Mer! Kev being rescued by some well-intentioned marine biologists.
Unfortunately, he hasn't had the best reasons to trust humans lately...
The salt water is a relief, even as it stings his bruised and blistered skin.
He does not like those bottles and things, but none of it looks sharp... this human better not try anything funny, one flick of the tail is all he needs to crush her puny body.
It's gonna take a while to establish trust... but it's a start!
Good morning! How are you? I imagine caring for a hissy little mer with a ton of trauma can be quite challenging sometimes, especially when people are so set on trying to filet him XD
Anyways, you mentioned Kev is touch starved? How about someone giving him what he wants? I'm pretty sure he wouldn't let anyone close enough for that if he was completely healthy, so how about him being kidnapped and drugged and thrown into some basement (the drugs are to lower his guard) There's already another whumpee there, someone who went through the same things and therefore takes care of Kev all night. They wipe him down with a wet cloth so he doesn't dry out, hold his hand when Kev reaches out blindly for something to hold onto, maybe even hug him, carefully, making sure Kev feels safe and held instead of caged in.
I'm sure as soon as the drugs are out of his system Kev's guard is back up but maybe he still feels cared for or maybe even trusts the other now, considering they could have hurt him when he was vulnerable and did the opposite instead.
Anon... that is so sweet... he deserves a bit of comfort after all this 🥺
Poor thing has barely gotten any kindness in his life. What do you think, how long would it take for MerKev to start trusting someone and what would it take? Maybe someone leaves out fish for him regularly after witnessing him eating scraps. They aren't stupid enough to try and touch him at first (they want to keep their limbs intact thank you XD) but maybe, just maybe, MerKev would let them touch him after a while? In case he needs help with something (a splinter in his tailfin maybe that he can't pull out without help)
Hmmm... it would take a while, for sure, but it is possible. Food is definitely the right way to do it, if you're discreet enough he doesn't suspect you're trying to poison him at first.
The medical help is more sensitive, but can be step two. He can always bash the person to death if they try anything funny, after all, so he'd let them try.
Maybe it's really hot and dry outside, and one day he accepts the friendly human's offer to dip in their pool when he's all dehydrated. Days pass, trust slowly building, until they get to a point when he allows cuddles!
Long time no see! Guess who's not dead? :D Enjoy the under-edited fruit of my sweat and tears!
Pls tumblr gods be kind this took so long OTL
<< Prev |
Masterpost (with drawings!)
CW: Hospitals (not whump related), stitching, hypervigilance, referenced Shitty Living Weapon Life, implied past child whump
---
For the next couple days, Leki stuck to Kev's side like gauze to a fresh wound. No one else seemed willing to entertain the boy, in the finely tuned machine the clinic was, and the intrigue of his fake amnesia was enough to keep his curiosity in a chokehold. Kev subtly added fuel to the fire, balancing between going along with his whims to gain his favor, and staying closed off to keep him guessing. It proved surprisingly easy - the young Kin was an open book, one constantly broadcasting its contents without even being asked.
It was day four, when Leki barged into his room a full hour before breakfast, well under curfew. The clinic was still bathed in the low, bluish night lights.
"Are you awake?" the boy whispered, his voice tinted in the telltale quiver of excitement for a minor disobedience.
Lying on his side towards the entrance, Kev opened his eyes. He'd been awake the moment the door slid open, silent but not silent enough for his finely tuned senses. Leki's hardly unnoticeable tiptoeing didn't help his attempts at being sneaky.
He looked very peppy, for the hour. Despite his natural high energy state, the boy usually took a while to kick into gear in the mornings, trudging through breakfast with barely any chatter. Not today.
"Come with me to exercise on the roof," he demanded in a hurried whisper.
"Why so early?"
"Keep your voice down!" Leki glanced at the door. "Uncle has Thursdays off, no one will notice we're missing."
Kev sat up, catching his drift. "You want to train."
Leki flashed a mischievous grin. "Only a little bit. I need a sparring partner." Kev didn't move a muscle nor said a word. As the silence stretched, the boy got more antsy. "I will be careful, I promise! Come on…"
Kev slipped out of bed and made for the door, earning an excited, hushed yesss! as the boy scrambled behind in a very poor attempt at stealth.
With nightshift approaching its end, the clinic was shrouded in drowsy stillness. The softer blue lights tinted the greyish walls and floors in a cold hue. Since the day cleaning crew had not arrived yet, the chemical scent of antiseptic, usually harsh and pungent, subdued to a softer, almost sweet smell. Here, well away from the critical care block, silence enveloped the corridors, as if the building itself had fallen in a state of suspended animation.
Despite the questionable sneaking abilities of his companion, avoiding the few tired nurses dragging around proved easy as expected. They were soon on the rooftop, bathed by the first feeble lights of a lazy dawn. More than enough to see each other, on the empty plane of their improvised battleground.
