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python333 · 10 months ago

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soft spot — python333

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synopsis you've been having a bad day, and ghost feels like being extra nice to you. plot twist you're an age regressor and him being so nice is NOT helping.

relationships platonic agere cg!ghost & gn little!reader.

characters ghost.

word count 6.7k.

warnings a victorious reference, age regressor reader, usage of c/n [call sign/code name], 2nd person pov [you/yours/yourself]

note please feel free to attack me as much as you want if this is inaccurate. i don't even care if it's not constructive criticism. i am begging for everyone's thoughts and opinions on this!! this is also the longest oneshot i think i've ever written!

“Having fun there?”

You turn in your seat and find Ghost leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed and one eye slightly wider than the other—an indication that his eyebrow is raised.

“Not really,” You answer, setting down your gun. You’d been disassembling it, trying to take your mind off of the slowly growing headache that’s been building up for the past few hours. You don’t think it’s a migraine or anything, but it still bothers you greatly.

“Yeah, no, I can tell,” Ghost chuckles, pushing himself off of the door frame and walking over to you. He eyes your gun for a moment, the magazine already removed as well as any live rounds left in the rifle ejected, and the bolt locked to the rear. You were only maybe a quarter of the way through your disassembly, even though you started around thirty minutes ago.

For some reason, you woke up upset today. You were too tired, you felt awfully sluggish, and there was a throbbing pain clustered in the back of your eyebrows. So, in short—you were reasonably very upset. It showed visibly in the way your eyes twitched every so often, and in the way you felt the need to pinch the bridge of your nose to distract you from the pain that was still building up behind your brows.

“What’s going on?” He asks, leaning on the table.

“I have this headache that won’t go away,” You respond, sighing as you move your gaze from your gun to Ghost. You can barely see it, but from his eyes you can tell that his face scrunches up beneath his mask. He knows a thing or two about bad headaches, being someone who frequently gets migraines himself.

“Have you taken any meds for it?” You shake your head ‘no’. Ghost holds up a single finger in a ‘one moment’ motion and rummages through the pockets on his tactical vest for a moment, before he pulls out a small bottle of ibuprofen no bigger than his palm. He hands it to you.

“Here.” You blink at it for a moment.

“Thanks,” You take the bottle gingerly and Ghost nods, watching you as you struggle with the child-proof lid for a second before getting it open. You shake out a small tablet, one the size of a low-dosage aspirin, and pop it into your mouth. You don’t have much of an issue dry-swallowing it, and it only takes one attempt before you successfully swallow the tablet.

“You’ve been feeling pretty bad this whole week, haven’t you?” Ghost frowns underneath his mask.

You think for a moment before nodding, “Yeah, I guess. I think it’s mostly just stress.”

You know it’s not just stress.

For a while now, you’ve used something called ‘age regression’ as a form of stress relief. You don’t know exactly when it started, but you do know that it was before you were recruited for the 141. And originally, you made a promise to yourself that you wouldn’t regress while on base, and you kept that promise for maybe a month before you broke it.

You think it was Ghost that was the trigger, actually. You can vividly remember the first time you regressed while on base; you had just finished talking to Ghost, and he called you something—you think he called you something similar to ‘kid’—that made a flip in your mind switch immediately. You can remember excusing yourself from the conversation quickly, leaving your lieutenant slightly confused but otherwise unbothered by the strange action.

And, worst of all, you can remember being in your quarters and practically burrowing under your blankets. You were curled up into a fetal position, trying to fight the urge to suck on your thumb or at least chew on something, but ultimately lost the fight and succumbed to your urges. You spent maybe a few hours like that, wide awake when you just wanted to try and sleep it away, thinking about that interaction you had with Ghost over and over again.

You’re not stupid. You know that Ghost has some sort of soft spot for you—albeit, you don’t know exactly how soft that soft spot is, but it’s definitely soft. Soft enough that he goes the tiniest bit easier on you compared to other recruits, soft enough that he spares you more time than he does for others, and the most obvious of all—he initiates most of your conversations.

