Chapter Text
Izzy is a hard worker. It’s something he’s prided himself on for a very long time, from when he was old enough to be making breakfast and dinner and lunch for his mother and his mother’s husband, which was quite young, mind you.
He knows what he has to do and he does it as efficiently as possible, even if that means screaming at a few people to get the job done in time.
Working at Ed’s pub has assured in Izzy the knowledge that if you want something done, you have to do it yourself. In the past twenty five years, Izzy has worked every position and placeholder as other workers have come and gone, scrubbing dishes one moment and hauling teenagers and their shoddy fake ID’s out the door by their collars the next.
The work is hard, and fucking tiring. The physical exertion is matched by the mental exhaustion, but if he ever thought of leaving he didn’t remember it. Izzy loves his jobs, and he loves where he works, and he loves who he works for, even if that particular part remains left only for him to ruminate on. He wouldn’t give up his job if someone offered him the fucking moon, even if working as the Queen Anne’sb manager slash bouncer slash waiter slash bartender slash stocktaker slash unpaid cleaning labour takes everything out of him.
His bed is warm at the end of the day, and he can afford to stand under the hottest setting on the shower for an hour if he pleases, and at the end of every shift Izzy gets to come home to Edward, listen to him talk in the low rumble of his quiet voice and watch as his inked fingers rake through black curls, turning silver to match Izzy’s temples.
Even despite Ed, Izzy can’t deny it.
He’s fucking tired.
And maybe, after however many decades, the simple pleasures of sleep and hygiene aren't enough to keep him content anymore. Coming home to Ed will never get stale, but the pure exertion he gets after working at the Queen Anne doesn’t pair well with the way he’s ageing, with his stiff joints and bad foot and migraines.
The guilt eats at him at first. Ed deserves this, Ed’s worked his whole life for this stability and it’s virtually nothing at all for Izzy to help him keep what Ed made in the first place. But an increase in lightheadedness and a trip to the GP left him with the almost startling knowledge that continuing this kind of routine won’t be dangerous in the we’re losing business kind of way, but the I might die of a fucking heart attack way, and Izzy - with a hell of a lot of disdain - makes an effort to relax.
And if you were to ask Izzy what he thought of relaxing, he’d tell you that it’s fucking stupid.
Izzy simply doesn’t see the point of it. His valuable time being spent leisure reading or applying useless cream to skin that’s already wrinkled is wasted where it could be spent making meals for the week or doing laundry or any other of the many chores Ed finds no interest in doing.
He does it anyway, after he’s forced to up his prescription of blood pressure medication, and at least tries to make an effort.
Izzy remembers a time where that sort of relaxation came easily, where he and Ed seemed to be on the same page without even the need to discuss it and Ed knew how to pet his hair and how to murmur pet names and say soft things in just such a way that Izzy could melt carefree against him.
The thought of those memories brings a hot flush to Izzy’s cheeks, and he expels the memory from the front of his mind, persistent as it may be. That vulnerability, that soft slip into innocence is behind him now, and purposeless on his own. He couldn’t possibly allow himself that now, not with how humiliating it would be if Ed caught him.
The thoughts stay mostly buried for the next few weeks, until Izzy’s worked a sixteen hour shift on a friday night/saturday morning and comes home with his feet throbbing and his neck with another strong crick.
He’s cozied up in his bed, feet resting on an ice pack and neck laid back on a heat pack, when the thought returns.
Izzy recalls it - the sensation of melting, of becoming pliable and soft and delicate and small, and the name of it all rings like church bells in his ears. He’s tired, and the heat pack can only do so much to wind him down. His laptop is heavy on his lap - the only new and expensive thing he’s bought in over five years, and only because his last out shit out on him and he needs it to keep up with the incoming stock of alcohol and food to the pub - playing some show he can’t quite manage to focus on despite the 10% of his effort that he’s putting into paying attention.
A fog has settled at and around his mind, blurring things in his focus and blending the rest into another vague hum. Izzy recalls a similar fog, though different to this one, that had taken him so softly when he was younger, when Ed would hold onto him and let Izzy bury himself in his chest.
Izzy’s cheeks heat at the reminder, his face flushing with a red hot tinge and made even his ears feel warm to the touch. That gentleness had always brought out the same reaction, not so much embarrassment as it was his body’s recognition of being, well, loved.
Izzy rubs his hands over his face and groans. He shouldn’t feel like this. Normal people don’t go all soft like he used to, all gentle and pliable and dependent. He was lucky enough that Ed just rolled with it. There’s no way that he’ll ever get that again- not in any meaningful way.
As much as Izzy refuses to refer to ‘what happens’, he has better words to use than ‘soft’ and ‘melty’.
Age regression.
He’s known the word for a few years now, after a late night trip down the google wormhole when he was feeling particularly wistful for that warm flush in his cheeks and the reassuring thrum in his chest when Ed had cuddled him close and ran his fingers through his hair when it was still a solid dark brown instead of threaded with grey.
He hadn’t known the word back then, but the feeling had been the same, and so had the guilt when Ed had begun to roll with it without asking. Izzy wonders if he knew what was going on inside Izzy’s head. Did he actually get what regression is or did he just think that Izzy just liked pretending to be a baby sometimes?
They had talked about it sometimes, not ever when Izzy was in a grown-up headspace, because fuck that, but when he was already well sunken down and curled up Ed had whispered to him, petting his back and speaking low as if Izzy might startle and run off were he too loud.
Ed would bring it up, the idea of playing or getting help eating or even a bottle, which had only come up a few times and made Izzy sink the deepest into his regression without fail each time.
But even still, even with Ed initiating the more infantile conversations, Izzy couldn’t shake the guilt from tricking Ed into doing this. Surely it was non-consensual, if Izzy was aware of the shifting power dynamic between them and said nothing. Did it count as taking advantage of Ed? What would Ed think of him, if he found out what Izzy was using him for.
Izzy had wanted to tell him, or better yet just ask him if he knew what regression was. The way he acted sometimes made Izzy so sure that he must’ve known (though back then neither had known the word for it), but the looming threat of Ed being disgusted, hurt, horrified, or some other awful figuration of negative reactions that he could possibly have was always too close for Izzy to risk it.
He loved Ed. He wouldn’t do anything to risk losing him.
Though really, that doesn’t matter much anymore, not with Ed dating around.
