#mer!cullen

[kemvee]

A redraw from my sketch last year. I may be a little bit in love with the idea of a Merman Cullen ♥ 🧜‍♂️

[vhyral]

*slams hands on table* Have you seen MerCullen by the amazing @jodywegner???? If not, go check him out right now?

I kind of fell in love with this AU right away and today! I read we can draw fanart of him! *flails* So here’s young MerCullen, guarding something. (if me posting this ain’t ok, just let me know and I’ll take it down right away! I just love the idea too much not to attempt drawing him!)

[paladina]

So merpeople don’t communicate with each other the same way they do with humans, mostly because words get lost and muddled too much underwater. It’s mostly these clicks and sort of grating sounds that sound really harsh above water. But Culle forgets this sometimes and the first time it happened when he tried talking to Dorian, Dorian honest to goodness thought that something was stuck in Cullen’s windpipe and that he was going to choke.

[paladina]

for real, the process of getting Cullen back to open seas is probably a process made much more long and difficult than it needed to be simply because of the fact that Cullen is very heavy, and his tail is longer than a human’s legs would be, and there aren’t a whole lot of options for this aside from having two or three people working together to carry something that is definitely not a fish man, thank you, down to the shore. 

[paladina]

So i had an idea based of another idea i saw in a mer au, which was basically that yes they're chubby, because they have to say warm in the ocean, but they also have a lot of muscle because they swim near constantly. And assuming shapeshifting was possible (which i'm still debating), the muscles in their tail have to go somewhere, shit doesn't just disappear, just gets rearranged. So basically they have great legs. And so cue Cassandra, and woe betide anyone that pisses her off enough because it might take a bit for her to get used to the shift but once she has she can kick someone like a while week into the future.

[paladina]

switch gears for a second with me to think about the mer au, because I’m a huge sucker for that trope where someone’s mer friend teaches them how to swim. And Dorian sees no sense in it because he hates water anyway and how is someone with a tail going to teach someone with legs how to swim and -

and yet Cullen manages to get him in the water anyway by way of convincing him that if anything were to happen, especially when there may not be someone else to help, Dorian would be able to avoid drowning if he knew how to swim. Dorian insists that it isn’t the look of despair on Cullen’s face at the idea of anyone drowning that got him to agree.

[paladina]

Their first conversation after concluding that neither of them were a threat to the other goes something along the lines of this: "I've met with humans before, among other land dwellers," Cullen says. "Some were kind, some weren't." After a moment of careful consideration, he adds, "You seem to be a decent sort." Dorian responds entirely out of reflex: "On top of being the dashing charming sort? Unless, don't tell me, you've met a human more dashing than I." "Er, no," Cullen replies, quite honestly, too. "I don't think I have." And then Cullen proceeds to take a very keen interest in his own scales, because he walked right into that one - or swam into it, as it were. Dorian, sitting on a rock about fifteen feet from the water, takes pride in being able to hold up his usual confidence in the face of the first merman he ever met.

[paladina]

*chin hands* I would LOVE to hear more about this mer!Cullen AU. How did they meet?

It was honestly chance, the kind of chance that make people go “the chances are astronomical”, because Dorian hates the ocean and Cullen rarely goes close to land unless he needs to so ??? one in a million chance. 

But it was definitely in the cove, definitely. Dorian found it first probably because Felix said he needed some ‘fresh air’ one day, and after that he felt no further need to explore the coast line. The place was quiet and who would think to look for Dorian close to water? No one. So if he wanted alone time, there it was.

Except one day during low tide what does he find? Some fish man swimming in circles because the water’s too low for him to swim over the sandbar at the far end without having to drag himself. And Cullen has more dignity than that. 

He also has enough dignity to admit that he fell asleep in the cove because the group he was a part of, his shoal I guess, gets rowdy pretty often and look, sometimes a merman has to go closer to land than normal to get some peace and quiet. So now here they both are in the cove expecting to find some peace and ending up in a staring contest instead, because a) Dorian’s heard rumours of merpeople in the area but never seen one and Maker’s breath the pictures in the library don’t do them justice, and b) Cullen’s had contact with humans before but the thing is sometimes humans are alright and sometimes they are evil on two feet.

But eventually they both know that they’re both just here for the quiet. Dorian isnt going to drown and Cullen isn’t going to get chased by harpoons. Shake on it. (that involves a lot of awkward reaching because Dorian doesn’t want to come near the water and Cullen doesn’t want to get out of it.)

When the tide rises, Cullen leaves, and they’re both convinced that that’s the end of it, and I would be lying if I said neither of them were a little intrigued by the other.