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Changeling Heart
Quark sighed as he looked around his nearly empty bar. It was late and a last group of Starfleet officers out celebrating a crewmate’s promotion had just left. Now only Morn on his customary barstool and Quark’s newest regular were still in the bar. Quark sighed again as he looked at the upper level to see that, yes, Constable Odo was still there.
“Morn,” Quark called down the bar pointing up at the time piece behind him. Morn nodded balefully before swallowing the last of his drink and lumbering off to his quarters until morning. He watched him go until the sharp footfall of a Ferengi waiter clambering down the stairs drew his attention. Broik stormed over to the bar.
“He’s still up there,” he snarled, jerking a hand behind him. “I told him it was closing and he growled at me!”
Quark felt a surge of irritation at his waiter but buried it as quickly as it came. He waved dismissively, “I’ll take care of him. You finish cleaning up down here.”
He watched Broik skulk over to the cleaning supplies before climbing the stairs to the upper level himself. It’d been almost two weeks since Odo had come back from the Gamma quadrant.
The Defiant had returned from the Gamma Quadrant and Quark had been relieved to see Odo back on the Promenade looking like his normal self again. He was no longer dripping bits of himself that he could no longer keep formed. Odo looked whole and healthy and Quark hadn’t really cared what the Founders had asked as the price of fixing him, only that Odo was fixed and he was back where he belonged. He had bounded up to him beaming from ear to ear.
“Odo! You’re back!” Quark had been about to wrap his arms around the changeling when he’d stopped short. He turned his head listening for Odo’s usual goo-noises, but the only sound coming from Odo sounded suspiciously like a heartbeat. He looked up into Odo’s pained face. “Odo?”
Odo’s face crumpled before hardening into a snear. “I bet you’re happy, Quark. I’m one of you now.”
“One of--” Quark trailed off as the pieces fell together. He looked at Odo in horror. “What did they do to you?”
“They turned me into a solid,” Odo ground out. “I’m no longer a changeling.”
Any words that Quark could have said to Odo vanished. He could only stare wide-eyed at Odo’s pained grimace. Out of all of the possible scenarios he had imagined would happen to Odo, he’d never imagined this. He must have taken too long to say something because Odo had let out a gruff harrumph and walked away, leaving Quark with the image of Odo’s anguished crumpled face burning in his mind.
That same face greeted him as he crested the top of the stairs. Odo was at his new usual table overlooking the main part of the bar below. He hadn’t been enjoying the view of the dabo girls though, Quark knew. He’d been staring intently into his drink of the day--a hew-mon drink today, Quark recalled, cream soda. Quark had tasted it when he saw Odo’s order. It was more vile than root beer.
Odo didn’t look up as Quark neared his table. “What do you want, Quark?” he growled.
Quark smiled and took the seat across from him. “It’s 0200. Bar’s closed, Odo.”
Odo’s hand tightened around his glass. If he’d still had his changeling strength, Quark would have been afraid it would shatter. As it was, he reached across the table and gently lifted the glass from Odo’s hands and placed it out of his reach. “Come on, Odo, what’s got you down now. You can tell me.”
Odo glared out over the railing, rolling his eyes, “Like you even have to ask.”
“Yeah, I do,” Quark insisted, placing his elbows on the table to lean closer. “I think you’ve been moping around my bar long enough. You’re starting to scare off my customers with all your glowering.”
Odo finally met Quark’s eyes with a snarl, “I’m sorry I’m such a detriment to your profits, Quark.”
“And so you should be,” Quark continued. “But the way I see it, you’re a solid now and there’s nothing you can do about it. So,” he shrugged, “get over it already.”
“Get over--” Odo stood up so forcefully his chair fell to the ground. He placed his hands on the table to lean menacingly over Quark. Quark barely contained a flinch as Odo bared his teeth. “I have lost everything. Everything I am,” his voice broke. “Everything I am is gone. And you want me to just get over it?”
Quark blinked slowly, meeting Odo’s eyes as calmly as he could. Such posturing usually didn’t faze him. The constable had made it his life’s mission to antagonize Quark so often that his bark had lost most of its bite. Now though, there was something wild about him. He’d lost his predictable prickly manner and for the first time in a long time, a flicker of fear shuddered through Quark’s lobes.
Quark swallowed his feelings. Odo was his friend (no matter what the constable said to the contrary) and Quark cared about him. He couldn’t just leave him to wallow in his misery indefinitely. It was bad for business to have anyone moping in a bar for too long.
“Ok,” Quark shrugged, standing up, too. If Odo refused to face his feelings, then what business did Quark have with them? “Have fun being lost then. Just find somewhere else to do it.”
He started walking away, leaving Odo to gape after him.
“What?” Odo croaked.
Quark spun on his heel to face him, shrugging once more. “Yeah, if you wouldn’t mind having your little existential crisis outside of my establishment, that’d be great.” He paused, pursing his lip thoughtfully. “In fact, some might call you sitting here all day ‘loitering.’ And if I recall correctly, loitering is a crime. Who do I need to contact to make a formal complaint?”
Before Odo’s face could explode, Quark started for the stairs once again to make his way back down to the bar. He couldn’t spend all night up here bickering with the Constable. He’d locked the Latinum in the safe, but Broik couldn’t be trusted not to pick a lock. And he had the weekly order to get ready to send out. He wanted some sleep tonight.
“I do not loiter!” Odo hissed, launching himself after Quark. He nearly stepped on Quark’s heels in his agitation.
“Could’ve fooled me,” Quark shrugged, skipping down the steps two at a time with Odo stomping right behind him.
Once he’d made it back to the bar, Quark stepped lightly behind it and picked up a holopad to begin his inventory for the night. He inspected the line up of bottles along the back wall with a frown. A bottle of Saurian brandy was missing. He shot a glare at Broik who slipped out of the bar before Quark could say anything to him. He made a note to interrogate his employees tomorrow.
“I do not loiter,” Odo continued from the other side of the bar top. “I am not a criminal.”
“Aren’t you?” Quark muttered absently, searching under the bar for any other missing merchandise. He grabbed a bottle of Kanar. As he suspected, the seal had been tampered with. He narrowed his eyes. Someone was going to be paying for this. He put the bottle back to mark it in his notes.
“If anyone is a criminal in this situation it’s you!”
Quark looked up then, meeting Odo’s accusation with a sharp grin. He threw the holopad onto the bar and then leaned over it to prop his head on his hand. He smiled widely. “Am I? Then, prove it.”
An indignant huff left Odo as his mouth fell open in shock. He slapped his hands onto the bar to lean over the small distance between them, growling menacingly until he was mere inches from Quark’s face, the heat from his breaths another stark reminder of Odo’s new form.
“Oh, I will, Quark. We both know you’ve never made a legal deal in your life. You’ll be behind bars where you belong if it’s the last thing I do.”
With that pronouncement, Odo marched out into the hallway, shooting a glare back through the window. Quark sighed.
“You’re welcome, I guess,” he mumbled to Odo’s back. At least Odo wasn’t moping anymore. He went back to checking his inventory. He may have solved Odo’s problem for now, but he was afraid that he might have made an even bigger problem for himself. His next few shipments were going to have to be squeaky clean.