Contrary to popular belief, he’s not the scary super-soldier most people think of him as. Sure, maybe he is kind of scary, and maybe his mask does jumpscare you when you’re doing missions in particularly dark spaces sometimes, but other than that he’s not scary in the slightest. If anything, he’s awkward. Awkward enough that he’s almost never the first person to talk to someone—except for you, of course. You don’t know why he acts so differently around you, but you don’t complain about it.

“That’s rough,” Ghost looks down at you with concerned, empathetic eyes, “Sorry you’re so stressed. Mind me askin’ why?”

“I don’t, but I also don’t know why I’m so stressed,” You huff out, even though you know the answer completely. You stand up, “I think it’s just me being sleep deprived. I’ve been having the tiniest bit of trouble falling asleep lately.”

“You should’ve told me earlier,” Ghost tuts, “I have melatonin.”

You give him a confused look. “You do?”

“‘Course I do.”

You blink at him for a moment before sighing, “Could I have some then?”

“What’s the magic word?” You give him an unimpressed look, ignoring the way the words make your stomach twist, and his eyes crinkle in a way that lets you know that he’s grinning under his mask.

“Could I please have some melatonin?”

“The magic word was lotion, but I’ll let it slide,” Ghost hums, “There’s some in my office. I’ll grab it for you later.”

“M’kay,” You look over at the door, unintentionally zoning out as you do. Your vision goes unfocused as the throbbing pain behind your eyebrows grows and something else grows inside of you.

Jesus. Why can’t you choose any other time to get the urge to slip into a younger mentality? Why does your headache have to make everything worse for you? Why does Ghost have to be so nice and helpful?

“Hey,” Ghost frowns, tapping a finger on your shoulder to snap you out of whatever trance you’re in, “[c/n]?”

Oh God.

Your eyes—that you try desperately to keep neutral—meet Ghost’s, his eyes soft and his eyebrows dipped downwards in a confused manner. His eyes are searching, flitting over you, trying to find something. The way he looks at you makes you want to squirm, and you can’t help but just slightly shuffle in place.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” He asks, voice as concerned as his look. That should be the breaking point for you, but you remain as big as you can be, and nod affirmatively.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” You try to assure him, hoping you don’t sound as nervous as you feel, “I think I’m just a little tired.”

Ghost doesn’t look convinced.

He puts a hand on your shoulder, the act like a hammer putting another dent in the wall you had put up. The leather of his glove is warm even through the thick material of your shirt, and it feels like hot metal against your cold skin, the clothing covering your shoulder be damned.

“You can tell me if you’re not okay,” He tells you—what is he doing? Does he know something I don’t?—while his thumb starts rubbing circles into your shoulder, “I feel like you’re more than a little tired.”

You stay silent for a little bit. You don’t know how to explain yourself, the words seeming to liquify and leak right out of you, making you speechless. He seems to notice this, sighing and letting his hand slip down to your hand, holding it and giving it a quick squeeze.

“I think,” He looks around for a moment before turning back to you, “that we should head to my office so that nobody can bother us, and then you can tell me all about how you’re feeling right now. Does that sound okay?”

You nod wordlessly, not trusting yourself to talk with how heavy your tongue feels, and you let Ghost lead you back to his office. It’s only a hallway away, but that’s still enough time to overthink everything that could possibly happen. How does he know something’s wrong? What gave it away? Did I do something bad? What did I do? Wh—

The creak of his office door opening snaps you out of your thoughts, and Ghost steps aside to let you enter his office first. Hesitantly, you take a few steps inside, and you hear the door click shut behind you as Ghost walks in. He takes your hand again, making you look at him as he guides you to a chair.

You sit in the chair that’s in front of his desk, and he quickly drags out the chair that’s behind it so that it’s right next to yours. He sits down.

He’s looking at you expectantly.

“Uh.” You’re not sure what to say. He’s looking at you so reassuringly, it’s hard to keep yourself sitting upright.