Izzy had always hoped that somehow Ed would fall for him, but Ed had never really piqued his romantic interest regarding Izzy, and eventually Izzy just got comfortable with waiting in the room beside Ed’s, too comfortable to ever take any steps towards something with Ed.
Ed’s been dating more as of late, and Izzy wonders if it’s some reaction to getting older. Izzy isn’t unfamiliar with the idea of a midlife crisis (though he wouldn’t be caught dead having one), but Ed’s sudden interest in dating apps and meeting men is new. Ed’s pretty enough that finding men has never been hard, but the actively seeking out companionship part is what’s new. Since when hasn’t Izzy been enough? (The second time Ed had mentioned a hinge date is when Izzy had let his dreams of growing old with Ed die).
And then, with Ed’s search for a proper companion, any of Izzy’s opportunities of getting Eddie back were gone.
Izzy sighs. The light coming from his computer screen is stinging his eyes, but his fingers twitch over the keyboard as he pulls more and more memories to fuel the burning flush in his cheeks.
As embarrassing as it is, he aches to feel that comfort again. He won’t get that with Ed, he’s come to terms with that already, but there’s other options, aren’t there?
Izzy decides he must be at the end of his rope as he opens a new incognito search tab and searches: Age regression.
The results are familiar, having read these sites several times over when he got restless under the memories of curling up in Ed’s lap. It’s mostly medical websites, wikihow articles and sites that are more cold and clinical than the thrum in Izzy’s chest craves.
He sighs and clicks again on the search bar.
‘Age regression group’ he tries, ignoring the embarrassment he feels with a self conscious eye roll.
There’s a facebook group, which Izzy scrolls past. He doesn’t deal with facebook anymore, not after Ed’s aunties hadn’t stopped trying to get him to join MLM’s.
There’s a few websites he scrolls past, some shady and some he recognises as forums he can’t be bothered to interact with any of the people using them.
Then he spots it.
It’s a blog site, Izzy recognises the name from some little baby twink that had tried to stumble into the pub with a fake ID and had given Izzy his username on a slip of paper with an awkward little wink, as if that wasn’t the most under legal drinking age someone could do, not even using an email or a phone number to hit on someone.
Izzy, lost for options, decides to click on it.
It’s pretty, though a bit too cutesy and rainbow for Izzy’s tastes. He reads for a bit, rules about interaction and what age regression can be defined as, which was a lot more things than Izzy had even thought about.
He reads for a bit, scrolling down and reading post after post that brings back that heat in his cheeks with a new intensity.
He scrolls and scrolls and scrolls and scrolls and then he clicks off of that blog and onto the main site and keeps scrolling and scrolling through post after post about regressing and being cared for and worried about and loved in the way Izzy knows that he fucking needs.
Izzy reads post after post even after the lights in the hallway go out and Ed calls goodnight from the other room. He keeps reading until the posts turn from structured and narrative based to conversational and inane.
Izzy’s brow furrows. Do people just use these blogs like MySpace? He reads for a bit more, clicking on profiles and blogs until he swallows down the resolve to click on the sign in button. He hasn’t signed up for a social media site since Ed convinced him to download instagram only to never use it, and hasn’t made his own username since he lied about using AOL instant messenger to impress Ed and had to make up a screen name on the spot.
He can’t use that though. If anyone found Izzy on here he wouldn’t know what to do. He has too much pride for anyone to find out about this side of himself - using a similar username would mean almost anybody he has on facebook or twitter or whatever other inane website Ed had insisted he sign up for would run a chance of finding this account.
Izzy chews at his lip as his fingers drum on the keys. He should use a different name. That’s clever. A lot of the blogs he checked out had names, and the whole point of doing this in the first place was to find someone to talk to about all of this. Izzy vaguely feels concerned about using Izzy, and he knows there’s not that many grown men in his age bracket called Israel, certainly not enough that someone wouldn’t link this back to him if they found it.
He chooses his middle name, Basilica, because virtually no one knows that’s his middle name and because he doesn’t want to use a name he’s unfamiliar with, because he knows from experience that it will bring the same sort of discomfort that his birth name brings him and Izzy refuses to feel like that ever again if he has any choice in it.
Basilica is taken, and so is Basilica01 and Basilica123, annoying enough. Izzy searches around the dark of his room for inspiration and his eyes fall on the blood pressure medication he’d picked up the day before last and forgotten to take since then. It’s ironic enough, Izzy laughs quietly to himself.
Izzy tries bazatenolol, and it’s available.
He’s then faced with the dilemma of designing his blog; every one he’d seen had been colourful and cohesive, and he struggles with the little colour wheel to create a nice combination of colours before he reconsiders the importance of this blog to his daily life and chooses a muted grey. He briefly worries if the dark theme is a little too much. Most of the profiles he’d checked out were pastel and pretty and well- more babyish. He worries his lip under the sharp edge of his teeth before blinking away the thought. It doesn’t matter what colour the posts he makes, does it?
Izzy isn’t all that accustomed to stuff like this, but he wants to do it right. He makes a little list of rules to go in his biography once he figures out how to work the damn thing. ‘No minors, No NSFW’. Simple enough.
Izzy’s heart pounds in his chest as he types up an introduction post. He’d seen several so far, but he has no idea what to say. How is he supposed to describe himself in any desirable way?
‘Hi!’ He starts, and then deletes it with a groan.
‘Hello!’
Is the exclamation mark too upbeat?
‘Hello.’
Too fucking cold.
‘Hi!’
Izzy sighs. Good enough.
His cheeks flare as he types out his name and some brief information about himself - really only that he’s fairly new to the community and he’s looking forward to making friends. Izzy floods with self consciousness as he types it out and bathes in the radiant embarrassment afterwards.
This all seems so dumb. He doesn’t talk like this, he’s not the type to go out and try to make friends.
But Izzy wants this. Badly. And it’s not like anyone will know who’s posting this. His name is changed and he’s not likely to ever post his own face
So he presses down on the button that will publish this stupid post (after he does something called tagging which he sort of gets the gist of), and tries not to think of it again.
He goes through and follows a handful of people, accounts that he’s scrolled through and committed half of their posts to memory already.
KeelhaulDryocampa: A little one curled up in bed, ready to go off to sleep with their papa by their side, brushing the hair out of their eyes and making sure they’re tucked comfortably into bed.
touchthatfishtank: thinking about holding a tiny close and making sure they’re safe and fed and warm and comfy and that their tummy is full and that there is nothing else that they could possibly want >.<
Izzy’s belly is wound tight with the anticipation of something, and for the first time in a long time, he doesn’t feel exactly so awful about it all.
