It’s funny, my therapist and I had just had a long talk about Quatre Winner that very morning. Or more like an argument. She insisted that six months was long enough, and that it was time I confronted the man and got it over-with. Especially since he and Trowa were tentatively talking about possibly giving it another try.

I maintained that I really didn’t want to deal with the man until I’d decided whether I was going to deck him or run away from him on sight. Kinda felt like there ought to be a plan there, before I made any hasty decisions, if you know what I mean.

All the way back from Devil’s Palm, Heero had assured me that I would not have to deal with Mr. Winner until I gave the word, and he’d somehow made it happen. Reason and I had moved into Heero’s apartment with him for the month it had taken us to find a house, and during that time there had been one single attempt by Quatre to get in touch with me. I have no idea what Heero said to him, but it had been the last call we’d gotten from the Winner residence. Heero had told me that if I decided I was ready to talk, all I had to do was ask, but until then… not to worry about it.

And I hadn’t. Had bigger fish to fry, if you know what I mean. It had taken a few sessions, but I’d come to understand that in the grand scheme of things Quatre Winner really hadn’t had that much to do with my breakdown. Guy had just been what Doc calls a ‘catalyst’. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong mood, wrong words and I up and did something that I probably would have ended up doing on my own eventually anyway.

I got that part pretty easily, I guess. The part I couldn’t quite get was the forgiving and forgetting stuff. The things he’d said to me… right, wrong, or indifferent… had still been an incredibly cheap shot.

But really, between a cross-country move, finding and buying a house, and moving in with Heero… Quatre really wasn’t on my mind all that much. Mostly on Tuesday and Friday mornings, during my damn therapy sessions. The terms ‘letting go’ and ‘moving on’ were starting to annoy me. And yeah, there might just have been a little bit of pissy contrariness in my continued avoidance. I never really have liked being pushed.

So I suppose I wasn’t in the best frame of mind that day, having just had another ‘talk’ with Doc Epstein on the topic. But even so, the last damn place on earth I ever expected to accidentally run into Quatre was the cat toy aisle at Pet Palace.

I saw him first, but only by about a minute. Just long enough for it to seriously cross my mind to fade back a few steps and try to get around the end of the aisle and out of sight. But that was instantly followed by Doc’s voice talking about avoidance and ‘fight or flight’ and all that trash, and I recognized the instinct and felt guilty. Hesitated until he happened to glance up and saw me.

It was kind of interesting watching him; I swear to God his knee-jerk reaction was to physically recoil. He actually stepped back a pace and then there was this nervous flick of the eyes around, like he was expecting to be attacked or something. Made me wonder, again, just what in the hell Heero had told the guy. But then he seemed to kind of piece the circumstances together in his head, and a weird-ass almost hopeful look came over him and damned if that didn’t kick me in the ‘flight’ gonads. Which pissed me off at myself and I think I might have frowned, turning away from him to look at the display of feather wands and mouse shaped toys that I’d come to see.

Yeah, Heero and I have a cat now. Heero found her wandering lost on the freeway one morning and ended up stopping to save her from becoming a road rug; I think I’m wearing off on him. We named her Gertrude.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Quatre open his mouth to speak, but two kids darted down the aisle with their dust-mop of a dog and he closed it again, watching them go by. I picked a purple plaid catnip toy off the rack and gave it a sniff to see how strong it was, wondering if I could get away with just walking away. Though I suppose the notion was kind of stupid… not like I could leave the store until the groomer was done with Reason anyway. Would he just follow me? And then what would we do? Play some kind of stupid hide and seek game all over the store? Could I lose him in the puppy petting area? That was always crowded…

Yeah, that thought really made me feel like an idiot of the twelve-year old variety and I hooked the toy back on the display peg and turned back around. Now or never, God damn it.

‘So,’ I opened, avoiding all the stupid ‘hello’ shit that we probably would have floundered all over anyway. ‘Trowa says that you guys have talked about maybe going out again?’

He blinked at me for a second, like maybe I’d taken the wind out of his opening lines. Or maybe he hadn’t had any but was on our track and not the Trowa track. ‘Uh… yeah. We’re going to try dinner.’

‘You think you’re ready for it?’ I blurted and wondered at myself. Guess my inner child had decided on the ‘deck’ plan. I fussed with the plaid mice, occupying my hands by arranging them by color spectrum… purple, red, orange, yellow. There wasn’t a green and I suddenly wanted a green one. That perverse side of my nature again, I guess. The stone silence coming from the feather wand section of the aisle made me look at him and I was surprised to find him blushing profusely and staring at the toes of his shiny dress shoes.