“I know something’s wrong,” Ghost says, leaning forward the tiniest bit, “I need you to tell me what’s wrong so I can help you.”

He’s got to have at least some idea of what you’re experiencing, You think, trying to form some sort of explanation, He’s being so… weird?

You swear there’s some other word you could use, but your vocabulary feels so limited, and you would mentally curse if you could because you know that now your explanation is gonna sound weird. You can’t use the words you want, you’re gonna be forced to use simple words, ones that can’t convey exactly how you feel. Words that—and it physically pained you to admit this—were childish.

You can explain your situation. Just, now it would be more… blunt. And short. And also you’d feel like killing yourself afterwards. You won’t, obviously, but you can predict that you’ll come very close to doing so.

Okay, I have to say something because Ghost is looking more and more worried the longer I stay silent.

“I feel…” You trail off for a moment, trying to get your thoughts in order for the next two seconds to actually say something that makes sense, before continuing in a far less confident tone, “… small.”

The moment the words leave your mouth, you regret it. Ew. Ew. Ew. What. Why? Why that word? It leaves a sour taste on your tongue and yet you can’t think of any other word that would better suit how you feel. Still. Ew.

Your thoughts are a jumbled mess ranging from fleeting thoughts of disgust to thoughts lodged in the back of your mind begging you to go anywhere else just so that you can stop having to have this conversation. This conversation requires words bigger than you have access to, and a sort of control over yourself that you can’t grasp. You can feel your hands twitching, wanting something to hold onto, anything to keep you distracted from the overwhelming urge to just regress.

Ghost blinks. He didn’t expect that answer.

“Small?” He repeats in a questioning tone, eyebrows furrowed, “I mean, compared to me, I guess you’re kind of short—”

“No, no, not like short small,” You try to clarify, feeling just slightly discouraged by Ghost’s confused words, “Like…”

You struggle to find the words that properly describe how you feel, only finding words like small and little in your current vocabulary. Your findings are making you increasingly upset, and you can feel your face start to grow hot with frustration and embarrassment.

Oh my God.

“Like…?” Ghost nudges your knee with his, trying to encourage you to talk, “I’m not leaving until you tell me.”

There’s still a level of care in his words, no matter how confused he seems, and that adds all the more struggle to your predicament. Not only do you not want to tell him, but you can’t describe how you feel in a way that’s acceptable for someone your age to describe anything. At least, not in a way that you deem acceptable for yourself to describe anything.

You’re far too old to be describing yourself as small.

“[c/n]?” Ghost nudges you again, and you blink at him. Your eyes are flickering all over his mask, going anywhere but his eyes, since eye contact with anyone would make everything significantly worse for you right now.

“It’s just—” You try to take a deep breath but your breath hitches. Everything is starting to make you feel so frustrated, and you’re starting to think that you might just throw a tantrum if you can’t do at least one thing right. You try to find the words you want to use but your throat is disobediently closing on you. Your mind feels like straight mush, and the quickly softening look that Ghost is giving you isn’t helping you at all.

To your horror, in your inexplicable inability to talk in the way you normally do, you let out a small whine. It sounds obnoxious to your ears, and worst of all, sounds like something a little kid would do.

You put your head in your hands, the quickly reddening skin of your cheeks getting cooled by the cold of your palms as you try and hide your face from Ghost. You can picture how he looks right now—somehow more confused than earlier, possibly annoyed, weirded out—and all those mental images make you bite your tongue to prevent another noise.

“What was that?” You don’t answer him.

To your non-answer, Ghost sighs, and you think, This is it, this is where he kicks me out of his office, oh my God I’m gonna get dishonorably discharged and he’s gonna give me a really mean look on my way out—

“Look at me.” You shake your head negatively.

“Why not?” He sounds so confused, it makes you want to cry. There’s still a level of worry in his voice, and it adds to the fog that builds up in your brain.

