by Willowbranch
Notes: This story is a prequel from the longer plot line of "Quatre's Birthday." I wanted to tell this story within the longer version but it would have detracted from it. *Duo's POV. Also, this story feels cliché to me, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.
I was on my way to Quatre's door when I had to stop and hit my fogged up head against the wall a few times. I was pretty drunk, but I didn't want to appear as pathetic as I felt to Quatre--so the hard surface was necessary to wake me up into a semi- coherent state. I weakly punched my fist into the wall. Godammit, how the hell did I get here? What the fuck happened?!
Oh yeah. Of course, it's fuckin' Heero's fault.
Well, I suppose it was my fault too. A little bit.
And now I was nearly at Q's place, again, and for the same reason as every other time. Q's been really great about it though; so supportive and generous. It's probably why I keep coming back--he should stop that. Especially now that him and Trowa are finished. It's only been a week since then and already I'm crawling my way over to him for help, and I never even returned the favor for him. Then again, he has been coming to work regularly, and he seems just fine, whereas Trowa . . .
Anyway, back to me. It's not as though this was the first time me and Heero have had a spectacular fight about our relationship. I used to think it was a healthy thing--we would get our anger out and then have unbelievable sex afterwards. A great system.
Then I had to bring up love. I had to know if he loved me, and if he didn't--then what was the point? Oh man, did we ever fight then! I still don't know what I was thinking, but bringing that up caused three fights over the past three days, and now I think it's really the end. Which brings me to where I stand, teetering to one side with my hand raised to knock on Q's door.
Ah, Q. He's really filled out over the past four years. He developed a man's physique around that sweet young boy I knew during the war. He didn't grow as tall as me, but then I'm the tallest of the pilots. I think they all secretly resent me for it. Even so, Quatre can be pretty intimidating when he wants to be. And those eyes have an impressive range of emotion that never ceases to entertain me. Sometimes, when I'm in one of my more jealous moods, I see Heero look at Quatre with something resembling awe--but I suppose that shouldn't matter to me anymore, should it?
I really should knock soon, otherwise I'm going to fall over. So I do, while leaning myself comfortably against the door frame.
The door opens and there he is, with those unruly blond locks and sea-colored eyes, looking like he had been expecting me. No, that couldn't be--I'm just half-drunk and going mad.
"Come in, Duo!" He said in a rush, pulling me in quickly. I was feeling unsteady. "You look like absolute hell." He had me sit down while he went to fix me something in the kitchen--knowing him, it was probably tea. My misery welled up right away at his concerned expression, but I forced it down again to an acceptable level.
Quatre returned with the tea (I was right!) and sat down beside me on his couch. "What happened? Did you fight with Heero?"
"I hate it that you know me so well." I muttered bitterly. I refused to touch his delicious-looking tea, feeling like a petulant child.
"No, you don't." Quatre said with a small smile. He stirred the tea invitingly. "We don't have to talk about it, you know. I could tell you about something innocuous, like how I did the dishes today or what the weather might be tomorrow."
I grimaced at him, but what he said had the right effect--I had forgotten my trouble for a moment. God, he was annoying. "I really hate myself for bothering you with this, Q--I know you have your own problems."
His face clouded over for a moment, but he told me seriously, "I'm fine, Duo. I was with Trowa for a long time but we're both better now that we're apart."
"Trowa doesn't seem better." I hated myself instantly for saying it, but it was true. Quatre didn't seem too fazed by it, though.
"He will be." Q said it with such calm and assurance that I believed him. "Now, what happened to make you look like you were caught in a hurricane?" He brushed some of my disheveled bangs out of my eyes, and I found myself taking his other hand and clasping it over my thigh.
I told him everything, how Heero had shut himself off from me since I asked him, no, challenged him to say he loved me, and his only reaction seemed to be irritation. I felt my pain siphon off with my words, and my muscles gradually relax. A few times I felt the need to stand up and pace the room as I raged at Heero, myself, and God. Quatre just listened to it all with the same intent expression. I grudgingly found fault with both myself and Heero, but there was still an irreparable rift between us that I couldn't imagine ever closing. I hated the fact that we had never moved beyond friends who were great at fucking each other, but I probably hated it even more that I had never noticed that that was what we were--and Heero was the only one who knew all along.
"You were more to him then just that, Duo." Quatre told me once I had finished. "He had great affection for you, even if it was never love. I could see it. Perhaps he just couldn't give you the rest of what you wanted." It seemed like he was talking about more than just me and Heero, but I didn't really notice at the time. All I noticed was the well of sympathy in his eyes, and the feeling of comfort he gave me without even trying. I felt like I could drown in him tonight, and forget that Heero ever existed.
"How did you get to be so damn wonderful, Q?" I sat beside him again, closer this time.
Quatre's sympathetic face turned sad. "I'm not so wonderful, Duo." He looked away from me, but didn't move away when I slid even closer to him. When he turned back, his sadness had dissolved, and an expression curiously similar to desire was beginning to form on his face. For awhile, all I could do was stare at the change in him.
