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Animal-Handler
Sep 8, 2019 | Art Archive Entries, Fiction, Gundam Wing Fanfiction
If Trowa had an alpha, it was Heero. If Heero had a beta, it was Trowa. And Trowa, who prided himself on being a good beta, had been loyal to and supportive of Heero ever since they'd first met, both when they'd been romantically involved and later when their relationship had become more that of friends with a practical arrangement.
Though the circus has settled in for its winter break, Trowa Barton (acrobat, animal-handler, and werebeast beta) still has his hands full — with a newly acquired lion he's sure is more than it appears, the return of former romantic partner and current alpha-friend-with-benefits Heero, and tiny niece Relena growing up much too fast.
Contains: Ambiguous relationship status for main couple(s) | Contains: Established relationship for main couple(s) | Contains: Language (general) | Contains: Pansexual Duo | Contains: Pansexual Heero | Contains: Pansexual Trowa | Contains: Sexuality/sexual references | Contains: Unique | Contains: Violence | Genre: Adventure | Genre: Drama | Length: 20k-30k words | Pairing - Primary: Heero & Trowa | Pairing - Secondary: Duo & Heero | POV: Trowa | Rating: 3 | Release/completion year: 2019 | Setting: Alternate universe | Setting: AU - Fantasy world
Unique to this story: a/b/o dynamics
Keeping the circus provisioned while on tour was a balancing act (pun intended) between overloading (which rendered travel difficult) and running short of supplies for all the people and animals that made the whole thing work (which put them at the mercy of the price hikes of the closest general store). By the time they finished their nine months on the road and returned to Springcleft for their season off, they'd usually run pretty low in a desire to travel light on the last leg; and the first thing Andrian and Cathy did, while everyone else got settled in, was drive back down into town and load up on goods to get the winter started. Therefore, Trowa's heart sank a bit when his sister and brother-in-law returned earlier than expected, not with a truck bed full of food crates, but with only a handful of them beside a large, iron-banded box with what had to be air-holes cut into its sides at various points.
He jogged to meet them, but had to stand off as they circled toward the empty lions' pen, angling and backing so the bed faced it. That elaborated on the box's contents, at least. As Cathy jumped out the passenger side, Trowa came closer. "Cubs?"
She shook her head, wide eyes promising a surprise. "It's a full-grown male, 450 or so."
Trowa looked again at the box, brows lowering. "How long has it been in that undersized crate?"
"Probably a lot longer than it should have," said Andrian as he rounded the front of the truck to join the conversation. "You know how Alex treats his animals."
Trowa nodded. A dealer in imports and exotics often of dubious origin, Alex took advantage of the circus's compassion for animals by procuring as many unusual examples as he could and housing them in small, shabby cages on short commons, knowing Andrian would pay the asking price just to get them away from him.
"One of these days we've got to find a way to make him stop," Cathy said with a disapproving shake of head.
"It won't be today." Andrian gave her a quick squeeze about the shoulders. "We need to unload it and get back into town before the stores close."
By this time, many of the circus folk had appeared and headed this direction, expecting to unload supplies but not entirely surprised when the truck's cargo proved to be mostly lion instead. Trowa's niece Relena, too young to remember the circus's previous lions clearly, had popped up from somewhere, and danced with excitement to see the new animal. It took long enough, though, to rope the heavy box off the truck bed, down a ramp they used solely for this purpose, and into a position where its door could be opened to allow the creature out into the spacious pen, that the child had wandered off singing a song about lions before the actual lion became visible.
Trowa stood near the tall bars and watched in interest nearly as great as Relena's had been. He'd missed having lions around, and only hoped this one hadn't taken too many ill effects from its time in Alex's clumsy hands.
"Handsome animal, isn't it?" said Andrian as he joined his brother-in-law observing the acquisition moving slowly out into its new habitat.
Trowa nodded. The creature's extensive mane appeared tangled, its shaggy body hair matted, and its entire frame covered in dirt and little bits of debris, but it was well formed and not as scrawny as he'd expected. It stretched thoroughly almost the instant its entire body had come free of its constrictive crate, then began to pace around the enclosure; the movements of its limbs were normal, fluid, strong, showing no signs of deformity or injury. Trowa nodded again.
"Work your magic," Andrian commanded cheerfully, clapping the younger man on the shoulder.
"We don't have much meat left," Trowa reminded him.
"We'll be sure to buy extra." Andrian turned back toward the truck, which Cathy, once the lion-extracting equipment had been removed, had turned on again and pointed at the front gate. Trowa kept his eyes on the lion.
As a recent tenant of Alex's, it must certainly be hungry. Once Trowa had satisfied himself that the animal seemed content for the moment simply to wander through the brush and up and down the rocks in its pen, he set off for the meathouse, after requesting that a nearby couple of trapeze artists see to the water trough.
What meat they'd had left at the end of their travels was still being unloaded, so Trowa stood and watched his options go by as Adele, who ran the circus's fortune-telling tent, walked back and forth between the meathouse and the stack of crates just outside it. Eventually she wondered in a jovially sarcastic tone, "Can I help you, Trowa?"
"I have a lion to feed," he informed her.
"Since half an hour ago. Andrian bought it from Alex."
"Upward of 400." He didn't quite agree with his sister's assessment of 450; she probably hadn't seen it walking freely.
"Spirits preserve us," Adele muttered. "I haven't taken inventory; I'm just doing this grunt-work." She indicated the crates with a thumb over her shoulder. "But come down and we'll see what we've got."
A clear none of the raw stuff they inspected looked in any way palatable, though some of it, still on the bone, advertised the type of meal a lion might otherwise enjoy. Trowa settled for several smaller pieces of preserved meat, which he re-wrapped in waxed paper and dumped into one of the crates that had already been emptied. Then, with a gesture of thanks at the fortune-teller, he turned his steps back toward the lions' pen.
There, he found John and Mary just about finished scrubbing out the water trough, which they'd removed and brought into the open for this purpose. The lions' pen had its own pool, consistently refreshed by water running in under one set of bars and out under another, but it was some of the most mineral-heavy water that came down from the hot springs Springcleft practically overflowed with, and the previous lions had never approved the taste. A pipeline in from one of the clearer springs in a different direction kept a silo full of drinking and cooking water for anyone else in the circus complex that shared this opinion.
The troughs in the lions' pen were accessed from an adjoining keeper's building that had been increasingly used, while they'd had no lions on the premises, for storage. Even had Trowa anticipated the advent of a lion, there wouldn't have been time between their late arrival yesterday and this afternoon to clean the place out. So he merely squeezed between the recently shuffled boxes near the door into the opener space beyond, and approached the bars where a chute allowed food to slide down into the other, still-present trough.
The chute was set a little high for convenience, even for the tall Trowa, and he had to drag a sealed box over and stand on it in order to peer its length and make sure it hadn't become clogged with leaves or anything since its last use. He found it relatively clear, but rather dirty: another item he would have scrubbed beforehand if he'd known.
He hopped down and pushed his erstwhile step-stool to the opposite wall, then quickly rearranged some of the others (which he wasn't sure why John and Mary hadn't moved entirely aside in the first place) so it would be easier to bring the water trough back in. This they soon did as Trowa began to unwrap the preserved meats, and once they'd gotten it locked into place through the slot at the bottom of the bars, they headed back to the silo for more water to fill it with. Meanwhile, Trowa fed the meats into the chute and thereby into the equally dirty food trough.
Eventually, with food and water provided for the lion and everything in its place, the trapeze artists returned to their own tasks, and Trowa stood at the bars observing the figure at the other end of the enclosure. At the moment it was rolling around in the dirt and scratching at itself all over, and either hadn't noticed the new amenities or didn't yet see fit to approach. Trowa watched for a few minutes, pleased at least that the poor thing had room to roam and roll as much it wanted now. More or less satisfied, he finally walked away.
An elderly couple, former bareback rider and strong man respectively, made up the circus complex's entire human population while the actual circus toured. They ran off would-be trespassers, took care of the animals that, like themselves, had grown too old to travel and perform anymore, and generally made sure everything remained at an acceptable level of readiness for the day at the end of the year when their fellows returned. But this didn't by any means lessen the amount of work required in as short a time as possible when that event took place.
There were animals to be settled into their long-term habitats, supplies to stow, inventories to take, repairs to be made, and a lot of cleaning to do. So Trowa, like everyone else, kept very busy for the rest of that day, and never had a chance to check whether the lion had found its meal or stopped rolling in the dirt. But since one of his functions in the circus was animal-handler, and he needed to 'work his magic,' as Andrian put it, sooner rather than later, he arranged for a good long time to spend with the lion the next day.
With the meathouse stocked to a better level after a proper shopping trip with no lions involved, Trowa was able to select a much better-looking lunch for the animal than yesterday's. And as he made his way back to the lions' pen, he recalled its previous inhabitants: a pair of males that had sometimes bickered amicably but for the most part had gotten along fairly well. Middle-aged when Trowa had joined the circus, they'd still been an active part of the show, so Trowa had worked with them quite a bit at first. But they'd progressed into their elderly years and retired, and eventually died within weeks of each other. At times Trowa still missed them; whether the new beast would grow on him as the old ones had, he couldn't guess.
Today, instead of wandering an enclosure it must be tolerably familiar with by now, it had settled down on a rock in that royally lazy way lions — especially the males — often had, and was soaking up the sun. It lay not too far from the keeper's building, so Trowa believed he could get its attention fairly easily.
He hefted the large leg of lamb up into the chute and watched it fall wetly into the trough beyond the bars with a splatting thud. Then he called to the lion, "Feeding time," and watched as the animal rose slowly, stretched leisurely, and moved casually in this direction.
"Hello," Trowa said as it approached. "I hope you prefer this pen to whatever Alex had you in." He spoke softly, as he always did when talking to animals and aiming to soothe; this habit had crept into his mannerisms with humans as well, leading many to make some interesting assumptions about him.
The lion looked at him briefly, then turned its full attention to the meat in the trough.
"My name is Trowa Barton," he went on. It didn't at all matter what he said; the point was simply to get the lion used to him and the sound of his voice. "I'm 28 years old. I've been with the Springcleft Circus for almost nine years — ever since my sister Cathy married Andrian, the owner. They have one child, a daughter named Relena; she's six this year."
As the lion tore at the meat and ate the pieces it separated from the bone in surprisingly delicate movements, Trowa went on.
"I'm a werebeast, but my sister isn't. As far as I know, Andrian is still in the dark about it. I handle the circus animals, get them used to humans, convince them to obey commands and work together with us. Any werebeast could do that, but Andrian thinks I have a magic touch.
"I'm only a beta, but even a beta werebeast can establish an order with animals. You and I, for example…" His already-quiet tone faded to nothing as the lion looked up and met his eyes for the first time.
This was usually all it took — allowing a creature to adjust to his presence, to him, and then a good solid look in the eyes to establish his dominance — and then it would become his servant, or at least (in the case of those more intelligent or dominant themselves) a pliable, receptive associate. This was the 'magic' he worked for the circus and for his own satisfaction: not taming animals, precisely, but convincing them of their position relative to himself and the wisdom of complying with his wishes.
But the lion's eyes seemed beyond intelligent, beyond assertive, and Trowa knew immediately his usual tactic wouldn't work. He'd never seen eyes quite like that in an animal before. In fact, his surprise prompted him to ask, "Are you a werebeast too?"
The lion gave no indication of having specifically understood him, but continued its unbroken stare.
Trowa shook his head. "Anyway you're all alpha, aren't you? You're never going to submit to me."
Returning to its meal, the lion terminated the almost uncanny eye contact.
Trowa continued pensively watching. Finally, after a long interval, he spoke again. "What I want is to make sure you're healthy and happy. If we can become friends, I'd like to arrange for acts in the circus for you. If that doesn't work out, I'd at least like you to be comfortable and secure here. But if you won't submit…" He pondered for a moment as the lion began gnawing the last of the flesh off the bone in the trough. Eventually he suggested, "Maybe you can consider me your beta. I don't mind, if that's what it takes." He stood straight from where he'd been leaning against the bars, and swept the dramatic bow he used during his own circus acts.
Abruptly and without warning, the lion dropped the bone, cleared the trough in a quick spring, crouched in the cramped space between it and the bars, and onto one of the latter placed a huge paw.
Trowa took a step backward, not frightened but definitely startled. More than startled at the sudden and unexpected movement, he was very surprised at the comprehension, completely absent prior to this, the lion seemed to demonstrate. With that raised paw, it appeared to be accepting Trowa's offer of service. It spoke again to the behavior of a werebeast rather than a natural animal.
"If you transformed," he remarked drily, "we could shake on it." But when the lion's attitude remained the same, he raised his tanned hand to place it on the bar across from the darker brown pads. He looked the lion in the eye, searching for signs of humanity. But no clues of body in any animal suggested it might be a werebeast, only of behavior. Trowa had certainly witnessed a few such hints, but they weren't quite conclusive.
Finally the lion, with the air of getting bored with this, removed its paw, turned its rear end on Trowa, and started nosing around in the food trough again. And Trowa decided that was enough interaction for now.
The next day, he saved the lion for last on his rounds so as once again to give himself plenty of time with it. Of course he couldn't be certain the animal would even grace him with its presence at the west end of the enclosure where Trowa could talk to it from the comfort of the keeper's building; and if it did, that didn't guarantee it would stay long enough for the time to be of any value. But Trowa needed to understand it better, so he would make the attempt.
When he'd dropped off the lion's supper yesterday evening, he hadn't seen it. Now, however, the creature paced in front of the food trough as if unusually hungry. When it caught sight of Trowa, it let out an annoyed growl and went still.
"Sorry," Trowa told it as he used the waxed paper to tip this late morning's meal into the chute. "You're on a long list; sometimes you'll have to wait for breakfast."
The lion inspected the food briefly, then stood back and shook itself vigorously all over. Debris flew from its dark brown mane, and Trowa stepped back even on the other side of the trough and the bars to escape some of it. Then the lion did as it had yesterday and bounded over the trough to look at the human more closely. It sat down in the dirt and, once sure of Trowa's attention, began making grooming motions with its left paw.
Trowa watched the huge appendage run up over the lion's ear, smoothing at its frazzled mane, and wondered what this was about. When the lion ceased this motion and pushed the paw out toward him in what could almost be taken for a pointing gesture, he shook his head. "I don't know what you mean."
The lion stood again and, moving forward, pressed the top of its head against the bars essentially right in Trowa's face.
Trowa too stepped forward, and peered into the grungy hair in front of him. At the sound he made when his eye caught movement therein, the lion stepped back again. It sat, repeated the grooming gesture, and again put out its paw as if to point at Trowa.
"You have fleas," said Trowa, "and you want me to take care of them."
For a third time the lion pointed at him. Now that Trowa believed he understood, the gesture came across very much like an order. If this creature wasn't a werebeast getting its kicks from harassing a fellow, it must be considerably domesticated to know a human could help with its parasite problem.
"I suspect it's much easier to bathe in human form," Trowa murmured, then added in a louder tone, "but I'll go get what we need. You're going to have to get very wet, and let me scrub you down. A haircut, too; you're so matted."
The lion made a grumbling noise, and turned back to the trough and its breakfast.
As Trowa left the keeper's building and headed toward the shed where flea powder for all the hairy animals was kept, he reflected on his new relationship with this unusual lion. A good beta followed their alpha's orders perfectly, and acted in every way as a staunch supporter and second-in-command. Of course he didn't consider the lion his alpha — that honor was reserved for other werebeasts or, very occasionally, exceptionally assertive natural humans — but the lion had obviously decided to take him up on his offer and consider him its beta. And a command even from an animal alpha to whom Trowa had offered a certain level of submission spoke to his natural inclination to obey. Giving a new hairy acquisition a flea bath (and possibly a good barbering) was something he would have done anyway as soon as he believed the animal wouldn't try to kill him for the offense, but that didn't alter the aberrant and interesting nature of this situation.
Relena, evidently having escaped all watchful eyes elsewhere in the complex, came running up to him as he left the shed. "Uncle Trowa!!" she shouted, not even breathless yet in her youthful energy. "Wanna see me do five cartwheels in a row?"
"Yes," Trowa replied, and watched attentively. He resisted he urge to criticize her form, merely saying, "Well done," when she'd finished.
"I get dizzy if I do more than five," she informed him, clapping her little hands together so dust flew off them in clouds.
He nodded gravely.
Next she wondered, "What are you doing?"
Trowa lifted the flea powder. "I'm going to give the lion a bath."
Relena practically shrieked in her excitement. "Can I help??"
"No." Trowa smiled. "But you can watch.
"OK." Relena turned to lead the way. "Look how high I can skip!"
The lion observed Relena with apparent interest as she grasped the bars inside the keeper's building and stared into the pen. It wasn't the attitude some predators adopted when a small perceived prey stood before them; it seemed rather to contain curiosity and immediate approval. And here Trowa was, already assigning very human interpretations to the lion's expressions.
"What's his name?" Relena wondered.
"He hasn't told me." Trowa threw the lion a look.
"Can I name him?"
Trowa repeated the gesture. "Sure."
"OK." His niece stood on one leg and pondered, still holding a bar and gazing delightedly at the animal. "I'll name you… MOOMBAH."
Trowa's third look at the lion was pretty smug. The creature, he believed, had twitched at the word. "That's a great name," he told Relena. "Now why don't you go outside and down to the far end of the pen so you can see the area where the water goes in and out?"
"OK!" She tried to skip out of the building, but the crates and things that still cluttered it got in her way and she was forced to walk.
Trowa turned back to the lion. "Well, Moombah, shall we get this done?"
The lion growled softly and rolled his head from side to side, then turned around and stalked away. Trowa set down the supplies he'd brought and reached for his keys. This would be the moment of truth. Would the werebeast take revenge on him for encouraging his niece to dole out a silly name? Would the mere animal become aggressive when Trowa invaded its new space and tried to scrub it? Now to find out.
The door, a section of bars that tracked to the side, fastened with two bolts and a chain, and fortunately the roof of the keeper's building provided sufficient protection from the elements that no rust had developed during the disuse over the last few lionless years. Trowa undid all three locks, slid the bolts back, and opened the door.
Moombah still plodded toward the pool at the other end, and did not turn at the rattling sound of the ingress. The latter Trowa closed and refastened after hauling everything he'd brought through the opening, then followed the lion to the bathing area. Relena had gotten as close, on the outside of the pen, as she could; now she poked her nose through one of the gaps so the bars pulled her cheeks back into a bizarre stretched expression, and watched with avid interest as Trowa drew even with the lion that had taken a seat near the edge of the water.
"I don't know when anyone last used this bucket," he remarked as he removed the items he'd been carrying inside the tin container. Moombah glanced indifferently at it, then started pawing at the running water. He tapped the surface delicately, then shook the water from his paw, then licked tentatively at what remained. He showed no signs of wanting to slaughter Trowa, and revealed this momentous fact with casual indifference. Trowa, letting out a silent breath, bent to rinse the bucket.
The land in Springcleft was composed of tier upon tier of various types of rock, and where the hot, mineral-filled waters from the springs wore away the earth between and around them, weirdly shaped holes with uneven layered edges gaped. So it was here in the circus complex wherever streams came down; so it was higher toward the apex where the large hot pools attracted bathers and vacationers; so it was right up the craggy walls of the valley, which might itself once have been completely underwater.
The pool in the lions' pen went perhaps six feet deep at most, but had a variety of floors at different levels like a miniature of the entire valley. The channels that fed into and led out of it dug deeper and deeper into the ground each year, and one of these times they were going to have to look to the bar supports. But in any case it was sufficient to rinse buckets and keep lions clean, and surprisingly warm even this far from its source.
Moombah turned to regard the act of mixing up a batch of soapy water in the bucket, and Trowa thought that, with an audience such as he had — a lion that might be a werebeast and a small human girl on the other side of the bars — this made for the most eccentric (and possibly the most boring) show in the history of the circus. When he began scrubbing the lion, though, he trusted it became much more interesting. The creature growled and whined and stretched and wiggled under the brush, and Relena giggled incessantly. And when Trowa gave the command, "Rinse!" and the lion obeyed without too much grumbling, leaping down into the pool so water splashed far out past its mineral-crusted edges and onto Trowa, Relena was beside herself with laughter.
With the process finished — flea scrub, several rinses, shearing, and what brushing was feasible — Moombah shook himself thoroughly from head to tail, rendering Trowa wetter than ever, and took off at a run around the pen. Trowa began packing up his equipment, trying to avoid the worst of the mud that had formed over the last half hour, while Relena made gleeful, impressed sounds about how fast Moombah could run. Eventually the lion came her direction, stopped abruptly at a bit of a skid, and shook his unevenly cut mane violently so water droplets sprayed across the little girl and the bars she clung to. Once more she shrieked with laughter as he then tore away again. Obviously Relena had made a new friend.
This observation was borne out over the next several weeks, and Trowa grudgingly added to it the assessment that he had made a new friend as well. Though occasionally imperious, the lion proved consistently companionable and sometimes outright friendly. As the circus settled and began to relax, and the immediate pressing tasks of winter's beginning were finished, Trowa had more free time in the afternoons, which he usually spent working on his acrobatics… and somehow (it was a mystery) he came to do this habitually in the lion's pen.
Moombah watched him with apparent interest. Cats of any size were, of course, natural acrobats and contortionists, but this one never tried to imitate Trowa's moves. One day, however, it did start a completely unexpected wrestling match. Of course it won handily, pinning Trowa to the ground with paws whose claws only barely prickled outward to keep him down, and this seemed the last proof Trowa needed that they truly were friends rather than predator and prey as they might have been.
Another mystery gradually made itself known: how Relena had come to interact as closely with the lion as Trowa did. Trowa's growing habit, confident in Moombah's friendliness now, of leaving the bar door inside the keeper's building open probably had something to do with it; Relena must have wandered in at some point when he wasn't looking. This worried Trowa as far as his vigilance concerning his niece went, but its results were nothing but pleasant. Moombah allowed Relena to do literally anything to him — play tag, climb all over him, brush his mane, and some kind of private game Trowa didn't understand that involved pushing each other and only sometimes falling down.
The lion demonstrated gentleness, care, and infinite patience with her. Once, when Moombah deemed she'd gotten too close to the pool at the east end of the pen, he even picked her up by the overalls as he might a rebellious cub, covering her with lion slobber and carrying her, helpless with laughter, away from what he obviously considered a dangerous area. Trowa was impressed. He also believed more than ever that this must be a werebeast, but nothing he could say or do convinced the animal to reveal his human form or even confirm the theory with an unguarded look or movement. So Trowa let that matter sleep for now.
Winter in Springcleft never became more than cool, and usually remained comfortably warm (as opposed to the long span between mid-spring and mid-autumn when the atmosphere resembled the interior of a stew pot), so Trowa tended to spend more time outside than in. They had their own discrete weather patterns, too, and in winter rain only occasionally drove him under cover. At such times he would read two-bit novels, chat with his sister, or help Relena cut out an eclectic set of pictures from magazines to paste onto colored paper for some enigmatic purpose.
It looked as if it would turn into one such day, as the valley's narrow window on the sky clouded over from northwest to southeast and a faint sprinkling of warm, scented rain already misted his hair and shoulders whenever he stepped out of the lion keeper's building. He'd finally gotten around to tackling the plethora of nonsense that had collected in there since the previous lions had died. Some of it, relevant to lion husbandry, only needed to be rearranged logically within the small building, but most of it belonged elsewhere in the circus complex. So Trowa grew increasingly damp as he went back and forth during the course of his work. Nearby, Relena played with Moombah in the pen beyond the open bar door into the keeper's building, undoubtedly becoming much wetter.
"Almost time to go inside, Relena," Trowa called to her as he explored the detritus at the bottom of another crate. A resistant cry from the human child and a discontented growl from the lion answered him.
Relena got a reprieve, as Trowa became distracted by the roll of old circus posters he found amidst the other junk. He couldn't help looking through them one by one, remembering those from the years he'd been here and assessing those he wasn't as familiar with from before his time. It intrigued him to see the change in styles from when the previous artist had retired and handed the job over to newer blood. And some of these featured Relena's grandmother Vasilisa, Andrian's mother the previous owner and manager, whom Trowa barely recognized except for the golden-brown hair she'd passed on to her granddaughter.
As he moved to shuffle to the next poster near the end of the roll, he was startled by the flinging open of the wooden door into the building and the rush of a figure, darting past him through the open bar door into the pen, whom he couldn't quite identify in the speed of their passage. He leapt to his feet, dropping the posters — they fell onto the side of the crate, some tipping into it but some scattering across the floor — and followed.
Trowa arrived just in time to see a man in a denim jacket fling himself between Relena and the lion, yanking the child back and shoving her behind him so she fell into a seated position on the grass with a yelp. Now Trowa recognized him, as well as the assumption he'd logically made upon entering the circus complex and seeing, almost first thing, a lion and a six-year-old together apparently unsupervised in this pen.
"Heero, wait," Trowa called, hastening forward.
Heero faced the lion in an openly combative pose, though what he thought he could do with human limbs Trowa had no idea. Still, he appeared ready to attack at any moment, or try to hinder the lion if it did. Actually, he seemed ready to transform, if Trowa was any judge; the hands he'd lifted seemed to be drifting toward what garments would be destroyed or hamper his movement if he did, ready to pull them off and reveal his werebeast form to the world in order to protect Relena.
Imitating his friend, Trowa placed himself between human and lion, blocking the latter's bemused tilt of head from the former's view and raising his own hands. "Stop," he commanded. "Don't."
Heero's eyes widened, and a body-wide start gave way to a gradual, reluctant relaxation into a normal standing position, no longer threatening to shed his clothing onto the wet grass in order to change shape. He opened his mouth to speak, but Relena beat him to that punch. Throwing her arms around his legs, she cried, "Uncle Heero! You came back!"
The lion took one step delicately to the side, then one forward, so it could see Heero around Trowa and his outspread arms. Trowa let one of these fall so his hand rested in Moombah's mane, a gesture of restraint and reassurance for both parties. Heero did not take his eyes off the creature as he tried to unclasp Relena's hands from his legs, but he did acknowledge her greeting with a gruff affirmative sound.
"This is Moombah," Trowa said, running his hand through the lion's dark brown hair.
Heero's brows went up.
"Relena named him."
"He's my friend!" Relena had gotten around in front of Heero and was now jumping up and down. "He's my uncle, just like you and Trowa! Uncle Moombah!" Almost absently, perhaps in an attempt at calming her, Heero reached down and picked the little girl up, still keeping his eyes on the lion. Relena took advantage of the position to hug him around the neck and plant a big wet kiss on his cheek. "Where were you?" she demanded. "I didn't see you for so long!"
"That's a good question," Trowa murmured.
Heero spoke at last. "I'll tell you. Let's get out of this lion pen."
Trowa nodded, then was forced to stifle a chuckle as Heero literally backed away from the lion, holding Relena and staring at Moombah steadfastly with every step. Trowa had to hasten to guide him around the food trough and through the still-open bar door into the building. There, Heero set Relena down in a slow, careful movement, as if expecting the lion to bound forward and gobble her up once she stood on the floor.
Turning, Trowa observed that Moombah had followed them and taken a seat next to the trough. Interestingly, he stared at Heero as ceaselessly as the human stared at him, though his reasons were far less fathomable.
Relena started bouncing around Heero, but, as usual, the clutter in the keeper's building got in her way. And halfway through her already broken circle, she noticed the circus posters scattered around a nearby crate, and abruptly dropped to her knees to examine them.
"You always leave this gate open?" Heero asked suspiciously, examining the setup briefly before looking at the lion again.
"When I'm here." Trowa sat down on the floor and pointed to a place opposite to suggest Heero take it. "Moombah doesn't cause any problems."
The other werebeast reluctantly sat. "It's tame?"
"I… wouldn't say that. But he's friendly."
Heero nodded slowly, and said nothing more.
As usual, it would be up to Trowa to start the conversation. Accustomed to this, he found it no great difficulty, but it was all part of a problem he'd observed for as long as he'd known Heero. "We're almost six weeks into winter. I didn't expect to see you at all, especially after you didn't show up last year."
Relena wandered over with what must be her favorite poster, and installed herself unceremoniously in Heero's lap to look at it. It occasionally blocked his vision, at which point he would push it aside in order to keep his eyes locked on Moombah. Trowa again had to restrain that chuckle.
"I went downriver to the coast. I spent the season in the swamps."
Knowing that by 'season' Heero meant 'mating season' rather than 'winter,' Trowa considered this. He had no chance to ask his next question, though, because Relena cried, "You were in a swamp??"
"That's right," Heero replied, taking her by the shoulders and tilting her sideways so the poster moved with her.
Relena squirmed and giggled, and through her glee demanded to know, "Were there alligators??"
Now Heero met Trowa's eyes briefly, and they both smiled. "Yes," Heero replied.
"How many alligators? I can count to one hundred, so if there were one hundred alligators, I can count them for you!"
"Thank you," said Heero gravely. "I didn't count them." His eyes flicked to Trowa's once more as he added, "They were a dirty temptation."
This was werebeast slang, and Trowa understood now how the beginning of Heero's previous year had gone: he'd tried to spend his inconveniently intense mating season as an alligator, in an area suited to that shape, in order to circumvent the irresistible attraction he felt to humans in his other form… but the natural alligators in the swamps had been distractingly sexually alluring to him in alligator form. It must have been a maddening, miserable winter.
"How many is that?" Relena was asking, getting her poster in Heero's face again.
"Relena," Trowa said suddenly, "Uncle Heero doesn't believe Moombah is a nice lion. Why don't you go play with Moombah so Heero can see how nice he is?"
Relena jumped up, nearly bashing her head into Heero's face, and stumbled out of his lap. "I will!"
"Don't take the poster into the rain," Trowa added hastily. For the storm had broken, transforming the drizzle into steady, heavy drops. Relena would be soaked; the adults had better finish their private conversation quickly so they could get her inside for a hot bath.
"Is it really safe?" Heero wondered, setting aside the poster the child had handed him before running out into the wet.
Trowa nodded. He noted that Moombah had come even closer, possibly to avoid the worst of the downpour, so Relena had no great distance to go to start climbing all over him. There was a relatively waterproof sort of den near the north wall of the pen, but evidently Moombah preferred to be here right now, despite how long it would take his fur to dry later.
Trowa turned back to Heero and said, "I'm sorry your swamp experiment failed."
Heero shook his head, looking grim and somewhat haunted. "I thought this year I'd try something else. But I couldn't. Nothing seems to work."
"Heero, you're welcome here. I'm here all season for you."
"I know. I'm grateful. But it's not fair to you."
"It may not be," Trowa allowed. "But I don't mind it. If I ever do, I'll tell you."
Heero only frowned. He'd removed his eyes from the lion again to look at Trowa, and now it seemed they were stuck traversing his friend's seated form. A hunger glowed in those eyes that Trowa had seen many times before, but which now looked famished, desperate; and the tension in his frame conveyed very clearly what it would take to satisfy him. An answering shiver ran through Trowa's body, as it always did on seeing Heero for the first time after a long absence.
Trowa lowered his tone. "I need to get Relena inside to Cathy, but I can meet you in my room after that."
Heero drew in a ragged breath. "Thank you," he whispered.
"You'd better hold your jacket in front of you," Trowa advised with a glance at Heero's lap, "and be glad that didn't happen three minutes ago."
With a grimace, Heero removed his outer garment, stood, and stepped toward the door. Trowa rose as well, and began to replace all the circus posters in the crate they'd come from so they wouldn't blow into the rain or otherwise get destroyed. Then he went to the bar door and called Relena, who seemed, in this rain, far more likely to come willingly. He noticed the lion's eyes followed Heero until he was out of sight.
Trowa missed dinner that night, but since Relena had undoubtedly spread the news of Uncle Heero's return, and the adults of the circus understood Uncle Heero's relationship with Uncle Trowa a little better than the child did, he doubted anyone worried about him. They might have worried about muscle strain and cramp resultant upon not having moved in certain ways for quite some time, regular acrobatics entirely notwithstanding — but only if they were thinking far more about his sex life than he would prefer.
Breathless and covered in sweat after the fifth or sixth time, Trowa attempted to rearrange the bedding into some semblance of order. He found himself a little too worn out, at the moment, to do more than tug on the thin patchwork quilt that had fallen half off the bed, and inadvertently induced its complete abandonment of that piece of furniture. The sheet beneath was hopelessly twisted and wrenched from where it had been tucked at the bottom, and this Trowa couldn't muster the energy to detangle and drape over them properly. So he let his head fall back onto the pillow, near Heero's, and tried not to care.
They were two very quiet men that rarely disturbed the inhabitants of the rooms to either side. In fact, they might well be considered extremely similar in personality by casual acquaintances. But, Trowa reflected as he listened to Heero's breaths controlled and silenced much quicker than his own, where his quiet was that of calm, of confidence, of peace and satisfaction with his life, Heero's quiet was that of repression. A passion and intensity lurked beneath Heero's surface like the alligator he sometimes was, and a muted frustration at his own denial of it drove him to wander, to seek, rather than settling into a comfortable life somewhere (such as here at the circus).
If Trowa had an alpha, it was Heero. If Heero had a beta, it was Trowa. And Trowa, who prided himself on being a good beta, had been loyal to and supportive of Heero ever since they'd first met, both when they'd been romantically involved and later when their relationship had become more that of friends with a practical arrangement. He'd always done whatever he could for Heero… but he knew by now that such behavior wasn't what Heero needed. Trowa's willing submission and second-in-command attitude could not draw out Heero's intensity the way Trowa (and undoubtedly Heero himself) would like to see it brought to the surface.
Some betas (they'd started calling themselves 'beta pluses,' which Trowa considered phenomenally stupid) were constantly challenging their alphas, pushing them, testing boundaries, essentially seeking to topple the dominance order and become alphas themselves. This would never be Trowa's way, and in fact annoyed him to think about… but perhaps it would better fit Heero's true needs.
The latter obviously remained unsatisfied. A proud and selective alpha, Heero demonstrated fastidious unwillingness to take to the cities, with their bigger selection, in search of a mate, clinging instead to something he knew met his body's demands, even while feeling guilty about it. His romance with Trowa had ended amicably some years ago, but Heero always came back here for his mating season. And Trowa would always be there for him, always love him as a friend, always submit to him sexually as Heero so desperately needed him to… but he feared Heero's lifestyle would never lead either of them to emotional fulfillment.
