notes: This is the third story in the arc begun with "Everybody Says I Love You," so if you've read that and "Sins of Trust" it will all make much more sense. It takes place after Quatre has destroyed the Vayeate, and he and Heero haven't gone to the Sanq kingdom yet.
I can hardly bear for him to touch me. He has such soft hands--such gentleness, and such profound despair pervades every gesture, like he's afraid that whatever he comes into contact with will shatter. Or explode.
We're sharing the same nightmare, Quatre and I. We live regret, and re-live the memory, watching the Vayaete explode and our world float into oblivion in a rumpled spacesuit.
I don't blame him anymore, and I don't hate him. There's not enough left of me to invest in such a strong emotion as hate, or even anger, anymore. I feel suffused with some vague misery in the bottom of my soul, but I think--I think that I've finally become the tool they built me to be. And I am too empty to care.
God--any God--I can still feel Trowa under me, drinking me in, hear his soft voice urging me on, my name on his lips, his hands on my skin--and me inside him, against him, moving with him. His eyes were open wide and dark and deep as eternity, his breath was hard, and his body--he begged me, surrendered to me, trusted me.
And I trusted him, even when I knew he hadn't chosen me.
I must be empty, because I don't care that the backs of my eyes are burning. I won't cry--not because there's any shame in it, but only because I no longer can. Quatre thinks I should cry, that it would help me release some of the pain that keeps me so numb inside.
It hasn't done a hell of a lot for him, though, has it? He cries, and I think he's in worse pain than I am.
He's lying so still next to me, like he doesn't want me to know he's awake. As if any sleeping person could radiate that much tension. It's an awkward kind of peace we've come to at last, mostly because we might be the last two left alive, and we have no choice but to work together.
Besides, we both feel the same pain, even if we feel it in different ways.
Quatre gives up the illusion of sleep, cocooning himself tighter in the thin sheet that is all we could find to shield him from the cold. He's not used to it, and I can see the goosebumps raised on any of his skin exposed to the air. He caught a cold in the first few days, and although it's finally going away, he still sniffles sometimes.
I think I understand what it is about Quatre that had Trowa so entranced. He's not much to look at, at first--he's short, skinny enough to break in two, and pale, like somebody upstairs forgot to finish colouring him in. There's a crack in his voice like it hasn't quite finished changing yet, which for all I know is true since it is still hanging around in the upper registers somewhere.
But then you watch him for a while, and you realise you couldn't actually break him that easily, nobody could. Because he's this incredible dichotomy of innocence and intensity, and you notice how his idealism has a tinge of desperation to it, and you realise you'd follow this kid to the ends of the universe if he asked you to, because if anybody really has a chance of making something real and lasting out of all this chaos, it's him.
Yeah...as much as it hurts, I can see why Trowa loved him enough to die for him. Now I just have to keep him alive, so that sacrifice isn't a complete waste of everything he wanted and everything I ever was.
I just wish we had another blanket.
"Quatre." He shifts, wriggles, doesn't quite manage to turn around, but I know he heard me. "Are you still cold?"
He shakes his head, silky tousled blonde hair flying every which way. "Nn-n-ot really."
"Sure, right. That's why your teeth are chattering." I scoot over, closer to him, and wrap my arms around him--he tenses at first, and so do I, but I can feel how cold his skin is under the sheet and his clothes, and he relaxes as he gets warm. I just don't quite feel like any of this is real--some part of me realises I'm so starved for human contact that this actually feels good, but it's got me all twisted up inside. Trowa should be holding Quatre, or I should be holding Trowa, but not--not this. There's something wrong, something even I can't fix.
"Thanks, Heero." He sounds subdued, even more than usual, and I think he senses the wrongness, too.
"As long as it helps." I don't know why I bother trying to maintain indifference. It's impossible to hide anything from Quatre, especially this close. I mean, when I hit the self-destruct button, he felt me die from half a world away--and I think I can make him think I'm relaxed when I'm all wrapped around him? But I try.
"I'm sorry, Heero," he says, after we've been lying there for a few minutes. Part of me wants to ask what for, so I can bask in misery a while longer, another part just wants to ignore him, pretend I didn't hear. He doesn't give me time to decide--there's more wriggling, and he turns in my arms to face me, his face all blotchy-pink like the sheet he's wrapped up tight in.
"I know you love Trowa, Heero."
I don't want to talk about this with him--I can't. It took the better part of a month just to talk about it to /myself/. "It doesn't matter, does it? He loved you."