You move your face just slightly up so that your eyes peek out from above your fingertips, your hands covering the rest of your face. Ghost reaches out both of his hands, and ever so gently removes your hands from your face, uncovering your red cheeks and your lips—the lower of which quivers, like you’re about to cry. He notices this quickly, and you can practically feel the level of his worry shoot up.

He doesn’t say anything, instead just holding your hands in his for a moment, before he sets them down into your lap. He looks at you, concerned, and asks, “Is it hard to talk right now?”

You nod. His gaze shifts to his computer, and then back to you.

“I’m gonna go look a few things up really quick, okay? I’ll just be right over there,” He nods over to the space behind his computer, “and I’ll be right back here in a few seconds.”

You reluctantly nod again, and Ghost gets up from his seat. He grabs the back of the chair and drags it back around behind his desk, sitting down in it and powering on his monitor. It turns on almost immediately, much to his relief, and he goes to his browser and searches up a few things. You can’t tell what he’s searching up, only hearing the clacking of keys and the occasional final click that indicates that he’s hit the enter button.

He stays there for maybe a minute or two. It’s a long few minutes, and you can feel yourself slipping more and more the longer he stays at his computer. And the more you feel yourself slipping into that younger mindset, the more you start to crave Ghost’s attention.

The way his eyes are glued to his computer starts to irritate you. You’re aware that he’s doing something important, he must be, because why would he be so intent on looking something up otherwise, but still—you manage to feel the tiniest bit jealous of the computer. You know you’re too far gone when you can’t find it within yourself to realize that you’re jealous of a computer.

Your eyes linger on him and he must notice this because he looks up from the screen of his monitor and looks over at you. As if he can read your mind, he reassures you, “Just a few more seconds.”

But you said you were gonna be back in a few seconds a few minutes ago.

You don’t voice your thoughts. Instead, you nod, because God forbid you annoy Ghost with your need for attention now when he’s being so patient with you. He looks at you for another moment before going back to his computer and looking something else up, this time with a little more fervor.

Another few seconds pass and, true to his word this time, Ghost stops and gets up from his chair. He walks over to you, and your eyes follow him intently. He kneels down in front of you.

He looks hesitant to say something to you. That’s a first. That adds to the exponentially growing blob of fear that lives inside your mind, one of the only things that’s still prominent in the fog that conquers your brain.

“Are you…” You feel like you know what he’s gonna ask you. You’re bracing yourself for the question, and he looks like he’s bracing himself just to ask it.

“How, uh,” He’s trying to find the right wording, and you’ve never been able to relate to him harder than you do in this moment, “How… do you feel right now? How old?”

How old? You don’t really like that question. As much as you like that you’re now getting attention, you’re starting to remember how little you actually enjoy this type of attention. The question is pretty vague, but at the same time so specific, and you’re almost ashamed to know exactly what the answer is. Or, at least, you would feel ashamed if there was room in your mind to feel so.

“You said you feel small, right? Not like short small, just small?” He sounds more unsure of himself now, and you don’t think you like seeing him so reluctant to say something, “I looked up what it means to feel like that. Took some time, but I got to some person’s… website, and the person who wrote it was talkin’ about feeling like that. Something about regression, feeling a little bit younger than usual?”

He’s being so awkward about it, and while you typically find his awkwardness funny, now it’s anything but that.

“Uhm,” Your voice comes out as a mumble and you see Ghost perk up at it. You don’t know what to say. For a moment, you’re silent again, before you get over your embarrassment for a quick two seconds and force yourself to say, “Four.”

“Four?” Ghost asks, before quickly realizing, “Right. Four. You feel four?”

You nod, and your hands instinctively start moving back up to cover your face. Ghost swiftly grabs them, keeping his grip gentle as he keeps them from reaching your face.

“Hey, don’t try to hide again,” He says, tone softening as he holds your hands, “everything’s fine, okay? Do you— what, uh— do you need me to do anything? Do you want me to leave you alo—”

“No!” You quickly answer, a little surprised by your own volume, before you clear your throat and answer in a much more quiet voice, “Don’t leave me alone.”