Physical fulfillment, on the other hand…
Trowa slept little that night, but on subsequent nights (when they hadn't started so early and therefore went on later) he slept even less. At this time of year, Heero was insatiable; he wore the other werebeast out before every dawn. And Trowa enjoyed the sex, naturally. He too felt lonely in general and longed for a mate, most especially during his own season in spring, but, not nearly as driven as Heero, he generally managed to get by.
"We always know when Heero's here," Cathy told him one day, "because you get circus tents under your eyes." And, though she was clearly teasing, the gentle sympathy showing simultaneously in her face probably pointed toward both her brother and Heero. Despite the transformative gene's recessiveness in her, she'd grown up in a family of werebeasts, and well understood the devastating toll an intense mating season could take on one without a mate — and those around them. But she didn't — maybe couldn't — say this in front of her husband.
He, a very supportive brother-in-law and with genuine good feelings and wishes toward Trowa, believed Heero and Trowa had an on-again-off-again romance, and at this point in the conversation said with comradely sympathy, "Hopefully he'll stick around this time."
Relena obviously had the same wish, for reasons of her own, and after not too long Heero appeared to return her affection. The last time he'd been here, his niece had only been four years old, and had mostly stayed with her parents and babysitter. Now, at six, she'd become interactive, and had the freedom to spend time with her uncles, blood and nominal and lion — and Heero didn't seem at all to mind. Trowa speculated that, being a child and therefore not sexually attractive, Relena made a much better companion for the easily aroused alpha than did any older human, including himself. So they were frequently together, the four of them.
The uneven, grassy ground of Moombah's pen could not be considered ideal for floor acrobatics. Because of this, Trowa found practicing there helped him adjust quickly to different terrain, a useful skill for someone that never knew how perfectly flat a surface the circus might or might not find for each show on tour. And in all or nearly all of his flips and balancing moves and cartwheels and rolls, Relena imitated him.
"I want to do the trapeze," she complained one day after failing to pull off even a single flip in imitation of Trowa's triple. She sat on the grass pouting, having previously brought under control the wailing and tears occasioned by her fall.
"When you're bigger and older," Trowa promised, "John and Mary will teach you."
"But I wanna do it now!"
"He's right," said the nearby Heero, who'd been seated in the grass taking care not to watch Trowa's body and its flexible talents, and who now rose to a crouch. "But come here."
Relena ran to him, and jumped into his arms. Heero promptly stood straight and threw her into the air. She flailed and let out the expected shriek of mirth, then fell back to his waiting hands. "Again! Again!" she demanded. And Heero complied.
Trowa, standing still for the moment to watch, observed that Relena wasn't the only thing rising and falling; Moombah's great maned head swiveled up and down, up and down, following her closely with his big liquid eyes. And whether the lion felt more interest in Relena's safety or Heero's physical prowess, Trowa couldn't guess.
Eventually, breathing hard, Heero caught Relena and did not immediately throw her again, though she kept telling him to. "Too tired," he said, and unexpectedly swung the girl onto the lion's back. Her eyes went wide, and she immediately clutched at the brown mane for balance. Moombah too seemed startled for a moment, but almost instantly regained his composure and waited, stock-still, for Relena to get her bearings. Then, as she sat up straight and looked around, clamping her little legs down as best she could onto the deep chest, he began slowly pacing forward.
A huge grin spread across Relena's face as she discovered she could direct her mount by pulling on his mane in one direction or another, and soon they were wandering all around the enclosure at varying speeds. Heero stood and watched them, and Trowa stood on one hand and watched them, and the atmosphere was nothing but cheerful.
Relena had needed only prompting to become a devotee of lionback riding. Over the next few days, whenever they were in Moombah's pen, she kept coming up with what she considered new 'moves' — different ways of mounting and dismounting, commands for actions on the lion's part that she kept forgetting, and ringleader-style introductions to her fictional lionback riding act. Heero would throw her in the air until too tired to continue, and then she would demand all eyes upon her while she performed the latest in a string of ideas she'd come up with during the rest of her day.
This was typical Relena behavior, but more in Trowa's vicinity than usual, and he relied on Heero's constant concentration to give him any time to practice his own routines. Moombah seemed aware of this small dilemma, and occasionally diverted Relena's attention away from Trowa's lack thereof, in ways the werebeast couldn't in any way believe unpremeditated. He never had persuaded the lion to reveal its human form, though, and had mostly given up trying.
Heero, Trowa believed, exercised this endless patience and show of interest for Relena's young antics not solely out of desire to do what he could to help Trowa, out of gratitude and some shame for what Trowa did for him; he also truly seemed to care about her, to enjoy interacting with her, and to take real consideration with her for her plans. It touched Trowa's heart, and made him wonder whether this was an alpha thing, or an aspect of Heero's personality he'd never had a chance to exhibit before in Trowa's presence, or maybe a little of both.
A camaraderie of another nature developed between Heero and Moombah. It differed from Trowa's relationship with the lion too; this much was observable from the merest moment they all spent together. But Trowa didn't realize just how different it was until the time he saw Heero and the lion wrestling, as Trowa did sometimes with Moombah, and felt the closest thing to a shock he'd had in quite some time.
Moombah snarled and lashed his tail and wrinkled his lips so his enormous teeth showed ruthless and shining, while Heero grappled him with biceps bulging and gritted teeth and an intensity looming in his blue eyes that Trowa had rarely seen there. Claws in, the lion gave Heero a tough bat with his paw and sent him sprawling, into a position from which Heero rolled into a crouching skid and launched himself right back at the animal. There was a seriousness to the sound, the look, the feel of the match that had never been present between Trowa and Moombah.
He shook his head slightly. That one had to be an alpha thing.
Not infrequently during any given day, Heero would become inconveniently aroused by some adult human in his vicinity, and retreat with a grumbling demeanor to Trowa's room until presentable again. But even on the nights following days when this hadn't happened, Heero remained insatiable. In earlier life, Trowa wouldn't have guessed a diminished refractory period might come with the drive of a werebeast alpha, but had definitely seen it demonstrated many times over the years.
In one instance, when they'd fallen out of bed and continued on the floor, and eventually lay half on the hard slats and half on the rug, the sore and panting Trowa happened to glance in the direction of the room's exit, and sat up abruptly. The pale glow of the minute cracks around the door prompted a broken query, "What time… how long…?"
Though Heero's expression was invisible in the darkness, just his single syllable, "Oh…" sounded embarrassed.
Rising and stumbling to his bureau, Trowa felt out the lamp and reached for the switch. As the gas hissed and the striker clicked, the room lit up enough to see the clock on the wall, by which he observed it was nearly seven in the morning. He tried very hard not to let his subsequent glance at the naked Heero come across as accusatory.
"Oh," Heero said again. "I'm sorry."
Trowa shook his head, stifling a sigh. "Don't worry about it."
"No," insisted Heero, rising and looking sheepish. "This is my fault."
Unable to deny it, Trowa said nothing, just turned back toward the bureau and opened the top drawer seeking a clean shirt.
"Don't." Heero began replacing and straightening the disarrayed bedding. "Get some sleep. I'll start the chores."
Trowa smiled faintly at the offer, and nodded at his companion. "I'll join you later."
Heero nodded as well, and then, once he'd pulled down the blanket and sheet for Trowa to climb back into bed under, searched for his own clothing and shoes. After not too long, fully dressed, he put out the lamp and left the room.
Trowa squirmed into the bed, half luxuriating in lingering sensations and half resolving soreness and exhaustion. Despite thinking drowsily that it smelled like sex in here just a little more than usual, it wasn't long before he dozed. And then it wasn't long before the door cracked open again with a creak of hinges and an in-flooding of dim morning light that startled him awake.
"Trowa," Heero said quietly, sounding bemused, "why is your alpha following me around?"
Re-closing his eyes against the light, Trowa grumbled out a barely intelligible answer: "Don't have an alpha. 'M a lone beta."
"Why is your lion following me around?"
Trowa lifted himself up onto an elbow and peered at the backlit, messy-haired head peeking through the door at him. "What."
"Your lion. Moombah. Is following me around."
Trowa made a noise of indifferent confusion. "Maybe he wants to help you with the chores." He reclaimed his recumbency and pulled the blanket over his head.
Heero said nothing further, and a moment later the latching and locking of the door sounded. Soon Trowa did more than doze; he'd fallen deeply asleep, and stayed there for several hours.
Though he woke groggy and sorer than usual thanks to the strenuous night and the unusually timed, truncated sleep, curiosity gave him a sharper edge than he'd expected, and eventually he rose, dressed, and issued forth to find out how much work Heero had accomplished and to what extent Moombah might have assisted in that endeavor.
Everything he took note of on his way from the rooms appeared finished, which relieved him since he hadn't looked forward to completing a miscellany of tasks in this fuzzy state He saw no signs of Heero or Moombah all the way to the latter's pen, but there he stopped short. Approaching the bars slowly, he felt an unexpected warmth growing inside him.
Stretched out lazily in the winter sun, the lion looked precisely like every other lion Trowa had seen lounging around that habitat in the past — except usually they didn't have a human man propped up against them, head on mane and arm along golden back, deeply asleep. Those two had bonded indeed, whether it was an alpha thing or not. Trowa would never tell Heero how charming a scene this made, though.
How rarely the bar door into the lions' pen was ever closed, Trowa doubted anyone besides himself, Heero, and Relena knew. The door into the keeper's building often stood open as well, so Moombah essentially had free run of the complex and beyond. Because he emerged primarily to follow Heero and Trowa around (not when they were caring for other animals, of course, as the presence of a lion invariably spooked or aggravated those), the rest of the circus simply assumed Moombah to be under their control.
One evening, though, as Trowa and Heero sat with Cathy helping to sharpen a truly startling set of throwing weapons that she'd arranged by size in heaps on a thick tarp spread across the dirt, while Relena hopped and cartwheeled and sprinted in large circles around this business she was strictly forbidden to get any closer to, Cathy remarked, "The way that lion stares at us is unnerving."
Her brother glanced over to where, some yards away closer to the front gate, Moombah sat, straight and lordly, gazing across at them from behind the bars of his pen. Trowa believed him to be staring at Heero as he often did when not outright following him around, but Trowa refrained from informing Cathy of this.
"Maybe he wants to help," Heero murmured in between grinds at the spinning stone.
Cathy chuckled. "And have his claws sharpened while we're at it?"
"He might," Trowa realized aloud as he noticed the lion's gaze moving subtly, "be watching Relena."
Cathy's expression and bearing became uneasy. She turned entirely toward Moombah and watched him intently, her brows lowering farther every time Relena crossed her field of vision.
"Because he's worried about her," Trowa clarified. "He's afraid she'll get too close to the edged weapons."
The look Cathy gave him now blended skepticism with a hint of suspicion. "He knows about edged weapons?"
Trowa reminded her, "I've mentioned he must have lived with humans in the past." In one form or another.
"Yes, but…" She pursed her lips as she fixed worried eyes on her daughter.
"He's very protective of her."
Whatever answer Cathy might have given was overridden when Relena, noticing her mother's fixed attention, shouted, "Mommy, watch me!!" and started cartwheeling again. It was nothing any of them hadn't seen a dozen times before, but they applauded when she finished, staggering and panting, and started to draw closer at a walk.
"Keep clear of the weapons," Cathy said.
Relena stopped and sat down at a safe distance. "OK."
All three adults smiled — for each's personal definition of the term — as they turned back inward to their work and Relena began to draw in the dirt and sing a song about numbers as she did so. The next time Trowa looked over at Moombah, he found the lion's gaze fixed… but the animal stood too far away to guess precisely whom it stared at.
Though the surrounding walls loomed about twice as high, the front gate onto the property rose only about five feet — tall enough for basic security, but making no pretensions to an ability to stop, for example, stampeding elephants. It remained fastened by chain and padlock unless someone had left and would return the same day; and on this particular one, the two high divers — a vapid married couple of ladies whose only real talents were looking extremely good in swimwear and no fear of heights — had gone to the lower valley to shop. Though perhaps unlucky for the Springcleft Circus folk, this was a lucky thing for the figure fumbling drunkenly at the gate's fastening, which never would have given way to his clumsy hands had the chain been in place.
They only noticed their visitor by noticing first that Moombah had moved down to the far end of his pen nearest the complex's entrance and now stood in a pugnacious pose, fur bristling, watching the man struggle to and eventually, painstakingly enter. Then, attention drawn that direction, they all looked at the big blonde figure stalking toward them with alcohol-fueled determination.
Cathy, as a co-owner and manager of the circus, rose first. She didn't bother putting down the hand ax she held as she left the tarp and the seats, and her face radiated disapproval. "Relena, please go into the house," she called over her shoulder before heading toward the newcomer. Then in a louder tone she asked, "What do you want, Alex?"
Alex's line toward them hadn't exactly been straight, but the angle changed when Cathy spoke. "I'll te'you what's I want!" he shouted in reply. "I tell you, I'll tell ya!"
Trowa sighed, and looked around at where Relena had, instead of obeying her mother, merely moved back a pace. "Relena, go into the house," he reminded her quietly. Very reluctantly, the child obeyed, looking over her shoulder every couple of steps and then standing in the open door to the residence hanging from the knob without going any further. At least there she was too distant to hear the language Alex would undoubtedly soon start using.
"Thas my lion, dyhearme? My lion!" Alex gestured furiously at Moombah, who, behind the bars of his pen, had kept even with Alex and maintained his angry stance. "You circus freaks thing you're better'n me with your big cages an' shiny tens an' lectric lights an' shit, up in this rich fuckin' valley you don' even 'serve t'own landin… Well, thas my lion, yhearme?"
Cathy remained cool and completely uncowed as Alex stumbled up to her and shouted the last declaration directly in her face. "How did you get here in this state?" she wondered, the question more rhetorical than anything. "And how many trees did you hit on the way up?"
As Alex's ranting became a little more personal, all about how the circus folk lorded it over him but in reality they were just weirdos that couldn't get real jobs, interspersed with continual insistences that Moombah belonged rightfully to him, Trowa and Heero came to stand on either side of Cathy for solidarity, and hopefully to diminish the amount of spittle she had to deal with on her face by sharing the load.
"You're very drunk, Alex," Trowa informed him quietly when he paused to draw breath. "You need to go home."
"Nah withou' my lion!"
Trowa followed Alex's flailing gesture over to Moombah. The lion, observing Trowa's eyes on him, bared his teeth and made an imperious clawing movement with one paw; and Trowa didn't doubt — not least because he instinctively twitched to obey — Moombah was ordering him to physically attack Alex. The lion must have been mistreated during his time in one of the unkempt cages in Alex's filthy warehouse, and now wanted Trowa to take revenge for him. Trowa, however, resisted the loyal beta's urge to do so, because Heero had stepped forward to deal with Alex in his own way.
Though broad-shouldered and tall — standing at least a head above Heero and even a couple of inches taller than Trowa — and bulked out by muscle and fat, Alex seemed abruptly hypnotized by the close gaze he suddenly had locked with the shorter, more wiry man in front of him. Heero had placed a fist on Alex's chest, and begun moving forward slowly, forcing Alex to give way. A drunk human ranked little higher than an animal, after all, so no surprise a werebeast alpha, even in this less intimidating form, could impose his will on him.
"You sold that lion to the circus," Heero said. He spoke even more quietly than Trowa, but his voice held authority and a buried fierceness.
Alex continued moving slowly backward away from Heero's advance, but protested, "Mueller sol' the lion! He 'ad no right!"
"Mueller works for you," Heero reminded him. "He acts with your authorization."
"He di'n' get enouffer the lion! Thas a good lion! You assholes owe me!"
Trowa, moving slowly forward behind Heero, shifted in annoyance. Alex paid this type of call infrequently (and had never done it in Heero's presence before), but was consistently irritating when he did; and honestly Trowa would like to follow Moombah's command and give him a good sock to the jaw… but Heero outranked the lion in terms of influence over Trowa, and must be allowed to continue as he wished. Trowa remained poised nonetheless for whatever he would be called upon to do.
Heero's final word on the matter came with the force of crushing jaws: "You need to leave this property. If the circus wants to deal with you and your illegal animal imports, they'll come to you. Leave, and never come here again." He had alpha'd Alex all the way back to near the main gate, and as Alex stumbled over the gate rut and only barely caught himself, he looked around and realized how far he'd come. Trowa could see his crookedly parked truck out beyond, its front bumper buried in a bush. And Alex himself appeared for a moment as if he might actually leave of his own free will, though whether or not he could navigate a motor vehicle down to the larger valley in his current state remained a mystery.
But then he turned again, seeming to rally, glaring at Cathy and Trowa and pointedly avoiding Heero's gaze. "You thing you're th'only circus aroun'?" he demanded spitefully. "I'm a circus too, an' you can' keep my animals from me! Thas my lion, an'–" But he broke off with a squeal, bloodshot eyes widening in sudden terror, and fell onto his rear end as he attempted to scramble back. For Moombah had obviously tired of the tirade exactly as Trowa had, and emerged through the ever-open bar door of his pen and the keeper's building to come bounding toward them.
The lion pounced on the screaming Alex, pinning him to the dirt, and roared again, deafeningly, right in the face of the drunk that hadn't expected any such result of his visit to Springcleft Circus this evening. In the distance, other animals stirred up by the sound added their opinions, particularly the elephants and the monkeys, and the entire north side of the complex shook with cacophony for almost a full minute. Alex, losing the energy or perhaps the strength of lung even to scream, writhed, wet himself, and made incoherent whimpering noises with a pleading timbre to them. The others, at least for a moment or two, merely stood back and watched.
Trowa felt he knew Moombah pretty well by now. He knew how friendly the lion was toward himself and any other human he'd observed approach it thus far; he knew how protective it was of Relena. He speculated, based on Moombah's apparent order to him, the lion didn't actually want Alex badly injured or killed. But he wondered whether a line had been crossed, whether the creature would now act like a vengeful lion instead of a sensible werebeast and actually maul Alex here and now. If Moombah chose to do so, they wouldn't be able to stop him — and attempting to might be dangerous.
But evidently Heero disagreed. At any rate, he appeared mildly annoyed — perhaps that his successful nonviolent maneuvering of Alex had been overridden by the lion's more vigorous plan — and moved around to look Moombah in the eye. "If you kill him," he said, in his own tone of command, "the circus will face legal trouble. Back off. Let him go."
The lion did not obey, only stared defiantly at Heero. Trowa took a few steps to the side so as to see their locked gaze more clearly, then had to resist the urge to shy away from the crackling of alpha energy practically visible in the air between them. And as this contest of wills dragged out, Alex managed somehow to gather his nerve and wriggle from between the lion's paws. He scrambled away, first on all fours, then, finally gaining his two legs, toward his truck.
It was Moombah's turn to appear annoyed, and he broke eye contact with Heero at last in order to step to the side and roar at Alex again. Again the elephants trumpeted and the monkeys shrieked, and Trowa believed he heard the zebras making their strange noise as well. Alex ran faster in response, slammed into his driver's side door, and hauled himself up through its window with a dexterity Trowa wouldn't have expected from him at this juncture. As he struggled to start the car, Heero grunted and turned away.
"I'll be in your room," he said to Trowa, and stalked back into the complex.
Moombah spun with much the same frustrated gesture and stalked back toward the lion keeper's building. A minute later, having returned that direction themselves, Cathy and Trowa saw him pacing as if still irritated behind the bars of his pen.
Sister and brother looked at each other, and each shrugged faintly. Then they went back to sharpening Cathy's throwing weapons, their task force diminished by one. Eventually Cathy remarked, "That was a dominance struggle, or I don't know anything about pack dynamics."
Trowa nodded. "It wasn't exactly settled, either."
Cathy agreed.
Just at that moment, Relena came running out to resume her safe distance from the tarp and the sharpening endeavor, and demanded to know what had happened. So Cathy began to tell her, which had the benefit of allowing Trowa to relive it all and decide what he really thought about it.
The little girl's impression, as she told them a few days later in Moombah's pen while Trowa practiced, was glee at the bad man having been scared off by the lion… but some bafflement as well. The idea of fearing Moombah seemed patently silly to her; Moombah was her best friend in the whole world.
Said Moombah rewarded her with an affectionate nuzzle for this statement.
"I want to do an act for the circus to show everyone I'm not scared of Moombah!" Relena went on. "Because a lot of circus acts are things people are scared of, so if people are scared of Moombah, won't they like to see me not scared of him?"
Trowa landed in a standing position instead of on his hands as he'd planned, and glanced at Heero. They both wore the same thoughtful expression, though his friend's showed more subtly in brow and corners of the mouth. He looked back at Relena and the lion. "I think that's an excellent idea for a circus act," he said.
"Really?!" Relena worried Moombah's mane, then jumped up and hopped over to Trowa. "I'm going to decide what it'll be!"
"Are you up for this?" Heero asked the lion.
Moombah just yawned.
"Let's all decide what it will be," Trowa corrected Relena. "Then you and Moombah can practice it together."
Relena's grin threatened to split her face.
In his own opinion, Trowa had never been the most artistic deviser of circus acts. He made sure to remain expert at a variety of acrobatic moves, but usually allowed one of the other acrobats to put them together into a routine that would dazzle an audience. Thus, coming up with a juvenile lion-tamer's act that demonstrated how firmly under Relena's little thumb Moombah was taxed his resources, and Heero had little useful input. They undertook the task, however, with great energy and seriousness not only because they believed this would be a legitimately valuable circus act that audiences would eat up (and therefore they needed at least a prototype of how it would go to present to Andrian), but because if Relena had an honest-to-goodness act to practice that she felt only she could do, it might take the edge off her longing to join the circus in more hazardous ways such as the trapeze, the tightrope, and the high dive. Beyond that, Trowa couldn't help feeling proud of his niece for her dedication to the family business, and rather suspected Heero felt the same. Everyone seemed likely to come out a winner from this situation.
Once they convinced Relena to stop describing the sequined outfit she wanted, they were able to come up with a sequence of tricks she and the lion could perform together that didn't seem too badly constructed. Relena's favorite suggestion, which made her dissolve in giggles more than once, was the idea of pretending to brush Moombah's teeth and then finding her missing toy inside his mouth. She would need a few props, which Trowa (who knew the inventory better than Heero) went to fetch, and then practice began.
Yet again, Trowa found himself more than a little frustrated at his certainty Moombah was a werebeast without hard proof that would allow him to bring it up to any real purpose with Heero. The lion played his part of the act with precision, excellent memory, and the care for Relena's wellbeing the others had come to expect of him, and he simply could not have gotten the hang of this so quickly and expertly as merely an especially intelligent lion. But what could Trowa say? Nothing he'd ever tried had convinced Moombah to admit to being a werebeast, and as long as he retained his lion form, nothing changed even if he was.
In fact Moombah seemed willing to continue practicing the routine far longer than Relena did. The attention span of a six-year-old, no matter how devoted to the family business, allowed for no more than a handful of times through and some memorization practice before she wanted to play something else. But they had worked some kinks out, and Relena was over the moon about the plan.
"I want to show mommy and daddy!" she declared, worrying Moombah's mane again. "Moombah, don't you want to show mommy and daddy! It's going to be the best act ever!"
"How about tomorrow night?" Trowa suggested. "You can practice one more day, and then we'll get them to come to the practice ring and turn on the electric lights."
Relena's eyes widened in excitement at the thought of the electric lights, which were the mark of a proper circus act such as actual circus performers did, but she still complained in a silly high-pitched voice, "I want to show them nooowwwwwww!"
"You need to practice more," Heero admonished. "But come here."
This had become a catch-phrase in more than one sense, and Relena ran to him to be thrown into the air as many times as Heero's arms would stand for. Thus he often convinced her to do something she would rather not, or compensated her for a perceived hardship.
The second day went as promisingly as the first, though Relena still took some persuasion to keep at it long enough to truly have the routine memorized and perform it relatively smoothly instead of running off to her parents and dragging them to a premature demonstration. Trowa had recommended not spoiling the surprise by saying anything to them last night, and (though when he'd spoken to them about Relena having something to show them, their knowing looks had suggested she hadn't been able to keep her mouth entirely shut) he believed she'd at least attempted to take his advice. Andrian and Cathy had set aside a special time in the evening, after the sun had gone down so as to please Relena with the use of the electric lights, to watch her unknown show, and Relena could hardly keep her head attached to her shoulders for excitement and impatience.
The practice ring measured the same distance across as the main ring they set up under the big top while traveling. Trowa didn't know that Relena, small as she was, would merit a show in the main ring even with the bulky Moombah beside her, but for astonishing her parents there could be no other option. The electric lights, which were the same (and ran off the same generator) they took with them on tour, had been set up in the same pattern they would be on the road: footlights, spotlights, and some with thin colored paint over the outer glass to cast a dizzying rainbow into the ring. It made for an impressive spectacle, and tonight it might well make the highlight of Relena's year.
With the ring open to the sky and no rear curtain through which performers could emerge, there could be no surprise entrance. And when Andrian and Cathy arrived and took their seats on the lowest of the high-rise benches, Trowa noted Andrian was startled and unhappy to see a completely unrestrained lion off to the side with his six-year-old daughter. Either Cathy hadn't informed him of Moombah's friendship with the girl, or he hadn't believed her when she had. They'd better get this show started, lest Relena's father call it off and break her little heart.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" Trowa strode out into the ring sooner than he'd intended, trying to nip any such intention in the bud. "May I present, for your wonder and delight–" with his level and often solemn tone, he made an abysmal ringleader– "the youngest lion-tamer who ever lived, the fearless and fantastic Miss Relena! With her terrifying companion, the dreaded Moombah!" Also, it was difficult to announce with a straight face anyone named 'Moombah.'
Andrian looked as if he would stand up and shout his disapproval in immediate response to the announcement, but Cathy took his arm firmly and said something to him in a low tone Trowa didn't catch. Then she disengaged her hands and began to clap loudly, in which her husband, after a reluctant moment, joined.
Relena, grinning in a manner exactly opposite the calm, professional demeanor wanted for such an exhibition, entered the ring as Trowa bowed himself out and went to stand beside Heero not far from the watching parents. She had one hand in Moombah's mane, and the lion slowed his steps to match hers. They stopped in the center of the ring and started in on their routine, and Trowa restrained a shake of head. He'd told her they should come farther forward, since the ring was so big the details of their act wouldn't be seen well from this distance, but obviously she'd forgotten. Still, that she gave commands the lion obeyed with precision and alacrity couldn't be mistaken, and after not too long Andrian and Cathy were both sitting forward looking intently at her with surprised interest.
The child couldn't ride the lion at any great speed yet without losing her balance, but her lionback circuit around the perimeter was still impressive, and she remembered (or just happened) to stop this time at a better distance for visibility. Then she began playing fetch with Moombah with a ball they'd brought along for this purpose. It was the weakest part of the act, because Relena didn't throw very well (even less so when excited), and the lion had to retrieve the ball from various incorrect places after failing to catch it in his mouth. But then they moved on to the finale, and the show was saved.
"Moombah!" Relena announced. "You got so much dirt in your mouth getting the ball! We're going to have to brush your teeth!"
The lion took his place patiently in front of her, and pulled his lips back in what resembled a terrifying snarl. This time, Andrian really did stand up, and Cathy with him. However tame this animal had proven, they understandably couldn't believe this part of the routine would go well.
And Relena pulled from her pocket the biggest toothbrush they'd been able to find at short notice, and began placidly rubbing it across Moombah's big ivory teeth. He made no sound during this process, only sat very still except for the occasional twitch of lips that probably weren't comfortable holding this position for so long. His jaw certainly remained more fixed than those of the circus managers.
"All done!" Relena declared. "Let me see inside your mouth!" And when Moombah obligingly opened it wide, the alarmed half cries of Andrian and Cathy were drowned out by the girl's subsequent declaration, "It's much cleaner now, but look! You still have the ball in there!" Utterly fearless, Relena reached into the dark space (they would have to think about angles and lighting for future performances) and retrieved the slobbery ball. Holding it high in the air, she turned completely toward her parents, who'd taken at least four steps in her direction, and bowed. The gesture was clumsy with the burden in her still-upraised hand, but Moombah mimicked it much more gracefully beside her, and the two of them retained the position for the appropriate count.
Trowa and Heero, neither of them the sort to stomp and whistle and cheer, yet were capable of applauding loudly; and Cathy and Andrian joined in only a little tardily with half-forced smiles on their faces. In response, Relena came tearing over to the adults and flung herself at each of them in turn for hugs all around. Then, in an excess of exuberance, she began jumping and skipping and cartwheeling from where they stood to the other end of the ring, and the complex wall beyond, and back, laughing and shouting "Hooray!" at intervals as she did so.
When the child had moved out of earshot, Andrian turned to Trowa with lowered brows. "You should be pleased to know you're a classic uncle."
"Why?" Trowa wondered a bit awkwardly. Heero too — the other uncle in this scenario — looked puzzled.
Cathy gave a weak laugh. "You couldn't have warned us?"
"It was supposed to be a surprise."
"Well, it was that." Andrian shook his head and took a deep breath. "My heart still hasn't stopped racing."
"I apologize," Trowa murmured.
Andrian's smile returned as Relena did, and it looked a little more natural this time. He accepted her repeat hug, then watched as she worked her way down the line again. It seemed her energy had only increased in her jaunt to the wall and back, and a glance between Andrian and Cathy took a break from the agitation caused by the lion-taming act to say, "We're never going to get her to bed tonight."
Heero, at the end of the queue, pulled Relena out of the hug and into the air above his head, causing her to shout her glee shrilly and (hopefully) expend some excess energy. The others angled themselves to watch — not without a few suspicious glances, on the managers' part, at where Moombah had relaxed into a comfortable-looking sprawl on the dirt in the same spot he'd occupied before — and began discussing in relatively low voices their feelings about the night's entertainment.
Andrian and Cathy obviously agreed that, having the matter sprung on them as it had been, they couldn't assess their own feelings about it very well… but Trowa got the impression that, once they'd calmed down and thought about it a bit, they would see the matter as he did. Trusting Moombah would make a big difference in getting Relena her own circus act, and that could be pretty easily accomplished.
In fact, Trowa was about to suggest they all head over to the lion and interact with him so the others — Andrian in particular — could get to know him and his cooperativeness. But just then, Heero gave a sound of surprise, and the nonspecific gazes of the other three adults focused perforce on the airborne Relena. Or rather, where Relena had been.
Only with great difficulty had Trowa convinced his niece to wear normal clothing for the demonstration. In the absence of an actual costume, she'd wanted to wear her nice dress, and it had been an effort for an uncle to come up with reasons why she shouldn't. Eventually, he believed, it had been her impatience to get going far more than his powers of persuasion that had won his point. She'd opted to remain clad as she had been all day, in a ruffly shirt and denim pants and leather shoes.
Garments that now appeared unoccupied.
The upward momentum granted them by Heero's latest throw had not yet faded; and the way the little shoes, no longer inhabited by feet, abruptly flew faster than the other pieces and started their drop sooner held a touch of horror to it. This was only compounded by the sudden unfamiliar shrieking that now sounded from the abandoned clothing as if in mockery of the late cries of delight from its former occupant.
As the pants too slowed in their rise and, fluttering with uncanny emptiness, began to fall, the shirt seemed rather to hang in the air, and from it the noises obviously emerged. And there seemed to be a struggle going on within as it jerked and bulged and moved in ways not entirely in keeping with the toss that had set it aloft.
Then, from beneath the hemline, a chaotically fluttering blur in brown and tan emerged in an explosion of feathers, and Trowa abruptly knew what had happened. The shirt drifted to the ground at last to join its fellows, and Relena, in the form of a small owl, appeared above their heads, awkwardly trying to get her wings to obey.
Her panicked screeching didn't stop, and in fact she'd become even more frightened than before now she'd emerged from her shirt, since a number of the electric lights that had so delighted her earlier shone into her wide but diminutive owl eyes. And the would-be inviting gestures both Heero and Trowa made and calls they gave to the confused child tripped each other up as they came late and at the same time.
Though it seemed at first Relena would lose control of the wings she'd never used before, her evident desire to get away from the bright lights blinding her must have granted her a boost in fledgling skill. She screeched again and reeled across the practice ring, unfortunately heading toward the complex wall.
"Relena, come back!" Trowa called, but this time was overridden by the frightened cries of Relena's parents — one of them far more savvy than the other, but both startled and concerned. So Trowa began unfastening his clothing indiscriminately; from the corner of his eye he saw Heero doing the same.
"You never mentioned you had birds in your family line," the latter commented.
Dryly Trowa replied, "It never came up."
With an animal form so much closer to human than Heero's was, Trowa didn't need to disrobe nearly as far before changing shape. Evidently the mere sight of him shedding his shirt and opening his pants, though, had been enough to give poor mating-season Heero an inconvenient and very badly timed erection, and the last thing Trowa saw before transforming and heading for the wall was Heero turning around as he unfastened his own pants.
Shaggy and rust-colored, Trowa ate up the ground on all four palms, then jumped and caught at the wall and swung himself upward on long arms. His eyes quickly lighted on the still-fluttering figure of Relena heading into the trees at the top of the slope, and he made a series of quick calls while pointing in the direction she flew. Then he threw himself off the wall and went loping after her.
As he ran, he was soon joined by Heero, who'd taken to alligator shape in order to worm his way under the wall rather than seeking out the nearest human exit. Possible lingering erection and definite nudity notwithstanding, Heero changed back to his longer-legged form not long after, but Trowa found it most convenient to remain an orangutan as they entered the trees. He swung up as high as he could go, and managed to catch another glimpse of Relena ahead.
Although they'd left behind the distressing lights of the circus complex, the young owl appeared more panicked in the forest. She probably didn't know how to perch or come to any kind of safe stop, so, unable to conceive of anything else to do, flew on simply out of desperation, though she had no idea how to navigate among the trees.
Trowa hooted as he followed to indicate the direction, and heard Heero crashing along in the brush beneath. Breathlessly the other werebeast called with his human mouth, "Relena! Stop! Turn around and come back! Come toward my voice!"
Somehow this made Relena fly faster. Was she too frightened to hear and obey? Did she believe the sounds behind her to be unknown enemies? Or did they have another alpha on their hands, and issuing orders would only make things worse?
