Rupert heard the CRACK. He left the kid on the floor, petting Flipsy like fur was meant to be torn out by the handful, and ran to the bathroom. He fully expected to see her on the floor, her head bleeding. She'd been disoriented; he'd known that. She'd slipped in the tub, she'd hit her head, he was going to be stuck raising her mutant child as atonement for all the horrible karma he'd wracked up for the both of them—

She was on the floor, all right. The shower was running, but she hadn't gotten in yet.

"Lori. Lori, hey," the ex-cop said gently, kneeling in front of her. "We're going to get through this, okay? Just take your shower, relax, and we'll figure it out together. One rabbit-eared kid isn't the end of the world; there are a lot worse mutations he could have ended up with. Hell, we can get him corrective surgery; he'll look human enough that even your dad will dote on him."

He may have misunderstood the cause of her breakdown.

"Get. Out." There was a not-so-subtle undertone of murder in her words. This was her own personal tragedy: death of normalcy. The compromise she was thinking of to get herself clean was by no means pretty and she wanted to remain pretty in Rupert's eyes. "I mean it." It wasn't as if she had anything he hadn't seen before, but...

Lori pulled her hand from between the towels and checked it. It wasn't burned. She wasn't sure why she'd thought it had been. Maybe the scorch mark on the tub? The blonde snatched a towel she had touched and, sure enough, there were burnt parts.

"Ugh." Face. Meet towel. It was a most comfortable towel. She could sleep here if need be.

Women ‘meant’ a lot of things, with all due quotation marks. Hell, they might even believe they did; Rupert tried to avoid going that deep into feminine psychology, except when mutational hijinks forced him to. And those occurrences, he kept neatly suppressed with a self-prescribed regimen of teacup scotch.

Most of the time, what a woman actually needed shared only one thing in common with what she ‘meant’: it was the polar opposite. Especially women like Lori. It was a man with a strong hand that she needed; he’d learned that about her early in their relationship. Nothing else would keep her. Nothing else made her feel steady, and safe.

There was a scorch mark in his bathtub. There were burns on his towels. And there was Lori, crumbled up on his floor.

He ran a hand through his hair; then he did the manly thing. He knelt down, and wrapped the electric mutant in an ill-advised hug. Towel and all.

“He can keep the ears, if you really like them. They remind me of someone.”

She was gonna murderize the SOB that made her like this. Yeah, yeah. Whoever took her brain didn't stash electricity in its place, but it sure as hell felt like it. Lori was boiling up the hurt and percolating it into righteous vengeance.

And then he hugged her. Beyond her gut reaction of get THE HELL off of me, she liked it. And his words made her all gooey and melty and loved on the inside.

The problem was that her initial reaction was so strong, she just happened to move a couple electrons in his direction. No big deal. Just a little lightning, an exploded light fixture and OH MY GOD I KILLED HIM.

Bunny baby made a sound in the other room, but Lori was frozen in the dark on Rupert Kelly's bathroom floor. "Rue?" The sparks in her mouth lit up the scene in a brief blueish flash and she slapped her hands over her mouth to keep from repeating that freak show.

The bathtub was still running. Honestly, she was tired and was feeling more tired, the longer she sat there. Lori could skip the shower if he could forgive the smell. And the... she didn't really kill him, did she? "Rupert?" Lori didn't know her voice went that high. She felt around in the dark for him.

In this order: cold, "Rupert?", oww, dark, light, "Rue?"

No. Not... No. More like: dark, oww, "Rue?", light, cold, "Rupert?"

The light had gone out, with a sharp pop and a tinkle of glass.

"Rue?"

Light: light curling and flashing out, like from an old sparkler toy.

It was cold on the floor.

"Rupert?"

A hand patted at his face. Rupert's nose scrunched; he lifted himself up, just enough to relocate his head and shoulders somewhere more comfortable: Lori's lap.

Oww. He would just stay right here, for a moment. It was... less disorienting. And warmer.

"Roger's crying," the zealot croaked. The rabbit was crying. The dog was barking. And he was pretty sure Lori's mouth was made of fire.

He relocated to her lap and she gave his face a squeeze before dumping his head onto the cold, hard tile and wobbled to her feet and feeling around for the tub controls.

"I'll get him." Since Rupert sounded less than able. Lori opened the door and the light from the living room filtered in. Roger, no not Roger, had managed to crawl under the coffee table, but his progress was barred by the horizontal support and he was banging his head against it.

Dummy.

Lori pushed her hair back and walked toward him, the lights brightening and dimming in time with her heartbeat. No... wait. Lori raised her foot. The lights dimmed to normal. She set it down and they brightened. Piece of crap. She was completing the circuit and feeding more power into the room? apartment? building? each time both of her feet were on the floor.

She grabbed bunny boy's legs and pulled him out from under the table while hopping on one foot. Then she sort of skipped back to the bathroom. Flipsy could stuff it.

There was an awful lot of hopping coming from the living room, and it sounded too big to be from the rabbit. Rupert slowly pulled himself into a sitting position at the side of the tub. By the time Lori was back, he’d upgraded to standing, while picking a fleck of glass out of his hand.

“Watch out,” he cautioned the skipper. “You got some... lightbulb on the floor.”

In the living room, the rabbit had lost interest in crawling under the table as soon as he’d been dragged away from it. Something much better had caught its attention: pink. From a baby’s perspective, it seemed like a whole vista of pink, a whole new horizon of pink. He crawled towards it, one chubby hand at a time.

Flipsy’s barking turned to frantic whines as she ran back and forth in a worried line, the infant crawling ever closer to her Princess bed.