His feet are still throbbing and the crick in his neck hasn’t stopped in the whole time he’s been laying on his heat pack, but his eyes are drooping enough that he doesn’t even have the time to move his laptop off of his stomach before he’s asleep.
Izzy works the next day, as he does every day. He gets up early after a few hours of sleep for what’s supposed to be a relatively stressless day of taking note of what they need to be restocking and what’s less popular than deserves being sold anymore and patching the few spots of wear and tear in the pub’s original booths, carved out from the walls.
It turns into a longer day once Ivan calls out sick to take his little sister to the hospital, and Izzy can’t fault him once he hears about the nine year old with an arm fractured in two places, so he takes Ivan’s bartending shift with the knowledge that at least he’ll get double time and a half for the saturday night and sunday morning, even if he’s drained by the end of it.
Izzy makes it home at five on Sunday morning with vomit on his shoes and the bottom half of his pants.
He kicks off his boots with a promise to buy insoles before his next shift and falls face first onto his bed with a groan. He wouldn’t have even remembered to check his laptop had he not quite literally fallen on top of it from where he had left it the night before.
Izzy’s tired, with his head pounding so hard that it makes his eyes hurt to look around, but the allure of that soft vulnerability he had half obtained while reading over those blogs the night before.
He gets comfortable in bed first, instead of sleeping in his clothes like he did the night before. He might be able to score a sleep-in if Ivan’s able to take his shift tomorrow, but he doubts it with the way Ivan’s sister had been audibly crying from the other end of the phone.
His eyes sting under the blue glow of his computer screen, but he blinks that away fast enough. He opens his browser and types in the URL for the blog site and types in the username that’s been settling beneath his fingertips since the last time he’d typed it.
Izzy goes to reread the posts he’d saved last night - the ones he’d liked the most and the ones that had hit a particular soft spot - but something else catches his eye first.
The notification button is adorned with a coloured bubble, and when he clicks on it Izzy’s screen is bombarded with notifications. Well - bombarded might be a bit over the top, but the few messages that are there are overwhelming as is. Reblogs of his first post and several likes and even several follows. Izzy drums his fingers on the keyboard.
Keelhauldryocampa liked your post
Keelhauldryocampa liked your post
Keelhauldryocampa started following you
hormonestaniwha liked your post
hormonestaniwha reblogged your post
gulpingcantonese liked your post
gulpingcantonese started following you
wantU2wantme reblogged your post
It’s only a little bit threatening to have a following already, especially when posting to no one already felt so overwhelming.
Izzy ignores it. He learns what a mutual is. He rereads his saved posts. And he goes to bed.
Izzy learns how to reblog the next day. He reblogs post after post, and once he remembers how to tag, he starts getting likes on his posts.
Slowly, he builds the confidence to start chatting in the notes of posts, reblogging with additional thoughts and comments that he wants to share with someone.
Posting becomes less threatening over time, and within a week Izzy no longer feels embarrassed with every post he makes.
He even makes friends, if he dares call them that. They’re closer to acquaintances if anything, though it feels odd to call people that he follows online acquaintances. They’re just…. people that he follows and people that follow him.
He makes his first real friend within the week. A response to a post that Izzy had made when he felt particularly outspoken.
bazatenolol: I find it weird that so much of regression is surrounded around young adults. Why is it? Where are the middle aged regressors and caregivers? Why don’t we talk about them more?
Izzy hadn’t thought twice about it aside from if it made him sound like the old man he was starting to feel like, but apparently someone else had.
Keelhauldryocampa: Yes!!!!!! Oh my goodness, I agree!!!!!!!! Give us more middle aged love and softness! Don’t we all deserve it? I think some attention towards us is much deserved! I’d love to see more of that happiness in our little community!!!!
Izzy almost laughs when he first reads it. Who is this guy? And why is he using a fucking years supply of exclamation points in one short post?
He responds anyway, just for the hell of it.
bazatenolol: I agree. It would be nice to see more of it in the community without it being some big thing.
Keelhauldryocampa: Regression is for everyone, my friend! Give us the freedom to exist and we may flourish!
Izzy snorts. This guy is a lunatic. But Izzy really likes his posts, and it’s more fun to play along than just laugh at him on his own.
bazatenolol: Glad to see you’re a supporter then.
Keelhauldryocampa: How could I not be? I’m one of them!
That takes Izzy off guard. This guy is middle aged? Surely not. Izzy was certain he was probably the only one on here. A spark lights in his chest.
He checks his profile. No name, and no age, but a very flowery introduction, and a meticulously thought out colour scheme for his blog - it’s almost impressive, but Izzy isn’t all into pastels.
Maybe this could be a friend- an honest to god person to talk to instead of these mutual thingies.
Izzy dispels the thought with another eye roll. There’s no need to act so pathetic. He’s known this guy for seven minutes- correction, he doesn’t know him at all! They’ve spoken on the internet about the same topic for seven minutes.
Izzy reads through some of his posts, his cheeks alight the entire time as his knuckle makes its way into his mouth.
Keelhauldryocampa: What’s that? Did you have a nightmare? That’s alright, my dear, Papa’s right here. Can you take some deep breaths for me, my love? That’s it, you’re doing just fine. Let’s do it together, hm? That’s it, in and out. Good job, honey, I know nightmares are scary, but they’re not going to hurt you. It’s my job to keep you safe, I promise <3
Keelhauldryocampa: cozy times with my tiny, bundling them in blankets and tucking them into the softest warmest pyjamas and doing whatever they like, watching movies and playing their favourite games, colouring pictures and eating their favourite snacks, just making sure that they’re perfectly safe and happy next to me
Keelhauldryocampa: feeding a little one is so perfect, them trusting you to feel so vulnerable with you that they let you take care of them in such an important way, it’s just so perfect!!!!
Keelhauldryocampa: I can’t wait to have a little one of my own and give them absolutely everything they could ever want, as many toys and clothes and cuddles and kisses as they could ever possibly need <3
Izzy turns over and groans into his pillow. He’d scream his frustrations if he could, but it would be more than mortifying if Ed heard and tried to assume what was going on.
He’s pathetic. He’s so fucking lonely that now he’s deluded himself into thinking that some stranger on the internet is his new best friend, his new buddy, his pal.
