[fic] Spook 3/4
Spook
Chapter Three
Fandom: Gundam Wing
Rating: R
Ship: Trowa/Quatre, Abdul/Catherine, Duo/Hilde
Summary: Still dealing (rather badly) with the loss of his cat, Trowa starts to worry about Catherine's pregnancy and Quatre's friendship with Dorothy Catalonia.
A/N: I wrote this a few months before my own beloved cat died unexpectedly. I could not possibly have written it afterward.
Chapter Two
3.
Late summer, AC 202
“Jeeeesus it's hot.” Duo bent over the sink, holding his unbraided hair under the running water. When he straightened he wrapped the soaked chestnut locks about his head and sighed with relief when cold water ran down his neck and forehead. “Oh man, that's better. I swear, this global warming thing has GOT to stop.”
Trowa glanced up from under the car on which he was working. He pushed his wet bangs out of his face, but all that he accomplished was to smear his cheek and forehead with oil; the bangs flopped right back over his eye and stuck to his sweat-slicked skin. “Scientists are working on it,” he said dryly.
“Not fast enough. You‘d think: ‘Canada! Cold!'” Duo studied his reflection in the dirty mirror that hung over the sink. “I'm either going to have to keep it all pinned up or cut it off.” He gave his reflection one last grimace, then walked to the fan and stood in front of it. “Ahhhhhh.”
“You look good like that.”
“Eh?” Duo glanced over his shoulder at him. He twisted his hair into a tighter coil and wound it into a large bun. “Do I turn you on like this?”
“You don't turn me on,” Trowa said mildly. “I was being sarcastic. No offense.”
“None taken, pal, b‘lieve me.” With that, Duo turned his attention to his daughter, who was watching him from her portable playpen, a puzzled look on her little face. “Daddy looks funny like this, doesn't he?” Duo cooed, kneeling on the garage's dusty floor so that he and Helen were nose to nose. “Where did his braid go? It disappeared!”
Helen stared for a moment, then she pointed. “Up!“
Duo looked at the ceiling. “Up there? Nope!”
“Up,” the girl insisted, pointing frantically.
Duo glanced over his right shoulder, then his left, as though he thought the braid might be sneaking up on him. Then he turned back to his daughter, put his hands on his hips, and shook his head. “You silly miss. It's not THERE, I'm telling you. It disappeared. Maybe I will cut it,” he said to Trowa, who had not ducked back under the car but continued to watch the pair from the floor. “I mean Hilde's hair is long now, so it kind of makes sense, sort of.”
“Quatre bought some hair dye,” Trowa told him. “Navy blue. He was going to do the tips of his bangs, but he chickened out.”
“He didn't happen to get this fantastic idea of his shortly after a conversation with one of his sisters, did he?”
Trowa was surprised. “How did you guess?”
Duo grinned down at him. “I know our little rebel. I was with him when he almost got his ear pierced.”
At that moment Helen jumped up and grabbed a lock of Duo's hair that had come loose from the bun. The whole mass of it came tumbling down around Duo's shoulders. He tossed his head, swinging his hair in every direction. Helen shrieked with laughter as droplets of water flecked her face.
Trowa smiled. He loved watching Duo and his daughter, knew that it was the future he saw reflected in Helen's dark blue eyes, and felt honored to be granted a glimpse of it. He was reminded of something Quatre had told him, regarding children in general and those who had been born after the war in particular: It's why we're here, Trowa. I mean all of us. To meet and meld and become new things.
New things, he thought. Yes, that‘s it. At the same time it made him wonder what his own purpose might be.
“Oh, I forgot to say before... Yo, Tro? You listening?” Duo stood over him, absently twisting his hair into a messy ponytail. Helen sat in her playpen, well occupied with a coloring book.
“I'm listening.”
“I forgot to say Hilde's coming to pick up Helen as soon as she's done with her exam. I'm guessing she'll be here in about forty minutes. Anyway, I forgot, so she's bringing a bunch of the baby books we got before Helen was born.”
“Why?”
“Quatre told me you were flipping out about Catherine. We thought you might want to read them over, see what it's really about. I was scared shi--out of my mind when Hilde went into labor.” His voice dropped and he sank to the floor beside Trowa. “There was all this blood,” he confided and his violet eyes looked haunted. “I wasn't prepared for it. I mean, I'd read about it, but somehow that didn't help. It was one thing to read about it in a book. It's even one thing seeing it in a war. It's another thing when it's Hilde. And she's such a little thing and there wasn't anything I could do except hold her. But that's normal, I was told. It's supposed to be messy. Anyway, the nurses all knew what they were doing even if I didn't, and as a result we got one of those.” He nodded in Helen's direction, his expression softening. “Hilde was out of it for a few days afterward, but then she was fine. I think I almost have her convinced to do it again. So, don't worry.”
He squeezed his shoulder just then and Trowa flinched instinctively, surprised by the gesture as well as the easy admission of fear and uncertainty by one of the most seemingly confident people he had ever known.
“Seriously,” Duo went on, “your sister's tough as nails. I should remember, even if you don't! That time I found you at the circus after you lost your memory... She was like a lioness and you were her cub. I know you kind of have death on the brain, but she'll be okay. If you ever want to talk, though--I mean, if you ever find yourself capable of speech--I've been there, and I'm here. Just say the word.”
He gave Trowa's shoulder another squeeze, then he mussed his bangs playfully and before Trowa could do or say anything he was on his feet again, on the other side of the garage, rummaging through a toolbox, his back to the other young man.
Trowa stared after him, surprised and deeply touched. He had known for a long time that Duo included him in his charmed circle, but he always thought that it was because of Quatre. But what Duo had done for him today had nothing to do with his lover. It had been for him alone and Trowa found himself at a loss as to how to respond.