They came perpendicularly upon a fold in the land down which a small stream ran, where it appeared Relena had made almost a right-angle turn in order to follow the easier, less tangled path up the line of the water. She gained better and better control of herself every moment, until she almost looked like a normal bird in flight as far as Trowa could tell in the shadows, yet she didn't stop or turn back.
Briefly, dangerously, he changed shape again and, during the rapid moment he spent balanced, naked and precarious, on a branch very inconvenient for a human, called behind him, "Heero! Up the waterway!" He couldn't retain this shape any longer than that if he didn't want to lose his grip and fall straight out of this tree, but as he transformed and swung off again, he hooted continuously in case Heero hadn't heard him clearly.
They needed to catch up with Relena and bring her home or into their direct protection before she either lost them and then herself or some bigger predator noticed the inexperienced owl and took advantage of the situation. How did the relatives of bird werebeasts deal with this problem? Kids often panicked at their initial transformation, but all those Trowa had known had been ground animals — or at least indoors when they'd first changed shape.
It would be convenient if she did lose control of her flight or run into something and fall down, as long as she took no injury, because then she could be scooped up into relative safety. She hadn't done them this favor yet, though. Trowa was unsure how quickly bird werebeasts learned to fly, but had a feeling this one would be a champion as she grew up if they could keep her alive to do it. No wonder she'd been so fixated on the airborne circus acts, and being throw into the air by Heero!
A splash behind alerted him to Heero's entry into the water, and a dark form below shot past as the alligator did what he did best and raced forward with powerful lashes of his tail. He probably wouldn't dare go too far, since he could undoubtedly make out even less, from under water, of Relena's shape in the air above him than Trowa could in the dark.
Heero confirmed this speculation when he rose, a dripping and muddy human figure pale in the darkness, from the middle of the stream some distance along — ahead of Relena, in fact — and looked around. The owl whirled when she detected him, making a clumsy turn that pointed her straight up what had become a much sharper-angled slope as they'd progressed. Heero waded messily out of the water and plunged into the trees after her, calling another futile command for her to come back; and Trowa, who'd been navigating the trees on the opposite side of the stream, made a reckless swinging leap across and hastened to follow them both.
The earthen forest floor and its foliage swiftly gave way to crag rising almost vertically to one step and then another and another, climbing the valley's side out of the warm, wet air around the hot springs environs and into the winter chill of the mountain proper. Trowa's long clinging orangutan fingers and strong, flexible arms made short work of the uneven rock faces, but Relena remained ahead of him — while Heero, lighter but unable to climb nearly as fast, lagged behind.
The owl, who'd screeched in protest or fear when Heero had last called out to her, now flew silently but crazily, wheeling and rising unevenly and struggling not to plow into the rock or any of the bushes, increasingly devoid of leaf, that clung to patches of earth in crevices in the crags. She really must have no idea how to land; she would most certainly run into something eventually, especially as she grew more and more exhausted. Toward that state Trowa too felt himself hastening; even as an orangutan, he couldn't climb forever, and the increasing cold seemed to be sapping his strength.
He felt the force of it more severely when he changed shape not long after. He'd reached the top of the current crag, and found he'd entirely lost sight of Relena, so he took on his human form with its slightly better night vision and turned quickly around, shivering, trying to locate her.
This step stretched longer and wider than the previous as the mountain began to change shape, and had enough accumulated soil tucked into the cracks in its surface to support a scrubby set of trees and bushes. It still felt hard and rough and frigid under Trowa's bare feet, though, as he swiveled from side to side. To the southeast he could see the forest below and the lights of the circus complex beyond, and down past that a blanket of cloud hiding the lower valley from view; if it blew over Springcleft, the warm drafts would lift it and melt it to rain temperatures, and they'd have a downpour tonight. To the north the step ended with a cluster of largely leafless foliage, over whose heads the stars stretched up and up.
And above, the rising ground gradually lost both the chaotic distribution of smaller rocks that characterized the crags as well as the crag's unrelenting verticality, moving skyward at more varying angles; but it also disappeared after no great distance in a lowering cloud-like mist that sheathed the mountain from here to its peak. If Relena had gone into that, she was lost to them.
He breathed deeply, trying to ignore his racing heart and the importunate cold, closing his eyes and listening hard. And perhaps it was his desperation to find his niece that allowed him, in this blundering human form, to hear scrabbling and fluttering from the cluster of trees and bushes to the north. Transforming as he ran so as to have some protection against prickling twigs and the needles of pines that were more prevalent this far up, he took off in that direction.
Once he'd fought his way through the thicket, with care so as not to plunge off some abrupt precipice that could support scrub but not an orangutan, he found what he sought. She'd obviously crashed into a stunted hollygrape bush that grew just at the edge, and hadn't righted herself; she vibrated and panted visibly at an awkward angle of leg and wing amongst the scraggly red leaves of winter and what berries, rotted to purple-black, she hadn't knocked to the ground in her crash. She appeared uninjured, and Trowa let out a soft relieved hoot.
Just then there came a snapping of talons and beating of wings in his face, to the tune of a startling long screech clearly meant as a warning. A clawed foot with a wicked opposable digit scratched a bloody stripe across Trowa's leathery brown face, and he stumbled backward with a startled sound. He tripped right over something that hadn't previously stood immediately behind him, and felt a large shape wriggling free of his flailing legs. As he righted himself, he was just in time to see the alligator (a shape doubtless assumed, like that of the orangutan, for protection against the vagaries of the thicket) give a half leap and snap his enormous jaws into the air.
Heero missed the duck hawk, as it wheeled upward, by a yard or so, and the raptor gave another cry and, turning, dove at frightening speed for the prey it claimed for itself. Heero's second lunge at it prevented its talons from closing on any part of Relena in the bush, but only just barely. Black-barred white underside flashing in the starlight, the bird came around for another pass, and Heero hissed out an alligator's subtle challenge, barely audible over the crashing of Trowa's heart and the screech of the hungry hawk.
And as the latter started its descent, and Heero's stubby legs tensed in readiness, the crashing sound abruptly grew louder — loud enough for Trowa to recognize it as coming from outside his chest — and a huge form that glowed a dull gold and seemed to shake the crags with its roar sprang free of the trees and brush and, intercepting the duck hawk mid-flight, crushed it concisely between massive, toothy jaws.
Moombah trotted to a stop after his leap, muscling his way through bushes and turning awkwardly with his right rear leg planted firmly inside one. He gave the duck hawk one worrying shake, then tossed it aside. Licking his bloody lips, he pulled his leg ungracefully free and moved toward Trowa and Heero.
Trowa, quickly changing shape, reached out both arms with a gasp and received Moombah's big head for a nuzzling hug. "We'll have a barbeque just for you," he whispered to the lion. Then he turned, one arm still across the maned neck, toward Relena.
Heero too had transformed, and was moving slowly and carefully right up to the hollygrape bush. Relena hadn't resumed any attempt at rearranging herself into a more reasonable position, and perhaps was too frightened to move, so Heero shifted his feet a little farther apart as if for balance and reached out cautious hands into the midst of the shrub.
The nearby sound of rustling leaves and snapping twigs must have startled Relena, for she began struggling and screeching weakly. The entire bush shuddered, and Heero said in a quiet tone, "Relena. Relena, calm down. It's me, your Uncle Heero. You're safe now. Hold still." It appeared to work, and everyone — including the lion, Trowa thought — breathed more easily as the owl at last followed orders. Gingerly, slowly, Heero's hands, now streaked with dark berry juice, closed around the little feathered body and began to adjust the wings so as to be able to draw her out of the bush without harm.
He kept shifting his feet, though, and Trowa thought he saw movement in the ground beneath them. Cracks opened in the soil, which appeared to be sliding away and breaking up, and the level of Heero's head, framed by the stars of the open space beyond, was sinking.
"Heero…" Trowa spoke in barely more than a whisper.
"I know," Heero replied at the same volume. He did not, however, hasten his movements; if Relena were startled into panic again, the likelihood of catching up with her a second time and rescuing her at last seemed scant. But the earth at this end of the crag was definitely collapsing, sliding toward the drop-off.
After the agonizing patience of Heero's minute and painstaking progress at getting Relena detangled from clinging twigs and pulling her toward him, when things did move it was as if the passage of time, lulled by the preceding thirty seconds, had suddenly dashed ahead at double speed. Heero flung out his arms to throw the owl toward Trowa precisely as the ground beneath him gave way completely; Moombah darted from under Trowa's hand and away; and Relena changed shape in midair and hit Trowa full in the chest, knocking him down and backward. The sliding, scrabbling noise of a minor landslide, with the cracking of ill-held roots as they disconnected, the grunts and piteous crying of human voices filled Trowa's ears; and he disregarded entirely how scored and bloodied his human skin would be when this was over as he awkwardly scrambled around onto his knees facing the disaster with Relena clinging to him like a vise with all four limbs.
And there he saw, lying flat on his belly in the slithering soil, reaching down with both arms past what was now visible as a rocky precipice, free of foliage, over which dirt still poured in little rivulets, naked but for a veritable mane of brown hair, a complete stranger.
Trowa wasted no time in springing to his feet and, wishing he could detach Relena but having no opportunity to think about it, planting his own bare buttocks right on top of the other man's and digging his heels into the ground in front of him, trying to create a sort of anchor. The other man — no stranger at all, really — grunted again as he felt Trowa's weight, but said nothing, only hauled upward as best he could. As soon as Heero's hands in the stranger's became visible, Trowa leaned forward (very awkwardly) and grasped the wrists beneath them; and together, still to the sound of Relena's weeping, and with the help of Heero climbing where he could with his bare feet, they pulled their friend up and over and away from the brink of certain death. Then everyone collapsed on the ground a safe distance from the edge, gasping and twitching.
It was the eventual subsiding of Relena's sounds of confusion and fear, and her removal of her head from where it gave Trowa a crick in the neck, that caused him to sit up at last into a cross-legged position and let her slide down onto his leg. She took deep breaths that calmed gradually, and presently began looking around. Trowa squeezed her and asked, with a quiet born more of shock than of his usual placidity, "Do you feel better now?"
Relena nodded, eyes wide. "I turned into a bird," she whispered.
"You did," Trowa agreed.
"And you turned into an animal too."
"And Uncle Heero…" She rotated, and Trowa looked with her.
Heero and the stranger, both lying on their stomachs, had also both risen to their elbows and were mutually staring in complete silence. It reminded Trowa strongly of the time they'd faced each other as lion and human when Alex had come harassing: there was a crackling intensity, a wordless struggle for dominance, easily discernible in the gaze.
"I knew it…" Trowa murmured.
The stranger gave his head a couple of extensive shakes and tore his eyes from Heero to glance at Trowa. He had a wide, lop-sided grin on a jovial face that also held some regret, if Trowa could be any judge in this light. "Yeah, you called it. You're too familiar with how natural lions act!"
Heero, not nearly as familiar with how natural lions acted, drew in a deep breath. His eyes had not moved. "I don't know whether to thank you for your help or throw you off the cliff myself." He spoke in an unusually dark, intense, accusing tone.
The stranger's grin became completely teasing as he returned it to Heero. "Trowa promised me a barbeque. But after that we can come back up here all alone, and you can try whatever violence you want to."
With not a twitch of change to his expression, Heero said nothing. Still it seemed as if something were passing between them, in their moments of wordlessness, that occupied much of their attention.
"Who are you?" Trowa broke in.
"Duo," replied the lion werebeast. "Duo Maxwell." And he only glanced at Trowa briefly as he said it before resuming crackling into Heero's eyes.
"Everyone is naked," Relena announced with a slightly hysterical giggle.
"We sure are, kiddo." For Relena Duo obviously was willing to break eye contact with Heero for more than a mere moment, in order to give her the fondest smile ever uncle bestowed upon niece. "Are you OK?"
"Yes… I think so," said Relena. "I turned into a bird, but now I'm back to being normal. Who are you?"
"I'm Duo Maxwell," repeated he, then added with a wink, "but you can keep calling me Moombah if you want to."
"I… never saw you before." Relena sounded confused and suspicious. "Moombah's a lion."
"He sure is." And abruptly Duo transformed.
Relena jumped and let out a shriek of surprise, but ran to hug her friend with equal rapidity. "Moombah! Moombah, really can you turn into a person just like I turned into a bird???" Her words were barely intelligible through the lion's mane, and she continued in that vein for quite some time while Moombah, or Duo, returned the embrace with a big paw and nuzzled her with his soft face and wet nose.
Finally Heero interrupted them with the impatient statement, "Don't think you can just stay in lion form now. We want to know who you are."
With evident reluctance, Duo pushed Relena away, lay down, and transformed back into a man on his stomach in the dirt. "Why doesn't Relena know anything about werebeasts?" he demanded.
"Don't try to change the subject," said Heero stonily.
"I really want to know!" Duo protested. "Why is all this such a surprise to her? Why hasn't Cathy explained? She's old enough for the talk!"
Relena turned toward Heero and wondered, "Are you mad at Moombah?"
"His name is Duo," said Heero in a kinder tone. Neither he nor anyone else could be harsh with Relena, but Trowa thought, with a shiver of realization, that this statement held more genuine emotion than he'd heard from Heero in a long time.
"He said I can call him Moombah!"
"That's right, Heero," Duo grinned, and the air crackled between them again. "I'm still Uncle Moombah. You're not allowed to call me 'Uncle,' though."
Trowa broke in again. "It's freezing up here, and we need to get Relena back to her parents. Duo, I think you owe us an explanation first."
Duo scratched at the dirt near his face. "Yeah, I guess I do," he admitted. "Short version: I'm in season all year."
The others just waited.
"I mean in season." Duo grimaced and rolled his eyes toward Relena, clearly loath to be more explicit. "I mean, why are you lying on your stomach, Heero?"
"Oh," Heero said in surprise.
"I see," said Trowa. With a slight frown and shake of head he muttered, "In the freezing cold and all scraped up and everything…"
"You know how it works," Heero murmured back.
Duo gave an embarrassed chuckle. "It's easier to just live exclusively as a lion, because there really aren't any other lions around to, you know, be a dirty temptation. This–" he gestured expansively as if to indicate tonight's adventure– "forced my hand, though. I'd do anything to help our Little Missy, even take three stupid tries to jump over a damned high wall and struggle through a forest that wasn't designed for lions and climb a mountain that really wasn't designed for lions."
"You did that all to save me?" Relena wondered, awed and excited.
"But it wasn't Relena you gave away your human form and risked your life for," Heero pointed out. "It was me."
They were staring at each other again, and Trowa shifted impatiently. But at least Duo's reply provided information. "When I first saw you, you were willing to fight a full-grown lion to protect Relena. Actually I thought you were about to change shape and give your other form away to do it. As if I could let you outshine me!"
"What do you turn into, Uncle Heero?"
"An alligator."
Relena shrieked again, this time, with the resilience of childhood, in complete delight and no remaining trace of fear or uncertainty. "Show me! Show me!"
Heero obliged without a word, but didn't retain the shape long enough for the girl to examine him all over and force him to open his mouth and so on. She did jump around a bit in a furor even after he'd changed back, though.
"Relena," Trowa said very seriously, and continued repeating it until he had her full attention. "Your mom's going to have to talk to you about changing shape, since she's the one–" throwing a quick glance at Duo– "who decided not to tell you about it before. But right now you need to know — when you turn into an owl again, you need to be very careful, and not fly away scared. It's dangerous out here, and that mean duck hawk almost got you before. Understand?"
Relena nodded solemnly, and before anyone else could speak or start crackling again, Trowa went on. "We need to leave. Duo, I don't think either of us can carry her down in either form; can you?"
"Are you sure?" Heero demanded. It seemed half concern for Relena and half alpha contrariness.
"I had to find a lion-friendly path up here in the first place, didn't I?"
"If anything happens to her on the way down–"
"Do you really think I'd let anything–"
"You don't exactly have a good record–"
"As if you don't completely understand–"
They were doing it again. Trowa reached out and took Relena's hand to draw her fascinated attention away from the two men on the ground. "Do you think you could try to turn into an owl again," he asked quietly, "and follow me while I climb down the crags and go back to the circus? Those two can follow when they're done arguing."
"They're arguing a bunch," Relena whispered conspiratorially.
"Do you think you could turn into an owl again?"
Relena thought about it for a moment. "I bet I could."
"You'll have to try not to be scared, and watch where I go and follow me. Do you think you can do that?"
Relena nodded. "I could tell where everything was really good before." She waved her hands and squinted into the air around her. "Easier than right now!"
Trowa too nodded. "And you might have to try to land on something, even if you don't know how yet. Could you try that if you needed to?"
"I can figure out how!" she replied enthusiastically.
"Good. You're my favorite niece; did you know that?"
"Do you have more nieces?"
"Then…" She tried to puzzle through the compliment and determine whether it held water.
"Why don't you try right now to turn into an owl?"
A mere minute later, to the sound of the argument — or whatever it was — giving way behind them to reactions of surprise, they were off down the crags. Less than half an hour later, they'd successfully made their way back to the circus complex.
Trowa would have liked nothing more than to drop Relena off, take a bath to clean up all his abrasions (some would need bandages), have a stiff drink, and go to bed, where he had no doubt he would sleep alone tonight — but of course this could not be. Had Relena left behind, in her wild flight, only her parent of werebeast descent, it would have been possible, but instead Andrian must be considered.
He was allowed to sit quietly in the parlor of the big house in the clothes he'd left out in the practice ring — which Cathy had brought inside and which weren't very comfortable over his dirt and scrapes — as his sister explained the concept of werebeasts to her husband. She'd waited to do this until Trowa returned so she could call on her brother to demonstrate, so Trowa left his belt and shoes off and his shirt unbuttoned at first. It took about twenty-four transformations for Andrian to overcome his shock and begin to accept the truth before him; how long it would take to reconcile with the fact that his wife was a dormant werebeast and his daughter an active one, Trowa couldn't guess. He rather thought Cathy should have explained all of this years ago, but held his peace on that topic. Perhaps, after growing up with a family whose abilities she didn't share, she'd set out to have a marriage and a new family completely free of the business.
Relena, despite obvious weariness, had no desire whatsoever to go to bed, or even to stop chattering for half a breathless instant, so some time passed before the entire story could be coherently told. Once Cathy got her daughter into her lap and convinced her to stay quiet for a bit so Uncle Trowa could tell them all about it, they only had to bear with a few interruptions from her before she began falling asleep to the lulling sound of Trowa's calm, quiet tones. Her subsequent unconsciousness freed Trowa to explain, so Andrian could understand, the more adult-oriented parts of the story without resorting to a lot of euphemisms and tilts of head.
And Andrian, still the supportive brother-in-law even in the midst of his bafflement and shock, commented disapprovingly, "So Heero's just been using you all along?"
Trowa smiled slightly and with a touch of sadness. "Only because he had to. Have you ever seen a cat in heat?"
Andrian threw a considering glance at his wife and began, "My dear–"
"Yes," said Cathy hastily, blushing. "Yes." And from this Trowa gathered she had inherited certain aspects of werebeast life even if she couldn't change shape. He hadn't really needed to know this about his sister, but he did pity her.
With everything out in the open — some of it several times over — Andrian finally sat back in his chair and rubbed at his beard with a thoughtful thumb. "An orangutan… an alligator… and a lion…" He actually chuckled faintly, and Trowa knew he was coming around at last. He also knew that pensive look accompanied by that particular glint of eye. "So that's how you always handled the animals so well…"
Trowa nodded.
"An orangutan… an alligator… and a lion…"
Trowa had always assumed that, whenever someone did get around to informing Andrian he could transform into an exotic animal and retain his human intelligence, he would immediately be worked into a variety of circus acts as an orangutan. And now that Andrian had his sights set on three werebeasts, his thoughts on the matter probably ran on a much larger scale. This wasn't a bad thing, but could mean a lot of extra work in future.
"Where are Heero and the lion-man, by the way? I would have thought they'd be back by now."
"I'm sure they are," Trowa replied. "And I'm sure they thought me better-qualified to handle this conversation." Assuming they weren't already very busy with other things.
"You're their designated human-handler, are you?"
Trowa chuckled.
Relena awoke at this juncture with a start, and for a moment looked around in a panic as if she'd forgotten where she was. Cathy gathered her into a more convenient carrying position and declared, "Bedtime for you, miss!"
And as Relena protested groggily that she wanted to find Moombah and wanted to show her parents how well she could turn into an owl and didn't want to go to bed and wasn't tired, all the way out of the room and up the stairs, Andrian came to Trowa and shook his hand. "Thank you again," he murmured.
"I've got a lot to think about, and a lot to talk over with Cathy, but…" He clapped his other hand over the back of Trowa's that he held and shook it again. "Thank you. For Relena."
Again Trowa nodded. He felt he'd done less than the other two, but accepted the gratitude for his effort and concern at least. Next he accepted Andrian's good night, and, after watching his brother-in-law hasten from the room and up the stairs, turned and headed for the front door.
Outside, he found Heero and Duo, both in human form, both naked, seated on the front steps, staring at each other. They appeared to have been deep in conversation, and, as up on the crag, it took a moment before they could look away and acknowledge Trowa's presence — as if he'd needed further confirmation that this was a done deal. It gave him, as he gazed at his longtime best friend, some forlornness to consider he'd lost this aspect of Heero's companionship completely, especially just before his own mating season… but that emotion was overshadowed by happiness that Heero seemed to have found at last what he needed. Who'd have thought it would be another alpha?
"Are we forgiven?" Duo wondered, jumping to his feet. His long erection bobbled as he did so, and Trowa turned immediately to Heero, who, more practiced at dealing with the intense-mating-season problem in human form, had risen more slowly. Trowa handed him the clothing he'd left in the ring, gathered along with Trowa's by the helpful Cathy.
"You are." Trowa directed his words toward Heero since he faced that way. "But it may be rescinded if you don't officially join the circus."
Heero appeared startled, opened his mouth, and closed it again with brows lowered more in pensiveness than disapproval. The problem that had sent him wandering year after year might well now have been solved, after all.
"Moombah is completely up for that," Duo declared, putting his chin on Trowa's shoulder in order to look over it into Heero's thoughtful eyes. "Can't abandon my beta now we've formed such a good bond."
"I'll have to think about it," Heero murmured, staring unflinchingly back.
Trowa snorted, both at Duo's comment about 'his beta' and at finding himself in the middle of the crackling now. "Think about it in a guest room," he suggested as he slipped out from between them, "and let me know in the morning what you decide."
Heero nodded. "I'll show you the way to the guest rooms, Duo."
Perversely — really, how was this alpha-alpha thing going to work? — Duo flipped his hair and turned the other direction. "I already have a room, thank you very much."
"You can't spend the night in lion form," Heero said flatly.
"And you can't spend the night with Trowa."
Trowa, letting out a sigh, was yet smiling as he walked away.
The rain he'd foreseen began not long after he'd gone to bed, and between its lulling sound, the bath he'd taken beforehand, a gulp of whiskey, and the lack of any bedroom activities to keep him up, he slept better than he had in weeks. He awoke, if not sexually satisfied as he usually did in the winter, definitely well rested and full of energy, and emerged into the wet and muddy circus complex to do his chores.
First thing, though, he had to make his way straight over to the lions' pen and discover which alpha had won that argument. He couldn't peek into each of the guest rooms, after all, but he could look here. And when he eased open the door to the keeper's building and poked his head around it, he felt no shock at what he saw within.
Heero had probably never put his clothing back on, and the chances Duo even owned any seemed slim. The dirt and berry juice and dried blood of their adventure of the night before, not to mention Duo's ample provision of hair, must be their substitute as they lay, entwined at various points and clearly exhausted, on the hard floor. They didn't so much as twitch at the sound of the door opening or the sense of someone watching them.
With a smile, Trowa withdrew. Tarrying in the shade of the roof over the door, he considered. They reminded him so much of the time Heero, worn out from a night of sex and a morning of chores, had curled up with Moombah in the pen… The word 'adorable' came to mind.
About to walk away, he paused as movement caught his eye over by the main gate, and he looked that direction just in time to see its closed height cleared in a fluid movement by a gorgeous blonde stag. If he'd had any doubts, after this unusual behavior, that the animal was something out of the ordinary, the bundle strapped to its back told a familiar tale. He leaned against the door and stood still, awaiting the outcome.
The stag swung its proud head, still crowned with fine unshed chestnut antlers, from side to side, seeming to examine the circus complex in front of it. Then, evidently missing Trowa in his shadow and believing itself unobserved, it stepped delicately out of the main thoroughfare and changed shape. In its place stood a gorgeous blonde man, who quickly removed the bundle tied around his waist and began dressing in haste. Trowa had to smile again, because hadn't they all been there?
Once decent, the stranger took off at a confident stride toward the main house. When he drew level with Trowa, the latter called out, "Hello — can I help you?"
Though briefly startled, the stranger altered course with no less confidence than he'd already exhibited, and moved to stand before Trowa. "Good morning," he said as he walked, and came to a halt with a winning smile on his face. "I apologize for the intrusion. I think I took a wrong turn in the fog, and now I have no idea where I am!" Charming smile crinkles appeared to the sides of his beautiful grey-blue eyes as he admitted his mistake. "And then there was this low spot in the road full of water, and my engine flooded. Can you please help me? Do you have a telephone?"
Trowa studied him thoughtfully. Despite the ingratiating demeanor and politeness, he got the sense that here was yet another alpha, and he already twitched to do what the man said. Interesting how many alphas came and went through his life, and never to date one willing to stay for the long term.
"We have no telephone," he said. "But I know the low spot you mean. I'll bring one of the trucks around, and we'll see if we can pull you out of there."
The stranger gave him a full, dazzling smile. "Oh, thank you. I was at my wits' end!"
"Don't worry," Trowa told him as he moved toward the house himself in order to fetch a key for one of the trucks, gesturing for the man to follow. "I'll take care of you." And as they walked off together and the stranger began inquiring curiously, and very understandably, what kind of place this might be, Trowa reflected that a good beta's work was never done.
This story was written for Daiyanerd as part of the Seasons of Anime Exchange 2019. I wish I could find more such exchanges to take part in! I kinda miss my art exchange days, and writing a story for an exchange is even more fun.
Piper, who has joined Waybee in the fine tradition of helping me write stuff, contributed the following:
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His Own Humanity: La Confrérie de la Lune Révéré
HOH Navigation
"Something cataclysmic appears to have happened to our Regional Manager."
A step Trowa has needed to take ever since the breaking of the curse has unexpected consequences; now unpleasant truths must be faced by everyone, and Quatre is suddenly a completely different person.
Art to celebrate my birthday | Author's Star Rating: 4.5 | Category: His Own Humanity | Contains: Angst | Contains: Established relationship for main couple(s) | Contains: Gay Duo | Contains: Gay Heero | Contains: Gay Quatre | Contains: Gay Trowa | Contains: Language (gendered) | Contains: Language (general) | Contains: Language (religious) | Contains: Physical fighting between Saitou and Sano | Contains: Psychological torment | Contains: Sexuality/sexual references | Friendship: Duo & Sano | Friendship: Heero Duo Trowa Quatre | Genre: Adventure | Genre: Drama | Genre: Introspection | Genre: Romance | Length: 100k-150k words | Navigation | Pairing - Primary: Duo & Heero | Pairing - Primary: Quatre & Trowa | Pairing - Secondary: Saitou & Sano | POV: Duo | POV: Heero | POV: Quatre | POV: Trowa | Rating: 2 | Release/completion year: 2014 | Setting: Alternate universe | Setting: AU - Modern U.S. plus magic | Title: La Confrérie de la Lune Révéré
Parts 6-10
Parts 11-15
Parts 56-0²
Even from a huge distance — nearly from space, seemingly — it was obviously a great collection of objects, like a vast landfill where only one specific type of item was allowed. What type that was he didn't know; though he could see they were all similarly shaped, he wasn't close enough yet to identify them. But he was nearing, gradually, inexorably, like something floating on an incoming tide. All he had to do was wait patiently, and after not too long he would see…
Cell phones. It was an unthinkably huge collection of phones stretching into infinity and piled to oceanic depth. They were all different brands and models, showing a wide variety of conditions and levels of use. Their one feature universally in common was their stillness and silence. No light shone from the face of any; they might all have been dead, headed for recycling or an actual landfill or whatever heaven existed for cell phones.
But as he drew closer, close enough to make out the numbers and letters on each visible keypad and the staring blank expanses of the touchscreens, he couldn't shake the feeling that there was a message somewhere for him, specifically for him. He looked around. It should be easy enough to spot in this desolation.
It was. Like some great mythological creature deep beneath the sea opening a thousand eyes at once, the phones abruptly lit. There was no wave of sudden power and reception spreading from one point to another; it was a spring to life so simultaneous it was as if a new image had been inserted in front of his eyes, obscuring the old, and beneath the new one still lay the dark, powerless expanse. And yet the light was so bright from the combined faces, though there was nothing to illuminate, that it was difficult not to believe in it. Besides, when he caught sight of the origin and purport of the message blazoned across the face of every phone from here to infinity, he had no choice but to believe.
It was from Quatre.
It said simply, Help.
Heero awoke to feel arms clinging to him violently, tight enough almost to hurt; and he found himself nestling against Duo and petting his hair in what he must subconsciously have thought was a soothing gesture before he was even fully awake.
"God dammit," Duo murmured brokenly as his clutching hands moved desperately, convulsively, across Heero's body almost as if checking him for injuries.
"I'm sure this will stop eventually." It wasn't the first time Heero had offered this reassurance recently, since this wasn't the first time Duo had awakened like this in a panic. "Just give it time."
Duo clung tighter. "I'm sorry."
Heero shifted so as to put both arms around Duo and pull him close. "It's OK."
"I don't want to feel like that again," Duo whispered harshly. "I can't do that again. I can't–"
"You don't have to. You're not a doll anymore, and you never have to be again. See?" Heero ran a hand up and down Duo's back, reminding him that he was here, that Duo could feel him, that this was real. "Never again."
With a very deep breath, Duo forced himself to calm down, continuing to draw air into his lungs in a slow, deliberate pattern and closing his eyes. Finally he chuckled weakly. "How many times do we have to go through this?"
"As many as it takes," Heero replied.
He could see only the faintest glint of light from outside the bedroom door on Duo's eyes as they opened again, but he could hear an equally faint grin in the reply, "I'm not sure if that's supposed to be comforting or what… but don't think I don't appreciate that you're offering to be there."
"I always will," Heero promised.
They lay in silence for a while, the tightness of Duo's arms around Heero the only indication that he hadn't gone back to sleep. Finally he said, "I was a doll for a long time, you know."
"I do know."
"Longer than I've been human, actually."
"Yeah, it's going to take some doing to beat that."
"It's…" Duo's voice lowered to an unhappy murmur. "I think it's possible that I'll never really get over it. We may have to go through this three times a week for… ever…"
Heero shrugged against the pillow. "As many times as it takes," he reiterated. Inside, though, he was reflecting that if what Duo feared really did turn out to be the case, some manner of professional assistance would seem advisable. But what kind of counseling did you seek for someone whose issue was that he'd been a doll for eighty-seven years? A therapist that was aware of magic, obviously… in this crazy world with its dangerous hidden facets, such people must exist; it would just be a matter of finding them. He would have to talk to Trowa about it.
In the meantime, he might as well do what he could to try to work through Duo's worries on his own. So he asked, "Are you nervous about starting work on Monday?"
"Yes," said Duo emphatically. "I'd be nervous about that even if I'd grown up like a normal human and gone to real schools and everything."
Though Heero didn't know if he believed this of the confident Duo, it wasn't a point worth arguing. "You know you're going to do fine, though, right? You'll have training first, so you'll know exactly what's expected of you and how to do it."
"Will you be training me?" Evidently this topic change was working, for Duo's tone was now, in addition to the concern and agitation Heero was seeking to calm, part wistful — since he knew the answer was no — and also just a little playful or even suggestive.
"I'll certainly be there if you have any questions. You already email me twenty times a day half the days of the week; you can keep doing that if it'll make you feel better. But they'll get you a company email address, probably Wednesday or Thursday… I'm sure it'll be dmaxwell@winner-plastics.com."
"Ooh, that sounds so official! And I can send you completely sexually explicit emails from there, at work, with my work email, with both of us at work, and I won't get in trouble for it?"
"You will get in trouble for it if anyone but me sees them." Heero's attempt at sounding severe, battling his urge to laugh, was losing badly. "But PG-rated flirtation should be fine."
By now Duo had loosened up and stopped clutching at Heero so fiercely, and his voice as he said, "I'll have to think up some good stuff that won't get you fired," had returned to something like its usual level of casual sanguinity.
Deeming it safe, therefore, Heero said, "And I think once you're working full-time, it'll be a pretty constant reminder that you're human."
"Yeah, I think so too." Duo's nod made a rustling sound against the bedding. "And it'll give me more stuff to think about, so maybe it'll distract the dreams away." Despite his obviously greater amount of hope and calm, he still sighed as he added, "Maybe."
Heero leaned forward with a kiss aimed at Duo's forehead, but in the darkness found an eyebrow instead. "I can work harder at distracting you, too," he murmured. "Make sure you have more stuff to think about."
The warm breath of a faint, appreciative laugh touched Heero's neck, against which Duo, yawning, then nestled his head. This resulted in his next statement coming out a bit muffled. "You know what? I love you."
Heero kissed the top of Duo's head and then rested his chin on it, pulling him closer once again.
After a few more comments against Heero's skin, increasingly incoherent, Duo fell silent and started breathing deeply and evenly. Though he would eventually, Heero didn't release him just yet. He liked to imagine that, holding Duo, he could hold off the dreams as well, hold at bay everything that troubled his lover, protect him from a world that had already been unusually unkind to him. If only it were that easy.
Despite this, however, Heero was actually rather pleased with himself. Maybe it was arrogant, but he thought he'd done quite well at helping Duo recover from his nightmare relatively quickly and smoothly. Once again, if only it were always that easy to help Duo in dealing with the aftermath of the curse. The problem was that the damn thing only struck at dark moments when Duo was most vulnerable, usually when Heero couldn't help him. It didn't seem fair that sleep, something Heero knew Duo had missed intensely while he'd been a doll, had been tainted by this recurring experience.
