Shrapnel 1/3
20 Nov 2005 08:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouGift fic for a friend, who's one of those rare birds to not only meet me in person but to also see parts of me I try damn hard to keep hidden, yet (so far) seems to be willing to tolerate me despite all that. This isn't my best pairing (if I have such a thing), and I'm not going for sterling IC-ness, as it is considerably after the canon period, so I see any story has having far more leeway. It's also got an implied OC, so if you're a diehard "no one else comes between" maybe this isn't entirely for you. But all that aside, yes, I am writing a 3=4 story, even if this first part is bittersweet.
Final versions will most likely be a little different (and posted on GWA, and maybe gwfan). This version has not been edited, revised, reviewed, beta'd, spellchecked, grammar-checked, or anythign else in any other way. Rough draft, read it here, hot off the frickin' pixels.
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I. March, AC 215
6pm
When Quatre opened the door to his apartment, he'd been expecting the doorman with a late package, or maybe his neighbor down the hall had an emergency and needed Quatre to watch his son. If he'd known what he'd find, maybe he wouldn't have put on his old sweatpants when he got home, the ones with the hole in the knee and another at the crotch. He would've been wearing a shirt that actually fit, and didn't have tomato stains at the collar from some chili-eating contest six years before. He might not have gotten up from his table and shoved the last bite of cucumber into his mouth, or at least wiped the salad dressing with something other than the back of his hand.
But that was the way it was, when he opened the door on that rainy Tuesday evening, one of those drab days in March that all run together, until someone knocks softly and the door opens to find history on the threshold.
"Trowa," Quatre breathed, stunned.
7pm
"I like your place," Trowa said, after the usual formalities. Just in town for a few days, he'd said, shrugging self-consciously with that tiny smile he'd always had as a boy.
"It suits me, I think," Quatre replied, and dug his toes into the carpet to keep from running around cleaning up. He'd stacked his latest project notes in piles on the coffee table; half the sofa was covered in books on civil engineering reconstruction projects over the previous twenty years, and financial records from companies seeking participation. Two of his plants were dead, and he wondered why the third clung to life so tenaciously. He hovered in the doorway to the kitchen, holding up two bottles of wine. "Red or white?"
"Whatever you're having," Trowa replied, and sat on the one free chair—after moving Quatre's laptop to the coffee table. He brushed off his jeans and sat down, nodding as Quatre chattered in the kitchen, loud enough to be heard across the small space, filling the years of space between them.
"I figured white, good to start..." Quatre paused, handing the glass to Trowa. "Uhm, had you eaten? I mean, are you hungry?"
Trowa glanced past him to the table, wilting lettuce under the single overhead light. He accepted the glass with a quick shake of his head. "I had a late lunch. If you're not done eating, though..."
"Well..." Quatre pursed his lips, and reached across the low barrier to grab his plate. "If you don't mind me picking at it. I didn't get lunch today." He shoved the stack of books to the side with his foot, and somehow collapsed his long frame into the opening, plate balanced on his knee. "Are you still with that company on L3?"
"Hunh?" Trowa blinked at him, then laughed, softly. "No, I left them, I guess about three years ago. We moved to Earth, for Lisa's promotion."
Quatre nodded, a little hurt that he'd not known—or just embarrassed that he had known but had completely forgotten—and tried to keep the smile secure. Lisa was good people, as Duo would say. "Still, it took you this long to come visit." He glanced past Trowa, before realizing what he'd done. "So are you on a business trip? Where's the rest of the family?"
"Lisa's in New York, with Sadie." Trowa took another sip of the wine. "I like this vintage."
"Thanks, it's some Australian wine Heero keeps sending me." Quatre grinned around a bite of carrot. "I think he picks out wines based on the labels. This one's got a hologram."
Trowa laughed, low and sexy and it took Quatre a minute to remember to breathe. It was hard. Twenty years since Trowa had been short—if taller than Quatre, granted—but he'd grown into a long-legged and lanky build, hair darkening into a deep auburn-red. There were lines around his mouth, and his eyes seemed a bit deeper-set, or just tired; when he smiled, his eyes crinkled up and Quatre could see the beginnings of age. He saw it enough in the mirror, every morning.
"Avoiding the question, counsel. You're on business? What are you doing now?" Quatre kept his tone light, and tried to hide the sadness in his gut. Twenty years.
"Consulting." Trowa swirled the wine, looking at Quatre over the rim. "Currently I'm on a project that deals with tracking and managing artificial insemination for big cats. The colonies were inbreeding for fifty years while the Alliance kept them shut down. I'm in charge of the agreements to make sure the program's followed by all participants."
"That's good to hear." Before Quatre could think to ask more, Trowa took hold of the conversation.
"What exactly is all this mess for?" He chuckled at Quatre's indignant snort, and waved a hand at the papers. "I'd expected I'd just have to leave a note, let you know my hotel—"
You could have done that, Quatre wanted to whisper, I would've come to your hotel, in rain or sleet, or across six thousand miles—
"And we'd get together for breakfast. Shouldn't you be out living it up?" Trowa arched an eyebrow, leaning back with his long legs taking up such a stretch. "Life of a single man."
