Chapter Text
You wake up slowly, still clinging to the last of your sleep. It was a good sleep, better than you’ve had in months- light, warm, and comforting. Even as you wake, slowly blinking away the remainders of dreams you’ve already forgotten, you feel yourself still wrapped in that cosy cocoon of safety.
Consciousness continues to ebb slowly towards you, and it carries with it the realisation that the cocoon is not just in your imagination. You are practically ingulfed in the thickest blanket you’ve ever seen (or felt) in your entire life. It is a soft, padded quilt, decorated with fabric stars, suns, and moons upon patches of multi-coloured sky. You want to keep it wrapped around you forever; cherish the welcoming warmth it gives for as long as possible.
Although the quilt over your head blocks out your view of the world around you, you can hear distant sounds of music. It is a joyful jingle, repetitive and fun. It reminds you of a children’s playground, or-
A daycare. The daycare. And- although your room still has the lights down low- the music playing means it must be open by now.
You are in the daycare, unable to leave without being spotted by a sea of curious children, with no excuse or reasoning hidden up your sleeve to explain why you’re here or how you even got here in the first place.
Crap.
How are you going to get out of this?
As if sent to answer your prayers, a tall animatronic bounces through the doorway opposite you. It is adorned with billowing fabrics in shimmering shades of blue, white, and silver, mimicking a sort of jester’s costume- complete with bells attached to the puffy wrists. The figure turns towards you as it approaches, revealing a head shaped like a crescent moon: a circle with one half curved and light, the other half dark like the night sky. It smiles the same smile Sun beamed down on you last night, and yet reflected in a more muted way. You can already tell that this animatronic was made to be a calmer alternative to the bubbly nature of Sundrop.
“…You’re not Sun,” you manage, pushing yourself up slightly to sit on the slightly raised mattress you have found yourself lying upon. It’s such a stupid observation, you almost laugh at yourself. But you’re too disorientated to do much at this point except sit and wait for an answer.
The mystery animatronic chuckles gently. “No, I’m most definitely not Sun. I’m Moondrop, my little star. Sundrop told me to look after you after he found you wandering around last night. He’s never been too great at the ‘bedtime stuff’. Gets everyone all riled up somehow.”
As he speaks, he walks around the room, gathering certain piles of miscellaneous items in his arms and tidying them away to their respective places almost subconsciously. It smiles softly to itself every time something is returned to its rightful place in the room and makes everything just a little neater than before.
“Normally, Sundrop would do all the tidying around here too. He’s a bit of a control freak when it comes to tidy-up time. But he left me in charge of you, so I will be relishing every opportunity to do things my way, without him breathing over my shoulder the whole time…”
Just by his voice, you can tell why he would be so good at the calmer aspects of the daycare. It is so velvety and smooth, like a warm cup of milk and a blanket after a cold day. And when he talks, he doesn’t try to simplify his words to make sure all the kids understand, making it feel as though you’ve been invited into a special showing into Moon’s own, private world.
“…I’m not sure why he was even out at that time to begin with- maybe it’s to do with daylight savings. Messing with our shared internal clock, and all that. I’m sure he’ll be back soon, just as all the other little ones start arriving-”
You start. “So, there aren’t any other kids here yet?”
“Nope. Me and Sun thought we’d have a later start, give you some time to compose yourself. It’s just you here, kiddo.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not… little anymore,” you sigh, swinging your legs off the bed and standing up, “But thanks. That’s really kind of you.”
As you look down, you realise you have a paci hanging from a clip attached to your work shirt. It has a simple design: a clear base, speckled with blue glitter. It sparkles in the dim light as you move it from side to side.
Moondrop notices you looking, and steps towards you. “You can keep it, if you like. We keep a lot of spares here.”
“Thanks again.”
“No problem.” It hesitates, clearly wanting to say more.
You’re too tired to keep talking, so you begin to pace around the room, gathering belongings as you do so. You find your ID card resting gently on the bedside table and slip it into your front shirt pocket. It would not be a good idea to lose that on the day after your first shift. You might’ve royally screwed up on every other aspect of your job, but you are not going to lose the one thing you have left. As you pick it up, you notice that someone has placed a yellow sticky note over your ID photo. It reads:
‘Look after yourself, Sunshine!’
And, underneath a little doodle of a smiling sun:
‘P.S.: Tell Moondrop to let me put the books away- he always does it wrong.’
As if sensing his name being read and written in sparkling orange gel pen, Moondrop appears directly behind you. It extends its legs- just like Sun did with his arms last night- to peer over your shoulder and read the note himself. He chuckles slightly when he reaches the end.
“What did I say? The guy’s a control freak. Lucky he’s such a ray of sunshine,” it laughs, looking at you to see if you got his little pun.
You’re more distracted by a sudden influx of memories from last night, cloudy and fleeting but just solid enough for you to grasp them and take a look.
There’s you, waking up halfway through the night, alone and scared. Then you’re safe again, half-asleep and sitting in Moondrop’s lap as he makes his way through a pile of picture books. His melodic voice acts as a soothing lullaby and you are lulled back to sleep.
“You read books for me?” You ask, unable to block the rising lump in your throat. It’s surprising to you that such a little thing can suddenly make you so emotional, but it’s been so long since you’ve had anyone in your life to share your regression with and you didn’t realise until now just how much you’ve wanted another person to care for you like this. Moon notices your vulnerability and places a gentle hand on your shoulder.
“Hey,” he says, spinning his body around to face you, “Me and Sun really enjoyed looking after you last night. Really, we did. It was nice to look after just one person rather than a hundred children. Plus, we noticed how much you needed someone in that moment. If, well- if you need anything like that again, we’d be happy to care for you.”
Smiling, you pull Moon into a tight hug.
“I think I might take you up on that offer,” you say, voice muffled slightly by the mountains of fabric that make up its costume, “I really needed that last night. Thank you. I mean it.”
“Anytime.”
With that, Moondrop takes your hand and leads you out of the daycare. As you leave, he waves you goodbye with a beaming smile stretching across his face until he disappears from view, and you are instead met with the large front doors of the Pizzaplex. The air outside is cold, making your breath appear as billows of steam in front of you as you breathe out, slowly. You feel more relaxed than you have in months. And both Sun and Moon seemed genuinely excited to look after you again sometime.
Putting your hand in your pocket, you find yourself clutching onto the paci Moondrop gave you last night. It fills you with a warm, fuzzy feeling, and you smile to yourself. You’ve never had a paci before, always chickened out before ever buying yourself any agere gear besides a couple plushies. There was this voice in your head that told you that you didn’t deserve the gear as much as somebody else did. That you didn’t deserve to regress, even when your whole body begged you to take a break.
But with Sun and Moon, it felt natural. You felt so safe, so loved and so cared for that everything else seemed to melt away. You now had a space where you could truly be yourself; you now had a space where you belonged and knew you would never be judged for any aspect of yourself. And this paci was just one example of that.
Maybe this job was turning out to be better than you thought.