On the twelvth day of Christmas...
If I was at all a football fan this would be where I spiked the ball in the end zone and did a little dance (did I get that sports reference right?), because I seriously didn't think this was going to come off this year.
But here we are, Christmas morning and I actually have a story and it's actually fresh off the type-writer instead of being covered in dust and cobwebs (course, this just means the typo content is likely to be higher).
So off you go to celebrate Yule or Sol or Thor or Christmas or Wombat day. Enjoy!
And now the best part...
*hands the baton off to turnippatch Can't wait! ^_____^
This is the third in what has become some kind of loose series. Started in 2006? 2007? With Starting Traditions, followed in 2011 with the lamely titled Traditions II. Now here I am back again with
I wasn’t entirely sure why I got to be the one who was left sitting next to Duo’s lounge chair while the other guys were busy unpacking and getting us settled into the bungalow. Because I’d lost the round of blind man’s rock, paper, scissors was what I’d been told, but I’m still not sure I could trust my crew of ‘impartial’ judges. I think it had more to do with being Duo’s Preventer partner, and the one most likely to survive when Duo woke up and found himself… not where he was going to be expecting to.
Without his laptop or his phone. Three weeks before Christmas.
Though in all fairness, we’d warned him. Not that appendicitis was quite the same thing as the broken bones and contusions that came with flaming helicopters. But when one ignores all the signs of acute appendicitis because one is ‘too busy’, one should expect some repercussions.
Or, as Trowa said, if you have to rub the puppy’s nose in it to teach the lesson… you rubbed the puppy’s nose. Would have been nice if he’d hung around to do the rubbing/baby-sitting after making that analogy, but you can’t argue with blind man’s rock, paper, scissors.
‘Mufcalheleremi?’ was the first sign I had that Duo was approaching the land where communication happened again. Pain meds are such wonderful things.
‘Somewhere in the Caribbean,’ I told him, having to guess at what he was asking based strictly off what I would want to know. ‘You’d have to ask Quatre… it’s his island.’
There were several moments while whatever percentage of his brain was coherent digested that. Then, ‘isd?’
‘Private Winner vacation island,’ I said, looking out over the pool toward the beach and then the ocean. ‘Pretty nice too. Nobody here but the five of us. And be careful if you try to turn over… you’re in a lounge chair.’
There was a tiny bit of butt wiggling while he confirmed the surface under him and then an eye cracked open. ‘What’n the hell…?’
Words with real spacing… we were getting there.
‘Once they had the infection cleared up, and they were getting ready to release you, we figured out you were not going to be a good boy and… hijacked you.’
Best get that part out of the way quickly, while he was still not back in complete focus.
‘You guys… freaking kidnapped me?’ he wanted to know, rolling his head to look at me and both eyes were open now. Somewhat widely. So much for loopy.
‘If you could follow simple instructions, Maxwell,’ Wufei tossed in, and I was a bit relieved to see the guys were not going to leave me alone with this part, ‘we would not have to resort to nefarious tactics.’
The three of them were bringing trays with various items indicating lunch was served, and Trowa sat his burden down and then moved in to ratchet Duo’s lounge chair up into a sitting position. Wufei adjusted the beach umbrella to make sure the shade would not shift while we ate, and then the lot of them settled in chairs around us.
‘I don’t recall any instructions…’ Duo began, trying hard to maintain a tone somewhere between aggrieved and petulant. But he was eyeing the glasses full of liquid that obviously involved fruit, ice and a blender.
‘Right on your calendar,’ Trowa cut him off, handing over one of the frosty concoctions. ‘I believe this year it read something to the affect that there were to be no hospital stays after Thanksgiving.’
‘This one wasn’t my fault!’ Duo groused, but accepted his fruity brew without complaint.
I raised an eyebrow in Quatre’s direct and was assured, ‘ no alcohol’ in an aside that no one else heard.
I nodded and settled back with a plate of fruit slices and my own drink.
‘And whose fault would it be that you ignored severe stomach pains and nausea, Maxwell?’ Wufei had to ask.
‘It wasn’t that bad…’ Duo tried, but he was nibbling at some kind of pastry thing and not trying all that hard, and I think even he had accepted that the whole emergency appendectomy had not been his most shining moment.
Quatre let out with a snort of derision. ‘Give it up.’
I’m not sure which one of us was the most surprised when… Duo actually did.