Izzy sighs.
He’s so sick and tired of being lonely.
He’d thought what he had was enough. That sharing a living space with Ed and a workplace with his mates was enough, and that he was fulfilled. But he’s not.
Izzy needs more than what he has.
So what if he gets it from here?
bazatenolol: team work makes the dream work, right?
He cringes as soon as he’s pressed post, but he ignores it. He needs to put himself out there if he wants any meaningful connection with anyone outside of Ed fifteen years ago.
He fiddles with his phone in the meantime. He doesn’t want to think about it, but at the same time this is the connection he’s been longing for with someone else for years now.
He checks his email and the pub’s socials while he refreshes the page over and over until he gets another notification.
Keelhauldryocampa: Haha! Glad to have found a friend then!
Izzy’s face flushes. A friend.
He slams his laptop shut and rolls over. He can’t think about this anymore. Bed time.
Izzy wakes up to several more responses to the same post.
alexisdefinitelyNOThere: i looooooove when i find fics about older people and regression, it’s so healing to think about <3 <3
hormonestaniwha: omg yes bro i whuckin love it. i deserve to see myself more around these parts!
swiftcompletelybackinline: i literally have a whole page of bookmarked fics for exactly this purpose lol
Izzy’s left with an excited thrum in his chest and a curiosity for what on earth a fic is.
Izzy learns what a fic is the day after next. There’s a lull in his shift, as there usually is at eleven on a Tuesday, and after he’s finished the plumbing and repairs for the day and serves their sole miserable customer the cheesiest drinks he could possibly order, he has time to lean against the bar and pull out his phone.
He’d learnt about the mobile app after a few days of scrolling on his laptop and had spent another few debating how much more likely Ed would be to find it if he actually downloaded it. He hides it in a clump of apps he has shoved into a folder for all his medical information, which means Ed probably won’t stumble upon it when he gets bored and uses Izzy’s phone to play games.
A fic, apparently, is just shorthand for fanfiction. He could’ve easily guessed that people write fan stories about this sort of thing, because he’d learnt that people write fanfiction about anything after Ivan’s little sister asked him to proofread her story about fucking Trolls, but the sheer amount of it he’d found online was astounding.
Maybe this whole thing is a bit bigger than he first thought.
He makes posts when he has the time to lean against the back corner of the bar, away from any patrons, and reads over the notes whenever he gets the chance. He falls into the rhythm of sharing his thoughts, of unabashedly reblogging the posts he resonates with and expressing his joy when he does so. His stomach flips when Keelhauldryocampa reblogs his posts, and Izzy spends at least fifteen minutes smiling at his screen while he reads his responses
“Never seen you use your phone so much at work, Boss,” Fang comments as they’re stacking up stools early one morning. “Or at all, really. New boyfriend?” Fang winks and Izzy doesn’t have the heart to shove him.
“Fuck off.” He grunts and Fang giggles, squeezing Izzy’s forearm.
“And you’re always smiling at your phone nowadays…. It’s almost as if you’re talking to someone new?”
“I’m not.” Izzy says firmly. As much as he enjoys the responses from Keelhauldryocampa, it’s nothing like that. His chances of actually becoming friends (as much as the wording disgusts him) with him are astronomically lower than he’s been hoping for. That knowledge still doesn’t stop the stutter of his heart in his ribcage when he gets a notification from him.
“That’s so cute!” Fang squeals, bouncing as Izzy shakes him off and sends him to mop the floors.
Izzy rolls his eyes and goes back to his office. That’s not the sort of thing he’s looking for anyway, even if he does enjoy reading the imaginary thoughts he posts from time to time, imagining himself in place of the ‘little one’ he’s always referring to.
As much as he tries to do his work, his phone keeps buzzing on the desk beside him, and he faces an urge to post something that’ll make Keelhauldryocampa respond again.
Izzy groans into his fist as he’s distracted from his work once again by the little hm from his phone from the other side of the desk. This infatuation shouldn’t be happening, should it? He barely even knows the guy, not even his name! They’ve spoken a handful of times in the replies of posts, not even in a private message! And yet Izzy’s knee is bouncing under his desk in the hopes of another chance to talk to him.
He tries to rationalise it as he logs into his email and sifts through the several hundred that have come in since yesterday.
It’s not wrong to want companionship. Izzy isn’t being selfish in trying to find that. Wanting more doesn’t mean that what he has isn’t good enough yet. He just needs something other than what he’s got.
And so fucking what if he’s excited about making a friend. He hasn’t made a friend in over twenty years, and Ivan’s siblings and Ed’s nieces and nephews don’t count as friends in Izzy’s eyes. He’s not being creepy, he’s just.
….Fucking lonely. How pathetic.
Izzy hasn’t needed anything like this is fucking years. He’s had Ed since they were kids. When did that stop feeling like it was enough?
The wheels on Izzy’s roller chair squeak as he rolls out from his desk, and the door echoes the sentiment as Ed kicks it open and falls into his own seat.
“Sup.” He grunts as he kicks his feet up and reclines his seat all the way. Izzy watches him out of the corner of his eye as he decides to flip through the shift rosters for the next few weeks. It’s mostly him, over half the hours of the week filled in with Izzy’s assigned black colour.
“How was the date last night?” Izzy can tell when Ed is waiting for someone to ask him how he’s doing, and after thirty years knowing him he doesn’t feel the need to fight it anymore.
Ed keeps his phone within four inches of his face while he responds, the little game his fingers fiddle with playing an 8-bit tune as his screen flashes bright on his face.
“Eh.” He shrugs. “It was alright. Tried to get me to pay for his meal. I told him, fuck that.”
Izzy snorts. “Sounds about right.” Ed goes on, but Izzy’s attention is captured by the way his phone buzzes from across the desk.
“Who ya texting?” Ed grins over at him, and Izzy barely remembers to flip him off in between navigating the pure excitement at seeing ‘Keelhauldryocampa’ flash across his screen.
He gets into his phone as soon as possible, his fingers practically vibrating as he goes to read Keelhauldryocampa’s response to whatever he’d posted.
“Fuck off.” He says, but he doesn’t entirely bite back the smile chasing after his lips.
Ed gasps. “Aw, get fucked!” He smiles wider, reaching out to poke Izzy with the hard toe of his boot. “You’re chatting to a guy, aren’t you? Is he cute?”
