Summary: Zack's a playboy, and noted ladies' man. His parents despair of him ever finding a nice girl and settling down. So what will their reaction be when he introduces them to his fiance? Set in MysticSpiritus' AU.

Disclaimer: Akalara, Yvette, Father Sabastien, and the baby are the only things I own. Got it?

Queen's Quornor: I should be working on a paper about "Paradise Lost" and "Gulliver's Travels" right now, but I just can't get the creative juices flowing. I mean, they're boring, and very hard to read! Well, "Paradise Lost" is, anyway; "Gulliver's Travels" is just plain boring. So, I figured I'd get one worry out of the way and work on the other thing that has been bugging me all day, namely this idea. I know Akalara's not the most popular of the Next-Gen Turks, but she's still a very demanding muse. Zack is, too. Drama queens. Maybe if I work on this, I'll actually be able to get my effin' paper done. Also, I'm not entirely sure what these things are called. You know, the special feature phone companies came up with a few years back that lets callers listen to a song instead of the 'ring ring'? That's what the song's doing in here. I'm also presuming that there are no wormholes lined with telephone wires, so Zack and Ak are back in Division Seven right now. They don't stay at the Shrine full-time; Zack's got an apartment back in Midgar.

Breaking the News

This was not how a relationship was supposed to go.

Normally, the boy and girl involved would go out on a few dates, see if they could get along with the other without resorting to fisticuffs, then introduce each other to their families, go out some more, get engaged, get hitched, and finish off by getting pregnant.

Nothing about the relationship of Zack Fair and Akalara Forrest, however, could be considered normal.

Thus it was with some apprehension that Zack hung up his phone, three days after he and the green-haired Turk had formally announced their engagement. His parents refused to allow their son to live his own life free of scrutiny, and insisted on calling him whenever they got the chance. More often than not, he would simply allow the answering service to pick up and then make some lame excuse later on, when he finally called them back. Since they only called his apartment in Midgar, that meant he usually came back from the Shrine or wherever and was greeted by about fifty messages from his folks. But he figured that he owed them an obligation-talk this time; after all, he had dropped a bomb on them when he sent them the announcement.

Somehow, they had talked him into coming to visit them in Gongaga, with fiance in tow. How they had done it, he wasn't entirely sure. But they had gotten his word that he would come see them and bring Akalara with him.

Sneaky parents...

The SOLDIER wasn't sure how to tell his loving bride-to-be that she was going to be meeting his parents in about a week. Or more importantly, how he was going to explain to his parents that they were going to be grandparents a lot sooner than they might be expecting. Akalara was nine weeks along by now, and it was becoming visibly apparent that she wasn't her usual, slender self these days. There was just a slight, incriminating bulge to announce her condition to the casual observer; not much of one, but it was still there. His parents would know if they got a good, close look at her.

And probably draw their own conclusions, to boot.

Gotta tell her sometime, he told himself, pulling his cell phone out of his back pocket. He couldn't just drag her out to Gongaga unawares; she had to have some sort of warning. Scrolling through his address book and hitting her number, he put the phone to his ear and waited for her to pick up, snapping his fingers to the beat of "U + Ur Hand" while he waited.

Akalara really needed to change her ringback, one of these days. Good song, but not so good for a dude's ego.

After a moment, P!nk's voice was replaced by a clicking sound, and his fiance's bored tone. "Hello?"

Zack chuckled. "You never check your caller ID, do you, Ak?"

"Zack! I'm sorry; I didn't know it was you."

"Obviously. What you doin'?"

"Paperwork. What else?" she replied dryly.

"Are you sitting down?"

"No, I'm standing on my head and typing with my feet. Of course I'm sitting down, numbskull! Why?"

"Just making sure. I've got some news."

He could hear her grin in her question. "What, you pregnant too?"

"No." The SOLDIER snorted into the phone. "It should be fairly obvious to you by now that I am not possessed of a uterus or any part of the female reproductive system. You've certainly been down there often enough to know."

"Just making sure." He heard the tapping of keys on a keyboard. "So what's your big news?"

Into the Abyss. "Well, I just got off the phone with my parents. You know they call me whenever they get bored, right?"

"Yeah. I'm still mad at your mom for interrupting us last Saturday, by the way."

Zack had to laugh, remembering Akalara's face when his mom had phoned them right in the middle of testing their new sex swing. One more minute, and they would have been waking up half the building with their screams. "Mom always did have this wonderful sense of timing."

"That's pretty obvious."

"Anyway, you know how we sent out engagement announcements, right?"

"Yeah..."

"And you know how I really didn't want to send one to them, right?"

"Are you going somewhere with this, Zack?"

He sighed, running his fingers through his spiky black hair. "Long story short, my parents want to meet you. And they talked me into driving us both out to Gongaga this Friday, to spend the weekend with them."

There was a silence on the other end of the line, and then he heard Akalara's chair squeak as she leaned back in it, accompanied by two thumps. Kicking back in her chair. A typical indicator of the emergence of Serious Akalara, a far more intimidating lady than the infamous Green Bitch.

Not good.

