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Benji woke up on the floor. He didn’t know where he was and the carpet beneath him didn’t do anything to hide the concrete underneath. He groaned and buried his hands in his face. Everything was sore and his stomach felt as if it was tied up in knots. He felt gross, like a liquid had dried up all over his body.
“Finally, a sign of life,” He heard someone say, “You awake?”
Benji whimpered, “No”
“Damn, all right,”
Suddenly, the past couple hours came flooding back to him. Escaping the Angels, meeting the boy in black and his friends, controlling the Graces, and…his dad. Benji looked down and realized the dirty feeling was his dad’s dried up blood, mixed with some of his own and some of the Angels.
“Name’s Salvador, pronouns xe/xem,” The person, Salvador, said to him.
Benji had the intent of also telling xem his name, but when he tried to speak, he choked on a sob. Oh God, what was happening? His dad was dead. The angel killed him. His dad was dead. His dad was dead. Oh god, his dad was dead. Benji’s heart raced but it was getting hard to breathe but his body was too exhausted to even take quick breaths. He just stared into the floor in front of him, tears running down his cheeks as he hiccuped for air once every couple seconds.
“Hey, kid!” Salvador kneeled down in front of him, trying to snap him out of this trance he was in.
Benji didn’t know if it was a side-effect from the injection or the adrenaline but his brain was feeling so strange. He just felt so…small and vulnerable, like he was a little kid again, or hell, even younger. Everything was so big, and realizing that his dad wasn’t here made him feel even worse. He wasn’t supposed to be grieving, it was wrong. And the fact that he was acting like this probably because of it was worse. All of his emotions and feelings have been building up ever since he got injected with that virus and now he was crashing.
Hot tears poured down Benji’s cheeks as he let out another sob. Why did the Angels have to kill his dad? He did nothing worthy of being killed! They should’ve killed him instead, even though he knew they never would. They couldn’t kill their precious Seraph. The reminder of the monster he was going to turn into made Benji let out a crying wail. He grabbed his choppy hair in his hands and tucked his knees into his chest.
“Hey, hey, shh, it’s gonna alright. Can I hug you?” Salvador asked. Never in his life had someone asked before hugging him. It just wasn’t something they did in New Nazareth. Getting a hug was rare enough. But nevertheless, Benji nodded, needing comfort from one.
Salvador scooped him up into xyr lap and hugged him, tucking his head into xyr shoulder. Xe let him cry for as long as he needed to. While he was just getting done with sobbing into xyr shirt, the door suddenly opened. Benji jumped and tried to scramble out of Salvador’s arms. These were the Angels, they’ve come back to get him, he was going to be tortured and forced to kill, he couldn’t do this!
“Hey, shhh, it’s okay, you’re not in danger,” Salvador promised. The people that walked in looked like teens, just like Benji. One was a girl, or well, feminine presenting, and the other a boy/masculine presenting. He recognized them from before, when they found him.
As Benji started to calm down, the tip of his thumb had unconsciously made its way into his mouth. He could hear Salvador whisper something to the girl.
“...think they’re regressing” was all he could make out. What did that mean? Benji thought he knew all the “nonbeliever” stuff from the books his dad smuggled him, but he had never heard of that.
When Benji had fully calmed down, he kept his head resting upon Salvador’s collarbone. He didn’t want to leave the safety and comfort that came from being held like this. He just felt so small and little. There wasn’t really any other way to describe it.
“Hey, bud, how are you feeling?” The girl asked, “My name is Erin, she/her, and that’s Nick, He/Him,”
“Benji, ‘nd he/him,” He sniffled. His voice sounded so weird, but he just assumed it was from all the crying.
“Alright, Benji. Do you think you can tell me how old you’re feeling?” Erin asked. Benji tilted his head, confused
“Sisteen,” He mumbled.
“Are you sure? Sometimes our mental age can be different from our physical one. Are you feeling a little younger?” She said.
Now that Benji thought about it, he did feel young, as if he was a 3 year old in a 16 year old’s body. He was about to tell her, but he realized how weird it would sound. Being a boy in a girl’s body was strange enough, saying he was 3 as a 16 year old just felt embarrassing.
“Can you tell me using your fingers?” Erin suggested. It felt better and less awkward than using his voice.
“Mhm…” blushing, Benji held up 3 fingers.
