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Marius woke up with pain shooting up his mechanical arm– well, arm that should be mechanical but today it wasn't. Today was one of the days where it almost flesh.again and it hurt.
Each movement sent fire through his veins and acid up his nerves. And it made Marius sobs.
Usually, when his stupid, parasitical arm mutated to be slightly more flesh-like, or even when it was its typical mechanical self, the pain wasn't too bad. It was manageable with a few pain killers or distractions, but when it mutated to be full flesh he couldn't handle it. And today, the pain was so bad that it made him nosedive deep into a regressed headspace.
Typically Marius spent his regression days by himself and he didn't mind not having a caregiver with him like most other littles on the ship, but on his extremely bad pain days he needed someone to comfort him through the pain. That someone being Raphaella, his Rara.
So hopping out of bed, not bothering to change out of his tank top and shorts as any sort of movement would make more tears appear, he made his way to Rara's lab, trying to keep sobs quiet and his movement limited so as to not cause more pain, his tail tightly curled around his leg as pain shot through him at each step, ears pressed flatly against his head.
Getting to Rara's lab was the easy part, it was knocking on her door that would be the difficult part. His mechanical arm was his dominant hand in his pained and child headspace; he couldn't figure out how to use his other hand to knock on Rara's door so he just hit his head against the metal door as he sobbed. Thankfully, his head thump was loud enough for Rara to hear as the door opened shortly later.
“Hey, hey, my sweet boy.” Rara’s soft voice cut through Marius’ pain as he fell forward into her chest, another sob heaving its way out of his mouth. “Hey, what’s wrong, kit?” Rara asked as a gentle hand stroked itself through his hair, thumb circling the base of his right ear that laid as flat as anything against his hair.
“Ar-arm.” Marius cried out, pressing his head deeper into Rara’s chest.
“Oh, baby boy.” Rara pressed a brief kiss to his hair, “Lets get that fixed for you, buddy.” Marius let his weight go limp as he felt Rara snake her arms around his armpits and lifted him up, his tail immediately wrapped itself around Rara’s waist, “Gotta get some food into you later buddy, have you been eating properly?” He heard her ask.
“What if not enough?” Marius slurred his words as he spoke as pain poisoned his system.
“Oh kit, there’s always enough food here.” Rara said as she sat him down on one of the comforter beds in her lab, one with a mattress on it. “Can I hold you arm sweetheart so I can see what I’m dealing with?” Marius didn’t want to! He knew that if Rara touched it, it would hurt more, but he also knew that Rara knew how to fix his arm so it would stop hurting as much. So, with prememptive tears falling down his cheeks, Marius nodded.
Marius cried when Raphaella took hold of his arm, broke her heart, but she knew if she let go, she’ll just have to do it again, so attempting to comfort him, Raphaella whispered and cooed at him as Marius cried his poor little heart out. But eventually– even if she wasn’t a “doctor” like Marius was, managed to figure out what exactly she needed to help with the pain of her baby.
The arm appeared to have mutated to practically pure flesh, meaning that it had also mutated back all it’s nerves so feeling all those feelings return in full must have been quite a shock to Marius’ system so all it registered was pain. But thankfully, both her and him worked on creating a numbing cream for when his arm mutated to such a degree.
“I’m just going to get the numbing cream, alright, baby?” His Rara kissed his forehead as she let go of his arm, “You are doing so well for me, you are so very brave.” She said as she walked over to one of her cupboard and started to go through them, each hiccuping sob from Marius motivated her to go quicker. Eventually, Rara returned with a bottle of cream, a sling and a wrap of cloth. Trying her hardest to not be affected by the sobs, she rubbed the cream all up Marius’ arm.
“There we go, all done. Just go to wrap it up to make sure the cream settles in.” Rara said as she got the cloth and slowly wrapped it all the way from Marius’ fingers to his shoulder before putting a safety pin into it and placing it within a sling to make sure Marius’ didn’t move his arm. “Do you want a special pill to help with the pain also or not?” With tearful eyes, Marius nodded, so Rara helped him with the pill and water.