“Yeah, like I’m talking to a fucking guy.” Izzy snarks. He rereads Keelhauldryocampa’s response over and over again. ‘That’s so sweet! I’d love for something like that in my own life!’. Izzy buzzes under the words. He can’t even recall what he’d posted about, but another interaction from this guy is another step, though who the fuck would even be counting, towards having an actual person he can talk to about what even Ed can’t know.
“He is cute!” Ed gasps, kicking his feet in the air. “That’s adorable, Iz. You deserve to settle down.”
Izzy shoots Ed a proper glare and he finally returns back to his mobile game with another quiet laugh, and Izzy is free to mope around in his loneliness once again.
He has a few more responses from other people, and he responds to them with the same cheery tune that he wouldn’t use with a young child, if he knew any. The knowledge that his identity remains somewhat anonymous makes it easier, though it still feels well out of his experience. Well enough that he spends five minutes hyping himself up to post a two word comment with only one emoji.
Eventually, his work can no longer be ignored. Izzy sets his phone to the side and returns to sorting through his emails. Ed does the same, after another fifteen minutes of scrolling aimlessly on his phone and snorting into the abyss every few moments.
Izzy doesn’t check his phone for the next few days. Fang comes down with something which then subsequently gets passed to two of the new kids he’d been training up, and Ivan’s mum has to pick up double shifts which means Ivan’s sister needs someone to watch her - which isn’t so bad when Izzy can keep an eye on her at the pub while he’s setting up for rush hour, but a bit more boring for her when it’s too dangerous and probably more than a bit inappropriate for her to be sitting up with him and instead forced to play solitaire in his office with his big clunky computer.
To make matters worse, Ed has already taken almost every night off this week. Dating, his excuse, ‘I need to settle down before I get too old!’ he says, and Izzy bites his tongue while he watches Ed flounce about with cologne and lip gloss while Izzy gets ready for work.
What about Izzy isn’t enough anymore? What about all of the endless hours of hard physical labour isn’t enough for Ed to appreciate anymore? He’d always assumed that he and Ed would….
Either way, Izzy works. He picks up Ed and Fang’s slack as well as working harder to supplement the subpar performance of their newer hires. Ivan’s sister is patient and well behaved, but even with her cooped up in the office with Ed’s netflix password, she’s a constant worry in the back of Izzy’s mind.
He sleeps on the floor in their office - for lack of any couch or reclining chair - in the short hours he has between shifts. He’d rather the carpeted floor than wasting valuable sleeping time driving to and from the flat. He brushes his teeth in the cramped sinks they use to wash dishes, rather than the filthy sinks in the toilets.
He cleans tables that the new boy’s tried to clean on his own, teaching him how to do it properly as he does so, and washes dishes that the dishwasher didn’t manage to get all the gunk off of. His inbox is full every time he looks at it and his feet begin to ache in their boots with all his stomping across the pub. Even after hours of work from him and his skeleton crew of Ivan and the pathetic new hires, there’s still food on the floor and tables with streaks and tubs of unwashed dishes. Izzy resigns himself to fixing it, because no one else will.
Izzy fixes the tables and wipes up the spilt food and vomit from the carpet he told Ed was a bad idea for this specific reason before he resigns himself to his office to finish off his emails and to sort out the live music for thursday band nights- suffice to say, he doesn’t stop working.
Izzy goes home again after another four days, when there’s enough competent workers coming into work that he can entrust the pub into their hands while he catches up on sleep for a few hours in his own bed.
Ed took their car on the third day of Izzy staying at the pub, and Izzy had given it to him - it is half Ed’s car after all, and he has every right to drive it to a date he planned two hours south of any reasonable date location - which means Izzy’s stuck on public transport.
Rush hour gets the best of him, and Izzy’s left grappling for a hold on the handles hanging from the bus railings instead of getting any sort of seat. Despite not having showered properly in a week, he’s relatively clean after upkeep with deodorant and being careful with the spare changes of clothes he keeps in his desk, though the man clinging to the handle beside his apparently hasn’t, and with his arm in the air and his armpit eye level with Izzy’s general face area, Izzy is left to reconsider opting to split the cost of a car with Ed while trying to breathe solely through the heavy coat on his shoulders.
He gets home after an hour extra on the bus, thanks to the rerouting he hadn’t been aware of after not leaving work for a week straight, but the lights are on inside and when he finally gets his key in the lock and opens the door, Ed is singing in the kitchen.
The scent of basil and simmering chicken stock hits him and clears the ache in his chest almost instantly, and Izzy rushes to close the door to keep the warm and heavy scented air inside.
“Izzy!” Ed squeals as Izzy thunks his bag down beside the kitchen bench. His hands are covered in something oily, told by the sheen on his dark skin, but he rushes over to give Izzy a hug anyway, only with his hands and fingers held up and out of the way.
Ed’s perfume hits Izzy’s nose when he’s pulled into a tight squeeze of a hug, lavender and rose water stinging his nostrils as he’s pressed against Ed’s collarbone. It’s not so usual for Ed to be making dinner, no less actually cooking said dinner, and for Ed to be excited to have Izzy home? It’s new. It makes something unfurl in Izzy’s belly, something warm and shy and untouched for a good few years.
“Missed you,” Ed hums, and once Izzy smells the familiar scent of flowery gin on Ed’s breath - a surprisingly more and more common occurrence within the last few weeks - he gets it.
“Are you drunk?” Izzy asks, pulling away from Ed’s chest. There’s no telling when he’ll get to have more of Ed’s warm comforting touch, but he can’t do this knowing that the only reason Ed’s being so affectionate with him is because he’s under the influence.
Ed snorts. “Little bit.” He uses his forefinger and thumb to demonstrate exactly how little. He laughs again. “Just a bit tipsy.”
Izzy nods, biting back a sigh. Of course he’s drunk, the only time he wants anything to do with Izzy.
“Alright, well…” Izzy grimaces. There’s a soft sort of shame settling along with the flush on his cheeks, a result of meeting the brunt of Ed’s lack of affection for him. It used to run rampant between them, in their youth, through stray hands and touches that lingered over jaws and collarbones. Though that past is far from them now, and Izzy is still left waiting in lieu of that lingering fondness.
“I’m making dinner.” Ed says before Izzy can escape down the hall to his room. “For both of us.”
A tense silence stretches out between them, spurred on by the way Ed dips his round dark eyes into contact with Izzy’s.
