"Oh, I'm sorry! I forgot I never actually introduced myself to you! My name is Bianca and I'm this little monster's current caretaker," says Finnick's mate from her spot alongside the couch. Her paws run up and down Finn's tattered ears, making them shiver every so often.
Nick didn't even know that his brother could purr.
Or kick his leg like that.
Nick smirks mischievously up at Finnick.
"So how did you two meet? Must have been quite the first date, huh? Hard to see how someone could be around this little guy for more than a few minutes without running scared!"
Finnick's purring turns into a warning growl. Bianca's face falls as she recalls the first night they had been together.
"Nick…" Finnick snarls.
"What did you guys have for dinner?"
Bianca hides her face entirely.
"NICK! I SWEAR ON OUR MOTHER, I'LL-!"
A wooden spoon flies from the kitchen and smacks Finnick directly between his ears. He flinches and grabs hold of the aching section of his skull.
"No swearing on me!" comes the scolding voice of his mother. "Nicky, stop teasing him! Ugh, it's like stepping back in time with these two!" she whines down to Corduroy. The foxy head rolls his way around the counter, trying to help his mate with her cooking. Without her eyes, they have to rely on their communication to get the job done.
Nick smells something burning.
Oh, well, it's the thought that counts.
Nick leans back with a surprisingly content look on his face. His mother isn't wrong; with the present company, it is almost like he's a kit again. It's like an improved version of his younger days, without his father screaming at something. Corduroy is admittedly a much better companion for his mother, even without a body. He's passionate about certain things and is willing to work together with her to achieve tasks that they used to be able to do alone.
Finnick was always trying to bring vixens home to show off his lady skills. It backfired a lot on him when it turned out the vixens thought that they were returning a lost kit to his mother.
In a way, they weren't really that far off.
Nick's just happy that he finally found someone who takes him seriously and is also willing to keep his fiery temper in check.
But just looking at the two happy couples interacting, Nick can't stop a twinge of jealousy from reaching him. Judy had to leave for work, so that leaves him and Duke as the only males without partners in the room.
Why did Judy have to turn? How much better would it be for them if they had both made it out of that stampede together? It could have been great. But as it is, those thoughts are just the newest fantasies in a long line of what if's.
And now that just leaves him with the same burning question he's had since the apocalypse began: what do I do?
If Duke's right about the undead restoration program or whatever it's called, then Nick could also do a great deal of good with his life. Granted, it would also probably mean he'd be kept in solitary for his own protection and be forced to reproduce with a lot of vixens. Is that how endangered species programs do it?
Nick doesn't know if his budding relationship with Judy could survive something like that.
And it had already survived the end of the world, so that's saying something.
Duke sits in the corner, looking at the card with the number for the mammals who had tried to get his attention. He has a look of serious contemplation on his face, which doesn't fit him all that well. Nick was used to him giving shifty glances or furious glares, so something hinting at much deeper, darker thoughts is a bit jarring.
Bianca finally moves around to sit next to her mate, to which the eager fennec gladly accepts. Within seconds, the smaller fox has found a comfy spot on her lap and...woah, he's asleep.
Bianca looks equally as baffled.
Duke's eyes are wide and the card slips from his paws without him noticing.
"I thought…" the weasel starts.
"How did…" Bianca cuts him off.
"Since when…?" Nick interrupts.
"Who's ready for some…?" Corduroy speaks over them as he rolls around the corner with a chef's hat flopping wildly on top of his head. When he sees the sleeping fennec, he stops rolling and looks up in confusion.
"How did he pull that off?" Corduroy blurts out. The foxes gathered around him shrug, while Duke remains motionless.
"The undead can't sleep though…right?" Nick mumbles up at the couch. Bianca doesn't know what to do with her mate. Should she wake him up? Should he just watch him sleep? Truthfully, she had been wanting to see what he looked like in his sleep quite badly. And just like she thought, he resembles a scowling plushie, but one of those ones you would find at a Nocturnia's.
She has to hold in her coos.
Finnick's leg kicks a bit in his sleep.
She can't hold in her coos.
He snores lightly.
She coos.
The others sit back and try to process what they're watching. As far as any of them had known, sleeping was out of the question for husks. Something about the infection wired them so wide awake that even closing their eyelids was difficult. But maybe without the influence of it, some pieces of the lives they used to lie are slowly coming back.
"Aww yis, nap times are back!" Corduroy cheers as he does a little celebration roll.
Duke finally breaks his gaze away from the snoozing fennec and looks back down at the card. Somehow, Nick thinks that the weasel is a little closer to reaching his decision. Duke stuffs the card back into his shorts and stands up.
"Duke, honey, would you mind setting the table for me? My vision is busy acting like a bowling ball right now," Marian calls with a pleasant chuckle. Corduroy bumps into the couch on accident, prompting an 'Ow!' that only proves the matron's point.
The weasel flinches at the sudden attention and gives Marian a suspicious glance. Was she teasing him for some reason? Why would she ask him that, when her two sons are right there?