"But you are wonderful, Quatre!" I insisted. He was crazy not to believe it. "You're always here for me, even though you yourself must be hurting--" I was cut off as Q leaned towards me and stole my breath away with a deep kiss. At first I could only be shocked at this very un-Quatre like behavior (at least within my realm of experience). But then my thoughts turned hazy, and my feelings of friendship, attraction, confusion and hurt swirled in a cocktail of emotion that Quatre now drank out of me. And I didn't think anymore--I was only in the moment.
Quatre was pressing his warm body against mine, his hands wandering underneath my clothes with barely controlled fervor. His sudden neediness overwhelmed me and I pressed back harder, pushing him down on his own couch and covering him with my body and his lips with my own. I began unbuttoning his shirt and he squirmed out of it, then reached with his bare arms to grasp the hem of mine to pull it over my head. "Quatre . . ." I found myself saying with awe as I ran my hand down his pale, beautiful chest, past his tightened stomach to reach the juncture of his thighs. I cupped my hand over the heat and hardness I found gathering there, then rubbed at it teasingly with the ball of my hand. He arched into my hand with a pleased moan. I looked at his flushed face and lidded eyes with adoration--he smiled and brought my head back down to kiss again, heating our blood even further.
"Duo . . ." He said my name breathlessly when we finally pulled away. "The bedroom--"
I nodded, smirking. I reluctantly pulled myself off of him and became irritated at the loss of body heat from certain areas of my body. I yanked him up after me and couldn't resist stalling our path by crushing him against me with another passionate kiss. When we parted, Q gave a mock stern look and pushed me along towards the bedroom.
We tumbled onto his bed together, and I climbed on top, straddling his hips. I leaned over him, looking into his heated gaze before moving my head down to nuzzle, lick and nip at his neck, learning his scent. It was a clean, musky scent with the barest traces of gunpowder, and I felt my blood heat even further. Q gave a little moan and began arching his hips into mine, creating blessed friction still hindered by the fabric of our pants. Oh dear god. . .
"Duo. . .mmm. . .more." His hand came up and dug itself underneath my braid, and his other hand was alternately caressing and clawing my back as I continued down his body. I reached one already hard nipple and closed my mouth over it as I rubbed the other one with my left finger and thumb. Quatre gasped, arching even further into me, if that was possible, pressed skin to skin as we were.
Leaving my hand where it was, drawing teasing circles around the nub of flesh, I went even lower, deftly undoing his pants and drawing them away from his weeping erection. I stopped and watched it for a moment with hungry eyes, and then chanced a look at Q's face. His mouth was slightly parted, aqua eyes swirling with need as he breathed heavily, anticipating. My eyes never left his as I slowly licked my upper lip, causing him to give a pained groan.
"Please. . ."
"Please what?" God, I'm evil.
"That tongue. . .please. . .on me, now." My sweet, beautiful friend Quatre, now incoherent with desire and ordering me to do dirty things to him? It was too much.
Of course I had to obey, but I would only give him a little. I suckled just on the head, then licked slow tantalizing circles around it. I could hear Quatre choke on a moan, the hand still in my hair becoming almost painfully tight, but he never pulled my head down. My mind did a sudden unwanted comparison of him to Heero, who never had any patience for my teasing.
"Duo--I can't take much more--fuck me now!" Heero? Who was Heero again?
"Where is your--" A drawer was opened and a familiar tube was thrown at me before I could finish the sentence. I stripped off my own pants, tossed them away. I gently spread his legs apart to lay myself between them, lifting his knees for better access. I kissed him reassuringly, and he returned urgently, not needing it. God, I wanted him.
I lubed the fingers of one hand, first coating the rim of his opening, then sliding them in slowly to prepare him. He braced his feet on either side of me, tilting his hips up with each slow thrust of my fingers. The sight was so erotic I felt myself shaking slightly from pent up need. Finally, coating my painful erection, I withdrew my fingers and replaced them with something much better. I entered him fully in one quick motion, and he moaned in relief, his long legs wrapping around my waist, holding me tightly in place.
"Ahhh--Quatre!" Wrapping my arms around his back I began to give him short, quick thrusts within the only amount of space he had allowed me. God, he was demanding.
Finally, his legs loosened, but still remained languidly draped around me as he began moaning his encouragement and demanding more, and harder--all sweet music to my ears. I braced one arm on the bed next to him and brought the other underneath one of those lovely pale legs of his and gave him just what he wanted--consequently what I wanted as well. I released all the strain I'd been holding in from the teasing earlier, even all the frustration I'd had left over from what's-his- name. Quatre just took it all and asked for more, more, more-- ahhh!!
He was coming, and then I was too, sending each ending thrust unerringly into his prostate, releasing my seed into him as his released between our taut bodies. Pulling out, I collapsed on him, both of us panting heavily.