Heero would definitely have to talk to Trowa about the possibility of some kind of magical counseling.
For now, though, he just tried to get back to his own sleep and not think about bad dreams or the very high probability of their return, since there really was nothing he could do to stop them. This had been happening fairly regularly for almost two months now, after all, and Heero didn't know how much he believed the proposed job/distraction theory they'd just discussed. The good news was that he was becoming more and more adept at damage control… he'd gone from the startlement and nearly ungovernable concern of the first few instances to a response so quick it seemed to begin even before he awoke; by now he tended to start attempting to calm and comfort Duo before he'd consciously registered what was going on.
Tonight he'd even been dreaming uncomfortably himself, hadn't he? –possibly in subconscious response to the signs Duo had been giving. He was reacting more and more quickly, becoming more and more in tune with Duo. Maybe that really would lead to a heightened ability to help one of these nights.
And yet… the specifics of the dream he'd been having were niggling at him, trying to make themselves heard above his other thoughts. The memory of exactly what he'd seen in his sleep was gaining clarity, and Heero found himself frowning in the darkness as he ran through the events — if they could be called that — in his dream. In fact, he was waking again, increasingly worried and perplexed, and he had to struggle not to tense up and squeeze Duo awake as well. It hadn't begun to occur to him while he'd been busy with his unhappy boyfriend, but… this wasn't actually entirely about Duo, was it? It couldn't be.
Because if it had been prompted only by Duo's distress, to which he'd been responding even before he'd awakened, why had his dream centered around a request for help from Quatre?
Trowa was still a much earlier riser than his longtime best friend, so Duo found it no surprise, when Trowa put his head into Heero's apartment late Saturday morning, that it looked as if this wasn't the first time he'd done so. On previous in-peekings, Trowa had probably heard signs first of Duo letting Heero know exactly what he thought of a boyfriend that was so steadfastly comforting and supportive during a period of stress and nightmare, and second of a vigorous shower, but this would be the first time he'd actually seen anyone up and about.
Duo, who was very helpfully helping Heero in the kitchen dressed only in pajama pants, caught the motion of Trowa's door opening and glanced over in time to see his friend step slowly inside, close the door behind him, and stand somewhat disconsolately against it.
"Hey, Trowa!" he greeted. "Come in and have breakfast!"
"Come in and distract Duo so I can actually make breakfast," Heero amended quietly.
"I'll put a shirt on, even," was Duo's generous accompanying offer.
When he returned from this errand wearing one of Heero's tees, he found that Trowa had wandered over to the sofa and sat down somewhat stiffly. His friend was now involved in an unnecessarily arduous discussion about whether he wanted breakfast, how likely he was to suffer if he skipped breakfast, and what, in the event he did want breakfast, he would like for breakfast. Heero was very patiently wringing answers out of Trowa, who was being far more unresponsive than usual; it was a little odd.
"You know Quatre will get on everyone's case if you don't eat," Duo said as he flopped down on the couch.
Trowa stiffened even further at the mention of Quatre's name, and this was the last sign Duo needed that something was wrong. Normally that sort of remark was everything required to get Trowa to shape up and act like a human being.
"So, what's going on?" Duo wondered, hoping to spare Trowa's feelings by letting him be the one to introduce whatever was bothering him. "Planning anything super exciting for your birthday?"
Trowa just shrugged.
"Birthdays count again," Duo reminded him. "That's worth celebrating, isn't it?"
Faintly Trowa smiled. "You're right about that."
This wasn't getting anywhere, so Duo decided to repeat the only word that had gotten a specific reaction thus far. "You and Quatre heading out to someplace extremely romantic?"
Simultaneously Trowa repeated his shrug, sighed a little, and looked away at nothing. "I thought we were," he said, "but I think plans may have changed."
This was enough to catch whatever portion of Duo's attention hadn't already been riveted on the conversation — not merely because Trowa was unhappy about something, but because words like 'think' and 'may' had just been applied to a plan involving Quatre. There might be times when Quatre's plans weren't entirely certain, but that was generally months before the event in question… and Trowa was turning 112 (or perhaps 25) tomorrow. "What happened?"
Trowa was consideringly silent for a moment. "He was in a bad mood last night." Clearly he was trying to downplay this, but it wasn't working.
Thinking back over the five months in which he'd known Quatre, Duo was having a hard time finding any memory to supply the information he wanted. Finally he asked in some interest, "What's that like?"
"Not very enjoyable for me."
This, Duo thought, answered his question: Trowa and Quatre had had a little tiff, and Trowa was here to pout and be petted about it. Doubtless Quatre would call or show up later, apologetic and full of plans for tomorrow, and everything would be fine. For now, it was probably best to let Trowa get everything off his chest in his own time.
"I'm worried," was how Trowa began, in a tone of confession — as if worrying about his boyfriend after an argument was a sign of weakness or something; poor Trowa. "He isn't answering my phone calls, and he isn't in his room at his house."
"Well, he wouldn't be, if he's annoyed and off somewhere," said Duo reasonably. "Heero! Where does Quatre go when he's annoyed?"
"Swimming," Heero replied, so promptly that it was obvious he was listening intently to the entire discussion.
"See?" Duo gave Trowa a comforting pat on the shoulder. "He's not going to answer his phone if he's in a pool, but I'm sure he'll call you when he gets out."
Trowa was still staring blankly at a point halfway up one of the apartment's largely empty walls. Duo had been meaning to talk to Heero about putting something interesting on some of them… if there'd been a picture there, Trowa would have had something real not to look at instead of having to make do with cream-colored nothing. As it was, Trowa was silent for the moment. Duo was itching to know what he'd done to irritate Quatre, but didn't think asking — which would be tantamount to accusing — would be terribly kind.
Finally, "He called me a coward," Trowa murmured.
"What?" This startled demand came from two voices, and suddenly Heero was standing just behind the couch looking down at Trowa with constricted brows and worried eyes.
Now Trowa's gaze shifted to the floor, as if he couldn't stand to meet the gaze of either of his friends. "I made him do something I couldn't do myself. I didn't force him to — I didn't even ask him to; he volunteered — but the fact that I couldn't do it, and that he feels the need to take care of me, made it equal to forcing him. He probably thought he didn't have a choice, and that's my fault."
"And it was so bad that he called you a coward to your face," Heero said. His face had gone hard, as had his tone, but he spoke softly. Duo had been surprised and concerned at hearing a report of Quatre using such negative language toward Trowa, but at the sight of Heero's expression and the sound of his voice his concern grew significantly.
Trowa nodded, and said heavily, "He told me I've been under the backwards impression that being a powerful magician was all I had left of myself that was worthwhile… and that I was afraid to let that go and live like a normal person… and that was keeping me from fully recovering after the curse. He said that if I'm going to keep being a coward about things, he's not going to be able to help me."
It sounded… well, it sounded, Duo had to admit, perfectly accurate. It didn't sound like anything Quatre would say. Duo remembered comforting himself once with the thought that Quatre was too compassionate ever to be unkindly blunt… but perhaps Trowa had somehow pushed him farther than Duo had ever seen Quatre pushed. Or had Duo simply been wrong in his assessment? In any case, the statement Quatre had made didn't sound like anything someone merely 'in a bad mood' would say.
"He was right," Trowa said simply, "but normally he's so much more kind about things like that."
Duo nodded inadvertently as Trowa essentially verified everything he'd just been thinking. Trowa didn't even sound petulant now — he wasn't complaining or looking for sympathy; he was uncomprehendingly hurt.
"I think I apologized for being so much trouble… I barely remember what I said… because he interrupted me and said, 'You know, Trowa, we spend an awful lot of time talking about you and your problems. It's not that I don't want to help you, but it gets overwhelming sometimes.'"
Trowa quoted as if he would never forget the exact words, and Duo simply stared at him. Once again it seemed completely accurate… and completely out of character for Quatre. Of course dealing with Trowa's issues must get overwhelming at times… but Duo wouldn't have thought Quatre would ever actually voice that sentiment aloud to Trowa.
"Then he said he was tired, and he went home. I thought he was going to stay," Trowa added with a slight blush, "and be around today… we hadn't quite decided between a couple of different options for tomorrow… but he seemed like he was angry with me all of a sudden. And now he won't answer my calls."
"It is kinda early still…" Duo offered this excuse only half-heartedly, since it wasn't actually all that early and he knew Quatre to be a morning person.
Something on the stove was crackling alarmingly, but Heero remained motionless beside the couch. He looked even more worried than before, and Duo thought there was a deep pensiveness and perhaps a touch of anger to his expression as well — and some disapproval, even accusation such as Duo had earlier eschewed, in Heero's tone as he asked, "What exactly did you have him do for you?"
Sounding even more miserable than before, Trowa ranted quietly. "He's been bringing it up regularly for months, and I kept putting it off… if I'd just done it myself, this wouldn't have happened, since I'm sure that's what caused this. He saw I couldn't do it and offered to do it for me… I shouldn't have let him; I should have done it myself… I shouldn't have been such a coward."
Silence followed this minor outburst, and Trowa seemed to realize that he hadn't actually answered the question. With a glance that was unexpectedly expressive of helpless guilt, he finally told them. "The artifact. He destroyed it for me."
Oddly enough, the tension in the room seemed to lessen a little at Trowa's pronouncement. He had anticipated anger from his two friends on hearing that he'd allowed Quatre to undertake something so magically involved and potentially dangerous — just as he'd been angry at himself for it ever since last night — but apparently his words had had a different effect.
"So this is a magical thing." Duo actually sounded somewhat relieved. "The artifact did something to him, and you should be able to clear it up and everything should be fine."
Not so sure, Trowa said nothing.
Heero, apparently sharing Trowa's doubts, wondered, "But what did it do to him? I've never seen Quatre behave like you're describing."
"Yeah, Quatre's so… nice…" Duo's expression, at the sound of Heero's voice, had slowly changed back to a frown.
"He's not just nice," Heero said fiercely — a very unusual tone for him. "He almost never speaks without thinking, and even if he has something difficult to say to someone, he says it as kindly as possible. And it takes him forever to say that kind of thing to his boyfriend, even–" here Trowa could feel cold eyes burning the back of his neck– "when his boyfriend deserves it."
"I know I deserved it." The slight defensiveness in Trowa's tone, the fact that he was standing up for himself (in a way) would have pleased Quatre the day before yesterday, Trowa thought. Today? Who knew? "He didn't say anything that wasn't perfectly true. It's him I'm worried about." Well, there was a touch of us he was worried about too — which, he felt, also would have pleased the normal Quatre. But when the normal Quatre wasn't around, it seemed almost meaningless. "And he's not answering his phone."
Abruptly Heero moved around the sofa and down the hall. For a few moments there was no sound but that of whatever he'd been cooking, which was now beginning to smell a bit smoky. In response to this, Duo reluctantly stood and went to deal with the probably ruined breakfast. Trowa thought there was very little appetite left among the three of them.
"Trowa…" Heero had returned with his cell phone, on which he'd fixed a very odd, pensive look. "About what time last night did this all happen?"
"Early morning." Wondering why Heero wanted to know, Trowa tried to narrow it down. "Probably around three."
"Which time zone?"
"Mine. So, midnight here?"
In the kitchen, Duo's sudden audible shifting suggested this meant something to him. But Heero said nothing, only nodded slightly and turned back to walk down the hall again. Another silence settled, but for Duo rattling cooking utensils, finally followed by the muffled sound of Heero talking to someone on the phone in his bedroom. It didn't seem a very promising conversation, though — too many questions and long pauses.
This was confirmed when Heero returned, still eyeing the device in his hand strangely, and eventually looked up at where Trowa remained on the couch. "No answer," he said, stopping in the entry to the hall and pocketing his phone with a reluctant slowness. "I called his house too, and Darryl said he's still not there. Something is definitely wrong."
"Why do you say that?" It was actually a little annoying that, after it had already been established that Quatre wasn't answering Trowa's calls, Heero would come to the conclusion something was wrong only after he tried and failed to reach his friend.
"Because," said Heero slowly, still frowning, "last night at 12:15 or so, I woke up from a dream about Quatre asking me for help."
Now it was Duo's turn to emerge, startled, from the kitchen, abandoning whatever cooking endeavor was going on there. "You woke up from a dream?"
Heero nodded. "It was a message. I didn't quite realize that last night, because…" His eyes flicked to Duo and away. "I got distracted. But it wasn't a normal dream."
Mimicking the nod, Trowa said wearily, "You're a communicator."
"What?" Duo wondered, pulled momentarily from his concern for Quatre. "Is he?"
"I've thought so for a while, but I never got around to running a test. Now I don't have to. The type of connection with a friend that brings dreams like that is one of the definitive signs." Trowa would be very interested in this at a later time, but at the moment he barely cared. "And you're right, Heero: it's also a definitive sign that something is wrong." As if that weren't already obvious.
Heero too set aside, for now, the question of his area of magical talent. "And I assume you can't jump to him, or you would already have done it." His tone was even, and Trowa got the feeling he was also setting accusation aside in the interest of helping Quatre.
"I haven't tried jumping anywhere," Trowa replied, "but I'm sure it will take some time and practice before I can do it again at all… and I don't know if I'll ever be able to use Quatre as a destination again." And that prospect had been not the least of the reasons he hadn't been looking forward to giving up the largest portion of his power. Quatre had been right about his cowardice, but at least some of it was specifically related to Quatre himself. The reminder that normal people got around by non-magical means all the time could do little to console Trowa for the loss of the ability to go instantly to his boyfriend whenever he wanted.
"You haven't tried yet," Heero murmured very quietly, almost as if to himself. Then, more loudly and very flatly he wondered, "Why are you here, Trowa?"
Trowa opted for complete honesty. "I wanted to see if I was overreacting."
"If you haven't tried jumping to him yet, I'd say you're underreacting."
"Maybe not, maybe not," said Duo placatingly from where he'd returned to the kitchen. "We don't know for sure yet exactly what happened."
"I," said Heero, in the same absolutely flat tone as before, "have known Quatre for ten years. And I am telling you both that something is wrong. Trowa, I think you should try jumping to him. If that doesn't work, I think you should look through those books of yours and see if you can figure out what might have happened to him."
The I think's didn't make these statements any less commanding, but any sting Trowa might have felt at being ordered around by Heero was drowned in the concern he felt — an emotion he'd been holding back all this time but that had been let loose by Heero's steely pronouncements. He nodded and stood. "Let me know if you get ahold of him."
Curtly, Heero returned the gesture.
Duo's tone in the goodbye he called out as Trowa headed for home was somewhat forlorn. "Good luck!" Trowa heard him add as his door closed.
It didn't entirely close before it opened again, and he turned, a little surprised, to find that he'd been followed. Heero still looked grim, but something about the grimness had altered slightly. Silently he let the door fall shut behind him as he faced Trowa across the entry, and Trowa waited in equal silence for whatever Heero had remembered or thought of to add.
"This isn't the best moment to ask," Heero began slowly, "but I don't want to wait. Do you know — or could you find — a good therapist who knows about magic?"
Trowa blinked in surprise, but the explanation for the incongruous request presented itself almost immediately: Duo needed help. Professional help. It was in no way any wonder, regardless of how happy Duo seemed in general. And he certainly did seem happy to Trowa… Heero tended to know these more personal things long before Trowa did these days, an idea to which Trowa still hadn't entirely reconciled himself. Not that now was the time for that.
"I'll look for someone," he assured Heero seriously.
"Thank you." As this evidently formed the completion of the intended exchange, Heero turned and moved to go back to his apartment.
But Trowa couldn't let him leave without saying something that, he hoped, would reassure (or at least remind) Heero that they two were still friends despite any coldness resulting from odd and uncomfortable circumstances, that Trowa returned concern for concern. It was a little difficult to drag his mind away from the worrisome mystery of Quatre's behavior, and the next subject in line would certainly be this new suggestion that Duo was still traumatized by the long cursed years, so his words were a little halting as other thoughts continually dragged his attention away from them. "Heero… if communication is your primary skill…" Trowa was fairly sure he was right about that, and even without the artifact, Trowa's surety was worth quite a bit on magical matters. "If you're a communicator, and your abilities have awakened… you're likely to start hearing people's thoughts."
"What?" Heero sounded surprised and not entirely pleased.
"Only louder thoughts, in general." Though it wasn't Trowa's main area of talent, so he'd never had this problem, he knew how it usually worked for communicators. "But if you spend enough time with someone, you'll start picking up anything on the surface of their mind they aren't actively trying to hide from you."
"In other words," Heero muttered, "get ready to start hearing all of Duo's thoughts, and probably Quatre's, and maybe yours."
"Not mine." Trowa's tone was a bit dry as he recalled just how much time and power he'd had backing his practice even of skills that were technically secondary to him, little proficiency as he'd still gained in some of them. "And I think Quatre's… natural organization… may keep most of his thoughts exactly where he wants them." Just mentioning Quatre's name distracted him from this topic, but Trowa forced himself to finish. "But Duo… yes, I think you should get ready to start hearing Duo's thoughts. Surface-level thoughts, at least."
Heero had turned to face Trowa again, and now he nodded slowly, his pensive expression bearing traces of reluctance. Finally he smiled grimly and said, "I guess that's the price I have to pay for hanging around you magical people. There's nothing I can do about this, is there?"
Trowa shook his head. There certainly were options to make Heero's talent easier for him to deal with, but Trowa was at the end of how far he could discuss this subject right now; having alerted him to the somewhat inconvenient early indications of a communion skill was all he could manage at the moment.
"Well, thanks for the warning." Heero turned back toward the door once more. Before he opened it he added in a friendlier tone than he'd used to dismiss Trowa from his apartment, "Good luck today." And once Trowa had returned his thanks, he left.
Trowa sighed as he glanced back and forth between his study and his computer room, trying to decide whether magical experimentation or research (and, if the latter, which branch of research) would be most likely to produce quick and positive results. Eventually he headed into the study with a good deal more to think about than he'd had when he left it earlier — assuming he was capable of thinking about anything besides Quatre.
Duo was examining the outcome of all their diffuse breakfast endeavors with a contemplative frown as Heero came back into the apartment through Trowa's door, and the most worrisome part was that Duo looked like he was seriously considering eating it anyway. In celebration of the fact that he could eat anything now, Duo would eat anything now.
"I hope you following him in there means you thought of something that explains everything," he said without looking up.
"No," Heero half sighed. "I wish it did."
The expression Duo now turned up toward him was sympathetic, but pretty clearly showed that he wasn't yet convinced of the full direness of the situation with Quatre. There was some curiosity in it too as he said, "Why'd you go after him, then?"
"Trowa says he'll look around for a therapist who knows about magic to help you with… your…" Heero found his voice failing at the change that occurred during his words: Duo had stiffened, stilled, and given Heero his complete attention — and none of this in a good way.
"Did Trowa bring this up," Duo asked quietly, "or did you?"
"I did. Because of your dreams."
Tightly Duo nodded, and his voice was quiet and nearly emotionless as he said, "Please don't just go over my head like that."
"I didn't sign you up or anything; I just asked Trowa if he knew anyone you could go to."
Duo moved his attention back to their breakfast as Heero approached somewhat warily. "Well, talk to me first about things like that. Then Trowa." Actually it didn't look like he was examining the food at all; he obviously just didn't want to look at Heero.
In response to Duo's pointed turning away, Heero stopped at the edge of the kitchen and tried to explain. "I knew you'd just say that no psychiatrist could possibly know what you've been through, so I thought before I brought it up I'd check–"
"Please," Duo reiterated with a firmness that was almost desperate. "Talk to me first." He gripped the oven door handle tightly as his gaze seemed to be pointed toward the contents of the stove without really seeing them. "You don't know what I've been through either; you don't know what it's like to have everyone do everything for you because you can't do it for yourself."
Heero couldn't help being a little hurt by "You don't know what I've been through," but he struggled not to say so. It was true, after all, at least on a certain level: he had been informed of much of Duo's history, and had himself been part of Duo's last month as a doll, but that wasn't the same as knowing. Even if he'd been there for all of it, he couldn't really have known what was going on in Duo's head, how the curse affected Duo on the inside rather than the outside. Of course Duo had shared some of it with him, and there was more Heero could guess at just by interacting with him, but that still wasn't the same as knowing. And even the knowledge he claimed to have — that therapy would help — was in actuality only a guess.
But if what Trowa had warned him about did come to pass, he might eventually no longer need to guess what was going on in Duo's head. He might eventually know what Duo had been through. But he pushed that thought away for now.
"Of course. You're right," he said at last. "I should have realized." He meant it as an apology he didn't quite have plainer words for, and Duo seemed to accept it as such.
"It's…" Duo released the oven with one hand and swung around, pivoting on the other wrist, still hanging on but looking now at Heero with a serious expression. "Not like I don't appreciate the thought. OK, well, I don't really like the thought much either, but…"
Heero winced. Of course Duo wouldn't enjoy having his boyfriend suddenly suggest that he needed counseling, even if Heero had managed to suggest it in a manner that didn't tread heavily on Duo's toes.
"But I appreciate that you're trying to look out for me," Duo finished. He gave Heero a smile that, though genuine as Duo's smiles always were, wasn't as happy as it could have been, and turned back to the stove. Now he focused properly on the remains of their intended breakfast, and said more or less cheerfully, "I think I'm not hungry enough anymore to eat this. What do you think?"
Heero moved forward to join in the examination, and shook his head.
Wordlessly they set about cleaning up, discarding ruined food and washing dishes in a silence that was like Duo's smile — not tense or angry, but neither as easy or happy as it could have been.
Finally, scraping the frying pan somewhat over-vigorously, Duo said abruptly, "I don't need therapy."
"I'm sorry," Heero replied. It was an automatic and somewhat defensive response, but at least he'd gotten the words out.
"I made it through eighty-seven years as a fucking doll without going crazy." Duo, whose voice told what he was feeling far more often than Heero's did, sounded much more defensive than Heero had. "I don't need to see someone about a couple of little bad dreams."
"I'm sorry," Heero repeated, this time at a murmur. He thought Duo was very specifically incorrect in this instance — Duo's almost desperate defensiveness spoke pretty eloquently that there were mental issues in there that could use some professional help — but Heero was sorry he'd made him unhappy with his suggestion and his thoughtlessness, and he wasn't going to press the issue at the moment. He would have to bring it up again eventually, but right now he just wanted Duo to smile properly.
What Duo did instead was drop what he was working on in the sink and fling soapy-handed arms around Heero unexpectedly from behind. "It's OK," he said. "Stop sounding like a kicked puppy! How could I be mad at you for doing something you thought was just to help me?"
"Because I did it all wrong?" Heero suggested. Whether or not he still sounded like a kicked puppy — and he had some doubts about having done so in the first place — he couldn't guess, but he was certainly happier with Duo's arms around him, even if he was going to have to change his shirt.
Duo nuzzled his face into Heero's back, and, though he said something muffled about learning from experience and not doing it again, he seemed to be seeking comfort all of a sudden. As if he were asking Heero — the one that had introduced the idea — to reassure him that he wasn't broken. It didn't shake Heero's conviction that counseling would do his lover good, nor did it make him feel less guilty about how he'd botched things; but he did raise a hand to clutch at Duo's, disregarding suds and char, and squeeze it.
Eventually Duo stood straight, pulling away and clearing his throat, and turned back to the sink as if nothing had happened. "Besides," he said in a brighter tone than before, which didn't entirely match his words, "you're distracted worrying about Quatre."
This tense little scene with Duo had actually driven thoughts of Quatre far into the rear of Heero's mind, but it was true that his best friend had been almost the center of his thoughts when he'd followed Trowa. That didn't excuse having done something he should have known would be hurtful to his boyfriend, and he would have brought this up had he not believed Duo's mentioning Quatre was a signal that he wanted to talk about something else.
Heero located a towel to run over the front of his shirt and his hands, and then brought out his phone to try Quatre again. This time it went straight to voicemail. Though Heero wasn't generally one for leaving messages, he was tempted in this instance. That he hadn't the faintest idea what he could say kept him from doing so.
What next? Conceivably Heero could call the club and see if he could wheedle them into telling him whether or not Quatre was there, but, even if he managed that, what then? It was pretty obvious that Quatre wasn't interested in talking to anyone right now, and, worried as Heero was, such wishes should be respected. And yet, if there was magic at work, such wishes might have to take lower priority than expedience. But, as with a message, what would Heero say? Very specific concern was sometimes a little difficult for him to convey; something this uncertain would probably be even harder to put into words. But he would definitely feel a lot better if he could talk to Quatre — about anything. Just to hear his voice at this point would reassure Heero, even if it reaffirmed the current bad situation.
He supposed he could visit in person the places he thought Quatre might be… but he couldn't get into the club except as the guest of an actual member, who had to be present at the front desk; and anywhere else Quatre might go in a particularly and possibly supernaturally bad mood — the office, out jogging, or to Cassidy's bar downtown — were hit-or-miss at best.
"You're really seriously worried, aren't you?" Whether the darkness of Duo's tone was in response to the referenced worry or a lingering result of the previous conversation, Heero didn't know. In any case, he was finished scrubbing the frying pan (or at least finished with all the work he was willing to put in on that endeavor at the moment), and wrapping arms around Heero's chest again. He hadn't washed his hands, but it didn't much matter.
"I'm really seriously worried," Heero confirmed. And perhaps it was impetuous, but he decided suddenly, "And I'm going to go look for him."
"I'll come with you," said Duo at once.
"Thank you," Heero replied. "Let me change shirts, and we'll go." As he left Duo's arms and headed across the living room toward the hall and his bedroom, he added with a sigh, "This may be completely useless, but it'll feel better than doing nothing."
This was like an echo of those long years when he'd been unable to find Duo or get any idea of what he should do once he managed to: he had huge amounts of knowledge and decades of experience, but in the specific area where he was being challenged he was ignorant and powerless.
He'd never been very good at divination, and now, without the artifact to boost his personal power, he was barely getting answers at all. This, he believed, probably arose from having grown too accustomed to that extra power, and that he would, in time, be able to benefit from that branch of magic again… but 'in time' didn't help with figuring out what had happened to Quatre right now.
In the area of communion he'd likewise never been very skilled, and the telepathy that was the hallmark of a communicator's powers was something he'd never mastered. Good communicators could, with practice, even speak telepathically over a distance, but Trowa didn't think any amount of practice would allow him to do so. So reaching out mentally to Quatre was out.
Command magic, therefore, was his only option in this situation. Thinking back on how skilled he'd become in this area was reassuring, but his drop in raw power was still a concern, and not a small one. He hadn't realized how much he'd come to use the artifact as a crutch — even to the point where he'd developed a certain attunement to it that had allowed him to access it from a distance almost without realizing he was doing so — until he was forced to go without it. Once again, however, he believed it was just a matter of time before he learned to look at magic from the different angle of having an almost perfect knowledge of how to work it without the practically unlimited power he'd once commanded.
The last couple of hours, spent first exploring his options and then trying to jump to Quatre, had obviously not constituted the time that it was only a matter of. In teleportation, there was no prior connection to the destination; you only knew you had properly specified the desired location by arriving there. Therefore, there was no scale to measure how well you had a destination in mind: you either arrived at it, or you went nowhere. In this case, it was like reaching, while climbing blind, for a handhold that turned out not to exist. And then the energy already built up for the spell had to be expended, either by initiating the weightlessness of jumping to no purpose where he stood or as a burst of undirected power that threatened destruction around him.
In part for this reason, he'd been attempting this experiment outside in his back yard. Up almost to his knees in weed-choked grass, breathing deeply, eyes often closed, sometimes raising his arms in a gesture meant to focus his energy in the direction he wanted, he would have presented quite a picture to anyone able to see over the six-foot fences, but for once he was completely ignoring the old paranoia about his neighbors.
He was also out here because he suspected a few of the objects in his study of having become artifacts. Because they had formed in conjunction with his use of the lunar artifact, they had previously been merely satellites to it, attuned to it from their inception, and unlikely to interfere with any magic he performed using its power — but now, with the candlestick destroyed, they were free to progress along their own paths and develop their own wavelengths that might interact badly with each other and have unforeseen influences over his attempts at spellcasting. Eventually he would test the items he suspected, and others, to determine which were artifacts and what their nature might be, and decide what to do with them all, but at the moment, not having time for that, he was simply working outside their presence.
Well, it was clear that using Quatre as a destination was simply not going to work. Whether it would at some point in the future, after more extensive and leisurely experimentation, Trowa did not know; right now he had to move on. The next step seemed to be, more simply, jumping to a destination that demanded less focus, less precise conjunction of multiple branches of magic. And the choice of destination wasn't terribly difficult, given that there were only a few places Quatre was likely to be that Trowa knew well enough to jump to. It was Saturday, yes, but he'd known Quatre to go to work on weekends for reasons less pressing than being magically irritable and wanting a distraction.
From many instances of picking Quatre up after work (whether because he'd taken him there in the first place and Quatre had no other way home, or in preparation for an evening together, or even just, on a couple of occasions, to surprise him), Trowa knew Quatre's office well enough by now to be confident in his ability to jump to it if he could manage the teleportation spell at all. He tried not to imagine Quatre there, practically waiting for him to appear, with an explanation for his strange behavior and a reassurance that he wasn't actually angry at Trowa at all. He tried not to picture them making up tenderly and then heading off — after, of course, a reassuring call to Heero — for a birthday celebration that would last the rest of the weekend. He knew he would only be disappointed.
Even as he cast the spell, he felt how extravagant he'd become. He never would have noticed before, with the artifact, but now when he had a much lower level of power it was obvious that he was expending far too much of it on this task simply because he'd never had to worry about conserving energy before. But now, as he landed in the office lit only by the big wall of windows on one side, he actually stumbled as he came to rest, and had to catch the desk to keep from falling. Exhaustion slammed into him along with the realization that he'd used the better part of his power on this one jump, that he certainly wouldn't be leaving this place magically until he'd had a rest and probably a good hard reflection on how more economically to cast this spell.
And of course Quatre wasn't here. Despite having striven to avoid getting his hopes up, Trowa was still bitterly disappointed.
After a glance around and coming to the decision that the very comfortable-looking leather chair at Quatre's big glossy desk would be the best place to regather his strength and give his mind to what needed to be thought about, he moved first, slowly, toward the office door (at what might be considered a hobble) in order to poke his head out into the hallway to ascertain whether he could hear anyone moving around in other parts of the building. And though he thought the fact that lights were on was a good sign that someone else was probably here, he didn't hear anyone immediately nearby, which was for the best. Then he took a seat, swiveled to face the windows, and stared blankly out at the parking lot and other nearby businesses.
It was strange to feel so drained so abruptly. It was novel, but that didn't mean he liked it. He felt as if he'd just run a marathon and come in last. Never in his life could he remember being so worn out, and though the bulk of the sensation was not physical, yet a certain measure of physical weariness was dragged along in the wake of his magical depletion. It was depressing and embittering.
The sound of the office door opening startled him enough that he jerked in his seat, and several thoughts went through his head in split-second succession: first, that it must be Quatre; second, that, as it obviously wasn't Quatre, it was odd that the door should be unlocked for anyone else to get in; third, that he'd probably unlocked the door himself by opening it from the inside; fourth, that his presence here was going to seem strange no matter who it was and why they were entering.
Even as he turned, he heard a woman's voice begin, "I didn't know you were here today, but I'm glad–" But she cut off when she saw that it wasn't her manager in the chair behind the desk.
"Pardon me," Trowa replied wearily. "I know I'm not who you're looking for."
"No," she said, advancing. "I thought Quatre must have come in without me noticing, and it was a stroke of luck he was here on a Saturday just when I was." She smiled a little as she approached the desk, and it was obvious that she did think it odd — and probably a little suspicious — to find this stranger here.
For a moment Trowa didn't know what to say. Not that coming up with excuses for the magical happenings in which he was often involved (indeed, which he often caused) was at all foreign to him; it was because he was momentarily captivated by her face.
It was the strong nose, he thought, and something about the corners of the eyes. She didn't have freckles, but he thought hers was the type of complexion that might develop them under the correct atmospheric conditions. And the big curls in the reddish-brown hair were certainly part of it.
Not entirely sure what prompted him to do so, he stood up and reached out across the desk, just as if this were his office and he was introducing himself to a co-worker or something, to offer a handshake. "My name is Trowa Barton. I'm Quatre's boyfriend." And though simple truth such as this was something he greatly preferred to tell where possible, it was a little surprising even to him that he'd given it so readily here and now.
He thought her eyes were studying his features with just as much interest as his had studied hers, and at the sound of his name her brows went down slightly — not, he thought, with any negative emotion, but in an expression of interest and curiosity. She accepted the handshake with a firm grip and replied, "Well, I'm Catharine Barton. Good to meet you."
What were the chances, Trowa wondered, of a second child of his mother also having deliberately taken her last name, and both that name and his mother's features having been carried down several generations and across the country to manifest in a co-worker of his mother's first child's boyfriend a century later? Could it be just a coincidental resemblance and sharing of name? He had no idea.
He realized he'd expressed himself equally pleased to meet her almost without knowing he spoke, and now she was asking him, "So is Quatre here after all?"
With a shake of his head designed also to shake himself out of his distraction he replied, "I don't think so. I came here looking for him, but it seems I'm out of luck as well."
"That's too bad," she replied. Her stance had shifted slightly, and Trowa realized that she was settling in. She probably wasn't quite sure yet that she believed he was who he said he was, and felt she couldn't leave the room until her mind had been eased on that point. That was fine — Trowa needed to rest before he could go anywhere anyway, and he might as well do it in someone else's presence as out of it — but he wanted to sit back down, and felt it would be discourteous to do so with this woman standing across the desk from him; at the same time, it would be awkward to invite her to sit down when this wasn't actually his office.
The slight awkwardness of the situation was clearly felt by Catharine too, and was probably what prompted her question, "Can't you call him?"
"He's not answering," Trowa replied. "We had a fight."
"I'm sorry to hear that." Her sympathy sounded genuine, and also seemed to break the ice a bit; glancing around, she pulled one of the other chairs in the room closer to the desk and sat, much to Trowa's relief. But she still sounded as if she was floundering a bit for things to say when she added, "You're lucky you ran into me and not anyone else from sales with that news. I've never met a team more gossipy than ours."
"I've heard stories," Trowa nodded as he too took his seat. "Apparently everyone believes Quatre is dating Heero."