Suddenly he wanted to confide in Duo, to unburden himself to someone who could not know in advance what he felt. He wanted to tell Duo that he had raided the library for books about pregnancy and devoured them all in less than a week. That the day after he learned that she was pregnant he had called Catherine and they had spoken for more than two hours and HE had actually done a lot of the talking. That Quatre had promised him that Rashid Kurama's wife, Marayam, a skilled midwife and former nurse, would be there for the birth.
“Thank you,” was all he managed to say, softly.
Duo did not hear him over the rattle of his tools, but Helen looked at him and smiled just like her father. “To-ro-wa!” she sang happily.
oOo
“Quatre, do you ever get tired of me?”
“Hmmm?” The other young man turned his head on the pillow, fluttered his eyelashes sleepily. “What's that?”
Trowa bent low over him on the bed and continued to stroke his naked body with the wet sponge. The late afternoon sunlight streamed through the open window and baked his skin, but he was less concerned with that than he was with Quatre's comfort and his answer.
“Do I bore you ever?” He ran the sponge delicately along his collarbone, dripping water into the hollow of his throat before moving down over his left breast and watching with fascination as the nipple hardened.
Quatre smiled, murmured, “You ask the oddest questions at the oddest times. You were the exact opposite of boring just eight minutes ago. You're not boring now.”
“I mean ever. If we didn‘t have so much sex, would you get bored?”
Quatre opened eyes still glazed and hazy from his recent orgasm and looked up at him. “You never bore me. Sometimes you're frustrating, but not boring. You're mystery.”
“My mystery?”
“No, you ARE mystery.” His smile slid wider and he lifted a hand to rest gently on the back of Trowa's neck. “Every time I figure something out about you, you present me with something new to puzzle over.”
“You're happy?”
Quatre wiggled his eyebrows in amusement. “Did I say odd? I meant stupid questions.”
“Fine.” Placated for the moment, Trowa rose and repositioned himself between Quatre's knees. The other young man continued to regard him wonderingly and languorously. Trowa stroked his belly with the sponge, wiping away sweat and semen. Quatre gasped as cold water dribbled into his navel, then squirmed against the wet sheets and groaned when Trowa lowered his head and lapped at the tiny pool with his tongue. “Boring?” he moaned. “How can--stupid--you idiot.”
They were both exhausted, drained by a long day at work, the weather, and sex. But Trowa found it impossible to resist Quatre in that pose, with that look on his face. Even if they did not go as far as they had a few moments ago, it was satisfying just to touch, to watch, to delight in the soft sighs and whimpers.
“No one ever really touched you when you were younger, did they?” Trowa observed.
“It would have been illegal.”
“I mean you didn't have a lot of physical contact with people. You weren't hugged a lot.”
“No, I wasn't. Why?”
“I'm just trying to figure out...” lifting the hand that rested limply against Quatre's belly and flicking his tongue between the slender digits... “why it takes so little...” feeling the shiver that passed through Quatre's frame... “to turn you on?”
“Did you ever consider it might be you?”
Trowa kissed the taut belly again, ran his tongue over the smooth skin, down to the short flaxen hairs between his legs. He stroked him with the sponge, under his knees, between his thighs, along the soles of his feet and between his toes, and--when he arched his chest--in the small of his back.
“Trowa--I--oh God. I wish you could really FEEL what I feel for you. Then you'd know...” The rest of the words crumbled into a moan as Trowa touched him again. “Can you try?” he implored when he recovered. “Please try.”
Trowa tried. He closed his eyes and concentrated until he had blocked out everything except his own heartbeat and Quatre's quick, jerky breaths.
Love. So much love he did not know how one body could contain it. Trust. Fear, too, nipping at the heels of the other emotions.
He opened his eyes. Those were his own emotions.
Quatre was watching him, his brows drawn together.
“All I can feel is what I feel. I'm sorry.”
“Don't.” Quatre reached for him, caught his hand and pulled him close. “It's all right.” He sounded tearful, but when Trowa tried to turn his head to see there were lips against his eyelids, cool and soft. “It's all right,” Quatre said again. “I'll show you, I'll show you...”
oOo
The weather broke two days later, became cool and grey again. A misty rain fell almost incessantly, making it feel more like autumn than summer.
Trowa and Quatre walked through the pearly air and a city that gleamed with the waxy rainbow light of fish scales. Bonnie bounced from puddle to puddle, chasing pigeons, barking at other dogs and little old ladies that hurried by clutching purses and umbrellas. “Do NOT jump on me with those muddy paws,” Quatre admonished when she came bounding back to him, eager for attention and praise. “Oh, we're going to have to give you a bath when we get back. Yes, you're such a good puppy. Yes, I love you.”
Trowa listened, amused, although it always shook him slightly when he heard Quatre telling Bonnie that he loved her. He was not jealous; he was wise enough to know that there was a world of difference between the love Quatre felt for him and the love he felt for Bonnie. But he thought about it a lot. It had taken three years for Quatre to confess his love for Trowa, although he swore that he had felt it the first moment that he saw him. He told Bonnie he loved her the evening they brought her home. Again, there was a world of difference between the two admissions. Trowa could respond, could reject or accept his love. And Trowa was poor, had no family background to speak of, and was male, to boot. Bonnie was...a dog. So there were different ways of loving things. Obviously there were, because his love for Quatre was very different from his love for Catherine. And his love for Spook (yes, it had been love, he acknowledged finally) had been different, too.
Would he love Cathy's baby? Could he give his heart automatically to another person? It would be normal for him to do so, but what if he could not? What kind of monster would that make him. And what--he shuddered--if something went wrong with the pregnancy? Would he...
Quatre slipped a hand through his own. “What are you puzzling over?”
“Stuff.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Not now.”
“Okay.” Quatre let go of his hand, wrapped his arm around his waist, and hitched him closer.
Bonnie bounded ahead of them suddenly, barking at the top of her lungs, and tearing Quatre away from Trowa.
“What's gotten into her?” Quatre panted as he hurried after her, keeping a frantic hold on her leash. “Stop, girl! Oh, yuck!” as he splashed through a puddle of muddy water.