“Okay, okay,” Ghost’s thumbs rub across the back of your hands, a soothing gesture that makes you the tiniest bit more relaxed, “what do you need?”

You sniffle, and you can see an immediate look of panic cross Ghost’s eyes. You don’t know how well he is with crying children, and don’t want to impose such a situation on him, but you also can’t stop the tears that begin to well up in the corners of your eyes.

“Hey, don’t cry,” He borderline begs, “everything’s gonna be okay, okay? Please do not cry. Take a deep breath.”

You try to take a deep breath, you really do, but your breath just hitches and gets caught in your throat. It only makes you more distressed, adding to the urge you have to just disappear. Ghost notices your failed deep breathing and lets go of one of your hands, before taking the other and holding it to his chest.

You can just barely feel his heartbeat, his thick tactical vest and gear in the way of it, but you can still feel it. Ghost takes a deep breath, holding it for a second or two before slowly exhaling.

“You copy me, okay?” He tells you, his words an order but his tone suggesting otherwise. He takes another deep breath, this time hoping you’ll follow his lead, and you do.

You try to breathe with him, your hand on his chest helping, but your breath keeps getting caught in your throat. Ghost notices this, but continues his breathing anyway, hoping you’ll catch on soon. You do, thankfully—after a few more attempted breaths, you finally manage one almost identical to Ghost’s. The next few after that go similarly, and that’s when Ghost decides you’re alright to take your hand off of his chest.

“I need you to tell me what to do,” He says, keeping your hand in his hold, “or at least tell me how all of this works. I want to help you.”

You really don’t want to tell him what you need right now, but you also don’t think you have a choice.

Wordlessly, you stand up from your seat, balance just slightly off-center before you quickly get your footing right. Ghost watches you, not moving, before you tug on his hand to try and urge him to get up as well. He obliges, getting up.

“What—” You interrupt him by taking another step forward and letting your head thump right into his chest, ignoring the itchy uncomfortable feeling of his vest against your face. You don’t bother to wrap your arms around him to at least try and form some sort of hug, preferring to just smush yourself into him and hope for the best.

After a moment of stunned silence, he wraps his arms around you.

“You mind if we move behind my desk so I can look up some more stuff on all of this?” He asks, voice quiet, “Unless you want to just tell me?”

“Desk,” You simply mumble into his vest, making him nod.

“Alright, but you’re gonna have to stop hugging me for a second,” Ghost warns you. You reluctantly step away, and Ghost smiles softly down at you, bringing his hands away from your back and instead holding one of yours.

He leads you behind his desk, and lets go of your hand before sitting down in his chair. Pausing, he quickly realizes you have nowhere to sit, and thinks for a moment before getting back up. He drags his chair just slightly to the side and looks back at you.

“Sit down,” He nods to the chair, “It’s only gonna be a minute or two, alright?”

You nod, hesitantly moving to sit in the chair, not really liking how far away from Ghost it is. It's not that far, You try to rationalize, I’m gonna be fine.

Ghost can see your hesitation and tries to work as quickly as he can, grateful that he didn’t turn his computer off earlier, typing away on his keyboard. You don’t care to see what he’s looking up, more focused on looking at the time on his monitor. 21:44. 21:45. The time ticks by and even though it’s only been a few seconds you already want Ghost’s attention again. His attention has actually turned into good attention, and that’s the type of attention you’ve been craving for the past week.

The clock reads 21:47 once Ghost is done, and he powers his monitor off this time, the small whirring the device makes dying down to a low hum before going completely silent. He turns to you, and somehow can sense that you need more attention.

“Am I not paying enough attention to you?” He teases you, making you conflicted on whether you should be annoyed by the teasing or happy you’re finally getting attention. As if he can read your mind, he chuckles, and kneels down to your level.

“I’m gonna give you as much attention as you need, alright?” He promises, “I just need you to stay in this room.”

—

Ghost watches you nod non-verbally, and it only adds to his softening expression.

