Closed RP: In which Francis meets an old friend. Sort of.

[h_m_winter]

Comments

[fabernathy]

There was no chance Francis was going to turn down that invitation, of course. He was instantly and implacably intrigued. Part of him was dreadfully convinced that Henry was going to introduce him to Detective Reese, simply for the dramatic irony of it, not to mention the plain old regular irony; just because that was how his life seemed to function, half the time, on these ridiculous coincidences coming together. The idea made him so ill that he had to sit down and take two pills and a shot of vodka before he could even get out of the door, but the pull of his curiosity was too demanding to ignore

[h_m_winter]

Henry's natural curiosity about whatever Francis wanted to show him was overridden by what he wanted to show Francis. "It's a Habitrail," he said, eying the complicated mass of colored plastic tubes--garish, but somehow that garishness was suitable for their purpose. He opened the little plastic box and removed Mister Whiskers, a.k.a. Bunny Corcoran. "And this is an old friend of ours. For a given value of 'friend', at least."

The hamster really was ridiculously adorable, as even Henry had to admit. Even yet he hadn't fully reconciled the idea that the little creature was really loud, offensive Bunny--there was a certain surreality to it that simply didn't compute.

[c_macaulay]

"It was Henry's Christmas present from me," Camilla explained, hiding a smile behind her hand. "The Habitrail, that is."

She wouldn't explain the rest -- though her owls to Francis some time earlier had probably been hint enough. It had been Henry who'd used Jezz's scroll to turn Bunny into a hamster, so technically the accomplishment had been his, and she wasn't going to step on his toes.

[fabernathy]

Francis, for all his laziness and the somewhat campy air he sometimes affected, was actually very smart, and it didn't take much work for him to figure out what they were getting at. His eyes bulged as he stared at the little creature in Henry's hands; his mouth formed a perfect 'O' of surprise. He very nearly dropped the things he was carrying and really, if his eyes had actually popped out of his head like some cartoon wolf's, he would have hardly been any more shocked.

"Oh, Henry," he whispered. "That isn't...? That's never..." He leaned in and peered at the tiny rodent. "Oh, my God." For a long moment, he was stunned into complete silence. Then he said, still in a hushed voice, "He has that fat jaw of his." And that seemed to satisfy him, for he straightened up, blinking rapidly but otherwise composed. "How on earth did you do that?"