‘I… I’ve been sober for almost five months now,’ he choked out, and I turned to stare at him rather openly.

‘What?’ I asked and it made him look up at me; I could see the blush spread as he figured out he’d just confessed something to me I hadn’t known. He didn’t seem to know what to say, his jaw muscles twitching as he tried to work it out. I was trying to work it out too, but was just staring.

I realized that my desire not to deal with Quatre Raberba Winner had made sure that I was not confronted with any aspect of him. Not his presence and not news of his life. I had no damn idea what had happened to him after that nightmare ‘pizza night’ other than a vague knowledge that he was no longer with Trowa. Sober? What the hell? I wonder sometimes how long we’d have stood there staring at each other if my dog hadn’t chosen that moment to drag his giggling groomer around the corner.

‘Here’s your pony, Mr. Maxwell!’ Julie told me, all out of breath and grinning from being dragged across the store. ‘All prettied up again!’

‘Thanks, Julie,’ I smiled, taking the leash from her and giving Reason his ‘good boy’ pat for finding me. He liked Julie and the other groomers at the Palace well enough, but I swear the dog thought we came just so he could play his ‘find the Duo’ game afterward. ‘He looks great!’

My monster chose that moment to jump up, putting his paws on my shoulders to give me one of his disgusting doggie kisses, his odd reward for my playing my part of the game properly, I think.

‘Reason,’ I admonished and he hopped back down while Julie laughed at us, giving Reason a last pat and waving as she went back to work. My white carpet woofed after her, his flag of a tail waving enthusiastically as though he somehow knew that it looked quite impressive all clean and brushed and silky. ‘Show off,’ I muttered and he looked up at me with his head cocked as if to say, ‘Yeah? And?’

There was a sound from Quatre and when I looked back that way, it was probably just my imagination that he was a step further away. ‘So… that’s your dog?’ he asked inanely, looking just a bit freaked out, but I suppose it was better than the fit of humiliation he’d been having. That moment, at least, seemed to have passed.

‘Yeah,’ I said, just as inanely. Reason has a way of picking out the interaction people from random other customers and turned Quatre’s way with his tail still waving, curious to see who the new guy was. Quatre tentatively held out a hand for Reason to sniff and my dog happily obliged. He didn’t seem to detect the scent of space aliens or anything else that upset him, and I found myself oddly… I don’t know… disappointed that the animal hadn’t instinctively known that Quatre was an evil man.

Ok, so that was one of my twelve year old moments. Guess it was kind of stupid to think that mean people should smell funny.

But then Reason looked up at me questioningly, somehow seeming to get that there was something about the new guy that made me uneasy, and he came to settle on my feet the way he does when he thinks I need to be protected from something. I rubbed at his ear gratefully, and wondered if a dog could be a security blanket. I’d have to talk to Doc Epstein about it. It was probably one of those ‘not healthy’ issues that needed to go on my list of things to work on.

Quatre didn’t seem to understand that Reason planting himself between us meant anything other than the dog belonged to me, but he stayed focused there anyway, as though it was easier than meeting my gaze.

Though his eyes looked a million miles away.

‘My shrink says the odds of working things out with Trowa aren’t very good,’ he suddenly blurted, confessing it to my dog and just sort of letting me over hear it. Reason cocked his head, probably confused by the stressed sound of Quatre’s voice. I didn’t know what to say to that, but he wasn’t done. ‘He says we don’t have enough in common and that I should… move on.’

I snorted. There was that phrase again; I really was coming to hate it. ‘Your shrink’s an ass then,’ I heard myself say and suddenly Quatre Winner just didn’t seem all that damn scary any more. And didn’t that thought just hit with a jolt? Scary? Where had that come from? I had been… afraid of him? Afraid of what? Afraid of his words? Of his… disdain? I had been avoiding him all the months I’d been back because… why?

I had not wanted to see Quatre because some part of my head had been half convinced that he would be able to toss more words at me and make me… what? Run away again? Break me again? I wanted to laugh thinking about it; all my assurances to Doc that I ‘got’ that part about my issues being my own, had just been so much hot air. I’d known it, but my head hadn’t been convinced. It had never been about Quatre Winner, it had been about me right from the beginning. He’d never had the power to hurt me until I’d given it to him.

Completely unaware of my internal epiphany, he turned away from Reason and ran his fingers through the fronds of a couple of the feathers next to him. ‘We’re… supposed to have dinner tonight…’ he said, his voice just full of all manner of scared, and hesitant, and this vague despair. I took a look around and realized just why in the hell we were where we were.