Leki hastily started on his stretching routine, rushing through the motions. Kev followed along, making a point to hold each position for the proper amount of time, even as the boy tried to hurry him. A fight, any kind of fight, started before the first move was made.
The boy's motive was easy to figure out. He was doing this to stay sharp, sure, but what he really wanted was to show off, get that easy praise he'd been thriving on his whole young life. His ability had grown expected by now, from peers and superiors alike. Everyone knew who he was, what standards he was held to. Not Kev. To him, allegedly knowing nothing of Vekta, of standards, Leki was just a young boy. The prospective to impress, genuinely impress someone with barely any expectation, it excited him. He could not wait to drag out that reaction, bask in it.
Kev had all the intention to turn the tables on him. He may be a mystery right now, but nothing that would interest anyone except an overzealous doctor. The origins of some nameless boy with a bump on his head were ultimately inconsequential. A nameless boy who could show up a young elite, however, now that was a starting point.
Leki impatiently bounced on his feet while Kev finished stretching. Bounced faster as he lingered an extra 10 seconds for good measure, let that anticipation build. Didn't seem to notice he'd already seized control of the pace.
The moment Kev got up, Leki dropped into a loose fighting stance. Not quite by the book, still easily recognizable: F5, the last one introduced in Vekta’s training modules, adding a degree of dynamism over the basic four. The boy had a solid grasp on it; light on his feet, stable and well balanced. He deviated from the standard form just enough to imply he’d mastered it, while still strongly anchored to its basics. It coupled well with his confident demeanor.
Kev did nothing. He rarely started fights with stances: it would broadcast his preparation, take away that extra sliver of unpredictability he liked to leverage. Plus, he wasn’t supposed to remember he knew stances. So, he waited for Leki to lunge.
Too charged up to think of taking time studying his opponent, Leki dashed into action. To his credit, he gave very little indication of his intentions. Quick and fluid, he sprang forward in a clean strike, movements polished with thousands of hours of practice. Barely any tell. But a tell nonetheless, as his back leg flexed minutely to prepare the motion, the offending arm shifting into the best position for a powerful hit to the gut. It came fast. Not fast enough. Kev easily evaded, narrowly sidestepping his fist like the very air pushed aside by its motion.
A glimmer of surprises flashed into the boy’s eyes as the attack failed to connect. He was certain he’d hit, and overextended past his stance when nothing stopped the momentum. Off balance, his side fully exposed to Kev’s position. It only lasted a moment, as he rapidly swirled around and regained his footing.
Dead, Kev reckoned by instinct. If this had been a real fight, that opening would have been its end.
Instead, the boy chuckled excitedly. “You’re fast!” The challenge further energized him; he didn’t realize he should not be alive. Despite all his technical ability, Kev instantly knew: not once in his life had he fought. He’d only ever sparred.
And sparred he did. Sparred well, if a touch too eagerly, with good timing, with smartly chosen actions, advanced moves here and there, flawlessly executed combos. His body flowed naturally with the rhythm, showing a raw talent that rivaled the skill Kev had to build from scratch, attacks exploding with unexpected power. He was still predictable. A young warrior confident in his excellence, overestimating his ability to make learned moves truly his own, to vary sets past what everyone else on that level would. A level Kev had left behind years prior.
He considered if he should go easy on the boy, let him get a couple minor hits in. No, there was no real benefit to doing this halfway. He needed him to feel how outmatched he was, to plant that seed for the rest of the family.
For a full minute, to Leki's increasing amazement, Kev toyed with him. Dodging, evading, barely touching to deviate. Never moving more than one step from his starting point, never letting him challenge his control of the pace, disrupt his positioning, force him into a proper parry. Effortless.
He didn't fight back.
A reaction shows your hand. Don't give them anything they can't drag out of you. Anything they can use. He'd learned it well, with his every interaction with Leska. Leska never taught, but his actions, his very presence did. Even now, alone on a rooftop with a cocky twelve year old, engaged in a playfight nobody else would see, he didn't cede an inch.
Leki paused, starting to get winded after being on the offensive the whole time. “Ancients!” he exclaimed, cheeks reddened from both effort and a bruised ego, eyes wide with a mix of admiration and indignation. “You didn’t tell me you could fight.”
Kev tilted his head to the side, taking a very casual, perfectly calm breath. “I didn’t know,” he lied.
"You clearly do," Leki protested, "And you're not even tired! What in death's name!"
"It just… happened?" Kev put on his best confused expression.
Hastily wiping his brow, Leki harrumphed. “Let’s go again! I won’t go easy this time-“
“Better not.”
“Come on-“
“Your wound reopened.”
