little!stein with cg!spirit and cg!marie…💭
[tw for self injury, stein typical weirdness]
stein regressing involuntarily when the madness gets to be too much to handle
has a pretty inconsistent age range he regresses to. anywhere between baby and older kid (0-10)
is usually hyper-aware of his regression, trying to logic his way out if it. it takes a lot for him to actually allow himself to relax into it.
he twists his screw as a stim and spirit and marie can use it as a sort of gauge of how he’s feeling when he can’t get words out. the faster he twists it, the more upset he is. when this happens, they try to redirect him, getting him to do something else with his hands.
spirit was stein’s first caregiver, even though they didn’t put words to what they were doing until after stein started teaching at dwma. it started back when they were students, but all spirit knew at the time was that stein would get weird and quiet sometimes. not that he wasn’t weird and quiet normally, but something about this felt different. spirit would always sit with him, keep him company when he got like this. usually he would put on some stupid cartoon or just talk aimlessly to fill the silence. company seemed to help. spirit remembers a time when he tried to go to the kitchen to make food while stein was regressed, and as soon as spirit was out of his sight, the meister started shaking uncontrollably. truth be told, it scared spirit.
spirit and stein just kind of. get each other. spirit picks up on stein’s nonverbal cues better than anyone else. he’s been around stein in all states of mind and nothing really shocks him anymore. he still holds a bit of a grudge over the whole “exploring my body (literally) in my sleep” thing, but ultimately he’s just happy to fill in a caregiver role again.
spirit has some issues where he feels like he has to prove himself through fatherhood. is he using stein as a last ditch effort to prove that he can care for someone without fucking everything up? maybe. that’s none of your business.
in reality he’s more like a douchey older brother/weird uncle.
spirit can carry stein. sometimes stein loves it, sometimes he hates it. it all depends on the situation. there have been times where spirit has had to carry him away from something dangerous (what, you thought he only ever punched one mirror?). that wasn’t fun. but sometimes, when stein is really small, he’ll just make grabby hands at spirit, who of course knows that that means “up please!!”
when regressed, stein is exponentially more likely to hurt himself somehow. spirit and marie have to lock away all sharp objects, just completely baby proof the house. his morbid curiosity only gets worse as a kid. he doesn’t understand why he can’t cut himself open to see what’s inside. why not? he knows how to do it safely!! (ignore the fact that his motor functions are much less reliable when regressed) every once in a while though, he’ll manage to get his hands on something sharp (re: broken mirror) which either ends with stein brandishing it at spirit and marie in a paranoia induced meltdown, or using it on himself. if he’s having a meltdown, his caregivers do their best to talk him down. it doesn’t always work, and in that case he’ll usually use the sharp object on himself. then, spirit and marie get to be on clean up duty!! :D yayyy (spoiler alert: it’s not fun)
marie is a pretty stereotypical caregiver. just an all around warm and calming presence. she loves to baby stein.
one time marie tried to take away stein’s cigarettes because “babies don’t need to smoke!!” within two hours stein was having a full blown meltdown and couldn’t articulate what was wrong and was trapped feeling absolutely miserable. spirit comes home to the tantrum. when he finds out stein hasn’t smoked all day, he gives marie a stern talking to about the importance of a chronic chain smoker like stein getting their nicotine fix.
stein has a few plushies. his favorite is his weighted dinosaur.
yes stein has tried to dissect his plushies next question
stein isn’t necessarily a picky eater but there are days where he just can’t bring himself to eat. sometimes he’s hallucinating bugs in the food (totally not me self-projecting), sometimes he just… can’t. the only thing he can reliably get down is milk. marie takes this as an invitation to bottle feed him. stein HATES that he loves bottle time and if anyone besides his caregivers found out about this he would kill them and then himself.
stein usually watches whatever spirit puts on for him, which is usually either a show from their childhoods or something he used to play for maka (left to his own devices, he’ll watch surgery videos, dissections, etc. on youtube. sometimes when he’s in a particularly foul mood he’ll watch straight up gore and spirit and marie have to scramble to turn it off). one of his guilty pleasures though is invader zim. his favorite characters are dib and professor membrane, but he loves gir’s design. he even has a gir plushie and gir hoodie he likes to wear sometimes when regressed.
stein absolutely loves deep pressure. he always has either his weighted blanket or weighted plush.
stein has mixed feelings about sharing a room with people at night. sometimes, having someone else in the room makes him too paranoid to sleep, while other times, he’s too paranoid about… everything else… to go to sleep alone. it would be nice to be able to say that spirit and marie know exactly what he needs, but there have been multiple nights where they’ve shuffled out of stein’s place in the wee hours of the morning after their company was met with whining, fussing, and plenty of tossing and turning. inversely, they’ve also tried giving stein space when they notice an uptick in paranoia, only to get a frantic call in the middle of the night begging for company. it’s weird. stein is weird. we know this.
sometimes stein gets embarrassed about needing help going to sleep and will put off getting help from his caregivers for days on end. he always ends up regressing to a younger age when this happens and always ends up feeling especially fussy.
sometimes stein will ask really strange questions, like stuff you’d hear from devil spawn children in horror movies.
if he’s really able to relax, stein will fall asleep mid-activity
not a padded regressor but stein has had accidents before.
