Fuckin' A

disclaimer: I don\'t own Gundam Wing, its characters, etc. This is a FANfiction site, so, it\'s only reasonable to assume that this story is a work of FANfiction. If it was an ORIGINAL fiction, it would be in the ORIGINAL fiction section.


Fuckin’ A


It wasn’t a bad morning.

It wasn bad bad day.

It wasn’t a bad week.

It wasn’t even a bad year.

It was a historically unrivaled blood-boiling frustrating life.

Quatre thought about this in his newly crunched car.

He’d been under the impression up until that point that his P.O.S. car was indestructible. It was heavy. It was built low to the ground. And, he’d been driving it ever since he’d driven it off of a user lor lot when he was in high school. That made it a seven-year long love-hate relationship.

This was the freakest of freak accidents.

He’d been on his way to work as usual, driving through the same four-way intersection that he always drove through, with the same feelings of vague resentment that he always felt.

The rain was falling down heavy, drowning out all other sounds from the outside world.

He didn’t hear the sirens.

The light turned green, and he pressed the gas with about as much forethought as a person would give to scratching an ear. When his car was about one third of the way through the intersection, an SUV barreling down the road perpendicular in excess of ninety-five miles per hour cut clean through the nose of Quatre’s car, shearing off the entire front end and sending it into a fantastic stomach-spinning ride into a traffic post.

He never knew that he’d been knocked out until he woke up.

It was a startled awakening, similar to the kind of a falling dream or of nodding away during class.

His chin jerked up and he shook his head in disorientation. The airbag had deployed, as it should have, tough it didn’t stop the windshield from breaking.

There was glass everywhere, he could feel shards under his limp fingertips.

Shatterproof windshields had come along a bit too late for his grandfather of a car.

He had to be bleeding. He knew it, though his eyes hadn’t yet become focused enough to see it.

The moments before the impact played in slow-motion behind his eyes, episodic moments that were out of sequence but had led up to the same conclusion.

There was rain pouring through the gash where his windshield should have been, running in rivers and falls down the slant of his dash and falling down to soak the upholstery.

For a time that could have been seconds or minutes, he sat in silence, not yet feeling sore or upset.

Then, spontaneous and impassioned, he cried, in a lung-emptying fashion, the only expletive that he felt encompassed fairly-well whatever it was that he felt “Fuckin’ A!”

Then a spell of fatigue hit him.

Did he have a concussion?

He was out like a light.

++

The sterile smell of a hospital was the first thing that he noticed when he woke up for the third time that day.

His eyes opened in determined bewilderment, no made-for-movies fluttering, just open. He looked straight up: a white tiled ceiling with nothing special about them. He looked to the right: fluid bags, a small night table with a card and a bouquet, and a call button. He swallowed and turned to his left: Rashid in a visitor’s chair, his father’s watchdog, worried himself to sleep.

Quatre parted his parched lips, which felt a little tender, or was that numbness? “Ruh…” he moistened his lips, “Rashid.”

He would have attempted a feeble hand motion to accompany his croaky grabs for attention if he didn’t feel so much as if he’d been cemented to the bed. Even moving his head took an unprecedented amount of effort.

He swallowed again, and spoke louder, “Rashid.”

Rashid startled awake and to ntiontion, “Master Quatre! I’ll call the nurse!”

He nearly ejected from the chair, always though, in a neat and powerful way that Quatre admired, and pressed the buzzer on the opposite side of the hospital bed.

“How long have I been out?” Quatre asked.

Rashid placed a steadying hand over Quatre’s chest, a preemptory gesture to make sure that his charge didn’t try anything stupid, like sitting up, “Half a day, maybe.”

As predicted, Quatre attempted to raise himself, then laid back down when he was reminded of Rashid’s hand.

“When can I go back to work?” Quatre asked next, watching Rashid reclaim his seat.

“I don’t know,” Rashid admitted. “You should take some time off.”

Quatre laughed, the weak laugh of a man confined to a bed.

He needed his job, as shitty as it was. It was how he paid the bills for his claustrophobic apartment, his recently made scrap metal car, his meager food, and his dog, affectionately named Stabler after the detective from the show Law & Order: SVU.

He would have said more if the nurse hadn’t shown up.

She was animated and obviously nervous. Quatre observed no rings on her fingers, and figured her for an eligible maiden who was standing in the presence of the very eligible heir to the Winner family fortune.

He smiled tolerantly at her, and listened with half and ear to the things that she had to say. Most of it was medical mumbo-jumbo that he wouldn’t understand even if he’d given her his full un-divided attention.

Above everything, he wanted first and foremost to get out of bed, and secondly to know which medicine he’d be taking in what dose and for what amount of time.

His injuries were mostly superficial, thanks to the airbag and seatbelt. He’d needed a splint of sorts for his broken nose, stitches on his forehead since some glass had decided to wedge itself there during impact, stitches for a busted lip because of his collision with the airbag, and band-aids everywhere else. There was extensive bruising all over his body, but there wasn’t much to be done about that except to suck it up and walk it off.

Rashid helped him up on his journey to the washroom, and stood guard outside as Quatre went about his business.

He looked at himself in the mirror and felt a repulsion to himself that was so acute that it was funny. He grimaced at himself, a move made possible by all the painkillers in his system.

The face reflected back at him was almost unrecognizable.

It was swollen, stitched, gauzed, colored, and ugly.

“At least Stabler won’t care,” he consoled himself before washing up and returning to his reserved space under the umbrella of Rashid’s care.

Seeing the concern on Rashid\'s face, Quatre swallowed his pride and allowed himself to submit a little to his former guardian\'s maternal instincts, \"You can walk me home,\" he offered.