“You should stay.” Ed shrugs. “We can watch mafs if you like. I know you like it.”
“I don’t.” Izzy says sharply, and Ed grins.
“Sure,” He says, returning to the stove and relieving Izzy of the weight of standing under view of Ed’s hickory eyes. “You must really hate it to always be watching it on catch-up on your breaks.”
“Fuck off.” Izzy grunts.
“It’s pesto chicken.” Ed replies. “So come down and eat it, because I know you like it.”
Izzy rolls his eyes and heads down to his room, slinging his bag over his shoulder.
Izzy needs to shower before he can eat, but before he can shower he needs to get the washing done so he doesn’t get covered in the grime from the laundry after bathing.
He empties the changes of clothes from his bag into the hamper, and takes the pile of dirty clothes from the corner of the bathroom as well. He strips his bed for good measure, even though the exertion of stretching over his bed to untangle the sheets from the corners of his mattress makes his back twinge and his bad foot cramp up again.
He sets it on to wash before getting in the shower and washing up as fast as he can.
The water’s turned up all the way, near scalding as it gushes over his stiff neck. He runs shampoo through his hair and soap over all of the… important areas, and dries himself off as fast as he possibly can. He doesn’t want to keep Ed waiting.
Ed’s dishing up their meals once Izzy finally gets downstairs, cheeks flushed and pink from the heat of the shower and hair still damp around his ears.
They settle on either side of the couch, which means they’re still pressed up right against each other - university student money doesn’t leave much to impress when it comes to buying three seater furniture.
His bowl is steaming and warm and full of rice and chicken and creamy pesto, and Izzy’s fork is shovelling loads of it into his mouth within seconds. He’s fucking starving, how he hasn’t noticed it yet he doesn’t know. A surge of hunger claws and scratches at the insides of Izzy’s belly and he rushes to eat to drown it out. He hasn’t eaten properly in days, running off of vending machine snacks and drinks, which he gets for free thanks to the key kept in his desk drawer, but that doesn’t compare to a proper serving of warm real food.
Ed watches out of the corner of his eye as Izzy scoffs at his food, splitting his attention between Izzy and the couples getting paired up and married on the tv mounted on the wall across from them.
The food settles warm and heavy in Izzy’s stomach, and with his bowl empty, Izzy is finally and gloriously left with nothing to do. He watches tv with Ed (who’s right about how much he likes mafs), and jokes with him about the couples they’re watching. It’s nice. This closeness with Ed, and Izzy cherishes it, even though he knows that Ed is craving something more than this, than what is more than enough for Izzy. That’s why he’s spent almost every single day this week out meeting men from his little dating apps.
Part of Izzy fears for the day Ed finds a proper man to be with - someone for more than just the cheap pleasures Jack offers him from time to time. Ed leaving him on his own is one thing, but the ever present danger of Ed disposing of the pub is another. It’s Izzy’s pride and joy, his place of work, and the only place of work on his resume for the last 25 years. Without the pub, Izzy quite literally has nothing.
There’s a present weight at Izzy’s hip as he chats with Ed. When Izzy recalls his phone he finds it there, and he reminds himself of his digital obligations.
He finds the blog app on his phone, laid untouched for however long in the hidden folder on his phone, and opens it, angling himself away from Ed so he doesn’t have to answer any questions about what agere stands for.
Izzy scrolls, reading over posts he has to catch up on and scrolling through replies and reblogs to his posts that accumulated over the week.
Keelhauldryocampa: Thinking about early mornings with a tiny, waking up in the quiet with my little one by my side, and we can cuddle close beneath the covers and keep warm together until it’s much too late to stay in bed any longer
Keelhauldryocampa: Oh my love, what’s that? You’re tired? Well come here, I think it’s time for bed, little angel. Are your teeth clean? Good job, sweetheart! Papa can help you get into some nice warm jammies, there we are, and Papa can tuck you in nice and tight. Goodnight, sweet pea <3
hormonestaniwha: it’s okay to regress differently. it’s okay to swear when you’re regressed, it’s okay to cook and clean and work and look after yourself while regressed. regression is transcendent, you’re allowed to regress in your own way, even if that means using a dummy while writing a report or standing over the stove. you’re okay.
frogpelicancrocodile: tiny babies are soooo cute but the tinies who’re just a bit older are so perfect. yes i’ll help you build a giant castle with lego and yes we can practise times tables and your handwriting and play tag and make biscuits together
persimmongenieant: have you eaten today? eating is important, my love, you need it to grow big and strong! Dada only wants you to be healthy, baby. do you think you could eat some dinner if dada helped you? that’s so good, my angel. good work.
sherlockhardrolls: I love to think about tinies in the wintertime. Making sure they’ve got enough layers on, and helping them get into their coat and boots and helping to put their mittens on so their fingers stay nice and warm
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Izzy grins into his phone.
This Keelhauldryocampa guy seems keen enough under his posts, and Izzy’s skin itches with the want to respond. He wants to keep this momentum going, to potentially make something of the growing fondness in his chest for this strange online man, however odd that notion might seem.
There’s a flush rising in Izzy’s cheeks and a nervous ball turning over in his stomach. Izzy’s head clouds momentarily over the absurdity of him, the man who’s been hopelessly in love with the same boy since he was eleven, finally falling for someone else and that someone being a complete stranger behind a screen, faceless, voiceless, and utterly unattainable.
Ed seems to pick up on Izzy’s lack of commentary, and then notices the pink tint on Izzy’s cheeks, illuminated by the faint light of his phone screen.
“Are you blushing?” Ed asks, and Izzy’s eyes flash over to where Ed is watching him in incredulity.
“No.” Izzy says, maybe a little too fast. He’s struggling to keep his composure, not to smile or frown or make any other indication that this is the slightest bit important to him.
Ed gapes at him, and then the corners of his mouth tug into a wide and bright grin.
“You are!” Ed laughs, tucking heavy curls over here, black and brown split by streaks of wiry silver. “Oh my god, you’re totally blushing.”
Izzy licks his lips. The once quaint and welcome ball of nerves in his tummy rolls over on itself until it’s formed into a congealed anxious mess in the depths of his stomach.
Why is this making him so nervous?
Of all times for Ed to suddenly start being perceptive, why now? Why couldn’t he have recognised Izzy blushing over him at any point in the past fucking forty years?
