Title: Child's play
Author: Enide Dear
Rating: awfully cute
Pairing: RenoxRude
Summary: Reno and Rude gets a very special mission
Author's note: Yes, I know. This has been done a million times before. But I have wanted to have a go at it!
Reno stared down at the mission Tseng had placed on his desk. It blew a saliva bubble at him and hiccupped.
"Your sense of humour is getting creepy, yo." He said to Tseng, who was trying to wipe his suit clean on a towel.
"It's not a joke, Reno. Rufus needs this…client…taken care of for at least a month. Kept safe and secret. See it as a prolonged vacation." Tseng gave up on the barf stains and pried a pen from the babies hand before it could stab itself with it.
"Vacation!"
"No one will shoot at you, no one will try to blow you up, no dangers. Just a few weeks of peace and quiet."
"…or you could just kill me right now?"
"Trust me, Reno, you don't want me to start thinking about that right now." Tseng looked decisively tired. "I haven't slept for forty eight hours."
"Tseng, we don't know anything about this kind of thing." Rude shook his head and grabbed the baby just as it was about to crawl over the desk. "Surely there must be someone better suited."
"Like 'Laney," Reno agreed, backing away from his desk as if it had been a bomb there, although explosives usually had an attractive, not repulsive effect on the Turks.
"Why should she be better suited?" Tseng asked, rubbing his temples.
"Because she's a she! She got…all the right glands for this!"
Tseng sighed, and swallowed some very politically correct answers.
"She's on a mission already. You two are just lazing around, harassing the desk workers."
"Scarlett? Scarlett's a woman."
"Scarlett?! She put the fish in my aquarium on her rice once when she wanted sushi and I think she deliberately tortures her potted plants. No. Anyway, this is not a discussion, it's an order. Take that –" he pointed and the baby "-go home, and stay safe. I'll get you when it's time."
"You take it." Reno glanced at his partner.
"You take it." Rude glared at him.
"… and someone needs to carry these bags. Diapers, clothes, milk formula, napkins, bottles…" Tseng gestured.
"I'll take it." Quickly Reno scooped up the baby who gurgled affronted, leaving all the heavy stuff to Rude.
Tseng shook his head and walked away, muttering something about dry cleaning bills. Reno bit back the impulse to stick out his tongue at his boss' back. It was rumoured Tseng had had Hojo implant an actual eye in Tseng's neck.
The child squiggled in his arms, and started crying, a very loud and eardrum shattering sound that made all the ShinRa office workers turn towards the struggling Turks.
"You are not holding it right," Rude grunted, loaded with bags and diaper packages.
"What do you know about it?" Reno snapped, panicking slightly. It was difficult hanging on to the struggling child.
"Not much. But I'm pretty sure the head is supposed to be up."
Reno and Rude's apartment wasn't much used as Turk missions usually took them all over Gaia, but it was rather neat and clean in an impersonal way. Reno found a blanket, spread it on the floor and placed the baby on it. It was rather fat, he thought, with pudgy little arms and no neck. It looked a bit like Palmer, actually. Blue, thoughtful baby eyes met his, and the arms waved around in the air.
Reno frowned at it.
"What?" he asked annoyed. "What do you want? Owowow, not the hair!" he squealed as the baby grabbed his long pony tail and pulled savagely. It gurgled happily and made a distinctively farting sound. "Rude! Tell me there's an instruction book to this thing!" he wailed. "Or even better, an on and off button!"
Rude, who had been putting milk formula in the pantry, threw something at him. It was a small note with Rufus' distinct writing on it, saying:
*If all is not well with the baby at the end of the month, you'll both end up as spareparts in Hojo's lab.*
"Fucker," Reno gritted his teeth, and then added hastily as the baby gurgled again. "Not you. Him. The boss. Sorry."
"So what do you think this is all about?" Rude sat down next to him, staring at the baby staring back at him.
"Don't know." Reno shrugged. "Could be a kidnapping and blackmail, or something. Doesn't matter. All that matters is that we keep it alive and happy for a month. Or at least find one to replace it…"
"Reno!"
"Just kidding, just kidding!" He wrinkled his nose. "Hey, you need to fart, you can at least open a window, man."
"It wasn't me. It must have been…"
"Oh, great."
"Well, it's a girl." Rude said from inside the toilet as he'd lost pulling straws. "Did Tseng tell us her name?"
"No." Reno was busy going through the pile of stuff they'd been sent. "No name on the clothing either. And it all looks new, so I guess he bought it." He held up something very pink and frilly. "That guy seriously needs to get out more."
The girl started crying again, although howling was a better word for it; her face got dangerously red and it looked like she would explode. Rude almost dropped her.
"Check the notes, Reno! What are we supposed to do now?"
"If screaming, feed, change, burp, put to sleep…" he read out loud. "Do not under any circumstances feed alcohol…damn. That ought to have put it right to sleep."
"Here." Rude pushed the furious little girl on Reno. "I changed her, you feed her."
"Alright…" Reno took the bottle with gruel, fumbled around with angry child and bottle for awhile, and sighed as blessed silence once again fell over the room as the baby started to suck greedily. "Man, she was hungry! Didn't Tseng feed you? I'll kick him in the balls for you," he promised the baby who seemed to think that was an excellent idea, judging by the happy sound she made around the bottle, "at least I would if I could figure out a way of doing it without him noticing."
