Disclaimer: Everything below this line is mine, thank you.

A/N: 'Death' prompt. This doesn't actually happen; it's a hypothetical situation following a discussion I had with my friend Ash regarding pets for children. Anyway.

Robbie, for those who don't know, is Michael and Paul's adopted son. Long story, and I'll be writing something about it later, methinks.

Wrong

"Oh dear."

"Yeah."

"What should we do?"

"I have no idea."

"I told you we should have got something other than a fish."

"Well like what? We don't have time or space or anything to take care of a cat or a dog or even a hamster. I thought a fish would be good because all you have to do is put food in every day and clean it when it starts getting mucky! I didn't think it would die so quickly!"

"Okay, calm down. Breathe. We'll figure out something."

"Figure out what? He's going to notice when he goes to feed his fish and it's not there. Or do you think we should leave it and hope he thinks it just got a taste for floating on its back? He's only three years old! He's not old enough to deal with death!"

"Paul," Michael came up behind his husband and rested his hands on the other's shoulders. "It's just a fish."

Paul shrugged him off, violently, hands buried in his hair. "Benny's not just a fish! You saw how he loved it! Robbie's always singing to it and playing sign games with it and reading it stories and telling it how they're going on big adventures when he's older."

"Paul!" Michael's voice crept up in pitch, tinged with disbelief. "You're getting freaked out over nothing. Just buy a new fish and put it in the tank and Robbie won't ever know."

Paul whirled on him, arms waving, and Michael jumped out of the way. "You want us to lie to him?" Several punctuation marks followed the sentence.

"It's better than explaining death, that's all," Michael pleaded, holding his hands out. "You said yourself he's too young. He won't understand. And it was a goldfish, not a puppy; they all look the same, anyway."

"This is why Dad never let us have pets," Paul moaned, sinking onto the dinosaur-covered comforter and burying his face in his hands. "He might have been psycho but he was at least right about that. We get attached and then they die."

"Oh boy," he heard Michael sigh, then the bed creaked and Michael slid an arm around him. "It'll be okay; don't worry. I'll go to the pet store and find a fish and bring it home, and we'll have it all ready before Mom brings Robbie home. I don't think Robbie's observant enough to tell two fish apart like that."

Paul sighed. "If you say so. I just hope it all goes okay."

He was making supper when Mom dropped Robbie off, Michael having cleaned the tank and acclimatized the new fish about an hour before. Paul had refused to flush poor Benny down the toilet and Michael hadn't been keen on the idea either, so they put it in an empty Kleenex box until they had a chance to bury it out in the yard. Even tiny aquatic animals had their dignity.

"He was a darling, as usual," Mom grinned, signing simultaneously. Robbie said thank you back and ran into the kitchen, clinging to Paul's leg until he looked down. "You said you'd feed him supper so I didn't give him too many cookies," Mom kissed Paul's cheek and stole a carrot from the salad bowl.

"Well, that's good to hear," Michael swooped, catching up Robbie and wrapping his arm around his mother-in-law's waist. He kissed them both, not talking until his hands were free to translate again.

"You want to stay for supper, Mum?" Paul waved the spoon he'd been using to stir the tomato sauce, barely avoiding splattering all of them. "It's spaghetti, and I didn't do that weird thing with the spices this time."

"Thank goodness for that," Mom winked at him, making a face at Robbie. "I don't want to criticize you, honey, but there's such a thing as too much seasoning. And I promised the kidlets we'd order in something, so I've got to get back. Thank you, though, sweetheart."

Dinner went well; the spaghetti did indeed taste all right, and Michael's biscuits were good despite being left in the oven too long because Paul forgot about them. All was fine until the cleanup, when they let Robbie down from his high chair and told him to play while they washed dishes.

Halfway through scrubbing the sauce pot, Paul heard a soft choking noise coming from the boy's bedroom. Shooting a worried glance at Michael, Paul set everything down and jogged into the other room. Robbie wasn't looking at him; he was on his knees, sitting on the chair he'd dragged up in front of the aquarium, and was taking quick, ragged gasps while tears rolled down his round cheeks.

"Oh no," Paul breathed, one hand coming up to his mouth. "Michael, honey, we've got a problem."

Robbie's hands were moving, and Paul flicked on the light so he could see the sign; he couldn't tell in the dim glow of the fish tank lamp. When he figured it out, Paul's stomach clenched.

"Wrong," Robbie signed, over and over, "Wrong, wrong, wrong!"

"This doesn't look good," Michael was behind him, one hand at the small of Paul's back. "Shoot. Paul, I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize to me!" Paul hissed, "We've both got to say sorry to him."

He crossed the room and knelt by the chair, reaching up to brush the wetness from his son's face. Robbie kept crying, soundlessly except his shaky intakes of breath, and didn't turn to look at him. "Robbie?" he finger-spelled against the boy's leg. "Come on," Paul said aloud, "Look at me."

"Wrong," Robbie insisted, his gestures sharp and flailing, "It's wrong!"

"What's wrong?" Paul asked, though it was useless as Robbie refused to watch his movement. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment.

"— not Benny!" Robbie was saying when Paul opened them again. "It's not Benny! Where's Benny? I want Benny!"

Even if Robbie's being deaf meant nothing with regards to how Paul felt about him, sometimes Paul wished it were otherwise; particularly now, when Robbie made no noise as he sobbed. Three years later, he still wasn't used to that.

"Oh, baby," Paul picked him up and carried him to the bed; Robbie shuddered and burrowed his face in the hollow of Paul's neck and shoulder, tiny hands curling in the hair that straggled loose from his ponytail. "Baby, baby, baby."