‘His place?’ I asked and he nodded, his eyes with that million mile away look again. I shook my head as much at myself as at him, reaching out to pluck one of the red mice from the rack. ‘Idiot,’ I muttered. ‘Here,’ I said, tossing it to him. ‘Ignore Gus completely and win over Duncan. Gus will come around when he’s damn good and ready.’

He caught the toy, finally bringing his gaze up to me and not my dog, eyes wide with a desperate hope in them that I suddenly realized had nothing to do with Trowa or cats or… that weird ‘sober’ comment.

‘I’m so sorry,’ came out of his mouth all in a rush, directed at me, sounding like it was something that he’d been practicing for a long time. He cringed, almost as though he hadn’t known it was coming, but then bulled forward. ‘I am. Duo… God, I am so very sorry…’

My name passing his lips made me think of another time and another place and he seemed to see it, staggering to a halt and that spark of hope fading in his eyes like a dying ember.

‘Tell it to Trowa,’ I told him gruffly, feeling sorry for him despite over a year’s worth of resolve to never let it happen.

‘I… will,’ he whispered, clutching the mouse like I’d given him the Hope diamond, and talking to my dog again. ‘I have. But I wronged you too, and… and…’

It was creepy to see him floundering around like that. Creepy and all kinds of wrong; Papa Winner didn’t raise up no faint-of-heart children, and Quatre had been the cream of the crop. There was something fundamentally wrong with seeing Mr. Zero-system struggling with words, his eyes all shining like he needed a teddy bear or… a stiff drink.

I dry washed a hand over my face, trying to block out the sight of him that was tugging at all the things that Doc Epstein said were triggers for me. Orphans, strays, the helpless. God, I wanted to tell him, don’t make puppy-eyes at me!

I wanted to hate him. I did. And it kind of scared me when I realized that I really did want that. A man should not actively want to hate anything. That spoke more about the man than about the object of the hatred. Sister and Father would have had all manner of things to say about that, starting with that ‘turn the other cheek’ thing that I’d never really cared for.

There were a lot of words that were associated with this whole ‘relationship’ thing when the guys spoke about Trowa and Quatre… ‘tentative’, ‘maybe’, ‘try’, ‘uncertain’. I had to wonder if that was because of me. Was Trowa holding back, waiting for my judgment? He said that what was between him and Quatre had nothing to do with me, but… was that really true in the grand scheme of things? If Trowa truly was my family in heart if not in blood, how could he ignore my feelings in the matter?

The truth was… he couldn’t. Not really. Even if he thought he could.

I dropped my hand away from my face and kept the ‘Fuck’ behind my teeth as best I could. Reason looked up at me as if asking if we could go yet, bored with the whole soul searching thing. I snagged two more of the mice off the wall, tossing the orange one to Quatre and keeping the purple for Gertrude.

‘You’re gonna need a second one so they don’t fight over it once Gus decides you don’t suck,’ I grumbled. ‘Don’t drink anything out of a bottle around him and avoid making loud noises.’

I looked at him hard then, while he couldn’t seem to figure out what to say. ‘And don’t you fucking hurt my brother again asshole, or my dog will eat you.’

All he could do was clutch his mice and nod, and I wondered if I should be amused or scared that the line seemed to fan that spark of hope into a flame that shone with an old, familiar light of determination.

I doubt that I would ever forget, but maybe I could learn to forgive… given a few more therapy sessions.

‘Thank you,’ he finally managed, while I thought about insecurities and cultural gulfs and the odds. Almost, I told him to ditch his too socially conscious shrink, but decided to leave that one go for another day. Admitting to myself with a sigh that there were going to be other days. The box of avoidance was open and there wasn’t going to be any going back. And I suppose, given enough time, I’d get used to that idea.

Quatre took a step away, offering up a timid, ‘I’ll see you?’ as though understanding we’d probably gotten about as much from the encounter as we were likely to.

I nodded and he headed for the front of the store and the check-outs, only glancing back once, as though making sure I wasn’t flipping him off behind his back.

And if I chose to explore the dog treat aisle before checking out myself, it was only because Reason had been such a patient dog, and not because of any desire to make sure Quatre was gone first. Really.

Was I a little bit relieved? It was probably too soon to say, but I supposed it was at least going to make for an interesting dinner conversation with Heero. I went over opening lines in my head as we made our way through the store to the bones and chew toys section. ‘So guess who I ran into today?’ or maybe ‘Quatre says hi’.

I grinned down at Reason. ‘Come on boy, let’s get you a treat and head for home.’

He wuffed his agreement with the plan, and it was a warm and comforting thought that I didn’t even think of Devil’s Palm when I said that word anymore. Home was where Heero was waiting.

 

End

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