"Ah, well," Quatre replied, embarrassed. "Truth is, it's a major project." It was then he realized Trowa no longer wore his wedding ring. "And my social life is limited to reading bids right now..." His mouth kept moving, finding the humor in working sixty to eighty hour weeks, in the empty bed, the empty calendar on a rainy Tuesday evening, and he had another sip of wine, telling himself that this had been settled a long time ago.
8pm
"No, no, no," Trowa insisted, but laughed at the same time. "My daughter is never going to be a super model. She's only ten, Quatre!"
"Hey, at ten, we were—" He stopped, swallowed hard, and kept going, hardly missing the beat but knowing Trowa caught it as well. Covering, he leaned forward, topping off Trowa's glass with the last of the red wine. "I know lots of people. If she's got Lisa's looks and your height, she'd make a killing."
"Not interested." Trowa downed the glass—only a few swallows—in one long draught, and set it on the coffee table with a solid thunk. "And she got Lisa's height and my looks, unfortunately."
"I'd say that's even more fortunate," Quatre replied. He blinked, cursed himself for the second time in a minute, and got up. Enough of this. "Time to open the whiskey, then."
"Whiskey?" Trowa perked right up, and Quatre had to laugh as Trowa got up to follow him into the kitchen. There was barely enough room for the two of them; Quatre ducked as he stepped into the kitchen but forgot to warn Trowa, who recoiled with a groan. "Ow, damn it, your door hit me."
"Sorry." Quatre smirked, and brought down two snifters. "They built the doorways three inches shorter than usual here. I met the previous owner. She came up to my waist, I think." He laughed, a bit self-consciously, when Trowa made a point of staring at his waist, and Quatre tried to keep from sucking his stomach in—or at least, not be too obvious about it. "Heero's the only one who likes it. Says it makes him feel extra-tall."
He opened the whiskey bottle, trying to move away from yet another questionable topic. Heero and Duo came to visit two or three times a year; Trowa and his family only met up with Quatre every few years, and even then only traveling to meet if they were on trips within a reasonable distance. Never bringing the family to Morocco, and never inviting Quatre to L3...
Quatre gave Trowa an expectant look. "On the rocks, a splash, or neat?"
"Splash is fine. Two drops." Trowa leaned against the counter, lifting the glass when Quatre finished pouring, and flicked water in the glass with his fingertips. Trowa took a small sip, sighed, and licked his lips. "That's excellent."
"I save it for special occasions."
"Oh, then pour yours back already." Trowa jerked the glass back before Quatre could grab it. "Wait, let me finish. Don't want it to go to waste."
"I'd say this is a special occasion," Quatre replied, and had to breathe through his nose at the sight of Trowa's tongue running along slightly chapped lips. He wouldn't think of those lips on his body, just like he never thought of those lips on his body, every time they saw each other, every few years. But the words came, as he set his own glass down. "Why aren't you wearing a wedding ring?"
Trowa froze with his glass halfway to his lips, then carefully drank the rest, a bit faster than expected with such fine whiskey. Setting the glass down, he shrugged, and ran his finger across the rim, sucking the last few drops of whiskey from his finger. "I'm thinking of asking for a separation."
Three years after the war, two years after the two of them had agreed to see other people while living twenty thousand miles apart. And a year became two, and then three, and then... but that was ancient history, now, and an older Trowa stood in his kitchen, a distant expression on his face.
"I'm sorry," Quatre whispered, and filled the glasses again. "If you want to talk about it..."
"Not really. Trying to get me drunk? You know those interrogation methods never worked during the war."
Something in Trowa's words hit Quatre, and he spoke without thinking, in the honest way he'd always been able to do—allowed to do—around Trowa, and the other pilots. "I've never seen you joke like that with Lisa."
Again the room became preternaturally still, before Trowa dropped his eyes to the glass before him, saying simply, "I don't."
But some things, once found, cannot be left. "Why not? You were the only one of us who married..." outside the family, he wanted to say.
"Outside the inner circle?" Trowa's look was wry. "It wasn't like I didn't know it going in. I hoped, over time, that it wouldn't matter as much. But it always did, and she's never understood, and so we never discuss it."
Quatre sipped his own whiskey, and thought of turning off the kitchen light. It was harsh, a sharp light that cut brightness across Trowa's face, the sharp angle of his chin and cheekbone, the lines and curves of his collarbone through the open neck of his shirt.
In a softer light, seeping in from the living room, Trowa would be younger—taller than he had at fifteen—but if he spoke, the deeper baritone, the crack of years would still be there. Then Quatre thought of turning off the kitchen light, and how in the darkness, fingers can creep to run across skin, how in darkness the sound of one's breathing amplifies to thunder in the ears, how a single bead of sweat is captured and sparkles in the low light from somewhere else.
"Quatre?"
"Sorry. Just..." Quatre shrugged, and picked up the bottle. "Guess we should go sit back down. My feet ache. Spent the day giving a presentation."
He started to move past Trowa, but there wasn't enough room, and for a moment he swore at his sense that a tiny efficiency was a wiser investment, close enough to work to walk, close enough to everything important to him, close enough that as he moved, he brushed past Trowa, leg against thigh, hip to hip, the round of his shoulder brushing Trowa's chest. And for a moment he wished the kitchen were half its size, and cursed himself ten times over for a fool.