"...Huh?" he blurts.
"The plates and silverware, you know. Could you put out five sets? Corduroy eats with me, if he eats at all. Can't really be hungry if he doesn't have a stomach, right?"
"She lies," Corduroy whispers to the weasel as he rolls his way back to the kitchen. Duke offers him a shiver and a sidestep, not enjoying the glimpse he got of the inside of the fox's severed neck.
"I...guess," Duke shrugs. He walks calmly over to the kitchen, where Marian is holding a small stack of plates down for him. She can't see exactly where he is, so he has to reach up and guide her reach a bit lower for him. The weasel accepts the plates and is quick to scurry up onto the larger kitchen table to arrange them. The silverware is spread out shortly after. Nick blinks as he watches the mustelid work, surprised at how fast and efficient he is.
Marian listens to the task getting done, a small smile gracing her features. But it drops suddenly and she flinches like she's been struck. A surprised yelp escapes the mature fox and she bats at her own head for reasons unknown.
Nick rises to his paws and rushes over, unsure of happening.
"Mom! Mom, what's wrong?!" he asks urgently. She doesn't seem to hear him, instead choosing to shake her head from side to side. A few seconds later, Nick sees a fly escaping the confines of her eye socket.
She calms down immediately and lets out a massive, uncomfortable shiver.
"I hate it when that happens! Gross little bugs! Ugh!" she complains. Nick tries to imagine what having an insect flying around inside his head might feel like, and knows for sure that he would have reacted the same exact way.
Corduroy bumps against her leg, a worried look on his face.
Marian gives her head one more shake before crouching down to pick up her mate's head. She gives him a hug that is probably more for her support than for his. He accepts his role as teddy bear for the time being and lets her calm herself down.
"I might be able to help, actually," Duke's voice chimes in. The occupants of the room, minus the sleeping fennec, turn to the weasel. He shrinks a bit from having so many undead eyes looking at him, but coughs and manages to work past the fear.
"I took care of my old lady for years, and she lost one of her eyes, too. I ended up making a glass one for her to fill the socket with. Had to clean it a lot, but it worked just fine. I could try making you one, if you want."
Nick watches on in surprise.
"You? You can make fake eyes?" Nick inquires, not quite believing his own ears. Duke turns to the fox and gives him a quick huff of indignation.
"You know, Necktie, I might have been the King of Bootlegs, but I didn't exactly have much in the way of suppliers. Most of that stuff I sold on the corner? Made it myself," he says with a slightly bitter tone. Nick's ears shoot behind his head.
"Wait, I thought...weren't those stolen?"
"Movie might have been pirated, but pretty much everything else was made by these," he grunts, holding up his paws to make his point. The russet tod sits down at the kitchen table, looking down at the expertly placed dinnerware.
"So...why did you always run when we came up to you?"
Duke sneers a bit.
"Please! With my track record? Plus that fact that I'm a weasel? If I stayed and tried to explain that my goods weren't dirty, would you have believed me?" Duke asks with a narrowed glare.
"Maybe if you told us! We're police, not th-"
"The police have done it before. Grabbed my stuff and my money and I never got them back. When I asked about my property on the way out of the station, they just told me that whatever they confiscate during a crime won't be returned. A whole month's worth of stuff, gone. Didn't even have money for raw materials after that. I went hungry for weeks because I stayed and tried to explain myself. That's why I was forced to start taking odd jobs. So yeah, I'll run. And I keep running. Even now, all I do is run." Duke's voice turns from annoyance to despair the longer he talks. The mammals in the room around him listen to his experiences with sorrowful expressions.
The room is quiet as Weaselton takes his seat at the table, having to use a stack of books to boost himself up high enough to reach his plate.
"I think a set of eyes would be fantastic, Duke," comes Marian's warm voice, cutting through the tension in the room like a knife. The weasel flinches and looks up into her empty sockets. Nick would have thought the sight would spook him at least a little, but Duke doesn't seem to care about how grisly an image it is. He did say his mother had one and that he had to clean the fake eye, so his stomach is probably well adjusted to it at this point.
The weight tugging on Duke's shoulders dissipates and leaves him looking a lot more relaxed. He even offers a tiny smile to the motherly vixen.
"Okay...I can get some measurements later, once I get my-...OH SHOOT!" he exclaims, slinking back into his chair and slapping his face with his paw.
"What?" Nick asks.
"My bag! My bag of stuff, I left it...shoot, I left it back at the place I've been hiding! I didn't expect to stay overnight here. This was just supposed to be a quick run in, ask question, duck back out before I get eaten kind of deal. And it's broad daylight now! Ugh, we'll have to wait until night time…" the weasel laments.
"Oh...well, that's okay, I can wait," Marian says gently.
A brief tingling of an idea stirs in Nick's mind. In his mind, he pictures the scene from the window last night, before bed. That pack of mammals on the street...the ones surrounding the sheep. They got him to walk amongst the dead and kept him safe by forming a circle around him…
Could they do that?