Trowa jogged after them. In a moment they discovered the source of Bonnie's excitement; in an alley, in the shelter of the backstairs to an Indian grocery store there was a soggy cardboard carton. Several somethings inside it wriggled and pushed against the deteriorating sides. When Quatre grabbed Bonnie and held her mouth closed they were able to discern a piteous mewling coming from the carton.
“Kittens!” Quatre exclaimed, holding the writhing Bonnie still and bending closer. “One...two...three...five of them! I wonder how old they are. They're so tiny. What monster just left them out here in the rain?”
Trowa remained a few feet away from the carton. He craned his neck to see over the sides, but he did not move closer.
“Do they have a mother, I wonder?” Quatre went on, sounding concerned. “Even if they do, they can't stay here. I wonder if anyone inside knows. Bonnie, SIT. Should we tell them? Trowa?”
“The store's closed,” Trowa said softly. “It's after seven.”
“Well, we can't leave them here. The box looks ready to fall apart, but I bet they're small enough to carry in my jacket. Take Bonnie for a second. We can dry them off, maybe feed them if we have anything they'd... Trowa?”
“We can't take them back, not with Bonnie,” Trowa said. His body felt hollow. He shook himself, blinked. There were raindrops in his lashes. They fell into his eyes, blurring his vision.
“We can keep them in our room,” Quatre reasoned. “Or in the bathroom. We'll close the door so Bonnie won't get in. I could run to the twenty-four hour grocery and pick up some baby formula or something. Trowa...” He turned to his lover, his eyes alight in the dull greyness. “We could keep them. Maybe not all of them, but one or two. You could have a pet, too. Bonnie's really young. She could grow up to LIKE cats.”
Trowa shook his head, but that only served to start his entire body shaking. This was a nightmare. He felt trapped in a story someone had made up for him. Quatre wanted him to say yes, he thought. It would all be so neat and pretty if he just said yes. But he could not.
He turned and walked out of the alley.
Quatre shouted after him. “Trowa!”
He heard footsteps, a splash, Bonnie's barking, and then the other young man was behind him, grabbing him by the waist, holding him in place. “What are you doing?” he demanded.
Trowa could not turn around. “I don't want another cat.”
“Fine. I understand that. But we can at least take care of these kittens. We can keep them for the night and then in the morning we can drive them to the animal shelter.”
“No.”
Quatre squeezed his hands and Bonnie ran around him, catching them both in her leash. “Come on,” Quatre said softly, leaning close to him, “I've never seen you do a cruel thing in your life. But it would be cruel to leave them here.”
“I just can't do it. I don't want to be cruel. But I can't look at another cat. I'll be sick if I have to look at another cat.”
“What do you want to do?” Quatre asked evenly.
Trowa felt a stab of shame. Quatre was disappointed with him. “I don't know,” he muttered. “Call the animal shelter when we get back home. Tell them to pick them up. Do they do that?”
“We'll find out.” Now Quatre's voice sounded clipped. “I'm going to go back to the alley, to cover the kittens up. Hold Bonnie's leash for a minute.” He put the leash into Trowa's hands, folded his fingers around it. “Have you got it? All right. I'll be right back. Wait for me.”
They did not speak very much for the rest of the evening, ate their dinner in almost complete silence. Before they went to bed Trowa asked, “So did you call the shelter?”
“Yes,” said Quatre. He pulled the blanket up to his chin and laid his head on the pillow.
“And they're coming?”
“They should have already. Turn off the light.”
“I'm sorry.”
Quatre's warm hand touched his own. “It's all right. I understand. If it were Bonnie who had died I probably wouldn‘t want to look at another dog, either. You're not cruel. You're normal.”
“You would have taken the puppies, though.”
Quatre was silent.
Trowa lay awake for a long time in the dark bedroom, listening to the faint hum of the ceiling fan, to Quatre's breath and movements, to Bonnie‘s snores. When he was certain his partner was asleep, sometime around midnight, he rose from the bed, grabbed his jeans and sneakers from the floor, and padded silently toward the door.
“Trowa?” Quatre mumbled sleepily.
“I can't sleep. I'm going to make some tea and read for a while. Or I might go for a walk.”
“Do you want to talk?”
“No. Go back to sleep, Quatre.”
He closed the bedroom door, stripped off his pajamas, and shrugged into his jeans and sneakers on the way to the door.
The misty rain felt good against his bare chest and back. He had felt suffocated in the apartment, in the silence. Outside he could drink in the sounds of the night, the cars going by, the people laughing and talking in the bars, music trickling out of half-open windows.
He walked to the alley behind the Indian grocery store, no plan in mind whatsoever. When he got there the carton of kittens was gone. He searched everywhere, in the shadow of the stairs, under the tin garbage can lids, everywhere. There was no sign of them except for a piece of thoroughly soaked cardboard. He picked it up and crumpled it in his hand and felt almost as full of emptiness as he had when he learned of Spook‘s death.
oOo
Catherine was looking well when Trowa went to see her the next week. In fact, she almost seemed to be glowing. He had never seen her so happy.
“I think I love being pregnant,” she confessed while she leaned back in a chair outside the house she shared with Abdul, and he sat in the grass at her side. “I might take it back when I start to swell up like a balloon, but right now...” She wiggled her bare toes and tossed her auburn curls and looked so girlish and delighted that Trowa could not help smiling for her.
Catherine had been born to give life to people, he thought. She had nursed Heero Yuy back to health many years ago, and she had stopped him from killing himself. Which was not exactly the same as giving life, but she was the first person who had made him believe he might be important as something besides a soldier.
