When We Were Young 3

[kaigou]

Rating might as well be PG-13 for previous parts and this one. Warnings continue to hold; conflict is the point of these slices-of-life, and since I continue to be in a foul mood to some extent, there will be no make-up sex. Maybe later. Or maybe you can write it for me. Go you.

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Quatre smiled at the young sales clerk, and realized he'd left Trowa behind somewhere. He gestured at the young girl to wait, and looked around for his errant partner. Quatre found him studying a small table not far from the store's entrance.

"I like this one," Trowa told him. He lifted up the lid, revealing a mirror and a small tray.

"I think it's an old shaving table." Quatre frowned. "That's hardly suitable for our foyer. I was thinking something more like..." He glanced around, until his gaze fell on a large half-circle, with ornate legs. "That's cool."

Trowa stared for a long moment, as the sales clerk came to stand nearby, with the eager expression of someone waiting to answer any question that might arise. Quatre noted her name tag, and gave her another smile, this one a bit more pained as he waited for Trowa's commentary.

"What else does it do?" Trowa finally asked.

"It doesn't need to do anything but be a table," Quatre replied, patiently. "I just wanted a place to put mail, put our keys, gloves, stuff like..." He winced at Trowa's sharp look. "If we're coming in and going back out again soon, it's okay to just set something aside rather than putting it away."

Trowa snorted and studied the table a bit longer. "I don't like the legs," he finally said.

"What kind of table?" The sales girl gave them both a bright smile; she deflated a bit at Trowa's sulky look, but held on gamely, obviously realizing it was better to focus on Quatre. "That table is a reproduction in the Empire style, but we have Victorian and even Post-modern as well..."

"Post-modern," Trowa stated.

Quatre just sighed. He would've preferred Victorian, actually; he'd always liked the curves. Or Art Deco. Trowa tended towards simply utilitarian, which wasn't really a style so much as a demand that everything had to have at least six purposes for existing, or it just annoyed Trowa that it would take up so much space. Quatre was sometimes surprised Trowa hadn't figured out a way to turn his electric toothbrush into a mini-drill; then again, perhaps he had and Quatre just hadn't noticed because for him, an electric toothbrush was designed, and built, to be an electric toothbrush. Nothing more, nothing less, and sometimes that was fine. Unless you were Trowa.

"How about these?" Amy waved her hand towards a collection of glass-and-steel tables, but two were bentwood. Quatre made a beeline for those, while Trowa walked around the entire collection from a short distance, his frown growing.

"I like this one," Quatre announced. He ran a hand over the curved line of the table's half-oval. The legs seemed to curve down from the edges in a C-shape, meeting at the center before spreading out to form feet. "Is this beech?"

"Birch," Amy replied. "It's a shade whiter than beech."

"There's not even a drawer," Trowa grumbled. "And it's at least four feet across."

Quatre moved away from the table, coming up behind Trowa to say through gritted teeth, "the foyer is sixteen feet by sixteen feet. Anything less than four feet will look lost in the space." Amazingly, Trowa didn't make his customary complaint about the size of the foyer; he continued to stare glumly at the table -- which was just a table, nothing more, nothing less. Eventually, lips pressed firmly together, Trowa nodded once, turned, and left. Quatre had to breathe through his nose before nodding to Amy. "We'll take that one."

"Uhm, are you sure?" She glanced past Quatre, toward the front of the store, worried. "Did you want to think about it, perhaps?"

"No, that won't be necessary." Quatre handed over his card and filled out the delivery information, shaking hands with Amy before leaving the store. Next door was a small coffee shop, and he wasn't surprised to find Trowa sitting at one of the tables on the side, nursing a cup of chai. Quatre slid into the seat opposite Trowa, but shook his head when the waiter started to head in their direction. For a long moment, no one spoke, and Quatre waited.

"It is a pretty wood," Trowa finally said, but he didn't look up. He'd relaxed a fraction, but the sulky edge to his voice remained.

"I think it'll look good."

