It's all in the nose
Title: It's all in the nose
Genre: Humor
Rating: PG
Note: Summary line taken from “What Folks are Made of,” attributed to Robert Southey
“Bye baby. Be good for Zared, okay?” Usagi gave the pink-pig-tailed toddler another kiss before Mamoru drew her away.
From the car, Mamoru called, “Call if you need anything.”
Zared waved him away, before once more holding Chibi-Usa’s little hands in each of his. As she stood between his legs, they both watched the car disappear.
Zared felt a wetness on his hand but was too busy thinking of how to distract Chibi-Usa for the next couple hours to really think about where the wetness came from.
“So, what should we do first, Chibi-Usa?”
When silence greeted him from the normally chattering child, he looked down. He watched in fascinated disgust as she lifted his dry hand to her nose and used the back of his hand to wipe the clear mucus running from her nose and coating her upper lip.
“CHIBI-USA! That’s gross!”
Zared wrenched his hands away and grabbed one of her wrists. Tugging her inside the house, he frantically wiped at his hands with a tissue.
“Next time, say ‘Tissue please.’”
Chibi-Usa’s red eyes looked up at him, clearly not registering that he was more than a glorified tissue himself.
~
Usagi fully believed in children having space for themselves. This meant that Chibi-Usa had a lot of toddler-sized furniture at her disposal. This meant that, currently, as Chibi-Usa ate at her low height table while sitting in her perfectly sized chair, Zared sat next to her with his man-sized bottom overhanging in the little toddler seat, wary of how much weight said chair could hold. With his knees in his chest, he wondered why people with no fine motor skills were allowed to eat things like yogurt.
“Use your spoon, Chibi-Usa. Your spoon, not your hand.”
“Spoo?”
“Yes. Your spoon.”
Chibi-Usa picked up the spoon and put it into her mouth. She looked to Zared for approval; he smiled and nodded. Chibi-Usa then diligently put the spoon back on the table, smooshed both hands into her strawberry yogurt, making sure her hands were completely flat against the plate, and proceeded to lick the mess from her hands.
Zared barely suppressed a groan.
Chibi-Usa must have found that hilarious because, with a giggle, she lifted her hands up in triumph above her head and landed her still slightly yogurt-ed hands on one of Zared’s knees. Leaning into him, she grinned with yogurt all around her mouth.
“Oh, thanks, Chibi-Usa,” Zared said sarcastically, not bothering to hide his grimace.
Mistaking his facetiousness for permission, Chibi-Usa began to vigorously rub the yogurt into his pants, twisting her palms hard into his knee. Yanking himself away from her, Zared managed, “Finish your lunch, Chibi-Usa.”
~
Chibi-Usa climbed into his lap, settling herself in his crossed legs before opening the book.
Zared read each page dutifully, waiting as her chubby little fingers fumbled with the cardboard pages.
When she rose to get another book, he looked in surprise at his lap. There were two wet spots on either of his thighs.
Had he peed on himself in two different spots?
He looked at Chibi-Usa to see two corresponding wet spots on her bottom.
“How did you manage to pee on me when you still wear a diaper?” he asked her incredulously. When she simply tried to climb back into his lap with a new book, he stopped her and said, “No way. Diaper change. Pronto.”
Chibi-Usa threw down the book. “No!”
“Yes!” he threw back.
“NO!” And she went zooming into the other room like a teenaged Usagi late for class.
Zared, only momentarily stunned, remembered he was the adult. Springing to his feet, he called after her sternly, “Yes! Come back here!”
~
“Want to wear my dress.”
“This is a dress, Chibi-Usa.”
“Not that dress.”
“There are no other dresses.”
“Princess dress.”
“The princess dress has pee in it.”
“Yucky.”
“Exactly. So, let’s put this on.”
“Don’t want that dress.”
“Okay, how ‘bout your blue pants?”
“Want to wear my dress.”
Zared’s fingers clenched tightly in all the little girl clothing. This conversation was not going well.
~
After Chibi-Usa settled for wearing a sparkly tiara with her blue pants, she and Zared went to Mamoru and Usagi’s closet to look for something for Zared to change into.
As Zared looked for Mamoru’s workout clothes, Chibi-Usa’s index finger found its way into her little nostril. Zared was surprised anything at all could fit into that little hole but a toddler finger made sense. Nevertheless: “Don’t pick your nose, Chibi-Usa.”
Chibi-Usa wiggled her finger a bit more before withdrawing. She touched her fingers to each other and rolled her hands together mysteriously. Zared had finally found a t-shirt and some sweats when Chibi-Usa thrust her finger into his face, two inches away from one green eyeball.
Startled, Zared dropped the clothes and grabbed her wrist instinctively, drawing it away from his eye.
“Bogie!” And indeed it was. It was one hell of a bogie actually. The green-yellow blob on the tip of her finger made Zared wonder how something so gross and big could come out of something so small and innocent.
He marched her into the bathroom to wash her hands and grabbed a wet wipe to clean her face as well. Her constant runny nose and her avid aversion to tissues meant that she kept wiping her nose with her hand, streaking the mucus across her right cheek, where it dried and hardened into white flakes.
Drawing her between his knees, he held her tight as she squirmed and whined and just generally disallowed him to touch her face. Managing to swipe both cheeks and her upper lip, he said, “Look at the light, Chibi-Usa. Look up.”
When she did, he some there was a little more gold in the cavern. After more struggling, more picking, and an almost-cry, he got it out, but it wasn’t so much golden as much as-
“Is this ham? I didn’t even give you ham. Where did you get ham? And why are you putting food up your nose?”
Chibi-Usa’s watery red eyes looked at him blankly.
“Oh god. I hope you ate ham this morning.”
~
Usagi quietly walked into the room, kneeling beside the napping princess. “How was she?” Usagi whispered, briefly touching Chibi-Usa’s erratic bubble-gum curls.
She had finally fallen asleep after an hour-long backrub.
Zared closed his book, standing and stretching. It was almost hard to remember why he was so tired when she slept so peacefully. With her eyelashes flush against her cheeks, her little round head poking out of the pink fuzzy blanket, her hands curled into balls-
She was the complete antithesis of what she had been all day. And yet, Zared was tired, and so he did remember.
Zared slung an arm around Mamoru, bringing their faces close together.
“Dude,” Zared informed him. “Your kid is gross.”
Mamoru shrugged the arm off his shoulders. “Really?” he threw back defensively. “Because you’re the one who smells like pee.”
---
I've been long overdue for a Zared-Chibi-Usa fic, but kept running into walls, until venusorbit1 mentioned I ought to share a story about my worst kids - this isn't it by any means (it's hard to convey the high-pitched constant screaming through the written word - it's really a you-have-to-be-there-&-listen-to-it-for-minutes-on-end experience, as is the firm & stubborn defiance two-year-olds have), but the above are certainly things I could've done without.