She gave a smile of regretful amusement, and seemed to relax a bit; Heero's name (and this bit of gossip) was obviously a password of sorts. "It's gotten a little confused lately, because–" She lifted her chin and a pointed finger as she interrupted herself: "Now, I want it understood that I don't work the gossip mill! But it's impossible not to overhear just about everything."
Trowa smiled a bit at the mixture of pride and playfulness in her demeanor. "Understood."
"Well, some people know Heero's actual boyfriend, and half the building still thinks Heero and Quatre are dating. There's a lot of whispering about who's cheating on whom."
"I wonder how Duo coming to work here will affect that."
"Duo — that's Heero's boyfriend, right? Is he coming to work here?"
"He starts Monday, I believe."
"It's going to turn everything upside-down for a while. Always a fun time for those of us who are here to work, not stick our noses into other people's business."
The fact that she was here on a Saturday was all the confirmation Trowa needed that she was one of those here to work.
"And even having said that," she added, leaning forward a bit, "I can't help asking… where are you from?"
Evidently the family resemblance was not, as Trowa had half thought it might be, a figment of his imagination, if the way Catharine's eyes were roving his face was any indication. She looked mostly relaxed and unsuspicious now, and would probably be all right leaving him alone in Quatre's office — but there was no reason they couldn't try to figure out for sure, first, whether or not they were related. The possibility of his having living relations, whatever their precise degree of connection, was not one Trowa had ever given any thought, and he found that it interested him more than he would have expected. And a distraction from his concern about Quatre, during these moments when he was forced to rest and barred from action, was not unwelcome.
So, falling back somewhat on the old genealogy he'd built for himself to fill up believably the years between his parents and himself, and setting forth his own history in the early 1900's as that of his great-grandfather, he started to explain where he'd lived and about his family line.
His Own Humanity is an AU series set in modern-day America (plus magic) featuring characters from Rurouni Kenshin (primarily Saitou and Sano) and Gundam Wing (primarily Heero, Duo, Trowa, and Quatre). In chronological order (generally), the stories currently available are:
Sano enlists the help of exorcist Hajime in discovering the nature of the unusual angry shade that's haunting him.
Best friends Heero and Quatre have their work cut out for them assisting longtime curse victims Duo and Trowa.
The New Familiar
During Plastic (part 80), Cairo thinks about thinking and other recent changes in his life.
Fast Decisions
A look at how Hajime and Sano are doing.
Get Used to That
A look at how Trowa and Quatre are doing.
A look at how Heero and Duo are doing.
Cockatiel and Armadillo
A meeting between Kamatari and Wufei.
Cross-Cancellation
Couple analysis among Heero, Duo, Trowa, and Quatre.
La Confrérie de la Lune Révéré
Quatre undergoes an unpleasant magical change; Heero, Duo, and Trowa are forced to face unpleasant truths; and Hajime and Sano may get involved.
Guest Room Soap Opera
During La Confrérie de la Lune Révéré (parts 33-35), Sano's 178-day wait is over as what Hajime has been fearing comes to pass.
Consummate Timing
During Guest Room Soap Opera (part 3), Cathy learns a lot of interesting facts and Trowa is not happy.
That Remarkable Optimism
A few days before the epilogue of La Confrérie de la Lune Révéré, Duo and Sano get together to watch football and discuss relationships and magical experiences; Heero listens in on multiple levels.
After-Dinner Brandy
On the same evening as That Remarkable Optimism, Trowa tells Quatre's parents the whole truth, as promised.
His Own Humanity: Cross-Cancellation
Jun 9, 2013 | Art Archive Entries, Fiction, Gundam Wing Fanfiction
The current arrangement of lovers and friends was so neat and desirable, it would be most convenient if it stayed the way it was.
Heero, Duo, Trowa, and Quatre make good use of the beginning of a short vacation to think extensively about each other.
Author's Star Rating: 3.5 | Category: His Own Humanity | Contains: Established relationship for main couple(s) | Contains: Gay Duo | Contains: Gay Heero | Contains: Gay Quatre | Contains: Gay Trowa | Genre: Drama | Genre: Introspection | Length: 9k-10k words | Pairing - Primary: Duo & Heero | Pairing - Primary: Quatre & Trowa | POV: Duo | POV: Heero | POV: Quatre | POV: Trowa | Rating: 1 | Release/completion year: 2013 | Setting: Alternate universe | Setting: AU - Modern U.S. plus magic
"You know, you guys don't all have to go completely silent like that every time I back out of a parking space," Duo was grumbling as he slowly guided Heero's car in the manner specified.
"I was already completely silent," Trowa pointed out.
"OK, Trois, you're exempt. But you two–" Duo glanced at Heero, who sat in the passenger seat, then into the mirror at Quatre in the back beside Trowa. Ironically, he wasn't able to tell these two what he thought of their behavior, since the accusatory movement of his eyes toward them in preparation for doing so caused them to break in with almost simultaneous protests that he needed to be watching what he was doing.
Duo was right, though: the car had fallen suspiciously silent the moment he'd started it up and moved to leave the parking space… but Trowa wasn't certain this had been due entirely to the nervousness of his passengers about his ability to negotiate the lot — at least where Heero was concerned. Because Trowa and Quatre had only just gotten into the car at that point, and it was nothing unusual for Heero's general volume to drop in direct proportion to the number of people around him.
Instead of whatever facetious rant he'd had in mind, Duo was grumbling, "…just because I still suck at parking lots…" and giving more attention to the latter than the rant probably would have allowed.
"You know, Heero," Quatre grinned, "I was pleased with myself for getting our time off arranged right this time — the right number of days in advance, vacation pay set up, and everything — but I realize now that what I really should have done was updated my will."
It was Duo that replied, this time with mock haughtiness. "Well, I wasn't planning on driving us off a cliff, but now I'm having second thoughts."
Shaking his head with a regretful sigh, Quatre seemed to lament this inevitable sealing of his fate. "I just hope Goldensea is worth it."
"If we get there at all," Heero put in. And because Trowa's thoughts had drifted in that direction, he specifically marked the tone in which Heero said it. 'Theatrical,' he thought, was the best description for it, though that did imply more drama (and perhaps volume from the diaphragm) than he could ever imagine a speech of Heero's containing. But there was definitely a performing quality to it, a consciousness of audience, and far more calculation than candidness.
Duo now shifted to offended dignity, and almost managed to make his portentous accusation with a straight face. "You two are no true friends."
In general, however, Duo's driving was not so bad. Trowa had found he wasn't terribly fond of being a passenger in any car, but he hadn't yet actively feared for his life with Duo at the wheel as his companions pretended to do. And despite the tendency of those companions to try to micro-manage lane-changing, acceleration, usage of turn signals, and most especially the distance maintained from other cars on the road, Trowa knew they would both offer reassurances to Duo, in between their teasing, that everything was actually fine.
In fact, he thought Heero was already doing so. Trowa couldn't quite make out what he was saying in that low tone up there; four adult bodies in the car on a July afternoon required more air conditioning for comfort than would allow any remark not specifically aimed at everyone to be heard by everyone.
Trowa himself had repaired the air conditioner, which apparently hadn't functioned correctly for many years, with a few spells a few days ago in preparation for this little road trip. Evidently more out of interest than skepticism, Heero had then insisted on examining the vehicle's internal workings, and had emerged, greasy and fascinated, probably with a better understanding of what the magic had done than Trowa possessed. But even if the air conditioner hadn't been working, Trowa did not doubt that Heero would have found an opportunity to murmur whatever statement he wanted to make to Duo in privacy great enough that he could deliver it in one-on-one mode.
Of Heero's array of interpersonal settings Trowa had pieced together his awareness after a great deal of observation that had never been intended to unearth any such information. Several instances of coming into Heero's apartment very quietly (ready to retreat immediately if it seemed that something private was going on), and overhearing thus how Heero behaved with Duo, had displayed the fact that this behavior was subtly but markedly different once Trowa joined them. He'd had occasion to observe Heero alone with Quatre once or twice too, and, though of course there was no romance involved, the openness and ease of Heero's manner at such moments were much the same as with Duo.
At first, very naturally, Trowa had attributed this to the fact that Duo was Heero's boyfriend and Quatre his longtime best friend, but after a couple of months observing and interacting with Heero he'd realized there was more to it than that. Because Trowa himself had been alone with Heero a few times, trying, at Duo's urging, to assist Heero with magic. That process hadn't gone very well, but the experiences had been enough to prove that, though Heero might not have quite the same degree of openness and friendliness toward Trowa that he displayed with Duo or Quatre, those aspects of his behavior yet remained — up until even just one more person came in.
When that happened, Heero seemed deliberately to shift gears. It had taken Trowa a while to realize that what Heero was actually doing at that point was closing off, putting up barriers, since Heero did it so smoothly: he did become quieter, yes, but he also seemed to start more carefully calculating everything he did say so as to cover up the fact that he was so much less inclined to speak at all.
They stopped for gas at a busy station, where Duo flirted shamelessly with the women at the next pump and then clearly startled them a bit when he replied to their teasing remarks about the apparent age and dilapidation of his car that it was actually his boyfriend's. Said boyfriend and car owner maintained his stony silence and stillness in the passenger seat.
Before they'd left Heero's apartment complex, when Duo and Heero had been the only ones in the vehicle… well, Trowa had been busy talking to Quatre at that point, but even the briefest glance at the others had been enough to show the greater level of responsiveness and candid animation in Heero's demeanor, as he and Duo looked over the map to their destination on Heero's phone, than in a moment like this when surrounded by people and observed by strangers.
And earlier than that, when Trowa and Quatre had come from Trowa's house, where they'd been changing clothing and retrieving what luggage they meant to bring with them (and Quatre had insisted Trowa pack, on the grounds that teleporting back home in search of needed items defeated the entire point of a vacation), they'd found Heero's apartment full of the sound of Duo's excited discussion of the reception they'd all just attended, as well as the wedding that had preceded it — and Heero animatedly agreeing with him on many points. But of course he'd changed his tone when he'd realized Trowa and Quatre had arrived, because it was evidently impossible for him to behave the same with three people as he did with one.
Though it was obviously not just the type of relationship Heero had with those around him, but also a simple matter of arithmetic, Trowa deemed it still made a difference that those three were friends; he had no real idea of how Heero behaved around other types of people. It hardly mattered, though, since the overall point remained the same: subtly, even somewhat unexpectedly, Heero was shy. This was a brief and simplistic description of a complicated set of attributes, and Trowa had been a little surprised when he found he'd boiled Heero's behavior down to that one word in his head, but there it was… and Trowa worried that it might cause problems one of these days.
Not with him, of course. While he wouldn't have applied the same description to himself, he had definitely developed certain social anxieties and dislikes, and some extremely withdrawn tendencies, over the many years, which couldn't leave him anything but sympathetic with anyone else's desire to avoid social situations. No, he worried it might cause problems one of these days with Duo.
The latter had finished filling the car and said goodbye to his admirers, and was now, to the sound of some fairly idiotic but no less amusing banter, guiding them toward the interstate. There, Trowa knew from prior experience, Heero and Quatre would be a little less inclined to backseat drive, as long as Duo refrained from 'riding the ass' of the car in front of them as he was, apparently, wont to do; to Trowa, who was far more agitated by constant non-joking harassment of Duo than he was by any minor traffic law infractions, this would be a relief.
The conversation had turned to Duo's job prospects and all the money he planned on making. "It'll be so cool to do my taxes next year," he was saying.
"I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've ever heard anyone say that," Quatre replied with a laugh.
Eagerly Duo said, "I'll do yours for you too!"
"Thank you, Duo." Quatre's tone made it very clear that this service, which removed his immediate influence over a part of his finances, was one of which he would never avail himself.
Picking up on this, Duo made a sulky face that Trowa could only partially see from this angle. "I'll just have to do Heero's taxes," he declared.
"Hmm…" Heero's reluctance was every bit as pronounced as Quatre's.
"You can do my taxes," Trowa offered.
"I will do everyone's taxes!" was Duo's fierce insistence. And he started listing all the people whose taxes he would do — though it sounded more like just a list of all the people he could think of, starting with his friends, broadening to acquaintances, then people he didn't really know, then strangers whose names he'd seen on billboards and TV ads and people he wasn't likely ever to meet. It probably would have continued into historic figures and fictional characters, but before that could happen, George W. Bush joined the roster, and this led to an energetic and very silly tangent.
Describing Duo as 'outgoing' was understating the fact. Duo had always been interested in people, which usually translated to his being equally interesting to people, which made friendliness levels rise exponentially when he was in company. If Trowa hadn't known it perfectly well after growing up alongside Duo's jovial and usually reciprocated interest in everyone they ever happened to encounter, those brief months of money and upward mobility just before the curse would have proven it. Duo had been politely invited to someone's party the first time because he was Trowa's friend; he'd been enthusiastically invited the second time because they'd realized that the gathering simply wouldn't be complete without him.
As far as Trowa could tell, Duo's time as a doll, being passed from one person to another for nigh on a century, had only given him a deeper and broader understanding of humanity in general, and done nothing to lessen his interest; if anything, he was more socially inclined now than ever before. He didn't have a phone yet, since apparently he wanted to start earning his own money before thinking about that kind of monthly bill, but he did have at least one email address, and appeared to have made friends with just about everyone in the apartment complex in addition to several of Heero's co-workers (somehow).
Trowa didn't think Duo had started intensively hanging out with his new friends yet, inviting and being invited, but he assumed it was only a matter of time, especially once an income and a phone entered the picture. And what was Heero going to do then? Trowa feared the result of the first wanting to mingle and the second to avoid people would inevitably be constant discomfort and possibly pain on at least one side; surely, even if they managed to meet halfway between Heero's preference for interacting with as few as possible and Duo's for as many as he could, those two conflicting desires were going to drive them apart.
On the other hand, Heero had proven himself both adaptable and tenacious thus far… and Duo's sociability, naturally, included a talent for overcoming interpersonal conflict… they would surely figure something out.
"No, obviously Heero will be my running mate," Duo was saying, "if JaMarcus Russell says no."
"Our junction's coming up," Heero pointed out. "You'll want to be in the right lane."
Since the difficult process of exiting and merging onto a different highway was apparently an engrossing prospect to Heero and Quatre, all conversation that held any immediate interest to Trowa ceased for the moment. Which simply meant he could carry on his contemplations uninterrupted.
Of course his friends' relationship wasn't strictly any of his business… but not only had disinclination to see Duo hurt become more or less a way of life for him, his own level of sociability had come into play as he'd been realizing that having friends again meant once again being both entitled and obliged to care about them. And he cared about Heero. They weren't exactly close, but Trowa thought they liked each other well enough — and that he understood this potential problem, at least to a certain extent, from both sides.
That didn't mean there was really anything he could do about it… he certainly wasn't going to bring it up with either of them, especially while it was only hypothetical as yet… He would just have to wait and see how things developed.
General conversation had faded into pensive, window-gazing quiet, as it not infrequently did on long drives. Heero was fine with the relative silence, but unsurprised to find that his boyfriend was not; in fact Duo was squirming somewhat alarmingly in his seat, attempting to get something out of the pocket of his jeans with the hand that was required for the gear shift. It turned out to be his iPod, which (rather than allow him to attempt to connect it, while still driving, to the cassette adapter in the stereo) Heero immediately took from him.
"Thanks," said Duo. Then in a sly tone he added, "If you just let it play from where it was, that'll be fine."
Heero rather suspected he knew what he would hear when he obeyed this injunction, and thus was braced for it. The back seat, on the other hand, had no prior warning, and the look on Trowa's face at the first sudden sound of Baby, baby, baby, no! from the speakers was priceless. Quatre, who wasn't much of a popular music fan in general, raised such a protest that Heero (nothing loath) had to skip the song and promise to avoid anything else by that particular artist for the rest of the drive.
Duo made a sound of exaggerated disappointment and an absurdly sad face.
"I'll make it up to you." Heero hid his smile in favor of the solemnity necessary for this promise.
With a sudden grin Duo said, "Hah! see, just a couple of lines of that song put you in the mood to make it up to me." And at Heero's expression he added, "I know, I know, it's really weird that Justin makes you want me; I totally admit that. But since we've discovered that this is a true, proven scientific fact, there's no reason not to take advantage of it, right?"
Even as Heero echoed skeptically, "'Justin?'" wondering since what point Duo was on first-name terms with the celebrity in question, he glanced reflexively into the mirror on his sunshade to determine whether or not Quatre and Trowa were listening to this ridiculous exchange. Observing that they had begun a conversation of their own, nothing of which Heero could hear over the music and air conditioner, he deemed himself safe.
The mirror did inform him that he was blushing a little, though; he would have pushed the visor away so as to ignore this fact if they hadn't been driving straight into the sunset… which just meant he had more opportunity (or perhaps excuse) to watch his friends in the back seat. So, giving one ear to Duo's continued, excessively silly Justin Bieber talk (talk that eventually transitioned into energetic singing along with whatever was currently playing) and one eye to a surreptitious watch of Quatre and Trowa, Heero sat in silence for a while.
There was often, he had noticed, an almost severe earnestness to Trowa's demeanor when he conversed privately with Quatre, as if Trowa threw everything he was into these interactions. Under most circumstances, Heero would have considered this a good sign, a proof of devotion and engagement… but with Quatre, he was afraid it was actually something more the opposite.
Duo had once declared that Heero loved fixing things. And while Heero didn't necessarily think this inaccurate, he felt it might apply to Quatre equally well or perhaps even more than to him. Or, at least, where Heero loved fixing things, Quatre loved fixing people. Certainly Quatre was drawn to people that needed help, the pathetic, people to whom he thought he specifically could be of use… so it amounted to about the same thing.
Heero couldn't count the number of times he'd received from a yawning, ring-eyed Quatre a report of all-night counseling sessions with the latest disturbed boyfriend — nor the number of times Quatre had mentioned having been called away from something he was doing, up to and including formal family functions, to see to some problem that really shouldn't have been Quatre's in the first place.
He couldn't count the number of times Quatre had unburdened himself regarding the personal issues he just couldn't manage to solve for Eric, Gabe, or Scott — issues that, while perfectly legitimate, were unlikely ever to be solved when Quatre seemed to be the only one working on them.
He could, unfortunately, count the number of times Eric, Gabe, Scott, or any of the rest, had made even the most pathetic attempt at returning the favor, at offering the same level of emotional support they so consistently demanded of Quatre. That he could count on one hand.
Abruptly Duo stopped singing, and remarked with intense complacency, "I am going to run down the beach in slow motion for two days straight."
Though the sentiment was nothing new — Duo had been listing all the things he was going to do at the beach on and off ever since they'd decided on this little vacation, and the list became more and more elaborate with each repetition — Heero had still been deep enough in his own thoughts to be taken unawares by the statement. Thus he wasn't in time, before Duo went on, to reply that he hoped this wasn't all Duo intended to do for the next two days.
"And I'm going to get a towel and a drink with a little umbrella in it and lay in the sun all day."
"You won't be happy if you get a sunburn the first day and have to spend the rest of the time inside," Heero smiled.
Duo returned the expression, but his was more of a somewhat sheepish "Actually, I probably would" smile. He still took an inordinate amount of pleasure in anything that reminded him he was human. Rather than admit this out loud, however, he began to wax enthusiastic about how long it had been since he'd visited an ocean beach (a couple of years), how many times he'd been to a beach in total (fewer than ten), and how many of those instances had taken place while he'd been human (a big fat zero).
The excitement Duo manifested at such moments never failed to make Heero smile… but since, similar to the description of what Duo was going to do at the beach, there was nothing Heero hadn't heard before in this particular dissertation, he wasn't required to pay minute attention, and could resume the train of thought regarding Quatre and Trowa he'd been busy with a minute or two ago.
There was a name for the kind of treatment Heero had observed in Quatre's past boyfriends: abuse. None of them had meant to do it — Heero would give them that much — and in fact he didn't think any of them had even been aware of the extent to which they were taking advantage of Quatre's unfailing kindness. But that didn't change the facts.
And Quatre, with his determination not to give up on someone he cared about, his confidence in his own abilities and good will, and the disciplinary side of his managerial inclinations dampened by the personal nature of the situation, continued to enable the abusive behavior long past when he should have given the effort up as a bad job. Eventually he tended to turn each boyfriend loose in what was probably worse shape than when the guy had caught Quatre's eye in the first place.
And as for the number of times Heero had attempted to suggest tactfully that perhaps Quatre should be a little more choosy about his partners, and had his friendly advice completely ignored… he didn't even want to try to count. It had been a source of more or less constant frustration for seven or eight years, but Heero supposed he couldn't really blame Quatre for a faulty behavior born of an overdeveloped sense of pathos combined with a perseverant desire to improve people's lives… and perhaps, in this, Heero was every bit as enabling as Quatre was.
"Oh! And I'm going to get drunk," said Duo complacently.
This was new. "Are you?"
"Yes! I've barely ever–" He raised his chin and his voice. "Trowa! Tell Heero how much money we had to spare for alcohol back in the 1910's."
Breaking off whatever he was saying to Quatre, Trowa turned with a skeptical expression Heero pretended not to be able to see in his sunshade mirror. "We occasionally had alcohol, but whether we ever once had money to spare for it is a different story."
"So I've never really been drunk," Duo concluded. "And the Goldensea website said something about a happy hour. Quatre, you got the happy hour thing in the reservation, right?"
"I think it applies to anyone who stays there," Quatre smiled. "So you can make up for everything you never had money to spare for back then." And his expression took on a speculative, perhaps even somewhat suggestive interest as he went back to his quieter conversation with Trowa. Trowa, with whom the current problem lay… a problem that would probably not be in any way improved by the application of alcohol, however curious Quatre might be.
After how long Heero had spent irrationally jealous of and unfriendly toward the magician, he hated even to entertain the thought, but it just wouldn't go away: Trowa, as Heero had specifically feared back when Quatre had first mentioned they'd become lovers, fit the prevailing pattern. As far as Heero could tell, Trowa's self-esteem was easily as detrimentally low as Eric's had been… he was about as unhealthily reclusive as Gabe… and he had more tragedy in his past to overcome and put behind him than even Scott had.
And Heero liked Trowa. He was pleasantly tranquil to have around, though he could also be unexpectedly amusingly sarcastic when he wasn't too busy effacing himself. And the world of magic with which he seemed to be thoroughly, unpretentiously familiar was very interesting. But none of that, nor even the fact that he was Duo's best friend, mattered in the slightest if he was going to be abusing Quatre.
They appeared happy enough in the back seat right now, but that didn't really mean much; of course there must always be periods of happiness, or else Quatre wouldn't be in these relationships in the first place. It was just that the trade-off was usually so painfully imbalanced.
"You know, to be honest, I never really liked the taste of alcohol much." Duo admitted this as if it were a little embarrassing. "Which might just be because everything we got our hands on back then was so cheap… but still… it might actually be kinda hard to get drunk, if it all turns out to be as gross as I remember."
With a slight laugh Heero replied, "You know there's a whole world of experiences out there, right? Getting drunk isn't strictly necessary when there's a big percentage of the list you already know you won't get to in one lifetime anyway."
"Yeah, that's true, but getting drunk is way easier than, say, skydiving. Hey! skydiving didn't even really…" Duo paused thoughtfully. "Well, actually, I guess it did. But it wasn't so much of a recreational pastime back then, and I definitely never could have done it."
"We can go skydiving sometime, if you want," Heero offered. He'd seen advertisements occasionally for someplace relatively local offering that service, and, though it was probably fairly expensive, he didn't think that would bother him much if it would gratify Duo.
The latter threw him a sidelong grin. "Oh, you've already taken me skydiving," he said, with an emphasis that made his meaning clear.
And Heero blushed faintly again, not necessarily because of the words themselves but because they'd been spoken in such close proximity to others. This, of course, dragged his thoughts once more to the people in the back seat — not that those thoughts had strayed too far even during this last exchange. It didn't help that just then the song changed to some kind of hip-hop number that seemed to be about both getting drunk and sex, the appropriateness of which absolutely forced Duo to sing/rap along and Quatre to glance up with a wearily skeptical expression so Heero was able to study his face minutely in the rear-view mirror.
Heero had been, Heero was always watching for the signs: Quatre sluggish from lack of sleep, perpetually downcast, and losing weight; Quatre seeking Heero out, looking first for random conversation to distract him and then, breaking down, talking at length about the actual problem; Quatre refusing reasonable invitations (of a type he usually accepted) from his friends because he was too busy dealing with the boyfriend or too emotionally spent to consider other entertainment… but then taking up the type of invitations he usually didn't accept in order to distract himself even further with more alcohol than he typically indulged in… On a couple of occasions, when things had gotten particularly bad, Quatre's father had actually emailed Heero looking for insight or at least commiseration.
Quatre had been ignoring his other friends quite a bit lately; Heero knew because he was always eventually contacted by them, when this was the case, so they could find out what was going on. Heero believed at the moment, however, and had assured them, that it was just the first phase of a particularly engrossing relationship causing this behavior, that Quatre would get back to them eventually.
Heero had also noticed a bit of baggy-eyedness in Quatre over the last couple of months… but, again, he believed this was due to nothing more than the enthusiastic nighttime activities of that aforementioned first phase — the same could probably be said of Heero. So, having carefully examined and dismissed the only two possible symptoms (he didn't consider that little spark of interest in alcoholic experimentation a minute ago a symptom), Heero was cautiously withholding condemnation of Trowa for now.
He hoped he would never have to condemn Trowa. He wanted this one to work out for Quatre. No, 'for Quatre' wasn't expansive enough — Heero hoped this one worked out for everyone's sake. It would be great to see Trowa, whom he really did like, happy and making good psychological improvement without tearing someone else down in the process. Then, the current arrangement of lovers and friends was so neat and desirable, it would be most convenient if it stayed the way it was. And if it didn't… if Trowa and Quatre didn't work out… it would hurt more than just the two of them.
Mostly he just didn't want to see someone mistreating Quatre and Quatre determinedly toughing it out again. Quatre, the beloved friend whose support, understanding, and companionship had always been invaluable to Heero, deserved better, and Heero had always been discontented with his own lack of influence in the thus-far-unpleasant area of Quatre's love life.
He'd never been able to do anything about Quatre's awful boyfriends before, but this time he felt he might have to try harder. Which would be even more difficult than in any previous scenario, given that Quatre's boyfriend was Heero's boyfriend's best friend. As a matter of fact, he didn't have any idea what he thought he would even try, or how he would stave off the awkwardness and pain that might result. So for his own sake as well as everyone else's, he hoped this worked out.
Quatre and Trowa really didn't seem to notice, but if Heero thought Duo didn't see him watching them in his sunshade mirror, he underestimated how practiced Duo had become at observing him. By now Duo knew perfectly well that Heero suffered at least a touch of discomfort about the relationship between their friends, and it was not difficult to guess that this was on his mind right now as he kept a surreptitious eye on their interaction in the back seat.
Not wanting to hear Trowa criticized, Duo had never inquired into the particulars of Heero's discontent; and, unless Heero decided at some point to make his concern public, Duo saw no reason to discuss it at all. It was a topic on which it was only natural that Heero should be biased, given not only the strong devotion of long standing that existed between him and Quatre but the pretty obvious neediness Trowa had going on these days.
Of course Duo knew Trowa well enough — or at least, despite how his friend had changed, Duo had confirmed the continued presence of traits he'd known and loved in the old days even if in altered form — to be aware that the difficulties Quatre must face in being Trowa's boyfriend were definitely worth the trouble. Heero couldn't know that yet, and therefore must be forgiven his doubt. Whether or not he recognized the potential issues in the relationship that arose from the other side of things was uncertain, as was to what degree his probable blindness in that quarter should also be forgiven. But Duo saw them.
Earlier he had laughed to himself as he'd watched Heero and Quatre subtly butting heads over the arrangement of luggage in the trunk. It was a silly argument, since they were only staying three nights and didn't have all that much luggage to begin with. It was an argument they probably weren't even aware they were having, since they certainly weren't unpleasant to each other. It was an argument Quatre eventually won (as far as it was winnable) when Heero, with an unusually expressive gesture ("This is not worth this much effort"), walked away from it.
After that, though Duo had been too busy looking over their route on Heero's cool phone to pay close attention, yet he hadn't missed the debate between Quatre and Trowa before those two got into the car. Evidently Quatre was insisting Trowa wear sunscreen, and Trowa protesting on the grounds that it smelled bad. Several shades paler than it had been eighty-seven years before, Trowa's skin had already demonstrated a tendency to burn since the onset of summer and a new lifestyle that included the occasional outdoor activity, so this seemed reasonable. But Quatre eventually lost that argument (as far, again, as it had been winnable in the first place) when Trowa cast a protective spell instead.
So Quatre had been one and one when he'd entered the car, but his tally of wins and losses didn't really matter. It all went as further evidence of a fact to which Heero had once alerted Duo and that Duo, since then, had never doubted: that Quatre was every bit as controlling as he was kind.
Of course Duo had always thought this exactly what Trowa needed. Trowa had long been in emergency mode, with all functions not absolutely necessary shut down, all power channeled into a primary purpose to which he was honed sharp and hard — and a way of life that had lasted the better part of a century was a difficult habit to break. He'd needed a skilled organizer to help him rearrange his priorities and reallot his energy, remind him that, with that primary purpose fulfilled, it was all right to relax and diffuse at least a little. He'd needed someone with the will to insist, the determination to persist, and the kindness to try it all in the first place — and Quatre had fit the bill in every respect so precisely it was as if some force of destiny had been involved in bringing them together.
But as Duo watched a second little scuffle over the luggage in the trunk upon their arrival at their destination, he had to admit he could see how Quatre's nature could eventually become somewhat… annoying… to his boyfriend, at least under certain circumstances.
This scuffle took place solely between Quatre and his own sense. Duo, hearing the sound of the ocean as he disembarked and full of a glee that had been growing ever since the highway had brought them close enough to catch the occasional glimpse of it, would have run off eagerly toward the building in whose parking lot they now found themselves, but had been restrained by Quatre's authoritative reminder that they had things to carry inside.
Then Quatre had wondered whether it wouldn't actually be more practical to go check in first and bring the luggage afterward, since there would probably be another entrance more convenient to their rooms that would save them an unnecessarily circuitous walk. And if that might be the case, whether three of them hadn't better wait out here until the fourth had gone inside and come back with keys and more certain information. The others, none of them having any opinion worth voicing, remained silent as Quatre rhetorically debated this and cast calculating eyes between the trunk of the car and the entry to the building.
Moving into an appropriate position in front of Quatre, Duo placed a half-clenched hand near his mouth and said, "This is Duo Maxwell of KTVU, coming to you live from the parking lot of a fabulous beach place where world leader Quatre Winner is pondering the fate of the nation. In just a few moments — or maybe, like, twenty minutes, since something this important requires a lot of thought, apparently — Mr. Winner will reveal his plan to end world hunger, stop all wars, and force them to make more seasons of 24. Mr. Winner! Do you have any comments for our viewers?"
Into the invisible microphone, Quatre laughed. "I never watched 24." He seemed to have taken the point, though, as he added, "Heero, can you open the trunk?"
Shaking his head, Heero moved to comply.
"'Never watched 24,'" Duo muttered, turning away in disgust. "You and Trowa deserve each other."
Of course when you were sick you wanted a doctor around… but the last thing anyone wanted was to have a doctor looking over their shoulder when they were well, berating them on every little thing they were doing unhealthily. Trowa's conditions might take a lot of doctoring, but what then? Once he was convalescent, how would he respond to Quatre's well-intentioned decisions about what was best for everyone he was concerned with?
As they crossed the parking lot, luggage and all, Duo's attention was split between observing Trowa and Quatre in much the same manner Heero did (though undoubtedly with rather different thoughts) and looking around excitedly. Lines of hugely tall palm trees marched along between the rows of cars, reminding visitors that this was a venue where a luxurious ocean-front atmosphere was to be had. Though palm trees were not particularly rare at home, these ones seemed to have a particularly special vacationy atmosphere about them, and Duo grinned up at their ragged heads in great pleasure and anticipation.
Inside the first building — Duo didn't know what it was called, but it seemed to be the main check-in area and other administrative bits of the resort — they made their way past an array of potted plants, some of which looked fake but all of which looked nice, and a lounge-like collection of furniture that was probably very comfortable but that Duo didn't really see much use for. Who was going to be hanging around here in front when there was a beach in back?
As they approached a tall driftwood reception counter in the center rear of the room, the guy behind it greeted them with scripted cheer, "Welcome to Goldensea Resort! Do you have a reservation?"
"Yes, it's Winner, Quatre," the latter said.
"OK, let me get you…" The desk guy trailed off as he began working the computer in front of him. After a few moments he asked, "OK, how's that spelled?"
"Last name's Winner," Quatre reiterated. He added with a smile, "I wouldn't ask you to try to spell my first name."
The guy chuckled a little, though it didn't seem he'd actually found what he was looking for in the computer yet and therefore couldn't yet know how Quatre's first name was spelled. Then several long moments passed in silence. "OK…" he said again finally. "It's Winner, like, you won?"
"That's right. You can probably guess what people who wanted to make fun of me called me as a kid."
Again the employee chuckled, and, though it seemed more genuine this time (in response to a joke he actually understood), it also seemed more nervous as he continued to work at a computer that evidently wasn't giving up the information he wanted. "Well," he said, obviously trying to cover his difficulties, "you all are going to love– how long are you staying?" When Quatre informed him that they would be leaving on Tuesday after lunch, the guy completed his statement. "Well, you're going to love it here; the Sugared Rim bar out on the walk just got renovated, and it's really great. If I could just find your…"
"Don't you love these unintuitive programs?" Quatre commiserated. "The people who design them are never the people who actually use them."
Heero made a low noise of agreement.
Appearing much comforted by these kind sentiments, the desk guy nevertheless continued to type and click in vain — but at least his growing panic had been quelled.
Finally Quatre leaned over the counter to peer around at the monitor. Given the manner in which this presented his posterior for everyone's admiration, Duo looked immediately to see whether Trowa was duly appreciative. Observing that he was, Duo turned back with an approving nod in time to see Quatre pointing at something on the computer. "Where it says 'Seasonal' there — is that your problem?"
"Oh, yeah," the guy said in a tone of enlightenment. "I'm in the… OK, I see… yeah. Thanks."