“Okay, thank you for telling me,” Then she whispered something to Nick and the boy walked out of the room, before turning back to Benji,
“I know things are overwhelming right now, but you’re safe here at Acheson LGBTQ center,”
“We just call it the ALC for short,” Salvador interrupted
“Yes, but we aren’t just an LGBTQ center. We also accommodate age regressors such as yourself. Age regression is where a person reverts back to a younger mindset despite their physical age. It can happen both involuntarily and voluntarily.” She explained, “It wasn’t very well known before the Flood, but a lot of the members here do it or used to,”
Other people also felt like this too? He wasn’t just weird? It felt nice to know he wasn’t alone, that this feeling was somewhat normal.
“I’m assuming you haven’t regressed before, right?” Salvador asked. Benji nodded, this was all extremely new to him.
“Well, don’t worry too much about it, bud. We got everything you need and we’ll help you learn this part about yourself,” Xe said.
As Sal finished xyr sentence, Nick suddenly walked in. The boy held a small plastic box, a sippy cup with water, and a baby blue beaded lizard.
“We have a small room with some more regression items you can pick out later,” Nick said, kneeling down to Benji and handing him the items. Benji took the lizard first and immediately got shot back into feeling all small and little. He grabbed the lizard and played with it, rolling the beads between his thumbs before going to put it in his mouth.
“Don’t put that in your mouth. You have a pacifier,” Nick gently eased his hand away and opened the small box. He took out a baby blue, white, and pink pacifier and placed it in Benji’s mouth.
At first, the boy blushed, his face becoming red. Seeing a babyish looking pacifier being placed into his mouth filled him with embarrassment. But it felt nice and soothing.
“We’re going to ask you some questions in a bit, but it’ll have to wait. You need some time to decompress,” Erin said. She wanted Benji to relax a little and at least drink some of his water before giving him a bath.
Salvador helped hold his sippy cup up to his lips. Benji drank some of the water, it was warm and tasted a little weird, but it soothed his sore throat. After he finished, Erin lifted him up out of Salvador’s lap and into her arms.
“Alright, Benji was it? It’s time for a bath,” She said, starting to carry him into another room to give them some more privacy. She set him down once they stepped inside the bathroom and asked what undergarments he’d prefer to wear
“We have boxers, briefs, binders, bras, and sports bras. But we also have pull-ups and some tape-style padding too if you prefer to have those while regressed. We already have very few regressors still here, and only one person wears them every once in a while, so don’t worry about trying to conserve the supplies,” She asked.
Benji hesitated before telling her he’d prefer boxers and a sports bra. The pull-ups and the other one (saying diaper sounded too weird, even if it was just in his head) did sound like they’d be comfortable and he kind of wanted to maybe try it, but he chose the boxers instead. He was still trying to wrap his head around this whole situation. With running away, to the regression thing. It just felt strange to do at that moment. Maybe once he was more educated on this, he could try it. Hopefully before his body changes too much.
Erin went into a pretty big closet and picked out the undergarments that would be his size and then a t-shirt and shorts. She came back with a towel too and set it down on a counter nearby.
“Do you need help bathing?” She asked. Benji shook his head, he already hated how his chest looked, he didn’t need another person to see it.
However, as he stepped into a shower stall with a bucket of water and got undressed, he could’ve really used her emotional support. He washed off the blood, mainly his dad’s, as tears started to fall. His papa was dead. The last thing Benji had of him would soon be gone and washed away. But he hated the stickiness of the dried blood, it was too uncomfortable. Plus he smelled. He needed to get clean.
Even though Erin stood outside the stall and could hear his quiet sobbing, she didn’t interrupt. Benji was extremely vulnerable right now, the last thing he needed was for her to scare him off. So unless he outright called for her, she would keep her mouth shut and wait for him to finish.
It took a while, but Benji soon washed away all the blood and grime on his skin. It was the longest and most painful bath of his life.
“Can I have m’ clothes please?” He asked in a small voice once he was done. Erin grabbed the undergarments first and handed it to him through the curtain. Then when he was done, she handed the rest and he soon walked out.
“Do you want your pacifier?” Erin asked. He had to take it out when he took his sponge bath, so she kept it safe on the counter. Benji nodded, still needing some time to be little.
After handing him the soother, she showed him to his “apartment”. She opened the curtain and led him inside. It was very small, only really being able to fit a mattress. But what was interesting was that on his bed, there was a teddy bear with a small trans flag heart stitched into its chest. He sat down on the mattress and held the bear, smiling. When he was young, his mom made him give up all his toys, saying that the only “comfort” he needed was acceptance from God.
Erin sat down and gave him one final hug before tucking him in. He had a really rough day, he needed to rest. She would do the interrogating with Nick later. Right now, Benji needed some sleep.