"We'll talk about more pleasant things, though. Have you heard the news about Relena?"
"No." He didn't say more; something in him, though, seemed like he waited for something.
It wasn't Relena's latest trade negotiation, and it probably wasn't whether Heero and Duo had blown up another kitchen trying to make lasagna, even after twenty years of Quatre's semi-annual cookbook gifts and Wufei's lessons. It probably wasn't a lot of things, but Quatre didn't know what it might be, and didn't want to guess. It was easier to smile and lead the way back to the living room, walking away from the history of one summer in the first flush of freedom. When bodies were young and kisses wet and hands sticky and like the flowers in the desert's first crisp nights, quick to fall away and be forgotten in the dead stillness of wintertime adulthood.
9pm
"I'm sure your sofa is under there, somewhere," Trowa said, eyeing the furniture judiciously. "Where's your backhoe?"
"No, no, really, it's fine," Quatre protested, but could only laugh when Trowa hauled him off the sofa and shoved him into the chair. "No, come on, stop, that's all carefully organized—"
"I can see that," Trowa said, and promptly took up an armful of books, piling a few more on top, before dumping the entire pile on the floor at the end of the couch. "I see you have an entire system."
"Yeah, it's very mathematical." Quatre got up from the chair, doing his best to reach around Trowa and prevent any more chaos, but Trowa planted one hand in his chest and continued to clean. For a moment it was too distracting, feeling the warm print of palm on skin, then he remembered he'd never stopped to change out of a t-shirt six years old, with tomato stains on the collar, and he quieted.
"Now, lay down," Trowa ordered, and shoved.
Quatre hit the sofa, and a part of him—a part he desperately hoped wasn't obvious—nearly sat up and cracked from long neglect, the part that let him be in old sweatpants and a beat-up tshirt and probably a strand of lettuce between his front teeth, a bit tipsy and not caring. He landed, stretched full out, and groaned when Trowa sat down at the opposite end, picking up one of his feet and beginning to massage gently.
"You're killing me," he managed to choke out, then remembered the hole in the crotch of his sweatpants, and suddenly the joke wasn't quite as funny.
The little death, and he shifted to bring one leg up, trying to hide the pleasure of Trowa's hands on his feet. Any hands on his feet were wonderful, his soft spot, his hidden weakness, but Trowa's hands... Hands that wore no wedding ring, but it was only a consideration, and Quatre had to respect that.
"No, really, it's not necessary, I mean," he flailed about mentally, trying to think through the haze of Trowa, and whiskey, and Trowa, and hands on his feet, fingers gliding along his ankles. "You're the guest, I should be doing you."
"Okay," Trowa shrugged. "You can return the favor later."
He sounded so easy about it, so matter-of-fact, that Quatre could only hope the innuendo had truly gone past. He doubted it, if Trowa had been sober—and twenty years younger—but he no longer knew what was true, and what was Trowa.
10pm
"Damn it, Trowa," Quatre sputtered, trying to wrestle his old friend back down onto the sofa. Despite the greater weight and leverage, Trowa seemed to be able to weasel out from any hold. "My turn. You said we could trade off."
"Too late!" Trowa laughed out loud and scooted out from under him, keeping a safe distance as he navigated the sofa, pretending to study the pictures packed onto the room's only full-height wall. "Look, it's Duo at fifteen." He snorted. "He was such a dork."
"No, really," Quatre said, twisting to kneel on the sofa, facing Trowa. "Why won't you let me do anything for you back?"
"Because." Trowa evaded the quick grab with a chuckle, then grew more serious. He studied a small metal shard, framed, up close for several seconds before shrugging and moving to a framed clipping of Rashid and Quatre. "I'm always doing something for someone. That's my job. It's what I do."
"Bullshit." Quatre flipped back around, landing sprawled across the sofa, and belatedly reached for his glass of whiskey. Empty. He set it back on the table with a grunt. "That's what we all do. You could say that's imprinted into our genetic structure, even all these years after training is over and done."
"You think? Maybe that's who I'll blame, when I finally break down at having a teenaged daughter, and go in for therapy."
"No, I'm serious. If no one else would do that for us, like we would for everyone, we're the only ones who can do it for each other." He reviewed the sentence in his head, and frowned. "I'm not sure exactly what I meant to say there. Never mind. My point is, exchanges should be the rule, not the exception."
"They are the exception." Trowa shrugged, and evaded a third attempt to snag him by the shirttails. "I'm just used to that." He pivoted, hands in his pockets, an easy smile on his face, far more open than any so far that evening. "Really. I liked giving you a foot massage. It's been so long that I can do that, not to make up for anything, or to forestall an argument, or as some kind of sick bribe in case I screw up tomorrow." He turned to stare at a picture of Wufei and Relena, taken only a few hours after their first child was born. "I never saw this picture. Wufei looks like shit."
"He's still not recovered."
"Don't see what his problem is. A kid's not a total nightmare."
"You didn't have triplets."