Trowa nodded, and finished his drink. He set the cup down, and gave Quatre a wry look. "But it's just going to be sitting there."

"It'll be holding stuff. It's not like it's doing absolutely nothing."

"Still."

Quatre took a deep breath, then a second one. "Not everything needs to do twenty things."

"I never said I wanted something that does twenty things. But just one thing? That's such a waste of---"

"We have more space than we know what to do with," Quatre protested. "Why can't we fill it up with beautiful things, even if those things are just a table, and nothing else?"

"Because it's more space for stuff to end up on," Trowa grumbled, barely loud enough for Quatre to catch. "Every horizontal surface..."

"Not this table. Really," Quatre promised. "Just keys and mail."

"We have an office for mail."

"We need a place to put the mail while we're taking off our coats." Quatre couldn't help but think: point for me.

Trowa's lips quirked, just slightly, and his gaze slid away from Quatre to stare out at the passerbys. "I see." He stood up, and jerked his head toward the door. "What's next on the list?"

"We need to find a gift for Hilde's baby shower."

"Right." Trowa smiled, just the barest amount. "I was thinking one of those cribs that you can dismantle and make into a twin bed as the child gets older."

Quatre was tempted to smack himself in the forehead. He should've known, but he decided it was better to give in. If he didn't, Trowa might sneak in some bizarrely-engineered extra toy for the baby, that looked like a beach ball but unfolded to be a vacuum cleaner, a coffee grinder, with extra space for storing camera batteries. After all, he'd won on the table; he could let Trowa have victory on a gift for someone else.

Comments

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

Well, it's true that if you complain about something that other people see as good forture, they're just going to look at your cross-eyed. It's very hard to explain to someone who hasn't been there just how stressful it can be to suddenly have money. It's certainly not seen as trustworthy, the less so the more recently one has been without. I think I'd be right there with Trowa and that stiff drink, and the people insisting we're complaining about nothing be damned.

The kept man thing is almost harder, because I think it cuts too close to the bone for a lot of women (and remembering the fandom is predominantly women, if not essentially completely women). The idea of being a non-contributing half of the partnership can rankle, and it sure as help is not appreciated when an imaginary character -- male, at that -- complains to any degree about the fact that he's not actually, to him, bringing anything to the relationship that's measurable, and money is measurable. It doesn't matter if Quatre assures him twenty times a day that Trowa is one-half of an equal partnership; one glance at the biweekly deposits would make anyone feel like they're just kinda an afterthought.

(As one woman-friend put it when comparing her salary with her husband's -- and she has a college degree, while he doesn't!, "my salary pays for the mortgage, and nothing else." It was the only way she could measure her contribution, considering it was only a quarter of her husband's, without beating her head against the wall that women get so little on the dollar, etc., etc.) I felt the same way when we owned a bookstore; my salary was negative, because everything we had went into the shop. My partner assured me many many times that I was "doing something" but given that he worked, brought home a paycheck (to support us, and the business (when it needed it in its first few years), I felt like I was just being lazy or something. I had nothing, tangible, with which to measure my contribution. What was worse were the few friends (soon ditched) who acted as though I was a freeloader for letting my partner work while I "played" at running a business.

I can easily see Trowa getting that sideways attitude, for "playing" at being a Preventer (or even continuing to be in the circus) while his spouse foots the bill. I can't imagine that would sit well with Trowa by any stretch, and in fact I would only expect him to joke about being a kept man if among very close friends -- anyone else might not realize how sensitive he'd really be to it, and might make just a hair too much of it, rather than letting his joking take the lead as his comfort level grows.

[windsorblue.livejournal.com]

It doesn't matter if Quatre assures him twenty times a day that Trowa is one-half of an equal partnership; one glance at the biweekly deposits would make anyone feel like they're just kinda an afterthought.

Especially if the principal wage-earner is working 60+ hour weeks and coming home too tired to do much more than leave his shoes in the middle of the living room and stomp off to bed.

"my salary pays for the mortgage, and nothing else."

Yeah, I can relate to that sentiment. =_=;;;