I raised my now very heavy head and kissed him some more in the after glow. He had a half-lidded, satisfied expression on his face, the corners of his flushed lips turned up in a smile.
We kind of shifted around a bit, and I rested my head on his chest and my hand on his stomach, his arms loosely embracing me, one hand back in my hair.
I sighed. "Damn, I should have gone after you back then."
Silence. He was holding his breath. Shit, why do I have to open my fucking big mouth?
His breathing relaxed again. "Then things certainly would have been different." He began rubbing my scalp lightly, comforting me. It occurred to me that this whole night was about that--him comforting me. This wasn't the start of something new, he didn't really want me--
"Shh, Duo." Quatre murmured. "We can talk more tomorrow. Get some sleep--I'll still be here for you." He whispered some other things, but I was already drifting off, feeling relaxed and comforted.
Waking up was, for the first time that I could remember, a truly breathtaking experience. Sunlight glinted off the objects in the room, the gentle roar of the city in the background was suddenly very soothing. The world was a good place, I thought, where I didn't have to be afraid, because. . .why again? My sleep-fogged brain hadn't yet remembered what had happened, but it felt the tension-free muscles, and a general feeling of weightlessness and freedom.
It was all shattered the moment Heero walked through the door.
It took me a while to understand what was happening, and how could he possibly be here in my new world of light and happiness. All I saw was his usual non-expression, then:
"Huh. Just what I thought." And he left.
Feelings were starting to register, and they weren't pretty. First, Quatre was in bed with me (good feeling) and was propped up with one hand, staring at the space Heero used to occupy, mouth hanging open (not a good feeling). Second, I remembered the important fact that we ex-Gundam pilots all carry keys to everyone else's apartments for emergencies (fear- in-pit-of-stomach feeling) so of course Heero hadn't broken in. Third, Heero knew Heero Knew HEERO KNEW (bad bad BAD feeling). What did he know again? Oh yeah--I had sex with Quatre!
"Q? Uh, you okay?" My voice sounded shaky to me.
"He's going to kill us. He is, right? He's going to kill us and then we'll be dead." Quatre didn't sound like his usual self. He wasn't afraid of Heero, was he?
"Quatre, if he was going to kill us he would have done it already. It's okay--it'll be okay." Boy, I sounded sure of myself. Well, it wouldn't be logical for him to kill us, right? We're a team!
"I don't know, Duo." Quatre sat up, turning to me for the first time. "I was going to make a plan for this, there was going to be a good time for us all to sit down and talk, or else, even better, he wouldn't even find out, Trowa and Wufei would never find out, and just me and you would have talked, and it would have been okay." Quatre was babbling. "Did you hear what he SAID?!"
"Yeah, it was cryptic and weird, just like he always is." It was also weird that I was the calmer of the two of us. It was probably because I knew Heero better, and knew how to read between the lines. I could see that Quatre could develop the same ability, were he to get closer to Heero. "No, Quatre, he's already accepted it. That's what he meant. We'll still have to deal with everything, but there isn't going to be any murder." I smiled, hoping he'd see the humor in how he was acting.
He did. A little. "Of course." He smiled back, looking calmer. He ran a hand through his blond locks and sighed. "It was just surprising--to see him. I wasn't expecting it."
"I know." I remembered last night, feeling a twinge of sadness. Somehow I knew, that it had been the beginning and the end, of whatever was between us. Quatre loved me as a friend, and he was attracted to me, but he didn't love me. There was a lot about him that was very mysterious to me, and even though we were very close, something in him remained turned off, or shut down when we were together. I saw the regret shining forth from his eyes, that he couldn't be there for me as a lover, a partner. I knew it as well as if he had said it aloud.
After we had talked, and I had dressed and left, I felt like I had a new strength in me. I knew I had to face Heero (and Trowa too-- god, we were becoming an incestuous little group), but I knew I could handle it. There was a cold spell coming for our still tenuous bond that I didn't yet know about, but thanks to the support Q and I had for each other we were able to weather it.
Even though I wish we could still have sex. Man, only in a perfect world. . .
Endnotes:
1. God, that was sappy. I'm sorry. Also, I'm sorry about any inconsistencies between this and the sequel to it. They were written far apart from each other, and with some laziness.
2. I really don't think I convinced myself that Duo and Quatre shouldn't be together. `Cause they so should. Maybe I'll write one of those later.
3. I know, it doesn't make sense that Duo could be so good at sex when he's half drunk. Let's just say (for the purposes of the story) that Quatre's tea has magical sobering properties.
4. Heero gets a bad rap from Duo in this story that may not seem consistent with the sequel. To explain this, a) the Heero that Duo had a relationship with was the "during-the-war asshole Heero." and b) it's only Duo's version of things, and therefore not the absolute truth. Quatre is lucky enough to have "calmer, nicer postwar Heero" who also sort of took out his inner pain on Duo already. It's not like it was one-sided, though--I just didn't want to get into angst like that in my happy lemon fanfic.