He’s always had a soft spot for kids. He knows that you aren’t technically a kid, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t still see you as one. You’re young for someone in the military, much less someone in this 141, and now that he’s found out that you’re an age regressor, that you’re a little—well, that doesn’t help how he sees you at all.

He thinks that maybe the reason he has such a soft spot for kids is a few encounters he’s had with them in the past. He’s seen far too many in compromising positions while on missions; positions like being held hostage, being held as prisoner, or just generally being mistreated or even just living in bad conditions.

He looks at you, and he just sees another one of those kids.

He sees how you act around him. He’s not stupid. When he talks to you, you’re actually engaged in the conversation, compared to when anyone else tries to talk to you—maybe excluding Price, or Soap, or Gaz, heavy on that maybe—you’re more likely than not brushing them off every chance you get. You’re standoffish with everyone else, but with him, you’ll always accept any conversation he initiates.

He can also see the way you look at him. It’s like you’re looking at your idol, or your savior, the way you look up at him. He can see that curious glint in your eyes when he tells you about a recent mission, or when he tells you anything, really. He can see when you try to mimic how he holds his weapons, and when you try to copy his techniques.

He remembers catching you one day in the shooting range trying to mimic how he aims at the targets—looking through your scope with one eye closed, the other focused only on the dot centered on the scope, taking a deep breath in and out before shooting, and keeping the gun exactly like that even seconds after the shot’s been fired.

In fact, the copying has gone from guns to melee weapons recently. Ghost swings only his forearm when he uses a knife, thumb resting on the very end of the knife’s handle, and entire arm stiff as he does. He does a slow windup when behind someone, a fast one on the off-chance that he’s in front, and buries the weapon to the hilt in whoever’s flesh he’s penetrated. He’s already seen you do the same on a recent mission. Not only that, but he caught you using a knife almost identical to his.

And now, you’re still looking at him like that—except, different. Sort of like how a kid might look up to their parents.

“What do you feel like doing, kiddo?” He asks, hoping the pet name isn’t too much.

From the way your eyes light up, he suspects it isn't.

“Mmm…” You hum, thinking for a moment, before requesting, “Coloring?”

“Coloring, huh?” Ghost looks around for some blank paper and some sort of marker or pen thick enough to act as one, but can only find some highlighters. He turns to you, frowning, “Sorry, but I don’t think I have any paper, kid. Anything else you wanna do?”

You shake your head, and Ghost is just about ready to jump off of a bridge before you point to his arm and repeat, “Coloring.”

He looks at his arm for a second, confused, before he remembers a conversation the two of you had a month or so ago.

“If you ever wanna get tattoos, I know a guy in Brighton,” Ghost said, reclining his chair back so that he can lay down in it. You were sitting across from him in front of his desk, fiddling with one of his pens.

“Good to know,” You hummed, “You have any tattoos?”

“Yeah,” You perked up at his admission, and he sat up for a second to roll up the sleeve of his shirt. He wasn’t wearing his usual gear, only one of those standard issue army-green shirts.

“Here,” He pointed to a large tattoo covering his whole arm like a sleeve, a few designs you could point out to yourself being a skull, a few Roman numerals, and some kind of scythe.

“Very emo,” You commented, making Ghost snort, “I like it.”

“I’m glad,” He rolled his sleeve back down.

There’s a lot of blank space in the tattoo, despite it being a sleeve, and he can already tell that you mean you want to color in that space. He thinks about it for a moment, a fleeting thought of is that even safe? crossing his mind before he ultimately decides that he doesn’t care and would rather kill himself than see you disappointed because he denied your request, his own health be damned.

“Alright,” He hums, grabbing a few highlighters from a mesh cup on his desk in the colors pink, yellow, and blue, “Go for it.”

You give him a small smile and if he cared about if he’d get ink poisoning two seconds ago, he sure as hell doesn’t care now. You gingerly grab the highlighters from his hand, your grabbing not too secure and sort of clumsy but secure enough that the markers stay in your hand.