‘So, I assume you didn’t pack me in a suitcase and smuggle me through some airport to get me here?’
Trowa grinned across at him and reached out to bump the leg of Duo’s deck chair with his foot. ‘We passed you off as a drunken bridegroom on his way home to his wedding after a killer bachelor party.’
‘Not so killer if I was the only one too drunk to walk,’ Duo quipped back.
‘Or sit up… or do anything but drool…’ Wufei muttered and Quatre took pity. After he stopped laughing.
‘As if the Winner family has any need for airports,’ he smirked.
‘It does pay to be friends with the elite,’ I said giving Quatre and his elitness a salute with my glass.
The fruit tray made another round, and there was a moment given over to nibbling and sipping.
‘So….’ Duo asked, tone going for a level of casual nobody was buying, ‘how long are we staying here?’
‘A week,’ Quatre told him in a tone that wasn’t just going for, but completely achieving, firm. There was no doubt that a Winner line had just been drawn in the figurative sand.
Duo opened his mouth on a retort that looked like it was going to be pretty hot, but he hesitated, perhaps analyzing that line in the sand.
‘That is not going to leave me much time to finalize the Christmas party for the kids,’ he finally managed, turning the heat down, and if he had to bite his tongue to do it, you couldn’t tell.
The pastry he crammed in his mouth immediately after delivering the line, guaranteed that no matter what the reply was, he would have to take a couple moments to chew and swallow before he could say anything he might regret.
‘All the arrangements were pretty much done before you… got sick,’ Trowa said.
‘I have been helping you out the last few years you know,’ I had to point out. ‘I think I have all the high points covered.’
Duo consumed another pastry.
‘He’s wanting to run down a check-list with you, Yuy!’ Wufei chuckled and it was kind of funny to see Duo’s self censorship backfire, because witty come-backs need to happen much faster than his chewing was allowing.
Quatre moved the pastry tray out his reach and shifted a bowl of mango slices into its place. ‘Really, Duo, nothing is going to explode while you take a week to relax and recover.’
‘But what if something comes in that needs an immediate reply?’ Duo wanted to know.
‘Then Heero will reply to it,’ Trowa informed him, his firm tone not quite as good as Quatre’s, but pretty close.
It got him a narrow-eyed look and I knew at some point in the next few days we were going to have an argument over his lack of connectivity. Because I could see he suspected he was not going to be allowed the same access that I still had. I tried hard not to look smug… no point in confirming his suspicions at this stage.
‘But…’ he began, and it was Wufei who cut him off this time, and Chang Wufei can do firm like nobody’s business.
‘Maxwell, here’s your agenda for the week,’ tone not at all spoiled by the carrot stick he was punctuating his words with. ‘Leisurely, short walks on the beach. Afternoon naps. Punctual, consistent consumption of your prescribed medication. Evenings spent with either a book, or a totally mindless movie from Winner’s massive library.'
‘No internet,’ Trowa chimed in, ‘no email, no work, no phone calls.’
I couldn’t quite decide what all I saw flit across Duo’s face… there was the expected flash of temper… you do not tell Duo Maxwell what to do… but there was something else the temper was trying to hide that looked a hell of a lot like the ghost of a smile. There was some worry in there somewhere, and I decided I really did need to run down the check-list with him for the party… a week of R&R would do him no good if he was stressing about ‘his kids’ the whole time.
We let him process that for a bit, the mangos moved when he didn’t seem to care for them, and replaced with the vegetables. He stared out across the water for a long time, and his mood gradually settled where it had been teetering between pissed off and … resigned? Accepting? I wasn’t quite sure what the ‘good’ side was, but he seemed to be moving that way.
‘You know,’ he finally ventured, ‘I’ve been thinking about making a change to the party.’
‘I thought change was bad?’ Trowa asked, while we all recalled the near disaster the year Garrison had been assigned to take over the planning when Duo’d had an altercation with a helicopter.
‘You can make changes as long as you add things in and don’t touch the basics,’ I informed him, pleased to be experienced enough to understand the workings well enough to know. It got me a warm smile from Duo.
‘So what are you thinking of adding in?’ Wufei wanted to know.
Duo expression turned thoughtful. ‘We do fine with the toy donations we get, but it just seems like those kids need so much more.’
We weren’t sure where he was going, and Trowa finally ventured, ‘clothes? Electronics? School supplies?’
Duo couldn’t help a small, almost self-deprecating grin, probably expecting to be laughed at. ‘Hopes? A future?’