He had a good time with Catherine and Abdul. He spent a week at their small house on the Martian colony and in that time he remembered that he stood on the brink of many beginnings, not endings. He had lost track of that somehow over the course of the past few months. But on the Martian colony, everything was new. The tree that he rested against was only seven years old. The stars that he looked at in the evening, gleaming like tiny pink diamonds against the garnet sky, had only been gazed upon from that angle for seven years. No one had even named the constellations yet. He had lunch one day with Governor Noin, Zechs Merquise, and their two young sons. He had not spoken with Zechs since his battle with Heero Yuy seven years ago in Antarctica, but he had a surprisingly decent time discussing the growth of the Martian colony with the man who had once been his enemy.
And he was going to be an uncle.
“And you ARE this kid's uncle,” Abdul informed him rather sternly shortly after he arrived. “Even if you're not related by blood. And who's to say you're not? Anyway, if the Maguanacs are all brothers--and you know Maguanac MEANS family--how can you not be?”
The night before he was to return to Earth, Catherine came into the bedroom she and Abdul had set up for whenever he visited. She wore one of Abdul's oversized Beatles t-shirts and a pair of grey boxers that read DANCERS KICK... and had the outline of a foot over one shapely buttock. She crawled onto the bed beside him and in a very feline manner laid her head against his belly.
“Turn the light off,” she said.
He did and placed his book on the bedside table.
“You've been a real brat this past week,” she informed him without preamble.
He stiffened. It was true. He'd spent a good portion of the past week driving her crazy, performing every chore without her asking, practically waiting on her hand and foot, concerned that she not exert herself. She who laughed in his face, went jogging in the morning, worked until evening, and then spent hours cooking, and laughing with her husband and friends. She who for all she loved to take care of others, prided herself on her self-sufficiency.
Her next words comforted him: “But I still love you. Just in case you started doubting that again.”
“I didn't,” he insisted, relieved that she had come to him, and rather ashamed of himself for not going to her first. “Quatre thinks I might be jealous of the baby, but I'm not. I'm so happy for you, Cats. More than I can say.”
“That's not saying much.” She turned her head and smiled up at him. There was no moonlight; Mars's satellites Phobos and Deimos appeared in the sky as tiny points of light, nothing more. Still, something illuminated her features, made her look as pretty as an angel, a svelte version of Botticelli's Madonna.
“I hurt you, though,” he stammered. “I'm so sorry. The truth is, I really do think of you as my family. I want to be your baby's uncle. More than anything, almost. But I keep thinking I'm taking someone else's place. Cathy...can I ask you a question?”
She nodded, her lavender eyes full of light.
“Why me? A thousand war orphans must have passed through the circus. Why me?” He frowned. “I don't even know if I'm an orphan, come to think of it. And why...” He grappled with the words. “Why did you always think of me as your brother, not a...”
“Why didn't I have a crush on you?” she finished for him, smiling again. “That's easy. You're not my type.” She reached up and tugged on his bangs, gently. “Besides, I was seventeen and you were fifteen. Compared to most fifteen-year-olds I knew you were pretty mature, AND you were cute, but...” She wrinkled her nose. “Um, no! Besides...”
“You knew I was gay?”
“I kind of suspected. Especially after you brought Heero Yuy for me to take care of. You minced around the trailer quite a lot. And you could hardly stop talking about him.”
“I MINCED?”
“About the other question...” She pushed the hair out of his eyes and caressed his furrowed brow. “Why you? I can't really explain it. It's like... When I look at Abdul something in my heart tells me, ‘This is right. We're supposed to be together like this.' It's kind of the same thing with you. Not the SAME same thing, but you know what I mean, right? Something in my heart always told me ‘You have to look out for this boy. He's your brother in spirit.' I think I knew from the first moment I saw you.”
“‘In spirit,'” he repeated softly. But not in flesh. Still, it was a great relief. “I thought you were going to say I reminded you of someone...who died.”
“But you did.” She raised her head, looked down into his eyes. “That was part of it. I DID have a younger brother. Two years younger. But I lost him at the same time I lost my parents. His name was Triton.”
Triton and Trowa. The names were so similar, but they were not the same. He stared up at her, feeling as though something had been knocked out from under him. “You never told me,” was all he could mutter.
“I know,” she replied sadly. “I don't know if I should have. See, I didn't want you to think you were filling someone's place. I wanted you to have your own place first. And now you do, right? You're my brother, no matter what. You never have to worry about your place in my heart.” She touched his face again. “You're going through a rough time, but you'll be all right.”
“I hurt Quatre, too. I mean I did something really stupid.” Suddenly he did not want to be in this bedroom, in this double bed with its empty side because Quatre was not there. He wanted to be with Quatre, who could help him understand what Catherine had just told him.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No. He tried to do something nice for me and I wouldn't let him.” He sighed and dropped his head back against the headboard.
“You're going to be all right,” she said again. “You know what this reminds me of? Do you remember my first date with Abdul when you stayed up until past midnight waiting for me to get home? I think you even had a fight with Quatre that night. But everything turned out all right, didn't it? You have to trust that things will turn out all right. That's what I learned.” Her laughter chimed in the darkness. “I learned that from you. Can you believe it?”
“From me? How?” He lifted his head, puzzled.
“Well...you were the first person I can ever really remember having faith in. I trusted my parents, of course. But I lost them when I was five and I think...I think I felt betrayed. They were supposed to look out for me, but they LEFT. You've left me, too--to fight battles and for Quatre--but you always come back. It's gotten to the point where I trust you to come back. That gives me more strength than I think you know.”
She slid off the bed. “I don't know if this will help or not, but I think--I think your parents must be dead. Because if they were alive they would have found you by now. They wouldn't have given up. I know it.”
It had been a very long time since he thought about his own parents. That he had to have had two was all he knew. Her words saddened him, but he felt detached from his sadness. Maybe it was because she stood between him and his sadness. He imagined her standing guard over him like Strength with her lion from the Tarot card.
He grabbed her hand. “I love you, Cathy. I'll be a good uncle to your baby. He or she can always count on me. No matter what. I‘ll make things right with Quatre, too.”
When he was alone again, though, he began to cry, over too many things to make sense out of any of them. When he had finished, he felt a little better.