Robbie cried, though the only way Paul could tell was the erratic heaving of his chest and the dampness soaking his skin. Michael sat beside them and rubbed his back, sending Paul pained looks while the brunette cursed himself. It was just a fish, after all, but this was their son, who cried if he saw robin's eggs on the ground and insisted they take them home and try to incubate them.

Finally the little boy stopped, sitting up and letting Paul wipe his face. "It's not Benny," his hands twitched as he spoke, and Paul couldn't understand him, upside down and backwards as his vantage point was; Michael had to translate for him. "What happened to him?"

Paul let Michael explain; he merely held Robbie, smoothing and dropping kisses on the child's curls. Michael fumbled and stuttered, both verbally and manually, as he told Robbie that Benny was happy and safe in fishy heaven and that it was sad, yes, but crying wouldn't bring him back.

Robbie sniffled and knuckled his eyes, wiping his nose with his fist. "Then why did you buy a new one?"

"Well, we just thought you'd be sad without Benny," Michael said, his mouth twitching a little, "So we got you this fish to be your new friend."

A pause, and Paul waited. Robbie was a bright boy; too smart, sometimes, because when he got thinking, sometimes the strangest things came forth from his mind. He was an oddly perceptive child; a lot like Tiffany had been, though perhaps less belligerent.

"So," Robbie moved his hands slowly, and when Paul shifted him a bit so he could see his face, he realized he was frowning. "If I go to heaven, you and Daddy will buy a new baby that looks like me so you won't be sad?"

"No!" Michael and Paul both cried out in unison, and Paul put Robbie down on the bed so he could face him and speak to him.

"Robbie, we would never, ever do that," Paul brushed the corners of his eyes and blinked rapidly. "You are a very special boy and we love you very, very much. No one else could be the same as you."

His lower lip trembled, grey eyes filling with tears again. "But Benny was a special fish to me! All the other fish aren't the same!"

"You're allowed to be sad," Paul said, patting his knee gently. "You can cry. It's okay to miss Benny."

Robbie nodded as he started to cry. "I am sad," his hands spasmed.

Paul decided not to try to explain the difference between the death of a fish and the death of one's son; it was too much for Robbie to understand now and he couldn't imagine it would end any other way than more tears and frustration.

He picked up Robbie and held him, then moved so he sat in Michael's lap, and the redhead put his arms around them both. Paul crooned, silly meaningless things, and eventually Robbie relaxed, soothed by the vibrations of his chest.

"I want a party for Benny," Robbie said, "So even if he's happy in heaven he knows I didn't forget him."

"We can do that," Paul smiled, stroking one pink cheek with his thumb. "What do you say, hon?"

Michael nodded and bent to kiss Robbie's nose. "We'll do that tomorrow, before Daddy and I go to class, okay?"

"Okay."

Later, as they tucked him into bed, Robbie clutched the teddy bear Pete had given him last Christmas. "Is it okay if I don't like the new fish yet?"

"Yes," Paul tugged up the covers a few more inches. "You don't ever have to like him if you don’t want to. Daddy and I will put him in our room if you don't."

Robbie nodded, tilting his head up for a kiss. They said their goodnights, then Michael switched off the main light and he and Paul went to their bedroom next door.

"Well, that was horrible," Michael said, slipping out of his jeans and sweater and sliding under the covers.

"I'm never going to get that image out of my head," Paul shivered. He changed out of his clothes and into a nightgown, his mind still replaying the scene of Robbie sitting in front of the aquarium like that. "Do you think we've scarred him for life?"

Michael's face was pained as he wrapped himself around Paul, almost like a larger version of Robbie when he was upset. "I hope not. But I really didn't think he'd notice, or if he did, that he'd get so upset."

"I know, honey," Paul kissed his shoulder, "But now we know, right?"

"Yeah."

"He doesn't still think we'd just get a new baby, does he?" Michael said a while later. Paul, who'd had the same thought swirling around in his head, worked his fingers into Michael's hair and rubbed the other's scalp gently.

"I hope not," Paul winced, "I remember when Jolene went through her obsession with death; took us months to get her out of it. We'll talk to him tomorrow, or once he's calmed down some."

Michael sighed gustily, rolling over and spooning close behind Paul. "This parent thing is so weird. Sometimes I think we're doing really well, and then others it's like we have no idea what we're doing. There should be a manual somewhere."

"Ah, but that would make things too easy," Paul laced their fingers. "We just have to deal with it, that's all. And hope that, if he really is traumatized, that he's little enough that he'll forget. Do you think we should get Manda to talk to him? She's good at things like that."

"Wouldn't hurt to try."

Paul was just drifting off when Michael spoke again, his own voice lazy and drowsy. "So would you buy a new Michael?"

"Don't know where," Paul replied in the same sleepy tone, ignoring the instinctive stomach-clench at the very thought of it. "I think they discontinued your model. Too many neuroses."

"Hmm," Michael nuzzled the back of Paul's neck. "Guess I won't go anywhere for a while, then. Wouldn't want you to get lonely."

"Good idea," Paul raised Michael's hand to his lips and kissed it, "Now go to sleep."

Some time after that, Robbie padded into the room and tugged on the corner of the blanket until Paul woke up. It was too dark to sign but the hall light shone on the trails down Robbie's cheeks; Paul's heart turned over, and he just picked Robbie up and brought him into the bed. The little boy clung to both of them, one arm around Paul's neck and the other hand around one of Michael's fingers, until morning.