That seemed to brighten him up.

++

As expected, Rashid didn\'t seem very pleased with the apartment that Quatre had taken to living in after moving out of his father\'s estate. The complex was like a rabbit warren, tight and compact.

Quatre lived on the third floor of Building D, where he said goodbye to Rashid, refusing anything that sounded even remotely like charity from the gentle giant. He had grown above that long ago.

\"I\'ll live,\" he assured him, and turned him around, then watched his descent down the rickety stairs, and piling into the company owned black sedan. When he was sure that Rasid was irrefutably gone, Quatre entered his apartment where a puddle of adoring puppy goo threw itself down at his feet.

\"Hey Goober,\" Quatre greeted him, and nudged him out of the way so that he could shut the door.

He set his keys down on the countertop and picked up the phone which he used to call for bus information. He didn\'t have enough money for another car.

He didn\'t have enough money for a bed, a dresser, a dining table, or bookshelves.

He had many books that gathered like dust in the corners of his tiny apartment, stacked up about knee-high with the second-hand store reciepts poking out from between their pages like tongues. Above all other comforts, Quatre loved those that provided him with information. Information was power.

After he fed Stabler, brushed his teeth, and read ten more pages into After the Sun Sets; he burrowed into his palette on the floor next to his stack of political science books and unifunction alarm clock, called Stabler to him, and then fell asleep.

++

The alarm went off at five-thirty, and Quatre finally felt it.

His entire body felt sharp, and it was a struggle to get up. His face felt particularly bad, and it hurt when he winced at the pain. He felt like crying, which he did freely.
Stabler whimpered next to him and pressed his head to Quatre\'s exposed side.

After a few tries, Quatre managed to press the button to turn off his alarm, and raise himself up to his feet. \"Oh god,\" he cried weakly with the strain. The soreness seemed to have seeped into the very marrow of his bones.

He staggered to the kitchen and popped his prescribed pain medication before hobbling over to the bathroom for an abbreviated soak in warm water. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Most of the swelling had gone down, though his right eye was still shut about halfway. It still hurt to be expressive, so he forced his face to remain motionless as he inspected it. Gruesome was a good word for it. He looked as if he\'d been bludgeoned, which, in a way, he had.

++

His journey down the stairs of his building was agonizing as he juggled his umbrella, his briefcase, and supporting himself on the rail. He tried, unsuccessfully, not to weep on the way down. The painkillers were taking a while to kick in. He almost felt like calling in sick for the day, but pushed on. His job didn\'t require much movement. It was a desk job.

\"Minimal movement,\" he cheered himself repeatedly during his descent, and then, on the way to the stop where he\'d, hopefully, have the opportunity to sit. \"Bus stops have benches,\" was another motivating slogan he reminded himself of periodically.

++

There were only a few people at the stop when he got there, and he took the available bench space as if he were thirsty and it was a glass of water. He tried not to look at the other people around him.

He didn\'t really mind them looking at him. That was normal, and he was hideous enough at the moment to justify scrutiny.

The thing that would make prying eyes intolerable would be if he were to return the looks. That would be embarrassing for both parties involved.

++

The bus arrived around six forty-five, and Quatre was feeling marginally better than he had when he\'d first woken up that morning. Stairs were still a bitch, though, and he took them as quickly as his condition allowed. His joints, the mucles, the tendons, everything felt splintered. He dreaded the inevitable climb up the stairs of Building D.

He dropped his money in the slot, and looked around, to his great dismay, at a full bus. He would have to stand. He wiped a few renegade tears of frustration from his eyes with the sleeve of his suit and limped towards the back of the bus.

He hated looking like a wimp, and figured that he could find a good corner at the back where he could become one with the shadows.

An outstretched hand stopped his progress. \"You may take this seat,\" a soft baritone offered, muted against the pitter patter of the rain on the roof of the vehicle.

Quatre felt his heart leap for both joy and irritation. He turned his head minutely, and observed the good samaritan out of the corner of his eyes. Inside he made a face of profound disgust aimed at himself, and cursed everything that he knew up and down to his heart\'s blackest desire.

\"Don\'t worry about me,\" he mumbled, barely moving his lips, which burned. The blow from the airbag must have chapped them.

\"I insist,\" the other man said, and stood up to prove his point. He took Quatre gently by the elbow and guided him to sit (against his will).

\"Thank you,\" Quatre piped up, feeling bitter about the situation. He lowered his head, and turned it a bit to the side to deter any further viewing of his deforming wounds. His cheeks felt hot from the blush that he knew was clouding them.

Through his lashes, he saw the right hand of his savior. It was well formed and thin, with long thin fingers that loosely gripped a nice leather briefcase, a rich brown burgundy one. The suit looked nice, too, tailored and ebony black. He looked too well-groomed for the bus.

Quatre couldn\'t see his face, now, but he remembered the glimpse that he\'d gotten.
What a glimpse it was.

Handsome eyes, handsome hair, handsome jawline, handsome nose, handsome cheek bones, handsome eyebrows, handsome everything.

It made the misery of being trapped in his own uglied up body all the more potent.
Quatre fingered the edges of his own black suit, faded and worn, and prayed for a short trip.


TBC...


note(s):
1. by god...I am EVIL. I swear to update on my other stories, soon.
2. I am a Law and Order junkie. Therefore, so will be Quatre.
3. I don\'t know how long this story will be. I hope it will be short ;>> I have too many stories.
4. thanks for reading, and please review. And, THANKS to SariL2 for looking over the first few paragraphs and giving me the green light.