‘I could open a scholarship fund,’ Quatre mused. ‘And lobby for donations to keep it viable.’
‘Do you see any advantage to setting up martial arts classes?’ Wufei asked, ‘there’s plenty of room in the basement where you have your party, to run a small class. I could work in something maybe once a week?’
‘The animal rehab group I work with has actually been looking for someplace to take some of the dogs where they would get more interaction with kids,’ Trowa said, then seemed to reconsider… perhaps imaging having to take those same animals away from those kids at the end of the day. ‘Or I could do some tumbling classes. Maybe even in conjunction with Wufei’s classes.’
Duo had that look that warned of the temptation of hugs. The vaguely watery look. I don’t think he’d expected so many offers coming from such a personal level. Despite all we’d been through together, he’s never quite understood the flame he is to everybody around him. But maybe his not expecting to be given the world is part of what makes it so easy for us to want to give it to him.
‘Or did you have something else in mind?’ I asked, before the watery look went any further.
He thought about it for a few minutes, while he fit the offers around whatever he’d had in mind.
Finally, in a hesitant kind of way that told me his ideas hadn’t quite reached a point of cohesion, ‘a kind of wish tree thing, you know? Only… not for toys.’
‘A dream tree,’ Quatre said, and it seemed a better fit. Wishes got you that doll or that toy truck you wanted, but dreams might bring you that future Duo was thinking about.
Duo nodded a bit sharply and I found myself wondering just a bit. When we had all become his ‘Christmas elves’ to start with, he’d spoken of perspective. We’d all understood the perspective he had… the same perspective as those kids. A perspective that Garrison did not have.
‘I think that’s where your scholarship money would come in, Quatre,’ Trowa grinned.
‘It’s a bit late this year anyway, ‘ Quatre informed us all, and I could tell the topic was about to be shelved in favor of that R&R line he’d drawn in his pristine white sand beach. ‘My people will call your people… we’ll do lunch.’
It made Duo laugh, but right before that watery look could fade completely, I heard myself ask.
‘What would go on your dream tree, Duo?’
He looked at me. Looked around at the lot of us. Watery wasn’t the half of it.
‘This,’ he said quietly. ‘Just this.
And we raised the dregs of our slightly less than frosty drinks in salute of family.
But here we are, Christmas morning and I actually have a story and it's actually fresh off the type-writer instead of being covered in dust and cobwebs (course, this just means the typo content is likely to be higher).
So off you go to celebrate Yule or Sol or Thor or Christmas or Wombat day. Enjoy!
And now the best part...
*hands the baton off to turnippatch Can't wait! ^_____^
This is the third in what has become some kind of loose series. Started in 2006? 2007? With Starting Traditions, followed in 2011 with the lamely titled Traditions II. Now here I am back again with
I wasn’t entirely sure why I got to be the one who was left sitting next to Duo’s lounge chair while the other guys were busy unpacking and getting us settled into the bungalow. Because I’d lost the round of blind man’s rock, paper, scissors was what I’d been told, but I’m still not sure I could trust my crew of ‘impartial’ judges. I think it had more to do with being Duo’s Preventer partner, and the one most likely to survive when Duo woke up and found himself… not where he was going to be expecting to.
Without his laptop or his phone. Three weeks before Christmas.
Though in all fairness, we’d warned him. Not that appendicitis was quite the same thing as the broken bones and contusions that came with flaming helicopters. But when one ignores all the signs of acute appendicitis because one is ‘too busy’, one should expect some repercussions.
Or, as Trowa said, if you have to rub the puppy’s nose in it to teach the lesson… you rubbed the puppy’s nose. Would have been nice if he’d hung around to do the rubbing/baby-sitting after making that analogy, but you can’t argue with blind man’s rock, paper, scissors.
‘Mufcalheleremi?’ was the first sign I had that Duo was approaching the land where communication happened again. Pain meds are such wonderful things.
‘Somewhere in the Caribbean,’ I told him, having to guess at what he was asking based strictly off what I would want to know. ‘You’d have to ask Quatre… it’s his island.’
There were several moments while whatever percentage of his brain was coherent digested that. Then, ‘isd?’
‘Private Winner vacation island,’ I said, looking out over the pool toward the beach and then the ocean. ‘Pretty nice too. Nobody here but the five of us. And be careful if you try to turn over… you’re in a lounge chair.’