Ed’s gaze flicks conspiratorially between Izzy and the TV mounted on the wall across from them. “I thought it might be fucking uh, fucking Todd over there making you all flustered, but you’re texting a guy, aren’t you?”
Ed’s giggles fall on deaf ears as Izzy’s fingers twitch around his phone. This is the last thing he needs, Ed snooping around his phone- or Ed having any reason to go snooping through Izzy’s things to find out what he wants to know, which he will most definitely do.
“No.” Izzy repeats, though Ed’s too smart for that by now.
“Who’s the guy?” Ed says, reaching across to snatch Izzy’s phone.
Izzy moves his closed fist out of reach. “None of your business.” He snaps.
Ed launches forward across the couch to get a glimpse of Izzy’s phone screen. “Come on, I gotta know who’s sweeping my little Iz off his feet!” He gets up close enough to see Izzy’s phone screen, wrenching his head between Izzy’s arms to try and catch a peek.
Izzy growls. The patter of his heart has grown faster and louder in the rush in his ears, and his hands are almost shaking around his phone. This sort of reaction seems unwarranted, feels that way at least, but this is the one thing Ed can never find out about. He’ll be mortified if he finds out Ed knows in such explicit detail what he gets up to in his own time. Ed catching sight of his phone screen is fucking bad, it means that Ed might know and if Ed knows then that sets up all sorts of dangers for his livelihood if Ed decides that he thinks it’s too weird for him to continue being around Izzy after he works it out.
“Fuck off.” Izzy grunts, switching off his phone and holding it up as high as possible, which means that Ed has the opportunity to stick his fingers in Izzy’s armpit and tickle until he can’t bear it anymore - which unfortunately works.
“I think I know that app, Izzy, are you on fucking Bumble?” Ed laughs again even as Izzy kicks him in the thigh. Ed’s practically on top of him now, poking the odd spots he knows make Izzy jolt and have made him spill embarrassing secrets in the past.
“Stop it, Ed.” Izzy tells him, pushing Ed away.
“Come on!” Ed whines, tickling Izzy’s sides. “I wanna know who you’re talking to! Let me see the cute guy that’s making you so flustered!”
“Ed!” Izzy shouts, getting his palm right over Ed’s face and pushing him away. “Fucking stop!” Izzy’s voice carries out through the flat, the sound broken only by the TV still playing in front of them.
Ed reels back. Izzy yelling isn’t at all an uncommon occurrence, especially at Ed, but it’s different this time.
“Geez.” Ed mumbles.
Izzy sighs. “Seriously, Ed.”
“How the fuck am I supposed to know when you dont wanna talk about shit?” Ed drops his arms against the couch exasperatedly, groaning.
Izzy huffs a sarcastic laugh. “Thanks for the dinner.” He says curtly, not bothering to put his plate in the kitchen sink before stomping down the hall to his bedroom.
Izzy changes his passcode after that. The severity of Ed going through his phone really isn’t that high. Ed is nosy, sure, and doesn’t always know when boundaries begin, but it’s not like Izzy has to worry about his medical information or his bank details. Ed’s curiosity isn’t malicious; it’s just fucking annoying. And most of all, Izzy wants this to be kept to himself. He and Ed had a shot at it already and Ed decided it wasn’t for him. And that’s fine, whatever, but that doesn’t mean Izzy can’t still enjoy exploring that more vulnerable side of himself. He turns off face ID too, for good measure. He doesn’t like the idea of Ed, or anyone really, being able to access everything on his phone using just a photo of him.
His nerves are a bit too jittery to keep reading, as much as that disappoints him. He’d been excited to unwind and fall down into that soft fog in the back of his mind, but that opportunity is long gone now. He’s upset, fucking angry at Ed for being a twat and miserably tired after sleeping on the hard floor of his and Ed’s office all week.
He goes to bed shortly after that. It’s been a long week away from home and his bed is warm and clean and he’s so tired. Izzy doesn’t even manage to think after his head’s hit the pillow.
Izzy wakes up the next morning with Ed on top of him.
“Wha-” Izzy slurs, scrubbing the gunk from his eyes and blinking heavily.
“Morning, Iz.” Ed grins down at him from where he’s kneeling directly over Izzy. He’s opened the bloody blinds too, and bright morning light stings Izzy’s eyes with the way it halos around Ed’s mop of silvery hair.
Izzy groans as he rolls over into his pillow. “Jesus, Ed.”
“Izzy~” Ed coos, poking at Izzy’s cheek incessantly. “C’mon!”
“Fucking what, Ed?” Izzy grumbles. He’s still tired enough that it’s a physical struggle to both open his eyes and keep them open.
“Can you cover for me today?” Ed asks, his wide and bright and pretty eyes entirely missing the way Izzy’s jaw hardens as Izzy turns back to look at him.
“Why?”
“I forgot and I made a date with this guy for tonight and I really don’t wanna miss it, you can keep my pay too and everything.” Ed grins at him brightly, his smile jittering with the weight of his excitement. Said excitement contrasts with the deafening anger blooming inside of Izzy.
“Are you serious?” Izzy rasps, sleep still clawing at his voice. He sits up on his elbow and Ed sits back on his knees, his smile still wide and almost contagious; it would be, were Izzy not both pissed and absolutely drained.
Ed shrugs, tipping his head back with a huff of quiet laughter.“I can’t believe I forgot I had work, but I booked a nice restaurant and everything so, y’know I can’t just cancel it.”
“I mean. Yes you can.”
Ed quirks an eyebrow at him. “What?”
Izzy stares at Ed incredulously. “You can still cancel it. I don’t care about you booking a table at some poncey restaurant.”
Ed frowns. “Well I care, I paid for the reservation.” His head tips to the side in confusion, as if it’s confusing to him why Izzy doesn’t want to work for another day straight. Today is his first day off in a week and a half. He’s not giving it up just so Ed can get some.
“Why would you ask me?” Izzy snarls, and Ed reels back in a way that lets Izzy know that he hadn’t picked up on any of Izzy’s annoyances thus far. “Why would I want to cover your shift?”
Ed shrugs again, his eyebrows furrowing in defensive anger. “I don’t know, maybe because you’ve been fucking asleep all week?”
“I’m sorry?” Izzy sits up properly this time, pulling his legs out from under Ed’s weight. “Sleeping?”