Leki’s eyes snapped to the small specks of blood starting to bloom through his hospital top. “Kval!,” he cursed, all his bravado deflating into the undignified whine of a man confronted with doom. “I thought it was just a bit of inside pain! Uncle is gonna tie me to the bed if he finds out…”
And so the fight was over.
—-
All the way back, Leki tiptoed on bare feet, breath held inbetween trembling puffs, peeking out corners to check if the route was clear like a terrified lizard. An elite fighter he might be, but Kev hoped for him he had no intention to enter covert ops. Few things were as conspicuous as a terrible attempt to be inconspicuous.
Kev glided by his side, soundless, sure. He was well accustomed to sneaking through hospitals.
They crossed paths with a single nurse. Kev heard her footsteps before turning into the corridor, and grasped Leki just as he was about to lean his head out. The boy froze up - Kev could feel his heartbeat hammering through the shoulder he'd grabbed - as the sleepy looking woman walked straight past the intersection, eyes staring into the void, and took the stairs at the end of the hall.
"Ancients…" Leki repeated in a breathless whisper. Kev had to nudge him to kick his body back into motion. He stayed rigid until they reached room 151 and he could close the soundproof door behind his back. A deep exhale, and he scrambled to the bed.
"Now what?," he started inspecting the bloodied bandages, "Maybe I can restitch it myself…" A groan, "I wasn't very good when we practiced first aid… and-" he frantically looked around- "I don't think there's a kit in here…"
Kev took a moment to weight pros and cons. The boy would appreciate the help. He'd also make blackmail material. He might however be weakening his cover. Did it matter that much? After hinting he could fight, why not this. Leki just confirmed himself, it was a skill expected of warriors.
"I can try," he said.
"You remember how?" Leki raised his gaze from the half undone mess of bandages, hopeful.
"Don't know. Doesn't seem difficult."
The boy nervously bounced his crossed legs. "Maybe there's bandages, but we don't have suture thread, I don't think."
"I'll look for it."
"That's risky…" despite the apprehension, there was a thrill in the boy's voice, in the way he tapped hands on knees. "Ah, to death's arms! Better to maybe get caught, than caught for sure."
Kev quirked a corner of his mouth up, mimicking his half smirk. Slipped out the room. He could feel Leki peeking through the slightest crack of the door, anxiously watching. He didn't turn.
As he walked away with steady, silent steps, a switch flipped in his brain. Senses heightened, pulse leveled into a calm, quietly charged thrum in his veins. He was on a mission. Always had been, but this, this kind he'd been trained for since he was a toddler.
From the few faint memories he could retrieve, back when he barely had the brain to retain anything, his very first tasks were mostly thefts. A lot of which he botched - remembering never failed to make him cringe at his own clumsiness. How incompetent can you be, to get yourself almost caught when you're small enough to fit into a nightstand? - Regardless, after years upon years of practice, stealth came easy as walking on uninjured legs.
This wasn't to say he could take it lightly. One thing experience drilled into him was to never take stealth for granted. It was all about awareness; let your guard slip, and all your practiced motions would make you as effective as a master archer in the middle of melee.
He lurked through empty corridors, a familiar nervous energy prickling under his skin. He welcomed its rousing charge, letting it wash away the dull looseness that infected his muscles during the prolonged bedrest. His mind felt sharper, on task. Finally out of the minefield of human relations, back on well-know territory.
In a Regellese hospital, this would be a piece of cake. The clinic seemed to be much more strict in guarding its supply closets and surgery areas. The ER was probably his best bet: can't keep materials behind locks and authorization forms with a steady influx of people at risk of bleeding out.
He followed the signage, lines embedded in the floors and lightly embossed plates lining walls at intersections, shimmering with reflected light. Attuned to the lightest sounds echoing through eerily quiet corridors, he ducked into hallways or stairways whenever some scraggly doctor came his way. Most were dressed in the grey scrubs of apprentices, and had the look of counting minutes before they could go home to sleep. Not even Vekta's best could change that, apparently.
ER was on the ground floor, partitioned from the rest of the clinic by a single set of wide communicating doors, angling with the corridor leading to intensive care. The two pockets of life in the dozing building, bustling with fast paced figures and distant shouts. From his vantage point at the foot of the staircase, he spied the gaggle of frenzied grey scrubs in the ER. He spotted a med cart, close to the doors and mostly unobstructed. On it, he scanned through bottles and boxes, quickly identifying what he needed. Target acquired.
While he briskly walked towards it - purposeful, like he belonged - a flash of red hair caught his eyes in the crowd. Not for the color, as all Vektians sported either black or red hair, but for the updo: a spiky bush tied in a ponytail at the very top of the head. He'd seen that before, in the intel files. It disappeared a moment later, swallowed by the swaying mass of bodies, just as he passed through the doors.