You hold them with both hands, and it makes Ghost realize how small your hands are—sure, you could hold the highlighters with one hand, but he’s glad you aren’t because now he can admire just how small you are as a whole.

You set the yellow and blue down on his desk, making sure they don’t roll off for a moment before uncapping the pink and hesitantly holding out a hand for Ghost’s arm. He rolls up his sleeve and obediently holds out his arm for you, watching curiously as you press the cold tip of the highlighter to his skin. You’re starting by coloring in the skull a neon pink, much to his amusement, and you’re starting in the dead center of its forehead.

You’re so much more quiet than you usually are when you’re little, and you’re so much more hesitant, it makes Ghost want to just wrap you in a blanket and keep you safe and in his sight forever.

Your tongue slightly pokes out from between your lips as you concentrate on coloring in Ghost’s tattoo, making him grin beneath his mask. The ink of the highlighter doesn’t stay within the black bounds of his tattoos at all, but he doesn’t care one bit, and he doesn’t think you care either. You finish up the skull quickly, and move onto the scythe that’s right next to it, this time capping the pink highlighter and grabbing the yellow.

Ghost is pretty sure this is gonna stain his skin for a day or two, but he couldn’t care less.

He can’t help but notice how much more relaxed you look in your regressed state. More at peace, he should say. There’s no longer a hunch in your shoulders, your eyes aren’t twitching from your headache, and you’re not bouncing your leg like you usually do when you’re sitting down somewhere. It’s like any anxieties you had pre-regression had evaporated, like slipping into a younger mentality had taken away most of your worries, if not all of them.

He also can’t help but wish he could see you like this more often. Not necessarily the regressed part, but the relaxed part. Well, maybe the regressed part too. You’re being such a sweetheart right now, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to live through this experience.

“You having fun there, darling?” Ghost asks, his grin evident in his voice. The corners of your lips quirk up at the pet name and you nod silently, and now Ghost is starting to think you’re actually trying to kill him. You’re being so uncharacteristically shy, and you’re being so quiet, and you’re just being so sweet.

It seems you’ve moved onto the blue highlighter now, coloring in the last bit of his tattoo. He doesn’t think he’ll ever wash it off—or, at least, he wouldn’t if he had a choice. He knows that he has to shower sometime soon, but surely he can put that off for a bit, right?

Once you’re finished with your coloring, you cap the highlighter, and set it down next to the others you’ve discarded. You turn Ghost’s arm the tiniest bit towards him so that he can see your work better.

“‘s it good?” You ask quietly, watching intently for Ghost’s reaction. He looks over your coloring job and hums approvingly.

“It’s amazing, I love it,” He assures you, smiling down softly at you, “You did great.”

You seem to preen at the praise, and you take your hand off of Ghost’s arm, moving to put in your lap. You’re keeping yourself very contained, Ghost notices, Why?

He’s snapped out of his thoughts when he hears you yawn, and you quickly move to cover your mouth as you do. He’s reminded that it’s almost twenty-two hundred, and while that usually wouldn’t be an issue for him, it’s an issue for you. You originally came to the 141 as someone who had a sleep schedule almost as fucked up at Ghost’s, but soon developed a habit of going to sleep somewhat early considering the training you had in the morning. So, now you get tired anywhere from eighteen-hundred to twenty-one hundred. After that, your only goal is to find somewhere to sleep.

“Sleepy?” You nod tiredly, making Ghost coo, Ghost, the man who quite literally haunts some people’s nightmares, coos at you, “Aw, of course you are, sweetheart. Pretty sure it’s way past your bedtime by now.”

“Nuh uh,” You deny, making Ghost chuckle.

“‘Nuh uh’?” He asks, amused, “What d’you mean ‘nuh uh’?”

“No b’dtime,” You shortly elaborate.

“Ohhh, okay,” Ghost feigns realization, “You think you’re too big for a bedtime, huh?”

“Mhm. Way too big.”

“I dunno about ‘way’ too big,” Ghost hums, checking to see if the highlighter on his arm has dried before he pulls his sleeve back down. “You seem pretty little to me.”