Granted, they don't have mammals as big or imposing as the sheep to help him, but…
They have Finnick. And his mother is terrifying in her own right. Plus Corduroy could act like a biting projectile if need be. Would Bianca be willing to come?
"Maybe...we could try getting it now," Nick mutters. Duke's eyes bug out of his skull and he looks like he's about ready to chuck his fork directly into Nick's face. The following silence says enough about his family's opinion of that idea.
"Are you nuts?! I know you want to turn anyway, but leave me out of your suicide missions!" Duke rants loudly, causing a muffled groan to erupt from Finnick. Looks like the little guy is starting to wake up again.
"No, I'm serious. Last night, when I was looking out of the window with my mom, I saw a group of undead mammals escorting a living sheep down the road. They kept the other mammals at bay and nobody died!"
Duke replies with a chuckle of disbelief.
"Uh-huh, sure. And I'm guessing the sheep was covered in zombie guts, right? Was he carrying a barbed-wire covered bat with him? Was he missing an eye, too? Give me his number, I'll see if I can't make a quick sale," Duke laughs sarcastically.
"This isn't a joke! I know what I saw! And nobody charged him! Some got closer to investigate, but all it took to repel them were some harsh words."
"Okay, then, tell us. What kind of mammals did he have guarding him, exactly?" Duke demands, his small arms folded loosely against his chest. Nick cringes and pulls back a bit from his mania.
"Mostly large canines...a few hyenas…" Nick admits.
"Ha! So basically brutes!"
"...And also a stoat."
Duke stops his taunting and looks at the fox. He tries to find something, anything, that would hint at his leg being pulled. But Nick stares right back at him with no traces of his story being fabricated.
Duke rubs his face and groans.
"But...even if we could...why would we risk it? Why not just wait for dark?"
Nick chews his lip some more.
"I kinda wanna see if it works. If we ever need to leave this room in a hurry, I want to have some kind of plan. And it's a bit more dangerous at night for me, since I wouldn't be able to see a husk coming and my body isn't small enough to evade like you can."
Duke lifts a brow.
"That's it?"
"Well...I really just need to get out of this room and stretch my legs. I've been sitting in here doing nothing for, like, two weeks now. I feel like I'm going crazy!" Nick replies with a small amount of heat in his cheeks.
"If you want to risk getting chomped on, you go right ahead. You let me know how that goes for you," Duke grunts as he turns down to the steaming plate of slightly-burnt fish that Marian had just set down onto his plate. A hungry flame grows in his eyes at the sight of the prepared meal. He probably hadn't had something hot to eat in quite a while now.
"Uh, bud? I don't even know where your bag is. If you're not with us, how can we get it?"
"I'll draw you a dang map, Necktie. Now just let me eat!" Duke demands before stuffing his face with the delicious meat.
Nick's eyes are drawn to Finnick pulling himself up into his own chair at the table. The smell of the home-cooked meal must have woken him up the rest of the way and drawn him to the impromptu meeting of the minds.
"What we talkin' about?" Finnick asks as he yawns and rubs at his eyes. Nick notices that his brother's messed up eye is slightly more centered than it was only days earlier. Another thing to keep in mind for later.
"Necktie here wants to walk around on the street!" Duke mumbles through a mouthful of fish. Finnick tilts his head to his brother. Before he can say anything, Bianca sits down next to him and politely accepts her own plate of food.
"Nick wants to go get Duke's bag of supplies so that he can make your mother a set of glass eyes. To keep the bugs out," the vixen explains into the humongous ear of her companion.
Whatever harsh taunting Finnick was preparing to bestow upon Nick dies in his throat upon hearing this. Instead, the fennec offers the two an approving nod.
"How does he plan to do that?" the smaller fox asks as he goes to take a bite.
"I'll need a ring of muscle around to keep me safe, in case the dead aren't as friendly as I've been led to believe lately," Nick answers. The table is full of every member of the family now...except for Judy. Nick looks to the empty spot at the table where she would have sat if she didn't have work. A small sigh escapes his nose.
"So I guess you're going to be needing me, then," Finn says with a mischievous grin on his face. Uh-oh, looks like someone's getting excited at the opportunity to knock a few heads around.
"Uhh, yeah. I was hoping."
"You got it, Nicky. It's been a hot minute since I got to bite off some faces!"
Nick looks to his brother's mate, who is daintily plucking away at her food.
"Would you mind coming along with us, too? I'm sure we could use your help," he asks. Bianca looks up when she notices that she's the one being addressed now.
"O-oh! I don't know...there's not much I could do…" she mutters faintly.
"Well, you could always just bite off some-"
"AWRIGHT! THAT'S IT!" Finnick belows and slams his paws down on the table.
Nick is sent sprawling back as a furious fennec flies directly into his chest.
Marian sighs and stands up, getting her claws ready to pinch some ears.
Just like old times.