To Chapter Four
Chapter Three
Fandom: Gundam Wing
Rating: R
Ship: Trowa/Quatre, Abdul/Catherine, Duo/Hilde
Summary: Still dealing (rather badly) with the loss of his cat, Trowa starts to worry about Catherine's pregnancy and Quatre's friendship with Dorothy Catalonia.
A/N: I wrote this a few months before my own beloved cat died unexpectedly. I could not possibly have written it afterward.
Chapter Two
3.
Late summer, AC 202
“Jeeeesus it's hot.” Duo bent over the sink, holding his unbraided hair under the running water. When he straightened he wrapped the soaked chestnut locks about his head and sighed with relief when cold water ran down his neck and forehead. “Oh man, that's better. I swear, this global warming thing has GOT to stop.”
Trowa glanced up from under the car on which he was working. He pushed his wet bangs out of his face, but all that he accomplished was to smear his cheek and forehead with oil; the bangs flopped right back over his eye and stuck to his sweat-slicked skin. “Scientists are working on it,” he said dryly.
“Not fast enough. You‘d think: ‘Canada! Cold!'” Duo studied his reflection in the dirty mirror that hung over the sink. “I'm either going to have to keep it all pinned up or cut it off.” He gave his reflection one last grimace, then walked to the fan and stood in front of it. “Ahhhhhh.”
“You look good like that.”
“Eh?” Duo glanced over his shoulder at him. He twisted his hair into a tighter coil and wound it into a large bun. “Do I turn you on like this?”
“You don't turn me on,” Trowa said mildly. “I was being sarcastic. No offense.”
“None taken, pal, b‘lieve me.” With that, Duo turned his attention to his daughter, who was watching him from her portable playpen, a puzzled look on her little face. “Daddy looks funny like this, doesn't he?” Duo cooed, kneeling on the garage's dusty floor so that he and Helen were nose to nose. “Where did his braid go? It disappeared!”
Helen stared for a moment, then she pointed. “Up!“
Duo looked at the ceiling. “Up there? Nope!”
“Up,” the girl insisted, pointing frantically.
Duo glanced over his right shoulder, then his left, as though he thought the braid might be sneaking up on him. Then he turned back to his daughter, put his hands on his hips, and shook his head. “You silly miss. It's not THERE, I'm telling you. It disappeared. Maybe I will cut it,” he said to Trowa, who had not ducked back under the car but continued to watch the pair from the floor. “I mean Hilde's hair is long now, so it kind of makes sense, sort of.”
“Quatre bought some hair dye,” Trowa told him. “Navy blue. He was going to do the tips of his bangs, but he chickened out.”
“He didn't happen to get this fantastic idea of his shortly after a conversation with one of his sisters, did he?”
Trowa was surprised. “How did you guess?”
Duo grinned down at him. “I know our little rebel. I was with him when he almost got his ear pierced.”
At that moment Helen jumped up and grabbed a lock of Duo's hair that had come loose from the bun. The whole mass of it came tumbling down around Duo's shoulders. He tossed his head, swinging his hair in every direction. Helen shrieked with laughter as droplets of water flecked her face.
Trowa smiled. He loved watching Duo and his daughter, knew that it was the future he saw reflected in Helen's dark blue eyes, and felt honored to be granted a glimpse of it. He was reminded of something Quatre had told him, regarding children in general and those who had been born after the war in particular: It's why we're here, Trowa. I mean all of us. To meet and meld and become new things.
New things, he thought. Yes, that‘s it. At the same time it made him wonder what his own purpose might be.
“Oh, I forgot to say before... Yo, Tro? You listening?” Duo stood over him, absently twisting his hair into a messy ponytail. Helen sat in her playpen, well occupied with a coloring book.
“I'm listening.”
“I forgot to say Hilde's coming to pick up Helen as soon as she's done with her exam. I'm guessing she'll be here in about forty minutes. Anyway, I forgot, so she's bringing a bunch of the baby books we got before Helen was born.”
“Why?”
“Quatre told me you were flipping out about Catherine. We thought you might want to read them over, see what it's really about. I was scared shi--out of my mind when Hilde went into labor.” His voice dropped and he sank to the floor beside Trowa. “There was all this blood,” he confided and his violet eyes looked haunted. “I wasn't prepared for it. I mean, I'd read about it, but somehow that didn't help. It was one thing to read about it in a book. It's even one thing seeing it in a war. It's another thing when it's Hilde. And she's such a little thing and there wasn't anything I could do except hold her. But that's normal, I was told. It's supposed to be messy. Anyway, the nurses all knew what they were doing even if I didn't, and as a result we got one of those.” He nodded in Helen's direction, his expression softening. “Hilde was out of it for a few days afterward, but then she was fine. I think I almost have her convinced to do it again. So, don't worry.”
He squeezed his shoulder just then and Trowa flinched instinctively, surprised by the gesture as well as the easy admission of fear and uncertainty by one of the most seemingly confident people he had ever known.
“Seriously,” Duo went on, “your sister's tough as nails. I should remember, even if you don't! That time I found you at the circus after you lost your memory... She was like a lioness and you were her cub. I know you kind of have death on the brain, but she'll be okay. If you ever want to talk, though--I mean, if you ever find yourself capable of speech--I've been there, and I'm here. Just say the word.”
He gave Trowa's shoulder another squeeze, then he mussed his bangs playfully and before Trowa could do or say anything he was on his feet again, on the other side of the garage, rummaging through a toolbox, his back to the other young man.
Trowa stared after him, surprised and deeply touched. He had known for a long time that Duo included him in his charmed circle, but he always thought that it was because of Quatre. But what Duo had done for him today had nothing to do with his lover. It had been for him alone and Trowa found himself at a loss as to how to respond.