Time for evasive manuevers. "Listen, Ak. I didn't realize they were going to pull this on me. I was just expecting the usual 'how are you, why do you never call, God help our poor, lustful baby boy' lecture! Plus, I just got back from sword practice, so I'm not thinking straight anyway. They got smart on me. Before I even knew what had happened, they'd gotten me to agree to this. It's not like I'm the one that suggested it!"

He heard her sigh into the phone. "Let me guess. They have no idea I'm pregnant, do they?"

"Nope."

"Think I'm just some nice girl who happened to capture your attention and steal your heart."

"More or less what Mom said."

"Going to guilt-trip you into dragging us both out there if we don't go?"

"Slam dunk."

"You know, suddenly I'm really thankful I haven't spoken to my parents in years." She sighed again, and he heard her chair squeak as she took her feet off the desk. "So what do we have to do?"

He wanted to do a victory dance. It wasn't often anybody could talk Serious Akalara back into her usual persona. "Ok, here's the deal. They don't know anything about you, apart from your name. I never tell them anything about my girlfriends, and the only thing they know about you, my lovely fiance, is that you're marrying me. They know I don't have the taste in women they would like me to have, so they probably won't be looking for me to walk in the front door with a nice Catholic girl."

"Zack, I'm not Catholic."

"I know that, Ak. So, I'm not going to ask you to pretend you are. They'd see right through that."

"Then what are you asking me to do?"

"Just be nice. Don't mention that you're pregnant; we'll break that to them after they've warmed up to you. Let them know that you are Christian, but not Catholic. Don't mention that you're a Turk, because my dad has a real problem with people who kill for a living. You do not want to know how long it took them to get used to the idea that I was in SOLDIER. Oh, and we can't have sex."

Silence again. He could hear the tick-tick-tick of Akalara's nails tapping on her desk. "May I ask why?"

"Because my parents basically put me on a libido-freeze when I was thirteen and...something happened. That's why I went so wild when I came to Midgar. I was sexually-repressed back home. They'll sic Father Sabastien on me if they so much as hear a bed squeak. And trust me, if you thought Father Vapone was bad, you ain't seen nothin' yet!"

"Why did they make you put it on ice, Zack?" Her voice was gentler now, encouraging him to tell her.

"Guess you have a right to know, since my parents won't be the only ones mobbing us with questions. Remember how I said I went to parochial school when I was little?"

"Yeah."

"The school was co-ed, and all of the girls were just as itchy as the boys. There was this one girl, Yvette, who was worse than all the others, though."

"Meaning...?"

"She was the living definition of the bad Catholic schoolgirl. Yvette was willing to try everything. I was thirteen when she decided she was interested in me. What was I supposed to do? A thirteen year old just discovering the joys of jerking off, getting an invite to an empty, parentless house from a fifteen year old with the biggest gazongas he'd ever seen? It was a dream come true at the time!"

"Let me guess. She seduced you, and you lost your V-chip to her." He could hear the jealousy in Akalara's voice over the phone.

"Started as a makeout session, ended with us rolling around on the floor. Wasn't anything to write home about; I can remember lying there thinking 'that's it?' when it was over. Yvette was an expert at drinking, smoking, and kissing, but she knew next to nothing about getting a guy off. I didn't realize how good sex could feel until I arrived in Midgar."

"Hmph." He mentally envisioned his fiance tossing her dark green locks in disdain. "I knew more than that at fifteen, and I was still a virgin at that point!"

"Yeah, but you had an older brother with a porn collection who spent most of the day at work, leaving you time to read his magazines after you got home from school. None of the kids back home had access to that sort of thing. Anyway, about two months after that, we got a little visit. I was upstairs in my room, slaving over my algebra homework, when there was this banging on the front door. Dad opened it, and I remember hearing shouting for a minute or two, and then dead silence. Then Dad called me down with his 'imminent pain' voice."

"'Imminent pain voice'?"

"That tone parents use when they're planning on beating the shit out of their kids in a few minutes."

"Oh."

"When I got down there, Dad was standing by the door. Yvette was there, and let me tell you she looked like she was going to cry. This big gorilla of a man had her arm in his fist, and he was glaring at me. I mean, I could literally see the fires of hell in his eyes, Ak! Dad handed me this stick-thing, and told me it was a pregnancy test. Then he asked me to tell him what the color of the strip on the end meant. He and Mom had already given me the Talk by then, and told me how pregnancy tests work. Why, I have no idea."

"Must have figured you would actually need to use one at some point in the near future."

"Ha fuckin' ha. Continuing on, it was blue. So I had to stand there and tell my dad, Yvette, and her dad that this pregnancy test read positive. Dad told me that Yvette was the one who had taken the test. At that point, her dad blew up at me, threatening to tear me to pieces for touching his baby girl, blow my brains out, castrate me, yadda yadda yadda. He even promised that he was going to rip both my heads off for knocking up his daughter. Dad and Mom had to calm him down before he finally sat down on the couch and stopped promising to rend me limb from limb. Still glared fire and brimstone at me, though."