He hitched the baby up on his shoulder to burp it.
"There you go – argh! Rude take her, she threw up all over my neck!"
Of course ShinRa hadn't thought of sending along a bed. They improvised one out of a few blankets, pillows and a drawer from a cupboard, and the girl seemed happy enough. She immediately fell asleep.
Both Turks sighed in relief and crawled into their own beds, exhausted.
They woke three hours later, in the middle of the night, by more screaming. A life on the edge made them both wake with a startle and grab their weapons, aiming them at the source of the noise before they were really awake.
Rude swallowed nervously, and carefully lowered his gun.
"Yeah, send the kid with us. Great idea. Let's see if she even survives until tomorrow."
"Well, she doesn't need a new diaper, that's something." Reno checked. "You get the gruel this time."
Rude did, but when he came back he almost dropped the bottle. The little girl laid happily gurgling, playing and biting at his gun whiles Reno looked on, dangling over the bed.
"Stupid Tseng didn't send any toys, of course. That guy is all work and no play." Reno tickled the fat little belly. "Hey, I think we should call her Renessa, what you think?"
"Reno…."
"Yeah?"
"That gun is loaded."
"Oh, shit…."
Reno was surprised he got to sleep the rest of the night, but he figured out why the next morning. When he got out to the living room, Rude sat snoring on the couch, the sleeping baby in one arm and a bottle in the other. Reno smiled, and carefully removed the baby. Draping a blanket over Rude, he tip-toed away.
"Let's let daddy sleep, a'right? You and your other daddy are going to do some shopping."
ShinRa took care of most of the Turks' expenses – clothes, travels, hotel rooms, cabs, food - and still paid them decently. With the kind of job they had there were seldom time to spend the money, and anyway few Turks cared much about possessions.
Reno went wild.
Two weeks later, there came a knock on the Turks' door. Tseng raised an eyebrow as Rude opened; the dark Turk didn't have neither tie nor jacket on – for Rude that was the equivalent of slouching around the house in a bathrobe.
"Hey Rude, hurry it up!" Came Reno's voice from inside. "Me and Renessa wants to go to the park and feed the ducks!"
"Renessa?" Tseng asked.
"Her name is Rudelia, and he knows it. I won the poker game, after all." Rude muttered and sighed. "Come in, sir."
"Oh, hi Tseng." Reno sat on the floor, surrounded by brightly coloured toys and with a very fat and happy baby in front of him. The child was dressed in what looked suspiciously like…
"A Turk uniform?!" Tseng hadn't known what to expect from the Turks and the baby, but this wasn't it.
"Yeah! Look, she even has a little tie!" Reno held up the baby. "Say 'yo' to the tall, creepy bastard Renessa."
The baby burped and Reno beamed with pride.
"I taught her that," he said proudly.
"That's…very good, Reno…"
"Yeah, she's in training. She's gonna be the youngest Turk ever, aren't you? And daddy Rude will teach you all about explosives, and daddy Reno will teach you all about drinking people under the table, and how to pick up guys. Or girls," he shrugged at the baby, "if your obsession with boobs stays on."
"…but you don't have to take care of her anymore, now."
"What?!" Reno gasped, and instinctively grabbed the girl, holding her close. Rude dropped the bottle he'd been holding.
"Rufus' deal got through faster than he'd expected. The kid should be returned. Today."
"But…but it's only been two weeks! You promised a month!" Reno looked around the room, at all the toys and clothes, the perambulator and the bottles. "You can't just take her away!"
Rude had stepped up and Reno seemed to try to back up behind him. Tseng hadn't seen either of them looking this distressed since Brahamut Sin. Maybe that should have tipped him off, he thought. After all, they'd both risked their lives trying to save the Remnant- affected children.
"Yes, I can, Reno." Tseng stepped forward. "Don't be ridiculous."
"I…but…oh, fuck it." Reno sagged. For a second Tseng though he actually saw a tear in the wild Turk's eye, but it was quickly blinked away. "Good bye, Renessa. We had a good run though, right?"
The baby gurgled happily and pulled his hair as he quickly hugged it. Rude stroke the down on the girls head, also blinking repeatedly. Slowly and very reluctantly, Reno handed over the baby to Tseng.
"Wait a minute. She needs her hat if you are taking her out in this sharp sun." Reno put a small blue cap on the baby's head.
"And a blanket. The wind is chilly." Rude grabbed a rabbit-infested blanket and put it around her.
"And don't forget her squidgy-cuddly-Vinny doll." Reno found a soft toy with an uncanny resemblance to Vincent Valentine. "Bets me why all the girls like him, but it keeps her happy."
"And take this in case she gets hungry." Rude pressed a gruel bottle on Tseng.
"We just changed her, so that shouldn't be a problem."
"She's stronger than she looks so keep a firm grip on her."
"And don't let any old ladies cuddle her – they got all kinds of germs."
A chorus of admonitions followed Tseng out the door, as well as any number of 'necessary' objects that the baby couldn't possibly survive without for more than five minutes. Finally Tseng simply kicked the door shut and fled.
Reno sniffed a little, and Rude put an arm around him.
"All kids need to leave home, you know."
"Yeah, but not this fast!"
A child's affronted cry came from the street and both of them hurried to the window, peering out.
"Tseng, you stupid git!" Reno screamed angry. "The head is supposed to be up!"