Trowa snorted. "This is true. Actually, if we had, I bet Lisa would've thrown me out of the delivery room and never let me back in." He sobered, tone growing thoughtful. "Too bad there's just Sadie, I suppose. I always did want more kids."
Lisa didn't, Quatre guessed, but didn't say it. He just watched, and after a few minutes fetched out the scrapbooks Relena had made for him. Knocking all the papers from the coffee table and not giving a damn, he laid out the books, opening to the first page, pictures Duo took in the hospital room after Peacemillion.
"I'd still give you one back," Quatre finally said, not looking up when Trowa came to join him, long thigh pressed against his.
"And that's the reason you don't have to," Trowa replied, in a tone that said, enough, Quatre, except that had never been enough, but Quatre could at least agree to pretend.
11pm
Quatre set the glasses on the countertop, and waved Trowa away from the kitchen. "No, leave them. I'll get them later." He followed Trowa to the door, trying on a suitable pleased smile, only half of which he had to fake, with feet—and the rest of him by extension—so relaxed. He decided to blame it on the wine. "I'm glad you came by."
"Yeah." Trowa stood at the door, opened his mouth, closed it, and then smiled. He glanced sideways at Quatre in the small foyer area, and put his hand on the doorknob. "I'll let you know if I can make it for lunch. I don't know how long the meeting will run."
"I know how that goes." Quatre laughed, because the moment called for that, and he wanted to keep it light. "I am sorry about everything that's going on, but if you need me, I'm here."
"I know." Trowa bowed his head; his bangs were still long enough to cover his eyes but in the hall light, Quatre could see five or six strands of silver nestled in with the red. "I just want you to know that I'm...I didn't come here because..." He twisted the doorknob, but didn't pull; it seemed a nervous gesture only. He exhaled suddenly, and chuckled. "I think I made the decision before I left for this trip, if that makes sense. To leave her. We've tried, and tried again, and I'm always the one to pay the price." He sighed, and still didn't look up, but at least he smiled, a little. "I'm not here because I want anything, other than your friendship. And I appreciate you respecting that."
Quatre swallowed hard, and nodded. "Whatever you need. That's what I'll do. Just let me know."
Silence reigned for several heartbeats, and Trowa's smile grew wider, if a bit sorrowful. "It was good to see you."
"Yes," Quatre murmured, still trying. Good to talk, about who they'd been. Who they were. Who they still wanted to be, if they ever grew up; to talk, to raise old dreams while ignoring the morning meeting and the paperwork and the laptop.
"Anyway, thanks."
The door closed behind Trowa, noiseless and silent as he'd come.
11:10pm
Quatre stared at the door, words forming in his head, repeating everything Trowa had said. All his promises to himself faded, all his firm resolve, seventeen years of standing by his friend, no intervention, no inappropriate look or word or act.
Trowa was leaving his wife.
Damn it. Quatre ripped the door open and launched himself into the hallway. He'd talk to Trowa, find out what exactly what so wrong. They'd invested so much, hadn't they? She meant something to Trowa, didn't see? He pounded down the hallway, rounding the corner as the elevator doors began to slid shut.
In two long steps, he ran into the doors, slipping his hand between them to make the sensors catch. The doors halted, and pulled open. Trowa stood there, mouth open.
"Did you forget something?" He blinked, then shook his head. "I think that's your question."
"I did." Quatre grabbed Trowa by the collar, yanking him from the elevator. "We're not done talking."
"We aren't?" Trowa sighed, and tried to disengage Quatre's hand from his shirt. "I didn't want to hear the lecture, really. I've heard it already, and I give it to myself every morning for the past three years. So much time spent, so much effort, it's for the kid, we've got a house, and I—"
"Shut up, Trowa," Quatre growled. "Who said that was what I meant I'd be talking about?" Once again he reviewed his words, and wondered why six glasses of wine and three glasses of whiskey over five hours had him at such a disadvantage. Then he tried to remember the last time he'd had that much to drink.
"So what were you going to talk about?" Trowa finally let go of his hand, looking defeated. "I'm not leaving her for any reason other than the fact that I'm not happy with her. That's all."
Quatre watched Trowa's lips move, and tried to remember what he'd meant when he'd hauled Trowa from the elevator. Talk about what?
"I just had to realize that, and now I just have to follow, through, so can we consider this conversation done."
Talking didn't seem to be getting them anywhere, and he recalled if he let Trowa get going, they'd stand there all night before Trowa shut up. Better to interrupt now.
"So if you don't—"
"I do," Quatre snapped, placed his hands on either side of Trowa's face, and pulled him forward. Lips against lips, Quatre tilted his head and ran a tongue across Trowa's mouth, heart hammering in his chest that Trowa would pull back and clean his clock, lay him out, tell him that twenty years ago was then, and nothing for now.
Then he realized Trowa was kissing him back.
I'll post part two tomorrow.
Final versions will most likely be a little different (and posted on GWA, and maybe gwfan). This version has not been edited, revised, reviewed, beta'd, spellchecked, grammar-checked, or anythign else in any other way. Rough draft, read it here, hot off the frickin' pixels.