Suddenly he wanted to confide in Duo, to unburden himself to someone who could not know in advance what he felt. He wanted to tell Duo that he had raided the library for books about pregnancy and devoured them all in less than a week. That the day after he learned that she was pregnant he had called Catherine and they had spoken for more than two hours and HE had actually done a lot of the talking. That Quatre had promised him that Rashid Kurama's wife, Marayam, a skilled midwife and former nurse, would be there for the birth.
“Thank you,” was all he managed to say, softly.
Duo did not hear him over the rattle of his tools, but Helen looked at him and smiled just like her father. “To-ro-wa!” she sang happily.
oOo
“Quatre, do you ever get tired of me?”
“Hmmm?” The other young man turned his head on the pillow, fluttered his eyelashes sleepily. “What's that?”
Trowa bent low over him on the bed and continued to stroke his naked body with the wet sponge. The late afternoon sunlight streamed through the open window and baked his skin, but he was less concerned with that than he was with Quatre's comfort and his answer.
“Do I bore you ever?” He ran the sponge delicately along his collarbone, dripping water into the hollow of his throat before moving down over his left breast and watching with fascination as the nipple hardened.
Quatre smiled, murmured, “You ask the oddest questions at the oddest times. You were the exact opposite of boring just eight minutes ago. You're not boring now.”
“I mean ever. If we didn‘t have so much sex, would you get bored?”
Quatre opened eyes still glazed and hazy from his recent orgasm and looked up at him. “You never bore me. Sometimes you're frustrating, but not boring. You're mystery.”
“My mystery?”
“No, you ARE mystery.” His smile slid wider and he lifted a hand to rest gently on the back of Trowa's neck. “Every time I figure something out about you, you present me with something new to puzzle over.”
“You're happy?”
Quatre wiggled his eyebrows in amusement. “Did I say odd? I meant stupid questions.”
“Fine.” Placated for the moment, Trowa rose and repositioned himself between Quatre's knees. The other young man continued to regard him wonderingly and languorously. Trowa stroked his belly with the sponge, wiping away sweat and semen. Quatre gasped as cold water dribbled into his navel, then squirmed against the wet sheets and groaned when Trowa lowered his head and lapped at the tiny pool with his tongue. “Boring?” he moaned. “How can--stupid--you idiot.”
They were both exhausted, drained by a long day at work, the weather, and sex. But Trowa found it impossible to resist Quatre in that pose, with that look on his face. Even if they did not go as far as they had a few moments ago, it was satisfying just to touch, to watch, to delight in the soft sighs and whimpers.
“No one ever really touched you when you were younger, did they?” Trowa observed.
“It would have been illegal.”
“I mean you didn't have a lot of physical contact with people. You weren't hugged a lot.”
“No, I wasn't. Why?”
“I'm just trying to figure out...” lifting the hand that rested limply against Quatre's belly and flicking his tongue between the slender digits... “why it takes so little...” feeling the shiver that passed through Quatre's frame... “to turn you on?”
“Did you ever consider it might be you?”
Trowa kissed the taut belly again, ran his tongue over the smooth skin, down to the short flaxen hairs between his legs. He stroked him with the sponge, under his knees, between his thighs, along the soles of his feet and between his toes, and--when he arched his chest--in the small of his back.
“Trowa--I--oh God. I wish you could really FEEL what I feel for you. Then you'd know...” The rest of the words crumbled into a moan as Trowa touched him again. “Can you try?” he implored when he recovered. “Please try.”
Trowa tried. He closed his eyes and concentrated until he had blocked out everything except his own heartbeat and Quatre's quick, jerky breaths.
Love. So much love he did not know how one body could contain it. Trust. Fear, too, nipping at the heels of the other emotions.
He opened his eyes. Those were his own emotions.
Quatre was watching him, his brows drawn together.
“All I can feel is what I feel. I'm sorry.”
“Don't.” Quatre reached for him, caught his hand and pulled him close. “It's all right.” He sounded tearful, but when Trowa tried to turn his head to see there were lips against his eyelids, cool and soft. “It's all right,” Quatre said again. “I'll show you, I'll show you...”
oOo
The weather broke two days later, became cool and grey again. A misty rain fell almost incessantly, making it feel more like autumn than summer.
Trowa and Quatre walked through the pearly air and a city that gleamed with the waxy rainbow light of fish scales. Bonnie bounced from puddle to puddle, chasing pigeons, barking at other dogs and little old ladies that hurried by clutching purses and umbrellas. “Do NOT jump on me with those muddy paws,” Quatre admonished when she came bounding back to him, eager for attention and praise. “Oh, we're going to have to give you a bath when we get back. Yes, you're such a good puppy. Yes, I love you.”
Trowa listened, amused, although it always shook him slightly when he heard Quatre telling Bonnie that he loved her. He was not jealous; he was wise enough to know that there was a world of difference between the love Quatre felt for him and the love he felt for Bonnie. But he thought about it a lot. It had taken three years for Quatre to confess his love for Trowa, although he swore that he had felt it the first moment that he saw him. He told Bonnie he loved her the evening they brought her home. Again, there was a world of difference between the two admissions. Trowa could respond, could reject or accept his love. And Trowa was poor, had no family background to speak of, and was male, to boot. Bonnie was...a dog. So there were different ways of loving things. Obviously there were, because his love for Quatre was very different from his love for Catherine. And his love for Spook (yes, it had been love, he acknowledged finally) had been different, too.
Would he love Cathy's baby? Could he give his heart automatically to another person? It would be normal for him to do so, but what if he could not? What kind of monster would that make him. And what--he shuddered--if something went wrong with the pregnancy? Would he...
Quatre slipped a hand through his own. “What are you puzzling over?”
“Stuff.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Not now.”
“Okay.” Quatre let go of his hand, wrapped his arm around his waist, and hitched him closer.
Bonnie bounded ahead of them suddenly, barking at the top of her lungs, and tearing Quatre away from Trowa.
“What's gotten into her?” Quatre panted as he hurried after her, keeping a frantic hold on her leash. “Stop, girl! Oh, yuck!” as he splashed through a puddle of muddy water.