"Flipsy." She looked over at Lori and back at bunny baby and yowled in distress. "Flipsyyyyy." She again spared a thought for Lori but not too much more, she was busy running interference between her bed and the baby.

"F#@k it, I'm going to sleep." Or, didn't they have to get diapers? And Rupert wasn't exactly in the best shape after... glass? Lori looked down at herself in a quick inspection. She plucked a piece of glass from her shirt sleeve, there was probably more in her hair but in the state that it was even Lori was afraid to go in there.

Okay. New plan. "I will get diapers and s*@t. If you'll sort this mess out?" She wasn't exactly giving him the option. It was just a nicer way of demanding. Lori leaned over him to get her shoes from the bathroom floor and planted a surprisingly shock-free kiss on his forehead, it just had a little buzzing kick to it. She shook the shoes out just to be sure there wasn't any glass in there and crammed her feet in sans-socks before she made her way to the cash drawer.

This was for both of them, sorta like groceries but non-edible and to be filled with human feces, so the stash of cash should be fair game. But she must have been too tired to be thinking straight... "Did you... move the cash?" Did she have cash on her? Lori fished in her pockets for her wallet and pulled out a man's billfold. Platinum credit card. Fifty, no... three fifty dollar bills... Heh! She must have robbed the right sucker.

"Never-"yawn"mind. I got it. You need anything else while I'm out?" She dumped the wallet in the trash, credit cards and all, and pocketed the cash. If she'd bothered to check the ID, she would have seen that the wallet was hers but she didn't.

"Cash--?" Rupert said, taking a moment longer than usual to process the word, and to run through the associated train of thought. Cash. The cash that they'd always kept inside of a tin in the second drawer down, behind the plastic wrap and aluminum foil, inside of a scorched old pot holder glove that looked like it was probably full of spiders. Because really, what robber dumps out your pot holders looking for cash?

Said potholder really had been full of spiders, when he'd gone to pull out a twenty one day. Now he kept the cash under the sink, in an empty Arm & Hammer baking soda box that he always scrutinized carefully before sticking his hand inside.

"It's—" He leaned into the hallway, and saw the wallet hit the trash.

Never mind, indeed.

"Eggs," he said. "We need eggs. Make sure to come back with less money than when you started, okay?"

He wasn't a cop anymore, and she was an amnesiac. He'd skip the rest of the lecture.

As it turned out, diapers came in sizes. And brands. There was pretty much a wall of diapers and Lori was just at the closest convenience store.

Okay. Screw it. She grabbed her best guess and then went to find the formula.

...

By the time Lori made it to the counter almost an hour had passed and she was sure Rupert and bunny baby had both gone to sleep and she was the only one left suffering. She piled up the goods: wipes, powder, cream, lotion, shampoo... the list went on and on. Once she picked up one thing, it seemed she'd needed twelve more. If they had one, she would have bought a baby bath tub so lil bunny wouldn't drowned in the big one. Damn. Buying baby stuff was fun.

Maybe she was a mom. Maybe this was proof of maternal instinct. She actually wanted the best for the kid.

$139.66

Lori handed over the three bills and it was painful! So painful.

She was still feeling the hurt when she dropped her keys for the second time today outside her apartment door.

"Honey?" The blonde used the plastic sacks as a barrier to keep Flispy from escaping as he had a hundred times before. The bags were numerous and bulky, but not too heavy. Lori was sporting dark circles under her eyes by now and hadn't had a single spark since she left the bathroom.

Heeeey. Maybe she was getting better?

Kids were supposed to have bedtimes. Human kids. Baby bunnies seemed like they were auditioning for a battery commercial; every time he set the kid down, it was getting into something. The floor was carpeted and the couch well padded, but he was soon finding himself hyper-aware of every sharp edge of every coffee table and every small object that seemed designed to fit in a baby's mouth with ease. With Flipsy running in nervous circles around both their feet and the neighbors no doubt about to call the cops for child endangerment and/or animal abuse, the zealot did the only thing he could: he started carrying he kid everywhere. It was the only way to keep the thing in sight, and not crying.

Mostly.

"No, that's my spoon. Not yours."

The ears started to quiver. That was the first sign; that was always the first sign. They pulled back until they blended with the mutie's fuzzy white hair, and started to tremble like... well, like rabbits.

"That goes in mixing bowls, not mouths."

Next were the legs. The bunny's chubby little legs started fidgeting and kicking the air, as it reached its hands out, out, out towards the object of its infantile desire. Like that would change Rupert's mind. You've heard of taking candy from a baby; might as well be 'keeping a cookie dough covered spoon from a baby.' Easiest thing in the world.

Except that next came the crying. It started in little bunny hops of the diaphragm; a few more seconds and he'd have a screaming rabbit next to his ear, right when he'd finally managed to get the oven door open without dropping the damn kid inside.

He surrendered the spoon to the kid's waiting paws, and shoved the cookie tray inside the oven before the kid got any other bright ideas.

"Fine. Get salmonella poisoning. See if I care."

Rabbits could have chocolate, couldn't they? If not, they'd all learn a lesson tonight.

He knew Lori was home by the way she dropped her keys; and for a moment, his breath caught stupidly in his throat. The moment lasted until little Rodger generously shoved the spoon into his cheek, by way of sharing.

"I don't want any. Thanks."

He went to the door. With hands and baby covered in flour dust, he opened it, casually scooting aside the cockapoo away from the sudden plastic bag barricade with one socked foot. The baby in his arms sucked happily on its doughy spoon, its ears flopped contentedly at the sides of its head.

"Did you get the eggs?" He asked. Because now they were out, and what was he going to cook for breakfast tomorrow if she'd forgotten—

Rupert Kelley was a nervous cooker.