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I. March, AC 215
6pm
When Quatre opened the door to his apartment, he'd been expecting the doorman with a late package, or maybe his neighbor down the hall had an emergency and needed Quatre to watch his son. If he'd known what he'd find, maybe he wouldn't have put on his old sweatpants when he got home, the ones with the hole in the knee and another at the crotch. He would've been wearing a shirt that actually fit, and didn't have tomato stains at the collar from some chili-eating contest six years before. He might not have gotten up from his table and shoved the last bite of cucumber into his mouth, or at least wiped the salad dressing with something other than the back of his hand.
But that was the way it was, when he opened the door on that rainy Tuesday evening, one of those drab days in March that all run together, until someone knocks softly and the door opens to find history on the threshold.
"Trowa," Quatre breathed, stunned.
7pm
"I like your place," Trowa said, after the usual formalities. Just in town for a few days, he'd said, shrugging self-consciously with that tiny smile he'd always had as a boy.
"It suits me, I think," Quatre replied, and dug his toes into the carpet to keep from running around cleaning up. He'd stacked his latest project notes in piles on the coffee table; half the sofa was covered in books on civil engineering reconstruction projects over the previous twenty years, and financial records from companies seeking participation. Two of his plants were dead, and he wondered why the third clung to life so tenaciously. He hovered in the doorway to the kitchen, holding up two bottles of wine. "Red or white?"
"Whatever you're having," Trowa replied, and sat on the one free chair—after moving Quatre's laptop to the coffee table. He brushed off his jeans and sat down, nodding as Quatre chattered in the kitchen, loud enough to be heard across the small space, filling the years of space between them.
"I figured white, good to start..." Quatre paused, handing the glass to Trowa. "Uhm, had you eaten? I mean, are you hungry?"
Trowa glanced past him to the table, wilting lettuce under the single overhead light. He accepted the glass with a quick shake of his head. "I had a late lunch. If you're not done eating, though..."
"Well..." Quatre pursed his lips, and reached across the low barrier to grab his plate. "If you don't mind me picking at it. I didn't get lunch today." He shoved the stack of books to the side with his foot, and somehow collapsed his long frame into the opening, plate balanced on his knee. "Are you still with that company on L3?"
"Hunh?" Trowa blinked at him, then laughed, softly. "No, I left them, I guess about three years ago. We moved to Earth, for Lisa's promotion."
Quatre nodded, a little hurt that he'd not known—or just embarrassed that he had known but had completely forgotten—and tried to keep the smile secure. Lisa was good people, as Duo would say. "Still, it took you this long to come visit." He glanced past Trowa, before realizing what he'd done. "So are you on a business trip? Where's the rest of the family?"
"Lisa's in New York, with Sadie." Trowa took another sip of the wine. "I like this vintage."
"Thanks, it's some Australian wine Heero keeps sending me." Quatre grinned around a bite of carrot. "I think he picks out wines based on the labels. This one's got a hologram."
Trowa laughed, low and sexy and it took Quatre a minute to remember to breathe. It was hard. Twenty years since Trowa had been short—if taller than Quatre, granted—but he'd grown into a long-legged and lanky build, hair darkening into a deep auburn-red. There were lines around his mouth, and his eyes seemed a bit deeper-set, or just tired; when he smiled, his eyes crinkled up and Quatre could see the beginnings of age. He saw it enough in the mirror, every morning.
"Avoiding the question, counsel. You're on business? What are you doing now?" Quatre kept his tone light, and tried to hide the sadness in his gut. Twenty years.
"Consulting." Trowa swirled the wine, looking at Quatre over the rim. "Currently I'm on a project that deals with tracking and managing artificial insemination for big cats. The colonies were inbreeding for fifty years while the Alliance kept them shut down. I'm in charge of the agreements to make sure the program's followed by all participants."
"That's good to hear." Before Quatre could think to ask more, Trowa took hold of the conversation.
"What exactly is all this mess for?" He chuckled at Quatre's indignant snort, and waved a hand at the papers. "I'd expected I'd just have to leave a note, let you know my hotel—"
You could have done that, Quatre wanted to whisper, I would've come to your hotel, in rain or sleet, or across six thousand miles—
"And we'd get together for breakfast. Shouldn't you be out living it up?" Trowa arched an eyebrow, leaning back with his long legs taking up such a stretch. "Life of a single man."
"Ah, well," Quatre replied, embarrassed. "Truth is, it's a major project." It was then he realized Trowa no longer wore his wedding ring. "And my social life is limited to reading bids right now..." His mouth kept moving, finding the humor in working sixty to eighty hour weeks, in the empty bed, the empty calendar on a rainy Tuesday evening, and he had another sip of wine, telling himself that this had been settled a long time ago.
8pm
"No, no, no," Trowa insisted, but laughed at the same time. "My daughter is never going to be a super model. She's only ten, Quatre!"
"Hey, at ten, we were—" He stopped, swallowed hard, and kept going, hardly missing the beat but knowing Trowa caught it as well. Covering, he leaned forward, topping off Trowa's glass with the last of the red wine. "I know lots of people. If she's got Lisa's looks and your height, she'd make a killing."
"Not interested." Trowa downed the glass—only a few swallows—in one long draught, and set it on the coffee table with a solid thunk. "And she got Lisa's height and my looks, unfortunately."