“No,” You whine, dragging out the ‘o’, “Not lil’.”

“Hmm… you sure, kiddo?” Ghost asks, “So if I ask you if you need to go to bed, you’re gonna say ‘no’?”

That makes you hesitate, and Ghost almost thinks he’s won, before your own pettiness wins and you nod affirmatively. He raises an eyebrow at you.

“Alright, well, you’ve gotta sleep at some point,” He says, crossing his arms as he leans back in his chair.

You think this over for a second, and he watches as you look over him for a moment before looking down at his lap, then looking back up at him. He can already tell there’s some sort of plan forming in your mind. Wordlessly, you get up, and Ghost does nothing to stop you as you decide to just plop yourself down into his lap. You straddle his thighs, moving until you’re sitting comfortably on him, and then let yourself slump forward so that your face is resting in the crook of his neck. It takes him a moment to process what just happened, before he laughs lightly and wraps both of his arms around you to keep you in place.

“Oh, okay,” He grins, resting his chin on your shoulder, “you just wanna cuddle with me until you fall asleep? Is that what this is?”

He feels you nod against his neck, and his grin grows as he rubs one hand against your back, trying to soothe you to sleep. He doesn’t say anything else, not wanting to distract you from your attempts to sleep anymore, simply letting you stay slumped against him. Your breathing wasn’t too fast-paced to begin with, but as you relax even more in his arms, he can feel your breathing even out.

You’re falling asleep fairly quickly, and the only complaint he has is that he didn’t get to spend nearly as much time as he wanted to with you while you were awake and regressed.

Once he’s sure you’re barely awake, he murmurs, “You’re such a sweetheart, you know that?”

—

You don’t know how long it’s been since you fell asleep, but you’re woken up by the slight rustling of clothes, and then you feel yourself moving up.

Your mind still feels foggy and you can tell you’re still somewhat in that younger mindset of yours, but now you’re significantly less bothered by it than you were before. You’re awake enough to be aware of what’s happening, always having been a light-sleeper, but not awake enough to know exactly what’s happening. You don’t dare open your eyes, and try to keep your breathing even—though that isn’t much of a challenge.

That headache that had been building up earlier has fully disappeared, thank God, and you no longer feel the tension in your shoulder that you’d been unconsciously carrying.

You can sort of feel someone’s arms snaked under your back, and you know that you’re being moved somewhere. Quickly, you remember that it’s Ghost carrying you, and that you had fallen asleep on him, much to your embarrassment. Or, at least, it would be much to your embarrassment if you had the mental capacity to feel embarrassed about that right now. But you feel so comfy and so safe that it really doesn’t matter to you right now.

You can hear the clicking of Ghost’s boots against the concrete floors of the hallway, and he’s carrying you off somewhere; you imagine that somewhere to be your sleeping quarters. He’s walking pretty fast, not hurriedly but still at a somewhat fast pace.

Soon, he reaches a stopping point where he has to awkwardly put one leg up to support your back on his thigh as he quickly reaches one arm out to turn the knob of the door to your sleeping quarters and pulls that arm right back to support your back again. He sighs as he puts his foot back down, kicking open the door and walking in.

He’s quick to reach your bed, and he pauses as he considers what to do. You can practically hear him thinking, wondering how he’s gonna get you under the covers while he’s still carrying you, and for a second you think about showing him you’re awake so that things are easier for him before he sets you down on the bed.

He pulls the covers up and stops when he reaches the part your body covers, and picks you back up, before dropping you right back off where the blankets have been pulled away. He pulls the covers back over you.

After a few moments, you think he’s left the room, before you hear the rustling of fabric and feel him leaning down. He gently presses his lips to your forehead and pulls away after a second or two, before quietly mumbling, “Night, kiddo.”

He stays there for a moment before you hear his footsteps leave the room, and then the door clicking shut behind him as he leaves the room entirely.

You’re quick to fall asleep after that.