There was a tiny bit of butt wiggling while he confirmed the surface under him and then an eye cracked open. ‘What’n the hell…?’
Words with real spacing… we were getting there.
‘Once they had the infection cleared up, and they were getting ready to release you, we figured out you were not going to be a good boy and… hijacked you.’
Best get that part out of the way quickly, while he was still not back in complete focus.
‘You guys… freaking kidnapped me?’ he wanted to know, rolling his head to look at me and both eyes were open now. Somewhat widely. So much for loopy.
‘If you could follow simple instructions, Maxwell,’ Wufei tossed in, and I was a bit relieved to see the guys were not going to leave me alone with this part, ‘we would not have to resort to nefarious tactics.’
The three of them were bringing trays with various items indicating lunch was served, and Trowa sat his burden down and then moved in to ratchet Duo’s lounge chair up into a sitting position. Wufei adjusted the beach umbrella to make sure the shade would not shift while we ate, and then the lot of them settled in chairs around us.
‘I don’t recall any instructions…’ Duo began, trying hard to maintain a tone somewhere between aggrieved and petulant. But he was eyeing the glasses full of liquid that obviously involved fruit, ice and a blender.
‘Right on your calendar,’ Trowa cut him off, handing over one of the frosty concoctions. ‘I believe this year it read something to the affect that there were to be no hospital stays after Thanksgiving.’
‘This one wasn’t my fault!’ Duo groused, but accepted his fruity brew without complaint.
I raised an eyebrow in Quatre’s direct and was assured, ‘ no alcohol’ in an aside that no one else heard.
I nodded and settled back with a plate of fruit slices and my own drink.
‘And whose fault would it be that you ignored severe stomach pains and nausea, Maxwell?’ Wufei had to ask.
‘It wasn’t that bad…’ Duo tried, but he was nibbling at some kind of pastry thing and not trying all that hard, and I think even he had accepted that the whole emergency appendectomy had not been his most shining moment.
Quatre let out with a snort of derision. ‘Give it up.’
I’m not sure which one of us was the most surprised when… Duo actually did.
‘So, I assume you didn’t pack me in a suitcase and smuggle me through some airport to get me here?’
Trowa grinned across at him and reached out to bump the leg of Duo’s deck chair with his foot. ‘We passed you off as a drunken bridegroom on his way home to his wedding after a killer bachelor party.’
‘Not so killer if I was the only one too drunk to walk,’ Duo quipped back.
‘Or sit up… or do anything but drool…’ Wufei muttered and Quatre took pity. After he stopped laughing.
‘As if the Winner family has any need for airports,’ he smirked.
‘It does pay to be friends with the elite,’ I said giving Quatre and his elitness a salute with my glass.
The fruit tray made another round, and there was a moment given over to nibbling and sipping.
‘So….’ Duo asked, tone going for a level of casual nobody was buying, ‘how long are we staying here?’
‘A week,’ Quatre told him in a tone that wasn’t just going for, but completely achieving, firm. There was no doubt that a Winner line had just been drawn in the figurative sand.
Duo opened his mouth on a retort that looked like it was going to be pretty hot, but he hesitated, perhaps analyzing that line in the sand.
‘That is not going to leave me much time to finalize the Christmas party for the kids,’ he finally managed, turning the heat down, and if he had to bite his tongue to do it, you couldn’t tell.
The pastry he crammed in his mouth immediately after delivering the line, guaranteed that no matter what the reply was, he would have to take a couple moments to chew and swallow before he could say anything he might regret.
‘All the arrangements were pretty much done before you… got sick,’ Trowa said.
‘I have been helping you out the last few years you know,’ I had to point out. ‘I think I have all the high points covered.’
Duo consumed another pastry.
‘He’s wanting to run down a check-list with you, Yuy!’ Wufei chuckled and it was kind of funny to see Duo’s self censorship backfire, because witty come-backs need to happen much faster than his chewing was allowing.
Quatre moved the pastry tray out his reach and shifted a bowl of mango slices into its place. ‘Really, Duo, nothing is going to explode while you take a week to relax and recover.’
‘But what if something comes in that needs an immediate reply?’ Duo wanted to know.
‘Then Heero will reply to it,’ Trowa informed him, his firm tone not quite as good as Quatre’s, but pretty close.
