Still Getting the Hang of This

Rating: PG
Category: AU
Pairing(s): Zack/Sephiroth
Warnings: Hamsters
Summary: Sephiroth does his best to comfort a child, and the neighbours may never forgive him
Notes:

Sephiroth had just enough of his marbles to know… he needed more marbles. This wasn’t a recent revelation, either. He’d known he was missing a few since he was a teenager, and he started comparing himself to other teens he ran into, and came to a few conclusions. Namely that if the average teenager did certain things, which he found, bizarre, pointless, and downright ludicrous, then he was not an average teenager. Especially since the average teenager seemed to find him disturbing, strange, and frightening. So Sephiroth spent years investigating his own personality and personality disorders, eventually coming to the conclusion that… well… he didn’t seem to have schizophrenia, or asperger’s, or anything else like that. He just didn’t have all his marbles. And his prolonged search hadn’t turned up any. So when problems cropped up that required a basic grasp of human interaction, Sephiroth yelled for Zack the way some spouses yelled for the mate most capable of catching and transporting spiders.

This worked great so long as Zack was there with his metaphorical spider-catcher. It worked less well when Zack was in Gongaga with the kids visiting his family.

Sephiroth knew he was in trouble when he heard a child snuffling and weeping quietly, and the sound was drawing closer. Finally the noise reached the door, and there was a knock. Oh just dandy, a crying child and no one to meet her but the Scourge of Nibelheim, who was still trying to master basic human interactions. This ought to prove interesting. He rose from his chair and walked over to the door, opening it gazing down at a little girl with a horrible bowl cut and glasses that probably went out of fashion twenty years ago. Marcie Drover was a terribly average little girl, with a terribly average little family. In fact the truly only remarkable thing about her was she could tell people she knew Sephiroth, which would have been exciting indeed if she had any idea that he was not just the odd man with the long white hair who Miki called Mommy.

“Hi Mr. Fair. I brought Miki’s books back.”

Sephiroth processed the situation and asked himself what Zack would do. Well Zack would bring her in, make her hot cocoa and ask her what was the matter. Sephiroth’s initial impulse was to take the books, close the door, and escape before she leaked emotion all over his carefully-ordered and vaguely insane world.

He decided that Zack’s method would be less likely to end in a heated discussion with Marcie’s parents.

“What seems to be the problem?” he asked.

Marcie blinked at him, sensing he was making an effort to be kind and really having no idea how to do that. She sniffed.

“Well…”

She was gently escorted inside. She walked into the kitchen, setting the books she had borrowed on the table, along with a small box. She sat down as Sephiroth began making hot chocolate, wiping at her eyes.

“Well I had to go to the vet and I thought I would take Miki’s books on the way back but the vet said Bobby was dying!”

Yes well he’d certainly heard less random statements in his life, but he did catch the jist of it. Her pet was dying.

“Who’s Bobby?”

“My hamster!” she said, taking the top off the cardboard box and showing Sephiroth the ball of puff that lurked within. Ralph the Wonder Amphibian chose that moment to stroll into the kitchen; fourteen feet long, bluish-green, and beginning to grow odd appendages, signifying that at six years of age he was finally reaching sexual maturity. He slowly rose onto his back legs to get a look at the hamster. Sephiroth distracted the beast with some raw meat before Bobby the Hamster ended up a well-chewed mass on the carpet.

“What’s wrong with him?” asked Sephiroth, trying to work up some compassion for the fuzzy little drain-clog. His fondness for small rodents was roughly on par with his fondness for Hojo. He simply did not understand why anyone would want some tiny reeking vermin whose droppings carried any number of viruses for a pet, especially for a child’s pet. Did people have no idea what sorts of things lived on, around, and in, a rodent?

Oh dear Gaia he was starting to sound like his father.

“Nuthin’,” said Marcie. “He’s just really really old. But… but I’ve had him forever! I love Bobby! I don’t want him to die!”

She fled sobbing into the bathroom, trying to get herself under control, not wanting to cry her eyes out in front of her friend’s mother. Sephiroth watched her go, wishing Zack was here. He finished making the chocolate and set two cups down on the table, then peered into the box at the geriatric hamster.

Bobby had once been light tan and fluffy. He was now partly bald, slightly scabby, and had a look on his face better suited to a ninety-year-old man seated on his porch screaming at the kids skateboarding on the sidewalk. He found nothing charming or endearing about the little plague-monster, but it was clear Marcie did. And Sephiroth recalled all too well how Miki had sobbed herself ill over Ralph when they thought he was dead. Sephiroth himself had wept when he found his white peacock Satin in pieces. So the point was not that he did not find this blob in a box charming. It was that a little girl clearly adored him.

Well there had to be a way to help the disgusting little bastard….

Sephiroth raised an eyebrow.

Leaving the kitchen briefly, he walked into the bedroom, where Zack’s massive sword hung on a cherry wood stand beneath Sephiroth’s signature masamune. It, like Sephiroth, was a brilliant piece of engineering; light, slender, harder than any known element, and so sharp it could cleave a falling diamond. A quick touch of the edge was all that was required for Sephiroth to cut his finger. Returning to the kitchen, he reached into the box and picked up Bobby with his uninjured hand. Holding the tiny animal, he forced a minuscule amount of his own blood into the small beast’s mouth, then set it down. The old hamster made faces as he cleaned himself of all traces of blood, then settled into his fluff to nap.