Quatre, having resumed his natural stance on the floor, just smiled.
"Yes, OK, here we go. Winner, Quatre." He pronounced it wrong despite prior indications, but sounded relieved as he added, "Everything looks fine. Yes. OK, two rooms; let's see…"
The guy was quite visibly relieved when they at last walked away with key cards, directions, and pamphlets, and Quatre's reassuring smiles definitely had something to do with that. Which was why it was almost a shock when, upon entering a long glassed-over outdoor hallway between this building and the next where their rooms were, Quatre remarked in a low, amused tone, "I give that guy a month."
Duo's laugh sounded his surprise at this cold assessment. "After you went out of your way to make him feel better and everything?"
"Everyone has a talent," Quatre shrugged. "And receiving isn't his."
It would have been nice to look forward to Quatre being a little less blunt about Duo when he eventually started working at Winner Plastics, but Duo couldn't really entertain any such hope. This mixture of criticism and sympathy was Quatre's nature; though he might go a little easier on people he cared about, it was neither likely, nor would it feel at all right, for him to exaggerate even the kindness that was so integral to that nature.
And as Duo considered the matter further, he came to the reassuring conclusion that it would be equally unlikely for Quatre to exaggerate his dictatorial side. He was overall, Duo thought, a well balanced person. In his compassion he might feel like taking control of everything around him to an improper degree so as to make sure things got done optimally, but that same compassion would probably temper the desire and produce only rational behavior. Duo had seen this type of personality before in others, and thought it was a safe assumption that it would follow the pattern of his prior experience.
Heero, apparently, was finished with today's (or at least this moment's) contemplation of the relationship between Quatre and Trowa, for he was giving his attention more completely to his surroundings. He seemed interested and anticipatory about what he saw, Duo was pleased to note; it was about time Duo followed suit and wrapped up his own thoughts about their friends.
This was easy enough to do. The long and short of it was that, though he could see the potential for problems, he had no real fear of their developing to any worrisome extent. He trusted his best friend, trusted the best friend of his lover and the lover of his best friend, and believed they were a good enough match both to be of mutual benefit to each other now and to adjust their interaction appropriate to any personal changes made by either of them in the future.
Over the years Duo had learned at lot about optimism. For one thing, he'd learned that when he wasn't legitimately feeling it, he wasn't very good at faking it. But he'd also learned to draw it from a number of seemingly mundane sources. These days, when he was surrounded by, inundated with such sources — things that, to others, while they might provide pleasure, could never mean as much as they did to Duo — it was impossible to remain pessimistic about anything for very long.
It didn't matter that he was starting to have nightmares on a regular basis about his time as a doll; it didn't matter that he still worried about his level of independence and to what extent he qualified as a real person; and it didn't matter that he could see potential complications in a romance between people he loved. In the end, the optimism came welling back up in response to anything and nothing — the taste of the sea air, the feel of cool glass against his trailing hand. In the end, he had to be happy.
Trowa and Quatre would be fine. More than fine; they would surely be every bit as happy as Duo was, if probably for different reasons. They were all very happy at the moment, if not perfectly so; everything was pretty great. The only imperfection Duo could even acknowledge right now was that Heero was not as confident of this as Duo was. But even that would come with time. Everything was going to be fine.
Duo had been entertaining Quatre's peripheral attention all day with his constantly increasing excitement and glee, but now all of a sudden he seemed to have had an exponential jump of sorts. Quatre had seen this in him before, and, while it was almost alarming in its intensity and abruptness, it was also a pleasure to watch for more reasons than one. Beyond just the simple joy of seeing a friend so satisfied and the amusement that arose in response to Duo's apparent ability to manufacture severe happiness out of no immediately evident material, there was also the effect it must always have on Trowa to consider.
Duo's contentment was still one of Trowa's highest priorities, and Quatre might have thought Duo sometimes, with this in mind, showed more than he actually felt… if this intensity of emotion — any emotion — didn't seem to be pretty standard for Duo and therefore totally unnecessary to fake. And the reminder and reassurance it represented for Trowa — that the curse was broken and Duo was more than all right — was not just pleasant; it was invaluable.
"Aha!" Duo said in a triumphant tone, as if their rooms had been deliberately eluding them and the effort it had taken to catch them in the act had required a great deal more cleverness and heroic endeavor than a mere walk of hallways. But as he drew level with the door to his and Heero's, he put a pensive hand to his face. "You know I'm not sure if this room is going to work?"
Worried, Quatre wondered why.
Instead of actually explaining why, Duo threw Heero a sly look. "Yeah, I definitely think it's going to need to be pretty thoroughly inspected first thing. Before we do anything else. You know… to make sure it's OK."
"Oh, I see," said Quatre wisely as Heero rolled his eyes with a slight grin.
Duo turned an expression of deep concern on Quatre. "You guys should check your room out too. Right away. I mean, you can't be too careful."
"I think you're right." Quatre struggled to school his features. "I should probably have Trowa do some magic, even, to make sure everything's OK."
"Oh, yes." Duo nodded vigorously, lips twitching wildly. "Magic is a very good idea."
"And then we can go check out the bar or something. Let's say we meet back out here at–" Having no free hand to pull out his phone to see the time, Quatre moved to set down his bag, but Heero gave a slight vetoing wave.
"I'm not going to commit to any specific length of time," he said levelly.
"Oho, aren't you?!" Duo chortled, turning on him.
Heero just gave him a look and held out his hand toward Quatre for the key to their room. And Quatre relinquished it, mind busy with something that had been rising from his subconscious probably over the course of the entire day but that had only just emerged into his real awareness during the last ten minutes or so.
Could noticing something because it was ceasing to exist be called an epiphany? In any case Quatre didn't really have another word for it. He supposed that was what it must have been, and also that everyone probably had moments like this: a moment in which it occurs to you suddenly that you've been believing a certain thing or thinking a certain way a while, for years and years in some cases, possibly for your whole life, without ever noticing it or recognizing the folly of your own attitude; and the abrupt, startling realization is so overwhelming that for quite some time it's all you can think about.
It had occurred to him suddenly that he'd been subconsciously feeling a little threatened by Duo all along. Jealousy he'd been aware of, at one point, but never until now this more widespread sense of threat — pertaining, he saw, not merely to Duo's relationship with Trowa, but also with Heero. What caused him to realize this was the consciousness of a weight he hadn't even recognized being removed from his mind as that sense of threat gradually eased: he was noticing it suddenly only because it was fading.
His initial reaction was to look back at all his interaction with Duo, ever since the first day he'd seen him in plastic form on Heero's kitchen counter, in great apprehension lest he'd ever been rude to him. He didn't think he had; he didn't think he'd ever shown it. If he had, he probably would have recognized the attitude sooner.
This was a relief, since Quatre was very much attached to Duo and would have deeply regretted ever having mistreated him. But he knew he was going to be looking at Duo in a different light for the rest of the weekend, if not for the rest of their acquaintance, now that he'd come to this startling conclusion.
Heero had been the origin of the problem, Quatre felt, because Quatre loved Heero very dearly. Heero's friendship was much more profound than that of any of Quatre's other friends; Heero understood him on a much deeper level than anyone that wasn't a blood relation (and many that were), and was endlessly tolerant and supportive despite knowing all of Quatre's worst characteristics. In response, Quatre had always taken an almost proprietary interest in Heero's life, and any difficulties therein, and been a bit frustrated at how little a difference he'd apparently been able to make.
To impose order and keep control over a world that intimidated him a bit, Heero liked to compartmentalize things, liked rigidity in many areas of his life. This was a fabulous trait when it came to organizing just about anything — sales data, for example — and therefore a trait Quatre, who deeply appreciated organization, could never complain about. But it often caused Heero to compartmentalize himself right off from things that might have done him good.
To Heero, there was some behavior that was appropriate in one setting but not in another, or between people in one type of relationship but not between those in another — and this was part of the reason he'd never been able to flirt successfully. His inability to break down certain walls made him come across as cold and withdrawn to many people, which therefore also formed part of the reason he'd dated so little and had (whether he realized it or not) been so consistently lonely.
Obviously Duo hadn't encouraged Heero to date more — except as far as jumping right into a live-in relationship with Duo himself counted as dating more — but he certainly encouraged him to flirt more. He'd slipped in and solved a number of problems relating to Heero's walls that Quatre had been working on for years. It was no surprise at all that this performance should present a subconscious threat to Quatre, especially since, in some areas, Quatre still wasn't even sure how Duo had managed it.
And as for Duo's relationship with Trowa… of course it was only natural to feel a little threatened by someone your boyfriend had frankly admitted he'd once been in love with. But there was more to it even than that.
Earlier, as they'd pulled out of the gas station after a rather lengthy process of tank-filling, Quatre had remarked very innocently, "I could have sworn you just exchanged phone numbers with those girls, Duo."
"Email addresses," Duo corrected. Seeing that he was trying simultaneously to drive and look down at the scrap of paper he now held, to the possible detriment of everyone's safety, Heero snatched the object from his hand and read out the first halves of the two addresses it contained:
"'hottkitten91…' and… 'tattooed Jen,' I think — 'tattoo-3-d-j-3-n'. They sound like just your type."
"We're going to discuss hair care," Duo said righteously. "There are so many products these days!"
"Quatre uses enough of that stuff to tell you everything you need to know." Heero's jealousy over Duo's flirtation with strangers right in front of him probably held a touch of perfect sincerity, but still he made it clear that he was teasing; in any case, Duo seemed gratified by it.
"That's right," said Quatre, rolling his eyes. "Unlike Heero, apparently, Quatre is extremely gay; he can give Duo hair-care tutorials better than any girl."
"Ooh, Quatre's offering to give Duo private lessons," said Duo in that over-the-top licentious tone of his that never failed to make Quatre laugh.
"No," Trowa contradicted levelly. "The only person Quatre is interested in private lessons with is Trowa."
"Oh, well," Duo sighed. "Poor Duo. At least Quatre has good taste."
"Heero is wondering," said Heero, "why everyone is suddenly referring to himself in third person."
Duo groaned at the use of what he perceived as a grammatical term, and the conversation shifted (as it often did, since Duo wasn't over it yet) to the G.E.D. he'd recently passed. But one statement from the silly prior exchange stuck in Quatre's head — "The only person Quatre is interested in private lessons with is Trowa."
It wasn't the first time he'd noticed this: Trowa had reached a point where he could tease Duo more or less easily, but Quatre doubted he would ever be able to threaten him, even in the context of such a playful, meaningless conversation. If Heero — an utterly absurd thought, but for the sake of argument — if Heero had been the one to make that suggestion directed at Quatre, Trowa would have put a threatening tone into his reply at the very least, possibly even made an entirely different, overtly threatening remark. But to Duo…
It wasn't unlikely that even joking threats between friends were better eschewed in any case, but the point was still that there were certain relatively innocent lines Trowa could not cross with Duo… and this gave Duo a sort of unconscious power over Trowa. Duo could probably say anything in the world to Trowa without fear of even mental recrimination; he could probably treat him however he wanted, and Trowa would accept it without question, be that acceptance as detrimental to his development as it might. So in a way, Duo had a disproportionate amount of control over Trowa's mental recovery. And to someone concerned with the latter, that would of course feel threatening.
The gradual diminution of this sense of threat had only just progressed to a noticeable level, which drew attention both to itself and to the condition to which it was a response. Because Duo was nothing but careful and kind in his behavior toward Trowa, to the extent that it seemed almost as systematic and instinctual as Trowa's treatment of him; Duo was obviously devoted to Trowa's good, and, though he might not be consciously aware of the power he had over his friend, it seemed just as unlikely that he would ever take advantage of it.
The memory of the gentle tone in which Duo had jokingly lamented the failure of his flirtation with Quatre must be Quatre's surety… that and his trust of Duo himself. And that had been solidified by Duo's treatment of Quatre.
Duo gave no signs of truly disliking anyone — he seemed to have a talent for finding something to like about even the most unlikable people, for speaking with jovial fondness about even those that specifically annoyed him — but Quatre had heard his intense disapproval expressed about circumstances and concepts; and the conclusion he'd reached was that if Duo really didn't like someone or something, he probably wouldn't be either inclined toward or capable of concealment. If Duo disliked or disapproved of Quatre, Quatre would undoubtedly know it.
Even the exchange in the parking lot just now, wherein Duo had pretty specifically pointed out that Quatre made more of mundane circumstances than perhaps he should in an attempt to control situations that perhaps didn't actually need controlling, had been nothing but friendly teasing. And pointing out someone's flaws with no hurt intended nor edge to the words seemed rather a sign of affection, of real friendship, than antipathy or falseness.
In this Quatre was reminded of middle school and its frantic pubescent worries whether or not his friends really liked him. Maybe it was juvenile, but it seemed just as important now as it ever had to his twelve-year-old self. And he was convinced not only that Duo did like him, but that there was no rivalry between them. Quatre's relationships with Duo's boyfriend and friend did not appear to be any sort of threat to Duo, and — out of respect for Duo as much as any other consideration — Quatre could do no less than to consider the inverse true as well. Or at least working toward becoming true.
Quatre was not the type to allow distraction to mar his ability to deal with the world around him, so, though his head had been abruptly flooded with these thoughts, he'd had no problem finishing up the banter that was apparently required before anyone could leave the hallway. And now he had entered the room he would be sharing with Trowa, and was exiting his whirlwind reflections at almost the same time. He'd pretty much reached a satisfactory conclusion to them, even if the ramifications of his realizations might last a while; and the room, with its huge tinted window overlooking the boardwalk and the beach beyond, demanded undistracted examination.
Trowa seemed to have noticed that Quatre had something on his mind. He probably wouldn't ask — which, though less than a perfectly desirable behavior in general, was for the best in this instance where Quatre felt no need to share — but Quatre liked to have Trowa's attention in any case. As he moved slowly into the room and looked around at its pleasant furnishing and decoration, aware of Trowa's eyes following him, he started to set his small suitcase down on the bed, but thought better of this placement and put it on the floor nearby instead. Unzipping it there, he bent at the waist all the way over to start rummaging through it. He wasn't actually looking for anything, though. At least, not anything in the suitcase.
"Duo is probably right, you know," said Trowa from much closer behind Quatre than he'd been only moments before.
Yes, Duo was probably right — right to be happy and optimistic, planning all sorts of pleasant activities at this resort, looking forward to times thereafter that would provide further and greater pleasure, without, apparently, worrying too much about what might go wrong.
"Duo's a smart guy," Quatre replied in satisfied agreement, not straightening up just yet. "We should probably do what he suggests."
Trowa did not answer in words, and gave Quatre no chance for any further coherent conversation either. Very soon the suitcase lay forgotten as the two of them followed their wise friend's advice (and undoubtedly example) in making a thorough examination or test run of the room the first step to enjoying their vacation.
How accurate are all the assessments made by these guys as they think about themselves and each other? Sometimes any assessment, accurate or otherwise, tells more about the assessor than the assessed. I'll leave you to interpret.
I've rated this story . What do you think of it?
This story is included in the His Own Humanity: Through July ebook.
His Own Humanity: Get Used To That
Feb 24, 2013 | Art Archive Entries, Fiction, Gundam Wing Fanfiction
He was in love, and, as far as he could tell, doing it right this time.
A brief look at how Quatre and Trowa are doing a month after the end of the curse.
Author's Star Rating: 3.5 | Category: His Own Humanity | Contains: Established relationship for main couple(s) | Contains: Gay Quatre | Contains: Gay Trowa | Contains: Language (general) | Contains: Sexuality/sexual references | Genre: Drama | Genre: Introspection | Genre: Romance | Length: 4k-5k words | Pairing - Primary: Quatre & Trowa | POV: Quatre | POV: Trowa | Rating: 3 | Release/completion year: 2013 | Setting: Alternate universe | Setting: AU - Modern U.S. plus magic
He supposed he could safely say he felt a bit nervous. These sensations weren't precisely what he would have called nervousness, under most circumstances and especially if taken out of context; but the fact that sensations existed at all, that his mind kept returning to the project throughout the day, seemed a positive enough sign that he was, in fact, nervous.
Not that Quatre had never before had a day during which he thought more about Trowa than about work; but he had considered himself mostly on top of that by now. It was June… he and Trowa had been together for more than two months… all that new-relationship distraction should be about over.
But this relationship had so many steps to be taken. And just as he sometimes found himself, at home, unable to escape what occupied him at work, it wasn't really too surprising to find something that meant so much more to him so fixedly on his mind at moments when it probably shouldn't have been.
He'd planned today carefully, or at least with a great deal of anticipation. Though he hadn't quite been able to bring himself to enter it in his calendar, the app for that purpose on his phone had a 'sticker' function he didn't frequently use that allowed him to put a little heart on the day without affixing any sort of label and thereby putting his intention in writing. Not that he wasn't committed; it just wasn't the type of thing he could stand to have spelled out staring him in the face every time he checked his schedule. And what if someone else had seen it? Impossible.
Having thus been looking forward to this for quite a few days prior, he felt he had prepared about as well as he could for what he planned. The problem was that little could be done to prepare Trowa. The best Quatre could hope for was trying to keep Trowa comfortable and at ease during all their interactions that evening, being sure to ask of him (or even hint at) nothing difficult or intimidating.
Upon his arrival shortly after work, he made it casually clear that he planned on staying the night, in order that, though this was nothing unusual on a Friday, any lingering awkwardness Trowa might feel about such things — and Quatre knew a touch of that remained — would hopefully have faded by the time questions came up. Then, instead of inflicting something microwaveable on his boyfriend, he'd called a relatively nice restaurant for take-out and stopped for it on his way home. This was no time to ignore potential snags, and Quatre admitted to his culinary weakness. Trowa knew that weakness as well, but, ever the gentleman, made no fuss about it… but if he didn't have to suffer a mediocre dinner tonight, so much the better.
The stage thus set, Quatre had a pleasant meal at his boyfriend's 50's table and pleasant conversation with his much more extensively decaded boyfriend, and only hoped he spoke naturally and engagingly and not like someone with a devious scheme for later that night. Then, as a sort of final preparatory touch, he brought up a couple of specific questions about magic that necessitated a lecture and a demonstration — which had the dual benefit of making Trowa feel like the confident expert he was, and being something Quatre happened to enjoy quite a bit for its own sake.
The grandfather clock in the entry declared it just past midnight when, the interesting magical discussion finished, they settled into the ugly chair as they so often did, and their talk became aimless and diffuse. This stage of proceedings often lasted for an hour or more before bed finally called them, especially if Quatre dozed while Trowa got distracted by the various engrossing things in his study, but tonight Quatre simply awaited his moment. And when he judged it had come, he didn't hesitate to make his move:
"How would you feel about topping tonight?"
"Being on top. Penetrating. Fucking me."
In no way could he have missed the abrupt stiffening of Trowa's entire frame in response to the question, but what he caught less easily (though still in time to see it) was the look of near-panic that briefly crossed Trowa's previously complacent face. However, all Trowa said, in an admirable imitation of calm, was, "I'm afraid I wouldn't be any good at it."
'Afraid,' Quatre thought, was the key word. Trowa feared hurting him, feared doing something wrong that might push Quatre away, feared not being spectacularly good at something for once and losing something he cared about as a result.
"And I'm sure you'll do just fine," Quatre replied, in a tone he hoped would reassure despite its lightness.
"I wouldn't have any idea how."
Quatre restrained himself from laughing. "It isn't difficult," he said solemnly. "I promise."
Hesitantly Trowa smiled a little. "No, I suppose not. But…"
"And I know you'll enjoy it."
Trowa's smile, though still reluctant, grew. "It isn't my enjoyment I'm worried about."
If it hadn't been for that little smile, or if Trowa had made any more serious objections, Quatre wouldn't have pushed — all careful forethought, calendar stickers, and anticipation notwithstanding. As it was, he believed only Trowa's self-doubt stood in the way here and only needed to be brazened through.
Trowa had been improving in recent weeks at taking initiative — quite a bit, in fact: ever since the curse had broken, Quatre might have been able to chart a steady upward line on a graph to represent his progress. One day recently, in fact, Trowa had taken him completely and beautifully by surprise when out of the blue he'd suggested a walk through his own town, where he'd kissed Quatre almost three times in relatively public places of his own volition. But he'd never indicated interest in any sort of role reversal in bed, or even seemed to be aware such a possibility existed. And while Quatre was perfectly happy to do all the penetrating if Trowa preferred him to, he feared Trowa was missing out on that enjoyable experience simply because he hesitated, for various reasons, to make any kind of change in arrangements.
"You're worrying over nothing," he said, "since I'm pretty sure I would enjoy lying still and watching paint dry with you."
"I'd be a lot more sure of myself watching paint dry," replied Trowa. "I could make paint dry by–"
Quatre cut him off with a laugh, which made his, "Seriously, Trowa," seem a little incongruous. "You have nothing to worry about."
Trowa didn't look entirely convinced, and Quatre decided to pull out the big guns. Not the puppy-dog eyes this time, either; he would skip that and go straight to what he hoped would put a quick and decisive end to the debate. Shifting in the chair, running one hand up Trowa's neck and into his hair and putting his lips against Trowa's ear, he murmured, "You know, ever since our first time, I've been dying to feel you inside me." Briefly he mouthed the cartilage and closed his teeth gently on the lobe before applying his final persuasive statement: "You don't even have to use a condom."
Trowa's eyes were wide when Quatre pulled back far enough to see them. "You always use a condom."
"Yes, but I just got tested, and everything's fine… and I was your first."
"You're sure I wasn't lying about that?"
Quatre raised an eyebrow. "Why would you lie about that?"
Even in the midst of his continual wide-eyed state at Quatre's epic pronouncement, Trowa looked thoughtful. "I can think of half a dozen reasons offhand."
"And I'm sure they're all very silly." Annoyed that his big guns hadn't been as effective as he'd hoped and expected, Quatre yet attempted to keep it out of his voice. If Trowa really didn't want to try this tonight, there was nothing Quatre could do about it. Not that he would give up in the long term… but he would be disappointed this evening.
Faintly, perhaps a little nervously, Trowa chuckled. Then, after several silent moments during which he took as many deep breaths impossible to hide from Quatre, who'd settled down against him again, he said all at once, "I'll do whatever you want. Whenever you want me to."
Again Quatre sat up, drawing back and looking into Trowa's face. He'd learned not to question his lover's made-up mind, but he couldn't help searching the now-relatively-impassive features for signs Trowa might already be regretting those words. He found none; he hadn't really expected any, but still he'd had to check.
"Well," he said, licking his lips as he pulled back a little in preparation for moving from the chair, "let's go."
"Now?" It wasn't the same level of panic as before, and Trowa quelled it much more quickly, but it remained quite visible.
"You just said, 'whenever I wanted you to,'" Quatre replied, both smile and tone a mixture of kindness and suggestivity. "And the truth is, I always want you to. It's just less likely to happen, say, at work, or while I'm out jogging, or something."
"Always?" At this, Trowa seemed slightly less intimidated, and even moved more or less willingly when Quatre pulled him to his feet out of the chair.
"Always," reiterated Quatre into his ear. "You have no idea how much I enjoy prostate stimulation." It was, quite possibly, his favorite physical sensation, but he would save that revelation for next time.
With a blush that turned his freckles a deep burgundy, Trowa admitted, "I certainly won't deny that I enjoy that…"
Quatre raised a brow. "Then don't you think I deserve a turn?"
And that did it. Though Quatre's voice had been facetious, still definitely in the realm of flirtation and lightness so as not to make Trowa feel unduly pressured, even just the hint of an accusation of unfairness apparently tipped Trowa's mental scales.
"Yes," Trowa said determinedly, "you do." And he didn't even add, as Quatre had been more than half expecting, some nonsense about Quatre deserving it better than Trowa could give it to him. He only accompanied Quatre into the bedroom with the air of one ready to do his best regardless, at least for the moment, of whether or not it would be good enough.
Trowa had a fairly rigid set of superlatives, and felt himself in a decent position to consider them unlikely to change. Having lived over a hundred years, having endured decades of crushing remorse and despair, having felt that burden lifted in a blinding moment beyond all hope, it was no difficult task to assign best and worst to various experiences he'd had. And therefore he couldn't say this had been the best night of his life, or even the best hour of his life.
But it had been pretty damn close.
After a period much longer than usual of sweaty entanglement and calming breaths that in their turn retained a hint of voice much longer than usual, Quatre had risen for his accustomed tidying and preparations for sleep, and Trowa watched him with a greater or at least more minute attention than on most nights. He couldn't help noticing Quatre moving differently, walking perhaps a little stiffly; and that couldn't be anything but Trowa's fault. Quatre had promised it wasn't difficult, which had turned out to be essentially the case, but perhaps Trowa had done something wrong after all.
But a tight and anxious expression had barely begun to elbow its way past what he'd been wearing ('dazed euphoria') when he also began to notice that Quatre's altered movements included a sort of continual stretching or shifting seemingly aimed at recapturing certain lost or fading sensations; and that his face, when visible between having his back to the bed and having turned off all the lights, bore an intense look of weary ecstasy, even triumph, that seemed to declare inarguably all was well.
Despite this, Trowa couldn't be certain what he should say as Quatre returned to his side and started arranging bedding and body parts to his own satisfaction and comfort. Something should be said to let Quatre know he'd been right, that Trowa really had enjoyed this as much as Quatre had believed he would… and if Trowa could work up the nerve, there was even some teasing he'd like to enact… but how to begin?
Quatre, however, didn't give him time. "Normally," he started before even completely settled against Trowa, "I don't take things guys say in the middle of sex too seriously, especially that particular thing, but I can't help asking…" He finished in a quieter tone that sounded simultaneously pleased and hopeful, and yet surprisingly questioning and tentative: "You said you love me?"
"Was that a bad moment for it?"
Quatre seemed to be attempting to restrain his laughter, but it didn't work. Finally he remarked, "You know, sometimes I'm pretty sure at least some of your lack of self-confidence is put on, because I think that's the most ridiculous question you've ever asked me."
It interested Trowa to hear his lover laughing at him, essentially making fun of him, and to have it be nevertheless so completely without sting. And Quatre had such a pleasant laugh… Trowa smiled a little as he began sheepishly, "Well, I haven't–"
But Quatre interrupted him with, "Did you not notice that orgasm I had because you said that? Not that I wouldn't have come eventually — because damn, Trowa — but, yes, I'd say that was a very good moment to say it."
Trowa liked all of that very much. "'Damn?'" he said. "Really?"
With grinning impatience Quatre replied, "Yes, damn, but don't change the subject. You said you love me."
"I did," Trowa agreed gravely. He was teasing Quatre by hedging, but he was also giving himself time to think.
He saw the wisdom in disregarding, to some extent, something someone said during sex. His statement had indeed been born of physical ecstasy, and his mind had been more than a bit of a jumble at the time. However, it took only a moment's uncomplicated reflection to decide it hadn't been at all inaccurate. Of course he loved Quatre.
"And I do." He would have thought it might be difficult to say aloud, this statement that bound him so much more closely to another person than he'd ever been, this declaration he had never made to anyone, even back when it might have been called for; but it turned out to be remarkably easy. "I do love you."
"Oh, good," Quatre breathed, sounding for a moment very childlike and squeezing Trowa tightly. "I don't know what I would have said otherwise. It's always awkward to be in love with someone who doesn't love you back."
The multiform implications of this statement at first too greatly overwhelmed Trowa for him to say anything, but since one of them was that Quatre loved him in return, he tightened his embrace and buried his face in Quatre's hair. He knew by now precisely what kind of hair products Quatre used, since various bottles had aggregated in his bathroom for those times (more and more frequent) when Quatre didn't feel like going to his own house… but he was never prepared for the way they mixed together with Quatre's natural scents. And that lovely smell combined with the headiness of the exchange they'd just had — not to mention the afterglow nowhere near fading yet — rendered Trowa about as dizzy as he thought it possible to be while lying flat and still. Here was, perhaps, another superlative, though he wasn't in any state to categorize it at the moment.
Quatre murmured something incoherent against the skin of Trowa's chest, sounding very content.
After a short period, however, another implication of the latest statement prompted Trowa to ask what he'd been wondering since: "How often, exactly, have you been in love with someone who didn't love you back?"
"Only a couple of times," Quatre said, and faint suspicion sounded in his tone. "Why?"
Trowa still felt nervous at the thought that Quatre had been with many other men in the past and could at any given moment be comparing his current boyfriend unfavorably with previous, more experienced lovers — but he planned not to admit it. Even if Quatre didn't already know about this insecurity in him (and Trowa was sure he did), Trowa didn't want him to have to deal with it. He wanted to move beyond needing Quatre's reassurance on every little thing, wanted to be able to overcome emotional failings on his own. Quatre had given every indication of being perfectly satisfied with the current arrangements, so why should Trowa assume any kind of unflattering comparison was or would ever be occurring in his head?
So Trowa gave a much more light-hearted answer in response to the question. "Maybe I'm a little jealous of anyone else you've ever been in love with."
"Mmm," Quatre said, "jealous, are you?" He sounded unexpectedly pleased with this. "Even after the way you blew my mind a few minutes ago?"
Trowa blushed.
Quatre went on more quietly, more seriously. "You might like to know, though… this isn't like any relationship I've been in before, and the way I feel about you isn't like how I've felt about anyone else."
Blush growing hotter, in conjunction with a burning sensation in his chest and an increase in heart-rate he believed Quatre must also be able to feel, Trowa shuffled vaguely through a number of responses that came to mind. Most of them were self-deprecating, and perhaps he didn't entirely believe those anymore, so he just said, in perfect honesty, "Thank you; I do like to know that."
After nuzzling Trowa briefly with face and shoulders, Quatre lay still, and neither of them said anything for a while. Trowa didn't think they were making any significant progress toward sleep, though; there was too much to ponder. Too many thoughts that set him on fire for sleep. He was in love, and, as far as he could tell, doing it right this time — or, at the very least, better than before (though, honestly, it would have been difficult to do it worse than before).
And he also hadn't lost track of the need to give his boyfriend a hard time on one particular subject.
"Now you can check this off," he finally said into the darkness.
"'Have Trowa say he loves me.' I'm sure it must have been on your list."
Quatre gave a very sheepish laugh and cleared his throat. "Actually it wasn't. You took me completely by surprise." And without bothering to deny that he did, in fact, have a list, he added, "But 'Get Trowa to top' definitely was."
"You could add it just for the sake of checking it off. Or are all the list items sexual in nature?"
"Only some of them. The real problem is that it isn't a written list, exactly."
"I'd like to know what's on it, though," Trowa mused, "if only to brace myself for what else I have to do."
In a tone that clearly said, I can't believe you're teasing me about this, Quatre replied, "I'll try to give you fair warning. We can discuss items when they appear."
"In scheduled meetings," was Trowa's solemn elaboration on this formal-sounding idea, "where hopefully I'm allowed to make suggestions as well."
"Of course you are!" Quatre seemed simultaneously embarrassed that he'd been called out on having an active list of ways to improve Trowa and their relationship, and appalled at the suggestion Trowa might not be allowed to contribute.
"Then how about 'Have Trowa say he loves me twice in one day?'"
Sounding suddenly very relieved, though not yet entirely free of guilt, Quatre said, "That one I would be happy to put on there just for the sake of crossing it off."
"Well, I love you." Not for the first time, Trowa wondered at the circumstance of being the one to offer rather than receive reassurance, regardless of the fact that he'd been the one to bring up the troublesome topic. "Even if you're trying to run my life. Perhaps because you're trying to run my life."
"I do that to people," Quatre half sighed. "It's a good thing I'm a manager at work, because otherwise I'd be fired for trying to act like one anyway."
"Please don't change on my account. In fact, just don't change. I think we were in this same spot when you told me not to change certain things you liked about me, so let me return the compliment: you're wonderful exactly as you are."
Quatre laughed and rubbed affectionately against Trowa again, but there remained some protest in his tone as he said, "But it's a little unfair." Then after a moment of thoughtful silence he added, "Maybe you should have a turn at that too."
"At trying to run my life?" Trowa wondered, surprised and amused. "Or trying to run yours?"
"I expect you to run your own life," Quatre said sternly, "with or without my meddling. No, I meant mine. Why don't you suggest something? Right now. Tell me something to do with myself." Though these last few statements sounded mostly playful, an underlying sincerity to Quatre's tone indicated Trowa shouldn't dismiss this as meaningless banter.
So he made the first suggestion he could think of: "Why don't we take a cooking class together?"
There followed a longer period of differently flavored silence, as if Quatre had been completely blindsided by the idea. Of course this raised immediate consternation in Trowa; it had been a dangerous position Quatre had put him in, and he should have given more consideration to how he responded. But then Quatre rolled over and started laughing uncontrollably into the pillow.
This muffled uproar didn't last very long, but it was enough for Trowa to relax and smile. Quatre truly had a charming laugh, regardless of how much bedding it was filtered through.
Then Quatre turned again and slid right up against Trowa, wrapping his arms back around him. "Yes," he gasped, "yes, I think we should definitely take a cooking class together. I love you. Heero will be jealous."
Assuming he meant Heero would be jealous about the cooking class, not that Heero would be jealous because Quatre loved Trowa, the latter nevertheless replied a little aloofly, "Heero can find his own."
"Mmm," said Quatre appreciatively. "So authoritative of you."
"Hmm," Trowa replied, pulling Quatre closer in his appreciation of Quatre's appreciation. "Maybe I could get used to that."
"I know I could." Now Quatre's tone had changed, and the motion of the hand that had previously lain still on Trowa's chest indicated the direction things would go if he had his way. Against the skin just beneath Trowa's ear he murmured, "What about 'Have Trowa top twice in one day?'"
Loving both the vibrations of Quatre's voice and the movement of his hand, but not entirely sure about the words, Trowa hesitated. "Go ahead and add that to the list," he said slowly. "But don't count on crossing it off right now."
"Well, it's always nice to have something to work on." Quatre didn't sound at all perturbed, despite the obvious interest with which he'd made the proposal. "It keeps away boredom."
Perfectly recognizing the facetiousness of this statement, Trowa absolutely refused to grant entry to a sudden new worry that Quatre might get bored with him. There, he really was improving. A month ago, that thought would have haunted him all night.