It got him a narrow-eyed look and I knew at some point in the next few days we were going to have an argument over his lack of connectivity. Because I could see he suspected he was not going to be allowed the same access that I still had. I tried hard not to look smug… no point in confirming his suspicions at this stage.
‘But…’ he began, and it was Wufei who cut him off this time, and Chang Wufei can do firm like nobody’s business.
‘Maxwell, here’s your agenda for the week,’ tone not at all spoiled by the carrot stick he was punctuating his words with. ‘Leisurely, short walks on the beach. Afternoon naps. Punctual, consistent consumption of your prescribed medication. Evenings spent with either a book, or a totally mindless movie from Winner’s massive library.'
‘No internet,’ Trowa chimed in, ‘no email, no work, no phone calls.’
I couldn’t quite decide what all I saw flit across Duo’s face… there was the expected flash of temper… you do not tell Duo Maxwell what to do… but there was something else the temper was trying to hide that looked a hell of a lot like the ghost of a smile. There was some worry in there somewhere, and I decided I really did need to run down the check-list with him for the party… a week of R&R would do him no good if he was stressing about ‘his kids’ the whole time.
We let him process that for a bit, the mangos moved when he didn’t seem to care for them, and replaced with the vegetables. He stared out across the water for a long time, and his mood gradually settled where it had been teetering between pissed off and … resigned? Accepting? I wasn’t quite sure what the ‘good’ side was, but he seemed to be moving that way.
‘You know,’ he finally ventured, ‘I’ve been thinking about making a change to the party.’
‘I thought change was bad?’ Trowa asked, while we all recalled the near disaster the year Garrison had been assigned to take over the planning when Duo’d had an altercation with a helicopter.
‘You can make changes as long as you add things in and don’t touch the basics,’ I informed him, pleased to be experienced enough to understand the workings well enough to know. It got me a warm smile from Duo.
‘So what are you thinking of adding in?’ Wufei wanted to know.
Duo expression turned thoughtful. ‘We do fine with the toy donations we get, but it just seems like those kids need so much more.’
We weren’t sure where he was going, and Trowa finally ventured, ‘clothes? Electronics? School supplies?’
Duo couldn’t help a small, almost self-deprecating grin, probably expecting to be laughed at. ‘Hopes? A future?’
‘I could open a scholarship fund,’ Quatre mused. ‘And lobby for donations to keep it viable.’
‘Do you see any advantage to setting up martial arts classes?’ Wufei asked, ‘there’s plenty of room in the basement where you have your party, to run a small class. I could work in something maybe once a week?’
‘The animal rehab group I work with has actually been looking for someplace to take some of the dogs where they would get more interaction with kids,’ Trowa said, then seemed to reconsider… perhaps imaging having to take those same animals away from those kids at the end of the day. ‘Or I could do some tumbling classes. Maybe even in conjunction with Wufei’s classes.’
Duo had that look that warned of the temptation of hugs. The vaguely watery look. I don’t think he’d expected so many offers coming from such a personal level. Despite all we’d been through together, he’s never quite understood the flame he is to everybody around him. But maybe his not expecting to be given the world is part of what makes it so easy for us to want to give it to him.
‘Or did you have something else in mind?’ I asked, before the watery look went any further.
He thought about it for a few minutes, while he fit the offers around whatever he’d had in mind.
Finally, in a hesitant kind of way that told me his ideas hadn’t quite reached a point of cohesion, ‘a kind of wish tree thing, you know? Only… not for toys.’
‘A dream tree,’ Quatre said, and it seemed a better fit. Wishes got you that doll or that toy truck you wanted, but dreams might bring you that future Duo was thinking about.
Duo nodded a bit sharply and I found myself wondering just a bit. When we had all become his ‘Christmas elves’ to start with, he’d spoken of perspective. We’d all understood the perspective he had… the same perspective as those kids. A perspective that Garrison did not have.
‘I think that’s where your scholarship money would come in, Quatre,’ Trowa grinned.
‘It’s a bit late this year anyway, ‘ Quatre informed us all, and I could tell the topic was about to be shelved in favor of that R&R line he’d drawn in his pristine white sand beach. ‘My people will call your people… we’ll do lunch.’
It made Duo laugh, but right before that watery look could fade completely, I heard myself ask.
‘What would go on your dream tree, Duo?’
He looked at me. Looked around at the lot of us. Watery wasn’t the half of it.
‘This,’ he said quietly. ‘Just this.
And we raised the dregs of our slightly less than frosty drinks in salute of family.