He exhales, his warm breath tickling the tip of my chin. He looks miserable. "Yes."
The silence is more than uncomfortable--it's tangible, painful, obscene. I know what he's struggling to find the courage to ask, and part of me hopes he never does--I don't want to give it to him. I don't want to share, and I know I will if he asks me. And then I really will have lost. I'll have given up for him the only time I have to remember when I had Trowa to myself. He said he trusted me, and for that single afternoon he was mine--even though I know he loved Quatre even then, I was the one whose name he was calling out.
But of course he manages to get the words out, even though it takes him a while. "Heero..." He's still fumbling, and I will him to falter even as the other, more noble part of me wants to tell him I already know what he's trying to ask. "Did you--when you and Trowa--did you ever--you know--touch him--?"
I choose my words carefully, because I know how fragile this moment is, and that I will never be able to take them back. "Once," I tell him, trying not to see how his eyes cloud and his face falls, refusing to meet his gaze even though I'm watching him. "He told me he trusted me, and I told him how lucky you were."
"Will you tell me?" he asks, and my shock must show on my face because his cheeks flush even redder than cold and crying had rendered them and he turns his face into the pillow. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked you that. I just--I want whatever I feel like I can touch of him, you know?"
"Quatre--" I want to comfort him at the same time as I'm cursing him. Does he have this effect on everyone? Is it some bizarre defense mechanism that was bred into him, that it's impossible to want to hurt him? "I made love to him." I sigh, the words tumble out of me and I can't stop them, no more than I can stop his shivering in my arms. "It was in Europe, I don't remember exactly where, and he'd just brought me back from the dead." I falter. "I'm sorry, Quatre--I can't do this. I don't know what you want me to tell you, and I just--I just can't."
Quatre nods, most of his face still hidden. "Did you kiss him?" he asks--I can barely hear him, his voice is muffled by the pillow and barely over a whisper.
"Yes," I tell him softly. Oh, did I--I remember that too, the incredibly sweetness of his mouth, the way I could have drowned in it...
The way his kiss was so much firmer than the tentative one pressing now against my lips. "Quatre-" I stammer, pull away, but even as I move I think I understand.
"Show me," Quatre pleads--his fingers clench in my arms, leaving marks, and it only makes me realise again how he's so much stronger than he looks. "Please, Heero, share with me."
I don't want to, but neither can I refuse. My devotion to Trowa demands nothing less than to keep his true love whole until I can reunite them, and my cold, weary body, tired of being alone, responds to Quatre's kiss even before I can attempt to control it.
So I kiss him, or maybe I let him kiss me. It doesn't matter. Our mouths press together, desperate with the urgency of loss; we grip each other's bodies close as if neither of us is quite certain the other is real. My lips leave his and slide down his neck, and his skin tastes like salt and tears and sweat--it's comfortingly, reassuringly human, just like the gasp that leaves his lips and brushes the hair from my ear.
I feel his fingers slip under my shirt--his hands are near frozen, and I shiver with more than arousal at their first brush against my skin. Quatre mumbles an apology and I kiss him into silence as he fumbles to pull my shirt over my head. I need this--I need this night, and Quatre with his cold hands and flushed, blotchy skin and beautiful sad eyes, and the hard gravel in the ground underneath us. I need to feel desire rising through my body and heating my blood, to surrender to the painfully intimate embrace of another living person--someone who understands, who hurts as much as I do and shares the same sorrow. I need to remember that I'm human, before all that part of me that finally found its way to the surface and broke free is suppressed again, or worse yet fades away altogether. I don't want to be empty. Not tonight.
Quatre finally tugs my shirt over my head--his is already unbuttoned, his skin already warming with its own heat before his skin touches mine. He kisses a hot trail down my chest, and I arch under him--my arms are stretched over my head, still tangled in the shirt he abandoned once it was free of the rest of me. I'm still fumbling with it, trying to shake it away, when his hands slide down my hips, taking cloth with them, baring my body to his eyes.
If he has any opinions of me, he keeps them to himself. I don't think he's really seeing me anyway, I think he only knows that the same flesh he caresses once touched Trowa, and that's all that matters to him now.
And just like I did with Trowa, I'll take what he can give me. I suppose I should be ashamed, but I'm too distracted right now by the warmth of Quatre's tongue circling my navel, by his soft hands, warmed at last, teasing down my thighs. He brushes his nails lightly across my skin and I shiver--if I look at his face I can see the smug smile that twists his lips even below the sadness in his eyes. He's human too, after all, certainly more than I am, and just as affected. He pauses, straightening to unfasten his khakis, though he leaves them on for now--I expect he's still too cold to undress completely.