"I'd say that's even more fortunate," Quatre replied. He blinked, cursed himself for the second time in a minute, and got up. Enough of this. "Time to open the whiskey, then."
"Whiskey?" Trowa perked right up, and Quatre had to laugh as Trowa got up to follow him into the kitchen. There was barely enough room for the two of them; Quatre ducked as he stepped into the kitchen but forgot to warn Trowa, who recoiled with a groan. "Ow, damn it, your door hit me."
"Sorry." Quatre smirked, and brought down two snifters. "They built the doorways three inches shorter than usual here. I met the previous owner. She came up to my waist, I think." He laughed, a bit self-consciously, when Trowa made a point of staring at his waist, and Quatre tried to keep from sucking his stomach in—or at least, not be too obvious about it. "Heero's the only one who likes it. Says it makes him feel extra-tall."
He opened the whiskey bottle, trying to move away from yet another questionable topic. Heero and Duo came to visit two or three times a year; Trowa and his family only met up with Quatre every few years, and even then only traveling to meet if they were on trips within a reasonable distance. Never bringing the family to Morocco, and never inviting Quatre to L3...
Quatre gave Trowa an expectant look. "On the rocks, a splash, or neat?"
"Splash is fine. Two drops." Trowa leaned against the counter, lifting the glass when Quatre finished pouring, and flicked water in the glass with his fingertips. Trowa took a small sip, sighed, and licked his lips. "That's excellent."
"I save it for special occasions."
"Oh, then pour yours back already." Trowa jerked the glass back before Quatre could grab it. "Wait, let me finish. Don't want it to go to waste."
"I'd say this is a special occasion," Quatre replied, and had to breathe through his nose at the sight of Trowa's tongue running along slightly chapped lips. He wouldn't think of those lips on his body, just like he never thought of those lips on his body, every time they saw each other, every few years. But the words came, as he set his own glass down. "Why aren't you wearing a wedding ring?"
Trowa froze with his glass halfway to his lips, then carefully drank the rest, a bit faster than expected with such fine whiskey. Setting the glass down, he shrugged, and ran his finger across the rim, sucking the last few drops of whiskey from his finger. "I'm thinking of asking for a separation."
Three years after the war, two years after the two of them had agreed to see other people while living twenty thousand miles apart. And a year became two, and then three, and then... but that was ancient history, now, and an older Trowa stood in his kitchen, a distant expression on his face.
"I'm sorry," Quatre whispered, and filled the glasses again. "If you want to talk about it..."
"Not really. Trying to get me drunk? You know those interrogation methods never worked during the war."
Something in Trowa's words hit Quatre, and he spoke without thinking, in the honest way he'd always been able to do—allowed to do—around Trowa, and the other pilots. "I've never seen you joke like that with Lisa."
Again the room became preternaturally still, before Trowa dropped his eyes to the glass before him, saying simply, "I don't."
But some things, once found, cannot be left. "Why not? You were the only one of us who married..." outside the family, he wanted to say.
"Outside the inner circle?" Trowa's look was wry. "It wasn't like I didn't know it going in. I hoped, over time, that it wouldn't matter as much. But it always did, and she's never understood, and so we never discuss it."
Quatre sipped his own whiskey, and thought of turning off the kitchen light. It was harsh, a sharp light that cut brightness across Trowa's face, the sharp angle of his chin and cheekbone, the lines and curves of his collarbone through the open neck of his shirt.
In a softer light, seeping in from the living room, Trowa would be younger—taller than he had at fifteen—but if he spoke, the deeper baritone, the crack of years would still be there. Then Quatre thought of turning off the kitchen light, and how in the darkness, fingers can creep to run across skin, how in darkness the sound of one's breathing amplifies to thunder in the ears, how a single bead of sweat is captured and sparkles in the low light from somewhere else.
"Quatre?"
"Sorry. Just..." Quatre shrugged, and picked up the bottle. "Guess we should go sit back down. My feet ache. Spent the day giving a presentation."
He started to move past Trowa, but there wasn't enough room, and for a moment he swore at his sense that a tiny efficiency was a wiser investment, close enough to work to walk, close enough to everything important to him, close enough that as he moved, he brushed past Trowa, leg against thigh, hip to hip, the round of his shoulder brushing Trowa's chest. And for a moment he wished the kitchen were half its size, and cursed himself ten times over for a fool.
"We'll talk about more pleasant things, though. Have you heard the news about Relena?"
"No." He didn't say more; something in him, though, seemed like he waited for something.
It wasn't Relena's latest trade negotiation, and it probably wasn't whether Heero and Duo had blown up another kitchen trying to make lasagna, even after twenty years of Quatre's semi-annual cookbook gifts and Wufei's lessons. It probably wasn't a lot of things, but Quatre didn't know what it might be, and didn't want to guess. It was easier to smile and lead the way back to the living room, walking away from the history of one summer in the first flush of freedom. When bodies were young and kisses wet and hands sticky and like the flowers in the desert's first crisp nights, quick to fall away and be forgotten in the dead stillness of wintertime adulthood.
