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The night wind whips at Odo's hair as he and Quark sit on a ledge, looking out over the city at its quietest. Quark takes in a deep breath, glad for the fresh air and the calm after a long day.
"Today must have been crazy busy," he remarks to Odo. "You only came bursting into my club and ruined my business once."
Odo scoffs, but does start regaling Quark with stories of what had kept him so busy. It's a bit strange, a superhero like Odo telling stories of what he and his comrades have been up to, as if Quark wouldn't go and take that information and put it to good use somehow.
But then again, it's strange for a superhero and a supervillain to be unwinding in each other's company like this.
As Odo talks, Quark gives him a furtive glance, and behind his body where Odo won't see, tries making a quiet snap with his fingers. Nothing happens, of course.
-
Their first encounter was admittedly pretty humiliating -- Quark staring blankly at the rookie superhero while ineffectually snapping his fingers in Odo's direction, wondering when the effect would kick in, while Odo just glared at him over crossed arms. Quark then being on the receiving end of an extremely one-sided beatdown. Quark spending the next couple of days in a jail cell, something that hadn't happened to him in years.
And ever since then, realizing that Odo was one of the few people immune to Quark's charms, Odo was basically assigned to handle him -- always the one who showed up to ask him questions; always on his tail watching him; in fights, always positioning himself like a shield between Quark and anyone else he might try to influence.
It was annoying, at first. But then Quark kinda got used to it -- it was nice having a "designated handler" of sorts, nice seeing a familiar face regularly. And Odo made for nice company -- setting aside his hawk-eyed surveillance, Odo being unaffected by Quark's powers actually made the shapeshifter relaxed and remarkably unguarded around Quark in a way that none of the other superheroes were.
Quark liked their spats and long conversations and then their griping sessions after work. Quark liked that there was absolutely nothing between him and Odo -- not even the possibility of something happening between them. Until suddenly he didn't.
-
Odo sometimes asked him about the nature of desire. "It's good to want things," Quark told him.
"Even things you can't have?" Odo queried dubiously. He was a strange guy -- alien to and easily baffled by a lot of commonplace experiences.
"Especially things I can't have."
First, Odo was a nuisance. Then he was a challenge. And now he's this -- this thing that makes Quark snap his fingers behind his back quietly hoping that this time it'll have a different effect than what it's had every other time.
Especially things I can't have; it was as true for gold as it was for people.