Trowa jogged after them. In a moment they discovered the source of Bonnie's excitement; in an alley, in the shelter of the backstairs to an Indian grocery store there was a soggy cardboard carton. Several somethings inside it wriggled and pushed against the deteriorating sides. When Quatre grabbed Bonnie and held her mouth closed they were able to discern a piteous mewling coming from the carton.
“Kittens!” Quatre exclaimed, holding the writhing Bonnie still and bending closer. “One...two...three...five of them! I wonder how old they are. They're so tiny. What monster just left them out here in the rain?”
Trowa remained a few feet away from the carton. He craned his neck to see over the sides, but he did not move closer.
“Do they have a mother, I wonder?” Quatre went on, sounding concerned. “Even if they do, they can't stay here. I wonder if anyone inside knows. Bonnie, SIT. Should we tell them? Trowa?”
“The store's closed,” Trowa said softly. “It's after seven.”
“Well, we can't leave them here. The box looks ready to fall apart, but I bet they're small enough to carry in my jacket. Take Bonnie for a second. We can dry them off, maybe feed them if we have anything they'd... Trowa?”
“We can't take them back, not with Bonnie,” Trowa said. His body felt hollow. He shook himself, blinked. There were raindrops in his lashes. They fell into his eyes, blurring his vision.
“We can keep them in our room,” Quatre reasoned. “Or in the bathroom. We'll close the door so Bonnie won't get in. I could run to the twenty-four hour grocery and pick up some baby formula or something. Trowa...” He turned to his lover, his eyes alight in the dull greyness. “We could keep them. Maybe not all of them, but one or two. You could have a pet, too. Bonnie's really young. She could grow up to LIKE cats.”
Trowa shook his head, but that only served to start his entire body shaking. This was a nightmare. He felt trapped in a story someone had made up for him. Quatre wanted him to say yes, he thought. It would all be so neat and pretty if he just said yes. But he could not.
He turned and walked out of the alley.
Quatre shouted after him. “Trowa!”
He heard footsteps, a splash, Bonnie's barking, and then the other young man was behind him, grabbing him by the waist, holding him in place. “What are you doing?” he demanded.
Trowa could not turn around. “I don't want another cat.”
“Fine. I understand that. But we can at least take care of these kittens. We can keep them for the night and then in the morning we can drive them to the animal shelter.”
“No.”
Quatre squeezed his hands and Bonnie ran around him, catching them both in her leash. “Come on,” Quatre said softly, leaning close to him, “I've never seen you do a cruel thing in your life. But it would be cruel to leave them here.”
“I just can't do it. I don't want to be cruel. But I can't look at another cat. I'll be sick if I have to look at another cat.”
“What do you want to do?” Quatre asked evenly.
Trowa felt a stab of shame. Quatre was disappointed with him. “I don't know,” he muttered. “Call the animal shelter when we get back home. Tell them to pick them up. Do they do that?”
“We'll find out.” Now Quatre's voice sounded clipped. “I'm going to go back to the alley, to cover the kittens up. Hold Bonnie's leash for a minute.” He put the leash into Trowa's hands, folded his fingers around it. “Have you got it? All right. I'll be right back. Wait for me.”
They did not speak very much for the rest of the evening, ate their dinner in almost complete silence. Before they went to bed Trowa asked, “So did you call the shelter?”
“Yes,” said Quatre. He pulled the blanket up to his chin and laid his head on the pillow.
“And they're coming?”
“They should have already. Turn off the light.”
“I'm sorry.”
Quatre's warm hand touched his own. “It's all right. I understand. If it were Bonnie who had died I probably wouldn‘t want to look at another dog, either. You're not cruel. You're normal.”
“You would have taken the puppies, though.”
Quatre was silent.
Trowa lay awake for a long time in the dark bedroom, listening to the faint hum of the ceiling fan, to Quatre's breath and movements, to Bonnie‘s snores. When he was certain his partner was asleep, sometime around midnight, he rose from the bed, grabbed his jeans and sneakers from the floor, and padded silently toward the door.
“Trowa?” Quatre mumbled sleepily.
“I can't sleep. I'm going to make some tea and read for a while. Or I might go for a walk.”
“Do you want to talk?”
“No. Go back to sleep, Quatre.”
He closed the bedroom door, stripped off his pajamas, and shrugged into his jeans and sneakers on the way to the door.
The misty rain felt good against his bare chest and back. He had felt suffocated in the apartment, in the silence. Outside he could drink in the sounds of the night, the cars going by, the people laughing and talking in the bars, music trickling out of half-open windows.
He walked to the alley behind the Indian grocery store, no plan in mind whatsoever. When he got there the carton of kittens was gone. He searched everywhere, in the shadow of the stairs, under the tin garbage can lids, everywhere. There was no sign of them except for a piece of thoroughly soaked cardboard. He picked it up and crumpled it in his hand and felt almost as full of emptiness as he had when he learned of Spook‘s death.
oOo
Catherine was looking well when Trowa went to see her the next week. In fact, she almost seemed to be glowing. He had never seen her so happy.
“I think I love being pregnant,” she confessed while she leaned back in a chair outside the house she shared with Abdul, and he sat in the grass at her side. “I might take it back when I start to swell up like a balloon, but right now...” She wiggled her bare toes and tossed her auburn curls and looked so girlish and delighted that Trowa could not help smiling for her.
Catherine had been born to give life to people, he thought. She had nursed Heero Yuy back to health many years ago, and she had stopped him from killing himself. Which was not exactly the same as giving life, but she was the first person who had made him believe he might be important as something besides a soldier.