Now to see how nanites and chemicals and DNA infusions designed to turn men into super warriors affected geriatric hamsters…

***---***

It was early afternoon on a Monday, and much to the surprise of her parents, Miki came home three hours ahead of schedule, smelling faintly of smoke and grinning.

“School burned down!” she announced happily.

Zack had been standing in the kitchen making coffee when his ten year old daughter marched in and made her declaration. Sephiroth just sat at the table, nibbling sashimi and reading.

“What happened?” asked Zack.

“Marcie Drover did it!”

Zack’s jaw dropped. “Marcie Drover set fire to the school?”

“Well not on purpose.” Miki began making herself a sandwich.

“I sense an epic tale here,” said Zack, grinning. “What happened?”

Miki opened the bread box and drew out a loaf of homemade whole grain bread. “Well Marcie has a hamster named Bobby, and she’s been taking him to the vet a lot lately ‘cause he’s real old and kinda gross. Not like you, Ralph.”

She gave the brute a piece of bread before she resumed both her sandwich and her story.

“Anyway she brought Bobby to school again today so she could take him to the vet again after school, an’ she was showing me how good he looks now ‘cause his sores have all healed an’ his fur has all grown back an’ she said he was eating more. So we had Bobby on the desk an’ we were watching him do hamster stuff when Gordie Buckerfield leaned down and belched really really LOUD at Bobby.”

“Did it scare Bobby?” asked Zack.

“Yeah it musta scared him REAL bad ‘cause he grew little bat-wings an’ then he sat up and he breathed FIRE!”

Zack’s jaw dropped. “The hamster grew wings and breathed fire?!”

“Yeah! And he flew up in the air and chased Gordie an’ kept breathing fire at him until Marcie caught him an’ put him back in the box but by then the school was on fire an’ I had to come home.”

Zack just stared, blinking, as if trying to wrap his mind around the concept of a frail and elderly hamster growing wings and breathing fire. He was distracted from his musings by the sound of someone knocking at the door. Leaving the kitchen, he went to the front door and opened it, finding before him the school principal, several fire fighters, numerous assorted parents, and heading the mob was Marcie Drover, holding Bobby the Demon-Hamster.

“Should I be worried?” asked Zack.

Marcie’s father, a man as average as his daughter, cleared his throat. “We’d like a word with your husband, Mr. Fair.”

Zack’s hackles went up. “Hey you can’t blame what that hamster did on my husband!”

“Actually, yes, we can,” said Mr. Drover. “Marcie stopped by here Friday afternoon when you were not here. Marcie says after she left was when Bobby began acting strangely.”

“That’s still no proof that Baby…”

“And we found traces of blood on the hamster bedding.”

Zack blinked. “Blood…?”

“Blood,” reiterated Mr. Drover.

Zack felt a headache coming on as he called into the kitchen; “Baby? Did you give Marcie Drover’s hamster a blood transfusion?”

There was a long silence, then a quiet, rather emotionless voice called back; “I cannot tell a lie. Marcie Drover’s hamster bit me. I suppose I could have been unreasonable and demanded the execution of a terminally ill puffball, but I thought since it was my own fault for trying to touch the miserable drain clog I would just say nothing about the matter.”

“There,” said Zack, turning to Mr. Drover. “Your hamster bites my husband, and you show up here with accusations of genetic tampering with a little girl’s pet. You know not every disaster is my husband’s fault! I can hardly wait until the fall winds come and you start accusing him of knocking the trees down!”

Mr. Drover looked suitably chagrined, and backed up a little. “I’m sorry, Mr. Fair.”

“I’m not!” said Marcie. “I got the coolest hamster on the planet!”

“Well I’m glad your hamster is doing better, honey,” said Zack, “But I’m gonna have to ask your daddy and his lynch mob to leave.”

The group left, Zack watching to make sure they were gone. Then he went back inside, closed the door, and marched into the kitchen. Sephiroth was still seated at the table, nibbling sashimi and reading. Zack crossed his arms and stared at his husband.

“Now you know that I don’t believe for two seconds that you were bit by a hamster because I know there is no way in Hell you would try to touch a hamster, especially not a scabby old one that smells.”

“Understood.”

“So what the hell were you thinking?”

“I was thinking I should do something to make Marcie Drover stop crying all over the bathroom.”

“AND CREATING A HOJO-HAMSTER WAS THE ONLY THING THAT CAME TO MIND?!”

“Zack you know I’m not very good at that sort of thing. And I assure you, had I the first idea that the little rat would breathe fire I would not have done it.”

Zack sighed heavily, letting his head fall back. “I know, it’s just… jeeze, Baby! You gotta consider consequences! I mean we have no idea what that hamster is now capable of!”

“Yes well I was never very good at consequences.”

“I know, I know. And who taught you to lie like that?”

Sephiroth paused in his sashimi-eating to give Zack a pointed look.

“Fine,” said Zack. “Just… no more mega-hamsters, all right?”

“Fine.”

Zack poured himself some coffee and sat down at the table, hearing Miki answer the phone. She spoke for a little while, then came into the kitchen.

“Mommy? Judy Crenshaw wants to know if you know why her pony just shape-shifted into a giant toad.”

Zack’s gaze snapped to his husband, who just nibbled his fish.

“You said hamsters,” said Sephiroth. “You said nothing about ponies.”

Zack said nothing. Instead he just began beating his head against the table.