‘Thanksgiving?’ he asked, an odd look on his face. Kind of perplexed with a hint of pensive behind it.
‘Yes, Thanksgiving, Duo,’ I chuckled. ‘Surely you’ve heard of it?’
He managed a half-hearted glare. ‘I’ve seen the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special, Yuy,’ he grumbled and I could tell we were skirting the edge of his somewhat easily aroused defensiveness. He hates appearing… in his estimation… like some uneducated ‘hick’.
‘Charlie who?’ I asked, exuding an aura of confusion that let him take the higher verbal ground.
He rolled his eyes theatrically. ‘Charlie Brown? Charles Shultz? Snoopy? Come on, man… they’re icons!’
‘I’ve heard of Snoopy,’ I allowed with a faint frown. ‘But what do beagles have to do with Thanksgiving?’
He laughed and threw himself down on the couch beside me, leaning against my shoulder and grinning widely. I smiled back, fairly certain we’d gotten past the moment.
‘Never mind,’ he soothed. ‘Nothing, really. I suppose a dinner supplied by a dog has little to do with reality. So tell me about this invite.’
‘It’s no big deal,’ I told him, walking that edge between down-playing and misleading. ‘Just dinner at Quatre and Trowa’s and probably some of the Magacnacs.’
‘Not one of those huge dinner party things?’ he asked cautiously, and I knew he was dying to inquire after… certain people, but didn’t want to make it sound like his attendance was contingent on the guest list.
‘Shouldn’t be all that big,’ I speculated casually, not looking at him. ‘Relena told me that she’s been invited to Zechs and Noin’s, and Wufei’s going out of town with Sally to visit some of her family.’
He grunted non-committally and mulled it over. I could almost hear the gears going around in his head. ‘We don’t have to watch football or anything, do we?’
I blinked for a second and wondered about the notion, but I suppose, commercially speaking, Thanksgiving did rather look like a sports thing. ‘No,’ I chuckled. ‘Though… if Abdul and Rashid are going to be there, they may try to organize a game of touch football again.’
He went pensive again in a blink and I winced internally. Another of those things he’d never done. ‘Touch football?’ he ventured. ‘You’d… explain the rules, right?’
I couldn’t help a laugh, though I’d meant something more reassuring. ‘Don’t worry… when Rashid is playing, there really aren’t any rules. Get the ball down the field to the other team’s goal no matter what.’
‘Uh… this is a game?’ he asked, looking only slightly nervous.
Since he hadn’t completely balked, I gave him a side-ways look, grinning in a way I knew was slightly predatory. ‘We haven’t broken anybody yet. Just make sure you’re on Rashid’s team.’
It got a laugh out of him and I remembered that he’d spent some time with Quatre and his private ‘army’ during the war. Maybe horsing around with the Magacnacs was something familiar. He had to think about it a bit longer, watching me closely as though gauging my trustworthiness, or maybe just doing a mental version of flipping a coin. Sometimes I just can’t tell what’s going through that head of his.
‘It’s not a dress up thing, is it?’ he finally asked, almost like he felt he had to question something, just for appearances sake.
‘Nope,’ I said. ‘Especially if we’re playing football.’
He nodded almost to himself before giving a casual shrug. ‘Sure; not like we had plans that day anyway… right?’
I smiled warmly. ‘All right then, I’ll call Quatre and let him know.’
‘Ok,’ he agreed and dropped a kiss on my cheek before heading back upstairs with the load of clean towels he’d just folded. I watched him go and decided I’d call Quatre from the office in the morning. I’d need a little privacy because I also needed to talk to Rashid.
Maybe we’d never actually broken anybody in our annual games of ‘touch’ football, but we’d sure bent the hell out of a few. Bringing Duo slowly back into the fold did not include throwing him to the wolves of traditional Magacnac macho sporting events.
Rashid and Abdul would just have to deal.