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Rico and Kowalski's Miracle Valentine
by Pirate Turner
Some animals gave flowers, especially roses, to their lovers for Valentine's Day. Others gave chocolates and extra large fish or even oysters. Still others went diving deep enough into the brimy, blue ocean to capture pearls and other treasures and bestowed them upon their loves. None of these gifts did anything but make Rico's stomach grumble in protest.
Rico placed his flippers over his large, white stomach as he tried to hold down his monster. Love was in the air, and it was making him sick! Everywhere he looked, he had another crafted heart thrusting into his face. At every turn throughout the zoo, he heard another bit of disgustingly romantic poetry or a blip of a love song.
His ears wanted to curl back into his feathers. His flippers, talons, and inner fury urged him to tear apart every Cupid he saw, and his stomach ached to hurl out everything he'd ever eaten. Saint Valentine's Day was truly the sickest holiday of them all, and Rico wanted nothing more than to flee back to the lair, bury into his bunker, and go back to sleep with his flippers over his head for protection.
He shivered inside as he watched couple after couple pass him by, each seemingly more cutesy than the last. Even the lemurs weren't fighting today as Maurice and Mort took turns telling Julian how beautiful and wonderful he was and how much they adored him. Burt was forming hearts out of discarded peanut shells, and Joey was doing his best to impress the new female kangaroo. Roger was playing piano and singing "Can You Feel The Love Tonight?" at the top of his lungs in one part of the zoo while, in the otter habitat, Fred's cousin was busily seducing Marlene with a Spanish serenade. Rico turned his back to the loving couple and promptly puked.
He heard the monkeys chattering and looked up and across the way to see them exchanging sweet compliments while picking the fleas off of one another. Rico's mind swam as suddenly loving voices from all over the zoo started crashing through his mind. Phil and Mason kissed before him, and behind him, Antonio dipped Marlene, took a rose out of his mouth, and laid a liplocker on the enthralled otter.
Rico screeched his outrage and began throwing up all over the place. Screaming and puking up bombs, dynamite, weapons, dolls, and almost everything imaginable, including the kitchen sink, he ran back to the lair. He only stopped when he was once more behind closed doors and in the safety of his own home. He bent over, panting for breath and tears glimmering in his beady, black eyes.
Kowalski daintily cleared his throat, and Rico looked up at his boyfriend and promptly screamed. Kowalski dropped the huge, heart-shaped box of chocolates and even larger fish he'd been carrying and gazed at Rico in concern. "What's wrong?" he asked tentatively, blinking back tears from his own eyes.
"WHAT'S WRONG? WHAT'S WRONG?!" Rico thundered and then began to zoom around the lair, screeching about all the sweetness and love he had suffered through that day.
Kowalski stood, riveted by both fear and a breaking heart, as he watched Rico exploding. He had not stopped to think that his love would react this way to Saint Valentine's Day, but he realized now, albeit belatedly, that he should have seen it coming for nothing upset his mate as much as mushy romanticism.
"ALL I WANTED WAS TO GET YOU A PRESENT THAT WASN'T TOO SWEET, AND INSTEAD I GET ALL THIS!" Rico screeched, his words coherent for just a second before he went right back to gibberish, and Kowalski smiled between his tears. Rico loved him so much that he had been set to face the mushiest holiday of them all, the day of love, to make him happy. He glowed with warm joy as Rico continued to explode and waited calmly for his sweetheart's sanity, such as it was, to return.
Hours later, Rico made one more jump as he screeched angrily, "HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!" He flipped through the air, spewing more objects to add to the hundreds that already covered the lair, and landed in his own bunk where he immediately fell asleep.
Kowalski sighed softly as he gazed at his love, now sleeping so peacefully, and made the decision that he'd neither force any valentines on him nor expect any from him neither this Valentine's Day or any other. His love had tried his best to face Valentine's Day, and it had taken a horrible toll upon him. He started forward, now intent on simply spending the rest of the holiday holding his love while he slept, when a test tube bumped into his talon. Kowalski looked down at the green liquid it contained, perplexed. It was something Rico had puked up, he thought, reaching down and picking it up, but what was it?
He looked again at his exhausted love sleeping and, telling himself that Rico wouldn't even know if he was there or not, Kowalski left, test tube in flipper, and went to his lab. After many hours of careful analyzation, Kowalski screeched, "EUREKA!", rushed out of his lab, jumped onto Rico, and started covering him with hugs and kisses.
"Whuzzit?" Rico asked sleepily, trying to still Kowalski, pull him closer to him, and use him as a pillow.
"RICO," Kowalski cried, "YOU'RE A GENIUS!"
Skipper and Private, who had just returned from their own celebrations together, looked at each other. "Now that's a statement you don't hear every day," Skipper commented dryly.
"BUT IT IS THE TRUTH!" Kowalski declared, hugging Rico tightly. "HE'S JUST SOLVED THE GREATEST THREAT TO ANIMALS EVERYWHERE! WE'LL STOP OUR WORST ENEMIES COLD IN THEIR TRACKS WITH THE MEDICINE RICO'S CREATED AND I CAN DUPLICATE!" he crowed.
"Hippies," Skipper explained with a shudder.
Private blinked. "A never-ending food supply?" he asked. "Unicorn magic?"
"NO!" Kowalski cried, beaming proudly as he continued to hold Rico who'd gone back to sleep. "RICO MAGIC! WE'RE GOING TO RID THE WORLD OF FLEAS!" He would have punched a flipper eagerly into the air, but his flippers were full of his love and he didn't want to do anything to disturb Rico nuzzling against him.
"Really?" Private asked in hopeful surprise.
"Yes!" Kowalski confirmed, his excited voice growing softer as he gazed down into his sweetly slumbering love's handsome face.
Skipper sniffed his disapproval. "I still say we'd be better off getting rid of the hippies. Come on, Private."
As Skipper and Private left them alone for a little while longer, Kowalski burrowed closer against his sweet, wonderful life mate. They'd both been so concerned over Valentine's Day, but as it had turned out, they had had no need for that concern. Some animals gave their loves flowers, candies, jewelry, catnip, chocolates, and gems, but Rico delivered miracles! Kowalski sighed happily, pressing his beak lovingly against Rico's cheek. "I love you!" he whispered.
His delight grew as Rico, even in his sleep, whispered back, "Wuv you too! Happy Valentine's Day!"
"Happy Valentine's Day, sweetheart," Kowalski returned, his heart soaring on the proverbial wings of love Rico had given him far beyond the furthest recesses of the galaxy, "and thank you for my miracle Valentine!" The holiday had proved to be the best Valentine's Day ever, and Kowalski knew that tomorrow would be one of the best days of his whole life! He looked forward to distributing the cure almost more than he'd ever looked forward to anything before in his entire life, everything, indeed, but being with, loving, and being loved by his miraculous Rico, but for now, he just held his sweet miracle worker, closed his eyes, and drifted off to dream of the happily ever after future they would share as they continued to always love each other alone for all eternity and infinitely beyond!
The End