9pm
"I'm sure your sofa is under there, somewhere," Trowa said, eyeing the furniture judiciously. "Where's your backhoe?"
"No, no, really, it's fine," Quatre protested, but could only laugh when Trowa hauled him off the sofa and shoved him into the chair. "No, come on, stop, that's all carefully organized—"
"I can see that," Trowa said, and promptly took up an armful of books, piling a few more on top, before dumping the entire pile on the floor at the end of the couch. "I see you have an entire system."
"Yeah, it's very mathematical." Quatre got up from the chair, doing his best to reach around Trowa and prevent any more chaos, but Trowa planted one hand in his chest and continued to clean. For a moment it was too distracting, feeling the warm print of palm on skin, then he remembered he'd never stopped to change out of a t-shirt six years old, with tomato stains on the collar, and he quieted.
"Now, lay down," Trowa ordered, and shoved.
Quatre hit the sofa, and a part of him—a part he desperately hoped wasn't obvious—nearly sat up and cracked from long neglect, the part that let him be in old sweatpants and a beat-up tshirt and probably a strand of lettuce between his front teeth, a bit tipsy and not caring. He landed, stretched full out, and groaned when Trowa sat down at the opposite end, picking up one of his feet and beginning to massage gently.
"You're killing me," he managed to choke out, then remembered the hole in the crotch of his sweatpants, and suddenly the joke wasn't quite as funny.
The little death, and he shifted to bring one leg up, trying to hide the pleasure of Trowa's hands on his feet. Any hands on his feet were wonderful, his soft spot, his hidden weakness, but Trowa's hands... Hands that wore no wedding ring, but it was only a consideration, and Quatre had to respect that.
"No, really, it's not necessary, I mean," he flailed about mentally, trying to think through the haze of Trowa, and whiskey, and Trowa, and hands on his feet, fingers gliding along his ankles. "You're the guest, I should be doing you."
"Okay," Trowa shrugged. "You can return the favor later."
He sounded so easy about it, so matter-of-fact, that Quatre could only hope the innuendo had truly gone past. He doubted it, if Trowa had been sober—and twenty years younger—but he no longer knew what was true, and what was Trowa.
10pm
"Damn it, Trowa," Quatre sputtered, trying to wrestle his old friend back down onto the sofa. Despite the greater weight and leverage, Trowa seemed to be able to weasel out from any hold. "My turn. You said we could trade off."
"Too late!" Trowa laughed out loud and scooted out from under him, keeping a safe distance as he navigated the sofa, pretending to study the pictures packed onto the room's only full-height wall. "Look, it's Duo at fifteen." He snorted. "He was such a dork."
"No, really," Quatre said, twisting to kneel on the sofa, facing Trowa. "Why won't you let me do anything for you back?"
"Because." Trowa evaded the quick grab with a chuckle, then grew more serious. He studied a small metal shard, framed, up close for several seconds before shrugging and moving to a framed clipping of Rashid and Quatre. "I'm always doing something for someone. That's my job. It's what I do."
"Bullshit." Quatre flipped back around, landing sprawled across the sofa, and belatedly reached for his glass of whiskey. Empty. He set it back on the table with a grunt. "That's what we all do. You could say that's imprinted into our genetic structure, even all these years after training is over and done."
"You think? Maybe that's who I'll blame, when I finally break down at having a teenaged daughter, and go in for therapy."
"No, I'm serious. If no one else would do that for us, like we would for everyone, we're the only ones who can do it for each other." He reviewed the sentence in his head, and frowned. "I'm not sure exactly what I meant to say there. Never mind. My point is, exchanges should be the rule, not the exception."
"They are the exception." Trowa shrugged, and evaded a third attempt to snag him by the shirttails. "I'm just used to that." He pivoted, hands in his pockets, an easy smile on his face, far more open than any so far that evening. "Really. I liked giving you a foot massage. It's been so long that I can do that, not to make up for anything, or to forestall an argument, or as some kind of sick bribe in case I screw up tomorrow." He turned to stare at a picture of Wufei and Relena, taken only a few hours after their first child was born. "I never saw this picture. Wufei looks like shit."
"He's still not recovered."
"Don't see what his problem is. A kid's not a total nightmare."
"You didn't have triplets."
Trowa snorted. "This is true. Actually, if we had, I bet Lisa would've thrown me out of the delivery room and never let me back in." He sobered, tone growing thoughtful. "Too bad there's just Sadie, I suppose. I always did want more kids."
Lisa didn't, Quatre guessed, but didn't say it. He just watched, and after a few minutes fetched out the scrapbooks Relena had made for him. Knocking all the papers from the coffee table and not giving a damn, he laid out the books, opening to the first page, pictures Duo took in the hospital room after Peacemillion.
"I'd still give you one back," Quatre finally said, not looking up when Trowa came to join him, long thigh pressed against his.
"And that's the reason you don't have to," Trowa replied, in a tone that said, enough, Quatre, except that had never been enough, but Quatre could at least agree to pretend.
11pm
Quatre set the glasses on the countertop, and waved Trowa away from the kitchen. "No, leave them. I'll get them later." He followed Trowa to the door, trying on a suitable pleased smile, only half of which he had to fake, with feet—and the rest of him by extension—so relaxed. He decided to blame it on the wine. "I'm glad you came by."