“Well done my sweet boy, oh I’m just so proud of you.” Rara peppered kisses all over his cheeks, making Marius giggle, his tail swishing at the affection, “You were so brave for me, I’m so proud of you for coming to me for help.” She used her sleeve to wipe away his tears as they settled down, good, that meant the numbing and painkillers were settling in.
A brief bout of silence filled Raphaella’s lab before she grinned, “Sweet boy,” Raphaella could Marius’s attention who was busy thinking how the fabric of the sling would feel between his teeth, “I have a super secret, and very cool experiment that I think you would be a great helper in.” She grinned.
Marius gasped, Rara had a super secret and very cool experiment for him! “Ooooo.” Marius awed, scooting closer to Rara, “What’s it?” He whispered so no one else could hear the secret experiment.
“It’s called ‘elephant toothpaste’.” Rara whispered back to him.
“Elephant toothpaste!” Marius loudly giggled, placing a hand over his mouth as he kicked his legs, his tail was swishing even more, “But we don’t have elephants!” He laughed.
“Oh didn’t you know, my little kit, it’s not actually toothpaste, and it’s not for elephants.” She smiled.
Marius gasped at the lie he was being revealed, “It’s not? Then why called that?” He asked, giggles still infecting each word.
“I don’t know.” Rara tapped her finger against her chin, “Maybe the scientists were just very silly.” She concluded.
“Does that mean you silly Rara.” Marius giggled from behind his hand, his giggles only multiplying at the offended look Rara gave him.
“How dare you call me silly!” Rara gasped, placing a hand to her chest as her wings fluttered behind her, “I am but the most respected scientist in the whoooolllleee wide universe!”
“No you’re not!” Marius continued to giggle louder as he spoke, his tail was practically a blur with excitement.
Rara placed her hands on her hips and raised her eyebrows at Marius who only continued to giggle louder, “Well, I’ll show you whose the more serious scientist when I make this elephant’s paste, but we gotta go to a different lab, so-” Rara placed her hands under Marius’ armpits again after the little moved his arms away from his body enough for her to do so, “-one, two, three. There we go.” She grinned as she picked Marius up, who immediately buried his head into Rara’s collar bone, humming in content.
Raphaella hummed alongside Marius as she walked to her lab that was designated for having littles in– either littles she was caring for or when she was little herself, it had all the child safety locks available and the least toxic chemicals whilst still having enough so that if a little wanted to do experiments they could. Including chemicals Raphaella would need to use in order to create elephant toothpaste.
“Alright, sweet boy, let’s first get on protective gear. That is super duper important, understand?” Rara tells Marius as she sets him down onto the floor, walking over to the colourful lab coats, Rara grabs Marius’ yellow one– a lab coat that she coloured especially for him! And of course his yellow rimmed goggles. Helping the little put on the coat, pinning the right side of the coat over his arm so they didn’t have to risk hurting Marius to get it into the coat before buttoning up it, and putting the yellow rimmed goggles over his eyes.
“Get yours too!” Marius pointed to Rara’s white coat and goggles.
Lightly hitting her forehead, Rara gasped, “Of course, how could I forget, how silly of me.” So she quickly turned around and gathered her own coat and goggles. “There we go, how do I look now, little kit?”
“Nice!” Marius gave Rara a thumbs up, giving her a toothy grin.
“Aww thank you, sweet boy.” Rara walked over to him and gave him a kiss on the forehead, “Now, let’s get going onto the experiment.” Marius could barely contain his excitement as he jumped foot from to foot as Rara opened up the cupboards and got down the things needed to create the elephants toothpaste, Marius was very excited!
“Now, do you want to go to the honors of pouring everything in?” Rara asked as she placed the four beakers onto the table in front of Marius alongside a very large tube, it was bigger than Marius.