Tonight, as they moved away from the cerebral exchange toward a more physical one, and in so doing essentially managed to confirm or at least supplement everything that had previously been said, Trowa couldn't help thinking — when he could think at all — that Quatre, as usual, was right: things didn't have to be perfect yet; just having something to work on was nearly as satisfying as a superlative.
I've rated this story .
One Year, Two Minutes
Sep 9, 2012 | Art Archive Entries, Fiction, Gundam Wing Fanfiction, Visual Art
Title art by hasu
"I've had a lot of really weird experiences in the past… but having a boyfriend I've never met is a new one."
Two busy high school seniors manage to avoid harassment about dating by pretending to be dating each other… but that's always a little dangerous when the parties involved are this compatible.
Author's Star Rating: 3.5 | Contains: Established relationship for main couple(s) | Contains: Gay Heero | Contains: Get-together story for main couple(s) | Contains: Gimmickry | Contains: Homophobia | Contains: Language (general) | Contains: Language (religious) | Contains: Misunderstanding/lack of communication | Contains: Other relationship(s) briefly implied | Contains: Pansexual Duo | Contains: Pining | Contains: Queer Quatre | Contains: Queer Trowa | Genre: Drama | Genre: Introspection | Genre: Romance | Length: 20k-30k words | Pairing - Primary: Duo & Heero | Pairing - Secondary: Quatre & Trowa | POV: Duo | POV: Heero | POV: Miscellaneous | POV: Quatre | POV: Trowa | Rating: 2 | Release/completion year: 2012 | Setting: Alternate universe | Setting: AU - Modern U.S. | Visual art collection: Commissions
This story has no chapters, but has been divided into three posts due to length.
When Quatre sat down in his usual place one Friday near the end of the semester, opening his lunch on his knees and leaning against Trowa for warmth in the chilly December air, he noted in a mixture of amusement and pity that his friends had already started the customary Pre-Weekend Harassment Of Heero.
"It doesn't have to be someone from this school, you know."
"Though good luck finding another school with this many gay guys."
"And it doesn't even have to be someone you really know well, either!"
"Yeah, you should meet more people anyway. Make more friends."
"And if you don't like the guy, it's not like anyone's forcing you to go out with him again."
"You know I could find someone for you if you don't want to bother looking."
"No, thank you." Heero would, Quatre knew, eventually drop the 'thank you.'
Given the clockwork-like prevalence of this conversation — on some Fridays a word-for-word repetition of last week's — it was a wonder Heero even ate lunch with this group anymore. Force of habit, Quatre thought. Well, and they would probably realize why he was avoiding them and track him down anyway, if he happened to try to find some other, solitary place to enjoy the free period.
"You don't even have to find someone good-looking! It'll be dark!"
"Plus it's a really good movie; I already saw a bootleg before it came out."
"Yeah, it'll give you plenty to talk over with someone!"
"Pff, like Heero ever talks things over with anyone."
"But a movie and dinner aren't serious enough for you to worry about getting all serious with someone!"
"Yeah, it's just a casual thing! Come on, man, you've gotta come!"
"No," said Heero.
Quatre hadn't known Heero well sophomore year — OK, really, Quatre still wouldn't say that he knew Heero well, but at least these days he referred to him as a friend rather than just a guy he had a few classes with — but it had been obvious even then that Relena was the reason Heero had come out of the closet. Quatre thought Heero would have been perfectly happy to keep the fact that he was gay as quiet as the rest of his personality, despite how friendly the school was toward gay students, if Relena hadn't been pestering him constantly back then to go out with her.
Of course that hadn't really stopped; it was just that now she tried to get Heero to join the group dates she was always setting up, whereas before it had pretty clearly been one-on-one time she was soliciting.
"What is your problem?" she was wondering now. "Did you get your heart broken? And you haven't recovered yet, and you just can't bear the thought of going out with anyone else, even on a group date with no strings attached just for fun? It is fun, by the way, and you'd really enjoy it."
Heero looked over at her with an expression that held a trace of 'You've got to be kidding me,' but which in general was just his usual nearly emotionless look. "Relena. I'm seventeen."
"So, no, I did not 'get my heart broken.'"
"You say that like you haven't had time or something!"
Someone else put in slyly, "I think he's saving himself for Lady Gaga."
"What?" Heero demanded in a tone half scornful and half surprised. "For who?"
"More like he's saving himself for all the more experienced guys he's expecting to meet at Harvard."
"I am not going to Harvard."
Quatre finally decided to step in. Most weeks Heero had to take care of himself, since this happened too frequently for Quatre to be saving his hide every time, but Quatre was feeling generous today. "You know, you guys, it could actually be that he's telling the truth — that he's not interested in dating because he's focusing on his grades and getting into the school he wants."
They turned on him. "You should talk! You guys hardly ever come out with us either!"
"Yeah, but that's because we're…" He threw just the briefest look at Trowa, gave just the tiniest clearing of his throat. "…busy… on weekends."
Appreciative laughter spread through the group, and Quatre gave Heero a pointed glance to see if he'd gotten the message: that it wasn't what you said, but how you said it. Trowa and Quatre both usually worked Saturday and Sunday, and did homework the rest of the time; and, though it was true that a weekend rarely passed without their seeing each other at least briefly, it was pure myth that they spent two straight days in bed together or out on exotic dates — myth perpetuated by perfectly true little phrases like 'we're busy on weekends' spoken in the right way and accompanied by the right gesture.
Heero returned the look with a faint, thoughtful scowl. Obviously he wasn't terribly pleased at how easily Quatre was able to get around the problem he faced on a weekly basis, but at the same time seemed to be struck with an idea; perhaps he really had gotten the message.
"Maybe he's got performance anxiety."
"Yeah, he's afraid he wouldn't actually be able to ask anyone out, because it would take too many words."
"You could write 'em a note, Heero… you know, like in middle school?"
"Do you want to go out with me this weekend? Check Yes or No."
His brows lowering a trifle, Heero took a deep, quiet breath. "OK, fine, you guys. I'll tell you the truth."
Every head turned toward him; everyone went silent.
"I didn't like to say," he went on, "because I didn't want people bugging me about it all the time, but this–" he gestured around– "is worse."
"What?" Relena was leaning forward eagerly. "What is it? Do you actually secretly have a long-distance boyfriend?"
Heero turned startled eyes in her direction. "How did you know?"
"What?! You really do??" She jumped up. "Oh, my god, Heero, you have to tell us all about him!"
This opinion was immediately ratified by most of the rest of the group; Quatre thought that, Friday tradition notwithstanding, most of them couldn't actually imagine Heero ever going out with anyone.
"Well," Heero said slowly, apparently very aware that everyone was suddenly hanging on his every word, "I met him in April… he lives in Gearing…"
And thus began the biggest, most complicated, and by far the coolest and most collected lie Quatre had ever heard Heero Yuy tell.
This place was strange.
Oh, the classrooms and hallways and lockers and the way people dressed and the way the teachers treated the students and the schedules and the curriculum were all perfectly normal, as far as Duo could tell, but in what world did everyone you encountered seem to be talking about you behind your back from almost the moment you walked in the door 'til the time you finally managed to locate where you'd left your bike that morning and went home?
Of course it was a little weird — unfortunate, even — for someone to switch schools in the middle of his senior year. Duo would have wondered about anyone in that situation too. Then, his circumstances were pretty interesting… but how many people here could possibly know anything of them yet? Yeah, there were plenty of reasons for most of the school to be whispering about him, but this was just too early. It had started halfway through his second class, for god's sake! What was going on here?
Applying himself devotedly, on his second day, to picking up what he could of the whispers, he thought he caught an unfamiliar name mentioned in conjunction with his own (to the confirmation that they really were talking about him): Heero Yuy. What he couldn't figure out was who this Heero Yuy was, what he had to do with Duo, and why this talk had all started up so soon. Presumably the guy had answers, but Duo hadn't yet been able to determine where and when he might be able to find him, and hadn't felt like asking directly.
Sometime somebody would have to say something straight out. High-schoolers could keep up gossip in a vacuum far longer than any other group, but eventually they needed concrete to build on. And when someone finally approached him, whatever they had to say would surely tell him what he needed to know.
But it didn't. Some clues, perhaps, were conveyed by the breathless demand, "So is he a good kisser?" but no real answers. "Nobody here," the unfamiliar girl in the hall went on, "has been able to find out!"
Duo could have demanded information at this point, but his smartass instinct took over and what he ended up saying was, "Wouldn't you like to know!" At which point the girl ran off giggling.
So obviously he was supposed to have kissed this Heero Yuy. Being a perverse individual, Duo was unsurprised that his first thought upon learning this was to wonder whether or not Heero Yuy was a good kisser. But his second instinct was annoyance at still being almost entirely in the dark, and after that came even greater curiosity than before.
His third day at his new school (Friday, since the semester had kicked off on a Wednesday) was as provoking as the previous two had been, and the fact that the widespread interest in him and his doings and his apparent connection with the oddly-named stranger didn't seem to have died down at all was really making him quite wild to find out what the hell was going on. With continued perverseness, however, he was even less interested in asking anyone outright unless that person was Heero Yuy himself. Where to find Heero Yuy was the problem, since it was a big school, and asking someone where to find him would be tantamount to asking everyone why they thought he'd kissed the guy. He would snap eventually, though.
Actually it turned out he didn't have to.
His new trigonometry class didn't seem to be quite as far along as they'd been in the old one, so paying strict attention wasn't yet a matter of great importance. It would be nice to have some homework that was just review, too, for a little while: grab a bit of a break while he got used to everything else here. Things like being endlessly talked about, and Heero Yuy, and all that.
He didn't realize just how badly his attention had waned until class took him by surprise by ending. Suddenly everyone else was standing and walking out when he hadn't even started packing. Hastily he shoved loose papers into his notebook and closed the latter, which action knocked his pen to the floor. When he returned from bending to retrieve the dropped article, a new and unfamiliar object lay on top of his things.
Immediately recognizing, from much experience, a private note, Duo looked hastily to see not what it said but, rather, who had left it. And though the guy was moving quickly, rejoining the other students leaving the classroom, Duo could tell he was the one, and got a fairly good look at him before he disappeared.
He'd actually noticed this person earlier — though he hadn't paid him any particular attention — because of the weird hair. At first glance it looked like a deliberately emo style, but the lack of an outfit or makeup in that vein seemed to contradict such an assessment — which actually made the long hair over the face even weirder. Not that Duo saw a great deal of the face; the guy didn't turn even slightly back in this direction to see if he'd found the note, and soon was out of sight.
With rising excitement, Duo reached for the folded paper. Was it possible that not-quite-emo guy had been the mysterious Heero Yuy himself, and here was an explanation of all the strange goings-on? This hope was dashed, however, even as a new one arose, when Duo finally opened the note.
It read, Heero Yuy's locker is B-213, if you're looking for him.
Without having to take in anything more than what the corner of his eye could show him, Heero knew exactly who it was that had appeared so abruptly next to him at his locker. He hadn't caught sight of the guy prior to this, but knew very well what he looked like, and that he must have good reason to seek Heero out before too long. As a matter of fact, Heero really should have sought him out sometime earlier than Friday afternoon, but hadn't really had his thoughts in order yet. Well, time to face the music.
The first he'd heard of it had been in his third class on Wednesday. Sylvia, who had been present that unfortunate lunchtime back before break when Heero had made up all that nonsense, sat behind him, and, coming in late, had barely had time to hiss at him before the teacher called them all to order, "Heero, why didn't you tell us your boyfriend was transferring here?! He's in my history class, and it surprised the hell out of me!"
There had been no time for Heero to express his shock or issue a denial at this point, as class was beginning. Since the teacher had only a fairly brief greeting for them, however, before getting them started on an assignment she'd written on the board, there was leisure for quiet conversation after not too long.
"Heero has a boyfriend?" was how it started. Heero didn't know the name of the girl that sat behind Sylvia, but he could tell just from the skeptical tone of these murmured words that she, like the rest of the school, had a hard time accepting the idea.
"Yeah, he's totally hot." He could hear Sylvia shifting in her chair to deliver this reply to her rear, but he himself kept absolutely still; if the teacher was going to throw a dry erase marker at anyone for gossiping instead of completing their assignment, it wasn't going to be at him.
"You saw him?" the whispered conversation went on. "What's he like?"
"Totally hot; I just said!"
"Yeah, but what does he actually look like? Maybe I've seen him in the halls!"
Sylvia poked Heero in the back of the head, which was very annoying. "He looks just like Heero described him."
Sincerely doubting that, Heero flipped through his notebook, seeking out the page on which he'd written in neat bulleted lines, just in case he ever needed to continue the deception, the points he'd made about his utterly fictional long-distance boyfriend back in December. As they continued talking behind him, he stared down at the improbable list.
"He's got the longest hair in the world. He's got it braided today; you can't miss him."
Subtly, Heero put a tiny checkmark next to Good-looking, and another beside Hair down to his thighs.
"And he doesn't exactly have what I'd call purple eyes… they're blue, but it's a sort of purpley-blue that I bet you'd definitely call purple if you were going out with him and wanted to make him sound all exotic."
The other girl giggled madly, and Heero, somewhat reluctantly, checked off Purple eyes.
"He said he just moved from Gearing when he turned eighteen; I bet he came just to be with Heero."
Sadly, Heero checked off Lives in Gearing while simultaneously trying to shut his ears to the "Aaww!" of the other girl before Sylvia added the final point:
"I think he said he did, like, three different sports at his old school; too bad it's too late for him to really do anything here."
Athletic went the way of the rest of the list as the other girl mused, "Well, he could still go for–"
"Ladies, I somehow get the impression you're not discussing the assignment back there."
Heero was grateful for the teacher's intervention, but had a hard time turning his own concentration toward searching for similes and metaphors in the short story they were currently studying. It was obvious that the damage had been done: if Sylvia had jumped to the conclusion that this handsome, purple-eyed, long-haired athlete from Gearing was Heero's fictitious boyfriend, even if she hadn't spread the news to everyone she knew, others might well have made the same connection. How on Earth had someone matching all of those improbable criteria shown up here so soon after Heero had invented them? And what was Heero going to do about it?
This question had occupied him throughout the last three days, and he'd never arrived at a satisfactory answer. It would be, he'd thought, good manners to give the newcomer a heads-up… well, it was probably too late for that, but at least an explanation of the weird treatment he was undoubtedly already receiving would be appropriate. But Heero had procrastinated because it seemed so odd a thing to have to confess and he'd never decided how to word what needed to be said. And meanwhile the gossip had only heightened, and the comments people threw him in passing become more and more embarrassing; god only knew how the stranger was taking it.
And now here was this same Duo Maxwell, having very understandably tracked Heero down, standing casually next to him at his locker, giving him an appraising look and exuding an air of curiosity and expectation with maybe just a touch of righteous indignation thrown in.
"You know," he said at last, "I've had a lot of really weird experiences in the past… but having a boyfriend I've never met is a new one."
Heavily, Heero shut his locker and turned toward him. "I can explain."
"Good! 'Cause I'm really curious."
Heero looked around at their fellows, many of whom were surreptitiously watching them. "Not in here, though."
"That's fine," said Duo affably. "I've gotta get my bike anyway, from the entrance that I thiiiiink is this way…" He pointed, though he looked a little lost.
Both in agreement and to confirm Duo's guess as to which direction the bike racks were, Heero nodded. When he turned away and started walking, Duo hopped after and fell into step beside him.
As they moved through the halls, Duo's glances in Heero's direction seemed to indicate that he was about to start asking questions, despite Heero's not yet having allowed the time and place to be right. Heero braced himself. Those selfsame glances, however, seemed to have informed Duo that Heero still wasn't ready; instead of what Heero had expected, what came out of Duo's mouth when it opened was, "So, 'Heero Yuy' — that's, what, uh, Martian?"
"Japanese," Heero informed him, grateful to have this to talk about and a few more minutes to try to come up with a way to explain things that wouldn't make him sound like a total idiot.
"Oh, cool. Do you speak Japanese?"
"Awesome! Say something for me! In Japanese, I mean."
Heero sighed faintly, and wondered, in Japanese, why people always made that request.
Duo was grinning appreciatively. "That's awesome," he reiterated. "I've seen some of those Japanese cartoons, but they've always got the voices all redone in English. Oh, bikes! You found them!" He gave a gesture of mock admiration and gratitude to Heero for the feat of having led them out the correct door to locate the bike racks, and moved to unlock a fairly new-looking grey one from the midst of the line.
Standing back and watching, Heero tried, almost frantically now, to get his thoughts in order. It didn't help that this Duo Maxwell fellow was… well, 'totally hot' on Sylvia's part had been an understatement. And supposedly he was an athlete too? If Heero had been looking for a boyfriend, this guy would have been way out of his league.
Bicycle extracted, Duo rejoined Heero, cheerfully wheeling the vehicle alongside. "OK, where should we go?"
Heero pointed. "I live that direction; I usually walk home."
"Oh! Well, I live that way too! Lucky coincidence." In a slightly louder tone he announced, "Means I can walk you home, boyfriend."
Somebody nearby giggled. Heero didn't look around to see who it was or put his burning face on further display.
A brief discussion of relative locations as they left school property revealed that Duo lived a couple of miles past Heero's neighborhood, which was itself a mile and a half from the school. No wonder he would be biking there and back rather than walking. More of a wonder was that the place was an apartment belonging to Duo and a roommate, that Duo had moved to town without parents or anything. But before Heero could question him on the interesting circumstance, Duo glanced around to verify that none of their schoolmates were nearby and then said, "So what's the deal? With you and me, I mean. Why does everyone think we're dating when I haven't even ever seen you before today?"
Heero never had thought of a good way to put this, so there was nothing for it but just to confess. "It's because I made you up last December."
Duo started theatrically. "Are you telling me that I'm a figment of your imagination? And that all my memories of my life never actually happened? And that if something happens to you, I'll totally cease to exist???"
Unable to remain unamused by this, Heero nevertheless explained seriously. "What I mean is, I made up a fake boyfriend to get some friends to leave me alone about finding a real one, and what I described turned out to match you perfectly."
"Really?" Duo looked a little skeptical. "Because, not to sound conceited or anything, I'm pretty unique."
"I know. I don't know how it happened. I chose the most improbable things I could think of off the top of my head — the long hair, the purple eyes… I was trying to describe someone who didn't exist anywhere in the world."
"Huh. Weird."
"So you showed up and of course everyone–"
"Thinks I'm your boyfriend, yeah. My eyes are blue, though."
"It's kindof a purpley blue," said Heero helplessly.
"So why'd you invent me? Your friends wanted you to find a boyfriend?"
"It's more like they're always bugging me to find a date and go out with the group on weekends… but I'm not interested in dating right now. I don't know how anyone can be, with the amount of homework we get."
Duo chuckled. "OK, I get it. So you invented a fake boyfriend. Lemme guess — I was from out of town and you only saw me on weekends or something, so it was a perfect excuse not to go out with your friends."
"You…" That pronoun was a little awkward, actually, in this context. "'He' was from Gearing."
"Oh, wow. It just keeps getting weirder."
"Well, we do sometimes get people transferring in from Gearing — and Steppe and Coachroad — because of the whole gay thing… That part wasn't as weird as the rest of it."
"Yeah, how'd you manage to get my hair and everything?"
"I have no idea." Heero shook his head, more helplessly than ever. "And I would never have said all of that," he added in sincere apology, "if I'd known someone would show up who matched it all so well. I didn't mean to make everyone think you were my boyfriend, I promise."
"Not everyone thinks that, though… The guy who told me where your locker was couldn't have thought we were dating, or else why would he have thought I… didn't know where your locker was?"
"Some guy with weird hair." Duo dug through one of his pants pockets with his free hand, and pulled out a folded piece of paper. "He handed me this in trig."
Heero opened the note; half a glance was all it took to solve the mystery. "This is Quatre's handwriting," he said dismissively. "The guy you saw was probably Trowa, his boyfriend, running errands for him as usual. Quatre is a sort of… social guru. He knows who everyone's dating, and everyone's schedule, and a lot more about the entire school than he should. Of course he knows you aren't actually my boyfriend."
After a long, pensive silence, Duo said slowly, "Well… I don't see why I can't be."
Heero found himself blushing hot all of a sudden. "What?" He barely got the word out coherently in his surprise and embarrassment.
"Not for real," Duo assured him hastily, undoubtedly marking Heero's flustered reaction. "But if everyone already thinks we're together, why not let them keep thinking that? Then your friends wouldn't keep bugging you to find a date, you wouldn't have to admit you made the whole thing up, and you could get on with your life in peace."
"That… that sounds like a perfect setup." Having regained his composure, at least outwardly, Heero was able to speak in a fairly businesslike tone. "But… not to sound ungrateful or anything… why?"
Duo shrugged. "We're already going the same direction to get home… I'm going to be working most days, and if you're going to be doing homework, why not let people think we're spending all our time together after school?"
"And…" It was a fantastic-sounding plan, but there was a side to it that Duo hadn't touched on. "And at school?"
"Well, you seem like a decent guy, and I never mind having new friends to hang out with." Duo grinned. "But even if we don't hang out all that much at school, it won't look weird if it still looks like we're going home together every day, right? And if it turns out we really can't stand each other at all, we can claim we broke up and just end the whole thing."
So overwhelmed was Heero by the abruptness of this unbelievably fortuitous idea and the apparent quickness of Duo's resolve, he couldn't for a moment say anything. Finally, though, he managed, "But why would you do this? It's… it seems really nice of you… and you just met me…"
Again Duo shrugged. "Why not? I'm going to be busy too; it'll be nice if people aren't bugging me about dating either."
"But what if you want to go out with someone?"
"Why should I? Truth is, I got a lot going on: I've already got hours of homework after only three days, and I have a full-time job." He gave a nod of satisfaction so brisk it made his braid bounce. "No, I think this will work out really well. I mean," he added with a sidelong glance at Heero, "if you want to. Don't let me push you into it if you'd rather just–"
"No, no!" Heero broke in hastily. "You're right; it seems perfect. I just…" He scratched his head a little nervously. "Just can't believe my luck."
"It does all seem kindof astrology or whatever, doesn't it?" In a deep, portentous voice Duo announced, "The stars aligned that day to throw together two strangers on the path of destiny." Then his demeanor changed entirely as he asked casually, "What's your sign?"
"Uh…" Thrown off-balance by Duo's sudden alteration of tone, Heero struggled to remember. "Pisces, I think?"
"Hmm. No good for a Saggitarius like me. Good thing we won't really be dating."
Heero supposed that was as valid a reason as any to be glad they wouldn't really be dating. "So you're interested in astrology?" he asked cautiously.
"Sortof. It's fun to follow. I like reading horoscopes and seeing how stupidly general they are. Like every single one of them could probably apply to anyone, no matter when you were born. The one I just read for myself the other day — no, actually, it wasn't for myself, sorry; it was for Cancer — it was talking about relationships, and……"
The next mile, spent discussing astrology and Duo's semi-satirical interest in it, was enough to convince Heero that some stars must indeed have aligned in order to bring them to this pass: his new fake boyfriend, with whom he would, presumably, be spending at least some time on a regular basis for a while, wasn't just quickly decisive and unexpectedly understanding and helpful; he was also very entertaining. Heero was enjoying the conversation so much that he found himself a little reluctant to stop at the corner where he needed to break away from Duo's homeward path.
"I have to go this way," he said, pointing.
"Oh." Duo looked in that direction, then on down the street where he needed to go. "Hey, I don't have to work today, and I'm just going to go home and do homework… do you want to actually hang out? Might as well do homework together as separately, right?"
Marveling at the ease with which Duo suggested so friendly an activity to someone he'd just met, but seeing nothing wrong with the idea, Heero said, "Yeah, why don't you come to my house?" He added somewhat warningly, "If you're serious about doing homework. Because I have a lot of it."
"Now, what would make you think I'm ever not totally serious about anything?" Duo demanded in the most innocent of tones as he followed Heero around the corner.
Duo had rather hoped to coincide with Heero on the way to school on Monday, but thought the difference in timing between a walker and a cyclist was a decent enough explanation for why he didn't. Although he'd never hated school the way some people did, it wasn't exactly his favorite pastime either — but today he was actually quite interested in being there. Having a secret was always fun, as was putting on a show for people; and becoming better acquainted with the quiet, intelligent Heero had its attractions as well.
Besides, this time when someone Duo didn't know came up to him in the hall and asked what struck him as an extremely rude personal question having to do with the accuracy of the portrayal of Japanese men's anatomy in anime porn — an inquiry whose significance would have gone completely over his head just a few days before — he was able to reply immediately and cheerfully that he would be quite willing to dole out punches to the face of anyone else that was curious.
The weather was cold, but evidently Heero's group of friends wasn't going to let a little thing like January deter them from eating in their customary outside spot. Anything to maintain their territory and avoid freshmen, Duo supposed. And the central courtyard was pretty nice, if a bit of a walk from the cafeteria if you happened to be buying school lunches (which, Duo had determined after some calculations, were cheaper in the long run than trying to figure out something else every single day). So the only problem left was coming up with an explanation for why he hadn't eaten lunch with Heero last week, why he was eating with him today, and why he might not be again in the future.
Interestingly, Heero was more taciturn with his friends than he had been with a complete stranger on Friday, and evidently they'd been unable to get a thing out of him last week regarding his newly-arrived boyfriend. Since Heero had mentioned in some embarrassment that he'd put off seeking Duo out because he hadn't been sure what to say to him, it shouldn't be too great a surprise that he hadn't discussed the matter with anyone else either. But it also meant that his lunch crowd was even more curious than they might otherwise have been because of the perceived secrecy.
They mobbed Duo the moment he appeared, a little later than most of them due to the aforementioned walk from the cafeteria and a disorientation about the layout of the school that he hadn't yet quite overcome. Space was made beside where Heero sat unobtrusively in a corner so Duo could squeeze in next to him — right next to him, which was a pleasant warmth in the cold outside air, but Duo couldn't help wondering how Heero felt about it.
The reason he gave, in response to the immediate questions about why he'd been neglecting his boyfriend, was that he'd been checking out lunch venues throughout the school — which he in fact had. His response to the information that Heero had been unhappy here without him was a serious inquiry of Heero whether or not this was true, to which Heero replied with a slight quirk of a corner of his lips that he'd been fine. His astonishing answer to the demand that he eat lunch here with Heero and the rest of them from now on was something silly to the effect of his being an itinerant at heart and unable to stay in one place long or consistently.
Then, in order to cover up the whispering that started as they all tried to wrap their brains around this and began to speculate what it would probably mean for his relationship with Heero, Duo asked to be introduced to everyone. When it became obvious that Heero wasn't about to take this task upon himself, it was performed instead by a girl named Relena. Duo was interested to note both the all-knowing Quatre and lackey Trowa among the group, and also that Heero didn't actually seem terribly friendly with most of these friends of his. It made Duo wonder how it was that he'd come to eat lunch with them every day at all.
Once Relena was finished rattling off names (and accompanying facts that were probably designed for further identification but that meant nothing to Duo), she settled down against one of the large concrete squares stationed throughout the courtyard. These had undoubtedly been intended by their builders as benches, but the one in this corner was used by this group as a shelf and a seat-back; Relena's current position in relation to it put her near and directly facing Duo in what almost resembled the attitude of an interrogator across a table from an unwilling informant.
"Now," she said in a complacently authoritative tone, "you have to tell us everything: how you guys met, what it's been like being long-distance, what made you decide to move up here — everything!"
Duo had actually given a fair amount of thought to this during the long hours he'd worked over the weekend, and entertained himself making things up; though he hadn't consulted Heero yet about the stories he'd concocted, he deemed it unlikely that Heero had fabricated anything too terribly complicated on his own that would contradict what Duo had to say. However, though Heero might not object, within the context of the scam, to Duo waxing eloquent on their supposed relationship, he might mind for other reasons. The briefest glance in Heero's direction showed him already blushing faintly just at hearing the questions asked; the answers, fictitious or otherwise, couldn't improve his condition.
"You know," Duo said instead, with a grin, "I'd rather not take all the mystery out of that story by telling it all at once; it'll be so much better if I just give you little hints over time. So for now, how about I tell you all about the fabulous Duo Maxwell instead?"
Relena's expression of slight discontent was the first hint Duo had that she was perhaps less interested in him personally than as he related to Heero. But all she said was, "OK, fine."
So he spent a happy lunch hour complaining about how his foster parents hadn't really wanted a son, but, rather, a minion they could shape and control; how they'd pressured him for as long as he could remember to prepare himself for a military career, and how he'd never been interested; how he'd put up with their demands and insistence for a few years and then rebelled, and how tense things had been thereafter; about the nuclear-level explosion he'd occasioned by announcing that he was bisexual; and, finally, about his lengthy and careful preparations, during the year he would turn eighteen, to get himself out the moment that happy event took place. That had been last December, and as soon as school had halted for the winter break he'd moved away from Gearing.
"I came here — I mean here specifically — because of Heero, obviously," he concluded, joggling his 'boyfriend' slightly with his elbow. "But also because I knew this school was all famous for being so gay-friendly. I read that one article in that magazine–"
"You and everyone else in the world," someone put in laughingly.
Duo grinned. "Yeah, the one where they said this was probably the only school in the country where you could get beaten up for being a homophobe — and I was like, 'I am so there.' I figured even transferring schools in the middle of my senior year would be worth it to come here for a while."
"And he didn't tell me any of this," Heero put in unexpectedly. It was the first time he'd spoken in quite a while.
"What do you mean?" Relena sounded incredulously amused. "He didn't tell you he was moving here?"
Heero shook his head.
Taking the cue, Duo grinned broadly and expanded on the subject. "It was pretty much the best surprise ever, if I do say so myself. Whenever I was complaining before about how much I hated living at home, Heero would remind me that high school was almost over, if I could just hold on a little longer…" This fictitious advice seemed consistent with what Duo had observed of Heero so far. "He had no idea I was already planning on getting out before high school was over!"
"So you just showed up here with, what, a truck full of stuff or something…" Incredulity now tinged with delight, Relena turned to Heero. "And that was the first you knew he was coming here?"
"Something like that," Heero mumbled. He looked embarrassed, maybe because he was so bald-facedly lying, but Duo thought this had been a good move on Heero's part: it would at least partially explain why he'd been in a weird mood last week — anyone might be a little stunned if his long-distance boyfriend suddenly joined him in his hometown without warning.
"So if you and Heero met and started going out last April…" This was the very innocent- and harmless-looking little blonde Quatre, and he had Duo's immediate attention. "And you were getting ready to get away from your parents all of last year… that means you already knew you'd be moving and changing schools before you even met him. Did you have this school in mind then?"
Duo wondered where Quatre, who knew the truth, was going with this question. Maybe he was just trying to guide the topic back to something that would embarrass Heero less. Perfectly happy to accept the subject shift in that or any case, Duo nodded. "Yeah, ever since I read that article…"
"So you were already interested in this school," Quatre mused, "and then you met Heero." His pointed yet half-veiled gaze indicated his awareness that, with the way he'd worded it, this was totally accurate. "It's kinda like destiny or something."
Duo remembered his own comment last Friday about stars aligning, heard the giggles and charmed noises of some of the girls in the group, and grinned as he leaned over the very small distance it took him to rub his shoulder against Heero's. He still wasn't sure what Quatre meant by that line of inquiry, and didn't know that it was likely to embarrass Heero any less, but he didn't hesitate to agree, at least verbally.
It turned out he needn't have worried so much about Heero's level of embarrassment. On their way home that afternoon, almost immediately they were down the street away from the school and the ears of fellow students, Heero brought it up.
"I'm not going to pretend I wasn't happy not to have to get into relationship talk over lunch," he said, "but I'm not fragile. You're obviously a better actor than me, so you're welcome to choose what we talk about to everyone, and I'll just try to keep up."
"Well, I thought you did fine," Duo assured him. "That idea that I supposedly didn't tell you I was moving out here was pretty funny, and I thought you pulled it off perfectly."
"Thank you." Heero smiled slightly; it was the first time Duo had seen him do it, and it was remarkable what a striking, attractive change the expression made to his face. "This is…" The smile turned into a bit of a grimace as he admitted the unpalatable fact. "Well, I didn't think I was going to like this, but actually it's been kinda nice so far."
Duo wondered whether this unobtrusive person had ever received so much positive attention at school before. "Even if some of it was embarrassing?"
"I said I'm not fragile," said Heero, now somewhat irritably. "Just because I get a little embarrassed about something doesn't mean anything changes."
Now Duo had to wonder whether anyone around here took Heero at all seriously in a social sense. He was an exceptionally good student — Duo knew that quite well even after such a short time — and there was a general tendency among people their age to equate that with a lack of social skills. Maybe that was at least part of the reason everyone had been so interested to discover Heero 'had a boyfriend.'
Anyway, Duo didn't feel like trying to analyze Heero's place in the high school strata right now. "We're only a day in," he said instead with a grin that was both cheerful and warning. "It could get better or worse from here."
"And if it's worse," Heero said calmly, "we can always 'break up.'"
It wasn't real; since they weren't actually dating, they couldn't actually break up. But Duo couldn't help considering this — particularly Heero's self-reassuringly cool manner of delivery — rather cold. No wonder, again, everyone had so marveled at the idea of Heero with a boyfriend!
After this, however, they moved on to Heero's favorite topic (homework), with the occasional mention thrown in of Duo's job at a restaurant not far from his apartment, and Duo pretty much forgot he'd ever felt put off.
"So it ended up 37-20, and they're obviously in. With Manning in there, they're practically unstoppable. That guy can find a receiver every single time, no matter what kind of heat's on him; it's fucking amazing. There's no way in hell San Francisco can… god, are you even listening?"
"Yes," Sylvia replied abstractedly, "and I totally agree."
"Then what did I just say?"
"That you've got a crush on Eli Manning," she replied promptly, finally turning her eyes back toward him.
"Not funny," Alex growled. "That's what's wrong with this fucking school… everyone assumes everyone's fucking gay."
"I was totally joking," she assured him. "But you have been talking about football a lot."
"Well, what would you rather talk about?" he demanded in that exasperated 'Oh, my god, why can't girls ever make sense?' tone guys sometimes used, glancing around to see what kept grabbing her attention past his left shoulder. Evidently he couldn't tell what she was looking at, for he turned back to her with no enlightenment on his face.
"Look again," she commanded, grinning. "Aren't they totally cute?"
