Author's note: Thanks for the reviews, they make me very happy! If you want to continue to make me a happy little writer, you know what to do!
Edit: Yes, my beta wanted to put some time and energy into the crazy ducks! Thanks to Ghastly Eternity for the beta-work!
2
As it turned out – to Gabriel's great surprise – there was more to raising a tiny living being than just playing with it and cuddling it.
The golden-brown duck knew how far the Sun was from the Earth, both in kilometers and miles. He knew the chemical formula for water and how to ride a bicycle, in theory, of course. But he knew next to nothing about nurturing kittens, or any other babies of any species, really. Well, they were born tiny and grew up to be bigger, except maybe for fleas or amoebas.
Well, he knew some more practical things as well. For example, he knew that he loved Sam, even though his biological programming should have made him interested in females and not gigantic half-geese. And he knew that he had loved the little kitten irrationally since he had first seen it.
"It-," Sam started but was interrupted when Gabriel sent him a glare, "Jesse is a kitten. He needs milk!"
"Damn, I left my wallet in my other pants," the honey-colored duck replied which only made his partner give him one of those looks that meant that he had no idea what Gabriel was talking about.
Okay, he had picked up a few very strange sayings in the time he had spent around humans. This particular one had been the favorite of a – ironically – pant-less man who had tried to regularly buy ice-cream from a vendor in a park Gabriel had lived at for a while.
"No money, otherwise I would go buy some in a shop," the drake explained to his bewildered partner.
"Of course, you would," Sam replied sarcastically.
He had learned what shops were when they had had an eerily similar conversation about bread. According to Gabriel shops or supermarkets were places where humans went in with a lot of money and came back out with a lot of things and no money. All in all, this had been one of the more plausible explanations for something Gabriel had given to Sam in all the time he had known him.
The smaller duck was looking at the tiny mewling kitten and decided that he needed to come up with a way to feed his family. That was what men did, after all. He might be small and have a feathery ass, but he was a man nevertheless! This still was new territory for the drake, since Sam was very capable of feeding himself. And if his partner would allow Gabriel to feed him, then it was the same things he generally ate, as well.
"Milk," Gabriel stated out loud, if only to remind himself about the task at hand, "Milk, milk, milk…"
Sam shook his medium-brown head and gave his partner a doubting look. This wasn't going anywhere, he could already see that and the kitten – Jesse – was hungry.
"There is a farm over there," Sam said casually pointing his beak into the right direction. He would not make the mistake to directly suggest that Gabriel should go there and try to find something suitable for Jesse. The other duck would only get into a discussion about the pros and contras of that course of action with him, but if he let Gabriel believe that he had come up with it on his own…
"There are animals that give milk on farms," the honey-colored duck concluded after a moment of intense consideration.
Gabriel stood up and took the warm cover of his feathers away from the kitten who started to shriek pretty much instantly. He then nudged the tiny baby with his beak until it got up and wobbled over to the other duck. "You watch the baby, I'll be back!"
Sam didn't get a chance to protest before his partner had already taken flight, so he was left with the crying kitten. With a resigned sigh he lowered himself down on Jesse. The baby shouldn't have to feel cold, at least.