"So, you're telling me you have a kid in Gongaga?" she asked quietly.

"No. The story doesn't end there. My parents offered to make me marry Yvette, and her dad eventually agreed to that, even though he still wanted to kill me. My parents did, too; I wasn't able to sit down right for a week after the beating they gave me. The good priest was out of town for a conference, though, so it was decided that we would have our shotgun wedding once he got back. Turned out, a wedding wasn't needed after all." Zack's voice trailed off, as he remembered what happened next. Funny how it still hurt, even after all these years.

"Zack?" He knew Akalara could hear his pain over the phone. She was good at sensing things like that. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

"I want to, Ak." He sighed and lay back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling as he continued. "Neither Yvette nor I had a say in the matter. We didn't want to get married, especially since we were so young, but we didn't have much of a choice. I eventually convinced myself that this was God's will, and got used to the idea. But Yvette wanted none of it. She..." The SOLDIER closed his eyes, and forced himself to go on. "There was this guy living in Gongaga at the time. He was a retired surgeon from Kalm, just living out his retirement in peace. Yvette went to him with her savings, all the gil her parents had put away for her to go to school once she graduated, and asked him to give her an abortion. From what I heard, he didn't want to do it, but she talked him into it, even though he didn't have the equipment needed for the procedure. I found out about it when her dad called my parents and told them to forget about the wedding, because there was no reason for it anymore."

"Oh Zack... I'm so sorry..."

"I left Gongaga for the military shortly after that. Just couldn't face Yvette anymore. I couldn't stop thinking about the abortion, how she killed my baby." His voice lowered as he confessed to the mother of his child, the woman he loved. "That's why I was so upset when you told me you were pregnant. I couldn't help thinking that the same damn thing was happening all over again."

"Never, Zack. Never. I'd never abort a child, least of all your's." Akalara grew quiet. "What happened to her?"

He sighed again. "Last I heard, she'd found a nice young man and settled down for real. Still in Gongaga, apparently, so we might run into her. The point of this is, we can't have sex because my parents will go ape-shit on us."

"They'll probably go ape-shit anyway, when they find out about the baby."

"I know. Let's just not antagonize them, ok? We might not even tell them about it."

"I'm still skinny enough I can hide it with loose clothes. If this was six months into the pregnancy, we'd have a problem. But right now, it's not easy to tell I'm pregnant just by looking at me."

"Well, in that case, let's change tactics slightly." Zack thought for a minute. "We won't tell them about the baby. We won't sleep in the same room. You're just a chaste little paper-pusher I started dating and fell for, not going to let me indulge my manly urges until the wedding night."

"I know I'm an expert at disguises, Zack, but that might just be pushing it."

"Just act like a virgin!"

"And how do you suggest I do that?"

"I dunno... Act like you did when you were fifteen!"

"Which was exactly the same way I act now, only by myself."

"Big help, Ak." Zack thought for a minute, and then the lightbulb flashed on over his head. "Gwen!"

"What?" Now she was very confused. "What does Gwen have to do with this?"

"Act like Gwen did before Seph married her! Nice, respectful, confident but shy, with just a hint of naivete; a woman who's saving herself for marriage, but smart enough to know what people do at night!"

"Well..." She hesitated, tapping her nails again. "I suppose I could try... Though I've never done 'virginal' before. Not even when I was the nun."

Zack laughed. "I can attest to that," he purred.

Now it was Akalara's turn to laugh. "That's what got us into this mess in the first place! You and your nun fetish!"

"So I get turned on by a hot gal with a ruler. It's a common affliction for us poor Catholic schoolboys. Besides, I don't remember you voicing any complaints."

"That's because, if you recall, I was too busy screaming your name!" They laughed for a minute, and then Akalara got playful. "So if we can't have sex while we're in your parent's home, because I must protect my honor and all, doesn't that mean we have to get it all out of our systems before we leave?"

"I hadn't thought of that, but it sounds reasonable to me!"

"I think somebody's being a naughty boy..." she purred into the phone. Zack immediately felt his pants tighten.

"Am I going to have to report to Sister Akalara for punishment?" he asked eagerly.

"I suppose that she could tend to your punishment," the Turk murmured. "But it will have to be after work, and I'll have to stop by the costume shop first."

"You'd leave me with a boner until then?" he wailed pitifully.

"Maybe that will teach you not to have impure thoughts."

"You like my impure thoughts," he accused playfully.

"True. Very true." He heard her clicking the mouse. "Very well, then. I'll ask Tseng if I can clock out early tonight. Oh, and Zack?"

"Yeah, baby?"

Her voice dropped a full octave, to that voice that always sent chills up his spine. "Don't you dare touch that sweet cock of yours until I get there."

He inhaled and exhaled shakily, already fighting the urge to touch himself. "Yes, Sister."

There was a dark chuckle, and then she hung up. Zack dropped the phone back in its cradle and glanced down to assess the situation.

Full-blown erection.

"Shit, Ak..." The SOLDIER fell back on the bed, making sure his hands were trapped beneath his back. "Gonna go off on its own, if you don't hurry home."