The dreamlike atmosphere shattered as he entered the section. Like a bubble bursting, sounds exploded in all their crude, jumbled urgency - hurried voices competing to be heard, firm orders, whining and complaining, harsh reprimanding, carts skirting and tools clattering. The pungent, tangy smell of blood and sick saturated the air, sweet and sour, cloying. Greys swirled in a vortex of organized chaos, pushing and pulling dazed patients up strainers, carting the critical out to the ICU, exchanging info, advice, materials and IV bracelets. No one had attention to spare for him.
He slipped and sidestepped through the chaotic human stream, grabbed his quarry and slunk his way back, unseen.
—-
"You're back already?" Leki welcomed him, impressed, "That was fast. Quick, quick-" he lay down on his back, gesturing to come close, "it's gonna be lights on soon."
Kev approached. Those few minutes he'd spent to procure the goods had proved more than enough for the boy to make an absolute mess of his medication. In a way, its own kind of impressive.
He whipped out antiseptic solution, gauze and sterilized thread, and got to work.
To his credit, Leki barely hissed through the process. To his discredit, he grimaced, scowled and winced the whole time, face pinching in all kind of ways as he fought through the pain. Leska would have wasted him for the poor performance.
The bandage was soon neatly back in its place, pristine again.
"This looks great," Leki beamed, all peppy now that his misdemeanor had been covered up. As much as it could be - it would still take a very distracted nurse to not suspect anything. Or an incompetent one.
"You should have Erein redo that, later" Kev suggested.
"Ah, good idea. I can pretend it's to help her practice, too. She's so gullible."
Said the dagger to the knife. Refraining from giving him a look, Kev placed the remaining gauze, thread and disinfectant on the med tray at the side.
"Wait, we need to hide those!"
Kev shook his head. "This looks like a nurse forgot. Finding them hidden would be weirder."
"That's smart. You're good at this sneaky stuff," Leki praised enthusiastically, "Even before, you were so sleek. Like a prowling wildcat. Or a panther."
As he rambled on, Kev disposed of the waste through the toilet. Just then, daytime lights kicked in.
—-
Breakfast came soon after, redoubling Kev's extreme prejudice against smart devices, as he had to follow the cart all the way back to his own room before that brainless hunk of metal deigned to let him grab the assigned meal. He ate its contents on the way back - hard boiled eggs, firm squares of graincake, savory sticks of dried fish skin, sour slices of some green citrus - and left the empty box in Leki's room out of spite, stacked on top of the boy's own. Let the glorified tray on wheels figure that out.
"Did you grab your toothbrush?" Leki asked.
For the first time today, Kev missed a beat. His what? "…No," he replied, studying his reaction.
"Ah, well." The boy made way for the bathroom. From the shelf under the mirror, he picked one of those two weird devices Kev had never seen before, the thin one.
"Sometimes I'm late and I skip it in the morning," he shared in a conspiratorial tone. He squeezed some white paste on it - soap? polish? - and the circular brush at the top sprang to life, spinning with a soft buzz. "A lot of times, actually. Nothing ever happened. It's just all pasty in my mouth for a while. But don't tell uncle!"
Then, he shoved the thing in his mouth.
Luckily, Kev had a finely tuned control of his expression. He watched, feigning a complete lack of befuddlement, as the kid dragged the electric brush all over the insides of his mouth. His teeth, most likely. Tooth-brush. Right.
Was this one of those weird beauty things people did, like tinting their hair and coloring around their eyes?
Whatever the purpose was, he'd gathered enough reactions to patch together that it was considered normal, expected. He'd better learn to do it.
"Say," Leki spoke, after spitting out a mouthful of foam, "Do you-"
"Leki!" The room's door sprung open on a breathless Erein, face red and eyes wild.
"What!" The boy startled at the screech and peeked out the bathroom, toothbrush still in hand, "I did nothing!"
"I just clocked in," Erein heaved, stumbling over her high-pitched, trembling words, "Rhori is hurt!"
Since it's halloween season again, what if: Vampire Kev?
He's kept caged or leashed by a team of monster hunters who use him to track down and hunt other monsters and torture him with silver weapons and sunlight-mimicking torches to ensure his subservience
SORRY FOR THE LATE ANSWER ANON
this is such a killer idea I needed to draw something! Have some gratuitous, delicious vampire!Kev bullying ✨
Is this Daffodil!Kev, I wonder? Might be, might be...
Why stop at sleeveless? Why not show us his whole upper body? Or - hear me out - there are hints of clothing on his body but they are ripped and bloody, most of it flayed away from a brutal knife attack? :3
Great, now he needs new clothes 😑
(my headcanon is, he fought a bear. the bear lost.)