"Yeah." Trowa stood at the door, opened his mouth, closed it, and then smiled. He glanced sideways at Quatre in the small foyer area, and put his hand on the doorknob. "I'll let you know if I can make it for lunch. I don't know how long the meeting will run."
"I know how that goes." Quatre laughed, because the moment called for that, and he wanted to keep it light. "I am sorry about everything that's going on, but if you need me, I'm here."
"I know." Trowa bowed his head; his bangs were still long enough to cover his eyes but in the hall light, Quatre could see five or six strands of silver nestled in with the red. "I just want you to know that I'm...I didn't come here because..." He twisted the doorknob, but didn't pull; it seemed a nervous gesture only. He exhaled suddenly, and chuckled. "I think I made the decision before I left for this trip, if that makes sense. To leave her. We've tried, and tried again, and I'm always the one to pay the price." He sighed, and still didn't look up, but at least he smiled, a little. "I'm not here because I want anything, other than your friendship. And I appreciate you respecting that."
Quatre swallowed hard, and nodded. "Whatever you need. That's what I'll do. Just let me know."
Silence reigned for several heartbeats, and Trowa's smile grew wider, if a bit sorrowful. "It was good to see you."
"Yes," Quatre murmured, still trying. Good to talk, about who they'd been. Who they were. Who they still wanted to be, if they ever grew up; to talk, to raise old dreams while ignoring the morning meeting and the paperwork and the laptop.
"Anyway, thanks."
The door closed behind Trowa, noiseless and silent as he'd come.
11:10pm
Quatre stared at the door, words forming in his head, repeating everything Trowa had said. All his promises to himself faded, all his firm resolve, seventeen years of standing by his friend, no intervention, no inappropriate look or word or act.
Trowa was leaving his wife.
Damn it. Quatre ripped the door open and launched himself into the hallway. He'd talk to Trowa, find out what exactly what so wrong. They'd invested so much, hadn't they? She meant something to Trowa, didn't see? He pounded down the hallway, rounding the corner as the elevator doors began to slid shut.
In two long steps, he ran into the doors, slipping his hand between them to make the sensors catch. The doors halted, and pulled open. Trowa stood there, mouth open.
"Did you forget something?" He blinked, then shook his head. "I think that's your question."
"I did." Quatre grabbed Trowa by the collar, yanking him from the elevator. "We're not done talking."
"We aren't?" Trowa sighed, and tried to disengage Quatre's hand from his shirt. "I didn't want to hear the lecture, really. I've heard it already, and I give it to myself every morning for the past three years. So much time spent, so much effort, it's for the kid, we've got a house, and I—"
"Shut up, Trowa," Quatre growled. "Who said that was what I meant I'd be talking about?" Once again he reviewed his words, and wondered why six glasses of wine and three glasses of whiskey over five hours had him at such a disadvantage. Then he tried to remember the last time he'd had that much to drink.
"So what were you going to talk about?" Trowa finally let go of his hand, looking defeated. "I'm not leaving her for any reason other than the fact that I'm not happy with her. That's all."
Quatre watched Trowa's lips move, and tried to remember what he'd meant when he'd hauled Trowa from the elevator. Talk about what?
"I just had to realize that, and now I just have to follow, through, so can we consider this conversation done."
Talking didn't seem to be getting them anywhere, and he recalled if he let Trowa get going, they'd stand there all night before Trowa shut up. Better to interrupt now.
"So if you don't—"
"I do," Quatre snapped, placed his hands on either side of Trowa's face, and pulled him forward. Lips against lips, Quatre tilted his head and ran a tongue across Trowa's mouth, heart hammering in his chest that Trowa would pull back and clean his clock, lay him out, tell him that twenty years ago was then, and nothing for now.
Then he realized Trowa was kissing him back.
I'll post part two tomorrow.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 21 Nov 2005 03:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 22 Nov 2005 11:09 pm (UTC)Uh... glad you like?
no subject
Date: 23 Nov 2005 12:32 am (UTC)And I don't even read Trowa&Quatre. Hell, I haven't even been reading any gw fics aside from two author's fics. You're evil, making me read and all.
...
I like it.
no subject
Date: 11 Dec 2005 07:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 21 Nov 2005 04:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 22 Nov 2005 11:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 21 Nov 2005 04:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 22 Nov 2005 11:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 21 Nov 2005 04:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 22 Nov 2005 11:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 21 Nov 2005 06:14 am (UTC)And I know this hasn't been edited at all, but one thing caught my attention:
Again the room became preternaturally still, before Trowa dropped his eyes to the glass before him, saying simply, "I don't." Flat, quiet, end-of-conversation, Quatre, drop it.
I think it may be better to drop the last sentence. Having that in makes it seem (to me, at least) that you're telling more than showing, and I think the first sentence alone is effective enough. FWIW, anyways. ;D
no subject
Date: 21 Nov 2005 06:17 am (UTC)I think there's a few points that need cutting and smoothing. Will make note and take a better look at it, if you think the impression came across clearly without Quatre's translation at the end.