I decided that I wanted to tell Fae about how I felt. After we watched The Notebook, he was more blushy around me, and seemed to want to cuddle with me more. I think he might have found something out about his feelings after the movie, and I decided to take my chances.

Well, I was going to. The day that I was planning on telling him, he woke up after a bad nightmare and couldn't calm down. I tried to help him calm down, and he seemed like he wanted to, but he was hyperventilating too hard and wouldn't stop crying. I think he got scared when he couldn't catch his breath, and that's why he kept crying.

I called Doctor Leiner and asked him to come over to help; he had told me to call him if anything ever happened, since he was a specialist doctor while Hannes was a general doctor and was less likely to be able to come at the drop of a hat. Leiner also understood Fae better, being an Elf himself. I held Fae gently and stroked his back while we waited for Leiner to come. Once he arrived, he gently took Fae from my arms to comfort him.Fae, surprisingly, let him hold him. He was still hyperventilating and sobbing, but Leiner held him on his lap, just shushing him and rubbing down a certain section of Fae's back. Fae shuddered a little as his breathing finally started to slow down and he started making a more huffing sound from his crying.

Leiner gave Fae back to me gently as he finally began to calm down. Fae started babbling at me as if he was trying to say something but his crying was getting in the way.

"Shh," I said, stroking his back again. "You can tell me what happened when you calm down more." Fae nodded, clutching onto my chest as he slowly calmed down.

He babbled something about a car and a knife once he had the breath to, though he started getting worked up again so I shushed him.

"It's okay, just calm down," I said. Fae nodded into me, whimpering and hiding his face in my chest as he took some deep breaths. I rubbed his back gently, using my other hand to hold his head gently to me. He soon calmed down so his crying was more of huffing and wheezing.

Leiner set his hand on the back of Fae's neck and pressed his thumb into the side of his neck. Fae suddenly went limp against me, still huffing but now he looked like he was asleep.

I knew that Leiner had pressed a pressure point to make Fae calm down and 'sleep'. "I want to talk to you about him," Leiner said. "I mean, I didn't have him sleep because of that, but I additionally need to talk to you."

"Okay," I said. I cradled Fae to my chest, holding him like a small child. He was mostly curled up in my lap, his body leaning into mine and wrapping my arm around his small shoulders to hold him up.

"As you know, Faervel is a fairly young Elf," Leiner began. "Well, he is a very young Elf. His hormones are still all over the place, but that is also because he has no mate."

I remembered a conversation like this with Marie and Barzethomirr before.

"He is considered an omega Elf, because of his small stature and general inability to be dominant," Leiner said. "Most male Elves are naturally dominant, or will at least try to be. Faervel doesn't seem to have any intention or I'd even say the capability to be dominant. He is perfectly fine just doing what someone else tells him to."

I nodded. "Yeah, he definitely doesn't want to take charge in any situation." And he doesn't look like he could be dominant in any situation.

"Right," Leiner said. "And we have also found out that Faervel has been in the sex trade since at least before he was fourteen. That was the first time he was sold out. Which means that he is even less likely to speak up about his emotions as well.

"So when his heats arrive, he is more than likely going to just try to ignore it. You can't let him do that; if he ignores his heat, it'll just get stronger and it'll cause him immense amounts of agony. Elves already don't eat or drink for three straight days during their heat cycle, if he piled immense pain on top of it he could seriously hurt himself."

I nodded, listening to what he said. "How do I help him then?"

"I am having a suppressant pill made for him," Leiner said. "You just have to give him that pill, and make sure he tells you if he feels like it's going to start so that he can take it before it happens. The only other way to get it to stop is to have sex with him for those three days, and that isn't a good idea either right now, regardless of your relationship together."

I felt my face get a little hot. "No, we aren't dating or anything," I said. I left out the fact that I would for sure date him though.

Leiner nodded, like 'ohh'. "Alright," he said. "Sorry I assumed, your relationship together seems very close."

"It's ok," I said. "Go on."

"Anyway," Leiner started again. "Yeah, I'll get those suppressants to you as soon as they're ready. I also wanted to talk about Fae's upbringing; we did some digging and found some things."

I nodded for him to go on, listening. I was more curious now; I knew basically nothing about his background.

"I told you that we found out that he has been in the slave trade since he was at least fourteen. We also found out some things about his family.

"His parents aren't in our systems anywhere, his DNA doesn't match with anyone as a parental unit. He did match with several siblings however, and from them we could find a few other relatives. He has four older brothers living in various places around Europe, and one living in New York. He has ethnic origins from Germany and Italy mostly, and some tropical islands near Bermuda. He is a Highland Elf, so that's why the tropical tan is nonexistent on him.

"You know already that he has dwarfism and malnutrition caused anorexia," Leiner said, to which I nodded. "His brain scans came back; he also has anxiety and most likely post-traumatic stress disorder, though thankfully he doesn't have any depressive or serious personality disorders."

I nodded in relief, then said, "wait, 'serious' personality disorders?"

Leiner nodded. "Yes; we suspect he may have something that could be considered a borderline personality disorder, but it is not serious at all."

"What is it?"

"There isn't a name for it, but a few specialists I work with suspect that he might be a Little; basically, he will mentally regress to a usually much younger age and will act that way. It depends on the person, though sometimes they can regress to the age of young toddlers, sometimes it's just a couple years back. We suspect this because normally these people have some sort of trauma from their childhood that basically forced them to grow up too soon.

"We assume that he had been in the sex trade for longer than he had first been sold, and even being in the trade we think would be enough to then cause him to regress."

I listened to him. "Oh," I said, thinking about it. "That makes a lot of sense. I'll be there for him if he does ever regress."

Leiner nodded and told me more about this; about the community of Littles and their Caregivers - appropriately named the CG/L community - and about what I might need to do for him when he regresses. Leiner also told me that his regressing could be simple as he just wants to take naps at a certain time, so it may be hard to even know when he is regressing, but if I watch his behavior enough I'll be able to differentiate.

After observing his behavior more, I realized that he might be regressing a lot more often than I thought. He usually was pretty shy and didn't talk a lot, even with me still. Almost every day though, he would also be really energetic and cuddly, and would talk a lot more, or at least make more noises. Like humming to himself. He also liked eating smaller foods when he was like that; he constantly wanted berries or candies. I think when he is energetic and stuff that that is when he is regressing; he just acted younger in general too.

I put off my 'plan' to tell him that I liked him; I wanted to focus on him for now, and not distract him or make him nervous with something like that. He did begin to act more cuddly and wanted to be with me outside of his regressing, though.

—

Hello! This took way too long to come out, sorry bout that.

Kinda stumped on ideas for the next chapter, aside from the obvious, so if anyone has anything they would like to happen, feel free to comment it or PM me the idea!

I'll try to get it out as soon as I can.
~ Snake Eyes