“Can’t reach.” Marius pouted, earning a laugh from Rara.
“Oh- how very silly of me, let’s get you a stepstool then sweet boy.” Rara kissed his forehead again as she grabbed a stepstool and placed it next to Marius, helping him get onto it. Now he was pretty much eye level with the tube.
“Now, what beaker do you think we should put in first?” Rara asked as she gestured to the four beakers, there were two that looked like water, though one was much larger than the other, another that had weird green liquid and another looked like sand.
“Mmmmm, sand?” Marius asked, pointing towards the smaller beaker.
“Close, that’s the third step baby. First we put this in-” Rara picked up the bigger beaker of water, “It’s called hydrogen peroxide.” Rara let Marius smell it and he scrunched up his nose at the weird smell.
“That not water!” Marius giggled as Rara helped him pour the beaker of not water into the tube.
“That’s right, kit, it’s definitely not water, tastes very bad.” Rara laughed as she put the now empty beaker to the side, “Now we put in dish soap.” She handed the beaker with the green liquid to Marius who took another sniff.
“Better smell.” Marius commented as Rara helped him tip the dish soap into the tube, using a plastic spoon to get every last drop out. “Now sand?” Marius asked as Rara moved the beaker to the side.
“It’s not quite sand, baby. Have a smell, see if you can tell what it is.” Rara moved the small beaker to Marius' nose.
“Bread! It’s-um, the bread sand!” Marius beamed with pride at knowing what the ‘sand’ was.
Rara looked at Marius with so much pride as she pressed peppered kisses to his forehead, “Yes, it is indeed bread sand, or as boring people call it, yeast.”
“Boring name.” Marius groaned as he attempted to reach for the bread sand, but he was quickly stopped by Rara.
“Ah, not quite yet, sweet boy, we have to mix it with warm water so we can get the reaction. Do you want to help with that?” Marius of course nodded viciously at that.
So, Rara handed him the beaker of bread sand and got him to pour it into the warm water before giving him a spoon to mix it in. “Now, are you ready to create elephant toothpaste?” Rara grinned as Marius jumped in excitement– having now been put back onto the floor.
Marius watched with squealing excitement as Rara poured the bread sand water into the tube and for a brief moment nothing happened. Then suddenly white foam grew from the tube and overflowed onto the table and the floor. Marius’ excitement increased at this.
“Success!” Rara beamed at Marius, “Well done baby, you have created elephant toothpaste!” Rara peppered kisses all along Marius' face as he started to make high-pitched chirping and meowing, letting his instincts take over his vocal cords.
“Picture picture!” Marius demanded as he jumped close to the experiment that had stopped growing, already giving a squinting, toothy grin to Rara.
“Okay okay, give me a quick second baby.” Rara turned to grab her camera– something she had brought with her when she and Marius first became a part of the Mechanisms that was now only used when littles did experiments in this lab to remind them of the amazing job they did at being her helper.
“Say, ‘bread sand’.” Rara said, Marius quickly repeated it as Rara took his picture. As the camera clicked, the picture started to print with a whirling noise.
“On wall on wall!” Marius practically bounced towards the wall of pictures, most consisted of him and Rara by there were some of the other crew. Watching with glee as Rara stuck the picture onto one of the few blank spaces on the wall, writing the date and experiment onto the back of the picture.
“Look at you, kit. So happy, such a good job.” Rara gave him a side hug, but Marius quickly turned it into a proper hug.
“Thank yous for helping with arm, Rara.” Marius mumbled into her lab coat.
Raphaella couldn’t help but smile tearfully at that, she wrapped not only her arms but her wings around her baby boy, “Of course sweet boy. I love you beyond anything so I will always be here to help you.”
The two stayed in Raphaella’s Little Lab until Marius demanded sweets for lunch, and Raphaella just couldn’t say no to her baby boy.