It makes me more vulnerable to him--I don't know if that's what he wants, or if he even notices, but a strange sort of submission makes me want to be at his mercy. I want to turn over control to him; he's so much better suited for it than I am. He's a leader, countless people would give their lives for him without a second thought. I'm one of them. I'm a soldier--I follow orders, I don't make them. Maybe all this is a strange metaphor for sex, but this already isn't ordinary sex.
He runs his tongue along the length of my cock and I'm not capable of dreaming up metaphors anymore. I want him to swallow me, but he takes his time, investigating more than teasing--testing my limits, testing his own. "Please--Quatre--" His contemplative gaze breaks away to catch my eyes, almost startled, and without any more warning or acknowledgment he's taken me all in. I don't know anything, I don't hear anything though I'm sure I want to scream--my whole world has shrunk down to the caress of his tongue and the suckling of his mouth, overlaid with flashes of memory of how I had once done the same thing to the man we both loved.
I've lost track of where my body is, and where it melds and blends with my mind. I can't feel the floor, or my fingertips, or the sharp cool of the breeze as Quatre shifts the sheet above us. I know where his mouth is, though, and his hands--one pumping, one already sliding under me, slick with saliva, searching until at last a finger slips inside me.
The world goes white--I think it and I are about to explode, but Quatre pulls away too soon, stretching alongside me, and I feel his breath against my ear as he whispers, "Not yet...."
I moan, grab his frail arms and pull him above me. "You can have it," I whisper to him--his salvation and mine, my gift in exchange for his keeping me human. "Take it, all of it. Do to me what I did to him--Quatre--"
And he understands. He cups my face in his hands and kisses me fiercely, the hem of his unbuttoned shirt falling in wrinkles to tickle my skin, his trousers loose and his belt undone, at least until I free my hands enough to start pushing them down. He kicks them off, crawls between my legs and braces himself on hands and knees above me. I want him inside me--maybe by joining two damaged bodies and empty souls we can make one whole, complete person, or at least one with a better chance of healing than either of us have right now.
He drives into me slowly--I'm not prepared enough, and neither of us has enough experience to make everything work quite right and it hurts like hell, but I endure it because I want it so badly. I don't care if it hurts as long as I can feel it, I can't take the emptiness anymore, and if Quatre's filling me with himself brings pain with it, it's no more or less than we deserve. He stops--I don't realise my teeth are clenched until he kisses me, slipping his tongue between them, whispering to me to relax.
He moves a little, and I see stars--oh God, I'm sure it was an accident, but my body accepts him abruptly and naked shock registers on his flushed face. "Now," I whisper, and he can only nod wordlessly in return, bracing his hands on the hard ground on either side of me as he begins to thrust.
The sensation is too much to be believed, the friction of his sex inside me, and every now and then he moves in just such a way that all the breath and feeling leaves my body in a wash of brilliant light. His skin is warm at last and damp with sweat, his downy hair clinging to his forehead. There's barely any hair on his body anywhere else, and what little there is is too pale and soft to be noticed. He still has his shirt on, but nothing else, and the edges of it brush my inflamed skin every time he drives himself in.
I reach between us--every time he thrusts my cock rubs against him, and the tension is too much for me to bear. I wrap rough fingers around my own throbbing sex and pump in rhythm with his motion--I'm writhing under him, and moaning though I don't know what half-formed words are leaving my lips. I can't see anymore, not really--the world has shrunk again, and this time when I feel the fire gather in my groin I know Quatre won't be stopping it. I choke on my own scream, trembling hands falling limp at my sides, and I know whatever my body has done has evapourated his control as well. I feel his release inside me, warm and wet, and time freezes as he tries to catch his breath, still bracing himself on his hands above me.
A drop of moisture hits my chest--a tear.
Quatre's crying.
I whisper his name, and reach up to brush away the damp trails lining his cheeks. He draws out of me, and I reach for the sheet to wrap around him as I pull him close.
He wants to apologise. I want to tell him I have nothing else to give. We leave it all unsaid, because it's no longer necessary. After a few awkward minutes that could just as easily have been days we crawl back into our clothes, toweling ourselves off with the corner of the sheet, because we know we'll be cold again all too soon. Quatre presses close against me, hiding his face in the hem of my shirt. I curl protectively around him in the damp cool air and hold him til, still sniffling, he falls asleep, and I wonder how long it will be before either of us can smile again.