolai smiled at Sigma, letting the other lean over his desk and kiss him goodbye. It didn't feel bad? He didn't hate it, he was soft, almost gentle with him. He broke into a big smile, but tried not to show his complete giddy to the two other men in his presence.

He could squeal over it later when he was at home with his kitten, Vera. He could gush to his kitten, who would simply run around with her zoomies and occasionally land on him to knead at his belly.

"Have a good day, dear." Sigma smiled against his lips, he felt like his heart was far too light for his liking, beating too quickly for it not to be a good thing.

"You too, darling." He smiled back, stealing a kiss back from Sigma, the first of several he knew he'd steal from him.

"I'll see you later, Mischa. Dimitri's making dinner for us to go on a double date with him and Vlad." He could only assume he meant Ivan and Fyodor by the names. He was happy to have him here.

"I love you." He knew saying it might be dangerous, but he liked it. He liked him and he wanted him to know.

"I love you too." Sigma's smile only got brighter. "I'll see you at home." Sigma kissed his forehead, leaving him rather giddy and very much awaiting getting home to his friends being there. Tonan huffed, leaning against his desk.

"You're not to tell your husband what we did the other day, Mischa." Tonan ordered. "I will destroy your life if you do. Your career and reputation will be gone, I assure you." Tonan tried to threaten.

"Sir, I don't plan to. But I'll have to quit if you plan to try that with me again. I have a husband, I love him, our marriage is happy. I can't be your secretary if you don't respect my marriage."

"If you're married, why don't you wear a ring?" 

"It had to get cut off. Remember, I collapsed a month ago because I got sick? You were visiting Hong Kong with Mister Inoue? The doctor cut it off me. Nikita is working on getting me a new one." He lied through his teeth. But Tonan bought it, he supposed, by the lack of bite back he got.

"Fine, but never tell anyone of what we did. It was a one time thing and it was a mistake." He could have cried hearing that. On top of the high of getting to be romantic with Sigma, that felt like a relief. He didn't have to worry about being taken advantage of again.

"Now, go take lunch, your work will be here waiting for you to come back." Tonan ordered him. Clocking out for his hour lunch, the bag Sigma brought him in hand, he was borderline euphoric, near tears too actually. He spotted Sigma waiting for him and he hugged him tightly.

"On lunch?" Sigma asked.

"I'm going to cry." He alerted him, quickly getting them out of there. He sat them in a park, alone near the swing set and he leaned against Sigma's shoulder.

"He said he won't do it again, that it was a one time thing. Because I told him our marriage is happy. I did it, I stood up to him. I told him I'd quit if he kept trying." He felt a strong arm around him, he sniffled.

"Fyodor's with Vega. Ivan is making piroshki for dinner." Sigma reminded him. He laughed, wiping his face softer than he had the day before.

"I should eat, I only have an about fifty minutes left." He reminded them both. Looking through the bag and finding more matcha kitkats, popcorn, and cotton candy, with a container of varenyky, deruni, and olivier potato salad.

"Fyodor helped me make it. He said you might like having something feel like home, especially when you're stressed by work." Sigma smiled nervously.

"You made this?" He asked.

"Well, I tried. Fyodor did most of the work." He gave a laugh, rubbing his back as he wasted no time trying them.

"You're the best." He alerted him.

"So are you." Sigma smiled, watching the birds in the sky while he ate.

"Tell Fyodor he did good teaching you to cook." He requested.

"I will." Sigma was quiet, leaning against him.

"I do love you." He finally managed.

"I know, I really do love you too." He couldn't have smiled more.

"Then give me more kisses." He dragged him to face him, kissing him, laughing when Sigma rolled his eyes and agreed by kissing him. So he got a boyfriend out of the deal. Or were they husbands? After all, a man who 'died' six years ago and a man who was made only three years ago wouldn't be able to get legally married.

He supposed he should have forged certificates made for them anyway, they could just make a second set they'd keep with their own unofficial marriage. Maybe have a little wedding between them and their friends. He could force Fyodor to be the officiant, he supposed. And that thought made him laugh against Sigma's mouth, making the other break the kiss to question him.

"We could make Dostoy be our wedding officiant." He laughed out, which just led to them both laughing in a park at the ideas of their imaginary wedding, topped right off with Vera being a flower girl and Ivan in some hideous imaginary bridesmaid dress.

He didn't really mind being tied down to Sigma, it didn't feel like a cage. It felt more like flying, his heart sure was and he was sure Sigma felt happy too. He stole more kisses, because of course he would, they kept making his heart go fast, and he liked it.