Fuckin' A

\"...If you were a hamburger, you\'d be McGorgeous,\" Andy Frum countered, leaning back in his conference chair and chucking a wadded up McDonalds wrapper into the trash can five feet away.

Quatre chewed on a clementine wedge, amused, \"Touche.\" Then, he swallowed, \"However! I have one better.\"

\"Nah-Surely not!\" Frum feigned astonishment.

The pink bud of a tongue pressed between Quatre\'s lips as he smiled, his mischevious face. He recited in his most accentuated hick-ccent, \"If yew wer ah booger, Ah\'d pick yew first!\"

Frum\'s nose accordioned, \"Ouch! That was so stupid-it hurt!\"

Sometimes Quatre and Frum would end up eating lunch together and exchanging bad puns or other nuggets of nerdiness. Outside of work, they tended not to fraternize, but in Conference room A (codenamed: Mothra), they were good friends.

All of the conference rooms in the small company had names from old monster movies.

There was a contest for the opening of the building where all employees were to submit ideas for conference room names. It was Harvey Donaldson\'s idea that won, and the prize that he collected was the corner office overlooking the shallow valley between the company hill and a residential hill. It was scenic and a few cubic centimeters larger than everyone else\'s office.

Some people were still bitter about it and grumbled whenever they passed his door.

\"Are you getting your stitches removed soon?\" Andy inquired, since the lacerations that they\'d held together seemed mostly healed.

\"Thursday,\" Quatre replied readily.

Andy grinned, \"Counting down the days?\"

Quatre shrugged, \"Not really.\"

\"I see...Did the police ever follow up on you?\"

\"No...are they supposed to?\"

\"I dunno.\"

Quatre nodded.

\"Did you file an insurance claim?\"

\"Sure did.\"

\"Well-?\"

\"Well what?\"

\"Did you get anything out of it?\"

\"They haven\'t replied.\"

\"Did you file charges against the guy that hit you?\"

\"Sure didn\'t.\"

Andy gave him a hard look, \"Why the hell not?\"

Quatre sniffed mildly, as he often did when he found a matter to be trifling, \"He\'s probably getting his ass reamed by the state. By the time that they\'re through with him, I doubt that he\'d have any money to compensate me for the loss of my devilish good looks.\"

Andy stuck out his tongue, \"Psh! As if.\"

\"I don\'t need this from you,\" Quatre replied sticking his tongue out in kind. \"Lunch hour\'s up,\" he said, tossing rhinds into the trash.

++

When Quatre reached home that afternoon, he saw a plump little beige envelope forcibly wedged into the space between his front door and the surrounding frame.

\"Cat shit,\" he muttered yanking the offending article out. He already knew who it was from, but it still ignited the fires of Hades in his gut when he read the return address (that was always very neatly embossed on the upper left hand corner). He was so irritated that he couldn\'t help but stutter, \"F-fh-ffffuck!\"

He stabbed his keys into the lock and erupted into his apartment. Stabler scurried, as best he could, out of the way, and looked to his guardian appealingly. Quatre looked at him and shook the envelope in front of his snout to give him a better look as he ranted, \"You see this, Stabler? This is guit! Bribery! An unpronounced contract! A leash! A ball and chain!\" He stumbled on until he ran out of names and eventually out of adjetives and out of euphemisms.

After venting, he felt the initial anger and indignation fly out of him. Anger was never something that he found easy to maintain. It took an unprecedented amount of concentrated effort to keep his brows furrowed, mouth turned down into a frown, teeth clenched, fists balled, ear tips red, and hackles raised.

A mellow sadness smothered the fires in his heart and took the square out of his shoulders. He sighed, defeated by his own gentle nature, \"I\'ll have to return it.\" He set the offending article down on the counter next to the phone.

He set his satchel down and, on his knees, beckoned Stabler to him.

\"I love you the most,\" he said when he had Stabler securely in his arms.

++

The reciever picked up on the third ring, making Quatre\'s skin prick with anxiety.

He\'d already looked at the other two dogs that he\'d been considering and found them to be not completely true to their ads (partly due to omission). One was a furniture eater and the other was too noisy for keeping in a cheap apartment complex.

\"Hello?\" a rich feminine voice carried over the line.

It was a lovely voice that Quatre could have sworn that he\'d heard before, \"Ah, I apologize for bothering you, but, I read in the paper an ad that you have a dog for adoption.\"

\"Oh?\" there was the sound of paper shuffling. \"Yes. I think that she\'s still here. You see...I\'m not the real person adopting her out. He stepped out a little while ago, but, I think that I can set up an appointment time for you.\"

\"Oh, okay.\"

++

On Thursday, the stitches were removed and Quatre couldn\'t help unconsciously running the tip of his tongue along the slightly raised line of skin that they left behind on his lips. The doctor looked over his scars and gave him a thumbs up. Then, later, Andy checked them over as well, and also nodded his approval. Quatre was beginning to look more like himself.

Friday, Quatre was in high spirits. The thought of another dog had him tickled, triumphantly overcoming the more Quatre-esque pain of parting with money. He\'d decided on \'Cabot\' rather than VanBuren as a name for his new pet. He liked VanBuren\'s hard edge, but eventually decided that he liked the iciness of Cabot more. Something about Cabot curled his lips into a \'gotcha\' grin so sinister that it even intimidated Stabler.

It was after work and he was feeling good about things. There was a light drizzle that rolled off of the slope of his umbrella and pattered harmlessly around him. In his hand, he held a notecard with the dogowner\'s address and had decided against all better reasoning to walk there. It was a nice day.

Soon, the light drizzle turned into a downpour and Quatre wished, just a little bit, that he\'d taken a cab or the bus. He stepped closer to the curb to hail a cab, and like magic, one appeared out of the gloom. It stopped about fifteen feet short of him, so he had to walk to it.

When he reached the passenger door, he overheard some muted squaking from inside. It was one-sided, so he assumed that there was a cellphone involved. While he was making up his mind whether to knock on the window or not, the door flew open.

To Quatre\'s most extreme discomfort, he wasn\'t hit by the flat of the door, but the thin edge. It struck the meat of his thigh through his slacks and dragged him a few inches before he lost his balance and collapsed down in shock on the soppy sidewalk.

Rather than dwell on unreasoning anger, or the intense pain, Quatre couldn\'t curb the realization that he\'d just been hit by an idle car.

When he regained his focus, he was staring up into the eyes of a complete stranger. He was Asian, but beyond that, Quatre had no idea.

\"Are you alright?\" the man asked with no trace of an accent. He was holding an umbrella over Quatre\'s head.

\"Yeah,\" Quatre sniffed pathetically. He couldn\'t help that it hurt.

The Asian man pressed his lips together, he looked genuinely concerned. He held out his hand for Quatre to take, which he did. \"I apologize. I didn\'t mean to open the door into you.\"

\"It\'s alright,\" Quatre assured him when he was back on his feet.

\"Where are you headed?\"

\"Just a little bit uptown...\" Quatre replied vaguely.

\"Get in the cab. I\'ll pay your fare,\" the Asian man offered.

Quatre shook his head, \"Oh, no...I couldn\'t,\" and held up his hands to emphasize his point.

\"Yes, you can,\" the Asian man told him, gently ushering him inside, Quatre protesting all the while.

The Asian man stayed outside a little longer to retrieve Quatre\'s umbrella, and was soon in the cab with him.

For Quatre, it was really awkward.

But, it would get worse.

TBC....


note(s):
1. Cabot was the A.D.A. in Law & Order SVU
2. the pick-up lines existed before me...so, don\'t credit me for them ;>>