17-Mar-2000

Hi hi... inspired by actual events and real live dancing cactuses...
feedback appreciated as always... everyone is so nice :)...
Disclaimer: GW isn't mine even though I spent my last tooth wishing for that. :(

A Little Out-take by Erin Cayce

Duo's grin seemed on the verge of tearing his face in half. I eyed the little wrapped bundle he'd placed before me with misgiving.

"What is it?" I asked.

He was doing a bad job of containing his excitement. "Just open it," he begged me.

But I didn't reach for it. "What is it for?" I repeated.

"TROWA!" he shouted, flinging up his hands in a gesture more characteristic of Quatre's gentle exasperation than his own flash-fire temper. He was still grinning insanely. "It's a gift! From me to you. It's Christmas. Or will be tomorrow. But I couldn't wait! Just open it, please! From me to you, man."

I felt a little numb. "I didn't get anything for you."

He rolled his eyes. He couldn't even sit down anymore, he had to get to his feet to bounce back and forth from one foot to the other. "That doesn't matter. Come on, man! Open it before I burst!"

Very slowly, I used my fingernail to slice the tape along the side of the horribly gauche wrapping paper. I didn't mean to annoy him by taking so long, but I couldn't seem to make my hands move faster. No one had ever given me a gift before.

I frowned slightly when a bit of bright green polyester peeked out from behind some crinkled tissue. "What is it?" I heard myself ask, even as I shucked aside the last of the paper and held the gift in my hands.

Duo clapped both hands over his mouth. From behind that ineffective barrier, he exploded, "It's a dancing cactus!"

If I had listed all the things that Duo might have hidden behind that wrapping paper, a dancing cactus was the very last that I had expected.

I looked up at him.

"See," he instructed, placing his warm hands over mine and showing me a tiny switch on the bottom of the cactus. I was still taking in the red-and-purple sombrero that clashed so awfully with a candy-cane-stripe scarf and the plastic string of lights draped around the cactus's arms. It was wearing black sunglasses. I'd never seen anything like it--never imagined anything like it could exist.

Duo flicked the switch, and it began to gyrate wildly, blasting "Feliz Navidad," karyoke style, at full volume.

I think I jumped a whole foot, and Duo practically fell over laughing. He slung his arm around my shoulders and howled and howled at the look on my face.

Finally I found my voice. "I don't understand," I said, perhaps more sincere in that moment than I had ever been in my life.

Duo calmed himself and settled cross-legged on the floor beside my chair. I looked down at him, dimly surprised to see that his eyes had darkened from cobalt to deep violet, and that all the intensity of that wide gaze was focused on me, and for me. The dimple in his right cheek deepened as he smiled up at me.

"Trowa," he said. "When I saw that thing, I had to get it. It just screamed your name. Well, not really, actually it was screaming Spanish stuff, but you know what I mean. I knew it would make you smile!"

"Did I?"

His grin began to creep across his face again, spreading like sunlight across a dawn sky, lighting everything it touched. "Yes," he replied. He winked. "Pretty sexy."

Dumbly, I shook my head.

"Trowa," he said, and surged up on his knees, a bundle of energy with a braid, "a gift isn't always special or expensive or even useful. That cactus has no point! And that is the point! It took something that silly for you to crack a smile. I knew you could do it! And I'll bet that every time you look at the ugly thing you'll smile again." He crossed his arms on my knees and leaned forward so that his up tilted nose was a bare half-inch from mine as I blinked down at him. "Egao, egao, Trowa! Next Christmas, I'm going for a full-out laugh!" And then, to my amazement, he kissed me, his warm mouth pressed up against mine in uninhibited exuberance; and then he was dancing away. I watched him go, and wondered if the last few minutes had actually happened, or been only some kind of strange dream. The tingling in my lips was already fading, and his taste disappeared when I licked them reflexively.

Then I looked down at the hideous Christmas cactus in my hands, still belching Feliz Navidad and pivoting with mechanical gracelessness.

Something twitched on my face.

Very quietly, I smiled. I couldn't help it.

"Thank you," I murmured. "Merry Christmas, Duo."

The End

(:./erin/outtakes)