His expression darkened. "I'm not looking again if it's just to see something 'cute.'" Then, briefly, a flicker of puzzlement crossed his face and, contrary to his words, he did look again. "Oh, god," he said as he slowly turned back. "You're talking about that new guy Duo and that nerd guy, aren't you? Please, Sylvia, please tell me Duo's not gay."
"He's not gay," she said immediately.
Alex breathed a huge, exaggerated sigh of relief. "Good, because he's in my P.E. class, and if I thought–"
"He's bi," Sylvia broke in.
"So he is gay! Goddammit, he's probably been staring at my ass in the locker room ever since he got here!"
Sylvia tried not to laugh. Alex actually seemed angry, but she couldn't feel sorry for him. "I totally wouldn't blame him if he did," she said. "And why would he anyway? He's together with Heero."
Alex appeared somewhat consoled by her flirtatious remark, and also curious in spite of a very strong inclination not to be. "Is he? I heard he played soccer at his old school… and Heero's in, like, five different Honor Societies… why would they–"
"Duo's totally got a 3.8," Sylva said, proud of her inside knowledge. "Or at least that's what he had at his old school; I don't know about here. I think Heero's got, like, a 4.7 or something, but anyway they're both really good students. Probably," she added in satisfaction, "because they spend, like, every day after school at Heero's house doing homework."
"You sure that's what they're doing?" Alex asked darkly.
"No," she tittered. "But they won't come out with us on Fridays, and they always go home together. Duo doesn't always eat lunch with us, because I guess he's already got a lot of friends all over the school, even though it's been, what, like, three weeks? And I think Heero misses him at lunch, but with Heero you can never tell." She laughed again. "Anyway, they always go home together."
"Why are you so interested in this?" Alex's tone was suspicious as he closed his locker, gave the couple they were discussing one last, somewhat venomous look, and turned away to walk down the hall.
Following him, Sylvia answered cheerfully. "Because I've been eating lunch with Heero practically every day for two years now, and we've never seen him go out with anyone, and we always thought it would be cool if he did, and now he finally is!"
"I can't believe that Duo guy's gay." This was more in muttered apostrophe than as any sort of reply to Sylvia.
"He's bi," she corrected.
"Oh, come on, like any girl would go out with a guy who'd been with another guy," he said harshly.
"God, would you? Have you? Seriously, if you say yes, you are not getting a ride home."
That, Sylvia thought, was a terribly rude comment, but she had to admit that she never had gone out with a bisexual guy… and she didn't want to jeopardize her chances of a date with Alex on Friday by calling him on his homophobia. She did, however, as a sort of passive rebellion, keep talking about Heero, and how pleased she was to see him with the very likeable Duo, all the way out to the student parking lot and half the way home.
The previous three Januaries had been the heaviest homework months of the school year, as if the teachers were trying to make up for the long winter break and get the new calendar year started off right, and this January had sustained that trend admirably.
"And you know how many pages he wants?" Duo was complaining as they made their usual way out one day near the end of the month. "Freaking ten! That's practically a book! And he was very specific about margin widths and font sizes, too, so we can't cheat."
"Triple-space it," Heero suggested.
Duo stared at him as if he'd never seen him before. "You're a genius!"
Heero, who didn't stoop to such tactics himself but somehow knew them all, and who moreover had written two seven-page essays this month and was inclined to feel sorry for his companion, gave a sympathetic look.
"But, seriously, I'll still end up having to write eight or nine pages," Duo groaned. "Who does that?"
"Have you chosen a topic?"
"I was thinking the Civil War."
Heero laughed. "You can't just do 'the Civil War.' That's way too general."
"Way too General Lee?"
Heero rolled his eyes.
"Well, I'll figure something out. Stupid research paper."
"Just wait 'til college. We'll be writing twenty-page research papers, and we won't have nearly as long to finish them."
"Ugh, don't remind me. How's it going with Stage, by the way?"
Willum Stage University, located in a town called Placette only a couple of hours' drive from here, was the school Heero had in mind, and he'd just finished the application process earlier this week. For this he was duly congratulated, after which they fell silent for a block or so — one of them, presumably, still mulling over the paper that had been assigned in his history class today. But it was just occurring to Heero to wonder something about Duo.
Finally he asked. "Where do you want to go to college? I've never heard you mention."
Duo pushed out his lips in a silly, almost pouty way and looked sidelong at Heero. "Iiiii don't know if I do want to go to college," he said a little reluctantly.
Surprised, Heero said, "Really? You're a good student; I thought…"
"Yeah, that's how everyone reacts," Duo mumbled, "which is why I don't talk about it much."
"Everyone does tend to assume we'll all be doing the same things once we're done with school," said Heero carefully, "but… some people work for a while first… some people travel… I guess some people don't go to college at all…"
Duo made a weary, protesting noise. "You make it sound like it's a really weird concept."
"College has been my goal for as long as I can remember," Heero admitted apologetically. "What do you have in mind instead?"
"I kinda want to be a chef." Duo apparently didn't have a great deal of hope that this would be in any way acceptable; his parents probably had something to do with that.
It sounded fine to Heero; he didn't even have to give it much thought. "So, a culinary school, then?"
"Yeah, maybe." Evidently heartened by the lack of immediate condemnation from Heero, Duo went on more enthusiastically. "What I think would be really cool is to have a combination restaurant and car repair shop so people could drop off their cars for whatever and then come inside and eat! Except I don't actually want to run the place, I just want to do the cooking. I might take a few business classes just so I'll have some idea what's going on, but mostly my plan is to do some other cooking jobs so I can get really good at that and save up enough money to find a partner who can handle the business end of things while I make all the awesome food. And of course we'll need a really good mechanic who…" He paused. "I lost you at 'combination restaurant and car repair,' didn't I?"
Trying very hard to stifle his laughter and speak seriously, Heero said, "No, no, I think it's a great idea." In truth he considered it a remarkably childlike idea: something not necessarily impractical or inappropriate, but that few adults would come up with. Obviously one of those few was Duo, whom Heero couldn't help considering, in light of this, rather adorable. Forcing calm upon himself he reiterated, "Really. Not a bad idea at all."
Across the bike that separated them, Duo peered suspiciously at Heero. "You mean it?"
Solemnly Heero nodded.
Breaking into a brilliant grin, Duo exulted, "Hah! You're the best 'boyfriend' ever!"
With a slight blush Heero said, "Who you should really talk to is my mom. She sometimes does catering. Just for small events, because it's just her and a friend doing the cooking, but she still knows some things about the business…"
"Oh! That explains why she always has the Best Snacks Evar for us whenever I'm at your house doing homework! I meant to get the recipe for those little potato skin things, but I forgot. How come you didn't tell me she did catering??"
"I didn't realize you were interested."
Duo frowned. "It's probably not good that we 'boyfriends' don't know all this stuff about each other. I mean, what if someone asked? Anyway, it's definitely not good that we real, actual friends don't know."
Unexpectedly pleased at having Duo refer to him as a real, actual friend, Heero suggested, "We should have a question and answer session."
"Yes! Yes, we should! OK, let me think of questions."
This activity occupied them the rest of the way to Heero's house. There, because Duo wanted to harass Heero's mother and Heero wanted to do his homework, they agreed that the best way to go about this was for each of them to write down a list of questions, which they would then exchange and answer in between their other tasks as they had time and inclination.
Between the culinary discussion in which Mrs. Yuy was happy to indulge Duo for quite some time and the homework that Duo, who wasn't nearly as irresponsible as he sometimes acted, started in on afterward, it wasn't until nearly two hours later that they gave each other their questions. And then, not for the first time that day, Heero had to try to stifle his laughter.
1. What's your favorite kind of ice cream?
2. What was one thing you used to want to be when you grew up that totally changed?
3. If you could take the characters from any movie and put them into a new movie about a DANCE COMPETITION, which movie and characters would you choose and why?
4. If you could have any animal in the world for a pet (and it would be friendly to you no matter what it was), what would you choose?
5. Do you have any awesome tattoos, and how do you feel about tattoos?
These weren't really the sort of questions Heero had had in mind, and totally dissimilar to his list, which was about things like politics and important formative experiences… but honestly he was rather looking forward to answering them. Not only that, but it struck him after a few moments of thought that Duo actually had the right idea: Heero had conveyed plenty about his plans for the future and other such serious topics; it was the extracurricular aspects of his personality Duo would know least about at this point — and vice versa for Heero about Duo.
So, setting aside for the moment the book he was reading for English and the notes he was taking thereon, he centered Duo's sheet of questions in front of him and set down his pencil without looking in order to choose one at random. Upon rereading it, he decided he would need more space than what Duo had allowed him, and extracted a fresh sheet of paper.
Am I limited to animals? he began writing. Because if it will be friendly to me no matter what it is, a banyan tree……
His Own Humanity: Plastic
Dec 28, 2010 | Art Archive Entries, Fiction, Gundam Wing Fanfiction
"A curse affects both the victim and the caster. A skilled curse-caster can bend this effect so that their share in the curse is something they don't mind, something that doesn't inhibit them… but even if they manage that, repeatedly having a share in any curse leaves a mark eventually."
When Heero rescues an abandoned doll from the gutter, he hardly thinks it's going to change his life; but now he and his best friend Quatre find themselves involved in the breaking of a curse from almost a hundred years ago, and perhaps in falling for exactly the wrong people.
Author's Star Rating: 5 | Category: His Own Humanity | Contains: Angst | Contains: Gay Duo | Contains: Gay Heero | Contains: Gay Quatre | Contains: Gay Trowa | Contains: Get-together story for main couple(s) | Contains: Language (gendered) | Contains: Language (general) | Contains: Language (religious) | Contains: Misunderstanding/lack of communication | Contains: Pining | Contains: Psychological torment | Contains: Sex (explicit) | Contains: Straight Relena | Contains: Surprise/forced kissing | Contains: Unique | Friendship: Duo & Trowa | Friendship: Heero & Quatre | Genre: Adventure | Genre: Drama | Genre: Humor | Genre: Introspection | Genre: Romance | Length: 150k-200k words | Navigation | Pairing - Primary: Duo & Heero | Pairing - Primary: Quatre & Trowa | Pairing - Secondary: Original male character & Relena | Pairing - Secondary: Treize & Zechs | POV: Duo | POV: Heero | POV: Quatre | POV: Trowa | Rating: 4 | Release/completion year: 2011 | Setting: Alternate universe | Setting: AU - Modern U.S. plus magic | Title: Plastic | Visual art collection: Commissions
Parts 96-100
"I've had enough of this."
"Enough of what?"
"Don't play ignorant; you know what. You knew she and I were to go driving today; you deliberately kept her out all afternoon so she would miss the appointment."
"So?! So, you are sabotaging my relationship with her!"
"And if I am? All's fair in love and war, my friend."
"You don't love her. You don't care about her at all. You're just trying to make sure I don't win her. You're being petty and shallow and… and fake. It's as if you were made of plastic."
"Oh, plastic, that is appropriate. No surprise you should mention that, since that's all you care about. You never behaved like this when we were both poor, but ever since that promotion at the factory, you think you can just buy everything you want — a big flat, a motorcar, even a nice woman. You don't care about her either! She's simply another object to you."
"Good lord, Duo, is this really about money? How can you deny being petty while you're saying such things?"
"No, this isn't about money… not entirely. But ever since you've had money, you've become more and more disconnected with the human world and human emotions. You don't care about people anymore — not her, not me, not anyone. You don't care about anything beyond your damned work!"
"You'd probably better watch what you're accusing me of. You may not want to find out just how much I care."
Art byLink Worshiper
Heero's glance into the gutter to make sure nothing was going to splash up at him as he stepped over it turned into a double-take and a pause. Something unexpectedly flesh-colored had seized his attention, and as he looked down more pointedly he stopped walking entirely. Then he bent and picked up the object that had caught his interest.
It was a doll — one of those Barbie men, whatever they were called, that dated Barbie or whatever they did — though Heero hadn't thought they made them anatomically correct these days, nor the males with such long hair. Lying on the ground hadn't done its state of cleanliness much good, and it had no clothes, but seemed otherwise undamaged. What a strange thing to find in the gutter.
He weighed the doll in his hand, looking around for a child that might perhaps have dropped it. The plastic had a somewhat brittle feeling to it, and the little figure was heavier than he would have thought it should be. Looking back down, he reflected that he was (understandably) out of touch with the world of dolls; he hadn't thought they made the faces this nicely detailed, either. Really, for a toy, it was rather attractive. It seemed old, somehow, too, for all it was in such good shape. Why and how such a thing should be here he couldn't guess, but surely this was someone's collector's item abandoned by accident.
Despite feeling a little foolish, Heero couldn't bring himself to set it down once he'd reached this conclusion. If he put it back, it would just get ruined, and it was already so forlorn… Besides, it was undoubtedly worth something to someone, even if that was just someone on ebay; he might as well try to locate its owner. Or sell it. He could let the businesses in the immediate area know he'd found it, in case someone came asking, and if that didn't lead anywhere he could check online to see how much it might be worth.
He didn't want to put a dirty, wet doll in his briefcase, but neither did he much want to be seen carrying it — he wasn't sure how his co-workers would react to the sight, but he was certain it would be annoying. So he held it down against his leg as he hurried on into the parking lot, trying to hide it as best he could with one hand and feeling its long, matted hair brushing him as he walked.
Mentally reviewing the contents of his refrigerator and kitchen cupboards and trying to decide whether or not to stop at the grocery store on the way home, he largely forgot about the doll as he drove. But once he removed his briefcase from on top of it on reaching his apartment (having decided to skip shopping today), there it was staring up at him with wide eyes and a vague smile. Sardonically he shook his head and carried it inside.
The kitchen sink under running water seemed a good place for it to wait while Heero put his work things away and changed clothing, and once he came back into the kitchen he poured some dish soap over it with a lavish hand. It looked better already. After double-checking that his mental fridge inventory was correct, he returned his full attention to the doll again. Keeping it under the tap, he worked the soap off of the plastic and out of the tangled hair, then turned the water off and held it out for inspection.
No, it didn't look bad at all. The face was remarkably nice, actually, for something that small, and the hair was soft and didn't feel much like plastic. Hadn't they made dolls' hair out of real human hair in some previous decade? This hair felt real, which was a little disconcerting but probably increased the value of the piece. The plastic genitalia was strange too; Heero wondered if this might not have been designed as some kind of gag gift. After a moment of thought, he pulled a paper towel from the roll behind the sink, folded it in half, and wrapped it around the doll's waist, tucking the upper fold beneath the lower so it would stay. Studying the effect, he wondered if this was what little girls felt like when they dressed their dolls.
Again he shook his head. "So what am I going to do with you?" he murmured.
"You could start by combing my hair."
Heero dropped — or, rather, threw the doll into the sink, jumping back with a startled noise. That thing had just… that thing had really just…
"Just a suggestion," said the doll's small voice, echoing slightly against the metal of the sink.
After his initial surprise, Heero didn't quite know what to think. He moved forward and stared down at the doll, which now lay on its face partially hidden by this morning's cereal bowl; the paper towel skirt had come askew, so a pair of plastic buttocks, half-hidden by clinging wet hair, was all Heero could actually see. Even as he looked, though, it commented further, "I hope you didn't faint. I hate it when they faint."
"I'm sure the audience likes it, though," Heero murmured as he reached into the sink somewhat tentatively and drew the doll out again. This time he pulled the paper towel off completely and began a minute examination of the plastic body. He was looking for the camera.
"You know," said the doll calmly as Heero turned it over and over, "this is just one of the horrible effects of reality TV. A talking doll never gets believed anymore; it's always, 'All right, where's the audience?'"
"Yes, that is one of the biggest horrible effects of reality TV," Heero replied dryly. "It happens all the time." No feature on the doll's body seemed to resemble camera, speaker, or microphone, but surely the unusual heaviness of the thing was explained by their presence somewhere.
The doll laughed. "OK, mostly I just hate reality TV," it admitted. "And it does make it difficult to get anyone to believe that the doll in their hand is really talking to them on its own."
By this point Heero had turned it to face him once again, and could swear that the little lips were actually moving — stiffly, as one might expect one's lips to move if one were made of plastic, but moving nonetheless. "Who would ever believe that?" he wondered. He thought the camera was probably focused through the eyes, since that made a certain sort of sense, and was peering closely at them trying to find any sign of it. They were nicely-painted eyes, well-detailed and an attractive shade of indigo, and, as far as he could tell, not cameras. They didn't even appear to be transparent.
"Children sometimes do," the doll said in a tone that implied he would have been shrugging had his shoulders contained the necessary muscles. Or… any muscles. His voice, though fairly quiet, didn't sound either recorded or transmitted; communication technology really had come a long way.
"I'm not a child," Heero said flatly. Perhaps if he removed one of the limbs…
"No, you're a big, strong, handsome man who's going to be nice to little helpless me," the doll cajoled absurdly. Then it went on in a more practical tone, "Also you're… wasting your time trying to pull my leg off. I don't come apart."
Ceasing his attempt to dismember the doll, Heero just stared at it with a raised brow. "Are you flirting with me?"
"Of course." Its lips were definitely moving.
"If this is one of those Punk'd-style shows, I have to say I don't think much of this premise."
"I dunno; I think it might work pretty well." Here was that 'shrug' tone again. "Too bad it's not a show; I think being a TV star would make being a doll suck less. I could get one of those luxury Barbie houses and a little convertible and everything."
"Well, it's time for this doll to go back to the gutter he came from. I was going to try to find your owner, or maybe sell you on ebay, but I think you'll do OK on your own."
"Thanks for the bath, at least," the doll sighed. Pensively, softly, it added, "I wonder how much I'd go for on ebay these days…"
In response to Heero's somewhat distracted look as he answered his door, Quatre remarked, "I just talked to you a few hours ago. You didn't already forget I was coming over, did you?"
"No, I didn't," replied Heero almost absently, stepping back to allow Quatre into the entry and closing the door behind him.
"Well, what's wrong?" Quatre persisted.
Heero frowned. "I guess I'll show you."
He gestured to the kitchen, which was set apart from the rest of the living/dining room only in that it had linoleum rather than carpet, and which lay immediately to the left of the entry. Quatre set down his shopping bag and backpack and immediately reached for the strange object on the counter. Heero stood aside in silence; evidently this was exactly what he'd planned on showing.
As Quatre examined the doll quizzically, Heero gave one of his usual unhelpful explanations. "I found it in the gutter outside work." After an almost expectant pause, he went on slowly,"I thought I might try to find its owner." Again he paused, as if waiting for Quatre to interrupt, then finally said, "Or see if it's valuable enough to sell it online or something."
At last the apparently hoped-for interjection came, though not from Quatre: "I think it's pretty obvious," said the doll, "that I'm a 'he,' not an 'it.'"
Quatre dropped the doll and stepped back, startled and staring. Its lips had moved.
"Yeah," said Heero darkly. Slowly the doll, which had landed face-down on the counter, moved its unbending plastic arms and righted itself stiffly, ending up in a sitting position with its legs straight out, facing them. At Quatre's side Heero shifted uncomfortably and muttered, "Well, I haven't seen it do that."
"He," the doll insisted. "Surely you noticed the giant plastic penis."
"'Giant?'" wondered Heero with a raised brow.
At the same moment Quatre speculated, "Is this some kind of reality TV stunt?"
The doll sighed.
"He–" Heero emphasized the pronoun– "claims it's not. I can't find any cameras or microphones or anything."
"But they have to be there somewhere." Quatre took up the doll again, straightening its legs out and examining it once more, this time with the aim of detecting hidden electronic devices. The plastic penis was rather large, proportionally speaking; obviously this was some kind of joke. Quatre smoothed the long brown hair away from the doll's face and looked closely at the latter. "Why is he wet?"
It was the doll rather than Heero that answered. "He gave me a bath. He rubbed me all over. It was niiice."
Assuming the licentious tone was part of the joke, Quatre simply shook his head and kept looking for the camera. Heero, however, seemed prompted to reply. "Yes, I'm sure all those plastic nerves of yours enjoyed it."
The doll laughed regretfully. "You caught me. I can't feel a damn thing. I'm aware that he's turning me over and over — you're looking for cameras, aren't you? — but I can't really feel it. Someday maybe I'll get used to that."
So forlorn was the complaint that Quatre had to laugh. "You're pretty convincing!"
Plastic lips stretched past what Quatre would have thought their limit must be into what might be called a grin. "Thanks. It's a side effect of being real."
"Real what?" Heero wondered.
"I'm not inclined to tell," the doll replied a little haughtily. "You're just going to throw me back into the gutter."
"I'm not going to throw you back into the gutter." At Heero's impatient tone Quatre had to restrain a laugh; sometimes the most unexpected things could get Heero involved and worked up.
"No," Quatre agreed pleasantly. "If technology really has come far enough for dolls to have conversations with people, you've got to be pretty valuable. And if you're just a transmitter for somebody who's secretly taping us, then somebody's in violation of certain privacy laws."
"Oh, nicely done," the doll commended him. Heero's sharp nod seemed to indicate he felt much the same.
"Anyway," Quatre went on lightly, "the game's going to start…" He looked down at the doll. "I don't suppose you're a college basketball fan?"
"For you, I could be," said the doll with a wink — an actual wink, though the examination of him that Quatre had conducted thus far wouldn't have led him to guess he had mobile eyelids.
Quatre shook his head skeptically. "Heero," he wondered, glancing up at his friend, "what have you gotten us into?"
"I've watched a lot of TV in my time," the doll was saying as Heero propped him up against the lamp on the end table beside the sofa in front of the television, "– and by that I mean more TV than anyone should ever watch in a single lifetime — but not much basketball." The propping took longer than Heero had expected, since the paper towel skirt, which he'd replaced, didn't want to behave.
"What kind of TV do you prefer?" Apparently Quatre had decided to play along.
Heero, who hadn't decided anything yet, rolled his eyes.
"I like sci-fi," the doll stated. "I used to watch that channel all day at my last house. The girl would leave me where I could see the TV, and the remote next to me where I could reach it, when she went to school; I just had to make sure to turn the TV off if her mom came into the room!"
"'The girl?'" Quatre echoed curiously.
"Yeah, my last kid; the last person who was taking care of me." With a disconcerting swiveling motion, the doll shook his head. "She liked to dress me up, and she liked to alter the clothes she had for me. She'd put sequins on them and stripes with markers and stuff like that — creative little kid. The problem was that she'd take off my clothing to do something to it, and then forget to put it back on me, so I'd be laying around naked.
"She was a little too young to appreciate my fine physique… she just forgot. But her mom hated finding me around naked all the time. I didn't talk to the mom, because she was touchy and would have freaked out, so she didn't know why I'm so detailed in certain areas, and she didn't like it. She told the kid that if she found me somewhere naked one more time, she was taking me to Goodwill. Well, guess what happened."
Quatre was standing beside the table now, looking down at the doll in silent fascination. Heero found that he too was staring, inordinately interested in the narrative.
The doll wrapped up his story with, "So I have no idea what's been happening on Dr. Who lately, and it's driving me crazy."
"Very convincing," Quatre murmured, shaking his head. "Somebody's done a really good job on this."
Heero nodded. "How did you supposedly get from Goodwill to the gutter?" he asked the doll as Quatre turned on the TV and settled onto the couch beside him.
"Oh… well…" The doll seemed a little annoyed, though whether at Heero's choice of words or what he was about to relate Heero wasn't sure. "I always try talking to the person who gets ahold of me, but it doesn't always work very well. They all think I'm a reality TV thing or some kind of walkie-talkie, like you guys do. I usually change hands a bunch of times before I end up anywhere I can stay for a while. Some woman buys me and then throws me out for the usual reasons… some kid she's babysitting picks me out of the garbage, tries to hide me from her mom on the way home, and drops me… some dog chews on me and carries me around… dogs love to chew on me… sometimes it goes on for days and days."
"How long do you usually stay somewhere?" Having found the channel, Quatre was now digging through his shopping bag and pulling out cheese dip and chips.
"It varies," said the doll in his 'shrug' tone. "Days, months, years… depends on how long it takes people to decide I'm an unhealthy figment of their imaginations and get rid of me."
The sincerity in Quatre's tone as he replied, "Oh, I see," struck Heero as rather worrisome. Quatre wasn't necessarily gullible, but he was kind-hearted almost to a fault, and it might be problematic if he started believing this weirdness, even just a little, simply because it seemed so pathetic.
"All right, enough about the doll," Heero commanded stonily.
"Duo," said the doll.
"That's my name. Duo Maxwell."
"Not Ken?" wondered Heero dryly, having eventually remembered the name of Barbie's boyfriend.
"Ken's got nothing on me," the doll — Duo — grinned. "Did you ever see a well-hung Ken doll?"
"Well, I'm sorry we're not watching Dr. Who," Quatre broke in, addressing Duo, "but maybe you'll enjoy the basketball game." It was a pointed reminder that the latter was starting.
"Oh, don't worry about it," the doll replied, waving one arm stiffly up and down. "Just explain the rules and I'll be fine."
Paying full attention to basketball with a talking doll on the end table was something of a challenge. Duo — or, more accurately, whoever was controlling the doll — was a quick learner: it only took a couple of commercial break lectures on the rules and a few comments about events during the game to get him just as involved as they were, and he readily joined in cheering on the team they were supporting… but that was only natural for someone trying to win their trust in order to further the practical joke or whatever this was.
"That was great!" he was saying enthusiastically once it was over. "It's too bad I've never watched basketball before! There was one guy I watched a lot of football with a couple of years ago, but he wasn't a basketball fan."
"Did he throw you away too?" Quatre wondered.
"He Goodwilled me," replied Duo a little bitterly. "You know I fucking hate Goodwill? Yeah, his girlfriend thought it was weird how he kept an anatomically-correct man doll around, and he didn't want to tell her that I talked because he was afraid she'd think he was crazy. I could have just talked to her, but he thought it wasn't a good idea, so he just got rid of me."
"It makes sense, I'm afraid," Quatre said apologetically.
Heero nodded.
"Well…" Duo swiveled his plastic head toward them, his tone thoughtful. "I know you two still don't believe me, but–"
"Believe what, exactly?" Heero broke in. "Are you inclined to tell yet?"
"That I have no cameras or microphones in me… nobody's talking through me or recording you… and I'm not a piece of advanced technology designed to have conversations with bored little girls while they dress me up."
"All right," said the skeptical Heero. "Then what supposedly are you?"
Seriously Duo replied, "I'm a human. Or I was. These days I'm just a creepy doll. But I'm supposed to be human. See, I'm under a curse."
Quatre tried his hardest, his very hardest, but he simply couldn't help himself; he burst out laughing. "You're what?"
The doll just shook his head.
"Everything sounded really good up until that part." With an effort, Quatre got control of himself again. "Seriously, I'd change it; say you're alien technology stranded on Earth or something. That would fit better with you liking sci-fi shows anyway."
"The shows I like have nothing to do with the fact that I'm a doll," Duo protested. "Besides, you wouldn't believe the alien technology thing either, so why not just tell the truth?"
Heero was actually smirking a bit at this conversation. "We might come closer to believing that, though."
"Why is science fiction always so much more plausible to people than fantasy?" complained Duo. "Why are robots who can have intelligent conversations more believable than curses?"
"Because we've made progress toward–" Heero began.
Quatre put a hand on his shoulder. "Debating the psychological impact of technological advancement is pointless right now."
So Heero asked a question instead. "How did you get…" The rueful half-smile he'd adopted in response to Quatre's admonition changed to another skeptical look. "…cursed?"
"I'm not even really sure," Duo replied. "My friend and I'd been playing around with magic for a while, but neither of us was very good at it. We had an argument, and I heard him starting a spell… some kind of spell, but he was talking real quietly… but I didn't think he would do something like this to me. Hell, I didn't think he could do something like this! We never had this kind of power…"
"Well, that's convenient," Quatre said a little sarcastically, and began counting off points on his fingers. "Somebody else cast the spell, so you don't know exactly what he did… It's something stronger than you thought you guys were capable of, so not something you can reverse on your own… I bet you're going to claim you can't do spells as a doll anyway… and you've probably lost track of your friend… am I right?"
Duo tilted his plastic chin up in a motion that made his entire head swivel backwards. "No, I can't cast spells as a doll," he said a bit snappishly. "And my friend is long dead, since he was born in 1898."
Heero snorted. "This keeps getting better."
The doll seemed to take a deep breath, which was faintly audible but in no way visible, and to put some effort into downplaying his irritation. "You don't have to believe me," he said, with admirable calm. "Just don't take me to Goodwill."
With a thoughtful sidelong smile at his friend, Quatre remarked to Heero, "I think we know how to keep him in line now, don't you? Just threaten to Goodwill him, and he'll probably do anything we ask."
"What on earth would we ask him to do?" Heero was giving Quatre a dark look, almost accusing, and Quatre realized immediately what the problem was.
"Heero, I don't believe him," he said sternly.
Heero's expression seemed to ask, "Are you sure?" and Quatre's in return was almost a glare. Heero really was getting worked up about this.
"Well, my flight leaves at 7:50," Quatre said next, turning away and changing the subject; "I'm going to go take a shower." He was a little surprised at his own tone of voice — it seemed to insert an "I give up" into his statement somewhere. There really was little more of use, he felt, to be gotten out of the doll (though probably a good deal more of interest), and Heero was evidently in a strange state of mind.
It was reluctantly, however, that he rose from the couch and made his way toward the hall. Only the awareness that he didn't want to be either dirty or tired at tomorrow's meeting induced him to abandon such a fascinating scene in progress. He did turn again at the entry to the hallway, though, and look back to where Heero was still pensively staring down at Duo. "Good luck with him…"
"So I'm a little confused," Duo was saying after Quatre had gone. "Is he or is he not your roommate? He knocked on the door earlier and you had to let him in, but now he's taking a shower here?"
"He's not." Heero wondered why the doll cared. "I mean he's not my roommate," he clarified. "But he lives out east past the edge of town, and we're closer to the airport here; he usually stays the night when he has a flight the next day."
"Ohhhhhh," said Duo in an exaggerated tone of understanding. "Where is he flying to?"
Heero's cool answer was, "None of your business."
"Fine, fine," Duo said breezily. "Where are you going?" For Heero had stood.
"None of your business," Heero repeated, moving toward the hall as Quatre had. Also as Quatre had, he paused in the doorway and glanced back. He couldn't help thinking that, whatever kind of hoax this was, Duo did look rather lonely and pathetic sitting there on the end table, stiff and unmoving in his paper towel skirt. Heero watched him for a moment, a frown growing on his face as much in response to his strange feelings at the sight as to the sight itself. Then, returning to the couch, he found the remote and turned on the TV again, this time to Syfy.
"Oh!" came Duo's surprised voice from his left. "Thanks!"
Heero, feeling a little stupid, did not reply.
Resultant upon a greater demand and therefore a higher price for one-bedroom apartments in the complex just when he'd been looking, Heero lived in a two-bedroom. The second room did hold a bed, and did come in useful when Quatre spent the night here, but its primary purpose was to house Heero's computer desk and bookshelf. So while Quatre was in the shower and the doll was watching television, Heero got on the internet.
Typing 'talking doll' into Google made him feel even stupider than leaving the TV on said talking doll's favorite channel as if he really thought a piece of plastic (and presumably electronics) was capable of a preference. The search results were far from pretty, and even farther from useful. The things little girls would play with…
The things grown men would play with…
He turned 'safe search' on and tried again.
The creepiness of the results didn't really diminish with the sex toys removed from the lineup, nor did he find anything useful in the fifteen pages he had the patience to glance over. Neither did adding terms like 'hoax' or 'reality TV' or any clever combination of quotation marks call up anything that seemed at all similar to this situation, let alone related. '"Duo Maxwell" "cursed doll"' gave him no results at all. Not that he'd expected any; they (whoever they were) undoubtedly had the doll give a different name to each person it attempted to trick, for this very reason.
Frustrated and judging by the cessation of the bathroom fan that Quatre would soon want the room, Heero shut down the computer.
Duo was watching something involving a psychic couple and an albino trying to stop a clan war among people with weird hair, but how much he was enjoying it was anybody's guess. The design of his face seemed well-suited for emotional display, Heero thought, and it was unfortunate — and a little uncanny — to see it so stiff and dispassionate.
Then he shook his own head vigorously. He shouldn't have been so quick to judge Quatre earlier, when here he was thinking things like this. Duo was not a person, for god's sake. He was either an expensive toy or a conduit for some prankster's misplaced sense of entertainment.
"Something wrong?" Duo wondered, his head swiveled a good forty degrees past disconcerting to glance at Heero.
Instead of answering the question, Heero requested the identity of the rather stupid-looking show Duo was watching. This proved not to be the best idea, as it led to a conversation about the series and the broader topic of science fiction and its typical follies. And with a piece of plastic he'd found in a gutter and was already having a difficult time dismissing as the joke part of him was still certain it must be, Heero really had no desire to be enjoying any discussion quite this much.
Here is a picture I drew of dolly Duo:
I actually didn't draw this until a much later point, but I moved it to this part to be concurrent with Duo's first appearance in the story. I'm very pleased with this piece, all except the hair. It's supposed to look like real human hair, but I think it actually looks more fakey than anything else in the picture. The shadows aren't entirely correct either, but I couldn't figure out how to make them look more realistic; I suck at lighting. Ah, well. I didn't draw the background; it's a photo of my kitchen counter that I blurred up a bit and put Duo on top of.
Here's a picture of Quatre I drew:
Like the previous picture of Duo, I didn't draw this until long after this part was posted, but I put him here since this is Quatre's first appearance in the story.
His facial expression didn't turn out at all like I planned, and actually strikes me as rather hilarious.
I never had Barbies growing up, because my mother disapproved of them. This was partly because she didn't like the image they presented to impressionable young minds (in which I really can't disagree with her), and partly because she just knew they'd end up lying around naked, and she hated that thought…. and, to be honest, I can't really disagree with her there either. Oh, Barbies…
In reality, you can go fifteen pages into a Google search for "talking doll" and not find any sex toys; there is a lot of creepy Christian stuff, though. And '"Duo Maxwell" "cursed doll"' does actually turn up several results — mostly from cosplay.com — though the two terms usually only happen to be on the same page, and not actually related. This may change if the search engines catch up to these chapter posts, though :D