“Yeah!” Ed’s voice raises in turn with Izzy’s. “Every time I got home you were already in your room with the lights out and you wouldn’t come out! I did fucking all of the housework all week because of you!”
Izzy gapes at Ed. Momentarily, his anger has fallen from his face and instead utter disbelief has taken its place. “I’ve been at work all week.” He says, calmer than Ed would have expected judging by the confusion in his expression.
“I’ve been fucking sleeping in our office every day this week!”
Ed sits back, confusion etched into the creases in his forehead. “Why the fuck were you doing that?”
“Because I was covering you!” Izzy shouts. His hands fly into the air with a tense annoyance. “And Fang, and two of the new hires you insisted on, and watching Ivan’s little sister!”
Ed stares back at him with wide eyes, his smile having fallen flat and his lip caught under his front teeth.
“And those new fucking twat hires that weren’t sick can’t even do their fucking jobs, so I was the one picking up all of their slack!”
“Well how was I supposed to know that?” Ed’s voice raises in response to Izzy’s, his arms curling around himself in defence.
“Because it’s your pub!” Izzy shouts back at him. “Apparently so, even if I do all the fucking work to keep it running.”
“Catch yourself on, Izzy.”
“I do! I do everything and you don’t care!”
Ed pauses, eyeing Izzy curiously.
“Is this because I tried to look at your phone last night?”
Izzy scrunches his eyes up and sighs sharply. “You know what? Fine. I’ll fucking cover your shift.” He kicks himself out of bed and stomps over to the clothes he’d set out for today, yanking his pants on up over the underwear he’d been sleeping in.
“Izzy.” Ed groans, tugging at his hair. “Don’t be like that, come on.”
“No.” Izzy says, dressing angrily enough that one of the buttons on his shirt flies off. “No, I’m going to go to work and handle things so that you can meet up with another stranger instead of doing your actual job. It’s fine!” It’s most absolutely not fine, with the way Izzy spits the words out.
“I said I’d pay you for it!” Ed’s yelling too now. He stands up from Izzy’s bed and crosses his arms tightly over his chest.
Izzy grins toothily back at Ed. “Oh! Thank you! I just fucking love working for no pay, thank god you offered to pay me for my time and effort or I would’ve just gone on working and working for free because I just love working for free so much!”
“You’re being an asshole.” Ed snaps back at him.
“Go on, how about you just pay me by the hour instead of Sunday rates, I don’t mind!”
“Why don’t you just fucking say something next time, man?” Ed’s jaw hardens with the deepening crease between his eyebrows. Izzy feels a similar anger reverberating deep inside of his own chest, thrumming through his veins.
“Because you’re out-” The breath is syphoned from Izzy’s lungs as a sudden wave of sadness hits him, batting at his lungs with strength. His voice goes soft and strained and squeaky, his breath coming in hitched. “You’re out on all these dates and-” Izzy’s left with only breath, no words coming from his opened mouth.
“Hey,” Ed says softly. The creases on his face smooth out in favour of something similar to sympathy as he comes closer, his hands coming to rest on Izzy’s shoulders. “Iz, come on.” He sighs, pulling Izzy into his chest.
Izzy doesn’t mean to cry. He doesn’t. But Ed’s warm and soft and holds him so gently and in a matter of months this won’t happen anymore because of Ed’s stupid dates, and Izzy can’t blink away the wet blur from his eyes fast enough.
“Look,” Ed says, voice strained, “I’ll handle it, okay? Just- go to bed, okay, Iz?”
Ed walks Izzy back to bed with a gentleness that makes Izzy crave the years before. He lets Ed help him back into bed solely on the basis that he wouldn’t be able to himself. The blankets get pulled up around his chin and his hair smoothed over, and Izzy lures himself into sleep with the faint fantasy of returning to those years before.
Izzy wakes up sometime in the late morning. Ed is gone, and the flat is quiet in his dismal absence. His eyes are still wet and his chest is filled with a heavy sediment that aches with the memory of this morning.
Izzy turns onto his back and sighs.
What is he doing with his life?
He’s virtually friendless, and without Ed…. there’s no one to will his heart to. And worse, no one to talk to about his trainwreck of a life.
Izzy mopes about in the sweaty sheets tangled around his legs until he catches sight of the phone on his bedside table.
His morning plans of scrolling through blog posts and replies can still go ahead, can’t they?
There’s dozens of replies he hasn’t read yet, and even more posts filling his timeline. It gives him something to do instead of ruminating on where his life’s going or having to focus on the twinge in his lower back or the dull ache in his bad foot.
When Izzy’s eyes flick down to the little plus button at the bottom of the screen, he pauses. No one on this thing even knows who he is. What hurt could it do if he whined about his shitty life here?
He drafts a post without reading it back. Just spitting out how he feels and leaving it be, all he needs to do.
bazatenolol: i’m so tired. i work for literal weeks straight and i hate it. i have no time to do anything i enjoy, i cant even regress anymore. I just wish i could be small like i used to and not feel so yucky and stressed all the time. i hate living like this
The thought of posting anything related to his own mental health is horrifying, so Izzy presses publish without looking at the screen and exits the app, instead opting to scroll through some other inane social media where he doesn’t have to think about what he’ll have to do when Ed inevitably finds someone that’s more ‘enough’ for him than Izzy.
Another twenty or so minutes goes by until he gets a notification from the blog site.
Keelhauldryocampa: Hello friend! I just wanted to….
Izzy’s heart practically leaps into his throat. He clicks on it, willing the app to load faster as it flashes through the logo and developer.
A private message this time, not a reply. His heartbeat thrums in his ear as he opens the messages menu and clicks on Keelhauldryocampa’s username.
Izzy’s eyes bulge as he reads the message, far longer than he would’ve imagined. His cheeks flood with heat and he bites down hard on his lip to try and prevent the smile on his face from growing even bigger. Izzy drops his phone to his chest and stares up at the ceiling.
A friend.
Keelhauldryocampa: Hello friend! I just wanted to check in on you, I read your post and I’m so sorry you have to deal with that :{( I can understand that sort of burnout myself, though I’m sure our experiences are much different! I’m very sorry you’re finding it hard to regress, I can imagine that’s not easy to deal with, especially when you’re under a great deal of stress! I hope it’s not inappropriate of me to DM you, seeing as you haven’t posted anywhere than you’re alright with that, but I didn’t want you to feel as though you had to answer me where anyone might see it! I’m always here for a chat if you need! X