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Marius huffed in annoyance at Rara. She was making him wait ten whole minutes before they could play dress up.
Marius had been big about an hour ago, he even offered to help Rara with a super “time sensitive” experiment but because of the bad dream he had woken up from, his mind easily swayed from big to little. He had tried to convince Rara to end her experiment early but she said that it was a time-sensitive one and that they didn’t have the materials for her to make it again. She did tell Marius that he could go and play elsewhere until she’s finished but Marius didn’t want to leave his Rara so he stayed put on one of the beds in the lab.
But of course, the little kit easily got bored and hopped off the bed.
“How much loooooonnnger?” Marius whined as he watched Rara place a beaker filled with a water looking liquid to the side.
“It’s barely been a minute, kit.” Rara laughed, “So still ten minutes.” She said, Marius couldn’t help but flicker his tail at the annoyance in Rara’s voice. Maybe she was getting annoyed at her experiment.
Maybe, Rara would no longer be annoyed if Marius helped get rid of it! And if he got rid of it then they could play dress up together!
So, sneakily walking over to the table where all the super cool looking equipment and beakers sat Marius’ eyes were on one beaker– the one Rara had pushed to the side earlier. That one didn’t seem too important but maybe just a few taps would make Rara see that she didn’t need to focus on that silly experiment and instead needed to focus on Marius.
Marius sneakily stood at the side of the table, just out of sight of his Rara as she was focusing on putting some weird powder into one of the cooler looking beakers, and started slowly tapping the beaker closer to the edge.
But Rara didn’t look up.
Marius huffed, Rara should be focused on him! Not some silly liquid and silly powder, so Marius kept tapping the beaker closer and closer to the table’s edge before-
Smash
Marius looked guiltily at the floor before looking back at Rara. She had jumped at the shattering of the beaker which caused her to spill all the powder into the beaker. Within seconds, small sparks of light started to fly from the beaker but Rara rapidly put a weird blanket that was hanging under the table on top of the beaker, this ended up knocking over three other beakers and causing the big piece of equipment to fall over and onto the floor.
“Oh no.” Marius squeaked out when the equipment fell over.
His Rara inhaled deeply before looking over to Marius, anger in her eyes. Instinctively, Marius wrapped his tail around his legs, ears pinned against his head.
“Marius Von Raum.” His Rara’s voice wasn’t happy, she was very angry. She clenched her fists before closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, “Why did you do that?” She demanded.
Marius’s lip wobbled, scared hands gripping his tail, “I wanted to play.” He said in a small voice, looking over at the beaker, the liquid was seeping through the floor at a slow rate.
“I told you that you can either leave my lab and go play by yourself or with someone else or wait here for ten minutes. I trusted your decision and believed you would be good.” Marius couldn’t stop the tears that sprung to his eyes at the disappointment in Rara’s voice. “Now, I need to clean up the mess you made because it is too dangerous for you to clean. But that doesn’t mean you’re out of a discipline.” Tears had started to fall from Marius’ eyes now. “I’m going to put you in time out for however long it takes me to clean up the worst of this mess. You will not move off the chair or turn around in it, or ask how long you have left otherwise I’ll add time to it. Understand?” His Rara said sternly.
With an embarrassed flush to his cheeks, Marius nodded.
Rara then put a gentle hand on his shoulder and led him carefully away from the broken glass, double checking he didn’t cut himself before leading him to the opposite side of the lab. There, she grabbed a cushioned “waiting room” chair and turned it towards the corner.
“Do you want a teddy or not?” Rara gently asked.
“Teddy.” Marius sniffled. Rara disappeared for a few short moments before returning with his teddy that he’s called Zeze– he didn’t know why he did, it just felt right to call the teddy such a thing.
“Now, remember what I said, you are not to move from this chair or ask how long you have left. I will come to collect you either when I finish cleaning or when I believe you’ve had enough time to think about your actions. Okay, sweet boy?” At Marius’ nod, Rara kissed his forehead before walking back over to her failed experiment.
Marius hated the time out chair so much, it felt so wrong and bad and made him think about what he did “wrong” and to learn his lesson, and he hated doing that!
Marius didn’t do anything wrong, he just wanted to play.
But…his Rara did give him that choice of playing without her until she’d finished her important experiment. Tim was little today so he could have probably played with him but he really wanted to play with his Rara.
He could have been playing with Tim but instead he decided to ruin something of Rara’s, making him be put in timeout.
Marius buried his head into Zeze’s fur, he didn’t want to do things wrong or be naughty, he hated making others upset and he had made Rara very upset and angry. Rara never got angry!
Muffling a sob into Zeze’s fur, Marius wanted nothing more than to get off the chair and apologize to Rara for making her upset but he didn’t want Rara to make his timeout even longer so he stayed put, pulling his legs up to his chest and wrapping his tail around them.
Marius didn’t know how long he spent in the timeout chair, was it hours or days? Realistically he knew it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes but it felt like forever. But eventually he heard Rara’s footsteps from behind him.
“Your timeout is over, my sweet boy.” Rara barely got to finish her sentence before Marius practically jumped out of the chair and hugged his Rara tightly. “Do you understand what you did wrong, kit?” Rara asked as she hugged him, pressing kisses on his head between his ears.
“I ruined your thing.” Marius mumbled into her chest.
“You’re right. You knocked over and smashed an important part of my experiment. So you understand why I had to put you into timeout?” Marius nodded with a sniffle, “I also had to put you into timeout because I didn’t want you to get hurt by the very mean liquid-” That earned a laugh from Marius, “And also because I was feeling very big emotions like anger so I had to calm myself down also before I accidently yelled at you.”
“You not mad now?” Marius asked quietly as he pulled away from Rara to look up at her.
Rara shook her head, gently carding a hand through Marius’ hair, scratching her nails on that spot she knows he relaxes into. “No baby, I’m not mad anymore. Yes, I was mad before, but now I’m not. That experiment can easily be redone, but yelling and hurting your feelings isn’t something that can be fixed easily.” Rara pressed another kiss onto Marius’ forehead. Marius hummed before pulling Rara back into a hug.
“Do you want to play now, little kit?” Rara asked after a few moments. Marius beamed at the question.
Marius grabbed Rara’s hand and led her out of the lab, any previous tears and the timeout chair long forgotten about in favour of playing dress up with his Rara!