He had a good time with Catherine and Abdul. He spent a week at their small house on the Martian colony and in that time he remembered that he stood on the brink of many beginnings, not endings. He had lost track of that somehow over the course of the past few months. But on the Martian colony, everything was new. The tree that he rested against was only seven years old. The stars that he looked at in the evening, gleaming like tiny pink diamonds against the garnet sky, had only been gazed upon from that angle for seven years. No one had even named the constellations yet. He had lunch one day with Governor Noin, Zechs Merquise, and their two young sons. He had not spoken with Zechs since his battle with Heero Yuy seven years ago in Antarctica, but he had a surprisingly decent time discussing the growth of the Martian colony with the man who had once been his enemy.
And he was going to be an uncle.
“And you ARE this kid's uncle,” Abdul informed him rather sternly shortly after he arrived. “Even if you're not related by blood. And who's to say you're not? Anyway, if the Maguanacs are all brothers--and you know Maguanac MEANS family--how can you not be?”
The night before he was to return to Earth, Catherine came into the bedroom she and Abdul had set up for whenever he visited. She wore one of Abdul's oversized Beatles t-shirts and a pair of grey boxers that read DANCERS KICK... and had the outline of a foot over one shapely buttock. She crawled onto the bed beside him and in a very feline manner laid her head against his belly.
“Turn the light off,” she said.
He did and placed his book on the bedside table.
“You've been a real brat this past week,” she informed him without preamble.
He stiffened. It was true. He'd spent a good portion of the past week driving her crazy, performing every chore without her asking, practically waiting on her hand and foot, concerned that she not exert herself. She who laughed in his face, went jogging in the morning, worked until evening, and then spent hours cooking, and laughing with her husband and friends. She who for all she loved to take care of others, prided herself on her self-sufficiency.
Her next words comforted him: “But I still love you. Just in case you started doubting that again.”
“I didn't,” he insisted, relieved that she had come to him, and rather ashamed of himself for not going to her first. “Quatre thinks I might be jealous of the baby, but I'm not. I'm so happy for you, Cats. More than I can say.”
“That's not saying much.” She turned her head and smiled up at him. There was no moonlight; Mars's satellites Phobos and Deimos appeared in the sky as tiny points of light, nothing more. Still, something illuminated her features, made her look as pretty as an angel, a svelte version of Botticelli's Madonna.
“I hurt you, though,” he stammered. “I'm so sorry. The truth is, I really do think of you as my family. I want to be your baby's uncle. More than anything, almost. But I keep thinking I'm taking someone else's place. Cathy...can I ask you a question?”
She nodded, her lavender eyes full of light.
“Why me? A thousand war orphans must have passed through the circus. Why me?” He frowned. “I don't even know if I'm an orphan, come to think of it. And why...” He grappled with the words. “Why did you always think of me as your brother, not a...”
“Why didn't I have a crush on you?” she finished for him, smiling again. “That's easy. You're not my type.” She reached up and tugged on his bangs, gently. “Besides, I was seventeen and you were fifteen. Compared to most fifteen-year-olds I knew you were pretty mature, AND you were cute, but...” She wrinkled her nose. “Um, no! Besides...”
“You knew I was gay?”
“I kind of suspected. Especially after you brought Heero Yuy for me to take care of. You minced around the trailer quite a lot. And you could hardly stop talking about him.”
“I MINCED?”
“About the other question...” She pushed the hair out of his eyes and caressed his furrowed brow. “Why you? I can't really explain it. It's like... When I look at Abdul something in my heart tells me, ‘This is right. We're supposed to be together like this.' It's kind of the same thing with you. Not the SAME same thing, but you know what I mean, right? Something in my heart always told me ‘You have to look out for this boy. He's your brother in spirit.' I think I knew from the first moment I saw you.”
“‘In spirit,'” he repeated softly. But not in flesh. Still, it was a great relief. “I thought you were going to say I reminded you of someone...who died.”
“But you did.” She raised her head, looked down into his eyes. “That was part of it. I DID have a younger brother. Two years younger. But I lost him at the same time I lost my parents. His name was Triton.”
Triton and Trowa. The names were so similar, but they were not the same. He stared up at her, feeling as though something had been knocked out from under him. “You never told me,” was all he could mutter.
“I know,” she replied sadly. “I don't know if I should have. See, I didn't want you to think you were filling someone's place. I wanted you to have your own place first. And now you do, right? You're my brother, no matter what. You never have to worry about your place in my heart.” She touched his face again. “You're going through a rough time, but you'll be all right.”
“I hurt Quatre, too. I mean I did something really stupid.” Suddenly he did not want to be in this bedroom, in this double bed with its empty side because Quatre was not there. He wanted to be with Quatre, who could help him understand what Catherine had just told him.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No. He tried to do something nice for me and I wouldn't let him.” He sighed and dropped his head back against the headboard.
“You're going to be all right,” she said again. “You know what this reminds me of? Do you remember my first date with Abdul when you stayed up until past midnight waiting for me to get home? I think you even had a fight with Quatre that night. But everything turned out all right, didn't it? You have to trust that things will turn out all right. That's what I learned.” Her laughter chimed in the darkness. “I learned that from you. Can you believe it?”
“From me? How?” He lifted his head, puzzled.
“Well...you were the first person I can ever really remember having faith in. I trusted my parents, of course. But I lost them when I was five and I think...I think I felt betrayed. They were supposed to look out for me, but they LEFT. You've left me, too--to fight battles and for Quatre--but you always come back. It's gotten to the point where I trust you to come back. That gives me more strength than I think you know.”
She slid off the bed. “I don't know if this will help or not, but I think--I think your parents must be dead. Because if they were alive they would have found you by now. They wouldn't have given up. I know it.”
It had been a very long time since he thought about his own parents. That he had to have had two was all he knew. Her words saddened him, but he felt detached from his sadness. Maybe it was because she stood between him and his sadness. He imagined her standing guard over him like Strength with her lion from the Tarot card.
He grabbed her hand. “I love you, Cathy. I'll be a good uncle to your baby. He or she can always count on me. No matter what. I‘ll make things right with Quatre, too.”
When he was alone again, though, he began to cry, over too many things to make sense out of any of them. When he had finished, he felt a little better.
To Chapter Four